Category: Hardball

Those who think the Federal Government had a rethink about its defiance of court orders, and decided to release SaharaReporters publisher, Omoyele Sowore, and a former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, need to think again.

The Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), was quoted as saying: “The only reasons for the release of Omoyele Sowore and Sambo Dasuki revolved around our commitment to the rule of law, obedience to court orders and compassionate grounds.”

In other words, the Muhammadu Buhari administration had released the two men, not necessarily in obedience to court orders but as an act of compassion.   In other words, the administration wants to be seen as a compassionate one.

In response to Malami, Sowore’s lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), asked Malami to apologise to Sowore and Dasuki for allegedly advising the Federal Government wrongly, which made the Federal Government to detain Dasuki for four years and Sowore for more than four months in violation of bail granted them by different courts.

Falana said:  “It is submitted, without any fear of contradiction, that under the current human rights regime no authority has the power to detain any person beyond 48 hours in any part of Nigeria without a court order.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the government is not permitted to refuse to comply with the order of bail under the pretext of defending the security of the nation.”

The Federal Government had been commended in some quarters for releasing Sowore and Dasuki on Christmas Eve, but such commendations were undeserved in the light of Malami’s utterances about why they were released.

Suggesting that the Federal Government could disobey court orders, Malami was quoted as saying:  “It is important to understand the fact that as far as the law is concerned and in relation to the Nigerian justice system, one has multiple options after a court has ruled on a matter; the right to appeal the said ruling, the right to ask the same court that issued an order to vary or review the terms of the order as well as the right to request for Stay of Execution of the order pending the hearing and determination of an appeal in that matter.”

It is clear that Malami’s argument doesn’t apply to Sowore and Dasuki as there was no Stay of Execution concerning the court orders that granted them bail. That is why there was intense public pressure on the Buhari administration to obey court orders. The truth is that the Federal Government had behaved lawlessly.

Agba Jalingo, a journalist and Publisher of Crossriverwatch, has been in detention since August. Four months after he was arrested, he remains caged at the correctional centre in Calabar.

According to the Secretary, Association of Cross River Online Journalists, Jeremiah Archibong, “Agba Jalingo’s sin was his story that asked the state government to explain how N500m that was purportedly allocated to the microfinance bank was disbursed.”

Archibong’s account of how Jalingo was arrested, and the sequence of events that followed his arrest, discredits the Governor Ben Ayade administration:  ”I feel sad because it is disheartening to know that a case like this can go on and on without any headway. How can a government deny knowledge of this when on August 16, 2019, he received a letter from the Police in the state inviting him for an explanation on August 19. He was in Lagos engaged in other things but explained to them that the August 19 date was not feasible.

“However, there was an agreement reached, but before the agreed date, he was arrested on August 22. The manner he was arrested was worrisome because the police team they sent from Cross River to Lagos to arrest him (Jalingo) alleged that he was being arrested as a kidnap suspect. They told him in the presence of his wife that he was a kidnapper who was wanted in Calabar.

“They took him from Lagos to Calabar on road with handcuffs on his hands and chains in his legs. On August 28, the state microfinance bank filed a charge against him (Jalingo) in a Cross River State High Court. It clearly showed that the state government had a hand in his arrest and detention. The state government has consistently denied knowledge of his arrest and detention, claiming that it was the Federal Government that arrested him…

“The judge handling the matter denied him bail. The Senior Advocate of Nigeria who was handling the case begged the judge to release Jalingo to him; the judge also turned the request down… Suddenly he is being charged for terrorism and an attempt to topple the state government.”

If this account is true, and there is no reason to doubt it, then the Ayade administration has a lot of explaining to do. If the state government is out to show that it is powerful, it misses the point that abuse of power amounts to a misconception of power.

In Edo State, politics coloured the season of goodwill. The Edo State government under Governor Godwin Obaseki was quick to inform the public that the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, the immediate past governor of the state, had rejected its Christmas gifts.

The Special Adviser to Governor Obaseki on Media and Communications, Crusoe Osagie, said in a statement:  “The messengers said they met the mother of the former governor who rejected the items, stating that her son would not accept the gifts. The gift items include four cows and ten bags of rice.”

The state government had also sent Christmas presents to others, including former governors, government officials, heads of security agencies, traditional rulers, religious leaders and heads of institutions of higher learning, the governor’s aide said. The information implied that only Oshiomhole rejected the Christmas presents.

Did the Obaseki administration expect Oshiomhole to accept the gifts? There is an ongoing war for the soul of Edo State between Oshiomhole and Obaseki?  The former governor had backed the incumbent to become governor, but the two men are no longer on the same page as Obaseki seeks reelection.

If Oshiomhole had accepted the gifts, it may have created the impression that the political conflict between the giver and the receiver was over. By publicising the rejection of the gifts, the giver wanted to create the impression that Oshiomole was a difficult person.

Interestingly, it was Oshiomhole’s mother who rejected the gifts on his behalf. “We hail Madam Oshiomhole for rejecting the rice if the story being cooked from the Edo State Government House is true,” the secretary of the Edo APC faction loyal to Oshiomhole, Lawrence Okah, said in a statement. “No responsible mother will want the enemies to kill her son. Obaseki has on several occasions threatened to ensure the removal of Oshiomhole as APC National Chairman.”

He added: “The people he told are there alive and can testify to it. So, why will he take a poisonous cow and rice to Oshiomhole’s house? Is that not deceit? … Obaseki is like the proverbial rat that will bite you and at the same time fan the wound. Enough of his deceit and rubbish.”

Obviously, four cows and ten bags of rice can’t end the battle. It is a fight to the finish. The fighters are focused on the fight. They are not thinking about the possible consequences of the fight for their party.

Christmas Day 2019 has come and gone. It was the second Christmas after Leah Sharibu was kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists on February 19, 2018.  She was among 110 schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamic extremists from the Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe State.

Sadly, five of the kidnapped girls were reported to have died in captivity. Others abducted with Leah were set free on March 21, 2018. Those released were Muslims. Leah, a Christian, was not released because she refused to renounce her faith and convert to Islam.

A December 29, 2018, report quoted a friend of Leah’s mother, Dr. Gloria Samdi Puldu;  “Leah Sharibu’s mother had a devastating Christmas; she has been down with serious fever and she is just recovering. It has not been easy spending Christmas without Leah. The hope of the entire family was that by this time, the assurances that the Federal Government gave to us when the three honourable ministers visited that Leah was going to be released would come true.”

She added: “We all had our hopes high, November passed, we are in December and thought that she would be out from captivity and be around on Christmas Day. Her birthday was on May 24 when she turned 15 years. It was a very devastating Christmas, despite the fact that our hopes had been completely in God.”

That was last year. This year, a few days to Christmas Day, the Northern Elders Christian Forum released a statement, urging President Muhammadu Buhari to give them Leah as “our gift for Christmas.”

The group’s chairman, Ejoga Inalegwu, who signed the statement, said: “We plead with the President, Muhammadu Buhari, to give the Christian community of this great nation, the Christmas gift by ensuring the release of our dear child, Leah Sharibu, from the brutal custody of the Boko Haram. We believe the government has the wherewithal and competency to effect her release.”

It is believed that Leah is alive. But she isn’t supposed to be alive in captivity. The Federal Government needs to do more than making promises to get her released. Leah has been in captivity for too long. As another year ends with Leah in captivity, the Presidency should redouble its efforts to bring her back home, since it claims to be making efforts to do so.

There seems to be no end to the twists and turns concerning the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). The latest twist to the story is President Muhammadu Buhari’s order that the new NDDC governing board confirmed by the Senate in November be reconstituted.

Members of the board, who were nominated by Buhari, were waiting to be inaugurated before the new development which meant that the board had been dissolved.

Subject to Senate confirmation, Buhari had approved a new 16-man governing board in August, including Dr Pius Odubu from Edo State as Chairman, Bernard Okumagba from Delta State as Managing Director, and Otobong Ndem from Akwa Ibom as Executive Director, Projects.

A statement by the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, Femi Adesina, on December 19, said: “President Buhari has approved that the board of the NDDC is recomposed and inaugurated after the forensic audit of the organisation.

“The President has also directed that the Interim Management Team of the NDDC shall be in place till the forensic audit is completed and that the supervision of the commission shall remain under the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs”

From the beginning, it was curious that Buhari had complicated the situation at the NDDC by ordering a forensic audit of the agency’s operations from 2001 to 2019 when the agency’s new board had not been confirmed by the Senate.

The Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio, had further complicated things by setting up an interim management team that would be in place for six months to oversee a forensic audit of the agency. The NDDC Interim Management Committee (IMC) was an oddity, if not an absurdity, in the circumstances.

Another complication arose when the Senate declared that it would not recognise the IMC in processing the 2019/2020 budget proposals of the NDDC. The upper chamber also ordered its Committee on Niger Delta to interact only with the NDDC board it had confirmed.

After that, Chief Press Secretary to Akpabio, Aniete Ekong, on December 9, had offered an explanation for the delay in inaugurating the new NDDC governing board: “There are many issues with the composition which are being looked into. For instance, the NDDC Act clearly stipulates that the Office of the Chairman of the Board will rotate among the states in alphabetical order.

“Consequently, after Cross River had produced the last Chairman in the person of Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, Delta State should produce the next Chairman otherwise it will be a breach of the Act.”

In the final analysis, President Buhari’s flip-flopping doesn’t help matters.

It came straight from the horse’s mouth, which heightened the impact of the bad news. Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum revealed that three local government areas were still under the control of Boko Haram.  The captured areas are Marte, Kukawa and Abadam, the governor said.

The information was a revelation because the Federal Government had led the public to believe that the terrorist group had been incapacitated, claiming it had been “technically defeated.”

It is surprising that the information Zulum supplied wasn’t in the public domain before now. Zulum raised the issue when the Minister of Defence, Major-General Bashir Magashi (retd), visited the Government House in Maiduguri, the state capital, on December 16. Magashi was in Borno to assess the counter-insurgency operations.

Zulum was quoted as saying: “Under Kukawa local government area, Baga, Cross-Kauwa and Kukawa town itself need to be retaken; there must be military presence and with the resettlement of communities back in these three locations with immediate effect.”

Predictably, the minister repeated the Federal Government’s monotonous aspiration: “We intend to re-design the battle to suit the environment we are operating so that with seriousness we can take on the Boko Haram and see to their end.

“I assure you; the Federal Government is doing its best to provide resources, both human, capital and equipment to ensure that the operation is done properly and with the speed it deserves.”

Magashi added: “We are in this operation for the past 10 years and the country cannot afford to continue in this battle. We must take the bull by the horns.

“We can do it and I reassure the people of Borno that the situation will soon come back to normal.”

Ten years after the Boko Haram insurgency started, it is tragic that the war on terror is looking like a war without end. The President Muhammadu Buhari government says it has “degraded” Boko Haram, which means nothing if the insurgents are still in control of three local government areas in Borno State.

It is clear that the insurgents are still dangerously active.  The objective of the war on terror should be to make the insurgents inactive. Indeed, the Nigerian military needs to demonstrate that it can win the war on terror.

A situation where parts of the country are under the control of Boko Haram makes a mockery not only of the military but also the Federal Government.