The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Amaechi and the NGF election

    Amaechi and the NGF election

    As governors head to the poll today to elect the chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), neither the people of Rivers State nor the powerful schemers in the presidency can determine conclusively what the aftermath would look like. The most important factor in the election is the fact that Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State is seeking a second term. The presidency pretends it is not interested in who leads the NGF. In reality, however, it is deeply and obsessively interested, as if should its candidate win, the victor would inexorably be its puppet and insult other governors by being the presidency’s lapdog. Katsina State Governor Ibrahim Shema is expected to cross swords with Amaechi for the position.

    Should Amaechi win, his troubles with the increasingly powerful President Goodluck Jonathan will worsen, for as Amaechi is boisterously irreverent and implacable, the president is laconically stubborn and imperious. Neither of the two takes prisoners, nor does any of them fancy himself as a prisoner of the other. The ongoing struggle between Rivers and the presidency has manifested in various ways, including struggle for oil wells, the controversy over the so-called excess crude account, the sovereign wealth fund palaver, and the politics of 2015 and how to deliver the votes of Rivers State. So far, it is an unequal combat. While Amaechi seems powerless, he nonetheless appears to sit on the moral high ground. And while the presidency, which has instigated series of problems for the governor, appears so powerful, it has nonetheless acted without the ethical scruples expected of Nigeria’s highest office, or the nobility expected of a sermonising president.

    If the election proceeds decorously, and the governors have the decency to recognise that all eyes are on them, by the end of today or the early hours of Saturday, the election will have been lost or won. That the loser, especially if it is the presidency’s candidate, will reconcile himself to his loss is doubtful. So, expect more troubles in the near future. But if Amaechi were to lose, still expect a different type of trouble ahead, for the governors who support him will permanently resent the winner. From all indications, the NGF is already polarised, and will take long to heal after the election, if it ever heals. The polarisation indicates that many governors are in fact overrated and cannot be trusted to act with the maturity and savvy expected of their high offices. It is truly remarkable how they exhibit such fiery passions and betray a lack of character over a body that is, strictly speaking, not even constitutional.

    But by far the most remarkable factor in the NGF election is the attitude of a loud section of Rivers State society. No one can ignore the political chicanery going on the state as the presidency sponsors politicians to unsettle Amaechi. This chicanery has disabled the state assembly from sitting, created theatrical atmosphere in which the state police commissioner seems to have taken sides, and protests and more protests are being organised almost on a daily basis, for barely discernible reasons. Sometime last week, a group of women demonstrated in support of the governor, calling on the state police commissioner to be redeployed. A day after, and in an unprecedented move, another group of women demonstrated in support of the rather voluble state police commissioner who keeps reminding everyone he got a degree from the University of Lagos, almost as if learning and character were the same thing.

    Now, two days ago, ex-militants were reported to have also taken to the streets to pressure the governor to resign. In addition, another group of contrarians calling itself Rivers PDP elders want their governor to step down from contesting the NGF chair. Enough is happening in Rivers State to indicate firmly that the presidency is at war with Amaechi. The NGF election will, therefore, not be the end of the war irrespective of whoever wins or loses, and the presidency will be as eager to undermine the constitution to unhorse the recalcitrant governor as it will be unprepared to take defeat gamely. But as the Chief Olusegun Obasanjo presidency proved lavishly a few years back, a president that indulges in petty political squabbles diminishes not only himself and the country he leads, he also embarrasses his office and consigns himself to future irrelevance.

  • Senate should move closer to Reps on Emergency Powers Act

    Senate should move closer to Reps on Emergency Powers Act

    The National Assembly is set to begin work on a harmonised version of their assent to President Goodluck Jonathan’s State of Emergency Proclamation (2013). The Senate, reports indicate, has unanimously endorsed the president’s proposals, of course, after noting very grandly the need to nurture democracy and retain democratic structures. It is obvious that the upper chamber, which has made some variations in the proposal, took cognisance of massive, but probably uncritical, public endorsement of the president’s proclamation of state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States. The House of Representatives also, in response to public sentiment, endorsed the president’s proposal, but with significant modifications. As both chambers prepare to inaugurate a conference committee to harmonise the two versions, it is important they balance the public mood, which is decidedly, if not fanatically, in favour of unreserved assent, with their onerous and constitutional responsibility to make laws that will stand the test of time.

    That the National Assembly is generally in favour of emergency is not in doubt. That majority of Nigerians endorse emergency is also not in doubt. But it is at times like this, when the country seems to single-mindedly embrace a point of view, that there is need for a pause to reconsider the fateful steps we are about to take, even if those steps turn out to be right. It is precisely when the public mood is impatient and fiercely intolerant of dissent, when there is a general absence of rigorous debate, and when the national mind seems completely made up, that a devil’s advocate is needed. The House of Representatives’ consideration of the president’s request for emergency powers comes closest to the ideal legislative undertaking. Yes, the situation the country faces is dire; but if democracy is to be saved, the country has a historic duty to anticipate and check any tendency for executive excesses, for the threats we face do not emanate from militants only but also from those who purport to fight militancy. The end, history teaches, is as important as the means.

    The modifications the Reps have proposed are in fact not revolutionary or subversive of peace, but are significant and indicative of an admirable measure of caution necessary to improve and sustain qualitative legislative work. In the Reps version, Section 2 of the Emergency Powers Act has been modified to make it very clear that the executive branch in state and local governments could not be subordinated to the president or his designee in the emergency states. This modification may be minor, but it is nonetheless significant, for if it had remained, the promise the president made not to tamper with the tenure or powers of the governors and local government chairmen in the affected states would have been of no effect. Section 2 (3) of the Act makes a provocative provision to directly bind the governor and LG chairman to obey the president’s order. Though the Reps modified it to limit its applicability to peace, order and security, it really should have been expunged, for clauses 1 and 2 could be vitiated by clause 3.

    Hardball had last week feared that given the huge cost of executing emergency, the federal government might be tempted to utilise a part of the allocations of the other two tiers of government in the three states. The Act in fact makes such a provision under Section 3(2e) empowering the president to utilise state and LG funds. Mercifully, however, the Reps have reportedly tinkered with that provision and barred the federal government from touching those funds. If the lower chamber had not had the foresight to do that, that provision could have opened a dangerous window into arbitrariness, if not extension of the period of emergency. There are a few more changes the Reps made to the Act.

    While the details of the modifications made by the Senate have not been published, it is important that during harmonisation, the Senate should move closer to the Reps position. It must be reiterated that while the country is passing through a very troubling time, the legislature must keep a presence of mind that enables it to check executive contrivances. That presence of mind must never be subordinated to the often explosive and unregulated public mood.

     

  • Finally, newspapers harmonise their figures

    Finally, newspapers harmonise their figures

    It has taken the agency of President Goodluck Jonathan’s state of emergency proclamation to coax the often heady and damned-the-statisticians Nigerian media into some uniformity of statistical presentation. In the past few days, the media have managed to present to a sceptical country a united front in reporting figures, events and places in the war against Boko Haram insurgents. Emergency was proclaimed last Tuesday. Between then and Saturday, the newspapers kept to their old habit of publishing contradictory figures on the same event, whether they involved deployment of troops or casualty. For instance, on Saturday, a newspaper reported “not less than 50” Boko Haram militants killed; while others respectively reported “hundreds” or “35” or “20” or “21.” Indeed, there was no agreement at all. But by Sunday, by some incredible coincidences, there was no newspaper left that differed from its neighbour in reporting figures, places, names and even tactical deployment of troops in the war against terror. The synchronisation seemed to have been engendered by the gods.

    Two reasons are responsible for this miracle. One is the ubiquitous ‘sources’ to which reporters famously attribute their difficult and sensitive stories. And the second is, as expected, the military spokesman, Brig-Gen Chris Olukolade. Cavorting between these two sources, the media have finally and effortlessly achieved reportorial convergence and poise. The miracle has also led to “super accurate” presentation of statistics. Henceforth, on the surface, readers needn’t fret over discrepancies in anything, whether of casualty figures or of names of settlements captured from the militants. Whatever one newspaper gave its readers was as good as those given by other newspapers to their readers. The facts and figures are seemingly indisputable and even bankable. A reader can safely quote them anywhere and anytime; they appear immutable.

    On Sunday, May 19, the newspapers, to the last, reported that the JTF captured 65 militants fleeing from their rustic redoubts and seeking refuge in Maiduguri. Ten militants were also reported killed. None of the newspapers doubted the figures, nor did they warn their readers the figures could not be independently confirmed. Between Monday and yesterday, the papers were irreverently in full blast, publishing figures and accounts provided by the military spokesman and other unnamed sources – all presented as incontrovertible facts. The figures were so good that by Monday’s and Tuesday’s newspaper reports those fleeing Borno State and escaping into Niger Republic, whether innocent victims or militants, were said to number 2,000. Five Boko Haram strongholds were also reported to have been overrun by the JTF, 14 militants killed and 120 captured. Who did the counting? Who confirmed the fallen strongholds? Surely there are enough lessons from the coverage of the Iraq War, especially its beginnings, the WMD controversy and its accompanying sexed-up dossiers, to make the Nigerian papers exercise more caution.

    If the media do not check their reporting of the crisis in the Northeast, especially issues surrounding the state of emergency, they may end up ridiculing themselves for having become the uncritical mouthpieces of the military. Irrespective of who they choose to support, or what sympathies they prefer to have, it is urgent for them to reintroduce professionalism into reporting the crisis. Caution is needed, attribution must be examined closely, and claims and counterclaims need to be subjected to time-honoured principles of journalism. The media may wish to support the JTF and embrace its accounts of the war, for patriotic reasons as they claim, but they have a greater responsibility to the public to feed them with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. For in the end, the media will survive the crisis and hope to exhibit the maturity and judgement needed to emerge from the crisis with their reputations intact.

    While the Baga controversy dominated the news, were local media establishments invited to the town to see for themselves, to either corroborate the JTF account or disprove it? The government resorted to generating its own satellite images to counter foreign accounts of the alleged massacre, but even those images were never really published. How many reporters are covering the war in the Northeast, providing accounts of atrocities, if any, or writing about the evidently dramatic and positive changes in the attitude of the JTF to the local populace in the war theatre? Rather than sit in distant towns waiting for military bulletins of the war, quoting unsubstantiated figures and accounts, the Nigerian media should rediscover their values, insist they need to be close to the battlefield to report the heroism of our troops, the sacrifice of patriots and the sufferings of innocent victims. Nothing else will do; certainly not the figures provided by the military and regurgitated in a state of suspended animation by a press that is struggling to regain its standards.

     

     

     

  • Jonathan’s enduring love affair with the Southeast

    Jonathan’s enduring love affair with the Southeast

    Less than a year ago, President Goodluck Jonathan visited Anambra State to, among other things, commission Chief Arthur Eze’s oil production facility. When he got to the state, it was love at first sight. Dr Jonathan smooched Anambra, and the state in turn serenaded him. Both gushed so openly and so unabashedly that theirs seemed a marriage made in heaven. The relationship was of such intensity that on September 7, 2012 Hardball had this to say: “It didn’t take careful reflection or any logical consideration before Anambra began to serenade the president with their own promises. Since his project was among those commissioned by the president, Chief Arthur Eze, boss of Orient Petroleum Resources (OPR) production facility, needed little prompting to open the floodgates. Said he to the president with cold calculation: ‘Obasanjo took eight years; we are calling on you to take another four years as one term is too short for you to finish the job you have at hand. You can consider giving power to the north after your eight years, so that they will return it to the Southeast after their own eight years.’ The ordinary Anambrarian, and possibly the ambitious south-easterner, must wonder how easily and how cheaply approbation can be secured in those parts. Eze was not content ceding 2015 to Jonathan, he also worked the ratios out and conceded eight more years after 2019 to the North. Only then, he said with self-flagellating bashfulness, should power rotate back to the Southeast. How very considerate of him.”

    Dr Jonathan’s visit last year was to Anambra. This year, the president berthed his love boat in Enugu State for a one-day visit to, as usual, commission projects. Like the August 2012 Anambra visit, the latest one witnessed a replay of the attraction between the impassioned president and the ingratiating Southeast. For as in the Anambra visit, the top hats in Igboland gathered in Enugu to receive the president. The hosts reminded the president of the ties that bound the Igbo people to the president. Last year, it will be recalled, Dr Jonathan promised he would build the 2nd Niger Bridge or go into exile if he failed. As he put it elegantly and heroically, the 1st Niger Bridge was commissioned by the first Azikiwe, that is, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe; the second one would be commissioned by another Azikiwe, that is, Dr Jonathan. When he swore to an oath to build the second bridge, Anambra erupted into raptures and were only restrained by their eager Catholicism from promising the president eternal life.

    On Saturday, the lovebirds replayed history. Dr Jonathan had his trembling hands all over his lover, and his lover, or more appropriately, his lovers, moaned and groaned. Dr Jonathan was kind enough to appoint illustrious Igbo people into his cabinet, their spokesman, Governor Peter Obi of Anambra ululated, and the Southeast was indebted to the president. Dr Jonathan was captivated by the sweet words of his host, and he also began to rhapsodise. “I thank you for the kind of support you have given to me since I indicated interest in national politics,” gushed the president to the Igbo at a town hall meeting at the Governor’s Lodge. “Till today, I have the strongest support from the South-East; I want to thank you for that. I am very grateful. I am part of this part of the country and I will continue to remain so even after national service.” Dr Jonathan is not just the new Azikiwe, he has become an integral part of the Southeast, an inseparable part.

    And in a tone designed to make other zones green with envy, the president summed up his love affair with the Southeast with this pithy statement: “No other zone has equaled the Southeast zone in terms of support for me and my administration.” Move over, the turbulent Northeast for your infidelity. Move over, the Southwest for being such a sanctimonious handful to the lovelorn Jonathan. Move over, the Northwest for being a smorgasbord of impassive, inscrutable and conservative consortia of opposition figures. Indeed, Nigerians should pray for 2015 general elections to come quickly or else Dr Jonathan would trade off the entire country for love; for judging from his embroidered love poems, he is so smitten by the Southeast’s perfumed so-and-so that no magician or druid can be found to neutralise the talisman that fetched him.

     

     

  • State of emergency and the Nigerian media

    President Goodluck Jonathan’s state of emergency proclamation has exposed how relatively inexpert the Nigerian media have become in recent years. So far, by Hardball’s reckoning, no newspaper has failed to endorse the declaration of a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States. They differ only in the degree of their enthusiasm. While some have embraced Dr Jonathan’s proclamation unreservedly, others have simply stopped at embracing the action without betraying any emotions. While a few mentioned concerns about potential threats to civil liberties in the affected states, others simply ignored that fear and instead concentrated attention on underscoring the president’s justification, and also lending their front pages to bulletins from the battlefields issued by the military.

    At no time in Nigeria’s history have the media been so universally uncritical and impressionable. “The state of emergency the president declared in the said areas seemed the best option,” began the National Mirror optimistically. “The widespread acclamation the proclamation received, as against the handful of criticisms it has attracted so far, seemed an indication that many Nigerians had for long been waiting on the president to wield the big stick.” Dr Jonathan would be delighted. The Nation also hitched a ride on the same soul train. Writing under the dramatic headline, Jonathan’s last card, and a kicker that spoke volumes – Emergency must be made to work because it is the ultimate action in the terror war – the paper argued thus: “We cannot escape the point that Boko Haram rampage derives from the failure of government at all levels. Ironically, the rage and devastations of the group have immiserated the people further and crippled the capacity for meaningful governance. That explains the need for this effort to work, or else we shall be at a vulnerable place as a people.” Having received this kind of unusual and unexpected support, all that remains for Dr Jonathan is to put his shoulder to the wheel.

    The Punch was effusive and even angry. After endorsing emergency, it lashed out at the opposition for engaging in “political point-scoring” and losing “all sense of patriotism” in the desperate bid to gain power at the centre. For a paper with a rich liberal tradition of defending the defenceless, it is remarkable how it equated the troublemakers in the affected states with the rest of the populace. It is even more worrying that in words that Dr Jonathan’s handlers would be reluctant to use, the paper robustly denounced the opposition. “The main opposition parties have fallen short of what is expected of those that have a passion for the well-being of the country,” the paper thundered.

    “The mischievous politicisation of a purely national security threat has given the terrorists the initial elbow room to manoeuvre and gain a foothold in Nigeria’s territorial space.” The Punch has the distinguished honour of being the only paper to describe the opposition in such uniquely unflattering terms.

    In a disquisition, the Daily Sun simply embraced emergency right from the opening paragraph. “The declaration of emergency rule in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states by President Goodluck Jonathan during a nationwide broadcast last Tuesday is a welcome step in the effort to halt the reign of anarchy in the Northeast geo-political zone of the country,” the paper averred. “Though the intervention is somewhat belated, it is commendable that the president has, at last, taken this pragmatic action to ease tension and stop the upsurge of violence in parts of northern Nigeria.” The problem of course is not that the paper supported emergency; the problem is the way it put. It spoke of welcome step, commendable, and pragmatic action – all in one grand paragraph.

    The Vanguard (Humanised Emergency Rule) and the Nigerian Tribune (Global Agenda on Boko Haram) also weighed in, with the latter doing so more restrainedly than any other paper. At a time when even the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has implausibly become a spokesman of the government churning out far-fetched stories about the situation in the north, it was expected that the media would be more rigorous in their analyses, cautious in their support for emergency and, given their antecedents, would be guided by their illustrious history of standing up for the oppressed, especially in view of government’s unremitting high-handedness. It is no surprise that the media were so carried away that they used emergency rule interchangeably with state of emergency. This certainly must be Dr Jonathan’s finest hour. If on a portentous tomorrow there is no crisis deserving of emergency proclamation, let the president furnish another grave crisis. He can rely on the media to be his spokesmen.

  • Obi’s presumptuous search for successor

    Obi’s presumptuous search for successor

    Sometime in 2004, if Hardball is not mistaken, Hassan Jallo, a former chairman of the National Democratic Party (NDP) in Kaduna State, was credited with an exuberant but galling appreciation of succession politics. “We don’t know who will succeed President Olusegun Obasanjo,” he had said glibly at the time, “only God knows. But we know all those who will not succeed him.” Alhaji Jallo was referring to the dilemma Nigerians were to face in choosing a successor to President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2007. But shortly before Obasanjo’s successor was chosen in the dramatic fashion Nigerians will hate to remember, Tony Anenih, now chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Board of Trustees (BoT), but at the time acting chairman, was quoted as saying that Obasanjo, not his party, would pick his successor. Chief Anenih, like most top Nigerian politicians, was merely acting true to type. Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, both former military heads of state, performed the same feat of rendering the balloting process a barren exercise.

    If the statement attributed to Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State on Monday is anything to go by, the culture of talking presumptuously about successors won’t go away in a hurry. While receiving a group of religious leaders who visited him at his lodge in Amawbia, Obi had announced that he was already praying that Anambra’s next governor would be someone with character, someone better than he (Obi). He had not yet found one, he said ruefully, but he was still searching anyway. Then he went on to describe the kind of person he would want to succeed him. Hear the governor in his own words: “He (the next governor) must not be a professional politician that sees politics not as a vocation to advance the progress of civilisation, but as an avenue to steal the people’s money.”

    As proof that the awkward culture of influencing succession has so permeated the populace that they even expect it and are prepared to accept it, the priest who led the delegation to Obi, Rev. Innocent Obumneme, told the governor unabashedly that rich men were after the post, and the governor must not make the mistake of leaving the choice of his successor to the people alone. In other words, the priests have no faith in classical democracy. Directing his gaze at Obi, Obumneme said gravely with the catholic simplicity he is accustomed to: “You have a part to play, and posterity will not forgive you if after eight years, you allow a fool to take over the state because of his ability to buy everybody.”

    Given the recent history of Anambra, both the governor and the visiting priests demonstrated thoughtfulness to be worried about who becomes governor next year. The state, it will be recalled, was traumatised by the Uba brothers, acting directly or through proxies, when they attempted to hijack the governorship of the state. It took the gregarious and charismatic Chris Ngige to free the state from the claws of Chris Uba, and the sedate and technocratic Obi to prise the state loose from the jaws of the younger Uba, Andy. Also recall that even the highly educated Chinwoke Mbadinuju had his governorship hamstrung by the unwholesome influence of his wealthy sponsor, Emeka Offor. Perhaps reminded of the presence and activities of a few powerful businessmen gawking at the coveted office, the priests and the governor have reasons to be anxious about who rules Anambra next.

    The problem, however, is not that right-thinking Anambrarians worry about the future of their state. More than that, they ought to be worried that if they inadvertently turn Obi himself into a kingmaker by ceding the rights of the electorate to him, it both defeats the purpose of democracy and calls into question the collective wisdom of the people. Obi’s choice can turn out to be wrong, as Babangida, Abdulsalami and Obasanjo were hopelessly wrong in imposing successors. Indeed, out of the more than 20 governorship impositions Nigeria has had to contend with, the public can recall barely three or four that turned out right.

    But if the visiting priests were indiscrete in publicly recommending to their host some form of imposition or guided democracy, the governor on his own should have known better than to endorse patronising views. And even if he was prepared to subscribe to the priests’ suggestions, he still owed his state and the country as a whole the obligation to talk diplomatically, disguise his intentions, or pretend he thought it objectionable for the electorate to have such an unpalatable view of the Nigerian electoral process.

  • State of emergency: Jonathan bites the bullet (2)

    State of emergency: Jonathan bites the bullet (2)

    The National Assembly is expected to endorse the president’s declaration of state of emergency with little fuss, and will pretend to understand how to circumscribe his powers and how to limit the denudation of the political structures in the affected states. But in the end, the president and his security forces will have their way. That they will have their way, however, does not imply they will succeed, for the crisis obviously requires much more tact and nuanced solutions than the president and his cabinet have given. Indeed, the president faces a herculean battle to prove that he has acted altruistically in this big gamble upon which he is staking his presidency.

    Two outcomes are possible from the imposition of emergency: it is either the Northeast is pacified and the president’s actions justified, or the crisis in the region worsens and dooms his presidency. It is more likely that the government may in no distant future find itself contending with flexible and rootless guerrilla warfare, with militants avoiding areas of strong troop concentrations in favour of more vulnerable targets, and pausing to fight only in order to score propaganda points. It is feared that the crisis, which has so far been largely localised in the Northeast, may now begin to spread more insidiously to other parts of the North and the Middle Belt. It must also be recognised that the fanaticism that drives Boko Haram militancy is akin to the one that propels the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is illogical, morally contradictory, non-ideological and offensive. For them, there is always enough deadly inspiration to make a few guerrilla fighters pin down a large force, as the Russians and Americans discovered in Afghanistan.

    In spite of the popularity of the declaration of state of emergency, its efficacy is doubtful, for the government has not appeared to reflect deeply on why the Boko Haram militancy has festered. It has festered for the same reasons many other parts of the country are exploding into mini wars and sundry, troubling and uncontrollable criminality. There are millions of unemployed and embittered youths left in the lurch, with most of them possessing little or no skills. There is deep frustration and alienation which no amount of military deployment can mollify. In fact the excesses that often accompany military involvement in internal security operations tend to worsen the problems. To the perceptive, therefore, law and order has virtually broken down everywhere, and it has little to do with Boko Haram. Borno and Yobe mayhem merely present the government a test case and an opportunity to demonstrate it can scientifically grapple with complicated problems.

    The crisis requires the president to show a deep understanding of the problem in the Northeast and other parts of the country, be wary of blaming so-called colluding elites, have the boldness to reappraise the defective paradigms of previous governments, such as a deformed federalism and an unwieldy 36-state structure, understand the psychology of the region, inspire them to support him and his initiatives, and reorganise his army into a disciplined fighting force that does not brook war crimes. If Boko Haram has taken the Northeast to the depths of depravity, Jonathan has an obligation to lead the country in a different direction where soldiers would embark on reconstruction projects, woo the local population with populist programmes in healthcare, education and entertainment, and showcase strategic thinking.

    This column fears that with the declaration of emergency and the massing of tanks, armoured cars and heavy weapons, the president has all but given up on reaching an understanding with a large part of the North, preferring instead a gunboat diplomacy to defeat the militants. A state of emergency is indeed a strong statement, but the president has not shown he has the formula to translate military victory into victory over the fundamental causes of the crisis.

    •Concluded

     

  • State of emergency: Jonathan bites the bullet (1)

    State of emergency: Jonathan bites the bullet (1)

    Last week, rumours were rife that President Goodluck Jonathan would declare a state of emergency in either a part or the whole of the Northeast. But presidential spokesman, Reuben Abati, responded that no decision had been reached on the matter, even though media reports strongly suggested the decision had all but been reached and was only awaiting the president’s proclamation. Dr Abati was careful not to dismiss the speculations in their entirety. Finally, yesterday, the president issued the proclamation and declared a state of emergency in three Northeast states, instead of the five earlier speculated. The affected states are Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States, which have all suffered varying degrees of Boko Haram extremism. The inclusion of Adamawa surprised many.

    The president justified his emergency declaration on the grounds that the scale of killings, not only of innocent civilians, but also of security agents, made his “extraordinary measures to restore normality” inevitable. In addition, he reasoned, a large swath of Borno State in particular had been overrun by terrorists and insurgents. No self-respecting president would allow the territorial integrity of his country to be violated at will, nor stand idly by as citizens were taken hostage by terror groups, he concluded. But the easiest part of a state of emergency is declaring it. The government will hope that merely declaring state of emergency will be a sufficient deterrent to lawlessness. However, as Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and even Turkey have shown at various times in their histories, declaring a state of emergency has proved to be virtually nugatory without a corresponding attempt to grapple with the fundamental problems causing the crisis.

    Unlike Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Dr Jonathan stressed that the governors and the political institutions of the three states would continue to function during the emergency period. That is of course unrealistic. By insisting that he expects all and sundry, including the political leadership of the affected states, to cooperate “maximally” with the security forces, the implication is that the military commanders in those states will become the de facto rulers of the three states. As everyone knows, when de facto meets de jure, the latter is often left shamefaced. But it is not only the executive, legislative and judicial arms that would be hamstrung by a state of emergency, even the ordinary citizen will discover that the powers of detention granted the security forces have effectively suspended habeas corpus.

    The president explains the powers granted the security forces thus: “This will include the authority to arrest and detain suspects, the taking of possession and control of any building or structure used for terrorist purposes, the lockdown of any area of terrorist operation, the conduct of searches, and the apprehension of persons in illegal possession of weapons.” The challenge will be how to deploy these enormous powers without suffocating those states and further alienating and humiliating their people. For, already, the scale of alienation in those places has reached impossible levels.

    By succumbing to the option of state of emergency, Dr Jonathan is in effect saying the insurgency in those states and all other terrorist acts perpetrated there will respond to military solution or strong-arm tactics. It is true the president was expected to take firm measures to halt the slide to chaos, but it is doubtful whether more troops, more force and further abridgment of the democratic processes in those beleaguered state are the panaceas required to re-establish peace and normality. The problems have become too deep-seated to respond to shock and awe.

     

    •To be concluded tomorrow

     

  • The brazen subterfuge of emergency rule

    The brazen subterfuge of emergency rule

    The moment President Goodlcuk Jonathan started surrendering wholesale to the cajolery of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gerontocracy – the Anenihs and the Tukurs – and began giving heed to the scaremongering of hawkish ethnic advisers, his government also started embracing vicious schemes and intrigues of every conceivable hue. It was not as if he was himself blameless before he encountered those who inspired him to excesses, but in his innocent years, he cut the figure of a moderate whose underhandedness appeared imposed. Thanks to the hawks and the ageing dupes that now surround him and weave their talisman around him, Jonathan has become an eager intriguer quite prepared to hang his enemies upon flimsy legal scaffolds as he is anxious to eviscerate his friends who acquire ambition that threatens his presidency.

    Last week, someone close to the presidency flew the kite of emergency rule in the five northern states of Borno, Yobe, Nasarawa, Benue and Plateau. The emergency rule declaration, it was suggested, would be a firm, if last-ditch, attempt to rein in the insurgency of Boko Haram, the acerbity of nomadic Fulani, and the homicidal frenzy of Middle Belt cults. The presidency has been quick to deny the news, but it didn’t quite say the government had not flirted with the idea. However, media reports strongly assert that the idea is actually under active consideration, and that the Jonathan presidency is somewhat amenable to it, indeed, that it finds it intriguingly attractive. The reasons are not far-fetched. Given present realities, the Northeast is all but lost to the president should elections be held today. However, even if the polls were to take place further down the years, it is inconceivable that the electorate in those forbidden regions would entertain Dr Jonathan with as much as a grin.

    Not only did Dr Jonathan fail to restrain his security agents when the people and elders of the Northeast complained about their high handedness, the president even toured a few of those outlandish regions and lathered them with criticisms. Borno elders have not forgotten the surliness of the president, nor will they forget or forgive his lack of empathy. It is, therefore, suggested that knowing how implacably opposed the Northeast is to him, the president has made up his mind he faces only two choices: either to consider the bright side of the stalemate as implying that no election will take place in those parts on account of unremitting violence or, through the instrumentality of emergency rule, and similar to what Chief Olusegun Obasanjo did in Ekiti State in 2006, put his men in power unconstitutionally to procure electoral triumphs. The two choices are truly enticing to Jonathan’s ageing advisers and hawkish ethnopolitical man Fridays. But these are ominous choices destined to miscarry badly for obvious reasons, for every subterfuge enacted in the Northeast alienates the restive region the more, thereby making wider swaths of that region vulnerable to Jonathan’s enemies, particularly the Boko Haram.

    The emergency rule idea is of course not the president’s first scheme to tackle the growing uncertainties of 2015. Recall his shenanigans in the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) and the bold and intrusive manner the president provoked dissension among the governors, pitching the boisterously impatient Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers against the ingratiating and colluding Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom. The battle and its concomitant furies are still raging in the Forum, and will not end even after the NGF chairmanship election had been won and lost. But much more than the fracturing of the NGF, the emergency rule boondoggle is certain to provoke the most fascinating pre-election jousting of the Fourth Republic, far worse than the serial deposition of PDP chairmen embarked upon by Obasanjo many years before.

    As governors of the South-South and Southeast showed in Asaba, Delta State on Sunday by their chorused endorsement of the president, Dr Jonathan has the two zones locked in his hat. Given the plum placement of officials from the two zones in the government, the cohabitation between them will survive every snide attack from the other regions. If the president is to work his sorcery on any Zone, therefore, expect him to target the Southwest and the Northwest, the two remaining bastions of anti-Jonathan forces and hegemonies of aristocratic politics. Dr Jonathan knows he will split the North-Central on account of the country’s widening religious dichotomies. In sum, the Northeast is the femme fatale expected to cast the deciding vote. But if Dr Jonathan cannot have her, he seems determined to ensure that no one else will. This behaviour may not be statesmanlike and could ruin the republic, but the president’s hawks don’t give a damn – as always.

     

     

     

  • Plumbing the depths of despair

    Scores of policemen killed by a cult group in Alakyo village in Nasarawa State; scores more murdered in Bama, Borno State by Boko Haram militants; perhaps hundreds killed in Baga, Borno State in questionable circumstances; and scores and scores of other security agents, including Department of State (SSS) operatives and soldiers, killed in action. Add to the mess a dozen relatively new forms of criminality such as kidnapping, gory bouts of rape, and bloody ethnic cum border disputes, and you begin to wonder whether the country has not yet plumbed the depths of depravity and horror. Despair? No, said some; its much worse, its Nigeria’s awful moment of angst. The country seems to be locked in a cul-de-sac, battered by bloodbath, wearied by its interminable woes, and unsure whether there is any way out, or if there is, whether the country’s leaders have the courage to take the audacious steps needed to free Nigeria from its self-imposed torments.

    This dangerous and menacing point was, however, not reached by sudden flight. It had been slow in building, indeed long in coming, and it gave as many signs of its portents as nectar inescapably draws bees. It is easy to blame economic and social dislocations for the outbreak of sectarian wars. Of course there are always elements of those factors involved in any eruption of violence, particularly violence levelled against the state. But how many Nigerians have scrutinised history to discover the many points where the country’s leaders took the wrong turns down the road, many points where opportunities existed to do right by country and avert rebellion? As recent as the Fourth Republic, would things not have been different had the founding leaders of this republic not played God? Indeed, had they been altruistic, patriotic, and conceived a brilliant vision of what Nigeria should be and where it should head, would things not have been different?

    The country is structurally deformed and needs fundamental changes to promote economic growth, tackle unemployment and guarantee political stability. But many of the social and political upheavals of today, starting from the 2009 Boko Haram revolt to the rampant militia activities of the past one year or more, are products of the thoughtless manipulation of the electoral process that began in 1999 and was accentuated in 2007. Power brokers imposed Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 and got away with that short-sighted act, but he proved to be the wrong man for the right job. Obasanjo, however, in turn imposed Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan in 2007, and also got away with it, though once again they proved to be the wrong men for the job. The country is consequently stuck with the follies of 1999 and 2007, which follies contributed significantly to the woes of today. If these follies are repeated in 2015, they could prove fatal to the survival of Nigeria, as the killings, kidnappings, maiming and defiance of lawful authorities push the country to the depths of despair.