The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Living in denial

    Living in denial

    Early in the week, newspapers regaled their readers with an indescribably unrealistic statement from government describing the country as safe, notwithstanding relentless terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, suspected Boko Haram militants timed their attacks on churches and a border post in Gamboru Ngala, Borno State to coincide with the government’s statement. In the past few years, terror attacks have been so massive and dispiriting that Nigerians do not require anyone to tell them how to place their country on the safety index. It is instructive, however, that the government statement was issued by Dr Doyin Okupe, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, probably the most thoroughgoing contrarian the country has produced in recent times. Variously described as an attack dog or a battering ram, Okupe is a man who enjoys needling Nigeria’s humourless public and their harassed media with startling statements.

    Except Okupe and his bosses, there is hardly anyone who thinks Nigeria is safe. Either at home or on the highway, by day or by night, Nigerians do not consider themselves safe. That perception, it must be pointed out, has nothing to do with whether they support or oppose the government. Okupe even admonishes the media, which he flatters as being nationalistic, to be more positive about events and developments in the country. As he put it: “It is in times like this that we need the fire of patriotism naturally within us as Nigerians, as individual citizens, organisations, including the media, to bring us together as a nation and rally round the government in its efforts to root out the criminal elements within our society.”

    A day later, the Director-General, State Security Service, Mr. Ekpenyong Ita, partially advanced the same thesis while declaring open a workshop for media professionals at the Institute for Security Studies, Bwari, Abuja. His explanation is that “Publicity is the oxygen craved by terrorists. When they carry out attacks, they want as much publicity as possible, and when the media sensationalise such an attack, the terror groups have achieved their objectives of getting wide media publicity which is aimed at intimidating and installing fear into people.” How Okupe and Ekpenyong hoped the media would underplay reports of terror attacks is hard to understand. It is true the media are patriotic, and that they also understand that news of terror attacks could gratify the vanities of terrorists, but they would be failing in their duties if they underplayed serious issues to, as it ironically seems, gratify the vanities of a complacent government. Let the issues come out in bold relief, and let the government and people of Nigeria know what giants lurk in the bushes.

    It does seem that what Okupe and Ekpenyong are expecting is for Nigerians to live in denial. But even if they want to, they can’t, for the problems are of such magnitude that they feel it much more than public officials who live behind the high walls of government reservation areas. Worse, Okupe even advances the illogicality of linking the increasing rate of attacks to the decline of terror groups. Likening recent Boko Haram attacks to the dying days of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Okupe suggested that terror activities in Nigeria could soon begin to wane. Even if that were true, he must by now have recognised that Boko Haram has become, as Ekpenyong colourfully put it, a big business. It has become a franchise spawning adventurous and autonomous terror cells. More than this, terror attacks are not the only reason for insecurity in Nigeria. Robberies, kidnapping, assassinations and murders, not to talk of the nefarious activities of security agents themselves, have all combined to make life a hellish one for Nigerians. No amount of media restraint, government whitewash, or living in denial can mitigate the feeling of insecurity unnerving the entire country.

  • Toll gates: If this is governance…

    Toll gates: If this is governance…

    While touring the North/South road on Monday, the Minister of Works, Mr Mike Onolemenmen, confirmed to newsmen that the federal government planned to reintroduce tolling on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. This was necessary, he said, to “sustain and maintain (the) road so that it would not go back to the sorry state we met it and similar others across the federation.” The tolling would begin as soon as the expressway was reconstructed and expanded by the two firms handling the road work, RCC and Julius Berger, he concluded. But does palliative work lasting eight weeks include expansion work? It is hard to understand the Works minister. In fact, given his garbled statements in the last two weeks on the subject, it is doubtful whether he understands himself.

    After terminating the concession awarded Bi-Courtney Highway Construction Services to reconstruct and expand the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the government had immediately engaged RCC and Julius Berger to work on the road. It was not until questions were asked about the haste with which a modified form of the road contract was awarded the two construction giants that the government explained that the two-month palliative contract was to make the road motorable for the festive period. Moreover, if the ongoing work by RCC and Julius Berger will last for eight weeks, why would the government begin tolling the road? It will be recalled that part of the agreement with the original concessionaire was to toll the road after reconstructing and expanding it to four lanes to Shagamu and three lanes to Ibadan.

    During his Monday interaction with the media, the Works minister also gave the impression that tolling of roads would not be limited to Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. It is clear the government is confused, if not outrightly dishonest. There is obviously more to the expressway contract than the government is telling the public. Why would the government impose tolls simply because palliative work was done on a road? Is the government jettisoning concession policy? If that is not the goal, then why the haste? Why not wait until new concessionaires emerge, who would determine the appropriate toll fees to collect? In fact, it seems, as the injured Bi-Courtney insinuated after it lost the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway contract, that the concession agreement was intentionally wrapped in multi-layered subterfuge.

    In 2010, the federal government had through an official of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) announced that tolling would be reintroduced on some federal roads. The plan was to impose about five-per cent road user charge on the pump price of petrol and diesel through which the government could raise about N30bn annually to maintain the nation‘s 220,000 kilometres of roads. Nobody knows the current status of that plan. In 2004, the Olusegun Obasanjo government had attempted a fuel tax of N1.50 on every litre of petrol to raise funds for road maintenance, and had contemptuously presented a fait accompli to the public by summarily dismantling all toll gates. He failed to achieve his aims, though the toll gates were already destroyed.

    Now, in a clearly muddleheaded plan to repair the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the government has engaged contractors in a deal that is unclear both in scope and objective. If this is not deliberate mischief, it is at least incompetence. At any rate, this is certainly not the way to run a government. The minister must abandon his plans to toll the roads until concessionaires are secured and proper contracts, not palliative agreements, are signed and the destination clear.

     

  • Silent tremors in Turkey

    Silent tremors in Turkey

    Turkey is gradually changing in such dramatic ways that were the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), to rise from the grave, he would probably drop dead from shock. The change is not recent; perhaps it was even inevitable. After founding the Republic of Turkey in 1923 on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, Ataturk embarked on cultural, economic and political reforms to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a westernised and secular state. The epicentre of the reforms was secularism, which sought to preclude unhealthy religious influences on politics. Specifically, in 1927, courses relating to religion were excluded from the curriculum on the excuse that non-Muslims also lived in Turkey. Between 1927 and 1949, no religious instruction was permitted in the school system to prevent the sort of abuse of Islam that contributed massively to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Armed Forces stood as guarantor of that secularism, that is, until the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came into office in 2002 and began to slowly and more palpably roll the curtain back by, among other things, introducing religious instruction in school curriculum.

    Now, after a long time, and after series of turbulent struggles with ruling parties that introduced non-secular policies into governance, the Turkish military has finally bowed to public policy by allowing the inclusion of elective Koranic courses in the curriculum of military high schools. This is not only surprising; it may in fact presage a steady surrender of the republic to religious influences in line with significant public opinion. But whether that opinion will serve the republic well in the near and distant future is not clear. It required the firm hands and ruthless conviction of Ataturk to resist the yearnings of Turks for Islamic influences in Turkish life, whether in education or in politics. The situation is now changing in favour of non-secularist policies, but the military, for which Kemalism is both a doctrine and a nostalgic way of life, still remains largely insulated from religion. Indeed, the rollback became sharply evident after the 2007 elections, which the AKP won more emphatically than it did in 2002. First was the controversial election of Abdullah Gul as president, in spite of his past involvement with Islamist parties. (The presidency is ceremonial, as effective power resides in the office of the prime minister). And second was the proposal of the government that same year to lift the ban on headscarves in universities.

    Of all the issues bifurcating the Turkish Republic, the headscarves controversy represents perhaps the most poignant. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had in the 2007 elections made electoral promise to lift the ban on headscarves. On winning, he caused the parliament in February 2008 to amend the constitution to that effect. But the opposition, at the head of widespread public protests, applied to the Constitutional Court to annul the amendment. The Court upheld the appeal and retained the ban. By 2010, however, the ban was no longer enforced, even though the law remains in force. For a society that is 95 percent Muslim, it is instructive how they respond to the controversial issue of religion, especially against the backdrop of the secularist principles adumbrated by Ataturk. For now there are enough forces to safeguard Kemalism and keep Turkey on the straight and narrow path of secularism. But the tide is changing, albeit slowly, almost like silent tremors, and with religion constituting a dangerous undertow to the continuing modernisation and stability of the republic.

    A majority of Turks appears to recognise the salience of the Kemalist doctrine of separation of roles between religion and politics as a factor in modernisation and social and political harmony. Turkey was fortunate that as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated, Ataturk came along with his visionary leadership and forceful personality. He was prescient enough to appreciate the drawbacks of the past and the high ground Turkey must climb in order to take its pride of place in the modern era. That great lesson is lost on Egypt, Iran, present Iraq, and sadly Nigeria. The case of Nigeria is particularly depressing. Having never tasted modernisation, it has also failed to produce leaders who knew where to draw the line and strike the right balance. This is why the northern part of Nigeria is in turmoil, and why, if the Southwest does not take extraordinary measures now, it could also become susceptible to the destabilising forces of retrogression masquerading as religion.

     

     

  • Brinkmanship in Egypt

    Brinkmanship in Egypt

    The assumption of sweeping powers by President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt on November 22 has triggered widespread protests that are sharpening divisions in this North African country of ancient fame and modern underachievement. On the one hand is the Freedom and Justice Party, which consists of the Muslim Brotherhood, and on the other hand are liberals, leftists and Coptic Christians who form a rainbow coalition of opposition groups. The controversial powers assumed by Morsi preclude the Supreme Constitutional Court from challenging his decisions.

    In effect after gaining presidential powers, and with the parliament still dissolved and legislative powers inhering in the presidency, Morsi has now with the new decree also assumed judicial powers. This has prompted many respected opposition politicians, including Mohammed ElBaradei, former United Nations nuclear watchdog chief, and ex-Arab League chief Amr Mussa, to suggest that Morsi had become Egypt’s new pharaoh. Morsi on the other hand claimed he needed the wide powers to safeguard the revolution, retry Mubarak loyalists accused of murder, and guarantee that the transition to democracy would be on course and the new draft constitution concluded and subjected to a referendum.

    Recall that in February 2011, the military command had enacted an edict dissolving the constitution and parliament. But after Morsi assumed office in 2012, he immediately and summarily revoked the dissolution and ordered the parliament back to session. The order, however, led to a politico-judicial crisis requiring the intervention of the Constitutional Court, most of which members were appointed during the Hosni Mubarak era. The Court ruled that Morsi acted outside the confines of his powers. With this background in mind, Morsi’s supporters have argued that the Court was again poised to bring the sledgehammer down on the Constituent Assembly that was drafting the new constitution. This was because leftists, secularists and Christians had boycotted sittings due to what they observed was a draft constitution that looked even more Islamic than the suspended 1971 constitution.

    In at least 13 of the provisions in the new draft constitution, there is little doubt that if passed in a referendum, Egypt would become more Islamic than it had been under the 1971 constitution. Does this amount to a betrayal of the January 25, 2011 revolution? Liberals, leftists and Christians think so. The Muslim Brotherhood says no. Will the divisions heal soon? That will depend on many factors. Already, the judiciary, which is beginning to bear the brunt of the illiberal tendencies of the Muslim Brotherhood, is on strike to protest the ouster of court powers. What is certain is that the manner Morsi has gone about “protecting the revolution” has rankled with many groups in Egypt and raised suspicion about the ultimate goals of the Muslim Brotherhood. Work on the draft constitution was supposed to be concluded in January. But because of widening divisions in the Constituent Assembly and the boycott by many groups, the work was cut short and hastily and perhaps shoddily concluded last Thursday.

    If Morsi hopes to ensure a smooth transition for Egypt and obviate the protests and counter-protests rocking Egypt, he will have to begin to act like a statesman rather than leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. He must recognise and respect Egypt’s sectarian pastiche and focus on the goals of delivering prosperity to a people currently dependent on sizable foreign aid, and enthroning a stable and progressive country, albeit with a dose of Islamic flavour. He cannot afford to forget that he narrowly won the June presidential poll with 51.73 percent after a run-off, and that those opposed to his party’s non-secular platform are nearly as many as those in favour. He cannot also afford the brusqueness his government now seems noted for, or the brinkmanship the Muslim Brotherhood is foisting on so tentative and vulnerable a polity. It would be a shame if the Arab Spring were to flounder in, of all places, Egypt, due to his excesses and especially the promulgation of judicial and constitutional measures that are apparently needless and avoidable.

     

    Tomorrow: Silent tremors in Turkey.

  • Between Sanusi’s idealism and Jonathan’s realism

    Between Sanusi’s idealism and Jonathan’s realism

    Far more than the furore that greeted his remarks in 2010 about the National Assembly spending 25 percent of the Federal Government overhead annually, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has again infuriated his enemies and united them effortlessly against himself. The list of his enemies is growing. Speaking with peerless candour at a seminar in Warri a few days ago, Sanusi told his stunned audience that if the nation wished to free resources for development, the government must have the courage to eliminate the third tier of government, that is, the local government, halve the staff strength of public sector workers, reduce the size of the National Assembly, and forswore the creation of more states. In that one swing of the axe, Sanusi ensured that he would have no friends among local government workers, among civil servants who interpreted his call as unfriendly and disparaging, and among national legislators who see him as probably the most irreverent and acerbic of all government appointees.

    Predictably, his now united enemies have in turn called for his sack, describing him as uneducated and incompetent. In fact the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), the umbrella union of Nigerian workers, has specifically drawn his attention to his indefensible and insufficient understanding of the term civil servants. Sanusi had indicated that 70 percent of the budget was spent on salaries and entitlements for public sector workers, leaving a meagre 30 percent for development purposes. But if Sanusi knew the difference between civil servants and public servants, said the General Secretary, Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), Comrade Alade Bashir Lawal, he would recognise that the entire civil service strength is below 100,000, and that the public service, comprising the Army, Navy, Customs, EFCC, NAFDAC, among others, has 970,000 workers. In other words, if Sanusi knew this distinction, would he still call for a drastic cut?

    But the NLC’s umbrage was even fiercer. Said Comrade Abdulwaheed Omar, its president: “We see in Sanusi an agent of death that must be defeated and crushed before he further destroys the Nigerian economy. While President Jonathan is promising to create more jobs, Sanusi is calling for mass sack of civil servants in a country with one of the highest number of unemployed, which has indeed led to gross deprivation and the current state of insecurity in Nigeria. While we believe the Federal Government will ignore the ranting of this hollow economist, Sanusi has never demonstrated patriotism in all his advice on economic and financial management in Nigeria.”

    It was clear Sanusi spoke with the impersonal penchant of a man obsessed with figures and with balancing of books or budgets. He did not speak as a politician, and could not have, for his lifetime ambition is either to be a top banker, which he has achieved, or a traditional ruler, which he still pants for. Both offices admit of candour, especially the indescribably unfeeling variety he has managed to imbibe. He must indeed consider himself lucky to be living in these times, when the grave contradictions undermining societal cohesion and progress have made his frankness tolerable, even admirable. Had he come to maturity decades ago, and rose to become an emir, he would have been vulnerable to deposition.

    If the NLC will gun for Sanusi, so too will the National Assembly redouble its effort to subvert his talents. The legislature had driven him to distraction with repeated summons a few months ago, to the point that he exasperatingly wailed he was tired of being summoned. He will wail the more in the coming months. However, no one has said anything about Sanusi’s sensible denunciation of the loathsome effort to create more states. It is impossible to fault his premise on the argument against state creation. There is indeed no reason on earth to create more states, and it does not seem it will be done, at least not this decade.

    Nigeria can use the candour and common sense of someone like Sanusi. But whether that candour befits a CBN governor is a different thing altogether. Nor is it likely that President Goodluck Jonathan will find Sanusi’s brave talk amusing. Jonathan is a politician, and he has an election to win in 2015, if he decides to contest. Sanusi on the other hand has no election to contest or even win. Instead he has repeatedly announced he has a death wish – to be sacked. For someone who derives fulfillment in speaking candidly and making people squirm, which characteristics he deeply covets, the last thing on his mind is to please anyone or suffer fools gladly. Sanusi may have spoken idealistically, but Jonathan can be relied upon to act realistically.

  • A national carnival of violence and killings

    A national carnival of violence and killings

    Nigeria now seems to be cavorting in a carnival of violence and senseless killings. Apart from the cataclysmic months that preceded the civil war, it is doubtful whether in a very long time Nigeria has had intensely dramatic days as it witnessed in the first two days of this week. Forgive the hyperbole. But on Sunday, suicide bombers, perhaps two of them, audaciously attacked the prestigious Armed Forces Command and Staff College (AFCSC), Jaji, in Kaduna State killing about 17 people and wounding scores more. AFCSC is not just prestigious, it accommodates the Infantry Centre and School, the Nigerian Army Peace Keeping Centre, and the Armed Forces Command Staff College. Only recently, it also became the home of the Nigerian Army Counter Terrorist and Counter Insurgency (CTCOIN) Centre.

    While the country was still reeling from the audacious bombings, and also counting the physical, psychological and reputational cost of the Sunday attacks, gunmen believed to number about 40 attacked the police Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) facility in Abuja for reasons that are still unclear. In the attack, about 30 detainees were freed – though 25 were rearrested – and two policemen were killed. SARS is the dreaded police outfit robbers feared the most. Yet, the facility was attacked in the early hours of Monday. If the Jaji attack was audacious, the Monday attack in Abuja was even more so, considering how that number of gunmen organised and stormed a law enforcement facility in the federal capital.

    And while the country was still wondering in bewilderment at the two very bold affronts to the security establishment, a different group of bandits of indeterminate number on Monday evening stormed Auchi, a town in the northern part of Edo State, and attacked a police station, three banks and the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) office. The attackers completed a triangle of mayhem that shocked Nigerians and silenced the town for hours. Now, everyone is getting a depressing sense of how unsafe the country has become, and how utterly naked we are in the face of lawless and maniacal groups.

    This feeling has been building up in the past two years or more. It became so bad last month, given the regularity of the killings strangulating the country, that Hardball, in a piece entitled “Sitting comfortably on a powder keg” made the following observations on October 18: The list of killings is endless and growing. Kidnapping is the order of the day, and highway robbery has made travelling by day or night an ordeal. The police are hardly able to compose themselves in the face of the massive lawlessness permeating the country; and in spite of the notable effort of the police leadership to inculcate discipline and higher degree of responsibility in policemen, officers have also affronted the law with embarrassing industriousness. What is obvious is that there are no realistic and practicable ideas from the federal government to arrest the dangerous lurch towards apocalypse. More than this, it is also indisputable that beyond general initiatives, which have neither been proffered nor tested, the structure of the country is simply too weak and even inoperable to stabilise a country of more than 250 cultures, rapidly expanding population, varying and competing religions, and intolerably high youth unemployment…

    The country is not only in ferment, it is seething. It is time the government recognised that these problems will not go away on their own accord or succumb to exhaustion. It will have to be more proactive, imaginative and aggressive to arrest what seems like a looming apocalypse. Of all the problems besetting the country, from Boko Haram to police killings, and from herdsmen versus farmers’ deathly struggles to boundary conflicts, and from communal wars to the gory sport of indiscriminate lynching and kidnapping, the government has solved none. Worse, there is nothing to show that these problems are receiving the intelligent attention that gives hope the country would overcome its afflictions soon. This must be the worst powder keg any nation can sit on.

     

  • Jaded response to terror attacks

    Jaded response to terror attacks

    On Sunday, suicide bombers operating in the mould of Boko Haram terrorists struck at a church inside the prestigious Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Jaji, killing, by official count, some 11 people and wounding more than 30 others. It was a great embarrassment to the military’s claims of making steady progress in the fight against terror. It is also significant that the twin blasts occurred at a facility that accommodates Nigeria’s only counter-terrorism training centre run by the military, the Nigerian Army Counter Terrorist and Counter Insurgency (CTCOIN) Centre. It was as if the bombers thumbed their nose at the military and indicated that no place was safe from terror attacks in the northern part of the country. But in reacting to the attacks, the military authorities rightly issued an official statement, and then barred reporters and government rescue teams from reaching the blast site. In addition, they briefly closed a part of the Kaduna-bound lane of the Zaria-Kaduna Expressway. Perhaps in the next few days they will explain the lockdown.

    The audacity of the Jaji attack is underscored by the seeming helplessness and hopelessness of the government’s anti-terror campaign. With all the resources at the disposal of the government, the war on terror has not gone as smoothly or as efficiently as the government has hoped. Killings are still rampant in the Northeast, with schools, places of worship and individuals at the mercy of Boko Haram militants and other imitation terrorists. At will, the terrorists also sometimes go out of their main operational areas to carry out devastating, even if symbolic, attacks on both soft and hard targets. The government has been smart enough to get the messages. This, for instance, explains why the presidency has been reluctant to conduct certain public and official ceremonies outside the safety of the presidential villa.

    In spite of the valiant campaign of the military against terrorists, a campaign that is sometimes attenuated by government’s dithering, the Boko Haram militants and other autonomous terror cells have seemed to loom large in the Northeast, and are even looming much larger. It was barely three days ago that the government placed bounties on the heads of Boko Haram leaders. If the sect claims responsibility for the Jaji attack, it will be their own way of mocking the government’s bravery. On the contrary, however, the sort of response the government has become used to is to strafe the terrorists with affected verbal denunciations and perfunctory outrage. “All of us condemn this dastardly act,” one group of outraged officials would say. Another would denounce “the uncivilised and barbaric act of the terrorists.” And yet another would describe the attacks as “cruel and wicked.” Finally, the government would follow with a string of condolences, “sympathising with the bereaved and promising to bring the perpetrators to book.”

    If the government will be honest, they must already be feeling quite numbed by the ferocity, ubiquitousness and seeming endlessness of the attacks. Against these, they have no new ideas, not even dainty new phrases, thus worsening their agony. Given the temerity of the Jaji attacks, it may in fact be far-fetched to expect that anyone would come forward with information, useful or useless, on Boko Haram leaders. If the terrorists could exact terrible revenge for the government’s anti-terror war, the human imagination can’t grasp what they would do to adventurous and freelance spies and bounty hunters?

     

     

     

  • Bounty hunters in Boko Haram territory

    Bounty hunters in Boko Haram territory

    Feeling expansively generous, the federal government has put a N250 million bounty on the heads of a number of militants in the Boko Haram fold. The five-member Shurra Committee, which is the highest decision-making organ of the violent Islamic sect, predictably attracted the princely sum of N25m on each head, with their leader, Abubakar Shekau, having the mouthwatering sum of N50m offered as reward for his capture. It is not known why the military authorities fighting the sect have not gone beyond placing a reward for information leading to the capture of the Boko Haram leaders. Why not a reward also for their heads on a John the Baptist-type platter if capture proves difficult? The military statement simply said: “They are wanted in connection with terrorist activities particularly in the North East Zone of Nigeria that led to the killings, bombings and assassination of some civilians, religious leaders, traditional rulers, businessmen, politicians, civil servants and security personnel amongst others.”

    But even without modifying the statement to embrace “dead or alive,” the government seems hopeful that bounty hunters will swamp the Northeast to capitalise on the largesse. Whether anyone will take the risk of ratting on Boko Haram militants is a different thing altogether. For it is obvious that anyone who claims a bounty on Boko Haram commander’s head knows invariably that for a far cheaper price, Boko Haram would in turn place a bounty on the head of the snitch. But you never can tell what amnesia the aroma of tens of millions of naira could cause a man to suffer. However, even if the bounty does not look tempting enough or practical, at least it seems to indicate that the government is finally quitting its pussyfooting on whether to fight Boko Haram or not. That is, assuming the government is not as Janus-faced as we think.

    Bounty hunters, any 50-year-old will recall from comic books of the 1960s, are an integral and indispensable part of American folklore. Who can forget the inimitable Charlie Siringo, a Texan cowboy who began working as an undercover detective for the famous Pinkerton Agency in Chicago in 1886? Using his Western guns, he tracked rustlers and bank robbers for his agency, travelling tens of thousands of miles throughout the United States, and infiltrating the famous Butch Cassidy gang of train robbers. After a very successful career, he even had time to write two books entitled, A Cowboy Detective and Further Adventures of a Cowboy Detective, and helped popularise detective work and bounty hunting.

    The federal government is of course at liberty to spend handsomely on anything that catches its fancy, not to talk of what it describes as sensitive national security issues. Perhaps more than the rest of us, it is best placed to determine the appropriateness of putting a bounty on the heads of guerrilla fighters rather than the classical fugitives from justice which detectives like Siringo battled. Perhaps it can also best weigh the benefit to a snitch of ratting on Boko Haram in a country notorious for its inability to keep secrets, and where police informants typically have sad tales to tell. And of course, in a country where officials descended on Abacha loot in foreign banks and profited from it, and also harvested humongous gains from Nigeria’s debt repayment, who can say whether Boko Haram commanders captured during regular operations will not be submitted under the subhead of bounty hunting?

    Well, by oil subsidy standard, N250m is nothing for Nigeria to lose sleep over. Indeed the surprise is why N100m or even N200m was not put on the head of Shekau. If nothing was put on the head of former Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf, and he was captured and extra-judicially murdered, and the sect easily replaced him, would it mean anything to the sect if bounty hunters secured the capture of Shekau? Somebody please quickly look for a metonym for the Joint Task Force (JTF) fighting Nigerian militants, whether in the Niger Delta, Jos, or Boko Haram territory. Their quaint ways, and now quaint ideas, put them in line for a superb and original metonym.

  • Westerhof’s distressing allegation

    Westerhof’s distressing allegation

    Mr Clemens Westerhof, a former Nigerian national team coach, has said that Nigeria’s perennial underachievement in soccer competitions could be due to corruption in sports administration, myopia of officials and lack of patriotism. Having served as technical adviser to the Super Eagles for five years, the Dutchman is amply conversant with the goings-on in sports administration. According to him, unqualified players were sometimes selected into the national team after paying a bribe of about $15,000 (about N2.8m) to team selectors. He did not specify the period when such sordid considerations prevailed in the national team, nor did he mention names of the corrupt officials and players involved.

    All Westerhof said was that, “We had a situation where we had the wrong people in the wrong places, even in the (Nigeria) FA. We had cases where players paid $15,000 (about N2.8 million) to the coach and say ‘I want to play for the national team’ and the coach would accept. They bought their way into the national team, and it was an unbelievable situation, very sad. I know these things.” Even if he released names, the affected officials and players would deny the allegations and challenge him to substantiate his claims. It is unlikely he would succeed in proving his allegations.

    Indeed, a few former coaches have disagreed with Westerhof and argued that such practices were alien to the national team selection process. But a few players have agreed with him, claiming that there were even instances when good players were inexplicably dropped from the national team in favour of out-of-form players. Like age cheating, which has become the leitmotif of age-grade sporting competitions, corruption in team selection, whether past or present, may prove difficult to substantiate. But there is hardly a Nigerian who doubts that the malaise in sports administration runs too deep to enable the country achieve any degree of consistent success in sporting competitions.

    Can anything be done to remedy the situation? For now, it is doubtful. In fact, for something to be done, the country will first have to investigate Westerhof’s claims and do a thorough appraisal of sports administration during and after the Westerhof years. The will to carry out that kind of sanitisation can only come from a disciplined and structured system, one that is itself based on merit, competence and justice. Secondly, the Nigerian system will also have to be one that is capable of periodically sanitising itself. The morass in nearly all sectors of national life – electricity, petroleum, civil service, et al – does not give anyone the confidence that the nation has set targets for itself, targets that would drive change, engender higher standard of living and lead to a better society.

    What happened in sports administration over the decades, as Westerhof revealed, is merely a reflection of the decay afflicting the entire body politic. Change will not come piecemeal, or from bottom up; it will come when the political will to drive change is imbibed at the topmost level of leadership.

  • So, who is telling the truth on Boko Haram?

    So, who is telling the truth on Boko Haram?

    The Islamic sect, Boko Haram, is taking a much huger toll on us than the killings, arson and maiming that have become its trademark. While we are still grappling with burying hundreds of the sect’s victims, rebuilding places of worship, reconstructing ethnic and religious relationships, and peering warily into a future that is looking increasingly gloomy, the sect has both directly and indirectly created a unique trouble for everybody. So far, we have passed the stage of arguing over whether to negotiate with the sect or not, for it seems we have argued ourselves into a stalemate, with the government more evidently at sixes and sevens than the rest of us. Now, we are at the stage of arguing over whether we are actually negotiating with the sect’s representatives or not, and not trusting what we see or hear. Self-doubt has begun to gnaw at our national kidney.

    After many months of handwringing, unsure whether to fight the sect or not, the government finally decided to fight, even if half-heartedly. Then when it discovered that winning the fight goes beyond the mere determination to fight, the government, like a whirligig, again began to contemplate dialogue; and the sect itself, with its hoary sense of humour snickered as it baited the government. Finally, a few weeks ago, after the sect announced its readiness to enter into dialogue, presidential spokesman, Dr Reuben Abati, acknowledged that some forms of negotiations were going on. He had asserted, with the kind of confidence that pleases newspaper reporters that, “I can confirm to you that talks are ongoing at the background. But the talks are not the kinds being envisaged by Nigerians. I know that some Nigerians are expecting that a venue should be chosen and a banner would be placed there indicating that the Federal Government is holding dialogue with the group there. That is not the kind of talks we are talking about here. The ongoing talk is a back-channel one in which those who know members of the group are talking with them on behalf of the government.”

    Abati’s confident assertions supposedly put us out of misery. But the relief was short-lived. Soon, the president himself, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, weighed in with an even more vigorous counter of his own. Said he dismissively: “Government is not in dialogue with any of group of people, not the least Boko Haram. They (Boko Haram) are still operating under cover. They wear a mask. They don’t have a face. You don’t dialogue with people you don’t know. We don’t have anybody to dialogue with. There is no dialogue going on anywhere contrary to reports that have been carried in the media.” Whaoh! If Abati doesn’t have egg on his face because of his self-effacement, on his behalf, we solemnly bear the pain. But who’ll break the logjam and set the record straight?

    Enter knight-errantry. Enter Dr Junaid Mohammed, the knight in shining armour, sweeping pugnaciously into view, arms flailing, eyes blazing hot, and tongue speaking daggers. He confirmed that the president was not telling the truth on Boko Haram dialogue, and that in fact dialogue was already taking place between the sect and government. Hear the eloquent Jonathan tormentor: “This government (the Jonathan presidency) has been having underground talks with Boko Haram, and if the President says he is not negotiating with the sect, he is lying. What the government is trying to do with the Boko Haram matter shows the highest display of hypocrisy and dishonesty.” Few people call a spade a spade as acerbically as Junaid.

    Should we decide to cast the deciding ballot, how would we vote? All three gentlemen ought to know the truth; but all three have chosen to tell colourful stories. Somewhere between them lie the unvarnished facts, and perhaps it is only Boko Haram that is not misrepresenting the reality. The winner in all this, it is obvious, is Boko Haram, a sect that repeatedly sets a cat among the pigeons, our pigeons, frightens us out of our wits, and causes the power elite to find fact and fiction indistinguishable.