The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Hasty troops withdrawal

    Hasty troops withdrawal

    Battles are won when the enemy is vanquished and disabled from further action, not by pulling back from the frontline when the enemy yet has some potency for doing damage. But the latter seems to be what has happened in Niger State regarding the activities of bandits in some insecurity-prone areas over which the state government lately pleaded for return of military presence.

    Niger State Acting Governor Yakubu Garba called on the Nigerian Army to send back its troops to communities in the state presently under siege by bandits, following serial attacks on some areas where residents were either killed or abducted and property looted or destroyed. He made the call after special prayers recently held for 13 residents killed by bandits in Allawa axis of Shiroro council area.

    The victims, said to be internally displaced farmers, were on the way to their farms in Anguwan village when bandits attacked them. A relation of one of the victims said the bandits shot eight people, while five others got drowned in a river as they were fleeing the scene of the attack. The army reportedly withdrew its troops from some communities in Shiroro after six personnel were ambushed and killed in April.

    Garba said the withdrawal of troops from Allawa and other communities had weakened government’s efforts to end insecurity in the state. “I want to appeal to our military to see reason and go back to Allawa and other bandits-prone areas to give full security cover to our people who are predominantly farmers,” he stated, adding: “The withdrawal of military personnel has left our communities defenceless. The people of Allawa are predominantly farmers, and they are now unable to tend to their fields without fear of being attacked. We need the Federal Government to act swiftly and redeploy the army to protect our people.”

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    It would be illuminating to know the particular reason why the military decided to pull out of the troubled area, but that withdrawal – for whatever reason – was premature in view of narratives of persisting activities of bandits. A community resident whose son was among the persons killed was reported saying the bandits were deliberate enough to separate between the villagers they ambushed on their farms before killing those they aimed for. “The bandits asked people from Kagara (in Rafi council area) to go while those from Allawa had their hands tied to their back before they started killing them,” the resident narrated. Also, a widow who lamented losing her son in the attack said the son was married before he was killed. She said she had lost her own husband to a bandits’ attack in 2023.

    The military need to look out for its personnel and keep them out of harm’s way when necessary. But it is government’s constitutional duty to provide security for citizens, and the military is pivotal to that duty. That is why soldiers should earnestly return to troubled Niger communities as solicited.

  • Authority stealing, soft justice

    Authority stealing, soft justice

    Is there any measure of honour imputable to stealing? That is a question begged by the defence mustered by a former Director of Primary Health Care in Nangere council area of Yobe State, Ibrahim Lawan, who is currently on suspension for diverting the council’s stock of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF). News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that RUTF is a packaged highly nutritious food supplement used in treating acutely malnourished children.

    Yobe State PHC Board on Wednesday, last week, announced indefinite suspension of Lawan for “diverting and misusing” the food supplement. Adamu Abba, the board’s spokesman, said in Damaturu that a five-member committee had been raised to investigate the matter. The board named an acting director, Ibrahim Disa, who will hold forth pending the outcome of investigations. Abba said the probe panel was also expected to recommend a strategy for ensuring accountability in the distribution of the supplement and other medical consumables.

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    In an interview with NAN, Lawan admitted to misdeeds but suggested the gravity was lessoned by some honour he made pretension to. “Actually, I and some of my staffers tampered with some of the therapeutic  food supplements, but the quantity is not as much as they are alleging,” the news agency reported him saying. “The allegation was that I diverted about 120 cartons. This is not true. However, I take responsibility for all that happened since I was the leader at the time,” he further said, adding: “I am appealing to the state government to temper justice with mercy, since I have cooperated and made investigation easier for them.”

    Lawan sounded like he was flaunting it as a badge of honour that he “took responsibility” for the theft he acknowledged leading workers under him to commit. It was bad enough that, by his own admission, he abused public trust by “tampering with” the item meant for acutely malnourished children kept his care. It was worse that he led a squad of staffers to do that. By their misdeed, they denied only-God-knows-how-many children the essential supplement and possibly their very lives, considering the socio-economic challenges in Yobe, among other states in the Northwest, that warranted making the provision in the first place.

    You would think Lawan took too seriously the cynical saying attributed to maverick politician, the late Arthur Nzeribe, that even among robbers there is honour. But he’s only lucky he faced soft justice. Had he operated in a place like China, he could have gotten death sentence for hazarding the lives of malnourished children.

    Still, he’s helped in making the work of the probe panel easy: just get him to name his accomplices and hand them the stiffest possible penalty under the law.

  • Melaye vs Frontliners

    Melaye vs Frontliners

    Indeed, it’s not the best of times for PDP.  The other day, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar were training verbal Kalashnikov at each other.

    Now, it’s Dino Melaye, the PDP enfant terrible that did more than most to de-market the party with his eternal childish stunts versus an intra-PDP lobby that calls itself “PDP Frontliners”, charging at each other.

    Melaye had declared, on his X account: “End of the road for PDP as Damagun, Bature and Anyanwu irredeemably destroyed the party.”

    The irony of this declaration was totally lost on Melaye.  If anything, Melaye, with childish pranks, started that “road” to destruction.  How could such a man-child crow unchecked, day in and day out, and you expect folks not to take the collective as a band of happy-go-lucky juveniles, not worthy of serious attention? 

    That was the road that Dino, with his empty dins, built.  So, if Damagun, Bature and Anyanwu allegedly completed that construction, who is Dino to extricate himself from the earthwork? 

    Besides, Melaye’s own woeful Kogi governorship result was fair mirror of Dino’s perception in the public mind.  As Dino’s own Okun-Yoruba people often quip: the rascal is fun to watch.  But whoever claims such as own child?  So long for Melaye’s gubernatorial drubbing!

    Which reinforces the PDP Frontliners’ first line of attack.

    “It has never been so bad since 1999 but Dino Melaye’s failure earned PDP a meager 46, 000 votes across the entire state,” the Frontliners’ gun boomed, in a release signed by the trio of Hussein Mohammed (president), Moses Abidemi (secretary) and Dan Okafor (publicity secretary).

    But the Frontliners’ clincher — sweet as honey for them, bitter as gall for Dino:  “… and the governorship candidate himself did not even bother to vote!” — or did he?  Devastating!  Dino and sympathizers can argue with grim facts!

    Of course, the Dino hyperbole of alleged total PDP destruction has to do with intra-party lobbies struggling to capture the PDP soul. 

    That’s pretty normal in political parties with sundry interests.  But with PDP that thinks nothing outside capturing power, it becomes very fierce.

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    The Dino hyperbole is panic mode that his faction is losing out in the sweepstakes.  So, he’d rather play Samson that interprets such a lose as total collapse of the house on everyone.  The Frontliners are probably the triumphant whoop of the ascending lobby.

    Either way, it shows the PDP continues to be a house divided against itself.  Perhaps it should think less power, and more purpose, quiet introspection and reorganization?

    But who does that with the likes of Dino making an eternal row?

  • Anambra’s haste to vote

    Anambra’s haste to vote

    Anambra State hasn’t held a local government election for 10 years, but now it is bullishly charging into staging one at 46-day notice. Talk of a smoking gun!

    Elections ideally are concerted sociological projects that take after the pattern of a steam locomotive. They start up with a sleepy rouse of planning, get into a sluggish hum of mobilisation, enter into a steady cruise of preparation, and crest with heady speed of deployment into election day. After an election is called, there is typically the reverse logistics of procedural demobilisation, down to the level of post-election review where lessons are drawn from the concluded exercise against future ones.

    But Anambra seems to have devised a unique momentum, such that its proposed council election is to be staged exactly 56 days from the inauguration of the body that will conduct the poll. Trust Hardball, it is a wonder in the making.

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    The state last held a local government poll in 2014 and under incumbent State Governor Chukwuma Soludo, the 21 council areas have been run by transition caretaker committees that are appointed by the governor every three months. Soludo, however, swore in the board of the Anambra State Independent Electoral Commission (ANSIEC) on Tuesday, 6th August. And at less that a week in the saddle, its chairperson, Genevieve Osakwe, on Monday, 12th August, issued a circular in Awka scheduling the council poll for 28th September. The poll timetable, programme of activities and other details were not available to concerned stakeholders, notably political parties, until Wednesday, 14th August, though.

    Most political parties protested the poll’s tight schedule, and when ANSIEC recently called a stakeholder meeting in the state capital, the meet was attended by only the ruling All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) along with Action Alliance (AA) and Social Democratic Party (SDP). Other parties like the All Progressives Congress (APC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP) boycotted. Still, the electoral body insisted the scheduled date remained sacrosanct. “This election must go on and will be in accordance with the law… Boycott will not be for the benefit of Anambra. Political parties should go and canvass for votes because this exercise will be free, fair and credible,” the chairperson declared inter alia.

    But the issue at stake is pre-election fairness. Parties have complained that they were not being allowed sufficient time to conduct thorough primaries by which candidates they would field for the poll would emerge. Meanwhile, APGA has its own line-up ready by simply transmuting currently serving chairmen and members of the transition caretaker committees into candidates. The playing field is badly skewed and ANSIEC should straighten it out if it wants a poll worth its name. Whatever is worth doing, as they say, is worth doing well.

  • Atiku vs George

    Atiku vs George

    It’s not the best of times for PDP, the embattled prime opposition party, with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and ex-Navy Commodore Bode George snapping at each other’s heels. 

    It’s such a far cry from their halcyon power days when Atiku pulled the strings from Aso Rock Villa as No. 2 and George held court as the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) Board chair at the Lagos Inner Marina.  It’s all so blighted right now!

    Which is why it’s hard to believe that the two old men — the one old political warhorse hardly tired, the other a rippling old soldier — would face off and teach each other the ABC of political gumption!  It’s strange they still belong to the same PDP!

    Nevertheless, George would appear the more principled in this current fray.   That is why one of his opening big bombs must have gored Atiku.

    If Atiku still wants to gun for the presidency — and Pa George is a soldier, he sure knows a thing or two about devastating gunning! — he should wait till 2031 “because that is the reality of our country, the PDP constitution, and our polity.”

    Now, that must have touched a raw nerve!  It was Atiku’s intransigence to run for president in 2023, despite that President Muhammadu Buhari would have just completed an eight-year northern slot, which thrust hot jackknife into PDP’s spine.

    Three “demons” emerged: Atiku, the self-named “northern” candidate; Peter Obi,  the “Christian” and “youth” champion, making an opportunistic dash on the Labour Party platform; and, well, George himself: irrevocably committed to a southern candidate for PDP and scorning Atiku for making that a mission impossible.  Suffice to say the three demons cancelled out one another, granting PDP four more years in the power wilderness.

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    But even old man George — the old soldier must be enjoying himself — raised the ante by flaunting the Biden option before the man from Adamawa, forever foreclosing his never-ever presidential dream.

    “We all saw what American President Joe Biden did recently when he stepped down for Kamala Harris to contest the November presidential election,” he said, “That is the hallmark of a statesman.  Alhaji Abubakar should do the same so that in 2027, the PDP will field a southerner as presidential candidate.” 

    By 2031, Atiku would be 85 — and it would have been game-over!  So, Chief George had better keep his advice to himself!  By the way, much earlier in the verbal slugfest, George had told Atiku to quit whining for, given the grim circumstances, he wouldn’t have done better job aa president.

    Atiku’s response, via Paul Ibe, was a rather lame, subversive sympathy for the poor: “The average citizen, and indeed all Nigerians, need to survive … It is insensitive to talk about 2027 now, when the 2023 mandate has not yielded any tangible benefits to Nigerians.”  Then, a no less subversive emotional clincher: “Bode George himself should also turn his attention to counselling Tinubu … instead of prioritizing the politics of 2027.” Toh!

    From the sidelines, the Tinubu camp must really be bemused.  When your two sworn “foes” are busy falling upon each other, I guess you need not lift a finger!

  • Oil snaps, foggy narrative

    Oil snaps, foggy narrative

    Recent explanations on challenges of Nigeria’s oil sector by the supervising minister would leave you wondering if solutions are in sight, much less on hand.

    Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri, said the country couldn’t yet optimise its output capacity because evacuation pipelines were outdated and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) did not have the funds to rebuild them. He was reported saying that even if the country could produce more than 1.7million barrels of crude per day, the problem was how to evacuate that output to the terminal.

    Speaking at the Energy and Labour Summit 2024 organised by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, the minister said government had resolved to adopt the public-private partnership model to fix the old pipelines and was building the confidence of investors as had been lacking for the past 12 years so to attract investment for that purpose. That much is understood. What isn’t understood are solutions being contemplated to periodic local fuel supply snaps that currently bedevils the country.

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    The oil minister said smuggling of fuel to neighbouring countries was because NNPC imports and sells below the landing cost. He sounded like Nigeria is helpless because security operatives who are expected to stop the menace aren’t up to the task. “When smugglers are taking the products outside the country, even if you put all the policemen on the road, they are Nigerians, you and I know the answer. If you put all the Customs men on the road, they are Nigerians, you and I know what the problem is. And that is why I’m saying that for Africa to attain energy security, Nigeria has to play a very strategic role,” he remarked. So we could ask: how is the smuggling menace being addressed in immediate terms, or will NNPC keep jacking up prices on Nigerians just to dissuade smuggling?

    Another issue touched on by the minister is local refining capacity. He said government’s decision to sell crude to Dangote and other local refineries could be stalled unless production got ramped up. “We resolved at the Federal Executive Council to sell crude to local refineries… But the bigger challenge is whether we have enough quantity to be able to supply them because of certain things that happened before we came,” he stated, adding inter alia: “We are committed to ensuring we support local refineries with all the feed-stock. If you must supply refineries in Nigeria and you don’t have the crude to supply, it remains something that is written beautifully in a law.”

    The question to ask is: even if government conceivably boosts oil output for supply to local refiners, how will it be conveyed with the old pipelines already said to be hampering evacuation to the terminals? Hazy outlook!   

  • A road no longer to be travelled

    A road no longer to be travelled

    Ancient wisdom teaches that you do not go revisiting a path on which you had pulled the curtains for lack of prospects therein. If it was tried before and was abandoned because it didn’t work, it doesn’t make much sense contemplating a revisitation. That is the challenge Hardball has with a recent proposal by the Nigerian Senate that government should explore the prospects of negotiating with bandits.

    Concerned about escalating insecurity in the Northwest and Northcentral zones, the Senate requested President Bola Tinubu to raise a task force that will evaluate the effectiveness and implications of negotiating with bandits. The task force, according to the red chamber, will analyse short-term gains against long-term consequences of such option. The Senate adopted the resolution following a motion by Senator Nasiru Zangon Daura (APC, Katsina North) on urgent need to review security approach to dealing with banditry menace in Northwest and Northcentral states.

    The lawmakers, of course, proposed other measures including reintroduction of patrol spots across affected states to deter bandit incursions, review of operational methods of security agencies, deployment of additional security personnel and special task forces to identified hotspots to ensure safety and protection of lives and property, and collaboration among the relevant security agencies, state governments, local communities, traditional leaders and stakeholders towards gathering intelligence that will enhance security operations in affected areas. The Senate also urged security agencies to adopt proactive and innovative strategies to secure farmlands, so that farmers can safely return to their farms in affected areas.

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    Governors of states in the Northwest had about mid-last year served notice of their toeing a new path in dealing with the menace of terrorism and banditry in the zone. Kaduna’s Uba Sani said governors currently in the saddle in the zone had resolved to “have a common approach to the issue, and we have to move away from the mistakes made by some previous governors that decided to compromise the operation in the past when they started giving money to the bandits and negotiating with them.” He spoke against the backdrop of previous governors like Katsina State’s Aminu Masari and Zamfara State’s Bello Matawalle having voiced frustration with their own efforts to bring bandits to reason through negotiation; and Kaduna’s Nasir el-Rufai’s advocacy of a hard hand against the criminals including carpet-bombing their forest hideouts. Only in March, Katsina State Governor Dikko Radda said negotiating with bandits was a doomed approach to addressing the menace of banditry because of multiplicity of layers of their operational command and diversity of their objectives.

    Negotiating with bandits is so proven to be a dead end that senators needn’t contemplate exploring its potential application, much less recommending it.

    •This article was first published on July 14, 2024

  • Service in captivity

    Service in captivity

    It was one hell of a year for eight university and polytechnic graduates, who had looked forward to their one-year national service as members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). They ran into trouble on their way to Sokoto State from Akwa-Ibom State. They were travelling in order to participate in a three-week orientation programme. Kidnappers stopped their bus in Zamfara State and took them into captivity on August 17, 2023.

    That was the end of their NYSC service year, which was just beginning at the time. They regained freedom one by one until the last one was freed on August 22, 2024, which was a year after the incident.  The Director-General of the NYSC, Brig-Gen Yushau Ahmed, who announced that the last of the kidnappees had been “rescued,” said they were regarded as having completed their service and would be given discharge certificates.

    He was reported saying, “They have already gone through service year automatically, what service year is more than staying in the jungle, in captivity, they qualified for the NYSC certificate.”

    According to him, “On the 30th of August, 2023, we rescued the first prospective corps member, Emmanuel Emmanuel Esudue; Victoria Bassey Udoka was rescued on the 20th of October, 2023. Abigail Peter Sandy was rescued on the 7th of December, 2023. Sabbath Anyaewe Ikan was equally rescued on the 7th of December, 2023.

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    “Obong Victor Udofia was rescued on the 3rd of February, 2024. Daniel Bassey was rescued on the 8th of February, 2024. Glory Etukudu Thomas was rescued on the 9th of June, 2024. Yesterday, 22nd August, we rescued the last victim, Solomon Daniel Bassey.”

    He stressed that “there was no payment of ransom in the rescue of all the prospective corps members,” adding, “no state government brought any amount for their rescue as claimed by the media.”  He also emphasised that “no group of people or organisations aided the rescue of the corps members apart from the security agencies particularly the Army and the DSS.”

    It is unclear how the kidnap victims were allegedly “rescued.”  They regained their freedom one by one, and this took a whole year.  The claims that they were “rescued” and no ransom was paid are hard to believe. Why were they “rescued” one at a time if there was no ransom payment?

    The security agencies were not only expected to rescue the victims but also arrest the kidnappers. However, there was no news about the perpetrators of the crime, which suggests that they are still at large.  They may well strike again.

    This further demonstrates why the country’s security crisis persists. It is the responsibility of law enforcement agents to ensure that when kidnaps happen, the victims are rescued, and the perpetrators apprehended and prosecuted.

    The authorities must clarify why the so-called rescue of the kidnappees happened in stages over a one-year period without the arrest of the kidnappers.

  • Isese

    Isese

    That four South West states — Lagos, Ogun, Oyo and Osun — marked August 20 as common “Isese” Day for 2024 has got to be the greatest win for native rights all through Nigerian history.

    As much as that might sound as some hyperbole, it’s probably true of repressed native rights.  Adherents of Christianity and Islam, often loud in their relentless proselytizing, often pretend they are the only faiths in town.  Yet, they are not only foreign faiths but also noisy “guests” of a quiet “landlord” — a quiet landlord that must be barred and banned from own land!

    So, until Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, as Osun governor, himself a devout Muslim, started this campaign to officially recognize the rights of faiths, alien or native, in August 2013, (naming 20 August 2014 as Osun’s first “Isese” Day), no one ever thought it was anything important.

    Worse, it appeared worse than heresy: a pesky matter in the official orthodoxy of religious rights.  Indeed, a few but deep and vibrating voices in the media, projecting own limited worldview on such matters, latched onto fashionable bigotry.  Out came quaky commentaries — and thunderous editorials — to condemn such “trivialities” and “distractions” as native faith rights.

    Why, a “civil war” had earlier broken out between media champions of Christianity and Islam, when Osun in 2012 (again, under Aregbesola) made Hijra — the Islamic new year — a public holiday, with relentless growling about an alleged “Islamization” of that state: comical to be sure. 

    Both would later unite, and turned ballistic, to thumb down “Isese” as a public holiday, for its mass of long-suffering adherents.  Bullies!

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    But thank God the Ogbeni held firm — not only on “Isese” but also on the old Awolowo party anthem, which he proposed as a South West regional anthem to rouse Yoruba patriotic consciousness, in a federal and united democratic Nigeria. 

    Both have been adopted — “Isese” by four states: what are Ondo and Ekiti waiting for — don’t they have “Isese” adherents within their borders?  The anthem, by the South West Governors Forum, which on June 11, approved it as regional anthem, indeed fit to galvanize the Yoruba to patriotic action, in a strong and united federal Nigeria.

    The triumph of the “Isese” initiative is another pointer to the cornerstone of spirituality — and “Isese” hallmarks authentic Yoruba (and African) spirituality — in the scheme of things. 

    Besides, “rights” don’t start and end with the so-called “peaceful protests”, which everyone — the “ human rights” denizens that levy it and the nervy government that often resists it — realizes is only a thin line between codified rights and romantic anarchy. 

    How the last bout of “peaceful protests” snowballed into an orgy of well-planned chaos is all too fresh, even with Amnesty International (AI) continuing to bury its head in a cloud of wilful self-denial over the obvious and the ugly.

    “Rights” need not bring out the worst in us all.  It need not lead to torching neighbours’ store houses to settle old economic scores; or smash and crack skulls to show who is lord of the political manor.

    Indeed, “rights” can — indeed, should — reinforce our common humanity and sense of self-worth.  That’s the message from “Isese” Day 2024, from these four South West states.  It’s a welcome flower of rights, in a federal, democratic Nigeria.

  • After the protests

    After the protests

    In the aftermath of the nationwide 10-day so-called hunger protests that turned violent in parts of the country, many Nigerians who allegedly participated in the protests are said to be suffering in detention. 

    A lawyer associated with the #EndBadGovernance protesters, Deji Adeyanju, was reported saying, “We do not have a specific number. But we have no fewer than 1,400 protesters, who were arrested nationwide in detention.

    “In Abuja, we are aware that no fewer than 50 people were arrested. We were able to secure the release of 27 people and it is assumed that 30 or more people are in custody.”

    He added: “Many of the protesters in Abuja are in the Intelligence Response Team, IRT. (Others are in) Bombai in Kano, and Kaduna Police commands, and other parts of the country.”

    He also said “the majority of the protesters feed once a day from what we have heard,” adding that the police “have refused to arraign the protesters before a Federal High Court in Abuja.”

    Three activists arrested in connection with the protests, Adaramoye Lenin, Mosiu Sodiq and Eleojo Opaluwa, were said to be in detention on the orders of the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu.

    Predictably, civil society organisations (CSOs) accused the Federal Government of violating the rights of the detainees by caging them without trial.  For instance, the Executive Director of the Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education (CHRICED), Dr Zikirullahi Ibrahim, was reported saying, “We hope that a good number of the detained protesters are still alive.”

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    The authorities are not helping matters by keeping the arrested protesters in detention without trial. It is not a fair approach. They should be arraigned without delay. Failure to do so gives the impression that the authorities are lawless.

    Interestingly, the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Abubakar Bagudu, indirectly acknowledged that the protests were not totally negative. According to him, “We have learnt that even the current protests have made us listen more. Whatever we are doing, we have taken the message that we need to do more, we need to do better, and we need to do it in a hurry.” He spoke at the “Nigerian Economic Summit Group National Economic Dialogue on Nigeria’s Economic Future: 25 Years of Democracy and Beyond.” It can be said that detaining the arrested protesters without trial contradicts his words. 

    The authorities should arraign the detainees, towards establishing that they, indeed, committed crimes during the protests. That is the lawful thing to do.