Category: Hardball

Imo State Governor Hope Uzodinma and his predecessor, Senator Rochas Okorocha who currently represents Imo East constituency in the Senate, are overpersonalising governance processes in their troubled state with the bitter political feuding raging between them. They thereby perennially  stoke tension in the state that is already badly hobbled by insecurity – perhaps the worst of its kind in the Southeast. Shame!

It was this political feuding that characterised the narratives about purported arrest last Sunday of the Action Alliance (AA) Imo governorship candidate in the 2019 poll and son-in-law to Okorocha, Mr. Uche Nwosu. Armed policemen had stormed St Peter’s Anglican Church, Eziama Obieri in Nkwerre council area while a worship service was underway and dragged Nwosu off amid intermittent firing of gunshots in the air, sending some congregants cowering in fear while others stampeded for safety. The service was reported to be a thanksgiving service Nwosu was attending after burying his mother two days earlier. The grossly crude manner of the assault made people think it was a kidnap, but the police later confirmed it was an arrest carried out by its personnel. Dispassionately speaking, it was shocking the police could own up to that being its official act.

Rather than address the curious procedure of the arrest, however, the camps of Governor Uzodinma and Senator Okorocha lunged at each other with accusations of vengeful complicity. Okorocha accused the state governor of having instigated the arrest of Nwosu out of sheer vendetta against him and his household, though he also acknowledged having been told Police Inspector-General Alkali Baba ordered the clampdown. In its response, the Uzodinma administration represented by Information and Strategy Commissioner Declan Emelumba accused Okorocha of raising false alarm, saying he was panicky because of guilty conscience. “He should allow the police to do their job. Okorocha should know that police have the right to arrest anybody,” the commissioner added.

But what manner of arrest was that whereby armed policemen barged into a church service and dragged off a worshipper by the scruff of the collar, firing wild shots as they made off with their quarry. And from indications, not that the alleged guilt was overly severe because Nwosu secured bail same day. Following his release, he said he never received prior invitation from the police that he could be accused of having spurned, and neither was the church assault preceded by formal service of an arrest warrant. It was pedestrian that Okorocha reduced the entire incident to vengeful assault on his family, and it was disgraceful that the state government that should be keen on due process and societal decency celebrated the incident as policemen doing their job. If the IGP truly ordered that arrest in the manner it was executed, he owes this country an apology; and if he didn’t, the executors of the purported arrest should be pulled in and reprimanded for indiscipline by the police force.

Interestingly, the Department of State Services (DSS) is showing interest in supernatural matters. The DSS detained Dada Ifasooto, a 29-year-old man who described himself as “a herbal medical practitioner and traditionalist based in Ekiti,” for six months based on a ridiculous allegation that bordered on the supernatural.

Ifasooto, they said, empowered Yoruba nation agitator Sunday Adeyemo aka Sunday Igboho by “preparing charms” for him. DSS operatives arrested the native doctor at his home in Ikere Ekiti, Ekiti State, on July 16.

This was about two weeks after Igboho was declared wanted following his escape during a midnight DSS raid on his residence in Ibadan, Oyo State, on July 1.  Two of his aides were killed during the operation, and 12 others were arrested.

How did Ifasooto become a person of interest to the DSS?  He said in an interview after his release: “There is a young man called Tajudeen (Irinloye) whom I have known for some time. He is a commercial motorcycle rider in Ibadan and he had come to me for treatment for an ailment.

“I called him thereafter to follow up on the treatment plan that I gave to him but unknown to me, he is an aide of Chief Igboho and the DSS had arrested him and some other aides during the widely reported night raid of July 1, 2021.”

The DSS located Ifasooto, and took him to Abuja where he was detained under harsh conditions.  “I developed ulcer and high blood pressure in DSS custody after three months,” he said.

His experience in detention says a lot about the methods of the DSS. He recounted that a DSS official who questioned him introduced a supernatural dimension, saying “He mockingly told me to disappear then that I had been handcuffed and I told him I don’t know what he was talking about.”

He experienced further absurdity when, according to him, “The officers then accused me of making charms for IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra).”

When he was eventually released on December 24, he said DSS officials told him “to be grateful to the lawyer and to their own investigation” which showed that he was innocent. They warned him to be cautious “so as not to return to their custody.”

Did all this really happen? DSS officials should hang their heads in shame.  Ifasooto said: “It is painful to be unjustly detained for six months but I thank God that I didn’t spend this year’s Christmas in DSS custody. The DSS should carry out proper investigation before arresting people.”  In addition, the DSS should make amends when they are wrong as in this pathetic case.

Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai is angry with terrorists rampaging across sections of this country, and he has every reason to be. The blood thirsty hounds have turned his state of Kaduna, in particular, into an unrelieved killing field and he sees no way of redeeming them from their ruinous path, either by negotiation or rehabilitation, but only to deal them in their own coin, namely with total destruction by military firepower. They have no business being alive in his view.

The Kaduna governor last week said there is no repentant terrorist but one that is dead, and that his government’s intention is to exterminate them without any concessional deal. “There is nothing like repentant terrorists. The only repentant bandit is the one that is dead. Our intention in the state (Kaduna) is to kill them; let them go and see God,” he told journalists in Abuja after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari. He was at Aso Rock Villa to brief the President on attacks penultimate Sunday on Kauran Fawa, Marke and Ruhiya villages in Idasu ward, Giwa council area of his state that left at least 40 persons dead.

Kaduna is one of the states worst affected by killings by bandits and other violent attacks, with no fewer than 1,825 people killed and 4,525 kidnapped between January 2020 and September 2021 according to the state government’s own records. Governor el-Rufai spoke against the backdrop of ongoing rehabilitation by the Federal Government of repentant Boko Haram insurgents, and stalled negotiations with bandits by some governors of northern states where they’ve been virulent. Controversial Islamic scholar Sheik Ahmad Gumi is a notorious advocate of negotiation with bandits as a way of curtailing their deadly exploits. A federal high court last month declared bandits as terrorists and proscribed their activities, ordering the Federal Government publish that declaration in a gazette owing to security reports showing that bandits were responsible for killings, rapes and incessant kidnappings in northern Nigeria as well as attacks and killings in communities, among other ills. The Kaduna governor hailed that verdict, saying it should strengthen the military’s hand to mercilessly deal with the bandits. He therefore called on security agencies to be more aggressive towards the terrorists and canvassed the President’s intervention in deploying more fighting personnel.

It was not certain how much of el-Rufai’s bitterness with bandits/terrorists was shared at the federal level, though. Whereas the Kaduna governor believed there were no repentant terrorists, the grand scheme by the Federal Government to rehabilitate and reintegrate repentant insurgents is remorselessly progressing. Besides, nearly four weeks after the court designated bandits as terrorists, the Federal Government is yet to gazette that declaration as directed by the court. The Kaduna governor must hope his bitterness sufficiently resonates with Abuja and he isn’t just a lone voice crying in the wilderness.

About two weeks to the start of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) on January 9, 2022 in Cameroon, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) seems confused.  Signs of confusion were evident when NFF boss Amaju Pinnick spoke to journalists this week.

Pinnick was reported saying the Super Eagles, the senior national men’s football team, would get a new coach “within the next week or so.” This suggests that the interim coach, Austin Eguavoen, may not lead the   squad to the prestigious continental tournament.

Eguavoen has been in the saddle since December 12 following the removal of German Gernot Rohr, who had been manager of the national team since 2016.  He is the team’s temporary coach, but given how close it was to the start of the tournament when he took over, many Nigerians didn’t think his temporary status meant that he might not even take the team to AFCON in January 2022.    The NFF boss, who said the search for a permanent coach was at an advanced stage, spoke out of both sides of his mouth. He said: “We know that Eguavoen can do the job expertly, but we also know that he will be more useful controlling the technical department. However, if we cannot get the coach to start work immediately, we will empower them to take the team to Cameroon.

“And if Eguavoen wins the Nations Cup, we might have a rethink. In that case, the foreign coach will now become the technical director, while Eguavoen takes the position of technical adviser.”

“We know Eguavoen can do it, but we also want someone who can do it better. If we are unable to sign him soon, then we will work with the current team. But I am not going to tell you that if we have him signed today, he is not going to lead the team to the AFCON.”

This position reflects the level of confidence the NFF has in the local interim coach as well as the level of confidence it has in the yet-to-be-named foreigner who will become the substantive coach.

It is curious that Pinnick doesn’t see that it is untidy, perhaps counter-productive, to even think of possibly changing the team’s coach again so close to the tournament.

The Super Eagles start their AFCON Group D matches against Egypt on January 11, before facing Sudan four days later and then Guinea-Bissau on January 19.

The question is: How close to the tournament must it be before the NFF firmly decides to allow Eguavoen take the team to the tournament?

If Imo State Governor Hope Uzodimma keeps his word, insecurity enablers in the state will be exposed in January 2022. Hopefully, he will prove to be a man of his word.

The governor has promised to reveal the identities of those sponsoring insecurity in the state.   He created a buzz at an event in Owerri where he addressed elected officials of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), in the state, saying the names would be made public during the Imo stakeholders meeting in January 2022.  Specifically, he said January 3, 2022.

 Uzodimma said: “18 suspects are now in custody in connection with different dimensions of crimes against the people of the state, and they have also given dependable evidence about those sponsoring them. The sponsors will be made known to Imo State stakeholders by January 3, 2022.

“We have clear evidence of those who are behind the insecurity based on information from the suspects.

“And I assure you that by January 3, 2022, when I will hold Imo stakeholders meeting I will reel out their names one after the other with the evidence of their roles.”

If that happens, it will go a long way in boosting efforts to tackle insecurity in the country. It should embolden other governors, and the Federal Government, to name names in the fight against kidnapping, banditry and terrorism, three crimes that continue to fuel insecurity across the country.   

The governor should know that identifying and naming the alleged evil sponsors is only a first step. Importantly, those identified and named should be prosecuted, and punished if found guilty.

It is reassuring that he sounded like someone who understood what needs to be done. He said: “My government is ready to do all within its powers to ensure that Imo State remains safe, and anyone working to destabilise the system or encouraging criminality, no matter how highly placed, would be made to face the full wrath of the law.”

The governor has spoken as expected. It remains to be seen whether he will act as expected. There is a wide gap between naming alleged sponsors of insecurity and taking action against them for deterrent effect. 

Insecurity thrives largely because of inaction on the part of the authorities. Uzodimma’s expressed course of action may well be what is needed to get other governors as well as the Federal Government to wake up to their responsibilities. But, ultimately, he needs to demonstrate that he meant what he said.

It will be one year in a couple of days since the umbrella body of teachers in Nigerian public universities, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), called off a nine-month-long industrial action after signing a fresh pact with the Federal government. The strike, which was among the most drawn out in the history of the labour body, was shelved on 23rd December, 2020 after ASUU signed a Memorandum of Action (MoA) with government on implementation of the 2009 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between both parties that was renegotiated in May 2020. One year after truce was called, the understanding has all but fallen apart and teachers have served repeated notices of returning to the trenches. Effectively, the storm is regathering and threatening another breakout.

On 14th November, ASUU issued a three-week ultimatum to government to do the needful or face another indefinite strike. Upon that ultimatum, a flurry of moves including reassurances by government on keeping faith with the extant agreement left labour in suspended motion. Last week, the teachers were back across many zones of the country warning they were at the end of their patience. In a statement by the union in Awka, Anambra State, it warned that once it embarks on another strike, the action would not be suspended until all terms of the agreement are implemented. “We once again alert Nigerians, that unless the Federal Government strives to sincerely resolve the issues, there will be no rest for us all. There will be no more MoUs or MoAs. When the macabre dance begins, there will be no stopping it until everything is fully implemented,” the Owerri zonal coordinator, Uzo Onyebinama, said. In Bauchi zone, the zonal coordinator who was represented by Professor Nanmwa Voncir said government’s dithering had been tolerated enough. “We are, once again, pained to bring these issues to public domain because more than a year after suspending the 2020 strike, little progress has been made towards implementation…Should we embark on strike, know that we are forced and government should be held responsible and accountable,” he stated. The same sentiment was simultaneously relayed through many other zones of the union across the country.

When ASUU served its three-week ultimatum in November, Labour and Employment Minister Chris Ngige said it would not need to do as threatened because government was diligently attending to the terms of the agreement it had with the union. Now it is more than four weeks on, and indications are that the issues remain unresolved and progress is not even being made towards resolution. It would be an utterly silly strategy to wait until another strike breaks out before ratcheting up moves to rein in the action on the basis of an agreement previously reached with implementation timelines indicated. A stitch in time saves nine.

If National Security Adviser Maj. Gen. Babagana Monguno (retd) expected to be commended for naming three groups allegedly supporting terrorism in Nigeria and the Sahel, he failed to grasp that the public expects more.

He named the Jama’at Nasr al-Islam Wal Muslimin, the Islamic and Muslim Support Group and Islamic State in Greater Sahara at the 14th workshop of the league of Ulamas, preachers and Imams of Sahel countries in Abuja on December 14.

“In Nigeria, Boko Haram and Islamic State in West Africa Province dominate terrorist activities, especially in the north-eastern part of the country,” he said, which amounted to saying nothing really.  The information was not new.

The public wants to see the Federal Government winning the war against terrorism, not just claiming to have identified groups that support terrorism.  That is clearly not happening. The question is: What happens after identifying terrorist groups as well as individuals and groups that support terrorism?

The authorities have a lot of explaining to do after failing to promptly prosecute arrested alleged insecurity enablers such as the 400 alleged Boko Haram sponsors said to have been arrested in April. At the time the said arrests suggested a new level of seriousness in the fight against terrorism.

The arrested alleged financiers of the Islamic terrorist group were said to be businessmen, including bureau de change operators. They were arrested in Kano, Borno, Lagos, Sokoto, Adamawa, Kaduna and Zamfara states, and Abuja.

The arrests were said to have been carried out based on investigations involving the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Department of State Services (DSS), Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The suspects were expected to be prosecuted without delay.

Five months after news of the arrests, the media reported that the Federal High Court in Abuja had fixed September 17 for the arraignment of 400 suspects for alleged terrorism funding. The public had looked forward to the event. “The case will come up before Justice Anwuli Chikere,” the media said. But there was no report of the case, which suggested that it didn’t happen.

Eight months after the said arrests, the public is still awaiting the trial of the suspects. This cannot encourage public confidence in the government’s effort to tackle terrorists and their supporters.

So when the National Security Adviser named terrorism-related groups in the context of government inaction, he only further exposed the Federal Government to deserved criticism.

Vice-Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Army, Senator Abba Moro, last week joined the advocacy for citizens’ self-defence as an alternative to institutional defence by security forces under the Federal Government’s control in the face of insecurity challenges wracking the country. He warned that his constituents in Benue State were about resorting to self-help in defending themselves against security breaches that conventional security forces seem unable to contain. Moro spoke on the heels of the killing of a Benue State Polytechnic teacher reportedly despite policemen being nearby.

Some gunmen suspected to be armed robbers killed the polytechnic teacher, Echobu Adah, penultimate Sunday while travelling in his car on the Otukpo-Enugu highway. Local sources said he was returning to his station at Ugbokolo around 5p.m. on the fated day when he ran into the robbery scene. His killing triggered a protest by community youths at Eke Junction on the Otukpo-Enugu highway, which caused a gridlock on the road for hours. Benue police command confirmed the killing, saying Adah was shot dead by suspected robbers.

Speaking to journalists about the incident, Moro who represents Benue South in the ninth Senate expressed worry that security personnel seem helpless over the security situation. “My people are on the verge of resorting to self-help. Communities are ready to defend their people,” he said, lamenting however that local vigilante groups and conventional security forces are poorly armed whereas the criminals are amply equipped to terrorise the people. “It is like the policemen are helpless in this situation. We have been paying lips service to security, policemen are not well equipped to confront the situation…Very soon Nigerians will lose confidence in government,” he added.

Moro is by no means the first to threaten recourse to self-defence by the civil population in the face of seeming incapacity of security agencies to tackle the challenge. Last February, Senator Olamilekan Adeola who represents Lagos West constituency in the red chamber threatened to join his Yewa people in Ogun State to resist recurrent attacks by suspected Fulani herdsmen on their communities. Benue Governor Samuel Ortom had repeatedly challenged state residents to defend themselves with weapons not prohibited by law. And in President Muhammadu Buhari’s home state of Katsina, Governor Aminu Masari once told residents to defend themselves against bandits, saying it was morally wrong to meekly submit to the hoodlums as that had emboldened them.

But Moro isn’t just a serving senator, he was once Minister of Internal Affairs who had oversight of domestic national security. It was expected that he should have much more informed and constructive propositions on how to tackle the insecurity problem, not just hit the mob instinct button of the clamour for self-help. In saner climes, he should be a resource person in efforts to devise strategies against the national challenge. By joining the chorus of self-help rather than offer insightful propositions, Moro played to the gallery and too cheaply so.

How can the Nigerian Army determine terrorists who surrendered because they genuinely had a change of heart?  How should such ‘repentant’ terrorists be treated?  What about those who faked their surrender?

These questions were unavoidable following remarks by the Theatre Commander of Operation Hadin Kai, Maj. Gen. Christopher Musa, about possible insincerity of some surrendered Boko Haram terrorists. He spoke on the sidelines of the Chief of Army Staff Conference in Abuja.

He said: “We have over 20,000 combatants and their families surrendered. This tells you there is something we are doing right. What we do with them after surrendering is our next focus…

“Of course, there are some insurgents who truly wish to surrender, but we cannot jettison the fact that some of them do have ulterior motives.”

The commander thinks that terrorists are surrendering because the army is doing a good job in the war against terrorism. He is entitled to his view.

But if the army has a problem differentiating between real and unreal repentance, then it has a big problem indeed. Terrorists who fake repentance can be treacherous. Their surrender could be a way to position them for intelligence gathering against the army.

The number of surrendered terrorists and their families given by the commander is great indeed. It is unsurprising that the army is faced with the challenge of what to do with them.

Predictably, the question of amnesty for repentant Boko Haram members remains controversial. The surrendered terrorists are not innocent people who never participated in terrorism. Were their “sins” washed away simply because they surrendered?

Maj. Gen. Musa observed that the surrender of an increasing number of terrorists “is good and if we follow it through in the right way, then, we may begin to see the end of this insurgency sooner than we actually think.”

The question is: What is “the right way”? What does he have in mind? The commander seems to be hoping that the 12-year-old insurgency would be brought to an end based on the number of insurgents that surrender and whether the authorities treat them “the right way.”

This is not how a counter-insurgency commander should think. Winning the war against terrorism should not be based on how many terrorists decide to surrender, and when they decide to surrender.  The war objective should be to defeat the insurgents.

This revealing insight into the mind of the commander shows why the war against terrorism seems like a war without end.