Hardball

The latest IPOB-PANDEF brickbats, over the Biafra question, has shown how public discourse has sunk into crass abuse.

Edwin Clark, leader of the Pan-Niger Delta Forum ( PANDEF), had cautioned the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to stop including the South-South in its Biafra map, adding that IPOB was equating its future “Biafra” with the defunct Eastern Region which, the old man thought, was childish.

But Emma Powerful, the IPOB spokesperson, hit back at Chief Clark, claiming Clark was a general without troops; and was in no position to speak for the Niger Delta — or, for that matter, any part of the South-South.

Powerful told Clark he would regret ever making that statement, adding a rather nettling piece of history: need old man Clark forget it was an Izon man, like himself, that suggested the name for the ill-fated Biafra, which rebel and secessionist leader, Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, only approved?

But the powerful insult of Powerful only got PANDEF hopping mad! Senator Emmanuel Ibok Essein, PANDEF national chairman and former Senate deputy chief whip, dismissed the Powerful comment as “idiotic” and “foolhardy”.

“The preposterous expressions in the said article could only have emanated from deluded and demented minds,” Essien seethed, “…This stupidity would erode any sympathy they had hitherto received from the South-South geopolitical zone.”

He called on the Ohanaeze leadership to not only call IPOB to order but also to, pronto, apologize.

Ohanaeze did apologize, and also cautioned IPOB.  “Ohanaeze is not in support of such remarks,” declared Alex Ogbonnia, its national publicity secretary, “We condemn such remarks vehemently, and we are asking Chief Clark to forgive; to understand that we still look at him as our leader in the Southern and Middle Belt Forum.”

But then, he added another apologia for bad behaviour: youth would be youth — rash, impulsive and exuberant!  How that would go with the hurting PANDEF folks, time will tell.  Nevertheless, it’s good Ohanaeze intervened to stanch the bad blood; and cut the cycle of virulent abuse.

Even then, it must be alarming how reckless abuse has elbowed aside reasoned and polite discourse, in the public space.  Emma Powerful wanted PANDEF’s support in IPOB’s Biafra gambit.  Yet his most powerful tool was raining vulgar abuse on the PANDEF leader!

In the same boat, Sunday Igboho would persuade other Yoruba to join his agitation, by ridiculing prominent Yoruba monarchs, mocking a top Yoruba clergy who just lost his adult son, and threatening to kill top politicians that don’t share his ideas!

The story of Nnamdi Kanu is almost exclusively told from the sewers, alienating not a few, who could have been sympathetic to his cause.

If these lobbies want to tear up Nigeria, without prejudices to the causes of their agitations, is rash abuse or threats sensible foundation for the future utopia they push?

No matter your call or cause, a little civility wouldn’t hurt your message — except, of course, you never had none, beyond rude bluff and bluster!

Hardball

Babatunde Fashola, Works and Housing minister, dropped some numbing stats, on what past federal administrations were spending on roads — a major infrastructural artery — contrasted to the Lagos State budget, when he was governor.

Though the minister gave the breakdown, reported exactly a week from today on July 16, as his ministerial briefing, a people distracted by atavism, sweet-quoted by  rallies by “nationalities”, seem untouched by it all.  Their salvation, lucky chaps, appears yoked to the past, instead of the future.  Yet, that report graphically painted the genesis of the poverty and paralysis facing the country today.

In 2015, when the present government took over, and when Fashola signed off as Lagos governor, the federal budget for roads was N18 billion, according to official stats  that the minister gave.

But contrast the federal budget to Lagos State’s — and capture the bathetic drama in Fashola’s very words: “The budget for roads in Nigeria in 2015 that we inherited was N18 billion for all Nigerian roads.  2015 was also the year that I left office as governor of Lagos State.  The budget for Lagos State roads for that year was about N70 billion and it wasn’t enough.  I don’t see how N18 billion would have been enough for the whole if Nigeria.”

Now, get it again, in full ugly technicolor:  Year: 2015.  Federal Government’s road budget: N18 billion.  Lagos State Government’s road budget: N70 billion.  The incongruity is notoriously clear, as lawyers would say of notorious facts!

If tiny Lagos could, back in 2015, spend a clear N52 billion, above the federal spend, on roads, why is anyone surprised that poverty deepened and the economy collapsed?  Is it not the logical follow-up to abandoning critical investment in roads over the years?

Well, the quantum alone — N18 billion — is scandalous, even if you factor in inflation, and calculate the money’s value in real terms, per today’s Naira worth.  But after you start factoring in inflation, you’d begin to see how the country seriously bled — into the state of economic coma, that it is in today.

Of course, if you had such relative pittance for roads, who would talk about rail?  If you don’t have solid investment in rail, how pray, do you modernize the economy, as every economy is as good as its infrastructure?  Of course, power is another key infrastructure, which this government is also struggling with, in contrast to roads and rail where it had a far better report card.

But the tragedy is not these pathetic stats.  It is rather the misreading of the situation, so much so that the elite — at least the vocal arm — that should be the guiding lights of their people, have arrived  at a near-unanimity that proclaims salvation in the past, in crowing atavism, instead of a vision of development to salvage the future.

The cream of the “ethnic nationalities” are busy romantically pushing Oduduwa Republic, Biafra, or even a Fulani enclave, which fellow ethnic champions accuse of having hegemonic dreams, of swallowing up the rest of Nigeria?

Still, which is easier: tearing up a country, when there is absolutely no guarantee that you would have eliminated all the flaws you complain about in Omnibus Nigeria?  Or clinically working hard at correcting those flaws, and compel whoever at the centre, to spend Nigerian money on the Nigerian masses, via critical infrastructure?

But then, that is the window of reason.  Right now, that window is slammed shut.  Open sesame: the sweet season of scalding passion!

Hardball

Figures published last week by the Kaduna State Government lent credence to fears that a ruinous subterranean war is being waged by bandits and other criminals on the Northwest state. It was made known that no fewer than 222 persons were killed between April and June, this year, in the blight of insecurity that bedevils the state. Some 774 persons more were kidnapped in the same quarter, according to official figures published by the state’s Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs Samuel Aruwan. We should place on record that in reality, the valid figures of victims may be far higher considering it is notorious that official figures tend to understate negative casualties.

The new security report implied that at least 545 people were killed and 1,723 kidnapped between January and June 2021 in that state alone. Aruwan had earlier on, this year, reported that 323 people were killed and 949 kidnapped between January and March. The report for the second quarter presented on Tuesday, 13th July, said the figures were of victims of banditry attacks, communal clashes and reprisals that took place across the troubled state, with a total of 266 persons more injured. Aruwan also reported that at least 20 people were raped in the three months under review, stating that council areas of Kaduna most affected by the wave of violence include Birnin Gwari, Chikun, Kajuru, Giwa and Igabi. Lamenting the impact of the violence on state residents, he said local economy in frontline areas was near-collapse, as the activities of bandits had “dispossessed residents of their foremost means of sustenance and disrupted the operation of the usually dynamic weekly markets. Besides the rustling of cattle, the targeting of farmers by armed bandits has generally eroded the economic viability of rural communities, in addition to precipitating a food crisis.”

Receiving the security report, Governor Nasir el-Rufai regretted that government efforts had not sufficed to safeguard lives and property. He said his administration had made considerable investments on security, but there was need for structural changes in the entire architecture to make the desired impact. The Kaduna governor urged the Federal Government to bolster the state’s efforts and, if necessary, deploy unconventional means to better protect communities.

El-Rufai’s administration stands apart in proactively reporting on the trend of insecurity in its jurisdiction, namely Kaduna, but the reported figures reflect what goes on in other states as well. Insecurity has made life nasty, brutish and short in many areas, and there is sense to the recommendation by the Kaduna governor that the Federal Government launch simultaneous security operations across all seven states of the Northwest zone and Niger State where insecurity is most pronounced. Nigeria is at war with bandits and citizens are falling casualty. People now almost routinely pay ransom for kidnapped relations, while others less lucky lose lives to exploits by the criminals. Government must rise to its constitutional obligation of protecting lives, whatever it takes to do that.

Hardball

Hubris — Jacob Zuma, who succeeded Thabo Mbeki as president of South Africa, suddenly woke up to declare himself lord and master, over the state he once ruled;  lord of the manor, over a land he was once jailed, to set free from White racist rule.

At his hubristic peak, the man accused of ringing sleaze, during his presidential years, would rather accuse his accusers as new Black successors to old White racists, for daring to allege that he, the great Zuma of great Kwazulu-Natal, was a thief.

He spat at the courts for probing such heresy; and dared the Constitutional Court to jail him, instead of making him, the great Zuma from Kwazulu-Natal, to answer to such heresy!  For that, he declared the courts the palladium of neo-apartheid, swearing he would rather go to jail than get demeaned to defend himself.

He got his wish — doesn’t that popular saying warn to beware of what you wish for, as it might just come true?  When the Constitutional Court, South Africa’s version of Nigeria’s Supreme Court, the apex court, threw him in for 15 months, for contempt of court, Zuma’s first stunt was defiance — he wouldn’t hand himself in; and dared the state to arrest him, from his great Kwazulu-Natal!

With the deadline running out, and confrontation with the state looming, the stunt changed from defiance to milking rogue sympathy: Zuma declared himself too old to go to jail in a period of galloping COVID-19, which latest Delta strain was reaping fresh lives in his country.  Then, of course, the bogey of new apartheid as final, desperate blackmail.

But as Zuma turned himself in, on the very last night of grace, hubris morphed into mass recklessness.  His army of supporters resorted to industrial-scale looting, supposedly to punish a post-apartheid land, for jailing an anti-apartheid hero, as a common criminal!

That misplaced rage has further lowered post-Mandela South Africa, in the estimation of right-thinking people globally.  But that epochal disgrace results from the comic hubris of Zuma, who thought playing childish pranks, throwing his weight as former president, his past activity as anti-apartheid hero who served jail terms with the great

Nelson Mandela, and wilfully clothing legitimate judicial probe as Black-on-Black racism, would shield him from responsibility.  Well, they haven’t — and that’s just as well!

A simplistic reading of it all is that it’s all predictably African, since that’s how African (wo)men of power often behave.  That’s not untrue.  Still, Hitler rose, pushing anti-semitism to ruin Word War 2 Germany, until it all ended in a fiasco.

In the 244th year of American independence, a certain Donald Trump came to shake, to its roots,  America’s democracy; by losing an election and threatening not to leave office — a clear heresy, in a land that crows as the bastion of global democracy.  America still battles with that fiasco, and no one can vouchsafe its final result.

The fact is at junctures of global history, demagogues come and try to chisel their countries in their ugly images.  Zuma is South Africa’s, as Trump is United States’ and Adolf Hitler, Germany’s.  The good thing though, is that South Africa is curtailing the Zuma threat, and the state and people would be better for it.

But with Zuma behind bars — the heavens haven’t fallen though industrial-scale looting had birthed — everyone caught instigating those riots and looting should be fished out, tried and, if found guilty, made to join their “patron saint” in jail.  Fingers are already pointing to Zuma’s offspring.

Perhaps to save South Africa from ruin, that country’s jail would boast of Rogue the Father, Rogue the Son or Daughter, Rogue the Evil Spirit!  Maybe that tough path leads to South Africa’s salvation, as tough beacon to the rest of the African continent!

Hardball

It was nice of the nasty bandits who kidnapped the 85-year-old Emir of Kajuru in Kaduna State, Alhaji Alhassan Adamu, on July 11, that they released him after spending a night in captivity.  Sadly, 13 others kidnapped with him, described as his family members, are still in captivity. The kidnappers had demanded a N200 million ransom.

Interestingly, the emir was said to have been released without paying a ransom. Also interesting is that the kidnappers were said to have asked for forgiveness before handing over the emir to his relatives and members of the emirate council.

One of those who received the emir was quoted as saying the kidnappers were represented by three men, heavily armed and in military uniform.  “We couldn’t believe it. We stood there looking at them while they apologised, saying they had not felt at ease since they abducted him. They told us to go with him while negotiations for the other 13 people will continue…” he said.  It is unclear whether the kidnappers released the emir so quickly and without ransom payment because of his status or age, or both.

The abduction of the emir and his family members was yet another kidnap case in the state where kidnapping has happened too frequently in recent months.  “We have a feeling that the renewed attacks in Kaduna are not unconnected to the position that we have taken as a government that we will not negotiate with criminals,” Governor Nasir El-Rufai said in April, insisting that his administration “will not give them any money.”

If it is true that bandits are trying to test the state government’s no-ransom-payment policy, then the governor should be prepared for more kidnappings. It isn’t enough to say his administration won’t pay ransom. What is his administration doing to tackle kidnapping in the state? If there is no kidnapping for ransom, there will be no ransom demand, and no need to pay ransom.

A day after the emir’s release, the Kaduna State government presented an alarming security report showing that 222 persons were killed in the state in the last three months as a result of banditry and other violent crimes. According to the report, 774 people were kidnapped in the same period. The report also showed that bandits were collecting “protection levies” from farmers in communities across 12 local government areas of the state for permission to go to their farms and cultivate their fields. “This has already begun to affect crop yields, and the threat of food insecurity looms large,” the report said.

El-Rufai has his work cut out. He needs to be told that it will take more than his stance against ransom payment to deal with escalating banditry and kidnapping under his administration.

Hardball

Folorunsho Bamisayemi, the Osun commissioner for Education, must consider himself some wit, if not an all-knowing Daniel come to judgment, with his ringing verdict on the Aregbesola-era “mega schools”, which he thumbed down as a virtual waste.

“I will renovate every school in Osun and put more teachers if I have access to the money used in building a mega school,” he told the press, insisting those 10 schools, with an eleventh 90 per cent completed, all built with N16.5 billion of public funds, were being underutilized.

To start with, what schools were Commissioner Bamisayemi talking about, that he would have renovated, employed an army of teachers and still keep a healthy change? They certainly can’t be in the class of those futuristic schools the old government took so much pains and sacrifice to conceive and build.

Besides, if there were enough schools worth their names, and if indeed they could be  renovated to make any difference as Mr. Bamisayemi now crows, it is doubtful if any rational government would take sweeping steps to build new ones.

By the way, by his condescension over the so-called “mega schools”, does Mr. Bamisayemi even realize Governor Gboyega Oyetola was the chief of staff in the government that built those schools, following recommendations from the Wole Soyinka Education Summit, convoked to plot a way from the ruins that Osun public education had become?

How does the commissioner feel his principal would feel, that an appointee of his is conking, in the most reckless and insensitive of manners, a legacy which glory — or short-fall — the present governor must proudly — or gamely — share, or bear?  Hardball thinks the governor should call his commissioner to order.

Without prejudice to tweaking policies to match the moment — governance, after all must be dynamic and never static — the commissioner’s take would appear in bad faith and taste.

That a facility has over-capacity is nothing to be mocked, if a government is visionary and futuristic.  Indeed, that reality should take credit for bucking the Nigerian general malaise, of planning always lagging behind population growth.  That has accounted for much of the urban chaos and town planning fiascos that continue to plague the land.

So, it’s the commissioner’s job to think through that challenge and advise the state executive council as to how to maximize the gains of that investment.  But that starts from differentiating “mega” from “model” schools.

“Mega” tends to suggest bigness in itself.  That can’t be an option, if scarce public resources — procured with loans — were deployed. But “model” suggests creating and radically expanding a conducive learning environment, for thousands of Osun public school pupils: most of them from poor and vulnerable homes.

Better schools, for most children and youths, can’t be harmful to anyone, even if the facilities are currently under-utilized.  That is why Commissioner Bamisayemi must embark on serious strategic thinking, to maximize the gains of those assets, instead of trying to mock those who thought hard to put those facilities in place.

Governor Oyetola should really call this commissioner to order.  If a chain is as strong as its weakest link, then the vision of giving a cross section of Osun public school pupils the best, in learning tools and environment, must really be embraced.

From his comment, the commissioner appears not at par with that critical vision.  That cannot be good for a state trying to secure better education for the greatest number, after the Jeremy Bentham dictate of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Hardball

Mubarak Bala is still in unlawful detention more than a year after the police arrested him without any formal charge, and more than six months after the High Court in Abuja ruled that his detention violated his rights to personal freedom, fair hearing, freedom of thought and expression. He was arrested in April 2020, and the court made the ruling in December 2020.

Bala, 37, president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, was accused of blasphemy and arrested at his residence in Kaduna State and taken to Kano State after posting comments critical of Islam and religion on Facebook. His comments had attracted accusations of blasphemy and threats.

In a petition to the police, a group of lawyers accused him of posting things on Facebook that are “provocative and annoying to Muslims.” The Islamic system of justice, Sharia, operates in 12 Muslim-majority states in the northern part of the country alongside a secular justice system. A lawyer fighting for his release was quoted as saying the police had detained him on “a holding charge” usually employed to cage detainees without presenting formal charges against them.

The court declared his detention illegal and ordered his immediate release following a “fundamental rights” petition describing how he had been detained without charge for more than seven months, and denied access to lawyers for five months. The court awarded him N250, 000 in damages.

Read Also: Uncage Mubarak Bala

It is unjustifiable that the authorities disregarded the court ruling. By disobeying the court, the authorities ironically demonstrated contempt for the rule of law. The campaign for Bala’s release from unlawful detention has been ignored by the authorities, which suggests undemocratic governance.

This is a case of abuse of power that has attracted the attention of international observers.  Notably, a group of seven UN human rights experts issued a statement in April, condemning the “flagrant violation” of his “fundamental human rights.”  They also drew attention to their efforts to get him released.  His wife, Amina, has described her “psychological and emotional trauma” as “unbearable.”  They have a toddler.

A Kano State indigene from a Muslim family, his family members believed he was mentally ill and put him in a psychiatric hospital in 2014 after he renounced Islam and embraced atheism. He is a vocal atheist, and his rejection of religion is offensive to many people in the country’s Muslim-dominated northern region.  Campaigners for his freedom regard him as a Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) Victim. There is no question that his arrest and detention violate some of his fundamental rights under the country’s secular constitution, which is supreme.

Bala’s unlawful detention is condemnable. Being an unbeliever shouldn’t make him open to abuse of power based on the religious beliefs of those in power. He should be freed immediately and unconditionally.