The Nation Newspaper

Category: Commentaries

  • Uzamere’s defection blues

    SIR: I had considered whether or not to write this reply for a few days before bringing myself to the realisation that to keep silent in the face of the obvious lack of reasonable care on the part of Senator EhigieUzamere that is representing Edo South Senatorial District at the National Assembly, would amount to a disservice not only to the people he represents but to Edo state and Nigeria in general. Senator Uzamere had advertised in the Vanguard Newspaper of Wednesday February 12, 2014, a letter announcing his defection from Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) on which platform he was elected to the Senate in 2011 to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Addressed to ”My dear people of Edo South Senatorial District”, Senator Uzamere’s letter was titled ”THIS HOUSE IS NOT OUR HOME. IT IS TIME TO GO (AMALAWA).

    In returning to the PDP which he left in 2011, Senator Uzamere exercised his constitutional right of freedom of association. I do not think anyone can or should quarrel with that. It is his right to seek out and associate with persons who he thinks can add value to his life and politics.

    It is instructive to note that Uzamere secured ACN ticket to go back to the Senate , not because there were no better qualified aspirants in the ACN but because the progressive party deemed it imperative to compensate him for the support he gave to the ACN government in Edo State. Senator Uzamere was, no doubt, careless in his remarks about what he described as the present reality in Edo State in which Benin people have been marginalised. Those remarks, false as they are, were designed to whip up ethnic sentiments and put a wedge between Benin people and other sections of Edo state. It is unfortunate this Uzamere chose to disparage a system and people whose homogeneity is and never will be in doubt. The present administration in Edo State has been fair to all in the distribution of appointments and projects including Edo South. Aside the Governor (Edo North), Secretary to the State Government (Edo North) and Head of Service (Edo Central), all other major positions starting with Deputy Governor, Speaker of the House of Assembly, Chief Judge, President of Customary Court of Appeal, Chief of Staff, Civil Service Commission, House of Assembly Service Commission, Accountant-General of the State, etc are in Edo South. No one has complained of marginalisation against the government of Edo State. The attention of Senator Uzamere should be directed to the lack of federal presence in Edo State generally and his senatorial district in particular.

    The Edo South Senator should admit it that the real reason for his defection is his inability to push through his personal assistant as nominee for the same NDDC state representative position. He has refused to face the reality that it is the state government that has responsibility to nominate a representative to the board of NDDC and not himself as a Senator. He may also not admit (but it is curiously coincidental) that his defection was influenced by the carrots dangled before Senators and Representatives including cash and automatic tickets by the ruling PDP. How else can one describe the sudden eulogy he is now pouring on the PDP whose ticket he described as “worse than the Zimbabwean Dollar” less than four years ago? We wonder if the Zimbabwe dollar is not worse off today than it was when Uzamere joined the APC almost four years ago.

     

    • Blessing Yakubu,

    Yenagoa, Bayelsa, State

     

  • PDP: Impunity is all you know, and all you need to know …

    Concluding his famous “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, Romantic English poet, John Keats (1795-1821), wrote: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”.

    Keats wrote at a period of intense anguish, almost ennui; when the greens of Britain made way for the grey of industry, and the romantics, ever, ever wary of change, rued the sure and steady disappearance of the green they had known; and all but predicted doom for a future green-less-ness.

    Keats himself was battling intense personal and family tragedies, before succumbing to consumption (tuberculosis) at mere 26. So, in the Grecian Urn’s eternal beauty and happiness, he located, in startling contrast, his own eternal woes, though his life was but a fleeting wind!

    Well, this is no excursion into Keats’s poetry; or even the English romantic genre. It is rather noting some parallels between Keats’ England and contemporary Nigeria.

    Keats’s England was all anxiety over the future, even if its government’s industrial revolution was charting a course that would secure the future, even if the curse of green-less-ness (as feared by the poetic Romantics) would come back to plague the globe.

    Today’s Nigeria is all anxiety over its future. Though spinners of President Goodluck Jonathan insist the President is doing the necessary envisioning to secure a better Nigeria, the ennui of not quite a few is that the president is at sea.

    So, as the hearts of Keats’s romantics skipped a bit, there was evidence that the loss they mourn would breed a future good. In Nigeria’s case, it would appear a double jeopardy: everything is topsy-turvy yet there is hardly any guarantee it would end in any future good. But then, the public are a great one for pessimism, let them! That, as the Pentecostals would mouth, is not the portion of the President and his men.

    Talking about the president, he was in especially boisterous mood the other day in Owerri, when addressing the PDP tribe gathered there. An upbeat president, flush from his impunity of Sanusi-slaying, told the “mammoth” crowd gathered, and warned PDP defectors to retrace their steps, or forfeit their pecking order in the party.

    Not for the president the genesis of their grievances, not for him the emotional dislocation, not for him even the collateral damage for the democratic polity, of a ruling party, unravelling because of its penchant for systemic injustice. All the president knew, and all he and his party needed to know, was the language of threat, the language of impunity. Conform, or else …

    Ah, the other day, Jonathan Rivers Man-Friday, the wike-wike-talking Nyesom Wike, was threatening that should his Oga-at-the-top, Jonathan, win in 2015, Governor Rotimi Amaechi would be arrested and post-haste thrown into the slammer! But what if he does not win? That, to him, is no option. So, Amaechi, start shivering and trembling!

    And even old man, Bamanga Tukur, now in a rehabilitative railway camp, was also all threat until the party nearly collapsed on his head!

    But then, impunity is what they know, and need to know …

     

     

     

     

  • How Nigerians will remember Jonathan

    How Nigerians will remember Jonathan

    SIR: The Yoruba say people may feel hunger same way, but may not feel same way deep down about issues, events, and occurrences. Thus, those who made illicit wealth during the presidency of Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ), due to which Nigeria is in debt and deficit financing, will remember him as the best thing that happened to them. He is currently in bribing spree, visiting traditional rulers and religious leaders, countrywide. Even ordinary citizens will hardly visit such people empty handed; so it goes without saying that he is bribing them.

    How will ordinary Nigerians remember GEJ? Very many Nigerians will remember him for driving them to join him to truncate rotational presidency, which led to terrorism, properly so-called, for the first time ever in Nigeria. Churches that had existed for many years were bombed with people worshipping inside them; many Imams, other Muslim leaders, and near innumerable Muslims were also killed and are still being killed. Many Christian leaders were and are bribed to shout against the Muslim north; the confusion is second only to Nigeria’s civil war. Is it the Muslim north that asked GEJ to truncate rotational presidency; and to divide and rule Nigeria’s Governors’ Forum? Is it the Muslim north that is now asking GEJ to deny that he promised to spend no more than a single term of four years? Yes, some bribed northerners are still behind him, but that is because they are bribed and they are corrupt.

    In the name of God and for the sake the nation’s Civil War, I appeal to all well-meaning Nigerians to give peace a chance and vote for rotational presidency; 2015, northwest; 2019-2027 southeast, etc. Let’s make that our modus vivendi, towards order, equity, peace, stability, and progress. Political opportunism, such as GEJ availed himself can never work; it worked for GEJ who became President, but too many Nigerians are still dying, both terrorism and corruption are on rampage; Nigeria is in shambles. I told the former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, to forget about becoming Nigeria’s President, and simply face his private University, because we want zonal rotational presidency, and we don’t want anybody who built private university from corruption.

    Being nice is good. General Muhammadu Buhari was Petroleum Minister, Finance Minister, and Head of State; in none did he mess-up. By the grace of Almighty God, he will win the 2015 election and teach us to straighten our petroleum and other accounts. He will not seek a second term, because we don’t want another civil war; it will be the turn of the southeast; southwest and south-south will wait for their second round as we rotate from zone to zone, north-south. Yes, if chosen,Governor Rotimi Amaechi will work well with Buhari, his peers have confidence in him as Chairman of the Governors’ Forum.

    Yes, University of Cape Coast, Ghana, is looking favorably into my Masquerade Studies proposal. I am highly hopeful. With God, all things are possible.

     

    • Oyeniran Abioje,

    Ilorin

     

  • Brouhaha over oil revenue

    Brouhaha over oil revenue

    SIR: I have followed, with keen interest, the controversy surrounding the unaccounted federation account funds involving the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). It will be recalled that the CBN Governor, Mallam Lamido Sanusi caused a stir when he raised an alarm in a letter to President Goodluck Jonathan that the NNPC failed to remit crude oil proceeds amounting to $49.8 billion into the Federation Account from January 2012 to July 2013.

    However, when he was summoned before the Senate Committee on Finance in December to give insight into the letter he wrote on the controversial missing money, Sanusi recanted saying $12 billion, and not $49.8billion, was the amount discovered not to have been remitted to the account within the period. That was after a joint reconciliation committee, of which he was part, had resolved the figure to $10.8 billion. Now, the CBN Governor’s position has changed again. This time, he has put the figure at $20billion.

    Between the vociferous rebuttals of the NNPC and the disturbing inconsistencies of the CBN, there is need to reach a middle point. Since the CBN and NNPC have continued to be at loggerheads, with the one insisting on $20 billion as funds yet to be accounted for, and the other vigorously asserting that it has accounted for virtually all the funds, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy (CME), Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has graciously recommended that the best way to get to the truth and reassure Nigerians who have been expressing strong opinions on the issue would be to set up an independent body that would do a forensic audit of all the documents and claims.

    Evidently, this should provide Nigerians with a definitive verdict on the controversy. We would recall that a similar forensic audit was deployed to investigate subsidy claims and this yielded good results and a better tighter process against fraud. With this firm stance on fairness, transparency and accountability maintained by the Finance Minister, we can rest assured that the reconciliation process will be completed with honesty and integrity, devoid of undue encumbrance from partisan interests.

     

    • Olusola Daniel,

    Kwara state.

     

  • Kwankwaso: A gale of garlands

    That Kano State is changing is no longer news. It’s a trite. That Gov. Kwankwaso is working is not only a statement of fact but an understatement. Gov. Kwankwaso is the present day mythical King Midas, who turns around waste to wealth, transforms rubbles to bubbles, theft to thrift, and dysfunctional to functional.

    Determination, patriotism and prudence are the linchpins that underpin Kwankwaso’s success, and then draw him accolades from far and near. Predictably, the awards come, day in day out, in torrents, rings of garlands file everyday his neck and a deluge of trophies dotted every space of his office.

    The selection of Gov. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of Kano State as the co-winner of the Man of the Year award by the Sun newspapers did not come to most of us as surprise. In view of his unprecedented achievements in the urban and rural renewal, education, healthcare delivery and sports development, one cannot but agree with the editors of the Sun that the award is being given to whom honor is due. In fact if there is a rating agency or a magazine that measures achievements of governors across the globe, I won’t be surprised to see Gov. Kwankwaso winning.

    Gov. Kwankwaso started his second tenure with stopping theft of public funds by canceling the infamous security vote, purging bogus overheads and wedging frivolous expenditures by MDAs. When compared with the monthly recurrent expenditures of the immediate past administration, Kwankwaso saves up to N500 million every month. It was in recognition to his “sound achievements in public financial management, transparency, accountability and respect for the rule of law” that he received an award from MIS Training Institute of Nigeria in May last year.

    Kwankwaso then initiated measures that jerked up the Internally Generated Revenue of the state from N400 million to about N2 Billion monthly. In ensuring fiscal discipline, Gov. Kwankwaso was able to make capital expenditure higher than recurrent votes (2012: 63% capital, 37% recurrent; 2013 75% capital, 25% recurrent) and achieved up to 85% budget implementation in 2012 and 2013. He is the first governor to achieve 2:1 ratio in favour of capital vote. This and many other indicators therefore prompted the Transparency In Nigeria to select him as Best Governor of the Year in terms of budget discipline.

    Education being the focal area of his administration, Kwankwaso ensured that all primary and post-primary schools are rejuvenated, fenced and equipped. He constructed more than 1,600 classrooms and 800 offices. As a measure to hop up the enrollment level and motivate the pupils, Kwankwaso reintroduced the free feeding and distribution of free sets of uniform for all primary school pupils. The workaholic governor also introduced the establishment of boarding primary schools in each of the the Senatorial Zones of the state, converted some abandoned public buildings into standard secondary schools (Governor’s College, GGSS Janbaki and First Lady’s College). No wonder, the National Union of Teachers crowned him Governor of the Year at its 82nd Founders Day in July 2013.

    On tertiary education, he established the first and second state owned universities; that is the Kano University of Technology, Wudil (in his first tenure) and the North West University in his second tenure. On foreign scholarship, he has so far sponsored over 2000 students to universities across the world to study Medicine, Nursing, Piloting, Aeronautical Engineering, Pharmacy, and Marine Engineering, etc. Additionally, Gov. Kwankwaso established 23 new training institutes for vocational training and professional development. They include Film Academy, Sports Institute, Institute of Horticulture, Corporate Security Training Institute, Driving Institute, Farm Mechanization Institute, Horticulture Institute, Fisheries Institute, Irrigation Institute, Journalism Institute, Entrepreneurship Institute, Reformatory Institutes Institute, among others. The foregoing achievements obviously captured the attention of Senior Staff Union of Colleges of Education in Nigeria to give him a Merit Award in August 2013 in recognition to his sterling achievements and support to education.

    On infrastructural development, three new cities of Kwankwasiyya, Amana and Bandirawo were established with the aim of decongesting the metropolis and providing planned layouts to meet the housing need of the people. The government is also constructing five kilometre dualised roads with drainages and street lights in each of the 44 Local Government Areas of the state. Kano’s superimposing flyover built by Kwankwaso at the city centre is captivating sight. The flyover, which is at about 85 percent completion stage, is the first of a kind in Northern Nigeria. The second flyover, covering more than one kilometer, is already taking shape as construction work takes place day and night.

    As obtained in developed climes, pedestrians in Kano walk smoothly by the road as neatly laid interlocking tiles adorn the sidewalk of the roads. Street lights were installed and rehabilitated, ditto the traffic lights on all the major roads to reduce accidents and enhance security of lives and property. Perhaps the foregoing effectuation prompted the Project Light-Up Nigeria to award him as “Governor with Highest Number of Streetlight” in its Annual Light-Up Awards in 2012.

    The Jakara-Kwarin Gogau river, which hitherto served as breeding grounds for vectors and haven for criminals, will no longer bear its features as standard gauge road with accompanying infrastructure is being constructed atop. Kwankwaso also initiated a 35 Megawatts Independent Power project at Challawa and Tiga Dams and initiated the construction of a metro-line (light train) across the city. Both projects will commence in earnest. These and many more perhaps captured the attention of the National Conference of American Black Mayors to award him at its 39th sitting in Atlanta, Georgia, US.

    Under the present administration, over 620,000 indigenes of Kano were either trained and empowered or sourced employment for. This will positively impact on the lives of estimated three million people. As part of his effort to create jobs and boost economic prosperity, Kwankwaso established 44 Garment Industries, one in each of the 44 LGA of the State. They are currently being constructed alongside 44 Micro Finance Banks in the 44 LGAs of the state to support small and medium scale industries with loans. Gov. Kwankwaso also provided a N1 billion commercial Agriculture facility to support commercial farmers and also provide N2 billion loan facility in collaboration with Bank of Industry to support Small Scale Enterprises with soft loans. Therefore the Award of Excellence in Recognition of his contribution to poverty alleviation and youth empowerment initiative by the Central Bank of Nigeria in 2012 was as deserving as the “Most Outstanding Life Time Achievement Award” for contributions to agriculture, youth & women empowerment, education and socio-economic development by the Nigerian Youth Consultative Forum in June 2013.

    Both lists of the wards and projects are seemingly infinite. Kwankwaso achieves his goals with finesse and governs with passion, stamina and discipline. I believe if the art of good governance would be co-opted into Ballon d’Or or Grammy Awards, Christiano Ronaldo or Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Bruno Mars and the like may hardly realize their dreams.

    • Jaafar is the Special Assistant to Kano State Governor on Media & Public Relations

  • Reflecting on the Mararaba-Nyanya-Abuja road traffic

    SIR: Daily, Nigerians who use the above stated road suffer a lot of inconveniences from or to Abuja. Most times, the traffic hold -up could keep people on the road for over two hours. It is really frustrating and uncharitable in a young city considered the world’s fastest growing city and the political capital of Africa’s most populous country.

    This situation worsens by the day as more vehicles and persons come into or leave Abuja via this road. By 2007 when I moved into Abuja and residing then in Karu Site Extension, it took a maximum of about thirty minutes to reach Aya junction in Asokoro; but that may surely not be the case today. The number of man-hours lost and the distress it causes in a hot environment like Abuja should only be imagined than experienced. To make the matter worse, private green buses (Araba) and motorcycles (Okada) have been banned from Abuja; thus crowding everyone in at Nyanya.

    To arrest the situation, the FRSC is now stationed at the Karu junction along the road so as to ensure organized vehicular movement at all times. Yet, no solution. One key solution would be to further expand this expandable road into a six-lane express road on either side up to Keffi in Nasarawa State. Another thing to do is to quickly construct a link road of near the same lane-size from Mararaba to Mpape and yet another one from Karshi to Apo. A final one can also be constructed to link Aya and either Orozo or Kurudu. With the construction of these link roads and further expansion of the main express, the traffic would flow better and it will give Abuja a further infrastructural face-lift just like the Aya to Kubwa road.

    The key purpose of governance is to reduce the sufferings of the people through having more common/public goods. I am pretty sure that these vital link roads if constructed would further beautify the FCT and free the flow of traffic from and to Abuja and reduce the sufferings of Nigerians who ply this road daily.

    • Okachikwu Dibia

    Abuja.

  • Cartoon

    Cartoon

  • Tackling menace of human trafficking

    Every year, the world faces the scourge of human trafficking which traumatizes the existence of man and threatens global development. A 2004 US State Department’s data reveals that more than 800,000 women and children are trafficked yearly across the world. Similarly, United Nations (UN) statistics indicates that 4million human beings are trafficked globally and domestically on a yearly basis.

    Women and children account for 80% of cases of human trafficking. It has reached such a widespread level that the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime was adopted by the UN General Assembly resolution 55/25 of 15th November, 2000, as the main international instrument in the fight against transnational organized crime. Nigeria and other nations are signatories to this UN Conventions and other Protocols such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). These Conventions guarantee right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose one`s residence, right to a decent work, right to freedom from slavery, right against torture and /or submission to other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

    The UN depicts human trafficking as the conscription, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercive methods, of abduction, of fraud of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. This universal boom of forced labour, human trafficking and violation of women and children’s rights is quite disturbing. It is a contemporary form of slavery, which regrettably, is being aided by technology, communication and transportation as well as high global demand for cheap labour and commercial sex workers. Consequently, tackling such a growing illicit industry demands better strategies because of its well organized structure.

    In-spite of available domestic and global legal instruments, human trafficking has remained a profitable venture which conventionally rakes in huge earnings of about $10 billion annually. Like it is with drug trafficking, our nation is highly ranked in the business of human trafficking, serving as origination, transition and destination points. At the moment, many Nigerian women and girls are being ferried abroad under various pretexts only to end up as prostitutes, domestic servants, slaves and destitute. Not only is Nigeria a major base for human trafficking to Europe, America and Asia, it is also an intermediary point for some West Africa countries such as Benin Republic, Togo, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Mali among others. Within the country, the bulk of household servants are under aged children recruited from such States as of Akwa Ibom, Cross Rivers, Ebonyi, Kano and Kaduna.

    Concerned by the rising drift of human trafficking in the country, the Federal Government established the National Agency for Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and other related Matters (NAPTIP) in 2003. The Agency, a creation of Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Law Enforcement and Administration Act, 2003, is the Federal Government’s official response to tackling the blight of human trafficking. It also fulfils the country’s international obligation under the trafficking in persons protocol supplementing the Transnational Organized Crime Convention (TOC) of which Nigeria is a signatory. In 2010, NAPTIP recorded 5000 victims, provided care for 1,109 human trafficking victims and prosecuted over a hundred cases. Sadly, this act really undervalues the scale of human trafficking issue in Nigeria.

    To truly deal with the scourge in Nigeria, Federal Government needs to put up a data base that provides universal details and methodical examination of human trafficking cases in the country. It is only in doing this that we can really evolve a structure for the precise breakdown that is required in limiting the current trend of human trafficking in the country. Likewise, government ought to wield sufficient political will to execute human trafficking laws in such a way that discourages the usual custom of sacred cows in the country. Equally, there is a serious need for the law to be strengthened in order to avoid being unduly exploited by the high and the mighty.

    Governments across the country need to execute policies that will ensure that the vulnerable in the society are not in any way manipulated by the powerful people. This is why it is vital that all levels of government in the country evolve programmes that would economically empower different categories of Nigerians, especially those that are more likely to be victims of human trafficking.

    Aside this, every agency involved in policing the nation’s international and local borders need to be re-oriented and efficiently empowered to perform this onerous and sacred duty. It has been claimed, in some quarters, that the porous nature of our borders is partly responsible for the current state of insecurity in the country. This must be addressed. Considering its nature as the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria, and indeed West Africa, Lagos, without doubt, has its own experience of this inhuman business. However, in its characteristic systematic approach to issues, the State Government has evolved an holistic strategy to tackle this menace headlong. For one, it has put in place several empowerment schemes for different categories of Lagosians in order to forestall the idle hands syndrome. There are several skill acquisition centres across the state where women and children could acquire useful skills that would make them become economically independent and therefore, less susceptible to exploitation.

    Additionally, the State has on ground a structure for the rehabilitation of casualties of human trafficking, rape, child abuse, domestic violence and other related evils. This, it has done with the establishment of the Home for Victims of Domestic violence and Human Trafficking in Ayobo, Ipaja area of the state. At the home, victims of several inhuman treatments are provided with conducive environment that serves as ‘home away from home. The home offers them free medical services, food, clothing and, perhaps, more significantly, an opportunity to surmount their ordeal. To stem the tide of human trafficking and other such dastardly acts, the State is currently implementing a well planned public education drive across the state, making use of various media.

    To say human trafficking is criminal is begging the issue because it is dehumanizing, it is evil. It is man’s inhumanity against man and thus, requires a louder voice against it and a more concerted effort to stop it. It is utterly confounding and shows an absolute lack of conscience that anyone could consider trading in fellow human beings as a means of livelihood. We must, therefore, not subject our world to a second form of slavery as a famous American actor, D’Andre Lampkin once said, because to look away and pretend that it is a small problem, is to encourage the perpetrators to be more vicious in this heinous act. God bless Nigeria.

    • Ibirogba is the Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy.

  • Nigeria’s leaders mustn’t toy with her peace

    SIR: May I use this medium to express my concern over the worrisome attitude of Nigerian rulers to issues about the peace of the nation. In 1999, the then leaders thought about Nigeria’s peace and proposed rotational presidency, consequent upon which all the major political parties chose their presidential candidates from the Southwest. When former President General Olusegun Obasanjo ended his second tenure in 2007, the pendulum shifted to the Northwest from where all the major political parties chose their candidates. That gave the impression that orderliness and peace had come.

    When President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) and OBJ denied the rotational agreement, that it was Jonathan’s turn. Some Nigerians argued that the agreement was unconstitutional or undemocratic. I argued that the constitution was made for Nigeria and not vice versa. To those who said rotational presidency was undemocratic, I replied that democracy is about political order, and it becomes democratic if we endorse it.

    Curiously, there was a rumour in 2007 that OBJ chose Yar’Adua as his successor, knowing that he might soon die from kidney ailment, thus making GEJ his automatic successor and thereby helping the South-south people to taste the presidency. I dismissed the rumour in favour of my belief that OBJ chose Yar’Adua selfishly to compensate Shehu Musa Yar’Adua. But, everything happened as rumoured. Yar’Adua died, and OBJ declared operation total support for GEJ. Then I started begging Nigerians not to truncate rotational presidency for it would ensure order, equity, peace and progress if made to rotate among the six geopolitical zones.

    GEJ used his power of incumbency to set machinery in motion; depleted Nigeria’s foreign reserves and plunged the nation into bankruptcy. The debilitating campaigns necessitated fuel price increase from N65 to N97, soon after GEJ’s election in 2011, dressed as “fuel subsidy removal”. The same scenario is now playing out as GEJ is going from traditional rulers to religious leaders.

    Therefore, I appeal to the All Progressives Congress (APC) to make amends where necessary for past mistakes. I beg Nigerians to resist GEJ’s bribery and corruption for the new Nigeria of our dream. Visiting leading Kings, Emirs, etc with brown envelopes will not sway people who are tired of political disorder, corruption and abject poverty. GEJ will only enrich the bribed and aggravate ordinary people’s penury.

     

    • Pius Oyeniran Abioje, Ph.D,

    University of Ilorin.

  • Now that Buhari is ireful of Boko Haram

    Gee! What a fresh and penetrating denouncement! It carries such refreshing authenticity that it might have the impact of a thousand IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). And it may well have more effect on the rampaging Boko Haram gang than all the security agencies in Nigeria put together. We speak about Mohammadu Buhari’s recent umbrage towards the Boko Haram sect. Since last week, the sect has embarked on an orgy of blood-letting and arson in Borno and other neighbouring states of the Northeast of Nigeria. The death toll from the killings at Izge alone reached 121. More deadly strikes followed in Gwoza and Bama.

    Obviously exasperated by the wantonness of the mayhem, the ex-general and former military head of state posted on his Facebook page last Sunday, what must be his most charged statement since the Boko Haram crisis started. He pronounced the Boko Haram ideology as devilish saying, “There is no justification for this wanton disregard for the sanctity and dignity of human life. Any ideology that trafficks in terror and violence is a devilish ideology that has no place in a civilised society.

    “This is the time for our security agencies and those responsible for the security and well-being of our citizens to intensify vigilance in order to mitigate future occurrences.” Though one would have loved for this manner of high-cadenced and damning condemnation to have come much earlier in the budding days of the sect, we say better late than never. Now, it is not that Gen. Buhari had not been condemning the terrorists hitherto but never in this high-pitched and telling manner.

    Further, while we agree that the military and security agencies of government must live up to their responsibilities as Buhari has charged, we think he and his fellow leaders of the North must stand up to be counted in resolving this sectarian matter. We refer to the large bloc of military elite of the North both retired and serving; the influential religio-traditional Brahmins, the governors and some of the money elites. We ask that for their own interest and in the interest of their region and for the sake of Nigeria, they must meet urgently.

    They must move now for apart from the fact that these boys are so emboldened that they are poking their dirty fingers into everyone’s eyes there is a more clanging reason to move. And that reason is that many people are still not quite convinced that there are not some renegades somewhere up there thinking for these boys and shoveling cash to them. Their longevity and tenacity also suggest that someone in some strategic position is looking out for them, buffering them and leaking vital information. For instance, they normally find shelter in communities, they move en masse or in a convoy through communities to hit their targets and back; how can they afford such fleet of trucks, such arsenal of arms and ammunition and such cash to recruit such large number of fighters? These are the questions Gen. Buhari and his northern think-tank on Boko Haram may want to find answers to.

    To paraphrase a certain bygone former general of the Nigerian Army, dis tori don get k-leg and mere abuse and hot air won’t harm the Haramists. And as our serially lazy governments are quick to say, government alone cannot do it. Ironically, this is a matter that kills leaders and it is also a matter that gives fillip to great leadership. What would it be for our dear general?