The Nation Newspaper

Category: Dele Agekameh

Fighting the Boko Haram

Sometimes in early 2012, I was in Enugu where I ran into a handsome, innocent-looking, young boy who was working in the hotel where I stayed. I asked him why he was‘slaving’ out in the hotel instead of being at school. The boy simply looked at me, shook his head lazily and began a short but pathetic story that almost drew tears from my eyes. “I am 19 years old. My parents are from Imo State. I was born in Maiduguri, where we were all living until recently when we were forced to run down to the East to avoid being killed.” According to little Isaac, the father is a welder by profession while his mother is a petty trader. His immediate elder brother was a student at the University of Maiduguri, while he, Isaac, had just secured admission to the same university, before the Boko Haram disturbances escalated.

Isaac told me that it got to a point that “these people started going from house to house to look for southerners, most especially Igbo, and they were just killing them. We had to hide in the forest for some days before we were finally able to run down to the East. My elder brother has dropped out of school. He is now in Lagos while I could not go to the university even though I had secured admission. That is why I am working in this hotel”, he said.

Isaac’s plight and that of his entire household is typical of the endless dislocation that indigenes of a section of the country have suffered in the last three or four years of the insurgency in the North. Many have died. Many have lost one or both parents. Many others have lost their husbands, wives, children, breadwinners and all that. It would appear that apart from the indigenes of the troubled areas who are daily being callously mowed down, those who have had to bear the brunt of the displacement are people of a particular ethnic extraction. There are many others from several parts of the country but the preponderance of the ‘refugees’, if I may call them so, are from the South-east.

Take the recent massacre in Kano. The Sabon-Gari Park that was hit by suicide bombers is mostly patronised by Igbo traders. Most of the luxury buses you find there are owned by Igbo transport magnates based in the East. Agreed many northerners and other tribes who were within that vicinity at that time were also cut down. Nevertheless, many of the victims were apparently Igbo traders.

The ongoing insurgency is a northern breed of senseless brigandage that has been cleverly concealed as a religious war, whereas it is not. To ascribe religious fundamentalism to the disturbances is to insult the religion of Islam, which abhors violence or the taking of innocent lives. To the best of my knowledge, there is no religion that supports the shedding of innocent blood, not to talk of large-scale killings that have now become common occurrence in that part of the country.

So, if some group of misguided youths, miscreants and other social misfits are going about killing and destroying schools, places of worship, businesses and all that, they cannot claim to be doing so in the name of Allah or God. If the mere mention of Allah by Muslims is usually followed by “the most Merciful, the most High”, then where do these criminals get their doctrine of violence and destruction from?

One psychological way of winning this war on terrorism is to remove the toga of religion from the insurgents. In this case, rather than calling them Islamic fundamentalists, religious extremists, Jihadists or what have you, let us simply refer to them as terrorists which they are. The average man or woman in the North respects his or her religion with a passion. The average northerner, especially those without formal education, is being told that the terrorists are waging war against infidels or unbelievers. In that case, they can never cooperate with anybody working against those terrorists who they regard more or less as their messiahs who will free them from the perceived tyranny of the unbelievers.

So first and foremost, let us change our attitude to those who engage in this senseless destruction of lives and property. They are simply terrorists. It is also very instructive to note that there are many types of Boko Haram – the religious, the political and the criminally-minded. The religious Boko Haram seem to have taken a back seat in the insurgency. They are probably those who, from time to time, have signified their intention to negotiate with government. These ones have lost steam and may have seen the futility of their escapades.

The political Boko Haram, on the other hand, are those who hide under this facade to perpetrate political killings of opponents. The recent killing of political leaders of a particular party in Maiduguri is evidence of this. The political Boko Haram are those who want to wrestle political power either at the centre or in the states or local governments by destabilisation. With the 2015 general elections fast approaching, they could resort to political assassination of opponents.

The last but not the least here are the criminally-minded people who have invoked Boko Haram to satisfy their satanic interests. These are those who kidnap and extort money in the name of “protection fees”. The ready armies for this group are the unemployed and hungry youths all over the place. Some even incite these jobless youths because of mere business rivalry to wreak havoc on innocent people.

The recent revelation by Alhaji Attahiru Ahmad, the Emir of Anka, Zamfara State, says it all. The Emir had opposed the issue of amnesty for the hoodlums who are engaged in this unending insurgency. At a recent workshop held in Kaduna on peace building and conflict management for sustainable development organised by the National Emergency Management Agency, the Emir said: “Amnesty is for people you can identify. Where were our leaders when members of Boko Haram were going to receive training outside the country? Let us check ourselves; if there must be justice, we must go back to the basics.”

Ahmad blamed the current security challenges on the elite and politicians. He said: “From experience, I have come to realise that whenever you have crisis and a proper investigation is carried out, you always find the involvement of these two classes. Within my domain, a sad experience occurred sometimes ago when an Igbo man who owned a shop was attacked and his shop burnt because his son was said to have torn a copy of the Quran. But upon investigation, I found out that a native of Anka, who was also in the same business with the Igbo man, deliberately roped in the Igbo family. He took a piece of paper with an Islamic inscription on it and tore it into pieces in front of the Igbo man’s shop and then raised the alarm, calling on all Muslim faithful to come and see a copy of the Quran torn into pieces by the son of the Igbo trader. The crowd grew angry and set the house and the shop of the Igbo man ablaze immediately. You can see that this native of Anka did this malicious act purely for personal interest and not religion. And that is how it is with the elite and the politicians”. Ahmad added: “As a traditional ruler who lives with the people, I have come to a conclusion that if the common man is left alone, there is going to be peace in the land. But any place you find crisis, just look around, you must find the involvement of these two classes –the elite and the politicians.” What more should be added? Basically nothing. Ahmad has said it all. This is food for thought!

April 17, 2013
NECO? Wait a minute!

It came like a bolt from the blue. That is how best I could describe the news of the Federal Government’s apparent resolve to scrap some of its agencies, which made headlines last week. The government is believed to have made up its mind to scrap the agencies in line with the white paper submitted by a committee set up last year to study the recommendations of the Stephen Oronsaye-led Presidential Committee on the Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies.

In April 2011, the Oronsaye-led committee had recommended the abolition of 38 agencies, the merger of 52 and the reversion of 14 departments in the ministries, from which they were initially carved out. This move, the committee suggested, would save the nation more than N862 billion between 2012 and 2015. In addition, the committee said the recommendations were aimed at helping the government to effect a drastic reduction in the size of its bloated bureaucracy, eliminate duplication of functions and lower the cost of governance.

Among the agencies which have now been placed under the government’s potential sledgehammer are the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), National Examination Council (NECO), Public Complaints Commission, National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) and Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, among others. Nigerians seem to be focusing more attention on the fate that awaits NECO and UTME.

It is expected that with the scrapping of the UTME, individual universities in the country would henceforth conduct their own admission examinations and admit students. The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, will only set standards and ensure compliance as it will now act as a mere clearing house. In the same vein, the West African Examination Council (WAEC) is expected to take over the functions and vast infrastructure of NECO. This means that WAEC would now conduct two external examinations in a year with one holding in January while the second would be conducted in November of every year.

Expectedly, the move to tamper with NECO and UTME has attracted controversy across the land. While some people have applauded the government for attempting to tinker with the two bodies, others have vehemently kicked against the move. For instance, while some say the scrapping of NECO will check duplication of examination by secondary school leavers, others maintained that allowing the examination body to exist side by side with WAEC has broken the monopoly hitherto enjoyed by WAEC as well as provide an alternative for students. Their argument is that while WAEC is a regional examination body, NECO is a wholly indigenous and national body that is well positioned to assess students in Nigeria. Nigeria picks 54% of the bill for running WAEC.

Some people have also been quick to go into history. Their argument is that NECO was established in April 1999 when Nigerian students were suffering untold hardship in the hands of WAEC. The establishment, they argue, was in line with decisions reached at the 49th meeting of the National Council of Education. The establishment of the Council at that time, they noted, was in response to the outcry of Nigerian students over the problems they were encountering with the examinations being conducted by WAEC in the country, especially the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination and the General Certificate Examinations.

With its massive infrastructure and permanent site located on the outskirts of Minna, the Niger State capital, NECO has recorded many successes. But like every other successful venture, the body also had its own teething problems at inception. It was initially confronted with several daunting challenges that sought to undermine its examinations. Most of these challenges have been surmounted. Unfortunately, in the last few years, Nigerian students have successively recorded woeful results, especially in English Language and Mathematics in both WAEC and NECO examinations.

These results have attracted a lot of public reaction and discourse. Commentators seem to agree that the results reflect the current state of Nigeria’s educational system and that something urgent needs to be done. Public discourse has also been engendered at various seminars, workshops, and conferences on how to proffer solutions to the inadequacies that affect students, teachers, educational administrators and policy makers in the country.

However, the problem of mass failure in school certificate examinations, though not limited to NECO, is believed to have arisen because due diligence may not have been carried out at the marking venue by the examiners marking the examination papers. There’s no doubt that the provision of a valid and reliable assessment of students’ performance is the only way to ensure that stakeholders in education could begin to see examinations as a means of restructuring and reviving the moribund educational system in the country. This will ensure the credibility of examinations taken by candidates in Nigeria, as well as engender global trust in results issued on them.

The idea that one examination body is better or preferable in Nigeria has been there all along. But what I think should engage the attention of our policy makers is the increasing number of candidates who could not obtain the mandatory pass marks in both English and Mathematics – a prerequisite for admission into the university – in the last few years. Many of the candidates could not also secure the mandatory credit-level pass mark in five subjects needed for admission into tertiary institutions. This has created a big problem in the education sector.

In my opinion, it is the standard of education that has fallen to unimaginable level and not the standard of the examination bodies. In that case, NECO cannot simply be scrapped because WAEC is there standing by. If at all the government has identified any problem with NECO, it should put necessary mechanisms in place to strengthen it rather than scrap it. Like the Yoruba say, “Ori bibe ko ni ogun ori fifo”, literally translated to: “Cutting off the head is not a cure for headache”.

Besides, it is clear that with the infrastructure it has put in place in the country, NECO seems to be better positioned to conduct final examination for Nigerian candidates than WAEC. Now, how do you ask a Tilapia to attempt to swallow a whale? Absolutely impossible. With about 37 offices located in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, it is obvious that WAEC has no capacity to take over and manage the assets and or liability of NECO.

Besides, about 5,000 people are said to be employed by the body. In a country where unemployment has soared to high heavens, how will government manage the high unemployment figure that may arise from scrapping NECO? This is because there is no way WAEC can immediately absorb even a quarter of that number. This will surely increase the number of unemployed Nigerians roaming the streets and who would likely be easy prey to criminal activities and criminality which the security agents are already suffused with.

At any rate, rather than take hasty actions that will further compound the problems in the education sector, it is imperative to overhaul the country’s educational system through appropriate and dynamic learning skills for pupils and effective teaching methods for the teachers. We should properly monitor the students from the kindergarten through the primary school, the junior secondary school and the senior secondary school levels. This way, any fundamental error in their growth process could be quickly redressed.

Above all, there is the need to make sure that we have qualified teachers to teach such compulsory subjects as English Language and Mathematics. The current situation where a whole school with SSS1 and SSS3 student population of about 1500 students may just have only one teacher tutoring students in the subjects does not augur well for good education standard. It all boils down to channeling adequate funds to education through provision of necessary infrastructure and teaching aids as well as constant training and retraining of the teachers.

The government may tinker with NECO for the purpose of enhancing productivity and efficiency but certainly, there is no justifiable reason to scrap it. So let it be!

April 10, 2013
Police, NSCDC’s roforofo fight

It was the late Afrobeat king, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, who invented the phrase “roforofo fight” to describe a messy, weird tango between two people or a group of people. Many years after Fela’s death, the word “roforofo” has again been brought to the front burner.

The story goes thus: Two officials of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, were in the early hours of last Wednesday allegedly killed by some policemen over an operational disagreement in Ikorodu on the outskirts of Lagos. Five other NSCDC officials were said to have sustained various degrees of gunshot wounds during the unfortunate encounter. The slain officials were on duty with their colleagues when a disagreement ensued between them and the police.

The NSCDC officials were said to have successfully arrested some pipeline vandals with their exhibit. They were taking the suspects to their office, when one of the suspects made a call. Shortly after, the NSCDC officials encountered the policemen who opened fire on them. Two NSCDC operatives were instantly killed, while no fewer than five others were hit by bullets as they scampered to safety. The vandals who had earlier been apprehended were then allegedly released by the police.

The incident has fuelled speculations that the policemen that killed the NSCDC officials were collaborators in pipeline vandalism. But, in a swift reaction, the police, through Ngozi Braide, the spokesperson for the state Police Command, denied the allegation. She said: “There was a distress call from DM Security PPMC, Mosimi, that they were experiencing drop in pressure on the pipeline. The Unit Commander in charge of Konu immediately pulled out his men on Konu axis under Inspector Sunday Gabriel to proceed to the scene. As they were approaching, they heard sound of serious gun firing in their area of pipeline coverage and the Inspector instructed his men to proceed to that direction… Upon arrival, they saw a group of Civil Defence Corps members coming out from the direction where the shooting was earlier heard. The NSCDC men challenged the policemen who were about four in number on what their mission was in the area, saying that it was their sole responsibility (Civil Defence) to guide and protect pipelines.

“At this juncture, there was an argument between the NSCDC and the police. The most senior NSCDC officer, DSC Olufemi, ordered his men who were about 14 in number to disarm, arrest and handcuff the police team leader and the three other members of his team. The NSCDC succeeded in disarming the police team leader, Inspector Sunday Gabriel, handcuffed him, collected his service pistol, walkie-talkie and Police I.D card…”

These two storylines suggest that we are really in a big mess in this country. It is quite evident that there is deep-seated animosity between our various security agencies. This has impacted negatively on inter-agency cooperation and the overall security of the nation. Taking the two stories on their face value, one cannot but be amused and even amazed by the spirited defence put up by the Police.

Who will believe such a cock-and-bull story that a team of NSCDC officials ‘overpowered’ a team of well-armed policemen, handcuffed and leg-chained their leader, an inspector, and even collected his service pistol in the process? Perhaps, that story is meant to be told to the marines as the public need not go too far to know who is saying the truth between the two agencies.

The issue of incessant pipeline vandalism has become worrisome to all patriotic Nigerians in recent times. In fact, it has become a big epidemic begging for urgent solution. Not only have the activities of the vandals led to a sharp drop in revenue earning from oil, in many instances, it has also caused untold hardship to many families through uncontrolled fire outbreaks resulting in death and destruction.

Usually, the picture that has been created is that of a booming illicit trade that is being aided, and or supported by unscrupulous security agents. This is so because the thriving business has gone on for several years without the security agents being able to apprehend the real perpetrators. In the latest incident, some vandals were allegedly caught in the act. Diligent investigation could have led to the arrest of the big brains behind them. But what did we find? Two government agencies traded bullets, so to say, over the arrest. Not only were the vandals freed after what seems like a conspiracy between them and one of the security agencies, some security agents met their untimely death while others were injured. This is a national shame of a scandalous proportion!

The whole thing reeks of the depth of infamy into which the country has sunk because of unbridled corruption that has become a cankerworm in our body politic. Or else how can one explain all these perennial clashes by security agencies over security issues that have telling effects on the well-being of the nation at large?

Many Nigerians believe that most of the security problems we encounter on a daily basis are being instigated by unscrupulous security agents themselves. Take for instance, the issue of Boko Haram. Even the President himself has cried out that Boko Haram agents have infiltrated the security agencies and the government itself. This, the President said, had hampered all efforts to find a lasting solution to the menace in the country. And from what has been going on all over the country, it is as if the security agencies as presently constituted may never find solution to the myriad of security problems confronting the nation. They seem to be more interested in the pursuit of filthy lucre with unfair and foul means.

This worrying situation has prompted various security analysts to harp on the need for cooperation among the security agencies, as a way of devising a concerted template to fight crime and criminality in the country. But rather than cooperating, what you find playing out everywhere is attempt to outdo or undo one another by the plethora of security agencies in the country. In many instances, these unhealthy rivalries have manifested in open public confrontation resulting in loss of lives and injuries to security agents and innocent members of the public.

If it is not the army versus the police, it could be the navy or air force slugging it out with the police. There has not been any love lost between the Police and the State Security Service (SSS) either. If the Police-SSS rivalry has not led to open confrontation involving shooting, at least, it has manifested in inter-service distrust. A case in point is the mess created by the two sister agencies on the investigation into the murder of Olaitan Oyerinde, the former personal secretary to Adams Oshiomhole, the governor of Edo State. Up till now, that riddle has not been solved.

Today, we are confronted with the bloody encounter between the NSCDC officials and the Police. Like I said earlier, this is a big shame. Fighting over whose right it is to apprehend pipeline vandals is out of the question. Any security agency or even an ordinary citizen has the right of arrest under the constitution. Therefore, to disagree on such an issue as who, among or between two sister agencies, has the right to arrest vandals, smacks of a hidden agenda or lack of proper orientation as members of a security outfit worth its name.

We need to be careful in this country and avoid causing unnecessary commotion through needless disagreements between our security agencies leading to avoidable death, injuries and destruction at all times. That is why this latest crisis between the NSCDC and the Police must be thoroughly investigated by an independent, impartial body. Certainly, not by any department of the Police as they are party to the crisis. This way, the truth behind the fracas will be unearthed. Steps can then be taken to forestall a recurrence of such a national embarrassment. Somebody should save us from the incessant upheavals among our security agencies and agents. And urgently too!

April 3, 2013
Not a shouting matter

The recent news that Adams Oshiomhole, the Edo State governor, and Mohammed Bello Adoke, the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, verbally assaulted each other at the council chamber of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, may have come as a big surprise. A hot argument had ensued between both public officials when they met at the State House for the Council of State meeting on the recent Presidential pardon granted to some VIP ex-convicts. The bone of contention was the shoddy handling of the investigation of the murder of Olaitan Oyerinde, Oshiomhole’s Private Secretary. It almost got out of hand but for the quick intervention of those who witnessed the ugly scene.

Trouble reportedly started when the AGF told the governor that Oyerinde’s matter should not have been referred to his office as it was a state matter. Oshiomhole said he was enraged because the AGF seemed not to have respect for his office. According to him, Adoke should have directed his anger at the Deputy Inspector General of Police that referred the case to the federal level.

Oshiomhole said: “And I asked him who should know better? If the Deputy Inspector General of Police refers a matter that he ought to have referred to the state to the federal Attorney General, who is the one dragging him into the matter? Who is the one politicising the matter? And I said if he has any complaint he should complain to the DIG who referred the case to him.”

Oshiomhole was not done yet: “The point is that you know some of these guys. I am a governor. I am elected. A minister is appointed. He has to respect my office even if he doesn’t respect my person…We also complained that this matter ought to have been referred to Edo State DPP not federal because it is a state offence, committed in Edo State. I am doing my best to raise the issue because that is the least I owe someone who gave his life. And someone else who doesn’t think life is important is attacking me. For him, it is a matter to trivialize and to joke about.”

When he was cornered by journalists on his way out of the Villa after the meeting, all Adoke could say was that he had no reason not to accord due respect to a sitting governor like Oshiomhole. He said, “I will not disregard his office. He is my personal friend. I have the highest respect for him. He is a governor of this country but I will not join issues with him. I did not trivialize his office and I have no reason to trivialize his office.”

Ever since the news broke out, I have watched the video clips of the altercation several times. It is very shameful to say the least. When one considers that such a thing could happen right inside the executive chamber of the Presidential Villa where important decisions that could make or break this great country are taken, then it becomes an abomination altogether. During those fleeting moments the altercation lasted, it was as if the sanctity of the chamber was desecrated.

In the first place, there was no reason for such an altercation to have occurred. If, as the governor rightly said, the AGF walked up to him where he was seated and said that the Edo State AG should have known what to do when the Police referred the murder file to the AGF for advice, Adoke could have done this on a lighter mood, not jokingly as the governor claimed. By this, the AGF’s action could be interpreted to mean that he only wanted to open a window of opportunity to explain certain things to the governor.

Perhaps, the AGF thought that he could put the governor on the same page with him and shed light on the Oyerinde’s issue as a way of breaking the logjam in which the case is now enmeshed. It thus appears as if, rather than be calm and allow the AGF to unfold his real intention to him, the governor suddenly grew impatient and blew up the whole thing. I am sure that Adoke could not have been joking with such a sad, sensitive and controversial issue.

When Oshiomhole took the Police to task in Abuja recently over the shoddy manner the investigation into Oyerinde’s murder has been carried out, this column celebrated the governor for his doggedness in the pursuit of justice for his slain personal secretary. However, this latest show by the governor looks more like the product of uncontrolled temperament, which cannot be excused. Therefore, my take on this avoidable altercation is that, in as much as the AGF publicly said he had “no reason not to accord due respect to a sitting governor like Oshiomhole” and that “he will not join issues with him”, the governor should have reciprocated his gesture in a more cordial manner. As they say,”respect begets respect”. If a governor can ‘vibrate’ on or holler at a sitting AGF like Oshiomhole did, how will he treat those who are genuflecting before him in Benin City?

The governor said while he was elected, the AG was appointed and so what? Who cares? The governor has a duty to perform just like the AG also has a duty, nay, a daunting task to perform as well. The issue of trying to accord one more importance than the other does not arise. Both are very sensitive and important positions. Perhaps, if you engage lawyers on this issue, they might want to say that the position of a federal attorney-general carries more responsibility than that of a governor, but that is not the intention of this piece. What this piece is all about is to point out the fact that the governor may have over-dramatised his pent-up anger against the AGF. That was why he may have scuttled the AG’s good intention.

I think the governor should have been patient enough to allow the AGF conclude his speech when he approached him. I do not believe that the AGF was out to trivialise the case of Oyerinde. He was probably trying to look at the issue from a lighter mood which the governor resented and it blew up in his face.

After the entire scenario had died down, Adoke refused to be ‘tricked’ by anxious journalists who had expected him to fume like the governor did. He simply maintained that the governor was a “personal friend” and that he had the highest respect for him. I doff my hat for him for that. But if it is true that Oshiomhole is, indeed, Adoke’s friend, then it means, perhaps, that the governor could have possibly woken up from the wrong side of the bed on that fateful day and that accounted for his sudden burst of anger.

A lot of things are happening in the polity these days such that can work up many a chief executive of a state. Administering a state as tempestuous and volatile as Edo State might not be a tea party after all. So many issues are in contention for attention. The civil servants are at war over the appointment of someone out of the civil service as a permanent secretary. The governor had recently turned down the request of the Minister of Information to open the State’s vault for the purpose of hosting the jamboree called “good governance tour”. Many other issues like that could be a positive source of migraine for a governor.

It is quite shameful that even at the position of a governor, justice is still elusive in this case. That goes to show the level of rot in our Justice system in this country. And Adoke alone cannot be held responsible for that. It is just as important that all Nigerians, and not only Oshiomhole, should strive to get to the root of Oyerinde’s murder without making real and imaginary enemies at every turn and bus stop.

March 20, 2013
This amnesty gambit

Nigeria is indeed a troubled country. That is why the talk about amnesty has always taken centre stage in our public discourse over the years. The first time it came up, though in a different garb, was in 1970. Remember, the then Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon’s three Rs – Rehabilitation, Reintegration and Reconstruction – after 30 months of a grueling civil war – May 1967 to January 12, 1970.

The word came up again 37 years after. This time, it was not masked in any form of rhetoric. On assumption of office in 2007, the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, in his wisdom, knew that the festering Niger Delta problem needed a solution. He came up with the amnesty programme. This brought some semblance of relief to the region. Today, the Yar’Adua amnesty programme remains a sort of magic wand that doused the tension and acrimony in the Niger Delta region, even though the neglect of the region is still there and the situation is far from normal. At least, successive governments can build on that foundation.

The ‘instant success’ recorded by the Yar’Adua amnesty in the Niger Delta must have encouraged the highly revered Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammed Abubakar III, to come out with such a proposal to end the senseless killings in some parts of the country. With his military background and his preeminent status, I am sure the Sultan actually knew what he was talking about. But since last week when he gave the ‘advise’, it has generated heated debates all over the country. Though this was not the first time such a proposal was being championed by influential people in the North, particularly in Borno State, the intensity of the debate has far removed from the issue at stake- finding a lasting peace in the North.

Without mincing words, there is obvious lack of sincerity in the approach to find peace to the brigandage that is going on in certain parts of the North. In my honest and candid view, we are all guilty: the federal government, the northern elders and the rest of us.

It would appear that President Goodluck Jonathan’s recent showing in Maiduguri was the first time he had spoken as “President and Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”. He pointedly told his audience that his government cannot declare “amnesty for ghosts”. This is an obvious reference to the Boko Haram sect which has donned a toga of secrecy while killing and maiming innocent people all over the place.

Our sensibilities have continued to be assaulted with such ridiculous stories that the insurgents are unknown. Yet, several times, the security agencies have stumbled on so many leads which could have been explored to unmask those behind this façade of a jihad, without anything coming out of them. The perpetrators of these heinous crimes are on the internet every now and then, but what we hear all the time is that they are faceless.

The other day, a group of masked men came out to address a press conference but they are still classified as unknown people. Some of them also came out to hold meetings with the Monsignor Hassan Kukah-led panel at the Government House in Maiduguri, yet they are still passed on as faceless. This is why I say that the whole episode bears some tinge of insincerity.

Assuming that the security agencies do not know those behind this wanton destruction of lives and property, what about those at the receiving end? I mean the elders and leaders of the affected areas. Is there anything wrong if these people could be patriotic enough to provide useful information that could assist the security agencies to unmask these evil people in their midst?

As for the security agencies, their big bosses in air-conditioned offices in Abuja and elsewhere may be complacent because it is ‘the boys’ who are facing the heat at the trouble-zone. Who knows what is actually happening to the allowances meant for the boys? We all know what happened to the stipends of the boys who went for peacekeeping in some West African countries in the recent past. They were short-changed. And when they ventured to show their resentment through protest, they were summarily carted to jail.

What I am saying here is that I don’t want to believe the story that the security agencies have not been able to unmask the brains behind this Boko Haram insurgency. The President actually admitted sometimes ago that the sect members had infiltrated the security agencies and even his government. Are we to believe that non-Boko Haram security agents or top government officials do not know their colleagues who have sympathy for the satanic sect? Are we saying that the Army cannot unmask those who gave away the movement of troops who were recently attacked in Kogi State on their way to Mali?

A former governor of Borno State who presided over the state when Boko Haram notoriety hit newspaper headlines in 2009 has been carrying on as if he does not have any idea whatsoever about the leaders of this murderous group. Is that former governor still denying the fact that he does not have any idea of who the sponsors of Boko Haram are? What about the lawmaker whose call logs contained calls made to known Boko Haram agents? And what about the man in whose house one of the wanted commanders of the sect was allegedly apprehended? Are we all still claiming that the people are ghosts?

Since three years ago, when the activities of the sect peaked to a frightening proportion in Maiduguri and environs, some leaders and elders of Borno State have not changed their tunes. All they have been saying is: dialogue with the people; withdraw the soldiers; and now, amnesty. I am sure that the relentlessness of the Northern leaders and elders on their calls for dialogue and or amnesty for the Boko Haram insurgents is a deliberate attempt to hoodwink the government of the day to achieve what violence has not been able to achieve. Why are they so particular about dialogue and amnesty? Would it be out of place, if they equally encourage these ‘ghosts’ to show up, renounce violence and then ask for amnesty for their members?

Boko Haram or whichever name the splinter groups now go about is an offshoot of the Maitasine sect that shook some parts of the north during the second republic. The late Muhammed Marwa, who founded the Maitasine sect at that time, had a stronghold in Maiduguri, precisely at Bulumkutu Quarters. They were later dislodged, only for them to regroup in Kano. It was in Kano that they confronted the government of former President, Alhaji Shehu Shagari in the early 80s. Shagari took the bull by the horns and quickly called in the Army. Within a few days, the soldiers succeeded in neutralising the sect and their leaders. It was a combined military offensive involving the army, navy and air force.

I am quite sure that if Mr. President had not listened to those who initially encouraged him to be soft on the sect members three years ago when their nonsense escalated, by now, we would have been spared the orgy of violence that has crippled a substantial section of the country.

The leaders and elders of the North will do us some good if they can truly unmask those among them who are the source of oxygen for the insurgents. It is not enough to tell us that it is the duty of the government to bring perpetrators of evil to book. That is true. But no government or security agency can go it alone if those who should know and show the way are not ready to do so. They are guilty of a conspiracy of silence. That is why the talk of amnesty cannot hold water, at least, for now. Period!

March 13, 2013
Water, electricity not bullets

Here we go again. By the last count, at least four students of the Nassarawa State University, Keffi, were callously mowed down last Monday. The students had turned out in large numbers on the fateful day to protest lack of water and electricity in their campus when the students met their death. Many more who sustained varying degrees of injuries were rushed to the school clinic and other nearby hospitals for treatment.

Unfortunately, just like many of such horrendous incidents in the past, the blame game is on. The students have alleged that their colleagues were killed by soldiers from the army’s 177 Guards Battalion based in Keffi who were drafted to the scene. But Ibrahim Attahiru, a Brigadier-General and Director, Army Public Relations, has denied this. While commenting on the incident last week, Attahiru said, “Three soldiers sustained injuries following the stones, bottles and metals thrown at them” by the rampaging students.

Thank God that the police have not been fingered in this latest killing. Eyewitness accounts said policemen who were drafted to the scene were very persuasive in their approach but, as soon as soldiers came in, they started shooting sporadically. This, the army has denied. But the question is: while the students were hauling stones and other available missiles at the battle-ready soldiers, with what did they respond? And how were they able to dislodge the warring students and got them back to campus?

We have been told by the army that hoodlums and cultists had hijacked the protest and caused mayhem before the soldiers and other security agents were called in to quell the protest. As more revelations are made in the coming days, I am quite sure the story line will change again and again. Then we’ll be told that some of the students actually carried arms during the protest. And to support this allegation, a cache of arms seized from armed robbers since God knows when, will be displayed for people to see. Such is the nature of cover-ups often employed by security agents to nail people at all costs.

Yes, the students could have destroyed some of the institution’s property or even public property during the course of the protest. This, in itself, is bad enough. Students cannot be protesting against lack of water and electricity and at the same time, destroying or vandalising many other infrastructure on campus or turn the heat on unsuspecting members of the public. Ordinarily, it doesn’t add up at all.

Government property or any other public property is the people’s property and, as such, should be protected at all times. Huge sums of money are involved in putting these structures in place. With inflation and the downward trend in world economy vis-à-vis the nation’s economy, it costs a fortune nowadays to replace these infrastructures or property. That is why there must be care and caution even in the face of extreme provocation, denial or lack of facilities in view of the dwindling government revenue earnings which have affected the nation’s expenditure or spending power in recent times.

I am aware that there are a few students who hide under this ‘Aluta’ of a thing to ventilate their anger unnecessarily on the society by going to the extreme. They hide under such protests to cause destruction. This will not do us any good. Now, some students who were sent to school with hard-earned money by their parents will be sent home in coffins. But then, when are we going to get over these incessant and perennial senseless killings of our youths in their prime?

The appalling security situation in the country has not helped matters. Mind you, Nassarawa State is a contiguous state to the killing fields of Plateau State where deadly clashes have led to the death of hundreds of people, including scores of security agents, in the last few years. Even though there are occasional lull in the orgy of violence and wanton destruction of lives and property in that part of the country, the ugly situation has often had its collateral effects on many of the adjoining states of Nassarawa, Benue, Niger, and even the Federal Capital Territory, to name a few.

The foot soldiers of these troublemakers are the hoi polloi in the society who have not been adequately catered for in terms of feeding, housing and other basic necessities of life. They live in abject poverty, deprivation, wants and disease. Life, to them, is meaningless, nasty, ‘short and brutish’. That is why they would take up arms in the name of hoodlums and hijack an otherwise peaceful protest by students.

But it would appear that the soldiers who were hastily drafted to quell the protest must have used maximum force on the protesters. In the first place, it was wrong to have called in the army to quell an ordinary protest by defenceless students. The students themselves attested to the fact that the policemen who first accosted them were persuasive in their approach but the whole configuration changed when soldiers appeared on the scene. And soldiers, by their training, speak only one language: force.

So, in essence, those who should take responsibility for this mindless massacre are not the soldiers who pulled the trigger that sent the students to their early graves, but the university authorities who brought them into the fray. It is also possible that the troops’ commanders may not have followed the rule of engagement to the letter.

What is evident in the latest sad story of Nassarawa University is that those in positions of authority in this country may have totally lost confidence in the police and their ability to deal with all these protests especially by students. That was probably why the school’s authorities quickly called in the army to do what a well-trained police force could have done. Internal security is the business of the police and other agencies. The army or military, as the case may be, should only be called in as a last resort if the police cannot cope.

I will agree with those who might want to say that protests in Nigeria may not be the same thing as protests in other countries like Britain, the United States of America, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal or even Egypt and other places. We have seen a lot of protests in these countries in the last two years often instigated by harsh economic realities as it happened in Britain, Greece, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria or bad governance in Egypt. At least, far less people have been killed especially in Egypt where the protests have often turned bloody and almost uncontrollable.

It is true that in Nigeria, many of these protests are often infiltrated by armed hoodlums who convert the protests to personal gains. Many of the security agents too, treat their fellowmen with disdain, contempt and extreme brutality even in matters that require tact, wisdom and experience to handle. With such ruthlessness often exhibited by our security agents, sometimes on innocent Nigerians who are made to suffer unjustly, and or even extorted in the process, it then becomes a natural phenomenon that the average Nigerian, rightly or wrongly, harbours some certain degree of hatred for our security agents. All this must change in order for us to achieve some modicum of decency in our daily lives.

I sincerely believe that what happened to the four unfortunate students of Nassarawa University is avoidable. The onus now is on our security agents to go back to the drawing board and map out new strategies to deal with the public, especially protesting students, so as to put a permanent end to this recurring human carnage in the name of quelling riots. The students too and indeed, all Nigerians, must strive at all times to be law-abiding, while the security agents should also operate within the ambit of the law. We cannot continue to waste our young, vibrant ones needlessly like this. After all, what the students asked for is water and electricity, not bullets and deaths!

March 6, 2013
Ogun PDP: The Abuja ‘coup’

There has been an upbeat in the polity. From all indications, there is a looming volatile and combustible confusion that is capable of tearing into shreds the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, the party that claims to be the biggest in Africa.

There’s no doubt that the PDP is a party run by ‘big people’, which has offered too little to Nigerians in the last 14 years of democratic governance. Therefore, those who call the party an alliance of strange bedfellows may not be too wrong after all as most of the members seem to be united in only one accord – the love of the stomach and filthy lucre.

Every now and again, the rumbles that tear through the soul of the party are far greater than a volcanic eruption with devastating consequences. I am sure, Bamanga Tukur, the national chairman of the party, cannot be sleeping with his two eyes closed at the moment. This is because some elements within the party cannot really come to terms with his style of administration. To them, he has come on board to ‘chop’ and not to offer any valuable legacy in leadership.

For now, Tukur seems to have held the rampaging tempest trying to dislodge him from his post at bay. One moment, it is as if he would not survive yet another day in office; the next moment, he is on the offensive again, fighting real and imaginary enemies. By the last count, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, the former national secretary of the party, and Bode Mustapha, the national auditor, have been yanked off their offices. If Oyinlola’s ouster was through the instrumentality of the law, Mustapha’s case was quite curious, dramatic, intriguing and strange. The latter was the culmination of several subtle but treacherous moves aided and abetted by Tukur and his lackeys. In this latest chess game, Bode George, the discredited party chieftain who is going about with a moral baggage of an ex-convict, played a prominent role.

George had, a fortnight ago, surreptitiously corralled chieftains of the party from the South-west into Abuja for a meeting with Tukur. Some of the leaders of the party who could read between the lines stayed away from that purposeless extravaganza. But others, who were goaded by vaulting ambitions and greed, could not smell any rat. They consequently rail-roaded their motley crowd of followers into the Golgotha that had been prepared for them in Abuja. What followed is the mass slaughter that was unleashed on the unsuspecting party faithful.

Though the ‘family meeting’ was cloaked in the façade of a reconciliation gambit, those at the meeting were dumbfounded when they discovered that they had voluntarily walked into a booby trap set for them by Bode George and others. In one fell swoop, all the contending groups in Ogun State PDP – the Olusegun Obasanjo’s, Jubril Martins Kuye’s and Gbenga Daniel’s groups – were all deposited inside the trash can. The only man left standing is Buruji Kashamu, who, apparently, had a fore-knowledge of the tsunami.

It was a well- orchestrated coup d’état. A few hours to the Abuja parley, Tukur, through a top legal practitioner based in Abuja, went round the courts and withdrew all the pending cases instituted against Buruji’s group by one of the other groups. The dummy that was sold was that Buruji would follow suit and withdraw all his court cases to pave way for genuine reconciliation. But this was not to be. As soon as the other cases were withdrawn, Buruji became adamant and would not take part in such a charade. That action actually sent a danger signal to the other groups. But alas, it was damn too late in the day to do a rethink or a re-map of strategy. That was how the other contending groups were led to the slaughter slab.

With power now fully in Buruji’s kitty, the businessman turned politician was said to have thoroughly lambasted Gbenga Daniel, the immediate past governor of Ogun State, who is widely believed to have contributed enormously to the streak of misfortune that has trailed the party in Ogun State in recent times. He was said to have pointedly told Daniel that he (Daniel) was an impostor having left the PDP in 2011 to pitch his tent with the Peoples Party of Nigeria, PPN, the party he founded and funded to achieve a selfish motive.

Daniel has been desperate to return to the PDP ever since because of the messy situation he found himself soon after the 2011 election. In that election, his favourite PPN came a miserable third behind the PDP and the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, who came second and first respectively. Not even his attempt to ‘romance’ Kunle Amosun, the incumbent governor of the state, now his nemesis, had paid off. Instead, Daniel has been at the receiving end of a barrage of legal cocktails which have greatly unsettled him. He is, therefore, believed to be seeking sanctuary in the PDP as one sure way to wriggle out of the political cobweb in which he has been trapped.

During the campaign for the 2011 general election, Daniel had confidently boasted to whoever cared to listen, including President Goodluck Jonathan himself, that he was capable of winning the governorship election in Ogun State, through the PPN. At that time, his illusion was that he could win the election and then ‘decamp’ with his PPN followers almost immediately back to the PDP. By doing this, he was obviously infatuated with a false sense of superiority and unfounded popularity even at a time it was clear that his public rating had plummeted.

It appeared that Jonathan and the party hierarchy in Abuja was sucked in by these vainglorious and delusive promises. This is apparent from events leading to the 2011 election. Daniel had so much sweet-tongued the president to toeing his line of thoughts that any contrary opinion expressed over the delicate position of the PDP in Ogun State election at that time was easily dismissed with a wave of the hand.

Today, Daniel is like a fish out of water, hence his desperation for a reunion with Ogun PDP by all means. Unfortunately, in trying to reunite with the PDP in Ogun State, he is not willing to follow the laid-down procedure of the party -go back to his ward and rejoin the party. Perhaps, he believes that as a former chief executive of the state, it would be too demeaning for him to be subjected to such party procedures. He has not also helped matters by his blunt refusal to make up with those whom he had stepped or even crushed their toes during the 2011 general election. Above all, there is also this problem of trying to seize the control of the PDP in Ogun State, a move many of the stakeholders consider insulting and outlandish.

Apart from the kid’s gloves with which Mr. President, Tukur and the party hierarchy in Abuja are treating Daniel for reasons best known to them, some of the past governors of PDP, namely Segun Oni, Olusegun Agagu and Adebayo Alao-Akala, are also believed to be fronting for him and doing whatever is possible to bring him back to the fold. Of particular mention is Oni, who, as former vice-chairman of the party in the South-west, preoccupied himself with the task of bringing in the embattled former governor. Unfortunately, that solo effort has led to his sudden ouster from the exalted position.

By now, all the powerful men of yesterday must have seen the nakedness of power. They are now like political lepers, courtesy of selfishness and greed. What is certain is that Tukur may have only scored a Pyrrhic victory as the South-west PDP, particularly Ogun PDP, gets further enmeshed and embroiled in internal wrangling. Until genuine reconciliation is effected, the crisis in Ogun State PDP is far from being over. In fact, it has just begun!

February 27, 2013
Yusuf and his ‘near acquittal’

The Nigerian judiciary, through the decision of Justice Abubakar Talba of an Abuja high court on January 28, on the police pension scam case, has sent a clear message to ‘future offenders’. acquittala Director at the Police Pension Office, was charged to court for criminal misappropriation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, under section 309 of the Penal Code Act, Cap 532, Laws of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Nigeria, 2007. He was charged alongside seven other members of the Pension Office whose cases are still pending in court.

Yusuf, who originally pleaded not guilty to the charges, turned around to plead guilty to three specific charges for which he was convicted. The change in his plea came after a session with the prosecution lawyers led by Rotimi Jacobs, SAN, where plea bargaining purportedly took place. The actual terms of the plea bargaining remains unclear. Yusuf was sentenced to two years imprisonment for each of the three counts to which he pleaded guilty, to run concurrently and with an option of fine, set at N750,000. This, he paid off, with the swiftness of one who had prior knowledge of this outcome.

This judgment sparked a lot of outcries from within the legal profession, the media and, of course, amongst the populace. Before Nigerians forget their recent history, Bode George was similarly convicted a few years back, after a plea bargaining session with prosecution lawyers. George got two years concurrent sentences on all counts for which he was found guilty. Then, Nigerians lauded the judgment. But in truth, he got off easy as well. The option of fine in Yusuf’s case seems like a world of difference, but really, it is not. Section 309 of the Penal Code, under which Yusuf was sentenced, reads thus: “Whoever commits criminal misappropriation shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years or with fine or with both”.

Now, there are a few issues to be addressed in the scenario. First, what options did the prosecution have in prosecuting Yusuf? Apparently, the Penal Code was one option. Another option, considering that the prosecutors were the EFCC, would have been to bring charges for offences under the EFCC Act. Section 17 (1) of the EFCC Act provides for offences in relation to economic and financial crimes. Section 17 (2) specifically states thus: “The penalties for offences under sub section (1) of this section shall be imprisonment for a term not less than fifteen years and not exceeding twenty-five years”. In addition to this, section 18 of the EFCC Act was clear in sub section (1) and (2) thus: “(1) The Federal High Court or High Court of a State has jurisdiction to try offenders under this Act. (2) The Court shall have power, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any other enactment, to impose the penalties provided for in this Act.” A rational prosecutor, who wishes to set an example as a deterrent for future offenders, will not be at a loss as to which of the two enactments (Penal Code or EFCC Act) will serve better to charge the accused.

Secondly, if the Penal Code’s Section 309 was really all that was before the court as a guide to the punishment of the accused, why did the judge give an option of fine which is clearly within his discretion to insert or withhold from his judgment? Alternatively, Section 309 also provides the possibility of a fine and mandatory imprisonment running together. And since the judge had given the accused an option of fine, why N750,000 for misappropriation of a figure in excess of N23 billion? While the section does not specify the amount of fine to be set, where applicable, the judge, in the exercise of his discretion, is to be guided by the principles of fairness and justice and, in special cases, public interest. Although, in defence of the judge, N750,000 is a fair fine for two years imprisonment, judging by the similar proportions of terms of imprisonment to fines, where specifically provided. The public interest vote on this particular decision should have outweighed the others in the mind of the judge, as this is a special case with immense national significance. He was within his rights to set that fine as he would have been if he had gone much higher.

Third, is the issue of plea bargaining. To start with, plea bargaining, in itself, is not a destructive mechanism but rather a constructive one. Its essence is to expedite the process of justice and clear the court’s desks to make way for the tons of litigations flooding the courts. The simple process involves an accused pleading guilty to some or all of the charges brought against him/her in return for a reduced sentence. This saves the court the task of a full-fledged hearing and even clears the prisons by keeping convicts incarcerated for a relatively shorter period. It is practised in many developed countries and, today, is a key part of the United States justice system in terms of effective dispensation of justice. Although it is not specifically provided for in the Nigerian legal system or in any of the laws, there have been calls for its integration in the laws along with alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. The reality is that, in our recent experiments with the procedure, it is the Cecilia Ibrus, Bode Georges and other billionaire offenders that have the privilege, while the common man is sentenced to five years imprisonment for stealing an item worth less than N100.

Though a copy of the charge sheet is yet to emerge for public scrutiny, it is not unlikely that the charges were brought both under the Penal Code and EFCC Act, as a seasoned legal practitioner would not be so absent minded to overlook such disparity in sentences. It is possible that it was during the plea bargaining that the Penal Code Section 309 was adopted and the EFCC Act Section 17 was abandoned. Whether there was communication by the parties and acquiescence by the honourable judge also is yet unclear. What is clear is that the public feels exposed and vulnerable after what seems like a slap on the wrist for a crime that should not have been taken lightly.

At this point, different theories of the events leading to the judgment will be passing around in the minds of the people. Was there a conspiracy by the judge, prosecution and defence to blindside the public and pull a judicial manoeuvre that resulted in the ‘near acquittal’ of the accused? Or were the hands of an impartial judge tied by the rusty binds of old statutes that predate that country as we now know it by almost half a century? The Penal Code and the Criminal Code are a 1916 ordinance and, as the current president of the Nigerian Bar Association put it when commenting on the sentence, “It is obvious that the law is inadequate and so the sentence is inadequate”. Since 1960, only Lagos State has ever amended its criminal laws, including criminal procedure rules. And that was done quite recently.

Yusuf may have also forfeited 32 houses in the FCT and Gombe as well as N325million, which the EFCC said were proceeds from the crime. But Nigerians are not thrilled by forfeitures in a system where there have been rumours of ex-offenders repurchasing their ‘forfeited’ properties and forfeited sums vanishing into thin air. Nigerians need to be sated with landmark judgments that will show that the judiciary is not caught up in the power politics of the executive and legislature. The people are not calling for burning at a stake or beheading; they simply ask for public officials to be accountable for their actions and for the justice system to apply commensurate punishment for crimes. After all, following a plethora of judicial authorities, justice must not only be done, justice must also be seen to be done!

February 20, 2013
Yoruba self-marginalisation

At a press conference in Ibadan last Wednesday, Yoruba elders under the aegis of Yoruba Unity Forum, YUF, accused President Goodluck Jonathan of favouring other sections of the country to the detriment of the South-West geo-political zone in the appointment of top government officials. According to the group, the marginalisation of the zone in the current political equilibrium, particularly in the distribution of political positions, “is an attempt to excise the zone out of the federation”. The elders alleged that the President’s pattern of appointments, with no consideration for the Yoruba, suggested that Jonathan did not appreciate the contribution the Yoruba people made to his emergence as the president in the 2011 general election.

Olu Falae, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who spoke on behalf of the group, said the Yoruba were sidetracked in the appointment and control of the apex political offices. He gave a rundown of such plum appointments as that of the President; Vice-President; Senate President, Speaker, House of Representatives; Chief Justice of the Federation, Deputy Senate President, Deputy Speaker, House of Representatives; acting President, Court of Appeal; Secretary to the Government of the Federation; Chief of Staff to the President; Office of the National Security Adviser; and Head of Service of the Federation. He noted that none of these offices was being occupied by a Yoruba person and that the absence of Yoruba in the current power equation, had adversely affected the zone.

Falae went further to justify the need for the President to redress these anomalies. He said, “In the days of the late President Umar Yar’Adua administration when he was incapacitated by illness and there was reluctance to make Jonathan acting President, it was predominantly Yoruba activists who led the march on the National Assembly to force our lawmakers to pronounce Jonathan acting President. When he chose to run for the presidency, he got the enthusiastic endorsement of many Yoruba progressives, especially the leadership of Yoruba Unity Forum…”

While Falae was lamenting the marginalisation of the Yoruba in Ibadan, simultaneously on the same day, leaders of the South-West states converged on Osogbo, the capital of Osun State, at the opening ceremony of the regional Grassroots Business and Investments Forum christened EXPO 2013. There, the leaders called on all the governments and people to join hands in building a prosperous zone. Prince Bola Ajibola, a former Attorney General of the Federation, who was chairman at the ceremony, said political tendencies should be de-emphasized in plotting the road to the future. He said the achievements of governors in the zone in the recent time were good enough to attract investments to their states.

The two governors in attendance – Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State and Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo – toed the same lines. Of particular reference was the view canvassed by Ajimobi, that the issue at stake transcends party politics. According to him, “This is not about party politics. It is about governance. It is about the region. Each of the states has an area of strength. What we need is to develop areas of comparative advantage for the overall interest of our people.”

Ajimobi enumerated the benefits accruable from regional integration to include “consensus-based decision-making processes, elimination of conflict and unhealthy rivalry, holistic articulation and effective mobilisation of varieties of resources, and the utilisation of community resources to facilitate optimal delineation of development roles among the integrating units.”

Looking at the current political dispensation in the country as it relates to the sharing of political offices, one cannot but agree with the views and fears expressed by Falae. It is apparent that the Yoruba has lost out in the political calculations of the current rulers in the country. But the reasons may not be far-fetched. In the first instance, the PDP, the ruling party at the centre, was overwhelmingly humiliated in the last general election held in 2011. The loss of the party, no doubt, was due to the desire for change by the people of the South-west who were obviously fed up with the misrule, brigandage and shenanigans of the leaders of the PDP in the zone between 1999 and 2011.

That era witnessed a free-for-all ‘buffet’ on the common wealth of the zone by those in power without any appreciable thing to show for the depletion of the resources at their disposal. As it is always canvassed under democratic rule, the only legitimate weapon available for a traumatized people is to use their voting power to right whatever perceived wrong wrought on them. And this was exactly what happened at the 2011 election. That election saw the PDP losing its grips on such states in the South-west as Oyo and Ogun. Before then, Osun and Ekiti States had also slipped away from the dominant PDP.

By the loss of almost all the states of the South-west to the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, with the exception of Ondo State, currently under the control of the Labour Party, it was clear that the people had resoundingly rejected the PDP. Perhaps, in simple terms, this was a matter of choice of which party the zone wanted to entrust its destiny. Today, the price the zone has to pay for that decision is its obvious marginalisation by the party at the centre in the scheme of things. This situation is buoyed by the intractable internal wrangling that has pervaded and further decimated the ranks of the PDP leadership in the zone. Anywhere you turn; there are several factions and groups within the party contesting for the control of power. To put it succinctly, the party is at ‘war’ with itself in the zone.

Of course, the other political zones have reaped bountifully from the burgeoning confusion in the zone with the attendant collateral damage. It is astonishing to note that the leaders of the PDP in the zone do not only quarrel among themselves, they also use the schism among them to run down their members when it comes to political patronage at the centre. Not only this. When it comes to the matter of appointments to choice political offices, the zone has never presented a common front. All manners of interplay of forces, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, are brought to the fore whenever the opportunity to present a qualified and capable individual for appointive office at the centre, comes up. The consequence of this and many others is the glaring marginalisation of the zone in the scheme of things.

Aside from the fractionalization of the PDP in the South-west, which has affected the fortunes of the zone, the leaders and elders appear to be staunchly divided among themselves. For quite some time now, the zone has witnessed the formation of several groups with each group jostling for the control of the zone. And there is no need to start mentioning names here. The effect is that this also has an overbearing implication on the fortunes of the zone. This stems from the fact that members of these pluralistic groups are, in many instances, fighting for individual spoils rather than regional or group interests, as the case may be.

Therefore, the irony inherent in what took place simultaneously last week, in both Ibadan and Osogbo, which is less than one hour drive in-between, is a sort of self-manipulation of a people by the people themselves. Otherwise, how do you explain the staging of a strategic economic summit that is targeted at the development of a region in one part of it, and another gathering on the present and future of the same region on the same day and perhaps, the same time elsewhere within the zone? If not self- marginalisation, what else?

At any rate, there is the need for the leaders and elders of the zone to go back to the drawing board and fashion out new strategies to realize the aspirations of the zone. A starting point is the bond of unity which must exist among them!

February 13, 2013
Mali, not Afghanistan

Since the campaign by the French Army to free Northern Mali from the iron grip of the Islamic fundamentalists began a few weeks ago, the Nigerian government has been labouring profusely to justify the entry of its troops into the fray. The Malian government was rendered dysfunctional in March, last year, following a military coup which toppled the government of President Amadou Toumani Toure. Amadou Sanogo, a Captain and leader of the coup, had called for external help to enable the war-weary Malian Army to stop the temerity of the rebels who had taken over a number of key towns in the North of Mali.

His pleas were ignored. Instead, the African Union, AU, suspended Mali. The AU later struck a deal with the coup leaders to allow President Toure to resign. Part of it was to restore civilian rule which finally saw Dioncounda Traore, the Speaker of the Parliament, sworn in as the Interim President on April 11, 2012. The army thereafter retreated from the North of the country, thereby giving a free reign for a plethora of armed groups to fill the void. These are disparate armed groups all of which have different aims and motivations. They were soon joined by Islamists, many of whom had been displaced from Libya after the fall and eventual death of Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011.

The Islamist insurgents, who were obviously well-equipped with tested fighters, weapons and free cash, soon overwhelmed other militias and took over the whole of Northern Mali. This started the ‘balkanization’ and bastardization of Mali as various World Heritage Sites, which abound in the rebel-held areas, were systematically desecrated and destroyed. Tied to an Al-Qaeda group in the Maghreb, which in itself, is a franchise of the original Al-Qaeda, the quest of the Islamic fundamentalists was to foist their own brand of stringent Sharia laws on the whole of Mali. Of course, this portends danger for Mali, the entire West African sub-region and the world at large.

All the AU could do was to engage in mere rhetoric while the extremists dug deeper. By January, this year, the rebels started making preparations to launch a final offensive on the south of the country. This would have brought the entire country under the control of the extremists. This would have also emboldened Al-Qaeda in North Africa to secure a launch pad for the total destruction of the weak governments in Africa, especially West Africa.

While he held sway as Libyan leader, the late Gaddafi never hid his expansionist agenda which was to control the whole of Africa. He had sold the idea of one United Africa with one President to his other African brothers. When he saw that nobody was ready to buy this, he resorted to buying arms and ammunition which he stockpiled in several locations in the vast desert of Libya.

With the whole of Libya now turned into one huge warehouse for weapons of mass destruction, Gaddafi planned and executed many sinister plots across the African continent and beyond. He was involved in the wars in Liberia, Cote D’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Somalia, Chad and other troubled spots in Africa. In other parts of the world, he actively sponsored acts of terrorism. One of it was the terrorist attack on the Pan-Am Airline Flight 103, which was brought down over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing all the 270 people on board.

Gaddafi’s ignominious death in 2011 opened a new bastion in terrorists’ war in Africa as all the warehouses harbouring his weapons were left at the vagaries of armed groups which plundered them. Some of them looted the armoury and got additional supplies from Gaddafi’s men who were out to make quick money.

However, throughout his reign, Gaddafi could not properly penetrate the countries in the northern part of Africa as their economies and governments were stronger than those of the poor countries in West Africa. Charles Taylor, the disgraced former President of Liberia, was a beneficiary of Gaddafi’s poisoned chalice. Another was Blaise Campaore, the pseudo-revolutionary who holds sway in Burkina Faso. Regrettably, both Burkina Faso and Cote D’Ivoire were the routes through which Gaddafi got his weapons across to rebels in Liberia and Sierra Leone during their civil war years. Cote D’Ivoire later paid a price for this by the bloodletting that confronted the country in the recent past.

Now, poor Mali has come under the jackboots of foreign troops fighting to liberate it from the clutches of Islamic fundamentalists. The French government, its former colonial master, took the lead by dispatching its troops, which stopped the rebels from advancing to the south of the country. Through ceaseless aerial bombardments, they have captured all the rebels’ strongholds. But the French troops will not be available to go all out on any ground assault to totally cleanse the place of the remnants of the rebels who may have taken sanctuary in the desert. Nigeria is at the head of the more than 3,000-strong African forces under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, which have been arriving in Bamako in trickles to undertake the ground offensive.

Currently, Nigeria is bedeviled by deadly exploits of some extremists believed to have a modicum of ties with the insurgents in Mali. Though the attacks are confined to the northern part of the country, its debilitating effects on the entire country and the West African sub-region is being felt rather than imagined.

Therefore, the logic of Nigeria’s involvement in Mali is that it is quite easier and cheaper, in terms of human and material resources, to fight terrorism outside the shores of the country than within. In other words, it is far better to confront the growing ‘Al-Qaeda’ influence in Mali and smash it than wait for the insurgency to be exported into the country through the porous borders in the North.

Furthermore, Mauritania, Libya, Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Niger and Algeria are quite vulnerable to attacks by these rebels. Particularly, Niger and Algeria borders are extremely porous, and neither government has had the effrontery to halt the weapon flow into and through their countries to other parts of West Africa, especially Nigeria. Nigeria shares a vast border with Niger Republic. Besides, the recent terrorists’ attack on a gas plant in Algeria has signaled what to expect in other parts of Africa if preemptive action is not taken to nip the growing insurgency in the continent in the bud.

But one problem remains. The African troops in the Mali campaign will require enormous assistance from external bodies in terms of training, weapons and other logistics of war. It will be recalled that during the war in Liberia, some of the African troops which were brought into the theatre of war were grossly under-equipped. They had neither boots nor weapons to fight because most of the West African leaders prefer to keep their army ill-equipped to stave off coups against their regimes.

Another major thing that is worth attention is: what becomes of the rebels who have abandoned their positions in Northern Mali and took to their heels? They are probably locked up in the vast deserts and mountains of Northern Mali where they could instigate guerilla warfare at their whim to destabilize Mali from time to time. They could have also taken refuge somewhere in the Sahel, where they could regroup and carry out their attacks on any part of the West African sub-region. This is why everything must be done to forestall the rise of another Afghanistan in Africa.

The recent pledge of an initial contribution of $50 million into the estimated $1 billion funds for the war efforts in Mali by AU members in Addis Ababa, underscores the seriousness attached to the Malian crisis by African governments. Therefore, the adventure in Mali is in Nigeria’s interest, the interest of the West African sub-region, Africa and the whole world to deal extremism a decisive blow in order to achieve sustainable peace and progress.

February 6, 2013