The Nation Newspaper

Category: Mobolaji Sanusi

  • Resurgence of political promiscuity

    Resurgence of political promiscuity

    ”The mind of the superior man is conversant with righteousness; the mind of the mean man is conversant with gain.” – Confucius 551 B.C. – 479 B.C

    At this moment, Nigeria’s highest political need is higher ethical standards – one that is propelled by genuine role models and also enforced by adherence to strict laws and upheld by responsible political leadership. But sadly, the tempo at which politics of harlotry is gaining momentum in the country should concern the reasonable discerning few among us. In the view of this column, the principal goal of politics in societal development should be that of creating men and women who are capable of sustaining principles and not simply repeating the foibles of other generations and which may have largely contributed to the sorry state to which the nation is plunged today.

    Yours sincerely do engage in persistent ruminations, and in such hopeless state come up with several pertinent questions: where are the men and women of principles and integrity in politics? Is it still impossible to have men that are ready to uphold the values necessary to bind the society together without bowing to the lure of being turned into quislings in the corridors of power? Is there any hope, again, for the current generation of Nigerians to witness better days ahead?  What is unfurling in the country is depicting the reality that in our clime, nothing defines political humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs.

    To develop our society and get our judgments right, we need to get our priorities right – as individuals and as government. And to be perfect in our judgments, there is the need to make moral principles and justice the starting point of all our undertakings and the root of everything that was beneficial. This is something that persons of middling or even more elevated intellect never grasps in the polity today, which is why they gain fleeting profits rather than integrity.

    Thomas Jefferson, one-time president of the United States of America, once said: ‘In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.’ How many of the younger and middle age politicians in our clime today can claim genuine acceptance of this statement by sincerely affirming that it remains the moderating influence of their actions with self and the Nigerian nation? The realism in this statement dawned on yours sincerely when earlier this week, Femi Fani-Kayode, beleaguered former Minister of Aviation finally announced his long-expected departure from the All Progressives Congress (APC).

    His professed major reasons: Consideration of “… nation-building as being far more important than party politics, party affiliation or party formations.” Anyone that truly follows the antecedents of this chameleonic rabble-rouser will realise that he has always considered ‘pocket building’ far more important than nation building through identification with anything odiously indefensible from the ignoble government of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

    He claimed that he could not stand a party where; “… members of the Christian faith are not treated as equals….” More damning is his accusing the major opposition party of “working hard silently” and “behind the scenes” to produce an all-Muslim pairing for the 2015 presidential election and that “all the substantive positions of the national executive of the party are made up of almost exclusively Muslims.”

    All of a sudden, Fani-Kayode just realised that he is questionably ‘a devout and committed Christian’ who ‘…cannot remain in a party where a handful of people that have sympathies for Boko Haram and that have a clear Islamic agenda are playing a leading role.” Is he equating performance in public affairs with religious inclination? He needs to tell us whether two Christian presidents in Obasanjo and Goodluck have shown inspiring flashes of hope for a better Nigeria than what late YarÁdua, a Muslim did in his brief period in power? Despite his claim of being a ‘devout Christian,’ the nation’s aviation sector was not better off what it is today when he was head of that ministry. If not for the embellished claim of Femi-Fani-kayode’s claim of having been in power for 24 years, he would still remember that the only Muslim-Muslim ticket of MKO Abiola/Kingibe in 1993 won the best and fairest presidential election in the annals of this country.

    He also erroneously claims not to want to be in a party where “… dissent and a differing opinion with others on fundamental issues are seen as an offence.’’ Now that he is back in the conservative PDP, it would be nice for him to let the world know what led to the fractionalisation of the ruling party last October when some of its leading members were forced to exit it for expressing differing views and what informed his selfish decision to go back this time around. He accused APC of having ‘… politicised the whole Chibok issue and even stated that the role of one of its governors is not clear on the Chibok issue.’’

    The issue of Chibok is tied to the Boko Haram menace and what yours sincerely presumes to be the issue is the shoddy handling of it by the federal administration. It is thus callous for Fani-Kayode to think that a party populated by parents will ever contemplate playing politics with the lives of innocent children, especially knowing the consequence of such an action in a year preceding a general election. More laughable was his erroneously claim of having been in politics since the ‘last 24 years of my life and all along, I have taken monumental risks and being guided by my principles.”

    Expectedly, he has returned to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from the APC that he formally joined on February 7th, 2014. This man is a liar for claiming to have been in politics since 1990. Where was he when June 12 was annulled? The only noticeable actions of him were his then trenchant self-conceited write-ups in newspapers against President Obasanjo in the early days of this century. To him, there was nothing good in Obasanjo until he was, like a crying monkey pacified with banana appointments that saw him finally ended up in the aviation ministry. He started and, in obvious more established self comfort, ended with Obasanjo without being able to rectify the derided shortcomings in the man and his government. It is, of course, not his fault that he thrives in this society where bootlickers of power and unstable jobbers. More knocks for the APC leadership for falling easily to the deceits of Fani-Kayode who ordinarily should not be allowed to mingle where decent politicians are congregating.

    Perhaps, if the appointment is right by the incumbent, Fani-Kayode will not think twice before unleashing his notorious fangs against Obasanjo, his former pay master. This is so, especially now that his calculated expectations of what to be reaped had been dashed in APC and the yet-to-be disclosed permutations with the centre government’s ruling party looks so tempting.

    The danger in the conduct of characters like Fani-Kayode is well amplified in the speech of the 34th president of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969), when he said: ‘A person that values his privileges above his principles soon loses both.’ For this immoral self-celebrated political creature, time will tell.

  • Memo to Boko Haram

    Memo to Boko Haram

    “From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.”– Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

    This open memo is written to you because yours sincerely assumes that wherever your members might be, whether in the forest of Sambisa or your bunkers of destruction located across Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, it will definitely be easier to gain your attention through this medium because one can reasonably presume that your sect actually has access to print and the electronics media. After all, your group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, has consistently been using the social media to convey his mostly satanic messages across to the Nigerian government and its traumatised people.

    Nigerians are more exasperated and frustrated by your group’s sustained havoc-wrecking spree on public/religious institutions as well as your having sustained effective devilish killing plots against innocent citizens of this great country. This is sadly in the face of largely un-motivated and ill-equipped military. Having perfected these heinous conducts, especially in the face of avoidable inadequacy by the state, hardly would a day pass without a destructive bang of your sect rocking one or two corners of the northern parts of the beleaguered country.

    This wanton act of disrespect for human lives by your sect has defied human reasoning and has even cast serious aspersion on the veracity of your members’ claim to be true adherents of the Islamic faith as championed by Prophet Mohammed (SAW). Personally, yours sincerely has always been seriously ashamed of your evil acts and terribly embarrassed when people asked whether my Islamic religion condones the barbarity of your highly destructive and pretentiously Islamic sect.

    This memo has become highly instructive because of the helpless state that your injurious acts have put my fellow country men and women. Apart from the routine killings and destructions by your sect’s members, the group, sadistically, moved a regrettable step backwards when it abducted in a day, over 250 school girls writing final examinations in Chibok, Borno State on April 14. This is otherwise a global record by any terrorist group like yours, which gave our government away as not in control of state security and even overall national affairs.

    By this savage act on innocent girls among others, you have become unreasonably plucky and treacherous soldiers of the Islamic faith: Through your numerous abductions and other killings, your irreligious attacks and disdainfully fearsome influence have stigmatised genuine adherents of Islam. The blood-thirsty illiterate recruits in your nest of killers called Boko Haram must have a rethink if truly they desire aljannah firdau.

    Yours sincerely is pleading with your group to please release unharmed, the school Chibok girls. Ordinarily, my pleadings should have been directed at the federal government that constitutionally ought to ensure that the security and welfare of the people are primarily guaranteed. But the response of the presidency to demands of protesting mothers when they went to Aso-Rock was heart-shattering. It is inconceivable to note that the Jonathan presidency told the protesters to direct their protests and grievances to the direction of Boko Haram. This is embarrassing because the ruinous sect is not known to the nation’s grund norm. Thence, what the presidency is saying or insinuating is that it has ceded its constitutional role to the sect. Otherwise, why should it say what ordinarily should be a shame on its professed capacity to govern the country?

    This government has broken the trust reposed in it by the Nigerian people when they voted for it in 2011. And its blame-game of putting liability at the door steps of Boko Haram is unacceptable. The blame-game of this government already connotes a lost game because blames create no change and true fighters/winners don’t apportion blames. The Boko Haram should, however, not take the timidity of this government to mean that the group would continue to hold sway forever. This column is, once again, appealing to the group to sheath its bloody sword and quickly release the school girls whose parents are still under intense trauma as a consequence of the sudden disappearance of their affectionate wards.

    The Boko Haram members definitely would have parents among their membership and it is useful to ask how any of them, despite their heartless onslaughts on the people, would feel if their kids, whether male or female, is abducted and with little hope of rescue by a dreaded group like theirs. If only they could shed off the toga of barbarity and wear the garb of humanity, they would waste no time in releasing those girls to government for onwards transmission to their parents.

    Let the group realise that its fight is not against President Jonathan who is well protected in his Aso Rock fortress, but against humanity because the entire world is now concerned and alerted to its inhuman representations as depicted by the senseless abductions of these girls and several others. Nothing lasts forever and the essence of doing anything good/pleasurable is to be imbued with the wisdom to know when to stop. This is not to talk of the evil that the sect represents.

    Yours sincerely is using this platform, once again, to tell Boko Haram that whoever might be its promoters before it went out of control; it is pertinent for the sect to know that it has exhausted its nuisance value. The moody state of the nation during the last Children’s Day and yesterday’s insipid Democracy Day celebrations were clear pointers to this fact. So, dear dreaded Boko Haram, pity the girls and their parents in the name of the Almighty Allah – and release them hale and hearty!

  • Nigeria’s troubling period

     “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life” ¯ Jomo Kenyatta

    Nigeria, our dear native land, is going down a path never witnessed in her history – and it is no news to the discerning. It is on a perilous path that is unsettling to the watchful. Crime and criminal activities appear to be trademark attributes in astronomical dimension in contemporary Nigerian society. People in virtually all the six geo-political zones live in perpetual fear. Everyday, people are tensed up by thoughts about their safety, which the state has failed to guarantee. While the problems of corruption, epileptic power supply, rampaging unemployment and sweltering poverty among others, look Herculean, intractable insecurity grows monstrous.

    In other climes, insecurity or terrorist acts are treated by leaders as a very serious problem. When the 9/11 bombings by the terrorist Al’Qaeda occurred in the United States (US), the country’s president then, George Bush, was vehement in his resolve to track the terrorists down when he vowed: “This is an act of war against the United States. We’ll hunt down the terrorists. They can run but they can’t’ hide….” When London was bombed during Premier Tony Blair’s era, his statement to his country men was re-assuring when he said: “We’ll track down the terrorists and bring them to justice.” Even though terrorist activities are still a bourgeoning problem to the world, there are no doubts that these leaders and also their successors in office are doing everything to make their countries safe havens for their citizens. They take as a national duty, the job of taking extra steps to protect their countries’ borders and also monitor activities of people living in their territories through well coordinated and efficiently effective intelligence networks.

    Why can’t Nigeria imbibe the same leadership spirits demonstrated by past and present leaders of the US and the United Kingdom? Why is my country finding it so difficult to halt the perverse tides of bombings, killings, abductions and kidnappings for ransom that are gradually looking unstoppable for government and its security agencies? Why are these avoidable problems becoming larger than the Nigerian state by every passing day?

    However, an insight into the clueless official approach to the problems was a remark reportedly made by President Goodluck Jonathan after the Christmas day bombing in Madalla, Gudaka, Damaturu, Maiduguri and Jos by the Boko Haram group years back. Then, he had described bombings in the country “as a burden Nigerians must live with until it fizzles out.” Again, the question is: How long will it take for the current spate of inexorable insecurity in the country to fizzle out? At another occasion of bombing, the president reportedly said: “Terrorism is a global phenomenon. May be it is Nigeria’s turn.” These are embarrassing, defeatist and un-presidential statement, especially from a sitting president that is currently nursing a covert ambition of seeking people’s sacred mandate again in 2015. In more enlightened society where poverty has not incapacitated the people, those statements during such challenging periods are enough to send the president on political Siberia.

    The current administration under President Jonathan has regrettably demonstrated its lack of capacity to comply with provisions of section 14(2b) of 1999 Constitution (as amended) that provides: ‘It is hereby, accordingly, declared that: The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.’ If government is expressly expected to constitutionally guarantee security of lives and property, then, the internal insecurity being faced today as a result of rising Boko Haram butchery, Jos ethnic/religious carnage, armed insurgency and kidnapping for ransom amply shows colossal failure of government to protect the governed.

    Since October 1, 2010, Nigeria’s Independence Day, when there were twin bombings in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the country seems to have parted ways with peace. When the CIA report of 2005 during the civilian regime of ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, predicted the collapse of Nigeria in about 15 years time, the administration engaged in sophistry, dismissing the report rather than embarking on rigorous scrutiny of the predictive indices believed to be capable of leading the country to the predicted collapse. The current general state of insecurity in Nigeria has now lent weight to the report.

    Most northern states are under perpetual siege of the Boko Haram onslaught; At the moment, the country is battling to rescue over 200 school girls abducted by Boko Haram insurgents in Chibok, Borno state; the eastern states are being tormented by cantankerous kidnappers/abductors that have turned ransom payments and killings into a vocation. The armed robbery siege in the south west is gradually being overtaken by creeping scants of kidnappings. The general notion among law-abiding citizens of this country whose psyche has been brutalised is that government security apparati, including the military, police, State Security Service (SSS) and other intelligence agencies are incapable of guaranteeing the safety and security of Nigerians.

    This regrettable development has brought forth the concomitant negative indices of fear and lack of confidence/trust in government of the day to protect them from these rampaging unscrupulous elements in their midst. This negativism in any polity limits peoples’ ability to be both socially and economically creative and stable. At the same time also, it acts as de-motivation to meaningful investment drive. Government is supposedly held in trust for the people but Nigerians no longer have faith in their government because it harbours criminals that put up the behaviour that hurt and sabotage the system and their wellbeing. In the end, such inimical activities injure the collective interests of the state.

    President Jonathan has not helped matters with the cowardly approach with which he rules this country. As the Commander-in-Chief of the nation’s Armed Forces, his refusal to visit and empathise with parents of the over 200 abducted girls in Chibok, Borno state shows crass presidential failure of courage at a period the citizens need motivation in that regard. What a cowardly act!

    May be Mr President needs to learn something from the aphorism of Jomo Kenyatta, that audacious Kenyan nationalist and former leader, where he said: “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.” If he is running away from the military he is expected to command and fund, what becomes the fate of the governed that have to contend with these poorly catered for military personnel. If the president and the presidency and even the topmost hierarchy of the military accused of scandalous corruption think they are secure simply because they have the privilege of state security compliment, let someone remind them that they are reveling in in self-delusion. What Kenyatta tried to say is that insecurity in most parts of any country and badly managed military/police necessarily translates to insecurity in her corridors of power, no matter how highly fortified: This troubling time of Boko Haram and kidnappings can be surmounted, despite foreign assistance, if only there is sincere official approach and more importantly, if the right steps are taken by truly determined leadership. All these are a desideratum at the moment. Should we then pray? Maybe!

  • Bad leadership: Will Nigerians ever say enough?

    Bad leadership: Will Nigerians ever say enough?

    ‘Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction’——John F. Kennedy

    Nigeria is in a sorry state, a condition that makes mockery of the toil of her foremost nationalists that had lofty dreams about her great but mismanaged potentials. And Nigerians of the younger generation have, inescapably, fallen victim to this avoidable leadership gaffe. Nigeria is at this sorry pass because at every decisive juncture, its leadership had always failed Nigerians. Such bad leaderships truly did not emanate from the free will of the people but obviously foisted on them by the elite political class. It would not be hyperbolic to state that leadership is the most critical challenge of the nation’s civilization – apologies to Brian Tracy, the world renowned management/leadership expert.

    It is trite in all human cum societal affairs that desires dictate our priorities while priorities shape choices. However, it is the latter that determine human/societal actions. And what is affecting the country today is sentimental leadership desires over national needs/expectations. What we term as national priorities in the country is nothing but largely the parochial desires of the few in power that later manifest in detrimental official policies/actions which invariably, have sadly failed to stand the test of time. This trend has routinely crept into the national psyche to the extent that rather than see leadership as a privilege to better the lives of others, the few in the corridors of power see it as an opportunity to satisfy personal/class greed. That is why in the real sense of the word, it has been really difficult to have genuine heroes amongst past leaders in the nation because heroes are made by the paths they choose and not through the powers they wield which are usually abused during their tenures in office.

    This leadership in the euphoria of savouring power easily forgets that the secret of success for men in power is to always endeavour to take the right collectively impacting steps/decisions by learning from the mistakes of the past. Historically nonetheless, men of power especially in Africa, nay Nigeria, hardly take rational decisions while in power because they get surrounded by bootlickers who, because of survival, hardly bother to tell them the truth. The fears of losing out in the bitter corridors of power-game turn aides of position wielders into ‘Yes men.’ However, most power wielders ignore, while their tenures subsist, the wisdom in Mahatma Ghandi’s historic statement: “A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.” This is why very few men are clever enough to know the tomfoolery they do while in office. We have several of such men masquerading as champions of democracy in the country’s political turfs today and Olusegun Obasanjo is one of them. Ibrahim Babangida and Yakubu Gowon are just two others. They mismanaged their goodwill while in power and outside office, they remain irritants to the country’s democracy through the giving of unsolicited and badly belated counsels.

    For example, Obasanjo, a former president of eight worthless years reportedly went to Jigawa state recently where he declared Governor Sule Lamido fit to rule the country come 2015. He reportedly declared: “Going by Lamido’s background, performance and credibility, his competent and exposure, he can stand shoulder to shoulder with anybody in the country…if it is the wish of the people, it is okay. He did not tell me he was vying for the post, but being the wish of the people, let’s wait and see. Based on his track record, would you say he is not competent?’’ The issue is not about the person or eligibility of Lamido for the job but more about the widely despised promoter of his yet-to-be-made public interest in running for the presidency come 2015. How can Obasanjo be talking about the wish of the people when he is the numero uno leader renowned for subverting the wish of the people of this country at any opportune time?

    There is no doubt that he wants to use Lamido’s candidacy to fly his trademark ignoble kite. An introspection: After Obasanjo’s eight hollow years in power and the failure of his abominable tenure elongation agenda, he foisted an ailing candidate in Umaru YarÁdua on the nation-against the wish of the people since the election that brought that late president to power-organised by Obasanjo-was adjudged to be one of the worst in the annals of the nation’s electoral history. To satisfy his greedy desires and more importantly as a mark of punishment on the nation for rejecting his Third Term agenda through the national assembly, he saddled YarÁdua with an inept deputy in the current Dr Goodluck Jonathan, the incumbent president. Today, the rest is history!

    Again, Obasanjo reportedly spoke on a BBC programme, Focus on Africa, where he advocated the deployment of carrot and stick approach in solving the Boko Haram debacle. His reason was because President Jonathan “is overwhelmed” by the Boko Haram insurgency. He also reportedly disclosed that his self(ish) 2011 fact-finding mission when Boko Haram insurgency became uncontrollable unveiled that the sect has a lawyer and even quoted what the lawyer told him to wit: ‘Mr President, if you want to meet their leaders, give me three hours. I will gather their leaders, not in Nigeria but outside Nigeria.’’ This, according to him, necessitated his conclusion that the sect has leaders and one reported source recently claimed that Obasanjo has a list of leaders of the sect. What then has he done with the list of leaders that the sect’s lawyer ostensibly availed him of? Being a government he installed without input from Nigerians, has Obasanjo ever bothered to discuss this issue with the protégé president for him to come forth with the way forward? Does he want the northeast region to go up in flames before brandishing the list for the whole world to see and for the media to have something to feast on?

    With the degree of misrule, coupled with selfish and bad decisions that Obasanjo inflicted on the nation, this column does not think that his fanciful endorsement of Lamido should be taken seriously by millions of Nigerian victims of his eight grueling years of misgovernance and tyranny that produced the incumbent president. Whatever misgovernance Jonathan might be inflicting on the nation today is a direct consequence of Obasanjo’s mischievous misplacement of priority because of his selfish interest. The time has come for Nigerians to stand up and say enough is enough to bad leadership and selfish counsels from disgruntled past rulers capitalising on the madness of the moment to launch themselves back to national reckoning. Even if Nigerians do not know those who would guide them out of socio-economic and political troubled waters, they should at least know those who would not and these include Obasanjo and Babangida. Enough is enough of bad leadership!

  • Government without humanity

    Government without humanity

    ‘If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity’ — John F. Kennedy: In his address at American University on June 10, 1963.

    Is there any humanity left in the running of public affairs in this country? Could it be that respects for human life and right to peaceful existence have taken flight under the President Goodluck Jonathan-led (mal) administration? These two questions agitated my mind early morning of Wednesday when my ten-year-old niece called me from London with her mum’s phone and in a troubled tone, demanded to know whether Mariam, my four-year-old daughter, was safe. Her reason for asking the question: She just watched on foreign media that girls in Nigeria were wantonly abducted by Boko Haram insurgents and she felt we all were no longer safe in this country. I tried to convince her that I lived in Lagos which was hundreds of kilometres away from the scenes of this savagery. But all fell on deaf ears. When it became clear to her that I was not ready or planning to leave the country for any perceived safe country, she pleaded with me to at least relocate Mariam and her brother and mum abroad. I refused her entreaties and her mum took the phone from her and reiterated her daughter’s fears.

    Well, I quite appreciate the apprehension of my niece and her mum but the truth is that yours sincerely never contemplated relocation and would not relocate Mariam or any other member of my family abroad, but would continue to pray for the return of absolute peace in the country. The only thing is that if the current government is proving incompetent to handle the ongoing criminality, then, it should rather resign; otherwise, Nigerians should show unwaged resolve to reject it by voting it out of power in 2015.

    What I went through that day is what many other Nigerians with friends/relatives abroad suffer when the barbarity going on in the country is being beamed and reported to the global world by the international media. The problem especially with the new dimension where girls were being abducted as if there were no government in place is very disturbing. In over twenty days, the country has been in sombre mood over the uncertain fate of the over 250 abducted girls in Borno state by Boko Haram criminals. Yet, the government has not come up with clues over the whereabouts or state of wellbeing of the girls, leaving their distraught parents, and millions of concerned citizens, including yours sincerely, across the country in a quandary amid ravaging angst. Again, does this administration have any empathy?

    This question becomes necessary in view of federal government’s carefree attitude despite the sad mood of the nation as exemplified by its hosting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The capital of the nation is now under lock and key for three days on the orders of President Jonathan despite the justifiable ongoing inexorable rage of women across the country over the abduction of innocent girls in Chibok. After his azonto dance in Kano and Ibadan, the president is now relishing on his wasteful WEF hosting.

    This government has shown unbridled contempt for mothers in the country and this has not properly situated those at the helm of affairs at that level as responsible parents with the desired empathic feelings. From Maiduguri, Abuja, Lagos, Ibadan and other major towns and cities were published and aired, pictures of flustered mothers/women staying in the sun, rain and sometime cold weather with placards protesting government’s lackadaisical handling of the madness of Chibok. Yet, government is so unconcerned that it still went ahead to host WEF in the FCT, and paralysing the federal capital for what could be rightly described as a jamboree that mocks the pains of struggling mothers. What idea or policy framework is WEF going to come up with that has not been crafted before for successive governments in the country? Can’t the summit be shifted to a better period when the girls would have been found and the foul mood of the nation diffused? What is so inevitable in this summit that makes the government feel it can undermine the emotions of the women folk and other men of conscience in the land by forcefully hosting it?

    In case President Jonathan has forgotten his history so soon, he needs to be reminded that women’s power of protest had led to the crumbling of even powerful traditional institutions in this country. One example will suffice: In 1949, Madam Funmilayo Ransome Kuti (1900-1978), a women’s rights activist and one of the most prominent leaders of her generation led other women of the Egba clan in their campaign against arbitrary taxation and presented documents alleging abuse of authority by the Alake, who had been granted the right to collect taxes by his colonial suzerain, the government of the United Kingdom. This led to the forced abdication of the Alake’s throne by Oba Ademola II. The great woman alongside her women comrades also oversaw the successful abolition of separate tax rates for women. In 1947, the West African Pilot described her in its editorial as the “Lioness of Lisabi” for her steadfast leadership focus given to the women’s liberation struggle against political oppression and economic suppression. It was during this period that she made her famous statement to wit: “Alake, for a long time, you have used your penis as a mark of authority that you are our husband. Today we shall reverse the order and use our vagina to play the role of husband.” Yours sincerely hopes that the president would not allow Nigerian women to be forced to make such weighty statement against his administration with his tardy handling the case of the abducted Chibok girls.

    The problems persist because of the mystification of everything Boko Haram even from the stupefaction of Sambisa Forest of evil in the East Mountains of Borno State where the criminals live and; the fact that the military sent on this operation are largely demoralised and humiliated; while their topmost hierarchy amass vainglorious ill-gotten wealth and live in eye-popping opulence.

    Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, in his most recently published article titled: ‘Nigeria bleeds and it needs all of us,’ succinctly pointed out the lack of capacity of this administration to quell the insurrection: ‘Some now say parts of Nigeria are ungovernable. I disagree. The issue is not that parts of the nation are ungovernable. The real problem is that the current administration seems incapable of governing these and other areas. No parts of the nation are ungovernable…Given the obvious danger before us, may this government regain sobriety and a sense of purpose equal to the moment and the challenge we face.’ Will this government be able to come up with the desired clear-headedness and courage to rise up to the occasion as admonished by Tinubu?

    The answer will unfurl in days ahead as the America may likely come with the much-needed assistance to rescue this government that is bereft of humanity. These innocent girls must not die or be sold into slavery as threatened by Boko Haram, but be returned safely to their agonising parents – and thereby put the nerves of the country’s bewildered citizenry at rest. For now, this column hopes that the ongoing women insurrection will not lead to something more historic. It is not too late for Mr President and his lieutenants to do the needful – now!

  • Power and the South Korean example

    ‘You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power–he’s free again’ – Alexander Solzhenitsyn

    There is something quite instructive that power mongers in Nigeria and other Third World countries must learn from what happened recently in South Korea. The country’s Prime Minister, Chung Hong-won, resigned from power amidst public outrage over his leadership’s perceived slapdash handling of the Sewol ferry disaster. The Sewol ferry sank on April 16, with only 174 people out of the 476 on board reportedly rescued. Equally sad is the fact that majority of the passengers were students and teachers from Danwon High School in Ansan, a city near Seoul. This, no doubt, means that a large chunk of the trustees of the posterity of South Korea was destroyed in that ugly incident.

    This conduct of voluntary official resignation is surprising because such a patriotic act is uncommon where yours sincerely emanated from. Thus, it was bemusing to see contrite Chung in a televised address declare on behalf of the government he served: “As I saw grieving families suffer with the pain of losing their loved ones and the sadness and resentment of the public, I thought I should take all responsibility as prime minister…There have been so many varieties of irregularities that have continued in every corner of our society and practices that have gone wrong. I hope these deep-rooted evils get corrected this time and this kind of accident never happens again.”

    He went further: “The right thing for me to do is to take responsibility and resign as a person who is in charge of the cabinet.” The South Korean embattled prime minister underscored his empathy for human life when he finally retorted that the “cries of the families of those missing still keep me up at night”. Well, some pundits might not see anything extraordinary in what Chung did because in South Korea, prime ministers are often fired when the government takes responsibility for major disasters. But his latter declaration merely shows the conscience and humanity in him; otherwise, he would not have agreed to be the fall guy let alone take “all responsibility” by resigning from his plum job. Chung is not just leaving the job, President Park Geun-hye has instructed he leaves after clearing the mess from the ferry disaster.

    After a bout of reflections over this laudable occurrence in far-away South Korea, my mind wandered over the egregious corruption and intractable Boko Haram-led abductions and killings going on in this country without meaningful official panacea. Quite vividly, this column reflects on the attack, sometime, of Federal government Girls College in Yobe State, where lives were lost, properties burnt and several students and teachers kidnapped. Adamawa State is not left out of these gory tales while Borno State remains the centre-stage of mind-boggling Boko Haram pogrom. Currently, the country is still agonising over the abduction of over 234 girls in Chibok area of that state. Yet, the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan looks so confused that it has not offered any meaningful solution to the problem. The teenage girls abducted while writing their WAEC examinations have not been released and the president doesn’t realise that he lacks the moral right to remain in power. This singular act of his makes me doubt whether he listens to foreign media like the CNN, Al-Jazeera and even SkyNews. Otherwise, he would have known that he has since lost his legitimacy to continue in power.

    Rather than come up with effective solution that could bring lasting peace into the country, the president is presently ingrained in the dirty politics of his re-election. He was in Kano and Ibadan to do ‘azonto’ dance while parents and families of the abducted girls and victims of the Nyanya bomb blast are in serious pain and agony. Under similar circumstances, someone in South Korea has resigned for badly managing a national disaster.

    The president, because of his enormous powers, does not feel the pains being felt by other Nigerians. What has been happening is to see presidential aides defending the presidency’s intolerable indices of crass ineptitude and other unpardonable errors as if defending their inalienable inheritance. Their paymaster must have forgotten that power is transient. The president would never consider resignation because he has been intoxicated by power. After all, Edmund Burke, a great philosopher and thinker of British ancestry, once observed that though powerful men ‘may be distressed in the midst of all their power but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.’ That is what Dr Jonathan is doing, which is peculiar to the leadership attitude in Third world countries. Such leaders according to Stephen Vincent Benét thought that because ‘they had power, it amounted to wisdom.’

    So sad, what we have in Nigeria is buck-passing because no government official believes he should be sacrificed for systemic rot that supersedes his/her coming to power. In every disaster, rather than toe the path of honour, the nation’s leadership sees the hands of political opponents in every disaster that befell it. Such leaderships as we have today and perhaps in the past are paranoid, despite their obvious ineptitude. This is one salient reason we have a system in which citizens are penalised for honesty and as such, everyone has learnt to lie to power through nauseating flatteries.

    A sinking government in Nigeria might not embrace the South Korean example because truth is silently interred in the corridors of power with no one being ready to courageously exhume it. And that is the tragedy of power under the Nigerian situation which has given birth to the death of genuine feeling; the dearth of inspired response and the flight of awareness that make it possible for most men of power to feel in their veins, the pains/miseries of other men. The Nigerian leadership has eyes and still cannot see. It has overtime, under this ruling party, grown so callous and yet unashamed. The president, except for the flight of honour, should see reason for common sense, common honesty and common decency – not the pursuit of 2015 elections and how to strategise on his return to power. Dear President Jonathan, a word, it is often said, is enough for the wise!

  • Reflections on Prof Olatunji-Bello’s day

    ‘God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well’- Voltaire.

    Perhaps, this column should sometimes stay away from beaming its klieg-light on the crass misgovernance that has plunged the nation into a near-irremediable cul-de-sac. This is a very difficult decision in the face of the damning insecurity and stubborn vampires in economic and political spheres destroying the country. This week, yours sincerely has chosen to celebrate an exemplary figure and acknowledge how we can individually make positive difference in the life of this country.

    Permit me to start with Voltaire, an historian and philosopher, who was born François-Marie Arouet and recorded by history as one of France’s greatest Enlightenment writers. In one of his most memorable quotes on a worthy life, he said: ‘God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.’ Indeed, living well and adding value to the society that we live in have become a painful rarity in Nigeria of today.

    With due apologies to Ernest Meyers who once admonished people not to‘… just count their years’ but to make such years count, he probably had a saner society in mind where there is minimal corruption and where the leadership puts national interests above parochial pursuits.

    What we have today in the land are mostly people who merely count years without making their years count. What most people celebrate today as birthday landmarks are rapacious display of ill-gotten wealth. They derive joy, under the pretext of celebrations, in wild-eye sour display of indefensible opulence and splendour in a society where most people fall within the poverty bracket.

    The regrettable thing is that our society which hitherto placed high premium on societal values has come to see this contemporary obscenity as something normal. In the days of yore, true role models are picked from among distinguished academics, professionals, genuinely-inspiring business moguls, committed technocrats, sportsmen/women and particularly Christian/Islamic clerics. Not any longer again as most young folks pick their role models from whoever could acquire overnight wealth; those who could afford to ride some of the best and costliest cars in town without any noticeable source of income. Even the traditional institutions are not helping matters as they confer coveted traditional titles on such men/women of doubtful pedigrees.

    The mosques and especially the churches have become havens to corrupt politicians that derive pleasure in looting public till, bank executives with loose fingers that convert customers’ money to private advantage and men of the underworld that flood these places of worship, paying huge tithes and donating incredible sums of money to possibly atone for sins against the citizenry. No wonder, the age we are now is the age of wonder clerics that flaunt numerous private jets/choice cars even when majority of those who worship under them could not afford to pay their rents or even send their wards to religious schools established with money donated by the mass of the congregation.

    Our society needs to regenerate the values of the past that promote integrity and credibility before it becomes too late. But the noticeable challenge here is the corruption of virtually all facets of dignity restoration in the country. The society needs to reject the escalating trend of ‘yahooism’ that has turned our youths on the heinous paths of destruction. However, there is hope especially if we can respectably fall back by endeavouring to restore the once-cherished family values and if we can as individuals, live a life that is truly worth emulating.

    That was the lesson which I took away from the 50th birthday celebration of Professor Ibiyemi Ibilola Olatunji-Bello (mni), former acting vice-chancellor of the Lagos State University, Ojoo and wife of workaholic Honourable Tunji Bello, the state Commissioner for the Environment – and a true role model – last Wednesday. The profile of this woman of substance gleaned from the occasion’s programme of events was inspiringly intimidating. In a man’s world like ours, it is difficult to see a woman so highly blessed, yet so respectably simple and humble to people around her and submissive to her admirable husband that voluntarily confessed as observed in his tribute to her: ‘Ever so brilliantly patient, resourceful, tolerant and God fearing. You cannot but marvel at her bubbling and ever so hopeful spirit. Most times, I silently gave her credit for being able to live with my restlessness, impatience and stubbornness. It is to her credit that our children have grown so lovely, humble, God-fearing and respectful.’

    This is indeed the mussing of a loving husband to his adorably treasured wife. No wonder that Prof herself disclosed during her brief speech at the event that after the almighty God, she owes everything she has achieved in life to her darling husband. Apart from what she said, discernible visitors on the occasion could feel the pulse of true family love between the couple and even from photographs and comments passed by their three children -Temitope, Ayodeji and Olamide – who are doing well as budding professionals in different fields of human endeavours, including medicine, engineering and law.

    How many people above the golden age could really be said to have celebrated real contributions not only to self but also more importantly to the society? How many who are yet to be fifty could confidently say that by the time they get to that golden age, they would confidently boast that they have tried for self and by extension for the larger society? For the latter group, the opportunity to make amends is still very open. The life of Professor Tunji-Bello at fifty with her husband and as corroborated by highly effervescent Chief Molade Okoya Thomas, chairman of the occasion, has shown that professional excellence should not be yardstick for undue pride. Rather it should be the linchpin for elevating the family as the fundamental unit of society as well as the root of positive values and inspiring culture.

    The significance of the Prof’s day is beyond just her birthday. It was a celebration of someone that is loved and greatly admired by her husband/kids and those she came across in the course of discharging her familial and professional duties. There are lessons for women in particular and other Nigerians in general to learn from the life of this esteemed wife of Tunji Bello, whether as a wife, academic, administrator or technocrat – more so in our society where little success easily gets into people’s heads. After all, Abraham Lincoln once said: ‘It is not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.’ Isn’t this food for thought for all as we forge ahead in the journey of life? Let us ponder over this! Once again, happy birthday, Prof!

  • Nigeria’s unending calamities

    Nigeria’s unending calamities

    ‘These are the times that try men’s souls’ — Thomas Paine

    The Boko Haram sect, it clearly seems, would stop at nothing to destroy the northern parts of the nation without the slightest compunction. They get more emboldened by the day – and the reason is simple: They have gone away undetected with so many atrocious acts that left reasonable people wondering what happened to the nation’s security apparatus. Otherwise, why would they plant a bomb at the popular Nyanyan motor park in Nyanyan, about five minutes drive to Abuja – a day after the Christians’ Palm Sunday?

    The motor park serves as terminus for commuters working in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and also a hub for travellers to some part of the northern states, including Nassarawa, Benue, Plateau, Kaduna and Bauchi states. Barely 24 hours after this sad event, these highly invidious sect members similarly struck with frightening speed when they abducted 100 female students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok that were writing their West African Examination Council(WAEC) examinations in the southern part of Borno state. Many dastard acts may have happened by the time readers are reading this piece just to underscore the level of insecurity currently ravaging the country. It is pertinent to ask: Do we still have government in place? What has happened to the billions of funds currently being spent on the so-called prosecution of Boko Haram onslaught in the north eastern part of the country?

    The Nyanyan bombs devilishly sneaked into town like a thief at night, wrecking heart-rending explosions at around 5.55am – shattering in the process, 16 luxury buses and destroying more than 24 other vehicles. The police – known usually for being officially frugal with reports – publicly stated that 71 people died, while 124 sustained injuries in the incident. The casualty figures are certainly higher now that the entire disaster has fully unravelled- some reports put death figures at not less than 200 with injury sustaining casualty of slightly above this. The attendant devastation reportedly affected buildings, whacked glasses and devastated cars parked near and several metres from the scene.

    Those caught in the web of the blasts were mostly workers, petty traders, artisans and passers-by that left home early so as to get to their different places of work in good time. The Federal Road Safety Corps, Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, National Emergency Management Agency officials and other security personnel got to the scene 20 minutes after the incident. This, in itself, raises serious question about the nation’s response to emergency situations. Definitely, 20 minutes after the occurrence of an emergency is not a good score-card for the nation’s purportedly well funded security and emergency institutions.

    This column, as usual, finds preposterous, President Goodluck Jonathan’s routine tepid vow to do everything possible to end insurgency in the country, while being conducted round the scene. His aversion that “the issue of Boko Haram is temporary and that Nigeria will overcome it” has become a cliché and his minders need to tutor him on what to say when (God forbid) such happens the next time since his government has no answer to the insurgency, which has become a recurring decimal. His commendation for the security services for his perceived ‘prompt action’ is quite curious and outrageous. One would ask: Is the president not personally embarrassed that his expensively maintained intelligence services failed to unravel the dastardly act before it occurred? Yours sincerely finds rather absurd the highly contemptuous visit by the president to Kano state to attend a political rally and, a social party in Ibadan, Oyo state, barely 24 hours after this national tragedy in Abuja. The compassion in President Jonathan must have taken flight!

    What is quite clear now to all is that Boko Haram members have proved themselves to be creatures of rage and lunacy because they ceaselessly inflict darkness on the country’s humanity. Nowadays, faces grow forlorn not out of personal volition but because the days ahead are marked with unexpected affronts that the government could not provide answers for. Most of these are usually disastrous and more worrisome is the fact that the process is irksome and incessant. Do we have a country governed by rules and with full compliment of state instruments of coercion in place? This is becoming doubtful because attrition avoidably rules the air at the moment with little hope that it would disappear soonest. What is our government doing? Better put – what is the administration of President Jonathan doing to end this unceasing bloodshed? Why is the widely touted official effort against the sect not effective? Are we scheming for self-destruct? Are things going to continue like this until there are very few people left to kill in that part of the country? What assurance is there that the menace will not spread to other parts of the country?

    The Boko Haram bombings/killings/abductions could best be described as nothing but a national tragedy despite the fact that some lucky parts of the country only read the story and view the ruins on television sets. But for the humanity that flows in human veins, they may never fully appreciate the pains and anguish of victims who dread to sleep for fear of Boko Haram-induced nightmares. The sorrows that the sect brought on humanity, through impiety, remain the hardest to bear. Is there a way to safety? Can someone guide these afflicted people since this administration seems incapable of providing effective escape route from the looming destruction?

    Governor Gabriel Suswan of Benue State, a protégé of President Jonathan and a chieftain of the ruling People’s Democratic Party(PDP), diplomatically indicted the president on the spate of insecurity in the land when he reportedly spoke during a recent visit by PDP stakeholders from the North-Central and entire north. The governor and Jonathan apologist frowned at the fact that nobody had been arrested for the violence and killings in the North-central. His clincher to the president: Tell your security men to arrest these criminals!

    This counsel needs to be urgently heeded by Mr President to save this country from the claws of Boko Haram and other criminal elements. But unfortunately, our Aso-Rock Presidential Villa chief tenant has erroneously been telling the world that he runs a benign and enlightened government; but the truth is that the nation is turning into a fiefdom of criminals where political collaboration, treachery and devilish manipulations reign uninhibited. From the festering sore of Boko Haram, what is undeniable is that authority and law now covertly elevate crime and other criminal tendencies. That is why today’s Nigeria is plagued with tragedies where devils in human skin have decided to ride us all like a horse and torment us all like assaulted bees.

    When will these victims-inflicted trials, struggles and losses come to end? Quite sadly, this column does not see any hope of liberation out of the abyss of despair for victims of violent afflictions with the half-hearted handling of the Boko Haram onslaught by this administration. This period is really a trying one to our souls. It is time we rose from our slumber!

  • The burden of a critic

    Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things –¯ Winston Churchill

    Something happened on Saturday last week. Though that was not the first time that such would be happening, what makes it unusual was the timing. Around 6.15am, l received an SMS on my phone from a reader of this column. It was a one-sentence stinker: ‘You are … Sanusi.’ It was sent in from +2348105419482. The text obviously was in response to my last week’s column titled: ‘Feeble leadership in troubled times.’ My mind started wandering over why someone would wake up early in the morning to start cursing fellow being for saying the truth. The kernel of disgust of this particular reader, like other respondents that earlier sent in mild responses, must have been my catalogue of the inadequacies of President Goodluck Jonathan during this troubled period of Nigeria’s history. Some in those numerous text messages actually accused me of putting all the nation’s problems at the door step of the “innocent” president. But they failed to tell me who else should be held responsible. They must have forgotten the cliché that uneasy lays the head that wears the crown.

    It was in the process of my cogitation over that indecorous text message that the federal government released on Sunday, its curious rebasing of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) index. That index rebasing has been widely acknowledged to be necessary and laughably unrealistic for putting the country as having the biggest economy in Africa – when empirically, the reversal is the case. However, no matter how long overdue the rebasing might be even with the touted last one reportedly done in 1990; it is unhelpful and deceptive for government to put Nigeria’s GDP at $509.9b, far above South Africa’s $370.3b. Could this be another pre-election year ego massaging for the federal government?

    The Economist, in a recent aftermath report, dusted government’s rebasing by saying: “Nigerians are not richer than they were on Saturday night. The majority of the country’s 170 million people live on less than a dollar a day”. Mr. Francisco Ferreira, World Bank Chief Economist, Africa Region carpeted the spurious rebasing efforts to wit: “What matters is improved living standards for everyone and the productivity that guarantees those living standards.” The Labour movement in the land pointedly told the government that a good GDP without jobs is meaningless and that the rampaging reality in the country include – hunger, unemployment and poverty. The incident gave me nostalgic feelings of when I was an editor; ordinarily, I would have instructed one of my good reporters to conduct a broad Vox Pop with the masses on the streets of this country to know their true feelings and assessment of the kangaroo rebasing by this administration. The report would have been the authentic rebasing of the GDP, not this officially doctored one.

    What is sadly emerging in the polity is a regular pattern of mischievous propaganda by this government which was meant to cover up its avoidable lapses. This column recollects that some days ago, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy openly lied to Nigerians when she was visited by delegates of the Arewa Youth Forum, that 1.8 million graduates join the labour market annually in the land. And that the government generated 1.6million jobs last year for Nigerians. She attributed source of her concocted data to the National Bureau of Statistics which she said, was arrived at “after two months of methodological work.”

    But like the newly released rebasing, she didn’t provide concrete evidence to show that the country actually produces 1.6million jobs annually, the quality of the jobs, the government agencies that gave out these jobs and names of beneficiaries if indeed they are not ghosts. Madam Ngozi ought to realise with all her international years of exposure on the global level that a concocted positively rebased GDP without sustainable and viable jobs is nothing but a ruse.

    This column’s critique of the Jonathan administration is not out of malice or personal vendetta but out of concern and patriotic fervour against the unwary ways things are degenerating in the nation. It is also not borne out of sympathy for any opposition party or particular individual but out of disappointment over the epileptic way that the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has been leading this country in the last 15 years. This column wants change in all ramifications in the land and what is quite clear is that the ruling party is now bereft of ideas on how to move the country out of the woods. Despite this fact, it remains impervious to any call for change that could possibly give Nigerians a new lease of life.

    Benjamin Disraeli once said: ‘Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.’ Even if the circumstance of Boko Haram is beyond Jonathan’s control, could it be justified that his ham-fisted approach is also beyond his power: If we agree that the economy is not doing well, can the president, with all the awesome powers in his custody, not come up with conducts that would fix it? If circumstances of epileptic electricity is beyond the president’s control, is the power to arrest the bad situation beyond his means? Unfortunately now, this government is touting the idea of importing power from Democratic Republic of Congo – This is a shame that is dismissive of his expensive reforms agenda in the power sector.

    There is serious unemployment in the country but the presidency has been lying about this sorry state with unpalatably fictitious employment-generating figures. The president’s silence on the reckless spendings and corruption in the oil sector is condemnable, but if this too beyond what he can use his powers to curb?  The backlash that greeted the latest GDP rebasing that makes the country Africa’s largest economy seems to be the last straw that broke the camel’s back. It most importantly shows from expected reactions from especially the Economist, Labour movement, financial experts and the World Bank that columnists/critics are not unjustifiably criticising the president.

    This column seizes this opportunity to assure ardent protagonists of the present administration that except things positively improve in the country, they should be prepared for more mordant writings from yours sincerely. They should be ready to purchase more air-time that would guarantee them more reactionary text messages. Whatever it is, the assurance is that this column will not be deterred from saying it the way it is, no matter whose ox is gored.

  • Feeble leadership in troubled times

    Feeble leadership in troubled times

    ‘A nation that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an instalment plan – Martin Luther King Jr.

    Is Boko Haram Nigeria’s Armageddon in the making? This question has become pertinent in view of the recurring spate of violent killings, especially in the north-eastern part of the country. It is disquieting that the news of such killings has become routine. Perhaps, it is daily expected to find published stories/pictures of killings and violent attacks in the newspapers. When a day passes without such unsettling stories, people become apprehensive of what the Boko Haram insurgents may have up their sleeves. Routine incidents of kidnapping/abductions, mostly for ransom – and armed robbery – have become the signpost of the time.

    These are surmountable challenges but what is worrisome is the usual deceitful stance of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, which is accustomed to the nauseating refrain: “Something is being done to arrest the situation.” Recently, the President revealed some truths that he did not intend to admit even when he privately understands them to be true and knows the dire consequences of saying it. He berated some unnamed state governors over their utterances and actions he perceived to be against his government. He reportedly retorted while granting audience to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stakeholders from the North-Central that recently paid him a solidarity visit at the Presidential Villa, Abuja: ‘If 50 per cent of the governors in the country talk and behave the same way these governors do, we would have vacated this seat for others to come and manage the country.’

    The reality is that the president would not have uttered this statement if he truly wants to know that over half of governors in the country had negative impressions about his unimpressive style of governance. What other evidence does he want other than to check the electoral result sheet of last year’s Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) election through which Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State became its chairman at the expense of Jonathan’s preferred candidate, Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State? This column vividly remembers that the outcome was Amaechi’s 19 votes to Jang’s 16. Yet, the President’s group, with the backing of the presidency, wants the nation and the world to believe that 16 erroneously out-number 19. Haba, Mr President! The president ought to have honourably resigned then if indeed public opinion still means anything to him.

    But because he still wants to continue to mis-rule the country, he devised regional divisive method which he acknowledged when he said governors from the north-central “… have been able to help stabilise the whole country. When the Governors’ Forum became a monster and we had a lot of challenges, it was the North-Central that came on board to stabilise the Governors’ Forum. So, we will continue to work with this zone, we will continue to encourage you. As we approach elections next year, let us know the problems on time. We will work with you to ensure PDP continues to maintain the zone.”

    From the above, it is quite apparent that the president is politicising the grievous issue of Boko Haram inflictions on the nation. To him, what matters is not the issue of dividends of democracy, genuine peace and stability, but how to win that part of the country for the PDP at whatever cost. Why should any president with the milk of human kindness in him be talking about winning an election that is about 11 months away when innocent blood was being made to flow by these callous insurgents? Or is Mr. President not seriously disturbed that the degree of Boko Haram onslaught on the country is quite terrifying? This column wants to know what his government is doing to curb the audacious rape on the North-east by insurgents that reportedly received arms and ammunition, food and medical supplies through helicopter droppings in their strongholds.

    Furthermore, what has been Mr. President’s response to the development whereby a convoy of about 20 to 30 Toyota Hilux vehicles recently moved freely without being detected despite the fact that there is curfew in that part of the country? Can the president as the Commander-in-Chief defend a situation where the Maiduguri Air Force Base was attacked unnoticed by insurgents that reportedly de-mobilised and set ablaze aircrafts and other military facilities even with the existing state of emergency and curfew in place? Let him tell Nigerians why security personnel were reportedly withdrawn from the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, few hours before the recent attack that claimed the lives of over 59 innocent children.

    Is it thinkable in a country with purportedly fortified security apparatus to believe that the Shilka Tank, a multipurpose self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery weapon that was officially stationed to secure the famous Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri failed to function at the hours of need which avoidably resulted in serious calamity for both the civilian and military in the hands of Boko Haram insurgents? When the president could not on the home front provide effective answers for these empirical observations, it is quite laughable too that at the ongoing Fourth European Union (EU) – Africa Union (AU) Summit in Brussels, the Belgian capital – he reportedly said that it is the collective responsibility of all nations to identify sponsors of terror groups, such as Boko Haram. Has he done this in Nigeria? The answer is NO!