The Nation Newspaper

Category: Mohammed Harunna

  • A presidency steeped in self-denial

    A presidency steeped in self-denial

    Like godfather like godson; President Goodluck Jonathan, it seems, likes to live in political self-denial, just like his presently estranged godfather and erstwhile benefactor, former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo. We are all too familiar, aren’t we, with the incredible denial by the former president that he ever even contemplated a third term agenda, much less want one. God, he has repeatedly said, has never denied him whatever he wanted. So if he had wanted a third term God, presumably, would’ve had no choice but give it to him. Therefore all those who had accused him of wanting to carry on beyond 2007, he has said to everyone who cared to listen, were nothing but malicious mischief makers.

    Like his estranged godfather, President Jonathan has been accusing anyone who says he has since made up his mind to contest the 2015 presidential election as a malicious mischief maker, possibly worse. He is too busy fulfilling the peoples’ mandate, he says, to have time to think of any re-election. Yet anyone with half an eye, indeed even someone with no eyes at all, must have the most credulous mind not to see through the president’s denial as so much hogwash.

    Proofs that our president not only wants a second term – some would say a third, because he has already been sworn in twice as president – but does so desperately are ten a kobo. However the two most glaring are the absurd drama that has surrounded the recent election of the chairmanship of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum and the authoritative lead story in the penultimate Monday’s edition of Thisday (June 10) about moves by the presidency to kill the Senate’s constitutional proposal for a six-year, single-term limit for the president and governors in place of the current four-year, two term limit.

    Actually it’s a misnomer to refer to the proposal as Senate’s, simple reason being it originated from the Presidency itself. It’s hard, if not impossible, to find a more classic case than this one of the curse, arguably of Chinese origin, that one should be careful what one wishes for lest it comes true.

    First, when the Presidency set up its constitutional amendment committee last year under former Chief Justice of the country, Justice Alfa Modibbo Belgore, members agreed that the committee should not waste time revisiting a number of issues that had been settled by a similar committee under President Obasanjo. Top of these was the issue of the four-year, two-term executive term limit. A minority, reportedly with the backing of the Presidency, tried forcefully to change the provision to five- or six-year single term. It failed.

    Undeterred, the Presidency sent an executive bill to the National Assembly still proposing same. This was in spite of the fact that during the nation-wide tour by the National Assembly committee on constitutional amendment to gauge public opinion, the idea was roundly rejected in all the six geo-political zones in the country, including the President’s Southsouth. The change was necessary, it had argued, because it would concentrate the minds of incumbents on the job at hand and save the country the corruption, sweat, tears and blood that has characterised elections under the status quo. Seemingly sensible arguments at first glance, but so much nonsense when you look again. (But this is a matter for possibly another day).

    It is this executive bill the Presidency, according to Thisday, has now made a volte-face about. Obviously, the Presidency was not careful enough in making this wish; apparently it did not think that it was possible to get its wish in a form it would not like. Which was exactly what happened; the Senate granted its wish, alright. But then it exempted the president and first term governors from being beneficiaries.

    Clearly the Senate’s caveat has exposed the motive of the Presidency’s attempt to force the issue since last year as purely selfish. It has also helped in no small way to expose the Presidency’s repeated denial that the incumbent wants to stay put beyond 2015 as untenable.

    What is true of the Presidency’s attempt to kill its own bill is perhaps even truer of the absurd drama that has surrounded the recent election of the chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. Few arguments, if any, can be more ridiculous than those offered by the governors who have rejected the election last month of Governor Rotimi Amaechi as the forum’s chairman.

    The rejectionist camp of 16 governors led by the factional chairman, Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau, says the election of Amaechi by 19 votes against Jang’s 16 was in violation of the forum’s tradition of choosing its chair by consensus rather than through election. The camp also says by an understanding, the chair was supposed to have rotated back to the North after Amaechi had served two years. It also says the score-line did not reflect an earlier unanimous endorsement of Jang by the 19 Northern governors.

    The one simple answer to the first two arguments is, if the rejectionists knew all these, why did they participate in the election at all? Why, in the first place, did they not reject it outright the first time it was proposed last year and instead merely postponed it twice? Was it not because they were not sure they would make the numbers back then? Is it then not a mark of poor sportsmanship to reject the result simply because they calculated wrongly that this time they had the numbers?

    As for the last argument about the immorality of breaching agreements, where were they when the president and his erstwhile benefactor repudiated a written agreement written in black and white about rotation and power shift between the North and the South which both of them had signed? Chickens, it seems, have this nasty habit of always coming home to roost!

    The leading rejectionist, it would appear, is Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State. So strong was his feeling about what he said was the immorality of some of his colleagues going back on their endorsement of Jang that he announced he was resigning from the Northern States Governors’ Forum for the remaining two years of his office. “By my own culture, background and religion,” he said, “I believed that whatever is agreed upon, we must stand by it unless it is illegal.”

    Coming from someone who won his office on one party platform only to abandon it for another so soon after his election and without any consultations with those who voted for him, this is indeed very rich.

    Untenable and ridiculous as the rejection of the election of Amaechi as chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum is it does not begin to compare in its hilarity to the Presidency’s claim through its spokesman, Dr. Reuben Abati, that it had no interest whatsoever in who got elected. If the Presidency had no interest in the matter why was it quick, too quick, to receive Jang in the Presidential Villa as the new chair? And, except for a Presidency that thrives in self-denial, who does not know that it lost the contest essentially because in its desperation to replace Amaechi at all costs it could not even make up its mind who to substitute him with?

    The Presidency should stop pretending that good governance rather than the 2015 elections remains its priority – that is, if it ever was.

     

    Feedback

    Re: Mamman Kontagora

    Sir,

    I have read your tribute to late Mamman Kontagora who was a blessing to this country during his life time. May his soul rest in peace. However, the PTF of Gen Abacha’s regime you mentioned in the tribute was Petroleum Trust Fund not Petroleum Task Force as you said.

    Adewuyi Adegbite, Ogbomoso, Oyo State. +2347013065440.

     

    Sir,

    Reference your tribute to the late Maj-Gen Mamman Kontagora. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that he was Minister of Works between 1987 & 1993 not 1993 & 1995 as you said. Ahmed, Abuja. +2348020756861.

     

    Sir,

    I’m a son-in-law to late Gen Kontagora, married to Ramatu, one of his daughters. May Allah (SWT) forgive him. Contrary to what you said, his mother was Hausa while his father was Nupe.

    Muhammad Shuaibu Umar. +2348079975555.

     

     

    Correction

     

    In my piece last week on my thoughts from Amman, I gave the population of Jordan of which the city is the capital as over two million. The figure was wrong. Jordan’s population, according to the World Bank’s The Little Data Book was 5.7 million in2009. With a population growth rate of 3.2% annually it is probably 6.4 million today.

     

     

     

  • Some thoughts on media and terrorism from Amman

    This year’s world congress and general assembly of the International Press Institute (IPI), the 63-year global press freedom advocacy organisation, took place in Amman, capital of Jordan, between May 19 and 21. Few Nigerians may have heard of this organisation even though it partly funds the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, the country’s premier journalism trainer, and even though some of the most prominent Nigerian journalists and publishers including Alhaji Lateef Jakande who once presided over its affairs, Aremo Segun Osoba, Mr Sam Amuka, Mr Felix Adenaike, Malam Kabiru Yusuf and Alhaji Ismaila Isa, have been among its leading members.

    Naturally the organisation believes that press freedom is “the right that protects all other rights.” Consequently it has tried to defend press freedom everywhere in the world in several ways, including through its annual congress and general assembly where leading journalists, editors and media executives gather to discuss major contemporary issues.

    Among the variety of issues discussed this year were the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the terrible civil war in Syria, the safety of journalists reporting in conflict situations, the implications of internet regulation for democracy and press freedom and reporting on religion. This journalist was on a panel of three – the others were Steven Pollard, editor of the London based Jewish Chronicle and Monjuru Ahsan Bulbul, the CEO of a private television station in Dhaka, Bangladesh who was a last minute substitute for Jeffrey Sharlet, a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine and faculty member of the Centre for Religion and Media, New York University, who failed to make it to Amman – which discussed the last subject. The moderator was Ms Maria-Paz Lopez, a senior religious writer with La Vanguardia, Spain, and chair of the International Association of Religious Journalists. A little bit more about this presently.

    Meantime a bit of my impression of Jordan. For me a more classic study in contrast between the country and Nigeria will be hard to find. Here’s a country in the middle of a harsh desert with no oil, no water, with a population of little over two million and in the frontiers of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict which is at the heart of so-called clash between the West and Islam. Yet a visitor to Amman and several of the towns and villages a few hours’ drive from it which we visited would be forgiven if he mistook them for towns and villages in advanced Europe or America. All the highways we travelled along were tarred, all the towns and villages we visited had electricity and water and not once did the lights go out throughout our stay in Amman.

    Of all the barren country’s advances in spite of an almost total lack of natural resources none fascinated me like its ability to provide water to all its inhabitants. According to Nasiru Aminu, a senior diplomat at our Amman embassy and a friend, in all his several years in Jordan the taps in his house have never gone dry. Yet, the country, he said, relies almost entirely on harvesting rain water.

    However, for me even more interesting than the ability of the country to satisfy the water needs of its inhabitants in the middle of a desert was the pattern of water supply among the poor, middle and high income neighbourhoods of the towns; the poor are supplied daily, the middle thrice weekly and the rich only once, said Nasiru. Here in Nigeria the reverse would’ve been the case.

    The secret of Jordan’s relative wealth, said Nasiru, is its investment in the education of its people. This is evident from the country being a leading destination of medical tourism in the world, raking in more than two billion dollars annually. It is also the Information Technology capital of the Arab Middle East.

    Jordan is, of course, no El Dorado. As a kingdom, and for that matter one on the frontiers of the Middle East conflict, its citizens can do with a lot more freedom than they have. I am certain, however, that few Jordanians, if any, would want to exchange their relatively gilded cage for Nigeria, the majority of whose citizens have been left free to live in abject and grinding poverty, almost totally abandoned by a state whose officials are generally too venal, selfish, power-hungry and incompetent, etc, to give a damn about public opinion.

    Back to the IPI congress and general assembly, the liveliest session for me was none of the eight that were held between the morning of May 20 and the evening of the following day. The liveliest for me was the pre-congress town hall meeting in the evening of Sunday May 19 moderated by the well known CNN International anchor and correspondent, Jim Clancy. The subject looked simple enough; “Who is a journalist?” However, not surprisingly, the answer proved elusive. The debate that followed the introductory remarks of the four panellists on the questions whether in today’s digital age where anyone with a computer or a mobile phone who can send pictures and stories to news outlets and bloggers can be called journalists was truly hot and in the end there was no single answer.

    There was, however, one interesting remark from the floor which was that today’s so-called “citizen journalism” was making mainstream journalists lazy by giving them an excuse to abdicate their responsibility for cross-checking the accuracy of news items before publishing. This, said the gentleman who made the remark, bodes ill for the future of professional journalism. I couldn’t agree more.

    Finally to the discussion on reporting religion of which I was a panellist. My submission was that the dominance of the Nigerian media by the private sector in spite of the heavy presence of government in the broadcast media – a private sector dominance which, for historical reasons, does not reflect the ethnic, regional and religious plurality of the country – has led to a reporting culture which is heavily biased against Muslims and Islam. This, I said, was in turn a reflection of the global media which has been essentially anti-Islam.

    Nowhere is this bias as glaring as in the reporting of Boko Haram insurrection which has caught the attention of the world because, of course, Nigeria, with at least 160 million people, is one of the most populous in the world and the biggest in Africa, reportedly almost split in half between Muslims and Christians, and because, of course, Nigeria is a leading world oil producer. The evidence of this anti-Muslim and anti-Islam bias of the Nigerian media is pretty clear in the way it has grossly under reported the human rights abuses of ordinary law abiding Muslims by the military and security forces in their fight against Boko Haram.

    Two recent reports by Adam Nossiter, the West African correspondent of The New York Times, have captured this journalistic blind eye like no other. The first in May entitled “Bodies Pour In as Nigeria Hunts for Islamists” and datelined Maiduguri, made very grim reading.

    “A fresh load of battered corpses,” Nossiter said in his introduction, “arrived, 29 of them in a routine delivery by the Nigerian military to the hospital morgue here. Unexpectedly, three bodies started moving. ‘They were not properly shot,’ recalled a security official here. ‘I had to call the J.T.F.’ — the military’s joint task force — ‘and they gunned them down.’”

    Nossiter’s second story this month in the wake of President Goodluck Jonathan’s declaration of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states makes as grim reading as the first, perhaps even more so. “The first independent accounts of the military offensive (since the emergency)”, said Nossiter, “spoke of indiscriminate bombing and shooting, unexplained civilian deaths, night time roundups of young men by security forces.”

    You will search most of the Nigerian media in vain to see any expression of concern about this indiscriminate use of force by our security forces in their war against Boko Haram terrorism. Certainly you would not see the sort of vehemence with which the media rightly condemned the Odi and Zaki-Biam massacres of the Obasanjo’s era. Yet what has happened in the North-eastern strongholds of Boko Haram is worse than the two combined, if only because both were one-off military invasions.

    In a recent well argued defence of President Jonathan’s state of emergency declaration in the region, the respected constitutional lawyer, Prof Ben Nwabueze, called it “a masterstroke indeed.” Without debating the merit of his position – this is a matter for possibly another occasion – it is obvious that the professor believes the consequential military operation against Boko Haram will bring a definite, if not quick, end to its terrorism, regardless of how the soldiers go about their operation.

    The professor’s “masterstroke” only reminded me of what President George Bush Jnr said when he invaded Iraq. It was, he said, going to be a “cakewalk”. Today, we all know that it was anything but. Right here at home the late President Umaru Yar’adua said more or less the same thing when he sent the soldiers after the sect in 2009. This too has, sadly and tragically, proved anything but a cakewalk.

    It seems to me the lesson of relying mainly on the use of indiscriminate force to solve a problem even as criminal as terrorism, whatever its variety, has not been learnt by our leaders and media pundits. Certainly the Nigerian media has not used its freedom as a shield that, to rephrase IPI’s principal objective, should be used to protect the rights of others.

     

     

     

     

  • Mamman Kontagora (April 20,1944-May 29, 2013)

    Mamman Kontagora (April 20,1944-May 29, 2013)

    His friends affectionately called him Doki (Hausa for horse), in apparent acknowledgement of his reputation for hard work. A more appropriate epithet would have been Dokin Karfe, a Hausa metaphour for integrity. For Major-General Mamman Kontagora who died at 69 last Wednesday May 29, lived a truly modest lifestyle in spite of retiring as a well-connected senior military officer and occupying some of the most “lucrative” public offices in the land.

    Anyone who had worked with the man would agree that he was a personification of hard work. In all the high public offices he held, the most important of which were twice as a minister of the Federal Republic, he was almost always the first to arrive office and the last to leave. In between he went about his duties with an attitude that detested eye-service and discouraged sloth and shoddiness.

    However, great as his reputation for hard work was, his reputation for honesty was even greater. Two episodes, by no means apocryphal, bear testimony to this reputation. First, when former military head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, pencilled him down as his minister of the “lucrative” Federal Capital Territory, a senior traditional ruler from his local government, Kontagora, objected. Asked why he should object in spite of his subject’s reputation for hard work and honesty, the respected traditional ruler said he had no problem with either, only that the man was too inflexible to overlook the bending of rules necessary for the occasional patronage to kith and kin which greased governance all over the world. Needless to say, General Abubakar went ahead to offer the man the job.

    His performance in the job was by no means stellar, but unlike many ministers before and after him, he did not leave it any richer than before he took it.

    Second, in an earlier episode, his home state, Niger, gave him a job as an army engineer, to identify the proper boundary between his own local government and Bida in an area which had become volatile and even a source of altercations between the late Etsu Nupe, Alhaji Umaru Sanda Ndayako, and the Sarkin Sudan of Kontagora, Alhaji Sa’idu Namaska. It was a reflection of the faith both sides had in the man’s integrity that neither objected to his choice. In the end he did not disappoint, at least not from the Bida point of view; he ruled in her favour against his own local government.

    Predictably some of his fellow Bakontagores who could not understand how anyone would find against his own people said he did so because his mother was Nupe! Apparently it did not matter to these critics that he loved his paternal side so much he used the name of the local government it came from as his surname.

    General Kontagora, like his friend, General Abubakar, was as apolitical a soldier as any could be; throughout his career, he never participated in any coup planning although many of those who did were his friends, even confidants; presumably they didn’t think the man was flexible enough to succeed at military politics.

    Yet once their coup succeeded he was among those they turned to to get things done professionally and honestly. Thus in addition to serving as the Minister of Federal Capital Territory under General Abubakar, he also served in the vast and “lucrative” ministry of works and housing between 1993 and 1995.

    In September 1995 he was offered the thankless job of auditing Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, his alma mater (Class of 1972), one of Nigeria’s oldest and Africa’s largest, by the regime of General Sani Abacha, also a friend. This followed a serious financial and administrative crisis in the university that disrupted studies in the premier institution. In early November Abacha went on to assign him the job as sole administrator to clear the mess he had identified, a highly unusual job since universities are supposed to be the epitome of academic freedom and free speech.

    Not surprisingly, mixed reactions trailed his appointment and his tenure. Yet not even his worst critics could question the integrity he brought to bear on his assignment which he completed in July 1998. At any rate those who took over from him were happy enough with his performance they named its convocation square after him.

    Following the return of politics in 1999, the man, like several of his military compatriots, tried to transform into a politician. He was, it seemed, too perpendicular and too austere to make much of a success of his transformation in Nigeria’s shark infested political waters where only the shark repelling rich and their godsons – and goddaughters – dared swim; in his first stab at an elected high office in 2003 he lost the primaries for the senatorial candidature of his party, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), for Abuja to an obscure candidate, Isa Maina, himself a military officer but even more junior.

    Undeterred the general went on to seek for the presidential ticket of his party in 2007. Few Nigerians thought he had the connections and the financial resources to be taken seriously. He proved them right when he could not form a credible campaign team, never mind mounting even the most rudimentary campaign to win over fellow party members. In the end his bid for the party’s ticket was, for all practical purposes, a no-show.

    Following this dismal performance the man retired to his modest farm in Kontagora and into politics at the local level even though he maintained his home in Abuja. It was from this semi-retirement from politics and from public life that he was appointed the deputy chair of Subsidy Re-Investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) Committee (SURE-P), a poor imitation of the Petroleum Task Force chaired by General Muhammadu Buhari under General Sani Abacha as head of state.

    General Kontagora did not properly assume office after the inauguration of the committee last year before he succumbed to the illness that has proved fatal. His death is a great loss to a nation in dire need of leaders like him who are hardworking, competent and, above all, honest.

    May Allah make aljanna firdaus his final resting place. May He also grant the dear ones he’s left behind the fortitude to bear his loss.

     

    GEJ, NGF and 2015

    Still talking about the shortage of honest leadership in the country, it’s hard to find anything more dishonest than the stand of the presidency of Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan on the contrived crisis of chairmanship of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. His spokesman, Dr Reuben Abati, has averred that his principal has no interest in who chairs the forum. Yet everything the presidency has done to the contrary since the crisis started last year has spoken much louder than the words coming out of there.

    From forcing a postponement of the election several months ago because it was clear the Presidency could not force its preferred candidate on the governors, through creating and force-feeding a divisive PDP Governors’ Forum on those so elected on the party’s forum, and now to the shameful rejection of the outcome of last month’s election of the NGF chair which its candidate lost in spite of all means, more foul than fair, that were used to stop Rotimi Amaechi, the Rivers State Governor who has since become a persona non grata in the Presidency, from retaining the chair, it should now be obvious to even the most enthusiastic supporters of the President that he does not truly believe his mantra about every vote counting in an election.

    The question is, if the Presidency would reject the outcome of as transparent an election as that of a numerically insignificant electorate as that of 36 governors, what guarantee is there that he will allow 60 million voters cast their ballot papers freely in 2015? And if he does, how do we know that he will honestly practice what he has preached about every vote counting?

    It is truly frightening to think that what happened a fortnight ago is a mere dress rehearsal of what will happen two years hence.

     

     

  • GEJ, his military chiefs, Asari-Dokubo and 2015

    GEJ, his military chiefs, Asari-Dokubo and 2015

    In the second part of my two-part piece on President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s offer of amnesty for the Boko Haram insurgents published on these pages on April 17, I was cautiously optimistic that the President will hold out firmly against the wishes of the more gung-ho of his military and security chiefs who apparently believe counter-violence was the main, if not the only, solution to the sect’s insurgency. With the President’s recent declaration of a qualified state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, it is now obvious that my optimism was misplaced.

    In retrospect, it seems even in my caution I was not cautious enough. First, in his initial rejection of the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Abubakar’s, earlier call for amnesty for members of the sect, the President had repeated an article of faith of his administration that it couldn’t and wouldn’t dialogue with a group whose leadership was faceless, even though it is not true that the sect’s leadership is faceless. If indeed its leaders were faceless, how did the security forces get the identities of those on its wanted list of the sect’s top leaders?

    Second, when the President inaugurated the somewhat unwieldy – in itself perhaps a statement about the strength of his faith in amnesty as a solution to the problem – committee he set up under his Minister for Special Duties, Alhaji Kabiru Turaki, to identify the grounds and possible strategies for amnesty, he said he expected it to perform a “miracle.” That was not the language of someone who sincerely believed dialogue had much of a chance in the resolution of the Boko Haram problem.

    Having, however, set up the Turaki panel, I, for one, expected the President to give it even the ghost of a chance to succeed. He didn’t. Instead, he found an excuse – albeit a good excuse – in the horrible massacre of nearly a hundred policemen by a hitherto little-heard-of vicious ethnic militia in Nasarawa State, and the earlier but even more devastating destruction of lives and property in Baga, a fishing town on the shores of Lake Chad in Borno State, to declare his state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.

    It all reminds one of a similar situation about forty seven years ago when the country’s first military head of state, Major-General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, constituted a panel under Chief F.R.A (Timi-the-Law) Williams to draft a new constitution for the country as part of his yet indeterminate programme for return to civilian rule. Before the panel could begin sitting, the general enacted his ill-advised Unification Decree which was to trigger the tragic events that eventually led to our three-year civil war which ended in 1970.

    The general’s anticipation of the outcome of Chief William’s panel was clearly at the behest of the more hawkish civilian advisers he had surrounded himself with whose triumphalism in their new status as the country’s new kids on the block seemed to know no bounds. Obviously this power hungry lot did not give a damn about the predictable consequence of, in effect, imposing a unitary constitution on a country as varied and as plural as Nigeria.

    Of course, 2013 is not 1966. Neither is President Jonathan’s state of emergency the same as General Aguiyi-Ironsi’s unification decree in its gravity for the integrity of our political-economy. However, unless the president, as commander-in-chief, can put a tight leash on his armed forces as they battle Boko Haram, his amnesty may inexorably lead to the fulfilment of the American prophesy of several years ago that Nigeria could become a failed state in a couple of years. Unfortunately, if the record of his control over his military and security chiefs is anything to go by, the omens do not look too good.

    Indeed the omens look even worse when you consider the hard-to-deny fact that the president’s men, if not the man himself, seem too obsessed with his remaining in power beyond 2015; a fact attested to by the “No President Jonathan in 2015, No Nigeria” mantra chanted by the likes of Mujahid Asari-Dokubo who apparently not only have the president’s ears but have behaved as his un-salaried attack dogs.

    Unfortunately for Asari-Dokubo and his ilk, but happily for Nigeria, they speak only for themselves and the charmed little circle of those who have profited immensely from the President’s amnesty for the ex-Niger Delta militants, clearly at the great expense of the ordinary people of that oil rich but pauperised region.

    The fact is that there are others from the same region who do not share the same enthusiasm for a Jonathan presidency beyond 2015, precisely because they believe the man, as the first president from the region, has made little or no difference to its terrible lot. The Guardian of March 3 carried interviews with four such South-Southerners, none of whom can be regarded as anti-Jonathan just for the hell of it.

    All four, Ms Ann Kio Briggs, an Ijaw activist and indeed an unapologetic Jonathan supporter; Chief Frank Kokori, who needs no introduction as a veteran trade unionist; Mr. Okpobari, national coordinator of Ogoni Solidarity Front; and Aniyakwee Nsirimovu, former chairman of the disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation sub-committee of the Technical Committee on Niger Delta, were agreed that their region has been the worse off for all the president has done – or more accurately, not done – to end its pauperisation.

    Yes, they all agreed, the man has poured tonnes of money into the region but then there has been little or nothing to show for all his efforts. The most obvious symbol of this failure, they said, has been the terrible state of the notorious East-West highway linking the region with much of the rest of the country. In spite of the huge sums voted for the construction of the road year in year out since the presidency of General Olusegun Obasanjo, Ms Briggs said in her own interview, the road “is now worse.” Anyone familiar with media reports of the state of the highway would consider her lamentation a gross understatement.

    Amnesty for Niger Delta, they all said, was not just about giving money to those who carried guns. Rather it was more, much more, about removing the region’s infrastructural deficit and ending its people’s abject poverty-in-oil-wealth. In these objectives, they all agreed, the Jonathan presidency has been a signal failure.

    However, of the four none seem to have captured the frustration of Nigerians with the Jonathan presidency, especially in the face of the expectations it raised among Nigerians with his “Transformation Agenda,” than Nsirimovu. In what was as much a parody of President Jonathan’s now famous 2011 presidential campaign sound bite about growing up without shoes as it was a repudiation of the threat from the likes of Asari-Dokubo that their principal must remain president beyond 2015 regardless of his performance and whether Nigerians like it or not, Nsirimovu said, “For somebody who had no shoes… he has done poorly to relieve others who have no shoes. He has gotten shoes and does not want others to have shoes.”

    Nsirimovu’s words may seem terribly unkind but it is the bitter truth. However, it is a truth that the President can still do something about if, as he has often said, he does not wish to go down in History as the last president of Nigeria.

    It may be too late for the man to fulfil all his campaign promises, much of which was unrealistic, anyway. But if he can improve the terrible state of insecurity in the land by prevailing on his military chiefs to stop their terrible abuse of the human rights of civilians in their war against Boko Haram insurgency, and if he can also give Nigerians more electricity than he had given them so far and, not least of all, if he can begin to show by example more than by mere words that 2015 is for him not a do-or-die affair, he would have justified his undeclared but obvious wish to seek re-election in 2015, without, of course, prejudice to the constitutionality of his wish which is being tested in the courts.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Constitutional amendments; a bad workman

    Constitutional amendments; a bad workman

    A bad workman, the English say, quarrels with his tools. Few people demonstrate the accuracy of this aphorism as Nigerians – certainly the politicians among them – do in their attempt, once again, to review the Constitution of their country as it clocks its 52nd year of its Independence from British colonial rule on October 1, 1960.

    First, it took them all less than six years to throw away the parliamentary constitution they had inherited from their colonial master and, in effect, adopt a unitary constitution.

    Not that ordinary Nigerians really had much choice in the matter when the soldiers overthrew the country’s unpopular civilian rulers on January 15, 1966. That first coup has since been blamed much for being the trigger of the country’s sharp decline since Independence. But this is only being wise after the fact; back then most Nigerians believed the coup was good riddance to bad rubbish.

    Naturally, when Major-General J. T. Aguiyi-Ironsi took over power as our first military ruler he and his colleagues abolished the Independence Constitution. Then in February he set up a Constitutional Study Group under Chief F.R.A. Williams, aka “Timi the Law”, to work out a new constitution. However, even before the group could settle down to work, the new head of state enacted Decree 34, the unification decree which abolished the then four regions – North, West, East and Mid-West – and replaced them with the provinces in those regions as the units of administration.

    That, as is well known, proved his nemesis; in July there was a bloody counter-coup in which the top casualty was the general himself, and following which the new kids on the block quickly abolished the decree. This was in September, barely two months after they came to power.

    The counter-coup, in turn, led eventually to a three-year civil war which ended in 1970. By then General Yakubu Gowon who had taken over from Ironsi as military, ruler, had been in power for over four years. When the war ended he promised a return to civilian rule in four years i.e. by 1974. However, as the deadline approached the man changed his mind and it became apparent that he had allowed himself to be persuaded by those around him that, like several of his counterparts elsewhere, notably Egypt, he should swap his khaki for mufti and remain in power.

    This, again as we all know, proved his undoing; he was overthrown in 1975 but unlike his hapless predecessor, he did not pay the ultimate price, reason being he was out of the country at the time of the coup.

    Apparently the new set of military rulers learnt the lessons of the demise of their predecessors, which was that in the long run no good ever came out of wanting to cling on to power; they promised to return the country to civilian rule in three years and set about their commitment with a vigour unknown in most military dictatorships, certainly those in Africa.

    Such was their commitment that even when some misguided elements in the army killed the head of state, General Murtala Mohammed, on February 13, 1976 in a failed attempt to overthrow his government, the new military rulers stuck to their transition programme to hand over to the civilians on October 1, 1979.

    The lot of implementing the programme fell on General Olusegun Obasanjo, General Muhammed’s deputy. Top of the programme was the provision of a constitution for the country. Before his assassination, General Muhammed had inaugurated a Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) under – who else? – “Timi the Law.”

    Suspicions that there were strings attached to the CDC’s brief soon provoked a huge controversy. The suspicions were first aired by Malam Aminu Kano, the late radical politician who led the opposition to the ruling party in the North. During one of the conferences organised around the country to generate input for the CDC – this one was on the Congo Campus of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in March 1977 – Malam Aminu claimed there was not only a “soft-subterranean influence” by the army to jettison the parliamentary democracy of the First Republic and replace it with American type of presidential democracy. He also said he had reason to believe the CDC had succumbed to the military’s influence.

    This columnist had the privilege of reporting the story for the New Nigerian as a junior reporter.

    That claim got Chief Williams’ dander up. Unless the radical malam withdrew his claim, the chief threatened in effect, he would sue him for slander. This threat got my bosses understandably worried, given the chief’s huge reputation of hardly ever losing his cases. So worried were my bosses they sent me to Kano to seek clarification on the issue from the malam.

    I did and he stuck to his gun. “I must,” he said in a short written statement he gave me, “say that I have grown old enough in the politics of Nigeria and generally of Africa to avoid equivocation or sycophancy and to know the difference between political consistency which is hard to maintain and political acrobatism, simple to operate. The first I will continue to do, but the second I condemn and reject until death, suffering and ostracisation notwithstanding.”

    The New Nigerian led with the story in its edition of April 4, 1977 under the headline, “Aminu Kano Unrepentant – stands by his words.” As far as I know, Chief Williams never sued the malam until his death.

    More significantly when the CDC submitted its report to the authorities it opted for the American type presidential democracy as if in vindication of malam’s claims. As we all know this was adopted by the Constituent Assembly (CA) of 1978 that eventually wrote the 1979 Constitution that ushered in the Second Republic and a document which has remained the country’s constitutional framework, give or take not a few amendments by the various military regimes that have ruled this country up to 1999.

    And so it was that the first opportunity Nigerians had of drafting their own constitution without supervision by any colonial master, they chose to throw away the one they had inherited, lock, stock and barrel.

    It has since become conventional wisdom to say the military imposed the presidential system on the country. The truth is much more complex than that. True, the Obasanjo regime that midwifed the constitution not only held a veto over it. It exercised the veto by inserting a few important clauses in it and deleting a few, without subjecting the document to a referendum or to even reconsideration by its CA.

    However, the fact was that the mostly elected 1978 CA agreed with the military in their choice of the presidential system over the parliamentary. It was also a fact that there was a popular support for the system. So it is simply historical revisionism to blame the soldiers alone for the country’s jettisoning of parliamentary democracy after the country had used it for less than six years.

    In truth the greater blame for this “imposition” should go to our politicians who, it seems, have a penchant for quarrelling with their tools. This much should be obvious from the fact that most, if not all, of them blame our Constitution more – much more – than their own behaviour for the problems of this country.

    According to Punch (September 29), there are at the moment 264 proposals before our National Assembly for amendments in our Constitution which is barely 12 years old. Among these, the newspaper said, are 61 demands for the creation of states before the Senate and 27 for same before the House of Representatives, making a total of 88.

    Neither the parliamentary constitution of the First Republic, nor the presidential one we have since replaced it with are perfect, being documents written by imperfect human beings.

    It is also true that it makes no difference what type of tool a country chooses to solve its problems with. In the end, however, what is more important than the right choice is how a tool is used. Only a bad workman, which your typical Nigerian politician is, will contemplate amending a constitution he has used for barely 12 years in no less than 264 places.

    Worse, only such a bad workman would demand for the creation of 88 more states in a country where we all agree, the existing 36 have proved too unwieldy and too costly.

     

  • Still on the case of Abubakar Idris Usman

    Still on the case of Abubakar Idris Usman

    By petition last week to the Director-General of the National Youths Corps Service (NYSC) over the harsh punishment of Abubakar Idris Usman for his article in The Nation last November elicited fifty eight texts and several emails. Only six of the texts and none of the emails defended the action of the NYSC authorities. In the light of the somewhat surprising – to me at least – controversy the case has stirred, I have decided to devote today’s column to the texts. The constraint of space could not, of course, allow me to publish all but I’ve included all six that were critical of my petition.

    So far there has been no response from the NYSC authorities on the petition.

     

    Sir,When has it become a crime for someone to say the truth? The young man only shared his problem and that of his fellow corps members. For Christ’s sake, why is he being punished? This is wickedness in its highest order.

    John +2347037737577

     

    Sir,Abubakar Idris Usman is a young Nigerian with courage. I salute him for this. I don’t see any need for this scheme, when graduates are subjected to live in camps not even fit for animals. Government should do an independent investigation on this matter. I can assure you that Abubakar will be vindicated.

    Omale Omale +2348022220978

     

    Sir,I cherished your article on the travails of the corps member. Of course, he is not right to write such but the most important thing was that it was not malicious and I think they should forgive him now.

    Apalowo Thalis, Ogbagi Akoko, Ondo State. +2347066403102

     

    Sir,Well done for your open letter addressed to the NYSC DG. It’s however my view that your son, Abubakar, lacks respect for the authorities and might have been emboldened to do what he did because of you, a father or “oga at the top” that’s ever prepared to use his position to protect his child, even for ill. Given the fact that you write for The Nation which Abubakar patronised indeed gives you out as an accomplice in this matter. It was, therefore, wrong of you to have dissuaded him from retracting the article. If Abubakar didn’t learn some decency and respect while in school please let him learn it now. After all the condition at the university he attended was not perfect and yet I am not sure he ever wrote about it. Rather than therefore positioning him for appointment at The Nation after his service year, I am sure there’s a more decent way of doing so than encouraging him to disrespect his bosses.

    Daniel +2347038533474

     

    Sir, Your last week’s article was very disturbing. Kindly do me a favour – if you will spare time to do it! – by letting me know how the issue of Abubakar Idris Usman will be treated by NYSC.

    Abdullahi Dodo Maijama’a. 2348033143372

    Sir,Thank you very much for telling Nigerians the plight of Corps member Abubakar. His case has once again brought to the fore one of the many injustices plaguing this nation. I believe he should not be made to suffer unjustly for speaking the truth. It is those women without conscience who should search their minds and right the wrongs they have done the gentleman.

    Ojo A Ayodele, Emure Ekiti +2347033168889

     

    Sir,It is a pity that the NYSC is good and quick at punishing corps members. There are corps members who redeployed to Ondo State officially and have not gotten any monthly allowance for the past ten months. They will pass out next month. They have been suffering in silence. I have a sister among them. I’ve tried to use my influence to help her but without success. Our prayer is that God should court-martial those wicked NYSC officials one day.

    Adebisi P.A. Akure. +2348034703653

     

    Sir,It is important to observe the BYE-LAWS of any organisation you find yourself in. If you are new to that organisation like Usman was to NYSC, study the rules that guide it. Usman has committed an offence punishable by NYSC Bye-Laws. A corps member is not permitted to make a publication in a national media or talk to the press without the permission of the NYSC D.G. They have laid down channel of communication in camp and outside camp. I don’t think Usman had good training.

    E. Z. Dia +2348037789957

     

    Sir,Thank you for the letter to NYSC DG. Indeed the state directors pre-warn corps members never to narrate their experiences or ask the DG questions. +2348022900875

     

    Sir,What exactly is this? A young man is being punished needlessly for writing the truth! What manner of people are these who have been placed in positions to guide the young? They are, in my mind, the wrong crowd to do this! This young man need not beg to get his right. Let him seek justice! What a country!

    Dokun Adedeji, Ikeja Lagos. +2348033023620

     

    Sir,I honestly felt disappointed today with your submission. One of the most informed columns in the land became a platform for personal agitation. Bad for a nation literarily at war within. And you have access to the agency! Please for a long time reader of People and Politics like me, the dregs of the earth and the locusts in the palace, deserve focus. Please not about your daughter next week!

    Tunde Esan +2348033109878

     

    Sir,Can someone help me tell this old generation to allow us grow. We the young generation can’t rule, can’t talk, and we are not even allowed to complain on ills they daily pour on us. God save us.

    Chichi, Port Harcourt, +2348091140815

     

    Sir,Your article on the corps member brought tears to my eyes. Why should anyone be victimised for writing an article? But then, what is The Nation doing about it since the paper published the article? This is really sad.

    +2348023255224

     

    Sir,That report on the travail of corps member Usman is fair and convincing. I am sure your ward did not put his case clearly. He breached the channels of communication. None the less he should write the DG, NYSC for a review and pardon. The NYSC family is not stone hearted

    Dr. Abhuere, former Director, Corps Welfare, NYSC HQ Abuja +2348037017956

     

    Sir,In an ideal country the issues raised by Abubakar would have been addressed by NYSC authority instead of going for the young man’s jugular. This is similar to the President’s visit to the Police College. Indeed there was a country.

    Elvis Ebanehita. 2348057201481

     

    Sir,Idris is not foolish. It is our system (that is the problem). Please encourage him. His time will surely come.

    Wole Eniayewun, Lagos 2348185768334

     

    Sir,This God-fatherism role you seem to play for your son Abubakar has not helped in our youths’ disciplinary effort. It’s good you blamed him for doing what he did but you must not interfere in the job of his boss. All camps all over the world are never places of luxury and your son is privileged to be there not as a spy that washes his house dirty in public. Let his bosses do their jobs.

    Chief Bashiomele, Auchi, Edo State. +2348059956056

     

    Sir,You are a good father, but how many unfortunate corps members have been punished for telling the authority the truth? God save Nigeria

    +2348023463851

     

    Sir, You see, what’s happening to this young man exemplifies the hypocrisy that is a major part of Nigeria’s problem. You say it as it is, and they say you’re criticising the government. Is government infallible? Why should saying what’s wrong be construed as an offence? It’s all part of Jonathan (PDP) legacy to Nigeria. Remember the President’s anger when Channel’s TV did an expose on Police College, Ikeja? Fish rots from the head, my brother.

    Gab A. Uche, Umuahia, Abia State, +2348051481333

     

    Sir,My advice is that this case should be taken to higher authority. There should not be anything like plea or appeal as young man has done nothing wrong. Instead of intimidating him, he should be commended.

    Elder F.Ogorry. +2348023529722

     

    Sir,I’m glad you drew the attention of NYSC Director- General to this ugly incident. There are many other Abubakars out there whose creative talents are being stultified by leaders without vision.

    BA Ikeagwu, Owerri. 2348035664612

     

    Sir, Methinks your ‘son’ should report to Delta. Did you as a northerner serve in the North? I think the SSS should watch your son very closely. I don’t like his guts and obstinacy.

    John, Zaria +2348028721705

     

    Sir,Thank you for highlighting this injustice. The Senator representing the young man should take it up.

    +2348091906116

     

     

  • An open letter to the NYSC Director-General

    An open letter to the NYSC Director-General

    Brigadier General Nnamdi Okorie-Affiah,

    Director General,

    National Youth Service Corps,

    Abuja.

    Sir,

    THE CASE OF ABUBAKAR IDRIS USMAN

    First, let me apologise for this open way of drawing your attention to the rather pathetic case of a serving corps member who seemed to have set the record of probably being the first to be court marshalled for allegedly offending the statutes of your parastatal. I have decided on this approach because the issues involved are of public interest.

    Second, let me declare my interest in the case. Abubakar Idris Usman, the corps member in question, is my son, in the African sense. He graduated from Abdullahi Bayero University, Kano, with a BSc (Second Class Upper) in Mass Communications. His father, who we all call Danjuma Yaro, and I have known each other since our childhood over 60 years ago, partly growing up as we did in the midtown Kaduna neighbourhood of Layin Shaba, aka Nupe Road, one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods which is predominantly Nupe. Danjuma himself is Hausa but speaks Nupe nearly as fluently as any Nupe. Not only that, Jamila, one of his daughters and elder sister to Abubakar, has been married for over fourteen years to one of my younger cousins. They’ve have had four kids. Abubakar is one of their favourite uncles.

    Abubakar has been the subject of an unrelenting punishment by your subordinates in Kaduna which has been grossly out of proportion to his alleged offence. This open letter is an appeal to you to put an end to his travail.

    The source of his seemingly unending trouble was his article published in the CAMPUSLIFE section of The Nation of November 22 last year entitled “In Kaduna, Corps members sleep in toilet.” The article, accompanied by a telling picture of a uniformed corps member sitting beside a bunker bed in a toilet converted into a room, sought to highlight the plight of corps members at the NYSC camp in the state as a result of its hosting about 700 graduates more than the previous year’s number.

    The offending piece quoted one corps member as saying the hostels on the camp were “unfit for human habitation.” It quoted another as saying the overcrowding in camp “posed a high risk of disease and personal safety.”

    The article also mentioned the Camp Director, Mrs L. D. Mburi, of complaining “bitterly” about female corps members who used to defecate into polythene bags in their hostels. It also mentioned the State Co-ordinator, Mrs. Victoria Ango, as telling you on a visit to the camp that the abandoned hostel projects on the camp would be completed in three week’s time as a way of meeting the challenge of inadequate accommodation on the camp.

    Predictably, the articles got the dander of the NYSC authorities in Kaduna up.

    The first sign that Abubakar was in trouble came at lunchtime on the very day his article was published. The sign came through an urgent summons on his phone for him to go to the State coordinator’s office. On arrival he was confronted by an angry Mrs Ango who demanded to know who put him up to his “wicked” article. This was in the company of an equally angry Mrs Mburi and the Camp Commandant, Captain Dada.

    After a barrage of angry words he was told that he’ll make the record as the first corps member to be court marshalled in the state. He was given enough time to get dressed up in his uniform for the trial which was to take place in Mrs Mburi’s office. On getting to the hostel to dress up he was told by some of his colleagues that some NYSC staff had been there and had ransacked his bag and taken away his digital camera, jotter, and his other mobile phone.

    At the venue of the trial he discovered that two of the corps members he quoted in his article had also been summoned. This was in the afternoon. However, the trial did not begin till 7 pm. It was chaired by Mrs Mburi. Others on the panel included a State Security Service (SSS) representative, a police representative and a civil defence representative. According to Abubakar, no one questioned the accuracy of his article. Instead the panel’s concern was who sponsored him and how he was able to file the article when he was supposed to be on the camp; a silly question, if you ask me, in this digital age of the ubiquitous internet. The panel, he said, also wondered if he thought he could fight government. And so on and so forth.

    All three apologised profusely for the embarrassment they said the article must have caused the state NYSC authorities and pleaded for clemency. Abubakar, however, said he tried to explain to the panel that he meant no harm and was only practicing what he was taught about the watchdog role of a journalist as a mass communications undergraduate.

    The panel was not impressed. Instead at the end of the trial at 9 pm it sentenced the other two to severe drill. On his part as the main culprit, Abubakar was sentenced to the same drill, his phone seized and was told he will get a three-month extension of his service without pay.

    The following day his father, Danjuma Yaro, appeared on the camp in the morning at the summons of the NYSC authorities, presumably for briefing about his son’s offence. Danjuma went along with one of the most respected elders of our neighbourhood, Sheikh Namadi. Both pleaded with the camp director for clemency for Abubakar. Their pleas fell on deaf ears; Abubakar would be forgiven alright, she said, provided he published an advert in three national newspapers retracting his article.

    Anyone who knows what newspaper advertisements cost, especially in Nigeria, would agree that this was impossible for anyone on a corps member’s relatively miserable allowance. Worse, it would amount to committing professional suicide for any journalist to retract a piece whose accuracy and fairness was never in question, never mind a budding journalist like Abubakar whose entire career was in front of him.

    Abubakar sought my advice as a father and a veteran journalist he said he’d always looked up to. I told him he was foolish to have written the article as a corps member but he must never retract it as long as he was sure of his facts. He heeded my advice and paid a stiff penalty for it; he was refused his posting letter when the camp finally closed on November 25.

    Before then his case took a very sinister turn in the afternoon of the very day his father was summoned to the camp. That afternoon, he said, he was made to appear before an SSS staff who accused him of being a member of Boko Haram. That was a most cynical manipulation of the young man’s self-will and of his appearance; unlike his clean-shaven father, Abubakar may have sported a goatee but anyone who knows Layin Shaba will testify to the fact that no child of the neighbourhood has ever displayed extreme religious tendency.

    Abubakar was interrogated extensively by the SSS operative but was not detained. Presumably the operative was satisfied that someone was merely trying to frame the stubborn young chap.

    For weeks after the close of camp a stalemate ensued between Abubakar and the Kaduna NYSC authorities. Each time he went to the headquarters for his posting he was told he could only get it if he retracted his article. Eventually, they relented – or so it seemed – and posted him to teach at Government Secondary School, Warsa Piti, in Lere Local Government of the state. This was in spite of his earlier plea for posting to Kaduna North on health ground as someone who had tested positive to Hepatitis B in 2012 and needed routine medical check up.

    However, even in seemingly relenting from their position, it was not without an element of cynicism; the same people who refused to post him until he retracted his article issued him a query that he had been posted since November 28, 2012 but had “refused” to collect his letter in violation of a section of an NYSC bye law! He was given the 24 hour to answer his query.

    For a while it seemed the authorities were satisfied with his response. Last month it emerged that they weren’t but were merely biding their time to punish the hapless chap even more. First, he was served with a letter relocating him to Delta State “on health grounds.” When he wrote back to say he never requested for relocation he received two letters, the first signed by an assistant director on behalf of the state coordinator and a second by the state coordinator herself, which said he was being relocated as punishment for his “malicious article” in The Nation. In addition, the letters said he will serve an extension of 30 days.

    Both letters said the reposting was at your directive.

    Sir, I wish to appeal to you to review your decision. Abubakar has been punished enough by his initial posting, considering his health challenges and the trauma he’d suffered through the delay in posting him. Besides he has never been paid his allowances since he resumed at his primary post. His offence may have embarrassed your staff in Kaduna but it was never malicious.

    I hope, sir, that you will answer the prayers of a father who prays that his son would one day become the kind of journalists any country that wants to progress needs plenty of.

     

     

  • The creeping despotism in the land

    The creeping despotism in the land

    Between my Chinua Achebe obituary in this column on March 27 and last week’s piece which reviewed the third annual Arewa Media Forum lecture on the problem of the failure of leadership in this country, I have received well over 200 reactions in texts and emails. Today, I have decided to reproduce a few of the more thoughtful ones.

    Before then, however, I’ll like to say a few words about the increasing despotism of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration which is dangerously creeping into the polity. So far eight instances of this despotism can be easily identified, virtually all of them have to do with the President’s thinly disguised bid for re-election in 2015. There are probably more, but each of these eight is enough cause for great worry. And each of them is one good reason why no one – probably not even the President’s own spokespersons – believes his persistent denial that he has made up his mind to seek re-election two years hence.

    First, was the crude manner the authorities harassed a former minister of education, Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, over her claim a few months ago that President Jonathan blew the $67 billion foreign reserve she said her principal, President Olusegun Obasanjo, left behind in 2007. Given the monumental corruption that went on in her time in spite of all the rhetoric about “due process” in carrying out government business, Mrs. Ezekwesili’s claim may sound holier-than-thou. Still it is instructive that officials of the administration are yet to pick her up on her challenge to a debate over her claim. Instead she’s been set upon by a half-hearted move to investigate her tenures at the education and solid minerals ministries.

    Second, was the ban by the National Film and Censorship Board of a 30-minute documentary by one, Ishaya Bako, on corruption in the oil sector, titled “Fuelling Poverty.” Reminiscent of the famous documentary on the same theme titled “The squandering of riches” by the broadcaster-turned musician, Onyeka Onwenu (One Love), Bako’s documentary sought to raise questions about corruption and impunity in the oil sector going up to the highest levels of government. He sought the censor’s permission in November to screen it locally. He was denied the permission last month. Instead, the censors accused him of producing a documentary “that was highly provocative and likely to incite or encourage public disorder and undermine national security.”

    Predictably the ban has proved futile; the documentary has since gone viral on the internet.

    Third, was the Gestapo-style invasion of Leadership newspaper last month by the police over its story that the President has issued a directive that every means, fair and foul, must be used to stop the new opposition party, the putative All Progressives Congress made up of the country’s three leading parties and dissenting groups from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, from emerging. Four of the newspaper’s staff were whisked away into detention before two were released on the same day. The other two were held incommunicado for days for refusing to disclose the identity of the sources for their story until public outcry forced the police to do what they should have done in the first place; charge them to court within 48 hours.

    The two have since faced prosecution for allegedly forging the President’s signature on the document the newspaper published as its evidence for the veracity of their story, following its denial by the Presidency.

    Fourth, is the invitation of the former governor of Zamfara State, Senator Ahmed Sani Yarima, by a security agency for interrogation over his statement in a phone-in a programme on a Kaduna-based radio station that there will be mass protests in the country if APC is refused registration.

    Fifth, there was the ridiculous N1million fine of Liberty Radio in Kaduna by the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, again for airing the opinion of a listener who said the country’s projects assessment tour by the Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, was a waste of public funds.

    Sixth, there was the initial suspension of the spokesman of the National Emergency Management Agency, Yushau Shuaib, for writing an article which accused our super minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, of carrying out an ethnic agenda in appointments in the parastatals under her finance ministry. The suspension was said to be at her behest. Not-so-inexplicably, the otherwise suave minister took the cue from her principal when she seized the opportunity of a public lecture late last month to say she did not give a damn what anyone thought of how she ran her charge.

    Seven, there was the recent suspension of the chair of the FCT branch of petroleum station workers arm of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), Aminu Hussaini, for petitioning the National Assembly against the presidential pardon granted the former governor of Bayelsa State, Chief Diepriye Alamieyesiegha and the former Managing Director of the collapsed Bank of the North, Alhaji Bulama Shettima. The suspension was handed down by, of all people, the NUPENG leadership. Wherever he is, I am certain Mr Frank Kokori, the fire-brand former secretary general of the union, must be wondering what has become of his union which was in the forefront of the fight for democracy under the military.

    I can go on and on with other examples including the recent grounding of the Rivers State governor’s aircraft by the aviation authorities on the strange ground that it is an “illegal immigrant” when everyone knows there’s no love lost between Governor Rotimi Amaechi and the President. However, I’ll end my list with only one more. And this is the most dangerous of them all. These were the remarks Kingsley Kuku, the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, made at an interactive with senior officials of the American State Department in Washington DC late last month.

    “If,” he said among other things, “we allow anything to hurt the peace in the Niger Delta, Nigeria’s economy will be endangered and energy security in Nigeria and even America will not be guaranteed. The attention and interest of the U.S. in Nigeria must remain the stability of the Niger Delta and the easiest way to ensure this is to encourage President Jonathan to complete an eight-year term.”

    His earlier remarks were even more categorical. “Permit me,” he had said, “to add that the peace that currently prevails in the zone is largely because Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, who is from that same place, is the President of Nigeria. That is the truth. It is only a Jonathan presidency that can guarantee continued peace and energy security in the Niger Delta.”

    For sheer brazenness as an egregious piece of blackmail, this is hard to beat. It also clearly explains why Nigeria is in so much trouble; the only thing that matters in the eyes of the Kukus, who have been in charge of this country since 2011, is not your performance but where you come from.

    God help us all.

    And now to the few of the reactions to my columns since March 27.

     

    On Achebe

    Good piece! Achebe is the greatest, he gets to our soul. (Professor Wole) Soyinka writes for the literati only. Content should be form. We are all tribalists.

    +2348182052349

     

    This piece on Achebe is by far the best among your series in a long while. Let your Yoruba accusers know that you are an Ibadan (Mokola) son.

    +2348037040304

     

    Achebe is a story teller while Soyinka is a lecturer. We all love story tellers because they put you in the middle of the stories while you read along.

    +2348034372555.

     

    On amnesty for Boko Haram

     

    Sir,

    My advocating for a high ranking Muslim officer to take charge of the operation is because of its sensibility and the nature of the operation that requires good intelligence which by and large has to come from the local community. So when you have the ‘son of the soil’ in-charge people will be more abiding and willing to cooperate. You will also neutralise the element of sabotage from miscreants in the security setup itself. A lot of the atrocities committed are by these people.

    aagummi@gmail.com

     

    Sir,

    I stand by Gumi: no amnesty for these creatures! If they are given amnesty, believe me we will have to fight them ourselves. The killers of Sheikh Ja’afar will NEVER know peace. I am ready to die fighting these lunatics.

    As for Soyinka and the southern press, no words to waste.

    +23480 66771572

     

  • The third annual lecture of Arewa Media Forum

    The third annual lecture of Arewa Media Forum

    Two Saturdays ago, the Arewa Media Forum, a forum of some Northern journalists and friends of the Northern media which I chair, held the third of its annual lectures at Arewa House, Kaduna. The topic was “The Crisis of Leadership in Nigeria as a Source of Insecurity in the Country: The Way Forward.”

    As guest lecturer, we invited Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon on account of his integrity as a man of God and as a well-regarded scholar of comparative religion. This was in consideration of how religion, along with ethnicity, has since become the first refuge of the failed leadership of this country.

    We invited two other scholars, Professor Kyari Mohammed, an expert on the Boko Haram scourge, and Malam Ibraheem Sulaiman, a scholar of Islamic Law, and one politician, Mrs Margaret Ichen, a former, and so far the only female, speaker of the Benue State House of Assembly, to discuss the archbishop’s paper.

    To chair the occasion we invited Professor Ango Abdullahi, former vice-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, the Magajin Rafin Zazzau and District Head of Yakawada, and lately a very outspoken spokesman of the Northern Elders’ Forum led by the First Republic minister, Alhaji Maitama Sule, Danmasanin Kano.

    The Royal Father of the Day was the Emir of Kazaure, Alhaji Najeeb Hussaini Adamu, one of the younger and more outspoken traditional rulers in the North. The Chief Host was the Kaduna State Governor, Alhaji Mukhtar Ramadan Yero.

    All seven came, except two of our three discussants, Mrs Ichen who had called earlier to say she was bereaved shortly before the event, and Malam Ibraheem who sent an email to say he had to attend to an unforeseen family matter on the day of the event. The Chief Host too did not come in person but sent his chief spokesman, Alhaji Ahmed Maiyaki, with a powerful speech.

    In his paper, Archbishop Idowu-Fearon disagreed with the usual conventional wisdom that the failure of leadership in the country begun with the military overthrow of the First Republic in1966; “From Tafawa Balewa (1960 – 1966) to Olusegun Obasanjo (1999 – 2007),” he said, “the crisis of leadership remains the same.”

    Quoting from Arthur Nwankwo’s 1989 book, Before I Die, apparently approvingly, he said in effect, that Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, our first and only prime minister, was reactionary; J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, the general who took over after the 1966 coup was ignorant and clueless; General Yakubu Gowon who took over after the second military coup in July 1967 was the only leader in the world who had so much money he didn’t know what to do with it; General Murtala Mohammed who succeeded Gowon after July 1975 coup was dynamic but ruled too briefly – all of only seven months – to make a lasting impact; General Olusegun Obasanjo on whose shoulders the country’s leadership fell after his boss was assassinated in February 1976 kept faith with his predecessor’s promise to return the army to the barracks but had “a pathological hatred for intellectuals.”

    Alhaji Shehu Shagari, the country’s first executive president, was, like Tafawa Balewa, too enamoured of the status quo; General Muhammadu Buhari, the first military ruler after the overthrow of the Second Republic, was too draconian; General Ibrahim Babangida who overthrew Buhari in a bloodless palace coup, had the intelligence and personal charm to make a difference but lacked the integrity and discipline to keep faith with his own transition programme; General Sani Abacha who Babangida left behind as army chief to strengthen the backbone of the interim administration he installed under Chief Ernest Sonekan, not only exceeded his brief by overthrowing Sonekan. He became arguably the most kleptomaniac leader in the country. Until, that is, the return of General Olusegun Obasanjo to power in 1999, this time in mufti.

    Obasanjo, according to this assessment, pretended to fight corruption but ended underselling public property, mostly to himself and his friends; General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who handed over to Obasanjo after implementing the shortest transition programme in the country –all of only eleven months – was “coolheaded and compassionate” but “emptied the foreign reserves of the country in the name of democratic transition”; Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua, who Obasanjo handed over to, was “incompetent” and weak; but the world, he concluded, was now “watching to see the direction of the current administration of President Goodluck Jonathan”

    Singly, the accuracy of this assessment of our leaders since Independence is debatable. Certainly the claim that the jury is still out on the present administration is hardly tenable; on the contrary most observers, I suspect, may have since concluded that it is clueless and corrupt – at least so far. Generally speaking, however, most Nigerians would agree that the archbishop’s assessment has more than a ring of truth to it.

    The big question, of course, is how to end this long run of bad and poor leadership in the country. For a man of God, his solution was hardly surprising: a return to our religious values. “My simple contribution,” he said, “is for Nigerians especially those of us from the Northern states (to) go back to our religious teachings and take seriously what our two communities, Muslim and Christian, share in common as far as leadership is concerned.”

    Nigerians, he said, are a religious people. Problem is, he added, the same people are “practical atheist,” i.e. those, he said, quoting a French Catholic Philosopher, “who believe that they believe in God, but who in fact deny His existence by their deeds and the testimony of their behaviour.”

    It may be difficult to change this attitude, he said, but it is not impossible and, in any case, we have no option, but to try and succeed if we want our country to become great. A country, he said, needs good people to have good government. “However good the system of government,” he said, quoting Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean leader who took his country from Third World to the First in one generation, “bad leaders will bring harm to their leaders. On the other hand, I have seen several societies well governed in spite of poor systems of government, because good strong leaders were in charge.”

    The credibility of Mr. Lee’s recipe for progress is debatable; it may be argued, as Professor Kyari Mohammed, the only discussant that turned up did, that bad systems have a way of corrupting good and strong leaders. There is no doubt, however, that a bad leader can only bring harm to his people no matter how good the system.

    It should also be obvious, as the archbishop implied, that a country can produce good leaders only if its people too are good. Until, as I said on these pages recently quoting Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) , each and every one of us sees himself as a shepherd who must account for his flock no matter how small the flock and no matter how lowly his position in society, we will not produce good leaders.

    As the archbishop said, quoting an Hadith as narrated by Bukhari, “Each of you is a guardian, and each of you will be asked about his subject.” This, he said, has it Biblical equivalent in the words of Jesus Christ when he said in Matthew 20:28, “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

    The long and short of all this is that we must each re-examine ourselves as individuals to see if we do our own bit for society and do unto others what we expect them to do unto us.

    Before the archbishop’s speech, the chairman, the royal father of the day and the chief host all spoke about the need for good leadership and they all agreed that we suffer from a serious deficit of same. The emir, however, entered the caveat that the public and the media are all too often unduly harsh on the leadership, a position, the chairman later begged to disagree with.

    Of these three probably the harshest criticism of our leaders came, interestingly, from the chief host, himself a leader even if by default. The country’s leaders, he said, have, since the First Republic, become greedy with a penchant for “convert(ing) public wealth into private riches.” He even spoke more harshly against leaders in the course of the short speech and concluded with the advice that the country in general, the North in particular, “must sit together and identify the myriads of problems facing our region and together find solutions to them.” He did not say how this sitting should take place, an answer which would no doubt interest the country’s advocates of National Sovereign Conference.

    News of killings in Baga in Borno State of hundreds of innocent civilians, including women, children and old men, and the virtual sacking of the town in an apparent reprisal attack by soldiers for the killing of an officer by Boko Haram insurgents over the weekend, coupled with the denial of the killings by the military in spite of the fact that the figures are from the Red Cross which has hardly been known to over-state casualties of hostilities, suggests that anyone hoping that the end of our long running crisis of unaccountable leadership as a source of the insecurity and the attendant underdevelopment of our dear country is in sight, still has a long wait ahead.

    However, the way to shorten that wait is clear; pray to God and at the same time organise individually and collectively to reject any politician with a track record of bad leadership who asks for our votes in 2015.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Amnesty for Boko Haram: between Gumi and Kukah (II)

    Amnesty for Boko Haram: between Gumi and Kukah (II)

    Interestingly, many of those that have condemned the Odi massacre, including President Goodluck Jonathan – remember the embarrassing altercation last year between him and former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, over the massacre? – and supported the granting of amnesty for the Niger Delta’s militants are the same people that have since been advocating the use of the same force, indeed an even more brutal one than that used in Odi, as the only solution to Boko Haram.

    For example, The Punch (March 14) which has consistently condemned dialogue with the sect called the amnesty “outrageous” and “gravely precarious.” Yet as recently as January 15 it had praised amnesty for the Niger Delta militants as a “panacea for peace in the hitherto restive oil-rich Niger Delta…” even though, in fairness, it also expressed some concern over the seemingly open-ended approach to the amnesty.

    The Nigerian Tribune, which also opposed any form of dialogue with Boko Haram in its editorial of July 13, 2011, had apparently forgotten its editorial of February 8, 2011 wherein it said “Soldiers and other security agents, even if they are professionally neutral, cannot bring lasting peace to Plateau State. The people of the state must begin an honest search for peace.”

    Similarly the Nobel Literature Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka has been vehemently opposed to dialogue with Boko Haram. Yet back in 2001 at the height of the clashes between security forces and the Odua Peoples’ Congress, he petitioned President Obasanjo to condemn what he said were the human right abuses of OPC members and called for dialogue between the organisation and the authorities.

    In the light of his high reputation as a champion of human rights, let me crave the indulgence of the reader to quote his petition extensively.

    “What,” he said in that petition, “has become apparent and undeniable is a systematic project of decimating this organisation through acts of intimidation, brutalisation and extra-judicial killings. We cannot stand by and watch these murders continue, openly or in secret. The gaols are filled with alleged members of the OPC. We have evidence of their routine ill treatment, and the resolve of the police to continue in their conduct, in full impunity. Much of these atrocities constitute punishable crimes in any decent society. They are being catalogued, and will be answered some day, unless restraint is exercised and the agents of excess called to strict order, and urgently.

    “No one advocates violence. State violence is no less reprehensible than the sporadic violence of extreme civil movements in society. An organisation is not condemned by the actions of infiltrators, agent provocateurs, and even the authentic lunatic fringe within a movement.

    “There is law in this nation – at least, we are persuaded that we now live in a society organised around the principle of legality. The police are not above the law. The police are certainly not licensed as killers in society. We insist: THESE KILLINGS BY STATE AGENCIES MUST STOP…

    “It is time that the OPC be called to dialogue in whatever states they exist, but most especially in Lagos State… If the path of dialogue is rejected and the current project of piecemeal pogrom is pursued, let it be understood that full responsibility lies in the hands of this government and its security agencies.”

    At the time of Prof Soyinka’s petition, OPC had clashed violently not only with the police. It had also done so with just about every major ethnic group resident in Yorubaland, all in the name of protecting Yoruba interests. Tell newsmagazine, in its edition of October 30, 2000, accurately captured the organisation’s reputation for violence in its cover story of the four days of mindless killing, maiming and destruction OPC unleashed on Lagos residents from October 15, mostly against so-called Hausa. In a sidebar to the story, the newsmagazine catalogued the organisation’s bloody attacks between July 16, 1999 and October 15, 2000 under the caption “(OPC’s) Trail of Blood.” The description couldn’t have been more apt; the bloody trail included attacks on the Ijaw Egbesu Boys in Ajegunle, Hausas in Sagamu, Ajegunle and Mushin, Igbo traders at Alaba market and even a clash between the Gani Adams and Dr Frederick Fasehun factions of the organisation in Mushin.

    The difference, they say, is that Boko Haram, unlike OPC or the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), is faceless and its goals and demands are irrational. The simple answer to the first excuse is, if Boko Haram seems faceless – and it is not, because the authorities very well know and have occasionally been in contact with several of its leaders, including Imam Abubakar Shekau – it is because it seemed politically convenient for government not to put any face to the sect’s leadership. At least twice it was persuaded to dialogue with government and lay down its arms. Each time someone, obviously an insider, leaked the move to a select media before negotiations had even begun in an apparent attempt to scuttle the talks. Worse, the authorities arrested those the sect sent to begin the talks.

    Whatever anyone may think is the difference between Boko Haram and MEND as a beneficiary of amnesty, the fact is that the militants did not come out from the creeks where they operated from until it was clear that late president, Umaru Yar’Adua, was sincere in his commitment to bring an end to the problems of Niger Delta. So far such sincerity in seeking an end to the insurgency in the North has been lacking in President Jonathan’s government and in its security agencies.

    As for the argument that the goals and demands of the sect are irrational, there is also the simple answer that however irrational, those goals and demands do not, and cannot, justify the terrible collective punishment the communities in which the sect’s suspected members live have been subjected to all these years. This is the lesson of Justice Lambo Akanbi’s judgment on Odi.

    In any case, it is not all of the sect’s demands that are irrational. Its stated objective of Islamising Nigeria through the barrel of the gun is certainly irrational if only because the Qur’an (2:256) itself categorically states “There is no compulsion in religion…” It also says in Chapter 3 Verse 20, “…So if they submit then indeed they follow the right way; and if they turn back, then upon you is only the delivery of the message and Allah sees the servants.” In other words, the word is persuasion not force.

    Islamophobes, of course, love to quote Chapter 2 Verse 191 of the Qur’an which says “And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter…” as evidence that Islam is a violent religion. This is simply plain mischief – probably worse; mischief, because the quotation is taken completely out of the context of the verse before it and the two after.

    Verse 190 of the chapter says “And fight in the way of Allah with those who fight with you and do not exceed the limits, surely Allah does not love those who exceed the limits.” Verses 192 and 193 respectively say “But if they desist, then surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful” and “…Fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for Allah, but if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors.”

    Taken as a whole it is clear from these verses that the Qur’an is against aggression. It admonishes Muslims to fight only in self defence and even then never to exceed the limits. No sane person would disagree that bombing churches, schools, motor parks and media houses, killing and maiming innocent people, etc, as Boko Haram has done, is exceeding Allah’s limits even in self defence.

    But other than Boko Haram’s untenable goal of Islamising Nigeria by force, there is nothing irrational in most of its other demands, especially the demand that the security forces stop the abuse of their powers in carrying out their duties to secure peace, law and order in society. This is a demand that has been repeatedly made by Amnesty International and myriads of local human rights organisations, including CLO and CDHR, even as they have rightly condemned Boko Haram terror.

    That the country is less secure and less peaceful today than it was four years ago when President Yar’Adua ordered the military invasion of the Maiduguri stronghold of Boko Haram, is proof positive that the preference for the use of force by the authorities almost to the exclusion of other options is a triumph of wishful thinking over the experience of the last four years.

    The big lesson of these four years of the failure to crush Boko Haram despite the military occupation of its redoubts is that amnesty for its members has become a doctrine of necessity. On its own, it may not guarantee peace, law and order in the country but without it we are not likely to see an end to the sect’s terror any time soon. Besides, it is not likely to cost the country the leg and arm that amnesty for the Niger Delta militants has cost this country – over N200 billion so far, and counting.

    Now that President Jonathan seems to have made his choice, albeit tentatively, between those like Bishop Kukah who support amnesty and those like Sheikh Gumi who oppose it, he will, hopefully, follow it through in good faith and refuse to be deterred by his more gung-ho security chiefs who have consistently failed to deliver on their boasts of crushing Boko Haram.