The Nation Newspaper

Category: Mohammed Harunna

  • ‘Muslim Brothers’ and the rest of us

    ‘Muslim Brothers’ and the rest of us

    Over seven years ago, on February 2, 2008 to be precise, I had cause to write a piece on these pages about “The persecution of Shi’a Muslims in Sokoto.”

    The context was the murder in that capital city of the Muslim Umma in Nigeria of, one, Sheikh Umar Danmaishiyya, one of the severest critics of the Shi’a in Nigeria, in July 2007. Following this murder, one, Malam Qasim Umar Rimin Tawaye, the leading Shi’a cleric in the city, was detained, along with 138 other members, on suspicion of committing the murder or being complicit.

    In addition, the family house of Malam Umar Sanda Gudu, Malam Qasim’s father, and several other property belonging to the sect’s members were demolished by the authorities.

    More than a year after the incident, Malam Qasim and his fellow Shi’ites remained in detention without trial. This detention without trial and the demolition of their property, along with their constant harassments by the authorities, was what I condemned in my piece in question as their persecution.

    The bloody clash last weekend between the Nigerian Army and the Shi’ites in Zaria, their self-declared capital and home of their spiritual leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, looks very much like a repeat of Sokoto – only on a more frightening scale because the army has been far less restrained than the civilian authorities in Sokoto were to the sect’s alleged infractions.

    Yet, as in Sokoto seven years ago, the Shi’ites are unlikely to attract much sympathy even from their Muslim brethren precisely because, down the years, they have managed to alienate just about everyone else by their isolationist tendencies and the spiritual arrogance of their leadership. However, even without these flaws, many a Sunni, who constitute the vast majority of the Muslim Umma in the country, as in the rest of the world, do not regard Shi’ism as Islam, mainly because of the higher esteem with which Shi’ites hold Prophet Muhammad’s family than they do his Sunna, i.e. his words and deeds, which mainstream Islam regards as the second most important guide for behaviour, after the Holy Qur’an.

    Far from attracting public sympathy to them, the weekend clash in Zaria is more likely than not to have been seen as giving their sect – which, for some strange reasons, rejects being labelled Shi’a and instead insists on calling itself “Muslim Brothers” – its comeuppance for its almost total disregard of authority and of the rights of others.

    A recent telling example of their disregard for authority and other peoples’ rights occurred early this year in the run-up to this year’s election in March/April. On that occasion a disaster similar to last weekend’s would have occurred, but for the exemplary restrain which the then governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Ramalan Yero, demonstrated.

    The incident occurred when the governor went on a condolence visit to Gyallesu, the Tudun Wada, Zaria, neighbourhood where Sheikh Zakzaky holds court. At a long distance from the residence of the deceased, some followers of the Sheikh stopped the governor’s convoy and insisted he and his entourage must disembark from their vehicles and trek the distance. When all entreaties failed, one of the governor’s guards fired shots into the air to clear the way. There and then the governor rebuked the orderly and submitted himself to the demand of the Shi’ites.

    Back in Kaduna, the governor summoned the relevant local government chairman and asked him to find out from the Sheikh if he knew of the humiliation he was subjected to. The Sheikh reportedly said he didn’t. However, the governor never received any apology.

    As governor of Kaduna State, Yero, of course, did not symbolise the authority of the Nigerian State as does the army chief, Lt-General Tukur Yusuf Buratai,whose convoy the Shi’ites blocked on his way to an official function in Zaria’s Army Depot and to pay a courtesy call on the Emir of Zazzau, Alhaji Shehu Idris, even after he came down from his vehicle to plead with them. So if Yero was ready to suffer their disrespect gladly, they ought to have known that rare is the soldier who would tolerate even the smallest slight from a “bloody civilian.”

    However, predictable as the army reaction to the foolish behaviour of the Shi’ites was, there is simply no justification for its overkill, which was what it was, considering the premeditated demolition of many of their property all over Zaria and the heavy casualties their leadership suffered, including their second-in- command, Sheikh Turi Muhammad Turi, who I personally know as exceptionally humble in spite of his rank in the sect.

    What the Shi’ites did last weekend in trying to stop an army convoy was not only foolish. It was illegal, even criminal. In civilised society, however, the penalty for illegality and crime is not extra-judicial killings and the demolition of the property of suspects. In civilised society, each and every penalty must follow due process.

    For, as that famous twentieth Century American Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, I love quoting on these pages said,”Our government… teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”

    This is the principal lesson of Boko Haram which we have been battling with since 2009. If we want to avoid a second religious terrorist front when we are yet to end the first, we should heed the call by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’adu Abubakar, for a judicial inquiry into what happened last weekend and ensure that every guilty party gets its just desert.

     

    FEEDBACK

    Uwazuruike, Kanu and the rest of us (November 25)

    When the Igbo finally leave and MASSOB hopefully succeeds in “stopping kidnapping, armed robbery and other criminal tendencies”, I am sure Nigeria too will be a better place. It’s not a bad deal. It’s a positive sum game. Nigerians should give it a try.

    Suleiman Kano,

    +2348054300625.

    Is it not ironical that for those who see themselves as saints to want to be in the same union with 419ners and drug peddlers all over the world who want to leave and be on their own?  Any further proof of who the parasites and hypocrites are?

    Amaechi Orakanma,

    +2348033722549.

    You are right; Uwazuruike and Nnamdi Kanu are not sincere. But then Buhari should also be fair to all.

    Chukwudi Dick,

    Lagos.

    +2348035410176.

     

    Bilkisu as a friend indeed (December  2)

    Just finished reading your column on Aunty Bilkisu. Tears in my eyes, but a firm belief she is aljanna bound. Take solace my big brother.

    A.M. Muhammad, Esq

    +2348067697000.

    Hajiya Bilkisu Yusuf wasn’t the pioneer editor of Sunday Triumph. Rufa’i Ibrahim of Peoples Daily was, while she was the second. She couldn’t have been the first editor as she had just joined the profession when production began in 1981. I should know, being one of the reporters at the time.

    A, Muhammad,

    Kano.

    +2348099472747.

    For the record: I was not Bilkisu’s news editor. We were appointed the same day, she as editor, New Nigerian, me as, editor, Sunday New Nigeria, in 1987. We were sacked the same day by the late Sidi Ali Sirajo when we rejected his version of “journalism.”

    A month later he too was sacked. We were then asked to return to NNN, but not as editors. We rejected the offer and joined you at Citizen. Bilkisu returned to Allah (SWT) the way she had always prayed for. May Allah have mercy on her.  Amin.

    Mohammed Suleiman Bomoi

    +2348029453789.

     

    Towards a viable federation (December 9)

    The “geography” you referred to in the allocation of revenue is actually two factors: terrain and land mass. The former was introduced by southern states, the latter by northern states as a counter. The result was the nullification of the supposed advantage gained by each side, a return to the status quo ante. Goodwill is what is in very short supply among the leadership, hence the marching on the same spot we are witnessing.

    MT Usman,

    +23433067825.

    A good article and analysis as always. However, Gen. Yakubu Gowon was over thrown on the 29th of July 1975 and not July 1976 as you stated.

    Alhassan Lanle,

    Minna.

    +2348036912830.

     

    General Gowon was overthrown in 1975 not 1976. Chief Rotimi Williams and Dr. Nabo Graham-Douglas were the first to be appointed SANs in 1975.

    Dr Mann Tolofari,

    Port Harcourt.

    +2348038749534.

  • Towards a viable federation

    Towards a viable federation

    The recent Biafra resurgence has since led to so much renewed talk about restructuring Nigeria. With due respect, I dare say all such talk is so much glib talk.

    What makes it glib, but what we have refused to acknowledge, is that Nigeria lost its innocence as a federation in the true sense of the word long ago when, on a fateful day in May 1966, a power-hungry clique our first military head of state, Major-General JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi, surrounded himself with, pushed him into promulgating the ill-fated Unification Decree No 34. That decree abolished the existing four autonomous regions – North, East, West and Mid-West – and substituted them with Nigeria as a unitary state of 19 provinces.

    One telling example of how Aguiyi-Ironsi and his clique intended to use the decree to run Nigeria with an iron hand emerged shortly after its promulgation when the late Chief Cyprian Ekwensi, a pioneer popular novelist, walked with his team into New Nigerian, in Kaduna, then still owned by the North, and announced to its bemused expatriate boss, Mr. Charles Sharp, that he had come from Enugu with a brief to take over the newspaper company! Just like that. Somehow the Enugu team never managed to really take over before there was a counter-coup in July in which Colonel Yakubu Gowon, the army chief, replaced Aguiyi-Ironsi.

    Gowon duly abolished the offending decree in September and returned the country to its four regions. But Nigeria had eaten  the forbidden apple, so to say, and the country could never be the same again. Events eventually led to a civil war, and as a strategy for isolating and defeating the rebels, Gowon split the four regions into 12 states. This changed the nature of our federation from the normal one in which autonomous regions came together to cede powers to the centre, into an abnormal one in which it was the centre that not only delegated powers to its constituents, but, in Nigeria’s case, actually created them.

    This creation went from 12 constituents in 1967 to the present 36. The contrast with America, the Real McCoy, couldn’t have been sharper; it started from a country of 13 states that decided to become a federation when the initial confederation attempt failed, and grew into a country of 50 autonomous states that ceded powers to the centre.

    The problem with those who talk so much about restructuring Nigeria is clearly their refusal to come to terms with the fact that the forces of state creation have since become difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.

    Of course, since 1995, following the Constituent Assembly established by the late General Sani Abacha, there has been increasing talk of reducing those 36 states into six autonomous regions of North-West, North-Central, North-East, South-West, South-South and South-East. Indeed they have even been used for administrative and political allocation of jobs andpatronages. Even then anyone who imagines the states would want to dissolve into these their geo-political zones is probably living in cuckoo land, considering the continued demand for even more states each time the country convenes a constitutional conference.

    So instead of wasting time talking about an almost impossible political structuring, we should draw a line with our current 36 states and make the best we can of their structure.

    Several leading politicians and public figures have lately been calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to implement the recommendations of the last constitutional reform conference convened by his predecessor, as the best, if not the only way to resolve the constitutional crises facing the country. Among them are Professor Ben Nwabueze, president of the Igbo Elders Forum and an unrepentant advocate of ethnic nationalism, Dr. Frederick Faseun, the co-founder of the militant Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) and Senator Kofoworola Bucknor-Akerele, former deputy governor of Lagos State.

    In an interview in the Sunday Sun of November 22, Bucknor-Akerele, for example, said: “I will advise President Muhammadu Buhari to implement the recommendations of that confab.” She even went further to say if those recommendations had been implemented long ago, not only would the Biafra agitations not have arisen, even Boko Haram would have been anticipated.

    I beg to disagree with the advocates of the Jonathan constitutional reform conference for the simple reason that, as The PUNCH said in its editorial of November 11: “Unfortunately, many administrations in the past had organised national conferences purposely to address these self-inflicted wounds, but they turned out to be grand larceny designed to serve their selfish political interests.”

    Jonathan’s conference was no exception. If anything, it was probably the worst. By comparison, that of Murtala/Obasanjo was certainly the best since the Republican Constitution of 1963. Aguiyi-Ironsi pre-empted his own conference by Decree 34. Gowon’s first attempt ended in Aburi fiasco. He pre-empted his second attempt by declaring 1976 unrealistic for handing over power to civilians as he had promised in  his first independence broadcast after the civil war on October 1, 1970. This led to his overthrow in July 1976.

    General Muhammadu Buhari in his first coming in 1983 initially said democracy was not his priority. And before he would make it so, he was overthrown by his army chief, General Ibrahim Babangida. The new military president’s longish transition programme ended in grief in 1993 when Abacha overthrew the transition government he had left behind, following his annulment of the presidential election of June 12 in the same year. Ditto Abacha’s transition programme in 1998, following his sudden death in June. The last and the shortest one by a military regime under General Abdulsalami Abubakar, Abacha’s successor, merely tinkered with the constitution bequeathed by Murtala/Obasanjo when it ushered in the current dispensation on May 29, 1999.

    Among all these constitutional conferences, none was anywhere as thorough and none was as transparent as that of Murtala/Obasanjo. First, its 50-member Constitutional Drafting Committee (CDC) under the late Chief FRA William, Nigeria’s first Senior Advocate, took nearly a year listening to Nigerians before submitting its draft to the authorities. This was between its inauguration in October 1975 and September 1976 when it submitted the report.

    Second, no post-independent constituent assembly (CA) has been as representative of the country as Murtala/Obasanjo’s; of its 230 members, only 27 were nominated by the government, seven of who were chairmen of the CDC sub-committees to shed light on the committees’ conclusions. Third, the CA went through the draft clause by clause between October 6, 1977 and June 5, 1978 when it finally adjourned.

    In sharp contrast, Jonathan’s constitutional conference was a fire brigade convened, as it were, in the run-up to this year’s elections in March and April. It was such an emergency decision that there was simply no time for any election into the conference. The ex-president seized this opportunity to impose a thoroughly skewed conference membership on the country.

    At any rate, anyone inclined to give the former president the benefit of doubt as to his motive must have had it shattered by the fact that he himself refused to implement even aspects of the conference’s report, which were within his administrative powers to carry out, apparently because they were of no use to his determined presidential bid.

    All this is not to say that the report is completely useless.All the talk about political restructuring associated with the report may be glib. However, such recommendations it contained about fiscal federalism, state police and the creation of local governments being exclusive to states should be taken seriously. The last two may require constitutional amendment, but the first, which is arguably the most important, does not. What it requires is a spirit of give and take, which, unfortunately, is in short supply among our political class.

    The easier aspect of the two-legged fiscal federalism is the vertical allocation among the three “tiers” of government – namely federal, state and local. Between 1980 when the late Dr. Pius Okigbo, a foremost economist, recommended a formula of 55:30.5:10 for the three tiers, with the balance of 4.5 per cent as Special Fund, and the present formula of 48.5:24:20 with the balance of 7.5 per cent  as Special Fund, the formulae have changed a few times. There are no constitutional reason why the current formula cannot be changed by reducing that of the centre and increasing that for states.

    The other leg of fiscal federalism, i.e. the horizontal allocation among states and local governments, may be difficult to deal with, but, as I said, with a spirit of give and take, it too can be tackled by reaching reasonable compromises on the weights to be attached to the main principles of derivation, population, geography and equality of states.

    In short, our current constitution, whatever its shortcomings, provides sufficient basis to solve our problems, provided, of course, there is good faith and goodwill among our political class.

    Without such good faith and goodwill, even a perfect constitution, were it possible, will get us nowhere, for the simple reason that no constitution is self-executing. Unfortunately such good faith and goodwill can never be legislated. It can only be cultivated. So, the sooner we learn to do so, the better our chances of transforming our hapless country into a happy nation.

    Note

    For two weeks now, I’ve started out with the intention of publishing reactions to my column, only to run out of space. Next week, God willing, I’ll do so, even if it means using most of the space for the reactions.

  • Bilkisu as a friend indeed

    Bilkisu as a friend indeed

    If she were alive, Hajiya Bilkisu Bintube, mni, who was among the hundreds of casualties in this year’s Hajj stampede on September 25 at Muna, would have been 63 today. In remembrance of her immense contribution to journalism, her advocacy of social justice, gender equity and interfaith dialogue, Advocacy Nigeria, one of the many civil society organisations to which she belonged, is organising a public lecture today at the ECOWAS Parliament, Abuja.

    As part of the event, 10 of her friends and colleagues were invited to give five-minute testimonials of her character and work. As her friend of over 40 years, I was invited to speak on her virtues as a friend. This is my testimony:

    Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection between two or more persons. Along with mutual affection, it is also characterised by mutual trust, honesty, understanding and altruism, among other virtues. Hajiya Bilkisu Bintube possessed each and every one of these virtues in abundance.

    I first met her in our undergraduate days. As a student in the second set of School of Basic Studies, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in 1971, I got admitted in 1973 for a degree in Government, now Political Science, in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, since split in two. Bilkisu got admitted for the same course in the same year from the Higher School Certificate class of her alma mater, Government Girls College, Dala, Kano.

    Some of us, who regarded ourselves as studious types, formed study groups to help each other in our courses beyond the classroom and tutorials. Bilkisu and I belonged to several of such groups.

    By sheer coincidence, both of us were also in love with the same profession – journalism – even as undergraduates. Unlike me, however, she was too serious a student and too decorous a person to indulge in the kind of junk journalism practised on university campuses in those good old days. Instead, she waited till after her graduation in 1975 and national service the following year to engage in the real thing. Thus began one of the most illustrious careers in journalism in post colonial Nigeria.

    The climax of that career was her editorship of New Nigerian, arguably the country’s most literate and authoritative newspaper in its heyday in the 60s and 70s. She became the editor in 1987 after she had, among other things, worked as information officer in the Kano State Ministry of Information and had served as pioneer editor of Sunday Triumph, its newspaper.

    By the time she became New Nigerian’s editor, I had been its managing director for over a year. During that period, I had a rather acrimonious relationship with her predecessor, Mr. Innocent Oparadike. In the end, I was able to persuade the federal authorities to replace him and was given the privilege of picking his successor. I didn’t have to think twice about recommending Bilkisu.

    First, she had already made her mark as a fearless journalist, columnist and editor. Second, for some rather personal reasons, the authorities at Triumph had made her life miserable by removing her as editor and getting her sent back to the Ministry of Information with no particular job to do. I felt obliged as a friend to help end her misery. Third, again as a friend, I knew she was honest, trustworthy, compassionate and, above all, a person of the highest integrity. Last, I felt she deserved to make history as the first Northern female editor of a truly national newspaper.

    Fortunately, the federal authorities agreed with me. However, not surprisingly, the same people who did not want her at Triumph in the first place, attempted also to stop her move to New Nigerian by trying to convince the state authorities that her services were still very much needed in her state after all. Military president, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, had to personally intercede at my request with the Kano State Governor, Group Captain Umaru Ndatsu, to secure her release to New Nigerian.

    As managing director and editor, the two of us got on very well like a house on fire, as the saying goes. However, my tenure as her “boss” – as she always introduced me to strangers – came to an abrupt end on February 13, 1989, when I was sacked. Unfortunately, she got on very badly with her new boss, the late Alhaji Sidi Ali Sirajo, whose idea of journalism was totally at variance with hers and with those of some of her colleagues, notably Adamu Adamu, the deputy editor and Mohammed Suleiman Bomoi, the news editor.

    It was then only a question of time before the new managing director moved against them, accusing them of being loyal to me. Adamu jumped before he was pushed and all three of them, along with Kabiru Yusuf, joined me in 1990 to found Citizen, the first weekly newsmagazine in the North. Bilkisu was my second in command.

    The magazine lasted all of only four years, but during that short period, it made its mark and, at a personal level, our bond of friendship as a team became ever stronger. Indeed we became like one family.

    If, as they, a friend is someone who knows you very well and still loves you, then Bilkisu must be one of best friends anyone can have, as, I am sure, virtually all of us gathered here today to honour her will testify. I, for one, can testify to how she stood by me as a friend from our university days through thick and thin.

    She stood by me when I was sacked from New Nigerian, without, of course, being unfaithful to the ethics of her profession. She stood by me when our magazine collapsed and on more than one occasion she was approached with irresistible offers to start a new one. On each occasion she insisted her potential benefactors invested in reviving Citizen if they sincerely meant well for the public interest the magazine served.

    And when some people tried to come between the two of us by reminding her I’d built my own comfortable house while she’d been only a tenant all those years in spite of all her labours, she simply told them she was the one who encouraged me to do so instead of investing everything I had in Citizen, as its single biggest owner. That shut them up. Not least of all, she was always there to share what little she had with me and my wife, to whom she became very close, any time we were broke, which was rather often.

    I can go on and on with examples of how faithful a friend she was, but the ones I’ve mentioned above are more than sufficient proof that Bilkisu is a friend indeed.

    Ladies and gentlemen, my invitation letter to this event asked me to talk about Bilkisu not just as a friend, but also talk about her capacity to network. While I can write a book about her qualities as a friend, I am afraid I don’t have as much to say about the latter. Suffice it, however, to observe that the variety of this gathering alone is enough evidence of her immense capacity to reach out to all, regardless of their religion, region, race and tongue.

    In that remarkable lady, I lost a dear friend, someone I regarded as my twin sister, on September 24, as she performed the last rites of this year’s Hajj. My consolation, however, was that she could not have wished for a better way to depart this world. May Allah grant her Aljanna Firdaus. Amen.

     

  • Uwazuruike, Kanu and the rest of us

    Uwazuruike, Kanu and the rest of us

    Probably the greatest headache the nearly six-month Buhari administration is suffering from right now is the Biafra resurgence, bar, of course the country’s sharp economic downturn arising from the collapse of the price of oil, the country’s single biggest source of public revenue.

    The administration, of course, suffers from other headaches, several of them very acute, notably Boko Haram insurgency, mostly in the Northeast and violent clashes between Fulani cattle rearers and farmers in most parts of the country. None of these headaches, however, seems of recent to have received as wide a media publicity as the Biafra resurgence. None certainly is as rooted in the popular imagination – grand delusion, is the more accurate description – of a huge chunk of a section of the country’s youth as the Biafra resurgence. Consequently, it has the greatest potential for defying any quick fix among all the problems with Nigeria.

    Former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, obviously thinks otherwise. “This,” he told reporters at his Abeokuta Hilltop residence late last month, “is fake agitation. You people make a mountain out of a molehill.” Obasanjo was probably right to say that those spearheading the Biafra resurgence are fake. “The people who are doing this,” he said, “are the same people in the 419 business, they are the same people you will find in drugs all over the world. To them this is another source of making money.”

    I do not know about 419 and drugs, but it speaks volumes about the motives of the spearheads of the Biafra resurgence that Nnamdi Kanu, the proprietor of the London- based pirate Radio Biafra and the immediate source of the new Biafra headache, would, in effect, dismiss his erstwhile boss, the leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Ralph Uwazuruike, as a carpetbagger. (Kanu, until he became estranged from Uwazuruike, was the London coordinator of MASSOB).

    In perhaps the longest news feature on the issue to date, the Saturday Sun (November 14) quoted Kanu as accusing Uwazuruike of deceit and self-enrichment. “I can tell you today,” Kanu reportedly told the newspaper “even MASSOB members are revolting now because they know that their leadership is fraudulent and decaying.” One of such fraudulence, Kanu said, was that whereas Uwazuruike printed and sold Biafran passports to his people, he always travelled abroad with his Nigerian passport.

    MASSOB was founded in 1999 and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) eight years later by Kanu as a breakaway faction. Since MASSOB, among other fraudulent activities Kanu spoke at some length about in the Sun interview, had always printed and sold Biafran passports, while Uwazuruike used Nigerian passport, one must wonder why it took Kanu all the intervening years to realise that his former boss was fake. Chances are, it wasn’t any moral principle, high or not.

    So, I agree with Obasanjo and many like him who believe the leadership of the Biafra resurgence is fake. Even then I disagree with him that expressing concern about the resurgence is making a mountain out of a molehill. That was what many of us thought of Boko Haram in its early days – and look where it has landed us since 2009 when we thought we could quickly despatch its headache with military sledgehammer.

    Uwazuruike and Kanu, like many in the leadership of Boko Haram who denounced science and modernism, but relished in their fruits, may be fake. But then we now live in a world where “verisimilitude matters more than veracity,” to quote The Economist in an article it published in its edition of December 18, 2010 on global public relations, entitled: “Rise of the image men.” To rephrase the magazine, we live today in a world where the appearance of truth matters more than the reality of truth itself.

    Uwazuruike, and even more so Kanu, are clearly good students and disciples of Edward Barnes, a nephew of the famous 19th Century German psychologist, Sigmund Freud, and widely regarded as the father of modern public relations. Barnes, like his uncle, believed people responded best to images and emotional appeals, rather than to rational arguments. Hence Uwazuruike’s and Kanu’s appeals to the effective emotion, but grand delusion, of a Biafran El Dorado that never was and is unlikely to ever be even if Biafra is to become a reality.

    Their Biafran dream is obviously based on the illusion that all the so-called people of Biafra, defined by Kanu as “the Idoma people, the Igbo people,  the Efik, the Ibibio, the Anang, the Ijaw, the Itsekiri, the Urhobo and the Anioma people” are the same but completely different from other Nigerians. This is clearly a false assumption. Of course, we do differ in race, beliefs and tongue. But even within each of these three categories, there are also differences, at times great.

    Take, for example, the assumption that all Igbo are the same. Nothing debunks it like a lengthy interview I had with the great late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in 1979 at his Nsukka residence when he was the presidential candidate of the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) in that year’s general election. Responding to a question I asked him on his role in Biafra, he said he did his best to keep his Igbo people in Nigeria in spite of their misgivings about their welcome in the country. His efforts, he said, were in the end thwarted essentially because some of the advisers of the late Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu, as Biafra’s military head of state, persuaded the man that he should be wary of Zik as an Onitsha man.

    These advisers, he said, told Ojukwu that Biafra was holding its own militarily and so did not need any conference to sort out his difference peacefully with General Yakubu Gowon, the Nigerian head of state. They told Ojukwu, he said, that “he should be very very careful with me as an Onitsha man because they thought that I was using him as a means to give publicity to myself internationally and that time will come when people will look more to me than himself. Well, as a young man, human, he fell for the flattery.”

    The moral of Zik’s inferred contention that Biafra was not inevitable should be obvious; there are no differences, individual or group that cannot be ironed out, if only we can, as individuals, get our egos and self-interests out of the way. After all, whatever our race, belief or tongue, we are all part of God’s humanity, with more shared needs and values than differences. Related to this is the moral that there is no end to our differences if we chose to focus on them.

    People like Uwazuruike and Kanu who harp on our differences and try to divert our attention away from our common humanity may be fake. But their capacity to appeal to our emotions makes them particularly dangerous and thus makes it necessary to handle them with the greatest care.

    In a world in which the Internet has made image more important than substance, it is difficult to solve problems by appealing to human rationality. However, in the long run there is simply no substitute for doing exactly that. The practical implication of this is that we must address the differences the likes of Uwazuruike and Kanu seek to exploit and at the same time respect due process in bringing them to book for their attempts to exploit those differences by criminal means.

    And MASSOB and IPOB, whatever their leaders and supporters think, are simply illegal, if not criminal enterprises, just like Boko Haram. Unlike Boko Haram, they may not have resorted yet to arms, but the hate speeches they spew against other Nigerians are criminal, and recognised as such by our laws and by international laws as well. In any case, given Kanu’s appeals last September to the Igbo in diaspora to support his cause with guns and bullets at the Igbo World Congress in Los Angeles, USA, it is only a matter of time before at least IPOB resorts to arms.

    Perhaps it was inadvertent, but in urging all the Igbo outside the Southeast to return home, MASSOB’s National Director of Information, Mr Uchenna Madu, gave the game away when he said “MASSOB has vowed to stop kidnapping, armed robbery and other criminal tendencies in Igbo land because there is no place in Nigeria like Igbo land (Saturday Vanguard, November 21).

    No doubt, there is the need to handle MASSOB and IPOB firmly as illegal enterprises. However, because they have succeeded in tapping into the popular, some of them legitimate, disaffections of a large section of the country’s youth, there is an even greater need to scrupulously respect due process in dealing with the Biafran resurgence.

  • Re: Shekarau at 60

    Re: Shekarau at 60

    It’s rare for readers of this column to completely agree or disagree with me. Usually it’s a mixed affair. Last week’s piece, however, was among those rare occasions when my readers not only almost completely disagreed with me. Most of them did so strongly. Here are some of the reactions.

    Sir,

    I cannot remember ever reading you, my favourite columnist and getting disappointed afterwards until now. Indeed, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau possessed ‘eloquence, humility and simplicity’ to qualify him for the number one seat in Kano as you rightly mentioned. And I think at the beginning he also meant well.  But to deliberately omit the most important and strongest factor, General Buhari’s emotional and passionate appeal to Kano people to vote ANPP SAK! when presenting Shekarau in 2003, was, surprisingly, very much unlike you, the constant writer and defender of  truth! And you very well knew that PDP people did not fear Shekarau, they feared Buhari. Even Al-Amin Little, Shekarau’s less experienced, closest rival during the ANPP primaries, would still have won the governorship election anyway.

    I dislike to even entertain the thought, but it seemed even Shekarau’s unmatched ingratitude to Buhari and, by extension, Kano people, had escaped your magnetic memory.

    And now, sadly, your precious column was chosen to drop the hint to Nigerians about Shekarau’s ambition for 2019. Good luck to him. After all, he has the right to contest, and you to be the first to let us know. But if not for the man of integrity that you are, I wonder what would be assumed to be your inspiration or motivation to, at a day Nigerians woke up full of hope and anticipation for their new ministers, give a certain Shekarau an undeserved publicity.

    But while nothing is impossible in politics, as your conclusion suggested, do not forget that part of your strength as a unique journalist is your loathness for lazy forgetfulness, hence your use of past documents to refresh your readers’ memory on the topic under discussion. In this case, should the time come, our collective memory would still be fresh. We may not need Dauda Kahutu Rarara, the reigning prince of political songs in the North, to remind us of the man for whose welcoming to PDP the party organised a notorious jamboree, with the former president personally attending, while the nation was mourning the Nyanya bomb blasts. Nigerians very well know those who, by all means, never wished them to be rescued when the devil held them by the throat. And while the world celebrated with us for coming out of cluelessness, we knew those that fumed, burned inside and had sleepless nights.

    And even with your belief in the non-existence of impossibility in politics, in the build-up to the 2007 elections you wrote of  Professor Jerry Gana in 2006, in a piece you titled Why Jerry Gana Will not be President that he  “…may be passionate and brilliant orator but it takes more than brilliance and passion to become a president. Among other things it takes credibility and it also takes conviction.” (Emphasis mine).

    At that time, the professor believed he could win the presidency riding the horses of religious sentiments; and you unequivocally told him that he was in for the shock of his life. I wonder how the three qualities of Shekarau you mentioned, mixed with strong doses of ingratitude, deceit and ill-wish for one’s people; and lacking credibility, would make his presidential chances any brighter.

    Mustafa Adamu

    mmustafaadamu@yahoo.com

    Sir,

    Is the man your friend or was the piece just a piece of bad research? Find out, the “Buhari factor” took Shekarau to “Africa House” and not any eloquence. Eloquence my foot! The man hasn’t half the eloquence of the late Rimi or Kwankwaso.

    +2348054300625.

    Sir,

    Bahaushe na cewa da muguwar rawa kwamma kin tashi. Shekarau can contest again, but be rest assured Buhari will beat him again even at the ward level, let alone the whole of Kano State.

    Garba Usman

    Kano

    +2348033065912.

    Sir,

    I am afraid you forgot to mention how that ingrate retired teacher who joined the governorship race, rode on wave of the BUHARI gale only to rout the man out of the party. May his type never again be trusted with elective political power.

    Charles Kuhe +2348055250990.

    Sir,

    Though  I am not a card-carrying member of any party, it is my candid opinion that whenever the political history of Malam Shekarau or his secret weapon as an opposition candidate in 2003, not to mention the Magic the BUHARI aura played is uncharitable. Buhari raised his hand and asked people to vote for ANPP -SAK and that was the magic during his first tenure. As for the second tenure I can’t tell what magic played any role.

    Moh’d Kano.

    +2348036283412.

    Sir,

    Your article on Shekarau at 60 actually made my day. Your comments on Shekarau as a man from humble background was not misplaced. Shekarau, the political generalissimo of Kano politics, is a household name in Nigerian politics. But his greatest undoing is his political misadventure to PDP, a party he held in disdain while in the office as governor for two terms. His reason for joining PDP did not persuade his admirers including me. He has a wrong perception of the political dynamics playing out in Nigeria.

    Kolade Ilesanmi, Esq.

    +2348030640311.

    Sir,

    You erred in your column today by totally neglecting the support of Buhari in the emergence and subsequent electoral victory of Shekarau as Kano State governor during the 2003 elections. How could you forget the ‘SAK’ admonition of Buhari to Kano electorate on that day at Racecourse, which surely proved to be the clincher when so many were contemplating re-electing Kwankwaso as governor, while voting for Buhari as president as in ‘wake da shinkafa.’

    +2348035007010.

    Sir,

    Your Shekarau at 60 was a good image refurbishing stunt for a man whose political fortunes seem to be nose-diving at all fronts. But even so Shekarau and PDP are not to rise from their downfall by shifting power back to the North in 2019. From Yar’adua (a northerner) to Jonathan (a southerner) to Buhari (a northerner) and back to the North again with the multi-dimensional ethnic nationalities in the country? Haba!

    What is expected of PDP is to learn its lessons, revive itself and come up with effective leadership and management strategy that would put the APC government on its toes for good governance. But to want to achieve that by sprouting a reprehensible political arrangement for the country couched in such a PDP zoning formula, which neither agrees with the aspirations of the majority of the people , nor is in line with the federal character principle of equitable power sharing, isn’t just acceptable to Nigerians.

    Emmanuel Egwu,

    +2347087231156.

    Re: Alhaji Haliru Dantoro Kitoro III, a man of peace and courage

    Sir,

    I have just read your article on the late emir of Borgu. Thanks for your historical work. Please come up with more of such that will unite the Yoruba race and its pre-colonial allies in the North, such as the Gobirs, Tapas, Argungus, etc.

    1. B. Lalemi

    +2348169596508

    Sir,

    There was never a Kwara Province. From inception, it has been Kwara State. Even with many parts of its territories chopped off, it’s still Kwara State.

    +2348037211366.

    Sir,

    It was Ilorin, NOT Kwara Province!!!

    Shehu Kaikai,

    +2348035892134

    Sir,

    In your article on Dantoro you tried to briefly write on Borgu history. You got it wrong when you said that Dantoro was fourth  Emir of Borgu. Borgu had recorded 11 chiefs before the arrival of the British. After that Jibrin was the first emir, locally called Kwandara. He was also the first Muslim ruler, appointed in 1916 and deposed in 1924. On his appointment, he destroyed all traditional belief and removed all idols and threw them in the River Niger. Starting from Jibrin, Dantoro was third Emir of Borgu  as the Supreme Court ruled that Isyaku Jikantoro was never an emir and remains a prince. You tried to give him what he was never.

    1. U. Wara,

    +2347031147461

    Sir,

    This is to confirm that Kainji Dam is located in Auna District of Kontagora Emirate, not in Borgu

    Major Buhari A. Aliyu (rtd)

    +2348034704024.

  • Shekarau at 60

    Shekarau at 60

    Last Thursday, November 5, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, two-term governor of Kano State, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) presidential candidate in the 2011 elections, and until May 29, the country’s Minister of Education, turned sexagenarian. His political career, which made debut in 2003, is arguably the most inspiring in recent Nigeria’s history – that of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan included.

    The long journey to his fortuitous political debut 12 years ago started, of course, 48 years earlier when he was born to Malam Shekarau and Malama Maryam in Kano. The mother, who died in 1999, was from Gundumawa village in Gezawa Local Government Area of the state. The father, who died in 1979, was, however, originally from Biu, Borno State, but settled in Kano where he joined the then Native Authority Police and rose to the rank of a chief inspector before retiring.

    That successful career brought Malam Shekarau close to the emirate’s Wakilin Doka (Chief of Police) at the time, Alhaji Ado Bayero, who, decades later as Emir, was to take the son under his wings as governor of the state and eventually turbaned him the Sardaunan Kano, the first in the emirate’s long history.

    After his formal education, which ended with a degree in Mathematics/Education from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1977, he joined the Kano State bureaucracy in 1978 as a secondary school teacher. Thus began a successful civil service career in which he was principal at various secondary schools in the state, an education administrator, and from which he eventually retired as a permanent secretary in 2001.

    Former President Jonathan’s spin doctors like to tell the story of his amazing political career as one similar to that of America’s Abraham Lincoln, who, we are told, went from a wood cabin to the White House; Jonathan, we are often told, went, in eight short years, from being a shoeless village boy – one from a minority of a minority ethnic group at that – to the presidency of Africa’s most populous nation.

    As with Jonathan’s, Shekarau’s debut in the political firmament too had an element of luck. The difference, however, was that with Jonathan it was more luck than any political acuity on his part or on the part of his handlers.  With Shekarau’s election as the governor of the most populous state in the country and its biggest commercial centre after Lagos, it was the opposite. In his case he needed the capacity to cultivate Kano’s highly conscious electorate. It addition he needed tons and tons of money, which he did not have, as a lately retired poor educationist.

    You can hardly put his predicament in 2003 better than the man himself did in an interview in the Daily Trust of March 18, 2011. “In fact in 2003,” he said, “someone looked at my face and said if I don’t have anything (because that was his own assessment) near N100 million, I would be crazy to think of contesting the governorship position. At that time I could not boast of N100,000 not to talk of N100 million, but I contested and won the election. I beat the sitting governor with a gap of over 600,000 votes and don’t tell me I rigged the election because I didn’t have the apparatus to do so.”

    His secret weapon as the governorship candidate of the opposition ANPP then seemed to have been his quiet eloquence, humility and simplicity as a retired teacher. His handlers used the latter two virtues to cast him in the image of an underdog in his contest with Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the sitting governor. And the good people of Kano, from their political history, seem to always love the underdog.

    Four years later as governor, it was debatable that his record had met the expectations of Kanawa. As an educationist he had given their formal education his priority attention. He had also established a Directorate of Societal Orientation (A Daidaita Sahu) which, under the Weekly Trust back page columnist, Bala Mohammed, had done a great job of inculcating the much needed civility in the often unruly people of Kano. The governor had again, in more concrete terms, established arguably the best and the most well-funded pension scheme for public servants in the state, well ahead of the pension reform at the national level.

    In spite of these achievements and others more, few people bet on his re-election as governor in 2007, not least because no governor in the state’s history had ever succeeded in securing a second term.

    On one occasion, the late Alhaji Abubakar Mohammed Rimi, its first elected governor, who at that time had become the state’s leading political godfather as a stalwart of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, boasted that Shekarau’s end as governor was nigh. “Ba Shekarau ba ko Dundundun ne sai mun tsige shi,” he said, roughly meaning even if his surname is Dundundun, i.e. “Forever” not just Shekarau, we will remove him as governor. Linguistically, Shekarau is a Hausa metaphour for a baby that overstays in his mother’s womb for more than the normal nine-month period.

    Rimi’s bombast proved empty; for the first time in the politics of Kano State a sitting governor won his re-election. This time Shekarau beat the PDP candidate, Alhaji Ahmed Garba Bichi, a protégé of Kwankwaso, his old rival. At that time ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo had appointed Kwankwaso his Minister of Defence in apparent compensation for his 2003 loss.

    After his second term as governor, Shekarau, unlike many of his colleagues who considered the Senate their retirement sanctuary, trained his eyes on the nation’s top job. He eventually emerged as ANPP’s presidential candidate for the 2011 elections after the party’s candidate for the 2003 and 2007 presidential elections, General Muhammadu Buhari, left the party as a result of a crisis, to form his own Congress for Progressive Change (CPC).

    And so that year’s presidential election was fought mainly between the ruling party, PDP, and ANPP, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and CPC, as the three leading opposition parties. As in the past, the media tried to organise debates among the presidential candidates. In the one NN24, the now defunct Lagos-based affiliate of CNN, organised on March 18 and in which Jonathan declined to participate, Shekarau emerged, by most accounts, the clear winner against CPC’s Buhari and ACN’s Nuhu Ribadu.

    The BBC News, for example, said it in its review of the debate on April 5 that “if Nigeria’s polls were carried out on Facebook and Blackberry messenger, it seems the outsider – Ibrahim Shekarau, the current governor of Kano State – might just win. His composure during the recent presidential debate impressed Nigerians – he was widely seen in the media as “the winner”.

    Polls, of course, are won and lost through ballot boxes, not on the Internet. Out in the field, Shekarau emerged a distant fourth, after Jonathan the victor, Buhari and Ribadu. Worse still, the tables turned against him in the governorship election when his anointed candidate, Alhaji Salihu Sagir Takai, was beaten, albeit by a narrow margin, by Kwankwaso, this time himself the candidate of PDP.

    Since last year, Shekarau’s political fortune seems to have dwindled even further. He had played a key role in the merger of ANPP, ACN and CPC which formed the All Progressives Congress (APC), the better to take on PDP. He had therefore expected to be acknowledged by the new party’s leadership as its leader in Kano. Instead the party gave the leadership to Kwankwaso shortly after he and several other PDP governors decamped to join APC.

    In anger, Shekarau announced his departure from APC to PDP in January last year. An apparently grateful Jonathan subsequently appointed him minister of Education the following July.

    Jonathan’s hope obviously was that Shekarau would help him get at least a quarter of the state’s massive votes in this year’s presidential election. That hope proved forlorn, as his party was completely routed in all elections in the state this year.

    In spite of the seeming downturn in former governor’s political fortunes, it would be mistaken to write him off just yet as finished politically. As a result of its defeat in the presidential election for the first time since 1999, several PDP officials have since said its presidential candidate for the 2019 elections will come from the North. As a two-term governor, ANPP’s presidential candidate in 2011, former minister and a prominent member of a 15-man reform committee the PDP recently set up, Shekarau is in good stead to revive his political fortunes and vie for its presidential ticket.

    Twelve years ago almost no one gave him any chance of beating a sitting governor. Of course 2019 is not 2003 and, of course, Nigeria is much bigger than Kano. But then in politics the one word one should never say about anyone or anything is “impossible.”

  • Haliru Dantoro, a man of peace, courage

    Haliru Dantoro, a man of peace, courage

    Over 13 years ago, on March 20, 2002 to be precise, I had cause to comment on the tussle for the emirship of Borgu on these pages. The background was the death on February 3, 2000 of its second emir, Alhaji Musa Mohammed Kigera III. For over two years after his death, his succession had become mired in needless controversy. Needless, because the reasons the Niger State Government, under  Abdulkadir Kure, gave for rejecting the choice by the emirate’s kingmakers of Alhaji Haliru Dantoro, younger brother to Kigera III, as the new emir, were dubious, to say the least.

    First, they said, the choice was made by less than the full complement of five members of kingmakers’ council since two of them were deceased. What the government conveniently forgot was that the rules provided for a quorum of three and the head of the council who was alive, the Baakarabonde, held a veto.

    Second, they said the kingmakers tied the governor’s hands by presenting him with only one name. Again, the rules never obligated the kingmakers to give the state authorities more than one name. Here the problem, it soon emerged, was really that the kingmakers did not even consider government’s closet candidate, never mind shortlist him.

    This much became evident when the governor expanded the kingmakers’ council to five by executive fiat and ordered a fresh selection. The council did as it was told and sent in two names – Alhaji Haliru and Alhaji Isiaku Musa Jikantoro, Haliru’s nephew and son of the late emir, then a commissioner in Kure’s cabinet. The council’s first choice was still Alhaji Haliru. Kure chose the second.

    Surprisingly hell did not break loose – thanks essentially to Alhaji Haliru’s faith in pursuing his objective through only peaceful and lawful means.

    Thus instead of encouraging his myriads of supporters to take to the streets, he went to court to challenge his rejection. Actually he had done so even before the reconstitution of the kingmakers’ council and the courts had answered his prayers that the expanded council be stopped from a reconsideration of his selection. The authorities went ahead regardless.

    And so it was that the case dragged on for over three years going all the way to the Supreme Court.  On May 5, 2003, a panel of five justices of the court, with Justice Alfa Belgore presiding, struck out the government’s application with cost against the government when, apparently, it finally saw the light and allowed its lawyers to withdraw its application.

    In between Alhaji Haliru’s first petition and the Supreme Court, the case became a cause celebre in Niger State, with several of the state’s High Court judges declining to hear it, apparently for fear of incurring the anger of the state’s authorities; Justice Ahmed Bima of the Suleja High Court who eventually heard it and decided in favour of Alhaji Dantoro was soon accused of corruption.

    It bears repeating to point out that in all the over three years of Alhaji Haliru’s long struggle to ascend the throne of his forbears as his people’s choice, he restrained his people from resorting to violence. During all that period, the state government had sustained Alhaji Isiaku as the third Emir of Borgu.

    In a private encounter with your columnist in his office following my comment in reference on the emirship tussle, the governor gave me his word that he would replace Alhaji Isiaku with his uncle as the emir, the day his government loses its case. He kept his word. And so it was that not long after the Supreme Court ruling on May 5, 2003, Alhaji Haliru became the fourth emir of one the most important emirates in the country with a history that dates well back before 1954 when it was first established by our British colonial masters from a merger of Bussa and Kaiama, which was its offshoot. As Emir of Borgu, Alhaji Haliru Dantoro Kitoro III became the third most important emir among the state’s eight emirates, after the Etsu Nupe and the Emir of Kontagora.

    The historical Borgu Kingdom had comprised Illo in present day Kebbi State, Nikki, Bussa’s rival of old which is in today’s Benin Republic and Bussa itself. The kingdom that in pre-colonial times had endured raids from the Yoruba to the South, the Hausa to the North and the Nupe across the River Niger to the East, fell to rival claims of the colonising British and the French and was eventually partitioned between the two in 1898.

    At independence much of Borgu was situated in the old Kwara Province and remained so until 1991 when military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, moved it out of Kwara State to Niger State in his last act of state creation.

    By the time Alhaji Haliru became Borgu’s emir, he had served his original state and the country in various capacities including as chairman of Kwara State’s Nigerian Herald at the time it was among the most popular newspapers in the country, as minister of the Federal Capital Territory and as a short-lived senator during the tail end of Babangida’s eight-year transition programme which came to grief in November 1993, following the sacking that month of the Interim Government of Ernest Shonekan, which Babangida had installed after he “stepped aside” in August of the same year.

    Alhaji Haliru’s travails before he finally succeeded in ascending the Borgu throne did not end with his ascension, thanks largely to his prior political engagements. Several times he was queried by the authorities for sundry political and other offences, some of them seemingly petty. He survived his queries as emir even though he was not entirely blameless of some of his alleged trespasses.

    The most controversial of these was the allegation that he had pledged to deliver his emirate in the 2007 general election to a nascent opposition to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which was being forged between Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, at that time estranged from his boss, Olusegun Obasanjo, and the emir’s friend, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, then governor of Lagos State. This was in 2005, the year he finally received his staff of office after several inexplicable postponements.

    Speculations then was that his coronation, after which he was to turban Asiwaju as Jagaban Borgu – the title itself standing alone is “Jagaba”, not “Jagaban” as it is widely but wrongly used, especially by southern-based media, “Jagaban” being a possessive adjective in Hausa – was to provide a convenient cover for a meeting of the vice-president, Asiwaju, Delta State’s James Ibori and Adamawa State’s Boni Haruna, a known protégé of the vice-president, to consolidate their plans for the formation of a new opposition party.

    These speculations were first published by Sunday Tribune of February 15, 2005 but they were swiftly denied as “simply childish” by Dele Alake, Asiwaju’s commissioner for Information and Strategy. However, true or false, the speculations seemed to have defined the relationship between the emir and the Niger State authorities, a relationship that remained far from cordial throughout the remainder of Kure’s governorship and even that of Kure’s successor, Dr Muazu Babangida Aliyu.

    Quick as the opposition was to dismiss the story of its meeting under the cover of the emir’s coronation as childish, it was apparent that his sympathy lay with the country’s opposition elements, if only from his intimate friendship with General Muhammadu Buhari who had become the country’s leading opposition figure from his first presidential bid in 2003.

    The emir, sources close to him say, strongly believed in a prophesy by one of his malams that the general, who was once military head of state, would one day return as civilian president. The emir’s belief, the same sources say, remained unshaken even after the general failed thrice in his bid. This made him one of the most prominent and faithful members of the general’s kitchen cabinet when he succeeded the fourth time around last March.

    Alhaji Haliru will be remembered not only as someone who believed in fighting for his cause only through lawful and peaceful means and for sticking with his friends through thick and thin, even at the risk of his turban. He will also be remembered as an emir who devoted much of his emirate’s resources and his own time to transforming it, through the staging of an annual Borgu International Gani Durbar Festival in celebration of the old kingdom’s history and glory, into one of the biggest tourist attractions in the country, based on the fact that his emirate hosts the country’s premier National Park and Kainji Dam, the country’s first hydroelectric power station.

    His death at 77 on Friday, October 30, in far away Germany after a brief illness has deprived our country of one of its most courageous traditional rulers. It has also deprived our President of one of his closest confidants. Hopefully that death would serve as a warning to the emirate’s kingmakers and the Niger State authorities to avoid a reprise of the unnecessary controversy that presaged his ascension to the throne of his forbears about a dozen years ago.

    May Allah grant the departed emir aljanna firdaus and give his immediate family and his people at large the fortitude to bear the great loss.

  • ‘Born to rule’ syndrome and Nigerian elite

    ‘Born to rule’ syndrome and Nigerian elite

    Last week in this column, entitled: “Jonathan’s fair-weather friends,” I said Dr. Reuben Abati, former spokesman for ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, was wrong to subscribe to the popular belief that a section of this country, specifically the North – for which read the so-called Hausa/Fulani – believed it is, to use the hackneyed expression, “born to rule.” Abati did not use exactly those words in his well-publicised sharp reprimand of Chief Edwin Clark over the godfather’s recent denunciation of his erstwhile godson, Jonathan. But the difference between the words he used and the hackneyed phrase was more or less like that between half a dozen of one and six of the other. The only difference this time was that Abati stretched the presumed northern superiority complex to include others outside the region.

    The betrayal of Jonathan’s confidence by the likes of Clark, Abati said in his putdown of the old man, was one reason “why the existent power blocs that consider themselves most fit to rule, continue to believe that those whose ancestors never ran empires can never be trusted with power.”

    Abati’s reference to “those whose ancestors never ran empires” obviously would include at least the Jukun, who once ran the mighty Kwararafa Empire, the Yoruba who ran the Oyo Empire and the Edo, who ran the Benin Empire. Abati, I am sure, knows very well that none of these three nationalities, or for that matter any other nationality, would agree that it suffers from any superiority complex, along with the Hausa/Fulani. But then even the Hausa/Fulani themselves would deny they suffer from this complex and even go further to accuse others of the same complex.

    The fact is that every nationality in the world, no matter how small, thinks it is superior to others – hence its faith in preserving its language and culture – but paradoxically also accuses others of the same complex. This clearly makes the notion of ethnic superiority, and by the same token, ethnic inferiority complex, more subjective than objective.

    Take, for example, Nigeria’s political-economy, which has rested on a tripod of its three biggest ethnic groups, the Hausa/Fulani in the North, the Yoruba in the West and the Igbo in the East. In his 1987 autobiography, the late Alhaji Babatunde Jose, post independent Nigeria’s greatest newspaperman, provided what I believe is probably the greatest insight into the country’s tripod-based politics.

    This was in Chapter 7 where he shed some light in what led to the infamous Kano Riots of May 18, 1953, which started from Sabon Gari, the mainly Igbo settlement on the city’s outskirts. Jose was at that time on tour of the North as a senior reporter of Daily Times. He had, he said, arrived Zaria from Kano by train when he heard that a riot had broken out in Kano following a campaign rally addressed by Chief Ladoke Akintola, then Deputy Leader of Action Group, in which he disparaged the Northern leadership “in fluent Hausa” for opposing the independence motion that had been moved in parliament in Lagos by his party.

    As a resourceful reporter, Jose persuaded a senior railway officer to allow him to double-back to Kano on a goods train that night. He then filed an eyewitness account of the riot in which he reported that it was one between the Hausa and the Yoruba. “Somehow,” Jose said, “it appeared in the Daily Times as a riot between the Hausa and the Igbo, a very different matter, and potentially a very dangerous error.” So dangerous that Percy Roberts, the expatriate boss of the newspaper, was summoned by the Chief Secretary of the Government (today’s equivalent of Secretary of the Government of the Federation) and persuaded to withdraw the entire edition and reprint it with the correct story.

    “We,” Jose said, “never found out how the mistake occurred. Was it an accident or was it a deliberate attempt to foment trouble?”

    Whatever it was, the incident provided an insight into how politics in this country has revolved around the three biggest ethnic groups in the country. As Jose pointed out in that chapter: “The Yoruba had literally ruled Nigeria since the British came, to the exclusion of the Hausa and the Igbo. While the Yoruba had produced the second generation of graduates in law, medicine and engineering, the Igbo were just starting with the first generation. But the Hausa had not started at all… Lagos was Nigeria and there was resistance to the backward provincials coming to share power in Lagos.”

    So Nigeria’s predicament has been one in which democracy, as essentially a game of numbers, has pitched the elite of one big ethnic group who think they have the numbers to dictate the shots against the elite of the other two big groups who believe they have the Western education to be the rightful heirs to the departing colonialists. And until Jonathan, an Ijaw, came along in 2011, the other smaller ethnic groups were supposed to be little more than bit players in the country’s political drama.

    Numbers may have trumped Western education in the politics of this country since independence, but neither the West (Yoruba) nor the East (Igbo) have the moral right to accuse the North (Hausa/Fulani) of thinking it is “born to rule.” If nothing else, the victory of Chief M. K. O. Abiola, a Yoruba, against Alhaji Bashir Tofa, a “Hausa” in the now famous June 12 1993 presidential election even in the North, and the support his victory got from leading Northern elite like the late Major-General Hassan Usman Katsina, Malam Adamu Ciroma and Alhaji Balarabe Musa, has since debunked the notion that northerners alone believe they are born to rule.

    Of course, a northerner, military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, annulled the election and another northerner, General Sani Abacha, buried the struggle for its realisation as military head of state. But none of them had any one’s mandate to do so. And they only succeeded with the active support of elite from all over the country.

    The fact is that few of our elite, whatever their ethnicity, believe in democracy as a means to power through the popular will. Fewer still are prepared to work long and hard to cultivate any reasonable level of popular support across ethnic, regional and religious lines. Instead, they’ll sooner use all three, and others more, to divide us in order to rule us.

    Anyone inclined to accuse only the North of a “born to rule complex” should remember how, in an interview in Sunday Vanguard of July 21, 2002, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, then a spokesman for ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, declared that whether anyone liked it or not, the South would rule Nigeria for “close to 50 years.” He even argued that the North would “actually be better-off being ruled by people from the South” because the benefits of good governance, which, presumably, was a southern preserve, would “flow down.”

    It should also be remembered that three years after Fani-Kayode’s declaration, the Southern Leaders Forum met in Enugu and demanded that power should remain in the South beyond the 2007 elections and threatened otherwise to boycott the elections.

    So if the so-called Hausa/Fulani, and by extension, the North, appear more guilty of a “born to rule” syndrome than the other big ethnic groups – and remember as we have seen in several multi-ethnic states, such as Benue, Kogi, Delta and Bayelsa, one man’s minority group is another’s majority – it is not because it is the veritable truth. It is simply because as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. the American historian once said: “Karl Marx held that history is shaped by those who control the means of production. In our times history is shaped by those who control the means of communication.”

    In Nigeria’s information and communication order, the North has clearly been grossly disadvantaged historically and has remained so even today. For this, however, the region can have only itself to blame because it has had more than 50 years to catch up or at least narrow the gap significantly, but has failed to do so.

  • Jonathan’s fair-weather friends (I)

    Jonathan’s fair-weather friends (I)

    DR Reuben Abati, the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to former president, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, has been expressing great anger at Chief Edwin Clark, his principal’s self-appointed godfather, over the godfather’s apparent denunciation of his godson recently. In a well publicised article last week, Abati said he couldn’t believe it when he first read remarks by Clark that Jonathan was a good man except that he seemed incapable of fighting corruption.

    “I have,” he said in the opening sentence of his article, “tried delaying the writing of this piece in the honest expectation that someone probably misquoted Chief E.K. Clark, when he reportedly publicly disowned former President Goodluck Jonathan. I had hoped that our dear father, E.K. Clark, would issue a counter statement and say the usual things politicians say: “they quoted me out of context!” “Jonathan is my son”.

    Instead of a disclaimer by Clark, Abati said, “the old man” has been joined by “some Ijaw voices” in denouncing a president they had “defended to the hilt” for all these years. “If,” he said, “President Jonathan had returned to power on May 29, 2015, these same persons would have remained in the corridors of power, displaying all forms of ethnic triumphalism.”

    Abati is absolutely right to denounce Clark and Company as ingrates – as friends who deserted a man when he needed them most. But Abati is equally wrong to blame only Clark and Company for their show of ingratitude. Truth be told, his principal must accept a greater share of the blame.

    Abati was also wrong to say their ingratitude is “why the existent power blocs that consider themselves most fit to rule, continue to believe that those whose ancestors never ran empires can never be trusted with power.” This patently snide remark, obviously targeted at President Muhammadu Buhari’s triumphant coalition with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in March’s presidential election, exposes Abati as harbouring a bitter grudge over his boss’ loss. More importantly, it also suggests that for all his education, Abati is among many otherwise highly educated people who subscribe to the nonsensical but successful propaganda that only those from certain sections of this country believe they are born to rule. I’ll return to this subject next week, God willing.

    Meantime consider an adage in Hausa which says “Ba’a mugun sarki sai mugun bafade,” which translates literally as “there is no bad king, only a bad courtier.” This is one adage I have always considered essentially, if not absolutely, untenable. For me it is no more than an attempt by the society to shield its leaders from the bad consequences of their bad leadership. After all, as another, and for me a much more tenable, adage goes, “show me your friends and I’ll show you who you are.”

    Abati may be right to denounce Clark for denouncing his godson in his hour of need. However, as Abati knows all too well, Jonathan chose Clark, not the other way round. In other words, when Clark unilaterally claimed the godfatherhood of Jonathan, the man had a choice not to acquiesce. Ditto with all those who claimed they were his friends and arch defenders.

    Power, Jonathan should have learnt from the lesson of History, is the absolute aphrodisiac, as Henry Kissinger, the world’s greatest modern-day diplomat, once said. As president of the biggest country in Africa and one of the world’s most naturally endowed, Jonathan ought to have known that few of those who flocked around him and swore by his name, day in day out, did so out of conviction. On the contrary, most of them did so for what they thought they would get out of him.

    You can blame the Clarks of this world for using half-truths and barefaced lies to get the man’s ears. But you cannot blame them for his inability to distinguish between truths and their pretences. The man can have only himself to blame for believing their half-truths and barefaced lies that the vast majority of Nigerians were happy and satisfied with his handling of their country’s political economy all these years, and that any claim that there was widespread disaffection with his rule was the creation of a few disgruntled elements.

    However, even as Abati is right to condemn the Clarks of this world for being fair-weather friends, he ought to know that there are others even more deserving of his anger than Clark and Company. Worse than the Clarks of this world who make no pretence at being apolitical are those who claim they are technocrats whose only concern is to get things done, regardless of the politics of those they work for.

    The fact is that their pretences at being apolitical notwithstanding, these so-called technocrats, especially those we employ from abroad, are past masters at camouflaging their personal interests with the public interest.

    The most obvious case here is Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who former President Olusegun Obasanjo first employed as Finance minister from the World Bank during his second term, until they fell apart towards the end of his tenure and she had to return to her old employers. Then after his 2011 victory at the polls, Jonathan re-engaged her and this time gave her at least nominal control over the economy as Co-ordinating minister, in clear breach of the Constitution, which vested the supervision of the economy in the vice-presidency.

    Under both Obasanjo and Jonathan, the lady from the World Bank carried on as if she did Nigeria a favour by leaving her job to come home and serve her country. “I don’t think,” she once angrily retorted to a BBC interviewer who had asked her if the cases of widespread corruption in Nigeria were not damaging to her reputation, “my reputation is under threat and to imply otherwise is distinctly wrong. I know what I’m doing. I know why I’m here. It would be very easy for me to sit at the World Bank and earn a nice salary and criticise. I gave up a comfortable career to come here and do my bit because I recognise that nobody but us Nigerians can clean it up.”

    Her most singular achievement under Obasanjo was to have helped secure the so-called debt relief of $18 billion – so-called if only because the whole debt of $30billion was questionable to begin with, as several leading economists, including the late Prof. Sam Aluko, had pointed out, and because the onerous terms of paying $12 billion at a go for a country with an annual budget a quarter that amount, was unprecedented. In any case the debt relief made little or no difference to the dismal life of the ordinary citizens of the country. If anything, their lot got even worse.

    However, that achievement did raise Okonjo-Iweala’s profile abroad because it served the interest of International Capital, her real masters.

    Under Jonathan her most singular achievement was to rebase our economy, making it the No. 1 in Africa, ahead of South Africa’s the hitherto No. 1. As with the debt relief, the rebasing made little or no meaning to the lives of ordinary citizens. Even then Jonathan celebrated it as one of his greatest achievements for which he deserved re-election.

    In spite of the fact that the lives of Nigerians have only worsened under Okonjo-Iweala’s supervision of the economy and in spite of the fact that Nigeria has never witnessed the degree of corruption it did under Jonathan, with little or no protest from the lady, all she has received from abroad are accolades in the form of honorary degrees from Ivy League universities, and more recently, appointments from blue-chip companies abroad. It’s not hard to imagine how the opposite would have been her fate if she were the minister of finance of some Western country whose economy had done as badly as Nigeria’s in recent times.

    It is interesting that even the man she has so ill-served by not having the courage to tell him how bad things were, has since joined in her praise-singing, even congratulating her for apparently serving the interest of her masters abroad and friends at home – think of all the generous billions of dollars of waivers to importers for all sorts of junks which she gave out as finance minister – better than those of her country.

    “I have no doubt in my mind,” the former president said the other day, “that you would excel in the two assignments, given your past excellent service both in Nigeria and internationally.” Jonathan was, of course referring to her recent appointment as a senior adviser in Lazard, an American investment bank, and as chair of Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation (GAVI).

    The contrast between Jonathan’s (indirect?) condemnation of his erstwhile godfather through his spokesman and his praise for his former finance minister couldn’t have been sharper. Yet, the minister served him not anymore truthfully and faithfully than the godfather.

    Hopefully, the lesson of all this would not be lost on President Muhammadu Buhari as he prepares to form his cabinet.

  • Erdogan and Turkey’s future

    Erdogan and Turkey’s future

    Turkey, as Daily Trust observed in its editorial of last Thursday, has lately been in the news for all the wrong reasons – well, almost all. And the principal culprit apparently is no other than its current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    The man is probably the country’s most successful modern-day politician – bar Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the acclaimed founding father of secular Turkey, and Suleyman Demirel, who died at 90 last June, having served his country as prime minister seven times and capping it all as its seventh president for seven years from 1993.

    Over eight years ago Turkey hosted the International Press Institute, the global association of journalists which champions free speech. This was for the third time in the association’s history, the first and second time being 1964 and 1988. The keynote address during the opening ceremony of the 2007 congress was delivered by Demirel. Erdogan, then the prime minister, gave the closing speech.

    At the time of the IPI congress there was much talk about what many regarded as “Two Turkeys,” one, pious and Muslim, the other, urban and secular. The dichotomy was exemplified by two political rallies that took place in different parts of the country on May 12, the very day the congress opened in Istanbul. One was by Islamists and the other by secularists.

    In his speech, Erdogan adverted to this talk of “Two Turkeys” in a most dismissive manner. “When a peaceful rally is held in Turkey,” he said, “they immediately start saying, ‘There are two Turkey’s.’ We cannot accept this. The Republic of Turkey is a democratic, secular, social state, with a rule of law, and this is how it is going to remain.”

    Eight years on, it seems, the man has been doing everything he can to undermine his promise of keeping his country for ever democratic and governed by the rule of law, if not secular. The irony of it all is that he has done more than most Turkish politicians to enthrone democracy and the rule of law in his country in a career that took off when he was Mayor of Istanbul, the country’s cultural and commercial capital, between 1994 and 1998.

    Following his mayorship, he founded and led the so-called “mildly Islamist” Justice and Development Party (AKP, in its Turkish acronym) in 2001. With more than a little help from a number of opposition elements, notably the Hismet Movement led by Fethullah Gulen, the American based Turkish intellectual and preacher, the AKP won the subsequent general elections in 2003, 2007 and 2011.

    AKP won the first of these general elections against the wishes of secularists, most especially the powerful military which considered itself the custodian of the country’s secular Constitution. However, Erdogan’s three terms as prime minister saw the country’s transformation into a great economic success and a model of plural democracy.

    He was voted as the country’s ceremonial president last year after he stepped down as party leader in what many must have presumed was a voluntary retirement and glorious exit from a successful career in partisan politics. Events since then have proved such presumptions completely wrong.

    For, far from being satisfied with playing the ceremonial role of a father-figure constitutionally assigned to the president, Erdogan seemed to have become obsessed with transforming himself into the first executive civilian president of his country. Predictably this has led to his falling out with the opposition elements whose alliance made his successes possible.

    One of the first signs of trouble for the man was a massive demonstration in Gezi Park, in Istanbul, two years ago against his decision to build a grandiose presidential palace which many of his countrymen saw as an ego trip and the despoliation of the park’s beauty. More serious, however, was the eruption of a 100 billion US dollar corruption scandal, also in 2013, in which he, some of his ministers and three of his sons were implicated.

    His reaction to the scandal has been to clamp on the media for exposing the allegations. Journalists have been detained, tried and locked up on trumped up charged and a law is being contemplated to give government powers to block “undesirable” blogs. There has also been a ban on Twitter and threats to ban Facebook and YouTube.

    For at least the last two years there has been no love lost between the man and the Turkish media, including many like Hurriet, the country’s leading newspaper, that have had little or no truck with opposition elements, especially those considered Islamist. But it is not only the country’s media that has had to contend with the man’s anger. Both the judiciary and the military have also suffered from his meddling.

    As if to make the man even angrier, the AKP, for the first time since 2003, lost its majority in the parliament in last June’s general election, in spite of – some would say, indeed because of – his determined efforts to secure the two-third majority his party needed to amend the constitution to give the president executive powers.

    So angry was the man with the result of the June elections that he refused, as president, to invite the party with the highest number of legislators to form a coalition government which the party could have done fairly easily. Instead, he chose the option of waiting without a substantive government for five months to have another general election, in the hope that this time his party will get the numbers it requires to amend the constitution.

    Daily Trust’s editorial in question entitled “As Erdogan clamps down on Turkey media” was concerned essentially with media freedom in the country. “Journalism,” it said, “is increasingly becoming dangerous in Turkey as the government clamps down on the media covering stories it wants ignored through threats, raids, arrests and deportation.”

    What is at stake here is much more than media freedom. Beyond media freedom, what is also at stake is the future prospect of a country which, until last year, stood out as proof positive that Islam, on the one hand, and democracy and the rule of law, on the other, are not necessarily mutually incompatible, as many in the West and Islamist extremists want the world to believe.

    It is, as I’ve said earlier in this piece, ironical that the man who now stands between Turkey and its consolidation as a model of a successful Islamic political-economy is the very person who arguably has done more than most of his compatriots to make his country the success story it has been in the last 15 years.

    Much of Turkey’s prospects now depend on how its citizens vote on November 1. Chances are it will be a reprise of the June 7 election which denied Erdogan his personal ambition to become their country’s imperial president. His reaction may be to play the dog in a manger, as many a petulant political loser has done. Hopefully, however, he will see reason and swallow his ambition.

    But in case he doesn’t, one can only hope and pray that his country has come too far down the path of progress to allow one man’s over-ambition to destroy it, or even to reverse its democratic and economic dividends of recent years.