Tag: AGF

Abubakar Malami, the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), clearly had an unpleasant job last Tuesday to defend the federal government’s refusal to arrest leaders of the coalition of northern youths who gave the Igbo in the North a quit notice on June 6. The notice was thought to be unprecedented, hateful and a dangerous incitement to anarchy. In his response when he addressed a number of issues concerning his ministry’s operations, Mr. Malami averred that it was not expedient to arrest the youths despite their objectionable reaction to the agitations in the Southeast. According to him, “Government considered the security implications on the issue. Let me state that government is alive to its responsibility and whoever is found wanting will be prosecuted. This administration is determined to provide good governance and promote justice, peace and fairness.” By not arresting the youth leaders who issued the June Kaduna Declaration, Mr. Malami was suggesting that doing so had negative security implications, or that as a matter of fact the youths had not yet been found wanting. However, it was clear last Tuesday when the AGF addressed the press in Abuja that he was neither able to convince even himself nor his audience.

A few days before then, on August 25, the AGF issued a press statement indicating that his office had approached the Federal High Court in Abuja seeking for the revocation of the April 25 bail granted the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu. The statement clearly suggested that Mr. Kanu had violated the terms of his bail in the following ways: “That the offence for which he is standing trial does not entitle him to bail; that among other conditions for the bail of the 1st defendant is that he should not be seen in a crowd exceeding 10 people; that he should not grant any interviews, hold or attend any rallies; that he should file in court medical updates of his health status every month; that rather than observing all of the conditions listed above, the 1st defendant in flagrant disobedience to the court order flouted all conditions of the bail.” It is indisputable that Mr. Kanu violated his bail terms.

But a day before the AGF applied to the courts for the revocation of Mr. Kanu’s bail, the same northern youths whom Mr. Malami egregiously defended against arrest imperiously issued seven pre-conditions for the rescindment of the June 6 quit notice. Among the seven conditions, all of which appeared to counter or dilute President Muhammadu Buhari’s affirmation of the right of every Nigerian to live in any part of Nigeria unmolested, was the one that predicated their magnanimous rescindment on the arrest and detention of Mr. Kanu for violating his bail terms and for his continuing incendiary remarks. Few people would fail to notice that the northern youths and Mr. Malami seemed in fact to be on the same page. Their actions followed the earlier statement by the Internal Affairs minister, Abdulrahman Dambazzau, that the courts might revoke Mr. Kanu’s bail to curb his excesses.

Worse, President Buhari’s terse and threatening broadcast of August 21, which probably partly inspired the rescindment of the northern youths’ quit notice, also appeared to be in sync with the general feelings in the North that Mr. Kanu should be locked up after the revocation of his bail. The unanimity of opinion across many parts of the North, however, complicates the IPOB-northern quit notice brouhaha. Mr. Kanu doubtless violated his bail terms, having organised or attended rallies, continued to make inflammatory statements, and neglected to file his medical updates before the court that granted him bail. But whether re-arresting him will help resolve the dangerous and inflammable matter at hand is a different thing altogether, especially in view of Mr. Malami’s argument that security implications were considered in the federal government’s reluctance to arrest leaders of the northern youths.

Unfortunately for the government, the argument has shifted away from the appropriateness or otherwise of Mr. Kanu’s defiance of his bail terms to the reluctance, if not criminal connivance, of the government to arrest or censure the northern youths. In the process, a lot of issues have become so complicated that the government is unable to draw a line between moral and political rectitude on the one hand and deliberate and provocative malfeasance on the other hand. The northern youths claimed their actions, hate speech and the unacknowledged hate song that went viral a few weeks ago were a product of the provocation and actions of Mr. Kanu’s IPOB. But neither the pro-Biafra provocation, which has met with vicious government response, including the president’s fierce anger, nor the northern youths’ reaction, which has so far met with deliberate and orchestrated pussyfooting, was lawful. Both should have attracted equal law enforcement and governmental sternness on the grounds that while the provocation was unlawful and malfeasant, the reaction also amounted to unlawful self-help. Instead, the federal government and the security agencies gave the impression that lawlessness had colour and mitigations.

It is puzzling that Mr. Malami dared to suggest that the federal government’s refusal to arrest the northern youths followed a sensible and cautious consideration of the security implications. What is even worse is that the AGF did not feel any obligation to explain in detail what those security concerns were, nor to defend them as factors militating against the government’s stern action. But by going ahead to assert cynically that the government was alive to its responsibility, when that responsibility seemed to be targeted in one direction, Mr. Malami did not convince anyone, let alone himself, that the government had any such ‘life’, nor even dispassion, nor yet impartiality. With the exception of the Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, who at first ordered the arrest of the northern youths but soon inexplicably kept his peace, and the police who also at first gave the impression that they sought out the youths to arrest them, little was heard from anyone else. Indeed, all that was heard were condemnations targeted at both IPOB and the northern youths. Even the Department of State Service (DSS), according to reports, invited the youths once, spoke with them and let them go.

Why it is difficult for the federal government to recognise Mr. Kanu’s obstreperous and trenchant advocacy of the Biafra cause and the equally tendentious and acrimonious northern youths’ reaction as evidence of the dire condition of the country’s unity, is hard to say. These actions and reactions, much of it almost neatly divided along North-South lines, are a testament to the decay afflicting the polity and an indication that little or nothing is being done to salvage the problem. The country is fraying at the edges, and this fraying is compounded by incompetent and prejudiced public officials who lack the knowledge and dispassion to weld a country together out of its many seething and fractious parts.

From the presidency to the relevant ministries, and on to the various law enforcement and security agencies, nothing expert or rational by way of public policies is being done to repair the country’s broken hedges. Contrary to what the presidency says about the country’s unity being settled or non-negotiable, the IPOB crisis and the northern youths’ quit notice, and various other forms of hate speech and hate songs on social media and traditional media, suggest quite clearly that fresh thinking is required to manage the dangerous decline to anarchy. Strong-arm tactics, as appealing as they may look, especially in the short run, do nothing but obfuscate the contentious issues tearing the country apart. The country is not only clearly not united, and nothing extraordinary and informed is being done about it, until the right mix of policies are designed and public officials from the North and South can eschew ethnic and religious prejudices, the situation may worsen considerably until it explodes.

Mr. Malami had no rational and acceptable explanation for the inexcusable reason given by the government not to arrest the northern youths who issued the Igbo a quit notice in June. He compounds that oversight by applying to the courts for the revocation of Mr. Kanu’s bail. Had he and the government he serves been fair-minded enough to deal firmly and expeditiously with the purveyors of quit notice, the move against the IPOB leader would have been explicable and defensible. More, it would have shown everyone that the government understands the need to keep an open mind in dealing with cantankerous groups threatening the peace and unity of the country. And if by chance the government were to also correctly situate those threats where they belonged, and go further to appreciate the factors that undergird and propel those threats, Nigerians would have assumed that sooner or later a political formula and existential fulcrum would be found upon which the unity and stability of Nigeria could rest without being imperilled.