If by acts of commission or omission, Nigeria is allowed, like Somalia, to gradually drop out of the global community of public order, all sacrifice in the past to keep Nigeria one and peaceful may come to nothing.
When Nigeria was one entity, there were cattle routes, which ran from Lake Chad to the Atlantic Ocean. When she became three regions, there cattle routes in each of the regions. When it became a state, each of the states made laws as to how to graze animals. When it became a problem in 1978 under Olusegun Obasanjo as Head of State in March 28, the Land Use Act was made. Under the Land Use Act, the President of Nigeria has control of land in Abuja only. . . . Going by this, the President of Nigeria is not in any way planning to give land to Fulani herdsmen anywhere in Nigeria, because by the provision of the Land Use Act, the President controls no land in the country, except in Abuja.—Senator Ita Etang, representing President Muhammadu Buhari at the South-South Interactive Meeting of Buhari Support Group in Port Harcourt on February 10.
The face-off between Fulani herdsmen and Ondo State public servants in Akure a few days ago may soon add a new lexicon to the federation’s geopolitical encyclopedia, if similar events are not quickly discouraged by constituted authorities.
With the sacking of Akure South Local Government headquarters, the Nigeria Factor continues to develop several layers like an onion. The first coup-like action was in the 1960s when the government of Western Nigeria was sacked through declaration of emergency that suspended operation of all forms of government in the region. It was not called a coup then because it was just a political sacking of a government of a political party that was the country’s main opposition party. However, the sacking of the government of Action Group in the region marked the beginning of events that eventually led to another coup that was unmistakable as a forcible change of a duly constituted government. The January coup was essentially a military one which involved the use of military violence to remove duly elected national and regional officers. Many other coups took place between 1966 and 1994, and the rest is history.
The newest form of ‘coup’ in a post-military polity is one in which groups of civilians with access to weapons of destruction use such power to prevent civil servants from doing the work assigned to them. What happened in Akure South Local Government last Monday is an example of an unusual coup that results not from Fulani herdsmen/farmers clash of cultures, but from Fulani Herdsmen/ Public Servants face-off. Angry members of what acted like a local militia of pastoralists removed from office on Monday workers of Akure South Local Government. According to reporters, it took the intervention of the Commissioner of Police in the State, and the Commandant of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps to restore peace, but not before the local government had been shut down.
Watchers of government affairs reported that normal government activities returned to the local government 24 hours after sacking of the local government. It is unnecessary to remind patriots in power that Boko Haram started in a small way until it developed into taking over of local government areas and turning them into caliphates without caliphars, until most of such terrorists got killed or pushed back into Sambisa Forest to allow normal life to return to most of the North-East region of the country.
With what now appears as Herdsmen Militia roaming the country to burn 120 acres of plantain, oil palm, and mango farm in Esa Oke, to kill and harass farmers and maim women and their daughters in Edo State, in addition periodic murders in Taraba, Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa, etc., the threat to security in the country is getting more dangerous than ever. Should farming communities choose in the spirit of self-defence to organize their own militia, Nigeria may be at risk of becoming a country of camps of war lords, such as have turned Somalia from cosmos to chaos over the years. This tragic scenario seems to be brewing already in Akure. Ojomu Olaleye’s eye-witness account of herdsmen/horticulturists face-off in Akure: “The cows were eating and destroying the vegetables we planted on the field. As Mr. Simon tried to stop them, one of the herdsmen brought out a cutlass and attacked Simon. He (Simon) brought out his own cutlass and they started fighting” should worry all patriots and true believers in united democratic Federal Republic of Nigeria. If by acts of commission or omission, Nigeria is allowed, like Somalia, to gradually drop out of the global community of public order, all sacrifice in the past to keep Nigeria one and peaceful may come to nothing. More specifically, many soldiers and civilians who had made ultimate sacrifice to prevent disintegration of the country will have been made to accept that they had fought in vain.
Now to another matter that cannot wait till next Sunday because of the tight timetable of INEC in respect of issuance of permanent voter cards (PVC). In more peaceful parts of the country than places under the threat of violent pastoralists, especially Lagos State, citizens are expressing difficulties in getting their Permanent Voter Cards (PVC), just as many did four years ago. Complaints range from too few registration units, late resumption of INEC staff hired to process PVC to undue slowness of workers resulting in frustration of applicants seeking to obtain a document without which they cannot vote. The experience of a family that I described on this page in 2015 is being repeated in 2018. A close family member who voted in 2011 could not vote in 2015 because INEC officials at the MKO Abiola Garden registration centre could not locate a PVC that her spouse sighted when he went to collect his own PVC, a few days before the wife returned from a foreign trip to ensure collection of her card before the 2015 election.
The same woman is now having difficulty in 2018. She had gone to the INEC unit closest to MKO Abiola Garden and each of the three days she had visited the centre, she had picked respectively number 140, 148, and 158. Unlike when there was an INEC registration unit in the Abiola Estate four years ago, there is no such place to attend to residents of an estate with about 400 housing units with an average of three adults per unit. INEC needs to avoid being responsible for disenfranchisement of citizens as it happened in 2015. If civil servants get to office for 9am, nothing should prevent INEC staff from doing so, particularly in a matter that has deadlines. In other climes, voter cards are mailed to applicants who are also allowed to register online. This is how to grow and consolidate democracy.
Without doubt, Lagos State needs more registration centers to serve the teeming population of one of the world’s most populous cities. Secondly, INEC staff ought to be incentivized and mandated to resume not later than 9 a.m. for a service that closes around 5 p.m. Further, staff strength in each registration unit ought to be increased and given a supervisory cadre that can enforce efficiency.
Just like the importance of prompt intervention in the herdsmen/farmers culture clash, the imperative of giving PVC to every citizen eligible to vote can never be over emphasized. Many citizens died in the anti-military pro-democracy struggle of the mid-1990s in the country, so that all eligible citizens have the right to determine who rule them. All citizens of voting age who make efforts to get their PVC need to be encouraged, not frustrated. Political folklore in the Southwest in respect of 2015 elections claimed (and still does) that the region was deliberately under-registered to prevent voters in the region from voting for change. A government voted into power to bring change can’t afford failing to insist that INEC do its best possible to ensure 100 percent registration of eligible voters, wherever they may be.
