Tag: blames

The times are indeed hard. And it would seem we have inevitably been boxed to a corner by the challenging times. The dire straits the country finds itself, may account for the avalanche of allegations and recriminations that have of recent, assailed the political space with no visible signs of abating.

In the last couple of days or so, officials of the government including top ranking security personnel have found themselves raising alarm and accusing individuals, faceless groups and unnamed politicians of fanning the embers of the escalating insecurity in the country.

In one instance, a phoney group was alleged to have circulated a document calling on the military to overthrow the democratically elected government in the country. The dust raised by the purported circulation of that illegal document was such that the military high command had to issue a statement, condemning the act with a promise to fish out the culprits to face the raw teeth of our laws. For the military to come public and deprecate the said illegally circulated document, underscores the weight they attached to the matter even as the source of that document and how it was circulated remain largely cloudy.

Before the dust raised by that action could settle down, the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed came up again to accuse the Peoples Democratic Party PDP and its candidate in the last elections, Atiku Abubakar of desperation for power as exemplified by what he called “unpatriotic” utterances with a warning that “such dead-end opposition could be toxic for the nation’s democracy, if left unchecked”.

Mohammed went further to remind Nigerians of a pre-election statement credited to the former vice president in which he allegedly said if Nigerians did not vote out the APC administration, “killings by herdsmen would continue and ultimately spark off a series of ethno-religious crises that would be irreversible”.

Atiku has denied all these allegations describing them as tissues of lies. But the PDP saw the statement as the hauling of insults, misplaced accusations and threats against their party and presidential candidate. The party urged the government to tackle the security challenges confronting it instead of taking shelter in shifting blames.

The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai appeared to have upped the ante when he also alleged that the army has strong evidence against politicians sponsoring bandits, kidnapping and other forms of criminality in the country. According to him,” the myriad of security challenges we are facing right now in the northwest, north central and other parts of the country, I want to believe and rightly so, that it is a fallout of the just concluded general elections”.

Buratai claimed that politicians who saw their defeat as a way of trying to revenge were sponsoring these criminal activities including banditry, herders and farmers clashes. The issues raised here are very weighty though this is not the first time officials of the government and the military have accused unnamed individuals, groups and international organizations of sabotage in their war to rid the country of all forms of criminality.

Yet, that cannot diminish the gravity of the issues traded by Mohammed and Buratai. Given their positions within the scheme of our national affairs, it would amount to a grave risk to suggest that the allegations are mere cover-ups targeted to get even with foes. They may have their facts especially as the authors of the alleged criminal document are yet to be unmasked.

But a critical appraisal of the statement which Mohammed claimed Atiku made during the last electioneering campaigns may not readily lend it to the exact interpretation he (Mohammed) wants to ascribe to it now. By reminding us of that statement, Mohammed would want us to believe there is a positive correlation between the rising insecurity in parts of the country and the statement ascribed to Atiku.

By extrapolation, he is implying that Atiku should know something about the rising insecurity in the country having warned that if Nigerians did not vote out the APC, Killings by herdsmen will continue and spiral to a series of ethno-religious crises. And with the rising insecurity after the elections, Mohammed wants us to believe that Atiku may actually have some information on it given that his warning has come through. It could be a possible dimension to the statement, its remoteness notwithstanding.

But that is not the only angle to the statement as there are other equally persuasive interpretations. And since insecurity was very palpable before and during the election campaigns with the government seemingly helpless in taming the monster, Atiku could have been saying that such a government cannot be trusted to secure the lives of Nigerians and therefore should not be voted into power. Its corollary is that insecurity is likely to increase if a government that has not shown capacity to tame the scourge is returned to power. That is the nature of campaign rhetoric and it is difficult to fault.

This angle seems a more rational interpretation of the warning especially given that the worsening security situation was a major campaign issue during that election. It was a major rhetoric in the campaigns of both the government and the opposition. Even then, both former President Obasanjo and former Chief of Army staff Lt Gen. Theophilus Danjuma had at various times before that election, accused the government and the military of complicity in herders-farmers crisis. The grave issues they raised cannot be glossed over in contextualizing the statement credited to Atiku.

Emerging events would rather appear an actual confirmation of the warning by Atiku. The attempt to confer other colorations to it would seem patently diversionary. Yes, there has been an upsurge in insecurity in parts of the country since after the election with no visible signs of abating. From Kaduna to Katsina, Borno to Benue and Zamfara, the story is the same. It has been a sad tale of insurgency, armed robbery, kidnappings and banditry even as reports are rife that indigenes of Katsina State are now taking up residency in neighbouring Niger Republic for fear of their lives.

The issue to contend with is not as much with the opinions people express on the worsening insecurity as the therapeutic responses of the government to that social malady. It is not enough to finger politicians who lost elections as the brains behind herders-farmers clashes and resurging banditry. These malfeasances had long been with us before the elections.

If politicians who lost elections are behind all these because they want to get even with their opponents, on whose door steps do we lay the blame for all the killings and destruction of property that reduced life in parts of the country to a verity of the Hobbesian state of nature before the elections? The way this poser is answered will be a litmus test for the level of credibility to be accorded some of the emerging theories on the escalating insecurity in the country.

But we run the risk of reductionism by attempting to give a mono causal explanation for the complex sociological and economic issues that give rise to crimes and criminal activities. In attempting to make political capital of the matter, we wittingly or unwittingly gloss over the right things to do to put the spectre of insecurity behind us. Dispositions bordering on buck-passing and outright shadow chasing may explain why we have been serially unable to find a lasting handle to the cankerworm.

More seriously, it is the prime duty of government to maintain law and order. A government; any government loses legitimacy if it is unable to live up to the raison d’être for its existence. It is somewhat discouraging each time the government or its functionaries come up to blame their inability to maintain law and order on phoney enemies.

If the government is really privy to the activities of politicians behind the insecurity, they should arrest them provided it is not another subterfuge to get even with and hound political foes. Overall, the solution lies in effective therapeutic responses rather than tiring voyage in mutual recrimination.

It is not unusual given the dire economic straits in the country on account of debilitating fuel scarcity, for some introspection on how we got to this pass. For a major oil-producing country, the sight of long queues for fuel across the country, the price at which hapless citizens access that commodity and the general toll it is having on economic activities are issues that are bound to generate public apprehension.

Not unexpectedly, reactions have come from various quarters on who or what to hold accountable for this. Opinions vary depending on the divide on which one stands. The trend however, is to heap the blame for the excruciating economic conditions at the door steps of the immediate past regime of Goodluck Jonathan.

Revelations relating to the huge funds allegedly looted by sundry officials associated with that regime are easily propped up to support this line of contention. The argument is that if the monies said to have been diverted into private purses had been deployed for public good, perhaps, much of the economic problems the nation currently face would have been staved off.

President Buhari had cause last week to identify with this school of thought when he blamed the past democratic regimes for the current economic woes of the country. The president said Nigeria has little to show for the huge resources it made from the sale of oil in the last 16 years despite the fact that the commodity sold around $100 per barrel for most part of that period.

He blamed those who managed the affairs of this country within that time frame for failing to plan for the future with a promise to break that vicious cycle by ensuring that Nigeria works at her potentials rather than remaining at the level of potentials.

President Buhari drew example with Ethiopia which solely relies on its airline industry for survival arguing that if that country could afford to sustain its people, Nigeria with greater potentials should be able to do better. The contention that Nigeria has no reason remaining at its current level of development had our leaders meaningfully deployed the huge resources that accrued from the sale of oil for public good, cannot be faulted.

It is also a truism that the problems of this nation for which its citizens have largely remained hewers of wood and fetchers of water despite the enormous gifts Mother nature has endowed us, are traceable to our inability to plan for the future. In its place, we have over time, been treated to a looting spree by sundry buccaneers who bestrode our political landscape like an army of occupation.

In the last 16 years and indeed since the advent of the oil boom in the 70s, Nigeria made enormous earnings from oil sales. But the reality on the ground is that this has not translated to a corresponding level of development such that even some other African countries with meagre revenue have done much better within the development matrix. So when Buhari said there is very little on the ground to show for the huge revenue that accrued to this nation within that timeframe, he is not out of order.

But he erred when he sought to limit that malfeasance to the last 16 years of the return of democracy. The past 16 years correspond with the periods when Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan presided over the affairs of the country under the PDP-led government. Before then and for most part of our post independence era, the military bestrode the entire landscape like a colossus. Within that period especially in the early 70s, oil also commanded reasonable price in the international market.

How much of the receipts from oil sales translated to meaningful development during the reign of the military, remains to be seen. So there must be something in the quality of leadership and its pattern of recruitment that has made it nigh impossible for us to make real progress. There must be some defective orientation in the psyche of our leaders that predisposes them to what foremost political scientist, Richard Joseph described as prebendalism. That is the issue to contend with and unless we realistically address this tendency, the leaders of today may not come out better than those of yesterday.

In comparative terms however, there is more on the ground development wise within this period than the years the military ruled this country. It is vital to make this point because in the past, such excuses have been capitalized upon by overzealous military officers to prematurely terminate democratically elected governments. And as has been evident from our case, the military did not post any positive record of better management of our resources.

So the blame game can go on and on. But there must be a point at which those in authority must take responsibility. The impression one gets each time we are reminded of how the last regimes mismanaged the nation’s economy is that the current regime is not willing to take responsibility for its actions. That the PDP did not live up to the expectations of Nigerians in the last 16 years is now history. And history is only relevant to the extent it directs actions of today for the better. What is vital now is not constant recourse to the past but how to convert the experiences of that past to positively impact on the actions and policies we take today.

With nearly one year in office, what Nigerians expect are corrective actions by the government to improve on the fortunes of the country. They expect the dividends of their votes to translate to improvement in their lives and services provided by the government. They want to see new ways of doing old things; they want people oriented policies with positive impact on the lives of the toiling masses.

They are eager to see a government that will convert the mistakes of the past to advantage and reverse the cycle of despondency and abject poverty that ravage the country in spite of the huge revenue accruals from the sale of oil. They want quick fixes given the high enthusiasm that greeted the change of baton last May. Unfortunately however, each time challenges arise in the management of the economy, we are quickly reminded of the sins of the last government as if there are no solutions to such acts of omission or commission.

Buhari has promised to move beyond bandying our potentials to convert such potentials to advantage. That is the way to go. He has also drawn parallels with poorer country that have been able to manage their economies implying that there is no reason Nigeria should not do better.

We must proceed beyond the past and chart the right course to stabilize the future. Not much is gained by attempts from supporters of the regime to blame the last regime for the biting fuel scarcity. Nigerians know the last government left office about one year ago and fuel situation was not that bad then. They are also privy to the fact that much of the stabilization we had in the supply chain in the last couple of years was achieved during that regime.

Attempts at holding it culpable for the biting fuel scarcity and the scandalous prices the commodity sells across the country, cannot fly. Much of the problems we face with shortages in domestic fuel supply have to do with the way the government reacted to the twin issues of fuel importation by oil marketers and subsidy payment.

The government misfired in coming to the conclusion that it has the capacity to almost solely take up the importation of the fuel needs of the country. Having found out the futility of that policy, it was not surprising that it last week handed back about 54 per cent of such importation to private marketers. And now, they talk of price adjustments or price modulation such that has given rise to speculations on the re-introduction of the fuel subsidy regime. Are we still in doubt of where the blame lies?