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Tag: Murtala Nyako

  • Plot against Nyako: Tukur’s son splits PDP

    Plot against Nyako: Tukur’s son splits PDP

    •Stakeholders threaten protest vote, root for APC’s Ribadu
    •Nyako’s son, Hong, Gulak, Fintiri, favoured as deputy governor

    There is trouble in the Adamawa State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) arising from its alleged plot to impeach Governor Murtala Nyako.

    The party is sharply divided over moves to make Awwal Tukur, son of the immediate past national chairman of the party, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, deputy governor should the plot against Nyako succeed.

    Alleged plans by the elder Tukur to make Awwal the PDP governorship candidate in the state next year were partly responsible for the crisis that forced him out of office.

    The presidency and the PDP want Nyako axed on the strength of a recent memo he wrote to his fellow northern governors on the security challenges in the north, particularly his claim that the federal authorities were carrying out genocide against the north in the anti-Boko Haram military campaign.

    The memo, in the view of presidency officials and the security agencies that studied it, constitutes a threat to national security.

    Barring a change of heart, impeachment proceedings against Nyako are expected to commence within the next two weeks.

    Those involved want the matter dealt with expeditiously and are already lining up who gets what once Nyako is out of the way.

    The constitution stipulates that the deputy governor (in this case Mr. Bala Ngilari) should take over once  his principal is impeached.

    But who becomes his deputy has become a big issue in the PDP with many stakeholders demanding an end to Tukur’s stronghold on the party in the state.

    The PDP stakeholders are also threatening to resort to protest vote in 2015 in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC) which is trying to build consensus around a former Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu.

    They say Ribadu has a better profile than Ngilari.

    Investigation by our correspondent revealed that some PDP leaders in the state are opposed to the removal of Nyako because it might affect the fortunes of the party in Adamawa.

    It was gathered that the leaders, who met on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in Yola and Abuja decided to send representation to President Goodluck Jonathan to shelve the idea of removing Nyako because of the ethnic crisis it might generate in the state.Although the PDP stakeholders agreed that there are enough grounds to impeach Nyako, they were also of the view that the Fulani hegemony in the state will not accept any change now.

    It was learnt that most PDP stakeholders, including 13 members of the Adamawa State House of Assembly, prefer Nyako completing his term in office.

    Findings also revealed that PDP stakeholders are split over plans to make Awwal Tukur the next deputy governor if Nyako is impeached.

    The former National Chairman of PDP had been scheming for his son to be the governorship candidate of the party in Adamawa State in 2015.

    The scheming caused disaffection between Bamanga Tukur and PDP stakeholders leading to defection to APC in the state.

    It was gathered that the stakeholders are still opposed to Awwal Tukur as deputy governor in spite of his antecedent as a former member of the House of Representatives like Ngilari.

    Some stakeholders have recommended a former Minister of State for Health, Dr. Aliyu Idi Hong; ex-Political Adviser to the president, Ahmed Gulak, the current Speaker of Adamawa House of Assembly; and Nyako’s son, AbdulAziz, as the next deputy governor.

    A highly-placed source said: “The impeachment plot against Nyako might fail because even among ourselves we are divided along ethnic and religious lines. Irrespective of the sins committed by Nyako, the Fulani (who are in the majority) will not take kindly to the sack of the governor.

    “Already the Fulani and Muslim leaders have been calling members of the House of Assembly one by one to reject the plot by the presidency and PDP. About 10 to 13 members of the Assembly may oppose the impeachment bid based on the persuasion of the Fulani.

    “Some members of the Assembly have been telling Fulani leaders that the presidency and PDP had been persuading them to impeach Nyako.”

    Another source, who spoke in confidence, confirmed the disagreement among Adamawa PDP stakeholders on plans to remove Nyako.

    “The source said: “Some of us in PDP are looking at the larger picture. If the presidency and the PDP go ahead to remove Nyako, it will lead to protest vote by the Fulani in 2015.

    “With this development, APC will convincingly win the state if it reaches consensus on ex-EFCC Chairman, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu as its candidate.”

     

    “It is impossible for Ngilari to beat Ribadu, who is a Fulani and an accomplished anti-graft Czar.

    “This plot requires being tactical. Even if PDP heats up the state with the impeachment threat, APC might still have the upper hand.”

    A third source said: “The plot is beclouded by disagreement over the choice of the next deputy governor. Our former National Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur is seeking the ticket for his son, Awwal Tukur.

    “Some stakeholders are saying we should bring in Nyako’s son, AbdulAziz to appease the Fulani and earn grassroots support for the impeachment.”

  • As we crucify Nyako…

    As we crucify Nyako…

    Retired Admiral Murtala Nyako has been reaping the whirlwind for sowing the wind of controversy by his recent claim that President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration has been hiding under war against Boko Haram to commit genocide against the North. He made his claim in a letter dated April 16 to his 18 counterparts in the Northern States’ Governors’ Forum. The letter, entitled: “On-going full-scale genocide in Northern Nigeria,” sought the support of his counterparts to stop the alleged genocide.

    Instead of support, Nyako, a former Deputy Chief of Defence Staff, a former Navy chief, first military governor of Niger State and currently serving out his second term as a civilian governor of his native Adamawa State, has been suffering from splendid isolation – indeed, worse.

    The chairman of the NSGF, Dr Muazu Babangida Aliyu, has dismissed his claim as baseless. Another governor, Abia’s Theodore Orji, has said there was “unanimous condemnation of the memo” by the expanded security meeting of governors, service chiefs and other senior government officials summoned by the president last week. Not least of all, virtually all his colleagues have maintained an apparently embarrassed silence over his call for their support.

    Probably the harshest criticism of the governor, however, has been Senate President David Mark’s brief but strongly worded opening remarks at the resumption of the Upper Chambers on April 29. Mark, speaking against the background of the suspected Boko Haram Easter bombing of the Nyanya motor park on the outskirts of Abuja which claimed many lives and the kidnapping of over 200 secondary school girls from Chibok in Borno State, did not name names. But when he said speaking along partisan lines over the fight against Boko Haram is “condemnable and totally unacceptable” and that “We should not sell the truth to serve the hour,” it was pretty obvious who he had in mind.

    Outside government circles, there has been a near universal condemnation of the governor by the newspaper commentariat. For example, The Nation (April 24) condemned his letter as “divisive and opportunistic.” Sunday Trust (April 27) denounced his stance as “dangerous” while The Guardian (May 5) said his language “was indecorous and inappropriate” for his high office. It also dismissed his assertions as “wild and unguarded,” without the backing of any evidence.

    As for the country’s leading newspaper pundits, as far as I know, only Adamu Adamu, the must-read Friday columnist of Daily Trust, has so far written to unequivocally support the governor in a two-part piece on April 25 and  May 2.

    I completely share the sentiments of those who have condemned Nyako’s use of such gutter language as “bullshit” and strong words like “evil-minded” in his letter to describe the presidency, even if it fits the description. As The Guardian said, certain language usages are simply unbecoming of certain office holders.

    I also completely agree with the newspaper that, in so far as the governor’s frustration with the Federal Government’s  obvious mishandling of the Boko Haram insurgency is understandable, his letter should have been addressed to Nigerians instead of only to his “fellow Governors and Citizens of the North.” The theatre of Boko Haram’s terrorism may be the North, more specifically the North-East, but the scourge has since transmogrified into a Nigerian problem which has claimed the lives and limbs of Nigerians from all parts of the country.

    However, while we condemn the governor for his language, sensationalism and sectionalism, we must accept that his allegations are not completely baseless.

    First, there was this online interview Sunday Trust had with Jomo Gbomo, the spokesman of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) nearly five years ago and which the newspaper published in its edition of June 21, 2009. In the half-page interview, Gbomo threatened MEND would extend its war from the creeks to the North. “Due to the fact that the (Northern) elite,” he said, “are taking us for fools and the majority of soldiers (fighting us are) from the North, the time has come when brothers have to go to war. In the end there will be mutual respect and true federalism will be mutually beneficial to all of us.”

    In the end, Gbomo’s war against the North did not materialise because President Umaru Yar’adua, a Northern aristocrat if ever there was one, anticipated it through a policy of amnesty for the militants, most notably Government Ekpemupolo, a.k.a. Tompolo, and Mujahid Asari Dokubo.

    As fate would have it, Yar’adua died before he could implement his policy. He was succeeded by his Vice, Goodluck Jonathan, first as acting president and eventually on his own steam following the 2011 presidential elections. This was against stiff opposition from much of the North which felt cheated out of the period Yar’adua would have spent as president if he had not died.

    MEND is said to be no more, but some of its leaders today are part of the kitchen cabinet of President Jonathan. As such they have become powerful and rich beyond their wildest imagination through government patronage. And they are unlikely to have forgotten how things were before the amnesty.

    Naturally they, and other beneficiaries of the current dispensation, would hate to lose their new-found power and wealth. As such they are likely to do anything to retain it. It is obvious that the greatest threat to doing so is from sections of the North with more than enough votes to deny their patron another term in a free and fair election.

    These beneficiaries of the current dispensation obviously have the motive to take the battle for power to the “enemy” territory. More importantly, their stupendous wealth has given them the means. It therefore does not sound as outrageous as Nyako’s critics believe for the man to conclude that some people in authority or having its ears are hiding under the war against Boko Haram terrorism to “deal” with the “enemy.”

    If this sounds like stretching logic to an absurd conclusion, consider the president’s response to a question during his Media Chat of last Monday about the seeming ineffectiveness of his handling of the Boko Haram insurrection all these years. “Things,” he said dismissively, “are not getting worse. The situation is calming, for now there is a low vibe. We have been able to suppress it reasonably well”.

    Clearly, a president who will sound so complacent when over 1,500 people have been killed so far this year – more than all the casualties in the first four years of the war on Boko Haram – is either criminally negligent of his responsibility or, at the least, does not give a damn about the pain a section of the country is going through because he seems to think its leaders, if not its people, don’t like him.

    Worse still, consider his response to the April 15 mass kidnapping of secondary school girls from Chibok. Instead of taking responsibility for dealing with the incident, the president has allowed his rather overweening wife, Dame Patience, and several of his sidekicks, to create the impression that the authorities did not believe there was any kidnapping in the first place; that it was all the handiwork of the enemies of his administration hell bent on painting it as incompetent, heartless and indifferent.

    Second, if Governor Nyako went overboard in his allegations, he merely took his cue from the president. Two years or so ago the president claimed, without giving any shred of evidence, that his government was infiltrated with Boko Haram agents all the way to the presidency. Since then several of his close aides, including Reno Omokri, his special assistant on social media, and the director-general of the State Security Services, have attempted to frame several prominent Northerners, notably the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria turned whistleblower, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, and even more ridiculously retired Colonel Dangiwa Umar, one of his staunchest supporters in the country, as financiers of Boko Haram.

    None of these aides have received as much as a rap on the knuckles even though their attempts have been exposed for what they were – frame-ups. Predictably this has fuelled widespread belief that the president is more interested in making political mileage out of the Boko Haram insurgency than in ending it.

    Governor Nyako may have overdone himself in accusing the president of committing genocide against the North, but the best way to expose the governor’s claim for the hyperbole that it mostly was is to see it as a wake-up call to go beyond using essentially military means to solve a problem which requires sincere dialogue as well if it is to be overcome.

     

  • I was not condemned at security meeting, says Nyako

    I was not condemned at security meeting, says Nyako

    Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State is disputing claims by some of his fellow governors that he was roundly condemned by participants at last Thursday’s meeting of the National Security Council.

    A major issue discussed at the meeting was Nyako’s letter to Northern Governors in which he accused the federal government of hiding behind the current state of emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe to perpetrate alleged genocide in those states.

    Several governors were said to have engaged Nyako in a shouting match at the meeting calling his action unpatriotic.

    But speaking to reporters in his Dougirei residence in Adamawa State, Gov. Nyako said what is true about the meeting is that people ‘made observations’ about his letter.

    “My letter was never condemned. People made observations but nobody came out and asked why or how I reached my conclusion and all that. They never asked me this,” he said.

    “Mr. President allowed everybody to speak; he asked for comments and we were allowed to read the paper (letter) again; and he asked for comments. Nobody condemned me for writing such a letter. The talk that my paper (letter) was condemned is all nonsense.”

    He said the President remains his friend regardless of their recent political differences. He also praised President Jonathan for the matured manner in which he handled the situation.

    According to him, “We as a people must remain loyal to the President and always pray for him to succeed as our leader. He is my friend and brother and I’m his Special Adviser on Agriculture and he also appointed me as a member of the National Economic Council.

    “The President is a good person. The only problem is that many Abuja based politicians with evil motive have been going to him to say Admiral Murtala Nyako doesn’t like him. The President has since stopped listening to charlatans who want to put a wedge between me and him.

    “Mr. President, to me, was really superb the way he handled the Security Council meeting. He wore no anger, no sign of getting too involved and he allowed everybody to speak. This is a democratic country and we are free to speak.”

    He dismissed as untrue a statement by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that he was out to frustrate Jonathan’s visit to Adamawa.

    Such statements could only have come from ignorant people, he said.

    “I am ready to leave the entire Government House for the president during his visit. In fact, I was saddened that the president had to be confined to a certain cubicle during his last visit to the state while the Government House was there for him to use,” Nyako said.

    He explained why he had to write the controversial letter, in the first instance.

    He said the massive deployment of troops to the northeast occasioned by the imposition of state of emergency has not, in any way, stemmed what he called mass murder and destruction of property in the zone.

    He said:”Everybody knows that the security situation, especially in the north, is degenerating by the day as mass killing is being recorded. The records are there. A number of people taken into the custody of the state and the nation’s apparatus are being taken to the grave yard for burial from the cells.

    “Those inmates are not being fed or looked after and it is a well-known fact in this state.”

    Nyako added that the failure of any government agency to carry out its responsibilities is usually an indictment of the affected institution.

    He described the involvement of the military in containing internal insecurity as out of fashion.

    “About 80 percent of the world’s nations have prohibited the use of the military to contain internal security issues. The use of the military in internal security situation is prohibited by most nations in their constitution,” Nyako said.

    This trend, he said, informed the decision of the Babangida Administration to refuse to send the military to contain the Zangon Kataf uprising and the crisis in Taraba State.

    The governor expressed happiness that a new resolve has been adopted by all stakeholders and with that a new strategy to resolve the insurgency is being taken by the stakeholders to resolve the insurgency.

     

  • ‘Don’t incite northerners against Jonathan’

    ‘Don’t incite northerners against Jonathan’

    Former Kaduna State Military Governor Col Abubakar Dangiwa Umar (rtd) has warned Adamawa State Governor Murtala Nyako not to incite northerners against President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Nyako had said the President‘s action was responsible for the “genocide” in the North.

    Umar said such pronouncement from a former military officer and a governor was inciting and indirectly asking northerners to rise against the Federal Government.

    He said as a retired senior military officer, Nyako should be aware of the weighty nature of his statement.

    His words: “Nyako’s statement is shocking and worrisome and I hope people like him do not set the nation on fire. He should desist from making wild allegations.

    “What is his aim? Does he want northerners to pick up arms against the Federal Government or what? These are comments that should not come from leaders who want the nation to progress.

    “How can he prove the allegation he made against President Goodluck Jonathan? Doesn’t he realise the implication of this kind of statement?”

    Umar urged Northeast governors to channel all grievances on the insecurity in their domains through the appropriate channels rather than embark on anything that would worsen the problem.

    “I expect Nyako to attend the next council of state meeting. He should raise those issues at the meeting.

    “What I think should happen now is for all northern governors to work with President Jonathan to handle the security challenges.

    “We cannot win the war against counter insurgency by making wild allegation.

    “Murtala Nyako should understand the implication of his statement.”

  • Governors divided over emergency rule extension

    Governors divided over emergency rule extension

    There appears to be a split among governors on whether or not to extend emergency rule in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. President Goodluck Jonathan is meeting with governors on security challenges tomorrow in Abuja.

    Governors Murtala Nyako, Kashim Shettima and Ibrahim Gaidam of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states are adamant on their position that there should be no extension of the emergency rule.

    The three governors have secured the support of some of their colleagues to reject plans to extend the state of emergency in their states.

    But some governors have been trying to pressurise the President to extend the emergency.

    Our correspondent gathered that there are three options before the President ahead of the crucial meeting.

    The options are: .extension of emergency rule; .ending the state of emergency with enhanced security apparatchik in the three states; and .placing restrictions on some services – in line with the Terrorism (Prevention) (Amendment) Act 2013.

    The presidency is looking at the security implications of the three options.

    Jonathan, in a November 5, 2013 letter to Senate President David Mark, sought approval for the extension of the state of emergency in the three states because “some security challenges still exist in a few parts”.

    The request was granted by the Senate and the House of Representatives.

    Investigation by our correspondent revealed that although the Presidency was already looking at the legal and security implications of extending the state of emergency, the three governors poised to resist it.

    The governors, who have reached out to their colleagues, are already lobbying members of the National Assembly to reject any notice of extension of the emergency rule.

    A top source said: “Most of the governors are rallying their colleagues to end the state of emergency in the three states. They have also secured the support of quite an appreciable number of National Assembly members.

    “So, the governors are determined to frustrate any move to extend the state of emergency. Therefore, unlike the overwhelming support, which the extension enjoyed in the National Assembly, it might not scale through this time around.

    “The state of emergency is also already politicized, with the Presidency feeling scandalised.”

    A governor said: “I know the state of emergency might be one of the issues to be discussed on Wednesday. We are already determined to ask the President to end the rule and let us see how the three states will cope.

    “We prefer total overhauling of the security apparatchik in the three states than the state of emergency which has paralysed the economic activities of the states.

    “The good thing is that the President cannot arbitrarily decide the fate of the three states. It is going to be a game of number in the National Assembly to extend the state of emergency. We are waiting for his decision.”

    One of the governors of the affected states, who spoke in confidence, said: “We believe we have had enough of the state of emergency because it has not stopped killings in the three states. Our position has not changed on the need to end it.

    “We want to appeal to the President to provide adequate security instead of the extension of the state of emergency.

    “What we are doing is to appeal to our colleagues to understand our position. We are better off without state of emergency.”

    Responding to a question, the governor said: “I think the state of emergency should end on May 19 and not April 19 , 2014 if it was really for a six-month period.”

    A Presidency source, however, said: “Wednesday’s meeting is going to focus on how to end rising insurgency in all parts of the Federation.

    “The President will present new security proposals or strategies by service chiefs to the governors for their input. He expects them to be large hearted enough and put the nation’s interest above personal sentiments or political partisanship.

    “The new strategies will be applicable to all the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT. He is meeting the governors because security is now everyone’s business.

    “There may be need for more financial collaboration between the Federal Government and the states on the new security measures.

    “The President is likely to use the opportunity to appeal to all stakeholders to avoid politicising security operations in the country. Some of the troops are feeling unappreciated.”

    Asked of the state of emergency in the three states, the source added: “This will be an issue but not the main agenda.

    “Even if it us not on the agenda, some of the governors will raise it because the fate of the state of emergency in the three states has dominated public discourse in the past few weeks.

    “The President has not made up his mind on the extension of the state of emergency because he is still consulting on the matter. These governors should appreciate that the President is determined to end these killings in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states.

    “The President is also likely to engage the leaders of the National Assembly on the way out. The consultation is necessary so that the governors will not turn round to point accusing fingers at Jonathan.

    “We have three options including the extension of the emergency, ending it and applying the Terrorism (Prevention) (Amendment) Act 2013 as part of the enhanced security operations in the three states.

     

  • Nyako’s play of the giants

    Nyako’s play of the giants

    Not even in the wildest stretch of democratic licence could one have fathomed the on-going macabre dance between the Jonathan presidency and Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa coming days after the carnage at Nyanya. Indeed, only in the engulfing climate of ethical regression – or better still – environment of leadership vacuity could one begin to make sense of the brickbats between two foremost institutions of the Nigerian state at a time of grave national calamity.

    To begin with, there is a lot to say of an 71-year old ex-governor, ex-three star general, one-time chief of the country’s Navy, recipient of two of the nation’s topmost honours – GCON, CFR, who currently occupies a gubernatorial office waking up to do a letter to his 18 northern counterparts alleging grievous crime of genocide against the central government on the basis of claims without a shred of evidence. We are talking here of an individual, who by all qualifications, should ordinarily qualify for the elite club of statesmen, making dangerous, unsubstantiated claims against the state.

    Agreed, some would argue that there is probably more to say about a pathetic, blundering presidency that has failed to rally Nigerians behind it in the war on terror. A presidency that has far too meagre results to show for the humongous resources deployed to the war; one that couldn’t find the words top connect with our hearts in the aftermath of the most gruesome calamities that has befallen us, and one under which an emergency national security meeting to review the security situation would overnight transform to a conclave of PDP governors on security! Add that to the pathetic PDP stridently seeking to pin the tag of terror on the opposition and the picture of an engulfing anomie emerges.

    However, I believe that the situation is bad enough without another rabid, partisan “elder” coming in to further muddle things up for us. For not even in the hate-filled politics of the current time would the attempt by Nyako to stand facts – and logic – on their heads wash! Merely by his letter, any hopes by the younger generation that the Nyako generation – in whom the nation had invested heavily – would somehow rise to the challenge of the times would have by now dissolved into a mirage. They are evidently a major part of the problems for which the nation is currently in quest of solutions.

    But then, the trouble with the Nyako’s of this world is that they are living in the past. When he talks about the Jonathan federal government as being the chief sponsor of the Boko Haram, or fingers the administration in the daily mass murder of innocent Nigerians, including the rampant kidnapping of young boys and girls; or the attempts on the lives of prominent northerners like Senate President David Mark in Imo State, Governor of Benue State Gabriel Suswan and himself or even prominent northern traditional leaders like the Shehu of Borno and the Emir of Kano, of course, they are not only meant to sound good to the ears of his “fellow northerners”, they are designed to deflect from the well-known culpability of the region’s leadership in the festering of the monstrous terror machine. Guess it is part of that living in denial that the pervasive insecurity– whether it is the Boko Haram carnage in the north-east, or the frequent the clashes between the nomadic Fulani and farmers across the middle-belt and north central – are alien imports aided and abetted by the federal militias!

    The fact of the matter is that Boko Haram is real. The bases are in the North. Perhaps the only area of dispute is the extent to which the menace has mutated. Not even Governor Nyako’s version of reality can change the fact that the Boko Haram has since transformed into a global terrorist network with ties with the Al-Quaeda in the Mahgreb.

    Terrorism, on the other hand, is a relatively new challenge to the military, the same way that intelligence has remained substantially an alien culture among Nigeria’s population. The talk of winning the terror war without active citizen engagement is sheer bunkum. But then, how could one imagine possible collaboration when leaders appear to denigrate the efforts of the fighting men?

    What was Nyako’s cry of genocide meant to achieve? Hardly about getting the best of the fighting men; at least not with the military – a branch of which Nyako once had the privilege of leading – increasingly presented as an occupation force to the people. Surely, it’s not about tasking the field commanders about the need to observe scrupulously, the rules of engagement, or calling those known to have breached the rules to account. I prefer not to deal with the grave charge of genocide alleged by Nyako which I consider at best opportunistic and cheap.

    It is not even about the ordinary people – the hapless victims of Boko Haram’s butchery – who genuinely desire an end to their agonies.

    No, it is a re-enactment of the long-running play of giants!

    In the circumstance, his reference to an exit strategy for the current state of emergency would appear an after-thought!

    I guess it is fine to consider “Northern Nigerian Amnesty to the culprits and consequently squarely address all other matters connected with the Amnesty and Boko-Haram syndrome”.

    So also is his proposal “to support maximally all those who have been adversely affected by ‘Boko-Haram’ to sue the federal administration to court for full compensation for any loss of life and property as per existing Laws of Nigeria including those enacted from 1915″ fine. Indeed, the idea of a Trust Fund to address the matter would be most welcome.

    The question is – would the proposed restitution also apply to other victims of state-sponsored injustices in other parts of the country particularly those predating the Boko Haram? Or is this an extension of the specious definition of ‘justice’ that has brought the nation to this sorry pass?

  • Presidency, Nyako clash over genocide claim

    Presidency, Nyako clash over genocide claim

    THE Presidency has described a memo written by Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State to the Northern Governors’ Forum as a sad betrayal of trust by a major beneficiary of the Nigerian nation.

    Reacting yesterday to the memo which highlighted Governor Nyako’s fears that the Presidency may intentionally not be doing enough to solve the many problems of insecurity in the north, the Presidency said the Governor’s positions smacks of “an unmitigated leadership disaster.”

    Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, in a statement said the content of the governor’s letter betrays his lack of a sense of history. According to Okupe, the memo portrayed the governor as incapable of rising above parochial sentiments as a result of his deep rooted disdain for facts and truth in public discourse.

    The SSA, who said the memo is extremely divisive, added that it was intentionally meant to incite one section of the country against the other.

    “Governor Nyako claims that President Goodluck Jonathan is from the Eastern region which according to him was responsible for the killing of Northern political elites on the 15th of January 1966. This is a very disgraceful remark by the governor and a pathetic embarrassment to the Nigerian Military from where Nyako derives his career antecedents. It is certainly a reflection of the Governor’s ignorance and unpatriotic inclinations.”

    Similarly, the Adamawa State governor referred to the Boko Haram terrorist group as a ‘phantom organization’ which he believes does not exist! How hypocritical? In his unwise and desperate attempt to demonise the Federal Government, Governor Nyako likened the military operations against insurgents to the activities of German dictator, Adolf

    Hitler. In his befuddled mind and apparent hallucination, the Federal Government should be held responsible for the activities of insurgents in the North East and the sad killings, wanton destruction, murder and kidnapping of school children as well as other horrendous activities of Boko Haram should be hung on the neck of the Federal Government!

    “He therefore invited his colleague northern governors to join him to sue the Federal Government. This definitely defies common sense and portrays Mr. Nyako as unfit for the hallowed position of a state governor. It is obvious that Governor Nyako’s opposition to the declaration of a State of Emergency in three affected states of the North East as well as his repeated calls for the withdrawal of the Military from troubled states without any credible alternative or security road map, is an open endorsement of the activities of the insurgents which is meant to provide them unrestricted opportunity to further unleash terror on innocent citizens in order to precipitate chaos, further instability, mayhem and anarchy ; a situation which they intend to exploit to undermine the administration and truncate our growing democracy. This, Nigerians will surely not allow to happen.”

    Okupe restated the federal government’s “continuous determination to defeat terror and restore peace to every part of northern Nigeria so that every law abiding citizen can go about with his/her socio economic pursuit without let or hindrance.”

    But reacting to the presidency’s statement same day, Governor Nyako said the response by the Presidency to his memo to Northern Governors has further proved that those running the Federal Government are too arrogant and confused in their handling of the affairs of the country.

    Accusing the Presidency of telling lies and feeding the public with untruth in its response to his memo to fellow Governors of the northern states on the activities of the dreaded Boko Haram Islamic sect and other issues of insecurity, Nyako, in a statement by the Director, Press and Public Affairs in the Government House, Ahmad Sajoh, said it is now very clear that President Goodluck Jonathan is very complacent about the insecurity in the northern part of the country.

    According to him, “They arrogate all knowledge and wisdom to themselves alone. We hold the statements we released as true and challenge those who claim to have a sense of history to cut-off the use of jaundiced semantics to address the issues raised in this and several other documents before it. By telling black lies about the attack on Governor Nyako which was never investigated nor ascertained, the Presidency is providing further proof that it knows more than it is willing to admit in the whole saga.”

    The statement accused the federal government of misleading the populace on all fronts saying, “Feeding the public with untruth is becoming a new culture in Abuja. The statement on the supposed rescue of the abducted girls is enough to prove that. It is a pity that responsible and supposedly educated people could manufacture statements and attribute them to others just to create an escape route from their glaring failures. None of the statements attributed to Governor Nyako by the Presidency were ever made by him. They were all manufactured for lack of a sound counter argument.”

    The Adamawa helmsman challenged the President to react directly to the issues raised in the memo instead of making up statements that were not part of the correspondence in question.

    He continued “If indeed the Presidency is not complacent about the killings in the country how come the President went dancing a day after several citizens were killed in Abuja? If they claim that Nyako does not deserve to be Governor, are they fit to be where they are? When we say the Boko Haram phenomenon is phantom we are talking based on several testimonies by the President.

    “At one point he said there are Boko Haram in his government, at another point he said they are ghosts he cannot dialogue with ghosts, yet recently he admitted that the young poverty stricken persons so far arrested cannot afford the guns they carry. And we say to them you have full command and control of the Armed Forces and security outfits with all the Intelligence units, investigate their activities, expose their patrons, sponsors and strategic commanders and arrest them.”

    He challenged the Presidency to expose the source of the arms used by the insurgents. “We still repeat the earlier questions we raised. How come the insurgents move about unchallenged at night in our states under so called Emergency Rule when we have a night time curfew in place? How come the insurgents operate for many hours unchallenged when we have military units all over the place? How come the insurgents move with a large convoy of vehicles through routes that have 24 hours military check points? How come statements by the Presidency and other authorities in Abuja are always at variance with realities on ground at the theatres of conflict? We want answers not insults or empty rhetoric.”

    On allegation against the Governor that he is creating divisions among the people with his utterances, the Adamawa State Government said President Jonathan is the chief culprit in this.

    “On the issue of creating divisions among the people, no one does it better than the Presidency that urges its backers to direct its people to implicate innocent Northerners in bombings they know nothing of, or one whose known official uses online sources to implicate someone it chooses to hate for no just cause. This Presidency also encourages some of its spokespersons to speak ill of certain persons and religion without a reprimand.

    He accused the Presidency of being the most divisive administration in the country to date, “This is the most divisive leadership in the history of this country and it also the most desperate to cling to power even at the cost of several lives of innocent citizens. Unfortunately it is also the most inept, confused, greedy, corrupt and incompetent regime ever. On the corruption mantra, while the Presidency is fond of asking Governors to account for allocations given, we challenge them to live by the same token, declare what you got and account for it.”

    He accused the Presidency of not executing project that funds have been disbursed for. According to him, “After all we now have proof that certain projects which are not executed have been announced as completed such as the Hong to Mubi road in our state which the Minister of Information announced its execution at their Bauchi Rally. Meanwhile, someone should help us ask the President under what Budget sub-head did he get the money he allegedly gave Governor Kwankwaso to bribe delegates to vote for him which was allegedly diverted.

    “We think rather than vent their venom in insulting people, presidential spokespersons and media managers should do better by re-focussing the man to be more open minded and competent in grappling with the myriads of challenges facing the nation,” Nyako said.

    The governor had in the now controversial memo accused the administration of President Jonathan of carrying out genocide against northern states with impunity. The Governor said the adverse security situation in the North in particular and Nigeria in general is being felt by all genuine stakeholders but lamented that while every state government is doing everything possible using virtually all its resources to stem the tide of near disaster facing the North, the present federal administration has become a government of impunity run by an evil-minded leadership for the advancement of corruption.

    Nyako regretted that the protection of life and property of innocent citizens in Northern Nigeria and recognising their human rights and voting right in the forthcoming general elections is no longer a cardinal principle of the administration.

    “Clearly the victims of the Administration’s evil-mindedness are substantially Northern Nigerians. The administration is bent on bringing wars in the North between Muslim and Christians and within them and between one ethnic group and another or others in various communities in the region. No wonder, we in the Northern Nigeria are now facing an organised ethno-religious campaigns of hate fuelled by the federal administration to make communities which hitherto have remained peaceful for centuries to start killing the minorities in their midst and to facilitate mass killings of the innocent and the arbitrary arrests and torture of elders of minority ethnic groups in the various Northern communities.”

    Listing occurrences of violence the governor wrote, “We, in Adamawa State, have been battling this heinous machination in the last three years. We also saw it as the Beginning of Genocide. Genocide kingpins are now on prowl in Northern Nigeria! Fulani communities in parts of the North who have been in their locations for over 100 years are now being raided and uprooted by paid killers within the Nigerian Army for the satisfaction of the Federal administration instead of being protected as citizens with their rights and dignity safe-guarded.”

    He observed, “The Federal administration’s affront to frame Northerners is also an open secret. Senior Special Assistant to Mr. President tried to hoodwink us into believing that Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was kingpin of Boko-Haram. Mr. Henry Okah, the convicted leader of MEND also stated under oath that he was being put under pressure by the administration to implicate senior Northern elements such as Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Muhammadu Buhari as financiers of Boko Haram terrorism. We are in deep trouble. We have begun to sleep with ‘both our eyes widely open.”

     

  • Culpable buck passing

    Culpable buck passing

    •Jonathan’s Boko Haram blame game in Bauchi is a presidential disgrace.  But it was a counter to gubernatorial recklessness 
    President Goodluck Jonathan’s March 29 charge in Bauchi, that North East governors should take the blame for the Boko Haram insurrection, is culpable presidential buck passing.

    But being a riposte to Adamawa State Governor, Murtala Nyako’s allegation that the president was incapable of, or uninterested in tackling Boko Haram, in a paper he presented at a Washington DC, USA symposium, it was a reaction to gubernatorial recklessness.

    It is well and truly condemnable when the president and governors engage in mutual buck passing, over a serious security issue as Boko Haram, when they should closely cooperate to solve the problem.

    The setting of both blame games is no less condemnable. The president launched his unwise tirade at a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) zonal rally in Bauchi. Governor Nyako made his provocative presentation in the United States, at a symposium from March 17-19, organised by the US Institute for Peace, which invited all the 19 northern governors.

    It was soulless for President Jonathan to go to Bauchi; and attempt to tar North East governors on Boko Haram — and all of this on the hustings. Yet, the same president could not create time to visit the same North East to condole with the victims’ families, even when Boko Haram slaughtered innocent pupils of Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, in Yobe State. It is the height of presidential folly to deny traumatised locals the needed compassion, yet go back to the same area to brag you would sweep the polls.

    On the other hand, it was culpable lack of statesmanship that made Governor Nyako to frontally attack the president on a foreign soil, suggesting President Jonathan was comfortable with the Boko Haram tragedy. It was a classic example of how not to politicise a living nightmare, in a foreign capital.

    There simply must be a limit to playing politics with Boko Haram, and both the president and governor deserve severe knocks for their indiscretion.

    That said, what should concern every right-thinking Nigerian is how to face down and defeat Boko Haram, and not what political capital anyone could claim from a pestilence that has claimed lives of hundreds of innocent Nigerians. On Boko Haram, what Nigerians expect is close cooperation, not fierce competition, between the president and governors of that affected region. Even then, the president must always show leadership, befitting his office as the highest in the land.

    Still, the buck passing has revealed ugly underbellies, from which the two camps can learn and make amends.

    The president focused on the process leading to Boko Haram, and was spot on, on the allegation that neglect of primary and secondary education in the areas has created a ready and willing pool of Boko Haram recruits. Though there has been a counter-argument that Boko Haram harbours not a few educated cadres, frustrated and angry at the unjust Nigerian system, the neglect of basic education is no less valid.

    The governor, on the other hand, focused on the grotesque final product: the Boko Haram pestilence, to which the Jonathan Presidency seemed to have little clue, until quite recently, when the terror group’s capability appears reduced to soft targets; and its attacks restrained to local areas, as against an earlier period when it bombed, killed and maimed virtually the whole North at will.

    The presidential and gubernatorial camps should take some positives from their mutual macabre dances. The president cannot afford to pass any buck. He is commander-in-chief and has a monopoly of command of the Nigerian state’s security agencies. Passing the buck is a sign of weakness, not of strength — and it is crassly un-presidential.

    The North East governors, on the other hand, must swallow the bitter pill and scale up their commitment to basic education of their citizens. Even if the bulk of the present generation cannot be saved, the future generation of youths must not be beyond redemption.

     

  • PDP suit: Nyako, Amaechi, others urge court to void service on them

    PDP suit: Nyako, Amaechi, others urge court to void service on them

    •‘PDP’s fresh motion for service strange’
    Adamawa State Governor Murtala Nyako and his Sate counterparts in Rivers, Sokoto, Kano and Kwara states, Rotimi Amaechi, Aliyu Wamakko, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Abdulfatah Ahmed, yesterday asked a Federal High Court in Abuja to set aside the service of processes on them on the suit brought against them by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    They also prayed the court to set aside the ex-parte order of December 13, last year, in which it granted leave to the PDP to serve the processes on them by pasting the documents on the walls of the headquarters of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at 6 Bissau Street, Abuja.

    The governors argued that court was misled by the PDP into granting the order because the address given, and on which basis the court granted the order, was wrong. They contended that “6 Bissau Street” was not the office of the APC.

    The governors urged the court to refuse a motion on notice by the PDP, seeking the leave of the court to serve them through substituted means by serving the processes on the liaison offices of the governors’ states in Abuja.

    They described the fresh motion as strange to legal procedures.

    Their lawyers – John Baiyeshea (SAN) for Nyako; Fidelis Oditah (SAN) for Amaechi; Awa Kalu (SAN) for Wamakko; Yusuf Ali (SAN) for Kwankwaso and Akin Olujinmi (SAN) for Ahmed – made the requests while arguing their applications before the court yesterday.

    The PDP is seeking to sack the governors, who defected to the APC last year from the ruling party.

    Baiyeshea argued that since the address provided the court was wrong, “there cannot be said to be a valid order for substituted service”.

    The lawyer averred that PDP’s claim that the address was supplied by the court’s bailiff was immaterial.

    “What we are saying is that as December 13 (2013), when the court granted the order ex-parte for substituted service, the address of the given for service was wrong,” he said.

    Baiyeshea urged the court to set aside the service and the order on which the service was made.

    Oditah argued that the conflict in the address contained in the order of December 13 and the fact that the court’s bailiff, who made the service, claimed to have served it on 40 Valentine Street, was an admission that the service was not effected as ordered by the court.

    The lawyer said PDP’s decision to file a new motion for substituted service on the states’ liaison offices in Abuja was an admission that the earlier service was wrong.

    He contended that it was wrong for the court to have granted an order for a substituted service on his client, who neither resided nor lived within the court’s jurisdiction.

    Oditah faulted the PDP’s claim that it served the processes on the defendants by pasting them on the last known office of the APC.

    The lawyer averred that the suit, which sought to remove his client from office, was directed at him in person and not any political party.

    He contended that the proper place for service of processes on his client was the Government House in the state, where the governor lived and performed his official responsibilities.

    Oditah argued that the preconditions needed for an order of substituted means were not met by the plaintiff.

    The lawyer prayed the court to vacate the order made wrongly on December 13, last year, set aside the purported service of processes on his client and to refuse the PDP’s fresh motion on notice for a substituted serve.

    Kalu urged the court to void service effected on his client on the ground that by the information contained in the affidavit of service filed by the court’s bailiff, it was obvious that the bailiff served on a wrong address different from that ordered by the court. He argued that the bailiff’s action amounted to a disobedience of the court’s order.

    Ali and Olujimi also argued in similar manner and prayed the court to also refuse a fresh motion on notice by the PDP for leave to effect substituted service on the defendants through their states’ liaison offices in Abuja.

    They argued that the fresh motion was an admission by the plaintiff that their earlier service was wrongly done. They argued that the plaintiff’s claim that their motion was intended to effect additional service was strange and amounted to an abuse of court’s process.

    But the plaintiff’s lawyer, Damian Dodo (SAN), argued that the earlier service on the defendants were in order.

    The lawyer said the service, having been duly effected on the defendants, the plaintiff’s fresh motion for substituted service was an addition to serve the defendants.

    He argued that his client ought to be commended for taking the extra step to effect additional service on the defendants, who are protesting earlier service.

    Dodo prayed the court to disregard the arguments by the defendants that their fresh application was strange and that it ought to be by an ex-parte application.

    The lawyer averred that there was nothing “esoteric or ritualistic about service”.

    He said the service was only intended to inform the defendant about the pendency of a case against him/her in court and the need for him/her to enter defence.

    “Our motion on notice is a deft reaction to the peculiar situation we have found ourselves,” Dodo said.

    The lawyer argued that there is not a known legal authority to prove that they were in error by taking such steps.

    He said although he agreed with the defendants’ argument that they live outside Abuja, the plaintiff has shown that the governors’ states have liaison offices in Abuja though which they could be served court processes since they receive other correspondences through the same means.

    He urged the court to hold that proper service has been effected on the defendants.

    He also urged the court to grant the plaintiff’s fresh application for service on the defendants through their liaison offices in Abuja.

    Justice Gabriel Kolawole adjourned ruling on the matter till May 23.

     

     

  • A president playing dangerous politics with Boko Haram

    A president playing dangerous politics with Boko Haram

    The last time we met on these pages two weeks ago, I concluded my piece that morning by putting the burden of solving the Boko Haram “riddle” (my own word) on the leadership of the Muslim North, specifically on the new Minister of Defence, Lt-General Aliyu Mohammed, (retired), a veteran spymaster and a former army chief, and on Col Mohammed Sambo Dasuki, retired, the current National Security Adviser to the President.

    “On his part,” I said, “the new army chief should know that if, along with the National Security Adviser to the president, Colonel Sambo Dasuki, a scion of the Sokoto Caliphate, he cannot solve the, admittedly complex, riddle of Boko Haram which has done so much damage to Nigeria generally but more specifically to the North and to Muslims and to the image of their religion, then the Muslim North will have no one else to blame but its leaders, both secular and religious.”

    President Goodluck Jonathan’s angry reply over the weekend in Bauchi to Governor Murtala Nyako’s charge in far away America that the president is incapable and/or uninterested in solving the Boko Haram crisis – that is if, according to Nyako, the man is not himself outrightly complicit in complicating the crisis for political gain – has got me wondering if I have been fair and sensible in shifting even the immediate burden of solving the crisis from the president to his lieutenants, and through them, to the entire leadership of a region.

    Of course the ultimate burden of solving any national problem lies with the country’s president; the buck, as they say, always stops at the table of the boss. However, there is also a lot his underlings can do to help him solve a problem. It was to that extent that I put the burden of ending the Boko Haram scourge on his two security chiefs.

    But then the president’s angry remarks last Saturday, March 26, during the Peoples Democratic Party’s North-East rally in Bauchi strongly suggests a frame of mind that is more interested in playing politics with Boko Haram than in ending its terror. With such a frame of mind, it will not matter much what his subordinates do to help their boss do his job satisfactorily of securing the nation.

    No doubt Governor Nyako’s paper during the March 17-19 symposium in Washington DC, USA, on the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East at the instance of the Unites States Institute for Peace, to which all the 19 governors of the Northern State were invited, was highly provocative. “The security situation we are facing,” he said in the course of delivering his paper, “…could be sponsored by evil minded and over-ambitious leaders of government and society for political gains.” Of course, he did not name names but it needed little or no imagination to guess those he was pointing his fingers at.

    As if to remove any doubts about those the governor presumably had in mind, the president chose the occasion of his party’s rally in the main theatre of the Boko Haram insurrection to reply him. I solved the terror problem in my home state, Bayelsa, when I was deputy governor and then governor, so Nyako and other Northern governors accusing me of incompetent leadership should go solve their own Boko Haram problem, the president said, in effect.

    “All what they put on their bodies,” the president reportedly said in his peculiar English and simplistic logic, apparently referring to the Boko Haram ragtag army, “is not worth N10, but they carry rifles and bullets worth more than N250,000. Somebody gives them food so that they can kill.

    “You ask how we build this army of unemployed and unemployable youth? The Federal Government does not control primary education; it does not control secondary school education, and a governor has been on seat for nearly eight years and we have people in that state that can’t go to secondary school. You say bad leadership? Who is the bad leader? Is it the Federal Government? I made sure that every state has a university. That is the responsibility of the Federal Government and I have done it.”

    The president is right, damn right, that governors – and I must say that includes himself when he was one, as can be seen from the poor primary and secondary enrolment figures of Bayelsa – have been almost criminally negligent of their responsibilities to provide primary (through Local Governments) and secondary education in their states.

    However, the president was wrong to blame the states alone for their negligence. Part of the blame must go to the Federal Government for cornering so much revenue for itself from the Federation Account (55% or so) that states seem to lack enough to attend to even their more basic responsibilities in such areas as education, health and basic infrastructure.

    The president was also wrong to think poor primary and secondary school enrolment is the main cause of Boko Haram. It is not. The Boko Haram army may be ragtag but its main recruits are not small kids who won’t go to Western schools. On the contrary, it recruits mainly from youths who have been to such schools but have become totally disillusioned with a system which they can clearly see is more interested in producing a few billionaires than in raising millions out of poverty. The president may not be essentially responsible for such a system but he has not helped matters by the wilful way he has, for all practical purposes, refused to do anything about so much waste, corruption and scandal that has surrounded his administration.

    The president was also wrong to claim he solved MEND’s terror problem in Bayelsa. He did not and could not. As governor, he had no control of the police and the security forces. As he knows all too well the credit for that goes mainly to his boss, the late President Umaru Yar’adua for his amnesty programme for Delta militants, and partly to himself as vice-president, who, as the son of the soil, helped to oversee the execution of the programme.

    The president’s apparent misdiagnosis of the Boko Haram problem clearly suggests he is more inclined to playing politics with it than in trying to solve it. There have been, at least, two evidence of recent to support this thesis. First, is the reckless manner in which his party’s spokesman, Mr Olisa Metuh, has been attacking the main opposition party, the All Progressives Congress, labelling it an Islamic party with a “janjaweed” ideology, as if it is a crime to be a Muslim in this country. Indeed, he has said worse by accusing the party without a shred of evidence of being the sponsor of Boko Haram and no one seems to want to call him to order. On the contrary, he seems to enjoy at least the tacit support of his party’s leadership.

    Even more telling than Metuh’s recklessness has been the president’s loud silence on the unmasking in February of his Senior Special Assistance on Social Media, Reno Omokri, as the brain behind a highly dubious attempt, through a Word document using a funny sounding alias, Wendell Simlin, that tried to link Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to the recent increase in Boko Haram violence in Borno and Yobe states. The discovery that Omokri was the real author of the document has yet to earn the man even the mildest rebuke, never mind a sack.

    It all reminds one, doesn’t it, of the charge by Mr Henry Emomotimi Okah, since jailed in South Africa for his alleged role in the October 1, 2010 fatal bombing of Eagle Square during the Golden Jubilee of Nigeria’s Independence, in an affidavit he swore to in a court in that country, that he was contacted by the presidency to prevail on the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) to withdraw its statement claiming responsibility for the bombing so that it can be blamed on some Northern politicians, notably General Ibrahim Babangida, former military president, who was initially in the running for the 2011 presidential election.

    Said Okah in his affidavit, “During the morning of 2 October, 2010, I received two SMS from Mr Tony Uranta…The SMS were sent from Mr Uranta’s number +2348075407801.

    The first of the two SMS stated; – “Ask J.G to withdraw statement.” (J.G being Jomo Gbomo the spokesperson for MEND). The final SMS sent at 10h28:32 am states; – “The government will blame on Northern elements.”

    Okah has since claimed that his refusal to co-operate with the presidency was why the Federal Government leaned heavily on the South Africans to secure his imprisonment.

    In that same affidavit Okah claimed that “On the day of the bombing of 1 October, 2010, I received a call from Mr Moses Jituboh, the Head of Personal Security to President Jonathan, who solicited my assistance and continued cooperation with President Goodluck Jonathan towards shifting blame for the bombings to the North of Nigeria. He assured me in this meeting that President Goodluck Jonathan was determined to ensure that political power never returned to the North which Mr Orubebe described as parasites. To achieve this, President Goodluck Jonathan would pretend to do only one term in office and once entrenched, he would insist on a second term.”

    Okah’s affidavit may sound like the desperate act of a dog in a manger, but his claims seemed to have been borne out by subsequent events, including former president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s now famous open letter to the president reminding him that he had promised to do only one term during his campaign for the 2011 presidential election.

    With a record like this, it is hardly unfair to suspect our president of being more interested in playing politics with the Boko Haram scourge than in bringing it to an end. In which case nothing his subordinates do will, in the end, make any difference in helping him secure the country and its citizens from terrorism.