The Nation Newspaper

Tag: native

  • Return of the “native”

    Return of the “native”

    •The relaunch of the Port Harcourt-Aba rail shuttle should spark commerce in the South-South, South East.South-South, South East.

    On May 1, at a ceremony at the Port Harcourt Railway Station, the Port Harcourt-Aba rail shuttle, shut down for track repairs in April 2022, was flagged back on track.  It’s the return of a rail “native” that had served traders, artisans and other denizens, in the two geo-political zones of South-South and South East.

    So, the reported mirth and jubilation at the flag-off, complete with transportation minister, Senator Said Alkali, the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) Managing Director, Mr. Fidget Okhiria, and the Chinese contractors that worked on the tracks, were hardly any surprise.

    Additional excitement came from the minister’s pledge that the next phase, in South East/South-South rail,  would be to link Aba to Enugu in an extended Port Harcourt-Aba-Enugu line; as well as linking Port Harcourt (in Rivers) and Onne (in Rivers State), two port cities, though the two are in the South-South.  Rail penetration, of course, would further spur economic activities in these two regions.

    This continued focus on rail development is highly welcome.  Every modern economy depends on the humongous evacuation of rail, over long distances, at comparatively lower cost (than road, air and sea), to stay competitive.  But even now in the immediate, re-starting this rail service couldn’t have come at a better time.

    Read Also: Tinubu pledges Nigeria’s continued support to Chad on mutual concerns

    It’s a season of high inflation, from painful economic reforms, viz removal of fuel subsidy and the floating of the Naira to find its market parity. To keep down transportation costs, the government is investing in vehicles powered by compressed natural gas (CNG). But in driving down costs, rail holds the strategic ace.  A vibrant rail network has a very good handle on inflation — and inflation  is the No. 1 economic headache of this administration.

    But back to Port Harcourt-Aba: travellers, along that renewed corridor, now re-join the few areas in the country enjoying inter-state rail: Abuja-Kaduna, Lagos-Ibadan, Warri-Itakpe, with its envisaged extension to Abuja, and now, Port Harcourt-Aba.  Aside, Lagos also enjoys two intra-city rail services: the Blue Line (already active) and the Red Line (inaugurated but soon to start a commercial service).

    So, the more the rail penetration, the lower should be both haulage and shuttle costs, the better the benefits for the economy. 

    Which is why the transport minister must be more specific on the plans to complete ongoing rail projects: Abuja-Kano, and Ibadan-Abuja, the outstanding legs of the Lagos-Kano standard gauge rail; the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri narrow-gauge rail revamp, the Itakpe-Abuja extension, and the Kano-Maradi (Niger Republic) rail line, for which the Federal Ministry of Transportation announced on March 13 that it just secured a US$ 1.3 billion funding.

    What are the funding plans for the others, aside from the Kano-Maradi route?  What are the specific construction timelines?  What are the possible completion dates?  We need to have these discrete information. 

    Besides, the Tinubu administration too needs an active rail programme — with its huge  debt capital — if it must manage the cost of doing business, as it consolidates on its economic reforms.  So, let the minister get cracking!

    But while the Federal Government — and some states too — make the heavy investments in rail, the NRC must run its operations efficiently. Debt capital must be repaid at the agreed time.  But that can only be done with revenue generated from the assets those debts created. 

    So, Mr. Okhiria and his NRC staff must run a lean, mean and profitable service. A well-run rail service will take a lot of bulk haulage off the roads. That should preserve the roads to last longer.

    Then, the all-important question of security.  The Port Harcourt-Aba line, as all other active lines nation-wide, should be saved the horror of the Abuja-Kaduna rail terrorist attack of March 28, 2022. 

    If rail penetration must add value to the economy, then travellers’ safety and security are imperative.  The travellers should not only be safe, they must be seen to be so.  So, NRC must take the security aspect of its shuttle services very seriously.

  • Return of the native

    Return of the native

    Yoruba nation activist Sunday Adeyemo, better known as Sunday Igboho, is back on the circuit. He lately served notice that he is back to dislodge killer herdsmen from Yorubaland and would not be needing the assistance of conventional security agencies to do that, but only self-help collaboration of fellow natives.

    Igboho only just returned to Nigeria from self-exile for the burial of his mother and has been spewing outrage against the incidents of banditry that had hobbled his native Southwest region, while not excluding other areas of the country. He said it was up to the people of the region to liberate themselves from suspected killer herdsmen who are terrorising them. Addressing cheering supporters on the heels of the funeral rites in his hometown, Igboho in Oyo State, he contended that conventional security agents deployed to Yorubaland, as in Ekiti State where monarchs were recently killed in broad daylight, could not tackle down the killers.

    Self-help remained the gospel the kinsman-warrior espoused. Speaking in Yoruba language in a video that trended on social media last week, he argued that Southwest people did not need soldiers to drive away killer herdsmen from their farmlands. “We need to come together, (and) take charge of the security of the Southwest. We don’t need to wait for government or anyone,” he said, adding: “Let’s just work in unison. We cannot farm on our lands because of these herders. And our people are going hungry and angry. We don’t need the soldiers the government claims to have deployed to Ekiti State. We’ll work in the tradition of our elders and man the places ourselves. It was my mother who was my fear before but now that she’s gone, I have nothing to be scared of again. I am back to take back our land.”

    Igboho had fled Nigeria following a lethal raid by Department of State Services (DSS) operatives on his Ibadan, Oyo State, residence on 1st July, 2021. The agency alleged that he was stockpiling arms and staged the midnight raid in which two of his associates were killed and 12 aides arrested. The ethnic agitator, who always boasted tradition-endowed invincibility, slipped away in that siege and was declared wanted by the DSS. He was arrested along with his wife in Cotonou, Benin Republic, on his way to Germany on 19th July, 2021, and he was detained at the request of the former Muhammadu Buhari presidency. Attempts by the Nigerian government to repatriate him following his arrest were however unsuccessful, and he was arraigned before Benin Republic judiciary and detained in a prison facility in the country. Charges against him bordered on arms smuggling, inciting violence and advocating secession of the Yoruba from the Nigerian state. Igboho’s legal troubles blew over eventually and he was set free by Benin authorities in October 2023. It was while he was in Benin incarceration that Nigeria transited to the Bola Tinubu presidency.

    That tangle with the law has not cowed Igboho a whit from his jingoistic sabre-rattling. On the heels of his release from Benin jail and his taking refuge in Germany last October, he gave Fulani herders seven days to vacate the Southwest over reported killings of farmers in Oyo and Ogun states, saying people of the region could otherwise be forced to take the law into their own hands. In direct rejoinder to that ultimatum, a group going by the name Northern Consensus Movement of Nigeria demanded a retraction or it would retribute in kind towards Yoruba people resident in the North and as well orchestrate a halt to supply of food items from the North. “We will do everything possible to stop that move and if he (Igboho) will not listen, then we have no option than to ask the Yoruba who are living in northern Nigeria to also go back to their region,” the group’s leader, Awwal Aliyu, said inter alia at a press parley. He added: “We are requesting President Bola Tinubu to do something… If nothing is done, we are going on a peaceful protest, after which we will shut down all food supplies moving from the North to the southern parts of the country.” Also reacting to the ultimatum, Miyetti Allah, Kautal Hore, leader, Abdullahi Bello Bodejo, traded harsh words with Igboho, with both respectively defending their ethnic turf.

    Read Also: I’m back to chase away killer herdsmen – Sunday Igboho

    In his return to the gadfly beat, Igboho has not hidden the fact that he is emboldened by the current dispensation of the Bola Tinubu presidency. He viewed the immediate past administration of President Buhari as having abetted the killer herdsmen syndrome, and he voiced that belief when he told the Miyetti Allah group late in 2023 to come to grips with the fact that acts of lawlessness perpetrated in the Buhari era would not be condoned under the Bola Tinubu dispensation.

    Igboho has as well been frontal in defending the records of the present administration. Recently, he canvassed patience with the government’s efforts in response to a statement by Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III of Sokoto that Nigeria sits on a time bomb with the extent of poverty, hardship and insecurity plaguing the country. His disposition had fuelled speculation in some quarters that he is working for political interests and, against the backdrop of his claim that the 2021 DSS raid was an assassination attempt, journalists recently asked him whether the powers that presently be would still want him dead. To this, he responded: “I am not working for any politician. In fact, if I accidentally slapped someone, the government would be ready to arrest me and put me behind bars. I know they are watching me closely now to know my next line of action. Still, I am ready to take steps to stop marauders’ activities in our lands.”

    But if Igboho has any respect for the Bola Tinubu presidency, he will tone down his aggressively divisive rhetoric. He cannot be seen to cast the administration in the mould of abetting him, just the way he had accused the Buhari presidency of abetting killer herdsmen. Truce and mutual accommodation by Nigeria’s component groups is what the country needs, not divisive rhetoric that sets one group against the other. It was such rhetoric that apparently informed the 2021 raid by DSS operatives. And if the rhetoric does not change but only the government in power has changed, it could be argued that it is none other than the government holding the security agency’s hand if it does not stage another raid against the ethnic campaigner. That is not a good profile to cast the Tinubu administration in before the diverse ethnic groups that make up the Nigerian nationhood.

    Igboho’s rhetoric resonates with many community folk in Yorubaland, but that does not make his self-help gospel the best approach to the security challenge he seeks to address. The approach rather portends collapse of the societal order. Early in 2021 before his encounter with DSS operatives, the ethnic campaigner served an ultimatum on the Fulani community in Igagan, Oyo State, to leave the community. At the expiration of ultimatum, he stormed the community to expel the settlers and precipitated a communal clash. The townsfolk rallied to his side as he vowed to extend his mission to all Southwest states and Kwara. Those exploits, however, ended in dislocation of communal peace and breakdown of law and order. It was lawlessness writ large and should not be encouraged in a society governed by laws. Such was the threat of communal violence at the time that Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde had to warn that government would not tolerate persons stoking ethnic tension under the guise of protecting Yoruba interest and, without naming names, he invited the police to arrest such people and treat them like common criminals.

    Self-help unilateralism is a fast track to the Hobbesian jungle and Igboho needs a change of tack to address the security challenge he berates.

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