Nigeria: Twilight Of The Republic

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Since our leaders have failed to learn from the past, they have currently embarked on a voyage of stretching the resilience of the nation and its people to the limit. To them, no calamitous consequences could attend this. They feel secure in the delusion that since the civil war could not dismember the nation, nothing else could. This is why when the victims of killer herdsmen cry for justice, they are ignored. It is the same way that those who agitate for restructuring are dismissed as national irritants. The beneficiaries of the warped polity send the subtle message to the oppressed that they have nowhere to go; they just have to learn to accept their bleak lot.

*Buhari and Saraki

These injustices have not really precipitated an insurrection that provokes the searing memories of the civil war simply because it is the poor citizens of the country who are significantly their victims. Or could there have been the civil war if a member of the ruling class, Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, had not considered himself as the embodiment of the persecution of the Igbo? Would the poor Igbo have resorted to secession as a means of ending the injustice being meted out to them by their fellow citizens?

But the country is taken to the precipice of crisis, and its heightened form, dismemberment when it is the members of the ruling clique who feel betrayed by their colleagues. Again, the civil war bears out this – did Odumegwu-Ojukwu call for arms because what was primarily at stake was the need to stop the mass killing of his people or that of redressing a personal insult of those beneath him transforming into his superiors? 

Throughout history, the fact is the same – personal squabbles become national tragedies. In the dark days of military regimes in Africa, there were palace coups because some soldiers felt affronted by the arrogance of their colleagues.

Now, the brewing crisis between the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari and the Senate of Bukola Saraki poses a mortal danger to the continued existence of the nation. It has gone beyond recurrent disagreement as a staple of democracy. What we are faced with now is a smouldering fire that could imperil the nation’s democracy.

Hameed Ali And the Custom Uniform

By Jaafar Jaafar

I’m happy the Senate did not succumb to Comptroller General of Customs, Hameed Ali’s implausible pretexts of avoiding either appearance before the Senate or wearing the service uniform.

Since his illegal appointment as Comptroller General of Customs on August 27, 2015, Hameed Ali, a retired army colonel, flies the service aircraft, earns the service highest salary, occupies the top service office, but looks down upon the service uniform. He wants all the privileges attached to the office, except that grey uniform with green beret.

That military elitism of looking at the police with disdain, the paramilitary with derision and civilian with contempt is still running in Hameed Ali’s veins. Haughty, asocial and absolutist, Ali is a terrible oddball under a democratic setting.

But if Ali thinks their uniform is demeaning to wear, as his regimented, intemperate ego tells him, he should quietly leave the job for career officers or someone who could abide by the rules. It is not a matter of doing your job well, which is also put to question particularly by your senseless retroactive order on car duty payment. Ali’s order on mandatory duty payment for old vehicle owners is akin to forcing pre-JAMB era degree holders to sit for UTME and score 200 to validate their certificates or risk revocation of their degrees.

On the uniform, Ali should be reminded that discipline as essential in military as it is in paramilitary service. As it depicts discipline, commonality and solidarity in military service, so it does in paramilitary service. When Obasanjo appointed a retired army general, Haldu Hananiya, as head of Federal Road Safety Corps, he wore the corps livery to show that he is part of it.

Magu's Rejection: I Stand With The Senate (II)

By Ochereome Nnanna

Having examined the retired Colonel Hameed Ali versus the Senate saga, let us take a look on another contentious issue: the Ibrahim Magu screening controversy.

President Buhari and Sen Pres Saraki 

So many people have said their minds on this matter, which is their constitutional right. There are those who blame the Senate for the long-drawn impasse and difficulty in getting Ibrahim Mustapha Magu confirmed as the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. Some have alleged that in rejecting Magu’s candidacy, the Senate constitutes itself into a “parallel government”. Others say they want to “collect the power” from President Muhammadu Buhari and frustrate him from implementing the “change” he promised Nigerians.

The one I found most interesting was the submission of Chief Robert Clark, a respected lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, with usually sound perspectives on legal and current affairs. He appeared on Channels TV and was all over the place, lamenting that the Senate’s treatment of Magu was “a slap on the face of the President; a slap on the faces of Nigerians”.

The impression being given by all these shades of opinion is that the Presidency has played its own part neatly only to be messed up by the Senate. Another impression is that the Federal Government is all about President Muhammadu Buhari, the Presidency he commands and the Cabinet he has at his disposal. In other words, the Executive Branch alone is the Government. On both counts I beg to disagree. First of all, let us track the facts of this story.

Following the sack of Ibrahim Lamorde as the EFCC Chairman, Magu, another police officer, was nominated as his successor in acting capacity. One would have expected that President Buhari, cognisant of the sensitive nature of the EFCC Chairman’s duties, would immediately send Magu’s name to Senate for confirmation. Instead, Buhari delayed this issue between 9th November 2015 and 14th July 2016, when his Deputy, Professor Yemi Osinbajo as Acting President, submitted Magu’s name to the Senate for confirmation when the President was away on his foreign medicals.

Before Supreme Court Finally Kills PDP

By Steve Nwosu

The dizzying pace at which mundane things are elevated to national prominence has since made me lose sense of what is right and what is wrong. So, to keep my sanity, I’ve since concluded that every one is right. All correct, sir!

If you say the economy is in recession, you’re correct. If you prefer to live in denial and insist that there is no recession, you’re also correct. Hameed Ali versus the Senators? Magu versus the Senators? Hospitalised El-Rufai versus convalescing Buhari? All correct!

But there is one thing I have a fairly clear head about. And that is what is the mess the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has brought upon itself.

Now, if there is anything the PDP is very good at – apart from impunity, it is the uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (apologies: Chinua Achebe). Of course, I don’t expect the All Progressives Congress (APC) people to gloat at that, because everything that was wrong with PDP is beginning to appear in APC.

However, the PDP is a master of the art of self-destruct!
When it was in government, it was fighting itself, providing opposition to its own government. And now that it is out of power, it has contrived to produce a most fractious split right down its middle. And even as the simple solution to its problem stares it in the face, it’s looking with eyes wide shut.

It is fixated at a Supreme Court that does not hold any promise of good news.

Yes, soon after the Appeal Court verdict that upheld Sen. Ali Modu Sheriff’s claim to the party’s chairmanship, the Sen. Ahmed Makarfi faction appealed the judgment, and is now expecting a favourable ruling from the apex court.

But, irrespective of whatever direction the pendulum swings at the apex court, the PDP would still be the loser. But we’ll return to that later.

Who Is Importing Arms Into Nigeria?

By Anthony Cardinal Okogie

It was reported, a few days ago, in almost all the national dailies, that the Nigerian Customs Service seized 49 boxes containing 661 pump action rifles unlawfully imported into Nigeria. The rifles were said to have been concealed in a container of steel products and other merchandise. Three suspects were said to have been arrested. According to retired Colonel Hameed Ali, the Comptroller-General of Customs, the arms were cleared at the port with the assistance of two customs officers who have since been apprehended and are now being investigated.

This is the latest in the series of unlawful importation of arms into Nigeria, and it raises a number of issues. First, who are those behind unlawful importation of arms into Nigeria and what are their intentions?

At a press conference, in which Colonel Ali triumphantly reported the arrest of three suspects, he also informed the Nigerian public that a team of customs officers on intelligence patrol had, on Sunday, January 22, 2017, along the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway in Lagos, intercepted a truck whose registration number he gave as BDG 265 XG, purportedly conveying the arms in a container whose number he gave as PONU/825914/3. Such news would have been sweet in the ears but for the fact that nothing was said of the owner of the truck and nothing was said of the owner of the container. That raises further questions: In whose name was that truck registered and in whose name was the container registered? Are they registered in the same name? Have their owners been investigated? When shall they and their foot soldiers appear in court?

Not to raise these and related questions, and not to address them, will leave us where we have always been, that is, a place where a criminal act is committed but there is neither trial nor conviction nor sanction, a country where criminals are phantoms, a strange land where there are crimes but no criminals. That is why the triumphant account of the Comptroller of Customs comes close to another episode in playing to the gallery.

But there is another issue to be raised, and that is, whatever happened to intelligence in this country? Newspapers reported that the Comptroller of Customs informed Nigerians that impounding the truck containing the unlawfully imported arms and the apprehension of three men suspected to be involved in the crime of unlawful importation was the achievement of a “roving team of the NCS’ federal operations unit, while on intelligence patrol.” But on closer scrutiny, this advertisement of prowess is in fact an advertisement of colossal but recurring failure of intelligence. A dictum has it that prevention is better than cure. Intelligence is crime prevention. Nigeria’s security agencies—the Customs in this case, the Police, the Army, to mentioned but these—have repeatedly demonstrated their ineptitude when it comes to preventing acts that are inimical to security. The Police arrive at the scene of a crime after the crime and after the departure of the perpetrators.