The Real Enemies Of Nigeria

By Ochereome Nnanna

Last week Wednesday, the President of the Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki, was forced, on behalf of his colleagues, to pronounce the Inspector-General of Police, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris as an “enemy of our democracy.” 

He declared him a persona non-grata and unfit to hold public office both within and outside Nigeria. This was after Idris refused on three occasions to honour the lawmakers’ summonses to answer critical questions bordering on the nation’s security challenges and the treatment the Police meted to one of their colleagues, Senator Dino Melaye.

*President Buhari 

 As often pointed out in this column, the National Assembly is not about the specific individuals elected into it or occupying its high offices at any given time. It is about an institution that represents the people of Nigeria who elected them to be in government on their behalf. They are there to make laws, supervise the ways the funds of the federation are spent, perform oversight functions on the ways the government is implementing the budget and the laws of the country and act as effective checks to ensure the Executive does not drag us back to dictatorship and impunity. 

Fulani Herdsmen And The Adamawa Five

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Any lingering doubts that these are the best of times for Nigerian herdsmen of Fulani extraction become easily vitiated in the light of two recent developments in the country. The Federal Government has just released a bumper package of incentives of over N179 billion for their business.

The government is to use this amount to set up ranches for them in 10 states including Adamawa, Benue, Ebonyi, Edo, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Oyo, Plateau, Taraba and Zamfara.

Those who have dismissed as an idle boast their position that they cannot be denied access to any part of the country to graze their cattle may now be ruing their delusion. 

But the government needs to be reminded that with Nigeria becoming a haven of herding, this budget would be doubled, even tripled in the days ahead.

Or how would this amount cater to the herding needs of other Fulani herdsmen in other parts of the world who would now bring their cattle here?

Nigeria: The Road To Babylon

By Reuben Abati

Nigeria is on the road to Babylon: a place of confusion. Three years ago, the people were convinced that they had found a messiah who will lead them to the Promised Land, and meet all their expectations. 

*Buhari 

Today, everyone is speaking in different tongues; “turning and turning in the widening gyre…the falcon cannot hear the falconer… things fall apart; the centre cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/The blood-doomed tide is loosed, and everywhere/the ceremony of innocence is drowned…surely, some revelation is at hand…”

But just may be, there is still, no cause for despair. The good thing about democracy is that it teaches people lessons – ask them in Malaysia and the United States – and even when the people refuse stubbornly to learn – ask them in Syria, Venezuela, and Libya –  the lessons exist nonetheless.

Nigeria: Lying As Cornerstone Of Govt Policy And Programme

By Alade Rotimi-John

In local Nigerian parlance, stratagem or the plan for deceiving otherwise trustful people is rendered euphoniously and even metaphorically as “lie, lie” or “connie, connie” (both of them amusing and melodious phraseology for graphically depicting the foible of cunningness, craftiness or guile). The Nigerian political or governmental practice has been largely characterised, particularly these four or so years, by an observable trend in posturing or cunningness by officials of state. These ones have perfected the art of refusing to take personal responsibility for their bumbling, blundering trajectory even as they lament or heap their failures on some extraneous or exogenous circumstance, situation or personage. 

As is normal with the nature and manner of a facile or convenient resort to lie-telling, every excuse or reason for the happening of one event or another, embarrassingly conflicts with an earlier expressed position taken on the same subject matter. Two or three clear indications are visibly discernible. The actors are not unanimous in their explanation of the occurrence of the event for which they speak for the same principal; they operate at cross purposes; and they betray their lack of co-ordination in a situation where coherence is key. For them, to begin to take personal responsibility is also to begin to recognise or admit that Nigeria is on the verge of a self-annihilating precipice even as they are in charge. Courage is up-turned as integrity no longer counts and little store is set for accuracy. 

President Buhari’s Naked Self-Interest

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It was not really unexpected that President Muhammadu Buhari would hinge his bid to return to office on patriotism. It is the way of all politicians. They are not tired of striving to mislead us into considering their personal ambitions as goals that are inextricably tied to our collective good. Thus, Buhari wants us to see him as a good patriot who is only responding to the call of his people to serve again.

*President Buhari

But it is clear to those of us who are far from the madding Buhari chorus that he is propelled by naked self-interest. Before the leaders of his political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), Buhari rhapsodised about how much the people who are appreciative of his service to them want him back. But he should have gone further to provide the specific areas in which the citizens have benefited from his government.

Nigeria: When Individuals Are Stronger Than State Institutions

By Adewale Kupoluyi

William Easterly is a Professor of Economics at the New York University, who in a 2006 publication: The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Harm and So Little Good, enunciated that fragile states are plagued by two factors, namely: political identity fragmentation and weak national institutions in their development.

According to him, states with poor institutions have negative effects on growth and public policy implementation.

Relying on this line of argument, what any serious democracy should strive for should be the state whereby institutions are stronger than individuals or persons, no matter how powerful. What usually transpires in the Nigerian public affairs tends to suggest otherwise. 

IGP And The Missing Police Vehicles

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

Since governance in these climes is often appropriated by those we entrust with leadership as a means of unbridled material acquisition, we are regularly scandalised by sleaze in public offices. The reports on such venalities come to the public with such rapidity that we do not infrequently fail in a bid to track them. But this rapidity serves well the opprobrious cravings of our public officials. Let the scandals break today, they are not bothered – by tomorrow other scandals would break that would take away the attention of the citizens from those of today.

*President Buhari and IGP Idris

Yet, at a time of economic recession that has thrown up the overarching need for transparency and prudent management of fast-vanishing resources for effective governance, we would not allow an opportunity to conserve the nation’s money to slip by. One of such opportunities that we must seize is the recovery of some police vehicles that have been allegedly stolen.

We have been told that the office of the inspector-general of police has been stripped bare of its vehicles. The culprit has been identified as the former inspector-general of police Solomon Arase. He allegedly took away 24 vehicles of the police at the end of his tenure. Among these vehicles were two BMW 7 series, one armoured. The incumbent Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris first made the allegation in July. He lamented how the haemorrhage of police vehicles led to his using a rickety one to travel somewhere with President Muhammadu Buhari. When the latter saw it, he was so outraged that he asked him what he was doing with it.

Three months after, the allegation is still on. But this time, the allegation has been framed in a way to present Arase as admitting to stealing 24 vehicles, out of which 19 have been recovered. But Arase has insisted that he did not steal the vehicles in the first place. He has asked his successor Idris to make available the registration numbers of the vehicles allegedly stolen.