Should The Massacre Of Pro-Biafra Activists Be Overlooked?

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

The Nigeria Army is once more in the eye of the storm due to the indiscretions and unprofessional conducts of some of her operatives   and officers with regards to internal military operations. Under the current dispensation the Nigerian Army has had several   face offs with International humanitarian groups over alleged   widespread killings of civilians.

The latest challenge to the public and corporate image of the   Nigerian Army is the alleged mass killings of over 150 unarmed   protesters thought to be members or sympathizers of the Europe   registered group known as the INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF BIAFRA (IPOB).

IPOB has for two years now waged global wide peaceful advocacy   campaigns for self-determination of the people of South-East of   Nigeria.

The members of the Indigenous People of Biafra are absolutely   unarmed and are some of the most peaceful and peaceable advocates of   self determination Worldwide.

The British founded global human rights body known as AMNESTY   INTERNATIONAL has recently issued damaging but extensively   verifiable reports of the killing spree conducted by the Nigerian   Army in the South East of Nigeria in the last one year leading to   the slaughter through extra-legal means of unarmed civilians   belonging or exercising their sympathy for the messages of   self-determination being spread peacefully by IPOB.

This report has understandably generated considerable volumes of   reactions with the Army hurriedly denying any involvement but in   another breath said it was only defending her operatives from   violence. Which violence? One may ask.

The killings of civilians by the Army go against everything that   constitutional democracy stands for because extra-legal execution of   civilians is absolutely antithetical to civility and democracy.

For the better part of the last two decades, Nigeria embraced   civilian democracy and an essential ingredient of this system of   government is the constitutionally guaranteed right to peaceful   protests the citizens are entitled to.

Importantly, the attempt to sweep under the carpets these senseless   killings captured in audiovisuals and which are watched globally,   offends everything that make us rational and thinking beings.

The killings if tolerated would amount to overturning all the   efforts we have genuinely made to build a Nigerian nation whereby   the Rule of Law would become our national ethos.

Count Buhari Among The Judges

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

By unleashing the Department of State Services (DSS) on some judges, President Muhammadu Buhari has succeeded in portraying the nation’s judiciary as reeking of corruption. The clampdown which has rightly provoked so much condemnation is a manifestation of the president’s long-held notion that the corruption of the judges has been an obstacle to the successful prosecution of his anti-corruption campaign. But there is one fact that must be remembered in the raging debate about the appropriateness or otherwise of the action of the DSS since the judges do not have immunity against investigation – the president’s complicity in the alleged misdeeds of the judicial officers. 

*Buhari 

For while it is true that the allegations of corruption against judges and lawyers predate the emergence of Buhari as president, the brazenness of the perversion of justice that riles him is only reflective of the current era of the collapse of the sanctity of the constitution that Buhari and his government have precipitated.

To be sure, we are all outraged at the judiciary’s loss of a moral compass that ought to guide its activities and therefore through every pronouncement reinforce the notion that it is the last bastion of justice for the common man. Rather than deterring corruption, the Bench and the Bar have become ready sources of its perpetuation in the society. Lawyers bribe judges for their clients to win cases. Justice is now for the highest bidder.

Politicians who empty the public treasury are allowed to plea-bargain and go home to enjoy their loot. Those who steal their organisations’ money to buy property all over the world are allowed to recover from phantom ailments in luxury hospitals while the shareholders suffer penury. But the poor person who steals a phone is sentenced to many years in prison without even an option of a fine.

With the return of democracy, corruption in the judiciary has become democratised. The numerous disputes over elections have become opportunities for judges to amass wealth. The late Justice Kayode Esho once alerted us to how some judges had become billionaires by giving judgements that were paid for.

Onitsha Massacre And The Shame Of A Nation

By Lawrence Chinedu Nwobu

Buhari would probably go down in history as the worst violator of human rights and by consequence the most undemocratic president ever to walk the shores of this blighted land. It is ironic that one day after the regime celebrated democracy day and its one year anniversary on the 29^th of May with much pomp, pageantry and fanfare, feeding the public with fanciful tales of its commitment to democracy, the rule of law and much propaganda on what it claims to have achieved in one year;   the next day being the 30^th of May heralded an unprovoked bloodbath as the infamous Nigerian army treaded the familiar path of killing more than 50 IPOB and MASSOB adherents who were peacefully marking the 49^th anniversary of the declaration of Biafra.

The most fundamental attributes of democracy are the freedoms of expression, association and dissent. Democracy in effect gives citizens the largest unrestricted space to air their views no matter how unpalatable—to assemble for what they believe in and above all to express dissent through peaceful means. In nations where democracy is practiced as it should, citizens express themselves freely and organise frequent public protests to register dissent. In none of these countries are citizens arrested or killed for expressing their opinion or for organising public protests. In rare occasions where possibly because of violence the security services deem it necessary to terminate such protests; civil means such as tear gas and water cannons are employed to disperse protesters.  It is thus paradoxical that one day after celebrating democracy day, the army is unleashed to kill peaceful  protesters who are exercising the most fundamental right that democracy affords them.

More so when as has been reported, IPOB and MASSOB had actually written the Anambra state commissioner of police, formally notifying him of their upcoming rally, for which the police should ordinarily have provided security while they carried out their peaceful rally as is done in true democracies. How can an administration celebrate the virtues of democracy and at the same time kill unarmed peaceful protesters? Is their own definition of democracy different? How come the same administration that has refused to act and infact maintained a studied silence while Fulani herdsmen slaughter people across the middle belt and South is ever so quick to kill peaceful IPOB/MASSOB protesters? By these contradictions Buhari has again demonstrated his deliberate refusal to align with democratic tenets.  After decades of struggling to have democratic governance and 17 years in a supposed democracy, these blatant suppression of rights and extra judicial executions  only serves to indicate that Nigeria has returned to full blown despotism.

Buhari In The Summer Of Sectional Discontent

By Louis Odion, FNGE

Ten years ago, yours sincerely received an unforgettable call on a certain Sunday afternoon. It was the ebullient Jimoh Ibrahim that was on the line. The youthful billionaire, though already a friend, was in a combative mood over the day's edition of this column published on the back page of Sunday Sun which I edited then. His beef stemmed not necessarily from the substance of my thesis, but lumping him among those he considered a tribe of the "unlettered".

*Buhari 

In the piece, one took potshots at the fierce infighting among the emergent club of Obasanjo oligarchs. It would seem, one surmised, that whereas OBJ mentored them on the art of making cheap money by being the biggest beneficiaries of an opaque privatization programme, they had failed themselves by not imbibing the apostolic virtue of peaceful co-existence. 

At the end of his friendly fire that lasted several minutes, Araba characteristically teased: "My yeye friend, I'm sure you took a strange coffee before writing that. Well, hold on for General."
To my biggest shock, what echoed next in my ears was the clipped, unmistakable voice of General Muhammadu Buhari: "Louis, I just read your article now. Very, very interesting and humorous. In fact, I read and reread some portions that were most humourous. Like the part where you said some went to the university of buying and selling. Keep it up."

I recall the memory of that phone encounter today to partly dispel certain myths about President Buhari and, more crucially, underline the urgency of remedial steps needed by a leader needlessly buffeted by rising dissent from sections of the country on account of what seems a self-derailment or gradual abandonment of habits that had served him so well. 

Fleeting as our conversation was that day, I was left with the portrait of not the implacable ethno-religious bigot which his then political rival, OBJ, had splurged fortune to project over the years; but a genial grandee at home anywhere in the country. From my findings later, the phone call was made from the home of Ibrahim, a full-blooded Yoruba from rural Igbotako, a riverine community in Ondo State. Of course, Araba happened to be one of the young Turks of ANPP, Buhari's party then. 

After the 2003 presidential polls which OBJ notoriously won by a "moon slide", not only did the negative profiling of Buhari become official policy, ostracization of any business tycoons suspected of ties with him also commenced pari pasu. Indeed, a good number of the northern business/political elite who seem in a hurry today to form an ethnic ring around him were the same characters Obasanjo had recruited to lead and sustain that dirty campaign. 

It was therefore from such a narrow circle –  pan-Nigerian nonetheless –  who refused to be intimidated or blackmailed that Buhari had to draw for emotional balance and funding of his protracted legal battles against those who "cheated" him in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 polls. Among that fraternity was Tam West-David, a decorated professor of virology, who would cap his cult-like loyalty by writing and launching a book in his worship at personal cost when no one was yet sure Buhari could become a president. 

Time To Rethink Nigeria

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

No matter how hard one tries, it is difficult, almost impossible, for any Nigerian to pretend not to be angry with the way things are going right now. Even those who want to be seen as being politically correct in this season of anomie are struggling to keep their balance because, let’s face it, there are limits to political correctness.

Something has gone fundamentally wrong with the Muhammadu Buhari presidency. He has failed to be the transcendental, pan-Nigeria leader we all craved for after the Goodluck Jonathan presidency. I don’t know how the illusion came about that such an insular, provincial leader like Buhari can step up to the plate at such a critical time in Nigeria’s history. But here we are, once again, at the crossroads.

For me, the massacre last week of innocent citizens by Fulani herdsmen at Nimbo in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State was the last straw. Over 50 people were killed in cold blood, scores displaced, and about seven villages and property worth millions of naira, including the Christ Holy Church International, destroyed. The victims were killed in the most gruesome manner – some had their throats slit, others were simply butchered with machetes and at least one was burnt alive on a commuter bus. Nobody deserves this fate.

Yet, security men got wind of this attack at least 24 hours before the hoodlums struck. Uzo-Uwani Council Chairman, Cornell Onwubuya, reportedly alerted Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi and the Commissioner of Police, Ekechukwu Nwodibo, that armed Fulani herdsmen had invaded their community to wreak havoc. No action was taken. The Department of State Securities (DSS) that claimed it discovered mass graves of “Hausa-Fulani” residents allegedly abducted and murdered by suspected members of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) in Abia State, without any evidence, did nothing to stop the carnage. The military that arrested 76 youths from Ugwuneshi community in Awgu Local Government Area of Enugu State for protesting against the abduction and gang raping of their mothers and sisters did nothing to forestall the mayhem.

After the carnage, Ugwuanyi wept and declared two days of fasting and prayers. It took Buhari – who had threatened to deal with Niger Delta militants like terrorists and vowed to deal decisively with IPOB and MASSOB for daring to challenge the status quo in Nigeria – three whole days to break his silence on the carnage.

I have wondered since last Monday what would have happened if the people of Nimbo had organised to brutally murder 50 Fulani herdsmen. By now, the security forces would have sacked the entire local government. They would have done to them what soldiers did to Shiites in Kaduna. Imagine what would have happened if some Igbo hoodlums were to go to any community in Katsina, Bauchi, Kaduna, et cetera, to kill, maim, rape and plunder. The perpetrators would have been summarily dealt with and the whole of Ala-Igbo would have become desolate by now.

Nigeria: Like Rafindadi, Like Daura

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

 Like most other appointments in his 11 months in the job, only President        Muhammadu Buhari knows why he pulled out his kinsman, Lawal Daura, from  retirement and handed him the sensitive and strategic job of director general of    the Directorate of State Securities (DSS).

That was in July 2015, barely one month after he was sworn in as president on May 29.

*Lawal Daura 

But whatever his reason, as usual, it has less to do with competence, the axiomatic act of putting a round peg in a round hole, but more with the overarching considerations in all of his political moves – nepotism, prejudice, clannishness.

For a president who has confessed his love for working with those he knows and who, despite all the positions he has held in the country – including being military head of state for 20 months – his circle of friends is limited to his Fulani kinsmen, Daura may well be his idea of the man who the cap fits after he sacked Ita Ekpeyong who headed the agency from September 2010 to July 2015.

Established under the National Security Agencies Act of 1986 (Decree 19) the DSS, also known as the State Security Service (SSS) – one of the three successor organisations to the National Security Organisation (NSO) dissolved in 1986 – is the primary domestic intelligence agency of Nigeria.

Before the DSS, there was the NSO, set up in 1976 with Abdullahi Mohammed as the first director general.

But the NSO under Mohammed Lawal Rafindadi was broken up into three agencies by former military President, Ibrahim Babangida, after it had been turned into a monster used to abuse Nigerians and trample upon their fundamental human rights by the Buhari-led military junta between December 31, 1983 and August 27, 1985.

In appointing Daura the DG of a critical security apparatus such as the DSS, it would seem that Buhari’s primary goal, aside consolidating power in the hands of his Fulani brethren, is to recreate the stomach-churning 20th century secret police used by his military junta to whip people into line in a 21st century democratic environment.

Still On Buhari’s Al Jazeera Outing

By Ikechukwu Amaechi 

I am sure that when his aides bring to his attention the monthly performance survey carried out by Governance Advancement Initiative for Nigeria (GAIN), which showed that his job approval rating slipped for the first time last month, President Muhammadu Buhari will most likely shrug it off.

He does not care about public opinion.

 

*President Buhari 

That is scary. The most dangerous leader is that man or woman who does not care about public perception, who does not give a damn (apologies to former President Goodluck Jonathan) about what the people think.

This is a very dangerous curve for the country.

The monthly poll, which tracks the performance of governments at all levels in Nigeria, providing feedback from the public to their elected officials, indicated that for the first time since December 2015, more Nigerians score the president low on jobs, economy, power and rule of law. The most interesting outcome is that for the first time since he became president, many Nigerians now blame Buhari for the country’s woes rather than his predecessor, Jonathan. The February result showed that Buhari’s approval rating dropped from 63.4 per cent in January to 32.8 per cent and a significant 79 per cent of the respondents rated the government’s handling of the recurring clashes between herdsmen and farmers poor.

According to the poll, more Nigerians now hold him responsible for the terrible state of the economy just as many have been convinced that he may not have the capacity, after all, to do the job he sought for 12 years.

Of course, the Buhari apologists, just like their principal, will dismiss the poll result as the machination of agents of ousted Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) regime or the ranting of disgruntled elements – the wailing wailers. The more obtuse of the regime’s spin doctors will brandish it as one more evidence of corruption fighting back.

President Buhari's Aljazeera Interview 

But to dismiss this poll result with a wave of the hand is to live in illusion because for many Nigerians the result is hardly surprising. In fact, if there is any surprise at all, it is that there is still an odd 32.8 per cent of Nigerians who still believe in the capacity of the president to deliver on his mandate. 

Why Biafra Is Giving President Buhari A Headache

*Kanu

"Dressed all in white, Nnamdi Kanu took his seat in the Federal High Court in Abuja, Nigeria, on February 9. Though he had been in detention for almost four months, the 48-year-old activist initially declined requests from court officers to agree to have his handcuffs removed. In an act of defiance, he raised his cuffed hands to the television cameras. It was hard to divine his intention, but the act and his angry expression suggested that he barely recognized the authority of the court he found himself in. Kanu, a dual British-Nigerian citizen, was arrested in Lagos in October by Nigerian intelligence agents during a visit from his home in London. Kanu leads the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)...”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE  

Solving The Biafra Agitation Problem

By Hannatu Musawa

Bckground: For 16 years now, the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) has made its voice heard. Emeka Ojukwu was alive when MASSOB was formed but he never gave it support, nor have important political and traditional leaders of south-eastern Nigeria. MASSOB leader Ralph Uwazuruike has, several times, clarified that MASSOB is not a violent group and will not engage in armed struggle. The group has relied on some provisions in the United Nations Charter, especially those relating to people’s right to self-determination.  What has made MASSOB and its younger sibling IPOB (Indigenous Peoples of Biafra) popular both at home and abroad is the occasional crackdown on their members during peaceful protests.

*Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu being sworn 

in as the head of state of the Republic of 

Biafra in May 1967

Referendum?
If a referendum were held today, there is no doubt that over 70% of people in the five south-east states would vote YES for separation. A little over 50% in Rivers State would also vote YES. Between 40% and 50% might vote YES in other south-south states: Bayelsa, Delta, Cross River, Akwa Ibom and Edo.

A similar result might be reproduced if the people of the south-west were to be subjected to a referendum to determine whether Oduduwa republic should come into being.

Therefore, the Federal Government should not agree to a referendum. Every section in Nigeria feels marginalised in Nigeria, apparently because the country is not practising true federalism. The state of the nation’s economy is also a contributor: Many have fallen on hard times and become frustrated.

Political Reform
Political reform is the way to go. The current 36-state structure is not working; it should be replaced by a six-region federal structure. The 2014 National Conference, therefore, needs to be re-examined. The government can go back to that conference and other previous conferences and provide a white paper. Barring any obstacle that may be constituted by the National Assembly, a new political structure should take effect from 2019, along with a new revenue allocation formula. There would not be loud cries over Biafra or Oduduwa or Boko Haram after a restructuring that would shift the country away from Unitarianism. Nigeria needs a weaker centre and stronger regions.

Tackling IPOB and MASSOB
Agitation for Biafra is heightened by the overzealousness of security agents. The agencies should be restrained from arresting people involved in the peaceful demonstration. On occasion, criminals attempt to hijack peaceful protests; anyone caught in acts of lawlessness could be arrested briefly and then prosecuted in court immediately. Similarly, operators of illegal radio stations like Nnamdi Kanu should be charged to court immediately. There have been at least three court decisions directing that Kanu should be released, but he is still held even after he has met his bail conditions. The government itself should abide by the rule of law.