A Thief Is Not A Thief If He Is Powerful

 By Owei Lakemfa

Four female students of the Zamfara State College of Arts and Science, abducted by bandits six months ago, may know their fate this week. Their abductors have given the parents of the young ladies, one week within which to pay N12 million ransom or the victims will be married off. This may be an euphemism for selling the young women into sexual slavery.

What to do about these soulless bandits who maim, rape, murder, loot and visit arson on many states, especially Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina and Niger, is no straight forward matter.

There are vested interests. For instance, with the new service chiefs vowing to destroy these bandits who in the last eight years have murdered about 65, 000 Nigerians, there are urgent petitions and campaigns that the might of the military should not be used against them.

Nigeria: Isa Pantami Should Be in Jail

 By Yemi Adebowale

In Law, Ignorance is not an excuse. Confessing to a crime is not immunity against trial. Again, the fact that an offence was committed years back does not mean the offender will escape justice. The person can be put on trial anytime the facts of the crime emerge. That was why the American government put former film producer, Harvey Weinstein on trial for sex offences dating back to the late 1970s. 

*Pantami

Weinstein was arrested, charged with rape in New York in May 2018, convicted and sentenced to 23 years in prison. Nigeria’s Communication and Digital Economy Minister, Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, for his past extremist and flammable preaching, is liable for trial for incitement; inciting Muslims against Christians, inciting Muslims against the federal government and the military. In criminal law, incitement is encouraging another person to commit a crime. It is committed when one person counsels, procures or commands another to commit a crime, whether or not that person commits the crime.

The ‘Avengers’ And The Future Of The Niger Delta

By Simon Abah

Medical persons attribute man’s thinking capacity to the balance between the neurons and synapses in the human brain. A normal human being thinks before he acts but in Nigeria, it appears we suffer from a frontal-lobe crisis which makes us act before we think. The Niger Delta Avengers may begin to blow pipelines anytime from now like pyromaniacs and if what I read in the papers is correct, they may also blow up any human being who stands in their way to actualise their bombing campaign. Like Boko Haram, they don’t strike me as a thinking group.

Relationship-building between and among people in the Niger region is abysmal. It has reached the stage that politics in the Delta is war. Is this region the only one in Nigeria where politics is played? Why are they always pointing fingers at other people but themselves for all problems? Why aren’t politicians crying in the pool of democratic baptism? Why have they allowed certain people to give the Niger Delta a bad name by allowing them to be as wild as un-dipped devils?

No, Don’t Re-Arrest Nnamdi Kanu

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

In a seeming bid to ward off the increasing threats to the stability of the country, the government is floundering from one absurd measure to another. From deploying its security apparatuses to monitor the social media, it has moved on to rein in hate speech by proposing a bill in this regard. No much alarm should be triggered if the government luxuriates in the obliviousness of the inability of these frenzied measures to stave off the dissolution of the people’s union if it fails to reckon with more enduring and acceptable solutions that the citizens have generously proposed.

*Nnamdi Kanu

But we must not ignore the augury of a looming tragedy we are now confronted with in the government’s latest move to sustain the nation’s unity. This is the bid by the government to re-arrest the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu. Kanu might have impudently breached some of the conditions for his freedom from incarceration. He might have been found rhapsodising before his hundreds of supporters and putative security personnel about his republic of unrivalled equality and thereby violating the condition that he must not be in a crowd of more than 10 people. He might be considered to have continued on the path of heating up the polity by insisting on his prising a Biafra Republic from Nigeria and securing the support of some Igbo youths who evidently swoon over the prospect of freedom from the stranglehold of their implacable tormentors. He might have been a threat to the state by declaring that no election would take place in Anambra as long as the Biafra question remains unresolved. But these apparent offences do not validate the government’s quest to re-arrest him in view of the rash of grim consequences that such a move would precipitate. 

How Not To End Recession In Nigeria

By Fred Nwaozor

The last time I checked, people had abruptly become fond of attributing silly jokes, even the ones cracked by a day-old child, to Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president. Currently, a day won’t pass without experiencing a certain comic utterance trending on the social media, and when one scrolls down, he would observe the comment is credited to no other person than the man who has ruled Zimbabwe for 36 years.

*Buhari 

This can be related to what is making the rounds in Nigeria at the moment. Right now, any misfortune in the country, be it personal or corporate, is wholly attributed to the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government owing to the obvious minuses the administration is characterised by.

It is needless to reiterate that Nigeria is at present undergoing recession. I’m afraid, if the needful is not done as quickly as possible, depression might set in soonest. Hence, sound thinkers cannot fold their arms as the painful and pathetic situation lingers. It is their duty to proffer the needed remedy as well as tender constructive criticism when and where necessary to ensure that the embattled giant of Africa regains its strength.

The Federal Government (FG) has promised that the 2017 budget, estimated at N7.298 trillion, would pull Nigeria out of recession. This pledge does not augur well for the country since the implementation of the 2016 budget of N6.08 trillion is still ongoing, and indeed, over 60 per cent of the budget is yet to be implemented.

Besides, do not forget in haste that Nigerians were equally promised a while ago that 2016 budget would end the recession. Intriguingly, the focus has suddenly been shifted to the yet-to-come 2017 budget. This confliction of promises significantly indicates that the actual disease ravaging the country’s economy is yet to be discovered by those entrusted with the task. I would say the 2016 budget can end this monstrous era once and for all, if the appropriate things are done. The 2016 budget is conspicuously bedevilled by limited funds, hence, the prime problem is not its implementation but how to find the required funds. We need to concentrate on realistic issues rather than empty ones. This is the only way we can make progress.

If we fail to implement the 2016 budget as expected, we will arguably still encounter similar hurdles when the awaited 2017 budget is eventually approved by the National Assembly (NASS). Moreover, a deficit of N2.269 trillion in the 2017 appropriation bill is enough reason to worry. This implies that Nigeria would continue to live on mere promises whilst thousands of Nigerians are dying with countless firms running out of business, on a daily basis. Since the NASS is yet to approve the Presidency’s request to borrow $29.9 billion externally, which is in line with the people’s wish, I suggest we look inwards toward sourcing for funds internally. Several citizens would be willing to lend, or even donate, to the government.

Before The Umpteenth 'Herdsmen' Attack

By Emmanuel Ugwu

If a perceptive artist was commissioned to draw a portrait of President Muhammadu Buhari, he would have to think of how to present an image of a conflicted, two-faced commander in chief. Buhari is a hawk and a dove. A lion and a lamb. A war monger and a pacifist.

He is waging wars against cattle rustlers and Niger Delta militants while winking at the prolific mass murderers that parade as ‘herdsmen’. He is fighting to secure Nigerian cattle and oil facilities even as he literally feigns ignorance of a genocidal phenomenon claiming countless Nigerian lives.

The double standard is not as a result of an oversight. Buhari receives daily security briefings. He is constantly updated on the condition of safety of lives and property in Nigeria. He is furnished with processed data on past and present security threats and predictive intelligence on future scenarios. His rich knowledge of the security situation of Nigeria is critical to his ability to fulfill the fundamentals of his job description as the president of the republic.

So, why is Buhari treating the wastage of Nigerians by the ‘herdsmen’ with asymmetric indifference? Why does he condone the killing of Nigerians when he is raging against cattle rustling and pipeline vandalism? Aren’t human lives incomparable, in value, with cattle or crude oil? Shouldn't the protection of endangered human beings come before that of animals and oil?

This question is important because Buhari and his generals categorize every serious security challenge as a battle and create a special military operation to defeat it. They dedicate a new operation to any pattern of criminal behavior that they consider too dangerous to be allowed to wane on its own timetable.

This inclination to resort to military operation is the reflex of a Buhari presidency that feels it is under obligation to use any effective means to de-escalate any spiral of criminality before its perpetrators develop a false sense of invincibility.

Constitutional purists take exception to this new normal of deploying the military to undertake law enforcement assignments that fall under the purview of the Nigerian police. The idealists say that repurposing the military as a quick fix talisman for suppressing domestic crimes is essentially unlawful and potentially risky. They argue that fitting the military into the vacuum of weakness of the Nigerian police, in the long run, could have the effect of orienting the focus of the Nigerian military away from their core mission. They surmise that the perennial distraction of the Nigerian military with police duties may be eroding the professionalism of our armed forces, and therefore, vitiating the readiness of the Nigerian military to defend the country against external aggression.

The Nigerian Army is presently prosecuting two military operations to combat violent crimes that the Buhari administration deems to be beyond the capacity of the Nigerian police to confront. Operation ‘Harbin Kunama’ is addressing the menace of cattle rustling in some parts of the North. Operation ‘Crocodile Smile’ is battling the sabotage of oil installations by militants in the Niger Delta region. But there is no hurricane-name-sounding, operation-scale military response to the runaway terrorism of the ‘herdsmen’.

In July, Buhari flew to Zamfara State to launch Operation Harbin Kunama. Prior to that time, a part of Zamfara state, particularly Dansadau forest, had become the playground of cattle rustlers. Armed gangs resident in that bush were invading villages from and impoverishing people whose wealth is mainly denominated in cattle.

Buhari went to the forest dressed in military uniform. His physical presence and his appearance in combat gear were a message. He wanted to signal that he took the suffering of the victims of cattle rustling seriously, and that he was committed to doing everything within his powers to end the scourge.

At the occasion, Buhari spoke to the heart of the matter. He said that his government viewed cattle rustling as a crime. He warned, in the clearest terms, that the mandate of the operation he came to kickstart was to achieve a complete wipeout of cattle rustlers troubling the people of Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi and Niger states.

Buhari’s Speech: A Nut Bereft Of Kernel

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Two things leap disa­greeably out of Presi­dent Muhammadu Buhari’s first-year-in-office anniversary speech of May 29, 2016. In the broadcast’s 2624 words, not once did he mention the words Fulani herdsmen, let alone address the real and pre­sent danger they constitute to Nigeria’s continued existence as one political entity. Was this unfortunate omission because he is himself of the Fulani eth­nic group? Or was it because he considers a final stop to have been put to the herdsmen’s mur­derous rampaging throughout the country? Or is it because the destructive army is a law unto itself, above censure and sanc­tion?

*President Buhari

And this: “We are fully aware that those vested interests who have held Nigeria back for so long will not give up without a fight. They will sow divisions, sponsor vile press criticisms at home and abroad, incite the public in an effort to create chaos rather than relinquish the vice-like grip they have held on Nigeria.” In rendering the above two sentences in the present continuous tense, wasn’t Presi­dent Buhari suggesting his gov­ernment’s lack of total control, much in the manner of a mon­arch unable to hold his goblet?

Sidelining the connotative meaning of these sentences as down to clumsiness by presi­dential speechwriters, and also not minding the grammati­cal mistakes in the speech, a fundamental worry is evident. Consider this: “They will sow divisions, sponsor vile press crit­icisms at home and abroad, in­cite the public in an effort to cre­ate chaos…” If you interpreted this official attribution of trea­sonous quality to a robust media as the first decisive step to the systematic emasculation of pub­lic opinion, your apprehension would sit on a solid foundation. Is it not often said that truth – read an unfettered media – is in­variably the first casualty in any dispensation’s charted course to a repressive bastion? Suddenly, a government that rode straight to power on the wings of the re­lentless and remorseless media battering and badgering of the Jonathan administration is talk­ing about a “vile press”!

The “vile press” must, of course, have no future in this democratic march, must not fea­ture in the dynamics of change. So, let’s take a more detailed look at the President’s broadcast, em­ploying the instrument of con­tent analysis. “By age, instinct and experience, my preference is to look forward, to prepare for the challenges that lie ahead and rededicate the administration to the task of fixing Nigeria,” said Buhari. Yet, about half the speech was on the past, rather than an expatiating on the “tri­umph”, “consolidation”, and “achievements!” he vaunted. He moaned about Boko Haram’s devastations. He moaned about the collapse in oil prices. He moaned about decayed infra­structures. He moaned about the preceding government that did not live up to expectation. You would expect the elaborate exercise in threnody to be fol­lowed by his administration’s rectifying “achievements!” That turned out to be a fatuous dream.

A Stronger Challenge Than Swatting A Fly

By Chuks Iloegbunam

The fight against insur­gency is not as straight­forward as swatting a fly. In the past week, I have snatched every free time that strayed into my schedules to criti­cally look again at two invaluable books on Nigeria. Professor Ben Nwabueze (SAN), one of Africa’s most renowned constitutional lawyers, authored both. The one book is How President Obasanjo Subverted Nigeria’s Federal Sys­tem; the other is How President Obasanjo Subverted the Rule of Law and Democracy. Gold Press Limited, Ibadan, published the books simultaneously in 2007. These seminal works, each of 22 chapters, pack a combined pagi­nation running to nearly a thou­sand pages. They demonstrate incontrovertibly that Nigeria’s primary political problem issues directly from the bastardization of its Federal constitution.

This indictment appears on the blurb of How President Obasanjo subverted the Rule of Law and Democracy: “This is an account of how President Obasanjo turned Nigeria from a law-governed state, a legal order, bequeathed to us by the British colonialists, into a lawless one; from an organization of power and coercive force limited and regulated by, and to be exercised in accordance with, law into a system of personal rule in which law was replaced more or less by arbitrary whims and personal political interests of one indi­vidual, and in which government actions were determined largely by might, by the application of organized coercive force in the exclusive monopoly of the state, altogether careless of legality.”

Anyone who reads these books will find detailed exam­ples, page after page, of how a man elected to promote the development of his country’s nascent democracy behaved, by words and actions, like a bull in a china shop.

Professor Nwabueze detailed how Obasanjo’s government wantonly bastardized the concept of the separation of powers, how, in illegality, it forced Governors DSP Alamieyeseigha (Bayelsa State), and Rashidi Ladoja (Oyo State) from of­fice; how it illegally impeached Governors Joshua Dariye (Plateau State) and Ayo Fayose (Ekiti State); how that government compromised the judiciary; how it turned the De­partment of State Security (DSS) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) into Leviathans for the annihila­tion of perceived opposition; and how Obasanjo routinely violated Governors’ constitutional im­munity. The books detail count­less other anti-Federal acts and actions perpetrated under Oba­sanjo’s watch.

Two questions arise:

(1) How did Obasanjo literally get away with murder?

(2) Is today’s Nige­ria a regression into a nightmar­ish replication of Obasanjo’s to­talitarianism?

There is for every cause, a con­sequence. During Obasanjo’s despotism, Odi was flattened; Zaki Biam was pulverized. These resulted in the massacres of in­nocent thousands. Of course, the military expeditions were not altogether surprising, com­ing as they did from a man who, as military Head of State, had set up the Ita Oko penal island, where Nigerian citizens were banished into oblivion. Is Nigeria banished now to the avoidable and intractable consequences of despotism, at the hands of someone who, as military Head of State, condemned Nigerian citizens to death on the strength of a retroactive decree? These questions are apposite, given the volatile developments unfolding in the Niger Delta. All kinds of militant groups are emerging or re-emerging, destroying pipe­lines and oil installations. In their first incarnation, President Oba­sanjo failed to halt and reverse their threat and potentiality for knocking the country down to its knees. He thought the problem could be combated and defeated by the brutish application of mili­tary force. He failed woefully. 

Buhari’s Archaic Approach To Niger Delta Problems

By Ochereome Nnanna

 Two Nigerians from Katsina State have been Presidents of Nigeria in the past ten years. The first was Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who assumed power on May 29th 2007. He was an academic from a Fulani elite family. The core of his government comprised mainly Northerners because unlike his late elder brother, Major General Shehu Yar’Adua, he never really had much opportunity to interact with the wider Nigerian society before he joined politics. He was imposed as President on the nation by – you know who – former President Olusegun Obasanjo, his immediate predecessor in those days when the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) did just as it liked without any challenge from any quarters.

*Buhari 

Having finished his eight years as the Governor of Katsina State, Yar’Adua had wanted to go back to the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, teach Chemistry pro bono and look after his failing health. Next, Obasanjo went to the creeks of the Niger Delta and dragged in another gentleman who had already won the PDP ticket for Governor of Bayelsa State, Dr. Goodluck Ebele “Azikiwe” Jonathan. I remember that day in November 2006 when Obasanjo paraded Yar’Adua and Jonathan on television as the Police usually parade crime suspects. Jonathan in particular looked like a school boy on a forced errand.

The president-to-be never knew his Vice-president-to-be apart from the fact that they sometimes met as governors. When eventually they were elected into office, the militancy in the Niger Delta was at its peak. Many analysts had argued that Obasanjo was forced to bring Jonathan into the presidential pairing as a peace offering to the Ijaw militants and their loud and troublesome “father”, Chief Edwin Clark, in place of the more fancied and popular Dr. Peter Odili, the Rivers State governor. That Obasanjo bowed to the Clark/Ijaw faction of the South-South People’s Assembly (SSPA) rather than the more broad-based pro-Odili faction led by Ambassador Matthew Mbu/Raymond Dokpesi, was seen as an application of common sense. Obasanjo must have realised that ignoring the demands of Clark and his Ijaw militant tribesmen would keep the economic livewire of the nation in the Niger Delta at great risk.

The disruptions would never stop, and the economy would continue to suffer. When Yar’Adua assumed power, he came under pressure by hawks from his native Northern Nigeria to “crush” the Niger Delta militants. He actually mobilised the Nigerian troops towards that effect, but as an intelligent, wise and commonsensical leader he also listened to the argument of Niger Delta campaigners who were very rampant in the media, especially television. These included Dr. Chris Ekiyor; my sister, Ann Kio Briggs, Dr. Oronto Douglas, Comrade Joseph Evah, Dr. Ledum Mitee, Dokubo Asari and a host of others.

Most of them advised that rather than launching a full-scale military campaign to “crush” the militants as the Federal Government had already started doing when it attacked Gbaramatu Kingdom in Delta State in search of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) leader, Government Ekpemupolo (alias Tompolo), an offer of amnesty for voluntary disarmament of the militants should first be tried. Yar’ Adua sent his Vice President, Jonathan, to the creeks to discuss with his kinsmen. Eventually, by August 2009, the militants accepted the offer of amnesty and surrendered their arms. Thus, began the post-amnesty programmes, which saw the “repentant” militants being given education and training on various trades in Nigeria and abroad. The big boys or “ex-generals” got hefty contracts and became visible and loud in Abuja hotels and the Aso Villa, especially during the reign of Jonathan as President. In fact, the biggest ex-militant, Tompolo, was awarded multi-billion naira contracts to safeguard the network of oil pipelines in the Niger Delta and he also became a major player in the maritime industry. There was absolute quiet in the Niger Delta.