The National Grazing Reserve Bill: The Greatest Evil Of All

By Femi Fani-Kayode

On April 18th 2016, Mr. Okonkwo Afamefuna wrote the following on his Facebook wall:

“I decided to read a copy of the National Grazing Reserve Bill and I was surprised at what I saw. The Bill creates a council to be chaired by a chairman to be appointed by the president. The council shall have the power to take your land anywhere the land is located in the country and then pay you compensation. Your land, when taken, shall be assigned to herdsmen who shall use your land for grazing purposes. They shall bring cows to the land and you shall lose the land permanently to those Fulani cattlemen”. This is the Sudan downloading right here in Nigeria.”

*Fani-Kayode 

On April 18th, Mr. Gabriel Ogbonnaya wrote the following on his Facebook wall:

“I decided to read a copy of the National Grazing Reserve Bill and I was surprised at what I saw. The Bill creates a commission to be chaired by a Chairman to be appointed by the president, to be confirmed by the senate. The commission shall have the power to take your land anywhere the land is located in the country and then pay you compensation. Your land, when taken, shall be assigned to herdsmen who shall use your land for grazing purposes. They shall bring cows to the land and you shall lose the land permanently to those cattlemen. If you feel that the commission was not right to take your land, you can go to court but before you go to court, you must first of all notify the federal attorney general of your intention to sue the commission. Apart from notifying, you must get the consent and authority of the federal attorney general before you can sue. So that means that if the attorney general refuses to give his consent to the suit, you have lost your land forever to the herdsmen. And this law, when passed, shall apply to the whole country so it means that your land in the village or anywhere is not safe. The National Grazing Reserve Commission would have the power to take away your land from you anytime they want and pay you whatever they want as compensation (even when you don’t want to sell, and remember that for you to get compensation, you must have documents showing or proving ownership). So I think that we all in the South-West, South-South and South-East must rise up and reject this Bill. We must do all things to force our national Assembly members from passing that Bill into law. That Bill is a deliberate attempt to take our lands and hand the land over to the Fulani cattlemen since it is only the Fulanis that rear cattle in Nigeria. That law, when passed, shall fulfill the directive of Uthman Dan Fodio and other northern leaders to take over other parts of Nigeria. I implore you to use all available means to implore your senator and Reps not to pass that law. That law will destroy Nigeria. All over the world, ranches are established and used to rear cattle. The farmers buy land and put their cattle there. There is no country where the land of the citizens are compulsorily acquired and given to others.

This is evil, and designed to favour the Fulanis, the stock the president comes from. We must resist the passage of that Bill into law to save Nigeria, and to protect our future generations.” This is Yugoslavia and Rwanda unfolding right here in Nigeria.

On April 18th 2016, Mr. Duru Collins wrote the following on his Facebook wall:

“This National Grazing Reserve Bill if passed into law will just mark the beginning of apartheid in our country. When the government of Zimbabwe collected land from the white people who naturalised there the whole world worked against President Robert Mugabe. Sanctions were stiffened against his regime even though the whites in Zimbabwe were not African by origin. In our country today there are people that are not Nigerians by origin and these people are making laws to take over our inheritance. This nation will burn once this law is passed.” This is Lebanon and Zimbabwe downloading right here in Nigeria.” 

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.

Is The Nigerian Senate So Bereft Of Shame?

By Simbo Olorunfemi

It is difficult to tell exactly what to make of the Nigerian Senate. It is that redundant contraption, an after-thought, mindlessly foisted on the Nigerian system by the drafters of the 1979 constitution in a bid to blindly copy the American system. Unfortunately, neither the 1990 nor the 1999 constitution corrected this anomaly, leaving us with a sore that has continued to fester, since then. The Green Chamber, that ant-infested arm of a bloated legislature, might yet be the greatest undoing of the present democratic dispensation.

*Senate President Bukola Saraki

Under the parliamentary system of the first republic, there was the Upper chamber or “House of Chiefs” fashioned after the largely-ceremonial British “House of Lords”. Its task was as ceremonial as it was institutionally redundant. But rather than for our Fathers to learn from that misadventure and embrace a nimble and manageable unicameral parliamentary system, they opted to embrace an expansive and expensive Presidential system. The Senate personifies everything that is wrong with the present system. It symbolises the waste, insensitivity, inefficiency that have come to define the system, over the years. The Senate is a symbol of disconnect between those charged with making laws and the people they purport to represent. Nothing in their words or action indicates that they understand where we are coming from or an understanding of the change of paradigm being witnessed in other arms of government. 

The Senate has always struggled for relevance, no doubt. The Enwerem-Okadigbo-Wabara era was one for internal schism over the spoils of office. The dust settled only for the chamber to transit into the pocket of a cabal, who for 8 years, turned it to a mere rubber-stamp for legislating acquiescence to anti-people policies and pronouncements. The Mark of the just-ended era was the military precision with which opposition was silenced in the chambers. ‘Bow and Go’ was institutionalised, as the serious assignment of screening and confirmation of nomination to high offices was reduced to a tragicomedy, played out to the full glare of the world.
 
With the exit of the first set of state Governors from office in 2007, the Senate soon became the favourite retirement pad for former Chief Executives of states. Those ones, standing on the ruins left behind in their states, simply picked Senatorial seats, transitioned to new offices and continued the life in Abuja. Some are Governors-emeritus, running the states from the Senate. Many are godfathers, dispensing favours at will - appointing, disappointing, nominating, engaging in all manner of shenanigans, while pretending to be Senators. The only use of the Senate being the perks, fat allowance and the opportunity for ‘oversight’, as many are known to be perpetual absentees from sittings. Those who show up hardly bother to make any contribution, spending time mostly for banter and inanities, when they are able to manage to stay awake.

 

Ordinarily, the Senate would do well to avoid media or public attention, as much as possible. There is hardly anything about it that commends it to us. From its filthy car-park to the disorderly face it presents to the public, the Senate should be content to be silent, while at ‘work’. But the Senate operates only in accordance with its own rules when it comes to the matter of shame. This is not even about the interesting circumstances under which the present leadership of the Senate emerged. It is not about the treachery, so alleged. Not about the Leader having to sit in the car park, hours before sitting, to be able to make it inside the chambers while other party members are at a meeting called by the party.  This is not about refusing to tow the party line and teaming up with the opposition to up-stage the position of the party, simply for the sake of personal ambition. It is not about all that, for integrity is not in high supply, when it comes to politics and struggle for power. It is not even about the budget.

The Danger Of A Single Corruption Story

By Moses E. Ochonu

There is a danger in equating corruption in Nigeria with the infractions of a single corrupt individual. At different moments of our national life, we tend to narrowly and naively unload our anti-corruption angst on one individual politician. We then pummel this individual like a piñata while seemingly forgetting that Nigeria’s political corruption is a group act, an orgy of theft involving whole groups of politicians and bureaucrats.

*Buhari and Saraki

We inculpate some politicians while inadvertently exculpating others. We do so to assuage our emotional exhaustion at corruption’s stubborn persistence, and its devastating consequences.

In the second republic the individual stand-in for corruption was Umaru Dikko. In the Peoples Democratic Peoples Party (PDP) era, it was James Ibori. In the unfolding All Progressives Congress (APC) period, that personification of Nigeria’s corruption is Bukola Saraki.

To hear some people talk about Bukola Saraki one would think that the Senate President is the very embodiment of Nigeria’s corruption problem and that his removal from office and/or conviction would magically banish graft and restore probity in the polity.

Reading and listening to some of these folks one would think that Nigeria’s corruption virus originated with Saraki and would end with his conviction. You’d think that Saraki’s ongoing trial was some seminal event in a revolution against corruption and that the reclamation of Nigeria hangs on its outcome alone.

Never mind that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was charged with exactly the same offense as Saraki in a similarly politically charged atmosphere and that over 70 lawyers invaded the courtroom to defend him and eventually succeeded in intimidating the judge into acquitting him. Mr. Saraki is rightly berated for trying to wriggle out of an actual trial, for seeking to have the charges corruptly dismissed. But it’s now a distant, rarely revisited memory that Tinubu, the architect and champion of change, if you believe the hype, had used a mix of legal maneuvers, bully tactics, and other shady shenanigans to evade justice on multiple occasions when the late social crusader, Gani Fawehinmi, sought to subject him to an open court process. He, too, was afraid of a trial. Today, he issues periodic sermons about how corruption has hobbled Nigeria and needs to be defeated. Depressingly, many Nigerians cheer these sanctimonious pronouncements.

We Are Watching: The Education Curriculum

By Anthony Olubunmi Okogie  

We live in a country where the rumor mills work relentlessly and unceasingly, a land where conspiracy theories are never in short supply. There are rumors in the air that a new curriculum of basic education is either about to be adopted, or has already been adopted by the Federal Ministry of Education, and that it is already being implemented.

*Cardinal Okogie 

It is said that this curriculum, with the stated intention of merging religion and national values, merges subjects like Christian Religious Studies, Islamic Studies, Civic Education, Social Studies, and Security Education into one compulsory subject; that this compulsory subject will be taught to our children from Primary 1 to Junior Secondary School 3; that our young and impressionable minds will be taught in this compulsory subject that Jesus neither died on the cross nor resurrected; that all the children to be taught this subject would be required to memorize and recite the Quran; that they (children) will be taught or are being taught already that they may disobey their parents if they do not allow them to become Muslim.

For the sake of limited comfort, let us be hypothetical and imagine that these rumors emanated from the fertile imagination of idle mischief-makers. That would be a confirmation of the famous dictum that the idle mind is the devil’s workshop. The emergence and increasingly powerful influence of social media clearly and unambiguously demonstrate to us in Nigeria that there is a large population of such minds. Their stock in trade is misinformation for the sake of dissension. They know how to make falsehood appear as truth and, even when they speak the truth, they do so in a way that misleads. Such individuals threaten our peaceful coexistence.

But there is room for another hypothesis, a discomforting one this time. What if such a curriculum exists, with its contents as reported in these rumors? If indeed such a curriculum is being implemented or is about to be implemented then its authors and executors should seriously consider its implications. It would be gravely imprudent to present Islam to a Christian child in ways that devalue Islam. In the same way, it would amount to a grave disservice to interreligious relationship if Christianity were to be presented to a Muslim child in ways that devalue the teachings of Christianity.

Who Governs Nigeria?

By Reuben Abati

During the Jonathan administration, an outspoken opposition spokesperson had argued that Nigeria was on auto-pilot, a phrase that was gleefully even if ignorantly echoed by an excitable opposition crowd. Deeper reflection should have made it clear even to the unthinking that there is no way any country can ever be on auto-pilot, for there are many levels of governance, all working together and cross-influencing each other to determine the structure of inputs and outcomes in society. To say that a country is on auto-pilot is to assume wrongly that the only centre of governance that exists is the official corridor, whereas governance is far more complex. The question should be asked, now as then: who is governing Nigeria? Who is running the country? Why do we blame government alone for our woes, whereas we share a collective responsibility, and some of the worst violators of the public space are not even in public office?

*Buhari and Jonathan 

The President of the country is easily the target of every criticism. This is perhaps understandable to the extent that what we have in Nigeria is the perfect equivalent of an Imperial Presidency. Whoever is President of Nigeria wields the powers of life and death, depending on how he uses those enormous powers attached to his office by the Constitution, convention and expectations. Nigeria’s President not only governs, he rules. The kind of President that emerges at any particular time can determine the fortunes of the country. It helps if the President is driven by a commitment to make a difference, but the challenge is that every President invariably becomes a prisoner.

He has the loneliest job in the land, because he is soon taken hostage by officials and various interests, struggling to exercise aspects of Presidential power vicariously. And these officials do it right to the minutest detail: they are the ones who tell the President that he is best thing ever since the invention of toothpaste. They are the ones who will convince him as to every little detail of governance: who to meet, where to travel to, and who to suspect or suspend. The President exercises power, the officials and the partisans in the corridors exercise influence. But when things go wrong, it is the President that gets the blame. He is reminded that the buck stops at his desk.

We should begin to worry about these dangerous officials in the system, particularly within the public service, the reckless mind readers who exploit the system for their own ends, and who walk free when the President gets all the blame. To govern properly, every government not only needs a good man at the top, but good officials who will serve the country. We are not there yet. The same civil servants who superintended over the omissions of the past 16 years are the ones still going up and down today, and it is why something has changed but nothing has changed. The reality is terrifying.

Reject Buhari's Loan Application - Gov Fayose Tells Chinese Govt

Ekiti State Governor, Mr, Ayodele Fayose, has written to the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, to turn down President Muhammadu Buhari's request for a $2 billion loan from China. The letter (Ref. EK/GOV/28/10) which was  delivered to the Chinese Embassy in Abuja by top officials of the Ekiti State Government will also be given directly to the Chinese leader by Gov Fayose has already left the country to China. Incidentally, President Buhari is still in China on a state visit. Below is the letter:  

*Gov Fayose 

“I write as one of the major stakeholders in the project Nigeria, and a governor of one of the federating units making up Nigeria, to draw your attention to report that the Federal Government of Nigeria is on the verge of obtaining a $2 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of China.

“This $2 billion loan is part of the N1.84 trillion the Federal Government of Nigeria has proposed to borrow to finance the 2016 budget, which is yet to be signed by the President, Muhammadu Buhari owing to unending controversies between the Executive and Legislative arms of government.

“According to reports, Nigeria desires to raise about $5 billion abroad to cover part of its 2016 budget deficit. This is projected to hit N3 trillion ($15 billion) due to heavy infrastructure spending at a time when the slump in global oil prices has slashed the country’s export revenues.

“While conceding that all nations, especially developing ones need support to be able to grow because no nation is an island, I am constrained to inform you that if the future of Nigeria must be protected, the country does not need any loan at this time.

“The government of China should be mindful of the fact that Nigerians, irrespective of their political and religious affiliations are totally opposed to increment of the country’s debt burden, which is already being serviced with 25 per cent of the Federal Government annual budget.

“It will interest the government of China to know that some of the projects for which the loan is being sought are not captured in the controversial 2016 budget, which has been sent to the President by the National Assembly for his assent. For instance, the Lagos – Calabar Rail project was not included in the budget proposal the President presented to the National Assembly and it was not included in the Appropriation Bill passed by the National Assembly.

Obasanjo And The Pathology Of Absence

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

WE now live in a country where if our moral sensibilities are not assaulted by the cases of corruption of our political leaders  which are unearthed with shocking regularity, our attempts  at every critical moment  to live down the jarring consciousness  of a dearth of  exemplars of a singular commitment to the collective good are  often  mocked by a stark reminder that this national malaise has  besmirched  us almost irrevocably .

*Obasanjo

It may be tolerable if we elect in a sombre moment of reflection on our seemingly intractable national challenges to grieve over the absence of men and women who ought to effectively hold the reins of the nation. But it is unbearable when we are reminded of this national affliction by attempts by some people to project themselves as the ultimate answers to our problems. What makes this situation doubly unbearable is that those who recommend themselves as solutions are part of the problems the nation has contended with in decades.

What really riles one is not the villains’ vacuous attempts at self-deification. What is more alarming is the danger of the obliteration of national memory which ultimately ought to guard us against the endorsement of such self-valourisation. With the national memory being overtaken by amnesia,  the urgent national  challenge is not how to rein in  the villain who is obsessed with  a  quest to transform himself into a hero but the citizens’ rapturous  approval of him as the  hero the nation has unfairly treated by not properly appreciating his place.

It is this search for national heroes that makes us to applaud former President Olusegun Obasanjo whenever he rails at the excesses of the leaders of the day, especially through highly envenomed epistolary media.  Of course, there are many excesses of our leaders that should rightly provoke umbrage from someone who is sufficiently aware that the nation is on the brink. Here, we need not split hair. But as a people who are scarred by the decades of misdirection, pillage and remorseless mismanagement of the nation’s bounteous resources by past leaders, we must not applaud those who are part of the malaise of the warped governance when they attempt to regain socio-political relevance by reminding us of our problems and blaming others as their vitalising forces.

Rather than encouraging Obasanjo as he struts around, self-deluded with the notion of being festooned with diadems for rare governmental insights and an unbreakable record of giant strides in government, the question we should ask is what are the institutions he established to check the excesses of the members of the National Assembly whom he excoriated in his letter to them last week? For if Obasanjo had established such institutions that nurture moral rectitude, he would not  be complaining that the lawmakers are preoccupied with how to cater to their selfish lifestyles at a time the nation is faced with an economic crisis that requires that they forget their personal comfort for now.

Grazing Bill An insult To Nigerians

By Tola Adeniyi

The National Assembly is about to pass a Bill that is set to kill whatever is left of our so-called over-centralised federal System. The bill if passed will be the greatest rape on our democracy and the biggest insult on our collective sensitivity as a people and as a country.

“The Fulani National Grazing Reserve” is presently before the National Assembly. The bill has successfully scaled through second reading in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. For it to become law it is to pass through the third reading.

The bill seeks to provide for the establishment of national grazing reserves and stock routes. It is sponsored by Senator Zainab Kure.

The Bill proposes to establish a National Grazing Reserve Commission (NGRC) for the country. The NGRC will be charged with the responsibility of using funds received from the Federal Government to forcefully acquire farmlands from Nigerians in all the 36 States of the country, develop same at government expense through the provision of bore holes, water reservoirs, etc; for the exclusive use of nomadic cattle rearers.

The issue here is very clear. Fulani herdsmen are cattle farmers. They could as well keep their cattle in ranches. They could devise whatever means like their counterparts in Argentina, Australia and the rest of the civilised world to do their animal husbandry. The men and boys roaming the streets, roads and bushes driving cattle are not the owners of these animals. They are just employees, labourers, attendants or whatever name they are called.

The owners of these cows like Generals Obasanjo, Nyako, Abdulsalami Abubakar and our president Buhari are big time farmers. They are businessmen. It is immoral to ask tax payers to finance the operations of these businesses. Cattle owners must provide capital through bank loans or whatever means to create their grazing lands in their localities. The cows are not owned by the Federal Government.

Just as the Federal Government is not creating farm lands for cocoa and kolanut farmers in Sokoto or Katsina, or creating farm lands for Agatu yam farmers in Enugu or Maiduguri, or creating special areas for fish farming in Zungeru, it cannot for any reason ever consider creating special lands for herdsmen for grazing. Let the herdsmen run their business without encroaching on the lands of other people. Let the cattle owners buy into the Fodder technology and other modern methods of providing feeds for their animals without roaming the streets and plundering other people’s farms.

To ever dream of this perverted bill is to step on the toes of other Nigerians and step on sore foot, and by so doing create a dangerous precedent.

Nobody should play ethnic game here. This is not an issue directed against any ethnic nationality in Nigeria. The simple matter is to let those who trade in cattle fund their business like all other businesses, including farming, in Nigeria.

The bill must not see the light of the day. The sponsors want to create serious problem in the polity and their design must be nipped in the bud.

The Nigeria Bar Association, the Coalition of Civil Societies, and all those who care about the continued existence of this troubled country must rise up to strongly oppose and kill this obnoxious and self serving bill. It beats my imagination that members of the National Assembly did not see the serious danger posed by this corrosive Bill.

In a reaction to the threats posed by this obnoxious Bill, the National Co-ordinator of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), Otunba Gani Adams, says: “Without any doubt, this is a very dangerous proposal for Nigeria. We all have seen how the Fulani herdsmen kill and maim members of the community where they graze their cattle without the backing of any law. I am sure that we can only imagine what their attitudes would be if the supposed grazing reserves are forcefully taken over by government and handed over to the herdsmen.”

Nigeria has enough problems on her hand right now; we should not provoke new and potentially more dangerous ones.

•Chief Tola Adeniyi, a former Managing Director of Daily Times of Nigeria, is Executive Chairman, The Knowledge Plaza and Founder Global Intelligentsia for Buhari. (adetolaadeniyi@hotmail.com)

Herdsmen And The Looming Rage

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

As a prime indicator of the failure of leadership in the country, government at all levels and public officials seem to derive some inexplicable joy from a creed that requires the neglect of problems until they deteriorate and almost defy any redemptive measures. Let the citizens protest or wail over roads that have been rendered impassable by their dilapidation that is worsened by floods and decrepit drainage systems. The government and its officials would wait. For to them, the bigger the problem, the better. If at all they intervene after the citizens’ outrage, it would only be because the problem has festered.

This official neglect was the compost for the proliferation of the Boko Haram crisis. Now, after the crisis has hobbled the North East, the government is troubling the citizens and the rest of the world with how to redevelop the region. Yet, our leaders have not learnt their lessons; they have not realised the futility of waiting for problems to fester before deploying tepid measures to solve them. The current response of the Federal Government to the danger posed to national security by Fulani herdsmen who are now on the prowl is underpinned by the same attitude of not frontally attacking national challenges as they occur.

Of course, we cannot capriciously abridge the right of Fulani herdsmen to pursue their business like other citizens. But the problem is when the pursuit of their business is a danger to the existence of other citizens and their legitimate businesses. It is the herdsmen’s predilection for blurring the distinction between their right and the right of others to their businesses that has launched them onto a path that is paved with impunity and tragedy. They ravage farmlands of other citizens in the course of grazing their cattle. Worse still, they rape women and girls. As has become rampant, a whimper of protest from those whose farmlands are destroyed provokes a ferocious response from the heavily armed herdsmen who unleash violence on them. These confrontations have led to tragic consequences: thousands are left dead and entire communities sacked and the residents rendered homeless.

But a more worrisome development is that the Federal Government has embarked on a course to legitimise the impunity of the herdsmen. Or how else do we consider the plan by the government to establish grazing reserves for the herdsmen? Already, President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Audu Ogbeh to set up 50, 000 hectares of grazing reserves within six months first in the north before moving to the south. By this policy, the government would seize the land of other citizens and give it to the herdsmen. Under the auspices of the new policy, the herdsmen can now leave Daura in Katsina State and have grazing reserves funded by the citizens’ taxes in a community in Anambra State. Aside from the president’s move, there is a bill that has passed the seconding reading and waiting for the third reading to be passed into law that would empower the Federal Government to create grazing reserves for the herdsmen.

But rather than having any potential to end the conflicts between herdsmen and farmers, the approach of the government would rather aggravate them. For in the first place, no one wants a neighbour imposed on him or her. Not even the likelihood of the government paying compensation for the land acquired for the grazing areas would make farmers to accommodate unwanted and destabilising guests. And why must the host communities accept the government’s position when without a clear legal backing as it is now, the herdsmen are already causing so much havoc? If there is an official policy that legitimises their grazing in other citizens’ communities, would the herdsmen not be more audacious in wreaking havoc? And why should the government spend the citizens’ taxes on private businesses?

The position of the government shows that it does not sufficiently appreciate the seriousness of the crisis. It does not take into cognisance the need of the communities that are afflicted by the menace of herdsmen. And since it is getting clearer that the government has failed to solve the problem, we must all be alert to the possibility of the victims of herdsmen’s violence protecting themselves. In fact, but for the efforts of some leaders in the south where the herdsmen have caused so much havoc, the crisis provoked by them would have assumed graver dimensions. For instance, the anger of the south west was only assuaged when the herdsmen who kidnapped its prominent son Olu Falae were apprehended last year. But apparently, the arrest of the kidnappers is not enough deterrent as Falae’s farm was again invaded this week and his security man shot dead. But for the intervention of the leaders of Ondo State, there would have been reprisal with its attendant calamitous consequences. Indeed, the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) to which the security man belonged has threatened that one major way to appease them is for the suspected killers of the security man to be apprehended or else they would retaliate.

The likelihood is fast disappearing that the citizens would forever contain their anger in the face of provocation by the herdsmen. That the patience of the much-offended farmers is running out was demonstrated in a community in Delta State where a lawmaker, policemen and community leaders went into the forest to search for the herdsmen who were destroying their farmlands and raping their women.

Instead of pursuing a tendentious policy of establishing grazing reserves for the herdsmen, the government should find a lasting solution to the issue. It is shocking that the government cannot ask itself the simple question of whether in the countries of the world known for producing beef what the government is considering is the best practice there. Nigeria is not on the list of the largest producers of beef in the world. Countries such as the United States, Brazil , China, Australia and even Libya and Gabon are not riven by conflicts over cattle like Nigeria. In these countries, there are no herdsmen who wake up every morning, strap guns on their sides and begin a mission of destroying other people’s farmlands. The governments of those countries have better things to do with their time than settling herdsmen-farmers’conflicts. In these countries, those whose business it is to breed cattle have ranches for doing this.

The government should be concerned with how to improve the standard of living of the nomadic Fulani herdsmen. There is the need for the government to encourage their education. This can only be done when the herdsmen are made to settle in ranches with their families. This has an additional benefit of stopping the spread of arms. Indeed, the government must appreciate the urgency of resolving this matter without seeming to be protecting the herdsmen. This is the only way to check the looming rage of communities that have been ravaged by the herdsmen with remorseless regularity and seeming government’s complicity.

*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is on the Editorial Board of the The Guardian where he also writes a weekly column that appears every Thursday

Nigeria: Of Bastards And Legitimates

By Chuks Iloegbuhnam

Two recent telephone conversations: My brother called. He was in something of a fix. Opening his door earlier that morning, there were two 30-li­tre jerry-cans placed in front of his house. Who had left them? He didn’t have long to wait for the answer to his unvoiced question. Our cousin’s wife, who lives in the same estate and whose husband was out of the country, had left them. She soon surfaced with an unam­biguous request.

“Your generator was on throughout the night.”

“It was.”

“That means you have a way of sourcing fuel. Please, don’t come back today without fuel for us!”

“Eh?”

“You can’t beat off the heat with your electric fans while I suffocate with my children.” The woman spoke matter-of-factly and returned to her house. What to do? I told my brother to go find fuel for his household’s further use, and for our cousin’s family too. He complained that the proposi­tion was far more difficult than it sounded. But, in my book, that aspect of our conversation was at an end. I was ready for us to discuss the moon and China.

I later called a journalist friend of mine. He had just returned from his barber’s, he said. The barber had doubled the cost of a haircut. When he asked why, the barber respond­ed with his own question:

“Oga, you no see say na genera­tor I dey use?” My friend drove home to find his wife frowning by their open freezer.

“What’s the matter?”

“The fish is melting.”

“In that case, let’s put the generator on for an hour while I go out in search of fuel.”

He had brunch and drove off again. Back after five hours without as much as a pint of petrol, the generator was still on. Seven minutes later, its fuel tank ran empty and the poor thing went off.

“As I speak to you now,” said my friend, “there’s no fuel in the house for anything. None for fighting the intense heat. We can’t even afford the luxury of watching the La Liga tonight. What gives me the jitters, how­ever, is the contingency of my wife’s fish going bad; that will earn me some roasting.”

*Chuks Iloegbunam 

I sym­pathized with my friend, and advised that he detailed his ex­periences in his next column, leaving out, of course, any as­pects that may, even if vaguely, suggest that his wife was some­thing of the authority on the domestic front.

The next story is about someone who got fuel all right but, against his will and the de­sire of his family, paid with the expensive currency of his life. The price was uncritically ex­tortionate and raises afresh the whole question of the place of the human being in contempo­rary Nigerian society.

The following report, by nu­merous online publications, came from Festac Town, Lagos, on April 6, 2016: “The lingering fuel crisis has claimed a life as a female staff of the Nigerian Se­curity and Civil Defence Corp (NSCDC) shot dead a boy at the AP Filling Station on 21 Road.

“The boy was alleged to have bought fuel in jerry cans and was going home when he was accosted by a team of Civil Defence officials who arrested him. The boy who should be about 18 years old was said to have laid down on the road pleading with the Corps mem­bers to allow him to go home, as he was not a fuel hawker but had just bought fuel for per­sonal use.

“Eyewitnesses said the Com­mander of the team who felt that the boy was resisting ar­rest, ordered a female official to shoot the “Bastard” and the woman obeyed his order and shot him. On seeing the boy dy­ing in the pool of his blood, the Corps members zoomed off in their patrol van.

“As at press time, men of the enhanced military patrol tagged “OP Mesa” and the Nigeria Po­lice led by the Festac Police Sta­tion Divisional Police Officer (DPO) Monday Agbonika were on the ground, making sure that the angry mob did not take the laws into their own hands.

“The angry sympathizers had attempted to set the filling station and some petrol tank­ers ablaze but were prevented by the security operatives. A senior police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said the killing of the young boy was unwarranted.

‘‘Why should they kill the boy? I think the Civil Defence doesn’t know when to use fire­arms; they don’t even have reg­ulation on firearms usage.’

“The Lagos State Police Command spokesman, Dolapo Badmos, who confirmed the in­cident, said that the Police was investigating the matter with a view to fishing out the Civil Defence personnel who com­mitted the act and prosecuting them in the law court.”

The Civil Defence officers abandoned the boy they had shot dead and zoomed off! Who did they expect to clear their mess? Also, something new is self-evident. If people previously entertained only suspicions, the Civil Defence commander in Festac Town finally confirmed the composi­tion of Nigerians as legitimates and bastards. The legitimates are armed to the teeth and, like poachers in a games reserve, are running around gunning down bastards indiscriminately. But, until recent times, it wasn’t spelt out that bastardy was a capital offence.

There’s another considera­tion. An unidentified Police officer questioned the Civil De­fence’s knowledge on gun us­age. In fact, he wondered if any regulations guided their use of lethal weapons. The murdered boy had not committed any of­fence known to Nigerian law, let alone an offence punishable by summary execution, with­out any form of trial. The bas­tard was sadistically shot dead at pointblank range, despite the fact that he was rolling on the ground, pleading for mercy.

In some societies, this out­rage by the Civil Defence Corps should lead to a thorough re­view of their arms-bearing cir­cumstances. But, the problem of Nigerians – or more appro­priately, the problem of Nige­rian Bastards – has not been only at the hands of the Civil Defence. All other gun-bearing services are into this indiscrim­inate poaching of ‘bastards’. A DSS officer recently shot and killed a voter in Nasarawa State, at pointblank range and with­out provocation. As for the reg­ular Armed Forces, the Shi’a in Zaria and Biafran agitators are severely bloodied patches on their slates.

It all leads to the fundamen­tals. Official wantonness is a needless invitation to the chaos of backlashes. Again, Nigerian commentators often audit gov­ernments on their performanc­es regarding mundane things like power supply, availability of petroleum products, the provi­sion of jobs and the creation of the feel-good factor. Needless to add that these are critical areas in which the current dispensa­tion has so far posted mind-numbing failures, for which it has consistently blamed every other entity but it bumbling self.

Yet, the most important barometer for measuring a gov­ernment’s worth ought to be the amount of premium it places on human life. Any society with the apparent or inherent dichotomy of Legitimates and Bastards, in which the former mindlessly plunders and mur­ders the latter, execrates politi­cal leadership.

 *Mr. Chuks Iloegbunam, an eminent essayist, journalist and author of several books, writes column on the back page of The Authority newspaper every Tuesday.

If I Were Buhari…

By Okey Ndibe

…I would not have traveled to China. Not at this time, no. In fact, I would tell my Chinese hosts today that I must abbreviate my weeklong visit and return immediately to my office in Abuja.

I know that some defense could be made for the current trip to China. Presidential spokesman Femi Adesina seemed to anticipate the objections to the president’s current excursion, and preemptively cast the trip in entirely positive light. “President Muhammadu Buhari,” he wrote in a press statement, “will leave Abuja…for a working visit to China aimed at securing greater support from Beijing for the development of Nigeria's infrastructure, especially in the power, roads, railways, aviation, water supply and housing sectors.”
 
He continued: “President Buhari's talks with President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Peoples’ Congress, Zhang Dejiang will also focus on strengthening bilateral cooperation in line with the Federal Government's agenda for the rapid diversification of the Nigerian economy, with emphasis on agriculture and solid minerals development.”
 
All that sentiment sounds high-minded and noble. Nigeria desperately needs to diversify its economy. Heck, a major tragic strain in the country’s mostly woeful narrative is the decades-long neglect of this imperative. Nigerians are paying the price for lazily laying all their eggs in the crude oil basket. We wagered on the globe staying eternally addicted to fossil fuel. We never reckoned that a time would come when there would be a glut of crude, or when the US, the world’s greatest consumer, would make a strategic turn toward domestic production.

Nigeria’s singular reliance on crude oil earnings meant a high degree of susceptibility to the capriciousness of the market. As oil prices plummeted into the valley, Nigerians suddenly realized that they were in a deep mess. Diversification of the economy, hitherto a fanciful phrase that cropped up in politicians’ speeches, became a rallying cry, one that President Buhari is rather fond of.
 
Yet, if I were Buhari, I would not only rush back to Abuja, I would also put a moratorium on all presidential foreign trips—until a semblance of normalcy returns to Nigeria.
 
As a military dictator, Mr. Buhari hardly traveled out of the country. In his civilian incarnation, he seems infected by Sokugo, the wandering spirit. In fact, his wanderlust rivals that of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first term in office. Like his predecessor, the incumbent president invokes the attraction of foreign investment to justify his junkets.

Buhari And 'The 24 Disciples'

By Iyoha John Darlington
We are doubtless caught in an agonising web of untold hardship, ruthlessness, frustration, totalitarianism, violence, and bloodshed - a period that could be characterised as anything but horrors orchestrated by a fascist Nazi front.

On May 29, 2015, a government was sworn in in Africa's most populous nation headed by a dictator cum born-again 'democrat' at the Eagle Square, Abuja, Nigeria. The cloud reeking of blood and violence that ominously hung over Nigeria dispersed; with the apostles of violence and not propagators of ideas but crusaders of lies and deceit now in charge.

President Buhari and two ministers: Amaechi and Fashola

Nigerians with a slim margin of two million votes or thereabouts we were told opted and voted for a change which spoke volumes for the historic gathering at Eagle Square where power eventually changed hands. And how well has this change actually impacted on their lives? The firebrand Septuagenarian amid a sense of impatience and repulsion in some quarters like a cow with a mouthful of cud held a nation patiently and anxiously for over half a year before his cabinet of ''efficient ministers' was unveiled as the ministries were pruned down to 25 headed by recycled politicians.

Curiosity, upon my soul , hung in the air, in fact , it got the better of everyone! In the event of power outage prior to his inauguration, we had enough fuel to run our engines, electricity generators inclusive, that, of course, kept Nigerians in business. With the stride recorded in the agricultural sector , Nigeria was something near a food exporting nation. This , in no small measure , encouraged Nigerians in the Diaspora to start girding up their loins probably for a hejira to their homeland.

Today Nigerians are neck deep in a ding-dong battle for survival under a power acquired through violence and intimidation as it is being misused to thwart the rule of law and this today has triggered off a very sad situation via a resurgence in crime particularly violent ones, economic collapse, brutality by security agents, lawlessness , terrorism and anarchy have taken deep roots as Nigerians now live at the mercy of nomadic herdsmen across the country.

Only yesterday reports emerged that nomadic herdsmen numbering 10 led an armed invasion of Dr Olu Falae's farm had the guard abducted who days later was found lifeless in a pool of water while Ugwuleshi and Agatu communities in Benue and Enugu States have also been attacked by these same band of invading marauders!

Nigeria like other nations under the sun was supposedly created for an economic welfare of its people and improvement in human resource development and not for the welfare of an elite cadre or group that it has degenerated to. There is no gainsaying the fact that moral bankruptcy has plagued our paid civil cum uniformed bureaucracy, judiciary, law enforcement and elected executive under the self-styled Mr. Integrity in fallacious pursuit of a credible system of accountability, prosecution, and punishment.

2016 Budget Crisis: My Position That Buhari Is Clueless, Incompetent Confirmed- Fayose

*Buhari 

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayo Fayose has described the raging controversies between the Presidency and the National Assembly over the 2016 Budget as a confirmation of his position that President Buhari was clueless and incompetent, saying: “Nigerians should expect more blunders like this until they send Buhari back to Daura in 2019.” 

The governor, who said it was now obvious that the President and his All Progressives Congress (APC) only wanted power desperately without the wherewithal to govern, added: “I warned Nigerians of the consequences of electing an octogenarian as president and with the international embarrassment that this budget crisis has become, I have been vindicated.”

According to a statement issued on Tuesday by his Special Assistant on Pubic Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, the governor said: “It is obvious that there is total disconnection between the President and his cabinet members as many of the ministers don’t even have access to him probably because the President spend most of his time resting as a result of his old age.”

He said further: “The reality is that the President is challenged by age, exposure and ability. He did not read the budget proposal that he presented to the National Assembly and this should be a lesson for those who clamoured for a Buhari presidency that no man can give what he does not have.

“The question is: can a minister present supplementary budget to the National Assembly and can the National Assembly act on budget proposal submitted by a minister? It is shameful that after blaming former President Goodluck Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for close to one year, the presidency is now blaming the National Assembly for its inability to prepare a common budget.”