Avian Influenza: Not Again

By Comr Fred Doc Nwaozor 

It’s only a-day old kid that is yet to realize that Nigeria is current­ly bewildered by the re-emer­gence of Avian Influenza, popular­ly known as ‘bird flu’. When Ebola virus was on board in the country some months ago, as an analyst and activist, in most of my commentar­ies, I categorically stated that Nigeria would surely overcome the scourge if we could employ severe and sus­tainable measures just as we did dur­ing the era of avian influenza.

To have used avian influenza as an instance as regards severe ap­proach towards containing an ep­idemic signified that undoubtedly every needed step was taken when the country firstly experienced the disease (bird flu) in 2006. To this end, the capital question that needs to be asked at this point is: why the re-emergence, or why is the coun­try experiencing the outbreak for a second time barely after nine years of its initial occurrence?

The country was able to over­come the said pandemic infection during its previous outbreak, spe­cifically in 2006, owing to the tacti­cal and drastic approach employed by the government and other con­cerned bodies. This implies that the re-emergence of the menace might not be unconnected with the fact that we went to sleep or on a recess; that is, apathy on the part of the con­cerned authorities and personnel re­garding sustenance of the measure initially utilized. In view of this as­sertion, it’s high time we are awoke.

Presently, survey indicates that seven outbreaks of highly patho­genic Avian Influenza have been discovered in Nigeria. Six of the A(H5N1) outbreaks were report­ed in the central and northern re­gions of the country, which affect­ed states like Kano, Plateau, and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT); over 21 thousand birds were re­portedly killed in the six outbreaks. Another outbreak occurred in the southern region of Bayelsa, affect­ing 8-week old pullets; 850 poultry died whereas 2150 were destroyed in this very outbreak. Officials said that farm workers visited other farms in the affected areas, which has great implications for possible infection routes and biosecurity.

Avian influenza is an infectious viral disease of birds particular­ly wild water fowls like ducks and geese among other such animals as pigs, whales and horses. Most avi­an influenza viruses don’t infect humans; however, some includ­ing A(H5N1) and A(H7N9) have caused serious infections in peo­ple. It is noted that outbreaks of A1 in poultry may raise global public health concerns as a result of their effect on poultry populations, their potential to cause serious disease in people, and their pandemic po­tential.

The 50 Most Dangerous Drugs

 While overdose deaths from prescription opioids have nearly quadrupled since 1999, some of the most dangerous drugs don’t require a prescription.

Using data from the Food and Drug Administration for 2004 through 2015, Health Grove looked at the 150 drugs that are involved in the highest number of adverse reactions and ranked them by the percent of these reactions classified as serious. For many of these reactions, the FDA database uses medical terminology, such as pyrexia and dyspnoea for fever and labored breathing, respectively.

The top 50 drugs with the most serious adverse reactions are considered the most dangerous. Though most on the list require a prescription and treat serious diseases, those like Advil and acetaminophen don’t.

It’s important to note that these medicines may not be inherently dangerous, but improper dosage, combining medicines or taking them with substances like alcohol can dramatically increase risk.

One-third of Americans say they “combine medications when treating multiple symptoms,” according to the National Council on Patient Information, cited in a New York Times report on over-the-counter medicines. The same source also claims that only one in ten people read the labels entirely and one in five admits to using medication more than the label indicates. This creates an environment primed for unintended drug interactions and overdoses.

Additionally, people over 65 years old — those most likely to take multiple drugs for chronic health issues — account for approximately 40 percent of over-the-counter drug usage. This puts this group at greater risk for trouble with these drugs by way of adverse side effects and interactions.

Despite the potential for negative consequences of drug use and misuse, modern pharmaceuticals have greatly contributed to the health and longevity of people around the world. Though many are regarded as safe, as more drugs become available over the counter and prescriptions of others rise, consumer awareness becomes increasingly important.

Note: In the case of ties, the drug with the highest number of total reported reactions is ranked higher.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE DRUGS AS YOU GO THROUGH THE IMAGES 

Terror Nomads

By Louis Odion, FNGE
With the Boko Haram cauldron still smoldering in a corner, it does appear Nigeria is already choking on a much quicker poison: the cocktail of beef and bullet. Or, how else can one describe the apparition of a trigger-happy herdsman now at the national door.
The weapon his forebears carried never used to be more than a stick, to whip the herd into line. And maybe a dagger tucked in a scabbard, to scare potential marauder in the jungle. But the new cattle-rearer has added gleaming AK-47 to his cache. 

The fact that he is migrant makes his own franchise of terror more diffuse, more intimate in savagery. As he wanders day and night from his native dry land up north to greener pasture down south, he has scant regard for the territorial integrity of farm camps he finds on his way.

From the north-central down to communities across the entire south, the siege is complete. The rampaging Ak-47-wielding herdsman leaves a trail of plunder, rape, kidnap and bloodbath. The kind you find in a Grade-A horror movie. Consider a slew of reports in just the past few days. On Wednesday, the Taraba State Government confirmed no fewer than 40 persons were slaughtered allegedly by Fulani herdsmen (20 in Angai village, nine in Maisuma, eight in Dorei and seven in Fali). This time, the fight was not even over farmland. Trouble reportedly started after armed herdsmen were prevented from raping a lady somewhere which angered them and they responded with violence. 

Tuesday came a rather grotesque report from Delta State. A local vigilante comprising a member representing Ethiope East constituency in the state assembly (Evan Ivwurie), security agents and some volunteers simply resorted to self-help by turning the heat on the herdsmen who had formed the habit of attacking farmers in the locality. Dubbed "Operation Arrest, Meet and Engage Their Sponsor", the mission reportedly led to the sacking of herdsmen's camp and their flight deep into the Oria-Abraka forest, in so much panic and haste that they forgot their precious herd behind. 

Ivwurie shared his experience: "I had embarked on a preventive approach to this matter which is identifying the source and taking the battle to the enemy in their domain." (However, the lawmaker was silent on what becomes of the cows: booties or prisoners of war?)
On Monday, in Oyo State, Fulani herdsmen under the auspices of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria spent the better part of the day defending themselves against allegations of vandalizing crops of farmers in Ogbomoso and some parts of Oke Ogun. Rather, they claimed two of their members (Abdu Chika and Buba Kajere) were gruesomely murdered by the farmers. 

*Louis Odion 

A day earlier in Akure, a security guard at a farm settlement owned by a Yoruba leader, Olu Falae, was brutally murdered by suspected herdsmen as usual. This came when some other herdsmen are still standing trial for allegedly kidnapping and torturing the same Falae for several days in September last year.

Abia and Imo entered the radar last weekend following a statement by the Department of State Security that five Fulani herdsmen were killed in a forest along the border of the two states. They were allegedly buried in a shallow grave. Condemning the action at a joint press conference Monday, governors of the two states blamed it on "miscreants".

Few weeks earlier in Enugu, ethnic tension had mounted following the arrest and detention of 76 Agwu villagers who decided to carry arms against Fulani herdsmen who allegedly destroyed not only their farmland but also abducted two of their women. No sooner had the irate villagers formed a barricade than a team of soldiers (said to be of northern extraction) stormed the community and whisked some 76 men in army trucks to neighbouring Abia State.

Embarrassed by the reports, the Army high command later described the perpetrators as "fake soldiers". The puzzle then: how did they acquire military uniforms, officially issued FN 7.62mm military rifles and green-colour military trucks deployed in the "invasion"? So bold, the "fake soldiers" also had the temerity to head straight to the police command to hand over their 76 captives for proper custody!
It eventually took a court pronouncement in Abia before the Agwu 76 were set free after wallowing in detention for days.

However, the Abia/Imo killings are a child's play compared to the genocide perpetrated in the last two months by suspected Fulani herdsmen in Benue communities like Agatu, Buruku, Guma, Gwer-west, Logo, Kwande, Gwer- East and Katsina- Ala. At the last count, more than 1,500 had been butchered so far this year. On a single day in February alone, about 300 were murdered in Okokolo, Akwu, Ugboka and Aila villages (all in Agatu LGA). Entire villages were razed. On March 19, another 500 were butchered in 10 communities of the same LGA. 

Clearly, the nation is now under a siege of sorts. This writer has a personal experience to share. Two or three year ago in Benin, we woke up at my private home to find that the flower garden outside which had taken a fortune to plant and pains and years to cultivate had been completely destroyed by some cows that stomped past overnight. But should everyone resort to the Ethiope formula, there certainly would be no nation again.

Moving forward, I believe a more sustainable panacea to this festering crisis is to first recognize and appreciate the cultural issues involved. Beside immediate economic benefits, farming communities have emotional attachment to their land considered ancestral legacy. Just the same way the Fulani herdsman views his herd as his only store of value and the national landscape as his legitimate pasture. Lasting resolution lies in both parties understanding each other and the boundaries clearly demarcated.

Therefore, what is required at this hour is a leadership that is not only creative but also courageous. President Buhari's dilemma is understandable. Before the last election, the charter of demand by the Fulani included a request for the grazing reserves to hold and nourish their cattle and other animals. But the challenge of statesmanship is to pursue a course of action that also accommodates the interests of others.

To start with, the specter of the herdsman brandishing at all an unlicensed rifle - much less a weapon of mass destruction like AK-47 - constitutes clear and grave assault on public decency. Rushing to deploy such lethal weaponry without inhibition in otherwise civil dispute over right of way on farmland is, to say the least, taking the culture of impunity to a treasonable bend. 

Now is the time for President Buhari, himself a cattle farmer, to go beyond the normal call of duty to stave the dangerously growing perception that seeming official lethargy - if not indifference - to the continued killings is dictated by the spirit of kinship he shares with the rampaging herdsman or that the nomad's renewed audacity, this genocidal reflex, feeds on the opium of expected solidarity from the top. 

Stories have told that the rampaging Fulani herdsmen are not Nigerian. Given their ferocity and that similar incidents were reported even in core northern states, they are suspected to be migrants from Niger, Mali and so on. That being the case, why is the Nigerian nation still shy of responding more strongly? Such attacks ought to be viewed properly then as direct assault on our sovereignty as a nation.

A sure way to start is urgently enunciating a disarmament programme. The wandering herdsman first needs to be engaged to turn in his AK-47 as the minimum pre-condition. Relevant security agencies should be directed to enforce this. The mass killings cannot continue. 

It is commendable that President Buhari, by some policy steps already taken, has the clarity of mind to, at least, appreciate the real existential point at issue: the most sustainable source of pasture for the cattle. This had led Abuja to consult with states with a view to finding lasting solution. Borrowing from modern practices elsewhere, most stakeholders were said to have agreed that the option of ranch is the most feasible and sustainable. But the optimism that a workable solution was finally in sight seems vitiated with a statement credited few days ago to the Agriculture Minister, Audu Ogbeh (himself a successful farmer), that the Federal Government would rather set up grazing reserve. 

In fact, Ogbeh disclosed that based on Buhari's directive, arrangement had been concluded to import improved grass seeds to cultivate the proposed 50,000 hectares of grazing reserves within six months. Bold as the step may appear, the devil is in the details. While Ogbeh's enthusiasm is welcome, it remains to be seen how he hopes to secure the land to start with. The idea of grazing reserves runs counter to ranch which the states are understandably comfortable with. For the extant Land Use Act vests allocation and control of the land resource in state authorities. Besides that, the concurrence of affected communities and landowners also matters. Ogbeh's grazing reserve will, therefore, require a constitutional amendment to begin with. 

Really, we do not have to reinvent the wheel. Ranching provides more decency not only for the cattle-rearer themselves but also their herd. It enables the application of modern techniques in the animal husbandry. It provides clean water, hospital, schools and other facilities for the convenience of the dwellers. Studies have shown that the Nigerian cow suffers stunted growth partly because of the exceedingly harsh condition it is bred. For instance, it is estimated that the average Nigerian cow travels some 25 kilometers per day under scorching sun and is left to quaff polluted water.
If properly harnessed, livestock has potential to raise our national GDP, especially now that there is a renewed clamour to diversify the economy from oil as mono product. According to a 2008 survey, Nigeria's population of cattle was put at 14.7m, out of which 10 percent were classified as milking cows.

Today, no thanks to the herdsman's primitive rearing technique, less than one percent of the cattle population is managed commercially. It explains why the country still spends an average of N50b importing milk and other dairy products annually simply because the full potentials of cattle farming are left untapped. But a relatively smaller country like Uruguay today owes the bulk of its national wealth to livestock. In 2014, it exported $1.4b worth of beef, $800m of dairy products and $400m of leather goods. At 3.3 million population, its per capital income is a whopping $22,000.
Changing the Nigerian narratives for the better means rethinking the way we work and live.

*Odion is a former Commissioner for Information, Edo State

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