Coming To Terms With Niger Delta Avengers

By Paul Odili

To correct a wrong, it is sometimes necessary to exceed proper limits’. This doctrine is attributed to Mao Zedong by his personal secretary, Lin Ke.

Mao, founder of the modern communist state of China was a man of power, who had no hesitation using whatever means he judged necessary to protect his power and the state he founded. In this context, Mao was justifying the use of terror. 

I do not ordinarily believe in the use of terror by legitimate forces of the state, yet there are times you just ponder what are the options before state actors under certain circumstances. If Mao were to be the commander of Nigerian state, there is no question as to what he would do in view of the dystopia in the Niger Delta area.

The senseless attacks and economic sabotage going on in the Niger Delta by a shadowy militant group( Niger Delta Avengers) claiming to be fighting for the interest of Niger Delta, you wonder if there is no great wisdom in Mao’s doctrine. We don’t have a Mao here of course, we have PMB and PMB is no Mao clearly. And Nigerian state is neither a communist state nor resembling a Chinese society. We are Africans with our cultural mores and social and economic structure. But we are a society that must survive and we are under attack by a merciless force. Nigeria is in a state of war.

In any state of war, economic assets are legitimate targets. So what do we do? Let’s get inside PMB’s head. A retired old school Army General, strict and unbending, prides himself in promoting order and discipline above everything else, is now faced with one of the greatest existential threat yet to his administration. At a period of great economic stress, in which the main source of the government’s economic power is being systematically sabotaged and somehow he is powerless to do anything. This must be his worst nightmare! Naturally, his first instinct would be to use military force and exterminate these saboteurs.

He said as much when he declared that the Niger Delta militants would be dealt with like Boko haram. So far PMB is wrong. The terrain and associated circumstances are different. NDA have called his bluff. Almost on a daily basis one asset or the other has been blown up. Minister Ibe Kachikwu is lamenting the effect of this on oil production down to 1.4 million; the lowest production in two decades. With the hapless situation he is facing PMB must be torn between armistice with the militants or military operation to conquer. With public panic rising and economic downturn worsening with the continuation of this act of war, what should be done and done to end this conflagration once and for all?

Ugwuanyi And The Potency Of Diplomatic Governance

By Nwobodo Chidiebere

“Constructive diplomacy doesn’t mean relinquishing one’s right. It means engaging with one’s counterparts, on the basis of equal footing and mutual respect, to address shared concerns and achieve shared objectives.”

           --Hassan Rouhani

In a democratic system of governance like ours, strategic diplomacy has been adjudged, tested and trusted as the best approach to finding lasting remedies to burning issues of governance. Great and age-long results have been made possible through constructive engagement and dialogue with relevant stakeholders than by the use of dictatorial methodology.

Gov Ugwuanyi

The developed democracies of the world like America and Great Britain have elevated potency of diplomacy cum diplomatic skills in managing public affairs issues to its rightful place. The advancement of democracy and its culminating effects on the development of these countries cannot be detached from the values they placed on diplomacy—which is the sturdy foundation of democratic governance setting benchmark to our contemporary world.

In fact, America for instance, rate and evaluate its presidential hopefuls on their diplomatic capacities more than other qualities, because American President will not run White House alone, but from time to time dialogue with congressmen and women, business tycoons in Wall Street, ICT magnates in Silicon Valley and other relevant stakeholders before major economic or socio-political policies are introduced and allowed to scale through the congress.

Since the advent of democracy in 1999, Enugu State has never witnessed a thorough democratic system of governance—where an incumbent governor will long to consult and interface with genuine stakeholders and iron-out grey edges before arriving at a consensus, in implementation of polices of his administration. There is no doubt that His Excellency Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi has not only redefined standard of stakeholders and community engagements in the Coal City via dialogue and diplomacy, but rewritten political template of Eastern hub; used previously by his predecessors in the art of governance. 

Before now, Enugu State had executive governors who operated like demi-gods, called the shots and determined who-gets-what without consultations with critical stakeholders and opinion moulders. They never bothered or alluded to overriding interests of Enugu people, provided they were in absolute control of the state government apparatus. Erstwhile governors of the state were feared more than respected. They propagated and enforced political ideology of absoluteness of power—which was averse to fundamentals of 21^st century democracy.

Buhari: Misguided Passion For One Nigeria

By Amanze Obi

President Muhammadu Buhari was recently quoted as saying that it is better for all Nige­rians to “jump into the sea and get drowned” than for Nigeria to divide. The president had his reasons. He said Nigeria fought a civil war which claimed over two million lives in or­der to remain united. This supreme sacrifice by Nigerians for Nigeria, he seems to be say­ing, cannot be thrown away just like that. The country, he also argued, is strong and united to­day because some people laid down their lives. For these reasons, he said he would not allow “kids” promoting the agitation for the division of the country to have their way.

*Buhari 

A few weeks into this outburst, the president is already living up to his vow. His army and po­lice have descended mercilessly on defenceless Biafran agitators, killing scores of them. The president has also deployed warships and fight­er jets to track down militants who have been blowing up oil installations in the Niger Delta.

Curiously, however, the president has taken no action against Fulani herdsmen whose mur­derous activities have become a clear threat to national unity. Maybe someone should remind the president that if Biafran agitators and Niger Delta militants are a threat to national unity, armed Fulani herdsmen are much more so.

There is no doubt that the president is pas­sionate about the idea of one Nigeria. But his passion appears to be driven by sectional, if not self-serving factors. That may explain why he has ignored or overlooked the historical fact that no country has ever survived two civil wars. If he is truly conscious of that, he will be less belligerent in his declarations and ac­tions on Biafra, Niger Delta militancy or any other separatist agitation in the country. The president is probably under the illusion that a segment of the country will rise against the fed­eration in the way it once happened with the possible consequence of an armed struggle.

Regardless of this extremity in language use by the president, we must indulge him by over­looking his flagellations about war and suicide and, instead, address our minds to the idiosyn­cratic convictions and motivations that inflame the language of passion in some old breed Ni­gerians.

We will, without relying so much on the pas­sions of the Buharis, the Obasanjos and the Go­wons of this country about one Nigeria, agree that the country, ideally, is better of as a united entity. We need not elaborate on this here. Suf­fice it to say that the aforementioned veterans are essentially driven by one passion. They do not want their labours over a united Nigeria to be in vain. Having fought in their individual and collective capacities to keep the country one, they would not want to witness a reversal of this in their life time. That is why they are always on edge whenever any reference, no matter how casual, is made to the possible dis­integration of Nigeria.

10 Reasons Why President Buhari’s No-Show In Ogoniland Is Bad, Bad PR

By Kennedy Emetulu

It seems true that President Muhammadu Buhari is not visiting Ogoniland for that much-publicised flag-off of the implementation of the UNEP Report on the cleaning up of Ogoniland and the Niger Delta. Honestly, this is a shocking and depressing development and it calls to question again the kind of advice President Buhari is receiving in Aso Rock. He may have the best of reasons or excuses for not going, but perception is reality in politics! Cancelling that visit is the last thing he should have contemplated today. Here are 10 reasons why it’s bad:

*Buhari 

(1) The Niger Delta Avengers have threatened that he shouldn’t come; not going there, despite the whole show of military force by the Nigerian Armed Forces for the visit of the Commander-in-Chief, hands the initiative to the Niger Delta Avengers. They have showed they control the agenda of his government and his own movement within the nation. Of course, the truth is nothing would have happened to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Ogoniland; but, again, perception is reality.

(2) The Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed talked up Buhari’s impending visit thus: “Buhari would return to Ogoniland where he inaugurated a fish pond in 1984 where the once flourishing pond regrettably had been destroyed by oil pollution. The Federal Government is coming back to restore the ecosystem to what it used to be and as such restore the peoples’ source of livelihood”. Obviously, mentioning that the president was going to Ogoniland again after his 1984 visit as a military Head of State in the circumstances of both visits was a way of making the case that between then and now life has been snuffed out of the environment there and Buhari is now returning life to the people and that environment with his visit. The symbolism would have been nice. But what have we now? The president is after all not coming!

(3) Buhari’s visit would have been the most significant thing in Ogoniland since the judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and for Buhari, it would have been a personal victory and a personal exorcism of some sort as well. Remember that Buhari was General Sani Abacha’s head of the PTF that was spending the oil money at the time Saro-Wiwa was killed. Buhari supported that killing as part of that government and Nigerians and the world condemned it strongly. As the world knows, Saro-Wiwa’s main message was not the political aspect of the Ogoni case, but the environmental aspect. Saro-Wiwa was essentially killed because he drew attention to the environmental destruction oil exploration brought to the Niger Delta. As president, Buhari would have used this opportunity to show with his presence his genuine commitment to cleaning up Ogoniland particularly and the Niger Delta generally. With that he would have come a full circle from his Abacha days. He would have used his presence to call for the unity of the Ogoni and the Niger-Delta with the rest of Nigeria, so we all find solutions to the problems of lack of development and environmental degradation ravaging the area.

Atiku’s Prognosis And The Prospects Of A Restructured Nigeria

By Olusola Sanni

I must confess I am not one of those who were excited by the call for restructuring the Nigerian federal system by former vice president, Atiku Abubakar. Anyone who knows the former vice president too well will understand that he is a passionate promoter of what has become a cliché of true federalism in Nigeria.

*Atiku and Buhari 

As a student of politics, I cannot pretend to be oblivious of the fact that federalism is more a system of government of itself, than in itself. By this I mean that a system of government can be unitary (or anything) in structure and remain federal in purpose, likewise it is possible for a structure of government to be federal in outlook and unitary in purpose.

Nigeria has had a long walk to its current state of governmental system and it can safely be said that the debate about how the Nigerian state should be structured is as old as the country itself. Right from the 1954 Constitutional Conference to the 2014 conference, Nigeria has spent the last sixty years asking the same question of how best it can be governed.

It may appear that perhaps something is intrinsically wrong with the political system in Nigeria, otherwise why should it take a people so long a time to find a solution to an easy puzzle and yet cannot crack it. Or, it may be that our Sisyphean experience is in the nature of federalism itself. In order words, no federal arrangement of government is ever perfect, and thus every federal system of government continually seeks perfection.

Therefore, we can say that while fiscal federalism was the bone of contention between resource-rich states and Abuja during the Obasanjo/Atiku dispensation, same way is conflicting judicial pronouncements currently the bone of contention between Washington and the state of North Carolina in the United States of America over LGBT rights. That means that even the world’s bastion of democracy and federation, USA, is still asking the same question of how best to be governed after more than 200 years of its being.

Will We Ever Get It Right In Nigeria?

By Bolaji Tunji

I have always agonized and been  concerned about this country Nigeria. My agony in most cases leads to headache and the problem is simply; why has Nigeria been the way it is? Why have we found it difficult to mesh as a nation? Why has development that would translate this country into a great country eluded us? Why is it that our leaders, over the years have always found it convenient to show concern for their own welfare rather than the collective welfare? Our leaders travel out of the country. They see some of the best of facilities and infrastructure in those countries- good road network, good medical facilities where they go in order to take care of themselves, unblinking electricity supply, welfarist programmes for the citizens.

*Buhari 

 All these our leaders see, why is it that they do not show concern or feel such would be good for their country and try to replicate here?

The answer I get is that our leaders really do not have any love for us. They do not care about the people they govern, they only pay lip service to all they claim concerning the masses, it does not touch their heart. We are just statistics to them. We are faceless. They do not see us or feel we are human. Decisions about citizens are always taken cold-bloodedly. The problem did not start with the person who holds the highest office in the land, definitely not  the president. He can not do everything and he can not be everywhere. That’s why we have ministers and other government officials to advise and make the job of governance easier. It also starts at our own level, the ordinary citizen. Do we, the ruled, show love to ourselves? That Hausaman that guides your gate, do you have any kinship with him or you only see a hired hand, who must open your gate or safeguard you while you sleep?

Do you ever wonder whether he has a wife or children? Have you ever wondered how he takes care of them and what he feels being so far away from his wife and children or we think he does not have the same feelings that we have? When you see two people fighting on the road and one breaks a bottle, what was the intention? And when you stab the other person, you now claim it was the devil. What was your intention when you broke the bottle in the first place? If you had considered the implications of that action or put yourself in the position of the other person, would you have considered stabbing or killing him? We are all responsible for our actions at every point in time.

At a macro level, one wonders at the action or inaction of people charged with minding us and why it never bothered them to take action when necessary.

The other day, there was an accident involving a vehicle belonging to Peace Mass Transport Company along the Umuahia end of the Enugu-Portharcourt  expressway. Of the 15 passengers said to be in the vehicle, only two people survived. The accident occurred on Sunday, May 22. Less than two weeks after, another incident occurred involving another vehicle belonging to the same transport company. The driver was said to have lost control and drove the vehicle into a ditch with all the passengers. Again lives could have been lost. 

13 Threats To Nigeria

By Tola Adeniyi  

With this title several readers will jump to the conclusion that the dreaded but now degraded Boko Haram terrorist group should occupy the Number one slot while the Fulani herdsmen terrorists and the new Ijaw Avengers would rank second and third respectively. They are wrong!

While the menace of the three mentioned terrorist groups constitutes grave threat and danger to Nigeria’s corporate existence and her economic resurrection, the combined menace of the three will pale into insignificance when placed side by side with the menace of the criminal silence of Nigerians in the face of the serious onslaught perennially and perpetually unleashed on the country by a handful of vultures who have bled Nigeria to near death with their insane looting of the country.

The Number 1 threat to corporate Nigeria is the unexplainable timidity of all Nigerians, the criminal silence of the masses in the face of the huge theft of their patrimony by a handful. Sometimes I wonder if Nigeria is the same country that produced legendary Aminu Kano, Madam Sawaba, Mrs. Olufunmilayo Kuti, Margaret Ekpo, Joseph Sarwan Tarka, Adaka Boro, Tai Solarin, Arthur Nwankwo, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Beko Ransome-Kuti and fiery Gani Fawehinmi among a few others.

Inability to speak out against evil, against injustice, against oppression, depression and deprivation is the beginning of calamitous tragedy. Nigerians have kept too quiet for too long that we now have a deadly monster that has almost swallowed us up as a people. Can we pretend not to know when our school drop-out neighbour who became chairman of local government suddenly started putting up a mansion and assembling porch cars in his yard? Did we not see Ghana-Must-Go bags being loaded and off loaded in the National Assembly? Did we not see our governors, presidents and other public officials suddenly becoming billionaires? We kept quiet.

Buhari And The Niger Delta

By Ken Agala

On Thursday morning news broke that President Buhari had cancelled his trip to Ogoni due to threat to his life from the Niger Delta Avengers. This is a very wrong move as the President must have handed over the required impetus to the militants and thereby emboldened them.

*Buhari

Even Jonathan’s ‘chickening out’ of going to Chibok at the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency, is less of a ‘Chickening out’ than this. But I know a President can’t move against his security report and I wrote about this when Jonathan was called names for cancelling his Chibok trip.

While Nigerians were shocked to read a report that our oil production has gone down from the agonizing 1.4 million barrels to 1.1, a few days ago the Avengers bombed three more crude oil wells even when the military carried out an invasion of Gbaramatu kingdom and other Niger Delta communities.

With the Presidents action, the Niger Delta Avengers have received credible endorsement as a group to be respected and I believe many conscripts will begin looking for how to join them .

Frankly speaking it is despicable to be talking about cleaning up some Niger Delta communities while more environmental degradation is strategically perpetrated by Niger Deltans.

But there is a law called The Law of cause and effect. Every effect is the result of a cause and every cause must have an effect

When President Buhari in his brutally frank manner told his US audience last year that he can’t in all honesty treat regions that gave him 95% votes equally to those who gave him 5%, I expected that his party men from these 5% regions would have openly protested and forced him to withdraw the statement. That statement was very wrong from a President who has a mandate to treat everyone equally.

I expected Mr. Presidents media team to tactically twist that statement in way that it’d give some form of confidence to people from the 5% region but they rather coined the name ‘wailers’ for these 5 percenters .

One Year After: Beyond The Blame Game

By Ayo Oyoze Baje  

Anyone still blaming the former President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration for all our current socio-economic woes, one year after leaving office, must be wallowing in self-deceit or simply living in fool’s paradise. Government is a continuum. Furthermore, when a leader takes over an institution, be it public or private, he inherits both the assets and liabilities. As he builds on the assets, he seeks ways to mitigate the pains inflicted on the people by the liabilities.

*Buhari 

One sweet victory leads to a new set of challenges. It is never a stroll in the park, nor a picnic in paradise. The top of the ladder, as the wise ones say, is not meant for dancing, or dithering to take decisive actions. Successful leaders find the reasons to succeed, not giving excuses for failure.

It would, therefore, do the spokespersons of our president a world of good to henceforth stop looking over the shoulder and laying all the blames of the failure of the Buhari-led government to frontally tackle and reverse the country’s dwindling economic fortunes, on the previous administration. Political campaigns, couched with sleazy slogans should have ended over a year ago. Now is the time for those who the electorate invested their trust and goodwill on to roll up their sleeves and get down to brass tasks.

After all, what is leadership all about? It is about having the vision to identify the led majority’s most pressing challenges and mustering the Capacity, the Character, the Courage and the Commitment to finding lasting solutions to them. It is about engendering team spirit; working with the best of hands and brain to deliver the so called ‘dividends of democracy’ to the good people of Nigeria. It is not about any individual, no matter how knowledgeable, to exhibit a philosopher-king mentality, pretending to know it all and foisting his views, sometimes puerile and out of sync with modern governance practices on his people.

Truth is, this administration needs all the assistance it could get. One of such is an economic think-tank, made of top technocrats who could read the next direction the global productive pendulum would swing and internalise it to proffer solutions to existing challenges. Such a group would have informed the president on the need to focus more energy, time and resources on revamping the tottering economy, soon after he took over the reins of governance. But one year after, there is no crystal clear direction where the ship of the economy is heading to.

Niger Delta And The National Question

By Dan Amor

To all intents and purpos­es, the raging war in the South South geopoliti­cal zone between irate militants and the security forces is needless and avoidable. Unfor­tunately, Niger Delta youths have once again played their much-abused region which, ironically, produces the wealth of the na­tion, into the willing hands of the establishment under the watch of a central government with an un­stated or hidden agenda to totally exterminate the goose that lays the golden egg from the face of the earth. Even while the region was yet relatively peaceful, when the reawakened restiveness had not reached fever-pitch, President Muhammadu Buhari, even in his inaugural speech alluded to how he would combat and defeat Boko Haram and Niger Delta militants. One can then safely assume that the current war is directly or in­directly orchestrated by the pow­ers that be just to create room for them to execute their plan against the region.

(pix: amnesty)

Yet, a fact too potent to be dis­puted, is that the deepening grouse of the people of the oil rich Niger Delta has largely gravitated to the growing consciousness that what the Nigerian state and the international monopoly oil com­panies take from their soil is not commensurate with what they give in terms of provision of social amenities, quality of life and the maintenance of a delicate balance between the human being and the natural environment. While not supporting the wanton destruc­tion of major oil installations in the Niger Delta and its concomi­tant degradation of the national economy, reason, no doubt, re­sides in this claim of neglect, which has further been justified and accentuated by the preda­tory disposition of some of the oil companies with the collabora­tive instincts of successive Nige­rian governments over the years. Most of these governments were military dictatorships lacking the requisite legitimacy, sufficient political will and constitutional mandate to protect the people and their environment.

As at Tuesday this week (May 31, 2016), the Senate and House of Representatives joint commit­tee on Niger Delta Development Commission, (NDDC), had is­sued bench warrant on seven oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region for failing to appear before a public hearing to defend themselves over allegation of non-remittance of statutory funds to the commission for the develop­ment of the region. That is how the multinational oil companies have been treating with levity is­sues relating to the development of the region due to their disdain for the laws of the land. Attitudes of successive Nigerian govern­ments actually created a dan­gerous class-a totally frustrated population- who now see the multinational oil companies and government as conspirators in the unholy and rapacious plot to drive them permanently out of their an­cestral homes in order to have free reign out the oil. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo was spend­ing N200million daily to maintain the Joint Task Force in the region whereas the people were dying from hunger and want. The per­sistent Niger Delta crisis is there­fore an economic process caught in a political web.

Restructure Nigeria To Save It

By Reuben Abati  

No one should be surprised by the loud and widespread support that has attended the latest call by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar that Nigeria needs to be restructured. In his words, “our current structure and the practices it has encouraged have been a major impediment to the economic and political development of our country. In short, it has not served Nigeria well, and at the risk of reproach it has not served my part of the country, the North, well. The call for restructuring is even more relevant today in the light of the governance and economic challenges facing us…Nigeria must remain a united country…I also believe that a united country, which I think most Nigerians desire, should never be taken for granted or taken as evidence that Nigerians are content with the current structure of the Federation. Making that mistake might set us on the path of losing the country we love…”

*Dr. Reuben Abati 

In those words, the former Vice President and now APC chieftain simply summarized what is already well known and has helped to draw attention afresh to what has been talked about over time but which Nigeria at the expense of its citizens and its own corporate existence is yet to address frontally and forthrightly. Indeed, Nigeria as presently structured and managed is not working. To save the country, the country must be restructured, not only politically but also in terms of the relationship between the federating units and the values that hold the union together.

Nations evolve on the basis of a creative rethinking of their processes and experiences. When the Americans came up with a Presidential/Congressional system of government in 1787, and wrote a Constitution to express their aspirations and expectations, they wanted to address the cleavages within the union and build a united country. In Nigeria, we inherited a skewed federal arrangement from the colonial masters, failed to improve on this, and ended up with the wages of that defect in the form of political crises and eventual civil war.

We have experienced years of military rule during which an enduring culture of praetorianism and dictatorship was established and when eventually we returned to civilian rule, we simply copied and pasted the American Presidential style of government. We have also borrowed the slogan of federalism, but in reality what we have is a unitary type of federalism, a unitary state, completely de-federalized. This is ironic considering the fact that one of the reasons for the collapse of the Aguiyi-Ironsi administration is commonly accepted to be his introduction of Decree No 34 of May 25, 1966, which in effect, transformed Nigeria into a unitary state.

Nigeria is in urgent need of a “re-set”, a rethinking, a redesign. The view that this is necessary has been in the public domain for more than 20 years, but successive administrations either toyed with it, politicized it, or they got round to it at end of term, so late that they gave a succeeding administration the opportunity to conveniently ignore it. The latest of such efforts was in 2014 when the Jonathan administration organized a National Political Conference, where far-reaching recommendations were made to ensure a restructuring of Nigeria. Sadly, the Report of that Conference, endorsed and supported by the Nigerian people, is hidden somewhere in government closets, gathering dust.

Buhari And The Tragedy Of Politics

By Abiodun Komolafe

“He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.”
– Harry Emerson Fosdick.

*Buhari 

I am a professed and an active Buharist and I am glad I made a wise choice! Impliedly, given the opportunity again, I will not hesitate to repeat my preference for Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s president.

With that said, one cannot but be worried about the direction in which Nigeria is headed. That there is a cloud of darkness surrounding the country is no longer in doubt. No thanks to the impunity of the Jonathanians which turned her into a veiled entity, unworthy of incense.

As things stand, Nigeria’s foundation is not only threatened with predictable consequences, its economy is also castrated. The masses are in total hardship, toiling and suffering; and it seems as if the spirit of Saul is pursuing our David! In this ‘fantastically corrupt’ country, demigods and untouchables in high places who once stole Nigeria blind are using Nigeria’s money to torment Nigeria. And it is as if their Cain is plotting to assassinate our Abel! Civil servants are living in avoidable stress and agony; and it’s as if the Pharaoh which knew Joseph has passed! Though we seek to behave as a country run by laws, there’s an increase in electricity tariff without any corresponding increase in its availability. As if to compound our woes, our intelligence system has become so weak that criminals’ propensity to succeed in their acts has increased. As such, rather than collaborate, our security agencies find it more convenient to compete for recognition and attention.

A recently-released Livelihoods and Economic Recovery Assessment 2016 report on the North-East of Nigeria is not only revealingly disturbing, it is also symptomatic of a looming disaster unless urgent steps are taken to reset the button of Nigeria’s socio-economic situations. According to the report, unveiled by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with Oxfam Nigeria, “46 per cent of households in that part of the country borrow money to buy food; one economically active member of a household sustains 2.3 non-active members, while a majority of them do not have sufficient food supply.” It did not end there: “41 per cent rely on alternative health care, 21 per cent have migrated to other locations, while 20 per cent send their children out to work and beg. 11 per cent support a member with a mental or physical disability, while 21 per cent include, at least, one member with a chronic illness.”

Buhari In The Summer Of Sectional Discontent

By Louis Odion, FNGE

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

*Buhari 

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

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

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

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

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

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

This Commander-In-Chief Is AWOL

By Lewis Obi

As President MuhammaduBuhari was completely unperturbed by the Army’s mas­sacre of hundreds of Shi’ites, so was he utterly indifferent to the slaughter of hundreds of local farmers by Fulani herdsmen. His silence was astonishing, his inaction frightening.

*Buhari 

The Shi’ites are a tiny minority Muslim sect often looked upon by the majority Sunni as a nuisance at best and fool-hardy, stubborn in their beliefs and doctrines. They are exactly the kind of group that a president must go the ex­tra mile to protect. Not only are they politically weak and they tend to have a persecution com­plex, they are also easily bullied or victimized. The President was asked what he thought about their massacre. He was dismissive of the mat­ter, but he made the remarkable statement that he has been told the Shi’ites constituted “a state within a state.” He did not elaborate. In classi­cal times ‘a state within a state’ readily attracted a charge of treason. In any case, he said, the Kaduna State Government was already taking care of the matter. It was heart-breaking to see a Nigerian President shirk his primary respon­sibility, contracting out his responsibility to pro­tect Nigerian citizens. It was like the Biblical Pontius Pilate washing his hands off the case of Jesus Christ.

Now, Kaduna State Governor Nasir El- Rufai, an otherwise deliberative man, from whom the President took his briefings on the matter, had arraigned, tried, and sentenced the Shi’ites. He was so sure their leader, Sheikh Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, would be tried for whatever crimes he must have commit­ted. He didn’t say what those crimes might be, but it was the government’s way of warn­ing that the Shi’ites were expendable.The most cursory observer could see that taking a cue from El-Rufai, the Northern Gover­nors began venting and piling on the Shi’ites, forcing everyone to run for cover. It was like kicking a man when he is down. So, when the commission of inquiry was announced, it looked like an after-thought and an attempt at a cover-up.

If the President’s silence on the Shi’ites af­fair was astonishing, his indifference to the slaughter of local farmers by herdsmen was dangerously confounding. The conflict of farmers and Fulani herdsmen is not new. But herdsmen armed with weapons of war are novel. Worse, President Buhari himself is a cattle breeder and is expected to understand the conflict of the interests of both sides. But it would appear that his ascent to the throne got the herdsmen intoxicated with power which ought to have been anticipated and squelched. Hence the impunity.

Unlike the Army’s attack on the Shi’ites which was a single orgy of blood-letting and destruction spanning three days, the attacks on the farmers are a repetitive provocation and savage aggression. As late as this week, on Monday to be precise, Fulani herdsmen attacked Tse Aondo and Tse Ankou farming communities, in Benue State, killing seven.

Each Fulani attack was in the pattern of a violent Genghis Khan-style “destroy what you can’t kill, burn everything that can be burned.” Thousands were rendered homeless and more thousands became refugees. Hun­dreds of women were raped, hundreds were killed and thousands wounded.

Nigeria: A Stunted Democracy?

By Eddie Mbadiwe

Winston Churchill’s speech to the House of Com­mons in 1947 in the course of which he said that de­mocracy is the worst form of government except for the other forms that have been tried from time to time now has universal acceptance. China, Russia and Cuba, apart from the Western world and the so called Third World countries practise one form of democra­cy or the other. The icing on the cake is that even North Korea as recently as three weeks ago had democratic elections and crowned Kim as Supreme leader.

For Nigeria, the journey has been long and ardu­ous starting with the pre-independence struggle led by Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo and the Sardauna of Sokoto. The military intervened post-independence and we had many years of stagnation and little growth. NADECO stepped in to drive away the military and there were lots of sac­rifices and casualties but the heroes remain MKO Abiola and the aborted June 12 election.

Democracy involves active people participation and you can take it as given that nobody will attempt to rig the June 23 European Union Election in Britain. More than 70% of eligible voters will actively take part. Same can be said of Canada, Australia, Norway and Denmark. As the Buhari Administration just clocked one year in office, there has been a lot of parroting of seventeen years of uninterrupted democracy. The question is at which cost and at what level of develop­ment. This is not a critique of the PDP which had been in power at the centre for most of those years or the APC. We must be courageous and accept our collec­tive incapacitations, afterall 60% of the major players in APC had executive power as PDP Governors etc. As one preacher paraphrased on radio not long ago, we have all sinned and have fallen short of the glory of our maker, God.

For people like me, it is important to know our past and that is why I think it is wrong not to make history com­pulsory in WAEC. However, dwelling daily on the failure of past administrations is not only irritating but a sign of unpreparedness to govern. What is the way forward – that is the real issue today.

Like in any field of scientific research, proper diagnosis is 50% of the cure or solution. Long – term mass education must remain at the core of our social emancipation. But what of the short and medium – term objectives? As long as politics remains attractive in terms of remuneration, so long will money which is at the root of all evils continue to occupy centre court in Nigeria. Courage demands that we take the bull by the horns and bring public officers’ pay at par with what obtains in civilised countries. There is a league of pay structure and Nigeria has to decide where she falls in.

The next thing Nigerians cannot afford to sweep under the carpet is the 2016 Appropriation bill. Section 58 (4) of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (Amended) states “When a bill is presented to the Presi­dent for assent, he shall within 30 days signify his assent or that he withholds assent” The President said he refused to assent because there was a lot of padding (a word new to our lexicon) and it took another six weeks presum­ably for the bill to be unpadded. One is on the same page with the President and will not sign what is shrouded in dense clouds. The question now is, who has contravened our constitution and are there any consequences? The six weeks delay will negatively affect budget implementation .

Dambazau’s Bigotry

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

With people like Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau in the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, it is no wonder why the much-touted quest for positive change has remained a mirage. If Dambazau who is the Minister of Interior had ever made any pretentions to being pan-Nigerian, this façade has been exploded by the recent appointments he made in his ministry for Nigerians to comprehensively apprehend who he is: A bigot who is only beholden to the narrow interest of his tribe and religion.

*Abdulrahaman Dambazau

Dambazau attained a top rank of a lieutenant general before he retired from the military. He also served as the chief of army staff. For a person with such a breathtaking military career that was rendered possible by his country, we would have thought that he had developed a broad vision of the nation. After all, it is commonly believed that the military institution is impervious to the fissiparous tendencies in the larger society. And this is why former President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Muhammadu Buhari do not brook any objection to the existence of Nigeria as one entity as long as they have a role to play in deciding the fate of the nation.

It is regrettable that Dambazau does not see his being in public office as an opportunity to serve the whole nation. He rather sees it as a means of favouring only those with whom he shares ethnic and religious affiliations. This was why when Dambazau made appointments in his ministry, he only considered those who shared his religious and ethnic ties. Brazenly, Dambazau appointed only northerners as heads of all the paramilitary agencies under his ministry. The agencies are the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), whose new Comptroller-General (CG), Mohammed Babandede, hails from Kano State, where the minister is from and the Nigeria Prison Service (NPS) where Ahmed Ja’afaru of Bauchi State is the Controller-General. Before now, Abdullahi Gana from Niger State had been the head of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) while the Controller General of the Federal Fire Service (FFS) was Joseph Anebi from Benue State in the North-central. At the NIS, Dambazau opted for his preferred candidate Mohammed Babandede.

Buhari’s Uninspiring Democracy Day Speech

By Mike Ozekhome

I carefully listened to and read President Buhari’s Democracy Day Speech. I must confess that I felt quite hollow after it all. He lost a golden opportunity to engage Nigerians to buy into his change agenda. The speech did not give the much needed hope, did not fire up ebbing nationalistic and patriotic embers in Nigerians, and did not ignite the drooping and sagging dreams of Nigerians for a better tomorrow, with nerve, verve, éclat, gusto, zest and vivacity. It was bland, colourless, full of sound and fury.

*Buhari and his wife, Aisha 

By the way, I do not believe May 29 should be Nigeria’s Democracy Day. I’ve argued this over the years. It should be June 12. That was the day real democracy berthed in Nigeria.  For another day.

PMB’s speech, rather than being engaging, pacific, placatory and conciliatory, from the father of the nation to his hapless children, was bellicose, belligerent, militant, combative and simply pugnacious. I blame his speech writer for this, for woefully failing to capture, or mirror the angry and disillusioned mood of the nation, to Mr President. The speech accordingly lacked colour, panache, assurance, animation, elan and vitality.

The speech failed to address the multifanous problems, besetting Nigeria and government’s deliberate efforts at redressing them. It dwelt too much on damage assessment of the past, rather than the  panacea, the present and the future. It failed Albert Einstein’s theory that “we cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. John Burroughs, it was, who said that “a man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else”.  PMB’s Federal Executive Council is now derisively called “Federal Excuses Council”. The speech blamed everyone else, but the government.

I hereby plead most earnestly with Niger Delta Avengers to drop their arms and come to the negotiating table with the government. Blowing up pipelines will compound, not only Nigeria’s socio-economic woes, but theirs, as well. You do not cut your nose to spite your face. But, PMB did not help matters. He threatened and talked tough. He could easily have demobilised them with assuaging and soothing words. Kind, persuasive and tranquilising words are deadlier than any armada of military force. The speech did not create for Nigeria an anti-corruption template, which seeks to extirpate it from the very root, rather than the present fight, which is merely superficially predicated on loot recovery alone. We are treating a dangerous ailment of cancer with drugs meant for skin eczema. Fighting corruption must have a template, which deals with a total re-orientation of our debased national psyche and value system from primitive acquisition, to honour, character and dignity.

Anniversary Of Truth-Telling Or Propaganda

By Levi Obijiofor

This past weekend has been one of celebrations – celebrations of a government that promised so much but found reasons to explain why it failed to provide for the basic needs of citizens, celebrations of a government that promised to transform our economy, to destroy corruption, to dismantle the Boko Haram insurgency in the North, suppress other ethnic uprisings, create a stable society by enhancing law and order across the country, and to tackle socioeconomic consequences of rising youth unemployment. By the end of the celebrations, Nigerians remain divided on whether the government of Muhammadu Buhari has significantly reduced poverty in the country or whether it has heaped more pain on ordinary citizens.

President Buhari and Information
Minister, Lai Mohammed

This disagreement is not surprising. Before the politicians were elected into office, there was so much hype and mystique built around Buhari, who was presented as the man who would redeem the country and emancipate everyone from 16 years of hardship created by the endemic corruption that manifested in the government of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Here is propaganda number one.

At a book presentation in Abuja  on Thursday, 18 February, 2016, President Muhammadu Buhari claimed that Nigeria “has the fastest growing economy in Africa and one of the fastest in the world.” It is intriguing to see that three months later, after Buhari’s statement was publicised across the world, a senior minister in Buhari’s government admitted publicly that the bad shape of the nation’s economy should not be used as justifiable ground to explain the failure to provide for the needs of the citizens. If that was the case, why did the president and his ministers and special assistants spread the propaganda that Nigeria had the fastest growing economy in Africa and one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world.   So far, it seems some government officials and some leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have been feeding citizens with a diet of misinformation concerning the state of the economy.