Viewpoint

[OPINION]: Where rulers ruin the future -Rotimi Fasan

It’s a cliché of our national existence to hear politicians and other categories of public officials describe the youth as ‘leaders of tomorrow’. Those who will be tomorrow’s leaders have a right to possess their today one would imagine.

But the rhetoric of a projected future for the Nigerian child has since replaced the nightmare of their present reality. Nigerians leaders have no more faith in the rhetoric of the youth taking over the leadership of this country than they do in their oath of office that forbids corruption of all kinds among public officials. Otherwise, the two leading political parties in the country wouldn’t have as their leading presidential candidates individuals approaching their eightieth birthdays among many other politicians that are closer to their grave than a convicted murderer.

For a class to whom corruption is second nature it may not mean anything that the future is being stolen from the Nigerian child, exposed as they are to the irresponsible conduct of our political leaders.

The unfolding ordeal of the Dapchi school girls further confirms the uncertain future Nigerian politicians are leaving their so-called leaders of tomorrow. It’s been two agonising weeks since these hapless girls were forcefully taken away from their school premises by murderous operatives of a group our deluded government had serially vowed has been roundly defeated. While laying the ground for the imminent declaration of President Muhammadu Buhari for a second term, the All Progressives Congress, APC, party had led itself to believe its own lies that Boko Haram has been consigned into history.

But no sooner was this message conveyed to the Nigerian people than the insurgent group staged a spectacular invasion of Dapchi and abducted at least 110 students of the Government Girls Science and Technical College in Busari local Government Area of Yobe State. Four years before it was the benighted town of Chibok in Borno State that received these agents of darkness.

In those four years during which the Nigerian government is still paying ransoms and releasing arrested Boko Haram operatives in exchanges for the girls it would still not acknowledge to the Nigerian people- in the four years since the return of the remaining Chibok girls is still a matter in the hands of providence, one would have imagined that the Nigerian government and its security agencies would have learned the right lessons about how not to lead a people.

But no, that’s asking too much of a confused leadership that is too set in its incompetent ways to imagine a reform possible. It went to sleep after believing its own lies that it has completely decimated a group that was essentially a scorched rather than the dead snake that the government proclaimed it to be. A military that randomly releases its battle strategies in the media has now belatedly learned the trite knowledge that every trainee soldier knows: you do not publicise your strategy against an enemy.

In the weeks immediately preceding the abduction of the Dapchi girls, the APC government made so much song and dance of its supposed defeat of Boko Haram. Both its army and the police among other security agencies announced the establishment of new formations. Most significantly the military announced, perhaps as a celebration of its assumed victory, the establishment of a military base right in the heart of Sambisa forest. It generally assumed that it has completely taken over Sambisa forest, and that outside this zone Boko Haram has no existence. Now the joke is on our security agencies and not Boko Haram.

Just a week before the nation was summoned to welcome home the president’s son, Yusuf, from Germany- just weeks after the young Yusuf fell off a power bike alongside a friend, while racing each other on fuel guzzling machines at a time the rest of the country was experiencing a devastating round of fuel scarcity, the Dapchi school girls were forced into captivity. We saw the joy with which the president received his own son. How one wishes the same joy for the parents of the Dapchi girls.

These girls were exactly where they ought to be as school girls- studying and going about their business in the vicinity of their school. Like their Chibok predecessors in captivity, they were being prepared for a future that could hopefully make some difference to their lives. The dream of that future has effectively been shattered by those entrusted with the responsibility of protecting them- if they are not returned.

We have failed our own children. For no fault of theirs we have destroyed their faith in a country that does not set store by the future even while proclaiming faith in it. What words of consolation would be enough for 12-years old Aisha Adamu Gashuama whose first day in school also marked her first in captivity? What therapy can compensate for the trauma of such experience? What official platitude would reassure Budumi Mustapha, the retired civil servant, who lost three daughters to the abductors?

In a region already made backward by poverty and whose hope lies in increased exposure to modern education, how does anybody persuade parents to release their daughters to go to school? What are the real and potential consequences of more girls staying out of school in a part of Nigeria that is already notorious for poor attendance of boys to say nothing of girls in school?

Now girls have become the target of murderous groups looking for free brides and potential suicide bombers, what are the consequences of the kind of failure by our children that has led to this theft of their future? What amount of counseling and preachment would suffice or amend for the literal rape of a child’s future? What kind of government sits back and leave room for the kind of outrage and national shame that would lead to a reprise of the April 2014 episode in Chibok?

When a country fails her young people in the manner Nigeria continually fails the youth of this country, what right has such a country to the allegiance of the youth?

The issue before us extends beyond the potential loss of electoral votes as the APC might yet suffer for this disgrace. Deserved as such defeat might be, this Buhari-led government has the immediate task of doing everything possible to ensure the return of these young Nigerians. The story of their abduction, the pain of their families and the incompetence that made these all inevitable make the heart bleed and grieve for this nation. While these children suffer our leaders are giving and taking their own children in marriage.

They are fiddling while their roofs are on fire. Are we on the road to another 1000 days of the Chibok girls in captivity? Shall we allow this?

Last modified on Wednesday, 07 March 2018 07:57

[OPINION]: INEC and the uncertainty of the 2019 elections -Sam Ohuabunwa

Last week the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) released what looked like the periodic table which we used in the O-level Chemistry class to determine the valency of metallic elements, announcing the dates of elections in Nigeria up to 2043 or so. Some people saw this as a strategic and audacious move of projecting the future.

Indeed INEC said they did this to bring some certainty to election dates in Nigeria. Many other commentators have mocked INEC for ‘forming work’, that is pretending to be working when actually there is no work being done. They think that INEC is leaving the substance and pursuing the shadow.

Some think all this was INEC’s response to the “effrontery” of the National Assembly in trying to change the sequence of elections in Nigeria. The executive is decidedly unhappy about this and it looks as if INEC has gone on overdrive to project the President’s desire. But there is little INEC can do, as it is their lot to implement the laws made by the National Assembly and not to make laws themselves.

Some believe that INEC should spend its time and budget in tackling existing problems like a dispassionate and truthful investigation of the widely reported underage voting in parts of the North especially Kano during the 2015 elections and continued registration of the underaged currently going on in some parts of Nigeria.

This is because,this would have marred the 2015 elections and may have caused post election crisis were it not for the single minded determination of Goodluck Jonathan to avoid any bloodshed. In 2019, the combatants may not be as peace seeking or in the language of Charley boy as “mumu” like Jonathan. It is further felt that if 2015 elections were expected to test Nigeria’s unity following several prophesies and theories, we do not need any other prophet to tell us that 2019 may be the 2015 that was prophesied.

This is because at no time in recent history did we approach an election season with so much anomie in the land.

Nigeria is currently so disunited and dysfunctional that anything worse than this will require a new definition of disunity. In 2015, we had some internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps in the North East only but as we approach 2019 we have IDP camps in the North East (courtesy Boko Haram), North West (courtesy Zamfara Bandits), North Central (courtesy Militant Fulani Herdsmen), South East (courtesy militant Fulani Herdsmen and Kidnappers), South West (courtesy militant Fulani herdsmen and Badoo cultists), South South (courtesy militant Fulani herdsmen, kidnappers and militant oil thieves). How INEC will handle this logistics nightmare should occupy INEC instead of acting as Nostradamus- the man who saw the future. There is so much uncertainty regarding 2019 elections that it may not be worth my time thinking of what will happen in 2023, not to talk of 2043.

First, many nationalities in Nigeria have taken positions regarding the future of Nigeria. Many still believe that there is some benefit in Nigeria remaining one big country with many nationalities. But such believe that for that to continue to be, the country has to be restructured in order to cure the country of the chronic instability, corruption, profligacy and dysfunction that has brought the country almost to its knees since the Military usurped power in 1966 and dislocated the arrangement made by the founders of modern Nigeria for a viable, thriving and mutually beneficial federation with strong federating units.

Some other nationalities especially in the core North feel that there is nothing wrong with Nigeria or its structure and will like to see Nigeria wobble from one crisis to another and continue to shed innocent blood daily perhaps to satisfy thirsty deities foistered on this country by the workers of iniquity. And then there are some other nationalities that feel that Nigeria is a lost cause. They look at the contradictions – ethnic bigotry, religious intolerance, manifest injustice, entrenched greed, sustained retrogression and the ‘we must rule or baboons and monkey be soaked in their blood’ mentality and they conclude that the only lasting solution is to let the nationalities go their separate ways in peace.

To this last group belongs Nnamdi Kanu of IPOB and many from his nationality. To day, I hear that many other nationalities especially in south-south and the middle belt share this view point,having tasted a little of what the South East has suffered in the Nigerian federation for years.

So it is clear that we are going into 2019 a very fractured Country with different nationalities holding different views about the future. While some are willing to have discussions on what to do, first to avoid any cataclysm that may be imminent and second on how to rearrange the relationships to assure future prosperity of all stakeholders in the Federation, some have already become impatient that they are already taking it out on the rest of us by different acts of violence and malfeasance.

This is evident in the current state of affairs in Nigeria where it is as if we are in a state of war, one new killing field every day and yet some people think all is well.

I think INEC should begin to create scenarios as to what will happen if the election does not hold in 2019. That is a possibility, even if remote. Some nationalities have insisted that there will be no elections in 2019 if the restructuring of Nigeria does not happen, resulting in a new constitution before elections.

They opine that the cosmetic piecemeal amendments of the 1999 Constitution being undertaken by the legislature is only begging the issue and only a brand new constitution written by the true representatives of the federating nationalities will satisfy their demand.

The government of Nigeria certainly does not take that kind of threat lightly and would rather prepare the military to undertake an operation ‘Elephant gyration’ to subdue any such nationalities. But my point is that there is so much real work INEC should be doing, instead of just ‘forming’work.

Over the weekend, I heard that a particular political party was doing ‘empowerment’ programs in my town and they were cajoling young men and women to come and collect money to start businesses or help themselves on the condition that they will drop their Permanent Voter’s cards.

Last modified on Wednesday, 07 March 2018 08:01

As Nigeria braces for the Egmont Group hammer -Vanguard Editorial

Fears of the imminent risk of Nigeria being expelled from the Egmont Group, a global network of 152 Financial Intelligence Units (FUIs), set Federal Government officials scurrying to prevent what could spell disaster for our financial system.

The Presidency and the National Assembly abdicated their duty of ensuring the independence of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, NFIU, which was put under the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

In July 2017, the Egmont Group lost patience with Nigeria and suspended our NFIU because of the EFCC’s habit of leaking sensitive financial intelligence to the media even before charging suspects to court. The EFCC also refused to cooperate in efforts to grant the NFIU independence.

Nigeria was required to amend the laws to either make the NFIU a separate corporate body or transfer it to the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, the global practice.

The Presidency had set up an ad-hoc committee headed by Senator Chukwuka Utazi, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Anti-Corruption, to reposition the NFIU and ensure it is not expelled from the Egmont Group. It was to turn in its report in August 2017, but nothing came of it.

Unfortunately, the Egmont Group has been meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina since Friday March 2 Reports have it that our possible expulsion is on the cards.

Nigeria’s expulsion will spell doom for our international financial transactions, especially as credit card holders will experience problems transacting business because such transactions can no longer be verified and confirmed through the global FIU. The situation will be worsened by the recent drop in our Corruption Perception Index, CPI, conducted by Transparency International, TI, our subsisting image as a country widely associated with advance fee fraud and the activities of Islamist insurgents in the North who receive illicit funds through suspicious networks.

The scale of an expulsion backlash could throw our banking system into chaos and the economy might even drop back to recession. Nigeria will once again become an international financial pariah as we experienced during the General Sani Abacha years.

If the Egmont Group hammer falls on Nigeria, the anti-corruption crusade of the President Muhammadu Buhari regime would be dealt another blow, the second within three weeks following the TI downgrade of our standing in the CPI.

We had called for an end to the circus shows which the anti-graft agencies stage in the media which most of the time end up a waste of time and money in the courts. But no one listened.

As we wait for the Egmont Group’s verdict we can only hope for the best.

Vanguard

[Opinion]: 2019 election sequence: Falana got it wrong - Edoba Omoregie

One of Nigeria’s foremost legal practitioners, Mr. Femi Falana, SAN has recently published an opinion on the needless controversy over one (1) out of the forty five (45) clauses in the proposed amendment to the extant Electoral Act (see Vanguard Newspaper of Friday 23rd February, 2018).

The main thrust of the clause is to amend the existing section 25 (1) of the Electoral Act by setting out the order or sequence of general elections in the country.

If passed into law before the next general elections, the amendment shall become effective in the conduct of those elections, being a law made by the National Assembly in exercise of its constitutional power to make law on elections into the offices of “President and Vice President or Governor and Deputy Governor and any other office to which a person may be elected under the (sic) Constitution, excluding election to a local government council or any office in such council” provided in the Exclusive Legislative List (see item 22 of the list).

However, in the view of the learned Senior Advocate of Nigeria, the said proposed clause is misconceived and an infringement on the general powers conferred on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by the Constitution to “organize, undertake and supervise” the general elections within its purview. Mr. Falana, SAN concluded his paper by declaring quite magisterially, in my view, thus:

“In other words, since the INEC has been empowered to organize, undertake and supervise all elections the National Assembly cannot rely on the provision of the Electoral Act to usurp the power of INEC to fix the dates for the elections.

In view of the settled position of the law the INEC should not waste public funds by rushing to the Supreme Court to contest its own constitutional duty to organize, undertake and supervise the 2019 general election”! (Emphasis mine).

Given the public personality of Mr. Falana, SAN especially in the legal discipline, it is quite logical to believe that his legal opinion is weighty enough to sway not only the minds of most Nigerians untrained in the law, but also that of INEC itself which seems to be caught in the middle of the unnecessary controversy.

This rejoinder is an attempt to highlight the untenable premise of Mr. Falana, SAN’s commentary which led to the alarming conclusions he reached; conclusions which, as we shall demonstrate, are not only legally unsupportable, but also appear calculated to encourage INEC to engage in acts of lawlessness and defiance against an arm of the Government of Nigeria charged with the legitimate power to make law.

The rejoinder shall focus on those two issues.

Power of the National Assembly to set sequence of Elections

A careful perusal of the proposed clause shows that what the National Assembly has done is to set the sequence or order of elections into the offices to be contested in a general election, not the date for conduct of those elections. Sequence or order of performing a task is clearly not the same as date(s) of doing the task.

Sequence refers to “a particular order in which related things follow each other”. The synonyms of the word “sequence” include succession, order, course, series, chain, concatenation, train, string, cycle, progression etc.

On its part, “date” refers to “a numbered day in a month, often given with a combination of the name of the day, the month, and the year”. Mr. Falana had argued in his paper that the National Assembly lacks power to fix election dates.

From the foregoing, by proposing to amend the Electoral Act to set the sequence of general elections, the National Assembly has not set the dates for the elections, even as it may well have been able to do so pursuant to powers conferred on it in the First Alteration Act since the power to set date of elections could, by necessary implication, include the power to set sequence of the election which the National Assembly has sought to do with the proposed amendment.

The next issue is whether by setting the sequence of general elections as proposed in the following order, namely:

A) National Assembly Elections,

B) Governorship and State Assembly Elections, and

C) Presidential Election, the National Assembly has acted ultra vires its constitutional powers to make law or the particular proposed amendment to justify the conclusion that the particular clause is unconstitutional, null and void for contravening the provisions of paragraph 15, Part 1 to the Third Schedule of the Constitution set out pursuant to section 153 of the Constitution.

For the avoidance of doubt, the said paragraph deals with the general powers of INEC over elections and related matters.

In exercising its power to set sequence of elections through an Act, the National Assembly is obviously complying with the provisions of the First Alteration Act to the Constitution in sections 5 (a), 10 (a), 11 (a) and 17 (a), which specifically removed the powers of INEC to set dates of elections into the offices of President (and Vice President), National Assembly membership, Governor (and Deputy Governor) and House of Assembly membership hitherto granted in the original text of the Constitution in sections 76 (1), 116 (1), 132 (1) and 178 (1) and placed the power to set date(s) of elections to be determined by the Electoral Act!

Although Mr. Falana acknowledged that the proposed clause apparently derives its origins from this constitutional change, yet he tried to diminish the effectiveness of the constitutional change by suggesting that the general powers of INEC in paragraph 15, Part 1 of the Third Schedule to the Constitution to “organize, undertake and supervise” are sufficient to trump the specific powers conferred by the First Alteration Act to the Constitution which removed the specific power to set date from INEC and placed it within the Electoral Act.

The position taken by the learned Senior Advocate of Nigeria is clearly wrong and unsupportable. The First Alteration Act is an intrinsic part of Nigeria’s Constitution making it as supreme as every other portion of the Constitution.

If anything, its provisions altering specific portions of the original text of the Constitution unquestionably supplants those portions.

Sections 76 (1), 116 (1), 132 (1) and 178 (1) of the original text of the Constitution have since been supplanted by sections 5 (a), 10 (a), 11 (a) and 17 (a) of the First Alteration Act.

Those provisions are the only portions of the Constitution which hitherto (before the First Alteration Act) and still (based on the First Alteration Act) specifically deal with the power to set dates for elections into those offices.

Without doubt Mr. Falana must be familiar with the principle of interpretation generalia specialibus non derogant: “provisions of a general statute must yield to those of a special one” or which states that if two laws govern the same factual situation, a law governing a specific subject matter (lex specialis) overrides a law which governs only general matters (lex generalis).

In several cases, the Supreme Court of Nigeria has upheld this principle of interpretation. One such notable cases is Attorney General of the Federation v. Abubakar (2007) 10 NWLR (Pt.1041) 1, where the court affirmed the application of rules of statutory interpretation in constitutional matters, and (per Tabai JSC) upheld the application of the principle while setting aside the declaration of the office of Vice President occupied by Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as vacant.

Therefore, the general power of INEC to “organize, undertake and supervise” elections cannot by any stretch of interpretation or imagination override the specific power to set dates of elections which, by virtue of the provisions of the First Alteration Act, is now to be determined by an Act of parliament and not by INEC as hitherto stipulated in the now inoperative sections 76 (1), 116 (1), 132 (1) and 178 (1) of the original text of the Constitution.

In view of the foregoing, the Court of Appeal decision in National Assembly v. President (2003) 9 NWLR (Pt. 824) 104, cited by Mr. Falana to justify his conclusion that INEC alone has the constitutional discretion to fix dates of elections bear no relevance to the issue at stake because it was decided 7 years before the constitutional changes contained in the First Alteration Act were passed in 2010.

Mr. Falana also referred to PDP v. Sylva (2012) 13 NWLR (Pt. 1316) 85, NDP v. INEC (2013) 20 WRN 1 at 45 and Faleke v. INEC (2016) 50 WRN 1, to justify his contention that INEC’s discretionary powers to fix dates of elections are unquestionable.

In addition to the fact that those decisions refer to INEC’s purported discretionary powers under paragraphs 15, Part 1 to the Third Schedule of the Constitution, the decisions are inapplicable to the current issue as they did not decide the constitutional implication of the constitutional changes introduced by the First Alteration Act which removed the specific power hitherto conferred on INEC to fix dates of elections contained in the original text of the Constitution and placed that responsibility in the Electoral Act.

The last case of Attorney General, Abia State v. Attorney General of the Federation (2002) 1 WRN 1 at 45 cited by Mr. Falana to contend that a provision in an Act of the National Assembly in respect of a matter already covered by the Constitution is liable to be “invalid for duplication and/or inconsistency and therefore inoperative”. This contention is once again inapplicable in the current matter.

As we have already submitted, after the First Alteration Act was passed in 2010, INEC no longer has power to fix dates of election.

The constitutional change has placed that responsibility in the Electoral Act. This is a completely different scenario from that stated in the AG Abia decision (supra), which refer to when an Act seeks to make conflicting provision in a matter already contained in the Constitution.

Consequently, the current effort of the National Assembly is perfectly within the powers of the National Assembly to undertake through the Electoral Act as it is based on a constitutional donation of powers hitherto specifically conferred on INEC by the Constitution but subsequently removed.

In any event, as the President has had cause to do previously, any suggestion that the proposed amendment is unwarranted can be checked by the President through exercise of his veto power, whenever the amendment bill is presented for his assent.

Where the President assents the bill into law, INEC is duty bound to comply with the new amended provisions, including the sequence for the general elections.

Where the President refuses to assent and the National Assembly is able to mobilize the required super-majority to override the presidential veto, the Bill automatically becomes an Act which the INEC is bound to comply with.

Or is Mr. Falana suggesting that it’s only if the President gives his assent to the amendment that INEC may feel bound to comply with the Act? I am of the humble view that any opinion which urges INEC to defiantly disobey an Act of the National Assembly must be deprecated as a call to anarchy.

This brings me to the second aspect of Mr. Falana’s commentary which motivated this rejoinder.

Whether INEC is permitted to sit back and ignore an Act of the National Assembly

In concluding his paper, Mr. Falana declared “In view of the settled position of the law the INEC should not waste public funds by rushing to the Supreme Court to contest its own constitutional duty to organize, undertake and supervise the 2019 general election”.

This weighty declaration of is shocking and ought to be rejected by all well-meaning Nigerians including INEC because it lacks any legal foundation and is a subtle way of asking INEC to assume the adjudicatory role of the Supreme Court and become a law unto itself.

In fact, it is capable of setting-off a chaining reaction which can only undermine the democratic system Nigerians of all classes have laboured to keep steady since 1999, with great efforts.

The power of the National Assembly to make law must be distinguished from the rightness or otherwise of the law made. No matter how dissatisfied with any law made by the National Assembly, citizens and institution to which they apply are duty bound to comply with the law, until set aside by the courts which alone have the constitutional powers to review the constitutionality of laws made by the National Assembly; or until the National Assembly itself tinker with it by a subsequent law.

Neither INEC nor any other body or person can assume the power to interpret the correctness of a law made by the National Assembly in valid exercise of its constitutional powers to make law, even if it’s a law which may subsequently be declared unconstitutional by the court.

Mr. Falana’s unsolicited advice to INEC is a call to trample on the rule of law upon which our constitutional democracy derives its sustenance.

Remarkably, even as he cited a number of inapplicable cases to contend that INEC has a general discretionary power to fix dates of election within its purview, Mr. Falana did not cite a single case which permits INEC to turn itself into an interpreter of the validity of an Act of the National Assembly, because no such case exists.

In several cases, the Supreme Court of Nigeria has warned against resort to self-help or discretion by government, authority or persons whenever there is a legal dispute.

For instance, in Miscellaneous Offences Tribunal v. Okorafor (2001) 18 NWLR (Pt. 745) 310 at 327, the Supreme Court said: “Nigerian Constitution is founded on the rule of law, the primary meaning of which is that everything must be done according to law.

It means also that government should be conducted within the framework of recognized rules and principle which restrict discretionary power”.

Several years earlier during the years of impunity under military regimes in Governor of Lagos State v. Ojukwu (1986) 1 NWLR (Pt. 18) 621 at 647, Per Oputa JSC), the Supreme Court was still able to admonish that: “The rule of law presupposes that the state is subject to the law, that the judiciary is the necessary agent of the rule of law… that by our constitution, the determination of all actions and proceedings relating to matters in dispute between persons, Government or authority”.

In the same case, Obaseki JSC also reaffirmed the sacrosanct position of the rule of law as opposed to discretional powers thus: “Rule of law primarily means that Government should be conducted within the framework of recognized rules and principle which restrict discretionary powers, which Coke colourfully spoke of as a golden and straight method of law as opposed to the uncertain and crooked cord of discretion”.

To conclude, it’s obvious that INEC cannot allow itself to be derailed from his constitutional obligations by the unsupportable opinion offered by Mr. Falana as such opinion is an invitation to trample on the rule of law and lay foundation for abrogation of the still nascent constitutional government of the country.

Certainly, there is no portion of paragraph 15, Part 1 of the Third Schedule to the Constitution which confers powers on INEC to determine which law to obey, or not to approach the courts for judicial review of the constitutionality of any act of the National Assembly against which it disagrees.

On the contrary, there is no question that in several positions of the Constitution, starting with section 4 (2), the National Assembly is empowered to make laws in respect of matters listed in the Exclusive and Concurrent Lists of the Constitution, one of which is the power to legislate on elections into national and states executive and legislative offices!

*Omoregie is Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law, National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies, Abuja.*

The sale of forfeited assets -Sun Editorial

The proposed plan to sell forfeited assets, which are deemed to be proceeds of crime and seized by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), by the Federal Government, is dogged by controversy. President Muhammadu Buhari has explained that the affected assets will be sold off and the proceeds deposited in the Treasury Single Account (TSA), to ensure that corrupt persons from whom the assets were seized would not reacquire them through the backdoor at the end of his tenure in office.

Since President Buhari dropped the hint in Katsina State when he hosted some elders in Daura, reactions across the nation on the issue were sharply divided. While some Nigerians condemned the plan, others called for full disclosures and transparency in handling the sale of the assets.

Nigerians have urged the government to publish the list of all assets so far recovered as well as all money recovered, properties seized and where they are located in addition to who owned them. They want the government to disclose the assets that have been sold, the buyers.

However, government has provided just one of the answers to the numerous questions being asked, that is, some of the amount of money recovered. The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, had recently disclosed that the various sums, in different currencies were recovered between May 2015 and May 2016.

These include N78.325bn, $185 million, £3.508m and €11,250. The government is yet to make public the amount recovered in 2017, even though the acting Chairman of the EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, at his last appearance before the Senate disclosed that the agency was still compiling the total cash recovered last year. All the same, some questions still linger. For instance, what is the implication or legal status of the sale of properties the matter of which is yet to be determined by the courts? Besides, some have queried the powers of the courts to make final forfeiture orders on properties of suspects not yet convicted of any crime?

Sections 20(1), 21, 24, 25, 29 and 30 of the EFCC Act 2004 and Section 44 (2) (k) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), provide that forfeiture of assets is temporary pending investigation or inquiry. Legal experts are of the view that the court should grant interim order of forfeiture. Also, Section 30 of the EFCC Act states that “the suspect must have been convicted by the court before it can make final forfeiture.”

Undoubtedly, the issues surrounding the sale of forfeited assets remain unclear to most Nigerians. Legal opinion on this very sensitive matter is even more divided. In all, there is a consensus that full disclosure and transparency is the ultimate way out, starting with publishing the properties, their owners and the money recovered, and from whom. Government owes Nigerians a duty to provide answers to these questions. It is in the national interest and indeed, the best interest of the present administration to do so.

We believe that in the absence of confidentiality of record, the Federal Government should, without further delay, publish details of those from whom those assets were recovered, and also give adequate time for their valuation before offering them for sale. Indeed, the process of disposing them should be open and transparent.

The government should be reminded that anything short of full disclosures and transparency in the planned sale of the forfeited assets will cast a huge blanket of suspicion on its war against corruption. We know that there are rules and guidelines in place to ensure transparency in such a matter.

Therefore, the government should comply with the Public Procurement Act that has specific guidelines and processes on this matter. The approach entails listing the assets that should be evaluated by qualified quantity and estate surveyors/valuers. The assets should be sold to highest bidders.

The government should not skew the process to favour cronies of the ruling party. Due diligence and transparency should be followed.

Sun

[OPINION]: Trump: One man against the world -Yakubu Mohammed

To all intents and purposes, the indefatigable US President Donald Trump has acquired the not-so-flattering distinction of being one man against the whole wide world. And he seems to revel in it. His “America first” agenda which is a signal tune for his economic nationalism has put him in direct confrontation against global interest and the civilised world’s economic survival.

For a clearer picture of how the world of Trump came to this pass, let’s wind back to 2016, the year, when Donald Trump, against all odds, beat the book makers – even against all his own expectations – to emerge as the forty-fifth president of America, causing global consternation.

Against the backdrop of his calamitous and divisive campaign during which time he railed against convention and against orthodoxy he sought to isolate America, the biggest democracy on earth, by turning his country upside down, while the rest of the civilised world held its breath.

While Trump was waiting in the wing to take over during the January 20, 2017 inauguration, Barrack Obama, the out-going president, was in the meantime on a farewell tour of Europe and you’d recall how he laboured, almost in vain, to reassure the rest of the world that Trump, the candidate, would be vastly different from Trump the president, the latter being more temperate, presidential and humble but more determined to promote world peace and not provoke a world war. He said campaign sound bites were entirely different from governance.

Obviously worried himself, President Obama stoically sought to allay the fears of American allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO and the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA and at the United Nations as well as the Americans back home that the incoming president would work for the interest of America and the rest of the world. Obama could not fathom how anyone, who had laboured to win election, would not govern his country with the best of intention for the good of the generality of the people.

The assurance became necessary because Trump had vowed during the campaign that he would have nothing to do with these world bodies; free trade was, for him, a hideous anathema, a restrictive mechanism to short change the great America of his dream. America, he pronounced literally from the roof top of the Trump Tower, must be great again. This was the cardinal policy of his entire administration – a credo by which he must live or die.

That was the reason he wanted out of NAFTA. Or if he could, scrap it entirely and put an end to this ambitious programme that has so far demonstrated how free trade, in no small measure, had benefitted the farmers, the artisans, the manufacturers and even the ordinary workers through wealth creation and the promotion of competitiveness to enhance quality and standard. It did not matter to him that majority of his people profited from NAFTA. He might not even be aware of the advantages.

One thing was certain. And that was the fact that Trump did not hide his disdain for trade liberalisation. He also made it clear that he hated free movement of people and goods across the international borders. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, he was convinced, crossed the borders freely along with the goods and services.

Trump’s anti-free trade policy naturally triggered world-wide alarm. It did not fail to arrest the attention of Madam Christine Lagard, the managing director of International Monetary Fund, the world financial sheriff who, with her back to the wall, was forced to give an unsolicited lecture on the virtues of trade liberalisation, the need to create more jobs and promote inclusiveness, not exclusiveness. Lagard, like Obama, was sorely worried about the evil that was about to befall free trade and the promotion of the greatest good for the greatest number of people in global community that would be devoid of rancour and belligerent supremacy of the mighty. She was worried that excessive rancour and resentment would put the global economy in jeopardy and the lives of the poor and the vulnerable in utter misery.

But her lecture, like other voices of reason, was destined to fall on the unhearing ears of a president that was consumed by egregious native nationalism, one who saw nothing but evil in ethnic minorities, the Hispanics, Mexican immigrants, Blacks, Muslims as well as Jews – the president, as it is now clear, who was elected not on the platform of decency and fairness and the rule of law but on the platform of hubris, resentment and vengeance.

When President Trump is not busy tweeting threats that he would press the lethal button for the ultimate nuclear annihilation against the North Korean supreme leader, Kim Jong-un and his people, he would be scheming how to provoke a trade war against all other nations.

Those, like President Obama, who had expressed hope that Trump, as president, would be confronted with the reality of office and settle down for serious business of governance, must be grossly disappointed that nothing apparently can deter this president - no reality can change his world view.

Nothing, not even the fire and fury that is turning his White House into the house of commotion, can stop him from walking the talk and keeping faith with his electoral promise, the singular mandate to take America back and send the immigrants packing.

One way, one sure way of doing that is to seek to please the steel manufactures and the aluminium industry and a host others by gratuitously protecting them against foreign competition by slamming a tariff of 25 per cent on steel imports and 10 per cent tariff on aluminium imports. Reactions to this new policy pronouncement have been furious, in fact incandescent.

China, the largest goods trading partner - $578.2 billion in total goods trade in 2016 – has threatened retaliation. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the European Union, EU, as a bloc would respond by forcefully targeting the US iconic imports like Levi’s jeans and Kentucky bourbon whiskey which are very popular in Europe. Canada and Germany have sent equally febrile signal.

But what can that do to Trump who may turn out to be America’s own Ivan the Terrible? He has vowed to hit back. And hit harder, too. He is angry with the German car manufacturers like the BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen for failing to assemble their cars on the American soil. He now wants to impose 35 per cent tariffs on those cars because according him, the “Germans are bad, bad.”

And, as for the EU – minus Britain - Trump has a message: “ If the EU wants to further increase their already massive tariffs and barriers on US companies doing business there we will simply apply tax on their cars which freely pour into US - Big trade imbalance” he tweeted.

And a parting word for his predecessors in office: “Other countries laugh at what fools our leaders have been. No more!”

But there is more. Apparently Trump does not appreciate the enormity of the war he is bringing on the international trade and its web of intricacies. The Republicans, members of his own party, are worried to their marrows because they know that retaliatory measures are bound to spiral out of control with unnerving consequences on both the aggressor (US) and its allies with rising unemployment and increased social misery across the world.

But who can stop Trump, the trade war-monger, who says he is enjoying it because it is “a war that is easy to win” Who indeed can stop him?

Last modified on Wednesday, 07 March 2018 07:17

IGP on cattle ranches -Tribune Editorial

The lingering controversies over the herdsmen/farmers’ clashes across the country may persist for a long while, as the laws and policies put in place to curb the ugly trend are obviously not being implemented or enforced dispassionately. The police, as the chief law enforcement agency have, contrary to their constitutional mandate, demonstrated an open and unabashed bias in favour of the herdsmen, a critical party to the conflict. The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr. Ibrahim Idris, in particular, has been a passionate critic of any legislation that targets open grazing and, by implication, reduction in herdsmen’s atrocities across the country. He comes across as an official who, by his pronouncements, erroneously believes that the herdsmen have inalienable rights to do whatever they please within the Nigerian territory, including destruction of farm crops and killing of innocent citizens. The anti-open grazing laws have been passed and are being implemented by three sub-national governments of Ekiti, Benue and Taraba, yet the Inspector-General of Police who statutorily should lead the enforcement of the laws has continued to publicly condemn the legislation.

A few days ago, the following statement was credited to Idris at a security meeting with northern leaders in Kaduna State: “To reduce the incidence of clashes between farmers and herders, state government should endeavour to establish grazing ranches in their various states before enacting laws to prohibit open rearing and grazing.” This is a patently biased submission that a state official of his calibre should not have made, especially in his capacity as the IGP. Does that mean that the people and governments of the three states that have put the cart before the horse, in the IGP’s estimation, should continue to bear the brunt of the herdsmen’s blatant disregard for the anti-grazing laws? Does it mean that if the herdsmen kill people in the states where anti-grazing laws subsist, the IGP will not arrest them?

Curiously, the IGP has continued to point in the direction of the anti-grazing laws as the reason for the escalation of clashes between farmers and herdsmen. But the truth is that some of these states had witnessed more brutal clashes before the advent of the laws. The anti-open grazing laws were a practical response by the affected state governments to the menace of the armed herdsmen. Indeed, it was the absence of diligent enforcement of the laws and sloppy response by the police to threats of attacks by herdsmen that created a sense of impunity and the subsequent upsurge in clashes. And given the IGP’s pronouncements, especially the one insisting that states must prioritise the establishment of cattle ranches before enacting anti-grazing laws, it is little surprise that the clashes have yet to abate. But who is the IGP to tell states what to do? Is he bigger than the state Houses of Assembly or how is his opinion superior to the duly enacted laws by some federating units within a federal structure? Is the IGP claiming ignorance of the atrocities of the herdsmen?

It is most unfortunate that the IGP appears to have willfully descended into the political arena. It is also unconscionable of the IGP to imply that the anti-grazing laws were being hastily formulated and implemented when the daunting challenges the laws are meant to tackle have always been there. Should the people at the receiving end of the open grazing menace wait until they are totally decimated before addressing the attendant challenges? And in any case, it is not the place of the police to tell which law is good or bad; its duty is to ensure diligent and dispassionate enforcement of duly enacted laws by all levels of government. After all, the judiciary is always there to interpret the laws whenever it is approached to so.

To be sure, we believe and have always preached that ranching is the way to go, in order to boost livestock production and rein in cattle rustling and herders/farmers’ clashes. However, it is not the business of state governments, many of whom are finding it difficult to pay their workers’ salaries, to establish ranches for private cattle herders. If the Federal Government has any support programme for ranching, it can give the support through the states or directly to the pastoralists within the context of assistance to private businesses. It is by no means the right of the herders to be officially provided with ranches, but if any government chooses to support them, it should be done in such a manner that it does not create any sense of entitlement that may become another problem in the future

The cost of this avoidable conflict across the nation in terms of loss of human lives can hardly be quantified, even though Mercy Corps, a UK-funded global humanitarian agency, has estimated the total cost to be in the region of $14 billion annually. Therefore, what is required at this moment is genuine and pragmatic solutions to the conflict which would reflect the reality on the ground and not reckless pronouncement like the IGP’s that only inflame passions and exacerbate the problem.

Tribune

[Opinion]: Eclipse of the big issues - Kayode Komolafe

Barely a year to a defining presidential election the big issues are distressingly in eclipse. The political ferment in the land is hardly about a clash of strategies on economic and social development. Forces are aligning and re-aligning, but hardly is any grand vision being enunciated. A third force is said to be coming on stage. Will there be a distinctively third vision for the people to embrace? You hear of possible presidential candidates including the incumbent president, but nobody tells you about their ideas of development.

You don’t know about which strategy of development contenders for power are really passionate. Presidential aspirants are identified not by their ideas and policy preferences, but by their regions or religion. Within their regions or religions they are further differentiated by their ethnic groups. That is what even some experts call superb political analysis and electoral calculations in Nigeria. Some cynics go further to say that this is so in Nigeria because “ideology is dead” as if there is any nation making progress without a guiding ideology.

Even an external observer could feel the heat in the Nigerian polity. However there is little or no light on how to practically solve the burgeoning problems facing the poor people of this country. This trend should worry the elements currently in the saddle as well as their opponents aiming to take power from them.

To start with, there is a gross political underdevelopment in this country. It is the less-talked-about form of underdevelopment in Nigeria. Political parties should not exist only as electoral vehicles for those wishing to take a trip to political power. Political parties should also provide the platforms to articulate and debate the big issues so that voters would be making informed decisions.

Perhaps the decline in politics would become manifest if one compares the political development in Nigeria today with what obtained exactly 40 years ago in the prelude to the Second Republic. In March 1978, Nigeria was patently in a transitory mood politically; the Murtala/Obasanjo military government had promised democratic elections against 1979. Political parties were already undergoing incubation. By the end of 1978 parties had emerged among which five got registered to take part in the elections the following year.

Warts and all, the registered parties were emerging as relatively viable political institutions. That was long before it became fashionable for our western-oriented motivational speakers to preach mechanically the building of strong institutions including political parties. There is a problem with the proposition that the way out is to build “strong institutions and not strong leaders.” Such a proposition misses the crucial point of the dialectical interplay of forces between the essence of strong institutions on the one hand and the role of individuals (especially leaders) in history on the other. It is not a matter of either a strong institution or a strong leader; it is squarely a matter of both in order to make progress in any department of national life. There were strong leaders with remarkable strength of character leading the Second Republic parties, which held some promise of becoming very strong institutions before the military truncated the process at the end of 1983.

Any profile of the political parties of the Second Republic would show that they had credible and indisputable leaders. Alhaji Shehu Shagari emerged as the presidential candidate of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), but party chairman Chief Adisa Akinloye and the other national officers were not figureheads at the party leadership. The stature of Chief Obafemi Awolowo was conspicuous in the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN). The stamp of the goodwill and immense charisma of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was unmistakeable on the fortunes of the Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP). The Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) was undoubtedly associated with the populist pedigree of Mallam Aminu. The great Nigeria Peoples Party (GNPP) radiated the aura of Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim. Even Waziri’s slogan of “politics without bitterness” helped humanise the political process, albeit imperceptibly.

It may now be convenient for some historians to define the Second Republic parties in solely ethnic or regional terms because going by electoral performance, the fortunes of some of the parties were limited to the areas of origins of their respective leaders. However, that would not be giving a full picture of the dynamics of politics of that era. The spaces taken by the parties of the Second Republic in the political landscape could easily be delineated by some ideas, policies and even strategies of development. For instance, the NPN and the UPN fought vigorously on the basis of clear policy options.

Any one who was of voting age in 1979 would remember that NPN campaigned on the policy platform of “national unity, “qualitative education,” “green revolution,” “mass housing,” etc. The UPN would always be remembered for its “four cardinal programmes” of “free education,” “free health services,” “full employment” and “integrated rural development.” Yes, Awolowo’s party won overwhelmingly in Yorubaland. But if you asked the rural folks in the south-west they would also tell you that beyond Awolowo being Yoruba they were also voting for the education of their children, jobs and the development of their area.

A similar thing could be said of the voters in Kano and Kaduna who might be poor but were evidently imbued with high level of consciousness as they were convinced that a party led by Aminu Kano could implement socially beneficial programmes. In retrospect, it is a huge irony of Nigeria’s political history that the politics of that era was considered backward especially from the sharply critical perspectives of Left. What would the elements of Left say of the present politics especially those of them who have played active parts in this age of sharp political decline? What ideas will the political parties of this dispensation and their leaders be remembered for in 40 years time?

In contradistinction to the policy-based politics of the second Republic, the trend since 1999 has been for presidents to begin articulating their policies long after their elections. In essence, they actually promised the people nothing. The Obasanjo administration began to put the National Empowerment and Economic Development (NEEDS) together in the second term of the President.

In fact, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that produced Obasanjo in the first place was listed merely as one of the “stakeholders” to be “consulted” while the “technocrats” drafted the agenda. This probably explains why some of the reforms initiated by President Olusegun Obasanjo could not be consummated during his tenure as they arrived almost at the twilight of his administration. President Umaru Yar’Adua enunciated his “Seven-Point Agenda” in his inaugural address. The agenda was never coherently articulated by his party, the PDP, during the campaign for his election. Similarly, President Goodluck Jonathan gave the first hint of his “transformation agenda” in his inaugural address on May 29, 2011. The PDP never sold such an agenda coherently while presenting Jonathan to the electorate for the election.

In the same vein, the party now in power, the All Progressives Congress (APC), cannot also be accused of selling any clear agenda to the electorate before the election of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015. The proof of this is not far to fetch. The party has no programmatic link with its governments at the centre and in the states. The APC had to set up a committee only last year to articulate its policy on restructuring even when it claimed it had the quest for “true federalism” in some manifesto somewhere. In fact, after 33 months in power the Buhari administration is just launching the “laboratory” for its Economic Recovery Programme duly approved by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Indeed, the expertise for the “laboratory” was outsourced to some Malaysian brains at a not-so-cheap cost of N430 million. It is not clear if the APC has any input of ideas into all this drama of governance in a country that has produced first class economists and scholars of various ideological hues, some of who once served the IMF and the World Bank. How can the APC be part of policy articulation, as parties are universally supposed to be, when it cannot even muster the strength to hold a national convention 36 months after winning the presidential election? Yet on the day of election it was the APC logo that appeared on the ballot paper.

The progressive eclipse of the big issues in electioneering since 1999 is at the root of the nation’s underdevelopment. The condition is so bad that it now takes even the IMF to draw the attention of the nation’s economic managers to the worsening poverty in the land. Ironically, at the onset of their ruinous Structural Adjustment Programme in the mid 1980s, the IMF and the World conveniently lived in denial of the huge “social costs” of adjustment, which the International Labour Organisation (ILO), in contrast, made a battle cry.

Now, the big question is this: is there any party in the land poised to wage a battle against mass poverty, inequality and social injustice? Is there any political aspirant articulating coherent and workable strategy against the plague of joblessness, hunger, illiteracy and homelessness? A symptom of the decline of politics is that the increasing polarisation in the country is not on the policy and strategic preferences to tackle these big issues. There is an obvious contempt for politics of ideas. Economic planning has become an obsolete governance practice in the eyes of our economic managers.

Yet the days of economic development plans were the days of thinking big in Nigeria especially in the immediate post-independence period. Nigeria has since moved from planning for massive water projects that could service millions to commissioning boreholes even in cities. Welcome to the age of limited vision! The modern politicians and their technocrats are content with getting foreign experts to draft some short-term programme for the masters in Washington to approve in the name of economic management. In fact, it has become an economic abomination to suggest that the state should drive the process with strategic investment in some areas for infrastructural and industrial progress.

While our neo-liberals keep announcing the obituary of ideology, they don’t stop looking towards China for loans and investments. Some of the Chinese organisations they brand as private foreign investors in Nigeria are largely publicly owned in their home country. It takes serious economic planning, and not ad-hoc recovery programmes, for China to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty. Yet the Chinese economic reform is still a work in progress. Only late last year, the thought of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, on “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in a New Era” was enshrined into constitution of the Chinese Communist Party.

The neo-liberals whose views dominate policy here should always remember that ideas constitute a motive force in history especially in the management of an economy. Politics of development cannot be conducted in a vacuum of ideas.

Above all, there must be first a nation before any one can seek political power to govern or rule it as it has been in most cases. So national integration is a big issue of our time. Leadership is, therefore, sorely needed in this respect. The style and substance of Buhari’s politics must convince the people that he is a unifier. The task of preserving national unity is that of leadership and followers alike. Buhari should unite this nation with the pronouncements issuing from Aso Rock.

His response to the increasing clamour for political restructuring should be better structured. Buhari and all those who want his job have the responsibility of making the next electoral season that of the big issues of the Nigerian condition.

Last modified on Wednesday, 07 March 2018 06:23

[OPINION]: A shameful elite and the democratisation of information -Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú

Every well meaning Nigerian must condemn the consistent urge to legislate for the protection of the current ruling elite, instead of looking for far-reaching and enduring legislation that will benefit future generations of Nigerians. This legislative myopia is a threat to our collective well being. Laws should be made to protect every Nigerian, not a select few.

Democracy thrives when citizens are involved and informed. Democracy works when officeholders are responsible and accountable. On both flanks, be it that of citizens or officeholders, we have been failing; big time! Seeking the death penalty for “hate speech” shows the patent lack of critical thought in the National Assembly. In the case of Nigeria, it is shameful that the most ludicrous bills always come from the Senate.

Thoughtlessness is what we get when we elevate the indecent and idiotic to positions of power due to primordial thinking and shortsightedness. How does speech of any kind get equated to murder? How can words attract capital punishment? We have legislators who are completely ignorant of the Constitution of Nigeria. That, this piece of crap passed second reading is beyond stupid!

For whatever it is worth, I will like to give some advice to the technology morons in the National Assembly. Sorry people, information has become democratised! Get used to it! We understand you are angry that the various platforms of social and new media are threats to your primitivism and primitive exercise of power and impunity. We know you wish to continue having undue and unchallenged privilege. Blame President Obasanjo for giving us mobile telephony. The mobile phone is your enemy now.

That piece of technology is a genie and it is out of the bottle. There is nothing you can do about it. You are only looking at one dimension of the issue at hand. I can understand that, because most of you are linear thinkers, if at all. You are looking at how social media is curtailing your excesses and exposing your closets. You are not thinking about how the young are seeing lives from their cell phones, in well run and organised societies, and how this can spell doom for an unengaged and deprived demographic.

…the goal of the Sabi Abdullahi bill is not hate speech, but to shrink the political space. However, the constitution of Nigeria has enough protections in it against hate speech, instead of the judicial rigmarole that has now been invented to snare those who dissent. In a country where judgement is available for sale, where does this lead?

I am sorry! You can’t control information the way you used to any more, as in the days of information monarchy, when you had newspaper editors in your pockets and could buy off content. With social media, the traditional dynamics of access and inequality around news and information have changed forever! You are fighting a lost battle.

In 2016 and 2017, you sought censorship via a spurious social media bill and it fell flat on its face! While so much effort is being devoted to curtailing free speech, bills that will guarantee gender equality and protection for children get killed each time. Unfortunately for you, you will find no respite because the audience of Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp exceeds the traditional media in thousands of folds. Social media is our territory. We the people set the agenda.

We determine the control of news and information flows. Trying to control social media under the cover of “hate speech” is a violation of human rights, particularly the freedom of expression. It will not fly.

The nebulous explanation given by Sabi Abdullahi, the senator who introduced the bill for the establishment of Independent National Commission for Hate Speeches would have been laughable were it not for his attempt at hiding the obvious. Each time I read pronouncements from people like Abdullahi, I feel sad about the intellectual laziness of those who are supposed to be making the laws governing our lives!

What do this senator and his aides (if any) ever consider properly? If they did any research or a simple Google search, they would have come across several international, regional and national normative frameworks on social and non-regulatory mechanisms that can help to counter the production, dissemination and impact of hateful messages online.

There is a compedium of these frameworks on the UNESCO website. To those of us who follow and chronicle the careers of Nigerian politicians and power elite, the goal of the Sabi Abdullahi bill is not hate speech, but to shrink the political space. However, the constitution of Nigeria has enough protections in it against hate speech, instead of the judicial rigmarole that has now been invented to snare those who dissent. In a country where judgement is available for sale, where does this lead?

…to the power elite, be rest assured that your stupidity will always go viral because every outrageous, stupid, batshit crazy act and comment will cause people to click ‘hilarious’, ‘sad’ or ‘angry’. These reactions propel the algorithm of the platforms you loathe. The information ecosystem has changed for good.

Technology is a tool. There will always be the good and bad guy users. Digital media poses several challenges to democracy. An example is in Russia’s meddling with the United States’ past presidential election. We have seen the cloning of the identity of reputable media organisations, the escalation of intolerance and the rapid spread of misinformation and fake news via social media. Despite all these, we have reasons to be hopeful about the future of media and democracy, as shown by the galvanisation of the youth to vote for Buhari in Nigeria’s last presidential election.

Laws should be made to protect every Nigerian, not a select few. And to the power elite, be rest assured that your stupidity will always go viral because every outrageous, stupid, batshit crazy act and comment will cause people to click ‘hilarious’, ‘sad’ or ‘angry’. These reactions propel the algorithm of the platforms you loathe.

The information ecosystem has changed for good. We determine what the attention backbone is. Soon, with just a hashtag, we can determine your political fate. Watch out!

Last modified on Tuesday, 06 March 2018 15:16

[OPINION]: Italy’s elections: what are the implications for Europe? -Nicola Chelotti

Big shock in the Italian elections. The Five Star movement won 32.6% of the votes, and is by far the largest party of the country. Its performance was particularly strong in Rome, Naples and in the south more generally.

Another clear winner is Le Lega, and Matteo Salvini seems to have won his bet: he transformed it from a regional party in Northern Italy (built around a centre-periphery cleavage) to a right-wing, anti-immigration Front National-type of party. In the 2013 elections, Le Lega won just 4% of the votes; today, with 17.4%, it has surpassed its main coalition partner, Forza Italia – the party of former Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi (on 14%).

Meanwhile, voters heavily punished the party currently in power, Matteo Renzi Democratic Party, which only won 18.7%.

Despite a struggling economy, the main concern of Italians in the run-up to the election was immigration. In recent years, a large number of migrants, especially from Sub-Saharan Africa, have come to the country across the Mediterranean.

There are around 6 million migrants in Italy – the number is overall in line with other European countries– and according to recent estimates, around 500,000 are irregular migrants and around 200,000 asylum seekers.

In the public discourse, immigration was linked to high unemployment (around 11%, with youth unemployment at 32.7%) and to crime – although data suggest both a fall in crime rates across the country, and in the share of crimes committed by foreigners.

In terms of the economy, the Italian electoral campaign has been characterised by three main aspects. First, all the parties (the centre-right coalition and the Five Star Movement in particular) have made costly electoral promises, which would further increase public debt. Not much attention was given to how these promises could be financed, or to the risks that a higher debt might generate.

Second, the Democratic party tried to use the recent recovery to publicize its reforms while in government; but the recovery was actually quite shallow, and GDP and employment have not yet returned to the pre-crisis levels. On the other hand, the opposition parties often blamed Europe, the euro, or Germany – depending on the news of the day – for the sluggish recovery.

Third, almost completely missing from the electoral campaign was a discussion of the internal reasons of the poor economic performance of the country.

Political parties hardly discussed why Italian productivity is so low, how the administration, the judiciary and the education system could be reformed, why all the new jobs are fixed-term contracts, why Italy does not attract high-skilled jobs, etc.

The common theme is that Italian parties like to think that the factors holding Italy back originate outside the country – be it immigrants, the euro or Angela Merkel. In this vein, the victory of the Five Star Movement and Le Lega are only in part a protest vote.

If this is a protest vote, it is certainly not aimed at changing Italy’s deep-rooted ways of running the state and the economy. Sunday’s vote might indicate Italians’ persistent willingness to lose their own sense of responsibility for the country’s economic fortunes.

As things stand, there is no clear majority in the Parliament. Several scenarios are possible. It might be that the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, calls for new elections in the coming months – either with the current electoral law or after a caretaker government produces a new one(!). The centre-right coalition (Forza Italia, Le Lega, Fratelli d’Italia) has the largest number of votes and seats; but it needs to gather a substantial number of parliamentarians from other parties to form a workable majority.

That might be possible, but this is far from obvious. Alternatively, the Five Star movement might try to lead a coalition with parties either from the right (possibly Le Lega and Fratelli d’Italia, with whom they share some common concerns) or the left (the Democratic party).

In the aftermath of the election, Luigi di Maio, the Five Star Movement’s leader, has said that he is open to talks with all political parties. On the other hand, Salvini argued that Le Lega has the right to govern with the centre-right coalition.

The implications of this election for Europe could be rather substantial – particularly if we get a centre-right coalition led by Le Lega, or a coalition between it and the Five Star Movement. These parties might not necessarily make plans for withdrawing Italy from the euro (at least not in the short term), but it is still likely that conflicts between the Italian government and EU institutions will increase.

A new Italian government will probably want to exceed the 3 percent deficit-to-GDP limit under the Stability and Growth Pact to fund public investments or reduce taxes – challenging the convergence of macroeconomic policies in the eurozone. It will also want to scrap the so-called Legge Fornero (an unpopular pensions law setting the retirement age at 67), which would further increase the country’s debt.

The clashes with the Commission that would follow might further polarise Italian public opinion on Europe, possibly strengthening the country’s euroscepticism. This scenario might also hijack France’s and Germany’s plans to reform the Eurozone: it is difficult to see the German government agreeing on a bigger budget and a single finance minister for the currency bloc, if it sees concrete risks coming from a fiscally autonomous and irresponsible (in their reading) Italy.

And, what about the implications of the Italian elections on Brexit? Like other European elections, Brexit was hardly mentioned in the electoral campaign. In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, Le Lega and Fratelli d’Italia applauded the British public’s decision to leave the EU.

The Democratic party joined other mainstream parties in Europe in regretting the results of the referendum and in considering Brexit a dangerous product of populism. The Five Star Movement had taken a more wavering position on the issue.

But since then, Italian parties have largely forgotten about Brexit; even Le Lega has not used it as a frame to strengthen its cause against EU institutions and the euro. If anything, eurosceptic forces have slightly downplayed their plans for an ‘Italexit’.

The new Italian government will certainly contain less euro-friendly elements. But it is unlikely that the new executive will choose Brexit to start battling with the EU. Italy’s interests in the first phase are very much in line with the Commission’s approach – in terms of citizens’ rights and UK financial contribution to the EU budget.

In the second phase of the Brexit talks, a eurosceptic government might be less strict than other EU countries in preserving the integrity of the single market, and might be tempted to offer more favourable conditions to the UK. Italy, however, has been a rather silent actor in the Brexit negotiations so far, and to become an active shaper would require substantive diplomatic and organizational efforts.

Most importantly, Brexit is not salient enough for the Italian government to spend huge political capital on in a clash with the EU institutions. That capital might well be used for other, more important battles.

Nicola Chelotti, co-investigator at The UK in a Changing Europe and lecturer in Diplomacy and International Governance at Loughborough University.

Last modified on Tuesday, 06 March 2018 15:00

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[OPINION]: IGP Idris and un-rule of law -Yinka Odumakin

For those who have forgotten, Mr. Ibrahim Idris, the current Inspector General of police was the Commissioner of Police in Kano state during the 2015 elections. He supervised an election in which one million more voters turned out to vote for a Presidential candidate than the 800,000 who voted in the National Assembly polls that held simultaneously.

Unconfirmed reports said the Kano Resident Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Alhaji Mukaila Abdullahi protested the conduct of the elections. Six days after the elections, Abdullahi died along with his wife and daughters in a fire incident early morning.

Idris as the state Commissioner of Police, said preliminary investigation confirmed that Abdullahi and members of his family died out of suffocation arising from a fire, suspected to have emanated from electrical debunking speculations that the dead were murdered. He stated that there was no trace of sabotage at the scene of the incident.

His words: “Today (Friday) at about 4:30 a.m., the police men on guard duty at the official residence of the Resident Electoral Commissioner Kano state, Alhaji Munkaila Abdullahi located at No. 2 Sir Kashim Ibrahim Road, Nassarawa GRA, Kano, observed a fire emanating from a split unit A/C in the sitting room.

“They made several attempt to get in touch with him, including banging the doors and breaking some of the toilets windows but he was not responding. The police men and local guards broke the door leading to the sitting room, and discovered the sitting room was engulfed by fire and smoke.

They then went to the side of the door leading to the masters bedroom, broke the door and entered; they were not inside the bed room and the Police then went to the bathroom, inside the master bedroom and found the REC, his wife and his two daughters unconscious on the floor.”

This forensic investigation carried out hours after the incident was the last we heard on the matter.

By July 2016,Idris was announced as the new Inspector General of Police by President Muhammadu Buhari.A news analysis by Vanguard Newspaper on 5th July 2016 said of the process that threw Idris up :

“Shockingly, the emergence of Idris has ushered in a total turn around in the Force. In fact, it was like the long awaited clean sweep. Just in the wake of the appointment, no fewer than 21 assistant inspectors-general of police were shown the way out of the Force in an exercise generally seen as a colossal loss to the Force. Besides the AIGs, also six deputy inspectors-general of police, DIGs, most were mandatorily retired with their immediate boss. Amongst the victims were most of the well trained, exposed and tested officers in the Force. Many believe that their unceremonious exit will, certainly, create a yawning vacuum in the beleaguered Force.

The victims: Prominent amongst the officers thrown out were Umaru Abubakar Manko, a former Commissioner of Police in Lagos State whose track records in crime fighting remains unequalled till date, Bala Hassan, an officer with a very sound intellectual base whose performances in different parts of the country especially, when he headed the elite Mobile Police Force, remains enviable; Kalafite H. Adeyemi, the only female victim, a lawyer and psychologist, she was the first female commissioner of police in Oyo, Osun and Taraba states at different times and also the first female assistant inspector-general of police at Zone 11 comprising Oyo, Osun and Ondo states. Adenrele Shinaba, Johnson Ogunsahaki, Edgar Nanakumo, smooth operator and achiever, Adisa Bolanta, the irrepressible and controversial Mbu Joseph Mbu and other achievers in the Force. Most of these officers have been trained both at home and abroad with tax payers’ money and still have many years to contribute to the unpliftment of the Force”.

Just like the paper predicted, the laurels have been coming in for the police under Idris.Nigeria has the worst police force in the world, according to World Internal Security and Police Index International, WISPI report released late last year for the year 2016.

While still savouring that global recognition,the Governor of Benue state conferred the boss of “the worst police in the world” with the title of “spokesman of killer herdsmen”.

The Governor gave the award in recognition of the clear demonstration by Idris that he seems beholden to special interest as against his constitutionally assigned role as the chief law enforcer of the country. The rampaging and murderous herdsmen have exposed the IGP as observing un-rule of law in diverse ways.

Shortly after the January 1 killings of 73 people in Benue, Idris declared that the killings arose from “communal feud” and that the killer herdsmen were Nigerians and asking for effect “are they not?”. He was later to deny the words we saw him pronounced on Television.

Shortly after the Police image maker, Moshood Jimoh was on Channels TV to declare the Benue Governor a “drowning man”. He was so adamant and it almost took the presenter calling off the programme for him to withdraw the crude and insolent statement. He is still keeping his job which suggests he was not speaking out of sync with the mindset of his boss. The lowest moment for Idris was his technically renewing the license of the herdsmen to continue their rampage when he disclosed that the terror herdsmen pose to farmers ( not the wrong word “clashes”) will persist until state Governors establish ranches for herders in their states.

The Police Boss insisted that the herders can only be arrested or punished for open grazing if ranches are provided by the states.

Speaking at the Northern States Stakeholders Security Summit in Kaduna, he said: “it is my humble suggestion that to reduce the incidence of clashes between Farmers and Herders in Nigeria, State Governments should endeavour to establish grazing ranches in their various states before enacting laws to prohibit open rearing and grazing.

“It is when grazing ranches are established that herders can be arrested and punished for rearing and grazing on the open places.”

Ibrahim Idris said the establishment of ranches, “will make the law acceptable by all the parties concerned and other critical stakeholders in that all-important sector.

“It will do us good if we avoid the hasty formulation and implementation of such laws across the country in the interest of peace and unity. For instance, I have visited Benue and Nasarawa States and observed that the crisis trailing the Benue State prohibition of open rearing and grazing of livestock would have been mitigated if the State had first established grazing ranches before the prohibition of open grazing as provided in the State law established by the State Assembly”.

One should be laughing if this were not tragic for the Republic. A policeman who should enforce the law is now telling properly constituted authorities when to make law and the laws that some sacred cows will obey.This country is collapsing gradually unless we pretend not to know. I wrote here months back that many citizens of a dying country are preoccupied with existential challenges to piece together the death symptoms of their polity.

The argument of the “spokesman of killer herdsmen” is akin to saying that the Federal Government should first ensure that all citizens are in a position to satisfy their needs before the EFCC can prosecute anybody for corruption!

Idris brazenness flows from the Constitution that ensures that the federating units don’t have police to enforce their laws in a country where theirs is Hisbah Police to enforce unconstitutional Sharia in some part of the country.

It is gratifying to note that the land is not in lack of real Governors,not sissies,who can stand up to these shenanigans. Ekiti Governor, Ayo Fayose said the IG had no power to order state governors around. He also said the IG was under an obligation to obey and ensure compliance with laws made by any state’s House of Assembly. The governor, who spoke through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, insisted that the state would not heed the advice of the police chief. He said: “The Inspector-General of Police has no choice than to obey the laws made by any state. It is the duty of the police to enforce the law.

Cattle rearing is regarded as a private business and it is not the duty of the governors to provide land for the herder. The real cattle owners are rich people who can afford land; they are not the nomadic cattle rearers from the North to the South of the country.

Speaking in a similar vein, the Taraba State governor maintained that his anti-grazing law was not the cause of the killings being perpetrated by the herdsmen in the state. Rather, he said the law remained one of the solutions to end the unwarranted massacre of law-abiding people in the state by herders.

Ishaku who spoke through his Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs, Emmanuel Bello, said the law in Taraba State was promulgated to put a stop to incessant attacks and killings by the herders. He said: “We have already enacted a law, but we are still prepared to listen to any good idea that brings about peace and mutual understanding among stakeholders.”

Bello explained that the state government was planning a pilot scheme on the creation of ranches to demonstrate that the global practice was also achievable in the country.

Similarly, the Benue State governor, who spoke through the Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Lawrence Onoja Jr., challenged Idris to approach the court if he was not comfortable with the implementation of the law.

Onoja said: “Ibrahim Idris’ directive to state governors to establish ranches before operating grazing laws is totally against the Nigerian constitution and the act that established the Nigeria Police.

“It is not his duty and he does not have the power to direct governors. The police is not to interpret the law but to enforce it. Therefore, it is not for the IG to determine whether a law is right or wrong. It is the duty of the judiciary to interpret laws. If a law is passed and the IG feels it is not good enough, the best thing to do is to challenge the law in the court for interpretation”.

The commissioner maintained that ranching remained a lucrative private business and that it would be wrong for anyone to advocate that government should establish ranches for herdsmen or whoever that is venturing into such a business.

By the way,Idris placed advertorials in some national newspapers on February 22 asking all those who have legal and licensed weapons to turn them in within three weeks but we are yet to hear him give a word on Fulani herdsmen who are carrying illegal and unlicensed weapons all over the place .

It is a season of un-rule of law in Nigeria!

Last modified on Tuesday, 06 March 2018 15:05

[OPINION]: From Imo State, a Nigerian and an Arsenal Fan – What a time to be alive! - Mayor Ikoroha

Fate can be cruel at times. Events virtually beyond your control conspire together to reduce you to an emotional wreck, an object of mockery for neighbours, friends and colleagues. You watch helplessly, realizing that you are only a victim of the failure of leadership, suffering from the painful effects of the actions and inactions of those entrusted with the sacred duty of taking decisions that affect the emotions and wellbeing of millions of people. Most worrisome is the nagging feeling that the gloomy situation would likely get worse.

Being an indigene of Imo State, a Nigerian and a passionate fan of Arsenal FC at this point is a sure recipe for continuous annoyance, anger, disappointment and misery. These three entities are now regarded as embodiments of failure, inept leadership, crass incompetence and to some extent shamelessness. Their current leaders came to power with a promise of hope, renewal and progress but today they have left their followers in despair, agony and retrogression. People have been reduced to a laughing stock by origin and association. They watch helplessly as their leaders desecrate all known precepts of leadership.

However, it was not meant to be this way.

Imo State, the Eastern Heartland, was supposed to be the pride of the Igbos who occupy the whole of South East Nigeria. The state is the highest oil-producing state in the South East, has the highest number of local governments and was the state least affected by the devastating civil war of 1967 – 1970. Imo was the top state in Nigeria in the latest Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) exams and has produced such notable people as Sam Mbakwe, Leo Stan Ekeh, Kanu Nwakwo, Genevieve Nnaji, Walter Ofonagoro and Adiele Afigbo.

Today, Imo State is a butt of jokes due to the actions and idiosyncrasies of state governor, Rochas Okorocha. No thanks to the internet and social media, the name Rochas, of which meaning is mired in mystery and linked to misery, is now known all over the world as an epitome of tomfoolery, ineptitude and shameless nepotism.

This is a man who got to Douglas House Owerri nearly seven years ago as a courier of hope, a renowned philanthropist elected to deliver Imo State from the clutches of Ikedi Ohakim. Mr. Ohakim was alleged to have stolen the state dry and was alleged to have sent thugs to beat up a clergyman. Thousands of Imolites danced in the streets of Owerri, Orlu and Okigwe when Okorocha’s victory over the then incumbent governor seeking for a second term in office was officially announced, believing that the saviour had arrived.

These days, the citizens of Imo State gnash their teeth in regret as the one who was supposed to save the state has proven to be a tyrant. In addition to outperforming his predecessor in high handedness, Okorocha has spiced his misrule with virulent clowning and brazen nepotism.

If the governor’s recent declaration that the state would be more comfortable with armed robbers than marijuana smokers is forgiven as a spur of the moment misspeak, the decision to erect some huge statues in the state including that of Jacob Zuma, the disgraced former South African President, was an infuriating celebration of misplaced priorities and a barefaced waste of huge public funds on white elephant projects. He chose to deify Zuma in spite of the fact that the then unpopular president of South Africa was facing a massive 786-count charge for corruption and his government had virtually done nothing over the xenophobic killing of Nigerians in South Africa. The silliness of erecting Zuma’s statue, giving him the highest honour in the state and naming a major road in Owerri after him was laid bare when he was forced to resign as president of South Africa some few months later over allegations of corruption.

The state government has been owing workers and pensioners in the state for several months, several abandoned projects litter the state and most roads in the state are unpassable during the rainy season. To mock the despair of Imolites, the governor created a Ministry of Happiness and Purpose Fulfilment late last year. The leadership inanity espoused by this action was accentuated by the appointment of the governor’s blood sister, Ogechi Ololo, as the commissioner in charge of the ministry.

Mrs. Ololo’s appointment was only another show of brash, noxious nepotism by the governor. It is well known in Imo State that the governor’s other sister named Geraldine supplies food and drinks to government house from her fast food joint; his elder sister collects market tolls in the state; the father in-law of his son Uzo, Professor Anthony Anwuka, is the governor’s nominee to the federal cabinet and is the current Minister of State for Education and the vice-chancellor of Imo State University, Professor Adaobi Obasi, is Okorocha’s aunt. Also worthy of note is that Anwuka’s wife, Justice Christiana Anwuka, was appointed by the governor as the President of Imo State Customary Court of Appeal.

Governor Okorocha has become so stranded in nepotism that he recently anointed Uche Nwosu, his son in-law who is also the current chief of staff as his successor as governor of Imo State. When he was the commissioner for lands and housing in Okorocha’s government, Mr. Nwosu is alleged to have facilitated the illegal and immoral acquisition of hundreds of choice houses and landed properties in Imo State by the governor, his family members, friends and cronies. Imo State has become a huge joke with Governor Rochas Okorocha as the chief comedian, dissing the citizenry with morbid, tragic and dangerous performances.

The Nigerian situation is a lot direr. Nigerians are marooned in the vortex of a clueless, incompetent, insensitive and savage government. In 2015, when the then president Goodluck Jonathan was voted out of power, most Nigerians warmly welcomed Muhammed Buhari, a former military head of state who had contested for the presidency so many times in the past that as they felt his persistence meant he had something to offer.

Some of those who rooted for Buhari knew he was joking when he promised to make one dollar equal to one naira. They knew about his questionable school certificate, his traits of religious irredentism.

But they were excited by his promise of change and hope. Buhari was seen as a no-nonsense man of integrity who would rid the country of the persistent evil of corruption, arguably the country’s greatest albatross. Nigerians hoped that as a former military man, he would bring a debilitating Boko Haram insurgency in the north east of the country to an end.

Nearly three years later, the country’s economy is in shambles. Nigerians who have never seen a classroom in their lives are now familiar with the word recession. Millions of Nigerians have lost their jobs, many people are suffering and all the masses get from the government are cheering but misleading economic statistics they are unable to feel in real life. Nigerians are no longer asking the president to fulfil his promise of making the dollar equal to the naira but to take back the exchange rate to N170 to $1 where his government met the national currency.

It disheartens many Nigerians that the promised fight against corruption has become a mirage, fought mainly in the pages of newspapers. Money has been found abandoned in flats, airports and safe rural houses. Properties and bank deposits worth hundreds of billons of naira, believed to be proceeds of illicit activities have been forfeited to the government. But then, Nigerians are asking why no highly placed person has been convicted of corruption.

The fight against Boko Haram insurgency is the most painful. The president told Nigerians that Boko Haram has been defeated. Then the suicide bombings continued, the killings persisted and the president shamelessly asked the national assembly for one billion dollars to continue the fight against a defeated enemy. The government paid millions of dollars as ransom to secure the release of 100 kidnapped girls and the terrorists apparently used a fraction of the ransom payment to mobilize and kidnap another 110 schoolgirls. Nigerians have been searching for the meaning of technically defeated.

The herdsmen atrocities, whereby the president’s kin kill and maim helpless Nigerians with impunity, would remain the lowest point of the Buhari administration. Many bereaved families in Benue, Taraba, Plateau, Enugu and other states of the country are cursing the day Buhari Part II happened.

These days, Nigerians have become so used to government ineptitude that many of them have taken the three-month long fuel scarcity as normal. In a country where the national oil company NNPC recently announced that the country has achieved another heinous feat as the largest petroleum importer in the world, most of the traumatized populace now relish dubious stories of snakes and monkeys swallowing huge sums of money, many of them using the allegories as a welcome escapism, a means of keeping their sanity intact.

Arsene Wenger at Arsenal Football Club is similar to Okorocha and Buhari. Just like the present Imo State and Nigeria, Arsenal have become an epitome of failure and frustration, a source of constant heartbreak. This is a club that has competed in Champions League finals with FC Barcelona but was recently beaten at home by Swedish minnows Ostersund in the Europa League, a second-tier competition meant to compensate teams who were not good enough for the elite European competition. As the defending champions, Arsenal were dumped out of the English FA Cup by Nottingham Forest, a manager-less team from England’s second tier.

It was not a shame to lose to Manchester City, runaway leaders of the English premier league, but to lose to them twice in four days, at a neutral ground and at home and with an aggregate score of 6–0, was very distressing. How do you explain the fact that just 63 days into the new year, Arsenal have already lost eight games and their conquerors include Bournemouth, Swansea and Brighton – three teams fighting for survival at the bottom of the English Premiership table?

It is so sad to realise that Arsenal are no longer a big team, anyone can beat them, no one is afraid of the team anymore. The Gunners have long stopped playing beautiful football. Their pattern of play these days is simply put out eleven, spineless, over-paid prima donnas into the field of play and watch them go through the motions that would ultimately lead to anguish for the long suffering fans.

Wenger is wholly responsible for Arsenal’s woes. He joined Arsenal 21 years ago and gave the club some unforgettable memories like a record seven FA Cup triumphs and a spectacular 2003/2004 season when the club achieved the unmatched feat of winning the premier league without losing a single match. Notably, most of these were achieved while Arsenal played football so pleasing to the eye.

However, these days Wenger has become an epitome of incompetence and imprudent longevity. The 68-year old is regularly outwitted on the field of play by younger coaches and has refused to quit in spite of several fans’ protest and calls by former players and pundits for him to call it a day.

He is now like an annoying relic, a callous man who chose the love of lucre over the happiness of millions of fans and who is ludicrously deluded that he is capable of getting the sinking club out of the mire. #WengerOut is regularly a trending hashtag on Twitter. The pain and distress of Arsenal’s recent results have been so daunting that #WengerOut has now transcended sports to become a serious human rights issue.

Arsenal fans cannot wait to see the back of Wenger this summer. Most Imolites look forward to the exit of Okorocha next summer. Millions of Nigerians would not want Buhari as president a day beyond May 29, 2019. But from all indications, until then, things can only get worse.

Mayor Ikoroha is an author and public affairs analyst. He is on Twitter as @tellthemayor

[OPINION]: Buhari, his two-headed Dragon and his “war” against terror - Femi Fani-Kayode

"No-one is more hated than he who speaks truth"- Plato.

These deeply profound and insightful words of Plato, Ancient Greece's greatest and most reverred philospher, who was a student of the great Socrates and a teacher of the great Aristotle, are as true today as they were in 400 BC when he wrote them.

You will not read the following account about President Muhammadu Buhari's so-called "war against terror" in Nigeria's mainstream media because they have mostly been compromised and intimidated by the Federal Government. You can however read it in this two-part essay if you are interested in knowing the truth.

I urge as many of those that care and that can get through it to spread the word and let the international community know the truth about what the Nigerian people are passing through.

Despite the hatred and aggression it always attracts towards its purveyor, truth remains truth and, for the sake of posterity, it is worth defending and, if necessary, dying for. And the truth about our war against terror is as follows.

Today Nigeria is in the terrifying grip of a bloodthirsty two-headed dragon which is empowered, fuelled and energised by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The first head of that dragon is that of Boko Haram and the second is that of the Fulani herdsmen and terrorists.

This two-headed dragon feeds on the flesh and blood of the Nigerian people and until it consummes or captures every living soul in our nation it shall not relent, refrain or desist.

I say this because, like the leader of the horrendous Nightwalkers in HBO's famous classic series, "Game of Thrones", the rider of Nigeria's Nightwalker dragon is our very own President Muhammadu Buhari and he brings nothing but death and destruction.

Those that expect him to master it, tame it or cut its two heads off are expecting him to drop his most awsome weapon and to fall out of the sky in mid-flight.

He will never do it and it will never happen because that is his strength, pride and source of power. He needs the two-headed dragon from hell to take him to his next destination and to his next level.

Simply put, without the blood-sucking, flesh-eating, bone-crushing and life-taking dragon-beast that he controls and rides, Muhammadu Buhari is nothing.

Blood is the currency in the realm of the spirit and the spilling of it gives him power. The more blood is spilt the more power he gets.

This explains why such little emotion is displayed by our President and next to no concern is shown by him when the people of Nigeria are abducted, enslaved, hacked to pieces and slaughtered by either of the two heads of his beast.

When one scrutinises Buhari's so-called war against terror over the last three years the first question we must answer is whether we can really expect one terrorist to fight another terrorist successfully?

Simply put, the question is whether darkness can defeat darkness or whether evil can overwhelm evil?

Consider the following.
In 2000 Buhari asked the late Governor Lam Adesina of Oyo state "why are your Yoruba people killing my Fulani people" when Fulani herdsmen and terrorists suffered a series of heavy reprisal attacks and killings after they had attacked and killed many Yoruba farmers in Oyo state.

In 2001 he told the Nigerian people that "Muslims should only vote for Muslims".

In 2001 he told the Nigerian people that it was his intention to "spread sharia law ALL over the country".

In 2002 he told the Nigerian people that "Christians have no business with the matter and should not complain when limbs are being cut off in the name of sharia because those limbs are Muslim limbs and not theirs".

In 2003 he proclaimed that the Muslims of Nigeria should "all work together and win power at the centre because when the Muslims of the north join hands with our Muslim brothers in the south-west we are more in number than the Christians".

In 2013 he told the Nigerian people that "an attack on Boko Haram is an attack on the North".

In 2014 his trusted political associate and a man by the name of Alhaji Lai Mohammmed from Kwara state who played a key role in his 2015 presidential campaign and who was later appointed as his Minister of Information announced to the world that it was "wrong, unjust and unconstitutional to proscribe Boko Haram and to describe them as a terrorist organisation".

In 2016 his official spokesman at the Presidency, Mr. Femi Adesina, told the Nigerian people that Buhari would not comment on the cold-blooded butchering and murder of no less than 808 Christians in Southern Kaduna on Christmas day and Christmas eve by Fulani terrorists because the Presidency "regarded the matter as a state-affair".

In January 2018 Buhari told Governor Samuel Ortom and the elders and traditional rulers of Benue state that "the Fulani herdsmen and cattle-rearers are your brothers and you must find a way to accomodate them" after those same terrorist herdsmen had butchered over 1000 innocent people in Agatu occupied their land two years ago and hundreds more all over the state since that time.

And it is the same story all over the Middle Belt and the south where Fulani terrorists and herdsmen slaughter innocent Nigerians in the most gruesome and horrific manner and circumstances and destroy and steal their homes, farms and land without any fear of being brought to justice or being resisted or confronted by any of Buhari's northern-Muslim-led security agencies and Armed Forces.

So now I ask, which "war against terror" or "war against Boko Haram" or "war against the Fulani terrorists and herdsmen" are we referring to or is Buhari fighting? Can he really be expected to fight himself?

To people like Buhari unarmed men and women who do not threaten others with violence and who have never killed anyone, like members of Nnamdi Kanu's IPOB, are the terrorists whilst murderous and zombie-like beasts that take pleasure in slitting open the throats of babies and infants and in slaughtering thousands of innocent and defenceless men, women and children are not.

I am sorry to tell the world and the Nigerian people that the Federal Government has been lying to them. They have not been waging any serious war against terror, no Fulani terrorists or herdsmen have been arrested or brought to justice and Boko Haram is as deadly and strong today as it has been in many years.

If anyone doubts that they should find out how many local government areas Boko Haram control and how often they attack and carry out successful operations in major cities in Borno and Yobe states.

They are killing as many people today as they did five years ago but the difference is that the govermment has suppressed the information and ordered a media blackout of these terrible events.

On the abduction of the girls from their school in Dapchi, Yobe state the situation is even more pathetic because it could have been avoided.

When you pay millions of dollars in ransom to Boko Haram over 3 years, when you lie to the world that you have defeated them, when you release thousands of their footsoldiers and commanders from prison and claim that they have "repented" and when you compel the media to supress the truth about the gains they have made in parts of the country why should you or anyone else be surprised about what happened in Dapchi?

It was bound to happen because you have empowered and emboldened them!

Worse still is the fact that the Govermor of Yobe has said that the soldiers that were guarding Dapchi were removed 24 hours before the attack and abduction took place.

The question is who gave the order to remove them and why?

Again the fact that military intelligence (DMI) had formally informed the Nigerian Army and the Federal Government that an attack on Dapchi was imminent and that the warning was brushed under the carpet and ignored raises even more questions.

Finally some time back the Daily Trust Newspaper and BBC Hausa Service reported that on two separate occasions the military came very close to capturing Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram, but that they were ordered by someone in Abuja to step down the operation, back off and let him go at the last minute. This again begs the question: who gave the order and why?

We need to know what is really going on because it looks as if some of these people were complicit in these terrible and shocking events!

All this is bad enough yet nothing exposes the level of deceit and insincerity of the Buhari administration more than their reaction to the abduction. First they said "no girls were kidnapped!" Then they said "sorry we lied!"

Then they said "ALL the girls have been rescued!" Then they said "sorry we lied!"

Then they said "SOME of the girls have been rescued!" Then they said "sorry we lied!"

Then they finally admitted that 110 girls had been taken and that none of them had been rescued, seen or heard from since. WHAT A GOVERNMENT!

Worse of all some of the parents of the abducted girls were detained, threatened and harrsassed by security agents and the military simply because they told the world the truth about what has happened to their girls and because they were exposing the lies that the government kept churning out.

If anyone doubts this they should please ask Stephanie Hegarty of the BBC who has done an excellent job in this respect and who has kept the international community aware of all the events with her twitter handle and her excellent reportage with the BBC.

That is how bad the situation is and our government has clearly lost control. They are more interested in covering up their own deceit, incompetence and complicty than fighting or stopping the activities of Boko Haram.

This is the same Boko Haram that they told us had been "technically defeated" two years ago and whose leader, Abubakar Shekau, they claimed to have killed a number of times over the last three years but who keeps popping up all over the place like a bad coin.

This is the same Boko Haram that they took 1 billion USD from government coffers a few weeks ago and claimed that they wanted to use it to fight.

The truth is that they have told us yet another lie and anyone that believes the fanciful tale that the money was used to fight Boko Haram or any other terrorist organisation will believe anything.

Now that the Dapchi girls have been kidnapped, the Government will allocate to itself yet another 1 billion USD and tell the Nigerian people the same old story.

Buhari has failed in his so-called war against terror and against Boko Haram and he appears to have lost control of his own security forces.

The whole thing is a mess and a sham and, to some, it is also a money-making venture.

The final clanger and piece of compelling evidence of the sheer insincerity of purpose, irresponsible disposition and utter depravity of the Buhari administration was made manifest when the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, proudly announced to the world that no less than 100 fighter jets had been deployed to look for the 110 Dapchi girls!

Such was the absurdity and magnitude of this particularly shameful mendacity and so embarrasing was it for the Buhari regime that the very next day the Nigerian Airforce was ordered to set the record straight, compelled to admit that the Minister of Information was lying and constrained to clear the air by telling the world that 100 jets had NOT been deployed to look for the abducted girls.

Meanwhile at the last Council of States meeting, which took place in mid-February, President Buhari walked past the embattled Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue state, refused to shake his hand, looked him in the eye and asked "how are your cattle rearers?" with a big smirk on his face.

This is all he had to say to a man whose people, for the last three years, have been subjected to mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide by (according to the International Terror Index) the world's "fourth most deady terrorist organisation", Nigeria's second most deadly terrorist organisation and those same Fulani herdsmen and cattle-rearers whose welfare he was asking after.

Buhari did not offer his condolences for the latest round of killings in Benue state which had taken place a few days earlier, he did not ask about the families of those that had been slaughtered and he did not ask about the morale of the people in the state.

Instead he asked about those who have been slaughtering, butchering, tormenting and torturing them for the last three years and those that have been raping their women.

This was callous, cold-blooded and sadistic. I watched the whole thing on video and, as I did, chills went down my spine.

I was utterly perplexed and disgusted by his nonchalance and dismissive attitude and by his manner and disposition.

If anyone doubts what I have said I challenge them to search for the video on Youtube and see it for themselves.

Sadly no less than three days after this strange encounter and the President's chilling question and inappropiate behaviour, Ortom revealed the fact that in his state 60 more innocent souls had been butchered by those same cattle-rearers since the mass burial of the 73 that had been slaughtered in January.

He also revealed the fact that the Fulani terorists and herdsmen had flooded his state with over one million cows!

Sadly the governor was to receive even more shockers after that. On the night of sunday March 4th the Fulani terrorists atttacked and slaughtered scores of people in Guma, Benue state, burnt down at least 20 houses and displaced no less than 200 people.

Again there was no intervention made by the Armed Forces to protect or defend members of the indigenous population and neither were any of the marauding and killer herdsmen and terrorists apprehended, arrested, brought to justice or shot by our security agencies.

The truth is that whether it is Boko Haram or the Fulani terrorists Buhari is not in the least bit interested in fighting or stopping them.

As a matter of fact he thrives on their blood-lust and he appears to enjoy the horror and terror that their bloodfest inflicts and unleashes.

Consequently both heads of the two-headed dragon that he bestrides and rides have been busy feeding on the flesh and drinking the blood of the Nigerian people.

Then came a shocker.

On the evening of tuesday 27th February, as I was about to board a plane at Abuja airport for my flight to Lagos, I received a phone call from a beautiful and courageous daughter of Numan in Adamawa state.

She told me that Fulani terrorists and herdsmen had just killed our very own friend and brother, Prince Sam Zadok. I could not believe my ears and I fell into a state of utter shock and disbelief.

Sam was a pride to the PDP, a rising star in Nigerian politics and an honest, noble man with impeccable credentials and unimpeachable integrity.

He had such a bright future ahead of him and so much to offer Nigeria. He was a Prince of the Royal House of Numan, a former Commissioner of Youth and Sports, a former Special Advisor to a Governor and the spokesman of the PDP in Adamawa state.

They not only killed him but they also killed 19 others that were with him whilst they were on their way to commiserate with the families of other Bachama sons and daughters that had been slaughtered by the same Fulani terrorists in Gwampa village just two nights earlier.

About 50 Fulani herdsmen ambushed Sam and his co-travellers and they did not just kill them but they also desecrated and maimed their bodies, removed their eyes, cut off their vital organs, cut out their tongues and literally cut them to pieces.

It was so bad that their remains had to be buried immediately and in the dark of the night without the youths of Numan seeing them otherwise there would have been an immediate response, a vicious, bloody and unprecedented backlash and a series of devastating reprisal killings.

Those that murdered Sam Zadok and the Numan 19 are not human beings: they are animals. And as far as I am concerned Zadok and those that fell with him are martyrs because they were killed whilst they were attempting to defend and protect their Bachama kinsmen.

I was restless throughout the flight to Lagos and utterly heartbroken that such a brilliant and courageous young man could be cut short in this way whilst in the prime of his life.

I was so devastated by what happened to him that I proceeded to Prophet TB Joshua's SCOAN Church in Ikotun for an unscheduled visit immediately after landing in Lagos in order to consult with the man of God and to secure prayers for Sam's precious soul.

TB Joshua has himself been a victim of terror and he knows how it feels. On 12th September 2014 his Church was blown up by rogue Islamist and jihadist elements in Nigeria's intelligence and security agencies with the loss of over 200 lives and the whole thing was covered up by the government and made to look as if the building had collapsed because it had a faulty foundation.

Despite that terrible experience, and as a consequence of his faith in God, hard work, commitment, dedication and prayer, Joshua was able to rise up to the occassion, get up on his feet and soldier on.

This, coupled with his raffish charm, disarming simplicity and remarkable humility, has impressed and inspired me immensly and made me proud to call him my brother and friend.

Since that horrific 2014 incident he has not only pulled up his socks and gone from strength to strength but he has also offered tremendous solace and comfort to the poor, the deprived, the wounded and the broken-hearted and to the relatives, loved ones and friends of victims of similar incidents and other tragic events.

I can testify to the fact that he is a kind and gentle man that is filled with nothing but love and compassion.

Given all this it was only natural for me to go and see him from the airport in an attempt to seek his counsel and wisdom and tap from his strength.

Sadly I did not meet him in the Church that night because he had apparantly travelled out of the country and therefore I proceeded to Ikoyi to spend what can only be described as a sad, painful and sorrowful night.

Whilst the entire nation mourned Sam and the other heroes of Bachama that were killed that night, the people of Numan themselves were filled with anger and rage.

As far as they were concerned this was yet another unwarranted and unprovoked attack on their people by the Fulani terrorists who appeared hell-bent on igniting a full scale tribal war!

Reflective of their rising anger were the words of the Acting Chief of Lawaru Numan, who, in response to another brutal attack that took place towards the end of last year, said,

"Buhari sent the Fulani to kill us. After that the Nigerian Air Force deployed their jets to drop rockets on our houses. We wanted to defend ourselves, the Fulanis attacked us. They killed my father, he was cut into pieces."

This sort of thing is not only a regular occurence in Nigeria today but it is also an unfolding nightmare and a tragedy of monumental proportions. Yet it does not stop there.

Just as my trauma resulting from the cold-blooded murder of my friend Sam was subsiding, no less than 48 hours later the news broke about a yet another devastating attack by Boko Haram on a predominantly Christian IDP camp in Ranna, Borno state.

The reports confirmed that hundreds of poor refugees and other innocent men, women and children were slaughtered, including some United Nations workers, Medecine San Frontiers staff and other foreign and domestic doctors, aid workers and personnel.

Worst still the military base in Ranna where many of them ran to for protection was also attacked, overun and overwhelmed.

The soldiers were overpowered and swept aside, scores of people were killed and guns, weapons and all manner of munitions were stolen from the armoury and carried away by the Boko Haram insurgents.

It is important to point out that this was the same IDP camp in Ranna that the Nigerian Airforce dropped bombs on in January 2017 which resulted in the cold-blooded murder of no less than 200 poor and innocent refugees, most of whom were women and children.

The only explanation that the airforce and government gave at the time was that the bombing and consequent loss of life was "a mistake" and none of the pilots involved were brought to justice or faced any sanctions.

That is the type of insensitive, callous, barbaric, unacceptable, inept and unaccountable leadership that Muhammadu Buhari has provided for our people and for the Nigerian Armed Forces.

Meanwhile the two-headed dragon of Boko Haram and the Fulani terrorists that he rides and derives his strength and power from has continued to relentlessly feast on the flesh and blood of the innocents in our land.

Permit me to conclude with the following: two days after Boko Haram attacked Ranna in Borno state, Fulani terrorists and herdsmen once again unleashed massive slaughter, carnage and terror on the indigenous Christian population in Mambilla, Taraba state.

Many of the local indigenous farmers and their families were butchered and chopped up into small pieces after they were dispossesed of their farms, homes and land.

Two days after that, on Sunday 4th March, the Fulani terrorists attacked a number of farms in Abraka, Delta state and not only massacred scores of innocent people, including women and children, in cold blood but also raped the women and cut off the fingers and toes of those those that they did not kill for "daring to resist" them.

Rarely have such horrific events been witnessed in our shores.

Under Buhari's watch our nation has become a theater of war and a veritable human abbatoir where mass murder, ethnic cleansing, genocide, terror, fear, ritual killings, barbarity and all manner of evil reign.

He needs to be stripped of his power and removed from office whilst the two-headed Whitewalker dragon that he rides and with which he torments and bestrides our nation like a collosus must be mastered, tamed, brought to heel, slaughtered, beheaded, carved into pieces, burnt to ashes and buried in the deepest recesses and bottomless pit of the filthiest pubic latrine.

May God deliver Nigeria!

Last modified on Tuesday, 06 March 2018 10:39

2019: Obasanjo can’t stop Atiku –Mohammed

Fateema Mohammed is obviously convinced that the next president of the country should be former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar. In this interview, the Director General (DG) of Atikunation group gave reasons for her conviction. She also spoke on her political ambition after the bitter experience she had with her party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in the last general election.

Why are you so passionate about Atiku becoming the next President of Nigeria?

The choice of Atiku for me is a personal conviction. You set your cards on the table and then you ask yourself, among all of the players on stage who is capable? In a time like this, we have different politicians; we have the pretenders who just want to come out and seek another thing. We have the contenders. To me, Atiku is the only contender to that seat. I am speaking personally; I think he is the only credible candidate in every aspect and he will be the next president.

How do you intend to convince people to support Atiku, considering his fracas with Obasanjo?

When you have a good product you don’t need to go through the stress of hyping the product. Atiku is the most sell-able candidate. The politics of the south-west is very dynamic; we have a lot of people who are exposed and knowledgeable. When you talk about APC it was Atiku’s money that helped the party to stand today and from the day he left APC, you will have seen that the party has taken a dive for the worse. It is simply because one of its pillars just left. Selling him is not a problem at all. He is the largest employer of labour in Nigeria. He is the benefactor of over 50,000 employees. He is a lover of youth and a detribalised Nigerian. He has wives from south-west and south-east. He believes in the girl child. He lives and says that he will give hope to the women and all that. Above all, he believes in restructuring. Is Obasanjo God or is he God’s Personal Assistant. Obasanjo has just one vote. He cannot determine who will be president. Obasanjo will be alive when Atiku will become president. He cannot stop Atiku.

Do you think the PDP will give him the ticket?

I don’t want to think whether Atiku will get the ticket. He will get the ticket. He will run as the president of this country.

If Atiku is good as you portray him, why didn’t he win in APC?

He was rigged out. A night before the primaries, he was rigged out and yet he attended the election to deepen democracy in the country. If Atiku was not there, the international community would grade it null and void. His presence gave the election credibility.

What about you, do you intend running again after the last experience?

What happened at that time was that I was taken unawares. I went to rest because I had won already at the poll and my party went to take out my name in parley with the INEC. This time I have re-strategised and I know the game better.

How are you sure the same system and party will favour you this time?

It was not the system that removed my name, it was some bad egg in the party that did so just because they do not believe in winning, only to embezzle funds in the party.

I heard that you later helped the APC to win that constituency. Is that correct?

I want to say it now and on record, yes, I helped them to win in the last election on condition and that condition has not been met. That particular meeting was recorded. I have it and if they deny it I will publish it. I was aggrieved with my party at that time because I thought everybody was involved. I asked him to make sure government is truly doable to the electorate. Ifako-ijaye is the second largest local government in Lagos and stinks of poverty and underdevelopment. But rather than work, they have been busy paying money to the godfathers who put them there.

What is your thought on the ‘not too young to run’ law?

I am an advocate for ‘not too young to run’, ‘not too old to rule.’ The political institution is a school on its own; you don’t start from the scratch today and be at the top the next day. These old people are the founding fathers of our politics. Moreover, it involves money that most of these young ones don’t have. Travelling and meetings, all these involve money.

Sun