Viewpoint
President Muhammadu Buhari, in the absence of any stronger word, rightly described the Chibok-style abduction of about 110 students of Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi in Yobe State last week by the Boko Haram insurgents as a national disaster. Indeed it is a disaster, a national calamity many times foretold.
I had warned in recent past that Boko Haram, contrary to the optimism in official circles, had not been tamed, vanquished or even radically decapitated or degraded to the extent that we could all go home and sleep with our two eyes closed. I had likened the successes achieved so far to a snake that had only been scorched, not killed; that while this venomous snake was in its death throes, it was still dangerous and viciously potent to the extent that it could inflict a more serious harm on its victims.
When the first batch of 21 Chibok girls were freed in October 2016, the exultant President Buhari gave his word that more of the Chibok girls, if not all of them, would regain their freedom from captivity soon. In May last year, 82 of them regained their freedom after a prolonged negotiation with a possible exchange of prisoners or payment of ransom. The President had kept his word and promised to do more.
Though the government was silent on the conditions for their release, it came to pass later that many of the Boko Haram captives in government custody were set free by the government having ascertained that those released had repented. Foreign media like CNN speculated that the government, in addition to setting free some Boko Haram commanders, had also paid princely sum of money as ransom for the release of the Chibok girls. Some of us had argued that there was no amount of money too much to pay to secure the release of the innocent girls in captivity.
As the negotiations continued to free the rest of the girls and other captives, the gallant soldiers in their operations, code-named Lafia Dole, had also intensified their efforts to stamp out the insurgency, but unfortunately not with an unqualified success. Those who are versed in this kind of asymmetric warfare, the type the insurgents are engaged in, have consistently pointed out that it is not the kind of conventional war that can be declared completely won and lost but the euphoria of our troops somehow helped to lure the citizens into a false sense of security leading to many successful suicide attacks.
This is the scenario that had played out in Yobe State with dire consequences. In a carefully choreographed operation, the Boko Haram insurgents came to Dapchi with many vehicles, as they did in Chibok, some four years ago, and carted away defenceless female students. As in Chibok, the soldiers stationed in the town to enhance security were withdrawn one week before the invasion ostensibly because of shortage of personnel. As in Chibok, the account of what happened was dismally incoherent and divergent.
It took two federal government delegations into Dapchi to find out the true situation; Information Minister Lai Mohammed, who led the delegation, confirmed that 110 students were now known to be missing. The governor said the figure was 84 but the parents who had volunteered information put their own figure at 105.
Whatever the case, the disputed figures should not stand in the way of what needs to be done urgently. And what the public and the traumatised parents of the girls are interested in, more than the dispute over figures, is the rapid rescue of the captives; though that too had unfortunately proved impossible on the short run after a lull of one full week, long enough time for the captors and their prey to escape the long hands of security agents.
Some tentative deductions are however in order. In my view, it is silly, naïve and grossly inhuman to play politics with the abduction of the Dapchi girls. Those intent on creating cheap popularity for Mr President, would wish to compare the way he has so far handled the Dapchi girls’ abduction with the unfeeling and insensitive way his predecessor in office had handled the Chibok episode.
Yes, the president has loudly condemned the abduction. He has despatched fact-finding mission to Dapchi twice in four days to ascertain the true situation. And he had ordered security men to pursue the captors and free their hostages. All this come with the territory of his office.
Others are putting the abduction squarely at the doorsteps of political adversary, coming close to next year’s elections. Those mouthing such inanities are nothing but idle interlopers who should be brushed aside to avoid any distraction, because the president must consider the latest violent abduction of defenceless and most vulnerable students as an affront to his gallantry as a war veteran, a respected general, not to say anything about his being an officer and a gentleman.
If he inherited Chibok girls palaver, the Dapchi abduction has come under his own watch, coming at a time when the official narrative was loud and clear – that Boko Haram had been technically degraded and rendered incapacitated.
Each time I hear officials of government and even the spokesmen of the military, who are in hot pursuit of the insurgents, say with absolute certainty that the Boko Haram was a shadow of its former self, with Abubakar Shekau, its leader, fleeing in a woman’s dress, hijab and all, it brings to mind the comic relief the Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf brought to information management during the Iraqi invasion.
He became so popular especially in 2003 not for his accurate information dissemination, but for the comic way he handled it. Even when it became clear that the invading American troops were indeed pounding Baghdad, the capital, the minister insisted to the end that there was no way America was going to overrun his country. Iraqi forces, he insisted, were determined to vanquish the enemy. A good student of Paul Joseph Goebbels, of Nazi Germany, who said that a lie, when told a number times, becomes the truth, Saeed al Sahaf, stuck to his post and his story line, laced with untruths and propaganda, until the day before the fall of Baghdad. Then he threw in the towel but with his head unbowed.
Governor Ibrahim Geidam put the blame for the invasion on the military. He said they had withdrawn the soldiers a week before the invasion when they should be there to prevent a re-enactment of the Chibok girls abduction. He claimed the same scenario played out in 2014 when 29 students of the Federal Government College Buni Yadi also in Yobe State were massacred by Boko Haram. On that occasion, the soldiers had also withdrawn.
The Force Headquarters denied this claim saying the governor was simply being mischievous. The military according to a spokesman was never in Dapchi. The closest they were to Dapchi was about 30 kilometres away.
When incidents of this magnitude happen, it naturally throws up the usual blame game and assorted conspiracy theories. One theory is that with payment of ransom to the bargain, various factions of the Boko Haram would turn insurgency into a money making business by taking hostages at random to extort ransom. Even without any group making claims for the current abduction, suspicious ransom demands, according reports, are now being made.
If this theory is anything to go by, then Nigeria must indeed be preparing to summersault into the inglorious club of failed states like Somalia where various warlords live by kidnapping and ransom taking. Certainly we cannot afford to add this dimension of human tragedy to our own tales of woe.
The attack on the Government Girls Technical College, in Dapchi, Yobe State, apart from re-opening the unhealed wounds which the abduction of Chibok girls left in the national psyche, has once again dealt a wicked blow to the national effort to promote girl-child education in Nigeria. Most painfully, it is occurring in the most educationally-disadvantaged zone in the country.
The initial Federal Government response to the sad news followed what is now becoming a pattern of denial, misinformation and the ordering of top security officers to relocate to the scene after the damage had been done. Just like the Chibok episode, the initial report was followed by an announcement that the Army had rescued some of the girls.
A day later, the Yobe State Governor, Alhaji Ibrahim Geidam, made a U-turn stating: “We have now established that the information (provided by one of the security agencies) we relied on to make the statement was not reliable.” This is simply scandalous and those saddled with the responsibility of managing our security may be less than up to the task.
But, in a sobering situation such as this, Nigerians expect professional security agencies to eschew propaganda and blame games and present the truth to the citizenry.
Nigeria has, once again, presented herself before the whole world as a country that is incapable of learning from its experiences. It is a well-known fact that those who fail to learn from their historical experiences are bound to repeat them. There seems to be a worrisome copying of the Chibok tragedy almost to the letter, and one wonders if there is more to this phenomenon than meets the eye. We hope the committee of security experts that President Muhammadu Buhari empanelled will unravel the truth and inform Nigerians.
We are holding the President to his promise of ensuring that the girls, as well as the rest of the Chibok girls, are rescued alive. Buhari had undertaken before Nigerians in his inaugural speech on 29th May 2015 that he would not consider Boko Haram defeated until all the abducted girls have been rescued or accounted for. We still stand by that undertaking.
We must also find out if some evil and unpatriotic elements within the system have been profiting from the anti-terror war, with the way Boko Haram makes a wild resurgence each time the authorities announce its “defeat”.
All hands must be on deck to rescue these girls, some of whom are reported to be as young as eleven years old. The current preoccupations with the 2019 elections should be downplayed to enable us recover all missing Chibok and Dapchi girls. Politicians must be reminded that the Chibok girls tragedy was the primary reason for regime change in 2015.
Vanguard
Barely a week after he was handed a six-month suspension by a faction of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Kaduna Restoration Group led by Danladi Wada over alleged anti-party activities, the governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, approved the demolition of the building housing the secretariat of the faction owned by Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi (Kaduna North). According to media reports, the demolition was carried out around 5.00 am in the midst of armed security operatives on February 20, 2018. For Governor el-Rufai, it was apparently payback time for his political foes in the Kaduna Restoration Group, and a lesson or two must be taught about respect for constituted authorities.
To be sure, el-Rufai stoked the flame of despotism in a democratic dispensation by his whimsical decision to approve the demolition exercise. Although the government’s spokesperson and the Kaduna State Property Development Agency have tried to rationalise the demolition exercise that has been roundly condemned by all and sundry, claiming certain contraventions of town planning rules and regulations, including the non-payment of ground rent, the defences are a hollow and only smack of bilious vindictiveness. Instead of fostering democratic traditions and principles, the action was actually a throwback to the heinous and crude days of military occupation in Nigeria’s history, now ironically and curiously being reinforced by a supposed democrat.
The reasons adduced by the Kaduna State government for the demolition of Senator Hunkuyi’s house simply belie ordinary logic. Was the government just realising, after so many years, that the house stood in contravention of certain rules and regulations? Why did the demolition coincide with the sprouting of a faction of the APC and barely a week after the governor was handed a suspension by the group? Was there adequate notification before the demolition? Even if the house infringed on certain town planning rules and regulations and ground rents owed in arrears, are there not stipulated procedures for enforcing compliance without involving the personal intervention of the governor? How much was the owed ground rent to warrant the demolition of a multimillion naira property?
Governor el-Rufai’s disposition to dissent and opposition is not only repressive, it is indecent and barbaric. This is most unfortunate because, during the immediate past administration, he was a most vocal critic of the government who, at a stage, even made the incendiary statement that the 2015 general election could be violent, that people were likely to die and that the only alternative left was to take power by force. He was never persecuted for his views. Now, what kind of vendetta could make the governor to defy protocol in the bid to get even with his perceived political foes? Surely, this is the kind of action that makes the country’s voters to wonder if the immunity clause in the Nigerian constitution is not an overkill for a political class with a legendary propensity for dictatorship.
Senator Hunkuyi has alleged that he has received another notification on the demolition of another building for yet another alleged infraction, which means that the governor is bent on muzzling the opposition. We think that those who are close to him should persuade him to desist from such a course of action, knowing that power is, in the end, transient. Governor el-Rufai has, by this obtuse action, given democracy in Nigeria an ugly name. Democracy without opposition or dissent is futile and insipid and it is imperative that there should be a vibrant opposition for it to thrive so that despots pretending to be democrats can be eased out of office.
Tribune
The recent kidnap of over a hundred girls from a secondary school in Dapchi, Yobe State reemphasizes the upscale in the activities of the Boko Haram terrorist group. The dilemma here is how to juxtapose the increasing number of casualties, and the growing efficiency of the group, with the official claim that it has been technically defeated (after being degraded).
Regarding the Dapchi incident, the questions for us here are: (1) What has become of pre-emptive intelligence in Nigeria? (2) When can a city, town or village be said to be appropriately policed in Nigeria and how? (3) Does the Federal Government believe that it is seen to be doing enough about National Security today? If the answer to the last question is “Yes”, then we are in far more trouble than we can ever imagine. If, on the other hand, the answer is “No”, then the government is not doing enough to show this awareness.
Those who say that the primary purpose of government is the welfare of the people and the security of lives and property have long since scored the President Muhammadu Buhari Federal Government low on all counts. Hunger and inequity walk the land (negative citizen welfare); lives are being routinely lost in communal classes and herdsmen/farmer conflicts (negative personal security) and loss of farmlands and cattle to herders and cattle rustlers, respectively (negative protection of property). It therefore seems fair to assume that the Nigerian State as it exists today is a colossal failure.
While the army and police traded blames, they forgot that Nigerians know there are no off-duty provisions in the Service Rules that would leave a town made totally vulnerable for marauders to come in; spend hours locating their targets and spend even more hours hauling away over a hundred human beings. Think of the number of vehicles used and the time spent during the operation. Yet they were unchallenged!
One major but unfortunate issue that the armed forces and security agencies must admit, and which is not new, is that there has never been genuine and sustainable inter-agency collaboration in national security. Meanwhile, it is only with such cooperation that we can curb the purposeless and self-replicating malignity of Boko Haram. Will a government committee made up of security and government representatives, some of which have been trading blames, not be distracted by the efforts of some agencies to ensure that whatever report is turned in does not indict them? Besides, for a government notorious for abandoning its reports, is this not just another futile exercise just to be seen to be doing something while doing nothing?
Let us, for the record, take some time off and look at the activities of Boko Haram, the havoc it has wreaked and its reversal of all values, Islamic and Western. We shall, in the process, also note a few points about the growth of this insurgency and how it could have been contained long before now.
Local economies have collapsed in various parts of the North, traditional rulers have been killed, ‘replaced’ or driven out of their domains, bombings and the sacking of otherwise peaceful villages and neighbourhoods have led to the decimation and abandonment of farmlands, cash crops and fishing communities. The sugarcane trade, the mainstay of some of the local economies, has disappeared in many areas. Re-desertification has occurred in some places, after years of non-cultivation and irrigation. The traumatised lands show the absence of any meaningful productivity or economic activities.
The farmlands are desolate. The people have either fled to other parts of the country, or have been killed. Factories are shut down, many of them for over six years now. Most cottage industries are no more. Several of the schools are not in session; shut down by Boko Haram. Organised services, wherein labour is recognised and paid, are very limited. The absence of factories, farmlands and cottage industries automatically translates into lower productivity and lower input into overall GDP. Retrogression, or knowledge retardation, is only one of the consequences, with national development as the ultimate casualty in all of this.
Boko Haram started very quietly. Then it grew gradually for decades. While we can say that the negative social, economic, security and political activities that blew the lid, it was largely the inattention of the authorities to the progressive radicalisation of large sections of uneducated and economically vulnerable swaths of the population that got us where we are today.
With its claim to be focused on promoting purer and more spiritual values for a better humanity, the name, ‘Boko Haram` boils down to this: Western Education (boko) is sin (haram). It rejects every form of `modernity`, especially Western education, Western culture and science. The claim is that they pollute us, as human beings. But what does Boko Haram offer for its presumably superior moral and other values? Look around you. What you see everywhere is the group`s failings as a vehicle for genuine human development.
While it may not be true that the origins of Boko Haram can be traced to Mohammed Marwa, founder of an older militant Maitatsine religious group, it makes sense to argue that the circumstances that created this earlier group may have contributed to the emergence of the latter. The group`s goals includes the creation of an Islamic state in Nigeria and the achievement of an anti-Western education target by stopping all regular schools. Yusuf used a school in his mosque for the recruitment of jihadis, or warriors for Islam; wherein the far more ambitious goal of creating a team that would later fight for the creation of an Islamic state was a quietly pursued aim.
Denouncing official corruption, while promising better material welfare to the people, helped the Yusuf group to draw followers, while remaining largely peaceful within the first seven years. The group grew over the years, especially as it was providing stipends and jobs for the unemployed youths in its area of influence; where over 75 per cent of the people were said to live below the poverty line.
The Federal Government Committee on Security in the North-east reported that the critical propelling factors for the Boko Haram insurgency included high levels of poverty, illiteracy, massive unemployment of skilled and unskilled youths, the existence of private militias, failure of effective intelligence work which were set up, used and dumped by politicians. The ready availability of these abandoned militias of almajiris, in addition to the influx of illegal aliens through our porous borders, provides the needed cannon fodder for mischief. This is in addition to the provocative and inciting preaching of some religious leaders.
The dangers we now face in civil political stability because of Boko Haram are legion. The Dapchi Girls kidnap is symptomatic of a thriving trend that is becoming too frequent to count. For a nation in recession and desperately in need of resources, too much of our earnings are being deployed in the fight against Boko Haram. This leaves us with a lower GDP, lower expenditure on social infrastructure per capita and an unavoidable disregard for those essential economic activities and incentives that drive growth and productivity and national development. This cannot be right.
Regarding the Dapchi girls, we now have the first near-equivalent of the Chibok Girls saga by a “defeated” terrorist group. Coming in the midst of doublespeak and mutual recriminations among the security agencies, this is further proof that the Federal Government appears to be totally out of its depths on all fronts. These girls are not statistics and numbers, but fellow human beings: people`s children, who have friends, cousins and all. Added to the Chibok saga, this is one kidnap too many.
Today the issues go far beyond the Dapchi girls. The Nigerian State is under a grievous siege it appears unwilling to admit. Worse still, the government has a lousy and really pathetic information management machinery that does it no credit. Asymmetric warfare, wherein the enemy is not only mobile but part of the landscape, is not an easy engagement by any stretch of the imagination. But asymmetrical government reflexes, asymmetrical government communication and inter-agency interface, when put together boil down to one thing, namely, incompetent leadership. Wanted: some indication of focus, coherence and a problem-solving trajectory around here
There is urgent need for more voters’ education
In the wake of the nationwide outrage that greeted what transpired at the recent Kano State Local Government election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), last week, constituted an investigative panel to probe complaints of underage voters in its register. According to INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, the eight-man panel would ascertain if the voter register requested by the Kano State Independent Electoral Commission (KNSIEC) was actually used during the election. It will also investigate widespread report of brazen violations of the electoral law as voters below the statutory age of 18 years allegedly freely participated in the poll.
Nothing less is expected on such a sensitive issue that can impugn the credibility of the electoral process and indeed put our democracy in peril. Video footages that went viral in the aftermath of the Kano council election had captured children participating and thumb printing ballot papers. The All Progressives Congress (APC), which controls the state, garnered about 2.6 million votes to win overwhelmingly in all 44 local councils, a result disputed as fraudulent by the main opposition, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). But INEC also doubted whether the register it provided KNSIEC was used during the election. A statement attributed to the KNSIEC partly clarifies that suspicion. “We are not a subsidiary of INEC,” said Professor Garba Sheka, chairman of KNSIEC. “The relationship between SIEC and INEC is that of partnership, not of leader or follower.”
It is thus clear that this is an issue that the authorities cannot afford to treat with levity because of its tendency to compromise the outcome of elections. Fortunately, the electoral umpire is acutely aware that the credibility if any election is contingent on the credibility of the voter register. Section 12 (1) of the Electoral Act clearly defines who is eligible as a voter. These are citizenship, residence and the attainment of the mandatory age of 18 years. During a workshop on Election Project Plan Implementation in Lagos last week, Yakubu vowed to clean and sanitise the voter register in all 1446 centres across the country and conduct the election which is due in 2019 in accordance with the best global professional standards.
In order to achieve this objective, INEC and other stakeholders should also ensure that forthwith, deliberate actions are taken to protect officials during the registration of voters just as it is done during the voting process. Reports are rife that many minors were registered because of threats to registration officers by many communities. But a more enduring solution lies in voters’ education and in securing the buy-in of community leaders and opinion moulders to drum to all that underage voting undermines the integrity of the electoral process.
There is no better time to clean up the voter register than now!
Thisday
Nigeria’s ranking in the recently released 2017 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), contrary to the headlines, does not show that the incidence of corruption in the country has grown worse since 2016. The CPI, published by the global corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI), tracks the degree of perception of corruption in different countries as experienced by business people and analysts and scores each country between 100 and 0, where ‘100’ means completely free of corruption while ‘0’ means stinking corrupt. Following from this, that Nigeria scored 28 points in 2017 against the 28 it scored in 2016, means that its position was unchanged from the year before – not that it got worse. True, in 2017, Nigeria was placed at 148 out of 180 countries, besting only 32 countries compared to 2016 when it was ranked 136 out of 176, besting 40 countries. A country’s score will be more important in estimating its progress in the fight against corruption rather than its ranking in the CPI league table because the ranking is influenced by the number of countries being compared, the number of countries that tie at a particular rank and of course the fact that other countries may have also improved on their own score.
The above however does not imply a pass mark for Buhari’s War Against Corruption. What the ranking clearly shows is that there has been a steady but statistically insignificant ebbs and flows in Nigeria’s performance in the CPI since she was first ranked in 1996. For instance in 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012, the country scored 26, 27, 25 and 27 respectively, meaning that nothing significant changed in the perception of the country’s corruptibility over those years. The pattern is virtually the same for the periods 1996 to 2011. One of the things to be deducted from this therefore is that despite the small ebbs and flows in our ranking, nothing substantial has changed about the way corruption is perceived in the country. In practice, many will argue that the incidence of corruption is getting worse. This means that despite the grandstanding by such contraptions as the Economic Financial and Crimes Commission (EFCC) and its routine announcements of humongous sums it seized from “treasury looters”, the current approach to fighting corruption has not really worked.
Even before the current misleading headlines from the 2017 ranking of the country in the CPI to the effect that the incidence of corruption has increased under Buhari (as if it ever significantly went down under any government), Olusegun Obasanjo who created the ICPC and the EFCC in 2000 and 2003 respectively recently admitted that there has been no progress in the war against corruption despite the existence of these contraptions. In a lecture in Abeokuta, Ogun State, in April 2017, on “The Role of the Church in the Fight Against Corruption in Nigeria”, Obasanjo was quoted as saying:
“How far has this [the use of contraptions like the EFCC or the ICPC] actually helped in the eradication or better still, in reduction of corruption in the country? Unfortunately, the act [ of corruption] has continued to spread like a wildfire, from federal to the states, to the local government level and to other authorities, even within the educational sector in Nigeria – from secondary to university levels.”
If our current approach – which is based on seeing corruption as basically an issue of moral lapses – has failed, it means the need for a new approach, for as the wise ones would counsel, if you continue to do what you have always done, you will continue to get what you have always got.
I believe that a starting point for an effective approach to fighting corruption in the country will be to understand its root cause. I agree with Obasanjo in his lecture mentioned above that corruption could be traced to the rise of public administration in the country and the discovery of oil and gas which exacerbated the problem. I believe however that it was not ‘public administration’ on its own that was the root cause of corruption but rather the alienating character of the colonial state that created the public administration. The colonized people did not have any sense of co-ownership of the State and therefore did not have any emotional attachment to the state’s institutions, including its public administration. In fact in several Nigerian languages, the colonial civil service was translated in a way that expressed its alienating character. Among the Igbos, for example, the colonial civil service was called the ‘Whiteman’s work’, a terminology that implies exclusion or people’s lack of emotional involvement in the colonial state’s public administration. Precisely because it was seen not as their own but ‘Whiteman’s work’, ‘outsmarting’ the public administration system was seen as heroic by various in-groups.
The discovery of oil only increased the opportunities for State plunder by contending ethnic and regional factions of the elite. And because the State controls the oil resource, the struggle for State power itself also became anarchic. Apart from political power becoming a means for wealth accumulation and dispensation of privileges, there is a pervasive fear among the contending regional and ethnic factions of the elite that the faction that captures State power will use it to privilege its in-groups and disadvantage the others.
As it was with the colonial public administration so it remains today with the Nigerian public administration! And the reason is because the project of nation-building, which would have changed people’s emotional attachment to the State and its institutions through creating a sense of co-ownership, has not been very successful. If anything, it is now mired in crisis, creating alienation, which leads to several groups and individuals de-linking from the State into primordial identities. And contrary to what some think, it is not only groups like Boko Haram, Biafra agitators, Niger Delta militants, Oduduwa irredentist or those who talk of ‘the North’ as if it is a separate country that are de-linking but also the wealthy who have no qualms bribing their way out of situations and the law enforcement officers who do not mind turning the other way if they are offered little inducements.
Essentially therefore, any effective fight against corruption must address the question of the alienating character of the State. It is the root cause of corruption, not its manifestation in some acts of impunities and corruption by some elites. Have we wondered why the incidence of corruption is least in countries where the nation-building process is most advanced such as the Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland) and why it is most prevalent in countries regarded as failed or fragile states? The truth is that while nation-building cannot guarantee a corruption free society, it creates a durable template for attenuating the problem and for ensuring that other solutions proffered to the challenges in the polity do not quickly become part of the problem.
I believe that we need to stop the hype that corruption is the most urgent problem facing the country or that it is responsible for the current state of affairs in the country. It is clearly not. There is also the issue of the misnomer that we are waging ‘war against corruption’, which wrongly implies an expectation of a decisive victory over a relatively short period of engagement. This is unlikely to happen with corruption because of its systemic nature. I believe that it is this wrong expectation of a decisive victory over corruption that has led to erroneous belief in some quarters that we need a warrior to lead the fight against corruption and consequently celebrate the use of untoward tactics as evidence that the fight against the malaise is working.
We need to reset the whole ‘war against corruption’ by granting conditional amnesty to all those charged with corrupt practices. This will benefit the country in many ways:
First, with so many challenges facing the government, and the country more polarized now than ever before, the fight against corruption, using the failed approaches of the past, has not only proven to be distractive but is evidently not deterring corrupt practices. In fact the current system appears to appease only those baying for the blood of their perceived ethnic, political, regional and class enemies.
Second, managing the politics of fighting corruption using the current ‘gra-gra’ approach appears to complicate the nation-building process.
Third, a conditional amnesty programme will encourage the repatriation of much needed funds hidden in different parts of the world to help accelerate the economy. Such funds will be extremely helpful to the government in these austere times.
Third, countries all over the world have used amnesty programmes to deal with problems that appear intractable. In 2004 for instance, George W Bush enacted tax amnesty programme, which allowed US corporations to bring home, tax-free, the billions of dollars they stashed away in tax havens. Just before he became gravely ill and subsequently died, Yaradua also offered amnesty to militants of the Niger Delta in exchange for their laying down their guns. If we can grant amnesty to those with blood on their hands, I see no reason why a similar tool cannot be used to draw a line in the fight against corruption in the country.
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Twitter: @JideoforAdibe
After the recent fiercely contested presidential election in Liberia, world attention has turned to neighbouring Sierra Leone, which has its own crucial vote on 7th of March 2018. Both countries share so much in common, not just political histories, but devastations of symbiotic civil wars.
Following the American Revolutionary War of the 17th century, and Slave Trade abolition initiatives, freed slaves from America and those “rescued” in the West African region settled with the natives of the two geographical locations known today as Liberia and Sierra Leone. While the American Colonization Society administered pre-independent Liberia, the British Crown held sway in the Sierra Leone Colony until the country gained independence in 1961 with Sir Milton Marghai, the last Acting Governor General as its first Prime Minister.
Much earlier, in the 15th Century, European contacts within West Africa were in the Sierra Leone, with Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra, credited with mapping out and naming the Freetown Harbour, Serra da Leoa or Sirra Leoa (Portuguese for Lion Mountains), from which Sierra Leone derived its name.
Like Liberia and many other African countries, Sierra Leone is blessed with natural resources such as diamond, iron-ore, titanium, bauxite, gold, and a vast agricultural land. It rains for much of the year in Sierra Leone, but ironically the country relies on food imports, and as is often the case with many developing African countries, instead being a blessing, diamond became cursed or so-called “blood diamond” for Sierra Leone, during its civil war which started in 1991.The war, which killed more than 50,000 people and displaced some two million others, was notorious for its savagery, ruthlessness and barbarism, involving the engagement of child soldiers and amputation of victims’ limbs among other atrocities.
Thus, Sierra Leone, the home of the famous Fourah Bay College, celebrated as West Africa’s first University and which once had a bragging right as the “bastion of peace and democracy" in the region, lost its glory days. The country today competes in the league of the World’s poorest nations with run down infrastructure and one of the highest rates of infant and youth mortality.
But even without the civil war, Sierra Leone has always been a country of contrasting fortunes. For instance, air travel to the country still terminates at the Lungi Airport. The rest of the journey of less than 30 minutes by sea to the nation’s capital Freetown is completed on a ferry/boat ride across a short stretch of the Sierra Leone River.
A helicopter shuttle service started as an alternative was abandoned in 2007 after a terrible air disaster that killed more than 22 passengers. Lungi-Freetown is a laborious six hours by road, so travellers prefer the ferry ride. This is because of the topography of Freetown, a port city on the Atlantic Ocean with undulating hills, mountains and valleys.
But if the difficult terrain is a natural phenomenon, the political instability, military coups, bad governance and corruption which have characterized Sierra Leone’s chequered political history are largely man-made. Following Sir Milton Margai’s unexpected death in 1964, his half-brother Sir Albert Maigai succeeded him as Prime Minister.
But barely six years after Sierra Leone's independence from Britain in 1961, and few hours after opposition leader Siaka Stevens was sworn in as Prime Minister after defeating Albert Margai in the 1967 general elections, he, was topped in a bloodless military coup. Although Sir Stevens was reinstated a year later, through a counter-coup, the brief military incursion became a benchmark for instability in Sierra Lone, where two political parties, the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and the now ruling All People’s Congress (APC), have dominated political power.
While the Margais were of the SLPP, Stevens belonged to the APC. To his credit, Stevens initiated some socio-economic reforms and made Paramount Chiefs and the Provinces more prominent. He also tried to bridge the distance between the city and the provinces with the construction of roads and provision of social amenities. It was also under his administration that Sierra Leone became a Republic in 1971 and Stevens, as President, was pivotal to the creation of the Mano River Union (MRU), started as two countries, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but has since expanded to include Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire.
President Stevens and his APC went ahead to win the 1972 by-elections, boycotted by the opposition SLPP, over allegations of intimidation and obstruction by APC militia. He survived an alleged coup plot in 1974, and another attempted putsch in 1975, which was followed by the execution of the alleged coup leaders.
He went on to win another five-year mandate in 1976, with his APC also victorious in a disputed parliamentary election in 1977, but amid growing discontent and allegations of authoritarianism and dictatorship against the government, which made Sierra Leone a single-party State under the 1978 Constitution.
Stevens retired from active politics in 1985 with his anointed candidate Maj.-Gen. Joseph Saidu Momoh installed as his successor. But even with his military background, Momoh faced several coup attempts, but went ahead to become Sierra Leone’s second President following an election in which he was the sole candidate in 1985.
President Momoh took a hard stance against corruption with the launch of the Code of Conduct for political leaders and public servants, but an alleged attempt to overthrow his government in 1987 resulted in mass arrests of suspects including Vice president Francis Minah, who was convicted and executed along with five others in 1989.
Bowing to internal and international pressures the Momoh government initiated what his critics called half-hearted political and economic reforms, including the re-establishment of multi-party system in October 1991. But by then, his administration had outlived its goodwill and with the raging civil war in neighbouring Liberia its days were numbered.
There can be no better illustration of the link between the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone than the fact that Liberia’s ex-warlord and former President Charles Taylor is today serving terms in Britain for war crimes committed, not in his home country, but in Sierra Leone. Taylor as leader of the National Patriotic Front Liberia (NPFL) launched the rebellion against then President Samuel Doe in December 1989.
He was also accused of helping the formation of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone led by British trained Corporal Foday Sankoh with the aim of dislodging the military base of Nigerian-led ECOWAS Ceasefire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in Sierra Leone, which was then fighting Taylor’s NPFL rebels in Liberia. This was after both men had undergone guerrilla training in Libya.
In an ensuing political confusion, a group of young Sierra Leone Army officers led by Captain Valentine Strasser struck in April 1992, seized power, and forced President Momoh into exile in Guinea. But after four years marked by several real and alleged coup attempts that resulted in further bloodshed, Strasser himself was toppled by his fellow National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) members and forced into exile in Conakry, Guinea in January 1996. Captain Julius Maada Bio, his former ally, and whom Strasser had promoted to the rank of a Brigadier, led the coup plot.
The Bio-led junta managed to keep its promise and returned Sierra Leone to constitutional democracy by organizing general elections in 1996, which Ahmad Tejan Kabbah won to become Sierra Leone’s third President under the SLPP platform.
But having tasted power, the Sierra Leone military would not let go. By May 1997 another group of soldiers, this time, led by Corporal Tamba Gborie, who was loyal to Army Maj.-Gen. Johnny Koroma detained over alleged coup plot against the Kabbah government, sacked President Kabbah and forced him into exile in Guinea, which was fast becoming the preferred refuge for dethroned Sierra Leonean leaders. Despite Kabbah’s reinstatement by the Nigerian-led ECOMOG forces in February 1998, Sierra Leone’s vicious civil war and instability were far from over.
When this writer visited Freetown on a reportorial mission after Kabbah’s reinstatement, the once bubbling Salone capital city was a shadow of itself with the war damage and destruction very much in evidence. To underscore the level of instability, that trip from Lagos was only facilitated by ECOMOG in a Lockheed C-130 Hercules military aircraft. Tourist centres in the city including then famous Mummy Yoko Hotel, where the Radisson Blu Hotel sits today, were in ruins with the only functional Cape Sierra Hotel serving as the temporary Command Headquarters of ECOMOG.
The regional force was then under the Command of Nigeria’s Col. Maxwell Kitikishe Kobe, who until his death in 2000, served as Sierra Leone’s Chief of Defence Staff in President Kabbah’s government in recognition of his gallantry and contribution to ending the RUF-instigated civil war.
When embattled President Kabbah eventually requested for UN support, the Security Council in 2000 approved the deployment of an initial 6,000 Peacekeepers, later increased to a 13,000-strong force at the peak of the hostilities. However, following the withdrawal of Nigerian ECOMOG troops, the RUF seized some 500 peacekeepers resulting in Operation Khukri by the UN troops to flush out remnants of the RUF rebels.
By January 2002, Kabbah declared the Sierra Leone civil war over and in May of the same year, he was re-elected with a wide margin against the opposition APC’s candidate Ernest Bai Koroma.
The return of relative peace in the country in 2004 encouraged the UN-backed war crimes court to begin trials at The Hague of those with the highest responsibility for Sierra Leone’s civil war. This led to the conviction of Charles Taylor for his involvement with the RUF, whose leader Sankoh had died in detention in July 2003 while awaiting trial.
Although ineligible to run again, having completed his constitutionally allowed two five-year terms, the August 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections in Sierra Leone, represented a referendum on the legacy of the Kabbah administration. The result was a resounding NO for the SLPP whose candidate Solomon Barewa was defeated in the presidential run-off vote by APC’s now outgoing Sierra Leone’s fourth President Ernest Bai Koroma.
While the jury may still be out on the assessment of APC’s 10-year government under Bai Koroma, Sierra Leone’s post-war worries, were compounded by the Ebola virus pandemic of 2014, which killed more than 3,000 people from the estimated 10,000 reported cases in the country, part of a West Africa-wide affliction. And as if that was not enough, Sierra Leone was hit by deadly mudslides from heavy rains, which claimed more than 1,000 lives and displaced tens of thousands of others, with grave health consequences.
It is under this grim context and prognosis that Sierra Leone holds the crucial presidential, parliamentary and local council polls on 7th March. While the APC and SLPP, which have dominated power, are fielding Foreign Minister Samura Wilson Kamara and former junta leader Julius Maada Bio, respectively, as their presidential candidates, there has been significant realignment of political forces ahead of the crucial elections.
Sixteen candidates are contesting for the Executive Mansion. But there are only two women flag bearers even though women account for 52.1% of the country’s population. The stakes are particularly high and whoever emerges winner has his/her job cut out. Kandeh Yumkella, the standard bearer of the newly formed National Grand Coalition (NGC), considered a “third force,” did not mince words, when he declared in a recent interview that “Everything bad is with us,” in a reference to various development indicators which put Sierra Leone on the bottom rouge of the ladder, with 70% of the population living under the poverty line.
The constitutional requirement that a candidate must score 55% of the votes to win the presidency makes a run-off ballot almost inevitable. The contest for Sierra Leone’s unicameral parliament is no less competitive, with more than 795 candidates, including 101 women vying for the 144 seats, including 12 slots for Paramount Chiefs and with 124 of the seats filled by direct election.
Some 3.17 million registered Sierra Leonean voters, out of the country’s estimated seven million inhabitants will be casting their ballots in 11,122 polling stations to elect the nation’s fifth president, who will shoulder the responsibility of moving the country from the devastation of natural and man-made disasters to the path of national development if the “Lion Mountain” is to roar again.
This would be the fourth multi-party elections since the end of the civil war, but it is the first time that Sierra Leone authorities would be taking full responsibility of the electoral process since the withdrawal of the UN Mission in 2014. One tribute which Sierra Leoneans owe the memory of ECOMOG fallen heroes, including the late Kobe, and gratitude to ECOWAS, the UN and the rest of the international community, for their sacrifices for peace in the country, is to conduct themselves responsibly and deliver credible and successful elections for the consolidation of peace and democracy in the country and the region as a whole.
Winners of the March 7 polls must be magnanimous in victory, while the losers must cooperate and all work for Sierra Leone to put its dark past behind it in the interest of development and prosperity.
*Paul Ejime is an International Media & Communications Consultant
With love for our country and a fierce commitment to a vision of rapid progress for our more than 180 million citizens, and following wide-ranging consultations, I offer myself to serve you as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as from May 29, 2019.
I therefore intend to be a candidate in the 2019 presidential election. I seek the opportunity to offer our country visionary, purposeful, competent leadership to build our future.
Nearly 60 years ago, our Founding Fathers Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sir Ahmadu Bello and Chief Obafemi Awolowo envisioned a great country that would take its pride of place in the world based on the talents of its citizens and a constitutional federation that would ensure justice, equity, and economic productivity.
Their vision and hopes have yet to materialize—military rule, oil booms and busts, and the successive leadership failures of our civilian political class have combined to rob us of what seemed our destiny at independence.
I am standing here today saying that it is time we shatter the downward spiral to nowhere.
I am here today, standing with the 110 missing girls of Dapchi and their grieving family, and with the traumatized young women of Chibok, those with us and those still in captivity.
I am here today standing with 180 million Nigerians, in addition to thousands of businesses struggling to share a measly 4000MW of electricity.
I am here today standing with the 100 million Nigerians experiencing crushing poverty, living on less than 300 naira a day.
I am here today because 33 million of our able men and women are unemployed or underemployed, nearly 15 million children are out of school, and only 60% of Nigerians are literate.
I am here today because our hospitals are understaffed and mismanaged death traps, and women are still subject to horrific prejudices and devastating early marriages.
I am taking this stand, here and now, because Nigeria today is divided by ethnic and religious conflicts, made worse by corruption.
The government has failed in its very first duty of securing our lives as citizens, and we have lost our place in the world. The time has come for us to fix this.
We are collectively exhausted by these politicians who continually fall in and out of alliances with each other and care nothing for the ordinary Nigerian. They aggravate our fears in the hope that we will continue to keep them in power even though offer nothing new.
IT IS TIME for a radical change in the political leadership of Nigeria.
IT IS TIME for a visionary, competent and inclusive leadership that truly cares about our country.
IT IS TIME for a leadership equipped with the skills, intellect and competence to wage a decisive war against poverty and unemployment.
IT IS TIME for a Nigeria in which our youth can fulfill their full potential and our daughters can aspire to any opportunity they desire.
IT IS TIME for a 21st century leader to lead us into a new and different future.
What we need now is a REAL movement of the people, by the people and, most importantly FOR the people of Nigeria to move our country forward and break with our troubled past. I offer myself as part of that movement.
We are a nation of great people; as seen by the way Nigerians abroad are thriving. We hear the stories of those who leave home with little more than a hope and a prayer, change the world abroad.
Nigerians have smarts, ingenuity, drive, relentlessness, vision, and sheer force of will. We must be able to harness our strengths and make them work for us here at home.
My fellow Nigerians, to quote the immortal words of the late US president John F. Kennedy, “politics is too important to be left to the politicians.”
We must ask our government hard questions about the promises they made about our security, about power, about civil aviation, about healthcare, about women’s rights.
The world is changing: time and tide have in several countries swept away old orders and brought in new, more dynamic ones. Nigeria must not remain stuck in its past. We, you and I, can do it for our country too.
We need to modernize, and quickly. For instance, we know that women in leadership and in government can accelerate growth for any economy, yet only 6% of our legislature are women. There are many, many competent, smart women who are more than ready to dig in and work together to rescue this country. We must draw them out and ensure that their voices are heard.
We must stop recycling failed politicians and regenerate our leadership ranks with competent and experienced young men or women. Youth who have prepared themselves with the relevant qualifications must take over the mantle of leadership because this struggle is about the future of Nigeria, not its past.
The battle to reorient Nigeria into a strong, capable country requires competence, capacity, and character. And as a citizen who aspires to be President I possess all three.
If it is about competence: my work as a Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria who played a leadership role in rescuing and stabilizing the Nigerian banking system after the global financial crisis speaks for itself.
If it is about capacity, my work in the United Nations reconstructing countries torn by civil war or reforming the internal workings of the world body is there for everyone to see.
If it is about character, well, talk to my colleagues, mentors, friends, and of course my family and listen to what they have to say. Strong, knowledgeable guidance is needed as Nigeria navigates these difficult waters, and I offer myself for service with a solid track record of leadership.
I’m not here to tell you that there are quick, easy solutions to our nation’s problems. Far from it. Decades of economic and leadership mismanagement cannot be undone in a few short weeks or months. Things will be difficult and painful choices will have to be collectively made.
What I am here to tell you is that:
TOGETHER, we can choose a NEW path.
TOGETHER, we can set a BOLD agenda.
TOGETHER, we can deliver for ourselves a DIFFERENT outcome.
Nigeria will achieve greatness.
I have not announced today the party platform on which I intend to contest for the presidency. My focus for now is the people of Nigeria and not on party platforms that have in the past been mere vehicles for capturing political power.
While I have been approached by a number of political parties, the movement that I am part of will decide which one we will join. That decision will be based on commonality of vision and the IMPERATIVE of a generational shift in leadership, and we will announce this decision in the coming weeks.
Based on such a decision, we shall seek to build a formidable coalition of parties for the presidential election that together will represent a clear and credible alternative to the failed political leadership class that has enthroned corruption and incompetence in the governance of our country.
It is important that we begin to focus more closely on the individuals seeking elective office in our country and their qualifications in terms of character, competence, capacity, and track record.
We have traditionally focused of platforms and structures that, though a necessary part of the democratic process, in our national experience have mainly delivered the wrong candidates. Naturally, those candidates have gone on to be failed leaders. It is good candidates that will create credible political parties. Visionless parties cannot produce the best candidates.
THE POLICY AGENDA
My vision for our country is set out in my new book BIG (Build, Innovate, Grow) which was released two days ago. In summary, however, the agenda of a government under my leadership includes the following:
Leadership and Governance
• Compose a world-class, “first eleven” team based on merit and inclusive governance to drive government policy. We will be ready on Day One. The appointment of all senior officials of the Presidency will be announced within 48 hours. My government will enthrone evidence-based public policy, strategy and risk management as tools of effective and modern governance.
• Establish and propagate through the educational system a foundational philosophical worldview for the Nigerian state, around which all Nigerians will unite in a common purpose
Nation-building
• Lead a consultative political process, in cooperation with the National Assembly, to achieve a constitutional restructuring of Nigeria and return our country to true federalism for stability and prosperity by 2021.
• Implement a 50:50 gender parity policy in all political appointments – nearly double the ratio recommended by the National Gender Policy of 2008.
• Establish and implement a Diaspora engagement and return policy and strategy as a new, fundamental component of our national quest for development as has been the case in China, India and Israel. My government will build the Diaspora Commission approved by the National Assembly into an effective, world-class institution to accomplish this important agenda.
• Fundamental overhaul of the Nigerian Police Force that will emphasize training, equipment, and boosting the strength of the Force by recruiting at least 1.5 million policemen and women, up from the grossly inadequate present force strength of 350,000.
Economy
• Establish an innovation-led economy, with intellectual property and commercialization of local innovation as its bedrock.
• Establish a Venture Capital Fund with a minimum of N500 billion as a public-private partnership to invest in the creation of new businesses by presently unemployed youth in Nigeria; the new businesses created with support from this fund will in turn create new jobs. The fund will be managed by private sector partners while the Federal Government of Nigeria will be a core investor.
• Reform energy policy to create an enabling environment for Nigerian households to be powered by renewable energy while industrial zones are served by gas and hydro-powered energy.
• Fundamental reform of Nigeria’s healthcare system to assure quality healthcare for Nigerian citizens and remove the need for medical tourism abroad. Healthcare will have 15 per cent of Nigeria’s budget in line with the Abuja Declaration of the African Union in 2001. A world-class hospital will be established in each of the six geopolitical zones at a federal university teaching hospital.
• Fundamental reform of Nigeria’s education system to create skills and human capital that will drive Nigeria’s industrialization and job creation. Education will be allocated 20 per cent of the federal government budget, with a progressive increase to 30 per cent over eight years.
CONCLUSION
I am here today because I want what is best for my country.
We have no godfathers. We are just ordinary Nigerians who want a future that is very different from the sad reality of broken promises and unfulfilled national potential that has been the lot of the Nigerian people for far too long.
But we know that, with your support we can bring about real progress in our country. To accomplish this, however, every citizen aged 18 years and above must obtain his or her Permanent Voters Card (PVC) and vote in the 2019 elections.
Fellow Nigerians, this movement of the people, the REAL coalition of everyone and not a select few, belongs to you. Because it truly belongs to you, it will be accountable to you, the people. For this reason, we need to crowdsource our intellect and resources to move this country forward. To support the movement, go to www.tobuildanation.com
We must refuse to allow the political elite to continue to intimidate us with the idea that no one can displace them. They boast they will outspend us and more.
But we say to them: Nigerians will not be taken for a ride yet again. The time to sit on the fence is past, ladies and gentlemen.
I’d like to end my speech by thanking my family. My lovely and ever supportive wife, who always challenges me to be the best man I can be. Thank you, dearest. To my sons and daughter, continue to be the amazing, talented people you are. I am so proud of you.
Nigeria, we can do this. Let’s get to work!
The All Progressives Congress, APC, party is currently at a crossroads. And that is putting it mildly. Whether the party leaders and ordinary members recognise the state of their party as such is immaterial. The point is that the party as an organisation is bursting at the seams and all the ingredients necessary for it to implode on itself appear to be coming together at an alarming rate.
Not being a party member there is no reason why I should worry about what happens to a party that is determined to self-destruct. As such I am mindful of what I say, lest I be accused of or be seen to be crying more than the bereaved. In calling attention to what is obvious to many Nigerians my heart goes out to the people of this country, most especially the ordinary people who bear the brunt of political misrule, that the failure of the APC is a case of a hope betrayed- yet another indication of how Nigeria’s politicians have condemned the rest of us to the repeated cycle of failure; of taking one step forward and many steps backwards.
Here was a party, the APC, that rode on the gale of national approval to electoral victory just about three years ago following the sixteen years misrule of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. That the party’s candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, a serial presidential-election manqué that had flunked three previous attempts at becoming the country’s president- the fact that a Buhari that appeared to have expired as an attractive presidential candidate would go on to win a national election was evidence of how disenchanted Nigerians had become with the PDP. By a deft reconfiguration of political alignments, the fact of the in-fighting within the PDP and God’s own intervention to take the country back from the brink of a political disaster, the APC was able to give the PDP a bloody nose in the 2015 elections in spite of the massive injection of money into the entire process by the party. Which is not to say that the APC was entirely innocent.
But PDP’s desperation led to a blatant manipulation and monetisation of the electoral process. This was in addition to a manipulation of the electoral date, a fact that is again threatening to pull the APC apart right from within its own living room as members of the party in the National Assembly are pitched against their counterparts in the executive arm. Or so the narrative goes. Which is why it appears that what happened to the PDP might turn out to be a child’s play compared to what the APC could yet go through in the event the Bola Tinubu peace initiative flounders. But as the elections drew near in 2015, practically anyone had their price from the perspective of the PDP, and anyone that could and wanted to be bought was handsomely bought.
It was an ‘open day’ for a few Nigerians who were either fortunate or unfortunate (depending on how they viewed their circumstances) to be part of or close to the PDP gravy train, to say nothing of members of the party who had a good time helping themselves to the free money that Goodluck Jonathan and his minders made easily available. Those who could helped themselves to the till, some worked on the side for the APC, already convinced that the PDP was a sinking ship, while assuring the ever incredulous Jonathan that he was ‘the man to beat’ as some are today assuring Buhari. Yet that did not give the PDP the day. If anything the party failed royally and handed the APC a victory many Nigerians deeply wanted, desired and prayed for. But that victory has since turned into ash in the mouth of many. We are back again to where we started from. This is the crux of my lament about the failure of the Buhari-led APC administration. Buhari has apparently frittered away a wonderful opportunity to turn things around for Nigeria. What we have now is more of the same thing. The reason Nigerians chose the APC over the PDP, the very reason most Nigerians wanted Goodluck Jonathan out now appears to be the same reason that will doom the Buhari government. Corruption was and had become an international embarrassment to Nigeria by 2015. Buhari promised to effect a change in this and Nigerians believed him. His reputation as an austere military ruler that dealt politicians of a different era a heavy blow for corruption preceded him and strengthened his aspiration.
But getting into office a strange concoction of nepotism, lack of will and inaction paved the way for corruption among members of the president’s own inner circle. The Buhari Nigerians thought they knew had been mellowed or simply went to sleep having gained the presidency. The verdict of that dereliction has come in the form of the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index that placed Nigeria at a dismal 148th position, 12 steps down from our previous position. All of this under a government that swore itself to an oath of anti-corruption.
Security is yet another electoral promise of the Buhari-led APC. Jonathan’s failure to rein in the activities of Boko Haram, indeed his less than enthusiastic response to the abduction of the Chibok school girls caused both national an international outrage. With between 250 and 350 school girls unaccountably driven into captivity in a country supposedly under the rule of law, the PDP government under Gooluck Jonathan had its days numbered. It tried particularly towards the end of its life but it could not live down that failure by the children of this country. Four years after, we are confronted with the abduction of over 110 schools girls of Dapchi by suspected Boko Haram operatives, even at a time the Buhari government had severally proclaimed victory over the murderous group. Now the government talks about an attempt to embarrass it where it is not accusing Transparency International of playing politics with its Corruption Perception Index about Nigeria.
On at least two keys issues that constituted the core of its campaign exercise in 2015, the APC has failed Nigerians. Many cannot see the justification for the continued retention of Aso Rock tenancy by the party or its leader, President Muhammadu Buhari. To compound an already abysmal situation the party cannot seem able to identify its centre.
Members are at loggerheads and there is no telling where the current struggle for the control of the party among it members would end. If Bola Tinubu could look beyond his relegation by Buhari’s relations and new found friends soon after he became president, it would be something close to a political miracle if he could soothe the frayed nerves of members of the party across the country.
We join other Nigerians and well-wishers in congratulating the foremost Labour organisation in the country, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, as it turns forty today, February 28, 2018. Its establishment in 1978 was a continuation of the enviable and progressive role the Trade Union Movement has played since the late 19th Century when mass paid employment was introduced in the country.
It has also built on the solid foundations laid by trade unionists like Chu Gogo Nzeribe, Michael Imoudu, Wahab Goodluck, Aminu Kano and Haroon Popoola Adebola. The NLC had as its founding President, Alhaji Hassan Sunmonu whose leadership built the administrative foundations of the Congress, secured its first headquarters in Lagos, popularised the NLC in the consciousness of Nigerians, promoted the culture of collective leadership and won the first National Minimum Wage in the country.
His successor, Alhaji Ali Chiroma, fought titanic battles to resist mass retrenchment by the military regime, check unreasonable increases in the prices of petroleum products and mobilised the populace against the repression of the Student Movement and the entrenchment of military dictatorship.
Comrade Paschal Bafyau who succeeded Chiroma after a ten-month interregnum by a government-imposed Sole Administrator, was not a particularly popular figure given his pro-military regime politics. However, his administration had the distinction of building quite viable institutions and structures for the NLC including the Labour Transport Service (now, the Labour City Transport Services), the Labour Bank, LALICON, a huge Education Fund and the 12-Storey Labour House in Abuja which has The administration of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole which came after another interregnum of government-imposed Sole Administrators on the NLC, returned the Congress to the path of mass popularity and support. That administration is noted for the numerous strikes it led against the constant increases in the prices of petroleum products. Comrade Abdulwaheed Omar who took over from Oshiomhole, with lesser effect, continued the resistance of its predecessor against unpopular government policies.
It, however, has the record of organising the largest and most effective street protests in the country’s contemporary history with its January 2012 anti-fuel price protests.
Unfortunately, due mainly to parochial and individual interests, the NLC split after the Omar administration in 2015. This eventually led to the rise of the rival United Labour Congress (ULC), the tragic consequences were noticeable in the abysmal failure of the 2016 fuel deregulation general strike. Today, the once vibrant trade union movement lays prostrate and workers are lacking the cohesive, pragmatic, vibrant, principled and proactive leadership the NLC once offered.
On this occasion, we urge all groups and tendencies in the trade union movement to reunite and ensure that the next forty years are more glorious for workers and the toiling masses of the country.
Vanguard
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Nigerians do not, and should not, expect their houses to be pulled down peremptorily by political opponents, deploying governmental power. Thus, no matter how the Kaduna State Government headed by Governor Nasir El-Rufai spins the demolition of Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi’s storey building situated at No. 11B Sambo Street, Ungwar Rimi, Kaduna, it must take responsibility for what is clearly the most vicious and politically motivated administrative high-handedness in the country, in recent memory.
We had thought Nigerian politics had progressed beyond such narrow, despotic cruelties. Alas, the demolition of the structure which houses an opposing faction of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state is a warning on the insidious despotism in the state.
It is no secret that the APC is factionalised in Kaduna State, and that a week or so ago, the faction of the party led by Senator Hunkuyi handed down a six-month suspension to Governor El-Rufai for “anti-party activities.” Senator Hunkuyi’s property that was demolished was being used as the office of his APC faction in the state. The demolition of that property by the Kaduna State Government cannot, therefore, be a coincidence.
We appreciate that the Land Use Act vests tremendous powers in the governor of a state. It is the duty of the governor to issue the Certificate of Occupancy. He could also revoke it for certain reasons. But, the law also provides that before the governor takes penal action, he must give sufficient notice. The Kaduna State Urban Planning and Development Agency (KASUPDA) has claimed responsibility for the demolition on the claim that it was performing its normal functions. The agency had invaded the property at the unnatural hour of 4 am. The bulldozer was accompanied by armed soldiers who blocked both sides of the road leading to the building. The excuse for the demolition is that the property was allocated for residential purposes and not political activities. The agency also alleged that the building was demolished for a flagrant violation of Land Use and non-payment of ground rent since 2010.
It is easy to see through the administrative fiction cleverly woven to justify this blatantly tyrannical exercise. According to the Kaduna State Geographic Information Service (KADGIS), the demolition was apolitical, and the land has now been allocated to KASUPDA “for the purpose of developing and maintaining a public park that will provide a green area and a serene place for recreation in that residential neighbourhood.” The KADGIS is challenging the senator to go to court to test his rights, vowing to be vindicated by the courts. Indeed, it also issued the senator a fresh N30.4 million ground rent bill for his private home, with an ultimatum to pay within 30 days.
Even if, for the sake of argument, the senator had violated some parts of the original purpose of the allocation, there is no provision in the Land Use Act for demolition as the sanction for such a violation. And, it is inconceivable that the punishment for late payment of ground rent would be the demolition of the property. Besides, the Kaduna State Government has not shown any proof that it followed the regular process, as the senator is entitled to fair hearing under Section 36 of the 1999 Constitution as amended, and should not have been deprived of it.
This ill-tempered, vengeful action is political vindictiveness at its height. It is astonishing that Governor El-Rufai was tempted to resort to such an underhand tactic, in spite of his high education and experience. The demolition is an indication of weakness rather than strength. Nigeria’s politics degenerates into warfare because of actions like this, and Nigerians should in unison not just frown at such actions but actively protest against them, whenever they occur. Senator Hunkuyi should seek legal redress and compensation for the demolition of his property.
Sun
For the second time since it began its terror campaign, Boko Haram has scored another odious landmark mass abduction of schoolgirls. In an uncanny replication of the April 2014 kidnap of 276 Chibok schoolgirls, the Islamists raided the Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe State last week Monday night. To the country’s dismay, the terrorists abducted 110 girls out of the 906 on the school’s roster, according to the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed. The repeat escapade in Dapchi, in spite of the Muhammadu Buhari administration’s cheap propaganda that it has “technically defeated” the Islamist sect, provides irrefutable proof that the terror group is still a force to be reckoned with. For the government to really decimate the murderous group, the time has come for stronger, decisive political leadership, a tougher and more effective anti-terror strategy and greater collaboration between Nigeria and other countries, particularly on intelligence gathering and sharing.
As usual, the latest abduction has clearly shown that many things are still awfully wrong with the Buhari government’s war on terror. Initially, the Yobe State Government, the police and the military denied the incident, claiming that the girls, who fled into the bush when the terrorists attacked the school, had returned in batches. This turned out to be false, much in keeping with the earlier mishandling of the Chibok girls’ abduction. It took the alarm raised by the girls’ parents for the government to own up to yet another strategic blunder. Reports said that the terrorists, during the invasion, fired gunshots and made straight for the food store, while some insurgents, dressed in military camouflage, waited outside the school’s perimeter fencing in their get-away trucks.
The incident has once more made Nigeria a laughing stock: an unstable country where insecurity and impunity are the order of the day. Since then, the global focus has rightly been on Governor Ibrahim Geidam’s insensitivity, Buhari’s cluelessness and the security agencies’ incompetence. Geidam exonerated himself, lamenting, “I blame the whole attack on Dapchi on the military and the Defence Headquarters, who withdrew troops from Dapchi. The attack occurred barely a week after the military withdrew the soldiers from there.” This is the fallout of government living in denial of Boko Haram’s dangerous reach.
What is most striking in this unfortunate incident is the total failure of the authorities to learn from history. Nearly four years ago, precisely on April 14, 2014, Boko Haram terrorists took advantage of the porous security in the rustic town of Chibok in Borno State to take into custody 276 schoolgirls. In one of the most tragic and heinous fates that could befall schoolchildren, the terrorists invaded the premises of the Government Girls Secondary School, in the dead of the night, just as the girls were preparing for their final examinations, and carted away truckloads of them.
Even more surprising is that the Dapchi schoolgirls were taken away in trucks that plied major roads that had no military or police roadblocks to prevent easy escape. Instructively, Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states are currently under the military’s redeeming Operation Lafiya Dole, just as they were under a state of emergency when the Chibok infamy occurred. Apparently, the security agencies have learnt no lesson in their nine years of counter-insurgency. Soldiers’ withdrawal from Buni-Yadi town in 2013 saw its secondary school attacked by the insurgents a week after, and 29 students killed.
These tumbles in military operational strategies deserve critical evaluation and remedial action. A former Chief of Defence Staff, Alex Badeh, in his valedictory speech, confirmed that fifth columnists in the military and other security agencies were making the war against the insurgency difficult. Operational plans and schedules have often been leaked to the terrorists, leading to soldiers being ambushed, killed and armouries looted since the Islamic jihadists seized the North-East landscape.
All diplomatic efforts should be made to secure vigorous military cooperation from Chad, Niger Republic and Cameroon. More crucially, it is essential to secure the assistance of friendly countries, especially the United States, France and Britain in liberating the girls. For Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, the states in the vortex of this terrorism, henceforth, every school should be provided with heavy security. Where schools are located close to external borders with no strong military fortifications, they should be closed and the students merged temporarily with others in safer zones and the extra expense should be fully borne by the state. Boarding schools in contested areas should be made day schools for now. Geidam bears responsibility for not protesting when the military withdrew from Dapchi.
Buhari should for once be shaken; he should critically review the performance of his security chiefs and the officers whose lapses, misjudgements and incompetence led to this debacle. US authorities fired two admirals and several captains after four ship collisions in the Pacific Ocean last year. Investigations should be launched to find out why Dapchi was undefended, why the military could not launch a swift response to recapture the girls, to verify the claims and counter-claims of troop withdrawals in Dapchi and Buni Yadi only for Boko Haram to strike, and ascertain who is responsible for the misinformation that fostered inertia in the critical first few hours and days after the attack. The 12-man committee set up to investigate the security lapse must get to the root of the abduction.
The police, State Security Service and paramilitary agencies that should have some presence in the area must explain their roles. The intelligence services – the SSS and National Intelligence Agency – need to be shaken up urgently. Nine years after the insurgency began, intelligence gathering appears to be still very weak and unable to adapt to the challenges. Defeating Islamist terrorism is not restricted to the battlefield as the world’s most powerful militaries have found out. The game-changer is intelligence and it is a long-drawn operation as Islamist terrorism is ever mutating. The use of technology is essential: drones, electronic surveillance applications and human intelligence, using locals and undercover agents will help neutralise these depraved Islamist terrorists from our midst.
Punch
Transparency International (TI) revealed last Wednesday that corruption in Nigeria is now worse under President Muhammadu Buhari than it was before he took over. That was sad, but it was not as sad as the presidency’s response to TI’s verdict.
Surprisingly, but not uncharacteristically, the presidency released a statement with a thinly veiled accusation that former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his former minister of education, Oby Ezekwesili, both conspired to use their influence as founding members of TI to prod the anti corruption watch dog to give the negative rating it gave on Buhari’s anti-corruption war.
President Buhari must move away from seeing leadership as something tied to an office or a position or a designation. Leadership is about influence and impact. If you don’t have both, you are not a leader, no matter how many titles come before or after your name.
If I was the president, instead of looking for scapegoats, I would be more concerned about the reasons why Nigeria moved 12 places backward from 136 to 148 in this year’s CPI?
And the thing is that going by the revelations that have been unearthed this year, Nigeria is looking like it may have an even worse CPI rating next year. For instance, I have heard of man-eating snakes but I have never heard of naira eating snakes before in my life! I have also heard of monkeys stealing food, but this new tale of a monkey stealing money is certainly strange.
In fact, it seems like providence just wanted to show President Buhari the limitations of propaganda. On a week after President Buhari boasted that he had fulfilled his two biggest campaign promises of security and anti-corruption, The #DapchiGirls incident and TI’s latest CPI showed him the limits of propaganda.
After the 2014 abduction of the Chibok Girls, how could we leave any school unguarded in the Northeast? Boko Haram precisely means that Western education is sin. These people were not cagey. They announced their intentions clearly and unambiguously. That 110 girls were kidnapped in Dapchi, Yobe State, is just unimaginable. It shows that we did not learn anything from the Chibok Girls saga.
If it happened to Chibok in 2014 then the shame was on Boko Haram, but when it happens again in Dapchi, the shame is on us this time around. This incident will be aired all over the world. It will affect investor confidence in Nigeria and portray us as an unsafe country. If we did not learn a lesson from Chibok, let us at least learn it from Dapchi.
I urge all Nigerians not to politicise this tragedy. We must unite to rescue the girls and defeat the ideology that is against education. The federal government must provide armed military guards at all schools in the Northeast. If this is not possible, then the students in such schools should be moved to safer locations nearer the state capitals.
Nigeria has spent literally hundreds of millions and perhaps billions trying to promote girl child education especially in Northern Nigeria. Incidences like Chibok and Dapchi have negated all that work and will set girl child school enrollment back several years. We must give citizens the assurance that when they send their children to school, the end result will be positive for both the students and their parents.
Having said this, I sympathise with the parents of all the missing girls. My thoughts are with you and I will do what I can to mobilise the world to look for and help return your daughters.
The truth is that if we are asking our youths not to make the perilous journey to Europe through the Libyan desert, we must give them hope in Nigeria. What hope is there when you can be kidnapped from school in Nigeria? What hope is there if you work and your salary is kidnapped by corrupt government officials?
And talking about salary, let me say that in the last three years, life in parts of Nigeria has become like in the Stone Age – short and brutish. With a minimum wage of N18,000 it will continue to be so. We must increase the minimum wage. If we can afford N1.1 billion to clean the National Security Adviser’s office, we can definitely afford to increase the minimum wage.
And we do not have to increase recurrent expenditure to increase the minimum wage. We only need to cut out wasteful expenditure that does not impact on the life of the common man like the afford N1.1 billion to clean the National Security Adviser’s office, and the N4.8 billion for electrical maintenance in the presidency.
For too long, Nigeria’s leaders have been thinking about the next election instead of the next generation. That is why our recurrent expenditure is huge and our capital expenditure is minute. If Nigeria is not growing or going backwards we must look at ourselves and make changes instead of looking at our predecessors and make blames.
Too many Nigerians climb the ladder of success and burn it. We need to have a paradigm change such that we help others climb the success ladder. Singapore was like us. Lee Kuan Yew took her from the Third World to the first in a generation. We need our own Lee Kuan Yew and it should not be a PDP or APC affair. We want the best Nigeria has to offer, not the best a party has to offer.
It is dangerous to be overzealous and to run too far ahead of the pack when there is social tension. In a democracy, it pays for government officials to consult thoroughly, think carefully through policies and apply circumspection in their execution to carry the public along. True democrats are always mindful of conducting public affairs in a manner as to maintain legitimacy and public approval.
Chief Audu Ogbeh, who is privileged to be appointed Minister for the second time, is repeating a mistake he made over 30 years ago when he was the Minister of Communications under President Shehu Shagari. At that time he had threatened to shut down the Radio Lagos FM station for reaching other states with its broadcasts.
Meanwhile, he ignored the Radio Rivers FM which could also be picked up in Imo, Anambra and Cross River States. But, Lagos State was under the opposition Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, while Rivers State was governed by the National Party of Nigeria, NPN, to which Ogbeh belonged. The legal battle which was brewing was only aborted when the military returned in 1983. Recently, Ogbeh announced the Federal Government’s intention to create cattle colonies which he claimed would be established in every state of Nigeria. Ogbeh ignored the fact that the state governors have constitutional powers over land matters in their states. He made it appear as if the states had no choice over the matter. His enthusiasm was buoyed by the response of the Kogi State Governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, who quickly volunteered to make land available for the project, though several interest groups across Kogi State angrily kicked against it.
It was the same Minister Ogbeh who jumped into the fray as soon as he was appointed Minister of Agriculture, and promised that Nigeria would import grass from Brazil to feed our livestock without consulting stakeholders who would have told him that Nigerian researchers had already developed suitable improved grass varieties for the same purpose.
On Saturday, February 10, 2018, President Buhari put the nail on the coffin of Ogbeh’s idea of establishing cattle colonies by declaring that he had no powers to create them. From all indications, the Minister acts alone on most of these knee-jerk plans. The result is always that he is forced to backtrack, and that is not a dignified way of exercising public authority.
Minister Ogbeh is advised to be more sensitive to public opinion. This is what comes of effective consultation. It is the height of insensitivity for him to even propose the cattle colony idea without caring about the way his people of Benue State and other Nigerians would feel about it, especially for someone who claims to be a seasoned democrat.
It pays to tread with caution.
Vanguard