Viewpoint
Last week, the Plateau State government declared Thursday, March 8, a work-free day to enable residents of the state to welcome President Muhammadu Buhari, who was on a one-day working visit to the state. The measure was announced by the state Head of Service, Mr. Izam Azi, after an emergency meeting of the State Executive Council. Azi said: “The holiday will afford civil servants and other citizens the opportunity to give the president a rousing welcome.” Curiously, however, the state Commissioner for Information and Communication, Mr. Yakubu Dati, announced that there would be restriction of movement during the visit, especially around areas where the president would inaugurate projects.
In the extant case, it is difficult to see any justifiable reason for paralysing economic activities in Plateau State just because of a few hours’ visit by the president. To all intents and purposes, last week’s holiday in Plateau State was unnecessary, frivolous and self-serving. If, for any reason, Governor Simon Lalong felt the need to stage a public demonstration of his love for the president, he should not have dragged the people of the state into his game. His action smacked of executive frivolity and should not be tolerated in a sane society.
It is, therefore, incumbent on stakeholders in the political process, particularly the media, the academia, civil society groups and religious institutions, to keep sensitising the people in order to ensure that politicians do not continue to take them for granted. Last week’s public holiday in Plateau State did the people of the state no good and such holidays must cease forthwith.
Tribune
THE firing of U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, will not lead to an improvement in strained ties with Germany, Deputy Foreign Minister, Michael Roth, said on Tuesday.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he had replaced Tillerson with Central Intelligence Agency Director, Mike Pompeo, ousting the embattled top diplomat after several public rifts.
In an impromptu news conference on the White House lawn, Trump told reporters there was a “chemistry” problem between him and Tillerson.
“It was a different mindset. It was a different thinking,” Trump said, adding: ‘’I think Rex will be much happier now.”
A senior White House official said Trump wanted to orchestrate a change to his national security team ahead of planned high-stakes talks with North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, Tillerson, a Texan and the chief executive of energy company ExxonMobil for a decade before joining the administration, has long been dogged by reports that his time in office will be cut short.
Trump frequently cast Rex as weak and clueless.
Their long-simmering tensions erupted into the public in October, after Tillerson suggested the U.S. could engage in talks with North Korea.
Days later NBC News reported that Tillerson had called the president a “moron” after a July meeting at the Pentagon with members of Trump’s national security team and Cabinet officials.
Tillerson never denied using the description but said he would not be part of an effort to divide the administration.
Trump then challenged his top diplomat “to compare IQ tests” in an interview with Forbes magazine.
The 65-year-old Tillerson was at odds with a number of Trump’s policies.
For example, he favoured the U.S. remaining in the Paris climate accord and has been less harsh towards Iran on questions relating to a deal to keep it from attaining nuclear weapons.
Tillerson arrived back from a four-nation tour of Africa early Tuesday.
The trip was cut short by a day, a schedule change Tillerson had said was due to the developments with North Korea.
Trump added that CIA Deputy Director, Gina Haspel is in line to become the next CIA director, which would make her the first woman to hold that job.
Pompeo, 54 is an avowed opponent of the Iran nuclear deal and Tea Party conservative, who used to represent Kansas in the U.S. Congress.
Pompeo was highly critical of Iran’s nuclear deal with six world powers, which was agreed to in 2015 and meant to constrain Tehran’s ability to make nuclear weapons for at least 15 years.
Trump has pledged to pull the U.S. out of the deal if substantial changes are not soon made.
Reuters
After a needless display of vulnerable arrogance President Muhammadu Buhari has allowed his presidential feet to step on the blood-stained soil of Benue State. At the time of writing this piece on Sunday the government and people of Benue were making arrangements to welcome the President.
Schoolchildren may line the streets to welcome the President. Traditional rulers will show up in their cultural finery. Top government officials will do their customary duty to pull off a hitch-free visit. But this is no ordinary visit. It is one that is supercharged with tension between the President on one hand and Governor Samuel Ortom and his people on the other.
Many Benue citizens have been killed in the past few months by some Fulani herdsmen. The Federal Government has been unable to stop their mad and murderous rampage. It has not also been able to bring the murderers to justice so far. Mr. Ortom has been afflicted by a creeping uneasiness and helplessness.
As the killings continue almost on a weekly basis, the governor is gripped by an obsessive sense of everything going wrong around him. He has urged his people to defend themselves with whatever means possible. That statement is the most damning commentary on the failure of the Federal Government to protect the life and property of its citizens wherever they may be.
As 73 persons were buried in a mass grave a few weeks ago in Benue, the public had urged the President to visit the state and convey his condolences. He did not. The public pressure has now yielded some fruits as he has now accepted to do so.
He also intends to visit other states where there have been killings. Besides, he has offered an explanation as to why he does not rush to scenes of disaster. He says: “People expect me to rush out to the fields to go and make noise. But I have my ways of gathering intelligence. I get to know what is happening without necessarily going to those areas.”
That is not the point. No President goes to a place of horror to gather information. Such visits are symbolic, they are meant for the leader to show his sympathy and empathy, to tell the people that he cares, that he feels what they feel, that he has come to comfort the wounded and the bereaved, that he would bind their wounds and he would bring them the balm of justice.
It is one sure way of connecting with the people, of oiling the leader-led relationship wheel. Strangely, almost all our Presidents since 1999 had behaved the same way as Buhari is doing. This is an indication that we want to run democracy in our own image, not the way those we borrowed it from do it.
During President Olusegun Obasanjo’s tenure (1999 to 2007) many people were killed in Zaki Biam by his security forces. A whole town, Odi, was wiped out and scores of people murdered by his security men on the pretext that some hoodlums killed some security officers. The logic of wiping out a town from the face of the earth because of the rascality of a few hoodlums did not make much sense to most people. The rational thing would have been to fish out the perpetrators of the crime and bring them to justice. Having made those irresponsible killings in Odi and Zaki Biam because of the anger of the moment, the public expected the President to visit these places before his exit and make peace and restitution with the aggrieved communities. He did not.
And when the Chibok schoolgirls were abducted in April 2014, most Nigerians thought that President Goodluck Jonathan would show his grief by visiting Chibok immediately. He did not. So it can be said without fear of any contradiction that ignoring the people in grief by our leaders has become a national ritual. It also shows the inability by our leaders to understand that leaders are expected to demonstrate true statesmanship during periods of national grief as a means of connecting with their people.
American leaders have learnt to do this effortlessly. In the thick of the Iraq war number two, President George Bush the son took the ultimate risk of visiting Iraq. He made himself a steward, dishing out food to American soldiers. He who sent them to battle was making a symbolic gesture of being with the soldiers in the thick of battle.
For those warriors and the Americans back home, the President had shown that fighting in Iraq was a risk worth taking, that he was a man of valour. In the same manner, President Barack Obama had flown into Afghanistan when it was still risky to set foot on the soil that the Talibans had made more dangerous than dangerous. President Donald Trump who has a cynical style of governance has visited several trouble spots since he assumed office a few years ago.
It has become not just an American tradition but actually part of the democratic ethos to connect with the people. On those occasions they pump the flesh and they make stirring speeches.
One example will do. One hundred and ten young girls are abducted from their school by terrorists and taken away to an unknown destination. At the same period the President is attending a loud wedding ceremony in Kano with 22 other leaders of our nation. Juxtapose the two events and see whether such leaders are smelling like roses.
The marriage was between two children of the Governors of Kano and Oyo states. It is a happy event for both the children and their parents but in the midst of a national calamity such as the Dapchi disaster common sense dictated that it should have been toned down considerably. The loudness of it was a repulsive and insensitive display of the arrogance of office. I am almost certain that the children who wedded would have wished that their marriage had been consummated without being brought into the national conversation in an unfavourable light.
Children of governors are obviously privileged children but nothing should be done to indicate that the other children who were not born into privilege do not matter. But above all it is the insensitivity of the carnival that rankles.
Buhari is going to Benue with the niggling guilt of his government’s failure to do its duty to the people of Benue State. That guilt is in three parts (a) Failure to prevent the killings. (b) Failure to bring the perpetrators to justice. (c) Failure to visit them in their hour of grief. But he is doing so now. The people of Benue should find room in their hearts for forgiveness and Buhari must find the right string of soothing words to cool tempers. Buhari is likely to shift uneasily in his seat during the visit.
The period will pass very slowly for him like a procession but he must take it in his stride. If he deals with the issues honestly and fairly, the uneasiness will begin to wither away. One of his problems is that he has a penchant for making unforced errors by what he says. In Taraba State, he said, rather incredulously, that the fatalities there were higher than they were in Benue. The implication of that is that more Fulani herdsmen were killed in Taraba than the people that herdsmen killed elsewhere.
He was trying to establish a pecking order between a flea and a fly. That is presidential indiscretion, a boo-boo that should never be repeated.
Every life matters, whether it is the life of a Fulani herdsman or that of a Tiv farmer. For a President, what should matter most should be how these killings can be stopped, how the killers can be punished and how sanity can be brought back to our communities, especially since the President said he “belongs to everyone and to no one.”
First, let’s deal with the praise, the plaudits, before ending this piece with the questions, the posers. Before I watched and heard him on television conduct an extraordinary “town meeting” with the business community in Lagos this last Monday, I hadn’t known much about Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State. As a matter of fact, the very little that I knew about him was not exactly flattering, to say the least: the razor-thin margin of only 150,000 votes – out of over 2 million votes cast – in his electoral victory over his PDP opponent in the gubernatorial race of 2015; and in 2016, the ugly spats between Ambode’s wife, the First Lady of Lagos State, and a state-employed chaplain of a church that had led to the rather highhanded sacking of that man of the cloth.
Moreover, when the Governor had come to Harvard last year to give a talk, I had been absent from my “duty post” at the time and thus missed the talk. All of which serves as the background to the pleasant surprise of the following things that I now report about Ambode’s televised meeting with the leaders of the business community this past week.
It is a well-known secret that most of the governors and high officeholders in Nigeria do not write the speeches they deliver in public. In addition, in general, once a speech is delivered, most of our rulers and politicians do not, indeed cannot, effectively field questions arising from speeches they deliver.
This is one aspect of the foul underbelly of democratic governance in our country, this fact that our rulers are in general incapable of conducting meaningful public dialogue with the citizenry, especially in the English language. As this is a huge subject, we cannot deal with it in this piece. Coming back to Ambode, I do not know if his speech on Monday was written by speechwriters; what I do know is that from his passionate and eloquent delivery, one can conjecture that he must have had a hand in writing the speech – if in fact he did not himself write it in its entirety.
The speech was masterful in its combination of technocratic prowess with social vision. Within five minutes into the speech, I recognized that I was watching and hearing something extraordinary and I immediately started taking mental notes. This essay is written entirely from those notes.
As the questions were posed, Ambode took notes, copiously.There were two sets of questions. The first set of questions were over a dozen in number; the second set had slightly fewer questions.
In any case, as questioner after questioner after questioner had his or her say, Ambode did not stop taking notes. After the number reached 12in the first set of questions and the questions did not stop but continued, the teacher in me became attentive and I asked of no one in particular, “why doesn’t the official directing the programme limit the questions to one or two at a time and how is the governor going to be able to respond meaningfully to all these questions”?
Needlessly and wordlessly, I answered my own question: “of course, he is not going to answer all the questions – he is a politician”! But Ambode did answer every question – and painstakingly so!
Please bear in mind, dear reader, that although all the questioners were from the business community as a very influential social group, the assembled audience of the governor’s performance at the “town meeting” came from an impressive diversity of interests and loyalties.
Permit me to identify the ones that I remember. Representatives of the big transnational corporations were there, but they were completely silent; they could be recognized or identified only by their white skins and by their silent but hegemonic embodiment of the vast economic and ideological muscle that runs planet earth in the name and interests of benign capitalism.
The Nigerian-owned big companies were there also in the persons of their MD’s or CEO’s; they addressed the Governor and were in turn addressed by Ambode with rather exaggerated politeness or even deference. Media and communications moguls were also present; and they posed questions pertaining to their own interests.
The Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce was also present, represented by my old friend and hallmate at Kuti Hall UI, Bintan Famutimu, who put in a spirited plug for closer ties and links between the Lagos State government and major cabinet members and representatives of the American government.
And then, there were the women who spoke on behalf of SME’s, the small-scale enterprises. Please note, dear reader, that I say women. A there were only two of them, this made their under-representation at the forum rather coincident with the gender inequality that is so prevalent, so constitutive of economic and social power in our country and our continent.
Significantly, both women spoke about industrial activities linked with the recycling of waste products and the training and retraining of our unemployed and putatively “unemployable” youths. In other words, of all the business people who posed questions to the governor, these women were the most upfront, indeed the most insistent on the social good that their industrial and business activities and products entail.
For this reason, I admit that I watched the governor’s response to them with much greater attention than I did with his answers to the others.I can report that the governor did not condescend to them and that his response to these two women, these two representatives of SME’s, was of the same passion and eloquence with which he engaged all his interlocutors at the forum.
An astonishing feat then, that Ambode responded fully and robustly to all these interlocutors equally. Having been a teacher and a speaker at public forums for large segments of my adult life, I know what this implies: only she or he who is filled with passion, focus and dedication can respond to more than a dozen interlocutors with diverse interests, constituencies and loyalties as if every issue matters and everybody counts.
But every experienced teacher, every gifted public speaker knows that although all pupils and all issues and their representatives matter and count, they do so differentially. I saw this knowledge, this intuition play out astutely in Ambode’s responses to a good number of his interlocutors.
For instance, to the CEO of a company who posed a question about her and her company’s “tax fatigue”, Ambode was respectful while slyly justifying the crucial importance of taxes and even more taxes for a state like Lagos.
To big entrepreneurs who wondered about the logic behind the bloated number and scope of workers on the public payroll in the state, Ambode was polite, even deferential in his endorsement of the logic of rationalization on which big companies are run; however, he insisted that governments cannot, indeeds hould not, be run exclusively or even primarily on the same logic; human and social interests, the governor argued, should override logics of rationalization and profit maximization that drive the activities of big corporations.
I have stressed the fact that the interests, perspectives and constituencies represented by the governor’s interlocutors were quite diverse.
I must now observe that it seemed to me as I took in the whole performance that Ambode felt that as diverse as these interests and forces were they not conflicting and whatever tensions and conflicts might exist between and among them could be reconciled to the advancement of the progress and development of Lagos state. The old Marxist term for this idea is “non-antagonistic contradictions” as opposed to and in contrast with antagonistic contradictions.
Ambode did not use these terms, but I was deeply moved by two particular instances when he expressed a passionate advocacy for contradictions especially characteristic of the city of Lagos in the apparent belief that they are non-antagonistic contradictions. Permit me to briefly relate these two cases.
People think that one of the worst present and future nightmares of life in Lagos pertains to the number of cars plying the roads, relative to how many cars the roads, the streets, can take.
Not so, argued Ambode passionately; the worst problem of street life, the governor argued, is the number of people on the streets with absolutely no provision for them to be on the streets in safety and comfort. No pavements, no sidewalks, no margins at the edges of the asphalt for people to walk on in safety, relaxation and even leisure.
You hear talk about cars and congestion all the time, Ambode declared, but who speaks for people without cars, people that happen to be the overwhelming majority of Lagosians? As a columnist who has in the past both humorously and seriously argued for a “Pedestrians’ Bill of Rights” in our cities, I was particularly moved by Ambode’s eloquent and impassioned restatement of this issue.
Even more moved was I by the governor’s playfully ironic joke that serves as the title of this piece: “We’ll keep them off the streets so that we can sleep at Banana Island!” The “we” here apparently refers to Ambode and his audience, his interlocutors at the “town meeting”, the crème de la crème of Lagosian society, the economic, social and political elites of the city and the state of Lagos.
What of the “them” that are to be kept off the streets? These are the talakawa, the denizens of the “Other Lagos” none of whom was present, indeed could be present at that encounter between the Governor and the business elites. Of the 25 million that constitutes the population of the city and the state, “they”happen to be the vast human and demographic majority whose internal majority is a whopping 65% that are under the age of 35.
If we can find gainful employment for “them”, if we can keep “them” busy and engaged in productive activities that keep “them” off the streets, Ambode was in effect saying, then we, the elites, can sleep at night without being haunted by the specter of their invasion of our homes, our rest, our peace, our security, our conscience. I do not think I have heard or read of a more powerful expression of the social contract between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless from any of our rulers and politicians in a long, long time, in fact since the days of Obafemi Awolowo and thePeople’s Redemption Party.
In conclusion, I now go, briefly and succinctly, to my questions for Governor Ambode and indeed forall of us. I have only two posers.
The first one pertains to the forces and interests involved in the realization of the social contract. Basically, I ask: who is present and who is absent, who is included and who excluded in the adjudication of struggles over the social contract? At the “town meeting” of the Governor with the business elites, the poor, the talakawa,together with their representatives, were absent. Would it have made a difference if they had been present and had also been vocal about their interests? Please note that as I stated at the start of this essay, Ambode’s electoral victory was about 150,000 votes out of over 2 million votes cast. The two million was itself only a fraction of the population of the state, which is 25 million. Will Governor Ambode correct this massive disenfranchisement of the majority of the people of his state? Will he bring the “Other Lagos” directly to the table and not only raise their presence as a specter that to disturb the peace and the good conscience of the rich?
Second poser: In the 1990 and 1999 Constitutions, Second Chapter titled “FundamentalObjectives and Directives of State Policy” it is clearly stated that it is unfair, as all previous Nigerian Constitutions had assumed, thatthe goals of development and social justice cannot be pursued simultaneously and indivisibly, that “development” must take place first before economic redistribution can take place. Both Constitutions made it mandatory for the Nigerian state to pursue both goals together; however, this was made non-justiciable meaning that the Nigerian state and its functionaries cannot be legally forced to observe or actualize this provision, this clause in the Constitution.
From his speech last Monday, especially in the segment wherein he fielded all those questions, I conjecture that Ambode is on the side of this constitutional clause. Will he step forward now and say so? More to the point, will he state what forces, what allies, what coalitions he, his administration and his political party intend to mobilise to realize this objective?
Jeyifo is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Comparative Literature at the Harvard University, U.S.A.
BEFORE THE LONDON PRISONERS ARRIVE
In a not-so-subtle vote of no confidence in the Nigerian prison system, the United Kingdom is planning the construction of a £700,000 jail in our country so as to deport some criminals and free up places in British jails. The 112-bed wing at the Maximum Security KiriKiri Prison in Lagos will be built as part of the compulsory prisoner transfer deal signed with Nigeria in 2014, according to Foreign Secretary, Mr. Boris Johnson. “As part of this agreement, eligible prisoners serving criminal sentences in Nigeria and the UK can be returned to complete their sentences in their respective countries,” he said.
The decision came in the wake of the amendment to the Transfer of Convicted Offenders (Enactment and Enforcement) Act Cap T16 2004. Signed into law in 2014 by President Goodluck Jonathan, the consent of convicted Nigerians serving various jail sentences in the UK is no longer required before they are repatriated home to continue to serve their respective jail terms. But, as we pointed out in the past, the law could be deployed to send away our nationals who may be legal residents in the United Kingdom where they may also have immediate family members. Besides, as we also observed before the bill was passed into law in 2014, there are serious implications for some of our nationals who could now be easily criminalised on grounds of immigration status and repatriated to the country without due process.
It is unfortunate that despite the high-level rhetoric on prison reforms by successive Nigerian governments, no concrete actions have been taken to massively decongest our prisons and ameliorate the inhuman condition under which many prisoners live and even work. For example, the Olusegun Obasanjo government set up a National Working Group on Prison Reform and Congestion to audit the state of the country’s prisons and make recommendations to the government. Successive justice ministers have equally been making recommendations to the government on how to reform our prisons. Unfortunately, nothing fruitful has come out of these seemingly lofty initiatives.
The main obstacle to the reforms is the gross over-population of the Nigerian prisons. According to many Amnesty International reports, about 70 per cent of the people in Nigerian prisons have never been convicted of any crime. What that suggests is that efforts to decongest our prisons or ameliorate the plight of inmates would come to naught without a complete overhaul of the country’s criminal justice system. Just last week, the Minister of Interior, Lt General Abdulrahman Dambazau (rtd) visited the Port Harcourt prison which was built for 804 prisoners but now currently accommodates 4204 inmates. The situation is similar, or perhaps even worse, in other prisons across the country.
The news that the UK authorities will bringing back convicted Nigerian prisoners abroad to come and complete their jail terms at home should be a wake-up call on the imperative of reforming our prison system. The prison that the British would build will be different from what currently obtains in Nigeria. We hope there will be sufficient lessons to learn from that.
Thisday
President Muhammadu Buhari’s passion for eradicating corruption from the body politic has witnessed a steady stream of recovered assets looted by public officials. Although the public has been at a loss about the benefits of these assets to the economy, Buhari cleared the air by spelling out a new policy to auction the loot. The President’s avowal renews the hope that those who steal public funds will not enjoy their loot.
In a move aimed at the jugular of corruption, the President told a delegation of local emirate officials in his Daura, Katsina State, country home that the government would sell off all unclaimed looted public assets. With public officials denying culpability when anti-graft agencies trace dubious assets to them, the Buhari administration has been left with no choice but to sell the assets and boost public coffers.
To concretise it, a new public agency would be established to manage and sell such assets, the government said. The legal backing is critical so that looters will have no room to reclaim the properties under any guise. However, by failing to put a definite timeline on the sales, there is a lacuna for owners of the seized assets to escape with their loot in the heat of the upcoming elections. We urge the government to quickly legalise the policy and sell off these assets before political jockeying distorts government’s noble intentions.
Sorely missing from the disclosure is the ownership pattern of the assets. This omission has created the impression that the government has something to hide. The public is demanding full disclosure, in line with Buhari’s election promise to divulge the identity of treasury looters. The public deserves to know the details, as this will strengthen their perspective about those sabotaging development by looting our collective wealth.
Not surprisingly, the anti-graft agencies are using a similar template, though with a slight variation. In 2017, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission recovered N473 billion, $98.2 million, £294.8 million and others, said Ibrahim Magu, its acting chairman. Although some of those suspects are not known, Diezani Alison-Madueke, a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, forfeited N7.6 billion to the government via a court ruling in August 2017. She also forfeited two posh properties in Lagos worth $4.8 million to the government on February 28.
The EFCC has also recovered $43 million and other cash stashed at a property in Ikoyi, Lagos, by the former Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency, Ayo Oke, and the flat itself.
Other assets, including 86 posh cars, a quarry and houses were traced to two civil servants. The case is in court awaiting final forfeiture. There are cases of looted assets by government officials, the wife of an ex-president and a former dictator, Sani Abacha.
In all this, the major concern is political expediency. This allows looters to regain their assets when a new government assumes office. This farce haunted the nation in 2013 when the then President Goodluck Jonathan pardoned a former Bayelsa State governor, the late Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, who had been convicted of corruption and had his multi-billion naira assets seized.
Jonathan’s rashness beggared belief because Alamieyeseigha was still a wanted man for money laundering in Britain when the ex-president granted him the clemency. In 2015, a Senate committee heard how a former bank chief, who was also convicted of corruption, regained the multi-billion naira assets seized from her.
This rigmarole strikes at the heart of Buhari’s proposal to sell off the looted assets. “…instead of what happened before, this time round, we will sell those stolen properties and the proceeds will be deposited in government treasury. If the money is in the government treasury, I will see who will come back after we left and reclaim them,” he said. This is a weighty statement; for us to tackle Nigeria’s systemic graft, this is needful.
Bringing looters to justice is critical for Nigeria to secure the cooperation of the international community in the fight against corruption. Developed countries can quickly recover loot but are rather slow in repatriating it.
However, Nigeria can boost the laborious process and gain the confidence of the United Kingdom, which has just started the implementation of its Unexplained Wealth Orders. It traces assets domiciled in the UK that were acquired in questionable circumstances.
Lodging the proceeds in the public treasury and sharing them among the three tiers of government are open to abuse. For all the financial stimulus and the Paris Club refunds, which the Buhari administration has doled out to state governments, many states still owe salaries. Allegations abound of how governors mismanaged the funds, which were not appropriated.
Perhaps, this is why the United States is withholding $500 million out of the funds looted by Abacha. Under the last administration, the World Bank advised Nigeria to devote some repatriated funds to specific projects, but that government still conspired to waste it on frivolities.
Therefore, the proceeds from the sale of seized assets should be targeted at specific projects that will benefit all. First, all recovered assets should be appropriated by the parliament. A caveat however: we stoutly oppose setting up a new agency to sell assets. It is totally unnecessary; existing agencies could do it instead of creating a new cost centre.
Proceeds of the asset sales can then be deployed to rebuild tertiary education, state of the art hospitals in each of the six geopolitical zones, reviving the river basin authorities or on expanding the power transmission networks. This measure resonates with the public.
Punch
The senator representing Nasarawa West Senatorial District, Abdullahi Adamu, has accused the Senate of taking decisions that are frustrating the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Adamu’s position was contained in a statement on Tuesday.
He said, “I believe we need to retrace our steps and reconsider our stand as legislators on matters of public interest. Our party, the APC, has the majority in both chambers of the National Assembly, yet we hold the executive prisoner of politics that are unhealthy for the polity. It is such a terrible irony that we sabotage our own government by refusing to do our part in support of the executive.
“Appointments requiring Senate approval are held up. The consequence is that the public has nicknamed the President and his administration ‘go-slow.’ The people gave us the mandate as a party to deliver. With our control of the executive and the National Assembly, there is no reason why the government cannot acquit itself and fulfil the yearnings of the people.
“Perhaps, while we are consumed with sabotaging the administration and stabbing one another in the back, we forget that in less than a year from now, we shall be required to seek the people’s re-validation of our mandate to sit in these hallowed chambers. What shall we tell them?”
The lawmaker stated that part of his “crime” was his stand on the amendment to the Electoral Act.
“Me and some of my colleagues were opposed to this amendment on the grounds that it is not the duty of the Senate to determine the order of elections. It had never been part of the Electoral Act and there is no need to deny the commission the right to do its duty as it deems fit. Happily, I am not alone in taking this stand. Some of my colleagues are opposed to it too,” he said.
When contacted, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Aliyu Sabi-Abdullahi, said Adamu was entitled to his opinion.
Sabi-Abdullahi said, “He is a senator, I am a senator. He is entitled to his opinion, I am entitled to mine. Anything that we did not discuss in the chamber is not subject to my reaction. I am not here to react to whatever he has to say.”
Punch
The United Progressives Party (UPP) on Tuesday said President Muhammadu Buhari's decline to assent to the electoral bill sent to him by the National Assembly on election sequence showed that he was afraid of losing the 2019 presidential election.
In a statement by its National Chairman, Chief Chekwas Okorie, the party explained that the order of election as contained in the electoral bill if signed into law would ensure that candidates of various political parties win elections essentially on their personal merit and the popularity of their parties' manifesto.
"His withholding assent to this bill smacks of fear of losing the 2019 Presidential Election as well as the fear of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) not benefiting from the bandwagon effect of a possible early victory if the presidential election came first.
"If the APC and President Buhari were confident that the record of their performance was impressive as they have often claimed, there should be no reason why this fear should be expressed in the manner of withholding assent to a bill that holds very strong promise to deepen and develop our democracy," the UPP said.
Daily Trust
Apparently, the more things change the more they remain the same in Nigeria. After months of denying what most economists and financial experts had already known the Federal Government has finally admitted that N774 million per day or N24bn per month is now being spent to subsidise the importation of petroleum products.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, while lifting the veil over the badly kept secret by the Buhari administration also placed most of the blame on smuggling along Nigeria’s borders with neighbouring states. According to the narrative, which rings like a familiar tune from the much-discredited past administrations, the consumption of fuel had gone up from 35 million litres to 50 million litres in recent months.
That 42 per cent jump which should have resulted in massive security interventions and the arrest of some culprits has merely led to the wringing of hands by Nigeria’s security agencies – Directorate of State Services (DSS), the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) and the National Intelligence (NIA). Instead of these bodies charged with security the vital economic interests of the nation swinging into action to deal with those diverting our imported petroleum products to foreign countries and causing hardship for Nigerians, the impression Nigerians get is one of a government totally helpless to halt this increasingly crippling economic sabotage.
One of the reasons that President Muhammadu Buhari gave for making himself the Minister of Petroleum Resources was that he wanted to sanitise the oil industry, especially the NNPC. Obviously, little has been achieved in that direction in view of the assertion by the President of the Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki, that: “the NNPC stinks”, at a recent public hearing of the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream) attended by the NNPC GMD, Dr. Maikanti Baru and the Corporation’s top brass.
We had expected, as part of the “change” that the APC had promised Nigerians during the 2015 campaigns that by now the NNPC’s affairs, which have traditionally been shrouded in secrecy, would have been made more transparent. We had thought the Corporation would have been unbundled, privatised or made a more efficient state-run business like Malaysia’s PETRONAS and Brazil’s PETROBRAS. What we see, instead, is the retention of the discredited, corruption-prone model which the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) audit of the Corporation’s accounts in 2014/2015 had declared outmoded.
Unless we reform the NNPC, deregulate the downstream sector of the oil industry and encourage the profusion of refineries in Nigeria, nothing will change. The Corporation will remain the cesspool of corruption. Fuel subsidy payments (whether real or imagined) will continue. Importation of petroleum products, fuel scarcity and the diversion of petroleum products to neighbouring countries will never stop.
We are still waiting for the “change” in the oil sector.
Vanguard
The senator representing Kaduna Central Senatorial District in the National Assembly, Shehu Sani, recently revealed in an interview that he and his colleagues in the Upper Chamber of the National Assembly receive N13.5 million as monthly running cost. This, of course, is without prejudice to their consolidated regular monthly salary of N700,000 each. Sani further explained that even though there is no specification on what the funds are meant for, each lawmaker is mandated to provide receipts to back up the expenses.
Although he is a beneficiary of the official largesse, Senator Sani’s candour was voluntary and may have been borne out of the realisation of the stark oddity of a democracy whose legislature is far removed and alienated from the experiences of the people it purports to represent. In theory, the sovereignty of the people resides in the legislature. But to what extent do the legislatures in Nigeria represent the people in terms of real life experiences? Since the minimum wage in the country is N18,000 monthly, how are the people’s representatives in good conscience sitting in such a cosy and lavish comfort? As expected, the revelation made by Senator Sani has generated outrage across the polity. Many people, incensed by the revelation, have been crying foul.
With this revelation from Senator Sani, it is no longer surprising that the cost of governance in Nigeria is unduly high, with a large chunk of the country’s resources ending up in the private pockets of political actors, especially the legislators. Politics in Nigeria is peculiarly lucrative, in fact to such a disconcerting extent that a former Senate President claimed that he had to invest heavily in order to secure his seat. This was the argument he conveniently deployed in explaining the eventual graft and sleaze in the Senate. Against the backdrop of the official admission of the plight of 82 million Nigerians living in abject poverty, Senator Sani’s revelation should call national attention to the unconscionable reward system in the country that is skewed in favour of the legislature and other political actors. Is it not odd that these wealthy political actors claim to be the representatives of the more than 82 million poverty-stricken Nigerians?
It is no wonder that election in Nigeria is warfare. The beneficiaries have become used to opulence and vacating their seats through electoral loss is often desperately and violently resisted. The truth is that democracy in Nigeria is essentially a travesty. There is then an urgent and desperate need to review the country’s democratic experience to bridge the gap of alienation between the people and their representatives in the National Assembly and the respective state Houses of Assembly. The irony, however, is that only the various legislatures can constitutionally effect any change through reforms and it will be a tall order to expect a reform that will rob them of their perquisites.
It is difficult, not to say hopeless, to expect such qualms from the former governors in the Senate who are still enjoying the perks of their former office along with the official heist. If the sense of propriety eludes them and they have not noticed the grave implications of such obscene and predatory acquisition, how can they be expected to embark on any reforms that will end up as self-immolation? Yet there must be reform. For a start, the receipts tendered by each senator for the current regime of “running costs” must be scrutinized to determine their authenticity. Then, pressure must be mounted on the legislature and the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) to review the remuneration package of office-holders to reflect the country’s economic realities.
Tribune
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The recent report on rising cases of fraud and forgeries in the nation’s banking industry, calls for the tightening of internal controls and supervision by the regulatory authorities. In the Central Bank Nigeria (CBN) Financial Stability Report (FSR), the value of fraudulent activities in the Nigerian banking sector rose to N5.52 billion at the end of the 2017 financial year, while the value of 2016 fraud was N4.12 billion.
The value of fraudulent activities in the banks from 2016 to 2017 showed an increase of N1.40 billion. Earlier, the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) had decried the rising fraudulent activities in the banking sector, especially fraud and forgery cases perpetrated by bank workers. The NDIC also revealed that the number of fraud cases attributed to internal abuse by bank workers increased to 320 in 2017 from 231 in 2016.
This was the outcome of the organisation’s recent report on off-site supervision of the Deposit Money Banks in the country. The report relied on a total of 286 responses received from 26 banks during the period. The regulator noted that there were 22 nil monthly responses from the banks as at the end of December 31, 2017.
There were 26,132 cases of fraud and forgeries from the 286 responses received from the banks last year. This represented 56.30 percent higher compared to 16,751 cases reported in 2016. In the same vein, the amount of money involved in the fraudulent activities documented rose by N3.33 billion from the N8.68 billion reported in 2016 to N12.01 billion in 2017. This represented 38 percent increase. The actual loss decreased by N24.42 million or 1.03 percent from the N2.39 billion in 2016 to N2.37 billion in 2017.
Altogether, both the (Automated Teller Machine), ATM-related fraud constituted the largest with 24,266 cases (about 92.68 percent) of all reported cases or N1.51 billion of losses in the sector in 2017.
Other fraudulent activities were traced to transfers and withdrawals through insider facilitation, presentation of forged cheques, Internet banking and diversion of customer deposits and outright theft.
Although the report showed that the level of attempted cases of fraud and forgeries declined by N0.32 billion, or 11.94 percent between March and June, 2017, there was an upswing in fraud and forgery cases from July to December, 2017.
According to the NDIC, reported cases of fraud and forgeries rose by 36.42 percent from 12,279 cases in 2015 to 16,751 in 2016. Actual loss in respect of Internet banking fraud was N857 million, which represented 27 percent of total loss of the industry that year.
All factors that breed corruption in the sector should be squarely addressed. These include poor corporate governance, infraction in foreign exchange operations, lack of effective sanctions of offenders, among others.
From what can be gleaned form the CBN and NDIC reports, it is clear that issues bordering on unethical financial practices and conflicts between customers and their banks are yet to be properly addressed. The Bankers Committee should look into this urgently. The CBN should take the advice of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and check the country’s rising bank risks.
Sun
I was confronted last week by a student who has shown a significant interest in Africa and other developing regions. The student asked me in a sombre tone: Why is Nigeria a country in which nothing works? Why do so many citizens of your country endure economic hardships when the country celebrates yearly federal and state budgets that make no impact on the lives of citizens? Why do so many people suffer when your country has many human and natural resources that could improve the socio-economic conditions of the citizens?
I was stunned by the questions. I was not expecting them but, on reflection, I found the questions represented the student’s deep understandings of the paradox that is Nigeria.
The student was absolutely correct. It is difficult to analyse methodically and critically in one essay the numerous problems that have overwhelmed Nigeria in the past 57 years. Quite simply, the nation’s problems are inoperable. In the same week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave us the bad news that Nigerians are getting poorer, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, warned that the nation would be sitting on a keg of gunpowder if no action was taken to address increasing youth unemployment. These are dire warnings the nation can ignore to its detriment.
There are so many absurdities that underpin life in Nigeria. For example, when you criticise poor services provided by telecommunications providers, someone will jump at you with a pedestrian remark that, before the advent of mobile telephones, things were much worse than they are now. It is this kind of weird argument that defines and justifies the shabby treatment we receive from government and political leaders, and the disrespect we receive from foreign businesses that operate and make huge profits in the country.
Different people have used different metaphors to illustrate the crisis of leadership in Nigeria, and the irreparable nature of the problems that confront the nation. The most appropriate metaphor, I would argue, is the one that depicts Nigeria as a mischievous adult that still behaves like a teenager. The moment you drag the teen out of the doctor’s clinic, you realise he or she has far worse injuries requiring urgent treatment.
Since the attainment of political independence in October 1960, the country has been governed by military dictators and wily politicians who promised to transform the nation to improve the living conditions of citizens. Everyone thought these leaders had figured out the solutions to the nation’s problems. Little did anyone realise the nation had been conned big time.
Nigeria is so blessed in many ways but has been unlucky with poor quality of leaders that have emerged so far in the history of the country. Haven’t we been reminded many times that every country deserves the leaders it gets? Nigeria has been weighed down by naïve and incompetent leaders, men and women who lack the capacity to govern but who are always the first to climb onto the bandwagon of leadership that has so far led the country to the edge of disaster.
We owe our generation and future generation honest and effective leaders with the foresight and undying determination to commit to educational, economic, technological and social transformation of the country. We need this model of leaders to recover what the country has lost since independence, namely genuine socio-economic development, improvements in the living standards of the people, meaningful health care system, improved agricultural production, an effective manufacturing sector, efficient air, sea, road and rail transportation systems, and uncomplicated telecommunications network.
The slow and painful downfall of Nigeria is symbolic not only of the failure of leadership but also failure of public and private institutions. It is proof of the failure of civil society to stand up and hold political leaders to account for their transgressions. Take a look at the level of youth unemployment in the country. Take another look at the frail condition of federal roads relative to the large sums of money that were budgeted over the years for road construction and repairs. Take a further look at the financial swindles that go on undetected at federal and state levels. All these and more will make you wonder why Nigeria has not yet been mortally wounded. How much longer can the country withstand uncontrolled pillaging of its financial reserves?
Across the country, many people are so broken financially, spiritually, emotionally and physically that they endure anything the government throws at them. There is no union or social movement that represents the people against abuses committed by government officials. When citizens drive on bad roads and develop headaches or suffer injuries, the only way they respond is to murmur, curse, express irritation and pull at their hair. Unfortunately, nothing changes. Their condition and the condition of the roads remain. No one has the courage to ask questions about how the money budgeted for road renovation has been used.
Take the power sector as another example. How many people can estimate correctly how much the country has budgeted in the past 18 years to fix the problem of volatility in electricity supply, including initiatives designed to make electricity regularly available to businesses, private homes, government offices and other consumers? Everyone complains about the darkness that has enveloped the country but no one is willing to do anything to hold political leaders, ministers, and stakeholders accountable.
Public concern that money allocated for federal projects has been hijacked or misused or redirected into some other useless projects has not gone beyond mere chit chat. Certainly, that is not a good way for citizens to scrutinize political leaders or promote accountability and transparency in government.
President Muhammadu Buhari should compel his ministers and other senior officials of his government to develop a culture of accountability and transparency that would see them conduct quarterly or monthly open forums with citizens in various parts of the country, where the ministers can respond to questions about their performance.
Michael Opeyemi Bamidele, (MOB) was a member of the seventh House of representatives from Iyin- Ekiti, in Ekiti central Senatorial district of Ekiti State. He is a lawyer of note and an ex- commissioner in Lagos State.
The state was agog last Wednesday when he formally made known his intention to run for the governorship of the state. He told party executives of the All Progressives Congress ( APC) at the APC office in Ajilosun area of the state capital, Ado Ekiti, that he would never let the party down should the party decides to support him.
This is even as he denied having any pact with a fellow aspirant, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, who is declared his intention to run for the Ekiti governorship last Friday. Bamidele also denied being under pressure to step down for anyone.
A huge crowd of supporters and admirers of the politician, many of whom had benefitted in cash and kind from his benevolence came out en mass out in his honour and shut down the state capital, causing heavy gridlock along the popular Ado Ikere road that linked the Ajilosun Secretariat of the APC from Okeyinmi roundabout.
All clad in white T-shirts that bore Bamidele’s bold image, the excited crowd walked for nearly two kilometres from the Okeyinmi roundabout to the APC office.
They sang many love songs for Bamidele who looked resplendent in elaborate white Agbada lace. He also wore the “Awo famed cap” to reveal his identity as a progressive member of the late sage, Obafemi Awolowo’s political family.
Earlier in the day, the supporters had chartered 18-seater buses from all the 16 Local Government Areas of the state and filling up each of the buses to its brim. They bombarded the Ajilosun office of the APC and took over all restaurants and motor parks in the capital city as early as 7:30am to await the arrival of their man.
When Bamidele stormed Ado Ekiti from his Iyin country home, broom wielding supporters came out in their hundreds to the to join him on his way to the party secretariat.
Security operatives and party officials had a difficult time controlling the crowd that had taken over the available spaces at the secretariat by the time Bamidele got there.
Just before he went to declare his intention to the party executives, Bamidele had a brief chat with the newsmen at the office of the party’s state deputy chairman, Mrs. Kemi Olaleye, where he revealed the purpose behind his grand entry into the secretariat.
He said: “To the glory of God, I’m here at the state secretariat of my party, the APC to declare my intention to run for governorship of Ekiti State in the coming primary of our party. I’m looking forward to be the next governor of Ekiti State and it is mandatory for every aspirant to so declare to the party. I have done a similar thing at the ward level three weeks ago and I have also conducted a tour of all the 16 local government in Ekiti.
Today I’m rounding up at the state secretariat of the party, to declare my intention and by implication we had also done that through the streets of Ado-Ekiti and the rest is for me to address the state exco.”
Bamidele who also explained his recent rapport with Senator Babafemi Ojudu and former governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi respectively, further said, “it is interesting and I think this are signs of good development, these are also things that should send signal to Ekiti people that it is not going to be the same old story, the party is coming back together and stronger and there is no doubting the fact that it is no longer a war time for us in APC, this is an election that will be conducted and done during a peace time, everybody is speaking with everybody”
He also denied the rumour that he was being pressurised by some other aspirants to step down for them, saying:” yes, Senator Ojudu wrote a letter of goodwill to me and I have been in touch with him and I believe it’s a kind of letter that should go from every aspirant to the other aspirant. What is important is that we all remain sincere about what we profess, so it is a welcome development. But that does not mean we have any pact, he’s also on this race and I’m happy the party is at home with that.
“It is also true that Dr Kayode Fayemi visited my office, when I went to my ward for the declaration three weeks ago and during my tour of the 16 councils, I made it clear that Dr Kayode Fayemi and I was bond together as friends on a personal note and we both remained as stakeholders in APC. He is definitely a frontline leader of the party in Ekiti State and there is no doubting the fact that we all need to work together. I’m in this race and by the grace of God I will work with every aspirant, the fact that Dr Fayemi also came to my office should not give room to any speculation, just like a letter written to me by Senator Ojudu shouldn’t give room to any speculation.
Sun
“Dr Kayode Fayemi came to my office two weeks ago but before his visit, Senator Ojudu had visited that office twice, and many leaders of our great party had visited that office. People had reason to visit, either on personal or official to discuss the affairs of the party, it has nothing to do with anyone’s aspiration. It also show relevance both on my part and by God’s grace on the part of the people who are visiting, for me it is a welcome development
“It might interest you to also know that I have as well visited Dr. Fayemi and his family after he visited my office. For us in APC, it is not going to be the same old story. The party is getting ready to take over the state and all of us are working together to achieve this end” he added.
Asked if he would, like it happened in 2014, opt for an option B, if the election did not favour him, Bamidele’s said: “A point of clarification, I never dumped the APC, I was a member of ACN and I was a member of ACN till the last day , and as part of the team of ACN that took the certificate of registration back to INEC, to say we were done with ACN, because it was a condition that the party must discontinue, to enter into negotiation with other political parties, CPC did the same things, ANPP did the same thing, as well as other small parties.
“It was after we were done with ACN, but before the registration of APC, owing to disagreement within the leadership of the party in Ekiti State that I had to go and join Labour Party, I did not dump the APC.
“APC was not even registered as at the time I joined the Labour Party and in any case, these are things of the past, we have moved beyond that, everybody is back in this party, a lot of people who left this party a long time ago are back in the fold. We started as Alliance for Democracy, we became Action Congress and later Action Congress of Nigeria, and today we are APC. During the cause of the journey, as everybody tried to approach his own destination, there have been several bus stops for different people. Before we brought Dr. Fayemi in 2006, after the primaries , a lot of people left us, Senator Ayo Arise left the party for another party, today we are happy that he’s back from PDP into APC and we are all happy together, Yinka Akerele left, today he’s back, Engineer Segun Oni left for PDP, today we are happy he’s back, I left for Labour Party at some point , even though I didn’t not dump the party like I said , neither did I cross carpet, because I was in parliament as I didn’t have to cross carpet and today I’m also in APC. So, everybody will have his own story but what is important centrally is the fact that we are all back to build a united and strong party,” he declared.
Bamidele also spoke on the aspirants’ agitation for zoning to enable a southern Ekiti person take the plum job, saying: “I want to say that zoning is a legitimate issue. It is also legitimate for every district of the state to aspire in line with the constitution of the federal Republic of Nigeria.
“The constitution of our party didn’t respect zoning and even the constitution, so we are free to contest irrespective of the legitimacy of the agitations” he admonished.
While India has sacred cows, Nigeria has sacred cow owners. That’s why, despite the atrocities being perpetrated by cows and their herders across the country, the ownership of the estimated 19.5 million cows in Nigeria remains shrouded in secrecy. Surely, the herdsmen we see carrying AK-47 rifles and following the cows through the highways, villages, and farmlands are not the owners of the cows they tend. Rather, they are hired by the cattle owners to ensure that the cattle are fed and defended against rustling and other dangers.
We also know that the herdsmen are organised into an association known as the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria. Speaking at the General Assembly of the Interfaith Dialogue Forum for Peace on January 18, 2018, the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, revealed that MACBAN was established over 32 years ago to cater for the welfare of its members and advance the growth of the Fulani business. By the Fulani business here is meant cattle rearing. MACBAN has a branch in each of the six zones of the country, which often promptly intervenes on matters concerning the herdsmen within its zone.
Beyond the leadership of MACBAN, the first suspects are the patrons of the association. The list consists of the echelons of Fulani oligarchs. Here’s the list as recounted recently by one of them, the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II: “The first grand patron was Sultan Abubakar III; and he was replaced by successive sultans-Dasuki, Maccido and Saad Abubakar now. Other patrons were the Lamido of Adamawa, and emirs of Zazzau and Katsina. So, my predecessor was a patron and on my ascension to the throne, I became a patron” (The PUNCH, January 14, 2018).
My investigation reveals that the vast majority of the Fulani elite each owns hundreds or thousands of heads of cattle. It will be recalled, for example, that President Muhammadu Buhari revealed in his assets declaration in 2015 that he owned “farms, an orchard, and a ranch … 270 heads of cattle, 25 sheep, five horses, a variety of birds and a number of economic trees” (Vanguard, September 3, 2015). In view of the ongoing controversy over cattle colonies, it is interesting to note that Buhari owns a ranch in which, it must be assumed, his animals are kept.
Informal enquiries within the last three months further reveal that the ownership of cattle goes well beyond the Fulani. Many Northern politicians of various ethnicities, especially governors, senators, and members of the House of Representatives as well as their predecessors in office, also own cattle. So do businessmen and thousands of livestock farmers. It is also true of military and ex-military officers from the North.
Interestingly, the ownership of cattle in Nigeria is not limited to Northerners. There is no state in the federation in which cattle owners do not reside with their cattle. And not all of such owners are Northerners. In every state, there are indigenes who own cattle. For example, the rumour is very rife that Senator David Mark, an Idoma from Benue State, owns several hundreds of heads of cattle.
What seems to be common to all cattle owners in the country is the hiring of Fulani herdsmen to tend their cattle, often through the local MACBAN branch. This is in recognition of pastoralism as their traditional occupation. The implication is that there are Fulani herdsmen resident in virtually every state in the federation. This is why, for example, many Benue residents claimed that they knew some of the herdsmen who plundered their villages and killed residents.
So far, the people’s anger has been directed at these herdsmen, who are being blamed for the serial conflicts with local farmers, whose farmlands and entire villages are being plundered by the cattle. It is high time the owners of the cattle were brought into the equation. There are several reasons to do so, and urgently too.
First, if my neighbour’s gateman drives the neighbour’s goat into my compound and the goat eats up the bunch of plantain in my backyard, I will not stop at blaming the gateman. Rather, I will report both the gateman and the goat to my neighbour and demand that the goat be gated within his compound. If the incident goes on repeatedly, I may double my demand — cage the goat and also pay reparation. If that fails, I will sue him. This rule should apply to cow owners. The problem is that we do not know them.
Third, it is necessary to know the source of the AK-47 rifles carried by the herdsmen in full public glare. Where do the arms come from and who is arming them? The other day, I saw four herdsmen march about 200 heads of cattle past an army checkpoint and a police checkpoint within 200 metres of each other. I wondered why they were not arrested and disarmed in keeping with the President’s order to do so.
Why do security officers appear complicit in the herdsmen’s crime? Why is the Federal Government always ready to appease the herdsmen instead of blaming them for their crime, while delaying, if not denying, the necessary attention to the victims? Why is the focus more on building cattle colonies than in rebuilding plundered villages and compensating the victims? These questions are being raised because many believe that there are powerful interests behind the herdsmen’s atrocities.
Fourth, it is necessary to know the cattle owners so that the Federal Inland Revenue Service could collect the appropriate tax from them. Millions of people must be raking in profit from the sale of cows, beef, milk, cowherd, and so on. The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, and the FIRS should be keenly interested in them.
Finally, it is high time reliable statistics were generated that would provide necessary data for planners and researchers interested in livestock farming in Nigeria. Such data should be able to tell us who owns what breed of cattle and where? If such data are not available now, where does the figure of 19.5 million heads of cattle come from? On what basis is the government planning its intervention in the ongoing conflicts between herdsmen and farmers? Appropriate data are needed and necessary taxes should be collected, if livestock farming were to make a dent on Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product.