Caveat: This piece is in no way a comment on the judicial context of the ongoing trial of the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, at the Code of Conduct Tribunal. That is not only outside the scope of my competence but would constitute contempt of the court, which I dare not do. 

Rather this is a journalistic overview of events surrounding the latest appearance of the Senate President at the Code of Conduct Tribunal, CCT, with particular reference to the sudden twist in the fate of the CCT chairman, Mr. Danladi Umar, in the hands of the EFCC and its implications for the wider administration of justice as well as the fight against corruption by the current regime.

But really, so many things have changed. At least, Danladi has unexpectedly cleared Saraki of all charges; it appeared he did not play to script. Also, the Appeal Court has asked Saraki to go and clear himself of three charges from the 18 levied against him by the EFCC and which Umar had earlier struck out, discharging and acquitting the Senate President in the process.

There are many questions begging for answer on this sudden volte face by the EFCC. One of them is, are there new evidences linking Umar to the alleged crime? If so, why has the EFCC, which is noted for promptly revealing links between accused /suspects and their alleged crimes to the media, refused to do so in this instant case?

How does the EFCC wish Umar to feel taking the plea of a man accused of corruption in his own court, when he himself is making his plea on corruption allegations in another court?  If there is new evidence against Umar, why did EFCC write initially to clear the CCT boss when it knew it was yet to conclude its investigations into the allegations against him? And are they sure now they have completed the investigation enough to ensure a conviction? Or, as is being speculated, does the Federal Government want people to continue thinking that setting up Umar before the court at a time he is set to hear Saraki’s case again is a way of mounting pressure on him to ensure a conviction of the Senate President irrespective of facts?

Questions, questions and more questions begging for answers; and the more questions we have on issues like this, the more challenging it becomes to see how our leaders can, come out, take water, wash their hands and say they are innocent of what is being done to a just man.

The anti-corruption crusade of the administration is not only losing steam, it is surely losing its initial esteem. And to be candid, many people have been pointing at this decline only that their appeals seem not to have sunk well into the deliberations of the constituted authorities.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo puts this concern laconically when he said, “there were serious allegations of round-tripping against some inner caucus of the Presidency which would seem to have been condoned. I wonder if such actions do not amount to corruption and financial crime, then what is it.  Culture of condonation and turning blind eye will cover up rather than clean up. And going to justice must be with clean hands.”

We will just continue an unnecessary cycle, if we go on like that. It is the existence of credible institutional framework against corruption of all hues that gives boldness to several agencies in the United States of America to take up the  Donald Trump presidency on sundry issues without anyone seeing himself as an object of personality attack. And it is the absence of such a framework here that makes someone like our dear Maina to approach a court and slam a multi-billion naira suit on the EFCC for libel et al.

It is the absence of such platform that created the unnecessary intervention of the police and DSS in the private affairs of General Ibrahim Babangida and his media aide in the last few days. It is the absence of such platform that made the former SGF to remain in office long after credible evidence had been adduced to warrant his stepping down and facing trial.

But it is not too late; our redemption is still possible if, like Saraki said at the national summit on security, our leaders can summon the political will to actually make the fight against corruption an institutional issue and not an instrument to settle personal scores. That is the real change we desire; that was the change this administration promised us during the campaign in 2015. That is the change we expect from them.

Last Wednesday, the  Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) dispatched two of its investigators to the Port Harcourt International Airport in Rivers State to commence investigation into the Dana Air plane incident at the airport.

The previous day, a Dana Air aircraft which was flying from Abuja to Port Harcourt Airport had overshot the runway.

Happily, however, all the passengers on board and the crew were safely evacuated from the aircraft. In her reaction, the General Manager, Corporate Affairs, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Mrs. Henrietta Yakubu, stated that the incident could have been caused by a heavy rain accompanied by strong wind and storm in the Rivers State capital. Dana Air also toed the same path.

On February 7, the door of an aircraft belonging to the airline fell off upon landing at the Abuja airport. In its reaction, the airline surmised that the door must have fallen off because it was tampered with.

  As noted by Kingsley Ezenwa, spokesperson of Dana Air, the door never shook since the aircraft was “airbone and fully pressurised.” Nigerians would however recall that on June 3, 2012, a Dana Air flight crashed into a building in Iju-Ishaga neighbourhood in Lagos State, killing all the 153 people on board and 10 more people on the ground. That crash was reportedly the second deadliest on Nigerian soil, behind only the Kano air disaster of 1973. Every effort must be made to prevent a recurrence.

To be sure, it is not being suggested here that Dana Air is prone to accidents or that its failure and not the alleged inclement weather condition was responsible for the latest incident at the Port Harcourt Airport. There is as yet no valid reasons for coming to such a conclusion. In any case, it is fair to assume that, as a business, the airline could not have deliberately taken any actions capable of tarnishing its credibility. Our concern is that the latest incident could have claimed lives and, in any case, Nigerians deserve to know what really went wrong.

A thorough investigation is, more than ever, needed to unravel the circumstances surrounding the incident. The investigation should unravel whether the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) provided the necessary instrument landing systems for safe operations during inclement weather and whether the weather report given by the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET) at the time of the incident was accurate and up to date. It must further establish whether or not the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) ensured due diligence on the aircraft and crew, and whether FAAN itself was up to date in the provision of the required infrastructure for safe operations in Port Harcourt Airport and indeed elsewhere.

On a general note, however, we urge the Ministry of Transport to ensure at all times that safety standards are adhered to by all the airlines operating in the country.

Past air crashes cost the nation too dearly and the nation surely needs to do all it can to ensure that avoidable tragedies in air transport are completely eliminated.

Tribune

The clarion call to action against illicit financial outflows and tax evasion/underpayment by multinational companies resonated recently at the Platform for Collaboration on Tax (PCT) Conference held in New York, United States.  Nigeria, at the conference organised by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in collaboration with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), expressed profound concern about illicit financial outflows from the country and tax evasion by International Oil Companies. Nigeria’s   worries are understandable, considering the country’s ranking as having the highest annual illicit financial outflows in Africa.    

Speaking on tax issues and revenue leakages in Nigeria, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, noted that illegal financial outflows have continued because foreign countries have placed hurdles on efforts to repatriate stolen funds stashed away in their domains, with the problem worsened by the unwholesome behaviour of some multinational companies operating in Nigeria and other developing economies.      

“There is absolute need,” Mrs. Adeosun said, “for a complete understanding of how these multinational companies behave in Nigeria and other developing countries. Many of them operate a completely different standard in Africa, contrary to what obtains globally.” She also accused the defaulting multinational companies of hiding “behind slow legislative processes” to perpetrate wrong activities in the countries from which they derive significant income.                                                      

Nigeria asked for the collaboration of the global community to designate tax evasion by multinationals across developing countries as a “foreign corrupt practice”, stressing that such an odious label will help to facilitate the Nigeria’s current efforts to sue the erring IOCs in their own countries. Indeed, Africa, in particular Nigeria, has lost a lot in revenue and image to illicit financial outflows and tax evasion by multinational organisations in the country, which are sometimes in cahoots with unpatriotic Nigerian   financial institutions and public agencies.

For instance, the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, told the Federal Executive Council (FEC) at one of its meetings that Nigeria lost about $178 billion to illicit financial outflows in the last ten years. Just last year, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) also disclosed that the country lost N306bn yearly to tax evasion by IOCs. This is 13 percent of the capital budget in the proposed 2018 federal budget. According to the FIRS Chairman, Mr. Babatunde Fowler, the amount resulted from the companies’ failure to file true and proper tax returns to government agencies. According to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Nigeria ought to significantly reduce illicit financial outflows by the year 2030.  

A Washington-based think tank, in a recent report, put illicit financial outflows from Africa and other emerging economies at between $2 trillion and $3.5trn yearly.    Nigeria, the report said, is the most “vulnerable” country in Africa to the flight of capital needed for investment and other purposes. The report further shows that combined illicit outflows and inflows amounted to 14.1 percent to 24 percent of the developing countries’ total trade from 2005 to 2014, the last year comprehensive data were made available.        

While the support of the global community is needed to tackle this problem, Nigeria must take up the gauntlet and move from mere declarations of intent to decisive action to stem the trend. Increased surveillance and tightening of internal controls are necessary. Other measures must include addressing poor governance, weak regulatory structures, which oftentimes aid illegal financial outflows.                        

Nigeria is still having talks with countries where state funds looted by discredited public officials are stashed.  In 2016, Nigeria signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Kingdom on looted assets. Tough legislations that can discourage the movement of stolen funds from one country to the other have become essential. It is also necessary to institute stiff measures against banks which serve as conduits for fraudulent financial outflows. According to the Global Financial Integrity Group, a financial watchdog based in the USA, about $15.7bn illicit funds passed through the Nigerian banking system.                          

They lie about 150 miles apart in the vast brush lands of northern Nigeria, but the towns of Chibok and Dapchi have a tragic bond: both have been targets of large-scale kidnappings of schoolgirls by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram. Following a four-year global campaign to free the 276 girls kidnapped from Chibok in 2014 – an event that brought Boko Haram’s sadistic agenda to the world’s attention – 110 girls in Dapchi vanished this month under identical circumstances.

In both cases, members of Boko Haram, which in the Hausa language translates roughly to “Western education is a sin,” sprayed a school with bullets as they invaded the grounds to steal food and oInline image
ther supplies. The group’s quest to establish a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria has already left at least 20,000 dead and made more than 2.6 million homeless since 2009.

Another commonality between the two attacks is that the fate of the schoolgirls was a source of confusion for days. In Chibok, it was eventually learned that the 276 girls had been herded into trucks and taken away. A grainy black-and-white photo of the group after their abduction, taken by one of the terrorists, incited global outrage, sparking the movement Bring Back Our Girls.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has called the incident a “national disaster”, and promised the deployment of troops and surveillance aircraft to search for the missing girls as a specially convened enquiry undertakes a full review into the circumstances of the raid. The children’s parents – such as the father of Fatima Manzo, who is just 16 years old – have formed their own association to track them.

Four years ago, I was part of the campaign to free the Chibok girls. In a petition that secured one million signatures almost immediately, we called on Western governments to support surveillance and reconnaissance missions, in order to locate and rescue the victims, who were being hidden in Nigeria and neighboring countries.

At that time, the Global Business Coalition for Education published a report on safe schools in Nigeria. The coalition also created a partnership among Nigerian business leaders, the Nigerian government, and international donors, in cooperation with UNICEF, to establish programmes aimed at making schools safe for Nigerian children.

As part of the coalition’s Safe Schools Initiative, community groups were formed; infrastructure reforms were implemented; and girls were provided with safe school options. Last May, 82 Chibok girls were released to the Nigerian government in exchange for five Boko Haram commanders.

After years of being too afraid even to cross a school playground, girls had started to return to the classroom. The doctrine of safe schools – a rare new idea in a region beleaguered by the confrontation with Boko Haram – seemed to be gradually taking hold. Fences and other physical security were built to keep raiders out, and mobile telecommunications were used as early warning systems.

But, sadly, the reality was that 100 Chibok girls remained in captivity, their whereabouts unknown. Moreover, six million of Nigeria’s school-age girls still don’t go to school. The abduction of yet another 110 schoolgirls is likely only to make matters worse, not just for them and their families, but for all whose fears about the safety of schools have now been reawakened.

As for the new abductees, we know their likely fate if they are not rescued quickly. Chibok girls who escaped or were released have said in interviews that abductees were whipped to persuade them to marry. Some were taken as concubines by group members. Many who were married off may never escape captivity.

The international community must do everything possible to support the Nigerian government’s efforts to save the Dapchi girls, including countries providing aerial surveillance to help locate them and their captors. The president has said his government will redouble its efforts to prevent the recurrence of such abductions.

That means we will need to galvanise more international support to help defeat Boko Haram and its destructive ideology. And within Nigeria we need a revamped Safe Schools Initiative, with an eye to ensuring that it is sustainable in the long term. School children deserve nothing less.

Gordon Brown is a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

With barely a year to the next national election cycle, fears have been raised about the continued apathy of many Nigerians. Figures of uncollected Permanent Voter Cards in many states demonstrate this. Despite widespread disaffection towards the political system, Nigerians should not relent in discharging their civic obligations. Democracy is hollow without popular participation: to enjoy its elusive “dividends,” people should shake off their lethargy, demand accountability and exercise positive influence on the democratic process.

Participation starts with registering to vote. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission, 74 million persons were enrolled on its register by the second week of January. This figure is expected to hit between 80 and 85 million before the first round of polling. In the 2011 presidential election, 36,728,992 votes were cast, representing about 54 per cent of the registered voters. But in 2015, only 29,432,083 voted, representing 43.65 per cent of the 67,422,005 names on the roll.

One problem that cropped up then was the non-collection of PVCs by many voters. In many states, hundreds of thousands of the documents were left at INEC offices and collection centres. In this, part of the blame lay with the electoral body. Its logistics, notoriously poor in all its successive reincarnations, failed. Many people who genuinely wanted to collect simply could not, enduring long waits and fruitless, repeated visits to the centres.

In Oyo State, 657,267 PVCs had not been collected by mid-January; most had been ready since 2015. The figures of 49,000 unclaimed PVCs in Taraba and 21,651 in Akwa Ibom pale beside the 460,000 uncollected PVCs in Edo State. By April last year, according to INEC, 7.8 million PVCs were awaiting collection nationwide and 4.23 million were yet to be printed.

Nigeria’s democracy has become what researchers at the Johns Hopkins University, the United States of America, describe as mere “Electoral Democracy,” a system “in which elites and their hangers-on hold elections but citizens have little real influence on the process.” We are paying a heavy price for this abdication of responsibility to a particularly selfish, self-centred and avaricious political class. According to the IMF, 54 per cent of Nigerians were living below the poverty threshold of $2 per day in 1999; but in its 2018 Nigeria Economic Outlook, the African Development Bank says 152 million or 80 per cent of the population now live below the poverty level, 18 years into the Fourth Republic.

Yet, a news report calculated that the country earned about N77 trillion from crude oil and gas between 1999 and 2016. A revelation by Tim Okon, a former senior executive of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, showed that $300 billion oil revenues flowed in between 2010 and 2014 alone. Not only are the people pauperised, elected officials are unaccountable to them.

The National Assembly that should champion the cause of the people at all times has, however, become notorious around the world for appropriating vast sums for its members who, along with the executive arm, live in opulence, promote narrow interests and plunder the treasury at will. At the state and local government levels, governors, lawmakers and LG bosses are handpicked by political godfathers and proceed often to serve those interests with scant regard for the people.

Lack of popular pressure has allowed the political class to deprive the polity of an effective power sector: infrastructure deficit could need up to $1 trillion to propel it to the top 25 economies of the world, while unemployment is rampant and the majority are alienated.

The way forward is clear: since the outcomes of the democratic contests have been unsatisfactory and politicians disdainful of the populace, the people should resolve to live out a one-time US president Abraham Lincoln’s famous description of democracy as the “government of the people by the people for the people.” Democracy imposes a duty on the people to have civic consciousness, beginning with registering to vote. In other climes, political parties would be mobilising the people to register and collect their PVCs.

People should locate lawmakers’ constituency offices and interrogate their supposed representatives: they should stop demanding money or asking them to pay their house rents or children’s school fees, or collecting tokens from them. Public office is about service, not plundering public treasury. The Journal of Democracy, a Johns Hopkins University Press publication, says “people become more effective in the struggle to obtain democratic institutions when they move from emphasising survival values towards emphasising self-expression values.” A study by the Brookings Institution, a US think tank, found that democracies where people demanded and extracted accountability from elected officials tended to be more prosperous than those where citizens exerted little pressure on public officials.

Apart from ensuring that they obtain PVCs, eligible Nigerians should stop the veneration of public officials: they are to serve, not to be served. They should deliver good governance. For all citizens 18 years and above, the voter card is the weapon to keep officials in line, the ultimate exercise of sovereignty; it is an inalienable right and confers a duty on all to use it and do so responsibly.

Punch

A former Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Senator Amadu Ali, says he supported tenure elongation for former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2006 because the ex-President had done remarkably well.

Ali said this in his biography titled, ‘The Many Colours of a Rainbow,’which was launched in Abuja on Thursday.

He said the decision to support Obasanjo’s tenure extension was a personal one and he never used his position as party chairman to manipulate the system in favour of Obasanjo.

The book read, “What happened was that in the previous PDP administration (1999-2003) a number of constitutional amendments – 106 of them – was proposed. The new House took up the unfinished business which had been publicised and gazetted and began to debate.

“One of the proposed amendments was on the extension of the term of the President. The press focused on this one proposal and spawned new emotive descriptions to characterise the proposal as ‘President for life’, sit-tight President,’ tenure elongation campaign and so on.

“Senator Amadu Ali had his personal views about it and in fact, supported Obasanjo’s ‘tenure elongation’ wholeheartedly because he genuinely believed that Obasanjo was an extraordinarily good leader in spite of his perceived failings.”

Ali, who was also a Federal Commissioner for Education during the ‘Ali Must Go’ university protests which left students killed in 1978, said he was wrongly blamed for the incident.

He explained that the protests erupted after the decision to increase the lodging fee from N150 to N468 per session while the cost of feeding was also increased by 50k.

The former PDP chairman said the decision was taken by the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Prof. Jibril Aminu, and Chief of Staff to the Supreme Military Council, Gen Shehu Yar’Adua, without his knowledge.

Ali, who is the protem chairman of the Coalition for Nigeria Movement, said Gowon, who was 31 when he became head of state, had already imbued himself with leadership skills before he rose to power as he was already controlling a battalion of 1,000 men before becoming commander-in-chief.

Punch

Last week, Thursday 22nd February to be precise; the media was awash with revelation made by erstwhile Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC); Professor Attahiru Jega that, “the desperation and recklessness of politicians is the greatest threat to Nigeria’s Electoral Democracy”. 

The former INEC boss made the comment at the inaugural session of ‘Watching The Vote Election Series’, an event organized by YIAGA Africa to serve as a platform in discussing the road map leading to the 2019 general elections. Professor Jega’s comment couldn’t have come at a better time and gathering as the event was graced by election stakeholders, which include major Political Party Actors, Civil Society Organizations and Youth Groups across Nigeria. 

There is no questioning Professor Jega’s first-hand knowledge of the antics of Nigerian Politicians, especially seeing as he was at the helm of affairs at INEC during the 2011 and 2015 general elections. Both elections made their marks in the history of elections in Nigeria, especially the 2015 polls which for the first time saw the replacement of an incumbent President with an opposition. The memory of how a certain “Elder Statesman”, Godswill Orubebe almost truncated what has been described as a peaceful process comes to mind. It took the calmness of the erudite Professor and other electoral stakeholders present at the announcement of results to ensure the scenario ended as a momentary distraction. 

It is rather unfortunate that the key players of the electoral process are the most culpable when it comes to electoral turmoil in Nigeria. While we may heap the blame on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) when it comes to irregularities during elections. However, Nigerians are not oblivious of the fact that, politicians always try to be a step ahead in a bid to manipulate the process. 

Take for example, the most recent issue of alleged underage voting in Kano, which of course is a dent on the image of the electoral body. However, it should be stated that, state electoral commissions are solely responsible in conducting Local Government Elections according to Law. 

Like YIAGA Africa #WatchingTheVote training manager; Mr. Paul stated during a TV programme on Wazobia TV Max not too long ago, no underage person will come out on their own to vote without politicians inducing and mobilizing them. Though election officials may be culpable as regards underage voting, report has it that politicians go as far as threatening electoral officials with guns and other weapons forcing them to undermine the process. 

The lack of adequate security for electoral officials during elections is an issue for future symposium, which to a large extent makes one begin to wonder why electoral officials are vulnerable during electoral duty. 

As rightly noted by the former National Chairman of Labour Party; Barrister Dan Nwanyanwu during the Election Series, Nigerian politicians do not care about the credibility of the electoral process, as they are more interested in winning elections at all cost. 

As a matter of fact, politicians hardly make effort in voter education during political campaigns, as all they care about is canvassing for votes. It is surprising as well as worrisome that in this age and time, elections still register thousands of invalid votes due to lack of adequate voter education.

The ongoing debate on the change of electoral sequence by the National Assembly is another issue which tends to undermine the power of the electoral body and as a result, undermine Nigeria’s electoral process. Professor Jega also waded in on the issue noting that, the decision by the National Assembly is self-serving and goes a long way in showing how far politicians can go in deviating from laid down rules and procedure for what is obviously not an altruistic motive.

 Political analysts have come out to say that, INEC within its constitutional right has been empowered to decide the dates of election. Thus, the ongoing debate may end up in court. This litigation could be a major drawback to INEC, as it should be taking its time in preparing for the Ekiti and Osun elections.

Despite all of these, it's either difficult or impossible to prosecute any politician for electoral fraud in Nigeria. Electoral violence, mobilization of thugs, vote buying and attack on electoral officials are major issues masterminded by reckless politicians and has contributed immensely to voter apathy, thereby undermining the electoral process. Also, the issue of penury of internal democracy which constitutes a major bottleneck for young people contesting elections cannot be overemphasized. 

There is need for security agencies to step up their game and apprehend any politician culpable of these offences. While the sensitization of young people as regards being used as electoral thugs is imperative so as for them to know they have better and equally vital roles to play in the society. 

Moshood Isah  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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