KONDUGA & IZGE: CLOSING THE DOORS OF REASON BY DOYIN OKUPE

 

While killers are rampaging in the north east, particularly Borno state, massacring innocent villagers and itinerant traders, Goodluck Jonathan was either genuflecting before the Emir of Kano, Ado Bayero or clownishly beating a drum in the palace of the Alafin of Oyo or trying to score with the Christian population by snatching a photo opportunity with the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church, Pastor Enoch Adeboye.  The president had neither time for the survivors of this modern day holocaust nor a sympathetic thought to those who lost their lives and property.  The president’s mien only projected a one-track mind – how to extend his stay in the Aso Villa, not the security or sanctity of the lives of the country’s citizens.  We have seen how Kaduna was “won” in 2011. We therefore pray that we won’t see a repeat of what happened then.  Interestingly, despite the prominence given by both local and international media organisations on the massacre, the president and the presidency kept mum and didn’t deem it worth their intervention.  The loud silence from Jonathan and his handlers is indicative of the value the president placed on the lives of our people.  Until Kashim Shettima, governor of Borno state, addressed State House in Abuja.  That was when the presidential attack dog, Doyin Okupe, poured insults on the victims.

What I find incomprehensible is that insurgents dressed in military uniforms, carrying military grade weapons and operating with military precision have been attacking communities under state of emergency with all its attendant military restrictions, yet no one is arrested and no prior information regarding such attacks.  The Nigerian intelligence community, seemingly so effective in apprehending the likes of Nasiru El-Rufa’I for being “politically incorrect” can’t seem to provide information that will lead to the apprehending of these insurgents, or at least pre-empting the attacks by moving troops to such identified areas.  Or are we to infer that the non-deployment of troops to these areas that are prone to attacks?

The case of Konduga appears to be very incomprehensible because the town is a stone’s throw from Maiduguri where incidentally the JTF and the 7^th Division of the Nigerian Army is headquartered.  In his hastily incoherent response to Kashim Shettima Okupe claimed Konduga is at the foot of the Mandara hills.  This shows you the level of ignorance on the part of those supposedly responsible for our security as political leaders of the country.  Granted Izge is at the foot of the Mandara hills, but does that give Okupe and his boss the excuse of not sending troops to rout the insurgents?  In the case of Konduga, it was reported that the killers operated between 5p.m to 12 midnight without hindrance.  This was happening just about 35 kilometres.  The people living around that corner of the world conveniently forgot Baga so quickly and it is proving to be their peril.

I have always had my opinions about Boko Haram and its shadowy leadership.  I am yet to be convinced about certain things and explanations from the government pertaining to the existence, operations and sustenance of this murderous group.  For example, I am yet to be convinced that Mohammed Yusuf was not executed to allow for the takeover of the brand name he made popular to be used for black operations.  The total absence of a successful prosecution or conviction of anyone caught either in the act of committing terror or in possession of guns and Improvised Explosive Devised (IEDs), makes a bold statement on the seriousness of the government to bring these killers to book and bring to an end this unnecessary and wanton human sacrifice.  Before you mention Kabiru Sokoto, I want you to reflect where he was arrested – was it in the theatre of war or in the comfort of his bed?  Here I am talking about the likes of the lady caught in St. John’s Cathedral Bauchi; the Delta fellow caught in the act of setting fire to a Redeemed Christian Church in Yenagoa; the guys caught with a cache of arms in Jos; the eight guys arrested in front of the COCIN Church, Miya Barkete in Bauchi state with explosives.  Jonathan’s reaction (or non reaction) to the recent violence gives life to the theory that Orkar’s (Tony Nyiam) project of excising some of parts from Nigeria is still very much alive.  Pretending otherwise may be dangerous for anyone from this part of the Niger.

Okupe can yak for all he cares, but I pity the likes of Ahmed Ali Gulak and Dauda Birma, because their villages are shouting distances from the nucleus of the war- more so for Gulak.  The bulk of the survivors of the Izge massacre had to relocate to Gulak to preserve their lives.  While their people are killed daily the likes of Gulak and Tanko Yakassai are competing to be identified with those the victims feel don’t care whether they live or die.  Bottom line is that the whole of the north is today under one form of attack or the other – north east is under the control of the Boko Haram; north central is now a theatre of war between farmers and herders; a large swath of the north west is under the control of bandits.  Northerners have lost faith in the government and the current crop of northern leaders.

Northerners see a federal government that cares less that they are reduced to a society beset with broken families, violent crime, and drugs.  They see a federal government willingly dividing the society by ethnicity, religion, and huge disparities in income.  This wasn’t what the populace bargained for in 2011 when they were cajoled, harassed, induced or suborned to vote for Goodluck Jonathan. They long for a peaceful life in which they may provide for the basic needs of their families, and enjoy the respect due to all mankind regardless of their ethnicity, religion, position, or wealth.  What they see is that their goals for a more just and compassionate society thwarted by the Quislings among them as personified by the likes Gulak and Yakassai, who pursue wealth and power regardless of the cost to their fellow human beings.

Human or material lost leaves them to either be burying relatives, friends and acquaintances or rebuilding a life shattered.  They see few opportunities to earn a living because most opportunities are withheld for militants of the Niger Delta and their godfathers. They see these Quislings and their sponsors remaining silent when their villages are pillaged and destroyed; when loved ones are killed and businesses destroyed.  What they are confronted with in most cases is denigration in the biased media, which serves to maintain these Quislings.

I just pray the activities of the likes of Doyin Okupe, Ali Gulak and their associates will not close the doors of reason permanently.  May God deliver us from this current holocaust and the Quislings and Goerings among us. 

JONATHAN’S YEA SAYERS IN THE NORTH: SAME OLD CROOKS

Last week, three people from the north were in the news for diametrically opposed reasons.  While Mallam Nasiru El-Rufa’i was in the news for his fifteen hours detention for the offence of having the audacity to advise Goodluck Jonathan on the consequences of rigging next year’s elections, Tanko Yakassai was on the other hand inaugurating his latest moneymaking venture of ‘adopting’ Jonathan as the candidate of his part of the north.  As a side attraction, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s appearance before the Senate added spice to a week that proved to be educative to all.  Incidentally both Yakassai and Sanusi Lamido are from Kano.  While the two younger men – El- Rufa’i and Sansusi are critical of the government’s handling of political and economic issues, Yakassai was trying to outdo Labaran (M)aku in praising the government of Jonathan as the best thing to ever happen to Nigeria and that Jonah should be allowed to contest next year.  As a rider, the old man added for good measure that anybody from the north who has political ambition must shelve it now.

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the governor of the Central Bank and the Banker to the government, accused the government of systematically haemorrhaging the country’s finances through the methodical robbery in the oil sector superintended by Jonathan’s darling Minister, Deziani Madueke, overseen by another untouchable amazon of the cabinet, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, who is a master of obfuscation.   Sanusi’s memo is an “ad memoire” to the letter he earlier wrote Jonathan alerting him of the theft at the NNPC (as if he doesn’t know).  The new memo to the Senate alerted Nigerians on another disappearing act of $20billion dollars from the NNPC and how the scam is perpetrated through a non-existent kerosene subsidy.  This is in addition to the $49.8billion said to have vanished into thin air last year.

Sanusi’s uncommon action was a very patriotic action alerting Nigerians and the world on the dangers Jonathan’s administration posed to the country and that nobody should do the mistake of trusting the man again with the destiny of the country.  The underlying message in all of Sanusi’s communications is that Jonathan and the ‘gang’ have neither shame nor compunction when it comes to fleecing the country.  Their understanding of fiscal federalism begins and ends with their pockets.  Jonathan is not averse to stealing or behaving contrary to the laws of the land.

While Sanusi was waving the economic red flag for Nigerians to see how low we have sunk fiscally, Nasiru El-Rufa’i was a guest of the SSS, our modern day Gestapo.  His offence?  He advised the government to conduct a credible election in order to avoid crisis.  The government has never been comfortable with anyone telling it the truth and it is becoming apparent that their reaction is becoming very predictable – unleash the security agents against such spoilsports.  The definition of a subversive has now being changed from what we know it to whoever is against Jonathan’s recklessness and his ambition to rule us whether Nigerians like it or not.  We have seen Asari Dokubo calling for war against the north in the event Jonathan is not returned as president next year and daring the security agencies to arrest him.  After El-Rufa’I’s fifteen hours detention, and condemnations from within and without the country, Dokubo was invited for a 30-minute tea chat.  This clearly shows that Dokubo is more important than El-Rufa’i to the government, Nasiru’s acknowledged brilliance notwithstanding.  A thug has more relevance than an acknowledged accomplisher.

While Sanusi and El-Rufa’i are undergoing their separate mental and physical ordeals in the hands of Jonathan’s kinsmen, a senile old man was inaugurating what he called Northern Elders Council (NEC).  Tanko Yakassai, a man who have been in the political field since the days of NEPU in the first republic, is embarrassing himself in public by denouncing all those having beef with Jonathan on how he is running the country.  It matters little to Yakassai that the north where he claims to be an “elder” has been brought to its knees by the same Jonathan he is campaigning for.  It matters little to him and his coterie of political contractors that the name Jonathan is akin to destruction of the same magnanimous north that made it possible for an unknown tailor to dance on the national political scene.  It matters not to Tanko Yakassai, Yusuf Mamman, Hassan Adamu and the rest of the gang that Jonathan’s kinsmen threatened to ostracise Raymond Dokpesi and his media empire when he agreed to be Babangida’s campaign Director General in 2010 before he beat a hasty retreat to their laager.  All that matters to them is how much they will make from their latest venture, no matter the terms and conditions attached in the MOU.  To them the north is another commodity to be bought and sold for their personal pecuniary gains.

I believe they are envious of (M)aku and Gulak, which may be responsible for their floating of the NEC.  My problem is that I did not see a single elder among them.  May be in a circle where you have Asari Dokubo, Edwin Clark, Boyloaf and the rest of the creek rats, then they may call themselves elders.  In my part of the north, none of them qualify to be known and addressed as elders, unless we have another definition of what an elder is.  The difference between this group and the militants of the Niger Delta may not be much.  While Asari & co. specialised in breaking of pipelines to steal oil, Yakassai and his group have been in the business of breaking peoples’ hopes and expectations.  They are specialists in breaking their region to the applause of their enemies.

If the bunch is what should be called the “elders of the north”, then the north is doomed.  May the good Lord safe us from this contraption that is more a Northern Elders Crooks than Northern Elders Council.  Thank God we have the authentic Northern Elders Forum.

A CONFERENCE OF JONATHAN’S NOMINEES

With the proposed composition of “The National Conference” as outlined by Pius Anyim in his news conference at the unveiling of the modalities for the conference, there seems to be no point in convoking the conference at all.  It will be cheaper for the country and easier for Goodluck Jonathan and his pipers to commission the ‘Nwabueze Committee’ to draft a new constitution incorporating all and everything they demand and submit same to the president for ratification.  This way, it will be easier for them to restructure the country in their image.  They can then inform the National Assembly for their information after the draft has been ratified and proclaimed as the constitution for the country.  I would presumptuously suggest the committee be headed by Ben Nwabueze with Tony Nyiam as secretary and Asemota as vice chairman.

In a conference to be made up of 492 delegates, the president is to theoretically nominate about 114.  The 114 include delegates from All Peoples Congress (APC) states whose governors had earlier indicated a resolve to boycott the conference.  When you add these to the ones to be nominated by PDP governors, you will have a conference of PDP delegates, who will then be expected to provide the 75% required to pass whatever the president needs to be passed.  Nigerians will then be presented with a document that is PDP in all its ramifications.   Jonathan and his cohorts are not going to leave anything to chance.  They are therefore ready to rig the process ab initio.    Where you have the president given the power to nominate 46 delegates; federal government to nominate 26; this is just same difference to me.  And then the president is to nominate for states where the governors may decide to boycott the jamboree.  Therefore, with the president’s direct nominations, the federal government’s “share” and the anticipated boycott of APC states and the nomination of the chairman, vice chairman and secretary for the conference, it is enough to make the whole shindig non-representative and therefore not better than the much maligned defective ‘military constitution’ it is supposed to fix.

Knowing the president’s pedigree and his notorious apathy to other parts of the country, and the antecedents of his closest advisers, one doesn’t need to be a stargazer to guess the outcome of the talk show.  The barely hidden agenda of Jonathan for the restructuring of the country has never been in doubt.  I salute the steadfastness of those hiding behind the cluelessness and incompetence of the man to actualise their lifelong dream of shaping Nigeria into their own narrow vision of what it should be.  The nomination of Nwabueze (later replaced with Asemota) and Tony Nyiam in the Advisory Committee gave an indication as to how the president wants the country to look like post the conference.  When an Igbo irredentist, later replaced by provincial ethnic jingoist whose horizon has never gone beyond the creeks of the Niger Delta; and a frustrated, dismissed military officer whose career was truncated by his misadventure in breaking up the country in the past, then you need to look far to understand what Jonathan wants.

The proposed manner, in which the delegates to the conference are to be selected in my opinion, is just another way of adopting Nwabueze’s proposal of being allowed to write a draft constitution for the country.  this allegation was not denied by either the president or Nwabueze.  If on the other hand, the conference is not meant to achieve a predetermined outcome, then why won’t it be shifted till next year, well after the general elections to enable INEC conduct elections on the basis of federal constituencies so that Nigerians will have a genuine peoples’ constitution – a demand that we have been inundated with in the past 20 years.  While it is generally agreed that our current constitution has some defects, the product of Jonathan’s conference will be worst than what we  now have in all its ramifications.  But I am assuming the president truly wants to fix a defective document and not impose his will on Nigerians. 

The adoption of nominations by the president presages the gravest danger to the north, particularly at this stage when they believe the north is on its knees politically and economically.  Some of those whom the president is allowed to nominate are what are referred to as ‘statesmen’, but who defines a statesman? Why should the president be allowed to nominate ‘statesmen’ for the zones? Do I qualify to be called a statesman?  Using universally accepted definitions of a statesman, do Edwin Clark, Tanko Yakassai or the Chairman of National of Road Transport Workers qualify as statesmen.  In my humble opinion, the trio all belong in the same category.

The excuse of not electing delegates to the conference doesn’t hold water, to me anyway.  If we can find $49.8 billion to steal, I don’t believe it could be hard to find N22 billion for INEC to conduct the elections for the delegates. We all know Jonathan and his chorus singers are scared of elections and will do whatever it takes to avoid going to the polls.  They believe bringing out oafs like Asari Dokubo from time to time will scare people into allowing them do what they want with peoples’ destiny.  While the klutz is threatening the country and our security men are applauding him he is investing in far away Benin Republic just to proof to you he doesn’t have confidence in the country.

If we are truly serious about restructuring the country, we should hold off the conference till after next year’s elections to enable INEC conduct elections for delegates for the conference.  A conference peopled by Jonathan’s henchmen will only be a conference for Goodluck Jonathan and his people.  No sane society can accept anything churned out by such a body.  A word is enough for the wise.