NORTHERN GOVERNORS: JONATHAN’S SOUL MATES?

It has been universally agreed that northern Nigeria has become a basket case.  The region is now a perfect template for failure in all its ramifications.  Our educational system has failed; the health sector is in shambles; agriculture – hitherto the bedrock of the region’s growth – is virtually non-existent, and commerce and industry has practically disappeared.  The north is to all intents and purposes, the sick man of Nigeria.  Blessed with a vast land – covering almost 80% of the landmass of Nigeria– most of it arable, large body of water and abundant human resource, this area is not supposed to be living on handouts.  This area was the financial grit of the country during the colonial days and the days immediately after independence.  What went wrong and how did we get it wrong?  These are questions that have been agitating my mind for a long time and I am yet to get answers to them.

I have had cause to visit one of the northern states recently and what I saw and went through in the hands of the top hierarchy of the political leadership opened a small vista for me on how we got ourselves into the current morass.  I have gone to this particular state on an official assignment with the intention of spending no more than two days at most but end up spending a week.  This is mainly because of the nature of leadership and the way power is exercised by those who wield it.  I saw first hand, how governance grind to a halt whenever the state governor is not around because of the enormous power vested in him by our constitution and his unwillingness to delegate such powers.  I saw first hand how time stopped for millions of people because governance come to a halt whenever the chief executive is not around and because political offices are turned to a platforms for dispensation of patronage instead of discharging administrative functions and responsibilities.  I felt scandalised.  Sadly, on sharing my experiences with a senior colleague, he told me that this is what obtains in virtually all the northern states.

On this visit, I was confronted with mediocrity, visionlessness, “big manism” and the cluelessness that is today the hallmark of our leadership.  I have seen how time wasted over commonplace issues to the detriment of critical issues that requires the full attention of a chief executive.  I have seen how the north was gradually rundown to its present state of hopelessness and anarchy by a core of leadership, which happened to find itself on the steering wheel without being ready for the journey a leadership largely bred by cronyism.  I was confronted with the base level we have taken governance thereby leading us to where we are today.  It is a pathetic narrative of the ways and manners the northern region is brought to its knees by those whose only motive for seeking public office is the acquisition of power with no articulated ways of using it.  It is acquired for the appellations or  the state’s purse, which invariably becomes the governor’s personal wallet.  I came to the conclusion that most of the governors of the north came to office without any enunciated plan or vision for their people, thus it is easy for them to rule the way they are doing.

In most cases, the governors are absentee governors as they can be found most often than not in Abuja, Dubai, one of the European capitals or the USA.  While the liaison offices in Abuja are in reality an extension of the governors’ offices to provide for a conducive working environment whenever a state chief executive visits the capital city, the governors’ offices in the various states capitals are now  de facto liaison offices.  Most of them breeze in and out of their state capitals that it is easier to “catch” them at the airports than in the government house.   I spent three days to see a governor just for three minutes.  My shock was in the realisation that neither him nor his minions who were aware of the imperativeness of my desire to see him, saw anything wrong in the man hours I wasted waiting to be summoned to his court.

With time on my hands, my mind kept wandering as to how the north got saddled with the kind of leadership we now have.  Do we deserve our current crop of leaders?  May be we do.  It dawned on me that these guys and Goodluck Jonathan are just different sides of the same coin.  May be that was why they went out on a limb to campaign for him in 2011 and some of them are still doing so for the upcoming 2015 elections.  Could the incompetence I saw, which my senior colleague told me is the same all over the north, be the catalyst that drove thousands of unemployed and unemployable youth into the waiting arms of terror merchants? Could the nonchalant attitude that I saw be responsible for the successes of the insurgency in the region?  Could this behaviour towards governance and its understanding or lack of it be liable for our failure to stem the brigandage going on all over the north and is threatening to consume everybody in the region?  Is there a correlation between how our governors administer our states and the rise in vagrancy in the north?

Numerous commentators have documented the incompetence and cluelessness of Jonathan, but I believe the searchlight should shift to our governors.  And to us the electorate who voted and rigged for them to get to their current offices.  What measures did we take to gauge their competence or incompetence before killing each other over their ambitions?  When they came for their campaigns, they only mumble inaudible and we cheer them without understanding what they mumble.  For all I know they may be insulting us.  We fail to see the shallowness of their promises and their emptiness in their verbosity.  If we had looked deeper, we would have noticed that the only promise they fail to make to us is the promise not to steal – and this is the only one they fulfil – they steal to their hearts’ content.  Please don’t get me wrong – I didn’t say corruption but stealing.  Our governors only take a break from the stealing only between one Federation Allocation Committee to another.

To underline the lack of vision by our governors, some of them are calling for the increase in revenue allocation to states instead of talking of revenue generation by the states.  They are very comfortable to be abused and insulted for the pittance thrown into their begging bowl by men no better than street thugs.  While we are blessed with abundant resources both human and natural, we have failed to harness any.

I believe the time is nigh for the northern electorates to open their eyes and ears to know who to vote for.  While our public officers are ensconced in fenced houses and cruise around in bulletproof vehicles, we are left at the mercy of a society fast retrogressing into a dark past.  Underlying our problems in the north today is a massive social dislocation.  This social dislocation is driven by a host of factors – greed, restricted access to education, health and other social services to the poor.  When next we go to the polls, we must ensure we make the right choices.  We must ensure that we elect officials that we will hold accountable.  Or else we surrender to internal colonialism.

DEMOCRATISATION OF VIOLENCE OR STATE OF EMERGENCY?

The request for the extension of the state of emergency in the northeast states tabled before the National Assembly by Goodluck Jonathan and sheepishly approved by the House of Representatives is clear indication that they have harkened to the misinformed call of the Southern Leadership Assembly and not the informed call by the North East Leadership Forum.  While the former live over a thousand kilometres away from the northeast, the later are right at the centre of the mayhem.  The act of tabling the request in itself is further prove positive that the Jonathan administration “has now become a government of impunity run by an evil-minded leadership..” to quote Admiral Murtala Nyako. 

While the people of the three states – Borno, Yobe and Adamawa – are counting the days and eagerly waiting for the last day of the emergency rule, those who the Admiral described in his Memo as “murderous/ cutthroats imbedded in our legitimate and traditional defence and security organisations” are pushing for the extension of the emergency.  As it turns out, Admiral, the “cutthroats” are also embedded in the political class. The people of these three states have been living through hell in the past one year. Their routines have been dislocated, their economic activities were grounded and their psyches have been brutalised.  Worse of all, the security situation became shoddier under the emergency regime.  An unnecessary curfew is imposed on the people making life more difficult than before the proclamation.  All businesses must be closed from a certain time to a definite time.  One is not allowed to venture out once the curfew hour kick-ins.  Even the act of taking a sick relation or expectant mother to the hospital has become risky because one may either be shot or arrested.  While they were enduring these, those calling for the extension of the state of emergency are ensconced in far away places like Abuja, Enugu, Port-Harcourt or Lagos.

It is not unusual for the soldiers to close down a whole town in the middle of the day in the name of “stop and search operation”.  While the innocent and law abiding are harassed, humiliated and confined to their houses defenceless and at the mercy of killers, the killers are having a field day with unbridled impunity and access – choosing and picking their targets. 

Another fall out of the state of emergency is the unwitting “democratisation of violence” – the proliferation of arms within the northeast of arms and ammunition. Today in the northeast, a toddler knows what an AK-47 looks like.  Small arms and rifles are now common sight.  It also led to the escalation of violence to unthinkable proportions. Before the declaration of the emergency regime, the insurgents operate in small ways before the audacious Baga massacre, which was attributed to the military.  This was the point that the mayhem took a life of its own and the declaration of the state of emergency only escalated the killing sprees. With the insurgents killing and destroying at will, the soldiers are harassing, humiliating and brutalising the people.  The innocent poor are now living a life filled with violence from both sides.

While I may not be a security expert, I am yet to see anything to convince me of the need to extent this martial tactic.  I am rather more convinced that the emergency rule should not be extended because of the results so far seen by the entire world and the pains it inflicts on those residing in the emergency states.  For those who are objective and unbiased, I want us to put the emergency rule on a scale and see what it has achieved.  This is without prejudice to creed, region or tribe.  We should view everything from a human prism untainted by our usual prejudices.

The invasion of Bama, Konduga, Gwoza Izge and Gamboru Ngala all took place while the emergency rule is in force.  The “insurgents” seem to be emboldened by the emergency declaration because they know all law abiding citizens are confined to their homes like chicken by the attendant curfew that is part of the emergency.  The insurgents who the emergency rule was meant to tame had a smooth ride overrunning military formations like the Air force base in Maiduguri and the Giwa Barracks.  The destruction of Mobbar, Mafa and some other villages along the Maiduguri – Damaturu highway were all carried out under the emergency rule.  And during curfew hours.

Students of Federal Government College, Buni Yadi were massacred in their sleep while Yobe state was effectively under the jackboots of the military, whose Commander in Chief is the President of the Federal Republic.  Beni Sheikh, another town in Yobe was invaded and many people slaughtered in cold blood.  Residents of Damaturu, Potiskum and Damagun, all in Yobe state, had to learn to sleep with both eyes open during in the past one year as the insurgents make sweeping visits to their towns from time to time unmolested.  Parents of schoolgirls in Chibok lost their kids under the emergency period and are yet to be reunited with them.  Their only consolation (if it can be called so) is that they are sure for the moment their children are alive, if the video shown to the world by their abductors is to be belived.

The northern part of Adamawa has not known peace from the time the emergency rule has been introduced in the state.  Numerous villages and towns around the area were attacked several times without response from the soldiers that are purportedly drafted to beef up security in the area.  The Adamawa state governor escaped death by the hairs of his beard at one time when he went to condole with those who came under attack by God knows who.

Interestingly, all the aforementioned attacks always take place in the night.  Security personnel are on the prowl during these curfew hours to ensure its compliance by a browbeaten citizenry.  The people living in these areas are caught between a brutal gang of killers and an unsympathetic security personnel whose presence is only felt at the ubiquitous road blocks that are now a veritable source of frustration to travellers and toll collection centres to those who man them.

The House of Representatives members hinged its motivation for the approval to extent the emergency rule in the three states on “evidence” presented before them by the Service Chiefs.  The House will have done itself a world of good by presenting this same evidence to the people of the northeast in order to convince them to buy into the extension.  Living in their Abuja comfort zones and appending their names to the continued brutalisation of their people by a military whose tactics are no better than those of the insurgents is easy for them.  I will advice most of them to avoid their constituencies because the evidences before the constituents paints a different picture.  Most of them believe they are better off before the emergency. 

These are some of the few things the people of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states have been subjected to in the past one year.  And this is what their so-called representatives want them to continue with for another six month.

The proclamation of a state of emergency in a democratic dispensation is an aberration and can therefore not be used ad infinitum.  If Jonathan believes that the Boko Haram menace falls under the factors numerated in S.305 (3) (c or d) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), then in my opinion, the threat by the Ijaw Youth Congress should be treated under S. 305 (3) (f).  With the near collapse of civilisation in the eastern region in the recent past when Port Harcourt was practically set ablaze, no such drastic action was taken on the region.  What is the difference now?

If the logic of those calling for the extension of the state of emergency in the three northeastern states is allowed to prevail, then the northern region of Nigeria should brace itself for a declaration of state of emergency in the whole of the region before the 2015 elections.  Either by design or default, the north is on fire – Boko Haram in the northeast, farmers/ herders clashes in the north central and bandits in the northwest. 

The success of the Civilian JTF in Borno is inspite of the emergency, not because of it.  Were the people of Raan, Kala Balge local government to rely on the soldiers to save them, their town will have been laid to ruins.  For the people of the northeast, emergency rule is akin to lining them up to be killed.   This, they are rising to reject.  The result? Everybody is arming himself the best way they know how.  This way they are all soldiers defending their lives and livelihoods.  Violence have been democratised by the emergency rule and who knows what becomes of these “civilian” JTF’s after the war against Boko Haram is won?  I leave that to your imagination.   The Senate may yet save the people by denying Jonathan his request.

If all else fails, then Diariz God.

NIGERIA’S IMPERIAL FAMILY

Nigeria is in trouble. Big trouble.  We are in a ship in turbulent waters with a big, ugly iceberg ahead of us and our captain is claiming not to see it.  Worse still, his crewmen are telling him that the road onward is clear.  That the next port of call, 2015, can be reached even if all those who paid (with their votes) for a smooth cruise will die or fall in the water before the destination is reached.  While the captain is playing dumb, his hired rabble rousers are busy adding more coal to the engine while the ship is fast cutting short the distance between the ship and the iceberg.  Some of the passengers, who may be on a death wish trip, are urging the captain to maintain course and whoever criticises his leadership of the ship should be thrown to the shark-invested ocean.

I am at a lost at how a country of 170 million people got saddled with a president with an addled brain – a country of brilliant and intelligent hardworking men and women, including a noble laureate.  We have a president with a one-track mind tagging a wife bent on embarrassing Nigerians in the international community with her lack of basic knowledge on either how a country is governed or the role of a presidential spouse.  Things are made more worrisome when you have a security leadership that is willing to be summoned and abused by a person with no known constitutional role or responsibility aside from entertaining her husband.  Here I am referring to the Borno State Commissioner of Police who presented himself to be insulted and disgraced by Patience Jonathan.  We can count ourselves lucky that no provision was made in our constitution recognising the spouses of elected officials.  Well, at least for now.  One may be celebrating prematurely – what with the way Ike Ekweremadu, the Deputy Senate President is lending himself as a vessel for the introduction of unpopular presidential Bills.

While the whole world is mourning with Nigerians on the abduction of over 200 of its kids from a school in the north east, Patience Jonathan decided to audition for a Nollywood flip in front a crowd made up of governors’ wives and a compliant media.  For a B rated movie, the performance was an insult on our amateurish movie industry.  Even though the movies that are daily churned out are insults to the word movie, hiring Faka (Fake?) Jonathan based on the performance that Sunday night/ Monday morning will be visiting violence to the movie industry, no matter how bad they are.  She came across as a bad play act even with almost three weeks of rehearsals.  Patience’s actions that weekend were insensitive, callous, uncouth, heartless, uncalled for and an unmitigated disaster to her image (if she has one). 

The verbal violence she unleashed on the traumatised parents, relations and teachers of those poor girls, who has been in the hands of killers for about a month now, was the height of superciliousness by anyone whose primary responsibility is to keep the bed of the president warm.  Many people were amused by her display of contrived emotion.  I was not.  To crown her show of power and disdain for the devastated parents and officials, she ordered the arrest of some of those who came to represent some parents who couldn’t make it to Abuja from Chibok for one reason or the other.  Apart from the mental anguish they are going through, they don’t have presidential jets to ferry them to be at her Imperial Majesty’s presence.  I don’t blame her for the insults she hurled at the Borno state officials.  I blame Kashim Shettima for allowing them to answer her summons, though his wife wisely opted out.  Would the punishment for not attending the ‘meeting’ be worse than the verbal violence they were subjected to?

I have been trying to twig in what capacity did Patience Jonathan subpoenaed these people and coming three weeks their kids have been whisked away – potential first ladies.  What was she doing all this while?  If she really cared, wouldn’t she have gone to Chibok the morning after and not send her husband to be dancing with Sani Danger and Shekarau in Kano few hours after the dastardly act was done?  Accusing the aggrieved of “sharing blood” is a notch higher than insensitivity.  And then she went on to practically accuse them of stage-managing the whole thing to mortify her husband, in cahoots with those against his 2015 ambition.  Mortify Jonathan?  Is it possible?  Has it crossed her mind (if she has any) that these people are in unspeakable anguish not knowing what unimaginable things their daughters are going though?

While she was acting her script, her husband was “catechising” officials of the Borno state government on whether the students have actually being abducted.  What a slur!  While Jonathan and his wife were sleeping in the three weeks that the girls have been away from their parents, these people that he is grilling couldn’t get a wink because of the pressures they are subjected to by the parents of the kids.  To compound their tomfoolery, they introduce sectional dimension through our current moron-in-chief, Asari Dokubo and a religious angle through the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), in particularly the not long ago formed Northern Christian Elders Forum.  While the whole world is united in outrage over what happened to these poor innocent kids, the president is exploiting our fissures to escape from responsibility.  As far as he has shown, he is angry that the abduction has put a hold to his junketing across the country campaigning for an election we are told he may not contest.

The anger shown by Jonathan towards the members of the House of Representatives for daring to invite his favourite Minister, Deziani Allison-Maduekwe was more real than his animus towards the terror merchants who rendered a whole community sad and miserable.  What gave the members the audacity to label Allison-Maduekwe corrupt?  Don’t they know the difference between a thief and a corrupt person?  Saint Deziani is not corrupt but only a thief who intermittently dips her hands and pilfers some billion dollars.  They are lucky he doesn’t have the power to sanusi them.  They should ask the Danmaje who couldn’t even travel to neighbouring Niger all because he labelled the saint of the Petroleum Ministry corrupt.

Goodluck Jonathan and his wife are ready to play Russian roulette with the lives of not only those poor abducted girls but the lives of all Nigerians just so that they can remain in the Aso Villa for may be another four years.  They always recourse to ethnicity, regionalism and religion whenever their incompetence is manifested by one avoidable mistake or the other.  And we always buy the scam.  From being a shoeless poor fisherman’s son from a minority tribe to being hated by northerners for being southerner, to well publicised church pilgrimages, we are gradually being diminished by Jonathan’s actions.  And we always buy into his scam.  While we are at each other’s throats, the couple are steadily creating and Imperial dynasty.  I just pray there will be a country left by the time they take their final bow.

And there are clowns like Doyin Okupe and the recently kicked out Ali Gulak wiling to do hatchet man’s job for their Imperial majesties.  Instead of admitting their incompetence, they unleashed the likes of Okupe or Asari Dokubo to remind us of how low we have sunk as a nation.  When a nation’s policies or lack of it; when a nation’s leader’s image is managed by those who are more comfortable living in the sewers than in comfortable, then the nation has retrogressed to prehistoric times.

A badly written script, acted by amateur thespians to a divided house.  God save us from this combination.  Chai, there is God wo!

NYAKO’S MEMO, PATIENCE’S HAUGHTINESS & JONATHAN’S LETHARGY

Now that the storm that we intentionally generated in order to obfuscate the issues raised by governor Murtala H. Nyako of Adamawa State is gradually settling down, one may now comment on the issues raised and the predictable reactions from supporters and apologists of a federal government increasingly becoming insensitive, disconnected and haughty to the feelings, yearnings and expectations of Nigerians.  It has become very predictable that whoever questioned the way the country is governed, or raised issues of fundamental importance to the well-being and safety of Nigerians, becomes fair game to presidential Rottweilers.  Sadly, I am forced to look at the government’s reactions to issues pertaining the northern region of the country or northerners from a northern perspective.  Goodluck Jonathan has ensured that issues are now viewed from sectional prisms, no matter how nationalistic one pretends to be.  Much as I dislike being compartmentalised, I am forced to do the compartmentalisation myself.  The government of Goodluck Jonathan has succeeded in turning me into a regionalist

A Facebook post by Hauwa Abbas got me thinking along these lines.  According to Mrs Abbas, Jonathan has never been hesitant in taking decisive action where a northern appointee of his is found wanting (by their standards).  Her thesis is informed by the “premature” sacking of Ahmed Ali Gulak (one of the Rottweilers), Jonathan’s Political Advisor and ethnic hate monger in-chief.  I could not see anything wrong in sending Gulak to the political Gulag that that is his comeuppance but Mrs Abbas’ post got me running to reread Nyako’s memo.  Could it be the genocide Nyako is talking about is not only limited to the on-going massacre in the north but may also metaphorically extend to the political realm?  Could it be assumed that the destruction of the political careers of northern politicians is part of the genocidal plans for the north?

We have seen how fast the federal government sends its security goons after any northerner that dare criticise the government of Jonathan.  We have seen how the likes of Nasir El-Rufa’i, and Dr. Junaid Mohammed were “invited’ by the powers that be at the Yellow House, the headquarters of the Department of State Security, for their predictions if the 2015 elections is rigged.  Whatever the duo might have said to raise the danger antennae of the government pale into insignificance when compared to what Edwin Clark, Dokubo Asari, Ann-Kio Briggs and, ironically, Ahmed Ali Gulak said would happen in the event Jonathan doesn’t get a second offering of the national cake.  We are yet to hear the same ‘invitations’ extended to them by the DSS.  Unless George Orwell’s Animal Farm is now our constitution.

The north is under siege – I have said this several times and I still believe the region is under siege by forces, which the government may know about or not.  If the government is aware of those bent on destroying the region but choose to be inactive, then the government is complicit by its inaction.  On the other hand if they are not aware of those perpetrating the massacres and destructions, then they are equally complicit by their failure to uphold the oath of office they took to protect the lives and properties of Nigerians wherever they may be.  Whichever way you look at it, the government must be ready to answer questions posed by Nigerians, whatever their station in life, particularly those who live in and around the epicentre of the killings and destructions.

The questions raised by Nyako in his memo are reflective of everyday discussions by northerners. The way and manner the federal government reacts to misfortunes in the north or to northerners raises concern among the people of the region and leads to such speculations.  I have had cause to raise such questions in my past commentaries like how General Shuwa was murdered right in front of soldiers; how these beasts can operate within a specific location for hours without the fear of interruption by security personnel whose main brief in the north east appear to be the harassment of hapless civilians.  The Buni Yadi bloodbath, the attack on the Maiduguri Airforce Base, the attack on Bama and other villages and the most heinous of all – the abduction of about 276 school girls.  All these happen in a state that is essentially under the jackboots of the military.  We are told the insurgents move freely in a convoy of more than twenty cars in the night when a curfew is supposed to be in place.  We all know one can hardly take a sick person to a health facility without being molested by the “guardians” of the curfew – how come these killers have safe passage without being challenged?

How do the insurgents replenish their supplies – food, arms, fuel and other daily consumables for them to live the life they are alleged to be living?  As a retired Naval four-star general; a former chief security officer; a former Naval chief; a former Deputy Chief of Defence Staff and at his age and with his accomplishments, I find it difficult to comprehend why Nyako should be accused of playing to the gallery.  So no matter what politics one professes, when the likes of Nyako speaks on security matters, one is compelled to listen.  Presidential attack dogs made up of the likes Ali Gulak, Doyin Okupe and Edwin Clark won’t keep their mouth long enough to appreciate the gravity of what the retired Admiral is saying.  The Navy of yore was never involved in oil theft or providing covering fire to oil thieves.  They were through bred professionals unlike what we have now – glorified ethnic warlords who happened to find themselves at the right end of a gun.

The other concern raised by many northerners is the “to hell with you attitude” of the federal government on anything or anyone to do with this part of the country.  This leads to the insensitivity exhibited by Jonathan and his sidekicks whenever any misfortune befalls the region.  A case in point is the act of dancing and rejoicing in Kano a day after over 75 souls were lost to nihilists and about 275 school girls vanished into thin air.  To rub it in for the parents of the abductees, Patience Jonathan the president’s uncouth wife came out smoking – practically questioning the veracity of the whole thing. Looking representatives of the anguished parents straight in the eye, she accused the Borno State government of organising the kidnap in order to embarrass her husband.  As if they need anybody to embarrass them more than the way they are embarrassing the country in the comity of civilised world.  The position taken by Patience re-echoes that of Kema Chikwe, the Women Leader of the PDP, Jonathan’s party. Such heartlessness.  I wish their daughters were among them.  They wouldn’t have been careless with their mouths.

We were told that Patience’s foster father in-law was kidnapped and we believed and prayed for his release; the nation was informed that the first son of Edwin Clark was equally kidnapped; we again believed and prayed for his safe return.  But Jonathan and his spouse are now accusing the victims of “embarrassing” his government by those against his 2015 ambition.  Such cheek!  Such callousness!  For good measure, they tried introducing the religious card by insinuating that the girls were abducted because they are Christians.  For those who may not know, Chibok is a predominantly Christian community.

Nyako’s memo succeeded in at least exposing the cowardly streak in our leaders and also reaffirming the believe of the average Joe on the northern streets that the Jonathan administration will be happy seeing him annihilated.  While the questions raised by Nyako resonated with the northern poor, their governors and political leadership queued up behind Jonathan in pooh poohing the memo.  By this singular act, Nyako came out smelling a bouquet of a million roses, while his colleagues in the north came out smelling like what the cat brought home.  

The earlier we accept the fact that no amount of denial and condemnations will make the questions go away, the better for all of us.  The questions must be answered not wished away.

Patience and Jonah, God de woooooooooh!