THE NIGERIAN ARMY: STEPPING BACK INTO JANUARY 1966

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The current promotions and retirements in the Nigerian army portend danger to the continued unity of this country; it reminds one of the complete annihilation of the crop of officer corps of northern extraction in January of 1966.  Now, as then, Igbo officers led the putsch – the difference being while the officers of 1966 used guns, the officers of 2012 used their pens.  With the attempt to rewrite the history of the civil war by the likes of Chinua Achebe and other intellectuals of Igbo descent, the direction of the intellectual warfare is beginning to be clear to those whose vision was befuddled by the pseudo-intellectualism of the writers.  It all began with giving Odumegwu Ojukwu, the leader of the defeated Biafra a state burial as if he was not directly responsible for the deaths of nearly a million people during the civil war.  The brutal killing of General Mamman Shuwa, an authentic civil war hero, right in front of nearly a dozen soldiers who were supposed to be guarding him, followed this.

If the skewed nature of the promotions and retirements is indicative of where the army is headed to, then we are in serious trouble.  A recent news item in one of the dailies went further to say that the retirements are not over because others still in service, particularly those from the north and the south who are seniors to one Major General Minimah will be retired to make way for him to take over as Chief of Army staff when the current Army Chief of Staff, General Ihejirika steps down.  That the present chief is retained just so that he can truncate the careers of senior officers to make way for a Minimah.  Though covertly, the officer corps of northern ancestry has been systematically decimated in the services, the subtle implication of Major General Isa and Air Vice Marshall Kure in the bombings inside the Jaji Cantonment was the first salvo fired overtly.  The subsequent forceful retirement of General Isa, who was in line to take over from Ihejirika, confirmed what was generally suspected to be in the offing.

The politicisation of the Nigerian military has destroyed the very essence of the services – professionalism.  Promotions and retirements are now based on primordial sentiments like where you come from and which religion you professes not on merit, seniority or such other professional considerations.  Though this was shrewd in the past, particularly during the Obasanjo regime, it has become full blown now.  The audacity of its authors leaves one breathless.  With what is happening in the military, one has the feeling that Goodluck Jonathan is bent on making sure he is the last President of what we know as Nigeria.  The parallels between what is unfolding now and the wholesale massacre of northern military officers in January of 1966 are uncanny and scary.  The events of the night of January 15^th, 1966 is repeating itself right before our eyes but this time no blood is flowing, only careers destroyed, some in their prime.  Are we by any stretch of the imagination sure the country is going to survive the current assault on its values by a government that cares little about the sensitivity of certain things?  A government that its functionaries branded a whole section of the country as ‘terrorists’?

The claim by the Controller General of the Immigration Service that she refused to advertise vacancies in the service in order to avoid recruiting ‘terrorists’ into the organisation sums up the mind set of those who forced the retirement of certain people in the Nigerian army simply to make way for Minimah to become Chief of Army Staff.  Our military institution is taken back to the days of the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) by a government insensitive to the existing socio-political fault lines.  The retirements and/ or promotions of officers purely based on the perception that a section of the country can and could be made subservient to another bodes danger to the corporate existence of the country. My take on the current exercise of weeding out officers of northern and south western extraction is synonymous with the murders of Brig. S.A. Ademulegun, Major S.A. Adegoke, Lt. Col. J.Y. Pam, Brig. Zakari Maimalari and Col. Kur Mohammed and the rest.  Then as now, no single Igbo officer lost his life or commission.  While Maimalari and co. lost their lives, Isa and his mates lost their commissions while the rest are on the firing line to lose theirs. My fears are – will the country bear the consequences of this misadventure?

If any officer is due for retirement let him be retired but if they are not, the military authorities should allow them retire whenever they are due to unless they choose to voluntarily do so.  The wise thing to do for those who want Minimah to head the army is to make sure he remains in the army and bide his time.  Retire his seniors to make way for him will be a very dangerous precedent that may be imitated by others when their ‘time’ comes.  The way the military and the country are run today will surely make Godwin Orkar proud in his grave.

EXECUTIVE PLANE CRASHES & ROADBLOCKS

My heart goes out to Dame Amina Elizabeth Yakowa on her irreplaceable lost – a lost felt by all and sundry in Kaduna State in particular and the country in general.  But no one will feel this lost more than the Dame for she lost a husband, companion and possibly a father. I pray God will give you the fortitude to bear the loss and the forbearance to forge ahead.  Sir Patrick Yakowa’s death was a lost to all, but while the state lost a bridge-builder, the family lost a patriarch.  We can all take solace in knowing that he did his best and wasn’t found wanting wherever he served throughout his public service career.  Mrs Yakowa should be well assured that the encomiums pouring in after his tragic death are not the usual political crocodile tears which easily flow eyes that are touched with handkerchiefs soaked in Mentholatum.  The tears were genuine and the encomiums authentic.  May Sir Patrick Yakowa be with his Lord.

Tragic as the chopper crash that snuff the late governor’s life, we may as well interrogate ourselves on the methods taken by the various states and the federal government as a means of safeguarding the lives and properties of the high and mighty.  Today most cities in the north looks like conquered territories because of the high concentration of gun totting military personnel wherever one turns.  Our society have been militarised, and if I can borrow Jerry Rawlings cliché, “violence have been democratised”, with a human life costing less than the cost of the bullet used to kill him.  The soldiers deployed to our cities and highways have turned out to be worse than the Boko Haram fighters it is meant to protect the people from.  The number of souls lost to the bullets of the soldiers may be higher than the number of those killed by the sect members.  Much as the people have been calling on the authorities for the withdrawal of the soldiers, the authorities have turned deaf ears because they believe the people are their enemies and must therefore be shielded from by force of arms.  All this may be a direct consequence of how our leaders emerged through fraudulent means.

Apart from the daily lost of lives caused by the military, the humiliation our people suffer from the hands of these uncouth goons both in the cities and the highways are terrible, to say the least.  I had the misfortune of travelling to Yola by road from Kaduna and the way commuters in public vehicles are humiliated and intimidated made me hate being a Nigerian.  The military men manning the roadblocks behaves no different from occupation forces we see on our television sets in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.  Passengers are asked to come down from their vehicles and open their luggage for a public display of their most personal items.  At some roadblocks, passengers are ordered to face away from the vehicle while searches are conducted.  I saw a woman forced to mow grasses for daring to look at a soldier while he was searching their bus.  The ‘rule’ is that all passengers are to turn their backs to their luggage while it being searched.  Can’t be worse for Palestinians crossing into Israel.  We ended up making a trip of eight hours in ten. 

For those in the towns, the experiences are far worse for those using motorcycles.  You are forced to dismount at the pain of being flogged by the soldiers at the roadblocks. The harassments and humiliations apart, the stupendous amount of money that goes into maintaining these roadblocks are mind-boggling.  The monies should have made a lot of difference in the lives of our long-suffering compatriots.  With all the ubiquity of the roadblocks, the bombers – what they are purportedly created to stop – are continuing to have a field day.  With the twin bombings in the heart of the military’s elitist Cantonment – Jaji – the uselessness of these roadblocks have been exposed.  They are just useless money guzzlers and a tool for the humiliation of the poor who find it difficult to navigate the various fierce looking, gun-totting soldiers, to go looking what to eat.

My point in this piece is for us to use Yakowa’s death to rethink our security strategies.  Our government houses have been turned into fortresses and most government institutions and structures are looking like mini military cantonments all in an effort to protect our governors, lawmakers and other public functionaries.  But the architect of this draconian security policy – the late Owoye Azazi – died in a chopper crash.  He was “attacked” by death where you can’t erect a roadblock.  I do not claim to know much about the man Azazi but I know him from reputation as the man indicted for the crime of unprecedented movement of military hardware to Niger Delta militants when he was the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 1 Mechanised Division, Kaduna.  He went on to head the Army and retire as Chief of Defence Staff.  He reinvented himself during the Goodluck Jonathan’s administration as the National Security Adviser (NSA) with enormous powers and influence.  He is no more but his legacies of roadblocks live with us.  The continued attacks by faceless terror groups who, for all we know, are hiding behind the mask of Boko Haram to perpetrate mayhem in the north, is a testament to the failure of these death traps.  They are there simply to degrade and intimidate poor daily road users who cannot afford sirens. 

Kaduna state has lost a rare gem.  A man who overcame his prejudices to lead an ethnically and religiously fragmented state.   It was universally agreed that Yakowa was a good man and tried his best for Kaduna and its people.  I hope he is in the bosom of his Lord.  As to Azazi, I am sure he was also eulogised by those he did his best to impress while alive; those he assisted in life even at the expense of others.  Though I may disagree with him and his worldview, he did his level best to make sure his people are visible in all spheres of our polity.  Despite his concerted efforts to have the northern part of Nigeria labelled a ‘terrorists territory’ and despite failing to do so, the man served the country in his own ways.

But the death of these two and the pilots and other passengers in the helicopter crash should ideally wake us up from the folly of thinking that we can mount roadblocks to ward off death. Injustice begets injustice and disenchantment that leads to frustrations, which in turn leads to the destructive spree we are witnessing.  Living behind sandbags, high fences, attack dogs and fierce looking security operatives hasn’t solved the problem but actually exacerbated it.   Governor Danbaba Danfulani of Taraba State is still in the hospital in Germany (I pray for his full recovery).  No ‘terrorists’ attacked the plane he was piloting;  Governor Idris Wada, a pilot, ironically was involved in fatal road accident, which claimed the life of his ADC. 

The best way to immortalise these gentlemen who lost their lives needlessly, is to find a lasting solution to the incessant insecurity in the country; to ensure that every Nigerian sleeps with both eyes and not this ad-hoc arrangement through which the authorities create more enemies than friends.

AS WAS WITH BALARABE MUSA, SO IT SHOULD BE WITH TANKO AL-MAKURA

The recent threat by the Nassarawa State House of Assembly to impeach the state governor, Tanko Al-Makura of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) reminds one of the maxim that “the more things change, the more they remain the same”.  Reading the story took me back to the second republic politics of old Kaduna State when a National Party of Nigeria (NPN) dominated House of Assembly fought a war of attrition with the Peoples Redemption (PRP) governor of the state.  The then NPN swept the country like a gale picking states at will particularly the northern states but could not win the mother lode – the old Kaduna state.  It was a shocker for the NPN and its candidate, Lawal Kaita, who to all intents and purposes was just waiting to be crowned.  While the NPN swept almost all the seats in the legislature, it performed woefully losing the gubernatorial seat to a little known accountant – Balarabe Musa.  This was unacceptable to the NPN and so began the ‘war’, which led to Balarabe’s impeachment.  The people of the state were the worst for it because in the two years that Mallam Balarabe Musa lasted, he was not allowed to perform optimally with distractions coming from the House of Assembly.  Be as it may, the PRP government was able to establish some industries like the Kachia Ginger factory and the Ikara Food Processing Company.

We can only guess what the state lost by the antics of the NPN, but from the little that was delivered by Mallam Bala, we can hazard a guess as to the unquantifiable loss the state experienced with his impeachment.  Balarabe Musa operated without commissioners for the duration of his stay in office but many people still revere him for his performance and he still remains a reference point for good governance.  The shenanigans taking place in Nassarawa state since the ascension of Al-Makura to the governor’s office reminds one of how the NPN scuttled people’s dreams because of the selfishness of the party and its members in 1981.  In the run-up to the 2011 general elections, Tanko Al-Makura a founding member of the PDP decamped to the newly registered CPC to actualise his ambition of leading Nassarawa Sate as governor, which he couldn’t realise in the PDP.  In a scene reminiscent of Kaduna in 1979, the PDP won almost all the elections held in 2011 and then lost the governorship to the CPC and Al-Makura.  The PDP holds Al-Makura responsible for its loss in Nassarawa State.

From the day Al-Makura was sworn to the present moment, the governor has not known peace from his legislators who are supposed to be his partners in carrying the state forward.  He has been jumping from one booby trap to the other.  The legislators once boycotted their legislative functions for the ridiculous reason that the governor refused to furnish their chamber – a contract awarded by the erstwhile governor when most of them were in the legislature.  But the recent threat to impeach the governor within seven days beat all else.  How does a fight between two ethnic groups constitute an impeachable offence beats my imagination.  Much as I try to see reason and logic in the threat, I couldn’t find any.  Nigeria has been practically on fire since Goodluck Jonathan became president but I cannot remember anyone threatening him with impeachment.

Ethnic and religious violence has been the hallmark of elite rivalry and has been destroying the country and tearing the nation apart and any right thinking Nigerian is trying to find solutions to these senseless killings and destructions going on.  To try to trivialise such a grave issue is tantamount to irresponsibility.  The PDP like politicising issues that they believe will advance its cause even if lives may be lost.  This attitude is exactly why you have pockets of clashes all over the country.  Authorities concerned are not interested in addressing critical questions but rather try to gain political points from such.  The recent misadventure by the group called Ombatse in Nassarawa state that led to the lost of lives of innocent Nigerians, some ordinary travellers, should under normal, rational circumstances elicit condemnation by the State House of Assembly and a call on the authorities (state and federal) to arrest and prosecute the leaders of the group.  But no.  The PDP see the disturbance of a way of issuing threats and may be finally get rid of Al-Makura, whose only offence seems the bruising of PDP’s dirty nose in the dirt.

The legislators accused the governor of lacking “competence to response to emergencies, and has shown complete disdain for the courtesy of extending relief to thousands, including women and their children, as well as the elderly, often displaced by the fast spreading violence”.  I hope federal legislators from Borno and Yobe states are listening and will take a cue from the Nassarawa State legislators.  The people of the two states (Borno and Yobe) should ask their representatives on why they are yet to issue impeachment threats against the president.  Goodluck Jonathan has not for once visited these hapless people to even show empathy, much less extend “relief”.  While he is not busy to attend the 40^th pastoral anniversary of Ayo Oritsejafor, he is always busy to visit Borno and Yobe despite the unparalleled lost of lives and destruction of economic activities in the two states under his watch.

Al-Makura was also accused by the majority leader in the House, Godiya Akwasiki, of “failing to comply with previous House resolutions to act on the raging violence and has folded his hands to watch while the people were daily being killed”.  May be I don’t get the meaning of this allegation, but are they talking about the president or Nassarawa State governor?

The NPN held the people Kaduna State to ransom and denied them the chance to be led by a bonafide welfarist.  Now it appears it is the turn of Nassarawa State and its people to be treated to the fascist’s treatment by the offshoot of the NPN.  I see the fascism that drove Balarabe Musa out of office in 1981 at play in Nassarawa State in 2012.  But if the state legislators should be foolhardy to go ahead with their threat, National Assembly members should be on notice to kick out Goodluck for the fact that while Nigeria is on fire he is playing modern day Nero – drinking expensive wine in place of Nero’s fiddle.

If the PDP as an institution wants to play this type of brinkmanship, why don’t they start with the presidency?  At least they are in control of the National Assembly.  To selectively single out Al-Makura for such a threat smacks of arrogance and bad bele.  This should be unacceptable to Nigerians wherever they may be.  We should not allow dictatorship creep in on us wearing the garb of law and order.  Granted that Al-Makura must, as the chief security officer of the state, ensure the prevalence of peace, harmony and peaceful co-existence amongst and between the disparate people of the state.  But this must be applicable to the federal government that controls all security agencies.

THE NORTH’S WRETCHED OF THE EARTH

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Whenever you think northern Nigeria has reached its nadir in the area of insecurity, we touch a new low.  With the killing of Major General Mamman Shuwa, war time General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the first Division, the situation was pushed a notch lower.  The late Shuwa was the most invisible among his peers throughout his retirement years and many people believed he died a long time ago.  His low profile life after retirement belies his larger than life stature of the folklores surrounding him while we were growing up.   Shuwa was an enigma to many people but that was the way he chose to live his life.  May his soul rest in peace.

The north has been under siege, so to say, since the middle of 2010.  The first salvo was fired in the Eagle Square during the Independence Day celebration of that year and since then the region has not known peace.  Almost every part of the region has experienced one crisis or the other; lives have been needlessly wasted and economies, both public and private, destroyed.  The level of infrastructural damage in a region with already atrophied infrastructure is mind-boggling.  This is happening to a region noted for its high level of poverty and illiteracy, high poverty level, low economic and commercial activities and dangerous rise in immorality and indolence.  The area is therefore home to the largest concentration of beggars found anywhere in the world.  These factors and bad governance by a leadership that is increasingly isolating itself from the people may largely be responsible for the insecurity situation.

Much as one may try to make excuses for our leadership (particularly the northern governors and other political leaders of the region) one is forced to admit leadership failure at all the strata of governance in the north.  The northern region has never had it so rough and I dare say no region has ever had it this tough without any fear of contradiction.  Gone were the days when parents were either forced or enticed to send their wards to school; gone also were the days when there was competition among parents as to who has the highest number of wards in the school, or the number of university graduates per household; gone also were the days when service to the community and nation supersedes personal aggrandisement.  Today the competition may be on who has the least number of students in school or which mallam has the largest body of almajirai.  Our streets are littered with street urchins, some barely out of their diapers – non-among them has a chance in hell of seeing the four walls of classroom.

My generation and the generation before enjoyed the best governments have to offer is now denying these poor souls the chance to even hope for a decent life.  We, the inheritors, are guilty of the perilous state of our communities.  We foolishly think being well off personally is tantamount to living in peace and to hell with the other guy.  Living behind high fences topped by electric or razor fence gives us a false sense of security.  We forget that those boys – those that we turned into hewers and drawers of water – venture into our houses, some to our innermost sanctums, to spy on us and see first hand how our over-pampered, children live while they scavenge our thrash cans for remnants of junk foods bought for our kids to or from school.  We invite them into our lives to come and wash for kids, sweep our houses and remove the garbage from our houses.  They see us living a life that they can only envy; yet we wonder how they become beasts without compassion.  We turned them in these beasts, wittingly or unwittingly.

We steal the money meant to educate them and send our kids abroad only for them to come back (or brought back) as graduates of drug addiction.  We pilfer the monies meant for the purchase of drugs and equipment for public hospitals to afford us the opportunity of travelling abroad for the merest ailment only for us to be brought back in caskets or strange ailments that our doctors lack the expertise or equipment to take care of.  We siphon the monies meant for the provision of potable drinking water to build boreholes in our houses.  We pinch monies for the provision of electricity and buy generators so our kids won’t miss Scooby Doo, The Simpsons, Ben10 and such other cartoons that only encourage immorality.  We are comfortable stealing funds meant to construct roads for the use of the poor and buy planes to pollute the atmosphere and air they breathe.  How did we come to this heartless century?  We that are noted for compassion are today guilty of lack of empathy.

We were given free education by our past leaders and now that we have taken up the leadership mantle have failed our younger ones and generations yet unborn.  We pretend not to know the causes of the mayhem unleashed on us by those whom we neglected and treat like dirt.  The hopelessness, their poverty and the way we throw our ill-gotten wealth at their faces are some of the things that make them behave irrationally.  We have taken away their future and that of their children, yet we think they are unreasonable.  Have we ever paused to think our roles in the creation of the monster that is now threatening to consume us?  Have we been fair to those who made it possible for us to be the successes that we belief we are today?  How did we come to this sorry pass? 

We have created a nation where injustice appears to have taken permanent residence.  Different folks are treated differently and this therefore, engender lost of faith in the country.  While pickpockets and small-time criminals are punished, armed robbers are rewarded with the country’s highest honours, appointments and contracts.  I can easily empathise with a boy who grew up on the streets, through no fault of his, when he becomes a killer for hire.  I am not justifying such behaviour but where you have a country that doesn’t care about your well-being and a president who “doesn’t give a damn” about you and your feelings, what do you expect to get?  The streets are harsh and unforgiving.

The spate of killings and property destruction sweeping across the north is a serious indictment on the leadership of the region.  They appear to be going round in circles with no clear vision as to how to bring an end to this madness.  Unfortunately they are part of the problem.  The poverty level of the region can be directly attributable to their selfish style of leadership.  For their visionless leadership style, today the economy of the north is prostate, the result is what see – unemployment spawning poverty, which breeds discontent that translate into anarchy.  While our cities and villages are burning, we pretend to find solutions in posh hotels, drinking coffee and exchanging banters while reading our mails on our Ipads, Iphones, BlackBerry and Samsung Smartphones.  Each of these gadgets is enough to send a kid to school.

The north is fast turning into a concentration of illiterates; drug addicts, morons and this invariably make people angry and suicidal.  Suicidal because they don’t have anything in life and nothing to protect.  Their lives become hopeless so therefore not worth living.  If such be their lot, why do you think they should spare you.  Shuwa is gone through the bullets fired by either an amateur or a trained killer.  His visibility, service to his community and the fact he lived all his live in the midst of the down trodden, couldn’t save him from them at the end.  Are we living the life Shuwa led?  Are we truly one with the people just like the late General?  Have we really tried to interrogate ourselves on why the region, known for its peaceful coexistence has suddenly turned to violence, where human life isn’t valued more than a dog’s?

The genesis of the violence surrounding us can be located in our governments abandoning education, making it unaffordable to the poor.  This led to the burgeoning in the number of street kids – their training ground being the streets and their teachers the criminals roaming the streets looking for gullible, innocent youths.   Thus we unwittingly created an army of killers, rapists and sundry criminals.  We created mindless, hopeless youth that will look you in the eye and shoot you dead without blinking their eyes.  We assumed in our usual fashion that we could use them as cannon fodders and scallywags during elections and discard at the end of their assignments.  To have total control over them, we introduce to hallucinogenic drugs but forgot to learn how to wean them from it.  They now take all manner of assignments to enable them satiate their thirst for the drugs.

These then are those that could kill without any emotion.  These are our legacy to the north that our parents inherited from the likes of Sardauna, Tafawa Balewa and Mahmud Ribadu.  While our first generation leaders bred first class scholars, civil servants and military officers, we have proudly procreated the demons that are consuming us.  To insult them the more, we conceived the Almajiri schools, more to give out contracts to the ‘boys’ than to cater for their education.  Why don’t we use the money so voted for these segregated schools to incorporate them into those schools where the kids of our domestic helps go to – the public schools.

We either rethink our ungodly, thieving ways or be prepared to be consumed by the hatred we are brewing in the bellies of these poor souls.

TARABA: THE HEAT IN SUNTAI’S ABSENCE- JOURNALISTS AT IT AGAIN

Our journalists and political jobbers are at it again.  In 2010 when the late President Umaru ‘Yar Adua was on his dying bed in Saudi Arabia, the vultures began circling and so much unwanted acrimony was generated which we are yet to overcome as a nation.  Danbaba Danfulani Suntai, Taraba State governor had an accident in a plane he was flying himself and his condition is still unknown.  We all pray for his recovery soonest.  But the signals emanating from the state portends danger for all the citizens of the state and all those who love the state.  I see some people trying to recreate what happened during the dying days of the ‘Yar Adua presidency.  The alleged sacking of the Deputy Governor by thugs said to be sponsored by a sitting Senator while security men attached to the Deputy Governor averted their gaze, says much about what to expect in the near future.  While the Deputy Governor was issuing press statements with a view to dousing the tension generated by the accident and its aftermath, I read a feature in the Daily Trust of November 1^st, 2012 by its Taraba State Correspondents Messrs. Andrew Agbese & Terkula Igidi with the above caption.  I felt scandalised.  Despite what transpired in the run-up to Jonathan taking over from ‘Yar Adua and the attendant friction it created in our society, some people are still ready to take us down that road again.

The feature was nothing but a subtle way of turning one segment of the society against the other.  Otherwise, what is the use of amending the said section 190 of the Constitution, which they copiously quoted?  I thought the section was amended to take care of such eventualities and prevent the recurrence of the unnecessary situation that arose in the ‘Yar Adua case.  If I understand the quoted section of the Constitution very well, the question of which Senatorial Zone or which religion one professes doesn’t arise.  A Deputy Governor / Vice President is picked precisely for what the duo of Agbese and Igidi are now trying to use to ‘disqualify’ Alhaji Umar Garba, the Taraba State Deputy Governor.  When those calling for Goodluck Jonathan to take over were in their elements, nobody brought up the issue of his faith or Zone and when ‘Yar Adua’s handlers resisted the move, the Senate passed what it called the “doctrine of necessity”, something alien to our laws.  We all accepted the Senate’s wisdom.  For the duo to imply that Patrick Yakowa was opposed because of his faith in Kaduna is a blatant lie with a mischievous intent.  He was the Deputy Governor and there wasn’t any ambiguity in our Constitution as who shall take over once there is a vacancy in the Government House so long as the tenure the Governor and his Deputy for which they were elected has not expired. 

No one opposed the take-over by both Goodluck Jonathan and Patrick Yakowa at the time the conditions of vacancies emerged in their respective political spheres.  As far as I am concerned, Jonathan and his group created a panicky scenario where northern politicians, depicted as desperately attempting to cling to power by all means, fair or foul, were trying to deny him his right to “ascend” the throne.  My take then was that it was indecent for us to be fighting over ephemeral things like the presidency while the holder of that office was lying prostrate before His maker, waiting for Him to do as He decreed.  It was disrespectful to his family and friends that we could be so heartless as to start “sharing” his inheritance while he was still alive and kicking.  But I know that every living soul must taste death.  Do we have guarantees that Danbaba will not outlive Alhaji Garba Umar or any of his plethora of loyalists who wanted to be identified as those who protected the realm in the emperor’s absence? 

If it were alright for both Jonathan and Yakowa to succeed their bosses when vacancies existed, then equity demands that Alhaji Umar shall also take-over – it is just a matter of time.  Endangering hatred between and among the disparate ethnic groups in the state will not help anyone bar the merchants of hate.  The writers’ resort to this underhand way of giving credence to those who want section 190 of the Constitution be interpreted to reflect their narrow prisms and horizons, makes them more guilty than the purported thugs who invaded the government house while the security operatives deployed to protect the Deputy Governor looked the other way.  Sub-section (2) of section 190 clearly spells what ought to happen in the case of Taraba State.  The section states unequivocally that “In the event that the governor is unable to transmit the written declaration mentioned in sub-section (1)  of this section within 21 days, the House of Assembly shall, by a resolution made by a simple majority of the vote of the House, mandate the Deputy Governor to perform the functions of the Governor as Acting Governor, until the Governor transmits a letter to the Speaker that he is now available to resume his functions as a Governor.  So said the Nigerian Constitution and concurred by our duo.

As things stand today, Alhaji Umar Garba is the Deputy Governor of Taraba, and until such a time as he is impeached, he remains the Deputy Governor.   We will wait and see if Danbaba may stay beyond the stipulated 21 days or not outside the state.  We will also not relent in our prayers for his recovery.  Morbid as it may sound, I had been looking forward to such a scenario where a principal is indisposed for one reason or the other and a deputy may be compelled to act.  It may appear we have not learnt any lesson from the ‘Yar Adu’a case.  For (un)biased journalists to take such a route portends so much danger for the populace – but more dangerous is for such a paper as the Daily Trust to publish such without minding its ramifications. 

For the information of Agbese and Igidi, Muslim political leaders promoted Yakowa’s candidature in the main and he wasn’t “opposed” to step up to the governor’s office – it was just a matter of taking over and appointing another deputy governor.  Same applied to the presidency when ‘Yar Adu’a died.  If the “odds do not favour a Muslim becoming a governor in Taraba State”, in this case, we have to resort to the Constitution and wait till election time and reject a ‘Muslim’ candidate.  But as it was with Jonathan, so it should be with Alhaji Garba Umar.  This does not mean I have written off Danbaba, God forbid.

OUR DIVIDED & COLLAPSING COUNTRY

This generation of Nigerians may as well be the last set of Nigerians if the record of Goodluck Jonathan’s leadership quality and style is anything to go by. A leadership steeped in ethnic assertiveness and abrasiveness with a ‘to hell with you’ attitude towards anyone outside the creeks of the Niger Delta.  A style of leadership based on provincialism, peopled by militants (ex or not), old men once indicted by a reformist government now desperately trying to reinvent themselves because ‘their son’ is in the saddle and pseudo-intellectuals like Atedo Peterside, who got the best opportunities Nigeria had to offer.  Goodluck’s government is fuelled by exploiting the fault lines in our body politics – regional, religious and ethnic – and this is why I belief, if allowed to continue, will bring the end of the country as we know it today.  I say this with all sense of responsibility.

The manifestations of this dangerous style of leadership reared its ugly head right from when Goodluck was Vice President and was desperate to shove aside the then sick ‘Yar Adu’a.  Goodluck had to rely on whipping sentiments to make his case and thus began the ascension of ethnicity in national discourse. Dinosaurs like Edwin Clark were resurrected from the dead to make a case for one of “their own”.  The north was blackmailed (of course with the connivance of some northern Quislings) into feeling guilty and the national assembly concocted a so-called ‘doctrine of necessity’, a contraption alien to the Constitution, just to please a segment of the country.  The rest, as the say is history.  Goodluck’s campaign last year was a defining moment for the country because at a point in time we were threatened with Armageddon should in case Goodluck was not elected.  The threat was given by no less a person than the minister of Information, Labaran Maku.  Rather than this dangerous brinkmanship diminishing, it is escalating and subtly adopted as state policy.  With the likes of Asari Dokubo, a confessed killer, joining the fray, I am afraid we are beginning to see the makings of the end of Nigeria as it exist today.

The most recent brinkmanship by Goodluck’s people is the recent declaration of autonomy by the Ogoni people, the unending insults and blame game on northern leaders by Clark, the passage of a law by the Bayelsa State legislature on state anthem, flag and coat of arms, the declaration of independence by the people of Bakassi and the incoherent threats by Dokubo of starving the north by denying them access to the ports to ‘import’ food and bringing out the guns.  The common denominator for these acts – south – south.  What is of interest to me is the lack of reaction from the federal government with the minister of information telling Nigerians that government isn’t aware of the declaration of autonomy by the Ogoni people led by Goodluck Jonathan’s namesake – Goodluck Diigbo.  That is the height of insult to poor struggling Nigerians.  It took the SSS (the secret police) less than forty-eight hours to “invite” Pastor Tunde Bakare for delivering a sermon on ‘How to Change Government Peacefully’.  May be because Pastor Bakare is not from the south – south.  The seditious nature of the actions of Diigbo and the Bakassi people was not viewed as serious as that of a harmless Pastor’s homily.  Is the federal government sending the wrong signal to Nigerians? Are we therefore to infer that while some get away with murder, others won’t?

The government of Goodluck Jonathan will go down in history as the government that polarised Nigeria the most.  The acrimony of his ascension was based on the fact some people decided to build his case purely on his ethno-religious identity.  His campaign put more emphasises on this same ethno-religious hue than on any tangible programme or manifesto and his government seem to be stoking the embers for the continuation of this same dangerous trend.  I am not optimistic that Nigeria will survive this bluster if the president continues to tow this path.  But be as it may, if the country breaks up in the foreseeable future, are northern governors and northerners prepared to face a future without ‘federal allocation’?  Are we truly building structures and infrastructures meant to endanger economic growth and prosperity?  Where are those northerners running from pillar to post just a year ago telling us that Goodluck is the best thing to happen to Nigeria?

While states in the south are involved in one economic programme or the other, our governors are busy buying up estates in Dubai, South Africa and Europe.  Or building new government houses that does not have any economic impact on the populace.  It is okay for Clark or Dokubo to insult us as long as the oilfields in their backyards can continue to fund our consumerism.  Our insatiable thirst for corruption has made us shameless and undignified.  Genuflecting before Dokubo or Tompolo is now the fad.

While Goodluck Jonathan belief it is okay to “allocate” to Dokubo, Tompolo, Ateke Tom and Boyloaf $40million per annum to “guard” pipelines, our governors are retching up issues that the presidency believed are “settled” while some are going round with a begging bowl asking the deaf to give them more.  How did we come to this sorry pass? Where are those so-called leaders who always claim to be working for our interests?  Am yet to hear anyone condemn the “allocations” to these militants who can cause their underlings to drive all the way to Abuja without fear of molestation by security personnel.  While all northern cities are turned into barracks, with gun totting soldiers at every corner, bringing to a halt most businesses, militants can have unfettered access to the nations capital, driving from the creeks in convoys.  Our leaders, those at the front row of Goodluck’s campaign train, are nowhere to be found now that the chips are down.  The poor are left to their devices and this is what we are reaping in the form of unmitigated violence.

This attitude of the leadership is, in my view, what makes the Boko Haram tick.  The spate of terrorism has nothing to do with religion or ethnicity but rather a product of ‘use and dump’ insolence of our political class.  These boys are denied education and therefore denied any future.  With no stake in a polity they believe they had a hand in making, they turn to violence in order to vent their bottled up anger.  They lay waste whatever they survey indiscriminately.  This monster has to be tackled by our governors and other leaders of the region even if the federal government is lukewarm about tackling it.  If we fail, then we should be prepared for the long-term effect of this madness.

While Goodluck is pampering his kindred (the militants), our governors believe they can wish Boko Haram away. Getting angry at Clark, Goodluck or any of the lot seems to be a misplacement of anger.  Our anger should be directed at our leaders to make them realise the folly of their ways.  We do not want more allocation from the federal government.  All we want is a conducive economic environment from our leadership.  

We now have a Nigeria of haves and have nots, south-south and the rest of us.  And this is dangerous because the have nots are in the northern part of the country.  I hope we won’t be last set people to hold a Nigerian passport.  But if that is going to be for the best, so be it.

COL. DASUKI & THE PREVAILING SECURITY SITUATION

The recent tinkering of the leadership personnel of the Defence establishment by President Jonathan even it be cosmetic, appear to wake up some people from a self-imposed slumber.  For whatever it is worth, the visits by the new National Security Adviser (NSA) Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) to the theatres of war have shown those bearing the brunt of the terrorists that some people still care about their plight.  The president failed to visit both Borno and Yobe states, the centres of the Boko Haram carnage giving as an excuse the lack of functionality of the Maiduguri Airport (the shame of it) for his non visit but his erstwhile NSA, Owoye Azazi couldn’t even glorify the people by giving an excuse, no matter how laughable.  The people are really appreciative of the NSA’s visit to empathise with them on the siege they have been under in the past two years.

But the visit alone cannot solve the people’s problems and they are waiting for the NSA to start acting.  Thankfully Col. Dasuki informed Nigerians that he has obtained the phone numbers of those to be contacted for dialogue on how to bring an end to the state of insecurity facing the country, particularly the north.  Col. Sambo has clearly shown his intentions of dealing with the macabre dance of those attempting to bring the north in particularly to its knees, by hitting the ground running.  But as far as I can see there are those who want to ensure that he failed woefully in his attempt.  The renewed and sustained attacks on northern cities is indicative of the desire of the merchants of death to make a statement – of particular interest is the attacks on Police formations in Sokoto state, the home state of the NSA. 

Islam clearly prohibits fighting (war) during certain months, the Ramadan inclusive, so it is clear to all discerning and objective minds that those carrying out these attacks are either not Muslims or do not understand their religion very well.  My gut feeling tells me they are fifth columnists with the intention of giving Islam a bad name and in the process achieve two things – both very dangerous to the corporate existence of the country.  One, to create a religious divide between Christians and Muslims particularly in the north; and two, two cripple economic activities in the region.  They appear to be succeeding on both fronts.  Before the madness in Sokoto, there was the massacre in Plateau state, which ultimately led to the death of a Senator and a member of the state legislature.  This came almost immediately after the visit of the new NSA to the state.  All these things appear funny to me and doesn’t have any linkage to religion nor could be simplistically explained as a reaction by northerners who are bitter for losing power to the south.  Truth be told, if the government and its functionaries are ready to get to the bottom of the madness, all they have to do is fall back on what one of its own began and was truncated midway.

When Major General Mungonu, erstwhile Chief of Defence Intelligence (CDI), beamed his searchlight on “Boko Haram” he came close to discovering those behind the killers and before you say ‘Goodluck’ he was removed from office.  But before he was removed, he made startling progress that points to certain politicians from his home state as being the men behind the masks.  Of particular interest was the immediate past governor, Ali Modu Sherriff.  Mungono was threatened to discontinue his line of investigation or be removed, or worse still, lose his Commission.  All these were made public in the run-up to his removal.  Sponsored media articles against him appeared with regularity in newspapers and the threat finally came to pass.  Mungonu’s investigation pointed directly to the former governor but in a bizarre move that can only happen in Nigeria, Mungonu was removed as CDI and Sherriff was appointed Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP).  While the General was sent to the cooler, Sherriff is on the way to rehabilitating his battered image.

After Mungonu’s ouster, the spate of attacks heightened with the attendant loss of lives and property because the tell-tale clues he was pursuing were deliberately allowed to fizzle out by redirecting the energies of the intelligence agencies to phantom suspects who couldn’t be allowed to see the four walls of a court room.  To compound the deliberate bungling, we have the State Security Service (SSS) and the Police working at cross-purpose on the same case.  The two agencies always parade different suspects on a particular case, or one service contradicting the other as in the case of the Radio House bomber.  Nigerians came to be cynical about the sincerity of the security and intelligence services and had the distinct impression that somebody, somewhere is lying to protect some people.

A lot of arrests have been made with each suspect branded as the ‘mastermind’, yet non of theses ‘masterminds’ was taken to the courts for prosecution much less conviction.  Are Nigerians then to believe that the government is not interested in getting to the bottom of this “boko haram” issue?  What happens to people like Ali Tishaku, a SSS operative embedded in to the boko haram hierarchy that was to be denied by his employers after ‘coming in from the cold’ with a report that was not in conformity with the current thinking in the SSS?  He had to go to the court to get his freedom from an employer he served diligently.  Where is he and what happened to his report?

With Col. Sambo as the NSA, we believe he will first of all bring to an end this inter-agency rivalry and pursue the real culprits and bring them to court for all Nigerians to see.  The likes of Munguno and Tishaku may be of immense help to the NSA’s cause of bringing to an end the mayhem and destructions in the country given their past participation in curbing the madness.  After all, Lamorde was once kicked out of the EFCC, but recognising his knowledge of the Commission, he was brought back to head the place.