CHUKS ILOEGBUNAM offers an insider’s view of how Gov Peter Obi works and what values drove his actions as Governor. It’s the Governor’s birthday today 19 July.

Until the run up to the 2003 general elections, I was unaware of Peter Obi’s existence. Our first meeting was in Asaba late in 2002, when Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu led an APGA delegation on a campaign trip to Delta State. I had travelled from Lagos to Asaba, to assist Prince Ned Nwoko, a friend from my London days, who was the APGA gubernatorial candidate for Delta State.

An excerpt from The Promise of a New Era, a book by Chuks Iloegbunam, out in August 2022.

Former Biafran Commando Colonel Joe “Air Raid” Achuzia led the Delta APGA reception team. With Ned exchanging pleasantries with some party supporters under a tree on the far side, I joined a handful of others who listened as Chief Achuzia stood by his car and delivered an impromptu lecture. This was happening on the grounds of the Grand Hotel, and while we waited for General Ojukwu’s team to arrive. Achuzia spoke on the need for everyone to always be on the alert for his or her safety. “If I got found today wielding an automatic rifle,” he said, “that would be trifling. I’ve gone past that age. But any of you young ones here with a job and salary for six consecutive months without acquiring an AK47 is foolish.”

Looking back now, I wonder whether Achuzia spoke in that vein because he had foreseen the calamitous security situation that has now drowned Nigeria. Anyway, Ojukwu’s convoy soon swept into the Grand Hotel. With the visitors from Anambra State, we formed a sizable crowd that soon plunged into a brightly lit hall.

With everyone seated and introductions concluded, Chief Ojukwu spoke on why APGA had become the “in thing, the party to belong to.” Deltans, he said, should elect Ned Nwoko their next Governor. Ned took his turn at the microphone, and thanked the party for reposing confidence in him by giving him its gubernatorial ticket. He described his electoral chances as bright and asked for everyone’s support. Peter Obi, the APGA governorship candidate for Anambra State, also spoke. He disdained the way politicians were carrying on and promised that, if he emerged victorious in the Anambra ballot, he would give his home state a new lease of life. “Is Anambra cursed, or are we the cause?” he asked. It was his slogan.

After the speeches, handshakes, backslapping and snacks, I seized a good moment to approach Peter Obi, asking where he could be reached for an interview.

“Onitsha!”

Fighting for a Mandate

Inever saw him again until months after the governorship ballot. I played no role whatsoever in his campaigns. But when INEC declared Dr. Chris Nwabueze Ngige of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the elected Governor of Anambra State, I became involved. The Ngige verdict raised a furore across the Igbo country. People were incredulous. Peter Obi headed for the Election Tribunal. I travelled East and interrogated the people’s misgivings. I returned to Lagos convinced that Mr. Obi had indeed won the election, only for his mandate to be stolen.

Indignant, I plunged into the fray, writing nearly fifty articles on the topic over the three years it took for the courts to restore Peter Obi’s electoral mandate. People approached me then from all over, pleading that I “die the matter,” because Dr. Ngige was, after all, my brother. “Both of you are from Idemili North Local Government Area, and his hometown of Alor shares a common boundary with Abatete, your hometown.” I didn’t want to know. Job offers and the promises of a glorious payday were thrown around but I remained steadfast with my pro-Peter Obi opinions in my Perspectives column in the Vanguard. All appeals for me to ditch my conviction amounted to hitting on a deer’s horns. My position was the same as I took in the matter of Chief M. K. O Abiola, whose June 12 1993 mandate was criminally nullified. As far as I was concerned, if someone won a properly contested election, his victory had to be upheld.

Thanks to Uncle Sam Amuka, the Chairman of Vanguard newspapers. And thanks also to Mr. Gbenga Adefaye, the newspaper’s editor. Not once did they impede the use of my weekly column for the advancement of Mr. Obi’s cause. After about three months of my continual articles on the Anambra election, Peter Obi invited me for a meeting. Only after Obi had become Governor did I learn the impetus for the invitation. Damian, Peter’s immediate elder brother, revealed that he was the one who advised his brother to meet with “this Chuks who, week in and week out, was championing our cause in the Vanguard.”

The Enlistment

Idrove over to Peter’s office on Aerodrome Road in Apapa. The very large warehouse in the compound surprised me. How could this young man own this? I wondered. Our brief meeting marked my official enlistment in a cause I had been fighting on my own volition. I discovered that, like me, Peter lived in Festac Town. We discussed media strategy. From then and until he became Anambra’s Governor, we met regularly. Unless he or I was out of the country, or out of Lagos, we met practically every week. Otherwise, we chatted on the phone, discussing the progress of his case through the Election Tribunal and the Appeal Court, using such discussions to plot fresh manoeuvres for electoral justice.

I found myself touring media houses around Lagos, contacting editors, and features editors, and reporters, positing our points of view, writing rejoinders and rebuttals to stories coming out of our opponent’s camp.

At around noon on March 14, 2006, I was at home taking things easy when my phone rang. It was Peter Obi.

“Have you heard the news?” he asked.

“What’s the news?”

“We have won!” Before I could say “Congrats,” he continued: “Prepare to fly to Enugu tomorrow. Chief John Nnia Nwodo is waiting for you. You both are to write my inaugural address.” In Enugu the following day, Chief Nwodo and I sat in the study of his GRA Enugu home and pounded out a draft of Mr. Obi’s inaugural address. Meantime, Peter Obi, Emeka Etiaba, who since became an SAN, and Chief Victor Umeh, the APGA chairman, flew to Abuja to collect Mr. Obi’s INEC Certificate of Return. With all of us in Enugu on March 16, we put heads together and agreed the final text of the inaugural address.

March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, was inauguration day. From Enugu, we left early in the morning for Awka in a convoy of just three vehicles, with neither siren nor outriders. Peter Obi and I were in an SUV. The driver introduced himself as the Anambra Government House Chief Driver. As we approached Awka, I noticed that Peter was looking for something around the car’s panels. Not finding it, he asked the driver the button to wind down the window, saying it would be impolite for crowds to wave without his acknowledging their cheers.

All about cars

Sir, the windows are designed to be permanently shut. The vehicle is bullet-proof.” That week, we got a request from Ngige’s people asking to have the SUV and about four others back, they being the personal properties of Dr. Ngige. A cacophony of angry voices rose from all corners, saying the matter was unworthy even of discussion. If Governor Peter Obi had so desired, he could have kept the vehicles without the heavens crashing on any pates. Instead, he turned the matter over to Onyechi Ikpeazu SAN, who had successfully argued his governorship case. Dr. Ikpeazu studied all the papers and ruled that the vehicles rightly belonged to Ngige. They were turned over to Dr. Ngige who is alive and well, and who, without hesitation will confirm the veracity of this story.

There were a few Peugeot cars around. And those were the vehicles we started with. It made no difference to Peter because that was the brand of cars he had always used. But new vehicles had to be purchased. Commissioners would be appointed. And Permanent Secretaries and other senior officials too! None of them would be expected to be going about by “footwagen.” Governor Obi asked for quotes on the cost of Peugeot 406 cars from agents and from the Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN) Limited in Kaduna. He ruled all submitted invoices outrageously high, especially as we were going to buy vehicles by the scores.

Closing from work one evening, Governor Obi mentioned that the French bosses at PAN would be in our office the following morning. He had invited them to a haggling match. “There is no reason I won’t yank a third off the price of each car we will be buying.” I grinned at his optimism. The men arrived as scheduled. In those early days, there were, apart from Mr. Uche Udedibia, the Permanent Secretary at Government House, and a handful of Civil Servants and members of our security detail, just four of us in the Governor’s Office. These were myself, the Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Mike Udah (Ojinnaka), Mr. Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu Jnr., and Chief (Mrs.) Uju Okeke, a retired Civil Servant and APGA leader who was fondly called Mkpulunma because of her beauty. Her son and Peter Obi were mates at Nsukka. Valentine Obienyem soon joined us.

We played no role in the haggling, which lasted all morning, with the Governor engaging three white men. At some point, Emeka Jnr was asked into the conversation – but only as an interpreter, because he was perfectly bilingual in English and French. He went in when the Governor sensed that the fire of his pitch was being tamed by linguistic inexactitudes.

By the time the match ended, I couldn’t swear that the PAN trio represented the happiest salesmen in the world. But Peter was beaming. “I told you I would do it.” At what cost? “They had me sign an undertaking that no other Governor would hear of the deal, lest they invade Kaduna asking for similar concessions.”

A master in frugality

All through the years we fought to reclaim his mandate, I hadn’t any inkling that Mr. Obi was a past master in frugality. The Peugeot deal opened my eyes. More was to come. Not being an old capital, Anambra had neither guesthouses nor enough living quarters for public officials. Some of us stayed in hotels for many months. When, one day, I told the Governor how much it would cost for us to move into Parktonia Hotel, which appeared more conducive, he said it couldn’t be true. He accompanied us to the place and out came his calculator. For many minutes he and the hotel’s manager kept hitting at the keys of their calculators. At a point, Peter asked for the hotel’s owner. Told that the man was away, Peter retorted that he obviously owned a cell phone. In the end the cost of our stay at Parktonia was cut by nearly a half.

Even on the international scene, his frugal disposition was always there, more acute, really, since expenditures abroad were mostly dollar denominated. I remember when we attended the World Igbo Congress convention in Detroit, Michigan, in 2007. It was an important convention with the theme of Repositioning the Igbo Nation, and all South East Governors were to attend. I wasn’t in the Anambra delegation; Mr. Obi was always averse to outsized delegations. But I was in the US on vacation at the time. Governor Obi, Chief Victor Umeh, the APGA Chairman, and Valentine Obienyem arrived with a morning flight the day the event started. Whenever schedules allowed it, Governor Obi would get into a country in the morning, conduct his business quickly and leave by evening flight, thereby avoiding the expenses an overnight stay would incur. I received the Governor’s team at the lobby of the hotel where the meeting held. The opening ceremony was seven hours away. Governor Obi said he was not prepared to take a suite in the hotel when he won’t spend a night on American soil. But Chief Umeh argued that the sight of a State Governor sitting out hours in a hotel lobby would be unfortunate. Obi didn’t take a suite. Fortunately, he didn’t have to spend hours hanging around a hotel lobby!

Corruption and the banks

Sometimes, Obi’s fastidious predilection to money matters score really big. We were in the office one day at around 9pm. The Civil Servants had long gone home. Only the security men and a few protocol officers and drivers remained. I was in my office with an eye on the window, to know exactly when the Governor called it a day. Instead he phoned me to come. I quickly strode across to his office. He was seated behind his desk a document in hand. Standing there, I waited for instructions. He waved me to a seat.

“A banker is going to lose his job tonight,” he said. He handed me a document. It was a statement on funds wired into one of Anambra’s bank accounts. As I handed it back, he showed me a second document. He soon eased my raised eyebrows. A bank manager in Awka had an hour earlier presented to him the balance of Anambra’s account in his bank. Obi was sure that the amount shown to him was incorrect. He, therefore, asked the banker to return to his office and do a recheck of his books.

The Governor and I engaged in small talk while we waited for the banker’s return. The Governor’s ADC soon ushered him into our presence. He was decked out in a dark suit and striped tie.

“Your Excellency, the original amount I submitted is correct.” He placed a sheaf of computer printouts on the Governor’s desk. Without casting a glance at the paperwork, the Governor reached for a drawer and pulled one of the documents he had earlier shown to me. He handed it to the man.

“How come your papers have no entry on this payment?” The banker swallowed hard. “And this too.” He handed over the second document. The air conditioner was on. But the banker started to sweat profusely. I expected the Governor to start railing at him. Instead, he gently told the man to leave. As he trudged the short distance to the exit, the Governor delivered a one-liner: “I will shortly be in conversation with your Chairman and MD.”

With this story in view, consider the debacle in Abuja where, under the watch of a confirmed epitome of financial prudence, Ahmed Idris, the Accountant General of the Federation, made away with the gargantuan sum of N80 billion. If N80 billion is too hefty for people’s psyche to easily handle, they could recall only the N2 billion of Federal pensions fund plundered by Abdulrasheed Maina. It is because of the thieving spree promoted by derelict leadership that kleptocratic vultures are antipathetic to the idea of Peter Obi directing the affairs of this country. For, under his watch, the very fear of assorted nemeses would never allow even the most seasoned of financial bandits to tamper with state funds.

Look again at the story of the middle-ranking banker that tried to rid Anambra State of a cool N100 million. He forgot that Peter Obi became Governor straight from being a bank chairman. He didn’t know that ever before Mr. Obi sends someone on an errand, he would have looked at all sides of the assignment from multiple angles and various sources. There is no doubt whatsoever that local bank officials, invariably in collusion with bosses at headquarters, routinely fleece countless states. And because every government in the country has multiple accounts in numerous banks, fraudsters and freeloaders have field days diverting state funds in the direction of their greedy pockets. But no one tried such nonsense with Peter Obi.

Like fable of the sour grapes

It was because Peter Obi is proficient in money management that he saved up billions in investments and raw cash that he handed over to the government that succeeded his. It was his frugality that made his government about the only one in Nigeria that never borrowed a dime. I often heard him say that, “Money is meant to be saved, not to be spent,” a clear commentary on financial thriftiness. In reality, what he practiced in government, and what he practices in his business affairs, is to scrupulously save money and to spend it only when it was absolutely necessary. Unlike Peter Obi, many heads of government don’t even bother to scrutinise bank returns presented for their signatures. But eagle-eyed Peter Obi examines everything with a fine toothcomb. He does so as a matter of course. He does so with regularity.

It is because everything is fair in Nigerian politics that people reeling in ignorance and those playing plain dirty accuse Peter Obi of achieving nothing while in government. We already mentioned that his government never indebted Anambra State. We also added that he left billions for the government he handed power over to. Yet, he that was tagged stingy achieved so much as Governor that most of his gubernatorial contemporaries can only turn green with envy. A different chapter takes a comprehensive look at his achievements in government. Suffice it to mention here a few of them, taken from the fields of Education and Health.

Return of Schools

One evening, a protocol officer came and announced that the Governor required my attention. I picked up pen and paper and went to answer the summons. At the entrance to the Executive Chambers, I saw the Governor and two visitors emerging from his office. So, I waited for them to reach me. Right there he thrust a piece of paper in my hand. “Go and write a press release on these schools we are returning to their original owners.” I glanced at the paper. It contained something between twenty-five and thirty secondary schools, all to be returned to the missionaries. Unguardedly, I remarked that it didn’t contain the names of privately owned schools that also came under the hammer of government takeovers.

“Uncle Chuks. Go and do as I’ve instructed!” It was a rebuke.

“Of course, Your Excellency.”

Less than twenty minutes later, I returned with my draft. He read and approved it. As I wheeled around to go call in the Chief Press Secretary and the Government House media crew, he said I should not release the statement yet. My spirit crumbled. I thought that, perhaps, in the little time it took to write the statement, people opposed to the return of schools to their original owners had thrown a spanner in the works. It was always a most contentious issue, right from 1970 when the Administration of the defunct East Central State headed by Mr. Tony Ukpabi Asika took over all the schools built and previously managed by the churches, communities and private educationists. But no one had had the courage to cancel the ill-conceived action.

It turned out that no one was playing the spoiler. Only that the Governor thought it would be improper for the heads of the two main denominations to first hear the news via the media. Therefore, he directed that I should go brief Archbishop Maxwell Anikwenwa of the Anglican Communion, and Bishop Simon Akwali Okafor of the Catholic Church on the development. After that, the press should be brought into the picture. Okechukwu Okeke, my driver, drove me and Ubaka Nkwoka (Mmagha), my personal assistant, the short distance to Archbishop Anikwenwa’s court off the Aromma Junction. From there we crossed the Enugu-Onitsha expressway and drove into the other half of Awka where Bishop Okafor’s residence sat on the grounds of the old St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Both prelates were overjoyed.

Thereafter, we shared the statement to the media, asking that it should be in the news the next morning. However, when I got home later that night, a neighbour enthusiastically welcomed me with the story that a special radio announcement had mentioned that Governor Obi had returned to their owners all the schools government took from them more than three decades earlier.

My neighbour was right, but not completely so. The first announcement was of secondary schools. It took place in January 2009. Nearly three years later, on November 22, 2011, Governor Obi announced at a formal ceremony in Awka, the return of 1,040 primary schools back to their original owners, and gave them N6 billion to maintain the schools.

Said Governor Obi: “The collapse of education in Anambra State is directly connected to the takeover of schools owned by the missionaries, churches and voluntary organisations in 1970. That singular exercise signalled the disappearance of morality and the building of character from our school system. This can no longer be allowed. Any society that deliberately allows its educational institutions to fall into stupor has already arranged the burial ceremony of the leaders of tomorrow. A progressive leader who sees danger for his people must take serious, radical actions, even if they are unpopular, in order to bring renewal and re-birth…We are not abandoning these schools, in the name of handing them over, because the State Government will continue to pay the salaries of all their academic and non-academic staff; while the Missions will be in charge of the day-to-day running and general administration of the schools.”

Dr. Valerian Okeke, the Catholic Archbishop on Onitsha, speaking on behalf of the missionaries, addressed the Governor thus: ”You have written your name in gold and you have wiped the tears of our people. You have rectified the anomalies of the civil war and rectified the fault of past leaders. With this action the church has forgiven them for forcefully taking our schools.”

Reaping the dividends

The Obi administration procured and distributed over 30,000 computers to secondary schools, 22,500 of them from Hewlett-Packard (HP). It was the first administration in Nigeria to achieve such a feat which Mr. Fabrice Campoy, the Managing Director for Personal Systems Group HP Inc, described as the biggest of such projects in Africa and the Middle East.

In addition, the Anambra State Government provided Microsoft Academies to more than 500 secondary schools. Mr. Ken Span, the Head of Microsoft in Nigeria described it as the biggest such deployment in Africa. All the secondary schools that got the Microsoft Academies were also provided with Internet connectivity. Mr. Gerald Ilukwe, the CEO of Galaxy Backbone characterized it as incomparable to any in the annals of Internet connectivity in the country.

It did not take time for Peter Obi’s innovative interventions in Anambra’s education sector to start yielding positive results. In three years Anambra jumped from the 24^th position to the 1^st of the nation’s 36 States in results of the National Examination Council (NECO), and the West African Examination Council (WAEC). Little wonder that Anambra State has about the highest cutoff marks for common entrance examinations into secondary and tertiary institutions.

Health & Wellness

The results in the Health Sector under Governor Peter Obi are equally spectacular. His government conceived and built the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital in Awka. His Government also built a medical centre where heart operations are now routinely performed. The idea of the heart centre grew out of a chance meeting between Mr. Obi and Dr. Joseph Nwilo, a celebrated Anambra-born cardiac surgeon based in the United States. Obi asked the doctor to relocate to Nigeria to continue his life-saving operations. Dr. Nwilo said he would gladly oblige on the condition of a well-equipped hospital. The cost of setting up the facility was computed. It came to N1 billion. Governor Obi instantly disbursed the fund. On August 3, 2014, months after Mr. Obi had completed his second tenure and left office, the first open-heart surgery was performed at the Joe Nwilo Heart Centre at the St. Joseph’s Hospital, Adazi Nnukwu, Anambra State. The record-setting feat was performed by Dr. Nwilo and a team of 14 doctors.

While Peter Obi had the foresight to establish a centre for heart surgeries, one of his fellow presidential contestants, said to be the best black phenomenon since the abolition of the slave trade, used up the thirty-one days of a whole month in a London hospital, fixing a dislocated knee.

Mr. Obi’s government won the $1 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Prize as the best-performing state in Immunisation in the South East geopolitical zone. The government added to the prize money to build, in partnership with the churches, ten Maternal and Child Care Centres across the State, especially in the rural communities.

Ethics and good governance

There are other aspects of his administration that marked Peter Obi out as exceptional, patriotic and visionary. He had absolutely no truck with nepotism. Through the five years I served in his administration, not one person from his own Anaocha Local Government Area was appointed a Commissioner. He felt it would be unfair to the other twenty local government areas. His governorship was enough slot for his LGA. Compare this to some other leaders whose appointments are based on cronyism, biological affinity or religious considerations.

I remember that shortly after he assumed the governorship, pressure started piling for him to tar one of the roads that ran through Agulu, his hometown. Obi refused, insisting that road construction had to be based on need, not on where a Governor or a powerful politician came from. Dame Virgy Etiaba (Mama Anambra) later awarded the contract for the construction of the road in question when she became Governor. This happened when Obi stood unjustly impeached by the PDP-controlled State House of Assembly. Mama Anambra is alive and well to confirm this story.

His records speak for him

Everything written here is verifiable, as is the fact that Peter Obi spent the normal four years at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, to earn a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy. He entered Nsukka in 1980, the same day Mike Udah, who became his Chief Press Secretary, did. They both graduated the same day in 1984, with Peter earning a Second Class Lower degree. All the talk about Peter using up 12 years to earn a first degree is bunkum. Nsukka University records have not been deleted. Peter’s academic records are easily verifiable, unlike those of some other presidential candidates of unknown schools and unregistered certificates.

Since December 2020 when Peter Obi and I met in Ajalli at the funeral of Dr. Arthur Nwankwo, the Chairman of Fourth Dimension Publishing Company in Ajalli, we haven’t seen again. Our last communication took place on May 18, 2021, when he texted me from London to wish me a “Happy Birthday.” I replied him with a “Thank you, very kindly.” Since the political warm-up started for the 2023 general elections, I have keenly followed his progress and those of other politicians. Still, I saw no reason to contact Peter. I didn’t tell him that I was writing this book. I didn’t owe him that information. I simply saw my duty only in terms of telling the truth of my personal experience of his political leadership and, thereafter, dare anyone with a contrary opinion to controvert my thesis.

Few people know Peter Obi and his work ethics more than I do. That is why I can with authority say that the avalanche of lies being bandied about regarding him is to do with the desperation of drowning politicians futilely clutching at straws. They shamelessly lied through the teeth who have accused Governor Obi of being anti-Muslim and anti-North. What I know is that during Islamic festivals he always feted Muslims, leaders and non-leaders alike, either at Government House, Awka, or inside the Government Lodge, in Amawbia. Not even Peter Obi himself will deny that we annually sent cattle by the lorry load to Abuja, for officials at the Anambra Liaison office in the Federal capital to distribute to assorted political leaders.

Peter Obi served as Governor of Anambra State for eight years during which period he never went on vacation for a single day. During his tenure, there hardly was a time when stayed abroad for more than one week. Before he handed over power to his successor, he did not load to his convenience such outlandish pensions and gratuities as many a governor found irresistible. He didn’t ask for and was not given a house or houses by the state. He didn’t ask for and was not given a car or cars by the state. He didn’t factor into Anambra’s governance any contractual agreements to his benefit whatsoever, let alone the sort seen in many other states that have left them hemorrhaging.

Why he’s in politics

The truth about Peter Obi is that he is into politics with a consuming zeal to serve the people. Apart from when he was not in Awka, he mostly reported for work at 7 am everyday, and never closed until nightfall. It was, of course, a burden. One morning during our first months, I entered the Governor’s office and found him lying on a couch. Startled, I asked what the matter was. He thought it was an attack of malaria. Asked if I should fetch Dr. Ezenwa of the Government House Clinic, he demurred. At that moment, Damian, his elder brother, who was on his way to Enugu stepped in. He was sure the Governor’s problem was overwork. As I saw him to his car, he said, “Your friend listens to you. Please advise him to slow down.” Quickly back again inside his office, I found the Governor Obi at his desk – working!

“Sir, why are you back at your desk working?” I asked.

“I didn’t come here to fall sick” he replied. We didn’t leave the office that day until well past 7pm.

Because of his sterling achievements, adversaries have been mushrooming even from the woodworks, spewing lies and many more lies, all aimed at assassinating his character and rendering his presidential bid a nullity. How woefully the detractors are failing! People of this country, across all the states, through ethnic barriers, religious divides and conspiratorial animosities have stood out resolutely for him. For one reason. They want the country to take a decisive turn for the better. They want the country to turn its back to the ruinous politics that, to this moment, has held the country in the throes of grinding poverty, endless bloody conflicts, empty stomachs, leaking pockets and utter hopelessness.

The Nigerian peoples have examined Peter Obi and have also examined the others busily digging above their limits and purporting to be aiming for the highest office in the land. They have found that Obi is the way to go. Not because his initials are P. O., but because he represents a breath of fresh air in comparison to the malodorous stench of the capricious lot that have carpeted a country once bound for glory. The Nigerian peoples have taken to heart the admonition of Marcus Aurelius, who was the Roman Emperor from 169 to 180 AD. In his book, Meditations, is to be found countless arresting gems of quotable quotes. For instance, Emperor Marcus had this to say on the evil conspiracies to destroy genuine servants of the people: “When a bunch of known corrupt people unites against one man and spares no attempt to assassinate his character, blindly follow that ONE man.”

The Nigerian people have wisely decided to follow Peter Obi. Without question, Obi’s traducers belong largely in the category that cannot show their certificates, that are incapable of pointing out their ancestral homes, that frittered away the peoples’ commonwealth, that, with effrontery and impunity, pissed on all the citizens’ heads on the pretext that it was raining. That is why they decided to go with him. The people are insisting that the days are now in the past when they could be hoodwinked with the inanity that a receipt acknowledging the payment of electricity tariffs, or the label on a loaf designating its baker was enough certification for educational qualification. The people have decided the intolerability of ailing, nonagenarian leaders that would, every two minutes, be stretchered into air ambulances for medical tours of American and European capitals.

The tremendous thing about the positive developments of this New Era is that it is youth led. The youths are sick and tired of the interminable strikes by university teachers. They are fed up to the hairline with the incessant bloodbaths in places of worship, in villages, in townships, on farmlands. Their acclamation for Peter Obi rebukes a bedraggled leadership coterie of insensate hoodlums that is suffering from a crippling paralysis of the will to take remedial actions against vicious and incessant terrorist attacks that have rendered Nigeria about the most dangerous place to live in the whole wide world.

In every clime under the sun, the tired take a rest. Even God Himself rested on the seventh day of His run of creations, according to Genesis 2:2. But Nigeria is suffocating from the wiles of exhausted and panting Methuselahs who deserve a place by the fireside singing lullabies to their great grandchildren, but who insist on participating in political marathons they lack both the steam and the fuel to feature in. This impunity is precisely what has stoked Nigerian youths into open revolt. Happily their armament, for all its lethality, is solely the Permanent Voters Card. They have taken to heart the pronouncement of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the sage, who famously prophesied that “A day will come when Nigerian masses from the North and South, Christians and Muslims and Animists will merge as a force for progress and unity, and kick against rigging, corruption and tyranny.”

Celebrating the youth

The Nigerian youths are to be celebrated. They are this country’s division of the global moral army that the American actor Harrison Ford spoke about when he addressed the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York on September 23, 2019. Said Mr. Ford:

There is a new force of nature at hand, stirring all over the world. They are the young people, whom frankly, we have failed, who are angry, who are organised, who are capable of making a difference. They are a moral army. And the most important thing that we can do for them is to get the hell out of their way.

Nigerian youths have rejected the politics of the retrograde class, together with their avarice, mendacity and equivocations. They have abjured carrots thrown at them in the form of job offers as “Internet consultants.” That would have conscripted them into the ragtag army of social media marionettes fitted with cell phones and inexhaustible data, to sustain a campaign of calumny and perfidy against Peter Obi. They have called the bluff of faceless marauders in cyberspace, who have been employing false aliases, to impugn Peter Obi’s integrity. Nigerian youths are not asking for remuneration. They are not asking for bags of rice and cartons of “agbado”. They are no longer interested in their future being mortgaged. They would have nothing more to do with bloodsuckers that shamefacedly denied the massacre of young blood at the Lekki Tollgate. They want new. They want sparkling. They want whole. They yearn for a New Era. They shall vanquish.

This, then, is the score. For the rationale, the purpose of elections is to put in office the competent. From every available empirical evidence, Peter Obi trumps the tired and recycled candidates of the old order in this Department of Competence. Whoever does not vote for him in 2023, will no doubt have his or her reason. But it will be nothing to do with the imperative of competence.  This is my testament. I stand resolutely on it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHUKS ILOEGBUNAN was Governor Peter Obi’s first Chief of Staff. He is a renowned critic, polemicist and author of many books, including IRONSI: NIGERIA, THE ARMY, POWER AND POLITICS.

By Piribonimibo Isaac Harry

Introduction

The internet was once again agog on Sunday July 17, 2022 with a viral video showing a man videotaping one of the serving Ministers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in what appears to be a restaurant located in one of the cities in the United States of America. The perpetrator, whose Nigerian identity was fairly exposed by certain words he uttered in Yoruba language, later identified himself in the video as a Nigerian based in the United States. The Minister in question, Mr. Rauf Aragbesola – Nigeria’s Minister of Interior, was seen resisting the invasion of his privacy by the unidentified man, thus creating an ugly scene of pandemonium in the restaurant to the utter dismay of spectators and embarrassment of the Honorable Minister. The unidentified man videotaping the Minister was heard arguing that his action was within ambit of the American legal system which entitles him to exercise such freedom.

A close consideration of the actions and arguments of both parties may appear a bit confusing in determining who among both of them is right. One may ask, is the purported act of the man videotaping the Minister against his will, right? Was his justification for perpetrating such action legally in order? Is the Nigerian Minister entitled to his right of privacy, especially as a public figure in America?

Before answering the above posers, I will start by commending the uncommon liberties enjoyed by citizens and residents of the United States of America as facilitated by its Federal Constitution together with the various amendments therein, even though same may be sometime susceptible to abuse as was evident in the extant case under consideration. However, unlike other climes in Africa, the replication of this U.S legislative feat is far from reality. No wonder the unidentified man under context appears somewhat too excited to do what he was doing, knowing fully well that similar privileges are not available to anyone back home where he came from.

Right to Press Freedom as Protected Under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

The Federal Constitution of the United States of America, under its first amendment, enables the rights of individuals to photograph and videotape public figures in public places. First, it must be reemphasized that the person whom the action is carried against must qualify as a public figure (E.g., a government official, politician, celebrity, diplomat, business tycoon, royalty, anyone with high social standing etc.). Secondly, the place in which the person is located must qualify as a public place.

This law therefore, gives anyone in the U.S the right to photograph or videotape the actions of public officials like Police officer, when carrying out their official duties in public places. The law further denies these Police officers or public figures the authority to demand, seize, search, deletes or destroy either the device or the contents of the device used for such recording, unless upon the show of a search warrant validly issued by a competent court in the U.S and sighted by the perpetrator.  It is also worthy of mentioning that the American Supreme Court, in the case of Burstyn V. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952), has further extended this right to include film making. It is submitted that the right of press freedom enabled by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United State of America is arguably the law that facilitates the now trending business of paparazzi in today’s America.

Having laid a brief foundation of the imports of the first amendment to the U.S Constitution with regards to press freedom, it becomes germane to critically examine its purports on the action of the unidentified man to the Nigerian Minister of Interior.

The American draftsmen were deliberate to use the word ‘public places’ in the first amendment. The issue for determination therefore, is whether or not a restaurant likened to the one which the Nigerian Minister of Interior was seen having his meal, could qualify as a public place within the contemplation of the first amendment.

Public places as far as the first amendment to the U.S Constitution is concerned, could be best described as government owned buildings, properties, businesses, establishments, or institutions which the government of the United States of America possesses certain equitable shares and which are located within the U.S. In other words, properties, facilities or businesses which the United States Government do not have direct or indirect pecuniary interest, and which in all ramification has no element of government ownership, cannot be said to qualify as public place. On the contrary, such places are deemed to qualify as private places, which entitles the private owners the right to set rules and regulations on how activities may be carried out within such facilities. Presumably, it may be safe to conclude that, given the physical appearance of the restaurant in the viral video, it depicts that same may be owned and operated as a private business.

Having alluded to the possibility of the restaurant being a privately owned business, it is submitted that same does not qualify as a public place withing the contemplation of the first amendment to the U.S Constitution. It is therefore, further submitted that the action of the unidentified man videotaping the foreign official is apparently wrong, as same violates the right to privacy of Minister Aregbesola. In this vein, the likely remedy available to the proprietors of the restaurant against the alleged offender is to hand over the man to the Police for harassing their client and for engaging in acts capable of breaching public peace. On the other hand, the Honorable Minister of Nigeria may elect to institute a private action under tort against the alleged perpetrator.

The above submission happens to be a segment of my argument and the attendant implications of the unruly actions against the Nigerian Minister. The second and most fundamental part of my argument and implication is the one facilitated by International Law, and whose effect may vary depending on the capacity in which the said Minister travelled to America.

US Federal Law that Protects Foreign Officials, Internationally Protected Persons and Official Guest.

Assuming that the Nigerian Minster of Interior travelled to the United States of America in his capacity as a serving foreign Minister, he is deemed to be protected under a U.S Federal Law known as the Protection of Foreign Officials – Internationally Protected Persons and Official Guest – 18 U. S. Code § 112. By the provisions of this law, the government of the United States of America is seen to have committed itself to protect any foreign official, foreign guest or internationally protected person from acts of endangerment whenever they are within the territory of the United States of America. In an attempt to paraphrase the said Federal Law, the law provides under paragraphs (a) to (c) that, anyone who attempts to, or willfully engages in acts of assaults, strikes, wounding, imprisonments, violence, intimidation, coercion, threats, harassment, attack, obstruction of officer from carrying out official functions and endangerment of the liberty of persons within the territory of the United States of America, would be liable to a fine, or 3-10 years imprisonment or both.

Paragraph (e) of that section of the law further provide that the alleged offender may not necessarily be a citizen of America, as an alleged offender who, though not a citizen of America, is later found in America, would also be apprehended and made to face the consequences of his/her actions. However, it must be mentioned here that by virtue of Paragraph (d) of the section of the law under consideration, these provisions are expressly made subject to the rights protected under the first amendment to the constitution of the United States of America as earlier discussed.

Following from the above cited legal provision, it is clear that the American Government have an obligation to protect the right of the Nigerian Minister of Interior, either as a Foreign Official – where his visit to the U. S is considered as official, or as an Internationally Protected Person and Official Guest – where it appears that he didn’t visit in his official capacity, and in view of his capacity as a high-profile visiting Government Official of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Since the ‘did has been done’ the Government of the United States is left with the option of arresting and prosecuting the alleged offender in accordance with the dictates of this law regardless of the nationality of the offender, since the offence was committed within the U.S territory and the perpetrator is still domiciled within the U.S. This step, if taken, will build up diplomatic confidence between the government of the United States of America and Nigeria and would further strengthen the existing diplomatic ties between both governments.

Finally, if upon close investigation it is discovered that the alleged offender is a Nigerian citizen without any citizenship affiliation with the United States of America, the Nigerian Mission in the U. S may in collaboration with their American counterpart, commence the process of repatriation of the alleged offender back to Nigeria to face the weight of the law for his action as a citizen of Nigeria. This is in line with Nationality Principle recognized under international Law. This, in fact, should have been the action the Nigerian Government would have taken three years ago when the former Deputy Senate President – Senator Ike Ekweremadu – was assaulted in Nuremberg Germany in August 2019 by persons believed to be members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The same would have also been the approach of the Federal Government when a Vienna based Nigerian harassed some Nigerian Athletes in a bus in Austria in July 2021. Although I stand to be corrected, I am of the strong view that the governments of the United States of America, Germany and Austria all have bilateral ties on repatriation with the government of Nigerian, which would render the implementation of the above suggested approach possible.

Conclusion

Incidences of harassment of public officers from Nigeria by Nigerians in foreign countries is now very rampant. Conscious efforts are expected from the federal government to put an end to this ugly trend. The federal government of Nigeria must not just as usual, make official statements condemning such actions but take decisive steps towards putting an end to it. This could possibly be achieved by the Nigerian government if it takes advantage of the provisions of relevant international instruments and domestic laws of the receiving states where such public officials are being subjected to unwarranted harassments and abuse, to effect justice on perpetrators. This measure, if effectively explored, is capable of deterring future offenders, and making bare the likely implications for perpetrators of unpatriotic actions on foreign soil, thereby underscoring the truism of absence of territorial limitations for punishment of certain offences with extra-territorial flavours.

Prostitution: A Legit Business and the Reflection of the Demarcating Lines of Legality and Illegality in Nigeria.

By Samuel Oloumu

Did you know that “Olosho”, “Ashawo”, “public toilet” as innocent and “virgin-Nigerians” angrily call them are actually not breaking any law in Nigeria? Don’t be shocked if I reiterate that prostitution is a legit business in Nigeria.  Prostitution is condoned and tolerated in various forms and manners. Paying for sex in cash or in kind is part of day-to-day social relationships.

Religious critics, law and policy makers might be prone to argue that such a law violates the religious and cultural values of the people. However, this disposition says very little in terms of what goes on in real life. While they see the religious side of it, they should at least see it reflected in terms of the legal and everyday experiences of people.

A crime or an offence is never created by morals but by law. So, an act can be a SIN but not a crime and you cannot arrest any person for committing a SIN in any part of Nigeria. The punishment for sin is judged by God but that of crime is earthly and punishment is awarded by man to man. As a result, prostitute are sinning against God not the government and if punished will be a rape of the ordinary law of the land.

No particular part of the Constitution prohibits prostitution in Nigeria.

However, sections 223 of the Criminal Code states that: “Any person who procures a girl or woman who is under the age of eighteen years to have unlawful carnal connection with any other person or persons, either in Nigeria or elsewhere;

“Or procures a woman or girl to become a common prostitute, either in Nigeria, or elsewhere;

“Or procures a woman or girl to leave Nigeria with intent that she may become an inmate of a brothel elsewhere;

“Or procures a woman or girl to leave her usual place of abode in Nigeria, with intent that she may, for the purposes of prostitution, become an inmate of a brothel, either in Nigeria or elsewhere; is guilty of a misdemeanour, and is liable to imprisonment for two years.

“A person cannot be convicted of any of the offences defined in this section upon the uncorroborated testimony of one witness.”

The offender may be arrested without a warrant.

FCT Penal Code Act criminalises prostitution, solicitation

Chapter 532 of the Penal Code Act, Federal Capital of Abuja, 1990 criminalises prostitution and solicitation of prostitutes. The law states that:

“An ‘Idle person’ shall include a common prostitute behaving in a disorderly or indecent manner in a public place or persistently importuning or soliciting persons for the purpose of prostitution.

“The term vagabond shall include any male person who knowingly lives wholly or in part on the earning of a prostitute or in any public place solicits or importunes for immoral purposes; and

“Whoever is convicted as a vagabond shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to two years or with fine which may extend to four hundred and fifty naira or both.”

However, a careful perusal of the stated statutes shows that there is no Federal or Nationally enacted law against PROSTITUTION in Nigeria. Although, owing to Sharia Law in Northern states in Nigeria, prostitution is illegal and therefore prohibited in all Northern states that practiced Islamic Penal Code. As accordingly imprinted under Chapter 532 of the Penal Code Act, Federal Capital of Abuja, 1990. But however, the Penal Code that penalises people meeting with prostitutes or prostitutes meeting with other people might fail if tested in the court,” on the ground that the Right to Freedom of Association (as contained in the constitution)  of the person has been breached. And If we are to follow this Constitution, that means; as a Nigerian, you are free to meet with whoever you want to meet with. Though, this might turn out to be flooded!

Interestingly, in all the Western, Eastern and Southern states of Nigeria, prostitution is not a crime. Hence the police CANNOT arrest prostitutes in such states. In Southern Nigeria, the activities of pimps or madams, underage prostitution and the operation or ownership of brothels are penalized under sections 223, 224, and 225 of the Nigerian Criminal Code. Even though Nigerian law does not legalize commercial sex work, it is vague if such work is performed by an independent individual who operates on his or her own accord without the use of pimps or a brothel.

Although the operation of brothels is prohibited in Nigeria, the truth is it still exists. There seems not exists a clear demarcation lines between an hotel and a brotel. Many places officially called hotels today, are actually brothels hiding under the guise of an hotel operating fulltime commercial sex with a string of workers. People on the streets in Lagos, Ibadan, Owerri, Port Harcourt or Calabar, in Abuja or Lokoja identified which hotels in these places were brothels or quasi-brothels.

Also, the Nigeria criminal system prohibits national and trans-national trafficking of women for commercial sex or forced labour. Nigeria is a signatory to the 2000 United Nation Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. Therefore, owning/running a brothel, being a pimp, trafficking persons for prostitution, use of children as sex slaves and other similar acts are criminal in all parts of Nigeria.

Sex workers have been facing severe human rights abuses and multiple forms of discrimination in Nigeria. According to the Nigerian Constitution, sex work is not specifically criminalised, rather the people that ‘benefit from the proceeds of sex work’. Sex workers can be punished when caught negotiating sex ‘aggressively’ with a client.

In conclusion, there is a huge gap between what is allowed or not allowed or what transpires in everyday life under the various law in different countries. To this end, prostitution is a complex issue and its complexity is made manifest in the way it is regulated and practiced in societies across the world. This complexities and contradictions needs being untangled in order to come up with an effective, practical and more scientific means of addressing the issue of the sex trade in Nigeria, Africa, and the world.

Credit:Sabilaw

By  Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

28 November 1988 was a Monday. In Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), a Constituent Assembly inaugurated by military ruler, Ibrahim Babangida, had been in session for just over six months, since 11 May 1988. At the helm as its chair was Anthony Aniagolu, then a recently retired Justice of Nigeria’s Supreme Court. He was a Christian from Enugu State. His deputy was Muhammadu Buba Ardo, then Chief Judge of the Gongola State, who died suddenly in 1991, two years after the Assembly completed its work. He was Muslim.

The Secretary to the Constituent Assembly was one Alhaji Babagana Kingibe, whom the country has since then got to know a lot more eloquently, a Muslim from Borno State. Kingibe’s assistant was Amal Inyingiala Pepple, who would rise to the height of the civil service in Nigeria, before retiring in June 2009 as the Head of Service of the Federation. She is a Christian from Rivers State.

In those days, Nigeria had 21 States: Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bendel, Benue, Borno, Cross-River, Gongola, Imo, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kwara, Lagos, Nigeria, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, and Sokoto States plus the FCT.

The Constituent Assembly, which Justice Aniagolu chaired, comprised 567 members drawn from all these states. 458 were elected, while 109 were nominated by the federal government, including the Chairman and his Deputy (both of them male), and drawn from the ranks of judicial figures, senior lawyers, titans of industry, traditional rulers, experienced public servants and administrators, academics and other professionals.

At the submission of its report on 5 April 1989, the membership was down to 565, owing to the death of two members: Dr. Daniel Obasi Agbafor, an elected member representing Ohaozara federal constituency then in Imo State in south-east Nigeria, who died on Sunday, 14 August 1988; and Honorable Justice Umaru Agora Isiaku, a judge of the High Court of Niger State nominated to represent Abuja in the Assembly, who died on 10 October 1988.

Assembled to negotiate the terms of a constitution on the basis of which the Babangida regime claimed it would hand over power to an elected government at the end of its transition programme, the Constituent Assembly got into a very animated debate from October 1998 over the irrelevant issue – as Nigeria’s current ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) would have us all believe) – of religion in Nigeria and the role it is to play in civic and constitutional life. In this debate, there was no quarter given nor taken.

So, on Monday, 28 November 1988, the Assembly received an unusual assortment of martial guests. They were led by Augustus Aikhomu, a Navy Admiral, and second in command to the military president. Accompanying him in full military uniforms were Air Marshall Ibrahim Alfa, Chief of Air Staff; General Alani Akinrinade, former Chief of Defence Staff; Major-General Paul Omu, Minister of Defence; Rear Admiral Murtala Nyako, Flag Officer Commanding Western Naval Command; Air Vice-Marshall Hamza Abdullahi, FCT Minister; Colonel John Shagaya, Interior Minister; and Mr. Victor Pam, Deputy Inspector-General of Police. It seemed evident that their mission was serious.

On arrival, Admiral Aikhomu proceeded to read a Riot Act to the Assembly, declaring, as Justice Aniagolu recalls in his memoirs on the making of the 1989 Constitution that was never promulgated: “the Federal Government has decided that this Assembly should stop further debate and discussion on these clauses.” As the Assembly wound down its work on 20 March 1989, Admiral Aikhomu wrote a letter (Reference: GS/CGS/235) to Justice Aniagolu as its Chairman ordering them to “insert into the Constituent Assembly Draft Constitution all matters and clauses of the Revised CRC Constitution which were excluded from the jurisdiction of the Constituent Assembly.”

In this way, the military retained ultimate decision making in resolving the matter of the place of religion in Nigeria’s life. To address that, they defaulted essentially to the framework agreed in the 1979 constitution when, as in 1989, the then military regime had also sent their second-in-command to order the Constituent Assembly gathered in 1978 to stop debating the matter before it got out of hand.

Four years after this uneasy settlement, Nigeria’s political elite reached an equally uneasy truce in order to hurry Ibrahim Babangida from his ruinous and interminable political transition programme. At the end of the truce, Moshood Abiola, a Muslim from Ogun State in Southern Nigeria teamed up with the aforementioned Babagana Kingibe for the ticket of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which triumphed in the June 12, 1993 presidential election before being frustrated from taking over power when Babangida nullified the result of the election. The 1999 Constitution, which ultimately transitioned Nigeria to civil rule six years later, essentially defaulted to the 1989 settlement, which in turned accepted the 1979 settlement. Many people prefer to say that the constitutional situation is that “Nigeria is a multi-religious state.”

At both national conferences convened first by President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2005 and then by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014, religion nearly derailed proceedings. Indeed, at the 2014 National Conference, it was reported that “religion pitched Nigerians against one another at the national conference with delegates disagreeing over religion.” The leaders who have led Nigeria until date have attempted to walk the fine balance that religion evokes in the country. Even President Muhammadu Buhari, often accused with some justification of being narrow on issues of faith, was not unmindful of the sensitivity of this issue when he declined the importunations of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, like Buhari a Muslim, to be his running mate in the 2015 presidential election.

The ruling APC has acted convenient on these issues, however, rather than principled. In 2019, Kaduna State Governor, Ahmad El-Rufai, in a fit of sectarian hubris, toppled the conventions of faith and ethnic balancing in the state when he decided to “pick fellow Muslim, Hadiza Balarabe, as running mate.” The correlation between this decision and the deterioration in coexistence in the state since then has been spectacular.

In explaining his choice then, El-Rufai claimed his only consideration was “competence”. In justifying his decision to choose fellow Muslim, Kashim Shettima, as his running mate for the 2023 presidential contest, APC’s presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, has similarly argued the urgings of competence with a bit of history, claiming that “the spirit of 1993 is upon us.” Like El-Rufai, Tinubu’s position implies spectacularly that individual competence and religious harmony are somehow mutually exclusive. If he wins and the country emulates the trajectory of Kaduna State, the country could become a level killing field.

Tinubu’s cheap appeal to the heady events of 1993 mis-reads contemporary Nigerian history in support of convenient, dubious and patronizing nonsense. All this takes place in a country in which citizens have been immolated without consequences on specious claims of blasphemy and the Supreme Court has recently ruled that female, Muslim students in public schools have the right to wear religious covering, none of which would be the case if religion were such an irrelevance in Nigerian civic life.

The Abiola-Kingibe ticket in 1993 was a product of a peculiar inflection point in Nigerian history unparalleled since then and unlikely to be repeated. Since then, if anything, successive rulers, none more so than the incumbent regime of Muhammadu Buhari, have invested considerable energy in divisive and toxic politics and policies.

Indeed, as someone has rightly pointed out “religious balancing is one of the first factors in determining competence for a Nigerian presidential aspirant. He who fails in this is incompetent.”

Let us assume then that Tinubu and Shettima triumph at the 2023 presidential election and proceed to complete two terms. Power will thereafter be liable to rotate to Northern Nigeria, which will probably produce a Muslim. At the end of two terms of that person, following the two terms of Tinubu-Shettima and counting back to the two terms of Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s presidency would have been occupied by a Muslim for pretty much a quarter of a century or for 27 out of 32 years going back to the administration of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. Children born at the beginning of this period may end up with the impression that Nigeria is indeed an Emirate in which only Muslims are entitled to aspire to the highest office. The point really is that it is not.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]

By Sonnie Ekwowusi

I would like to thank the Nigerian Feminist Forum (NFF) for joining issues with me in its very thoughtful and illuminating rejoinder entitled: “Re: Legalization of abortion in Lagos State”.  For the avoidance of doubt and for the benefit of those who have not been following the recent development in the abortion debate in our country, three weeks ago the Lagos State government, contrary to the law, dramatically released what it dubbed abortion guidelines in Lagos State, that is, the guidelines for termination of pregnancy or killing of unborn babies in Lagos State. The release of the aforesaid abortion guidelines caused no small stir in the Lagos polity. Apart from triggering off a series of discourses in the media, it was trailed by peaceful demonstrations in Lagos and Abuja. For example, displaying different colourful placards inscribed with attractive inscriptions: “Say No to abortion”, “Abortion Kills Women”, “Abortion Kills Babies”, the members of the Civil Society organization staged a peaceful protest at Alausa, Lagos. The protesters, most of whom were young girls aged 10-18, danced joyously as they marched through the block of buildings of the Lagos State  Ministries en route to the Lagos State House of Assembly before finally returning to the esplanade of the Ikeja Shoprite from whence they initially took off. Aside the protests, notable stakeholders in Lagos State including the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos issued public statements stating that they were not consulted in the making of the impromptu abortion guidelines, and, that besides the guidelines were antithetical to the political, moral, cultural, religious and philosophical convictions of the Nigerian people.

On my part, I penned an essay with the title: Legalization of Abortion in Lagos State. In that essay, I stated, inter alia, that the abortion directives fragrantly violate sections 145, 146, 147, and 201 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State (as amended in 2011); sections 228, 229,230, 297, 309, 328, of the Criminal Code Act CAP C38 (and their equivalent provisions in the Penal Code); sections 3,4, and 17 of the Child Rights Act 2003; Child’s Right Law of Lagos State 2015: sections 17 and 33 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution; Articles, 3, 4 and 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights; Preamble to the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (ratified and adopted by Nigeria).  Consequently, I prayed that in the interest of justice the aforesaid directives should be rescinded.

Apparently peeved by the facts contained in my said essay, the NFF had last week joined issues with me in their rejoinder entitled: In re: “Re: Legalization of abortion in Lagos State”. It is noteworthy that the members of the NFF are pro-abortionists and pro-choicers. They propagate, for instance, that a married woman in her matrimonial home can procure an abortion with or without the consent of her husband because, as far as NFF is concerned, women are the owners of their bodies, and, therefore men have no right to dictate to women how to use their bodies. Before faulting the said rejoinder of the NFF, let me quickly state that the Lagos State has suspended the aforesaid abortion guidelines. I must thank the Lagos State government for its prompt display of fatherly maturity and understanding in this matter.

Contrary to the view of the NFF, the guidelines were not anchored within the ambit of the laws of the land. They were ultra vires the laws and therefore were null and void. In my aforesaid essay,  I stated that by virtue of the combined effects of sections 145, 146, 147, and 201 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State (as amended in 2011); sections 228, 229,230, 297, 309, 328, of the Criminal Code Act CAP C38 (and their equivalent provisions in the Penal Code); sections 3,4, and 17 of the Child Rights Act 2003; Child’s Right Law of Lagos State 2015: sections 17 and 33 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution; Articles, 3, 4 and 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights; Preamble to the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (ratified and adopted by Nigeria) abortion is completely illegal in both Lagos State and in Nigeria as a whole without any exception under which abortion could be procured. I further submitted that section 201 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State which is in pari materia with section 297 of the Criminal Act is not an exception permitting abortion in Lagos State, and, that even if it is an exception it would, by virtue of the doctrine of covering the field, be inconsistent with the provisions of the Criminal Act and other Federal laws, and, to the extent of that inconsistency would be null and void.

It is amazing that the phrase: “killing the unborn in order to save the life of the mother” has somehow become a convenient cliché or a dubious catchphrase or subterfuge which the NFF and the abortionists always latch on or hide under to advocate for the perpetuation the heinous crime of abortion.  Over the years they have been deceiving the unwary public into believing that abortion is permissible in Nigeria when the life of the pregnant woman is threatened. But this is completely unfounded under our law. As I have stated above, there is no such exception or provision both in the Lagos Criminal Law (as amended in 2011) and in the Criminal Act and that even if such an exception exists in Lagos State it is inconsistent with the Federal laws and to the extent of that inconsistency becomes null and void.

Sharing her own medical experience on this matter, prominent Nigerian public health practitioner, Dr. Regina Akosa, writes that even in situations in which the life of the mother is threatened, it is not permitted to kill the unborn child because such a murderous act may still not save the life of the mother. According to her, “when there is the medical need to separate an unborn baby from the mother because the latter’s life is threatened, say, in the case of eclampsia, every effort should be made to protect the life of the unborn baby and its mother. In the process of doing so, the unborn baby could survive, but even if it doesn’t survive, the process cannot be termed as an abortion because the doctor did not deliberately intend to kill the baby. Abortion is a deliberate act with the intention of killing a baby. That is wrong because doctors are enjoined under the Hippocratic Oath to save human life not to terminate or take away human life. No medical doctor should deliberately intend to kill the unborn baby under any circumstance, not even when the life of the mother is threatened because the doctor is not even sure that the mother would be alive after killing the unborn baby.  Abortion is neither health care nor a human right not even when the life of the mother is threatened. By virtue of the Hippocratic Oath, it is the job of the Obstetrician and Gynecologist to save the life of both the mother and the unborn baby at all times. If a pregnant woman is sick of cancer, for instance, and wants to be treated even though she is pregnant, she has the right to be treated for cancer. But what the doctor must not do is to abort the woman’s baby in order to treat her for cancer. The baby must not be aborted. If the baby dies in the process of treating the woman for cancer, so be it, but in most cases, the baby does survive. The Society for Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Nigeria (SOGON) is notorious in Nigeria for always pressuring the government to legalize abortion in Nigeria. I recall that in 2006 Senator Daisy Danjuma sponsored a Bill to set up the Institute of Reproductive Health in Nigeria, which in actual fact was a cover-up for legalization of abortion in Nigeria. Because we all knew at that time that reproductive health was another euphemism for abortion, we all opposed the Bill and the Bill was defeated at the National Assembly”

I agree with Dr. Akosa. SOGON is heavily funded by foreign pro-abortionists. It has been pressurizing the government to legalize abortion under the fabrication that many Nigerian women are dying because they lack access to safe, legal abortion. I am not a medical doctor but common sense tells me that abortion is not food or medicine that Nigerian women badly need in order to stay alive. But abortionists argue that rape and incest victims and women whose lives are in jeopardy badly need abortion to survive.  But cases of rape and incest are very rare cases. And even if they are not rare cases all rape and incest cases do not automatically result in pregnancy. The truth of the matter is that about 98% of all abortions committed in Nigeria are committed for other reasons unconnected with rape or incest or  “circumstances where the continuation of the pregnancy threatens the life of the pregnant woman” as the NFF wants us to believe. 98% of female abortion seekers in Nigeria are unmarried young girls who willingly and knowingly got entangled in the complex web of pelvic issues and have resolved to abort their pregnancies without the knowledge of their parents. For example, two years ago, the Lagos Police raided the notorious Marie Stopes abortion Clinic located in Surulere, Lagos. During the raid, the Police discovered the abortion files containing the particulars of the under-aged girls who had been aborted by the Clinic. On being quizzed by the Police on why the clinic was committing abortion on the under-aged girls without the consent of their parents, Dr. Bernard,  the abortion doctor on duty on that fateful day told the Police that the clinic was not aborting the girls but merely doing “family planning” with them. In response, the Police further queried and said to him: “How can you be doing “family planning” with unmarried young girls?. It was Eleke the bird that said that since men have learnt to shoot without missing he has learnt to fly without perching. Analogously, since abortion is illegal in Nigeria, and, since the word “abortion” is repugnant in our cultural and religious setting, Nigeria abortionists have deftly learnt to promote abortion under euphemisms such as “family planning”, “unsafe abortion”, “post-abortion care”, “family health”, “interruption of pregnancy” et cetera  So whenever you hear the Federal Ministry of Health, Abuja, talking about “family planning” be assured that they are talking about abortion.

On February 7 2009 The Vanguard newspaper hit the newsstand with a screaming headline: “70-abortion-a-day doctor arrested. “A Lagos-based medical doctor got what he did not bargain for as a new year package when a team of detectives…swooped on his hospital…based on information earlier received about the doctor’s criminal activities in the hospital situated in the densely Orile area of Lagos State”. The name of the hospital where the doctor was criminally killing babies was Rotunda Hospital, a tall-four-story building once standing adjacent to Orile Police Station. The doctor’s clients, or, sorry, his victims, were mostly Nigerian secondary school girls including young girls from Cotonou, Togo and other countries sharing boundaries with Nigeria. The doctor charged between N1, 500 to N5, 000 to abort various degrees of pregnancies. For example, he charged N5, 000 to burst open the womb inhabiting a 5-month-old pregnancy. From his hospital diary, the police discovered, to their consternation, that he performed 11 abortions on Christmas Day, 25 December 2008. On January 1, 2009 he started the New Year by performing 9 abortions. His administrative secretary confessed that he is “stupendously rich as a result of proceeds from procuring abortion and had always ‘settled security agents’ with huge sums of money in order to divert their attention from his criminal activities”. Sources said the girls arrested in the hospital confessed that they throng the hospital because the doctor is reputed to “successfully abort pregnancies at any stage of growth…”.   The Assistant Inspector General of Police Mohammed Abubakar who ordered for the doctor’s arrest said that the doctor was wasting humanity

The NFF argued that the suspended Lagos abortion guidelines have the imprimatur of SOGON, with support from the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). They also said that the guidelines were modeled after the National Guidelines of the Federal Ministry of Health, Abuja. And so what? Nobody is above the law of the land. Neither the abortionists nor SOGON nor PRB nor the Federal Ministry of Health, Abuja is above the law of the land. In any case, the directives are not laws. They do not have the force of law. Therefore nobody is bound to obey them. I had argued in my earlier essay that directives or policies that are in violation of the existing laws should neither be obeyed nor enforced. The Federal Ministry of Health, Abuja is a big scandal. It is in dire need of purge. Nigeria is the first country in the world with the highest number of people lacking access to basic primary health care. Cancer epidemics have erupted in Nigeria. Nigeria’s life expectancy has plummeted to 35 years. In various parts of Nigeria, the ordinary primary health care system for preventing preventable diseases such as polio, cholera, and measles is virtually non-existent. Medical infrastructure and equipment are in shambles in Nigeria. Yet the Federal Ministry, Abuja is busy channeling all its resources in promoting safe sex for kids, abortion, and population control in Nigeria.

The current Minister of Health Dr. Osagie Ehanire, who is the brother of Senator Daisy Danjuma,  has recently, under the guise of “family planning (FP) services” or “Family Planning 2030” or “sexual reproductive health”, launched a comprehensive abortion, infanticide, and contraception national policies and programs in Nigeria aimed at killing Nigerian babies and children. In August 2012 Federal government said it was spending a total of $11.3 million to purchase condoms for ‘safe sex.’ In April 2011, the then Health Minister, Prof Chukwu flagged off an aggressive free distribution of contraceptives (including hormone and injectable contraceptives) in all public health centres and institutions in Nigeria. The Federal Government planned to spend N915 million in 2017 on procuring contraceptive commodities for safe sex. The then Health Professor Isaac Adewole announced in July 2017 that Nigeria, in collaboration with its partners and the private sector, would spend an additional $4.3 million on contraceptive procurement to achieve a modern contraceptive distribution rate of 27 percent among all women by 2020. He also stated that Nigeria was committed to increasing its annual allocation for contraceptives in each state to $4 million. At the request of Prof Adewole, the Federal Government announced in January 2018 that $1 million had been set aside for the free distribution of contraceptives to improve the quality of safe sex among Nigerian adults and teenagers. The preceding reveals the vast sums of money spent on promoting safe sex at the expense of people’s actual health problems. So why do we fail to get our priorities right in Nigeria? It defies belief that at a time when malnutrition and kwashiorkor are wreaking havoc on the citizenry; a time when medical statistics show that 2,300 under-five children and 145 pregnant women die in Nigeria every day, the Federal Ministry of Health, which was established to develop health policies and programs that will, among other things, strengthen the country’s health system, has chosen to conspire with foreign agencies such as the World Health Organization. In addition, the Federal Ministry of Health, Abuja provides the Nigerian public with IUCD, postinor 2, Lo-femenal, Norplant, suction tubes, Vasectomy y (male sterilization), tubal ligation (female sterilization), and other procedures. Shame to the Federal Ministry of Health, Abuja !.

In case the NFF does not know, although the Maputo Protocol has been ratified by Nigeria it does not have the force of law because it has not been domesticated in Nigeria by virtue of section 12 (1) of the 1999 Constitution.  In the locus classicus Abacha V Fawehinmi,  the Justices of the Supreme Court held that an international treaty or regional treaty entered into by the government of Nigeria does not have a binding force in Nigeria until created into law by the National Assembly by virtue of section 12(1) of the Constitution. In the aforesaid case, Justice Michael Ekundayo Ogundare JSC (of the blessed memory) unequivocally stated that the African Charter is not superior to the Constitution. Consequently, in the event of a conflict between the African Charter and our 1999 Constitution, the latter prevails to the extent of the inconsistency. Justice Okay Achike JSC (of the blessed memory) minced no words in stating that “unincorporated treaties cannot change the aspect of the Nigerian law even though Nigeria is a party to those treaties. Indeed unincorporated treaties have no effects upon the rights and duties of citizens either at Common law or Statute law”. To Justice Akintola Olufemi Ejiwunmi JSC, CON, (of the blessed memory) “If such treaty is not incorporated into our municipal law, our domestic courts have no jurisdiction to construe or apply its provisions…”. These pronouncements of the law Lords are in agreement with the position of the law in Nigeria on this matter. A contrary pronouncement would lead to a travesty of the Constitution.

Maputo protocol was hurriedly ratified on 16 December 2004 by a bunch of unknowledgeable Nigerian officials probably over a glass of champagne without knowledge of the import of the protocol. The National Assembly is empowered by the constitution to make good laws for the country. Therefore since the Maputo Protocol is a complete break with the values of African civilization, the National Assembly cannot proceed to domesticate it let alone Nigerian courts “respecting it”. Maputo Protocol is incompatible with African regional instruments such as the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights domesticated in Nigeria and applied by the Supreme Court in the case of Abacha V Fawehinmi. Specifically, Article 14 (2)(c) of the Maputo Protocol cited by NFF is incompatible with the language of African values, and in particular with the language of the African Charter which upholds the human rights of both the child and the mother. Therefore Maputo Protocol is unacceptable and must not be domesticated in Nigeria.

Contrary to the view of the NFF, Muslims, in principle, are against abortion (Quran 17:31 stipulates: “slay not your children, fearing a fall of poverty, we shall provide for them and for you, LO the slaying of them is greater sin”) although some Muslims believe that abortion can be committed at the early stage of pregnancy. Of course, the Ten Commandments and the Bible condemn abortion. But above all, the law “thou shall not kill” is a natural law written in everyone’s heart. It is a natural law which every rational person, be he a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist,  atheist, Marxist, internet free-thinker, juju worshipper, agnostic, animist, etc applying his/her natural intellect comes to grasp and appreciate by his/her own effort. St. Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, Sophocles Antigone and St. Augustine of Hippo, and others of the Natural Law School argued that natural law constituted the basis for the good ordering of the society. Abortion destroys the good ordering of society. Abortion is murder. Murder is murder. Whether the victim is a vulnerable child in the womb crushed to death by the doctor or a 45-year-old politician killed by a bandit, it is the same murder.  And we cannot be advocates of the human rights of adults and feign ignorance of the human rights of the most vulnerable unborn child.

I am surprised that after reading my earlier essay the NFF is still quibbling with the phrases “safe abortion” and “unsafe abortion”. As I said in my aforesaid earlier essay: “Safe abortion” is not only an oxymoron: it is a medical impossibility since every abortion is always unsafe for the unborn baby because it kills the unborn baby. The notion of “unsafe abortion” is also misleading because it implies that some abortions done by competent medical doctors are “safe” or without risks. This is a big lie. All abortions carry serious risks for the aborted woman regardless of the quality of medical care employed. If the abortion kills the child how can they be talking about “safe abortion”?. More importantly, abortion is a crime in Nigeria. Therefore you cannot modify the crime of abortion with the prefix “safe” in the same way you cannot modify stealing with the prefix “safe”. For example, you cannot say “safe-stealing”

Perhaps the biggest blunder in the rejoinder of the NFF is its assertion that maternal deaths in Nigeria can only be curtailed by giving Nigerian women access to safe, affordable abortion. I have never heard a more illogical assertion. With due respect, medical experts have ceaselessly maintained that the main cause of high maternal deaths in Nigeria is lack of access to acceptable and affordable primary, secondary and tertiary health care systems; lack of drugs, lack of access to skilled birth attendants; lack of consumables, medical equipment, poor referral linkages in our hospitals; poor transportation and general lack of access to basic emergency obstetrical care associated with safe birth in Nigeria. For example, severe bleeding (hemorrhaging), during birth and after birth accounts for about 44% of maternal deaths in Nigeria. So, what Nigerian women need for survival is access to well-equipped affordable Nigerian hospitals, not access to abortion. I hope I am understood.

All said I can understand why the Nigerian abortionists are putting so much pressure on the government to legalize abortion despite the fact that the U.S Supreme Court has recently upturned ROE V WADE. The abortion industry in Nigeria is now a multi-billion dollar industry. This is why SOGON, the Federal Ministry of Health, Abuja, and other pro-abortion persons and institutions are waxing stronger and stronger in the industry. They want money, quick money. But that is blood money. Blood money kills.

By Mojirayo Ogunlana-Nkanga

INTRODUCTION

The driving force of the clashes is the competition for available resources, especially grazing land. It seems that the government has abandoned the grazing reserve system created by the Northern region government in 1965. Then, the government created over 417 grazing reserves in the north. Under the grazing reserve system, government provided space, water and vaccinations for the livestock while the herdsmen paid taxes to the government in return. However, the discovery of oil and subsequent exploration and export made Nigeria an oil economy, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. Subsequently, the grazing reserve system was abandoned due to the neglect of the agricultural sector as the mainstay of the country’s economy.”

However, several causes have been identified and highlighted by numerous researchers, who discovered that there was no one major cause but several factors arising at different times in history, some of which include encroachment on farmers’ lands, destruction of crops, disintegration of grazing routes,cattle rustling, lack of grazing areas, etc. Nevertheless, the genesis of this conflict in North Central Nigeria has been traced back to 1999[2] where it was reported that its emergence and development was as a result of socio-economic, religious and political factors.

Often times when discussing the issues surrounding the farmers-herders conflict, discussants and observers unconsciously or ignorantly leave out its impact on women and children, particularly girls, both aged and young.In fact, some of them almost completely forget to account for women victims in their narratives. In reviewing the book, ‘The root cause of farmers-herders crisis in North Central Nigeria’ by Plangshak Musa Suchi, and Sallek Yaks Musa, this gender perspective to the crisis exposes the social impact, economic impact and the political impact on women and girls, the effects of the continued and unabated crises on women and girls and the legal implications. Thus, this paper highlights the consequences of the farmers-herders clashes on women and girls.

BACKGROUND

Historically, farmers and herders have enjoyed peaceful co-existence in the North central region of Nigeria for years. It has been reported that farmers and herders have lived harmoniously from generations to generations and that there existed an understanding as to the responsibility of both divides, in ensuring that there is mutual respect and prevention of rancor. However, this mutual relationship began to dissipate and take on a negative outlook in the North central region of Nigeria in recent years, particularly since 1999 when it was reported that the problem began to intensify and gained recognition by the government and the media[3]. For instance, it was recorded that between 2012and2016, over2,500peoplewerekilled in the farmers-herders clashes.[4]While the media continued to report the deathly relationship between the farmers and cattle herders, it was recorded that not less than 150 women were victims of the clashes between 2014-2020[5] and amongst these where reports of a pregnant woman slaughtered with her husband in Takende Village, Guma Local Government Area (LGA) of Benue State in 2020, 13 women in Mkovur Buruku LGA of Benue State shot in 2017, over 20 women killed in Riyom LGA of Plateau State in 2015, over 15 women shot in Awe, Keana, Obi, and Doma LGA of Nasarawa State in 2018, over 15 women killed in Jandeikyula village in Wukari LGA in Taraba State, etc .The resulting bloodshed becomes not only a burden to the immediate society but also to the country as a whole. These clashes continue to pose security challenges in Nigeria and particularly for the North Central Region, which seemed to be the center stage, considering that it consists of one of the most fertile farming grounds in Nigeria, Benue State, known as the food basket of the nation.

THE CONFLICT AND CONSEQUENCES

In the States of Benue, Nasarawa and Plateau, different accounts were taken from traditional heads, local chiefs,both male and female representatives of the communities. They recounted different perspectives of the cause of the crises, raising issues and allegations, backed by witnesses’ accounts, in which the farming community claimed that herdsmen allow their cows to destroy farm produce and refuse to take responsibility for the destruction, while the herders claimed that the absence of grazing routes have been mainly responsible for the problem of crop destruction and that if grazing routes were provided for their cattle, crop destruction will not arise. Some herders have also claimed that farmers conspire to steal their cattle which provoke them to attack these communities. In circumstances where encroachment arose and the farmers took action to protect their produce, either by beating up the perpetrators or by seizing the cattle, the herders usually resisted and fought, which then degenerates to  situations like revenge attack, where vulnerable women farmers, or wives and children of the farmers are attacked. Some women were raped, kidnapped, tortured and killed.[6]There was also a report of a long established war between the Fulani herdsmen and the Tiv ethnic community of Benue and Nasarawa States[7] arising from crop destruction and retaliatory attacks. In order words, the conflict results in meaningless killings and loss of lives, insecurity of innocent lives and properties, loss of agricultural produce, displacement and threats to national security.

GENDER IMPLICATIONS

In all of these accounts, the perpetrators of these heinous crimes are usually male Fulani herders and mostly male farmers and at the center of it all are women and children, who become widowed, displaced, and orphaned. Women and children are categorized as vulnerable groups during crisis, and their frailty or vulnerability are usually exploited. For instance the researchers[8] pointed out the testimonies of Chief of Usha, in the community of Agatu LGA, Benue State (KII with the Chief of Usha, Usha, 21/10/2020), that women were killed by Fulani herdsmen and they ran off. There have also been reports of rape, kidnapping, etc. All point to the fact that women continue to experience highest levels of gender violence and inequality. As these criminal events continue to unfold and remain unabated, there is not a doubt that women and girls are at a disadvantage in the confrontations, mostly because they are unarmed and dependents of the male farmers who lose their lives in the conflict. Apart from the use of arms, women and children cannot match the physical strength of these male violators, who do not hesitate to plunder and destroy with pleasure. Thus women and girls have to survive different forms of violence from the moment of the crises till afterwards when the perpetrators have moved on. This is because generally, women and girls are categorized as vulnerable and so ordinarily, odds are stacked against them in different societies were there’s relatively peace.

A review of ‘the root cause of farmers-herders crisis in North Central Nigeria’ by Plangshak Musa Suchi, and Sallek Yaks Musa and some few other papers referenced here, expose the consequences of the confrontations between the two factions on women and children in the following subheadings:

1. Sexual Violence: Sexual violence encompasses sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual intimidation. Graphically, this means that herders/farmers compel, force or threatens and in fact overpower women and girls to forcefully have sexual intercourse with them without consent. The Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Act 2015 defines sexual violence as follows:
2. “sexual abuse” means any conduct which violates, humiliates or degrades the sexual integrity of any person;
3. “sexual assault” means the intentional and unlawful touching, striking or causing of bodily harm to an individual in a sexual manner without his or her consent;

• “sexual exploitation” occurs where a perpetrator, for financial or other reward, favour or compensation invites, persuades, engages or induces the services of a victim, or offers or performs such services to any other person;

1. “sexual harassment” means unwanted conduct of a sexual nature or other conduct based on sex or gender which is persistent or serious and demeans, humiliates or creates a hostile or intimidating environment and this may include physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct.

These elements are experienced by women and girls at different stages of the conflict. First women and girls get raped on the farm[9] and it was further reported that conflicts occur on the farm where cutlasses, machetes, and guns are involved and women farmers are raped.[10]The attendant outcome is one of shame; stigma and some women are rejected by the family and the community. Where a woman has undergone rape or loss of their breadwinner, they move away from that community and in a lot of cases into Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDP) camps, where it has been sufficiently reported that women and girls continue to experience all manner of abuses from the male occupants in the IDP camps and men outside these camps. It has been reported that teenage and underage girls are daily abused and exploited in IDP camps[11] but rarely will they speak out about it in order to protect their dignity. Furthermore, the Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP) reported that ‘women and girls are randomly raped in exchange for food and water and that the incidences occurred mostly in the host communities and the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs camps located in Borno, Adamawa, Yobe states and Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory.’[12] It was also reported that these attacks have targeted women and girls travelling to displaced persons camps or to towns, leaving the relative protection of those locations to collect firewood, water or other items, and taking these goods to market to sell in exchange for necessary family items.’[13]These outlandish situations not only leave women and girls to suffer physically but also compel them to suffer emotional and psychological violence without access to therapy or psychosocial support. In a lot of cases, these survivors do not seek mental health support and in reality, such support services are rare in the country. The ripple effect of silence is later experienced by the society should the survivors continue to live through repeated trauma, through revictimization or repeated exposure to abuse.[14]

According to a United States report by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN)[15], after conducting several investigations, ‘sexual violence can have long term effects on victims and manifest in the forms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during the two weeks following the rape, symptoms of PTSD 9 months after the rape, contemplation of suicide, attempt of suicide, and it stated that approximately 70% of rape or sexual assault victims experience moderate to severe distress, a larger percentage than for any other violent crime. It also stated that people who have been sexually assaulted are more likely to use drugs than the general public, sexual violence also affects victims’ relationships with their family, friends, and co-workers; Victims are at risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).’

1. Socio-Economic Impact: The conflict situation deprives women of their livelihood and in this case women and girls are forced to experience economic violence, which is defined under the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Act 2015 to include: “…the unreasonable deprivation of economic or financial resources to which any person is entitled or which any person requires out of necessity and the unreasonable disposal or destruction of household effects or other property in which any person has an interest…” Women and children in crisis infested areas are deprived of their economic sustenance. In fact, due to manifest insecurity in their communities, they flee their farms and are unable to access the farms afterwards to harvest their crops, which may have produced or in other cases these become spoilt or are destroyed by cattle or harvested by other people. In addition, the hardships women experience during and after violent confrontations negatively impact their significant role of sustaining communal cohesion and social capital, in that, the loss of family members, disruption of the family structure, and breakdown of intergroup relations along ethnic and religious lines directly threaten women’s capacity to  sustain the societal bond and togetherness.[17]

According to the reports of Plangshak Musa Suchi, and Sallek Yaks Musa[18], due to the farmers-herders clashes, a lot of people have been displaced in the North Central Nigeria and they reported that there are four large IDP camps in Benue which reveals the intensity of farmers-herders crisis. The International Crisis Group in 2018 reported that in 2018 alone, about 300,000 people were displaced in communities in Plateau, Nasarawa, Benue, Adamawa and Taraba States in the violence and reprisal attacks flowing from the farmers-herders clashes. The situation is so dire that it was reported that a 70 hectares farmland cultivated to help internally displaced victims of Fulani attacks was reportedly destroyed by Fulani herders using over 300 cattle in a strategically planned overnight attack in Rotsu village of Miango District in Bassa Local Government Area of Plateau State[19] Amongst the displaced persons are women and girls who then find it hard to make ends meet, moreso where they have lost their husbands or forced to separate from men who usually provide for them. There are also situations where the clashes result in permanent injuries on the women, making it impossible to provide their basic needs. In addition, most of these women are uneducated and the community is unable to support them because in most cases, the community as a whole is also affected.

1. Widowhood: Generally in Africa, this serves as a significant change of living condition in women’s lives. African widows, irrespective of ethnic groups, are amongst the most vulnerable and destitute in the region.[20]Widowhood entails the observance of certain rites by women and these rites differ culturally in Nigeria. It is commonly regarded as a test of the woman’s fidelity to her late husband and a cleansing ritual to free the woman from curses attached to his death. Various tribes and cultures in Nigeria have diverse ways of practicing rites pertaining to burial which usually is hard on women. The loss of the spouse, usually the main provider for the family, results in the loss of social status and reduction or complete loss of economic status. In violent clashes that result in the death of the male provider, this generates a lot of stress for the woman because in most cases, she is forced into unpleasant cultural widowhood practices in the community. A lot of widows in the North central region are forced to experience discrimination of varying degrees whether under the traditions or religion they practice. Widowhood forces women, apart from being direct victims themselves, into carrying the burden of care giving and household responsibilities without adequate family, societal and governmental support.For instance in Idoma land, Benue State, the widow mourns in sack clothes for at least one year. She then performs the cleansing ceremony assisted by her age grade before she is allowed to re-marry within or outside her dead husband’s family. Under this custom, only a man’s brothers inherit him and not his wife.[21] In Ilorin, Kwara State, where indigenes are mainly Muslims and the major ethnic groups are Yoruba, Fulani, Hausa and Nupe, widows are prevented from going to the farm and market during the mourning period. In fact, she is prevented from performing household chores and some are prevented from eating certain kinds of food, or changing clothes during the mourning period.[22]Ultimately, these practices force women into isolation as she no longer fits into that society. Some women even decide to flee to cities or other parts of the country while some remain indoors to avoid further violence. In order words, a widow and her children will have to suffer both the loss of her husband and the discriminatory practices from the society in which she resides.

1. Health: Health involves the ability to function physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. In the aftermath of the violent conflicts between farmers and herders, women and girls encounter different health challenges. A lot of these women and girls suffer physical injuries due to gun shots, hours of migration and relocation or injuries sustained during flight from the herdsmen, hunger and malnutrition and psychological disturbances such as nightmares and trauma.[23]For those who are forced to perform widowhood rites, they experience physical hardship due to the constraint compelled on them, emotional instability, and psychological trauma.[24]For some young girls, going back to school becomes a huge struggle because of the fear of abduction and sexual harassment. For women and girls who suffer sexual violence, they are faced with certain health threats due to their biological makeup. This could be in the forms of sexually transmitted diseases; unwanted pregnancies and forced childbirth;complications arising from unsafe abortions; vaginal traumas such as vesico-vaginal fistula, mutilation, and scarring; uterine problems; loss of sexual urge or pleasure, etc.[25]Then there is the issue of stigma and suffering in silence which could result in depression and insanity and so many other physical and mental health issues.

1. Singlehood:As the men go into conflicts, everything in the household and community is left in the hands of women. Women immediately take up the roles of solely fending for the family. When their men are killed in the conflict, it becomes clear that they are the heads of the family. In most African society, once a woman or girl is single and without a male protector, she becomes a prey for violence. Where women farmers lose their sustenance or the male provider and are forced to take up different odd jobs to make ends meet, they become a target of perverse male desires. In most cases they are prevented from owning lands and this forces them to look for different means of providing for their households. In cases where the lands are available for cultivation, there’s always still the threat of farming on the same land, the subject of the crisis which led to the loss of their men. Most times for fear of their lives and the trauma associated with the land, they avoid venturing into the same farms. Apart from these, they experience different forms of discrimination, such as they lose protection and freedom of movement, they are exposed to violence and abuse, they are forced into marriages, forced to be pregnant, forced to have abortions, forced into trafficking, etc.

RESPONSES AND SOLUTION

According to Plangshak Musa Suchi, and Sallek Yaks Musa, the Nigerian government’s responses to the farmers-herders crisis have been “…the deployment of security forces especially the army, the police and Civil Defence to restore and maintain peace in the affected communities and…is widely adjudged by the affected communities as reactionary and grossly ineffective in most cases”. In fact, there have been allegations by research participants that security agencies are complicit. This was also reported by Amnesty International in its 2018 report, “Harvest of Death: Three Years of Bloody Clashes Between Farmers and Herders”, which recorded facts documenting clashes between farmers and herders from January 2016. According to its country Director, Osai Ojigho, “The Nigerian government has displayed what can only be described as gross incompetence and has failed in its duty to protect the lives of its population and end the intensifying conflict between herders and farmers. The authorities’ lethargy has allowed impunity to flourish and the killings to spread to many parts of the country, inflicting greater suffering on communities who already live in constant fear of the next attack…our research shows that these attacks were well planned and coordinated, with the use of weapons like machine guns and AK-47 rifles. Yet, little has been done by the authorities in terms of prevention, arrests and prosecutions, even when information about the suspected perpetrators was available.” Some of the research participants in these North Central States also believe that the government’s actions over the years have contributed largely to the conflict. Some cited “…government policies allocating land to rich individual farmers at the expense of herders; violent activities of farmer- allied vigilante groups known as yan sa kai (volunteer guards) and herder- allied militias known as yan-bindinga (gun owners); complicity of community members and politicians; and state authorities’ negligence/lack of leadership in dealing with the crisis”.[26] In addition, “Eye witnesses, victims, local officials and others that were independently interviewed have recounted several incidents where police and soldiers have either ignored credible warnings of impending attacks and/or abandoned people during or just before deadly attacks by heavily armed groups, suspected to be members of herder or farmer communities”[27]

This obviously reveals that the people do not have faith in their government and that can also continue to serve as a huge problem for the region because people will still choose to resort to self-help rather than put their lives and properties in the care of the government that they believe has not protected them in the past. Ultimately, this is a critical problem for women and girls in those States, who are forced into harsh circumstances that can easily be avoided if the government shows commitment to resolving the root causes by taking responsibility for the role it played and still plays and identifying and punishing its complicit state forces.

Although it needs to be on record that the government has deployed strategic responses to the conflict in the past, such as the Creation of Grazing Reserves in 1965, Establishment of the National Commission for Nomadic Education (NCNE) in 1989, The Use of the Armed Forces to Curb Internal Security,The Great Green Wall Agency of the Federal Government, Establishment of the National Grazing Reserve Bill 2016, Cattle Ranching System 2018, Legislation Prohibiting Open Grazing;it seems that these have been unproductive as the conflict persists.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

At this stage in the crisis between the farmers and herders, there can’t be a one way solution to the problem. The government will have to adopt a multi stakeholder approach to finding a lasting solution.

Intervention Strategies for women and girls

Firstly, the farmers-herders clashes have been particularly onerous on women and children considering that the kinds of victim hood they experience are driven by the simple fact that they are weak and can’t truly defend themselves.This paper has addressed in details how women suffer different forms of violence from the inception of the crisis and continuously after all have been destroyed and displaced. At the forefront of all discussions to resolve the crisis should be the protection of women and girls who are survivors of the unaddressed carnage. Government need to set up 24hrs free psycho social support centers with toll free hotlines to encourage access for women who have undergone these traumatic experiences. The government needs to also work in hand with the Women Affairs Ministry and Commissions and women based civil society organizations operating in the North Central region to empower women and girls survivors. This is because the acquisition of skills can cushion the effects of the abrupt loss of their means of livelihood. Furthermore, the federal government needs to collaborate with the State and Local governments to set up local factories that will give women and girls job opportunities. These factories should be subjected to the oversight supervision of states, national and international civil society organizations for accountability and transparency.

The government can also establish small and medium scale businesses for women by providing capitals and also put in place mechanisms for ensuring the proper management of those businesses by employing monitoring business staff that will supervise and act as business counselors for the women. These staff strength could be drawn from successful entrepreneurs with proven achievements or graduates with more than five years’ experience in practical business administration.

Young girls and teenagers should be compelled to attend tuition free schools, with government sponsoring all their educational necessities such as uniforms, books, feeding and transportation. For transportation, the government can provide school buses with designated drivers, whose qualifications and backgrounds have been properly scrutinized. This is to ensure that the drivers do not become easily influenced by corrupt state forces who would want to lure them into their nefarious activities.

Security and Peace building

Security must continue to be the first priority of the government. Security should be improved for both herders and farmers to prevent further break down of law and order. In fact, the government needs to put in place structures that will guarantee proactive responses to the crisis. Then the government has to carry out arrests and punish offenders. This is one step to rebuilding trust in the government.

Another security measure which has strong merits is community policing. Government needs to encourage existing structures within the community such as vigilante groups, to provide information that would assist security personnel in arresting culprits. Such groups also need the protection of government enforcement agencies and this should be provided with adequate mechanisms for checking the activities of the latter to ensure compliance and efficiency.

On peace building, women and girls should not be underestimated and tossed aside. They shouldn’t only be seen as victims of the conflict but included in the conflict prevention efforts, post-conflict transition and reconstruction processes. The government must ensure that women are consulted during the peace negotiations in order to put into perspective their experiences and obtain firsthand information on ways to address and resolve the problems.

Social and Economic infrastructures

The government also needs to be committed to providing standard social and economic infrastructures in IDP Camps. Those communities need to be a priority for the government who should provide top notch security that will protect women from post trauma abuses.

Lasting Solution

The government must find a way to train, sensitize and educate herders through their traditional and religious leaders to embrace the ranching system that has proven to work in other climes. They should be trained to understand that business models in the 21^st century have progressed beyond the nomad system. Society as we know it today can no longer support open grazing and this should be the stance of any progressive nation. Cattle rearing must be seen as what it is, a business and every business owner needs to take adequate steps to acquiring all that is necessary for that business to thrive. This includes the purchase of available land, fencing of the land in order to prevent encroachment and the purchase of all tools and materials that would allow that business to be self-sufficient and Herders should not be exceptions to this model.

References:

The root cause of farmers-herders crisis in North Central Nigeria’ by Plangshak Musa Suchi, and Sallek Yaks Musa (2021)

Gbamwuan, Asor. (2022). FARMER- HERDER CONFLICTS AND THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC PREDICAMENTS OF WOMEN IN NORTH CENTRAL NIGERIA. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal. 9. 90-105. 10.14738/assrj.96.11318.

Harvest of Death: Three Years of Bloody Clashes Between Farmers and Herders-AmnestyInternational,2018

Premium Times (2018): How Nigerian govt’s failures fuel farmers, herders conflict causing nearly 4,000 deaths – Amnesty International.

Journal, IERJ. “CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF HERDERS-FARMERS CONFLICT AND ITS GENDER IMPLICATION IN PLATEAU STATE.” International Education and Research Journal (2018): n. pag. Print.

Women Suffer Disproportionately During And After War, Security Council Told During Day-Long Debate On Women, Peace And SecurityUN  Press ReleaseSC/7908https://www.un.org/press/en/2003/sc7908.doc.htm

UN Security Council Resolutions on women, peace and security: https://www.ohchr.org/en/women/womens-human-rights-and-gender-related-concerns-situations-conflict-and-instability

[1]Understanding the Herder-Farmer Conflict in NigeriaBy Ugwumba Egbuta: https://www.accord.org.za/conflict-trends/understanding-the-herder-farmer-conflict-in-nigeria/

[2]Gbamwuan, Asor. (2022). FARMER- HERDER CONFLICTS AND THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC PREDICAMENTS OF WOMEN IN NORTH CENTRAL NIGERIA. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal. 9. 90-105. 10.14738/assrj.96.11318.https://bit.ly/3RcodCa (accessed 29th June 2022)

[3]Ibid and https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/301429-how-nigerian-govts-failures-fuel-farmers-herders-conflict-causing-nearly-4000-deaths-amnesty-international.html(accessed 1st July 2022)

[4]Amnesty International, 2018

[5]https://bit.ly/3RcodCa (accessed 29th June 2022)

[6]Journal, IERJ. “CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF HERDERS-FARMERS CONFLICT AND ITS GENDER IMPLICATION IN PLATEAU STATE.” International Education and Research Journal (2018): n. pag. Print.https://www.academia.edu/45296733/CAUSES_AND_CONSEQUENCES_OF_HERDERS_FARMERS_CONFLICT_AND_ITS_GENDER_IMPLICATION_IN_PLATEAU_STATE (accessed 29th June 2022)

[7]‘The root cause of farmers-herders crisis in North Central Nigeria’ by Plangshak Musa Suchi, and Sallek Yaks Musa (2021)

[8]Ibid

[9] See testimony of the leader of the farmers’ association in Mbawa communityin Guma LGA of Benue State(KII with Leader of the Farming community in Mbawa, Daudu, 20/10/2020)

[10]KII with Women Leader, Keana LGA of Nasarawa State, 24/10/2020

[11]https://guardian.ng/opinion/abuse-of-women-in-idps/; https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/407902-special-report-how-boko-haram-displaced-women-girls-are-sexually-abused-at-idp-camps-1.html ; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352645942_Coverage_of_Gender-Based_Violence_in_IDP_Camps_A_critical_Analysis_of_select_Nigerian_Newspapers/downloadand https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262229579_The_Prevalence_of_Sexual_Violence_among_Female_Refugees_in_Complex_Humanitarian_Emergencies_a_Systematic_Review_and_Meta-analysis(accessed 1st July 2022)

[12]https://www.vanguardngr.com/2021/03/boko-haram-women-girls-randomly-raped-in-idps-camps-in-exchange-for-food-water-ledap/

[13]https://guardian.ng/opinion/abuse-of-women-in-idps/

[14]https://www.healthline.com/health/revictimization#the-effects

[15] A US based anti-sexual violence organization that carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, help survivors, and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice.https://www.rainn.org/about-rainn

[16]https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence(accessed 29th June 2022)

[17]https://www.sfcg.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Policy_Brief_on_the_Impact_of_Farmer_Herder_Conflict_on_Women_in_Adamawa_Gombe_and_Plateau_States_of_Nigeria.pdf

[18]The root cause of farmers-herders crisis in North Central Nigeria (2021)

[19]Gyang, 2020).ibid pg 6

[20]https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/public/wom_Dec%2001%20single%20pg.pdf (accessed 3rd July 2022)

[21]Widowhood: Between a rock and a hard place (1): https://bit.ly/3Ia5O4y(accessed 3rd July 2022)

[22]Practice and Correlates of Widowhood Rites in A City in North Central Nigeria: https://www.academia.edu/40479147/Practice_and_Correlates_of_Widowhood_Rites_in_A_City_in_North_Central_Nigeria(accessed 3rd July 2022)

[23] IMPACT OF FARMERS-HERDSMEN CONFLICT ON THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF GIRLS AND WOMEN IN BENUE STATE, NIGERIA Ruth Ochanya Adio-Mosesa and Tajudeen A. Akanjia a University of Ibadan, Nigeria Statement of the problem. (accessed 28^th June 2022)

[24]Widowhood in African Society and its effects on Women’s Health: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1831944/(accessed 28^th June 2022)

[25] Violent Traditional Gender Practices And Implications For Nation Building Process In Nigeria: https://iiste.org/Journals/index.php/PPAR/article/viewFile/2935/2973

[26]Crisis Group Africa Report, 2020

[27]‘The root cause of farmers-herders crisis in North Central Nigeria’ by Plangshak Musa Suchi, and Sallek Yaks Musa (2021)

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