When the news hit the airwaves that the Federal Government had budgeted N6.3 billion to build an airport at Wachakal, in Yobe State, 130 kilometres from Damaturu, the state capital, not a few people were taken by surprise. This is because there is already an international cargo airport, which can serve as a normal airport as well, being built in the state capital.

In 2017, the then governor, Alhaji Ibrahim Geidam, had awarded the contract for its building at the cost of N11.3 billion with the promise that the contractors would complete it by the end of his tenure, which ended on May 29, 2019.

Though government officials touted it to be the cheapest airport contract of the time in the country, in June 2018, the sum of N1.760 billion was added to United Aviation Services for the supply and installation of communication gadgets at the airport under construction. Again, in November that year, Gaidam added to the contractors N4.2 billion for the “completion” of the airport. And with six days to May 29, 2019, the governor gave them the sum of N6,067,305,786.91 for the upgrade of the design of the airport. Hmmm…a contract design upgrade for N6bn!

Therefore, with this history, it is normal for people to ask if the Wachakal airport will get completed for the amount budgeted.

But beyond that is the million naira question: Does Yobe State need another airport? Is it a priority for the state? Assuming it is, does it make sense to site it 130 kilometres from the state capital? How many states in Nigeria have airports this far from their state capitals? While there is a federal university at Gashua and wetlands at Nguru, over ninety-five percent of those going to Yobe for business or to explore investment opportunities using the services of airports will not consider disembarking 130 kilometres away from where they will meet with the relevant people. If not for the security situation, coming from Maiduguri International Airport in Borno State, roughly 100 kilometres away, is a better proposition.

Even the Potiskum airfield, established before the Maiduguri airport, is not an alternative for now, but reviving and upgrading it will be more economically important for the nation. Because of the airfield’s global recognition, Potiskum, which the pilots refer to as Papa Oscar Tango, is a Mandatory Reporting Point (MRP) in navigational charts. Kano, Potiskum and Lagos are mandatory reporting points which even Maiduguri is not. Pilots on that international air route therefore must mention Potiskum when flying over.

While the Maiduguri airport was built in 1950, the Potiskum airfield, which was once a beehive of activities during the colonial days, came into being in 1945 during the scramble for Africa by the colonialists because Potiskum was a sprawling town in the North that was earlier annexed by Germans before the British took over. 

The construction of the airport was to make the movements of the colonialists in and out of Potiskum easy because the town was a gateway to other nearby towns in the North, which had enhanced trading activities and other associated commercial services in the region. When the airfield was constructed, planes carrying goods and colonial masters took off and landed in Potiskum daily.

Sadly, high-ranking government officials do not consider the economic viability and relevance of projects; they would not site projects in the right areas, rather they would take them to their hometowns. So they bypassed the Potiskum airfield for an upgrade, a project that would have been more beneficial to the state and nation.

And this is also how the construction of rail lines was taken off the Kano-Potiskum-Damaturu route.

They prefer to waste public funds in this manner rather than do what is right and what makes economic sense. Would they have spent the funds in this manner if it were their hard-earned money?

Potiskum is one of the top three towns around the northeast area in business activities. People from neighbouring Borno, Jigawa, Kano, Bauchi and Gombe and many others from Niger, Chad, Cameroon and the Central African Republic have a stake in its cattle and grains market, adjudged to be among the biggest in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The profit to be made by the Nigerian Railway Corporation from Potiskum alone from passengers and goods cargo will surpass what it makes between Abuja and Kaduna. But no, that will not be a consideration because those with the powers to do and undo – today – do not have Nigeria at heart.

Looking at it objectively, it is such placing of personal interests above the collective that has brought Nigeria to this sorry pass. If the current leaders had the patriotism and love for the people known as the attributes of the late Sardauna, Sir Ahmadu Bello, insecurity wouldn’t have bedevilled us this way. Sardauna could have built ABU Zaria in Rabah, his village, or Sokoto, where his grandfather’s throne was. But no, he didn’t. Instead of being vainglorious and causing the wastage of public funds, he based it where it would be meaningful and of more benefit to the people. And for this and many others, his name will remain in the hearts of good people.

There are certain projects a patriot does not commandeer to his area just because he can. Airports are among them. You can take a university there, a military/paramilitary training institution, relevant industries or research institutions. But surely not airports or railway stations meant for areas with large populations and goods to transport, where the majority will have access and what they generate can sustain them thereby relieving the government of much needed funds. Any good national political leader from a state like Yobe must see the state as his constituency and not just his enclave or tribe. And people must see him as being just and fair to all – those he considers his, and those he wants to see as not his.

Anywhere there is an injustice to the collective and wastage of the nation’s resources either for personal gain or to massage bloated egos, insecurity will not be far away. There is a correlation between wastage, corruption, and insecurity.

On February 1, 2021, in my write-up entitled Mandela and the Parable of the Fulani, I wrote on this page: “But there is also something wrong with the North. It lacks a leader. It lacks focus, and it lacks vision. Most of the Fulani terrorising Nigeria now could have long been engineers, medical doctors, professors, etc. The regime of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida started what it christened nomadic education. Under it, there were many things involved that could change the way the Fulani live. But because most of our leaders are short-sighted and prioritise lining their pockets, they never took that programme seriously. Now, with all the money they have sliced for themselves, those who should have been professionals today will not allow them to enjoy it.”

Now one can see how both those who, through corruption, have brought insecurity upon us and the innocent who find travelling between Abuja and Kaduna safer through the trains are now jittery because the products of wastage have turned their evil towards the rails.

Bandits operating in Niger State to the West, Kogi to the South, Kaduna to the North and Nasarawa to the East have sandwiched Abuja and there is a need for the clinical onslaught against them. The Fulani settlements in these areas have to be forensically combed. Quite a few of the rugas around Kuje, Lugbe, and close to the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport are alleged to be used by bandits to store weapons.

As long as public officers surviving on public funds have no patriotic feelings but indulge in wastage of the trust invested in them, so long will our problems of insecurity continue. We should never be foolish to assume that wastage of public funds, another form of corruption, has no relationship with escalating violent crimes and insurgency.

Those public officers who regard national influence as a Magna Carta for the wastage of public resources do not differ significantly from the bandits that bomb rail tracks, destroying public property to take people captive for ransom.

The difference is that while the bandits are crude in their operations, these officials are suave, but all enslave the nation for lucre, all indulge in the wastage of public funds and property for their base interests.

The unfortunate death of Miss Omowumi Aisha Adesina, a Part Four student of Foreeign Languages at the Obafemi AwolowoUniversity, Ile-Ife, on Thursday, 30th September, 2021 was, understandably, angrily responded to by her colleagues who took their protest beyond the university campus to the highway, with implications for their own safety as well as for the safety of other citizens plying those roads. While their protest was justified, it is trite that your right stops where those of others start. Blocking the highway for an incident that happened within the campus and which required the attention of the school authorities should not be condoned for any reason. What with the rights of others – and their safety and well-being – being so brazenly and viciously assaulted! What if any accident victim was being rushed to the hospital? What if a woman in labour needed to quickly get to the maternity ward? What of those hurrying to catch up with one appointment or the other? What of intending couples making their way to the marriage registry or reception centre?

I consider it the duty of each and everyone of us to impress upon our young, understandably exuberant and impressionistic youths the need to keep their protests and or grievances within the “locus in quo” and not stray into or invade the highways no matter the provocation. When they so hit the streets, they imperil themselves, endanger other law-abiding citizens, escalate and worsen the problem at hand, invite draconian and punitive measures on themselves from the authorities, and give a blank cheque for rogue elements to seize upon what might have started as a peaceful protest to cause mayhem and give both the students and their school a bad image in the reckoning of reasonable citizens.

Once the students’ protest spilled into the highways, the OAU Management panicked, in my view, and shut down the school on Friday, October 1, 2021. Among its reasons was the need to nip the crisis in the bud to prevent further loss of life. The loss of Omuwumi was painful and regrettable enough. The OAU Management also said it got credible information that fifth columnists had cashed-in on the protest to serve their own sinister ends and ulterior motives and that the newly-elected but yet-to-be-sworn-in Student Union Government had raised the alarm that it had lost control. Many of the protesters blocking the highway and extorting huge sums from stranded, desperate, and vulnerable road users were allegedly not OAU students. This is one vital reason why students’ protests should be restricted within the campus.

For a fact, I know that many stakeholders scolded the OAU Management for allegedly not being proactive enough in the way it responded to the crisis as it unfolded. Like Prof. Omotoye Olorode himself alluded to, many expected the OAU Management to have climbed down from its high horse to address the students. Prof. Olorode went back memory lane in his “Deepening neglect of public-funded education in Nigeria: OAU students’ protests as a metaphor” when he said: “And the tendency of the leaders of institutions to be “unavailable” during crises and periods when students are distressed needs to be terminated! Of course empathies are created and conditioned by the congruence of the interests of leaders and the communities they lead. Fortunately, at OAU, I can attest personally to the fact that H.A. Oluwasanmi was always there among the students during distress and crisis. Wande Abimbola was there, too. So was Roger Makanjuola who even called Town Hall Meetings to dowse crisis! So were senior academics like Oyin Ogunba, Bayo Lamikanra and “Union people” like the late Edmund Oshinaike, the late Kola Olufemi and Tunde Fatunla, the late Otas Ukpomwan, Dipo Fashina, G. G. Darah, Folabo Soyinka-Ajayi, the late J.D. Oke and Ayo Asafa, to mention just a few; even though “the Union people” end up carrying the can of being accused of “instigating the students”!

I had a glimpse of those glory days in our universities when I was admitted into the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in 1978. I saw vice-chancellors walk freely into the halls of residence, queue with their trays in the cafeteria, and rub shoulders with students. I stopped short of demanding similar populist, even if effective, PR and administrative stunts from present-day vice-chancellors because, frankly-speaking, times have changed in the universities. Today’s students are different in many significant ways from the students of our own days. For instance, in our own days, there was nothing like cults and cultism. The closest thing we got at Ife was Prof. Wole Soyinka’s Pyrates Confraternity, which was not a cult in the real sense of what cults are today. I remember toying with the idea of joining forces with them before finally deciding for the more socially-relevant and ideologically-focused Alliance for Progressive Students (ALPS). But with the way cultism and cults have permeated our schools today – from the university down to even primary school level – with the way students carry guns and cult gangs waste lives, with the support and cover they get from politicians in high places, I will not blame any VC who is wary to put his life on the line. How many high-brow murders have been conclusively resolved in this country? Usually, it is the concerned families that bear the brunt and lick their wound.

That said, there is no job, vocation or profession without its attendant risks, dangers and challenges. If you enjoy the perquisites and spoils of office, be ready to take on the challenges as well! Students are an indispensable part of a university system and must be seen and treated as such. The way many university Management sees and treats students as trifles has got to stop. Without students, there can be no university! The primary purpose of a university is to train students. Research and other functions or roles must be treated as an addendum. Therefore, one of the criteria that qualify anyone to become VC must, henceforth, be the demonstrable ability to proactively and effectively manage students not only in peace time but also in times of crisis. Academic prowess alone may be suitable for the head of a research institute but not for a university. VCs must not be quick to shut down universities; they must also not see the proscription of student unionism as front-line charge at the flimsiest of excuses. If I am to advise, I will say that VCs that show a lack of competence, dexterity, and acumen in managing their students should get the sack. Haughty, arrogant and imperialistic VCs have no place in a university system. And where universities are unavoidably shut down, all hands must be on the deck for normalcy to quickly return; Management, students, and the unions must bend over backward to resolve their differences and reopen the school so that academic pursuit – which is the raison detre for the school in the first place – to continue in earnest.

Incessant closures have dealt incalculable damage to the academic calendar of our universities. Long-drawn strikes by the ASUU in its never-ending disputes with the Federal Government have been the major culprit. In 2020, COVID-19 reared its ugly head to make a bad situation worse. As if that was not enough, OAU has suffered two closures this year alone as a result of students’ crisis. This is not to say anything of the succession dispute that also grounded the university in 2016/2017. As a result, many of our universities, OAU inclusive, have had their academic calendar thrown into a tailspin. While some of them have cancelled an entire academic year, others, OAU also inclusive, have feverishly struggled to save the day before the latest setback of October 1, 2021. I gleaned from sources that the university plans to merge the 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 admission processes into one stream – 60% intake of candidates from the first stream and 40% intake of candidates from the second stream. That was before the last crisis. Thousands of eligible candidates will thus miss admission. As we put this column to bed, news filtered in that the OAU Management has asked the students to resume on November 5, 2021. When the panel set up to investigate Omowumi’s demise turns in its report, I will be surprised if it does not finger incessant school closure as one of the remote causes of Omowumi’s death. But for time lost, Omowumi would have graduated from OAU a long time ago and the angel of death that came reaping her would not have met her at Ife. So, the FG, ASUU, OAU Management, and the students themselves ALL bear precarious liability for Omowumi’s untimely and very unfortunate death.

Space constraints will not let me respond to Prof. Olorode point-by-point. It is obvious I did not object to public or students’ protests; I only insisted that students should restrict their protests to their natural habitat. Yes, the government has always employed the divide-and-rule tactics against radical-leaning universities like Ife and there have always been conservative, pliant and compromising staff and students willing to serve as government lackeys. In the face of this, however, Ife in times past had stood ramrod, solid, and uncompromising; keeping a progressive and united front. Is the government alone to blame for this? How about the pig-headed politics of the supposed vanguard of the struggle?

And what is “circumscribed historicism” in the current OAU Management celebrating the school’s 60th Anniversary in 2021 and not in 2022? According to Prof. Olorode, “I consider the debate unnecessary because it can also be reasonably argued that a university does not exist de facto unless academic activities begin in it!” I beg to differ! A baby’s birthday is the day it was born and not the day it was named. A school’s Founder’s Day is not when it admits its first set of students or when lectures begin; it is the day it is pronounced or legislated into existence. From that day, it becomes a legal entity and begins to take decisions, allocate resources, recruit staff, develop both temporary and permanent sites and, finally, it admits students, after which lectures start. The day lectures start, important as it is, CANNOT be the anniversary date. Or else, we void all the actions taken preceding that date. It is impossible, even laughable, to think of building something on nothing!

Signing off in “Deepening neglect…” Prof. Olorode described himself as a “theoretician and revolutionaire”; very well, but I am a journalist even though I may not be a total stranger to the terrain of Marxist theoreticians and revolutionary scholars. We, nonetheless, have different rules of engagement and subscribe to divergent ethics. Journalists inform (report news/events), educate (investigate to lay the issues bare), and entertain (choosing a style and language that best convey his point of view as well as captivate the audience). In so doing, journalists hallow facts, allow all sides to adequately present their views, and accommodate all shades of opinion. A journalist is not necessarily an ideologue. Even where one harbours an ideological bent or sympathy, the ethics of the journalism profession compels pragmatism. I suspect that made all the difference!

A photograph forcefully elbowed itself into the media space during the week that just ended. It was that of President Muhammadu Buhari looking heavenwards, his two hands spread in total supplication to God, his countenance sober. He had arrived the Islamic holy city of Makkah on Thursday to perform the Umrah (lesser Hajj). Makkah, which houses the Mosque of the Holy Prophet Muhammed, is regarded in Islam as the second holiest mosque in the world. According to the president’s Media Man Friday, Garba Shehu, Buhari reportedly spent quality time embroiled in the rituals of fervently praying to God for “return of peace and security all over Nigeria,” as well as immersing himself in in-depth recitation of the Holy Qur’an.

In Buhari’s Nigeria of the last six years, crimson has been the colour of the sky. When the world looks towards Nigeria, it sees a country shawled in a towel of blood and hopelessness. Highly respected London-based magazine, Economist in a leader entitled, Insurgency, Secessionism and Banditry Threaten Nigeria, put the global view of Nigeria aptly but grisly scary, thus: “Jihadism, organised crime and political violence have grown so intense and widespread that most of the country is sliding towards ungovernability.” According to it, “in the first nine months of 2021, almost 8,000 people were directly killed in various conflicts,” and “hundreds of thousands more have perished because of hunger and disease, caused by fighting (with) more than 2 million (people fleeing) their homes.”

But, not to worry, President Buhari has prayed in Makkah. He swims in an ocean of hope, even when he is surrounded by mountainous seashells of hopelessness. A few days before fleeing to the protective covering of Makkah, he had arrived Kaduna for the Passing Out Parade of Cadets of 68 Regular Course, (Army, Navy and Air Force). Acknowledging that “our beloved nation Nigeria is facing many security challenges at this period,” and that Nigeria “continue(s) to face security threats and violent crimes such as insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and politically motivated killings which threaten our national integration” Buhari however “assured” that the Federal Government would do everything within the purview of the law to ensure the protection of Nigerians from the onslaught of criminals.

Hardly had the president finished giving this opaque “assurance” than gunmen invaded a weekly market in Goronyo, Sokoto State. They operated continuously between Sunday and Monday. At the end of their bloody strike, the terrorists killed at least 43 people, with scores sustaining injuries. In terms of “assurances,” the Buhari administration is not in short supply of this barren cliche. Add this to its off-the-cuff, peremptorily issued obsequies to those murdered by gunmen, no government in the history of Nigeria possesses Buhari’s huge arsenal of empty rhetoric. However, the reality on ground runs contra to its vague narrative.

Insecurity has heightened frighteningly in Nigeria in the past six years. Gunmen have field day across northwestern, northeastern and even southeastern states of Nigeria. Bandits terrorize them without let, kidnapping children with many of them disappearing for months, raping women and making life dreary for Nigerians. There is hardly any week that a space in the Nigerian geographical border is not soaked in blood. Pursuing this further, Economist said that, “across wide swathes of Nigeria, a collapse in security and state authority has allowed criminal gangs to run wild. In the first nine months of this year, some 2,200 people were kidnapped for ransom, more than double the roughly 1,000 abducted in 2020. Perhaps a million children are missing school for fear that they will be snatched.” Guns and gunmen have so much become recurring decimals that it is said that in Nigeria, it is rarer to see gari in the market than guns.

In the spate of attacks, Nigerians are killed with abandon, kidnapped in hundreds, most of them for ransom. The situation got so dire that, in conjunction with communication outfits, some state governments in the northern parts of the country have had to abridge the fundamental rights of their people while tackling the menace. They did this by imposing communications blackouts on their territories and upping military operations to forestall strikes of armed gangs.

On October 19 in Njaba, a community in Imo State, unknown gunmen suddenly opened fire and killed some traditional rulers. A couple of days ago, four policemen were said to have been killed by gunmen in Anambra State. Bandits kidnap young and old in Minna, Niger State as off-handedly as wall geckos peck insects for dinner. The saddening aspect of all these is that no one will be arrested; none will be prosecuted. If you are unlucky to fall prey to the barrenness of ability and capability of a government that Economist called “inept and heavy-handed,” you will become one of the statistics of its impotent “assurances.”

As government was celebrating its impacts in the transportation sector due to some railway routes that have received life and become operational aftermath an injection of billions of Naira into them, terrorists blew up the Abuja/Kaduna rail, a terror-laden operation that took place overnight. A train was said to have been attacked with explosives by the bandits, twice within the space of 12 hours. Media reports said the windshield of the train was shattered and the impact of the blast blew off a portion of the rail track. This prompted the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) to temporarily suspend its service on the Abuja-Kaduna rail line.

Swallowed by these challenges and advertised incompetence, the Buhari-led government attempted to drown the hoopla in an Imelda Marcos-like din. Imelda Romualdez Marcos was a Filipina politician-turned convicted criminal, who served as Philippines’ First Lady for 21 years, during which she and her husband, Ferdinand, were alleged to have stolen billions of Philippines’ money. Imelda personally amassed personal fortune of between US$5 billion to US$10 billion as at the time Ferdinand was deposed in 1986. So, Diezani Alison-Madueke was alleged too to have stolen $2.5 billion belonging to the Nigerian government while she served as minister.

The fugitive former petroleum minister’s assets were advertised for forfeiture last week, among which were personal effects like bras and waist trainers, including properties like 125 wedding gowns, 13 small gowns, 41 waist trainers, 73 hard flowers, 11 suits, 11 invisible bras, 73 veils, 30 braziers, two standing fans, 17 magic skirts, six blankets, one table blanket and 64 pairs of shoes. Imelda was reputed to have amassed 3,000 pairs of shoes and lived lavish lifestyle. As late Odolaye Aremu the singer counsels, no one should mock whom the rain that hasn’t yet subsided batters as only when the rain ends its pitter-patter will we find out how many have been drenched. We surely will see Imeldas in skirts, agbada and babanriga post-2023.

The seeming barren success of military operations against these insurgents and bandits, among others, must have provoked the Economist to further lament what it saw as the sissy disposition of the Nigerian Army which it said was only “mighty on paper” with “many of its soldiers (are} “ghosts” who exist only on the payroll.” For a Nigerian Army that scooped global garlands in decades for its interventions in UN, ECOMOG and multiple regional operations, this was an unkind and calamitous blow of Hiroshima and Nagazaki proportion.
It will appear as though Nigeria had begun to collapse under the huge weight of insurgency, banditry and secessionist bids of her component groups. These are manifest outcome of the failure of the Nigerian Army and other security agencies to ruthlessly attack the menace of insecurity.

The question on the lips of the world is, how come that, the more the armaments of war get more sophisticated – the Tucano fighter jets and unheard-of military equipment – the more effeminate and ineffective the Nigerian Army becomes? The Economist has a frightening answer. It is that, “much of (the purchased fighting) equipment is stolen and sold to insurgents.”

Like soldiers in post-civil war Nigeria under Yakubu Gowon whose “big fat stomachs” – apologies to Fela Anikulapo Kuti – became the advertisement of their bloody heists in the war, Nigerian soldiers have become soldiers of fortune, feeding fat on Nigeria’s insecurity misfortune, almost bursting at their seams from the illicit blood of the murdered that fills up their fat tummies. Rather than attack the specifics of this claim, a riposte from the Nigerian Army’s Director, Army Public Relations, Brig Gen Onyema Nwachukwu, attributed the Economist’s leader to an attempt to “denigrate, demonize and destabilize the Nigerian government.”

The spate of insecurity in the land and the beating of the chest of the president have no mutual coherence. But to Saudi Arabia, the President headed, to pray for peace and security in Nigeria. Apart from crude oil and Islam that tie Nigeria to this House of Saud, Saudi Arabia spends sleepless nights bothering about threats of an external aggression of her neighbours as well as internal revolt. Like Nigeria which is so big that, of five black in the world, one is a Nigerian, Saudi Arabia spans a vast majority of the Arabian Peninsula and is the largest country in the Middle East, with an expanse of land, making it the second-largest country in the Arab world. While it is bordered by both Jordan and Iraq in the north, Kuwait in the northeast, it is constantly threatened by  her neighbours – Quatar, Bahrain and the UAE, Oman in the southeast and Yemen in the north. These threats make Saudi Arabia to acquire one of the most sophisticated armaments in the world. Its leaders could have spent 24 hours a day in the Makkah mosque instead.

While it has no apologies for its very poor human rights record, since petroleum was discovered on its soil on March 3, 1938, the House of Saud’s monarchical elite has morphed the country into becoming the world’s second largest oil producer, as well as the world’s largest oil exporter. Today, its earth embowels the second largest oil reserves and sixth largest gas reserves in the world. However, unlike Nigeria, the kingdom is ranked by the World Bank as a high-income economy and its Human Development Index very high, also ranking as the only Arab country in the world to be named one of the G20 major economies.

Like Nigeria in the hands of successive governments, Saudi Arabia, in the hands of the House of Saud, is assailed by growing and emerging insecurity on all fronts – land, air and sea, chief among which is threat from Iran. There has been upsurge in kinetic and cyber threats to its strategic oil and gas assets as well. The kingdom also keeps its two eyes wide open to secure its 4,415 kilometers borders and 2,640 kilometer coastline to curtail threats from al-Qaeda. While it boasts of a Makkah perceived as one of the holiest cities in the world and is unapologetic that it runs a conservative theocracy with the Quran as its constitution, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia and the 25th son of King Abdulaziz, as well as his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the House of Saud, work before praying and don’t shovel their problem into the hands of God.

Guided by the precepts of Islam on justice, they didn’t get to the peace on their land by merely stomping and desecrating the hallowed sacred land of justice. But President Buhari believes that prayer in Makkah would fight insurgency, curtail the war hunger is fighting, win the separatist war in Nigeria as well as prop the Naira, which is fast becoming one of the weakest currencies in the world, on its feet again.

Three factors stoke the current instability in Nigeria: a hitherto troubled but now comatose economy; a hydra-headed regime of injustice that has spread widely like the cells of cancer and, borrowing the word of the Economist, a bumbling government. Government not only has no answer to the cracks of instability across Nigeria, it grandstands in governmental ignorance. A hugely poor population, added to a stagnating hopelessness of what tomorrow portends for the people, has exacerbated the curve of the Nigerian civil conflicts. A whole region – the Southeast – is wrapped in a miasma of violence which neither prayer, nor governmental arrogance can resolve.

Only a humble Nigerian leadership that is just and has fairness as its watchword can unlock the key of the looming war and senseless killings across Nigeria. A government that it takes an eternity to declare those who bring down military fighter jets as terrorists but is quick to declare those who set government institutions on fire cannot be a fair shepherd to take Nigeria to the land of peace. As if Nigerians are fools, Minister of Defence, Bashir Magashi, last week said that “due process” was responsible for the delay in the declaration of bandits as terrorists. “When the procedure is followed, they will be classified as terrorists,” he had said.

When a government carries such a heavy burden of dirty compromises; when, rather than delink its ignorance and accept its ineptitude, it runs to God for a solution that He has deposited in the brains of man from creation, we can as well close shop, hopelessly throw our hands in the air, and head home.

The Ladigbolu and Asenuga-Olubanjo model

Two books engaged my attention last week. Incidentally written by women whose passion for the written word and unquantifiable bother for the regressing values in the Nigerian society are nonpareil, the books synchronize with my belief that, to rescue Nigeria from her current morass, each Nigerian must go to their homes and families and reconstruct the Nigeria of their dream there. Don’t Mess With Their Flowers and Akin and the Fake Doctor, the latter published by renowned University Press, products of the hands of Bukoladeremi Ladigbolu and Modupe Asenuga-Olubanjo, are attempts to locate the dying values of a Nigeria in the 21st century.

While Ladigbolu, in a narrative manner, frontally dissects and confronts the pandemic of rape in Nigeria, Asenuga-Olubanjo teaches the teenager targets of her book that no single individual is too young to make impact in society. Though the rape subject that Ladigbolu dimensions is not a new phenomenon, society is becoming alarmed that if it is not addressed, rape may emerge as Nigeria’s most damming social undoing. Treating such issues as what rape is, its types, facts behind it, why people rape, how to avoid it and experiential encounters with rape, among others, the book is no doubt a therapy to the menace and an explainer of why rape has become this bothersome.

Asenuga-Olubanjo however fictionalizes her bother about the ills that plague society. In five chapters, she treats the incidence of fake drugs, the need for everyone, no matter their age, to be alert to the danger of fakery and how collectively, we can save our society.

In and out of the inks of their books, both women are amazons who are making impacts with their special biases for the youth of tomorrow. Ladigbolu, a certified marriage and relationship coach, spares time to fling verbal cudgel on social deviances like child molestation and relationship abnormalities on the social media. Asenuga-Olubanjo, a journalist turned public relations expert with one of Nigeria’s telecommunications companies, on her own, is a teacher of youths, impacting society with the model of values of traditional African Yoruba society.

Nigeria – a country known to all, yet full of many ‘unknowns’;
Name it, we have it here: unknown gunmen;
Unknown soldiers, unknown workers (ghosts);
And, unknown law enforcement agents

Unknown (or, at any rate, little-known) geniuses;
Unknown (because, fake) drugs, doctors and lawyers ;
Unknown (because, incompetent) leaders;
And, unknown ailments and illnesses

Here, virtually the only thing which everyone is adept at –
Is the rumour mill and pontification;
When it comes to either of that, Nigerians will be agog;
We are all self-opinionated and judgemental

But, given the chance to make a change, we are probably worse;
A quick example here will suffice;
‘He is the Messiah!’, we all chorused (well, at least most of us);
But, the reality turned out to be otherwise

Why don’t we tone down passing judgement and be more objective?
Easier said than done; Start with yourself’, I hear you say;
But, of course, no one is immune from this malaise;
The blame is all round – we are all guilty

But, let the cure start from the man (or woman) in the mirror;
‘Am I really better than others – do I, myself, make the cut?’;
Talk is cheap, it is said: ‘Can I walk my talk?’
‘Can you honestly answer this poser – on your honour?’

‘Even if you do, my friend, wait for others to make the call’;
For, as we say in law: ‘You can’t be a judge in your own cause’;
No, that would go against the very law of nature;
As ordained by the one true God!

Written By Abubakar D. Sani, Esq.
30th October, 2021

Tony Elumelu, chairman of Heirs Holdings in a recent report stated that multiple taxation and inconsistent government policies affect Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, (SMEs) competitiveness and their ability to attract capital in their investment climate. “It seems we have a big problem, because, with high taxation and multiple levies, it is expected we should have very high tax revenue,’’ he said.

Thriving motorcycle startups in Lagos state were faced with taxation problems in 2019 when the state government initiated a new regulation, including licensing fees, required for the motorcycle firms to operate as part of local transportation infrastructure. Under the proposed regulation, each startup will pay an annual licensing fee of ₦25 million per 1,000 bikes and then ₦30,000 per bike after the first set of 1,000. This move was criticised by economic analysts who claimed that apart from the government-imposed taxes, transport unions also collect taxes from the startup firms, which could cripple their business.

Sabir Mohammed does not own a motorcycle, so he remits ₦1,500 daily to the owner of the motorcycle he uses for commercial operations within Lugbe, a suburb along the airport road in Abuja. He is unsure why he has to pay a compulsory levy that does not benefit him. “After I make the daily returns to the person that owns the bike I ride, when I pay those levies buy petrol and attend to all these small expenses what is left becomes my profit for the day. I still don’t know why we pay those levies every day,” he said.

This is a question that requires some answers without which Citizen Sabir can rebel tomorrow in a ‘Nigerian Spring’. This is the crux of the whole matter here: when the poor become rebellious!

Ifeanyi Emmanuel, head of motorcycle revenue collection at AMAC’s office in Nyanya does not share the same view. Speaking to ‘The ICIR’, he emphasized that most of the motorcyclists they collect taxes from are illiterates who don’t have the slightest idea of taxes.
“Most of the motorcyclists are not literate enough to understand the intricacies of this tax because for example there is a contributory scheme the council has organised for motorcyclists to support them if there is an accident we give them support to help them back on their feet. It is just that many of them are not keying into the scheme,” he said. “Apart from that, the council is providing employment for youths through their taxes, the ticket agents that assist us in collecting these taxes, it is from that money they are paid,” he stated.

Ifeanyi’s area of tax coverage is from Nyanza to Karshi, he told ‘The ICIR’ that data collection was a bit sketchy but the number of commercial motorcyclists registered with his office was about 1,500 members. “Most of the riders who come from Nasarawa state and even as far as Niger state to do their motorcycle business on our roads if they are included I will say we have about 10,000 motorcycles within Nyanya – Karshi area,” he said.

The ICIR contacted the chairman of Motorcycles Transport Union of Nigeria, Nyanya chapter, but he declined to comment, saying he was very busy. ‘The ICIR’ asked to know how the association spends the tax collected from his members, he dismissed the question. Daniel’s “okada” business was supposed to be his ticket to easy money until he gets a better job but the reverse is the case.

However, six years after waiting for the “better job” he believes his only choice is to keep working hard and to keep paying the taxes, hoping someday taxes will be utilised for the benefit of Okada riders like him. “If they are using the money they collect from okada riders then there would be no worries. When an accident involves an okada rider, for example, you will not find any official of the union who will assist with the medical bills,” he said.
The fact file from ‘The ICIR’ a digital investigative journal, has been quite instructive.

And so we need to raise some questions for various authorities and our representatives in Nigeria:

First, how will the motorbike and allied riders including taxi and bus drivers feed from the work they do with daily killer-taxes they pay Nigerian politicians through their agents at the parks? What is the relevance of the numerous representatives of the oppressed people in various state and national assemblies?

In most parts of the world, governments design special stimulus packages, palliatives for the vulnerable and struggling industries to cope with the harsh and debilitating effects of Covid-19 pandemic. Are these oppressive tax policies on “the wretched of the earth” the way Lagos and Abuja governments, for instance, would like to use as welfare package? Why are our political leaders heartless? Why can’t they for once be people-centric in their policies? Don’t they know that their inability to provide welfare and security to the people alone is a crime against humanity? Isn’t it in their own constitution that welfare and security of the people shall be the primary purpose of government?

Do they remember the origin and consequences of the epic ‘Arab Spring’?

The term ‘Arab Spring’ is a reference to the Revolutions of 1848, which are sometimes referred to as the “Springtime of Nations”, and the ‘Prague Spring’ in 1968, in which a Czech student, Jan Palach, set himself on fire as Mohamed Bouazizi did in Tunisia on December 18, 2010.

This background should be quite instructive to Nigerian leaders: The recent ‘Arab Spring’ was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in response to corruption and economic stagnation and was influenced by the Tunisian.

The series of protests and demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa that commenced in 2010 became known as the “Arab Spring” and sometimes as the “Arab Spring and Winter” “Arab Awakening” or “Arab Uprisings” even though not all the participants in the protests were Arab.

It was sparked by the first protests that occurred in Tunisia on 18 December 2010 in Sidi Bouzid, following Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in protest against police corruption and ill treatment.

With the success of the protests in Tunisia, a wave of unrest sparked by the Tunisian ‘Burning Man’ struck Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, and Yemen and then spread to other countries.

The largest, most organised demonstrations often occurred on a “day of rage”, usually Friday afternoon prayers.

The protests also triggered similar unrest outside the region. Contrary to expectations the revolutions were not led by Islamists.

Even though the Islamists were certainly present during the uprisings, they never determined the directions of these movements, after all. There was hardly any central leadership in any of the uprisings. Some Islamist groups initially were even reluctant to join in the protests, and the major religious groups in Egypt—Salafis, al-Azhar, and the Coptic Church—initially opposed the revolution. The mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa, proclaimed that rising against the then lawful ruler—President Mubarak—was haram, not permissible. And the Muslim Brotherhood’s old guard joined in the protests reluctantly only after being pushed by the group’s young people.

It should not be forgotten that the ‘Arab Spring’ caused the biggest transformation of the Middle East since decolonisation. By the end of February 2012, rulers had been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, civil uprisings had erupted, major protests had broken out in Algeria Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Oman,Sudan.and minor protests had occurred in Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Western Sahara and Palestine.

Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on 14 January 2011 following the Tunisian Revolution protests. Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak resigned on 11 February 2011 after 18 days of massive protests, ending his 30-year presidency.

The Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown on 23 August 2011, after the National Transitional Council (NTC) took control of Bab al-Azizia. He was killed on 20 October 2011 in his hometown of Sirte after the NTC took control of the city. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed the GCC power-transfer deal in which a presidential election was held, resulting in his successor Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi formally replacing him as president on 27 February 2012 in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

Weapons and Tuareg fighters returning from the Libyan Civil War stoked a simmering conflict in Mali that has been described as ‘fallout’ from the Arab Spring in North Africa.
Besides, during this remarkable period, several leaders announced their intentions to step down at the end of their current terms. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announced that he would not seek reelection in 2015 (he ultimately retracted his announcement and ran anyway) as did Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al- Maliki, whose term was to end in 2014, although there were violent demonstrations demanding his immediate resignation in 2011.

Protests in Jordan also caused the sacking of four successive governments by King Abdullah. The popular unrest in Kuwait also resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Nasse Al-Sabah’s cabinet.

It is worth remembering that the geopolitical implications of the protests drew global attention. Some protesters were nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. Tawakkol Karman of Yemen was co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize because of her role in organising peaceful protests. In December 2011 Time (magazine) named “The Protester” its “Person of The Year”. Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda won the 2011 World Press Photo award for his image of a Yemeni woman holding an injured family member, taken during the civil uprising in Yemen on 15 October 2011.

These details are necessary for our careless Nigerian leaders who should note that the significant ‘Arab Spring’ was touched off by the protests that occurred in Tunisia on 18 December 2010 in Sidi Bouzid, following Mohammed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in protest against police corruption and ill treatment. I hope we haven’t forgotten that the young ones in Nigeria also rose up against ‘police corruption and ill treatment’ (#EndSARS) last year. The first anniversary echo is still in the air.

There is nothing else to stress here than the warning the iconic Frantz Fanon gives in that same classic, ‘The Wretched of The Earth’ that:
‘The basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anti-colonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. What matters today,…which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be’.

What this should mean to our leaders at all levels is that they have to stop exploitation of the poor motorbike riders, sundry drivers and petty traders they are fast killing with daily excessive taxation. They should seek knowledge on how to make Nigeria an entrepreneurial nation. It is through entrepreneurship that a nation can be wealthy, not by over-taxing the poor so that the rich will find money for elections. It is one of those acts of our governments the earth cannot tolerate anymore!

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On Sunday, January 10, 2021, Princess Paschaline Chidinma Odume from Udi, Enugu state, a member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) serving in Uyo, Akwa Ibom state, returned from church service and went out to buy akara balls and other small fries to quench her hunger. As it got to her turn in the queue to pick her fries, a strange young man approached her and offered to pay for what she had ordered. Incredulous, she protested the man’s offer, but upon his insistence she kept her own money and the man paid, pretending to be flowing with the milk of human kindness.

As Chidinma made to go back to her abode, the same strange man followed her on the way besotting her in a manner that appeared surreal to come with him to meet his mother and other members of his family in a close-by family house. He even suggested that his parents were in a position to assist her while she served in the town and obtain for her lucrative job placements post-service.

Feeling grateful for his initial generosity, Chidinma wasn’t too sure if rejecting the invitation to meet his family was in order. She decided to give it a try because nobody knows from where the angel of God would come. But as it turned out, this apparent gullibility would be the most disastrous mistake she ever made or would make in her entire lifetime – truncating her personae, freedom, her NYSC service year, and inflicting lasting pain on her family and friends.

It is said that when misfortune wants to visit a man it first sends him tranquilizers. Within hours of this chance meeting, the young Chidinma found herself in the middle of a chilling melodrama battling to save her life from a ferocious serial rapist and murderous sociopath later identified as Agbowo Japheth. In a most cruel twist of fate, the man who a few minutes before had presented himself as a mobile angel shepherded Chidinma into a lonely compound and locked up all the exit points. He then reached for a dagger and machete and ordered Chidinma to undress to be raped, failing which she would be killed and butchered like meat without  anybody tracing.

It was much later that it came to light that Japheth  had  driven the rest members of  his family out of their family house and converted the same house to a slaughter slab where women were lured, raped and killed without trace.Having found herself facing  death pointblank in the hands of the killer-rapist and remembering that her mother’s immediate older sister Dr. (Mrs) Maria Amadi who was head of nursing services at the Federal Psychiatric Hospital, Enugu, was murdered in cold blood a few months before,  Chidinma vowed not to allow herself to be killed by her attacker. As the movie-like drama of life and death unfolded, Chidinma wrestled the knife from him and, in self defence, successfully killed him.

By the time she emerged outside the compound with tears and blood stains all over her and beckoned neighbours and passers-by to come witness her ordeal, they ironically turned themselves into a bloodthirsty mob, stripped her and were on the verge of lynching and setting her ablaze before police intervened, rescued her and took her into detention.

Thereafter, the social media and the mob, the mainstream media not excluded, went agog with bizarre headlines of how “Corper butchered her boyfriend” etc.

Apart from Chidinma’s family’s account of this tragic incident, another lady, Miss Effiong Laurel Scott, who had suffered exactly the same fate in the hands of the same Agbowo Japheth in the same ghost house, came out to corroborate Chidinma’s story without even meeting her. Please google https://www.lindaikejisblog.com/2021/1/woman-claims-she-was-once-raped-by-the-man-harked-to-death-by-youth-corps-member-in-akwa-ibom-video-2.

Since January 10, 2021, Princess Chidinma has been detained in Uyo Prisons, abandoned and forgotten by the NYSC which mobilized and posted her to Uyo. As I type, we have authoritative information that Chidinma has developed a very serious life-threatening health complication.

Despite the best efforts of her family for the public to get a fair and balanced account of how fate cruelly thrust her in the middle of a tragedy, the managers of the justice system in Akwa Ibom state appear adamant in having her charged for culpable homicide!  Her crime: saving her life in the hands of a killer-rapist with a previous conviction for rape within the same criminal jurisdiction in Akwa Ibom state. This apparent reality of state support for rape offences and bias against a rape survivor raises a number of issues concerning the growing epidemic of gender-based violence, rape and murder of women all over the country.

The statistics are as staggering as the minutes and hours roll by. In April this year, just four months after Chidinma’s experience, a lady jobseeker,  Iniobong Umoren, was lured, raped and murdered by another serial rapist, Uduak Frank Akpan, in the same Akwa Ibom state. Mr Gracious David-West, who raped and killed 11 young women in hotels in Port Harcourt, was arrested in Uyo where he hibernated. He has since been sentenced to death by a Rivers State High Court. On March 23, 2021, the commissioner of police, Lagos State, Mr. Hakeem Odumosu, reported that 91 rape cases took place in Lagos in the first two months of this year. In June 2020, Miss Vera Uwaila Omozuwa, a 22-year-old Microbiology student, was cornered in an empty church, raped and murdered in Benin City. Miss Cynthia Osokogu, daughter of a retired army general, was lured from Abuja to a Lagos hotel and murdered by a Facebook friend. And only last week, October 21, 24-year-old Joy Ogochukwu Onoh was lured to deliver goods for sale to a rapist who violated her, killed her and abandoned her body at the North Bank area of Makurdi, Benue state.

In fact, a peep into the website of Ripple Nigeria would shock a researcher with reports of violent killings of women and little children by rapists all over Nigeria. Violent rape is now an epidemic of unimaginable proportion in Nigeria. In its September 22, 2021, edition, Borgen magazine wrote from Tacoma, USA, that “Nigeria’s low conviction rate speaks to the fact that sexual assault in Nigeria is not taken seriously by the Nigerian Police”. That, “because the legal system has failed the Nigerian survivors, they have instead turned to the internet using the Hashtag #ArewaMeToo”.

Today, the fate of Princess Chidinma Odume, another rape-murder survivor, hangs in the balance. All eyes are riveted on the director of public prosecution (DPP), Akwa Ibom state, and the state judiciary to set her free. It is equally unfortunate that so far the NYSC, which posted her for service, has abandoned Chidinma to a most tragic ordeal. She should never be punished for not allowing herself to be killed and her corpse left to rot in the dumpsite like other unfortunate women.
_*Ezea, a public affairs commentator, writes from Abuja*_