Inside Stuff With MARTINS OLOJA

I was reflecting at the weekend on how to expand my view that we should not push buttons on balkanisation of our great country because of the many troubles with our president, Muhammadu Buhari when the federal government announced indefinite suspension of Twitter operations in this our country of anything-is-possible.

It will be recalled that, ‘Let’s Not Break Up Nigeria Because of Buhari’ is a subtitle in my article titled, ‘Let’s keep Nigeria together for Mandela (2)’ here last week. I still believe in the substance of the argument that we should not champion a cause to break up this beautiful country because of poor leadership we are experiencing at the moment. I believe that under a good leader, the country has the dynamic capability to be the authentic leader of the black race and become part of the First World.
Part of what I wrote last week:

‘…But let’s organise to isolate all these dealers who masquerade as leaders especially since 1966. We the younger ones who have tolerated them thus far should not allow the destruction they have callously unleashed on this beautiful country to provoke us into break-up warfare. Yes, they don’t care if Nigeria comes to harm. We elected them to improve the economy. Our leaders, sorry our dealers looted the treasury and then cried foul and set up anti-graft agencies to search and try mainly petty thieves. They have ignored what a foreign policy expert and journalist, Sarah Chayes, calls “thieves of states”. We elected them to improve education standard but they destroyed the schools and set up their own schools and universities with their loot that anti-corruption agencies can’t detect. We elected them to provide good roads. They have looted road infrastructure funds to buy private jets to fly over our bad roads. Nigeria’s wicked power elite know that Nigeria can work, but not under them. The world powers too know that Nigeria can be great and become a big player on the world stage. The seven big men in suits (G-7 powers) know enough to know that Nigeria has inestimable brainpower that can be harnessed to be one of the greatest powers on earth. They all know from White House though Kremlin to Whitehall that Nigeria is Africa’s Power House. They have not forgotten that it was Nigeria that (spoke for Africa) in January, 1976 looked them in the face and told them point blank, ‘Africa has come of age…’

Yes, they know more than Mandela that Nigeria is the face of Africa and indeed the black race. That is why they can sell even deadly weapons to insurgents that can fast track Nigeria’s failure….’

The power elite would like to cause distractions from our discussion points on nation building every week: One week, one trouble, one distraction. I think most of us should continue to stay on the narrative that Buhari our leader should be encouraged to complete his term peacefully so that we can enter a new phase of national development plans in this country. We should concentrate on and work against the shenanigans and peccadillos of those who packaged him for us in 2015. Instead of lamenting on the incompetence and mediocrity that have characterised the last six years, we should encourage enough-is -enough Movements against all the enemies of the people who are masquerading as leaders now. I mean instead of agonising a great deal about the consequences of indefinite suspension of Twitter in Nigeria, we should be resourceful in organising and encouraging those who would like to run the country after the Buhari’s historic but didactic administration.

Here is the thing, we have read the beautiful reportage of global outrage over the federal government’s suspension of Twitter operations. United Kingdom, the U.S, Canada, Swedden, among other world powers have expectedly warned against rights violation. NBA, SERAP and other civil society organisations have cried foul and threatened court actions. These are positive responses to yet another tragic errors in this government. Even what Hurricane Donald Trump could not do to Twitter when it suspended his account, Nigeria’s government has done. Oh Power. Raw power! Where is thy powerlessness?

Where can I get a copy of a review of Dr. Fidelis Amatokwu’s book in those days by Prince Tony Momoh, the reviewer titled, ‘The Ignorant Tyrant’? The book by the then mass communication lecturer at the University of Lagos was torn to pieces through a quite objective review when the reviewer called the author an ‘ignorant tyrant’ as a result of too many errors of parallax and avoidable slips including ‘Nigerian Union of Journalists’ instead of ‘Nigeria Union of Journalists’. May we not be taught and led by ignorant tyrants in this perilous time!

Now that what we have feared most – attack on free press – has come upon us, we need to continue to reflect on President Barack Obama’s observation that ‘elections have consequences’. We need to note that we are still facing the dire consequences of our choice in 2015, which has become an eye opener, a testimony of some sort, after all as I noted here the other day.

We need to have some introspection on the fact that if no one from the kitchen to the legal cabinet could tap the leader of this country on Friday June 4, 2021 that indefinite suspension of Twitter, a micro-blogging platform where the old and the young meet to express themselves and even conduct their businesses, where the federal government even announced the ban was going to set Nigeria back, we should note that there is no need to sing any redemption songs for this administration.

How can the leader of Africa and the black race take that kind of rash decision in 21st century?
We, the people indeed need some introspection on the way they once were in South Africa where an iconic author Alan Paton wrote a classic, ‘Cry, the Beloved Country’ from which we need to borrow some brilliance.

Throughout the novel, (‘Cry, the Beloved Country’) one of the major themes is the contrast between hope and fear, light and darkness. The author, Paton juxtaposes these contrasting ideas by using literary devices, such as vivid imagery and rich dialogue. Personification, similes, repetition, diction, symbolism, antitheses, dramatic irony, and allusions also supply the varying moods of the novel and distinguish the “light” of hope from the “darkness” of fear. This story, set in South Africa, is about how two fathers, Jarvis and Kumalo, and how their lives intertwine. It is also about how fear and hope are inseparable parts of life. Kumalo is a black minister in a small, poor town. Jarvis is a richer, white man who lives on the hill. This novel also has many allusions to the Bible. These allusions signify both fear and hope. One allusion that signifies both fear and hope is on page 62, when Kumalo prays: “Oh God, my God, do not Thou forsake me. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, if Thou art with me.” This quote is both desperate and fearful, but it is also hopeful at the end when it says: “I shall fear no evil, if Thou art with me.”

Dialogue is a compelling device used to contrast hope and fear or desperation, as on page 108: “Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an arriving.” (Father Vincent) And where have I arrived?” (Kumalo) “When the storm threatens, a man is afraid for his house. But when the house is destroyed, there is something to do. About a storm he can do nothing, but he can rebuild a house.” (Father Vincent)…

That is where we should be: about the storm that is blowing now we can do nothing but we can rebuild our fallen houses and broken walls. Let us encourage our young and old civil liberty organisers and young politicians and even young journalists not to fear evil. They should brace up to say enough-is-enough. There is nothing we can do about the present darkness in the land. We all conspired with the corrupt political class to enthrone this governing party in 2015. Even the Letter-Writer-General of the Federation and the Nobel laureate in Abeokuta failed to see through the façade in the 2015 candidates. They too were naïve and we all followed them. We need to know that the evil geniuses who artfully designed the present darkness in which no one is safe at the moment are re-organising again. They have warehoused the Project 2023 war chest, though they are men without chests. They are strategising to confuse us again with their artistry and stratagem. Let us not be carried away by some naivety that Ministers Lai Mohammed and Abubakar Malami, for instance are the problem. They are not the real problem. They are part of a system that doesn’t work. Let’s look at the larger picture of the systemic failure that has heightened insecurity and food crisis at the moment. The leadership that appointed these people should be the focal point of discussion. The way the president, the governors and even the national and state assembly leaders emerged should be discussion and planning points. The role of money in our electoral process should be discussed now. How can the country recruit its leaders without moneybags and unpatriotic godfathers? We need to get those who will like to run the country to come out now to tell the nation how they intend to confront the present darkness and rebuild the broken country. Doubtless, this requires national re-awakening, lest we will regret again and wait for Godot that won’t come, after all. Let’s create our Godot today.

Meanwhile, the Buhari administration should not celebrate the arbitrary suspension of Twitter operations, which has been interpreted to mean war on the media and the youth. It is Pyrrhic victory, (which takes a heavy toll that negates any true sense of achievement or damages long term progress). The administration’s reputation managers should advise the presidency not to allow the world to address Nigerians and their leaders as the illiterates of the 21st century who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.

I have quoted Alvin Toffler, an American writer, futurist and former associate editor of ‘Fortune’ (magazine) several times here and this administration needs his brilliance now. To him (Toffler), ‘The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. I am afraid, in this digital switch over (DSO) age, in this century that information and social technologies disrupt daily, a leader who authorises suspension of a popular micro-blogging platform and social networking service provider, Twitter will be regarded simply as ‘an illiterate of the 21st century’. Our leader should, therefore, swallow this pride and vanity and allow Twitter continue in Nigeria today. The journalism genre they practise isn’t a crime. It nourishes participatory democracy and has made journalism to be an enjoyable conversation. It is a significant part of progress and digital revolution Nigeria shouldn’t disrupt.
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The primary responsibility of the government is to protect its citizens, failing to do that, every other achievement can be wiped out by just 2 days of war. Clearly, from the North to the South the State has lost it’s monopoly of violence and a clear strategy on how to retain control on behalf of the citizens.
None State actors can not bring stability. They can deliver blood, the temporary feeling of victory in revenge and counter revenge until the last person standing falls.
It is ONLY the State that should restore its authority by gaining the confidence of the citizens in a war situation. Be consistent in reactions to all the conflicts without any hesitations and resort less on knee jack responses.
The escalation of the conflict in Nigeria will only produce one resolution, endless carnage that will make the Liberian, Syria Leone and Biafra 1 Wars look like a child’s play.
From President Buhari (Who has thus far failed with regards to dealing with insecurity).)to state Governors, local government officials, lawmakers (who pretend like they are not also charged with the responsibilities to create an enabling environment to improve security) to the least person in government across the political and regional divide, a decision needs to be made, to either continue to politicise the crisis, do nothing and wishing the situation will improve or putting differences aside, doing something and putting the safety of the people and Nigeria over and above everything else or watch Nigeria slide into a war that no one can win. Sadly, after the fog of war, it is the very poor in all the nooks and cranny of the country that will end up being sacrificed as they are being sacrificed at present.
In the absence of the State, the people are already resorting to self help, enemies are defined in blury lines and crisis entrepreneurs in government, civil society, religious organisations are smiling to the bank.

By Dele Momodu

Fellow Nigerians, I had planned to write on a different topic today, but man proposes and God disposes. Nigeria has become such a rollercoaster that it is very difficult to catch up with news and events. Since President Muhammadu Buhari and his acolytes took power six years ago, our country has known no respite from news of gloom and doom. Where we had looked forward to the easing of our pain, what we got was a dissipation and destruction of our gain. It has been one day, one fight. Even a world heavyweight boxing or wrestling champion who fight for fun and for finance will ordinarily get tired at some point and decide to retire, but not these ones.

Where there is no fight, they will find it and create one, making sure it is bigger and more violent and virulent than the last. There is a sense in which you are made to feel that those in charge of this government thrive only in chaos and confusion. They seem to get off on playing to the gallery and practising dangerous brinksmanship. And so, the country lurches from one foreseen disaster to another unforeseen problem and then back to another foreseen calamity and the orgiastic cycle and circle of a litany of woes continues and persists forever.

We had been warned, long before President Buhari finally won the Presidential election at the fourth attempt, that he was too rigid, pugilistic, dictatorial, vindictive, divisive, venomous, fundamentalist, unbending, unyielding, and all that, but we dismissed all those allegations as belonging in his past. I was one of those who repackaged him as a People’s General, a veritable, certified, dyed in the wool democratic who had become a true friend of the lumpen proletariats, the most honest and frugal gentleman alive. We had good reason for reaching what has now turned out to be a highly fallacious conclusion. We had been led to believe that the President had turned over a new leaf and had imbibed democratic principles and in the process jettisoning everything regimental, military and authoritarian. The General certainly spoke the language of politicians, he even renounced his past toga of a high-ranking military officer and instead embraced politics like one who had always been a politician of the Nigerian hue. He probably had become better than them, playing them at their own game, like the military strategist and tactician that he has always been, when he stooped to conquer. Sometimes this President, feigns ignorance, plays possum or fakes diverse maladies, merely to get out of a tight situation.

Deniability and a willingness to abdicate responsibility are the hallmarks of this regime. I am beginning to think that it is no longer coincidence that the President is always absent when urgent matters affecting the national discourse and the nation’s future and destiny are at stake and being discussed. When it comes to matters which he holds dear and are closest to his heart like the issue of cattle and Fulani nomads from neighbouring countries, the President is astute, engaging and articulate. I do not believe in selective amnesia. It is a mere tool of manipulation and I am starting to feel that the President has worked it out to a Tee. Indeed,, when one critically examines the President’s posture and position on certain matters, it becomes as clear as day that we are being had and taken for a ride. Those matters which directly affect and concern the President and his constituents are usually swiftly dealt with. Outside of this, the President is characterised by snail-like speed, indecisiveness, bumbling and failure to interact with colleagues, and others, with any degree of process and precision.

It was not to say that we didn’t know his major shortcomings, which would always include his taciturnity, bad temper, reclusiveness, modest education, antiquated worldview, and so on. But we were so sure that his deficiencies would be protected and covered by a more cosmopolitan, cerebral, mild-mannered, affable, genial Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo. Sadly, we were dead wrong, and the error was absolutely brutal and fatal. Not only were things worse than imagined, as these vices held sway and appeared to hold the person and his office with a vice like grip, but they were also beginning to give rise to fatalism and morbidity. Under Buhari’s government, the falcon can no longer hear the falconer and things have absolutely fallen apart.

So here we are begging our leader to have mercy upon us and get a few necessities of life right for the general good of us all. I do not know why it has been impossible to reduce the spate of highly violent insecurity in the land. When Buhari came, insecurity was mainly volatile in the North East but today it has spread, uncontrollably, rapidly, and sporadically, across the length and breadth of Nigeria. What makes it so strange is the fact that Buhari retired as a Major General in the Nigerian Army and he was expected to be more competent than regular politicians in matters of insurgency. But that has not been the case. Instead, insurgency, militancy, insurrection, banditry and kidnapping have been on the rise. The perpetrators have become bolder and more brazen. Their exploits seem to be achieving greater superlative status by the day. Despite this fact, the government appears tepid, even timid, in its response. It is definitely afraid to engage these hoodlums, some say, for fear of offending their beloved kinsmen. After all, the speed and rate at which the Government tries to put down and supress innocent protests in the South East will seem to suggest that the Government can be actively proactive and decisive whenever it pleases the President to doo so.

Anyway, all that have become sorry tales. They have merely given rise to a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness in the people. Nowadays, Nigerians merely shrug their shoulders and roll their eyes as if to say, “what’s new”.

What has made matters worse is the glaring nepotism that exists and the manner some people from certain parts of Nigeria believe they are being treated like second class and third-class citizens in their own country. Many sections of the country have virtually given up on President Buhari ever changing his ways or style. Time and time again, the President is presented with opportunities for directing a new beginning, at least in the area of appointments. At reach turn, the President has spurned the opportunity and instead repeated that which makes it easy for his traducers and detractors to remark that a leopard cannot change his spots.

The most recent is the opening, and avenue, for the President to appoint a new Chief of Army Staff from the South East, or the South generally, with the untimely and tragic demise of the former Chief of Army Staff, the late Major General Attahiru Ibrahim. Instead, President Buhari went back to his tested, tried and trusted method of making such a high-profile appointment from the North. When he appointed Major General Farouk Yahaya, many concluded all hope for any salvation or redemption for President Buhari was lost. All entreaties to change have fallen on deaf ears.
The President has not hidden his disdain for the people of the South East in particular. Any time the Igbo people chose to protest the injustices and marginalization meted to them; President Buhari has always responded with brute force. He sent in the army and crushed any act of rebellion mercilessly. In interviews and in general speeches, Buhari left no one in doubt that he was never a fan of the Igbo people.

As if this was not bad enough, the President made a major gaffe this week when he brazenly and defiantly threatened to deal ruthlessly with the young people who must have been too young during the last civil war. He promised, emphatically, to handle them in the language they understand, thus invoking the sad spirit of a genocidal war that claimed millions of lives. The President’s media team compounded the problem by acting ignorantly, about the social mores and rules of engagement of social media, when they put such a direct act of threat and intimidation on social media: “Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War.
“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”

Unknown to them, the world has since moved far away from the kind of maximum rulership that Major General Buhari enjoyed as Head of State from 1984-85. Nigerians promptly protested against this level of intolerance from their democratically elected President. The terrible news, of ethnic bias and racial intolerance and abuse, instantly attracted world attention. Social media was on fire and there were many protest tweets to Twitter to delete Buhari’s unfortunate tweet and suspend his account. Before one could say Jack Robinson, Twitter had responded in kind by deleting the odoriferous tweet and suspending the recalcitrant account. Of course, President Buhari’s ego was critically bruised.

Of course, it was not in the character of a pseudo-democratic government to let such a simple and straightforward matter pass without rancour or much ado. Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture, wasted no time in coming out to offer a blistering criticism of the action of Twitter, naming it as being “suspicious!” My very dear Alhaji must have forgotten that Nigeria’s gra gra has its limitations, and that Twitter is an institution far more powerful than gods with feet of clay. The same Twitter that yanked off the most powerful President on earth, Donald Trump, is the same one that the President of a country, in search of loans from wherever it can get it, wants to take on by embarking on reciprocal activity.

You must give something to us Nigerians. We are good actors; the reason Nollywood is very successful. Vehemently rebuking Twitter for disrespecting our President is folly when you have absolutely nothing to back your sabre rattling. Nevertheless, Lai Mohammed felt that this was the path to thread, in a bid to demonstrate how farcical and unserious our leaders have become. Many people were even surprised the Government did not accuse Twitter of being bribed by some corrupt politicians to tarnish the wonderful image of a saintly leader. I thought the inane press conference would have sufficed. However, trust the Nigerian government to go for the jugular of Twitter, it announced yesterday that it has suspended Twitter operations:

“The Federal Government has suspended indefinitely the operations of the microblogging and social networking service Twitter in Nigeria. The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, announced the suspension in a statement issued in Abuja on Friday, citing the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence. It distresses me that a learned person like Lai Mohammed would make such a feeble, woeful statement, knowing it is a futile one.

The Minister said the Federal Government has also directed the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to immediately commence the process of licensing all OTT and social media operations in Nigeria.

Ironically, the announcement of Twitter’s retaliatory suspension was made on the Twitter page of the Federal Ministry of Information which generated some comic relief for millions of Twitter addicts globally.

This news was greeted with incredulity across the civilized world, wondering why a President Buhari would feel superior and untouchable if President Donald Trump could be sanctioned, and all he could do was to sulk and whine in one corner of the White House. And that was a President whose life was totally dependent on Twitter and who could actually tweet directly without the assistance of aides and did so.

With this draconian development, it is obvious that Nigerians should brace up for full-blown dictatorship which we thought had long been put behind us in 1999. The Buhari government have now come full cycle and is no longer comfortable with criticism. It has started a blistering war of attrition on its critics through the unfortunate retaliation against Twitter. How this would be managed, let alone achieved, would be seen in the days ahead!

By Wole Soyinka

We heard it last during the heydays of Donald Rumsfeld under George Bush – and judge in what condition it has left that part of the world, and beyond. Rumsfeld’s namesake – a sobering coincidence – also spat the same gung-ho rhetoric. That Donald once ordered his uniformed forces to “go out there” and “dominate the environment”, following civilian protests at extra-judicial killings of blacks by state police. Soon enough, leaving nothing to chance, that Donald II seized on the first opportunity to personally mobilize a mob to “dominate” Capitol Hill, his own seat of government that was clearly slipping from his control.
Optimists are free to underplay that threat to the much-acclaimed democratic beacon. Study that scenario carefully however, and you find It is not a question of: it could never have succeeded. Such surmises are wrong, It COULD HAVE SUCCEEDED, albeit with unpredictable consequences for America and the world. And so, when the elected head of a democratic state like Nigeria, not perched precariously on the knife edge of power but with a couple more years in the kitty, threatens to “shock” dissidents, we should indeed be shocked out of any complacency. Even if History has been deliberately eliminated from the school’s curriculum, Memory suffices to jerk us into a watchful, precautionary alert.

I hold no brief for those who resort to burning down police stations, slaughter their occupants simply for the crime of earning a measly monthly pittance, torch electoral offices, assassinate politicians in calculated effort to set sections of the country against others in the promotion of their own political goals. These are largely nihilists, psychopaths and/or criminal lords, soul mates of Boko Haram, ISWAP, Da’esh and company, not to be confused with genuine liberators. All over the world, throughout history, elections are denounced, boycotted, and generally delegitimized without recourse to wanton butchery.

When, however, a Head of State threatens to “shock” civilian dissidents, to “deal with them in the language they understand”, and in a context that conveniently brackets opposition to governance with any bloodthirsting enemies of state, we have to call attention to the precedent language of such a national leader under even more provocative, nation disintegrative circumstances. What a pity, and what a tragic setting, to discover that this language was accessible all the time to President Buhari, where and when it truly mattered, when it would have been not only appropriate, but deserved and mandatory!

When Benue was first massively brought under siege, with the massacre of innocent citizens, the destruction of farms, mass displacement followed by alien occupation, Buhari’s language – both as utterance and as what is known as “body language” – was of a totally different temper. It was diffident, conciliatory, even apologetic. After much internal pressure, he eventually visited the scene of slaughter. His language? Learn to live peacefully with your neighbours. The expected language, rationally and legitimately applied to the aggressors, was exactly what we now hear – “I shall shock you. I shall deal with you in the language you understand”. That language was missing at the moment that mattered most. It remained “missing in action” for years until a belated “Shoot at sight” outburst. Too late, and of course, inappropriately phrased. The precedent had been set, the genie let out of the bottle, consolidating a culture of impunity that predictably spread its bloody stain all over the nation.

Buhari’s recent deployment of this language is thus wrongly targeted, and tragically untimely. Even while he was threatening dissidents, an agenda of both secessionism and alien occupation was taking place not too distant from Aso Rock. ISWAP was taking over the already excised territories of Shekau’s Boko Haram, appointing new warlords of the occupational forces, sectioning Nigeria into vassal states and unfurling their replacement flags of domination. Soon, logically, ISWAP’s letters of diplomatic accreditation will be presented in Aso Rock?

We must however backtrack a little – that is the function of memory. It would be false to suggest that these eggs of impunity are newly laid. They have been incubating in loathsome hatcheries of power and domination for years, even decades, and now the raptors have been hatched and taken wings. The political culture of the devil’s bargain, of denial, evasion, avoidance of constitutional mandates, the culture of “appeasement of the unappeasable” – to quote myself – in order to gratify the vested interests of a narrow, power obsessed elite has blossomed. Finally, the chickens have come home to roost.

The evocation of the Civil War, where millions of civilians perished, is an unworthy emotive ploy that has run its course. In any case – and this has been voiced all too often, and loudly – the nation is already at war, and of a far more potentially devastating dimension than it has ever known. Every single occupant of this nation space called Nigeria has been declared potential casualty, children being pushed to the very battlefront, without a semblance of protective cover. We have betrayed the future. We need no breast beating about past wars. The world has moved on, so have nations. Some, however, prefer to move backwards. The continent is full of these atavists. In Nigeria, powerful cliques of this persuasion still roam the corridors of power We are indeed at war. It does not take the formal declaration of hostilities, with or without lethal bombardments, for a nation to find itself shell-shocked. The populace of this nation is already in that shell-shocked condition. So, what is there left to shock?

It is time to think “outside the box”. That many, in so doing, find no landing place except dissolution, is not a crime. It is not peculiar to any peoples, and is embedded in the ongoing history of many, and not only on this continent. It is their natural right as free citizens, not slaves of habit and indoctrination. Where disillusion rides high, sentiment tumbles earthwards, and the only question becomes: what can be salvaged? It thus remains the responsibility of leadership to persuade them, through both discourse and remedial action, that there are other options. Attempted bullying is not a language of discourse, nor the facile ploy of tarring all birds with the same feather.

I shall end on a personal note. It was not intended but, in view of breast thumping rhetoric by one president after the other over military sacrifice – undeniable, certainly – such recalls should be considered salutary. The heroic exploits of our military in confronting some of the deadliest internal forces of dehumanization deserve their place of honour, not only in history, but in contemporary consciousness. However, let not the military fail to take its place centrally in the nation’s ongoing, unavoidable soul searching. And so to an instructive intervention by this “bloody civilian”, in what should be an exclusionary portfolio of the keepers of a nation’s mandate for secure existence.

It took months for me to effect a meeting, agreed in principle, with a former National Security Adviser. It took that long only because I refused to meet him within the country, since it had become clear that the security forces, in addition to high levels of governance, had become infiltrated by the very vicious elements that have fully established and sustained a lethal dimension. I was not about to let myself be “sold out” to unseen forces in my eagerness to sound an oppressive warning. We eventually met in London. The records, I am certain, will be found in the National Security files and, in any case, I went accompanied. My mission was straightforward – to let him know that the nation was under siege, that the nomadic herdsmen that then threaded the forests were of a different breed from those whom we normally encountered in that environment that was also close to second home to some of us. We met. That National Security Adviser assured me that the military was aware of this, and that his mission to the United States was to negotiate the purchase of spotter planes to patrol the forest routes. I retreated, satisfied, to my normal preoccupations. No, not entirely true – I did take other supplementary steps internally, including meetings with high level state officials in the West.

Now comes the rub! imagine the chagrin, this past week or two, as revelations emerged, ten years after that meeting, of humungous amounts from oil resources being found in the US off-shore accounts of that pivotal figure of any nation’s security architecture! Is that an exceptional tale? Not in the least! He is not the first multi-starred general to be thus exposed, some even brought to trial. While Boko Haram was consolidating, a Nation’s Security Czar was also consolidating his nest egg with funds meant for elimination of a national scourge.

Shock? No. Civil Society already has a superabundance of the military shock treatment!

Nigerian Television Authority’s boss, Yakubu Ibn Mohammed, is also on the list of “Fulani” appointees of strategic government agencies, but he is ethnically Jukun from Taraba State who grew up in Plateau State.

NNPC boss Mele Kyari has also been assigned a “Fulani” ethnicity even though he is a straight-up Kanuri man from Borno.

The only linguistically and culturally Fulani people on the list are FCT minister Mohammed Musa Bello and UBEC boss Hammed Bobboyi who are both from Adamawa State.

A reporter from the South recently interviewed me for a personality profile, and although one of the issues we discussed during the interview was the robust diversity of northern identities and how people mistake me for Fulani, Hausa, “Hausa-Fulani” or Nupe even though I am actually Baatonu from Kwara State, he still went ahead and described me as “Fulani” in his story. This shows how our preconceptions can sometimes distort our perceptions.

I corrected his unintentional mischaracterisation of my ethnicity because he was kind enough to let me have a pre-publication readback of his story.

In other words, the South is relentlessly rhetorically Fulanising the North, particularly the Muslim North, just to fertilise and sustain a simplistic narrative of superhuman Fulani domination. One of my Fulani friends from Adamawa by the name of Idirisu Alkali tells me he is often simultaneously amused and flattered by the prodigious capacities that southerners endue on his people.

The Fulani are now lionised in the South as the lifeblood of the North and the sole designers of all that is ill with

But at the core of this sociologically impoverished monomaniacal fixation with the Fulani is a deep-seated but unacknowledged inferiority complex, which is fully realised in the tendency to describe as “Fulani slave” anyone who expresses opinions that depart from the forced and false consensus of the Fulaniphobes in the South.

Since only “masters” can have “slaves,” people who call others “Fulani slaves” have clearly accepted the Fulani as “masters,” indicating that they have also internalised their own inferiority before the Fulani.

But the truth is that the Fulani are just as human as anyone else. They are not a stagnant, undifferentiated, unthinking human monolith with no dissensions. They have the same fears, anxieties, and pains as anybody else. They have both good and bad people like other groups. There’s no conspirative conclave where Fulani people meet and plot to dominate everyone else. They battle disunity within their ranks like all ethnic groups. In fact, like the Igbo, they agonize over the progressive erosion of their language and culture in much of Northern Nigeria.

Muhammadu Buhari on whose account the Fulani are ceaselessly dehumanised and vituperated is, in fact, not culturally or linguistically Fulani. In other words, although he traces patrilineal descent from the Fulani, he doesn’t understand or speak Fulfulde (as the language of the Fulani is called) and has no experience with Fulani culture.

Buhari’s father, Adamu Bafallaje, who was an ardo (as Fulani community elders are called), died in his real hometown of Dumurkul in the Daura Emirate of Katsina State when Buhari wasn’t old enough to know him, so Buhari was brought up by his maternal relatives in Daura. His maternal relatives are ethnically Kanuri people who are nonetheless culturally and linguistically Hausa.

As Mamman Daura’s daughter, Fatima Daura, wrote on the occasion of her father’s 80th birthday, Mamman Daura is Kanuri from both his paternal and maternal sides. The family’s forebears migrated from Borno to a town in what is now Niger Republic and finally to Daura. Note that Mamman Daura’s father, Dauda Daura, shares the same mother (but different fathers) with Buhari. So Buhari’s mother, Hajia Zulaiha, was Kanuri.

Not having grown up with his father and knowing next to nothing about the Fulani, Buhari idealised not just his absent Fulani father but the Fulani people. This is a well-known psychological phenomenon that is encapsulated in the folk wisdom that says, “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Barack Obama, for instance, idealised his absent Kenyan father—and his Luo people— with an intensity he would never have had if he’d grown up with him.

Buhari’s idealisation of his absent Fulani father inspires an exaggerated identification with the Fulani in ways that alienate others and expose innocent Fulani people to unjustified animosity. That’s why I called him the “single greatest threat to the Fulani” in a July 6, 2019 column.

I also pointed out in a January 12, 2019 column that “People who are on the edge of an identity tend to be more exaggeratedly aggressive in their assertion of the identity than those who are—or see themselves as being—in the mainstream of the identity.

“For instance, when there was a butcherly communal turmoil that pitted Bororo Fulani cattle herders against Yoruba farmers in the Oke-Ogun area of northern Oyo State in October 2000, Buhari led a group of ‘Fulani’ northerners to Ibadan to meet with the late Governor Lam Adesina where he told Adesina, among other things, ‘your people are killing my people.’ A Fulani person from the northeast is unlikely to say that.”

Nothing in what I’ve said is intended to mitigate the injustice of Buhari’s preferentialist style of governance. I started calling out what I called the “undisguised Arewacentricity” in Buhari’s appointment since 2015 when most people were scared to criticise the regime (read, for instance, my September 5, 2015 column titled “Buhari is Losing the Symbolic War”), but to put the entire moral weight of his wrongheaded choices on the Fulani and proceed to demonise them without let is both reprehensible and unconscionable.

There’s no denying that northern Muslim elites have benefitted disproportionately in choice appointments in this regime, but “northern Muslim elite” isn’t synonymous with “Fulani.”

An honest, empathetic role play would probably help. Imagine being from an ethnic group that’s perpetually slandered, maligned, reviled, and vilified as a national pastime because you share ethnic identity with someone—or some people—whose boneheaded policies smolder you like they do your traducers. How would you feel?

Demonising people based on invariable attributes that are incidental to their humanity, such as their ethnicity or race, is akin to condemning them even before they were born. Malcolm X once called that the worst crime that can ever be committed. Let the toxic, hateful ignorance stop already!

By CHIEF MIKE A.A OZEKHOME, SAN, OFR, FCIArb, LL.M, Ph.D, LL.D.

Today the Nigerian Government through the Information Minister, Mr Lai Mohammed, suspended indefinitely, operations of the Micro-blogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria. It was a retaliatory action against Twitter for humiliating President Buhari based on his incendiary statement against protesting Nigerians.

Well, I am not surprised that the Federal Government has suspended twitter operations in Nigeria. Are you? I have always said that this Government has a very thin skin for criticism. It is a government that cannot take punches, but delights in always giving punches to adversaries, real or imaginary.

What does Nigerian government think Twitter loses by being suspended? It is just the Nigerian people that will suffer, in the same way the Government has been punishing Nigerians in the last six years. Twitter will not even bother whether Nigerians use Twitter or not. We are 210million people in Nigeria. Of this number, only about 33million Nigerians are active on social media. Less than 15 million of these are on twitter.   On the other hand, there are well over 300 million people across the world that use twitter. So twitter will not feel it. It is just like a drop of water in an oasis. Twitter will not even know that a country has suspended it. So, it is the same beleaguered Nigerian people that will suffer, not the Federal Government or Twitter, because the Federal Government is a minute minuscule aspect of the Nigerian society, made up of only a few selected elite that do not care about the common man.

The Government knows that Nigerians now resort partly to twitter to express their dismay and dissatisfaction with its mis-governance; its opaqueness; its lack of responsibility, transparency, accountability and commitment to the Nigerian people. The Government knows that Nigerians now express their resentment and protest through Twitter, by telling the whole world how Nigeria has been turned into a corruption haven, and a sprawling field of butchery, extra-judicial executions and slaughtering. Those in Government do not want the world to hear about their atrocities. So, they just gleefully tell the world that they have suspended twitter, and that they would soon license other OTT and social media operations. These people in Government know that Nigerians have been reaching out to the whole world; and they are very embarrassed that the breeze has been blowing, and the smelly backside of the fowl is always being opened for the whole world to see and smell its odorous side. This is the same Government that undeservedly rode to power using the same twitter and other social media platforms it now detests.  My humble appeal to this Government is that it should go further than this. It should actually suspend or dissolve the Nigerian people which it has become so allergic to and no longer wants to see or hear about. Then, it can now go ahead to elect or select another people in place of the present Nigerians who appear to have become a nuisance to it. I am very ashamed of this government. This government knows no shame at all. This government has no integrity at all; no honour; no dignity; no capacity to govern; no pretensions to democratic nuances. I am greatly disappointed about this government round and round. I feel very sad as a Nigerian being led by a Government of one scandal per day.