As former governor of Osun State and pioneer Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, got ready to launch his autobiography in Lagos last Friday, a day before the launch, one very unAfrican event occurred in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso. Christophe Joseph-Marie Dabiré, the West African country’s Prime Minister, presented his letter of resignation to the country’s president, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. It was accepted. Dabiré threw in the towel on the heels of persistent demonstrations against his government’s inability to stop the bloodletting Burkinabe faced from ceaseless jihadist attacks. With the PM’s resignation, according to Burkinabe law, an end had ipso facto come to his administration.
There is nothing bad happening in Burkina Faso that is not happening a hundred fold to Nigeria. But at the launch of the 559-page autobiography entitled My Participations, Akande had no word of comfort for the afflicted. He instead chose to make a Pope of the sleepy incumbent. He beatified President Muhammadu Buhari while demonizing former President Olusegun Obasanjo and some unnamed northern elites, including “an aristocratic leader” who he said fought strenuously to ensure that Buhari never became the Nigerian president. Every political enemy of Tinubu was a villain in the book, from Chiefs Ayo Adebanjo, Olu Falae to Sir Olaniwun Ajayi. For Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to whom his being a sidekick is a notorious fact, Akande chose to do a sleaze, slimy job of whitewashing.
Like Nigeria, since 2015, rising insecurity had gripped Burkina Faso’s Sahel region as it faces increasing and frequent, yet lethal attacks. Though an extension of the seemingly interminable Malian conflict, local dynamics fuel the Burkina insecurity. Spearheaded by the Ansarul Islam group, founded by Malam Ibrahim Dicko, a preacher from its Soum province, the crisis has religious, social and security dimensions. Dicko’s jihadist armed group, like Nigeria’s Boko Haram, is said to be affiliated with Al-Qaida, as well as the Islamic State organization. Targeting civilians and soldiers, Ansarul has thus far killed 2,000 persons, with 1.4 million displaced. On November 14, the Inata Northern Province came under an attack said to be Burkina’s deadliest ever. Jihadists mercilessly shelled Burkina security forces of gendarmerie detachment, which led to the deaths of about 57 people, 53 of them gendarmes. Till date, military offensives against Burkina insurgency have not been able to stem its tide.
Like Burkina Faso, the butcherbird stalks the Nigeria for which Akande believes Buhari was God-sent. Butcherbirds, in description, are similar to birds called ravens. They are meat-loving birds with a unique audacity of spirit. The butcherbird’s name is got from its gruesome mode of feeding. With its mean-looking hooked beak, the moment it catches its prey, it hangs it on a branch or fork of a tree and hacks the meat clinically as butchers do at the abattoir. It then hangs the leftovers on tree forks, to be eaten afterwards. It walks up to home frontages, gardens and backyards with a magisterial confidence that is uncommon. Endowed with beautiful, rollicking voices of a sonorous orchestra, butcherbirds often perform a duet. While it scavenges on the road to kill, this isn’t strictly the butcherbird’s dark side. Small birds tremble at its sight. This is because these small birds, chicks and eggs, constitute the menu of the butcherbird.
Adipolo
Adipolo
South African novelist, Alex La Guma, in his 1979 novel entitled, Time of the Butcherbird, popularized the renown of this flesh-eating, flesh-hacking bird. The book was La Guma’s last novel before his passage in 1985. Does Bisi Akande know that, whether on issues of security, economy, social or political, butcherbirds have taken over Nigeria? If he knew, why shower butcherbirds with eulogies if you are not one?
On the security side, as it has become commonplace, in the last one week, as Yoruba say in elegy to the dead, the ground has opened its irreverent mouth to swallow the blood of another set of innocent Nigerians. Not to worry, our government-by-obsequies wasn’t watching helplessly. As is its wont, it commiserated with the families of the deceased.
Two days before Akande’s attempt to make the Buhari stone talk, specifically last Wednesday, in Ba’are, Mashegu Local Government Area of Niger State, 16 worshipers were killed and 12 others injured by suspected armed bandits. Official figure claimed nine died. Death stalks the land like an apparition. If you are to conduct a proper clinical autopsy on those deaths, as you disembowel each of the blood spillages, hidden inside a corner of the carcasses is the Nigerian State and leadership failure.
There is a consensus among Nigerians and stakeholders on Nigeria that gloom is Nigeria’s second name. Economists, financial analysts, political scientists and even the common man on the streets, give unimpeachable statistical data to back up their claim that Nigeria is at the precipice. Their conclusion is teased out from the excruciating pain and agony on Nigerian streets and the hopelessness that has become a daily example in the country. Excluding government and its apologists and a coterie of systemic leeches who say the pains are fuelled by intolerance of the Nigerian political opposition, the agony is visible for the blind to see.
The Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, which began 12 years ago, with a group of men trying to impose an extreme version of Islamic extremism in some parts of North-eastern Nigeria, under Buhari, has opened a greater Pandora’s Box about Nigeria. Inside it is an exposure of a deep-seated crisis that incriminates, implicates and questions the competence of the Nigerian military and civilian leadership. Banditry and war against Nigeria then followed. These were followed in tow by separatist violence in some parts of the country, economic crises, acute food shortages and the collapse of the Nigerian Naira.
Bandits kill, maim, rape, murder and kidnap and are said to collect taxes from farmers when they are planting and harvesting their farm inputs. In some parts of Niger State, there is an allegation that Boko Haram controls a part of the country. An Economist magazine report said that more people were kidnapped in the first four months of this year than all of last year in Nigeria.
The South is not immune from the butcherbirds. In the Southeast, life answers to Thomas Hobbes’ description of nasty, brutish and short. Recently, two policemen were reported beheaded. Since some brigands shot and killed the husband of former NAFDAC boss, Dora, Chike Akunyili, others have been hacked to death, especially in Imo State, deaths that didn’t have the honour of gracing the media. Indeed, fighting between government forces and Igbo separatists in the south-east has recorded so many deaths, figures that may embarrass the Federal Government if the actual statistics are made public. Southwest is also a recipient of this insecurity trauma. Kidnapping for ransom, spontaneous criminal activities and the uncertainty of life rule the airwave.
In May this year, Robert Rotberg, founding director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict and President Emeritus of the World Peace Foundation, in conjunction with John Campbell, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, gave a very damming report on Nigeria’s democracy and government under Buhari and concluded that Nigeria is a failed state. Some other scholars disagree with them and say that Nigeria under Buhari hasn’t failed completely but is a failing state. To yet another group of scholars, from their prognosis of what the sickly Nigerian child in Buhari’s hands is, she is a fragile state. Whatever it is, it is apparent that Nigeria is hemorrhaging. And badly too. Yet Akande’s autobiography didn’t see this gloom.
On the economic front, as alluded to by Rotberg and Campbell, the Nigerian economy is in throes. Recently, Simon Harry, Statistician-General of the Federation and Head of National Bureau of Statistics, said that the country’s economy grew by 4.03 per cent in the Third Quarter of 2021. When we go to the market, reality there boos Harry.
Nigerian social crises are no less mind-boggling. The society is at the receiving end of all these crises. Social relations are at their lowest and life is almost at a standstill in Nigeria. Nigerians are suspicious of one another and even other nations have utter disrespect for us. Night life is almost dead as a result of the huge insecurity in the country. Inter and intra-state travels are at their basest, not to talk of inter-regional relationship which is almost totally absent. No time in the history of the country have mutual suspicions been at this lamentable level. Nigerians face trauma of all kinds daily. If you add the above to the acute hunger, unprecedented in the history of the country, which the people face, to say that Nigeria is in a period of crises may be an understatement.
The critical question to then ask is, is Bisi Akande aware of all these? Or does he live in Saturn? How many of those who voted Buhari in 2015 in the north are alive today? Why didn’t Akande summon the courage to tell Buhari to resign like Burkina Faso’s gallant leader, Dabiré? It is instructive that in the entire book, Akande never had a word for the people of Ibarapa, Oyo State, who were killed by identified Fulani herdsmen and the gale of kidnaps that gripped the Southwest, yet a leader is a leader when he shows empathy for his people. Not to worry. Even from Tinubu, mum is the word for the people of Ibarapa and Nigerians dying under the butcherbirds in government.
Rather than reply Akande, Obasanjo and all those mentioned by him as having attempted to deflect the arrow of the Buhari calamity in 2015 should thank Akande for doing them a big PR job. What Akande invariably accused them of was that they were not guilty of feeding Nigeria with this Buhari poison. They should all take a bow for their resistance to the selfish, fatal and ill-conceived job of making Buhari president in 2015. They were patriots and Nostradamus,, men who saw and warned against the bleak tomorrow of Nigeria that is today under Buhari.
The Akande book, in its apparent lick-spittle job of whitewashing Tinubu, is laced with ignoble falsifications of facts. While he claimed in the book that Buhari betrayed Tinubu, having hitherto promised to make him a Vice Presidential candidate, in December 2014, Tinubu himself issued a statement claiming that he turned down Buhari’s offer to him to be the party’s vice presidential candidate so that he could maintain his position as leader of the party, as well as act as bridge builder across all divides. One of the two must be lying. Tinubu had said in 2014: “My contribution to the party was never based on the expectation of a later political handout. Nigeria is in trouble and we are well past the moment for such narrow, selfish games. There came a time during the course of the events when our Presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari offered the Vice Presidential slot to me. Being a normal human being, I was deeply moved and honoured that he would consider me for the position. Being a patriot, I had to weigh my potential candidacy in all of its dimensions.”
Insinuating that General Mai Gaskiya was treacherous, Akande wrote, “General, this was not what we agreed upon. You are changing our agreement? He knew I was getting angry. He said he was under pressure from some governors from the north, including those who were Muslims. I told him the slot belonged to the South-West and among the Yoruba, religion is not a factor in leadership.”
All in all, it is evident that Akande’s My Participations is another of the Tinubu group’s plan to deodorize him preparatory to the 2023 elections, stomping on sacred facts with scant regards in the process. If Akande wanted to lick Tinubu’s spittle as he has always done, he should have done it with more respect for the people of Nigeria. Calling the Buhari butcherbird years a blessing to Nigeria and whitewashing Tinubu this mendaciously are terrible affronts on the people. One of the ways he could address the Tinubu debacle is to advise Tinubu himself to write his own autobiography – so that we all could know everything about the man who desperately wants to be our president, and so that we all could benefit from his uncommon grass-to-grace story. This is a challenge for the Lion of Lagos to take in the new year. We are waiting
[8:16 pm, 12/12/2021] Miss Lillian: Inside Stuff With MARTINS OLOJA,
Sunday December 12, 2021, Back Page
‘ABUJA: Capital Relocation From Lagos 30 Years On’
‘Not many young people will know why I have always been very passionate about Abuja affairs. The nation’s capital is actually my second home. My journalism career grew luxuriantly like yam tendrils in the rainy season, thanks to my relationship with the capital about 28 years ago when Alhaji Bukar Zarma, former editor of Sunday New Nigerian established the first newspaper the ‘Abuja Newsday’ there.
I was pioneer Lagos Bureau Chief from 1988 to 1990 when I was promoted editor of the newspaper. Abuja is the place my colleagues (bureau chiefs) including the dangerously hardworking Yusuf Ali,the ever clean Sam Akpe, never-say-die Yomi Odunuga, etc named me “The Dean” of the Bureau Chiefs’ community while some others outside journalism would call me “The Mayor of Abuja”. There is nothing extraordinary about the sobriquets other than my long-standing experience as a reporter, writer and editor in the 40 years old “capital of the federation” as the constitution calls it….’
That is an extract from a warning article titled, ‘Before Abuja becomes toxic federal capital’ I wrote here on July 16, 2016.
This background is quite relevant to the points at issue today in Abuja that is supposed to mark the 30th anniversary of the capital relocation from Lagos to Abuja, today. Exactly 30 years ago, today General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida physically moved the seat of power from Lagos to Abuja. I have always complained here about how the people who have been running Nigeria from Abuja after Obasanjo have always forgotten Abuja’s two birth birthdays: February 3, 1976 and December 12, 1991.
It is important to reflect on the 30th capital-relocation anniversary of our nation’s capital where religion & ethnicity have become political tools in the hands of our politicians.
Let’s reflect on this my background: when the newspaper civilisation kicked us in the face in Abuja in 1988, there was a good country where religion and ethnicity did not play so much overt role in interpersonal relationships, let alone in recruitments into private enterprises. Then Alhaji Bukar Zarma, who hails from Borno state shaped the business plans of publishing the first newspaper in Abuja (‘Abuja Newsday’) with Alhaji Hassan Adamu Wakilin Adamawa, from Adamawa state. They are both Muslims.
But the striking element in the story in 1988 in Abuja was that Alhaji Zarma, who advertised for vacancies for journalists in a national daily then did not consider religion and ethnicity when he hired very resourceful journalists from different parts of the country. One thing was clear then: he never asked any candidates state of origin. And so coincidentally, all the senior editors and most reporters recruited from the North and South were Christians. This is the evidence: Mr. Nick Dazang (Christian from Plateau) was the pioneer Editor; Mr. Jackson Ekwugum (Christian from Delta State) was News Editor, Mr. Dennis Mordi (Christian from Delta State) was Chief Sub Editor; Mr. Samm Audu (Christian from Kaduna State) was Sports Editor; Mr. Skekwogaza Wasah (Christian from Abuja) was Features Editor, Martins Oloja, (Christian from Ondo State) was Lagos Bureau Chief. Other notable names in the newsroom ten included Shok Jok, Camillus Eboh, Moji Olaniyan, Moji Olajide, Alex kabba, Emmanuel Obe, etc, all of them Christians.
In fact, Alhaji Zarma did not know my state of origin until long after the newspaper was shut by the military junta then in the wake of the June 12, 1993 crisis in the country. It should be noted that at that time, the Chairman of the Abuja City Press Limited, Publishers of The Abuja Newsday, Alhaji Adamu was the Chairman of National Fertilizer Company of Nigeria Limited, (NAFCON).
I met him several times in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kaduna and Abuja. He never asked even once where I hailed from. What is more, at that time, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) was military president (Head of State) and most of the prominent officers in the then presidency were Professors Jerry Gana, Omo- Omoruyi, Jonah Isawa Elaigwu, Sam Oyovbaire, etc. These were Christians, among others who were quite visible in government then, although they were still in Lagos. But Professor Omo omoruyi was then in Abuja before the historic movement to Abuja on Thursday 12 December, 1991.
The point really is that as a young Nigerian citizen and journalist, I have seen the good part of the country even in Abuja where it is now becoming increasingly difficult to associate with it as the capital of our federation. I succeeded Nick Dazang in 1990 as Editor, (Abuja Newsday) in Abuja and I can recall that Abuja was gloriously promoted as a great city and a unity capital. In fact, our newspaper’s masthead carried a motto: ‘A great paper for a great city’. Besides, the FCT administration we were covering then had a lot of Christians, Muslims and free thinkers alike from different parts of the country.
As I had earlier noted, the atmosphere then was so conducive in the nation’s capital to the extent that even the land administration department then had a code of conduct in plots allocation to states. In other words, if Plot 25 in Garki was allocated to a citizen of Anambra state, for instance, Plot 26 would be allocated to a citizen of Adamawa, and not to another allotee from Anambra State. That was what led to naming Abuja “Centre of Unity” when the Federal Road Safety Corps came up with various slogans for the 36 states and Abuja then. Lagos was named “Centre of Excellence…
It is quite tragic today in this very toxic country where a Muslim-Muslim ticket had won a free and fair election that no political party even in the nation’s capital can organise a convention that would produce a Christian-Christian ticket for president as we did in 1993. This is a tragedy. It is really catastrophic that the nation’s capital that Justice Akinola Aguda (from Ondo state) recommended as a “centre of unity” through a Presidential Panel he headed in 1975 has become a dangerous “centre of disunity”. It is unfortunate that Murtala didn’t promise us a capital that will be dominated by a section of the country.
Two weeks ago, Nigeria’s President and the FCT Minister the constitution empowers him to appoint in his capacity as Governor of the FCT, appointed a cabinet for Abuja and heads of agencies of the FCT administration and Executive Secretary for the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA). Curiously, most of the appointments were due in 2019 when the President was re-elected. It was for these reasons I had written two articles this year alone – to complain about undue delay in appointing the Abuja cabinet (Mandate Secretaries) since 2019. https://guardian.ng/opinion/buhari-and-fct-ministers-missing-memo/January 10, 2021; https://guardian.ng/opinion/buhari-and-his-fct-ministers-inaction/August 08, 2021.
So, President Muhammadu Buhari finally appointed Mandate Secretaries (equivalent of Commissioners in the states) for the Federal Capital Territory FCT, on November 22, 2021. The President also approved the appointment of the Chairman, FCT Ministerial Task Team on City Sanitation, Attah Ikharo as Senior Special Assistant (Monitoring, Inspection & Enforcement) to the FCT Minister. According to the organic law of the land, the President is the Governor of the FCT, with the minister only holding fort for him.
The appointment of the Mandate Secretaries, announced in a statement issued Monday November 22 in Abuja and signed by the Chief Press Secretary to the FCT minister, Anthony Ogunleye, was based on recommendations by the minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello.
Also appointed are the Executive Secretary of the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) Heads of Agencies and others into relevant positions in the Federal Capital Territory Administration FCTA. Among those appointed are Ibrahim Abubakar Dantsoho, Secretary, Area Council Services Secretariat; Abubakar Ibrahim, Secretary, Agricultural and Rural Development Secretariat; Sani Dahir El-Katazu, Secretary, Education; and, Dr Abubakar Tafida, Secretary, Health and Human Services Secretariat.
Others are Muhammad B. Umar, Secretary, Legal Services Secretariat; Hadiza Mahammed Kabir, Secretary, Social Development Secretariat; Zakari Angulu Dobi, Secretary, Transportation Secretariat; Agboola Lukman Dabiri, Secretary, Economic Planning, Revenue Generation and PPP; Obinna Francis Ogwuegbu, Coordinator, Satellite Towns Development Department; Umar Shuaibu, Coordinator, Abuja Metropolitan Management Council; Engr. Shehu Hadi Ahmed, Executive Secretary, FCDA; Ibrahim Damisa, Managing Director MD, Abuja Broadcasting Corporation and Dr. Muhammed B. Kawu, General Manager, Hospital Management Board .Twenty-six of the appointees are new, while the 14 earlier appointed by the FCTA were ratified by the President. Some of those whose appointments were ratified were Abubakar Sani as Senior Special Assistant (Media) to the minister and Mr Austine Elemue as Special Assistant (Media) to the Minister of State, FCT.
But expectedly, the following day, a coalition of Civil Society Organizations, (CSOs), called on the Minister of Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Mallam Mohammed Musa Bello to reverse the appointments of Mandate Secretaries in the FCT with immediate effect, saying the exercise could ruin national cohesion that the nation’s capital represents. The CSOs, operating under the Young People’s Initiative for Credible Leadership, (YPICL) said the appointment was fraught with nepotism as there was no single representation of the South East, South-South and South-West geopolitical zones in the statutory appointments of Mandate Secretaries, representing the FCT cabinet. Rejecting the appointment via a statement issued Tuesday Novemner 23, in Abuja by its Executive Director, Comrade Abdulwahab Ekekhide, the YPICL asked the minister to appoint persons from South East, South-South and South-West as Mandate Secretaries in the FCT. According to the statement, “The announcement of the appointment of Mandate Secretaries in the FCT came to us as a shock, taking a look at the list we observed to our dismay that there is no single representation of the South East, South-South and South-West geopolitical zones in the statutory appointment. “The FCT by status is the centre of unity and being the seat of the Federal government the constitutional provisions as regards appointments must be followed, but in this new appointments made by the FCT Minister, Federal Character has not been obeyed as there is no representation of the South East, South-South and South-West Geopolitical zones in the statutory positions of the FCT. “We are all living witnesses to the fact that it has taken the Minister two years plus to appoint Mandate Secretaries for the FCT. “You will recall that Ministers were sworn in on 21st August 2019 by President Muhammadu Buhari and the Minister is making his appointments on the night of 22nd November 2021….”
As the capital relocation clocks 30, today, President Buhari should take another look at the November 22, 2021 appointments for FCT and reflect on the way the exercise has further dented his administration. Appointments in Abuja have always reflected federal character. A situation in which the FCT Minister, the Executive Secretary of FCDA and all Mandate Secretaries and all agency heads (Commissioners) are all from the North and are all Muslims can destroy the confidence of the people of southern Nigeria in Nigeria and its capital.
Note that, Economic Planning, Revenue Generation and PPP Department is not part of the original Mandate Secretariat. It is a new creation to be headed by Agboola Lukman Dabiri, as Secretary. And Obinna Francis Ogwuegbu, Coordinator, Satellite Towns Development Department is the only Christian in the new appointments, and that agency is not part of the organic cabinet. These appointments do not help national cohesion that the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NiPR) has been campaigning to achieve in its current mission across the nation. This is a public relations tragedy that should be managed if Abuja is to be accepted as our capital as advertised to us by the iconic Murtala Muhammed, 45 years ago.
