MY STAND

And Mr President fires back (2)

2018-06-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

Aliyu Musa

In recent months the world witnessed some surprising prosecutions for corrupt practices and shocking convictions of former leaders/presidents. In April 2018, Brazil and South Korea, notably, did the needful by respectively sending former presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Park Geun-hye to prison for abuse of office and corruption. Peru had, in July 2017, ordered its ex-president, Ollanta Humala, to begin an 18-month pre-trial detention for illegally accepting from a Brazilian construction company a campaign donation worth $3 million. In South Africa, former President Jacob Zuma, humbled out of office in February 2018, is facing criminal charges for his alleged role in an arms deal involving some European companies more than two decades ago.

Nigeria, in comparison to Brazil, South Korea or even South Africa, is a desperately poor country, on average. While Lula da Silva was accused of illegally accepting a gift (property) worth $755,000 from a construction company, Zuma’s corruption allegation involves $5 billion and Geun-hye’s is to do with amounts raging between $6.5 million and $72 million. Interestingly, none of these is anywhere near the $16 billion the Obasanjo power project is alleged to have gulped or the $6 billion Obasanjo’s political ally, Osuntokun, admitted was spent on the project.

But Nigeria is not like any of these countries, despite each claiming it’s experiencing a massively incremental corrupt practices involving top government officials and politicians. In Nigeria, unlike anywhere else, corrupt government officials and politicians are shielded from the consequences of their actions by petty sentiments often propelled to despicable heights by their victims, the desperately poor masses, intoxicated by tribal and religious allegiances.

This is why, even after Chief Obasanjo boldly dared the government or anyone to initiate another investigation and possible prosecution, it would be difficult for his bluff to be successfully called off. In fairness to the south-west, though, it remains the only region to have resisted the temptation to align forces behind kinsmen accused of corruption, something every other ethnic nationality is guilty of. So, will a resuscitation of investigations into how the $16 billions dollars were spent provoke a different reaction from people in the south-west?

In my previous commentaries in which I weighed Chief Obasanjo’s political capital in the the south-west, in particular, or Nigeria, in general, I argued that to rely on him to directly (numerically ) influence the outcome of an election, especially one involving the position of president, could result in a monumental failure. But his strategic importance, as was seen in the 2015 election, cannot be denied. However, it does not mean that things cannot suddenly turn around and an attempt to subject him to trial for corruption could backfire, as his constituency could perceive it as a political witch-hunt and kick against it.

Already, the government and its anti-corruption agencies are accused of selective justice, a charge they have not been able to successfully dispel, given the political affiliations of most of those being investigated or prosecuted for corruption.

Despite these possibilities, though, it is still unlikely that the south-west would massively rally round Obasanjo, were the investigations that the EFCC re-opened this week progress to criminal prosecution and possible conviction. Many south-westerners, firstly, have yet to forget the unfair and ruthless decimation of Alliance for Democracy (AD), a political party that was immensely popular in the south-west and the battles of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, being the only surviving governor, under Obasanjo’s watch. That Tibunu is today iconic in the politics of the region is largely due to his resistance and survival, in spite of Obasanjo’s relentless use of state powers to crush him and what was left of AD. AD has since reincarnated itself as Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), under Tinubu’s leadership (ACN is one of the key alliance partners that birthed APC).

Secondly, the ruling APC, despite its not so impressive performance, is still the party to beat in the south-west for various reasons, some of which were discussed in my recent commentaries on the political dynamics in the region and APC’s chances in 2019. Again, the people would rather not risk the current political and potential benefits of standing with the ruling party in spite of Obasanjo.

The above points, notwithstanding, Obasanjo is a hard and dirty fighter and would definitely fight to finish. And one of his strategies, as is already happening, is to steer ‘unignorable’ sentiments against the president and ruling party, possibly using religion. Religion is a very potent weapon, second or equal to ethnicity, in Nigerian politics. Time and again, it was used with precision and 2019 is not going to be an exception.

This is one major reason why Obasanjo could remain an untouchable for as long as possible, even if his ostensible sacrileges are too obvious to not fail to proceed to a criminal prosecution or a likely conviction, like those of Brazil’s Lula da Silva, South Korea’s Geun-hye, Peru’s Humala and South Africa’s Zuma.

(Concluded)

Police recruitment test, Jamb and the CAN campaign

The recent police recruitment computer-based test (CBT) is a subject of religious controversy, once again, in a country this has no shortage of such animosities. The Nigeria Police Force had reportedly contracted the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to conduct the test on its behalf and only one subject were the applicants to be examined on. But JAMB, according to a statement by its head of media, Fabian Benjamin, has a system whose software only accepts four modules at a time.

To get round this obstacle, Dr Benjamin said, JAMB had to upload three other dummy tests (questions) and, logically, modules were uploaded alphabetically, which was why Arts, Arabic and Agriculture were the ones added on. He argued further that instructions were clearly given, in addition to several announcements, that candidates for the recruitment exercise were to attempt only English Language test and no other. They were given 45 minutes, in total.

Anyone that ever sat any JAMB exams knows that 45 minutes are barely sufficient for one test. Asking students to attempt questions on four different modules in 45 minutes is, therefore, bizarre, insane and alien to reality. But it later emerged that some of the candidates claimed Arabic was imposed to, as part of a supposed Islamisation agenda, give Muslim applicants an undue advantage.

What is more troubling is that some enlightened, highly educated and strategically positioned Nigerians, who should know better, have chorused the claim. For example, a well-respected organisation of no less standing than CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria) rather than verify the allegation amplified it, regardless of the polarising repercussions. But even more baffling is the fuel some highly placed individuals, including respected journalists, have added to the controversy by using their traditional media and social media advantage to strategically peddle the misinformation.

Objectivity, balance and truth are essential principles of journalism. Any journalist that do does not know that stories must be double checked before going to press has no business in the profession.

This piece also appears in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, June 2, 2018.

And Mr President fires back (1)

2018-06-03T04:56:00.000-07:00

Aliyu Musa

In the concluding part of my commentary titled “2019 and Obasanjo’s threat” last week, I commended President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling APC for not publicly joining issues with former President Olusegun Obasanjo. I reminded that responding to Obasanjo’s similarly provocative attacks was one of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s major miscalculations in the run up to the 2015 election.

Despite repeated attempts to provoke a dirty fight, the president impressively avoided it, until earlier this week, when he charged at not only Chief Obasanjo but also Obasanjo’s immediate successor, the late Umar ‘Yar’adua and his (Buhari) immediate predecessor, Mr Jonathan. So, the dirty fight I warned of has just begun.

In his comment at the Presidential Villa while receiving members of the Buhari Support Organisation, the president said that a former president bragged about spending $16 billion on power projects during his (the former president) tenure, yet there’s nothing to show for the huge spending. Although the president did not mention any name, it was obvious that he was referring to Obasanjo.

In 2008, a House of Representatives committee probing power projects had indicted Obasanjo and recommended that he should be held to account for the reckless spending of $16 billion in the power sector during his tenure as president. The committee further recommended the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to investigate him.

In the report the committee also indicted Chief Obasanjo’s minister of power and steel, Liyel Imoke, for over-costing the project and recommended him for investigation too. Also named in the report and recommended to EFCC and ICPC for further actions were: Alhaji Abdulhamid Ahmed, a minister of state (energy) in Obasanjo’s government; Dr Olusegun Agagu, who had served as minister of power and steel; Engineer Joseph Makoju, a former managing director of PHCN (Power Holding Company of Nigeria), among others.

Following the release of the report, as is typical of Nigeria and Nigerians, citizens across the country seemed furious, especially as it emerged that some prominent Nigerians, including former presidents/heads of state were among the beneficiaries of what was termed “fruit of mischief”. But the anger eventually fizzled out and the matter was laid to rest.

This was why, perhaps, President Buhari used the opportunity to hit back at Obasanjo, his former boss and backer in the 2015 election. In fairness to the president, Obasanjo’s attacks had become too frequent and ferocious. But, like I opined in my commentary last week, he should have been ignored, at least for now.

Predictably, the president’s statement drew Chief Obasanjo’s feral response within hours. His spokesman, Kehinde Akinyemi, dismissed President Buhari’s allegation by describing it as one “rooted in ignorance”. And in an attempt to debunk the president’s claim that there is nothing to show despite spending the amount, Obasanjo stated: “The answer is simple: the power is in the seven National Integrated Power Projects and eighteen (18) gas turbines.”

He also pointed the president “and his co-travellers” in the direction of his autobiography, My Watch, where he said he had cleared the allegation in some chapters, including 41, 42, 43 and 47. And, further spoiling for a fight, Chief Obasanjo offered to “inform the uninformed” (presumably Buhari) that he did not brag about spending $16 billion on power, arguing that it was a mere allegation against his regime.

The statement by the former president again dismissed the claim as an allegation that was started by his successor, the late Umar Yar’adua, whom he accused of failing to clear from the ports the gas turbines purchased with some of the money.

Chief Obasanjo concluded by daring anyone who doubted the outcome of the EFCC and the Hon. Aminu Tumbuwal ad hoc committee’s probing of the matter to initiate another investigation. With that, he threw the ball in President Buhari’s court.

Whether the president will take on the challenge now or at some point in the future, remains to be seen. But what is obvious is that power supply in Nigeria has continued to be embarrassingly erratic despite several claims, by different governments, of spending humongous amounts to fix the numerous problems. What is also certain is that former president did not completely deny spending any money on power during his tenure.

Another political ally and spokesman for the Obasanjo-led Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM), Akin Osuntokun, also staunchly defended the former president. Osuntokun, like Obasanjo, accused the late Yar’adua’s government of concocting the ‘rumour’. But in the same breath, the CNM spokesman admitted the Obasanjo government actually spent $6 billion on the power sector.

So, with a consistently erratic or often non-existent power supply, what has happened to the money?

(To be concluded)

This article was also published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, May 26, 2018.

2019 and Obasanjo’s threat (2)

2018-06-03T04:43:00.002-07:00

Aliyu Musa

Since writing his damning but not totally unexpected letter in January 2018, Obasanjo scarcely misses the opportunity to attack Buhari’s government. He has accused the government of incompetence and the president of ineptitude and nepotism. He has also accused the president of diverting the most important security positions in his government to the north and of being insensitive to the killings going on in the country, allegedly perpetrated by Fulani herdsmen, the president’s kinsmen.

When Obasanjo fired the first salvo, it was expected that President Buhari’s media team would respond. But the presidency shocked everyone, particularly Obasanjo, by simply ignoring him for some days. And when the response came, it was a polite reminder to the former president that, despite his criticisms, the government has some achievements to it credit. The achievements were listed out by the information minister, Dr Lai Mohammed.

Last week, under the aegis of Foundation for Good Governance in Nigeria (FGGN), I, alongside four colleagues, had the opportunity of meeting the president during his visit to London to see his doctor. In a brief encounter in his lodge he told us why he initially didn’t want to respond to Chief Obasanjo’s tirade. According to him, when his special adviser on media, Femi Adesina, came to him to say he wanted to reply the former president, he told him not to. He said because Adesina is much younger than him (Buhari) and Obasanjo, he did not want to him be involved in the matter. He also said, given that Adesina, was from the same constituency as Obasanjo, it could have a consequence on Adesina.

But when Dr Mohammed came to him and explained what he wanted to do, the president said he reasoned with him and let him. The outcome was impressive, because President Buhari said he received calls from people commending the government for the constructive response. I personally think it was a brilliant one! Obasanjo, with the way he has carried on with attacks on the government and Buhari, was hoping for a dirty fight. So far, the president has refused to let him have his way. This is disappointing to Obasanjo, I believe, which is why he has refused to relent, promising to kick the president out of power, the way he brought him in.

But Chief Obasanjo, methinks, is mistaken. Like I mentioned last week the former president played an important role in President Buhari’s victory, but it was not sufficient to bring him to power, as the former president claims. He has, clearly, exaggerated his importance because, while he is strategically influential he is does not have the numerical influence to singlehandedly decide who comes to power or who does not. He, no doubt, contributed significantly to Jonathan’s defeat in 2015. But Mr Jonathan’s tumble from power was only waiting to happen. So, Obasanjo only acted as a catalyst.

Besides, despite repeatedly threatening the president and the ruling party Chief Obasanjo has been unable to put in place the political machinery that can realistically dislodge the ruling party and, especially, candidate Buhari in 2019. This is in spite of the inability of the president to meet the expectations of most of those who supported him in 2015.

With the election only months away, the opposition PDP is yet to put its house in order. It has yet to come to terms with its defeat and, therefore, it’s unable to decide how best to tackle the ruling APC. The other opposition parties, practically, do not have the clout to dislodge the ruling party and Buhari, at the minute. Obasanjo’s talks with Chief Olu Falae’s SDP has since fallen through and the former president’s National Intervention Movement (NIM) has only succeeded in raising plenty of dust, but has now calmed down, without any prompting. So how does Chief Obasanjo hope to defeat an incumbent President Buhari?

Obasanjo’s privileged access to strategic information was what Buhari needed in 2015 to bring down Goodluck Jonathan’s already crumbling government. And this, alone, explains why Jonathan should not have shot himself in the foot by openly and impolitely paying back Obasanjo, when the letter wrote a similarly damning letter about his (Jonathan’s) regime. Not that ignoring Obasanjo would have solved the problem, as it were. But it would have given him no ammunition to ferociously tear the regime to shreds, like he did by strategically helping the APC campaign team to counter every move the former President Jonathan, with his loyalists in PDP, made.

At least that support helped to put the pressure on the PDP and Jonathan’s withering power. And, although they did not want to go into an election they were doubtlessly unprepared for, they were nonetheless forced. The only time they controlled the situation was when they, with the help of the then National Security Adviser (NSA) Sambo Dasuki and support from service chiefs, blackmailed the Professor Attahiru Jega-led Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) into postponing the election by six weeks. That, still, did not stop the impending defeat they were eventually handed.

Candidate Buhari is, presently, the only candidate with a realistic chance of winning the 2019 election. Other candidates may only be able to send a message; one that may not take them beyond the actualisation of their dream of merely contesting. But the situation could change if, for instance, all the other parties form a powerful coalition and present one candidate. But it’s a remote possibility because time is fast running and they would hardly be able to convince all the various political ‘heavyweights’ jostling for the president’s job to dump their ambition.

So, regardless of Obasanjo’s threat and ceaseless attacks, Buhari could coast to victory, once again, in 2019.

(Concluded)

This article was published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, May 19, 2018.

2019 and Obasanjo’s threat (1)

2018-06-03T04:38:00.001-07:00

Aliyu Musa

As the 2019 election draws nearer political forces are forming alliances just as alliances are collapsing. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is, at the minute, taking the heat as some of its alliance partners issue subtle or direct threats and a few others withdraw their support. The opposition People’s Democratic Party, which lost power to APC, is far worse hit, as it fails to shape up since losing out in 2015.

Nigeria’s political turf is usually dicey. But it is dicier as each election approaches. The 2015 election is phenomenal in the country’s history. It was the first occasion an incumbent at the centre was handed a humbling defeat. Towards the end of his tenure as president, Goodluck Jonathan fell out with many of his allies, including those who played key roles in his election. So, it was obvious that the contest was not going to be a walk in the park for him, despite the ‘advantage’ of power of incumbency.

After repeated failed attempts to unseat the then ruling PDP candidates, the then opposition candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, began to look like a real threat. Reasons were the withering support base of President Jonathan, general disenchantment with the PDP whose 16 years in power had brought the dividends of democracy to only a few, the worrying security situation in the country, particularly the monstrous Boko Haram insurgency, and, above all, the surprising unity of opposition parties that birthed the APC.

APC’s conception, birth and survival, especially in its early days, came at a costly price. But the choice of Buhari as its presidential flag bearer was its hallmark. The primaries had been, as unusual as it was for party politics in Nigeria, extremely transparent. The losers were, in defeat, sportsmanly. The winner was, in victory, magnanimous. The amazing show of unity profoundly unsettled the PDP, making its defeat, something that was hardly previously envisaged, almost certain, long before votes were cast.

One of former President Jonathan’s major miscalculations in the run up to the election was his inability to hold back his anger in the face of provocations. For example, trading words with former President Olusegun Obasanjo immensely contributed to his defeat because Obasanjo fired back with full vengeance, deploying every weapon at his disposal. Suffice to say, therefore, that Obasanjo’s support for President Buhari was a significant lubricant to the latter’s navigation to victory.

But, as important as Chief Obasanjo’s support was, it was not a sufficient factor for Buhari’s victory. Candidate Buhari was, among other reasons, the most trusted of the contestants to get Nigeria out of the woods. But his support, especially in northern part of the country, was unprecedented and, surprisingly too, the south-west soon caught the bug.

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State, is arguably the most formidable politician from the south-west. His popularity and strategising capabilities are ever reliable. He was one person whose backing of candidate Buhari had a profound effect on the election. Starting with the APC primaries in Lagos, he calmly but humiliatingly humbled former vice president Atiku Abubakar, who had strategically readied himself for victory. Tinubu matched the former VP tactic for tactic and the outcome shockingly placed Abubakar a distant third in the race.

It was this feat and Tinubu’s ability to rally the south-west behind candidate Buhari in the main election in March 2015 that made him a far more important factor in President Buhari’s victory. The south-west was (and still is) the beautiful bride, whose nod made or marred the two main rivals’ sail to victory. But the victory dance has, somehow, since given way to grief and not a few grumbles have rented the air. This, perhaps, is why the battle for Aso Villa in 2019 could be a lot fiercer and, maybe, messier. Whoever gets the bride’s nod comes out merrier.

But Tinubu is no novice and knows his onions; 2019 is as crucial as 2023. And, based on the gentleman’s agreement that power should be rotated every eight years between the north and south, 2023 would be a payback time; a time only those who sowed would reap, most probably.

But, in fairness to the south-east, it has yet to produce a president since Gen Aguyi Ironsi’s short but ghastly reign. So, as Chief Obasanjo argued not long ago, 2023 could be a time to compensate and pacify them to drop their secession plan. But there has to be, beyond mere sentiments, a basis for such concession.

In 2015, despite the APC reserving the Senate President position for the region, it massively voted for the PDP, and eventually aligned with rebelling members of the ruling APC to settle for the Deputy Senate President position. Up until now, although there is increasing support for the ruling party, the south-east is predominantly pro-PDP. This means if it remains with the opposition and the APC candidate is re-elected in 2019, the south-east would have little or no legitimate claim to bearing the ruling party’s flag in 2019.

For Asiwaju Tinubu and the south-west, therefore, supporting President Buhari’s reelection bid would be in their best interest, for a number of reasons. First, it would consolidate Tinubu’s political relevance in the region over and above Obasanjo’s claim, despite the latter being a two-term president. Second, it would be the second time the region is producing a president after Obasanjo’s two terms since the country’s return to democracy in 1999. Third, President Buhari’s victory, with the support of the region Obasanjo comes from, regardless of his threat, would permanently perish the former president’s claim to being a ‘power broker’.

But Obasanjo is not a man that makes empty threats. He makes good his promises and could fight really dirty.

(To be continued)

This article was published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, May 12, 2018

London gang killings and community-based solutions (II)

2018-06-03T04:25:00.000-07:00

Aliyu Musa

There is no single or commonly accepted definition of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). It varies in meaning to various people and in different places. But what it does focus on is the resolution of conflict or disagreements or disputes between two parties (or more) without resorting to court proceedings or adjudicative processes.

It is a method of mediation in which a neutral mediator brings together the two parties and gets them to agree on a common solution. While it is applied more in disputes involving consumers and traders, it is, nonetheless, applicable in other situations, including the feuds among youth in London.

In the first part of this article two weeks ago, I mentioned DCS Michael Gallagher’s suggestion of a community-based solution in which parents, government and community groups would play a central role.

This approach, in a practical sense, would involve negotiation or mediation. The Cambridge English dictionary defines mediation as “the process by which someone tries to end a disagreement by helping to talk about and agree on a solution.”

Realistically, the sides in the feuds in London are diverse and amorphous and, therefore, difficult to identify prior to committing the crimes. But, pragmatically, they could be drawn out and identified by means of strategically planned and executed campaigns.

Like I explained in the first part of this article, the Nigerian Diaspora in the UK are the most affected. This, therefore, means they should be in the forefront of proffering a solution, which will require putting on a thinking hat on a (united) head.

Acting as a body such groups could begin a serious campaign whose objectives could be two-pronged: first, to get families to identify and address problems that affect parenting and; second, to identify the youth that are affected or likely to be affected and begin a process of sensitisation and rehabilitation in order to steer them off the path of crime and violence.

A potential challenge for any group trying to work towards achieving these goals is funding. This is where the government, charities and others stakeholders could step in. Already, bereaved families of the victims sometimes, although informally, organise rallies in which they speak out against the crimes. Such groups could become formally recognised and funds set aside to support the cause.

But for them to succeed some fundamental problems, like the collapse of the family as a primary unit of socialisation, needs to be addressed. This collapse, directly linked to the changing political economy of the family, started with parents abdicating their roles and leaving children, more often, on their own to do as they please.

While in some cases it could be because of absenteeism due to long hours of work, in a situation where both parents work full time, in many other cases it be due to a longer or even permanent absence of one or both parents. The latter happens more in broken homes, which leaves one of the parents struggling to bring up the children.

A victim’s father, Patrick Boyce, believes the problem has spiralled out of control because families are now dysfunctional. This, he argues further, is because, most of the youth involved in such crimes come from single parents, and do not have fathers around them. He also blamed poor schooling.

So, the first thing to address is how families could be reorganised and encouraged to take their responsibilities seriously. And where one of the parents is absent, the communities and could consider means by which they could help the lone parent cope with the challenges of parenting.

This could mean, somehow, overcoming some of the barriers imposed by the individualistic nature of the society. Thus, the campaign could focus on educating parents, especially those in the most deprived areas, to realise the importance of working with community groups to address common problems. In this way, such parents, could take ownership of the campaign and work fully for its success.

With the help of experts, such communities could be armed with ADR skills, which they could pass on to their members. This will, in turn, help them identify urgent situations and provide the required supports.

It is important to understand that these young people, the victims and the perpetrators, are victims of this dysfunctional system; a system in which they have lost confidence, which is why they often resort to violence at the slightest provocation.

The system, the family and the community, must win back these youth. They must empathise with them and make them realise they are as important as everyone else and begin the process of rehabilitating them and addressing their needs. This could break down the barriers and, possibly, be the turning point. The alternative is to sit down and do nothing while the problem amplifies.

(Concluded)

This article was published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, March 5, 2018.

London gang killings and community-based solutions (1)

2018-04-21T02:31:00.001-07:00

Aliyu Musa

London’s gang-related violence has claimed yet another victim. On this occasion Sami Sidhom, described as an 18-year-old A-star History and Law student of Queen Mary University, is the victim. He had been ambushed and stabbed by a gang of youth in two cars, and left lying in a pool of blood.

Within seconds the assailants fled the crime scene before anyone had the chance to identify any of them. And, although, help soon came it was not enough to save their victim’s life.

Sidhom is one of many victims of violent attacks and or gang-related crimes resulting in fatalities in the boisterous city. Since the beginning of this year no fewer than 50 lives have been lost and many fatally wounded in the attacks.

Most of the victims were either from Black and Minority Ethnic Groups (BMEG) or young men and women between the ages of 17 and 30 or both. And, often, the causes of the violence ranged from social media spats, postcode disagreements to gang wars.

Victims may not be in any way connected to the original causes of the violence, but may just, unfortunately, be caught in the crossfire. Many innocent persons, for instance, could be caught up in postcode wars simply because they live within a particular postcode that is at war with the youth of another postcode.

An unsuspecting victim who was accosted and asked by a couple of teenagers if he lived in a particular postcode ended up with life-threatening injuries after he answered in the affirmative. Such attacks could provoke revenge attacks by youth of the victims’ postcode.

Some of the victims are, sometimes, known to their assailants. In 2016 Jamel Boyce, for example, reportedly had an argument with a former schoolmate who promised to kill him. Afterwards, Jamel, who was said to have never carried a knife or belonged to a gang, was attacked and stabbed in the heart and leg.

Although the teenager miraculously survived, he is, presently, in a semi-vegetative state and, doctors say, will never recover the use of his brain.

A female victim killed in a drive-by shooting was only caught up in a gang feud due to her closeness to a target, who had, himself, been shot. Soon after, the killers were on social media mocking their victims.

Over the years, these gang-related killings have continued to steadily rise, almost overwhelming efforts to tackle them. One of the attempts made was the introduction of increased stop and search, which gave the Metropolitan Police more powers to stop people and search them if they suspected they were carrying weapons.

In 2011 and 2012, the Met reportedly carried out more than half a million stops a year. But it was said to have disproportionately targeted people of African-Caribbean backgrounds. The fact that most of the searches yielded no evidence of crime fuelled allegations of deliberate black targeting, further impacting community relations.

This development and the government’s belief that increased stops have not resulted in fewer gang-related crimes or violence led to a cut in the number of searches and a search for more community-based solutions.

In view of this a senior Scotland Yard officer, DCS Michael Gallagher, recently advocated a radical societal change. Emphasising a need for more focus on the needs of young people, Gallagher posited: “What we need is a societal change where young people, as the perpetrators and victims, feel valued and protected.”

He further argued that the problem was beyond the police and that it was impossible for them to prosecute their way out of it. Rather, it was something that required a collective problem-solving approach, in which parents, government and community groups would be involved. So how could this suggestion be translated into reality?

Most migrant communities in the UK are close knit. Nigerians, for example, have various cultural, political and religious unions through which they interact and connect with their people and country of origin.

Among the victims, from January 2018 up until now, are about 10 Nigerians. They, like many of the other victims, were caught up either in the wrong place or time or both. For example Abraham Badru was killed in late March 2018 just outside his family home in Hackney.

He, like most Nigerian migrants’ children, was well educated and ambitious. He had a Masters degree and was working as a football coach. He had been given an award for bravery after rescuing a sex attack victim and following up by appearing in court as a prosecution witness. He was, clearly, of good character and had no links with gangs.

Even beyond altruism these various Nigerian groups, being directly affected, should be able to come together and, possibly, present a common front to take up the initiative towards proffering an alternative means of resolving the problem.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is increasingly gaining currency especially where crises defy commonly applied solutions.

(To be continue)

This piece also appears in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, April 21, 2018.

Will tension over Syria escalate to another world war?

2018-04-13T03:51:00.002-07:00

Aliyu Musa

Rival blocs, reminiscent of the cold war era, are massively pilling up forces and weapons around Syria. On the one hand are Russia, President Bashar al-Assad’s strongest ally and backer in the civil war that engulfed the Middle Eastern country since 2011, and Iran. On the other are the US and its prominent NATO allies, Britain and France.

Before Russia fully threw its massive weight behind al-Assad, regime change was almost certain, as the rebels increasingly gained ground, propelled by support from the west. Attempts by the UN to broker a peace deal failed on all occasions because regime change was always on the table, which President al-Assad and his backers vehemently rejected. But that has since changed because Russia’s military backing has since neutralised the rebel forces and helped the embattled Syrian regime regain control.

But the war is far from over, as pockets of rebels are still fighting to the death. And al-Assad, desperate for a resounding victory, is willing to use every means, foul or fair, to defeat them. This is why the latest imbroglio over Douma does not come as a surprise.

Douma, a city in eastern Ghouta, is the last rebel stronghold. The battle to oust the rebel from their remaining strongholds of eastern Ghouta began in February, 2018. Relentless assaults from al-Assad forces left hundreds of civilians dead. But the rebels were undaunted, up until the end of February.

In March, the regime launched a final onslaught and Douma, housing about 150,000 people, became a target mainly because the group controlling it, Jaysh al-Islam, had refused to give up. Following the failure of negotiations with the rebels last weekend, the Syrian government resumed air strikes on the city, culminating in the use of what was suspected to be chemical weapons.

While it cannot be claimed with definite finality that it was the handiwork of the forces loyal to the regime, the fact that air strikes had taken place, targeting civilians shelters, suggests the regime’s complicity. But Syria could as well be a sacrificial lamb.

The battle for the soul of the beleaguered country has been nothing short of a proxy war between old, formidable rivals. Russia, the United States of America, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, have for various reasons, been deeply involved in the conflict.

Russia’s support for the al-Assad regime is not in any way altruistic. It is basically to defend its interests in the country, particularly its naval facility at the port of Tartous, the country’s only Mediterranean base for its black sea fleet. Another key interest is Russia’s air base in Latakia, where it has its forces.

To protect these interests Russia has done everything, from blocking resolutions at the UN Security Council not favourable to al-Assad to providing weapons to the Syrian forces, regardless of criticism from rivals in the west and the international community.

One excuse Russia gave for its military support to the government of Bashar al-Assad was an urgency to defeat terrorist groups like the Islamic State (IS) that were fighting in and had annexed parts of the country. But, often, Russian air strikes target rebels enjoying the backing of the west, which result in retaliatory air strikes that further affect civilians and compound the problem.

Directly opposed to Russia’s stance and leading the anti-al-Assad alliance is the US, which insisted from the outset that regime change was inevitable. In order to weaken the al-Assad regime the US gives what it describes as limited military support to moderate rebels. But, like it was in Libya, it is believed that the support is aimed at empowering the rebels to the point of being able to overthrow the regime. But that has, so far, failed to happen.

Yet, despite carrying out strikes on jihadist fighters, including the IS, the US is reportedly tactically refusing to hit such targets where it believes doing so would put President al-Assad’s forces at an advantage.

The Saudi-Iranian religious-cum-political rivalry also comes into play in the conflict. This explains why both are heavily involved. Iran is Russia’s key ally in backing the Syrian Shia regime. Being a regional Shia heavyweight, it is heavily providing military, political and financial aid to the al-Assad Alawite government.

Using its regional power, Iran has played a substantial role in mobilising Shia support from its (Iran) militias as well as from Iraq, who while protecting Shia holy sites fight alongside Syrian forces. Also, Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement loyal to Iran has fighters in western Syria, on the side of the regime.

Conversely, Saudi Arabia, for obvious reasons, is on the other side of the divide alongside the US. Like its military expedition in Yemen, where the Shia have been directly targeted, it is believed that the Sunni Saudi rulers want to oust President al-Assad more for religious and political reasons. Whereas Saudi forces were sent to Bahrain to crush a Shia uprising at the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2011, the Kingdom has consistently called for the forceful removal of the Syrian regime.

Following a similar chemical attack in 2013 that was blamed on al-Assad, Saudi Arabia wanted a swift military action but was disappointed when the Obama government chose not to. It is believed that, in order to undermine Iran’s regional dominance and weaken the Syrian regime, Saudi Arabia provides massive military and financial supports to different rebel groups in Syria.

The last filament to the conflict is the Turkish involvement, which like the others is also for its own interests. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been a staunch critic of President al-Assad and has on various occasions accused him of being a dictator that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians.

Being a major supporter of the Syrian opposition, Turkey allows its borders to be used as a route for the shipment of weapons to the rebels. It has also played host to nearly two million Syrian refugees.

The significance of these divergent interests is that they have helped the conflict to endure with colossal damage to the people and country. By using Syria as a proxy these countries are either trying to assert their global or regional dominance, while directly avoiding direct confrontations with each other.

However, with the current tension over last week’s allegation of the use of chemical weapon against the government of al-Assad, will these global and regional powers escalate the conflict to a major war? It is unlikely. Already, the US President Donald Trump appears to have back-pedalled on his promise to hit Syria soon. But should he make good his promise, is Russia likely to hit back? That, too, remains to be seen.

This piece also appears in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, March 14, 2018.

Zamfara killings that won’t just stop

2018-03-30T08:37:00.000-07:00

Aliyu Musa

With the death, early in March, 2018, of the notorious armed bandit, Buharin Daji, terrorising villages in Zamfara State it was thought the orgy of violence imposed on the communities was over. But the palpable peace lasted only a couple of weeks, before the killings resumed with total mindlessness.

On Wednesday, March 28, 2018 local vigilante members in the village of Bawan Daji were holding a meeting to strategise in view of the next farming season. The villagers had been warned by the bandits to forget any plans for farming this year and that was for reasons best known to the bandits. But with the meeting, it was clear the villagers were hoping to defy the bandits.

Reports had it that to make sure they were not defied the bandits continued patrolling the village, brandishing dangerous weapons. It was a psychological warfare that would soon culminate in the brutal shootings that cost dozens of lives, as the bandits, on realising a vigilante meeting was holding, struck.

Not satisfied with the carnage they had unleashed the bandits pursued the fleeing villagers to the bushes and shot and killed more. Again, while the survivors attempted to bury the dead, they attacked them in the cemetery, killing many more.

Initial counts put the death toll at more than 60. But based on the latest statistics of recovered corpses, it is confirmed that 36 of the villagers were killed. Meanwhile dozens are still missing, suggesting that the death toll could rise, especially in view of the fact that some of the corpses could be lying in the forest where the bandits are still watching, waiting to spill more blood.

Armed banditry and cattle rustling in the Zamfara-Kebbi axis have been a major security concern for nearly a decade. In a bid to overcome the problem, after the military action dubbed ‘Operation Sharan Daji’ had failed, a peace meeting was convened in January 2017 and an amnesty offer made, on the condition the bandits agreed to renounce violence.

Buharin Daji led many of his lieutenants to the meeting and eventually accepted the offer. But not before articulating his reasons for opting for banditry and violence. Fulani herdsmen, he said, were being victimised by the local (perhaps non-Fulani) vigilante members. Many, he claimed, had been killed without anyone giving them justice. And to protect and give his people justice, he took to violence.

Unfortunately, Buharin Daji brought more misery to his people because his gang did not discriminate whenever they struck. Kidnappings, cattle rustling and killings were generously ‘democratised’ and everyone was a target. All he and his gang members cared about were their loots.

While this trend persisted the government of the state looked ‘hopelessly’ to the federal government. The military operation, as Zamfara State Governor Abdulazeez Yari once said, was only temporarily successful, like most military responses to serious social and structural problems.

The gangsters had scampered to safety as soon as the soldiers arrived. But they regrouped again, after the military presence had been scaled down, on the assumption that they (the bandits) had been vanquished. And then, with undiluted vengeance they reappeared and made several villages, including Mallamawa, Barka da Yabo, Tungar Kahau, Maikamar rimi, Gidan Anna, etc. to defray more costs.

So, Governor Yari’s attempt to restore normalcy by dangling a carrot, via the amnesty offer, to the bandits is understandable. But the problem is, like the military solution, it did not go beyond that point to understand and address the underlying issues Buharin Daji had complained about.

In most Zamfara communities, I am made to understand, cattle rearing has become such a perilous business that only bandits and rustlers could guarantee herds and herders’ safety. And the only way families that own herds of cattle could do so was to ensure that one of their own became a member of a gang of bandits and rustlers. In that way that member would protect his family and their herds and terrorise others as a form of revenge or deterrence.

While Buharin Daji’s excuses are inexcusable, they are, nonetheless, worth looking at, given that the violence has refused to end. In an audio clip, believed to be a conversation between the kingpin and one of the peace mediators, Buharin Daji could be heard bragging about his ability to fight for as long as possible and that, even in death, he would fight on through his proxies (lieutenants).

His death, allegedly masterminded by the security forces in the state, in the hands of a former co-bandit and lieutenant, Dogo Gide, is a reflection of the power play among the gang members. Dogo Gide, who was an associate of Buharin Daji, reportedly accepted the amnesty offer and renounced violence, just like Buharin Daji. But when the latter fell out with the government on account of the alleged arrest of another associate, he returned to violence and banditry. Dogo Gide, however, did not. And he paid a price when Buharin Daji’s men attacked his (Dogo Gide’s) in-laws and rustled their cattle.

Despite entreaties it was said that Buharin Daji refused to return the cattle, which made Dogo Gide to cleverly plot his former boss’ death by inviting him to a peace meeting. It was there he (Dogo Gide) and his boys killed Buharin Daji and eight members of his gang. His death was welcomed by the government, security forces and people he had terrorised. It was claimed that soon after the incident the security forces arrived to confirm and retrieve his corpse and that they were assisted in searching for the corpse by the rival gang.

While he was alive Buharin Daji unleashed maximum terror and evoked fear. He was not just a brutal killer who rustled cattle and kidnapped villagers for ransom, but he was also a gunrunner who procured and loaned sophisticated weapons to other criminals. His armoury, it is claimed, was beyond belief. He was a state within a state.

So, how did an ordinary villager, a former herdsman acquire such weapons and notoriety? This, methinks, is the question the governments should be asking with a view to finding a lasting solution to problem. Already, with the recent killings, it appears the late kingpin is making good his promise to fight even in death.

Tribute to a brilliant mentee

A couple of years ago a student who came to do a Masters degree was introduced to me. She had come to the local Masjid to pray and, perchance, met my wife. I don’t know how the conversation led to me, but my wife eventually introduced her to me as a student in Coventry University. From that day she became very close to my family and when her husband visited she linked us up and we became good friends.

In the time she was studying, she took me as a mentor and, even though I made her to work extra-hard, she was never deterred. She once told me she graduated with a First Class in her first degree and wanted to finish her Masters with a Distinction. I did my best to support her. When the results were out, it was an excellent outcome. And with that her husband encouraged her to do a PhD.

Although she returned to Nigeria where she got a lecturing job, she kept applying to universities in different parts of the world and I wrote reference letters to support her applications.

Less than a month ago while I was preparing a lecture note for my students my wife received a call. It was her, Halima Goni Abdu. She told my wife she was in London, on her way to Canada to begin a PhD. As usual, her husband and daughter were with her. She promised to stop by on her way back. But it won’t happen.

On Monday, March 26, 2018, I received a call that shattered my heart and left me paralysed for much of the day and next two days. It was the news of her death, after a brief illness in Boston, where she was visiting from Canada. She has since been buried.

May Allah forgive her shortcomings and reward her with al-Jannat Firdausi and comfort her husband, Alhaji Ahmed, and daughter, Eeman.

This article also appears in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, March 31, 2018.

Rejoicing and commiserating with Dapchi parents

2018-03-24T02:08:00.000-07:00

Aliyu Musa

With the parents of the 105 Dapchi schoolgirls, who were released this week from the Boko Haram dungeon after one month in captivity, do I rejoice. And to the parents of the five or four girls whose return will never be because, as some of the girls recounted upon their return, they have lost their lives, I offer my sincere condolences. Regarding the case of Leah Sharibu, the lone Dapchi schoolgirl still held, I am deeply saddened and pray she comes back to her parents very soon, hale and hearty.

The Boko Haram insurgency has affected many of us, some directly and many others indirectly. I have personally paid a price. One of my younger siblings, Auwalu, was shot and killed by the group in Damaturu in September 2012. It was a time when many people needlessly lost their lives either because the insurgents attacked and killed them or soldiers tackling the insurgency either directly killed or indirectly caused their death.

On the day Auwalu was killed, according an eyewitness account, he was in a stall in the Damaturu main market and attending to a man who was apparently on the insurgents’ hit list. The insurgents had trailed the man and when eventually they cornered him they made sure whoever was with him did not survive. As soon as Auwalu and the man were shot everyone fled the market because it was the safest thing to do, otherwise soldiers would arrive and take away everyone and eventually brand them Boko Haram members or sympathisers. And because it happened just before sunset no one came back to the scene of the shooting until the next day.

His corpse was found many yards away from where he was shot, suggesting that he tried to get some help but gave up the ghost after losing plenty of blood at some point in the night. If people had not fled he, probably, would have got some help and, since it was destined he would die anyway, he still would have died but, maybe, not in the kind of agonising way it happened. So, I have been personally affected by the insurgency, like many people, although mine may not be as torturing as the experience of the Dapchi or Chibok or any parents whose child was taken away and put in captivity.

However, I have always argued that the manner in which situations like this are handled do not help the fight against the insurgency. In a previous write-up titled ‘Between Chibok and unworthy victims’ (October 24, 2016) I pointed out that the high-profile status campaigners have assigned the poor girls is responsible for the stakes the insurgents often raise before releasing them. And because the present and immediate past regimes wanted to use the girls’ matter to raise their approval ratings, they were more than willing to allow such campaigners to pressure them into negotiating the release of the girls at any price.

But more worrying was (and still is) the nonchalant attitude of the authorities to the plights of other captives, many of whom are young schoolgirls like the Chibok or Dapchi victims. What makes the other victims different is that no one has been actively campaigning for their release and that is why the government would not consider it a priority to get them back to their families.

When Lear Sharibu’s release was botched at the last minute, according to one of the girls, she was asked to go back into where two other women (captives) are held. The women are, most likely, Nigerians and as much victims as the girls. But even now it is very unlikely that their release would be negotiated and this is because they are, unlike the girls, unworthy victims whose return would bring no political capital.

Any observer of the Boko Haram insurgency would have noticed how it metamorphosed, over the years, into a lucrative venture accruing millions of dollars with which weapons and drugs are procured and more foot soldiers are recruited to sustain the insurgency. Starting with the handsome reward of £3 million that sealed the deal that handed back a French family of seven its freedom in 2013, the various factions of the group have since realised that they could circumvent the blockade imposed on their foreign and other sources of funds. And kidnap for ransom has been an excellent alternative.

In an analysis two years ago I stated: “In one of my previous analyses of the sect’s change of modus operandi I argued that due to the urgency to sustain the insurgency at all cost the sect resorted to three types of abductions: high profile abductions to demand ransom from victims’ families; abduction of young women, especially, to serve as insurgents’ brides and domestic servants; and abduction of young men that are conscripted to swell the ranks of the sect’s foot soldiers.

“All three categories of abductees are citizens of Nigeria whose situations deserve equal treatment. The ‘200+’ Chibok girls are in a category and should not have eclipsed others!”

But, clearly, government policies show that some of the abductees are more important than others.

Despite allegedly paying millions of dollars to characters supposedly acting on behalf of the insurgents in order to secure the release of the Chibok girls, the Goodluck Jonathan regime was not successful. But the Muhammadu Buhari regime has, so far, got back 103 of the girls in two batches of 21 and 82. And in return, as some reports have claimed, the government parted with €3 million and swapped five captured insurgents.

Again, despite the huge outrage the abduction of the Dapchi schoolgirls brought on the Buhari regime, the anger has since subsided following the release of the girls. That the girls are back, except Leah and the four or five dead, is major cause for celebration. But the price at which their release was negotiated is what should worry every Nigerian.

Although, at the minute, the government says it paid nothing and made no concessions to the insurgents, it is very unlikely that any of the factions, whether Shekau or al-Barnawi’s, as desperate as they are for money and any lifeline, would part with something it considers a prize trophy for nothing. The girls were taken away for a reason. And, unless, that point has been clearly articulated and achieved, it would be totally out of character for the insurgents to simply let them go. Otherwise, they would not have taken them away in the first place.

So, while we welcome the girls back and hope for the return of Leah and the other abductees either on the priority list of the government and campaigners or not, we should remember to brace up for a more intense and longer insurgency. This has always been the case: each time similar deals were reached in the past the insurgents came back fully reinvigorated to fight. And the prices were always costly. Hopefully, it might be different on this occasion.

This article also appears in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, March 24, 2018.

A date with destiny

2018-03-11T15:12:00.001-07:00

When I relocated from London to Liverpool in 2008 it took my family and I a little time to settle down and one of the first few Nigerians we met was Alhaji Abdullahi Abubakar. He was an amazing elderly man who had a successful career with a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Shipping Line. On the surface he looked quiet and a bit reserved. But as soon as you sit with him and begin chatting you realise that he’s very friendly and chatty.

Liverpool was, incidentally, the first city in the UK I visited when I first came to the UK on a visit, long before I came back to live. The trip was sponsored by the British Council as part of its Connecting Futures programme. I was part of a Nigerian team of eight and we were required to visit a city and spend about four days with the locals. We were hosted by a local group, Hope Street Limited, in Liverpool and a Liverpudlian, Giles Agis. During our brief stay Giles and members of this group made sure we met the Nigerian community in Liverpool.

Our brief stay in Liverpool was memorable. It was in this time I observed that there was a large Nigerian community, largely made up of an ageing population. I interviewed some of these Nigerians and realised that many of them had either come as students or worked with the NNSL and eventually settled down.

So, when I got a scholarship to do a PhD at the Desmond Tutu Centre for War and Peace Studies at Liverpool Hope University and University of Liverpool, I was overjoyed to return to Liverpool. I looked forward to meeting that Nigerian community again and, possibly, learn a bit more about the ageing population.

In a 2002 Daily Trust article I had described Liverpool as a City of Blacks and Beetles. The piece chronicled our visit and my experience with the locals and historic places like the Beetles and the International Slavery museums. As a kid I remembered reading about the Beetles and listening to some of their songs. I also recalled reading about the city’s notorious image as a route for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. I remembered reading about John Lennon and his Beetles’ teammates’ peace campaigns through the medium of music.

All of this accelerated my excitement, especially knowing that I was going to spend at least three years doing a serious research on war and peace in a city that contributed immensely to the perpetuation of the world’s worst cruelty and witnessed one of the UK’s most disturbing race riots in the 1980s.

Despite my sincere eagerness I received some pieces of advice from friends back in London who didn’t think Liverpool was the right place to relocate to with my young family. They were worried about racism and crime. I was, surprisingly, not alarmed.

Liverpool turned out to be the perfect place to live. Meeting people like Alhaji Abubakar made it even more perfect. And from their life stories, my observation about the ageing migrant population turned out to be true.

From the day a friend, Dr Mohammed Sulaiman, introduced us to Alhaji Abubakar my son, Imam, who was nearly three years old, and daughter, Ni’ima, who was less than a year old, became very connected to him. They called him Kaka Alhaji (meaning grandpa Alhaji). He always gave them treats, which they quite liked and never got tired of visiting him. He had been separated from his wife and lived alone. But he was always in the local Ar-Rahma Mosque attending the five daily prayers. So, he was hardly at home. But whenever we passed by his house, which was just a few yards from ours, and the kids observed he was in, they would insist on seeing Kaka Alhaji. And we would knock and say ‘Salam’ to him.

He always liked our often impromptu visits and, sometimes, he would pop in to see us and hand the kids sweets and pizza. He fondly called Ni’ima ‘Shortie’, to which she usually responded by calling him ‘Shortie’ too. He also had a playful name for Imam, which was ‘Chewing Gum’ because the boy always went everywhere with me, including the Mosque and the university. He would often say “where is your chewing gum” and the boy would say “I am here”.

Whenever we met, either at his place or mine or on our way to or from the Mosque, we would chat about life, religion, politics and many things. He would tell me his life story. He loved kids and had two sons and daughters of his own. I only met the children a few times because they, the men, live and work in London. As a captain he spent much of his time on the High Seas and the children grew up not seeing much of him.

He rose to head the NNSL operations in the UK, Germany and one other European country. He was well paid and made sure his family was financially well looked after. He owned a property in the highbrow part of Liverpool. He told me about an incident that once happened when a policeman spotted one of his sons in the area, on his way home. He said the police officer stopped the boy and asked what his mission was and was shocked when he replied that he was on his way home. He, apparently, didn’t believe a black man could own a property in the area. It took the intervention of the parents to convince the officer.

Liverpudlians, from what I observed and heard about them, are ordinarily nice people. But Liverpool has since lost its wealth, which came with its infamous role as a trans-Atlantic slave trade route. It is, today, very impoverished and there are fewer jobs, which is why the locals are perceived as hostile. Many well educated children of migrants like Kaka Alhaji are forced to leave Liverpool in order to secure good jobs. And this is why those left behind are the ageing population.

I always enjoyed listening to his life story and he repeatedly reminded me that he was the youngest of his siblings, after his younger brother, a medical student, had died. He, like another another elderly family (Gerald and Judy Henderson), was always available to support my family and give me the fatherly advice my father’s death had deprived me of.

One day he visited and saw Imam had hit his head against the sharp edge of the radiator in the living room. He was very visibly disturbed because the boy had sustained a slight cut and was crying. He insisted that we saw a doctor to be sure there was no internal injury. We did and were reassured. Upon our return he sat me down and gave me a lecture on the fragility of body parts like the head and why extreme caution must be taken. He ended the lecture with the sad story of one of his older siblings who, as a child, had crashed his head on a hard surface during play with his mates and died within hours after the incident. The story is glued to memory.

When I was leaving Liverpool in January 2013, even though I was quite happy settling down in Coventry where I had started a new job, I felt quite sad leaving behind good people like Kaka Alhaji and the Hendersons. I tried to keep in touch with them by visiting until I had an accident on a motorway that seriously impacted me. Getting Kaka Alhaji on the phone was a tough job because he was always in the Mosque, turning off his mobile phone or, when at home, observing his leisure.

I was aware Alhaji Abubakar’s health was not very good, especially due to old age. But he went on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia a few years ago and went through a very stressful experience that further effected him. He was placed on admission in the hospital and recuperated. We met, afterwards, at his son’s wedding in London and spent plenty of time chatting. And when it was time to part ways, it was difficult saying goodbye, which turned out to be a final goodbye.

It was from Dr Mohammed Sulaiman, who came visiting from Nigeria last week, that I became aware that Kaka Alhaji was in the hospital, again, and had undergone a surgery after a serious accident in his home in which he sustained a critical head injury. Dr Sulaiman visited him in the hospital and came back with an even more depressing story. But, as Muslims, we hoped on Allah to heal him. I was also planning on visiting, together with the Ameer of the Nigeria Muslim Forum UK (NMFUK), Dr Abdullahi Ahmed, who is married to his grand niece, perhaps over the weekend, to see him alive at least one more time. But it never was.

Sadly, it was a head injury that he so much dreaded and was always cautious about that killed him. But such is destiny. In him I have lost a father and a friend, exactly 17 years and one day after my father’s death. May Allah forgive their shortcomings and reward them with al Jannat Firdausi.

This article is also published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, March 10, 2018.

Dapchi: There should have been precautionary and response mechanisms

2018-03-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

It is nearly two weeks since the notorious Boko Haram insurgents struck in Dapchi in Yobe State and kidnapped 110 schoolgirls. No one is sure how long it will take before the girls are brought back home, like some of those previously taken. Nor does anyone know at what price their release from the abductors’ dungeon will be negotiated. But what is certain is the criminals that seized them from their school have a motive (and, possibly, many motives), which is to frustrate education. And the girl-child education has been a major victim.

The Boko Haram insurgents abhor education and one of the ways they actualise their hate for western education is through attacks on schools. After each invasion they leave behind a trail of massive destruction and sorrow. And no school or community in the north-east of Nigeria has been exempt from this orgy of cruelty. So, in Buni Yadi, Mamudo, Maiduguri, Damaturu, Chibok, Damasak and, now, Dapchi, among others, has the terror group’s signature been ingrained in the memory of their victims and many Nigerians.

The Dapchi disaster is quite traumatising because it happened soon after the government declared victory over Boko Haram and its leader Abubakar Shekarau appeared in a short video in which he seemed dampened, although characteristically adamant. His opposite number in the group’s breakaway faction, Abu Mus’ab Al-barnawi is, according to some reports, in the custody of the government, suggesting that the insurgents have been effectively restrained but for intermittent suicide bombings.

Some analyst had, however, dismissed the government declaration of victory as premature given the continued ability of the insurgents to carry out some attacks with precision. But the government dismissed these fears, arguing that an insurgency, normally, takes time to be fully stamped out. This argument makes sense if one considers other parts of the world where similar violence have continued, although at a curtailed level, for several years after such declarations.

But some happenings, regardless of the plausibility of the government point, suggest that the war was far from over, even before Dapchi happened.

It is important to consider the continued elusiveness of Abubakar Shekau as a huge shortcoming, despite several claims about his death and the recent order by the Army Chief of Staff Tukur Buratai to his men to capture him dead or alive. The deadline for the order to be executed has since elapsed, but there is still no Shekau or his head.

Shekau, a man of a hard heart, has continued to negotiate through intermediaries with the government. These negotiations, although resulted in the release of some of the abductees, have also earned Shekau and his group valuable concessions. And this is what he needs in order to avoid capture and keep the insurgency alive.

The success of Shekau’s group in these negotiations has, indirectly, inspired the Al-barnawi faction, if it is true that it is responsible for the Dapchi abduction, to venture into the flourishing world of kidnap for ransom. Kidnap for ransom is a major means of sustenance for terrorist and organised criminal groups. High profile abductees are usually a big target. And from these category of abductees millions are extorted to fund the criminal activities.

Shekau’s Boko Haram was quick to take advantage of the global outrage that followed the Chibok schoolgirls’ abduction and attach a high profile label to the girls. This decision has paid off and earned the group a lot more than the $3 million dollars it got from the French Family of seven it abducted in February 2013. And, more importantly, it has kept the cash flow steady.

While the government had a tough choice between negotiation to get the girls back alive, after conceding to the group’s demands, and refusing to negotiate with the terrorists and risk losing the girls, a more moderate position should have been taken. Paying huge ransoms in addition to releasing terrorists in government’s custody has, certainly, been anything but moderate. And this is why the group and other factions would keep coming back for more girls in the hope of always having their way on a negotiating table. This is another big shortcoming of the fight against the insurgents.

One aspect of the fight, a fundamental shortcoming, about which the government has been mum is the allegation that the soldiers in Sambisa forest were just moments from capturing Abubakar Shekau when an order came that halted the advance. It was in this time that the insurgents launched a counteroffensive, killing some of the soldiers while Shekau, once again, avoided capture. This order, for it to have been obeyed by the soldiers, must have come from a credible source. That source must be known to the soldiers and can, therefore, not be anonymous.

For the government to be taken seriously that it is actually tackling the insurgency as it should and working relentlessly to get back the abductees, the source of the order needs to be traced and appropriate action taken. It is also important that the president should summon security chiefs and ask for explanations for their failure to prevent the attack on the school and the absence of a rapid response during and after the abduction.

Unless actions are taken to reassure Nigerians that the fight is genuine and there’s a total commitment to end the insurgency people would continue to regard declarations that the Boko Haram insurgency has been defeated as mere propaganda. After all, there should have been precautionary and response mechanisms to prevent the repeat of Chibok in Dapchi.

This article is also published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, March 3, 2018.

An open letter to Northern leaders (3)

2018-02-23T06:44:00.001-08:00

Aliyu Musa

Again, it is with a heavy heart I conclude republishing my letter to northern leaders. This is because history is boldly and unambiguously repeating itself. And, what makes it more painful is that we don’t seem to have learnt any lessons from our previous experience.

When the Boko Haram insurgents attacked the Chibok school and took with them hundreds of girls it took many days for the Goodluck Jonathan government to acknowledge the atrocity. The group took advantage of the ensuing confusion to ferry the victims to places only they knew. But the Chibok girls’ plight was only one of many of such abductions in which thousands of Nigerians disappeared into the terror group’s dungeon without anyone noticing or doing anything.

We all criticised the Jonathan regime’s handling of the Boko Haram menace and the Chibok abduction, in particular. And when elections came it was a major weapon against the regime. The rest is history.

I do not share the opinion that progress has not been made in the fight against Boko Haram since President Jonathan’s last minute ‘rise from slumber’ and when the present regime of President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in May 2015. The fight against the terror group has been quite difficult and full of setbacks. But, methinks, some of the setbacks are self-inflicted.

For example, based on a BBC report, the Nigerian soldiers combing Sambisa forest for Abubakar Shekau came close to capturing him, recently. But, according to the report, the soldiers received a certain sudden order that halted the search and while they waited, for four days, the insurgents remobilised and launched a massive attack on the troops, which killed some of the soldiers. And, very worrying too, Shekau made good his escape.

The Nigerian government strategy of piecemeal deals resulting in monetary ‘incentivisation’ in addition to releasing the group’s fighters in the custody of the government in exchange for some Nigerians in the group's captivity is also self-destruct. Each time such deals are agreed the group comes back fighting ferociously. This is because the incentives they get from the government are used to replenish the group’s supplies and resuscitate it in order to carry on the insurgency.

This strategy has to change. The government needs to begin a serious discussion and consultation on how a combination of military and political solutions can be applied to end the insurgency. Northern leaders need to agree that they have a big role to play and begin planning how to step in. Most importantly, a clear policy to prevent rogue groups like Boko Haram from emerging again has to be put in place. This is why I think this letter is as relevant today as it was about five years ago, when it was first published. Enjoy reading.

Sirs, as much as we blame you for most or all of our ills we must also accept our own culpability for some of those. You might have defaulted in handling affairs handed over to you since you stepped into Sardauna’s shoes after his demise. But our biggest fault is we are your cheerleaders and are often entirely willing to not ask appropriate questions about the way things are managed. We, as if God decreed that we should be condemned to such abjectness, accept it as our destiny.

The biggest problem of the northern oppressed is that he does not think his situation is man-made. He takes it as God-sent. This sweetens the minds of those in some form of leadership roles because it rules out any possibility of ‘people’s revolt’. So the rogues who took advantage of our ignorance to claim to speak for us and are now mobilising some of us to capsize the ship know too well we are very bewildered and badly needing some kind of herding. And herding us to disaster, to satiate their and their sponsors’ greed, is an agenda they must achieve.

In spite of everything you are our leaders and, by implication, role models. Even as we revel Sardauna’s indelible footprints on the sand of time many of us did not live in their time and only know them from the stories told of them. But the glad tidings of their deeds are transmitted through generations. Even though we ought to aspire to be like them we can hardly be because you, their legacy, are what we see each time we look into the scope.

And the real consequence is that things will continue to be like this because even after your time, long after you are gone we would continue with your legacies and pass them on to our inheritors. This issue brings me to the real motive of my missive. We need you, for our sake and of successive generations, to change and bring about a positive alteration of this trend. For history to remember you with full kindness as we remember Sardauna and his generation, who for our today and tomorrow people’s tomorrow sacrificed theirs’, we need you to rethink your stance vis-à-vis this calamity into which our home, our part of the divide, is enmeshed and seriously consider ways to steer it out.

No doubt there’s leadership in the region (and country) to which allegiance is paid and whose responsibility it is to ensure our safety and well-being, but we still do not think you should be as mute as you are. Neutrality has no place in the battles these vices that are plainly inimical to our collective survival wage on us. And they are determinedly aiming to vanquish us. And sadly the vices succeed not because they are so formidably rooted to defy efforts to uproot them but because the purported antidotes are programmed to aid such resistance.

For example we cannot claim to be hoping to have no more of fraudulent cults like those in the forefront of this appalling violence without addressing its underlying causes like poverty and unemployment. If we plan to put a check to the growing number of those waiting to be enlisted into the army of these cults then we must find something for them to do. Rather than investing in a gang/cult culture we should put our money and energy in producing a generation of usefully productive men and women.

Ignorance is one evil we have malevolently invested in. Now is the time to turn the table by building schools and equip them with the tools to bring our people to positions where they can confidently compete with their equals around the world. If they are prepared for and they are aware they have a future to look forward to I doubt they would allow themselves to be rented out as murderers (who could get killed too) or suicide attackers or your (our) hunters.

You have the clout and resources to bring about all this change but no one expects it to happen easily. It is a major challenge, which you can confront by first agreeing you have a responsibility to do it and could unite us to support you.

In conclusion, sirs, lets ask ourselves: if we do not show similar unselfishness towards making others’ tomorrow how would posterity treat us when we are gone and in places we cannot be of any help?

(Concluded)

This article is also published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, February 24, 2018.

Terrorists on the prowl

2018-02-16T11:18:00.001-08:00

My original plan this week was to conclude republishing my 2013 letters to northern leaders. But so many things have happened to warrant a change of plan, which is why I have postponed the conclusion to next week.

To all Americans, especially those who lost loved ones in the Florida school shooting on Wednesday, I send my heartfelt condolences. It is one shooting too many. But the real problem is that, in my opinion, American governments do not consider the perpetrators of these criminal shootings the very dangerous criminals that they are, in reality. They always excuse and rationalise their atrocities because they (the killers) are privileged to be non-black and non-Muslim.

When the Las Vegas mass murderer Stephen Paddock shot and killed at least 59 people attending a music concert on October 1, 2017, both the US President Donald Trump and the police tried to mitigate the seriousness of his crime. President Trump was quick to describe Paddock as a “very, very sick individual”, refusing to call him by the name he deserved. The police also tried to rationalise Paddock’s atrocity, regardless of the sufferings of his victims, by invoking his trouble-free past.

“The guy…did not cause any problems at any time,” they claimed. And with that the problem was put aside and heads buried in the sand, despite the president promising to let discussions on gun laws continue. But we are back to the same problem and this time too the killer is a privileged terrorist that cannot be called by the name he has earned himself.

19-year-old Nikolas Cruz did not just appear from the blue to carry out the killings in his former school. He had warned of his plan in a YouTube post, to which FBI’s attention was drawn by a kind user. But the matter was, again, not taken as seriously as it should have been. The FBI says it was contacted by one Ben Bennight who had come across Cruz’s post on YouTube last year. But, based on what it claims was its inability to identity “the person behind” the post, it could not trace it to Cruz and forestall his plan.

But it was not only FBI that failed to prevent the would-be mass murderer from making good his promise. His former school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in my estimation gets a larger portion of the blame. And this is because, if the school had reported him to the police after he threatened students for which he was expelled it would have been much easier for the FBI to link the YouTube post to him. But all the authorities in the school did was to expel and order him not be seen on the premises with a rucksack, which is easier said than implemented as the Wednesday shooting has proven.

The American gun culture is a massive problem to which a corresponding serious attention is not paid. When President Trump promised to let the debate on gun laws continue it was clear he intended not to do anything to control access to guns especially by people of questionable character and mental stability. Otherwise he would have put in as much as energy as he put in making sure his blanket ban on immigrants from certain countries was successful.

Since the Paddock tragedy many more killings have happened and most of them were in schools in different parts of the country. But the government did not (and still does not) find it expedient to vigorously pursue a policy that would restrict access to guns and save innocent lives, just like it is doing by keeping out foreign terrorists.

While it is true this policy of keeping out foreign terrorists has kept the US safe from attacks from this category of criminals, pretending that homegrown white, non-Muslim terrorists are not as much a threat as their foreign counterparts even after causing more deaths simply begs the question.

Terrorists should called by their name regardless of their race, colour, religion and other identities. Nicolas Cruz, a man with links to the white supremacist group, the Republic of Florida, is clearly a terrorist and should be treated as such.

Zamfara in the news again

Long before the killings in Benue occupied the front burners of the Nigerian media and turned the state into a sort of pilgrims’ hub, Zamfara State had silently suffered vicious attacks by armed bandits and cattle rustlers. There were occasions when communities were encircled and residents, including women and children, were executed in cold blood or markets sealed and traders and buyers were subjected to endless torture and eventually killed.

In November 2017, for example, the villages of Mallamawa, Barka da Yabo, Tungar Kahau, Maikamar rimi and Gidan Anna were attacked in broad daylight, dozens of villagers killed and many more injured. Despite the governor’s SOS message to the Federal Government the attacks were only temporarily halted. The criminals have since returned with vengeance and have continued to perpetrate more atrocities, which are hardly reported in the media.

Every life is sacred and every crime against humanity, whether it results in the death of anyone or not, must be condemned in its entirely and the perpetrators be brought to justice. The herdsmen attacks that have led to the loss of many lives in Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa and other places are criminal acts that should not be condoned by the state. Similarly, attacks on Fulani anywhere in the country, whether as a payback for the herdsmen atrocities or otherwise, are criminal. The media, being the society’s watchdog, should not be selective in reporting these atrocities as it unfortunately seems.

If every crime, regardless of the ethnic or religious leanings of the perpetrators and victims, is given the kind of reportage it deserves the government would be held to account until it has done what is right. But by ignoring some, as the case of Zamfara suggests, authorities are given the leeway to treat such serious matters with levity.

This, perhaps, explains why the criminals holding Zamfara hostage struck again on Thursday, killing no fewer than 41 people in a village called Birane in Zurmi Local Government Area of the state. To the victims and their families my sincere condolences go. But the governments at all levels must step up to bring an end to these criminal activities. Ignoring the victims is just not acceptable.

This article is also published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, February 17, 2018.

Re An open letter to Northern leaders (2)

2018-02-11T04:41:00.000-08:00

Aliyu Musa

This week too, I am republishing the second part of my October 2013 letter; again with little editing. Since the letters were written I am only rereading them now and it is with total shock that I realise that many of the issues highlighted were swept under the carpet. For example the serial killings that happened in schools were never properly investigated nor were the victims ever given any special mention. No one has compensated their families. They are simply forgotten.

More worrying, the killing spree has continued in more complicated forms, while the country bleeds profusely. On our part, we have embraced hate speeches and turned hatred for our compatriots and neighbours into a favourite pastime, which explains why our country is unbelievably divided. Our leaders, as always, are the biggest beneficiaries of our division. They worry more about their interests and often do everything to mend fences and cement their unity.

On the contrary we are often too quick to demonise each other, too quick to accept the stereotypes that our leaders, by means of privileged access to the media, retail to us of others and, acting on our psychologically choreographed loathe for those ‘others’, we are too quick to spill blood. The land is drenched with the blood of our innocent compatriots. It’s such a messy situation, but it’s still not irredeemable. Enjoy reading:

Recently marauders who claimed to be Boko Haram insurgents torched primary schools, the very few still not in total ruins, in Yobe and Borno states. So, children who should be in school were either harmed or kept out of education at a time states in other regions are making basic education not only free but also compulsory. Those behind the dastardly acts are never brought to justice, nor are the victims ever compensated.Then secondary schools became a target and teenage pupils were slaughtered heartlessly.

We all continue to bury our heads in the sand. Terror, now emboldened by our conspiratorial silence, goes for the jugular; it invades tertiary institutions to vent its sadism on poor students. Last week it had a stopover at the College of Agriculture, Gujba in Yobe State, callously taking the lives of no fewer than 50 innocent students. Not unexpectedly though, we have carried on with life as if nothing happened. The government, in its usual show of disinterest, went on partying to mark another independence anniversary, as if internal colonisers are holding the nation hostage.

But do I blame the government? I don’t. You are silent; we are mute as if we have nothing to lose. I do not believe in reincarnation but if, for the purpose of this discourse, the late Sardauna were to come back to life what would he say? How would he feel about this brazen betrayal?

Sardauna, as we all recall, did not anoint successors for himself and his generation from his family and friends. He chose you because he trusted you to not betray his dream, our dream. He did not amass wealth, enough to last several generations, for himself and his family because he knew the vanity in that and, above all, he did not want to create a class of a few superrich in the midst of an overwhelmingly poverty-stricken majority.

He did not use religion as a tool of convenience nor did he use poverty as a weapon to enable him dehumanise the people he called his; none of his contemporaries, a few of whom may still be vaguely around, did any of those. He did not divide the ranks of his followers on the basis of tribe to allow him rule for as long as he wished. He was a just leader, a father to all whose aspiration was a united north devoid of the sort of poverty that breeds the kind of terror miserably tearing us to pieces today.

Terror in the form of the Matatsine cult, Boko Haram, Ombatse and many others feasts on the cannon fodder your act of betrayal offers. Unlike Sardauna you amass wealth forgetting that poverty, as scandalously rampant as it is in your immediate environment, exists. You are so cloaked in your comfort that you care too little whether those left in your care survive or die. All that matters is you and yours – your very close ones – and your wealth.

As pivotal as education is to human development in this age (and always) it does not matter whether those masses of people around you acquire any of it or not. For there is always a use for the ignorant, like employing them during elections as thugs to intimidate the opposition, harass the electorate and manipulate the results. And the fruits are what we reap today. No one begrudges us, though.

Public schools, as far as it concerns our clime, are artefacts of bygone days. So, you build gigantic structures which you furnish with state-of-the-art learning kits, import expatriates to teach and charge extortionate fees, which you know full well only the few in your class can afford. For the rest of the population underneath mango trees or what remains of those structures you once benefitted from serve as their schools. And you sleep soundly each night.

Sirs, I know I have been very uncouth but I still beg your indulgence. Let us be sincere for once and do a soul search. First, how did we end up with people like Muhammadu Marwa Maitatsine, Musa Bakaniki, Muhammad Yusuf, Abubakar Shekau and many dubious characters as our champions? You probably can’t remember. But I have an idea. You abdicated your responsibility and rogues stepped in.

Once upon a time, at the uttermost of your nonchalance, many of us gave up on hope and took to hooliganism because it was a safety valve for our frustrations. And because it favoured you, you encouraged it. So cults under such nomenclatures as ‘yan daba, ‘yan gunda, ‘yan kalare’ ‘yan sara such, ‘yan dawa, ‘Ecomog’, etc. conveniently sprouted. For you it seemed a win-win situation as you used the army of thugs they supplied to fight your political battles and comfortably kept the downtrodden as minimum a threat to your dream hegemony as possible.

But you did not realise it would all boomerang some day as it obviously appears now. So, the same thugs you used began hunting you because they know all your ‘behind-the-scene’ acts and, even though not everyone has contributed to ‘their making’, they vent their anger on all, bringing those scenarios Thomas Hobbes once captured in his Leviathan concept nearer home than one would ever have imagined.

More baffling though, we all stand still, hoping in hopelessness, as we watch the ship head towards the rocks, to the delight of our ill-wishers. But you could, if you wish, stop the wreck.

(To be concluded)

This piece also appears in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, February 10, 2018.

Re An open letter to Northern leaders (1)

2018-02-02T09:11:00.001-08:00

Aliyu Musa

Last Tuesday what would have been a tragedy of monumental proportions was averted. The former governor of Kano State, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso had scheduled a political rally to herald his visit to the city of Kano, the hub of his mammoth support. But things have been very sour between him and the current governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, who was also his deputy when he was governor. The rivalry hit a new low when Governor Ganduje also planned his own political rally for the same day and in the same venue. The stage was, thus, set for an all-out war between the two ruling APC factions.

Each side remained adamant, until Senator Kwankwaso listened to the voices of reason, albeit grudgingly, and put off his plan. Peace is back, at least for now. But there’s a looming danger. Kano is not far from the verge, given the pictures that emerged from the state after the governor’s rally. Young men and women, wielding dangerous weapons, were in the pictures. In one of the pictures a legislator was seen posing with armed hoodlums, known as ‘yan daba.

Anyone who remembers the menace of ‘yan daba, some years back, would weep for Kano, seeing them reemerging and returning to prominence in the political sphere of the state. The situation becomes even more frightful if we recall that the state is presently in the news as a nucleus of drug addiction. Young men and women’s lives are ruined because politicians who benefit immensely from the drift are very pleased to fund the habit and arm the addicts.

Kano is not the only part of northern Nigeria where priorities are progressively missed, giving politicians the leeway to do as they please. In other states governors who are unwilling to pay workers’ wages despite repeatedly receiving bailouts from the Federal Government smartly invent diversions or take full advantage of those others create. And by means of relentless amplifications everyone embraces the diversions and such governors begin to recruit, train and arm militias; militias that would soon become everyone’s peril.

The danger is, before long, the entire country would be saturated with and overwhelmed by these thugs. And we could be on our way to ruination, the scale of which only those in the north-east can understand, from their experience with Boko Haram. The Boko Haram insanity began in the same fashion, when Governor Ali Modu Sheriff armed and incorporated the then relatively unknown ‘ECOMOG’ into his government. But by the time he realised he could not rein in the group it was too late and we ended up with an ogre.

In October 2013, when the Boko Haram violence was spiralling out of control amidst growing accusations that the Goodluck Jonathan government had abdicated its responsibility of securing lives and property in the region, I wrote a three-part open letter to northern leaders reminding them that it was time to pick up the gauntlet and reverse the decline. The situation has still not transformed, which is why I am reproducing the letter, with a bit of editing. Enjoy reading:

Dear Sirs,

I am writing in the sincere hope that you will act with utmost urgency to stop the drift in a region where life has effectively lost value and man is brutishly subjecting fellow man to scandalous cruelty. In this respect I am referring to the violence that has engulfed the north since the July 2009 ‘suppression’ of the first phase of the Boko Haram violence.

You will find that I have directed this message to Northern leaders. By leaders I mean everyone that is, was or is thought to be in any position of leadership or authority and can speak for or influence thoughts in the north. Therefore, it is a missive to past and present leaders in politics and civil service, serving and retired military and paramilitary officers, Muslim and Christian clerics, business leaders, teachers at all levels, journalists, trade unionists and Rights activists, students and every professional from or sympathetic to or with a stake in the region.

A friend and I were once taking stock of developments in the region since the death of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, a man whose generosity doubtlessly impacted our lives immensely. It was with a great shock that we realised that those who benefitted most from his vision and selflessness and were hoped to continue this act of altruism have done almost nothing for the region and people.

Gamji’s days were full of intense but healthy competitions among the regions that constituted Nigeria. For example, while the southwest under the leadership of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group was actively investing in people from the grassroots Sardauna, I was told, travelled from village to village and house-to-house to personally recruit many of you into the strategic professions that prepared you for essential roles in the hope that you will replicate the gesture to successive generations of northerners.

It was through this effort many of you became leaders in politics, military, judiciary, civil service, academia and so on. You did not have to pay fees for training locally or abroad. Irrespective of tribe, religion or social status, I heard, you were awarded scholarships. And because you were pioneers from the region in all the fields you found yourselves your rise was almost effortless.

Sirs, pardon my vulgarity, but if you contrast your situations then to those that confront many of us today you will appreciate that you have not done much to reciprocate Gamji’s action. Only, maybe, a handful of you actively offer support to people outside of your own family and cohorts, despite being in positions to successfully champion Gamji’s dream.

So, because you either have no dreams for the region or don’t know how to translate those dreams to reality you allowed Sardauna’s vision to practically collapse. Now, we are left with groups like Boko Haram, claiming to speak for the region and people but ironically decimating its population more than any plague did in the region’s entire history.

But we all know Boko Haram is a franchise, conveniently deployed to achieve a certain agenda to which you may or may not be privy. But everyone’s frustration with you is that you seem almost completely mute in the face of all this in spite of your enormous influence and power.

(To be continued)

This article is also published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, January 3, 2018.

Between the message and the messenger

2018-01-26T03:54:00.002-08:00

Aliyu Musa

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s missive to President Muhammadu Buhari is one bombshell that was long expected. The wordings were deliberately chosen to make it as damning and provocative as possible. And Obasanjo was, perhaps, hoping for a repeat of what transpired between him and former President Goodluck Jonathan, after his similarly critical comments about his regime in the run-up to the 2015 election.

Not a few watchers of events in Nigeria since May 2015, when President Buhari assumed office are agreed that things are not right. But many also appreciate the fact that the president came to power at a time things had gone very awry and had hoped his rescue mission was timely. But nearly three years on, many are still very unhappy.

Many of the problems the Buhari regime is struggling with were inherited, which was why many Nigerians were willing to excuse its shortcomings. But some of the problems have arisen as a result of the president’s indecisiveness. For example, it took him nearly seven months to form a cabinet which was eventually populated with the usual acquaintances. And he has continued keep the same team despite the glaring incompetence of some members.

Due to the conduct of some of his ministers and top officials one could be forgiven to think they run a parallel government. Justice Minister Abubakar Malami, for instance, has handled too many cases too badly, including the corruption cases that were thrown out of court when the president was away in London for treatment. Most of the cases, apart from handing corruption an easy victory, are yet to be resuscitated.

Convinced he could not be reined in, the minister took a further step to score an own goal when he ordered the EFCC to hand over all files of people under investigation to his ministry. Before such files are sent to the ministry of justice, it is expected that the EFCC investigators working on them have completed their work and are ready to release or prosecute the suspects. But the instruction clearly overrode this process, again appearing to create a leeway for some of the suspects.

But the biggest of these possible acts of dereliction is the minister’s handling of the Abdulrasheed Maina reabsorption into civil service. It was this case that forced many of the president’s once ardent supporters to rethink their support. The scandal that came to be known as Mainagate was so notoriously indefensible that even the presidency chose to wish it away in the face of mounting evidence of complicity. But what the president and his team fail to realise is that by ignoring the matter they are only procrastinating the crisis. So, it did not come as a surprise that it was one of the issues Obasanjo cited in his criticism of Buhari’s stewardship.

Although many are still wont to believe President Buhari’s integrity is intact, by saying nothing in the hope that such scandals would vanish on their own, the president sends the wrong message. He should, at least, offer some excuses and or apologies. He should have, in the case of Maina, penalised the officials involved, including Malami, and that would have weakened the efficacy of his detractors’ weapons and strengthened the resolve of this supporters.

The SSS director general, Lawal Daura, is another principal officer of the regime that should have been called to order. He often acts as if his agenda is at a parallel with the government’s plans. On the two occasions the president sent the name of the EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Magu, to the Senate for confirmation as substantive head of the anti-corruption agency the Senators relied wholly on the intelligence the DSS sent to decline.

Their action, based on Daura’s failure to operate in sync with the regime he is part of, was clearly embarrassing to the president, who is now forced to retain Magu in an acting capacity. If Daura felt so strongly about the intelligence why did he not share it with the president beforehand? Why did he wait to embarrass the president at the Senate?

Like the minister of justice the SSS DG is relentless in his strive to make the regime look like a joke. Recently, he reportedly sent his men to bungle EFCC’s attempts to arrest some suspects, almost causing devastating inter-agency clashes. But Daura got away with all this, which suggests that it is either the president is unaware of this serious abuse of office or he is aware but unable to do anything about it.

Until the arrest of former SGF Babachir David Lawal in the middle of the week he seemed to be one of the sacred cows of the regime whose big and small sins are overlooked and they are allowed to go and sin again and again. Sadly, many of these officials are directly responsible for diverting money and relief materials meant for the millions of Nigerians displaced from their homes by the Boko Haram violence.

One scandal that has surprisingly vanished into thin air is the one involving the diversion of several tonnes of palm dates the Saudi government donated for the use of IDPs during the last Ramadan. The office of the minister of state for foreign affairs, Hajiya Khadija Bukar Abba Ibrahim, admitted receiving the consignment, but claimed passing it over to the government agency responsible for distributing to the IDPs. The IDPs did not receive the dates. No one has been questioned or indicted. The case has since been forgotten. But, like Mainagate, it would be resuscitated when the campaign for 2019 election begins.

The Obasanjo missive, rather than viewing it as a fuel for adversary, should be taken as a wake-up call. The government could use it a pivot to do a thorough and sincere appraisal of its performance since May 2015. The ruling APC’s response is a step in the right direction, but beyond overwhelming Nigerians with statistics there should be a genuine effort to make the ordinary people feel the impacts of these success stories the statistics supposedly represent.

While Obasanjo, presently, could either be hailed as a hero or dismissed as a villain, depending on the perspective from which he is viewed, we must acknowledge the fact that the message is more important than the messenger. The messenger was, himself, anything but a saint when he had the opportunity to inscribe his name in gold. If in his time he understood the dicey domestic politics of the country he would not have authorised the November 1999 Odi invasion, in which an entire community was run over by soldiers. Nor would he have allowed the October 2001 repeat of Odi in Zaki Biam, where soldiers massacred more than 200 villagers.

It’s just so easy and comfortable to perfect things from outside. And Nigerians’ propensity for forgetfulness is unparalleled.

This piece is also published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, January 27, 2018.

Of ranches, cattle colonies and misplaced priorities (2)

2018-01-24T14:04:00.001-08:00

Aliyu Musa

Pastoralism is, arguably, one of Nigeria’s most under-tapped economically viable sectors. It contributes a third of the agricultural GDP and more than three percent of the national GDP. Even though it generates about US$6.8 billion annually, it falls far below the estimated US$20 billion it, normally, should generate. And this shortfall is due to incessant conflict and failure of successive governments to properly harness the potential of the sector.

The National Grazing Reserve Act of 1964 was introduced as a means of resolving and or preventing the increasingly daunting conflict between herders and farmers over grazing lands. It was meant to legally designate and protect areas specifically for grazing livestock and, in the process, encourage the sedentarisation of nomadic pastoralists. Sedentarisation or settlement of nomadic pastoralists has several benefits, one of which is general livestock development.

But the Act has now been overtaken by several events, which is why the key objectives have not been achieved. Conflicts between herders and farmers have continued to arise due to a number of reasons: the Act has not been able to legally protect demarcated areas from encroachment by crop farmers and expanding population; sedentary animal husbandry has failed to appeal to a greater number of the pastoralists; the pastoralists that have settled on the designated reserves were not previously nomadic.

Other problems that affected the success of the policy were the failure to properly compensate owners of lands taken over as part of the reserves, which often resulted in disputes; and, owing to the fact that the nomads have refused to settle down the livestock often wandered into farmlands, leading to conflict with farmers, etc.

In Nigeria, conflict between pastoralists and farmers is a massive problem that defies logic and solutions. The problem appears insurmountable because herders rear animals mainly through grazing and they (herders) are led by the cattle to wherever grazing land is available, making clashes over grazing land inevitable.

Technology has made life simpler and most tasks are achievable with ease. Pastoralism has moved on too and today, in most parts of the world, nomadic pastoralism is out of vogue. Sedentary animal husbandry, regardless of its lack of appeal to nomadic herders, still holds the key to the door out of this logjam. But this option would require a strong financial commitment to succeed. Besides, without proper sensitisation to draw attention to the benefits, it would be hard to sell the idea to the nomads, potential investors and host communities.

In the first part of this commentary last week I argued that the two policies the Federal and Benue State governments have proposed need to be seriously reassessed to know whether any of them has the capacity to transform the conflict. So, in my view, both proposals try to put the cart before the horse.

In the case of the anti-open grazing law, apart from the fact that it suggests vindictiveness, it does not take into consideration the cost implication of setting up ranches, which is the only option it leaves the herders with. It also does not factor in the nomads’ unwillingness to embrace sedentary pastoralism. But most importantly, it fails to see that the decision could be interpreted as a war declaration, since most of the nomads do not have the means of setting up ranches, even if they wanted to.

The FG’s cattle colonies proposal is vague and equally fails to do the needful. It does not take into account the fact that the communities in the states are to eventually host the colonies and unless there is an unambiguous willingness it could backfire, like the National Grazing Reserve Act. It does not realise that the nomads would also need to be educated and persuaded to accept the proposal.

So, biggest challenge now, for the FG especially, is how to deescalate the tension hovering over the country and put in place a machinery to create a sustainable peace and restore trust among the various parties in the conflict. This could serve as a base for its initiative, afterwards.

Modern cattle ranching techniques are gaining currency across the globe. And lessons could be learned from the success stories of countries where new practices have transformed old conflicts, built an enduring peace and led to livestock development.

Of Nigeria’s 36 states only Lagos is fully able to generate revenue internally and survive largely without subventions from the FG. Out of this crisis some of the currently crumbling states could benefit substantially. Morden cattle ranching or sedentary animal husbandry is practiced in many parts of East and South Africa. This has significantly reduced the incidences of clashes with crop farmers, helped the nomads settle down and boost the development of pastoralism.

In some countries like Zimbabwe, Uganda, South Africa, etc. commercial ranching and cattle banking are attracting an increasing acceptability, despite sceptics’ gloomy predictions.

Experts and financiers who set up such ranches or cattle farms or banks apply modern techniques to boost the quality of the cattle through cross-breeding, fattening and disease control. Cattler owners are, thus, relieved of the worries of grazing, preserving and multiplying the herds. They only need need to deposit them in the farms or banks and earn certain percentages over an agreed period of time.

By partnering with private investors, states in northern Nigeria that are willing to continue to host herdsmen could borrow from the initiatives in East and South Africa and modify to suit their local situations. They could invest substantially in modern techniques to boost the quality of the herds and increase the National herd. And because it is a win-win deal, they could earn revenue through beef and dairy products, for which they could control the prices and distribution channels.

While it may sound vindictive the states that refuse to host the herdsmen or be part of the project may have to pay more for beef and dairy products, in addition to losing out on revenue. This is why there is an urgent need for some states to take on this initiative, regardless of the likely challenges, and make as much as possible from the crisis. This is a priority we must get right.

(Concluded)

This piece has also been published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, January 20, 2018.

Of ranches, cattle colonies and misplaced priorities (1)

2018-01-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

Aliyu Musa

Some months ago I randomly came across a story on social media a former teacher of mine, now a retired professor, posted lamenting the invasion of his farmland, where the entire crops that were almost ready for harvest were destroyed. I felt very sorry and wrote a comment consoling him. At the end of the comment I suggested a possible solution that, somehow, angered some commentators on the thread. And I got very hostile responses.

On the front burners of Nigeria’s mainstream traditional and social media, these days, are daily reports of ruthless nocturnal attacks in different communities. In nearly all cases the alleged perpetrators are herdsmen. But because the word ‘herdsman’ is subjectively used interchangeably with or alongside Fulani it is almost always concluded that every herdsman is Fulani and, by implication, the perpetrators are Fulani.

So, it is understandable that those that angrily reacted found my suggestion about revisiting the grazing reserves matter irritating. They were out and out in support of a ban on open grazing, regardless of the consequences. Fulani herdsmen are generally not liked in many communities in the north-central and southern parts of Nigeria. They are accused of mass murders, kidnappings, armed robberies and many similar or worse vices. And, in the often sentimentalised courts of their accusers every Fulani is guilty, as charged.

And, on this basis, it is ‘sacrilegious’, even in the interest of peace, to advocate for any policy that would appear to offer them any form of favour (carrot), as my suggestion seemed to have done.

But this is so because many of us have failed to listen to or understand the other sides of the story: the stories of many who are needlessly demonised and condemned to permanent disrepute because of the actions of a few; the stories of the hundreds of thousands of victims of a system that unfairly expropriates from the poor and weak and pass on land to the powerful; the stories of victims of victims who turn to villains because no one cares about their plight, etc.

There are many narratives of the herdsmen and their menace. A popular narrative is the one explaining the roles climate change and conflict in the Chad Basin and north-eastern Nigeria have played in compelling the herdsmen to migrate southwards. A part of the narrative is that, due to the extreme pressure on the few available grazing land, they often come into conflict with farmers on whose farmlands they are accused of encroaching.

There are also tales of many of the herders losing their cattle to natural conditions and those caused by the deliberate activities of man. Of such activities are the incessant attacks on herders and rustling of their cattle. Many, who once owned large herds of cattle now own no cattle at all and can hardly survive. Non-nomad Fulani also have their stories. Many of them are victims of attacks, sometimes by their non-Fulani neighbours, who blame them for the crimes of the killer herders and much else.

Another narrative claims the killer herders are usually contracted by the familiar non-killer herders to invade communities and spill as much blood as possible. Proponents of this narrative refer to the revenge killings in parts of Plateau and Benue States. This, to this school of thought, is what makes the non-killer herders complicit and, therefore, deserving of whatever befalls them.

While it is true that most herders are likely to be Fulani the reality is not all herders are Fulani. Herding has become such a lucrative and competitive venture that many non-Fulani financiers have stepped in and taken over. These non-Fulani financiers are the big players who own very large herds and contract those Fulani herders who no longer own herds to herd their cattle. So, the regular Fulani we see herding cattle may only be earning some crumbs in exchange for his hard labour.

As legitimate as this source of livelihood may be there are many who may find it unjustifiable and undignifying and, therefore, unappealing. To this category of ‘dispossessed’ Fulani, a shorter, quick-fix route becomes an irresistible alternative. Thus, with their advanced terrain knowledge, they turn to armed robbery, kidnapping and cattle rustling.They become relentless and turn against even their tribesmen, whose cattle they rustle.

And as some recent evidence show, many of those illegally barricading our highways to abduct or rob innocent travellers of their possessions are some of these disgruntled former herdsmen. Even though they constitute a minority but because they wield sophisticated weapons, they, sometimes, outgun armed policemen and soldiers. Nonetheless, most of them are mere contractors whose powerful overlords, in addition to being shielded from the law, take home the bulk of the loots.

But these narratives are either deliberately ignored or hardly understood or mischievously distorted. So, no one talks about these disgruntled, perverse herders or their travails or sponsors. They are simply called Fulani herdsmen and, through these demonising labelling of an entire ethnic group, the real problems are evaded and imaginary ones are invented and overdramatised.

Therefore, without understanding these narratives, especially how the dispossession of a certain group partly fuelled this massive problem, it is unlikely that we are able to proffer enduring solutions. This, in effect, means a thorough reassessment of the Benue State government’s outlawing of open grazing and the FG’s cattle colonies plan is essential.

(To be continued)

This article is also published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, November 13, 2018.

Looking beyond violent clashes in the New Year

2018-01-06T07:22:00.001-08:00

Aliyu Musa

Benue is burning. There is fire in Taraba. The Plateau is on fire. The blaze in kaduna still rages. And the inferno the mindlessly murderous Boko Haram insurgents kindled many years ago, which has razed nearly the entire north-east to the ground, still endures, despite the significant downgrading of the terror group. Rivers is boiling too, but there’s no enough water to douse the fire.

It’s less than a week since the New Year began but terrifying tales of killings have overshadowed the celebration. In Rivers State, for example, dozens of churchgoers were in the early hours of the New Year ambushed and murdered. And in the restive southern Kaduna, a traditional ruler and his wife were killed; so were more than two dozens of people in Benue killed, for which Fulani herdsmen are blamed.

The herdsmen crisis, like the Boko Haram violence, is an inherited problem. However, a major difference between the two is that while Boko Haram successfully attained global notoriety after its April 2014 abduction of 276 Chibok schoolgirls, the herdsmen are largely unknown, internationally. Yet theirs is also a serious security problem, which is why this week’s discourse focuses on it.

And because it is a security challenge with potentially grave consequences it requires as dedicated handling as the Boko Haram insurgency got. But that has not been the case and this is due to a number of reasons.

First, the crisis is largely misunderstood even by the local media and, therefore, misreported. Second, because it is misreported or selectively reported most people are not aware that the herdsmen caused as much havoc before 2015 as they do now. And because they think it is a new problem, due to the way it is presented in the media, they believe the president is deliberately refusing to tackle it.

The third factor is directly corollary to the above. The fact that the herdsmen are believed to be Fulani and the president’s kinsmen leads to the assumption that the president is tacitly in support of their atrocities and shields the perpetrators from justice. Proponents of this conspiracy theory further argue that the systematic ethnic cleansing is in pursuance of a so-called Fulani supremacist agenda (whatever it means?).

They posit further that because the victims are mainly outside of the north-west geopolitical region the president does not see the urgency of ordering a swift, comprehensive military operation against the herdsmen. They point to the decision of the president, on assuming power in May 2015, to set up a military task force to tackle the Zamfara-Kebbi banditry, which they claim has led to the defeat of the bandits/cattle rustlers.

While it is true there were attempts to deal with the menace of herdsmen or bandits or cattle rustlers in the north-west after the president assumed office, it should also be understood that the crisis is far from resolved. The cattle rustlers, believed to be former herdsmen, have continued to present as much security concern in the geopolitical region, especially in Zamfara State, as they did a couple of years ago and earlier.

Even as recently as November 2017 several villages, including Mallamawa, Barka da Yabo, Tungar Kahau, Maikamar rimi and Gidan Anna (all in Zamfara State) came under well coordinated attacks in broad daylight. At the end of it dozens of innocent villagers lost their lives and many more injured. The killings prompted a statewide broadcast by the governor, AbdulAzeez Yari, who admitted that the military operation was only temporarily successful. The operation had merely sent the killers scampering to safety and they soon regrouped and returned with vengeance. So the claim that they were sufficiently defeated in the north-west is unsubstantiated.

One key weakness of this regime is a slow response to crises. Even acknowledging such crises in the media often takes several days. This pace, a distinct signature of the presidency, affects all fronts, including security and has nothing to do with some sections being ignored because they are not the president’s people. In fact this kind of thinking only arises because the media ignore the travails of states like Zamfara or Taraba, where several Fulani settlements were sacked and scores killed late last year.

In the case of Taraba State, after the killings in Mambila, neither the state government nor the FG acted sufficiently to prevent the bouts of reprisal killings that everyone knew would happen. Up until now no serious security measures have been taken to prevent the recurrence of the violence. And we have all buried our heads in the sand.

It is important, though, to appreciate the fact that the military and, in fact, every security apparatus in the country are stretched to a breaking point. If serious steps were taken, over the years, to prevent this plunge we, probably, would not have ended up being terrorised by Boko Haram or herdsmen or some rascals in the creeks etc.

In the early days of this government the security situation of the country was the subject of discussion in a BBC Hausa panel and phone-in programme Ra’ayi Riga. I was on the discussion panel and recall suggesting to the government to create a special security unit to respond to terrorism/security challenges that require non-conventional approaches. Although such decision would require a constitutional backing, if it had been taken seriously it would since have successfully gone through the two chambers of the National Assembly like the Peace Corps bill. But plenty of time was wasted while the herdsmen and other security problems spiralled out of control.

Now that things have reached this point it will require a collaborative problem-solving approach to tame the monster. When it became obvious the bandits were out of control, after the initial attempts to defeat them failed, the governors of the states affected in the north-west decided to work as a team to proffer solutions. Although that effort failed too some of the governors, individually, introduced an amnesty programme that saw the bandits exchanging weapons for money. This too has not been a total success but it has, at least, cut down the threat to a less severe chunk.

Trying something new and creative will be worth the effort. Revisiting the National Grazing Reserves matter with total seriousness and sense of urgency is very necessary. But, for it to succeed, it will require an assiduous sensitisation campaign that should be two-pronged: one targeting the nomads by highlighting the economic and social benefits; and the second aimed at convincing the locals of the immense benefits, including cheaper and healthier beef and diary products. But most importantly, both sides should be made aware of the immeasurable advantages that naturally come with peaceful coexistence.

This article is also published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, January 6, 2018.

Religious profiling: My close shave with death (2)

2017-12-29T11:34:00.000-08:00

Aliyu Musa

Even though it started with me, it turned out, I was not the sole beneficiary of the manager’s empathy and system’s magnanimity. Other people of religious beliefs also immensely benefited. Because I worked in the university’s exam office, I was aware that students were given consideration when they observed sabbath (Jewish) or when their exams clashed with Friday prayers.

For example, whereas the start time for afternoon exams was 2.15, on Fridays Muslim students who wanted to observe Juma’a prayer were allowed to start a quarter of an hour later. And for the rest of my time there, there were no hitches to or eyebrows raised against the plan.

After leaving City University I found my time at Liverpool Hope University equally very memorable and inspiring. LHU was a college of Theology and it in is a huge Cathedral. But when I first arrived there fire had gutted the Cathedral and it was being rebuilt. I was told that in the Cathedral the small Muslim community was provided a separate prayer space.

But after the fire incident the Christian and Muslim communities were provided a prayer room each in Alexander Jones Building. My office was, incidentally, directly opposite the Muslim prayer room, where we often observed our daily and Friday prayers.

When the Cathedral was rebuilt the Muslims continued to maintain the small prayer room in AJB, until the entire building was evacuated. However, the university had other plans. One day the Vice Chancellor, Professor Gerald Pillay, a Professor of Christian Theology invited the Muslim community to the opening ceremony of a new building, which was given to the community. Within it were two well-separated male and female prayer and wudu’u spaces.

During the event the VC, a very honourable man that I had a firsthand experience with, told the story behind the building. One day, he said, he was seated in his office when a male student walked by the garden behind the office. The student, as if he’d suddenly remembered something, stopped and looked at his watch watch; he immediately stepped into the garden and began to perform his noon (Zuhr) prayer.

The student’s action, explained Professor Pillay, struck and joggled his memory back to the prayer room the Muslim community once had. And, there and then, he decided that the Muslim community needed a befitting place of worship. So, a building was reconstructed and converted to prayer rooms and wudu’u spaces for students and staff.

And the Muslim community continued to grow without any discrimination or impediment. The prayer rooms were well utilised and sisters, who previously had no dedicated prayer space, began offering prayers in congregation. I remember observing and sometimes leading daily or Juma’a prayers in the building and in the remaining time I was there, I cannot recall any problems arising from the use of the facility.

In the aftermath of the July 7, 2005 attacks in London an elderly white, Christian friend and I began visiting secondary schools, especially Sixth Forms, as external speakers to promote race relations. What I found most striking was in each of the nearly 80 schools we visited the students were more than willing to learn about Islam and, often, quite receptive to the dissimilarities it brings as a religion.

These examples may come across as subjective, isolated cases but they also highlight the fact that despite the media stereotyping of Islam and Muslims the British society is much more tolerant than one would expect in view of recent happenings. This is so because it is established on the rule of law and sacredness of rights, even of minorities, regardless of what others think.

Unfortunately, in societies such as ours back home, otherness has been elevated beyond wits and reason spanked to stupor. On a daily basis and at every opportunity in-groups and out-groups are erected as barricades between followers of the two main religions. Name-calling and other forms of hostility typify relations.

Debates about important national matters are trivialised and collapsed into religion and, in the end, people become even more divisive, intrusive and discriminatory. And so religion, like ethnicity, is the society’s lushest recruitment base for dubious politicians and provincialists.

Were it in a saner society, the heated debate over Firdausi Amasa’s exclusion from the Nigerian Law School’s Call to Bar ceremony would have had no basis. But in our society, being an epicentre of sensationalising and emotionalising simple matters, it has provided an ambience for the usual opposing sides to be at daggers drawn.

And because emotions were prioritised over reason, not even lawyers agree on whether there was any violation of fundamental human rights as enshrined in the country’s constitution or not. Or whether there were precedents on which such rights violation could be predicated and challenged or not. The focus was simply on Islam and how it could be ‘detoxified’, as it were.

While the Law School has its own rules we must not deny the fact that the constitution is supreme. If certain rights are held as fundamental in the constitution it amounts to an exercise in futility for any rules introduced by any entity within the country to set aside that provision of the constitution. So, Firdausi Amasa’s matter could easily be settled in a competent court of law.

In the meantime, the emotions it has triggered, especially as some arguments are deliberately targeted at and intended to undermine the Muslim identity, is worrisome. If Firdausi had been excluded because she attended a Muslim event dressed in something considered unacceptable by the event organisers the same people currently criticising her would have attempted suffocating everyone with screams of human rights, self-determinism and so on.

But on this occasion, because it suits their stereotypes of Islam and the Muslim identity, they are at variance with this self-assigned posture.

(Concluded)

This article also appears in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, December 30, 2017.

Religious profiling: My close shave with death

2017-12-22T03:28:00.001-08:00

Aliyu Musa

In December 2003, when Nigeria hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Abuja, something happened that nearly tragically ended my life.

As head of Daily Trust’s Foreign and Diplomatic desk I was saddled with the responsibility of ensuring sufficient and effective coverage of happenings during the event. So, even though much of my work was office-based I needed accreditation to give me access to places where most of the happenings were taking place.

On the eve of the opening of the event I went to the International Conference Centre, Abuja to be accredited. I was dressed in a white Jalabiya and a white cap to match. I was also bearded. Although my beard had grown relatively bushy I did not think it would arouse any suspicion, regardless of my dressing.

However, as I walked into the centre towards the temporary offices made specifically for the event a mean-looking mobile policeman (MOPOL) wielding a gun bawled at me to stop. I obeyed without hesitation. But to my bafflement he had a finger on the trigger as he howled questions at me. I told him who I was and why I was there.

But my explanation made no sense to him as he kept moving his finger as if trying to pull the trigger. He did not demand to see my ID card, which was conspicuously on me. Clearly, he had profiled me and concluded that, by my physical appearance, I constituted a serious security risk and getting rid of me was a top priority.

It took the intervention of a plain-clothed officer to calm the irate policeman down to the point of taking his finger off the trigger. Even then he continued to bark at me, referring to my appearance, my religious identity as the trigger for his eccentric behaviour. And if the officer that intervened had been as unreasonable I would be dead by now. It was such a close shave.

But that was not the first or last time I was profiled and harassed in Nigeria because of my Islamic identity. I vividly recall several other occasions; one was when I went to an eatery and wanted to know if the beef I had been served was halal. The waiter initially seemed shocked that I even asked. He then hissed and walked away without responding to my query. In order not to escalate the situation I paid for the food and left without touching it.

Another occasion was when I visited during the inauguration of President Muhammadu Buhari in May 2015. While I was in Abuja, after the inauguration, my good friend and sister Hajiya Rafat Idris invited me to her Radio House office for an interview. The last time I was in Radio House was many years back. So, I flagged down a taxi and requested to be taken there.

On arrival at the Radio House I spotted a notice at the entrance advising visitors to provide a valid proof of identity before being allowed entry. So, I stopped to search my backpack for my ID card. It did not occur to me that my presence had attracted an unbelievable attention. Even policemen at the entrance stared at me, as some of the people around the gate hurriedly disappeared. It soon occurred to me I was being profiled, once again, due to my religious identity. But unlike my experience in 2003 I was also aware that there were genuine security concerns the activities of the terrorist Book Haram group had caused.

I could be mistaken for a suicide bomber or something worse. And as a preemptive action I could end up with a bullet in my head.

As this thought flashed through my head I didn’t know whether to approach the officers at the gate and show them my ID card or simply turn back and leave. I chose to do the former but made sure I was clearly holding out my ID card, which was what cleared the suspicion and doused the tension and I was allowed into the building.

When I recounted my experience to Hajiya Rafat she asked if I was similarly subjected to such procedural and embarrassing profiling in the UK.

In the nearly one decade and a half I have lived in Britain I have not experienced a fraction of the traumatising profiling and mistreatment that I faced while in Nigeria because of my religion, apart from the general media profiling every Muslim suffers as a result of the activities of a handful of deviant Muslims.

Each time I walked through security checks at Heathrow Airport my beard drew much less suspicion than it did on every occasion I was at any Nigerian port of entry. The Islamophobia calously directed at many of us, for which the Nigerian media is conspiratorially mute, is, to say the least, irritating. Once a rude security official at Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport cracked an unwarranted, humourless and humiliating joke about my beard.

While in the UK subtle racial and religious profiling may not be uncommon, I remember many occasions when I thought I was treated with much more respect as British Muslim than I could ever hope for back home in Nigeria.

When I worked at City University London after completing my MA I realised that the only way I could attend a weekly Friday Prayer was if I swapped my lunch break. So, each Friday I would skip my lunch at 12 noon and wait until 1:30 pm to attend Juma’a prayer. My manager, a non-Muslim, found out at some point and advised me to always have my lunch as well as my Friday prayer, adding on half an hour to my lunch break.

(To be continued)

This article also appears in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, December 23, 2017.

When leadership is empathy

2017-12-15T03:22:00.004-08:00

Aliyu Musa

Jose Mujica was Uruguay’s president between 2010 and 2015. Despite a monthly take-home pay of $12000 (about N4.3 million) he opted for a life of penury and was described as the world’s poorest president. But Mr Mujica was not poor. He was only human and humane. And unlike most leaders today, he was an empathetic politician who felt and understood the suffering of his people and swapped it with his own comfort to bring to them succour.

Ninety per cent of his salary, each month, went to charity. Even as president he had no fascination for choice cars or magnificent property. Instead he chose to live in a run-down farm house, owned by his wife, and drove a rickety 1987 Beetle. For Mr Mujica, love means everything and love he shares by caring for everyone.

Moved by his benevolence, in 2014 an Arab Sheikh offered $1 million for the president’s Beetle. But, while emphasising he had no commitment to cars, Mr Mujica said the entire money would go to a housing support programme for the homeless.

Speaking on Al Jazeera, the former president once posited: "A president is a high-level official who is elected to carry out a function. He is not a king, not a god. He is not the witch doctor of a tribe who knows everything. He is a civil servant. I think the ideal way of living is to live like the vast majority of people whom we attempt to serve and represent.”

Such was Jose Mujica’s exemplary and inspiring leadership, which is worthy of emulation especially by African politicians, to whom politics is a one-way road to affluence and power aggrandisement.

Africa is sadly home to a large population of the world’s poorest, with over forty per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa living in absolute poverty. But the continent has produced some of the world’s richest politicians and public officers, with no prior history of wealth or independent wealth creation enterprises.

Apart from direct proceeds of corruption, for which the continent has earned a notorious reputation, politicians have, unabashedly, continued to expropriate from the people and appropriate to themselves ridiculous wages and allowances. Thus, out of politics few stupendously wealthy Africans have emerged.

A study in 2013 by the UK-based Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) and the International Monetary Fund (IMPF) shows that of the five countries with the highest paid MPs in the world four are from Africa and they include Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa. And, not surprisingly though, three of the four African countries top the list, while South Africa occupies the fifth position behind Indonesia but clearly ahead of much bigger economies like the US, Japan, Germany, Britain, China etc.

While leadership, as exemplified by Mujica and many non-Africans, typifies empathy and altruism, to the egocentric and nepotistic African politicians everything revolves around the self, with all that pleases it, consciously and subconsciously. Even policies are often indicative of the insatiability of the greed and vindictiveness of this self-destruct self.

In the run-up to elections, when canvassing for votes trumps reason, ‘slums’ are accessible and credible. But as soon as the elections are won such overcrowded communities, which are homes to millions of voters whose usefulness has now elapsed, are reviled with the tag of illegality and targeted for demolition in order to justify a brazen social cleansing.

So, unlike Mujica who worries about homes for the poor and food for the hungry, politicians on this side of the divide deprive the poor of homes and keep them hungry by not paying their wages and blame it on paucity of funds. Yet the money they claim is not available to do the needful is spent on the needless.

But Mujica’s conscience consciously daunts his appetite for opulence. And that is why choice cars and palatial homes befitting of an ‘emperor’ are conspicuously not in his list of desirables. On the contrary, because their conscience has taken a permanent leave, leaders in this clime outrun each other in the race to erect for themselves sprawling mansions fully fitted with state-of-the-art accessories.

For these category of leaders paying workers’ wages is de-prioritised; losing millions in revenue due to workers’ strike is, ironically, a non-issue; schools churning out barely literate graduates is not a disaster; and hospitals being barely functional is least of all worries.

After all, for them and all theirs, money is never in short supply and with it anything is buyable, including the the best education and medical care there can ever be. Nonetheless, even for them, it’s all a fool’s paradise because they, like the poor they spend a lifetime actively impoverishing, do not have the means to halt death, being an unstoppable end and common destination.

This piece is also published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, December 16, 2017.

Migrant slavery: Time for African introspection

2017-12-13T06:03:00.001-08:00

Aliyu Musa

Since CNN’s Nima Elbagir’s undercover video exposing the inhumane treatment of black migrants in war-torn Libya hit the airwaves and cyberspace a few weeks ago, more revelations have come to light as more videos and depressing stories emerge, further sending shockwaves across the globe. But more importantly, there have been open condemnations of the atrocities that were once ignored, despite several warnings and governments, especially of countries where majority of the victims come from, have been challenged to act and are facilitating the repatriation of hundreds of citizens.

And as the victims, whose stories can hardly be disregarded, recount their ordeal the world, despite the UN secretary-general António Guterres saying he was horrified, still fails to take responsibility, even partially, for the role it has played in turning Libya into the mess that it now is, which has, in turn, made it a safe haven for racist criminals and terrorists that are seeking to roll back history by centuries. And the black race, in the midst of this distressing reminder, is forced to introspect and reflect on its vulnerability and the culpability of its leadership.

In my commentary two weeks ago, I discussed how the late Libyan president, Muammar Gaddafi tumbled from being the poster boy of western leaders’ migration control to a villain and how his removal from power later became a priority and ultimate assassination, via proxies, an inevitable goal. The decision has since turned out to be as catastrophic as the invasion of Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s execution, for which a costly price has been (and is still being) paid.

Warnings about the horrendous crimes against humanity in the beleaguered country, partly fuelled by racial hate, are not new. Out of the rubbles of the formerly formidable country emerged several clannish and racist criminal factions whose appetite for revenge (violence) went out of control from the early days of Gaddafi’s sack.

Gaddafi had, reportedly, fortified himself with thousands of mercenaries recruited from the Chad, Mali, Sudan and Niger, who bravely defended him and supported his fightback even when the country’s military was polarised and its loyalty was not spectacularly trustworthy. And that made the rebels’ total victory delayed. Vexed by the delay, on taking over control after the NATO-aided killing of Gaddafi, the rebels began responding in kind, targeting dark-skinned humans in the country. Many Nigerian and African migrants were caught up.

Tales of extremely horrifying rights violations, sometimes captured by camera, were overlooked despite their possible genuineness. For western leaders, their priority of getting rid of Gaddafi had been achieved. Even former US President Barack Obama ‘regretfully' admitted not having a post-Gaddafi plan. For African leaders, their inarticulateness in approaching the matter, regardless of the profound impact on the people and continent, was phenomenal.

So, Libya was left in total turmoil and the black population and migrants were left to silently bear the brunt. But now that more pictures and stories are emerging to highlight the gravity of the problem and they are igniting fierce debates about Human Rights and freewill in the 21st Century, the leaders are now, at least presumably, trying to do something.

African leaders, whose previous silence sounded like a stamp of credence to the atrocious acts, are coordinating, either individually or under the auspices of the African Union (AU), with ‘authorities’ in Libya to work out means of rescuing and repatriating the victims. Already, hundreds of the migrants, including women and children, have been repatriated to countries like Nigeria, Niger and Guinea. And, with the AU setting a target of repatriating 20,000 within weeks, many more might be home soon. But the big issue is what are they coming back to?

The main motivation, according to those interviewed, for going to Libya was economic. Many of the victims told of how difficult life was before they made the decision to undertake the journey. But all had their hopes dashed and are returning home to even tougher realities, having lost the little they had to criminals and fraudsters and traumatised by their experience.

Beyond repatriation one hopes the governments would articulate genuine and unambiguous policies to resettle and rehabilitate them and to also de-incentivise those hoping to give the journey a go, which is only possible if real hopes are given by creating jobs or some form of employment to reduce poverty.

Meanwhile, Rwanda’s offer to resettle some of the migrants is a brilliant idea for migration within Africa, as it has the potential to ensure skill circulation, reverse brain drain and generate and circulate wealth within the continent. And, very importantly, it will promote the spirit of brotherliness amongst Africans. Others need to emulate the gesture.

This piece was also published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, December 5, 2017.

The war on drug wages in Kano

2017-12-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

Aliyu Musa

A few weeks ago the BBC Hausa broadcast in its weekly programme Adikon Zamani an interview with two young women hooked on hard drugs. From the discussion, presented as usual by the articulate Fatima Zahra Umar, the women’s accounts suggest the tip of the iceberg of a problem spiralling out of control, given the gravity of the havoc hard drugs are causing in Northern Nigeria. And many of the victims, sadly, are young people, especially women.

It was not the first time Kano, where the two interviewees apparently come from, is in the spotlight for this reason. I can’t remember precisely when, but not many years ago the BBC Hausa broadcast a similar report, although on that occasion many interviewees participated and all of them confessed to being hooked on hard drugs, citing various reasons, particularly poverty. So why is Kano in the spotlight again?

Kano, for several reasons, is the heart of the north. It is arguably Nigeria’s most populous city. And, although now a caricature of its once wealthy self, it is the home state of the wealthiest black man, according to Forbes ranking, on earth, Alhaji Aliko Dangote. It is also home to many wealthy Nigerians and two former Nigeria’s heads of state.

While all this may not be an accurate yardstick for measuring affluence, especially its average distribution in the state, Kano, however, has no business being the hub of a steadily growing number of the society’s deprived who, ostensibly, take solace in hard drugs, away from the reality of their deprivation.It is important, though, to resist the temptation of restricting the definition of deprivation to financial distress, which is what poverty is generally seen as.

In the programme earlier broadcast, among the multiple interviewees were many who cited poverty as the main reason they took to drugs. But then this raises the question of affordability; if one is so poverty stricken to the point of using hard drugs as an escape route, how is one able to fund the addiction?

A participant whose account I vividly remember told of his joblessness, how he wakes up each morning to this hopelessness and, so, he runs around for money, as little as N100, with which he buys cheap hard drugs. These cheap drugs, some of which are normal cough syrup and flu medication, are readily available over the counter. But there are also many thoroughly hard drugs that are illegally procured at affordable prices.

The other participants also told of similar situations and their bids to dock-shove, leading to drug addiction and more complications. But what came out of that discussion and the recent one is a need to look beyond financial impoverishment and focus, also, on other forms of deprivation. For example, the two female interviewees in Adikon Zamani mentioned problems like collapse of relationships and how the addiction fills up the vacuum love has vacated.

Both women also told of how, at the early stage of their addiction, they tried in vain to hide the habit from their families. But, they said, when the families were unsuccessful in stopping them, they resorted to prayers. Yet the addiction soared. And this was because there were always willing ‘accomplices’ to help them feed the addiction.

In a follow-up programme the following week a local peddler, who remorselessly admitted her role in helping the addicts keep their stock replenished at all times, was interviewed. Before venturing into this ‘business’, she said, her attempts at a breakthrough elsewhere, in legitimate business, were a colossal failure. But thanks to addicts in Kano, whose vulnerability she feasts on, she has now broken down the barriers of poverty even though, for every Naira she earns, a life is ruined.

Yet this peddler and her ilk, as daring as the revelations are, would continue to walk the streets, without any fear of apprehension or retribution, and be rewarded handsomely for destroying more lives.

But whether we realise it or not, with this trend in Kano and across the region, we are dealing with a ticking bomb, which could go off at any time. And the women’s stories are a direct indictment of our society, especially as we fold our hands and watch the depletion of a generation. This is even more sobering if we consider the peddler’s claim that most of her clients are women and that women are fast outrunning men in drug abuse, in terms of number and intensity.

There is no better time to address the problem than now. We could start by regulating what medication can or cannot be obtained over the counter and what quantity of the legal ones can be procured at any given time. And from that we could progress to tackling the menace of the greedy paddlers, their sponsors and clients.

This article is also published in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday December 2, 2017.

Migrants’ journey through hell

2017-11-24T04:07:00.002-08:00

Aliyu Musa

A few months before the Arab spring that thundered off in Tunisia, tore through the Middle East and the Maghreb and and swept power off the feet of tenacious dictators liker Hosni Mubarak, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Muammar Gaddafi, I watched a documentary on African migrants trying to cross to Europe through North Africa. Libya, its then leader Muammar Gaddafi’s strategy of blocking the migrants specifically, was the focus of the documentary.

The Libyan leader, apparently, had a deal with the EU to ensure the seemingly uncontrollable influx of migrants through his country’s southern border to European countries was systematically, nay ruthlessly, checkmated. Hundreds of thousands of migrants, some escaping persecution but most fleeing from poverty, had crossed to Europe, surviving unimaginable risks. And many more were waiting for an opportunity to take a leap. But with the deal, worth millions of Euros, it was hoped the influx would be frustrated and a ‘Black Europe’ prevented.

Gaddafi, reports said, had requested an annual payment of €5 billion. But EU agreed to pay €50 million over three years. Although several millions of Euros short of his request, the deal was sealed and the regime intensified its crackdown on foreign nationals using Libya as gateway to Europe.

Prior to the deal most migrants apprehended trying to cross to Europe through Libya faced instant deportation to their country of origin. But that changed as soon as the agreement came into force. Deportation, it was thought, only temporarily stopped the migrants because many determined ones often re-embarked on the journey once they were back home.

But the regime was to make sure they were put in custody so they would not have the chance to make any further attempts. Thus, a new strategy was adopted and many would-be migrants to Europe languished in Libyan jails. Amongst them were several scores of Nigerians.

President Gaddafi’s death in October 2011 threw the country into further chaos. Libya, consequently, became the floodgate for migrants to Europe. But it also means higher risks, including death in the hands of rival groups fighting for control. ISIS also took advantage of the confusion to establish a strong presence.

Migrants from sub-Saharan Africa are most at risk. Many travel through extremely unsafe routes to the north African country where they are exposed to more danger. Many die in the open desert because they hire dubious guides who abandon them along the way. Many are attacked by bandits who dispossess them of money and any other valuables. Many are abducted and forced to contact relatives back home for ransom before they are released.

There are also tales of some being arrested in parts where there’s a semblance of government and forced to pay heavy fines for being in the wrong places. But more disheartening are the stories of those who survive all the danger in the desert and in the war-torn country only to fall prey to high seas murderers who, after collecting money from the migrants in a deal to ship them to Europe, throw them overboard or force them onto inflatable boats that are abandoned to wander off and sink shortly afterwards, killing hundreds, including women and children.

Those who survive the ordeal tell tales of horror. A group consisting of many Nigerians told of the torture the traffickers who held them at knife-point subjected them to in an over-crowded vessel, from which nearly 200 were thrown overboard in the high seas, the remainder abandoned before the vessel docked and the Navy eventually rescued them.

The biggest lure for most of those who undertake the horrifying journey is a desire for pastures new, which they erroneously assume Europe offers. But what they either are not told or refuse to believe when told is the probability of success is, sadly, hugely exaggerated. The risk, realistically, far outweighs the benefit, if one was lucky not to lose one’s life.

In the mid 1990s I met a young man who had just left high school and was learning a trade but was frustrated and wanted to ship out. His destination was the US and hoped to, initially, travel by road through the Sahara to North Africa. He eventually left and was stuck in a West African country for many years. Finally, he took the risky leap through the sea and arrived his dream destination a couple of years ago. By my calculation he probably spent 20 years wallowing in uncertainty. But even greater uncertainty does he face now, in a new place, in a fast changing world with new and increasing demand for specialist skills.

Last week, two very distressing events happened. First, an undercover video by CNN’s Nima Elbagir went viral, showing just a snippet of what happens to African migrants in Libya. In the video some men believed to be Nigerians came under the hammer for as little as $400; what they go through after they are sold is better imagined. The second was the burial, somewhere in Salerno, Italy of 26 Nigerian women, some of whom were teenagers, who were being trafficked to Europe but got drowned in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Nigerian government has, so far, condemned the ‘slave auction’ in Libya and criticised the Italian government’s rush to bury the dead women, nine days ahead of schedule. While this is commendable, it has merely skimmed the surface. No one has, yet, ordered full investigations into both tragedies with a view to finding solutions to, at least, the problems that keep forcing Nigerians to flee their country, their comfort zone, and undertake unprofitable risks.

Applying diplomatic leverage, the government needs to move beyond media criticisms and work with the recognised authorities in Libya in order to find ways of rescuing its citizens trapped in the war-ravaged country. The country also needs to establish the actual identity of each of the women buried in Italy so there can be some form of closure for their families. Otherwise, they may never find out what has happened to them.

This piece also appears in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday November 25, 2017.