|
Written by Sam Nda-Isaiah
|
|
Sunday, 14 March 2010 19:32 |
|
For two days after the revenge coup of July 29, 1966, there was officially no government in Nigeria. Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi had been arrested and killed by troops of the Northern Region who believed he was part of the mutiny, six months earlier, in which both the political and military leaders from the North had been assassinated. Brigadier General Babafemi Ogundipe, who was the No. 2 in the perking order in Ironsi's military government, had fled the country after his order had been disobeyed by some of the troops under the then Lt. Joe Garba of the Guards Battalion of the Nigerian Army. There was no leader in Nigeria for two days and the situation was getting dangerous. That was when the Daily Times came out with a loud front page comment that read like, "Where are the service chiefs? Where are the four regional governors? For the sake of the country, let one of them take over". The following day, we were told that the service chiefs, worried by the situation, dispatched Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, the chief of army staff and the most senior Northerner in the government, to go negotiate with the counter-coup makers and ask them what they wanted. By some coincidence, one of the leaders of the coup, Major Martin Adamu, had earlier suggested to his fellow coup makers that they declare Gowon, the most senior Northern officer, the head of state and commander-in-chief even though he was not part of them. So the coup plotters were glad to see Gowon and immediately informed him that they had decided that he should take over as the head of state. Gowon strongly demurred and was virtually placed under house arrest; he was compelled to read his maiden speech to the nation. What eventually became Dodan Barracks, the seat of government, was the army officers’ mess where Gowon was holed up for about four days before he could as much as change his clothes.
Gowon never overthrew any elected government, not even a military government. The government of Aguiyi-Ironsi had collapsed and Gowon was available to stabilise a very confused state that eventually led to a sad civil war between July 6, 1967, and January 15, 1970, in which more than one million Nigerians died.
Last week, the senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria – many of whom might probably not even have been alive today – and all of whom would definitely not have been senators today, had Gowon not fought a civil war to keep Nigeria one and subsequently re-integrated Nigerians – passed a bill denying all former military leaders of their pensions and benefits as former Nigerian leaders. They want to deny history or maybe rewrite it. Only in Nigeria would that kind of thing happen. Whether anyone likes it or not, there was a period in the history of this country when each of Aguiyi-Ironsi, Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Mohammed, Olusegun Obasanjo, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Ernest Shonekan, Sani Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar was head of state and head of government and took decisions that, for good or for ill, still affect us as Nigerians today. The world also recognised them as leaders of Nigeria and conducted the business of state with them as leaders of the nation.
What's this funny logic about denying leaders who came in undemocratically their pensions and entitlements? For instance, did Sani Abacha overthrow a duly-elected government? Was Gowon ever a coup plotter? Was there no time in this country that Nigerians – including all the senators who now earn the fattest and, some would even add, unreasonable salaries and allowances that belie their genuine contributions to national development compared to what some of these former leaders contributed – were calling some of them heroes? Have we forgotten so soon that in 1984, General Muhammadu Buhari and company, which by the way included the then Lt. Col. David Mark (the current Senate president), were actually the luminaries who came to rescue Nigeria from the excesses of those hell-bent on destroying the nation at the time? Like Akin Omoboriowo of the NPN winning the elections in Ondo State, but couldn't take over because he was running away from the people who purportedly elected him, or Dr Olu Oluloyo also of the NPN "defeating" the popular Bola Ige of the UPN in Oyo State and C.C. Onoh of the NPN "defeating" the more popular Jim Nwobodo of the NPP on account of the "Ikemba factor". Ikemba (Odumegwu Ojukwu) who enabled an easy sail for Onoh got defeated himself by an unknown quantity in his quest to become a senator in the 1983 elections. Have we also forgotten so soon that Buhari and co intervened to pre-empt what could have been an extremely violent junior officers' coup that would have wiped out the entire political elite of the nation in a way that would have made the January 15, 1966, coup a child's play? Have we also forgotten that when Buhari was made head of state by his colleagues on that day, he vehemently resisted pressure from certain segments of the society asking that he execute corrupt members of the ancien regime that had destroyed the Nigerian economy and turned us into a beggar nation?
Indeed, can we forget that David Mark, whom I respect very much for his consistent competence as a public servant and under whose leadership the decision against his former bosses was taken, was a pivotal member of both the General Buhari and General Babangida governments? David Mark being one of Nigeria's most experienced public servants today, who has been around government since his godfather General Murtala Mohammed brought him to the precincts of power in 1975, is a quintessential creation of military governments. It is under successive military governments that he acquired the leadership skills and metier that have enabled him to effectively pilot the affairs of the Senate today. And it must also be said of him that he remains one of the very best and most competent governors that Niger State has had. This record is still physically there for everyone to see.
The senators today sit in Abuja, Nigeria's beautiful young capital city. Abuja was Murtala Mohammed's bright idea and it was General Babangida who brought it to fruition. That is a historical fact and nobody can or should even attempt to change that. David Mark and other senators enjoy their current station in life because General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who never did any coup against anyone in his life, returned power to the civilians, and the elections he conducted in 1999 remain the most credible since then.
And, just to be clear, what is the difference between how Obasanjo "won" his election in 2003 and Umaru's coming to power in 2007 with the manner of coming to power of any of the former leaders whose pensions have been stopped? Rigging an election is even worse than a coup d'etat, because while some military coups are extremely popular and could approximate the will of the people – e.g. the recent one in Niger Republic – no rigged election is ever popular. By its definition, a rigged election is meant to thwart the will of the people which must, sometimes, be achieved through extreme violence and murder of opponents.
Let us not treat our former leaders the way the senators want us to. They were our leaders and some of them actually gave their life for the country. Many of them made mistakes, some were mischievous even, but all of them at one time or the other was head of state. Gowon today is incontrovertibly the father of the nation. It does not matter whether there are people who do not like that. He is the most senior former head of state alive. And it smacks of insolence and is almost sinful to treat Gowon the way the senators want to treat him. Don't they have manners?
Gowon did not abuse his office as head of state; he didn't steal anyone's money. He still doesn't have a respectable bank account anywhere in the world even after prosecuting a three-year civil war and ruling for nine years. Let any senator that can beat this record vote against Gowon's pension and entitlements!
E A R S H O T
When Is The Next Jos Killings?
The murder of hundreds of children and women in their sleep by marauding Fulanis, eight days ago, was predictable, just as it will be foolish to think that there will be no revenge attacks. The only way this could be nipped in the bud would be to provide real leadership in Plateau State and the country as a whole. The security agencies must fish out those who committed the genocide of Sunday, March 7, 2010 - and not just innocent passersby – as well as those who committed the mass murders in the same Plateau State in January and publicly execute them. The way things are today does not depict a well-run nation.
|
|
|
Written by Kabiru Mato, PhD
|
|
Saturday, 13 March 2010 23:47 |
|
The labour of our heroes past is certainly in vain. What is wrong with Nigerians? Selfish, disorganised, wicked, sentimental and lawless. The attributes are countless. These are the issues that are standing between the nation and development. We cannot make any headway unless these distractions are removed from our individual and collective lives as a people.
Since the Yar'Adua palaver began, the debate has transformed from a national issue to petit aspirations and sheer political brutality by those who wish to seize power through a dubious way. The thirst began with the existence of a vacuum, then to a call for transmitting a letter to the National Assembly, then to conferring of acting status on Goodluck Jonathan. And when all these were got, the final blow is to seek to invoke Section 144 of the constitution so that the president would be declared incapacitated, thus giving his deputy the automatic ticket to the presidency even when he was not elected as such and the principal is still alive and not impeached.
The debate at a point was over why the substantive president should be allowed to return to Nigeria without clearance from the acting president? This is nonsense and a sheer display of ignorance by a few who believe they are all that matters. This is wanton provocation from a power-hungry cabal that is desperate to put the nation on war path.
If truly, as a portion of the National Anthem says, the labour of our heroes past shall never be in vain the developments in Nigeria over the last 50 years seem to suggest that either it will be impossible for the nation to attain any meaningful growth and development as it is recently constituted or there is the urgent need to revisit the issue of sovereign national conference so that the various groups that make up the country freely decide what to do: either be part of the entity called Nigeria or go their ways.
It appears that there are a lot more issues than the things that have continued to make Nigeria an impossible enterprise, and the earlier these issues are confronted, the better for the nation. Why is it so easy for Nigerians to be lawless? Why is it that 50 years after independence, several years after a ravaging civil war and years of political, social and economic turmoil, it is still very difficult or even impossible for Nigerians to agree to live together?
The current debate as regards the health of the president has been exhaustively debated. Several citizens have since made up their minds, out of sheer desperation, that come what may, President Yar'Adua will never be well again or will never bounce back as the president of Nigeria. Some people are irritated by the mere thought that President Yar'Adua could, sooner or later, resume work. They don't want to hear that - and the only item on their agenda is that the man must either get well or otherwise be removed from office. This is unfortunate and an illegality.
The privilege of acting, which the vice president has, is the farthest the nation can go unless if, God forbid, the president is not able to bounce back. What the nation's political machine needs to be doing at this point is strategising on the post-Yar'Adua era after the 2011 elections.
I believe that the confusion which the nation finds itself in today provides any credible opposition the opportunity to increase its stake and possibly capture power from the PDP in the next round of elections in 2011. The trick therefore must be to exploit the advantages opened by the power tussle amongst the two warring cabals in the presidency. It is not President Yar'Adua alone that has been cornered by a cabal, but equally and more viciously his deputy who is acting for him. Nigerians are shameless and lacking in morals and standards.
The PDP has a lot of work to do to be relevant in 2011. There are, at the moment, two standing theories of how they intend to approach 2011. What is clear is that the party has told its acting president in very plain language that he would not have the ticket to run in 2011. In the event that the acting president desires to remain in his party, he may step aside after ensuring that free, fair and credible elections are conducted and a new government has been constituted in Abuja. That, to me, would have made Jonathan an honourable person against this desperate scramble for power that he is engaged in at the moment. Another scenario is having a powerful presidential candidate with whom Jonathan can run as a running mate. There are, of course, several people within the ruling cabal that can fit into this, but the consideration of protocol and other matters is capable of reducing the list to a manageable size. If the insinuation of an IBB presidency is true, then, Goodluck Jonathan will improve his vitae if he is nominated to run along with IBB. If the IBB candidature is a hoax, the second thesis seems to suggest that the Governors' Forum, being the strongest organ of democracy in the country, may wish to nominate one of its own to run for the presidency while Jonathan deputizes.
Whatever the case may be, the PDP will once again face Nigerians with a lot of baggage, and how well it is able to wriggle out of the mess will, to a great extent, depend on several factors among which is how it is able to address the major issues at stake. Certainly it won't be easy resolving the puzzle. I want to believe, still, that the labour of our heroes past shall never be in vain.
Sokoto: The Need For Caution
The Appeal Court Tribunal sitting in Sokoto has announced that it would deliver judgment this Tuesday in the appeal case before it between the governor of the state, Alhaji Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko, and the defeated candidate of the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP),Alhaji Maigari Dingyadi. This announcement came in spite of the intervention of the chief justice of Nigeria, Katsina-Alu, and the National Judicial Council (NJC), to the effect that the Sokoto Appeal Tribunal should suspend all further action on the case pending the resolution of the allegations made against the judges. As a result of this inexplicable defiance by the judges, the normally peaceful state capital, Sokoto, and its environs have been gripped by a rising tension which, if care is not taken, may explode at any moment.
Sokoto residents who expressed opinion on the issue say that they were angry because the matter had already been decided by the people twice: in 2007 and in 2008. There is an urgent need for the law to take into cognizance the societal parameters that determine the wellbeing of the people by avoiding rancour that is likely to jeopardize the essence of justice. We are of the view that justice as the foundation of social engineering must be conscious of direction of flow of the people. Yes, it is blind. We need to ensure that the peace in Sokoto is retained and improved upon. And the judiciary definitely has a positive role to play in that by closely understanding the aspirations of the people. We are told, time and again, that the law is an ass. In any case, in this digital age, the law cannot afford to serve negative purposes.
|
|
|
Written by John Akpan
|
|
Friday, 12 March 2010 21:52 |
|
At a point I did fear that Mr. Ogbonna Onovo wouldn't be made the inspector-general of the Nigeria Police. But on that evening the news of his elevation flashed on the television screen, I instinctively felt, for reasons I couldn't even understand, that justice had been done. I may not know a thing about Nigeria Police politics, but I had always regarded the present IG as a likeable officer. If my memory serves me right, I think I once watched him strum a guitar on a Charley Boy Show; and perhaps that could have been it. My thought then: for a very senior Police officer to push aside the seedy world of the Nigeria Police to play the guitar, for me, had meant "here's a regular, quiet, artsy guy who, if given that high office, can, at once, connect with the real people and the real situation to fully grasp the rhythm and the reality of things. He could stroll down the neighbourhood and shake up some hoodlums by their scruff," such were the extent of my imaginations.
That sort of reasoning made me happy when Mr. Onovo took over from Sir Mike. The seat of the IGP of Nigeria is understandably red-hot, trying and demanding. Nigerians have seen it all. IG Onovo is currently having it full, as would be expected. My impression is that his approach to handling public reaction to police conduct has to be overhauled to reflect, not only a willingness by the police, as a public institution, to listen to criticisms, complaints and exhortations, but also to take time to explain its many difficulties, without resorting to evasions and counter-arguments.
Last year, there was a case of "fight-them-back" reaction of the police to a report of the Amnesty International on the police. That report documented possible graphic instances of police brutality; their institutional failings, operational difficulties, etc, and without much spadework, the police dismissed it.
Police Affairs Minister, Dr. Ibrahim Lame, recently harangued the Force, citing some grave incidents of insecurity in the country and told its management to buckle up. The most gruesome of such incidents was the killing of 20 passengers in an armed raid along the Benin-Ore road. I am a reporter, but the first time I saw the picture in the press, I gasped. The accounts of the massacre depressed me, and so I didn't worry about the correct date, time or such other particulars of news reporting. Now, the police are out with an uncommon zing to prove the media wrong over possible finer details of that report. First, I had heard the charge that the picture was a product of modern photographic technology deployed to morph what we saw. Then came the hair-splitting details of the actual hour, date, month, year and the circumstances in which poor Nigerians were run over by a motor vehicle because they hadn't money on them to give rampaging highway robbers. OK, the killings didn't happen on February 25, 2010, as the media accounts put it, but rather on July 1, 2009. Yes, it wasn't the luxury bus driver that ran over the passengers, ordered down by the robbers, as reported in the media, but rather another vehicle that came on the scene did the smashing. Of course, all these were never reported by the Police then, in order not to "heat up the polity."
The Police authorities may desire to talk classical journalism, but you'd have to wonder about how the variations in the accounts of the gory event can explain, or even make it a less significant piece of news, that Nigerians now, cannot travel if they don't hold sufficient money to pay armed robbers on the highway.
Let's hear more of the lamentable woes of the Nigeria Police, not some scape-goating narratives, because the truth is that the police in Nigeria perform under very severe operational situations. The public barely trusts the Force to protect or save lives. That's the greatest danger. We should, therefore, stick to these problems and explore ways of convincing the government to run its police well.An Evening With Ghanaian FriendsGhanaians resident in Calabar, last weekend, marked the 53rd National Day of their ever forward-looking nation. I was in Calabar on their invitation. Let's say that this part of Nigeria has had age-long interaction with Ghana. In music (highlife), common names, (Ansa, Essien, Oko, Edem, Ama, etc) and some slices of cultural life, Ghana and the Calabar area of Nigeria are remarkably similar.With their glorious yards of kente, slung over their shoulders, the Ghanaians strutted about the venue of the ceremony, extolling the quality of the early hard work done by their nation's founding father, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, and with highlife lyrics on their lips.As one of the patrons honoured at the occasion, I was seized by the instant magic of justified sense of patriotism eloquently displayed by Ghanaian brothers and sisters. Whither Nigeria my native land!
|
|
|
|
|
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>
|
|
Page 1 of 26 |
|
|
|
COMING SOON!!!!!
CHECK BACK LATER
COMING SOON!!!!
CHECK BACK LATER
|
