The Glow in the Plateau Mindset

When you stay in someone’s backyard, it gives you the space to see corners of him you wouldn’t have seen. On the reverse, when someone’s backyard is far away, he gives you the impression his place is like paradise, where everything is flawless. If you come against it, you must have proof to back it up. So, as long as you have not travelled there, his corrosive lies are fact.

When the Fulani issue started in Plateau State, many of our closest neighbours would beat their chests saying, “they can’t try this in our state.” Unexpectedly, the tide of events moved the conflict to their towns and villages. Their reaction, as a matter of fact, turns out even worst. I have stayed in a number of places outside of Plateau State. Everybody has a shortcoming.

Here on the Plateau, people insult the broad smile and open arms of the host. They would dish out that simmering vitriol like,” What does a Plateau man knows other than to drink gallons of burkutu.” They think that Plateau people are without ambition, just because they are head-over-heels in love with the Civil Service.

But we are not without decency. “Blessed are humble for they shall inherit the earth.” Being modest is not a reflection of ignobility. You will understand that Plateau is not a needy state when it comes to manpower. You will understand that military adventurism runs in the blood of the Plateau people. When in the mainstream of the military, Nigeria remains calm. Outside of it, Nigeria burns. You will agree that Plateau women are the most beautiful outside and within. To embrace people of all shades and hues with a smile is a virtue, in itself.  

There is a story that played up the worth of the Plateau humility. A Plateau man owns a house. He stays in Europe and wants to lodge in the house anytime he returns for a brief holiday. After staying for years without visiting, he saw it expedient to rent the house out. He, however, gave out his terms: “I wouldn’t want any tenant who isn’t a Plateau man or woman.” There you go! So, there is beauty in being a Plateau man, after all. It isn’t that there aren’t other people that make good tenants, but he wants to deal with the good he has always known. The worst a Plateau tenant can do is to fail in the rent payment. When that happens, though, your house will still be yours. It is better than renting the house to someone who turns the house into a den of thieves. He wouldn’t want a tenant who turns the house into a shrine, or someone to claim the house belongs to him, or a tenant who turns the house into a “baby factory.”

We may drink gallons of burkutu, but we like ourselves like that.  

Chatham House: Tinubu Did Nothing Wrong

 

Bola Ahmed Tinubu

There is an undying noise across Nigeria, regarding Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s conduct at Chatham House. Tinubu, the All Progressive Congress’ (APC’s) Presidential Candidate in the 2023 General Elections in Nigeria, forwarded questions he was asked to members of his team. In Nigeria, a lot of people see it as a sign of ineptitude by someone seeking to become the Nigerian President.

But there’s really nothing wrong with Tinubu’s conduct at Chatham House. It is important for Nigerians to understand that all the persons to whom he directed the questions are members the APC. A political party is a team of persons who are ‘fighting’ for power. People in the same political party are driven by a common wish for the nation. So, they pool themselves into a strong force with the propensity to achieve their goal of setting up a government and unleashing their common idea.  When eventually the government is formed, the same group of persons will form the cabinet. It is the cabinet that, as a team, makes decision on how a country is governed, not an individual.

If Tinubu becomes president and decides not to allow other members of the cabinet to make contributions, he would be referred to as a despot. Democracy itself is a space that allows contributions from everyone. By relaying questions to other members of the campaign team, he is already demonstrating that he will run a government of inclusivity.

Someone argued that the party doesn’t have any ideology. That the team is a group of guys who failed to find positions in other parties and, hence, found an umbrella in the APC. The most important thing is that they have come together. If there are differences among them, coming together will compel them to prune the differences so that they can move along. Furthermore, cross-carpeting is a tradition in Nigerian politics. It is not peculiar to the APC.

Someone, opposed to how Tinubu conducted himself, compared Tinubu’s visit to Chatham House to attending a job interview and should not refer questions thrown at him to other persons. The situations aren’t similar. Someone seeking to become President will oversee a country of diverse institutions. He is not trained to have knowledge in the affairs of every institution. Instead, he relies on members of his cabinet with experiences in these institutions to help him run the country well.  There is no single president anywhere who ran a solitary government successfully. There are always diverse group of professionals with whom the president builds his team to run the country well. Tinubu proved that he will not be an exception.

As said before, Nigeria has run a political system without ideologies. From 1999 till date, there are only a few politicians who endured without changing a political party. Most of them ran to other political parties and later returned to the same party they had deserted.

What do the electorates do? The electorates will have to take part of the blame for a stagnant political system. If we search deeply, there are other political parties with younger politicians offering modern ideas that meet the standard we are yearning for. Unfortunately, Nigerians are unable to read the policy content of these new political parties. They lazily shove them aside and continue to give attention to the same politicians from an old political culture that has ruined the country for decades.

Until the electorates play their own roles well, blames against certain politicians will never stand.

President Buhari: Time for Confession

Is it true that there is a cabal? Nigerians deserve to know. Perhaps there is no cabal, but there are problems that make Nigeria wild. What are these problems? Nigerians will need to know them. If they exist, it will be a deplorable injustice, if the president refuses to talk about them. If Mr President can make this confession, he will go down as the Nigerian saviour despite the mess of his regime. The first step towards solving a problem is to identify it. When it is identified, the search for solution begins. 

President Buhari

 On December 1^st, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Mohammadu Buhari, revealed, in graphic style, the scale of corruption at the third tier of government in Nigeria.

The Nigerian President, while hosting members of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, made a revelation of how state governors share subventions of the third tier with the chairmen of the councils.  

For me, it was an emotional moment. It reminds me of events that helped built the reputation of the General Mohammadu Buhari, helping to reopen the door of the state house for him in 2015, once again. Only he and General Olusegun Obasanjo have achieved this in the history of Nigeria.

As a military Head of State, Buhari built a reputation as a gritty fighter of fiscal and moral dishonesty. The highpoint was on July 5^th, 1984, when an attempt was made to “rustle” a former Nigerian cabinet member, Umaru Dikko, who ran away with state funds to the United Kingdom. It was a commando-styled operation involving Israeli guerrillas. The aim was to bring Dikko to Nigeria to stand trial for accusations bordering on corruption. Sadly, the operation failed. The Israeli guerrillas were arrested and imprisoned for decades, but the character of the young General was made bold and visible.    

While General Sani Abacha was Military Head of State, the Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF, was established. When Abacha ran a search of the right Nigerian to oversee things at PTF, the name Mohammadu Buhari popped up. Nigerians talk highly of how he eventually chaired the fund. Funds were spent and the result is visible till today. It was yet another testimony of the unbowed love of country in the heart of Mohammadu Buhari.

When fuel queues started manifesting at fuel stations across Nigeria, newspapers carried headlines lines that read:  GENERAL BUHARI SEEN IN A QUEUE AT A FILLING STATION. It was yet another parade of beauty in the heart of a patriot.

These series of events are among a few of the events that helped wrought Buhari’s standing as the man to save Nigeria. So, he was given a chance in 2015. But shockingly, things took a turn for the worse, worse than it has ever been seen in the history of Nigeria. So bad are things under Buhari at the moment that he should have stayed in Daura and die with his name intact. In dead, he would have remained a giant icon in the minds of Nigerians.

The mess started with President Buhari being referred to as Baba Go Slow, considering his sluggishness at putting up his cabinet. When, in the end, the cabinet was in place, it was largely of northern Nigerian old men of his generation. Buhari said he prefer to work with people he trusts. The import is that he doesn’t trust anyone from the south and also trusts not the youths.  

People started looking forward to corrupt politicians of past regimes getting jailed. It didn’t come. Instead, they were asked to only return monies they had stolen. When members of his cabinet saw this, they joined the “bandwagon” and the President was unwilling to investigate members of his cabinet accused of corruption. One instance was the case of Babacir Lawal, Secretary to Buhari’s Government, who used hundreds of millions of naira to “cut grass” at a camp for the resettlement of Boko Haram victims while the victims were starving to death.  There was a case of the President’s son getting involved in an accident while riding a power bike that was too expensive to be owned by President Buhari himself, let alone his son.

The cries about President Buhari’s failure to fight corruption were drowned by the rise of night killings of farmers in rural towns across the north-central part of the country for which the President pretended not to see.  The situation became messier when banditry started in the north-west of the country. Bandits would raid a rural town, killing everyone in sight and making away with wealth in the form of livestock and grains. They could kidnap you and ask for ransom. They would compel farmers to pay to cultivate and harvest their farms.

Economic woes under President Buhari became the worst the country has ever seen, triggering a wave of crime of equal proportion. Eventually, abductions became widespread, happening in cities and everywhere the wealthy are sighted. The police would advise you to just pay the ransom; they don’t have the resources to go after the criminals.

 As far as hell is concerned, Nigeria became a tip of the iceberg under President Buhari’s civilian rule. But a conspiracy theory rose to explain why we found hell when we were hoping for heaven: that the president is a stooge ran by a group of influential persons, referred to as The Cabal. Another conspiracy theory says the man in Aso Rock isn’t Buhari at all. That Buhari had long died. And that the man in Aso Rock is actually a Sudanese look-alike (some say it is a clone.)

As the Buhari’s regime nears its end, the conspiracy theory of a cabal running Mr President like a stooge, may be factual after all. There are pointers to these facts. Certain decisions are taken in Aso Rock that should have been taken immediately the problems popped their messy heads. It’s like the President is telling the cabal that, “at least you can let me clean up now that I am going. Even if you don’t agree, I will still go ahead and do it. The few months remaining are nothing; after all I have enjoyed a greater part of eight years.” Bandits are now getting killed daily and the frequency of their activities is sliding. There is a fight against oil stealing and daily outputs are rising. Mr President is redesigning the currency to prevent the use of money during elections. Mr President is talking about the scale of corruptions in local councils and people are challenging him to mention names.

The revelation of corruption at the local government level is what prompted me to write this. I, like other Nigerians, have watched that video footage of Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, challenging Mr President to mention names to avoid a blanket accusation that smears every governor. Along this line, the President can go ahead and widen the scale of his revelation. Rather than just talk about corruption in local councils, he can talk about challenges he had faced that ended up making him the devil in the history of the Nigerian Presidency. Is it true that there is a cabal? Nigerians deserve to know. Perhaps there is no cabal, but there are problems that make Nigeria wild. What are these problems? Nigerians will need to know them. If they exist, it will be a deplorable injustice, if the president refuses to talk about them. If Mr President can make this confession, he will go down as the Nigerian saviour despite the mess of his regime. The first step towards solving a problem is to identify it. When it is identified, the search for solution begins.

Mr President has nothing to fear. He is an old man that has accomplished everything in life: children, grandchildren, wealth, power and all other gear of success.