We, on the edge

“It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want hear”. Dick Cavett.

You are reading my last column in this great paper. It is difficult to believe that I resumed only a few months ago after years of absence, owing to the generousity and firm proddings of a Nigerian I have very high regards for, Chief Sam Amuka. I have been part of this great Vanguard family for a long time, thanks to Chief Amuka’s strong belief in the value of a good paper being its ability to reflect all opinions. In the last few months, I enjoyed absolute freedom to offer personal opinions, most reflecting strong political leanings or narrower perspectives.

The value, for me, was that my voice was heard. This was where the critics were very important. If a columnist’s skin can withstand bruising responses, he will be very fortunate to glean a wide spectrum of opinions that provide the hard stuff which make our politics as a nation today. There is not much from the hallowed corridors of power and intellect which provided the nation’s political backbone  its hue from the late 1940s to the 1990s. The lower rungs took over the moulding of opinion, as, indeed, it took over most of what is important in our lives. Our middle classes collapsed into the gutters. The Nigerian ceased to exist. His place was taken by identities and a perverted personality who is designed basically to offend the idea of a plural country. All of us had two identities: one we gave ourselves, and the other given to us by others.

In the few years when I first wrote a regular weekly column in this paper, I could have sworn that this country had paid its dues for recklessness and gambling with expensive assets like good governance co-existence and security. We looked like we could elect leaders without shedding rivers of blood. We thought Boko Haram was going to be another uprising we would crush and wait for the next one. We thought irritants like IPOB will fritter away as Nigerians look ahead, not backwards. We thought we could put endemic and pervasive corruption behind us. We thought we could create a political culture that placed premium of competent, honest people who will be elected on merit through a credible electoral process. We would still have serious problems, as any nation with our size, population, complexities, an economy and governance institutions crippled by corruption and poor management and an elite bleeding relevance and credible would have.

The stewardship of President Buhari put paid to all those grand dreams. In the history of Nigeria, no leader was elected with so much promise, and none had failed to deliver on so many fronts. As we speak, Boko Haram has become emboldened by the failure of the Nigerian state to defeat it. It holds large swathes of territory and populations and takes on our military as an equal. Fairly new and old crimes like banditry, kidnappings and cultism have been fed by easy access to  small arms and light weapons to blossom into virtual industries that threaten citizens, communities and even the survival of the nation. Corruption is more comfortable now than it has ever been. The sign that the country will survive dwarfed leadership at all levels, politics that thrives only by exploiting more problems, spreading perceptions created deliberately by irredentists and an industry that shapes opinions among the young that the country has nothing to offer them combine to exploit an alarming absence of elite cohesion and control of the political process and the economy.

In private, managers of this country who would rather sweep our current condition under mountains of carpets accuse some of us who speak like this of undermining national security and exaggerating how bad things really are. But they are hard put to explain the abductions of school children; Boko Haram’s audacious exchanges of towns and populations with our fighting forces; attacks on targeted northern communities in the South with virtually no consequences; the on-going strike by northern farmers and transporters which is raising the cost of food in the South; frightening rhetorics on the consequences of decisions by politicians on rotation of the presidency;  community action to cleanse ethnic groups from localities; the rise of local thugs who enjoy string state patronage and protection and above all alarming rise on social media  in language and style which indicate how far Nigerians think they are from each other.

There are a few glimmers of hope but they are fighting for space will pervasive doom and gloom and a leadership that will not switch on the light. There are efforts all over the country by elites who can read the outlines of a bigger disaster, but they are disconnected and isolated. Outside these, most Nigerians with an obligation and a responsibility to keep this administration on what remains of its toes appear to think resistance to poor governance and citizen action to challenge breaches to our rights to security and protection are the responsibilities of #EndSARS protestors and groups that demand for extra-constitutional action. Between an indifferent and incompetent leadership and an elite that thinks someone else should step up, this is where the country is bleeding badly. So, unfortunately, I stop writing a weekly column I enjoyed to devote more time to those efforts that try to pull the country from the edge. I will miss writing this column, and the few commendation and heap of criticisms and even insults for my temerity as an Aboki Malam to use a ‘southern’ platform. In a way, these insults which profile and pigeonhole us are the highest hurdles we have to surmount if this nation will survive and know peace again. If Nigeria collapses because not too many of us bother to hold it up and reinforce its foundations, it will collapse on all our heads. Boko Haram, IPOB, Amotekun, Ndigo, Northern Elders Forum, Afenifere, PDP,APC, will have nothing to fight against. We will turn on each other in a spectacle the world may never have seen. Those who doubt this should peep into our foundations and see how weak they are. We may not realize it, but the center of our existence as a country has been carved out by hate, indifference, opportunism and violence. All of us are on the edge. If we fail to rebuild the heart of the nation, we will fall off.

       I thank you for reading my personal views. Good bye.

Matters that keep you awake

“Prepare now for the solutions of tomorrow”. African Proverb.

 You may have noticed that Daily Trust has a strong stable of  excellent weekly columnists, and some of them will take up some  back pages, including mine. I had asked to be relieved by the paper (again!) to attend to other important matters. I am particularly excited that  the columnist  you will read on this page from next week, Bulama Bukarti, has a reputation as an outstanding writer with rich insights and an analytical ability that will do great justice to the back page on Wednesdays. So, this will be my last column, and it is difficult to express how grateful I am to the leadership and management and staff of this paper for giving me a platform to express basically personal perspectives on a very loud medium. I want to thank you, the reader, who followed what I wrote, either to gain something or to criticize something. I enjoyed the criticisms as much as I was lifted by  the commendations. After all, I was basically a critic. This is where I have to say that those who will be happier if I disappear entirely are likely to be disappointed. I plan, in sha Allah, to remain visible and audible on matters that affect our communities and our dear country.

Although the future will be without a weekly squeak  from me, I will be part of millions of Nigerians who will continue to stay awake from worry over personal and social problems that are produced or shaped by contemporary issues in our country. These are very challenging times in our country, and this is no cliche. We never had a combination of pervasive and multiple security challenges, weak leadership, damaging divisions at elite and political levels, a weakening economy, natural disasters such as the pandemic and mountain challenges around our future as we have today. Are our leaders likely to get a handle on insecurity before it drowns our entire nation? Where is the strength to re-engineer a national will to fight back and retrieve the nation from the criminal? President Buhari is either in deep denial over how insecure every Nigerian is, or is completely overwhelmed by threats to the powerful and the weak to the point that he has no idea what needs to be done at all. There is a third option that would have been unthinkable but for  the state of our existence: does the President really know how desperate our circumstance is?

 Governors are beginning to dare to call out a President over his management of security. They also quarrel openly over what needs to be done, with the very little to do it with. All these  add to the panic of citizens who have a right to expect protection. The military is not winning its war, and the battle to recapture Marte will test the value of the change of guards at the top of the military which the nations had clamoured for. Either way, Boko Haram these days like to show of its gained weight under the Buhari administration. Public  safety is not being policed and protected by the state. The federal police has lost its confidence and competence, coming alive only periodically when the administration’s pride is pricked by groups who are getting good at it. Citizens worry daily when they will fall victims to an assortment of armed criminals who now appear to have the run of the country. Abductions from schools in the north are threatening  the poor state of education. Kidnappings in the south are threatening the fragile state of  our co-existence. The bandit in our forests grows in confidence and may soon acquire a solid political consciousness and a capacity transmute  beyond periodic forays into a fighting force.

With two more years to the end of President Buhari’s non-governance, you would have thought there will be serious efforts to put in place the type of leadership that will commence the reversal of the rot and reconstruction of the Nigerian state from 2023.Even the most hardened  optimist will despair at the state of the elite that  will inherit Buhari’s failures. The two major parties are lost in battles that will destroy them and each other. Ordinarily, this will not be a cause to lose much sleep over. After all, between them, the PDP and APC have wrecked dreams and the promise of a nation that could have emerged from ashes of military rule with vision and commitment to realize the potentials of a truly great African nation. Now they confront new threats with antiquated weapons. Their remnants will be involved in even more damaging scramble for the carcass of a nation that really cannot stand further abuse.

Their sole aim is to provide platforms for state capture by politicians who have no feet to stand on unless they smash the country and lean on its rubble, or they cover themselves in tatters of ethnic particulars and aspire to govern a country running away from being destroyed by narrow and offensive identities. Will the politician emerge who will inspire an elite to assume the responsibility to govern a country desperate for good governance (or even survival), a leader that will use  power to defeat the criminal, reduce poverty, build bridges across the nation and restore trust and integrity to public office and institutions? Instead of learning from the most pronounced legacy of President Buhari, which is mountain of evidence that ethnicity or faith of the leader is no guarantee that where he comes from or his faith will be of benefit to those who share them, our future leaders are laying the seeds for further damage by defining the prime requirement of a leader as his sub-Nigerian identity.

Will there be a revolution that will change the basic structure of Nigerian politics, sweep away the old order represented by most of the politicians currently holding or angling to capture the state and give the nation a new lease of life after the Buhari misadventure? Is there enough constructive anger and faith that it can be converted into fuel for major changes before the 2023 elections and used to ignite mass support to take the nation away from its liabilities represented by today's politicians in the two parties, generate national consensus that this country is worth saving and serving, and give assurances  to tens of millions of our young that they have a good future as Nigerians? Will very old Nigerians stop quarreling with each other over restructuring, and get down to the business of giving it meaning and substance? If the country survives in a state that allows for the conduct of the 2023 elections, will the electoral process withstand the negative impact of a severely damaged political system? Will there be alternatives to the old order? Is there a chance that the quality of leadership can be improved because the political system has been challenged  enough to yield to a fairly new order, and an electoral process has been strengthened to reflect the people’s will?

The nation can be pulled from the brink of collapse even  after its foundations have been eroded by poor and indifferent governance, poisonous politics and assaults from multiple sources that capture populations, territory and power through the use of violence. This, however, will require a massive effort which re-unites the elite with the population to insist that President Buhari and politicians who prop him up  cannot wait out their term at the expense of more damage to our lives today and more uncertainties over our future. Of all the matters that should keep Nigerians awake at night, none is more serious than the absence of evidence that some Nigerians of substance who possess courage and integrity will step up and challenge our racing decline.

 

And then it all comes crashing down

 “Even a farm which belongs to a father and son will have demarcations”. African proverb.

You will find it difficult keeping track of the dizzying frenzy of activities and chatter from top to bottom as the country goes through one of its periodic convulsions as citizens take on the state or each other. There are many battle stations and too many commanders to deploy those who will do battle or defend them. It is the noise from the confusion that gets you. Too many commanders choose their own battles. The lines between friend and enemy get blurred so easily, many get caught in crossfires. There ought to be one supreme commander who sets out the rules of engagement, but he is missing in inaction. No one therefore can tell whether battles are being won or lost. The front shrinks or expands on the logic of confusion, panic and voluntary activity that mostly just tells you the situation is not getting better, and you could be a casualty or an aggressor soon.

This is what happens when you ignore a creeping problem, or you sit on it until it outgrows you. The nature of many of our  problem have  never really been understood by leadership that will not win prizes for analyzing problems. Nigerian leaders from ‘YarAdua to Jonathan to Buhari saw Boko Haram insurgency as a mere uprising that needed the strong arm of the state to eliminate. While they engaged it with force, its roots dug deeper the in minds and weakened communities, and it flourished by exploiting the weaknesses of a state whose institutions and leaders have been crippled by endemic and systemic  corruption. President ‘YarAdua had seen the value of a political solution to militancy and criminality in the Niger Delta,  and had deployed solid political will and huge resources towards resolving it. His immediate reaction to Boko Haram insurgency allowed it to outlive him and grow under President Jonathan. Corruption and incompetence gave it the oxygen it needed to grow into the monster that has defied President Buhari’s spasmodic governance. One of President Buhari’s legacies could be an insurgency that brought him to power and bears testimony to his impotence as a leader.

Look how quickly the problem of cattle rustling created the criminal Fulani. Criminal Fulani stained the Fulani herder. Fulani herder poisoned relations between his host communities and a huge part of the North. This in turn allowed a quarrel involving two people in an endemically mixed community to ignite a fire that had been prepared to ignite. As we speak, the country is in grave danger of major conflagrations. This, however, is not a source of concern for all concerned. There are activities involving people with responsibility targeted at damage control, and quite possibly, others who want the fire to burn more. Northern Governors have quarreled in the open, and now they are attempting to put a united front and launch a counter attack against people who make them look bad. They are meeting with community leaders and Governors  from the South West to contain and put out a fire that could pitch northern and western communities against each other, on a scale that had never been seen in the land.

Governors from the West are running from pillar to post, between their constitutional responsibilities and communities that had been primed by ethnic champions, to de-escalate tensions and rebuild relations among communities that are not strangers. Some politicians  from the eastern part of  the country are beside themselves with joy at a political manna: a major falling out between the north and the west, a gift that will enhance the chances of the type of mindsets which will tilt the scale in favour of the south east on the issue of the presidency in 2023.Many in the north think they now have solid reasons to resist the pressures to concede the presidency and vote only a non-northerner as president in 2023.Passions are running high all over the land. Many in the south cannot understand the anger in the north over the decisions by some communities in the south to pay back the fulani herder and the arrogant Hausa (the generic term for people in the south for northerners) in the same coins with which they  paid for the hospitality and trust of southern communities. There is enough hostility, fueled by desperate politics which does not recognize red lines all over the country. There are a lot of hot heads in northern communities who are almost breaking free to take pounds of flesh and make statements about the country they feel is not worth sacrificing northern lives for. There are also fringe groups that just live off provoking a leadership and making it look bad, like the people who assembled at Lekki Toll Gate last week.

In all the heat and the noise, there is a voice missing. It is President Muhammadu Buhari’s. Virtually everybody blames him for the state of security, deterioration of relations among communities and for being the remote and immediate cause of the state of the nation. It is very unlikely that the country will raise its voice in demands that President Buhari speaks to the nation. After the experience of the #EndSARS protests and riots when the president spoke more to himself than to the nation, there will be less clamour to ask that he be heard. His spokespersons must be at wits end. The country does not believe them, yet they cannot stop trying to speak for a president whose disposition to issues suggest that they actually choose what to say and when.

There are other voices that are silent. They do not need to be heard in public, but they must find a way to get to President Buhari and nudge him into action. A mass movement of victims of attacks or even terrified citizens from one part of the country to the other is the last thing the country needs. Yet, it could be the very goal of people interested in escalating fear and levels of violence. Eroding the foundations of the country will injure most citizens and parts of the country. But there is a tiny minority that will benefit from having all of it come crashing down.

Losing our heads

 “Because we focussed on the scorpion, we missed the snake”. African proverb.

 Listening to elite adopting language and styles of the generally uninformed and more alienated groups in this country, you will not be wrong in assuming that the survival of the country as one with a future has few champions and many enemies. Just visit circles where Nigerians are engaged in our usually passionate quarrels over everything from football to the president, you will come away with the impression that from top to bottom, there is now a major convergence of opinion that political positions only make sense on the extremes of fringes. To be fair, you could excuse the younger generation here. This is the stuff it grew up on: bitter and damaging narratives that all the nation’s problems are caused by other Nigerians who have taken up all the room available for some groups, including generations, to develop and flourish. There is a huge vacuum where those who measure how close we are to the abyss and can apply breaks are supposed to exist. We play without rules. Some know it is dangerous. Others think it is worth the danger, even if they do not know what price has to be paid.

The Fulani herder represents strong evidence that we have mountains of problems and very little to deal with them effectively. Ordinarily this should be a text book issue of law and order, or the type of problems Africans have a hundred and one ways of resolving. Part of an identified group has recently become prominent in the public domain as criminals who kidnap, rape and plunder communities and retreat into forests. Northern communities have cried dry tears in the last few years as they lost thousands of relations, suffered immeasurable humiliations and lost billions to Fulani criminals who lost cattle and  acquired guns, drugs and an outlaw mentality. They took over forests and dared governments who retreated. Their kith and kin held on to a precarious ,outmoded and unproductive tradition of  trudging thousands of kilometers trying to feed cattle in an increasingly limiting and hostile space.

The Fulani herder now bears the cross of his kin, in addition to his own store of transgressions which most communities know and dealt with in a routine matter. He pays the price for the lack of vision of leaders who ignored all the signs that ranching or domestication of some sort is the only solution to increasing population of humans and cattle and dwindling space due to climate changes. In the end, the problem comes to this. The criminal Fulani exploits a weak Nigerian state and acquires for  himself a lot more space. The Fulani herder loses the vital cooperation and goodwill of local communities which see him and his criminal brother as one and the same thing and wants him out. Both bear the additional cross of being President Buhari’s kin, and therefore fair game for anyone with a score to settle with him.

Does anyone stop  to think that dealing with the criminal Fulani as the law prescribes, the same way it is supposed to deal with cultists, pirates, yahoo boys, armed robbers and drug merchants is the way to go, and insisting  that those with responsibility to do this should be held to account for their failure to do so? Where were those who could have made the case that expelling all Fulani from communities because there are criminal elements among the Fulani is not the best solution because it could be counter- productive and play into hands of people who want more than Fulani-free environments? Where were voices that will counter outrageous propaganda that the herder represents Buhari’s Islamization agenda and an advance party for the annexation of lands of all Christians in Nigeria and their forceful convergence to Islam? Apparently, the babble triggered by hysteria and demonization have scared even the most level-headed opinions. Now we are at a point where neither the puny presence of federal might nor community vigilantes can eliminate the criminal Fulani, wherever he is. His herding kin now has choices: stay and get harassed and attacked by local communities, leave hostile communities en-mass for safer climes and trigger a dangerous chain of events, or split between  leaving and joining kin in forests and highways.

This is what happens when leaders with constitutional responsibility abdicate their responsibilities to make and enforce laws and take steps to deal with problems as they arise. Simple folk have limited options when confronted with social and political problems. They look for those with responsibility to solve the problems, or they attempt to solve them themselves. When leaders cannot, or will not, lead with responsibility, and an elite with stakes in political stability, security and the economy  is obliterated or shrinks behind shrieking classes, what you have is anarchy which leaves no one unscathed. Problems never walk away. In most instances, chasing them away seemingly intact does not solve them either. They mutate or relocate and become other problems.

There is no need to apologize for saying this, but the Fulani problem is a national problem, the same way militancy in the Niger Delta was a national problem and required a strong leadership and national consensus to deal with. The criminal Fulani is not a Buhari problem, except in the sense that he sat on it and allowed it to grow under him. It now has a national dimension, without territory or constituency. It is not a northern problem, except in the sense that most Fulani are located in the north and have very deep roots in its history and society. The north has been its biggest victim, and will continue to be its victims as northern political leaders lament their impotence to deal with it, and quarrel over strategies on dealing with it in the face of the inability or unwillingness of the federal government to attempt to deal with it.

Of all the stimuli this problem needs to grow further, mass hysteria, elite opportunism and an indifferent leadership are the most important. It now has them. The more we push it around, the bigger it will grow. Unfortunately, it looks like this is what we will continue to do. Every voice that makes the case for a more rational evaluation of the Fulani challenge is drowned by accusations that it is making excuses for the Fulani criminal. There are people who find the travails of the innocent Fulani in his country fertile ground to harvest the sentiment that the south is squeezing the north for political reasons over the Fulani, and the north can also hurt the south. There are politicians who see the Fulani issue as a political game. Few among them give thought to the possibility that this is a game that could end in stalemate, which, in real life, means that all  players are losers. There are Nigerians who have seen it all. They can tell when we push too hard and they apply some breaks, but they appear to have lost their voices and heads. We are handing over another chunk of our lives to criminals.

 

The Fulani question(s)

“If your enemy hurts you, but each of his children a drum”. African proverb.

The Fulani herdsman is at the heart of a monumental crises at the most vital organ of the nation: its regulatory mechanism which allows it to take risks with its existence and still survive. He is both a symbol and a trigger of frightening tempers and tensions rising at the worst possible time for a country whose leadership shows an unmoving inclination towards indifference to serious governance issues, or pandering to their causes for a pittance. Take a few of the hundreds of videos making the rounds at frightening speed in the last few days. Nobel Laurette, Wole Soyinka calmly speaks about an impending civil war, complicity of President Buhari in the escalation of the crises around what the Fulani represents to communities like his, and the positive roles of people like Sunday Igboh. Benue State Governor Ortom speaks to a familiar audience around a familiar theme: the need to permanently eliminate the problem of the Fulani herder by, among other measures, arming all Nigerians, and lamenting the total isolation of President Buhari from an escalating disaster.

Another video shows Sheikh Ahmad Gumi in a forest surrounded by armed Fulani, whose leader reels out a long list of betrayals by the Nigerian state which will make  any more deals difficult to strike. Another  shows a Fulani man explaining to a local, apparently in the South East, in fluent pidgin English, how the Fulani has been victimized over recent times, and warning that no one will win a war against the Fulani. Finally, there is this old video finding a new lease of life. It shows a long line of parked buses and other vehicles apparently headed east and a lot of panicking travellers explaining that Fulani bandits had blocked the road and there was no help from police. There are a hundred more videos feverishly being shared, none if which seeks to calm nerves or lower tensions.

While videos speak with unrestrained venom, leaders say nothing, or, when they do speak, say what is guaranteed to raise tempers to new highs. Sometimes they say very little in public, presumably because they say a lot in private meetings and audiences. President Buhari’s spokespersons got their fingers burnt with the comment which followed the quit notice to herders in Ondo. Thereafter, they yielded space to security agencies which now release periodic, dire warnings that un-named persons intent on triggering mayhem are at play. The President himself has granted audiences to governors and nothing more. It cannot be easy for President Buhari, to be accused as the problem and be expected  to be  the solution at the same time. Now the president is entirely hamstrung by his past: everything he does or fails to do about the Fulani problem is suspect.

Northern communities have long given up hope that the Buhari administration will arrest and eliminate the terrible scourge of kidnappings and banditry, and are now virtually resigned to living with it. The rest of the country is drawing lines around a problem which looks every inch like the combined product of engineered mass hysteria, justifiable worries, dangerous politics and naive thinking that removing Fulani and his cattle from neighbourhoods will make everyone safe and secure. A key part of the grievance is that President Buhari is reluctant to support curbing criminality, brigandage and impunity among Fulani because they are his kith and kin. The sins of the Fulani are part of Buhari’s considerable  political liabilities. The Fulani is collateral damage in Buhari’s many battles, from his two election victories to his failure to govern well. The criminal Fulani is the cancer that grew in size under Buhari, making a mockery of an administration that came to power to secure the citizen better than his predecessor. The non-criminal Fulani has been a serial victim of power and authority, and now he represents the Achilles heel of a north that must be made to yield to political interests with an eye on 2023.

The supreme irony is that President Buhari who enjoyed cult-like political support of Fulani is not a key player in any scenario which will deal with the Fulani issue. The most immediate issue is to stop rhetorics and actions that imperil law-abiding Fulani in regions that are hostile to him. The President  cannot, or will not do anything here. Poisonous rhetorics and demonizations have preceded genocide in history. President Buhari apparently does not feel he should go beyond warnings. Next, the law-abiding Fulani needs to be relocated from environments that sustain hostility against him to places where he  and the community are safer. A panicky exodus of Fulani from the south to the north is the worst case scenario which should be avoided at all cost. It will happen if many Fulani communities feel sufficiently threatened by thugs and communities in the south. This will extend a chain reaction that is too frightening to contemplate, but not by those who have responsibilities to protect all citizens.

Outside a few islands that will take in a few thousand cattle and Fulani families, the north is ill-prepared to receive large numbers of cattle at a go. When, or if they move, they will be at the mercy of state agents, criminal Fulani, jittery northern farmers, hostile northern governments and the temptations to join criminal kin in forests where they are king. Deals can be struck with host communities in the south to tolerate law-abiding herders, but President Buhari does not have the moral authority or political clout to negotiate these deals with governors and ethnic champions basking under popular applause. The president cannot flush criminals out of forests in the south and the north. He lacks the police and army to even attempt this. Forests in the north are now entirely bandit territory. In the south, they are now the focus of a campaign for a cleansing by many, including people who did not even know the south had forests that represent its dignity.

It is very likely that the Fulani herder will no longer be welcome in the south of Nigeria in future. The question is how he can leave permanently without serious damage to national security and peaceful co-existence. A related question is whether the hostility and violence from host communities is enough to remove him entirely from a part of his country. When he does leave, entirely or in part, the  question is where he goes to live or pursue his livelihood in the context of shrinking  economic and environmental resources, expanding local hostility and strong temptations to develop political consciousness out of a sense of persecution. Will federal and state governments fund large investments into infrastructure to domesticate the herder, or will they leave him to wander losing a national asset and boost security challenges? Who will champion the cause of the law-abiding Fulani herder and stop his depletion by crime and desperation? Ranching or some form of permanent domestication is the only alternative to wasteful and now dangerous herding across thousands of kilometers of land the Fulani has to beg for. Northern leaders control land and resources, but they have abandoned the Fulani herder for so long, they barely recognize him. They may continue to ignore his basic needs, but he will always be part of the nation, for good or evil.

 

Finding the soft underbelly

  “In the time of war, the loudest patriots are also the greatest profiteers.”August Bebel,1840-1913.

  It is possible, just possible, that people who are bent on causing real and sustainable havoc with the  country’s fortune and future may have found its soft underbelly at last. This would be the weakest part of all the chains that hold the country together, the part you break and get results that are guaranteed to cause maximum damage. Starting a few weeks ago in Oyo and Ondo States, and now in parts of the eastern part of the country, individuals and groups are treating Fulani herders, families and communities as fair game. They are threatening and attacking Nigerians who by the nature of their livelihood are isolated and entirely at the mercy of host communities. The objectives of these very dangerous provocations appear to achieve ethnic cleansing on a huge scale and in the process, trigger crises that may hasten the achievement of patently political goals.

It is a game plan contemplated in many minds, but rarely put in place for a number of reasons. First, Nigerians still remember the horrors of 1966 and many other conflicts with distinctly ethnic foundations that took thousands of innocent lives. There are  many scars (some deliberately kept septic) all over the nation that have  frequently caused by failures  to arrest bloodletting triggered by mismanagement of requirements of co-existence and pluralism. Second, the strength of our country lies on its fragile foundations represented by tens of millions of individuals, families and groups who have faith that other Nigerians will have places for them in distant communities and homes, and will let them live as equals under the law and welcome guests who add value to all concerned. The moment we begin to tinker with this foundation, there is no way the nation can survive. Three, we are all aware that our politics has recently acquired a desperate edge which cuts deeply in order to make an impression. It is clear that our political process has bled so badly that leadership has lost its credibility, authority and even awe, and politicians have retreated and left the stage to fringes who make much political capital by undermining the foundations of the country to build small ethnic enclaves.

Now the Fulani herdsman appears to have provided a perfect cannon  fodder for people searching for excuses and shortcuts to achieve political goals that have proved difficult to achieve through the political process. Local communities are legitimately worried that the Fulani, with or without cattle or an AK47 represents a mobile, existential danger to them. Many have been worked to frenzy with inflaming stories that the Fulani herdsman  represents an Islamization foot soldier; he is the pampered  and protected kin of President Buhari who has license to roam the country destroy to assets, kidnap people, rape women and fight away communities that challenge his audacity to think he can live where he wants; he harbours criminals so deeply that he is practically indistinguishable from the criminal; and the only solution to crimes in communities is to remove the Fulani and his cattle entirely from communities. Leaders now pander to these narratives at the cost of great political capital, and they look away as the puny barricades they erect to look like they mean business are trampled upon by small people with huge powers to tweak popular sentiments. Politicians have their eyes on bigger prizes from these dangerous games: spaces and assets  to negotiate with in the mainstream political process.

All too often, the reality seems to be drowned  by hysteria and opportunism. The Fulani community has been afflicted by a terrible scourge in the form of many of its people taking to violent crimes. The roots of this recent phenomenon are both deep and recent. Climate change, population growth and urbanization have reduced the land available for traditional herding. Time-tested measures which allowed for relatively free movement of cattle  were ignored and abused. Inept and visionless succession of leaders ignored the imperatives of ranching, rather that the unproductive, disruptive and now dangerous practice of herding cattle for thousands of kilometers. The Fulani had billions in assets, but no political capital except as an occasional voter who generally knows next-to- nothing about who best represents his interests.

The Fulani has quite possibly more history of accumulated grievances of exploitation against agents of the Nigerian State, including traditional rulers,  than any group in Nigeria. In the last decade, the Fulani’s considerable asset began to be massively plundered, uprooting hundreds of thousands of people for whom life had little meaning without cattle. A Nigerian State which did not represent his interests looked away. The unsophisticated Fulani realized the power of the gun, the same instrument that pauperized and created millions overnight. His community was torn wide open. A section chose to seek easy wealth through crimes like rustling, kidnapping and banditry. It lived dangerously and briefly, but while it lived, it wrecked havoc on neighbouring and distant communities, without fear or favour. The other section trudged on as it did for centuries, only this time it carried an additional liability of its criminal kith and kin. Everything that has been done wrong by the Fulani and about the Fulani is now coming to fruition in a tragedy that will take a lot more casualties.

But this is not an inevitability. We can draw a line where we are and reclaim lost ground. We can begin by accepting that there are Fulani criminals who must be contained, but reject the idea that all Fulani have forfeited the right to be treated as citizens with rights, including the rights to security and treatment under the law. We must accept the rights of all communities to be protected, including protection from Fulani criminals and home grown criminals, but reject the idea that groups like IPOB, organizations like Amotekun and thugs like Ugboho should be trusted with our security without becoming new sources of insecurity. We must accept the reality that our politics and security are intimately connected, but reject the idea that we can routinely sacrifice group and national security for political advantages. We can accept the existence of differences among us, but reject the notion that we are unfit to share the same country because of our differences. It is entirely up to us, whether we choose to abdicate to an uncertain future, or retrieve our country ourselves and rebuild it.

 

 

The (fairly used) new Service Chiefs

 “Ten men, ten minds”. Japanese proverb

 Four of the country’s most senior military officers were replaced by their subordinates last week, and the nation went  into a frenzy over it. This is the second time President Buhari will change Service Chiefs. He had sacked those he met in place when he was elected President back in 2015.The nation barely stirred: it had been on the cards. President Buhari  had won an election substantially because voters thought a tough former General will put a prompt end to Boko Haram, a phenomenon that  hatched and  grew into a major threat under Jonathan’s watch. Those Jonathan had trusted to fight it knew the game was up. They quietly drifted away to await probes while Buhari’s pick set about pushing back the insurgents into forests and islands far away from major towns and cities which they had bombed  and attacked at will. Six months down the road, the insurgency and the Nigerian military reached a point that had barely changed since late 2015.The military could not defeat  the insurgency. The insurgency survived  and even flourished by tying the Nigerian State down, determining the nature of the conflict and winning the war by avoiding total defeat.

A number of observations can be made regarding the state of defence and security under President Buhari’s watch. The first is the survival and mutation of Boko Haram insurgency  into a resistant fighting force with branches and  strong capacities for adapting and feeding-off the expanding weaknesses of the Nigerian military. It has attracted foreign interests and dug into a territory that allows it to fight and retain capabilities to survive and hurt the military and keep huge populations under control or terrified. For an insurgency whose goal had long been adjusted to survive as an armed embarrassment, this is a resounding victory. Unless there is a dramatic decline in its capacities, or a radical improvement in the capacities of the Nigerian fighting forces, this will be the situation for a long while.

This leads to the second observation. The Nigerian state has fought its war with the insurgency on a single track, fighting an unconventional enemy with a conventional strategy and a mindset that force alone will defeat it. When it failed, it resorted to putting out its own version of the state of the war with an impressive store of language   that had nothing to do with the situation on the ground. It was bad enough  that the enemy, the communities who suffered under the state of the conflict and all Nigerians knew that the Nigerian leadership merely invents new descriptions of the state of the war. Worse, however, is the fact that the political leadership genuinely thinks it has just about won the war, and everything that happens now is evidence that the enemy is severely damaged and in death throes.This explains why so little had been done to alter the state of the war, including the leadership of the military, six years into gradual decline.

A third observation relates to weak political influence over the military. President Buhari’s trademark tendency to hand over responsibility to people and treat it as the end of his responsibility is boldly stamped in all aspects of the execution of the war. From tolerating damaging turf wars that dissipated the military’s energy, to failure to insist that people he had appointed to exercise responsibility over the military were allowed to do their jobs, to ignoring major setbacks and limitations caused by declining professional standards and morale, to rumoured widespread corruption and failure to affect changes at senior levels which damaged career expectations and requirements of fairness in the service, President Buhari’s management of his Commander-in-Chief responsibilities have been  poor. The military fought its internal battles and fought the insurgency with next-to-no political influence over it. It interpreted the progress of the war to Nigerians, decided rules of engagement, determined friend and enemy and suffered its injuries and setbacks alone. It failed to prioritize vital public support and paid a huge price for the limitations of an  administration that appeared to pamper its leadership.

A fourth observation relates to the  escalation of additional threats to internal security which the military was deployed to deal with because policing was either woefully inadequate or had virtually collapsed. This spread the military even thinner. Without significant improvements in numbers, capabilities or support, neither the primary nor the secondary  jobs  of the military were being done well. The Nigerian State failed to explore options to the use of force against every threat, so its only instrument for securing the Nigerian citizen and the nation showed all the signs of stress and decline in effectiveness. The rise  in numbers of  organized armed criminals worsened  the image of the administration and the military suffered further collateral damage. The President would not accept popular opinion that leadership of the military was failing to lead it well, and he could not improve the performance of the military as its  Commander-in-Chief either.

Until last week when he appointed leaders from the top brass of the military to replace their bosses. The new Service Chiefs are virtual veterans in a military where they are the only change. It will be unpatriotic and uncharitable not to wish them luck as they step into shoes they may never have thought they could wear. Now they are theirs, but where they go with them is  not entirely up to them. The environment in which they will operate will not be radically different, yet Nigerians have a right to expect improvements in the performance of the military. If the fairly used new Service Chiefs do not make an immediate and real difference in the state of many conflicts into which the military is thrown, they  could  be Buhari’s excuse that the nation did not know any better when it harassed him into changing Service Chiefs.

Now the new Service Chiefs have to bear three burdens: one for being part of an old order that has been found wanting; another for an administration that sends the military to fight and win battles with tied hands; and the third for expectations that they will perform miracles. They can make a difference only if President Buhari is willing to critically scrutinize Nigeria’s security challenges from a perspective that lets him see how desperately exposed the nation is; if he is willing to improve all manner of support and encouragement, including holding leadership of defence and security organizations accountable; and if he accepts to consider options to use of force in the manner the nation deals with threats. As things stand, the military is itself substantially  a casualty of incompetence and indifference. It should not be the lot of these Service Chiefs to superintend further decline of the only institution the nation has that can turn tide against all manner of threats. This is why they need the support and prayers of all Nigerians.