2017: An optimist's nightmare.

In its first full year in charge, 2016, the Buhari administration registered a major success in fighting the Boko Haram insurgency and signaled a determination to fight endemic corruption. During the year, however, just about every index for judging the success of an administration that had raised massive expectations will be solidly in the negative. A combination of obvious success in the fight against the insurgency and pronounced failures to shield the citizenry from the effects of an economy in deep recession will be of some comfort to an optimistic  projection, the type that starts on the assumption that things couldn't  possibly be worse in 2017 than they were in 2016.Sadly for the country and the administration, there is no solid basis for this assumption. In spite of the evidence of  strong will, it is evident that much of what the administration requires to make a major difference are  vaguely-articulated, poorly-supported by strong institutions and processes, and deeply contingent on a political environment that is not being well-managed. In 2017, President Buhari will have an opportunity to reverse a perception  of poor management of an economy in deep recession and convince Nigerians and the global community that the nation is secure and safe for citizens and foreign investment respectively. It will be a  make-or-break year, because 2018 will be mostly about the elections of 2019.

The reported success of the military in capturing the last stronghold of Boko Haram in Sambisa forest represents a major achievement for the administration. The challenges beyond this major milestone are going to demand the same level of political will to deal with, and massive resources to sustain the fight and deal with the horrendous humanitarian crises that the insurgency has spawned. The capacities of the military and intelligence services will be challenged to design strategies for dealing with an insurgency that could mutate, adopt strategies suitable to a threat without captive territory or survive as low intensity conflict that will frustrate the speed of recovery, resettlement and rehabilitation. The military will need to maintain presence and vigilance and improve liaison with the military and intelligence services in neighboring countries. The Nigerian military will be stretched to provide essential service in many other areas such as the Niger Delta, numerous outfits designed to secure or preserve peace, as well as areas of emerging threats such as Southern Kaduna and extensive forests that are providing cover for crimes such banditry, cattle rustling and kidnapping. Without a radical improvement in policing capacities and a willingness to explore options to the use of force in dealing with many internal security challenges, Nigerians will be exposed to serious threats to lives and livelihood in 2017.

The administration will need to examine the value of engaging the Shia in charting a course towards a peaceful co-existence between a faith and a nation founded on laws. The  current stand-off amounts to an escalation of a conflict with frightening implications. The commitment of President  Buhari's administration to the rule of law will be tested by the manner his government responds to judicial orders such as those related to release of leader of the Shia. Real dialogue with armed groups destroying oil and gas assets in the Niger Delta will have to involve more than the high profile Dialogue Committee which currently says it represents the communities in the region. The administration's political presence in the South East will need to be strengthened to effectively engage or isolate the threat of IPOB. Significantly, the tendency to consign security issues to judicial custody should be discouraged, and, in 2017,the administration will have to improve its capacities to deal with threats with imagination, decisiveness and an awareness of the intimate linkages between politics and national security.

Managing national security under multiple challenges and an economy that is unlikely to operate with marked improvements in 2017 will sharpen popular perceptions regarding the Buhari administration. In spite of improvements in the price of crude towards the end of 2016,the price in 2017 is unlikely to rise well beyond current levels. Export levels will still be affected by the activities of armed groups and the success of the signaled intention of the administration to engage these groups in dialogue to stop sabotage of assets. Nigerians will blame the administration for rising cost of living, in spite of attempts that will continue to be made to blame the past for the state of the economy. More stringent demands will continue to be made for better policies and quality of Ministers and key officials. By the end of 2017,Nigerians will largely have made up their minds regarding the competence of President  Buhari in managing the economy. It is unlikely that beyond the hardest core of his supporters, many Nigerians will accept excuses and apologies over rising levels of poverty.

The administration will also be challenged to prove that its anti-corruption campaigns have yielded more than a  list of people facing trials against corruption. Nigerians will use convictions, forfeitures  used to mitigate revenue shortfalls, evidence that the campaign recognizes no partisan boundaries as well as the  outcome of the investigations of high-ranking officials which the President has just ordered to judge the impact of the anti corruption campaigns. The pressure for immediate gratification could divert attention from painstaking and substantive institutional and other reforms that should reduce the nation's vulnerability to corruption in the long run. The National Assembly could be a major asset or an obstacle to the fight against corruption, depending on the manner legislators perceive their interests and their fates in the 2019 elections.

The politician in President Buhari will be severely challenged in 2017.He does not appear to have paid much attention to the state of his party, the APC, and the next few months will reveal how much damage has been done to an election-winning coalition if many pillars on which it rests relocate ambitions or re-design strategies, leaving his charisma, now interrogated by the challenges of exercising power, badly exposed. On the whole, it could be said that history, and a seeming reluctance to push the frontiers for change have combined to suggest that the administration is unlikely to break many new grounds in 2017.But then again, President Buhari could manage adversity to make history again. If he will, he will have to make 2017 the year to make a real start.

Southern Kaduna

Don't find fault. Find a remedy. Henry Ford.

        Events in Southern Kaduna are once again the focus of national attention and concern. Home to roughly one-fourth of a State that captures and reflects the basic essence of northern Nigeria, many of the residents in this area spent the Christmas in partial lockdown following days of protests and clashes. The tipping point were the attacks on the Governor, his Deputy and members of the State Security Council who had decided to hold a meeting in  the largest town in the area, Kafanchan, to find a way out of the killings and reprisals that had become almost endemic in and around many villages in many parts of the region in the last few years. These killings had created problems which had become more pronounced with the persistent mention of Fulani as attackers and the prominence of partisan politics as a factor in responses and mobilization of passions. Villagers will now confront a new reality: hundreds of soldiers, policemen and an assortment of security personnel, who will be  part of their lives for a few weeks or for much longer, depending on the state's perception of the threat which villagers and herders pose to each other and to national security.

       Significantly, this very presence will give a large part of the population the  comfort and assurance it seeks from a state that had appeared too distant and indifferent. While security agents attempt to keep citizens from taking on each other and any one else identified as the enemy through sharply-defined prisms of faith, ethnicity and relationship with the state government, Kaduna State government will labour to convince the world that it is  not punishing naked women and youth who defied a curfew to attack Governor el-Rufai and show utter contempt for laws of the land.

      The Federal government will watch to see if it has to design a new security outfit for long-term stay, similar to the one next door in Plateau State. New frontiers in propaganda will be opened. Some communities will say they are being occupied while the real culprits, the Fulani herders  and their political backers roam free, planning new attacks. Some will urge the state to lean hard on citizens from communities and politicians who encourage them to believe they have earned the right to ignore the state completely while they go for their pounds of flesh or when they design their own protection. Churches and mosques and the social media will take up battles, making all faiths part of this fight between historical oppressors and victims. Regional politics will be prominent as a factor as APC's opposition  raises its voice to reinforce the fact that this region has been a solid PDP supporter since 1999.APC itself will not abandon one of its very own, particularly one who will flash deep involvement of PDP politicians in encouraging defiance and violence.

       Today's conflicts in Southern a Kaduna have deep historical and cultural roots, giving every group many good reasons to successfully plead the case for being a victim. From the 1970s,competition for political and territorial space, egged on by faith institutions and urban-based elite began to create conflicts in parts of the region that would reverberate across the entire state or the country every time they occurred. Kasuwan Magani,Kafanchan, ,Zangon Kataf, the 1999 installation fights, the 'Shari'a' riots, 'Miss World 'riots, the 'Cartoon 'riots, 2011 post-election riots, the riots that followed the church bombing by Boko Haram in 2013 have been etched into history as horrific blood-letting occasions that made the state at a time the most dangerous place to live in because you could live or die in the hands of mobs only on the basis of your faith or location at the time. Except for the jailing of some prominent elite from the region by a Judicial Commission of Enquiry following the attempted ethnic cleansing that was Zangon Kataf, not one citizen anywhere has been punished by the state for killings and arson. Killers melted into communities, victims cried and sulked at a state that begged pained hearts to forgive, and life became cheaper with every bloodbath. Communities built arsenals for the next conflicts. Towns and cities became virtually segregated along religious and ethnic boundaries. Trust between communities broke down completely, and was worsened by partisan politics that reflected the hue of religious and partisan character. PDP's brand of politics gave the Christian communities a prominence and a share of the spoils that belied their actual aggregate strength. They in turn stood by the party with unwavering loyalty, refusing to budge even when much of the northern Christian communities in other northern states switched sides and supported the APC.

     The gradual spread of killings of villagers by suspected Fulani herders that began from the southern part of the state introduced a relatively novel element in the geo-politics of the region, and confronted the state with a very complex problem. History and ecology have combined to create an elaborate tapestry of communities, cultures and economies that were impossible to isolate from each other. Changing patterns of land use and a politicized land ownership epidemic were pitching herders and farmers across most of the north in skirmishes. Long-term solutions required a stable political environment, enlightened policies and strong political will to craft. None have existed in the last decade or so. Communities  and groups therefore designed their own protection and defined the enemy. As villagers died in greater numbers at the hand of  killers that seemed impossible to arrest or stop, more and more villagers lost faith in the state to protect them. Respect for authority plummeted, demonstrated more graphically in the humiliation of the late Governor Yakowa in Zonkwa, the retreat of former Governor Yero from protesting elderly naked women in Sanga Local Government Area and the series of events culminating in the attacks on Governor el- Rufai.

      Governor el-Rufai's personality and brand of politics have not prepared him well to deal with the daunting cumulative legacy in Southern Kaduna State. The voters from the region rejected him, preferring to stick with the sinking PDP. He has been unable to build political bridges with the region, choosing to operate with politicians without any weight in their communities. Prominent politicians and elders from the region who would have been inclined to work with and for him have been alienated by his tendency to believe that all past is a liability, and he can create his own world. He has accumulated massive hostility from a Christian community from many sources going as far back as a re-tweet some years back which some say insulted their faith, to the plan to regulate religious preaching, to plans to demolish 'Gbagi Villa',a high-brow, largely Christian location  in Kaduna he insists is illegally built and must be demolished. PDP politicians in the state have made massive political capital out of the Governor's travails with Christians and Southern Kaduna communities, in many instances specifically and openly urging disobedience to authority in the name of resistance.

  

      Yet, Governor el-Rufai needs support to pull the state from the brink of a long-drawn crisis that will suck in a lot more than the rest of the region, the state and the nation. He is already deeply engaged in the trenches with the Shia, a group with rich credentials in building strategic alliances with religions and sects that would further its cause. This is the time to advise that the mobilization of law enforcement agents must be accompanied by serious thinking over exactly what it is to accomplish. At all cost, it must not stay in place of peace and security that does not require soldiers and police to enforce with boots on the ground. Communities need to be assured that they are safe, and this will involve the elimination of the threats from attacks as well as attacks from other communities. The Governor should engage key clergy, community leaders, politicians and elders from the region and other parts of the state to help identify possible solutions in the long term, and to bring down tension in the short term. It will be a serious mistake for the Governor to believe that events in Southern Kaduna State are about him. They predate him, and will in all probability outlive him. Today, it is his lot to deal with a very serious and complex manifestation of an old problem. If he is unable to mobilize a lot more than his officials and security agents and re-examine his do-it-all-alone philosophy to get over this challenge, it will be about him. And that will be an even bigger tragedy, because a major part of the problem sees him as the problem.

Looking inwards.

              Darkness reigns at the foot of the lighthouse. Japanese proverb.

Reports that President Muhammadu Buhari has directed Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) to investigate allegations of corruption against top government officials are likely to generate widely divergent reactions. There will be people who will celebrate signals that the President's resolve to fight corruption is genuinely blind to partisan, political or personal interests. PDP bigwigs and retired military officers who have borne the brunt of the anti-corruption onslaught largely because their hands still show fresh signs of raiding the till will hope that the investigations will throw in new inmates from the accusing side. Federal legislators who have battled numerous attempts to rope their leaders and their conduct into anti-corruption dragnets will chalk-up this development as a victory of sorts, to the degree that the President is even willing to contemplate investigating corruption charges among officials close to him. Then there are those whose hard-earned cynicism over the administration's willingness to tolerate questions around its integrity and competence will advise against raising expectations that any new grounds will be broken by this order. Nonetheless, the President's order represents an encouraging step towards responding to public opinion regarding his commitment to the fight against corruption as a national, rather than a partisan problem.

The directive that key officials suspected of corruption should be investigated could be the call to battle stations, the order signaling a readiness to engage the enemy, will be followed very closely by Nigerians and the international community. Until now, the focus of the fight against corruption has been the leading lights of the previous administration and the military, as well as the odd high profile APC politicians who appear to have committed political crimes that remind the administration that they have questions around corruption they should have answered a long time ago. Record offices of anti-corruption and investigating agencies are brimming with  case files of many prominent APC politicians, yet new files are daily being opened  for new suspects with different partisan tags. Between the courts and the anti-corruption agencies, the fate of many former governors now Senators of APC and PDP as well as many others who were being investigated or prosecuted appears sealed in favour of their perpetual freedom from being conclusively processed. A few of the recent high profile defections from PDP to APC have been attributed in some quarters  to the search for political immunity against investigation and prosecution, a charge that should hurt the president very deeply. The president himself has said on numerous occasions that corruption is fighting back, giving a rather simplistic impression that he expected that the culture that breeds corruption and the act itself will simply roll over. The appearance of evidence that far from running away, corruption is finding a breeding ground in intimate circles around him may have finally pushed the president to salvage his administration's key undertaking to Nigerians.

The allegations that people close to President Buhari are engaged in corrupt practices have been around for a while. It will be uncharitable to assume that the president did not investigate these allegations. Given the pervasive tendency of Nigerians to suspect every one in authority, no one should blame the president for not throwing them under the bus at the first whisper of corruption. If the president has decided to be loyal to the intimate circle around him, ignoring calls for replacing some of them to improve standards of transparency and competence, it is his right to do so. But he knows that he will be responsible for their actions and performance, and Nigerians will judge him over his choices of aides, confidants and other officials .So far, you could count the number of senior officials the president has fired for any reason on your fingers. This suggests either of two things: the president is happy with his choices to date, or he does not monitor performance and integrity levels. If your loyalty to the leadership capacities of the president is very high, you could also grant him the ability to establish facts around allegations that just won't go away, and keep the outcome to himself. Judgment over his tendency to remain silent over persistent allegations against senior aides, officials and ministers will be divided. Some will say he does not have to tell Nigerians that every allegation that comes his way is investigated and found wanting. Others will say Nigerians are an intensely suspicious people who look up to him to improve transparency in governance, and he must constantly assure them that he and everyone around him are squeaky clean.

Now it appears the president is outsourcing the responsibility to establish the integrity of key officials to other public officials with requisite statutory responsibilities. It will be comforting to believe that the impetus behind this decision is not primarily the fact that the federal legislature whose leadership the president has been at loggerheads with over corruption has raised serious issues around the integrity of two of his key officials. If the fiasco over the screening of the president's nominee for chair of EFCC and the allegations of corruption against the Secretary to Government of the Federation (SGF) have triggered a wider and deeper search for evidence of corruption beyond these two persons, the nation will be better assured that the real battle against corruption, which is to uproot it from within the deep recesses of power, could be won.

 President Buhari has just raised the stakes in the war against corruption, and may just have triggered a scramble for many battle stations. The enemy may not be as far away as it is convenient to assume. His own side is a key player that could determine the outcome of this decisive battle. He only needs to interrogate the events and circumstances around the rejection of his nominee for chair of EFCC, a nomination that had been with the Senate for months, waiting to be torpedoed by a security report written against the nominee by a security agency that reports to the president. How tight are his ranks? Could the president have tolerated a nomination to a very sensitive position that had been mortally wounded? Did he believe he can win another battle against the National Assembly with his troops shooting at each other? Was Magu set up to be embarrassed and to embarrass the president and the anti-corruption war? Could Magu move from crack investigator and prosecutor to being an accused in one fell swoop? Could someone have handed the Senate a battle in this war on a platter? Are all eyes on the ball?

Even more questions will be asked if the circle to be investigated by the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) is widened by the president. The allegations against the SGF which he dismissed as balderdash, for instance, ought to have been available to more than just a Senate Committee. Long before this Committee laid its hands on these damaging allegations, the battery of control mechanisms in the Presidential Initiative in the North East and the many federal and security agencies in and around it ought to have raised alarms that should reach the president directly. Certainly, many aid and humanitarian agencies have drawn attention to rampant corruption and abuse around victims' support in the northeast. Without a doubt, the SGF is entitled to defend himself against the Senate's allegations, and the Senate itself ought to have afforded him the opportunity to defend himself before it. The Senate knows better than to demand that the SGF is sacked only on the basis of its findings against him. The devil now is in the questions around the integrity of the investigations to be conducted by the AGF which Nigerians will raise. How much credibility should be given to investigations by EFCC, ICPC, Police, AGF, DSS against powerful public officials in an administration with pronounced cleavages? Will the AGF also investigate officials who are infinitely more powerful than the SGF?

Still, it is the prerogative of the president to device who, how and why he wants his officials to be investigated. Nor should his decision be dismissed as cosmetic or public relations. President Buhari's commitment to fight corruption is being questioned, and some of those questions deserve answers. The AGF should be encouraged to be loyal to president Buhari's anti-corruption stand do justice to the mandate to thoroughly investigate those referred to him. The entire credibility of the war against corruption may very well depend on the outcome of these investigations.

The inmates' chatter.

Do not follow a person you see running away. African proverb.

 After weeks of attempts to ignore each other, they finally began to come to terms with the objective similarity of their conditions and circumstances. They were going nowhere. Not even a few feet away from each other. They could finally speak with each other, a significant progress from the silent struggle for space, fresh air, fights that no one separated, alliances that collapsed every few hours and the imperatives of sharing very little. The normal protocols in detention will be the existence of a leader supported by enforcers and a hierarchy designed by length of stay, muscle, and the necessities of maintaining order. Not here. This is not the normal cell. Every inmate here represents the others' source and target of hostility. The cell was the world that had locked them up, its occupants constant reminders that they all had long chains that are not severed by walls or circumstances.

 The ground rules had been set. They shared a righteous indignation and a sense of profound injustice. Their innocence was beyond question, a mark of honour worn with pride and fortitude. Martyrs all, they had agreed no cause is more noble than the other. They are champions of causes that clashed and struggled for validation and triumph in the world outside. Here, they will share their versions of the injustice of the Nigerian state, the inspiration behind their struggles and the cause of their current circumstances. No interruptions, no arguments, no challenges.

 Inmate One goes first. He is a fighter for the cause of Biafra, a nation his people were destined to have and build into a model African nation. He had inherited this cause from generations who had lived lives, fought and died on the margins of Nigeria, a nation which milked his people's innate genius and enterprise. The simple demand to leave a nation that is inherently incapable of doing justice to his people, a  demand recognized by a world which acknowledges rights to self determination for certain cultural groups has been resisted by the rest of Nigeria and many Igbo who prefer servitude to others than joining the struggle for their own nation. His struggle will not end until the Nigerian state yields. By any means necessary.

 Inmate Two states his case. He is a fighter for a nation where his Islamic faith will not be answerable to other faiths or political systems that negate, abridge or pollute it. The Nigerian state as it exists represents an intolerable assault that cannot be ignored or tolerated by all good Muslims. His fight is a divine call to resist the imposition of systems that compromise the essence of being a Muslim. Victory is assured by Allah, Whose demands to fight to free Muslims from non -Islamic influences and compromises is being ignored by many Muslims, and entirely by other Nigerian non-Muslims. These are enemies who should be fought without distinction. His war will be over when the Nigerian state becomes a model Muslim state, or yields grounds to carve out an Islamic State from it. By any means necessary.

 Inmate Three speaks. He is a freedom fighter for a people whose God-given wealth is being stolen by other Nigerians. His people are rewarded with a pittance, poverty and destruction of all other assets on land and in water. The world colludes with the Nigerian state to pump out his peoples' wealth to areas where life is made comfortable. Most Nigerians have fed fat from his people's wealth under dubious arrangements that allows strangers and foreigners unhindered access to incredible wealth that could give every youth and adult from his communities all the benefits of modern development. This is a fight for the life and soul of his people, a fight abandoned by many from the community and resisted by a Nigerian state which could collapse without his peoples' stolen assets. It is a war that can and must be won. It will not stop until the Nigerian state is made to accept that his peoples' wealth is not available for plunder by foreigners and other Nigerians. By any means necessary.

 Inmate Four states his case. He is a fighter in defence of his community which is being destroyed by people from other communities. His people have been farmers, simple folk living in peace with everyone who was willing to respect lands, boundaries, traditions and rights bequeathed by ancestors. Until recently, quarrels and conflicts with neighbors and strangers have been resolved through ancient mechanisms and processes, as well as the facilitation of organs of the Nigerian state. These are no longer effective, and his community has had to protect itself from assaults, attacks and imminent extinction with the same methods being employed by its enemies. It is no longer safe to wait until after you are attacked. Taking the fight to the enemy is the only effective means of keeping the community safe, or as safe as it can be in a situation where it has to raise its own security and buy weapons at great cost. His war will not end until women and children can sleep in their villages, and men can go out to farms and markets without being attacked. By any means necessary, his community will protect itself.

 Inmate Five says he is not a freedom fighter. He has no noble cause to champion. He fights to survive in a nation that has not prepared him for anything other than a life of crime. The violent crime for which he is being accused should be visited on the Nigerian state, a nation built precariously on two pillars of pervasive violence and subversion of all laws of the land. He is one of millions in that bulge around a nation that is actually its uneducated, unskilled demographic nightmare. Violent crime is only one variant among crimes in a nation of virtual criminals, the worst crime being caught. There are millions like him out there, grabbing and shooting their ways a day a time. One day he will be finally victimized by the state's bullet or a lynch mob.

 Inmate Six was next. He too is a fighter in his people's cause to resist the destruction of their livelihood and lifestyle. For centuries, they have lived a life on constant move, dictated by the needs of livestock and the imperatives of preserving a culture under constant threat from a rapidly-changing world. Conflicts and frictions with settled and farming communities have been a constant part of life, but these have been mitigated in the past by effective dispute resolution systems and governments that designed methods of reducing conflicts. In the last few years, however, shrinking secure grazing land, expanding urban settlements and indifferent or even hostile governments have combined to threaten the lives and assets of his people. Land is now the only asset recognized by governments with little sympathy for his people. His own asset is a nuisance and a threat, and the land he needs to sustain it and expand is being taken away. He is hemmed in by insensitivity and hostility. He cannot move forward without being an aggressor. He cannot stay because he owns no place to stay. He fights for space, a job he is ill-prepared for in a nation in search of demons. He makes new enemies by the day, losing many members of the community to crimes and lifestyles with less stress. What is left of his lifestyle and asset will be preserved. At all cost necessary.

Inmate Seven sighed. He was not prepared to speak, but he had to honour a commitment. I am the Nigerian state, he says, including its justice system which you all accuse. I am in this cell with you because I am also accused of failing Nigerians. I am supposed to be your protection and guarantor of you rights. I am to mediate between your rights and those of other Nigerians. I have lost the legitimate monopoly to use violence as a means of enforcing law and order to crime and every grievances. I am accused of failing to stop widespread corruption which impoverishes citizens and pushes them into desperation. I am like a large prison, a much bigger version of this cell, in which every inmate is my victim. I cannot provide judicial or guarantee social justice. I am accused of victimizing everyone. Yet only I can address injustice.