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For 133 million poor Nigerians by Lasisi Olagunju

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The National Bureau of Statistics in January 2012 released its ‘Nigeria Poverty Profile 2010’ report which contained data covering the previous 30 years. It showed that 17.1 million Nigerians were in poverty in 1980; 34.7 million in 1985; 39.2 million in 1996; 67.7 million in 2004 and 112 million in 2010. The same NBS a few days ago (November 17, 2022) launched the results of its 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) Survey. It returned a figure of 132.9 million poor people in Nigeria. That figure represents 63 percent of people living in Nigeria. In 1999 when we retrieved Nigeria from the jaws of the military, we danced and rejoiced. We were sure that with the breath of fresh air had come prosperity, the safety of self, family, and property. The Yoruba among us hit the street and sang ‘bye bye to jatijati.’ Now, look at the figures and the depth of a people’s misfortune: Democracy grows in years, poverty and insecurity grow in leaps and bounds; the Nigerian elite stay firm; they count their blessings. They continue to grow big and powerful and exponentially rich; their giant cocks muffle the crow of the poor and they give no damn.

This democracy is filthy water; it cannot be washed. Democracy is supposed to give freedom and prosperity and security. Nigerians have gained none with this experiment. What they have is the evil hen that lays poverty – the Somali definition of slavery. The difference between what we want and what we get is leadership. Our ancestors always desired good leaders because they wanted to live the good life. They knew that choosing a leader is like choosing a spouse; it has consequences for the well-being of the parties. And so, people of the past travelled from ocean to ocean in search of good governance. They paid attention to the details in the leadership selection process; wealth and its corrosive properties had no influence in the conclave where kings were chosen. A former vice-chancellor of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile Ife, Professor Wande Abimbola, offered an insight in an interview published by Saturday Tribune two days ago. He told us that: “In ancient times, there was a vacancy in the stool of the Alaafin. In those days, Ifá would choose from among the princes. So they had the list of all the princes; they presented all to Ifá and Ifá rejected all of them. After exhausting the names of all the princes, the kingmakers were worried about what to do next. One of them said: ‘there is one person who lives in a village far away. He carries his load of firewood to the town once a week. He goes to the bush, cuts firewood, and takes it to the town every week to sell. After selling, he would go back to the village. His name is Otonpooro. Why don’t we try him?’ So they consulted Ifá if Otonpooro would be fit for the throne and if the Oyo Empire would be prosperous under his reign. Ifá said yes. At that time if Ifá had chosen you as the new Alaafin, the kingmakers would meet you in the house wherever you were. Otonpooro had just put his heavy load of firewood on his head, coming to the town. They met him as he was leaving his abode in the forest. They shouted: ‘Otonpooro, da’gi nùn; ire ti

dé’lé kokoko’ (meaning ‘Otonpooro, throw away your firewood; great fortune is awaiting you in the city.’) He ruled for a long time. He was a successful king….” You see how all princes failed the test and no one in the metropolis merited the throne. It was a poor villager with a promise of good governance that got the crown. The professor’s story fits into my thoughts as I reflect on Nigeria’s poverty of governance and the billionaires campaigning and abusing one another because they want to inherit us next year. The present line-up should tell us why the poor sink deeper in want and why Nigeria gropes in this dank alley of ineffectual democracy.

The 2022 NBS poverty report says that 83.5 percent of Nigerian children under five years are poor “due to lack of intellectual stimulation needed for childhood development.” The report adds that “school attendance is particularly problematic in the North-East and the North-West.” And these are zones with a cumulative 65.96 million poor people, about half of the national total of 132.92 million. Ironically, these two zones, with very huge voter populations, will determine the next leader and the direction the nation faces, going forward. How do you help such a country? Educating the children of today secures the future for the community. The Zulu say a tree is bent before it gets dry. The Yoruba say no wise person bends a dry fish and complains that it breaks. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 2020 (two years ago) said there were 10.5 million out-of-school children in Nigeria; the most recent figure from UNESCO is 20 million. These are not just numbers; they are human beings wasting away like millions of others before them. I don’t think those kids want to grow up as limbless cripples, useless to themselves and to their clan. The truth is that their dog does not prefer bones to meat; it is just that no one ever gives it meat.

Unless Nigeria’s jungle of demons is deforested, its foliage will continue to kill the soil. There is an instructive quote credited to Chief Obafemi Awolowo in Kole Omotoso’s ‘Just Before Dawn’: “Look at it this way. All over the country, you have farmers and peasants, fishermen and labourers barely earning a living. They have millions of children who cannot go to school because their parents cannot afford the fees. If somebody does not do something about it, there is going to be trouble in this country in another decade or so (page 220).” Omotoso did not put a date to that quote, but the understanding in it apparently informed Awo’s free education programme. It is tragically ironic that the sage’s Western Nigeria today suffers literacy poverty almost as much as the other parts that paid scant attention to education. It is a catastrophic failure of the present. The ancestors did not create ragged, unschooled children in search of hope. That is why we proudly parrot our father’s saying that it takes a village to train a child.

Amidst its crisis of mass poverty and ignorance, Northern Nigeria last week celebrated the mining of crude oil in the desert. How is that wealth (if it is true wealth) going to wean the bandit of his banditry and educate the uneducable millions? A Cameroonian tribe says knowledge is better than riches. Grand old Yoruba musician, Haruna Ishola, lyrically celebrates education as the “chord of wealth that endures forever (okùn olà tí kìí já láíláí).” Somewhere else in Nigeria, people tell themselves that wealth diminishes with usage; learning increases with use. My own people say it is sweet to be wise, educated, and knowledgeable (Ogbón dùn ún gbón; ìmòn dùn ún mòn). Yet, if there is an age that despises, deprecates, and devalues wisdom, learning, and schooling, it is this age of dirty, unwashed leaders. Yet, we complain that nothing works. Were you not told that what you give you get ten times over? The untrained child won’t ever escape poverty and society will not escape the consequences of that abandonment. There is an apt proverb here: The child who is not embraced by the village will soon burn down the village to get warm. You cannot nurse millions of children with the waters of poverty, illiteracy, and hopelessness and

dream of peace and prosperity. North to south, the road to the farm and the pathway to the stream are strewn with terror and terrorism. Who is not afraid to venture out anywhere today? People can’t work; the poverty queue lengthens; the odious cycle remains unbroken – because of the choices we made yesterday. We are set for another round of mischance.

Greek philosopher, Plato, wrote about his ‘cave’ and the people’s fascination with darkness. Before Plato, there was his teacher, Socrates with his profound analysis of power and politics. Socrates’ dialogue interrogates the eternal contest between good and bad; between what is just and what appears to be just. We see a world in perpetual competition “between the perfectly just man who shall appear to others (because of their ignorance) as supremely unjust and the perfectly unjust man who is absolutely ruthless, observing no moral constraints in attaining what he wants, and who possesses a magical ability never to get caught but always appears to others as supremely just.” A brilliant writer once described Nigeria as an unusual country of destructive intrigues; a nation where what one person wants is negated by what another person wants and what eventually prevails is

what no one wants. In 1998/99, we were eager to replace the military with just anything, and we did. In 2014/2015, we were proud to insist that what we wanted was “anything but Jonathan.” And we did just that. Today, we can’t wait to see the back of bleak Buhari and his aura and we are toeing exactly the same path that led to today’s ruination. What is coming is what no one wants.

In Plato’s ‘The Republic, Socrates states why democracies fail and leaders without sense rule. He asks us to imagine a ship in which there is a captain who is stronger than any of the crew, but is deaf, dumb, blind, and drunk and is disastrously incompetent in navigation. In addition to the tragic combination, the crew members are quarreling with one another about the steering and about who holds the wheel. I have a feeling that Socrates had Nigeria in mind when he constructed that ship of confusion and entitlement where “everyone is of the opinion that it is his turn to lead and that he has a right to steer the ship though he has never learnt the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learnt.”

 

 

 

 

Strictly Personal

Help! There’s a dangerous, secret plot to save the EAC from imminent death, By Charles Onyango-Obbo

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In an interview with NTV Keny, at the start of the week, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame painted a rather bleak picture of the East African Community (EAC).

 

He suggested the saga of the East African Regional Force (EACRF) to the troubled eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which was kicked out ignominiously by a disgruntled government in Kinshasa, was a low point. He said to date, no one has even bothered to formally brief the EAC heads of state on what happened.

 

This debacle, coming on the back of numerous ugly trade and diplomatic spats, despite the latest expansion to include Somalia as the eighth member of the bloc, does not inspire a lot of confidence about the EAC’s future. In Kampala, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, once the choir leader of the EAC, no longer gets so excited about it.

 

Good East Africans are looking on with alarm. A dyed-in-the-wool pan-East-African Ugandan lawyer wrote to say he has conceived of a plan that will get regional leaders to fall into each other’s arms and turbo charge unification.

 

He plans to arouse patriotic East Africans to establish a radical revolutionary front called the East African Liberation and Unification Front (Ealuf) to work regionally to pressure the governments in Nairobi, Dodoma, Kampala, Kigali, Kinshasa, Juba, Gitega (the newish Burundi political capital), and Mogadishu with an alternative political structure. Ealuf will look to create an East African Peoples Republic.

 

It will have an agenda to abolish all restrictions on travel across borders, have zero tax rates for regional trade, create a regional digital currency, and create a roaring common market, among other things.

 

He believes the leaders will come together at 6G speed, and work hand in hand to stop the ideas espoused by Ealuf from gaining political traction, with its grand vision of a truly meaningful borderless East Africa. In the process, they will move forward with integration to Ealuf.

 

It is likely too, that they will not come together to collectively save their jobs. They might form an East African Emergency Unity Summit (EAEUS), to fight back. President Museveni might want to chair it as the region’s “elder statesman”, having been in power for nearly 40 years.

 

However, some leaders would oppose him, saying he has eaten for long at the top, and should let a younger leader, “new blood”, like Burundi President Évariste Ndayishimiye, or Kenya’s William Ruto, lead it. They will accuse him of scheming to install himself as the East African supreme leader, and clinging on to power until one of his grandchildren was ready to take over from him.

 

Museveni will push back, citing their inexperience. Some will demand that South Sudan President Salva Kiir pay all the arrears his country owes the EAC before it gets full rights in EAEUS. DRC President Felix Tshisekedi will push to exclude President Kagame from taking a seat until Rwanda stops its support for M23 rebels. President Kagame will tell him to go and swim with crocodiles in the Congo River.

 

Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud will complain that the other leaders are disrespecting him because he is an EAC newbie, and until they change their attitude, he is staying in Mogadishu.

 

As they squabble, some groups might see an opportunity. Al Shabaab might reform, disavow violence, elect new moderate leaders and seek to ally with the regional integration activists as Ealuf-Horn of Africa.

 

In M23 allies with some of the 120 rebel groups and form Ealuf-Congo Basin. A bid by externally based Ugandan groups like a rump Lord’s Resistance Army emerging from the forests of the Central African Republic, and the Allied Democratic Forces in the eastern DRC is rejected, because they have failed to demonstrate good faith credentials.

 

Meanwhile, Ealuf is spreading like wildfire. Large numbers of Ealuf are reported to have hired boats near Entebbe in Uganda, and Mwanza in Tanzania sailing fast on Lake Victoria and converging on Kisumu, where local integrationist forces have mobilised and turned the city into a hotbed of East African unification. In DRC, bands are composing new songs praising the new people’s unification efforts. Young people are organising to link their hands along the half of the 770-kilometre Kenya-Tanzania.

 

All over East Africa, there are reports of high school boys and girls disappearing in large numbers to join Ealuf cadre training camps.

 

Traders are staging solidarity rallies and vowing to divert the taxes they pay to states to Ealuf, and stories of market women all over the region raising money and sending food to the heroic mobilisers are spreading far and wide.

 

International comrades from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia are arriving in large numbers in East Africa and joining. Word leaks that some of the EAC presidents are sending out feelers, seeking to meet with Ealuf to cut deals. There are rumours that they are paying some Ealuf leaders big money to defect. The hardliners in Ealuf reject the olive branches, and there is some division in the ranks and a witch hunt for the “traitors,” who are eating money from the presidents.

 

Ealuf recovers and marches on. EAEUS reaches out with an official offer to sit down and dialogue with Ealuf about the formation of an East African Amalgamation. Whether they stick together or get divided, the leaders lose. But Ealuf has only won the first round. This is not over by any means.

 

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3

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Strictly Personal

Is Nigeria’s security challenge intractable? By Jide Ojo

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Section 14(2)(b) of the 1999 Constitution says the security and welfare of citizens shall be the primary purpose of the government. Quite unfortunately, successive administrations have failed to meet these requirements, and the current Bola Tinubu administration is equally failing. Right now, instead of people’s standard of living improving, it is depreciating and everybody is worried about the intolerable level of insecurity in this country.

This newspaper, in its editorial of Monday, March 11, 2024, chronicled the spate of mass abductions that have recently taken place in the country. It stated, “Within the past week, Boko Haram insurgents and bandits have successfully abducted over 404 Nigerians across three North-East and North-West states. This is unparalleled and ominous for the rest of the fragile country. For the President, it calls for a swift re-evaluation of the subsisting national security strategies, which appear ineffective against the hordes from hell perpetrating this criminality.”

It went further, “Indeed, it is the familiar Salafist modus operandi all over again: The predation on women, pupils, and other soft targets. Fifteen pupils of an Islamiya school in Sokoto State were kidnapped in the early hours of Saturday. This is less than 72 hours after 287 schoolchildren were abducted from the LEA Primary School in Kuriga, in the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State. A few days before the Kaduna incident, over 200 female internally displaced persons were forcefully taken away by terrorists in three IDP camps in Borno State. The women were kidnapped in Ngala, the headquarters of Gamboru Ngala, while fetching firewood in the bush to sell.” The PUNCH submitted that, “Data indicates that about 1,548 schoolchildren have been abducted in 11 separate incidents of mass abduction by terrorists and bandits in northern Nigeria between April 2014 and June 2021.”

What are the implications of insecurity in Nigeria? First, it hampers economic growth and development. Many businesses have shut down due to these ceaseless kidnappings, banditry and insurgencies. Many of those internally displaced have lost their means of livelihood and have become economically dependent on the government and charity organisations. Thus, rather than contributing to economic growth, they become liabilities. There is now low investor’ confidence in Nigeria, as no foreign investor will want to come and set up business in a volatile country like ours unless they are into the sales and marketing of security gadgets and bulletproof vehicles.

Insecurity is also one of the drivers of the ‘japa’ phenomenon, as many Nigerians besiege embassies of foreign countries to flee their fatherland. Many don’t even bother to go to embassies; they simply embark on a hazardous journey of being trafficked through the desert and the Mediterranean Sea, hoping to irregularly migrate to Europe for safety and a better life.

I saw a journalist friend of mine sometime in January after a long while. As we chatted, I asked how he was coping with the astronomic rise in the cost of living. He sighed and said it had not been easy. I then complimented him on living in his own house in Abuja when I, who had been in Abuja for over 20 years, still lived in a rented apartment.  He corrected me and said he had fled his house in the Bwari area of Abuja due to the incessant raids of kidnappers in his community and is now living in a rented apartment like me. That’s how insecurity has also impacted family life. Imagine the pain of having to relocate from your home, not because of any natural disaster like an earthquake or flood but due to the activities of bandits.

Food inflation, which has risen above 35 percent, is also a result of food production shortages linked to the activities of bandits who not only demand access and harvest fees from farmers but routinely raid farm settlements to abduct, maim and kill the farmers who are feeding the nation.  Health-wise, many Nigerians are suffering from panic attacks, paranoia, schizophrenia and trauma as a result of the scary news of abductions and acts of terrorism being daily reported in the media. Many of us could no longer sleep with our eyes closed. In many communities, people now live in fortresses and under self-imposed curfews. As described by the renowned English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes in his 1651 book titled Leviathan “No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

It is not as if the federal and state governments have been standing akimbo, watching helplessly. Funding for security and defence has increased exponentially. According to the earlier referenced editorial of this newspaper published on Monday, “The Federal Government, as part of efforts to keep the country secure, disbursed N231.27 billion to procure arms and ammunition for security agencies and officers between 2020 and 2024. This is beside the yearly budgets of the Ministry of Defence and eight other forces between 2020 and 2022, put at N11.72 billion, N10.78 billion, and N9.64 billion, respectively. More recently, in the fourth quarter of 2023, the government procured N5 trillion worth of tanks and armoured fighting vehicles for the security forces, per the NBS report ‘Foreign Trade in Goods Statistics.’ This is in addition to other security hardware.”

The Muhammadu Buhari administration established the Police Equipment Trust Fund just as a handful of states have similarly done. Many states have established vigilantes or state-owned security agencies, with the latest being Zamfara State, which early in the year established Community Protection Guards. Recall that the six south-west states of Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Ekiti, Ondo and Osun, on January 9, 2020, established Amotekun to fight insecurity. Consideration has been given to the establishment of state police, with a committee set up to come up with a framework.

With all these aforementioned initiatives, why is Nigeria still largely insecure? The answer to this can be found in the hardware solutions without a significant component of the software solutions. I daresay that even the hardware efforts have been largely ineffective due to a lack of sufficient well-trained and motivated security personnel. We have not also adopted technology-driven security solutions. There are several modern tech gadgets such as satellite orbiters, drones, CCTV, scanners, jammers, communication gadgets and forensic laboratories, that Nigerian security forces do not have or have in insufficient quantities.

On the software side, unless and until we frontally tackle the challenges of unemployment, poverty and hunger, whatever hardware equipment we acquire will not resolve our security challenge. These variables drive crimes and criminality. People will not blink an eyelid to commit crimes if they are starving. The popular adage is also that an idle hand is the devil’s workshop. If people are not gainfully employed and are poor, they will constitute a nuisance and danger to the rest of society.

I think the time has come for the Nigerian president to seek international assistance to bring the security challenge effectively under control. We should also mobilise our able-bodied retired security personnel to help combat the increasing insecurity. There is also a need to do something about our porous borders, where small arms and light weapons are indiscriminately smuggled into the country and used by bandits to terrorise innocent Nigerians.

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