Buhari Leaving Nigerians More Vulnerable Than When He Came 2015 – Kukah

Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah

Bishop Matthew Hassan-Kukah of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, said President Muhammadu Buhari will be leaving Nigerians ‘far more vulnerable’ than when he assumed office on May 29, 2015, despite his many promises.

The cleric stated this in his 2022 Christmas Message titled, “Nigeria: Let Us Turn A New Page,” and made available to newsmen by the Director, Social Communications of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Rev. Fr Christopher Omotosho.

Kukah also said he has no doubt that the health of the President had improved in the last seven-and-a-half years but wished millions of Nigerians enjoy a fraction of Buhari’s enhanced health through access to better healthcare services in the country.

He said, “Mr. President Sir, a merry Christmas to you and your entire family. I speak for myself and Nigerians when I say, we thank God that He mercifully restored you to good health. We know that you are healthier now than you were before. We can see it in the spring in your steps, the thousands of miles you have continued to cover as you travel abroad. May God give you more years of good health.

“However, I also wish that millions of our citizens had a chance to enjoy just a fraction of your own health by a measurable improvement in the quality of health care in our country.

“It is sad that despite your lofty promises, you are leaving us far more vulnerable than when you came, that the corruption we thought would be fought has become a leviathan and sadly, a consequence of a government marked by nepotism.

“In my Christmas Message last year, I pointed out the fact that you had breached the Constitution by your failure to honour and adhere to the federal character provisions of our Constitution. The evidence is all before us all,” Kukah said.

The Bishop, however, commended the President for the efforts made in the area of infrastructure and in seeking to end malfeasance in the electoral processes.

He said, “Am I to believe that you knew and could do nothing about the Muslim-Muslim ticket within your Party?” Kukah quickly interjected. “Still, we pray for a free, fair and credible election.”

Kukah lamented abducted “children still in the forests, in the hands of evil men” and urged Nigerians to be “vigilant” and called for a change of strategy on the part of the masses to dethrone arrogant men and women in power who are determined to make Nigeria a jungle.

“This is the last Christmas for this present government’s administration. Let us all do our duty as we have a chance to choose new leaders. Do not be cynical. God is not done with us. Choose leaders who, in your view will love us, will care for us, will cry with us, will laugh with us. Look ahead and do not look back,” he said.

“Although the responses to my messages suggest that, generally, Nigerians listen to our voices in the wilderness. However, the deliberate culture of pauperization and destitution of our people continues. So, we need a change of strategy so that we can turn a new page. We need a new strategy to confront those who sit on the throne of power in arrogance and are determined to reduce our country to a jungle.

“We need a new strategy that separates men and women of honour from those who have chosen dishonour. We need a new strategy that provides a clearer moral guide for ordinary citizens who, based on the moral strength of culture and religion, are seeking to build a good society, even if with straws. We need to stand up and stand firm. We need new mechanisms for saying no to the violence of governance,” he said.

SOURCE: VANGUARD

Nigeria’s Buhari Promises Fairness In Anticipated Election

President of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari addresses the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022 at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

BY CHINEDU ASADU

ABUJA, NIGERIA (AP) — Nigeria’s president said Wednesday that the 18 candidates vying to become his successor will run in a “free and fair” election next year.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari told the U.N. General Assembly that his goal before leaving office is to entrench “a process of free, fair and transparent and credible elections through which Nigerians elect leaders of their choice.”

“Ours is a vast country strengthened by its diversity and its common values of hard work, enduring faith and a sense of community. We have invested heavily to strengthen our framework for free and fair elections,” Buhari said.

Only one woman is among the 18 presidential candidates listed by Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, on Tuesday. Nigeria’s political world remains male-dominated, and women rarely make it into top positions.

Analysts had predicted the February 2023 election would be a two-man race between Bola Tinubu, 70, a former governor of Lagos from Buhari’s All Progressives Congress, and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, 75, who placed second in the 2019 presidential election.

However, the growing popularity of Peter Obi, a former governor of southeast Nigeria’s Anambra state, has put him ahead of the other candidates, according to a recent poll.

The electoral commission projected that 95 million voters would participate in the February election. Security and economic crises have caused hardship for many of the more than 200 million citizens of Africa’s most populous country.

Despite being one of the continent’s top oil producers, Nigeria is grappling with a 33% unemployment rate and a 40% poverty rate, according to the latest government statistics. The country has also battled an insurgency by Islamic extremist rebels in the northeast, as well as armed violence now spreading across parts of the northwest and southeast regions.

Such challenges make the presidential election a “battle for the soul of the country,” Idayat Hassan, who leads the West Africa-focused Center for Democracy and Development, said.

Some Of Nigeria’s Security Challenges Are Imported – Buhari

Boss Mustapha. Image: Facebook

BY SUMAILA OGBAJE

ABUJA (NAN) -- President Muhammadu Buhari has said that government had recognised that some of the security challenges confronting Nigeria were imported by foreign elements.

Buhari, who was represented by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, stated this at the Graduation of Course 30 of the National Defence College (NDC) on Friday in Abuja.

He said that the nation and indeed the African region had been facing difficult times such as terrorism in the North East, banditry and other criminal activities across the country.

He added that the military and other security agencies have been given directives to decisively deal with all forms of security challenges and secure the nation.

According to him, the military has continued to counter the terrorism that was very prevalent in the North East which has resulted in the surrendering of thousands of persons who are being managed by government agencies.

“Government is also deeply concerned about the activities of bandits and criminals who have rare their ugly heads in some parts of the country.

“This is because the number of violent unprovoked attacks on citizens appear to be on the increase. This is unacceptable.

“Accordingly, we have given strong directive to the military and other security agencies to deal decisively with terrorists, bandits and other enemies of the country.

“We have also adopted bilateral and multilateral arrangements to tackle the trans border and maritime crimes because we recognize that some of our security challenges are imported into Nigeria by foreign elements.

“I want to assure all Nigerian that the government is doing all it can to eliminate or apprehend the criminals or bandits, wherever they are,” he said.

Buhari commended the nation’s apex defence institution for its continuous effort towards raising a discipline and professional strategic leaders for the armed forces, security agencies as well as Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

He said the college had since its establishment 30 years ago, continued to fulfil its mandate and had grown to be at par with similar colleges across the world

He charged the participant to deploy the knowledge they had acquired in making useful suggestions toward addressing the challenges in their areas of responsibility.

The president assured that the government would remain committed providing needed resources for the security agencies to carry out their assigned tasks.

The Commandant of NDC, Rear Adm. Murtala Bashir, said the college had 102 participants drawn from the military, paramilitary, security and intelligence agencies as well as selected MDAs and participants from 16 allied countries.

Bashir said the participants comprised of 28 from Nigerian Army; 20 from Nigerian Navy; five from Nigerian Air Force; 29 from strategic institutions/MDAs and 20 international participants.

He said the college had trained the finest from the military, security agencies and MDAs both from within and outside the country since inception in 1992, adding that some had distinguished themselves in their careers.

According to him, the mission of NDC is to develop future strategic leaders who are sufficiently equipped with knowledge and skills.

“for participants of course 30, this mission was achieved through the pathway of study in nine modules comprising researc methodology and strategic writing, state and social political environments, economy and finance, science and technology, international affairs and regional studies.

“Others are policy strategy and national security, military history and conflict studies, peace supports operations and higher defense management.

“The module were delivered in for s of lectures, seminars, study tours, research papers and studies under a broad theme, ” a Whole of Society Approach to Enhancing Human Security in Nigeria.”

“The course also involved exercises that stimulated real life scenarios and the review of the National Defence and Security Policies,” he said.

A foreign participant, Commodore Ashwsni Tikoo of Indian Navy, thanked Nigerian government and the armed forces for giving them the opportunity to be a part of the course and learning experience of a lifetime.

Tikoo said the course had also afforded him the opportunity to make new friends that would help to shape his military career.

He said the scope of the curriculum was vast including economic development, social security, internal security, geostrategic issues among others.

“It has been a great learning experience and particularly for me I would say that my knowledge about the African continent has increased very considerably.

“And obviously, when you get to know so much about this continent, which has 54 countries, rich in resources and beautiful people, it is a great experience.

“I am sure that when I go back to my country with this kind of learning and experience, it is definitely going to enable me to bring in certain changes in my own country with the perspectives and the learnings that I have had here,” he said. (NAN) 

Edited by Ismail AbdulAziz

Presidential Combinations: The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea

Muhammadu Buhari

BY SOLA EBISENI

The irony of the 2023 presidential race is that the clearer the coast, the cloudier the sky. Nigerians have never been so confused and disunited as they are under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, so much that mutual fears and misunderstanding rule the polity. The nation itself, if it still exists, is a shadow of itself. The people are so preoccupied with existential realities bordering on the Nigerian question that matters of social progress are relegated, if ever discussed.

Considering the fact that ‘O lule’ in his earlier three attempts, Buhari’s CPC, hitherto consigned to the North West as a local jihadist political organisation, was yanked off him and his personality rebranded as an acceptable national leader with a fragranced garment to stave off the stench of parochial ethnic and religious sentiments.

An array of aligned groups, including ACN, an ingeniously crafted N-PDP as a powerful breakaway group from the then ruling PDP and some chips of the APGA block were hurriedly but painstakingly packaged to oust President Goodluck Jonathan whose government was deliberately undermined, sabotaged and tagged clueless on the very important matter of national survival.

As it turned out, our President could not wean himself from a mind inexorably consigned to ensuring the dominance of one of the ethnic nationalities. The initial bravado of relocating the Military High Command to the theatre of war in Maiduguri, which was hailed by the people, turned out a mirage as Boko Haram terrorists later seized control. The Commander-in-Chief, against genuine advice, hue and cry of all, romanticised the Fulani terrorists who descended on defenceless farmers, destroying their farms, killing them and in several places taking over their homes and lands.

The terrorists, emboldened by official complicity or at least, complacency, soon extended their operations to kidnapping for ransom, taking over the roads, railways, schools, prisons, hallowed security institutions that no one would be surprised hearing that the seat of power is breached.

No part of the country is spared the effect of terrorism but the response of government has been so undisguisedly sectional. In the face of ethnic cleansing in the Middle Belt, the President urged them without sympathy to seek peace with their assailants.

The war, ironically, is more severe even in the North West, between the permissive armed terror gangs of the itinerant Fulani against the indigenous majority Hausa and other tribes, either in Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Zuru in Kebbi or Southern Kaduna. The President lives in denial of this reality and instead wondered, on Arise Television, why people he pretentiously described as of the same ethnic nationality would take up arms against one another.

While the state covers the terrorists, it opens its fangs on armless Igboho and his Yoruba youths civil rights campaigners and deliberately launched a war of decimation against the Igbo youths in the name of fighting resurgent Biafran nationalism, but obviously to decapitate their capacity to defend their homeland.

The Buhari administration has so much squandered its enormous goodwill and traumatised the people such that the indelible picture in the minds of Nigerians today of their President is that of an ethnic chauvinist, a leader they would not have wished even for an enemy nation. Nigerians have never been this disillusioned about their country, so much that the closest thing to its disintegration is the ethnic and faith identity of the faces adorning the Aso Rock Villa.

It is in this state of suspicion among the various groups that the next President is being discussed. While the agitation for power-shift from the North to the South is in tandem with the need for national equity, the underlying concern is the need for a breather from the reign of terror with which the administration of this nation has been associated in the past seven years.

Unfortunately, the security breach also wears religious faces that it is scary that the seat of power would portray absolute dominance by the same religion. This feeling is so strong, notwithstanding that the killings, particularly in the North-West, have a large number of Muslims as targets and victims.

The final list of the presidential and vice presidential candidates is here eventually. The faces thrown up reflect a combination of tribes and religion that it is difficult for anyone to beat the chest that his or her interest is fully satisfied. For the advocates of power-shift or Southern president, the PDP is out of the equation.

The agitation for religious balance is not borne out in the APC; the combination in the Labour Party which appears to meet both power-shift and faith balance suffers apparent delivery capability if winability is absolutely a measure of structure anchored on the players. The choice even by the various ethnic nationalities is not an easy one. The several groups in the Middle Belt region which, pulled together, is a formidable majority group, need a lot of deep thinking about the dangerous notion that none of them is electable.

They must look at the parties and make a loud statement with their votes otherwise when it is the turn of Northern President, they are not reckoned with and when a Southern Presidential candidate seeks Northern partnership they are seen as not worthy of consideration.

The choice for all Nigerians is between the devil and the deep blue sea. The Yoruba call it having honey in the mouth in an atmosphere where the air is fouled. In the final analysis, two considerations will be dominant: the region, personality and worldview of the president (not the vice president); the second is the love for power by the political actors.

Nigeria! We hail thee.

Ebiseni is Secretary General, Afenifere.

NIGERIA: Buhari's Quest To Crown His Successor

BY BOLAJI ADEBIYI

Somehow, President Muhammadu Buhari has a knack for starting late and finishing very badly. Earlier in the week, he expressed the wish that every departing executive always wanted: to anoint a successor. “I wish to solicit the reciprocity and support of the governors and other stakeholders in picking my successor,” he told the governors of the All Progressives Congress on Monday shortly before he departed the country for another in his numerous overseas tours.

Buhari told the governors that his desire was the party’s policy and that if all the exiting governors had by that policy been allowed to anoint their successors while the returning governors had been given the right of first refusal, it was only fair that he would be allowed to do that at the federal level. This is not exactly correct and his speechwriter must have mixed up things.

The party has not shown that it has any policy at all, wandering about since the president ascended to power in 2015. Governors have always had to battle for their political lives. In 2019, under Adams Oshiomhole, the truculent erstwhile national chairman of the party, many of them struggled to retain their seats while those that were exiting had hard times installing their replacements.

In Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode was shunted aside and unseated despite the intervention of his colleagues. In Ogun State, where Ibikunle Amosun, a bosom friend of Buhari, held court, his choice, Adekunle Akinlade, a former federal legislator, was worsted by Dapo Abiodun, who is now in the saddle.

Amosun’s experience was particularly interesting. Riding on his close relationship with Buhari, he did anti-party, asking Akinlade to cross the carpet to another party where he emerged as the flag bearer. Thereafter, the decamped fellow was taken to the Presidential Villa in Abuja for an audience with the president who received him with glee. As loyal party men protested this high-level acceptance of organisational indiscipline, Buhari appeared at a rally in Abeokuta to add insult to injury. “Vote for the candidate of your choice,” he told the mammoth audience that consisted of the renegade’s supporters as well as APC members.

The situation in 2021 was not different. Virtually rudderless since 2020 when Oshiomhole was elbowed out of office, the party managed to install new leadership in March this year. How that leadership emerged is too notorious for its interrogation to detain us here. But it is enough to say that leadership has yet to settle down to promulgate any transition policy referred to by the president. Rather it is already manifesting internal strife as Salihu Lukman and Isaac Kekemeke, vice-chairmen of the North-west and South-west zones, have publicly complained about the one-man-show of Abdullahi Adamu, the new national chairman, in cahoots with Buhari.

The president’s quest, it would seem, was, therefore, based on a falsehood that the governors he addressed are certain to have detected. No wonder their meeting on the night of the address over Buhari’s request in Abuja reportedly ended in a deadlock between the protagonists and antagonists despite their promise earlier in March that they would do his bidding during the transition period.

However, it is important to note that Buhari’s wish is neither novel nor illegitimate. It is the practice for an exiting executive to desire to entrust the reins of power to a trusted successor that would ostensibly continue and consolidate their policy legacies. This political objective is responsible for the military’s insistence on imposing a guided democracy so that an incoming democratic administration does not rock the boat. This was why in 1979, Olusegun Obasanjo, a four-star general, preferred little known Shehu Shagari to a tested political warhorse Obafemi Awolowo. It was for this reason that Abdulsalami Abubakar preferred Obasanjo to Olu Falae in 1999. Obasanjo too managed the process for his preferred aspirant and candidate, Umaru Yar’Adua, in 2007.

But the attainment of that political objective needs a tactical approach that would legitimise its desired outcome. This will require the internalising of that political objective within the context of the structures and processes of the party. In other words, the president’s choice has to be taken through the party’s selection process. And for it to be seen as legitimate, it cannot be executed overnight or in the middle of the process.

Once Obasanjo won his second term, he made it clear that his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, would not succeed him. And as soon as he lost out in his third term agenda bid, he unveiled Yar’Adua as his preferred choice so that every other aspirant knew who and what he was up against. His deputy, therefore, explored another platform, the Action Congress. So, when Yar’Adua coasted home to victory at the party’s nomination convention, the talk of imposition by the worsted opponents within the PDP was seen to be in bad faith.

If Buhari had a sound political management team, he would have been advised to project his preferred successor long before now. Rather, and asked by a broadcast network, during a choreographed interview, who his preferred successor was, he replied that it was not his problem.

Now, after 28 persons have purchased nomination forms at a whopping N100 million price tag each and have expended much more resources on electioneering nationwide, Buhari is talking about nominating a successor a few days to the elastic nomination day.

What he needs to note is that although his wish might be understandable as the party leadership reserves the privilege to point the way for its members, it is, however, the right of the rank and file to reject the hierarchy’s choice if they are convinced that it is not in their interest. It means, therefore, that the president’s choice can be defeated in an open and fair contest. This too, will not be a novelty.

In 1978, Obafemi Awolowo, leader and presidential aspirant of the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria, wanted his long-time associates, Emmanuel Alayande and Josiah Olawoyin, to fly the governorship flags of the party in Oyo and Kwara States. His younger associates, Bola Ige and Cornelius Adebayo stood stoutly in his way. Twice the congresses were conducted, and twice the young Turks won resoundingly. Awolowo bowed to the wishes of the rank and file in the two states.

I hope Buhari’s handlers will bring this to his attention.

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Nigeria's Hopeless Fight Against Corruption

BY TOBORE OVUORIE

Buhari swears in ministers into his cabinet in Abuja, Nigeria November 11, 2015

Seven years after President Muhammadu Buhari promised to swiftly defeat corruption, Nigerians who are now worse off than they were in 2015 doubt that the president's anti-graft war will ever succeed.

Nigeria's Muhammadu Buhari during his 2015 election campaign not only promised to swiftly defeat militant Islamist movement Boko Haram and boost the failing economy, but also take decisive actions against corruption.

A large number of the country's electorate supported his presidential bid at the ballot box, hoping for a turning point in the fight against endemic corruption. Even the media trumpeted his integrity in the run-up to the elections.

"One of the major plan on which the present government ... came on board, was to tackle corruption. But it has not been able to do so," Sheriffdeen Tella, professor of economics at Nigeria's Olabisi Onabanjo University, told DW.

"In fact, the level of corruption has increased so much that people have lost hope in his ability to do this," Tella added.

"And corruption has actually fought back. It has not only affected the education sector, it also affected the health sector and all other sectors of the economy."

It has been over seven years since Nigerians put their hope in "SaI Baba” as Buhari is popularly known.

Many Nigerians complain about how life has become worse since he came to power and express doubt over his promised anti-graft war.
Shocking theft

Lanre Arogundade, a trade unionist and former president of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), told DW that Nigerians' concerns are valid.

"Nobody can blame Nigerians if at this stage they are doubting the anti-graft war or its effectiveness. And the reason for this cannot be far-fetched," he told DW.

"One can give the striking example of the allegation against the accountant general of the federation that he singlehandedly stole about 80 billion naira [around €180 million]."

Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arrested the country's accountant general, Ahmed Idris, in connection with allegations of diversion of public funds.

"This development has actually confounded many to the extent that Nigerians have been calculating how many years it would take for a single individual to spend this money," Arogundade emphasized.

Financial analysis indicated that if 1million naira was being spent every day, it would amount to 365 million naira in a year. It would therefore take 10 years to spend about 3.6 billion of the 80 billion naira. And 100 years to spend 36 billion naira.

One of the consequences of Idris' alleged theft is the closure of Nigeria's public universities. University lecturers said he is partly responsible for the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) which has put the future of Nigeria's youth on hold.
Anywhere but Nigeria

Collin Xavier, a 20-year-old first year international law student at Ukraina's Karazin Kharkiv National University, barely sleeps these days.

He is self-sponsored after training to be a stylist and designer at a Nigerian fashion school.

His hunger for success led him to Ukraine for his education. His future had looked bright, until Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. He was lucky to escape with his life — and little else — to Berlin.

Now, squatting with two Arab families — also refugees — he stays awake every day until 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. thinking and hoping.

The night breeze helps him think straight to mull the dilemma and trauma of losing everything.

Returning to Nigeria isn't really an option for Collin. He fears the endemic corruption which has brought the country to its knees. He worries about the quality of education in Nigeria because of incessant closure of universities due to striking lecturers — caused by the corrupt actions of public office holders.
Deeper and deeper

Corruption is certainly not a new phenomenon in Nigeria. Rather, it has long been an intrinsic element of Nigerian society affecting virtually all spheres of the West African country.

In 2021, Nigeria ranked 154th out of 180 countries listed in the Transparency International's Corruption Index.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that the corruption is culturally acceptable because members of the family, tribe or ethnic group benefit from an individual's ill-gotten gains.

At the point when former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan relinquished his government role, the country was at the brink of ruin due to endemic corruption being recklessly displayed.

Seven years later, following a historic change of power on the grounds of defeating corruption in Nigeria, West Africa's most populous nation is said to be sinking deeper into the mire of corruption.

Nigerian security forces are battling a 12-year jihadist insurgency by Boko Haram militants in the country's northwest that has killed more than 40,000 people.

Whether in terms of the president's promise to swiftly defeat Boko Haram or fix the economy, it was clear Buhari's integrity would be tested.

Many Nigerians believed in him as they visited his past — when he was military head of state and was considered a no-nonsense person — thus invested a whole lot of hope in him. In-depth research indicated that such investment is unprecedented in the history of Nigeria.

Even after his first four years in office, many gave the Buhari-led government the benefit of the doubt that it would be difficult to fix the state of the nation, given the degree of rot they had inherited.
A salad of hope

The government started on a very good note but completely did almost a 360 degrees at the point when many of the efforts were about yielding fruits, Olanrewaju Suraju, chairman of the Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA) told DW. He said that he holds Buhari's cabinet members responsible for this.

"And, a number of them — a host of many of the ministers who are true to type — the same politicians who have only just changed their political party but not their orientation, decided to take advantage of the opportunity of the anti-corruption to also be corrupt and share in some of the recovered loot," he said.

Noting that President Buhari maybe be overwhelmed, Suraju said "we want to see a situation where he is holding people to account. It is not just a few; it has to be holistic. We expect more firm action from the president and that actually is missing in some instances. So, that gives a whole lot of cause for concern."

To highlight the importance of anti-corruption for socio-economic growth — which is being raised globally — Buhari through the anti-graft agency; EFCC, has arrested, detained and even prosecuted some public office holders, the latest being the country's accountant-general for the staggeringly monumental fraud he's been perpetrating for years.

But Nigerians are saying that fighting corruption should not just be about probes, arrests and prosecutions, it should be about prevention — something the Buhari-led government lacks.

"What we have not seen under this government is the prevention of corruption such that it keeps happening again, and again, and again," Arogundade, the trade unionist told DW.
Poor preparedness and failing economy

The Buhari-led government seem incapable of coping with the level of corruption that has engulfed the economy.

Investigations reveal it has been quite hard for the government to save the fainting economy because the consequences of corruption are largely affecting the production, as well as distribution of goods.

Professor Tella told DW that the government was not prepared for the magnitude of problems it has to deal with, and it could not even begin to overcome them — not to mention providing the strong leadership necessary to grow the Nigerian economy.

Arogundade also doubts whether the government can fix the economy.

"It is clear that things are really not working. Diesel which is supposed to be deregulated, and part of the argument for deregulation was that ultimately it would bring prices down, but prices keep skyrocketing everywhere. So, there are obvious question marks over the ability of the government to actually fix the economy."
‘Interesting' days ahead

HEDA's chairman told DW that the fraudulent activities perpetrated within the last eight years would be exposed after the present government relinquishes power because the law enforcement and anti-corruption agencies are presently timid to do that now.

"We are going to see a whole lot of expose after the government leaves office. Many of the law enforcement and anti-corruption agencies are either compromised; timid, to actually reveal some of the atrocities that they know or reported to them," he said.

Suraju said Nigeria's anti-corruption agencies have not attained the level of independence that guarantee their security of tenure or independence to speak up against the corruption and atrocities being committed by political office holders.

"So, they technically would rather not jeopardize their office and just choose to wait till when it is considered expedient for them to actually spill the beans and then take appropriate action. We would see a whole lot of that happening when this government leaves office," he added.

Nigerians have taken to various social media platforms calling for the public identification of individuals and institutions being investigated for corruption by the various anti-graft agencies.

They say naming and shaming would be very helpful to the country because corruption is already killing the country and people, so should be a source of concern to everyone.
Way forward

All experts sampled for this artcle told DW that Nigeria needs a government that would from the beginning tackle corruption with its own transparency and accountability clearly seen. They all expressed worry that it is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that if Buhari could not do it, who else could?

Professor Tella said there was no way out for Nigeria in the short run. "Until after the election of next year, that is 2023, that is when we can say we are ready to improve either on the issue of corruption or the economy generally."

He said an anti-graft war requires having a plan — a national plan — something the Buhari-led government lacks. The plan should include available resources, where the country and government wants to be at any point in time, amongst others.

"What it should do first, is to have a plan. And that plan must be able to lead us to where we should be may be in the next 20, 30 years," Professor Tella told DW. "For now, there is no such plan and until we have such a thing, the government would continue to be on trial and error over time."

Lanre Arogundade doubted the possibility of an end to corruption in Nigeria. "We keep talking about the same thing: The fact that corruption is still very much there. It seems as if we are sitting on a barber's chair that keeps rotating and nothing much has actually changed."

"It would have been good for one to be able to say that there is some form of end in sight to endemic corruption in the country but definitely it is something that is just too difficult to say," he continued. "There is no way that one cannot be pessimistic when it comes to this particular issue."

Suraju said holistic change would begin with Nigerians revisiting their personal and family values because public office holders do not fall from heaven; they are from families. "It is a function of garbage in, garbage out. The moment we keep producing these level of characters, then we would still have them aspiring and becoming public office holders that would then be causing us this level of hardship."

He said imbibing the culture and orientation of not just patriotism, but also of responsibility in Nigerian children is crucial.

"We would really need to check kind of persons and characters that we are throwing up within our system and also our homes to go into the society."

--------------------DW

2023, Buhari And The Succession Battle

BY ENIOLA BELLO

To adapt House Leader Alhassan Doguwa’s method of announcing the census result of his immediate family, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has, at the time of writing this, 25 aspirants that have procured the party’s presidential nomination forms at the princely fee of N100 million. Some personally bought the forms, some had the forms bought for them by friends or political associates, and yet some others had the forms procured by groups and coalition of groups. On this (un)enviable list of presidential aspirants are the party’s co-founder, the vice president, five governors, five senators, five ministers, a former Senate president, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, a former national chairman of the party, a popular pastor who had long self-prophesied himself as No.16 in presidential historical order, and two or three others whose name recognition is nil.

How lucky the APC is! When the party fixed the fees for its presidential nomination forms at N100m, there was a general condemnation, particularly in the media. Some APC officials made spirited defence of the party’s decision, saying the high nomination fees was meant to discourage unserious aspirants from wasting the party’s time and resources. The party may as well not have bothered explaining away its decision. The expensive presidential nomination fees didn’t seem to have spared the party from having a deluge of aspirants seeking its ticket for the 2023 elections. At no time in the electoral history of Nigeria have so many aspirants sought the presidential ticket of one party. What is the catch? Why would so many people be aspiring to preside over the affairs of a country so weighed down by general insecurity, huge debts, high unemployment, crippling inflation, and unstable foreign exchange crisis; and on the platform of a party whose administration in the last seven years has collapsed the country, to borrow a popular presidential expression, “from top to bottom”?

Has the Nigerian presidential office now become an all-comer affair? Is it because the performance of President Muhammadu Buhari has been so pathetic that every Rochas and Ben and Yahaya and Sani now bets at doing a better job; something like, “If Buhari could be president, why can’t I?” Could that be the reason why a couple of the aspirants who are barely known beyond their streets, and who have no hope in hell of getting the vote of a single delegate outside of themselves, also bought the presidential nomination forms? Or is it no more than an investment with profit motif in mind as the party primaries draw close; a game for political visibility; a gamble on being the beneficiary of a likely stalemate between the top aspirants; an expectation of possible Buhari endorsement; a contest for supremacy and positioning in different zones; a hired gun to undermine the prospects of one or two serious contenders; or mere tools for continued domination of one region?

In December 2014, only five aspirants contested the APC presidential primary in which Buhari picked the party ticket. Since his victory in the 2015 general election, through his re-election in 2019, Buhari has in his utterances, actions and appointments shown himself to be more a regionalist than a nationalist. Those he appointed to oversee some critical ministries like Justice, Defence, Power, Finance, Humanitarian Affairs, Labour and Education are either self-serving or ineffectual or incompetent or overwhelmed. Strangely, the president, who enjoys delegating responsibility but shuns supervision, hardly sanctions his aides and appointees for bad behaviour. Buhari appears so disinterested in the actions and inactions of his ministers, so unperturbed about the disconnect between his administration and the people, and so scornful of the concerns of a critical segment of the populace on the direction he has taken the country that it wouldn’t be totally out of place to say he’s content in being the president, for its own sake. Yet this president, more than any of his predecessors since 1999, has had every support to be a force for the good of the country. He has had total control of the party, which, without internal opposition, had been run since its formation in 2014, to satisfy his every whim. The National Assembly has, since his re-election in 2019, servilely approved every presidential request. The Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) has been very supportive, and individually, almost every state governor, even in the opposition People’s democratic Party (PDP), has been playing the good boy to the president. Not even disruptive protests by civil society have been directly proportional to the administration’s general lack of direction.

In a Channels TV interview earlier in the year, Buhari had, in a blank stare, dismissively said that the 2023 election was not his problem. Yet some governors of the ruling party have been quoted as saying the president would decide or guide the party in deciding the candidate for the top job. Indeed, there has been a whispering campaign that Buhari’s endorsement would determine who picks the APC presidential ticket at the end of the day. Consequently, a swirl of speculation has followed not one or two among those who have bought, or have had bought for them, the party’s presidential nomination forms as Buhari’s joker. It would be interesting to see how a presidential endorsement for one person on the growing list of aspirants would not end up a problem. Or wasn’t Buhari in that interview simply waving a political sleight of hand, having a dissimulation of sorts behind the blank stare?

Isn’t it curious that the APC would sell its presidential nomination forms at N100 million and Buhari, who in 2014 claimed to have taken a bank loan to procure the same forms, would as president and party supremo find this comfortable? Is there a hidden catch somewhere? Why would former House Speaker Dimeji Bankole, a man who didn’t have enough delegates to pick the governorship ticket of Ogun State in 2014, decide to waste N100 million to buy the nomination forms for a ticket he knew he may not even have the vote of a single delegate from his state? Why would the APC collect the nomination fees from two different coalitions who have made it their self-assigned duties to co-opt CBN (Central bank of Nigeria) Governor Godwin Emefiele and ADB (Africa Development Bank) President Akinwumi Adesina into the presidential contest when both are evidently not party members? In accepting payment for forms in the name of Emefiele and Adesina, isn’t the APC implying that both are closet members of the party? Or did the party simply collect the payment on false pretence? How would five ministers in the administration resort to similar narrative, claiming that a group of friends or associates or supporters paid for the forms?

Or is this ongoing charade simply a grand scheme to, like a colleague argued, launder money into APC to fund the party’s campaigns? Part V, Sections 75-97 of the Electoral Act 2022 focuses, among others, on the registration, structure, management, monitoring, funding, campaigns and election expenses of political parties. The Act demands transparency on source of funds, limits campaign donations, puts a cap on election expenses, and prescribes sanctions for infractions. Section 87.1 empowers the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) thus:

“The Commission shall have power to place limitation on the amount of money or other assets which an individual can contribute to a political party or candidate and to demand such information on the amount donated and source of the funds.”

On campaign donations from individuals and corporates, Section 88.8 states that, “No individual or other entity shall donate to a candidate more than N50,000,000.” Moving from the general to the specific on election expenses, Section 88.2 states, “The maximum election expenses to be incurred by a candidate at a presidential election shall not exceed N5,000,000.” In respect of a political party, Section 89.2 adds, “Election expenses incurred by a political party for the management, or the conduct of an election shall be determined by the Commission in consultation with the political parties.”

With this Act, it is impossible as it was in previous elections for a candidate or party to arm-twist top businessmen and their usually faceless friends to donate billions at campaign fundraisers. Was that the challenge APC wanted to side-track by unduly jacking up the nomination fees to different offices and encouraging the mushrooming of aspirants? Isn’t it possible that some senators and ministers and former governors and some other endorsement-seeking public officials got their business fronts and government contractors in the guise of one coalition, or one group, or the other to procure their forms? Isn’t the deluge of presidential aspirants on the ruling party’s platform not some dubiously clever way of infringing on the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 without necessarily breaking the law; or to use a football language, committing a technical foul on an opponent to escape referee sanction?

With the APC game of brinkmanship, why would the preponderance of those ministers pretending to be in the race for the party’s presidential ticket care to resign? And why would Buhari force their hands to so do? Didn’t he say the 2023 election was not his problem?

---------------------THIS DAY LIVE

NIGERIA: Maximising Buhari’s Remaining Time In Office

BY WAZIRI ADIO

Muhammadu Buhari

By this time next year, President Muhammadu Buhari will have just four months left in office. Many Nigerians, within government and outside of it, in good and in bad faith, are dutifully ticking off the remaining months and days. Not a few people are already looking forward to the morning after 29 May 2023. From one of his recent statements, the president seems to be in this category too. Not that he has a choice, but he seems eager to move on to his second retirement, and to less-exacting things like taking extended rest, spending time on his farm, and attending to his grandchildren.

President Buhari is blessed with an unflappable mien. So, it is difficult to know if he is approaching the remaining 16 months with a sense of fulfilment or with some measure of anxiety. However, the fact that he has exhausted almost 85% of his eight years in office should give him a strong cause for pause. He came to office with wide and wild expectations. In almost seven years, the poetry of campaign has been given a short shrift by the laborious prose of governance. Even when ample accommodation is made for external headwinds and some landmark achievements, critics and supporters alike seem to agree that the Buhari administration could have done much more to meet the expectations of 2015.


Time is hopelessly running out. The president will not have another chance to make a different impression. In fact, he has been lucky to have a second chance in two different ways. Thirty years after he was kicked out of office by his military colleagues, he rode back triumphantly into the presidency with a halo: cast in the messiah mould, he defeated an incumbent to become president, the only Nigerian ever to do so. And four years later, he was re-elected as president. The only other Nigerian who has had the dual luck of being both military head of state and being voted president twice is President Olusegun Obasanjo. This is an honour many of his military colleagues and others covet but will not get, and not for lack of trying.

This rare luck, the expectations of his ardent supporters and even the disdain of his implacable traducers, and the limited time available to make good should propel some urgency and intensity. To compound matters, most of the remaining time will be dominated by the politics of 2023. There is a feverish battle aboard for the soul of the ruling party, involving not just the governors and legislators but also some within his government. This is not unfair or unexpected: people will have to think about their political future without the president. The party convention and the election of principal officers will be followed by what promises to be an epic contest for the presidential ticket of the party. Then, there is the not so small matter of general election in which the main opposition party will make a spirited effort to reverse the setback of 2015.

Every defeated incumbent or term-barred one with elected or soon-to-be-elected successor faces a lame-duck period, a period of distraction, lethargy, and limited influence. Given the informal but spirited flag-off of political activities, the lame-duck period has arrived very early for President Buhari. Beyond the fact that politics has now effectively crowded out everything else, there are specific political pre-occupations likely to limit presidential performance. The folks at the National Assembly are already consumed in the quadrennial battle to earn their return tickets (as usual, most of them are not likely to return, as the turn-over rate for national legislators has been remarkably high since 2003). Some members of the president’s cabinet and some of his key appointees have open or thinly disguised political ambitions, some are hitching their tents with the emerging camps, and others are busy trying to figure out what to do next. It is safe to say that most of them are distracted or tired even. This is the implementation context for the president’s remaining 16 months in office.

The sudden realisation of limited time may evoke three different reactions. The first is to continue at the current pace, with the hope that certain ongoing initiatives will come to fruition soon and history will take a fair, equal-measure view of things. The second is to attempt to do so much in the little time left. This could lead to the introduction of a slew of initiatives, driven by a concern that the judgement of history could be harsh and by the belief that there is still enough time to do many things. The third, a practical half-way house of sorts, will be to focus on a few ongoing areas with renewed intensity. I don’t think the first two approaches should be favoured, not just because of Buhari and his potential legacy, but because of Nigeria. The current pace will not cut it. And realistically, especially in the prevailing circumstances, there is little time left for any audacious reform, policy, turn-around, or legislation. On this basis, I will suggest that the administration should focus, with a laser-beam intensity, on just three things.

The first is improving security. Of the three agenda items that President Buhari ran on to get elected in 2015, fighting insecurity was the strongest. He was a soldier, a general and a former military head of state. That electoral promise spoke to his professional background and experience. At a time that Boko Haram posed a real threat not just to Nigerians in the North East but also elsewhere, it was easier for a significant number of Nigerians to choose a retired general over a civilian incumbent president whose handling of the threat was tainted by either denial or the mindset that Boko Haram was sponsored by people of certain regions and religions just to undermine him. But Boko Haram has not disappeared with the retired general in charge. To be sure, the capacity of the terrorist group to hold swathe of territories in the North East has been seriously diminished, and the siege has lifted on places like Abuja (where five major bombings occurred within two years and key government buildings were screened off). But Boko Haram is still there, with our gallant forces in constant push-back mode.

More disturbingly is that insecurity has gone beyond the North East, and more than at any other time in our history insecurity has become more generalised, more pervasive. The North West has become a major hotspot. Yes, there were incidents of cattle rustling in some parts of that zone and banditry in Zamfara State for a long time. In classic rendition of the broken window theory, what started as a localised problem in some remote villages in Zamfara has now spilled over into other states in the zone like Kaduna, Sokoto, Katsina (the president’s state) and even Niger State in North Central. Added to this, kidnapping has become widespread, especially in the North West and South West, there is an upsurge of clashes between herders and farmers, there is some sort of insurgency in the South East and a low intensity militancy is still ongoing in some part of the Niger Delta.

Given how central security is to practically everything, this is an area the president cannot afford to leave the country worse off than he met it. He should take this as his main thing for the time he has left in office. The good news is that this is not an area that will be too impacted by the distraction of politics. It is important to give our over-stretched armed forces all the moral, technical, operational and financial support they need to scale up assaults on the terrorists and sundry criminals harassing, abducting, maiming and killing our citizens. Nigerians are tired of tepid warnings or hollow promises. They want the full strength of the state to be brought against these criminals. Nothing should be off the table in this quest, including leveraging technology, using mercenaries, if necessary, further improving engagement with our neighbouring countries, enhancing policing of our borders, ensuring better coordination across tiers of government, improving intelligence gathering and acting on time on credible intelligence, and setting clear targets for and undertaking regular reviews with our security top-brass.

The second recommended area of laser focus for the president is on completing ongoing infrastructure projects. Though not one of the three campaign issues in 2015, or at best a subset of growing the economy, improving the stock of physical infrastructure in the country is one area in which the president, surprisingly, has earned his stripes. Either in restarting long-abandoned projects (like the Warri-Itakpe rail line) or completing the ones started by his predecessors (like the Abuja-Kaduna rail line) or starting and completing new ones (like the Lagos-Ibadan rail line), Buhari has done more for infrastructure than any of his predecessors in the fourth republic. This much his implacable critics will concede, even if grudgingly or with caveats. He is the infrastructure president, with tentacles not only in rails and roads, but also in electricity, health, water, aviation, and oil and gas.

Through enhanced budgetary allocations and special interventions such as the Presidential Intervention Development Fund, Sukuk Bonds, Road Infrastructure Tax Credit Scheme, the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative, the recently incorporated Infrastructure Company (InfraCo) and bilateral and concessionary loans from China etc., Buhari has enabled an increase in the quantum of infrastructure likely to impact quality of life, ease of doing business and even security in the country. However, some of the ongoing projects may slow down or fall off as politics takes centre stage. It will be important for him to ensure fund availability, insist on regular update and adopt a project management approach to the key projects. The following signature projects need to be completed: the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano gas pipeline, the Mambilla River Power Plant, the Second Niger Bridge, the Loko-Oweto Bridge, the Bodo-Bonny Road, the Abuja-Lokoja-Benin Highway, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Ibadan-Kano Rail, the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri Rail, the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Highway, and the East-West Road, among others.

My last limited agenda for the president is for him to ensure credible election next year. To be sure, presidents don’t conduct elections. That’s the remit of INEC. But the president has more than a passive role to play to ensure that INEC has all the resources it needs to undertake a credible election and to guarantee a fair playing field by preventing the co-option of state assets for electoral advantage. The first task for the president in this area will be for him to quickly sign the electoral act once the National Assembly concedes to his valid observation about imposition of direct primaries on political parties.

The second task under credible transition will be for the president to resist the temptation to force his choice on the country as his successor. The last time a departing president tried to do that was in 2007. It didn’t end well. The country is yet to live down the ripple effect that imposition created, and that attempt remains an indelible stain on the record of the perpetrator. Buhari can make credible election his parting and lasting gift to Nigeria. Despite the pressure that will be brought on him and the waning influence of a lame-duck period, he can do it. He should. History will be more than kind to him if he takes this right and honourable path.

------------------------THIS DAY

NIGERIA: PDP Chieftain Faults Buhari On Nnamdi Kanu, State Police

Muhammadu Buhari

BY ADEJOKE ADELEYE

PM NEWS

A chieftain of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Segun Sowunmi has said the position of President Muhammadu Buhari on the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, as he espoused during his interview on television on Thursday showed that he has not gotten over the shock of civil war.

The President had in the interview said he will not interfere in the ongoing treason trial of the IPOB leader or accede to request to release him from detention.

But Sowunmi said the tone of the President Kanu and IPOB was certainly not re-conciliatory nor reflective of the need to heal and unite the country.

In the same vein, Sowunmi said the President’s opposition to establishment of state police was not well thought out.

The PDP Chieftain noted that with the increasing population of the country, the attendant security challenges will naturally demand a multilayered policing framework and therefore Buhari’s decline to sign state police is not progressive.

“It is clear that the needed level of reflections has not gone into the opposition to state police by Mr President, the truth of the matter is that the multifaceted security challenges we have all over the country makes it imperative for the Fact and all leaders of goodwill to rethink this state police issue.

“If President Buhari is unwilling, he will find out with time, that he can only delay it, for an idea whose time has come cannot be killed.

“The population of the country is increasing, the attendant security challenges will naturally demand a multilayered policing framework. To obstinately say no is certainly not progressive.”

“On the Igbo issues generally and the Nnamdi Kalu specifically, it is most unfortunate that it seems the president has not gotten over the civil war after all these years, the tone is certainly not re-conciliatory nor reflective of the need to heal and unite the country.

“No one is interested in a crisis nor is a nation that is not harmonious with itself the best legacy for the president’s generation to bequeath to Nigeria,” Sowunmi said.

Nigeria’s Deadly Tug Of War Over Free Expression

Muhammadu Buhari. Image: George Esiri

This article is part of the THE FREE SPEECH PROJECT, a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech.

BY OHIMAI AMAIZE

ABUJA, NIGERIA (FUTURE TENSE)--For years, Steven Kefas was an operations manager at an environmental services company in Port Harcourt, a booming oil town at the mouth of the Niger River delta in southern Nigeria. In 2009, he signed up on Facebook just like any other young Nigerian at a time when Facebooking was the new cool. He simply wanted to post pictures. In 2010, he joined Twitter.

Now, on his Twitter profile, Kefas describes himself as an “accidental journalist,” a former “terror reporter,” and a former “political prisoner for 162 days.” He’s also become a symbol of Nigeria’s threatened press freedoms, even appearing in the U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights in 2019. His story exemplifies Nigerian authorities’ assault on free expression.

Beginning around 2013, Kefas began to receive troubling news from Kaduna, his home state in northwest Nigeria. Loved ones were sending him accounts and photographs of bloody and sometimes fatal attacks against people in Southern Kaduna, an area occupied by mostly Indigenous agrarian communities. The killings were reportedly carried out by herdsmen, mostly members of the dominant Fulani group. Kefas began posting the news and photos on Facebook and Twitter.

Kefas told me earlier this year that he believed his social media activism forced Nigerian security agencies to become more responsive to the attacks in the region—but also made him a target. On April 5, 2018, after several years, things reached a turning point when he posted pictures of the dead bodies of two young men who had been killed in a massacre. Facebook user Comr (short for “Comrade”) Mohammed Idris, a member of Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress party in Kaduna state, responded: “YOU WILL BE JAILED soon if you fail to answer some questions from security.” That same month, Kaduna Gov. Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai tweeted at him: “Dear Mr Kefas: This irresponsible and defamatory statement will require a response. So I hope when you receive from court summons, you will be able to prove your defamation? We are tracing your address for service of court processes. Help the processes by providing it early.”

While some Nigerians—and the Nigerian government—see the violence in Kaduna as a series of skirmishes over land between cattle-grazing herdsmen (the Fulani) and farmers (the Southern Kaduna people), Kefas, like many in his region, sees the killings as a form of genocide or ethnic cleansing. The situation was exacerbated in October 2018, when His Royal Highness Maiwada Raphael Galadima, the Agom Adara, the traditional ruler of the Adara people (a prominent ethnic group in Southern Kaduna), traveled to meet with the governor of Kaduna state, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, a Fulani. The Adara chief, whose position is recognized by the Nigerian state, visited the governor to discuss the deteriorating security situation in Adara land. On his return home, he and his wife were kidnapped by suspected Fulani herdsmen. His wife was released, seven days later. But the monarch was killed—even though the Adara people had paid a ransom. Not long after, despite the warnings he received in April, Kefas published a post titled “How the Kajuru Genocide Started,” arguing that the killing was not a random criminal act but a political murder. (Kajuru is the epicenter of violent attacks against farming communities in Kaduna state.) Despite the trouble it would lead to for him, Kefas is proud of the post. “It was the first time anyone had boldly written any article with a chronicle of events that connect the dots in a way that points to the complicity of the Kaduna state government in the happenings in Southern Kaduna,” he told me in an interview. With the absence of a sanctioned press reporting comprehensively on the Southern Kaduna crisis, Kefas said he stepped into the information void and created awareness about the killings through his social media activism.

“At the peak of those killings, whenever a village is under attack, the villagers will call me instead of calling the government or calling the security agencies,” he told me.

I asked Kefas how he verified most of the sensitive information he shared, considering that he was not a trained or professional journalist.

He said that he trusted his sources, as they were credible individuals such as community leaders and traditional chiefs. “There has never been any occasion where any information given to me turned out to be false. Instead, when they tell me they have 10 casualties, at the end of the day, there may be up to 50,” he said.

On some occasions when he received distress calls from community leaders, Kefas said he could hear a staccato of gunfire in the background and screams of women and children running for their lives. “In my mobile phone that is currently with the police, I have call records with gunshots in the background, commotion and people running. In that mobile phone, there are some images that have never been shared in the public domain.” The phone has been with law enforcement since May 2019, when he was arrested and remained in detention for 162 days.

Kefas believes that his phones were tapped well before his arrest, and for a long time he refrained from using his personal device. Instead, he felt more comfortable using his work phone. Despite his precautions, he said the Nigerian police were able to find and arrest him after monitoring his phone communications with a close friend.

The same strategy has been used several times by the Nigerian police. Since 2017, there have been at least four documented cases of the Nigerian police using phone records to lure, arrest, and arraign journalists with criminal charges for their work, according to a report published by the Committee to Protect Journalists in February 2020.

When Kefas asked the detectives who came to arrest him if they had a warrant, they presented a bulky document that contained several of his tweets and Facebook posts about the Kaduna governor and developments in the state since 2017. (He says some of them were only retweets, though.)

In the petition, Kefas was accused of inciting disturbance and injurious falsehood against the governor of Kaduna state via his Twitter account @realKefason—an account now deactivated by Twitter for inactivity, during the period Kefas spent in detention.

Kefas was charged with defamation of character, injurious falsehood, inciting disturbance, and cyberstalking. Under Section 24 of Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act, “cyberstalking”—an offense often used by Nigerian authorities to target journalists and activists under President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime—stipulates a punishment of a roughly $15,500 fine, three years of imprisonment, or both.

Social media and free expression are in crisis all over the world, but if in the United States that largely centers on calls for regulation in response to the proliferation of misinformation, in countries like Nigeria, the picture is even more complicated. On June 4, the Nigerian government banned Twitter entirely. (The ban remains in effect, though many people are getting around it by using virtual private networks.) In Nigeria, social media has been a vital source of uncensored information—such as Kefas’ posts about the atrocities in Kaduna. But the Nigerian government uses it as both a tool and a weapon to identify and punish dissent as well as to suppress undesirable speech. How Africa’s most populous nation resolves the struggle between democracy and the impulses of authoritarian rule—as well as the freedom social media can engender and the threats it can also pose—remains to be seen. But it is clear that this is a critical moment for the future of Nigeria.

Kefas is only one of several victims in the wave of civic repression that is sweeping across Nigeria, targeting activists, prominent opinion leaders, and journalists.

In November 2018, activist Deji Adeyanju was arrested and detained for criticizing officials of the Buhari regime on social media. He was subsequently rearrested and spent 78 days in detention before his release on March 1, 2019.

On Aug. 1, 2019, Abubakar Idris, a young Nigerian who often criticized Kaduna’s governor and the Buhari regime on social media, was abducted by suspected agents of the State Security Service from his residence in Kaduna. Amnesty International has said that Idris is a victim of enforced disappearance.

On Aug. 3, 2019, Omoyele Sowore—a human rights activist, founder of the online newspaper Sahara Reporters, and a presidential candidate during Nigeria’s election earlier that year—was arrested by the State Security Service after he called for a mass nationwide protest. In September 2019, he was charged with “conspiracy to commit treason” and “insulting” Buhari. Despite two separate court rulings ordering Sowore’s release from detention, the State Security Service refused to release him. Following international outrage and pressure from six U.S. lawmakers, Sowore was released on Dec. 24, 2019, albeit under strict bail conditions that bar him from leaving Abuja, the country’s capital. (He remains under these restrictions.)

On Oct. 20, 2020, during Nigeria’s #EndSARS protests against police brutality, Nigerian authorities met protesters with excessive military force, killing at least 10 people according to Amnesty International. Obianuju Catherine Udeh, popularly known as DJ Switch, livestreamed the attacks to her more than 900,000 followers on Instagram. Udeh, who said she counted at least 15 bodies of protesters shot by Nigerian security forces, has since fled Nigeria after claims she was being targeted by the authorities for her viral livestream of the violent attacks.

More recently, in January, the Nigerian government blocked access to the privately owned online newspaper Peoples Gazette after a series of reports critical of Buhari’s government.

Nigeria is currently listed in the CPJ 2021 prison census among countries where journalists are in detention. (CPJ cited the case of journalist Luka Binniyat arrested in November over a complaint by Samuel Aruwan, the Kaduna state commissioner for internal security and home affairs.)

Kefas said that social media has become the nightmare of Nigerian authorities seeking to exert absolute control over communication and information dissemination. “In Kaduna state, whenever you hear the governor speak, he is not really bothered about the terrorists that are known to be terrorizing the villages. His obsession is with social media users. And so also is the federal government.” (El-Rufai did not respond to a request for comment.)

The Nigerian situation, Kefas noted, would escalate further without any international pressure from countries like the U.S.

Unfortunately, the chances of U.S. political leaders stepping out to intervene in external circumstances are slim. “We haven’t even figured out how to address the problem in the domestic context,” Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told me in an interview. “So the global context is for now, I think, completely out of reach.”

Susan Benesch, faculty associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and founder of the Dangerous Speech Project, said Kefas’ story illustrates how social media can be a force for good and a tool in the hands of governments who want to silence dissent. Social media allows activists to accomplish all kinds of things that they couldn’t without the internet. But “it’s the very same feature that allows certain governments to persecute them,” she told me in an interview.

In August 2019, during Kefas’ detention at the Kaduna Convict Prison, Kefas’ mother paid him a visit and pleaded with him to forgo his activism. But Kefas decided that he would devote his life to activism and that there was no going back. He remains active online, including on Twitter—and the attacks in Kaduna are still happening.

Although he now walks as a free man, he remains concerned about his personal safety. He remains afraid that he might meet the same fate as Abubakar Idris, who has not been seen since August 2019.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

Open Letter To Former Junta Muhammadu Buhari Concerning Governance In A Democracy

Muhammadu Buhari. Image: Youtube via BBC


My dear Muhammadu Buhari,


I am not a usual letter writer, and I must admit, I barely complain for many reasons. It would make no sense to complain since nobody likely would listen, especially you, Buhari, knowing you for your extreme views and the preservation of Islamic fundamentalism, and your utmost desire to silence the press from around which you have a track record as a junta, remember?

It's not that you're so powerful and tough as permanently battered Nigerian citizens may seem to believe; it's just that you've taken advantage of what made you a junta, in the first place, when your colleague of juntas wrestled power and dissolved the 2nd Republic, positioning you as "head-of-state", a figure head, and besides, Tunde Idiagbon, who sat as your side kick and made draconian laws which covered you up and saved you the embarrassments of a weakling soldier from the public eye, and only if they had known you were nothing but a wimp. It did not take much sweat to erase you from its roster inside the Dodan Barracks commands, just like that; remember?

You only lasted as a junta because Idiagbon was there on your side, and protected you, and covered your weaknesses until another junta, Ibrahim Babangida, took care of you. Upon Idiagbon's trip to Mecca, so dumb of an admired junta who lost his sense of purpose, in its critical time, Babangida getting rid of you was like a rat, and it was done quietly, without any form of resistance, and locked you up, indefinitely; remember?

Of all the ugly decrees that your junta lead promulgated, you clamped on the press, and also murdered folks who did not commit any crime, save for what you did, all of a sudden, backdating the said draconian law to reflect time of crime on folks who only were trying to do their best out of bad situations, which shouldn't be justified, though, in a country you and your junta league hijacked. Do you remember?

I agree those you killed on drug charges committed crimes on moral grounds not on existing laws to be murdered the way you did, and despite the world's outcry, the international community, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other causes, worthy of note, you went ahead and ignored that, and executed them by firing squad. Their blood is in your hands.

The case of Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson and a list of journalists you had targeted to silence and proscribe its newspaper outlets is still very fresh in our minds, and it's only in an avalanche of insanity like Nigeria that the citizens can be permanently disabled, because you had barrels of the gun in your possession and could always use it to harass and intimidate the citizens you were assigned to protect its territories as a soldier.

On April 17, 1984, your retroactive decree was out there for all to see, sorting out media organizations you found detrimental to your brutal regime. You closed down the Imo Statesman, leaving it in a state of coma, never to be fully up again, and sent the journalists in that little statement the unique state had, packing, for the fact that its view had questioned the imprisonment of Alex Ekwueme while Shehu Shagari was under house arrest. You detained Niyi Onigoro, Idowu Odeyemi, Haroun Adamu and others, under Decree 4, crafted by the "Idiagbon-Buhari tandem", putting deep scars to the fourth estate and conquering the panicking press that admired the junta in the name of reform. You had no conscience, and despite all the atrocities under your handle, you still had the guts to run the country aground, again.

A little step back to reflect your past deeds, I have been compelled to drop you this missive as I felt disturbed on the happenings in that troubled country under your leadership, in mufti, since you discarded your khaki uniform, for the flowing robe and confessed to Nigerians that you have reformed yourself, and now a good man for the better, and a would be democrat to respect the rule of law, and uphold democracy; and that you have been destined to build bridges and make the country safe, and a better place for all with a thorough system based on the constitutional prescription of separation of powers; though there's none that exists at the moment, because, what you have is a fabricated document concocted by your colleagues of juntas who hijacked the peoples mandate over thirty years ago, and declined to let the civilian structure run a full course of its administrative duties as required without interference by your men in khaki uniform.

The military and guns consists of everything that is wrong with Nigeria. They beat up and arrest civilians on the streets. They mount road blocks and collect bribes before motorists can get their way and continue with a journey another roadblock stands a mile or so away, staged by uniformed men in the name of enforcing a law that is made up. They invade citizens' homes as armed robbers and take away all their belongings, and in some cases, kill them in the most brutal of circumstances. They gang up with their civilian counterparts and collect unnecessary levies, then share the proceeds as the cycle continues. Under your watch, the citizens now live in a state of empire and anarchy, even when you were so desperate and had begged to be allowed another chance to implement your ideals that would revive the country. The country is disappointed in you because you ate up your own words. You had vowed to make corruption a thing of the past the moment you step into Aso Rock. You also said you will stamp out Boko Haram and terrorism, while I have the hunch you're one of the kingpins, if not, why is Boko Haram still very much around? You completed your first term and Boko Haram was still out there causing all kinds of havoc. What explains that? Now the country is trapped with all the accumulated mess upon your assuming the mantle of leadership.

Remember you had promised Nigerians of a fair deal in governance when in 2003 Presidential election you lost on a very wide margin to your fellow junta Olusegun Obasanjo, whose administration then was the worst any could imagine? You did not take it lightly, and it kept bothering you since your enemies had always been your target whenever the opportunity knocks.

 In 2007, you surfaced again, in your second attempt for the presidency and lost to Shehu Yar'Adua who was handpicked by Obasanjo to continue with his 3rd Term agenda, and you complained about being rigged out, and blamed everything on those you claimed were enemies of the state who didn't want the country to move forward. As if you'll give up from the frustration and run around involving the presidential campaigns and its dubious nature, you picked up courage and never gave up, switching political parties, leaving the All Nigeria Peoples Party, the ANPP, for the Congress for Progressive Change, the CPC, under a platform you had vowed to wipe out corruption in its entirety, and delete the immunity clause your fellow junta had included in a fabricated constitution. You lost that election to Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party, the PDP, which erupted violence and wanton killings incited by your inflammatory remarks in which scores of Southern Christians and members of the National Youth Service Corps on election assignments were massacred by the Northern Islamic Jihadists. After the mayhem of a post election following your threat, Nigerians did not learn from the danger of electing you president.

However, nobody took you serious when you started your campaign to be president, switching parties and soliciting for funds to help boost your presidential campaign drive, which frustrated your efforts after three attempts until Bola Tinubu, another desperate politician who also wants to be president,  formed a new party from parts of other existing parties, and gave you the torch to take the lead. Actually, nobody knew that Tinubu himself was setting you as a front to propel his desire for the throne at Aso Rock, which he figured you in particular must be used in order to achieve his dreams. Tinubu, himself, would find out, eventually.

I am not short of memory to recount your trails of a bad military combat as transport officer, an ineffectual military governor, an embezzling petroleum minister, and as the list goes on, your first instance of joining politics and your quest for president. And, I'm pretty sure you recall what had generated the move for you to come back in disguise, in the form of an ordinary civilian. But, with all said and done, you got the ticket, finally, and nobody cried wolf about rigging. Your opponent conceded and called immediately to congratulate you for victory to respect the foundations of democracy, something you patently declined to acknowledge when you lost in the three previous presidential elections.

Nigerians still did not learn the danger upon all that. They reelected you again.

And here, we are.

But you must bear in mind that you are no longer a dictator, You are not an absolute ruler. It doesn't exist in a democracy. In order to run the affairs of state in a democratic fabric, the legislative organ of a country makes the laws, and not you, Buhari, and I'm not sure if you have been told that. You must recognize and defend democracy which you vowed to uphold when you took the oath of office. It is a fundamental value and a universal human right where it is practiced.

Be well and I hope you can revise your mindset, and become effective in what the people had demanded.

Signed:

Ambrose Ehirim,
Development and Editorial Board,
Igbo Journal Review

How Russia Helped Nigeria Defeat Biafra During Civil War – Buhari

Muhammadu Buhari shake hands with Russia's Vladimir Putin at the Russian-African Summit in Sochi, Russia, Thursday, October 24, 2019'

Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari has revealed how Russia helped Nigeria defeat the Biafra warlords during the nation’s civil war between 1967 and 1970.

Buhari spoke in his speech at the Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi, Russia on Thursday.

Buhari said Nigeria’s relationship with Russia began in 1960 with the old Soviet Union, saying that Russia helped Nigeria with military assistance during the civil war against the Biafran forces.

“Nigeria’s relations with Russia just like the rest of Africa, began during the Soviet era when diplomatic relations were first established in 1960. That relationship covered areas such as education, healthcare, solid minerals development and military assistance, especially during Nigeria’s civil war.

“More recently, our partnership has extended to the oil and gas sector as well as military and technical assistance in support of our fight against Boko Haram insurgency. At this point, I would once again like to thank His Excellency, President Putin for his support, especially in the area of security.

“It is my hope that through this forum, Russia and Africa will revitalize their time-tested relationship by exploring new opportunities for the collective benefit of our peoples,” he said.

Buhari said since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, relations between Russia and African nations had lagged a historical levels, saying that the former Soviet Union had been a key partner of Africa, while recalling the strong support received from the former Soviet Union in Africa’s anti-colonial struggles, stressing that Africa would continue to remember this, and many other significant gestures of solidarity and support that shaped history as a continent.

He added that in an increasingly changing world driven by trade, technology and innovation, the time had come to inject new energy and pragmatism in Africa-Russia relations for the mutual benefit of both Africa and Russia, emphasising that this mutually beneficial relationship must go beyond trade and business.

“Our re-energised partnership must also address challenges such as counter-terrorism, poverty eradication, human and drug trafficking, illicit financial flows, climate change and migration to mention some of the many contemporary challenges facing our peoples.

“Our continent is rich in human and natural but is lagging behind in capital and technology. This is why we see increased conflict, migration and instability that is also impacting many nations outside Africa. On our part, we in Africa have continued to view Regional Integration as a key development priority. Our integration is one that seeks to address our infrastructure deficit, conflicts and terrorism, climate change, human trafficking and of vitality, trade.

“Our integration process also takes into account our diversity as a continent and our unique challenges at the national and sub-national levels. This is why progress has been slow but steady. With a population of over 1.2 billion people, for us in Africa, getting our socio-economic integration right presents enormous opportunities as we stand to promote robust, equitable and inclusive growth that will minimize conflict and enhance economic development.

“Today, these aspirations are captured in the Agenda 2063 of the African Union. We are confident that with strong partners like Russia, our goal of having a peaceful and prosperous continent is achievable. Nigeria is the largest economy and most populous country in Africa. Today, our population is almost over 200 million people. It is expected to grow to approximately 400 million by 2050. This will make Nigeria the third most populous nation in the world behind China and India.

“Our economy is heavily dependent for its foreign exchange on oil. With the result that our high Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is not as a result of domestic sector productivity. In the circumstances, although we still remain an oil dependent nation, our government in the last four years has focused on diversifying our economy by supporting key job creating sectors such as agriculture, mining and ICT,” he stated.

To achieve this, Buhari explained that the nation invested aggressively in infrastructure development and introduced policies and programmes that enhanced ease of doing business, reduce corruption in the public sector and enforce the rule of law.

“It is this inclusive economic diversification agenda that we want to forge a new Nigeria-Russia cooperation. Already, we are seeing progress in areas of power generation, solid minerals development and rail transportation and I hope this will be expanded to Agriculture, Manufacturing and other means of Transportation.

“We already have over 200 Nigerian university students in Russia benefitting from Russian Government scholarships which have been on-going since 1960. Earlier this year, Nigeria signed a Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) with Russia which will expand the human capital development support we are already receiving,” he said.

....................PM NEWS