Sunday, 30 November 2014
Who to blame for Boko Haram
Boom Haram BH is a terrorist organisation fronting as a jihadist group. They have no principe or grievance for which they are fighting the Nigerian state. They have grown from strength to strength due in part to a variety of reasons. The ground work for their being was the use of religion by short sighted politicians in our third republic. They implemented half barked sharia laws in Northern Nigeria. They burnt books and closed social centres forgetting that Northern Nigeria is not a country but part of a federation. All of these while they neglected their people's welfare. They then went further to co-op militants who wanted to be their provisional arm enforcing sharia. They soon became disillusioned with their political masters who were in fact worse then they had feared. These politicians were thieves who were only interested in themselves. Hence the movement of BH. Their growth also depended on the ambition of politicians who wanted power in the centre and were content for the country to burn to prove they were indispensable for the governance of the state. Our neighbouring countries were also into it. Niger and Cameroon provided succor for BH to store arms and maintain logistics for their war against Nigeria.
The biggest benefactor has been the Nigerian state. The current government have a written the book on how not to deal terrorists in the manner and actions they have taken to dealing with this matter.
We have a President who ought to a mere local council member and by stroke of luck, without ambition and ability risen to the highest position in the country. Corruption has like cancer premeditated all spheres of our lives including the military. The effect is a demoralised, ill equiped and badly led armed forces.
The failure to galvanise the people, empathise with the direct victims of this war has caused us to lose the battles with BH. The government is shortsighted, befret of ideas on how to fight this war. When the Chiboke girls were taken, the government did not act because it was busy calculating the political motives of the news save for social media who made it a global matter, our own government could not have cared less. In all of the bomb blasts in Northern Nigeria, the president has not been there to cry with the people rather his office issues bland statements. The opposition are also busy giving sucoor to BH by scapegoating and point scoring.
The military has failed to deploy in sufficient troops to deal with the terrorists. Half of the military is used as personal protection service for our political and military elites and for political actions for example during the recent Ekiti governorship election, they had enough soldiers to lock down the state. The government has singularly failed to put the country on a war footing. They have failed to seal the Northern boundaries and the states most affected to flush out these terrorists. They have failed to expose sponsors of BH and deal with them. They have failed to enact an enabling terrorists laws to deal with support and material support for terrorism. They have failed to make countries where suspected terrorists operate from pay by laying waste these countries. They have failed to learn from Israel or our own civil war.
All retired army personnels should be recalled and any money stolen from our security budget dealt with as treason and punished with death. Mobilise the country for the war and declare a state of emergency in the affected states. There should be a general war tax to properly fund the war. Hire mercenaries if required to lead if our officers are without abilities and knowledge executing a secure and clear strategy of flushing out terrorists. All petrol stations monitored or only used for the war effort. Let the terrorist trek and not in vehicles powered with our petrol.
Finally decouple religion from the State. Establish a Marshall plan to create the environment for development in Northern Nigeria. Education must be a central point of any plan. The people of Northern Nigeria have been ill served by all the alleged leaders they have produced todate.
EFCC’s laughable subsidy theft recovery
Friday, 28 November 2014
The law and the Speaker and politics
Given this background and history, the framers of our 1999 constitution sought to learn from our past and inserted a clause in the constitution that any parliamentarian who jumped ship from their sponsoring political party would lose their seat in parliament. If you believe that your constituents support your change of political allegiance you will be reelected. However, the constitution recognised that political parties are human and developing organs inserted an exemption to the above provision. That exemption is that you are able to retain your parliamentary seat if your political party is spit.
If you are an office holder in parliament and you hold that office due to election into that body and by your action lose your seat, then you also lose that office. However, each parliament while accepting the constitutional provision, set rules on how to actualise this constitutional provision. The Speaker upon notification by INEC that a member of the House has switched political parties, will by obligation of the constitution declare the seat of the member vacant. INEC will then conduct new elections for the vacant seat.
The House of Representatives, has principal officers including the House Leader and the Majority whip. In the matter of the Speaker, on the face of the constitution, decamped to another party his seat is vacate but the procedural method of declaring a seat vacant is absent as the decamping Speaker is not about to declare his seat vacant. In the instance, the Leader of the House and or the Majority Whip moves a motion in the House to remove the Speaker. A simple majority vote sacks the Speaker and appoints or elevates the deputy Speaker to the Speaker's position.In this case the new Speaker declares the parliamentary seat of the former Speaker vacant.
The courts have inherent powers to oversee this process and any party including the decamping member can make an application to the court for their seats not to be declared vacant on the singular ground that his decampment was due to a spit in his party.
The question for the court as being currently argued is that a party is not a unitary organ but a federation or collectives and therefore while there not be a spit in the national party, there has been a spit in the local collective. This is a novel idea and not capable of rigorous examination. The Constitution in its words, intent and the mischief it was seeking to prevent, negates this proposition. The only destination any interpretation of this clause of the constitution will lead is that a local qalam does not amount to a party spit. In any event, the managers of political parties is INEC and a certification from INEC ought determine status of party.
Of course the working assumption one has to make is that members of this House are not honourable men and women and will attempt to circumvent the constitution.
Why are the principle officers of the House not moving to remove the current Speaker from his position. If the current Speaker had any iota of honour why not resign.
Finally, of course our national pastime is impatience, hence the drama at the House the other day. The Police acted in haste and outside their powers in seeking to determine the position of the Speaker. The 1960's is within the life time of all concerned and shame on their lack of duty to both the constitution and people of Nigeria.
Monday, 24 November 2014
Why he had to turn down Band Aid
Saying no to Bob Geldof is one of the hardest decisions I have had to make this year. However, seeing what looked like the corpse of an African woman being carried out of her home on primetime TV when the video was premiered on X Factor crystallised my concerns about this strategy to combat the Ebola crisis. For me it is ultimately flawed.
A week before the recording of Band Aid 30, I received a call from Geldof asking if I would take part. I was honoured to be asked and, connecting with his passion for wanting to tackle the Ebola crisis, said I wanted to offer my support.
But I also had my concerns. I was sceptical because of the lyrics and the videos of the previous charity singles, and I worried that this would play into the constant negative portrayal of the continent of Africa in the west. Geldof and I spoke at length about this and he agreed with me on many levels, assuring me that we could use it as an opportunity to showcase the positives of Africa.
However, on receiving the proposed lyrics on Thursday – two days before the recording was due to take place in London – I was shocked and appalled by their content. The message of the Band Aid 30 song absolutely did not reflect what Africa is truly about and I started to question whether this was something I wanted to be a part of.
I pointed out to Geldof the lyrics I did not agree with, such as the lines “Where a kiss of love can kill you and there’s death in every tear”, and “There is no peace and joy in west Africa this Christmas”. For the past four years I have gone to Ghana at Christmas for the sole purpose of peace and joy. So for me to sing these lyrics would simply be a lie.
In truth, my objection to the project goes beyond the offensive lyrics. I, like many others, am sick of the whole concept of Africa – a resource-rich continent with unbridled potential – always being seen as diseased, infested and poverty-stricken. In fact, seven out of 10 of the world’s fastest growing economies are in Africa.
Let me be clear, I’m not disregarding the fact that Ebola is happening and that people need help. Since the start of the outbreak in March it has killed more than 5,000 people. But every human being deserves dignity in their suffering and the images flashed on our screens remove any remnants of this from Ebola sufferers, many in their dying moments, when they should have it the most.
I am not disputing Band Aid’s good intentions. But the shock-factor strategy they have used since the 1980s has sparked a whole wave of “good cause” organisations that have been irresponsible with regard to the images shown to the rest of the world. It’s been totally one-sided. That’s understandable in part, as they wouldn’t raise much money if they showed the affluence, wealth, and happy lifestyles that exist in the continent. But in the process of doing all this “good work” a huge imbalance has been created.
That image of poverty and famine is extremely powerful psychologically. With decades of such imagery being pumped out, the average westerner is likely to donate £2 a month or buy a charity single that gives them a nice warm fuzzy feeling; but they are much less likely to want to go on holiday to, or invest in, Africa. If you are reading this and haven’t been to Africa, ask yourself why.
This is New Africa (Tina) is a movement empowering people to shed a positive light on Africa. I was born in Tooting, south London, and was taken as an infant to Ghana. Returning to London at the age of 11, being African was not something to be proud of because of all the negative connotations it conjured up, and it drove me to be almost ashamed of who I was.
Anyone who has experienced Africa in a positive way is a citizen of the New Africa and needs to play their part in challenging perceptions. I’m sharing my experience through my music – and if I can make chart-topping music that celebrates Africa then surely Band Aid and its extensive network can do the same. I’ve performed in two of the three countries currently hit by the Ebola crisis, where I have friends and loyal fans, and will be donating the proceeds from my next single to help tackle this issue.
I hope from the bottom of my heart that the disease can be eradicated in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. But though shock tactics and negative images may raise money in the short term, the long-term damage will take far longer to heal.
Sunday, 23 November 2014
The Nigerian Status Quo
The Nigerian Status Quo
NOVEMBER 16, 2014
LAGOS, Nigeria — The current Nigerian government is widely seen as the most corrupt since independence from Britain in 1960. Ordinarily, this would be a huge problem for President Goodluck Jonathan and his People’s Democratic Party, which has been continuously in power since the end of military rule in 1999. But things are unlikely to change. To many Nigerians, it sometimes seems as if we merely swapped military dictatorship for a one-party state.
Mr. Jonathan’s name will be on the ballot this February, when Nigerians, many of them fed up with government corruption and incompetence, go to the polls. Yet events percolating across the country that could come to a boil within the next three months might actually work to the president’s advantage. Two grave problems — the Boko Haram insurgency and tensions in the oil-rich Niger Delta — hang over the land. A third, West Africa’s Ebola crisis, seems to have been contained so far, and though this has little to do with Mr. Jonathan’s leadership, the people responsible for it are unlikely to gain any political capital at his expense.
The incompetence of Mr. Jonathan’s government is most clearly seen in its inability to rescue the 276 schoolgirls, most of them believed to be Christians, who were kidnapped by Boko Haram insurgents in the largely Islamic north last April. Even at the time, the president, himself a Christian from the largely Christian south, didn’t seem much concerned about their fate. It took him almost three weeks to officially acknowledge what had happened, whereupon he belatedly invited their relatives to lunch at the presidential villa in Abuja, an event which one journalist likened to “a wedding reception,” complete with bunting and a band.
What Mr. Jonathan didn’t count upon was the international furor over the kidnappings or the powerful worldwide publicity, negative in his case, of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. Seven months later, most of the girls are still missing (though dozens have managed to escape). A report by Human Rights Watch catalogued the “physical and psychological abuse they were subjected to: forced labor, forced participation in military operations, including carrying ammunition or luring men into ambush; forced marriage to their captors; and sexual abuse, including rape.”
Meanwhile, sporadic violence continues. Last week, a suicide bomber killed at least 48 students at a boys’ high school in the northeast. Rescuing the girls — or putting an end to the insurgency altogether — would certainly help Mr. Jonathan’s ambitions, but his government’s ability to do so seems most unlikely. Corruption and low morale have hobbled the military. Even so, the government announced last month that the extremists had agreed to a cease-fire, though Boko Haram has denied it.
Although the extremists have been widely condemned by leading Muslim clerics and politicians, the insurgency contributes to Christian suspicions of their Muslim compatriots, and this may well play into Mr. Jonathan’s hands come election time.
But in an effort to bridge sectarian divisions and garner votes across the religious divide, the country’s leading opposition parties, one from the largely Muslim northeast, the other from the mostly Christian southwest, have joined forces with other groups to form the All Progressives Congress. In theory, this gives the opposition a fighting chance of wresting control of the Senate and House of Representatives from the People’s Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, efforts to make common cause in Nigeria are invariably sacrificed upon the altars of religion and ethnicity. The alliance’s likely presidential candidate is a Muslim northerner, Muhammadu Buhari. He also happens to be a former dictator, who ruled Nigeria for 20 months in the mid-1980s. His administration came to an abrupt end in August 1985, when members of his cabinet, alienated by his efforts to root out corruption, forced him out. Though widely unpopular, many Nigerians feel he has the credentials to tackle corruption. Moreover, one potential running mate is Babatunde Raji Fashola, the two-term governor of Lagos State who has distinguished himself by successfully tackling the incipient Ebola crisis with the same energy and efficiency that he brought to modernizing the infrastructure of Lagos, the biggest port in West Africa. But there are also doubts about his commitment to clean government, fueled by the fact that he is a protègé of Ahmed Bola Tinubu, a former governor of the same state and a founding member of the All Progressives Congress whose reputation has been tarnished by corruption scandals, even though he has never been convicted of corruption.
Though Mr. Fashola is a Muslim with a Catholic wife, few Christians (or for that matter even the generally more-liberally minded Muslims of the south) would be inclined to vote for a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
Religious differences are a key factor in voting, but perhaps patronage plays a greater role, a lesson Mr. Jonathan learned in the Niger Delta, where he taught school and gained political prominence. Like any savvy politician, he knows that patronage is a two-way street, and he has been careful to keep the money flowing in a region plagued by resentment over oil rights, piracy and periodic unrest.
Oil is Nigeria’s greatest source of wealth, providing about 90 percent of the nation’s foreign exchange earnings, but many people among the delta’s diverse ethnic groups feel that the central government has seized control of their oil without adequate compensation. The government says it loses about $3 billion a year due to piracy, widely seen as aided and abetted by the military. Local gangs also take what they can by tapping pipelines. In the past, anger over corruption and the unfair redistribution of wealth has fueled a dangerous political militancy. Everyone knows that if the militants want to, they can easily stop oil production, which would bankrupt the country.
Thus Mr. Jonathan takes care to ensure that the region is well looked after, and this contributes to his enormous popularity there. Indeed, he is widely seen as crucial to keeping the lid on potential unrest. In the words of Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, a former leader of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force who is now a key supporter, if Mr. Jonathan is not re-elected next year, there will be “blood in the streets.”
