Former governor of Kano state, Alhaji Ibrahim Shekarau is, obviously, one of the few Nigerian politicians that, before now, presented himself as a cool-headed, principled and ideological driven politicians, especially, from the Northern part of the country.
As a matter of fact, Shekarau earned the respect of many Nigerians across different ethnic and regional divides after the Presidential television debate which held as a prelude to the 2011 Presidential election. During the debate, he maintained a clear-head as to what he would do differently from the candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Goodluck Jonathan, to bring rapid development to Nigeria.
In deed, more than 70 percent of Nigerians who listened to the debate, in which General Muhammadu Buhari and Malam Nuhu Ribadu were part of, agreed that Shekarau was more confident with clear vision than the other two by the words of mouth.
He contested that election on the platform of All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), which now fused into All Progressives Congress (APC). He was seen as almost the near equivalence of General Muhammadu Buhari if not in anything, at least, in the tenacity of purpose: in holding on to his beliefs even if it was only him that was standing.
Many of his admirers, including yours sincerely, were surprised to see the same Shekarau genoflecting before the power-that-be in PDP, a party whose Presidential candidate he lampooned for lack of performance in 2011, simply for a pot of porridge.
His defection from the opposition to the PDP came not merely as a blow to what appeared to be his original posture of stickler to refine political principles, but it also foreclosed the hope of many Nigerians trusting politicians of whatever denomination.
What has come out clearly to the political watchers, from his present hobnobbing with the same Presidency he took to the cleaners in the 2011 presidential debate is that, his purse had now gone leaner and he needs to refilled it, and to him, the politics of ideology, the politics of clear-headedness, the politics of sticking to one’s guns and be identified within the confines of certain idea and ideals can go to blazes.
Of course, there are always excuses which human being, like Shekarau, would give to cover up things that are obviously out of reality; things that fail to mark the person out differently from the crowd, which Shekarau has actually jumped into. I mean, the fact cannot be missed, of the man who initially built a false image of a populist (in the mould of late Malam Aminu Kano) that now happily joined the group of mad crowd of hungry, gluttonous and executive plate-in-hand politicians.
From the way things are now, to Shekarau, who now dine and wine with Vice President Mohammed Namadi Sambo and by extension, President Jonathan and the PDP, the minimum amount of decency, not even the truth, has lost the steam.

It is not today that Governors have started jockeying to replace a sitting vice president in Nigeria.
When he was in office as Vice President in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, Atiku Abubakar faced the same challenge. It was not a hidden secret the supporters of two governors, talking about Governors Makarfi of Kaduna State and late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (May God bless his soul) or directly by themselves, had come before President Obasanjo as potential substitutes to the vice president in the 2003 elections. The reader will recall that when President Obasanjo came to the International Conference Centre, Abuja to make a formal declaration for second term, he spoke in “I” terms only and made no reference to the person who would run with him. Instructively, the program of the event distributed on the occasion had the President’s picture only and no vice presidential candidate was indicated. It must have been very clear to Atiku at that time that he wasn’t going to be on that ticket. How and why he fought to be back on is a story told and retold by journalists and contemporary historians.
That Namadi Sambo faces a similar threat today should not surprise anyone. If Nigerian politicians are proficient in one thing, it is the so-called PHD – Pull Him Down Syndrome. When the Presidency of the Nigerian Senate was zoned to the South-East geo-political region, politicians in that region turned it into a revolving door. Some called it a Warrant Chieftaincy. To make sure that every state had a ‘taste’ of the ‘juicy’ office, the South-East Senators by themselves moved and effected the removal through impeachment of each one of them put in that office, to the point that this country was almost having a Senate President each year.
What is happening with Vice President Sambo, that may become the game-changer is that while in the past, the executioners of these plots played hide and seek games and concocted their treacherous plans inside dark rooms in hidden locations only to storm the public space when they are sure they had a done deal, these ones are brazenly open in all that they do. While those in the past fought one another with civility and decorum, these ones fight dirty. They are proving themselves as masters at washing their dirty linens in the public. What shocked many in Katsina was the treatment given to Vice President Namadi Sambo who went to the state to witness the conferment of the traditional title of Sarkin Fulani on the Governor, Ibrahim Shehu Shema. It is not a hidden fact that the Governor and a handful of other Northern Governors still remaining in the PDP have been scheming to do one of two things: One, to unseat the President at the primaries, given his low level of performance, thereby denying him a shot at a second term or where this fails, which is the second option, to negotiate their support for the President’s reelection by positioning themselves as the choice for the Vice President’s slot by evicting the incumbent Sambo.
As reported by the Vanguard Newspaper two Saturdays back, Governor Shema revealed himself more fully when his supporters treated Vice President very rudely and contemptuously by interrupting his speech with shouts of “sai Shema,” “Nigeria sai Shema.” Many people at that gathering were disappointed by this because you don’t treat your guest, a leader who has come to honour you with attacks through an orchestrated “alawada.” This was not only morally wrong but enough to be described as the most brazen attack on Northern political culture. Traditionally, the North is always impressed by the one who turns his back to power or retreats from it as did Atiku in 2003 when the PDP Governors pushed him into unseating President Obasanjo but he declined.
In India for example, your classic example of “power of not seeking power” to borrow from Bajpai is in Mahatma Ghandi and lately Sonia Ghandi who led the Congress Party to election victory but declined to take the office of Prime Minister. In Nigeria, the late Sardauna declined to proceed to take power at the centre after leading the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) into election victory. He, instead, chose to send his deputy, the late Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. This set of governors who are relentlessly, ruthlessly and deliciously seeking power should learn a thing from these historical figures. The rejection of power has a way of generating power. Rejection has a way of drawing a politician, particularly in the North, to the people. That is when they will beckon upon you and say “you, go forward”.
This incident has become instructive to two events that happened in quick succession in the previous week, one, the formation of a brand new ‘Northern Elders’ Council owned and controlled by Vice President Sambo under the veteran politician, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai. Yakasai will supposedly now use his bountiful energy, oratory and skills to intervene for Sambo in these situations. The second of course, is the solidarity visit to the Vice President by Bayelsa State’s political leaders who came to praise Sambo for his support to the President.
To have a sitting Vice President visiting a state and officiating at an event is a big thing. To have the supporters of a governor shout him down as being unfit for the job and that their man is the better one for it does not accord with, not only Northern political culture but the good taste of Fulani traditions encapsulated in the PULAKU (restraint, shyness) habits, a basic tenet that any man aspiring to take the title of “Sarkin (Chief) Fulani” should imbibe.
But the Ibrahim Shema I know, will by now have tendered an unreserved apology to Vice President Sambo for the embarrassment caused him, and the over-zealous supporters cautioned to avoid a future incident.

If I sit in a jury to decide who among the three in President Goodluck Jonathan’s circle is doing the most damage to “enemy” Northern leaders (Edwin Clark, Asari Dokubo and the minister of Information, Labaran Maku) I will not hesitate to choose Maku and I will tell you why.
Maku is not only adept at linguistic pedagogy and propaganda, but he also has the courage to take the fight to enemy’s territory just as he did in Kaduna recently.
At the rate he is going, especially with the recent addition of the defence portfolio to his cap, Maku may run the
Ijaw leaders out of business and succeed in having all to himself, the heart of the President. That prospect alone should worry those who love the minister.
Beyond occasional insults hurled at men and women, past and present in power in the North, Maku’s edge over the two others is that he speaks
Hausa to the
BBC and the
Voice of America, which gives him direct connections to the hearts and minds of the Northern masses. Talking about his courage, who but Maku could go to Kaduna, the so-called home of the “Kaduna Mafia”–famous for running and ruining Nigeria (?)–to tell the Northerners that they should forget the Presidency in 2015 because “power can never return to the North” (Nigeria Observer), and that “Northern leaders lack the moral reasons to lead the country come 2015?”
Maku alone can look at the Northern political elite in the eyes and tell them that they are tied to ethnic politics and religious bigotry.
In Kaduna, at the self-styled “townhall meeting,” he pronounced that the emancipation of the North would not come from a Northerner (which curiously includes himself). “Every day, we keep advising people that politics is not madness, it is not about religious bigotry, it is like market… All the Propaganda and fight for political power are only retarding the North’s development.” In his view, the people should jettison ethnic politics and support the President, meaning that the democratic right to differ belongs to only the President and those on his side, and all others who disagree with them are tribalists. Short of saying that Northern Nigeria is at war with the rest of the country, using the
Boko Haram, Maku has used every given opportunity to give the impression that the political leaders in the North are those who are responsible or that are behind the senseless insurgency going on. On this occasion of the Kaduna homily, it was surprising to many that he skipped the equally senseless killings going on between Fulani herdsmen and the other tribesmen in the Middle-belt. Not a word from him on the
Ombatse violence that saw the killing of nearly 100 policemen and secret service personnel by a cult, formed by his own
Eggon tribe and about which nothing of any serious consequence has been done to punish the perpetrators.
In America, the Mecca and Jerusalem of our political and mental compass, a certain Michael Dukakis lost steam and momentum in a presidential nomination race he was about to win by talking lightly of the killing by an outlaw, of a single policeman. In a report that he vigorously objected to,
The Sunday Tribune linked the
Ombatse cult murder of the security men to the existing political disagreement over 2015 between Minister Maku and Governor Al-Makura.
This denial notwithstanding, the opposition All Progressives Congress, APC went on to denounce his promotion as Supervising Minister of Defence and not few pages of advertorial were published in opposition by some other Nasarawa State communities.
The pressure of these lingering accusations notwithstanding, Maku continues to make important contributions to the Jonathan administration through the demonization of Northern leaders, past and present, whenever the opportunity presents itself. When he spoke in Kaduna, he rubbed pepper into their eyes when he said “clearly, clearly, clearly (three times), the North had not had it better under any President than we have it under Jonathan.”
At this point, you asked yourself, which North is the Minister talking about? Is it the same North in which Muslims and Christians are both feeling unsafe because the government has failed in its constitutional duty of protecting their lives and property?
You don’t have to be a Christian to feel the agony they feel when, as Goza in Borno State, you have 80 Churches now reduced to only eight and no week passes without one more being torched and worshipers shelled with bullets by extremists. Nor are the Muslims safe from the madness, given the fact that more of them have actually been killed with bombs and guns as illustrated by reports the Human Rights Watch has published. Both groups need a government that would protect them.
As if Maku had forgotten that the primary duty of government is the protection of life and property, he went on “Radio Link,” a talk show by the
Federal Radio Corporation,
FRCN, run by him and launched what was described as a “frontal attack on Northern leaders.” In the programme, he blamed them for every wrong of the country, past and present and exonerated the President who gave him two cabinet jobs to run at once as a man deserving of accolades.
Would anyone be right to remain quiet, or abandon the quest for public office through democratic election in a country as we have, where a snapshot by
Daily Trust showed that Niger Delta, one of the six geo-political zones got 86% of total projects approved by the Federal Executive Council between March and August 2011?
That this sub-region alone got projects, in terms of budget implementation in that period worth N760billion out of N883billion they had paid?
At another occasion, Maku thundered that “the fiction in the North that President Jonathan and Vice President Sambo are not developing the North, is the fiction whipped up by politicians who see nothing other than their blind ambitions. When they want to do it (leadership), they continue to talk about the North. When they come to power, you don’t see anything. In terms of development, what we are witnessing is momentous, not only in Northern Nigeria but Nigeria as a whole.”
I asked a former friend of the minister if they thought the time had come for some senior people to address Mr. Maku on his continuing attacks on a victim people and he said to me “perish the thought.”
He said there are ministers in this government who don’t feel embarrassed by claims coming from some of the most respected and admired clerics and other leaders that their calls are not being picked.
A man who calls himself the “Angry Blogger,” Twitter @aderinola, and worried that the Minister is busy chasing shadows and attacking victims said that “there are serious allegations of missing trillions of Naira against his government… Your Boss cannot deal with … corrupt men and women in the executives (sic)” and Maku has given all his energy attacking perceived political enemies of the President in the North. What is this but shadow boxing?

Broadcasting is a natural talent, and those who have it easily become household names. For anyone who listens to radio or watches television, there is tendency he would develop professional affection to certain broadcasters, because they can give delicious taste to a boring story.
For, anyone who work in the broadcasting business would tell you that no matter how good a story is, and no matter the editorial effort invested in producing the story, if you don’t have an excellent and talented presenter to sell it, that story will be dead.
One person who possesses such natural talent and ability to sell a story to complex audiences is our former colleague at the BBC
World Service, Komla Dumour.
Komla Dumour joined the BBC World Service a year before me, and while I was working at the BBC Hausa Service, we normally cross ways in or out of Bush House, the then headquarters of the World Service, but we were neither close nor working in the same hub.
Early in 2010, I was briefly transferred from the BBC Hausa Service for an attachment at the now rested flagship programme, the World Today, which has been fused with BBC Network Africa, where Komla was a presenter, to what is now called  Newsday.
Komla was one of the leading presenters in the World Today, and one of the most appreciated by his colleagues, because he is reliable, will come to duty on time, and has the ability to grill interviewees, when there is need to do so, and can be as humorous as you would expect a lively presenter to be.
On a number of occasions, I was assigned as one of the producers of the interviews he would conduct, and that was how I began to understand this gentleman who died of cardiac arrest on 18 January, 2014, according reports on various news outlets.  It was then I knew that Komla Dumour actually grew up in Kano, my home town, and his father was a lecturer at the Bayero University, Kano, the institution I graduated from.
At the time the British general election was approaching, the World Today decided to commission a special programme that will focus on British identity and how that will affect voting behavior. At the time, and I believe up to now, there was a serious debate about immigration, and what it means to be English/British, looking at how people from different cultures have settled and made Britain their home. A development that many voters were not happy with, and all the main parties were trying to exploit this feeling to gain electoral advantage.
Beyond that, Peter Horrocks, the Director of the BBC World Service wants a different brand of journalism, one that maintains the traditional form of reporting, and at the same time integrating the changes in technology, social media, and diverse nature of audiences. In fact, Peter was interested in integrating the various services at the BBC to work as a team  benefiting from the strength of each other. So the  World Today assembled a team to pursue this task, and one key person who could deliver on these expectations was the Ghanaian among us, Komla Dumour. Under the leadership of Simon Peeks as the editor of the programme, Leo Honark, and my humble self, we embarked on a one week long journey along M1 which is arguably the longest highway in England, reporting from Luton, Peterborough, Leicester, Sheffield and Leeds.
During the journey, the liveliness of Komla, his jokes and sense of friendship made the trip more interesting. But the strength of Komla is when it comes to work. Komla was not only reporting and presenting for World Today, which was a radio programme transmitting at night, he was also reporting for BBC World TV, writing for the  BBC News website on the same trip, and at the same time engaging with listeners on Facebook about our experiences in the trip. I could still visualise Komla presenting live at 4am, at the heart of a freezing winter from the empty Luton stadium.
So it was not surprising to me when I saw the kind of meteoric rise in his broadcasting career which culminates in becoming one of the main faces of  BBC
World TV. One thing which many people do not know was that at least, two former presidents of Ghana had offered Komla a ministerial appointment, and on both occasions, he politely declined, and instead decided to focus on his journalism.
Komla Dumour has a strong fan base in Ghana due to his popularity while he was working for Joy FM, and later the BBC World Service, and many youths in Ghana see him as a potential future president. He once showed me the Facebook page promoting his presidential campaign established by his fans, and I teased him by saying that I looked forward to the time he would be sworn in as the president of his country. Certainly, Komla Dumour is the president Ghana would never have, but in his journalism career he had a presidential control of the television screen. Ghana had lost a son, and journalism has missed an icon.
I join his family, the people of Ghana, former colleagues at the BBC World Service and his entire admirers in extending my condolences over the death of this natural broadcaster who has inspired many youths in Africa and beyond.

It is not at all controversial to say that Nigeria’s ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) is imperiled today. By the weekend, party leaders and the Presidency were congratulating one another following the forced resignation of party chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur. Will this change in the leadership cause any difference to its perils?

Many who are still inside the party say it’s broken from inside and irretrievably doomed. “Dis party don scatter finish” were the words coming out of the mouth of a “loyal” PDP Governor on a barber’s set as he watched television reports of his party’s never-ending crisis. Many say this leadership change is coming too late to save the party.

Tukur’s exit was itself a thing of joy to his native Adamawa State. There were jubilations on the streets of Yola. Throughout his term, he did not give a single thought of uplifting his own Adamawa community. But the real reason for joy at his exit was the fact of the general belief that he caused the state of emergency imposed by the Federal Government on the state to spite Governor Murtala Nyako whom he fought from the beginning to the end of his term. Although in truth Adamawa has a number of security challenges, especially in its areas of control next to Southern Borno, the continuing quasi-military rule over them is an over-kill. With Tukur out of power, his kinspeople assume that emergency rule will be removed.

Even at the centre, it is doubtful if anyone is expecting a serious change to occur. The problem of the party isn’t a Tukur problem. The party’s problem is mainly its own ideology, which is the subversion of democracy. PDP is all about the authority of the high command and consensus as a way of arriving at choices and decisions. If they change the chairman a hundred times over, the party will continue to dwindle so long as they are beholden to this undemocratic ideology; and are led by President Jonathan’s conspiracy rhetoric.

Although Nigerians have always been divided on the basis of region, religion and tribe, the President is the main reason behind the growing differences between Christians and Muslims; between the North and South; between minorities and the majorities and between his “Ijaw nation” and the Nigerian nation, all arising from his divide and conquer strategy.

Such parochial strategies, apart from being distasteful, have also lost voter appeal leading to the loss of faith in the party. The policy of the appeasement of minorities and the marginalization of the majorities, which is yet another problem, is PDP’s version of democracy.

To do well, the PDP needs a leader that would focus on championing the cause of the country’s poor; its workers, women, its youth and students among other segments of the society. It needs a President who comes across as a political leader with acumen, not a tribal leader with political acumen.

By taking the laws into their hands, asking the police to do as they want, arresting who they want, the PDP has been sowing the seeds of instability in the country. In Rivers and Kano, they have been sowing the virus of impunity and anarchy.

It is clear to even those in authority that the current system has become, not only corrupt but un-responsive; it has become old and out-dated. To borrow the expression of a blogger, the system is unable to solve the day-to-day problems of the common people and grows silent when it is most urgently needed.

“If Nigeria is a computer and the PDP is its default program, the least that can be said is that the program needs an urgent upgrade.” Some, like the spokesman of the opposition, Lai Mohammed would even say dump that program, it is corrupted to the core and upgrading will not solve any problem. Just dump it if the computer is to be saved.

Fortunately for the country, there is a growing list of budding opposition parties pushing to provide an alternative.

As for the former Chairman, the bitter and intricate bouts to oust him notwithstanding, Tukur will likely continue to be an important presence at the higher levels of Nigerian politics, for a long time to come.

That said, there is no denying that Tukur’s departure is coming with an expiry date, too little, too late to change anything. It is certainly most unlikely to change the dismal forecast for the party’s future.

The dept of American hypocrisy and shallowness, hiding under the over-beaten democracy, has never been so pronounced until now when Nigeria makes it public that it abhors the idea and practice of same-sex marriage and all other forms of homosexuality.
It is really sickening to hear America and its allies bemoaning a bill prescribing penalties for homosexuals and their promoters, which over 400 members of the two chambers of the National Assembly passed and was recently signed into law by President Goodluck Jonathan.
As a matter of fact, there is no absurd names and attribution the American government and its agents and or its allies have not made on the new law, crafted by Nigerians for Nigerians. They have not only called it ‘draconian’ but went ahead to say that it would bring about increase in the cases of HIV/AIDS. O yeh?
In this senseless war against the law proscribing homosexuality in Nigeria; homosexuality that is equivalent to sodomy, the American authorities and their cohorts have been threatening fire, including the fact that they would stop all kinds of aides to Nigeria.
The most absurd part of the American reasoning is that the law is against fundamental human rights and democracy. Which human rights? Which democracy?
This America posture has now clearly exposed it as a society that is against God and all that are decent in the sight of God and the right thinking peoples.
Indeed, if the American idea of democracy and human rights is bereft of basic morality and decency, then, democracy and human rights, from the point of view of America, are better not practiced in Nigeria and of course, other decent clime.
What the America, Britain, Canada and their likes are saying is that for Nigeria to enjoy their support and acceptance, it should join some ungodly countries in encouraging man-to-man or woman-to-woman marriages and other sexuality! Evil thought this is.
Where, in all these noise and dictation to Nigeria on what it should do, is the principle of none interference in the internal affairs of other countries? If America and its supporters in the new generation of ungodliness; if it would be breathing down the neck of Nigeria over what it feels is right for the moral standard of its citizenry, what happened to Nigeria’s independence and sovereignty as a nation?
When has homosexuality, described in religious Holy Books as the most heinous sin against God, become part of human rights that must be respected and protected at the global level? Where and how has the homosexuality connected to human rights and democracy, to the extent that the absence of one would have an adverse effect on the other?
Has America and its blind allies realized that God had once perished a generation, according to narration, simply because a single soul was involved in homosexuality only for once? And America now wants it to be venerated, made part of human rights and democracy, and universalised?
Where has the sense of reasoning of America gone to? To hell fire?

Unlike Zimbabwe or South Africa, Nigeria didn’t fight a war of liberation to achieve national independence. The Nationalist Press, rightly or wrongly, laid claim to having secured this for this country without a shot being fired. This is a realistic claim, considering that the nationalist who-is-who is largely made up of journalists, including Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Awolowo, Sa’adu Zungur, Abubakar Imam, Aminu Kano and the rest of them.
Reading the press sometimes makes you wonder if this galaxy of nationalist writers had not been a toothless tiger to the people of Nigeria.
I do not share the view that the glaring omissions on the part of the mainstream media is made up for by the courageous work against sloth, inefficiency and routine corruption by the new media.
Mainstream media need to do more than just breaking the story. It is simply unacceptable that they limit themselves to merely reporting incidents and events in an isolated sense. There has to be contextualizing, interpretation and follow-up. Without these; without the media clearing the way, this country will run into a stampede.
One way of correcting this glaring omission is for the media to make our rulers to think of duty before perks. Even when the media have to pursue commercial interests to survive in the business, today’s media must not blindside human dimensions to events they report.
Many have accused this country’s press of dwelling mostly on mundane issues of appetite as tragedies creep in day after day; that commercial interests are at times placed above public good. When you critically examine many of them, you come to dislike the short shrift they give to life-consuming incidents arising from the continuing failure to force public officials to come to account for their misdeeds.
Week after week, this country grapples with major tragedies, the one for this week over-writing the one before and the one in the week ahead almost certainly to surpass the one witnessed this week. In large measure, the media are culpable because they restrict themselves to merely breaking the story. Without a follow-up and the needed follow through, the media help to keep culprits, including judges, administrators and politicians well out of the reach of justice.
Take these three tidbits for a taste. The media did the duty of breaking the Boxing Day mishap that killed 50, mostly young men and women in a boat mishap in River Buruku, a tributary of River Benue in Buruku Local Government Area of Benue State. The tragedy happened owing to engine failure. “The villagers,” as reported by the
Guardian, “say that such incidents were common place because life jackets were both alien to operatives and passengers even as government has not taken steps to enforce its necessity so as to avoid incessant deaths.”
This “killer River” as it has come to be known, separates Buruku with Logo Local Government, Governor Gabriel Suswan’s native area. According to the
Guardian, “the federal government had, in the past, awarded a contract for a bridge “but that money had disappeared or “eaten up” according to common parlance. The state transport company, Benue Links, which provided a more reliable ferry, had had its services “grounded by corruption.”
Since reporting this incident, you ask the question, which are the media that followed up to establish the culpability or lack of it on the part of officials or government agencies?
Who has deemed it necessary to take government to task to ensure this did not occur again? What are the immediate, long-term and restorative measures anyone has taken to avert these kinds of deaths?
In October 2013 in Niger State, two similar incidents occurred. At a point near Malali on the River Niger, a boat built to carry 80 passengers sank with 150 on board. Forty-two of the passengers, mostly women and children died. One hundred were declared missing. From this point, the media lost interest in the story and moved to other things.
The actual losses remain therefore matter of conjecture. Within six days of this incident, another one occurred at Kokoli, a walking distance from Malali. This boat was meant for 30. It sank with 80 passengers with their goods. Eighteen of them died.
In December 2013 in Bayelsa State, 12 persons died in another boat mishap and in Lagos, four days later, four of the 80 passengers died in yet another boat mishap.
Worried about these endless chain of boat mishaps, the
Sun in October last year wrote an editorial in which it warned that “the time has come for federal, state, local governments and their agencies to beam their searchlights on transportation along our inland waterways, with a view to arresting the hazards and improving safety… we should begin to put value on some of the lives of our fellow citizens who have no other option than to use boats and the inland waterways.”
To me honestly, journalism can avert most of these, but it is not editorials that will do it. This is something they can help the nation do by holding officials and government agencies to account, with regard to the discharge of their responsibilities in these incidents. The
Guild of Editors, the human rights community and lawyers may also form a formidable coalition to help victims of these acts of negligence to get their rights and compensation in cases of loss of life and property.

At least, for Nigerians of my generation, the 1990s was one of the most exciting time. It was the decade of the June 12 struggle. Ethnicity, regionalism, nepotism and naked propaganda between sections of the country have reached their peak. This was further complicated by the harsh economic reality caused by the austerity measures which made it easier for the Nigerian elites to dribble their fellow countrymen in search of influence and political authority.
A common site after the annulment of June 12 elections at  Sabon Gari and  Unguwa Uku in Kano was the web of people migrating either side of the country, northerners from south arriving in troops, and southerners living in the northern part of the country finding their way back to the south. For those of us who did not experience the sad experience of the civil war in the 1960s, it was the age of uncertainty. International media organisations, from CNN to BBC, Voice of America etc, Nigeria was the subject of ridicule and sometimes unsubstantiated propaganda. Many thought the country could not survive, yet twenty years after that, we still have a country bearing the same name given to it by the British colonialists.
From the uncertainly of the transition towards independence in the 1950s, to the 1960s when ethnic and regional politics define the psyche of Nigeria, down to the civil war, the austerity measures of the 1980s, the ethno-religious crises of the late 1980s, military intervention in politics, lack of maturity of politicians, endemic corruption in the polity, have all characterized this colonial concoction, yet Nigeria still survives.
Since the creation of this unlikely union, one would like to ask, what are the negatives and the positives? In my opinion, there are at least three key positive things about Nigeria. First is the fact that the country has survived in the last hundred years, surmounting great challenges that saw other nations disappear.
Few countries will survive the corruption that Nigeria contends with, ethnic and religious tensions, and leadership that is lacking in patriotism and sense of direction.
The second positive thing about Nigeria is that its strength amidst these challenges provides hope for the African continent and the black people in general. The position of Nigeria is nowhere near its potential, despite these challenges on a number of occasions fellow Africans will tell you that, your country is moving in the wrong direction, but the future of Africa would largely depend on Nigeria getting its acts right. The recent account narrated on how the late Nelson Mandela feels about the mismanagement of Nigeria, and how it fails Africa is a case in point. With all the challenges and the failures of its leadership to live to expectation, yet some Africans still hope that Nigeria could provide the necessary leadership that Africa needs.
In December 2012, when we were busy debating in the British House of Commons on Chinua Achebe’s book,
‘There was a country’ a fellow African stood and said, while you are busy tearing yourselves apart, do you think of what it means for Africa without Nigeria?
The third positive thing, which to me is the most important, is the human capital and the enterprising nature of Nigerians. Within and outside Nigeria, there are people who are as qualified as any serious person you will find anywhere in the world. This human capital is perhaps the saving grace for Nigeria. You only need a purposeful leadership to harness its potential and utilize it for economic development.
As for the negatives, we always discuss and write about them. Of course, others will disagree with me, and I respect their right to do so, but there are three key historical issues that lead Nigeria to its present sorry state.
The first is the 1966 coup which eliminated the most patriotic generation of Nigerian leaders, solidified ethnic and regional hatred, and sow the seed of the civil war. This historical mistake has deprived Nigeria of its potential for greatness. The scar of this unfortunate event is yet to heal.
When the pain of this sad experience begins to heal, another event is created by the political class to revive it.
The second historical event that changed Nigeria were the harsh austerity measures of the 1980s and 1990s such as the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). This has changed the psyche of Nigerians, deprived it of its talents, created a huge economic vacuum between the rich and the poor.
The governments that followed to date have not departed from this philosophy. They only make few ‘adjustments’ even when it’s clear that the policies that helped countries like Malaysia, Singapore, China and South Korea where the exact opposite of the policies our country imbibed.
Finally, the third negative and the worst is the failure of leadership. Unless the question of leadership is resolved, and purposeful and right minded individuals lead the country. It is difficult to see the end of this mess.
So what is the solution? Our senior colleague in journalism, and a veteran in his own right, Malam Mahmud Jega has provided a blueprint in his Monday Column in the
Daily Trust newspaper of 6th January, 2014.
Before dropping my pen, one question keeps recurring in my mind; it is a question for all of us, but the consequences of its answer is for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
In the next 100 years will there be a country called Nigeria?

(All views expressed are strictly personal)

As a writer, Olusegun Obasanjo has carved a genre for himself. From his many books-“My Command” to “The Animal Called Man” et al-there is a frightening tone of military fury.
His public letters fall within the same class.
His writings are evidently tall on justifiable anger but regrettably short on facts.
On November 10, 1999, President Obasanjo wrote a letter to Governor Alamesiegha of Bayelsa State, threatening to declare a state of emergency in the state. Part of the grounds he gave for his threat was a rape incident in Choba where soldiers had allegedly gone on a raping spree, accompanied by photographers who dutifully took shots of their animal acts. The obscene pornographic pictures-with soldiers in uniform doing their thing-were put in wide circulation.
Whether the whole thing was stage managed or true is outside our scope today. The fact remains that Choba is in Rivers and not Bayelsa State. So, our President was threatening to punish a Governor and a State for an act which took place outside its borders!
The Presidential anger over the incidence at Choba had not abated and may in fact have  been responsible for a full scale military invasion ordered by the President on a Bayelsa community that was accused of killing soldiers and policemen. As a result of that order, Odi, a tiny and sleepy community was completely razed down and many innocent civilians killed. That was late in 1999.
Two years after, in 2001, the President gave a similar marching order. This time a whole Senatorial Zone in Benue state was invaded.
Like in the case of Bayelsa, the Benue community was punished because of the death of some soldiers. But unlike in Bayelsa where the invading soldiers claimed they were pursuing unknown murderers, the identity of those who killed the soldiers in Zaki Biam was well known.
For, in a bewildering demonstration of criminal naivety, the murderers invited photographers and posed for photo shots with their victims and also of their butchering that followed!
At the National burial arranged for the murdered soldiers, Obasanjo announced that he had ordered security agencies to “fish” out the murderers. This was an easy task to perform since the identity of the murderers was exposed by the bizarre pictorial sessions they engaged in before and during the murders.
The truth is that the soldiers were not sent to fish out the killers as advertised. They were sent on a revenge mission.
The Nigerian media has wrongly termed what happened in Benue that year as the ‘invasion of Zaki Biam.’ The truth however is that Zaki Biam is just the headquarters of Ukum-a Local Government in a senatorial zone of six Local Governments. This whole zone was cordoned off by soldiers with an armada of armored tanks that were given air cover by helicopter gunboats.
The military juggernaut then proceeded to unleash systematic terror on unarmed civilians, a type that has not been heard of in Nigerian history.
The Human Rights Watch did a very detailed and painstaking report on the invasion. It includes the atrocities at Gbeji where soldiers gathered unarmed people in the market square, supposedly for a peace meeting and shot many of them at point blank range to death. Others at the gathering were shot in the legs, drenched in petrol and then set ablaze–incinerated alive! Over a hundred people died in this incidence alone.
A special target for the invading army was the country home of Obasanjo’s former Chief of Army staff General Victor Malu. A few months before then, he had disagreed with Obasanjo over military issues and was dropped. His family house at Tse Adoor in Katsina Ala local Government was raced to the ground; his mother of over 80 years was drilled and beaten while his blind uncle of over 90 years was thrown into a burning house where he roasted to death as his shocked wife watched. She was later shot to death.
Roadblocks were mounted and Tiv tribesmen who were travelling in vehicles brought down and shot. In fact, the damage done to human life at Zaki Biam was minimal because as news of the mass slaughter of Tiv men by soldiers spread, they all fled the town into the bush. Still the soldiers made sure they leveled all buildings in Zaki Biam, including that of Hon Benjamin Chaha, former Speaker House of Representatives.
Obasanjo never went to see the damage that was done by his soldiers but he allowed his Vice President Atiku Abubakar to go. The Vice President expressed horror at what he saw.  Chuba Okadigbo, then Senate President also went and in disbelief said the brutality used to destroy Zaki Biam was not used even during the Biafra civil war.
The first reaction of President Obasanjo was to deny the involvement of Nigerian soldiers in the massacre. Then as evidence became irrefutable, he argued that what happened in Benue is what people should expect when they kill soldiers.
Due to domestic and international pressure, Obasanjo’s reluctantly set up a panel under Justice Okechukwu Opene to investigate communal disturbances in Benue, Plateau, Nassarawa and Taraba states. It looked like a diversionary panel, still, people cooperated with it and by 2003, it submitted it’s report.
The report went the way many other panels set up by governments in Nigeria go–thrashed and forgotten.
It is believed that the government of Obasanjo refused to release it because it said one or two things in its conclusions that were not in favor of his government. This was reinforced by the fact that his successor, Umaru Yar’adua and his army chief tendered a public apology to the people of Benue for the conduct of the military during the massacre.
The massacre also attracted litigation. Dr Alexander Gaadi who claimed to have suffered physical torture, loss of property and relations during the invasion took the government to court and won his case. A Federal High court in Enugu granted him the over 40 billion Naira he claimed as damages.
The military invasion of Benue is one issue Obasanjo hardly talks about in public.
On January 1, 2003, he gate crashed into an obscure local church in Makurdi and apologized for the massacre. On February 14 2003, Valentines day, he told his audience at IBB square in Makurdi that he launched his re-election campaign on that day because he wanted to show the Benue people how much he loves them. He also wanted to ask for forgiveness over the massacre.
Strangely enough, in 2011 he traveled to Makurdi and announced that George Akume, the former Governor of the state–who has never been an army commander-should be held responsible for the massacre.
But, the greatest evidence that Obasanjo treats facts and figures with contempt is to be found in General Alabi Isama’s book-“The tragedy of victory.”
Large sections of the book are a point by point rebuttal of Obasanjo’s claims in his first book, “My Command.”
General Alabi argues his case with great details, illustrating every point with maps, pictures and statistics. This book has finally put a lie to Obasnjo’s pompous claim that the civil war came to an end because of his lone military exploits.
Of particular interest to me is the claim by General Alabi that Obasanjo was a blundering General who often led his troops to doom. After one particularly disastrous battle, he says, Obasanjo took to his heels and was shot in his buttocks by the Biafrans.
Obasanjo has, of course, denied the embarrassing charge. But whenever I meet Obasanjo, I will play the doubting Thomas and ask him to strip down and show me his buttocks. Just to be sure.