It was so hard last week to watch the Makurdi video of trailer-loads of caskets bearing the bodies of the 70 persons killed by suspected cattle herdsmen in Benue State. Imagine the awful scene: rows and rows of caskets of lives suddenly and needlessly terminated in just one theatre of violence, being transported to a mass burial, watched or accompanied by a despondent and weeping crowd.
The federal government has set up a committee, led by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, allegedly to address what is described as the “menace of farmers/herders” clashes in the country.
Committee member Abdullahi Ganduje, who is the governor of Kano State, said the committee will “work in accordance with commensurate commitment to ensure that all perpetrators of violence are brought to book.”
Commensurate commitment. A powerful new concept. The governor suggests-or confirms-that in governance, commitment is a choice, and may be measured by the teaspoonful or the shovel.
Governor Ganduje, who in a different statement last weekend called for a West African solution to the problem, explained the inevitability of clashes: “You will find a herdsman from a West African country moving about with a herd of cattle of 1,000 which narrow cattle routes cannot contain. Hence the need to trespass farms in search of fodder, which often led to very dangerous disputes.”
Note the element of inevitability.
Second, the 10-man committee is headed by the Vice-President, which is usually a sign that the government is buying time in a matter in which it has no interest in taking serious action.
Remember, the last time Mr. Osinbajo headed one such committee, justice was delayed, deferred, and then denied. Neither the former Secretary to the Government, Babachir Lawal, nor the former National Intelligence Agency Director-General, Ayo Oke, both of whom were indicted, has been prosecuted. And then in a classic case of coconuts and oranges, President Muhammadu Buhari appointed a French language specialist into Oke’s specialized intelligence role.
Third-and in a country with a police force and regular security agencies-assembling a committee of state governors in a matter requiring arrests in a crime is deceptive.
In other words, there is no evidence-despite his words but also because of his words-that Mr. Buhari has any intention of pursuing the cause of justice in a matter as dangerous to national unity as the herdsmen menace. In a meeting with some Benue elders in Abuja-not even at the scene of the crime-he admonished them to “accommodate your countrymen” and to restrain “your people.”
It is “others” who are to accommodate the herders wherever they roam, even over their own crops. It is others who are to be restrained. It is others, the victims, who must be apologetic about being in the way of the herd, any and every herd, and the armed herders. This is particularly important if it is remembered that two years ago, Buhari told NTA News that a man herding 400 or more cows can do little should his cattle overrun an innocent farmer’s farm.
In other words, President Buhari appears not to have grasped the concept of national, over sectional, leadership. As long as he maintains this attitude, Nigeria is in grave corporate peril from which it may not recover.
That is why the new committee headed by Mr. Osinbajo is at best, window-dressing.
Speaking of window-dressing, Nigeria has finally reacted to United States President Donald Trump’s unprecedented insult of African countries. But it took several days of Nigeria observing other countries remonstrating with the American ambassador in their capitals, to summon both outrage and courage. In its tame and lame copycat response, Abuja offered but substance to Mr. Trump’s characterization.
Is Nigeria a s-hole country? If there is an African country which deserves to be insulted, it is Nigeria. This is difficult for a Nigerian to accept, particularly when it is a dismissal thrown down by an outsider, but it is also difficult to imagine another nation on earth with the potential of Nigeria which has underperformed to such abysmal proportions or achieved so little.
Despite our resources, we travel in circles, our leaderships always finding excuses not to succeed; the citizens sometimes giving them a free pass.
As I have said in the past, however, Nigeria is a crime scene. Actually, she is a million crime scenes in one, which each person concerned only about himself, and only a helpless few sparing a thought for the general interest.
When we acquire power or position, it is often to serve ourselves and those closest to us. This is why we have stacks and stacks and layers and layers and decades and decades of half-programmes, quarter-policies and unfinished projects. It is why our infrastructure is no infrastructure: the powerful do not want to build or repair the roads or the rail: they want to buy official jets to fly over them.
Sixty years later, nothing works. Sixty years later, we lack bold and imaginative policies. We are small largely because we think small. Government officials speak of “dualizing” major highways as if an open or no-drainage dual-which they are sure not to complete, or complete to any quality-is an achievement today for a population and economy of our size.
Think about it: Nigeria lacks one good quality airport-ONE-or any airport with standard equipment, management or maintenance. Name the public buildings with toilets you can confidently step into if you have not been there six months after it was built. If you are not the spouse or child of the president or governor, what hospital would you like to die in should you be in an accident?
A s-hole country? Perhaps Nigeria did not react to Trump because Abuja simply could not summon genuine outrage. Perhaps we were asking, arrogantly: What’s a s-hole anyway? Perhaps we were wondering: How is that offensive? Until we heard a proud and functioning African country say, “Heck No, Trump!”
Heck Yes: Last Friday, The Nation reported that the EFCC is trying to find a tranche of $500m in Sani Abacha loot repatriated to Nigeria during the Goodluck Jonathan years.
“Of the $500million, about $250million was released to the Office of National Security Adviser (ONSA) during the tenure of Col. Sambo Dasuki without appropriation,” the newspaper said. “The balance of $250million cannot be traced yet.
It added that the agency found that the $250million was illegally withdrawn about two months to the end of Jonathan’s tenure.
I have often said that if the current government earnestly, and honestly, began a war on corruption, large sums of money would be recovered for development. But it has been neither honest nor earnest.
That is why it is not accounting for funds recovered, including as determined by the courts; not capable of using such funds any better than its predecessors; not traveling beyond its propaganda; and not inspiring any confidence.
“Commensurate commitment.” A powerful concept for our new age. Chew on it.
• Twitter: @SonalaOlumhense
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