24032021 - Insecurity threatens 2023 elections, Ortom tells Buhari

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16 — Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2021 You’ll regret losing your land to invaders (1) IF your education has left you incapable of defending the land that your ancestors acquired and preserved for you and your future generations, then you are beyond pathetic; you are worthless! In Igbo, a fool is often described as efulefu or ofekhe (Abiriba); a person who has lost the sense of what makes him “the son of his father”. Before the White man came, we had our own templates for raising young men and women into strong adults well-equipped to sustain their inheritances. In Abiriba, we had the ikpu uzu and ije uzu, which was eventually copied by other Igbo groups and became what we all know as the Igbo entrepreneurship mentorship system. You served your master, learnt his trade, leveraged on his experience and contacts and (expectedly) benefited from his reward when you were ready to set up your own shop. You also moved systematically from the lowest level of cultural initiation and strove to attain the highest. Through all this, you acquired the ability to understand the culture, defend the land and preserve it for the future generations. This was what defined your social stature. The coming of Western education was meant to confer an “additional brain” to the African. It was not meant to displace his traditional sense of belonging or rob him of his manhood. But unfortunately, that is exactly what it has done to many of us, especially those from the southern parts of Nigeria. Education gave us certificates and we headed off to the nearest urban area developed by the British colonialists because of the jobs that used to be abundant. There were also limitless opportunities for commerce. Urban dwellers enjoyed power and water supply and modern amenities which were not available in the rural areas. With the massive embrace of education, the urban areas filled up. The jobs dried up, the amenities which government could not expand became dilapidated, and millions of unemployed, poverty-stricken people became trapped in urban slums. Even today, people are still drifting to big towns like Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. Virile young people abandoned the villages to the weak and elderly who survive on subsistence agriculture. The fertile lands with almost year-round rainfall were no longer cultivated. The richly-endowed southern people rendered themselves vulnerable to a punitive “food blockade” by the North! Climate change and self-imposed instability has been steadily driving the northern population southwards in the past 20 years. Ordinarily, there is nothing wrong or strange about this. It is a natural human instinct to move towards the greener pasture. Once upon a time (between the 1950s and 1980s) the North was once considered by many people in the South as a greener pasture. Many people migrated northwards to earn their livelihood. That is why many people from the South had their birthplaces in the North. The problem, therefore, is not that Nigerians of northern extraction are drifting southward. When this migration started, nobody complained. Northerners came into the towns and villages as lawabiding citizens and took up honest, menial jobs. They mended shoes, hawked water, operated commercial motorcycles, worked on the farms and construction sites and generally performed the grunt tasks that southern youth now believe they have become “too big” to do. Minor ethnic skirmishes apart, we have cohabited quite What we now have is no longer mere migration; it is an armed invasion of our ancestral lands! well. But right now, the situation has changed to land grabbing by means of war or conquest! What we now have is no longer mere migration; it is an armed invasion of our ancestral lands! In the past five years, there has been a steady influx of strange people masquerading as “herdsmen” into the South with assault weapons. Many of them are not Nigerians. For six weeks, around this time last year, most parts of the country were forced into a lock-down to minimise the spread of the coronavirus. The lock-down was so fierce that some governors closed state boundaries to prevent the influx of people. While the rest us were forced to stay indoors, thousands of food, cattle and Send Opinions & Letters to: opinions1234@yahoo.com cement trailers and trucks were used by some faceless powerful individuals to bring hundreds of thousands of youth into the South. As soon as they were disembarked from the trucks they were herded into the nearest forests! We saw them live on several viral videos. There were also rumours that some of the trucks contained assault rifles and ammunition. The security agencies who were mobilised to implement the lock-downs betrayed their assignment by allowing these unknown elements through their control posts. Some governors found themselves having to struggle with superior officials up the hierarchy of our political, military, police and security agencies who were bent on forcing through the armada of strange arrivals. State task forces on the implementation of the lock-downs were now clashing with the “authorities” who were obviously playing the double game of imposing a lock-down and facilitating the drafting of these strangers down South. Within a little time, we began to see the morphing of the number of “camps’ in the southern forests. These strangers had set up settlements made of the typical thatched round huts usually associated with the people of the Sahel. In the South West, reports had it that about 150 such camps had been identified. Another report also had it that no less than 350 such settlements were isolated in the South East with its tiny tranche of landmass! The situation is not different in the South-South where “helicopter drops” have been reported. The Federal Government, whose Ruga, Water Resources and Cattle Colony policies had been firmly rejected throughout the Middle Belt and South, is now preaching that Nigerians have the constitutional right to “settle anywhere”, which is a pathetic lie. Miyetti Allah and other interest groups even claim that the whole of Nigeria is a property of their ethnic group! We continue this next week. Soyinka 'blunders' again! By EKANPOU ENEWARIDIDEKE THERE is a towering aromatic blunder in the air. As before, ever and always - like ‘Abiku’ the perpetually irrepressible troubler of the Nobel Laureate’s creation - Soyinka, ‘the perpetual dramatist who tends to dramatise on every grammar of his own manufacture’, has blundered again. This is the first time Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, born July 13, 1934 at Abeokuta, has blundered and unashamedly admitted he has actually blundered. General Sani Abacha and his cohorts must be in a derisory jubilant mood over the fact that the literary legend hitherto thought flawless has at last openly admitted his blunders. So even Soyinka blunders too! Wole Soyinka is my father - my literary father. This literary fatherhood is a fortified formation created of my own volition, seduced by the voluptuous features/physique unveiled or shed in his writings: drama, poetry, prose, essays, lectures, his oratorical prowess, fluidity and seductive phonological proficiency. And again, of my own volition, I have just dismantled this formation hitherto built on filial literary allegiance and love - a sudden dismantlement occasioned by Soyinka’s recent blunders! For a mind-bogglingly morbid portrait of a nation as one of paedophiles, assassins, anthropophagi, marketers of human parts, crisis-profiteers, ritual murderers, religious hypocrites, tainted government functionaries, promoters of development stasis , hunters of visionaries, pathological promoters of infanticide, homicide, terrorism, pathological promoters of arsonists, pathological haters of intellectuals and reformers and pathological scapegoaters of religious crisis as a camouflage for gold-mining in Zamfara State - a great nation like Nigeria for that matter! Soyinka merits dismantlement and expulsion from my republic as my literary father. This I have already done as the only distinguishable patriot in a great country called Nigeria where the welfare of the citizens is always speedily given a royal priority The Niger Delta is still an abandoned child full of scalding tears of underdevelopment attention - a radiant reality which Soyinka does not bother to know in his boundless, unremitting vituperations in his recent artistic creation called Chronicles Of The Happiest People On Earth. From 1960 and beyond when Soyinka patriotically offers as rituals for societal reordering, re-orientation, re-direction and transformation his own babies of imaginative procreation - undaunted by the glaring risk of accusatory jabs and poisoned arrows of infanticide and homicide disparagingly deposited at his doorstep - A Dance of the Forests, The Swamp Dwellers, The Strong Breed, The Road, The Lion and the Jewel, The Interpreters, The Man Died, etc.etc. - his consistent critical dance is always anti-establishment whose murderous institutions are always poised to silence his stentorian voice of vision with every opportunity corralled or commandeered. Imaginatively procreative continuum of the anti-establishment critical dance of the Nobel Laureate is a normal expectation of his believers, but the Soyinka we know seems to have gone AWOL on this noble and commendable path - only sadly shaping ominous path out of his hitherto glorious noble path. Could this be that lionised Soyinka we know whose words and oral renditions could seduce Holy Mary and Helen of Troy into noble relationship? The Niger Delta is still an abandoned child full of scalding tears of underdevelopment. From the 1950s till now, Chief Harold Dappa Biriye, Major Isaac Boro, Ken Saro-Wiwa and High Chief Tompolo had megaphoned the developmental backwardness of the Niger Delta to the Federal Government of Nigeria whose present response - after series of failed interventionist developmental organs created - revolves around NDDC and the Presidential Amnesty Programme. NDDC is in the grip of a ‘mafiad’ systematic suffocation. Contractors with proofs of job-completion are denied payment. This deliberate non-payment of contrctors can be located in the deliberate nonpayment of the canalisation project professionally carried out in Akparemogbene River in Burutu Local Government Area of Delta State - a commendable canalisation project taken on by a competent contractor in 2019 but the contractor is yet to be paid a kobo by NDDC. What about the Amnesty Programme now administratively captained some nautical miles away from the ideal course where only competent administrators very much at home with the agitation nitty-gritty of the region were usually appointed when it began in 2009. It is today the capital of discordant songs as regards the course it is being piloted by the privileged hands. Is Soyinka not aware of these weird happenings in NDDC and PAP? Why the silence, Soyinka? I thought Soyinka’s vocal cords would assume stridency and deafening decibel over the visible storm threatening NDDC and PAP but suprisingly, he has chosen professional silence over and above weird occurrences that keep the interventionist development bodies convulsed. Soyinka appears not to be bothered that NDDC and PAP are dancing fractionally away from the known rhythm of development of the people for whom they are created. Is Soyinka afraid of NDDC and PAP? Strikingly, in Delta State the mantra that dwells on the lips of the people is that of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa as the road master - referentially echoed as a responsive critical appraisal of his development projects - and the Deputy Governor, Kingsley Otuaro, around whom development theories revolve in their variety - ‘Otuaroism,’ ‘Otuaro- Singaporeanism,’ ‘Otuaro- Intellectualism’, ‘Otuaro-Ruralism’, ‘Otuaro-Philanthropism’ and many other allied development theories society can lean on for transformational progression. Governor Okowa’s mantra as the road master activated by a vision to finish strong, and Otuarosim and its allied development theories formulated can be given investigative thrusts for extraction of the truths in these phenomena distilled as materials to inspire and trigger off a chain of devleopment thrusts because Okowa’s developmemnt mantra, and Otuaroism and its allied development theories constitute a magical developmental compass when constructively mangled. As regards imaginative and constructive mangling of Okowa’s mantra and Otuaro’s ‘Otuaroism’ and its allied development theories, no writer on earth can do this better than Soyinka but in Soyinka I only see infectious disinterest and dismissive glares. Is anything the matter O Soyinka, the giant of Literature and activism? Is anything the matter with Soyinka the untainted voice of vision in the society? That Governor Okowa and Deputy Governor Otuaro are politicians may constitute the mitigating basis for Soyinka’s disinterest and analytical dissociation from the activities of the two personalities. What about the activities of King Alfred Izonebi? King Izonebi is of the world of Soyinka. King Izonebi is a philosopher, gifted musician who anchors the music revivalism movement through which he hopes to revive the ancient traditional Ijaw songs produced by old musicians of the dead years.These ancient but great songs - timeless in their didactive value and appeal - are faced daily with extinction. This king Izonebi has laboured to revive most of these dead songs for mankind and he is still at it. The music revivalist movement of King Izonebi ought to have rung a bell of high decibel loud enough to attract the creative sensitivity and sensibility of Soyinka. Even on this music revivalism matter alone, which is the domain of the Nobel laureate, he gives off professional distance and silence like bats upon BIA branches in Oyangbene town whose clanging voices are never heard when it is dawn. Is Soyinka at war with the talented Ijaw music revivalist called King Alfred Izonebi of Bayelsa and Delta states of Nigeria? Continues online:www.vanguardngr.com •Enewaridideke, a poet, wrote from Akparemogbene, Delta State. C M Y K
Nigerian leaders not Nigeria (2) THE third ‘error’ I now address is not so much an ‘unforced error’ as it is something of a Freudian slip- it reveals the actual or inner thought of the person concerned even if inadvertently. This time around it concerns the statement made by the National Security Adviser, NSA, retired Army Major-General, Babagana Munguno, who in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, Hausa Service made the jaw-dropping claim that arms meant for the anti-insurgency war for which billions of naira and at least $1 billion were released and which arms were supposedly procured under the watch of the immediate past service chiefs, were nowhere to be found. The only reason this revelation could be considered jaw-dropping at all is simply because it came from a member of the All Progressives Congress, APC-led administration and not one of the so-called wailers or the supposedly hate speech-filled Opposition. According to Monguno, the new Service Chiefs, who were appointed by President Muhammadu <strong>Buhari</strong>, with the clear mandate to defeat the insurgents that have made most parts of the North-East (and now the North-West and North-Central) ungovernable in the last ten years, assumed duty only to find that their predecessors neither bought nor left them any weapons with which to fight the insurgents. Hear Mungono in his own words: “The President has done his best by approving huge sums of money for the purchase of weapons, but the weapons were not bought, they are not here. “Now, he has appointed new service chiefs, hopefully, they will devise some ways. I’m not saying the former service chiefs diverted the money, but the money is missing. We don’t know how, and nobody knows for now. I believe Mr. President will investigate where the money went. I can assure you the President takes issues of this nature seriously. The fact is that preliminary investigation showed the funds are missing and the equipment is nowhere to be found. When the new service chiefs assumed office, they also said they didn’t see anything on the ground.” I have quoted the NSA, Munguno, at considerable length in order to clear any doubt as to whether he meant to say what he was quoted to have said and that his meaning lacked any contextual ambiguityit was clear as daylight. In what manner could this remark made by the NSA have led to a misconstrual based on context? But Mungono now wants to walk back his own comment by retailing that old, worn lie of the typical Nigerian politician caught in the act of telling lies: that he was quoted out of context. No, Mr. NSA, you have spoken your truth! It may neither be the official line sanctioned by party apparatchiks, but it is the truth as seen from an insider who should know. Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2021—17 had done his best by releasing money for the purchase of arms. But as we have said often here, the best of this government is many times not good enough. Mungono’s charge is not just an indictment of the President as an individual, it indicts the entire machinery of the APC-led administration, including Mungono himself, and the opacity that appears to characterise their activities. When did Mungono come to the realisation that the funds meant for arms were missing- before or after the former service chiefs left office? Although he might himself have been frustrated into silence but the question still remains: why didn’t he speak before now, and why is he walking back his claim? When Nigerians see things like this, they are frustrated not just with the individuals and groups responsible for it. They write off the perpetrators of these acts and in the process Nigeria itself. No, Nigeria deserves better and should be so treated. This country is the accommodating mother or spouse that is roundly abused and misused by her evil children. A House of Representatives investigative committee has more or less confirmed Mungono’s claim by its own admission that 60% of the $1 billion meant for arms purchase was expended on building a base/ hanger for the Super Sukano fighter jets Nigeria ordered from America. The unnamed member, according to Sunday Punch of March 21, 2021, made clear they are yet to trace the whereabouts of the outstanding 40% of the arms funds. Is it any surprise that just a day or two after Mungono’s interview Abuja announced it would be taking delivery of some of the 12 Super Tukano jets in July? What’s the point in making this announcement just after the BBC interview ruckus even when delivery of the jets is still three full months away? Why is the House of Representatives recalling the former service chiefs for grilling? There’s fire on the mountain and everyone is panicky fighting the fire. No, Nigerian politicians are not Nigeria. They do not equate this much abused country that will survive her bastard children that strayed into governance. Concluded It also would not make a difference that Munguno now seeks a walk-back. He may, indeed, have deliberately made this remark knowing full well that Nigerians would read between the line even when he now disclaims it, washing his hand off of it Pontius Pilate-style. He said enough to absolve himself of future culpability. He has taken enough risk and said more than enough as a prominent member of the present government. It is left for Nigerians to work out what is true or not for themselves from his bold statement. To be clear also, Mungono has said nothing that Nigerians, including others directly involved in the anti-insurgency war, have not said. Was it not General Olusegun Adeniyi’s criticism of the management of the anti-insurgency war, his complaint about the non-availability of weaponry to prosecute the so-called war that led to his being court-martialled and demoted? How many other officers and men have been so treated in the last five years? How often before now have we as Nigerians heard of soldiers deserting or going AWOL all out of frustration about how corruption among their commanders and service chiefs has Why is the so-called antiinsurgency campaign unending, why have the insurgents been so impregnable? wrong-footed their effort and placed their lives at risk? Why is the so-called antiinsurgency campaign unending; why have the insurgents been so impregnable? Mungono’s BBC interview needs no special pleading or interpretation, let seekers of truth make of it what they will. And mind you, the BBC is none of the other mistreated Nigerians media outlets that could be so easily and mischievously discredited with a charge of unprofessionalism. It is Abuja that must of its own accord come clean about the monkey business surrounding its management of the war operations in the North-East and the rest of the North. Although Mungono tried to absolve the President, telling the world he 08055069060 (SMS Only) Finally, timeline comes for Digital Switchover, DSO THERE is the street language of “money talks”. Translated in street value, it means that money has so much power that it can virtually do anything for the owner, command authority and bend people into oxymoronic genuflection or sustained obsequiousness. Money talks. Perhaps, this is why in 1969, the British author, James Hadley Chase, real name, Rene Lodge Brabazon Raymond, wrote the thriller, The Whiff of Money. Only a few can resist the scent or the temptation of money. Some pursue it inordinately and find out at the very end even with loads of it that life is nothing but vapour. In Nigeria, the pursuit of money is more aggressive and more grotesque. Governments make budgets and steal half of the money. National Assembly members earn so much of it and are yet unable to visit their villages for fear of being killed or kidnapped. Young men and women go into yahoo yahoo business and engage in voodoo to make cash. That was before kidnappers realised that you can make a booming trade out of the business, especially when government is insipid and far away from reality. Money talks. As a country, we throw cash at problems and earn vacuity as rewards. Is that not the reason we throw billions of naira every year at fixing our refineries and yet tax the ordinary fellow on the streets for our failure to earn even a little result? We fail to align cash with planning and reality, and what confronts us is that the country lives from day-to-day and hand-tomouth, while only those who preside over the looting of the commonwealth sing hosanna about the biggest economy in the continent that cannot feed nearly half of its people. Money talks. I can announce with excitement this morning that since the Federal Executive Council, FEC, on February 10, 2021, made a payment approval for the Digital Switchover, DSO, both the regulator, National Broadcasting Commission, NBC, and the Ministry of Information and Culture, have gone on maximum overdrive to achieve projected results. For once, I will try to overlook the subterranean maneouvres and contradictions within the implementing organisations, to focus on what can be taken for real tangible roadmap that was recently released. They don’t seem to be throwing money this time; there seems to be a conscious effort to align money with planning. Even then, there are too many open questions that can hardly be ignored. Money talks. Now empowered to meet residual debts, Acting Director General of the NBC, Prof. Armstrong Idachaba, with the support of the Minister, Alhaji Lai Mohameed, penultimate week, released a switchover timeline which, we hope, will weather intervening situations going forward. The reason being that in the November/December issue of 2015, ITU News had warned that in countries like Nigeria, where demand for terrestrial television is strong, Digital Switchover would be a long and complex process and called for the involvement of No matter how grandiose our plans are, some TV viewers will still suffer, shut out of their only means of information and entertainment with Analogue Switch off stakeholders and an information campaign promoting the availability of free-to-air digital terrestrial television. With all the warning, this writer cannot be sure whether anybody thought the process was going to be this convoluted and tortuous. Nigeria has missed the Digital Switchover window twice: 2015 and 2020. Government has thus acted to save a failing process from becoming an international embarrassment, you know, as a country that cannot manage any process to conclusion. Like a man challenging the nation to hold him to his words, Idachaba said of the timeline: “Phase 2 of the Nigeria DSO will commence with roll out in the most populous and commercially viable locations of Lagos, Kano and Rivers states as well as Yobe and Gombe states. This departure from the initial roll out plan of six locations from each geopolitical zone was necessitated by the need to evolve a self-sustaining strategy for the DSO. “The new timetable will, therefore, be kick-started with roll out in Lagos State, April 29, 2021; Kano State on June 3, 2021 and Rivers State on July 8, 2021; on the heels of these states will be switch on of Yobe State on July 15, 2021 and Gombe State on August 12, 2021.” Anticipating the success that will be recorded in the process, Idachaba informed that the first Analogue Switch off, ASO, is, therefore, slated to take place on May 28, 2021 in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory. The remaining phase one states of Plateau, Kaduna, Kwara, Enugu and Osun will follow in June, August and September 2021. What this means is that effective from the date of Analogue Switch off, television broadcast can only be received with the DSO approved Set Top Boxes. Money talks. Everything seems to be falling in place. The minister has promised that nobody will be excluded from the process. Meaning that no matter the situation, a TV user should be able to receive signals. “Before we embark on the analogue switch off in any state, we will ensure that the Digital Terrestrial Television, DTT, signal has covered at least 70 per cent of the population in that state, while the remaining 30 per cent will be covered by Direct-To-Home, DTH, satellite signal. Please note that once the analogue signal is switched off, no one on the system will receive television signals anymore,” the Minister said. The minister also addressed the issue of Set Top Boxes, promising that availability and cost are being addressed with the manufacturers and through the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment. In some other countries of the world, their governments subsidised the acquisition of Set Top Boxes in order to make them available to those at the base of the economy. Nigeria with over 40 million TV homes may not be ready for direct subsidy (hey! that is only easily possible in the importation of premium motor spirits - PMS – where woolly deals are made), but the Minister is looking at other factors that can knock down prices. However, I have my little hold back. No matter how grandiose our plans are, some TV viewers will still suffer, shut out of their only means of information and entertainment with Analogue Switch off. I have visited some places recently, even in the FCT; the people who live there will not understand the meaning of Digital Switchover or Analogue Switch off in the next few years. Even if they do, they cannot afford the cost which may hover at about $60, which is only a fraction short of the minimum wage, my friend. And the little information available about the DSO has been adulterated by the poor performance of this government. There is the crying need to pump it up and keep it pure.
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24032021 - Insecurity threatens 2023 elections, Ortom tells Buhari

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