Is’haq Modibbo Kawu

IN the end, the return journey by road from Maiduguri to Abuja, took fifteen hours! It was certainly one of the scariest trips I have done in recent times. By Sunday night, I learnt that I would have to return by road not by air as we had arrived on Saturday. I feel happy in the long run, that I travelled by road, because I got a clearer picture of what Borno people in particular and the Northeast in general, have undergone in the past couple of years: towns and villages raided many times; economic activities and social life suffered severe restrictions and there is a mix of stoicism and fatalism underlining existence for majority of people in these communities. One of my friends, who I had not seen since 2007, told me that people still living in Borno are there because they have nowhere else to relocate to!

The poignancy of the situation was brought home by a combination of events. A new video was issued by Boko Haram, which showed the execution of people in a school dormitory in Bama. Months after it was captured, no effort to re-take it has come to the fore. And there were also the bombings in Gombe and Bauchi on Monday, with very gory pictures of death and injuries being posted on various websites.

And as we drove past the countless military and police checkpoints, towns that used to have those fascinating names, like Beni Sheikh, Damagum, Damaturu and Potiskum, have suffered the wrath of the killing machine that Boko Haram is: burnt police stations, residences and shops are everywhere. Yet, people maintain a troubling dignity as they try to earn a livelihood. It is very clear to see the disadvantages faced by young people without the education and skills to become relevant in the world of the 21Century.

They sell pure water and soft drinks; kolanuts; sugarcane; cigarettes, and other stuff, that taken together, cannot be worth more than one thousand naira. I wondered how livelihood can be constructed around these items. The Bama episode was brought into bold relief when I met dozens of the refugees, under shades of a mosque on Damboa Road, close to the residence of Senator Ahmed Zanna.

There is no hope of return to their homes soon. And do we expect these individuals to appreciate being Nigerians, when their country’s leadership obviously does not care about them?

We arrived on Saturday morning, and drove in a convoy to the Gamboru Primary School inside Maiduguri. The occasion was to distribute food items and some funds to six hundred indigent families in the area. The programme  has been going on in the various wards of the Metropolitan LGA and the neighbouring Jere LG.

Maiduguri

The truth is that many families have become poorer in Borno as a result of the insurgency. So the assistance was really well-received by the community. In all, Maiduguri now hosts one million refugees from the various places sacked or occupied by Boko Haram. Two hundred thousand others are in camps. The logistics of feeding and keeping them reasonably comfortable is back breaking for the Borno State Government.

Zanna Umar Mustapha, the Deputy Governor supervises the project, which is coordinated by the Borno SEMA. Over five hundred million naira is expended every month to keep the people going, with the hope that someday soon, the insurgents will be routed from the various communities, so they can return to pick up the pieces of their lives.

That scenario fills me with trepidation, because in real terms these are people that even in the best of times are severely disadvantaged! It was clearer to me that, that over abused word, synergy, is clearly not existent between the Federal Government and the Borno and Yobe states, who suffer most from the insurgency. And the truth is that the Federal Government has to do more; if what Obasanjo revealed in his new book about what President Jonathan told him about the insurgency in the North, then we are in much deeper trouble than we thought. Jonathan allegedly told Obasanjo that it was his enemies that are killing themselves in the North! It is a most scandalous statement from the president of our country if it is true he said so!

Seriousness of the situation

On Sunday evening, I accompanied Kashim Shettima, the Borno governor, to visit the famous Nursing Home Hospital. I did an interview there in 1994 for the BBC, with its then director, Dr. Hamakim. Today, it has been refurbished and named after thelate General Muhammed Shuwa. Kashim Shettima met EVERY single patient in all the wards.

There was a pattern of illnesses that we found, which again underlined the seriousness of the situation and how hard the battle is against underdevelopment. It is very appropriate that Borno has in Kashim Shettima, a governor who genuinely has a desire to work for the upliftment of his people. As we left the hospital late in the evening, and in the next two days, I couldn’t help but think of the revelry that will accompany Christmas in the houses of the filthy rich in our society.

This is the season of goodwill, but how much of it has been extended to the suffering people of Borno, Yobe and the Northeast as well as the poor who make up the majority of our citizenry? Nigeria has managed to create one of the most unjust and unequal societies on earth today; yet we have enough to banish underdevelopment in our country and to even extend brotherhood in Africa.

But the greed of our ruling elite is destroying this beautiful country. It is NOT sustainable! So when you tear the thigh of a chicken and wash down with champagne, please give a thought to the people under the yoke of the Boko Haram insurgency! Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace and goodwill to man! That is one of my favourite quotations from the Holy Bible. Merry Christmas!

Bukola Saraki: Always clever by a half

TO commemorate his 52nd birthday recently, the tin-god of Kwara politics, Bukola Saraki, announced to the flotsam and jetsam that follows him, that he would use some of his pension to start a scholarship programme for brilliant students. His hangers-on probably applauded him for his “generosity”.

But the facts are very messy. Towards the end of his tenure in 2010, Bukola Saraki got a supine Kwara House of Assembly to pass for him a Pension Bill, which for all intents and purposes, means that for as long as he is alive, he will LEGALLY be entitled to cream off a huge sum of Kwara state’s money. That is coming after all he made as governor; and what he continues to make as Governor-General of Kwara since 2011! So the propaganda about a scholarships scheme is set out to hide the obscenity associated with the IMMORAL Pension scheme he has worked out for himself!

If the money had remained in the coffers of government, would better use not have been made of the funds? What altruism is in immorally taking money from a state that he has systematically underdeveloped since 2003, and then turning around to now issue some ridiculous scholarships? It is still Kwara’s money, not his!

This is a SCAM and it is one that has been perfected in the governance structure in Kwara since 2003! Another example will underline the scam. Honourable Aliyu Ahman-Pategi is the Chair of the House Committee on Water Resources. Not long ago, he was able to get the Federal Government to approve boreholes for Kwara. To propitiate the tin god, Bukola, Ahman-Pategi gave him about 50 of these boreholes.

With fanfare, Bukola Saraki began “donating” boreholes to communities in the state. It was Federal Government intervention; it underlines the SCAM about water supply in the state since 2003 under Bukola! Billions of Naira has gone down the drain, yet we cannot see the water Bukola Saraki and his cronies have spent money on. Similarly, after expending billions on road construction, he returned to Kwara over a year ago, with an earth moving equipment, allegedly to launch a roads construction intervention. In a most humiliating spectacle, he drove the vehicle while our amiable governor, AbdulFateh Ahmed, posed as the “karen-mota”, to the chagrin of onlookers! Being clever by a half is a classic approach to governance and exploitation of Kwara under Bukola Saraki’s suzerainty. But we see through the charade! It will certainly end one day!

THESE certainly the WORST  of times in our country! Last weekend at a fund raising dinner party, which lasted not more than three hours, Nigeria’s ruling party, openly displayed the incestuous relationship between the party and government and the Nigerian super-rich, what Andre Gunder Frank would have described as our lumpen-bourgeoisie!

Well in those few hours the party became N21billion richer to fight what must be the most bruising election it would ever  face since the 1999 transition to civil rule. At the occasion, President Goodluck Jonathan, with utmost pride, announced that in the past 15 years in power, PDP has “created many millionaires and billionaires”, because it is a “business-friendly party”. In his incredible tunnel vision, Jonathan did not see the obverse of the scenario: the millions of Nigerians that his party has condemned to poverty, squalor and hopelessness.

The truth is that those who donated the billions of naira and those receiving them live in mortal fear of the Nigerian people! They are in cahoots in the systematic underdevelopment of Nigeria and they need each other, to keep the criminal enterprise going: the incestuous relationship between the Nigerian business elite and the party and government it runs.

But nothing lasts forever! The Nigerian people will eventually see through the criminal alliance of big business and the political apparatus of party and state, under the PDP. If anyone surprised me about his donation, it was Nigeria’s AGIP-IN-CHIEF, Jerry Gana. Where on earth did Jerry Gana get five billion Naira from? Who are his faceless friends that donated the money with him? Jerry Gana, as I have written here in the past holds the ONLY PERMANENT C-of-O, to the corridors of power in Nigeria!

Could have been that he mortgaged his certificate? Isn’t the proper thing to do the FULL DISCLOSURE of the faceless “friends” and their source of money? What is INEC saying about that obscenity? We are waiting for an eventual day of reckoning. Remember what Fela Anikulapo Kuti sang? “One day go be one day, those wey dey steal money from government; one day go be one day”! That day is not far off in Nigeria!