Boko Haram attack on Nigeria oil team killed over 50.

Details emerging from Tuesday's ambush in northeast Nigeria suggest the death toll is higher than initially reported.

More than 50 people were killed in a Boko Haram ambush on an oil exploration team in northeast Nigeria earlier this week, multiple sources told AFP news agency on Thursday, warning the death toll could rise.

Tuesday's attack in the Magumeri area of Borno state on a convoy of specialists from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was the group's deadliest in months.

It underscored the persistent threat posed by Boko Haram fighters, despite government claims they were a spent force, and also the risks associated with the hunt for crude in the volatile Lake Chad basin.

Details of the ambush, which was initially thought to be a kidnapping attempt, have been slow to emerge and an exact death toll difficult to establish, as the military strictly controls access to rural Borno.

Telecommunications and other infrastructure have been severely damaged or destroyed in the conflict, which has left at least 20,000 dead and more than 2.6 million homeless since 2009.

The army said on Wednesday that 10 people were killed in the attack.

But one source involved in dealing with the aftermath told AFP news agency on Thursday: "The death toll keeps mounting. Now we have more than 50... and more bodies are coming in."

"It's clear that the attack wasn't for abduction. They (Boko Haram) attacked just to kill."

Missing university staff

An aid agency worker in Magumeri, which is 50 kilometres northwest of Maiduguri, said 47 bodies were recovered from the bush as of Wednesday evening.

"Eleven of them were badly burned in the attack. They were burned alive in their vehicle, which was stuck in a trench," he added.

"We buried them here because they couldn't be taken to Maiduguri.

"This evening (Thursday), six more bodies were recovered, including one soldier, and many more could be recovered because search and rescue teams are all over the place."

A medical source at the Nigerian Army 7th Division headquarters at Maimalari barracks in Maiduguri said: "So far we have 18 dead soldiers. Ten were brought yesterday and eight more today."

At the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), a medical worker said: "We have 19 bodies at the moment of civilians.

"Fifteen of them were vigilantes (civilian militia) and four were staff from the university. They have been taken for burial."

The head of the academic staff union at the University of Maiduguri, Dani Mamman, confirmed they had received four bodies and said two of them were academics.

"We got the impression our staff on the team were rescued because that was what the military spokesman said yesterday," he added.

"But we were shocked when we were given four dead bodies. This means it wasn't a rescue. We still have other staff that are yet to be accounted for."

Hospital and army officials told the local Punch newspaper that the corpses of 18 soldiers and 30 others had been brought to a facility in Maiduguri following the incident.

The bodies brought to the hospital included 18 soldiers, 15 members of the Civilian Joint Tast Force (JTF), a group of fighters to help oust Boko Haram, five local university staff and four NNPC drivers, Punch reported.

An ongoing threat

In a statement, Nigeria's junior oil minister and the former head of the NNPC Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu described the attack as "unfortunate" but did not give a death toll.

OPEC-member Nigeria is looking to find new oil reserves away from the southern Niger Delta, which has been blighted by attacks from rebels wanting a fairer share of revenue for local people.

With production hit by the attacks, there has been a shift in focus to explore inland basins, including around Lake Chad in the northeast, where Nigeria meets Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

Both Chad and Niger are exploiting reserves on their side of the freshwater lake.

Activities on the Nigerian side had to stop in November 2014 because of Boko Haram violence but the military gave permission to resume exploration in November last year, according to Kachikwu.

Work is centred on a triangle of hotly contested land stretching from Gubio in the west of Borno to Marte in the east, and Kukawa, in the far northeast corner near the shores of the lake.

There has been no serious suggestion that Boko Haram is motivated by a desire to control oil in northeast Nigeria.

But fighters, squeezed out of captured territory by the military counter-insurgency, may have been keen to make a show of force against the soldiers and civilian militia guarding the NNPC team.

In recent months, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group affiliate has been forced to rely on guerilla tactics, particularly suicide bomb attacks, against the security forces and civilian militia.

Women and young girls in particular have been used against civilian "soft" targets such as mosques, as well as the university in Maiduguri.

Source: News Agencies/Aljazeera

Military and Political Heavyweights by Eddie Iroh.

I just wonder how many Nigerians have taken their tongue to count their teeth lately? If they did, calmly and dispassionately, without the emotive effusion that often beclouds the intellect of even ordinarily reasonable men and women, they would find that if care is not taken soon and i mean very soon their country could become a toothless bull dog. The unthinkable would happen Nigeria would disintegrate. The Not Negotiable would be negotiated.

While the focus is on Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB and Ndigbo and their agitation for or against Biafra, a geographical minority in relation to the rest of the country, the Northern Elders Forum, a behemoth led by stalwarts beside whom Kanu would be a small boy, have declared the "readiness of the North to break up Nigeria." 

From the cowards and docile elements, the Facebook pontiffs whose stock in logic is the easy resort to insult and abuse, and the others who find Kanu, IPOB and Ndigbo a soft and easy target, I have not heard a whimper or a whisper against the Elders of the North and their threat. Nor have i heard a squeak from the pips of the serving and retired Army Generals who would threaten to crush any threat against the unity and sovereignty of the Federal Republic. One is then left to resort to conjectures. One such is that this conspiracy of cowardly silence is almost certainly because the true geographical, political and military heavyweights of Nigeria have spoken. 

The politicians and "we the people" have scurried under cover even though their Kaduna Declaration, alongside the Quit Notice to Ndigbo in the North, and the sudden jettisoning of Restructuring, pose a far greater threat to the unity of Nigeria than IPOB can muster. No one is calling the Northern Elders idiots, albinos, demagogues etc, as Kanu is often excoriated. No one dared! Just because a cat looks like a tiger does not make it a tiger. Indeed a cat knows a tiger when it sees one and dares not tweak the tiger's tail.

One does not have to belong to IPOB or Ohaneze to expect equity and even handedness in dealing with any issue that goes to the very heart of the corporate existence of Nigeria. But when it comes to dispassionate examination of critical national issues, there are as many positions as there are ethnic groups. That is because Nigerians are very strange animals. And any inference to the Zoo here is totally unintended.

Eddie Iroh

MAY YOUR ROAD BE ROUGH By Tai Solarin, (Jan. 1, 1964.)

I am not cursing you; I am wishing you what I wish myself every year. I therefore repeat, may you have a hard time this year, may there be plenty of troubles for you this year! If you are not so sure what you should say back, why not just say, ‘Same to you’? I ask for no more.

Our successes are conditioned by the amount of risk we are ready to take. Earlier on today I visited a local farmer about three miles from where I live. He could not have been more than fifty-five, but he said he was already too old to farm vigorously. He still suffered, he said, from the physical energy he displayed as a farmer in his younger days. Around his hut were two pepper bushes. There were Coco yams growing round him. There were snail shells which had given him meat. There must have been more around the banana trees I saw. He hardly ever went to town to buy things. He was self-sufficient.
The car or the bus, the television or the telephone, the newspaper, Vietnam or Red China were nothing to him. He had no ambitions whatsoever, he told me. I am not sure if you are already envious of him, but were we all to revert to such a life, we would be practically driven back to cave dwelling. On the other hand, try to put yourself into the position of the Russian or the America astronaut. Any moment now the count, 3, 2, 1, is going to go, and you are going to be shot into the atmosphere and soon you will be whirling round our earth at the speed of six miles per second. If you get so fired into the atmosphere and you forget what to do to ensure return to earth, one of the things that might happen to you is that you could become forever satellite, going round the earth until you die of starvation and even then your body would continue the gyration!

When, therefore, you are being dressed up and padded to be shot into the sky, you know only too well that you are going on the roughest road man had ever trodden.

The Americans and Russians who have gone were armed with the great belief that they would come back. But I cannot believe that they did not have some slight foreboding on the contingency of their non-return. It is their courage for going in spite of these apprehensions that makes the world hail them so loudly today.

The big fish is never caught in shallow waters. You have to go into the open sea for it. The biggest businessmen make decisions with lighting speed and carry them out with equal celerity. They do not dare delay or dally. Time would pass them by if they did. The biggest successes are preceded by the greatest of heart-burnings. You should read the stories of the bomber pilots of World War II. The Russian pilot, the German pilot, the American or the British pilot suffered exactly the same physical and mental tension the night before a raid on enemy territory. There were no alternative routes for those who most genuinely believed in victory for their side.

You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs, throughout the world, there is no paean without pain. Jawaharlal Nehru has put it so well. I am paraphrasing him. He wants to meet his troubles in a frontal attack. He wants to see himself tossed into the aperture between the two horns of the bull. Being there, he determines he is going to win and, therefore, such a fight requires all his faculties.
When my sisters and I were young and we slept on our small mats round our mother, she always woke up at 6a.m. for morning prayers. She always said prayers on our behalf but always ended with something like this: ‘May we not enter into any dangers or get into any difficulties this day.’ It took me almost thirty years to dislodge the canker-worm in our mother’s sentiments. I found, by hard experience, that all that is noble and laudable was to be achieved only through difficulties and trials and tears and dangers. There are no other roads.

If I was born into a royal family and should one day become a constitutional king, I am inclined to think I should go crazy. How could I, from day to day, go on smiling and nodding approval at somebody else’s successes for an entire lifetime? When Edward the Eighth (now Duke of Windsor) was a young, sprightly Prince of Wales, he went to Canada and shook so many hands that his right arm nearly got pulled out of its socket. It went into a sling and he shook hands thenceforth with his left hand. It would appear he was trying his utmost to make a serious job out of downright sinecure.
Life, if it is going to be abundant, must have plenty of hills and vales. It must have plenty of sunshine and rough weather. It must be rich in obfuscation and perspicacity. It must be packed with days of danger and of apprehension.

When I walk into the dry but certainly cool morning air of every January 1st, I wish myself plenty of tears and of laughter, plenty of happiness and unhappiness, plenty of failures and successes. Plenty of abuse and praise. It is impossible to win ultimately without a rich measure of inter mixture in such a menu. Life would be worthless without the lot. We do not achieve much in this country because we are all so scared of taking risks. We all want the smooth and well-paved roads. While the reason the Americans and others succeeded so well is that they took such great risks.
If, therefore, you are out in this New Year 1964, to win any target you have set for yourself, please accept my prayers and your elixir. May your road be rough!

Tai Solarin (1922-1994) was one of Nigeria’s foremost social activists and front line educationists, his evergreen legacy includes the famous Mayflower School, Ikenne and Molusi College Ijebu-Igbo Ogun state. This article was first published in Daily Times Newspaper of January 1st, 1964.

The Etisalat Example by Dr. Kazeem Bello.

The Abu Dhabi Government that owned Etisalat pulled the company out of Nigeria last week and gave the Nigerian ex-partners 7 days to change its name and drop its Trade name. That has been complied with. Etisalat Nigeria changed the name this past week. The news information about this I monitored on my travel to Dubai on the local news which indicated that the Nigerian Etisalat claimed it invested over $20 billion on equipment and facilities in Nigeria. The news Analyst from Dubai Business New Network TV insisted that it is not possible. The parent company invested $13 billion in Gulf Area to attract over 40 million subscribers, with high world class services , how can Etisalat Nigeria invest $20 billion for 22 million subscribers with epileptic services and a debt ridden company?

The Abu Dhabi home office is struggling to remove the negative effect of the news on the company's stock market performance. It is being very difficult because the numbers are not adding up. The questions in Abu Dhabi is what does Etisalat Head quarters know about the mammoth fraud that prevailed in Etisalat Nigeria? How can the company claim to have spent so much in investment and infrastructure and yet come out with huge debts?

While Etisalat Group is facing serious backlash at home over this monumental fraud, in Nigeria, our CBN is not even asking any question to unravel why the company suddenly went bankrupt. Instead, our CBN and Ministry of Finance from the above are struggling to take over the company's debts and pass it to the unsuspecting tax payers under the umbrella of the debt ridden AMCOM.

The Chairman of the Board and all Board members of the defunct Etisalat Nigeria resigned and walked away free leaving Nigerians with another private sector mismanaged debt ridden company.

Actually, the major reason for my worried contribution here is on the Banking System in Nigeria and the financial mess we may have found ourselves in. Many Nigerians may not know this for a fact because the authorities will never tell you the truth, just like it took several years of noise for the NNPC to admit that the corporation is debt ridden and bankrupt. The Government of Nigeria will not admit it that the CBN of Nigeria is currently running at a Deficit Financial Model. This is called a DEF Model operations in Central Banking structure and practice. For references, you can google " Greece Monetary Collapse" and also the great fall in Brazilian financial system in the 90's. The CBN is almost at those crescendo from all indications going by several body languages, utterances and news from the international financial circle.
The CBN may not be able to cover import bills for more that 15 days from now as we speak which is a huge red flag! The CBN is currently not in any position to bail out the Government in any form due to distress in its liquidity-money creation matrix. CBN cannot perform its role as lender of last resort to the Government of Nigeria as we speak, a major function of Central Banking system. This may be the reason why last week, the Hon Minister of Finance addressed a press conference to tell Nigerians that they are in trouble but most Nigerians just did not understand how to interpret her unspoken words. She said clearly that Government will have to aggressively borrow money from abroad to implement the 2017 budget. Her reason was predicated on the wrong and super inferior analysis that Nigeria has a low debt-capital ratio hence there are rooms for more external debts. We better find a way to stop her from running a huge debt that OBJ was able to clear up during his regime but was kept low during Jonathan's regime due to oil windfall which makes borrowing unnecessary then.

Now with disappointing and falling oil prices, low income-revenue generation by Government, NNPC totally broke running at huge deficits, CBN's inability to bail out Government, we seem to have no choice than to go back to external borrowing at premium at all cost.

Something is pathologically wrong with the Nigerian system. I have written about this in early December 2016 when the budget estimates came out. I pointed to the totally wrong budget appropriation and tagged it a budget of " Economic Contractions". I mentioned that by 3rd quarter of the year, the bubble will burst if something is not done and the Economy may slide into a full blown depression far worse than recession. It is not known what the facts are right now because there are various attempts to hide facts and give erroneous figures to the unsuspecting public. The situation is really bad based on International Analysts facts and figures especially with perceived not admitted dire financial crises at the CBN. We may see an Economic Emergency Bill very soon showing up at the desk of the Senate President but with the current face off between the Acting President and the Senate leadership, it is doubtful if such required bill will ever come to surface. That will be an instrument for the " hawks" in the Senate to roast the Acting President and blackmail him further of incompetence. In the fight between two giant elephants, the grass will have to pay dearly and suffer for it. Nigerians will grow in more poverty, no power, no infrastructure, high inflation, and low economic activities and no salaries for work done.

Back to the Etisalat case, this is the fact of the matter and CBN has not deemed it fit to raise any probe on the huge bank lending to one single company without adequate collateral. Indeed what asset does Etisalat own aside from its license that will be worth the amount of debts being cited? I don't live in Nigeria but at least on my visits, I have not seen any such assets except power masts all over the place.

The same Nigerian Banks gave billions to all the debt ridden GENCOs AND DISCOs with no collateral and yet we have no power. Again, I have written on this issue before. How the power system in Nigeria was defrauded by the collusion of the so-called investors, Nigerian Banks and some officials in the defunct FGN. Nigerians are very prayerful people, we are still trooping to the worship places to pray for steady power supply when some are swimming in billions from the fraud in the sector. Our dream for steady power supply is daily becoming a mirage, to say the least.

The other day, I was having a discussion with a Chinese group of investors on telephone and internet network projects. They mentioned that with about $5 billion dollars in investment in highly powerful telecom equipment and satellite infrastructure, they will supply over 120 million in Nigeria with highly efficient phone and internet network service with super easy, small and latest technology. So why is Etisalat with $20 billion in investment not able to supply good phone and internet network service in Nigeria? Yet poor Nigerians are paying for poor services and will again pay the company's debt through our taxes.
The same way the same people buy and pay for banks and goes around to liquidate the same bank while the tax payers takes over the debts through AMCON. 

Nigeria's Solution to the Problem of Electric Cars By Pius Adesanmi.

Scandinavia, Britain, France, Netherlands, India, China, the US - everyone is in a scramble to announce the end of fuel-powered cars by 2040 and so on. Everyone is announcing that every car on their roads will be green by 2040. Only electric cars. No more petrol and diesel cars.

Many of my friends, who still are yet to come to terms with just how terrible the psychology of Nigeria's political elite is, have been agonizing. They are worried about what happens to an oil-dependent, monocultural economy like Nigeria when all the buyers of her oil go green and her oil pretty much becomes useless.

Well, I can tell you for sure that from Aso Rock to the National Assembly, to Governors, down the ladder to the most inconsequential member of the political class - you can add the socioeconomic elite too - they are already thinking and planning ahead for the advent of electric cars in 2040.

They are just not thinking the way you are thinking.

If you do a laundry list of the solutions they have found as a class to the challenges of modern living in the 21st century, you will gain an insight into how they are going to handle the transition to electric cars.

Problems of space in their built environments in Ikoyi, VI, and Maitama? They destroyed master plans, built on green areas and public parks, built commercial ventures in residential areas, commandeered communal rail track areas for parking lots of private schools, etc. Other elite in tight spaces in Hong Kong, Singapore, etc, will experiment with innovative mastery of space by applying engineering and architectural genius to achieve vertical derring-do in building design. The Nigerian elite will visit violence and aesthetic chaos on her own built space because she has too much money and too little culture.

Bad roads and death traps? They are buying more and more helicopters; their jeeps are getting bigger and sturdier. The other day, I saw Senator Ben Murray-Bruce and a group of other pregnant male Senators inspecting Federal roads in worse condition than the farm paths used by Askia the Great in the Songhai Empire in the 15th century.

The Senators say they are members of one of these useless Senate committees and they had come to do a firsthand assessment of the roads. This was some expressway linking Edo state to the deep south. As the Senators granted TV interviews, talking rubbish, you could see their jeeps in the background. I shook my head in anger. Useless people. They have now seen that the roads have gotten worse. They will return to Abuja to suggest bigger and sturdier jeeps capable of coping with the roads for all Senators in the 2018 appropriation.

Poor health facilities? Well, you have been witnesses to their nakedness and utter shamelessness on display in London this week as a political class. Foreign hospitals will remain their only answer to Nigeria's health issues.

So, how do you think an elite that has handled its own lived environment, roads, and health in this manner will handle the question of electric cars and the imminent end of the fuel economy?

Well, by now, I can bet that some of them are already making inquiries from the innovation sectors of Scandinavia, Britain, France, the US, China, and India. When can we start to place individual orders for these cars of the future? When can we start to queue up for customized versions of these cars? How many can you deliver to me in Lagos or Abuja on January 1, 2040?

How can they be attempting to place orders for cars in 2040 when they cannot guarantee that they will be alive even tomorrow? Never mind. Members of Nigeria's political elite are not intelligent enough to think like that. Their singular focus will be to be the first elite in the world to use cars they cannot manufacture.

And by the time the electric cars are being delivered over their dead bodies to their children in 2040, their own goal of being able to manufacture pencils in Nigeria sometime in this 21st century may still not have been realized.

If the owner of morning says it shall be well with the leaders of Nigeria, the owner of evening will disagree.

Pius Adesanmi

IPOB, MAZI KANU AND MYSELF By JOHN DANFULANI ,Ph.D

On Sunday the 23rd of July 2017 I paid a courtesy call to the supreme leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra(IPOB) Mazi Nnamdi Kanu in Umahia, Abia state. The thick mushroom cloud that my visitation engineered is still permeating the political skies of Northern Nigeria. The empire dogs are jeering while lovers of freedom and liberty are cheering. It's hard to predict when the rumbling cheers and jeers of my solidarity visit to one of the most courageous and foresighted Nigerian and leader of IPOB will cease.

The ultra-conservative elements and oligarchic beneficiaries of a skewed cum dysfunctional unitary system baptized and labeled a federal system are hysterically yet unsuccessfully trying to throw the kitchen on me and divert attention to most mundane issues. Their bait is too pedestrian for me to swallow like brainless turkeys happy for Christmas.

IPOB's takes are:Nigeria is an unhappy matrimonial home full of ruckus;colonial masters that engineered the political wedlock called amalgamation in 1914 did so for economic and political reasons; and that, Ndigbos be allowed to conduct a United Nation Monitored referendum to decide whether to stay in the marriage or divorce.

IPOB's mission, strategy and tactics has local,regional,and global protocols and laws backing them under the broad "principle of self-determination".In post Cold War era,many climes withdrew from the bank of this collective rights without hindrance from the state. It was the spirit of this principle that nationalists in the colonial world(including Nigeria) triggered in sinking colonial rule. Through the magnanimity and global acceptability of this philosophy Nigeria lowered the Union Jack on 1st October 1960.

The political geography called Nigeria was created for heinous reasons by the colonial masters. It is an established realism that economic and administrative reasons guided their decision to amalgamate extreme strange bedfellows in 1914. And refused to demolish the political babel they mischievously constructed before their departure in 1960 despite the knowledge that the amalgams never solicited for it nor showed any interest of staying together. The country's many constitutional conferences in Nigeria and in United Kingdom, and threats of secession by regional leaders before 1960,was a clear indication of Nigerians unwillingness to glue as an indivisible and indissoluble entity.

In 1967 South East region declared a Biafra Republic.It sparked a 30 months civil war. Fifty years down the lane,we are still getting colliding versions of the quantum of human and material lost. Because history is written by victors, war crimes and other inhuman treatment of the Biafrans have been refused a ventilating space in the narrations of the war.

The 1967-1970 war only suppressed the Biafra mission- a fact the federalists are blatantly refusing to accept for a very protracted moment. The rise of IPOB and its complete acceptance by day-to-day Biafrans is a pointer to that. Solomonic wisdom and sagacity are not required to know that it will take God's direct intervention to neutralize IPOB's advocacy of a referendum for Ndigbos.

The state, through its official information channels and sundry propaganda outfits are equating IPOB's call for a referendum to a call for war. Hell no. We saw how similar calls peaked with peaceful referendums in Eritrea, Kosovo, East Timor, South Sudan,Scotland, and Crimea. All those referendums came to force under the globally acceptable principle of self-determination. Is Nigeria not aware that self-determination cardinal principle of international law? Sheer mischief,right ?

Truth be told,this 1914 Lord Lugard's political contraption and Apartheid-like state has outlived its usefulness. Its existence is only serving the interest of ethno-religious supremacists whose anachronistic and barbaric ways of life is not in tandem of contemporary socio-cultural cum political order.

This European created upper caste placed their spiritual books above our 1999 constitution- hence their constant chopping-off of peoples heads under the pretext that some basic tenets of their religion had been violated.Or launching of some terrorist groups whose aim is to shove their beliefs down our throats. Or a cattle rearing Militia that keeps destroying peoples villages and running down their farmlands with impunity.

It's clear that most ethnic nationalities are comfortable with this slave and master political setting,except Ndigbos. As a lover of freedom and liberty,and a hater of dictatorship and other form of discriminations- I support IPOB's struggle against the evil system and its actors. I support their attempt to pull down the pillars of this satanic political order through a referendum.

This brings me to the question of the geography of the struggle. Yes IPOB is a South East based organization struggling for the emancipation of their people from the yoke of a backward system and actors. But their freedom will also set-free other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. Ndigbos going will make-way for others to peal-off from the remaining entity. And stand as independent entities or form a commonwealth of independent states or a confederation.Sequel to that,my support for struggle stems from the positive "unintended consequences" I/we will benefit from it.

Aside what might be our collective decision to also end our existence as a single entity, individuals can migrate to the new nation of Biafra and acquire citizenship. The new nation(like most nations) will permit citizenship by naturalization. It is better to live in a nation where your name and religion is not placing a limit to what you can aspire and potentials.

My prediction:Biafra shall be a shining city on a hill. And a place where the black race shall be proud of.
ISEE!
ISEE!!
ISEE!!!

APC: The Obstinate Journey to Shame via London by Pius Adesanmi

Those interested in the dustbin of Nigeria's history will one day find APC inside the rubble, among the putrefaction, just beside PDP, and bring out her carcass for examination.

Such students of the dustbin of history will likely conclude that APC's signature contribution to the Nigerian tragedy is not in the empirical failure to deliver on measurable electoral promises in virtually all areas of national life but in the deadening of the Nigerian mind.

A nation's mind is lost when the capacity for ironic sentience dies. And no group of Nigerians, at any moment in our chequered national history, has contributed more to the assassination of irony than the confederacy of parochial interests in the leadership of APC.

If blindness to irony stopped within the ranks of APC's leadership, if it was limited to Governors, Senators, Reps, and other political figures within her ranks, I wouldn't be so worried. It would be their funeral. I am not in the habit of shedding tears for members of Nigeria's political elite over their intellectual impecuniosity.

My worry lies in how the leadership of APC has democratized blindness to irony, especially among their followers so effectively. If irony hits you like a Dangote truck and you are unable to recognize it as a citizen, you wear that condition of ignorance like a badge of honour and hit social media for celebration in this APC era.

Chief John Odigie Oyegun fired the first bullet to assassinate irony. APC had just won the election. She was still in that period of grace when the people could excuse anything. Euphoria was still in the air. One message of change that APC could send early and effectively in order to write her name in gold was in the retirement of campaign funds.

The notion of retiring campaign funds is a complete stranger in Nigeria. We have at least two adult generations who have never heard of it because it has simply never been practiced. No Nigerian has ever retired campaign funds. After elections, you privatize the leftover funds, campaign vehicles, and other resources. You keep everything for yourself and distribute some to your cronies. This, of course, is a crime routinely committed by every Nigerian who has ever run for public office: there is no separation between their bank accounts and campaign contributions.

President Buhari, especially, most especially, had a moral and ethical obligation to inaugurate a monumental paradigm shift in our polity by being the first politician to ever retire his campaign funds, especially after making such a show of seeking a loan for the nomination form. He lost that golden opportunity to inscribe his name in gold - as he has frittered away every other opportunity since his election. To this day, President Buhari’s campaign funds have not been retired.

Enter Chief Odigie Oyegun with an early press interview. APC, he assured the nation, was not the party that should retire campaign funds. The onus, he continued, was on PDP to retire her campaign funds. I gasped and nearly had a heart attack when I read such ignorant comments from the Chairman of the President's party. To this day, Chief Oyegun has not explained the sources of his sick political theory of campaign finance retirement to Nigerians.

The irony was supremely lost on Chief Oyegun and APC. They had campaigned on a mantra of change but were telling Nigerians that the change ought to start with the party they had vanquished! Did PDP promise change? This was the beginning of a history of criminal blindness to irony that has led APC to the dustbin of history.

More tragedy was to come from APC. The party promised financial prudence and frugality. President Buhari held on to the most visible evidence of the long history of financial irresponsibility by the Nigerian Presidency - the harem of presidential jets. No change here. The irony was supremely lost on the changers.

President Jonathan was a junketing President. He traveled the world so irresponsibly that Reuben Abati was forced to pen a funny piece on the gains of President Jonathan's foreign trips. However, Reuben could not possibly have believed the nonsensical claims he was making in that essay.

Did President Buhari change the paradigm of fruitless and irresponsible presidential trips? For where? He doubled down on it, determined to cover in a few months the air miles that Jonathan covered in five years. But for the unfortunate illness that has largely truncated his trips, President Buhari was approaching a point where he could very much have offered to build an airport for a country without an airport in order to be able to visit such a country. No change here. The irony was supremely lost on the changers.

Fast forward. Roll over two years of daily evidence of blindness to irony on the part of APC and you arrive at restructuring. Suddenly, APC has a committee led by my friend, Nasir El Rufai, whose mandate is to help her understand restructuring and frame her position accordingly. APC's entire electoral manifesto is a promise of restructuring by other names. They called restructuring all sorts of names in various parts of that document but they cannot possibly pretend not to know that restructuring is what they promised. In some places, they called it devolution. In other places they used other names but it all still comes down to the fundamentals of restructuring: empowering the margins, de-centering the centre, putting an end to Nigeria's obnoxious financial feeding bottleism from the centre.

All of a sudden, nobody in APC has ever heard of restructuring. They now need a committee to study it, help them understand it, and, Allah be praised, the committee just must comprise all the Governors in their ranks who have declared war on restructuring recently one way or the other! No change here. The irony was supremely lost on the changers.

The most difficult part of APC's tragedy is the part of their manifesto and agendas pertaining to health and health care delivery in Nigeria. Nigeria would become the Dubai of health facilities within five years and progress on the road to Dubai would start to become noticeable within the first two years. You must, of course, read APC’s manifesto on health in tandem with President Buhari’s campaign statements vigorously condemning foreign medical safaris.

All of these promises have led to the sorry and tragic spectacle of APC Governors and the Party Chairman at a medical safari breakfast table in London. During President Buhari’s first stint in London, it had been the entire leadership of the National Assembly. It is painful to see what these leaders are doing to themselves. I take no pleasure in watching their naked dance in the marketplace. At various times, the President of Nigeria, the Senate President of Nigeria, the Speaker, Governors, and the Acting President of Nigeria have all gathered in London. No sense of shame. No trace of the understanding of irony in their demeanor.

I wager that they are doing it because there is a sense that they have so battered and clobbered the people into intellectual submission that the ability to engage and vigorously examine the empty ethical and moral proposition of their actions is no longer available in the land. I wager that they are doing this because their spokespersons, supporters, and foot soldiers have so battered and clobbered the people into submission and silence that nobody is going to even dare to ask: who funded APC’s jamboree to London?

I wager that these Governors are going to say that the London trip is a working visit, hence the deployment of public funds on such a woolly-headed jamboree at a time when, from Lagos to Port Harcourt and everywhere, Nigeria is showing the world a spectacle of flooding and salaries are not paid. If the Governors considered this trip to London a working visit and expended public funds on it – I suspect they did – this would be another tragic nail in the coffin of the changers.

From the same political party, the Acting President made a cameo appearance in London a few weeks ago, assured the nation that the President was in great condition and was primed to return to the country very soon. If we are to believe a Pastor of the Redeemed Church, what could have been so urgent that the APC Governors couldn’t wait for the President’s arrival? Could it be that they did not believe the reassurances of the Acting President?

Whatever be the case, this London trip is a tragedy on so many fronts. On that medical safari breakfast table was assembled those who promised to change the paradigm by putting an end to medical tourism. The supreme irony was lost on them.

Also lost on them is another supreme irony – and this one is a tragedy for Nigeria. Wait for it: the only two instances of leadership by example on the issue of foreign medical trips that we have come to us from the cancerous stables of PDP. Idris Wada is one of Kogi’s worst Governors. He was also very accident prone. He never went beyond Abuja for his medical woes. All the broken bones he sustained from his many convoy accidents were treated in Nigeria. And His Excellency Chief Otunba Dr. Peter Ayodele Fayose (Jerusalem Pilgrim) has been doing a lot of chest beating about his own medicals in Nigeria.

Wada and Fayose as the best examples of the change promised by APC? Nothing makes sense any more. APC has turned Nigeria into a Yeats-ville where:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

When the best lack all conviction and, blind to irony, fly off to London to waste public funds in defiance of the very principles they swore to uphold, you can see the worst running riot all over the land (Fayose, FFK, etc) with passionate intensity.

Yet, the irony is lost on the changers.

And their followers. And their defenders.

Pius Adesanmi

Iya Biliki's Plight By Pius Adesanmi

Three failed attempts so far to pick up a few things I need at Shoprite.

Each occasion, I see a sea of shoppers massed at the pay points. The queues are so so so very long, with orbs of Nigerian chaos in places along the way. It's almost like the faithful circling Kaaba. I am not going to spend an hour or more waiting in line to pay for items I can still pick up from Iya Biliki of Alanamu in her roadside store.

I am not thinking of the killing that shoprite is making in this land. I am thinking of the sociology of the crowd that has abandoned Iya Biliki of Alanamu for the aisles of Shoprite.

You look at those very long lines waiting to pay: 99.9% are single-item shoppers. One loaf of bread, you go to Shoprite; one pack of Indomie, you go to Shoprite; one apple, you go to shoprite; one tomtom, you go to shoprite. At the pay point, the two-kilometre queues are a wonderful spectacle of red shopping baskets and shopping carts containing a single item.

Although I have thus far yielded to the supremacy of the one item shoppers and embraced Iya Biliki's provision store rather than subject myself to time on that punitive Shoprite queue, the student of Nigerian sociology in me cannot let go of what I believe is happening.

As they wait in that tortuous queue, their single-item red baskets on the floor in a long serpentine formation, they are selfie-ing away with reckless abandon. It is a mass selfie process: click, click, click, upload to Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter instantly.

It is all about a class struggle for the atmospherics of modernity and gloss. Nigeria is peopled by the most atrociously class conscious social and political elite in the world. The identity and the psychology of this elite is fed by and dependent on a gulf that must exist between them and the lower classes. Only this class must have access to the glossy atmospherics of modernity and civilization. The lesser classes must be in squalor.

It is precisely this atmospherics of modernity, which used to belong exclusively to the elite, that Shoprite has banalized and brought within the reach of the lower classes. If Kasali needs to buy a tin of Peak Milk at N400 from Iya Biliki, he will spend a week saving an extra N100 to be able to afford that same tin at N500 in Shoprite and take selfies as empirical evidence of his access to the atmospherics of modernity.

Iya Biliki has been abandoned by majority of her customers who now go to Shoprite to buy one bar of canoe soap. At this rate, her source of livelihood is threatened. In fact, she doesn't even know what to make of me since she started seeing me stop by. She's convinced I belong in the Shoprite class. Yet, for some strange reason, I keep coming to her roadside provision store.

I don't blame Iya Biliki's customers for migrating. They are telling an elite whose lives have meaning only when there is a gulf between them and the people: you may go to Macy's of New York for your shopping all you want; you may stop over at Harrod's in London on your way back. Don't worry, we dey here for Shoprite. It's the same gloss, the same modernity, the same mall culture. Your exclusive ownership of access to the atmospherics of modernity has been demystified.

But the Nigerian elite would have none of this. The democratization of gloss by Shoprite and the consequent accessibility of mall modernity to the little people means that the political elite must steal more and more to increase the social distance.

The worst thing that can happen to Oga is for him and his driver to be rubbing feet in the same Shoprite queue.

Oga will have to steal more to raise the level...

The Economic (in)significance of ‘Islamic slavery’ in precolonial Nigeria by Femi Owolade

My expository post on Christianity, Exploitation and the Transatlantic Slave Trade was met with criticisms by some of my Facebook friends, who sensed a level of Anti-West or Pro-Islam bias in my writing. The crux of the criticisms centered on my apparent tendency to whitewash the topic of slavery in Africa, while ignoring another form of slavery, wrought by the Muslim Arabs to exploit Africans; and to put in the words of my Facebook friend in a private message: the ‘evil of Islamic slave trade… stole African heritage’. These criticisms, though articulate and much appreciated, erred in the conflation of a number of distinct and mutually exclusive issues. While my earlier post focused on pre-colonial African Slavery and its economic advantages to the slave master’s region vis a vis its economic disadvantages to the region of the enslaved, I think it’s important that any fair rebuttal to my postulations must be limited to slavery and its economic consequences in the pre-colonial world, rather than introducing new issues such as modern day Islamic slavery in Qatar and the economically irrelevant human trafficking in the Arab world. In this post, I will attempt to address some of these issues, with a close emphasis on the institution and economic benefit of slavery in the pre-colonial Sokoto Caliphate, and with the expectation that we can have a friendly and respectable dialogue on the sensitive but important issue of slavery in Africa.

Since this post is largely concerned with ‘Islamic slavery’ or slavery in Islamic societies, to avoid unnecessarily controversy, I think it’s important to give a very brief treatment of Islam’s position on slavery. Islam, when introduced into the Arab world, met and acknowledged the existence of slavery in pre-Islamic Arabia. During the course of its introduction to the region, Islam did not explicitly prohibit the

pre-existing practice, rather it provided decrees and sanctions that aimed to free as many slaves as possible. It is very important for us non-Muslims to acknowledge this fact, because there seems to be a tendency to associate Islam with slavery and other forms of oppressive acts. That certain Islamic societies or Islamic personalities vigorously participate in the practice of slavery, while refusing to emancipate slaves, doesn’t make slavery an Islamic practice. The Islamic position on slavery is what I’ve briefly explained three sentences ago. To add to this, the slave trade on the Indian ocean has been called the ‘Arab Slave Trade’ for so long that it hides the extent to which it was also a European slave trade. When this slave trade from East Africa was at its height in the 18th century and in the early 19th century, the destination of most captives was the European-owned plantation economies of Mauritius and Seychelles- as well as the Americas, via the Cape of Good hope. Besides, Africans laboring as slaves in certain Arab countries in the 18th and 19th centuries were all ultimately serving the European capitalist system which set up a demand for slave-grown products, such as the cloves grown in Zanzibar under the supervision of the Arab masters.

With this general outline in mind, I think we are well equipped and ready to take a closer look at the institution of slavery in an Islamic society. Although slavery in Hausa land has a long history with no specific start date, the practice was ‘institutionalized’ on a large scale, in the region, by the 19th century Sokoto Caliphate. Initiated by the jihad of Uthman Dan Fodio and his followers, the Caliphate sought an Islamisation agenda- through proselytization- in the sparse region constituting much of present-day northern Nigeria. Slaves were acquired, in this Islamic society, by different means (war,punishment, buying, barter etc.) but the most well-known mean of acquisition came about as a consequence of proselytization or active conversion of members of non-muslim tribes. It remains an established tenet of the shari’a that non-muslims who refuse conversion to Islam or subjugation to the status of ahl’al-ahimmi (non-Muslims living under the protection of Muslim authority) or who, on acceptance of the latter, rebelled against (except when oppressed) or subverted the authority of the Islamic state are, on having been reduced to captivity by conquest, legally enslavable. This practice, not unique to the Sokoto Caliphate, was in fact a commonplace in the broader Islamic Africa (Western Sudan) in the 1800s- a period which marked heightened Islamic proselytization. For instance, in the territory encompassing modern day Sudan, new slaves were acquired in war where the elusive frontiers between the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam) and the as yet unconquered Dar al-Harb (House of War or Realm of the Heathens) for centuries, marked off the latter ‘heathen’ or ‘unenlightened’ lands, where enslavement by whatever means (war, raiding, kidnapping, punishment, buying or barter) was a permitted activity. Similarly, slavery by this form of proselytization was enforced in the Sokoto Caliphate.

The Masu Sarauta (ruling class) of the caliphate, united by a common religion- Islam, often saw the disunited non-muslim regions of Hausaland as a huge hunting ground for slaves. It should be noted here, and this is very important, that slavery, during this period, was not solely perpetuated by Muslims. A number of non-muslim tribes of Hausaland and its surrounding societies, provided they had the means to, equally exploited the practice of slavery. The institution of slavery is intrinsic to the evolutionary development of human beings. Every society populated by homo sapiens engaged in this practice at one period or the other.

As we now have a superficial picture of the institution of slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate and how slaves were acquired, I think it’s important to go straight to the main aim of this post: a consideration of the economic benefits of ‘Islamic slavery’, compared to the economic benefits of slavery perpetuated by Europeans. The sensitive nature of the topic of ‘Islamic slavery’ and the existence of slavery in pre-colonial northern Nigeria has resulted in some difficulties in quantifying the extent to which slavery contributed to the Caliphate’s economy; the result of which has seen what some people call a downplay of the existence of slavery as an economic institution in the region. In investigating the Sokoto Caliphate, many scholars have either been reluctant to examine practices that might reflect adversely on the Islamic legitimacy of the Sokoto Caliphate leadership. This difficulty is intensified by the uncertainty surrounding the word ‘plantation’, as used in western slave societies such as the Caribbean and the USA, and the word’s apparent absence in both the Shari’a and Hausa lexicon. Perhaps the closest replacement word for plantation, in Hausa, is gandu, but the problem is that gandu may also indicate a farm (or farms), a group of men, the relationship between the men concerned, a condition of trust, a large farm, a farm owned by a chief by virtue of his office, tribute (or tax), or a store of money (gandun kudi).

But while it remains a general belief that slave labour was used in the Caliphate for small to medium scale agricultural production, the extent of slave utilisation for mass production- on the same scale as plantation agriculture developed by the Europeans in the Americas- remain contentious. It is true that as a result of its exploitation of slave labour, the Caliphate brought some economic growth throughout the region. Emirate officeholders were indeed supported by produce grown by slaves. Nevertheless, the extent of mass production remains uncertain. Islamic slavery certainly did not contribute to the growth and sustained development of nations, like the transatlantic slave trade did with the United States of America (as explained in my previous post on slavery), at the expense of African communities.

Moreover, there are many differences between European plantation agriculture in the Americas and Islamic plantations in Africa. First, the slave trade and market forces were weaker in Africa, and they were often regional rather than intercontinental. Second, the ideological framework for plantation slavery was very different from European norms. In Africa, race was not significant, although cultural and other differences were often emphasized. Third, slaves were treated considerably better by the perpetrators of Islamic slavery in Africa, than they were by the European slave masters in the Americas. Finally, emancipation of slaves was far more common in the Islamic slavery of Africa, than in the European slavery of the Americas.

Femi Owolade

A Note to Professor Yemi Osinbajo By Pius Adesanmi.

Now that a world-acclaimed Professor of Law is running the show in the land, you'd expect him to use this window to inject some strange notions into the system.

Strange notions such as actions and consequences, especially legal consequences a.k.a the sort of legal consequences that can land you in jail after due process.

Professor Osinbajo has been presiding over the distribution of tranches of the Paris Club Refund. As I said yesterday, the elephant is dead and all kinds of carnivorous state governors are out with glittering carving knives of various shapes and sizes.

Democracy, even a kwashiokored, emaciated pretext to democracy such as obtains in Nigeria, can be so inconvenient. Otherwise, it should even be a crime to give another tranche of the Paris Club Refund to ANY state Governor in this country, given their antecedents with earlier tranches.

What ought to be happening is a very busy EFCC and Federal Attorney-General preparing dossiers against all these current Governors so that they can all be arrested and made to face charges of criminal diversion of the Paris Club Refunds as soon as their term is over and they lose immunity.

None of them hasn't stolen from the funds. The difference is in the scale and manner of the stealing. The polished ones among them have stolen the funds with some finesse; the ponmo and eja shawa ones among them have stolen it with palm oil stains all over their chest. You cannot really argue with your background.
But I was talking about consequences and what Osinbajo ought to be doing by now. That part of my reflection has nothing to do with the Governors. Academic curiosity should make Professor Osinbajo want to know and understand how we got into a situation of Paris and London Club Refunds in the first instance.
He ought to be interested in the history and sinews of criminal negligence, corruption, and racketeering that led to the over-deductions in the first place. You dig and dig and dig and they say the problem started with the Debt Management Office and moved along the paths of Nigerian corruption to CBN and other places.
People were running the system in all those places. To this day, not a single explanation has been given to Nigerian citizens. I know that not many citizens understand that they are in fact owed explanations so not too many of them are asking for explanations.

I am.

I am also asking Professor Osinbajo: how do you live with a system that is never curious about criminality or really interested in finding the political will to prosecute it? Sir, how do you wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and not feel uncomfortable that the man looking back at you has not deemed it necessary to begin a process to make somebody or some people accountable for the over-deductions that got us here in the first place?

Nnamdi Kanu calls Nigeria a Zoo. Senator Shehu Sani and Mrs. Aisha Buhari are in agreement that Nigeria is metaphorically littered with lions, hyenas, and weaker animals. President Buhari also once metaphorically thought that there may be dogs and baboons all over the place.

Professor Osinbajo, your folks in the elite are wrong about all these animals they are throwing around. There are actions and consequences in the animal kingdom. In a pride of lions, among hyenas, baboons, meerkats, zebras, etc, there are always consequences if your actions are deleterious to the common interest of the group. Depending on the nature of the animals in question, you could get banished or killed for endangering the collective good and interest.

In essence, Professor Osinbajo, the only place where there are actions and consequences in Nigeria is among the residents of the Yankari Game Reserve.

You will recall that your boss promised to transfer the elementary values of the Yankari Game Reserve to governance so that we, the human owners of the animals in that park, can at least learn something. Then people padded his first budget. He promised consequences and shuffled them around in offices in Abuja.
To date, nobody has been punished for budget padding.

When you started distributing the Paris Club Funds, I said to myself, now, this is a Professor of Law. He is going to understand that things need to be done beyond mere distribution and sending Kemi Adeosun to howl for greater accountability. We need to understand how the over-deductions happened. People need to be investigated and punished.

Above all, the Nigerian citizen needs full explanations in a detailed national press conference by the concerned authorities. Professor Osinbajo, unlike majority of the ignorant and half-illiterate people in government, I am sure you fully understand that explaining these things to the Nigerian citizen is not a privilege you are bestowing on him and her?

It is your duty to explain.

It is their right to be explained to.
Pius Adesanmi 

On Biafra and Nnamdi Kanu by Eddie Iroh

Before glib thinkers and talkers start running loose, let me state my case. I was carrying ON ABURI WE STAND placards in Enugu in 1967 before today's Children of Biafra were born. Gowon unilaterally abrogated the Aburi Accord and launched his famous "Police Action". That led to full blown civil war.

We fought gallantly and lost. For me and most of my generation that was the end of the struggle. But here is where I vigorously disagree with the glib talkers. I fully concede to the Children of Biafra their right to make their own case and validate their own existence as they deem necessary out of their own perception and conviction. Nnamdi Kanu has risen to the challenge of his own generation.

Glibly calling him names -- idiot, mad man, etc etc - is an abysmally puerile resort of the intellectual scoundrel. Insult has never been a substitute for logical argument and indeed says more about the insulter than the insulted. Make your own case and leave us to judge and mutter our insults to whom deserves it.

In offering the surrender of Biafra in January 1970, the mortal General Philip Effiong also offered General Olusegun Obasanjo this immortal advice: TREAT THE SURRENDERING BIAFRANS WELL OR RISK THEIR CHILDREN RISING AGAIN. Before you deride Kanu, it is the duty of every thinking Igbo to determine for him or herself whether Effiong's advice was heeded.

Finally those who are unwilling to concede to Kanu and his generation their right to validate their own existence should stop to consider that their agitation for IPOB has put RESTRUCTURING front and centre of national debate.

From the rigid stand of NOT NEGOTIABLE nearly every group interest and individuals are talking about Restructuring. Before Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB upped the ante with their agitation the only voices were Atiku and Soyinka. Nigeria put an iconic hero's crown on Kanu by putting him in Kuje prison, with echoes of Mandela ringing in the ears of his supporters. A people have no greater hero than a political prisoner.

In other words, it is the FGN that made Kanu the overnight legend he has become in a very short time in his young life. And if and when Restructuring comes to be, I can wager that elements of the Aburi Accord will be part of it.

And that, fellow country men and women, would be a posthumous victory for General Emeka Ojukwu if not for Nnamdi Kanu.

So long a letter!
Eddie Iroh