By Emmanuel Onwubiko
“Don’t cry for me Argentina
The truth is I never left you
All through my wild days
My mad existence
I kept my promise
Don’t keep your distance”
– (From
soundtrack Evita, www.genius.com)
It began like a child’s play.
But before we knew it, it has assumed a global dimension
today and millions of Nigerians have become victims.
That which began like splatters of rain fall have become
a thunderstorm of monumental proportions.
These terrorists attacks on Nigeria which began from a
small beginnings of the ill timed and illegal decision of some officials of the
Nigerian state to put an end to the evolution of a sect of Islamic
fundamentalists in Borno state whose members were recruited by their then
spiritual leader Sheikh Mohammed Yusuf and then indoctrinated not to accept
western education for in his own understanding, it is evil and anti-Islam.
Sadly, there were missteps that have unleashed
incalculable national tragedy.
Ten years ago the police in Borno state executed him
(Mohammed Yusuf) in an extralegal way after soldiers arrested him and
handed him over to the police. Mohammed Yusuf was handed over to the police in
Maiduguri alive and well and in high spirit even from video evidence shown on
the Nigerian Television Authority.
The police executioners are walking freely as I write
just like many rogue police operatives who have killed thousands of detainees
through extralegal executions.
His execution was the immediate trigger for the now
ten-year old war against Nigeria by armed boko haram Islamic extremists which
by some estimate has led to the killings of over 25,000 citizens and the
destructions of towns, villages and communities in the North East of Nigeria.
Recall that North East of Nigeria demographically
is larger than Belgium and France put together.
The terrorists attacks and the attendant counter terror
war by the brave Nigerian military has lasted a decade just as the non-state
actors waging the war against Nigeria have gained notoriety with their
affiliation to the global jihadist movement of Islamic state of Syria and Iraq.
The United Nations is also known to have estimated that
over two million children are facing starvation as a result of the 10 years of
seemingly unceasing bombardments of their communities by boko haram terrorists
and the consequential destructions of their homes and livelihoods thereby
making them to exist as internally displaced persons within Nigeria or refugees
in Cameroon and Niger Republic.
To underscore the global dimension of the North East
terror related crises, the European Union (EU) has just earmarked 271 million
Euros (about #98 billion) to assist about 5.6million displaced persons in the
North East.
The five year E.U humanitarian funding focuses on
providing what the European Union calls life-saving emergency assistance in
insurgency-affected states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.
In a statement quoted by the media on Monday, the
European Union’s commissioner Janez Lenarcic said the assistance comprise
emergency food aid and shelter in camps and host communities.
In as much as we commend the European communities for
coming to the aid of the internally displaced persons of North East with
humanitarian reliefs, we must note two factors.
These factors include that offering only foods and
temporary shelters to the needy may be good for the time being, but it is not
sustainable over time.
One would have expected that the scope of these
humanitarian assistance should include skills and vocational acquisition
mechanisms to build up these internally displaced persons to not only have the
emergency foods to eat, but to have the skills to be able to fend for
themselves and their children ever after the war is over. It is more
significant to teach the needy how to fish and not just handing them the fish
to eat.
The second factor is that the terror war affects all of
Nigeria because there were citizens of Nigeria who hail from all parts of
Nigeria outside the North East whose means of livelihoods have been destroyed
but they are either forced to relocate to safer zones of Nigeria but with
practically nothing to live on but to beg for survival from good spirited
Nigerians.
Many others have joined the ranks of migrants seeking
refuge understandably in civilized parts of the world.
I think the European Union should look at ways of
accommodating these persons who can be traced, identified by relevant
authorities in their former places of abode so they are similarly assisted.
I know about the cases of hundreds of thousands of young
Igbo, Yoruba traders in the North East who are in this unclassified group that
I have just identified just as it will be good if they are not left behind.
Before the topic of this reflection is lost on
transmission, I must state that the members of political class in the corridors
of power have practically demonstrated that they are overwhelmed by the deluge
of security challenges posed by terrorists, Fulani herdsmen, armed bandits and
hoodlums of varying dimensions.
President Muhammadu Buhari who by law is the
commander-in-chief was quoted to have stated that the level of insecurity in
Nigeria now has shocked him.
The senate president has also enlisted himself into the
inglorious rank of executive cum legislative wailers.
He too has wept like a baby over what he calls the
breakdown of the nation’s security system.
Hear him: “First and most importantly is to look into
the issue of security that is now bedeviling this country.”
“Apparently and obviously, all hands must be on deck to
ensure that we bring back a better security situation that we had before.
Presently, the story is not good. In many areas we have so much happening that
is destabilizing our communities and killing of people.”
“We believe that we owe Nigerians the responsibility to
intervene and work together with the executive arm of government, actually to
work together with other tiers of government – the states and even the local
governments – to ensure that we change the way we approach the security issues
in this country.”
“Apparently, the system has not been working efficiently
and effectively and we have to do something. This time around, there should not
be buck passing, we have to be forthright. We have to say it as it is and we
have to do it as it is required.”
“We should engage with the security agencies to find why
the deterioration in security in many parts of the country. We have had series
of engagement before but the escalation now has made it mandatory that we have
to have a definite position as a government because we just cannot play
politics with security issues. Lives are at stake."
“Therefore the Senate will take a position on how
security in the country should be. We believe that the security architecture
should be restructured. The present system does not give us the type of outcome
that we need. Whether it is the federal, state or local government; even the
traditional rulers or others, the most important thing is to secure the lives
and property of Nigerians and we would do that,” he said.
Lawan also spoke on the Senate Ad hoc Committee on
Constitution Review and gave an assurance that the committee, which will be
constituted before next week, will be headed by Deputy Senate President,
Senator Ovie Omo-Agege.
This is simply an experiment in futility because it is
just to create jobs for the boys.
However, the Senate President stated that: “The
committee will be constituted very soon, either this week or next week by the
grace of God because the time is ripe for us to reconstitute the committee so
that the members could start work immediately. We have referred some bills to
them already. Traditionally, everybody knows that since 1999 when the
constitution review committee was formed in the National Assembly, in the
Senate, the Deputy President of the Senate usually heads the committee, while
the Deputy Speaker is usually the chairman of the committee. We are going to
maintain the tradition in the 9th Senate. We have a Deputy Senate President who
is a vast, erudite lawyer who played an important and significant role in the
eighth Assembly as a member of the Committee on INEC and Constitution Review.
So, we are good to go by the grace of God,” the Senate President explained.”
Sadly, the constitution amendments committee may go the
way of others in the previous sessions of the National Assembly that swallowed
well over N5 billions of taxpayers’ money but the strategic outputs of these
committees were never implemented due to Ethnic and Religious myopic sentiments
of the elites and even those implemented were mere artificial amendments that
do not address the badly structured security architectures of Nigeria because
the status quo favours the North.
However, he the Senate President Ahmed Lawan need not
cry.
DON'TCRY FOR ME NIGERIA! The National
Assembly is empowered by law to act and not to cry or wail like a helpless
child.
Does he want Nigerians to teach him his job for which he
got elected for donkey years into the national parliament?
Mr. senate president, this is the time to prove to us
that you are not the worst executive rubber stamped senate by adopting
law-based action to restructure the collapsed security system controlled by
largely persons from only one (Moslem Hausa/Fulani/Kanuris) section of the
country as against the federal character principles.
Speak truth to power and stop pandering to sentiments or
propaganda.
Mr. Senate president! Stop shedding crocodile tears and
work for police reforms constitutionally so states can run their security
architecture to complement the national policing institution which has
collapsed, even by your own admission.
Can Mr. Senate president be told to stop wailing and
look at even the health sector that has collapsed and urge his members to
provide robust oversight to force the Federal Ministry of Health to wake up,
end corruption and fix the broken health infrastructures.
Let me end by calling Ahmed Lawan and other ‘big-men
wailers’ in government to the emerging shocking scenario in the health sector
as recently reported and also the revelation from Borno state on the number of
Children orphaned by TERRORISTS.
The report states that boosting efforts to fight
pneumonia could avert over two million child deaths from pneumonia and other
major diseases in Nigeria, new analysis has found.
The modeling by Johns Hopkins University is being
released today as nine leading health and children’s agencies host the world’s
first global conference on childhood pneumonia in Barcelona.
Forecasts show that 1.4 million children under the age
of five could die from pneumonia over the next decade in Nigeria, on current
trends – the highest number of any country in the world and more than 20
percent of childhood deaths from pneumonia globally.
However, an estimated 809,000 of these deaths would be
averted by significantly scaling up services to prevent and treat pneumonia.
Researchers also found boosting pneumonia services would
create an additional ‘ripple effect’, preventing 1.2 million extra child deaths
from other major childhood diseases at the same time.
Interventions like improving nutrition, increasing
vaccine coverage or boosting breastfeeding rates – key measures that reduce the
risk of children dying from pneumonia – would also stop thousands of child
deaths from diseases like diarrhea (580,000), meningitis (68,000), measles
(55,000) and malaria (4,000).
By 2030, that effect would be so large that pneumonia
interventions alone would avert over 2 million predicted under-five child
deaths in Nigeria from all causes combined, researchers said.
Pneumonia is caused by bacteria, viruses or fungi, and
leaves children fighting for breath as their lungs fill with pus and fluid.
The disease is the leading killer of children in
Nigeria, causing 19 percent of under-five deaths.
Most pneumonia deaths can be prevented with vaccines,
and easily treated with low-cost antibiotics.
But more than 40 percent of one-year-olds in Nigeria are
unvaccinated, and three in four children suffering from pneumonia symptoms do
not get access to medical treatment.
Peter Hawkins, UNICEF Nigeria’s Country Representative,
said:
“We have a responsibility to do all we can to avert
these deaths by pneumonia – deaths that are nearly all preventable. It will
take concerted action by all players. The announcement by the Nigerian
government of the world’s first-ever pneumonia control strategy – coupled with the
focus globally on combatting pneumonia – is a huge step forward. We now need to
follow this with concrete action on the ground to address the causes and
drivers of childhood pneumonia deaths in this country.”
On January 29-31, nine leading health and children’s
organizations – ISGlobal, Save the Children, UNICEF, Every Breath Counts, “la
Caixa” Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, Unitaid and
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance – are hosting world leaders at the Global Forum on
Childhood Pneumonia in Barcelona, the first international conference on
childhood pneumonia. Corruption is rife in the health sector and the government
does not care. Mr. Senate President you must act now and stop crying.
Also, the Borno State governor, Professor Babagana Umara
Zulum, has said that Boko Haram has caused the emergence of 59, 311 orphans
whose fathers were killed and 59, 213 widows that lost husbands to the
insurgency in different parts of the state.
Governor Zulum, who was guest lecturer at the National
Defence College, in Abuja, delivered a paper with the title, “Strategic
leadership: The challenges of Insurgency in Borno State”. He enlightened the
audience with his immediate, short and long term strategic plans in confronting
the challenges from all fronts that include investing heavily on security,
enrolling out of school children into existing and new mega schools, placing a
ban against political thuggery with jobs being created as alternative.
The Borno Governor observed that the unwillingness of
persons in the corridors of power to tell leaders truth about issues and the
unwillingness of leaders themselves to hear the truth are some of the major
problems confronting leadership in Nigeria.
He explained that a strategic leader must be a strategic
listener and reader. A strategic thinker must also be a strategic learner. A
strategic leader must be willing to hear the truth and to learn.
He further explained, “However, telling the truth and
accepting the truth has been our major problems in Nigeria. Some people will
never tell you the truth when you are in power and honestly, many of us in
power also do not want to hear the truth, we prefer to be told what we like to
hear and that is a serious deficit in leadership in the country.”
Dr. Zulum according to media reports discussed different
aspects of strategic leadership, situating them with Nigeria’s in the last 50
years and gave account of experience working as commissioner from 2011 to 2015
and as governor in the last eight months.
The Senate President should tell the President to obey
FEDERAL CHARACTER PRINCIPLES IN APPOINTMENTS INTO TOP SECURITY POSTS INSTEAD OF
HIS SECTIONAL APPOINTMENTS OF ONLY HAUSA/FULANI/KANURI INTO STRATEGIC INTERNAL
SECURITY POSITIONS.
We must Make hay whilst the sun shines.
*Emmanuel Onwubiko is the Head of the Human Rights
Writers Association of Nigeria and blogs@www.huriwanigeria.com;
www.emmanuelonwubikocom; www.thenigerianinsidernews.com
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