Here is another update on 2021 summer reading book blogging series:

"The Nigerian Army and the "Liberation of Asaba: A Personal Narrative"- Stanley I. Okafor

 Excerpted from The Nigerian Civil and its Aftermath edited by Osaghae, Onwudiwe & Suberu

"This [is] a personal narrative of what I personally saw of the activities of the Nigerian military in Asaba. ...To describe these events as a nightmare is an understatement. My father, Mr. Nma Okafor, a senior civil servant in the government of what was then the Midwestern State, was killed. Also killed were his junior brother, Mr. Chukwuemeka Okafor, a police officer, and his first cousin, Mr. Sunday Okafor, a technician in self-employment.

My father and his brother were based in Benin City, while his cousin was based in Jos. His cousin returned to Asaba in the wake of the mass killings in the north. My father and his brother returned home just ahead of the arrival of Federal troops in Benin City.

When the fall of Benin City became imminent, my father sent eh rest of the family home to Asaba, while he alone stayed behind in Benin, at his job. The first nightmare of the family was when my father failed to arrive at Asaba with the rest of our people who had fled from Benin when it fell to the Federal troops. We could not sleep during the night. ..I was asked to go in the direction of St. Patrick College (SPC) in case I would see him driving into town. SPC was then at the entry point to Asaba.

We live in Cable Point Asaba, which is the opposite of the town from SPC. Around Catholic Hospital, I saw his car in the distance, driving towards me and as the care moved nearer, I heaved a sigh of relief when I realized it was actually him. The care was completely smeared in mud, as if it had been in a safari rally.

When the fall of Asaba became imminent, some relations came to our house in Cable Point and told my father that we should all go into hiding in the bush, way out of town. He said there was no need for such action. All that was needed was to be polite and friendly to the troops. It turned out that he was wrong.

Before going further with this narrative, it must be stressed that the phrase ‘fall of Asaba’ is misleading. There was hardly any battle for Asaba as the Biafran troops simply retreated into their territory (Biafra) and blew up the Onitsha end of the Niger Bridge to halt the advance of the Federal troops. This makes it even more difficult to figure out the rationale for the scale of the massacres in Asaba. Okocha, (1994) includes a list with 378 names which was compiled by the International Red Cross. But he rightly stressed that the list is not exhaustive, which is correct. For example, my father and Sunday Okafor were listed, whereas Chukwuemeka Okafor was not. Clearly the number of people massacred in Asaba is much larger than 378.

Before the Federal troops entered Asaba, they shelled the town for over twenty four hours from beyond SPC. The pounding was ferocious. As Achuzia (1987) observes, the intensity of the bombardment of Asaba made it obvious that the intention of the Federal troops was total war, and not police action as claimed by the federal government. During the period of the bombardment one could hear the shells whistle overhead then explode beyond our house, with neighboring houses taking direct hits sometimes. We were lucky that none of the shells hit our house. But it was a period of heightened anxiety as we all clustered on the lee side of our house during the day time.

It would appear that the troops entered the town at night because not too long after we woke up with two armed soldiers with fingers on their triggers, entered our compound and ordered everyone to go to the police barracks. As it turned out, the troops were mostly interested in men because the very young, the infirm and the aged were exempted. Thus, my paternal grandmother was spared the ordeal of a four kilometer walk to the police station. In my mind, I thought it was a standard routine procedure, and that at the police barracks the townsmen and women would be addressed by military officers and told what to do and what not to do. But my expectations were shattered when, after some two kilometer walk, somewhere near the Federal Ministry of Labor office on Nnebisi Road, I saw two men, lying flat on their backs, with the tops of their heads blown off, obviously from close range. Brains and blood smeared the ground around their heads. From their outfits one could tell that they were men of one of the white garment churches, probably returning from night prayers. They both wore long white garments, one with a bell in his hand, and the other with a lantern which was still burning.

This sight sent chills down my spine, and I immediately knew that all was not well, contrary to my earlier expectation. I remember walking behind my father most of the way to the barracks, dumbfounded by the gory sight I saw earlier, and not knowing what lay ahead. All along the way, I saw looting by troops. Household items were being loaded onto trucks: cookers, refrigerators, radiograms, furniture etc. Cars were stolen. In other cases car engines were dismantled and loaded onto trucks. When we got to the barracks I lost sight of my father and I never saw him again.

There was a mammoth crowd at the barracks, all sitting on the ground. We were kept there from morning till about 5 p.m. Every once in a while, a soldier would announce if anyone in the crowd knew Mr. X or Mr. Y, promising freedom to whoever would volunteer information and take soldiers to the residence of the named person. The purpose of this offer of freedom was obvious and I am not aware if anyone took up the offer. Also every once in a while someone would be fished out of the crowd, taken to the back of one of the buildings and shot. Thereafter silence would descend on the crowd after an initial but brief outpouring of grief. No one knew who would be next. Death stared everyone in the face.

 At 5 pm or thereabouts, the crowd was asked to disperse, not having had food or water since morning. This turned out to be the beginning of the real tragedy that befell Asaba. People went in different directions. The vast majority headed for the traditional part of the town that the mass killings took place. I did not witness them, but the events have been  well documented (see Okocha, 1994).  I was told the tales of horror by relations  and friends who miraculously escaped the killings. These tales will be addressed briefly later on.

When I got home in Cable Point, I was told that my father had come home earlier, in the company of two or so officers (I cannot remember the exact number now), and that he had taken them back in his car. While in our house, my paternal granny said they were entertained with a bottle of White Horse whisky. They took the remainder of it along with them. Apparently my father was well known to one of the officers. The feeling was that my father was in the company of friends and was therefore safe. Those who saw him leave the barrack in the company of the officers felt the same way. But he was never seen alive again.

Evening came and right came, and my father did not come back. At night we reenacted the vigil we kept when we were expecting him from Benin. At the sound of any vehicle, we would peep through the window only to discover it was a military jeep. Morning came and my mother left home in search of my father. Word had gone round that men were the main targets, and so it was unsafe for me to be out in the streets. Not too long after my mother left home, we saw her coming back, supported on both sides by two people, barely able to walk. The message was clear and we all broke down. My elder brother was working in Shell Port Harcourt when the war broke out and so I was the most senior male at home. I had to pull myself together and comfort my younger ones. My mother was distraught but my paternal granny was highly philosophical about her son’s death.

It is hard to know the circumstances of my father’s death. Was he dispossessed of his car by his ‘friends’, asked to go home and then ran into one of the many murderous bands of soldiers unleashed on Asaba? Was he dragged out of his car and then shot by the ‘friends’ he had earlier entertained at home? Was he killed in the day time or at night? We had no answers to these questions and still do not have answers to them. My mother found his body about one kilometer from our house in the compound of the Udobis, with gunshot wounds on his chest.  Since it was unsafe for men to be out on the streets, I could not see his body and so could not pay my last respects to him. It was the lot of my mother and my granny to clean the body and bury it in a shallow grave at the Udobis. It was there until 1985 when it was exhumed and re-buried in my elder brother compound on the eve of the traditional burial ceremonies for my father.

Back again to 1967. Later in the day that my father’s body was found, we heard a gunshot in the neighboring compound. Women were wailing and crying. A young man had been shot and two elderly men were ordered by the soldiers to dump the body in the Niger. Our house is close to the Niger; about 100 meter from it. Shortly after, the two soldiers crossed into our compound. I was outside the house, along with my elder sister and the younger ones, all of us still in state of shock occasioned by my father’s death. I had my little sister in my arms. One of the soldiers, the leader in fact was clearly of northern extraction. He was a regimental sergeant major (RSM). He was tall, black and big. He was drinking straight from a bottle of beer in one hand while the gun was held with the other.

As he came closer, he ordered me to drop my little sister and follow him to the bank of the Niger. We knew what that meant and we all started begging and pleading for my life. My elder sister was hysterical and asked to be shot instead. As if incensed by our pleas the RSM threw away his bottle of beer (obviously looted from a nearby shop), cocked his gun and asked me to move. At that point I got angry. I was angry because he was incensed by being asked to spare a life. So I put my little sister down and told him we should go. I do not know what happened, but my mother who had been speaking Hausa to the RSM all along must have said something that made him change his mind. What I do know is that at some point my mother gave him #30 pounds. He then warned that I should not be seen by any soldier, either in our compound or on the streets; that they had instructions to shoot and kill any male above five years, and that my younger brother was not even safe.

The rest of my family then decided I should hide in the ceiling. I then went up into the ceiling through the many-hole in the box room. I was provided with cushions form some chairs in our living room. I placed them at the top of one of the living room walls, they were fairly comfortable to sleep on. The ceiling was my home for two weeks,  with potty, face towel and all. I placed the cushions at a vantage point from where I could see the movement of soldiers in and out of the house, and so positioned myself safely in case they decided to shoot into the ceiling during any of their frequent calls. Fortunately our ceiling was never shot into. The soldiers did shoot into ceilings in some homes. It was hot and mosquito-infested up in the ceiling. But these inconveniences meant little in the face of death. After two weeks, when the killings had abated somewhat, I came down from the ceiling and left Asaba with the assistance of the Red Cross.

I escaped the house-to-house killing, which was one dimension of the massacres in Asaba. The greater tragedy was represented by the mass killings. As indicated earlier, these are reasonably well documented (Okocha, 1994). The large crowd that went from the police barracks to the traditional part of the town were joined by many more, and organized an impromptu dance to welcome the soldiers in an obvious effort to placate them. The troops separated the men from the women, and opened fire on the men, killing them in hundreds. All these detailed in (Okocha, 1994). There are mass graves in Asaba, the largest of which is probably the one in Ogbe-Osowa. I hope that someday the international community will come and dig up these mass graves in order to establish the scale of atrocities committed against Asaba people; an urbane, cosmopolitan, non-violent and non-aggressive people. I hope, too that someday the Asaba community will erect a befitting memorial to its sons and daughters murdered in cold blood by federal troops; a memorial with their names boldly inscribed on it.

The crimes and human right abuses perpetrated by the federal troops in Asaba are unimaginable. They murdered, they stole, they looted, they raped. My father’s care was recovered about a year later in Lagos, from an officer who became a military governor of one of the states. Some people were made to dig their own graves into which they were shot. Some were marched to the bank of Niger and shot there. These new strategies were adopted in order to avoid the problem of dealing with large numbers of bodies which the military faced in the killing fields of Ogbesowa. Okocha (1994, p. 65) describes one of the episodes as follows:

We dug another grace for ourselves. Before we were told to jump into the grave, two other brothers came in. One was an undergraduate of Ibadan University, the other was a civil servant. Both of them were dumped into the grave covered. The two were members of the Oyana family, but I have forgotten their first names now. 

Why this Scale of Atrocities

The answer to this question was suggested earlier. The scale of atrocities can be explained in terms of the character of the officers and men of the Nigerian military, and of the boundary effect. Concerning the issue of character, a pertinent question is what manner of humans can kill, loot, steal, and rape with glee and reckless abandon? Maybe psychologists and psychiatrists are best placed to characterize such humans. These are men who have no regard for human life, human rights, human dignity, and the rule of law. These are men for whom impunity and recklessness are central elements of their culture. It is only such men, who can behave the way the federal troops did in Asaba. Clearly a group with this culture should not be in charge of the affairs of humans.

Sadly, Nigeria has been in the hands of this group for more than 50 years. From military to militricians. Do we therefore need to stretch our imagination in order to figure out the origin of the level of violence and the erosion of values that today characterize Nigerian society? Most probably not. From Asaba massacre to Odi massacre, it is one long line of mass murder in a continuum genocidal tendencies and behaviours.

The character of the officers and men of the Nigerian military is the main factor responsible for the tragedy in Asaba and Odi. Other factors are secondary or contingent. These factors would have been insignificant but for the character factor. One of these other factors is the boundary effect. Boundaries are barriers to the movement of people, goods and services. Boundaries can either slow down movement or stop it completely. When this happens, the phenomenon that is moving, crowds or intensifies in the local area. If it is a positive phenomenon, the area benefits. But if it is negative phenomenon, the area is negatively impacted.

The blowing up of the Onitsha end of the Niger Bridge turned the Niger into an effective barrier to movement and so led to the congregation of soldiers in Asaba. They thus had the opportunity and time to commit atrocities. Each time the troops suffered reverses in attempting to cross the Niger, they took it out on Asaba people. Had the troops crossed over to the east in pursuit of Biafran soldiers, the federal troops would not have committed atrocities in Asaba; at least not on the same scale as they did. But the boundary effect is contingent on the character of the troops. A disciplined and highly professional military, whose officers and men have some minimum modicum of civility, will not massacre unarmed civilians simply because they are forced by circumstances to congregate in their midst. Had the character of the Nigerian troops been otherwise, the boundary effect (or any other factor, for that matter) would have been of no consequence. Therefore, the character of Nigerian troops is the fundamental reason why they perpetrated the scale of atrocities they committed in Asaba. The effects of all other factors are contingent.

The tragedy that befell Asaba during the civil war at the hands of Nigerian troops escaped the attention of the world when it happened. The full extent of the tragedy is beginning to come to light as survivors of the gory events tell their stories. The federal government, and indeed Nigeria were lucky that there were no satellite TV networks like CNN during the civil war. The gory event would have been beamed to the world and the outcome of the war may have been different. But it is important that the relics fo the gory events such as the mass graves in Asaba be visited and documented, it is also important that a memorial be erected for the victims of the massacre by the Asaba community.

The kind of humans who committed the atrocities witnessed in Asaba and Odi should never be allowed to be in charge of the affairs of men. Their culture of impunity, disregard for the rule of law and for human dignity is one that is not suitable for governance. The current state of the Nigerian economy and society is largely the aftermath of the dominant role of the military/militricians and their culture in governance. Recent revelations in various panels and commissions clearly indicated that the looting and destruction perpetrated in Asaba and Odi were extended to the resources of the nation.

References

Okocha, E. (1994) Blood on the Niger: An Untold story of the Nigerian Civil War. Lagos: Gom Slam

my commentary italicized

How to kill a nation by destroying the souls of its nationalities

"The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism” – Professor Wole Soyinka. 

 Sometimes what others say about their experience rings home to me. I was particularly disillusioned about events happening in our dear country Nigeria when I read David Brooks most recent column in the New York Times and to my utter surprise and consternation, I found a lot of parallels between what he wrote about America and the ongoing troubles in Nigeria. He wrote, “Great nations thrive by constantly refreshing two great reservoirs of knowledge. The first contains the knowledge from the stories we tell about ourselves. This is the knowledge of who we are as a people, how we got here, what long conflicts bind us together, what we find admirable and dishonourable, what kind of world we hope to build together. This kind of knowledge is not merely factual knowledge. It is a moral framework from which to see the world. Homer taught the ancient Greeks how to perceive their reality. Exodus teaches the Jews how to interpret their struggles and their journey. 

For America, the dominant story has been filled with resonant characters — Irving Berlin and Woody Guthrie, Aaron Burr and Cesar Chavez, Sojourner Truth and Robert Gould Shaw. 

 For Nigeria, the Yorubas see their world through Oduduwa and Obatala who created the world and started from Ife, and thence to Oyo-Ile, Benin etc. Oduduwa was the first divine king of the Yoruba people, and Obatala fashioned the first human beings out of clay. It is said the Yoruba people believe that their civilization began at Ile-Ife where the gods descended to earth. The Yorubas believe all civilizations can trace their roots to a quarter at Ile-Ife, the spiritual but not necessarily the political capital of the World. The stories Yorubas tell themselves help them cope with tragedy, such as the sacking of arguably the most advanced political city-state south of Sahara- Katanga and the internecine wars spurned thereafter. Therefore, the Yorubas honour elders and traditions, understand tragedy and see the need for a strategic long-term view of things compare to Pyrrhic victory. 

 In the Igbo creation myth, the God, Chineke, created man with part of Himself. Here, the God, Igwe, and the Goddess, Ala, (both components of the creator God, Chineke) met and formed human beings, male, and female. This the root of Igbo individualism, if your chi is bound up in the Supreme Being, why should you bow to another chi? 

 According to the Bayajidda legend, the Hausa states were founded by the sons and grandsons of Bayajidda, a prince whose origin differs by tradition but official canon records him as the person who married Daurama, the last Kabara of Daura and heralded the end of the matriarchal monarchs that had erstwhile ruled the Hausa people. According to the most famous version of the story, the story of the Hausa states started with a prince from Baghdad called “Abu Yazid”. When he got to Daura, he went to the house of an old woman and asked her to give him water, but she told him the predicament of the land, how the only well in Daura called kusugu was inhabited by a snake called Sarki, who allowed citizens of Daura to fetch water only on Fridays. Since “Sarki” is the Hausa word for “King”, this may have been a metaphor for a powerful figure. Bayajidda killed Sarki and because of what he had done the queen married him for his bravery. After his marriage to the queen, the people started to call him Bayajidda which means “he didn’t understand (the language) before. This myth helps the Hausas to seamlessly accept their Fulani conquerors in the 19th century and assimilate them. The Fulani have a picturesque creation myth. The Fulani live and die by dairy farming. Not surprisingly, therefore, they believe that the world began as a great globule of milk. Then the god Doondari descended, and from the milk he created stone. In due course, the stone created iron, the iron created fire, the fire created water and the water created air. When this chain reaction was complete and the five elements were in place, Doondari came down a second time and shaped the elements into people. But the people proved to be proud. So Doondari created blindness, and blindness defeated the people. When blindness itself became proud, Doondari created sleep, and sleep defeated blindness. And when sleep, in turn, became too proud, Doondari created worry. And worry defeated sleep. Worry. Like breathing and eating, it is something that all humans do. The Fulani will have their word for it. But they will never tell you what that word is, rather they as nomadic people will use other people’s terms and do things in the same way as people in their host community permit. They blend in easily even though they are constantly transitory in outlook. This myth explains why they value property and ownership far above all others, including human lives. 

 I draw on these small examples to illustrate the divergent perceptions of reality among the over 300 ethnic groups in Nigeria. Ordinarily, such disparities should not work against the creation and formation of a nation, as we see in the USA if they must face a common enemy together, be it, colonialism, war, plagues, or common religion. 

 Nigeria however got its independence from Britain without fighting a single battle. The original plan is for each of the major regions to move for independence at its or her own pace. In the United State of America, the revolutionary wars, as a national experience invited all Americans to share what Walt Whitman calls the passion to contain “the whole vast carnival of stories, to see themselves in its themes and to feel themselves within this story”. This is further accentuated by the commonality in the Declaration of Independence- the quest for freedom, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. This emotional and moral knowledge gives Americans a sense of identity, a sense of ideals to live up to and an appreciation of the values that matter most to its people — equality or prosperity or freedom. Even though blacks and Native Americans were excluded. This shared knowledge helped Americans fighting slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow laws, the right to vote, housing, employment, the right to bear arms as members of a militia and other economic and human rights. Through this, they discover a shared destiny and shared affection for one another. It is a lot easier to rally around a George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr who can draw on this ethos to demand a higher elevation of liberty, prosperity, and a call to a “better angel of our nature” 

Compare that to Nigeria, where joint emotional and moral knowledge is lacking. And an appeal for the education of citizens by Chief Obafemi Awolowo can easily be demagogued by saying he only wants to emphasize the advantages gained by his race being among the first to exposed to Western Education. While one region -Southeast-, sees such call as an opportunity to catch up, and so through its Towns Unions embarked on massive education of its young population through communal efforts. The hegemony in the North perceives such calls scornfully. Given its history and experience in Islamic scholarship at its many Madrasas and as such lost an opportunity to have the best of both worlds- education from East and Western Civilization. 

 The second reservoir of knowledge is propositional knowledge. This is the kind of knowledge we acquire through reason, logical proof, and tight analysis. Some of this knowledge is empirical knowledge that can be established by carefully using evidence. It is the kind of knowledge that made Goodwill Ebele Jonathan called his minister and tribesman, Mr. Orubebe, to order, concede defeat and spare the nation a catastrophe. It is what is missing in America where deluded Trump supporters refuse to acknowledge that you can score more electoral votes than any other previous presidential candidates in history and still lose the election if your opponent in the current election score more votes than you. No, the 2020 election was not stolen, folks! 

 Some of this kind of knowledge is contained in powerful ideas that can be debated, for example, you could argue that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” while someone else posits that the history of mankind is an eternal struggle to bring order and stability to a chaotic existence. David Brooks cites Jonathan Rauch brilliant book “The Constitution of Knowledge,” which states that the acquisition of this kind of knowledge is a collective process. It is not just a group of people commenting on each other’s internet posts or WhatsApp groups. It is a network of institutions — universities, courts, publishers, professional societies, media outlets — that have set up an interlocking set of procedures to hunt for error, weigh the evidence and determine which propositions pass muster. These are the same principles as those of the scientific method. 

An individual may be dumb, Rauch notes, but the whole network is brilliant, so long as everybody in it adheres to certain rules: No one gets the final say (every proposition might be wrong). No claim to personal authority (who you are does not determine the truth of what you say, the evidence does). No retreat to safety (you cannot ban an idea just because it makes you feel unsafe). This is where we struggle most in Nigeria. 

Our educational institutions in Nigeria, seem to be beholden to politician’s whims and caprices. The professor appointed by INEC to monitor presidential elections that “plays the game” for the winners in Presidential and Governorship elections are often the ones that get appointed by the visitors-President and Governors, as vice-chancellors and pro-chancellors. 

It is so bad, recently the Education Minister Adamu Adamu, while announcing the appointment of new pro-chancellors of federal universities  accused some state governors of hijacking the process of appointing vice-chancellors for Federal Universities. Adamu, who enjoined the Governing Councils to take charge and exercise their rights, urged them not to allow outside influence in the selection process of the new vice-chancellors of their institutions.

According to him, the Federal Ministry of Education, under his watch, had not in any way interfered with the selection of any vice-chancellor, he states,

 “I have not talked to any chairman that I have any candidate. Unfortunately, I found out that because of my lack of interest, or because I feel I should allow you (the Council) to exercise your right, it is being hijacked by the governors. It is your right; don’t sell it to them. The law stipulates that and we are giving you full independence, don’t sell it to them. It is, therefore, essential that you familiarise yourselves with the specific laws establishing your university or centre, as well as with other relevant laws of the Federation.

The Governors realized that INEC frequently taps Vice chancellors from regional  federal universities to monitor elections.  The VC in turn appoint university senate members who agree with the political party in powers. So the circle of corruption and debasement of political institutions continues. 

If you doubt me, answer this question: When was the last time our academic institutions produced the likes of Professors Ayodele Awojobi, Segun Osoba, Eskor Toyo, Dipo Fasina. Gadfly who are willing to risk, life, limb, liberty, and comfort to speak truth to power. Those ideas are generated, evaluated, vetted, and refined by professional bodies and trade associations/unions. Institutions such as Nigerian Bar Association (led by Alao Aka Basorun, Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana), Nigerian Medical Association and National Association of Residents Doctors of Nigeria (led by Dr Beko Ransome Kuti), Association of Staff Union of Nigerian Universities ( led by Professor Attahiru Jega), Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (led by Frank Ovie Kokori, (NUPENG former General Secretary), Late Wariebi Kojo Agamene (former President of NUPENG), former General Secretary of PENGASSAN, (Chief) Milton Gilchrist Dabibi) to mention but a few. All these organizations in the past set aside demands for personal emoluments for their members to build a national consensus around the struggle of the common man, representative democracy and eventually helped defeat military rule in Nigeria. They pushed the nation and its political leaders to build a better Nigeria. In recent years, politicians realizing the powers inherent in those organizations have infiltrated their ranks, imposed compromised leadership on them who in turn debase the National discourse. We are now paying the consequences for such lack of divergent opinions on the National stage. 

 Today many of us feel that Nigeria is suffering an epistemic crisis. We do not see the same reality. When People say that we often assume the problem is intellectual.Our system of producing propositional knowledge is breaking down. Why can’t those people fact-check themselves? Recently, southern governors resolved to ban open grazing and the movement of cattle by foot, after a meeting in Asaba, Delta state. The immediate response from the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), is an outright false equivalency, in a live interview with Channels Television, he stated that the resolve to ban open grazing by southern governors is equivalent to prohibiting spare parts trading in the north saying that the decision does not align with the provisions of the constitution. Even at the height of the First and Second Republic no minister of the federal republic of Nigeria of Northern extraction will be so banal and openly tribalistic to utter such garbage. And if he or she did, there will be a Balarabe Musa, an Aminu Kanu, or a Bala Usman or Col. Dangiwa Umar who will aggressively push back on such minister. We are now at a fractured place where the head of our justice ministry sees his loyalty to his ethnic group as his primary task and not the nation’s unity. The firestorm of outrage and criticisms which followed this shocking “cow vs Spare parts” comparison and portrayal of Malami’s poor understanding of the Constitution led to questions about the Attorney-General’s fitness for that office. Many believe he is mischievously or ignorantly imputing that the ban on open grazing is the same as the stoppage of individuals’ constitutional freedom of movement. In truth, it is the stoppage of the movement of cows that destroy farms and is partly responsible for the current food inflation. These nomadic herders do not pay tax, something that should be an object of concern for a debt-riddled administration. All the herders do is to destructively trespass into people’s properties which is a felony that should bother the AGF if he were well-meaning. 

 As Vanguard newspaper states, “These and similar utterances by officials of the Muhammadu Buhari administration appear to validate the allegation that the terrorist activities of the herdsmen militias are being officially condoned or even supported.” Just in case you think Malami is alone in making such unguarded utterances, here are more: “Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Idris Wase, blocked a petition from a section of Nigerians in the Diaspora, saying they had no right to comment on insecurity in the country. Danladi Umar, Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal, slapped a security guard, and his office called those who showed their displeasure at his public misconduct “Biafra boys”. Minister of Communications, Isa Pantami’s past as an Islamic terrorism sympathiser who issued a “fatwa” that led to the killing of a student, Sunday Achi, was exposed. The presidency exonerated him because he had “repented”- Vanguard 5/31/21. But Information Minister Lai Mohammed, like Donald Trump in the US, does not get away with lies because his followers flunked Epistemology 101. He gets away with his lies because he tells stories of dispossession and imminent loss of power that feel true to many in Aso Rock. They believe the lies they sell to themselves that kids protesting in Lekki are sponsored to topple the tottering regime. They see enemies in newspapers articles that dare criticize people in power. They see enemies in 280-word Twitter posts online. They are insecure because they are fearful of the people’s reaction to the land, they laid waste and the masses impoverished with impunity. Our federal ministers are censorious and intolerant because they lack analytic skills. They see their continued stay in power as derived from their ability to enforce compliance through violence. If they engaged in an argument at all, it is “ad baculum”-force. The fear of losing control makes them shut down public discourse, entrapped by a moral order that feels unsafe and unjust, they order a crackdown on activists by every means possible. The collapse of trust, the rise of animosity — these are emotional, not intellectual problems.

 The real problem is in our system of producing shared stories. If a country can’t tell narratives in which everybody finds an honourable place, then righteous rage will drive people toward tribal narratives that tear it apart. Part of the blame goes to our judicial, educational, professional and trade unionists who abandoned the common cause for their emoluments and comfort and then try to whitewash history by pretending what we practice is democratic. 

 Part of the blame goes to our judiciary whose partisan decisions on election cases contrived to bring us politicians who owe neither allegiance to their constituency nor legitimacy from the voters. Their appointment steeped in controversy and nepotism helped destroys patriotic allegiance to the nation’s unity. 

But let me restate again that the core of our problem is our failure to understand what education is. The electorates are willing to settle for a morsel of bread distributed on Election Day. The masses are easily drawn to politicians’ divisive harangue and ethnic pejorative. “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions,” David Hume wrote. Once you realize that people are primarily desiring creatures, not rational creatures, you realize that one of the great projects of schooling and culture is to educate the passions. It is to help people learn to feel the proper kind of outrage at injustice, the proper form of reverence before sacrifice, the proper swelling of civic pride, the proper affection for our fellows. 

This knowledge is conveyed not through facts but emotional experiences — stories. Over the past decades, we decimate our public schools’ system and proliferated private schools where the educated/political elites send their kids. Very few of those kids will ever encounter the sons and daughters of the poor and hear the stories of what it means to overcome poverty. They leave those schools for higher institutions abroad and either stay abroad or come back to Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Port Harcourt, Enugu, or other state capital to serve as ministers, commissioners or special assistants to Imams or General Overseers. They lack empathy for the farmers brutalized by herders because they do not own or ever step on a farm. They cannot see how the problems of kidnappers and armed robbers are concerns of the government because they are ensconced in gilded mansions protected by DSS goons who speaks French and Arabic. Coming back to our need to focus on reason and critical thinking skills — the core of the second reservoir of knowledge, let me admit here that we have got lots of work to do. 

The ability to tell complex stories about us has atrophied. Nothing seems to bind us together anymore. Our long-cherished national soccer team, the Super Eagles of Nigeria, is a shadow of itself. The ability to tell stories in which opposing characters can each possess pieces of the truth, stories in which all characters are embedded in time, at one point in their process of growth, stories rooted in the complexity of real-life and not the dogma of ethnic abstraction is dead. Here again, we can use our soccer history, where is Shooting Stars, Rangers, Mighty Jets, El-Kanemi Warriors, Niger Tornadoes, Stationery Stores etc. they are all in a different state of comatose.  The soul of our nation seems to drift in purgatory right now. 

We are now paying for the neglect and debasement of institutions that could help us find the path out of this quagmire. Now as we watch the presidency and National Assembly try to enforce national unity on a confederate of distressed tribe and tongue, we gasped for breath. Can they do that? Each shocking act of impunity and overreach builds on previous inanity. We see history repeat itself, fugitive’s abduction and shoot out with ethnic agitators. We are spectators in the front row story of our destiny. Our government conveniently forget that legitimacy is not earned through the barrel of the gun. What will history say about this time and our role in it? That you watch as an ethnic demagogue in and out of power and partisans introduce ethnic tirades in our national discourse, debauched and brutalized Nigerian’s will to settle disputes peacefully and democratically? It is time to go back to our historical storytelling roots. It is unfashionable to say so, but Nigeria has the greatest story to tell about itself if we have the maturity to tell it honestly. This long season of anomie will yet pass. I started with Soyinka’s quote and ends with another of his witticism, “The man dies who keeps silent in the face of tyranny.” 

The fate of Nigeria is in our collective hands. Attribution: Let me state here that few of what you read above is original, it is the poignancy of its message that I beckon you to heed. I owe David Brooks (who I rarely agree with) and whose article in NYTimes I disassembled to write this piece, a debt of gratitude.

The Sorry State of Nigeria’s Judiciary, amongst others makes Sowore’s Revolution Inevitable

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."--President John F. Kennedy (1962) This week may be one of the worst weeks for Nigerian judiciary and they might have made the much vaunted Sowore’s revolution inevitable. The first salvo was the list of judges released by the National Judicial Council replete with the names of their sons and daughters as well as hangers on. Second is the farcical decision in EFCC vs Kalu where the Supreme Court “suo motu” created a new section to the constitution of Nigeria by vacating a conviction duly given under an extant law. The strange rationale by the Supreme Court is that the presiding judge, now elevated to the Court of Appeal should not have pronounced the sentence. The Court conveniently ignored the fact that the accused counsel had invited the judge to come back and continue the hearing by a formal letter! Gone are the days when Nigerian judiciary is famously viewed as the last bastion of defense for the common man. The days of Kayode Esho, Chukwudifu Oputa, Muhammed Uwais is long gone. Our judiciary is no more like Caesar’s wife, above board. The problem however is not necessarily down to the hydra headed monster of corruption alone but a more sinister evil called, nepotism. It is my humble opinion that an opaque process for selection of judges led us to where we found ourselves this week. And the problem did not start with the current chief justice. The dysfunction and bastardization have been long in coming, and as we will find out in this piece, the cancer has eaten deep into the fabric of this nation. The revolution is inevitable. What precipitate this write up is a social media post by a good friend of mine and I obtained his permission to repost his comment with my personal edits:

It took Orji Kalu only 4 months including Covid lockdown challenge to move from the High Court to Supreme Court to get his so called sound judgment from Supreme Court while it took ten years to get his case completed at the High Court level. Ten good years! And we are told justice in Nigeria is not cash and carry? The Supreme Court is preparing the ground for a revolution and very soon somethingxtraordinary will take place. The same Supreme Court that will give 2021 and 2022 court date for poor defendants, sat and summarily decide a case within 4 months while cases of those facing a life sentence languish in the labyrinth of jungle justice!

My first response to the post, is to retort that the problem did not start with judiciary, but they seem to have led the “nunc dimitis” for the internment of democracy in Nigeria. The judiciary may have pushed us to the praecipe but they were not the only one. We all recalled the impunity days of PDP rule and how they ride roughshod on people’s right, celebrating acquisition of jets obtained from corrupt practices while hordes of masses suffer the indignity of scrapping for foods from the gutter. Towards the end of that era, we all thought, if we can just get a man of integrity into Aso Rock, someone who will brook no atom of corruption, we will change the country. The election of 2015 seems to have lulled Nigerians into thinking that all we need is someone or a duo with integrity, so we elect Buhari and Osinbajo, a puritan and a pastor and went home satiated. What we were not prepared for or more appositely choose to ignore is the fact that the vehicle that brought them into governance is none other than the decrepit system that PDP used to feather their nest. In the first 4 years, we were told that the problem is with the National Assembly where the legistlooters shifted their control of the vortex of power in Abuja, opposing every anti-corruption moves of the executives. Then come the last election where the ruling party now controls the executive and legislative arm, but corruption runs through the gamut of the judiciary and Aso Rock looks the other way while nepotism festers in its rank. It is as if the cancer has completely swallowed up the entire fabric of the nation. Cases involving the poor dragged on for years while those who can afford senior advocate can get quick justice. Many warned that this will sound the death knell of democracy in Nigeria. Every attempt to even build on free and fair election has been truncated by the judiciary. What with the recent confounding judgment from Imo and Bayelsa. Our two gargantuan political parties now owned our judiciary lock, stock and barrel. They sit in smoke filled rooms to determine who will be governors, legislators and judges, and those who will play ball are readily appointed as pawns in the chest board of the Nigerian ruling class, wives, nephews, cousins, sons and daughters are made judges and senior advocates overnight without recourse to any modicum of meritocracy. A friend of mine recently quipped that the problem of nepotism is not just that it defeats meritocracy and breeds mediocrity but that it infects the entire body politics and renders it comatose. Corruption can be traced, and ill-gotten wealth recovered but nepotism is more sinister. Those who obtain position of power and authority through nepotism hold fealty only to their masters who appointed them. Such appointee will readily twist the constitution, made up section that does not exist all at the behest of their “godfather”. It is insidious and evil. I graduated from Nigerian Law School 30 years ago, after an excellent stint at Great Ife. My class at Ife, drawn from the north, east, west middle belt and south-south has in its rank some of the best legal minds any country will be proud of. We graduated with high hopes to take on the world and change the land. Few of us found ourselves abroad on scholarship where we flourish and excel. Those in legal practice in Nigeria, either at the federal or state ministry of justice or private practice are the ones my heart bleeds for, especially those without access to members of the National Judicial Council. I have had the privilege to advance my career abroad as an attorney and public defender. I frequently sit on panels that recommend colleagues for appointment as judges in a fair, open and transparent process; something my colleagues in Nigeria could only dream of. When I look at the state of Nigerian legal practice my heart bleeds. The career growth of colleagues in the legal profession in Nigeria is stunted not for lack of excellence but influence in the right place. Influence peddling is an art form in Nigeria and politicians used to have the exclusive preserve of selling it to the highest bidder, but our Judicial Council seems to have mastered the art. The problem will not be this pronounced if the sons and daughters they are foisting on Nigerian judiciary are steeped in the Nigerian experience or have a modicum of merit. As many of my colleagues are apt to complain, majority of the recent appointees hardly spend few years in Nigeria. They all went to schools abroad. Totally devoid of the Nigerian experience, and constantly removed from the everyday life Nigerians suffers under. Majority of them lives in the gilded mansions of their forbears in Abuja and other state capitals, where they are rarely touched by the “better angels of our nature” to use the phrase coined by Abraham Lincoln. It is therefore no surprise that they care only for what their “godfather” demand. Let me however warns that the biggest mistake we could make is to think that the rot is only in the heart of our judiciary. Think again. Nepotism is next door, next street, next town and everywhere in Nigeria. It rampages through the land, be it North, East or West. Just look at our churches and mosques, who do you see minister or lead the prayers when the founder/visioner is not around? You guess right, if you say their sons and daughters. Gone are the days when Pa Fadayomi push to have a meritorious doctor of aerodynamics succeed him. Gone are the days when the leader of the faithful in Nigeria is selected by their aptitude in the knowledge of the Quaran. Nowadays, the exit of the leader is the beginning of the reign of the progeny. It has infected our colleges and universities, scholarship and opportunities that used to be available on merit are now exclusive preserve of the vice chancelor’s children and family members. Woe betide the school senate members that dare ask questions. Advertisement for jobs that has already been reserved for the children of the privileged are means to extort money in the form of application fees a la Abba Moro immigration recruitment scheme. A recent recruitment without advertisement at our apex bank reported by Sahara Reporters shows that successful applicants names were picked out of the rolodex of the governor. Commercial Banks staff are not an exemption, they are either recruited based on sex appeal or influential ministers/senators’ “recommendation” which doesn’t come easy for the educated but less privileged applicants. A friend concluded an animated discussion on social media on this issue with a distinctively Nigerian resignation: “It is clear that those who do not want things to work properly in Nigeria are more powerful than those who are working towards finding solutions to our problems.” Again, my response is what do we have to lose if we embrace Omoyele Sowore’s revolution, even with its youthful disdain for experience? Especially when our current experienced leadership seems to treat the Nigerian masses with contempt. Look at it this way: They do not need our votes to win election, as they could procure midnight judgment in Abuja a la Bayelsa and Imo. They do not need to legislate to fill any lacunae in our constitutional experience as the Supreme Court proved in Kalu’s case. In fact, as long as oil flows and they have the means to fill their Cayman Island bank accounts, we may as well not exist. Greed and avarice have become the directive principle of Nigerian ruling class. To rescue ourselves from their vice grip, we need revolution now!

BBC: Nigeria court upholds Buhari's poll victory

Posted at 22:24 11 Sep 201922:24 11 Sep 2019 Nigeria court upholds Buhari's poll victory A Nigerian election tribunal has dismissed a case filed by opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar, who was challenging President Muhammadu Buhari's victory in last February's presidential election. The electoral commission had declared President Buhari, a member of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) party, the winner with about 56% of the votes. The judgement took eight hours to read out to a packed courtroom in the capital, Abuja. The judges said that Mr Abubakar, a former vice-president, and his People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had failed to prove their allegation that the election had been rigged in favour of Mr Buhari. They also said there was no proof that the president had lied about his academic qualification. The opposition had alleged the president did not have a secondary-school leaving certificate, which is a basic requirement for presidential candidates. President Buhari, who is serving his second term in elected office, said he felt vindicated by the judgement. “With this ruling, it is now time for the country to move forward as one cohesive body, putting behind us all bickering and potential distractions over an election in which Nigerians spoke clearly and resoundingly,” he tweeted. The 76-year-old president, who once led a military regime for 20 months in the 1980s, said he was “extending a hand of fellowship to everyone who felt aggrieved at the outcome of the election, and went to court”.

2018 Human Rights Watch Nigeria

The ongoing Boko Haram conflict in the northeast, cycles of communal violence between pastoralists and farmers, and separatist protests in the south defined Nigeria’s human rights landscape in 2017. Notably absent for much of the year was President Muhammadu Buhari, who traveled overseas on two extended medical leaves for an undisclosed illness. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo acted as interim president on both occasions. While the Nigerian army made considerable gains against Boko Haram, the toll of the conflict on civilians continued as the extremist group increasingly resorted to the use of women and children as suicide bombers. Over 180 civilians have been killed in suicide bomb attacks since late 2016, mostly in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital. In August, female suicide bombers killed 13 people and injured 20 others in an attack near a security checkpoint in Borno. Three suicide bombers also killed 27 people and wounded 83 in coordinated attacks at a market and an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Maiduguri in August. Bomb attacks in September killed at least 25 IDPs in two camps at Banki and Ngala. Nigeria’s eight-year conflict with Boko Haram has resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 civilians and a large-scale humanitarian crisis. Approximately 2.1 million people have been displaced by the conflict while 7 million need humanitarian assistance; in February the United Nations secretary-general, together with key UN agencies, warned Nigeria was facing famine-like conditions due to insecurity triggered by the war. In June, Nigeria helped Cameroonian authorities unlawfully force almost 1,000 asylum seekers back to Nigeria. In May, after negotiations brokered by Switzerland and the International Committee for the Red Cross, 82 Chibok schoolgirls were released. Boko Haram fighters had abducted 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno state, in April 2014. More than 100 of the girls and hundreds other captives, including over 500 children from Damasak, Borno, remained in Boko Haram captivity at time of writing. Abuses by Boko Haram Boko Haram retained control over a small portion of Nigerian territory after numerous offensives to dislodge the group by security forces from Nigeria and Cameroon. The extremist group, however, continued its violent campaign in the northeast, particularly in Borno and some parts Yobe and Adamawa states. The group used suicide bombers in markets, universities and displacement camps; ambushed highway convoys; and raided and looted villages. At least 300 civilians died in the group’s attacks in 2017. In perhaps its deadliest 2017 attack, Boko Haram ambushed an oil exploration team from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation in July, killing at least 69 people in Magumeri, approximately 30 miles outside Maiduguri. Boko Haram mostly used women and girls as suicide bombers, forcing them to detonate bombs in urban centers. According to the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, 83 children were used as suicide bombers since January: 55 girls and 27 boys, one was a baby strapped to a girl. The group abducted 67 women and children in 2017. On October 9, authorities began closed-door trials in a Kainji Niger state military base of more than 2,300 Boko Haram suspects, some detained since the insurgency’s inception in 2009. Concerns about due process and fair hearing heightened when, within four days of trial, 45 of the first batch of 565 defendants were convicted and sentenced to between three to 31 jail terms for undisclosed charges. The court threw out charges against 34, discharged 468, and referred 25 defendants for trial in other courts. Prior to October, only 13 Boko Haram suspects had faced trial, out of which nine were convicted for alleged involvement in crimes committed by the group. Conduct of Security Forces On January 17, the Nigerian air force carried out an airstrike on a settlement for displaced people in Rann, Borno State, killing approximately 234 people according to a local official, including nine aid workers, and injuring 100 more. The military initially claimed the attack was meant to hit Boko Haram fighters they believed were in the area, blaming faulty intelligence. After six months of investigations, authorities said they had mistaken the settlement of displaced people for insurgent forces. At the time, the settlement was run by the military. In June, a military board of inquiry made up of seven army officers and two lawyers from the National Human Rights Commission concluded that there was no basis to investigate allegations of war crimes committed by senior army officials in the northeast conflict and elsewhere. The allegations they investigated included extrajudicial killings, torture, and arbitrary arrests of thousands. Authorities have failed to implement a December 2016 court order for the release of Ibrahim El Zakzaky, leader of the Shia Islamic Movement of Nigeria, IMN. Zakzaky and his wife Zeenat, as well as hundreds of IMN members, have been in detention without trial since December 2015, when soldiers killed 347 IMN members in Zaria, Kaduna state. In August, acting President Osinbajo established a presidential judicial panel to investigate the military’s compliance with human rights obligations and rules of engagement. The seven-person panel, which began hearing complaints in September, was set up in response to allegations of war crimes committed by the military across the country, including the December 2015 Shia IMN incident in Zaria, the killing of pro-Biafra protesters in the southeast, and the killing, torture, and enforced disappearance of Boko Haram suspects in the northeast. Inter-Communal Violence Violence between nomadic and farming communities spread beyond the north-central region to southern parts of the country in 2017. Hundreds of people were killed, and thousands displaced. In July, two days of clashes between herdsmen and farmers killed over 30 people in Kajuru village, 31 miles outside the city of Kaduna, Kaduna state. A similar attack in Jos, Plateau State left 19 dead and five injured in September. The governor of Kaduna state called for the intervention of the regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), to end the perennial violence between the two groups. In April, Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) was released from detention on the orders of a court. He was arrested in October 2015 and detained on treason charges. In response to calls for Igbo independence by IPOB, in June a northern-interest pressure group, the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF), issued a notice demanding that Igbos leave northern Nigeria before October 1, or face “visible actions.” Following condemnation by various interlocutors, including UN independent experts, the AYCF withdrew the quit notice in late August. Public Sector Corruption Corruption continues to plague Nigeria despite the Buhari administration’s increased efforts at reform and oversight. In October, President Buhari sacked Secretary to the Federal Government, Babachir Lawal, on corruption allegations, and National Intelligence Agency head, Ayodele Oke, after the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) found US$43 million in cash in his apartment. The EFCC accused Diezani Alison-Madeke, the former oil minister, of bribery, fraud, money laundering and misuse of public funds. In August, a court ordered forfeiture to the government of $44 million worth of property and $21 million from bank accounts linked to Alison-Madeke. Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity The passage of the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act (SSMPA) in January 2014 effectively authorized abuses against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in 2017. The law has undermined freedom of expression for members of the LGBT community, human rights organizations, and others. In July, authorities arrested over 40 men attending an HIV awareness event at a hotel in Lagos and accused them of performing same-sex acts, a crime that carries up to 14 years in jail. In April, 53 men were arrested for celebrating a gay wedding, and charged with “belonging to a gang of unlawful society.” In addition to the SSMPA, under the Nigeria Criminal Code Act of 1990, “carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature” carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. The Sharia penal code adopted by several northern Nigerian states prohibits and punishes sexual relations between persons of the same sex, with the maximum penalty for men being death by stoning, and whipping and/or imprisonment for women. Freedom of Expression, Media, and Association Nigerian press, bolstered by strong civil society, remains largely free. Journalists, however, face harassment, and the implementation of a 2015 Cyber Crime Act threatens to curtail freedom of expression. In January, police arrested two journalists, the publisher and judiciary correspondent of an online publication, Premium Times, in Abuja for articles that allegedly showed “deep hatred for the Nigerian army.” In June, Ibraheema Yakubu, a journalist with the Hausa radio service of the German Deutsche Welle, was arrested and detained while covering a procession by the Muslim Shiites group in Kaduna. He told media that policemen beat and slapped him. In August, police arrested and detained journalist Danjuma Katsina in Katsina state for posting “injurious comments” about a politician on Facebook. The two journalists were released after a day each in detention following the intervention of officials of the Nigerian Union of Journalists. The director of defense information announced in August that the military would monitor social media for “hate speech, anti-government and anti-security information.” The government also directed the National Broadcasting Commission to sanction any radio or television station that broadcasts hate speech. It threatened to charge people found to spread yet-to-be defined hate speech under the Terrorism Prevention Act. A “Bill to provide for the Establishment of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs),” described by local groups as an attempt to crackdown and monitor NGOs has passed two readings in the House of Representatives. Key International Actors International actors, notably the United States and the United Kingdom, have continued their support for the Nigerian government in the fight against Boko Haram, providing military equipment, funding, and humanitarian aid for the crisis in the northeast. In August, the US finalized the sale of $593 million-worth of military equipment to Nigeria. The sale, which was initially delayed under the Obama administration because of human rights concerns, included 12 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircrafts, laser guided rockets, unguided rockets and other equipment. While members of Congress expressed concern about this sale, there was no attempt to block it. Following an August visit to Nigeria by the UK secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs, the UK pledged $259 million over five years in an emergency assistance package to provide food, medical treatment, and education assistance in Nigeria’s beleaguered northeast. In February, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA co-hosted a donor conference that raised $700 million in Oslo, Norway to address the humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad Basin in the northeast. Despite an August army raid on a UN compound in Maiduguri, allegedly to search for arms, UN relations with Nigeria remain intact. The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) continued its preliminary examination into allegations of atrocities committed by all sides in the Boko Haram conflict. The office also has an ongoing analysis of the December 2015 event between soldiers and Shia IMN members. In May, Nigeria was reviewed by the UN Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, but failed to submit its report to the committee or send a delegation to the review. The committee expressed concerns, including about harassment and exploitation of domestic migrant workers and lack of information on measures taken by Nigeria to ensure non-discrimination for all migrant workers in law and in practice. When reviewing Nigeria in July, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women expressed concerns regarding access to justice; female genital mutilation; sexual exploitation in IDP camps; gender based violence, including domestic violence; trafficking for the purpose of sexual and labor exploitation; and continued abduction, rape, and sexual slavery under Boko Haram. Foreign Policy Nigeria currently sits on the UN Human Rights Council, as well as the Economic and Social Council. In January, Nigeria’s minister of environment Amina Mohammed assumed office as UN deputy secretary-general. In August, government officials joined the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in the condemnation of ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma, and called on the UN to invoke the principle of “responsibility to protect” to end the abuse. Africa has been the focus of Nigeria’s foreign policy for many years, but at the African Union 28th Summit in January, the country failed to secure any leadership position in the body. In January, President Buhari played an important role with other ECOWAS leaders in ending Gambia’s political crisis. Nigeria took a stand in support of justice for grave crimes by publicly opposing ICC withdrawal at the African Union ’s January 2017 summit in Addis Ababa.

The biggest disaster in Nigeria is human engineered and neglect and we can't address our problems because we are too busy defending the perpetrators who comes from our neck of the woods in the name of ethnicism

"I pledge to Nigeria my country
To be faithful, loyal and honest
To serve Nigeria with all my strength
To defend her unity and uphold her honor and glory
So help me God."

Can any Naija politicians say this without equivocation?