From Jibril To Pablo: The Jagabanization Of Democracy As Nigeria Moves Closer To Tyranny

David Hundeyin

CC™ Viewpoint 

By Boyejo A. Coker - Editor-in-Chief

In my preceding piece, I alluded to the fact that, it actually does not matter what aisle of the political spectrum you belong to, the problem with Nigeria is not one of ethnicity or a lack of resources, both human and natural to propel that great nation to its deserved lofty heights, Nigeria's problem remains the same - the rudderless, improvident and imprudent band of usurpers and brigands, masquerading as leaders since the inception of the 4th Republic in May, 1999. 

For those who thought 2023 was going to be different, I must ask what they were smoking to have thought it possible for one to put old wine in a new bottle and expect a different taste. In what parallel or alternate universe would that have been possible giving the antecedents of Nigeria’s crass political class and the generality of its people? When you have Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi as the standard bearers of the three main Parties, was anything actually going to be different? 

Most people conveniently forget that Peter Obi launched a third force as a form of ‘grievance’ against the PDP. Obi felt he was never going to win the nomination ticket to be the presidential candidate of the PDP. Obi was in fact the first protagonist of the spirit of Emilokan, or in his case, Awalokan, as he felt it was the turn of the Southeast to produce the next President of Nigeria. Peter Obi is not new to the political arena in Nigeria. He is in fact an integral part of the establishment and while many laud his purported achievements when he was the Chief Executive of Anambra State, one remains puzzled as to exactly what his signature accomplishments were, besides being a supposed egalitarian steward of the coffers of Anambra State, as governor. 

  

For the record, Obi was Atiku Abubakar's running mate in 2019 under the auspices of the PDP, the Party that had held sway over Nigerian politics for 16 years from 1999 to 2015. He and Atiku lost the election to the then incumbent (and outgoing president) Muhammadu Buhari.

Obi was also named in the Pandora Papers controversy. The result of the Pandora Papers leaks, the Premium Times reported on Obi's involvement in offshore companies in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands and Barbados. This was before he held any political office in Nigeria. Further reporting showed that in 2010 as well, Obi had Access International help him set up and manage Gabriella Investments Limited, a company in the British Virgin Islands named after Obi's daughter. 

One of the directors was also the director of a Belize-based shell company that was issued 50,000 shares in Gabriella Investments. In 2017, Obi reorganized the company under the name PMGG Investments Limited and created a trust named The Gabriella Settlement which became the sole shareholder in PMGG Investments Limited. Obi was not holding any political position at this time. 

The Premium Times report claimed that Obi had broken several laws due to his business dealings. The report claimed that firstly, Obi remained as director of Next International (UK) Limited while serving as Governor of Anambra State, which is in direct violation of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act. Obi described that claim as misleading and wrong in an interview with Arise News stating that he resigned from all companies before taking the office of Governor of Anambra State. Secondly, it claimed that Obi's non-declaration of his offshore companies broke the Nigerian Constitution's provision that requires public officers to declare all their properties, assets, and liabilities. 

For the record, no criminal case has ever been filed against Obi. 

 

To his credit, Obi's Labor Party (LP) galvanized a movement that threatened the very foundation of Nigeria's entrenched political establishment. He selected a charismatic running mate of Northern extraction, Senator Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, a Nigerian economist and politician who served as Senator for Kaduna North from 2011 to 2012 and member of the House of Representatives from 2003 to 2007. 

The 'Obidient Movement', as it was aptly named, re-invigorated the youth of Nigeria and energized a political base that had been marginalized, oppressed and suppressed for far too long by the Kleptocrats who had run roughshod over the Nigerian populace for far too long. For the first time in the history of Nigerian politics, the entrenched political establishment had to reckon with a veritable third force, and Bola Ahmed Tinubu's All Progressives Congress (APC) ruling Party as well as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led by Atiku Abubakar, were left reeling in the face of a formidable display of organizational discipline and focused messaging by the Obi-Datti led LP. 

While the Obi-Datti led LP sought to project a unity of purpose coupled with disciplined messaging, Tinubu's APC took the often travelled path of ethno-religious bigotry by presenting a Muslim-Muslim ticket with Tinubu's running-mate Kashim Shettima having a well-documented history of being in bed with the Islamic terrorist group, Boko Haram, while the Atiku-led PDP again put forth someone with a well-documented record of not only losing major elections dating back to the early 1990s, but also being one of the most corrupt individuals in the history of Nigerian politics.  

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Nigeria's supervisory electoral body promised a free, fair and transparent election with a veritable voter authentication mechanism, as well as real time upload and transmission of election results. At the end of the day, the 2023 elections were at best a sham with widespread issues of voter suppression through intimidation and in some cases, murder, including the blatant altering/falsification of results to favor the ruling APC.  

Even more damming is that Tinubu’s own organization, the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), which was formed on 15 May 1994 by a broad coalition of Nigerian democrats to challenge the then military junta of the sadistic dictator, Sani Abacha, challenged the transparency and legitimacy of the just concluded 2023 general elections. 

Worse still is that barely a month after the elections, the Islamist terrorist groups have once again resumed their blood-letting, perhaps in recognition of the fact that the incoming administration of Bola Tinubu and his second-in-command, Kashim Shettima, will subtly acquiesce to their ethnic and religious killings, as the two (Tinubu and Shettima) are known sympathizers and benefactors of Boko Haram and its sister band of killers. 

 

If President Buhari's goal was to leave a legacy beholden of the true tenets of democracy, he failed woefully, which is not surprising when one considers the rudderless leadership, he has subjected the country to over the last 8 years.  

The legitimacy of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, if he is sworn-in will always be a viable conversation piece. He will be the first person chosen to lead Nigeria to get less than 50% of the votes. There are also doubts as to the veracity of his educational qualifications, as to date, his purported degree from Chicago State University in the United States of America, remains unsubstantiated.  

Furthermore, there are serious legal questions surrounding his forfeiture of close to $500,000 to the United States government in 1993 for his involvement in drug trafficking. The latter, as well as the specter of the fact that he may have presented fraudulent educational credentials may be enough to cast a shadow over his fitness for that exalted office.  

There is a palpable air of illegitimacy hanging over Tinubu's hollow victory, and regardless of what the Supreme Court rules in response to the petitions filed by both the LP and the PDP, near irremediable damage has been done to the collective psyche of Nigerians, as well as the nation's nascent democratic institutions.  

Identity, citizenship and the Fulani in Ghana

CC™ Opinion Editorial

By Osman Alhassan

Observations from Gushiegu, Donkorkrom and Dawadawa

"In spite of the efforts by the Fulani to integrate, they are often reminded that they are strangers who do not belong to the community...."

Conflicts between farmers and Fulani herders are a prominent – and growing – conflict in Northern Ghana. Although the Fulanis have been living in Ghana for generations they are still not accepted among local community groups and are thus excluded from certain areas of political life and health services. In this blog post Osman Alhassan from the University of Ghana argues why resolution of this conflict is in everyone’s interest.

Conflicts among competing land and water resource users are not new in West Africa. While some scholars attribute these rising resource use conflicts to growing scarcity of resources, others contend that it is the consequence of failed governance structures and local conflict resolution mechanisms. Our field investigations in northern Ghana in early 2019 as part of the Domestic Security Implications of Peacekeeping in Ghana (D-SIP) programme point to the fact that both resource scarcity, such as decreasing grazing land and increasingly stressed water resources, and social relations explain conflicts between local farmers and settler Fulani. A closer look at the conflicts between local community famers and settled pastoralists in the Gushiegu Municipality in the Northern Region of Ghana suggests an escalation. Although the Fulani pastoralists have lived in the Gushiegu area since the 1940s, they are increasingly experiencing tension with indigenous community groups, such as the Dagombas, Mamprusis, Konkombas, and the Bimobas.

The Fulani in Gushiegu recount that their ancestors settled in Gushiegu, and surrounding communities, as far back as in the 1930s and 1940s. They took care of cattle as well as farmed the land that was allocated to them for their food needs. Most of the Fulani are Muslims and as such joined the local population for congregational prayers on Fridays and during Eid festivities. As a guest community, the Fulani in Gushiegu and other communities made efforts to attend other local festivals and ceremonies in a bid to get closer to the local community and sustain mutual coexistence. While most Fulani children are not undertaking formal education, they attend the local Makaranta (Islamic school) with Dagomba kids where the Koran and Islam are taught. According to the Fulani in Gushiegu, there are a few inter-marriages between the Fulani and the Dagombas. However, there have been some challenges, especially during periods when cattle in the care of the Fulani destroy food crops belonging to community members or pollute community water sources.

Issues around identity and citizenship provoke strong sentiments among Ghanaians when the Fulani are discussed. It would appear that no matter how long they have been in Ghana, the Fulani cannot become Ghanaians in the eyes of certain communities and officials. A Planning officer with the District Assembly at Donkorkrom argued that everyone in Donkorkrom was a migrant, including the Fulani. So he was baffled about why they had been singled out as not belonging to Ghana, when the Hausa, Gau and other ethnic groups that were not originally Ghanaian did not face the same challenge.In spite of the efforts by the Fulani to integrate, they are often reminded that they are strangers who do not belong to the community. The Fulani are not allowed to participate in gatherings such as political campaigns, cannot easily access health services, including National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) cards, and are not allowed to vote even in district level elections. The Fulani therefore are not identified as community members though they have stayed in the area for a long time. The local community is indifferent to the younger Fulanis who have been born in the area and have no other place of origin. The Fulani in Gushiegu cited an incident in Kpatinga two years ago that claimed the lives of two Fulani men and the destruction of their properties. No Fulani had anticipated this as they had lived with the people, practiced the same religion, taken part in local festivals and ceremonies, and had a few of their kinsmen married to Dagomba.

The situation at Dawadawa was not much different. A Fulani man, Ibrahim Musah, in Dawadawa explained the discrimination he felt in Ghana. Although he demonstrated fluency in three Ghanaian languages – Dagbani, Akan, and Ewe –during the interview, Ibrahim Musah was considered by many in Dawadawa as an alien because of his Fulani origins. His credentials, though, show him to be Ghanaian. He was born in 1987 in Bawku and raised there. He lived in Bimbilla for 14 years, and in Dawadawa for the past 10 years. Before this, he had lived in other places in Ghana, including Kumasi, for many years. People were not concerned about his birth, residence, mastery of several Ghanaian languages, and his vast knowledge about many parts of Ghana. ‘I consider Bawku as my hometown. If you send me to Bawku which is in Ghana, many people can testify that I was born there because my father lived there. My father hails from Bawku though my grandfather, I am told, hails from Burkina Faso,’ he accounted. He was of the view that there are many misleading perceptions about Fulani, including those who are citizens of Ghana, and this has had an adverse impact on their livelihoods and participation in decision making. A first step towards peaceful coexistence and effective conflict resolution would be to recognize the rights of the Fulani and facilitate their participation in local mechanisms for resolving conflicts.

The conflict situations in settlements such as Gushiegu could also improve if local and national governance mechanisms emphasized education of the population about the rights of citizenship. Local and national politics have often been complicated by religion, ethnicity, and economic considerations. While Ghana’s constitution specifies who a citizen is, this is differently interpreted at local levels to suit those in power to make decisions on behalf of the community. In addition, community members must also be aware that our collective economic and security organization goes beyond individual countries. For instance, the sustained development of livestock production is an integral part of any food security or poverty reduction policy. So, it has been argued that traditional pastoral farming systems such as transhumance – moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle – contribute to socio-economic development and the growth of livestock production.

A treaty on cooperation between Member States of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) exist as a means for regulating transhumance and achieving agricultural development and food security in the sub region. The provisions of ECOWAS decisions cover issues of the free movement of persons, good and services, and mechanisms for conflict prevention, management and resolution, peacekeeping and security. Unfortunately, not many community members, or local government agencies are fully aware of these regulations which gives rights of passage across and within countries, and to grass and water resources for their cattle, to pastoralists such as the Fulani herdsmen. After all, ECOWAS was formed to commit to enhancing economic development through the free movement of people in the West African sub-region. It is about time governments realise that our diversity as a people is a major asset for development.

In some other discussions, both the Fulani and indigenous communities see the need for changing the policy and practice of pastoralism for the improvement of communities. Respondents in Gushiegu and Bimbilla agreed that logically, the more land and water employed for farming, the less land available for other livelihoods, including pastoral livelihoods, and the more competition and conflicts over land resources. Particularly if technology and population remain the way things are now. Both Fulani herdsmen and crop farmers in Gushiegu agreed that modern cattle ranching should be encouraged and capacities built to be able to exploit these opportunities. It is likely that cattle herding as is currently practiced, will survive only forty to fifty years from now because there will be no corridors for cattle passage. It is therefore critical to encourage good cattle rearing and farming practices such as development of pastures and the establishment of ranches on public-private joint management. Food security remains an integral part of human development and poverty reduction, and better livestock industrial practice will reduce the country’s meat deficits. It can also reduce the numerous conflicts over grazing land and water.

DIIS.DK