Point One

From every indication, the lockdown adventure by separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has gone utterly rogue, true to the saying that it takes just a tip to start a snowball. It not only seems a tough call for government centres in the Southeast to rein it in, it has apparently gone out of IPOB’s own control. Sit-at-homes had always been a handy tack by the outlawed group in pressing its secessionist cause. The current ‘ghost Monday’ campaign  was flagged off 9th August by IPOB avowedly to protest the incarceration of its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, and force government’s hand on his trial and desired release. Recall that Kanu, who fled this country in September 2017 amidst prosecution for offences including alleged terrorism, arms running and insurrection against the Nigerian state, was rearrested abroad last June and dragged back in the dock in Abuja, following which IPOB launched the latest campaign to compel his being freed. Although the lockdown notice met with robust reassu...

 You do not have to be a fan of Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai to acknowledge that he runs against the grain in a noble sort of way. Whether he thereby engages in genuine paradigm shifts or mere optics is debatable; but even if it is optics, he is a master at good optics. And optics, as they say, is everything. When the governor personally took his six-year-old son to enroll at a Kaduna public school in September 2019, and placed the boy on his laps as he himself sat in a guest chair before the school’s headteacher like a dutiful parent, it was good optics to the hilt. He not only made a classic statement of elite confidence in an educational system most of his peers won’t touch with a vaulting pole concerning their wards, even though they have the statutory responsibility to manage and rightly position the system, he also epitomised hands-on parenting amidst pressing stately duties in a manner that reinforced assurance in the moral character of leadership. It is reported tha...

 Willful amnesia about willful crime, even when there is seeming momentary respite, never works. Ask Sheikh Ahmad Gumi. The frontline Islamic cleric cum famous bandits negotiator and advocate has all but chilled now, and that likely is because his ‘amnesty for bandits’ advocacy has done next to nothing in reining in banditry in the land. Criminality is an affront to society’s laws and should be dealt with according to those laws; otherwise, attempts to disincentivise criminality by forgiving ‘repentant’ criminals after the fact of their ruinous adventure, or looking the other way when they give up their ‘booty’ per occasion, would end up like merely running rings. Nigeria seems to be straining to achieve a willful and blanket amnesia at the moment: amnesia about insurgency in the Northeast following ‘repentance’ by some Boko Haram fighters who are drilling out of forest hideouts and handing themselves in to the military; fragment amnesia about banditry in the Northwest and Northcen...

Before our eyes, the 12-year-long insurgency in northeast Nigeria is unravelling. Boko Haram fighters and their dependents have burrowed out of hiding places and surrendered in droves to the Nigerian military; it was estimated that 2,000 handed themselves over to army units in southern Borno State towns of Konduga, Bama and Mafa in recent weeks. The bombings that mainly characterised the insurgency have largely ceased, and it seems quite apparent that the fighters have lost enthusiasm or, at least, have been considerably degraded. There’s a break in the insurgency and you could feel it. If the trend holds steady, it will be a major feat by the Muhammadu Buhari presidency comparable to the de-arming of Niger Delta militants by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration between 2009 and early 2010. The military have been in bragging mood and, yes, they earned it. The “massive surrendering” of Boko Haram and Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists is the result of...

 If he had his way, Nigerians should be eternally grateful to former dictator, Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, rtd (IBB). The ex-ruler, who ruled by the oxymoronic title of ‘military president’, saved this country an upheaval of monumental proportions when he arbitrarily annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential poll, and we’ve been flaying him all along because we didn’t know it was a saving act. How gross! Many years on, he angles to be seen as ‘Babangida, the saviour,’ not the fiend as history reckons; and he even savours dubious manoeuvres he adopted in forcing his way on the country. That’s the gist of postulations Babangida made in a recent personality interview on television to commemorate his 80th birthday anniversary that falls due tomorrow, 17th August. The former military leader had on 24th June, 1993 voided the 12th June election that is now officially reckoned as won by the late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola. He became head of state on 27th August, 1985 a...

If the call by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has resonated, some areas of the Southeast region would this Monday be on lockdown, with people momentarily staying off their businesses and duty posts.  That would be in pursuit of a ‘ghost Monday’ campaign launched by the separatist group to protest ongoing detention of its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who is being prosecuted for offences including alleged terrorism and insurrection against the Nigerian state. Kanu had fled this country in September 2017 amidst prosecution by government for same offences, and he was intercepted somewhere abroad and dragged back into the dock at the Federal High Court, Abuja late in June, this year. Government did not disclose where he was rearrested, but it has been consistently speculated by Kanu’s camp to be in Kenya. Upon his re-arraignment, Justice Binta Nyako ordered that he be remanded in the custody of the Department of State Security (DSS), with the next adjourned date in his trial fixed for 2...

 A two-day global education summit that held in the United Kingdom last week made that country’s capital a locus of activity attracting some world leaders. Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari left Abuja on Monday to be a part of the summit which held on Wednesday and Thursday, 28th and 29th July. Official literature by organisers indicated that the ‘Global Education Summit: Financing Global Partnership for Education (GPE) 2021-2025’ would be a key moment for the world community to pull together in support of quality education for all children, as leaders were expected to make five-year pledges to help transform education systems in up to 90 countries and territories. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta co-hosted the summit in a hybrid format, with participants attending live sessions of the summit on GPE’s virtual platform besides “a small in-person event” arranged in London.  Before he left on the London trip, a Presidency statement outlined P...