Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Minister Dan-Ali and TheBuhariDoctrine on Herdsmen

Okechukwu:

Nigerians are listening!  What I meant is that a system is as as good as it's practitioners. Democracy is a work in progress. There are many things that are not working in Nigerian democracy but worked in the place from which it is imported.  Nigeria can fine tune any imported system to its specific purposes.

If there are certain provisions in the presidential system that are subject to abuse by Nigerian presidents such clauses must be subject to amendments.  To this end a permanent constitution review committee must be part of Nigeria's democracy (that meets for the purpose in specified years -say 3 to 6-after receiving on going memoranda) that must be saddled with such amendments (and aticled into the current Constitution by emergency Act of the National Assembly) so that anytime an incumbent appears to be taking the country for a ride for his/her personal agenda Nigerians will not resort to threatening fire and brimstone knowing fully well such acts can be amended in the future and the results obtained thereby neutralized.  A similar situation seems to be happening in the US now where Trumps hands are being tied with regards to how he could influence the implementation of the Act passed against countries adversarial to American democracy.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Okechukwu Ukaga <ukaga001@umn.edu>

Date: 28/01/2018 00:07 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Minister Dan-Ali and TheBuhariDoctrine  on Herdsmen

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Olayinka,

It is the leadership that is the culprit, NOT the system (whatever that means). Blaming the "system" will not work. After all good systems do not develop and maintain themselves. They are in fact developed and maintained by people, especially the leaders. Effective leaders improve systems while ineffective leaders make them worse. The problem is the worker, not  the tool. So to remove the cyst, remove non-performing leaders and replace them with better ones. Don't make excuses for any. 

OU

On Jan 26, 2018 5:44 AM, "Olayinka Agbetuyi" <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:

It is well for the prophets of doom to claim foresight!   For me it is the system that allows that to happen that is the culprit.

But how does one remove the cyst in the system without rancour? ( apologies to WS)

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Okey Iheduru <okeyiheduru@gmail.com>

Date: 26/01/2018 07:30 (GMT+00:00)

To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Minister Dan-Ali and The BuhariDoctrine  on Herdsmen

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The Fulani conquerors have every Nigerian tightly cornered. Some of us tried to warn us, especially about the men around Buhari, in 2014-2015 but we refused to listen. 

The muse became an early victim of the Messiah 

and the valley of propaganda graphs and tables dried up

The wood-pecker's beak dripped with puss

and the Iroko tree got a reprieve from death foretold

We don't seem to "have it" there any more!

The grazing reserve, a colony secured

A gift from their fathers and the Wise One from the west

Boycott their "god" and it's war assured

The state, their state; our crude and blood of our mothers

and the gadfly lacks the courage to call a spade a spade!

NNAMDI KANU 6th February 2014

"As they campaign vigorously for elections, you would think they are coming to grow the economy, enthrone justice, breed unity and tolerance, love for one another. No, they are coming to enthrone Hausa-Fulani supremacy, to reposition the security agencies by sacking all competent hands and replace them with their kinsmen in order to drive their ethnic domination of the south, the Fulani herdsmen will be armed and encouraged to slaughter us with impunity and their masters will protect them. They are coming to ensure that my people are enslaved forever. Those who do not believe me will soon see it happen before their eyes." #Nnamdi Kanu, 6th Feb. 2014.

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 10:26 PM, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

Nothing playing out here is new.

It has been the norm since the 2011 Boko Haram escalation, an arrangement between right wing Northern Muslim die hards and terrorists that the organisers could not keep under control.

The same mindset is behind this unfolding horror only its much better organised now that their man is in power.

Im struck by Moses' comment that he fears for what is left of the country.

Please allow me to revisit Nnamdi Kanu.

Do we have a country or a wild forest? At least in the zoo of Kanu's description, the animals are cared for by the keepers and are not killed wantonly.

In Nigeria, on the other hand, we have a group of wild animals who are insisting on treating everyone else as prey for themselves.

When Kanu took to determined measures to resolve the long unfolding crisis, many, including some of his fellow Ndigbo, vilified him.

Gradually, our eyes are opening to the fact that Nigerian is being run by people who dont see other Nigerians  as fellow humans or as equal on the scale of existence.

Anytime one wakes up is one's daybreak, the saying goes. I welcome us all to our different but correlative  dawnings of the day.

toyin

 

On 26 January 2018 at 13:15, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

Moses Ochonu!

Why are you determined to refuse to grant agency to a person whose brutish clannishness you have yourself catalogued?

You keep referring to people advising Buhari wrongly.

Yet you have yourself described his mindset in a way that is consistent with this behaviour, meaning that he has advised himself and is at the heart of this plan.

Na wa.

A highly coordinated terrorist ethnic agenda, from the top of the political pyramid to the security agencies,  is playing out before you but you are determined not to admit it until what?

By the time a good no of Jews admitted to themselves the Nazi party meant their eradication, it was too late for them.

We dont have to agree but is it fair on yourself to insist on ignoring the evidence of your own analyses, all bcs perhaps it took you so long to grasp the hell being unleashed on Nigerians?

Is the memory of Bashir of Sudan and his jajaweed not relevant here?

Farooq,to give another example of a person who refuses to adequately correlate the data he has himself catalogued,  is determined to see the unfolding horror as the work of some vagrant bororo and the culpability of Buhari as nothing more than a person seeing a national crisis through clannish eyes, yet the same Farooq has described Buhari's Arewaisation of Nigerian govt, central to which is his beginning his rule by filling practically all security leaderships of the nation with his ethno/religious kin.

Yet the determination persists not to link the dots and at least grant the implications of various casualties at play here.

Education and being civilised are good but they should not lead one to refuse to recognise the systematic evil human beings are capable of.

We Southern Nigerians need to be more politically mature. Its great that you are working hard in unmasking this fiendish mentality dramatised by Buhari's govt but you need to ask yourself some serious qs about Buhari's mindset based on the evidence before you.

toyin

On 26 January 2018 at 10:45, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Moses: 

Greetings from Nigeria. I think Abuja is misreading the level of anger in the land. There is a level of callousness, too, in dealing with thousands of displaced people who rely on their land for survival.

Can the govt. not:

1. Disarm citizens who carry AK47 around? Herders used to carry sticks.

2. Apply the full force of law to anyone with guns without license.

3. Appeal to sedentary farmers to cultivate grass and sell them in inter-regional trade. This becomes a win-win situation.

The nuclear option

Boycott beef.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 26, 2018, at 3:30 AM, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:

"Since Independence, we know there used to be a route whereby these cattle rearers use. Cattle rearers are all over the nation, you go to Bayelsa, you see them, you go to Ogun, you see them. If those routes are blocked, what happens? These people are Nigerians, it's just like you going to block river or shoreline, does that make sense to you? These are the remote causes. But what are the immediate causes? It is the grazing law. These people are Nigerians, we must learn to live together with each other, that is basic. Communities and other people must learn how to accept foreigners within their enclave, finish!"

--Defense Minister, Mansur Dan-Ali, January 25, 2018.

Take a moment to digest this. This is Nigeria's defense minister, speaking to reporters today after the security council meeting, not the spokesman of Miyetti Allah. He is echoing the official position of the government on the herdsmen issue, a position indistinguishable from that of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, the genocidal herdsmen body that regularly admits to, and threatens communities with, mass murder.

The highlights of his rant are, 1) the remote cause of the problem is the "blocking" of grazing routes by farming communities, and 2) the immediate cause is the anti-open grazing laws passed by three states, never mind that the Agatu massacre of 500 villagers by armed herdsmen preceded the Benue law and that the anti-open grazing laws passed by three states were a response to the violence of herdsmen, not the other way round.

The minister apportioned absolutely no blame whatsoever on the armed herdsmen militia. They are the victims, the wronged side, according to Defense Minister Dan-Ali. There is no pretense of balance and even-handedness. The solution, for him, is not to mobilize the military might of the state to go after the armed herdsmen mass murderers. The solution for him and the president is to urge to farming communities to grant the herdsmen unfettered access to grazing lands in their communities because according to him, "these people (herdsmen) are Nigerians."

These are the people advising Buhari and shaping his attitude and response (or lack thereof) to the herdsmen violence. No wonder, Buhari told the Benue delegation that visited him to "in the name of God accommodate your countrymen." That is what he and his inner circle and security team believe to be the problem: the failure of Benue and other states to accommodate the herdsmen. Herdsmen must be "accommodated" for peace to reign.

This is what clannishness can do to a leader. It traps him in a bubble of provincialism, in which he gets only skewed counsel. It creates an incestuous, provincial world that reinforces the leader's own preexisting parochialism and hubris. Clannishness blinds the leader to a broader reality, causing him to remain completely out of touch with what is really going on. It causes him to value above all else the deceptive but comforting narrative of kinsmen advisers who are moored to ethnic loyalty and given to navel gazing.

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