Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Buhari Legacy

The Same Dance with Different Dancers 

Obi/Atiku is no different from Osinbajo/Buhari.

I wrote publicly variously describing Atiku as even more dangerous than Buhari. 

The entire system is rigged agst development. 

The Atiku/Buhari kind of fanatics are even more dangerous in adding bloodthirsty bullying and terrorist enablement to their own statecraft. 

Right Wing  Fulani as Different from Fulani in General 

I consistently reference right wing Fulani, not all Fulani. 

Right wing Fulani are the ethnic supremacists behind the Fulani militia terrorism that is currently Nigeria's greatest or second greatest security threat, along with Boko Haram.

Various terrorist watch agencies, along with the UK Parliament,  have mapped, with statistics, names and dates of attacks and nos of casualties, the years long campaign of the Fulani militia.

These accounts are very visible online and have been severally been posted here, along with recurrent eye witness accounts of the stranglehold in which these  characters have held the nation,  particularly since Buhari, virtually their patron, came to power in 2015. 

The fictional euphemisms 'bandits', 'so called Fulani herdsmen' etc or describing efforts to identify this group and their supporters in terms of racist ethnic profiling serve to satisfy only those insisting on such fictions. 

SW Politics Beyond  the Tinubu/Osinbajo Configuration

True, I needed to qualify my last sentence in my previous comment.   SW politics is not equivalent to the Tinubu/Osinbajo/APC  camp, although it seems they want to make it seem so, and it is likely to be so for many.

The Tinubu/Osinbajo group is not equivalent to the SW/Yorubaland.

The Yinka Odumakin/Afenifere group is different from the Tinubu group and are not arguing that one has to become a terrorist to press for structural change.

Between Critical Vision and Political Expediency 

The issue of integrity of vision is not about Yoruba ethnicity.

Its about ideology, about vision, about not condemning Buhari for declaring at the 2008 Abacha memorial in Kano that Abacha did not steal even as part of Abacha's huge loot was being returned to Nigeria from Switzerland, a condemnation issued by  Tinubu through his then party spokesman Lai Muhammed and yet in 2015 presenting Buhari as an icon of anti-corruption bcs you want to get to Aso Rock on the back of the murderous fanaticism of Buhari's Northern Muslim right wing  supporters.

Its about supporting a dictator to get to power without any evidence the dictator is different from what you have long described him to be, as a self declared social rights crusader, thereby using your enormous public image in misleading the populace, as Soyinka did in 2015.

Its about developing a reputation as a social critic yet making yourself nothing more than an APC mouthpiece, declaring the APC candidate would be your candidate, as if you were a politician, and when they presented the very person you wrote movingly against for his 2008 exoneration  of the Abacha looting bonanza you kept your peace, as if being anti-GEJ govt means being pro APC, as Pius Adesanmi did in 2015.

I am well informed about the public careers of Soyinka and Adesanmi, so I  focus on them here as examples of self declared social activists who are better understood as politicians, using their public standing to pursue political agendas in line with the short sighted  vision of the Tinubu politocracy.

We can reference  ex central bank gov Chukuwuma Soludu who cried rivers over what he described as the largest shedding of blood in Nigerian history outside wartime on account of Boko Haram in GEJ's time but whose voice is absent now that state aided terrorism by right wing Fulani strides across the land.

 Soyinka and Adesanmi, however,  are the people I know best about and who most opened my eyes to the politicization of intelligentsia which Soyinka has been cultivating since his accreditation of the IBB govt by working with the dictator, decrying those who challenged him as 'disco critics', endless criticizers who would not take the opportunity to take part in the political process, like himself, as if the end justifies the means in such situations.

We know the bigger picture of the the ultimate profile of the IBB govt.

People like Soyinka, Adesanmi, and various so called social activists from various parts of Nigeria rode on the prestige of genuine social activism established by the Gani Fawehinmis, the Beko and Anikulapo Ransome Kutis  and even Soyinka in his varied public self positionings, to ultimately become little more than APC enablers. 

Between Social Criticism and Party Politics 

The literary and social critic Ikidhe Ikehloa kept insisting on social media, agst the grain of his fellow intellectual travelers like Adesanmi, that being critical of the GEJ govt does not automatically translate into support for APC and their opportunistic politics. 

Not so, the other side declared by their actions.

They must declare the dangerous one has been washed clean, and salvation was at hand.

What happened to persistent critical distance from the political process, acting as a means of measuring our progress to the promised land instead of helping to lead us to  where we are in danger of drowning in the mirage of salvation?

The SW and Social Criticism 

This subject demonstrates an ethnic thrust in the light of Ikheloa's accurate observation that the thrust of social activism in Nigeria has historically come from Nigeria's SW, evidenced from the long careers and national image of the Soyinkas, the Gani Fawehinmis, the Beko and Anikukalopo Ransome Kutis  and that the capitulation of this bloc of civil society to the APC agenda was strategic to the party's triumph, and was not in Nigeria's interest.

Those we had left as the most significant critics of the Buhari govt, well before OBJ saw the light, were then gov of Ekiti, Ayodele Fayose and ex minister FFK, but these are politicians, thus they dont have the public image of people who cant be seen to be implicated in the political networks  they are criticizing, the latter represented in the past by the  examples of  the Gani Fawehinmis, the Beko and Anikulapo Ransome Kutis.

The Muslim Northern Political Landscape in 2011-2015   

As for the strategic value of Southern opinion moulders  in the 2015 elections, who, apart from   Buhari was an equally  visible Northern Muslim candidate between 2011 and 2015? A person on whose behalf his supporters massacred innocents in large scale riots in revenge for his loss? A person careful to place himself in the Northern Muslim hard right through his consistent support for Boko Haram Islamic terrorism which established a hold in the Muslim North in their 2011 upsurge that continues till today by presenting themselves as Muslim fighters, attacking  only govt installations and bombing churches and machine gunning their worshipers,  and killing informants agst them, in the first two years of their escalation?

Atiku ex VP who had not gained Buhari's kind of visibility through repeated running for office?

Kwankwaso, then Kano state gov who could not match Buhari's presence as ex head of state, though through a coup?

Buhari as Boko Haram Enabler 

'War agst Boko Haram is war agst the North'was Buhari's response to the 2013 state of emergency taken to flush them put of their footholds in urban centres. He later changed to 'the current Boko Haram is political Boko Haram, the work of the GEJ govt' helping to fuel  misinformation  in the North that the govt was behind Boko Haram.

Mobilising the Southern Intelligentsia for APC in 2015

Agst this background, with the right wing dominated Muslim North in his pocket, the South needed to be convinced. The SE and SS were a lost case for APC, leaving the SW. 

That is where the Soyinkas, the Adesanmis, the Sowores [ publishers of Sahara Reporters who declared in an interview that GEJ was worse than the serially murderous and historically kleptocratic Abacha, and generally glorified military rule] and the misguided, in my view,  like Obi Ezekwesili, who became political instruments without perhaps understanding the full game unfolding around them.

Civil Disobedience as Perhaps the Only Way to Force Fundamental, Creative Structural Change in Nigeria

The IPOB vision remains the only one I see as viable.

Those who dont want change to the status quo control the legislative houses so the only way to force change without declaring violence is by peaceful action, and peaceful civil disobedience,  as IPOB initiated and was in the process of consolidating until the massacre of their people, to the silence and even at times support of Nigerians who did not understand this crushing was being done by a terrorist govt that would increasing turn on them.

I pray Nigerians are able to adopt such a civil disobedience strategy one day.

thanks

toyin

 

On Sat, 30 May 2020 at 21:10, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:

Toyin Adepoju:

You wrote that restructuring was jettisoned once Tinubu/ Osinbajo ( 'politicians who wanted entry to Aso Rock' and ended Toyin Adepoju's desire for a non SW Jonathan bid for a third term in Aso Rock)  reached Aso Rock.   

The North was not 'always Buharis on account of ethno-religious affiliations' when Jonathan won.  Lets just drop the usual barely veiled Yoruba bashing here and face the substantive questions:

How higher can you go in a constitutional fight than pursue your dream till it gets to the National Assembly (highest national decision making body) where the motion for restructuring was roundly defeated?

What should the Yoruba do at that stage?  Take to the bushes and join Boko Haram in its campaign to destabilize Nigeria because they could not get their way or abide by the constitutional wishes of the majority?  OK the Yoruba original sin is not to have- as an inconsequential player in project Nigeria- promptly lined up behind the SE, the champion of southern causes. 

After Jonathan did you put forward a viable southern candidate to your hated Buhari- except Obi who promptly lined up behind another hated Fulani of yours Atiku Abubakar ( I do not recall Toyin Adepoju berating him and asking him to stand in his own recognition) to copy- cat the Yoruba gambit?

Have you taken to the bushes yourself,  armed , alongside Boko Haram  to give teeth to your wishes?

Otherwise what is yours own method of constructing a vision for the nation, project Nigeria, that will bypass the wishes of the National Assembly?

You ask until we all demand a renegotiaton of this nation, will there be progress?

I ask,,  since the National Assembly ( the constituted agency for such matters) already did that, and we know the verdict,  how?

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>

Date: 30/05/2020 13:45 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Buhari Legacy

This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (toyin.adepoju@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info

A political/civil society cabal whitewashed a terrorist sympathizer, an ethnic bigot, a person who has no record of self improvement to his name, while the Wole Soyinkas, the Bolaji Alukos, the Pius Adesanmis and others in the train of those whom Soyinka once described in relation to 'the artist should be a voice of vision in his time" were celebrating "anything but Jonathan"

Soyinka is yet to explain why he ditched his 'The Trouble with Buhari' the most trenchant anti-Buhari document before Soyinka's 2015 turn around after a sustained shouting match with Patience Jonathan and hobnobbing with then gov Amaechi of Rivers who became Buhari's campaign manager, who, years down the line was captured on record lamenting Buhari's imperviousness to sound advice, only for Soyinka to emerge to defend Amaechi, declaring the ex gov did not insult Buhari-a busy Nobel Prize winner, great writer but unreliable politician.

He claimed, in an interview, that he was convinced to support Buhari by people who vouched that Buhari had reformed.

Really?

Looking back to see where and how we stumbled is vital if we are not stumble again for the same reason.

Historian and social critic Moses Ochonu has described himself as taken in to support Buhari on account of what he now recognizes as the disguised ethnic considerations of people he clearly respected and whose views he valued.

The whole evil Buhari story is the work of politicians who wanted entry to Aso Rock and co-opted Southern Nigerian civil society leaders as comrades.

The North has always been Buhari's on account of ethno-religious affiliations, automatically granted but further carefully honed over many years of self positioning on the hard right that dominates the region.

All that is happening today was predictable  from 2011 when 'power must return to the north'became a mantra among some in the Muslim north.

How will Boko Haram go away when they have been so useful?

How will terrorism by right wing Fulani using Fulani herdsmen soldiers as some insist on naming them 'so called Fulani herdsmen' go away when they are so useful as carvers of territories  for a Fulani hegemony?

Restructuring which the SW politicians made their mantra was jettisoned once the Tibunu/Osinbajo group  reached Aso Rock.

IPOB struggled for peaceful self determination for their region. They were murderously brutalized as others even among some foolish SEs clapped.

After which Fulani herdsmen terrorism proceed in earnest.

Until we all demand a renegotiation of this nation, will there be progress?

A feudal system, run by corrupt politicians, at the head of which are those who have cornered the instruments of politics, oiled by a readiness for verbal and physical violence, the right wing Muslim North, a violence also demonstrated by others, such as the Bola Ige assassination by the PDP ( then PDP strongman Tony Anenih-" we shall deal with your boss the way we dealt with Ige". PDP-"Its a family matter"), but which the likes of Atiku Abubakar ( "those who make peaceful change [ his being made PDP Presidential candidate in 2011 as the Muslim North's consensus candidate] impossible make violent change inevitable),    Buhari( "the dog and the baboon shall be bathed in blood if what happened in 2011 [when he lost the election] happens again in 2015") have made an open policy of intimidation and statecraft, central for mobilizing their region and their supporters, against the background of massacres of innocents by Buhari's supporters in revenge for his 2011 loss, the initial embrace of Boko Haram in the Muslim North as a Muslim army fighting the "infidel govt of GEJ", and the ongoing internal colonization scheme through massacre by terrorism run by Fulani herdsmen militia and their Miyetti Allah handlers, headed by the Sultan of Sokoto and Sanusi, then as Emir of Kano, 

The every-man for himself at times using ethnicity as a tool continues   until a real nation is constructed.

Anyway, the 2023 battle is whether or not the SW will be rewarded for its help in bringing Buhari to power in 2015.

Its not about any vision.

thanks

toyin 

On Sat, 30 May 2020 at 04:28, segun ogungbemi <seguno2013@gmail.com> wrote:

It is a waste of time, in my opinion, to expect any good legacy from President Buhari. He has used federal government resources for the treatment of ill heath and to reward his political associates that stood by him during his political hard times. 

He is known as harbinger of  political terror in terms of insecurity, patron of Ruga, economic danger to generation yet unborn and a remorseless leader. 

On Fri, May 29, 2020, 8:36 AM Jibrin Ibrahim <jibrinibrahim891@gmail.com> wrote:

Mr. President: What Would the Buhari Legacy Be? 

Jibrin Ibrahim, Friday column, Daily Trust, 29^th May 2020

Today is the anniversary of President Buhari's fifth year in power and has three more years to go before retiring to Daura to take care of his cows. In another year or two, the campaign for 2023 will take over the attention of the political class and governance would stop. This means the President has less than two years to leave his legacy of eight-year rule. One of the problems the President has been facing is the mediocrity of his communication team, which has been unable to explain to the people what really has the President been doing. They are in the media continuously attacking all those who have been attacking the President, and I concede that is part of their day job. What they have not succeeded in doing is communicating the priorities and achievements of the Administration so that data is provided to the people on the evidence on which citizens can assess the regime. As the countdown commences, President Buhari has to reflect on what he has done with power and how he can communicate his legacy to citizens.

I still remember that just before the beginning of the Administration five years ago, the APC Policy Directorate held a major conference in preparation for implementing their strategy of "hitting the ground running" as soon as their parry takes over power. The buzz at the conference was that major policy decisions, especially politically difficult ones must be made immediately and quick wins must be obtained by the end of the first hundred days in office. The idea was that by riding on the crest of newly acquired legitimacy and popularity, significant gains could be made before expected criticisms begin to affect the credibility of the government. The underlying assumption was that all new regimes coming into power in a context of very high expectation start losing their popularity on assuming office even if for the sole reason that people's expectations are unreasonably high. President Buhari rejected the road map of hitting the ground running and did not start constituting his governance team until after five months. Years later, he explained to Nigerians that he was aware they were calling him "Baba Go Slow" but they should understand that being older and wiser, he had decided to reflect and consider before taking executive decisions. 

I have said repeatedly that the President was wrong to think that he had a lot of time; four years plus another four is a very short period and his team was right to have advised him to move fast. Today, the issue is with the countdown clock ticking, can he move fast enough to leave a respectable legacy of his rule. This is difficult because his style of delayed action has led to the development of a body of critical opinion that paint him in a very negative light leading many to assume nothing positive can come from his administration. Therein lies the opportunity, as a believer in miracles, I feel that if "Baba Go Slow" can transform into "Action Baba", he might still save the day.

In 2015, I wrote a number of articles on this column urging the President to prioritise the implementation of the 2012 Oronsanye Report on restructuring and rationalizing Federal parastatals so as to reduce the cost of governance through mergers and dissolution of parastatals with cross cutting mandates. It was one of the low hanging fruits he could have harvested because the reality is that there were many more parastatals than what could be funded to do their work leaving the country with the wasteful legacy of tens of thousands of top civil servants who are paid but have no work to do. The President took no action until a couple of weeks ago when the project was resurrected. Meanwhile, the situation is today much more serious because the 8^th Senate, 2015-2019 considered 213 Establishment Bill for the creation of new Federal agencies and currently, the 9^th National Assembly is already considering over 100 Bills for the creation of new agencies. The mood in the National Assembly is that each legislator creates a new Federal agency for their constituency. It is important that the President convinces them to give up their individual "pet" projects and act in concert with the Executive to restructure and merge the 102 agencies identified in the Report. 

The most important legacy the President should leave is an improvement of the security situation in the country. The expectation of Nigerians was that Boko Haram would be vanquished within the first year or two of his presidency. It did not happen. For over ten years now, the insurgency has endured and become entrenched as an existing reality while the security agencies appear to have been at their wits end. There has been some progress over the past couple of weeks but Nigerians are still waiting for the decisive victory. Meanwhile, under President Buhari's watch, farmer-herder conflicts have blossomed into rural banditry which has developed into a major challenge in many States in the country. Today, peasant farmers are regularly attacked and massacred by armed bandits and many can no longer farm and feed their families. Another, dimension of the crisis is the spread of kidnapping for ransom, which is rapidly becoming the money-making occupation for the unemployed youth. The problem today, as SBM Intelligence explained in a recent study, is that between January 2016 and March 2020, kidnapping gangs have made over $11 million in addition to killing hundreds of their captives. The 100 million poor, hungry and angry youth are waking up to the fact that the most rapid pathway to wealth is armed violence and the longer they are allowed to continue along that path, the more difficult it would be to stop them.

Maybe Nigeria's collective pet project has been industrialization of the country on the basis of our own iron and steel industry. Way back in 1971, the Nigerian Steal Development Authority was established to set us along the path of an iron and steel industry and Ajaokuta was established in 1975 and programmed to go into production in 1981. It never happened. While campaigning for office in 2015, President Buhari in a campaign rally in Ajaokuta promised he will address the challenge. Nigerians are waiting.

One legacy Nigerians have been crying for four decades is the improvement of power supply, the requirement for rapid development. I doubt that there is any country in the world that has invested as much as we have in power and yet we have nothing to show for it. In 1999, the late Bola Ige promised us sufficient power within six months, it did not happen. President Obasanjo, we discovered through the House of Representatives probe, had squandered $16 billion with the promise of 6,000 megawatts of electricity by December 2007 and it did not happen. Subsequently, President Umaru Yar'Adua in February 2008 launched the Committee on the Accelerated Expansion of Power. He promised Nigeria that 18-months from that date, Nigeria would be producing at least 6,000 MW of power and it did not happen. Goodluck Jonathan took the approach of institutional revolution by privatizing the industry and getting the magic of the private sector to do the job, it was a woeful failure. After long reflection and study, President Buhari has committed to a new contract with the German Government and Siemens to produce and actually distribute 7,000 megawatts in 2021 rising to 11,000 in 2023. Having followed the failure and corruption saga in the power sector for decades, I will say I will believe it when I see it. If he succeeds, it would be a great legacy from his Administration.  

Section 15(5) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria stipulates that "the State shall abolish all corrupt practices and abuse of power". Nigerians elected Buhari into office because they believed he could make that provision operational. There has been some improvement in the war against corruption under his stewardship but the results are underwhelming and nowhere near the expectation of Nigerians. If he could significantly scale up the war against corruption and focus his eyes on some people around him, he could offer Nigerians a great legacy of opening a new pathway to development based on the use of public resources for enhancing the public good.

 

 

 

 

 

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim

Senior Fellow

Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja

Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAPWX8rWBmq6fyviPF2kwU9va3k%3DPDhJGrsgR6qJhqAU%3D76S5MQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAB0J%2Bvp0OthBuyoFdYgg4ike4pOAa2%2BFU3RT5BCw22WsT2xQ0g%40mail.gmail.com.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CALUsqTQu1HyxBmDNH31ucMV%3DS5SN3TA5tLv6bbatv8Ue8O%2Bp%3DQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB2982887CF73A611613CF2D81A68C0%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CALUsqTRzjXkfce4gnjmv3n26HY6J8yttpN-pgTpRpQG1TP1Ykw%40mail.gmail.com.