This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (harrow@msu.edu) kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2021 11:44 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: COAS Appointment as Missed Opportunity for Unity
N.B. If my memory serves me right, in his time Abacha retired 35 Yoruba generals. I read this in the Swedish papers.
Since, sadly, Lieutenant General Ibrahim Attahiru was not terminated by retrenchment or retirement his replacement, no doubt also a politically strategic decision is not surprising since it shows more of a continuity than a dramatic break with the past and the present.
However inelegant/ ugly Kperogi's infelicity of expression " the perishingly shriveling tree of national unity " may be, this is the reality:
The first question for the uninitiated is, "Is a coup possible or likely, given the current situation in Nigeria?
The answer is: Not likely! Masterminding and coordinating a coup in Nigeria is not child's play. Most of the general and the regions have to be on board, That's why Abacha was in Port Harcourt for Christmas in 1983, to put the finishing touches - a big party was thrown for him at the Officers mess (I can't remember if he drank or not( but when all the communication lines were cut and the only place I could phone from was Scanastra, I thought there was something fishy going on...
The logic and the logistics of a coup taking place right under the noses of former General Buhari (now democratically elected for the second time as Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari) and his military appointees, so freshly appointed, speak against that possibility. Part of the logic underlines why he would not appoint a possible Biafran secessionist as head of the Nigerian Military at this very sensitive time when things are ostensibly falling apart. Certainly not in order to appease the ethnic separatist instincts of the South-Eastern Igbos who only gave Brother Buhari a meagre 5% of their votes at both the Presidential Elections which he won. Of course, there are another few million Igbos scattered throughout the rest of the Federation and goodness knows what percentage of their votes were devoted to Brother Buhari.
So, it's not as if he's going to bribe the Igbos or ensure their change of mind towards him by appointing one of their rank and file to the most sensitive position of Chief of the Nigerian Military. Such a move would have definitely only increased Igbo contempt for Brother Buhari , and if anything , I wouldn't put it past them ( some of the Igbos) to at least surreptitiously prevail upon their Brother Major General Benjamin Ahanotu from Anambra State to stage a coup/ lead the secession like Ojukwu, or at the very least to increase the venom, the ammunition, the fire-power and the bombs against Boko Haram and any marauding Fulani Herdsmen found loitering or on the brink of encroaching / eating up the yams on any Southern farmlands. Even carpet bomb the Sambisa Forest
That logic also resuscitates the ghosts that still surround that awful Dreyfus Affair
Brother Buhari came to prominence with the New Year's Eve coup of 1983 - after that heavily rigged Hiroshima Day Election of 6th August 1983. Brother Buhari did not come alone - in fact his partner the now late Tunde Idiagbon was demonstrably the idea-power behind the throne, starting with the much needed WAI (war against indiscipline) - no more dropping in at the office to sign in and then taking off for the rest of the day to go fishing. I saw first hand how the mountains and hills of garbage at Mile One Market were cleared away within the very first week of the Buhari- Idiagbon period, by presidential decree.
What about appointing someone with strong Amotekun connections but without any secessionist tendencies (smile) as overall head of the Nigerian Military?
(To be continued...
Saturday, May 29, 2021
COAS Appointment as Missed Opportunity for Unity
By Farooq A. Kperogi
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
The appointment of my namesake, Major General Farouk Yahaya, as Chief of Army Staff to succeed the late Lieutenant General Ibrahim Attahiru who died in a plane crash on May 21 is yet another tone-deaf but entirely predictable mismanagement of Nigeria's diversity at a time it desperately needs to be cared for with deliberate symbolic nourishment.
There is no question that General Yahaya is qualified for the job. His CV shows evidence of immense professional and academic preparedness for the position. But the alternatives to him are just as qualified, so this is never about competence for the job. It's about symbolism and the politics of representation at a time of heightened national storm and stress.
Many people had hoped that the regime would appoint Major General Benjamin Ahanotu from Anambra State as Attahiru's successor both to water the perishingly shriveling tree of national unity in the country and to pacify the Southeast whose sense of alienation in the last five years is resurrecting the ghost of Biafra secessionist agitation.
Since Ahanotu is just as professionally and academically prepared as Yahaya is, a lot more would have been gained in symbolic and substantive terms if the regime had chosen to not appoint another Northern Muslim to succeed a northern Muslim who succeeded a previous northern Muslim.
In no previous civilian administration has this ever happened. Former President Shehu Shagari had ethnic and religious diversity in his choice of Chief of Army Staff. He started with Lieutenant General Ipoola Alani Akinrinade, then appointed Lieutenant General Gibson Jalo, and finally Lieutenant General Mohammed Inuwa Wushishi.
Although Obasanjo's choices of Chief of Army Staff didn't reflect religious diversity, they reflected regional and ethnic diversity. Goodluck Jonathan also chose only Christians from the South-South and the Southeast, which we condemned, but his security council was more broad-based than Buhari's is.
Many well-placed northern politicians who are disturbed by the widening intensity of fissiparity in the Nigerian polity told me they intervened to ensure that the regime appointed someone other than a northern Muslim as Chief of Army Staff. One man told me he was part of a group that reached out to Professor Ibrahim Gambari, Muhammadu Buhari's Chief of Staff, to persuade him to advise his boss to appoint Ahanotu—or another qualified southerner—as Chief of Army Staff.
Perhaps, that was where the group erred. Gambari has no powers to influence consequential policy decisions in this regime. A personage who is intimately familiar with the workings of the Presidential Villa told me a few days ago that Gambari was recently caught dozing off in the waiting room of Sabiu "Tunde" Yusuf, the 30-something-year-old cousin of Buhari's who is also his special assistant.
The man said the fact of Gambari drifting off in Yusuf's waiting room was indicative of the extended minutes, perhaps hours, that he had been waiting for the young man. But, for me, it emblematizes Gambari's powerlessness and lack of access to the man he is supposed to be Chief of Staff to.
As dramatic as this revelation was, it wasn't shocking to me. I have always known that Sabiu "Tunde" Yusuf, whose highest work experience prior to joining his cousin's government was a phone recharge card seller, is the real successor to Abba Kyari.
In my November 23, 2019 column titled "Government of Buhari's Family, By His Family, and For His Family," I described him as "one of the most powerful people in Nigeria today. He determines who sees and who doesn't see Buhari. Only Mamman Daura and Abba Kyari can overrule him."
I also pointed out in my May 16, 2020 column titled "Real Reason the Buhari Cabal Picked Gambari as CoS" that Gambari's linguistic "handicap" in the Hausa language would ensure that he isn't sufficiently close enough with Buhari to have any meaningful interpersonal relationship with him. That, I said, would whittle away the influence of his office.
A May 25, 2020 exclusive Daily Trust story titled "How Buhari's Chief of Staff, Gambari facilitated removal of TCN boss" proved me right. "The Special Assistant to the President (President Secretariat), Sabi'u Yusuf, the same day, wrote a letter referenced PRES/65-I/COS/3/750, addressed to the CoS, Prof. Gambari, conveying Buhari's approval of his earlier memo," the story said.
So, unlike Abba Kyari who had a direct access to Buhari and whom Buhari said all ministers should meet if they wanted anything from him, Gambari has an intermediary between him and Buhari, and that intermediary is a blood relative of his planted there by Mamman Daura, his Trinity College, Dublin-educated nephew on whom he has always been emotionally and intellectually dependent.
As I pointed out in my May 30, 2020 column titled, "Gambari: Embrace and Alienation of an Outsider on the Inside," "The real Chief of Staff to Buhari is Sabi'u 'Tunde' Yusuf (of course, acting on Mamman Daura's behalf) while Ibrahim Gambari is only the public face of the office— with some legroom to do the most obvious official requirements of his job."
I've gone to this length to rejig the reader's memory just to make the case that anyone who wanted to influence the appointment of the new Chief of Army Staff should have gone to Mamman Daura who is the real, if unofficial, president of Nigeria. But Daura has a really retrograde and fossilized understanding of Nigeria's ethnic and religious diversity.
Nonetheless, in case people who can influence Daura are reading this, he should be made self-aware that in moments such as Nigeria is going through now, even little symbolic acts of inclusion go a long way. At the twilight of his life, he has become the luckiest Nigerian alive. He has unofficial presidential powers without winning or rigging an election, staging a coup, or even being appointed. Even for the sake of his grandchildren, he should snap out of his provincial cocoon and save the country from avoidable implosion.
Nigeria's chance for continued existence going forward will be dependent on intentional symbolic gestures that nurture national cohesion. National cohesion doesn't magically emerge out of thin air because people who are luxuriating in the decadent orbits of power facilely proclaim Nigeria's unity to be "settled" and "non-negotiable." Nation-building is never "settled"; it is always in a state of negotiation and renegotiation.
Unity is not an article of faith to be internalized and accepted unquestioningly. It is consciously sowed, watered, and nourished by acts of kindness to the disadvantaged, by equity and justice to all, by consensus-building, by deliberate healing of the existential wounds that naturally emerge in our interactions as constituents of a common national space, and by acknowledging and working to cover our ethnic, religious, regional, and cultural fissures. The efforts will never be perfect or fool-proof but doing something about a problem is always better than complacency and smug self-satisfaction.
Most progressive Muslim northerners I know are embarrassed to no end by the extreme and unprecedented Arewaization of appointments in this regime. They are embarrassed and worried because the lopsidedness of the appointments invites unearned hate to innocent northerners who don't materially benefit from them, line the pockets of a privileged few, and alienate our compatriots from the South. That's not sustainable if we still want a country.
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogiNigeria's Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
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