INTERVIEW: Nigerian govt has failed to protect us against Boko Haram – Shehu of Bama

“These are times of telling each other the home truth, which is that the Nigerian leadership has failed”.
The Bama Town in Borno has witnessed several attacks by Boko Haram insurgents in the past one year leading to the death of hundreds of people. The latest of the attacks happened on February 18.
The Boko Haram terrorists invaded the town, killed nearly 100 persons, burnt over a thousand houses, torched as much as 400 vehicles, and burnt the palace of the town’s traditional ruler, in an attack that left virtually all business outfits in the commercial town in complete ruins.
The traditional ruler of Bama, Kyari Ibrahim Ibn Elkanemi, often described as a humble and patient man, has become unhappy at the repeated attacks.
In this interview held at his burnt palace, the monarch blames the Federal Government of Nigeria for the spate of terrorism in Borno State.
PT: How was the February attack carried out?
Shehu: At about 4 a.m. , one of my village heads called and informed me that somebody from a far village called Gonikurmi sent a message to him that he saw a long convoy of vehicles and motorcycles moving through the bush and passing by their village towards Bama.
Immediately, I called one captain at the college side in Bama and informed him about what I was told. He equally confirmed to me that two members of the Youth-vigilante, called civilian-JTF, had already informed him about it too. I did not stop at that, I called a major at the army barracks here and also informed him.
I also tried getting across to the Brigade commander and the GOC but all their lines were not reachable. Just some 30 minutes later, somebody called me to alert me that they have set fire on the low-cost housing estate that is at the outskirts of Bama Town; and that the gunmen were heading towards the central town.
People were running helter-skelter, we heard sounds of gun shots, grenades and all. I was later called by some of my subjects to alert me that the four sides of the palace were surrounded by women and children wanting to come into the palace for safety. As we were considering how to safely let them in, the gunmen came to the palace area and when they saw that there were hundreds of women and children all over the palace premises and the main gate, they ordered them to vacate the place at once. They were busy shooting to scare them away, and it was after that they tried to break down the palace gate; which they did using heavy sounding explosives.
When they gained entrance into the palace, they sorted out some of the vehicles like the Hilux Pilot car used in my motorcade before they began to set the entire place on fire. They practically set ablaze virtually everything from the main gate building of the palace, the office and main palace hall. They burnt virtually over 30 cars both official and private parked within the palace. We were in the inner part of the palace, then we saw the upstairs office of the palace on fire, so we had to evacuate everyone including the women and children, the palace workers went into the innermost part of the palace where it was safer so that we won’t get suffocated by smoke or blistered by the heat of the fire. All the while there were shootings outside. They remained in the town up to around 12 noon, that was about eight hours, until when we started hearing the sound of the air force helicopter hovering; we also overheard them giving instruction and trying to shoot down the helicopter.
PT: What was the number of casualties?
Shehu: We tried as much as possible to gather all the dead bodies in front of the palace where they were to be given funeral prayers before taken to the cemetery for burial. But before the message could go round the town, many people in other parts of the town have since buried their dead relations. But in the central mosque here near the palace, I partook in the burial of 34 corpses. And after that many others were still buried.


Many people who did not see me before the burial and many who saw how the palace was destroyed were agitated and confused as they don’t know my where about. There was serious tension and concern about my whereabout, until I came out for the burial of the 34 persons, before tension simmered down.
PT: How did you survive the attack?
Shehu: Well that is by the grace of Allah and also part of my personal security arrangement. I don’t think I should discuss that for obvious reasons.
PT: How would you describe the attack and destruction on business areas?
Shehu: It was really an unfortunate development, to say the least. It was so sad that some two or three years ago, when fire gutted our main market, business activity was low until very recently when the state government came to the rescue of the people after a committee set up by the state government came to distribute N100 million to the affected traders, that business life picked up.
Bama, as you may know, has one of the largest markets in Borno State, and the entire town is strictly a business haven given the border areas we share with Cameroon. But with the attack by the Boko Haram insurgents, everything went to zero again; everything that is known as a business outfit here in Bama has been burnt to ash; when I say everything, I mean totally everything.
PT: What is the level of destruction?
Shehu: We are still compiling the official figure of the destruction; you know it was very massive, and Bama is such a large community. But the chairman of the Motor Parks here in Bama said in the four parks that were attacked, they have recorded a total of 116 vehicles of different kinds burnt completely. That is just the commercial vehicles. Then on the privately owned vehicles; virtually every house where the insurgents went and met vehicle, they set them ablaze. They did not spare any one they come across, including Keke-Napep that the poor struggling young men use to sustain their family. It was so sad.
PT: What was the response of the security agencies?
Shehu: Well, I will say the security agencies have tried their best. But if one is to rate their performance in this attack, I will say it was poor, not because they have failed as soldiers but because they
were ill-equipped to confront the Boko Haram gunmen. The soldiers were merely carrying AK-47, while the Boko Haram were armed with RPGs, Grenades, anti-Aircraft rifles and even Improvised Explosive Devices.
PT: What is your call to the Federal government?
SHEHU: My prayers are that all Nigerian leaders rise up and show responsibility. As it is presently, it seems everyone one is losing confidence in the leaders, and looking up to Almighty Allah who is the ultimate leader to take control. But these are times of telling each other the home truth, which is that the Nigerian leadership has failed. Every leader who is struggling to maintain his or her status quo at the neglect of the overall interest of the general populace should realise that one day the people will be forced to challenge.
For now the morale of the people is down on the trust they have for the president, the governors, the local government chairmen, and even us, the traditional rulers, because a system that was designed to protect them failed them. I repeat, the confidence our people are having on the President down to the local council officers is nil!
This is a call to the President, to the governors and the local government chairmen; we should fear nobody but Allah. The media should help to say the truth, which is bitter. The journalists should see this issue beyond saving his job or life, because the trouble in Nigeria today is beyond individual interest. We should desist from the politics of selfishness and money-grabbing at the expense of our collective security. With the trend of happenings in this country today, nobody is safe.
The government has failed; it is not protecting anything, and I have no reservation in saying this. It is constitutional responsibility of government to protect lives, but here lives are not protected at all. And the irony of the whole thing is that what is happening and being condoned by the government of Nigeria, can bring down the entire country within six months if it were in the other part of the country, because of the way and manner the people will react. And I know if it were to happen in the other part of Nigeria the government will react better than the way it is doing now. We now know it is because of our culture of patience, that we are being taken for granted. The Federal government is not really serious about tackling the Boko Haram insurgency. I realise this given some of the interactions I had with the soldiers who told me honestly that they have limitation in combating the insurgents; they said they are ill-equipped.
PT: What do you feel needs to be done urgently?
Shehu: The federal government and all relevant security chiefs should link with us at the grassroots for the real situation reports and analysis and desist from relying on the so-called concocted and arm-chair security reports that don’t reflect the true situation up here. They should reach out to us on ground, because we always have the real time security alert. But very unfortunately, it is as if the authorities have connived with the insurgents, all networks are not functioning during the attack and up to this present moment, as if we are not in Nigeria. We want to appeal to the government to immediately restore all networks in all crannies of Nigeria so that the people that are willing to reach out with relevant information can do so without difficulties.
It is an undisputable fact that these insurgents have established known camps around the forests within Borno state but the security agencies are always afraid to go there. And more unfortunately, our youth Civilian-JTF who are willing to lead in going there are even being discouraged by the soldiers. I have other suggestions that I need to oblige the federal government which I cannot make public, but if the government is very serious and open the door of advise I will be ready to talk to them one on one. But above all, I wish to state it clearly here without any fear of being challenged that I support the stand of the Governor of Borno state on what he said in Abuja last week Monday concerning the state of insecurity in Borno state and Nigeria as a whole.
To me, the governor is even being too diplomatic in his declaration, because he merely said half of what is happening.
So some persons down there in Abuja should not annoy us by defending his so-called political interest. It is amazing that somebody who has probably not visited Kano before, should sit in Abuja and be saying things he has no knowledge. If he wants to comment on Borno or the insecurity facing the North-East, he should come up here and appreciate what the people are facing before making rash comments.

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EXCLUSIVE: CBN Governor, Sanusi, replies Jonathan’s query, defends bank’s multibillion naira spending

The documents contain details of the communication between the president and the CBN governor.
The suspended Central Bank governor, Sanusi Lamido, has defended his bank against allegations of spending billions on extensive loans, staff emoluments, and maintenance of devices.
In suspending Mr. Sanusi last week, President Jonathan accused the CBN governor of “financial recklessness”.
PREMIUM TIMES had reported exclusive details of the president’s second query to Mr. Sanusi early 2013, in which Mr. Jonathan demanded prompt clarification on key spending in excess of a trillion naira. The president’s query followed the submission of the CBN’s audit report by Mr. Sanusi to the president on February 26, 2013.
The president claimed in his letter that Mr. Sanusi’s swift response on the issues raised would be helpful in providing proper “appreciation of the nation’s economic outlook”. It was, however, Mr. Sanusi’s reply that the president forwarded to the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, on whose recommendation the president said it relied to suspend the embattled governor.
In the 22-point query, the Mr. Jonathan demanded amongst other things, the domestic report on the CBN’s 2012 financial statements by external auditors and the financial reporting framework under which the financial statements were prepared.
He also directed the CBN governor to provide names of the trustees of the CBN’s self-insurance, including the board minutes approving the said self-insurance scheme and trustees and the entries of the annual appropriations indicating where it was posted in the financial statements.
Mr. Sanusi was also directed to explain the composition of CBN’s gratuity of N72.653 billion in 2012 and N64, 280 billion in 2011 and how it was determined as well as the board minutes and approval practice of making provisions for internal currency insurance based on the premium that would have been payable to external insurers had they been engaged. The president also wanted names of the insurance companies that were filed tested in the exercise and the modalities thereof.
The president also demanded the justification for the “Repairs and maintenance expenses” of N2.268 billion in 2012 and N2.070 billion in 2011 and the extent of repairs of printing machines and intervention activities of N19 billion in 2012 and N23.865 billion in 2011 as well as the administration of expenses of N42.596 billion and N48.340 billion in 2011.
This newspaper learnt that the query raised by the president contained basically the same questions that the Financial Reporting Council had asked CBN’s auditors who had sent a copy of the audit report to it.
The auditors, Ernst and Young and Pricewaterhousecoopers had responded to the questions, attaching relevant documents to back their submissions.
Those familiar with the matter said it therefore came as a surprise to the CBN when the president wrote to Mr. Sanusi asking the same questions to which the auditors had provided “satisfactory answers”.
Our sources said in responding to the president, the CBN governor simply reproduced and forwarded the same answers that the auditors provided to the Financial Reporting Council.
In his response to the president, obtained exclusively by PREMIUM TIMES, Mr. Sanusi said the repairs and maintenance expenses relate to “general office equipment and ICT maintenance”. The letter is dated May 20, 2013, two weeks after the president’s query.
The CBN governor said about 92 percent of the maintenance expenses were for information and communication technology equipments. The CBN does not have printing machines, he said.
On why he granted N50.06 billion as loan to Wema Bank and another N500 billion to Asset Management Company of Nigeria, AMCON, the CBN governor said the loans were necessary because AMCON was sustaining “heavy losses” while WEMA was still having liquidity challenges.
He said the bank was working to recover the loans.
On the composition of the CBN’s N72.65 billion gratuity in 2012 and N64.28 billion in 2011, Mr. Sanusi said employees of CBN are entitled to gratuity payments after completing five continuous full years of service with the bank.
He said the gratuity is computed based on the number of years of service, gratuity rate, and gross emoluments for final year of service.
The CBN governor, defended his spending of N19 billion in 2012 and N23.865 billion in 2011 as “intervention activities” of the bank, saying the funds were channelled to critical sectors of the economy.
“These activities were carried out as part of the bank’s developmental role,” he said.

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The Canonisation Of Terror By Wole Soyinka

The sheer weight of indignation and revulsion of most of Nigerian humanity at the recent Boko Harma atrocity in Yobe is most likely to have overwhelmed a tiny footnote to that outrage, small indeed, but of an inversely proportionate significance.  This was the name of the hospital to which the survivors of the massacre were taken. That minute detail calls into question, in a gruesome but chastening way, the entire ethical landscape into which this nation has been forced by insensate leadership.  It is an uncanny coincidence, one that I hope the new culture of ‘religious tourism’, spearheaded by none other than the nation’s president in his own person, may even come to recognize as a message from unseen forces.

 For the name of that hospital, it is reported, is none other than that of General Sanni Abacha, a vicious usurper under whose authority the lives of an elected president and his wife were snuffed out.  Assassinations – including through bombs cynically ascribed to the opposition – became routine. Under that ruler, torture and other forms of barbarism were enthroned as the norm of governance.  To round up, nine Nigerian citizens, including the writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-wiwa, were hanged after a trial that was stomach churning even by the most primitive standards of judicial trial, and in defiance of the intervention of world leadership. We are speaking here of a man who placed this nation under siege during an unrelenting reign of terror that is barely different from the current rampage of Boko Haram. It is this very psychopath that was recently canonized by the government of Goodluck Jonathan in commemoration of one hundred years of Nigerian trauma.

            It has been long a-coming. One of the broadest avenues in the nation’s capital, Abuja, bears the name of General Sanni Abacha. Successive governments have lacked the political courage to change this  signpost – among several others - of  national self degradation and wipe out the memory of the nation’s tormentor from daily encounter. Not even Ministers for the Federal Capital territory within whose portfolios rest such responsibilities, could muster the temerity to initiate the process and leave the rest to public approbation or repudiation. I urged the need of this purge on one such minister, and at least one Head of State. That minister promised, but that boast went the way of Nigerian electoral boast.  The Head of State murmured something about the fear of offending ‘sensibilities’. All evasions amounted to moral cowardice and a doubling of victim trauma. When you proudly display certificates of a nation’s admission to the club of global pariahs, it is only a matter of time before you move to beatify them as saints and other paragons of human perfection. What the government of Goodluck Jonathan has done is to scoop up a century’s accumulated degeneracy in one preeminent symbol, then place it on a podium for the nation to admire, emulate and even – worship.

            There is a deplorable message for coming generations in this governance aberration that the entire world has been summoned to witness and indeed, to celebrate. The insertion of an embodiment of  ‘governance by terror’ into the company of committed democrats, professionals, humanists and human rights advocates in their own right, is a sordid effort to grant a certificate of health to a communicable disease that common sense demands should be isolated. It is a confidence trick that speaks volumes of the perpetrators of such a fraud. We shall pass over - for instance - the slave mentality that concocts loose formulas for an Honours List that automatically elevate any violent bird of passage to the status of nation builders who may, or may not be demonstrably motivated by genuine love of nation.  According generalized but false attributes to known killers and treasury robbers is a disservice to history and a desecration of memory.  It also compromises the future. This failure to discriminate, to assess, and thereby make it possible to grudgingly concede that even out of a ‘doctrine of necessity’ – such as military dictatorship -  some demonstrable governance virtue may emerge, reveals nothing but national self-glorification in a moral void, the breeding grounds of future cankerworm in the nation’s edifice.

            Such abandonment of moral rigour comes full circle sooner or later. The survivors of a plague known as Boko Haram, students in a place of enlightenment and moral instruction, are taken to a place of healing dedicated to an individual contagion – a murderer and thief of no redeeming quality known as Sanni Abacha, one whose plunder is still being pursued all over the world and recovered piecemeal by international consortiums – at the behest of this same government which sees fit to place him on the nation’s Roll of Honour! I can think of nothing more grotesque and derisive of the lifetime struggle of several on this list, and their selfless services to humanity. It all fits. In this nation of portent readers, the coincidence should not be too difficult to decipher.

            I reject my share of this national insult.

                                                                                                                        Wole SOYINKA

S’Korea warns Japan over sex slaves

    
South Korean President, Park Geun-hye, has warned Japan it will only bring isolation on itself if it reviews a statement acknowledging its wartime use of sex slaves.

She called on Japan to embrace “truth and reconciliation”.

Japan apologised in 1993 to survivors of the many thousands of women who were forced into army brothels.

On Friday Tokyo said it would set up a panel to review the evidence on which that apology was based.

Some conservatives in Japan have claimed that the women, known euphemistically as “comfort women”, were prostitutes – something fiercely denied by the women and by Japan’s neighbours.

President Park’s warning came in a speech marking the anniversary of a 1919 uprising in Korea against Japanese colonial rule.

“Historical truth is in testimony from the survivors,” she said.

“Japan would only bring isolation on itself if it turns a deaf ear to their testimony and sweeps it under the rug for political benefits.”

President Park urged Japan to follow the example of Germany in repenting its past wrongs so that their two countries could “move forward for a new era of co-operation, peace and prosperity”.

“I hope Japan extricates itself from denial of history and starts making a new history of truth and reconciliation”, she said.

Arsonists raze Senator’s campaign office in Sokoto

Unknown arsonists on Saturday set ablaze the campaign office of Sen. Ibrahim Gobir, located on Western Bye-pass Road, Sokoto.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the office, a block of six rooms, was partially razed by the attackers, that struck in the early hours of the day.

Gobir, an APC lawmaker, who represents Sokoto East Senatorial District, expressed shock at the incident, which he described as “barbaric heinous”.

The senator, who spoke through his Special Assistant, Alhaji Almustapha Hamza, condemned the act, and advised Nigerians against “politics of violence, chaos and destruction”.

He, however, advised his supporters to remain calm and to continue to be law abiding.

Gobir said he lost property worth “about N15 million” and regretted that many sensitive items like computers and stationery were burnt.

Alhaji Shuaibu Gambo, Sokoto State Commissioner of Police, confirmed the incident, adding that the security guard was being detained by the police.

“We are detaining him for further interrogation; we want to ensure a thorough investigation into this incident,” he said.

Civil Defence arrests man for stabbing friend over N200

    
The Jigawa Command of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps on Saturday arrested a 25-year-old man, who allegedly stabbed his friend, during an argument over N200.

The Commandant, Mr Muhammad Gidado, told the News Agency of Nigeria in Dutse that the suspect, Abubakar Shehu, was arrested in Turho Village in the Kiyawa Local Government Area of the state.

“The suspect used a knife to stab one Yawale Muhammad, a resident of the same area several times in the stomach, shoulder and back, during an argument over N200,’’ Gidado said.

A police source said that the suspect had confessed to committing the crime and would soon be charged to court.

NAN

Police intimidating our members in Kwara -APC

    
The Kwara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress on Saturday called on the Inspector-General of Police, Abubakar Mohammed to ‘call to order’ the Kwara State Police Command.

The state Interim Chairman of APC, Alhaji Ishola Balogun-Fulani, during a media briefing in Ilorin accused the police of arresting and intimidating some members of the party.

He alleged that the police arrested seven APC members that were mounting the party’s bill board.

He further alleged that the police also confiscated the party’s bill boards from the printer.

“The Police Command had gone to stop the APC members while erecting bill board along Asa-Dam road.

“It also tampered with the street sign post of the party in all major roads in the state, leaving the PDP’s sign post intact,” Balogun-Fulani said.