RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Opinion on the Constituional power ofthe President to crush seccessionists
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Cornelius Hamelberg
“to Crush” unlike some handy synonym in this context, is a very strong word, maybe not the exact wording that John O. Aikpokpo-Martins used or the exact wording in the holy constitution that he could ostensibly, be quoting.
The way it’s presented here, considering that the exact wording of the constitution even if written in stone is also open to interpretation and I’m sure that unlike Brother Buhari, Brother Biko Biko will agree with me that the way that Aikpokpo-Martins represents the issue, it sort of gives unbridled leeway justification for any hell-bent president, not necessarily the current one, to go ahead with the kind of genocidal extermination of the self-determination people of the opposition that he could already have cooking, way up in his genocidal head.
On the surface at least it seems logically self-contradictory that on the one hand “self-determination agitations are “simply unconstitutional”, whilst shooting from the other side of his mouth this kindly piece of advices to the law-abiding : “So, I urge the agitators for different countries to be carved out of Nigeria to first agitate for the right to self-determination and referendum be included in the constitution.”
I have been peacefully following Scottish Referendum mostly through these auspices , the main interest inspired by my Scottish stepfather ( a decorated WW2 hero) who firmly insisted that he was not an “ Englishman”
Many of the Scottish Brethren are still busy peacefully agitating for a second referendum because there is no other way that they could possibly leave the Union , certainly not by taking up arms against Her Majesty’s Government...
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
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Cornelius Hamelberg
“Don't
punish me with brutality
Talk
to me, so you can see
Some of Brother Buhari’s most ardent critics have been complaining about the brutality in his language, to the extent that he says that the language of brute military force is the only language the would-be Biafran secessionists understand and that’s the reason why his tweet ,that used that language, was unceremoniously deleted by the powers that be, who are their own commanders-in-chief at Twitter.
Many of Brother Buhari's most ardent critics complain, and have been complaining for a long time now, that we have yet to hear him using that kind of language when talking to or talking about Boko Haram or his Brethren , the Fulani Herdsmen., who are apparently licensed to carry fully loaded AK 47’s to protect themselves and their cows, but the same privilege / equal rights are not extended to Brother Buhari's fellow citizens further, down South, so, obviously, there’s no denying that President Buhari's heart is with the Fulani herdsmen – that he has a tender heart for them, perhaps thereby conforming the truism that "blood’s thicker than mud” –that even as President of Nigeria he has a more tender heart for the Fulani than for the Igbo. For some people, that would be natural, even as they sing, “ We’re all Nigerians “ and "Charity begins at home”
This is not so funny : “ When asked if he agreed with the AGF’s position, Buhari had responded, “You want me to contradict my attorney-general?”
It may well be that Commander-in-Chief doesn’t know or care a rat’s tail about the law that he’s talking about, which should be sufficient reason for him not to disagree with his AGF. In other words, he could be misled by his less than infallible AGF, and in effect find himself agreeing with him based on his own very shaky foundations or false assumptions. (About Lord Lugard’s amalgamation of Nigeria and the kinds of issues arsing from that welding together, there’s an instance when the Crown ( UK ) lost their case to the Creole Settlers Descendants Union (about the amalgamation of Freetown and the Western Area of Sierra Leone, which, prior to Independence was a “Crown colony” and the rest of Sierra Leone which at that point was a so called “ Protectorate” - the case got as far as the Privy Council which is the UK’s ultimate judicial arbitrator.
So, that’s a pretty tall order from Brer Buhari’s erudite AFG, that for a referendum to be held there has to be a prior provision in the Nigerian Constitution for such a referendum/referendums, when somehow, all along, the powers that be have been dragging their feet, resisting the idea of a referendum on the peaceful dissolution of Nigeria ever appearing on the agenda of a sovereign national conference specially convened to discuss and resolve that specific issue. I suppose that further down along the road the powers that be will be demanding that it will need more than a two thirds majority vote in the Senate, to amend the Nigerian Constitution…
The procedures that resulted in The Scottish Referendum could be instructive .That Union is of course older than Nigeria which became the entity that it is today a little over a hundred years ago, in 1914. With his background as a historian and as an anti-imperialist Professor Bernard Porter’s perspective on the Scottish Referendum could be instructive and we could learn something from that. I wonder , all things considered, what are his thoughts about Nigeria’s immediate future, the way forward….
Daniel Chukwuemeka's Afro-Pessimism and the Question of Biafran Nationalism ( was written before these latest developments but his thesis still holds...
In some quiet corner some Nigerian is also saying, “tread softly for you tread on my dreams”
It’s not everyone in this forum that’s a “fearless fang”. Some probably fear reprisals at home and abroad, loss of livelihood, loss of limb, life and property or getting arrested at the airport the next time they dare set foot in Nigeria again. I suppose that some Nigerians in this forum and being a little cautious, uncertain as to whether Commander-in-Chief Buhari and his chief legal advisers intend “TO CRUSH” each and everyone who whispers or breathes the word “ Secession” or “Biafra Must Be Free Must be Free” , or they only intend “ TO CRUSH” those who actually intend
“to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them…”
As usual, human rights activist Wole Soyinka has again weighed in with some moral authority. And that moral authority has some impact , all the way to over here people listen to him and not to “ the dog and the baboon”. His quiet impact sometime translates into behind the scenes activities which ought not to be underestimated. Losing the high moral ground, is a great loss, even for the mountain gorilla. When we mess up big time the racists start sniggering and saying, “Nigeria, that’s where the niggers come from, can't get their shit together, always making some ethnic palaver. ” Shithole countries
Just imagine Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron being caught on camera actually confiding to Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II, “ We've got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain. Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world !”
From that point of view it’s understandable even to them that e.g. Biafrans don’t want to be ruled by someone else – if that someone else is going to continue messing up big time and keep on telling them, “We're in this mess together. “ Big shit.
If the major ethnic conglomerations (nations ) do not all secede or want to declare secession simultaneously, there is hope for the decentralisation that Professor Soyinka advocates , and the much talked about " restructuring" , or even better yet, out of these birth pangs, the emergence of a powerful (because united) United States of Nigeria , with a new constitution cementing that indivisible unity...
Cornelius Hamelberg
In the 2004 Reith Lectures delivered by Wole Soyinka, on the theme “The Climate of Fear”, one of the lectures is entitled " I'm right; You're dead” . With the ongoing anarchy and chaos, are people not living in another climate of fear and insecurity, once again, now under Muhammadu Buhari ?
As someone who you can still safely refer to as a “Buharist” ( I have not lost my faith) you might believe I may have gone overboard or jumped ship, hopped off the bandwagon by wondering publicly whether or not Brother Buhari who asks rhetorically, “ Do you want me to contradict my attorney-general?” could have lost his bearings, or when I say about him , “ It may well be that Commander-in-Chief doesn’t know or care a rat’s tail about the law that he’s talking about, which should be sufficient reason for him not to disagree with his AGF. In other words, he could be misled by his less than infallible AGF, and in effect find himself agreeing with him based on his own very shaky foundations or false assumptions.”
Samuel Oloruntoba my New Testament educator/ mentor tells me from time to time, “Faith comes through hearing”, and with regard to Bother Buhari, I remember his first coming on 31/12/1983 as clearly as I remember the second coming of Flight- Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings (“Junior Jesus”) who also struck on the cusp of the New Year , on 31/ 12/ 1981, when everybody apart from Muslims was supposed to be at least slightly tipsy ( my Better Half and our son were celebrating the New Years Eve in Port Harcourt at the family home of Mr. Dulip an Indian gentleman from Kerala a disciple of Jesus with Oral Roberts as his pastor and Tai Solarin of Mayflower fame as one of his most admired Nigerians, we were happily singing some songs when the news came in that Jerry had struck again, and I thought, God save the Queen, Hallelujah!
The question is what happens when a military man sheds his uniform , just as a snake sheds its skin, and in the case of Jerry and Brer Buhari a few years after their respective coup d'états they then stepped into civilian attire, without necessarily shedding the military background to their thinking and decision-making. In Brother Buhari’s case , lately, his military mentality is still so easy to discern. He has of course influenced his legal advisers immensely, that’s why we hear them ( General Buhari and his legal team ) unmistakably talking in unison about “crushing” , any rebellion, seclusionist dream, separatist upstart who rears his beautiful head in defiance. The funny thing about Bro Buhari asking rhetorically, “You want me to contradict my attorney-general?” - is that the attorney-general himself would probably be in danger, mortal or immortal, if he dared to contradict his commander-in-chief either publicly or privately. As Shakespeare's Julius Caesar once said,
“……………………..danger knows full well That Caesar is more dangerous than he: We are two lions litter'd in one day, And I the elder and more terrible.” And that’s General Buhari’s message to any potential miscreants. Don’t say you haven’t been warned. Prior to that warning, where was Major-General Buahri’s head when he violated the Nigerian Constitution on 31/12/ 1983, by toppling the democratically elected President Shehu Shagari and his government? Had he first conducted a referendum to ask the people of Nigeria whether he they wanted him to take over and become their military head of state, yes or no? He was certainly not in agreement with the then Attorney general of his country about “ defending the constitution” ?
Concerning the rule of law, is the country better off today than it was before Buhari took over? To what extent have things changed for the better since the days of Goodluck Jonathan?
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Our assumption must always be that the intelligence services and the various foreign diplomatic missions stationed in our various countries are not sleeping (are not there to merely get a good night’s sleep and to hold garden cocktail parties) – on the contrary, they are supposed to be well informed, good at collecting, analysing and assessing the data collected. be it about the economic situation ( of which pernicious corruption is usually one of the greatest bleeders of various economies - and the data interpreted must be put to good use - to the advantage of the various countries and interest being represented. Yours truly got to thinking about these matters a long time ago with regard to e.g. Graham Greene stationed in Sierra Leone as an MI6 agent during the Second World War. I think of Greene in many ways and then I think of e.g. Michael Crowder ( the historian) , Robin Horton ( the anthropologist ) - and the importance of e.g. a naval blockade of Nigeria in a war situation ( God forbid). In the same stretch of imagination, I think of W. Scott Thompson ( Kennedy’s in-law) and the documents that are the basis of his Ghana's foreign policy, 1957-1966, I even think of Thomas S. Cox and his Civil-Military Relations in Sierra Leone, and much, much else.
There's this not so thrilling account published in Turkey: Confessions of a British Spy
In early post-Nkrumah Ghana and as late as when I was there ( 1970 – 71) the place was crawling with every manner of openly and covert CIA , M16, and their recruitment agents, not to mention other powers interested in e.g. trade unionism, cultural affairs, military affairs, elite connections with secret societies, the penetration of some of these societies etc. etc. I took some of Victor T. Le Vine’s courses and at the time was more than slightly impressed by his not so humble brag about some of the work he had done for Uncle Sam, in Korea.
The list of visiting professors etc. etc is long. Sadly, whilst all this was going on most of the upcoming, ambitious African intelligentsia were either hell-bent on pursuing their postgraduate specializations in Shakespeare and British RP pronunciation etc. etc. and willing or unwittingly becoming useful idiots, like Robin Crusoe’s Man Friday, over-identifying with Massa‘s ideals, values, democracy ( crazy-demo) in a desperate bid to become part of the civilised British and American Empires overseas, in the name of biodiversity, loyalty, in extending those spheres of influence, bending over backwards with other insane contradictions such as so called “ not religious” Muslims and ridiculous mimic men, mimic clowns, brain-drained… uncle toms, collaborators come in all shapes and sizes, a dime a dozen
But there are genuine, praiseworthy exceptions, specimens such as Biko Agozino to whom I doff my hat ….
All of the above is just a very brief background to back in 2004, when Olusegun Obasanjo was President of Nigeria and Hamid Karzai was the President of Afghanistan and David Cameron was caught on camera actually confiding to Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II, “ We've got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain. Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world !”
In response to Cameron’s comment back then I’d just like to say that today it must be a little different with the people at the Old Colonial Office which has been successively re-named “The Ministry of Overseas Development “ and then “Department for International Development” which prospered wonderfully during the tenure of Hilary Benn when I followed what was happening there more closely. The latest politically correct baptismal name of that ministry you will find here in UK Government Ministries .
This is what I intuit is a little different: A corrupt country does not imply a corrupt leader. The BBC’s “honest general” is supposedly, patently different. The genesis of Muhammadu Buhari’s political life goes back to his justification of his 1983 coup , that Shagari’s government was extremely corrupt...
Apart from President Muhammadu Buhari’s regular visits to the UK for some medical attention, they must be very sympathetic to the war that he declared against corruption and is still fighting, the main obstacle in his way being a Senate that is hostile to some of his efforts and a judiciary that still has an awesome backlog of corruption cases to be heard, stretching back to many years, their embers dying now, on the back burner...
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
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More info Our assumption must always be that the intelligence services and the various foreign diplomatic missions stationed in our various countries are not sleeping (are not there to merely get a good night’s sleep and to hold garden cocktail parties) – on the contrary, they are supposed to be well informed, good at collecting, analysing and assessing the data collected. be it about the economic situation ( of which pernicious corruption is usually one of the greatest bleeders of various economies - and the data interpreted must be put to good use - to the advantage of the various countries and interest being represented. Yours truly got to thinking about these matters a long time ago with regard to e.g. Graham Greene stationed in Sierra Leone as an MI6 agent during the Second World War. I think of Greene in many ways and then I think of e.g. Michael Crowder ( the historian) , Robin Horton ( the anthropologist ) - and the importance of e.g. a naval blockade of Nigeria in a war situation ( God forbid). In the same stretch of imagination, I think of W. Scott Thompson ( Kennedy’s in-law) and the documents that are the basis of his Ghana's foreign policy, 1957-1966, I even think of Thomas S. Cox and his Civil-Military Relations in Sierra Leone, and much, much else.
There's this not so thrilling account published in Turkey: Confessions of a British Spy
In early post-Nkrumah Ghana and as late as when I was there ( 1970 – 71) the place was crawling with every manner of openly and covert CIA , M16, and their recruitment agents, not to mention other powers interested in e.g. trade unionism, cultural affairs, military affairs, elite connections with secret societies, the penetration of some of these societies etc. etc. I took some of Victor T. Le Vine’s courses and at the time was more than slightly impressed by his not so humble brag about some of the work he had done for Uncle Sam, in Korea.
The list of visiting professors etc. etc is long. Sadly, whilst all this was going on most of the upcoming, ambitious African intelligentsia were either hell-bent on pursuing their postgraduate specializations in Shakespeare and British RP pronunciation etc. etc. and willing or unwittingly becoming useful idiots, like Robin Crusoe’s Man Friday, over-identifying with Massa‘s ideals, values, democracy ( crazy-demo) in a desperate bid to become part of the civilised British and American Empires overseas, in the name of biodiversity, loyalty, in extending those spheres of influence, bending over backwards with other insane contradictions such as so called “ not religious” Muslims and ridiculous mimic men, mimic clowns, brain-drained… uncle toms, collaborators come in all shapes and sizes, a dime a dozen
But there are genuine, praiseworthy exceptions, specimens such as Biko Agozino to whom I doff my hat ….
All of the above is just a very brief background to back in 2004, when Olusegun Obasanjo was President of Nigeria and Hamid Karzai was the President of Afghanistan and David Cameron was caught on camera actually confiding to Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II, “ We've got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain. Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world !”
In response to Cameron’s comment back then I’d just like to say that today it must be a little different with the people at the Old Colonial Office which has been successively re-named “The Ministry of Overseas Development “ and then “Department for International Development” which prospered wonderfully during the tenure of Hilary Benn when I followed what was happening there more closely. The latest politically correct baptismal name of that ministry you will find here in UK Government Ministries .
This is what I intuit is a little different: A corrupt country does not imply a corrupt leader. The BBC’s “honest general” is supposedly, patently different. The genesis of Muhammadu Buhari’s political life goes back to his justification of his 1983 coup , that Shagari’s government was extremely corrupt...
Apart from President Muhammadu Buhari’s regular visits to the UK for some medical attention, they must be very sympathetic to the war that he declared against corruption and is still fighting, the main obstacle in his way being a Senate that is hostile to some of his efforts and a judiciary that still has an awesome backlog of corruption cases to be heard, stretching back to many years, their embers dying now, on the back burner...
Cornelius Hamelberg
Lord Agbetuyi,
I’m sure that you must have also enjoyed Chidi Anthony Opara’s latest Poetic Thought ...
It remains for you to identify who is “The Lead Zebra” and who are the Lead Zebra’s followers, his follow-follow people, the zombies galloping after him headlong towards the abyss of their perdition, extinction.
It’s reminiscent of the exorcism story of Jesus causing the demons in a demon-possessed man to enter into a herd of pigs and helter-skelter, the pigs running towards the precipice and all of them drowning in that fabled Lagos Lagoon…
“On the other side
Of the expanse,
The hare chants
A harebrained chant,
Secession,
Secession,
Secession.”
You and your rhetorical questions. About the good old days of Goodluck Jonathan, you ask, “Where were the secessionists then? “
it’s not an easy question. Methinks you had better ask them directly, “ Where were you then?”
The secessionists come in many shapes and ethnicities, cultural identities, religious propensities, moral/ethical dispositions. If by “the secessionists” you mean those who generally aspire to their Igbo ethnic enclave becoming a fully-fledged independent country and no more a part of a failed or failing state known as Nigeria, then I’ll hazard a guess as to where “ they” were then. The general perception is that some of those people must have been at the feast, making merry and making hay while the sun shines – feasting - sitting at the high table, sitting at the right-hand side of Goodluck Jonathan, guzzling down copious drafts of the best palm wine, helping themselves to their second and third helpings of the yams and some of the loot, whilst their Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan a good friend to the Igbo was Lord of The Manor . He was certainly their man, a generous one at that, dispensing some of his blessings from his house of largesse as was the case in the good old days of Chief Melford Okilo, the then the Governor of Rivers State. Largesse.
Apparently, Brother Buhari isn’t (their man). They complain that he isn’t manifestly their man, that he has not been manifesting that Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe love towards them.
In his own self-defence we should be able to hear Brer Buhari saying, “Well, you asked for it. We live in a world of cause and effect. Am I Goodluck Jonathan? NO. Did you vote for me ? NO. Am I stupid? NO! You want me to reward you for not voting for me? As ye sow so shall ye reap. So, what do you expect? What you see is what you get: Tough Love! I’m showing you some tough love and I’ll show you even tougher love if you as much as mess with the idea of leaving our dear Mother Nigeria through violent secession. I will deal with such miscreants in the only language some of you understand.” ( According to this evening’s BBC world news, Trump was banned by Twitter for “glorifying violence “ . You can hardly say that about Brother Buhari. Maybe secessionists advocating violence should be also banned? What say you?
True or false, in the case of the Igbo, we can only surmise there is much talk by them about being marginalised by the current dispensation.
But it’s not only Igbos that have been talking about secession and today the main reason is the widespread, breakdown of law and order throughout the Federation, and the current, post-Goodluck Jonathan dispensation being unable to provide the security that is the birthright of every Nigerian citizen. It is this insecurity that has resulted in the creation of Amotekun and similar self-defence militias. If the Buhari government can’t defend Nigeria’s citizens than Nigeria’s citizens have the moral obligation to defend themselves.
We are now in a situation in which, if the Oduduwa and Biafra and other would-be secessionist regions were independent republics and were being invaded by e.g. AK47-toting Fulani Herdsmen we would be talking about war. That’s what happens when one country invades another country, such as when Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland and thus started the second world war.
If Oduduwa and Biafra were independent counties, Boko Haram and the Fulani Herdsmen would think twice before invading those countries.
If the Southern Governors recommendation about zoning and that the next president should come from the South West does not bear any fruit, what do you think is going to happen?
You can’t say to a Biafran, “You got some big dreams baby, but in order to dream you gotta still be asleep” - not when someone with the know-how of an Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala tells her Igbo people who are renowned in Nigeria as being very industrious people, “ I Will Make Biafra The Richest Nation In Africa In five years!”. That should be a lot of incentive indeed
Start with Chidi, end with 1st September, 1939 - by W. H. Auden
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