03122019 - Ganduje sends bill for 4 new Kano emirates afresh

Ogomudia prophecy
IN a season when Nigerian
seers and prophets are
either not hearing from God or
are afraid of maximum rule to
declare "thus sayeth the Lord"
over the country, the spirit of
prophecy came over Alexander
the son of Ogomudia who made
undiluted pronouncement over
a country driving carelessly to
the edge of the precipice on the
first day of December.
The former chief of defence
staff who was the keynote
speaker at the Good
Governance Lecture organised
by the Catholic Church of
Warri’s Justice Development
and Peace Commission, JDPC,
warned that the continued
suppression of agitations for the
restructuring of the country
could lead to a violent break up
of the country.
He implored those opposed to
restructuring to borrow a leaf
from the break up of Yugoslavia
and Sudan saying that even in
Spain the Catalonians want to
break away and that in Britain,
Scotland seeks autonomy. He
added that restructuring was a
global trend which every rightthinking
government should
embrace for national integration
and development especially in
a country like Nigeria, where
he said we practice “a fake
federal system.”
Fractured
politics
Ogomudia equally criticised
the barbaric death penalty for
the hate speech bill before the
rubber stamp Senate. He was
reported to have created a mild
drama in the hall when he
paused to ask anyone who can
define hate speech to come
forward. When no one came out,
Ogomudia said “something that
no one can truly define, they
want to impose death penalty
for? Where is this country
headed?”
He described the type of
politics practised in Nigeria
today as toxic and detrimental
to national development,
saying “we have a fractured
politics and everyone is doing
things that will hurt the
country.” He said Nigeria
needed true federalism to
advance like other nations,
stressing that Nigeria is the
only country where states share
money coming from only one
source monthly.
He argued that Nigeria was
overdue for change saying that
restructuring the country would
guarantee ethnic harmony,
accountability, freedom of
speech, independence of the
judiciary and a fair electoral
process.
•Map of Nigeria
Ogomudia expressed his fear
for the future of the country and
the present security situation
saying “a country where a
former chief of defence staff, Air
Chief Marshall Alex Badeh,
was killed in the streets like an
urchin, and nothing happened,
is a sign that the nation is not
Let the defenders of
Nigeria give just one
example of a
contraption with the
unresolved
contradictions that we
face that has survived
and we will ask
Ogomudia to take back
his words
moving in the right direction”
But Mallam Garba Shehu, a
few hours after the words of
Ogomudia came out with the
usual trite of those living in
denial and declared the soulsearching
declarations of
Ogomudia as "vituperations of
someone who is yet to accept
democracy as a form of
government." Shehu said: “It is
very important to stress that we
as a nation, are a constitutional
democracy and changes to the
country in structure, its systems,
policy and politics must abide
by the norms of democracy
otherwise they would be
extrajudicial and, therefore,
unconstitutional.”
Can we move on to serious
things please? Any country that
is not destined for perdition
should reflect seriously on the
warnings of Ogomudia as he
stands on the side of history.
Leaders who stopped teaching
of history in schools are not
likely to have a sense of it
anyway. The truth, however, is
that from time immemorial, any
constitution that does not bend
is bound to break!
So it was that Israel came and
pleaded with King Rehoboam
to restructure the heavy yoke his
father had placed on them. He
asked them to return on the
third day during which time he
consulted the Arewa
Consultative Forum, ACF, and
their anti-reforms likes. When
Israel returned, King
Rehoboam did not ask Deacon
Femi Adesina or Mallam Garba
Shehu to issue a statement on
his behalf. He spoke in his own
words: my father chastised you
with whips my own next level
is scorpion. When the people
listened to his foolish
declaration ,they chorused in
unison: to your tents o Israel.
USSR was one of the mightiest
empires in modern history
forged after the Bolshevik
Revolution of 1917. It soon fell
into the grip of bureaucrats who
ran a unitary and totalitarian
Vanguard, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3
regime that was deaf to
restructuring calls.
The dissolution of the Soviet
Union was the process of
internal disintegration within
the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, USSR, also referred
to as the Soviet Union, which
began in the second half of the
1980s with growing unrest in
the national republics and
ended on December 26, 1991,
when the USSR itself was voted
out of existence by the Supreme
Soviet, following the Belavezha
Accords. Declaration number
142-H by the Supreme Soviet
resulted in self-governing
independence to the Republics
of the USSR, formally
dissolving the USSR.
Ratified
signatories
The
declaration
acknowledged
the
independence of the former
Soviet republics and created the
Commonwealth
of
Independent States, CIS,
although five of the signatories
ratified it much later or did not
do so at all. On the previous
day, December 25, Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev,
the eighth and final leader of
the USSR, resigned, declared
his office extinct and handed
over its powers - including
control of the Soviet nuclear
missile launching codes - to
Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
That evening at 7:32 p.m., the
Soviet flag was lowered from the
Kremlin for the last time and
replaced with the prerevolutionary
Russian flag. If
they still read in the Villa, I will
supply a few copies of Brian
Hall's The Imposable Country:
A Journey Through The Last
Days of Yugoslavia. It was a
book by American freelance
journalist who was the last
permitted on official tour of the
country that has now
disappeared from the map of
the world.
This is a privileged glimpse
of the former Yugoslavia from
within, one that gets behind
journalistic accounts to present
the intimate hatreds,
prejudices, aspirations, and
fears of its citizens. Hall spent
the spring and summer of 1991
traveling through Yugoslavia,
even as the nation was
crumbling in his footsteps.
••Bailout crises:No solution
THOSE of us who have
deep insight into the
Nigerian crises are often pained
when we are proved right. The
latest is the new crisis states have
been thrown into with the recent
deductions from their bailout
allocations (a fraction of the
resources Federal Government
appropriated from their land) that
they were granted in 2015.
Writing under "Minister Lai:
How now, bailout?" on February
6, 2016; I made the following
submissions: "However if you are
made of steel you go on expressing
your conviction knowing that
whosoever wants to lead the
orchestra must be ready to back
the crowd. A few months ago, the
company of simpletons were all
over the place hailing the illthought
out bail out for the states
as a great feat. The then
spokesman of APC, Alhaji Lai
Mohammed now Information and
Culture minister was pounding the
ground over the package.
Said he: “Also, the President has
approved a debt relief programme
that will help states restructure
their commercial loans currently
put at over N660 billion. The
implication is that the life span of
such loans will be extended, while
reducing the states’ debt-servicing
expenditures, thus leaving the
states with enough resources -
which otherwise would have been
removed at source by the banks -
to meet their monthly salary
obligations, among others.”
History is repeating itself before
our very eyes. Some 31 years ago,
Buhari, then as a military head of
state, also inherited a huge
national rot similar to what has
been bequeathed to it by the PDP,
DECEMBER 3, 2019 — 17
Having arrived a week after the
catalytic May 2 massacre at
Borovo Selo, he watched as
political solutions were
abandoned with dizzying
speed, and as Yugoslavia 's
various ethnicities, which had
managed to reach a point of
tolerant coexistence went for the
daggers. The country collapsed
while the book was still in the
press.
From the years 1938 to 1945,
Nazi Germany occupied
Czechoslovakia. Hitler claimed
that the invasion was necessary
in order to protect the ethnic
German populations that were
living in Czechoslovakia. In
what was widely considered an
act of appeasement, the Munich
Agreement was signed, which
allowed Nazi Germany to
annex parts of Czechoslovakia
known as the Sudetenland.
The Sudetenland was known
for its ethnic German residents.
Although the Munich
Agreement was created by
Germany, France, the United
States, and Italy, as a way of
maintaining peace, looked back
on it as a great failure. German
troops completely took over
Bohemia, and forced a
protectorate state over Slovakia.
The occupation only ended in
1945 with the end of the World
War II.
On January 1,1993,
Czechoslovakia split into the
nations of Slovakia and the
Czech Republic. The separation
was peaceful and came as a
result of nationalist sentiment
in the country. The decision to
split was decided by the
Federal Assembly who voted on
the matter.
There was a deep disconnect
between those living in Czech
territories and the Slovaks. The
Slovaks, notably, did not fully
embrace the idea of
Czechslovakianism. The act of
tying the country together was
considered to be too expensive
a burden.
Sudan is close to us in Africa
for the story of its split not to be
known to us like the reasons
Nigeria fought a civil war in
from 1967-70.
Let the defenders of Nigeria
give just one example of a
contraption with the unresolved
contradictions that we face that
has survived and we will ask
Ogomudia to take back his
words. If they cannot, a Brian
Hall may just be on tour.
and had to approve N480 million
for the payment of arrears of
workers’ salaries. Truly, the
President is a man of destiny.”
This column was not scared to
call the bail out exactly what it was
- fiscal irresponsibility. I
particularly don’t like quoting
myself but I have to do it often now
in our season of peculiar mess in
Nigeria.
Writing under “Fiscal
Irresponsibility as bailout” on
September 8, 2015, this column
submitted as follows: "There was
no legislative approval for these
loans which were packaged under
the table in the most brazen
violation of fiscal responsibility.
Shorn of all pretenses, the states
drawing these loans are
technically under receivership!"
It is a terminal crisis unless we
embrace federalism.
C
M
Y
K