09012021 - Nigeria must stop paying ransom to kidnappers

C
M
Y
K
They say the darkest hour is just
before dawn. This saying has
come true again. Just as we were
celebrating the announcement of three
efficacious vaccines by the medical
world, a universal spike in COVID 19
shook the rest of the world. With this
has come the numbing news that a more
contagious mutant which may or may
not respond to the vaccines is rapidly
finding its way into communities and
nations.
The rise in infections is understandable
even if it is not excusable. We live in a
world of ‘fundamental human rights’ and
people will go the extra mile to defend
those rights even when some of those
rights are injurious to their health. The
fear of COVID 19 has forced many
governments across the world to curtail
the right to movement and association
of their citizens. Many people have
fought back, aided in some cases, by
populists and right wing leaders. The
result is that the world was unable to
have a uniform response to the
lockdown. And in this age of massive
travels within a global village, we are
all as strong as our weakest link. There
are those who obeyed the lockdown rules
but felt the need to get out to clear the
cobwebs in their heads. There are those
whose businesses had been on lockdown
since the beginning of last year and
were desperate to breathe some life into
them. Then there is the category of social
animals who missed the gaiety of
gatherings. Some of them had deferred
their weddings and anniversaries till the
end of the year hoping the virus would
have miraculously disappeared by then.
All these have resulted in cross
movements and contacts.
While the need for human interactions
and the desire of people to have their
‘lives back’ are understandable, the
lowering of guards or complete disregard
for COVID 19 protocols by some cannot
be excused – there are many places in
Lagos where those who insist on wearing
masks are disdained; there are people -
some of them enlightened - who
describe those who are still reluctant to
embrace social gatherings as being
When Senator Magnus Abe
last Monday insinuated
that followers of the minister
of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi,
were running loose in Rivers State, it
again brought to light the fickleness
in relationships among Nigeria’s
political class.
His assertion followed what he
alleged as the disruption of a
gathering of his supporters in
Buguma City by those inclined to the
minister, the previous day.
Though Abe did not mention
Amaechi by name, the insinuation that
the minister’s foot soldiers disrupted
the gathering was suggestive of where
blame should be.
Remarkably, Abe went on to link the
sponsor of the violence against his
supporters as
the same person
people who also
allegedly
instigated
violence
a g a i n s t
supporters of
Nyesom Wike
in the period
leading to the
2015 election.
It was as such
implied that
Amaechi or his
associates had
b e e n
employing
violence as a
means of
political
expression from
his time as
governor.
If Amaechi could walk
away from Sir Peter and
Justice Mary Odili after
a closer relationship,
then the moral court
will not find Abe guilty
despite all the ‘dirty
things’ Amaechi was
alleged to have done in
the night of December
12, 2016 to return Abe
to the Senate.
Given Amaechi’s usual sermons
about propriety, it is a claim that will
be difficult for many to believe.
But coming from Abe who had
journeyed with Amaechi for close to
20 years, that claim should not be
Reading signs of the times
paranoid. This is not to mention the
increasing number of packed gatherings
with absolute no thought to the virus. All
of these have made us all – and not just
the careless -very vulnerable. The infection
has come so close to home now that one
can literally touch it. Everyday, people I
know, people I am close to, people I love,
people who are family, are getting
infected.
Our government, like most governments
across the world, has again decided to
tighten restrictions. But what seems
inexplicable is that some government
agencies are refusing to read the sign of
the times and are still ‘doing business as
usual’. Ideally, the current situation should
mean anything that has to do with people
aggregating at a place be discouraged. A
visit to the airport will remind you of how
tardy and cumbersome our immigration
process and indeed an entire travel
experience can be. It is not unusual for
passengers to spend two or more hours
in the closeted and cluttered environment
that is the Lagos Airport. They come out
tired only to meet evacuating conditions
that are out of tune with modernity and
the reality of the current times.
Another example of government
agencies not reading the sign of the times
is the deadline initially given for the
alignment of sim card with National
Identification Number (NIN). I don’t know
how many people have been captured on
NIN. Let’s say it is about half. It would
have been a herculean task to capture fifty
easily shaken off. Your correspondent
can also share his disappointment and
disbelief with Amaechi following news
reports in December 2016 that he was a
principal facilitator of the violence that
characterized the
December 2016 National
Assembly rerun elections.
According to news
reports, Amaechi was on
ground to deliver all three
APC Senate candidates
with Abe the most
pressing. It was claimed
that after not supporting
Abe in the 2015
governorship election that
Amaechi saw it as his duty
to return Abe to the Senate
by hook or crook.
Amaechi ensured Abe
and Andrew Uchendu
were returned to the
Senate on the ticket of the
APC in that blood tainted
election.
Given the solidarity
between the two men at
that time it is now
shocking that their opposing interests
froze out their party in the 2019 General
Election. Of course, that was to the
cheer of Governor Wike.
But how did it happen? It is claimed
that Amaechi embarrassed Abe in his
SATURDAY Vanguard, , JANUARY 9, 2021—21
per cent of 200 million people in two weeks
given our ponderous way of doing things.
And then you wonder why the
rush or even the fuss. As it is,
most Nigerians have been
captured on BVN,Driving
Licences and International
Passports. The personal details
in these instruments are
virtually the same. I am sure
there are more seamless ways
of getting these details merged
with phone sims without
people having to camp out at
the designated offices for NIN
or service providers during
these virus infested times. I am
sure we the people need more
enlightenment from our
leaders on what is suddenly
so urgent about the alignment
that people have to risk their
lives at a time prudence and
common sense suggest they
should be home. I am sure
foreigners who live among us
will want to know their
position. Do they stand the risk of losing
their phone numbers because NIN?
What the average Nigerian needs now
is help to cope with these dire times; what
they need now are palliatives and I am
not talking about the ones that were
misappropriated or stolen by some officials.
I am talking about genuine relief –
physical, mental, financial and spiritual –
Abe And Amaechi: Conspiracy Tales
home by telling him he would not be
governor. Whether true or not, the
fracture between both men grew ever
since. Abe’s demand for a level playing
level ground for all aspirants ahead of
the 2019 General Election did not help
matters.
Some would say that Amaechi after
putting his life and line for Abe to go to
the Senate that the senator was being
ambitious.
Was he?
Those who say so are sometimes told
to look back at the relationship between
both men over the years.
Amaechi had recently been quoted as
saying that over 80% of the present
political actors in the state were nurtured
or helped by him. That obviously could
include Abe. Abe was an All Peoples
Party, APP member of the House of
Assembly between 1999 and 2003,
having won his election outside the Peter
Odili structure.
It is alleged that Amaechi as Speaker
wooed him over to the PDP and helped
in his appointment as commissioner for
information in Odili’s second term.
If anyone was loyal or passionate to
Odili, Abe was also such a man. Your
correspondent met him along with some
other reporters sometime in November/
December 2006 and drew some lessons
from him on the marital harmony that
existed and should still exist between
Sir Peter and Justice Mary Odili.
not another aggro to cap an already difficult
year. Speaking of relief, the much touted one
is the vaccine which has now been dogged
by all kinds of conspiracy theories. It is
understandable to be cautious. Especially
Africans whose ancestors had been used as
medical guinea pigs in the past. But I always
ask those who express their fears of vaccines
verbally or through posts, what the alternative
is to a pandemic that is threatening life in all
ramifications. After all, where would the world
be without vaccines? Government has a role
to play in overcoming the scepticism of its
citizens. There is a characteristic silence on
this front. More importantly, government
needs its best brains out to handle the logistics
of mass vaccination. We have not done well
in this regard in the past. It is one thing to
purchase the vaccine. It is another thing to
get it safely into people’s arms. For example,
if America vaccinated
a million people per
day, it would take the
better part of two
years to vaccinate all
its people with the
required two doses.
You can then imagine
You can then
imagine how
long it would
take Nigeria of
200 million
people at the
rate we do
things!
how long it would
take Nigeria of 200
million people at the
rate we do things!
This is quite apart
from the challenges
of storage and
distribution. This is
not something we
pass through the
usual sloppy
channels. It is also
not something to
assign to political
jobbers. Or to our
kinsmen. There are
Nigerians here and
in the diaspora who are quite knowledgeable
about epidemics. We should find them unless
we want toxic vaccines on our hands.
President Biden just employed a Nigerian to
his COVID 19 team! If she is good enough
for America, she is more than good enough
for us. Nigeria needs to sit up and get its acts
together concerning COVID 19. We need to
read, and follow the signs of the times.
His devotion to Sir Peter at that time your
correspondent gathered, made him name
his first son and child after Peter Odili.
So, when in 2007, Abe, Wike and some
others broke away in the gang-up against
Odili to enthrone Amaechi as governor, it
obviously would have meant much to Abe.
Every time Abe looked at his little son, it
would have pulled at his conscience that
he was in a rebellion against a man he had
found worthy to be his son’s god father.
For those who have followed the events
in Rivers State the assertions and activities
of Abe also push the narrative that he is in
cahoots with Wike to shut out the APC.
But can it be true? It is almost a certainty
that Wike cannot support Abe as a successor
even if he would not mind aiding him to
destabilise Amaechi.
There is also the narrative that Abe
willingly or unwillingly became a tool for
those within the APC leadership and
especially at the presidency who had been
determined to cut Amaechi to size.
Those who push this narrative say that
the deceased Chief of Staff, Mallam Abba
Kyari was well into this game. It is also
alleged that that may have played a role
in the appointment of Abe into the board
of the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation, NNPC.
In the beginning of the APC government
most of the appointments in the South-
South were determined by Amaechi. But
over time that power faded as Kyari
increasingly took control of the
government. It is in that light that Abe was
supposedly empowered to humiliate
Amaechi.
It is tempting for the Amaechi crowd to
see the actions of Senator Abe as insulting
and as a betrayal. However, they should
not.
If Amaechi could walk away from Sir Peter
and Justice Mary Odili after a closer
relationship, then the moral court will not
find Abe guilty despite all the ‘dirty things’
Amaechi was alleged to have done in the
night of December 10, 2016 to return Abe
to the Senate.