06072021 - We must okay FG's security operations in our states- Southern Govs

18 — Vanguard, TUESDAY, JULY 6, 2021
ON Thursday, July 1, 2021, the Soka,
Ibadan home of Chief Sunday Adeniyi
Adeyemo (also known as Sunday
Igboho) was attacked for the second time
in six months. The first was on January
26, 2021 when hoodlums burnt the same
house in what was seen as a retaliation
by suspected Fulani assailants. Three
weeks earlier, Igboho and his men had
evicted the families of a Fulani leader,
Abdulkadir Salihu, from Igangan in Oyo
State, over accusations of masterminding
attacks, rapes, kidnappings, murders,
destruction of farms, harbouring
hoodlums and negotiating ransoms for
kidnappers.
While speculations were still swirling
as to who carried out the second attack
on Igboho’s household, the Directorate
of State Services, in a statement issued by
its spokesman, Dr. Peter Afunanya,
claimed responsibility for it. The DSS said
it acted on an intelligence report that
Igboho had stockpiled arms in his home.
According to the statement, on
approaching the residence at 1.34am, the
DSS operatives were fired on by nine men
suspected to be Igboho’s guards.
According to the statement, “six of
them were armed with AK-47 guns and
three others with pump action rifles. In
the course of the exchange, two of
Igboho’s armed men were gunned down
while the rest were subdued and
arrested”. The Service also said that seven
AK-47 guns, three pump action rifles, 47
AK-47 magazines with 5,000 rounds of
ammunition, five cutlasses, one jack
knife, Igboho’s passport, one pair of
binoculars, two whistles, three voodoo
charm jackets/traditional body armour
and other items were recovered.
We consider the manner of this
nocturnal raid very disturbing because
there is very little that differentiates it from
Midnight raids: DSS should not behave
like bandits
the methods deployed by hoodlums and
bandits in attacking innocent people. By
staging this operation in the wee hours
of the night, the DSS operatives gave the
guards in that building legitimate reasons
to try warding off the attack in the belief
that the hoodlums who had earlier
attacked the place were back.
When the same DSS staged what it
described as a “sting operation” on some
judges in Abuja in October 2016, it was
widely condemned as an unnecessary act
meant to intimidate the suspects when the
same objective could have been achieved
through the civilised, due process of
obtaining a court warrant. In this raid on
Igboho’s residence, there was also no
reported indication that it was done with
a court warrant. The problem this poses
is that the DSS agents were the only
persons at the scene to process it and
report of items recovered. There was no
way of confirming the veracity of their
claim that Igboho “stockpiled arms”.
Furthermore, there is no reported
evidence that the DSS took any action
when Abdulkadir had allegedly
established a commune which was
guarded by armed men in Igangan and
carried out his alleged criminal activities.
Even when hoodlums attacked Igboho’s
house, there was no known action from
DSS to unravel the assailants. It was only
the Police which said they were on the
heels of the assailants, but up till date,
never disclosed the outcome of their
investigations.
The Directorate had also carried out
actions early in this administration which
questioned its impartiality in the
discharge of its duties. In April 2016, the
Service, through its erstwhile spokesman,
Tony Opuiyo, had issued a statement
which read as follows: “Service has
uncovered the heinous role played by the
members of the Indigenous People of
Biafra in the abduction/kidnap of five
Hausa-Fulani residents, namely:
Mohammed Gainako, Ibrahim
Mohammed, Idris Yakubu and Isa
Mohammed Rago at Isiukwuato LGA in
Abia State. The abducted men were later
discovered at the Umuanyi Forest, Abia
State, where they were suspected to have
been killed by their abductors and buried
in shallow graves amidst 50 other shallow
graves of unidentified persons”.
That raised the question of how the DSS
was able to only identify the five bodies
of “Hausa-Fulani” ethnic origin without
telling the public the identities of the other
50 bodies. This manner in which the
Service has sometimes performed its
functions under the current regime also
resonates with the Muhammadu Buhari
government’s worrisome refusal to
declare the armed pastoralists as
terrorists.
Meanwhile, the Global Terrorism Index,
GTI, since 2015 had rated them as the
fourth most murderous terror group in
the world after ISIS, Somali Al Shabbab
and Boko Haram. Since then, the armed
herders have taken their terrorism to all
parts of the Middle Belt and the Southern
geopolitical zones,establishing camps in
forests, killing people, raping, destroying
farms, kidnapping for ransom and even
collecting tolls in parts of Delta State
before allowing farmers into their farms.
Rather than declare them terrorist and
protect innocent and law-abiding
Nigerians from them, the government
inappropriately describes their nefarious
activities as “farmers-herders clashes”.
Just last month, we did not hear a word
from the DSS when a group of self-styled
“Fulani Jihadists” threatened to attack
Asaba and Agbor in Delta State unless
Governor Ifeanyi Okowa “rescinded” the
ban on open grazing imposed throughout
the 17 Southern states by their Governors
after a meeting in Asaba. Nobody has
been apprehended to reassure the public
that such threats cannot be tolerated by
the government of the day.
These uneven-handed approaches to
the discharge of the Service’s functions
do not augur well for faith in the country
by Nigerians who feel at the wrong end
of it. If anything, it will boost the camps
of the aggrieved who seem to have totally
lost their faith in Nigeria as their country
capable of and willing to protect their lives
and property.
We call on the President to caution the
Service. The DSS must conform strictly
to the universally-established rules of
engagement while performing official
functions. Government agents maintained
with the taxpayers’ money cannot be
perceived to compete with hoodlums in
their modus operandi. Civilised,
professional and lawful conducts on their
part will earn them respect and acclaim
among the people and restore faith in
Nigeria. These are what we ask of them.
The first part of this piece focused on
the major differences between Northern
and Southern parts of Nigeria that were
brought together by the colonialists
BEFORE southern Nigerians pounce with
glee (as they often this evidence of northern
economic dependency on the South, one
must pause and reflect that amalgamation was
a British decision, not a northern one. Northern
Nigeria had no more say in amalgamation than
Southern Nigeria did (and probably, if given a
choice, would have objected to it). One of the
North’s leaders did, after all, later refer to amalgamation
as ‘the mistake of 1914’.
Effect an alliance with a Southern lady of
means: The economic disparity between the
two Nigerias made their amalgamation inevitable.
In a light-hearted after-dinner speech to
the Colonial Service Club in 1913, the secretary
of state for the colonies, Lord Lewis Harcourt,
used a metaphor to the impending amalgamation:
“We have released Northern Nigeria
from the leading strings (British) Treasury.
The promising and well-conducted youth allowance
‘on his own’ and is about to effect an
OPINION
The mistake of 1914 (2)
alliance Southern lady of means. I have issued
the special licence and Sir Frederick will perform
the ceremony... May the union be and the
couple constant!
‘An enthusiastic practicing paedophile.’ In
1913, Lugard named the south-eastern Nigeria
city of Port-Harcourt after Lord Harcourt. Details
of a man’s personal life should not ordinarily
occupy much space in a history book
about two nations. However, the continued
prominence of Harcourt’s name in contemporary
Nigeria justifies an exception. Harcourt
ostensibly led an ordinary family life. His wife
was the wealthy American
heiress Mary Burns, who was
a member of the Morgan
banking family dynasty and
the niece of the banker John
Pierpont Morgan (founder of
JP Morgan Bank). However,
Harcourt (or ‘Loulou’, as he
was known) ‘was an enthusiastic
practising paedophile’,
who abused both young boys
and girls.
Owing to his status, Harcourt’s paedophilia
was largely unknown to the public, and knowledge
of it was restricted to the elite circles in
which he moved. Harcourt abused the son and
daughter of his friend Viscount Esher (Reginald
Brett). Esher’s teenage daughter Dorothy
was so traumatised after Harcourt tried to sexually
assault her that she avoided romantic relationships
with men for most of her adult life.
Harcourt’s predilection for preying on children
was so well known that boys at Eton School
(where he was a fellow) were warned not to be
alone with him.
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Harcourt also tried to sexually assault a young
boy named Edward James during a party at
Harcourt’s country estate. The boy reported the
assault to his mother, who mentioned it to others.
Harcourt was found dead early the next
year after taking an overdose of sedatives. The
most extraordinary aspect of Nigeria’s amalgamation
was how little thought the British
colonial administrators gave to its long-term
consequences. The architects of both the 1914
amalgamation and the Niger Committee’s report
of 1898 had no guiding vision or objective.
Not only did the colonial government fail to
contemplate the north-south differences, but
they paid little attention to how much British
rule had amplified the pre-existing differences
between the two regions. The introduction of
Christian missionaries in the South had caused
a revolutionary change to the region’s religious
life and created a Western-educated cadre that
was anxious for independence while the North
had little interest in rushing into a union with a
southern region that was so radically different
in religious and social ethos.
To be concluded