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16 — Vanguard, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2022 Bagauda Kaltho was not a terrorist Mahdi Shehu, one of the supporters of the bloodthirsty Abacha military regime, runs around today in the outfit of a ‘human rights activist’. I don’t have any problem with that; anybody can call himself anything he wants. He trashes the Buhari presidency when he has the opportunity. As a Nigerian citizen, he has a right to his opinion and in any case, I do not hold the Buhari administration in high esteem. Besides, when the Abacha regime was sending innocent Nigerians to early graves, forcing some into exile, looting our commonwealth and employing terror, including bomb blasts against Nigerians, Shehu and Buhari stood by that nightmarish regime. In the last fortnight, Shehu has gone on air to defend terrorist negotiator, Tukur Mamu, who the Department of State Security accuses of being a “logistics supplier, aiding and abetting acts of terrorism” and heavily benefiting from the proceeds of ransom payments. It is not my duty to prove or disprove such allegations. What is, however, clear is that Shehu and Mamu are part of a gang in alliance with Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, the ex-Army Captain who campaigns that terrorists are “are peaceful people” engaged in an “ethnic war”, and should therefore be granted amnesty. However, in campaigning for Mamu, Shehu tried to present the patriotic journalist, Bagauda Kaltho as a terrorist who, he claimed, planted a bomb in the bookshop of the Durbar Hotel, Kaduna and was killed in the process. Shehu claimed that he had been contacted by an American diplomat, Russell Hanks, to plant the bomb. He claimed that on his way out of Hanks Hamdala Hotel room, he met Bagauda and two hours later, there was the bomb blast. Shehu narrated what he claimed happened next: “Lawal Jafaru Isa (then Military Governor of Kaduna State) can confirm this – I drove straight to the Government House to see the governor. For what reason? Urgent security reason. I was ushered into Lawal Jafaru Isa’s office, and I told him what happened. The following day, I was brought to Abuja. I was able to see Abacha in his residence, and I narrated the story to him.” Before I point out the fallacies in Shehu’s narration, let me first state that I had known Bagauda as a young activist, and over the years when we practised journalism together. He was a humanist who would not engage in the mindless bombing of a public place. Secondly, he was an anti-imperialist youth who was Bringing back Benin bronzes BY AYODELE OKUNFOLAMI Nigerians received the news that Horniman Museum in London would be returning over 70 artefacts that had been looted from the ancient Benin Kingdom at the twilight of the 19th century. The expected return follows years of ongoing negotiations between Nigeria’s Federal Government represented by the Ministry of Information and Culture and the governments of Britain, Germany and a few other former colonialists that must have been involved in looting of symbols of our early civilisations. Personally, I am not too excited about it. First, there are concerns about the notorious maintenance culture in Nigeria. If and when these artefacts are given back, how decently would they be kept? Is there provision for the oils and perfumes that should be regularly applied on them for them to maintain their beauty and durability? What about the museums that would house them? Are they well airconditioned? Do the citizens appreciate such arts, or some people just want to use their political offices to tick some achievement boxes? The National Commission for Museums and Monuments, NCMM, Lagos revealed it receives less than 50,000 visitors annually with a little above 80% of them students and just two per cent foreigners. What this indicates is that, but for school excursions, a museum located at the heart of Lagos hosts less than 10,000 adult Nigerians yearly. One can only imagine how much less would be touring exhibition sites farther away from airports with much fewer populations and hotels. With that in mind, of what economic value would these artefacts bring to the nation when the inhabitants do not visit galleries? Would it not be better it remained in the London Museum that welcomes almost a million viewers yearly? We cannot separate tourism from aviation. The many troubles of the aviation industry where only the Lagos-Abuja route is viable will not help tourism at all. A nation where there are more private planes than commercial planes will only be known more for terrorism than tourism. For those Benin Bronzes and the other artefacts to attract the needed views, Nigeria needs to rework its overall infrastructure. It makes no economic justification for anybody to leave mainland Lagos to spend unpredictable hours amidst highway robbery just because he wants to visit some ancient sites in Badagry. Or due to an absence of high-speed rail, one spends over six hours from Calabar airport because he wants to visit Obudu cattle ranch. Or fear being kidnapped along between Abuja and Kaduna just because one wants to go and see Gobarau Minaret in Katsina. The cost of visiting a tourist site in Nigeria is no different from putting on generator to charge your phone. Until we make the cost of visiting our tourist attractions cheaper, more accessible, and safer, Benin bronzes and other related artifacts will only be in Nigeria for sentimental motives. Let’s even argue that the homecoming of these artefacts is for us to get in touch with our history. There has been calls for history to return to our schools across the federation. Lagos State Government followed up the Federal Ministry of Education directive with its recent memo for the reintroduction of History as a standalone subject in primary and junior secondary schools which was addressed to schools in the state. Besides the fact that it was lack of teachers that took History away from our schools and I am unaware of any deliberate attempt to recruit teachers for those subjects, history is not just about what children in their formative years learn about their land, it is also about what they encounter in their everyday lives outside their classrooms. Take Civic Education, for instance, which is aimed at the development and ingraining of national anti-American; so he could not have carried out a terrorist assignment for an American agent. Thirdly, Bagauda believed not in terrorism, but in revolution. Fourthly, about the time Shehu claimed Bagauda went to see a politically- exposed Hanks in a well patronised hotel, he was in hiding as he was wanted by the Abacha regime. I met him in a safe house in Lagos and he left for Kaduna in order to relocate to Abuja because he believed the regime would not expect him to be in the city. After stating these facts, let us examine Shehu’s story. He claimed that he met Hanks on December 21,1995 and two hours later, Durbar Hotel was bombed. My analysis is that Mahdi Shehu and his gang want to exonerate Abacha, Al Mustapha, Zakari Biu and their notorious killer squad from the murder of Bagauda whose corpse they have refused to release to his family or cannot produce In reality, the bomb blast at the hotel was January 18, 1996, that is: 28 days later. Shehu’s claim is that the bomb blast occurred two hours after he left Hanks and Bagauda, so the bomber was the latter. Not logical. It was possible for a third or even a fourth person to have visited Hanks apart from him and Bagauda. In other words, if someone had seen him, Hanks and Bagauda two hours before the blast, it would not be logical to conclude that he had taken part in the bombing. Shehu claimed he immediately sought and secured audience with Governor Isa and told him the identity of the bomber. He claimed that next day, he briefed General Sani Abacha about the incident. Going by this, it would have meant that within hours of the bombing, the government knew the identity of the bomber. If this were true, the same government would not have spent the next two years desperately trying to identify the bomber. Mr Umaru Suleiman, the acting Police Commissioner of Kaduna State testified that the stomach of the victim was ripped open, his legs shattered and face burnt “beyond recognition”. So, how was the corpse confirmed to be Bagauda’s remains? To show that Shehu lied about Bagauda: as at April 1998, the Abacha regime was still trying to unravel the identity of the bomber. The regime’s Head of Anti-Terrorist Task Force, Zakari Biu, at a press conference on Tuesday August 18, 1998 told the press that in trying to identify the bomber, investigators on April 18, 1998 secured a statement from Mr Babafemi Ojudu, Managing Editor of The News Magazine, employers of Bagauda, on the whereabouts of the journalist. Note that Ojudu’s interrogation was 27 months after the blast; yet Shehu claims to have informed the government of the bomber’s identity just over two hours after the blast. Biu said it was from Ojudu, investigators got the address of Bagauda’s family in Billiri, Gombe State. It was from Mrs Martha Kaltho that and social values in children before they attain adulthood. These youngsters encounter a contradiction when the school bus driver who has a job to protect, breaks traffic rules to get them to school on time. Similarly, taught history will only be effective if these museums and galleries of diverse aspects of our culture and past are readily accessible and visible. London alone has more than 170 museums. What we have today is that even a visit to our palaces, one gets little or no exhibits of the history of the traditions, culture or customs they are supposed to be custodians of. Other parts of the world, visits to palaces fetches Since those Benin bronzes and other relics are of more economic value abroad in terms of people that get to see and appreciate them, and in terms of security and maintenance, I would suggest we left them there; leaving them abroad does not mean they are not ours tens of millions of dollars from visitors that don’t get to see the royals. The Whites are so good in keeping their materials that the British Museum displays only one per cent of what it has at a time. Do the maths. It means they can afford to keep 99% away from visitors. For a nation like Nigeria that is also, if not richer in culture to be able to do likewise, I propose that incentives and grants from government be made available for artefactual institutions that showcase and preserve our culture. This way, art centres would be a profitable venture for anybody, private or any tier of government, that wants to set up such. By the way, what happened that these Send Opinions & Letters to: opinions1234@yahoo.com investigators got her husband’s photograph which Biu claimed was used to match the face of the burnt corpse. So, Mahdi Shehu lied when he claimed that the regime knew the identity of the bomber, at least 28 months before. Shehu emphatically claimed that the then Governor Isa was his witness as he reported the alleged involvement of Hanks and Kaltho in the bombing to him. But the latter, short of saying Shehu was lying, said last week he couldn’t recall such an incident. So, why is Shehu concocting such story against a selfless patriot who paid the price for democracy with his life? My analysis is that Mahdi Shehu and his gang want to exonerate Abacha, Al Mustapha, Zakari Biu and their notorious killer squad from the murder of Bagauda whose corpse they have refused to release to his family or cannot produce. On the other hand, it might be an attempt to link Bagauda, the pro-democracy movement and the anti-military National Democratic Coalition, NADECO, to terrorism. They can then start a campaign that anybody linked to NADECO should not be voted into office. Don’t forget that one of the 2023 presidential candidates was a NADECO chieftain who later named a public office after Bagauda Kaltho. Whatever be the case, the attempt to portray Bagauda Kaltho, the fierce prodemocracy journalist and Pan-Africanist as a terrorist, will fail. We have civilian rule in Nigeria today thanks to the sacrifices of uncompromising fighters like Beko Ransome- Kuti, Alao Aka-Bashorun, Alfred Ilenre, Chima Ubani, Gani Fawehinmi, Anthony Enahoro, Dan Suleiman, Ndubusi Kanu and Bagauda Kaltho. artefacts aren’t replicated? Why are they not made as replicas even as toys for children or portraits in greeting cards for grownups? Did the White men steal the technology and science of making these items along with them? If indeed, these articles are ours in spirit and in truth, we should have been able not only to replace them but also to improve on them into more treasured items that would not only showcase our past but would be continuous commentary of our evolving civilisation and a peep into what our future would look like. Another reason I am not as excited about the returning of these artifacts is the way we have handled previous loots. Till today, Nigerians are yet to feel the impact of the recovery of looted funds. Who says these artifacts won’t be looted again, this time by Nigerians? Truth is that Europeans ravaged Africa. However, I don’t think playing the victim card asking for the return of these items evens up things. What we should work on is to ensure our present culture and civilisation should either be competitive or possibly overtake theirs. Although, we may argue it: Europeans succeeded because they had a superior civilisation; and to achieve a competitive civilisation, we must purposefully, progressively, and continuously invest in ourselves intellectually and culturally. In addition, the goodwill of our civil and traditional leaders would help citizens and subjects alike to help propagate and promote our customs. Finally, since those Benin bronzes and other relics are of more economic value abroad in terms of people that get to see and appreciate them, and in terms of security and maintenance, I would suggest we left them there. Leaving them abroad does not mean they are not ours. Continues online: www.vanguardngr.com *Okunfolami, a cultural activist, wrote from Festac, Lagos, via: @ayookunfolami
Can Nigeria’s INEC organise a credible national election? Indeed, it can be claimed with a large measure of truth, that rigging of elections has become part of our political culture.-- Report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO), 1979-1983, Main Report, Paragraph 10:10 (1986) THE electoral landslide of President Shehu Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria, NPN, 1983 unfolded in instalments over different sites of improbable magic across Nigeria. This did not occur in one day. It involved the manipulation of the entire value chain of election administration over the cycle of four years from 1979 to 1983. It was both wilful and methodical. After squeaking through a very tight field in 1979 with a mere 36% of the votes and not a small helping hand from the judicial arithmetic of the Supreme Court, the NPN in power set about ensuring that they were not left in 1983 to the mercies of any judges. For the party, this meant they had to find a way to wrestle some significant territory off the hands of Obafemi Awolowo and the UPN in South-West Nigeria. If they did not have living voters, then they had to invent voters by some means. In places like Oranmiyan North 1 Constituency then in Oyo State but now in Osun, they found just the perfect site for this project. This was the state where Awolowo left arguably the greatest physical monument to his political vision in what was then known as University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University). In 1979, the register of voters in this constituency had 48,216 persons. Let the campaigns begin BY NICK DAZANG On Wednesday September 28, 2022, two major milestones will be reached on the electoral front. On that fateful day, we would have arrived at the ninth out of the 14th milestone on the way to the conduct of the 2023 general elections. By the same token, and based on the Timetable And Schedule of Activities for the 2023 General Elections issued by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in February this year, campaigns for the general elections will begin in earnest on the same day(September 28, 2022), 150 days to Election Day. Ordinarily, campaigns are conducted to engender a free and open discussion on who is the best candidate and which party, based on its high-minded agenda, is best poised to squarely address our concerns and challenges.We expect our impending campaigns to be no less muscular and lively. We expect them to define and climax into the conduct of the best elections in our history. We expect them to excite and titillate the political firmament. We expect them, particularly the rallies, town halls and debates, to be full of colour and circumstance. We expect them to be agog with pomp and sound bites. We expect that the arguments that will undergird the campaigns will be reasoned and cogent. We expect our media to be suffused with messages which stand the candidates in good stead. We expect campaign speeches to be studded with exalted and ennobling visions of a greater Nigeria. We expect campaigns which unite, rather than focus on our fault lines and things that divide us. We expect the campaigns to be civil, refined and issue-based. Four years later, in 1983, the number of registered voters in the same constituency had skyrocketed to 214,500, an increase of 444.87% at an average annual rate of growth of more than 111%. According to the 1986 Report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of the Federal It is well possible that the would-be president who has prevailed over every prosecutor and politician arrayed against him will, in office, overcome his provenance and plunder greatness from the jaws of infamy Electoral Commission, FEDECO, 1979-1983, chaired by former Supreme Court Justice, Bolarinwa Babalakin (himself also from Osun State), the reason for this was “Mr. Stephen Ajibade, FEDECO Administrative Secretary”. Mr. Ajibade contrived to impregnate the register with the names of ghosts none of whom came from the constituency, most of whom probably did not exist, but most of whom were recorded as having “voted” in the constituency during the 1983 elections. These ghosts contributed to unseating the UPN But if we are to go by the pronouncements of some of the enablers of our presidential candidates, who before now stridently canvassed positions or take issues on behalf of their principals, then we have every reason to fear or harbour reservations. For they carried on as giddy and inebriated enforcers, slinging mud and calumnising their principals' opponents. They also issued highfalutin claims and inflammatory rhetorics, thus setting the stage for wild, outlandish and ridiculous promises in the mould of unscrupulous politicians of yore who would promise to build bridges even where no rivers existed or literally putting the Atlantic Ocean on fire. The grim reality which confronts us and the terrible place in which Nigerians find themselves today should persuade even the most reckless and delinquent politician that only well thought out and sombre arguments will do. Candidates must thus refrain from incendiary speeches or pronouncements which tend to cast unnecessary aspersions on their opponents. They should abide scrupulously by the provisions of the electoral holy grail, namely the Electoral Act 2022. Permit me to quote from Section 95(1-6) of the Act: A political campaign or slogan shall not be tainted with abusive language directly or indirectly likely to injure religious, ethnic, tribal or sectional feelings. Abusive, intemperate, slanderous or base language or insinuations or innuendos designed or likely to provoke violent reaction or emotions shall not be employed or used in political campaigns. Places designated for religious worship, police station and public offices shall not be used-a) for political campaigns, rallies and processions or, b) to and handing the rich harvest of votes in Oyo State to the NPN. The moral of this tale is not merely, as the Babalakin Commission report said, that election rigging is part of Nigeria’s political culture. It is also that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, as the current successor to FEDECO is now called, enables that culture. As the 2023 elections approach, senior officials of INEC who appear to have graduated from the Stephen Ajibade school of electoral administration, have dusted up their routines. Let’s take voter registration in Omuma Ward in Oru East Local Government Area, LGA, of Imo State in South-East Nigeria for example. This happens to be the home of Hope Uzodimma, the man whom the Supreme Court of Nigeria installed as the winner in January 2020 of the March 2019 ballot in which he came fourth. In 2015, this ward had a mere 6,500 voters. Since 2019, it has become the epicentre of ongoing violence in the state, leading to an untold exodus of people from the locality. Yet, over this period, the number of registered voters in the constituency rose with the alacrity of Ijebu garri to over 46,000, a factor of over 700% or an average annual rate of increase of more than 100%. Under any circumstance, this kind of trend would task credulity to breaking point. For INEC, it’s par for the course. The details of some of the new additions to the register of voters in Omuma Ward of Oru East bear telling. Among the newly registered voters added since Hope Uzodimma was installed as Governor of Imo State is Adesanya Nash who was born 122 years ago in 1900. He registered at the Central School, Omuma II. Mr. Nash is only two years older than two persons, both identified as “Chimzuruoke Daves O” and supposedly male but with female passport pictures. Both were registered in Umuhu Primary School II. One is fair complexioned while the other one of much darker hue. Whether or not they are extraterrestrial transvestites is not clear. What is clear is that the records say that they are 120 years old, having been born in 1902. Vanguard, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2022 — 17 Send Opinions & Letters to: opinions1234@yahoo.com This register is an incredible peek into the healing capabilities of Heaven and the Hereafter. Also registered in Umuhu Primary School II is 108-year-old Chidiebube Ozi, who was born in 1914, the same year in which Frederick Lugard worked his magic to invent an amalgamated Nigeria. From his passport, Chidiebube looks like a specimen preparing for the athletic exertions of the Qatar World Cup. Not for any of these the corpulence of their brother in the Governor’s Office in Owerri or the physiological creases from the consequences of Buhari’s “Change”. It bears recounting that Nigeria is a country whose citizens in the diaspora do not have a right to vote. It is also a country in which there are no 123-year-old new voters. But, while Nigeria’s citizens in the diaspora cannot vote, it seems that those who have gone to Heaven, at least in Hope Uzodimma’s village in Omuma, Imo State, can. The response of INEC to this entire saga has been nothing short of a scandal. On September 15, Festus Okoye, the INEC National Commissioner responsible for Information and Voter Education, issued a statement in which he appeared to suggest that the problem was with putting these facts in the public domain and not with the fact that INEC staff without whom this could not have happened are still in service. Commissioner Okoye claimed that the Commission “is conducting a comprehensive Automated Biometric Identification System, ABIS, cleanup of the registration data by scrutinising every record”, pointing out that “after the ABIS and clean up, the Commission shall appoint a period of seven days during which the register will be published for scrutiny by the public for objections and complaints.” Three things are evidently missing from this release. One, Commissioner Okoye did not say how long the “cleanup” of the register would take or when it would end. Two, he did not say what degree of accuracy the processes of the ABIS enjoy. Third, promote, propagate or attack political parties, candidates, their programmes or ideologies. Masquerades shall not be employed or used by any political party, candidate or person during political campaigns or for any other political purpose. A political party or member of a political party shall not retain, organize, train or equip any person or group of persons for the purpose of enabling them to be employed for the use or display of physical force or coercion in promoting any political objective or interest, or in such manner as to arouse reasonable apprehension that they are organized-trained or equipped for that purpose. The grim reality which confronts us and the terrible place in which Nigerians find themselves today should persuade even the most reckless and delinquent politician that only well thought out and sombre arguments will do; candidates must thus refrain from incendiary speeches or pronouncements which tend to cast unnecessary aspersions on their opponents A political party, person or candidate shall not keep or use private security organization, this release did not say what consequences would follow if it were to be found that staff of INEC had in fact been complicit in manipulating or inflating the register of voters in any place through facilitating clear breaches of what Mr. Okoye called INEC’s “business rules”. The Commissioner did not forget to disclosed that 3,316 “ineligible registrants” have so far been invalidated in Hope Uzodimma’s Oru East LGA. Two metrics will put this number in context. First, INEC’s breakdown shows that it found 7,145 of 16,511 new entries from Imo State ineligible. This means that Hope Uzodimma’s Oru East alone supplied 46.41% of Imo State’s ghost voters. For context, Imo State has 27 LGAs and 305 electoral wards. Second, if the number of “ineligible registrants” from Hope Uzodimma’s Oru East were to be applied as a constant across the 774 LGAs in Nigeria, it would yield 2,566,584 ghost voters. That is a mere 5,175 less than the margin of 2,571,759 with which Muhammadu Buhari beat President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. In other words, even the numbers so far discovered as ineligible by INEC could easily determine the outcome of any election. The situation, therefore, warrants serious action against the perpetrators. It should be evident to INEC and its leadership that the staff who enabled this kind of rigging of the register of voters will happily enable worse in an election. If the Commission is interested in a credible poll, surely, claiming that it is engaged in Spring-cleaning the register in the rainy season is not good enough. It should say how these ineligible people got there and what will happen to those who perpetrated this. Until INEC is willing to contemplate this, it must remain in doubt whether the Commission under its current leadership is fit for purpose. *A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu vanguard or any other group or individual by whatever name called for the purpose of providing security, assisting or aiding the political party or candidate in whatever manner during campaigns, rallies, processions or elections. If the candidates and political parties are to carry themselves in a sublime and decorous manner, the Media and Civil Society have salient roles to play in tracking and publicizing their promises and holding them to account. The Media should give unfettered opportunities for the candidates to ventilate themselves. This will enable the voters to study their pronouncements and make informed choices. And in providing these unhindered platforms, the Media must be as fair as possible, thus giving equal or near equal space and time to the candidates. The Media must vigorously interrogate the candidates and political parties. Assumptions must not be erroneously made on the bases of sentiments and emotions regarding the candidates. This way, we shall avoid the costly mistake of 2015, when Nigerians were wowed and beguiled by the putative and assumed integrity and high sense of patriotic fervor of one of the candidates only to be disappointed thereafter. “No doubt, peddlers and purveyors of fake news will have a field day. But the traditional media, with their army of gatekeepers,must comport themselves responsibly, playing their roles as veritable custodians of the truth. They must refrain from amplifying or weaponizing pronouncements that fan the embers of hatred or incite the people to violence. Continues online:www.vanguardngr.com *Dazang, a public affairs analyst, wrote via: nickdazang@gmail.com C M Y K
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