GIST ME JOOR

Saturday, August 11, 2012

SHOULD a man's trousers slip down his legs in the full glare of a busy street, the frantic attempt to redeem the situation almost always results in greater "calamity": the elongation of his rear end (buttocks) while bending to reach the errant trousers! It can be quite embarrassing no matter how briefly or swiftly executed; the public often gets a glimpse of some most confidential commodities best left out of print... 

It is however legitimate to wonder why the slip occurred in the first place. Only a curious brand of sloppiness will cause a full-grown man to handle zipping up and belting down (or tying down) of his trousers (or sokoto) with levity.

With the killing machines which the Northern elite has bred and nurtured within its domain over time now out of control and ravaging the region, their pants are way down their knees. And the so-called elders of the region have refused to bend their knees to redeem their trousers.         Rather, they prefer to stand, trousers down, talking back at sane advisers from other regions of the federation. One of their ranks, a common rogue of international repute, even imagines himself to be a statesman. Eleleya.

Now, their sins (age-old treachery) has  caught up with them; and they stand naked on the streets .

But they are not ashamed.

What is wrong in an elder like Chief Edwin Clark expressing the opinion that Northern leaders were not speaking out against increasing violence in their own region? Or in specifically charging Ibrahim Babangida and Muhammadu Buhari to speak out?  Clark had, after all, personally led efforts to dialogue with Niger Delta militants.

The response of these people was a mob attack and a barrage of insults.

The greatest calamities that have assailed Nigeria have come from these ranks. From the 1966 pogrom when Igbos in the North were slaughtered in their thousands to the May 1980 riots in Zaria, the   December 18-20 religious riot of Zaria the same year which claimed over 4,100 lives, to the Maitasine  wahala in Kaduna, Maiduguri, Borno in 1982, Maitasine wahala in February/March 1984 where over 500 were slaughtered, to Zango  Kataf of 1992.The annulment of the June 12 presidential  election won by a southerner by Ibrahim Babangida (Evil Genius) almost tore Nigeria apart . The lingering crises in Plateau State is another.

And the still ongoing slaughter of men, women and children in "God's" name by the Boko Haram lunatics.

The North has been a disaster to everybody in Nigeria--including itself.   These so-called Northern elders, under whose supervision the masses of their people-especially --youths-- have been misguided by religion and impoverished by profligacy have failed woefully both as parents and leaders.

In their "mob" attack on Chief Edwin Clark's sensible advice, they have unanimously distanced themselves from the sect.

Arewa consultative Forum(ACF) spokesman, A.Z Sanni, insisted that " it is unhelpful to associate Boko Haram with any region..."

Really? Such brazen inanity. With what region should it be associated?

Junaid Mohammed, on his part asks "where is proof" that Northern leaders are culpable over the Boko Haram insurgency. Was Kabir Sokoto not caught in the Borno Governor's lodge? Did Zakari Biu, a Police commissioner not confess to aiding Sokoto's escape? Has any of these criminals or the marauding Fulani herdsmen been sentenced anywhere? What step have any of these northern leaders taken to ensure the criminal elements among them are punished? Has the Plateau State Governor, Jonah Jang, not complained repeatedly that these northern killers are usually spirited away to Abuja or God knows where to escape trial in Plateau state?

What of Senator Ndume, who is standing trial for aiding and abetting Boko Haram? Was an emir in Borno State not fingered in Kabir Sokoto's escape?

Also reacting, Yerima Shetimma of the youth wing of ACF said "this madness must stop...nobody should accuse the North... " Oh oh! So Shetimma knows there is something called "madness"? But not northern elders tacitly aiding and abetting of mass killings of innocent Nigerians.

Kaita Mohammed, on his part claims "northern leaders want peace for this nation"

Haba! Lah ilah ilah LIE!

Do they imagine that Nigerians have forgotten the northern elders' vow, through Alhaji Lawal Kaita, a northern leader in October 2010, to make Nigeria ungovernable if the president did not come from the North?  And Ciroma, and his cohorts gave tacit support.  Imagine the contempt in which they hold the rest of Nigeria to make such treasonable vow publicly.

In the 2012 Budget alone, over N900billion has been earmarked for security due to the northern madness. Think what that could have done in terms of development if the North had not been part of Nigeria.

Dinosaurs were supposed to have died out millions of years ago. These northern Nigeria elders may be poof that Science is sorely mistaken...

Bend down and retrieve your trousers. Your bums are unsightly!

N.B: Before this gets to be published in the next 72 hours, I pray the northern Frankeinstein Monster does not strike again...

yemiogunsola@gmail.com

08069074718
SOURCE: GUARDIAN

The TY Danjuma Foundation has launched a $5 million endowment at the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa, University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa to fund African scholars’ research in Law and Policy Development in Africa.

The fund, known as the ‘TY Danjuma Fund for Law and Policy Development in Africa,’ is an endowment in perpetuity to support research, capacity building, African knowledge production and information generation for the advancement of well researched initiatives in the law and policy environment for development in Africa.

Speaking during the formal signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Lagos, the founder of the foundation, General TY Danjuma (rtd), said he was invited by the university to endow a fund that will finance legal research in Africa.

“My donation is to the university for all African countries not just Nigeria. The University of Cape Town will administer the fund, they will make sure that only the interest earned on the endowment will be spent on research every year, so the endowment is in perpetuity.”

He said the initiative was in recognition of the need to engender researches and studies that are capable of engendering positive development of African countries especially in the area of law.
He said the fund would assist scholars who need it to further their studies in exploring new way through which African countries could develop their legal system to make them competitive across the world.

“When this issue was first brought to me, I was really not interested because I felt already we have enough lawyers across the continent and we have so many laws that are not being implemented. But when the issue was raised among the board members of the foundation, I was surprised that everyone supported it. And I had to agree that since it is for the development of Africa, we will do it. The only condition we put in there is that the first beneficiary of this gesture must be a Nigerian scholar.”

The fund would engender long-term collaboration between the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa and the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, which is expected to make available its resource base for scholars selected to benefit from the endowment.

Also speaking, the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Dr. Max Price, described the endowment as a step in the right direction because it would enable African scholars to start looking at aspects of comparative laws.

“For us at the University of Cape Town, our Centre for Comparative Law in Africa draws on the strengths of comparative methodology to research into the multifaceted field of law on the continent. Thus, we realise the need to develop a continental approach to law and its development since the experience of an African country can benefit another country.”

A peace negotiator used in previous formal negotiations with Boko Haram – the group responsible for kidnapping hundreds of school girls – has proposed a formal negotiation process to the Nigerian government that he hopes will allow for the girls’ safe return.

The operation could be convened quickly, with the girls returned, alive, within a week, Shehu Sani told ABC News.

The negotiating team should involve a committee of Islamic clerics from the north-eastern region of the country, along with insurgents who are in prison, he said. Sani said he believes Boko Haram will be willing to return the girls in exchange for their members who have been incarcerated.

Boko Haram’s threats to “sell” the girls into slavery is a positive signal because, normally, they vow to “kill” their captives, he added.

“Hope is not lost, as long as these girls are alive,” he said.

The peace negotiator, who has previously traveled to Maiduguri in Borno State, in northeastern Nigeria, for direct talks with Boko Haram leadership in a burned-out mosque, is concerned that international attention is forcing Nigeria’s government to take a hardline but miscalculated approach.

"This government is helpless and hopeless on solving the problem” he said. “The most important thing is to get them back alive, and you cannot do that through force.”

Instead of convening a negotiating mission, the Nigerian government has appointed a committee led by military and intelligence chiefs, to whom Boko Haram will be unwilling to talk, Sani said.

He cited recent examples of armed raids, attempting to rescue foreign hostages, that have resulted in the death of captives.

“The government of Nigeria is pretending to be serious simply because the world is taking an interest,” he said.

Source ABC

Jaye Gaskia, the man I call Mai Gaskia does not shy away from saying it the way it is. In this write up he bares his mind on the June 12, 203.

We begin with a paraphrased quote from Marx; it goes thus – “The dominant ideas of every society are the ideas of its ruling classes”. Perhaps as a measure of the truism of the essence of this statement, the dominant narrative of the June 12 struggle that is being passed down is the narrative of NADECO!
20 Years after the June 12 1993 elections, the annulment of the result of that presidential election, and the consequent inauguration of the June 12 struggle as the new phase of the Anti-Military and Pro-Democracy struggle, it is perhaps time to restore the full and more complete narrative of that struggle.
Let there be no doubts about it, there were alternative narratives to the NADECO narrative in the June 12 struggle. Yes there was NADECO, a coalition mainly of the ‘progressive wing’ of the ruling class which had cohered around the winner of the June 12 presidential election [MKO], and which because of its role around MKO in the SDP, during the election, and in the immediate aftermath of the annulment, could be collectively referred to as the mandate custodian group.
But there were also the Campaign For Democracy [CD] then led by Beko, with Chima Ubani as Gen Sec; and much later by 1995/97 the United Action For Democracy [UAD] then led by Abgakoba, with Chima as Gen Sec – after the 1994 split from the CD; the Joint Action Congress of Nigeria [JACON] led be Gani; and the students’ movement, including NANS then led by Kura, and Unilag SU led by Sowore!
We may have coordinated regularly with NADECO, but we were not members of NADECO! Although we were all fighting the military and fighting for Democracy, we had different strategic visions, and different modes of operation.
Within the pro-democracy movement it could be said that there were two versions and visions of democracy that were in contention; the liberal [including its social democratic variant] democracy, and the popular [including its socialist workers variant] democracy. And it can be said clearly that while the NADECO narrative represented the Liberal vision; the other narratives between and among them represented the Popular democratic vision and version. This is a very important difference, not a cosmetic one; it is ideological and political.
Let me illustrate the qualitative difference between these competing but also collaborating narratives with a historical occurrence which significantly changed and altered the trajectory and outcome of the June 12 struggle.
After the annulment, a new wave of mass protests began across the country, and this was intensifying daily, so much so that the dictator, IBB was forced to abdicate in late August of 1993 and hand power to a hurriedly put together contraption called the Interim National Government [ING]. The ING suffered from a crisis of legitimacy from the onset, it was not accepted by the mass movement or by the mandate custodian groups. Its legitimacy was challenged in the law courts, and in November a court of competent jurisdiction declared it illegal and unconstitutional.
I can remember the scene from that historic day; from the court premises, a massive crowd of citizens, a crowd that continued to grow in numbers by the minute, left the court premises and headed for MKO’s Ikeja residence.
On arrival at Ikeja, the mass movement had one simple demand which was put to MKO and the custodian group: on the strength of the illegitimacy of the ING, now affirmed by a court, Reclaim your mandate, declare yourself president elect, name an interim cabinet, a transitional government, announce dates to convene the SNC, and call on the international community to recognize your government!
The custodians prevaricated, they stalled, and politely rejected the demand of the mass movement coordinated by the alternative narratives, and dispersed the movement!
Days later, Abacha struck, and overthrew the ING of which he was Defense Minister! How did the contending narratives respond? The mandate custodian group, which was to later become NADECO responded with caution. They somehow had an illusion in the Pro-June 12 character of the coup, perhaps because they had foreknowledge of the coup and were in the know. They sought accommodation with the coup and nominated representatives to serve in the cabinet of the coupists in the expectation that within a few months, Abacha would restore the mandate and hand over to MKO.
Of course Abacha would later betrayed them, neither meeting their expectations, nor honouring any formal or informal agreements he may have made with them!
How did the alternative narratives respond to the coup? They called for and organised mass protests, and inaugurated the Anti-Abacha phase of the pro-democracy struggle, which the betrayed Mandate Custodian Group would come back to join after being betrayed.
They would respond to being betrayed by Abacha by taking the desperate step of making the ill prepared June 1994 Epetedo Declaration of MKO and formalizing the NADECO structures. Essentially the Epetedo Declaration was in content and form the very demand that the organised mass movement had put to the custodians back in November 1993. But by this time, it was made before the media, without the mass movement, without the shield of an aroused mass of citizens on the street. In fact the people were as shocked as the dictator by the declaration. After the declaration was made, with the protective shield of the masses, it was only a matter of time before MKO would be arrested and detained, and virtually all the major actors in the November events would also be harassed, detained, framed, and murdered.
Henceforth the struggle would be waged strenuously and fearlessly on different fronts, in various trenches; increasingly more robustly on the streets inside Nigeria, and on the diplomatic circuit by the exiles.
The rest as they say is now history; we eventually won, a half victory; when by mid 1998 imperialism had to intervene to prevent a radical revolutionary outcome, by taking the two main protagonists [Abacha and MKO] out of the picture, organising their twin murders, and creating what one of NADECO’s leading lights would later on call a ‘Level Playing Field’ from which to resume a less contentious, and therefore less dangerous for Ruling Class interests [both domestic and global], ‘Transition to democracy program’!
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Only recently, the wife of the Kaduna State Deputy Governor, Mrs. Naomi Nuhu Bajoga, abruptly decamped some security operatives attached to her, leaving them to return to the State capital by commercial transportation. In spite of the embarrassment, no report has since emerged as to her being reprimanded by her husband over the incident. But her colleague, the wife of the deputy governor of Cross Rivers was not that lucky as his husband, Mr Efiok Cobham, the Cross River State deputy governor startled his household recently when he commanded his wife, Glory to kneel down and apologize to his protocol officer, Asikpo Okon for allegedly claiming that the protocol officer was in the habit of arranging girls for his boss.

Could this really be the intrigues going on inside the Nigerian Governor's Forum? Is it why they were labelled a trade Union? Your guess is as good as mine but just read this and judge for yourself.