₦airaland Forum

It is happening all over again. History is repeating itself and, alas, within such an agonizingly short span of time. How often must we warn against the enervating lure of appeasement in face of aggression and will to dominate! I do not hesitate to draw attention to Volume III of my INTERVENTION Series, and to the chapter on The Unappeasable Price of Appeasement. There is little to add, but it does appear that even the tragically fulfilled warnings of the past leave no impression on leadership, not even when identical signs of impending cardiac arrest loom over the nation. Boko Haram was still at that stage of putative probes when cries of alarm emerged. Then the fashion ideologues of society deployed their distancing turns of phrase to rationalize what were so obviously discernable as an agenda of ruthless fundamentalism and internal domination. Boko Haram was a product of social inequities, they preached – one even chortled: We stand for justice, so we are all Boko Haram! We warned that – yes indeed – the inequities of society were indeed part of the story, but why do you close your eyes against other, and more critical malfunctions of the human mind, such as theocratic lunacy? Now it is happening again. The nation is being smothered in Vaseline when the diagnosis is so clearly – cancer!

We have been here before – now, ‘before’ is back with a vengeance. President Goodluck Jonathan refused to accept that marauders had carried off the nation’s daughters; President Muhammed Buhari and his government – including his Inspector-General of Police - in near identical denial, appear to believe those killer herdsmen who strike again and again at will from one corner of the nation to the other, are merely hot-tempered citizens whose scraps occasionally degenerate into “communal clashes” – I believe I have summarized him accurately. The marauders are naughty children who can be admonished, paternalistically, into good neighbourly conduct. Sometimes of course, the killers were also said be non-Nigerians after all. The contradictions are mind-boggling. Wole Soyinka Victor Dlamini

First the active policy of appeasement, then the language of endorsement. El Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, proudly announced that, on assuming office, he had raised a peace committee and successfully traced the herdsmen to locations outside Nigerian borders. He then made payments to them from state coffers to cure them of their homicidal urge which, according to these herdsmen, were reprisals for some ancient history and the loss of cattle through rustling. The public was up in arms against this astonishing revelation. I could only call to mind a statement by the same El Rufai after a prior election which led to a rampage in parts of the nation, and cost even the lives of National Youth Service corpers. They were hunted down by aggrieved mobs and even states had to organize rescue missions for their citizens. Countering protests that the nation owed a special duty of protection to her youth, especially those who are co-opted to serve the nation in any capacity, El Rufai’s comment then was: No life is more important than another. Today, that statement needs to be adjusted, to read perhaps – apologies to George Orwell: “All lives are equal, but a cow’s is more equal than others.”

This seems to be the government view, one that, overtly or by implication, is being amplified through act and pronouncement, through clamorous absence, by this administration. It appears to have infected even my good friend and highly capable Minister, Audu Ogbeh, however insidiously. What else does one make of his statements in an interview where he generously lays the blame for ongoing killings everywhere but at the feet of the actual perpetrators! His words, as carried by The Nation Newspapers:

“The inability of the government to pay attention to herdsmen and cow farming, unlike other developed countries, contributed to the killings.” The Minister continued:

“Over the years, we have not done much to look seriously into the issue of livestock development in the country….we may have done enough for the rice farmer, the cassava farmer, the maize farmer, the cocoa farmer, but we haven’t done enough for herdsmen, and that inability and omission on our part is resulting in the crisis we are witnessing today”

No, no, not so, Audu! It is true that I called upon the government a week ago to stop passing the buck over the petroleum situation. I assure you however that I never intended that a reverse policy should lead to exonerating – or appearing to exonerate – mass killers, rapists and economic saboteurs – saboteurs, since their conduct subverts the efforts of others to economically secure their own existence, drives other producers off their land in fear and terror. This promises the same plague of starvation that afflicts zones of conflict all over this continent where liberally sown landmines prevent farmers from venturing near their prime source, the farm, often their only source of livelihood, and has created a whole population of amputees. At least, those victims in Angola, Mozambique and other former war theatres, mostly lived to tell the tale. These herdsmen, arrogant and unconscionable, have adopted a scorched-earth policy, so that those other producers – the cassava, cocoa, sorghum, rice etc farmers are brutally expelled from farm and dwelling.

Government neglect? You may not have intended it, but you made it sound like the full story. I applaud the plans of your ministry, I am in a position to know that much thought – and practical steps – have gone into long-term plans for bringing about the creation of ‘ranches’, ‘colonies’ – whatever the name – including the special cultivation of fodder for animal feed and so on and on. However, the present national outrage is over impunity. It rejects the right of any set of people, for whatever reason, to take arms against their fellow men and women, to acknowledge their exploits in boastful and justifying accents and, in effect, promise more of the same as long as their terms and demands are not met. In plain language, they have declared war against the nation, and their weapon is an undiluted terror. Why have they been permitted to become a menace to the rest of us? That is the issue!

Permit me to remind you that, early in 2016, an even more hideous massacre was perpetrated by this same Murder Incorporated – that is, a numerical climax to what had been a series across a number of Middle Belt and neighbouring states, with Benue taking the brunt of the butchery. A peace meeting was called, attended by the state government and security agencies of the nation, including the Inspector General of Police. This group attended – according to reports - with AK47s and other weapons of mass intimidation visible under their garments. They were neither disarmed nor turned back. They freely admitted the killings but justified them by claims that they had lost their cattle to the host community. It is important to emphasize that none of their spokesmen referred to any government neglect, such as refusal to pay subsidy for their cows or failure to accord them the same facilities that had been extended to cassava or millet farmers. Such are the monstrous beginnings of the culture of impunity. We are reaping, yet again, the consequences of such tolerance of the intolerable. Yes, there indeed the government is culpable, definitely guilty of “looking the other way”. Indeed, it must be held complicit.

This question is now current, and justified: just when is terror? I am not aware that IPOB came anywhere close to this homicidal propensity and will to dominance before it was declared a terrorist organization. The international community rightly refused to go along with such an absurdity. For the avoidance of doubt, let me state right here, and yet again, that IPOB leadership is its own worst enemy. It repels public empathy, indeed, I suspect that it deliberately cultivates an obnoxious image, especially among its internet mouthers who make rational discourse impossible. However, as we pointed out at the time, the conduct of that movement, even at its most extreme, could by no means be reckoned as terrorism. By contrast, how do we categorize Myeti? How do we assess a mental state that cannot distinguish between a stolen cow – which is always recoverable – and human life, which is not. Villages have been depopulated far wider than those outside their operational zones can conceive. They swoop on sleeping settlements, kill and strut. They glory in their seeming supremacy. Cocoa farmers do not kill when there is a cocoa blight. Rice farmers, cassava and tomato farmers do not burn. The herdsmen cynically dredge up decades-old affronts – they did at the 2016 Benue “peace meeting” to justify the killings of innocents in the present - These crimes are treated like the norm. Once again, the nation is being massaged by specious rationalisations while the rampage intensifies and the spread spirals out of control. When we open the dailies tomorrow morning, there is certain to have been a new body count, to be followed by the arrogant justification of the Myeti Allah.

The warnings pile up, the distress signals have turned into a prolonged howl of despair and rage. The answer is not to be found in pietistic appeals to victims to avoid ‘hate language’ and divisive attributions. The sustained, killing monologue of the herdsmen is what is at issue. It must be curbed, decisively and without further evasiveness.

Yes, Jonathan only saw ‘ghosts’ when Boko Haram was already excising swathes of territory from the nation space and abducting school pupils. The ghosts of Jonathan seem poised to haunt the tenure of Mohammed Buhari.

On Thursday, President Muhammadu Buhari was in Kaduna state to inaugurate new coaches and locomotives for the Abuja-Kaduna train service.

The president, after the inauguration, took a train ride from Rigasa to Kakuri on the outskirts of Kaduna to inaugurate Nigeria’s first inland dry port.

Commenting via Twitter, Ben Murray Bruce, senator representing Bayelsa east, asked Buhari to thank ex-President Goodluck Jonathan for availing him the opportunity to ride on the train.

Bruce said the rail system in question was “entirely” Jonathan’s achievement.

But Nasir el-Rufai, Kaduna state governor, replied Bruce, saying the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo – “which Jonathan was not part of” – initiated and raised funds for the project.

But Bruce stood his ground, challenging el-Rufai to a public debate on the issue.

In August 2017, a similar controversy had risen as to who approved the rail lines from Kano to Daura and Jibia local government areas of Katsina.

Just like the Daura-Jibia, Kano-Lagos rail lines, the Abuja-Kaduna is not a new initiative. It is in a plan approved by Jonathan, which Buhari is now implementing.

So, whose project is really the Abuja-Kaduna railway system?
FACT 1: OBASANJO CONCEIVED THE PROJECT

On October 9, 2006, Obasanjo said “no nation has achieved holistic development without a coherent, integrated, efficient and reliable transportation system” while setting out his vision for the revitalisation of Nigeria’s 3500km rail network.

The grand plan is summed as the Lagos-Kano standard gauge modernisation project. The contract was awarded to China Civil Engineering and Construction Co (CCECC), for $8.3bn, to be funded with a soft loan of from China.

However, due to funding problems, it was later redesigned to be executed in standalone segments and the existing 1,124km narrow gauge Lagos-Kano line was rehabilitated.

Bruce says Jonathan deserves the ‘entire’ credit

The Abuja-Kaduna segment is the first to be implemented as part of the standard gauge project.

Obasanjo added that a new line would be built for 100km from Minna to Abuja, continuing for 205km beyond the capital to Kaduna. He also said phase II would see reconstruction of the Port Harcourt-Jos route.

The agreement with CCECC was done that month.
FACT 2: YAR’ADUA STALLED IT

However, in November 2007, the Yar’Adua administration stopped the project due to “paucity of fund”.

Diezani Alison-Madueke, then minister of transportation, announced that the programme was “posing challenges to the current administration”.

The intention to source funding from the country’s excess crude account had “constitutional limitations”, she said, and an anticipated $1.28bn loan from China “crashed for a number of reasons”.

Yar’Adua was worried that the first payments were made without appropriation and there was no engineering design in place, according to a senior official in his administration who spoke with TheCable off-record.

El-Rufai says it was Obasanjo’s idea

“Yar’Adua insisted that the proper thing must be done, and even invited the respected geographer and urban planning expert, Professor Akin Mabogunje, to a meeting to discuss how the entire rail system could be modernised,” the former official said.

The Abuja-Kaduna project was then finalised in 2009. The contract for building the new line was awarded in December 2010.

Yar’Adua was in power then, even though he was battling health issues, and Jonathan was his deputy.
FACT 3: JONATHAN STARTED THE PROJECT

According to Railway Technology, the construction of the Abuja-Kaduna rail line started in February 2011 and was completed in December 2014.

Jonathan was acting president from February to May 2010 and president from May 2010 to May 2015.

The Abuja-Kaduna segment is the first to be implemented as part of the Lagos-Kano standard gauge project under the first standard gauge railway modernisation projects (SGRMP) in Nigeria.

In October 2014, the federal executive council (FEC) approved $6.6 million for the procurement of two locomotives for the Abuja- Kaduna rail.

After Jonathan assumed power upon winning the 2011 presidential election, he initiated the high-speed rail project.

In 2014, it was rated by KPMG, one of the leading consulting firms in the world, to be among the global top 100 world-class infrastructure projects.

The rail will connect Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Warri, Bauchi, Abuja, and Port Harcourt and will cost the country $13 billion, much of which will be financed with a loan from the Export Import Bank of China.

The China Railway Construction Corporation secured the contract to build the 3,218km network, which will be digitally operated using fibre-optic cables, radio communication and wireless services.

The project is designed to cover 54 stations and will take 25 years to build.
FACT 4: BUHARI IS COMPLETING THE PROJECT

The Jonathan administration could not have lasted 25 years, given Nigeria’s four-year term for presidency. At most, he might have won his 2015 re-election bid and would have spent nine years in power.

As government is a continuum, the project did not fade with the end of his tenure. Buhari took over and is finishing what Jonathan started.

The 187 km standard gauge line between Kaduna and Abuja was inaugurated by Buhari on July 26, 2016, with standard gauge railway tracks from Idu, near Abuja, to Kaduna in the north-western region of Nigeria.

It has ten stations and features both passenger and cargo trains.

Senate President Bukola Saraki had said the launch is “indeed an epoch-making event as it pushes Nigeria closer to achieving economic diversification by bridging the gaps in our nation’s infrastructure”.

And upon the completion of the rail line, Buhari travelled to Kaduna to inaugurate it.

The inauguration is no longer within the powers of Obasanjo and Jonathan, even though they had worked on the project before Buhari.
THE ABUJA LIGHT RAIL VS THE ABUJA-KADUNA RAIL SYSTEM

With nine intermediate stations, the Abuja-Kaduna trains run at a maximum speed of 100 km/h. At its southern end, the line terminates at Idu, about 20km from central Abuja, where there will be an interchange with the Abuja light rail, a 78km intra-city rail line.

The Abuja light rail is a different project from the Abuja-Kaduna rail line, but still part of the grand plan birthed by the Obasanjo-led administration.

While the Abuja-Kaduna rail line will connect Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Warri, Bauchi, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, the Abuja light rain will run only within the capital city.

The first phase of the Abuja light rail project will connect the city centre to Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, stopping at the standard gauge railway station in Idu.

The project was 90 percent complete as of March 2017 and was supposed to be launched in December of the same year.
CONCLUSION

When the roads of three streets merge to form a crossroad, the meeting point belongs to all of the streets or none of them. Such is the case with the Abuja-Kaduna rail system.

However, Jonathan did the major part of the work and deserves a bigger chunk of the cake of acknowledgement. If he had not pursued the project, maybe Buhari would not have had to complete it.

deji17:
Govt provides the enabling environment for private businesses like that of Dangote and Flour Mills (the big users of the road) to thrive.
Moreover, FG provided the cost for the design, estimate and supervision for the project.
If the FG input on these projects were that easy to figure out and achieve, I believe that the previous vision less and wasteful Govt might have achieved the same feet.
Give honour to whom its due. Buhari is providing the right kind of leadership that is leading to the delivery of project like this...

ProWalker:
At a cost to FG...not for free.

NgeneUkwenu:
This PDP spokesman throws tantrums like a kid...No substance in his endless press releases..

Perhaps he is trying too hard to impress Wike and Fayose.

Shameless beings..

imhotep:
the truth is coming out about AP-Cheat

dunkem21:
That was how they posted pictures of Reinhard Bonke crusade