Why Herdsmen-Farmers Clashes Won't End.

Herdsmen-farmers clashes are common all over Africa. Grazing routes inevitably pass through farmlands and there and then there is little the herdsman himself can do to restrain famished animals from lunging into a bite and crops are the usual victims. Droughts and unexpected weather patterns occasioned by global warming have helped to exacerbate the problem of late and for many herdsmen and farmers, the crisis could approach a struggle for life itself. But the problem is especially intractable in Nigeria because of an entirely different reason. Many of the cows, sheep and goats being herded do not belong to the herdsmen themselves. Estimates reveal that a herdsman do not really need more than 20 head of cattle for the upkeep of his family. Wealthy ones among them barely own more than 60 and if you see 300 cows with a herdsman or two, be rest assured he doesn't own more than 25% of the herd. At most. The brutal truth is that cow-rearing is big business in Nigeria. A fair-sized cow costs an average 100,000 naira and just having 10 is big money, at least by Nigerian standards. Hence there is a frenzy to own cows and since it is only the herdsmen that have the expertise of rearing, it makes sense to acquire the animals and keep them with them, eventual proceeds being shared according to a prearranged formula. This business cuts across all strata of the society: the poor who own one or two to the rich who own them in hundreds; Christians or Muslims; military, paramilitary or civillian. A discreet investigation carried out by this forum reveals that during festive periods or seasons where cattle sales are high, it is common to see wealthy individuals in jeeps sneaking under the cover of dusk into herdsmen temporary huts to collect fat wads of notes, being their own share of the sales. In central Nigeria where the crisis rages fiercest, at least 40% of the cattle being reared by herdsmen belong to soldiers, naval officers, air force men and policemen, retired or serving. These are men that will go to any length to protect their investment. They do not think twice before they supply weapons to Fulani militias or militias dressed as Fulani herdsmen, arms which these untrained handlers are liable to use indiscriminately. The central states of Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, Plateau and Taraba have huge military bases and a huge reservoir of serving and retired military personnel and it is a wonder the clashes should persist there. Major mayhem usually breaks out when there is large-scale cattle rustling. All hell is let loose in order to recoup or revenge losses. The recent massacre in the central Plateau State has as part narrative, the rustling of 8 head of cattle belonging to the Archbishop of Jos. It is easy to see why the government is helpless in curtailing the crisis. Those who are to handle the crisis, arrest and disarm the culprits, have the least inclination to do so because the cows at the centre of the problem actually belong to them. And it is difficult blaming them. For some, their cattle investment is all they have in these hard times.

M.K.O.Abiola:Buhari Rights a Wrong.

Righting a wrong is not, often, the same as righting a situation. In most instances, the wrong outlives the situation so long that rectifying it can only be symbolic. Of recent, President Trump issued a pardon to Jack Johnson, the first American heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson happened to be a black but had a white wife and was jailed under the notorious Mann Act forbidding one to transport a woman across state lines for 'immoral' purposes: charges as racially motivated as they can be in that Jim Crow era. That can only happen now in a distressing comedy but over a hundred years ago, such offenses, even though hideously unfair, were serious violations under laws extant then. Now, such pardon cannot undo the term Johnson served in prison but such gestures help put events in the correct perspective and could help prevent a future recurrence.
It is in light of this that we must appreciate and understand the decision of President Muhannadu Buhari to declare June 12 of every year the appropriate time to celebrate democracy in Nigeria. It was on that day in 1993 that Nigerians rose en masse to elect Chief M.K.O.Abiola as president of the country on the platform of the Social Democratic Party in an election widely adjudged to be the freest and fairest in the country up to date. Thereafter, the polls were strangely annulled by the then head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida, under whose tutelage the elections were organized and conducted in the first place: a heinous cancellation that sparked a quickfire series of crises such as the formation of the Interim National Government headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan, soon declared illegal by the courts and in no time toppled by General Sanni Abacha, the de facto military strongman;  the death of Abiola in Abacha's prison as a result of insisting on reclaiming his stolen presidency; the incarceration of General Olusegun Obasanjo for coup plotting; the death of Abacha himself and the restoration of democracy on May 29, 1999.
Officially recognizing Abiola's role in the evolution of democracy and freedom of choice that we now enjoy will not bring him back to life and neither will it even begin to repair the ruin visited on his businesses and large family. The posthumous medal awarded him, Nigeria's highest, will do him little good and will certainly fit poorly on his neck skeleton. Symbolic things do no such things.
But this recognition will help etch vividly on our mind that his struggles helped call time on military misadventures in Africa and went a long way in cementing democracies now entrenching solidly all over the continent. It will also give some joy to those splendid supporters who stood by him till the end. Once again, Buhari makes the right choice.

Ugandan Museum of Evil.

Adolf Hitler.

It is always difficult resisting the urge to quote Pliny the Elder's famous saying that there is always something new out of Africa and once again the ancient wise comes to mind with the decision of the Ugandan government to build a museum to the late, execrable dictator, Idi Amin Dada. According to statements credited to Stephen Asiimwe, Chief Executive of Ugandan Tourism Board, the move is to 'set the records straight'. As if what we know about this monster's nine years reign of terror is not clear and well-documented enough. What records do you still need to clarity for descendants and relatives of the over 400,000 people murdered during his evil regime? Or thousands of Asians who were driven out of the country after their businesses were confiscated? Plunging the once-buoyant economy into instant crisis. Or innocent Israeli air passengers hijacked by Arab terrorists and diverted to Kampala? This sparked Operation Thunderbolt, one of the most audacious and spectacular air assaults in history, a rescue in which Col Yoni Nentayahu, brother of the current Israeli prime minister, was killed during the raid on Entebbe Airport, Kampala. This grim buffoon made himself King of Scotland, Conqueror of the British Empire, among his many comical excesses and deservedly met his Waterloo in an infantile and immature attempt to annex the Kagera region of Tanzania. The well-motivated troops of Julius Nyerere counter-attacked instantly and in record time, captured Kampala. The beast fled to Libya, after writing one of the bloodiest, darkest chapters in world history. The same tourism boss, who could be easily accused of having a reckless way with cliches, without sounding offensive, likens Ugandan history to wine. The older it gets the better, especially with some flavors added. He should just try tipping some hemlock into the cask.
 Stephen Asiimwe and the Ugandan authorities can only succeed in establishing a museum for the sadist, the voyeur, with their plans and it is all parallel with creating a museum for Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and other infamous denizens of history. What are we going to see there? Images of Idi Amin snarling at the governor of the Ugandan Central Bank to simply go and print money after the hapless fellow had told him the government was broke? We might be compelled to treat the whole plan as a joke if not for the curious knowledge that Idi Amin is still considered a Field Marshall in Uganda. The guy is effectively a lieutenant in the British Army and if they still accord him that regard in his country, then we cannot scream loud enough in this outrage. And to compound mischief, they are also planning to dedicate a section to the notorious Lord Resistance Army. Sadists, kidnappers, butchers and child soldiers recruiters. Uganda is very resourceful in manufacturing monsters but, sorry, few of us, very few, are interested in their showcasing.

Idi Amin Dada.

President Pierre "Messi" Nkurunziza.

'There is always something new out of Africa'- Pliny the Elder.
But first let's start with an invention in a place far away from this mostly blighted continent. President Trump in far away America forms a football team. American football or gridiron football so to say and names it The White House Patriots. He spends most of his team moving around with this team and engaging all forms of opposition in football matches, a traveling choir providing the entertainment because the president claims to be an evangelical christian. So no Justin Timberlake or Janet Jackson and all that wardrobe malfunction nonsense, just thumping gospel music in heavy metal mode while the president and his team carry out another sort of thumping on the opposition: always scoring at will, always winning silly, with unbelievable margins. Because the president is not expected to be tackled, or roughened or impeded. If there is going to be any engagement, it would have to be the softest of all touches. In essence it is not supposed to be a contact sport anytime the president is holding the ball. So he makes all the throws, all the catches, all the running, all the touchdowns. He is the quarterback, the halfback, the fullback, the wide receiver rolled into one. And naturally he is the superstar and takes all the plaudits. And why not? He is the president of the United States of America.
That is until he travels to Texas and plays a team made up mostly of refugees being held in camps along the Mexican border. Latinos and blacks, guys being held in concentration camps. Fellows who were not in the happy mode at all. Guys who would like to kick some presidential ass. And which they gleefully did, roughening up the president, sending him tumbling into the dirt several times and getting his jersey torn. Respect my foot!
Naturally, the president is not happy about it, not happy at all and he gets the governor of Texas and his deputy arrested and corralled into a little fetid jail. Crime? Conspiracy against the president of course. You can't arrange a little roughening up of the president in the evening and expect to eat breakfast in your own house the following morning.
A very short, dystopian  story? Sure.
But if you change the settings to Africa, precisely to a nasty corner of it called Burundi, and gridiron football becomes soccer and Trump transforms to President Pierre Nkurunziza and the Texas team is replaced by a group of hungry refugees from Congo, you have the latest comedy from Africa. Nkuruziza runs a football outfit called Haleluya FC and as a self-acclaimed evangelical christian, travels with his own choir called' Komeza gusenga which in the local Kirundi language, means 'pray non-stop.'
A real, real comedy. Dystopian to the ends of nightmare. And not funny at all because the governor of Kiremba region of Burundi where the president was made to 'fall several times and kiss the dust' and his deputy are now in even a dirtier jail for conspiring against and humiliating the president. It is not everyday that Messi has his way. Even Messi of Africa.
What is fiction anywhere else in the world can turn into a nasty, grinding reality in Africa.
Yes, there is always something new out of Africa. And most of it is not always pleasant.

World Wildlife Day: These Cats Don't Even Have A Life.

Few animals in the wild excite us as the great cats: lions tigers, cougars, leopards, cheetahs and so on. We admire them for their beauty, speed, strength, power and predatory instincts. Unfortunately, these admirable attributes are also their greatest undoing. They are the reasons we think claws, teeth and other parts of tigers can boost sexual prowess in China and the skins and bones of cheetahs can be made into charms and amulets that can aid rapid workplace promotion in Nigeria. The human mind thrives on inventiveness and superstition, especially senses not prejudiced by science, which constitute 99% of all perceptions on earth and men can attribute anything to anything. The appeal of big cats was always going to be boundless and with globalization and spread of AK-47s and other assault weapons all over the world, these wonderful creature were going to be under sustained and prolonged siege.
Their numbers are dwindling very fast, especially in Africa where legislation of any kind is very poor and law enforcement is even weaker. In Nigeria, game officials consider bribes from poachers as traditional perks of office. Naturally, they look the other way while these cats are slaughtered in thousands. Leopards, tigers and lions no longer live in the wild in south-western Nigeria and in the savannas of the northern regions where they used to thrive, a single sighting in a month now elicits sustained exclamation.
It is a great step, the decision of the UN to dedicate this year to the great cats. And many admirable measures have been put in place to curb illicit hunting of and criminal trade in these species but the average guy in China with a lot of money and a huge libido is going to need tough convincing that Viagra can as well perform the feat he thinks leopard skin can do. At a far cheaper rate and with less burden of destroying beauty and grace on his conscience. An even greater task is bridging the notorious income gap prevalent all over the world. This is the main combustible ingredient fueling the destruction of the great cats and other fauna. The rich have too much money and the poor have too few and it is easy for the rich to give the poor guns and money to go and kill the big cats for parts that will help flavor their insane, conspicuous consumption. The poor have few other choices anyway. A huge number of families live on poaching in Africa, a dangerous type of living they will easily avoid it the bread-winning males can get jobs that pay as low as $20 in a month. Creating jobs will go a long way in creating future safe havens for our great cats.

The Curse of Liberators.

All countries on earth, without a single exception, have been under one sort of occupation or the other before attaining their present sovereign/independent status. Either the occupiers were foreigners, or were native rulers who had visited so much toil, ruin, suffering and unease on their own people that they soon grew to become horrid, repulsive aliens.In both cases, they had to be driven out by largely peaceful but intense political pressure- India, Nigeria, Ghana- or by violent insurrection, uprising: Russia, China, the US, Zimbabwe, South Africa.
But it is expedient to look into recent political history to understand better a scourge that is just becoming well-defined but which has always ravaged, on all fours, polities as diverse as Liberia and Ukraine. We have all heard of the curse of resources in Nigeria and Congo, yet it is the same African continent that has seen the worst of the curse of the freedom fighter, a pestilence that ate its cancer so unobtrusively into the social, political and economic fabric of the countries under its invasion that it is only now the full extent of the hideous damage it had wrought is being fully felt. Yes, we are talking about ANC, ZANU-PF, FLN, to mention a few of the insurgent groups that played a key role in the decolonization or, to use a more glamorous term, liberation of Africa. But we are not talking about the copious atrocities they too committed even on their own populations while driving away the much-hated, arrogant foreigners: excesses that have been poorly recorded, acknowledged, Excesses that were even celebrated in the euphoria of grand heroism. What eventually mattered was what they did with the power they wrestled from the terrible occupiers. The present scourge in Zimbabwe did not start with the British, it started when that hero of liberation, Mugabe, started entrenching himself as a long-term dictator: too long for his own good or for the good of his country. It was a common plague in Africa. Hardly had the colonial masters left when they were supplanted by the torrid dictatorships of Gaddafi, Siaka Stevens, Sekou Toure, Dauda Jawara; freedom fighters and independence heroes of yesteryears. It could be argued that similar outcomes unraveled in Russia, China, Vietnam, but rickety republics like Nigeria Liberia, Burundi had no technological prowess, economic resilience or organizational acumen to paper over the defaults and in many cases of these African countries, fresh political upheavals such as coups and  mass rebellions had to inevitably erupt  to resolve some of the scourge. Often unsatisfactorily. The victims have been social, political and economic progress. The symptoms have been appalling poverty, telling political repression and a wave of migration most of which end up in the watery graves of the Mediterranean.
Authoritarian regimes or lines of party succession that were as far from democracy as Timbuktu is far from Toronto and likely to throw up characters as outlandish as Jacob Zuma. Succession that implied George Washington telling Americans: "Hi folks! We did well to secure your freedom from the infernal Brits and it is legit if your leaders till eternity come out of a line anchored on me, or my comrades." It wouldn't be monarchy, but certain blood must prevail.
The blood is increasingly going under the microscope and folks must necessarily turn to China, a country whose influence is growing very powerfully in Africa and whose leaders have become very adept at tweaking the line. In Zimbabwe, the military had to step in to effect a mini purge, before Grace Mugabe got too powerful, a situation that looked like a perfect recreation of the Gang of Four conundrum after the death of Chairman Mao. And still borrowing from China, the ANC has done very well to ease out Zuma. Jacob Zuma is actually a likeable guy but the controversies surrounding him were getting a bit tiring and he could have been more careful of his association with the Guptas. As shopkeepers or as managers of big enterprises, Indians have a business reputation a bit on the unsavory side in Africa. Of course nothing really has been proven yet. It might even have been a myth made popular by the infamous Idi Amin but Zuma should have realized his hobnobbing with the Guptas was going to profit him little.
He had to go. Not for his own good but for the continued good of the ANC. Cyril Ramaphosa has his work cut out and perhaps our Zuma would have more time to perfect his celebrated recipe for AIDS cure.

Trump, Immigration and Walls.

President Donald Trump like his things big and bright, a one off image that catches on all fours and swamps everything else. Hence everywhere you go in his immigration policy, the wall looms large. If he's trying to erect a fence to keep out immigrants along the border with Mexico, why should the whole project borrow a controversy from the horribly contentious Dreamers' Project? Not by any stretch of imagination are the two related.
But he knows the immigration conundrum will not just go away with erecting a wall. It is too complex for that project no matter how big it is. He has to back to the roots of the problem, which are as spreading and diverse as the roots of the West African red mangrove. He would need to start from Africa, a shithole as shitty as they come. Poverty is simply grinding; the leaders who run the shitholes are too powerful and helpless folks do the only thing they can: risk the horribly dangerous journey across Sahara Desert and then cross the Mediterranean Sea in any boat they can find to Europe. It is not foolhardiness. It is desperate survival. America is lucky, so to say. The Atlantic Ocean is a much larger divide than the Med and Africa versions of Vietnamese boat people are not going to be a sight soon. From Africa and Europe, some migrants will find their to Mexico, to Trump's wall but whether it will be an unbreachable obstacle remains to be seen. If the Berlin Wall could not could not keep folks from bursting out from behind the Iron Curtain, I don't see how a wall  in sections of the infernally long Mexican border will be a greater obstacle to those who have crossed the Sahara and the Med. In an age where human desperation and ingenuity are increasing by leaps and bonds.
A Harvard professor was in Nigeria recently and he did see people virtually boiling leaves for food. Which is just a very tiny, tiny fraction of the gory picture. Millions are surviving on less. Mr Trump could be at the forefront of the fight against those who steal money meant for food and stash them away in other countries. He could impose severe sanctions on countries that readily accept and hoard such loot. The Oghara Independent Power Project, a Ponzi Scheme organized by the Delta state government of Nigeria, led to the bleeding of 25 billion naira from the state coffers. Many officials simply shared the money, closed shop and relocated to the US, leaving millions of people in the impoverished region to a fate of hunger and malnutrition. Trump could ask serious questions of folks like that. Britain is already asking investors to explain sources of their wealth. Such proactive steps will not me unnecessary meddling; it could help a lot of folks in Africa and Asia become a bit contended and save the money meant for building the wall for other pressing needs.