A new twist was introduced into the Ibadan explosion of 16 January, 2024 by the Yoruba Self-Determination Movement (YSDM) when it alleged that the explosion was not caused by any errant legal or illegal miner, be it Malian or Nigerian, but that it was a failed assassination attempt on the life of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Led by Prof. Banji Akintoye, YSDM is a pro-Yoruba or Oodua Nation nationalist group. In an open letter to Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, it commiserated with the governor and people of Oyo State over the gruesome incident but also commented on what many have described as Makinde’s hasty conclusion that mining explosives, stored in a private home in a thickly populated residential area, was the cause of the explosion that was directly responsible for the death of seven people, with close to a hundred others wounded, and causing extensive damage to properties worth billions of Naira.

Said YSDM: “One group of our Yoruba patriots has suggested that the explosion was caused by a big military-grade bomb; that the bomb seems to have been brought to Ibadan for use to wipe out a large number of leading Yoruba citizens gathered at a large celebration in the International Hall, University of Ibadan, at which President Tinubu was scheduled to be present; and that when President Tinubu did not attend, the owners of the bomb took it back to an inappropriate storage in a living house in nearby Bodija Estate, where some sort of mishandling caused it to detonate…” This allegation is weighty and could not have been lightly made by an organization of YSDM’s stature or pedigree, which is the foremost assemblage of Yoruba self-determination protagonists. Akintoye himself is a scholar of international repute and a leading figure in the Yoruba socio-cultural-cum political organization, AFENIFERE.

It is instructive that neither Makinde nor the Federal Government has responded openly to YSDM’s allegation. The relevant agencies must still be investigating the matter. Could the allegation be true or is it a mere crying wolf? Hopefully, when the investigation is done with, the authorities will let us know. For sure, this incident is not one that should be swept under the carpet, not in view of other circumstances surrounding it, apart from the alleged threat on the president’s life. Remember, it was in this same city of Ibadan that the masterminds of the July 1966 counter-coup cornered and killed Nigeria’s first military Head of State, Gen. JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi, and his host, the Western Region governor, Col. Francis Adekunle Fajuyi. The events that followed led to a 30-month civil war. Can Nigeria afford another civil war?

Before arriving at its conclusion that the Ibadan explosion was an assassination attempt on Tinubu’s life, the YSDM laid the foundation as follows: “Those among us who are knowledgeable about explosives say that this explosion is not consistent with an explosion caused by a miner’s store of dynamites. They say that a miner’s dynamite can only be stored as packages in boxes and bags, and that a mishap with the contents of the storage can only set up a series of explosions lasting for some minutes, and cannot set up one mighty explosion that does all the terror and destruction (that took place at Ibadan)”.

Continuing, the YSDM told Makinde: “It does not sound plausible, Your Excellency, that any master miner would store a large quantity of dynamites of his profession in his home or bedroom. Furthermore, and very importantly, what do our Oyo State Government and people know about this miner who is said to be from Mali Republic, who does considerable mining on our land with a Federal Government licence, who pays business taxes to the Federal Government only, and who, according to some of our people who have had contacts with him before, desires no contact with the Oyo State Government or the local government of his place of residence?”

Not done yet, the YSDM argued: “And still further, Your Excellency, it is very well known that Dejo Oyelese Street, off Adeyi avenue, where the explosion happened, is one of the choicest parts of Bodija Estate, containing the homes of many prominent Yoruba persons – professors (retired and serving), highly-placed professionals, retired governors, retired senior civil servants, etc. – whose houses have now been destroyed. Does the importance of Dejo Oyelese Street have anything to do with this explosion? In other words, was the explosion meant to eliminate many important Yoruba citizens at one blast, with the purpose of seriously hurting the Yoruba nation? Is this (explosion) some sort of threat to us Yoruba people in Nigeria?”

Questions, questions, and questions but will the appropriate answers ever come other than those meant to sweep this matter under the carpets, like the others before it? The reason being that the authorities themselves are complicit in the criminal activities taking place all over the place. Where they are not criminally negligent, they are hands-in-gloves with the perpetrators of all sorts of criminal activities that hurt the people they are elected into office to serve and whose interests they swore on oath to protect and advance. Can our political leaders and top traditional rulers claim ignorance of both legal and illegal mining activities taking place in their domain? Where they and/or their cronies are not directly involved in these activities that destroy our environment and benefit the people, the communities and the government itself nothing, are they not in cahoots with those that do? Why is it that our governments cannot take these licences and partner with professional miners openly and transparently to mine our God-endowed mineral resources to our benefit? Why are aliens the ones carting away our resources before our very eyes? They feign it but can any of our governors in all honesty claim not to be aware of the rip-off going on? Are our leaders not part of the racket?

In the final analysis, nothing is hidden. There are no selfish and/or corrupt activities that anyone engages in that is hidden. Afterall, they have accomplices-in-crime. They have foot soldiers running their dirty errands for them. I will give a few examples. Why are they not allowing DAWN – Development Agenda for Western Nigeria – to function properly? Why the lack of synergy among them for the rapid development of the South-west? Why is everyone more concerned with the “development” of their individual pockets?  Why are we not properly funding Amotekun? With all the criminality being unleashed on Yoruba land today, why is securing the life and property of the people not a priority? Why do our leaders maintain criminal silence or speak tongue-in-cheek when they should have spoken out forcefully in defence of their people? I started my journalism profession at the Ibadan-based Sketch newspapers in 1985 but where is Sketch today? Why did our governors of the time allow it to die? From what we heard, when those who wanted to buy and convert it into their personal property failed in their bid, they let the newspaper die! The Yoruba used to be the doyen of the media; no more!

If you give ideas that can benefit the people to our leaders to execute, they always look for avenues to appropriate and corner it for themselves. Examples are legion. Ask our young men and women churning out proposals after proposals, they have stories of woes to tell. I, too, suffered such in the past. Ask our professionals in the Diaspora bristling with ideas and who, being patriotic enough, came home to sell their ideas to our leaders; they will regal you with stories of betrayal and selfishness. Ask our leaders what happened to Odua Net (O’Net). If you fling open the closets of our leaders, serving or retired, dead or alive, you will cry for Yoruba land. It is said that the enemy within throws the door open for the enemy without. I don’t know if I can make any exceptions, but if you can, please do! It is time we began to hold the feet of our leaders to the fire. What are they doing with the humongous amount they collect monthly from Abuja? What are they doing with their security votes that secure nothing? Why are the Yoruba regressing on all the fronts where they used to occupy the commanding heights – the professions, education, industries, name it! We have seen Dangote refinery; we have seen the BUA and Dangote cement factories; we have seen Ibom Air, among many others; let our leaders tell us the industries they, too, have established.

Having said all of the above, it does not in any way exonerate Miyetti and kidnappers from censure for their renewed criminality. I said somewhere else that I have removed “Allah” from Miyetti’s name because there is nothing godly in them and their activities. Now, why is Miyetti demanding that no Fulani should be arrested over the Ibadan explosion? What does Miyetti know about the explosion? If there was no Fulani involvement, why threaten the government not to arrest any Fulani over it? And if involved, why should any criminal be shielded by anyone, except like-minded criminals? Miyetti’s latest antics include the brazen setting up of an armed-to-the-teeth Fulani militia, whereas Amotekun and other para-military groups elsewhere were denied sophisticated arms. Not only that, they have begun hurling attacks at the Tinubu administration, threatening to make the country ungovernable for him and inhospitable for the generality of Nigerians.

In a statement issued on January 24, 2024, Miyetti virtually declared war on the country; that is treason. Not only its leaders but also all its militia members must be brought to book. Miyetti’s declaration of what it called “inevitable jihad” against Nigeria is a criminal act and the days of treating these criminals with kid gloves, which has emboldened them, must now come to an end. Fortunately, their grand patron is no longer in office. The new sheriff in town must act swiftly, firmly, and decisively if this country is to continue to hold together.

Now, the danger in Miyetti’s declaration of war on all Nigerians who do not subscribe to their hideous ideology is that they gave only two options: Either we succumb and become slaves to Miyetti or we pick up the gauntlet and fight to defend ourselves, our territories, our liberties and freedom. Unfortunately, I have not heard much condemnation of Miyetti from the North’s leaders and establishment. Does it mean that Miyetti has their back? Is Miyetti merely running errands? If the feudal North will not call its bad boys to order, then, bad boys from other parts of the land will rise and confront them. And their own leaders, too, will back them up. That appears to be the tone of a statement by the YSDM denouncing what it described as “the Fulani declared war on Yoruba Nation”. Reeling off case after case of embarrassing killing of traditional rulers and other citizens, and the kidnapping of school children in Yoruba land, the YSDM vowed that the Yoruba would defend themselves.

The die is cast! Before the vultures begin to swirl, we must act fast!

It is becoming increasingly dangerous to be poor. Don’t believe the yarn that all men are equal. Is the man eking out a living on a tired patch of earth on the desert fringes of Katsina equal to his compatriot luxuriating in the cosy embrace of Abuja without a visible means of livelihood?
The law behaves like society, too. There is one law for the rich and another set for the poor. Nowhere is this more apparent than in contemporary Nigeria where people are being made to feel that it is a crime to be poor. If being poor is a crime, imagine what now happens to a poor man found committing an offence.
One can argue that there are poor people all over the world and that no human society has yet succeeded in getting rid of relative poverty among its populace. But what would be the justification for having different scales for measuring the same infractions from the rich as against the poor?

POOR MAN’S BURDEN
Look at the case of 30-year-old Citizen Mande Zaki of Kuta, Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State, who was recently sentenced to a two-year jail term for stealing a tuber of yam. He was, in addition, ordered to pay a fine of N1,000 for trespass. Zaki had spent some time in prison awaiting trial. It seemed luck was finally on his side when the Niger State Chief Judge, Justice Halima Ibrahim Abdulmalik embarked on a prison decongestion visit to correctional centres in the state.
When asked if he actually stole the yam, he confessed that hunger had driven him to do it: “It is true that I stole a tuber of yam because I was very hungry. I was in search of my goat and I entered the farm. This is the first time I am getting involved in this kind of problem. I have never stolen anything before. I was hungry and this pushed me to steal the yam, please have mercy on me.”
The “mercy” that the law would have on him was a sentence of two years in the slammer. On the instruction of the chief judge, the chief magistrate summarily tried and convicted him.
In a society where all men are supposedly equal before the law, it is difficult to reconcile the fate of Citizen Zaki with that of his ‘fellow countryman’, John Yakubu Yusuf, a former assistant director in the federal civil service, who was tried on a 20-count charge alongside his Permanent Secretary, Atiku Abubakar Kigo; a director, Ahmed Inuwa Wada; a cashier, Veronica Onyegbula; and an ICT officer, Sani Habila Zira.
Mr Yusuf had pleaded guilty to counts 19 and 20 involving betrayal of trust and the conversion of N1 billion on each count, to personal use. In a country where a man could be sentenced to jail for two years on account of stealing a tuber of yam, the maximum penalty for the offence of stealing N2 billion pensioners’ funds is two years!
After the theatrics of appearing stern, the judge of the Federal Capital Territory High Court, Gudu, Abubakar Talba, pronounced the two-year jail sentence with a N250,000 option of fine. The convict is to forfeit a property valued at N325 million traced to him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

ONE COUNTRY, TWO LAWS
So, there you have it: One Nigerian goes to jail for two years for stealing a tuber of yam while another convicted of stealing N2 billion pays a fine of N250,000, forfeits a property of N325 million and goes home a free man to enjoy the rest of his loot. Most Nigerians can’t wrap their heads around such one-handed notion of justice where everything is loaded against the poor.
It can’t be a coincidence that the elite of the society constitute the legislature at every level of governance. So, they make laws that favour the rich or the politically connected. In addition, it is increasingly becoming obvious that many of the judges currently in service are spouses, children or close relatives of politically exposed persons. Between these two, the eminent thief is assured of soft landing whenever the law decides to use him as a token sacrifice to assure the public that a slap on the rich man’s wrist is the very equivalent of justice.

The morale? Before you decide to steal, ensure that the sum is big enough to enable you hire a senior advocate, grease the judicial path and still have enough to live happily ever after. The gallows and swords of amputation are reserved for petty thieves. Remember the case of Bello Buba Jangebe of Sharia-compliant Zamfara State whose hand was amputated in 2000 for stealing a cow?

It is as if we are a society of ‘one day, one trouble’. When there seems to be no trouble, or when everywhere seems at peace, some demons are activated to rouse us from our complacent reverie. Kidnapping for ransom was becoming so commonplace that it wasn’t really making the front pages again unless some touch of bestiality or savagery is involved. Then we are all roused. Dr. Tai Solarin warned us decades ago that we must always decry and rise against every crime and that every death mattered. According to him, one of the worst things that could happen to the society was unshockability— when frequency of occurrence numbs your sensibility.

BEYOND SHOCK
So, kidnappers roused us from our sleep with the recent killing of Nabeeha Al-Kadriyar to force the family to pay ransom. Then news came from Ekiti State that kidnappers had killed two traditional rulers in a failed kidnap attempt. The Elesun of Esun-Ekiti, Oba David Babatunde Ogunsakin, and the Onimojo of Imojo-Ekiti, Oba Olatunde Samuel Olushola, were killed by the gunmen while the Alara of Ara-Ekiti, Oba Adebayo Fatoba, escaped. It has since been revealed that Oba Olatunde Olusola of Imojo-Ekiti was on track to becoming a professor within a year before his untimely death.
And perchance we still were not bestirred enough by the sacrilege of spilling royal blood in such gruesome circumstances, another band of kidnappers on the same day abducted five school children of Apostolic Faith Group of Schools, Emure Ekiti, from their school bus together with some staff of the school.
The principal of the school related how the bandits were playing psychological games with the family of the hostages: “The kidnappers have started to maltreat the abductees … They called the parents of the pupils who were abducted and the husband of one of the women. We were told that during their calls, they heard how they were flogging the children and the way they were crying to call the attention of the parents…”
Imagine torturing children to force their parents to find, by whatever means, millions of Naira to satiate the satanic lust for money by common criminals!

And in neighbouring Kwara State, the police command confirmed the gruesome killing of a traditional ruler in the state, Oba Peter Aremu, the Onikoro of Koro-Ekiti in Ekiti Local Government Area. The police disclosed that, “The gunmen invaded the residence of the traditional ruler in the evening and killed him and went away with his wife”.
It seems that criminals are finally levelling the field of victimhood. No matter the status, tribe, age, and gender of the abductee, we are all potential hostages under enforced equality and foreboding hopelessness in this vast forest of a thousand demons.
Until we establish state and local government constabulary to augment this unitary police force pretending to be on top of the security situation, it is clear that this will not be the last report on the scourge of kidnappings ravaging the 36 states of Nigeria. The choice is ours.

The searing torment that everyday folks are going through in Nigeria right now is so dire, so unbearably extreme, and so unexampled in its rawness that even diasporan Nigerians like me who live tens of thousands of miles away from home can feel it not just vicariously but also experientially.

The unending streams of requests for help to meet the most basic obligations of life that we get from previously proud, resourceful, and self-sufficient family members, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers are the conduits through which we have experiential encounters with the ongoing cost-of-living turmoil in the country.

The lower classes are sinking deeper into soul-depressing depths of poverty, despair, and hopelessness, and the middle class is so hobbled by the economic crunch that it is disappearing faster than soap bubbles. The lower and the middle classes are now united by a common sensation of emptiness, agony, and anxiety for the future.

Every day is worse, less hopeful, and more precarious than the previous day for most Nigerians. Even hope, which French philosopher François de La Rochefoucauld assured us is the last thing that dies in humans, is desperately going into a death spiral. That’s an ominous signal President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would do well to not take lightly.

Nigeria is famous for its superabundant supply of self-regenerating hope, even in the midst of the most nerve-racking existential strain. You know you’re dealing with a potentially explosive social rupture when hope is grasping for breath among people who are famed for feasting on hope.

The current state of affairs isn’t unavoidable. It’s the predictable consequence of the pig-headed pursuit of a ruinous policy of subsidy removal from petrol, the lifeblood of Nigeria. I sounded an early warning about this a month before Tinubu was inaugurated.

In my April 29, 2023 column titled “Six Agenda Items for Tinubu’s Success,” I specifically warned Tinubu to resist the neoliberal anti-subsidy seduction of Western financial institutions, which they have successfully brainwashed Nigerian economists and civil society members into not just accepting but also aggressively evangelizing.

I wrote: “I know that there is now an artfully manufactured consent, particularly among the gilded classes in Nigeria, about the undesirability of ‘fuel subsidy.’ I don’t care what it’s called, but any policy (call it deregulation, subsidy removal, appropriate pricing, etc.) that results in an arbitrary and unbearable hike in the price of petrol without a corresponding increase in the salaries of workers and an improvement in the living conditions of everyday people will sink Tinubu.”

I concluded: “I can assure Tinubu that if petrol price hikes deepen people’s misery, he’ll have a tough time governing.”

The dramatic spikes we have seen in abductions for ransom all over the country are attributable to the rising tide of unheard-of deprivation that the removal of petrol subsidies has activated. And that’s just one auxiliary after-effect of the removal of petrol subsidies without a cushion or an alternative.

Other after-effects are the total collapse of the informal sector and what remained of Nigeria’s manufacturing sector. It also instigated the unprecedentedly hyper-inflationary pressures that are being exerted on the economy. Prices of basic goods and services and even of medications for common illnesses are now beyond the reach of people. That’s an unsustainable magnitude of agony.

But it was always obvious to anyone with even a halfway functioning brain that removing petrol subsidies in a weak, oil-producing economy that is organically petrol dependent, that has no well-developed public transportation system, that has weak infrastructures, and that is the poverty capital of the world would trigger infernal anguish on the vast majority of the people and tank the economy to the ground.

These are not birth pangs. They are not the pains before the gains. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel is condemned to unrelieved darkness. The blight Nigerians are contending with now is the certain and inevitable result of a conscienceless implementation of disconnected and irrelevant economic policies inspired from outside Nigeria.

I came of age during General Ibrahim Babangida’s regime. IBB started the so-called Structural Adjustment Programs (removal of subsidies, devaluation of the naira, mass retrenchment, etc.), which inaugurated Nigeria’s descent into the abyss. I heard the exact same things the current government is spouting during IBB’s time: that it would get worse before it got better, that after the birth pangs a big bouncing baby would be born, that there was delayed gratification awaiting us if only we could be a little more patient.

None of the promises materialized. Instead, suffering was elevated to crushing heights. Advanced Fee Fraud (also called 419) blossomed. Corruption was fertilized. Brain drain to the West got wings. This period also unleashed the naira’s irrecoverable slide into the deep hole of worthlessness.

Decades after, the same SAP about which hundreds of books and articles have been written and whose irreversible damage we continually lament, has been artfully repackaged, disguised, deodorized, and huckstered by a well-oiled gang of soulless apes who deployed all manner of clever rhetorical trickery to coax Nigerians into consenting to their own self-incineration.

The idea that petrol subsidies had to go because they were riddled with corruption and that they consumed a disproportionate share of our national budget is a mere propagandistic cop-out. If petrol subsidy administration is rid of corruption (that is perpetrated in cahoots with the government, which explains why no “subsidy thief” has ever been apprehended much less brought to justice), it would consume no greater share of our national budget than any governmental obligation.

It certainly won’t be anywhere near the colossal venality that is perpetuated at the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development under the guise of giving money to the poor.

The truth is that we have no original, independent thinkers among people who make or influence economic policies in Nigeria. They are all hopelessly mindless parrots of ill-comprehended economic prescriptions of the Bretton Woods institutions. They do not have the cognitive and intellectual sophistication to transcend what I call derivative or regurgitative knowledge.

There is not a single example of a country in the world that has developed on the basis of the prescriptions of the World Bank and the IMF. On the contrary, the only countries that have achieved inclusive growth and development outside the West are precisely the countries that have bucked the World Bank and the IMF. And every country that uncritically adopts the recommendations of these institutions has been wracked by utter devastation.

Unfortunately, if either Atiku Abubakar or Peter Obi were president today, Nigeria would experience exactly what it is going through now. Like Tinubu, Atiku and Obi said they would remove petrol subsidies “on day one.” When you remove petrol subsidies “on day one” in a desperately poor, inordinately petrol-supported economy with no public transportation, you get what Nigerians are going through now. It’s not rocket science.

Similarly, both Atiku and Obi said they would float the naira and let its fate be determined by the vagaries of demand and supply. When you do that in an import-dependent economy, you can’t escape what the naira is going through now.

Atiku tweeted in March 2021—and in several policy documents—that “Nigeria must move towards a single exchange rate to be determined by market forces.”

On April 9, 2022, Obi also tweeted: “The truth is that for long market forces have not determined the exchange rate of the Naira…. It has to end. Let the exchange rate be determined by the forces of demand and supply. It’s that simple.”

In other words, Tinubu is doing exactly what Atiku and Obi had proposed they would do, and the results would have been the same. The hyperinflation and hurt Nigerians are going through now won’t have been evaded because it is Atiku or Obi who removed petrol subsidies “from day one.” The naira’s glide to the bottom wouldn’t have been avoided because Atiku or Obi “floated” the naira.

That is why Atiku- or Obi-supporting critics of Tinubu come across as ignorant partisans who have drunk the Kool-Aid of their cult leaders. Atiku and Obi supporters should be grateful that their idols are not president today. They would have been bearing the reputational brunt of the boneheaded, discredited rightwing economic policies they also advocated, which have thrown Nigeria into the current mess.

Interestingly, in response to Obi’s 2022 tweet rhapsodizing over the imperative of subjecting the naira to the “forces of demand and supply,” a supporter of his by the name of Abel (with the handle @governance9ja) wrote a riposte, which has turned out to be prescient. He wrote: “So @PeterObi will float the currency for a country where most factor inputs into local manufacturing is imported? We already have cost push inflation reducing real income of many Nigerians. Floating naira will ruin many households. @PeterObi and @OfficialABAT are two of a kind.”

Obi supporters who have wet dreams of a Nirvana if Obi were president should wake up. His economic policies are exactly like Tinubu’s. Personalities aren’t the issue; policies are.

Tinubu and his team need to face the reality confronting them and change course. I know that Nigeria has been so polluted by neoliberal propaganda that even news that the government was paying subsidies through the backdoor to stop petrol prices from getting to N1,000 per liter was seized upon by the opposition to poohpooh the government, which compelled the government to deny paying any subsidies.

I’ve never seen this level of self-crushing inanity in my life. Assistance to the needy (which is what subsidy literally means) is now a dirty word that everyone avoids like the plague.

But the government should know that even hope is dying in Nigeria. When a usually hopeful nation spawns armies of hopeless and angry people through thoughtless economic policies dictated by outsiders, it sows and nurtures the seeds of its self-destruction.