THETHE VERDICT by OLUSEGUN ADENIYI; olusegun.adeniyi@thisdaylive.com
The Emir spoke about a phenomenon that is threatening not only the
peace and security of many states in the northern region today but also
the national economy. It is called rustling. Put simply it is the
stealing of cows but the menace goes far deeper because the Rustler is
not your regular thief who only robs people of their material
possessions, he is equally a murderer and a rapist. From Kaduna to
Katsina, Kebbi and Zamfara, hundreds of lives have been lost to the
activities of the Rustlers in recent weeks. Several families have been
dislocated with thousands of herds of cow carted away in trailers and
most often in broad daylight!
Yet the more I reflect on the activities of the Rustler, the more I see
the striking resemblance he bears to many people in positions of
authority in our country today. But for the uninitiated, I think I
should return to the recent account by Malam Zubair Jibril Mai Gwari,
the Emir of Birnin Gwari, in Kaduna State: “as I speak, we don’t know
how many thousands of cattle have been stolen so far. The issue is that
everywhere you go in the Emirate, you will find a casualty; someone’s
herds of cattle were stolen, his wife or children raped and others even
killed.
“The rustlers are well organised. They are in control of one village
called Jan Birni. You can’t go there now if you are not a thief. If they
don’t know you, they may kill you. I reported to the government that
our people have sighted, many times, helicopters landing and taking off,
delivering weapons to these people. These rustlers don’t care whether
you put fire on your cattle, they will whisk them away. The rustlers are
so clever. If your cattle are branded, they will slaughter them, cut
them up and sell them in pieces. If you go to Birnin Gwari-Funtua axis,
they are gradually taking over all villages and towns along the roads.
They come out on market days and brandish their weapons without a care…”
If you consider that scary, then you need to read the experience of Dr.
Hakeem Baba Ahmed, former INEC Secretary and retired federal permanent
secretary who is now back to the university as a teacher: “I lost my
entire herd to rustlers. 20 years of labour went with a gang armed to
the teeth. We were fortunate that the herd was all they took. Women and
young females who are routinely raped and/or abducted were alerted by
the commotion caused by cows being separated from calves to run into the
bush. We had prepared very well, because we knew they were coming, and
there was nothing we could do. For almost 400 square kilometers, from
Abuja to Kaduna, Zaria and Birnin Gwari, there is hardly any farm with
cattle [left]. We don’t even bother to report to the police. It is the
same in most parts of Katsina and Zamfara states. The backbone of the
northern economy is farming and husbandry. Cattle breeding and
processing was a major business in these areas. Not anymore. Slowly but
surely, the heart of the northern economy is being snuffed out. We
cannot keep cattle on our farms. Large scale farming is becoming less
and less attractive. A huge swathe of the north is now bandit territory.
Most of us know where our cattle are, but we cannot retrieve them.
Abducted women and young girls hardly ever return…”
Perhaps the last few weeks might go down as the most violent and bloody
in the nation. Besides the attacks in Maiduguri where some daring
insurgents attempted to free their detained mates from a well-fortified
military barracks, more than 300 innocent people have been killed by the
activities of Boko Haram, the Rustlers and other armed groups which
cannot be readily categorised. Several communities in Benue State,
including the governor’s village, were sacked and many murdered in their
homes or in the fields. Even the convoy of Governor Gabriel Suswam was
also attacked in the course of commiserating with some of the victims.
In Katsina, while President Goodluck Jonathan was on official visit,
rampaging gunmen attacked some communities, resulting in the death of
more than 100 innocent people. And when many were still mourning the
dead, another violent group attacked some three communities in Southern
Kaduna, resulting in the death of more than 100 people.
As I wrote about Nigeria’s centenary last week, I believe in the future
of this country but these days, I am also afraid of the lawlessness
that is fast turning our nation into one big jungle. Millions of our
people are being denied their means of livelihood and hundreds are being
killed in cold blood almost on a daily basis. You have Boko Haram and
their cousin, the Rustlers operating in the North while armed robbers
and the kidnappers are having a field day in the South.
In all these, there is a sense in which the activities of the Rustlers
mirror that of our society. Take the tragedy of last Saturday across the
country. The real issue is not that we have millions of unemployed
people as worrisome as that may be. Neither is it about the absence of
any logistical arrangement to take care of the huge army of applicants
that resulted in the stampede. The real tragedy is that the whole scam
was put together by some Rustlers who had no compunction about
exploiting hundreds of thousands of young Nigerians.
Each of those unfortunate Nigerians paid N850 as “application charges”
and N150 as “transaction charges” making a total of N1, 000 to be
eligible to apply for a job in a government agency in their own country.
Drexel Nigeria Limited to which the scam was outsourced then asked each
applicant to come to the “examination centre” with a valid
identification card, the acknowledgement card, original copies of birth
and educational certificates and writing materials. But it is also clear
what the real motive is with this instruction: “present this payment
slip along with the cash amount displayed above to the cashier at any of
the supported banks listed on the portal to make payment. Once your
payment is completed at the bank, ensure you collect your validation
number before leaving the banking hall. YOUR VALIDATION NUMBER IS YOUR
ONLY PROOF OF PAYMENT” (their emphasis).
That is the way of the Rustler. And for those who may still not know
who a Rustler is, you don’t need a dictionary, just get Mario Puzo’s
novel, “The Last Don”, the gripping sequel to “The Godfather” that has a
notorious character named the Rustler. Below is a dialogue from the
novel which captures the essence of the man we are talking about:
“…they call him the Rustler, and he loves all the s**t. He never pays
his bills, he even stiffs the IRS, he fights with the California State
authorities because he won’t pay the sales tax of the stores he owns in
his malls. Hell, he even stiffs his ex-wife and his kids on support
payments. And he is a man who believes he can get out of every jam he
gets in. He is a thief in his heart…”
“Why do they call him the Rustler?” Dante asked.
“Because he takes things without paying for them,” Cross said.
“I have never met a man like that,” the Don said.
Georgio said, “They grow them only in America…”
You won’t get a complete picture of this crook until you read Mario
Puzo’s characterization but that is in the world of fiction. In real
life, we also grow many of them in Nigeria. In our country, it is not
uncommon to hear that people pay bribes to secure jobs in either the
private or public sector. Those responsible for such things are plain
thieves. Opportunity, it is said, makes the thief but not so the Rustler
who makes his own opportunities even if it entails preying on the
misfortune of other people to make illicit gains.
The Rustler has no conscience. He is audacious. He embodies impunity.
He will demand money openly for jobs that do not exist and blame the
victims if things go wrong. He will collect multibillion Naira subsidy
funds from government for petroleum products that he would still sell to
the people even above the market price. He will divert money meant for
the pension of Policemen into his private accounts. He is simply above
the law. Those are the sorts of characters we are dealing with in the
scandal that led to the death of no fewer than 19 young Nigerians in the
“recruitment exercise” of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) across
the country last Saturday. But the bigger tragedy as I stated earlier
is that in our country today, several positions of authority are manned
by Rustlers.
Nobody has captured the immigration tragedy as succinctly as a brother
to one of the deceased and lecturer at Federal Polytechnic, Nasarawa
State, Dr. Mohammed Hakeem. While regretting that his late sister was in
2013 defrauded of N150, 000 in the course of seeking the same job for
which she lost her life last Saturday, Dr. Hakeem added: “I make bold to
tell you that the slots for which my sister has been used as a
sacrificial lamb had been allocated to those that matter in Nigeria.”
The immigration authorities claim that 4,556 jobs were on offer but it
is also a fact that most of the slots have already been allocated to
presidency officials, ministers, National Assembly members, governors
and heads of federal agencies. I say that both from experience and what I
also know about the current exercise. So, the whole essence of last
Saturday’s bloody show across the federation was merely to fulfil all
righteousness and essentially to justify the hundreds of millions of
Naira that have been taken from the pockets of young Nigerians. Given
such disposition, is anybody still amazed about how we have acquired a
notorious international reputation?
At his 90th birthday recently, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe
asked his officials: “Are we now like Nigeria where you have to reach
your pocket to get anything done?” Then he added: “You see, we used to
go to Nigeria and every time we went there we had to carry extra cash in
our pockets to corruptly pay for everything. You get into a plane in
Nigeria and you sit there and the crew keeps dilly dallying without
taking off as they wait for you to pay them to fly the plane.” That
elicited a roaring laughter from the delegates attending his birthday
bash.
The senile dictator in Harare may have enjoyed his joke at the expense
of our country but majority of Nigerians are actually honest people. The
difference between our country and others like for instance United
States (which remains the standard for many of our people even with its
own contradictions) is not in the purity of hearts of their own citizens
but rather in the fear of sanctions that are almost certain for those
caught breaking the law. In Nigeria, the incentives for corruption and
related crimes are high because it is a low-risk, high-reward
enterprise, except you are a petty thief with access only to millions
rather than billions. If you steal small in this clime, chances are that
you will be caught and punished by the law but if you steal big, you
are most likely going to be a celebrity because you have graduated to
the status of a Rustler!
All said, we must tackle the menace of cow rustlers that has made life
nasty and brutish for many in the northern parts of the country. It is
important both for the peace of our people and for national food
security. But we also must appreciate the fact that it is just a symptom
of a far bigger malaise in our society. My wife and I were caught in
the human traffic caused by the INS exams at the Abuja stadium before
6am last Saturday as I was driving her to the airport to connect a
7a.m. flight to Lagos (which she and many others eventually missed).
While I was lamenting about the huge population of the unemployed
gathered at such early morning for what I knew was a scam, my wife said
she did not believe that everyone was unemployed.
Her own theory is that there would also be in the crowd applicants
probably working in the private sector but who would readily cross over
to the NIS because of the awareness that government jobs are not
tasking. She said that beyond government failings which are all evident,
it is also a fact that many young Nigerians these days don’t want to
work with their hands, they just want to sit in some cozy offices and
collect the easy money. As we were still arguing, I saw someone I know
who incidentally indeed is gainfully employed in the private sector and
he smiled on sighting me saying, “Oga, I also came to try my luck o!”
Then I saw a few more people in similar circumstance.
I am not in any way discounting the fact that we have a huge
unemployment problem and I want to believe that more than 95 percent of
the people who subjected themselves to the Immigration Service abuse
last Saturday have nothing doing. May be even 99 percent of them were
really unemployed. But the fact also remains that there are also those
who went with the notion that such job comes with an opportunity to
acquire wealth without work. That therefore explains why, for me, the
metaphor of the Rustler has become the distinguishing credo of the
present state of public service in our nation.
Whether those in authority want to admit it or not, a discernible
gangster ethos defines the character of the state of affairs in our
country today. It is manifest in the size of the corruption scandals,
the impunity with which public institutions are degraded to further
private ends, and the utter disregard for all rules. Even the code that
recognizes some honour as essential even among thieves no longer has any
place in our country. So, between the cattle rustler and the crooks
that masterminded the immigration employment fiasco across the country
last Saturday, we are dealing with the same menace. The rules are the
same. The pity is that we are feeding the monster god of elite greed
with too much human sacrifice almost on daily basis now. And because
innocent bloods do cry, there will be consequences.
Between Abacha and Ifeajuna
In the last two days, I have the privilege of reading a copy of the
United States Justice Department account of how the late General Sani
Abacha and other accomplices looted the Nigerian treasury. It is
stranger than any fiction. Even though there are still more pages for me
to read from the voluminous document, this paragraph more or less sums
up the entire saga: “...Abacha and his associates conducted three
fraudulent schemes during his time in office: (1) the ‘security votes’
fraud through which more than $2 billion was embezzled from the Central
Bank of Nigeria; (2) the Ajaokuta Steel debt buy-back fraud, which
defrauded the Nigerian government of more than $200 million through
overpayment and non-performing debt; and (3) extortion of Dumez Group, a
company operating in Nigeria, which was used to invest in Nigeria Par
Bonds that were traded in the United States.” And that is the same man
recently honoured by this administration as one of the most
distinguished 100 Nigerians of the last century!
I have written so much about the late Abacha and I covered a bit of the
Ajaokuta debt buy-back scandal trial at a London court in 2001. I have
nothing personal against the late Head of State or any member of his
family even as I concede that he may also have done some good while in
office. Even then, against the background that most of the hundreds of
millions of Dollars already repatriated to the country from the loot may
also have been looted by some high-placed Rustlers in the last couple
of years, perhaps Abacha’s only sin is that he broke “the eleventh
commandment” by getting caught. And that happened because he died.
However, I fail to see the logic in the honour given him by the
Nigerian state that has conveniently chosen not to recognise the
achievement of Emmanuel Ifeajuna, the first athlete to put our country
on the global sporting map by winning a gold medal in high jump at the
Commonwealth Games. A national reward system that would ignore Ifeajuna
(one of the five Majors that planned Nigeria’s first military coup
d’etat), for whatever political reasons, and yet venerate Abacha, is not
one on which we can build a just society.
It is indeed mind boggling reading through the dirty details contained
in the “United States of America versus Mohammed Sani Abacha and Others”
court papers in relation to assets forfeiture. So the posthumous honour
given to Abacha says so much about our country and the character of the
current administration that acts as though it doesn’t care about its
reputation on issues of transparency and accountability. But all the
arguments about Abacha being honoured for his achievements in office
despite whatever else he may have represented become hollow in the face
of the Ifeajuna hypocrisy. It is a big shame.
ThisDay
