Gun control

*The gun control that works: no guns

 

By Lexington

 

I HESITATE to offer thoughts about the school shooting in Connecticut that has seen 20 children and seven adults murdered and the gunman also dead. Your correspondent has been in the rural Midwest researching a column and heard the news on the car radio. Along with a sense of gloom, I found I mostly wanted to see my own, elementary-school-age children back home in Washington, DC, and had little desire to listen to pundits of any stripe: hence my reluctance to weigh in now.

To be fair, on NPR, the liberal columnist E.J. Dionne had sensible things to say about President Barack Obama’s statement on the killings, and how it was probably significant when the president seemed to suggest that he was minded to take action on gun control, and never mind the politics. On the same show the moderate conservative columnist, David Brooks, expressed sensible caution about assuming that stricter gun controls could have stopped this particular shooting.

Switching to red-blooded conservative talk radio, I found two hosts offering a “move along, nothing to see here” defence of the status quo. One suggested that listeners should not torment themselves trying to understand “craziness”, though it would, the pair agreed, be understandable if some parents were tempted to remove their children from public education and homeschool them.

To that debate, all I can offer is the perspective of someone who has lived and worked in different corners of the world, with different gun laws.

Here is my small thought. It is quite possible, perhaps probable, that stricter gun laws of the sort that Mr Obama may or may not be planning, would not have stopped the horrible killings of this morning. But that is a separate question from whether it is a good idea to allow private individuals to own guns. And that, really, is what I think I understand by gun control. Once you have guns in circulation, in significant numbers, I suspect that specific controls on things like automatic weapons or large magazines can have only marginal effects. Once lots of other people have guns, it becomes rational for you to want your own too.

The first time that I was posted to Washington, DC some years ago, the capital and suburbs endured a frightening few days at the hands of a pair of snipers, who took to killing people at random from a shooting position they had established in the boot of a car. I remember meeting a couple of White House correspondents from American papers, and hearing one say: but the strange thing is that Maryland (where most of the killings were taking place) has really strict gun laws. And

I remember thinking: from the British perspective, those aren’t strict gun laws. Strict laws involve having no guns.

After a couple of horrible mass shootings in Britain, handguns and automatic weapons have been effectively banned. It is possible to own shotguns, and rifles if you can demonstrate to the police that you have a good reason to own one, such as target shooting at a gun club, or deer stalking, say. The firearms-ownership rules are onerous, involving hours of paperwork. You must provide a referee who has to answer nosy questions about the applicant's mental state, home life (including family or domestic tensions) and their attitude towards guns. In addition to criminal-record checks, the police talk to applicants’ family doctors and ask about any histories of alcohol or drug abuse or personality disorders.

Vitally, it is also very hard to get hold of ammunition. Just before leaving Britain in the summer, I had lunch with a member of parliament whose constituency is plagued with gang violence and drug gangs. She told me of a shooting, and how it had not led to a death, because the gang had had to make its own bullets, which did not work well, and how this was very common, according to her local police commander. Even hardened criminals willing to pay for a handgun in Britain are often getting only an illegally modified starter’s pistol turned into a single-shot weapon.

And, to be crude, having few guns does mean that few people get shot. In 2008-2009, there were 39 fatal injuries from crimes involving firearms in England and Wales, with a population about one sixth the size of America’s. In America, there were 12,000 gun-related homicides in 2008.

I would also say, to stick my neck out a bit further, that I find many of the arguments advanced for private gun ownership in America a bit unconvincing, and tinged with a blend of excessive self-confidence and faulty risk perception.

I am willing to believe that some householders, in some cases, have defended their families from attack because they have been armed. But I also imagine that lots of ordinary adults, if woken in the night by an armed intruder, lack the skill to wake, find their weapon, keep hold of their weapon, use it correctly and avoid shooting the wrong person. And my hunch is that the model found in places like Japan or Britain—no guns in homes at all, or almost none—is on balance safer.

As for the National Rifle Association bumper stickers arguing that only an armed citizenry can prevent tyranny, I wonder if that isn’t a form of narcissism, involving the belief that lone, heroic individuals will have the ability to identify tyranny as it descends, recognise it for what it is, and fight back. There is also the small matter that I don’t think America is remotely close to becoming a tyranny, and to suggest that it is is both irrational and a bit offensive to people who actually do live under tyrannical rule.

Nor is it the case that the British are relaxed about being subjects of a monarch, or are less fussed about freedoms. A conservative law professor was recently quoted in the papers saying he did not want to live in a country where the police were armed and the citizens not. I fear in Britain, at least, native gun-distrust goes even deeper than that: the British don’t even like their police to be armed (though more of them are than in the past).

But here is the thing. The American gun debate takes place in America, not Britain or Japan. And banning all guns is not about to happen (and good luck collecting all 300m guns currently in circulation, should such a law be passed). It would also not be democratic. I personally dislike guns. I think the private ownership of guns is a tragic mistake. But a majority of Americans disagree with me, some of them very strongly. And at a certain point, when very large majorities disagree with you, a bit of deference is in order.

So in short I am not sure that tinkering with gun control will stop horrible massacres like today’s. And I am pretty sure that the sort of gun control that would work—banning all guns—is not going to happen. So I have a feeling that even a more courageous debate than has been heard for some time, with Mr Obama proposing gun-control laws that would have been unthinkable in his first term, will not change very much at all. Hence the gloom.

YORUBA INCOMPTENCE DESTROYED NIGERIA COMPETENT CORRUPTION VS INCOMPETENT CORRUPTION

Nigerian’s problem is not bribery, not corruption not even greed rather our fundamental problem is incompetence. 

Definition

Competent corrupt societies are societies that have the in-built mechanisms to self-correct and self-adjust because the fundamental foundation of those societies are situated on COMPETENCE 

Incompetent corrupt societies are societies that do not have the in-built mechanisms to self-correct and self-adjust because the fundamental foundation of those societies are situated on INCOMPETENCE

Enter Yoruba Incompetence:

The presence of the Yoruba in this whole cesspool will once and for all prove my point that incompetence of the crippling order is responsible for Nigerian malaise rather than Bribery, corruption or greed.

It is easy to make the argument that the reason why the north was incompetent was because they were not well educated, that majority of them had only high school education, that they were naive young men and ill-informed.

Only when you discover that the northern leaders understood their shortcoming and literally handed over the running of the government to the Yoruba to handle the day to day operation of the government and the Yoruba could not do any better than the Hausa.

I will like to state without fear of contradiction that Yoruba has well educated people in every field of endeavor-engineering, law, economics, name it, they have people there but that is where the credit ends.

The understanding was that the educated Yoruba was going to help the ill-prepared north to administer the affairs of the country by complementing the north that was mainly in the military. 

In order words, the Yoruba supposed to take care of the administration, economy, the technological innovation and development of the country into the 21st century.

What Yoruba proved unequivocally, at least we have more than forty years of history to support it, is that acquiring education to PH.D level does not automatically make you a competent person.

One cannot question the educational achievement of the Yoruba because they are one of the most educated groups in Nigeria. The question that Yoruba has to answer is what went wrong?

What did they do with their education when it came to managing Nigeria?

The Yoruba had the education, the engineers, the architects, the lawyer, economists, technologists, the numerical numbers, the ministers, directors, the medical doctors, the high positions, the unrestricted authority, the power, you know what?

The Yoruba had cart Blanche. They even had total control of the communication media.

As established above the Hausa needed the Yoruba given the fact that they got into power ill-prepared, they hoped that the Yoruba will use their education and intelligence to help navigate the ship of the country.

As history has shown, the Yoruba dropped the ball big time and are still dropping it as we speak.

 Most Hausa that are in the know will tell you that it is true that Yoruba are well educated but that they are as incompetent as the north is. What called the competence of the Yoruba into question was that from the day Yoruba occupied the center stage in piloting the affairs of the country, the country did not progress an inch from where Yoruba met it rather the country regressed and lost everything that Yoruba touched or managed.

Yoruba simply ravaged, pillaged and looted every government ministry, department, agency, business, cooperation, you name it.

Gowon’s administration was considered corrupt because of the wanton, unmitigated, unrestrained looting and corruption of the Yoruba that was recruited to help run the country. It is a known fact that Yoruba thought the north how to be corrupt.

Monkey see and monkey do. After watching the Yoruba pillage and loot, the north figured that that is normal and that that is how educated people behave and they joined the bandwagon.

So you have now two tribes with the biggest population that see the looting and destruction of everything they touch as business as usual and Nigerians are wondering what is wrong with the country, why is the country so corrupt. The country is corrupt because Hausa and Yoruba are incompetent to manage the affairs of the country.

The consequences of the North’s incompetence was critical because if the north were competent, they could have taken care of the country by themselves or alternatively checkmated the Yoruba once they starting looting, but because the north did not know any better they simply joined.

The way it happened was that as the north was siphoning and looting directly from the federal treasury to themselves, the Yoruba were busy sucking the life out of all the MDAs and the businesses and cooperations from the fallout of indigenization.

Interestingly enough Hausa did not bother Yoruba and Yoruba did not bother Hausa, each party was busy minding their business to the detriment of the whole country. Exactly the symptom of incompetence, you see, incompetence does not ask questions or get inquisitive because it does not know what to be inquisitive about and even when it asks a question and gets an answer; it does not know what to do with. This explains the widespread of bribery and corruption when you have Yoruba and Hausa neck deep into it.

Another case of incompetence displayed by north was when the Yoruba proposed for the indigenization of foreign companies. It is my belief that none of the northern military leaders had ever heard that word INDIGENIZATION before or understood what it meant.

In the first instance, the presence of the northerners incooperated Nigeria was minimal to none, so the north had no comprehension of the ramification of such policies, another evidence of incompetence rather than corruption from the onset.

If the north was competent and understood the implications of such policies, they could have objected on many grounds, unfortunately they did not know any better to checkmate the looting Yoruba rascals.

Having demonstrated that the Yoruba failed to lead notwithstanding their education, the question is what is the difference between the leaders of countries like South Korea, Brazil and India that succeeded in the face of challenges and the Yoruba leaders that failed?

The fact that Yoruba cannot claim lack of education, they cannot claim lack of opportunity and they cannot claim that they lacked the unrestrained authority to act, the only thing that the other leaders have that the Yoruba lacked is competence.

The way it works is that the absence of competent creates a vacuum hat is quickly filled by the ills of societies like bribery, corruption, greed, crime, murder and so on and so on.

To further drive the point home, can anyone recall one single Yoruba official that has done something so noble and honorable to improve the lot of the whole nation rather pursuing self-interest that Nigerians could look back and sing his praise?

The answer is no, but I will like someone to proof me wrong. That is a proof of incompetence first before corruption.

As a matter of fact you can trace the origin of all the millionaires from Yoruba and Hausa to one corruption or the other or government contract.

Fighting corruption in Nigeria is like fighting Hausa and Yoruba and I think that that is a daunting task.

The simple fact that after Yoruba took total control of Nigerian economy and they could not improve the socio-economics and technological development is a sign of nothing but incompetence. 

The injection of competence in Nigerian system will see a gradual improvement in accountability and progress.

Typical example is that Hausa and Yoruba have gone in and out of ministerial positions for decades without anything to show for it and that is why no one can remember their names or what they did but when you mention the name of people that have demonstrated competence, people remember them and what they accomplished, people like Charles Soludo, ObiageliEzekwesili, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Dora Akunyili and Dr. Bert Nnaji to mention afew.

 Notice that these folks did not have unrestrained authority, they did not have cart blanche but were able to make a different despite the challenges just like the leaders in South Korea, Brazil and India. What do they have in common? Competence.

I could go on and on but I believe that the point has been made that the problem ailing the country is not bribery, corruption or greed rather that our fundamental problem is incompetence and that only competent people can tame the pillaging and looting going on now and most importantly that Yoruba and Hausa must join the builders rather than looters of the system.

Enter the Hausa Incompetence:

Contrast the success of competent corrupt societies with the failure of incompetent corrupt societies like Nigeria. I defined earlier an incompetent corrupt society as a society that lacks the inert mechanism to self-correct and self-adjust for the betterment of its society or a house without a grown up. 

Since after the war Nigeria has been living the life of an incompetent corrupt society that lacks the necessary capacity, ability and skills to self-correct in order to carry out a task of improving the lot of Nigerian. 

It is important to note that after the war the north held sway, they had total and absolute control, they had total freedom, they had no opposition because the opposition had been decimated.

 Igbo was leaking its wounds.

The north had the freedom to take the country in any direction they chose without opposition, to make Nigeria in its own image, if you think about it, they sure made Nigeria in their image, squalor, illiteracy, ignorance, crime, death, murder, hopelessness, stagnation, disillusionment, indiscipline, disaster, unfulfilled dreams, indifference, neglect, over-night millionaires and billionaires, disappointments, bribery, corruption and greed became the new normal, the question is what happened? 

What happened was that the British helped to institutionalized Kakistocracy and incompetence prevailed over competence and became the order of the day if you ask me? 

As we will see, the north exhibited incompetence of the highest order with its attendant corruption and blight without the necessary mechanism to self-correct and self-adjust.

Even before the north got power, they knew that they were ill prepared for the responsibilities, when they got the power, they had no clue what to do with, they did not know what military and political power were used for, they became confused, they became a sitting duck, they became rudderless, even when they were advised, they could not use the advise because they did not have the requisite ability and skills to judge the advise right or wrong. 

When they delegated responsibility they lacked the ability to evaluate what the result should be, for that reason it was difficult for them to request for any feedback when they had no clue what the feedback is supposed to look like. 

If they cannot tell difference between what they are looking for, how can they check mate bad behaviors from good? 

This is incompetence not corruption. Before the northern military took power, literally, everything in the system was working, education, health, water supply, electricity, road infrastructure, Nigerian railway, ports authority, national shipping line, the business and commerce industry were all thriving. It is pertinent to note that the north did not meet the systems in their primitive stage, they had systems that were working, as a matter of fact Nigeria experienced incredible economic expansion immediately after the war in part because the Igbo land was militarized and unbeknownst to the leadership the army spent majority of their salaries in Igboland which managed to keep the Igbo economy afloat and plus other foreign investment into the country.

 When the demands of leadership came knocking on the door of the northern leadership, what answered and opened the door was abject incompetence, absolute intellectual vacuity, visionlessness and hopelessness. 

The leadership was found to be inadequate, unsuited, devoid of those qualities requisite for effective conduct or action and not possessing the necessary ability and skills to carry out the tasks of leadership. What was most disturbing was that the northern leadership knew it, the British masters knew it, the Igbo knew it, the Yoruba knew it, the world knew it and the British went ahead anyway to convince the north that they can lead the country even over the objection of the northern leadership that they cannot. 

The manifest absence of vision, objectives, direction, hope and the cluelessness of the northern leadership created a vacuum that laid the foundation and fertile ground for unbridled bribery and corruption to breed, fester and multiply.

This is incompetence not corruption. 

The absence of competence is our problem. When the northern leadership was found vacuous, opportunist and schemers filled the vacuum they found with their whims and caprice and the north could not self-correct or correct others because they did not possess the requisite elements of competence. 

This is incompetence not corruption, though corruption later filled that vacuum that was created but it did not come first, it came second after it discovered that competence was not home. 

In order words the north being in charge is like having no grown up in the house and the rascals came in and ransacked the house. What is most heart breaking is the fact that the northern incompetence knew no bounds, the least that could have been expected from the northern leadership was taking care of northern citizens, favoring them and raising their standard of living relative to the rest of the country but that did not happen.

The fact that they could not do it is incompetence not corruption. 

The northern leadership could not improve the education and literacy, health -infant mortality, water, road infrastructure, economics and the overall wellbeing of the northern citizens. 

The question is whether the failure of the northern leadership to improve the lot of the northerners was deliberate? 

The answer is no but more of the manifestation of incompetence and not corruption. They were clueless which is equal to incompetence. The north today has the highest illiteracy rate in the whole world, infant mortality, blindness and myriad of other problems. The north is worse off amongst the whole groups in Nigeria in all indices used to adjudge standard of living. 

The welfare of the north could have been more worse if it were not for the work of non-governmental organizations from the southern part of the country that provide preventive and palliative services in place of the total absence of government services.

Folks have always wondered why Nigeria is in this state of anomie, all I ask is for folks to look to the north and they will find the answer.

Folks should ask the question, how can the north do for the whole nation what they could not do for their northern people, the saying that you cannot give what you do not have, the north could not give that which they did not possess and that is competent service.

Ladies and Gentlemen, what I am contending here is that what the northern leadership demonstrated was not bribery, was not corruption or greed, what they demonstrated was peter’s principal at work which was basic incompetence because it is evident that as much as one will agree that the north had a reason to hold malice against the east, there was no evidence that they extended that malice to their northern brethren, nor was there evidence that the leadership hated their citizens, so their failure to take care of the welfare of the northern people and to make them better than the rest of the nation could only be seen as innocent and inert ignorance and not corruption. 

Their failure to understand what leadership is all about and failed to make the connection between leadership and the people. 

In case some of you have forgotten, let me remind you of what incompetence is all about: being Inadequate for or unsuited to a particular purpose or application, Devoid of those qualities requisite for effective conduct or action, and not possessing the necessary ability, skill,etc. to do or carry out a task". 

I want the reader to pay attention to the words "unsuited, devoid, and not possessing and that will capture the crux of my argument. You have to be devoid of something serious to fail in everything. That north is simple and short not suited for the purposes of leadership and that is why they can not stop all the bad things that are happening.

There were plenty of evidence that the north in most part were innocent and not corrupt nor were they inclined to bribery until years later when the leadership vacuums they created were filled by others who were equally as incompetent as they were. 

The north did not start out not to bring the dividend of their leadership to the people, ironically they did not even try because they did not know how to try or what to try or do, they were super-morosed, and they simply vegetated throughout their leadership reign. The lack of performance on the part of northern leadership was not intentional because they just did not know how to perform anything. They had no expectations either from themselves or from others, they were satisfied with where they found themselves, complacency became the order of the day as they knew no better, as they could not see beyond where they were standing, evidence of incompetence not corruption. 

As far as they were concerned everything was normal, they did not know the difference between performance and none performance, when they allowed some ideas and projects to be executed, they were unsuited and were devoid of the abilities and skills to grasp what exactly the ideas and projects were supposed to accomplish in the scheme of things, the final result and output supposed to look like. They heard the words but did not comprehend them, so whether a project was done half way, well done or not at all did not matter because the skill to do the evaluate did notexist, particularly when the highest level of education attained by almost all the northern military boys at that time was secondary school obtained from mostly moslem school. 

The moslem education still does not explain the incompetence of the north because some other moslem countries like India and Pakistan even Indonesia are doing better than Nigeria. The north had no understanding of administration, no understanding of economics, no understanding of employment, no understanding of social welfare, no understanding of technology and most importantly no understanding of their synergy.

The northern leadership had no dreams for themselves, for their people or for the nation. 

They couldn’t dream dreams, when they dreamt something, it made no sense to them and they could not do anything with it, this is not corruption, this is not bribery or greed, this is incompetence. 

The only reason that can explain the unbridled and ubiquitous nature of corruption, bribery and greed that are ravaging the country is because the competence requisite to check them is absent.

Azazi: The General’s Final Retirement

Festus Akanbi

The late former National Security Adviser, General Owoye Andrew Azazi, who was retired by late President Umaru Yar’Adua as Chief of Defence Staff on August 20, 2008, emerged from retirement to assume the post of National Security Adviser (NSA) as a civilian on October 4, 2010 under President Goodluck Jonathan administration.

He inherited a range of challenges from extremists, including the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), and the rise of a new violent Islamist group- Boko Haram, whose insurgency started in 2009.

Azazi was said to be aggressive behind the scenes. For instance, the State Security Service (SSS), which was under the purview of Azazi, took what observers considered an unusual step in November 2011 by arresting a federal senator, Mohammed Ndume and charging him with aiding Boko Haram.

In June 2012, he was sacked by President Goodluck Jonathan.

Azazi was born at Peretorugbene in present Bayelsa State on February 1, 1952. He had his early education in old Bendel State where he attended Government College Bomadi and graduated in the class of 1968, after which he joined the Nigerian Defence Academy Regular Combatant Cadet- Course 12 on July 3, 1972.

Azazi was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant on 14 December 1974. He served as a Brigade Intelligence Officer, Divisional Intelligence Officer and Colonel Coordination, Headquarters Directorate of Military Intelligence. He was assistant Defence Attaché at the Embassy of Nigeria, Washington DC, United States for three years. He served as a member of the Directing Staff of the Command and Staff College from where he was posted to Lagos Garrison Command as the Intelligence Officer and subsequently to the Directorate of Military Intelligence as Colonel Coordination.

He was later posted to the Training and Doctrine Command as Colonel Research and Development and then Director of Training. On graduation from War College, he was appointed Colonel General Staff, 81 Division of the Nigerian Army and later Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence, Defence Intelligence Agency. General Azazi also served as a member of Directing Staff of the National War College Abuja, rising later to become its Principal Staff Officer Coordination. He was appointed Director of Military Intelligence in 2003.

He was appointed the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 1 Division, Nigerian Army in January 2005, and subsequently appointed Chief of Army Staff (COAS) in June 2006.

He obtained a MSc in Strategic Studies from the University of Ibadan, and he completed the Staff Intelligence and Security Course, School of Service Intelligence, Ashford, Kent, UK and Combined Strategic Intelligence Training Programme, Defence Intelligence College, Washington DC, United States. He was a graduate of the Command and Staff College Nigeria, and the National War College, Nigeria where he won the President and Commander-in-Chief’s merit award for best all round performance. 

He was decorated with harvests of honours among which are Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (CFR), Grand Service Star (GSS) and Distinguished Service Star (DSS), among others.

On August 20, 2008, Umaru Yar’Adua replaced Azazi with Paul Dike as CDS and announced Azazi’s retirement from military service. He was survived by a wife, five children, and grandchildren.