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The Arewa
Consultative Forum (ACF) has congratulated the President-elect,
Goodluck Jonathan over his victory in the just-concluded general
elections.

The forum has also condemned the call for the abolition of the National Youth Service Corps scheme (NYSC).

The ACF had
earlier opposed the candidacy of Mr Jonathan and the jettisoning of the
zoning arrangement of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), insisting
that the North should be allowed to complete its second term based on
the zoning arrangement.

In a communiqué
issued at the end of the meeting of the National Working Committee
(NWC) chaired by the chairman, Aliko Mohammed yesterday in Kaduna, the
body congratulated all the state governors, members of the National
Assembly as well as State Assembly members for their successes at the
polls.

The communiqué
signed by the National Publicity Secretary Anthony Sani, also commended
the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC),
Attahiru Jega for conducting what the forum described as “elections
that have been generally adjudged by both the local and international
observers to be better than previous elections.” “As to the losers, the
forum congratulated them for their spirited efforts in providing the
electorate with alternative platforms needed in a democracy, since
democracy without opposition is a sham.

“Losers should,
therefore, be magnanimous in defeat and seek redress through due
process of law where it is absolutely necessary. Victors on the other
hand should recognise the fact that governance is an art of balancing
competing demands among constituent parts of the united whole.” The
group continued, “While condemning the killings of some NYSC members
who were victims of the violence in some parts of the country, it is
the considered opinion of ACF that the NYSC scheme should not be
abolished. This is precisely because the ideas of fostering national
unity which informed the establishment of NYSC are still relevant.

“What is more,
scrapping NYSC is as good as saying people should not settle outside
their states of origin. Therefore, NYSC scheme should be retained and
spirited efforts be made to ensure the security of members.”

“The forum also
called on victors from the just concluded elections to have a realistic
appreciation of the circumstances of their emergence and make
consciously direct efforts by bringing Nigerians together and enable
them to unleash their synergy by way of living up their collective
challenges.

“This is very necessary because no nation thrives on the victory of
its factions but through their ultimate reconciliations. And in order
to make the desired results come to pass, governments must be peopled
by those with vision, conviction, public intelligence and with
patriotic courage needed to tell power not just what it wants to hear
but also what it needs no hear.” ACF emphasised.

The Anambra State
Governor, Peter Obi has said that but for lean resources, every
governor in the country would be willing to implement the new minimum
wage structure approved by the National Assembly. Mr Obi, who is deputy
chairman of Nigeria’s Governor’s Forum, said yesterday in Awka that
though it is good for Nigerian workers to have a good wage structure,
the resources available to state governments might not be enough to pay
the approved packaged. He said a meeting of the Governors’ Forum had
unanimously agreed that the federal government takes too much of what
accrues to the nation and there is need to re-adjust, because what is
left to the states is not enough to enable them to pay.

“For instance,
where federal facilities located in some states are either privatised
or commercialised, the states lose those sources of revenue and get
poorer,” Mr Obi said. He said the sooner this was redressed, the better
for all Nigerians.

APGA did well

Asked if he was
satisfied with the performance of APGA in the state in the last general
election, where the party failed to win any of the three senatorial
seats, Mr Obi said: “The last general election was fairly a
representative of the wishes of the people,” he said. “The way you know
which party is more acceptable is result of election in strategic areas
of Onitsha, Nnewi and Awka. That is Awka North, Awka South, Onitsha
North, Onitsha South, Nnewi North, Nnewi South and that is how to
determine whether we do well or not.”

As Cote d’Ivoire
becomes the latest African country to subject itself to a truth and
reconciliation commission, the lesson it can learn from past efforts is
two-fold: it is going to hurt, and it could take years.

Experience from
post-apartheid South Africa to post-war Sierra Leone shows such
exercises can help a country draw a line under the past, even when many
victims are left dissatisfied.

But Ivorien
President Alassane Ouattara must ensure all sides are heard and must
avoid rushing the pace for the sake of political expediency if he is to
heal wounds ripped open for the second time in a decade.

“Although the truth
side of it is very important, very often what actually happened is
known by many people,” said Yasmin Jusu-Sheriff, first executive
secretary of Sierra Leone’s 2002-2004 Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC).

“It’s how you deal
with it, and how you live with it after it happens … While it can’t
go on for ever, it shouldn’t be too much of a time-bound process,” she
told Reuters.

Yet Ouattara seems
to be in a hurry to get things going after the April 11 ousting from
power of rival Laurent Gbagbo, whose refusal to accept defeat in a
November election triggered a fourth-month power struggle in which
thousands died.

He has pledged to set up a South African-style TRC within two weeks and has already filled the key post of chairman.

“It is positive
that the President has announced plans for a commission, but we urge
him not to rush,” Desmond Tutu, who chaired South Africa’s TRC in the
1990s, warned after talks with Ouattara in Cote d’Ivoire this week.

Curing Ivorien ills

The mandate,
structure and aims of Cote d’Ivoire’s TRC process will all help
determine whether it can succeed in rooting out an ill which may prove
harder to diagnose and cure than the trauma of apartheid inflicted on
millions of South Africans.

Although Ivoriens
rubbed along for years following independence from France in 1960, a
debate over nationality exploded in 1999, culminating in a 2002-2003
civil war marked by ethnic bloodshed and which split the country
between north and south.

The November 28
election was hoped to seal reunification but the southerner Gbagbo’s
refusal to accept the victory of Ouattara, a northerner, only made
matters worse.

When pro-Ouattara
troops headed south to Abidjan in late-March, hundreds died in an orgy
of ethnically-motivated violence still not fully explained.

Ouattara’s choice
for TRC chairman of ex-premier Charles Konan Banny appears designed to
show neutrality. Ex-banker Banny is an uncontroversial figure from the
central Baoule ethnicity and will be flanked by one Christian and one
Muslim deputy.

But the TRC’s mandate has not yet been publicly defined. It is not
clear whether Banny will have the right to subpoena alleged wrongdoers
to give testimony, nor what will happen to them afterwards —
forgiveness or criminal proceedings.

Osama bin Laden was
unarmed when US special forces shot and killed him, the White House
said, as it tried to establish whether its ally Pakistan had helped the
al Qaeda leader elude a worldwide manhunt.

Pakistan faced
national embarrassment, a leading Islamabad newspaper said, in how to
explain that the world’s most-wanted man was able to live for years in
the military garrison town of Abbottabad, just north of the capital.

Islamabad vehemently denies it gave shelter to bin Laden.

“There is an
intelligence failure of the whole world, not just Pakistan alone,”
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told reporters in Paris. “(If there
are) … lapses from the Pakistan side, that means there are lapses
from the whole world.” The revelation that bin Laden was unarmed
contradicted an earlier US account that he had participated in a
firefight with the helicopter-borne American commandos.

Al Arabiya television went further, suggesting the architect of the 9/11 attacks was first taken prisoner and then shot.

“A security source
in the Pakistani security quoted the daughter of Osama bin Laden that
the leader of al Qaeda was not killed inside his house, but had been
arrested and was killed later,” the Arabic television station said.

White House
spokesman Jay Carney on Tuesday cited the “fog of war” – a phrase
suggested by a reporter – as a reason for the initial misinformation.

Bin Laden’s killing
and the swift burial of his body at sea have produced some criticism in
the Muslim world and accusations Washington acted outside international
law.

“The Americans
behaved in the same way as bin Laden: with treachery and baseness,”
Husayn al-Sawaf, 25-year-old playwright said in Cairo. “They should’ve
tried him in a court. As for his burial, that’s not Islamic. He
should’ve been buried in soil.”

But there has been
no sign of mass protests or violent reaction on the streets in South
Asia or the Middle East, where Islamist militancy appears to have been
eclipsed by pro-democracy movements sweeping the region.

Washington will
weigh sensitivities in the Muslim world when it decides whether to
release photographs of bin Laden’s body which could provide proof for
skeptics of his death.

Bin Laden was shot
in the head. “It’s fair to say that it’s a gruesome photograph,” Carney
said. “I’ll be candid. There are sensitivities here in terms of the
appropriateness of releasing photographs.”

Pakistan has
welcomed bin Laden’s death, but its foreign ministry expressed deep
concerns about the raid, which it called an “unauthorized unilateral
action.”

The CIA said it
kept Pakistan out of the loop because it feared bin Laden would be
tipped off, highlighting the depth of mistrust between the two supposed
allies.

US helicopters
carrying the commandos used radar “blind spots” in the hilly terrain
along the Afghan border to enter Pakistani airspace undetected in the
early hours of Monday.

The Pakistani
newspaper Dawn compared the latest humiliation with the admission in
2004 that one of the country’s top scientists had sold its nuclear
secrets. “Not since Abdul Qadeer Khan confessed to transferring nuclear
technology to Iran and Libya has Pakistan suffered such an
embarrassment,” it said.

The streets around
bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad remained sealed off on Wednesday,
with police and soldiers allowing only residents to pass through.

“It’s a crime but
what choice are you left with if I’m not handing over your enemy who is
hiding in my house?” said Hussain Khan, a retired government official
living nearby, when asked about the apparent violation of Pakistan’s
sovereignty. “Obviously you will go and get him yourself.”

Unarmed resistance

Carney insisted bin Laden resisted when U.S. forces stormed his compound in the 40-minute operation. He would not say how.

“There was concern
that bin Laden would oppose the capture operation and, indeed, he
resisted,” Carney said. “A woman … bin Laden’s wife, rushed the US
assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then
shot and killed. He was not armed.”