BOOK REVIEW By Okey Ikechukwu

I first met Maj Gen Udounwa when he was head of the Army War College, Abuja. I had come to deliver a lecture and make a presentation on “War in complex Environments”. This gentleman who took over from the previous Commandant, was as simple, well turned out, urbane and professional as his very pleasant predecessor. He came across as a self respecting professional in a very unforced sort of way. He had, and still has, his almost shy smile and polite manners.

There were subsequent encounters and engagements at the College while he was still in charge. These subsequent engagements only reinforced my initial impressions about him as an army officer who will not be easily distracted by anything that is not strictly related to the values he espouses, or his professional calling.

After his relatively recent retirement, he wrote a book to capture his years of service and meritorious career in the Nigerian Army, titled “Big Boots: Lessons from My Military Experience”. The first four major attractions of the book are (1) The print quality and font type, which do not afront your sense of beauty; (2) The chronological layout of the chapters and the narratives; (3) The simple descriptive , storytelling, style and (4) The absence of any affections in the book’s overall effect. This book of nine chapters, gives the reader a step-by-step account of the birth, development and career progression of its subject matter and author.

Part of what the author succeeded in doing with this work is show us how a person’s family background, his core ethical values respect for norms ultimately define and determine who he is, what he does, and how he turns out in life; no matter where he finds himself. What one gets from reading the book includes the following: (1) Deep insight into the Person, inner motivations, personal values and concept of loyalty and national service, as understood by Mag Gen Solomon Odounwa (rtd). (2) The professional and personal development of the author as a human being, as an army officer and as a dependable aide to his superiors in service and (3) The service experience of the author, his brilliance and his impact and trajectory in the positions he held at various times; including his time at Army Headquarters.

“Big Boots: Lessons from My Military Experience” testifies to how a distinguished officer’s personal discipline and commitment to the best ideals of his chosen profession can mark him out for a glorious career in the Service. The author took time to understand the system. He remained true, and loyal, to his calling. Every aspect of his Service Record and performance was marked by excellence, as he moved from one level of endeavour and fulfilment to another. It was his decades of honest effort, professional discipline, personal integrity, self-respect, and an enlightened grasp of global best practices that made him the man he is today.

These facts alone, which any reader will unravel in the book, may lead some of his former and serving colleagues unto the path of self-examination. He showed that career is not just “what you do for a living’. It is what absorbs your entire soul and being; and that is what makes it a Calling.

The Foreword to the book, written by Lt Gen TY Danjuma (rtd), the exemplary Nigerian soldier and the author’s former boss, set the tone for what to expect in the book, with these words: “…I had no difficulty choosing Solomon to work with me…his service records indicated that he was a brilliant officer who had undergone several courses, beyond the mandatory ones, and indeed excelled in all of them”.

In the Introduction, which is immediately followed by the first chapter, the author says: “Big Boots tells the full story of my military service in all the posts I held… with the purpose of sharing my experience that could be of benefit to military personnel and other persons with interests in military affairs”. I disagree with the author here. I submit, instead, that his book will be of great value and benefit to a much wider audience and reading public, far beyond serving and retired military personnel and “individuals interested in military affairs”.

The first chapter of Big Boots tells us about the birth of the author during the Nigerian civil war and about his village and the defining essence of the people. It showcases the influence of his father, who was nick-named Atara Abam (the tree that stands out among others) by the author’s maternal grandfather and how the young Solomon found strong points of moral anchorage in the man’s unshakable Christian faith and native wisdom.

The author’s mother was described as “A mother from heaven”. Her faith in God, as “The source of wealth, health, riches and all good things…: without Whom “…no man can achieve anything” was also one of the early stabilizing beacons for the author; whose vivid memories of his parents, especially of the lessons they taught him, were the foundations on which he built much of his later life.

The early signs of greatness budding in the author, his High School adventures, as well as his first contact with soldiers and its effect on him, can be gleaned from this opening chapter of Big Boots.

The second chapter, titled “The Beginning of Military Adventure” discusses the circumstances that led to the author’s choice of a military career and how he faired throughout his training at NDA. It touches on ECOMOG and the loss of colleagues and Course Mates in that operation. It also dwelt his “Life Line of Mentorship” in Minna, when he was posted from ECOMOG to Headquarters Battery, 31 Artillery Brigade, Minna, as Troop Commander. This chapter reveals so much about the author’s brilliance, initiative under pressure, his strong leadership qualities and his Service discipline.

The third chapter of this book, titled “Recollections of and Aide-De-Camp” captures the authors experiences as ADC to Lt Gen TY Danjuma, when the latter was Minster of Defence. His interview with this “living legend” for the position of ADC, the effects of the Minister’s forthright nature on him and the realities of working with a seasoned officer, patriot, and gentleman with deep professional knowledge and a human face left a deep mark on Udounwa’s person and professionalism.

And this is where the account dovetailed into how this seasoned officer is described at various times by former colleagues and bosses. While the author reports former Head of State, Gen Yakubu Gowon, as describing TY Danjuma as”..  a confident and intelligent officer who could be entrusted with any sensitive and strategic assignment”, he tells us that former Head of state, and later President, Gen Buhari, had this to say about the same man: “…no better soldier than he has served in the Nigerian Army. He was competent, fair, and had no time for dilettantes and non-tryers”.

Gen Babangida’s testimonial about the gentleman to whom this chapter of the book is largely dedicated is this: “He is a man of excellence who does not accommodate mediocrity. Only people of high standards survive around him”.

The only thing to add here is that Maj Gen, Oduonwa not only survived around this man, but is still around him. The reader will learn much about Lt Gen Danjuma’s simplicity, humility, generosity, and commitment to transparency and accountability, among other things, from this chapter of Udounwa’s work.

The fourth chapter looks at the author’s mid-career years, his Bangladesh experience, his various postings, his excellent performance records in the places he served, and his stint with Army Public Relations. This chapter also tells us about the author’s first command experience and the transformative impact of his nine months of holding a command position; as well as his return to the Army School of Artillery as an Instructor.

In the fifth chapter we see what the author calls “The Carlisle Experience”, while the sixth chapter, captioned “In the Corridors of Military Power”, focuses on the roles, relevance and impact of various individuals on the author and the nation. These two chapters are  best read, in order to get their full value.

In chapter seven of “Big Boots: Lessons from My Military Experience”, we see Maj Gen Solomon Uduonwa as a military diplomat at his duty post as Nigeria’s Defence Adviser in New York. He captures Nigeria’s rallying role as President of the Council for the month of August, 2015, during which period the Security Council adopted and passed two landmark resolutions on Syria and UNIFIL, among other presidential statements. The strengthening of Nigeria’s peace keeping profile, the handling of cases of sexual exploitation and abuse in the UN, AMPAC and efforts towards the consolidation of Africa’s position on the global stage can also to be found in this chapter.

Chapter eight deals with the authors return to Army Headquarters and his engagements and duties there. His account of his service at the Army War college training leaders, as well as the tricky business of managing Army hospitality business dovetailed into the last chapter of this book, captioned “A New Chapter Beckons”; which begins with a sub title: ‘Last Post: Sojourn at Defence Headquarters’. He describes his duties at Defence Headquarters as working “..to sustain our armed forces’ partnerships with our key allies”.

This last chapter also captures the author’s retirement from service, as “A New Phase of Adventure”, with rich and moving testimonials toasting his commendable and meritorious trajectory as a distinguished officer, gentleman and patriot.

In the “Afterword” which is the concluding section of the book, the author has this to say: “The primary duty of a military officer is to fight and win his nation’s wars. To prepare him for this role, the military invests enormous resources to train and equip him with the knowledge and skills he requires for success. Beyond the training, the military officer must understand the enormity of the responsibilities he carries on his shoulders. He must understand that military service is a sacrifice, even at the cost of his life. He is largely the custodian of the destiny of his country, confronting every adversary that threatens its existence. This is an onerous task for which he must adequately prepare himself“.

I agree with the author’s submission above, and I adopt the above declarations, without reservations.

It bears repeating here that this book brings to the fore the importance of home training, professional and personal integrity in making a person who he is in life. It also stands as a legacy publication, because anyone who is interested in establishing that tenuous nexus between character, training and upbringing can find it here. The lessons the author has shared, and his deliberate efforts to be as objective as possible, make the book very useful material for students of personal growth and professional development. 

The book is to be ready and digested. Not flipped through.

Modibbo Az Zubair

In the pursuit of prosperity, ‘fortune favours the brave.’ This adage stands as the guiding principle for Minister Hannatu Musa Musawa’s audacious and transformative vision for Nigeria’s creative economy. Charged with the ambition to elevate the sector’s GDP from $5 billion to $100 billion by 2030, and to create two million jobs, Minister Musawa faces this formidable challenge head-on, bolstered by strategic plans grounded in action and innovation.

To confront the intricacies of Nigeria’s burgeoning creative economy, Minister Musawa enlisted the expertise of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a leader in strategic advisory with a rich history of steering economies towards unprecedented growth. BCG’s track record in successfully revamping creative and other sectors worldwide lends credence to the feasibility of Nigeria’s ambitious goals. Their comprehensive evaluation of the sector, benchmarked against international standards, lays the groundwork for FMACCE’s 14 actionable initiatives, each underpinned by detailed implementation plans.

The creative economy’s contribution to Nigeria’s GDP has surged from 1.3% when Minister Musawa took office to an impressive 2% by the end of Q2 2024. This growth, equivalent to approximately N420 billion, not only exceeds the Federal Government’s target of 1.8% for the entire year but also reflects a remarkable increase of over 50% in nominal terms, showcasing effective policy execution.

Furthermore, the rise is reinforced by the registration of around 23,000 new start-ups in the Cultural and Creative Economy between January and June 2024, as reported by the Corporate Affairs Commission. Through the implementation of 14 strategic initiatives focused on technology, funding, infrastructure, and the promotion of international culture, the FMACCE is cultivating an environment ripe for innovation and sustainable growth.

South Korea is one of the Benchmarks in FMACCEs BCG study; its Korean Wave, or “Hallyu,” refers to the rise in popularity of South Korean culture from relative obscurity into a global phenomenon. The success of the Korean Wave can be attributed to a combination of well thought through government initiatives, strategic marketing within the creative economy, and sound policy development. All these elements are incorporated into Minister Musawa’s roadmap along with well-defined implementation plans that are in progress.

In parallel with its global strategic advisory, FMACCE is forging cohesive engagement and governance frameworks that foster collaboration between local stakeholders, creating synergy across agencies, academia, the private sector, and creatives. Through 27 separate stakeholder engagement events and strategic workshops, the Ministry has ensured that its policies and programs resonate with the creative community’s needs, fostering an environment conducive to growth.

Furthermore, the Ministry’s commitment to skills acquisition highlights a forward-thinking approach to workforce development. Through partnerships with esteemed educational institutions, FMACCE has established cultural and creative learning platforms, successfully training about 7,500 individuals at the end of Q2 2024, with a target of 25,000 by year’s end. The Creative Leap Accelerator Programme (CLAP) exemplifies this commitment, aggregating resources and facilitating democratized access to training, funding, and networking within the creative sector. CLAP, along with FMACCE’s data collection strategy, enriches the Ministry’s data-driven decision-making capacity, enabling agile responses to domestic and international market trends.

The capacity building and job creation ambitions of the Honourable Minister are supported by an effective partnership with BigWin philanthropy that mimics successful models that have created jobs across Africa, including 500,000 in Rwanda, a country with a much smaller population than Nigeria. Big Win has developed a unique approach to job creation which aims to deliver a “demographic dividend” to countries like Nigeria that have an overwhelming youthful population. This collaboration is developing a tailor-made strategy that will aim to deliver two million jobs by leveraging regulatory frameworks, strategic investments, and incentives while aligning with Nigeria’s commitments under the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Minister Musawa’s collaborative approach, notably with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), underscores a strategic alliance to implement policies that stimulate growth. This initiative has yielded a Memorandum of Understanding focusing on critical policy areas including National Intellectual Property Rights and The Cultural and Creative Economy, there is also a separate Fiscal & Tax Incentives policy tailored for the creative economy. These frameworks are poised to unleash economic potential, enabling creatives to monetize their innovations and secure financing against intellectual property (IP) assets.

 By partnering with the NESG, FMACCE aligns its goals with the private sector, crafting policies to enhance investment appeal and foster sustainable growth. This strategy, along with an inter-ministerial collaboration to enforce IP Protection, is a testament to the Ministry’s ability to leverage cross-sector synergies, driving the creative ecosystem forward through informed, macro-level decision-making.

In the hitherto largely ignored Heritage sphere, there is a long list of wins: securing the inscription of the Sango Festival on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage; accrediting Asaba Film City as part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network; quadripartite agreement with notable institutions to preserve and celebrate the Sukur UNESCO World Heritage Site; and securing UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity recognition for ‘Midwifery: Knowledge, Skills & Practices’.  The latter underscores the Ministry’s dedication to preserving traditional healthcare practices and highlights the vital role of midwifery in enhancing community health and well-being.

At a recent meeting in Abuja, Abdourahamane Diallo, UNESCO’s Country Representative to Nigeria, confirmed UNESCO’s support for FMACCE highlighting their assistance toward strengthening the Ministry’s policy frameworks and implementing international cultural conventions. These achievements emphasize the Ministry’s strategic focus on amplifying Nigeria’s creative voice on the global stage, fostering a thriving environment for cultural expression and economic growth.

Minister Musawa has also emphasized the importance of infrastructure as highlighted by the renovation of the National Theatre. During a stakeholders’ engagement in Lagos, the Minister said “This renovation, facilitated through collaboration between the Ministry and the Bankers’ Committee, symbolizes a “gift to the nation” and aims to preserve Nigeria’s cultural heritage while boosting economic growth”. Other infra developments include the creation of a public sector driven vehicle that will focus on infrastructure development, refurbishment of multiple museums in partnership with NCMM, and the NCAC partnership with Mefa to build multiple smaller capacity venues across the country.

On Global Soft power, the Minister launched “Destination 2030” at the prestigious World Economic Forum in Davos. Through Destination 2030, FMACCE has promoted and positively repositioned the country’s brand with active participation in global cultural events including the Grammys, Cannes Film Festival, Paris Fashion Show, and the Venice Biennale, reflecting solid support for Nigeria’s artistic expression and its presentation to a worldwide audience. FMACCE has also partnered with the Louvre Abu Dhabi on the “Kings & Queens” of Africa exhibition, which will open in Jan 2025.

Consequently, the D2030 initiative has catapulted Brand Nigeria forward, leading to the country rising 14 places in the 2024 Global Soft Power Index while gaining significant ground in other cultural influence rankings. D2030 is designed to provide global recognition, foster networking opportunities, and enhance access to capacity-building initiatives. By doing so, FMACCE aims to leverage cultural assets for social, economic, and environmental benefits in alignment with global cultural and diplomatic goals.

It is public domain information that the budget of the FMACCE is a fraction of what is required to deliver FGN stipulated growth targets, yet Musawa powers on with her programmes while seeking innovative solutions, the level of economic expansion recorded in year one speaks volumes to this point! The Minister recently held a widely attended event at the UN House in Abuja to promote its programs and broaden opportunities, she stressed that the Creative economy is actively opening its doors to international partnerships, spearheaded by engagements with UN agencies, foreign diplomats, and ambassadors.

In a similar event last week in Lagos, the Minister pitched the $100 billion Creative Economy Growth Plan to Corporate Nigeria including local and international investors. In addition, the Ministry’s plans for revenue generation through commercialization of National IP and private IP monetisation regimes highlight its forward-thinking approach while the establishment of a Cultural IP asset bank and the Creative Economy Development Fund will ensure creatives can access essential financing channels, turning cultural assets into sustainable revenue streams.

Significantly, Musawa has forged a partnership with AFREXIM, one of Africa’s largest financial institutions. FMACCE will be holding a joint event with the bank on the side lines of the 79th session of UNGA to mutually promote investment in the African Creative Economy. In addition, FMACCE will partner with multiple Nigerian entrepreneurs to provide them with access to a global market through AFREXIMs Canex WEND, the continents largest Creative gathering. The Minister has been appointed to the board of AFREXIMs’ Creative Africa Advisory Group in recognition of these efforts. 

Of course, there are challenges and plenty of naysayers, dissent is a healthy pillar of democracy. Minister Musawa has articulated a clear vision and demonstrated a willingness to engage in constructive discourse with well-intentioned stakeholders, meaningful exchange can only enrich the final result. However, critics must engage transparently and not in the shadows, otherwise they are but mere echoes of discontent to be dismissed without much thought as they lack the credibility that comes from open and honest dialogue. Additionally, commentators who focus on ad hominem attacks and refuse to engage with the substance of the Honourable Ministers Nation building ambitions, discredit themselves and betray the best interests of Nigerians who are desperate to see the country succeed.

Minister Musawa is implementing a serious strategy with the potential to offer an entire generation of Nigerians new opportunities through a genuinely diversified economy that benefits all. Her pursuit of transformative change is more than just ambitious; it is achievable through a meticulously crafted blend of global benchmarking, strategic partnerships, data-driven policies, innovative frameworks and effective implementation. Her inspired leadership promises to etch a new chapter, where Nigeria’s youthful population is empowered and creativity fuels economic prosperity. The Minister’s commitment remains steadfast and resolute, her unwavering commitment shines: to lead Nigeria boldly into a creative and prosperous future.

Zubair is Special Assistant to the President & SA to the Honourable Minister FMACCE on Economic Expansion & Job Creation

DIALOGUE WITH NIGERIA BY AKIN OSUNTOKUN

In the event of a random sampling of n the event of a random sampling of Nigerian public opinion leaders, the probability is that former President Olusegun Obasanjo will be judged the best of all those who have had the privilege of holding the office of President (or as Obasanjo naysayers would say) the one eyed man in the land of the blind. It is also fair to say that, more than his colleagues, he has benefited from a better education and training in the school of Nigerian leadership. some of them, inadvertently. It is a platitude to call him a man of destiny. None has had a more fulsome harvest of providential interventions. He typifies the saying that opportunity plus preparedness is equal to luck (Opportunity+Preparedness =Luck)

An early pointer to his charmed life trajectory was the prophetic foresight of the then Military Governor of the Northern Region, Colonel Hassan Usman Katsina. In the thick of the July 1966 crisis, Obasanjo had to leave Kaduna in a hurry – there was the fear that the safety of military officers of Southern origin was no longer guaranteed. Katsina then assigned two armoured vehicles to secure his journey to the airport and warned that Obasanjo must come to no harm because Nigeria was going to need him in the future. Four years later he was on hand to receive the surrender of the secessionist Biafra army at the end of the civil war in January 1970 (as General Officer Commander of the victorious Third Marine Commando).

He and the late General Murtala Mohammed were the nationalist godfathers of the July 1975 coup that ousted General Yakubu Gowon. Obasanjo thereafter became the deputy to Mohammed in his capacity as military head of state. After the accident of the abortive February 13th 1976 coup in which Mohammed was killed, he was a shoeing into the vacuum created by the assassination of his principal. He was ordained to barely escape getting killed in the coup by fortuitous circumstances. It so happened that on the same day, he had altered his daily routine to accommodate the christening of General Olu Bajowa’s baby to whom he was godfather. Furthermore, General Dumuje was mistaken for him and was accordingly rained with bullets but he survived.

All along in his career, he deliberately cultivated the trust and confidence of the dominant conservative wing of the Northern political establishment.There were rumours to the effect that he was the godfather of the best known Northern elite pressure group, Kaduna mafia. In the subsequent coup of December 1983, the leading conspirators had requested him to pick up the baton he left behind in October 1979 but he declined. You will recall the Mohammed Buhari junta routinely self identified as an offshoot of the Murtala-Obasanjo regime.

As head of state, Obasanjo burnished his lustre and appeal with the successful implementation of a military disengagement from power and transition of political power to civil democratic rule programme. He thereafter commenced another life stream as a burgeoning World statesman.Today, he is the chairman of the committee of former Presidents. Not to talk of the martyrdom effect of the adversity he endured at the murderous caprice of the rogue military dictator, General Sani Abacha. For that matter what used to be the dark spot of his political career, the third term gambit, appears to have transmuted into a missed opportunity in the popular imagination.

It is a reflection of his productive and disciplined life that he went on to acquire a doctorate degree in theology, immediately after his eight years presidency. Exasperated at the repeated failures of his successors, he had pointedly asked me to propose a way out of the mess Nigeria has found itself. He enjoyed utilising me as proxy for the Obafemi Awolowo political school of thought with which he was often at cross purposes. He enjoined me to speak freely without regard to his well known stump speeches.

Obasanjo belongs to a category of Nigerian leaders especially those of military background who are generally disdainful of ‘restructuring’ as reflected in his dismissive refrain that what Nigeria needs is a “restructuring of the mind”. This attitude is typical of the status quo stalwarts who are instinctively suspicious of any suggestion of decentralisation as the only realistic response to the lapse of Nigeria into interminable political and governance abyss. As probable panacea for what ails Nigeria my default position essentially boils down to an advocacy for the restoration of federalism as against reducing the political problem of Nigeria to the absence of ‘good leadership’.

So how do we conjure this good leadership? If we had been searching for this elusive good leadership for the better part of post-independence Nigeria, shouldn’t we get realistic and retrace our footsteps from where we sprayed into the wrong turn. If we were lucky enough to get good leadership occasionally, how do we ensure that the magic does not depart our shores again?.

The emergence of good leaders or bad leaders is random and not predictable unlike the permanence and certainty of the mediation of impersonal constitutional structure. Properly understood, the constitution is the product of our collective wisdom, whose applicability is the irreducible minimum of our coexistence. Moreso for a country that is prone to dysfunction. The futility of predicating the viability of Nigeria on the hope for good leadership has been the sad story of the fourth republic.

Democracy is particularly notorious in its blindness to virtue and optimal outcome of elections. Otherwise Donald Trump would not have been elected American president seven years ago. And no truth has been better said than the quip of Obasanjo that “the best candidate may not win the election” in the 1979 presidential election. Winston Churchill once said that: “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”

What is within our capacity to determine is the constitutional structure that is responsive to our foundational challenges. A viable constitutional order anticipates the worst case scenario of a destructive leadership, hence its inherent imposition of limitations and constraints on the capacity of bad leadership to damage society. It is analogous to taking out an insurance cover for your properties. Science proceeds from the assumption of worst case scenario not the wishful thinking of anticipating good leadership. It is in the assumption of this scientific logic that federalism was formulated as response to Nigeria’s peculiarities and vision. The most debilitating source of Nigeria’s political instability and crisis since 1966 was the military rule enabled over centralisation of powers hence the self prescription of decentralisation.

Nowhere is it truer than Nigeria that federalism is tragedy ‘as it is intended as a response mechanism to political conflict not an optimal strategy. It is a suboptimal compromise in the effort to defuse real and potential situations of conflict and ensure that such situations do not degenerate into less attractive possibilities’¹ The optimal strategy would have been for Nigeria not to be amalgamated in the first place.These were my ruminations and I suspect I might have moved a needle in his disposition towards devolution and decentralisation of powers.

Within the cosmopolitan ambience of the Obasanjo Presidential court would be found the constellation of Nuhu Ribadu and peers from across the nooks and crannies of Nigeria. We worked and lived like a political family of happy warriors. Ribadu was particularly close to Obasanjo. And in the post-Obasanjo era, we endure different degrees of withdrawal syndrome but who would have thought Nigeria would equally suffer a withdrawal syndrome to the extent of wishing that the third term bid had succeeded. His all encompassing role as the National Security Adviser has weighed heavily on him in an important respect-serving to bridge the gap between his principal, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Obasanjo. Understandably, he was not happy that Obasanjo did not attend the last council of state meeting in Abuja. We more or less spent the last Christmas break in Lagos to set in motion the process of thawing the frosty relationship between both of them.

So far as I know, the only encounter between the former President and the incumbent was the occasion of the inauguration ceremony of the ‘reelected’ Governor of Imo state, Hope Uzordinma. In a buoyant mood Tinubu had warmed up to Obasanjo and said aloud he was coming to see the former President. Obasanjo said that what he most appreciated was the waiver of the protocol that no flight takes off when the president is waiting to board his flight. Surprisingly, the camaraderie was blacked out in newspaper reports the following day. If you add two plus two, it is easy to conclude that some people (in Tinubu’s caucus) have a vested interest in the perpetuation of the cold war between the two.

Inevitably, the absence of Obasanjo at the council of state meeting was the kernel of our discussion the last time I saw Nuhu. He found it unacceptable that the former President would generously give of his time and energy to help distressed countries and ignore Nigeria. My position is that a newly elected President should have honoured his predecessors with at least a courtesy telephone call once he resumes office. This is good etiquette, moreso in the Yoruba culture especially if the incumbent is the younger party. I was surprised to see that an acclaimed master of political pragmatism could not transcend personal reservation in such a situation of realpolitik.

I issued a press statement on the itinerary of Obasanjo on Sunday which consisted of his ceremonial visits to Benin to felicitate with Chief Gabriel Igbinedion on his 90th birthday and from there went to Minna on a compensatory retroactive birthday felicitations. He was not in Nigeria on the actual birthday of President Ibrahim Babangida on August 17th. The statement was intended to put the itinerary in its true perspective as against the insinuation of ulterior motive

couched in reports such as this “it was further learnt that, at the residence of General Babangida (rtd), another former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar (rtd), and former National Security Adviser (NSA), General Aliyu Gusau (rtd), were also waiting for Former President Obasanjo”.

By now, it is common knowledge that Abdulsalami and Babangida are close neighbours and close friends in the retirement residence in Minna. And both of them are personally close to Obasanjo including General Aliyu Gusau. All of whom were his mentees.The news would have been that these friends stayed away when Obasanjo came calling.

the verdict

Using the hashtag, #TheBudgetisaMess, BudgIT Nigeria made a crisp post Tuesday on X (formerly Twitter): “Just look at this, Nigerians! A Federal Polytechnic (NICTM) in Edo (State) has an allocation of N900 million to construct a road in Cross River (State). This same Polytechnic is renovating traditional palaces for N300 million and supplying motorcycles to Katsina and Bayelsa traders for N100 million to ease the effect of subsidy removal.” The post listed many other projects running into several billions of Naira scattered across the country to be undertaken by this same Federal Polytechnic in Edo State before the conclusion: “Nigerians, these insertions cannot continue.”

BudgIT, a civic organization that promotes transparency and active citizen engagement, has for years been raising awareness about the futility of the national budget. When Senator Abdul Ningi was suspended in March this year following his allegation of an ‘underground budget’ of N3.7 trillion, BudgIT Director and co-founder, Seun Onigbinde, waded in on the side of the senator. And in recent days, Onigbinde has been exposing the various insertions that make nonsense of the 2024 appropriation law. But this is a recurring issue on which I have also written dozens of columns and most times, I preface or conclude with the admonition by Laolu Samuel-Biyi that “If you want to keep hope alive in Nigeria, don’t look at the budget.” The challenge, of course, is that we cannot ignore the budget. Yet, if such an important planning instrument is reduced to sharing money between and among powerful interests, as we have seen over the years in Nigeria, how can our country develop?

Ordinarily, the national budget is the financial plan of a country with the principal objective to reduce inequalities by mobilising and allocating resources for investment in the public sector. Sadly, that has rarely been  the case n Nigeria. From buying motorcycles and wheelbarrows to construction of websites to multibillion Naira ‘empowerment’ projects, budgeting in Nigeria is simply about sharing money for items repeated annually.

After President Muhammadu Buhari signed the Appropriation (Repeal and Amendment) Act, 2020 into law, I wrote a two-part series, ‘A Nation on Ventilator’ where I highlighted these same problems. A few of the items I listed from the 2020 budget: ‘Supply of fertilizers to some operatives in Bauchi Central Senatorial District for N50 million’; ‘Grant to Kutiriko Jummat Mosque Committee, Agaie/Lapai Federal Constituency, Niger State’ for the sum of N10 million; grant to ‘Lapai Emirates Development Association’; ‘Construction of Admin Block at ECWA Theological College (Christian Academy) Zambuk, Yamaltu/Deba’ at N19 million; N40 million for ‘Community support in Iwo, Ejigbo and Ola Oluwa LGA in Osun West Senatorial district’ etc. In the budget of the federal ministry of water resources for the same year, there was even a vote of N2 million for the construction of a personal gym that had no location!

One may argue that the sums allocated for a number of these items are small but by the time you multiply them into thousands, you get a fair idea of the quantum of money deployed for things that do not belong in the national budget of a country. Besides, there is hardly any rigour in the description of these items. For instance, supply of ‘empowerment materials for youths and women in Ondo motorcycles, tricycles, grinding machine, fashion and training equipment, barbing and hair dressing equipment in Ondo Central Senatorial District’ gulped N60 million if you can decipher what that means. The ‘purchase of one unit of CAT Caterpillar grader equipment for rural road rehabilitation in Ondo Central Senatorial district’ took another N70 million. Assuming this caterpillar was purchased (and you find this kind of line item every year), who would take ownership? More noteworthy: That particular ‘project’ was inserted in the budget for the Public Complaints Commission!

I understand that the structure of our country encourages lack of accountability in a system that was founded on ‘sharing the national cake’. But as I have also argued on numerous occasions, the essence of budgeting is forward planning.  It takes three years to complete the process for one fiscal year in more organised societies—a year to formulate, another to legislate, and yet another to execute. The real issue is not even that National Assembly members insert ‘projects’ without any process but rather that most of these financial allocations are transactional. That explains why ‘road construction’ projects can be domiciled in the Ministry of Health while ‘empowerment’ can be under the Ministry of Labour and Productivity. Projects running into hundreds of millions of Naira are sometimes domiciled in ‘various locations’ or ‘some communities.’ Since it is not conceivable that these Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) officials will execute projects outside their mandates, it stands to reason that such monies are purposely ‘warehoused’ for certain individuals.

More concerning is that while this challenge has been with us for years, it is now being institutionalized under the current administration. Even if they didn’t do anything about it, previous presidents (from Olusegun Obasanjo to the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari) were uncomfortable with the manner the budget was cannibalized by the National Assembly. But for the first time, we have a president who is not only comfortable with what the National Assembly has done with the 2024 budget but has also defended it. “I know the arithmetic of the budget and the numbers that I brought to the National Assembly, and I know what numbers came back. I appreciate all of you for the expeditious handling of the budget. Thank you very much,” President Bola Tinubu told the National Assembly leadership after the allegation by Ningi earlier in the year. “Those who are talking about malicious embellishment in the budget; they did not understand the arithmetic and did not refer to the baseline of what I brought. But your integrity is intact.”  

Perhaps the commendation is understandable because this presidency has also been adding luxury items that have more to do with its own indulgence than any attempt to promote the public good. Meanwhile, while signing the 2022 Appropriation Bill into law two years ago, Tinubu’s predecessor had expressed concern over “new insertions, outright removals, reductions and/or increases in the amounts allocated to projects.” These distortions, according to Buhari, “relate to matters that are basically the responsibilities of states and local governments, and do not appear to have been properly conceptualised, designed and costed. And many more projects have been added to the budgets of some MDAs with no consideration for the institutional capacity to execute the additional projects and/or for the incremental recurrent expenditure that may be required.’’

With a president who is more concerned about taking from the people (removal of subsidy, increased taxation etc.) than how such monies are expended, it is no surprise that concerns are not raised by the executive regarding the 2024 budget. But we cannot continue this way. When the national budget of a country is replete with ‘stakeholders annual forum’, ‘promotion of energy planning tools in six geopolitical zones’ etc., there can be no meaningful development. It is therefore important that we reform the budgeting process. And that will not happen until critical stakeholders in both the executive and legislature agree that we have a systematic problem which requires dealing with.

Section 88, subsection 2(b) of the 1999 Constitution expects the National Assembly to “expose corruption, inefficiency or waste in the execution or administration of laws within its legislative competence and in the disbursement or administration of funds appropriated by it”. An institution with such enormous powers cannot afford to be messing with the national budget every year. Let’s take the case of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA)—one of the agencies that BudgIT has highlighted in the 2024 budget.

Established in 2008 “to promote and support the use of space technology within and outside of Nigeria for the management of the full disaster cycle including prevention and mitigation”, the mandate of NASRDA is very clear. Despite that two of the three remaining satellites have expired, about 40% of the 2024 capital expenditure by NASRDA is going to ‘Supply Of Empowerment Materials To Indigent Women In Various Communities’, ‘Training And Empowerment Of Clergy, Traditional Rulers/Heads Of Communities On Conflict And Peace Resolution’, ‘Supply of Toyota Hilus Utility Sports For Sensitization Against Rape And Pre-Mature/Unwanted Pregnancy’, ‘Provision Of Sustainable Appliances’, ‘Provision And Supply Of Large Metal Dustbins, etc. How can anybody defend such budgetary provisions in a space agency?

But I do not want us to scapegoat the National Assembly. The argument of lawmakers has always been that if unelected ministers, heads of agencies and civil servants (who did not go through the rigour of any election) can insert whichever projects they want in the budget of the MDAs, why should they (elected representatives of the people) be precluded from doing the same? And this is a valid question. The issue, of course, is that the budget is a legislative responsibility, so we cannot but hold the lawmakers to account on the issue.

The essence of legislative oversight is to detect and help eliminate areas of waste within public agencies, make government accountable to the people, evaluate the impact of policies and programmes on the society while ensuring that all these are in promotion of the public good. A National Assembly whose members cannot appreciate that such onerous responsibility demands accountability will sooner or later lose the moral authority that surrounds its constitutional power. That exactly is the situation today. But we must also understand their own challenges.

On the second anniversary of the 8th National Assembly on 9th June 2017, I had the privilege of addressing members of the House of Representatives at plenary, at the invitation of then Speaker, Hon Yakubu Dogara. “While the Honourable members of this House were elected to make laws for the good governance of the country and through that bring developments to the people, what your constituents demand are instant gratifications. They want money to pay the school fees of their children, establish businesses and sometimes even to marry more wives,” I said in my presentation, which dwelt on the power of the legislature and the crisis of expectation on Nigerian lawmakers. “If you are not able to deliver on these, no matter how many bills you sponsor in the National Assembly or how efficient you are in your oversight functions, you are a failed lawmaker, in their estimation.” But I also made the lawmakers understand that the legislative ‘power of the purse’ confers on them the responsibility to serve as watchdogs on the executive in the way and manner national resources are allocated and expended.

Overall, we need a serious conversation on the budgeting process in Nigeria. The current arrangement does not, and cannot, serve the public good. As critical stakeholders in this democracy, our lawmakers (and their collaborators within the executive branch) must appreciate that, and course correct. In their own enlightened interest.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com   

Guest columnist By Kayode Soremekun

As the news unfolded about the Dangote Refinery and the counter-currents, I was stupefied. Specifically, I never knew that Nigeria’s oil policy would ever come to this sorry pass. Mind you, I am not innocent as far as oil and Nigeria are concerned. But I never thought for one moment that my country’s oil would be in a hock to external interests ably egged on by their internal collaborators. As I pondered over this issue, and the other related variable like, massive oil theft, I waited in vain for a rebuttal from official quarters. Thus far, none has come. So what is being bandied about our oil being used upfront as collateral for our debts by the previous regime may well be true.

As I began to ponder over this and other sad issues, memories came to mind about Nigeria and the black gold.

These memories are mainly owed to a career of over forty years in which I acquired various academic qualifications in the twin areas of oil politics and energy diplomacy.

In the course of this career, the shocks came very early during a field work, which eventually led to the highest academic degree in the area of oil and international relations.

In my attempts to gather first hand-information on oil politics, I had to interview a gentleman, a Nigerian and former secretary General of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). We got talking and in due course, the name of a Canadian scholar, Terisa Turner came up. The gentleman categorically told me that he knew Terisa Turner. But since he was running late for another appointment, we agreed to meet on the same day, in the same place-his Western House Office on Lagos Island. We duly met as agreed. But when Terisa Turner’s name came up again, the former OPEC scribe told me that he had never met Terisa Turner in his life. I was aghast and I immediately sensed that I was entering an area of study that was populated by invisibles and invincibles!!

My next port of call, a few days later was on another gentleman. One of those super-perm secs of the Gowon Era. Very suave and self-assured in manners and diction. This is not surprising. Afterall, he had studied the three Greats: Politics, Philosophy and Economics in Oxford with a background in King’s College, Lagos. As an old boy myself, matters moved swiftly between us.

Then the name Terisa Turner came up again. On hearing T.T, this KCOB and Oxford alumnus lost his cool. He proceeded to mouth epithets against the woman, and such are better left out of this piece.

This much was clear however, I had to go back to the Library to search out the works of Terisa Turner. This was when I discovered that the woman wrote her PhD thesis on: The Formulation and Implementation of Nigerian Petroleum Policy. In the thesis, the thrust of her argument was that Nigeria is mainly an arena where the oil companies act out their various external interests in collusion with various internal interests to the detriment of the Nigerian State

This according to her was a recipe for instability. In this respect she went on to predict long before the 1983 coup that a coup was only a question of time in view of the various forces jousting for influence in the arena of oil policy in Nigeria.

Fast forward to 1985, after finishing the doctoral programme.

I was bristling with enthusiasm and I had to attend a conference in McGill University in Canada, where I presented a Paper on: Oil, Nigeria and Mexico.

After the presentation, one woman came up to me and said that there were gaps in my analysis. That I needed to do more work by way of more familiarity with the literature. I took this suggestion in my stride, after all knowledge by its very nature is infinite. I subsequently asked for the lady’s name and she revealed that she was Terisa Turner. I pressed on by asking her whether she knows the former OPEC scribe, she answered in the affirmative. I duly informed her that the man told me that he does not know her. She simply threw back her head and laughed.

Yet another episode, which comes to mind, is the LNG Project. Dear readers please note that efforts to harness Nigeria’s gas resources date back to 1964 some sixty years. And as some technocrats are wont tell in fits of escapism, they always contend that Nigeria is not even an oil producing country; that it is in fact a gas producing social formation. My usual response to this is that the power realities, which govern oil, are also ever present in the gas industry. Long story short, on one fine day, a former oil minister, Tam David-West announced that the money earmarked for the LNG Project, some eight hundred million dollars was missing. The Nigerian media did not pick up the scent. I did and made enquiries from the lawyer in charge of the project under the first administration of Obasanjo. The lawyer was startled because I simply called on him to educate the audience on the issue at an open seminar in Obafemi Awolowo University. He in turn, educated the audience that the then departing regime of Obasanjo handed over the issue to the then incoming government of Shehu Shagari. For four years during the second republic nothing happened. Then the Special Adviser on energy to Shagari died. The 1983 coup came and the whiz kid of the Era bought into a major commercial bank. The new board of directors was made of top and retired personnel of the then NNPC. At this juncture even the non-imaginative reader can fill in the details.

Another episode, which comes to mind, involves this writer and the late Ken Saro Wiwa. Largely at my instigation, I caused the defunct African Guardian Magazine to organize a seminar on: Oil Companies and Oil Community Relations. This was way back in 1993.I served as an anchor resource person at this seminar. In this capacity, I had to comment on every paper through analysis and interpretation. I was enjoying myself at this intellectual feast.

The crunch time was when it was Ken Saro Wiwa’s turn to present a paper. He did alright. But in a different way. He came forth with pictorial footages on the plight of the Ogoni people. The atmosphere changed. Most of the junior workers of the Presidential Hotel poured into the hall. It was no longer a seminar for sedate academics. Heavy advocacy was on courtesy of Ken, the irreverent Ogoni man. But one oil man from Shell would not let him be. He offered counters to Ken’s depositions. It was feisty exchange between the two men. A sort of civil war: for the other man was also from an oil-bearing area. As a serious student of oil politics, the implications and irony of this abrasive encounter was not lost on me. For here were two men from the South-South crossing swords with one batting on the side of the oil companies and with Ken on the other side. Evidently it was not a civil exchange and the two men nearly came to blows. For me, the episode brought to my mind the fate of one Italian man, Enrico Mattei who in an earlier era, also took on the oil companies. He died mysteriously in an air crash. And as the records go, it was reported that when Enrico Matteo died in what has been regarded as an arranged air crash, there were no long faces in the corridors of the oil companies. I went on to narrate this story to the audience and proceeded to pointedly warn Ken that if he was not careful, he would go down the Mattei way. This was precisely Ken’s fate two years later. On November 10,1995,he was hanged courtesy of a kangaroo trial, which precluded an appeal. Such indeed are the ways of oil.

As I reflect on this greasy fluid and Nigeria, what vividly comes to mind is that, no Nigerian leader has ever said anything concrete about oil. Rather the focus has always been on oil revenues. But there is an exception. That exception comes in the spirited interventions of Obafemi Awolowo. As the Finance Minister under Gowon, he caused the government to send a delegation to other oil producing countries. He wanted to know why Nigeria was getting low returns from her oil. The delegation produced a comprehensive report as regards the way forward for Nigeria. This was a 1969 document and it should have been used as a Bible for our oil policy. But shortly after, Awolowo left the government and that was the end of the matter. But not quite.

In the run-up to the 1979 and 1983 elections the same Awolowo outlined comprehensive plans as regards how the oil industry would be run. But the man was too far ahead of his time. This was moreso when the sage was pitted against the vampires of the then ruling party.

So where are we at the moment. For much too long we have gone to sleep. Such that the abnormal has assumed the profile of the normal. For how can one explain a situation in which an oil producing country cannot refine its product and as such has to depend on refined imported oil.

However it looks as if the jinx is about to be broken since the hegemonic forces appear to be in retreat partly because of Tinubu’s latest thrust. It is instructive to note here that PBAT has succeeded in doing the unprecedented by inserting the Naira as a transactional item in our oil business. No more the almighty dollar.

But in an overall sense: will he succeed? Can he succeed? If these questions can be answered positively, then Nigeria would have embarked on a path, which should have been taken several years ago.

But then, as the sage would say: better late than never.

But even then, there are matters arising from this latest phase of our adventure in the oil industry.

There is still much confusion about the pricing and how the product will get to the consumer. At a point in time, Dangote himself said he was waiting on the Federal Executive Council (FEC) as regards pricing. Again we were initially told that NNPC would be the sole off-taker of the products from the Dangote refinery. Meanwhile, as if NNPC is something of a scourge to the populace, it keeps breathing down our necks that the refined oil will not come cheap. And as we write, the street is not smiling as regards the availability and rising price of petrol.

PBAT himself has not helped matters, by his depositions all the way from China.

Among other things, he was of the view that things will have to get worse, before they get better. True, and this is common place enough.

But what remains unaddressed is that under the current conditions, Nigeria only gets 5 percent of what is due to her from the industry. The rest is appropriated by wiser folks outside Nigeria.

In more plaintive terms, what is being said is this; over time since the inception of what passes for the Nigerian oil industry, we have failed to put in place backward linkages, which would have catalyzed our quest for industrialization. For any country with a viable petrochemical industry  (as well as a steel industry) would have successfully weaned itself from itself from unbridled importation which is the sad and tragic lot of our Nigeria, despite its oil.

So beyond all the noise about the Dangote refinery and the perennially coming Port Harcourt refinery, the challenge is really how we can run a viable oil industry that will serve as the foundation of an industrialized Nigeria. Luckily for us, this is not rocket science.

Other social formations through their respective oil companies have been able to serve their countries in this critical area.

On this note, my specific references are to entities like: PETROBRAS; (Brazil), SONATRACH; (Algeria), PEMEX; (Mexico), PETRONAS; (MALAYSIA).

Against this background, my final poser to PBAT is this: Is it possible for us to learn from one or more these countries as regards how we can attain a breakthrough in this critical area.

As it is, the debates and discourses in this critical area of our oil industry have not even started.

This, I believe is the ultimate challenge before this administration in the area of the oil industry-namely the task of putting in place backward linkages which will give a novel fillip to the Nigerian economy.

Permit to end here by saying that a number of individuals are well placed to drive this novel policy thrust. Such individuals include: Engineer Oladele Afolabi, Engineer Kayode Ojo, Austin Avuru, Cyril Obi and Professor Julius Ihonvbere.

•Professor Kayode Soremekun is the immediate past Vice Chancellor of Federal University, Oye-Ekiti.

TUESDAY WITH REUBEN ABATI

The return of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu from what looked like a long trip abroad must come to many as a relief. When the President travelled on August 29, his destination was announced in very clear terms. He was heading to China to attend the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in his capacity as Nigeria’s leader and as Chairman of the Economic Community of West African states (ECOWAS). The President himself has described his trip to China as successful. On September 2, he met with President Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the People, and also, On September 4 with Premier Li Qiang, with the Chinese expressing a commitment to upgrade China-Nigeria relation to “a comprehensive strategic partnership”. At the end of bilateral meetings with the Chinese five Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) were signed on the Belt and Road Initiative, nuclear energy, infrastructure, media engineering and mining at national, sub-national levels and with the Nigerian private sector. The President also visited two Chinese companies. At the opening session of FOCAC, President Tinubu made a strong case for China-Africa relations within the context of multilateralism and the promotion of global peace. I thought he added a little dose of saccharine when he said the objectives of FOCAC align with those of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement. How exactly? But what is not in doubt is that China is determined to further extend its inroad into Africa and the developing world, under the New Silk Road project, committing to making available to the African countries additional financing support of 51.4 billion US dollars. President Tinubu met with Nigerians in China, members of NIDO, China chapter, using the opportunity to explain his administration’s reform efforts. He lauded the $280 billion economic trade partnership between China and Africa.

 China has a lot to gain from Africa and vice versa. Africa is the last frontier where major nations of the world – France, Russia, Japan, Germany etc. are seeking partners and markets. In an increasingly multi-polar world, Africa provides China with a fertile ground to deepen its geo-political influence in the face of its fierce competition with the West, especially the US in virtually everything. Africa also has a lot to learn from the Chinese. I was expecting that the 53 African leaders who went to China for FOCAC would return home with memories of the technological wonders in China, the speed trains, the cutting-edge innovations of the Chinese, their work culture, organizational efficiency and capacity to pay attention to details, and therefore seek to imbibe the value of how a nation defines its own character. African leaders are very quick at signing MOUs and showing excitement at the promises that China offers, but they hardly have the skills set to maximize advantages for their own people. This is the story of the debt trap in which many African countries including Zambia, Angola, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya have found themselves, resulting in accusations that what China practices is “debt trap diplomacy.” Nations look out for their own interests. No nation except perhaps Nigeria engages in Father Christmas diplomacy, and now years later, the same countries who benefitted from Nigeria’s generosity treat us badly. In addition to whatever we do in the foreign scene, there is yet a need for the re-thinking of Nigeria’s foreign policy process.  

Shortly before President Tinubu’s departure to China, there was an incident involving Ogun State and a Chinese company, Zhongstan Fucheng – the enforcement of an arbitral judgement which saw three Nigerian aircraft being attached in France as well as properties in the UK and Canada. This was the latest in a series of agreements that Nigeria botched. It will be recalled that around 2016/2017 when President Muhammadu Buhari visited China, so many MOUs were also signed. But what happened? Many of the agreements with the Chinese were not implemented or they are in various states of confusion, including the HEDA-SINOPEC deal, and other projects involving Chinese companies such as China Composites Group Corporation (CCGC) and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). Many of the issues could be resolved not through litigation or arbitration, but diplomacy. Did President Tinubu address this challenge during his trip to China? Was there anything about the contract problem involving Ogun State, more so as that particular issue generated so much concern among Nigerians? The problem with Nigeria is our ad-hoc-ism, lack of consistency and continuity. International agreements require competence and consistency in execution. President Tinubu said at the heart of China-Africa relations is a foundation built on trust and mutual respect. The Chinese will only respect us if we get our acts together. It is not enough to sign MoUs, there should be follow-through action on the understanding reached. President Tinubu has visited about 24 countries in the last 16 months. We need ambassadors in these countries. Many of our missions have no ambassadors manning them at the most senior level.  It has been a whole year since Nigerian envoys were recalled. The President must send envoys abroad, competent persons not party members and their children looking for titles! 

The China summit ended on September 6, and we were informed that the President would have a stop-over in London. He stayed longer in London than he did in China, only to return on Sunday, after more than an additional week. In one report we were informed that the President stopped over to discuss climate action with King Charles III. For one week? What kind of climate action discussion is that? This is not the first time that the President would travel to one destination, and instead of returning after his main assignment, Nigerians would be told that he would stop over either in France or London. Twice, his managers even forgot to announce his whereabouts. Such absent-mindedness should be avoided, the President of Nigeria must not disappear into an artificial Bermuda triangle even for a day, only to show up later in a photo-op. The people of Nigeria have the right to ask for their President. They voted for him. He asked to be given the job. The littlest expectation is that he will show up on duty. If there is any reason for him to be absent, the people have the right to know. In the absence of transparency, Nigerians are quick to resort to speculations and rumour-mongering. And that was exactly what happened this time around: someone had taken a photograph of the President leaving a hospital in London, it was said, and immediately the rumour-mill jumped to the conclusion that the President had gone to see his doctors.  The President is a human being. There is nowhere in the Nigerian Constitution where it is said that to be eligible for President, the candidate must be super-human. The President’s handlers must pay attention to this detail and going forward, respect the people’s right to know. In other parts of the world, the state of the President’s health could have reverberations in markets, and generate political consequences.

But now that he is back, it is good to see him, getting back quickly into the groove of things. He was in Maiduguri, Borno state capital yesterday to identify with the people who were displaced by the massive flooding that overtook Maiduguri and Jere LGAs of the state. Knowing that the President had just returned from the UK where he reportedly discussed climate action with the King, and knowing that there have been torrential floods in parts of the world, certain government officials may inform the government that the flooding in Maiduguri is as a result of climate change. It is a lie. The flooding could have been prevented. The dam managers, if they are experts, should have known that there would be a massive inflow from Nagdda River, at a particular time of the year, and plan for any eventuality accordingly. I refer President Tinubu to a damning report in the Daily Trust of Monday, September 16 at page 4 titled “Maiduguri flood: N400 m budgeted for Alau Dam in 4 years.” The pith of the story is that the Alau Dam has been defective for upwards nine years, and despite over N400 million budgeted for its rehabilitation between 2020 and 2024, the dam managers did nothing. Now, over 30,000 persons have been displaced, the death toll keeps mounting, there are fears of a possible disease outbreak. The visit of the President and the Vice President before him, and the prompt response of the agencies: NEMA and the Nigerian Army is commendable, but there is a lot more to be done. The President should order an immediate investigation into the Borno flood incident. What happened to the budgeted funds? Who collected what? What did the Chad Basin Development Authority do or did not do? Each time there is a crisis in this country, we are quick to lament and wring our hands, but the real challenge is the negligence and incompetence of officials. Every year, Nigeria’s low plains are flooded, from the banks of Rivers Niger and Benue to the Delta. Farms are destroyed. Lives are lost. We lament. We move on. The following year, the same tale is re-enacted – it is either the Rivers Niger and Benue overflow their banks, or water is released from Lagdo Dam in Cameron, or from Oyan Dam or the Ogun-Osun River Basin. We lament. We move on. This year, the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency in its 2024 Annual Flood Outlook had listed 31 states as high-risk areas, including Borno. Characteristically, nobody took precautions. We need to take a second look at our dams nationwide, and the management of the country’s river basins.

President Tinubu returned to Nigeria on the same day NNPC Limited lifted petrol, from the Dangote Refinery, a $20 billion investment, with a refining capacity of over 650, 000 barrels per day, the largest single-train refinery in the world. Dangote has been praised deservedly for his courage, patriotism and faith in the Nigerian project, and on Sunday, President Tinubu was also congratulated. It is on his watch that the Dangote Refinery began its operations. Government-owned refineries have been moribund for about 28 years, swallowing state resources and producing nothing of value other than corruption. The Dangote Refinery marks a watershed moment in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. The responsibility of government is to provide an enabling environment for those who believe in this country to thrive. This is why I consider the altercation between NNPC Limited and Dangote Refinery, somewhat of a distraction. Dangote Refinery is not an NGO, it is not a charity organization. It is in business to make profit. NNPC Limited is also in business to make profit, what it calls a willing buyer, willing seller market. The regulator is the Nigeria Midstream and Downstream Regulatory Agency (NMDPRA). Whatever negotiations that may be necessary by October 1 as announced must be the focus of the government at this time, not the battle of press releases that we have seen in the last few days. As President Tinubu settles down after his long trip around the world, he must get on top of the issue of petrol supply. Nigerians would like to know for once if the government is truly subsidizing fuel and by what amount and if the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) needs to be revisited, so be it. Laws should serve the best interests of the people. Market forces must wear a Nigerian face.

The energy security that has been talked about, and savings in forex expenditure that local refining may bring should translate into greater productivity in the Nigerian economy. President Tinubu should move away from running a palliatives economy, and run an economy that puts people to work and creates massive opportunities. This should be the renewed hope message that he preaches. No country grows on the strength of a handout economy, where as we have seen, the people have been turned into beggars in their own country. The people of Nigeria have made it clear that they are hungry and angry, and what government does is to distribute rice, and millet, and cash that may not be properly accounted for. I have only just heard that each Minister has been given 1, 200 bags of rice to distribute to the old and vulnerable in their constituencies. Your guess is as good as mine as to what will happen to those bags of rice, but there is also something ugly about having a Federal Cabinet of rice distributors.

In Maiduguri, President Tinubu reportedly said he had to alter his travel plans to return home to visit Maiduguri. He had planned to move from the UK to America. I don’t want to believe that he actually said that. He went to China a week after returning from France! There is brewing discontent in the land as a result of the rising cost of living.  If, as someone calculated, it costs about N1, 500 to have a slightly decent meal these days, then anyone would need about N5, 000 per day. Multiply that by 30 days, that is about N150, 000 per month on feeding alone. People have other expenses, including rent, out of pocket healthcare spending, an army of extended family mouths, and other dependants, and yet the minimum wage of N70, 000 has not yet been implemented. The new national minimum wage has already been wiped out by inflation. It is no longer a status thing to own a car. It is expensive to maintain. In the month of August, Nigerian youths trooped out in a protest they called #EndBadGovernnace, some of the persons arrested during that protest are now facing trial for treason. Should any citizen receive the death penalty for saying he or she is hungry, or for carrying placards? While the President was away, these same angry youths have been talking about another protest. They call it #FearlessinOctober. There is an army of hungry people out there ready to defy the authorities. They think they deserve more than the handouts of rice, maize and millet from their government. Other Presidents before Tinubu enjoyed some honeymoon with the people of Nigeria before the critics descended on them.  President Tinubu must reconsider his strategy.

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA

One city wag said the Biblical-proportion flood that overcame whole sections of the city of Maiduguri last week was second in national impact only to the recent increase in fuel prices, but I did not agree. We are yet to have a final tally of the Maiduguri calamity, including the number of lives lost, the injuries suffered, the number of houses and property washed away, critical infrastructure destroyed, productive man-hours lost, the hunger and homelessness suffered, disease outbreaks that could follow, and the anguish suffered by parents separated from their children by the floods.

You get a certain measure of the calamity from videos of major highways turned to gushing rivers; women, children and the elderly wading through gushing waters, grabbing anything they could for support; University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital’s priceless cancer therapy and diagnostic machines swimming in the currents; some youths sitting on the rooftops of their houses, only a meter or so above gushing waters; Shehu of Borno’s palace flooded; Vice President of the Federal Republic and the Governor of Borno State wading through waist-high water in order to reach the Shehu’s palace, their security aides forming a protective ring around them in case water tried to wash away the big men; claims, though disputed, that hundreds of convicts and awaiting trial persons escaped from the medium security prison, some of them allegedly Boko Haram chieftains.

The Navy, other security agencies and locals deployed canoes along the [former] streets in order to rescue trapped people. It reminded us of Noah’s Ark. All this calamity caused by the Alu dam, which either collapsed or the water gushed over it, according to contradictory accounts. The last time we had a calamitous flood of this proportions, sweeping away parts of a major city, was the Ogunpa flood disaster in Ibadan in August 1980. We saw television pictures at the time of President Shehu Shagari shedding tears at the riverside when he visited the scene. There was also comic politics to it; when a delegation of Ibadan Descendants Union paid a sympathy visit to Governor Bola Ige, he dressed them down, saying it took them long to come when the Sokoto man Shagari promptly arrived at the scene.

In between Ogunpa and Maiduguri, we had the River Niger flooding of parts of Lokoja and other riverside towns in 2012 and again in 2013. No doubt our town planners’ dedication to their duties leaves much to be desired. Maiduguri was probably a once in a generation calamity occasioned by an unforeseen dam collapse, but when I saw videos of whole town wards in Lokoja, with only the tips of their rooftops visible, I wondered why houses were allowed to be built in the valley of River Niger, the mightiest river in West Africa,  in Lokoja, after it has travelled thousands of kilometers all the way from Fouta Djallon mountains and crashed into the mighty River Benue, itself having arrived all the way from the Cameroon highlands.

In between calamitous floods, in Nigeria we have also had terrible canoe accidents. One of them just occurred three days ago, at Gummi town in Zamfara State, where 40 farmers on their way to their farms were said to have drowned. This year’s rains have been exceptionally heavy; Gummi town suffered a mighty flood, which did not get the same attention as Maiduguri because it is not a state capital. Many canoe accidents occurred in recent years in Niger and Kebbi States, on the River Niger and its tributaries. In April last year, a boat sank with a film crew on River Niger in Anambra State, leading to the death of Nollywood actor Junior Pope and four others. Some years ago, we also had a sea surge in Lagos, and major roads on the island were washed away by seawater.

Not only in water, but calamities on dry land have also been our lot in Nigeria. One of the worst vehicle accidents occurred in 1986, when two luxurious buses travelling in opposite directions collided in Edo State, with the loss of some 80 lives. Although there is a whole agency in Nigeria set up in 1988 to combat road accidents, the combination of our roads, our Tokunbo vehicles, our heavy traffic including overloaded articulated trucks, our national habit of ferrying petrol, diesel, steel and cement by road, not to mention our drivers  deprived of sleep and our brash young child drivers, all combine to make FRSC’s work nearly impossible. I got an idea of what happens on our roads one day in 2010 when I entered Abuja’s Jabi Motor Park at midnight, looking for diesel. I saw whole rows of commercial drivers sleeping on benches and on cardboard mats, densely packed together like sardines, with not even enough space to turn. They were waiting for dawn to load passengers, jump into their vehicles and hit the highways.

Plane crashes tend to get the most publicity, maybe because they are rarer and also because the most important citizens travel by air. Among the worst cases were the November 1996 ADC plane crash into Lagos lagoon in which Prof Claude Ake was among the victims; the October 2005 Bellview plane crash outside Lagos that killed many VIPs;  December 2005 Sosoliso plane crash at Port Harcourt airport, with 60 students of Loyola Jesuit College among the victims; the September 2006 crash of a military plane in Benue State that killed ten Army Generals including Major General Nuhu Bamalli; the October 2006 plane crash in Abuja that claimed many lives including Sultan Muhammadu Maccido; Nigeria Airways plane crash at Enugu in 1983 that had Governor C.C. Onoh’s daughter on board; the 1992 Hercules plane crash at Ejigbo that consumed nearly 200 Army Majors returning to Jaji for a course; not to forget the January 22, 1973 Jordanian Airlines Boeing 707 place crash at Kano airport, which killed nearly 200 returning pilgrims, including my uncle. Also calamitous have been train accidents, probably the worst being the February 1970 Langalanga train disaster in present-day Nasarawa State which killed dozens of passengers. In his biography, Dr. Ahmadu Ali also told a story about how he only just escaped a train accident in Ibadan in the late 1950s.

In the 1980s, we used to have a lot of kerosene explosions in Nigeria. Housewives lighted kerosene stoves or kerosene lamps only to have them explode, because the kerosene got mixed with petrol. We have had much less of that in recent years, no doubt due to greater diligence by the authorities. We however have even more calamitous gas explosions, in houses and in sales depots. Despite many tragic explosions in the past, Nigerians cannot resist scooping free petrol from a fallen tanker, which sometimes explodes with fatalities and injuries. Not to mention people scooping fuel from a vandalized pipeline; the worst explosion was probably the one at Jesse, Delta State in October 1998 when nearly 1,000 people died.

Sometimes it was not our fault. In August 1986, an estimated 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide gas erupted from under Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing 1,700 people in nearby villages, some of them in Nigeria. Whole herds of cattle grazing by the lakeside were also killed. After road accidents, fire is probably our most common calamity in Nigeria. Although the Federal, every state, many Local Governments and many public and private agencies have fire fighting agencies, fire still kills many Nigerians every year and destroys a lot of property. Fire in a petrol station is one of the worst; I witnessed one in Kaduna in 2003 and the flames in the sky looked like Doomsday.

Another common calamity in Nigeria is building collapse. Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja are the Ground Zeros of building collapse. Whenever it occurs, Nigerian Society of Engineers will be huffing and puffing, that professional engineers were not used, that substandard materials were used or, often, that the building’s owner violated building approvals and added a storey or two on top of the approved plan. I was participating in an Editorial Board meeting at Jabi, Abuja in 2008 when we heard what we at first thought was a plane crash. We soon learnt that a multistorey building collapsed not far away, with many fatalities.

Talking about disasters, there was the Ikeja armoury explosion in January 2002. Lots of people died, not from the explosion, but because they fled into the nearby lagoon and drowned. When Defence Minister General T.Y. Danjuma visited the scene, he said something memorable: “When you hear an explosion, you don’t run! Take cover!” The BBC report on the incident also expressed surprise that although this country has lots of rivers and lakes, too many Nigerians do not know how to swim, which is a major survival skill. [I was a good river swimmer in my primary school days, but have since lost the skill].

We once had relatively minor earth tremors in Ogun State in the 1980s, in southern Kaduna State and in Katampe area of Abuja about ten years ago, the latter attributed to mining activity and possibly the indiscriminate sinking of boreholes. We have had mines collapsing onto miners, especially in the olden days of Jos tin mining, Enugu coal mines and more recently, in illegal Zamfara gold mines. Other national calamities include disease epidemics. Malaria is the biggest killer, but it gets nowhere near the publicity that the great Cholera epidemic of 1970 got, not to mention the 2020 AD Covid pandemic. Animal disease epidemics were not left out, including rinderpest, Mad Cow, foot and mouth disease and bird flu. Man-made calamities resembling natural disasters have also bedeviled Nigeria, including insurgency, banditry, Sit At Home, anti-government riots, and communal clashes such as Kafanchan 1987, Tafawa Balewa 1991, Zangon Kataf 1992, Ife-Modakeke and Aguleri-Umuleri.

We still thank God that in Nigeria we have never had a typhoon, a hurricane, a Central Asia-style major earthquake, an Australia-style mudslide, a Pacific-rim style tsunami, or a Chernobyl-type nuclear reactor meltdown. I sympathise with the people of Maiduguri on this latest national disaster. I am not doing so only because my great grandfather immigrated out of Borno in the  mid-19^th century. Alau Dam was built 150 years after he left, so he didn’t have a premonition.

By

Dakuku Peterside 

“Scramble for Africa” historically refers to the late 19th and early 20th centuries when European powers colonised and divided the African continent, seeking political, economic, and strategic dominance. Africa was mercilessly exploited, and to date, the scars remain. With its rich resources and sizable population, Nigeria became a prime target of British colonial authorities, a historical fact that underscores its continued strategic importance on the continent. Fast forward to the 21st century, and a new scramble for Africa is underway. This time, global powers compete for influence, resources, and markets rather than territories. Once again, Nigeria plays a central role in these geopolitical and economic dynamics.

In this modern scramble, the dynamics differ considerably. The focus has shifted from territorial to economic conquest wrapped in infrastructure investments, aid and strategic alliances. Leading global actors—such as China, the United States, the European Union, and emerging powers like Russia, Turkey, and India—vie for influence across Africa through diplomacy, trade deals, and development initiatives. While politically independent, Africa remains a stage for intense geopolitical competition, as the world’s most powerful nations recognise the continent’s potential and seek to secure a share of its resources and promising future.

Nigeria is pivotal in Africa’s trajectory as the continent’s most populous country and largest economy. The country is rich in oil reserves, has a rapidly expanding technology sector, and boasts an increasingly youthful and growing population. By 2050, projections indicate that one in four people will be African, and Nigeria is expected to account for a significant portion of that demographic shift. This youthful population, with its energy and potential, presents a promising future, making Nigeria a focal point in global power plays, with its future development and stability crucial for Africa and the world.

However, Nigeria also faces many domestic challenges that complicate its ability to maximise the benefits of this shadow battle for influence by global powers. These issues include endemic corruption, ineffective political leadership, and security concerns. These issues have created a fragile environment for economic growth, even as foreign powers, as part of their grand strategy, seek to invest in the country’s resources and infrastructure to position their countries for influence and economic advantage. 

In recent years, a series of high-profile international summits have been held aimed at solidifying relationships with African nations. These summits, often referred to as an ‘old trick’ in international diplomacy, remain effective in the modern scramble for Africa. They serve as platforms for global powers to compete for influence and partnerships, highlighting the continued importance of Africa in the global geopolitical landscape. 

Unfortunately, Africa has learnt nothing from history. Some notable examples of these partnership summits include the Russia-Africa Summit, the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit, the European Union-African Union (AU) Summit, the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, and China’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).

Each of these summits represents a strategic attempt by global powers to strengthen ties, secure economic partnerships, and cement their geopolitical foothold in Africa. For instance, the European Union’s Global Gateway project, announced at the EU-AU Summit, seeks to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by offering substantial investments in African infrastructure. Likewise, the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit highlighted a $55 billion investment plan over three years, reflecting a renewed focus by Western powers on regaining influence in a continent where China’s presence has become increasingly dominant.

China’s FOCAC remains a crucial pillar of its engagement with Africa. At the 2024 FOCAC summit, China pledged USD 51 billion for 30 infrastructure projects across Africa, positioning Beijing for more significant influence on the continent. Meanwhile, emerging powers like India, Turkey, and the Gulf states are also working to deepen their ties with African nations, creating more comprehensive partnership options for African leaders.

In this evolving global chessboard, the question remains: Is Nigeria a pawn in the hands of international powers, or can it become an active player shaping its destiny? Nigeria’s vast natural resources, demographics, expanding technology sector, and strategic location make it an attractive playground for foreign investment and global geopolitics. However, the country’s ability to benefit from this renewed battle for global influence hinges on its ability to navigate the complex landscape of international diplomacy and partnerships, in addition to the quality of domestic governance , the power of immigration , the rise of Ai and ICT and its positioning in the new global economic order. This is purely a function of leadership that has understanding and requisite navigational skill. 

At present, Nigeria faces a delicate balancing act. On one hand, foreign investments can drive much-needed infrastructure development, job creation, and technological advancement. However, the ever-present risk of economic dependency and the challenge of maintaining sovereignty exists. China’s large-scale infrastructure investments, often funded by loans, have sparked concerns over Nigeria’s rising debt burden and the potential for long-term economic vulnerability. These concerns underscore the need for Nigeria to adopt a cautious approach, ensuring that foreign partnerships do not compromise the country’s sovereignty or its long-term developmental goals. This delicate balance requires strategic decision-making and a clear understanding of Nigeria’s long-term interests in the global geopolitical landscape.

Nigeria’s potential to play an active role in the African continent and emerging global dynamics is inextricably linked to its domestic stability, achieved by strengthening democratic institutions, improving security, promoting inclusive development, and maintaining a favourable investment  environment. Nigeria inevitably must build a strong economy as the foundation for effective foreign policy. We cannot continue to tumble from one economic policy to the next and expect to be given strategic importance in this new war for influence by powerful global nations on the continent.

Nigeria’s leadership is central to its success in this new scramble for Africa. Without visionary and strategic leadership capable of understanding global dynamics and advancing Nigeria’s long-term interests, the country risks being left behind in the race for international influence. The need for such leadership is urgent, as Nigeria’s leaders must prioritise its strategic autonomy, leveraging its vast resources and human capital to negotiate favourable terms with global powers.

Nigeria needs to be more active in a world where geopolitical competition intensifies. Its foreign policy must proactively build alliances with traditional and emerging powers while safeguarding the nation’s long-term interests. The country’s leaders must recognise the importance of actively shaping Nigeria’s future and Africa’s collective destiny. Nigeria, with its potential and resources, has a significant role in shaping the continent’s future. 

So far, sound bites from Nigeria’s foreign affairs minister, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, seem reasonable, but action is more important. Nigeria is championing the 4D principle, Democracy, Demographics, Development and Diaspora. We led the UN tax reforms but till date we are yet to appoint  a permanent representative in the global body to further advance our agenda items. Nigeria has yet to appoint substantive ambassadors for all our missions in nearly one year, yet we expect the world to take us seriously in diplomatic engagements. Regional leadership in West Africa and the continent should be our natural forte, but we also are not getting it right. 

As one of Africa’s largest economies, Nigeria is uniquely positioned to lead the continent in defining its collective positions in dealings with external powers. However, this requires smart diplomacy and a Pan-African approach, whereby African nations present a united front in their negotiations with global actors. If African nations act as individual entities, they risk being divided and conquered by more considerable powers with far more excellent resources and strategic leverage.

Africa’s ability to thrive in this new era of global competition depends on its capacity to unite as a bloc to secure mutually beneficial deals with external partners. By adopting a coordinated Pan-African strategy, African nations can negotiate from a position of strength, ensuring they benefit from foreign engagement rather than being exploited.

The new scramble for Africa presents both opportunities and risks for Nigeria. Foreign investment offers a pathway to infrastructure development, economic growth, and technological innovation. However, the risk of neocolonialism and economic dependency looms as Nigeria and other African nations rely on external capital for their development. A culture of dependence on aids and foreign capital often creates a disincentive for critical thinking and institutional development. 

Nigeria’s future will depend on its ability to manage these external influences, prioritise national interests, and strengthen its internal governance. With strategic foresight and effective leadership, Nigeria can turn the renewed global scramble for Africa into an opportunity for national development, positioning itself as a key player worldwide. However, if Nigeria fails to navigate these challenges, it risks repeating past mistakes and falling prey to the forces that once sought to dominate it.

The historical and contemporary scrambles for Africa share similarities in the way foreign powers seek to exploit Africa’s resources for their benefit. However, the modern scramble is driven by economic partnerships rather than direct colonisation. With exemplary leadership, Nigeria can be central to this new global competition as one of Africa’s most influential countries. While foreign investments bring growth opportunities, Nigeria must navigate the challenges of dependency, corruption, and internal security issues to ensure that it benefits from the new scramble without repeating past mistakes. Nigeria’s future depends on its ability to manage foreign relations while prioritising its national interests and development.

Postscript by Waziri Adio

Saturday’s governorship election in Edo State will feature a keen contest among political gladiators whose names are not even on the ballot. On many fronts, the race has all the trappings of a proxy contest. Of the 17 candidates on the ballot, the three frontline candidates are: Senator Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress, APC; Mr. Asue Ighodalo of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP; and Mr. Olumide Akpata, of the Labour Party, LP. They will put up a good fight on their own and two of the three will run on their accomplishments in other fields. But all three are political newbies. Their three-way exertions will be dwarfed by the vigorous test of strength by other and more politically-experienced individuals and entities both within and outside the state.

This is because there are outstanding scores to be settled and new advantages to be scored by those who are not even on the ballot. These outside gladiators have a greater incentive than the candidates for the outcome to favour them or their camp. If it doesn’t work out, the APC flagbearer will return to the senate while the PDP and the LP candidates can return to their day jobs, take lessons from their first political outing, then give it another shot.

But more seems at stake for the external parties. For them: there is a grudge to be settled, there is an unfinished business to attend to, and there is current and future political relevance to contend with. These are some of the factors that drive desperation in Nigerian politics. Already, one of the external actors has described the election as ‘do-or-die’ and ‘existential’ while another could be mistaken as a candidate in the election. The Edo governorship election is of outsize significance and is likely to generate more heat, and attract more attention, than other regular off-cycle governorship elections. A week to the election, the heat is so palpable that it can be felt even beyond the state.

A briefing paper released on September 10^th by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) brilliantly captures the various issues at play in the Edo governorship election and points out its larger implications for future elections in Nigeria. I fully recommend the paper. In my intervention today, I intend to tease out the proxy dimensions of the September 21^st poll, then close with how zonal dynamics within the state (itself a form of proxy) may impact the outcome of the election.

The first proxy contest will be among the presidential candidates of the top three political parties in the last presidential election: Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of APC; Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of PDP; and Mr. Peter Obi of LP. A major shift occurred in Nigeria’s electoral pattern in 2023 when the presidential contest expanded beyond the traditional two-way race of the previous six electoral cycles of the Fourth Republic. Obi alongside Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwanso of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) bucked the trend and turned the contest into a truly competitive multi-party poll only close to the one we had in 1979, which incidentally was our first presidential election. Edo gubernatorial contests used to be a two-way affair, as no third-party candidate ever scored up to 1% of the votes cast between 1999 and 2020. This will definitely change this time around, mostly due the Obi factor.

One of the states where the Obi wave made a significant landing in the 2023 presidential poll was Edo State. Obi garnered an impressive 56.97% of the votes in the state and even denied his more experienced competitors and their established political structures the mandatory 25% of the votes cast. Tinubu, who won the overall election, could only muster 24.86% in Edo State. Alhaji Abubakar, whose party had been a dominant force in Edo and national politics since 1999 and was the ruling party in the state at the time of the election, got only 15.41%. Even when Saturday’s election is a local one, and we should not forget the maxim that all politics is local, the 2023 presidential candidates and their political parties have different points to prove in Edo State on Saturday.

For all three presidential candidates and their parties, winning the governorship election is way more than symbolic. To start with, governors remain dominant figures in our politics and the number of states controlled by a political party is a signifier of its relative electoral strength or a factor that can, to a large extent, be leveraged for electoral success. For Obi and LP, the Edo governorship election is an opportunity to show that 2023 was not a fluke and a chance for the party to be in charge of a second state (the only one being Abia State). A victory for LP in Edo will burnish Obi’s standing and relevance whether he chooses to stick with the party or not in the future.

Retaining Edo State will be a face-saving opportunity for Atiku and PDP, which was rudely upstaged in 2023 in the South South and the South East, two zones that had been the party’s strongholds in six previous elections. PDP had a particularly terrible showing in the federal elections in Edo State in 2023: it failed to produce a senator, and had only one out of nine House of Representative members. Retaining the governorship of Edo will keep PDP’s tally of governors at 13.  However, losing the state will increase the diminution of a party that at its height controlled 28 states and once boasted of ruling the country for 60 unbroken years.      

Winning Edo will grant APC a chance to regain a state it had governed for 12 years (2008 to 2020) and only lost in 2020 when the outgoing governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, and APC’s candidate in 2016 was denied a re-election ticket by his estranged godfather, Senator Adams Oshiomhole. Obaseki had to decamp to PDP, which successfully flipped the state. Victory in Edo State will increase APC’s governorship tally to 21. This will take the party close to its best showing so far since in came into being in 2013. In 2015, APC won governorship elections in 22 states.

For Tinubu, Edo State is a bit personal. This was where in 2007/2008, he successfully launched the bid to take his Action Congress (AC, later Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN) beyond its South West enclave and part of the strategy that eventually landed him the presidency. The 2008 victory came via the courts, but ACN won 76% of the votes in the 2012 governorship election in Edo State when its candidate, Oshiomhole, sought re-election. By 2016, ACN had merged with other parties to form the APC and APC’s candidate, Obaseki, won by a decent 55%. However, things soon fell apart between Obaseki and Oshiomhole.

Tinubu not only took sides but also openly showed his hands. He made and released a video close to the 19^th September 2020 governorship election in Edo State, and called on the people of the state not to vote for Obaseki whom he accused of many things. In response, the Obaseki campaign adopted and popularised a very effective slogan: Edo no be Lagos (in reference to Tinubu’s overbearing influence in Lagos politics and the way in which he, in 2019, denied Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, then incumbent governor of Lagos State, the party’s nomination).

Obaseki personally replied Tinubu and promised to end godfatherism not just in Edo State but also in Lagos State. Obaseki said: “In Edo, we have been fighting godfatherism and by Saturday we will put an end to it, and after that go to Lagos and put an end to godfatherism in Nigeria.” Obaseki went on to win the governorship election by a handsome 57% of the votes cast, with the support of some APC members who had scores to settle with Tinubu and Oshiomhole. Tinubu, now the president of Nigeria, got eggs on his face for the manner he tried to intervene in Edo politics in 2020. He is thus unlikely to be disinterested in the outcome of the Saturday poll, even when he may not go for the ill-advised approach of 2020. And this is not just about merely wanting his party to triumph. There is an outstanding slight to settle.

But the most obvious battle on Saturday will be a proxy rematch between Obaseki and Oshiomhole. They have had two electoral face-offs since 2020. While Oshiomhole triumphed in the federal elections in 2023 by wangling two senatorial seats and six House of Representatives’ seats for his party, Obaseki clawed back in the state House of Assembly election, where PDP eventually won 15 seats compared to APC’s eight and LP’s one. For Oshiomhole, this is the final opportunity to put Obaseki in his place; while for Obaseki, this contest is clearly the last time he is in a prime position to show his former benefactor that he has grown to a formidable political force in the state.

A lot has happened in the last four years to change the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two gladiators cum godfathers. Oshiomhole is still in control of the APC structure in the state, remains the strongman of Edo North, has been a magnet for PDP members who have fallen out with Obaseki, and is in a position to attract federal support from a president who is not a disinterested party. Though term-barred, Obaseki has incumbency at the state level on his side and is from Edo South, which boasts of about half of the voting population of the state. Both frontline gladiators have major handicaps, which may rub off negatively on their parties’ candidates.

As said earlier, the three leading candidates have scant political experience. Ighodalo and Akpata are contesting for political office for the first time while Okpebholo was elected as a senator only last year (and was victorious largely on account of the decision of PDP not to respect the zoning arrangement within the Edo Central senatorial zone). The fact that the real contestants are political newbies with limited political capital further magnifies the likely impact of their backers. All the three candidates emerged from contentious primaries. The extent to which their various parties and the various tendencies within the parties have been able to pull together post-primaries will have some impact on the electoral outcome.

But beyond the godfathers and other interested parties, the Edo election will be largely shaped by zonal dynamics within the state. This is another dimension of the proxy contest. On the basis of equity and justice, the governorship of the state seems to have been zoned to Edo Central, a zone that has been unfairly locked out of the exalted position in the Fourth Republic. While indigenes of Edo South have served as governors of the state for 16 years (Mr. Lucky Igbinedion, 1999 to 2007 and Obaseki, 2016 to 2024) and Edo North senatorial zone has done eight years (Oshiomhole, 2008 to 2016), Edo Central has only had a shot at the highest elective position in the state for a very brief and annulled period (Professor Oserheinem Osunbor, 29^th May 2007 to 12^th November 2008). In addition, Edo Central has not produced a deputy governor for the state since 1999.

There seems to be an elite political consensus to correct the injustice meted out to the zone in this election cycle. Incidentally, the last time someone from current Edo Central served as governor was between 1979 and 1983, when Professor Ambrose Alli was the elected governor of Bendel State (which on 27^th August 1991 was split into present Delta and Edo states). It is ironic that someone from the zone could be governor of a much larger entity (Bendel State) but the zone has been struggling to be given a chance in a smaller space (Edo State). The Esans, who are the predominant ethnic group in Edo Central, are significant minorities in Edo State, the same way the Okuns are in Kogi State and the Idomas are in Benue State.

Prominent Esans have played important roles in national politics and national life. Some of these include Chief Anthony Enahoro (who moved the motion for Nigeria’s independence in 1953 and edited a newspaper, the Southern Nigerian Defender, at the record age of 21), Chief Peter Enahoro (better known as Peter Pan, renowned editor, publisher and satirist), Admiral Augustus Aikhomu (former military vice president of Nigeria), Chief Anthony Anenih (former chairman of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, former chairman of the Board of Trustees of PDP and former Minister of Works), and Chief Tom Ikimi, (former minister for foreign affairs and former chairman of the National Republican Party, NRC).

The Esans ironically have been relegated to a bit role in Edo politics because their senatorial zone is the smallest of the three: Edo Central has only five of the 18 LGAs in the state, compared to seven and six for Edo South and Edo North respectively; and going by the result of the 2020 elections, Edo Central accounts for only 18% of total votes in the state, compared to 47% for Edo South and 35% for Edo North.

However, it seems Edo is ready for restitution on its Esan problem (and hopefully Kogi and Benue would find similar political resolution for their Okun and Idoma challenge). It is thus not surprising that two of the three leading candidates, Okpebholo and Ighodalo, are from the favoured zone, Edo Central. On paper, this consensus puts Akpata at a disadvantage. An Akpata victory will mean another four to eight years for Edo South, which apart from having done 16 of 25 years since 1999 is also the zone of the outgoing governor.

However, Akpata is from the most populous zone in the state. It is not clear if the everyday voter in Edo South has bought into the elite consensus for power shift. However, it is also not clear that Akpata would have Edo South all to himself, given that the running mates of the two other parties (Mr. Osarodion Ogie of PDP and Honourable Dennis Idahosa of APC) are seasoned politicians from Edo South. The state’s most populous zone will probably be a hotly-contested ground.

The odds seem to favour one of the two candidates from Edo Central. There is an intra-zonal dynamic at play here too. Edo Central has two axes: Okpebholo and Agbazilo. The APC candidate is from the former while the PDP candidate is from the latter. The APC candidate reportedly won the senatorial seat in 2023 because of an attempt to upturn the agreed rotation between the two axes. In 2024, the argument is that the Okpebholo axis should not produce both the senator and the governor. There is also a not-so-subtle contest about who is more Esan and who is more accomplished/articulate between Okpebholo and Ighodalo. The score is even here.

But these are unlikely to be the major deciders of the race. To get over the line on Saturday, one of the two Esan candidates will need to make a respectable showing in his home zone, lock down one of the two other more populous zones, and be competitive in the other. This again brings into prominence the electoral capital that those not on the ticket, especially Oshiomhole and Obaseki, can muster on Saturday. It is sure a race to watch.  

Chidi Amuta

Order in every credible democracy is a balance of compassion and hard policy choices. The hard choices, often of a reform nature, which confront new leaders only make sense if they are for the common good. Otherwise, a  barrage  of crushing reforms with no tinge of compassion can suffocate the afflicted citizenry and cast the reformer in a bad hue. In that situation, even the best intentioned reformer could become a mindless autocrat. Democracy then breeds, not a charismatic leader but a mindless authoritarian. The equation is somewhat like this: the pain of reform must be balanced by the appearance of compassion. The tough committed purposeful leader who is both feared and capable of being loved.

President Bola Tinubu insists that he has unleashed reforms to make Nigerian better. Not everyone of his compatriots agree. Contrary to the chorus of his Abuja choir, most citizens now contend that today ‘s Nigeria is beginning to look more like a training ground for cruelty and a practice field for apprentice authoritarians. Many are swearing that Mr. Tinubu may have turned his back on the ways of democracy and popular governance and now faces a frightening direction. I am among those who are very frightened to live in this place. An assumed democracy has replaced sweetness with bitterness, citizens are now afraid of the very government they went out to elect only a few months ago.

The far sighted and perceptive never  expected Tinubu’s tenure to be any different from what is unfolding before our eyes . When he chose his inauguration podium on May 29th to mouth ‘fuel subsidy is gone!’, sensible people expected a balancing reassuring statement. None came immediately or any time afterwards. Instead,  more draconian acts of serial wickedness have been heaped on citizens like burning coal. For all these, the government insists that it is on a reform path.

The Naira was floated with no scientific benchmark. An astronomical tax was heaped on electricity. Pump prices of gasoline headed to the sky and have been shooting upwards ever since. Taxes on practically everything followed: basic food, basic medications, transportation costs, house rents, cooking gas, basic banking transactions etc have since last May shot up beyond the rational.

When gasoline prices shot up and the Naira was shredded in value,  organised labour raised the urgent matter of a commensurate national minimum wage. The public supported labour’s pressure for an increase of the national minimum wage. A series of negotiations and arm twisting manipulations led to an agreement on a contentious N70,000. While workers at federal and state levels are still waiting for the promised minimum wage, a new vortex of new gasoline prices have been allowed to kick in. The public is confused and has been thrown into a further life support mode. Predictably, the  latest Increase in fuel pump price has taken its toll in the wrong places. Schools can hardly resume because of high transportation costs. Edo , Kano and Borno states have postponed the resumption of schools for the new school year. Other states may follow suit.

Since May, 2023, hardly any pleasant news has come our way except for announcements about bags of rice scattered in a few states. The government that took away our little sweetness has responded with rice and noodles. A myriad taxes have followed. The rice of offer has turned out a mirage. By its nature, rice is a tax-laden palliative. If you give people rise, they need money to buy meat and fish, oil, onions and other ingredients. In short, a gift of free rice reminds people of their immense poverty. So, people desperately access the free rice as an article of trade, something to be re-sold to raise money to douse the ravaging poverty. That has led to fierce warfare in locations where rice is being shared. People who went out to fight for rice returned in body bags as the fierce battles were  do –or- die duels. 

The pursuit of cruel reforms and draconian levies and taxes has created a country of numerous precedents.  Nigerians living today may have seen far too many precedents in our national life already. In one life time, we have seen more new milestones than any other generation. We have seen the  highest inflation rate- 43%  ever. Since its introduction in the early 1970s, Nigerians have seen the most abysmal exchange rate for the Naira in national history. We have seen the highest poverty rate in our national history, leading to the creation of Nigeria as the world’s poverty capital. For the first time in our life time, hunger has become a widespread national affliction, graduating into an object of nationwide protest and massive street brawls between hungry mobs and armed security personnel.

Today ‘s Nigerians have seen the highest price per liter of gasoline ever. In some parts of the country, there are reports of prices of up to N1,500 per liter. Similarly, Nigerians are seeing the highest cost per unit of electricity even as darkness envelopes  the land. Nigerians are seeing the most expensive cup of garri, beans, corn or millet  in their life time. It is the worst of times and the most trying of times.

It is also the most dangerous of times and the most precarious of times. Never before in peace- time have Nigerians seen such a high  casualty rate as this. People are being killed needlessly on an industrial scale everyday. In no other nation’s peace time do so many people die needless deaths. Peace time Nigeria is ranking shoulder to shoulder with Sudan, Syria, Somalia and other dangerous places in the world on a scale of insecurity. The English language has run out of terminologies for describing the variants of Nigeria’s bad state and its architects: terrorism, banditry, abduction, kidnapping and other unnamable crimes.  At no time in our national history have we lived in a more dangerous country, not even in the civil war years.

Youth is ordinarily the time to hope, to look forward to a long life stretched ahead of you. The youth dream dreams and cherish longings. As youth, death and mortality was far and remote from us. But in today’s Nigeria, death has become the constant refrain in the language of youth. Our university campuses have become common grounds for suicide among our youth. Our children are being killed or are killing each other because the landscape beyond is bleak and hopeless. We are living in a place where suicide has become an easy escape route for frustrated youth.

Other silly and laughable precedents have also been created in Nigeria under the Tinubu presidency. For instance, we have never seen such extensive motorcades trailing men of power as are being displayed by Akpabio and Tinubu. Nor have such humongous sums been spent on luxury items at the apex of power anywhere as in today’s Nigeria. Nor have we seen single civil construction projects of such magnitude as the Calabar-Lagos highway (N18 trillion!). No previous president so prioritized his personal comfort as to purchase a different presidential jet in under two years in power without parliamentary appropriation or any known budget provision. These are clearly precedents in national profligacy! 

Democracy devoid of compassion or prudent consideration for the welfare of the lowly runs a clear risk. When a democracy proceeds with reckless impunity, it runs the risk of drifting into authoritarianism, a routine insensitivity to the common feeling. The feelings of the people begin to matter less. The state carries on as though it is a self- empowering entity.

At the moment, Mr. Tinubu’s bumbling embrace with power is by far a greater threat to Nigeria’s democracy and survival than anything else. When a democracy fumbles, its readiest temptation is to be attracted towards dictatorship. The Tinubu government is beginning to arrest journalist for no stated reason. Labour leaders are not immune either. Innocent people who went out to protest their own hunger and poverty have been arrested and are being prosecuted for disturbing the peace of the rulers. Of course, it is easier to arrest people than to manage them in freedom. It is also easier to clamp down on dissenting voices than to loosen a million free voices. People who cannot afford expensive  lawyers to defend them or speak English to state their rights are easy to put away until the jail houses are filled with those who should be voting at the next election.

Compassion is an issue when the common good is of concern. But the  common good is an issue when power is wielded on behalf of the people. But when power becomes an end itself, the common good recedes into the background and becomes a concessionary  afterthought. The pursuit of power, its consolidation, warehousing and monopoly becomes the end of state power. It does seem that barely one and half years after Tinubu’s ascendancy, we are down to that level where the values of democracy are being goaded towards the route of authoritarianism.

A Nigerian authoritarianism under a rule like Tinubu’s will be untidy. Our power hegemony is never evenly spread. It usually wears a sectional ethnocentric color. Already, Tinubu has erected what is easily the most blatant and unabashed Yoruba ethnic hegemony in Nigerian history. Name any strategic segment of national life and it stares you in the face. Open. Shameless. Even disgraceful to the dignity of the otherwise decent and sophisticated Yoruba nation. We are faced with an impending calamity. Nigeria’s democracy is about to give birth to an ethnic authoritarianism. It will be a sad day when we descend from today’s increasing repression to the hounding of political opponents into political exile out of fear for their own safety. Over and above today’s japa droves, we may soon witness swarms of political asylum seekers heading in many directions. The freedom which our people trooped out to welcome in February is slipping away under our very eyes. 

By Okey Ikechukwu

Every 42 adult today was not born when the man who left this works while serving Ndigbo as President General of Ohaneze was at the peak of is visibility in business, national politics, the aviation sector, the media, the construction industry, sports and much more. How many today know, or would believe, that he put two million dollars of his hard earned money into the building and development of Imo Airport? Who today remembers Oriental Airlines, the Iwuanyanwu Narionale football team, Hardel and Enic Construction Company and much more?

He lived a full life, for himself and for his Igbo people. He left this life serving them as a rallying voice and a rousing pillar of influence. That is why it would make sense to speak of him as one the the people’s Ijele of note inAla Igbo.

But let us note, for the record, that the Ijele is not just a masquerade; no! There is no such thing as the Ijele Masquerade in the real sense of the term. Igbos have  big and small masquerades. There are many of them. But the Ijele is not one of the masquerades. It is not a big masquerade. And that is because it is Ijele: and Ijele cannot be anything other than what it is, namely, Ijele.

As was once said here long ago: There are masquerades and then there is the Ijele. The latter does not dance for money because it is sufficient unto itself. It does not try to entertain anyone, because that is beneath its dignity. It does not ask anyone to get out of the way when it is coming, because it cannot contemplate that anything would possible want to stand in its way. It expects, and knows, that people would know what to do.

Yes, the average person considers it an honour to help clear the way when he hears (even before confirming) that the Ijele is approaching. That is why its ‘presence’ always precedes it. Who, or what, will stand in the way when the ijele is afoot? It is just not done!

The Ijele does not ask the big and small masquerades to leave the Village Square when it wants to enter. They have to. They are not the Ijele. They are masquerades and that is the essential difference. The Ijele must take pre-eminence as a matter of course. And, mind you, there is no question of arrogance or preposterous self-inflationsion here. It is the nature of the Ijele to live thus.

So do not expect that it would acknowledge the cheer and applause of the crowd, no. Do not also expect that it would genuflect and thank anyone for getting out of the way as it approaches. Absurd!  There is no contemptuous air of superiority on display here no. It is just the natural majesty conferred on the Ijele by its very identity, as well as the triumph of the Aristocratic Principle of Nature.

 The Ijele’s majesty is inherent in, and internal to, it. What can you give to Ijele? How would you even approach it in order to bestow anything on it? Who are you to enter the square while it walks the square? Please note this: there are masquerades and then there is the ijele!

In all matters affecting Igboland and Ndigbo everywhere, on questions people of group cohesion, selfless service and the values of community leadership, the late Ahaejiagamba stood head and shoulders above many of his contemporaries. He was a remarkable man in every sense of the word, warts and all. But back to masquerades In Igboland.

Most Igbo masquerades serve many social purposes in the traditional Igbo society and are often the audio-visual aids used by society to embody some core, moral and cultural values. The Agbogho nmanwu, for instance, is the physical embodiment of the most graceful maidenly beauty. Dainty, beautiful, calm and exquisitely womanly in every sense of the word, its form and dance steps may be called a living admonition for any woman who tends towards any form of brashness.

The Ulaga, Oji onu and a few others are the entertainment masquerades; while Agaba, Okwonma, Ike Udo represent uncontrolled manly strength and youthful rascality respectively. Onuku (the fool) represents degenerate manhood and is so degenerate in appearance that every pregnant woman would do anything to avoid sighting, or being reminded of, this masquerade throughout the period of pregnancy. It is only Onuku that fights with women, or enters the village square from obscure corners and sneaks up to unsuspecting women to take liberties with some parts of their anatomy. Yes masquerades have great moral, epistemological, educational and political values in Igboland.

But the Ijele is royalty embodied! That is why it is laden with choices gem on the few occasions it comes out. A yearly appearance for the Ijele is out of the question, because royalty is never part of the evening and morning market rush.

And it is within this context of the Ijele that we must locate some aspects of the profile, life and times of Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu. The title of “Ahaejiagamba” refers to one whosw name gives Right of Passage when mentioned even in foreign lands. Such a person is an institution in his own right, but not for himself. The title is presumed to speak of one in whom the essence of influence, credibility and social leverage is most meaningfully embodied and who also ‘bodies it forth’ without apologies, without reservations and without being afraid of his own voice!

Can this be said of the late Iwuanyanwu? The answer is a resounding yes! He represented some of the best, and also even the somewhat questionable, attributes of the Igbo man. Industry, courage (even daredevilry, disarming candour and an occasional bluntness that sometimes makes others look for a fire extinguisher.

Ahaejiagamba wanted justice, dignified visibility and relevance for his people. He would not keep quiet when he knew he should speak out. That is why tributes will pour in, as Ndigbo prepare to bury the remains of their immediate past President General. The ceremomies are bound to come. But Ndigbo must also use the occasion to ask themselves deep and searching questions. How many people do they have in the public space who are living for either a cause, or for others?

I can imagine what Ahaejiagamba would probably have done back in1966, after the Northern offices staged a counter coup against Ironsi’s government. With the anger against people of the South East, and as Ndigbo were killed in all the provincial capitals of Northern Nigeria except one, which is Mubi, he probably would have mobilized everyone he knew within and outside Nigeria to push for nationalization of the Mubi example.

When Ndigbo were being murdered wantonly in other cities of the North, late Alhaji Isa Ahmadu the father of the current Emir, invited all the town elders to a meeting and reminded them that the Igbo people in Mubi were brothers and that no harm should come to them. They were all invited to the palace where their safety was assured. Vehicle owners were made to surrender their vehicles to be used to convey Ndigbo to Bourha Susprefecture of the Republic of Cameroun.

Before leaving, they were all made to write out their properties down to the chicken on free range. Selected elders were given custody of such property. After the war, all those who survived and returned to Mubi collected their property with rent accrued and the cost of animals sold. There is no incident of Abandoned property in Mubi. Even those who did not return had their family members traced and given their property.

Today Mubi stands proudly one place in Nigeria where every Nigerian can safely call home. The Igbo and Yoruba populations have representation at the highest decision making bodies of the town. When a Northerner and Engineer Udeogwu contested for the post of Rector Federal Polytechnic Mubi, the townsfolk including prominent traditional title holders backed Engineer Udeogwu.

Today, with the full backing of the people of the town, an Igbira Man from Kogi state is the Rector because he was there for some time and considered a son of Mubi in the true tradition of the town. And what Mubi is today is what Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu would have loved to bestow on the Federal Republic of Nigeria as his legacy. He was a people’s Ijele

Prof Ikechukwu is Chairman of the Publicity Committee for the Burial of Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu

By Tunji Bello

The Federal Competition and Consumers Protection Commission (FCCPC) decided to host this townhall meeting in Lagos as part of a broader initiative to foster a national conversation around the sanity of the marketplace.

Before I continue, let me seize this opportunity to debunk a gross misrepresentation of the position of the Commission at the Abuja edition of the townhall series by a section of the media, particularly some of the online platforms. Contrary to the impression they created, at no time did we say we were giving traders ultimatum to crash prices across the country by fiat. That is quite ridiculous. The Commission would have required an army to enforce that. Certainly, our statutory mandate does not include price control. We are not here to fix prices or dictate to any law-abiding trader or manufacturer how to relate to the market. Rather, ours is to ensure there is no price fixing or gang-up in trade transactions.

As a Commission, we are not acting out of a brainwave. Indeed, we had carried out extensive discreet market survey across the country and our findings were quite disturbing. We identified patterns of price fixing perpetrated by some market associations, price gouging, and other anti-consumer practices. We noticed that the margin in the prices of imported goods are very disproportionate in many cases; and in the case of locally produced goods, excessively inflated.

In some areas, we discovered that some players are engaged in hoarding of grains, to create artificial scarcity, thereby distorting the market, resulting in unduly high prices of such food items.

To be sure, we cannot deny that the removal of fuel subsidy has brought some discomfort, just as we quite recognize that an unfavorable exchange rate has negatively impacted the cost of production in local currency. But nothing justifies selling a blender sold N140,000 in the U.S. for N950,000 in Nigeria, for instance, representing more than 500 percent inflation of the cost.

Perhaps, the case of BUA cement best illustrates how the middlemen collide sometimes to distort the market and make life more miserable for the consumers at a time when people are already facing economic challenges. You will recall that after a meeting with President Bola Tinubu last year, the Chairman of BUA cement, Alhaji Abdul Samad Rabiu, agreed to bring down the price of cement to N3,500 ex depot as his own way of helping to bring succor to Nigerians passing through economic difficulty. But Alhaji Rabiu’s commendable gesture was frustrated by unscrupulous middlemen who bought cement from BUA at N3,500 and ensured that prices remained at N7,000.

In our investigation, we also discovered that some traders form a cartel in the market and put barriers in form of ridiculous membership fees intended to ensure price fixing in the market. Without joining them, they won’t allow anyone to sell goods in the market or provide services.

Such practices are against the law and constitute some of the offenses the Commission is against, ladies and gentlemen. To be clear, price gouging and price fixing are not only unethical, but patently illegal also under the FCCPA. Section 17 of the Act empowers the Commission to eliminate anti-competitive practices, misleading, unfair, deceptive, or unconscionable marketing, trading, and business practices. Sanctions include fine of up to N10m and a jail term for anyone found guilty by the court.

But rather than applying the full weight of the law in the first instance, the Commission is deliberately adopting the option of dialogue with you the stakeholders to collaborate with us to help check unfair pricing in the market.

To galvanize a more efficient process nationwide, I am pleased to announce that Commission is upgrading its consumer engagement portal to make it more inclusive and interactive and in real time. In simple terms, it means that, when fully calibrated, it will be possible for any consumer who feels aggrieved to lodge a complaint and upload the receipt of the transaction as evidence and such complaint will be processed promptly free of charge with a view to ensuring that justice is done without fear or favour.

At our engagement with stakeholders in Abuja two weeks ago we heard their own stories. They listed factors like insecurity, high costs of transportation and extortion on the road by both state and non-state actors as part of the reasons for prevailing high costs of consumer goods. As a government agency, our responsibility is to get feedback to help policymakers.  At Abuja, we heard the stakeholders loud and clear and shall take the message back to  the government.

At this juncture, let me acknowledge and thank the Lagos State Government for a good step already initiated in this direction. According to a media report few days ago, the Lagos State Government said it would henceforth track the movement produce from the farms to the markets with a view to checkmating those in the habit of hijacking the produce and manipulating the prices at the expense of consumers. Having supported farmers with free inputs and processors, the Lagos State Government is, of course, justified to track the produce to the markets to ensure that the prices at which those produces are being sold are reasonable for average Nigerians. We welcome such a step and encourage other states to emulate this to ensure fair pricing for the benefit of Nigerian consumers.

Before I round off, I think it is also important to report that the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not unaware of the pains caused by the economic reforms being implemented to reposition our economy. As a responsive and sensitive leader, President Tinubu has taken some extraordinary steps by removing taxes on food items, pharmaceutical products, and public transportation. Such laudable initiatives would however be in vain if the benefits are not passed down to the consumers by way of reduced prices of goods and services in the times ahead.

In Abuja, I had enjoined stakeholders to embrace the spirit of patriotism and cooperation at this challenging moment. Here in Lagos, I am echoing that statement. Please, let us talk to ourselves and say no to the exploitation of one another.

*BEING Excerpts from THE KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY THE EXECUTIVE VICE CHAIRMAN/ CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER (FCCPC), MR. TUNJI BELLO, AT A STAKEHOLDERS MEETING ON EXPLOITATIVE PRICING HOSTED BY THE FCCPC AND HELD IN LAGOS ON WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

By Olusegun Adeniyi

In what must be an act of desperation, the Governor of Katsina State, Dikko Radda, last week promised to support communities that are ready to stand up against attacks by bandits, kidnappers and other criminals. “We have come up with an initiative that for any community ready to depend on itself, we will give them necessary support and training to engage criminals before the arrival of the security agents” Radda said, while explaining what motivated his decision. “I went to a village, Tsamiyar-jino, where it took me two hours inside a Jeep before I reached the village from the main road. So, if bandits attack such areas, from the time you inform the security, it will take them over two hours before they can respond to the distress call. By then, whatever is going to happen would have happened – they would have killed people and kidnapped others.”

It is difficult to fault Radda on this initiative. Katsina State has been under the vice grip of criminals for several years and the picture the governor paints is scary. “I am surprised at the way we are dying in such a humiliating manner. You see five criminals attacking a community of 2,000 to 3,000 people, rape daughters, women and abducting others without any confrontation from the people of that community,” Radda said while lamenting the lawlessness that now pervades the state. “If there are 100 youths in the community who confront them, they will not shoot for more than three times without being captured with bare hands. Paying ransom doesn’t even prevent a hostage from being killed by abductors, sometimes they collect the money and kill the victim.”

Before I come to why the governor’s proposed solution may be counter productive, let me state that I understand how Radda feels. In June 2020, I visited Katsina State, following reports that from Batagarawa to Kurfi to Malunfashi to Funtua and Daura (where then President Muhammadu Buhari hails from), bandits had overpowered communities. Perhaps in a bid to underscore the saying that once you take the shepherd, the sheep will scatter, these criminals had also targeted traditional rulers. Within one week, the Village Head of Mazoji who doubled as the Sarkin Fulanin Fafu, Alhaji Dikko Usman was killed by bandits while the Hakimin Garin Yantumaki, Alhaji Atiku Maidabino was assassinated right in his palace in Danmusa local government.

In the column I wrote following the visit, I recalled asking the Emir of Katsina, Dr Abdulmumini Kabir Usman, his feelings about the situation in his domain. “You are asking me how I feel when my people are being killed every day? We can spend a whole day discussing that. We are dealing with murderers, people for whom lives mean nothing, but they seem to have overwhelmed the capacity of the state”, the emir responded while also recounting his encounter with former Agriculture Minister, Audu Ogbeh and then CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele who visited his palace and gave him some cotton seedlings. “I asked what they wanted me to do with them. I told them what I needed from the federal government is protection for my people, most of who in any case have been forced to abandon their farms.”

What we are experiencing across the country today is a reign of impunity – with criminals doing whatever they like because they know, or at least believe, that the Nigerian state no longer possesses the required capacity to confront them. Not only have hundreds of innocent villagers lost their lives to the activities of these gunmen, but there is also a feeling of helplessness by the majority of people in rural areas. From cattle rustling to kidnappings and armed robbery, these gangsters roam the streets freely, carrying out deadly raids and forcing dwellers to flee for their lives. In most communities, the local economy has crashed while the poverty and deprivation this has bred are in themselves a serious threat to national security.

The vast land in the North, which should be an asset as we seek to boost food security and get our young population gainfully employed in agriculture, is now ‘bandit territory’ to borrow a famous phrase of Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed. Meanwhile, we have overstretched the military with a task of internal security while police personnel are saddled with performing guard duties and running errands for our very-important-persons (VIPs) and their spouses.

Radda is not the first to propose “self-defence” for communities under attack. The last Defence Minister under President Buhari, Bashir Magashi, once said Nigerians should stop being ‘cowards’ at the sight of criminals. “At times, the bandits will only come with about three rounds of ammunition, when they fire shots, everybody runs. In our younger days, we stand to fight any aggression coming for us,” Magashi said at the National Assembly on 17 February 2021 shortly after bandits abducted 27 students and 13 others from Government Secondary School, Kagara, Niger State. “I don’t know why people are running from minor things like that. They should stand and let these people know that even the villagers have the competency and capabilities to defend themselves.”

It should worry authorities that a majority of our people, especially in rural communities, are left at the mercy of non-state actors amid compelling socio-economic difficulties. And asking that they defend themselves is not the way to go because of the reprisal attacks that usually follow. I understand that the recent Boko Haram invasion of Mafa in Tarmuwa Local Government of Yobe State that led to the killing of dozens of innocent villagers was a revenge mission against communities that offered resistance. “Around 150 suspected Boko Haram terrorists armed with rifles and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] attacked Mafa ward on more than 50 motorcycles around 1600 hours on Sunday,” said Abdulkarim Dungus, Yobe state police spokesperson who confirmed to AFP that it was a revenge attack “for the killing of two Boko Haram terrorists by vigilantes from the village.”

That has been the pattern either with bandits or insurgents. Meanwhile, the security challenge in Katsina, and indeed the entire North-west, is not different from that of other areas of our country. And it is compounded by the factor of geography (vast forests and a treacherous border) as well as an absence of deterrence for bad behaviour. The enduring solution lies in reforming/repositioning our armed forces and the police in such a manner that would give them the capacity to deal with the challenge. The growing charge by authorities that people should defend themselves therefore offers no enduring solution. If anything, it would only compound the problem in a nation where there are already too many guns in the hands of criminal gangs.

The worrying aspect is that those tasked to protect us seem to be abdicating their responsibility, while promoting this warped idea that civilians can, and should, defend themselves against armed criminals. Following the armed robbery attack at my residence in December 2020, I went to the police station to file the usual routine report. “How many were they?” the all-powerful DPO asked after I had narrated what transpired. “I don’t know how many were outside but only one operated inside our room with a gun.” Before I could explain further that my wife and I had no idea what was happening to our children in the other rooms, she retorted sharply: “And you could not wrestle him to the ground?” She asked the question with so much contempt that I couldn’t tell my wife when I got back home lest she deemed me to be one of those Magashi ‘cowards’.

What those who man the security sector in the country fail to appreciate is that the connecting thread for the variants of violence we are witnessing across Nigeria, as I have consistently argued, is the loss of what Max Weber described as “the legitimate use of physical force” to criminal cartels. And until they muster the requisite capacity and political will to effectively confront those who trouble the peace of our country, there may be no solution to the problem. They should also not deride rural dwellers who would prefer a functioning security from the state than resort to self-help. “It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, but sometimes it is better to be a coward”, a fictional character in the late Professor Chinua Achebe’ novel, ‘Arrow of God’ reminded us. “We often stand in the compound of a coward to point at the ruins where a brave man used to live.”

The United Bank for Africa (UBA) Chairman, Tony Elumelu hit the nail on the head regarding the nexus between security and the socio-economic wellbeing of the people on Tuesday. “To protect our people, feed them, attract investment, and foster trade, we must prioritise security,” Elumelu said at the annual conference of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN). “Insecurity has become a national crisis, which must be dealt with decisively and urgently. Our people deserve to go to their farms unhindered, live peacefully and conduct their lives and businesses without fear; it is the fundamental right of every citizen.”

The fundamental obligation of the state to its citizens is the protection of life and property. When state officials therefore promote the gangster ethos of asking the people to defend themselves as a policy, anarchy is not too far away.

The Maiduguri Disaster

With corpses being exhumed from cemeteries while farmlands, schools and hospitals are submerged, it is troubling that more and more Nigerians are joining the growing population of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in communities across the country. But there can be no bigger tragedy than that of Maiduguri where snakes, crocodiles and other reptiles have escaped from zoos as hundreds of thousands of people count their losses following the flooding that hit the Borno State capital on Tuesday morning. For the already traumatised people to suffer this kind of devastation on top of the socio-economic challenges in the country and their own peculiar security situation is just too much. But was it an unavoidable tragedy?

I understand that there have been signals in recent years that the Alau Dam which was completed in 1986 could give way anytime as it has now happened. But nobody paid attention. That the resulting human tragedies leave both the rich and poor counting the costs is why I marvel about why we seem to move on without finding long-term solution to serious problems. But with more than 200,000, including women and children, already displaced, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), there is an urgent need for mass intervention from the federal government as well as the private sector.

We need a serious conversation about our country and how we waste enormous resources. Nigeria, former Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) Director General, Clement Nze told me last year, has one of the best natural drainage systems in the world due to our topography, land and location within the Niger Basin that traverses nine countries in West and Central Africa. On annual basis, according to Nze, a total volume of over 200 billion cubic metres of fresh water drains into the Atlantic Ocean. This is a huge resource from nature that could be a catalyst for the much-touted diversification into agriculture, help resolve some of our security challenges and aid power generation. But, as we have seen over the years, it could also be a disaster if not properly harnessed.   

We will come back to this issue another day. For now, it is important that all stakeholders help the people of Maiduguri to recover from this devastation.  

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com   

Sonni Anyang

The recent  inauguration of some INNOSON-assembled, compressed natural gas (CNG)-powered buses by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu right inside the premises of Aso Rock Presidential Villa was obviously an opportunity to counter (via photo-op) the widespread criticism that he neither gave much thought to nor adequately prepared for the cost of living and welfare consequences of his decision to abruptly announce the withdrawal of government subsidy on petrol at his swearing-in last year.

Even the President’s most ardent supporters would agree that at the point of his famous ‘subsidy is gone’ pronouncement, or indeed soon after, it did not appear that any containment measures had been put in place to meet the entirely predictable and seismic fallouts of such a major policy move.  The best such supporters have been heard to come up with is that had the president allowed for another round of public debate, the political moment for tackling the subsidy monster would have passed him by.  The obvious response to this lame argument, of course, is that the subsidy that is said to have gone, now appears to have returned, afterall.

Regardless of the wisdom in the manner we had attempted to see off petrol subsidy, or whether, in fact, the stubborn thing has refused to go away, the Tinubu government is clearly putting a lot of faith in the ability of CNG as an automotive fuel, to help reduce the pain being felt by the generality of Nigerians from the sharp rise in transportation costs and associated difficulties occasioned by its signature policy decisions, namely, petrol subsidy removal and naira exchange rates equalization.The President therefore had to personally take delivery of 30 mammoth buses to underscore the point that CNG will be the salvation fuel.

While it was not openly stated that the presidential inauguration of the CNG-powered buses represented some kind of milestone, the Aso Rock ceremony has served to remind us that it was also in August, a year ago, that the Presidential CNG Initiative (PCNGi) was announced, as “a component of the palliative intervention” directed at “providing succour to the masses” in view of the “transitive” hardships of the fuel subsidy removal policy.

In particular, the PCNGi was meant to lower transportation cost for Nigerians by enabling the powering of motor vehicles(and industries) with cheaper, cleaner, safer and more reliable domestically produced natural gas.  As an alternative to petrol and diesel automotive fuels, CNG ticks all the positive boxes—environmentally cleaner and therefore safer, cheaper (by at least 40% or up to 60% in some applications), abundantly available given that Nigeria is said to have more gas reserve than oil, plus the added advantage that gas can perhaps be more easily sourced locally with no need for imports. It can also be subsidised (if need be) without the drawbacks of subsidised petrol.  Certainly, the scale on which Nigerian subsidised CNG can be smuggled to the rest of West Africa and further to Central Africa appears much less than for petrol or diesel.  The PCNGi was intended to incentivise and accelerate CNG adoption.

On its website, PCNGi has stated its programme and objectives in clear, quantitative terms—with timelines.  It was to start by making available 21,000 conversion kits at 10 participant workshops to get Nigerians to retrofit their petrol and diesel-powered vehicles to run on CNG.  By the end of 2024, it hoped to reach 150,000 units with 250 participant workshops.  By 2027, it would have achieved 1 million units through 500 participant workshops.  For buses and tricycles, the Initiative was to take off with 5,500 vehicles with the expectation to finance 200,000 new ones across Nigeria.

PCNGi also had a plan to establish conversion centres all over Nigeria. It has projected 10 such centres at the start, and would drive to 100 at the end of 2024, with 1000 in view by end of 2027.  With such a technically-orientd exercise, a corps of technicians and engineers would be needed.  So, the start-up figure of 1000 trained technicians was planned, to be followed with 2500 by 2024 and 10,000 by 2027.  The Initiative budgeted $25 million to be raised for the first phase with the figure set to rise to $75 million by the end of 2024 and $250 million by 2027—to support the development of CNG infrastructure for the country.

There can be no quarrel with the vision behind pressing CNG into service to rescue the country from the unending crisis of automotive fuel supply and prising. But will it be sufficient to substantially ameliorate the harsh conditions Nigerians currently face with regard to unbearable transportation costs and the hardship arising therefrom?  On this question, the jury must remain out for a while.  Perhaps, we should await the 2024 report of the Steering Committee.  What is obvious in the aftermath of the recent #EndBadGovernance is that nearly a year into the implementation of the CNG initiative, not much of a noticeable dent has been made in the challenge of crippling transportation costs.  Nigerians are obviously no longer amused by the situation.

If we assume that PCNGi will be the exception in a Nigeria that is used to trashing the noblest of ideas through incompetent execution, and the goal of a million vehicles running on CNG by 2027 is actually met, that number would amount to less than 10% of the total vehicle population in Nigeria (Estimated Vehicle Population in 2018 was 11,826,033) based on the figure available to this reporter at the time of writing.  Likely, the total vehicle population must have gone up substantially with over 500,000 new vehicles registered every year since then.  Can reducing the price of fuel for that tiny a proportion substantially lower transportation costs for the entire nation? Put another way, with over 90 percent of motor vehicles likely to retain propulsion by petrol and diesel, will anything other than a substantial fall in the price of those fuels have a dampening effect on transportation costs? As it pursues the CNG option, the Tinubu administration would do well to bear this question in mind. In fact, it should actively consider the distinct possibility that its efforts to push the adoption of CNG as automotive fuel will not have that significant an impact.

In pursuing the CNG transport fuel option, government must have been encouraged by, and has approvingly cited, the examples of China, India, Iran, Pakistan and other countries that have substantially shifted to that fuel type.  There are two key differences between those countries and the situation in Nigeria.  The first is that it took a while for those countries to rollout their CNG infrastructure.  Besides having a proven track record of excellent programme execution, those countries did not do it as an emergency (not to say panic) response to a dire national crisis such as the one in which Nigeria currently grapples with.  Second, most of the countries cited in all likelihood, manufactured their conversion kits and fuelling infrastructure, having built for themselves, reasonable domestic manufacturing capacity. Nigeria on the other hand, has to rely on importation either of fully built kits and associated equipment or components for local assembly.   The lack of domestic manufacturing capacity continues to hobble us  wherever we turn. And while this cannot be developed overnight, the earlier we start treating that national weakness, the better for us. Thus far, there’s no indication that we are paying anything other than the usual lip service to this urgent national need.

Above and beyond the foregoing, getting Nigeria moving with or without CNG and with or without petrol subsidy, will not be efficiently and effectively achieved until and unless we have a properly organised public transportation system.  If any sector of our national socioeconomic life is disorganised, inefficient and dysfunctional to a disgraceful degree, that sector is public transportation. 

As we speak, no Nigerian city of a million or more in population, has a mass transit system that can properly be so-called.  What exists in Lagos and recently started in Abuja, is embarrassingly rudimentary.  How can a country of more than 200 million people with cities boasting populations of two, three, four and even 20 million, not have rail-based transit systems? How can such a country hope to be part of the 21st century? It is a testament to the remarkable short-sightedness of Nigeria’s governing elites that mass public transport has been handled with such irresponsible levity. It is as if our leaders are not aware of what other nations have been doing in this regard. Or that an efficient and effective transportation system is indispensable to anything at all resembling modern development.

Right here in Africa, Ethiopians, Moroccans and Egyptians are scaling up with transit systems; metro systems, subways, trams and RBT (not the joke in Lagos, please) that function almost like trains. Here in Nigeria, we continue to deploy an assortment of dangerous contraptions as means of public transportation.

Hard data on the scale of the use of motorcycles (Okada) as a mode of transport in Nigeria remain unavailable, but if we assume that that widely deployed mode of vehicular transport serves even up to 10 percent of Nigerians, then the scale of inefficiency involved is enough to keep us perpetually backward. A commercial motorcycle is operated by one person and generally can transport only one person at a time. An average subway train on the other hand, involves one or two operators carrying anything up to 1600 people at a time. A city bus has one driver transporting 80 people (or more if, as Fela sang, 99 are standing). We can judge for ourselves, which of the modes are more efficient and conducive to society’s well-being.

Merely having CNG-powered vehicles outside the context of a comprehensively planned public transportation system will not come close to solving the problem of high, inflation – stoking transport costs. It will certainly do little to reduce the chaos and inefficiency of Nigeria’s transportation sector.

In addition to his CNG Initiative, President Tinubu should cause to be convoked immediately, a national policy dialogue with stakeholders, principally state governors, on how to quickly start the roll out of a well-designed, modern intermodal public transportation system for the country.  Down the line, state governors should do the same with local government chieftains.  As a starting point, let each local and state establish transit systems based on CNG-powered buses, as the lowest hanging fruit.  Even as that is being implemented, planning for rail-based transit systems should commence, to be followed with immediate implementation.

Of course, if any feasible national railway plan exists, it should be dusted up, reviewed and implemented with more seriousness than the desultory efforts of the Jonathan-Buhari years.

The implementation of a national railway plan that would connect all state capitals in the country should have been a priority project of the Tinubu government in place of the ambitious and controversial highways it has embarked upon. In addition to bringing its innately superior efficiency to such an important economic sector, rail is less carbon-intensive than road transportation. This is one reason forward-looking countries like China are pursuing rail-based transportation systems like their very existence depends on them. And in a way it does, since it generates lower emissions and less greenhouse gases.

For Nigeria, a massive railroad build-out would be one easy way to urgently and easily develop the much-needed domestic capacity in basic industries and heavy engineering. Without such a capacity, real sustainable development will continue to elude us. So, the implementation of a comprehensive national transportation system, centred on  less carbon intensive rail-based platforms, would enable the country to kill two or more birds with one stone — give Nigerians access to affordable transportation options and engender industrial development. Such organised transportation systems make it easy to efficiently and effectively direct transport subsidies to those who need it the most.  Subsidy, when applied to automotive fuels rather than directly on mass transportation systems, benefits the less deserving more.

Apart from rail systems, Nigeria has great potential for marine transportation. Endowed with numerous navigable inland waterways and an extensive sea coast, the country could easily cut cost for end users through a well – organised marine transport system using boats, ships, ferries and barges that can deliver up not just efficiency but also comfort to commuters. The recent attempts to step up on water transportation in Lagos State with LAGferry and Omi-Bus services  while welcome is but a pale shadow of the possibilities that that mode of transportation holds for Lagos State, a place totally surrounded by navigable bodies of water. The use of boats and ferries as  reliable means of urban transportation in places like Hong Kong, Bangkok and Istanbul show that Lagos State can and should push harder in that direction, bringing into service, bigger and safer vessels than the outboard – engined equipment it is currently using. Even a hundred of the 40-seater boats LAGferry and Omi-Bus are using, do not come close to matching the 100,000 plus commuters that the ferries in Hong Kong deliver daily.

The domestic manufacture of vessels and the construction of accompanying infrastructure are also fertile grounds for industrial expansion and employment generation.

Whatever appropriate conveyance systems are brought into service in an organised manner will help us to become part of the 21st century world with a transportation mix that is efficient, effective, intermodal and dignifying. No modern economy can even begin to function properly if it continues to fool around with a disorganised and chaotic system for the essential task of moving people and goods from one place to another.

Elsewhere in the world, after education, health, public safety, effective public transportation is an indispensable responsibility of governments at all levels. 

As pointed out earlier, organised transit systems make it easier for government to directly subsidise public transport without the sort of issues that have bedevilled the management of fuel subsidy in the country and led to the present pinching pass. Afterall, we don’t drink the subsidised fuels; we use them mostly to power vehicular movement. The very desirable direct subsidisation of transportation can only be possible if it is organised to minimize chaos, render touting (agberos) irrelevant and significantly reduce the use of tricycles and motorcycles in the transportation mix.

Fuel subsidy was first introduced in 1973. We have spent the last 50 years—half a century—tryingto manage it effectively without success. We are entering a second half century without hope of a solution to the economically disruptive and politically charged challenge of fuel supply and pricing. It is about time we tackled the problem from the point of the end use to which automotive fuels are put. Since that end use is mostly transportation, that is the sector to which the Tinubu government must pay attention if our hope of national economic salvation is to be renewed rather than dashed.

Let us have CNG by all means, but let us also organise and modernise transportation in Nigeria. We will not go far until we do so.

•Mr Anyang is a former federal commissioner at the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, a former banker and a journalist

REUBEN ABATI

“Bros, you dey craze. I watch you dis morning, you just dey yarn, You just dey craze. You just dey troll Una dey drink something for that una programme? Una dey mad?”

“What is the matter, uncle?”

“Don’t Owain me? How can you go on television and give the faintest impression that Buhari is a better economic manager than Tinubu?  This is the thing about you, Yoruba people, you don’t know when to be loyal to your own people You do not know when to say this is our own and we need to stand by him, when he needs us.”

“I am sorry. I don’t get what you are saying”

“I am saying that Tinubu needs all the support he can get right now from among his own people. It looks bad to have on TV, any Yoruba man or woman condemning their own. You have a responsibility to defend your own person”

“I don’t get your drift. I am educated enough to reject what you are suggesting.”

“And I am telling you that this is Nigeria. Whatever Tinubu does with the Nigerian economy, you have to stand by him. He is one of us. He cannot do any wrong. Whatever anybody says about the economy, it is our son that is there, and we, Yorubas have a reputation for knowing anything about the economy. Ibos are traders. They know commerce, even if they end up dominating other people’s homesteads. Hausa-Fulanis think power is their birthright. They will come into your community and they will try to take over everything. Yorubas think they are the wise ones in the room. They will carry their shoulders high thinking they are the ones that know it all, on whose shoulders everything hangs but at the end of the day, they get deceived. Igbos claim that they are the lords of commerce.  They are in every community in Nigeria, plying trade. What I am trying to say is that this country no balance. The people who think they are wise and smart, are actually stupid. The stupid people are the wise ones.” 

“Is that why you will go on television and say Buhari is wiser than Tinubu? And that Yoruba people are stupid, and they do not know how to manage the economy?”

“Okay, Bros. I did not mean it that way. I was just saying that Yoruba people are supposed to be Nigeria’s best economic managers. We have been in charge for about one year now. Bros, how market? It is enough time for Buhari to sit back and laugh at the expense of the same Yoruba people who think that when it comes to the economy that they know it all. Let me confess to you: I feel grossly embarrassed. I am ashamed.”

“Stop embarrassing yourself. Buhari and his Fulani people caused this problem. They messed up the country. Tinubu is trying to clear up the mess. The problem with Nigeria is the mess that Buhari caused. It has nothing to do with Tinubu. Buhari was sleep-walking for eight years. You have a President who is active. The Jagaban himself and you are going back to the sleepy crowd. I disagree vehemently with you.”

“My brother go and sleep. I am telling you how Yoruba people behave. Economy, Na we know am. Economy na we sabi. Go and fix the economy.   Look, if we want to tell ourselves the truth, this economy was not this bad under Buhari. Go and fix it.” 

“Try and be fair. Buhari caused the problem”

“Fix it. That is why we voted for you. You APC people said you will renew our hope. Renew it.”

“Your hope is being renewed. What the government says is that the people of Nigeria must be prepared to make some sacrifices. I don’t even like this narrative about Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa-Fulani. There are over 250 ethnic groups in this country. We must put an end to ethnic politics in this country.”

“We are the people being asked to make sacrifices. How much sacrifice is the government making? Or the people in government? They are riding yachts. They are busy buying new aircraft. They are busy travelling all over the world. I tried to buy fuel. I had to pay more money. Schools are resuming, after the holidays. They have increased school fees. I wanted to buy suya. Ordinary suya oh. They said the price has gone up. Transport fares have increased by about 50%”

“NLC will take care of that. Labour Congress is on top of it. Labour says the NLC has been betrayed.”

“Which NLC? Which Labour? Are you aware that Joe Ajaero has been arrested?”

“Who arrested him?”

“The Nigerian Government”

“Are you sure?”

“I read it in the papers. The DSS arrested him. I hear he is now in the custody of the Nigeria Intelligence Agency. The NIA.”

“What do they say his offence is?”

“I never hear oh”

“Why are these people perpetually looking for trouble?  Are you sure there are no fifth columnists inside this government? I am beginning to worry oh. You have not solved one problem, you go and create another.”

“I agree with you. Joe Ajaero is a very small irritant. This is not the time to go after him. He is a Labour Leader. He can say what he likes. He can be ignored.”

“They say he is financing terrorism. He is not above the law. No man is above the law.”

“Then you ignore him because of the followership that he commands.  If you have to do anything, you do it underground. Nobody will believe you if you want to do anything then you do it under the cover, never in the open.”

“We are talking about terrorism. The law does not work that way.”.

 “We are talking about the leader of the largest Labour union in the country. Do you want to burn down the country?”

“My attitude is that nobody is above the law”

“Fine. Detain Nigeria’s Labour leader then. What I am saying is that a country cannot fight on all fronts at the same time.”

“Tinubu is not fighting the country. He is saying this country has gone so bad, it has to be fixed.  He is saying organised Labour must not hold this country to ransom. He is saying he won the election in 2023, and he would not allow Obidients and Atiku and his followers to sabotage this country, claiming to be opposition. This is where we are. Try and be patriotic.”  

“Which Nigerian law says to be patriotic you have to be a Tinubu lackey? Tell me.”

“We are saying don’t follow the opposition. Be a man”

“I am not a man. I cannot pay school fees. I cannot fund basic things. I am in pains. Don’t tell me to be a man. How can I be a man in this country?”

“Be a woman then. Your wife can feed you, if she can”.”

“What kind of talk is that?”

“Be the woman. That is what Nigeria today calls for. If you have a woman who can, then humble yourself.”

“Is that what Tinubu is supposed to reduce us to?”

“Life is like that sometimes.”

“No wonder Ajuri Ngelale left them. He told them to keep their job. He walked away from it all.”

“I am of the view that you do not know what you are talking about. Ajuri Ngelale is the luckiest man who ever occupied the position of Presidential Spokesman. He was not just spokesman. He was Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Change. He was Chairman of the Federal Government Project Evergreen Initiative. No other person in that position was ever so garlanded.”

“And he will abandon all of that?”

“It is not everybody that would rather die in a government job. He has asked us to respect his family’s privacy. He talked about family medical issues. Can we all just respect his privacy and personal space?”

“Could this be a case of the demons in Aso Villa chasing Ajuri Ngelale?”

“I have no comment”

“Demons in the Villa.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There is a spiritual side to that Villa. Anybody that goes in there is no longer recognizable.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“So who do you think will take over Ajuri’s job? Who is the demon that will step into his shoes?”

“They have more than enough people in that place falling over themselves to take over the job. You don’t have to worry about that.” 

“Do you think that it is normal that the same Tinubu who used to lead pro-democracy protests will stand by and allow protesters to be charged for treason under his watch?”

“Tinubu is not the judiciary. He wants the judiciary to do its work. Find something else to say.”

“Oh God Oh God. Okay, is Tinubu happy that we the people of Nigeria cannot find fuel to buy?”

“I understand fuel is now available in the filling stations across the country. You drive in, you buy. Willing buyer, willing seller”

“At what price?”

“I refer you to Section 205 of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) of 2021)

“Rubbish. I am not interested in any useless Sections of the law. Is Nigeria better today than it was a year ago? We can’t buy diesel. We can’t buy fuel. Lagos, the country’s commercial center is a ghost town because the people cannot get or buy fuel. Section whatever. Is that what will feed my family?”

“E lo fo kan bale”

“Egbon. Did I hear you right?”

“E lo fo kan bale”

“God. God. God.”

“E lo fo kan bale. There is renewed hope”

“No. I don’t see hope. Not to talk of renewed hope. I sewar to God Almighty anytime there is another call for protest in this country, I will carry placard and go out.”

“Fine. When you get arrested and you are charged for treason, just know that you are on your own. I have always told you. You cannot fight government. After government it is God. Fight government and live with the consequences.”

“To hell with Government”

“And with God too”

“I did not say that. Don’t put words in my mouth. I will never say to hell with God.”   

“It is God that has chosen Tinubu as President of Nigeria. God is forever right. He is all-knowing. Nigerians must learn neve r to fight God.”

“I don’t discuss religious issues. There is too much mumbo jumbo in that arena”

“Are you aware that all the churches will be filled to the brim this Sunday? The same people who cannot find fuel to go to work, they will get fuel to attend Church and enough money to give to Pastors”

“Good for them”

“Many of the congregants will even go with jerry cans of fuel for the Pastors”

“One day, the Pastors and God will meet face to face. I believe in the concept of Judgement Day. Let God judge every man according to his deed.” 

“I think President Tinubu should start by paying tribute to the Paralympics athletes who have just done Nigeria proud in Paris. These are the kind of people we want to see on the National Honours List. Not office holders. Not traditional rulers.”

“I agree. I am impressed. Even if this is Nigeria’s worst outing at the Paralympics since Barcelona 1992. We did better in Athens, London, Tokyo and elsewhere, but at least this one, we came home with seven medals. Congratulations to Nigeria’s Paralympic team. I want to specially recognize Oluwafemiayo and Eniola Bolaji. They made history.”

“I want to add that there is ability in disability. Nigeria’s main team went to the main Olympics. What did they come back with? Zero. Odo. Nothing. Physically challenged people went to represent Nigeria, they returned with medals. I predicted it. In this country, the blind see, the deaf hear, people who have their faculties all intact are the enemies of national progress. Nigeria is a living paradox.”  

“There are still people in this country who can see and hear. I know a few. Things are not as bad as you paint them.”

“Like who, please?”

“Austen Eguavoen. he just led the Super Eagles to beat the Cheetahs of Republic of Benin. He did not allow Gernot Rohr and his team to cheat us. We beat them 3-0.” 

“When Eguavoen and the Super Eagles qualify for both the AFCON, and the World Cup, that is when we can talk. For now, I am just watching. They are in Rwanda. Let them bring us victory from Rwanda too.”

“What of the U-20 Falconets? They are in the group of 16. They are making us proud in the FIFA U-20 tournament.”

“I want to see them in the finals. Nigerian women are always better than the men.”

“You are a pessimist. I need you to see Nigeria in a positive light.”

“I do. I do. It is just that sometimes this country get on your nerves.”

“I know your problem. I know why you are in a foul mood. It is time for children to return to school. You have to pay school fees. And the fees have gone up. But think of all the positives in this country. Dangote Refinery for example. Soon, there will be fuel in every filling station. Dangote is a Nigerian like you. He has done something for his country. You can do something too. You can be a positive force for progress. Stop whining. This country belongs to all of us.”

“Dangote?”

“Yes. Dangote.”

“Are you sure Dangote is happy he has done something for Nigeria right now?”

“Don’t worry yourself.  Everything will be resolved.”

“Really?”

“I think so. No be Nigeria?”

“I dey vex. Country hard no be small.”

“Don’t worry. You will be able to eat suya again if that is your problem. And you will get fuel in your car. Don’t take out your anger on other people”

“I dey vex, no be small”

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA

There are only three other people who know this matter first-hand nearly as much as former President Olusegun Obasanjo does. He declared recently that Nigeria is not at all difficult to govern. He made that stunning declaration at Osogbo in Osun State when, after dancing a jig with Governor Ademola Adeleke, the former president led the way to commission a presidential lodge inside the Government House. I don’t know if it was the dancing that got to Chief Obasanjo’s head; he declared Adeleke to be his “dancing partner,” which was a serious exaggeration because the governor is a world-class dancer whereas Obasanjo could at best shuffle and wiggle.

Chief Obasanjo ruled Nigeria for a cumulative eleven and a half years, February 1976-October 1979 and then May 1999-May 2007. General Muhammadu Buhari’s total rule [December 1983-August 1985 and May 2015-May2023] was shorter by one full calendar year. Both men however had the unique experience of ruling this country both as military dictators and as civilian presidents, a very rich study in contrasts. Someone once said that Army Generals are always fighting the last battle, unable to adjust to changing circumstances. It was no wonder that both these men ruled in their Second Coming as if it was their First Coming, emasculating democratic institutions and traditions, trampling their political parties underfoot and treating the news media, trade unions and civil society groups with a mien ranging from cold rebuff to severe disdain.

The other two men with a long stretch of ruling Nigeria are Generals Yakubu Gowon and Ibrahim Babangida. They were very different kettles of fish from those first two. Each one of them ruled for the whole stretch as a military ruler, though both unsuccessfully tried to bounce back as civilian rulers, one in 1993, the other in 2011. One was very friendly, cheerful and as gentle as a nurse, while the other one spotted a [fake] cheer, created more agencies than anyone could count, and dribbled the country like a combination of Pele and Mbappe. Since all four of these men are still alive, could they kindly get together and tell us whether they in fact agree that Nigeria is easy to govern?

Chief Obasanjo did add a rider, that indeed Nigeria is complex but that it is not difficult to govern when you have a leader who is honest with God and the people and who has conscience and good character attributes. But Chief, that is a very big “if.” It reminds me of Basket Mouth, when a young girl told him that she was waiting for a “Mr. Right” to marry, one who is honest, sincere, loving, caring, who does not lie, does not drink, does not smoke, does not cheat and who is God-fearing. Basket Mouth calmly said, “Please wait a little. Jesus Christ will soon come back.”

You say that Nigeria is easy to govern when leaders who made much greater impact on their countries still thought those countries were near impossible to govern? In 1962, the imperious French President Charles De Gaulle said in exasperation about his country, “How can you govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?” Cheese experts later protested that De Gaulle undercounted them, because when sub-varieties are added, France had nearly 2,000 varieties of cheese!

We may not have a lot of cheese, but did Chief Obasanjo stop to count the varieties of gari, beans, amala and egusi that we have in Nigeria before he reached his startling conclusion that the country is not difficult to govern? Even when he was a military dictator with full powers subject only to a small Supreme Military Council which in practice could not restrain him because its members were all his military juniors, how many things did he left undone? His Operation Feed the Nation [OFN] farm that he started cultivating inside Dodan Barracks, did he harvest it? The high-falutin speech that he gave in Kaduna State in 1977 and the media called it “Jaji Declaration” where he said Nigerian society should be “fair, just, humane and African,” did it happen? All the banks and oil companies that he seized from White owners and renamed them “National Oil, African Petroleum, Union Bank, Afribank” etc., are they not back in the hands of Whites and their local fronts? Even the new National Anthem that he so laboriously crafted and adopted, has it not been discarded recently in favour of the one crafted by an English woman? So how easy has it been to govern Nigeria?

Even when he returned as civilian president in Nigeria and complained that all the great institutions he and his military colleagues established in the 1970s were destroyed, including the oil refineries, depots and ports, did he revive them? Nigeria Airways collapsed under his very eyes, even though he boasted that he left it with many planes when he first left in 1979. Was Nigeria Railway Corporation easy to govern? In 2003 when I and a group of other editors interviewed the then President Obasanjo, he said Railways’ monthly pension bill was N250 million while its revenue was N40 million a month. Did it improve since then?

Many things happened last week alone that made me to wonder if, indeed, Nigeria is so easy to govern. There was this photo of the Minister of State for Defence, Bello Mohammed Matawalle, arriving at Sokoto airport in full military gear, the Chief of Defence Staff closely behind him, that they were there to rid Sokoto, Zamfara and Katsina states of kidnappers and bandits. Who gave the minister that uniform to wear? I perused his CV and did not see where he even belonged to the Boy Scouts or Red Cross during his school days. Yet, he catapulted himself to an Army Marshal’s battle fatigues. Since their arrival in Sokoto, have they caught any bandits? The bandit Bello Turji, who the social media has accorded the title of Lieutenant General, is even there posting pictures of himself setting fire to a captured Armoured Personnel Carrier.

Did you ask Governor Dauda Lawal of Zamfara State if it is easy to govern last week, when his whole state machinery was rattled by a fake memo posted on social media, that he was paying N200million each to bandit kingpins Bello Turji and Dogo Gide, when he had been saying at every opportunity he got that he opposed negotiating with bandits? The “memo” even had the Zamfara SSG’s signature as well as Governor Lawal’s “approval” with a red pen. Did ZMSG do any other work that day, apart from scrambling to disown the memo?

You say Nigeria is easy to govern, so why, despite the arrival of the Defence Minister of State in full battle gear, was the Governor of Katsina State singing a different tune, exhorting the people of villages and towns to rise up to a religious injunction to take up arms and defend themselves, their families and their dignity from bandit attacks? Have the security agencies given up on the task assigned to them by the Constitution, and people must go back to pre-Constitution religious injunctions for guidance on how to handle internal insecurity matters? Governor Dikko Radda appeared close to giving up on the security system, after buying so many vehicles and gadgets.

Nigeria is not difficult to govern? Why did President Tinubu ensure that he travelled to the end of the world [China] before NNPC surreptitiously announced a fuel price increase? It didn’t actually announce it; we at first saw a leaked internal memo telling marketers to increase oil prices, which the Minister of State for Petroleum distanced himself from, before we saw fuel station attendants climbing up ladders and changing the displayed prices at their stations. Government later said fuel will reappear at the stations, but was silent on the price increase, before the president spoke in China and defended it.

How can Chief Obasanjo say that Nigeria is easy to govern when the government’s position and that of citizens on petrol price, one is at the North Pole and the other is at the South Pole? It is a big conundrum and no one seems to know how to bridge the gap. We the citizens, we want government to invest heavily in internal security, to build roads, rail and safe airports, to invest heavily in quality education and health care, to invest heavily in food production for us to eat well and at good prices, to protect our environment and cultural heritage, and to win trophies in international sports competitions in order to boost our national ego.

In the last 50 years, most of government’s money came from oil, and we want that one as cheap as possible so we can pay modest fares for taxis and buses and as many millions of us as possible could have cars in front of their houses and drive around as they please on cheap petrol. We couldn’t find the right balance for these fundamentally irreconcilable expectations, and by last month NNPC declared that it could go bankrupt, was owing suppliers $6billion for supplied fuel and may no longer be able to import refined fuel, as government mandated it too. The story is of course more complex than that, especially when we factor in the corruption, the opaque fuel subsidy arrangement, the muddled-up communication with the public, and the Dangote Refinery story angle, which so far is full of claims and counter-claims and we are not yet sure what is the full truth.

Dangote Refinery is to many Nigerians what the boxer Gerry Cooney once was to the world’s White people. In 1982, the great boxing promoter Don King declared Cooney to be “the Last White Hope” to clinch the world heavyweight boxing title from a string of black champions, including Brown Bomber Joe Louis, Sony Liston, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Ken Norton and Larry Holmes. Could this refinery, owned by the shrewdest of businessmen, sitting pretty in an Export Free Zone, menacingly hugging the Lagos coastline and threatening to export its products if we cannot agree on the right price, be a solution to our fuel price problems?  

By Dakuku Peterside 

In July 1986, Nigeria’s military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, launched a public policy initiative hailed as the silver bullet for Nigeria’s distressed economy: the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). A local adaptation of an IMF/World Bank  initiative, SAP was intended to stabilise the economy. However, within a year of its implementation, the programme had left a trail of hunger, industry closures, unemployment, and acute poverty. Instead of achieving its objectives, SAP exacerbated the economic crisis, leaving Nigerians groaning under economic hardship. SAP was part of a broader World Bank/IMF global economic policy framework.

While SAP failed from a broad perspective, certain socio-economic elements—like poverty alleviation, job creation, and rural development—experienced some success in the medium term.

 Fast forward 37 years to 2023, and Nigeria’s new political leadership revisited two critical elements of the 1986 SAP: the policy on petrol subsidies and the floating of the Naira. While these policies’ medium to long-term impacts are still uncertain, their short-term effects bear an uncanny resemblance to those of their predecessor.

The issue is not necessarily the nobility of these policies’ intentions—after all, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. Nor is it about the appropriateness of the policies themselves. What’s indisputable is that these public policies have imposed unintended consequences, hurting the very people they were meant to help. These aren’t the only government policies in Nigeria, at both the national and state levels, that have failed to achieve their intended objectives or have produced adverse effects.

It is not uncommon to see government policies fail to meet their goals. Such failures drain public resources, exacerbate the suffering of the people rather than alleviate it, and erode public trust in the government. The question is, why? As Nigeria continues to embark on new public policies that, if not carefully examined, may produce unintended consequences, I will explore why public policies fail in Nigeria and how we can do things differently.

First is the need for more rigour in policy conception. Most policies emerge as reactive measures to imminent problems the government seeks to solve. This reactive approach often forces a sense of urgency in policy formulation, leaving little time for proper planning, research, cost-benefit analysis, and scenario mapping of both intended and unintended consequences. We often see policy statements made in the media by leaders on the fly, with policy implementing institutions scrambling to catch up in executing  these policies. This approach is dangerous in a democracy and detrimental to economic development. The lack of rigour in developing the fuel subsidy removal policy is evident for all to see.

For instance, the president made a straightforward policy statement during his inaugural speech that “oil subsidy is gone,” triggering immediate reactions from the people and the economy. However, there was no clear, overarching policy framework to guide the process, consider intervening variables, anticipate unintended consequences, and devise ways of mitigating them. The policy apparatus was unprepared, and implementation has been a game of catch-up with unintended  results. The ongoing attempts to rein in the consequences of this policy have largely failed, and the damage is evident for all to see.

Contrastingly, the Philippines, one of the few countries that successfully removed petrol subsidies, took a markedly different approach. The government meticulously laid the groundwork for the policy over nearly five years, engaging independent assessors to evaluate the potential impact of subsidy removal and mitigation measures. The implementation was phased, with provisions for targeted support to assist vulnerable citizens, ensuring the impact was cushioned for lower-income households. The Philippine government also proactively communicated the rationale behind price changes and the benefits of deregulation, which helped build public trust and acceptance of the reforms. This strategic, long-term approach fostered a more sustainable oil and gas market in the country, a stark contrast to Nigeria’s short-term, reactive policy formulation.

Second, policymakers in Nigeria are often driven by short-term gains and personal interests. The prospect of immediate results or benefit too easily sways them, and they seldom consider the long-term impact. True leaders think about generational impact and provide solutions that transform society for posterity. Unfortunately, such leaders are not common in Nigeria . Many policymakers are so short-sighted and parochial that their focus on policy is as narrow as pursuing the subsequent election victory. Even when good policies are created to benefit society, a lack of political continuity often kills their implementation. Political discontinuity in policy execution has led to frequent policy disruptions. New policymakers tend to abandon previous policies to create new ones, even if the old policies are addressing the challenge it was designed to address   or nearing completion. This constant change fosters confusion and instability.

Thirdly, policymakers in Nigeria often lack a deep understanding of the policies they plan to implement or the economic context. Instead of developing solutions that are tailored to Nigeria’s unique circumstances, they often defer to foreign solutions—a copy-and-paste approach, without the necessary adaptation . The floating of the Naira under this administration is a prime example. On paper, the policy aligns with recommendations from international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank and was heralded as the solution to Nigeria’s exchange rate problems. However, previous governments resisted the policy due to fears of unintended consequences in an import-dependent and mono-product export economy. This lack of understanding and the blind adoption of foreign solutions have led to the current exchange rate crisis. May be adaptation could have produced a different result . 

Nigeria’s economic structure means that fluctuations in the Naira’s value against major currencies directly affect the cost of living for millions of Nigerians, especially those living in multidimensional poverty. The government was overly optimistic, expecting the Naira to stabilize at around N750 per USD. However, within a year of implementing the policy, the exchange rate has mostly harmonized and partially deregulated (with the CBN still intervening to influence the Naira’s value). However, the currency has depreciated by over 300%, from N500 per USD at the start of this administration to N1600 recently. The problem lies in the supply of USD in the market, which neither the Nigerian government nor the private sector has significantly impacted. Demand far outweighs supply, leading to a severe erosion of the Naira’s value.

It is evident that policymakers in Nigeria often underestimate the challenges and potential unintended consequences of their policies. This was the case with both the oil subsidy removal and the exchange rate floating. As a result, they have yet to find answers to the many unintended consequences that have nearly overwhelmed the planned policy objectives. Most Nigerians are less concerned with the policies’ good intentions and more affected by the harsh consequences. Furthermore, there was poor communication with stakeholders. The government needed to adequately prepare the public for the unintended consequences or provide sufficient remedial and palliative measures. As the saying goes, ‘To be forewarned is to be forearmed.’ Nigerians were unprepared for what they are now facing.

Moreover, misleading narratives led to these policies. The government framed the economic situation under the Buhari administration as dire, suggesting that without these two policies, the country would collapse. This doomsday narrative initially led to the policies being received as the panacea to Nigeria’s economic woes. But time is proving the opposite, and people are increasingly frustrated. The difference between the tail end of Buhari’s regime and now feels like a lifetime. The price of everything has at least doubled, if not more.

I advocate for a more intellectual approach to governance. Politics seems to dominate everything, and this lack of capacity to engage with the complexities of governance leads to ineffective policymaking and implementation. Nigeria must develop a national policy elite capable of creating, pursuing, and sustaining sound policies. Nigerian leaders must work to bridge the gap between policy formulation and implementation. Most policies fail at the implementation stage due to conflicting interests and the impunity that hinders Nigeria’s economic and social progress.

In Nigeria, the persistent failures of public policy reflect more profound issues in the governance structure, where reactive measures, short-term thinking, and a reliance on foreign templates overshadow the need for tailored, well-researched, and rigorously planned policies. The consequences of these approaches are evident in the current economic distress and public disillusionment. Nigeria must cultivate a new generation of leaders and policymakers who prioritize long-term societal transformation over immediate political gains to break this cycle. These leaders must embrace a more intellectual and context-sensitive approach to governance, ensuring that policies are well-conceived and effectively implemented, with robust mechanisms in place to mitigate unintended consequences. Only through such a paradigm shift can Nigeria hope to achieve sustainable economic and social progress.

By simon kolawole

It took me less than one hour into President Bola Tinubu’s administration to spot a giant red flag. His famous words at the inauguration, “subsidy is gone”, instantly set off an alarm in my head. In my article on it, ‘Why (Most) Nigerians Oppose Subsidy Removal’ (June 4, 2023), I wrote: “With all of Tinubu’s experience in government, I thought a presidential pronouncement on such a very sensitive and emotive topic could have been better managed.” My worry, on hearing his declaration, was that it lacked strategic thinking and it was going to create chaos everywhere as there would be panic buying. Little did I know that chaos was going to be the core administrative model of his government.

To start with, President Muhammadu Buhari budgeted for petrol subsidy for only the first half of the year. It went without saying that from July 2023, subsidy would be gone — unless his successor decided to retain it. Why, then, was Tinubu in a hurry to announce the death of subsidy one full month ahead of schedule? The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd, aka NNPCL, quickly issued a statement to “clarify” that the announcement would take effect from July, but it was a waste of time. That would only lead to hoarding and hardship. A couple of days later, NNPCL announced a new price of N488/litre in Lagos, up from N185. In other parts of Nigeria, it was as high as N557.

When Tinubu made the ill-advised Eagle Square declaration, the price of crude oil was $75/barrel and the FX rate was N463/$. In June 2023, when the pump price of petrol was adjusted, I understand that the base assumption was an exchange rate of N600/$ — thereby creating some wriggle room in case of depreciation of the naira. Two weeks later, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) decided to float the naira in its “willing buyer willing seller” policy which — as overly optimistic projections go — was supposed to stimulate the inflow of billions of dollars into the economy, undercut the black market and stabilise the naira around N650/$ at most. The poorly managed float ended up killing the naira.

In July 2023, the theory and practical of floating parted ways as the naira started spinning out of control, hitting N800/$. The Tinubu administration reacted by increasing petrol price to about N600. Thereafter, the naira went fully naked in the FX market, crossing the N1,000/$ mark in September 2023 and racing towards N2,000/$. To make matters worse, oil went up to $93/barrel. However, petrol price remained unchanged. Shockingly, the government and NNPCL insisted there was no subsidy. By the end of August 2024, the FX rate was about N1,600/$ and oil was close to $80/barrel, but petrol remained N617. Amazingly, NNPCL kept saying there was no subsidy, just “a shortfall”.

Alhaji Umar Ajiya, the chief financial officer (CFO) of the NNPCL, added some comedy to the tragedy, saying: “What has been happening is that we have been importing PMS, which has been landing at a specific cost price, and the government tells us to sell it at half price. So, the difference between the landing price and that half price is a shortfall.” Ajiya was only doing what NNPCL historically does: pulling the wool over our eyes. Now that NNPCL has adjusted petrol price to around N855/litre, we are still being told government does not fix the prices, that the market has been “fully” deregulated and it is the market forces that are at work, or at play — a barefaced lie that will go unpunished.

Before the latest price hike, NNPC was buying petrol at N1,200 and selling at N600. To cover the “PMS shortfall” from January to July 2024 alone, NNPC forked out N4.2 trillion. By December 2024, we will have spent about N8 trillion on “PMS shortfall” for this year alone — money that should have otherwise been shared by the federating units. Even if we (expectedly) steal or waste 50 percent of it, there will still be some N4 trillion left to spend on education, roads, health, water, etc. As our forefathers would say, “at all at all na him bad pass”. That is, half a loaf is better than none. The reality is that we have been subsidising petrol consumption since most probably August last year.

Nigerians have been very patient with Tinubu but it appears he does not appreciate this. He would do well to come clean on this subsidy issue. The starting point is the need for conceptual clarity. What exactly is he trying to do? Is he increasing petrol price to reduce the subsidy bill? Or is he trying to generate more revenue from the sale of petrol? When he says “subsidy is gone”, is he deregulating the pricing so that any marketer can buy petrol and sell at a price that covers the cost and provides a profit margin — as the case has been with diesel for decades? Or is he just making a political statement for the cameras? Until we know what he is doing, we cannot have a meaningful debate.

Secondly, it is very clear that there was no preparation for this policy. There was a lack of proper thinking — and this should be surprising for someone who said what he wanted in his life was to be president. You would think he had developed a solid blueprint over the years, but the impression I keep getting from the day he was sworn in till now is that he has been doing things on an ad-hoc basis. For a major issue like the pricing of petrol, you would have expected scenario painting. If the cost of petrol per litre is x, are we going to sell at x plus profit? Or are we going to modulate the price? Where will funding come from? Floating the naira after removing the subsidy was so reckless.

Thirdly, the lack of transparency in the whole game is so irritating. Why is Tinubu playing games? While NNPCL and Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, minister of state for petroleum, were busy playing with words on the latest petrol price hike and saying it was all about market forces, Tinubu was saying in faraway China that the increase was because he had to take “hard decisions” for the sake of Nigeria’s development. Don’t they have a WhatsApp group where they can co-ordinate what they tell Nigerians? In any case, “subsidy scam” was one of the catch phrases the APC used to oust the PDP in 2015. Buhari famously asked: “Who is subsidising whom?” It is now an albatross around APC’s neck.

On assuming power and seeing the reality of subsidy in 2015, the first APC administration resorted to semantic sophistication, preferring to call it “cost under recovery” — as if that would solve any problem. They belatedly ended the denial by finally calling a spade a spade. The second APC administration, headed by Tinubu, has rebranded subsidy as “shortfall”. Subsidy denial amounts to lying to your doctor about your illness. Obviously, the denial is also an ego thing. Tinubu, who reputably tamed the Atlantic Ocean, is also celebrated as having slain the subsidy dragon, thereby doing what Napoleon — and all previous Nigerian leaders — could not do. So why burst his bubble?

I know that petrol has been regarded as the most important product in Nigeria and issues around its pricing are tricky. Diesel pricing is free of government control and we have moved on with our lives. Same for kerosene and Jet-A fuel. The labour unions have never called a strike over diesel price, even though a large chunk of inter-state transport is by luxury buses which run on diesel. Most goods — foodstuffs, equipment, etc — are moved across the country by trucks and trailers running on diesel. Medium to large-scale businesses run on diesel. All these impact on the cost of living. Diesel was N700 when Tinubu came in and is now N1,300 or thereabout, but there are no calls for strike.

Why always petrol? I asked a senior friend last week and he reasoned that it was because it is one product that affects the life of every Nigerian. Really? More than the prices of garri, rice, yam, maize, tomato and beans? I have never heard that anybody went on strike because of rising prices of yam or rice. Does that mean Nigerians consider petrol to be more important than food? I don’t think so. My conclusion, which may be tenuous, is that we think, rightly or wrongly, that petrol is “government property”. Therefore, government should take sole responsibility for the pricing in the interest of Nigerians, whether or not it can afford the bill. We classify petrol as a socio-political commodity.

Early 2023, when petrol was N185 in Lagos, I told a filling station attendant that I had just returned from Ghana where a litre was about N700. He replied: “But their government is doing something for them. Fuel subsidy is the only thing we enjoy in Nigeria.” His sense was that Ghana was spending the revenue from petrol on its citizens. I wanted to explain to him that the Ghanaian government does not sell petrol, that it is purely the business of private companies, but courage failed me. Petrol price in Ghana is determined like the price of yam: how much did I buy it? How much did I transport it? How much will I sell to make a margin? We have been unable to achieve this in Nigeria since 1986.

I don’t know who brought up this idea that with Dangote Refinery, petrol would be cheap because it is locally refined. How? The major cost input is crude oil. If crude oil goes for $80/barrel, products cannot be cheap — except we subsidise the crude. A benefit of local refining is the elimination of shipping cost, which does not amount to much. Shipping is the cheapest form of cargo transport across the globe. The biggest benefit of local refining is that we would conserve the FX we spend on fuel imports. The downside, though, is that if we sell crude in naira, we will lose the opportunity to earn FX from oil exports and that could further hurt the naira. Every policy comes with a trade-off.

In the final analysis, whatever we do with petrol subsidy, there will be repercussions. We remove it, Nigerians will suffer but the treasury will suffer less. We retain it, Nigerians will suffer less but the treasury will suffer more. Know that, know peace. It is for the government to weigh its options. But this administration has been disingenuous. They should come out and tell us the truth with their chest. They should lay bare their thinking. Do you want to treat petrol as a socio-political commodity? Do they want to truly deregulate? Why play games? In 2024 — over 180 years after education came to Nigeria — we are still being treated as a colony of ignoramuses. It is what it is.

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

GUTTER POLITICS

Playing Games with Petrol Subsidy

It took me less than one hour into President Bola Tinubu’s administration to spot a giant red flag. His famous words at the inauguration, “subsidy is gone”, instantly set off an alarm in my head. In my article on it, ‘Why (Most) Nigerians Oppose Subsidy Removal’ (June 4, 2023), I wrote: “With all of Tinubu’s experience in government, I thought a presidential pronouncement on such a very sensitive and emotive topic could have been better managed.” My worry, on hearing his declaration, was that it lacked strategic thinking and it was going to create chaos everywhere as there would be panic buying. Little did I know that chaos was going to be the core administrative model of his government.

To start with, President Muhammadu Buhari budgeted for petrol subsidy for only the first half of the year. It went without saying that from July 2023, subsidy would be gone — unless his successor decided to retain it. Why, then, was Tinubu in a hurry to announce the death of subsidy one full month ahead of schedule? The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd, aka NNPCL, quickly issued a statement to “clarify” that the announcement would take effect from July, but it was a waste of time. That would only lead to hoarding and hardship. A couple of days later, NNPCL announced a new price of N488/litre in Lagos, up from N185. In other parts of Nigeria, it was as high as N557.

When Tinubu made the ill-advised Eagle Square declaration, the price of crude oil was $75/barrel and the FX rate was N463/$. In June 2023, when the pump price of petrol was adjusted, I understand that the base assumption was an exchange rate of N600/$ — thereby creating some wriggle room in case of depreciation of the naira. Two weeks later, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) decided to float the naira in its “willing buyer willing seller” policy which — as overly optimistic projections go — was supposed to stimulate the inflow of billions of dollars into the economy, undercut the black market and stabilise the naira around N650/$ at most. The poorly managed float ended up killing the naira.

In July 2023, the theory and practical of floating parted ways as the naira started spinning out of control, hitting N800/$. The Tinubu administration reacted by increasing petrol price to about N600. Thereafter, the naira went fully naked in the FX market, crossing the N1,000/$ mark in September 2023 and racing towards N2,000/$. To make matters worse, oil went up to $93/barrel. However, petrol price remained unchanged. Shockingly, the government and NNPCL insisted there was no subsidy. By the end of August 2024, the FX rate was about N1,600/$ and oil was close to $80/barrel, but petrol remained N617. Amazingly, NNPCL kept saying there was no subsidy, just “a shortfall”.

Alhaji Umar Ajiya, the chief financial officer (CFO) of the NNPCL, added some comedy to the tragedy, saying: “What has been happening is that we have been importing PMS, which has been landing at a specific cost price, and the government tells us to sell it at half price. So, the difference between the landing price and that half price is a shortfall.” Ajiya was only doing what NNPCL historically does: pulling the wool over our eyes. Now that NNPCL has adjusted petrol price to around N855/litre, we are still being told government does not fix the prices, that the market has been “fully” deregulated and it is the market forces that are at work, or at play — a barefaced lie that will go unpunished.

Before the latest price hike, NNPC was buying petrol at N1,200 and selling at N600. To cover the “PMS shortfall” from January to July 2024 alone, NNPC forked out N4.2 trillion. By December 2024, we will have spent about N8 trillion on “PMS shortfall” for this year alone — money that should have otherwise been shared by the federating units. Even if we (expectedly) steal or waste 50 percent of it, there will still be some N4 trillion left to spend on education, roads, health, water, etc. As our forefathers would say, “at all at all na him bad pass”. That is, half a loaf is better than none. The reality is that we have been subsidising petrol consumption since most probably August last year.

Nigerians have been very patient with Tinubu but it appears he does not appreciate this. He would do well to come clean on this subsidy issue. The starting point is the need for conceptual clarity. What exactly is he trying to do? Is he increasing petrol price to reduce the subsidy bill? Or is he trying to generate more revenue from the sale of petrol? When he says “subsidy is gone”, is he deregulating the pricing so that any marketer can buy petrol and sell at a price that covers the cost and provides a profit margin — as the case has been with diesel for decades? Or is he just making a political statement for the cameras? Until we know what he is doing, we cannot have a meaningful debate.

Secondly, it is very clear that there was no preparation for this policy. There was a lack of proper thinking — and this should be surprising for someone who said what he wanted in his life was to be president. You would think he had developed a solid blueprint over the years, but the impression I keep getting from the day he was sworn in till now is that he has been doing things on an ad-hoc basis. For a major issue like the pricing of petrol, you would have expected scenario painting. If the cost of petrol per litre is x, are we going to sell at x plus profit? Or are we going to modulate the price? Where will funding come from? Floating the naira after removing the subsidy was so reckless.

Thirdly, the lack of transparency in the whole game is so irritating. Why is Tinubu playing games? While NNPCL and Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, minister of state for petroleum, were busy playing with words on the latest petrol price hike and saying it was all about market forces, Tinubu was saying in faraway China that the increase was because he had to take “hard decisions” for the sake of Nigeria’s development. Don’t they have a WhatsApp group where they can co-ordinate what they tell Nigerians? In any case, “subsidy scam” was one of the catch phrases the APC used to oust the PDP in 2015. Buhari famously asked: “Who is subsidising whom?” It is now an albatross around APC’s neck.

On assuming power and seeing the reality of subsidy in 2015, the first APC administration resorted to semantic sophistication, preferring to call it “cost under recovery” — as if that would solve any problem. They belatedly ended the denial by finally calling a spade a spade. The second APC administration, headed by Tinubu, has rebranded subsidy as “shortfall”. Subsidy denial amounts to lying to your doctor about your illness. Obviously, the denial is also an ego thing. Tinubu, who reputably tamed the Atlantic Ocean, is also celebrated as having slain the subsidy dragon, thereby doing what Napoleon — and all previous Nigerian leaders — could not do. So why burst his bubble?

I know that petrol has been regarded as the most important product in Nigeria and issues around its pricing are tricky. Diesel pricing is free of government control and we have moved on with our lives. Same for kerosene and Jet-A fuel. The labour unions have never called a strike over diesel price, even though a large chunk of inter-state transport is by luxury buses which run on diesel. Most goods — foodstuffs, equipment, etc — are moved across the country by trucks and trailers running on diesel. Medium to large-scale businesses run on diesel. All these impact on the cost of living. Diesel was N700 when Tinubu came in and is now N1,300 or thereabout, but there are no calls for strike.

Why always petrol? I asked a senior friend last week and he reasoned that it was because it is one product that affects the life of every Nigerian. Really? More than the prices of garri, rice, yam, maize, tomato and beans? I have never heard that anybody went on strike because of rising prices of yam or rice. Does that mean Nigerians consider petrol to be more important than food? I don’t think so. My conclusion, which may be tenuous, is that we think, rightly or wrongly, that petrol is “government property”. Therefore, government should take sole responsibility for the pricing in the interest of Nigerians, whether or not it can afford the bill. We classify petrol as a socio-political commodity.

Early 2023, when petrol was N185 in Lagos, I told a filling station attendant that I had just returned from Ghana where a litre was about N700. He replied: “But their government is doing something for them. Fuel subsidy is the only thing we enjoy in Nigeria.” His sense was that Ghana was spending the revenue from petrol on its citizens. I wanted to explain to him that the Ghanaian government does not sell petrol, that it is purely the business of private companies, but courage failed me. Petrol price in Ghana is determined like the price of yam: how much did I buy it? How much did I transport it? How much will I sell to make a margin? We have been unable to achieve this in Nigeria since 1986.

I don’t know who brought up this idea that with Dangote Refinery, petrol would be cheap because it is locally refined. How? The major cost input is crude oil. If crude oil goes for $80/barrel, products cannot be cheap — except we subsidise the crude. A benefit of local refining is the elimination of shipping cost, which does not amount to much. Shipping is the cheapest form of cargo transport across the globe. The biggest benefit of local refining is that we would conserve the FX we spend on fuel imports. The downside, though, is that if we sell crude in naira, we will lose the opportunity to earn FX from oil exports and that could further hurt the naira. Every policy comes with a trade-off.

In the final analysis, whatever we do with petrol subsidy, there will be repercussions. We remove it, Nigerians will suffer but the treasury will suffer less. We retain it, Nigerians will suffer less but the treasury will suffer more. Know that, know peace. It is for the government to weigh its options. But this administration has been disingenuous. They should come out and tell us the truth with their chest. They should lay bare their thinking. Do you want to treat petrol as a socio-political commodity? Do they want to truly deregulate? Why play games? In 2024 — over 180 years after education came to Nigeria — we are still being treated as a colony of ignoramuses. It is what it is.

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

GUTTER POLITICS

If you have been following the campaigns in Edo state ahead of the 2024 governorship election, you would be forgiven for thinking the most important issues are marital status and child-bearing. The PDP went on a campaign of taunting two of the leading candidates for being single or unmarried, while Senator Adams Oshiomhole (APC) went completely into the gutter by saying the incumbent governor and his wife are childless. How low can Nigerian politicians go in the struggle for power which, more often than not, is for the ultimate goal of personal aggrandisement and not the progress of the society? Unfortunately, their supporters will defend (or try to justify) the nonsense. Tasteless.

HATE SPACE

Canadian police authorities have arrested a 46-year-old Nigerian woman who allegedly made a hate speech — to the extent of vowing to poison the meals of people from some ethnic groups. The cyber space is full of hate speech but while Western countries are arresting and prosecuting the perpetrators, Nigerian authorities appear to be more interested in fighting personal battles for politicians and other VIPs over “cyber stalking” and “defamation”. They must also crack down on those cowards stoking ethnic and religious hate on social media. These characters think they can post whatever they like and go scot-free. They are a clear and present danger to this society. Action.

CYBER CRIMINALS

Other forms of cybercrime that are not taken seriously in Nigeria are sextortion and revenge porn. Two Nigerian brothers have just been sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison by a US court for sextortion. Samuel and Samson Ogoshi, 24 and 21 years old respectively, lured Jordan DeMay, a young American boy, to send them nude pictures, pretending to be a girl. They then threatened to spread the images except he sent them money. The boy sent all he could and threatened to kill himself, to which the criminals said he should go ahead. DeMay committed suicide immediately. It’s good Nigerian authorities helped with investigation but they need to be doing more at home. Tragic.

NO COMMENT

Prof. Tahir Mamman, minister of education, recently tried to get JAMB to bar students less than 18 years old from writing the UTME. After the uproar, Dr. Tanko Sununu, his minister of state, has come out to “clarify” the matter. “People just pick up some remarks the minister made, misinterpreted the statements to imply that age restriction has been placed for WAEC and NECO examinations,” he said. “What we have been mentioning was the entry age for university — candidates sitting for the UTME.” That is, you can write the senior school exam if you like but you can’t write the UTME until you are 18. The glaring difference between six and half a dozen. What a clarification! Wonderful.

If you have been following the campaigns in Edo state ahead of the 2024 governorship election, you would be forgiven for thinking the most important issues are marital status and child-bearing. The PDP went on a campaign of taunting two of the leading candidates for being single or unmarried, while Senator Adams Oshiomhole (APC) went completely into the gutter by saying the incumbent governor and his wife are childless. How low can Nigerian politicians go in the struggle for power which, more often than not, is for the ultimate goal of personal aggrandisement and not the progress of the society? Unfortunately, their supporters will defend (or try to justify) the nonsense. Tasteless.

HATE SPACE

Canadian police authorities have arrested a 46-year-old Nigerian woman who allegedly made a hate speech — to the extent of vowing to poison the meals of people from some ethnic groups. The cyber space is full of hate speech but while Western countries are arresting and prosecuting the perpetrators, Nigerian authorities appear to be more interested in fighting personal battles for politicians and other VIPs over “cyber stalking” and “defamation”. They must also crack down on those cowards stoking ethnic and religious hate on social media. These characters think they can post whatever they like and go scot-free. They are a clear and present danger to this society. Action.

CYBER CRIMINALS

Other forms of cybercrime that are not taken seriously in Nigeria are sextortion and revenge porn. Two Nigerian brothers have just been sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison by a US court for sextortion. Samuel and Samson Ogoshi, 24 and 21 years old respectively, lured Jordan DeMay, a young American boy, to send them nude pictures, pretending to be a girl. They then threatened to spread the images except he sent them money. The boy sent all he could and threatened to kill himself, to which the criminals said he should go ahead. DeMay committed suicide immediately. It’s good Nigerian authorities helped with investigation but they need to be doing more at home. Tragic.

NO COMMENT

Prof. Tahir Mamman, minister of education, recently tried to get JAMB to bar students less than 18 years old from writing the UTME. After the uproar, Dr. Tanko Sununu, his minister of state, has come out to “clarify” the matter. “People just pick up some remarks the minister made, misinterpreted the statements to imply that age restriction has been placed for WAEC and NECO examinations,” he said. “What we have been mentioning was the entry age for university — candidates sitting for the UTME.” That is, you can write the senior school exam if you like but you can’t write the UTME until you are 18. The glaring difference between six and half a dozen. What a clarification! Wonderful.

ENGAGEMENTS with  Chidi Amuta

Perhaps unknown to most Nigerians, the Nigerian government hosted its political opposition in the hallowed chambers of the Federal Executive Council last Wednesday. It was a unique opportunity to hear an opposition perspective on the current state of the nation right in the executive chambers of Aso Villa. This was in a week when Mr. Dinuba was out touring in China after sneakily authorizing a cruel increase of petrol pump prices over and above the wildest imagination. The opposition flag and message were carried by an unusual mascot: American tech billionaire and philanthropist, Mr. Bill Gates.

Escorted by Nigeria’s leading money mascot, Aliko Dangote, Bill Gates got an opportunity to literally gate crash into the Executive Council Chambers at Aso Villa where he had the rare opportunity of lecturing the entire Federal Government including Vice President Kassim Shettima and ministers. A lecture on basic development challenges ended up as an unscheduled talk on the inconvenient truths of the present times in Nigeria.

What was auspicious is not so much the presence of the two money merchants. It was rather the message that Mr. Gates had to deliver at the Aso Rock Council chambers that should interest us. Forget the fact that America’s own money men do not get to casually walk into council meetings at the White House to lecture anybody about anything. It is not usual for Gates, Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffet to hike a ride and gate crash into a White House Council meeting to talk about anything. If indeed they have to make a Congressional appearance on any subject, they have to be invited by the relevant committee leadership and answer specific questions. But this is Nigeria. All anyone needs to qualify to lecture an entire Nigerian government is a trove of cash and influence either as a refinery owner or a rich technology billionaire turned philanthropist.

n any event, both Dangote and Bill Gates are familiar sights in Nigeria’s power precincts. Dangote is constantly on hand in all meetings that have to do with running a successful economy especially on matters that concern cement and petrol. Bill Gates similarly shows up ever so often in Abuja and Lagos to talk about Guinea worms or his over $2.8 billion spend on charity, especially primary healthcare, in and around Nigeria.

What is important is the message that Mr. Gates had for his unlikely audience in Abuja. I am sure that most of those there gathered must have been uneasy in their padded seats as the man delved deeper into the substance of his subject. Mr. Gates told them unkind and uncomfortable truths. His contentions were in two major areas of Nigeria’s contemporary economic and social situation: government spending priorities and tax performance.

Mr. Gates told our government people what they probably already know but dare not openly admit in the corridors of power. All is not well in the economy. Nigeria’s economy has stagnated in the last 15 years. The revenue to GDP ratio has worsened over the same period. For the first time, our debt exceeded 50% of GDP. Our government is now the third most indebted in the world with debts still climbing.

That is not all. Nigeria now has the second highest rate of food insecurity in the world with hunger ravaging more than half of the populace. Access to primary healthcare remains a mirage while out of school population has just approached 20 million. Given his preoccupation with primary healthcare in his Africa wide philanthropy projects under the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he is shocked about the average annual spend of N3,000 per citizen in Nigeria. It is of course his contention that what Nigeria needs now is attention to the basic components of development like primary healthcare, basic education and poverty alleviation.

Implicit in his elaborate presentation is an excoriating critique of the current trend and direction of priority of the Tinubu government. Implicit in Bill Gates’ well timed lecture is an outright condemnation of Mr. Tinubu’s emphasis on wasteful and luxurious government spending. Mr. Gates says it without naming it.

Nigeria ought to be sending more kids to school away from the streets, buying more medicines and medicaments for health centres and hospitals in remote places, assisting basic enterprises so that common people can find resources to meet their basic needs. Nigeria ought to be sending more hands to the farms to produce the food now urgently needed to feed millions of the hungry.

Our priority ought not to be presidential yatchs, fleets of luxury SUVs, new presidential jets, mansions and expensive junkets to literally all corners of the globe to attend inconsequential gatherings that have nothing to do with the welfare of the common Nigerian. In the latter respect, the intrinsic value of Mr. Bill Gates’s lecture to our Council of Ministers is actually in the eloquent silences of the message. He told us what we ought to prioritize and left our ministers to conclude on the wrong priorities of the government they are serving.

Within the present Nigerian political space, there exists a dialect that belongs alongside Mr. Gates’ preoccupations. In fact, Mr. Gates’s rhetoric corresponds to the outlines of the contention of the mainstream political opposition. Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party are more less saying the same things as Mr. Gates but not in aid of a philanthropic end. Indeed, the basic developmental logic of Mr. Peter Obi since after the 2023 presidential election corresponds to the kernel of Mr. Bill Gates major argument. Of course, Mr. Gates was not out on a political campaign. He was merely marketing his philanthropy. But his philanthropy is essentially a humanistic development agenda. It takes its departure from a human development perspective. Its broad contention is that Africa’s future depends on its ability to harness its resources to actualize its present human resources in the things that matter and will uplift the majority of Africans.

It has been the consistent position of Mr. Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the last presidential election, that what Nigeria needs is a basic developmental strategy, not a grandiose pretentious display.  Mr. Obi has consistently harped on the need to prioritize basic development issues of primary healthcare, poverty alleviation and education. In accordance, he has taken the Tinubu government to task on its wasteful priorities of luxury, white elephant projects and highways that lead nowhere in particular.

As a way of addressing the paucity of revenue in relation to GDP, Mr. Gates used his speaking opportunity to critique Nigeria’s tax performance. In his view, Nigeria is collecting less tax than it should. Literally, Nigerians are not being taxed enough.  Or, better still, the Nigerian tax administration system is not sufficiently effective to collect all that is due to the government. The latter is more true than the former. Predictably, ordinary Nigerians who have been at the receiving end of all manner of multiple and incidental taxes have jumped on Mr. Gates on the social media to question his temerity to talk about taxation in Nigeria.

Perhaps Mr. Bill Gates does not understand the massive implicit taxation regime under which Nigerians have lived for decades. In Nigeria, the same people who pay monthly income tax, annual business tax and several other incidental taxes are also subject to several implicit taxes. Government for the provision of water, electricity, security etc taxes people. Yet, nearly every Nigerian provides his own water borehole, private electricity generator, private security guard etc. These are all services that the government taxes and levies people but does not provide any services.

On the surface, ordinary Nigerians contend that Mr. Gates cannot talk about personal income tax in Nigeria where the government taxes people without discharging the reciprocal obligation of providing social and other services. In Nigeria, we have governments at both federal state and local government levels that levy a multitude of taxes, charges, levies and tariffs without delivering the corresponding services and infrastructure.

Nigerians are unhappy that Mr. Gates would come from the United States, a country where governments account for every dollar of tax payers’ money by way of services to the people.  Yet, it would seem that Mr. Gates is more concerned about corporate and institutional taxes than personal income taxes which has little loopholes for tax avoidance since these taxes are direct charges on monthly incomes at source.

Mr. Gates of course admits the ineffectiveness of government services in Nigeria but still insists that the Nigerian government needs to find the resources to fill the gap between its current obligations and what it needs to maintain the semblance of a functioning nation state.

So far, there have been no signs from government circles that the oppositional essence of Mr. Bill Gates’s visit and address to the Federal Executive Council struck any chords within government circles. Instead, what has lingered is the war of nerves between Mr. Dangote and the NNPCL over what killer pump prices to charge Nigerians for gasoline. Implicit in that price war is yet another unstated petroleum tax whose incidence falls almost uniformly on every Nigerian who has cause to stop by the gas station in order to keep moving.

Mr. Bill Gates has delivered his message and returned to America. It was a message about a more viable alternative development strategy. I doubt that the political import has yet dawned on the Nigerian ruling class who were the immediate audience. The Nigerian opposition will keep up the Bill Gates message but they are not likely to receive the claps and ovation that Bill Gates got in Aso Rock last Wednesday. What a pity?

By Okey Ikechukwu

But wait: Do Nigerians really know the demands they ought to make of their governors, local governments chairmen, state Houses of Assembly, etc.? As thraldom and misery have taken up permanent residence in our subnational governments, do we all really care what people who are supposed to be dealing with leadership at subnational levels are doing with our money and with themselves? I think not. And that is because everyone has been living with barely-performing subnational governments.

Scenario number one: A local government chairman receives the sum of 150 million Naira in one month on behalf of his local government and nothing happens. Yes, nothing happens; and no one can see or tell what he did with it. The month before, the same local government chairman received the sum of 180 million and no one asked him what happened to is, or what he did with it. Since he became local government chairman, less than two years ago, his fleet of cars has increased. So has the size, and cost, of his residence. He even now has a hotel, as well as a big house, in the state capital.

Scenario number two: There are Ward and Council Chairmen in the local government. All of them carry on either as if they owe no one any responsibilities, or as if the schedules assigned to them by law do not even exist. Yet they are all on the organogram designed by the framers of our constitution for effective leadership and good governance. No questions are asked by the people. And that includes mostly traditional rulers, religious leaders, town unions, district and village heads in the local government; who ought to be custodiams of propriety.

Scenario number three: The entire supply of truckloads of bags of rice, (read palliatives) sent to a particular state of the federation from the centre was sold off, stock, lock and barrel by the governor, along with very people who are supposed to help him act as custodians of service delivery and defenders of the people’s well being. In short, the goods did not get to the people in whose name it was sent to the state because of the “subversive patriotism” or elected leaders.

And then this noisy talk, allegedly true, that the thousands of tons of fertilizer meant for farmers in some parts of northern Nigeria got sold off to our Cameroonian neighbours? Just saying.

Scenario number four: A state governor pulls out billions of Naira every month as security vote. Every month security worsens in the very state wherein these billions are being routinely pulled out from. No one asks questions about the increasing size of governors’ security votes and the increasing levels of insecurity in the states.

Truth be told, the problems of Federal republic of Nigeria today are not all about the Federal Government. Subnational governments are all lying flat on its stomach, bereft of all dignity and unwilling to take responsibility in many respects. Unable to present a cohesive leadership front, state and local governments, Counsellors and Ward Chairmen are part of the furniture in their respective neighbourhoods. It has been thus for a long time now, and it is as if we are all enveloped in an incubus of snarling befuddlement that rules out any inclination to question what is wrong.

That is why we are dragging towards a benighted terminus, because Nigeria’s subnational governments are mostly now a metaphor for how to exist without really living. We are told that the governors are in charge everywhere, and in that the local governments are emasculated and even underfunded. We are further told that the Chairmen are all twisting and turning piteously in subdued pain and near-asphyxiation. But are they really?  

We are told that the local governments are ridiculed, swindled and roundly scandalised on all fronts by an elaborate scheme of the governors to maintain a stranglehold on them, in order to drain and use their resources. That, we hear, is the reason why there is not even a shadow of accountability and responsible service delivery at that level of government. It is all said to be a grand text for nominal and fraudulent leadership and service delivery, we are told.

True, many local government chairmen have found themselves in a system that excludes them from the very powers they are supposed to exercise. But that was before the Supreme Court judgment. What their equivalents all over the world are doing as a matter of course they cannot even contemplate. There is, for most of them, a strange identity crisis and an uncertain groping for validation, despite that landmark judgment. That level of government seems to be under a strange spell, with the denuding assaults of governors that seemed determined to annihilate them, until a few months ago.

The failure of constitutional provisions, the failure of reforms, and the decades of aggravated misconduct have all combined to almost make plain nonsense of our local government system. It is a matter of fact, and record, that the nation has lived with this reality for very long before the current government That is why the land and the people now bleed from all pores. Local government administration lacks relevance in every sense of the word. It is mocked by the wretched profile of its most visible political actions and actors. It crawls about in recondite and narrow corners, scandalized by everything it ought to stand for.

Look around you calmly and you must conclude that there is really nothing happening in our local governments. It boasts the most disregarded clan of political leaders. It is the least considered in many ways, notwithstanding the Supreme Court judgment. For decades now, its misfortune has lingered; until it became the norm. A massive industry of fraud sprung up, and now still thrives, around our local government system.

Much of the insecurity in the land remains a matter that intel from local governments can help with. The Airforce has been bombing and destroying illegal refineries for years now. This year alone several hundreds have been “destroyed”. Really?

Recall that some three years ago Nyesom Wike directed all 23 Local Government Chairmen in his state to hire bulldozers and destroy the illegal refineries in their respective local government areas. Four days before the directive, he said to the LG bosses, as mentioned in an article titled, “Governors, Just Look at Wike”: “Now, every council Chairman must go and identify illegal refineries … and you’re given 48 hours to go and identify all illegal refineries sites, and those who are in charge of them. … Our people are dying and we owe our people the responsibility to protect them, to save them from death”.

A few weeks before this directive, Wike went about commissioning several completed, and well-executed, projects. Concerning where the huge sums of money came from, the then governor announced that it was from massive tranches of cash he received in arrears from the Federal Government. Not quite done, he went ahead to tell Nigerians that all other oil-producing states in Nigeria received their shares of the same arrears. Then, he challenged the governors concerned. He asked them to explain what they did with their own share of the windfall. “Then, his colleague oil-producing governors started speaking in tongues”.

But that is not the point here. Wike is also not the point. It is all about tying the fortunes of the people to the tenure and continuity of subnational governments and their confirmed relevance in their respective domains. Wike’s handling of local government officials at the time pointed to what is possible; even if it was coming from an unlikely source. It was a pointer to what demands could and should be made on some subnational governments as elected leaders who should be part of the nation’s cohesive national leadership, service delivery and security architecture.

As was said back then, “That Wike called on the 23 Local Government Chairmen in Rivers State out was his way of putting responsibility for some aspects of environmental awareness and security squarely at the door step of those who are supposed to be closest to the people: and who should therefore know what is going on at any point in time”.

Will all our LG bosses, where they exist in real terms, not be forced to take their jobs seriously, if their governors are breathing down their necks? Will these chairmen not, in turn, descend on their largely idle Ward and Council Chairmen? Will this then not eventually bury the thriving expectation that we should all continue pretending that it is the business of the Federal Government in Abuja to address all local issues that a passing knowledge of one’s living environment should enable us to deal with?

As said then, regarding Wike’s Riot Act to LG Chairmen: “The beauty of Wike’s intervention … lies in the fact that he is calling out politicians who are in office as servants of the people to do their work. He is also, metaphorically speaking, asking his fellow governors and their LG Chairmen to do their jobs. They are being told that they have a duty to identify criminality and propose ways of dealing with same, in their largely closely-knit communities where everyone knows what everyone else is doing. He is saying that it is not right that people should carry official titles/cars and have their names on the government payroll, without actually being on the job”.

With the intervention of the Supreme Court, the days of our governors being sole administrators are over, and the reason is simple: “Being a governor, or a local Government Chairmen, has job description and role expectations in other climes. Enough of everyone pretending that we don’t know what’s going on and who is doing what”. The six months moratorium will soon be up. We suspect that this is a “political’ ploy, to enable the governors plug in their stooges and continue the old merry-g-round. But for how long?

Quote

But wait: Do Nigerians really know the demands they ought to make of their governors, local governments chairmen, state Houses of Assembly, etc.? As thraldom and misery have taken up permanent residence in our subnational governments, do we all really care what people who are supposed to be dealing with leadership at subnational levels are doing with our money and with themselves? I think not. And that is because everyone has been living with barely-performing subnational governments.

 BY AKIN OSUNTOKUN

Departure Points

(1) The Amalgamation Roots
Conceptually and objectively speaking, all the evidence of a predisposition to endemic corruption looms large in Nigeria today. The sad reality is that there is no silver lining in the horizon, which in itself fuels more corruption as those opportuned to be in position of authority scampers to insure themselves against the promise of a bleak tomorrow. This is why corruption has become cyclical. The roots of the culture of nepotism and corruption lie deep in the foundational amalgamation ideology of robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to say; the legitimisation and prioritisation of the consumption culture of unearned income and the lack of positive correlation between productivity and reward.

Here is the meaning of what I have just said. “As early as 1898, the British considered combining the then-three protectorates to reduce the administrative burden on the British and allow the rich south to effectively subsidise the much less economically prosperous north. (This is what Lord Lugard was referring to in his infamous description of how a marriage between the “rich wife of substance and means” (the south) and the “poor husband” (the north) would lead to a happy life for both. Some have suspected that Lugard was also referring to the political supremacy of the North over the South”
This was the ideology of raw nepotism infused into the bloodstream of Nigeria by the British upon which the existence of Nigeria was predicated. From this raison d’être emerged the entitlement syndrome of the Northern ruling class and their collaborators from the rest of Nigeria. The new age embodiment of this mentality is no other than former President Muhammadu Buhari and his unprecedented nepotism. He would absolve Abacha from the charge of stealing even as he was receiving and taking custody of proceeds of Abacha’s crime. If the Tinubu presidency is having problems with this constituency today it is on account of not adequately yielding to this entitlement syndrome.

(2) The Distortion of Federalism  
The extrapolation from all these misgivings is that Nigeria does not pass the litmus test of being constituted as a nation but if it must be then the irreducible minimum criteria is federalism with substantial devolution of regional autonomy. Recently addressing himself to the problematic ambition of Vice President Atiku Abubakar to seek the presidency of Nigeria again in 2027 Chief Bode George reminded him of a most significant rule of the road. He said “We should not do anything that will destroy our party and the country. In 2027, the concept of Turn-by-Turn Nigeria Limited must be strictly followed. This is the reality of Nigeria”.
The principle of power rotation was conceived to serve the cause of political stability and the national unity of Nigeria.The principle emanated from the lessons learnt from the crisis of the annulment of the 1993 presidential election.The crisis centred on the monopoly of political power by the Northern half of the country. The casus belli entered an acute phase with the refusal to hand over power to the winner of the election, Chief Moshood Abiola, a Yoruba politician from the South West.

The power rotation principle can be construed as ‘tragedy’-it is a response mechanism to political conflict not an optimal strategy. It is a suboptimal compromise in the effort to defuse real and potential situations of conflict and ensure that such situations degenerate into less attractive possibilities’¹. As it is often the case with Nigeria, this utility has morphed into the dysfunction of becoming an instrument of legitimising incompetence and corruption. It has become birds of the same feather with the grossly abused federal character provision. It is a recognition and acceptance of the bane of overcentralisation of power and an escapist deflection from coming to terms with federalism. .

(3) Deregulation
Decades before Nigeria was conceived, the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, ‘saw the deregulation of the economy leading to societal material goals becoming unattainable. This saw people becoming anomic’. To survive on the strength of take home pay is an impossibility for public officials in contemporary Nigeria. There are no officials who are not compelled to seek ways and means of supplementing their income. The rough and ready option is a recourse to abuse of office and corruption in its myriad manifestations.
Any federal permanent secretary who could afford to buy a brand new car today is clearly a corruption suspect. The extent to which democracy is impoverished in Nigeria today is the extent to which the judiciary is corrupt. Remember the sordid revelations unearthed by security officials when they raided the homes of several judges in Abuja in recent memory. I do not know how much a Judge earns in Nigeria but I’m certain that none of them can account for their current networth with their regular income and remuneration.
According to the latest report from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, the average cost of a healthy meal is about N1300. This gives you 117000 per individual in a month which is N47000 costlier than the minimum wage. The highest paid university professor earns N800000 per month. So how does this university don (most likely a family man with school fees paying children) survive without an extra source of income let alone owning a home?

(4) Resource curse syndrome
‘Countries like Venezuela and Nigeria (the companies we keep) are often cited as examples of the resource curse, where despite their wealth in natural resources, they face significant economic and social challenges’. The contemporary manifestation of the resource curse syndrome in Nigeria is what is called the oil subsidy scandal. The curse here is, first and foremost, the inability of this government to hold anyone accountable given the surfeit of evidence. Rather than hold anyone accountable the government is reinforcing the prior scandal with its own collusion. I do not know Mr Mele Kyari but I marvel at the mystery behind his retention. Every performance index keeps on degenerating under his tutelage yet he remains untouchable. One does not need to dislike this government to conclude that they are in cahoots with this man. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.

Of equal significance are the ideologues of the resource curse who are obsessed with consumption culture (enabled by the proceeds of crude oil) over the development ethic.”. Typical of such ideologues was Dr Usman Bugaje who argued that “There are no oil producing states…. the only oil producing state is the Nigerian state itself… Whatever mileage you get in the sea, according to the United Nations Law of the sea, is a lmeasure of the land mass that you have; that is what gives you the mileage into the sea…and the land mass of this country, that gives that long 200 nautical miles or more into the ocean, is because of that 72 per cent of the land mass of this country, which is the North. The investment came from the Nigerian state and the territory belongs to the Nigerian state. What they claim is the off shore oil is actually the oil of the North.”

From the South came the counterattack by Professor Itse Sagay “This is a wake-up call on the people of the oil-bearing region. For instance this is the time to come together and fight intellectually for the anomaly in the uneven allocation of oil blocs in the country. You will observe that because of the long stay of the north in power at the centre, they manipulated the process and cornered these blocs to the disadvantage of the south; today, you have all juicy oil blocs in the hands of the north. Now that Jonathan is there, I would not want to sound being immodest by calling for a revocation of the blocs allocated to the northern businessmen, but from the look of things, they have decided to take the entire South for a ride, so Jonathan should ensure that he corrects this imbalance by allocating more oil blocs to people in the South to make up for the inequity in the sector.”

(5) Lack of Autochthony
Integral to the alienation of Nigerians from Nigeria is the concept of autochthony. “Which usually means the assertion of not just the concept of autonomy, but also the concept that the constitution derives from their own native traditions. The autochthony, or home grown nature of constitutions, give them authenticity and effectiveness” . The lack of autochthony is what is responsible for state-society discontinuity in Nigeria. There is no continuity from a prior Nigerian society to the Nigerian state.
What Nigeria had was a prior assortment of different culturally nationalities like the ibibio, Yoruba, kanuri etc inability to sublimate these identities into Nigeria was what Peter Ekeh called the two publics of Africa, the primordial public versus the civic public in which loyalty to the former invariably trumps loyalty to the latter. It is the conflict between the two that fosters corruption. He illustrates ‘Acts of corruption in public office carry little moral sanction and may well receive great moral approbation from members of one’s primordial public (read ethnic affiliation).

But contrariwise, these forms of corruption are completely absent in the primordial public. Strange is the Nigerian who engages in embezzlement in the performance of his duties to his primordial public-town union. To put your fingers in the till of the government will not unduly burden your conscience and people may well think you are a smart fellow and envy you your opportunities. To steal the funds of the (ethnic) union would offend the public conscience and ostracise you from society.’
The sum of my argument today is that the challenge confronting Nigeria, especially corruption, is a cyclical systemic crisis. In the short term, the solution to this crisis is simple but elusive. It is as simple and elusive as requesting President Bola Tinubu to done the garb of a radical reformer. For instance a President with the mentality of issuing an executive order that within a year all federal government motor vehicles should be sourced from Nigerian car manufacturers. To survive Nigeria needs a shock therapy.

For the mid to the long term perspective a massive constitutional reforms towards the reinstatement of ‘true’ federalism is inevitable. The challenge of this is that no status quo power, including the incumbent president, would want to work for the diminution of the awesome powers of the Nigerian President. By the same logic, the constituency with the strongest vested interest in the status quo would oppose such a political reform. All this looks like committing class suicide. Yet nothing less will do at the stage Nigeria finds itself.

Olusegun Adeniyi

Our movement was fairly routine. We would fly into Katsina Airport from Abuja and drive straight to the presidential lodge. But on this occasion, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua changed the protocol. “Please drive straight to my mother’s place. I came purposely to see her.” Prior to that day, only the ADC, Mustapha Onoyiveta, CSO, Yusuf Tilde, SA Domestic, Hamza Nadada, PLO, Habu Habib, Chief Physician, Salisu Banye and Alhaji Inuwa Baba (the only ‘Senator’ with a global constituency) went with the president whenever he visited his mother. That occasion provided the first opportunity to meet Hajiya Dada, and I noticed something as we took turns to greet her. Though there were a few chairs in the room for visitors, the late president took his seat on the floor beside her mattress. Before we left them alone, I witnessed how the power dynamics in Nigeria had changed as Yar’Adua attended to his mother in awe. When he eventually came out of the room, he held a jug I was told contained fura da nono, a special delicacy she always made for him.

I arrived back to Abuja on Monday from China and was not feeling too well when the news broke that Hajiya Dada had passed. But I was determined to pay her my last respects by attending the burial slated for 1.30PM on Tuesday. I must therefore express my appreciation to the former Governor of Gombe State, Senator Danjuma Goje who provided a space for me on the aircraft that took him, his former Kebbi counterpart, Senator Adamu Aliero and Professor Modibbo Ahmed to Katsina. And I was impressed that Vice President Kashim Shettima, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Labour Party presidential candidate in the last election, Mr Peter Obi, as well as former Senate President Ahmad Lawan, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe and many other important dignitaries defied the slight rain to attend the prayers on the football field of Katsina Township stadium.

Beyond the usual stories you hear about mothers of influential children, I really did not know Hajiya Dada. So, apart from Baba, Nadada, Banye and Tilde whom she had known before her son became president, the only other person close to her among us was Mustapha. It started from an innocuous incident. On one occasion the president visited her, we were outside when a family member came to call Mustapha. What we later learnt was that Hajiya Dada had asked the president, “Where is that soldier who usually stands behind you?”. It was no surprise that Mustapha arrived Katsina on Tuesday with former First Lady, Hajia Turai and is still there with the family to join the third day prayers today.

In every sense, the late Hajiya Dada bore similarities to the late Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy of the United States. Mrs Kennedy died in 1995 at age 104. Hajiya Dada died at age 102. Mrs Kennedy was married to a top politician who chaired the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was US Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Hajiya Dada’s husband was also a politician, administrator and Minister of Lagos Affairs during Nigeria’s First Republic. Mrs Kennedy had nine children, including a US President who died in office and two senators who also died in office, all during her lifetime. Hajiya Dada also had nine children, among them a former number two man in Nigeria, Major General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and his younger brother, Umaru who died as president—both in her lifetime. Perhaps because of their longevity, both Mrs Kennedy and Hajia Dada also lost other children while alive. Fortunately for Hajiya Dada, she left behind Hajiya Habi, Malam Sule, Hajiya Hafisatu and Senator Audu Musa Yar’Adua (Audu Soja, as he is fondly called within the family being a retired Lt Colonel). And of course, she is also survived by Murtala Shehu Yar’Adua, a former Minister of State for Defence, among many grandchildren.

But the essential similarity between Mrs Kennedy and Hajiya Dada is that they raised extraordinarily successful children and suffered more than their share of tragedy. Even though both families were privileged, one could see the critical roles played by the matriarchs. This much was captured by Mrs Kennedy in her 1974 autobiography, ‘Times to Remember’, where she explained her role in bringing up her children to be who they were. “I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best I could bring to it,” she wrote as a testimony to her influence in how the children had turned out. “What greater aspiration and challenge are there for a mother than the hope of raising a great son or daughter?”

Hajiya Dada was noted by many as an exceedingly spiritual woman whose guidance was sought by her sons throughout their lives. But she was also known for her uncommon special attention to detail, especially regarding them. The Director General of the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Ms Jacquline Farris once shared a story with me. “When Umaru (the late president) took me to condole with Hajia Dada after Shehu died in December 1997, she went into her room and brought out his school uniform after hearing about my plan for the exhibition hall,” she said. “That she had kept it in her room all those years and knew exactly where she kept it amazed me.” And on the day that Hajia Dada visited the Centre, many people panicked when they couldn’t locate her whereabouts. “We later found her at the exhibition hall, alone”, evidently absorbing the environment while reliving the memories of her departed son.

Hajiya Dada left no memoir, but I believe she could say the same thing about her efforts in raising her children to who they were in Nigeria, just as Mrs Kennedy did. And there could have been no greater testimony than the number of people who gathered in Katsina on Tuesday for her burial. Most of them may never have met Hajiya Dada in person. Even some of us who had met her could not boast of any special relationship with her. We were there in Katsina simply to honour her illustrious children—a worthy legacy to her life.

May God grant her eternal rest.

But Where We Wan Go?

It is not the kind of argument a government official should be making but we live in a country where people say all kinds of things. “If NNPC imports PMS and sells to marketers at perhaps N600 or below, there’s no way that smuggling can stop,” theMinister of State for Petroleum, Heineken Lokpobiri said last week while arguing that the only antidote to fuel smuggling across Nigerian borders is to sell the commodity above the landing cost in a tacit admission of failure of critical institutions. “When smugglers are taking the products outside the country, even if you put all the policemen on the road, they are Nigerians; you and I know the answer.”

When the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) responded on Tuesday by jerking up the pump prices of fuel by about 50 percent, Lokpobiri became angry that Nigerians would hold the federal government to account on the issue. He would not even take responsibility for his own declaration a few days earlier. “We categorically condemn these claims as baseless, malicious, and a deliberate attempt to incite public discontent,” he said in response to reports on the pump price. “Such a claim is entirely devoid of truth and should be recognised as an intentional effort to mislead the public. It must be stressed that NNPCL operates as an independent entity under the Companies and Allied Matters Act, with a fully empowered Board of Directors.”

It is not only Lokpobiri who takes Nigerians for fools on this matter of subsidy.  Several other operatives of the current administration have also decided to adopt the same lie: The federal government has nothing to do with the pump price, it is the NNPCL. But Lokpobiri is adding insult to injury with his CAMA tales. Meanwhile, it is not a secret that I endorse removal of fuel subsidy. It is an argument I have canvassed for more than two decades and my position on it has not changed. But implementing fuel subsidy removal at the same time as floating the Naira has proved to be a dangerous combination for the economy. Now things have gone haywire.

I have read people who blame the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for our woes. The usual argument is that the government is taking their usual pills. But that’s not my reading of the situation in Nigeria today. When Witold Henisz, currently theVice Dean and Faculty Director, ESG Initiative; Deloitte & Touche Professor of Management at the University of Pennsylvania, joined other leading academics to conduct research on market reforms in dozens of Third World countries, they were said to be looking for a link between failed or troubled reform efforts and the presence of the World Bank or the IMF. At the end, they reportedly found one interesting link. “If you see the IMF and World Bank influencing reforms in a country,” says Henisz, “It’s not a seal of approval. It’s a warning flag!”

That remains true of Nigeria today. We are in a serious economic crisis. The situation may have been exacerbated by the arrogance and thoughtlessness with which the Tinubu administration handled critical issues, but the problems preceded them. The challenge is that to get out of the mess, we require short-term, medium-term and long-term solutions. Part of the long-term solutions must include how to tackle the menace of a growing but largely unproductive population. I am aware that some don’t like to hear this but it’s an issue we must deal with. In 1960, the United Kingdom from where we secured our independence had a population of 52.2 million people whereas Nigeria was then inhabited by 45.14 million people. Today, the UK is 69 million, an increase of about 14 percent over a period of 64 years. Meanwhile, the population of Nigeria today is put at 229 million, an increase of about 500 percent! And we are talking of people with little or no access to education, healthcare and other basics of life.

However, that is not the issue for today as we seek to tackle the current challenge. In his 1923 work, ‘The Tract on Monetary Reform’, English economist and philosopher, John Maynard Keynes, made a profound statement though not often referenced in full.“The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead,” Keynes wrote but most people often leave out the next lines. “Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again.”

It is not that Keynes could not appreciate the benefits of long-term planning. On the contrary, his thesis actually supports that. What he is saying is that you must survive today before you can envision tomorrow. That is a message for those who are formulating policies for this administration. Yesterday, I was listening to a radio call-in programme in the vehicle and many callers were expressing their frustration about the high cost of living which would be compounded by the hike in fuel price. The picture of deprivation painted by many was just too harrowing. One caller summed it up by repeatedly chanting, “Where we wan go? Where we wan go? Where we wan go?”

Most Nigerians are now at their tethers end. And they need solutions to their pressing challenges. Deploying the Sani Abacha tactics of intimidation, coercion and other forms of repression provide no solution. Beyond mismanaging expectations, I hope those in power today are not also poor students of history.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com   

Sam Amadi

On Monday, the Brazilian Supreme Court was reported to have approved the ruling of a judge in Brazil banning Brazilians from making use of the Elon Musk’s microblog site, X. Elon Musk has been in running battle with Brazilian authorities over the latter’s allegation that the former has used his online platform to spread falsehoods against the government. In the past, falsehood used to be countered with truth. Today, views and opinions adjudged to be false by authorities in liberal democracies are not countered, they are criminally indicted. It is a matter of poetic irony that on the same day that the Brazilian Supreme Court reportedly issued the order criminalizing inconvenient speech, the Nigerian government arraigned 10 citizens who participated in the ‘end bad governance’ protests on a charge of treason. Treason carries a death penalty. So, the Nigerian government’s response to a politically inconvenient protest is to seek the court’s order to hang the protesters. Some in the Brazilian government are bracing up to arrest and prosecute Elon Musk for providing a platform that is adjudged to enable false information. Now, be careful. False information could mean any statement that does not agree with the official information.

It is also interesting that the US government, that self-acclaimed undertaker of democratization, has not made any statement condemning the threatened prosecution of an American for free speech or the Nigeria’s government prosecution of protesters. The administration in Washington has even expressed its delight to have the microblog X scrambled and Elon Musk prosecuted. It is not because it is busy that the Biden-Kamala administration has not bothered to react to many of these threats against free speech. It is a principled and strategic silence.

The Biden-Harris administration seems to have some problems with free speech. Many high officials of that administration have called for the arrest and prosecution of Elon Musk. Although, they continue to use X to promote their views about social and economic affairs, they do not hide their dislike of Elon Musk for buying the microblog site and the removing the restrictions against dangerous and false information. Before Musk, President Trump was yanked off the site for posts unaccepted to the influential liberals who controlled the site. The reality of the most powerful man in history having his voice suppressed alarmed many conservatives who had complained that many conservatives were blocked from expressing their views on the excuse of extremism. Elon Musk removed that ideological filter. This is why he now represents a threat to society. Kamara Harris, the Vice President and the Democratic Party’s candidate for the November presidential election has not hidden her opposition to Elon Musk and his X. Professor Robert Reich, a leading liberal and former Clinton Secretary of Commerce, notably called for the arrest of Elon Musk for promoting views that he considers dangerous and enable extremist opinion on his microblog.

Why is the US government less concerned about assaults against free speech across the world? This is unlike it. The US government is notorious for its propensity to intervene across the world in purported defense of democratic right. Is free speech no longer a fundamental democratic right? Or is democracy no longer that important? Why is the government not bothered about threats by political authorities in notable western democracies against free speech? My view is that this change is evidence that the US government is in pursuit of something more important than freedom of speech. For instance, the US government’s official communication shows that protecting transgenders, and promoting gender transition are more important concerns than protecting free speech. It has taken drastic actions against countries that are reported to criminalize homosexual relations or are denying official recognition to transgender interests. It looks like many in western government consider free speech the real enemy to fight.

The irony is that free speech, together with the right to life and the right to freedom of opinion, is the most basic democratic right. So, the demise of free speech is in many ways the demise of democracy. This knowledge is basic in public understanding of democracy. If the US government do not care about it, it suggests that something is going on. We need to know what it is. Is democracy no longer important? Are we now in a post-democracy era in human history?

After the first tenure of Mr. Donald Trump as the President of the United States of America, there arose a cottage industry of democracy pessimism. Many political scientists wrote books about the end of democracy. The three most notable of the books of this new genre are ‘How Democracy Ends’ by David Runciman,  ‘How Democracies Die: What History Reveal About Our Future’ by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, and Crises of Democracy by Adam Przeworski. There was so much glib talk about how democracy ends and the such. In 2020 Biden defeated Trump and we did not see any such frenzy again. It looked like the threat to democracy was no more. Trump was that singular threat that provoked the rise of the literature of the end of democracy. But was Trump really a threat to democracy? Or was a narrative crafted by resentment and hatred for Mr. Trump and what he represents?

Just a little point about the literature of the ‘How Democracy Dies’ epidemics. In Runciman’s view, three events announce the end of democracy. Democracy ends when a coup uproots the foundations of a democratic regime. It is usually quick, violent and unannounced. In the past, coups against democracy involved “tanks surrounded the city overnight and soldiers were sent to seize communication points, including the radio and television stations and post office”. Anyone in Africa who is above 30 years is familiar with these situations. Today, coup don’t come unannounced and quick. They creep in through multiple ways unnoticed when strong leaders erode the guardrails. As Runciman wisely puts it, “some coups need to make clear that democracy is over to succeed, and some coups need to pretend that democracy is still intact”. 

Another way democracy comes to an end is through a catastrophic event. Catastrophe drains us of civic energy and imposes an urgency that may lead to the dismantling of the democratic state. Runciman quotes Eliane Scarry in her book, Thermo-nuclear Monarchy: Choosing between Democracy and Doom, that “Nuclear weapons undo governments and undo anything that could be meant by democracy”. He references Hannah Arendt’s powerful insight that modern democracy entrenches mindlessness which often leads to failure to preempt disasters. So democracy can end when it confronts a disaster that requires more than democratic habits. To choose to avoid either doom or democracy, many people will choose democracy.

Technology can also upend democracy. It does so when it drains democratic politics of its civic character and the moral authenticity and replaces it with plastic machination. Runciman quotes Ghandi to argue that “Representative democracy was wholly artificial. It had become a thrall to machines. It operated through the party machine, the bureaucratic machine, the money machine. Citizens were passive consumers of their own political destiny. We press a button and we expect government to respond. It is no surprise that we are disappointed. What we get instead is cheap promises and outright lies”. The implication of ‘technological takeover’ of politics is that politics become boring and boorish. It has no truth, soul or authenticity. Network replaces neighborhood; and majority rule is replaced by the rule of the few who are technological adroit.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write about the lessons of history about how democracy dies. Their main thesis is that democracy dies when elected officials turn around and undermine democracy. “Blatant dictatorship- in the form of fascism, communism or military rule- has disappeared across the world. Military coups and other violent seizures of power are rare. Most countries hold regular elections. Democracy still dies but by a different means”. Adam Przeworski sees the crisis of democracy as sign that democracy would “gradually and scrumptiously deteriorate”. The key point is that deterioration is usually seen as the handiwork of rightwing conservatives, extremists who would destroy freedom. But is that really how it is turning out?

These books on how democracy ends or dies always use Trump as the signal figure who prefigures these threats. The COVID 19 pandemic further etched in black on white canvas the ‘evil’ that Trump posed to democracy. Trump seemed to have doubted the efficacy of modern science. He allegedly assembled and platformed assorted pseudo-scientists and extremists who questioned venerable personages like Dr. Fauci and the bureaucrats at the World Health Organization (WHO) and disputed their prescribed modalities and vaccines for the virus. Let us forget for a moment that Dr. Fauci and his venerable colleagues have walked back on tens of what they said were scientifically proven about the virus. Today, some of the so-called conspiracies from Trump-like scientists have now being accepted by mainstream scientific sources as authentic.

Now that Trump is back to fight for the presidency with a message that challenges the liberal global coalition that calls the shot in international public policy, the noble men and women of Davos, the real undertakers of whatever remains of the ‘Washington Consensus’, are once again, chanting ‘Trump is a threat to democracy’. The way the anti-Trump elites paint a scary picture of the end of democracy if Trump gets a second term as US President, you would assume we never had a Trump first term. Trump definitely threatened to end many things important to the global elites , like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and cozied up to dictators like Putin and Kim Jong of North Korea. But he did not throw political opponents into prison. He did not abolish any of the constitutional rights of the US citizens? He did not use state power to expel elected representatives from Congress. He did not enact decrees in place of laws passed by Congress. He did none of these. Yet Trump represents the most credible threat against democracy.

Anyone who studies American constitutional law would argue that, arguably, President Obama, the posterchild of democracy, issued more executive orders that threatened liberties of American citizens than President Trump. Some of these executive actions were successfully challenged at the Supreme Court. Obama’s regulatory state was more incursive than Trump’s in many ways. Yet, Trump continues to represent the archetypical threat to democracy. Maybe he is. But that would be construing democracy in a tendentious manner. 

Trump may be odd and weird as democrats claim. But Trump is not the President of Brazil where a judge has banned Brazilians from expressing themselves through the X platform. A few weeks ago, the founder of Telegram was arrested in Paris and is undergoing criminal prosecution for what appears to be trumped up charge that belies the truth that government officials are angry at the platform for not censoring what they consider misinformation and disinformation. A few weeks ago, a top official of the EU fired a warning against Elon Musk to stop his proposed interview with President Trump on his X platform to avoid serious consequences. This was a barely concealed attempt to censor a political viewpoint from a man running for the US Presidency. Apart from constituting a veiled election interference, the threat betrays a mindset that is poised against some perspectives considered as ‘dangerous’ to society. What makes these perspectives dangerous in the mind of the ruling elites in the west is that they are frontally opposed to some dominant liberal projects. Think about the war in Ukraine. It is reasonable to think that the west should support Ukraine to defeat Russia. It is also reasonable to argue against continuing the war against Russia. None of these views constitutes a real threat to democracy.

The global liberal elites have constructed democracy to mean some important agenda that override the basic rights and freedoms that are traditionally associated with the democracy. Some political theorists are wondering whether democracies needs to accord tolerance to those who oppose the ‘democratic’ life. This has always been an issue in establishing the coherence of liberal theory. But it is now being implemented as a programmatic shutting down of ideas and viewpoints that contradict the ideas and viewpoints of dominant liberals. Take for example, views about homosexuality or transgender. Some western countries have enacted laws that  criminalize failure to address transgenders by their preferred pronouns. The renowned writer, J.K. Rowling, is threatened with criminal prosecution by Scottish authorities for refusing to accept that transwomen are women. The Vice President of Google startled many when he defended the IT company’s overt manipulation of its algorithm to block certain facts from public search by saying that accuracy is not as important as the project.

There is no doubt that the left in the west have problem with the traditional concept of democracy to include the necessity for freedom of opinion and expression. They have problem with constitutional democracy if it means that the people may elect those who do not accept their comprehensive moral doctrines. This century’s leading political philosopher, John Rawls, propounded a theory of justice that is based on the liberal faith that civil society can have reasoned coexistence with those who reject the liberal canons. He argued that this is feasible though the overlapping consensus in which liberal and non-liberals can bracket their comprehensive moral doctrines and engage contractarian views on the basis of public reason. In his book, The Law of the Peoples, he showed how to build a just and peaceful social order through such epistemic abstinence.

The possibility of an overlapping consensus has been one of the core faiths of modern political liberalism. It is not based on forceful repressing of a viewpoint considered wrong or false, but the construction of a public good accessible from all divergent reasonable comprehensive doctrines. This means that a platform like X should allow divergent, even incommensurable, perspectives without suppressing any. But modern left liberals do not believe this anymore. They are clamoring for stronger censorship for fear of the presumed damage that unregulated free speech could cause. But the lesson of history is clear: on the whole there is more harm with suppression of speech and control of channels of expression by a person or group of persons than by expression or falsehood or hate speech. Yes, some speeches could be dangerous. But freedom of speech should be continually protected. Democracy, properly understood prioritizes self-determination over safety, of the city or of the ideology. It we no longer believe in this prioritization, then we should become China.

It is evident that many of the new liberal lefts have abandoned this naive faith in the priority of democracy in pursuit of the project of establishing a social order that protect their substantive vision of the good. To implement this, the need to take out those who oppose their project. They are willing to abandon democracy to protect the emerging woke and radical agenda. This is like the former communists who railed against democracy because the freedom that liberal democracy offers are superficial. As some of them argued, the right of man in a bourgeois society is just an illusory right. Today’s ‘neo-Marxist’ in the guise of the liberal extreme left argue that freedom of speech undermines real freedoms. For these extreme left ideologues, democracy is not as important as the project. Just as the Google exec put it, ‘The project is more important than accuracy”.

Free speech and freedom of expression are cornerstones of democracy. They are the engine of innovation. There are obvious dangers that ignorant and provocative speeches pose to society. These dangers are preventable and manageable through legal and social measures that do not require the suppression of speech. The presumption is that the most potent threat to democracy comes from the extreme right who resents the democratic way and values. These fascists elements are the killers of democracy. So reads the literature of ‘how democracy ends’. But the true situation is different. Trump and his right-wingers may not be the most potent threat to democracy. That dishonor now belongs to the radical left.

Today, democracy is dying in the West. Surprisingly, it is dying at the hands of the radical left. This truth is not captured in the literature of How Democracy Dies. That literature needs an update. It is the extreme left (not the extreme right) that is (really) killing democracy.

TUESDAY WITH BY REUBEN ABATI

“Hello, Bros. Hello. Hello. Hello”

“Yes. I can hear you”

“Which kin thing be this now? I don dey call you since, you no pick call. Person go dey call you, you no go pick.”

“At your level, you should know that if you call somebody once or twice and the phone rings, the best thing to do is to leave a message and expect the person to call back.”

“I called you up to ten times.”

“Why? Once you call a person twice, leave a message or send a text. Do I owe you money? You Nigerians do not know how to use a phone. You think if you call me, I must answer you compulsorily. I do not respond to such calls. All the people who call me up and down are people who want to beg for money. In this Tinubu Nigeria, if you call me and up and down, I won’t answer. I may even block your line because the desperation is a serious signal, that a hungry Nigerian is calling me. I did not cause inflation oh, let nobody come and disturb me. All of you who voted for APC in 2015, 2019 and 2023, carry your cross. Do you know some people even have the effrontery to come and ask me to help pay for their wives’ hospital bills in the maternity ward. If you have enough strength to impregnate a woman, when it is nine months and the result comes out, carry your own cross. The notice is long enough. I don’t want to hear that nonsense about helping the neighbour.  Neighbour wey no get common sense.”

“So, am I one of those persons who will disturb you for hospital bills? When person call you, make you pick”

“I dey unavailable that time. Davido says I am unavailable. Dem no dey see me. The network must have told you that the line you were calling was not available at the time. So, what’s up, Omo? I have a busy day.”

“Have you seen what I am seeing in the papers today? They say NNPC Limited is facing financial strain, financial pressure and that is why there is fuel scarcity, and long queues. NNPC says it is overburdened by debt obligations running into about $6.8 billion”

“I thought they said it was weather and bad roads causing the fuel supply disruptions, and that even if they were owing, it is in the nature of the business to source credit.”

“We are in September. The weather condition will soon change from rainy season to dry season in Nigeria. There is a limit to which anyone can blame the weather and the roads. The truth has now been let out of the bag. My question to you is what do you think this implies?”

“It is obvious. NNPCL is the breadwinner of Nigeria. If the company says it is under financial pressure, it is as good as saying that Nigeria is financially bankrupt. When you link that to the fact that NNPCL is the sole importer of finished products in the downstream sector, it means that the NNPC Limited has no money to import more PMS, and that would create supply problems and translate into fuel scarcity and longer queues at the fuel stations. Very simple.”

“Nigeria produces over 1.3 million barrels of crude per day. How is that possible? NNPC Limited can sell crude and make money.”

“Sorry. Your 1.3 million, 1.4 million barrels have already been used to take loans upfront from Afrexim Bank and other sources. You produce the crude; you use it to pay existing debts. It is a perfect storm.”

“But what of the plan to have an Operation and Maintenance concession with private investors at the Warri and Kaduna Refineries?”

“It is called O and M. If you are an investor, I ask you, will you go and invest your resources in the same refineries that the Nigerian Government has not been able to fix for the past 20 years? Not even the Chinese who are looking for every possible opportunity in Africa will go near that. Why do you think the multinationals are very careful with Nigeria and some of them are using style, style to reduce their risk margins in Nigeria?  A country that cannot protect its biggest assets cannot be trusted. Investors look at risk factors. And I don’t think that refineries should be for concession. They should be privatized. Or sold as scrap. The Nigerian Government cannot run refineries.”

“President Tinubu is in China. He is talking to the Chinese looking for more investments. We pray that he succeeds at the Forum for China- Africa Co-operation (FOCAC)”

“I hear everybody is in China too, with some of your Ministers behaving like they have seen Heaven, the same Heaven that they cannot create here in Nigeria”

“Don’t mind those ones. Very soon there will be a cabinet reshuffle and they will be sent out”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I am not sure of anything. I just think that the President should return to the country to address the many matters arising. He is Minister of Petroleum, and the fuel queues have not disappeared. There is flooding in many of the states.”

“The President does not have to be on the ground for the country to run properly. That is why he has appointed people to do the job. The fuel scarcity issue is simple. I wish the government can deal with all the rent collectors in the oil and gas sector. They are the ones causing the problems and they are all over the system.  The fuel marketers. The fuel depot owners. The middlemen. The thieves. Tinubu did not cause the crisis. This is one of those things that Tinubu inherited. He is trying to clear the rot in the land. His situation is compounded by the fact that he is coming as President after eight years of Buhari, whose government is remembered for its sleep-walking for eight years!”

  ‘Buhari. Hmm. Have you noticed that since he left office more than one year ago, nobody, I mean nobody, I mean no institution or platform anywhere in the world has invited him to come and give a lecture on any subject, not even cattle rearing? Even his Vice President gets invited all over the world. President Jonathan has been busy virtually every month since he left office in 2015. President Tinubu has a lot to worry about taking over from Buhari”.

“I am hearing that the Federal Government may increase fuel price. The Minister of State for Petroleum has said that PMS must be sold above the landing cost, at the open market price to stop smuggling and ensure sustainable fuel supply.”

“One, I don’t think the fuel subsidy regime which government had to go back to is sustainable. It only benefits the rent collectors of Nigeria. Two, I am worried about fuel price going through the roof. What would be the open market price of PMS? N2, 000?”

“People are already buying fuel at over N1, 000”

“We have issues with foreign exchange. If we don’t strengthen the Naira, people will groan.”

“As an economist, I think the pain may be for about two months, then things will stabilize and the market will adjust and self-correct.”

“Please leave economics out of this matter. No economic theory works in Nigeria. When prices go up in this environment, they will refuse to come down and the government will be confronted with another problem.”

“But I hear the Dangote Refinery has started production, up to about 70 to 80%. If they pressurize the refinery further, production levels for PMS could reach 90%.”

“What you do not know is that Dangote Refinery is a private business. Oil business is international. Dangote Refinery is not a charity outfit. They will sell at open market price and in any case NNPC limited has not yet reached an agreement with the Refinery as to how much fuel should be sold.”

“Are we helpless then? Will fuel price go up?”

“Things will get worse before they get better.”

“But how about this thing I am hearing that one British national, Andrew Wynne is working with some other persons to remove Tinubu.  The Police have declared a certain Drew Povey, also a Briton wanted for subversive activities against Tinubu’s government. Povey is accused of renting a space at Labour House in Abuja as a cover for his activities which includes the funding of protests to create anarchy in Nigeria.”

“The same Povey says he has been running an innocent business in Nigeria for about seven years and that he has never done anything wrong.”

“A sleeper cell in Labour House, shortly after the NLC President was invited by the Police for terrorism related issues? I sense something here. But my position, Bros is that nobody should ever think of talking about removing Tinubu’s government. Britons coming to Nigeria to remove government? That would be pure madness. Anybody that tries any nonsense. No, it is not even trying, if anybody gets so reckless as to think of it, that person and his or her collaborators should be summarily executed. When a Northerner was in power, nobody talked about removing anybody. Now that it is our turn, some animals are talking about removing. This country belongs to all of us. Whoever is frustrated, hungry or angry should wait till the general elections in 2027, and make a choice at the polling station.”

“I agree with you. The Nigerian Military has also pledged their loyalty to the President and the Nigerian state. Even the Police.”

“The Police have no option. The retirement age for policemen has just been extended by the Senate from 60 to 65 years. The IGP, Kayode Egbetokun has been granted a grace period of four more years.”

“Well, well, well. I really don’t have a problem with that. The extension is not for Egbetokun alone. Other policemen will benefit from it, and every government has a right and the privilege to adopt its own directions. In the. UK, Sir Keir Starmer wants to stop winter fuel privileges. He wants to introduce a more stringent tax regime. The only thing that bothers me is that I know one police officer who is always terrorizing other people, threatening to lock people up. What this new law means is that he would spend more time wearing the police uniform. Useless man.”

“The general belief out there is that the retirement age for policemen was revised just to keep Egbetokun as Inspector General of Police. He is a Tinubu man, they say. And Tinubu wants his own person in that office.”

“I don’t get it. If you are President, will you as Tinubu appoint Peter Obi’s person or Atiku’s person as IGP? These are commonsense things. What we should expect is performance and better quality from the Nigeria Police Force.”

“You know what I am thinking?”

“What?”

“With all these problems that we are facing in Nigeria, why would the President buy a new Tokunbo Presidential jet? Why would a member of the National Assembly of Nigeria collect as much as N21 million per month at a time NNPC Ltd says it is facing financial constraints?”

“You have a point. Nigerian leaders should be seen to identify with the people. Yes. But purchase of PMS is not the same as buying a presidential jet or the N21 million that Senators collect. It doesn’t show on them anyway. Many of these our lawmakers look miserable.”

“It is just that I expect higher standards of conduct.”

“From who? From Comrade Senator Adams Oshiomhole for example?”

“Ha. Comrade oh Comrade. I am his fan oh. And I like his contributions on the floor of the Senate. His intervention on the National Anthem issue. His request that the Nigerian military must account for all the money that they collected to fight terrorism and banditry. But Comrade drop person hand oh, with his attack on Mrs. Betsy Obaseki, the wife of Governor Obaseki of Edo State, publicly calling her a barren woman, and asking the couple why they have failed to adopt a child.”

“I was shocked too. When did Comrade Oshiomhole become a family planning expert. And who ask am question? Wetin concern am?”

“He was actually defending the APC Gubernatorial candidate in Edo State, Senator Monday Okpebholo, after Mrs Obaseki while introducing Mrs Ifeyinwa Ighodalo to the women electorate in Ubiaja, South East Local Government said that it is only the PDP candidate that has a wife among all the Gubernatorial aspirants in Edo State. She did not mention anybody’s name.”

“Having a wife or a child is not a pre-requisite for becoming a Governor. There is no such thing in the Nigerian Constitution. But even if the innuendo lands perfectly where it is targeted, what is Oshiomhole’s own in the matter? We hear more from him than from the APC candidate himself. He has become Okpebholo’s spokesman and campaign manager. I sympathize with the people of Edo State. Instead of their politicians talking about issues – how to fix roads, generate employment, create jobs, promote prosperity, what we now hear is gutter politics – who has a wife who does not have, who has children, who does not have. Who has DSTV, who does not. Terrible”

“I think the Comrade Senator owes the Obasekis an apology. Politics or no politics, there are things an elder should not say. When JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate in the US election played the same fertility card referring to Kamala Harris as a “childless cat”, there was an uproar. There must be decorum in politics.”

“Sometimes I actually think that the whole world is going mad. Look at what the South African did to Chidinma Adesina. They pursued her out of the Miss South Africa Beauty Pageant. They threw all kinds of things at her: They said she was married or divorced, the organizers said it did not matter, they said her mother is an identity thief and that she is actually from Mozambique. Nobody remembered that Nelson Mandela, father of modern South Africa also married a former First Lady from Mozambique. When Chidinma was invited to participate in the Miss universe pageant in Nigeria, South African netizens pursued her still. They gave their votes to Miss Kwara. But in the end Miss Chdinma Adesina emerged victorious. A very big story about xenophobia, national identity politics, Nigeria South Africa relations and the love-hate relationship between the peoples of both countries.”

“Quite a moving human story. Congratulations to Chdinma Adesina. Thanks to all the fans who gave her the 15, 482 votes that brought her victory. Perhaps not everyone is going crazy. Some people will always stand by you, no matter what.”

“What do you think of Nyesom Wike saying he would fight anybody that supports Governor Fubara of Rivers state, be such a person a Governor of another state or anybody at all?”

“Please, Bros, I think my phone is out of credit. I sincerely do not want to discuss Wike.”

By   Dakuku Peterside 

Good governance is universally acknowledged as a critical factor in the progress and development of any nation. In Nigeria, both the elite and the common people share this profound understanding of governance’s impact on the country’s trajectory. However, despite this shared understanding, these groups have a significant divide in their conception of what constitutes “good governance.” For the masses, good governance is primarily about tangible improvements in living conditions—such as access to necessities, healthcare, education, and security. The elite, however, view good governance through a broader lens, encompassing systematic approaches to resolving public policy challenges. Meanwhile, technocrats and academics emphasize key principles like participation, transparency, accountability, responsiveness, equity, effectiveness, and inclusivity as the hallmarks of good governance. Despite these varied perspectives, there is a consensus across all sectors that good governance is sorely lacking in Nigeria.

This column explores the reasons behind Nigeria’s persistent struggle with good governance, even after sixty three  years of independence and twenty-five years of representative democracy. The question arises: why, despite numerous opportunities for reform and change, does good governance remain elusive? To find an answer, we might consider Joseph de Maistre’s assertion that “every society gets the kind of leadership it deserves,” or Jimmy Carter’s observation that “a government is as good as its people.” However, I argue that the root causes lie deeper than these philosophical reflections. Corruption, underdevelopment, lack of political accountability, misuse of power, insecurity, and nepotism are not the root causes but symptoms of a broader deficit in good governance.

To explore this issue further, I engaged in informal discussions with ten members of Nigeria’s elite circle. Several recurring themes emerged from these conversations, offering insight into why good governance remains so elusive in Nigeria despite regular elections and changes in leadership.

One of the fundamental reasons for Nigeria’s governance challenges is the high rate of illiteracy, which is fundamentally incompatible with the demands of a functional democracy. Democracy relies on an informed citizenry that can actively participate in governance, demand accountability, and advocate for their rights. However, in Nigeria, high illiteracy levels have created a populace that cannot effectively participate in the process leading to or  demand good governance. This situation has allowed the elite to maintain power with minimal resistance, perpetuating a cycle of poor governance. Without an educated and informed electorate, the necessary pressure for good governance remains absent.

Illiteracy not only weakens the  citizenry’s ability to hold leaders accountable but also makes them vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous politicians. In many cases, illiterate voters are swayed by short-term incentives, such as cash handouts or promises of immediate benefits, rather than assessing the long-term implications of their choices. This dynamic perpetuates a cycle of poor governance, as leaders who are elected based on populist appeals rather than merit are less likely to prioritize the common good once in office.

Another significant factor contributing to Nigeria’s governance challenges is the weakness of civil society. A robust civil society is essential for fostering participatory democracy, holding leaders accountable, and ensuring that governance serves the public interest. Unfortunately, Nigeria’s civil society remains fragmented and largely ineffective. High illiteracy, economic hardship, and a lack of civic consciousness exacerbate this weakness. Historical evidence suggests that strong civil societies are correlated with better governance outcomes. For instance, countries like China and Japan experienced significant improvements in governance following periods of strong civil society engagement. China was post Chairman Mao, during the reign of Dieng Xiaoiong and Japan under Junichiro Koizumi.  In contrast, Nigeria’s weak civil society continues to contribute to the persistence of poor governance.

The limitations of civil society in Nigeria are partly due to the country’s socio-economic challenges, including poverty, unemployment, and inequality. These issues have made it difficult for many citizens to engage in civil society activities, as they are preoccupied with meeting their basic needs. Additionally, the government’s often hostile stance towards civil society, including restrictive regulations and harassment of activists, has further weakened the sector’s ability to influence governance positively.

A robust civil society is essential for fostering good governance, as it provides a platform for citizens to voice their concerns, advocate for change, and hold leaders accountable. In countries where civil society is strong, such as in many Western democracies, there is often a higher level of political accountability and better governance outcomes. In contrast, Nigeria’s weak civil society has struggled to mobilize the populace effectively or to challenge the entrenched power structures that perpetuate poor governance.

Effective leadership does not occur in a vacuum; it requires strong institutional frameworks that guide and support the governance process. In Nigeria, the absence of these frameworks has resulted in unstructured and ineffective leadership. Institutions play a critical role in ensuring continuity, stability, and accountability in governance. When these structures are lacking, leadership becomes arbitrary, and the delivery of public services suffers. Without strong institutions, governance becomes a matter of personal discretion rather than a structured process to serve the public good. The absence of effective checks and balances allows for the concentration of power in the hands of a few, leading to the abuse of authority and the perpetuation of corruption.  Nigeria’s governance system lacks the uniform standards, benchmarks, and guardrails necessary to ensure consistent and high-quality governance.  Strengthening these institutions is essential for improving governance in Nigeria, as they provide the necessary framework for ensuring that leaders are held accountable and that public resources are managed responsibly.

Nigeria’s leadership selection process is another significant barrier to good governance. A credible governance system should be meritocratic, ensuring that the most qualified individuals ascend to leadership positions. However, the political party system in Nigeria is far from meritocratic. It is dominated by cronyism and clientelism, resulting in the selection of leaders who prioritize personal gain over public service. This flawed system perpetuates a cycle of ineffective governance, as leaders selected for their loyalty rather than their competence are unlikely to deliver the kind of leadership that fosters development and progress.

This flawed selection process is deeply rooted in the country’s political culture, where politics is often seen as a means of personal enrichment rather than public service. Political parties, rather than serving as platforms for articulating and advancing policy ideas, are often vehicles for advancing the interests of powerful individuals or groups. This results in a political landscape where the most qualified candidates are frequently sidelined in favour of those who can mobilize financial resources or secure the backing of influential figures.

Nigeria’s cultural norms and attitudes also significantly hinder good governance. These norms often create an environment resistant to public accountability, a key pillar of effective governance. In many Nigerian communities, particularly in the northern regions, there is a preference for strong, autocratic leaders, and dissent is often discouraged. This cultural disposition aligns with the ruling elite’s aversion to accountability, further stifling the development of good governance practices. In such an environment, the principles of democracy—debate, dissent, and accountability—are often viewed with suspicion or outright hostility.

Moreover, the cultural acceptance of corruption and the normalization of unethical behaviour further entrench the governance deficit in Nigeria. In many communities, corrupt practices are not only tolerated but are also seen as a necessary means of survival or advancement. This creates a vicious cycle where corruption is perpetuated at all levels of society, from the grassroots to the highest echelons of power.

The country’s diverse geopolitical, regional, and socio-cultural differences have produced a fragmented governance system with little uniformity in standards. While well-intentioned, policies such as the Federal Character and affirmative action have further complicated the governance landscape, creating disparities across regions and leading to uneven governance outcomes. The absence of clear standards and benchmarks allows for a wide variation in governance quality across different parts of the country, further complicating efforts to achieve good governance on a national scale.

The challenge of achieving good governance in Nigeria is multifaceted, rooted in a complex interplay of high illiteracy rates, weak civil society, the absence of robust institutional frameworks, a flawed leadership selection process, anti-democratic cultural norms, and the lack of uniform governance standards. Addressing these challenges requires a comprehensive approach that includes improving education, strengthening civil society, building robust institutions, reforming the leadership selection process, promoting democratic cultural norms, and establishing clear governance standards. Only by addressing these underlying issues in a comprehensive manner can Nigeria hope to overcome its governance challenges and achieve sustainable development.