The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Pain of the year: Inflation

    Pain of the year: Inflation

    All through the year inflation raged relentlessly. Many Nigerians struggled to cope with this reality. Sadly, there seems to be no end in sight.

    In the last three months, for instance, figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicated that the cost-of-living crisis in the country continued to worsen. Month-on-month food inflation rate, for instance, increased in September, notably affecting prices of staples such as rice, maize, beans, and yams. There were also significant price increases in housing rentals, transport, and medical services.

     Again, according to the agency, the inflation rate rose to 33.8 percent in October from 32.70 percent recorded in September. At the time, the Statistician General of the Federation, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, said in a statement that the highest increases were recorded in the prices of “Bus Journey within the city, Journey by motorcycle, Bus journey intercity, etc. (under Passenger Transport by Road Class), Rents (Actual and Imputed Rentals for Housing Class), Meal at a local Restaurant (Accommodation Service Class), and hair cut service, woman hairbrush, women’s hairdressing, etc. (Hairdressing salons & personal grooming establishments Class).”

    Yet again, a report by the bureau said inflation increased in November. The food inflation rate in November 2024, for instance, was higher than the rate recorded in October 2024, the agency said, attributing the rise to “the rate of increase in the average prices of Mudfish, Catfish Dried, Dried Fish Sardine, etc. (Fish Class), Rice, Yam Flour, Millet Whole grain, Corn flour, etc. (Bread and Cereals Class), Agric Egg, Powdered Milk, Fresh Milk, etc. (Milk, cheese and eggs Class) and Dried Beef, Goat Meat, Frozen Chicken, etc. (Meat Class).”

    The alarmingly deteriorating cost-of-living crisis in the country is a bad advertisement for the Federal Government’s reforms. The government’s repetitive argument that the reforms negatively impacting Nigerians are a necessary means to a positive end can’t make sense to people who are unable to breathe because of the cost of living.  The increasing prices of goods and services reported by the NBS continue to suggest that the reforms may well be counter-productive.  The people want falling prices, not prices that are rising and rising. 

    Responding to the NBS report, the Director of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, Dr Muda Yusuf, was reported saying, “The reality is that the dynamics driving inflation are yet to be effectively subdued.” He observed that these factors include “the depreciating exchange rate, surging fuel price, rising transportation costs, logistics and supply chain challenges, high energy cost, climate change including resultant incidents of flooding, insecurity in farming communities and structural bottlenecks to production.”

    Taming inflation demands tackling these challenges, which are mainly the consequences of reforms introduced by the Tinubu administration.  The World Bank said the reforms were crucial for the country’s long-term stability. “Turning back or opposing the reforms would only make things worse,” said Ndiame Diop, World Bank country director for Nigeria, at the launch of the Nigeria Development Update (NDU) report in Abuja.

    Predictably, the World Bank’s position drew public criticism in a country struggling with a crushing cost-of-living crisis. However, Diop added that the ongoing reforms “must be accompanied by reforms enabling the private sector to create more and better jobs. With targeted support to youth and women.” This was a way of saying that the hard results of the Federal Government’s reforms can be softened.

    At the Distinguished Personality Lecture organised by the National Institute for Security Studies (NISS) in Abuja, in October, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, a former governor of Edo State, noted that Nigerian workers were poorer now, despite the increased minimum wage.  “Inflation severely impacts purchasing power, making it difficult for workers to maintain a decent standard of living,” he observed.

    An interesting development underlined the reality that the minimum wage boost is not only cosmetic but also ineffectual. Sensationally, Niger State Governor Mohammed Bago made the headlines after announcing that the state would in November not only begin paying a minimum wage of N80,000 to its workers, which is N10,000 more than the stipulated new national minimum wage, but also aim to “eventually achieve a minimum wage of one million naira.” This can be interpreted as a subtle admission of the inadequacy of the new wage.

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    Was the governor serious? Did he expect the public to take him and his words seriously?  Governor Bago of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is 50 and became governor in 2023. He was a member of the House of Representatives from 2011 to 2023.  He may be dreaming of a second term which would take him to 2031. So, he may have time to reach the point of possibly paying one million naira as minimum wage in his state. But he sounded like a politician saying what he thinks the people want to hear.

    Fifteen states adjusted the fixed minimum wage upward, possibly to give the impression that their governments are worker-friendly.  They include Lagos and Rivers (N85,000); Bayelsa, Niger, Enugu, and Akwa Ibom (N80,000).  Others are: Delta and Ogun (N77,000), Ebonyi and Kebbi (N75,000), Ondo (N73,000), Kogi and Kaduna (N72,000), Gombe and Kano (N71,000). But the variations are tokenistic.  Evidently, the new national minimum wage is not a living wage in the country’s current circumstances. Nigerian workers in the public and private sectors deserve what some describe as a ‘living minimum wage.’

    The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, had declared that “The two critical reforms on market-based pricing of Premium Motor Spirit and foreign exchange are now at the stage of results delivery.”  At an interactive session with the Senate Committee on Finance, he was reported saying, “These two pillars of the economic reforms… have taken positive shape,” adding, “I think we need to commend Nigerians for staying the course to this stage of getting benefits.”

    Many Nigerians who are still struggling with the cost-of-living crisis will not agree with the minister that the country is at the stage of benefitting from the economic reforms. The minister’s assertion is not supported by the increasing prices of goods and services reported by the NBS. When inflation is deflated, the authorities will not need words to communicate that better times have arrived.

    When President Bola Tinubu presented the 2025 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly, he optimistically declared that the government would reduce inflation to 15 percent next year. Also, in his first media chat on December 23, he explained how his administration will bring down inflation from 34.6 percent. Nigerians can’t wait to see this happen.

  • Bandits’ republic of Shiroro?

    Bandits’ republic of Shiroro?

    “They have so far succeeded in creating a republic within a sovereign nation. It can’t be worse than that”.

    That was the assessment by Concerned Shiroro Youths of Niger State of the current state of banditry within their locality. In a joint statement by the convener of the group, Sani Abubakar Kokki and secretary, Shuaibu Awaisu Wana, the group lamented that marauding terrorists “now wield so much power that they roam unsecured villages with uncommon gusto and impunity, moving from house to house to carry out their heinous activities. They now determine who to live and who not to live in their areas of strength and control”.

     The group was apparently piqued by the latest escapades of the bandits which involved the planting of bombs and landmines that triggered multiple bomb explosions in Bassa community within two weeks leaving in their trail, human casualties.

    Curiously, the heightened insecurity is said to have been exacerbated by the withdrawal of troops of the Nigerian Army stationed in the Allawa axis of Shiroro without notice to the villagers. This saw villagers scampering for safety as they fled the area, swelling the ranks of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs.

    Before the latest development, another group, the Coalition of Shiroro Association in Niger State had last September, raised the alarm that bandits and terrorists had enslaved their people dispossessing them of their harvest and forcing them to farm for the terrorists.

    Their people were forced by the reign of terror to abandon their farmlands and ancestral homes for fear of being kidnapped or killed. They had also attributed the heightened insecurity to troops’ withdrawal from the Allawa community exposing villagers to the mercy of the marauding bandits.

    Then, the Niger State government while responding to their outcry had promised that arrangement were on to get the army back to the post following their withdrawal on the heels of the killing of soldiers and local vigilante stationed in the area by bandits. Troops’ withdrawal from the Allawa axis has been a recurring issue in the degenerating security challenge identified by the two Shiroro groups. It is central to their demands and goes to show how serious it is in restoring some measure of security to the area.

    It is now three months since the issue of troops’ withdrawal from Allawa was raised with the state government promising something was being done. With the issue resonating in the lamentations of Concerned Shiroro Youths, it is clear the matter is yet to be addressed. This has left residents at the mercy of the bandits. Little wonder the prevailing state of anarchy characterised by the Shiroro group as a bandits’ republic within a sovereign nation.

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     This categorisation is as serious as it is weighty. That the Shiroro groups have continued to raise serious alarm on the near state of anarchy in the area within the last three months shows the federal government is yet to establish firm authority in the area. In the absence of state actors to maintain law and order, non-state actors filled the gap by imposing their sovereignty over the helpless and hapless villagers. 

    So the predicament of Concerned Shiroro Youths can be understood. They have been compelled by the near state of anarchy within their domain to fall victims of the menace of the bandits. Its purport is that law and order have completely broken down in the area with the atavism of the law of the jungle reigning supreme.

    This may sound alarmist or unpatriotic especially given that the impunity with which bandits hitherto mounted mass abductions has been substantially diminished. The scenario portrayed by the groups, is the situation the people of Shiroro now contend with despite efforts by the government against all forms of criminality. They live in the area and they feel the pains. They suffer in the hands of the bandits and they are the ones that can tell the story.

    But the current situation in Shiroro should not come as a surprise. Evidence of the control of some communities by bandits and non-state actors imposing levies and sundry taxes has long been recorded. In many localities especially in the north, the enormous powers of control over villagers by sundry banditry groups are not hidden. In the absence of any serious challenge from security agencies, many communities were known to have entered into noxious agreements with the bandits to guarantee their safety.

    The recent unmasking of the Lakurawa terror group; the circumstance of their engagement for protection by some locals in Sokoto State against invading bandits from Zamfara State, says it all. So, there is really nothing new in the alert by the Concerned Shiroro Youths about the sovereignty of the bandits over their community.

    Perhaps, the value of the alert lies in drawing attention to the reality that despite government’s efforts and claims to have substantially restored law and order to all constituents, Shiroro is still in the firm hands of bandits. But the sovereignty of the bandits had long been predicted especially following their intense escapades in kidnapping and ferrying out hundreds of students from schools into hiding in the north without the security agencies having any clue as to their whereabouts.

    There was the Kankara abduction in Katsina State involving more than 400 school children on the very day Buhari was to arrive the state for rest as a sitting president. As the dust was about settling, Government College in Kagoro, Niger State fell victim when 42 students, staff and their relatives were abducted in similar fashion. Before the Kagoro incident, travellers in Niger State Mass Transit Bus suffered similar fate.

    That was not all, Zamfara which has been the epicentre of banditry, had more than 300 students of Government College, Jangebe abducted and ferried into thick forests with one of the students shot dead. Elsewhere in Kaduna, Plateau and Sokoto states, it was the same story. About seven states in the north were compelled to shut down their schools due to acts of banditry targeting the students’ population.

    The degenerate state of banditry and kidnapping for ransom was such that this column had in March 8, 2021 under the title, ‘A bandits’ republic’ alerted on the increasing slide to the sovereignty of the bandits. The thesis of that presentation was that the ‘reign of the bandits especially in the north is fast conveying the miserable impression that there exists a bandits’ republic within the federal republic of Nigeria’

    But the bandits’ republic conceived then was not a normal one where the rule of law and due process form the basis for political action. It was one that shared common traits with the Hobbesian state of nature where life had at once become nasty, short and brutish.

    Then, the lethargy of the federal government in taming the monster was rationalised on such puerile grounds as hostage taking being a complex engagement requiring extreme care not to harm the victims and the need not to disrupt the ecosystem. The then Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed even trivialised the matter when he contended that even the United States of America experiences banditry just as other developed countries. Is it surprising that banditry has since festered.

    Four years after the article on ‘a bandits’ republic’, it should be a thing of serious worry that Concerned Shiroro Youths have now drawn attention to a verity of that order. A prediction come true? The Shiroro case is a tip of the iceberg of the mortal fate many localities are made to face due to an assortment of security challenges.

    The Lakurawa phenomenon is another case in point. There are many communities and villages in both the north and the south where the reign of non-state actors holds sway. The existence of IDP camps for people displaced from their villages due to insecurity is a measure of the dominance of those areas by bands of criminals masquerading under various guises.

    In all, the reign of the bandits is not only a reality but a serious challenge to the authority of the government. Not only does its motivation not lend itself to precise understanding, it has been pretty difficult pinning them down for what they really are or the interest they represent. At one point, their modus operandi shared similar traits with that of the Boko Haram insurgents. And at another, the difference between them and the killer herdsmen portrays the image of two sides of the same coin.

    When fiery Islamic scholar, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, visited some insurgents in Zamfara forests, he interfaced with the camps of the bandits and the Fulani. But when it came for them to present their grievances, they spoke of cattle rustling, attacks by the military and attacks on the Fulani by Zamfara indigenes as their grouse. There was no difference between the complaints of the bandits and that of the Fulani as they shared common characteristics.

    Could it be the reason for the lethargy by the federal government in branding the bandits a terrorist organisation even when it has continued to pose more lethal threat to the sovereignty of the country than events preceding the proscription of IPOB? That is the issue elevated to the fore by the outcry of Shiroro indigenes on the success of the bandits in creating a republic within a sovereign nation. It is that grave!

  • A sunny chat

    A sunny chat

    I was with a few editors the other day and they expressed surprise at the acuity of the president in his first media chat of his reign. I expressed surprise at their surprise. Didn’t they know him, I wondered? Why would they expect anything less? One of them said, he acquitted himself better than the campaign, asserting that candidate Bola Tinubu was not coherent during the stumps. The gathering was not for that purpose, but my only response was that they were looking at his campaign from the wrong lens, so they saw the wrong thing. They saw and heard what they wanted to see and hear. In literary circles, it is called hermeneutics, the theory of reader-response.

    What was more coherent than “emilokan”? What was better phrasing than the “church rat and poisoned holy communion,” or the idea of “recharging Lake Chad?” Was he not the one who said he would bring headmaster Cardoso to help revive the economy? Or was he not the first of the four to promise to collapse the exchange rate regimes and remove fuel subsidies?

    Anyway, those who thought he was afraid of the chat, should be afraid no more. I read and watched a lot of comments about the outing. The contrarian voice said, the media team picked tame and suppliant journalists. Maybe they wanted gangsters as questioners. They asked very good questions, but such interviews cannot by any means exhaust all issues. No interviews of that calibre ever do. If any of them thought they could rattle the man, they were probably not prepared enough. The man is a soldier of wit, and can outmanoeuvre many a fighter as we saw. But what has been missing in all the comments so far is that President Tinubu did not fill the studio with the glum spirit of combat. It was a president of sunny face, cheery in spite of the gloom of the hour. He cheered to all the questions. Even when it called for sobriety, he spiced it with an optimistic tone. His spirit was saying, the moment must be biting, but let us look beyond the painful now. American President Franklyn Delano  Roosevelt who led his country through a war and depression on his wheelchair, had said, “the only thing to fear is fear itself.” It was in a time when people woke up to see their pockets dry, and men fell off roofs in suicide. It was like the words of the New Testament about fear coming over people because of the evil to come. President Roosevelt gave them so much cheer that the historian Doris Kearn Goodwin recalls the story of the man who said his roof had caved in, his wife had left him, he had no money in the bank and his dog had run away but he was happy because Roosevelt was president and would save the economy.

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    Tinubu may not have FDR’s eloquence but he evinced his spirit. Roosevelt, though, did not confront the sort of fractious malice we have today in Nigeria. Never mind an opposition figure dismissed his economic policy then known as The New Deal as the “raw deal.”

    No doubt, it was a sober media chat, but it is credit to the president, he lifted the gloom rather than bow to it. Even the phrase, “I doff my hat to him,” about FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, was nifty. The discussion on the tax bill was anticipated, but he was at once firm and conciliatory. He minced no words, though, about the thrust of the bill as “pro-poor.” As Reuben Abati noted, the president displayed a mastery of subject. At times, it seemed to me he had rattled his interlocutors, so much so, that their follow-up questions seemed tame.

    I would have expected, as some had observed, for the president to speak more about the suffering and his sympathy. But the nature of the exchange was less about emotions than logic. He had to justify fuel subsidy, collapse of exchange rate, tax bill, his ministers, war on corruption, the flights of inflation, mushroom of ministers, etc. On the cost of governance, I thought they could have asked him how much it cost government and whether cost of maintaining that many ministers was worth the investment. I think, they might have gotten better insight on the thinking of the man. I think the subjected spews much ignorance. Many do not know that more ministers do not mean more ministries. No new civil servants were hired or new infrastructures. They have to share the available resources.

    He, however, challenged them on anyone who was not performing, and it took a while for Abati to rib Wike, and the president lectured Nigerians on their disdain for order and compliances. A few days later, there was Wike and his sons in a photo-op with the president. When was the last time a president challenged a cast of high-profile editors and broadcasters and they were caught almost with no words dribbling off their lips?

  • Reading 2024

    Reading 2024

     As in any year, I read. Because I do, I sometimes cannot help to let them shine through my writings. I thought I should pick out some of the standout books that illumined my minds since January. I start with non-fiction. Few have read the memoirs of Julie Coker, the beauty queen and broadcaster. Her Book, Ere Yon, means sweet sounds in Itsekiri. It is a slight but riveting affair. As I told her, she might have done better by plying us with greater detail. She still can. The opening chapter was a masterpiece you might read from a Garcia Marquez or Peter Abraham’s Tell Freedom. It immerses the reader in the times and culture, the life in the creeks and Lagos. Did you know that her beauty almost caused a diplomatic row in the 1960’s when the brother of Liberian head of state wanted to snatch her from her husband? The foreign minister had to intervene. What might have happened if her date with Gowon did not coincide with the 1966 coup? Could she have been the first lady? Why did Fela -yes abami eda – violate the Queens College rule by driving pell-mell onto the premises to dazzle the white chaperons just because he must see Juliana?

    I can’t help but cite a book that enthralled me, The Age of Revolutions by Fareed Zakaria, the CNN host. He tracks revolutions over the centuries and exemplifies the futilities of their bloodthirsty excitements, with much praise to Britain for outclassing others, including Russia, France and Germany, by forging ahead without it. We love revolutions more than it loves us. The other nonfiction I read at my sleep’s expense is Erik Larson’s Demon of Unrest, about Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War, a true narrative that sometimes reads like fiction for its detail and research and rigour about law, war strategy, prejudice, fascinating personalities, scenarios and American south. The other book is Viktor Frankl’s Man’s search for Meaning, about how humans tried to make meaning out of life in Hitler’s ovens of concentration camp during the Second World War. He developed an idea called Logotherapy. How can I forget Harvard Professor Samuel Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit, a jibe at our self-important elite and how modern society is built on a meritocratic hubris. No wonder, the West and its underclass are fighting back with Brexit, Trump and a wave of immigration-baiting as excuse for lagging behind.

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    I can’t help but cite a book that enthralled me, The Age of Revolutions by Fareed Zakaria, the CNN host. He tracks revolutions over the centuries and exemplifies the futilities of their bloodthirsty excitements, with much praise to Britain for outclassing others, including Russia, France and Germany, by forging ahead without it. We love revolutions more than it loves us. The other nonfiction I read at my sleep’s expense is Erik Larson’s Demon of Unrest, about Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War, a true narrative that sometimes reads like fiction for its detail and research and rigour about law, war strategy, prejudice, fascinating personalities, scenarios and American south. The other book is Viktor Frankl’s Man’s search for Meaning, about how humans tried to make meaning out of life in Hitler’s ovens of concentration camp during the Second World War. He developed an idea called Logotherapy. How can I forget Harvard Professor Samuel Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit, a jibe at our self-important elite and how modern society is built on a meritocratic hubris. No wonder, the West and its underclass are fighting back with Brexit, Trump and a wave of immigration-baiting as excuse for lagging behind.

    I read not a few times of fiction. Some of them include Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and Larry Mcmutry’s Lonesome Dove. I re-read War and Peace, and I know I will come back to it at a later date. It is a love fest of a book, in personality portrait, in history, in philosophical onslaughts. I had planned to devour Copperfield all my life having read the abridged version in Class One at Government College, Ughelli. Part biographical, it is a bildungsroman, a novel of education, about how a boy grows up in 19th century England. It is not Dickens best, but it is my favorite Dickens. Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob I also read twice. For a people dealing with the zealot as charismatic figure, you cannot escape this novel based on a real character known as Jacob who led a religious movement that combined Judaism and Christianity, and ripples with passion, deception, perversions and devotions.

     Chigozie Obioma’s The Road to the Country makes my list about the civil war, and it weaves the Nigeria crisis under the belly of the original sin. In the tale, reality interweaves with unrealism, witchcraft with prophecy, love and bloodshed. The quality of writing unspools the menace and beauty of adventure. It is a cautionary tale in a country where some see secession as a sort of romance. It says war is no party.

    Two other Nigerian novels, And so I Roar by Abi Dare and A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo, I recommend. A sequel of her novel, The Girl with the Louding Voice, Abi Dare pursues the theme of a lower-class girl from rural Nigeria come to terms with patriarchy and its consequences, torching off a rebellion. Adebayo, author of Stay with Me, makes an intersection of extreme poverty and our cynical politics. In these days of high inflation and deprivation, the novel has great resonance. I should add Teju Cole’s Tremor, a novel that explores the folly of civilisation by exploding received truths and how our education has soiled our minds because those who control narratives also control power. Wonderful, breathtaking.

    Two novels I saw in film after I read them were Lonesome Dove and Anthony Doer’s All the Light We cannot see. Dove that spanned over 900 pages was both entertainment and lessons in American west. It sometimes reads like traveling in the underbelly of banditry in parts of the north. Funny that those parts, just a century ago, were deathtraps but are now cynosures of calm and civilization, from Texas to Colorado to Montana. Doer’s novel about love and light in Hitler’s Second World War, shows who is blind is probably more sighted. The movies are not entirely faithful to the prose.

    The book that keeps haunting me as the year ends is only a little bigger than Coker’s Ere Yon. It is Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s The Discomfort of Evening. It is a family grieving the death of a son, and it spans parental tyranny to invocation of Hitler’s concentration camp. This winner of the International Prize for fiction is a wily narrative. Also unforgettable is The Vegetarian by Han Kang, and this year’s Nobel Prize winner, also a little longer than Coker’s work. But it turns vegetarianism into a window on human fanaticism and curiosity. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante is a post WW2 work of playful genius looking at how peacetime can be another version of wartime, and how devotion to another human being can be beguiling. I end with Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos about the love of an older man and a teenage girl and how it tells the story of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I am starting the new year by reading… …

  • A fowl story

    A fowl story

    It is intriguing that a fowl story should grab the Nigerian imagination at Christmas. Yet, it is not just about fowl alone, it is about killing but no one human is dead. We do not speak about fowls at Christmas without bloodshed. The bird cries as we hold its two legs, its wings flap with fear, its neck nervous at the invitation of a knife. Humans gaze with murderous appetite. We imagine the succulence of its thighs in a tomato stew, in pepper soup, in the ability of its thighs, wings or breast to lie beside a plate of jollof rice – not Ghanaian – in a parody of a décor.

    Yet it is no Christmas story. No buntings or decorated lights or corals in the air. We could say it is a foul story. It is the story of life and death, which is the story of a fowl anyway, especially at Christmas. But in this case, a human, not the fowl, was destined for the grave. We could call the story death by fowl. The human was going to die for stealing a fowl, and eggs to boot.

    Like many a Nigerian story, it is not as it seems. Ultimately, the law like a folktale tortoise comes into the tale. The law is a constant tragi-comic character in the Nigerian narrative. The fowl tale, especially this one, is typically Nigerian. The only thing left out of it – happily – is the rigmarole of political party, or tribe or faith. It gives us the convenience of fighting without God and without tribe.

    But government and law are involved, so we cannot run away from the hoopla that we love: to fight each other. This time, while we are not having tribe or the other’s God to fight, we have a new one: a chicken fight. The chicken fight usually is a fight in which cocks go at each other and the winner wins a prize for the owner. In this case, the law is the one in trouble. The law has taken a side in this chicken duel.

    Why should a judge side with the fowl against the human being? The chicken will die anyway and soon. But why sentence a boy of 17, Segun Olowookere, and another boy, Sunday Morakinyo, to death because they stole a fowl?

    They robbed a police officer, allegedly. They shot no gun, if they had a dane gun, allegedly. They did not slash any throat, if they had a cutlass, allegedly. So, do you go to your maker for stealing a mere chicken? You don’t steal a fowl for the sake of it. Only the hungry do that, and a fowl does not go beyond a family meal, or two. Even the bible allows you to steal if you are very hungry, but on the proviso you are not caught. If you are caught, you will pay sevenfold. But sevenfold is not the same as death.

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    But the boys have said they did no such thing. They did not steal anyone’s fowl. The police forced a confession. The two boys never knew each other until they were framed together. But that is a moot point now that both of them served 10 years already, more than the life of a fowl, and more than the lifetime of a digestion.

    At Christmas, it is often the fowl that is on trial. What’s on trial in this case is the law and the police. Some lawyers have said that the court had no competence to try it. Some said, they followed the law, and it was the case of armed robbery. Armed robbery with a dane gun and cutlass in the 21st century? No shots fired. The irony, a dane gun against a police officer who operates a modern gun? Yet, the dane gun man triumphs. He does not even fear that when he wants to rob, it should be a police man. It is a robbery as impunity, even as robbers go. Robbers assault the weak, except Anini and Osunbor are their ancestors. Even they waged modern warfare. I wish we can hear the policeman’s account. Did they steal his modern gun, too? No story has indicated that. Or did he run a home without armoury? He might have shot them after they had “chickened out.”

    Some lawyers say it was legal. That pains. Law can be cruel. History gives us examples of bad laws that sustained civilisations. Law condoned slavery, enthroned bigots who fattened on slave labour, endorsed colonialism, Nazism, collectivism, the Chinese purge, the Benin massacre, murder of blacks. Law still deprives women of inheritance. We are not right just because one is on the right side of the law. As Thoreau notes, “the law never made anyone a whit more just.”

    And the law has been a bait in these parts. We are seeing it with the elder and younger Obidients in an inter-state duel. We saw it in  the past election, when some wanted to upturn the Supreme Court justices into ciphers of their own perverted consciences. They wanted to turn Abuja into special vote, capsize minority to majority, so it may turn their loss into a grace of victory for them.

    Nor did it start in this republic. Remember in the First Republic when Justice Sowemimo said his hands were tied? Or before then when the Western Region crisis threw up two premiers and one governor at the same time? When the Supreme Court under Adetokunbo Ademola ruled in favour of Awolowo’s AG faction, their jubilation was cut short when the Privy Council – then the real Supreme Court – ruled from London in favour of Akintola. Just before the news broke in Nigeria, the AG shot itself in the foot by changing the law and annulling their own judicial victory and legitimating Akintola. The farce is compelling. So, as some say in Nigeria, no be today.

    But the foul story found mercy when the dancing governor of Osun State suspended his comedy and bestowed pardon on the boys. It seemed, like Sowemimo, that the judge’s hands were tied, and also sought gubernatorial mercy to untie them. As Shakespeare says, “all is well that ends well.” But first, we have to account for the 10 years the fellow spent behind bars. Time, we all know, is a great healer. But on the hand, “You can’t kill time without injuring eternity.” A Thoreau quote again.

  • A coup as revenge

    A coup as revenge

    It was an evening at the highbrow Metropolitan Club in Victoria Island and it was a surprise bash for a man of success. It was not just a party. It was an 80th birthday appreciation.

    The organisers intoxicated the soiree with a unique style. It was a coup. Chief Biodun Shobanjo had obeyed his wife, Joyce. She said he should dress up, which invoked an inevitable signature: a bowtie. He followed her out of the home. He walked, as he himself confessed later, like “an innocent lamb to the slaughter.”

    All the coup plotters were at the ready.  But the main plotters were known as the Shobi Collective, apparently led by Udeme Ufot, managing director of SO&U.

     But the chief coupist was not a man. So, when Chief Shobanjo strolled into the Met’s hall, everyone lined up on the aisle, to his amazement. It was a soiree of subversion. At first view, he saw everybody and nobody. Everyone shielded their face with a fan-like mask bearing his picture. So he saw everybody but the only face he saw was his own and many of him. As he walked from person to person, we took off our veils and he hugged coup plotter after coup plotter until he greeted everyone who attended. It was a parade of industry mavens, professionals, mentees, friends and associates.

    Enter Aremo Segun Osoba, Chief Segun Osunkeye or Mr. Nestle, industry icons and a few media names like Yemi Ogunbiyi, John Momoh and Thisday’s Eniola Bello.

     But the most striking parade was of his mentees, men and women who have risen to become industry hefties.

     They lined up, including Ufot, Funmi Onabolu, et al.

     It was a soiree of tributes from Momoh to Osoba to Osunkeye, and no story stirred the audience like the story of Ufot’s wife, Professor Dorothy Ufot about Shobanjo effect on their lives.

    The professor was a youth Corps member who paid frequent visits to Insight Communications, Shobanjo’s firm.

     The boss noticed and wondered what the young woman was looking for. He learned her then boyfriend Udeme had applied for a job at the company. She had vowed never to leave Lagos, and if their relationship was to continue, Udeme must work in Lagos.

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    So, she visited Insight for insights into his boo’s prospects for Lagos. The day Udeme landed the job, “we celebrated,” she said to laughter and applause. She is also a SAN and teaches law at BAZE University. Before she left the stage, she attributed her husband’s success to God and the celebrant.

    Who was the chief coupist then? The Shobi Collectives pointed a finger at the woman sitting beside the celebrant. His wife Joyce, that is.

    In calm humour, Shobanjo said: “I thought I knew my wife,” and all laughed, but she had led a plot. But the irony was on Shobanjo himself, which was a story barely hinted at that evening.

    Shobanjo was himself a master coupist who turned the industry upside down with a disruptive mould of doing, a generation of rebellion and imagination when he set up Insight and broke away from GrantCommunications,  and tradition.

     One of the items on the programme was called Payback, which was a presentation from the Shobi Collective.

     The real payback was the coup his men unfurled against him.

    He counted himself lucky that he was hearing such glowing tributes while he was still alive, although he promised he would still be around for another 20 years. A centenarian loading…

  • AGF’s threat to governors

    AGF’s threat to governors

    Warning by the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice (AGF), Lateef Fagbemi of dire consequences awaiting state governors enacting laws to tamper with local government funds says a lot about all that is wrong with this country.

    The AGF was piqued that some of the governors were prodding their state Houses of Assembly to enact laws to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling divesting local government funds from their stranglehold. He has threatened impeachment for governors standing against the financial autonomy of the local governments (LGs) and prosecution of elected local government chairmen engaged in similar misdemeanour.

    Fagbemi did not name state governors involved neither did he disclose the quarters from which the impeachment proceedings will be initiated. But his warning may not be unconnected with a recent declaration by Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State while signing the state’s Local Government Administration Law that “absolute autonomy to the 774 local government areas in the country is impossibility. In fact, it is a recipe for humongous chaos”.

    In a paper at the 2024 Conference of the Abuja chapter of National Association of Judicial Correspondents (NAJUC), Fagbemi said he was “aware that some states have embarked on promulgation of legislations which appear antithetical to the tenets or tenor of the judgment of the Supreme Court”.

    According to him, by the July 11, 2024 judgment of the Supreme Court granting financial autonomy to the LGs, it amounted to misconduct and impeachable offence for governors to tamper with local government funds. And since council chairmen do not enjoy immunity, they stand to be prosecuted for misappropriation or misapplication of LG funds, he further warned.

    This development is worrisome. The apex court had in that landmark judgement declared “a democratically elected local government sacrosanct and non-negotiable” and that the use of caretaker committee amounted to a state government taking over the control of a local government in violation of the 1999 constitution.

    The policy court further ruled that the state government has no power or control to keep local council money; local councils are entitled to local government allocation. “Justice in this case demands that LG allocation from the federation account should henceforth be paid directly to the LGs”, the court further ruled with an injunction restraining the defendants or their privies from spending LG funds.

     It is sad that in spite of the unambiguous rulings by the apex court ousting the powers of financial control over LG funds from the governors, some of them still embarked on a perilous voyage of seeking avenues to circumvent that judgment.

    But the development should not be entirely surprising given the high-wire politics in which local government administration has been enmeshed- politics that has left the third tier of  government a ghost of its former self unable to discharge on its statutory duties.

     If governors prodding their state Houses of Assembly to enact laws to get control of LG funds are not unsettling enough, the suspension for two months of chairmen and vice chairmen of the 18 LGs in Edo by the state House of Assembly strikes as a direct attack on the autonomy of the councils.

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    Their suspension followed a petition by the governor, Monday Okpebholo to the House of Assembly alleging refusal by the chairmen to submit financial records of their councils to the state government. For him, this amounted to insubordination and gross misconduct for which the house has to investigate them.

    Not unexpectedly, the chairmen have protested the suspension citing extant court injunctions including the landmark ruling by the Supreme Court. Okpebholo has just been in office for barely a month. He inherited LG chairmen elected under the platform of an opposition political party.  It is not unlikely that the lure to wield control over that level of governance is behind the suspension order. But for the judgement of the apex court, those chairmen and councillors would have been booted out and their places taken by caretaker committees.

    The game playing out in Edo State is another guise to curtail the financial independence of the third tier of governance. But the suspension order has been declared illegal by the AGF as only the councillors in that LG can exercise such powers. But the governors will not easily let go.

    With the state assemblies acting as willing tools, the length some governors can go to achieve through the backdoor that which the apex court curtailed, is a matter of educated guess. The way it plays out will have wider repercussions for the financial autonomy of the LGs and their capacity to discharge on their mandate.

     As unsettling as these tendencies are, the urge to abridge rules or cut corners for self-serving ends remains a huge setback to the politics of this country.  In that mind-set can be located the reasons for the failure of many well intentioned government policies.

    Peter Ekeh captured the conflict of orientation in his theory of the two publics-the private and public realms. The thesis of his presentation is that our citizens have different moral attachments to issues that impinge on the private and public realms.

    Whereas the individual has a high moral attachment to issues of the private realm; the ethnic union funds for instance, the same person has a negative disposition to funds belonging to the public realm – federal, state or local government. That is why it is a taboo to steal the funds of a village meeting but not government money. So, you may be considered a smart fellow if you exploit loopholes to defraud the government without incurring the wrath of the law.

    But the same attitude to community or union money attracts opprobrium. That is why a governor will goad a state assembly to make laws to corner LG funds even after the apex court had ruled to the contrary. It is for the same consideration that all the 18 LG chairmen were suspended in Edo for touted insubordination.

    Ours is a country where sub-national governments and citizens appear in a haste to exploit loopholes to circumvent well intended laws rather than seek to cooperate and strengthen them. This negative culture is evident in public reaction to, and perception of, socio-economic policies and our faulty political recruitment process. Searching for loopholes to exploit and sabotage well-intentioned policies of government has assumed dangerous and destructive proportions. You can find the tendency in reactions (governments and individuals) to the deployment of technology to enhance the integrity of elections.

     If technology cannot be sabotaged to gain undue electoral advantage, the resort to vote buying must be the way out. And this culture has come to permeate the entire fabric of our society.  The urge to disingenuously play outside box is evident in the current scandalous scarcity of cash even when the old and new notes are still circulating concurrently.

    The conduct of local government elections follows the same predictable pattern. That is why the ruling party in the states clears all the LG elective positions to the exclusion of other political parties. Circumvention of the rules is the game. And we all fold our arms in seeming helplessness. But we are not helpless. Why have our leaders not thought it wise that strict adherence to rules, principles is the way to national good?

    The threats by the AGF can find practical expression if the leadership at the centre musters the political will for strict enforcement. Obasanjo did a similar thing even to governors of his political party. If there is genuine commitment to rule enforcement, the temptation by governors to exploit the laws setting up state assemblies to circumvent the ruling of the apex court would be stymied.

    But not in George Orwell’s Animal Farm where all are equal but some are more equal than others. Not in a clime where the leadership seems to relish in exploiting loopholes to circumvent the law. That is the uncanny contradiction elevated to the fore by the threat of the AGF. All these continue to evoke Thrasymachus’ characterisation of ‘Justice as the interest of the stronger’.

    We must return to the drawing board and answer basic questions on the type of standards that can propel this country to greatness. Our concept of politics and democracy may turn out our greatest undoing. A system that relishes in rules’ abridgment or corner cutting to satisfy selfish predilections of the ruling class is a recipe for unmitigated disaster.

  • Oyinbokemi

    Oyinbokemi

    Kemi Badenoch may need to beware of the pratfall ahead. It is what hubris breeds. Rarely is a woman accused of hubris, perhaps a few like Cleopatra. Hubris is often a male venom because women seldom rise to the sort of power that invokes celestial self-confidence.

    In this regard, Badenoch is a class apart. Many don’t want a rehash of Badenoch’s rhetorics without restraint, her Nigerian putdowns, her repudiation of the land of her birth. Yet, as the cleric Bishop Kukah has eloquently written in a recent essay, we must credit her ability to traverse a country of a pedigree that enslaved blacks and built a civilization on the backs of the African race.

    She thinks she was plucked from the sky, a dizzy genius of self-manufacture. She does not seem, in her habits and attitude, to know gratitude to history, to go down in genuflection to the monuments that made her possible.

     She is not the first to so rise. We have known blacks, especially in the United States, who either star as inspiration for others or, for most part, take a cue from the words of an unlikely hero of humility: Winston Churchill. He said, “it was the people who had the courage of a lion, I simply had the luck to give it roar.”

    Obama acknowledged the exploits of centuries of blood and tears, of white butchery and blacks squelching through the mud bowed by lashes. Serena nods to Arthur Ashe. Coco Gauff thanks Serena. In Britain, Formula One Lewis Hamilton thanks all of them before him, especially in the U.S. but not without knowing that you can’t be a pioneer without the collective sacrifices of little people in little episodes. Those who protested in homes, in farms, on the plantations, like Bertha Mason, who screamed anonymously in the attic in Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre. Or Mansfield’s Judgment of 1772 in favour of James Somerset, a slave who would not toil in the plantations outside England. Or our own John Fashanu, or even a sleek Arsenal star Bukayo Saka, whose Nigerian name, unlike Kemi’s, rankles the British soul soothingly.

    Badenoch should remember that a few other Nigerians and African names, too many to say, have been in British politics, and have made names like hers not too shabby for the ear and sensibility of the British. To refer to Churchill again, “to each, there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered a chance to do a special thing.”

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    As Nixon wrote in his memoirs, “history affects us more than we affect history.” War made Roosevelt, slavery minted Lincoln, suffering sainted Mother Theresa, apartheid gave us Mandela. We have to be humble before history. We are not as great as we think we are. History is like what the playwright Arthur Schopenhauer describes willpower, as “a strong blind man who carries a lame man who can see.”

    A few examples of blacks who rose by discounting their fellow blacks should help Kemi. They are Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson. Woods is the best golfer whoever lived, even if he has not clobbered as many majors as Jack Niclaus’ 18. When his stardom lit its first tinder, he had a meeting with existing stars of his colour, especially Jordan. They asked him to stay away from politics, and focus on golf. Retreating from controversy would mount up the dollar deals, and he did. When he was asked in Missouri about a question, he replied, “I am a golfer.” He became a darling of all. Blacks and whites embraced him.

    Then came the fall that exposed his many peccadilloes. The whites turned their backs on him, and it was the blacks, who he would never marry, who would never date, he never identified with that gave him succour in that painful hour. It was his time of solitude. Michael Jackson became so white that he wanted to look white. Then he had troubles of his own, and he fell into accusations of sexual perversion. He opened up in a new album asserting, to some as an exaggeration, that they -white- “don’t care about us.”

    It is the sort of trap Badenoch has to avoid. He is the first to become the leader of a major political party. It is not just a major political party, but the most organized political party in history. It is the oldest in history. It is also the most successful having gobbled up power two-thirds of the time. Before they were called Conservatives, they have been a loose group known as Tories since the third quarter of the 17th century. Most notably it was the party of slavery and monarchism. It was in the aftermath of the Reform Act in the 19th Century that it became organized fully as the Conservative Party. It is no mean task that Badenoch sits on top of story of the Tories.

    It does not call for vanity but sanity. Kemi does not act like a politician of that stripe. He should learn, too, that his party has a history of intolerance for bumbling leaders, white or black. That explains its success. Kemi should be wary, lest she becomes as black as a blip of history. If she wants to lead the party to victory, and become its first black prime minister, she has to remodel her character. Her personality is helping her today. But she needs character more.

    When Vice President Kashim Shettima says she could remove her name as Kemi, we suddenly saw her appealing to her Yoruba roots. That is not only foolish but sophomoric. Yoruba has always been Nigerian since she was born. Her biography shows she grew up in the Southwest where she had all the experience she derides. So, trying to separate Yoruba from Nigeria is vacuous. A president – who is Yoruba – is today fighting Boko Haram, and most Nigerians, North or South, abhor that group.

    She should beware of what some call Coconut – black outside, white inside. Or else, we might not call her Oluwakemi but Oyinbokemi, a name she seems to propagate with her acts. Kemi means take care of me.

  • Between Akume and Atiku

    Between Akume and Atiku

    When George Akume, secretary to the federal government, said there is no vacancy in Aso Rock in 2027, he was not expected to say anything different. He was deferring to a growing convention in Nigerian politics: that it is the turn of the south to have its eight years. But, as usual, our master of political pirouette, Atiku Abubakar, will have a thing or two to say. He said it is time for mathematical parity. He is calling for his own version of equality of regions in the calculus of power. He says, since 1999, the South has been in the saddle more than the north. If we make the calculation, he says it would be six years. His is math as mischief. First, if south gets it till 2031, it will mean the North will take it till 2039. By then, it will be two years advantage. This is counting from Yar’Adua, whose tenure was ended by death and his position Jonathan took. It was the will of providence, not the south, that it turned out so.

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    But Atiku was only clever by stealth. His math is so poor, perhaps that is why his primary school certification is still under a cloud. If we want to make any calculation, it has to originate in 1960. The South was in power only in the Obasanjo years, and that was because Murtala Muhammed was assassinated. If not, it would have been nada for a southern leader. So, between 1960 and 1999, a southerner was Nigerian leader from 1976 to 1979, barely three years out of 39. If the South were to call for parity, it would be unfair because the North would not be in power for a generation. Who wants that?

    The problem with Atiku is that he does not care about democratic tenets but his tenancy in Aso Rock. He knows he will be 86 years by 2031, and he cannot wait, so he wails. He is counting time because he is marking time and running out of time. Pity Atiku. A teardrop for him.

  • Old man and the siege

    Old man and the siege

    It is a pity that Obidients are dragging all of us into their mess. Afe Babalola, like his benefactor, the Owu chief, are Obidients. Farotimi, a strident megaphone of Obi, is also a chip off the old block. Now, their arteries are blocked with a riot of plaques. That is the plague of the Obidient movement. Their bloodline is in crisis. Everyone knows it except the Obidients themselves. That is the sorry state of that rabble.

    Now, we see an old man and his son fighting in public. Peter Obi runs from pillar to the post in Ekiti to play peacemaker. Obi starts a storm. He must end it. After a meeting, no resolution except the resolution to keep kicking up the dustbowl. A dysfunctional family.

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    The drama has everything in a farce. Father is fighting a son. Son is acting like a brat and father is acting like a fuddy-duddy. Son calls the police, and carts him to town and locks him up. The children are crying, from professor to mechanic about rule of law. Whereas it is they who should talk to themselves about washing their linens in public. They suffer from self-forgetfulness. First, they forget that the battle is in the house. They attribute their son’s fate to a man who has nothing to do with it: the president. He is the one they hate. Even when they err, it is his fault. What a shame.

    To give it respectability, a book is in the tale. But it is more tale-bearing than facts. Farotimi says he has facts but they are in the court who nailed him. Some quibble over why he was in detention. The police add to the grist. The book is a best seller, but it is not Lady Chatterley’s Lover, or Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn or To kill a Mocking Bird. This one is trash. No law professor unless an Obidient renegade would teach it except on how not to teach law. But as all farces go, trash must enjoy a pride of place. The old man is under attack, and he must weather the storm from  a ragged mass of hair that leads a rabble