The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

Femi Esho: Exit and memories

It was striking that Femi Esho’s daughter, Bimbo, broke the news of his death by sending me a video, with the words, “Last dance with my dad. May your gentle soul rest in peace, Daddy.” As they danced to a song by Juju maestro Ebenezer Obey, she hailed him, calling him “Evergreen Baba.” There were birthday cakes and drinks on a table in front of them. He died on June 17, aged 77.

The video brought back memories of the first time I met him, and the last time I saw him. I knew him by reputation before I first met him, some years ago, at the Lagos residence of his friend who was also my friend. We got talking and he got me thinking about his service in the music sphere. His passion for music was infectious.

When he gave me his calling card, I was struck by the fascinating quote inscribed on it: “Without music, life would be an error – Friedrich Nietzsche.” He gave me a valuable collection of the works of Afrobeat king Fela Anikulapo Kuti, produced by his company, Lagos-based Evergreen Musical Company Ltd, described as “Africa’s greatest custodian and producer of music of yesteryears.”

After that stimulating meeting, I received regular invitations to events organised by his company. “I started collecting music at the age of 12,” he said at one of those memorable events in Lagos, in 2017, which celebrated “10 Music Legends of Lagos Evolution.” It was a celebration of indigenous music genres, including Apala, Sakara, Juju, Highlife, Fuji, Waka, Folk, Agidigbo, Afrobeat and Were.

Ultimately, Esho was the star of the show, with his long white beard, doing what he had mastered over the years. He gave insight into the works of the awardees and why they deserved their awards. They included Hubert Ogunde, Jimi Solanke, Adeolu Akisanya, Abibu Oluwa, Batilu Alake, Ayinde Bakare, Ayinde Barrister, Bobby Benson, Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Haruna Ishola, among others. He displayed impressive knowledge of Nigerian music history.

Read Also: Femi Esho (1946 – 2024)

Born in Ilesa, in present-day Osun State, he was described as “the undisputed largest collector of music of yesteryears.” His collection was said to include “over 150,000 vinyl plates made up of 78rpm breakable plates, 45rpm and 33rpm, hundreds of reel-to-reel tapes, thousands of cassette tapes of various music along with archival materials such as His Master’s Voice (HMV), various reel-to-reel machines, various turntables with the oldest 100 years old, books and newspaper articles on Nigerian music, video recordings of early Nigerian music icons.”

He was a music collector extraordinaire based on his extraordinary music collection. According to an anecdote about him, when he visited Ghana in 2008 to seek permission rights to release the works of some old Ghanaian Highlife stars, the late Jerry Hansen of the Ramblers Dance Band, who was then 86, “could not hold back his tears as he exclaimed that it was a great shame that Esho came all the way from Nigeria to present to him all his lost works.” The drama underlined his significance as a music collector.

Before he formed his musical company, he had worked for the Lagos State government, and was a secretary to the state’s first military governor, Mobolaji Johnson. He had a stint at a big architectural firm. He had also set up an Advertising/PR agency, and ran a printing consultancy.

His social life equipped him for his musical role. He had frequented popular clubs in Ibadan and Lagos before he eventually decided to devote his life to music preservation and promotion in the early 1990s.

He formed a band in 1993, known for its rich Highlife repertoire, which was patronised by high-profile figures and various corporate giants. He presented radio and television programmes promoting evergreen music, particularly Highlife. He presented “Highlife Renaissance” weekly on Raypower, the first private radio station in Nigeria, for about three years. To mark Nigeria’s centenary celebration in 2014, he reviewed Nigerian music from 1914 to 2014 in a programme on the network service of Nigerian Television Authority (NTA).

His musical company revived the works of music greats such as Bobby Benson, Eddy Okonta, Rex Jim Lawson, E.T. Mensah, Joe Mensah, Haruna Ishola, Victor Olaiya and I.K. Dairo through a repackaging project involving music from the 1920s. He also released the complete works of Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Ebenezer Obey.

According to him, “Highlife and some of its variants originated from Nigeria, Ghana and a few other African countries, hence it can be described as our gift to the world.” However, he observed, “you can hardly find more than three or four recreation spots where the music is still enjoyed by patrons of musical bands. We feel that the situation portends a great danger to our indigenous contribution to the world of music, something that has the potential of being a major income earner for Nigeria if properly harnessed.”

The last time I saw him, he looked frail. But he danced at the event tagged ‘Yaba Evergreen Happy Hour,’ organised by his company and the authorities of the Yaba Local Council Development Area (LCDA), Lagos. It was an unprecedented collaboration to promote live bands in the community, and celebrate the music of notable Nigerian musicians, particularly in the Highlife category.

The event took place on December 15, 2003 at Akinwunmi Centre, Yaba, Lagos. It marked the end of the year and boosted the month’s atmosphere of celebration. Chairman of Yaba LCDA Kayode Omiyale, the event chair, welcomed guests to “the home of music.” The area is associated with the musical careers of legends like Sunny Ade, Fela Kuti, Ebenezer Obey, Roy Chicago, Adeolu Akisanya, Victor Olaiya, Orlando Owoh, and Bobby Benson, who used to play regularly at popular clubs located in Yaba and its environs.

Esho’s legacy includes the Evergreen Music Heritage Foundation, which he launched “to preserve and safeguard musical heritage.” It is “a one-stop place for research and documentation” of a considerable number of Nigerian musicians, designed to “help to create a world-class archival institution to cater for the needs of researchers, anthropologists and sociologists the world over.”

It is a testimony to his vision and energy that a gigantic multi-purpose centre for the activities of the Foundation is under construction in Lagos, fulfilling his 25-year dream. A significant cultural figure, he will be remembered as a giant who made a name for himself as a music collector, preserver and promoter.

June 24, 2024
Customs’ revealing statistics

Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) last week, unveiled startling data on activities of smugglers of petrol around the border states of the country.

Its Comptroller-General, Adewale Adeniyi while updating the nation on the activities of his agency raised alarm over the renewed smuggling of petrol to neighbouring countries following what he called, the massive hike in the price of the product in those countries. He bandied comparative prices of the product in neighbouring countries and the region to back up his claim.

Hear him: “While PMS is sold at an average of N701.99 in Nigeria, it is sold at an average of N1,672.05 in the Republic of Benin and N2,061.55 in Cameroon. In other countries around the region, the price of PMS ranges from N1,427.68 in Liberia to N2,128.20 in Mali, averaging N1,787.57 according to fuel price data obtained from Opensource”.

That is not all. He further reeled out statistics from the National Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) on the average daily evacuation of petrol to various states of the country to buttress the smuggling trend. The data shows significant changes in evacuation patterns that are not justified by corresponding economic and demographic changes in states that share contiguous borders with neighbouring countries.

According to the figures, between April and May, Borno and Kebbi states recorded 76 and 59 per cent increases in evacuations ranking among the top three states. Katsina also recorded more than 50 per cent increase in evacuation raising concerns on the actual delivery of petrol and the potential for smuggling.

Read Also: Customs: Non-intrusive, physical inspections can earn Apapa N2.3tr

As a response to this nagging trend, the agency in collaboration with the Office of the National Security Adviser, ONSA initiated what they called “Operation Whirlwind”. The objective is to dismantle the smuggling cartel and save the nation from the economic and social repercussions that unlawful activity entails. The operation NCS said, paid off handsomely with the arrests and confiscation of smuggled petrol.

Within seven days, Operation Whirlwind intercepted 150, 950 litres of fuel valued at N105,965,391 in various states nationwide. These included Adamawa, Sokoto, Cross River, Ogun, Katsina, Kebbi and Taraba. That was not all. Other seizures amounting to humongous sums of money were equally made.

It is good a thing the NCS with the assistance of the NMDPRA is monitoring fuel evacuations across the country. It has gone ahead to initiate measures in conjunction with the ONSA to check the rising smuggling of petrol around border states. That some of these states have in the last couple of months, been receiving fuel evacuations that defy demographic and economic reasoning can only be explained by the allure of smuggling.

Smuggling around our porous and largely unmanned borders is not entirely new. It thrives because of the inability of those in authority to police the borders and unmask the unpatriotic cartel behind the economic sabotage. Smuggling and illegal oil lifting deny the country of the much needed revenue for its development.

Perhaps, the new initiative by the NCS and the ONSA marks a renewed awareness on the harm which that act of economic sabotage has wrought on the national economy. That is why every effort must be deployed to ensure that the new campaign is sustained and results achieved.

But the campaign may not achieve its goal without the collaboration of the local population and the traditional institutions in the border states. The smuggling routes are well known to the indigenous people and the traditional institutions in the border states. These groups should be identified and their collaboration sought in stemming the tide of smuggling.

There should be serious monitoring of the destinations of the delivery trucks. With effective monitoring, diversion will be put to effective check. It will also bar fraudulent officials and their collaborators from ordering supplies that will end up in phoney destinations.

Here, the job of the security agencies comes into serious calculation. If the speculation that security agencies now accompany delivery trucks to border states are true, the measure should be further reinforced to nip smuggling of petrol in the bud.

But the observed increase in smuggling of petrol around border states as monitored by the NCS and NMDPRA are as revealing as they are troubling. More than anything, they touch on the controversies that had overtime dogged the fuel subsidy regime. At issue has been the domestic consumption of petrol.

The most potent argument usually put forward to justify subsidy removal has been the large quantity of petrol consumed domestically. Though the figures have never lent themselves to exactitude, but officials of the government have always argued that the huge savings from subsidy removal will catalyse quantum development when injected into the national economy.

The argument is that we consume large quantities of petrol daily and a lot of money will be realised from subsidy elimination. This, the promoters of subsidy removal contend will ultimately lead to public good.

But this line of argument has always elicited the concomitant question of the precise amount of local fuel consumption for the larger picture to come clearer. That information has remained within the realm of speculation.

The question has resonated with the revelations from the NCS and NMDPRA. Their records of sporadic rise in the supply of petrol to border states when there are no observed changes in economic and demographic indices, point inexorably to the fact that domestic estimation of fuel consumption may have been largely exaggerated. And any calculations based on such distorted figures will remain largely illusory.

That is the issue to contend with. It is loaded with the frightening prospects of distorting all the calculations of the government on the quantum of revenue generation from fuel subsidy removal and investments it can generate. That is the startling danger the high incidence of petrol smuggling in border states brings to the fore.

But smuggling around the border states either of petrol or other essential products are not entirely new developments. They have always been there. The difference in prices between goods produced locally and their counterparts in border countries is the oxygen that sustains the illicit business. The same logic has all these years, been the basis for the campaign on subsidy removal either of petrol or electricity. So the issues raised by the NCS are not entirely new.

They have always been part of the calculations. And if the price of the product in neighbouring states is influenced by our local price adjustments, there is everything to expect that prices will be higher in those countries now fuel sells for about N900 in some states of the country.

But the floating of comparative pricing in such other African countries as Liberia and Mali etc., which do not share borders with Nigeria, is an entirely different kettle of fish. The intention of the NCS boss in factoring these into his comparative engagement is not known. But they strike as sad reminders to the type of strategies deployed each time a government seeks to increase the price of petrol.

It is scary that we are at it again. Coming at a time a former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai and oil marketers had alleged the government is still paying subsidy more than before, the comparison is suspicious. Though the federal government denied the allegation by El-Rufai, comparisons portraying the country as paying the cheapest price for petrol are highly suggestive.

This is not the time for such reminders even if the data floated are collaborative. With the excruciating cost of living brought about by liberalisation measures, nothing should be done to exacerbate an already fluid situation.

The NCS should concentrate its efforts in fighting the menace of smuggling around our border states. It is obvious from the figures released, that Nigerians consume far less amount of petrol than is ordinarily attributed to them. Its message is clear.

If the current fight is waged to its logical conclusion, it may be possible to know our domestic fuel consumption. Then, the accruable revenue from subsidy removal will become clearer. It may then dawn on us that much of the so-called subsidy ends up in the pockets of the cartel neck-deep in trans-border smuggling of the product.

June 17, 2024
Common sense

The question of minimum wage has often made me think of the word commonsense. The very word provoked the American Revolution when a non-American used it to sue the conscience of the world. Thomas Paine employed it as a phrase, not a word. He titled his pamphlet, Common Sense. He was history’s first pamphleteer of freedom. The little piece of literature morphed into a torch of liberty in the infant nation, just like a century later when Harriet Beecher Stowe published her uproarious novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Paine, in his subversive tone, asked a series of questions when his own country England held the Americans in colonial throttle. His questions were simple but pithy, and riled a continent against an island. One of his questions was how should a mere island hold a continent in its grip?

Today, there are quite a few questions of commonsense that NLC’s Agbaero and TUC’s Osifo ought to ponder. We must admit though, that reason has failed to pass muster in their universe. One, when George Akume, the country’s first scribe, said he could not pay his drivers N100k as salary, Agbaero and co. lashed out. Did they ask Akume what his salary is, what his bills are? If they say he is a “big man’ and can pay, it is because they often suggest politicians and government high-fliers misappropriate allowances for personal use. So, if they want him to steal to pay, are they not encouraging looting our treasury? Does that make them wise or foolish, or even corrupt?

Two, I asked the question last week? Is the NLC or TUC prepared to pay their security guards N250k as minimum wage? Are they going to milk the workers to obtain the money? Will NLC and TUC release their own prepared salary scale now and let us debate how they can pay for it.

Three, why is labour insisting on minimum wage for less than 10 percent of Nigeria’s work force? In saner societies, labour duels corporate elites who purloin the sweats of the teeming employees. Here in Nigeria, they attack the governments. Not that they should not. Their focus upends the logic of the philosophy of Labour. So, if the Federal Government pays N250k, how do they want to enforce it on the major labour centres in the country? Will they force it on the one-man business limping for survival? To demonstrate the irony, President Joe Biden recently ennobled the picket lines of autoworkers demanding better welfare.

Read Also: Nigerian Labour Congress

Four, why is Labour so parochial in its vision of the purview of their work for the Nigerian Labour? There are many areas Labour has perennially ignored. Why have they not paid attention, for instance, to foreign oppression of the Nigerian worker on our soil. Why have they not drawn a charter for the Chinese, Lebanese, Indians et al, who are reigniting a colonial slave ethic in their fiefdom of factories and shops across the country? Why have they not marched on Ikorodu and Ogun State where factories and warehouses have overshadowed the air and water with near apocalypse of pollution? Citizens crouch with diseases and mourn unheard. These quiet tik tock to death has become commonplace in the Niger Delta where rivers and farms have turned dark with crude oil and paralysed citizens and criminalised their consciences. Are they not workers, too. This new Labour is not like some of their hefty men of old like Imoudu, who understood the scythe and horizon of the Labour philosophy. The new honchos have turned themselves into a salary union, rather than a Labour union. A Labour union is a thinking fortress of society. They create a cooperative pool of ideas. They are also a moral vortex. Did Adams Oshiomhole not save nubile beauties from the predation of an amorous banking elite and policy? The great French writer and philosopher mapped out how great movements die. They start with utility, then they turn into privilege. At last, they fall into abuse. NLC and TUC are in the final phase. That august movement requires a rebirth.

Can the Labour not see its task as government’s partner in squelching the big ogre of the age: fake products. Or don’t they think labour should stop water-borne diseases in the form of “pure water” or fake drugs killing many in the country? American poet and writer Lucille Clifton noted that “We can’t create what we can’t imagine.” What our labour leaders need is imagination. Garcia Marquez, who won the Nobel Prize for turning the creative world upside down with fantastical tales, once proclaimed: “Freedom to the imagination.” He once also asserted that “imagination is more important than knowledge.” Agbaero and co. can’t imagine a Labour approach other than through strikes. It is a monotony and deadness of the imagination.

Hence, they shut down the national grid. A thinking Labour will not shut down a national grid. Records say the nation lost over N100 billion in the last strike. Is this a labour that seeks productivity? When Akume called them saboteurs, was he not right? If they cost the country N100 billion, what moral authority have they to challenge those who spend less to acquire SUVs? Do they have a moral authority.

In saner realms, positions in national grid and arms industry are not only given to their citizens, they are especially screened. National grid is not just an institution. Working there is not just a job but also a national service. It entwines both commerce and national security. Only a man of unpatriotic mindset will embark on a rant to defend shutting down the grid. Not even today when the nation is trying to stop banditry and other forms of subversion.

Is it commonsensical for Labour to seek salary hike for a fraction of the workforce and not eye the ire of inflation? If the salary jumps, inflation jumps, not only for those who will earn the new pay but those who can’t. The new earners earn a status of false privilege because the new pay dissolves in a revanchist inflation. It becomes a double jeopardy for those who do not earn the new pay and they are the majority. They will stoop under more inflation than the new earners.

If Labour is a thinking group, will they not muse former Ekiti State governor Kayode Fayemi’s point that they should map a federal salary policy? Sokoto cannot pay the same salary with Lagos. In the United States, wages are not created equal. They could have mused the point distinction between salary and wages Babatunde Raji Fashola’s (SAN) made in his book, National Public Discourse. He reiterated that point at Pastor Poju Oyemade’s The Platform.

Labour should know that they are partners, not necessarily cosy twins, with government. “They are,” in the words of Shakespeare, “both in either’s powers.” Labour needs commonsense for a common sense.

June 17, 2024
Abiola’s unsung partners

June 12 gives us reason to reflect on the man M.K.O. Abiola. We speak of those who fought with him, and they became torchbearers of democracy like President Tinubu, who bathed in many accolades last week. We have had over the years phonies who claimed to be Abiola’s fellow travelers and those who were true fighters, especially in the media. In journalism, we had a few who were close, especially in the Concord newspaper, his media outfit. Apart from Dr. Doyin Abiola, his widow, the Concord fellows who were close have been rather shy of public self-praise. These were men, to use Christ’s language, who were beside him in his days of temptation. The first was Olu Akerele, his confidante. He was with him through thick and thin, and visited him in detention a number of times. He held his confidences and was possibly a man who could have been eliminated for his closeness.

Read Also: Tinubu appoints Gbeleyi BPE Director General

There were the trio of Dele Alake, Tunji Bello and Segun Babatope. Alake was editor of Sunday and National Concord (the daily), and so was Bello. Babatope was of the editorial board. These men were with him behind the spotlight. They were the soldiers on the parapet. These men may not have been mentioned in the past week. They deserve their accolades. Akerele saved my life in the heady days when he alerted me to cars, a Jetta and Peugeot 505, stalking me around Abuja where I was managing editor. I fled town before IBB men woke up. Onanuga ran Tempo and the news. He was Abiola’s buddy until he broke away on principle with Dapo Olorunyomi, Kunle Ajibade, Babafemi Ojudu and Seye Kehinde to form The News. But June 12 brought Onanuga to join Abiola at the barricade.

Yet some were not close, but significant. Bagauda Kaltho, who was derided for being a northerner fighting a Yoruba battle, died in the struggle. Alex Kabba almost fell at the NUJ press centre to journalism traitors but fled to the U.S. Embassy. Kunle Ajibade was in gulag forever. Let’s not forget Chima Ubani, the ‘immortal governor of Lagos’ These may not be Abiola’s close aides but they fought as though they were. They were Nigeria’s aides.

June 17, 2024
A short history of stumbles

President Bola Tinubu’s personal drama stole the June 12 show with a slip and fall. Characteristically, he rose and waved in a parade. A social media tumult followed the story. They raised the spectre of the man’s health. The saw the fall but didn’t see the rise. It is the mindset of those who see. In media studies, it is called selective exposure and selective perception. The person is what they see. Those who saw a fall are fall-minded. Those who saw the rise see hills and not valleys.

President Tinubu spiced it with humour. He was prostrating to democracy. It reminds one of what Ronald Reagan quipped to his wife, Nancy after a failed assassination attempt. “Honey,” he remarked, “I forgot to duck.” Nor is what happened to President Tinubu ever new in history. Not long ago, tall and gangly Joe Biden stumbled, and it was a laugh. Some said it was a measure of age, not health. But it was a transient spectacle to Americans. What of tall and gangly Obama, who stumbled on Airforce One? He reemphasized it while stepping on a podium. His tall frame came down on a stage. We saw that with George H. Bush who lost his step on a Japanese staircase, and gave his Democratic foes a hearty laugh. These were tall men.

Read Also: Tinubu appoints Gbeleyi BPE Director General

Our macho man of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is one of the short men who fell. American media reported a fall in his home staircase. So steep was the descent that his anal parts became generous with faecal releases. The world did not see that. But we saw his sudden fall on an ice hockey rink. Another chunky fellow, our great Narendra Modi of India, came down on a staircase almost blasting his head on the marble floor.

The spectacular was related in a new book sensation, Demons of Unrest by Erik Larson about the prelude to the American civil war with eerie similarities with the last Nigerian election. The author relates an episode when Abraham Lincoln was on a long train ride to his inauguration in Washington. He panicked over his now famous draft of his inaugural speech. The tall and gangly Lincoln suffered a structural collapse as he came down on a staircase in an Indianapolis hotel. And people could not laugh as the man fell among a raft of suitcases.

Stumbles are no respecter of presidents. To paraphrase Jesus, let anyone over 15 years who has never stumbled or fallen in their lives, come out!

June 17, 2024
Labour as anarchist

The Labour unions are agog, and a sort of vanity has enveloped them and their enabling lawyers. Agbero and co. are like the anarchist in the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev’s fiction who wants to pull down the system. When asked what to put in its place, he answers, let it come down first. That is not the prudence of working. It is the logic of the Jacobin era.

They want the federal government to pay over N300k. If the money were available, it would be nice for all. But lack of a math sense is troubling Agbero and his TUC counterpart, Osifo. One, they think it is the federal government alone that would pay. Two, the governors have hollered that they can’t pay above N60K. Some are making noise about SUVs and Hajj money, and they should. I have not heard the Muslims complain, though they make the majority of the population. Again, Agbero and co should ask their lawmakers to return their SUVs and ask Pitobi to recant his assertion that they need the cars to work. Only then can Labour shed its hypocrisy on government spending. As Zebrudaya says, “what are good for the goose are good for the gizzard.”

But have they done the math of how much a month any salary increase will amount to compared with the money in the coffers? It is not even the amount that should bother us but whether we have the funds to pay given the state of the purse.

We need them to break down for us what it will cost. If we know that, we can now determine how much we have and can make.

Read Also: State Police under Governors who can’t pay minimum wage recipe for disaster

Our Labour unions have turned into salary unions. That is not the substance and concept of unions. It is about working with employers to lift the people’s welfare. Labour is not an enemy camp. They cooperate to agree and even to disagree. That also involves propounding ideas. The NLC and TUC have no worthy idea other than shut down the grid, paralyse the banks, etc, In the last strike, it was an irony. The very poor for whom the strikes were for were not at home. They were in the markets selling wares, on the roadsides repairing tyres and in homes doing the plumbing.

Labour also forgets that most employers cannot afford N100k minimum wage. Would they embark on a strike against the moi moi seller for not paying his employee N100K, assuming we get that far or low? When all is done, I would want to know what the TUC and NLC are paying their security guards.

June 10, 2024
Air El Malam – Flight 423 billion

Kaduna State has witnessed two flights. One is money, and the other is human. The latter flight is because the former is airborne. The money flight comes from fraud, while the human flight soars from fear. We can call the airline Air El Malam in its cloudy accounting. From my investigations, the flights are international and involve two continents and three countries.

We hope that the flights have return trips, or else the EFCC and Pastor Olukoyede may have to employ Interpol. For his peace and that of Kaduna, we should hope that all those who have left the country are on vacation or some sort of medical rejuvenation, or businesses that have little to do with the new report from the Kaduna State House of Assembly about the first flight that involves N423 billion taking wings from the state accounts.

That first flight, in financial parlance, may be called capital flight. But this is not strictly capital flight because capital flight can be legal and even wholesome.

The report, a 175-page affair as long as a novella, involves corruption allegations of gargantuan dimension, both in dollars and naira, traced to the little man who bestrode the most iconic state of Northern Nigeria. This writer was the first to do a comprehensive expose on the seedy tale of a government that had projects that eyes could not see, claimed to issue contracts without due process, some by blackmail and others by sheer bravado. Contractors collected money without work. Undocumented Contracts yielded funds to questionable accounts and documented money spun fairytale contracts. So, fiction became money and money became fiction. One of the satisfying events for a writer is for public occurrence to vindicate his report.

We hear that former Governor Nasir El Rufai is in Egypt. I expect that he will return soon, and I don’t want to invoke the line from scripture about those who seek refuge in the north African country. But many in the state are worried that the folks indicted by the House report have left the country to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Can we say they fled, or they are merely visiting?

Let it not be that they pled guilty with their feet and fled. Let it not be told that their flight tickets are saying, “I am guilty, my honour, because I have no honour.” Let it not be imagined that they fled to houses they bought abroad. Such purchases may invoke in the purloined homes the phrase in scripture that cursed is in the house of a thief.

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The sum of N423 billion is no small find for even the grandest larceny. Malam EL Rufai, as I stated in an earlier piece, is often not a man to bait. He replies even before you drop an acidic sentence. Now, we neither see his face, nor hear his voice. The small man has become a hermit. He who was in a quiet swagger and eyeing with an avaricious eye the illustrious ambition of 2027, is like the haunting Comfort Omoge song about the fellow that everyone searched for but could not see. He is an invisible man.

He has promised to respond. When I wrote the expose, he said he would respond. He didn’t. When the House met, he said he would respond. He didn’t. Now that the report is out, he said it is false. But that is all he has said.

But this is the second phase of the invisible man. In the first incarnation, he loved the gossip. He was in stealth flight mode. He was meeting the president’s foes in furtive nights and unknown rendezvous. Then he made a show of his visibility. He met Pitobi. He even met folks of the SDP. Then to escalate the vanity, he met with Ribadu either to show off or to taunt those who knew he was showing off.

Then his successor Uba Sani cried out when El Rufai’s sins blazed forth like a fire that wanted to consume the state. Ezekiel the prophet wrote about a city being a cauldron and people as flesh in the heat. Governor Sani did not want that. All state stakeholders were invited to see. El Rufai is his friend. But the state is more important than a man, especially if he was setting the state on fire. The labour unions wanted to go on strike. They had to see the books and the rot of his predecessor. When they saw it, they winced, and decided to halt the onslaught.

Labour was part of the townhall meeting. The governor could not bear the pain alone in his liver. His revelations generated a collective sigh in the state.

The irony is, among the political elite, the religious leaders and the military and intellectual classes, no one has faulted Governor Sani. In all, the only person defending EL Rufai is El Rufai. Hence all those in the indictment, including a certain gentleman named Jimmy Lawal, who held an amorphous office of senior adviser/counsellor was, like a tortoise in an African tale, present in many of the sordid affairs. Who is an adviser and who is a counsellor? His acts, according to the report, is as questionable as his designation/s.

Unlike others with the outsized ego of an El Rufai in a small body, the former Kaduna State governor did not need anyone to encourage him. He was the man who birthed and cradled. He did not need a court jesters or buffoons to inspire him. He needed no minstrel with a guile, no hymnals of tease, no ministers of affection and no drumrolls of flattery. He was his own bouquet. If he falls, he will be like the mighty tree crashing alone on a forest glade.

There is a lot of work to do in the state. After such depredation, the new man in the saddle has set out on a repair mode. His own flight has to be turbulent, the rough air of redeeming the state debts, of revamping the projects, of getting the pensions to the retirees. Imagine on the former governor’s watch, billions of naira allocated to the aged did not go to the fellows with the hoary crowns. The work has begun for a new turn.

The language of the report was instructive. In the many loans, the only one that was used for what it was earmarked for was the N1 billion for the purchase of security vehicles. Each of the others, including N14.3 billion, N10 billion, N17.5 billion, N7.5 billion, N18.043 billion, N10.5 billion, N20 billion, $129.8 million, $209 million, $26 million, $350 million, $130 million, $62.8 million, $150 million, $20 million, $80 million, $280 million, $470 million, $494 million, $494.6 million and $16.8 million, was accompanied with such a phrase as “they were not utlilised for what they obtained for.”

The report says, “the debt management unit seems not to be aware of some of the loan facilities… “But a reckoning is afoot, and the nation waits what will happen now that the report is being forwarded to the EFCC. Is this history repeating itself? When he assumed office, EL Rufai took his predecessor to the EFCC. According to the House report, the state has never been so indebted in its history, and the hermit man had virtually no debt to pay when he assumed office.

This is not a time for the former governor’s secret rendezvous. He should meet the Kaduna people and release his voice box and give account. Not him alone, but all of them abroad.

June 10, 2024
High minimum wage contradiction

Before this article is published, the federal government and organised labour may have reached consensus on a national minimum wage. But before then, it bears stating that the logjam over the appropriate national minimum wage which culminated in the just suspended nationwide industrial strike is a product of contradiction.

It is a dialectical situation thrown up by the policies of the federal government and reactions to them by organised labour. The initial demand for an outrageous minimum wage of N1million from the current N30,000 by organised labour and government’s rejection of it as unrealistic and unsustainable, further underscores the dynamics of this contradiction. What are the issues?

President Bola Tinubu had immediately after his swearing-in last year, announced the elimination of subsidy on petrol. The measure immediately saw the pump price of the product rising well above N550 per litre in some areas. Before then, the product sold below N200 per litre.

Fuel subsidy removal was quickly followed by the floating of the Naira in the foreign exchange market. This saw the local currency exchanging for about N1, 400 against the dollar in the parallel market. The exchange rate was about N450 against the US dollar before the floating of the local currency. The effects of these measures on hyperinflationary trend were quite spontaneous with the prices of essentials hitting the rooftops.

The centrality of petrol to daily businesses and economic activities made the impact of the policies heavily felt in all households. The government was to explain that the interventions were necessary to save the national economy from collapse even as it urged the citizens for patience as the eventual outcome will lead to public good.

The ensuing inflation brought untold hardship as the prices of essential commodities including food items went beyond the reach of the average citizen. But the salaries and wages of the working class remained the same despite federal government’s award of N35, 000 to be paid workers for a few months. The reality was that many state governments were unable to pay that sum to their workers. In the face of this, the average worker was left to lick the wounds inflicted on him by the excruciating economic circumstances that are logical outcomes of government’s policies.

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Attempts by organised labour to get the government reverse these policies including poorly coordinated strike actions failed to achieve any meaningful result. Organised labour subsequently began to mount pressure on the government for a wage increase such that will enable workers cope with the rising cost of living.

Negotiations have been on for quite some time without any agreement. Expectations that the tripartite negotiation committee would have concluded their assignment well on time for the federal government to unveil the new national minimum wage during the last workers day, failed to materialise.

Feelers on the inconclusiveness of the negotiations emerged when the President of the Trade Union Congress TUC, Festus Osifo announced that the new national minimum wage would not be announced on May Day. He had also said the only way that announcement could be possible was if the government accepted the N615, 000 demand presented to it by organised labour.

The implication was that organised labour had come down from its initial minimum wage demand to the new figure. But it was still on the high side. It seemed inconceivable how the government could accede to such a humongous amount given the parlous state of the national economy.

Osifo got the reading right. No new national minimum wage was pronounced on the May Day. But President Tinubu, apparently dissatisfied with the inconclusiveness of the negotiations by the tripartite committee, promised workers better working and living conditions buoyed by fair wage.

“This shall be resolved soon and I assure you that your days of worrying are over. Indeed the government is open to the committee’s suggestion of not just a minimum wage but a living wage”, he assured workers on May Day.

Even with the assurances from the president, negotiations failed to resume until organised labour went on industrial action last week paralysing activities with heavy losses to the national economy. Negotiations resumed following the suspension of the strike action for five days. Organised labour returned to the negotiation table with a minimum wage demand of N494,000. The government considers this still unrealistic and unsustainable. The president’s task to the Minister of Finance, Wale Edun to furnish him with the cost implications of the new minimum wage has been complied with amidst speculations.

For now, it remains a matter of conjecture what the final outcome of the negotiations will be. But one thing that seems clear is that with the intervention of the president, some consensus will soon be reached irrespective of whether it properly aligns with the inflationary trend triggered off by government policies.

Yes, N494,000 and the higher figures earlier demanded as minimum wage are unrealistic and unsustainable. The government and the private sector cannot possibly afford to pay such without dire consequences. But as unrealistic and unsustainable as the figure appear, they illustrate most poignantly the contradiction in the inability of the government to factor in the material conditions of our people as they went about floating inflation influencing policies.

It was obvious from all economic and social indices that the economy was not strong enough to absorb the dislocations bound to arise from those liberalization policies. Not only is the populace contending with low per capita income, the poverty rate is so high that the policies will end up reducing the people to the poorest of the poor. Incremental and guarded responses would have made better economic sense.

Organised labour seeks high minimum wage to enable workers cope with the hyperinflation unleashed by these policy measures. They have a point. But high minimum wage could also turn out counterproductive. It has the prospects of spiralling another round of inflation that could bring the economy on its knees.

The contradiction arose first, from the hyperinflationary trend unleashed by the removal of fuel subsidy and the floating of the national currency. To cope with escalating prices of general goods and services, labour mounted pressure on the government to grant workers high salaries and allowances.

If the government accedes to the high wage demand, it could in turn unleash another round of inflation with consequences more devastating than what we currently experience. That is the uncanny dialectics at play.

Even as workers deserve a better/living wage, extreme caution should be exercised to ensure another round of inflation is not about to be triggered off by whatever is finally agreed as the new national minimum wage. It is for this reason that suggestions have been made that it would have made better sense for organised labour to demand for a reduction in the price of petrol and some form of control on the value of the Naira in the foreign exchange market.

Such measures will bring down inflation, shore up real income. They also promise more beneficial to a greater majority of the citizenry than wage increases that target only those in gainful employment.

Organised labour also embarked on the suspended strike to press home their demand for the reduction of the cost of electricity following government’s elimination of subsidy for categories of consumers in that sector. The government had a few months back, raised the unit price of electricity for categories of consumers by over 250 per cent.

Apart from this figure being very prohibitive and unaffordable, the lot of consumers is compounded by the unavailability of pre-paid meters. Households without pre-paid metres in the so-called Band A areas are now made to pay estimated bills of N185,000 per month. This is as unrealistic as it is prohibitive. Matters are compounded by the inability of the Discos to make pre-paid metres available to customer willing to pay for them.

As the government considers a minimum wage that will not jolt the system further, it has to be more circumspect rolling out policies that will further erode the purchasing power of the ordinary people. The elimination of subsidy on electricity is one of such policies that has to be tinkered with. Else, it will make nonsense of whatever is finally approved as the national minimum wage with no end to the cycle of inflation already in active motion.

June 10, 2024
That LGs may breathe

There appears a renewed momentum to get the 774 local governments in the country begin to live up to their constitutional functions. President Bola Tinubu, the Senate and the Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi had within the last two weeks or so, shown inclinations to that desirable direction.

The president had at a national discourse on Nigeria’s security challenges and good governance, established a nexus between the worsening insecurity and the poor state of governance at the local government levels across the country.

He noted that the degradation and incapacitation of the local government system contributed greatly to our inability to address the prevailing national security threat even as the local governments stand as first line defenders against insecurity on account of their closeness to the people.

Fagbemi in his contribution at the occasion would rather want the State Independent Electoral Commissions SIECs scrapped for constituting the main impediment to the development of the local government system.

For him, the most prevalent form of abuse is the use of the SIECs to conduct sham elections and governors’ preference to appoint caretaker committees. The elimination of the SIECs and transfer of their powers to the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, he contended, would foster true democracy at the local government levels.

Senate intervention came through a resolution asking president Tinubu to convene a national dialogue with state governors, state legislators, local government officials and relevant interest groups to deliberate on full autonomy for the local governments.

But the federal government has moved beyond rhetoric. It instituted a suit at the Supreme Court to compel state governors grant full autonomy to the local governments. In that suit, the government is asking the apex court to grant “an order prohibiting the state governors from unilateral, arbitrary and unlawful dissolution of democratically elected local government leaders for local governments”.

It is also asking the court to make an order expressly stating that the funds standing to the credit of the local governments from the Federation Account should be paid directly to the local governments rather than through the state governments.

The court is equally being prayed for an “injunction restraining the governors, their agents and privies from receiving, spending or tampering with funds released from the Federation Account for the benefit of the local governments when no democratically elected local government system is put in place in the states”.

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Encapsulated in all these prayers are the key challenges militating against the effective functioning of the local government administration in the country. If the apex court (being a policy court) grants all the prayers, most of the challenges standing in the way to the autonomy and financial independence of the local government administration would have been sorted out. Then, we shall witness a local government system that discharges on its statutory mandate.

But it remains a moot issue whether the reliefs sort by the federal government are better approximated through court action or the instrumentality of constitutional amendment. So, it is not just enough for the senate to pass a resolution requesting the president to convoke a national dialogue to discuss the local government autonomy question.

Our political space is neither lacking in such conversations nor is the National Assembly handicapped in initiating the necessary constitutional amendments to plug loopholes in the extant constitution. Pious statements, resolutions and pontifications are inherently ineffective in addressing the more fundamental challenges to the local government administration that arise from gaps in sections of the constitution.

The last National Assembly did a lot of work to get the contentious sections of the constitution amended to enhance the financial and administrative autonomy of the local governments. But that effort was sabotaged by some state governors goading their state houses of assembly. It remained a sad commentary that when the bill for the proposed amendments was transmitted by the last National Assembly for the concurrence of the state assemblies, they voted against it.

Part of the bills voted against by the state assemblies were ones seeking financial and administrative autonomy for the local governments, the abrogation of the state-local government joint accounts and the establishment of the local governments as the third tier of government.

Perhaps frustrated by the inability of the national and state assemblies to forge a common front on this vital constitutional change, the federal government had to approach the apex court to seek judicial remedy. Though it would appear a desperate approach to a malignant challenge, the move by the federal government resonates with the people.

This is especially so given the suspicion that many of the state assemblies that are rubber stamping for the state governors may still frustrate any piece of legislation that seeks to curtail their unbridled hegemony and control over local government funds.

The issues for which the government approached the court are at the root of the inability of the local governments to discharge their statutory duties in the areas of sanitation, market control and development and local road construction among others.

They hinge on the funds accruing to the local governments from the Federation Account paid into the state-local governments’ joint accounts. The reality is that much of the funds allocated for the development of the local councils are hijacked by state governors and diverted.

Incidentally, that is the tier of government closest to the people. It is also the barometer for gauging the temperament of the people; effects of government’s policies, programmes. The boundaries of all the 774 local governments coincide with the boundaries of the country.

By extrapolation, when you develop all the local governments, no part of the country will be left underdeveloped. Even the seemingly advantaged state capitals and the federal capital territory fall within one local government council or the other.

That illustrates the incalculable harm the country is into disallowing effective governance at that level. It also illustrates the incongruity in allowing governors regale in the hijack of funds meant for the local governments through various guises. It is inconceivable that we can make reasonable progress when development at that level is stalled through deliberate subterfuge to disallow true democracy from germinating and flourishing at that level of governance.

There is merit in any arrangement that allows funds meant for the local councils to get to them directly. The preference for caretaker committees in place of democratically elected persons at the local governments should not be allowed to continue.

Not only do governors refuse to conduct elections when the terms of incumbents expire, they connive with their assemblies to amend laws to allow them dissolve democratically elected governments at will. When they find time to conduct elections through the SIECs, it is more of a selection process. Only those approved by the ruling party win such election.

Fagbemi wants SIECs disbanded and their functions transferred to INEC. Sadly, INEC has not even fared better within its current sphere of functions. With the way it has acquitted itself, allegations of federal interference in local government elections may also creep in.

The challenge is not as much with the institutions created to handle certain functions as with the disposition and willingness of the operators to play by the rules. Our democracy is constrained more by the dispositions, attitudes and orientations of the people than the systems we operate. Perhaps, the Supreme Court will be visionary and patriotic enough to resolve this constitutional lacuna and allow the local governments breathe.

June 3, 2024
What’s wrong with tribe or native?

For one, I am blasé about whether we continue with the old or new anthem. For sentiment, I vote the old. Maybe because it was the anthem of my childhood. The lyrics lilted my natal tongue, a hymn of beginning. Or maybe it is because of the majesty of its rhythm, the haunting, almost ecclesiastical simplicity of its diction and because it beats the other anthem in its philosophical range and appeal. It is more solemn, more visceral in content.

Those who oppose it for colonial reasons may have their point. They are entitled to their nationalist, may I say nativist, embers. Then they should campaign to eject Nigeria as a name, English as a language, eagle as a national symbol, abolish Ikoyi, rename River Niger, etc. It will never end.

If you pooh-pooh the anthem as a colonial legacy, why should you accept the other anthem of 1978 that came from the soldier. We loath both as anachronistic and cynical. Why incinerate the messenger if the message is a balm? The objection to the words native or tribe come from lack of understanding of the dynamics, nuances and range of language, or from a ferocious insistence on being contrarian. Some say it’s a racist trope, the white man’s habitual sneezing at our inferior ways. A tribe often has chiefs, chants, rituals, et al. Don’t we? Are we afraid of who we are? Is the English bard superior to the Yoruba ewi? A tribe is often with a language, don’t we have Itsekiri, Gwari, Bini, Igbo, Fulani, et al. Does that make us inferior? No. If the white man says we are inferior because we have chiefs and palaces, then they should look to Buckingham Palace for an answer. For their sirs, we have chiefs. If we accept that logic, it is not the white man we should blame but our own submission to their self-acclamation of superiority.

If they use the word to mean we are backward, it is their business. We didn’t, and I don’t, sing it with a sense of an inferior. A tribe is a group, tied together by a community of language, accent, ethos, culture and history. If the Yoruba have it, they are a tribe. The English have it. It is what Michel Foucault calls the rhetoric of discourse. Some people use certain phrases to pursue agenda of superiority. Foucault also asked a question, what is an author? And another of their own, Roland Barthes, proclaimed the death of an author. The premise was that once a thing is written, it is no longer the possession of the writer. The readers take authority from the author. Hence the Bible was used to authorize slavery and also to liberate slaves. Ditto apartheid. Ask Bishop Tutu. The language was redeemed by the readers. Literary theorists call it hermeneutics, or reader-response theory. Some say everyone is a text.

If we deny we are a tribe, it is because of inferiority complex, or colonial mentality. We want to be described as ethnic so we can appear civilized. Even the whites don’t even use the word ethnic for themselves. It is their choice. The white may not call themselves tribes, but they call the Indian aborigines native Americans. The Indians call themselves tribes with pride. They sing their songs and wiggle to their beats and rhythms with gusto. It does not take away from their pride or authenticity. They do not want the white man to inferiorise them with contemptuous rhetoric so they abandon their own lives. I met a white American lady in 1991 who objected to calling the Indians native Americans. She said she, too, was a native American because that was her country. Many blacks have appropriated the word nigger as a term of endearment among themselves.

Our people abandoned our local names to bear Ambrose or Rose, to sound like them. We changed to Oluwadare, Usman and Chinyere. Is that inferior? No, sir. Hence Derek Walcott wrote, “I met history, but it didn’t recognise me.” We were forced to canonise their suits with ties and jackets that perspire under the African sun. But we have the elegance of our costumes and caps with their salubrious virtues that let in the genial air. I remember Aime Cesaire’s poem that complains about a suffocating suit. But it is not about the suit, it is about whether you wear it because it enhances your aesthetic profile, or because it is the white man’s. After all, the most common photos of the poet is Cesaire in the white man’s suit. Soyinka once warned about the tiger shouting its “tigritude.”

We make ourselves colonial slaves by fighting against the word native or tribe because the white man said so. To be a native is to be authentic. These days followers of Trump call themselves nativist because they love white over immigrants. If you don’t want to be native, it is because you want to be modern, ride cars, live in mansions of western architecture with western carpets and air-conditioners, speak in the American or British accent, and look askance at your own village song or dance or their masquerades.

It’s a matter of choice. You can make the new anthem native to your heart if you wish, or alien if you choose. I am writing this on a laptop. But I use it to assert my native pride. It is not about being a white man’s gadget. It is whether it suits us as an anthem. Many who resent it have not embarked on any textual analysis. They fished for native and tribe, and they holler and say it is from Tinubu, so it is wrong. That is juvenile.

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Yet, many of us love chieftaincy titles, and love to bow to our kings. We don’t want to be called tribes or native. It is either ignorance or hypocrisy. On the gender part, I concede that the word “man” can change to “one,” and that will embrace both man and woman.

In one of the best novels published this year so far, Percival Everett recasts one of the iconic novels of the American canon. He was following Edward Said thesis that we should feel free to write against the canon. Everett has done it to Jim he calls James in his own version of the novel, James. It reworks Huckleberry Finn, a novel in which Mark Twain tells the story of a white boy and an older slave in a picaresque tale across America. Twain makes Jim the slave a passive character. Everett makes Jim his father and deliverer, casting him in dignity. He took back the story. He also gives him utterance as a proud man. Achebe employs the English language in Things Fall Apart to reply Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Since we have changed to “Nigeria we hail thee,” I embrace it. As I said on TVC Breakfast show, it does not change us if we do not want to change ourselves. After all, the first anthem did not neutralise a civil war and we sang the second anthem from Ali Must Go into the storm of June 12. Just as Paul said of circumcision in the Bible, “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails, but faith…” The real question is, do we have faith in our country? The anthem can inspire us if we want, and derail us if we make it so. It is like changing a shirt. It can be cosmetic, or it can impress a date.

June 3, 2024