The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

For Okuama to return

The story of the poor and vanishing Okuama people will not leave our radar. It is because we are dealing with two sets of injustices. One is against the 17 soldiers who died, whatever their infractions in the local politics. The president and commander in chief has immortalized them with national honours and their families secured guarantees of federal government care, scholarships and provision.

The second are the suffering innocents in Okuama village. We cannot believe that the mothers, old women, and children were part of the conspiracy to kill the soldiers. I therefore align with the Governor when he set up a committee to resettle people in an IDP camp as succour for the innocents. Governor of Delta State, Rt. Hon. Sherrif Oborevwori said of the army: “They have been very supportive and they have kept to their promise that innocent people will not be victimised. I want to assure the people of Okuama there is no point running away from your community.” He also said President Bola Tinubu cares for the innocents.

The matter is a delicate one, especially because we are dealing with a grieving army. The army, though, has to get to the bottom of a fact that troubles me. Who brought down the village? Every building, hut, school, including what looks like a palace in their humble terms, was razed down. That was army revenge? But there is no room for that in a democracy or even civilized community. The army denied this in spite of the videos.

They have not explained to us who did it and why. Justice never succeeds as revenge. To show that there was method to the rage, why did they leave the only church building unhurt. It was the only innocent in the village. They did not touch the anointed. They were ready to hurt the hapless people, but they did not want the trouble of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). It should concern CAN. But CAN crawls with timid souls. The poor people of Okuama are now left to scramble for their God.

They have crude oil that eludes them, so they have no silver or gold for CAN. And no cathedral magnificence. Otherwise, CAN would whimper. But their lips are clasped. Whoever razed the village was afraid of the holy of holies. But they wanted the people to belt out psalms and battle demons, like Elijah, in forests of a thousand demons.

Whoever committed the bonfires did not want to murder the cathedral, apologies to T.S. Eliot. We don’t know if there was a murder in the cathedral. Now who will worship in the church? Stones, clay splinters, remnant smokes? Even the area of dispute is less than a hundred yards.

Read Also: Urhobo forum to Delta govt, others: establish camps for Okuama IDPs

There was also the arrest of the King of Ewu Kingdom. If he had a hand in the murders, this essayist is not about to plead for any monarch. But the military did not wrestle with Gumi even though he nestled with militants.

Good thing that the President intervened on the pleas of the Governor and other concerned persons, according to sources.

Okuama, according to someone in the region, is smaller than its name. It reminds one of Abraham Lincoln’s comment on sighting Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that tore apart American conscience during the Civil War. The 16th president quipped, “Are you the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war?” There is also the proverb about a dog being killed because of its bad name.

What is important for all the longsuffering villagers is for them to resettle and return to their boring lives. I believe that the committee, headed by Abraham Ogbodo, former editor of The Guardian newspaper and one of the vocal advocates for peace in the village, is the beginning of the way home. Governor Oborevwori’s quiet, mature and methodical approach is a better route to peace and justice, rather than catcalls from some quarters for him to show bad temper. As he said, the area was peaceful until recently.

“I have come to see how the innocent people of this community can be reintegrated with the cooperation of the military,” said the Governor when he paid a visit.

April 29, 2024
Unbundling the unbundled Discos

The unbundling of the former National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) followed the signing into law by former President Obasanjo of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act which led to the formation of the Power Holding Company Of Nigeria (PHCN).

By that Act, NEPA was broken into 18 companies- six Generating Companies, one Transmission Company and eleven Distribution Companies with each issued operating licences. But the actual privatisation of PCHN was consummated by former President Jonathan in 2013 when he handed over the subsidiary companies that made up PHCN to the new core investors.

Between the time Obasanjo signed the Act and the actual handover of the companies to the new investors, the word ‘Unbundling’ gained so much prominence within the power sector that it was viewed as an elixir for all that was wrong with electricity generation, supply and distribution in the country.

The enthusiasm was so high that it was generally thought that with privatisation, the challenges of epileptic and unreliable power supply that had virtually stifled national development would soon take the back seat. That was the level of public confidence reposed on privatisation in that sector.

But 10 years thereon, that prospect has turned down a pipe dream as no significant improvement has since been recorded in that critical sector of the national economy. Rather, it has been more of business as usual raising questions on the appropriateness of the implementation and execution of the exercise.

Time without number have governments after governments promised substantial improvement in power generation and distribution since the unbundling of the power sector, but all these have failed to materialise. Rather, we are regularly confronted by frequent collapse of the national grip. With regular breakdown of the national grid, it remains to be seen how the distribution companies assailed by debilitating operational hiccups will be able to make the required improvement in power supply.

Not only has the country not gone beyond 4,000mw of electricity generation, a far cry from the overall electricity needs of the country, the distribution of the much generated has remained largely unsatisfactory leading to the exit of multinational companies due to inclement investment climate. It is a measure of the inadequacies of the power privatisation process that over these years, electricity supply and distribution have not really gone beyond the pre-privatisation era.

It was a matter of time for the government to take another look at the entire exercise if the objectives of the unbundling exercise are to be realised. So when last month, the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu threatened severe consequences against power distribution companies (Discos) for wilful non-performance, it was obvious the government was about to do something about the shortcomings of the unbundling process.

Read Also: Govt to sell Abuja, Ibadan, Benin, Kaduna, Kano DisCos

That threat was made good last week when he announced plans to unbundle power distribution companies Discos along state lines due to their large sizes; the inefficiency and ineffectiveness these engender. Additionally, the government directed the sale of Discos that have been taken over by banks or the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria AMCON within the next three months. Through the sales, the government intends to ensure that the buyers are technical manpower operators with good reputation in utility management.

Four of the Discos are under the management of the banks for their inability to pay the loans with which they acquired the companies, while the remaining one was taken over by AMCON. The Abuja Disco is under the management of the United Bank of Africa UBA while Fidelity Bank manages the Benin Disco, Kaduna Disco and Kano Disco. The Ibadan Disco is under AMCON management.

Apart from the sale of the five Discos, the government intends to go further down the line to licence smaller Discos in areas of operation not fully covered by the existing ones.

“We will start seeing regulations about franchising. The fact that you are Eko Disco doesn’t mean that you cannot have smaller Discos that are ready to invest in your unserved communities. So we are looking at franchising”, Adelabu further explained.

It is unclear whether the unbundling along state lines would be carried out before the proposed sale of the five Discos in the next three months. Also not stated is if the franchising the government plans for areas not covered by the current Discos will be done before the unbundling along state lines and sale of the itemised ones.

Whatever the case, it is important that the government takes a holistic and more enduring perspective of its plans for effective electricity generation and distribution in the country. Adequate safeguards should be made to guard against the mistakes of the past.

Before selling off the ailing Discos, the government must be clear with its plans on unbundling along state lines and franchising within the uncovered areas. This will entail proper delineation of the spheres of coverage of the Discos being unbundled along state lines vis-a-vis the areas that will be franchised.

Through this, the government will checkmate the clash of interest that may arise if the Discos are hurriedly sold off without earmarking the areas for franchising. The case of the 188-megawatt Geometric Power plant in Aba, Abia state which was commissioned last February should be instructive.

The altercation that ensued on the alleged roles of some official of government agencies and the owners of the Enugu Disco that worked against the quick realisation of the project underscores the imperative for clarity on the spheres of operation of all power distributors. Such gaps should not be allowed in the new endeavour.

With clarity on the spheres of coverage of the Discos that will emerge from the unbundling, prospective bidders will not be left in doubt as to what they are actually paying for. Then, the unbundled Discos including the ones that will be franchised can now be put up for sale. The sale of the five Discos under receivership must also follow the same path of unbundling and franchising.

Overall, the measures earmarked by the government to ensure efficiency in the power sector are high-minded. It is clear from the woeful performances of the Discos that the privatisation of the power sector failed to deliver on its mandate. Both in terms of its execution and implementation, the privatisation process fell short of its laudable objectives.

Not only are the buyers of the privatised firms contending with lack of relevant expertise to run utility firms, many of them did not have the required financial capacity to pay for the power companies. Faced with debilitating financial hiccups, the new investors failed to keep to their promise of injecting funds into the project to enhance their distribution network. It remains to be conjectured how such investments will be possible when the investors took quick resort to bank loans.

They have since found it difficult to pay back the loans given the long time it takes for investments in that sector to mature and make returns to the owners. Nothing bears out this failure than the take-over of the management of the five Discos by the banks and AMCON.

But it is neither the business of the banks nor that of AMCON to run power business they lack the requisite expertise. Even then, with the impending recapitalisation of the banks that will put serious stress on their capital base, the fate of the Discos under their management would rather worsen. This will entail dire consequences for the power sector.

It is good a thing the Discos are being rescued through the measures listed by the government. In doing this, the Nigerian factor must be avoided like a plague. It remains a sad commentary that investors without the requisite expertise and financial capacity in the management of such a critical sector were allowed to buy off the privatised companies.

What seems obvious from all this is that some other considerations than merit and capacity influenced the decisions of those that superintended over the sales. This is the time to correct all that. It is not another opportunity for those in power to now bring in their favoured ones and cronies.

But the Discos are not the only challenge in the electricity supply and distribution chain. Equal attention should be accorded to power generation and supply. The government must upscale very substantially, the amount of megawatts of electricity generated and supplied to meet the country’s electricity needs. The partial removal of subsidy on electricity for those branded as Band ‘A’ should free resources for the completion of the power plants envisaged to give a quantum leap to power generation.

April 29, 2024
Deaths in hotels: The soldiers’ angle

It is a good thing the Nigerian Army promptly responded to the alleged torture to death of a hotel manager, Achimugu Etubi, in Umuahia, Abia State, by some of its personnel following the drowning of an Air Force cadet, Emmanuel Onyemereche, in a swimming pool within the hotel premises.

The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Taoreed Lagbaja, ordered full investigations with a pledge to bring any of its personnel found culpable of wrongdoing in the incident to face appropriate legal sanctions. And to dispel insinuations of possible agency cover-up, Lagbaja promised to make the findings of the probe public. This should be re-assuring given the sensitivity and intense public interest the matter has since generated.

But the probe should not be limited to this singular incident. Of equal weight was another torture to death a week earlier in Imo State where another staff of a guest house in Umulogho, Obowu Local Government Area, Ebuka Udemba, was sent to his early grave after being locked-up in the generator room for allegedly stealing the phone of an army officer.

The hotel owner, the army personnel and another individual were fingered in the torture that led to Ebuka’s death. A common thread runs through the two incidents. Both involved the death of civilians after alleged torture in the hands of personnel of the Nigerian Army.

Coincidentally, the incidents happened in two Southeast sister states of Imo and Abia. As a matter of fact, the Obowu Local Government Area of Imo State shares common boundary with Umuahia, the Abia State capital.

Is there anything in this association or the temperament of the personnel of the Nigerian Army in that zone that predisposes them to easy resort to the torture of civilians? Why the uncanny coincidence in the circumstances leading to the death of the two hotel workers?

These questions arise because of what appears as crass mismanagement of the two incidents leading to avoidable loss of human lives. Or is it a measure of the value we now attach to human lives? In verity, the deaths were clearly avoidable. Why those who tortured the hotel workers resorted to self-help remains confounding. It also puzzles what remedies they sought to procure by their acts of indiscretion that have now aggravated matters that should ordinarily lend themselves to resolution through due process.

What were the issues? The account of the owner of the Umuahia hotel, Steve Ihedigbo, will be relied upon in the case of Etubi’s torture and subsequent death.

According to him, he was alerted around 6.45 pm on the fateful day that someone was missing around the pool side. When he arrived at the hotel and went to the pool side, he was told the cadet did not jump into the swimming pool. “They were going outside to check whether he went outside or inside the toilet. Up till 8pm, he was not found but I was told that they started looking for him since 5pm”.

At about 9pm, policemen were there and everybody was searching for him. The fire service was called and they brought a vehicle and ladder. The cadet’s father also came and told me that his son should be released and I told him I didn’t understand what was going on. The father told me that his son’s colleague told him that his son did not swim. We called three divers who went into the pool and found him and brought him out, he recounted.

Ihedigbo said when he was brought out, everybody was surprised because he did not look like a drowned person as no water was coming out of his mouth or nose. The police came the next day and arrested the manager and three other staff for questioning but later released them on bail.

But things turned awry when some army personnel stormed the hotel the next day, insisting they wanted to interrogate the staff. The manager later went to the army base at the Agricultural Development Project ADP where she was interrogated till late in the evening and released with an instruction to bring three other staff unfailingly by 8am the next day.

They complied with the order and after interrogation, Ihedigbo said an order was given for them to be beaten. They concentrated on Etubi, beating him to a pulp. He said they were hitting him on the neck and the head and when he died, they put him in a tricycle together with the other staff and took them to the hospital where he was confirmed dead.

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He was piqued that the other cadet who accompanied Onyemereche to the hotel that ordinarily should be the prime suspect, was among those who tortured and beat up his staff. He has therefore accused the army personnel from the ADP base, Umuahia, of torturing his manager to death. That is the Abia incident.

The one that happened in Imo is another account of similar torture of a hotel worker for allegedly stealing a phone belonging to an army officer who visited the place for relaxation. The state police command said “Ebuka Udemba was tortured and locked up inside the generator room by the owner of the hotel and two others at large, where he suffocated to death on the allegation that he stole a customer’s handset.” The police said the hotel owner has provided information that will lead to the arrest of the other two suspects.

A community source corroborated this narrative. The source said those who tortured Ebuka were the hotel owner, the soldier whose phone was allegedly stolen and one other individual. “They mercilessly beat up the 25-year old boy and locked him up in the generator house and he died there,” he lamented.

The hotel owner is in the custody of the police. But the whereabouts of the soldier and the third suspect that took part in the torture are not of public knowledge. Even then, the police have not been forthcoming in disclosing the identity of the soldier whose phone was allegedly stolen and who actively participated in the torture. They only spoke of two other suspects.

This has given rise to apprehension that the soldier may get away with his illegal action if the Army high command does not intervene to bring him to justice. That is why the scope of investigations ordered by Lagbaja should be expanded to include the equally inhuman and callous torturing and locking up of Ebuka in a generator house, only for him to be suffocated. That treatment should ordinarily offend public sensibilities.

The two incidents expose all that is bad in the temperament of military personnel in handling disputes or security issues involving the civilian population. For a country that has been under uninterrupted civil rule more than 25 years, our military should have been sufficiently tamed to imbibe and uphold the culture of democratic engagement. Sadly, events of the two incidents speak to the contrary. Not even in the military era was our collective psyche assailed in this callous manner.

The issues relate to alleged death in a swimming pool of an Air Force cadet and stealing of a telephone handset belonging to a soldier which our laws have copious provisions for their resolution. Even as the death of the cadet in that suspicious circumstance assails public sensibilities , its handle requires diligent investigation to get at the root of what actually transpired.

Neither mob action nor the resort to self-help by some personnel of the Nigerian army holds the key to their resolution. The police in liaison with the relevant military authorities are in a better stead to investigate the matter and fish out the culprits to face the raw teeth of the law.

The army high command can reverse the resort to jungle justice by its personnel through the firm and decisive manner it brings to book its officers and men found culpable in these avoidable deaths.

April 22, 2024
Age of discontent

American writer Edith Wharton jolted her generation with her eighth novel, The Age of Innocence. The novel may bear resonance today as defiled souls wear cassocks of innocence. The American novelist tracks a society in transition, where old and new collide. The writer laments the delusion of a man who despises the old era that will not leave and the new one that winks and beckons. The past does not work but the future does not come. Since the society despaired between plunder and promise, Wharton should have called her story, The Age of Discontent.

Today we are seeing some of them. Those who do not want the Lagos-Calabar Highway because they want to flip it to Calabar-Lagos Highway. Those who want the naira back on its back like a dying cockroach. Who want subsidy back. Who want the Central Bank outside the market. Hoarders who keep food from kitchens. Shylocks who have turned the exchange rate into a bogeyman. Paymasters of terror who make the society too giddy to govern.

This is nothing new in moments of change. Okonkwo committed suicide in Umuofia. Gorbachev railed into a storm with Glasnost and Perestroika in the Soviet Union. Catholics fell out of grace after the Glorious Revolution in England. Napoleon exploited the scene as the Ancient Regime fled the French Revolution. Warrant chiefs became the white man’s favorite in Igboland as colonialism subdued a republican ethos.

Some of such characters are colourful in their conservative brio. Okonkwo hanged because the new order kept hanging on. James II fell from power to his sister Mary and William of Orange because he loved his own version of Christianity. Soyinka’s Elesin Oba morphed into epicurean indulgence. These have character. They are authentic. Perhaps that’s why Okonkwo is more popular than Ezeulu, a realistic character, in Arrow of God, a better accomplished book than Things Fall Apart.

Characters like Okonkwo and Elesin Oba know what they want. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan declares, “All good to me is lost.” Or the hawk in Ted Hughes’ poem, Hawk Roosting who snorts, “I kill where I please because it is all mine/ there is no sophistry in my body.”

The other set are those who are hypocrites about change. They pretend they want a better society, and they recoil when they see a light in the tunnel. They are not Ted Hughes’ hawk. They are chameleons. They blend with the shrubbery of the times.

There are two such people. The first are the guys who are bellyaching over the Lagos-Calabar Highway. They are flailing because it is a good thing. They are afraid they misjudged the president. Or they are scared what they feared is about to come to pass. They are afraid of the whispering prophecy in their hearts during the campaigns., that Tinubu is a better breed than their candidate. Like Job, their fear has come upon them. But they would not admit in public. It is called the fear of gratitude. As Greek historian Tacitus writes, “gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.”

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They may have to live with the project as a fait accompli. Get ready for a long ride.

But the man who epitomizes the spirit is former Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir El Rufai, who wanted attention to himself. He paid a visit to the Borno State Governor, and he uttered a phrase of adulation. He said Zulum is the best governor in Nigeria. For all the gifts of the Borno chief executive, and he deserves all the praises he gets, the former Kaduna helmsman was not interested in praising him. He was weaponizing eulogy as revenge. He wanted his foes and critics in the other camp of his own camp to hear his words and grieve for undermining them. But more potently, he did not know that he was throwing dirt at himself. Some would say, from the recent revelations about financial dealings on his watch, that he did not want attention on his dark profile. He presented a sunny exterior for another chief executive so we can forget about his own sins.

He also said that fuel subsidy is back, and for ostensible authenticity, he gave a figure: eight trillion naira. He is borrowing from the Nazi propagandist Goebbels. He was asked a question, though, by petroleum minister of state, Heineken Lokpobri. Where is your proof? The little man from Kaduna has not said little in reply. He has said nothing.

The man is now assailed with “proof crises,” but he is not proof from any of them. In the first proof crisis, he has been asked to explain how he spent the state funds. He left a debt of $587 million and N85 billion for his friend and successor Governor Uba Sani. He said it was to renew urban Kaduna. He drew all the money in 2021. Yet when Governor Sani climbed the saddle, contractors came with a certificate to claim N115 billion for work not done. A month before leaving office, El Rufai took a loan of N20 billion and tied it to the Internally Generated Revenue. He took a $26 million loan to change agriculture, but no one is seeing evidence. He secured a moratorium on all these loans so he did not have to pay until he left office. There is more.

I wrote a magazine piece on it, and sent questions for him to answer. The man kept mum. Now, he has the gumption to cry over fuel subsidy, a cry of wolf. The State House of Assembly has instituted a probe into his times, and he has not said a word about how and why he tinkered with the tax payer’s money?

When proof is brought before him, he says nothing. When he says something that needs proof, he also says nothing. For a man of prattle, he has exercised an embarrassed restraint. He is acting like a crocodile with a locked jaw. He prowls but cannot growl, so he cannot bite.

All he wanted to do with the fuel subsidy issue is stir discontent in the land. He wanted to wake up the Tinubu enemies who have gradually receded into a grumble or a silence of agony. At best, they stutter like Atiku, who should be facing FCT Minister Nyeson Wike, who has clobbered him twice now. First, in the presidential poll; Second, in securing the acting chairman Umar Damagun.

When President Tinubu declared that fuel subsidy was gone, what did he do with the money? He spent it on the states. For the first time, the monthly allocations have leapt to trillions of naira. It has continued. If he stopped, we might have said the money was returned to pay subsidy. The month of march, for instance, had N1.1 trillion distributed among states and federal government.

Men like El Rufai should learn to live in a republic of facts, not speculation. More seriously, not a democracy of mischief. President Tinubu has been saying it for those who want to listen that corruption is fighting back. He was referring partly to the subsidy vermin who fed fat in the past. It makes the lazy rich drone. Abebe Selassie, director of IMF African Department echoed this point. Hear him: ““And the reason why we counsel against such generalized subsidies is very simple. It tends to be highly regressive, meaning the benefits of such fuel subsidies tend to accrue to the rich and not to the poor people.”

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) has said that there is no such thing as return of subsidy. Those who want to believe it are wondering why we do not have the queues and why we have fuel. These are the people that the man from Kaduna want to give voice. If El Rufai is decomposing into a rage and discontent, he has no right to stir the polity with a lie. He may be eyeing 2027, but he has questions to answer about 2015 to 2023. He should leave NNPC alone.

April 22, 2024
Is she an Abiola?

Many call her Abiola’s wife, but even members of the Abiola clan have said they don’t know Modupe Onitiri. The media have been too hasty to designate her as the widow of M.K.O. Abiola. Not enough investigative diligence. When did she marry Abiola. She claims to have a child for him. that may be true. But did she marry him, or was she, like one of the 700 concubines of King Solomon? I am reporting that the last time Abiola saw her was when he last appeared in Court in the throes of the June 12 crisis. She was pregnant then, and a source tells me that Abiola showed concern from a distance because Abacha’s soldiers cordoned him off. He even asked one of his aides to put a careful eye on her. Did that make her a wife or a prospective wife? She was even reported to have sent message to Abiola to read Psalm 51 because she believed Abiola was undergoing trials because of his sins. That psalm is popular for sinners who want God’s forgiveness like David. So, June 12 was a sin? How would she characterize her efforts to subvert the democracy that Abiola shed his blood for?

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She has turned from a holy prayer warrior to a sinner of the same offence. This presents her as a schizophrenic. She once fought against democracy before she wanted to subvert it. She is not legitimate enough to be called an Abiola. If she married Abiola, we have a right to know. Until that is proven, it is illegal to call herself an Abiola. But Kudirat we knew. She was not only legitimate as a wife, her bona fides for democracy stand high in the waves of Nigerian struggle for human equality. She fought, she defied, she entered the streets, twitted power, advanced the position of her husband, and paid the ultimate price.

That is not the same with Onitiri, who birthed a nation and fled it. It is like giving birth to a child and abandoning it in the hospital. With her feet, she delegitimised what came out of her womb. How can anything about her bear the name of authenticity? She may have given birth to an Abiola, but that did not confer on her the last name. The glory belongs only to his child.

April 22, 2024
A five-star Act

When the very rich appear in public, it is their aura, not aroma, that proclaims them. Not the cars, not the clothes, not the swagger, not the rustle of cash in their pockets.

In their clothing, they are fine without finery. They walk with dignity shorn of thumping their feet like public desperadoes. They speak rather than bawl. Smile rather than guffaw. Their cars glide rather than rumble. Their wealth imbues them with proud humility. They don’t seek attention. They don’t flock to people. Rather, they parry attention for being too much.

It is not that they don’t have vanity. Their earnings, fame and status have smothered their rights to show off. Class and status ooze rather than explode around them. They glow in their own orbits, an immanent glory.

Nigeria’s top man of money, Aliko Dangote, is such a man. But what sets him apart in this season is his act of charity in a time of scarcity. When the federal government asked that palliatives go to the poor, there was reluctance from the ornate class. Even many governors had to be jolted out of their lack of charity. But the soft-spoken billionaire evinced a million megawatts of love. He was going to distribute a million bags of rice to Nigerians in the 774 local government areas of the country. Target: a million poor families.

With his Aliko Dangote Foundation, he set out on a mission to help. In Kano, he distributed about a hundred thousand 10 kilograms bags of rice.

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In Lagos, beside the BOS of Lagos, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, he let go 80,000 bags of rice. His foundation collaborated with the infrastructure of the government. From Ekiti to Zamfara, many households eat because he refused to dine alone in his halo of plenty. Not the Lazarus and rich man scenario. No ulcerous sore oozed under a table of majesty dropping crumbs from a spread where peacocks fed fat and drank in between burps of flatulence.

Sometimes we distinguish charity and philanthropy, but Dangote’s act is charity within philanthropy, if we define charity as an impulse and philanthropy as corporate. We always imagine the rich in their garish splendour, in fables of car, food, wine, clothes, private jets, et al.

But a wealthy man who does not think of the society is what in my childhood days in Warri we called “money miss road.” In his novel, The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James describes rich people as those who have enough money to “meet the requirements of their imagination.” Why is it that the federal government revealed that we have a lot of idle billions in Nigerian banks? Especially in dollars. Yet the naira was plummeting and the rich were gloating.

It is where capitalism lost its conscience. A capitalism that disdains the poor is suicidal. It is lumbering towards a storm. Droplets of poison drip into its golden bowl. It was its rabid hour that gave birth to Karl Marx and the Russian revolutions in early part of the 20th century. It was the failure of socialism to recalibrate itself in the world of ideas that allowed capitalism to refresh itself by borrowing from socialism. This resulted in the welfare state. So, in spite of the self-proclamation of the eternity of liberal ideas, capitalists know that for rich men to fatten in peace and follow Thorstein Veblen’s formula of conspicuous consumption, the poor must have enough. If your mouth is busy, you cannot shout of hunger.

It is a failure of imagination of our rich that they consume with contempt. They take for granted the poor’s lack of organized system. They fail to rebel well or turn the hierarchy on its head. Some have shaken the system with a bedlam of rhetoric about revolutions. They have failed, though, because we have too many social impediments to a people’s hour in our history. The youth pockmarked its era with EndSars, a moment of generational pratfall.

A former governor told me recently that there are quite a few persons in this country with cash who are pining for ideas of what to do with them. When Warren Buffet had such a burden, he handed a lot to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations. There is so much poverty and ignorance, and want of ideas is a marker of a breed of dry-eyed and unthinking billionaires.

The idea of palliatives gave the platform to the rich. Even at that, how many take this advantage? Im moments like this, especially of crisis, the theory of government as a night watchman attracts no success. The job of government is not just to protect, but to be proactive. This is an activist moment for government. Hence, it dished out grains form reserves and inspired the governors to do so. When the president told governors to “Spend the money. Don’t spend the people,” he was keying into that activist sentiment.

Dangote has been at this for a while. He feeds 10,000 vulnerable people daily in Kano with 20,000 family sized loaves of bread. In Lagos, he feeds 12,500 daily with bread. He has partnered with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for polio. He has endowed business schools in universities in Kano, Zaria and Ibadan. In Lagos’ hovel of the poor known as Mushin, has benefitted from his scholarships involving about 250 indigent children.

Reports have it that costs of food have started to show signs of coming down. Eggs and rice, for instance. If charity helps a million families feed, it also helps them buy their own. Why? Because plenty of free rice will pare prices and show hoarders and smugglers that there is an alternative to crookedness. This is the market side of charity. This makes Dangote’s charity an example for all those who think that the first thing to do with their wealth is to run for political office. There are other ways to charm a crowd. Forget ego. Try kindness. Here, Dangote models with his five-star act.

April 15, 2024
Mister SPV

Atiku Abubakar is sitting in his Dubai home and throwing tantrums across the desert. He was so glib about a contract he did not understand. He was so moral from a soul tainted with hypocrisy. He lacked geography integrity so much so that he accused a region of something his part of the country was benefiting from.

He made himself a business and could not distinguish a business decision because he articulated it through the blinkers of bias.

All of this was explained by works minister Dave Umahi, who put on the caps of an engineer, accountant, bureaucrat and politician as he made the media rounds to make mincemeat of Atiku’s tirades against the Lagos-Calabar project.

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Atiku should upbraid his media aides and sundry advisers from embarrassing him in public. But out of a desperation to wear the baroque dress of opposition leader, he shoots from the hip and, consequently, shoots himself in the foot. He speaks like an overexcited kid who wants to get a candy. So, since Minister Umahi has laid the issue of bids to bed, who is Atiku to play priest in contract awards? He who cannot explain how he sold one of Nigeria’s jewels, Delta Steel Complex for $30 million when it was worth $1.5 billion. Who did he sell it to? He planned to sell our refineries. He is the same fellow who still has a case to answer in the U.S. over his dealings with congressman Jefferson. He will have the moral reason to speak on such matters if he can explain why his wife went to jail and he, the business man, was sipping orange juice in his Abuja mansion.

He failed in his mathematical calculation of the contract because he did not know that this is a different contract. Is it not the same Atiku who introduced SPV(Special Purpose Vehicle) into Nigerian political speak? The man who justified the back-door approach to public money?

This Atiku man continues to have nightmares of the president, and I wonder if he ever sleeps a wink in his hysteria to flay the man in Aso Rock. On the figures, he stumbled. Again, he wants the project to start in Calabar because it is starting in Lagos. If it was starting in Calabar, he would have accused the president of trying to forage the region for their ports contract and extend his business reach to Calabar. He would have suggested to begin its work in Lagos and Lekki region which is the fastest growing and richest business district in all of West Africa. What is wrong with the Adamawa chieftain these days?

I advise him to consult better before consorting with ignorance.

April 15, 2024
Obaseki betrays, again

Godwin picks Godwins and he might think there is a God in all of it. But the governor of Edo State may go down as the biggest violator of the rule of law in the history of this republic. He kept a legislature like a mouse in the cage. The lawmakers became happy pawns in the hand of the man whose ancestry is known for playing outside the law and noble path of history.

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He will descend into history as impeaching a deputy the same day the man is accused and swears in his replacement. It is what you call answer before the question. The same Obaseki, whose stewardship is such an anticlimax for a man who betrayed his boss and ditched his fellow traitor. If his former deputy Shaibu acted the way he did, it was because Obaseki did not treat him as a human being. If you don’t want a deputy to succeed you as governor, call him aside first and tell him. He didn’t. In politics, reward does not follow sacrifice. Obaseki showed that. First to Adams, and later to Shaibu. His worst victim of betrayal is Edo State. He performed poorly as chief executive. His forbears also betrayed the kingdom.

This same Obaseki set himself against the palace on artefacts, betraying his king. He may be the first in Nigerian history to betray both state and kingdom.

April 15, 2024
Band ‘A’ electricity tariff

Suddenly, there was remarkable improvement in electricity supply in my area just a day after the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission NERC announced total elimination of subsidy for customers branded as Band A. Before then, power supply in that area had at best, remained epileptic with some days of total black-out.

Things appeared to have changed in a jiffy. That evening and throughout the night, power supply was surprisingly stable. Even when there were outages, it took only seconds for normal supply to be restored. This sudden and surprising turn of events continued throughout the following day such that it began to raise questions among residents.

What could have been responsible for the overnight huge improvement in power supply? Is the concerned Disco now receiving more energy from the supply company that it has enough to maintain steady power supply? Or, what is the magic behind this huge improvement and for how long will it last? Has the total amount of power generated in the country gone beyond the 4,000mw mark?

Faced with these searing posers, I had on my Facebook page wondered if the development was not an attempt to group the area under the Band A category that has just been slated for an upgrade from N68 Kilowatts per hour (KWh) to N225KWh under the subsidy elimination regime. Soon, similar arguments began to trend in our Community Development Association CDA platform.

But the issue appeared resolved when someone posted the receipt of the payment he made that very day, indicating that for the N10,000 recharge he made, he got only 41 units of electricity. The arithmetic of it showed very clearly that it was calculated on the basis of the new Band A rate. The message got clearer in the absence of any clarification from the power distribution company (Disco)

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In the last 10 days or so, electricity supply has been steady in my area. How that became possible is still confounding. But that is the reality on the ground. Nobody is now left in doubt about the reality of the new tariff paid by those classified under the Band A for presumably receiving between 20 to 24 hours of electricity supply daily. In verity, the Ikeja Distribution Company under which coverage we fall, has been able to maintain 20 hours of power supply or even more in the area under focus. A big feat one will admit!

But that feat has continued to raise eyebrows as to the magic the Disco did in an area that hitherto stayed some days without electricity. Before this time, power outages had become so rampant that the CDA had begun negotiations with the power distribution company for possible connection to another feeder said to have better power supply.

All that have now been overtaken by events. The nagging challenge is how to contend with high cost of energy consequent upon the classification within the Band A customers who NERC said constitute 15 per cent of the total number of power users in the country.

The 240 per cent increase in electricity tariff has further added to the burden of consumers already contending with the debilitating effects of fuel subsidy removal and the floating of the Naira in the foreign exchange market. The effect is really telling.

As those classified within the Band A category grapple with high cost of electricity, the capacity of the Discos to keep faith with the minimum of 20-hour daily power supply has also been at issue. Since NERC benchmarked the increase on the supply of at least 20 hours of electricity per a day, what remedies are there for customers in the event of default by the Discos? For now, there is no clarity on that seeming contractual agreement.

The only thing available is a threat by NERC to downgrade feeders under Band A that are unable to supply up to 20 hours of power a day. What happens to customers short-changed in the process, remains a moot issue. But that threat says much about the criteria adopted in classifying some of these feeders under Band A. It speaks of some arbitrariness and haste in the classification process.

Not unexpectedly, the consequences of that faulty classification process are beginning to manifest. Some of the Discos have since blamed their inability to supply the required minimum of 20 hours of electricity per day on technical glitches among other challenges.

Benin Disco apologised to its customers on about 13 Band A feeders for its inability to generate 20 hours of electricity. Kano Disco also apologised to customers on Band A 33KV Gaskiya feeder while its Ibadan counterpart asked for customers’ understanding over power outages in about 20 Band A feeders.

The list is not exhaustive. But it mirrors vividly the shortcomings in NERC’s strategy on subsidy removal in the electricity sector. Apparently responding to pressure from the Bretton Woods institutions on subsidy removal in that sector, the government sought a way out through what appears as price discrimination.

But, this brand of discriminatory monopoly is not necessarily based on the ability to pay or some other social or demographic indicators but on the capacity of the Discos to supply at least 20 hours daily electricity to the earmarked areas. There is something inherently untidy in this strategy. Perhaps, the government found itself in this contradiction in an attempt to present subsidy removal in the mould of price discrimination.

And as we have seen, even some of the Discos that are being positioned to rake in huge revenue from the process are not even prepared to deliver on that mandate. The capacity is not just there. They will only end up short-changing all segments of the consuming public that have been lumped together under Band A.

Twenty hours daily electricity supply, appears a smart way to run away from the backlash of a wholesale elimination of subsidy in the face of the glaring inefficiencies in that sector. It may also be a subterfuge to save the government from the social discontent bound to follow that police given the biting effects of those before it.

But the policy has seen some of the Discos struggling to meet the target. Only time will tell how long this will last before another collapse of the national grid.

There is the notion that those in Band A are net worth consumers that should be able to pay the new rate. This calculation may not be foolproof given the widening poverty in the land and its toll on the middle class.

The government said the price paid by customers in Band A represent the appropriate pricing for the commodity and would allow the Discos fully recover the efficient cost of operation, including a reasonable return on capital invested in the business. That could as well be.

Price comparisons for one KWh of electricity in Ghana, Togo and Benin Republic have also been bandied to justify the hike. Even then, the government has not left anyone in doubt that the new price regime will sooner or later spread to other Bands implying that the branding strategy is largely provisional and will soon give way to total deregulation.

One of the conditions for the success of the new price regime is the installation of metres for the affected customers. Sadly, many of the customers now being made to pay the cut-throat price have no metres and have to depend on estimated billing.

Before now, estimated billing created serious challenges for most customers as they often complained of bills that bore no semblance with their consumption pattern. Unmetered customers are bound to face very serious challenges with the new tariff regime. They may end up paying for services they did not receive. NERC estimates that between 15 to 20 per cent of Band A customers are unmetered. It has asked the Discos to speed up the process of metering. The figure is likely to be even much higher.

But such lapses have been the bane of many a policy in this country. Metering should have presaged the implementation of the so called Band A classification to ensure customers are not saddled with electricity bills they did not consume.

There is also the high cost of procuring such meters which ordinarily are the properties of the Disco. Now that the band A consumers are being charged the appropriate price for the electricity they consume, sundry expenses incurred by consumers each time there are faults in their transformers etc, should no longer have any basis. Neither will there be further reason to fund the inefficiencies of the Discos through outright or partial purchase of transformers by communities or CDAs.

Beyond these, extreme caution should be exercised by the government in considering wholesale removal of the subsidy on electricity. The experience of those who have had the misfortune of testing the Band A category is not funny at all. The reality is that at the current rate, a majority of our citizens can ill-afford the cost of two hours of electricity supply a day.

April 15, 2024
Renaming Nigeria

What’s there in a name? That is the rhetorical question brought to the fore by a recent advocacy by the president of African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwunmi Adesina.

He had at a lecture as the recipient of the 2024 Obafemi Awolowo Prize for Leadership, called for a change of name from the Federal Republic of Nigeria to the ‘United States of Nigeria’. This change in nomenclature in his view “would change the relational mind-set between the states and Abuja: the fulcrum would be the states, while the centre would support them, not lord over them”.

Adesina further contended that with good governance, better accountability systems and zero tolerance for corruption, more economically stronger constituent states would emerge.

It is hazy how a mere change in nomenclature would elicit concomitant change in relational mind-set between the states and Abuja to obviate the control and dominance of the centre over the constituent units. Equally uncertain is how good governance, more accountability and zero tolerance for corruption will ensue through renaming Nigeria.

So what point was Adesina really driving at? What is there in the suggested new name that is lacking in the old one that has the magic wand for these envisaged fundamental relational and mind-set changes? Or, are we being fed with the notion that once we rename the Nigerian federation in the fashion of the United States of America, USA, our brand of federalism will begin to deliver public goods and services optimally? Does the hood make the monk?

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These are the immediate posers that confront the suggestion that renaming Nigeria will bring about a change in relational mind-set between the states and the central authority. That association or linkage is hard to fathom. So what is the hidden message of the AfDB boss?

The thesis of his presentation appeared clearer when he said, “the achievement of economically viable entities and the viability of the national entity require constitutional changes to devolve more economic and fiscal powers to the states or regions. The stronger the states or regions, the stronger the federal units”.

His further intervention to the effect that for Nigeria to get out of economic quagmire, there is the compelling need for restructuring driven, not by political expediency but economic and financial viability says it all.

Herein lies the message. So it is not just a case of mere renaming of Nigeria in the mould he advocated eliciting attitudinal and relational mind-set changes between the states and the federal government. Neither does the level of economic and political development that give allure to the American federal system lie in the order in which that country’s name is arranged. No!

The strength of that country’s federal system is in its strong institutions and processes entrenched in constitutional provisions that devolve powers between the federal authority and states such that does not give room for an omnipotent and omnipresent centre. It is hallmarked by fiscal federalism and independence that allows the constituent units control their affairs without undue interference from the centre.

Their system operates along the principles of federalism characterised by K.C. Wheare as the “method of dividing powers so that the general and regional governments are each within a sphere coordinate and independent”. A.V. Dicey gave further fillip to this by identifying three leading characteristics of ‘completely developed federalism’ to include the distribution of powers among governmental bodies (each with limited and coordinate powers) along with the supremacy of the constitution and the authority of the courts as interpreters of the constitution.

These are the principles that give allure to that governance framework. They have nothing to do with the order in which that country’s name is arranged. So changing the Federal Government of Nigeria to the ‘United States of Nigeria’ as Adesina suggested is practically of no value in addressing the glaring imperfections of our federal contraption.

It has no solution to the disproportionate control and disbursement of the national revenue by the centre. It has no remedy for the deadly political competition our convoluted federal system engenders. Neither is it a therapeutic response to our brand of politics identified by Richard Joseph as prebendalism- the bitter competition to capture political power for the benefit of one’s ethnic group and family members.

Renaming Nigeria is of questionable value in addressing the national questions; the aberrant form and structure of the federation and the intense competition between the centre and the constituent units for the loyalty of the citizens.

The ‘United States of Nigeria’ as a concept, can only draw relevance as a metaphor for true federalism. It strikes as a figurative representation for power devolution, fiscal federalism and restructuring through fundamental constitutional changes. It is a call for federalism in its pristine form.

Perhaps, that was the link Adesina sought to establish when he called for devolution of powers and restructuring that is guided by economic and fiscal considerations. But he could have gone ahead to marshal his thoughts along these lines rather than hide under a nebulous advocacy for renaming Nigeria. It is not certain why he chose to hide under the call for a change of name for such fundamental change issues.

One’s guess however, is that he aimed at getting at the same objective through an entirely different channel. His target was to draw attention to the imperfections of our federal order by giving the impression that there is something in that name that works against the spirits and principles of true federalism.

There is also the possibility that his proposition may have been a subtle way of avoiding controversy. This should not be surprising given the vested interests that easily get jittery each time restructuring, power devolution or fiscal federalism is mentioned.

But then, how far can we possibly stretch the concept of a United States of Nigeria in the face of the multidimensional challenges that constantly assail the authority of the federal government? That concept would seem a misnomer given the current siege by non-state actors and the ensuing competition for the loyalty of the citizens between the central government and cleavages of primordial, religious and sectional hue?

Despite his manner of intervention, Adesina did not disappoint in charting the path the country needed to toe, if our federal system of government will not continue to operate in its current aberrant form. He has added his weight to the necessary and sufficient constitutional changes this country must undertake to extricate itself from the debilitating challenges assailing its progress, economic development and political stability.

But, the issues he raised are not entirely new. They have been recurring decimals on the country’s political chessboard. They were the national questions that led to the 2014 National Conference set up by the Jonathan regime, the National Political Reforms Conference of the Obasanjo regime and the Constitutional Conference of the late Abacha administration.

Each of these conferences made far-reaching recommendations on the necessary constitutional and administrative reforms the country needed to undertake to position itself on the path to steady progress and even development. Sadly, despite the huge resources and energy injected into these conferences, their recommendations (futuristic as many of them were) have not gone beyond the papers in which they were written.

That is why agitations have resonated with seeming ferocity. We now have the President Tinubu administration that has been taking hard and painful decisions for the overall public good. These have been evident in the removal of fuel subsidy and the floating of the Naira in the foreign exchange market among others.

The gains from these sectors can only endure in a politically stable environment. President Tinubu should consolidate the gains of his reforms by mustering the necessary political will to get the Nigerian federalism function in its true spirits. It is time to confront and realistically address the national questions headlong.

April 8, 2024