The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

Inside Kanu’s cage

Which of the conflicting narratives about Nnamdi Kanu’s detention conditions presents the true picture? It is confusing that the detainee and the detaining authority have clashing accounts on the detention environment and life in detention.

The detained leader of the secessionist group Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), who is facing trial at the Federal High Court, Abuja, also faces a credibility challenge following the narrative from his camp that he is being persecuted in detention.

Kanu, 54, was rearrested in Kenya and brought back to Nigeria in controversial circumstances in June. He was initially arrested in 2017 for leading a campaign for secession of the South-East from Nigeria. He jumped bail in June 2018, and fled to the UK where he continued his anti-Nigeria activities.

After his rearrest, his trial for terrorism-related charges has continued to generate intense public interest. There are moves to get a political solution, but there is no clarity on that yet.

Kanu’s trial is scheduled to continue on January 18, 2022. Justice Binta Nyako had ordered on December 2 that he should not be discriminated against in detention. She had also ordered that Kanu be given maximum comfort possible in detention, be allowed a change of clothing, be allowed free practice of his Jewish faith including access to his Jewish religious materials, allowed to receive any visitor of his choice, and allowed to mingle freely with others in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS).

But his lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, in a statement, said the DSS had “unrepentantly continued to treat the orders of the court with greatest disdain.” The statement was an update on Kanu’s situation following his legal team’s visit to him at DSS headquarters, Abuja, on December 6.

Ejiofor said Kanu had informed them that “none of the pronouncements made by the court on the 2nd of December 2021 has been obeyed by the lawless DSS.”

He also said Kanu “further informed us that he had not eaten anything since Sunday, apparently being punished because we dared to complain to the court about the harsh condition under which he is being held in custody.”

Does this claim mean that Kanu did not have any meal on the mentioned Sunday and up till his legal team’s visit on Monday? Then the DSS has a lot of explaining to do.   Even convicts are entitled to their meals. And, importantly, Kanu has not been convicted

Kanu remains in detention, but he should not be treated in a way that shows disrespect for the law, and makes his prosecution seem like persecution.

Perhaps predictably, his legal team said it would immediately let Justice Nyako know about the alleged flouting of her orders by the detaining authority. If it is true, it is inexcusable and condemnable.

On December 13, Kanu’s legal team took the matter to court, accusing the DSS of grossly violating his fundamental human rights. Kanu alleged that the DSS deprived him access to facility and material to practise his faith and ultimately prevented him from praying and/or practising his faith.

He also alleged that the security agency prevented him from having access to a medical practitioner and a legal practitioner of his choice.

He added that the DSS allegedly subjected him to solitary confinement which is a form of mental and physical torture, and subjected him to inhuman and degrading treatment.

In his application to the court for a redress, he sought orders directing the DSS to allow him access to facility and material for the practice of his religion, allow him to appoint an independent medical practitioner of his choice from a certified government hospital to review his medical files, allow him access to a medical practitioner of his choice and a legal practitioner of his choice, and remove him from solitary confinement.

On December 14, the Public Relations Officer of the DSS, Dr P.N. Afunanya, responded to the allegations, “for the sake of transparency and democratic accountability,” during a press briefing at its headquarters in Abuja.  He described the claims as “outright misinformation.”

The DSS said Kanu “is not, in any way, maltreated in custody,” and “enjoys full luxury in the holding facility incomparable to any of its type anywhere in the country. He is accorded full rights and privileges. He is never denied his right of worship or freedom from his select religious practice.”

The security agency also said Kanu “has unhindered access to the best medical care and doctors. Kanu, himself, has confirmed to his visitors that the Service has never, in any way, maltreated him. He even confirmed this to the quartet of Senators Ike Ekweremadu and Enyinnaya Abaribe; Bishop Sunday Onuoha of the Methodist Church, Nigeria and Co-Chair, Interfaith Dialogue Forum for Peace and Ambassador Okechukwu Emuchay, MFR, Secretary-General, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, who saw him on Wednesday, 8th December, 2021.”

The DSS also said the story of Kanu being starved “is fallacious,” adding that “he enjoys meals of his choice.”  In addition, it said: “That he is not allowed change of clothing is also false. He is regularly allowed change of clothing as against what is presented to the public by IPOB propagandists.” In conclusion, the agency said all the allegations of violation of Kanu’s rights as a suspect, victimisation and starvation among others “are not true.”

Both narratives cannot be true. It is expected that Kanu’s real detention conditions will be clearer to the public sooner than later, given that the matter has been taken to court.

If it turns out that Kanu’s narrative is false, it will further damage IPOB’s image. The group should not resort to misrepresentation possibly to win public sympathy.

If it turns out that the DSS narrative is unreliable, it will expose the agency as lawless.

It is striking that there is a collision of narratives concerning what is really happening inside Kanu’s cage. The prosecution of the IPOB leader was not expected to involve such sideshows.

The court should quickly intervene and settle the questions regarding Kanu’s detention conditions, if any. It is important that the authorities are seen to be conducting his trial lawfully in all aspects.

December 20, 2021
The tortoise

Baba Akande, as those close to him call him with near adoration, took the public by surprise. Yours truly did not know of the book until a week to the presentation when Dare Babarinsa, the publisher and writer with a historical temperament, intimated me of the coming storm and eventually gifted me with a copy.

As a slow and earnest reader, I ploughed into the volume, a writing of spare, unvarnished prose but abundant content, surfing with history and tumbling with names of high and low profiles, and overflowing with incidents. But the real review will come soon on this page, but this essayist was as happy to attend the coming-out party of the glorious story of one of the most consequential figures of Nigeria’s contemporary political history.

At Eko Hotel, the visages and agbadas and babaringas materialised. The caps, too, the smiles, some faces bearing daggers, others supine and worshipful. Hugs and handshakes could hardly disguise the wily and the bold. Enter governors and ministers from north and south. Enter President Buhari with his train. Enter Asiwaju Tinubu bedecked with his familiar cap and glasses. Enter, of course, Bisi Akande, the day’s top shot, unveiling his lips with a vintage supernova smile, unveiling his lips to a galaxy of white teeth.

As the day wore on, there was a man who was both tortoise and elephant. He was a tortoise because he was there but he was not there. A tortoise is never absent in any African folktale and so was this man. Tortoise, sly, manipulative, fell and ferocious, animates all African tales just as the fellow has been in our country’s modern history. He was, in consequence, the elephant in the room. He is the Owu chief, the man from Ota, a former president, Olusegun Obasanjo. I wonder if he was invited and decided to remain ensconced in the secure Bastille of his Ota home, the same way a tortoise hides its head in the rampart of its shell.

But there whether from the lips of President Buhari, from gangling Kashim Imam, from Bisi Akande himself and the Jagaban, and even the perspicacious reviewer Segun Ayobolu, this newspaper’s editor at large, Obasanjo was in the dock.

He was prosecuted. He was cross examined, heckled and damned. He walked to Golgotha and descended to Hades. He was jailed and convicted. He was the sufferer of an inquisition and guillotine. His head was lopped off there in spirit and in Ota in the flesh. In either place, he felt the severity of the judgement. It was justice without a defence attorney, without a plea of guilt. There was no tear for him, no acclamation. He went from the dock to the place of the damned.

Kashim Imam reported that he was with OBj when the former president decided to sweep out progressives in an electoral gale across the southwest. He said Obj thought Akande was such a good man, but he removed him anyway. Only Lagos was spared, or shall we say only Lagos was impregnable, a thing that earned the candidate and governor, Bola Tinubu, the praise of “the last man standing.” Imam warned Obj not to come near Lagos, because the man would resist and burn everywhere. A coward does not fight when he knows disaster beckons.

The president’s speech was so heartfelt and rippled with humour and it humanised him in ways few ever see him. He called what happened “an electoral massacre,” a clear innuendo at those who fished for the word to justify a fiction. He said a “steadfast Tinubu” escaped it. This was the sentiment of the day. But if he was steadfast, how could he escape? To escape is to flee, to be weak and vulnerable. Obviously, it was OBJ himself who escaped a disgrace on the streets of Lagos. A steadfast person would triumph, not escape. The writing missed the philosophical nuance of that episode of Nigerian history.

There was another miss. When Reviewer Ayobolu adverted to Baba Akande’s suffering in Jail at the collapse of the Second Republic, there was an elephant in the room. He did not say, out of courtesy, that the man who jailed Akande was in our midst: President Buhari himself. There were hushed murmurs in parts of the hall. It was a paradox of the day, but it also shows how a mistake at one time can be a mea culpa at another. Akande was in the gulag for about three years, and went through unprintable hardship, at one time sleeping in a “pond of dirt” at the jail house in Ibadan. But the review is coming.

The paradox remains that the same Buhari nods to a quote from the book in which Baba Akande says he never asked nor took bribe from anyone in his life. Yet, that was the reason he did not see daylight in three years. It is a personage like Akande, who exposes the brutish chicaneries of that age of guns and sleight, of decrees and deceit.

Many are reading the book now, and already the tremors are shaking the political earth. Ayo Adebanjo, who I berated in this column as a phony progressive and who enlisted some columnists to come after me, a Teflon penman that I am, came up for quite some beating in the book. Ditto Olaniwun Ajayi and a line of political never-do-wells. Adebanjo says he wants to read the book first. I await his rebuttal of the C of O gratis and free home Tinubu built for him, a man he has made a career of assailing. Tom Ikimi has also said he is writing his own book. We await the prose and his reasons for denying.

Also some have started revisionism of history that happened before our eyes, especially what Baba Akande wrote about how Prof. Yemi Osinbajo emerged. Some are fighting hard to make the vice president look like a familiar figure and national heavyweight before he was nominated. Did he not emerge out of Tinubu’s shadow at Asiwaju’s initiative? How could Buhari just pick him when he knew next to nothing about the law professor and former attorney general under Tinubu as Lagos governor? Some journalists should be careful about turning apocrypha into facts and parroting the drivel from the mischief tongues of unfledged politicians, especially tendentious play with facts. Even he, Osinbajo, confessed that Tinubu nominated him. The mongers of this fiction are privileging that narrative to detract from the more obvious one: The breach of faith of candidate Buhari as Akande narrated. Having emerged, he could not stand his ground as a man of faith to a pact he himself had anointed with his lips and witnesses. It was a lapse of integrity.

More issues will emerge, and the book, titled: My Participations, is instructive by his title. He implies he took part and was a part of the maelstrom of events. it hinted at his passivity in the concourse of Nigerian history. It underlines a humble man, who had been a deputy governor, confronted the military, was a governor, became a party chairman of four political parties. His humility, his lack of guile as Ayobolu called him, makes his revelations and bird’s-eye view of the train of history very credible. Anyone who would defy or debunk had better come with facts, or chew their cud in ignominious silence and shame. When the chips are down, Participations may be not only a redoubt of modern history, but perhaps one of the best works of his generation.

Eleyinmi comes to Lagos

This time he showed his hands. Eleyinmi never did that because he always had something to conceal. But Eleyinmi, who we know as Bukola Saraki and former senate president by stealth, came to Lagos to embrace a group that calls itself “Lagos4Lagos,”an amorphous epithet and grammatically meaningless. But it was Saraki, who was rejected and run over by the Otoge train in Kwara State who is seeking authenticity in Lagos. He, Eleyinmi, who has crisis of political identity, is coming to seek identity with an amoebic nonentity in Lagos. The man who is seen as a northerner when he is in the south and a southerner when he is in the north and whose family home is in dispute even in Ilorin. He wants to make an identity in Lagos.

December 13, 2021
NDDC’s headship

Compliance with provisions of the Act establishing the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC in appointments into its headship positions has certainly begun to brew schism among member states of the organization.

Section 12(1) of the NDDC Act 2000 provides that “there shall be for the commission a managing director and two executive directors who shall be indigenes of oil producing states starting with member states of the commission with the highest production quantum of oil and shall rotate among member states in order of production”.

What this entails is that appointment into the commission shall be rotated according to the quantity of oil produced by the states starting with the state that has the highest production output in that order. As at the year 2000 when the Act came into force, the following were listed as oil producing member states of the commission: Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo and Rivers.

Going by the provisions of the Act, the headship of the commission would have gone round the nine oil producing states two times with the first three highest producing states doing it thrice. But what you find in the 21 years NDDC has existed is the monopolization of its headship by four states- Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers.

While each of the states of Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa has had shots at that position thrice, Rivers has done it four times with Delta making it twice. Delta would have been on the third tenure but for the suspension of the last board appointment by President Buhari. The suspension followed the insistence by the minister of Niger Delta, Godswill Akpabio on a forensic audit of the commission. That has been completed and submitted to the senate but the president is yet to set up another board as he promised in his letter to the senate suspending the last board.

The same four states have also almost exclusively dominated the positions of the two executive directors. That has left the other five member states of the commission: Abia, Imo, Cross River, Edo and Ondo virtually spectators in contravention of the laws setting up the commission.

Not unexpectedly, the continued sidelining of the other members states of the commission from these leadership positions has not gone down well with other member states of the commission. One of the states that have protested its continued sidelining from these appointments is Imo which recently celebrated the recovery of 43 oils wells from Rivers State.

According to the state, the oil wells recovered from Mgbede Field in the Ohaji/Egbema Local Government Area LGA and Akri Field in Oguta LGA has placed Imo as the fourth highest oil producing state in the country. Based on this, Imo is asking that the post of the managing director of the commission should devolve to it in keeping with the provisions of the NDDC Act.

Before now, the umbrella body of oil producing communities in Imo State, the Urashi People’s Congress had made a passionate appeal to President Buhari to consider appointing the managing director of the commission from Imo State. They said over the years, such appointments had been skewed in favour of four states thereby marginalizing other members against the spirits of the laws establishing the commission.

Read Also: Time-wasting on NDDC

Even as Imo is making a strong case to be considered for appointment into the headship of the commission on account of the its fourth position in oil output, the Rivers State government has gone to court challenging the ceding of 17 oil fields to the state in Nigeria’s administrative Map 10th, 11th and 12th editions and other maps.

It is not clear why these oil fields that were clearly ceded to Imo State by the relevant maps should have been in the hands of the Rivers State government before now. But whatever the reason for that, there is no doubt that Imo is in an enhanced position within the oil production matrix in the country on account of the ceded oil fields.

Rivers is contesting only 17 out of the 43 fields. That translates to 26 recovered oil fields that are not in contention. That should also be something to cheer for the people of the state. Imo therefore is viewed as being in a proper stead to lay claims to the headship of the commission.

Beyond the new position on which Imo State is basing its agitation for the headship of the NDDC, is the more fundamental issue of infringement on the laws setting up the commission in appointments by successive governments at the centre. The case of the NDDC appointments mirrors very vividly the scant observance of rules by people in authority.

Or how else do we explain that in the 21 years of the existence of the commission, it did not occur to any of the presidents, past and present, that appointments into its leadership had been done in utter contravention of the laws setting it up?

But even as the leadership of this country is to be blamed for not balancing appointments into the commission in keeping with the laws, the other member states should share much of the blame for keeping quiet for so long. It is very difficult to explain why some states would occupy those positions for upwards of three times while others are yet to have it once. That cannot make for fairness and equity.

Perhaps, the case of the NDDC is just a tip of the iceberg in the monumental injustices that pervade all spheres of our national life. If a very crucial institution as the NDDC could operate that way for years in defiance of extant laws, one can then extrapolate what the general situation in our national life would be.

Incidentally, ours is a federal arrangement that derives strength from its capacity to build on its diversities. Our constitution recognized the power of efficient management of these diversities for political stability when it provided for the federal character principle in appointments into governmental positions. That has also been expanded in such terms as catchment areas, educational disadvantaged states and quota system.

The objective is to build an inclusive government that accommodates all the tendencies that make up this unity in diversity. The challenges assailing the country from all corners have their roots in our inability to effectively manage our diversities. That is why the central authority is still locked in bitter competition with the primordial units for the loyalty of the citizenry.

It is thus vital that issues of equity, fairness and balance are accorded the primacy they deserve in our national affairs. That is a sure way of imbuing confidence in the constituents and staving off acrimony arising from feelings of alienation and marginalization and manifest injustice.

There is no doubt that extant law in appointments into the leadership of the NDDC has been observed in its breach over the years. Now that awareness has been created, it is only proper that steps are taken to remedy the situation to give a sense of belonging to other member states of the commission.

Good enough, the inauguration of the last board had been suspended. That affords the president a good opportunity to redress the skewed appointments into the headship of the commission. The fourth state in terms of the quantum of its oil output ought to be appointed to head the commission. Thereafter, it should rotate to the fifth and in that order before returning to the first highest producer. That is the spirit of the law that set up the commission.

December 13, 2021
Time-wasting on NDDC

Minister of Niger Delta Affairs Godswill Akpabio continues to project himself as a redeemer ordained to turn around the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). Perhaps he is. But his redemption song has become disharmonious and he is beginning to seem like a redeemer in need of redemption.

More than three months after Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami, on behalf of President Muhammadu Buhari, received the NDDC forensic audit report from Akpabio, in Abuja, on September 2, there is little or nothing to show that the Federal Government understands the importance of implementing the report without a long delay.

Akpabio, who should be driving the process, is busy offering unconvincing explanations for the inexcusable lack of drive. His ministry’s response to the understandably intensified public demand for action from the authorities on the NDDC issue demonstrates the minister’s misreading of the situation and his role.

A statement on the constitution of the NDDC board, issued by the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Dr Babayo Ardo, on December 6, said: “The report of that audit has been submitted to Mr President who is studying it to come up with a formula for a commission fit for purpose. That formula is what the board being put together will work with.

“It is not in the interest of the region to stampede the government into aborting the reform process.”

The statement also said: “The President wants to give the region an interventionist agency that will realise the dreams of our fathers for our people and generations yet unborn.

“The Hon Minister is irrevocably committed to assisting Mr President to leave behind a legacy for the Niger Delta people , particularly saving the NDDC from dying like past developmental agencies put together for the region since 1958.”

It is commendable that Akpabio wants to save the NDDC, but he should not see himself as the only one who can do so. His approach leaves much to be desired. He has been criticised for allegedly misdirecting the Federal Government on the NDDC because he wants to be in control of the agency.

There is no doubt that the NDDC, established in 2000 by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, has failed to develop the Niger Delta as expected. Ironically, it is supposed to be a development agency, but has been identified as a major agent of underdevelopment in the oil-rich region.

The Federal Government had lamented the “uncompleted and unverified development projects” in the region “in spite of the huge resources made available to uplift the living standards of the citizens.”

The government said there were “over 13,777 projects, the execution of which is substantially compromised,” even though the commission got “approximately N6tn” from “budgetary allocation” and “income from statutory and non-statutory sources,” from 2001 to 2019.

When President Buhari, in October 2019, ordered a forensic audit of the agency’s operations from 2001 to 2019, the move suggested that his administration’s anti-corruption campaign had finally reached the NDDC.

The audit was reported to have started in April 2020. The Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved a contract of N318m for the engagement of a lead consultant for the audit. It is curious that the exercise took well over a year.

It shouldn’t take that long to implement the report. Among the recommendations, presented by the Lead Forensic Auditor, Tabir Ahmed, is that the NDDC should be made to operate within the limits of its annual budget and ensure that only projects budgeted for are awarded each fiscal year.

The report also recommended that mobilisation payment be abolished, and the agency should employ project consultants to ensure accurate supervision and valuation of projects. Additionally, the report recommended that the agency should adopt a standard for costing contracts with appropriate profit margins.

According to the Federal Government, it will “apply the law to remedy the deficiencies outlined in the audit report as appropriate.” The government added: “This will include but not be limited to the initiation of criminal investigations, prosecution, recovery of funds not properly utilised for the public purposes for which they were meant for amongst others.” The goal is to improve the standard of living of the people of the Niger Delta “through the provision of adequate infrastructural and socio-economic development,” the government said.

More than three months after the tough talk, there is no sign that the Federal Government meant what it said. It is unclear whether the delay in implementing the report is because those implicated in the underdevelopment of the Niger Delta are trying to prevent the government from taking action against them. The government needs to demonstrate that it is against the region’s underdevelopment by implementing the report.

In December 2019, President Buhari’s spokesman said he had approved that the NDDC board ”be recomposed and inaugurated after the forensic audit of the organisation.” He also directed that the agency’s interim management team “shall be in place till the forensic audit is completed.”

The commission’s acting managing director, Prof. Daniel Pondei, was later removed, the government explained, as “a result of a plethora of litigation and a restraining order issued… against the Interim Management Committee of the NDDC by a Federal High Court in Abuja.”

President Buhari had earlier extended the tenure of the Prof. Keme Pondei-led Interim Management Committee from May 1 to December 31, 2020, and the extension was to cover the period of the forensic audit of the NDDC. The audit went beyond the date.

In December 2020, President Buhari had appointed an interim administrator to run the agency. Effiong Akwa, the agency’s acting executive director, finance and administration, was “to assume headship till completion of the forensic audit,” according to the government.

The forensic audit has not only been completed; the report was submitted to the government more than three months ago. It is abnormal that the NDDC is still controlled by an interim administrator appointed a year ago. This arrangement is not the same thing as having a lawfully appointed and approved board for the commission, with the implications for transparency and accountability.

According to Akpabio’s ministry, the board is “being put together.” The Federal Government should stop wasting time concerning reforming the NDDC. To demonstrate its seriousness, the presidency should constitute a board for the agency without further delay, and ensure that the audit report is implemented. That’s how to go about saving the NDDC.

December 13, 2021
The people’s side

A certain candidate made a pact with his followers. They were to queue up on election day behind him. He fantasised an extravagance of enthusiasm. A long, sinuous tribe of men and women, body after body, smile after smile, party card after party card, chants after flattering chants. They snaked audaciously onto the street, spilled onto alleys and front yards, obstructing traffic, enraging opponents and advertising him as the man of the people. His victory a technicality, a matter of hours.

He arrived, his agbada, starchy and voluminous, dwarfed him in its splash and brilliance. He stood in front and waited for his supporters. But the line beside him got longer and longer, and behind him shorter and shorter. What he wished for himself was fulfilling for his opponent. His supporters, looking away from him, cheered behind his rival.

Then, he yelled in primal despair in Yoruba, Eyin enia mi da? Translation: “Where are my people.” It was a cheerless moment baffled, he shrank away, his puny frame disappearing inside his agbada like a tortoise head inside the shell. It was the sort of democracy that separated farts from facts, hope from pretenders and democracy from a band of oligarchs, the people from their big men.

That is the campaign that House speaker Femi Gbajabiamila began. The House passed it and the Senate, an unlikely place for such a volcanic roar, also appended its name. Now, history beckons the president, and all await his all-important flourish of signature.

It is the open primary. It signals an open democracy. It is a Trojan hand against the Trojans of democracy. It is a vote against the vole-face of politicians, against filthy lucre. It is for kin against kingpin, the manipulator. It is an opportunity for the people.

Whether the people will cede this great hope and sell themselves is yet to be seen. The opponents have been the governors. It has been on the surface a battle between the lawmakers and the executives. Ironically, we expect the executive, the president of the republic, to decide he is on the people’s side.

The governors say they want the indirect option because it is less expensive; it is simpler; less chaotic. We should get order and not collapse the system by handing them to the people. This sort of position has also been modified by those who fear chaos, who suspect the tyranny of the centre. They say each party should determine what they want. The party in power cannot impose a system on all.

Lobbies are hushing in the corridors of power. Governors are lending their advice. The president is lending his ears. Even INEC wants the open option. We cannot deny that the proponents of indirect primary have their ideas. They may be right about chaos. They may be right about simple. They may be right about parties deciding their strategic destinies. But they deny the simple fact: the people ultimately should decide how our democracy works. Not a few men. We have been running a democracy of few men, oligarchy overshadowing what Lincoln calls a government of the people by the people for the people.

We want order, but not the order of a clique. We want cheap but not at the expense of the people. We want parties to decide their destinies, but this is about the destiny of our democracy, not a group. After all, the lawmakers are elected by the people. They are deciding as the people’s parliament.

Again, if we give them to the parties to decide, the governors will hijack it, and the system will go back to its default stronghold of a few men. I am not an advocate of systems over men. Systems are slaves of the wiles and cunning of men. Yet we need systems. We need to make them elude the shenanigans of hectoring men of power and money as possible. Hence, we must seek the better option. We have had it before; the open primary, that is. And it has worked. What is the fear? It is the fear of the people. If we don’t have it now, we won’t in a generation.

It is possible for big men to rethink their strategy, to hoodwink the people, and pay as many voters as they can. But we saw from the Anambra model that people can decide to reject money. The vote and cook soup model may work in parts. But that should be our next phase of battle. Politicians will now learn to develop how to woo and wink rather than hoodwink. We shall learn how to make the crowds sane and not cow them. It is the people’s hour. The United States has increasingly yielded to the direct option. Only a few states, less than four of the 50 states, still tinker with the direct. Even at that, it is not the sort we have here. There is a collegial temperament to the picking of delegates.

In the early days of U.S. politics, politicians planted entertainment spots on the way to the polls. Up to the 20th century, presidents and governors taxed government workers to finance elections. They have transcended such corruptions. This is a country that fought to fashion a monument of a constitution, and when they were done, a swaggering Benjamin Franklin strode out. Journalists asked what document they had made: “A republic, if you can keep it,” he said. So, what we want is the people’s republic, fashioned not for the strong but to make the weak strong, give ownership to the farmer and mechanic, and bring the topflight business mogul to the logic of the masses. It will pedestal choice over fiat.

It is a legacy hour for the president. It will birth a new republic inside a republic. The French have had five republics, but within each republic, they have enshrined principles and practices worthy of new constitutions. That is what the direct primacy will do. It will reengineer the people’s will. The father of democracy, Cleisthenes, was resisted by what historians call the era of the Tyranny. But the people reinstated him, and he gave us what political scientists call Athenian democracy. Historian Herodotus wrote that Cleisthenes was “the man who introduced the tribes and the democracy.” Our constitution has brought a semblance of order. But we want the people’s order, and that is democracy.

Some philosophers have said the Greek model will not work and even did not work as well as it is propagated. Hannah Arendt, in her The Human Condition, has lamented the disconnect between leaders and crowds. Some other thinkers have opined that the death of the industrial world has banished the crowds that labour movements enacted. But the social media has reinvented them, like the EndSars protest that the youths bungled for failure of leadership.

But all systems are imperfect. Let us tweak it. Even the American constitution continues to bow to amendments. Let us improve it and make the direct primary into a sacrament of our republican practice.

A new weather in Jos

•Lalong

After the hoopla and near paralysis, the Plateau State House of Assembly has reopened. The sacking of the former speaker Ayuba Abok is now behind the parliament. Abok, an APC fellow, had hung the parliament by taking two APC lawmakers with him. The PDP had nine members while the APC had 14, and that made the tally an ominous draw at 12 apiece. But one of Abok’s fellow traveller Phillip Dasun, who was Abok’s PR maven has come back to roost in APC. He is not getting the prodigal son treatment after a way in the wild. The other one, Henry Longs, unfortunately passed away in the cauldron of the crisis. A tear for him! May his soul rest in peace. They had tried to fest while Plateau fell to pieces. The same assembly has passed Governor Simon Lalong’s budget, and are working on other legislations. The last time they sat about 18 persons, PDP and APC, were present.

Plateau has been a tinderbox, and politicians ought to beware of curdling an ethno-religious tension into a cauldron. That is what some have done within the party and the PDP. The former governor, who is in a cold war with another general Jeremiah Useni, is stoking the flames. All because of 2023.

Abok lit the tinder when the issue of financial autonomy for state assemblies gave him powers and some complained that they were not part of the new dispensation. The y saw opaque everywhere. Hence the plot to remove him. Using a few people to remove him was not the way to go, and Governor Lalong, who suffered similar fate, has not associated with it.

Nonetheless the new speaker Yakubu Sanda, is now in charge, and he has the duty to steer the ship out of stormy seas.

Plateau is mini-Nigeria, and peace and order are pre-conditions for development. Politicians both in APC and PDP should always bear that in mind. The crises have been boiling for a few decades, and no one has the right to rip the scab in order to score in politics.

December 6, 2021
INEC appointments et al

It is almost certain that the provisions of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill transmitted to President Buhari by the National Assembly will form the basis for the conduct of the 2023 general elections. Though the president could withhold assent to the bill, indications are that the National Assembly is poised to veto such a move and get the amendments through in keeping with extant laws.

So, it can be presumed that electronic transmission of election results and direct primaries by the political parties will constitute the grundnorm for the conduct of the next general elections. If this assumption is correct, then we expect substantial improvements in the capacity of the coming elections to reflect the sovereignty of the electorate. This is more so, given such other scientific innovations by the electoral umpire that have impacted positively on the integrity of elections.

Just as electronic accreditation and transmission of election results are geared towards enhancing the credibility of election results, direct primaries will usher in internal democracy by taking the parties back to their real owners – the people. The overall objective is to deepen democracy and forestall the rancour and acrimonious disputations that had overtime, characterized election outcomes on this clime.

A lot of electoral progress would have been made when election outcomes approximate the collective will of the people as expressed at the ballot box. Then also, the country would have parted ways with our sordid electoral pasts characterized by sundry infractions that had tended to question the continued relevance of our democratic order that has been anything but democratic.

But as good as the coming election-regulating laws and innovations are, their success would ultimately hinge on the human factor. The human element cues in both from the point of view of the dispositions of the government in power; politicians, the electorate and INEC officials to these laws. For, no matter how perfect rules and regulations are, their success would ultimately predicate on the level of cooperation they get from the public. That is why systems that are known to function perfectly in environments they were copied from, fail to deliver in the same measure in some other climes. The fault cannot be located in those systems but the attitudinal dispositions in the new environment they are domiciled. So when politicians rig elections and manipulate its outcome through devious means, that is not the fault of democracy as veritable governance construct. It is failure on the part of those who operate the system.

The high-minded goals in these electoral laws and innovations may come to naught without the collective resolve to play by the rules. Politicians must get off the idea that elections must be won by hook and crook irrespective of their appeal to the electorate. Those who wish to excel at elections, must work their ways through their constituencies and earn the appeal of the people.

The controversy that recently embroiled the mode of primaries by political parties would have been absolutely unnecessary were politicians to be playing by the rules. The grouse against indirect primary is not because it cannot further the cause of democracy. No! If the rules guiding indirect primaries were to be applied to the letters with some reduction in the number of statutory delegates, the cause of democracy could still be very well served. After all, it is in tandem with the notion of representative democracy necessitated by the size of modern states.

But governors and leaders of the parties never allowed the rules of the game to see the light of the day. In many cases, primaries were never held even as questionable lists were produced with names of favoured aspirants. You have to be in the good books of the authorities to be a candidate even when such a person is an unmitigated electoral liability. The quest to deliver such unpopular candidates by all means is largely responsible for the monumental infractions witnessed during elections.

Because there will be people out there to subvert the rules, the prosecution of election offenders must be pursued with added vigour. That is why the agitation for the establishment of election offences tribunals to facilitate extant slow trial processes by the regular courts will continue to draw allure.

Human element primacy in the overall credibility of elections is more critical from the point of view of the electoral umpire – the INEC. Yes, laws and innovations are being put in place to enhance the overall success and acceptability of elections. But these laws are in themselves not self-implementing. Much of their success would still predicate on the characters and credibility of appointees into the electoral body.

So, it is just not enough for the president to assent to the Electoral Act Amendment Bill and expect all will be right. Much will depend on the quality and character of people he appoints to superintend over elections. Before this article is published, not less than five national commissioners of INEC would have exited from services having completed their tenure. That leaves us with barely a year before the conduct of the next general elections going by INEC timelines.

It is not clear how long it will take the president to fill those vacancies. But one thing certain is that time is not on the side of the electoral body. The new appointees will require ample time to get acquainted with the workings of the INEC and this may impact negatively on their overall performance. In view of time constraints, it would appear better for the president to look inwards within INEC and fill the vacancies with some credible and experienced commissioners so that the system could leverage on their wealth of institutional memory.

Credibility, track record, character and integrity must form the fulcrum for filling the vacancies created by the departing national commissioners and other appointments. This point is very relevant given the furore generated by the controversial nomination of Special Assistant to the President on New Media, Lauretta Onochie as a national commissioner and that of a niece of the president Amina Zakari. The two nominations cast serious slur on the credibility and impartiality of INEC.

But for protests from the public and Onochie’s rejection by the senate, her appointment was bound to bring with it, credibility deficits in the management of elections by the INEC. Whatever considerations that gave rise to such manifest partisan nominations against the spirits of the electoral law, must be avoided like a plague in filling the vacancies created by the exit of the five national commissioners and appointment of Resident Electoral Commissioners.

That is the challenge before the president and a measure of how committed he is in bequeathing the country an enduring and credible electoral system. Part of the innovations witnessed in INEC during the Jonathan regime can be rationalized on his appointment of Prof. Attahiru Jega as INEC chairman and some of his colleagues from the civil society. Some of Jega’s colleagues with civil society background still in service are acquitting themselves very creditably. Appointees to leadership positions in the INEC must be people with no visible partisan link or questionable integrity for them to command the confidence of the people.

By calling to action clear constitutional provisions in such appointments, the president would have injected fresh blood into the system to complement the innovations in our electoral laws and deepen the democratic engagement.

With the right mix in human capital and the scientific innovations that saw to the success of the Ondo, Edo and Anambra states elections, the president would have been on a sure path to bequeathing a credible and enduring electoral system to the country. Buhari has a date with history on the decisions he takes to institutionalize democracy through fool proof-electoral laws, credible and non-partisan appointments to the leadership of the INEC

December 6, 2021
Budget integrity

All things being equal, the National Assembly is expected to pass the 2022 Appropriation Bill this month. After the budget has been passed, the public will wonder about the integrity of its shape and size. This question has something to do with the integrity of the proposers and approvers of the budget.

Interestingly, the Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, recently gave an insight into how the country is shortchanged through the annual federal budgetary process.

The alarming revelations at the 3rd National Summit on Diminishing Corruption in Public Sector, in Abuja, show how budget padding by some government establishments contribute to the high cost of governance.

The ICPC chief said the agency “found that 257 projects amounting to N20.138bn were duplicated in the 2021 budget.” This discovery prompted “an advisory to the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning which promptly acted on it to prevent abuse.”

It is unclear whether those behind the fraudulent duplication of projects were identified and punished. The intervention of the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning to “prevent abuse” was only one of the necessary actions that should have been taken in dealing with the issue. If the perpetrators were not identified and sanctioned, the authorities failed to do what was necessary to discourage such improprieties.

Owasanoye also said the agency had “so far initiated enforcement actions against 67 contractors and forced them back to site and ensured completion of 966 projects worth N310bn some of which were hitherto abandoned.”

The information about the scale of the projects that needed the agency’s intervention for completion, and their value, says a lot about why the country is progressing at a snail’s pace, and also exposes some of the agents of underdevelopment. The situation calls for more rigorous project monitoring as well as greater effort to ensure that contractors perform as expected.

The ICPC boss listed “poor needs assessment that disconnects projects from beneficiaries, false certification of uncompleted contracts as completed and deliberate underperformance of contracts” among the “maladies” that hinder the country’s development. According to him, “the same malady of corruption” escalates the cost of governance and denies Nigeria value for money.

This is a familiar malady. It is a long-term malady that has defied treatment. But it is a treatable malady. It certainly requires a focused and determined approach.

Corruption thrives because there is room for it to thrive. It thrives because it is allowed to do so. The truth is that to defeat corruption self-styled anti-corruption fighters need to do more than paying lip service to the anti-corruption fight.

The corruption-related findings based on the ICPC’s review of the 2021 budget should guide gatekeepers regarding the 2022 federal budget proposal. That’s how to fight corruption.

It is unacceptable that every year, the same thing happens. The proposers and approvers mainly carry on as if it is an unchangeable ritual. Year in, year out, items are questionably repeated in the annual budget proposals of federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

In one instance, the Senate Committee on Environment said it had discovered about N16bn included in the 2022 budget proposal of the Ministry of Environment for servicing of debts by some state governments.

Chairman of the panel, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, revealed that about N6bn had been added to the ministry’s 2021 budget proposal, for which it was queried by the committee, saying “only for it to be brought back in next year’s budget, this time to the tune of N16bn.” He described it as a “grand plot to defraud the Federal Government.”

It is not enough to discover plots to defraud the government. Such discoveries should lead to sanctions for those implicated in the plots.

Budgetary repetitions come in various forms, but they usually have something negative in common. ”It is a delicate issue. There have been some suggestions and lamentations from different quarters about the recurrence of items of expenditure every year,” the Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Barau Jibrin, was quoted as saying.

According to him, the heads of MDAs “argue that the said items are perishable as they can get worn out and written off. I think they don’t get written off at the same time in all the agencies. While it may become unusable in one agency or office, it could still be good in another office.”

Considering the senator’s sound reasoning, why do the federal lawmakers who are supposed to approve such proposals do so without applying this same thinking?

It is striking that the senator supplied the answer to the problem. “The best way to go about it is through proper oversight on the side of the National Assembly members as well as putting in place certain mechanisms within the MDAs to make sure that the items are not frivolous,” he said.

So the answer highlights another problem, which is the failure of the federal lawmakers, who have oversight responsibilities, to do “proper oversight” and ensure that the questionable repetition of items of expenditure in the yearly budget proposals of the MDAs becomes a thing of the past.

It is noteworthy that a civil society organisation, Centre for Social Justice, observed that the 2022 budget proposal submitted by President Muhammadu Buhari to the National Assembly in October contained frivolous items to the tune of N227bn.

Every year, there are questionable items in the Federal Government’s budget proposal. Every year, the public condemns this practice. Every year, little or nothing happens to show that the National Assembly, which is supposed to play the role of gatekeeper, is alive to its responsibility.

For instance, a report said the Federal Government planned to spend N19bn on computer software in 2022. Another report said the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) planned to spend N2.04bn on computers alone, and another N1.3bn on “office stationery and computer consumables.”

The federal legislature’s oversight role is a serious and important function. The yearly repetition of questionable items and the yearly inclusion of questionable items in the federal budget proposal are encouraged by the failure of gatekeepers.

There will always be budget proposals and budgets, but there shouldn’t always be budgetary improprieties. When there are budgetary improprieties, there should be proper gatekeeping to ensure that what is proper prevails.

December 6, 2021
Baba Suwe’s vigil

Nothing is funnier than the plot of a comic and his poop. Not even the poop of a pope could have popped any more laugh than Baba Suwe’s. But it was a laugh with an itch, with a niche.

The man died and we still can’t boast a hearty laugh. His was a funeral with a spectre of the sh*t, a faecal ghost.

I recall one of his TV acts, when he went into a deal and he spoke in a parody of his Ibadan neighbours. “Fity-fity, no seating.” Fifty-fifty, he meant to say, no cheating. But the man, Babatunde Omidina,63, expired a cheated man.

He dedicated his life to the thespian laugh. But we laughed in vain. Laugh without gain.

All of that started when he was travelling out of the country in 2013. The scan said he had something in his body interior. Something like drugs. The NDLEA arrested him. The headlines spilled blood. Comedian Baba Suwe arrested over drugs. The imagination set itself free. The slim, simple man with little stomach, bearing illegal substances. Why? He wanted to be rich? He made our homes rich with guffaws, tickled our ribs, wet our eyes. Why Baba Suwe? Why, Baba Suwe?

The man had been condemned. No courts necessary. It was an archetype of Nollywood deviance. They looked large. But had no money. They had to live large. So, if Baba Suwe was innocent, many were not ready to give him a humour of a chance. If what he bore like a tumour was not revealed, he had to be separated from it.

So, in his cell, it was time to confirm. Not to investigate. But then he did not stool in time. The officials hated a biological dillydallying. But he would have no ease until he eased himself.

It was not only a wait for the poop, but for the test results. The nation was in a poop vigil, a toilet watch. Baba Suwe was not on television or on stage. He was fulfilling Shakespeare’s words that the world is a stage. The stage was beyond our eyes. No one saw him in cell except those assigned to see him. No one saw him crouch and out the bowel contents. No passage for the public to see the passage of the thing. It was in the mind. The public imagination was the playwright. They concocted him sighing, silent, sitting, moping, eating, drinking, farting, pooping, frowzy. They didn’t see poop but they pooh-poohed him.

After nine tries in eight days, a dramatic disappointment. Excreta without evidence. Execrable! They saw nothing. But they would not release him. If the scan said it was there, so what happened? Was he not supposed to let it out? Such things were not supposed to give much problem. They wrapped them in little bags and swallowed. So, if swallowed, they were supposed to be in only one place, the stomach. To remove it, you either puked or defecated.

The scientist ought to believe the evidence of the scan more than eyes. But that pertained to invisible things, to microbes, to viruses, like those things that run in the body in the name of Covid-19 that no eye can see. But drugs in a bag? Habba!

If it burst, Baba Suwe would have been no more. Is that not how it works. But rather than ask, is it not the misreading of the equipment by our scientists? Like the doctors who said the wife of a prominent Nigerian – name withheld – had pneumonia three times and treated her to no avail. The same body went to the United Kingdom and it turned out to be Parkinson’s Disease and was healed there. Or was it not a prominent hospital here that said the great Gani Fawehinmi had malaria until it was too late?

So, if the scan was contradicted by other evidence, why not let him go?

But the poop vigil turned into a superstitious watch. The man had taken some magic herb. It was there, like the language of the Bible: “Thou shall not see me and live.” So, no scientist had the eye of understanding to peer the substance still hidden in plain sight. People said he was guilty. They just didn’t have the evidence. In good time, the charms would expire, and the man would be exposed when the ball of cocaine or heroin or whatever would materialise to the open gaze.

Read Also: Baba Suwe: Curtain falls on comedy icon

A nation of illiterates now encouraged the NDLEA to nurture their doubts. If the society and the media had banded on the side of truth and inquiry, maybe it would be a different story. But the man was left. Science subdued, superstition and a credulous people conspired to let official impunity reign. That explains how we believe without questions. The Renaissance era in Europe was born to rid the society that believed without inquiry. They invented witches, made bonfire of innocents, slaughtered ugly old women, went to war on rumours. Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, emblematised that pathology. Americans elected trump on lies. The “red scare” in the 1950’s, also called McCarthyism, was an era when Americans, high and low, saw communists where there were patriots. It’s not here alone, not today alone.

Data and facts are turned upside down and the people follow. We are seeing it today. We can empanel fiction as verities. Fela warned, If you dey follow follow, make you open eye. Many bow to pastors. Murder for politicians. Queries are a sacrilege. “A wonderful and terrible thing is committed in the land, the prophets prophesy falsely and the priests bear rule by their means. And my people love to have it so,” wept Prophet Jeremiah.

Even the courts are not immune. The NDLEA got court injunction to continue to hold him. The Beckettian wait continued. For them, no faeces, no peace. They surrendered after 25 clueless poops. In Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett had two infinite waits. Critics said, “nothing happens, twice” as against “nothing happens twice.” The coma explains the difference in Baba Suwe, NDLEA was waiting for sh*t to happen. They were the metaphor of the filth itself: official failure, scientific incompetence, judicial capitulation, mass hysteria.

They were feeding him when he could feed himself at home. Sheltered him when he had a better roof. They tarred him with disgrace on a spotless fame. Bound him instead of letting him fly Air France. He became the greedy artiste. The hypocrite. The role model exposed.

When he left, he was alone. No highflier came to his rescue. He remained a hanged man. Damned man. Everything fell apart: his career, his fortunes, his peace, his name.

A free man, he sued and got N25 million. A million for every poop. That was judicial humour we all missed. It is Fela’s “expensive sh*t.” But an appeal court upended it. The matter remains unresolved.

He fell ill, and only then did a few help him. But the pain never died, and in the end, Baba Suwe gave up the ghost. He still had a lot to offer, and wanted to do a movie on his ordeal. On his deathbed, he might have said like Socrates, “We owe a cock to Asclepius. Do not forget to pay him.” Or shall we say, we owe a cock of apology to Baba Suwe, now is the time to pay. The federal government should do that homage to his ghost. Or else, he will haunt us with his ill humour.

He died having much to offer. He left us like a crippled eagle eyeing the sky.

Nurturing hope

For some, it looked like a fluke. A state government taking over the skies. Now, Ibom Air is ramping up to become an elite airline in the country. When it had three aircraft, doubts were nurtured. It improved to five, and then in the midst of COVID-19, it soared to seven. Two weeks ago, it signed in collaboration with Airbus, to acquire 10 aircraft to raise its profile to 17 for the Nigerian airspace. It is one of the major doings of Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State. On land and in the air, he is defining the quality of legacy with the legacy of quality. No wonder, he was awarded African Regional Journal as one of 100 inspiring individuals in Africa. At the Raddidon Blu Hotel and Convention Centre in Kigali, he was conferred along with such stalwarts as our own Okonjo-Iweala, Prof. PLO Lumumba (well-known Kenya corruption czar) and goal scorer Mohammed Salah of Egypt. Gov. Emmanuel has shown you don’t need the vanity of a cymbal for the world to see your virtues.

November 29, 2021
Bandits and renaming ceremony

It is unrealistic to expect that banditry in the country will be ended simply because bandits have been relabelled. The public debate about the aptness of renaming bandits, and calling them terrorists, has ended in favour of those who favoured a renaming. But the reclassification does not mean that banditry is about to become a thing of the past.

It is a new beginning for the old bandits as they struggle to understand their new category. It may well be that reclassifying bandits was based on a misperception. Banditry is not terrorism just because it looks like terrorism.

Under pressure from sections of the public, including federal lawmakers, the Federal Government needed to demonstrate greater seriousness in the fight against banditry. Based on this, Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation Abubakar Malami (SAN) advised President Muhammadu Buhari to “declare Yan Bindiga, Yan Ta’adda and other similar banditry groups as proscribed organisations in accordance with the provisions of Section 2(1) (a) (b) (c) of the Terrorism (Prevention) (Amendment) Act of 2011 (as amended).”

Malami’s office presented the president’s approval to the Federal High Court, Abuja. Justice Taiwo Taiwo agreed with the Federal Government’s position and declared the activities of the “Yan Bindiga group and the Yan Ta’adda group and other similar groups” in any part of the country as “acts of terrorism and illegality.”

The court proscribed the activities of the group as well as other similar groups in any part of Nigeria, “either in groups or as individuals by whatever names they are called.”

Also, the court restrained “any person or group of persons from participating in any manner whatsoever, in any form of activities involving or concerning the prosecution of the collective intention or otherwise of the Yan Bindiga group and the Yan Ta’adda group under any other name or platform however called or described.”

According to the Federal Government, “These groups have engaged in attacks and wanton destruction of lives and properties in communities, kidnappings for ransom, kidnappings for marriage, mass abductions, cattle rustling, enslavement, imprisonment, severe deprivation of physical liberty, torture, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, other forms of sexual violence, attacks on commuters, and wanton destruction of lives and properties.” These activities “constitute acts of terrorism, threat to national security and the corporate existence of the country,” the government stated.

This list gives an insight into the thinking that led to reclassifying bandits as terrorists. This list not only extends the scope of terrorism but also redefines terrorism. The inclusion of cattle rustling and rape, for instance, highlights the definitional problem.

What is the difference between bandits and Boko Haram terrorists, for instance? Bandits are focused on sustenance, but terrorists seek political, religious or ideological results. The two are not the same thing, although they are similar because they terrorise the people.

Malami said his office ”in collaboration with relevant government agencies, including security operatives, are working assiduously to do the needful to take full advantage of this declaration.” It remains to be seen how the declaration will affect the operations of bandits and the government’s efforts to tackle them.

Will bandits become terrorists because they have been categorised as terrorists? Will they add political, religious or ideological objectives to their sustenance goals? It is noteworthy that the Federal Government is still fighting a war against terrorism that has gone on for more than a decade. This looks like the beginning of another war against terrorism.

Read Also: ‘How bandits killed our husbands, made us widows’

Obviously, the country has not won the anti-terrorism war. The war continues because terrorist groups in the country are still active. Indeed, the insurgency has been compounded by the involvement of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and ISWAP (Islamic State West African Province). The insurgents are no longer only Boko Haram members.

The implication of the reclassification is that the war against terrorism will now include bandits. It will amount to the government fighting on two fronts. Fighting terrorists and fighting bandits who have been declared terrorists at the same time will further complicate the war against terrorism.

Nigeria recently bought A-29 Super Tucano fighter jets from the US for the anti-terrorism war, and the jets are expected to be used against bandits because they are now called terrorists. Buying fighter planes to tackle insecurity is not a silver bullet as the ongoing war against terrorism has shown. If the purchase of fighter jets has not resulted in the defeat of terrorists, how will the jets bring about the defeat of bandits now known as terrorists?

Renaming bandits as terrorists is a political stunt. It is yet another move by the Federal Government to make the public believe that it is serious about tackling the country’s security crisis.

When media reports said the Federal High Court in Abuja had fixed September 17 for the arraignment of 400 suspects for alleged terrorism funding, the public had looked forward to the event. “The case will come up before Justice Anwuli Chikere,” the reports had said. But there was no report of the event, suggesting that it didn’t happen.

In April, it was reported that 400 alleged Boko Haram sponsors had been arrested, suggesting a new level of seriousness in the fight against terrorism. The arrested alleged financiers of the Islamic terrorist group were said to be businessmen, including bureau de change operators. They were arrested in Kano, Borno, Lagos, Sokoto, Adamawa, Kaduna and Zamfara states, and Abuja.

The arrests were said to have been carried out based on investigations involving the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Department of State Services (DSS), Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The suspects were expected to be prosecuted without delay.

Seven months later, the public is still awaiting their trial. This cannot encourage public confidence in the government’s effort to tackle insecurity.

It is easy to change labels, and tag bandits as terrorists. But that does not change banditry, and it does not change terrorism. Perhaps the government can afford to play word games, which is what this reclassification suggests. But the victims of bandits and terrorists know and feel the hell of insecurity. They need more than word games.

November 29, 2021
N5, 000 bait and subsidy removal

We are at it once again. The same old songs are at replay. This time, the federal government is poised to remove whatever remains of the so-called fuel subsidy regime.

Already the ground for its removal had been set with the elimination of same from the 2022 national budget. The government is delaying its implementation till early next year apparently to forestall any backlash that may possibly arise from hasty application.

But the demise of the fuel subsidy regime is now certain going by hints from the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed and the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company NNPC, Mele Kyari. Ahmed had last Tuesday at the launch of the World Bank Nigeria Development Update set mid-2022 as the target date for complete elimination of fuel subsidy.

According to her, the government is working with its development partners on measures to cushion the potential negative effects of the removal of subsidies on the most vulnerable at the bottom of 40 per cent of the population. Hear her: “One of such measures would be to institute a monthly transport subsidy in the form of cash transfer of N5, 000 to between 30-40 million deserving Nigerians”.

She sought to justify the subsidy removal on recent developments in the oil sector such as the Petroleum Industrial Act 2021, envisaged full reactivation of four public refineries and the coming on stream of three private refineries under construction in 2022.

Kyari had also at the same event announced that petrol would sell for between N320-N340 per litre from February next year. That represents more than 100 per cent increase from its current pump price of between N162-N165 per litre. With the two positions, the final elimination of the touted fuel subsidy regime by early next year has become a foregone conclusion.

Nigerians must have to brace up for the hard times ahead given its hyper inflationary propensity with devastating effects on the disposable income of the most vulnerable of the population. It also comes with the risk of social and political backlash if the process is not properly managed.

In the past, such increases had come with skyrocketing of the prices of goods and services available to the poor thus widening the poverty level in the country. The situation is bound to be worse now. For a country rated by the World Poverty clock as the poverty capital of the world, the proposed subsidy removal promises very devastating outcomes. It will push down many more Nigerians to the lowest rungs of the poverty matrix.

Government’s response to this smouldering danger is the proposal to pay a monthly transport stipend of N5, 000 to 40 million vulnerable Nigerians. This proposal comes with serious challenges and limitations. Apart from fears on how to identify the 40 million Nigerian beneficiaries, it comes with some arithmetic incongruities that lend the proposal suspect.

N5, 000 monthly transport palliatives to 40 million Nigerian will translate to about N2.4tn per year even as the current annual subsidy on fuel is put at about N3tn. Given this, the government would only net in about N600billion from its subsidy regime removal.

This makes little sense as the supposed funds that would be freed from subsidy removal will not be substantial to catalyze the touted leap in social infrastructural development. It then remains to be conjectured what the government stands to gain from the subsidy that is said to hold the ace for rapid development of the country’s economy.

Read Also: Ex-presidential aspirant cautions over subsidy removal

It is either the government is not telling us all the truth or the exercise is wrapped in deception. Questions have also been raised on the criterion for identifying the 40 million Nigerians to benefit from the fund and the mode of the proposed disbursement. Matters are not made any easier by disclosures from the senate that no provision was made in the 2022 national budget for the payment of the N5, 000 transport stipends to 40 million Nigerians. The government must come clear on these ambiguities if it has no intention of compounding mistrusts that are usually associated with such bogus promises.

The burden of the confusion on the amount of revenue that will accrue from subsidy removal is made heavier by the scandalous corruption that has been the bane of fuel subsidy regime. Much of the opposition that had trailed the subsidy debate overtime, had centred on the high level corruption that had marred the exercise. Nigerians do not have confidence that funds to be recouped from the subsidy removal will not be frittered away by self-serving buccaneers masquerading as leaders.

That is why feelings are high that subsidy regime remains part of the national cake for the less privileged that should be retained at all cost. This reasoning may seem absurd but it illustrates the mistrust associated with the management of public funds on these shores.

The country’s experience in the management of subsidy funds does not give comfort that things will take a different shape this time around. Not with the thriving corruption in high places despite the fact that the fight against corruption was one of the three campaign promises for which the current government was voted into power.

High level of corruption in the fuel subsidy regime was brought to the public domain by two events during the regime of President Jonathan. The House of Representatives had indicted scores of oil companies for their roles in the fuel subsidy scam and asked them to refunds sums of money to the federal government. About the same time, the government terminated the services of two accounting and auditing firms- Akintola Williams and Company and Adekanola and company.

The two companies, responsible for certifying the documents and claims of marketers before subsidy claims are paid were sanctioned following concerns on the management of the subsidy regime. These are but a tip of the iceberg in the monumental corruption that had messed up the management of the fuel subsidy regime.

There are fears that funds accruing from the N5, 000 transport grant will reach the target population. But if the difference between the total amount to paid out as transport grant to the vulnerable population in one year and what will be saved from the subsidy removal is just about N600billion, Nigerians should be allowed to choose from the two options.

They should be asked to make a choice between the transport grant and fuel subsidy removal. If that choice is thrown open, your guess is as good as mine. They will definitely opt for the retention of the subsidy regime as they may not trust transport grant will get to them. That is how bad the mistrust is. And it is a measure of public perception of such promises.

The federal government is faced with crisis of confidence in this matter. It must clear the air on the country’s annual fuel subsidy standing vis-à-vis the annual financial implications of the proposed transport grant. There is also the need to clearly state the duration for the payment of the grant.

Beyond these however, the fuel subsidy challenge would have been history but for its politicization. The arguments being canvassed now to justify fuel subsidy removal and the measures to cushion its effects are not substantially different from the justification proffered for the same exercise by the Jonathan regime. But the country was shut down by the Occupy Nigeria protests when Jonathan moved in similar direction.

He was not given the chance to carry out the changes he proposed in the oil sector just because some people wanted to get even with him. Today, we are back to square one. The Buhari regime has increased the selling price of fuel from N97 per litre to its current price of N165 per litre. The same government intends to increase the price to N340 per litre. The vehement opposition Jonathan got when he came up with the same measures mirrors vividly the destructive politics that had stood against the development of this country. Or, is it a case of the proverbial tortoise messing up the air and nobody complains?

November 29, 2021