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  • NCC: A tale of regulatory failure

    NCC: A tale of regulatory failure

    In Africa’s largest economy, sometimes making a simple phone call successfully could become a herculean exercise requiring patience and enduring frustration. Nigeria’s telecommunications sector, despite its potential and importance to the nation’s economy and amidst its increasing subscription rate, continues to deteriorate under what appears to be poor and ineffective regulatory oversight, leaving millions of subscribers at the mercy of underperforming service providers.

    The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), established to protect consumer interests and ensure quality service delivery, appears to have abdicated its regulatory responsibilities. While collecting billions in licensing fees and fines, the commission has failed to address the fundamental issues plaguing the sector, transforming from being a watchdog into a mere spectator of the industry’s decline without much of a whimper despite the glaring shenanigans displayed by these telco firms.

    For the average Nigerian, the gory and ugly experiences of using mobile services have become a daily ordeal. Network congestion, particularly during peak hours, renders smooth communication whether it be voice or voice over internet protocol communication nearly impossible in major cities. More subscribers often find themselves redialing multiple times to complete a single call, while those fortunate enough to connect must contend with poor audio quality and abrupt disconnections.

    In commercial hubs such as Lagos, Onitsha, Kano and others, subscribers have reportedly complained about such occurrences due to dropped calls and unreliable networks. This has led to subscribers purchasing multiple SIMs of different networks, still such measures yet fail to guarantee the subscriber the desire for reliable communication. This, I have witnessed firsthand.

    The situation with internet services is equally dire. On a number of occasions, the internet services provided could be described as the ‘Speed of Yesterday’. While telecommunications companies proudly advertise 4G LTE services, the reality for most users is far from the promised high-speed connectivity. Data speeds frequently crawl at 2G levels or 3G levels, making simple tasks like sending emails or accessing social media platforms a grueling exercise.

    Obviously, one cannot totally quantify the huge impact such situations have on Nigeria’s growing digital economy. To describe such as bad is an understatement. Start-ups, online businesses, and remote workers face significant challenges due to the unreliability of such internet connections, with such regression threatening not only Nigeria’s position as Africa’s leading tech hub but also largely undermining our potential to scale up to the opportunities offered by the digital economy creating the jobs and attracting the investments necessary to leapfrog our economy from where it is now to where we really want it to be.

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    The NCC’s approach to these issues has been remarkably passive, its posture similar to regulatory negligence. Despite having the statutory power to impose sanctions and enforce quality standards, the commission’s actions have been limited to issuing occasional warnings and conducting ineffective monitoring exercises.

    The regulatory body’s quality of service (QoS) parameters, which should serve as benchmarks for acceptable service levels, have become merely passive suggestions rather than enforced standards. Telecommunications service providers routinely breach these parameters without facing meaningful consequences, effectively turning the entire regulatory framework into a paper tiger.

    As noted earlier, the economic impact of poor telecommunications services extends far beyond individual inconvenience. The Nigerian economy repeatedly loses billions of naira annually due to failed transactions, missed business opportunities, and reduced productivity. Small and medium-sized enterprises, which form the backbone of the economy, are particularly vulnerable to these telecommunications failures.

    Moreover, the poor quality of service has implications for national security. Emergency services delivery is obviously likely to be affected when networks like ours fail, and the inability to maintain stable communications affects both personal safety and law enforcement efforts.

    While the NCC maintains a Consumer Affairs Bureau, its effectiveness in addressing subscriber complaints remains questionable. The bureau’s complaint resolution mechanism is cumbersome, and many consumers report that their grievances remain unresolved for months and even years.

    The commission’s consumer protection guidelines, while comprehensive on paper, lack practical enforcement. Telecommunications companies have continued to engage in practices that place their subscribers at a disadvantage, from unsolicited services to arbitrary charges, with minimal intervention from the regulator.

    The transformation of Nigeria’s telecommunications sector requires immediate and decisive action. The NCC must transition from its current passive stance to active regulation, implementing and enforcing stricter quality of service standards. This should include:

    • Regular, transparent monitoring of network performance with published results

    • Substantial penalties for breaches of service standards

    • Mandatory infrastructure investment requirements for service providers

    • Implementation of consumer compensation schemes for service failures

    • Regular independent audits of network infrastructure and service quality.

    The time has come for a complete overhaul of Nigeria’s telecommunications regulatory framework. The NCC must either step up to its responsibilities or make way for a more effective regulatory body. The Nigerian people deserve better than to be held hostage by poor telecommunications services while regulators watch from the sidelines.

    In a world where digital connectivity increasingly determines economic success, Nigeria cannot afford to continue with its current trajectory of telecommunications decline. The cost of regulatory failure is too high, and the patience of Nigerian consumers has worn beyond too thin. The message to the NCC and service providers must be clear: Improve!

  • The Kemi Badenoch challenge

    The Kemi Badenoch challenge

    Her narrative of Nigeria, the country of her birth, is essentially a monotonous, one-track and static tale deliberately designed to further endear her to those who already have a jaundiced, perverse and derogatory perception of the capabilities of the black race and its claims to civilization and a shared equality of dignity with other races particular of the Caucasian variety. Mrs Kemi Badenoch has been especially voluble since her meterioc rise in British politics as leader of the Conservative Party and the opposition as regards the dysfunction, corruption, poverty and decadence that characterize contemporary Nigeria. It is difficult to fault her assertions that most Nigerian politicians are in public life for purposes of selfish aggrandizement than for the pursuit of the common good; that an institution like the Nigeria Police Force, for example, parades a good number of personnel who fall far short of the requisite professional and ethical standards or that essential facilities for a dignified life in a modern polity are inexcusably unavailable to the vast majority of the people.

    That is the reality of the Nigeria Kemi grew up in as a child in the 1980s and from which she has escaped courtesy of her British citizenship by birth and is responsible for her decision to tenaciously cling on to her adopted country and aggressively seek to cut all physical, emotional and psychological ties with the land from which her parents and their ancestors sprang. The opportunities offered her by Britain not only to acquire qualitative education but to also ascend to the elite rungs of that country’s politics may seem to validate Kemi’s strident and unrestrained denunciations of Nigeria’s failings. It is doubtful if her obvious ability and brilliance would have been given such fertile soil to flourish in this country.

    But there is also the danger that her negative narrative of Nigeria will help reinforce the prejudices of many of the far right white elements she seeks to court who may see her as another opportunistic black person from a failed country incapable of developing itself who has come to take advantage of a country built by the labour of others. It is impossible for Kemi to denigrate Nigeria in the way she is going about it without also devaluing her essence as a black person.

    Many Nigerians have identified with and supported Kemi’s vehement criticisms of the country for essentially partisan reasons – their grievances against the outcome of the last presidential election and the resultant current political status quo in the country. Thus, the opposition has chosen to read her scathing comments as directed against President Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Vice President Kashim Shettima’s take that she is free to drop her Nigerian name, Kemi, if she detests the country so much further spurred many in the opposition to rally to her defense.

    Yet, the incidents that she cites to illustrate her negative depiction of Nigeria dates back to the late 1980s suggesting that the situation predates an administration that has been in office for less than two years since May 2023. Kemi’s criticisms, which cannot be dismissed as entirely baseless, thus constitute an indictment of the Nigerian political class as a whole across party demarcations as well as successive administrations in post-independence Nigeria.

    I certainly do not agree with those who argue that patriotic love for country should restrain any citizen from publicly and unreservedly condemning Nigeria’s all too obvious failings. But the enterprise of such criticisms must be predicated on intellectual honesty and factual balance. Kemi’s lived experience of the Nigeria she paints in putrid colours to the world is of the Lagos of the 1980s and possibly early 1990s. Can it be empirically valid that Lagos, as an example, has remained static and unchanged since then? Has there been no improvement in infrastructural facilities since then? What about the light rail or Bus Rapid Transit system which now define the city’s landscape but was absent at the time Kemi references?

    Before 1999, daylight Bank robberies were near daily occurrences in Lagos and armed robbers lay siege to estates and communities at night. Traffic and street lights were few and far between on Lagos roads; children carried chairs and benches to and from school daily while adults and children could be seen with all kinds of containers in search of water across the state. What about the mountains of refuse that defaced the state from Ikoyi to Ikorodu and Ikeja to Badagry?

    Can Kemi and her supporters honestly say that there have been no positive developmental attainments from the situation nearly three and a half decades ago that informed the Conservative Party leader’s experience of Nigeria and now even if we admit that much more progress ought to have been made? In the same vein, is Mrs Badenoch right in depicting Britain as a model of perfection devoid of the kind of flaws such as pervasive corruption that taint Nigeria? The answer is an emphatic no.

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    Listen, for instance, to Carol Vorderman, the Welsh journalist, social critic and tv celebrity on the menace of corruption in the UK. Her words, “Yesterday, there was the Public Accounts Committee put out, and nobody’s reported it in mainstream media, that in the two years preceding Johnson becoming Prime Minister, there was an approximation of five and a half billion pounds of fraud and waste on government departments. In the following two years when Sunak was chancellor, that quadrupled to 21 billion pounds of fraud and it’s not being investigated. And this report said,  not that mainstream media reported any of it at all, that of the 7.9 billion pounds that went into COVID testing, 6 billion pounds of that was given to the companies recommended by Tory MPs and ministers and peers. It goes on and on and it’s not being reported. I could go on for hours about the corruption”.

    So much then for Mrs Badenock’s unceasing attempt to contrast an angelic Britain with an irredeemably demonic Nigeria. The reality may be far more complex than that and this is not in any way to suggest that the existence of corruption in Britain justifies its prevalence in Nigeria. But every community of flawed mortals has challenges with which it grapples not excluding the advanced western countries that she idolizes so uncritically. Indeed, the Conservative Party leader’s outlook may subconsciously be a function of the chronic inferiority complex arising from centuries of Nigeria and Africa’s encounter with slavery and colonial imperialism, which is a key factor in the continent’s protracted underdevelopment.

    Yet, her analysis sees no linkage between about five centuries of slavery, colonial exploitation and neocolonialism and the wealth of the West in contrast to the poverty in Nigeria that she contemptuosly refers to. Of course, this is not a line of argument worth pursuing too far as it gives the impression of seeking to find excuses for Africa’s indefensible  dismal post colonial developmental performance. Nigerians have ruled Nigeria for six and a half decades since 1960 and must bear the responsibility for whatever they have made of their country. On that, Mrs Banedock cannot be faulted.

    But then the disturbing poverty of historical consciousness in the Conservative Party leader’s analysis is evident in her response to Vice President Kashim Shettima’s jibe about her retaining a Nigerian Kemi identity of a country she so passionately detests. In her words, “I find it interesting that everybody defines me as being Nigerian. I identity less with the country than with the specific ethnicity (Yoruba). That’s what I really am. I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where the Islamism is, those were our ethnic enemies and yet you end up being lumped with those people”. In the first place, she appears oblivious of the diverse multiethnic, multicultural and multi religious composition of the North. There are substantial numbers of Yoruba who have lived in the North from pre colonial times just as the Hausa-Fulani communities in many of the Southwest states date back to over two centuries ago.

    Many states in the Northcentral and far North have considerable Christian populations just as Islam is deeply rooted in Yoruba land. Since precolonial times, there have been trade, marital, cultural and sometimes conflictual relationships between different primordial states and communities in the areas that today make up southern and northern Nigeria. And as Sam Omatseye pointed out in his column on Monday, the negative experiences she often narrates about Nigeria occured in Lagos in the Yoruba Southwest where she lived. When she talks about the north being “our ethnic enemies”, she is perhaps unaware of the protracted intra-Yoruba wars that lasted for over a hundred years before the colonial subjugation.

    But then, in the final analysis, Mrs Badenoch is entitled to her worldview and the extreme conservative ideology she has opted to identify with. There is little that anybody can do about that. However, there is much that can be done about the undeniable dysfunction and poverty in Nigeria she describes and the corruption, ineptness and lack of vision of the political class responsible for this. Part of the missing link in her analysis and those of her supporters is that, despite its own shortcomings and the complex context in which it operates, the Tinubu administration is taking far reaching steps to address the root causes of the country’s debilitating challenges fundamentally.

    The removal of the fuel subsidy that has saved humongous amounts of funds that has made it possible for most states to pay the new mininum wage of N70,000 with a number of states even exceeding this amount. The coming on stream of domestic crude oil refining through the new Dangote and rehabilitated Port Harcourt refineries, processes that had started under the preceding Buhari administration, and the envisaged ultimate mitigating impact on fuel prices. The merger of the parallel exchange rate markets and the elimination of the opportunities it provided for privileged and connected individuals to make instantaneous stupendous wealth without industry through arbitrage. The fiscal liberation of the local government councils from the financial asphyxiation of the states to promote the prospects of grassroots development.

    The empowerment of  states to generate and distribute electricity within their jurisdictions – an opportunity that a number of states are now taking advantage of with huge potential impact on the economy. The proposed thoroughgoing tax reforms which experts claim have revolutionary rejuvenating potentials for the Nigerian economy. These are a few of the key policy thrusts of the administration and they are beginning to bear tentative fruits. The country’s foreign reserves currently stands at about $42 billion, a considerable improvement. And the country recorded balance of trade surpluses of N6 trillion, N6.5 trillion and N6 trillion respectively over the last three quarters indicating steadily growing domestic productivity.

    The fierce opposition in many quarters to the reforms despite the cautious and restrained approach of the administration shows just how difficult engineering change in a complex polity like Nigeria can be. But the challenge of critiques such as those posed by Kemi Badenoch is that there is no option but to deepen and sustain the reforms until the country is placed on an irreversible trajectory of growth, development and prosperity. This long term goal must be calibrated with urgent and effective short term measures to tame current astronomical inflationary spirals, drastically bring down food and transportation costs in particular and address the biting poverty that breeds citizen cynicism and generates support for extremist perspectives of the Kemi Badenoch variety. There must also be a more concerted effort to tackle the corrosive corruption at the root of high levels of inequality and deepens the high rate of poverty in a richly endowed country where the vast majority of the people have no business being poor.

  • Slapping club officials

    Slapping club officials

    The domestic league is gradually becoming a jungle where anything is possible. New methods of brigandage are introduced across the country with the criminals choosing where to strike – this new system ensures that the target suffers the punishments, leaving the clubs safe from heavy sanctions.

    On Sunday in Lagos, a disgruntled fan took the laws into his hands by creating an unpleasant setting which led to the physical assault on Remo Stars Coach Sulaimon Kamil. As the coach walked away from the pitch, his unknown assailant spotting a black shirt walked up to the unexpecting Kamil and slapped him from behind.

    The blinding backhand slap jolted Kamil, who struck back at the beast on impulse. Kamil’s punch made his attacker groggy, as he staggered to the turf. He got up quickly, groping, while his crowd of supporters who had come with him watched what had befallen their leader in awe. Mission unaccomplished. I wished Kamil had waited to finish off his attacker by ensuring his arrest by security operatives.

    The sanctions against bestial tendencies by these unscrupulous fans on their clubs would only make a lot of sense when the attackers are nabbed and made to face the wrath of the law. No person’s blood is worth being spilled at match venues before relevant changes can be reflected in the domestic league. Weekly matches are marred by violence, with the culprits (hoodlums, urchins, etc) made to look like spirits due to inadequate security.

    The irony in the statement credited to the NPFL rests with the demand on Ikorodu United FC of Lagos’ management to produce and prosecute the culprit who slapped the Remo Stars assistant coach. The NPFL is simply asking Ikorodu United’s officials to clap with one hand. Of course, the idiot has a right to support the Lagos side; just as the club may not have sent him on that shameful assignment. What stands out clearly is that this man isn’t a stranger to the Lagos side. I don’t expect the unknown fan to watch matches inside the Onikan Stadium, Lagos’ premises again this season. If he does, he would be on his own.

    Ikorodu City was charged for breach of Rules B13.52, B13.18 and C9.

    In a summary jurisdiction notice, the NPFL charged Ikorodu City for failure to provide adequate security, which resulted in unauthorised persons gaining access to restricted areas and assaulting Remo Stars Coach Kamil in breach of Rule B13.52 of the Frameworks and Rules.

    Ikorodu City was also charged for failure to ensure proper conduct of their team and supporters in breach of Rule C9.

    The club was fined a total of N3,000,000, ordered to identify and prosecute the fan who assaulted Coach Kamil and play the next two consecutive home games without admitting fans to the stands.

    The sanction read: “an order to identify and prosecute the individual(s) involved in the assault on Remo Stars Coach, Mr. Sulaimon Kamil. A report detailing the progress of this action must be submitted to the NPFL within seven (7) working days of the date of this notice”.

    “In accordance with Rule C26, you are required, within 48 hours of the date of this notice, to either submit to the summary jurisdiction and the sanctions contained herein; or elect to be dealt with by a disciplinary panel”, the NPFL ruled.

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    Much as this writer appreciates the swiftness in which the NPFL’s hammer falls on defaulters, it is also pertinent to plead with the organisers to avail us with copies of the body’s rulebook. It isn’t enough to list the section in which clubs defaulted, it helps readers and followers of the game understand the dictates of the offences committed.

    This incident is not an isolated one, as the NPFL board imposed sanctions on Plateau United and Bendel Insurance in November for security lapses and violent incidents during recent home games on Matchday 11.

    Plateau United faced penalties for failing to ensure adequate security, which led to attacks on visiting team members and match officials. The club was fined N4 million and faced deduction of three points and three goals. They were also ordered to pay compensation to the injured match official and Rangers player Daniel Onyia.

    Indeed, Bendel Insurance was charged with rule breaches following their Matchday 11 game against Kano Pillars. The club faced a 3-point and 3-goal deduction and a total fine of N3.75 million for security failures and misconduct.

    The last of the three home games at Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium in Benin City, which the NPFL directed should be played behind closed doors by Bendel Insurance, holds this weekend against Lobi Stars of Makurdi. If Bendel Insurance beats Lobi this weekend, for instance, it would be said the sanction helped them steady their game. After all, how much do they rake into their coffers from the gates when the fans watched their games before the NPFL’s hammer struck?

    I have always advocated here that the best form of security starts by ensuring that competent referees are assigned, such red-lettered matches are handled by the best set of referees and match commissioners alongside several independent assessors. And it is good to celebrate here the massive improvement in officiating by Nigerian referees

    Why haven’t the league body contacted the Commissioners of Police in the States where the games are played for them to watch over the different stadia to maintain public peace. Of course, where the police or/and security operatives are present in the stadium, beasts who have flouted the law are immediately arrested and handed over to them for prosecution. It isn’t enough for the body to make pronouncements or ask the criminals or offending clubs to pay fines and treat injured referees.

    These injured referees and fans should be made to be part of the criminals’ prosecution in court, where they can narrate their close shaves with death, and the pains and mental torture they went through. Their accounts may further embolden the judges to strike out any pleas from the criminals’ lawyers of them being first offenders. The court proceedings should be covered massively by the media. The news stories from the courts should be published in all the newspapers and in the electronic media. Shouldn’t the IMC members insist that venues hosting the domestic league games should have closed-circuit devices to fish out such miscreants?

    For any venture to attract good funding, it should be packaged to look attractive. But with the spate of violence at venues, nobody will do sports business with the league until hoodlums are chased away from the stadia. The carnage at the stadium may dissuade spectators from watching games. Nobody will bring his family to the stadium only to scamper out of the place as violence breaks out.

    I don’t subscribe to the view that we should introduce soldiers at match venues. They are no battlefronts. Stewards and those associated with keeping the stadium peaceful should be made to do their jobs. Negligent ones should be axed. Many jobless Nigerians will be happy to land this kind of job.

  • The Massacre in Gaza

    The Massacre in Gaza

    “Whenever injustice becomes the law with which to govern a people, resistance must become a legitimate duty with which to quest for legitimate survival”.  Anonymous

    Preamble

    Today’s world seems to be a proverbial ark without any compass that can show its way to a particular destination. Yet, that proverbial ark keeps cruising recklessly on a storming sea without minding the repercussion of a possible capsizing.

    Unlike in the remote or even recent past, no part of the world can confidently claim safety today and go to bed with the closure of both eyes. Except for self-deception, any euphoria of  whatever can be called global peace in the contemporary world remains a property of the past.Thus, from all indications, the contemporary time is fast-tracking the pace of mankind towards the end of human existence.

    The Palestinian Crises

    While millions of Muslims, all over the world, while muslims are eagerly awaiting Ramadan into the world, the international media waves throbbed with unpleasant breaking news that immediately became an eyesore for some people and a sour taste in the mouth of others.

    The news was about an outbreak of a new orgy of violence in Gaza Strip which hurriedly reminded the world of a merciless siege on that same Strip in 2014.

    Analysis of the Crises

    As a onetime Foreign Editor and a student of International Law and Diplomacy, who studied in the Arab world and was quite familiar with the situation in the Middle East, yours sincerely had severally delivered public lectures on the conflicts in that regionwith detailed analysis of the causes and effects of those conflicts from various conceivable angles. Below is an excerpt from one of such lectures which I deliveredsome years ago in different parts of the country:

    “This is not the first time in history that partition would be adopted as solution to a contentious problem. In primordial time, King Solomon ruled between two mothers who were laying claim to a single child thus: “If you cannot give one child to each of the two women claiming to be the mother, then split the child into two and give one half to one and the second half to the other”.

    This analogy was re-enacted in 1948, almost three thousand years after that historic episode in an area disputably called Palestine and Israel at the same time. The only exception in the contemporary case is that the Wisdom of Solomon which brought solution to the historic controversy of the yore is conspicuously absent today.

    Partition of Palestine

    Like the false mother in King Solomon’s time who welcomed bisection of the controversial child, the Jews quickly accepted the partition of Palestine in 1948 because it gave them something that was not legitimately theirs.

    Partition of countries against the wish of the people living in there was not only a social aberration but also a clear evidence of injustice and man’s inhumanity to man.

    Wherever adopted as a solution, partition only brings suffering, destruction and tragedy to millions of human beings as in the case of Vietnam, Germany, Korea and now Palestine. Normalcy only returned to Vietnam after the reunification of that country following ten years of a fierce war. Although the conditions of the partition of Germany after the World War II in the 1940s appeared normal, neither that country nor those who partitioned it felt relaxed until Germany became a single country again in the early 1990s. The situation of (North and South) Korea today can be regarded as temporary because reunification of that country is just a matter of time.

    The imperial powers which imposed partition on the three countries mentioned above against the wish of their inhabitants were the same that inflicted the tragedy of partition on Palestine without any consideration for the agonizing plight of her long time inhabitants.

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    Genesis of the Crises

    The conflict between the Palestinians and the Jews, which now dominates the Middle East crises, did not start by accident. It was well designed and orchestrated from the very beginning. In 1879 when the Zionist movement was officially launched, an Austrian Jewish lawyer and journalist, Theodor Herzl, who, incidentally, was the founder of that movement published an article in a European popular magazine. In the article he declared: “Let sovereignty be granted us (Zionists) over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest we shall manage by ourselves”.

    Influence of World War I

    The outbreak of the World War I came to fertilize the soil for the germination of that tall dream. The year 1916 was disastrous for the allied forces. Casualties on the Western fronts were heavy. Anxiety rose very high. And the only seeming choice left for Britain to escape defeat in the hands of the Germans was to draw America into the war on her side. It was at that gloomy period that an Oxford educated Armenian, James Malcolm, walked in.  He was a friend of the then British Secretary of State, Sir Mark Sykes. The latter told Malcolm that the British Cabinet was looking anxiously for American intervention in the war.

    Responding, Malcolm who was well connected to the topmost echelon of the American government told Sykes that Britain was going about it the wrong way. He said: “You can win the sympathy of certain politically minded Jews everywhere and especially in the United States in one way only, and that is by offering to secure Palestine for them”.

    That was the beginning of a long journey that was to culminate in what has now become the ‘Arab/Israeli conflict’. Of course through Malcolm’s connection, the US entered the war on the side of the allied forces in 1917 and that resulted in a fate accompli for Germany.

    To fulfill her own side of the agreement, therefore, Britain made a declaration on November 2, 1917 through her Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour, giving a substantial part of Palestine to Israel. That declaration has since popularized the name of that Foreign Minister as it has since been known as Balfour Declaration.

    Ever since the declaration, the Arabs have never been able to sleep with their two eyes closed. It has always been a matter of war today, ceasefire tomorrow. This is not mainly due to the condemnable usurpation of their land by the Zionists but more because of their own diabolical disunity that has been telling incessantly on Islam as a religion.

    The Fault of the Arabs

    Viewing the Middle East crises from religious angle, the general belief in many Muslim quarters is that those crises are a religious affair. And for decades, the Arabs have capitalized on that belief to whip up Islamic sentiments among non-Arab Muslims for the purpose of winning their sympathy. But looking at the matter critically, one will discover that such a belief is not only misgiven but wildly misplaced. The reason is this: long before the Israeli factor came into those crises, the Arabs had been at loggerheads among themselves for centuries in that sub-region. History is there to testify to this fact. But for the internal wrangling among them, the entire Europe would have been fully Islamized today. At least the Umayyad Dynasty which was fully run by the Arabs lasted for about 500 years in Spain where its headquarters was relocated after eviction from Damascus. Despite that great vintage, they missed the opportunity of planting Islam in the heart of Europe.

    Now, the Middle East crises cannot be pinned down to the Arab/Israeli conflict alone. They are a multifaceted conflict that requires a multidimensional solution. For instance, the State of Israel was not planted in Palestine until 1948. But Syria and Lebanon only agreed just a few years ago to exchange diplomatic mission for the first time since 1943 when the latter became independent. Why? Are both countries not Arab in language, culture and orientation? And this example can be found in virtually all the Arab countries. The truth is that the Arabs are as much a problem to Islam as they are to themselves. Ironically, the divine religion called Islam originated from them. One can imagine what they would have done to that religion if it had not emanated from them.

    Implication of Disunity

    Since the obliteration of Caliphate in 1923 which for many centuries had been the central core of Islamic operations, there has been no precise leadership for the Muslim Ummah. The implication of this is that there has been no universal competent Muslim authority that can be obeyed globally if and when a vital order is given to propel Islam statutorily. Thus every country or community operates at its level to the detriment of muslim unity.

    What is more worrisome in all these is the snobbish Arab attitude which places premium on Arabism rather than Islam as if Islam is the property of the Arabs which can be incorporated into Arabism at will.

    Except for Libya, Somalia and Sudan, no Arab country bears a name that reflects Islam. Even those three African countries only reflect Islam in their official names for political reasons.

    Arabs’ Economic Strength

    The wealth available in the Middle East is valued to be about one fifth of the entire wealth in the world. Yet the size of that sub-region in terms of land area and population is less than 2% of the world’s land mass. But unfortunately, the enormous wealth in the area is being managed and spent directly or indirectly by the West. Every Arab country has her foreign reserve in the US or other Western countries. Their administrative thinking and security strategies are from the West. Most of their investments are based in the West. Yet their most insuperable problem, that of disunity is from the West. How can they survive without the West?

    The total Gross Domestic Products (GDP) of the Arab countries was $1,195 billion in 2008. Much of this money kept in Western banks is what those Western countries use to further their own development. They also use a part of it to finance NGO projects in Africa and some other parts of the world in the name of humanitarian gesture. And most of the beneficiaries are non-Muslims.

    The Way Forward

    Never in the history of man has war been the final determinant of peace. The victor and the vanquished in any war will eventually sit around a table to talk and negotiate the terms of their coexistence.

    It happened in Asia and Europe. It happened in Africa and America. It happened in Australia and the Middle East. There is neither permanency of victory nor that of vanquishness. And that is why there is always room for communication even in a war situation.

    The war of attrition between Israel and Palestine is not in the interest of humanity no matter the sentiments. And it can never be. If these two races (Jews and Arabs) living together on the same land have fought constantly for 76 years (1948-2024) without much to count as gain, logic must dictate a change of style.

    In the last one decade alone, the Palestinian people have lost more than 500, 000 lives; over $70 billion in income opportunity; 20 million square meters of agricultural land; and over 100 million man-hours in crossing either from West Bank to Gaza or vice versa at Ramallah. Much more than that, almost 2.7 million of the 4 million residents of Gaza and West Bank have become refugees in almost inhuman camps. The opportunity cost of conflict for the Middle East from 1991-2024 is estimated to be $27 trillion. In other words had there been peace and cooperation in the Middle East since 1991, every Palestinian citizen would have been earning over $4,500 as income per capital in 2024 instead of the $1,500 now being projected. Every Israeli citizen would have been earning over $47,000 as income per capital in 2024 instead of about $24,000 now being projected.

    Because of an import-export ban imposed on Gaza by Israel in 2007, 95 per cent of Gaza’s industrial operations were suspended. And out of 35,000 people employed by 3,900 factories in June 2005, only 1,750 people remained employed by 195 factories in June 2007. The figures can be imagined today. Blockade has severely hindered health services in Gaza. Between October and December 2007 for instance, the World Health Organization confirmed the deaths of 20 patients, including 5 children due to lack of access to health care. Between 2007 and 2008, 120 people in Gaza died because they were not allowed access to medical treatment.

    The Israeli Government’s cut in the flow of fuel and electricity to the Gaza Strip has also been called collective castigation of the civilian population, which is a violation of Israel’s obligations under the laws of war. Starting from February 7, 2008, the Israeli Government reduced the electricity it sells directly to Gaza.

    This also had a terrible effect on all spheres of life in the Gaza and West Bank.     

    War of Amenities

    The war between Israel and Palestine is not limited to weapons and diplomacy alone. In the Middle East generally, water is a resource of great political concern because of the desert nature of the sub-region. Thus, since Israel receives much of its water from two large aquifers which are sprawled across the Green Line, the use of this water has been contentious in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Though the major source of the common water lies in the Israeli section of the disputed land, some of the wells used to draw that water are situated within the Palestinian Authority areas. This has limited Israelis’ direct access to drinking water.

    But the argument is that Israel herself had prevented substantial volume of water from flowing to the areas occupied by the Palestinians thereby limiting the quantity of water that may be drawn from those wells.

    While Israel’s consumption of this water has decreased since it began its occupation of the West Bank, it still consumes the most of it.

    In the 1950s, Israel consumed 95 per cent of the water output of the Western Aquifer, and 82 per cent of that produced by the North eastern Aquifer.

    Although this water was drawn entirely on Israel’s own side of the pre-1967 border, the sources of the water are nevertheless from the shared groundwater basins located under both West Bank and Israel. By 1999, the percentage of water available to Israel had declined to 80 per cent. Now, with the continuation of war, neither Israel nor Palestine feels secure even as threat of further war is drummed into the infants’ ears in that area daily.

    Historically, the Jews and the Arabs are from the same father (Abraham). If one claims a return to ancestral home to justify land occupation, the other may be right to make the same claim. Thus rather than continuing fighting war which may eventually lead to total loss of the entire land, why not sit together and negotiate peace on a permanent basis? That is perhaps worthier than the shedding of innocent bl

    “Whenever injustice becomes the law with which to govern a people, resistance must become a legitimate duty with which to quest for legitimate survival”.  Anonymous

    Preamble

    Today’s world seems to be a proverbial ark without any compass that can show its way to a particular destination. Yet, that proverbial ark keeps cruising recklessly on a storming sea without minding the repercussion of a possible capsizing.

    Unlike in the remote or even recent past, no part of the world can confidently claim safety today and go to bed with the closure of both eyes. Except for self-deception, any euphoria of  whatever can be called global peace in the contemporary world remains a property of the past.Thus, from all indications, the contemporary time is fast-tracking the pace of mankind towards the end of human existence.

    The Palestinian Crises

    While millions of Muslims, all over the world, while muslims are eagerly awaiting Ramadan into the world, the international media waves throbbed with unpleasant breaking news that immediately became an eyesore for some people and a sour taste in the mouth of others.

    The news was about an outbreak of a new orgy of violence in Gaza Strip which hurriedly reminded the world of a merciless siege on that same Strip in 2014.

    Analysis of the Crises

    As a onetime Foreign Editor and a student of International Law and Diplomacy, who studied in the Arab world and was quite familiar with the situation in the Middle East, yours sincerely had severally delivered public lectures on the conflicts in that regionwith detailed analysis of the causes and effects of those conflicts from various conceivable angles. Below is an excerpt from one of such lectures which I deliveredsome years ago in different parts of the country:

    “This is not the first time in history that partition would be adopted as solution to a contentious problem. In primordial time, King Solomon ruled between two mothers who were laying claim to a single child thus: “If you cannot give one child to each of the two women claiming to be the mother, then split the child into two and give one half to one and the second half to the other”.

    This analogy was re-enacted in 1948, almost three thousand years after that historic episode in an area disputably called Palestine and Israel at the same time. The only exception in the contemporary case is that the Wisdom of Solomon which brought solution to the historic controversy of the yore is conspicuously absent today.

    Partition of Palestine

    Like the false mother in King Solomon’s time who welcomed bisection of the controversial child, the Jews quickly accepted the partition of Palestine in 1948 because it gave them something that was not legitimately theirs.

    Partition of countries against the wish of the people living in there was not only a social aberration but also a clear evidence of injustice and man’s inhumanity to man.

    Wherever adopted as a solution, partition only brings suffering, destruction and tragedy to millions of human beings as in the case of Vietnam, Germany, Korea and now Palestine. Normalcy only returned to Vietnam after the reunification of that country following ten years of a fierce war. Although the conditions of the partition of Germany after the World War II in the 1940s appeared normal, neither that country nor those who partitioned it felt relaxed until Germany became a single country again in the early 1990s. The situation of (North and South) Korea today can be regarded as temporary because reunification of that country is just a matter of time.

    The imperial powers which imposed partition on the three countries mentioned above against the wish of their inhabitants were the same that inflicted the tragedy of partition on Palestine without any consideration for the agonizing plight of her long time inhabitants.

    Genesis of the Crises

    The conflict between the Palestinians and the Jews, which now dominates the Middle East crises, did not start by accident. It was well designed and orchestrated from the very beginning. In 1879 when the Zionist movement was officially launched, an Austrian Jewish lawyer and journalist, Theodor Herzl, who, incidentally, was the founder of that movement published an article in a European popular magazine. In the article he declared: “Let sovereignty be granted us (Zionists) over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest we shall manage by ourselves”.

    Influence of World War I

    The outbreak of the World War I came to fertilize the soil for the germination of that tall dream. The year 1916 was disastrous for the allied forces. Casualties on the Western fronts were heavy. Anxiety rose very high. And the only seeming choice left for Britain to escape defeat in the hands of the Germans was to draw America into the war on her side. It was at that gloomy period that an Oxford educated Armenian, James Malcolm, walked in.  He was a friend of the then British Secretary of State, Sir Mark Sykes. The latter told Malcolm that the British Cabinet was looking anxiously for American intervention in the war.

    Responding, Malcolm who was well connected to the topmost echelon of the American government told Sykes that Britain was going about it the wrong way. He said: “You can win the sympathy of certain politically minded Jews everywhere and especially in the United States in one way only, and that is by offering to secure Palestine for them”.

    That was the beginning of a long journey that was to culminate in what has now become the ‘Arab/Israeli conflict’. Of course through Malcolm’s connection, the US entered the war on the side of the allied forces in 1917 and that resulted in a fate accompli for Germany.

    To fulfill her own side of the agreement, therefore, Britain made a declaration on November 2, 1917 through her Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour, giving a substantial part of Palestine to Israel. That declaration has since popularized the name of that Foreign Minister as it has since been known as Balfour Declaration.

    Ever since the declaration, the Arabs have never been able to sleep with their two eyes closed. It has always been a matter of war today, ceasefire tomorrow. This is not mainly due to the condemnable usurpation of their land by the Zionists but more because of their own diabolical disunity that has been telling incessantly on Islam as a religion.

    The Fault of the Arabs

    Viewing the Middle East crises from religious angle, the general belief in many Muslim quarters is that those crises are a religious affair. And for decades, the Arabs have capitalized on that belief to whip up Islamic sentiments among non-Arab Muslims for the purpose of winning their sympathy. But looking at the matter critically, one will discover that such a belief is not only misgiven but wildly misplaced. The reason is this: long before the Israeli factor came into those crises, the Arabs had been at loggerheads among themselves for centuries in that sub-region. History is there to testify to this fact. But for the internal wrangling among them, the entire Europe would have been fully Islamized today. At least the Umayyad Dynasty which was fully run by the Arabs lasted for about 500 years in Spain where its headquarters was relocated after eviction from Damascus. Despite that great vintage, they missed the opportunity of planting Islam in the heart of Europe.

    Now, the Middle East crises cannot be pinned down to the Arab/Israeli conflict alone. They are a multifaceted conflict that requires a multidimensional solution. For instance, the State of Israel was not planted in Palestine until 1948. But Syria and Lebanon only agreed just a few years ago to exchange diplomatic mission for the first time since 1943 when the latter became independent. Why? Are both countries not Arab in language, culture and orientation? And this example can be found in virtually all the Arab countries. The truth is that the Arabs are as much a problem to Islam as they are to themselves. Ironically, the divine religion called Islam originated from them. One can imagine what they would have done to that religion if it had not emanated from them.

    Implication of Disunity

    Since the obliteration of Caliphate in 1923 which for many centuries had been the central core of Islamic operations, there has been no precise leadership for the Muslim Ummah. The implication of this is that there has been no universal competent Muslim authority that can be obeyed globally if and when a vital order is given to propel Islam statutorily. Thus every country or community operates at its level to the detriment of muslim unity.

    What is more worrisome in all these is the snobbish Arab attitude which places premium on Arabism rather than Islam as if Islam is the property of the Arabs which can be incorporated into Arabism at will.

    Except for Libya, Somalia and Sudan, no Arab country bears a name that reflects Islam. Even those three African countries only reflect Islam in their official names for political reasons.

    Arabs’ Economic Strength

    The wealth available in the Middle East is valued to be about one fifth of the entire wealth in the world. Yet the size of that sub-region in terms of land area and population is less than 2% of the world’s land mass. But unfortunately, the enormous wealth in the area is being managed and spent directly or indirectly by the West. Every Arab country has her foreign reserve in the US or other Western countries. Their administrative thinking and security strategies are from the West. Most of their investments are based in the West. Yet their most insuperable problem, that of disunity is from the West. How can they survive without the West?

    The total Gross Domestic Products (GDP) of the Arab countries was $1,195 billion in 2008. Much of this money kept in Western banks is what those Western countries use to further their own development. They also use a part of it to finance NGO projects in Africa and some other parts of the world in the name of humanitarian gesture. And most of the beneficiaries are non-Muslims.

    The Way Forward

    Never in the history of man has war been the final determinant of peace. The victor and the vanquished in any war will eventually sit around a table to talk and negotiate the terms of their coexistence.

    It happened in Asia and Europe. It happened in Africa and America. It happened in Australia and the Middle East. There is neither permanency of victory nor that of vanquishness. And that is why there is always room for communication even in a war situation.

    The war of attrition between Israel and Palestine is not in the interest of humanity no matter the sentiments. And it can never be. If these two races (Jews and Arabs) living together on the same land have fought constantly for 76 years (1948-2024) without much to count as gain, logic must dictate a change of style.

    In the last one decade alone, the Palestinian people have lost more than 500, 000 lives; over $70 billion in income opportunity; 20 million square meters of agricultural land; and over 100 million man-hours in crossing either from West Bank to Gaza or vice versa at Ramallah. Much more than that, almost 2.7 million of the 4 million residents of Gaza and West Bank have become refugees in almost inhuman camps. The opportunity cost of conflict for the Middle East from 1991-2024 is estimated to be $27 trillion. In other words had there been peace and cooperation in the Middle East since 1991, every Palestinian citizen would have been earning over $4,500 as income per capital in 2024 instead of the $1,500 now being projected. Every Israeli citizen would have been earning over $47,000 as income per capital in 2024 instead of about $24,000 now being projected.

    Because of an import-export ban imposed on Gaza by Israel in 2007, 95 per cent of Gaza’s industrial operations were suspended. And out of 35,000 people employed by 3,900 factories in June 2005, only 1,750 people remained employed by 195 factories in June 2007. The figures can be imagined today. Blockade has severely hindered health services in Gaza. Between October and December 2007 for instance, the World Health Organization confirmed the deaths of 20 patients, including 5 children due to lack of access to health care. Between 2007 and 2008, 120 people in Gaza died because they were not allowed access to medical treatment.

    The Israeli Government’s cut in the flow of fuel and electricity to the Gaza Strip has also been called collective castigation of the civilian population, which is a violation of Israel’s obligations under the laws of war. Starting from February 7, 2008, the Israeli Government reduced the electricity it sells directly to Gaza.

    This also had a terrible effect on all spheres of life in the Gaza and West Bank.     

    War of Amenities

    The war between Israel and Palestine is not limited to weapons and diplomacy alone. In the Middle East generally, water is a resource of great political concern because of the desert nature of the sub-region. Thus, since Israel receives much of its water from two large aquifers which are sprawled across the Green Line, the use of this water has been contentious in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Though the major source of the common water lies in the Israeli section of the disputed land, some of the wells used to draw that water are situated within the Palestinian Authority areas. This has limited Israelis’ direct access to drinking water.

    But the argument is that Israel herself had prevented substantial volume of water from flowing to the areas occupied by the Palestinians thereby limiting the quantity of water that may be drawn from those wells.

    While Israel’s consumption of this water has decreased since it began its occupation of the West Bank, it still consumes the most of it.

    In the 1950s, Israel consumed 95 per cent of the water output of the Western Aquifer, and 82 per cent of that produced by the North eastern Aquifer.

    Although this water was drawn entirely on Israel’s own side of the pre-1967 border, the sources of the water are nevertheless from the shared groundwater basins located under both West Bank and Israel. By 1999, the percentage of water available to Israel had declined to 80 per cent. Now, with the continuation of war, neither Israel nor Palestine feels secure even as threat of further war is drummed into the infants’ ears in that area daily.

    Historically, the Jews and the Arabs are from the same father (Abraham). If one claims a return to ancestral home to justify land occupation, the other may be right to make the same claim. Thus rather than continuing fighting war which may eventually lead to total loss of the entire land, why not sit together and negotiate peace on a permanent basis? That is perhaps worthier than the shedding of innocent bloods where better alternatives are available.

    oods where better alternatives are available.

  • FAAC disbursements, IGR and Fed govt interventions to states in 2024

    FAAC disbursements, IGR and Fed govt interventions to states in 2024

    Since the assumption in the office of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in May, last year (18 months), the revenues and federal government interventions to the 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have increased by over 90% (almost double) what States were receiving during the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. This is largely due to the immediate removal of the subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS or Petrol), whence the money used hitherto used for the payment of the PMS subsidy was shared as part of the Federal Allocation in line with provisions of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Consequently, between June last year and to date, the Federal, State, and Local Governments in Nigeria have collectively received about N25 trillion or more as monthly FAAC (Federation Account Allocation Committee) disbursements. The latest disbursement of N1.727 trillion was made last week to the three Tiers of Government, for the month of November 2024. The November distribution is 22.5% higher than N1.41trn shared at the last meeting for the month of October 2024.

    Furthermore. President Bola Tinubu has been approving hundreds of Billions of Naira to the tune of over 500 billion Naira (in cash and commodities) that were disbursed paid so far over the period of the past 18 months -almost every quarter to all the States in Nigeria; as “palliative interventions” to States to cushion the effect of the removal of fuel subsidy on Nigerians. This is in addition to additional interventions that Mr. The President has been providing to States that face or that are facing natural disasters like terrorist attacks, flooding due to the overflow of Lagdo Dam in Cameroon (which occurred last year and this year), the bursting of Alo Dam in Borno State, Bomb, and Fire disasters, etc. The additional support from the federal government is to further alleviate the sufferings of Nigerians, especially the multi-dimensionally poor. This is apart from the N573bn shared with states in August (about 2 months ago) which was the World Bank loan (zero interest) received by states for infrastructural development.

    It is therefore true that the States across Nigeria have been receiving the highest amounts of revenues and interventions in the past 18 months – more than any other administration in the past 25years since the beginning of the 4th Republic.

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     Interestingly, some states are yet to implement the recently approved new minimum wage of N70,000. Indeed, there are State Governors who have stated that they will not be able to pay the newly approved minimum wage, as organized labor unions in those States have initiated Strikes in those States to protest the inability of the States to pay the minimum wage. Many of the State Governors are still complaining about the shortage of funds to sustain the States. 

    Indeed, the increase in the monthly FAAC allocation should reflect on the socioeconomic impacts of States; and should be visible in terms of infrastructure, and the quality of life of citizens. Suffice it to say that we have some outstanding State Governors, who have demonstrated prudence, value innovation, effective utilization of resources and, they are making tangible impacts in their respective States. But by and large, if you take it across the board, I don’t think it would be wrong for me to say that a lot, leaves much to be desired in the overall performance of all the States in Nigeria. For example, let us remember that as part of the aforementioned federal interventions, around July this year (about 4 months ago), Mr. President approved an intervention of over N180 billion, which was been shared across the 36 states as FCT, as follows; N5 billion per state, and then bags of rice and bags of fertilizers. I believe that going forward, in the year 2025, we should expect to see governors stepping up the quality of governance in their States to really deliver tangible evidence of good governance to the citizens across states. We need to see that clearly over and beyond mantras, PowerPoint presentations, and photo shoots.

    In 2025 citizens should also direct their attention to the state governors’ performance, and hold the governors to account to ensure more qualitative governance at the State level, especially given the fact that President Tinubu has achieved the laudable autonomy of local government areas. It is time to stop buying the gimmick of governors who continually point to the Federal Government or Mr. President for all the responsibilities of governance. This is misleading and sometimes mischievous. The scope of responsibility and accountability of Federal, State, and Local Governments are very clear. Hence it is time for citizens to demand good governance and accountability from state governors in line with their scope of responsibilities and accountabilities. In my opinion, the State Governors have been responsible for the overall 45% underperformance of our national economy in the past 25 years since the return of Nigeria to democracy.

    Most state governors claim that the increase in the monthly FAAC disbursements has been negated by the decrease in the value of the Naira. Yes, it’s a good defense, but it shouldn’t be an excuse. When politicians campaign for elections, they promise milk and honey that would be flowing in their states, local governments, or even at the federal level. Some of them even tell citizens that we should give them the job regardless of the challenges promising that they will deliver the mandates. Therefore, elected political leaders know the numbers before they take the mandates; be it at federal, state, or local government levels. So, coming now after taking more allocations and saying that inflation has swallowed the value of the money received, which to some extent is true, should not be an excuse. When you inherit an administration, you inherit the capital and the liabilities. And if we are going to use that excuse, then some people should have no business holding political offices. Because the reason why we are in office is to provide value and to create wealth. So, for example, what if there was no inflation? Or what if, for example, with the inflation and then the revenue did not increase? It is time for our Governors to face the reality and to act accordingly. 

    Moreover, in the case of the Internally Generated Revenues in states, most states are lagging behind and there is the need to upscale the IGRs in those States. A classic example is my state, Kano – the commercial hub of not just Nigeria, Kano should also be the commercial hub of the Sahel region of Africa. Yet strangely for over 5 years, Kano has been lagging behind, hovering around 6th position in terms of IGR in Nigeria for the past 3 years. Hence, Kano needs to step up its IGR drive. Lagos State has been blazing the trail of IGR volume and growth trajectory in Nigeria for a long time. According to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Lagos is leading all the States in Nigeria having generated N815 billion IGR in 2023, followed by the Federal Capital Territory with N217 billion, and then Rivers State with N195 billion 

    How IGRs are utilized for the betterment of the people is critical. How Governors efficiently and effectively use IGR to complement the FAAC allocations in delivering good governance is also important. How Governors are investing or applying the IGR and the FAAC in trying to build infrastructure, invest in human resource capacity, build their Agriculture value chain, harness the States’ solid mineral capacity to deliver or upscale qualitative governance is what remains to be seen for us to now properly evaluate and say the impacts are good and the utilization is also effective.

     Let me remind some of our State Governors of some critical things that they should do to achieve a sustainable increase in IGR. First of all, it is to block leakages to ensure that the monies collected are actually credited into the accounts of the government and are not siphoned away. The second one is creating means of generating revenue without choking your citizenry or killing them considering the current socio-economic headwinds across the Country. It’s very important to create new ways to generate revenue, not necessarily by inflicting more levies/ hardships on the citizenry; for example, through PPPs, through investments as I mentioned earlier, through synergies and collaborations even amongst the states. Those are some examples of how in the short-mid to long-term the Governors will actually increase their IGR. but more importantly, utilisation and impact are very important to measure the effectiveness of wealth creation, socio-economic development, and sustainability.

    The Fiscal Policy and Tax Reform Bill is also a key game changer that will ensure balance, equity, and ultimately better performance at sub-national levels in Nigeria. The Fiscal Policy and Tax Reform is a wake-up call to States to face the reality that as States, we will eat what we earn or produce. Almost everywhere you stand in Nigeria, you are stepping on wealth in Nigeria i.e. human capital, agriculture value chain, and other solid minerals.

    Essentially, state governors in Nigeria have no excuse to fail.

  • Let’s nurse minds, not social cannibals

    Let’s nurse minds, not social cannibals

    Nigerians are a curious breed. Think of us as the proverbial coastal dwellers dying of thirst. We complain of parched tongues, but every day, we defecate in our fresh springs and struggle to slake our thirst with poisonous waters from abroad.

    Beyond metaphor, Nigeria must be rescued from cognitive dissonance; the mental racket that triggers the Nigerian lust to relocate abroad and sustains it.

    Ultimately, it poisons our wellsprings of civilisation and knowledge: culture, family and academia. This corruptive mentality pervades the country’s educational and cultural institutions, aggravating the brain drain that robs Nigeria of the allegiance and contributions of promising citizenry.

    The multiple failures that beset the country, from the bungled economy to our subversive partisanship, to our lack of universal health care, to protracted terrorism, and the neocolonialist afflictions of our politics and media, can be adduced to the institutions that produce and sustain our political elite.

    Our local schools and even the elite schools most Nigerians throng abroad, hardly teach students to question and think. They focus instead on creating legions of effective systems managers via standardised tests and passive submission to authority.

    Eventually, when the systems fail the managers, they scurry out of the country in search of greener pastures abroad. When the going gets tough, they simply pack up and leave.

    The responsibility for the collapse of the Nigerian economy runs from the corridors of power, through the media soapbox to the lecture theatres of the academia; it pervades our banking halls, the comatose industry and the random trade zones of municipal sidewalks.

    Scholarship is crucial to the rejuvenation of our comatose state thus Nigeria must furnish an educational system that facilitates fearless intellectual inquiry; one that is constructively critical of authority, fiercely independent, and selfless.

    We must quit organising learning around minutely specialised disciplines, tapered solutions, and rigid structures designed to produce predetermined answers. As the government fixates on science education, it must equally furnish our arts and humanities.

    Nigeria must rejig her cultural foundations and ethical complex – and this is achievable through a partnership between the government and the arts & humanities. The result of such an endeavour would excite a social re-engineering built on character mending and economic restoration in consonance with our peculiar strengths and weaknesses.

    Restoring our cultural dominance would facilitate easier salvage of our society, particularly the engine wheels of our industrial complex. China, Japan, Germany, Indonesia, Sweden, among others, attained progress by founding their governance on a cultural experience indigenous to them.

    The wild pursuit of materialism renders large segments of our business and political elite addicted to mindless acquisition of ill-gotten wealth. Thus the ceaseless cases of corruption in public office. The lives of several culprits are funded by stolen money and beastly monopolies facilitated by heinous social and political contracts.

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    On the flip side of the equation, the working class diminishes and struggles to maintain membership in the informal social caste imposed upon it by a raptorial ruling class.

    The general run of the masses supposedly dissents but many do so without any real awareness of the actuality of forms that define their existence. Plato’s allegory of the cave was meant to explain this. In the allegory, he likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. Plato’s allegory speaks to our individual and collective fate as a nation.

    For Socrates, all virtues were forms of knowledge thus to train someone to manage a business account for Price Water Cooper, for instance, is to educate him or her in skill. To train them to debate the ethics of a business venture is to educate them on values and morals. A culture that disregards the vital interplay between morality and power, writes Hedges, condemns itself to death.

    Such existential truths are scorned by the modern fortune hunter. And the disconnect subsists across professions, government, and academia. Nigerian economists, for instance, chant elaborate theoretical models yet know little of how their fancy, soulless economics impact rural poetry and suburban lives.

    Our educational and social systems must quit churning out such products of a cultural void, casualties of a system that produces graduates who have been taught to cheat the system and applaud theft as a shrewd corporate strategy.

    The true purpose of education must be to make minds, not social cannibals. Education must furnish us with patriots capable of leading Nigeria’s charge back to rebirth.

    A recourse to educational foundations, in the light of Arnold’s 1869 treatise, could be in Nigeria’s best interest. This is attainable by conscious endeavour. President Bola Tinubu could lay the foundation for such a monument by increasing Nigeria’s education budget to 18 per cent or thereabouts, from the disgraceful fraction – usually less than seven per cent – budgeted over the years.

    The foundations of scholarship and knowledge must be reconstructed to guarantee more progressive responses to internal problems of social advancement: problems of work and wages, of families and homes, of morals and the true value of life.

    Our quest for effective public governance can only be realised through the guidance of skilled thinkers, and a synergy between a public service that works and a humane corporate business sector.

    Nigeria could take a cue from Finland’s educational system. The transformation of the Finnish education system began some 40 years ago as the key propellent of the country’s economic recovery plan. Educators had little idea it was so successful until 2000, when the first results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardised test given to 15-year-olds in more than 40 global venues, revealed Finnish youth to be the best young readers in the world.

    Three years later, they led in math. By 2006, Finland was first out of 57 countries (and a few cities) in science. In the 2009 PISA scores released last year, the nation came in second in science, third in reading and sixth in math among nearly half a million students worldwide.

    There are no mandated standardised tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school. There are no rankings, no comparisons or competition between students, schools or regions. Finland’s schools are publicly funded. School managers at all levels are educators, not businessmen or politicians. Every school has the same national goals and draws from the same pool of university-trained educators.

    The result is that a Finnish child has a good shot at getting the same quality education irrespective of his or her descent. The differences between the weakest and strongest students in Finland are the smallest in the world, according to the most recent survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

    True knowledge essentially translates to being an emissary of truth, hope, superior culture and progress. It is never simply to teach bread-winning, furnish teachers for the public schools or vocation for the unemployed. It should above all, be an appendage of that fine adjustment between what Du Bois calls reality and the flourishing knowledge of life – an improvement of civilisation and a solution to its seemingly intractable problems.

    The end product of such an educational process would be less likely to abscond in the face of odds because he or she must have learnt to courageously vie for truth and progress, not for vulgar repute or profit.

  • Syria: Prostrate Arabs and Israel’s hubris

    Syria: Prostrate Arabs and Israel’s hubris

    The collapse of the Bashar Hafez dictatorship in Syria and the overthrow of the 53 year old Hafez al- Assad Alawite minority regime in Syria has come without any sympathy and with much relief and welcome in the international community and the Arab world. Bashar Al Hafez succeeded his father Hafez al – Assad (1930- 2000) in 2000 after his death. He was not supposed to be a ruler. He was training as a specialist ophthalmologist in London when he was recalled to take the mantle of leadership after the accidental death of his older brother who had been trained and primed to succeed his father.

    The elder Hafez was a politician and one of the supporters of the Syrian wing of the Ba’ath party and also a military officer as was characteristic of the Arab world. Historically, Syria has had a chequered trajectory, beginning as part of the Ottoman Empire before the First World War and ending as a mandate of the League of Nations assigned to France after the war. The territory was a hotchpotch of different groups namely of the Druze, Alawite, people of Aleppo and those of Damascus who were organised independently of each other. Opposition to French rule seemed to have brought some unity which was expressed in armed rebellion periodically from 1920 after King Faisal Hussein abdicated the throne to pave the way to the time of the French mandate.

    The period of fragile French control spanned the period 1920 to 1945 when the Free French forces finally withdrew from Syria after sporadic fighting to pave way for the Syrian Republic which staggered on until 1971 iron and brutal rule of Hafez al-Assad provided some disciplined order under the Ba’ath party. The Ba’ath party was founded on April 7, 1947 as the Arab Ba’ath party by  Michel Aflaq, an Orthodox Christian, Salah al -Din-al Bitar, a Sunni Muslim, and the followers of Zaki al-Arsuzi, an Alawite (a small sect of the Shi’a) who later became an atheist in Damascus. This party’s ideology was based on social justice and the unity of all Arab countries and it had branches in all Arab countries but with the branches in Syria and Iraq being the most formidable.

    Ba’athism enunciated some form of socialism or Arab socialism as they called it. It was secular in nature and wanted state control of all resources particularly land for the benefit of the Arab masses. It also wanted the distribution of land to the peasants against the then prevailing monopoly and ownership by monarchs and religious bodies. It preached some form of populism which made the party very attractive to the Arab masses. It also wanted the unity of all Arab lands and its motto was “Unity, Liberty, Socialism”. The party ruled Syria at least in name from the coup of 1963 to the fall of Bashar al-Hafez. Initially the party meant well before it became a dictatorship of a few military politicians climaxing in the Hafez Al-Assad seizure of power in 1971 to the hurried fleeing in the night by his son Bashar after 24 years of disastrous rule during which the ancient country of very rich culture was destroyed and close to one million of its people were slaughtered in a fratricidal war which lasted for 14 years leading to mass exodus of millions of its people to Lebanon, Turkey , Jordan  Germany and many other countries in Europe and the Americas . Apart from Bashar Hafez, his backers in Iran, Russia and the Hezbollah in Lebanon were largely responsible for one of the cruellest slaughter of a people whose offence was asking to be free.

    The country became a protectorate of Russia which had a large air force base few miles from the coastal town of Jableh. Russia also has a large naval base at Tartus on the Mediterranean coast which the Kremlin considers most strategically necessary if Russia is to continue to be seriously considered a global naval power. Iran, the other military power supporting the Assad regime does not have a base in Syria but maintained command and control presence in Syrian high command necessary to conduct operations within Syria using largely Hezbollah forces. Syria was the strongest eastern wing of the forces of resistance against western and Israeli intervention in Arab land and the larger world of Islam and the unfortunate Palestinians were used mostly as cannon fodder.

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    The collapse of Syria has completely exposed the Iranian and Russian flanks in the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey which harboured about three million Syrian refugees had always had troops in northern Syria to keep in check Syrian Kurds that Turkey considered terrorists interested in joining Iraqi, Turkish and possibly Iranian Kurds in creating an independent Great Kurdistan. There were also a few American troops monitoring the presence of adherents of the Islamic State (IS) in northern Syria. This was the situation in Syria while Bashar was in power in Damascus.

    On December 8, a major offensive against Bashar al Assad, president of Syria was launched by opposition forces led by Abu Mohamed al-Julani, head of the group known as Tahrir al-Sham, a group that had been named a terrorist group by American government and its allies and supported by mainly Turkish forces and some renegade Syrian forces against Damascus after previously capturing Aleppo, the second most important town in the country and overrunning other towns on the way to Damascus. President Assad fled to the Russian air force base from where he and his family escaped to Russia which officially stated it has offered him and his family political asylum. Even before the announcement, the Syrian embassy was flying the flag of the liberating group. The United Nations has asked for global humanitarian support for the Syrian people and a lifting of sanctions against the country and presumably against those the West had previously called a terrorist group. The group leading the fight in Syria had had previous association with Al Qaeda and sometimes with the Islamic state of Abukar al-Baghdadi but has now dissociated itself from its previous connection with the two terrorist groups.

    The Arab world seems to welcome the ouster of the Assad regime and Qatar is promising huge financial support and so is the UAE. Not much has been said by Egypt and Saudi Arabia which are apparently still waiting for reaction of their principals in Washington DC. The American Secretary of State has been holding meetings in the Jordanian capital with leaders of Jordan and the UAE and Saudi Arabia to agree to a common front on Syria. Turkey is backing the regime and has been busy fighting the Turkish enclave in Northern Syria. Turkey is expected to play a major role in the stabilization of the new Syrian regime. The defeat of the Hafez Al Assad regime remains a major defeat and blow for Iran and Russia. No one knows what the two countries are planning jointly or separately to do in Syria. Russia seems bogged down in Ukraine to be too bothered with Syria unless the hubristic rampage of Israel which has been grabbing Syrian land near the Golan heights, sinking Syrian navy, and bombing Syrian army barracks and destroying chemical weapons depots pushes the new regime into the warm embrace of Russia for protection if the Israeli allies do not call Israeli to halt the hundreds of military and bombing raids into Syria.

    The Arab League has called Israel to stop what it is doing in Syria but moral remonstration without military backing amounts to nothing in the situation on hand. Iran appears tamed by joint Israeli and American sabre-rattling against it and it is hobbled down by the possibility of Israeli attack backed by American massive air support. Unless America and its allies move quickly to offer support for the new regime based on mutuality of interest, the Russian presence will stay because the new regime needs it and the humiliation of Russia demands it finds credible support somewhere that Israel will respect. It does not seem the doddering American regime on its way out understands the opportunity being presented to it if Israel, its apparent boss in Jerusalem, will allow it to take it. Turkey which is a member of NATO dominated by the USA may find it more rewarding in Syria allying with Russia for joint influence in the new Syria rather than allowing Israel unhindered promenade into Syria. We are entering interesting times in the Middle East.

  • Mission to Ekiti

    Mission to Ekiti

    Since Dele Farotimi’s arrest in Lagos and transfer to Ekiti 17 days ago, the world seems to have centred around him and his book: Nigeria and its criminal justice system. It is the book that put him in trouble. The contents of the book are said to be defamatory of some individuals and the judiciary.

    Leading the individuals aggrieved by the book, though not jointly, but severally, is accomplished lawyer and educationist, Aare Afe Babalola (SAN). Babalola’s complaint to the police led to the arrest of Farotimi in Lagos and transfer to Ekiti for trial for criminal defamation. The facts of the case are in the public domain, that even a schoolboy can reel them off heart, if asked to do so.

    That will show you how popular the  matter has become. Then, there are people for and against on both sides of the divide. There are those who argue that Farotimi went overboard in what he wrote about Babalola, some lawyers in his chambers, the chambers itself, and the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, for which he has never hidden his contempt.

    At no time did his contempt for the judiciary become more obvious than during the 2023 presidential election which his principal Peter Obi, who coincidentally Babalola also supported, lost. Farotimi was livid that the judiciary upheld the outcome of the election which President Bola Tinubu won. In his characteristic manner, he tore the judiciary apart, wondering how it could have upheld what he called such a flawed poll.

    His controversial book is a reflection of his thoughts on the judiciary in his interviews in the mainstream and social media over the election. That was in a political season where, as they say, “anything goes”. The book is a different matter. The difference is now being seen as the aggrieved are challenging its contents and putting Farotimi to the strictest proof of his claims.

    Farotimi does not lack supporters. Here, I am not talking about the social media crowd that usually goes into a frenzy on matters that it knows little or nothing about. I am talking about the high and mighty; the affluent and the influential who would go to any extent to protect their honour and integrity. These are people, who if they were in Babalola’s shoes would not listen to any plea for mercy until they have exacted their pound of flesh from Farotimi.

    These rich supporters of Farotimi are in two camps. On one side are those that have seen what Farotimi is not seeing. On the other are those who believe in what he wrote, warts and all. So, the former group led by his main man, Obi believes that it is better to resolve the matter amicably, but the latter comprising the leadership of a faction of Afenifere does not. Obi has seen the danger ahead and wants to leverage his relationship with Babalola to avert it.

    He has met with Babalola who appears receptive to his proposal. But the issue is Farotimi, who is reportedly insisting on fighting to the end. He has the right to take any course of action. But he should remember that whatever option he goes for has consequences. Obi has done what he deems right. His initiative may not have been appreciated by Farotimi. As usual, he is insisting on his position in the book. As we wrote here last week, he can do that as long as he can prove the allegations therein.

    Read Also: 2027 elections: Ganduje tasks APC members to secure Tinubu’s re-election

    Obi knows why he initiated the peace moves. He might have done it to avoid a crack within his fold. Or he might have done it after seeing the grave allegations Farotimi made against Babalola. Can those allegations be substantiated? Obi might have asked himself. So, to help Farotimi save his face, Obi might have decided to beg Babalola on his behalf. Farotimi would have none of that. He said he never sent anybody to beg Babalola on his behalf.

    Of course, the world knows that. Obi and his team that comprised Sola Ebiseni, the Labour Party’s candidate in the November 16 Ondo State governorship election, among others, was on a peace mission, all for the sake of a loyalist who fought tooth and nail for him during the last presidential election. How do you abandon such a man in his hour of need? Obi has done what he should do for a follower. Whether the follower appreciates that move or not is a different matter entirely.

    If the follower decides to play along with self-styled revolutionaries or others egging him on just for the purpose of noisemaking and without cogent proof of the allegations contained in his book, then he should be prepared for any eventualities. The choice, I reiterate, is Farotimi’s. He is not only an adult, he is a lawyer to boot, who knows what is right and wrong. He knows what to do in the present circumstance to end this case. Babalola has set out the conditions for truce.

    Those conditions, I want to believe, are not cast in iron. They can still be worked upon until both parties reach an agreeable point. The truth is the odds are against Farotimi. He got himself into this mess and he is the only one that can extricate himself from it. It will do him well to calm down and listen to the voices of reason. It will do him no good to keep the company of people urging him to keep pursuing the same lines in the book, if he knows he has nothing to prove those allegations.

    He should like a fighting ram retreat to draw strength. No matter what people may say, that is no weakness, but wisdom. Only a fool fights and dies in battle. He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day. The choice is Farotimi’s.

  • Ten million wasting brains; Corruption fiction?

    Ten million wasting brains; Corruption fiction?

    Why are we growing 10 million educationally empty brains? We must not shirk our national responsibility to rescue them from the disease called ignorance and instead fill those brains with the knowledge making them better, more self-sufficient, higher-earning educated citizens in future. For politicians please before allowing colleagues to embark on the next week’s round of stealing ‘awoof government funds’, please make them aware of whom they steal from. They steal from the baby I saw in my clinic with both eyes blind from an eye cancer retinoblastoma. Indirectly they steal from the huge number of children out of school, estimated at 10million who seem to have become a badge to boast about at international meetings rather than a burden of shame for families, states and government.

    Certainly, it is not being treated with the ‘Education Emergency Fiscal Measures’; the human helpless faces making up this huge figure deserve and need to prevent a knowledge gap 10,000,000 brains wide. Each one of the 10,000,000 is a flesh-and-blood hungry child failed by family and government.

    Simple education mathematics tells us that Nigeria’s 10,000,000 children require 333,334 classrooms for an ideal class size of 30 children each and 333,334 – 666,668 teachers at 1-2 teachers per 30-student classroom. Classrooms will need to be in school compounds of approximately 200 students each i.e. 50,000 schools or 300 students each i.e. 33,334 schools. Classrooms need 10 wall posters each -3,333,340 posters, 10 textbooks a child – 100,000,000 books and 100,000,000 exercise books, two writing implements /child – 20,000,000 pencils and 10m rulers, 10m schoolbags, 10m one-child chairs and desks or 5m two-person benches and desks. 50,000 teacher desks and chairs.

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    Now do the maths for the finances involved and pay up to build, equip and give our 10m children their schools before you allow any politician or civil servant around you to even think of stealing from the 10m children hungry for knowledge. They are not faceless even if you are heartless. Governments certainly need to allocate higher percentage of budgets to education and may need to re-negotiate the budgets and targets of Universal Basic Educational Commission, UBEC and State Universal Basic Educational Boards SUBEB.

     How much corruption can a single country endure? Anything more than 10% corruption will kill the country. Ask anyone doing business as many people treat Nigeria as a business for them to extract a luxurious living from. It is the same in business from tiny business to corporations. In Nigeria we all know someone whose business was ruined by mega theft.  Our farmers lose chicks, eggs, fish and yams stolen by staff or others the day before harvest. We all know shops ruined by staff-orchestrated theft often on a daily basis. If the staff cannot steal because of the high level of perimeter security preventing items being taken away, they have been known to take the tins and food down to the basement or into the backyard during break and open the tins and eat the sardines along with stolen bread and then wipe their mouths clean before returning to the shop floor. The tell-tail open tins are discarded carelessly to be discovered much later, and no one bothers doing fingerprint checks or DNA to catch the thieves. 

    So, to reiterate, any corruption more than 10% will kill the business and country. All advancing countries and their citizens know this and teach this lesson to their potential and incumbent political class. They also pay a more living wage as an anti-corruption strategy. One sees that it is not taught to Nigerian politicians of civil servants or contractors. This is obviously demonstrated by the stupendous and scandalous, in a poor country like Nigeria, ‘Salaries and Perks and Pensions’ allocated or self-acquired to the political class, contrasted with the minimum wage, recently raised  from N30,000 to N70,000. The negative impact of corruption is buttressed by the tsunami of multibillions dollar and naira in the hundreds, all cumulatively economically disastrous for the success of Project Nigeria. Every day brings news of new mega-corruption, each less creative and more blatant than the previous one.

    Now it is an education fund, the TETFUND being accused though the accusations have been denied. Hopefully, justifiably denied. In advanced countries the politicians and contractors and civil servants steer clear of stealing from ‘Healthcare, Education, Agriculture and Transport’, HEAP as these are collectively the foundation of the nation and stepping stones to survival and potential greatness, as well as adequate care of the majority of citizens and the fulfilling of the Sustainable Development Goals in a timely manner.

    Sadly, most Nigerians, especially those who volunteered to become politicians, have consistently refused to comply with this no-no. We know that all Ministries and Departments, MDAs are vulnerable to be extorted from by greed-driven politicians demanding a share of everything. Such politicians may threaten them with budget cuts or non-confirmation during any parliamentary proceedings, relentless and inquisitional and costly profit driven oversight, and even embarrassing negative comments on open mic sessions at political events and in the public media. Often in society, even being wrongly accused of doing wrong is stigma enough. Some accusations are diversionary. Can we ever imagine the quantum of money really extracted by this ‘POLITICAL EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRY’?

    It also highlights a major flaw in the Nigerian political structure needing correction – accepted secrecy sources and expenditure of political party funds.         

    Wishing all a worldwide safe and Merry Christmas 25-12-2025. Amen.

  • The long walk to 2027

    The long walk to 2027

    The 2023 electoral cycle is the one that never ended. Even after the Supreme Court dismissed the cases brought before it by Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar and the Labour Party’s (LP), Peter Obi, it was clear that for the two men, there was no closure.

    They never accepted defeat, never congratulated the winner President Bola Tinubu, and showed by their reaction to final judicial defeat that they were ready to relitigate the matter – this time in the court of public opinion.

    Standard behavior – even in politics – accepts that there’s time for everything; a time to campaign, a time to govern. The changing of times is usually marked by the termination of legal hostilities at the apex court. But in an age where denialism has become reality, nothing is the same.

    The only outcome that would have been acceptable to either Atiku or Obi was one in which they were declared winners. Since it is impossible to have three winners on one contest, they have grudgingly accepted the fact that there’s a president sitting in Aso Rock, while they are skulking around in the opposition wilderness. This is just a restless, holding position.

    Everything they have done since points to the fact that they are warming up for a repeat of a contest that is at least three years away. Take Obi for example. While his performance at the polls last year surprised many by its reach into largely Christian areas of North-Central, it also exposed the weaknesses of his presentation and how his candidacy was perceived.

    He would have loved to be seen as a pan-Nigerian figure whose message resonated with a younger demographic, but the lopsided results in the Southeast made him out to be an ethnic project. His performance in the Southwest was anaemic – with the exception of Lagos where a complex mix of religion and ethnicity delivered a famous win for him in the presidential poll.

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    By choosing the same-faith ticket, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Tinubu, opened the window for his rivals to weaponise religion. While Atiku attacked the ticket will all the gusto he could muster, it was Obi who really made a meal of it. He traipsed through mega churches the length and breadth of the South with the rallying cry ‘Christians, take back your country!’ Such exhortations were often greeted with exuberant cheers.

    His determined attempt to cement himself as the Christian candidate in an environment where the Muslim-Muslim ticket had been demonised would end in a scandal after his fawning ‘yes daddy’ phone conversation with Pentecostal grandee, Bishop David Oyedepo, was leaked.

    While he was pursuing the strategy of locking up the Christian vote North and South, he forgot the downside of being seen as anti the other side of the religious divide. It was no surprise therefore that the LP flagbearer made only the most perfunctory of attempts to canvass votes in the far North. It was a factor that would deny him the national spread required to win the presidency.

    It is clear the man recognises the mistakes made and has been taking baby steps to remedy them. For instance, the same person who wanted Christians to take back their country one year ago, was sighted in a couple of gatherings during Ramadan breaking fast with Muslims.

    Social media was also agog with images of a poorly executed borehole project bearing his name somewhere in Zaria. Many were quick to conclude he was was rebranding ahead 2027. Such were the extremes to which he went in 2023 that he would need more than these photo-ops and posturing to reverse the damage.

    As for Atiku, he has never hidden the fact that for as long as he has breath, he would pursue his dream of becoming president. So, next stop, 2027. But with the former Vice President there’s been noticeable change. Gone is some of the arrogance that misled him into thinking he could win the last election without the support of the Nyesom Wike-led G-5 rump of the PDP.

    The same man who preferred to hang on to the questionable electoral asset called Iyorchia Ayu rather than work with five state governors, is today feverishly marketing a grand coalition of opposition parties as the only way of toppling the ruling party at the next election. For inspiration, he points to the victory of the 44-year-old Bassirou Diomaye Faye at the recent Senegalese presidential poll as evidence of what’s possible when parties work together.

    It can be taken for granted that all things being equal, the incumbent will run again. At least he made that obvious when at the inauguration of Lagos Red Line rail project in February, he taunted Joe Ajaero and the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) to wait until 2027 if they were interested in political power.

    The trouble for Tinubu’s rivals is that while the next elections represent a window of opportunity for those who wish to supplant an officeholder with a record, they would be reduced in that time to merely carping on the sidelines watching the president wield power.

    They may wish he stumbles from error to error – providing them with ammunition to attack his record. But the reverse is also possible; that he could go from win to win – becoming more presidential as the days go by. Critically, he’s taken some pivotal and very unpopular steps early in his tenure, giving him sufficient time to ride out any negative blowback. Early signs point to the fact that fuel subsidy removal and the forex reforms were the right calls needed to unlock the economy.

    Given what we know about the evolution of political power in these parts, it’s going to take more than opposition name-calling to bring about regime change at the next election – especially if the pace of reforms is sustained and the economy rebounds and becomes stronger. PDP, LP and others would then have to make a compelling case as to why voters should dump a tried and tested model for a pie in the sky.

    In the days when the British Tory Party seemed to have a lock on power, going from one electoral triumph to another, it was a young Tony Blair who warned his comrades in the then far left-leaning British Labour Party about the need to develop policies and an image that would make them electable. He argued that no matter how well-meaning a party’s policies were, they could do nothing about them except they found a way to get into power. He would then push Labour to be more centrist and eventually electable.

    At least the Labour Party was not just a cohesive platform, it was perceived by British voters as a credible alternative to the Conservatives. Today, the PDP which in its days in power appeared invincible and even dreamt of governing non-stop for 60 years, is on the ropes – riven with factions. This week it would hold crucial meetings that would affect its future. It is a measure of how much confidence Atiku has in it that he’s desperately marketing a joining of forces with other parties.

    The same affliction has paralysed the Labour Party which is locked in an internecine feud with NLC which claims to own it. Such is the bitterness of the dispute that it promises to be long drawn – rendering it largely useless to anyone hoping to ride it to power.

    Perhaps, the most credible challenge to APC rule lies in an opposition coalition. But its prospects are dead on arrival because of the ambitions of the would be promoters and partners. The day Atiku sacrifices his ambition for Obi or the NNPP’s Rabiu Kwankwaso or vice versa, is the day to begin to take such a project serious. Until then, any visions of power these perennial contestants may be having are nothing short of a mirage.