The name Harry Houdini naturally conjures a number of thoughts and opinions particularly in the area of magic and escapism, which is the practice of escaping from restraints and other traps. This is in terms of the magical and should not be confused with escapism in  either the fields of psychology or literature.

Houdini, was for sure an escapist who used it together with some form of magic as a modern art with the intention to entertain people. From escaping from handcuffs, graves , prison cells and the most popular of them all, a Chinese water torture cell,Houdini held his audience in one spellbound act after another until he met his death from acute appendicitis.

In Nigeria, we have had our own array of  illusion masters; the likes of Professor Peller and recently a Babs Cardini readily come to mind, however the list is endless as a number of Nigerian , leaders, politicians and policy makers have also featured relentlessly as members of the abracadabra gang.

All through our history, Nigerians have been entertained on a monthly if not daily basis with what the legendary Nigerian musician described as “Government Magic”. From the early days of the Western Region crisis where the Tafawa Balewa led administration declared a “State of Emergency” and foisted a pliant Sole Administrator in the person of Dr. Moses Majekodunmi simply because there was a strange dance in the Western Region House of Assembly which resulted in an exchange of blows between parliamentarians. However, when push came to shove and the region began to experience real bouts of violence and chaos, the same Balewa who was quick to declare such an emergency in the past told the world that he had no powers to do such.

Other events such as the allotment of 20 pounds to each member of the defunct Biafran nation as an equivalent of all his supposed holdings in the bank was another example of government magic, the 12 2/3 conundrum where a state was no longer seen as a whole unit but could be broken into fractions to serve the political interests of a few people and ensure that Alhaji Shehu Shagari was declared as president-elect rather than allow for a runoff between the aforementioned and his closest rival in that election, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was another display of such magic, matter of fact the Supreme Court ruling  that upheld the 122/3  magic was also some form of escapist magic in itself as the ruling justices declared before reading the judgement that such a ruling was to never be cited as a judicial precedent!

I mean this is a country where 12 billion dollars just woke up overnight and took flight, a country where the number of votes in a particular election was greater than the number of registered voters. One where an election was reportedly annulled when a particular candidate was already coasting to victory, one where 19 was adjudged lesser than 17, where 5 could form a quorum and impeach a sitting governor.

There you have it, Nigerians for an uncountable number of years have been experiencing such magic free of charge and whereas magic elsewhere serves as a form of entertainment, the Nigerian type induces pain and befuddlement thus numbing the mind after a number of bouts that the average Nigerian is no longer alarmed at such attempts to pull the wool over our very eyes.

To this end, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Godwin Emefiele has joined the legion of shamans bedeviling the Nigerian nation in the name of policy formation and implementation. Since his emergence as the head of the Nigerian apex bank, Emefiele has put every foot wrong or should I say applied every wand of his in abysmal error. Nigerians will recall how the CBN under his watch, sometime in 2015 conducted a secret recruitment of people as staff of the bank without initially publicizing such vacancies. These persons are allegedly children of the high and mighty who’s competence to work in the apex bank wasn’t based on their degrees or levels of experience but based on whether one was a family friend of Emefiele or the daughter of one of his concubines.

His eight year tenure has also been filled with what one will call “By his spirit” policies, policies which are escapist in nature and has seen Inflation spiral much out of control, a situation where money in circulation tripled from 1.46 trillion Naira to 3.23 trillion Naira without any corresponding increase in

Investments in the nation’s economy, for example in manufacturing. What we saw was the deliberate creation of an inflationary trend without an attempt to arrest such a trend and perhaps help cool the economy.

From one policy misstep  to another, Nigerians have watched as the CBN  under Emefiele‘s watch created and sustained a rent seeking class which thrived on the policy summersaults experienced within the apex bank’s monetary policy regime. It is also important to note that under the same Emefiele’s watch, the Naira experienced its freest fall against the Dollar and other notable currencies moving from N180 to its present rate of N460.00 to a dollar, whereas its unofficial rate  is near N700 all as a result of the Emefiele’s shambolic macroeconomic policies.

I, like a number of other Nigerians woke up on New Year’s Day to read the letterman’s (President Olusegun Obasanjo as christened by Musikilu Mojeed) new year missive in which he officially endorsed a presidential candidate as well as attempted to paint a gory picture of the present state of Nigeria.

True to his abrasive nature, the ex president now turned chicken farmer embarked on his saintly admonition in an “ajoro jara joro” manner , showing no concern for the diplomacy that a former leader of any nation should exhibit or possess. Not even the outgoing administration of Muhammadu Buhari would escape his vitriolic prose, Obasanjo wrote the letter like as if he was writing to an enemy or set of enemies. Well, the presidency and a number of other interested parties , notably the All Progressives Congress, APC and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP did respond in kind, rubbishing whatever set of narratives the new year letter had sought to pass on too millions of Nigerians.

My grouse with such a letter stems from Obasanjo’s condemnation of Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s deployment of “Emilokan” an anaphoric exclamation made while the presidential candidate of the APC addressed party delegates on reasons why he felt that the job of being president was his to fill up.

Obasanjo had in his dreary letter, condemned

Tinubu’s Emilokan declaration as the wrong attitude and mentality for the nation’s leadership and that such claims could not form the same pedestal to reinvent and to reinvest in new Nigeria.

He ended by saying that no individual could claim that he had the absolute solutions to the nation’s problems, stating that “the solution should be in ‘we’ and ‘us’ and not in ‘me’ and ‘I’.”

Hold the phone! This is the same Obasanjo who since times after the civil war has always adapted a messianic persona when it comes to matters affecting the nation.

This is the same Obasanjo who had in 1999 campaigned under the theme, “ I have done it before and I will do it again”. Obasanjo had also in 2007 told Nigerians that the election to bring in a new president from his party was a “Do or Die affair”.

What is if I may ask wrong with what many may describe as an ecstatic declaration such as Emilokan? How different is it from Obasanjo’s own slogan in 1999 or even Martin Luther King’s “ I have a Dream” speech, since the solution according to Obasanjo should be in either “we” or “us”.

Everyone knows that electoral contests, particularly in democracies such as ours come with a number of flavors; cultural, philosophical and lastly some form of  individuality which when combined help portray a candidate in a particular light before the electorate. Tinubu’s declaration of Emilokan isn’t a messianic complex of any sort, neither does it transmute Tinubu into a Louis XIV nor is Emilokan similar to the declaration L’État, c’est moi (I am the state”).  

In my research before writing this piece I had stumbled upon a number of campaign slogans , many corralled from the bastion of what we now have as a presidential democracy, the United States of America. Declarations or slogans such as

“Who but Hoover? “ “Happy Days Are Here Again”

“Pour it on ’em, Harry!” , “The Buck stops here” ,

“Nixon’s the One”  and even Obasanjo’s friend, the Baptist Pastor Jimmy Carter’s “ I am Jimmy Carter and I am running for President “ all connote some sort of individuality, even as we all can agree that it still does not transcend into any of these persons professing to possess alone the solutions to the nation’s problems at that particular point in time.

Dotting the lines, Nigerians conversant with our political history will agree that even in our own sphere here will reveal the same trend. Our political culture is rife with such rugged individuality: Azikiwe, Awo and Kano used such , it was littered in their speeches, writings and discussions, even a number of Second, Third and Fourth Republic politicians exhibited such characteristics. Should we then translate such statements to bouts of megalomania or messianic tendencies on behalf of these persons mentioned who were selfless statesmen in their very right?

It is even correct to say that Emilokan is simply the declaration of ambition, was it not Mark Antony who in Shakespeare’s Caesar stated that “Ambition ought to be made of sterner stuff” At the time of the Emilokan declaration, Tinubu was in the ring for the APC presidential ticket, perhaps “Emilokan” was a message loaded with the sterner stuff called ambition!

When then did it become a crime for one to be ambitious? Or to declare such ambition , even in the Church we are told to declare into our lives that which we want to be or see, how then is “Emilokan” different?

Like always, Olusegun Obasanjo has always generated some form of envy unto every Yoruba man that aspires to the leadership of this country. In 1979, just days to the 1979 election he did broadcast to the chagrin of the nation that the best man (Obafemi Awolowo) may not win the election. When Abiola was outrightly denied the presidency even after the results had declared him a comfortable winner, the same Obasanjo in attempting to deflate Abiola’s quest for justice told the world that “Abiola was no Messiah”. By 1999, with  Obasanjo becoming  president, a presidency much erected on the grave of Abiola and the struggle for democracy, Obasanjo paid no heed to Abiola or his sacrifice and not until the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari did we attempt to placate the ghost of June 12.

Today, it is Tinubu’s “Emilokan” declaration that is giving him sleepless nights, and in attempting to fuss over nothing, the same Obasanjo who had always taunted every Nigerian with his own pseudo messianic complex is like a fury fussing over one man’s declaration, masquerading under the cloak of patriotism and statesmanship.

For me “Emilokan” has much come to stay, we shall queue behind it come February 25th, 2023!

So even when President Muhammadu Buhari was magnanimous enough to allow the states to direct the administration’s social intervention programs, a direct departure from what previous administrations had been known to do with such instruments, one could still see that a majority of these governors rather chose to play politics with these programs. In my state, a former governor turned the matter into a party affair; allotting slots to their party henchmen rather than the real poor, the program obviously had lost its initial objective at that point.

In defense of the states, building flyovers and airports is not entirely a bad idea per se as these projects are likely to stimulate economic activity and open up the economies of such states to further investment opportunities. As research on public works  have shown such labour intensive public works programs  help to create a short-term social protection function and help implement more pro-growth labour market policies as they quickly

quickly provide employment opportunities to many individuals for a short-term, nevertheless, there is also need to focus much more on opening up the rural areas and meeting their development needs as the people living in these areas matter too and not only during election periods.

Under the last argument, that is about opening up the rural areas a number of impediments do arise, chief amongst such is the way the Federation is presently structured which makes the incidence of poverty in Nigeria a predetermined event. A situation where the states all troop to Abuja like institutionalized almajiris to collect federal allocation on a monthly basis and depend on such for even the most basic of functions is likely to encourage rent seeking within the states.

A closer look at the states except Lagos, Rivers, Kano and Kaduna reveal that a number of these states cannot even pay their civil servants salaries without depending on the allocation from the centre, now remove control of a number of resources from the exclusive list or reduce the lion share allocation lapped up by the centre and allow the states to manage such resources. Oil produced in Anambra or Rivers should see the producing states control a bulk of such resources, while allotting a smaller portion to the centre or even an equal ratio to the latter.

Truth then is that both the Federal Government  and the states are the blind men who were asked to feel and describe an elephant from different points, on the plank of which side is responsible for the poverty that we have experienced there are no absolute truths; the two tiers are both the harbingers of the nation’s poverty woes! Both are complicit in the immersion of the nation into poverty’s wash basin. Again a focal look at the 2022 multidimensional poverty index confirms this, matter of fact most of these indices suggest that they are not only within the purview of the federal and state governments but also within the purview of the most neglected tier, the local government.

The local government or council administration in Nigeria is a sick joke , state governors and their cohorts have turned this tier into their private chattels, appointing lackeys and yes men into these positions from which they siphon funds meant for these councils into their private pockets under what is called the Joint Account Allocation Committee, JAAC.

Local governments were created to ensure that governance penetrated the grassroots, however its dynamism as a system was lost when the 1979 constitution gave legal backing to the reforms of 1976  which somewhat crippled the system.

The local government system has suffered so many violations that even its democratization  which ought to be sacrosanct is in most states subject to governor’s whim and caprice, matter of fact only Lagos, Kano, Rivers and Kaduna to the best of my knowledge have maintained for quite some time now a regular schedule for LG elections, which at best is nothing but a forced referendum of the ruling party in the state as most seats are swept by the ruling party.

So while the states can rightly blame the centre for the skewed federating system, the local governments in turn can rightly blame the state governments for plunging plunged the local government system into a state of limbo.

Here lies the crowning thrust of my thoughts, which is that the main cause of the nation’s poverty levels  can be traced to  the basic neglect of the Local Government system in Nigeria. It is simple logic, since these are the closest form of government to the rural areas and the people within these areas, then a properly federated system which grants full autonomy or grants a status where the local government is an equal federating unit in the constitution, with its powers and functions clearly spelt out, would see local government areas as development hubs with each competing for resources, talent and ideas.

Imagine the force of ideas that would be unleashed in each and every local government  area should these units operate on a level that has a guaranteed form of autonomy? Imagine the fueled fire of development?

It has even been proven in other climes that true development clambers from bottom to top, even China, a state with centrist tendencies much spurred towards economic growth using its county tier which  shares similarity with our own Local Government Areas. Whereas these counties have flourished and together with the provincial and central governments have helped lift 98.99 million people out of extreme poverty, ushering development into over 900 counties, our local government areas have floundered dragging millions of Nigerians into the doldrums.

Thus the blame for the nation’s continuous plummeting into poverty definitely resides within the domains at the centre and the states. It is as simple as ABC!

NIGERIA’S poverty indices are quite startling; according to the 2022 multidimensional poverty index survey for 2022 about 63% of persons living within Nigeria (133 million people) are multidimensionally poor with our National MPI standing at 0.257. Now given our nation’s poor standing when it comes to data integrity , many would take theses figures even in their very dismal nature with a pinch of salt.

What these figures portend is that there is somewhat a failure of government and its agencies to lift its people out of poverty which is the Cardinal goal of the Sustainable Development Goals, a road map to entrenching development goals within member states of the United Nations. Since 1960, every administration has sought to tackle the issue of poverty head on while the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s saw a number of administrations  develop programs dedicated to ending poverty among Nigerians. Even recently, the outgoing administration of President Muhammadu Buhari while taking his second and final oath of office as an elected civilian president hinted at the drive by his administration to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty,so much for what may appear as a sincere policy motive fall flat on its face, perhaps reasons can be adduced for its failure- the emergence of COVID 19 which slowed the global economy and much affected the nation’s economic fortunes and unfortunately Putin’s mad war in Ukraine which has raged for ten months now and has put the global economy in peril’s sights.

The 2022 multidimensional poverty report has anyway sparked a form of healthy debate between the two tiers of government, namely the Federal Government of Nigeria which presides  at the centre and the its counterpart tier at the lower levels, the state governments. The debate or poverty blame game as I have styled my title followed the opening salvo by the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clement Agba  where he attributed the huge poverty rates to state governments which were on a somewhat voyeuristic flight of  grandeur constructing infrastructure such as airports, skyscrapers and flyovers in a number of capital cities in such states whereas a number these states had a number of rural areas which were wallowing in poverty and were bereft of any form of attention by these state governments.

According to Agba, 72 percent of the nation’s poor are resident in the rural areas who then produce 90 percent of what the nation eats but then lose about 60 percent of what they produce due to the poor state of infrastructure in these rural areas which naturally stymies whatever efforts these rural poor have made producing such crops. This then reduces the amount of produce available in the markets which then makes such products expensive whereas they ought to be cheap as well as produce immense returns for the rural farmer this however is not the case. According to Agba, these skyscrapers, airports and flyers vets do not put food on the table, this is indeed very true.

Responding, a couple of states smarting from the attempt by the federal government to robe them in poverty causing drapes, responded by blaming the government at the centre for the nation’s poverty woes, a number of these governments who spoke through their designated spokespersons rather blamed the federal government for the poverty conundrum facing the nation. Citing a number of areas where they accused the federal government of failing, areas such as insecurity, subsidy payments, high exchange rates and the insincerity of the Buhari administration’s poverty alleviation programs which they alleged end up favoring a number of politicians in Abuja with little or nothing getting to those the funds were originally designated for.

Understanding the premises upon which these states have responded, issues such as insecurity particularly within the rural areas where n a number of these states have practically deprived these rural poor from farming. In a time where we have witnessed increased attacks by non state actors whether it is Boko Haram, Fulani Herdsmen or bandits, farmers who are based in the rural poor areas will be scared to visit their farms and thus not even produce any yield.

Other issues such as subsidies and the non performance of the anti poverty programs of the FG cited by the states have all been victims of that hydraheaded monster called corruption. While the central government’s intentions on subsidies are ideal, the system has become so corrupted that many are doubting our subsidy figures which have quadrupled to $15.7bn. Now when such figure trumps the budgets of the 36 states of the federation put together, then we are in a real dilemma.

Reports also have it that a number of FG schemes for the same rural poor have been high jacked by politicians who then have turned such schemes into a settlement program for loyalists, children, concubines and girlfriends. While a number of these programs at the initial stage stuck to their target audience who were indeed the poor, a look at such programs today show that there has been some form of derailment. Even when the Buhari administration in its desire to remove politics from such programs and gave state governments irrespective of their political alignment control over such programs, these state governments in turn used such programs to build their own political bases in their respective states.

In a country that is likely to spend 5 trillion Naira subsidizing PMS in 2022, one then wonders why Nigerians should be subjected to such bizarre conditions warranting them to buy the product at outlandish amount; It surely doesn’t add up! What game therefore is the NNPCL  and government up to?

If fuel or PMS is being subsidized at roughly 280 Naira for every liter of fuel imported and the same Nigerians are buying the fuel at the same amount in some parts of the country rather than the 180 which is the approved rate, it does not require any form of calculus or a Professor Chike Obi to deduce that Nigerians are been short-changed on a per liter basis!

It is obvious that there is a cabal like  arrangement within the NNPC and some of these petroleum marketers to create such artificial cases of scarcity in order to deliberately foist such high prices on Nigerians. These schemes thus guarantees millions more if not billions of Naira from such rent seeking opportunities, simply because some persons have chosen to look the other way.

A situation where these depots are without the product questions the logistics deployed by the oil behemoth. Like I stated last week, insider sources confirmed the implausibility of NNPC’s claims that they have enough of the stock to last three months and that the scarcity was due to the palliative works on certain roads. The stocks, the sources noted are still in vessels which are yet to berth on our shores.

In simple economics the apparent absence of a product leads to an abnormal Demand- pull  for that product- transporters must run their routes, artisans and technicians must power up their businesses with the same scarce fuel owing to the improved but yet inadequate state of power supply in the nation. The rest is as good as the reality checks streamed from such a situation!

There is also the conspiracy theory that NNPCL is simply testing the waters for an upward price climb of the product, this seems plausible despite the theatrical gesture denials of the newly commercialized entity that it has no such plans. But the theorists may be making sense here, with PMS selling at three times its subsidized cost and with the Buhari administration planning to phase out subsidy payments, perhaps there is some truism in such.

Creating artificial scarcity might be a convincing way of psyching the average Nigerian to accept the phasing out of subsidy. Recently, even the GMD of NNPCL had stated that PMS would not sell lower than 510.00 per liter.

Should such a theory materialize, this will no doubt create a great upheaval within the nation’s economy as prices of most goods and services would shoot beyond the reach of the ordinary man. This will definitely not be a win win situation for the ordinary Nigerian, this I believe has been the stance of the Buhari administration since its inception.

High forex rates and oil theft are other proximate reasons why Nigerians are grappling with fuel scarcity. Since the product is priced in USD and given the Naira’s perennial state of flux in the Forex market  particularly against the US Dollar  serve to militate against its availability, since obtaining the dollar in either the banks or alternative markets comes at a high cost.

The issue of oil theft is even worse.

This impedes the nation from actually meeting its quota of 1.8 million barrels per day thus ensuring that we receive less the revenue due to the nation while the shortage of 700 million barrels per day ends up in the hands of non state actors  who move such to our neighboring countries and make a killing out of such business.

All been said, it is imperative to still note that the buck stops on President Buhari’s table who as President took an oath to serve the over 200 million Nigerians. This is why Nigerians  elected him twice and it would be a shame that barely six months to the end of his tenure, despite the many firsts achieved in his administration such as the signing of the Petroleum Industry Act,the commercialization of NNPC and a number of other laudable reforms that Nigerians who should be benefitting from such achievements are rather holding the short end of the stick.

President Buhari should therefore get the rest of his acts together and pan out a workable solution that will benefit Nigerians and outlive his administration. He can start by ensuring that the scheduled date to get the Portharcourt Refinery working is met, thankfully also and barring any setbacks, the Dangote Refinery should also come on board by mid 2023, both scenarios one much believes should help mollify our fuel importing woes.

Lastly President Buhari should read the riot act to the petroleum authorities who merely sit aside and allow some devious marketers take advantage of the system to impose these harsh conditions on Nigeria. This I believe in the short term will avail Nigerians of the product and help end our misery.

By Igboeli Arinze 

The recent scarcity of PMS in the FCT and Lagos much did remind me of my first time and firsthand experience of such chaos and its attendant rigidities during the Abacha years as the Junta then grappled with strikes and industrial actions carried out by NLC and the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG) in solidarity with the June 12 mandate which the Abacha administration had tried to suppress. As administrations entered the stage, the trend much became a learning curve, particularly during the Yuletide periods and whenever such administrations wanted to bring about an increase in the cost of PMS all in the drive to deregulate the downstream petroleum sector. However, with the emergence of the Buhari administration Nigerians began to heave a sigh of relief as the fuel queues began to disappear, particularly during the festive periods thus ending the series of recycled hardships for homesteads and families during that period. Today we cannot sing the same song as regards such with the reemergence of these queues as a result of the scarcity of the product. On three occasions within one year, Nigerians have had to suffer the attendant symptoms of such supply side disruptions such as very long queues and the high cost of getting the product in alternative markets. This has resulted in a hike in transportation costs and the loss of man hours by businesses , particularly those within the transportation sector who have to wait for long hours to get the product.

This situation, many will agree with me is indeed an embarrassment to a nation that  produces the parent product of PMS,  crude oil but then has a near zero refining capacity as none of its refineries seem to be working for now as past administrations looked on while the refineries moved into a state of massive decrepitude, even defying several attempts to resuscitate them with billions of dollars going down the drain, the latest been the nation’s biggest refinery in Portharcourt which is currently undergoing what the administration has termed as rehabilitation at the cost of $1.5bn with the mandate to return the refinery to its 210,000 barrels per day capacity within certain phased timelines starting from December 2022. Like Caesar to the Soothsayer, Nigerians will be quick to remind the Minister of State for Petroleum that December 2022  has surely come.

Read Also; Let there be petrol

The Kaduna and Warri refineries are also performing at subpar capacities, and even with the coming of the Dangote refinery, which would be churning 650,000 barrels per day there is little or no respite as Nigeria would still not be able to meet its 1.52 million barrels per day demand for domestic consumption.

Even with the snail speed attempt to fix our grim refining status, a country that has largely been in the business of importing a large chunk of its energy needs ought to have perfected such an endeavor that its citizens do not have to groan over the supply of such a product. Given our heavy reliance on such imports a serious nation would have long resolved such supply chain problems, when we thought we had resolved such an impasse with the coming of the Buhari administration, the Nigerian system very much scoffs back at us.

Nigerians are then forced to ask why after many years of enjoying a steady supply of the product we are right back in the middle of the conundrum. Has the Muhammadu Buhari administration somewhat dropped the ball? Or how can we explain such shortages with the chucklesome and ludicrous set of excuses such as the fact that Nigerians are celebrating Muslim holidays or that access roads in Lagos are currently been worked upon thus the lack of supply! Are these roads been worked upon in the moon or did the construction company just give notice of such works that the NNPC which is saddled with ensuring that the country is duly supplied could not have taken advantage of such due notice as it is given by construction firms and state agencies upon which such palliative works are to be carried upon? Why didn’t the NNPC take advantage of such a notice? Perhaps seek to meet such  projected shortfalls in a proactive manner? Excepting the Lokoja flood impasse, the NNPC could have on the other two occasions avoided the untold sufferings been presently meted on the Nigerian people.

While the NNPC is busy blaming roads, others such as the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association (IPMAN), have blamed such shortages on the non arrival of vessels bearing the product leading to a drop in the stock levels of the product. It is even been alleged that a number of inland depots are without the product, while those with the product have seen prices in such depots rise from N165 to N177 and N178 per litre. Other depots may even be selling more and by the time the product is transported to the various filling stations in the North, a number of costs are unwantedly attracted pushing the final cost to as high as #285 per liter in some areas.