The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Ayobolu

  • Comic coalition of confusion (1)

    Comic coalition of confusion (1)

    It all started with the diminutive former governor of Kaduna State for eight years, Mallam Nasir ‘El Rufai, bitterly resigning his membership of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and joining the Social Democratic Party (SDP) amid a flurry of media interviews in which he stridently denounced the President Bola Tinubu administration, which he accused of being the most incompetent and corrupt in the country’s history and inflicting hardships on the Nigerian people through its economic reforms. Coming from a man who as Director- General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) under the former President Olusegun Obasanjo administration was implicated in the corruption -ridden privatization of public enterprises at give away prices to political cronies and hangers on; as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) exposed residents of Abuja to mindless hardship in the name of implementing the city’s master plan and as Kaduna State governor has been accused by the succeeding government of financial recklessness leading to the state’s huge debt burden, alleged misappropriation of funds and rampant human rights abuses, his accusations against the Tinubu administration were utterly laughable to large numbers of Nigerians.

    Many people were thus quick to conclude that El’Rufai’s real grouse against the administration was President Tinubu’s failure to appoint him into his Federal Executive Council (FEC) as he had promised due to unfavorable security reports during the screening of prospective Ministers. Although El’Rufai is now  quick to assert in his increasingly boring media interviews that he never sought to be a Minister under Tinubu, it is instructive that he put off his announced plans to pursue his PhD programme after his tenure as governor in the expectation that he would be offered an appointment. Urging disgruntled politicians within and outside the APC to join him in the SDP to pursue the project of unseating Tinubu and the APC from power at the centre in 2027, El’Rufai was disappointed that the response to his call was hugely underwhelming. Beyond this, in a Kaduna State where he sat astride the apex political authority for eight years, he left the APC like a solitary orphan as no notable member of the party followed in his footsteps.

    Even more dishearteningly for him, the founding leadership cadre of the SDP were clearly unenthusiastic about the prospects of their party being hijacked for the purpose of ganging up against Tinubu or anybody although they had also been critical of the APC government’s performance in office. Thus, El’Rufai found himself joining other aggrieved politicians like former Vice-president Atiku Abubakar, former two-term Rivers State governor and Minister of Transportation for eight years, Rotimi Amaechi, among others pursuing the efforts to register a new political party, the All Democratic Alliance (ADA) as the platform to actualize their obsession with unseating President Tinubu at the next election. Not being adept at the back-breaking hard work involved in the formation, nurturing and organization of a new political party, that effort floundered and this week, the group described by the APC as comprising Internally Displaced Politicians (IDPs), at last found a political party willing to be hijacked and thus landed in the African Democratic Congress (ADC) the leadership of which they promptly dislodged and took over.

    Those described as ‘political heavy weights’ by sections of the media that converged at the Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja to announce their membership of the ADC with funfare include Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Mr Peter Obi of still indeterminate party identity, Nasir El’Rufai, hungry Mr Rotimi Amaechi, former Edo State governor and National Chairman of the APC, Chief Odigie Oyegun, former President of the Senate and a key actor in the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election won by the late Chief M.K. O Abiola, Mr David Mark, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation in the Buhari administration, Alhaji Abubakar Malami, former governor of Sokoto State, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal, former governor of Cross River State, Mr Liyel Imoke, former Minister of Sports, Mr Solomon Dalung, General Tunde Ogbeha (rtd), former National Chairman of the PDP, Mr Uche Secondus, former Minister of Sports and Youth Development, Mr Bolaji Abdullahi, Senator Dino Melaye and two-term governor of Osun State and Minister of the Interior also in the Buhari administration, Ogbeni Rauff Aregbesola. General David Mark became the Interim National Chairman of the emergent, still inchoate coalition, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola its interim National Secretary and Bolaji Abdullahi its protem Publicity Secretary.

    The swan song of virtually all the speakers at the event was their determination to oust President Tinubu from power at the next polls in 2027, which is apparently the only issue on which they are united. But even then, the architects of what is difficult to differentiate from a hostile takeover of the ADC by the anti-Tinubu coalition do not appear to have undertaken a thorough due diligence of their new preferred party platform before their invasion and capture of the party. For, the presidential candidate of the ADC in the 2023 presidential election, Chief Dumebi kachukwu, and a number of the Party’s State Chairmen have condemned the arbitrary emergence of the new national helmsmen of the ADC without adherence to due process, which they describe as a violation of the party’s constitution. The Chairperson of the ADC in Plateau State, Mrs Hanatu Gagara, who supports the new coalition arrangement argued that the former Chairman who stepped down voluntarily for David Mark, Mr Ralph Nwosu, had been the sole financier of the ADC over the last two decades. But does that make the party his private property which he can handover to outsiders at will?

    Those who are opposed to the emergent coalition arrangement within the ADC contend that, according to the party’s constitution, a new member cannot contest for party positions except he has been a member for at least two years. They argue further that national party officers can only be elected at a duly convened national convention and that the former party national Chairman, who purportedly voluntarily handed over to Senator David Mark has since ceased to occupy the position since 2022 when his tenure expired. If the aggrieved members of the ADC decide to seek legal redress in court, the complicated and most likely protracted judicial process may have injurious consequences for the coalition right from inception.

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    Even if the feuding  ADC members eventually unite behind the new coalition arrangement, there are other possibly impeding factors which the aspiring coalition members must contend with and overcome. There is no doubt that Atiku is the main driving force behind the coalition as he seeks a new platform to actualize his ambition since it is obvious that the PDP are unlikely to concede their presidential ticket to him for a consecutive third election cycle. But Peter Obi and Rotimi Amaechi also clearly still harbour presidential ambitions as both men have reportedly expressed their desire to contest the 2027 elections promising that they would serve for one term only if elected. Such a pledge many see as the height of deception and reflection of desperation since an incumbent once elected can easily renege on any pledge to serve for one term This has been only too common a story in our political history and experience. The implication is that even if the coalition suceeds in holding together, the ADC will have very contentious presidential primaries ahead of it and the outcome may be as destructive and disruptive for the party as the 2023 presidential primaries was for the now gravely enfeebled PDP.

    Those opposed to President Tinubu’s re-election for a second term strive to play on people’s emotions by blaming current inflationary spirals on the economic reforms of the administration without stating if there are viable alternatives to these reforms and clearly articulating what these may be. Furthermore, in their various media interviews, the leading lights of the coalition such as Atiku, Obi, El’Rufai and Amaechi assert that the administration has no achievements whatsoever to showcase in its two years in office so far. This is intellectually dishonest. While the gullible may be carried away by such emotional and irrational rhetoric, many discerning members of the electorate will also most certainly be put off by such reckless and fraudulent generalizations.

    In its 2025 Article IV Mission with Nigeria released on July 2, the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that “The Nigerian authorities have implemented major reforms over the last two years which have improved macroeconomic stability and enhanced resilience. The authorities have removed costly fuel subsidies, stopped monetary financing of the fiscal deficit and improved the functioning of the foreign exchange market. Investor confidence has strengthened, helping Nigeria successfully tap the Euro bond market and leading to a resumption of portfolio inflows… Growth accelerated to 3.4 percent in 2024, driven mainly by increased hydrocarbon output and vibrant services sector. Real GDP is expected to expand by 3.4 percent in 2025, supported by the new domestic refinery, higher oil production and robust services. Against a complex and uncertain external environment, medium-term growth is projected to hover around three and a half percent supported by domestic reform gains”.

    Of course, the IMF acknowledged subsisting challenges and recommended greater efforts to bridge current infrastructure gaps, boost agricultural productivity to address poverty and food insecurity, tackle red tape, boost electricity supply as well as enhance health and education spending. But this is a far cry from claiming falsely that the administration has not achieved anything in two years just for reasons of partisan animosity. In any case, leading members of the emergent coalition have been in critical public offices at the federal and sub-national levels for considerable periods since 1999. They are no less culpable for the grave economic crisis caused by elite corruption, incompetence and lack of vision that the Tinubu administration is trying to tackle. Is there any evidence in their political trajectory that they will offer Nigerians better governance than the Tinubu administration? The answer is clearly in the negative.

  • The Tinubu administration and its malcontents (2)

    The Tinubu administration and its malcontents (2)

    It is difficult to credibly dispute the assertion that hardly any politician in post-colonial Nigeria has faced as much opposition, hostility and undisguised hatred against the realization of his political ambitions as President Bola Tinubu. Both as governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007 and now the occupant of Nigeria’s apex position of power since May, 2023, Tinubu continually confronted and overcame persistent efforts to distract him and ensure his failure to achieve set political goals. His unanticipated triumph in the 2023 presidential elections despite vehement and bitter attempts to prevent his emergence as the candidate of his party, the All Progressives Congress, (APC), the concerted and surreptitious subversion of his candidacy by a powerful and influential cabal in the immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari administration and the unprecedentedly vicious campaign of calumny he faced particularly from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP)

    and Labour Party, (LP), fueled the unabating antagonism against his administration right from its inception by malcontents both within the ruling party and in the opposition.

    Thus, although his administration has just passed the two- year mark in its first term in office, aggrieved political elements who are aggravated at their perceived marginalization within the APC as well as implacable adversaries in the perennially crisis-ridden major opposition parties are openly talking and planning towards the formation of a coalition to dislodge the President and his party from power in 2027. During his visit to Benue State in response to large scale killings in parts of the state by marauding gunmen, Tinubu acknowledged that his opponents hate him “like hell” though he remains their President. And in Nasarawa State where he went to commission some legacy projects of the Engineer Abdullahi Sule administration, the President taunted those plotting the coalition to unseat him in 2027 describing them as internally displaced politicians.

    Yet, the security agencies curiously appear to suspect no linkage between the bitterness of many of those who have drawn a battle-line against the President and the persistence of unrelenting bloodletting in parts of the country which appear to be deliberately instigated to lend credence to unceasing efforts to discredit and delegitimize the administration. Surely the security agencies should send an unmistakable signal to those malcontents who have been making incendiary and reckless pronouncements against the President and his administration and who are alleged to have a track record of having sponsored violent subversions of the Nigerian State in the past, including publicly threatening foreign elections observers that they would leave the country in body bags, that it is closely watching them. The inexplicable lethargy of security agents when some aggrieved political groups and individuals have openly called for military intervention to overthrow this democratic dispensation has undoubtedly emboldened such elements to persist in their strenuous efforts to destabilize the polity.

    The strategy of the malcontents is obviously to portray the hardships attendant on the administration’s reforms such as removal of the fuel subsidy and merger of the parallel foreign exchange markets leading to the devaluation of the Naira as a deliberate decision to inflict pain on the people as if the reforms were avoidable. But the economy, which as the eminent economist, former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, (CBN), and now Anambra State governor, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, has noted was practically comatose at the inception of the Tinubu administration, needed urgent corrective surgery, which Tinubu and his economic team promptly administered. It was a situation akin to the dentist in Woke Soyinka’s novel, ‘Season of Anomy’ who had to inflict the discomfort of tooth extraction on his patient to save the latter in the long run from excruciating tooth decay and pain.

    But a large number of the ever increasingly sophisticated Nigerian electorate are not unaware that all the major presidential candidates in the 2023 general elections had promised to implement far reaching and long overdue economic reforms such as removal of the fuel subsidy. During the campaigns, the voluble LP candidate, Mr Peter Obi, had said severally on national television that he would remove the subsidy,  which he described as an elaborate scam, “on day one” but now insists that had he been elected President, he would have done so gradually after putting in place measures to alleviate the pain without elaborating on how he would do this. In their plan to predicate their campaign against Tinubu and the APC in 2027 on the hardships associated with the reforms, the desperate opposition politicians angling for an electorally viable coalition appear to discount the fact that the APC had won off-season elections in Ondo, Imo, Kogi and Edo States even after the reforms of the Tinubu administration had set in.

    Even as they continue to seek the actualization of their coalition plans, it is obvious that the anti- Tinubu malcontents will be relentless in their demonization and concerted efforts to demystify and delegitimize the incumbent APC administration by vehemently denying and denouncing even its most glaring accomplishments. As the ongoing reforms continue to show signs of bearing fruit and achieving set objectives with downward trend in inflationary spirals, systematically increasing productivity, growing employment and prosperity, the more strident will be the efforts to vilify and portray the administration as non-performing in the hope that assertions repeated often enough, possibly with the aid of Peter Obi-type of manufactured statistical mumbo jumbo, will be readily believed by a gullible public despite the reality. And they will be enthusiastically sided by a section of the media still hurting at Tinubu’s emergence as President despite their no-holds-barred exertions to ensure his defeat.

    In the past week, for instance, former Vice President Abubakar Atiku has tried to resuscitate public discourse around the stale issue of President Tinubu’s academic records despite the futility of his litigation of the matter both in the United States and at the highest judicial level in Nigeria in the last election. He even tried to taint the President as associating with an allegedly corrupt Belarus businessman without any evidential basis for the allegation. Atiku probably thinks that most Nigerians had forgotten that it is on record that a Congressional investigation in the US indicted him for allegedly criminally transferring over $40 million into various accounts of his fourth wife, Jennifer Douglas, in the US during his tenure as Vice President.  Similarly, the former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El’Rufai, has continued his round of television talk shows this time claiming that members of the coalition had commissioned an opinion poll which showed that Tinubu could in no way win the 2027 election. He is probably unaware that what he needs more urgently is an opinion poll that indicates with acceptable accuracy and credibility his current standing in Kaduna State which he governed with unprecedented arrogance and impunity between 2015 and 2023.

    The former governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Sule Lamido, was also on television trying to rewrite history by distorting Tinubu’s well documented and applauded role in the struggle against the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election won by Chief M.K.O Abiola and claiming that the President supported a military atrocity that he actually expended humongous resources and risked his life to fight against. Luckily, Lamido has been unable to respond to the exposure by Dr Dele Alake and Mr Bayo Onanuga on how, as National Secretary of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP), he worked in concert with the National Chairman, Chief Tony Anenih,  to trade away Abiola ‘s mandate. But President Tinubu and his party should expect these outright falsehoods and historical distortions to continue especially as it becomes increasingly difficult to credibly fault the administration on the basis of incompetence or non-performance.

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    Initially, the APC gave the impression that its main strategy in response to the ceaseless, often baseless, onslaughts against the Tinubu administration was to utilize its power of incumbency at the centre and the control of the advantage of patronage to lure key opposition figures to defect from their parties and join its ranks. The party had scored a major victory in this regard with the defections of the incumbent governors of Delta and Akwa Ibom States with the entire government machinery and PDP party structures in their states into the ruling party. At the same time, significant numbers of National Assembly members from the PDP and the LP have continued to stream into the APC almost on a weekly basis. This has prompted allegations from some opposition politicians of attempts by the APC to turn Nigeria into a one-party state based on the unproven supposition that it is the ruling party instigating the crises that have continuously plagued and immobilized the major opposition parties in the aftermath of the 2023 elections.

    Of course, as President Tinubu stated in his maiden State of the Nation  address to the National Assembly on June 12, he does not desire a one-party state for the country but cannot be expected to assist the opposition parties in resolving their intra-party crises and running well organized, efficient and harmonious party entities. However, in my view, the APC, by beginning to more effectively showcase the achievements of the governments elected on its platform at the federal and sub-national levels is laying a better and more convincing foundation for its campaign towards the 2027 elections than merely attracting opposition politicians to join its ranks. This is because the phenomenon of political vagrancy, which has been a common feature of Nigerian politics right from the First Republic, smacks of opportunism and a deficiency of principles on the part of political actors. There is really no way to ascertain that a defecting politician from one party to another is not  doing so for self -serving reasons rather than the new platform offering a better opportunity for public service.

    However, in the last few days, President Tinubu has been in Nasarawa and Kaduna States to commission well publicized legacy projects in diverse sectors including education, healthcare, agriculture and road infrastructure. For the past one week, the Borno State government has been advertising over 1,339 projects implemented across diverse sectors by the administration of Professor Babagana Zulum in the print and electronic media. In the last ten days or more, the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT), Minister, Barrister Nyesom Wike, has been inaugurating a plethora of projects including ultra modern roads, water projects, a modern bus terminal, interchange bridges and the radically modernized President Bola Tinubu International Conference Centre, with the President personally launching most of these facilities. True, Wike is of the PDP but the credit for the ongoing transformation of the FCT goes to the APC administration in which he is serving.

    Before now, President Tinubu was in Lagos to launch the first 30 km of the ongoing path-breaking Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway as well as the new access road to the Lekki Deep Sea Port. Among the major highways on which work is going on across the country under the superintendence of the Minister of Works, Engineer David Umahi, are the Bodo-Bonny Road, Second Niger Bridge Access Road, Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway, Benin-Asaba Super Highway, Abuja-Lokoja- Benin Road, Enugu-Onitsha Expressway, 9th Mile-Oturkpo-Makurdi-Road and Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano dual Carriage Way. This week, the President launched the distribution of 2,000 advanced tractors and thousands of farming implements including 50 industrial-grade land preparation booths, 12 fully equipped mobile workshops, and over 8,000 specialized farming implements under the Renewed Hope Agricultural Mechanization Programme, designed to boost food security and national prosperity.

    Even when the President has been in states controlled by opposition parties such as his being invited to commission projects delivered by Professor Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in Anambra State earlier in the year, the governors have openly declared that the federal government’s economic reform policies under Tinubu had made substantially more resources available to the sub-national governments thus enabling them to meet recurrent expenditure obligations without jeopardizing the implementation of critical capital projects. The most critical advantage of the APC’s incumbency at the centre is not the power to attract opposition politicians into its ranks but that of conceptualizing and actualizing key projects to build the country’s economic capacity and generate prosperity in such a way that the most inveterate malcontents will be unable to impugn the administration’s efficacy, efficiency and effectiveness with any degree of credibility or integrity. It would be unwise for the APC to allow its governments at the centre and in the states to be distracted from productive governance with a premature preoccupation with the 2027 polls at this time.

  • The Tinubu administration and its malcontents (1)

    The Tinubu administration and its malcontents (1)

    It is obvious that those political and personal adversaries of President Bola Tinubu, who are most viscerally and implacably opposed to his administration’s economic policies, are motivated largely by partisan discontent as well as malice arising from the bitterness they still nurse at his electoral triumph in 2023 than any genuine concerns for the welfare of the Nigerian people. Impatient to dislodge the President and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), from power at the earliest possible opportunity in 2027 if a popular uprising or a military usurpation of power cannot be instigated to achieve the objective before then, leading political figures within and outside the ruling party are already striving to form a coalition which they openly and unabashedly declare is to “remove Tinubu from power in 2027” in an election that is still two years away.

    The APC has understandably but perhaps needlessly responded by aggressively wooing opposition politicians into its ranks with considerable success and getting its diverse stakeholders to enthusiastically endorse the President for a second term. From all indications, there is absolutely nothing that the President and his party will do that will mollify the anger and resentment of a politician like Alhaji Abubakar Atiku who sees Tinubu as a stumbling block to the realization of his enduring and desperate ambition to be President of Nigeria or those disaffected elements within the APC who feel marginalized and alienated in the present dispensation. One of such political figures, Mr Rotimi Amaechi, two-term Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, two-term governor of the oil- rich state and two-term Minister of Transportation in the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, declared dramatically during his 60th birthday anniversary that he was ‘hungry’ despite being continuously in prominent political offices over the last two and a half decades.

    Doubling down on his pathetic ‘I am hungry’ plaintiff cry in a follow up interview with the BBC, Amaechi lamented what he described as the country’s deteriorating condition while reiterating his readiness to join hands with like minds in forging a new coalition in a rescue mission for the nation. According to him, “People are dying. People are starving. I myself am feeling the effects of hunger” thus painting a dismal portrait of life in the Nigeria of the last two years under Tinubu. He averred that poverty had deepened, worsening insecurity and the number of out-of- school children, then pegged at 10 million, had increased since he was last Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) in 2015, a situation he apparently blames the Tinubu administration for. But then it was eight years between his exit as governor of Rivers State in 2015 and President Tinubu’s assumption of office in May 2023. In those intervening years, Amaechi was Minister of Transportation and a member of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in the Buhari administration.

    The critical question is: in those eight years when Amaechi was privileged to occupy one of the most prominent ministerial portfolios and serve as a member of the country’s highest decision making body, was poverty ameliorated? Did the number of out-of- school children diminish only to surge astronomically with Tinubu’s emergence as President two years ago? Had the challenge of insecurity been effectively checkmated only to spring to life under Tinubu? Yes, the Tinubu administration summoned the courage to introduce critical policy reforms such as the removal of fuel subsidy and merger of the parallel foreign exchange markets with painful consequences for millions of Nigerians as a result of attendant inflationary spirals particularly of transportation, essential drugs and staple food items. But what did Amaechi himself say of these reforms during his 60th birthday commemoration?

    According to a report in the New Telegraph of June 1, 2025, Amaechi had submitted that “If I were the president, yes, I would pursue some of the policies they are pursuing. But ask what the failure is: the failure is that the gains of those policies are in their private pockets. At a point, we were paying between four to five trillion Naira as subsidy, where is the money now? If they had dumped it on the economy, you would not be crying”. Whether this is mischief or sheer ignorance, it is embarrassing and astonishing coming from a man with the tremendous experience Amaechi has had in public life. Can it be that the former governor and minister is unaware that revenue allocations to the three levels of government have nearly tripled since the removal of fuel subsidy and that consequently sub-national levels of government previously unable to pay the former N30,000 minimum wage monthly are now able to pay the new minimum wage of N70,000?

    Is he unaware of the fact that most states with their healthier financial position have been able to clear their debt obligations thus leaving them more funds for implementation of infrastructure projects and delivery of social services which are being advertised daily in the media? Is he unaware that the Tinubu administration has cleared the inherited foreign exchange debt obligations owed foreign airlines, repaid the over $4.5 billion dollars owed the IMF as well as the country’s over $100 billion Sukuk bond loan? Is he unaware of the scores of landmark road, rail and other infrastructure projects being delivered at a frenetic pace across the country? Can it be that he is unaware of the establishment of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) and the hundreds of thousands of tertiary institution students who are benefitting both from payment by the federal government of their tuition fees as well as receipt of monthly upkeep allowances? Is he ignorant of the widely disseminated media reports that as at June 11, 2025, at least 100, 201 Nigerians, including no less than 35,000 civil servants, have accessed affordable consumer credit through the Nigerian Consumer Credit Corporation (CREDICORP) established by the Tinubu administration to democratize credit access and enhance the quality of life by making borrowing accessible in a responsible manner?

    In any case, how can a man of Amaechi ‘s calibre and stature state so casually and cavalierly that funds saved from removal of fuel subsidy have been diverted into private pockets without adducing the slightest scintilla of evidence? Can it be that he has been grossly overrated in terms of character and intellect? Is this how corrosive of mental acuity and moral integrity political prejudice and injured ego can be? No less abrasive, reflexively unthinking,  self- endangeringly bitter and poisonous have been the pointed attacks against the Tinubu administration by former two-term Kaduna State governor, Mallam Nasir ‘El Rufai, who incidentally, was a top functionary of the PDP during the eight years in office of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. In a characteristically incendiary interview on the BBC Hausa Service, el Rufai described the Tinubu administration as the most corrupt and intolerant in the history of Nigeria. He accused the administration of engaging in baseless propaganda contending that, contrary to the government’s claims, bandits and terrorists have continued to operate in states like Kaduna, Zamfara and Sokoto states.

    Coming from the diminutive but spontaneously combustible former Minister and governor, these accusatory assertions sound utterly comical. For, as Kaduna State governor, Nasir ‘El Rufai ran one of the most intolerant and repressive administrations at any level in this dispensation since 1999. Members of the Nigerian Union Teachers (NUT) and the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) who attempted to exercise their constitutional rights to demonstrate against the policies of his government were hounded by security agents and their leaders subjected to the worst forms of persecution and intimidation. Under his watch in Kaduna State, scores of members of Ibrahim Zakzaky’s Islamic Movement, were allegedly mowed down in cold blood extra-judicially  and their bodies buried in shallow graves. El Rufai complains that insecurity remains a challenge under the Tinubu administration and this is partly true even though there have also been considerable improvements in a number of areas as regards security in the last two years.

    But then, is this not the same El Rufai who, as governor of Kaduna State, admitted to having donated humongous amounts of public funds to terroristic members of his ethnic group, some from outside the country, to procure a peace that never materialized? How are we sure some of such funds were not utilized by these bandits leaders to stock up arms and build up their criminal gangs that have remained a menace to the country till this day? During his eight years as governor of Kaduna State, the people of Southern Kaduna, mostly Christians, were continuously hounded, harassed, humiliated, dehumanized, marginalized and rendered vulnerable to unimaginable violence by an El Rufai administration that did not disguise its disdain for them. How can someone  under whose watch as Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), some of the country’s most prized public assets were allegedly auctioned to cronies of politicians at criminal prices have the temerity to describe any administration as corrupt?

    Under the incumbent Kaduna State governor, Senator Uba Sani, it is incontrovertible that the state has been restored to a level of harmonious co-existence thought impossible under El Rufai’s draconic rule. Uba Sani has demonstrated a degree of maturity, emotional intelligence, generosity of spirit, disarming humility and wisdom that bring people of diverse cultures, ethnicities, faiths and partisan dispositions together rather than driving them apart through mean spirited and arrogantly cantankerous leadership best exemplified by El Rufai. Is it any wonder then that Nasir ‘El Rufai left the APC for his initial misadventure into the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as a pathetic solitary figure with no notable politician in a state he governed for eight years accompanying him on a journey of indeterminate destination?

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    Waziri Atiku Abubakar ‘s media aides try regularly to punch holes in the economic policies of the Tinubu administration suggesting alternatives that are difficult to distinguish in substance from those already being implemented beyond superficialities. Their efforts to project their principal as a superior economic manager are as impactful as throwing tiny pebbles into a vast ocean as his record as Vice President during which he had a free hand to run the economy in Obasanjo ‘s first term is there for all to see. In any case, his testimonial is eternally etched in granite in the memoirs of his brutally unforgiving boss, OBJ, who records for posterity his former Deputy’s alleged grasping greed, desperately inordinate ambition, superstitious proclivity for consulting marabouts, undependability and much more.

    Mr Peter Obi continues his ineffectual sermonizing both within and outside the country on how he would have prepared a delicious dish of fuel

    subsidy removal omelette without breaking eggs although he is yet to share the secrets of such magical abracadabra from his mystical policy cookbook. Similarly, he continues to offer delightful, theoretical master classes on the imperative of transiting the economy from consumption to production while remaining firmly a trader and refusing to invest his humongous wealth in production in practical demonstrations of his exquisite theorizing. Arriving London from Nigeria this week on an Air Peace flight, Obi sought to capitalize on the recent dispute Senator Adams Oshiomhole and the Airline to characteristically score cheap points.

    On his X handle, he commended the professionalism, consistency and efficiency of the management of Air Peace on the route while appealing to “Nigerian elites and political leaders to give strong and deliberate support to indigenous businesses” because”It is never easy to run any business in our difficult environment, let alone highly capital -intensive sectors like air and land transportation, especially given the challenges of competitiveness and rising operational costs”. But addressing a press conference in the Lagos office of Air Peace on Wednesday, the Chairman of the airline, Dr Allen Onyema, commended the Tinubu administration for its policies which he said has unlocked opportunities for aircraft dry leasing, “a feat that was not possible about a decade ago due to blacklisting of the country by global lessors”.

    As this newspaper reported the story, “The Air Peace airline boss also commended the President Tinubu administration for assisting aviation authorities in providing equipment for birds wildlife control at airports across the country affirming that there were other interventions initiated by the government to make the operating environment for indigenous carriers more conducive “.

  • Malcolm Muggeridge and ‘the end of Christendom’ (1)

    Malcolm Muggeridge and ‘the end of Christendom’ (1)

    Ever since my first encounter over a decade and a half ago with his fascinating reflective narrative on the life of the founder of Christianity titled ‘Jesus: The Man Who Lives’, I have strived to obtain as much of the writings of the 20th century British journalist, author, film maker, television personality, satirist and engaging polemicist, Malcolm Muggeridge, that I can lay my hands on. ‘Jesus: The Man Who Lives’ is a magisterial portraiture of the most enduring and impactful personality to traverse the portals of human history and coming from a most unlikely quarter. One of the blogs on the back of the book simply states that ‘This man writes like an angel’! Muggeridge is a master of the written word. He is a keen and acute observer of society and human behavior and deploys his cutting wit to effortlessly devastating effect.

    Born on 24 March, 1903, Malcolm Muggeridge died on 14 November, 1990 at the age of 87. At various times, he was a school teacher before venturing into journalism, an exchange correspondent on war and peace with Mahatma Ghandi in India, a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in Moscow in the nascent years of the communist regime, worked as Editor of the Statesman in Calcutta, India, and served in the military in various capacities during the second World War. He wrote for the Evening Standard, was appointed Deputy Editor for The Daily Telegraph and was Editor of Punch magazine from 1953 to 1957.  Later, in his career, he became better known as a broadcaster and documentary film maker. Married to Katherine Dobbs (1903-1994), Malcolm Muggeridge ‘s life appeared to be sharply divided into two phases. For a substantial part of his life as an active journalist, he was an agnostic who did not appear to place much stock on Christian moral values even though he and his wife maintained a life-long relationship.

    In a rather unflattering perspective on his life during this period, an online entry reports that “Muggeridge was described as having predatory behavior towards women during his BBC years. He was described as a “compulsive groper”, reportedly being nicknamed “The Pouncer” and as “a man fully deserving of the acronym NSIT – not safe in taxis”. His niece confirmed these reports, while also reflecting on the suffering he inflicted on his family and saying that he changed his behavior when he converted to Christianity”. Mother Theresa’s influence through her work with the poor in India was a key factor that motivated his inclination to Christianity and his later rejection of the Anglican communion and conversion to the Catholic Church. He wrote a book that popularized the life and work of Mother Theresa titled ‘Something Beautiful for God’s. Another of his works, ‘A Third Testament’ focused on the lives of seven spiritual writers and philosophers who influenced his conversion to the Christian faith, namely Augustine of Hippo, William Blake, Blaise Paschal, Leo Tolstoy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Soren Kietkegàard and Fyidor Dostoevsky”.

    The focus of this review derives from the second phase of Muggeridge’s life when he had become an outspoken critic of the sexual licentiousness, rampant drug use and corrosive irreligiosity that had become a defining characteristic of modern, ever increasingly secularized society. During this period, he resigned from the position of Rector of Edinburgh University to which he had been elected in protest against the Students’ Representative Council’s support for the use of “pots and pills”. His new disposition to faith and spiritual values informed the choice of Muggeridge in 1978 to deliver the inaugural addresses of the ‘Pascal Lectures on Christianity and the University’ at the University of Waterloo. As the organizers of the annual lecture series wrote, “Blaise Paschal (1632-1662) is remembered today as the forerunner of Newton in the establishment of calculus, and as the author of the Christian meditations, Les Penses”.

    Continuing, they explained that “Members of the University of Waterloo, wishing to commemorate the spirit of Pascal, have established this annual lecture series to generate discourse within the University community on some aspect of its own world, its theories, its research, its leadership role in our society, challenging the University to a search for truth through personal faith and intellectual inquiry which focus on Jesus Christ”. And justifying the choice of Muggeridge to kickstart the delivery of the lecture series, Professor John North submitted that “Malcolm Muggeridge is a fitting choice to inaugurate the Pascal Lectures on Christianity and the University. During the first half of the twentieth century, he moved easily among the renowned: politicians, scientists, academics, churchmen and socialites. As a commentator in the press, then radio and television, he became increasingly caustic about the figures and movements of our time. Disillusionment mounting at times to anger began to characterize his work. Then came a transformation as wholehearted as that of Pascal, and an allegiance to the same master. The focus of his work has changed from the superstars to the meek of the earth”.

    Read Also: Tinubu: every Nigerian will feel impact of good governance

    Muggeridge then went on to deliver two lectures published under the common title of ‘The End of Christendom’ published in a slim volume of 62 pages along with his responses to questions from members of the audience on the two occasions. In the first lecture, he advances the thesis that Christendom has reached a dead -end and in the very throes of its demise. But he makes a distinction between the ‘Christendom’ that is the product and derivative of the powers, mores and values of the institutions of this world and the Christianity that springs from the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which he sees as remaining a vibrant and virile entity which is alive and well. The latter is the focus of the second lecture titled ‘But Not of Christ ‘.

    Clarifying the issues, Muggeridge noted that ‘Christendom’, however, is something quite different from Christianity, being the administrative or power structure, based on the Christian religion and constructed by men….The founder of Christianity was, of course, Christ. The founder of Christendom I suppose could be named as the Emperor Constantine. You might even say that Christ himself abolished Christendom by stating that his kingdom was not of this world – one of the most far reaching and important of all his statements. Christendom, on the other hand, began when Constantine, as an act of policy, decided to tolerate, indeed, positively favour, the Church, uniting it to the secular state by the closest ties. This was at the beginning of the fourth century”. Is the contemporary Pentecostal church especially in Nigeria and the United States not making the grave mistake of seeking to derive its power no more from the risen Christ but through association with the wielders of State power hence it’s current excessive preoccupatipn with partisan politics in both countries? 

  • ‘Tinubunomics’ as last chance for the Nigerian bourgeoisie? (2)

    ‘Tinubunomics’ as last chance for the Nigerian bourgeoisie? (2)

    One of the most insightful assessments of the last two years of the President Bola Tinubu administration was undertaken, perhaps understandably, by the Chairman of the BUA Group, a leading investor in diverse productive sectors of the Nigerian economy, Alhaji Abdul Samad Rabiu. As a practical business operative at home with the realities of running functioning companies in Nigeria that engage in production, he was able to demonstrate with concrete examples the positive impact of the administration’s key reform policies including removal of fuel subsidy, merger of the parallel exchange rate markets and the consequent devaluation of the Naira, massive investment in infrastructure and temporary waiver of tariffs on agricultural imports among others on economic growth and development. Alhaji Rabiu ‘s hands -on understanding of the economy reminds one of the late Alfred Chief Alfred Rewane, another astute businessman, in his very public disagreements with the late Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, the brilliant but essentially theoretical economist, who was one of the academic pillars of military President, General Ibrahim Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).

    Unlike Mr Peter Obi, for instance, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 elections who is a substantial player in the Nigerian economy but only as a trader,  importer and financial speculator with tangential involvement in production, Rabiu appreciates the critical significance of the Tinubu administration’s policies in expanding and strengthening the productive capacities of the economy. According to Alhaji Rabiu, “In infrastructure, the difference is also clear. Look at the Lagos-Calabar highway. Look at the Sokoto-Badagry road. Look at the Kwara projects we are executing under the tax credit scheme. Look at Kano-Kongolam. Look at the Okpella to Kogi State corridor. These projects are progressing because of the savings from subsidy removal and FX unification. With more revenue, Nigeria is building”.

    Read Also: Top four visas that give Nigerians access to more countries

    Continuing, Rabiu states that “These roads and others being built are critical because logistics have become a major challenge. Transporting goods from Lagos to the North is very expensive due to bad roads. Now, the President is addressing this. With better infrastructure, logistics will improve, and businesses will grow. These reforms have enabled long-term planning and serious investment”. When he gives concrete examples of how the reforms have enhanced the investment capacity and activities of the BUA Group in the Nigerian economy, you readily understand why Rabiu, just like Alhaji Aliko Dangote, another development -oriented capitalist, cannot indulge in the unproductive fantasizing of a Peter Obi who loves to travel the world to spread his delusional gospel of a non-performing Tinubu administration armed with manufactured statistics of dubious provenance.

    In the words of Rabiu, “Since President Tinubu took office, BUA Group has invested over one billion dollars in the Nigerian economy. We are expanding our food business, doubling our flour and pasta facilities in Port Harcourt and building another one in Lagos. Demand is increasing. People are earning more. Confidence is returning. We have also completed the first POP plaster manufacturing plant in Nigeria which is now operating and are soon starting construction of a 300 MW solar energy project in Sokoto State. In the oil and gas sector, we are completing our LNG project in Ajaokuta, Kogi State. These investments are possible because of stability that has been brought about by President Tinubu’s reforms. We can plan now. The exchange rate has been fairly stable for almost a year. FX is accessible. Money is coming in from different sources, and investors are responding. If you want 200 million dollars a week for trade, you can get it without lobbying anyone at the Central Bank. These are the results of good policies”.

    Speaking this week at the inauguration of the access road to the Lekki Deep Sea Port in Lagos, Alhaji Dangote expressed similar sentiments. According to him, “Your leadership has been both decisive and reassuring. Your actions have reignited hope for a prosperous Nigeria of today and of the future. From the very start of your administration, Your Excellency has worked tirelessly to foster an enabling environment for private sector -led growth”. It is perhaps people like Rabiu and Dangote that Alhaji Abubakar Atiku was referring to when he said the Tinubu administration’s policies were benefitting the rich who are being made richer. It is not known when the Waziri Adamawa became a fire -belching revolutionary. But at least the two businessmen are contributing phenomenally to the growth of the Nigerian economy and generating mass employment through aggressive and unceasing investment in diverse sectors. Most of those of his friends to which several of Nigeria’s public enterprises valued at billions of Naira were auctioned for peanuts when Atiku statutorily supervised the privatization programme were criminally enriched without adding value to the national economy.

    Dangote and Rabiu are not the only inspiring examples that suggest that the sustenance and consumation of the ongoing economic reform policies of the Tinubu administration may offer the last chance for the creation of the conditions to enable the Nigerian borgeosie become catalysts for national development. Any failure this time around may make ever more imperative  far more radical and hardly peaceful or democratic options to force the country to break out of what is becoming to be perceived as an irresolvable developmental dead-end. This is why it is heartwarming that at least 22 manufacturing companies have so far benefitted from the disbursement of N16.1 billion loans of the N75 billion provided for under the Presidential Conditional Grant Scheme to strengthen their productive bases and expand their distribution lines at nine per cent interest rate annually. But it is now 14 months after the policy was first announced in December 2023 and it’s slow pace of implementation has been attributed to government bureaucratic delays.

    The Bank of Industry (BOI), which is the vehicle for implementing the policy must surely devise strategies for companies to have accelerated access to these critical funds without compromising procedural rigour and integrity. This is particularly so as the plan as announced also includes provision of another N75 billion for 75,000 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to obtain loans of N1 million each to support their businesses and cushion the adverse consequences of the reforms. The earlier the affected companies obtain and begin to utilize the loans, the better for the reforms and the brighter the prospects of achieving the objectives for which the fund is being injected into the economy will be.

    Radical political economists make a distinction between waves of transient economic crises in African countries and the more fundamental challenge of underdevelopment. Unfortunately, Orthodox economists tend to conflate the two. Thus, they often pursue policies that address the economic crisis in the short term, may achieve an appreciable rate of growth but still do not promote development in any concrete or meaningful manner. The radical political economist, Professor Okwudiba Nnoli, made this point in the late 1980s with regard to the SAP then being implemented and his submission remains valid. As he put it then: “The SAP is addressed to a steady and balanced growth, not to development. Therefore, it emphasizes changes in the indicators of growth, such as the gross domestic product, balance of payment, exchange rates, money supply, interest rates, privatization and liberalization of trade. It ignores the qualitative changes in society induced by changes in these parameters.”

    Critical as these technical considerations are in economic policy formulation and implementation, they must be supported by the most crucial factor in achieving national development, which is the mobilization of the popular energies of the people to engage as active agents in the development process. Unfortunately, this is where liberal economics is deficient and it is in the direct engagement of the people physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually to participate actively in and contribute concretely to the development process that ‘Tinubunomics’ can truly realize its potentials. For instance, with regard to food availability to curtail stratospheric prices, Alhaji Rabiu noted that the temporary tariff waivers on food imports granted by the Tinubu administration for six months, “allowed rice to be brought in and milled immediately. The hoarders were cut out. Prices began to drop. It was a short-term solution, but it worked”.

    But then, what happens when the tariff waivers expire after six months? Agriculture is one sector where large numbers of people can be mobilized to grow food on an expansive scale. The country has an abundance of fertile land.  In most parts, the climate is clement for productive agricultural activities. Already, considerable investment is being made made in the procurement and distribution of agricultural inputs such as seedlings, fertilizers and insecticides. Orders placed for tractors, harvesters and other mechanical appliances are being delivered. But these are not sufficient conditions to achieve munificent food production. Equally critical is the appropriate mobilization and organization of the people to engage in mass food production.

    As has been advocated in this space a number of times, the organization of Nigerian farmers into viable Cooperatives has become an indispensable categorical imperative. It is hard but unavoidable work if we are to develop a thriving and vibrant agricultural sector. As Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who had thought deeply and written extensively on the issue, submitted in one of his lectures, “To this end, the oft-repeated and sound policies of the Federal and State governments towards Nigerian farmers of (1) organizing them into virile, viable and prosperous Cooperatives; (2) subsidy in kind, cash and services; (3) provision of finance and technical know-how; should now be pursued and translated into realities with unabating dispatch and vigour”.

    Even the requisite security without which displaced farming communities cannot fully return to active work on their farms in a safe and conducive environment can only be achieved with the active involvement of the people. The people, organized to secure their communities but armed to a level not below that of those who ceaselessly attack and seek to seize their land, must be the basis of an effective community policing system under federal or state control. The proposed ‘Forest Rangers’ recently approved by the President must thus be essentially people and community-based. The President should urgently give a deadline for its recruitment, training, equipping and take-off as the restoration and sustenance of security across rural and urban communities across the country is critical to the ultimate success of ‘Tinubunomics’.

    •This article was first published June 7, 2025

  • ‘Tinubunomics’ as last chance for the Nigerian bourgeoisie? (2)

    ‘Tinubunomics’ as last chance for the Nigerian bourgeoisie? (2)

    One of the most insightful assessments of the last two years of the President Bola Tinubu administration was undertaken, perhaps understandably, by the Chairman of the BUA Group, a leading investor in diverse productive sectors of the Nigerian economy, Alhaji Abdul Samad Rabiu. As a practical business operative at home with the realities of running functioning companies in Nigeria that engage in production, he was able to demonstrate with concrete examples the positive impact of the administration’s key reform policies including removal of fuel subsidy, merger of the parallel exchange rate markets and the consequent devaluation of the Naira, massive investment in infrastructure and temporary waiver of tariffs on agricultural imports among others on economic growth and development. Alhaji Rabiu ‘s hands -on understanding of the economy reminds one of the late Alfred Chief Alfred Rewane, another astute businessman, in his very public disagreements with the late Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, the brilliant but essentially theoretical economist, who was one of the academic pillars of military President, General Ibrahim Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).

    Unlike Mr Peter Obi, for instance, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 elections who is a substantial player in the Nigerian economy but only as a trader,  importer and financial speculator with tangential involvement in production, Rabiu appreciates the critical significance of the Tinubu administration’s policies in expanding and strengthening the productive capacities of the economy. According to Alhaji Rabiu, “In infrastructure, the difference is also clear. Look at the Lagos-Calabar highway. Look at the Sokoto-Badagry road. Look at the Kwara projects we are executing under the tax credit scheme. Look at Kano-Kongolam. Look at the Okpella to Kogi State corridor. These projects are progressing because of the savings from subsidy removal and FX unification. With more revenue, Nigeria is building”.

    Continuing, Rabiu states that “These roads and others being built are critical because logistics have become a major challenge. Transporting goods from Lagos to the North is very expensive due to bad roads. Now, the President is addressing this. With better infrastructure, logistics will improve, and businesses will grow. These reforms have enabled long-term planning and serious investment”. When he gives concrete examples of how the reforms have enhanced the investment capacity and activities of the BUA Group in the Nigerian economy, you readily understand why Rabiu, just like Alhaji Aliko Dangote, another development -oriented capitalist, cannot indulge in the unproductive fantasizing of a Peter Obi who loves to travel the world to spread his delusional gospel of a non-performing Tinubu administration armed with manufactured statistics of dubious provenance.

    In the words of Rabiu, “Since President Tinubu took office, BUA Group has invested over one billion dollars in the Nigerian economy. We are expanding our food business, doubling our flour and pasta facilities in Port Harcourt and building another one in Lagos. Demand is increasing. People are earning more. Confidence is returning. We have also completed the first POP plaster manufacturing plant in Nigeria which is now operating and are soon starting construction of a 300 MW solar energy project in Sokoto State. In the oil and gas sector, we are completing our LNG project in Ajaokuta, Kogi State. These investments are possible because of stability that has been brought about by President Tinubu’s reforms. We can plan now. The exchange rate has been fairly stable for almost a year. FX is accessible. Money is coming in from different sources, and investors are responding. If you want 200 million dollars a week for trade, you can get it without lobbying anyone at the Central Bank. These are the results of good policies”.

    Speaking this week at the inauguration of the access road to the Lekki Deep Sea Port in Lagos, Alhaji Dangote expressed similar sentiments. According to him, “Your leadership has been both decisive and reassuring. Your actions have reignited hope for a prosperous Nigeria of today and of the future. From the very start of your administration, Your Excellency has worked tirelessly to foster an enabling environment for private sector -led growth”. It is perhaps people like Rabiu and Dangote that Alhaji Abubakar Atiku was referring to when he said the Tinubu administration’s policies were benefitting the rich who are being made richer. It is not known when the Waziri Adamawa became a fire -belching revolutionary. But at least the two businessmen are contributing phenomenally to the growth of the Nigerian economy and generating mass employment through aggressive and unceasing investment in diverse sectors. Most of those of his friends to which several of Nigeria’s public enterprises valued at billions of Naira were auctioned for peanuts when Atiku statutorily supervised the privatization programme were criminally enriched without adding value to the national economy.

    Read Also: Secure public infrastructure in your domains, Ibas tells Rivers’ monarchs

    Dangote and Rabiu are not the only inspiring examples that suggest that the sustenance and consumation of the ongoing economic reform policies of the Tinubu administration may offer the last chance for the creation of the conditions to enable the Nigerian borgeosie become catalysts for national development. Any failure this time around may make ever more imperative  far more radical and hardly peaceful or democratic options to force the country to break out of what is becoming to be perceived as an irresolvable developmental dead-end. This is why it is heartwarming that at least 22 manufacturing companies have so far benefitted from the disbursement of N16.1 billion loans of the N75 billion provided for under the Presidential Conditional Grant Scheme to strengthen their productive bases and expand their distribution lines at nine per cent interest rate annually. But it is now 14 months after the policy was first announced in December 2023 and it’s slow pace of implementation has been attributed to government bureaucratic delays.

    The Bank of Industry (BOI), which is the vehicle for implementing the policy must surely devise strategies for companies to have accelerated access to these critical funds without compromising procedural rigour and integrity. This is particularly so as the plan as announced also includes provision of another N75 billion for 75,000 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to obtain loans of N1 million each to support their businesses and cushion the adverse consequences of the reforms. The earlier the affected companies obtain and begin to utilize the loans, the better for the reforms and the brighter the prospects of achieving the objectives for which the fund is being injected into the economy will be.

    Radical political economists make a distinction between waves of transient economic crises in African countries and the more fundamental challenge of underdevelopment. Unfortunately, Orthodox economists tend to conflate the two. Thus, they often pursue policies that address the economic crisis in the short term, may achieve an appreciable rate of growth but still do not promote development in any concrete or meaningful manner. The radical political economist, Professor Okwudiba Nnoli, made this point in the late 1980s with regard to the SAP then being implemented and his submission remains valid. As he put it then: “The SAP is addressed to a steady and balanced growth, not to development. Therefore, it emphasizes changes in the indicators of growth, such as the gross domestic product, balance of payment, exchange rates, money supply, interest rates, privatization and liberalization of trade. It ignores the qualitative changes in society induced by changes in these parameters.”

    Critical as these technical considerations are in economic policy formulation and implementation, they must be supported by the most crucial factor in achieving national development, which is the mobilization of the popular energies of the people to engage as active agents in the development process. Unfortunately, this is where liberal economics is deficient and it is in the direct engagement of the people physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually to participate actively in and contribute concretely to the development process that ‘Tinubunomics’ can truly realize its potentials. For instance, with regard to food availability to curtail stratospheric prices, Alhaji Rabiu noted that the temporary tariff waivers on food imports granted by the Tinubu administration for six months, “allowed rice to be brought in and milled immediately. The hoarders were cut out. Prices began to drop. It was a short-term solution, but it worked”.

    But then, what happens when the tariff waivers expire after six months? Agriculture is one sector where large numbers of people can be mobilized to grow food on an expansive scale. The country has an abundance of fertile land.  In most parts, the climate is clement for productive agricultural activities. Already, considerable investment is being made made in the procurement and distribution of agricultural inputs such as seedlings, fertilizers and insecticides. Orders placed for tractors, harvesters and other mechanical appliances are being delivered. But these are not sufficient conditions to achieve munificent food production. Equally critical is the appropriate mobilization and organization of the people to engage in mass food production.

    As has been advocated in this space a number of times, the organization of Nigerian farmers into viable Cooperatives has become an indispensable categorical imperative. It is hard but unavoidable work if we are to develop a thriving and vibrant agricultural sector. As Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who had thought deeply and written extensively on the issue, submitted in one of his lectures, “To this end, the oft-repeated and sound policies of the Federal and State governments towards Nigerian farmers of (1) organizing them into virile, viable and prosperous Cooperatives; (2) subsidy in kind, cash and services; (3) provision of finance and technical know-how; should now be pursued and translated into realities with unabating dispatch and vigour”.

    Even the requisite security without which displaced farming communities cannot fully return to active work on their farms in a safe and conducive environment can only be achieved with the active involvement of the people. The people, organized to secure their communities but armed to a level not below that of those who ceaselessly attack and seek to seize their land, must be the basis of an effective community policing system under federal or state control. The proposed ‘Forest Rangers’ recently approved by the President must thus be essentially people and community-based. The President should urgently give a deadline for its recruitment, training, equipping and take-off as the restoration and sustenance of security across rural and urban communities across the country is critical to the ultimate success of ‘Tinubunomics’.

  • ‘Tinubunomics’ as last chance for the Nigerian bourgeoisie? (1)

    ‘Tinubunomics’ as last chance for the Nigerian bourgeoisie? (1)

    It is difficult to comprehend why the Financial Times titled its otherwise brilliant and nuanced editorial on two years of the President Bola Tinubu administration, published on May 29, as ‘Nigeria’s shock therapy’. The editorial did not disguise the newspaper’s fascination with the free market, neoliberal economic policies aggressively marketed and at times imposed especially on financially beleaguered, heavily indebted and chronically dependent third world countries by major international financial institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). But President Tinubu is no reflexive, unthinking afficiando of free market extremism. His support for neoliberal capitalist policies, an inclination noticeable even from the mid-eighties during the implementation of military President, General Ibrahim Babangida’s introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme, (SAP), was not rigidly ideological. Rather, it was strategically pragmatic and understandably informed by his studying in the United States, his training as an accountant, his working in the public sector in America and rising to become Treasurer of Mobil Nigeria before his fateful foray into politics.

    Unlike those opposition political leaders who claim to be blind and deaf to any achievements of the Tinubu administration and insist that the administration has zero performance levels, thereby exhibiting their intellectual dishonesty and lack of moral integrity, the Financial Times in its editorial demonstrates a commendable grasp of pertinent issues in Nigeria’s political economy.  According to the newspaper’s Editorial Board, “On day one Tinubu removed a ruinously expensive fuel subsidy. More important still, the Central Bank has restored monetary policy orthodoxy after a shambolic era in which only cronies with access to cheap dollars benefitted. After a dangerous overshot, the Naira has stabilized, with the gap between the official and black market shrinking to almost nothing. The Central Bank has stopped printing money to pay for government profligacy. Politicians still spend too much, often on fripperies like an extravagant presidential Jet, but at least the government has begun to increase tax receipts”.

    According to the newspaper”Halfway through the first presidential term of Bola Tinubu, who completes two years in office this Thursday, Nigeria is in better shape than at any time in the past decade. That may come as a surprise -or even sound like a sick joke – to tens of millions of Nigerians who af living crisis in a generation. That may come as a surprise – or even sound like a sick joke- to tens of millions of Nigerians who are suffering the worst cost of living crisis in a generation. Yet, a former governor of Lagos and the country’s wiliest politician in a generation, has stabilized the economy and laid the groundwork for a broader recovery”.

    To build on this performance, the newspaper advised that the administration should tackle inflation with more urgency, build on tax reform by achieving its stated aim of doubling the ratio of tax collected to 18 per cent of GDP, spend envisaged higher tax revenue on neglected schools and clinics and confront Banditry and terrorism with the single-mindedness as it did monetary policy because “The army needs cleaning up as urgently as did the Central Bank”

    Read Also: Infrastructural development in FCT monumental under Tinubu – Ortom

    The Waziri Adamawa stridently condemns what he describes as the reckless borrowing spree of the Tinubu administration while conveniently ignoring the explanation by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun, that “There is no such thing as a $25 billion borrowing plan over six months or even over one year, what was laid before the National Assembly in line with the law and the Medium Term Expenditure Framework is project-linked borrowing to be disbursed over five to seven years”. Again, a case of unfortunate intellectual dishonesty.

    Alhaji Atiku accuses the Tinubu administration of implementing policies that only enrich a few and impoverish the majority of Nigerians. But the Waziri is least placed morally to raise such questions. He forgets how his former boss, General Olusegun Obasanjo, took him to the cleaners most vehemently and viciousl in his book, ‘My Watch’, for his alleged fraudulent role in the auction of some of Nigeria’s most prized public assets to his friends at give away prices far below their market values. When asked on national television to clarify the issue, Atiku  cynically wondered whether he should have sold the assets to his enemies! The fraudulent privatization programme undertaken by the PDP during its 16 years in power was a key factor in Nigeria’s protracted economic crisis. Was it not under the PDP administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan that the then Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) was unbundled into Distribution and Generating Companies and handed over to private operators who as it turned out had neither the financial capability nor the professional expertise to effectively discharge the responsibility thrust on them. That remains a key causal factor today in the conundrum that continues to plague Nigeria’s power sector.

    Most of the criticisms of the Tinubu administrasation’s two years in office have focused on the hardships engendered by the President’s harsh but inevitable economic reforms. But this is a cheap play on the emotions of Nigerians. The question is would the economy not have headed for a greater disaster, possibly terminal collapse, but for the clinical surgery that had to be performed on the patient through the reforms? For instance, the respected and cerebral Emeritus Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, Cardinal John Onaiyekan,  at the 2025 Catholic Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria (CSN) Communications Week Public Lecture, called on President Tinubu to urgently address the severe economic hardship as well as the deteriorating security situation in the country which is obviously not an illegitimate demand.

    According to the cleric, “I do not think we are unfair to government if we say that in the last two years, our level of living has crashed considerably. The government is there to make sure that the level of well-being of Nigerians is maintained and if possible, improved. If he continues like this for the rest of his term, if we have a free and fair election, he will not win. Because how can the country bring him back, if we are not feeling good?”. Unfortunately, the problem with this type of criticism is that it assumes that the problem with the Nigerian economy was created in the last two years of the Tinubu administration. But the structural distortions at the root of Nigeria’s protracted economic crisis long predated the current administration.

    The problem with the import-substitution industrialization mode adopted during the colonial era and sustained by successive post-colonial governments, according to Professor Bayo Olukoshi, is that as it developed, “it became clear that its sustainability depended on the ability of the state to earn sufficient foreign exchange to met its needs, namely, raw materials, spare parts and machinery”. For as long as the state was awash with abundant foreign exchange earnings largely from munificent oil sales, there was no problem. This was why General Gowon as Head of State boasted in the early 1970s that Nigeria’s problem was not money but how to spend it. By the late seventies to early eighties, the bubble burst. Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings plummeted substantially and the manufacturing sector suffered a severe decline at a time when agricultural productivity and earnings had plunged abysmally. The military administration of General Obasanjo, the civilian administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari and the military regime of General Muhammadu Buhari were all forced to adopt different variants of austerity measures that left the fundamentally distorted structure of the economy unaddressed.

    By 1984, Nigeria’s economic and development planning had reached a veritable dead-end. Refusing to accept the IMF and World Bank conditionalities such as removal of fuel and other subsidies as well as the devaluation of the Naira, the Buhari-Tunde Idiagbon regime became isolated from the international monetary system while its policies such as drastically stepping up the amount of national resources expended on servicing debt to win the confidence of international creditors or the adoption of counter-trade to barter Nigeria’s crude oil for critical raw materials were largely ineffectual. In August 1985, Babangida stepped in as military President and radically changed the direction of Nigeria’s economic developmental trajectory by reaching an accommodation with the International Financial Institutions and implementing the Structural Adjustment Programme which met all of the IMF/World Bank conditionalities although it did not obtain the IMF loan due to fierce public opposition.

    Babangida fundamentally deregulated the economy especially prices and interest rates,  devalued the Naira, removed import controls, substantially reduced fuel subsidies, embarked on an elaborate privatization and commercialization programme of public enterprises among other essentially market-driven policies. But ultimately the outcome of these policies was to lead to massive de-industrialization of the economy with many formerly flourishing manufacturing companies shutting down, worsening unemployment, deteriorating infrastructure and services in health and education, escalating inflationary spirals and deepening poverty levels. Despite this, all governments after Babangida with the exception of the General Sani Abacha junta, adopted varying degrees and components of SAP. Perhaps Nigeria has no choice. In terms of policy articulation, enunciation and implementation, we are really not much different from a one-party state.

    It is in the interest of the political class, in spite of partisan differences, for the Tinubu administrasation’s Renewed Hope Agenda to succeed. This may be the last opportunity for the bourgeois class to demonstrate its capacity to lead Nigeria effectively and capably and avert the instigation of revolutionary pressures that may move Nigeria in a radically different direction. Luckily, the administrasation’s reform agenda is beginning to yield fruit. There has been a substantial increase in foreign reserves, inflationary spirals are gradually coming down as agricultural productivity picks up, our debt obligations are being steadily offset boosting confidence in the management of the economy, sub-national units of government earn markedly increased revenue accruals enhancing their capacity to deliver democracy dividends and ameliorate poverty, there have been impressive trade surpluses over the last three quarters, foreign direct investment is steadily growing while significant number of Nigerians are being positively impacted by such programmes as the Student Loans Scheme and the Presidential Loan and Grant Scheme to name just a few successes of the administration.

    But the administration cannot afford to rest on its oars. The President cannot allow any of his functionaries to lapse into complacency arising from self-satisfaction. As Professor Okwudiba Nnoli noted of the Babangida regime, its SAP actually met the targets it set for itself between 1986 and 1989. But in spite of this, this momentum was not sustained. IBB’s SAP ultimately failed. How can President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda’s successes be sustained and have an enduring and sustainable impact on the Nigerian economy?

    The Financial Times gives an important advice: “As Nigeria’s election cycle edges towards 2027, Tinubu May be tempted to slow the pace of change. That would be a mistake. He should forge ahead, with the overriding aim of making ordinary Nigerians – not just investors – feel the benefits of shock therapy”. But ‘Shock Therapy’ again? This was a phrase coined by the Canadian radical and progressive writer, Naomi Klein, in her best selling book, ‘The Shock Doctrine’. It is a term she uses to describe what she calls ‘disaster capitalism’. It is built on the economic philosophy of the late influential economist of the University of Chicago, Milton Friedman, who believed that natural disasters or even deliberately instigated occurrences such as wars provide great opportunities for private interests and corporations to take over public assets and turn them into profitable ventures in a way that governments can never do. That certainly is not the spirit of Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.

  • Issues in Lagos APC LG primaries

    Issues in Lagos APC LG primaries

    Not surprisingly, the just concluded primaries of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in Lagos State to select chairmanship and councillorship candidates for the local government elections slated for July 12 have been highly competitive and uproariously contentious in many instances. Critics of the party would readily attribute this to what they perceive to be a tendency within the party to impose candidates, stifle free intra-party contestation and promote the dictatorship of an emergent party oligarchy. That may not necessarily be the case. Rather, intra-party contests for the emergence of candidates to fly the party’s flag in elections in Lagos State are always fiercely fought because those who succeed would almost invariably go on to win the general elections.

    Thus, the primaries can be described as the election proper. And this is not limited to Lagos State, especially with regard to local government elections. There is hardly any state where the party in power does not go on to win 100 per cent of local government chairmanship and councillorship seats, given the control exercised by state governments over members of the State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs), electoral umpires that they constitute and administer. In the Lagos APC local government primaries, 432 out of 470 aspirants, who submitted nomination forms, were cleared to contest for the 57 Chairmanship seats across 20 Local Government Areas and 37 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs). This is apart from the thousands of others who competed to emerge as the party’s councillorship candidates in the 377 wards in the state, represented by a councillor each.

    It was no doubt a Herculean challenge for the electoral committee. Headed by respected Senior lawyer, Mr Babatunde Ogala (SAN), with wide acceptability across the various partisan groups within the APC in the state, the electoral committee was no doubt carefully selected. In the same vein, the Appeal committee to handle grievances arising from the primaries is headed by another respected lawyer, Mr Lawal Pedro (SAN), who is the Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice in Lagos State and he is assisted by four other reputable members. The appeal committee no doubt has its work cut out for it, as no less than 100 petitions arising from the chairmanship contest are reportedly pending before it.

    The number of petitions by aspirants dissatisfied with the primaries can certainly not be blamed on the incompetence or deliberate violations of the rules by the electoral committee, as understandably alleged by most of the aggrieved aspirants. There is no outcome of the contest that would not have elicited vehement protests in such a hotly fought intra-party exercise. This was obviously why the party leadership and stakeholders strongly pushed for the emergence of the candidates through consensus arrangements to reduce the incidence of bitterness and fractionalization that would arise from competitive primaries.

    However, this appeal for wisdom and caution through the adoption of a conciliatory, consensual method of selecting candidates fell largely on deaf ears, and this is understandable. The consensus approach would no doubt have favoured more the entrenched, pro-status quo forces in the party and was thus opposed by the younger and more impatient elements pressing for radical change.

    Consequently, only four LCDAs – Iba, Ijede, Lekki and Otto-Awori – opted for the emergence of the chairmanship candidates through consensus with delegates later affirming the choices for each of the LCDAS. With the exception of Yaba and Mainland Local Government Councils, which did not hold primaries, about 1,530 delegates voted for chairmanship candidates in the remaining 55 local government and LCDAs, which saw 27 delegates voting to elect candidates in each of the councils through indirect primaries.

    The forthcoming local government elections are very critical to the APC in Lagos State, especially against the background of the last presidential election in the state, where the party’s organisational lethargy and grassroots complacency were largely responsible for its worst electoral performance since the inception of this political dispensation in 1999. True, its control of the LASIEC can easily be utilised to manufacture an overwhelming victory for the party as happens in local government polls in virtually all states. But the APC needs a true and credible measure of its grassroots electoral strength in preparation for the critical 2027 state and national elections.

    In this regard, the party cannot afford the festering of otherwise avoidable intra-party fissions that can drive sizable numbers of its membership into the fold of the opposition or breed grassroots apathy that can prove electorally costly in contests mediated by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The party must therefore balance the need to reward its eminent leaders who have rendered selfless service to the party and the state over the years, through the sponsorship of their nominees to appointive and elective positions, with the no less important imperative of not denying hardworking and dedicated party members who may have no prominent connections their right to also hold such offices.

    Again, the APC in Lagos State must ensure that it balances the requirements of democracy with the equally important criterion of according the right place to merit and demonstrated competence in the emergence of candidates for public office, especially at the local government level, where there is a dire need for accelerated development. It is at the grassroots that the war against poverty can be most effectively and concretely waged with positive results. But the objective of the President Tinubu administration in pursuing the attainment of financial autonomy for the local government councils can only be realised if the best, brightest and most experienced hands are engaged to run the affairs of the councils.

    It is thus difficult to understand, for instance, how an aspirant for Chairmanship of Ojokoro LCDA like Hon. Mobolaji Sanusi, could have reportedly scored only two out of 27 delegates’ votes in a council where he had been recommended by no less than 12 reputable residents of the area, most of them former public office holders, as the most suitable consensus candidate. Prior to his appointment as Managing Director of the Lagos State Signage and Advertising Agency (LAASA), a position in which he served with demonstrable competence and exemplary integrity for four years, Sanusi had practised as a lawyer and respected journalist for over three decades without blemish.

    In addition to being a successful businessman,  he has also been actively involved in campaigns for the ACN and now APC in Lagos and at the national levels in all elections over the last two decades. Although he has accepted the outcome of the primaries with grace and equanimity and pledged his continued loyalty to the APC and President Tinubu,  Sanusi is certainly the kind of candidate that should be encouraged by any progressive political party.

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    Some of the petitions appear to be rather frivolous and unserious. For instance, a full-page advertorial against the outcome of the primaries in Alimosho Federal Constituency alleged grave irregularities in six local councils but was signed by only one person supposedly resident in Ipaja. One would have expected known names in each of these councils to have endorsed the petition. It appeared to be just a case of one power bloc protesting against being outwitted by another bloc without necessarily possessing superior democratic credentials.

    In Agege and Orile-Agege, the Presidential Council of the APC in the area alleged that “The political climate in Agege and Orile-Agege is uniquely troubling. For over a decade, a carefully orchestrated structure was dominated by the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Rt.Hon. Mudashiru Obasa, has monopolized power. He exercises unchecked power over local government executives and ward officers who, by design, form the voting delegation in primaries…The implication is clear -any primary process steered under such influence cannot, by any objective measure, produce a fair or credible outcome”. This is not a tenable or convincing excuse. Building and sustaining an enduring political structure cannot be a crime.  Those who want to dislodge the current structure in the area must build their own, especially if they claim to enjoy popular grassroots support.

    Petitioners in Ikosi-Isheri claim that the elected Chairmanship candidate, Samiat Bada, had served as Vice-chairman for five years and another six years as Chairman before winning the recent primary to contest the forthcoming election. But has she violated any law in contesting again, even though she had previously held office for a considerable length of time? But in Yaba LCDA, the son of a prominent chieftain of the party who reportedly currently represents Shomolu/Bariga Local Government on the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) is being allegedly imposed on Yaba, without any emotional, political or other ties to the council. The propriety of this, if true, should bother party leaders.

  • Celebrating eminent journalist, Dare Babarinsa, at 70

    Celebrating eminent journalist, Dare Babarinsa, at 70

    On May 9, one of the most accomplished exemplars of journalistic practice in post-independence Nigeria, Mr Oluwadare Babarinsa, attained the significant milestone of marking seven eventful decades this side of eternity. It can be said with no equivocation of Mr Babarinsa that journalism is his life. The graduate of the University of Lagos has not looked back since putting his hands on the plough of journalism at the commencement of his career over four decades ago. Of his education, Babarinsa said, “I went to Anglican Grammar School, Ile-Ife, from 1969 to 1973. After that, I was a teacher briefly at Ire-Ekiti and Ikole-Ekiti before I gained admission to the University of Ife in 1976. I was there for two years before crossing over to the University of Lagos to study Mass Communication. Since 1981, after my graduation, and after I finished my NYSC on July 15, 1982, I have been into journalism”.

    From editing the Corps Torch, a magazine of the NYSC during his youth service, he was employed by Drum magazine, from where he joined the Concord Group of Newspapers in November 1982. A master wordsmith and meticulous craftsman, he joined the then trail-blazing Newswatch as a staff reporter in 1984 and rose to become Associate Editor of the magazine. Of his Newswatch years, he recalls in an interview that “It was a great experience working with Newswatch. You cannot get a better environment to practice journalism. Journalists were in charge; we were not beholden to any moneybags”. He was one of those writers whose delectable and arresting prose, along with icons such as Dele Giwa, Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese and Yakubu Mohammed, made Newswatch a weekly must-read for undergraduates like me.

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    As Executive Editor of the TELL Magazine, of which he was a co-founder, Babarinsa continued his service to Nigeria and humanity through the medium of journalism. Not given to self-promotion, he courageously but quietly contributed his quota to the struggle against military dictatorship in Nigeria through his fearless articles at the Newswatch and TELL magazines. An author, his book, ‘House of War’, captures vividly in gripping prose the struggle for power in Nigeria’s Second Republic with particular focus on the intra-party conflicts within Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN). His publishing company, GaskiaMedia, published Chief Bisi Akande’s epochal autobiography, ‘My Participations.’

    As an unapologetic and proud Yoruba patriot who embodies the best of the ‘Omuluabi’ ethos, Mr Babarinsa’s response to a question on why his company is named GaskiaMedia is insightful and interesting. His words, “Yes, Gaskia is a Hausa word. Gaskia has a very high-level universal aspiration; it means truth. It is not a Fulani word; it is one of the best-used words in Africa, and therefore, it carries a deep philosophical meaning. It means, it also means the truth”. To a deeply reflective and broad-minded journalist and a great human being, we say ‘a happy, blessed and fulfilled birthday sir.’

  • What future for APC, PDP, LP?

    What future for APC, PDP, LP?

    Under the extant 1999 Constitution of Nigeria (as amended), political parties form the pivot around which the machinery of governance revolves. Members of the legislature who make the laws and the head of the executive which implements the laws are elected on the platform of political parties, as independent candidacy is not recognized by law. Even appointments in the judiciary, which constitutes the third arm of government, are made by the executive, sanctioned by the national or state judicial service commissions and confirmed by the legislature. Despite the central role of the political party in the governance process, the party system under the constitution is largely amorphous, loose and unstructured.

    As things are currently, the vibrancy, vigour, vitality and efficacy of political parties will have to depend on the quality of party leadership, the strength of the relationship between parties and their grassroots bases, the degree of internal party discipline, respect for the regulatory laws of the parties and the effective functioning of various party organs. The reality is that none of the political parties today, at least the three major ones, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP), which performed beyond its own expectation in the last presidential election, live up to the ideal of capably led, efficiently organized, party machines with intimate organic linkages with their grassroots membership.

    While the PDP and LP are bogged down by protracted and debilitating internal crises, the daily haemorrhaging of elected and other prominent members of the two parties to the APC has engendered a sense of triumphalism and self-satisfaction in the latter and alarm bells of panic among the former.  The beleaguered opposition parties raise hysterical cries that President Bola Tinubu is deliberately destabilizing their ranks through alleged inducement or intimidation, and blackmail by anti-corruption agencies.  The aim, they say, is to foist a one-party dictatorship on the country, shrink the democratic space and make the President’s reelection for a second term a fait accompli.

    But then, the large-scale defections of opposition party members to the party in control of the state and thus the power of patronage at the centre or in the states has become an entrenched feature of our political culture that predates the assumption of office of President Tinubu in May 2023. For instance, in 2021, Alhaji Bello Matawalle, who was elected as governor of Zamfara State in 2019 on the platform of the PDP, dumped the party and joined the APC. Earlier, Engineer David Umahi, governor of Ebonyi State and Professor Ben Ayade, governor of Cross River State, had equally defected to the ruling APC. And as noted last week, as at May 30, 2007, the PDP controlled 31 of the country’s 36 States although this was later reduced to 30 states when the courts sacked Andy Uba as governor of Anambra State and Mr Peter Obi of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) was sworn in as chief Executive of the state.

    Although the major political parties in focus here have been dismissed by many as essentially opportunistic vehicles which exist for the sole purpose of winning elections and accessing power for largely extractive, exploitative purposes as well as lacking in ideological distinctiveness that undermine their capacity to promote development, they are the most viable party structures we have for now. As our electoral structures and processes continue to improve and elections more and more reflect the will of the people, they will incrementally be compelled to improve their organizational structures, respect internal rules, uphold intra-party democracy and put governments elected on their platforms on their toes to seriously implement party manifestoes and thus be concrete developmental agents.

    And this may be the only option until youths who actively advocate change through social media militancy as well as radical intellectuals who wax rhetorically revolutionary only in theory learn to engage personally on the political terrain and get down to the hard, back-breaking work of forming and nurturing viable political organizations capable of winning elections and charting alternative trajectories for the country. But any tendency towards a one-party system will not be in the interest ultimately of the ruling party, the opposition, democracy or the country. But it is up to the opposition parties to put their houses in order. Neither President Tinubu nor the APC can do this for them.

    The greatest challenge confronting the PDP right now is to resolve the current crisis that pitches the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mr. Nyesom Wike, against the party’s presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, Waziri Atiku Abubakar. A member of the party’s Board of Trustees, Chief Olabode George, has canvassed the expulsion of both chieftains from the party for anti-party activities. It is impracticable and unworkable. Despite his frequent abandonment of the party in his desperate quest for the presidency of Nigeria, expelling Atiku from the PDP will have serious negative implications for the party. As for Wike, it is well known that he almost single-handedly sustained the party and ensured its survival during an earlier crisis that nearly spelt its irretrievable implosion.

    An amicable solution must be found with Wike and Atiku remaining in the PDP but ready to struggle for control of its structures through the party’s internal democratic processes at its next elective national convention. The party’s stakeholders – governors, states’ party executives, national Assembly caucuses, BOT members and those who belong neither to the Wike nor Atiku factions should summon the will and resourcefulness to get the party out of its current bog and enable it to regain its squandered glory. As for the LP, the way forward lies neither with the Julius Abure nor the Nenadi Usman-led factions.

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    It would be wise for the sponsor of the LP, the NLC, to extricate the party from the grip of both sides and begin to nudge the LP to reclaim its original mission and identity as an organization of the toiling Nigerian masses committed to charting an alternative developmental path for the country rather than an opportunistic Special Purpose Vehicle hired by all manner of unprincipled politicians to contest elections for a price. It is instructive that neither the voluble Peter Obi nor the incurably academic Pat Utomi has been able to proffer practical solutions to the LP conundrum.

    The defectors to the ruling APC have cited President Tinubu’s policies, the near tripling of the fiscal receipts by the sub-national units under his administration, as well as the protracted crisis in their parties, as reasons for their joining the party in control of the centre. These defections cannot be attributed to the organizational efficiency of the party in galvanising grassroots support and winning over new members, and here lies the great challenge confronting the APC. It must urgently ensure that its various organs begin to function seamlessly.  It must reinvigorate its grassroots machinery by ensuring that the party executives are active, especially at the ward and local government levels.

    Significant as the current defections to the party by opposition politicians are, no less critical to the party’s performance at forthcoming polls will be the impact of its policies in achieving evident objectives and improving lives. The party should thus have a ready pool of experts and progressive intellectuals to pay attention to the policy of governments elected on its platform with a view to contributing to making qualitative inputs to the policy process, which is one of the key functions of a serious and purposeful political party. It should prioritize winning and mobilizing new grassroots membership over receiving decampees from other parties, even if it will understandably readily welcome the latter.