The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • How not to end farmers-herders conflict

    How not to end farmers-herders conflict

    In February, after eight months of verbal commitment, Vice President Kashim Shettima unveiled the Bola Tinubu administration’s Pulaku initiative, a Fulani code of conduct that responds to the farmer-herder conflict and ‘integrates cultural and ethical value system specific to the Fulani’. The initiative is designed to engineer ‘a large-scale resettlement programme’ to address the root causes of the conflict. While inaugurating the steering committee to midwife the initiative, the vice president announced that some seven northern states had been designated to pilot the programme as a major part of the non-kinetic approach to resolving insecurity in the Northwest particularly. Pursuant to this, while inaugurating Niger State’s agricultural mechanized programme in Minna last Monday, President Tinubu spoke of his readiness to end the farmer-herder conflict in weeks if states provided grazing lands. Mr Shettima had announced last month that Sokoto, Kebbi, Benue, Katsina, Zamfara, Niger, and Kaduna states had signed up for the programme.

    A few more states in the northern part of the country may still sign in to the programme, but the initiative will stir passions in the Middle Belt and find no takings in the southern part. The reasons are rooted in history, conflict and bloodshed. In theory, the initiative IN February, after eight months of verbal commitment, Vice President Kashim Shettima unveiled the Bola Tinubu administration’s Pulaku initiative, a Fulani code of conduct that responds to the farmer-herder conflict and ‘integrates cultural and ethical value system specific to the Fulani’. The initiative is designed to engineer ‘a large-scale resettlement programme’ to address the root causes of the conflict. While inaugurating the steering committee to midwife the initiative, the vice president announced that some seven northern states had been designated to pilot the programme as a major part of the non-kinetic approach to resolving insecurity in the Northwest particularly. Pursuant to this, while inaugurating Niger State’s agricultural mechanized programme in Minna last Monday, President Tinubu spoke of his readiness to end the farmer-herder conflict in weeks if states provided grazing lands. Mr Shettima had announced last month that Sokoto, Kebbi, Benue, Katsina, Zamfara, Niger, and Kaduna states had signed up for the programme.

    A few more states in the northern part of the country may still sign in to the programme, but the initiative will stir passions in the Middle Belt and find no takings in the southern part. The reasons are rooted in history, conflict and bloodshed. In theory, the initiative may resonate with many stakeholders, particularly in the core North and among the Fulani; but in practice, it will instigate many already skeptical states into implacable opposition. The skeptical states, especially Plateau and Benue, now riddled by ethnic conflicts and genocidal skirmishes, point at the Fulani/herder settlements in their midst as the loci of ongoing unrest and conflict. To ask them to cede more land and accommodate cattle herders may be asking for too much. They recall with great alarm the Muhammadu Buhari presidency calling on them to cede land in exchange for their safety and security as pointer to a hidden land grabbing and ethnic cleansing agenda, not to say outright political Fulanisation of the Middle Belt. Some of those states had countered the call by promulgating anti-open grazing laws. They are thus unlikely to embrace any Pulaku scheme soon.

    President Tinubu’s Minna statement, while unduly optimistic, will do nothing but aggravate suspicion in some parts of the North which have declared open animosity to open grazing and covert land grabbing schemes. The president had said: “We must reorient our farming population, including livestock programme. I don’t see why Nigeria can’t feed all our pupils with one pint of milk a day if the dairy system is well harnessed. I know what it means as an economic sabotage for cows to eat up the crops and vegetations of our land. When we reorient the herders and make provisions for cattle rearing, governors must provide the land and I as the President am committed to giving you, in two to three weeks time, a comprehensive programme that will solve this problem.”

    Read Also: Arewa Initiative call for Senator Ningi’s unconditional reinstatement

    In Minna, and elsewhere before last Monday, President Tinubu had given the impression that weeks were all he needed to resolve the farmer-herder conflict if states donated land. He did not say whether he had all the 36 states in mind or just a few, particularly in the North; nor did he say how he would execute the programme, especially con sidering the many things that should be put in place to engender widespread acceptance of the initiative among the Fulani. However, all things considered, a few weeks, let alone three weeks, would be overly optimistic. In the first place, the anachronistic open grazing method of cattle herding has been unfortunately infused with political undertones. Old habits, they say, die hard. The old culture of animal husbandry will not go away in weeks, nor will the tantalizing political and land grabbing advantages it has been infused with for centuries, as exampled by the ethnic and political smorgasbord Southern Kaduna and a few Plateau local government communities have become over the years.

    But what is even direr, as the administration will discover, is the adamantine resolve of parts of the country to resist Fulani colonies among them. Already, the Southwest blames those colonies for the restiveness in their countryside, and the humongous scale of kidnappings and insecurity on highways and farmlands. The Southeast, which stridently bemoans their land shortage, will have nothing to do with any such ceded land. Their militias have warned the region’s governors not to contemplate a scheme certain to be resisted with everything at their disposal, legal or otherwise. With a wide swath of the country potentially excluded from the initiative, what are its prospects of success? The administration hopes that if federal investment in the pilot states manifests clear financial and developmental advantages of hosting Pulaku schemes, more states might ask to be enlisted. The skeptical states do not doubt the ability of the federal government to elevate Pulaku into an enviable economic hub, but they chafe at the miscon ception and misplacement of animal husbandry which is supposed to be an essentially private economic undertaking. Individual herder or their cooperatives, like any other economic grouping, are free to lease lands anywhere in the country, possibly with federal incentives. But to position herders as exceptional and priority to the detriment of farmers and other landowners simply because of their capacity to levy violence appears to many states as unwise and ill-considered.

    The Pulaku initiative may be discriminatory and poorly thought-out, but it stands a chance of yielding fruits in parts of the North and lowering the conflict temperature in those regions in the long run. However, any attempt to extend it to other parts of Nigeria, whether in the Middle Belt wracked by farmer-herder conflicts or the deeply suspicious and increasingly nationalistic South, may be pushing the administration’s luck too far. Pulaku, by its structure and design, can only achieve partial success. It will not end farmer-herder conflicts in the country. Indeed, by the very nature of its conception, it is nothing more than the definitional equivalence of ranching. It should be a private initiative supported by wide-ranging federal subventions and incentives rather than the hue of exceptionalism with which it is covered. Ceding lands for Pulaku, a shortsighted solution for a long-term problem, will in many states sow future seeds of conflict rather than extirpate them. The Buhari administration was in the end forced to make the land cession policy optional. It should remain so, and it must not be a precondition for peace. The farmer-herder conflict, which in some cases was actually herder violence on farming communities, has transmogrified into banditry and kidnapping. If it had attracted decisive kinetic rather than non-kinetic responses, the crisis would have long been obviated.

  • The N3.7trn budget padding kerfuffle

    The N3.7trn budget padding kerfuffle

    Bauchi State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senator Abdul Ningi stirred the hornet’s nest last week when he insisted that the 2024 Budget was padded with N3.7trn to inflate the original N25trn appropriation he claimed was passed by the National Assembly. The padding, he argued, was inserted for phantom projects regionally skewed against the North. His legislative colleagues, including northern lawmakers, pooh-poohed his claims, insisting that his claims were the product of ignorance. Since then, though he stood his ground, he had been on the defensive, isolated and ridiculed for his appalling budgetary arithmetic and wild ethnic extrapolations.

    Read Also: Abiodun promises 10,000 housing units by 2027

    But the controversy he inadvertently stoked relates to discriminatory constituency projects allocations. Those allocations have in turn led to acrimonious debates between sceptical public and angry and disadvantaged lawmakers. Sen Ningi has been suspended for three months; but Nigerians can rest assured that lawmakers, whose image had never been flattering, will resolve their differences one way or the other. They always manage to turn every serious policy dispute into a kerfuffle.

  • Debating the parliamentary system again

    Debating the parliamentary system again

    Suddenly, almost out of the blue, debate has begun over what system of government Nigeria should adopt or return to. It is not certain that the debate stands any chance of gaining sufficient traction, not to talk of procuring the outcome its proponents desire; but for now, apart from some vague acquiescent whispers on social media and knowing winks in the traditional media, the debate is given life solely by a coterie of national legislators. They want a return to the parliamentary system of government to save or manage cost of governance in the face of dwindling revenue. Sponsored by House minority leader, Kingsley Chinda, and 59 other House of Representatives members, the bill virtually repudiates the presidential system practiced in Nigeria since 1979, pockmarked by some cruel and violent hiatuses.

    Sixty out of 360 House of Representatives members, or one out of six, may not seem significant enough, but the pro-change lawmakers have at least enlivened the debate on Nigeria’s system of government. It is of course class suicide, for dozens of them now flourishing in a bicameral legislature might be edged out in the race for relevance in a unicameral system. They are probably sensitised to the risks they face advocating for a return to the First Republic system of government, but given the eagerness with which they pursue their latest cause, they seem inexplicably unperturbed. How equanimous they would be in the face of unplanned and unexpected electoral setback in the future remains to be seen.

    There has so far not been a reliable computation of what it costs to operate Nigeria’s democracy. Structurally and culturally, that cost is presumably very high. Structurally, because the current presidential system is bicameral, it will require almost twice what it costs to run a parliamentary system, in terms of personnel and material costs. And culturally because Nigerian officials have not quite mastered the art of running things efficiently, nor are they disquieted by the obscenity of grandiloquent appearances, whether they pertain to legislative buildings, duplicated ministries and agencies, or even disproportionate perks and emoluments. But in vague and general terms, assuming Nigeria does not still find an ingenious way to make a unicameral legislature extravagant, a parliamentary system appears cheaper. The sponsors of the bill thus have a prima facie case against the presidential system. If they do not run out of steam sooner or later, they will win many unwary minds to their side.

    The 60, or their representatives, have toured a few states and met with a few statesmen in their advocacy campaigns. They have received some attention, and have been serenaded by some of their hosts, but it is doubtful whether the lawmakers have so far presented any persuasive argument anywhere. They talked about costs mainly, but running a democracy, whether parliamentary or presidential, requires much more than mere frugality. It also requires discipline, knowledge, vision and a clear and robust understanding of the total concept of democracy. Britain, perhaps the biggest exemplar of parliamentary system of government, does not even have a written constitution. Nigeria’s First Republic constitution was not only written, that republic’s lawmakers had the opportunity of a new system not yet polluted by ethnicity, politics or religion. Yet, they blamed that system for everything that went wrong with the republic. Now, who or what do they blame for their repudiation of the presidential system – the constitution or their lack of character and discipline?

    Read Also: How Nigeria, others can attract foreign gas investors

    In contrast to Britain, the United States of America (US) is the greatest avatar of the presidential system. In the past few decades Americans had made it seem as if their greatness, influence, wealth and global dominance were attributable to both their system of government and democracy as a whole. But they had been independent and democratic since 18th century, and only began to assume global influence and dominance after World War II, when for some reasons, they jettisoned their policy of isolationism. Despite the Donald Trump factor, the US can in fact be deduced to have shaped not only global politics but also global culture. But to suggest that all their influence, wealth and power were shaped by either democracy or the presidential system may fly in the face of history and even experience. Democracy may be relevant today, but it does not explain the rise of past empires, nor the power and influence of Russia and China today. The US is not more likely to embrace the parliamentary system than Britain is likely to change to the presidential system. Factors weightier than costs and ability to finance a system of government explain the durability of a system. The Group of 60 may have a herculean time explaining why the US has retained its presidential system and Britain its parliamentary system; worse, they are even more unlikely to explain why Nigeria tried both systems and failed at them.

  • Outthinking the money changers

    Outthinking the money changers

    In a 24-paragraph revised regulatory guidelines issued in February, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) demonstrated its willingness to stand toe-to-toe with Nigeria’s fleet-footed Bureaux de Change (BDCs), those ubiquitous adepts at identifying and exploiting forex loopholes. In the new guidelines, the BDCs will have to renew their registrations and then recapitalise, while the extreme latitude they enjoyed hitherto will now be severely circumscribed. They will likely squirm very considerably, considering the manner of technical reporting processes they are expected to put in place to enhance automatic financial reporting. Meanwhile, over 4,000 of them have been decommissioned.

    What is even more important is not just the severity of the CBN regulations, which was long overdue to curb the BDCs propensity to operate, often disruptively and recklessly, under the radar, but that the apex bank was determined to outthink and outfox the money changers. The regulator has shown grit and uncommon political will. The BDCs may still find some loopholes in the new regulations, but they now know, unlike before, that the CBN is as willing to play the cat and mouse game with them as they are determined to put the regulator’s nose out of joint. The CBN may also not fare very well in the application of its new regulations; but it will succeed in some, even if it has to engage in a war of attrition with the money changers.

    Read Also: Tinubu has faith in Southeasterners – APC chieftain

    Clearly, the Bola Tinubu administration appears willing to appoint capable people into sensitive positions in government and then leave them to flourish and fly, no matter whose ox is gored. Many agencies have already taken the bull by the horns. The CBN is one such agency. Whether it succeeds in the war it has kick-started or not, it is unlikely to relent. The BDCs may have found their match, after years and decades of profiting from the misery of the people and the naira. One thing is beyond dispute, the CBN will pursue its quarry to the thickest forest, while the BDCs will wait to confirm what mettle they are made of as they surreptitiously resist their regulators in the landing grounds where the naira had repeatedly come to grief. 

  • Gowon on ECOWAS sanctions

    Gowon on ECOWAS sanctions

    On the same day he visited President Bola Tinubu at Aso Villa, former military head of state Gen. Yakubu Gowon released a letter he wrote to ECOWAS leaders asking them to initiate reconciliation with countries it had imposed sanctions on. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger Republic, which are all under military rule, had served notice to the regional body of their intention to take their exit. They also went ahead to form the Alliance of Sahel States to replace ECOWAS. The trio had been subjected to withering but largely ineffective ECOWAS sanctions for overthrowing their elected governments and scorning democracy. The overthrown elected governments might have been irresponsible, but the populist military governments that replaced them are untrained for the responsibilities they have presumptuously assumed. But regardless of the protesting military rulers’ attitude to democracy, Gen Gowon has asked the regional body to lift sanctions against them and Guinea, which is also under military rule but had not announced any exit plan. However, the former Nigerian military ruler’s letter to ECOWAS leaders was neither exhaustive nor persuasive. Indeed the letter seems largely nostalgic and nugatory.

    Said Gowon: “I have noted with deep concern and sadness, the past and recent developments unfolding in the West African sub-region, particularly the pronouncement by  Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger of their intention to exit from the Economic Community of West African States. As one of the founders of our regional economic community, it is incumbent upon me to speak on behalf of the 14 Heads of State and Government who joined me in Lagos, on 27th May 1975, to establish ECOWAS. Since its inception, the regional bloc has made a number of major accomplishments, including trade liberalisation, right of West Africans to live legitimately in any country within the community, as well as successful peacekeeping operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

    He went on: “ECOWAS, despite its shortcomings, has become an example of regional integration for the wider continent. Having achieved all of the above, it saddens me to learn that ECOWAS is threatened with disunity following the announcement by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, three important member states, of their intention to leave the community. The impact of such a decision will have far-reaching implications for the ordinary citizens who have been the major beneficiaries of regional integration. Therefore, on behalf of all the founding fathers of the community and myself, I urge the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government, including the leaders of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, to put aside their differences and reunite for the peace, stability and prosperity of our sub-region.”

    When ECOWAS was launched in 1975, it made no distinction between military governments and elected governments. In the passing of time, the reigning regional wisdom grew to view coups d’etat as anathema, and for many years until 2017, no West African country was under military rule. The tide is, however, changing for the worse, and it is high tide spreading ignobly through West and Central Africa. In his letter, Gen Gowon offered no thoughtful exposition of the coup culture nor a definitive measure for its extirpation, nor attempted to draw a comparison between elected and unelected governments. Though he acknowledged ECOWAS shortcomings, which he didn’t itemise, he rather emphasised its many beneficial sides, which he adumbrated. The imposition of sanctions did not predate the coups; they were a consequence of the unlawful seizure of power and overthrow of the constitution. Dialogues had proved spectacularly useless, far worse than sanctions, in the face of the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. So, how does Gen Gowon hope to discourage coups? He did not say. And if sanctions were lifted without irreversible steps taken towards the restoration of civil rule, would return to elected governments not depend on the whims and condescension of military rulers?

    Gen Gowon’s visit to President Tinubu, given its coincidence with his letter to ECOWAS dated February 13, may have elucidated that subject. Yes, he suggested that the Tinubu administration be given some ample time to allow its policies and measures mature, but the circumspect former ruler may in fact be trying to save a child whose conception and birth he was partly responsible for. He should have dwelt on the far more exigent issue of disallowing the contamination of the sub-region by military coups, and entrenchment of democratic rule. He should have stressed the original principles of the regional body, condemn their violation, and offer insights into how to reclaim and inculcate them in the region’s political elite. He should have minced no word in denouncing military rule and extolling the virtues, beauty and advantages of civil rule.

    Read Also; State Police: Pipe dream or panacea?

    The coupists, including those of Guinea, fouled the region and baited the rest of the bloc. Gen Gowon should have told ECOWAS leaders to shorn compromise rather than advocate lifting sanctions. The coupists prefer Russia, which is also ruled exploitatively and brutally by the dictatorial Vladimir Putin, as their new overlord; they should be left to stew in their juice. More voices, including that of Mohammed Ibn Chambas, pioneer president of the ECOWAS Commission, are calling for the lifting of sanctions. Should those voices be heeded, it would imply a sad capitulation by the regional body to the three triumphant, renegade and antidemocratic military adventurers. ECOWAS leaders face cruel and unforgiving choices; whatever they decide will have consequences for the future of the regional body, a road other economic and political blocs all over the world had traversed at one time or the other. Principles must never be betrayed or compromised. After all, Mauritania was a founding member of ECOWAS but exited in 2000, Britain was a founding member of European Union (EU) but left in 2020, and much of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States were a part of the Soviet Union until 1991. Entry and exit should not imply the death of the mother organisation.

    Ndume, northern critics and ‘Lagos boys’

    The relocation of a few Central Bank departments and the Aviation ministry agency of FAAN brought into the open snickers about the so-called Lagos Boys massed into the federal administration by President Bola Tinubu. The Lagos Boys, rather than incompetent and lackadaisical state governors, are blamed for the country’s economic hardship, soaring prices, and plummeting exchange rates. Nothing is heard anymore about decades of misbegotten policies that ruined the economy, inflame and stoke insecurity, and made a national reset doubly difficult. Nothing is said anymore of the crazy debt binge of the past few years that plunged the country into the abyss. Everything wrong with Nigeria, in the eyes of Senator Ali Ndume and other regional critics bristling with anger over loss of certain and minor privileges, is caused by the Lagos Boys. Labelling is hardly the right way to examine a country’s crisis and weigh its panaceas.

    Well, ex-president Muhammadu Buhari had his cabal, and former president Goodluck Jonathan had his Ijaw and Igbo conspirators. The next president, years from now, will have either his ‘Boys’ or his cabals. Somebody somewhere must always be the scapegoat, as long as there is a crisis. As it has been evident in the past few months, including the Sultan’s umbrage and the Kano emir’s irritation, has no one wondered why there is such a fascinating convergence of all the demons that plague Nigeria, all of them at the same time, without exception, particularly insecurity and inflation? Meanwhile, ‘Lagos Boys’, stop vexatious preening.

  • Labour Party torn apart by discord

    Labour Party torn apart by discord

    Whether they like it or not, Labour Party (LP) leaders must now openly grapple with the ethical miasma that has smeared their party for many months. On Monday the party’s treasurer, Oluchi Oparah, raised critical moral issues afflicting the running of the party, particularly its controversial bookkeeping laxity long denounced by the Lamidi Apapa and Ayobami Arabambi faction. The party’s contentious chairman Julius Abure had engaged in endless tussle with Mr Apapa and Dr Arabambi during and after the last elections, with party leader and former presidential candidate, Peter Obi, signaling his unflinching support for the status quo. Both Mr Obi and Mr Abure continue to bask in their messianic complex, believing that the survival and integrity of the LP rests on them. Questioning them has thus become very risky, if not impossible.

    The vociferousness with which Mrs Oparah questions the party leadership’s financial dealings may yet create tremors in the LP. But she will acknowledge, though perhaps will remain undeterred, that Mr Apapa’s faction has failed spectacularly in denting the reputation and standing of the party leadership, despite having sturdy legal legs to stand on. Mrs Oparah rests her disenchantment with the party’s leadership style on the following: 1. Provide documentation for the N3.5 billion raised from the sale of forms for the 2023 elections and explain why Edo State proceeds went into private accounts.

     2. Account for the N958 million raised from off-cycle elections in 2023. Also provide paper trails and documentary evidence of adherence to due process.

    3. Declare every single dollar raised from the 2023 US fundraising tour and provide documentation on where donations were warehoused and how same was appropriated.

    4. Explain the source of funds for properties bought in Nigeria and abroad between 2022 and 2023. Provide paper evidence.

     5. Allow me (Mrs Oparah) unfettered access to party accounts and records as national treasurer.

    6. Submit to an independent forensic audit of our party’s finances, to be conducted by a reputable international firm.

    7. Explain why he has deliberately undermined my authority and flouted the Labour Party’s constitution. 8. Provide evidence that he has not abused his office for personal enrichment through theft, money laundering, or abuse of power.

    She concludes dismissively: “The Labour Party belongs to its broad membership, not a single power-drunk individual. I urge Mr Abure to do the honourable thing and submit himself to a transparent process that will restore confidence, trust, and integrity in our party’s financial dealings.” Mr Abure is unlikely to give Mrs Oparah a hearing beyond perfunctory denial. He has the absolute confidence of Mr Obi, with whom he fought Mr Apapa’s faction to a standstill using lawful and unlawful means, including forcefully unsealing the locked party headquarters in Abuja.

    Read Also: BREAKING: Labour Party suspends national treasurer Opara for six months

    Messrs Apapa and Arabambi have called on Mr Obi to prevail on the party chairman to heed criticisms of his financial dealings and to open the party’s books for investigation. The former presidential candidate has consented to an audit; but nothing extraordinary will come out of it. However, Mr Abure will sniff at such calls, especially from a faction he had defeated and humiliated. Mrs Oparah’s allegations are specific, far-reaching and damaging. How convincingly the chairman will also sniff at her accusations remains to be seen. He will attempt to ignore the complaints, but he will be unsuccessful should he try to link the allegations to external political chicaneries.

    Mr Obi, on the other hand, will in the final analysis stall the matter for as long as he can, perhaps backed by insolent party members dredged up from the Obidient sewers. But if Mrs Oparah is pertinacious, and if the Apapa faction continues to shout the matter from the rooftops, it will be hard to see how far the party leader can deflect the allegations. Mr Obi does not understand the nitty-gritty of running a party, let alone a party hijacked as a special purpose vehicle, and he snorts at barbs and allegations from political upstarts challenging LP leaders’ messianic complex. If Mrs Oparah has the staying power, Mr Obi, much more than Mr Abure, will be forced to respond credibly one way or the other. That response may be unsatisfactory, indeed, will likely be unsatisfactory; but if the media, which at the moment seem tuned in favour of Mr Obi, will ask him very uncomfortable questions, and if they can dig further in order to expose the shenanigans in the party, Mrs Oparah will have the last laugh. But there are too many ifs in the LP case for any observer to draw optimistic conclusions.

  • NLC ultimatum, tardy wage awards

    NLC ultimatum, tardy wage awards

    It had to take another 14 days Nigeria Labour Congress/Trade Union Congress ultimatum issued on February 8 to ginger the federal government to promise resumption of payment of the N35,000 wage award slated to be given for six months. The agreement was reached in October 8, 2023, but was only paid for one month. In January, Minister of State for Labour, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha, promised resumption of payment. But by February 8, when the unions gave the latest ultimatum, the wage award had still not been paid.

    Read Also: UPDATED: NLC protests hardship, insecurity Feb 27, 28

    Last October, the government had signed a 16-point agreement with the unions. But according to the unions, the government had breached the agreement. If there were hiccups in implementing the agreement, why was the government not proactive in taking the unions into confidence, and perhaps seeking a reworking of the terms? Neither side to the disagreement has been forthcoming on just how many of the terms had been implemented. But in general, the unions insisted that the agreements reached with the government were “focused on addressing the massive suffering and the general harsh socioeconomic consequences of the ill-conceived and ill-executed IMF/World Bank induced hike in the price of PMS and the devaluation of the naira.”

    The administration is buffeted on many sides by social and economic agitations actuated by mass hunger, rampant insecurity, and forebodings of general collapse. If the unions are not to be the explosive trigger for the tinderbox that Nigeria has become, the government must get its act together. Honouring agreements is one way to begin, especially at a time when there seems to be a threatening coalescence of fissiparous tendencies.

  • Social media and Herbert Wigwe’s death

    Social media and Herbert Wigwe’s death

    There has been a plethora of essays on the whys and wherefores of the death of Access Bank Holdings boss, Herbert Wigwe and his wife, son, and others in a helicopter crash in the United States last week. This column, not being superstitious, can offer no definitive reasons for the crash, whether mechanical, electrical, weather, or even metaphysical. But it is striking and disturbing that some social media denizens, believed to be Obidients, suggest that Mr Wigwe got his comeuppance because he supported the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the last presidential poll. Really?

    Read Also: On the death of Herbert Wigwe and others

    This hypothesis is not just naivety; it is insanity. Have no Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP) backers died since the polls? And will a few more not die in the coming weeks and months? Does death now have political colouration? Those who suppose that Obidients were behind such arcane hypothesis may not be far away from the truth. For, surely, no APC supporter would embrace such a far-fetched idea. Given the truculence with which the idea was trundled on social media, the traducers will have to be either LP rather than the dispirited and distracted PDP.         

  • Tinubu’s biggest cheerleader

    Tinubu’s biggest cheerleader

    Of all President Bola Tinubu’s appointees, former Rivers State governor and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister Nyesom Wike has been one of the most astounding. His remit may not be countrywide, for he would then have needed to travel over vast distances in order to accomplish national assignments and make great impressions, but probably one of the most difficult jobs any minister could grapple with is administering the federal capital, the seat of the federal government and cynosure of all eyes, including the eyes of all ministers. Mr Wike has not needed to try to settle into the job, or find his feet. Instead he has been composed, relaxed, assiduous and supremely self-confident. Much more, though he is of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and has so far managed to remain an influential factor in the party, he is mystifyingly becoming the poster boy for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

    The first few months of the Tinubu administration have been testy and unpredictable. The APC has been in office for about eight months, and has waged a valiant battle against the conventions and orthodoxies, not to say the detritus, of the previous administration. That battle has not gone too well, and has left many bitter and angry Nigerians in its wake. If Nigeria had credible opinion polls, they would not show the administration rising in popularity: its popularity rating would be in sharp decline because of the hardship the reforms and palliative measures have elicited. But here precisely is where Mr Wike has become a factor. Of all the ministers saddled with the responsibility of ameliorating the harsh socio-economic conditions of the people, including ensuring the fair distribution of palliatives and conceiving and implementing impactful policies, Mr Wike excels. He has been careful about mouthing the governing philosophies of the Tinubu administration so as not to be seen as demarketing the PDP; instead, he has limited himself to the president’s renewed hope agenda slogan, and his pragmatic enunciations, passionate commitment, and hard work have turned him into a consummate marketer of the administration.

    Where other ministers and appointees have been reticent, Mr Wike has been voluble on behalf of the administration. Where they seemed fazed by the cries and agonies of the people, and were consequently careful about sounding optimistic, Mr Wike has seemed to outdo even the president himself in selling the administration’s sure cures. He has insisted that the pains are temporary, and the benefits, if the people endure for a little while longer, immense. Speaking during the commencement of the resurfacing of 189 roads in the Maitama District, Garki, and Utako in the FCT last week, Mr Wike defended the administration with engaging plausibility. He said: “To change the economy is not by mouth. So, many things will go wrong, but in going wrong, it will get right. The wrong is the effect on you temporarily… What the President is doing today will yield positive results soon. We may be having some inconveniences, we agree. But be patient. You will see the turnaround of things. I will never support what will not work. I know that whatever position or whatever policies you see today coming out is not intended to make anybody suffer. We need to pray to make sure there is good health for Mr. President, for the wisdom, the strength for him to pilot the affairs of this country. It will not be good for us only to talk about the bad. We should also talk about the good side.”

    Read Also: Sanwo-Olu to flag off N750 million ‘trader money’ for 15,000 beneficiaries on February 14

    Some analysts have described the FCT minister as mercurial, a politician capable of defending the implausible with perfect equanimity. But his remarks at the commencement of FCT road projects last week appear heartfelt and convincing. He is not just trying to keep a job; he has transferred his loyalty and commitment to a president he believes keeps his word, a president who fears no one, and indeed a president who has no airs. Convinced that the president is genuine, and persuaded that the reforms embarked upon to recalibrate an economy knocked out of kilter by previous administrations are difficult but sensible, Mr Wike has spoken energetically about why Nigerians must be patient instead of looking for quick fixes. Indeed the Wike factor is underscored by his total commitment to identifying projects beneficial to his constituency, and has promoted, sold and executed them with equal if not surpassing panache. He has not lost his governorship touch. It can be argued that other ministers had to seek funding from the federal government for their projects, a limiting factor that had generally hobbled previous FCT administrations. But Mr Wike studied the constitution and discovered a lacuna which he implored the president to resolve. Once that was done, the FCT minister had a new and secure line of funding for FCT projects, and he now runs Abuja like a state, as conceived by the constitution. Even on the matter of insecurity and kidnapping, the FCT minister has approached the matter in an aggressive and sensible manner that reassures Abuja suburbs. If only the states would borrow a leaf from him.

  • That IBB Channels interview

    That IBB Channels interview

    Some three or so weeks ago, ex-military president Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida was on Channels Television reiterating the need to devolve powers to the states in a restructured federation. He told his interviewer his administration had in fact contemplated that idea in 1989. It is not clear whether his government was really keen on the idea, seeing how much he loved power, but responding to a question on power devolution, he zeroed in on the absolute necessity of devolving control of the police to the states and giving them the resources to run the law enforcement agency. He is being wise after the fact. As a military dictator, he was not only infatuated with the unitary system of government, he was also obsessed with regime elongation. His refrain was the absoluteness of Nigerian unity, insisting that unity was non-negotiable.

    Read Also: Soludo, Kefas, Nnamani, Uba, others in Anambra for Offor’s birthday

    Every administration since then, whether elected or military, has been uncomfortable with devolution of power, especially regarding law enforcement and security agencies. It has taken extreme challenges to peace and security of the nation, not visionary consideration of the country’s future, to persuade most Nigerians as to the practicality of devolving control of the police. Even then there is still a lot of haphazardness and reluctance. But if insecurity is not to really threaten the peace and stability of the nation, if insecurity is not to spiral out of control, the government will have to urgently restructure the police to give states control. It took decades to convince Gen. Babangida of the absolute necessity of power devolution; it should not take the Tinubu administration many more months to recognise the long-lasting constitutional folly of centralising policing control.