Category: Barometer

The Southeast is still engaged in a titanic battle with the Monday sit-at-home order first issued by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in August 2021. Few know how the battle will end, or who will win, considering how long the bloody test of wills has lasted. It is unclear to many outside the region who the backbones of the order for the self-immolating weekly protest are: IPOB or the faceless ‘unknown gunmen’; or perhaps they are just opposite side of the same coin. Both militant groups have continued to pass the buck. But giddy with the November 2021 Anambra governorship poll triumph, and being an economist who is not ignorant of the unbearable cost of the sit-at-home civil action designed to pressure the federal government to release detained IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu, Charles Soludo ordered an end to the protest. He tabled before Anambrarians the enormous opportunity cost of the protest and argued that the state, nay the Southeast where the protest holds sway, could not afford the loss. Thrice between December 2021 and mid-2022, the governor tried to lift the siege but failed, for the people were more fearful of the lawless gunmen than the timid and sometimes frustrated law enforcement agencies.

Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State is the latest to try to arrest IPOB’s civil action. Though the separatist group had sometime last year suspended the action, renegade members, including the Nigerian-Finish member of the IPOB leadership, Simon Ekpa, have done their worst to sustain it with brutal enforcement. The governor had on June 1 ordered businesses and schools and offices to open on Mondays starting from June 5 in defiance of the IPOB order. Those who defy the state’s directive would have their premises shut, the governor threatened. On June 5, the governor and his men went round Enugu to monitor compliance and later announced that they were satisfied with the people’s response. Sixty percent compliance, he enthused, was not a bad outcome. Other reports, however, disputed the governor’s measurement. The compliance level was dismal, said other sources. The governor’s order and threat were a dismal failure, they chorused. This column cannot independently verify whose report is more believable; but judging from the governor’s plaintive comment, compliance was less than satisfactory.

There is no confusion about the relevance of the IPOB civil action. It is counterproductive. It undermines civil authority, bleeds the economy of the Southeast, and promotes dissension within the polity. Prof. Soludo computes the economic loss to the Southeast zone consequent upon the civil action to be about N19.6bn. It is not clear whether it is an exaggeration or understatement. But the loss to the region is indisputably in the billions of naira. If wealth is not being created, poverty is being fostered. So too is migration to other more peaceful zones, leading to the export of investment capital to other places. It is unlikely indigenes of the zone lack an understanding of the economic and social losses consequent upon the sit-at-home action. They understand the damage the losses occasion, but are perhaps too fearful to summon the courage to end it.

Two reasons explain the difficulty of ending the IPOB action, and both speak to Nigeria’s constitutional weakness and the failure of the Southeast elite, perhaps in equal measure. The sit-at-home action is a terrible indictment of the regional approach to law and order as well as the failure of leadership. Take the constitution, for example. Had Nigeria been operating economic federalism, where states earn their keep and pay taxes to the central government, they would recognise that without revenue from a central pool in Abuja, their states would starve. The undue reliance on revenue allocation from federal pool has promoted economic indolence, if not profligacy, in states. More importantly, the prolongation of the IPOB action is a reflection of the laxity and outright failure of the Southeast elite to control, mediate and modulate political activities as well as disaffection and alienation in their region. IPOB militancy did not develop into a monster overnight, and there is no proof, given their perspectives on national issues, that the zone’s leaders are even convinced of the folly and illogic of the militant group. Having indirectly justified IPOB’s objectives perhaps because of the alleged unfairness of Nigeria’s constitutional arrangement, they have now found it difficult to curb the excesses of the group. If they had the wisdom to foresee the consequences of IPOB’ militancy on their economy, especially the staggering revenue losses, perhaps the elite would not be too eager to shoot themselves in the foot. They gave free rein to IPOB; they must now find the courage and the wisdom to end militancy in their region should they not receive help from Abuja in terms of constitutional rearrangement or the amicable resolution of the Kanu conundrum.

Governors Soludo and Mbah have demonstrated their willingness to finally grapple with the Monday sit-at-home nonsense and bring to an end the region’s economic bleeding. They have solicited the cooperation of the federal government to cobble a solution. The former president Muhammadu Buhari did not lend them an ear. Perhaps the new helmsman in Abuja will. But the Southeast elite must themselves demonstrate uncommon sagacity and responsibility in tackling the crisis. Releasing Mr Kanu and bringing the case against him to an end may not be as difficult as taming the hotheaded young man who had played into the hands of the federal government by his excesses and incendiary rhetoric. Prof Soludo wishes to stand surety for Mr Kanu; but the last man who did, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, got his fingers burnt. Could Mr Kanu, upon whose release the Southeast elite anchor peace in the region and an end to the sit-at-home order, really be tamed? Indeed, has the Southeast got its politics right, as indeed Governors Soludo, Imo’s Hope Uzodinma, and former Ebonyi helmsman Dave Umahi feared?

Joe Ajaero, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NC), is shockingly unable to see the contradictions in fighting for workers’ interest and prosecuting the cause of the Labour Party (LP) in the same breath. He won’t see the contradictions until the union implodes. Reacting to accusations that NLC was fighting the cause of LP and thus politicising the union, not minding that some members of the union belong to other political parties, Mr Ajaero doubled down and dismissively described the objections against his leadership style as an insult to the NLC. Clearly, a showdown between the government and the union leadership looms sometime in the future.

Mr Ajaero had said: “We determine what happens in the Labour Party. Who is Labour Party or its candidate that will be telling us what to do? What we are doing now, has it not been consistent with what has been done on the issue of fuel subsidy from the past?  Even when the Labour Party presidential candidate was talking about fuel subsidy removal, although the mode maybe different, we said if you do it, you will hear from us…We have an era that we are entering: era of politics, and we will not shy away. The Nigeria Labour Congress will be involved in politics. We are already involved in politics. NLC has a political party: the Labour Party, and LP participated in the recent elections… Nigeria must exist before we practise our unionism. Anybody, who emerges as the president of Nigeria will work with us, and the rights and privileges of the workers must be guaranteed. The current wage system, casualisation policy, and outsourcing are anti-worker; with such policies, we can’t be our brothers’ keepers.”

Ignore his arrogance for a moment. It is of course not true that at the moment the NLC determines what happens in the LP. The union may have tasted power and seen what such power can do, but Mr Ajaero’s assumptions are illogical and impossible to defend. By his admission of the indistinguishability of the NLC and LP, not to talk of their incestuous relationship, he is of course inviting and taunting the federal government to treat the union as an opposition party. The NLC president is unwise. As this column has maintained, just when should the government see the demands of the NLC as strictly for the interest of workers, and when does the government see the union’s negotiational intransigence as not for the LP in its bid to undermine the ruling party and compromise its electoral misfortune? The question is not whether a showdown between the union/LP and the federal government would occur; the question is when the presumption that everyone in NLC perforce belongs to LP would end.

There were probably other ways of carrying out the business of removing fuel subsidy. But on inauguration day last Monday, President Bola Tinubu took liberty with précis by suggesting that fuel subsidy was gone. That was not quite how it was rendered in his written speech. Here is what his speech contained regarding subsidy: “We commend the decision of the outgoing administration in phasing out the petrol subsidy regime which has increasingly favoured the rich more than the poor. Subsidy can no longer justify its ever-increasing costs in the wake of drying resources. We shall instead re-channel the funds into better investment in public infrastructure, education, health care and jobs that will materially improve the lives of millions.” Instead, he was emphatic that subsidy was gone, a statement interpreted as indicating that subsidy removal was with immediate effect.

The spontaneous emergence of fuel queues was, therefore, predictable. Indeed, government officials, Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited bosses, Vice President Kashim Shettima, and a host of others have continued to insist that subsidy had become untenable. The more forthright NNPC in fact brushed aside all misgivings and equivocations, and indicated that the removal was immediate. Queues have thus emerged at petrol stations, and fuel is selling for princely sums. A statement by the presidency at first even declined to give a commencement date for the subsidy removal. Had the president stuck to his speech without making a dramatic extempore addition, the controversy would have perhaps been redirected or mitigated altogether. From all indications, the president’s image makers have their work cut out for them in managing many more extempore remarks in the future. President Muhammadu Buhari rarely skied off-piste in his addresses, except when he indulged his bucolic sense of humour; but in his speeches, President Tinubu will ski off-piste regularly, indulging his expansive but perhaps more arcane sense of humour.

Why the subsidy removal policy should become controversial is a curious byproduct of Nigeria’s indulgent past. Hardly anyone thinks it should not be removed. Indeed, nearly everyone agrees its total removal is long overdue. Subsidy had become a burden on the country, a needless and embarrassing and self-destructive load. However, the confusion came about because no one was sure what the effective date of commencement would be and what palliatives were needed to mitigate the effect on the poor and low income workers. As a matter of fact, a presidency statement released soon after th brouhaha broke out suggested that the president did not instruct the immediate commencement of the removal. But as other government officials doubled down over the removal, and a favourable consensus even seemed to be forming around government and presidency circles, the presidency itself began to dither. 

The government was yet to settle down before the volatile issue of fuel subsidy broke out in a fiery storm. Had the administration settled down, and advisers and officials met over the contentious issue, the government would have developed probably the best method to break the subsidy mould and get the public’s buy-in. All said, one way or the other, the matter will be resolved, hopefully without scorching the reputations and confidence of NNPC officials or the image of the presidency. In some ways they will all learn on the job that public policy enunciation and implementation are not as straightforward as they look. Officials are right to be desperate about the country’s financial outlook; the previous administration procrastinated so perversely that it could do nothing in eight years but to kick the nuisance to the incoming administration. After borrowing tons and frittering away many more tons, the previous administration calmly walked away into the sunset and left its successor to pick up the pieces.

Everyone in the new administration is now on tenterhooks, looking for ways to manage a testy situation which its predecessors could not grapple with since 2011. The crisis has finally come to a head; the buck can no longer be passed to someone else. It must be resolved. According to the NNPC boss, the federal government owes the national oil company an astronomical N2.8trn subsidy fund, while no subsidy bills have been paid since February 2022. Worse, added the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Nigeria frittered some N13.6trn on subsidy between 2005 and 2021. Wasteful spending has sadly grown much worse in the past two years. Even those who are not financial or oil experts also agree that the haemorrhaging of Nigeria’s public finance needed to be arrested urgently. Whether the country likes it or not, that bleeding will have to be stopped one way or the other. And it has to be much sooner rather than later.

There will be a lot of grandstanding among stakeholders involved in the oil business, whether from the government, the unions, or the public. But whatever grandstanding anyone does, at a point along the way, they will realise that the nation is perching precariously on the edge of a financial cliff. They should not let it tip over. From all indications too, and especially having received this early baptism of fire, the new administration will begin to recognise that while a policy may be unimpeachable in substance and design, its execution must also receive as much scrupulous attention in order to mitigate its harmful effects or unintended consequences, especially a policy that had assumed the toga of decades-old addiction. Weaning an indulgent nation off the subsidy habit will take some doing.

After a divisive election, from which the Tinubu government is still trying to catch its breath, assembling a cabinet has not been the cakewalk many expect. But once done, the country is likely to experience much better designed policies and an even suaver implementation culture. It is not clear how the administration will deal with the more hardline Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the tamer Trade Union Congress (TUC), both of which own the bitter and contumelious Labour Party (LP), but sometime soon the government and the unions will inevitably come to blows. Until there is a separation between the unions and the LP, NLC activism will always be viewed interchangeably with political goals. The subsidy withdrawal crisis, if not expertly managed, may be the first shot in a bruising conflict between the unions and the administration. 

PDP, LP and scorched-earth politics

The courts have finally begun the task of sifting the grain from the chaff in determining who didn’t win the last presidential election. Both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), who were first and second runners-up respectively, insist they won. Obviously both couldn’t have won at the same time, despite their affinity for each other. But since the electoral umpire, INEC, declared the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of the February 25th poll, both the PDP and LP have been engaged in possibly the most anti-democratic and inflammatory rhetoric ever. Their contempt for the electoral outcome is so severe that they do not seem averse to the total collapse of democracy in Nigeria in order to justify and expiate their losses. They have enunciated and vivified three scorched-earth measures to midwife that collapse.

Firstly, they tried to instigate popular revolt all around the country, believing that their combined votes, some 13 million and more, somehow conferred on them the equivalence of victory and moral high ground. Their statistics doesn’t make any electoral or logical sense, especially seeing that it was not just the number of votes that produced the winner, but they enthusiastically sold that sleight of hand to the gullible public and hoped the unwary bought it. There were, however, few takers. Then, secondly, they threatened the president and the courts to keep the process of handover in abeyance until the courts had their say. Sadly, neither the 1999 Constitution nor the Electoral Act supports their argument; but they imperiously advocated it nevertheless. Yet, few paid heed to them.

Finally, knowing full well how tenuous their legal suits and political arguments are, they had produced from their hats the rabbit of television coverage. But unable to prove in court that lack of television coverage would inhibit their suits, they have raked up old and populist measures that complement their incendiary logic of appealing to the emotions of the masses. In short, they have less faith in the efficacy of their legal submissions as much as they hope in the power of popular uprising triggered by biased, inciting and mocking coverage riding on the back of malicious reporting. Nothing has worked so far; and it does not appear anything will work for them. But they will persist in their subversion of the democratic process. Having never partaken of the decades-long struggle to enthrone democracy when the military held the reins of power, their determination to undermine a great good is fired by their disdain for noble democratic objectives to which they have retained neither emotional nor even commonsensical attachment.   

Nigeria is in an uproar over leaked phone calls. It used to be that the police or the secret service was generally fingered for phone or wire tapping, sometimes without court warrants, and citizens were apprehensive about the privacy of their phone calls. Though there is nothing to suggest that the intelligence agencies are still not running riot over telephone tapping, however, the crime has become an all-comers affair, with everyone taking advantage of the digital revolution to secretly record one another. Will it stop anytime soon? It is unlikely. The advantages to the snoopy and malfeasant individual obviously far outweigh the disadvantages. What used to be the fear of the public concerning their helpless and almost unfettered exposure to agents of the government secretly recording or listening in on their phone conversations has in the past few years transformed into everyone possessing the capability to record unwary neighbor. To cap the problem, the leaked calls, if they are incriminatory, now get uploaded on social media.

The most recent leaked call involved outgoing Kano State governor Abdullahi Ganduje and All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential running mate placeholder Ibrahim Masari conversing on the meeting in France between President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu and New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) leader and former Kano governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. In the alleged call, Mr Ganduje expressed his reservations about the effort to conciliate Dr Kwankwaso. All four personalities involved or mentioned in the leaked call are associates and allies. But the call was obviously leaked to sour relationships between the gentlemen for unstated political objectives. Some of the men involved are undoubtedly embarrassed.

But the Ganduje-Masari leaked call is in no way as devastating and embarrassing as the leaked call between Presiding Bishop of the Living Faith Church, David Oyedepo, and Labour Party presidential candidate in the last election, Peter Obi, on the subject of sectarian politics. Pressed for an answer, especially when the conversation between the two men veered towards deploying strong and unflattering words to describe the nature of contemporary Nigerian politics, the bishop made only tangential references to the phone conversation in a sermon soon after the leak in which he described himself unprovably as apolitical and magisterial in his political views. He was clearly embarrassed, but still refused to acknowledge the call. Mr Obi simply continued to obfuscate on the subject until a newsman pinned him down before he acknowledged the call. He did not describe the last election as religious war, he growled, but conceded that he ‘begged’ the bishop to help him corral religious votes. On why he at first denied the call in its entirety, he simply quibbled over the lie and refused to apologise. Both bishop and protégé were left with egg on their faces.

Then there was the alleged tripartite phone call between ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar, Sokoto governor Aminu Tambuwal, and Delta governor Ifeanyi Okowa, all of them Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftains. Recorded and leaked before the last presidential election, the conversation was allegedly geared towards compromising the election, particularly the security agencies and the electoral umpire, INEC. None of the three gentlemen agreed that the call took place. In fact, they seemed to have devised the stock answer of simply denying the calls ever took place. Yes, so simple. And just before the elections too, Michael Achimugu, a former aide of Alhaji Atiku, also leaked phone conversations he swore he had with the former vice president that revealed how the party chieftain subverted procurement process using fronts via onshore shell businesses to win and execute controversial contracts as well as siphon and launder illicit money. The response? The audio was manipulated, said aides of the former vice president.

Another devastating leaked call allegedly involved ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, Charles Oputa, who is also known as Charly Boy, and former Cross River governor Donald Duke in which Nigerian youths were incited to occupy Nigeria and prevent both the conclusion of the last presidential election and the legitimisation of the same election. Again the stock response was that the call didn’t happen, or that the story was the handiwork of forgers and manipulators. But while Mr Duke denied the call, Mr Oputa was less categorical. As for the former president, no one dared approach him for his side of the story. But Nigerians believed the call took place, and the incitement was in tune with the open statement issued by the former president asking President Muhammadu Buhari to abort the election before the results were fully declared in late February. The call to abort the process, coming from a former elected president, was irrational and indefensible, and so too the alleged inciting phone call. But the law enforcement agents have turned a blind eye.

Most of the controversial phone leaks were recorded and uploaded by individuals involved in the calls. While the law is ambiguous about acts of bad faith, morality is not. But what is at issue here is not the law per se but the complete bursting of trust between individuals and associates. The state may be reluctant to probe these leaks because, strictly speaking, no law was broken, and no one has lodged a complaint, but since various degrees of crimes were alleged in the leaked calls, it behoved the law enforcement agencies to launch investigations. Their reticence in the face of serial infractions, not to say their indolence and indifference, remains truly baffling. The phone leaks, whether they are described as illegal or immoral, will, therefore, continue. And habitual liars among these highly placed and amoral politicians and state officials will continue to assail the public with cock and bull stories when they are found out.

When the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) president, Joe Ajaero, announced that the union was waiting for the incoming Tinubu administration to unveil its agenda for workers, and also warned that industrial crisis awaited the administration because of the outgoing president’s unfinished task concerning Labour, it was not clear in what capacity he made the statement. Was he speaking as NLC president? Or was he speaking as the owner and benefactor of Labour Party (LP) to which he has foolishly tied the union and thrown in his lot? So far, given how he has linked NLC with LP, spoken violently in the party’s favour, and engaged in strong-arm tactics to ward off challenges from factional party leaders, his role as a union president has diminished in inverse proportion to his ascendancy as LP enforcer.

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Mr Ajaero, as this column maintained weeks ago, has behaved very unwisely as a union president, and it is baffling how he got elected into that weighty position. His two roles may conflict, but surely he can’t be so idealistic as not to understand that the incoming administration he is advising will not also be puzzled and conflicted about how to relate with him and the NLC. Will the administration see NLC as a union or as LP in another guise? When Mr Ajaero speaks, would the administration be sure whether the union or LP is speaking? The NLC president and the LP have poured contempt on the All Progressives Congress (APC) and questioned and litigated the incoming administration’s victory. Could they be trusted to fight for workers’ interest without hidden political objectives? And as some analysts have wondered, given the ‘coincidence’ of the NLC and Trade Union Congress (TUC) presidents hailing from LP-loving regions, would the administration be comfortable relating with the union leaders as unbiased Labour activists?

There will be an implosion in the NLC sooner or later. When the LP was not a nationally significant political and electoral player, the presidency was not conflicted about how to relate with the union. But now that LP has become a significant political player, the administration, not to say the country, will be curious and apprehensive.

The exuberant former Labour and Employment minister, Chris Ngige, obviously played ducks and drakes with the feelings of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), particularly the splinter National Association of Medical and Dental Academics (NAMDA) and the Congress of Nigerian University Academics (CONUA). After he encouraged division in ASUU ranks, he gave the splinter unions the impression their withheld salaries, about eight months arrears, would be paid. They were suckered. No pay has been forthcoming. Worse, by some incredible sleight of hand, shortly before he vacated office brazenly and contemptuously engineered the exemption of some 204 Nnamdi Azikwe University (UNIZIK) lecturers of the Faculties of Medicine, Clinical Sciences, and Basic Medical Sciences from the salary embargo, and secured approval from the federal government to pay them. Dr Ngige is from Anambra, and apart from stretching stories and bluffing his opponents, this grandiose of all former ministers must need return home, with all the attendant implications, ASUU be damned.    

Since 1999, the National Assembly has worked on tonnes of shortsighted bills, some of them incoherent and impossible to enforce. But none has arguably been as destitute of logic and commonsense as the amendment to the Medical and Dental Practitioners Act being sponsored by Representative Ganiyu Johnson (APC, Oshodi/Isolo II) to withhold the full practice licence of Nigerian-trained medical doctors until they had served for at least five years. Restricting the doctors to provisional licences for that duration would help the country combat or ameliorate the brain drain that has hit the medical profession, Hon Johnson argued lamely. The amended bill has been passed for second reading on the urging of Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, who incredulously argued that the bill would not impinge on the constitutional rights of the doctors.

Too many things are wrong with the bill. As a percentage of skilled manpower migrating to other shores, doctors do not form the majority, despite the high visibility of their profession. Nor are they the only ones whose education was subsidised by taxpayers. In addition, not every locally trained doctor benefited from public taxpayers; some attended private universities. Why then focus on doctors, and not lawyers, engineers, nuclear scientists, geneticists, mathematicians, etc? Decades ago, did Nigeria suffer from this kind of debilitating emigration? If not could there not be reasons for the sudden change in attitude? Unable to meet the salary and conditions of service demands of doctors, the government has shrugged in impotence; and lawmakers, given the atrocious bill under consideration, have sought to further victimise the victims of bureaucratic and policy insensitivity.

The bill will die a natural death. It constitutes not only an emotional and childish response to a serious national problem, it is also incapable of redressing the problem. After five years of hamstringing young doctors, assuming the bill passes, what then, and what next? The bill inequitably seeks to compel and single out doctors, from all other professions, for a mandatory five-year service before they qualify for full practice licence. They could conceivably fulfill that condition and still leave in droves thereafter. Would it not, therefore, be far better and more expedient to address the underlying and fundamental problems militating against the stay of doctors in Nigeria before embracing needless and foolish fiat?

It is shocking that Hon Gbajabiamila, who should see through the vacuousness of the bill, has encouraged it. In considering the bill, lawmakers have yet to provide statistical rationalisation for targeting new doctors. They need to provide evidence that fresh medical graduates are fleeing Nigeria more than those who qualified more than five years ago. The fleeing doctors are not migrating because they are disloyal to Nigeria or as insensitive as policymakers to the health sector. They are migrating because of obsolete or total lack of equipment, poor funding of the health sector, incompetent bureaucracy, poor conditions of service, and general and stifling underdevelopment of the sector. Shackling doctors will not solve the problems. Singling them out for punitive treatment will exacerbate the issues.

The House of Representatives should be ashamed at their simplistic arguments and wishy-washy debates. While it is true that not all lawmakers of the lower chamber embraced the bill, with some of them warning that it is counterproductive, it is shameful that a bill that singles out and victimises doctors was not thrown out at first consideration. The Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) has expressed its dismay at the simplicity and unworkability of the proposed bill, and many civil rights groups are also preparing themselves to litigate it should it be passed. The bill will stain the reputation of the 9th Assembly.

Neither the Senate nor the Executive branch will countenance the disgraceful bill. Even if the Reps pass it, it will not scale the Senate. And if it scales the Senate, no president could sign a bill that simply does not make sense, a bill that sidetracks the problems besetting the health sector, a bill that unfairly singles out a profession for creative and punitive interpretation of Section 45 (1) of the 1999 Constitution. Fortunately the bill is too late for President Muhammadu Buhari to have a chance to consider. Should the bill ever pass and be transmitted to the next president, it is certain to come to grief. The president-elect is a political and policy engineer discomfited by shortsighted and impracticable policies. Even more fortunately, he has a far better, more realistic, and more holistic plan for the health sector devoid of the kind of fire brigade approach which Hon Solomon’s bill seeks to apply to a complex and fundamental problem.