Category: Femi Orebe

Femi Orebe

Why are Southern APC leaders not saying anything, not even the party Chairman is known to have uttered a word on this nefarious developments.

FIRST: “We have asked all Fulani across West Africa to raise money and arms to prosecute the oncoming war. We call on all Fulanis to prepare for this Holy War. There is no going back. All over the world, Nigeria is the only country given to Fulani by Allah” – Fulani Nationality Movement (FUNAM)

It will be a shame if all Fulanis believe this gratuitous lie just because they have succeeded in subduing the Hausas whose tenants they were when they first arrived the Hausa Kingdom in the 1800’s.

“We urge the Northern youths to resist, by all means necessary any attempt to send them back by Southern Governors

We see the actions of these Governors and their agents as provocative and a devious assault on free movement of persons contained in the Nigerian Constitution and the ECOWAS Protocol on movement of goods and persons.

“We declare any State that refuses to allow Northern youths to Southern States as an enemy that we promise will be fought vigorously. We urge you, faithful men, not to cringe, not to fear, not to look back. The battle is better fought on their homeland.

We inform you that we your leaders held meetings across the key Northern States of Sokoto, Bornu, Katsina,  Kano, Yobe, Kebi, Bauchi and Kaduna. Our resolve is that Northern youths should move enmasse to Southern States. Relaunch the mass movement in ways they have never seen Go in long convoys. If you are stopped,  use all means, the bushpath, the railways and all.

If the towns and cities are hostile,  hang out on the street corners, in uncompleted buildings, occupy the forests, pitch tents, make any where available as your abode, your rest places, your home.

We urge you to be armed. The infidels may want to attack you.

It will be disastrous to ever assume there will be no battle at all, before we regain the lost caliphate”.

Where is a single Nigerian Police reaction to these absolutely provocative statements or have I missed that of  the presidency on these criminal posturings which we see  only  because the  President is of Fulani extraction?

By the way why are Southern APC leaders not saying anything, not even the party Chairman is known to have uttered a word on this nefarious developments. What is happening? What are they afraid of or must they wait till a conflagration erupts?

Are Nigerians correct when they say it is for these reasons the Nigerian security architecture is what it is and that the President deliberately handed its control to Northern Moslems?

Is Nigeria a country of equal citizenship or are some people more equal than others?

Now while incriminating statements like this go un noticed by the security forces, I shall not be surprised one bit,  if this article becomes of special interest to them.

But let it be said, loud and clear, that Nigeria cannot continue to be ruled on these basis and its leaders continue to nurse the  hope that peaceful cohabitation, which the President called for when he went on a sympathy visit to Benue state, will not, like forever, remain a chimera.

In the past two weeks or so, some muscular Northerners – certainly not Almajiris – have been moving to the South in droves and videos are now trending on social media showing some of them caressing tonnes, and tonnes of munitions. One of these videos was posted, not anonymously, but by the LOWER NIGER CONGRESS which I hope security forces would not now prance on .

Indeed, I  have come to believe that the few Almajiri that have been moved Southwards must have been premeditated by Northern governors  when they decided to send them to their states of origin, or which of them has come out to say that their decision was not to send them to states outside the North. Or are  Edo, Abia, Osun, Cross River etc,  now in Northern Nigeria?

By Femi Orebe

Many reactions trailed my last week article: ‘Periscoping The New Chief Of Staff To The President’, but let me take just two that actually zero-ed in on the same section of the article. Two  readers, one a respected Yoruba elder, and the other, a University Professor, called to vigorously disagree with my opinion that Health Minister, Professor Isaac Adewole,  should have resigned when   Abba Kyari, the late Chief of Staff to the President, turned his ministry to an appendage of the ministry of Agriculture. Their reason was simple: that as we saw when Mrs Kemi Adeosun was replaced by Zainab Ahmed as Minister of Finance,  and knowing what we now do about the Buhari  government, a Fulani, most probably the man  Adewole suspended, may very well have been appointed as his  replacement. I honestly couldn’t agree less.

Congratulations to  Professor Agboola Gambari, a highly regarded scholar – diplomat, on his appointment as the new Chief of Staff to the President. His appointment can only come as a surprise to those who do not know him as a keen Arewa ideologue. I expect him to use this opportunity to achieve at least two things, nationally, and personally. Given his advanced age and extensive experience at the world level, especially, having served in places like Myanmar and Iraq, two thoroughly atrocious countries, representing the U.N Secretary – General, he should be able to assist the President in mending a divided and painfully agonising Nigeria. Now  with the new massive resurgence of banditry in Katsina,  Kaduna and Zamfara portraying the government as weak, he should be able to dig deep into both the Boko Haram and banditry conundrum with a view to reaching an agreement which, apart from stanching the ferocious blood-letting on both sides , will also put a stop to these North-induced burning of billions and billions of naira which the country could have put to much better use especially in that part of the country which accounts for more than 70 percent of its  national poverty level. He should also please devote some quality time to seriously interrogate the nuisance the Fulani Nationality Movement, (FUNAM) is fast turning to.

Only on May 02, 2020, that atavistic body issued a statement, saying, inter alia, to Northerners now being furiously rushed southwards: “We your leaders held meetings across the key Northern States of Sokoto, Bornu, Katsina,  Kano, Yobe, Kebi, Bauchi and Kaduna. Our resolve is that Northern youths should move enmasse to Southern States. Relaunch the mass movement in ways they have never seen … If the towns and cities are hostile,  hang out on the street corners, in uncompleted buildings, occupy the forests, pitch tents, make any where available as your abode, your rest places, your home.We urge you to be armed. The infidels may want to attack you”. Were this statement made by another group, the Nigerian police would have become unnessarily hyperactive but a whole two weeks after, mum has been it from both the police and presidential spokespersons.

On the personal level, if Professor Gambari would be a little humble, he should be able to apologise for those unreflected positions he took on critical national issues that saw him asserting, for instance, that ”Nigerians don’t need democracy because democracy is not food. It is not their priority.” Equally, he should be able to make up for his many acts of repaying acts of  goodness done him with unkind cuts. I need not delay my readers with examples some of which are already in the public space.

We wish Professor Gambari   success.

Then to the issue for the day, a grievous  matter of great national interest, given the way Northerners, but  certainly  NOT  Almajiris,  given their big, muscular frames, have been rushing to the South in waves, after waves, even after President Buhari had expressly banned interstate travel. In my view, this indicates that torrid days  are ahead with regard to overall security in the country as these people could very well be killer herdsmen, elements of Boko Haram/ISWA soldiers or  outright bandits. They are being moved like consignments of commodities, hidden behind cows or cement, and covered with very heavy tapaulen. All these in a country where even the President is preaching social distancing as a means of checking the spread of Covid-19. It is in that way, reminiscent of the Atlantic slave trade, that some evil minded characters are transporting these unfortunate Nigerians from the extremities of Northern Nigeria, in blazing sun and inclement weather, over hundreds of kilometers.

The hurried manner in which they are being moved point to the fact that the people behind this scheme are up to no good. The minders are either preparing for a massive uprising in the South, which will first see a re-enactment of their now well-known raping, killing and kidnapping or, alternatively, trying to plant an advance party for RUGA which the South rejected, to the last man, and will continue to reject even with the last drop of their blood. Initially coyly presented by the Federal Government as a silver bullet for herders/farmers clashes, RUGA was to have seen Fulani herdsmen, respledently settled in  well provisioned new towns, carved out of other peoples’ ancestral lands, while the owners of the land would have been left eke-ing out life in their old, decrepit ways.

Such equity!

This exodus of biblical proportions, with the characters packed, it can bear repetition,   like sardine, hidden amongst cows or being haulaged in several trucks like cement, and being presented to vigilante groups in the South as commodity consignments, is certainly ill- intentioned and the fact that the Inspector General of Police has not  deemed  it fit to say a word about it, says a lot. God bless the eagled eyed vigilantes, they were not deceived as many of these uninvited guests were immediately turned back where they came from  even though it is obvious that many of our forests down South may now be crawling with thousands of  killer herdsmen, elements of Boko Haram, ISWA fighters  and bandits.The last bit – their being in our forests,  though conjectural, is a very reasonable supposition  given their battle order from  FUNAM, and whoever wants to dispute it must first explain to  Nigerians how,  with the President’s express ban on interstate travel still subsisting , these people  are able to come  down, all the way, from the furtherest corners of the North without  being stopped by security agents who ought to have felt duty bound to, at least, respect the President’s directive on interstate travels. Nigerians are no longer  deceived. A study by the Chinua Achebe Foundation has long shown that when herdsmen are to attack in a given  area, directives are usually given from the top, to security  agencies around the target area not to intervene in any manner. They usually show up long after the killings.

It is obvious that this exodus, hidden under the Covid-19 lockdown, must be a much bigger project than the well known herdsmen’s murdering escapades  but whatever the motive or motives, those behind this project should know that things have  since changed in the South. The people have taken their security into their own hands and would respect no orders not to respond in kind if attacked and their ancestral  lands come under any threat. They should know that in  no way would they over run the South like they did Benue and Plateau states. Nobody in these parts would live to see total strangers take an inch of their ancestral lands, talk less of raping their daughters and killing their wives.

God bless Dr Junaid Mohammed who has honestly called on his Northern brothers who might be behind all these shenanigans to think again. He has suggested that security operatives who collude in this matter should be investigated and those found guilty be  brought to book but we know that is where it ends because those behind this macabre dance are executing an ethnic agenda to sex up the Nigerian population and make Nigeria the Fulani homeland as FUNAM has severally asserted. Thanks to them, we have long been told that Nigeria is the only country Allah has given to Fulanis as their homeland.To justify that  joke , a people who arrived Nigeria for the first time ever in the 1800’s are claiming a one thousand year ownership of Nigeria. Prof Gambari should be able to let them know, in case they have forgotten their history, that of all Nigerian ethnic groups Fulanis arrived last and were tenants of the Hausas. This is contemporary, not ancient history.

Unfortunately, senior state officials  being paid to ensure security of life and property of Nigerians  are  themselves, compromised and so  continue to  turn deaf ears to all these criminalities , in the process disrespecting the President and toying with the fate of Nigeria. One thing they should know though, is that recent experienves in  Africa has shown that nobody is too important,  or powerful, to find him or herself in a refugee camp, especially in a foreign land. That will ring truer in a post Covid-19 world when the West would no longer be ready to welcome our  overly exposed politicians.

A stitch in time can still save nine if only  some people would just be less prideful.

Femi Orebe

A LOT has happened since the unfortunate passing of the Chief of Staff to the President, Malam Abba Kyari. May the Almighty God grant him eternal rest.

Nigerians have heard testimonies to his all round brilliance, his self- effacement, dedication to work as well as his inspiring loyalty to the President, with whom  he had been associated for over four  decades. Conversely, so also have we heard other commentators, yours truly included, point out  his failure to deploy his high scholarstic attainments  to help an obviously  insular President Muhammadu Buhari to appreciate, and properly manage, the  Nigerian diversity  with equity and fairness. It is the considered view of this group that had Kyari  been so minded, a President Buhari who could describe him as “the very best of us”, would not have demurred, if he had as much as told him, for instance,  that it is inequitable for him to be presiding over a Nigerian security council with such a lopsided membership.

Nor would the North have maintained a literal stranglehold over the rest of  the  country, as we have seen in the past 4 years plus , if there was fairness.

Unlike former President Olusegun Obasanjo who told Nigerians that  his advisers would be no better than  artefacts , President Buhari is not  yet on record as saying that he would not listen to his advisers. Therefore,  responsibilty for the  President’s much criticised  appointments, like his ability, for so long, to gloss over the murderous activities of the Fulani herdsmen, must be put squarely at the feet of the late Kyari, a man Mallam Mamman Daura described, not only as the intellectual lodestar of the entire Buhari administration, but as the best of all. It is understandable if Geoffrey Onyeama, who nobody expected to return, was no less effusive in his panygyrics to his friend.

As jockeying must have now commenced  for the appointment of his successor,  the President, I would like to suggest, must have to bear a few things in mind.

Nigeria’s extant constitution expressly permits the President  to appoint his personal staff but in the Order of Precedence of National Officers, none of his   personal staff is superior to a minister of cabinet rank. Their head , the Chief of Staff, is only   the ‘numero uno’, amongst the presidency staff but certainly not an Alpha and Omega, as we recently experienced.

This  fact  ought to have precluded Kyari, or any  Chief of Staff for that matter, from insinuating himself into, and interfering, in matters that are  constitutionally prescribed for  other functionaries of state, as he reportedly did in the matter of the Ministry of Health which he, allegedly, unilaterally turned to an appendage of the ministry of Agriculture, which, in turn,  rendered the former so manacled it could not buy ordinary APC (pun intended) by itself.  Nor could it  inspect its capital projects as the ministry of Agriculture  sat on its N10B capital vote. This, indeed, must be the first of its kind in any democracy.

I do not know how to describe what he  did, putting a minister of cabinet rank smack between Dr Muazu Abdulkadir, the Permanenent Secretary, ministry of Agriculture, and  Mamman Ahmadu,  Director-General of the Bureau of Public Procurement, both of who the minister then had to propitiate, to be able  buy even stationery, other than call it virulent ethnicity on display. It was to tell Professor Adewole who exactly owns the land. Kyari was apparently determined to deal with the ‘insolent’ Yoruba man, who had the effrontery to suspend a blue eyed, Fulani Professor. lt is beyond puke inducing. But what nauseates the most, really, was  Professor Adewole, a former Vice- Chancellor, and an otherwise  proud Yoruba, not to have immediately resigned, rather than suck in that inanity which  is a shame, not only to him, but to the Yoruba nation, and the academia. Now that the full  details are out, not a few Yoruba feel thoroughly diminished that Adewole didnt resign. Or for how long shall we let this feeling persist that we are, by any means, inferior to Northerners?  Aren’t hundreds of  their Almajiris, currently being mutually expelled by their  governors,  already  running Southwards, loaded amidst cows and all sorts?

For how long  shall we accept to be treated like second class citizens in a country President Buhari once said we should salvage together because it is the only country we can all call our own?  How far would these shenanigans go before the President moves  to protect us as joint owners, and equal stakeholders, in the Nigerian  project? If the President loses confidence  in any of his appointees, he has all the power in the world to determine such an appointment but it is not the business  of any busybody to take that up on his behalf.

I do not mind how this article is interpreted, because the truth is that no single  Nigerian is greater than the other. We all deserve to be treated with respect, first as human beings, and secondly, as Nigerians with equal stake. It is this  same misbegotten belief  that emboldens Fulani herdsmen when they go on their  killing rampages , cocksure not  even the police would dare arrest them.

Given all we saw under Kyari – the crass nepotism, for instance, the incoming Chief of Staff should be told, from the outset, that his primary functions are: to organise the office of the President, arrange his schedules, advise him when the need arises, help him with policy formulation, and do those other things he may  expressly direct him  to do, but certainly without him becoming a Coordinating – General of the entire government, lest he becomes a Frankenstein monster.

Appointees of government, ministers and heads of agencies inclusive , must have a free, and unfettered chance, of  performing  the functions allotted  to them by the constitution, and as  the President may, from time to time direct , as long as such directives are not illegal like late General Abacha ordering the then CBN governor to release huge funds, under all manner of guises, only for the  funds to end up being laundered for him.

No matter how close he may be  to the President, and regardless of how long they have come together, the next Chief of Staff must realise that institutions must be properly run and not on the basis of sentiment, or affinity. After all, these are no family preferments.

It is important that he is made clearly aware of his limitations  so he does  not unnecessarily create problems for the President.The office should  not permit of any unelected, aspiring potentate, once the President is firmly in charge of affairs. He should be precluded from acting unilaterally only to drop the name of the President when the chips are down. Happily , the President is now fully recovered from an alleged poison – related  illness, so there should be no gaps , any more,  for any so -called mafia to exploit to our detriment.

Nobody can question the President’s  right to  appoint whoever he wants as  his Chief of Staff , someone he can trust completely,  and feel  very  free to discuss intimate matters with. After all, Obasanjo had his Andy Uba just as Jonathan his Owei Dudafa, even though both  were,  deployed to domestic affairs.

There is an urgent need for a re – organisation of the Presidency in such  a way that, yes, the Chief of Staff would be  the numero uno, but certainly not  an Alpha and Omega, as mentioned earlier.

In the United States of America from where we  copied this system, the functions  of the Chief of Staff are  clearly stated as follows: “ The Office of the Chief of Staff is responsible for directing, managing and overseeing all policy development, daily operations, and staff activities for the President. This office coordinates and communicates with all departments and agencies of the Administration. The staff of the office assists that effort by organizing the affairs of the Chief and Deputy Chiefs of Staff. The staff also assists  the Chiefs of Staff in their duties as advisors to the President”.

Nowhere in the foregoing are we told that the Chief of Staff runs other departments of state, not to talk of making one an  appendage of another. All he does is as stated above. When the American President wants to discuss foreign affairs, he calls his Secretary of State, not Chief of Staff, ditto Education or  any other department, when he calls in the relevant Secretary. The Chief of Staff can only be in attendance at such meetings. Although, for scheduling purposes, a Secretary may call the Chief of Staff to book an  appointment to see the President, it will be anomalous  for Secretaries (ministers) to be asked to report to the President through the Chief of Staff. Of course, that won’t ever happen in the U. S  as it has the possibility of making such a Chief Of Staff swollen- headed.

It will be nice if government  will interrogate these views critically  for the sake of good governance, rather than peremptorily throw them away.

 Femi Orebe

Had I not prompted my friend, Anthony N.Z Sani, former Publicity Secretary of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), and its immediate past Secretary, to react to the decision of the Northern governors not to lock down their states, which prompted the above article in the first place, revisiting it would have been absolutely unnecessary. He had sent me a mail whose import was the inevitability of a lockdown in fighting the covid-19 pandemic.

My response was to ask him for his views on the Northern governors’ decision, and I believe I owe him the chance to be heard.

He wrote:

“I read your column yesterday and even though I share your concerns and frustrations on the attitude of some northern governors on how best the nation can contain and mitigate the menacing Covid19, it seems you did not get all the facts right when you generalized that all northern governors have refused to lockdown because of the farming season.

It is not all the governors who refused to lockdown. For example, Kaduna and Plateau states have been on lock down for the past three weeks. My state, Nasarawa, has also been on lock down along with FCT, Lagos and Ogun state. In fact, the Chairman of the Northern Governors Forum, Governor Lalong was on NTA on Saturday explaining that there was no consensus among the governors on the best approach.

So, to generalize in the way your column did does not represent the reality on the ground.  Albeit, I canvassed for the need for all governors to be on the same page.

I have tried to push the view that because unless all states are free of Covid19, no state is free, there is need for uniform lockdown across the nation lest disparate approaches by individual states become wasted efforts.I even suggested that northern states can, for the meantime, align their lockdown with that of the FCT for purposes of uniformity, considering the fact that interstate travels will render individual lockdowns ineffective.

If there had been a  uniform lockdown for say, 14 days, when PMB first announced lockdown, most of the COVID- 19 cases would have manifested, and affected persons would have been quarantined for containment and mitigation by now. I granted interviews to The Tribune, New Telegraph and The Sun newspapers on these issues on the need for proper coordination by the center for performance.

I have been in running battles with some of our egg-head professors who think that  lock down, with the restrictions, but  without palliatives for the poor, is meaningless because they believe it is not workable. Even some of the editors and reporters share their views  by refusing to give my position prominence. To them, I am insouciant to the plight of the poor.

But I insist that the choice is between the need to save lives and the imperative of preserving livelihoods by those who are alive”.

He went further to discuss restructuring but as that is not immediately germane to the issue in discussion, we’ll have to come to that  another day.

Disquisitions between Tony and I are not new and  I have published him more than once on these pages. I know him to mean well, even if he always holds, tenaciously, to positions the core North believes to be in its greater interest, even if the alternative position would have benefitted the entire country  more. This, I believe, is what underpins his position on restructuring which only the Northwest, of all Nigerian geo-political zones, objects to. And that is not to demean him as I know Tony to be a man of very strong principles.

His explanation that not all Northern governors were against lockdown is, incidentally, the same reason I hold that, in going back to reverse their prior position, and joining their colleagues in freshly deciding not to lockdown, they were not motivated by high principles, but by money. Otherwise, why the change as soon as the federal government gave Lagos State a N10b grant? Even Governor Ganduje, who I had excluded from the others in the original article, has since asked the President for a N15b grant. Why N15b? Just so Kano won’t have the same amount with Lagos State even when it does not have a fifth of Lagos  Covid -19 cases. This is nothing but a sop to the entitlement mentality that continues to rubbish governance in our country. And this attitude is about  the only way one can explain the late Chief of Staff to the President allegedly, illegally, handing over to the Permanent Secretary of the ministry of Agriculture to execute, the budget approved by the National Assembly for the ministry of Health. The following is how The Nation of Thursday, 30 April, 2020 captured the absolutely unbelievable story:

“The federal policy requesting the Health Ministry to go through the Agriculture Ministry for its procurement and other funding needs has been lifted, it was learnt on Wednesday. A senior government official told The Nation that the Health ministry can now handle all its contracts and procurements without the ‘unnatural’ routing through the Agriculture ministry. Prior to the new regime, the ministry of Health, with about 119 agencies, apart from its inability to make its own procurements, including (even) stationeries, could not monitor its projects as all funds must be approved by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. The policy affected the ministry’s ability to monitor the agencies under it.

To worsen the matter, the ministry had to get approvals from the ministry of  Agriculture to access the  N10.5 billion approved for the funding of its capital expenditure in last year’s bugdet. According to the source, the Health ministry was asked to get approval from the ministry of Agriculture, following a power play between the erstwhile Health Minister Prof Isaac Adewole and the late Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari. The source said: “One of the causes of friction (among others) between the duo, was the Minister’s decision to suspend the then Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf which the late Kyari vetoed”. “Whenever the Ministry of Health wants to make procurement, the Permanent Secretary would raise a memo which would be sent to the Permanent Secretary of the ministry of Agriculture”.

“In some instances, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture would give direct approval while sometimes, he would write a memo to the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Procurement, Mamman Ahmadu, for approval”.

“The lifting of the ban will be of great benefit to the Ministry as it can now bypass the administrative bottlenecks that must have frustrated  immediate responses, and activities, regarding procurement in  government ’s health facilities.”

I decided to spend some time on that story because  such overbearing actions will never endear the Buhari government to right thinking Nigerians. Or how can one  explain that  an unelected government official  could so completely immolate a key arm of government without his being countermanded by higher authorities? Post Covid- 19, every effort must be made to rule over this country with fairness and equity.

I digress.

Fortunately in the  article under reference , I did exempt Governor Ganduje from those I believe were intent on blackmailing the President for money, and happily , he never at any time, dilly dallied, like his Adamawa counterpart who opened up everywhere, including civil servants who were previously working from home , for instance. Knowing what we now know of Kano, we can only thank God.

The takeaway in the article, even where I take Tony’s corrections in good faith, is that persons in positions of authority, especially those whose decisions could be the difference between life, and death, must always think through their actions. In the particular case of Covid -19, science, not politics or sentiment, must be allowed to determine government action.

Concluding, knowing full well that my article was not written to spite the Northern governors, Tony was gracious enough to conclude as follows: “I am aware of your sense of nationalism driven by patriotism, and your belief that progress can come through change from robust interactions. This is because nation-building is work in progress. That is how it should be. I only wanted to clarify some of the issues raised in the column the way some of us understand them”.

By Femi Orebe

It is time to think Nigeria anew. This may well be the major fruit of the Corona adversity – paraphrasing Tatalo Alamu in SILENT DAYS, The Nation, Sunday, April 5, 2020.

“Time shall come when the white man’s country will no longer be safe for African leaders to travel to. They will be forced to make positive changes for Africans” Nelson Mandela – 1918 – 2013.

“The ravaging global pandemic has been a dangerous yet revelatory moment in Nigeria.”

“It is dangerous because this deadly pandemic has infected over a million and killed thousands of citizens of our planet. No one seems to know when and how it will end.

“But COVID-19 is also revelatory, a blessing in disguise because it has exposed Nigeria as a country where quality of leadership is of low grade. What we have known but denied for so long is now shown to us as an incontrovertible fact: that the quality of leadership in our country must improve.”

– Archbishop Olubunmi Okogie.

And that improvement must start with President Muhammadu Buhari. Without a scintilla of doubt, the hoopla that accompanied President Buhari in 2015 has vaporised so badly, that calls for a change to his captivating CHANGE mantra is no longer limited to political opposition.

The Covid -19 pandemic offers him, as an individual, a distinct  opportunity not only to change that, but to completely etch his name as the ‘numero uno’ leader in the annals of Nigerian history.

And that he can do  on many fronts  but this piece will interrogate only two.

Nigeria has been likened to a car with a problem: as you finished fixing its brain , a new problem emerges in the clutch. It is, therefore, difficult to blame one particular leader for all our problems as a nation, but President Buhari can, at least, begin a meaningful repair of these existential problems, and start the process of giving Nigeria a new beginning.

For instance, where in the civilised world do you have members of parliament, or congress, earning the following PRIMITIVE allowances which members of our National Assembly happily haul home monthly?

Because there’s not a single one of the current members  with the mojo, like good ol’ senator Uba Sani, who can  volunteer the  current figures, let me quote from  one of  my old  articles : ‘It Is Time To Storm This Bastile’ (2011):

* Basic Salary (B.S) – N2,484,245.50  * Hardship Allowance (50% of B.S) – N1,242,122.70

* Constituency Allowance (200% of B.S) – N4,968,509.00  * Newspapers Allowance (50% of B.S) – N1,242,122.70  * Wardrobe Allowance (25% of B.S) – N621,061.37  * Recess Allowance (10% of B.S) – N248,424.55  * Accommodation (200% of B.S) – N4,968,509.00  * Utilities (30% of B.S) – N828,081.83  * Domestic Staff (70% of B.S) – N1,863,184.1  * Entertainment (30% of B.S) – N828,081.83  * Personal Assistants (25% of B.S) – N621,061.12  * Vehicle Maintenance Allowance (75% of B.S) – N1,863,184.12   * Leave Allowance (10% of B.S) – N248,424.55  * Severance Gratuity (300% of B.S) – N7,452,736.50   * Car Allowance (400% of B.S) – N9,936,982.00.

These must now be much higher given their propensity to do as they like with our resources.

Now a combination of events have fortuitously occured, namely: the corona pandemic and the precipitous fall in the price of crude oil to below $30, that the President should have no problem  thanking the National Assembly members for their kind offer of two months salaries as paliative, but tell them   they should keep it because he is set to erase all those silly allowances. He should then call in the appropriate government agency –  The Revenue Mobilsation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission- which slept off when the members awarded themselves tho allowances – to now wake up  and commence the process of making his decision  a reality as Nigeria can no longer, reasonably, afford that nonsense. If it was possible then, not any more, when Nigeria has become the poverty capital of the world. Probably for the first time ever,  President Buhari would have Nigerians, minus these  selfish legislators, backing him hundred percent.

Nor does the legislature have a monopoly of the outlandish wastage that characterises our  governments , especially at the federal level.The Executive is, in fact,  probably more guilty but because its excesses are not concentrated on  personal benefits like the legislators, attention is not rivetted on it. It is time to go back to the ORONSAYE REPORT which recommended the abrogation of 220  federal agencies  and, once and for all, eliminate those duplicitous and duplicated  agencies. Complaints about our bloated bureaucracy are not new because we  devote too large a chunk of our resources to overhead costs, thus undermining positive  investments.

A lot of savings will thereby  be made from the current humongous cost of governance which can then be invested in  Education, Health, Agriculture, Infrastructure, as well as Human Capital Development, not forgetting social investments, as no less than 70 per cent of the population presently live in poverty.

Sometime in 2019, President Buhari sang panergyrics to true federalism, claiming to be in love with it. If this is true, and we have no reason to doubt him, we have not seen him do a single thing towards  moving  Nigeria in the direction of that political Eldorado. Rather, he has shown a bewildering disdain for anything resembling restructuring, even as many quible on its definition.

The time for him  to do something concrete, and impactful, is now.

If the corona pandemic has not completely concentrated  his attention, he must have observed that despite the great effort of his government to fight  the virus to a standstill, and ameliorate  the conditions foisted on Nigerians by the lockdown,  greater success has been achieved at the state’s level. This is how the highly regarded Archbishop Olubunmi Okogie  captured the incredible efforts of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu in Lagos: “It must be admitted that with a population said to be close to 15 million, if Governor Sanwo-Olu and his team had not provided outstandingly exemplary leadership, we would have had a more dangerous situation on our hands.”  Equally, so impressed was I with Governor Kayode  Fayemi’s sterling efforts in Ekiti, his rainbow coalition of a COVID-19 FUND Committee, and the length to which the Ekiti state government has gone in cushioning the effect of the pandemic on the citizenry, that I couldn’t help writing to him as follows this past week:”E kuse o. Mo fi Oluwa so nyin. Great efforts you ‘ve thrown in. I  only wish other Nigerian  leaders have been half as socially responsible as yourself since 2010″.

Nigerians would recall that Fayemi was the first governor, ever, to make monthly stipends to the elderly, a state policy in Nigeria.

The President must  also have seen how Nigerians are moving back ‘home,’ to give back.

For instance, in addition to his huge  donation to the federal effort, Alhaji Aliko Dangote has since gone back  to Kano to donate  a 500 -bed isolation centre. Nigerians are doing this in their thousands, and that exactly is how a rationally re- configured Nigeria will operate with the result that there will be so much positive inter- regional competition – call it Competitive Federalism – that it wil redound to Nligeria’s overall development and  progress. And if I may ask: why is President Buhari afraid of restructuring? Was he  faking the arrowheads of the then emerging APC when he, as the obvious number one leader, together with his CPC team,  agreed to the party’s inclusion of Power Devolution in its manifesto  which  the party then went on to sell to Nigerians during the campaigns for his election ?

It can bear repetition that restructuring is not synonymous with dismemberment, and the North is far too resource-rich to suffer  any dimunition as  consequence since  that possibility, I suspect, must be weighing heavily on the President.  If he  doubts me , he should consult the duo of Professor Ango Abdullahi  of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) and my good friend, Tony Sani, of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) who will  both convince him, with verifiable statistics,  of the North’s undouted capacity to,  not only  survive, but thrive and  flourish; the only condition being that it must convert its teeming population to a productive energy to drive its vast resources.

This pestilence certainly provides,  for a thinking  government, a golden opportunity to free Nigeria from, to quote Tatalo again, the  “iron cage” the Nigerian  military put it when it thrashed the political structure the founding fathers methodically crafted for  the country.

By doing just these two things, namely, ridding Nigeria of its outlandish, totally unreasonable and economic all unsustainable cost of governance, thereby freeing resources for investment in productive areas and restructuring Nigeria for its constituent  parts to blossom by bringing forth its capabilities, President Muhammadu Buhari would have carved his name in gold on the positive side of our national history.

Femi Orebe

IF we have to eventually shut down our country, then as a government we must be prepared to have some relief for the most ordinary people. “As a government, we must find our own money to fund something for our people. I have  not seen anything at the moment targeted at providing some relief. If we lock up Nigeria today, then we will wake-up trouble, because majority of our citizens go to market every day before they can get something to eat” “So, you lock them up in their houses with a threat of disease and without food. We need to have something, a plan of some sorts, in addition to making sure we don’t lock up the farmers market for example, where people can easily go and buy something, and of course pharmacies. “We need to have some kind of supplies to people, I don’t know how we can achieve this, but we have to be ingenious.This is a time to think deep and wide, to provide for our people, in order for us at least to deal with this challenge.” – Senate President  Ahmed Ibrahim Lawan.

I am sure Barrister VC Mba must have been  spirit led  to  send  me the following mail around 4 a.m last Friday as I write this piece. He wrote as follows from his tel no. +234 803 694 9810: “Kenya President, Uhuru Kenyatta, has just announced 80%  reduction in his salary and urged other leaders to do same. His reason? To free up funds to combat the Coronavirus pandemic!

That, to me is pure nobility of soul, which is, unfortunately, extremely rare in this clime. Pray, where is our much vaunted religiosity? Where are, and what are our billionaires doing while Armageddon looms? Our billionaire pastors, can’t they help their members, at the least, if they won’t other citizens? Our foolishness and primitive greed as a people, religious and non-religious, is being laid bare. The chicks have come to roost!“

I haven’t the slightest doubt Nigerians will join me in thanking Senate President Ahmed  Lawan for his kind  thoughts towards the Nigerian people, something that is totally  alien to most Nigerian politicians to whom we matter only during  elections.

Such generosity of heart!

Unfortunately, that exactly is where our gratitude should end because, no matter how thoughtful  he was, he left completely untouched, the two critical issues  that should now concentrate the minds of members of the National Assembly. Nigeria is  at an unusual  historical juncture that,  if appropriately  seized by our legislators, and others in high places, would see their names emblazoned  in gold, in the annals of Nigerian history.

On these pages this  past week, I berated members of the National Assembly for their failure to  offer even a  miniscule reduction in their mountain -high  salaries and allowances which, meanwhile, were self- awarded, when the Nigerian economy was in recession. This time around, however, they and other public office holders, beginning from Mr President who, together with the VP has once reduced his salary , should need no telling to reduce their pay by a minimum 50 per cent now that:(a) crude oil prices have plummeted to its nadir, and (b) coronavirus, the  killing global pandemic, has made  it inescapable that the economy gets  totally shut down;  with nobody sure as to  when it will end or how prostrate it will leave Nigeria seeing how it has humbled  the super powers with 3.3 million Americans losing their jobs in a space of one week.

Failure on the part of these legislators to voluntarily make this offer, traumatised Nigerians, the  teeming unemployed, and those now  being, willy nilly,  recused from their jobs,  must then find a lasting solution  to the  challenge  unfeeling  National Assembly  members constitute to their well being as citizens of the same  country . The Yoruba have  this saying that: ‘enu ki je, kenu ma wo’,  literally meaning that it is wrong for  one person to be eating  while the other merely looks on. There’s no way, post coronavirus,  Nigeria must continue to pamper these people. This should have been  the senate President’s good tidings to Nigerians if he truly empathised with us.

The next  matter of national interest should be that both chambers of the National Assembly  should now put an end to the ongoing constitutional amendment. It is too little, too late, as panel beating an unworking, indeed, unworkable constitution, will not be in the best interest of the country given our present circumstances. It is also an unnecessary waste of funds which the country can ill afford. They  should  now realise that our unitary system of government, characterised as it is, by a suffocating centre having a stranglehold on the country, will be the greatest problem to confronting this pandemic. It is this centre-owns- it – all mentality that has ensured that successive governments of the federation did nothing to diversify the country’s economy though it must be said that the Buhari administration has tried in this regard even though it is also too little, too late. Otherwise it would not have had to begin scaling down its current budget which is far beyond its capacity to execute

Rather than just amending the  extant constitution, the National Assembly must now see this as an opportune time to strategically re- configure  the country’s structure. I have deliberately left out the word ‘restructure’ as it is known to instigate  constipation in some people. The National Assembly should now work towards returning Nigeria to something near  its pre- independence structure though not strictly in the North,  West, East of old. God bless the late former Vice- President , Dr Alex Ekwueme, who gave us  the idea of a  6 geo – political structure  which has since served the country considerably well. That should now be the new structure with the possibility of alienated communities being permitted  to join their kith and kin in an adjoining geo -political zone.

States in Nigeria, unlike those in the U S, are presently  incapacitated by lack  of funds in their effort to fight the virus since they have not been  adequately challenged  with regards to  generating funds internally. This is most obvious in the near zero testing of persons who have not yet show symptoms which means that we can only be making a guesswork of the actual number of persons already infected. It must be stated though that Nigeria is not alone in this quagmire.

As a result , they have become used to the monthly handouts from  Abuja where, unfortunately, the centre takes the lion share, to be able to  do  which, the present constitution  was deliberately cooked up; packing on  the centre , responsibilities that should  have been  better performed by states and local governments.  Through such  re- engineering , the National Assembly  would have freed  the states thus putting them on the road towards buoyancy  or how many states in Nigeria  today can, like Lagos, budget  N20 billion  to fight coronavirus?

Permit me to briefly state what the old Western Region was able to achieve, in an unencumbered atmosphere, without any federal authority breathing heavily on the government under the leadership of the Avatar, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, as a pointer to how such re-engineering will help galvanise Nigeria’s overall development with each region developing at its own pace.

The following  is how Professor Banji Akintoye captured it: “The gift of free education was the greatest single gift given by Chief  Obafemi Awolowo to us his people, but it was not the only gift. Under his leadership, the Western Region stood out as the number one Region, the pace setter in development in Nigeria. The wide-ranging development achievements included many miles of solidly surfaced roads all over our Region, pipe-borne clean water in many of our towns, the first television station on the African continent, the first public-owned sports stadium, the first industrial estate, imaginative support systems for our cocoa farmers (as a result of which our cocoa farmers became the most productive African farmers on the African continent), farm centres training our youth in modern farming, technical training centres teaching modern job skills to our youth, a broad-based investment corporation with investments in industries, commerce, banking, and real estate (the largest agglomeration of African-owned investment capital in Africa). Very importantly too, our Region was the leader in Nigeria in the development of a democratic society, and a government responsive to its people. On the whole, we in the Western Region were led to dream dreams of greatness in the world and we began to see ourselves as soon able to catch up with industrial world leaders like Japan. And we gave our Region the name “First in Africa”.

All these, and more, can be replicated in all parts of Nigeria if only we would be bold enough to dispense with a structure that for decades have been unhelpful to our country.  Reorganisation is no balkanisation. It is time we move on.

To Hon Olawale Oshun at 70

This is to Honourable Oshun’s incandescent integrity, decency and un-flapping loyalty to causes.

Happy birthday and many happy returns.