The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Orebe

  • Mainagate

    As long as things like this continue unabated, there will be no let to the increasingly vociferous cries about having our co- existence reworked.

    In reaction to a report by Elombah on Abdulrsheed Maina, I commented as follows on Saturday, 16 February, 2013 in a post on Ekitipanupo: “I have this strong suspicion that a good part of this so-called ‘stolen’ pension funds went into that stupendously expensive President Jonathan  2011 campaign. Or how could the police claim inability to capture a man they have  no less than 30 of their own men guiding round the clock?” As soon as the story broke, Elombah had reported as follows:

    Have no doubt about it, Alhaji Abdulra-sheed Maina, the current head of pensions, is beyond the reach of the Nigerian police. Even our senators don’t know what else to do about him. Man pass man! On January 28, 2013, Nigerians were shocked to learn that Yakubu Yusuf, the former head of Pensions, embezzled N23 billion and was fined N750,000, even after he had pleaded guilty. While the case of Yusufu was a rude awakening, Nigerians must prepare for a much bigger shock, at least ten times bigger than Yusuf’s meagre 23 billion naira. The case of Maina who succeeded him, is so mind burgling it makes Yusuf look like a petty thief. He is alleged to have stolen nothing less than N400 billion. He was neither arrested nor questioned by the EFCC’.

    In Nigeria, when you are sitting on N400 billion, you can thumb your nose at anybody. And as always happened then whenever Maina lined up to welcome President Jonathan at  the Abuja airport, he remained a front line celebrity who, even though already declared wanted by the Nigerian police, had a near battalion of  them guarding him round the clock. And why would the Nigerian police not play dumb? In Maina’s own words, big guns in the Nigerian police were daily raking in  N300 Million from the Police Pension fund but hardly ever spending a penny of it on pension.  Wrote Elombah further, “with such an inflammable liquid asset, Maina could burn down the nation. He could raise an army, order arms and fight Nigeria to standstill.” But he simply chose to buy everybody, and anybody that could prove difficult. His alleged heist was so humongous he could raise an army, order arms and fight Nigeria to a standstill. When the Senate issued an arrest warrant for him, the police which should execute the warrant by arresting him, did no such thing. It decided, instead, to declare him wanted.  Even at that, his houses were being guarded by scores of policemen. And only an Inspector-General of Police with two heads, could have approved that without orders from the highest levels of government.

    Not a penny of that heist has been retrieved from Maina as you read this.

    And that is why he has resurfaced as not only a huge problem and an embarrassment to the Buhari government but as an incomparable dent on Nigeria even though, as suggested by a presidential spokesperson, Maina could very well have been ferreted into the country by the yesterday men with whom he had shared billions with, knowing that elections are around the corner. As has become the case with that unfortunate state, there are even news he wants to become the Borno State governor.

    One glaring thing about the Maina fiasco is the downside of President Buhari handling the country’s security apparati almost solely in the hands of some fun loving, money grabbing individuals who, though very close to him, care nothing for his anti corruption war or what becomes of the legacy of such a committed and patriotic head of state who knows, and untiringly verbalises the fact that if Nigeria does not kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria. While he loves, and protects these his people, they care nothing about him. Were they on the same page with this ascetic head of state, we would never have had any “grassgate” and other embarrassing incidents, nor would doubt about the president’s integrity, and seriousness about the anti- corruption war, become a sing song on the social media to the eternal chagrin of those of us who appreciate his genuineness, and incandescent incorruptibility.

    Or who of these top officials surrounding him, for whom he continues  to be serially flagellated, which senior security operative in this country,  could claim he doesn’t know that Maina has landed in “the estate of his forefathers” to continue as he wishes? As I never cease to ask in circumstances such as this, who but a northerner, in this country, would not have since been ferreted out even for half of what Maina is alleged to have stolen? Of all the officials mentioned in Maina’s serpentine, and ignominious return to the civil service, the only southerner of note mentioned is the Head of Service who the Minister of Interior was trying everything to make the fall guy. She was to have been thrown under the bus by these wicked and selfish characters. Haven’t we heard from the EFCC that not only are some of their sister agencies in cahoots with Maina, he has, in fact,  been escorted out of the country by security officials who, on one breath swear allegiance to this country but are extremely disloyal as they have become slaves to money and ethnicity. As long as things like this continue unabated, there will be no let to the increasingly vociferous cries about having our co- existence reworked.

    Those living in denial will easily turn round to claim I have reduced this serious moral fiasco to an ethnic thing but truth be told, that is what it is because, I know for a certainty that our taciturn Attorney-General Malami would never  have stuck his neck out for a non northerner, hiding Maina’s recall on court decisions which he could have simply appealed even if on orders from above, Attorney- General Adoke had decided to sleep on the country’s right of appeal on court decisions Maina must have purchased. It’s obvious from all we have read on this matter that it was driven by the Attorney-General, who I am waiting to see prove that this scam is in our national interest, as he claims, and the interior minister who must have edged on his ministry’s senior staff committee to simply rubber stamp the infamy. And to worsen matters, we saw an ethnically challenged civil service commission asking the Head of Service to serve merely as a post master in delivering Maina’s recall letter as she was explicitly directed not to add a word.

    It is important that our northern compatriots wean themselves of this their silly entitlement mentality, forever believing that they own this president and can therefore get away with anything, even murder. I have news for them. This president belongs to all of us. If, for nothing else besides humane consideration for those he believes he trusts, having been there with him during his time in political Siberia, and therefore reticent  about peremptorily dispensing with their services whatever their guilt they think they are more important than the rest of us  who trust this president, I say they lie. From this moment, they must come to the realisation that millions of Nigerians daily agonise over how they are making a normally difficult job much more difficult for him, mindlessly throwing him into positions where a thousand darts are simultaneously aimed at his solar plexus by members and supporters of a thoroughly lecherous party of buccaneers, rogues and serial loafers, who believe that our memories are so short we would not mind returning, so soon, to our vomit. PDP must recognise that  it is an absolutely irredeemable party, and that, short of an atomic bomb being hauled straight our medulla oblongata, it will continue  to remain  in disarray, and out of power,  for a very king time to come.

    Finally, it is particularly gratifying to note that one good thing to come out of this thoroughly nauseating incident was how very rapidly, but uncharacteristically, President Buhari acted decisively, directing that the ogre be promptly yanked off the Nigerian civil service. It is hoped that all pending issues gathering dust in his office will now be equally promptly dealt with so that a new chapter of diligent dealing could open up and his party, the APC, could thus be saved from all the unintended consequences of his delayed actions.

     

  • The Nigerian girl-child on my mind

    Nigeria’s Rights of the Child prescribes that all children must have minimum of nine years of education.

    What manner of meddlesome law makers do we have in this country? If they can continue to rip the nation’s resources apart, unperturbed , earning ludicrous emoluments not even the U. S President or the British Prime Minister earns, must they also continue to be a cog in the wheel of the anti corruption war? What is their own if EFCC  is asking  a house wife to explain the sources of her unearned wealth which runs into billions of naira? What right do they have to poke their noses into executive functions so annoyingly, they are asking banks to unfreeze accounts already countermanded by the anti graft agency? Aren’t they bothered about Nigerians perceiving them as apostles of corruption?

    In order to protect the identity of the young subject of this article, the piece will be slightly edited, and the authorship shall not be ascribed. The piece is a reaction by a concerned, highly respected Nursing Professional, a former university teacher, now well into her 80’s and came as a reaction to a similar harrowing story of an 11 year old also in the North of our country.

    That other story briefly.

    In a letter she captioned: “The Painful Story of My Life”, the 11 year old wrote: “… I was married off at age 11. In my village, most of us were married by age 12 to preserve our purity. I am still not sure what that means. I never thought it would happen to me because my parents allowed me to attend school instead of hawking and I loved school a lot. I loved school because I loved coming first and being ahead of the boys in my class. I was in JS2 when my mother started talking about getting me married. I honestly thought she was joking until my uncle brought his friend to our house as my suitor.

    My suitor, Malam Faruk was a shoe seller and cobbler in Zaria. He was 42 years old and my parents felt he would make a good husband. I neither understood what they were talking about nor did I understand what I would do with a husband. So that’s how Malam Faruk started coming to our house with wraps of suya and juice from the city. I liked the suya but I didn’t want a husband. He said he had 2 wives and he wanted to make me his third. He said his last daughter was in JS2 like me. He told me that when we got married I would stop going to school and bear him beautiful babies. I thought he was mad. I wanted to stay in school and become a nurse. I loved nurses in their immaculate white uniforms and how they had the solution to all problems at the health centre in my village.” She did not escape until she had had a boy who, according to her,  could very well be an Almajiri today.

    I digress.

    Mama in her reaction writes:

    “What do we do as a nation, a member of  the civilised community? A country where children as young as six years are given out in marriage? Let me quickly share my  experience of child marriage. I always like to have a child from my home town with me in Ibadan to send to school. The pre requisite qualifications are that such a kid must be brilliant and from a financially disadvantaged home.

    This was how this pretty 14 year old girl was brought  to me by my brother who told me the girl’s family was a returnee from Yola, victim of Boko Haram. Her mother is an Hausa  woman from Taraba State. Her father died shortly after returning home.

    Let us call the girl’s name Jolade for the purpose of this discussion.

    This was in January 2017. We got a school  for Jolade and  was put in Primary 3!

    After observing her behaviour for a couple of weeks, I started my investigation of her background even though she had, herself,  told me a lot.

    Below are my findings which are very pertinent to our on going discussion on child marriage.

    Jolade’s parents separated while she was about five years old.

    On the advice of some people, her mother who had custody gave her away  in marriage to a man aged about 45 because she couldn’t  cope with her upkeep.

    The husband bought a goat for the child wife and the husband ‘s family instructed him not to have sex with his wife until the goat gave birth. He obeyed.

    The day the goat gave birth, he had sex with the child who was  then about six years old. Jolade told me she bled  a lot, could not walk for days, and that she was always crying.  No one cared for her. Her husband always threatened to beat her if she did not stop crying during intercourse.

    The husband,  his family and Jolade’s mother subsequently held a meeting  and agreed that the husband should not have sex with her again until the goat’s babies  grew horns. The man refused and  continued to rape and  sexually assault Jolade in spite of her pain, agonising crying and protests which was literally on a  daily basis.

    In the meantime, her farther was looking everywhere for her. The mother  told him that she also did not know her where about.  The father the went to her mother’s village in Taraba State to lodge a report with her grand mother with an ultimatum to produce his daughter. The grand mother finally rescued Jolade and brought her back to her father. Her ordeal lasted from shortly before Christmas of one year to after Easter of the second year. She said that her husband bought Christmas  dresses for her two times. She was probably married for about 20 months, a period she described  as hell”.

    Mama continues:

    Is there any law that can protect the girl child from predators who “marry” children  as wives?

    Yes, there is. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of  the Child describes a child as a human being under the age of 18 years. The African Union adopts the same definition and Nigeria is a signatory to both q laws. Nigeria, represented by President Babangida ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1993 shortly before he stepped aside. I believe the bill for domestication of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was  submitted to the National Assembly before he left.

    There were, understandably, objections from those who marry kids as wives. A lot of political manoeuvre went on for many years before the bill was passed and sent to the 36 States. I am certain not all the 36 States have domesticated, or would domesticate it. States in  Southern Nigeria have since done so.

    What is the relevance of this to our discussion on child marriage?

    Nigeria’s Rights of the Child prescribes  that  all children must have minimum  of nine years of education. It also lists child marriage, making children to hawk, among other things as child abuse.

    In essence child marriage violates the rights of the child by not allowing them to stay in school and subjecting  them to marriage for which they are not physically,  psychologically,  and emotionally prepared. In many cases, the right of the girl child to life is violated when the kids die as a result of pregnancy, child birth and some other illnesses that arise from this unfair, and illegal, practice.

    The practice of child marriage constitutes the SHAME of any nation which cannot keep to the spirit and letters of international protocols to protect her children;  but which she ratified with all the  fun fare. It is also an act of gross irresponsibility at the national level, that Nigeria cannot obey her own rules to keep the girl child safe from these predators.

    There are other laws in Nigeria that stipulate the minimum education our kids should acquire and it is only fair that those who deliberately abort these by their predatory and very irresponsible libidonal  predilections should be made to face the law.

    And my question: which is the culprit here: culture, religion or plain ignorance?

     

  • Olorunfunmi Bashorun’s refreshing take on restructuring

    On local governments, he asks, why should states, after creating local governments, head to Abuja for confirmation, what they call listing, by the National Assembly?

    I  once called him the Exemplar on these pages when he demonstrated he was so different from the Lagos PDP goons amongst who he, unfortunately, found himself. Even as pioneer Chairman of the party in the state, he couldn’t help quitting. Reference to Chief Olorunfunmi Bashorun in the column today is a direct consequence of the ongoing dialogue between ace columnist, Segun Ayobolu of The Nation, and the highly regarded Hon Wale Oshun, Chairman, Afenifere Renewal Group, which a well respected Afenifere chieftain, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, was reported to have called Afenifere Rebel Group at a recent public outing. To imagine now that  our Afenifere titans were not only there with us at ARG’s maiden outing at the IITA, IBADAN RETREAT which, with considerable justification, could be called its birthplace, but, ALL undertook to let bygone be bygone, and for all rancour to cease, and perish henceforth.

    How time changes!

    Let us capture the two disputants’ point of departure as to what they think would have been Awo’s position on the recent Ibadan Summit. Hon Oshun in his piece indicated that there are two main planks in Ayobolu’s article: first was on the call for a return to parliamentary system of government which Awo is known to have shot down on basis of the limited ‘ladder’ theory, while the second deals with the call to return to a regional structure of government which he would also have jettisoned since he preferred the French system to both the British and the American systems, besides its being too expensive.  Arguing, pro or con, is not the intention of the column today. I therefore go straight to Chief  Olorunfunmi Bashorun’s highly simplified, and refreshing views on restructuring in a recent interview (The Sun, 6 October, 2017).

    According to him, the first subject on his recent memorandum to the APC restructuring committee is about devolution of power which he describes as surrendering some of the powers and functions on the Exclusive list to the Concurrent list, to enable the state, and by extension, the local governments, have more responsibilities. He talked here of areas about which the National Assembly should make appropriate laws  e.g  power,  where he opines  that states should have the authority to generate, transmit and distribute electricity. Electricity, he says, must be on the Concurrent list. Also, fingerprint identification and criminal records, labour, industrial relations, conditions, safety and welfare of labour, industrial dispute and the prescription of  minimum wage should be removed from the Exclusive list explaining that fixing N18,000 as minimum wage for  workers in Lagos as well as for those in states like Kebbi, Nasarawa, or in Ebonyi states is  grossly unrealistic. Tourism, and federal roads should all go to the Concurrent list. All these changes, these additional responsibilities at state and local government levels, should be reflected in a new revenue sharing formula, he opines.

    He next spoke on regionalism about which he says he still stands o his position in a paper he wrote in 2000 wherein he was emphatic there should be nothing like going back to regionalism as this will unduly overload the system with new expenditure items like regional governor or administrator, one or two regional administrative houses or bodies with all their retinue of appointees. There will also be the judiciary and all the necessary paraphernalia for those arms of the regional government. But much more irksome, he says, is the current statutory states structure. For instance, he asks: in the Northwest, will the man from Sokoto or Kebbi, or the one from Zamfara want to come and report in Kaduna, his new regional hub? We in Lagos, he says emphatically, will never like to go to Ibadan nor would people in Ogun, Ekiti, or Ondo. When you  go to the East, he continues, are you saying those in Abakaliki  will now to Enugu, or Benin to go and report at Port Harcourt; states in the  North East to  all head to Maiduguri and those in North-central to  go and report in Jos? Regionalism, he concluded, will just not work. Rather, the six geopolitical zones should be included in the constitution to serve as unit of sharing national preferments.

    On local governments, he asks, why should states, after creating local governments, head to Abuja for confirmation, what they call listing, by the National Assembly? Under our extant constitution, he contends, there are already provisions for the administration of local governments with the state Houses of Assembly squarely in charge. In his opinion, if we want the local government system to function properly, states should create them as provided for in the constitution and be fully in charge through legislation by the State Assembly.  And there should be nothing like local government autonomy. Autonomy, he says, is tied to federal allocations.  Whenever the federal allocation arrives the state, it goes into the ‘Joint Account and Allocation committee’, where it is shared. This is where the appropriate laws should kick in, if it is discovered that any state governor has tampered with local government funds. Such governors should be tried and jailed once they leave office and their immunity lapses. Concluding, he believes that Local governments should return fully to states and all federally allocated revenue should be distributed among the federating units on the basis of equality of states and population. State Houses of Assembly should monitor local government funds and where being tampered with by the executive the appropriate laws should be applied.  They should perform their oversight functions and damn the consequences, if they are themselves, not hand in glove, with the governors.

    In his view, Restructuring should enable states cut their cloth according to their size. You cannot, reasonably expect a local government chairman in Gombe State to earn the same salary with his Lagos State counterpart, just like its governor cannot earn the same salary as that of Lagos state whose IGR per month is in the region of N30B. There is no way you can compare the enormity of the responsibilities of a Lagos State governor, or that of Rivers State with that of very many other state governors. According to him, it is most unreasonable of the Revenue Allocation Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission to have so approved.

    Chief Bashorun, however, concluded on a very novel idea which will, if implemented, not only correct the gross imbalance in wealth distribution in the country, but could very well stop this monthly pilgrimage to Abuja by state governments, complete with their begging bowls, looking for  handouts. It is his considered view that with the huge amounts daily going to owners of oil blocks in the country, and with every oil block making a minimum of N4Billion daily according to a former senator of the Federal Republic, government should embark upon a complete redistribution of oil blocks such that one each goes to the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory. Specific functions, he suggested, must be set for the revenue accruing from these, just as there should be an agency, domiciled in the office of the Vice President, to monitor and oversee compliance. Also, 10 per cent of the funds must go to the local governments to energise them and rapidly increase economic activities at the local government level.

    I believe that this hard-headed suggestion deserves a serious interrogation by government, especially,  the Nigerian Governors’ Forum which should be able to muster the appropriate effort, and do the necessary leg work, to see this to fruition. I believe it is doable with appropriate discussions with present owners, especially the international oil companies which might be, understandably, uncooperative, holding tight to the terms of their respective contracts. With diplomacy, and considerable quid pro quo, I do not think this should be impossible for a sovereign nation which, after all, is not intent on using the Zimbabwean model to deny the contractual owners. Also, if the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) is passed, inclusive of a compulsory proportional payment to the oil bearing communities, states should have no problems with the communities and this will go a long way in ensuring that states no longer have to wait for bailout funds from the federal government.

    In concluding, I think, and do hope, that Chief Bashorun has said enough here to make the Southwest take another look at the decisions reached on restructuring at the Ibadan Summit. The suggestion about oil block redistribution does not, in my view, vitiate talk about fiscal federalism as mineral bearing states’ ownership could very well be put at only about 50 per cent, or thereabout. After all, the federal government has committed huge resources to developing the assets.

  • Still on Mr. Justice Ayo Salami (Rtd)

    Still on Mr. Justice Ayo Salami (Rtd)

    If the Nigerian judiciary regresses into infamy again, it will not be for lack of trying, on the part of a Hon Justice Ayo Salami.

    Courtesy the leaked, Minister of Petroleum Resources (state) letter to the president, we saw again this past week, another of the in-your-face, ‘we own Buhari’ insubordinations by senior public servants of northern extraction. Before I return to this next week, God willing, let me say it is maladies such as these that are fuelling the instability currently ravaging the country. It will be a big shame if these people do not realise the embarrassment they are causing the president and how very difficult they make the efforts of those of us down South who, in spite of everything, especially the ethnocentric appointments Nigerians see all over the place, we still continue to stick by him solely on account of his integrity which they are doing everything to diminish in the eyes of those of us who see President Buhari as àbout the only one man army holding Nigeria back from being brutally devoured by rapacious corruption.
         I digress.
    In continuing Mr Justice Ayo Salami (RTD) saga, I present below my article of 24 October, 2010, inviting the incorruptible jurist to take over one of the high profile election cases of the era.

     EKITI: I SALUTE MR JUSTICE AYO SALAMI

    igerians, and the judiciary especially, can never thank Mr Justice Ayo Salami and his brother justices on the Fayemi-Oni case enough,  for lifting that arm of government from the pit where sleaze and lack of character have combined to put it. I salute the courage and the cheer intrepidity of a man of character who neither money nor any insufferable superior authority could unfaze. I salute what we hope is the new face of the Nigerian judiciary: a judiciary which no overzealous, rambunctious ‘political has-been’, a bull in a china shop really,  will ‘fehin gbe pon’,  that is, treat with impunity; which no influence -peddling, friendship-exploiting Kabiyesi will  again overawe and which no  feckless, self-centred local  judicial ‘big man’ will be able to corrupt. Justice Ayo Salami has written his name in gold in the annals of the Nigerian judiciary despite an overarching, near-occultic stranglehold.

    In order to demonstrate the depth of the morass in the judiciary before 15 October, 2010, I  shall do no further than  recall here, my article of  Sunday, 23 May, 2010.

     

    Why Justice Salami must assume jurisdiction in the Ekiti case

    The PDP, Ekiti chapter, completely misdirected itself when it took full page newspaper adverts to celebrate the judiciary in the wake of its so-called victory at the ‘Hammer’ tribunal.

    The judiciary should be left to sink or swim solely on its record of  performance bearing in mind that for now that institution  has become analogous to the Nigerian army  which General Salihu, a former Chief of Army staff , once described  as an army of anything goes. It is a shame really that it has come to this because, for every infidel therein, there are thousands of men and women of good conscience.

    But for Christ’s sake, why do our courts fail ever so miserably at these high profile cases?  How could a judge, decide to protect an Odili, in perpetuity, from defending himself in a case of sleaze preferred against him by the EFCC or why would any judge quash a 170- charge case against an Ibori even long before he could put a foot forward in his own defence?.  When a judge claims that a man who presented as exhibit, his own severed leg, backed by a medical certificate, has not sufficiently proved that there was violence at an election what was the poor man supposed to do? Present the coffin in which he was buried?

    Why, for instance, does a judge continue to be assigned these delicate cases when his decisions are being routinely upturned by higher courts as in the case of the judge who handled the first Ogun tribunal where nearly all his decisions were nullified at the higher court? This is why many believe that our courts now operate like cults. And the larger political implications become crystal clear when you realise that most of the cases  in the South-West tribunals are being handled by judges from the North in whose courts, judgments allegedly written by some senior lawyers and retired judges of Yoruba extraction are merely read by them as  their decisions.. For now, Nigerians are eagerly awaiting their abracadabra in the Aregbesola Vs Oyinlola case in the Osun Election tribunal where massive over-voting were not only recorded in many places but  where a huge number of  form EC8A were blank while for same centres, form EC8B have figures as high as 866, instead of a maximum of 500 votes, recorded  as in ward A1, Anthony Primary school ,Okuku, where Oyinlola hails from.

    This is not the first time the judiciary would sink this low only that last time around Justice Abdullahi, as President of the Court of Appeal, quickly assumed jurisdiction in the Edo and Ondo cases. That way he was able to mitigate the damage.

    It would therefore appear like Justice Salami already has his job cut out for him.

    Like the Nigerian soldier who puts his life on the line for his country, Hon. Mr. Justice Salami, as President of the Court of Appeal, must be prepared to put his integrity on the line especially in the Ekiti case about which an online news agency recently made serious allegations, naming names, price and how and where millions of naira were  allegedly changed into dollars to facilitate things.

    Justice Salami is advised to take over not because anybody knows which way his court will rule but because Nigerians truly deserve to know whether there are any redeeming features left in the Nigerian judiciary or whether next time around, they should better prepare to fight their own electoral wars the ‘Adedibu way’, machete for machete.

    Making this accusation in such a ramifying manner may be awkward logic, and a great disservice to  Father Farmer, my  Logic teacher at the University of Ife  some four decades ago, but  go back a little into  the recent  history of the Nigerian judiciary and  identify what else  is common to  the likes of  Naron, Bwala, Hamman. In one of their courts, the lead lawyer for the respondent was assiduously romancing the tribunal Chairman via telephone calls. This was reported to the NJC where it has since been dead and buried.

    The Nigerian judiciary, has become a helpless victim in the marauding hands of political godfathers, and some senior members of the profession who  use their huge profiles,  and standing with government, to dangle promotion  to either the Appeal or Supreme Court before tribunal judges. Nothing less than Justice Salami’s personal integrity can now satisfy millions of Nigerians who have come to regard judicial miscarriage as the norm in our courts.

    If judges, who are huge stakeholders in the Nigerian judiciary would not be perturbed enough by the shenanigans that now pass muster as justice in our courts, and would also permit transient political office holders to buy justice in their courts, then so be it.

    If, unlike in  the days of the Esho’s, the Oputa’s, and such other outstanding jurists, there are no longer men in whom we can repose confidence, trusting  that nothing other than the law would determine their judgments, then we as Nigerians will be more than satisfied to know that truly, the courts are no longer the last hope of the common man. If the Nigerian judiciary regresses into infamy again, it will not be for lack of trying, on the part of a Hon Justice Ayo Salami.

  • South West states are already restructuring

    This unity has prompted the Lagos State government into joining Odu’a Investment Limited as its 6th owner-member

    This column is dedicated today to two iconic Ekiti leaders: Chief Oladeji Fasuan, who will be 86 on 1 October, 2017 and Chief Dele Falegan, former Central Bank of Nigeria’s Director of Research, who is our guest writer today. Happy birthday, in advance, Sir, and may you both continue to receive the favour of God Almighty. Amen.

    Chief Falegan writes:

    The meeting of Southwest governors which was held in Ado Ekiti in January, 2017 has laid the foundation for restructuring in Nigeria. That, incidentally, was at the initiative of Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN), under the leadership of late Dipo Famakinwa whose memory must be cast in gold in the history of the region. Since that meeting, the governors have been rotating their meetings in their various state capitals to discuss matters pertaining to the development of the region, intent on making it a preferred destination to visit, live, work and invest. For instance, the common heritage of the states –the Odua Investment Ltd – has been re-organised, and further strengthened to jump start increased economic, industrial, commercial and tourism development, as well as housing, agriculture and allied industries.

    This unity has prompted the Lagos State government into joining Odu’a Investment Limited as its 6th owner-member.  The financial and legal transactions advisers appointed by both parties, i.e. Lagos and Odu’a Investment have since completed the valuation of Odu’a assets for smooth operation. This is to say that the innovation by DAWN, and, ipso facto, the region’s development,  is being  appropriately driven, not through cries of war, but by some young professionals, daily interrogating the good vision of the West, at its DAWN headquarters in a Cocoa House, Ibadan, built by Awo. The mere fact that the South East, as captured on page 41 of The Nation newspaper of 13th September, 2017, visited the DAWN office in Ibadan, intent on replicating its programme for regional integration, is a sign of regional cooperation and not disintegration.

    The Ibadan “Yoruba Summit” of 8th September 2017, further reinforces my point that restructuring, by whatever name so called, is gathering momentum in the West. Whether as devolution of power or true federalism, it speaks to the fact that the business of governing Nigeria, henceforth, will be restructured. For example, Governor Bello Masari of Katsina State believes in devolution of power, as far as the central government is not weakened. He went further to say (rightly too) that governors should not be earning same salaries, giving Lagos and Kano as states whose revenue are far bigger than his. He, however, contradicted himself when he went on to say he does not understand what restructuring means.

    One of the areas where there has been much imbalance in the extant federal structure is the use of landmass as one of the indices for Revenue Allocation formula. I will also like to observe as follows on the present allocation formula which leaves the federal government awash with too much funds.

    • The present vertical allocation formula is not in the interest of the larger Nigerian state;
    • According to reports from the Federal Ministry of Finance, it is evident that not all revenues are being paid into the Federation Account. The FAAC is being short-changed by certain revenue generating MDAs such as Customs & Excise, the NNPC (which many believe is a parallel government), and the Immigration Service, among others;
    • The federal government is not transparent enough in the management of the federation account
    • There is arbitrariness in the management of the Special Funds;
    • Some of the indices being used for the horizontal formula have become irrelevant in view of recent developments. For instance, Global Warming has made a mess of climatic restrictions to certain geographical locations as incidents of flood ravages now cut across virtually all states;
    • Some of the indices being used are at no cost to the states benefiting from them. For instance, land mass without land use is meaningless, yet some states benefit unduly from this. Land utilisation and density is obviously more appropriate than land mass;
    • On the social development indices, private schools enrolment and private health institutions do not form part of the indicators, whereas state governments have, and fulfil responsibilities towards these institutions;
    • There are indications that the social development indices being used are already outdated and due for review.

    Correcting the above will also constitute restructuring and the ongoing constitutional amendment should see some items on the exclusive list become concurrent.

    It is mischievous to turn the debate on restructuring into an abstraction as former President Obasanjo recently did.  He said what did simply because, even though he was a civilian president, he actually employed militricks to breach and overrule the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMFC) its full statutory power and independence, by over ruling its recommended, new revenue formula.

    The trouble with “General, Chief” President” Olusegun Obasanjo is that when he abandons reasoning,  he becomes obstinate;  the more he is in error, the angrier he becomes.

    The Dasuki 1976 Report which recommended 774 local governments was self-serving and was deliberately meant to favour the north. For instance, Lagos State has an estimated population of 21 million, while Kano’s estimated population was 14 million. Despite this huge discrepancy, Lagos has 20 local government areas while Kano has 44 on the basis of land mass index. Yet two states were created out of Kano State on this same basis of land-mass. According to Finance Minister, Kemi  Adeosun, Lagos state generates 55% of VAT in Nigeria while Kano generates 5%, yet Kano receives as much as Lagos from this item of revenue.  The present revenue allocation formula of 55% federal, 24% states, 20% local government, 1% FCT development form, 2% ecology, 2% national reserved (stabilisation) and use of land-mass as an index of revenue allocation is absolutely inequitable and  grossly unfair.

    The recent revelation about unremitted / uncollected revenue shows that what is not accounted for is so humongous it could outstrip what currently goes into the federation account. For instance, JAMB collected an unprecedented eight billion naira within eight months of 2017. NIMASA collected four billion in 2015 and collected 20 billion in 2016. NCC paid 133 billion naira to the federation account. As an aside, given that these are at no cost to any particular state, is it right to distribute these on the basis of land-mass; is it equitable? These are some of the reasons the north does not want the country restructured.

    The criminality involved in the non remittance of revenue by past management of those agencies is why Prof  Itse Sagay’s cry for a special crime court, the relentless actions against corruption by Magu (who some people want removed for selfish reasons) and the indefatigable efforts of the Minister of  Finance  –   her various initiatives and measures such as BVN, the incomparable anti-smuggling devices of Colonel Hammed Ali(retd) of the Customs, put together with  funds seized from “our compatriot rogues”, will add quite a lot to the revenue accruing to the consolidated federation account which could then be used for revamping the economy. Not only will the economy return to the path of growth, there will be enough money to pay pensioners’ huge out standings and stop the embarrassing relay of “strike, strike, strike”.

    For those who think Yorubas are cowards, or who, like the Emir of Kano, believe that they are the problem of Nigeria, I advise they learn from  these three prominent world leaders:

    Wilson Churchill who said “it is better to jaw jaw than to war-war”;

    1. F. Kennedy – “Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent revolutions inevitable” and

    Cardinal Okogie – “Go to the ants thou sluggard, consider its ways and be wise”.

    Finally, may I again ask Emir Sanusi of Kano, a former governor of CBN, and the Central Bank of Nigeria itself, why since the  Emir’s Indian and Pakistani friends abandoned the construction of CBN branch in Ado Ekiti more  than 15 years ago, the bank has left Ekiti-State the only one in Nigeria without a branch of Central Bank?

    I am a whistle blower with integrity.

  • A plea to those holding pade ojoodide to please release him in the name of god

    Why would they want to confirm Magu, their supposed tormentor-in-chief, as substantive chairman of EFCC?

    In full disclosure, what you are about to read, dear Nigerians, and the world at large, is part of the efforts lined up by Ekitipanupo and  the  Ojoodide family for the release of  MR OLAPADE OJOODIDE, a proud member of our forum who was last seen by family and friends on Saturday, 22 April, 2017. Needless to say, this has brought us, not only indescribable agony, but an unpalatable gnashing of teeth. One can only begin to imagine in what state this has left his darling wife and adoring children.

    Since this unfortunate event occurred, Ekitipanupo has not rested easy. We have, together with members of Pade’s family, met with senior officials of the Nigerian security community, organised prayer sessions and, indeed, held a press conference on 14, July 217 which was the 83rd day of his abduction. At the Press conference, we said the following: “Pade was, until his disappearance, a Regional Director, South-South, with Dangote Cement Plc, and was based in Warri, Delta State.  On Saturday April 22, 2017, he travelled to Akwa, Anambra State, and with three other directors of the company attended an official event hosted by one of the company’s major distributors. He later went back to Asaba where he checked out of the hotel before heading to Port Harcourt.

    Nothing has been heard from him since.

    The case was immediately reported to the Rivers State Police Command which says it has since been investigating the matter but without a breakthrough. The police command described the case as an abduction and has recovered his phone and the official car, a black Prado Jeep, with Registration Number: KSF 580 DN.

    We use this opportunity to call on the Federal Government of Nigeria, the IG, the Rivers State Government and all the good people of Nigeria to come to our aid in the search and rescue of our brother as any further could lead to grave consequences.”

    This current phase of our efforts includes, but is not limited, to the following:

    Distribution of Online & Flyers to various Social Media platforms.

    2X2 newspaper inserts in many newspapers  –

    Television appearances, and use of Blogs/Bloggers.

    We plead with the federal government, the Dangote Group, the security agencies, individuals and those holding Pade to please, IN THE NAME OF GOD, RELEASE HIM NOW.

    BENEFITS OF EARLY CONVERSION AND CONSECRATION

    One of the wonderful individuals the good Lord divinely accorded me the opportunity of being a classmate with at Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, 59/63 set, is the Very Rev Jide Iyiola, who the Almighty God must have deliberately compensated his small frame with a tremendous apostolic gift.  He recently turned 70, and retired, in the tradition of the Anglican Communion, at the Anglican church of the Ascension, Akobo, Ibadan on 31 July, 2017; an event that was well attended by a  good number of our classmates, from far  and  wide.

    Rev. Iyiola has been a mighty blessing to our gracefully aging group, who were boys only yesterday and all, but a few of who by His grace, have now clocked the biblical age.

    Ardent readers of this column would remember my aversion to Whatsapp. I must report, however, that the Man of God,  is fast changing that since that is on what platform, he daily feeds  us with his wonderful ministrations. A few of us have since persuaded him to agree to be a blessing to the entire world, in this age of the internet, by securing a Sunday column in any Nigerian newspaper to spread the word and I have offered to assist in that quest. I am therefore appealing to any interested newspaper editor to please contact him @babajideiyiola@yahoo.com. He/she would thus enable this trained entomologist, a great opportunity to minister to, not insects, but humanity at large.

    It is my pleasure to present the reader with the latest of Venerable Iyiola’s ministrations with the above caption as subject matter.

    “Walking with God from a tender age prevents us from evil programmes of the devil for the world. People that begin their journey with God enjoy peace, success and the promises of God.

    Joash, as early as age seven, started walking with God. What of people like Josiah, Joseph, Joshua, Timothy etc; they all consecrated their lives to God from their youth.

    What is your excuse for not serving the Lord? You want to taste life? Well, there is nothing in this world to taste more than evil. If God could pick Josiah when he was only eight years old, what are you waiting for?

    Parents! We need to realise that hell is for both young and old (Rev: 20:12- 15). The only place where we can get breakthrough without sorrow is in the Lord Jesus. Outside Christ, there are only sickness, sorrow and failure.

    Don’t leave your children at home when going to the church. Look at the way you are doing your best so that they can be successful; why can’t you struggle more for their salvation. Don’t buy clothes that expose them to sin. Correct them early before it is too late.

    Do you want to be successful in life? Retrace your footsteps back to Jesus today.

    If all of us can start our journey early with God, this country will not be in this mess.

    It is not too late to come to Jesus today with genuine repentance because a life without Christ is a life full of crisis.

    Have a great and blessed day in Jesus name.”

    IN NIGERIA, DO SENATORS, ESPECIALLY THE MORE LOQUACIOUS ONES, HAVE TWO HEADS?

    In a number of posts on the Ekitipanupo web portal between yours truly and the inimitable Femi Falana SAN this past week, with the Kanu brouhaha as the subject and the Silk, understandably, insisting on the primacy of rule of law, I held, almost adamantly, to the belief that a large proportion of extant Nigerian laws are lagging behind our current realities. While lawyers like Femi Falana and Ayo Turton are exuberant about the primacy of fundamental human rights, I am ad idem with the Nigerian higher bench when in Asari Dokubo Vs FGN it held that as follows:  “A close scrutiny of the charge and documentary evidence available reveals offences that are a real threat to National Security. They involve creating a situation where the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria could yield to force or expose the public to serious danger… Where National Security is threatened or there is the real likelihood of it being threatened Human rights or the individual rights of those responsible take second place. Human rights or individual rights must be suspended until the National security can be protected or well taken care of.”

    Isn’t this the same scenario – laws lagging behind critical realities –  playing out in the cases of  Senators  Godswill Akpabio and Nwaoboshi, both  members of  PDP,  where EFCC invitations to officials  of  Akwa Ibom  state, and  Nwaoboshi have so far been treated with benign neglect, with none appearing and the Akwa Ibom Secretary to government seriously warning EFCC to keep off even as these two senators are being investigated for corruption in matters involving billions of naira?

    Put briefly, in the Akpabio case, seven times, the Akwa Ibom State Government has blocked the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) from investigating  its officials in the probe of  Akpabio  over his alleged diversion of public funds running into N108.1B, reported to the EFCC through several petitions by Leo Ekpenyong, a lawyer.

    Nwaoboshi, in his own case, is in trouble with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for obtaining a N1.2billion loan from the Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM) to buy electrical equipment but he allegedly ended up diverting the facility to personal use. There are others including the purchase of refurbished, in place of new construction equipments for some local governments in Delta State.

    Are these the senators Nigerians expect to pass anti-corruption laws? Meanwhile there are about 18 of them under one probe or the other by the EFCC. Why would they want to confirm Magu, their supposed tormentor-in-chief, as substantive chairman of EFCC? But, I ask: Is Efcc so helpless or the Federal Government so unserious in her anti- corruption war that it could be so treated? Kudos to the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, for his new, absolutely revolutionary reforms. Let us now see if the 8th National Assembly will update our laws to meet current realities or it will like to go down in history as the cog in the wheel of the Muhammadu Buhari anti-corruption war.

  • President Buhari’s 2nd term: where will the votes come from?

    “The president does not know 45 out of 50, for example, of the people he appointed and I don’t know them either, despite being his wife of 27 years.” “Some people are sitting down in their homes folding their arms only for them to be called to come and head an agency or a ministerial position,” “He is yet to tell me (about 2019) but I have decided that if things continue like this up to 2019, I will not go out and campaign again or ask any woman to vote like I did before. I will never do it again,” – the President’s wife, Aisha Buhari.

    In his reaction to Senator Aisha Alhassan’s recent effusions regarding President Buhari and 2019, Ibikunle Amosun, governor of Ogun state, and a close ally of the president, opined that only ill-health can stop the president from contesting. My prayer is, God will restore President Buhari to perfect health to an extent his health will not even be an issue in the elections.

    The real question to ask, however, should be: where will the votes come from to earn him a second term? Let us examine the man and his government, his persona, approach to politics, appreciation and inclusiveness as a way of cohering party platforms. Also, how has he treated the various individuals and caucuses that saw him to victory and, finally, how far can a resurgent PDP burrow into his areas of solid support, his base.

    Relying exclusively on what I knew of contestant Buhari up until 2014/15, and seeing how President Jonathan had firmly enthroned systemic corruption in the country, I wrote on these pages, shortly before the APC primaries of December, 2015, that Nigeria needed Buhari more than he needed her.

    But can I wholeheartedly repeat that statement today?

    Apart from his incandescent integrity, I will obviously think twice before repeating those words. President Buhari showed far too early in his administration that he will not be his own man when, in what many saw as a dig at Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a man who gave a leg and an arm for his victory, he permitted himself to say he was for nobody, but for all, as if anybody said he should be beholden to Tinubu even as Nigerians knew only too well that the gentleman had earned himself a decent  recognition in a Buhari administration, rather than be used and dumped, as former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, also recently complained about, with both of them yielding place to Buhari’s blood relations and sundry Mafioso.

     By the time President Buhari ended his ‘search’ for would -be ministers,  many of his blood relations and assorted Hausa/ Fulani/Kanuris, to almost total exclusion of others,  have taken over the government with literally the  country’s entire security apparatti in their hands. That was how he effectively alienated the most principled, rather than the merely euphoric, and very vulnerable portion of his electoral support.

    We will have to wait to see how that will play out in 2019.

    If the above was, understandably, mostly resented in the Southwest, what of the North central which the progressives were winning for the very first time? Political pragmatism should have told APC to cede the senate presidency to the nPDP after CPC and APC had taken the Presidency and the vice presidency. That is how easily the extremely polarising executive –legislative face off which has bedevilled the administration could have been avoided.

     But politicians will always be politicians – ever calculating, ever selfish!

    I often wonder about how effective and rancour-free this government would have been had the crisis in the National Assembly not happened. The president worsened matters when he said, rather listlessly, that he can work with anybody rather than seek out, and discreetly work, for the victory of whoever he believed would have best facilitated passage of his policies in the legislative arm.

     How he must have since regretted that faux pas!

     How then have these avoidable missteps impacted governance and how, in turn, will they determine the direction of votes in 2019?

    The president has recorded considerable achievement in his handling of anti corruption and security. Unfortunately, both have some critical, but avoidable, challenges. While inter agency squabbles have significantly hampered the anti corruption war, resulting in poor handling of cases despite EFCC’s considerable successes, the judiciary has been absolutely unhelpful, with some judges, despite ACJA, still allowing unreasonably long adjournment of cases and giving decisions that completely ignore the moral standing of the nation in the comity of nations. Many senior members of both the bar and the bench have constituted themselves into a vanguard for corruption to ferociously fight back.

    These challenges are also observable in the war against insecurity, especially the Boko Haram insurrection. With President Jonathan having largely played politics with this huge problem, and being religious in nature, Boko Haram elements have successively established serpentine alliances with some elements in the local communities making its expurgation at that level literally impossible even if rooted out on battle fields and exfoliated from Sambisa forest. The result is what we see today in serial suicide bombings. Add to this kidnapping, which is now on an industrial scale and you get, exactly, how far the president has gone on both. Factor in the very high cost of living and the exponential youth unemployment which many have described as a time bomb, and you know that President Buhari has got a helluva problem, come 2019.

    A resurgent PDP can also not be under rated. In this regard, he must realise that Nigerians have very short memories. Yes, PDP is a party of buccaneers, yes they stole the country into recession, but hey, if Nigerians are still this hungry by 2019, no voter will remember that it was President Jonathan who turned the CBN to an ATM machine, somnambulistic ally instructing the looting, by his cronies, of as much as 2.4 billion dollars, from the bank.

    How do the masses see the Buhari government today? If traditionally Northerners venerate their politicians (ranka de de), not so Southerners, who are concerned only with how you have impacted their lives. You could even be his uterine brother, it is how your government has affected him, and his nuclear family that matters.

    So how impactful has his government been in Education, Agriculture, Healthcare delivery, Security, Housing, Youth employment etc? Why so much strike in our institutions of higher learning and how come labour has become so agitated?

    And what of the unending intra party crisis tearing APC apart? In Kano, his prayer must be that neither governor Ganduje nor his predecessor, Kwankaso, kisses APC bye as that could summarily whittle down his massive support there. Ditto in Kaduna, where it has been a fight to the finish between state governor and a senator. And so it is in many other states, the Southwest inclusive.

    Happily, however, the president still has some time on his hands if only he will now rouse himself. He just must change tack, see every part of the country, especially the agonising Southeast, as equally deserving of equitable treatment. He must abandon his insularity and let other parts of the country also have dividends of democracy. The Southwest gave as much as anybody, if not more. They have to be compensated in appointments. It is normal. It should now be over for those the First Lady said were invited from their homes, probably sleeping, to come and head agencies or become ministers. President Buhari should today act on the report of the panel that investigated the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation. Why the undue delay? Let Nigerians know his decision on those two public servants.  All these are the undercurrents driving the now Pan-Nigerian cry for restructuring; something that used to be solely driven by the Southwest. Nigerian masses must have a new lease of life, especially workers who no longer get paid their salaries and wages. He must equally take more interest in the affairs of the APC which, after more than two years in office, still has no BOT nor could hold its convention. Boards of companies and parastatals must now be reconstituted and inaugurated as a way of showing appreciation to members who worked for his victory. These are the irreducible desiderata if President Buhari must contest, and win, in 2019.

  • Nigeria exits recession amidst a rash of strikes

    Nigeria exits recession amidst a rash of strikes

    We would need to protect local industries and prevent importation of substandard goods, while more proactively managing the distortions in our economy

    My first reaction when I heard that SSANU, NASU and co were joining ASUU on an indefinite strike, in a thoroughly beleaguered economy, was to intervene as follows on a trending discussion on the Ekitipanupo web portal: “I think it is time Nigeria heeds Prof Wole Soyinka’s advice: close all these universities for a minimum two years and re direct their massive intelligence and expertise to our lagging agriculture. Enough of this nonsense. Also, a good number of these people could resign, (after all, I resigned from a university job), leverage on their incomparable expertise and start off their own outfits. They have enough knowhow to make a success of them. Doctors too, even those just graduating, could start mini clinics. Rather than go for agbo Jedi (an assortment of local herb concoctions) we shall be calling on them and patronising them in droves. Or what manner of country is this where everybody is going on strike even with no statutory notices given any longer. Where has good, old rational negotiations gone?”

    In writing like that, I was not unmindful of the skyrocketing cost of living with the rate of inflation at around 17 per cent; even as salaries and wages of government workers are in arrears of close to one year in some states. I also actually not only read, but shared on my Face book wall so that not only Nigerians, but the  entire world, could  know of  the following views of Professor Itse Sagay SAN, a key member of President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption team. Said he at a lecture: “The National Assembly is made up of self-serving lawmakers who allocated N125billion to themselves alone this year. While the United States President earns $400,000 per annum, a Nigerian senator earns over $1.7million. Apart from a basic salary of N2.4million per month, they earn allowances, such as hardship (50 per cent of basic salary), newspaper allowance (50 per cent), wardrobe allowance (25 per cent), entertainment (30 per cent), recess (10 per cent) and leave (10 per cent), among others totalling N29.5million per month.” Speaking further, Sagay said: “Perhaps the most notorious example of the legislators’ resistance to the war against corruption is the rejection of the right of the executive to choose the persons who will spearhead that struggle. The clear impression is created that Nigerian legislators are in office for themselves and not for the populace. Not surprisingly, he added, the National Assembly has not passed a single bill for the promotion of anti-corruption war since it commenced business in July 2015. The Whistle Blowers Protection Bill, the Proceeds of Crime Bill and the Special Criminal Court Bill remain in a virtual state of stagnation. What (more) evidence do we need to establish the hostility of the eighth Assembly to the anti-corruption war?”

    The situation so eloquently captured by the learned professor is one glaring example of the deleterious consequences of former President Olusegun Obasanjo inflicting on the country, two very weak successive presidents both of who so actively romanced the National Assembly that its members became so swollen headed, and selfish, they turned Nigeria into their cash cow. Worse is the fact that their outrageous allowances were not approved by the appropriate agency of state, the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission, but self-awarded. It must be said, in mitigation though, that on Friday, 8 September, 2017, without robustly challenging Sagay by  revealing, in unmistakable terms what the senators’ salaries and allowances are,  Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi,  Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, claimed that Professor Sagay is fond of disparaging the federal legislature and its members. I think the senate spokesperson should do more than this as everything Sagay said has been a ringing challenge since the inauguration of the 8th senate.

    I digress.

    If one could ask, why do successive governments not consider themselves honour bound to respect agreements they freely entered into without their hands being tied behind their backs? Why should a government whose campaign mantra is change look on helpless, as this slew of strikes rear their  ugly heads to further worsen a poorly performing economy by having productivity reduced to almost nothing in some of its very critical sub sectors?

    That this happened on such a massive scale this time around, speaks to a lack of capacity in those areas of the executive branch and the president should have no further need of more calls to rejig his cabinet especially now that an aspiring presidential candidate has successfully breached the federal executive council.

    It’s time to throw out its incompetent and disloyal members.

    The good news about Nigeria exciting recession came from the National Bureau of Statistics this past week, with the GDP growing by 0.55 thus indicating an end to five consecutive quarters of contraction since the first quarter of 2016. While the experts busy themselves with the pro and con and the politicians throw in their usual obfuscations, I would like to share with my readers, the following perspicacious contribution on Ekitipanupo by Mr. Tope Ojo. It is edited for space purposes, but left, essentially in its racy, simple but highly didactic format.  It is about the   exchange rate of the naira which Ambassador Dapo Fafowora, a former Chairman of the United Nations Development Committee, deprecates for having multiple, rather than a single FX rate.

    Tope  wrote: “It is a fact that the exchange rate of the Naira to any other foreign currency is high. The Naira has been weak for quite some time and, was on a steady decline before the federal government and the Central Bank came up with remedial actions to shore it up.

    Our socioeconomic problems in Nigeria are largely self inflicted.

    The basic law of price discrimination is, primarily, about demand and supply.

    1. About 40% of our monthly foreign exchange (FX) needs is for the importation of refined petroleum products. If there is adequate local production of refined petroleum products, our dollar needs for their importation will be zero; and the value of Naira will significantly improve.
    2. Nigeria is probably the only large crude oil exporter in the world that is still importing refined petroleum products.
    3. Proceeds of corrupt practices, over the years are mostly laundered abroad. The funds are used to buy properties and luxury items while some are stashed away in the vaults of foreign banks. The demand or FX due to these illicit activities has profound effects on the exchange rate of the naira.
    4. Nigeria has a big trading sector. We import virtually everything under the sun. This exerts a huge pressure on demand for foreign currency and affects the exchange rate.
    5. Round tripping and other illegal currency activities. The Black Market in Nigeria is an ancient trade which remains potent and active.
    6. If we increase our exports, we would earn more foreign currencies, and strengthen the Naira. If we reduce our imports, there will be reduction on the pressure on our demand for foreign currency, and the value of the Naira will improve.
    7. We need to better manage the elements of our demand for foreign currencies.
    8. Trade restrictions and protection of local industries is, therefore, very vital.
    9. Huge Infrastructural development is a critical factor for rapid socioeconomic development. And in this respect, the power sector is pivotal.
    10. Good policy formulation and implementation are also key.
    11. Development of our health, Education and Tourism sectors will substantially reduce our demand for foreign currency. Nigeria presently spends a lot on all of these products and services.

    As a nation, we need to focus more on production. Until we vastly increase both  our agricultural and industrial production to meet our  domestic  needs and, possibly  have room for export ,we would continue to have an  unfavourable balance of payment position with our trading partners, and, thereby,  continue to have  issues  with  the  exchange rate of the  naira.

    The way out for Nigeria is a comprehensive ‘Change’ programme that will result in increased agricultural and industrial productivity, which will earn more foreign exchange, coupled with a better calibrated foreign exchange outflow.

    We would need to protect local industries and prevent importation of substandard goods, while more proactively managing the distortions in our economy.  We need to become much more competitive.

    Without properly managing inflation, unemployment, unfavourable exchange rates and other vital economic indices, Nigeria may not be able to grow her economy on a steady basis for a very long time to come.

    A strong Naira is an economic imperative.

  • President Buhari: Why constitute boards and councils you won’t inaugurate six months after? – A Dirge

    With a party in almost total disarray at the leadership level, where exactly does the APC expect to draw its support from come 2019?

    Roared the public announcement from the Federal Ministry of Education, April 22, 2017:, ‘President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the reconstitution of the boards of 19 agencies and parastatals under the Federal Ministry of Education for a period of four years. In doing this, continued the announcement by Mrs Chinenye Ihuoma of the ministry, the President took into cognizance provisions of the respective legislation with respect to composition, competence, credibility, integrity, federal character and geo-political spread”. Of course, as has become usual with this administration, the second part of that statement is not true. Miffed with himself as much as the columnist is writing this, facts are facts and they are sacred. The same motive that could make Biodun Jeyifo, a professor and colleague columnist on this newspaper who has been very supportive of the president’s anti-corruption programme, railing ceaselessly at some senior lawyers trying to hamstrung it write as quoted below, is what inspires some of the things you would be reading in this piece. Wrote Jeyifo in his column of Sunday, August 27, 2017: “I suggest that what we are witnessing is the fact that with the coming to power of Muhammadu Buhari as President and the APC as the new ruling political party at the centre, all the lies, all the deceits and all the delusions of our political elites in all the ruling class political parties proffering themselves as the champions and standard bearers of our country’s unity and corporate existence have been exposed in a way that had hitherto had been impossible.” He wrote further: “On the personal level, without descending into insult and calumny, I cannot but say with all the emphasis that I can muster that Buhari has turned out to be one of the most parochial, sectionalist and nepotistic rulers we have ever had in this country. This is a man who enjoyed – and probably still enjoys – respect and even sedulous followership all over the country, well beyond his own regional and local neck of the woods. But now, it is an understatement to say that his blatant and even arrogant sectionalism has caused a deep crisis of credibility.”

    For this article, I am expecting a rather well-deserved roasting in the social media. Even though I have severally criticised the president for his very insensitive appointments, especially the in-explainable architecture of the country’s security apparatti which has guaranteed  that murderous Fulani herdsmen have roamed , uncensored,  on their killing forays into other peoples’ lands, and not forgetting  my criticising him for narrowing key and very sensitive appointments  to Hausa/Fulani and Kanuris, my traducers will, very conveniently, forget all that but remember, without fail, the ringing support I have always  given the government in the sure belief that President Buhari is an unmatchable, incorruptible patriot. And please, don’t go telling me his appointments corrupt the system as I am zero-ing in here on a comparison between him and the Presidents we had during the massive looting of our common patrimony during the PDP’s  16-year stranglehold.

    They are, of course, incomparable.

    What therefore rankles  the most about the constitution of boards of agencies and parastatals under the ministry of education is not only that the ministry, under a minister of northern extraction, could gloat uproariously about being sensitive to federal character  in the appointments even with 15 out  of the 21 Chairmen in the colleges of education, 10 out  of  25 in the Polytechnics  and  12 out of the 19 in the mostly regulatory agencies and para-statals under  the ministry all going to the north, is that six months after that announcement, nothing has changed as none of the supposedly brand  new boards has been inaugurated. And let nobody ascribe this to President Buhari’s indisposition as examples are legion, even on You tube, of ministers inaugurating boards of their respective ministries.

    I do not see any of these appointments as doing anybody a favour since the boards and councils are meant to guide and assist the administration of these various institutions by putting in place policies and ensuring their compliance in running the institutions since, as we recently saw in the case of the National Health Insurance Scheme, many are they, who believe they can run them like their fiefdom.

    As in the case of the ‘lost and found’ Universities (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) Act 2003, otherwise called the Universities Autonomy Act, which was ferreted out by ASUU and Femi Falana SAN, when the Education Minister was performing some abracadabra within the universities, I am sure there is also a document setting out the constitution and functions of these various organisations which, by failing to inaugurate the boards, the minister has, curiously, put in limbo for six months. Without a doubt, and as is usual with Nigerians, the respective heads of these organisations must have been acting like sole administrators, though all reporting to the all powerful minister.

    How can officials of state be this arrogantly disrespectful of not only persons, but institutions of state too?

    But it is not only disrespect that is motivating this; rather, it is crass opportunism being used to disguise ethnicity. As you read this, literally all the executives running the core agencies in the ministry,  like TETFUND and UBEC, are under the headship of northerners whilst southerners are consigned to those agencies which require real hard work like the National Library of Nigeria and others in that category. It is obviously in order not to upset the apple cart that Adamu Adamu, who is being assisted as minister of education, by a highly experienced professor from the south, is not keen about inaugurating the boards. It is beyond him to realise that most of these appointees, especially those from the south, are reputable and very busy people who, put in the lurch in this highly arrogant manner, are stopped from properly planning their schedules and itinerary. This becomes more ingratiating when you realise that these people were appointed either for their competences and past service to the country, like Professor Bayo Banjo, or for their expertise and contribution to the Buhari victory which some people now see solely as theirs.

    I am also reliably informed that this is not limited to the ministry of education because as you read this, I am told that not all the boards of Nigeria’s 12 River Basin Development Authorities have been inaugurated. One can only hope this is not true. The question then is this, if constituted boards are not inaugurated, six months after,  how can this government even remember that more than two years of  assuming office, the president is yet to constitute the boards of most of the government’s enterprises? Is it too much to expect that high ranking party members, who gave of their best to ensure that Buhari smelt victory the fourth time trying, are given appointments in appreciation? With a party in almost total disarray at the leadership level, where exactly does the APC expect to draw its support from come 2019? Incidentally, not even the president can claim that this is a cost saving device because, apart from the ministry of information, appointees of former President Goodluck Jonathan are allegedly sitting spat at their posts and how APC expects them to shift their loyalty is beyond me.

    This situation is worse off in states where the APC is in opposition and many uninformed people, believing their local political leaders have been compensated by their party still approach these unappreciated politicians, asking for one favour or the other.

    I am at a loss as to how the APC intends to counter the rampaging PDP which is today leaving nothing to chance with its interim chairman, Senator Makarfi, personally leading an aggressive reconciliation campaign. At a personal level, as readers of this column know only too well, I have done my utmost to de-market the PDP, drawing Nigerians’ attention – since we have short memories – to how rapaciously the party ruined Nigeria in those 16 years of the locust. But what is this government’s unique selling point to a people who continue to say they have seen no change while APC itself remains uninterested in winning back, and equipping its loyalists and supporters, to mount an aggressive Risorgimento, imbued with a new determination to win back the love that propelled Buhari to victory?

    And one can only hope it is not getting too late.

  • The president’s broadcast

    The president’s broadcast

    Is Buhari a military president that we should now expect him to rule by military alacrity?

    Restructuring Nigeria, to which the President Muhammadu Buhari’s broadcast of Monday, August 21, has literally been reduced by critics, has become a fait accompli. It will take place even faster than its greatest proponents can ever imagine and no Jupiter, not the president or his party the APC, not His Eminence, the Sultan, their Royal Majesty the Obas, or the respected Ogbuefis, will be able to stop it. Restructuring has become a historical inevitability, as to kill it is to kill Nigeria as we know it. President Buhari must, therefore, be assisted by the APC and those whose duty it is to do so, to realise that it is not only corruption, ferocious as it is, that can kill Nigeria as he has often said. The excruciating, fissiparous tendencies daily erupting and ravaging the country, the mind-boggling insecurity and the near complete economic meltdown, should be enough to concentrate our minds on that earnest possibility. But that said, what exactly is the problem with having restructuring done constitutionally as the president said in his broadcast?  Why must we always want the easy way out even if patently illegal? Is Buhari a military president that we should now expect him to rule by military alacrity?  What became of Obasanjo and Jonathan’s illegal National Conferences? We are, indeed, a very funny people. I could not help laughing when this past week, I saw in Lagos, those very people who were at the vanguard of President Goodluck Jonathan’s disastrous 2015 campaign, and were lately suborned, end of April, 2017, to Abuja by Chief Alegho Dokpesi, to press for the implementation of the 2014 national conference report but now, ingeniously, moonlighting as Southern Leaders Forum, trying to pressure President Buhari on restructuring. This is precisely what happens when people would not properly reflect on the past and allow history be their guide. Had these respected elder statesmen, and their younger subalterns done that, they would have remembered that the national talk shows, for that’s what they were, convoked with pomp and ceremony, and at great cost by both presidents Obasanjo and Jonathan came to absolute nothing, realise that something was fundamentally wrong with that process and that a new paradigm is required; which is what Present Buhari is suggesting – adherence to the rule of Law, that is.

    I was quite happy, though not surprised, to see my lifelong teacher, Professor (Senator) Banji Akintoye, make the point on Channels Television that he agrees that the unity of Nigeria is none negotiable, contrary to the incongruous diatribe of many of the critics, I never heard President Buhari, in that broadcast, disavow of restructuring and I consider him too patriotic to do that, given our multi-faceted challenges as a nation and a people. What I understood President Buhari as saying, about which there had been literal bedlam orchestrated by those who must just criticise for criticism sake, is all about the process of bringing restructuring about. It was therefore fascinating to see on television also, Tunji Abayomi, a P.HD holder in Law, telling Nigerians that the primary function of the president, qua president, is to execute the laws of the land. This, he said, was why he had to go to court to challenge the capacity of former President Jonathan to convoke the 2014 national conference as well as expend billions of unappropriated funds on same. All the president is saying, therefore, is that the National Assembly should be allowed to do its duty to Nigeria. Given its highly skewed composition, with the North enjoying a totally unrealistic, and if you ask me, unearned, majority which they have severally taken undue advantage of, a true patriot and statesman of President Buhari’s standing, cannot, be suggesting that the National Assembly it is which will dot the I’s and cross the T’s of restructuring Nigeria, though a northerner, he is. Rather, what I  understood him to be saying is that the legislature should be given the opportunity to make appropriate laws expressly permitting the convocation of a constituent assembly as well as make provision for a  national referendum at which the decisions will be ratified or rejected. Nigerians, the president inclusive, know this National Assembly well enough, not to saddle it with such a heavy, solemn responsibility. His critics, a great number of who  are members of the 2014 National Confab Forum, could not have forgotten, so soon, that one of the decisions at their Abuja summit is to liaise with the federal executive council, the National Assembly and other  relevant stakeholders, (like the Council of State), to promote the implementation of their conference report.

    The first of the rash of criticisms of the broadcast I heard on television was from my dear aburo, the highly perspicacious Akin Osuntokun, a former presidential adviser, complaining about grammar. Akin, I thought, should have properly contextualised a speech which, in its robust brevity, spoke to most of the demons eating at the very heart of the country. It was the same broadcast Chief John Oyegun correctly described as having spoken to the stability, peace and security of the citizenry and left nobody in doubt that any Nigerian can live, work and operate, unmolested, in any part of the country. Indeed, quite unlike him, President Buhari even mentioned the Fulani herdsmen for stricture, as one of those elements the security agencies must now take a hard stance on.  Among the critics too was one Ugochukwu Uko of the Eastern Consultative Assembly who completely lost it in his rant. Said he: ‘Nigeria is tottering at the edge of the precipice, bursting at the seams and sitting on a combustible keg of gun powder and Mr Buhari and his speech writers are the only people who are unawàre of this self evident fact’. “If Mr President does not, as a matter of urgency, set up a constituent assembly to draft a new peoples’ constitution that will be affirmed at referendum before the end of 2017, he continued in Kanu-speak, there will be no Nigeria by 2018. Of course, I understood him as speaking from the Igbo perspective; a perspective which arose simply because Igbo elders had been rather reticent, for whatever reasons, in reining in the young men fomenting trouble in Igbo land, questioning Nigerian sovereignty. Kanu had even allegedly formed an army which a You tube video showed him as inspecting, but yet without a single rebuke from Igbo elders or from its powerful intelligentsia. For come to think of it, when did this Igbo marginalisation they are protesting about begin? Was it when, after the civil war, Nigeria had an Igbo Vice President; a Speaker of the House, or when the Senate Presidency became a revolving chair amongst Igbo politicians? Was it when, under President Jonathan, they headed most agencies of government? Or yet, was it when, in the words of the highly cerebral President of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Igbos formed the bulk of President Jonathan’s kitchen cabinet but forgot to hold him to his promise about the Second Niger bridge? Is Kanu the reason President Buhari should now quibble about Nigerian unity? Or didn’t these critics hear him say there are legitimate concerns everywhere and that the beauty of a federation is that it allows different groups to air their differences and work out a mode of co- existence? PDP, in turn, obviously expected something akin to President Jonathan’s usually ponderous speeches that were largely effete. The party could, therefore, listlessly conclude that the broadcast missed what it called: a golden opportunity to reconnect with the people. Never, it appears, would these PDP people ever realise what a hole they dug Nigeria into from which Buhari is doing everything to lift it from. Do they, by any means, read newspapers or listen to news? If yes, have they not heard that a mere minister in their government, has just had 56, yes FIFTY SIX, houses, proceeds of corruption, forfeited to the federal government on the orders of a court? If a minister wreaked that havoc Nigerians can only begin to imagine what its more influential members – the president, its several chairmen, two of whose sons were implicated in the multi billion naira oil subsidy scam, governors sitting on billions of oil money, must have done.  Were there a sense of shame, these heists should have been enough to keep the Femi Fani-Kayode’s quiescent for a while. And lest we forget, had that broadcast not taken place, Fani Kayode would have told Nigerians that the president is incapable of uttering a word. Only God, and of course Nigerians, will save our country from these irredeemable predators.