The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • And Baba Lekki agrees to disagree with Kongi

    And Baba Lekki agrees to disagree with Kongi

    Dear readers what you have just read was actually published eight years ago. Last Thursday at the fiftieth anniversary of Punch newspaper group after Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, delivered  his sledgehammer statement that it is nations impeding the progress humanity that should be destroyed so that the human race can survive, a swarm of reporters besieged Baba Lekki who was hiding in a disused facility adjacent to the lecture hall.

    “ Baba, as dem Nobel Lawrence don say make dem kukuma kaput Kontri wetin you say to dat?” one of them demanded.

       “He didn’t say that. You see this is the problem with you illiterate journalists. One of you was even asking me whether I am Tosh Benson. God punish his mama for me. You see Kongi is my friend. But I will put it differently. Humanity has survived all the iron jackets and encumbrances we have been forced to wear in the name of progress and state engineering. Whenever these artificial constructs reach the limit of their possibility as vehicles of human emancipation and empowerment, they cease to have the right to exist. This is what has happened to old kingdoms, fiefdoms, empires, principalities and nations. The nation-state paradigm is six hundred years old and Nigeria only a century. When the decibel of human suffering and misery reaches a particular crescendo, not even the lame will need any persuasion to get up”, the old man rued tearfully as he began to walk away in sad, measured steps.

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     “Baba, he come be as if nail don bend and hammer don scatter. So who killed dem Dele Giwa man?” one flustered journalist shouted at the old man.

       “Balance of forces”, the old man snapped in weary impatience. There was a tense silence. Then a dutiful journalist who has been chewing on his ball pen roused himself.

    “Baba se na balance be him surname abi na forces?” he demanded.

      “Abi na Bilisi (Devil in local parlance) force sef?”, a drunken, self-important stringer slurred.

     “So why dem never catch him killer?” another demanded.

         “Balance of forces”, the old man insisted as he vanished among the crowd.

  • A game of numbers (II)

    A game of numbers (II)

    A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how the human race grew over a short period of time to cover the earth, in spite of the numerous problems posed by pathogenic microorganisms. For most of human history we remained ignorant of the existence of these microscopic organisms and were not aware of the danger they posed to our continued existence both at the level of the individual as well as the collective.

    It is interesting that even before the connection between disease and microorganisms was made, mankind had quite instinctively begun to take precautions against them. A man who was martyred for his belief in hygienic practices was Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor of German descent who practiced in the Vienna General hospital in Austria in the middle of the nineteenth century. Coincidentally, there were two labour wards in his hospital, one was managed by midwives and the other by doctors who also conducted routine post mortem examinations on their freshly dead former patients. Surprisingly, the number of fatalities among women who were admitted to the doctors’ ward was more than double what was recorded in the other ward. The good doctor reasoned that the disparity in the fatality figures in the two wards was caused by doctors who also carried out post mortems. They all came to attend to women in labour straight from the mortuary without bothering to even wash their cadaver contaminated hands before bringing them in contact with the living tissues of women striving to bring new life into the world. In the process of doing this, they transferred some infectious agent to their gravid patients, many of who succumbed to the virulent effects of what they had picked up from the doctors. Semmelweis insisted that the doctors under his supervision washed their hand with chlorinated lime before attending to their female patients who thereafter and consequently, stopped  dying in child birth. Unfortunately, this went against the grain of his ignorant professional colleagues who argued that women were ordained by their God to suffer and even die in child birth and so, reducing their suffering during child birth was to thwart the will of God. Semmelweis was vilified for his work to such an extent that he was railroaded into an asylum where he died very soon after. A few years later, his work was vindicated when it was discovered that the puerperal fever responsible for killing the women after childbirth was caused by microorganisms which could be killed by the simple expedience of  doctors attending to them washing their hands in chlorinated lime before attending to their pregnant patients as prescribed by Semmelweis. It is not difficult to imagine that by saving the lives of women in child bearing age has contributed immensely to boosting global population as has happened over the last one hundred years or so. Just as important as the work of Semmelweis was to saving lives on a truly large scale was the contribution of John Snow to advancing the course of public health. Snow was an English doctor whose primary area of interest was in anaesthetics. But, whatever work he did in this field pales into piddling insignificance by what he did in the field of epidemiology. He is indeed known today as the founder of this branch of scientific study. He won his spurs in this area of study through his work on the origin and cause of a cholera epidemic. Cholera outbreaks were quite common in Europe at this time but on this occasion, Snow was determined to track the outbreak to its origins. In this instance, the pestilence broke out in London in August 1854 and as cholera epidemics are wont to do,  killed hundreds of people in next to no time. This was at a time when  even the most learned people were completely unaware of the existence of disease causing microorganisms. Not really knowing what he was up against,  Snow painstakingly followed the progress of this epidemic and found that the vast majority of those who died took their water supply from a particular pump on Broad Street. He brought the epidemic to an abrupt end by simply removing the handle to this pump so that people no longer had access to the contaminated water it dispensed to a multitude of people every blessed day. This opened the eyes of the world to the importance of making pure drinking water available to people and led to the building of water purification plants in cities all over Europe. This measure also made a substantial contribution to the health of people  and over the coming years, boosted global population figures tremendously. Today, there is virtually no European who does not have ready access to municipally purified water which is a guarantee of freedom from water borne diseases. The Europeans took this practice to towns and cities in their overseas colonies which is how come the inhabitants of Lagos  were supplied with pipe borne water which came all the way from Iju as long ago as 1915.

    As soon as Pasteur demonstrated the pathogenic quality of microorganisms, it was immediately clear that what was needed to remove the scourge of microbial infection was to find ways and means of killing pathogenic organisms within their unwilling and endangered hosts. This was however easier said than done as there were no available substances which could eradicate microorganisms from the human body without using grievous harm to their hosts. Nevertheless, the search was on to find what was described as the silver bullets which could kill bacteria whilst sparing human cells. It was however clear from the onset that, as advised by Semmelweis taking hygienic measures was vastly beneficial to those who took the trouble to exclude microorganisms from their body.

    Long before the silver bullets which could kill microorganisms were discovered however, perhaps the greatest single most effective public health measure in human history had been introduced into medical practice. Louis Pasteur, who else, had given vaccination to the world and by doing so guaranteed the rapid increase we have seen in world population over the last hundred years. Because of the practice of vaccination, children everywhere have been given more than an even chance of not just surviving childhood but of living long enough to have children of their own hence the dramatic increase in global population which has made it possible for eight and a half billion people to be alive today. Our recent experience with the Covid pandemic clearly shows the importance of vaccination to the world. This pandemic killed close to eight million people within two years and goodness knows how many more millions would have died had no effective vaccines not been made available at the time that they were. In a malaria endemic area such as we live in, the recent availability of not one but, two effective malaria vaccines suggests that the goal of malaria eradication has been brought more than a step closer to blissful reality.

    Another reason why there are so many human inhabitants in the world today is that we now have an effective chemotherapeutic agent for virtually every bacterial infection including tuberculosis that agent of lingering death which took years to kill its victims but always did so in the end. Today, there are many tuberculostatic drugs which are effective in curing this utterly dreadful infection.

    Man was launched into the world of antimicrobial chemotherapy by the serendipitous discovery of penicillin by Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scottish doctor working in London in 1929. Every literate person should acquaint himself with this story so, google it. Antibiotics, more than any other group of drugs have revolutionised the practice of medicine and changed the business of saving live profoundly. Life before antibiotics was rife with sudden death, pain and suffering which turned survival to something of a lottery. Since antibiotics became available, bacteria were knocked off their pedestal as determinants of human fate and longevity so much so that it has been calculated that antibiotics have added another ten years at least to our collective life expectancy. So far, man has not yet been able to solve the problems caused by viral infections but even so, HIV/AIDS,  an infection which was invariably fatal only some years ago has now been degraded to the status of a chronic infection which can be managed successfully over the span of a lifetime by the judicious use of retroviral drugs. It is difficult to come to terms with the fact that the basketball legend, Magic Johnson has been living robustly with HIV for more than thirty years now and appears to have many more years left in his tank. Such is the power of modern medicines.

    Read Also: Emefiele moves out of CBN Gov’s quarters in Lagos

    Drugs have also been very useful in the treatment of non-communicable diseases. In 1921, Canadians, Banting and Best isolated insulin from dogs and used it to treat diabetes in other dogs who had been  made diabetic. Within two years, insulin isolated from cows was being used to treat diabetes in humans and since then, millions of humans have been kept alive and able to lead a more or less normal life even though  they are diabetic.

    Over the last hundred years, man has learnt a great deal about the myriad diseases which plague them that many of the conditions which for many millennia made life a misery have now been  eradicated. They have used the knowledge acquired to create a world in which most of us have access to a level of healthcare which was the stuff of dreams two hundred years ago. There are still some dark spots but continued research is beaming a great deal of light in those areas and our health status will continue to improve in the foreseeable future. A few days ago, I saw the video of a so-called pastor supposedly ‘sucking’ cancer from a woman’s breast.  I felt doubly sorry for the poor woman because she is never going to get better and because she has just been publicly humiliated. Sucking a woman’s breast is an overtly sexual act and to do so publicly is to violate the human code that sexual acts were restricted to private quarters. Man is the only animal species that respects this code and to violate it is to reduce man to the level of other animals. It is a frank denial of the human status. Our current control of disease has not been achieved by pastors, diviners, soothsayers and supposedly powerful men who have some control over spirits, principalities and powers. This control has been chiselled out step by step by men and women toiling day and night in scientific laboratories. We can only honour them and enhance our health status by putting some trust in the result of the tremendous work they have carried out on our behalf.

  • Oronsaye report implementation: Late but not too late

    Oronsaye report implementation: Late but not too late

    I don’t envy Nigeria’s next president. Whoever steps into Aso Rock on the 29th of May 2023 will be inheriting an omni-dimensional catastrophe. He will be inheriting a boiling cauldron of insecurity and unease. Destiny has ordained only two paths for him. He will either be a super-man or an undertaker.

    He will need super-human powers and extra doses of luck to save Nigeria. Or he will become the unfortunate undertaker tasked with presiding over Nigeria’s funeral.

    The new president will be inheriting a country on the brink of economic collapse, social implosion, and sectarian strife. His predecessor’s rule has been a vortex of misgovernance” – Onyemaechi Ogbunwezeh –

    Senior Research Fellow and Director for Genocide Prevention at the Christian Solidarity International, Switzerland, Premium Times, August 17, 2022.

    There were many low hanging fruits President Bola Ahmed Tinubu could have tapped into, to great aplomb, at his inauguration on 29 May, 2023 because it was crystal clear to  Nigerians that, as succinctly captured above by

    Onyemaechi Ogbunwezeh,

    President Muhammadu Buhari, working in cahoots with his CBN governor Godwin Emefiele for  the benefit of his Villa cabal, and a few others, had by then, turned Nigeria to an empty shell, economically, good only for whatever fate her creditors deemed appropriate.

    You needn’t be an economist to know that in view of the fact that apart from the humongous debts the President had rail – roaded Nigeria into, future earnings from oil had also been pledged to creditors just as a huge proportion of the country’s crude was being stolen rotten. As you read this the senate of the Federal Republic is investigating Buhari’s then illegal N22.7 Trillion Ways and Means debt, most of which are  believed to have been misapplied.

    Such was the parlous state of the country’s finances on 29 May, 2023, that I  had thought that President Tinubu’s ‘numero uno’ concern would be how to substantially reduce Nigeria’s astronomical cost of governance.

    That belief was the rationale behind the article re-produced below. First published 2 July, ’23, that is within a few weeks of his inauguration, it is captioned:’Reducing Nigeria’s Monstrous Cost of Governance Through The President’s Personal Example’.

    It read as follows:

    “To save Nigeria we must, among other things, go back to Education, Healthcare and Infrastructural development. Cut the high cost of governance, with the President, ministers, governors, legislators and all other political appointees taking a substantial pay cut to save money that could then be spent on the welfare of the citizenry”. That was how Chief Philip Asiodu captured it all in an interview titled: ‘Where Nigeria Went Wrong’.

    The challenge of finding a lasting solution to the astronomical cost of governance in Nigeria is one  problem Nigerian presidents have toyed with but shied away from.

    Indeed, the most outrageous aspect of it – the National Assembly’s totally outrageous emoluments – has been attributed to none other than one of them, namely, former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Chief  Asiodu credited it to Obasanjo’s anticipated support by the legislators for his then incubating Third Term Project, aka Life Presidency.

    According to the same source, with President Goodluck Jonathan’s own second term ambition in view, attempting to have the humongous salaries and allowances reduced was a no go area.

    He, however, set up a Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government’s Parastals, Commissions and Agencies Committee, headed by Stephen Oronsaye, a former Head of Service, but whose recommendations he knew he would treat with benign neglect just like the recommendations of the 2014 National conference.

    As for President Muhammadu Buhari, according to Chief Asiodu, self interest, arising from his having packed nearly all the MDA’s with Northerners,  ensured that he paid little or no attention, whatever, to the  report until very late in his administration. His late approval to implement the recommendations, therefore, went to nothing.

    With the above kaleidoscopic survey of the challenge, therefore, President Tinubu’s   situation is analogous to that of  Chief Obafemi Awolowo when the following was written about him:”To accomplish these, Awo and his colleagues were determined to blast their way through whatever problems, and compel the force of any adverse circumstance to serve their will. This was because they had put in, long and hard preparations, to meet the challenges and they had evolved elaborate plans which they were ready to launch at a moment’s notice”.

    What is more, and here am quoting  Awo:”we had an abiding, flaming faith in the soundness and practicable-ness of our plans. We regarded ourselves as crusaders in a new cause, and as eminently qualified for the pioneering role which we had imposed on ourselves”.

    With considerable justification, therefore, I believe I can suggest that after his 30 years of productive involvement in Nigerian politics preparing, presumably, for what he personally described as ‘his life long ambition of becoming the Nigerian President’, PBAT should be able to own that assertive pronouncement by Awo, regarding his own preparedness for office.

    In consequence of that, he should now go ahead and deploy his well known qualities as a  strategist, combined with his long experience, and not inconsiderable network, towards reducing  Nigeria’s unsustainable cost of governance, especially the totally unjustiable emoluments of members of the National Assembly which, in my view, is actually the elephant in the room.

    This, of course, will not be an easy task as he will have to confront, head on,  powerful politicians whose  primary interest has always been Self- Love, as against concern for the toiling Nigerian masses. (Otherwise, why insist on N160M imported vehicles for each  member?)

    For these self – centred  politicians, Chief Obafemi Awolowo may very well have been talking to the marines when he wrote as follows in  Path To Nigerian Freedom:”The purpose of governance, its raison d’etre, is first and foremost the security of the lives and property of citizens. Next, in order of importance, is the enhancement of their freedom and liberty; and finally, is the welfare function of promoting equal opportunities and happiness for all”.

    To them, especially those now populating the National Assembly – most of who  probably think that ‘Path to Nigerian Freedom’ is the title of a Nollywood video – everything Awo wrote, will mean nothing since their primary concern is the good life, but only for themselves.

    Reducing their pay, even by one Naira, will therefore be one of the President’s major challenges as the legislature is a co- equal arm of government.

    To succeed, therefore, he would have to lead by personal example: an example that would be so robust, the legislators would have no alternative to doing same.

    The President  must be prepared to show, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Presidency became his life ambition only because he saw it as the position from where he can most positively impact the lives of Nigerians  irrespective of clan, tribe or religion. He must show that for him, this is the sole driving force propelling him all along.

    “True leadership”, wrote former Ekiti state governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, one of his proud mentees, is influence”. That was in a lecture he titled ‘Of Values and The Building of A Successor Generation in Nigeria’. Continuing, he writes:”It is driven by core convictions, values and ideas. In a profound sense, leadership is living out one’s values and ideas. It is the sheer power of personal example that projects

    influence”.

    All these – values, conviction and leadership – are qualities President Tinubu possesses in quantum. He must now bring them to bear on this major task.

    He must  encourage them to, willy nilly, take substantial cuts from their emoluments which are in multiples of millions of Naira monthly, in a country infamously known as the poverty capital of the world.

    The same treatment – that is, cut in salaries and allowances – must be fully extended to the executive branch where the President would have led by his own example. The  President should also see that all the outlandish wastages that have characterised the executive branch over the years end forthwith.

    The governors and others will, of course, automatically, replicate all these in their respective states.

    That done, the next thing for the President should be the immediate implementation of the recommendations of the Oronsaye Committee.

     Set up by President Goodluck Jonathan on August 18, 2011, the Oronsaye Committee had  the following mandate:

    “to study and review all previous reports and records on the restructuring of Federal Parastatals, and advise on whether they were still relevant; examine the enabling Acts of all the federal agencies, parastatals and commissions and classify them into various sectors; examine critically, the mandate of the existing federal agencies, parastatals and commissions and determine areas of overlap or duplication of functions and make appropriate recommendations to either restructure, merge or scrap some to eliminate such overlaps, duplications or redundancies; and advise on any other matter incidental to the foregoing, which might be relevant to the desire of the government to prune down the cost of governance.”

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    Apart from the fact that Nigeria now spends about 96 per cent of its total revenue on debt servicing, according to the World Bank, many Nigerians have long expressed strong concern over the  unsustainable cost of governance in the country.

    A country that serially borrows to implement its annual budget should, if led by a serious government, never run a government half as expensive as that of Nigeria.

    Worse is the fact that the country presently suffers a huge revenue shortfall, a fact not helped by the ever decreasing income from its hydrocarbon assets – no thanks to massive oil theft that has run like for ages. 

    The President should appreciate that cutting the cost of governance is long overdue and that it no longer qualifies as a stitch in time which, as they say,  saves nine.

    Over then to President Tinubu.

    Nine months may be rather long for him to toy with implementing the Oronsaye report but it is certainly not too late.

    Taken together with some of the other suggestions in this piece, we may all come to see, very soon, those now shouting crucify him, experience a Pauline conversion which will see them begin to embrace the Tinubu administration, exactly as we saw Lagosians do some two and a half decades ago.

  • Saving the system (Phase II): Idan brings the henchmen to the table

    Nigeria is not an easy place to govern and that is a statement of fact that can be taken to the bank. If our country was so easy to run, maybe we would have arrived El Dorado all these while, with every citizen living the life of an Arabian prince/princess, wasteful as the description might imply. Reaching El Dorado has been most difficult because of how we are wired; here, everybody is ‘very wise’ and believes he can do it better than whoever is currently holding the reins at every point in time. The situation is worsened by the various primordial sentiments driving most citizens’ reasoning and actions; religious and ethnic mostly.

    So running Nigeria requires more than a vision and the physical energy to match visceral sentiments that have held us back as a people, you must be something close to an oracle, who knows what to apply for every ‘malady’ that threatens to throw spanners into the wheel each time you make the move forward, upwards, whichever one fits. At the moment, this is the circumstance President Bola Tinubu is having to deal with; a man with a well planned and thought out solution to our age-long development crises, equipped with some of the most sophisticated solutions, some of which other oracles will agree to be the ‘Panacea’.

    However, like Yoruba people will say, “o ba ni, ko’i tii ba’je”, meaning, in transliteration, “it has only gotten to ‘ba’, not at ‘bad’ yet”, President Tinubu, who, earlier in his Presidency, earned the epithet ‘Idan Gan-gan’ (the real Magic) from the Gen-Z, always has one more trick up his sleeve, has continued to reinvent his methods of addressing our challenges as a nation. Hence, on Sunday, while no one, even the media, was looking the way of Aso Rock Villa, assembled a meeting of the critical stakeholders of the nation’s economy, including federal ministers, representatives of the sub-nationals and the runners of the business community, those you will consider the biggest names in corporate Nigeria, to an emergency strategy meeting in his office.

    The First thing that came out of the meeting, which was later confirmed by one the business moguls he trusted enough to be part of the meeting, the Chairman of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, was that the select team was constituted into a Tripartite Economic Advisory Council. The committee is tripartite because it consists of the government at the federal and sub-national levels, as well as the business community.

    Among those at the meeting were Vice President Kashim Shettima; Governors of Ogun, Dapo Abiodun; Anambra, Professor Charles Soludo; Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila; Ministets of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun;  Budget and National Planning, Atiku Bagudu; Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari;Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris; and the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Yemi Cardoso.

     Some of the private sector players at the meeting included the Chairman of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote; Chairman of BUA Group, Abdul Samad Rabiu; Chairman of Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu; Group Chief Executive Officer of Pandora Plc, Wale Tinubu; Managing Director of Matrix Group, Abdullabir Aliu; Chief Executive Officer of Financial Derivative Company, Bismarck Rewane; Director-General, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Segun Ajayi-Kadir, among others.

    Looking at the array of people assembled and his message to them, one will immediately be drawn to start an analysis of how our President reasons. This is a man who, right from the onset of his administration, started with policies that his predecessors had only mouthed, but never found the courage to execute and has all along confidently told the world that he came to reorder the narrative about the largest black nation. Then he found himself and his programmes and plans defiantly being challenged by contrary forces, those who have always survived by the wrongness of our situation.

    Then he initiated his alternative plan; bring in those holding the biggest stakes in the project Nigeria, pick their ideas and get them to commit to the success of the progressive policies he has initiated, all for the ordinary Nigerian. Just before the iron cooled off from his alternative ingenious idea, complemented with other underground moves, including intelligence/security engineering, results started showing. For instance, from Monday morning, efforts at ridding the foreign exchange market of the manipulated negatives for the Naira started yielding results as the dollar, which had been adversely rising like the yeasted dough, took a nasty tumble (it has continued to roll down the cliff since then).

    Taking an educated guess, just after the meeting of the Tripartite Economic Advisory Council, Wale Jana, a Nigerian businessman, on his verified Instagram page, said “he henchmen have been called in. Dollar is going down and the economy is about to take a boost Sometimes, all it takes is to acknowledge the powers that be! There is a power that the President does not have that Elumelu, Dangote and Abdulsamad Rabiu have. As long as we look at this country through the eyes of entrepreneurship and capitalism, we will see progress”.

    While speaking to the council during the meeting, the President did not waste time, he went straight to the core, the reason for assembling those whose actions will always impact the nation’s economy and ultimately the lives of Nigerians. They were called together to make them see reason why they all must work together to see to it that Nigerians are not hurt by doing everything, as individual entities and as a collective of those who hold the economy, to see that the pro-people policies and programmes of the administration work and deliver results.

    “Let’s look at what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong to bring life back to the economy. Like I said, many times, the people of this country are only the people who we have to please and we are very much concerned from students to mothers and fathers, farmers, the traders and realising that everyone of us will have to fetch water from the same well. We’re looking for additional efforts that might help the downtrodden Nigerians and we will provide that hope and reassurance that economic recovery is on its way. We are not saying that we have all the answers, but we will not be blamed for not trying. We assure Nigerians that we will do our best to get our marshall plan in place and fashion out the best economic future for this country”, he said.

    It would not have been a complete job if he had initiated his alternative approach, constituting the Council, and did not think to treat the mess of those who will not do and still will not allow those who want to do, do their thing. Of course, he has been deploying security and intelligence agencies in the fight against the subversive elements, whose activities have negatively impacted plans and activities of government, but then there are those who have been using legitimate platforms to undermine the administration’s efforts at achieving progress. He needed to let them know he knows how they have been using the legitimate platforms they were trusted with to subtly pursue selfish political agenda.

    So when the opportunity presented itself on Thursday in Lagos, where he inaugurated the first phase of the Lagos Rail Mass Transit (LRMT) Red Line project, Baba threw a jab at a section of the organized Labour, which has used its platform to further attack the economy, deploying unconscionable number of strikes and protests. “Some Labour unions should understand that no matter how we cling to our freedom and rights, to call four strikes within the first nine months of a new administration is unacceptable. If you want to directly participate in the electoral process, wait until 2027, if not, maintain the peace. Labour is not the only voice of Nigerians”, he said.

    Read Also: Emefiele moves out of CBN Gov’s quarters in Lagos

    Achieving these steps did not stop him from engaging in other activities that were equally targeted at solving our several challenges. For instance, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) met on Monday. If nothing else, the meeting achieved a decision that has brought praises to the administration; the implementation of parts of the Orosanye Report. Even Mr Peter Obi, whose position and opinion of the Tinubu administration is well known, gave a pass mark to government on this, saying it was “a welcome development”. Other decisions were taken, including the one having to do with Social Security Unemployment Programme, which will cater to the welfare of unemployed Nigerian youths.

    There was the launch of the Expatriate Employment Levy, which sees to it that foreigners do not come into Nigeria to take citizens jobs as well as ensuring the bridging of wage gap between Nigerians and expatriates, among others, on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he was in Ondo State, paying condolence visit on the state government and the family of the former governor, the late Arakunrin Rotimi Akeredolu. He also used the time to meet with Pa Reuben Fasoranti and other Yoruba leaders. He seized the moment to reassure Nigerians of his resolve to achieve true and fiscal federalism for the nation. He left Ondo State for Lagos, where he would be performing the inauguration of the LRMT.

    On Thursday, after the LRMT inauguration, he departed for Qatar, on the invitation of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. That’s a State Visit that is expected to yield so much for Nigeria, in terms of commerce, security and general economic growth. However, even while out there, he already lined out a number of new appointments, which were made public on Friday by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Chief Ajuri Ngelale; five for the FGN Power Company Limited and four for the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

    As the new week starts, more is expected to happen with regards to the alternative strategy he initiated last week, so expect yet another exciting week.

  • SNAPSONG 211

    SNAPSONG 211

    Japa Song

    The grass is not always greener

         On the other side

    Nor is the Nightingale’s song

         Half as sweet as the Weaverbird’s

    Look left

         Look right

    Look left again

         Before you cross that road

    Aching memories of moons which moan

         In foreign skies

    And the sighs of a mother whose only child

         Is lost to distant dreams

    “See you in another month”,

         Your promise was strong

    As you hurried towards the waiting jet

         With tears in my eyes, hope in my heart

    Three years later your infrequent letters

        Tear me apart with their changing addresses

    From countless places. A curse flies out of my mouth

         Each time I see a flying plane

    I wake up every day, wondering

         How to sing my song of loss

    I damn a cruel country that stands

         Between me and the Love of my former Life

  • Slogging through adversity

    Slogging through adversity

    Low hanging fruits on the road to recovery

    Like an impertinent but confident and supremely self-assured youngster, Nigeria is wading through its latest round of crisis with sangfroid and considerable panache. Like most colonial African nations put together under controversial circumstances, crisis seems to have become second nature to the troubled West African giant. In a curious turn of events, it is those who express fear about the fortunes of the country who appear to be overwhelmed by fear rather than the country itself.

       However that may be, there are certain salient features of the latest round of crisis which speak to the magnitude and volatility of the current circumstances. While it is true that every crisis contains the seed of its own resolution, some of the issues have to be highlighted particularly where the low-hanging fruits are concerned so that they can be pressed into immediate and remedial national service.

       First, Nigeria is resoundingly broke. All the sins and errors of omission of previous administrations appear to have converged on the current administration. Second is the rise of food insecurity in a country equipped by nature and climatology to be a global food basket if all other variables fall in place.

       Third is the ascendancy of enemy nationals who for reasons best known to them are bent on bringing the country’s economy to heel through foreign exchange racketeering, smuggling, financial espionage, illegal mining and massive production of counterfeited goods. When you add this to the sharp upsurge in kidnapping, abductions, criminal extortion, amphibious piracy and trans-border heists, it is a perfect explosive cocktail.

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       Finally, there is the collapse of civility and with it the prospects of civilized discourse in the country. In its place there is bovine rudeness everywhere. You cannot hope to contribute to national discussion on any issue if you do not have a strong constitution and a stout capacity to withstand insults from social misfits and ethnic neurotics who can only view national issues from a psychologically damaged and prejudiced point of view.

        To be sure, quite a lot of these intemperate outbursts are miffed ripostes to our errant traditional rulers and misguided clerics who have done further damage to the national fabric by their insensitive observations on pressing national issues.  However, the attempt to shut down frank and open dialogue which is the oxygen of free association in a modern society through sheer intimidation is a negation of paraded credentials as champions of true democracy.

       While this hysterical dismantling of authority and the demystification of traditional hierarchies may appear exhilarating and even potentially liberating to certain sections of the country, it sets off the alarm signals of imminent chaos and anarchy in other sections. This collision of worldviews may presage violent confrontations of an ethnic and religious hue particularly in situations of extreme economic adversity.

      Given the dire economic circumstances in which the nation has found itself and the apparent inability of the political elite to agree on the best way to handle the political dystopia threatening to engulf the nation, it is beginning to look as if the nation is being pushed back to its 1966 default setting.

     It is true that when confronted by a crisis of this magnitude and complexity, one must first seek the political kingdom. But there are times when the economic kingdom is equally important, particularly where economic delinquency threatens to snuff life out of a nation.  

       In all this, it is a typical Nigerian irony that the lowest hanging fruits are also the ones that constitute the most immediate threat to the nation. That is the issue of food shortage. This is the apex of the hierarchy of human destitution. Nigeria is so blessed with arable land in all their varieties and variables that it amounts to a pedological scandal that the country cannot feed its citizens.

      As we speak, at least eighty percent of the remaining arable land in the nation remains uncultivated and uncultured, that is after allowance has been made for ongoing armed conflicts and threats to sedentary farmers. This is simply unimaginable in a world in which land-strapped nations cultivate vegetables on their roofs and walls.

      The federal authorities should begin a massive back-to-the-land programme with commensurate incentives to youths now roaming our cities to own their own allotments and get to work. It takes a while for an agrarian traditional society to become a fully mechanized community. The government must launch a discreet inquiry into why Obasanjo’s Operation Feed the Nation failed so catastrophically.

     If it cannot replicate the whole scheme, government can borrow tropes from it. The image of the wily Owu general in his farmers’ apparel with a hoe in hand remains one of the most fetching symbols of patriotic identification with the land in Nigeria’s postcolonial history. The government must also partner with our various agricultural institutions to come up with higher yields mutants of existing crops.

      It is not by accident that the Chinese scientist who developed the variant of high-yield rice grain that saved his nation from mass starvation became a highly decorated national hero. When he died a few years’ back, he was accorded a hero’s funeral. It is now a matter of national emergency that Nigeria must first confront the demon of mass hunger before it can proceed on the political front.

  • A case note of two African giants

    A case note of two African giants

    (Why restructuring is a coded battle for modernity)

    Excerpts

    In medical science, comparisons of case notes often illuminate and enlighten.  They throw up unusual and startling insights into the nature of human organism and how similar pathologies can drive dissimilar afflictions. They can also show how and why certain dreaded human afflictions can be largely absent in a particular race even as they become the dreadful scourge of some other races. For the ill and the ailing, comparison of ailment is a known and probably analgesic exertion.

         As it is with human beings, so it is with nations, particularly postcolonial nations suffering from the trauma of colonial gestation and induced labour. If this medical hypothesis is applied to the study of two African giant nations, Nigeria and the Congo Democratic Republic, we may begin to understand why in certain nations compound fractures never manage to heal simply because the external nourishment is not there and the internal organs are incapable of growing regenerative tissues.

       Mobutu finally took power in 1965 and remained in place until 1996 when he was deposed in a civil war, while Kabila ruled till 2001 when he was assassinated in a failed coup bid. His son has been at it ever since, managing to hang on to power through egregiously rigged elections and sheer authoritarian savagery when all else fail. Between Mobutu and the two Kabilas, fifty one years of the modern Congolese nation have evaporated in a bonfire of Equatorial despotism.

      As this drama unfolded in the Congolese Republic, and as if a cruel and neat symmetry of shared post-colonial fate is at play, Nigeria also witnessed the revival of a fifty year old national festival of hate and mutual loathing. While the west was mourning the assassination fifty years earlier of one of their most illustrious sons ever, the east was grieving over the summary execution of their son and former head of state in the same momentous bloodbath.

    Meanwhile the north was commemorating the anniversary of the leader who told the world that the rest of the country would hear from his people at the appropriate time. Fearsome rhetoric of ethnic exceptionalism echoed and reverberated throughout the length and breadth of the country. It was as if the country was on the verge of war and disintegration all over again. Unlike 1966 when the country was relatively prosperous and financially viable, the looming economic apocalypse has not helped matters. Once again, the idols of the tribes are on rampage.

    Read Also; Why is Southwest neglecting agriculture? (2)

    It goes to show how Nigeria is powered by a reverse nationalism in which the valorous myth of the nationality is more powerful and all-suffusing than the myth of the nation. It is as if nothing has been learnt or taught in the intervening five decades or half a century.

    In a bitterly polarized nation, politics of remembrance can easily degenerate to the politicization of institutional memory as can be seen in the attempts by rival ethnic sections to call to question the very heroism and altruistic nobility of a man whose exemplary courage in the heat of savage battle against Congolese rebels had earned him a colonial medal just a tad short of the ultimate British honour for a soldier. It was the first ever awarded to a Nigerian combatant.

    This desecration of sacred memory as a way of evading debts of gratitude and the burden of honorable obligation or as a strategy of demeaning the stellar import of heroic national sacrifice in order to obviate guilt and the shame of insensate revenge shows the diabolic imagination at work in the construction of mutually cancelling narratives of a nation in the context of permanent de-nationalization. It demonstrates why the Nigerian story will never be an authoritative narrative but a story of many stories in a conflicted atmosphere of polyphonic strife and tension.

    Yet as the Americans will put it, stuff do really happen even as we seek to authorize and notarize them from the point of view of primordial sentiments and ethnic subjectivity. Perhaps the most significant event of 1966, apart from the two momentous coups, was the declaration of independence from Nigeria by a ragtag band of Ijaw militants led by Isaac Adaka Boro. It was a forlorn and doomed bid summarily degraded by force of superior arms. Last week, fifty years after, a predominantly Ijaw group known as The Adaka Boro Avengers (ABA) sought to declare a Niger Delta Republic. As we write, the entire region is crawling with military personnel hunting down the rogue secessionists.

    As we have noted in this column once and appropriating the seminal insight of Leo Tolstoy, arguably the greatest novelist the world has seen, all happy nations are the same, every unhappy nation is unhappy in its own unique way. From different routes but similar debilities, both Nigeria and the Congo Republic, like so many African post-colonial nations, have arrived at a state of unadulterated unhappiness.

    All happy nations, however they arrived at modernist rationality, be it through Western Enlightenment, Confucianism, Shintoism, Hinduism or even benign variants of Islamic modernization, look suspiciously alike. You may go to bed in Stockholm and wake up in New York. But you expect certain benefits of modernity to be in place: regular supply of electricity, potable water, public utilities that function with seamless efficiency, particularly public transportation that run on time and with clockwork precision, decent housing for most and adequate medical facilities even for visitors.

    Local topography and native fauna notwithstanding, or the complexion of local politics not standing in the way, everything seems surreally alike. Indeed in some of these countries, you often develop an overpowering sense of Déjà vu. That is what we call the homogeneity of national feel-good or happiness. It comes with the territory.

        Conversely, because they exist in a whirlpool of political, economic and spiritual irrationality, a time-warp of stalled motion that derive  their peculiar dynamics from specific internal disorganization, all unhappy countries are unhappy in their own unique way. Apart from the underlying solidarity of human aberration, they have absolutely nothing in common. To the unwary visitor, African countries, particularly Congo and Nigeria, may appear the same as iconic monuments to underdevelopment, but they come as special brands in the unwavering commitment of their respective political elite to national ruination. In the heterogeneity of national unhappiness, no two nations are alike.

    The reason for this momentous paradox is simple.  Whereas the achievements of scientific modernity is open, universal and for all time, all remaining human societies that seek to dominate nature and overcome political, spiritual and economic adversity through the sheer power of poetic  or religious imagination become stranded in a peat bog of fetishes, risible rituals, superstitions and wild irrationalities that are localized, society-specific and time-bound. These are the last bastions of Early Man.  Modernity solves problems for all human societies, while mythology deflects the specific problems of specific societies through the fabulous and imaginary resolution of pressing contradictions.

       We must now return to our case file in order to press conclusions. The chaotic colonial amalgams of Congo and Nigeria, despite seeming structural similarities such as vast landmass, mighty life-enhancing rivers in each country, improbable natural riches and a vibrant and indomitable populace are plagued by country-specific contradictions.  Since independence, the Congo Republic has seen many civil wars, summary dismemberment, virtual excision of remote parts of the country and periodic descent into ungovernability.

       If Nigeria has been spared such horrific extremities, it is because the nation is powered along by a micro-pluralism of power in which competing and countervailing centres of power cancel out each other and make it impossible for any despot to stay put or for any group to lord it over the nation on a permanent basis. Potential potentates and regional power mafias should note that Nigeria is not the Congo.

        The obverse of the coin of the regionalization of power elite is the absence of a genuine national and nationalist elite group which makes it impossible for the Nigerian political elite to act with a pan-Nigerian concert when a pressing national conundrum surfaces. The engrossing historical irony is that it leads Nigeria to the same democratic and developmental impasse as the Congo Republic. Whereas in the Congo, national elections are a rarity, in Nigeria the electorate rouses itself once in every four years to do the needful before it is summarily disbanded by the selectorate until another electoral season in a political ecology of compulsory hibernation.

     It is this absence of a truly functioning and viable electorate that has made it impossible for the Nigerian electorate to successfully recall a single erring lawmaker in seventeen years of post-military democracy. Once elected, the electors are summarily vaporized while the elected join the selectorate in a macabre enactment of the ritual of national immolation. Yet while the political tomfoolery goes on the nation sinks further in the abyss of societal anomie.

        Despite the fact that competing centres of power have managed to thwart despotism and the phenomenon of political overlordism in the country, what stares us in the face is the reality of uneven political consciousness among the competing power groups that has led to growing disillusionment and widespread disenchantment with the state of the nation.  In a situation of stark economic decline, if the current muted cries of dismay and disappointment are allowed to reach their 1966 decibel, it has horrific portents for the continued viability of the country. The future may well be the past.

    It can now be seen why the current shrill cries for the restructuring of the country are mere shorthand or coded battle signal for the swift and urgent modernization of the country’s economic and political parameters. All over the modern world, the trend is for a gradual devolution of power from a stifling and suffocating centre to other loci of potential and accelerated development.

    The sterling and stellar example of contemporary Lagos state is a model that commends itself to other sections of the country. Unfortunately, while vital segments of the nation hunger and thirst for economic and political modernity, some other sections take a dim view of this as an invitation to a summary dismemberment of the country.

    Had the country been blessed with visionary military modernizers, this conundrum would have been overcome. But you cannot give what you don’t have.  Yet until that dawn when a truly modernizing political elite who will seize the nation by the scruff of the neck and drag it to modernity arrives, the more likely possibility is that impatient sections of the country will eventually resort to self-help to plot their way out of the iron cage of colonial contraries.

        First published in 2016

  • The lost art of letter writing (II)

    The lost art of letter writing (II)

    Although each individual post office was  just a building, it’s tentacles reached far and wide and touched virtually every building in the land.  The letters posted in each post office was moved through one of several agencies associated with the office. Perhaps the most important agency was human, as the letters had to be sorted out by people who had been appropriately trained for the job. In other parts of the world, places where they have to deal with a very large volume of mail, machines are used to deal with sorting mail. This is especially true during the Christmas period when the post office has to employ an army of casual workers to shift out letters and other items of mail which had to be delivered before Christmas. Many Nigerians who were students in Britain in days gone by retain happy memories of the stipends which came their way at Christmas, courtesy of the Royal Mail which briefly opened her doors to them in those hectic days leading up to Christmas.

    As soon as letters were appropriately sorted, they were sent on to their respective destinations in all sorts of vehicles many times travelling through the night to deliver letters to destinations all over the country. Night travellers were likely to meet mail vans as well as those notoriously quick pickups ferrying newspapers across the country, delivering news to all nooks and corners of a country in the grip of satisfying sleep that came after honest labour.  Apart from these all important mail vans, letters were also distributed by contracted transporters like the famous Armels Transport with the guarantee of faithful delivery whilst even the trains which roared their way through the countryside carried mail. The roads over which mail was carried may have been narrow and winding; they may have been untarred and the bridges encountered all along the way may have been designed to carry only one vehicle at a time but they were adequately  maintained by the men of the Public Works Department (PWD) whose work camps were a prominent presence and like that of the Police, could be taken for granted all over the land. The delivery of that letter casually dropped into a mail box on the Marina in Lagos and received by a friend or relative in Afikpo a couple of days later would, if it could talk, have a story of adventure to tell of its journey through the Nigerian postal system as it was put into the hands of the recipient by the familiar postman who arrived at the point of delivery on a government issued bicycle.

    The P&T was an institution with a vast and necessary reach and as with all institutions had her own rules of engagement and discharged her duties with due diligence. It had an unwritten but powerful social contract with her numerous and diversified customers, big and small all over the country. Countries all over the world, at least those of them that have a reputation for success, are governed by these contracts whilst on the other side of the coin are the broken countries in which the social contract is casually violated, almost as a matter of principle. In Nigeria, the will and the drive to deliver letters on time began to unravel, first imperceptibly and then quite overtly at some point in time until the postal service which became the butt of sick jokes, sickened in its turn and died. It took longer and longer for posts to be delivered until the guarantee of delivery died a natural death. Hitherto reliable postmen no longer saw or respected the need to make any delivery and dumped mail in some convenient spot but not before extracting anything of value contained in the post under their care. Such chicanery could only have been possible in an institution which had lost its way in a country which had lost all forms of social cohesion and degenerated into an incoherent mass, rather like a terminally diseased heart going into atrial fibrillation at the point of shutting down forever.

    It has become very easy these days to point accusing fingers at certain people for the mess we are now battling with but the sad reality is that more than anything, what is wrong with us is the serial collapse of virtually all our institutions especially as in this case, the Post & Telegraph service. It has to be pointed out however that we will only be using the P&T as a convenient scape goat were we to neglect to point out the culpability of other public institutions in what has now become the failure of the whole. The point is, nobody is interested in looking out for public over the private which is why you will need to look into private pockets for money which should properly be going into the government treasury to serve common purposes such as the provision of social infrastructure; good roads, bridges, railroads, sporting facilities, educational institutions and so on and so forth. We now have individuals who are richer than the country and spend ‘their’ money to scratch their back, never mind that the general populace no longer have any back to scratch. The situation has degenerated to such a point that people, those who have a great deal of money in their pockets are well advised to prepare a detailed written explanation for how it came about that they have cornered such a large amount of money. This is in the unlikely but necessary event that the Nigerian situation may change to such an extent that pointed questions are asked about how come they are thriving furiously in the middle of a desert, far away from any oasis.

    The postal service was designed to serve everyone and in doing so, make it possible for societal purposes to be achieved. However, it’s continued usefulness needed to be guaranteed by individuals who had been trained, some of them at public expense to administer what in effect was a public utility company. The P&T was not expected to run up stupendous profit in the manner of Amazon but it was given the wherewithal to ensure that letters were delivered to their respective destinations within a reasonable period of time. It has to be said that this limited objective was once achieved even with time to spare. But that was in those days when we could rely on responsible authorities to be alive to their responsibilities. In the case of the P&T, one can imagine that it’s managers, eager to put up a show for their friends and family began to think that it was in the interest of their job if staff cars were purchased from the public purse for their own personal use rather than delivery vans which actually carried the mails which the company or,  in the jargon of the day, the parastatal had been paid through stamp sales and fat government subvention. In time, the management came to the irresponsible conclusion that the postal services existed for the sole purpose of their own personal aggrandisement.  After that, it became impossible for the general public to be served and letters became an irrelevance, if not an actual nuisance and like many other things, the art of letter writing was lost among us and lost forever. Now, we are all condemned to communicating with each other electronically by email and suddenly the thrill of actually sitting down to compose a letter was exchanged for the rather impersonal exercise of typing out a letter on some compliant keyboard and despatching it with a single click of a button or a mouse attached to a computer. Instant delivery is assured, blocking out the thrill of actually having to pick up a physical entity from a pigeon hole in an office or your own box at the post office or even from a postman with whom you may have developed some form of relationship over the years. In any case, a letter was more than the message it contained but was the manifestation of a way of life. In many cases, it had a life of its own and was like an impossibly elastic umbilical chord which bound, in its most basic form, two people together in their own personal form of a social contract.  When I was away from home for any extended period of time, one of the highlights of my day was receiving a letter with a Nigerian stamp on it even if it was the flimsy airmail which did not allow for many words as it’s forte was in its quick delivery. I felt like celebrating the arrival of a letter, usually in a blue envelope, covered with stamps, the value of which compensated for the weight of the letter and the effort which went into writing it and when it came from a special person the ecstasy of the expectation of the sweetness enclosed in that rectangular cover was enough to make my day and at least reduced the pain of separation over a substantial period of time. In short, every letter had a romantic appeal of its own as it sometimes relieved anxieties which had built up over a period of waiting for that delivery. For those who have probably never received a proper letter delivered in an envelope decorated with a stamp, that feeling of holding a personal letter in your hand is indescribable.

    For many years, I listened every Sunday evening to a BBC programme called Letter from America delivered by Alistair Cooke, a Briton who from 1946 to 2004 wrote a letter to the world from his perch in America. Throughout that period, he regaled the world with letters on a wide  range of topics on his observation of life in America. Listening to it was like receiving a personal letter from a friend, a special friend or if you like a pen pal who lived in America and did not expect you to take the trouble of making a reply. Alistair Cooke was blessed with long life and one interesting thing about his life was that he died within a month of having to give up the writing of his weekly Letter from America. That may have been an example of an incomparable attachment to letter writing but call me an incurable romantic but even at that risk, I consider that the bond which Alistair Cooke had developed with those letters kept him going long after his contemporaries had shrugged off their mortal coil. The email or WhatsApp message is unbeatable for speed but what about the passion?

  • Rend your heart

    Rend your heart

    Our problem is neither presidential nor parliamentary democracy; our politicians are the problem

    It is almost certain that the 60 members of the House of Representatives who are pushing for the country’s return to parliamentary system of government are not likely to go far, for very obvious reasons.  The present law makers in the National Assembly are not likely to let the matter scale through because, according to some people, they would not like to commit class suicide. I don’t know what that means, though, because anyone who expects things to continue like this, with a situation where the congregation is getting lean and the pastors are getting fat is only deceiving himself or herself.  But, what are the reasons adduced by the House of Representatives’ members who are calling for our return to parliamentary rule?

    The law makers, under the auspices of Parliamentary Group, introduced a constitution alteration bill on the floor of the House of Representatives on February 14, setting in motion what could be a transition to a parliamentary system by 2031. Led by the Minority Leader, Kingsley Chinda (PDP, Rivers), the law makers appear frustrated with the presidential system that they see as expensive, and the overbearing powers of the president. “No wonder the Nigerian President appears to be one of the most powerful Presidents in the world,” the group’s spokesperson, Mr Abdulsamad Dasuki said. They are also not happy that despite several alterations to the present constitution, the shortcomings in the system persist, thus robbing the country of its opportunity of attaining its full potential.

     “Among these imperfections are the high cost of governance, leaving fewer resources for crucial areas like infrastructure, education, and healthcare, and consequently hindering the nation’s development progress, and the excessive powers vested in the members of the executive, who are appointees and not directly accountable to the people,” he said.

    “The bills presented today seek a return to the system of government adopted by our founders, which made governance accountable, responsible, and responsive, and ultimately less expensive,” he said.

    Even from Dasuki’s presentation, it is clear that parliamentary system of government is not a particularly novel idea to Nigeria. It was what we had in place before it was dismantled by the military that foisted an unworkable unitary system of government on us, in place of the federalism that we hitherto practiced.

    True, we have long been complaining that the present presidential system is a drain on the nation’s treasury. But we have merely been complaining in the last 24 years plus without taking any concrete steps to actualise an alternative. Without doubt, our presidential system is expensive and therefore unsustainable. Even from the point of electoral contest, a lot of money is involved. Unlike in the past when political parties relied on their members’ contributions for sustenance, it is money-bags that hijack most of the parties and, after spending so much to win elections, they want to recoup their money. Whether due to slip of tongue or whatever, a few of them had confessed this much. 

    Read Also; State Police: Pipe dream or panacea?

    The sad part of it is that the usually expensive elections hardly end with the conduct of polls in the country. Virtually every election outcome is contested in court. This also entails a lot of money spent on litigations, some of which are from the public till in cases where incumbents are involved.

    Of course this is because, as I have always argued, Nigeria is one of the few countries where someone enters public office today in bathroom slippers and emerges the next day in golden Italian shoes without anybody asking questions. It is the tax-payers that bear the brunt. The reward for public office is alluring.

    After elections, the spending continues. Not only at the centre but even in some states where some governors have had cause to appoint over a thousand political aides.

    Imagine the colossal amounts we have spent maintaining law makers in the National Assembly alone, even since 1999. I am afraid of mentioning figures because they are too staggering not to incite, especially at a time like this when millions of Nigerians are not able to afford two meals a day.

    The humongous cost we are spending on our over-pampered law makers notwithstanding, we would be making a big mistake to think that returning to unicameral legislature alone can lead to reduction in expenses at that level or at any level of governance for that matter. It is true we may not have as many legislators as we now have at the national or state level if we return to parliamentary system of government, that would not automatically lead to a reduction in what we spend maintaining them if the people who are going to represent us then have the same mindset of primitive accumulation as the bulk of those we have been having since 1999. All they need do is raise their greed mode. Like doubling or tripling what both senators and House of Representatives members take home under various incomprehensible headings.

    Lest we forget, the present NASS members did not get to this greed juncture overnight. It started, I think, with furniture allowance in the Olusegun Obasanjo era in the early years of the return to civil rule in 1999. Then, we condemned the legislators but even the then President Obasanjo could not reject the demand in spite of his tough posture on several other things.

    After furniture allowance, the NASS legislators continued to dig deeper until we got to the situation where we find ourselves that they no longer see made-in-Nigeria vehicles as good enough or befitting of their status. Yet, they say they are promoting made-in-Nigeria goods. Yet, they had the temerity to summon the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria to come explain why the naira keeps plummeting. Pray, whether in the green or red chamber, which of the items that they are using is locally produced, from their furniture to their flowing gowns? May be they would soon ask us to be paying palliative allowance to them to enable them make better laws for the country. You know, Nigeria is the only place where law makers do their job.

    What I am saying in effect is that the problem is not about the system of government that we adopt, it is more about how ready we are as a people to call to order our so-called elected representatives. Our docility is what these lawmakers continue to exploit until they have now become dry fish that we now find impossible to bend. We have lost the sense of outrage with which we fought the military to a standstill before they returned to their barracks in 1999. We must find it.

    Where are all those non-governmental organisations that went into the trenches during the soldiers-must-go-struggle? I mean Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), Campaign for Democracy (CD), etc? We drove the soldiers away only to let those who didn’t lift a finger against the soldiers hijack the harvest from us. Because many of them contributed nothing to the struggle (in fact, some of them worked directly or indirectly to entrench military rule), the only language they understand is how to corner national resources to their advantage now that they have succeeded in getting access to the only factory that is producing nothing in the country — the National Assembly. And if they say they are producing something, what is it? Bad governance! If the state of this country today is the parameter to assess their performance from 1999 to date, then they should know that Nigerians had spent so much to sustain people whose only product is the hardship that is the country’s lot today.

    To further buttress my point that the reason why we have greedy people dominate the NASS is because  most of the lawmakers we have been having since 1999 are just the greedy lot. We had law makers in the Second Republic. They were not this covetous.

    Perhaps what is more perfidious is that there is no difference between the conservatives and the progressives when these spoils from the Nigerian people are concerned. There is unanimity of purpose where sharing money under various headings is the issue.

    The presidential system, no doubt, is naturally expensive, but it becomes even more so when practiced by the kind of politicians who have dominated the National Assembly since the return to civil rule in 1999. The ‘bamu bamu la yo, awa o mo pe’bi np’omo enikankan’ (we are feeding well; we don’t know that some people are hungry) politicians who care little about the millions of miserable Nigerians that they claim to be representing.

    This, for me, is the problem. Not the presidential system, per se.

    I know the greed of many NASS members would not allow them to see clearly in a matter like this. It would quite naturally blur their vision. Like the typical greedy fly, many of them would end up following dead body to the grave because that is where this country is headed unless we retrace our steps. And one veritable way to do that is to jettison these wasteful aspects of the presidential system that our NASS members coined and has produced many rich men (and women) who have become stupendously rich without having any factory or identifiable vocation.

    What the 60 representatives have kick-started is a process of reforming from above, which is far better than leaving the initiative to come from below. The representatives may have come up with an idea that is not necessarily the solution to our financial woes. But what they have started should be a wake-up call to others in the NASS now and those who would be there tomorrow, that to continue to practice this kind of presidential system that makes elected representatives rotund while the so-called electorate continue to go lean in their untiring efforts to settle their representatives’ bill is not the kind of honeymoon that would last forever. As a matter of fact, may be not for too long.

  • Gowon on ECOWAS sanctions

    Gowon on ECOWAS sanctions

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Ndume, northern critics and ‘Lagos boys’

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

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