The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • NLC, TUC and opposition politics

    NLC, TUC and opposition politics

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has become predictable in its very casual manner of taking issue with the policies and programmes of the Bola Tinubu administration. The job which history assigned the party, after it lost presidential election thrice, is much huger than party leaders appear to appreciate. So far it has misunderstood and misapplied the tools of opposition politics. On its own, the Labour Party (LP) has never really functioned as a party, let alone opposition party, beyond the idealism, fantasies and statistical excitedness of Peter Obi. Since the party does not even operate as a political party, and Mr Obi is too distracted and impatient to function in the capacity a political party needs, he is far less likely than his opposite number in the PDP to imbue the LP with anything substantial or inspiring. Shockingly, it is actually the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), under the increasingly hysterical and myopic Joe Ajaero, that is stepping into the gap. The Trade Union Congress (TUC) arm of organised labour seems more eager to adhere to the technical strictures of a labour union.

    In the short run, the country had better get used to seeing the NLC operate as the official opposition. The Tinubu administration must factor that fact into its governance equation. The TUC too, and the rest of the country, must get used to seeing the NLC as a political transvestic, at least until Mr Ajaero completely diminishes and demystifies the union. The TUC must also finally come to terms with the annoying reality of a politicised NLC or cease riding the coattail of the senior arm of organised labour. When the TUC brusquely called out a national strike over Mr Ajaero’s Imo State debacle months ago, reflecting a needless personalisation of serious national issue, it ought to know that it was either setting itself up for total subordination to the NLC or diluting its own aims and objectives. The Department of State Service (DSS) must also now begin to factor the changes brought upon the NLC by the politicised Mr Ajaero. Dealing with the NLC in the past was a fairly straightforward thing; dealing with them today, when they seemed to have cut their political teeth on the national stage and are eager to sink those teeth into the jugulars of anyone that crosses their path, is a different kettle of fish.

    Everyone – public, TUC, DSS, federal government – must gradually begin to understand that the NLC has become indistinguishable from the LP, basking in the limelight and continuing to revel in its newfound fame. The problem, it must be understood, is not just that the NLC gave birth to LP and turned it into a feral social media beast, but that the immoderate and uncalculating Mr Ajaero has been asked to suckle and wean the ogre. No one has done a chemistry of the milk on which the LP is suckled, but what is known is that the baby is temperamental and pugnacious, and is unwilling to be tamed either by law or by the constitution. There is hardly anyone who does not know that a street protest today stands the very high risk of being hijacked; the DSS says so, the NLC and Mr Ajaero know it, and the government also fears the possibility. Even though it does not say so, the TUC also suspects that a protest could indeed turn very nasty very quickly. But regardless of any misgiving, and despite any DSS warning, the fanatical Mr Ajaero has sustained his obstinacy. He wants to go ahead with his protest, an indication that the NLC leadership has probably become zombified or is unqualified for the offices assigned departmental leaders.

    The clearest indication that the NLC has lost its wits is its readiness to call out a strike on a whim. It was so eager for a protest that it forgot to carry along the other labour centre, the TUC, yes the same second arm of organised labour that saved its bacon months ago when political hoodlums taught the witless Mr Ajaero a lesson on the dangers of meddling in local politics. Scorned by Mr Ajero and angry that it had been scorned, and perhaps was merely being tolerated, the TUC has written a fiery letter of protest against its mistreatment. It will not join NLC’s February 27 and 28 protests, it says. What the TUC’s Festus Osifo does not suspect is that Mr Ajaero is merely tolerating him. The NLC feels it can go it alone, and that the TUC is surplus to requirement. In the about eight months of the Tinubu administration, Mr Ajaero has threatened or called out a strike at least four times, like a confetti. He and his union had sought out reasons for battle, and determined where and how the battles should be fought. He is not a deep thinker, nor a chess player, nor even an orator who could stir an impassioned crowd, but he knows how to capitalise on the emotional deficit of his co-unionists and herd them over the precipice. He will not stop until he is embarrassed. He will not heed any warning. It is not in his nature to heed anything he cannot decipher, for few speak his language as adroitly as Imolites spoke it last November when he thought that the same diffidence he encountered at the national scene could be transmuted onto the local political scene, especially his state where they read his sinister moves far more competently.

    Read Also; State Police: Pipe dream or panacea?

    In early January, Mr Obi adjudged the Nigerian political scene ready to host him and his party as the main political opposition. In a New Year message, he declared his readiness to outpace any other opposition party and fulfill the mandate he believed had been entrusted to him. He stopped short of describing it as a divine mandate in line with his religious politics. Yet, he is merely chasing shadows, conspicuously engaging in leisure of the theory class. The truth is far more intriguing than Mr Obi has made it. Mr Ajaero is actually the main opposition leader, backed of course by the Catholic Bishops of Nigeria. He is more discussed than Mr Obi, and seems well on the way to becoming capable of evoking fear and dread among the populace and in the corridors of power. Meanwhile, the NLC, not the more amorphous LP, is the main opposition party. There is no need settling any precedence between the two or publishing a change of name. Let the general public, as they say, take note.

    That abominable refrain, ebin pa wa

    For those really interested in why Nigeria has fallen on hard times, the economic and political facts speak for themselves without any obfuscating technicalities. More crude oil is being produced in line with OPEC quota, but the dollars are not available for the government to use, having being pledged by the previous administration in foreign exchange forwards that weakened external reserves to less than $4bn instead of about $33bn. Under ex-president Muhammadu Buhari, also, the government printed about N23trn through ways and means, and retroactively appropriated and passed the spending weeks before the end of his second term. And to cap the economic insanity, the last administration took over $30bn loan and added it to the $10bn it inherited. In one brutally short phrase, Nigeria was broke by the time a new administration took over – not only broke, but also broken. To fix such brokenness would take years; but Nigerians, particularly the youth and also the unenlightened and idealistic, not to say those who view every measure through ethnic prism, want the fixing done in months. They do not take issue with the measures designed to do the fixing, for these economic tools are hard to comprehend, instead they take issue with the symptoms.

    Nigeria is not insulated from the inflationary pressure dogging the world. But given the low income status of the country, and the relative absence of social safety nets, the effects have been felt rather more severely, particularly in the area of hunger. Long used to being fed almost for free as a result of oil wealth, Nigerians have elevated the hunger pangs flowing from the ongoing economic hardship to a crisis. This crisis is compounded by the creeping politicisation of every step, facial expression, and statement from the presidency. Fortunately, religion as a political factor has abated considerably. But ethnicity has continued to loom very large. Perhaps, over time, that factor will also diminish. But for now, whether it concerns fuel subsidy or relocation of a few departments in a few ministries, the ethnic factor is stretched to its elastic limit and made to look like a consistent and deliberate programme by the administration.

    But what is complicating the hunger crisis now expediently turned into singsongs and street protests is the erosion of the privileges of powerful men of yesterday who sense danger from probes launched into the financial dealings of ministries, agencies and departments. Some analysts justify the protests on the grounds that President Tinubu’s policies are iniquitous, misplaced, and brutal. This is incredible sophistry. In the first instance, the global economic downturn does not leave any country insulated. Secondly, the cumulative effect of poorly conceived national and economic policies implemented over four or so decades impoverished Nigerians, degraded institutions, obliterated local industries capable of backward and forward linkages, erased safety nets, and created a dismal and frightful future for the people. Rather than tackle the problems from the roots, fearful administrations took loans to cover the gaps, and fished for short-term reliefs. In summary, the problems metastisised years ago such that no palliative could mitigate or obviate them, let alone an eight-month-old administration assailed from the beginning by ethnic and religious jingoists.

    Until there is a better understanding of the root causes of the problems, and public enlightenment to guide Nigerians away from the sensationalism and idealism energising protests against the symptoms of the disease rather than the disease itself, the country will remain susceptible to manipulations by vested interests, ethnic irredentists, traditional rulers, and other freelance bigots masquerading as activists and rights crusaders. The answer to a crisis that took so long in maturing cannot be found in panaceas that take a few months to conceive and execute. That would be a silly resort to magic. The answer lies in patient rebuilding of the foundation, and careful bricklaying and structural engineering. It takes time to stay the course and do the right thing, despite the undue politicisation of the pains accompanying the country’s economic surgery. The administration may not have got its appointments right in all cases, and has been a little tardy in imposing discipline on erring officials indispensable to protecting the legacy it is trying to establish, but it must be firm in administering the medicine. Secure the farms and countryside, return to agriculture in the copious manner the regions did before and immediately after independence, fight crime and criminality in an active manner rather than the laid-back and passive manner it is being done, and completely eliminate rent-seeking. The easy options exist only hypothetically.

    Too many Nigerians have poured into the cities and urban centres doing little or nothing and expecting to be fed and pampered. They will go hungry, especially when global fluctuations and economic crisis occur. However, the government has an obligation to holistically reconstruct the economy to enable it cater to the needs of the people. Such reconstructions cannot but rest on the principles of federalism if the building is to stand and withstand periodic stress. It is time local and state authorities, in line with federalism, shared in the blame for decades of indolence and ineptitude. It is also time the Tinubu administration let the states know what they can and must do to placate their people and midwife life more abundant for them. The crisis is multifaceted; it requires deep thinking, not ad hoc solutions.

    Good thinking from Lagos, but…

    Lagos State government, like a few other state governments, particularly Niger State, has introduced far-reaching measures to mitigate the impact of the ongoing economic crisis on Lagosians. The state has been methodical, probably newfangled in its ideas, but nevertheless scientific. Among the measures are subsidised public transportation, expansion of subsidised Sunday markets for foodstuffs, fewer working days for civil servants, free child delivery at the state’s 31 general hospitals, and soup kitchens in each LGAs to feed 1,000 people per day. On the surface, these are laudable ideas.

    But the last two measures are problematic, very problematic. How do they hope to limit the number of people fed in soup kitchens to 1,000 without creating a stampede? The measure sounds well in the ears. Beyond that it is fraught with all manner of difficulties. One, who would the fed be, and would they truly be Lagosians?  Two, free child delivery is a counterproductive policy that would probably exacerbate Nigeria’s uncontrolled population growth. It encourages indolence and plays to the gallery to seek to underwrite childbirth. This measure should be replaced with a drugs policy that gives succour to those burdened by expensive lifesaving medications. More importantly, given the limit to what the government can offer, should the state not demand some kind of identifications’, say registration with Lagos State Residents Registration Agency (LASRRA), in order to derive any benefit? 

  • Tinubu’s attempt at exorcising ‘evil’ in the civil service

    There is this very interesting vibe that President Bola Tinubu seems to infuse into public administration since his assumption of office. Right from the Day-One, the day of his inauguration, when he, with just a proclamation, expelled a problem that seemed to have evolved a life of its own over the years, Jagaban has left no one in doubt that he is not here to fiddle, but to take steps leaders take, in other parts of the world, to make the homeland attractive to the rest of the world to be considered as serious.

    Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to say those who came before him fiddled away our time or resources, no, not by any translation of my thoughts. Even if they fiddled in any of the ways the word fiddle translates, this space is not created to voice that and I won’t pretend to know what other leaders before Asiwaju did well or not. Such will be an opinion I will rather keep personal for the time being. I am only trying to emphasise the essence of taking particularly determined and intentional actions, sticking by such actions, taking more steps to see them through to fruition. Our President has been showing capacity as a public administrator.

    An example of this intentionality in his ways and running of Nigeria will be the single-mindedness with which he has followed up on the all-important removal of the fuel subsidy. The policy hurts, as a matter of fact, both the people and the government have been impacted. He has consistently acknowledged the fact that he knows how it is hurting the people, especially those in the ‘desperately poor’ category. This has constantly put pressure on the state because from time to time, the pain has pushed the people to mount resistance. Some sections of the ruling class, especially in the traditional class, have even suggested a reversal of the policy to the President.

    Read Also; PBAT and unrelenting opposition (2)

    However, knowing his targeted end in the painful journey out of petrol subsidy, President Tinubu has maintained his focus and stoutly, and consistently too, refused the suggested summersault.

    When he met with a delegation from the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA), led by its Chief Executive Officer, on Florizelle Liser, on Thursday at the Villa, Tinubu sent the message out again: “we are right in the middle of a challenging stage of our reforms. We have headwinds, no doubt, but we are not going back. We are challenged, and we believe we will overcome the challenges. I have a can-do attitude that must be translated into a must-do attitude. We have a good team, and we must remain focused to get the goal accomplished”. The message simply translates “I have a beautiful picture in sight and these passing inconveniences are not enough to rob this nation of that beautiful end. There’s no plan to abandon this struggle, not with all that Nigerians have suffered”.

    With this sort of vision and focus on the vision, it was not really a surprise when it later emerged that his meeting with the leadership of the Federal Civil Service, including the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, the Accountant-General of the Federation, the Auditor-General of the Federation, the Body of Permanent Secretaries, and some Director-Generals of federal agencies, was really not a tea party, as initial information portrayed. Sources inside the meeting said the President was angry at the people who ought to facilitate the execution of policies and programmes of government. He was said to have queried the crème of the civil service over sloppy attitudes towards implementation of policies and programmes. According to a source, the President was said to have wondered why they had been “abysmally slow in carrying out his people-oriented programmes.”

    Why would he be angry with them and not even minded if they were the top echelon of the civil service? It is simple. Jagaban is a man on a mission, focused on his mission and taking every risk and step to achieve his target. Here is a link in the chain of the executive, the very core of the chain, now behaving as if it has gone brittle. The President has constantly said he will spare no resource when it comes to ensuring that Nigeria comes out of the woods, meaning he is ready to provide all that is regarded as constituting the enabling environment to achieve his goal.

    So after making sure that all that is required is available, then the work men, who ought to use all he has provided to bring about the result, start dragging their feet, as though they are deliberately intent on ensuring his plans and efforts fail, how else would you expect him to react when he sees those seeming to be antithetical in the journey?

    Since the harsh effects of the removal of the petrol subsidy and the floating of the Naira at the foreign exchange market started hitting both the economy and Nigerians hard, the President had come up with a number of cushioning programmes, aimed at providing temporary succor to citizens, while massive reorganization of the entire productive system goes on below the surface for the long term solution to the crises we see now. Programmes like provision of a single-digit loan of N1billion to 75 enterprises; N50,000 grant each for 1,300 Nano businesses; N75 billion for 100,000 businesses and startups; and the investment of N100 billion in gas-powered buses for mass transit had been put out to the public as far back as the end of July, but the population is still waiting for much of these to manifest so that the heat they feel can be eased. 

    “Let us make our children’s dreams come true. Why are we slowing that down? It is not just shameful. It is unacceptable. We made a pledge to bring our people out of poverty. You should not increase their vulnerability. Help Nigerians to get out of these problems, do not compound the tough situation with unacceptable delays”, the President said. Since there will be more of meetings like that of Thursday, Baba should be able to monitor the rate of effectiveness further and if there will be need for re-strategizing, he will know early enough.

    Meanwhile, the week was filled with many events and activities of impact. For Instance, on Sunday, while still in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he had attended the 37th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU), the President met with his Brazilian counterpart, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, discussing issues of mutual economic interest, especially in the areas of agriculture, trade and other areas.

    Returning to Nigeria from Addis Ababa on Monday afternoon, he swung back into action, starting with a directive on Tuesday to the management of the State House to immediately settle the electricity bill owed the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC), a debt that had almost turned to some sort of embarrassment to the administration. Then on Same Tuesday, he made a couple of new appointments into federal agencies. For instance, he appointed Ms. Hafsat Abubakar Bakari as new Director of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU).

    On Wednesday, the President met with former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (Rtd), at the Villa. It was actually the first time the elder statesman was visiting the President since he was sworn-in at the end of May last year. It was a time for him to discuss the headaches facing the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which he currently chairs, with one of its founding fathers.

    Then he made more appointments; he appointed DCG Kemi Nanna Nandap as Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), and Kahlil Gaga as Executive Director, Corporate services, at the Nigerian Export-Import (NEXIM) Bank.

    He also met with the President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African Export-Import Bank (AFREXIMBANK), Professor Benedict Oramah, accompanied by a delegation from Kings College Hospital, London (KCH), discussing issues, especially those surrounding the health sector.

    Then on Thursday, he continued with making new appointments, making for three agencies under the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy: the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the Nigerian Communications Satellite (NIGCOMSAT) Limited and Galaxy Backbone Limited. He also appointed Gbenga Alade as Managing Director of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON).

    Those appointments happened late Thursday evening, after he had met with the top echelon of the federal civil service and had received the ECOWAS Judicial Council, which was led to him by its Chairman, who is also the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Olukayode Ariwoola, at the Villa.

    Not much of the President was seen on Friday, but that was assumed to have been as a result of preparation for yesterday’s ECOWAS Summit, held at the Villa. We might not be able to make predictions about what should be expected this week, but one sure thing is it will be exciting because with Jagaban, there is no dull moment.

  • Some blow back (rejoinders) to my recent articles

    Hoping your President fails is the same thing as hoping your country fails. And it’s not patriotism. Patriotism is supporting your Commander- in-Chief even if you do not agree with him on everything” – Barack Obama, 44th U.S. President.

    “Amid all these came from the North last week a regional threat to the president by traditional and religious leaders. They said their people were hungry and restive and that they could no longer control them. Every sentence they uttered sounded like a threat of Armageddon. Their concern would have carried weight if the shouters had done so when their Muhammadu Buhari was in power and was messing up everyone, everything, everywhere. But they maintained complicit quietude and passivity when their evil reigned. Because of their past of unholy silence, their present angst could not resonate with the street in the South. I saw and heard people mocking these Northern leaders and their groans.

    They lost it” – Dr Lasisi Olagunju in ‘Our President’s Love Affair With The IMF’.

    I have severally written on these pages that  we owe ourselves an obligation to  always tell ourselves the truth if Nigeria is to ever exit its benumbing conundrum.

    As a result of that I wrote as follows  in ‘The Unabating Kidnapping in The North: Price We Are Paying For Long Years Of Feudalism’:”Knowing how much insecurity can imperil its economic programmes, especially its drive for foreign investors, the Federal government must now

    put in place, appropriate measures, to nip this terrible situation in the bud. The starting point will, however, be to seek the support of both the Northern elite and that of its traditional authority both of which have demonstrated unbelievable equanimity in the face of massive insecurity in that part of the country. It is  time Northern leaders are roused from their lethargy”.

    I followed that up this past week with the following:”Time and again, the North has shown that its interests are not exactly coterminous with that of Nigeria. On many occasions  it has treated with disdain, matters that would have  redounded to our mutual interest whilst  holding, tenaciously, to things aimed at achieving short term regional advantage.

    A good example is the fate which the Obasanjo political conference suffered as a result of  the North’s fastidious opposition to the demands of  Niger-Deltans, which requests are now being feverishly delivered  via the Amnesty programme, after it became obvious that oil money was no longer as guaranteed as previously assumed”.

    Read Also; PBAT and unrelenting opposition (2)

    I concluded with this reference to the threat by a Northern Emir who, ordinarily, should have been counted among those seeking a solution to Nigeria’s problems:”It doesn’t get more annoying than when a Northern leader, who didn’t breathe a word throughout the  Buhari years,  now tells us “that Northerners will soon revolt; we can’t pacify them again”.

    What blackmail!

    I got many reactions to the articles but suffice it to include only two here.

    On the statement by the Sultan to the effect that “the economic hardships have left citizens feeling agitated, angry, and desperate for change” and the other monarch who asserted, authoritatively, that Northern youths will soon revolt, a commentator  wrote:

    “The statements by members of the Northern royalty concerning northern youths and their seething anger is revealing. It shows the level of disconnect and delusions of grandeur under which their Eminences and members of their class operate. It shows also how far a section of this country would go to bully and intimidate others in order to sustain their privileged and entitlement mentality. But let’s keep those issues for another day.

    For now, kindly permit me to reply to His Eminence, the Sultan, as follows:

    1. The greatest problem facing the north is indiscriminate child bearing. This is 2024, not 1824. No part of the world engages in endless breeding of humans anymore because uncontrolled population growth breeds poverty and destitution. Desertification and ignorance up North are issues that need serious and committed attention. Not threats.

    2. The North receives more allocations than the South. The North   has more states and local governments just so it can collect the lion share of everything. The question is –  what have they done with those resources to make life bearable for Northerners – both youths and adults?

    The youth anger should focus on the Northern governors (past and present), NASS members (past and present) and their royal collaborators. They should be asked to give account of their stewardship.

    3. The good Sultan did not remember the suffering of Northern youths when Buhari handed Nigeria over to a gang of avaricious  predators. The rape and desecration which Nigeria endured under Buhari’s watch is unparalleled in Nigerian history. For the eight years it lasted, no one  heard the Sultan issuing  apocalyptic warnings and threats.

    4. The Sultan was disingenuously silent when kidnappers and bandits were being  cuddled and pampered,  being made to feel that they can get away with any atrocity.

    People were denied access to their farms or killed outrightly in the process. So it is a no brainer that there will be hunger as a result.

    5. Or what about the ethnic cleansing, and land grabs, that took place in Niger, Kaduna, Benue, Plateau and in many other states?

    Isn’t it true  that millions of Nigerians are presently living in IDP camps because their ancestral lands were arbitrarily expropriated by a ‘master’ race?

     6. The Sultan should be talking about issues like these which have combined to bring Nigeria to its knees. He should not be threatening anyone with the anger of  Northern youths as anger and violence do not have a particular ethnic or religious monopoly.

    7. After all, when that anger finally explodes, I cannot see the Sultan and members of his feudal oligarchy, both political and ethno-religious, escaping the fallouts. The Sultan and company have benefitted from a system designed to downgrade the majority and place them in perpetual servitude. He should not pretend that he is a defender of the talakawas. Something tells me that the angry youths in the north know their real enemies.

    8. Also the Sultan will agree that the Nigeria Buhari inherited in 2015 is a far cry from the Nigeria he handed over in 2023.  He left behind a broken and bleeding nation. 

    They damaged Nigeria and no one should play holier than thou. All of them are guilty and must be held supremely responsible for whatever follows”.

    And this: “Daddy, I wish you a blessed Sunday sir.

    I don’t want to join issues on this for now. Our major problem is the congregation of saboteurs, old foes who predicted Nigerian collapse much earlier than now and the electoral losers and their sponsors who command large reserves of resources to sponsor a disintegration in a continent where such has since become a hobby for some.

    The major strategy that you elders and associates should convey to Tinubu is that Benevolent Dictatorship Is The Key To All Successful Democracies.

    If he is not assertive on the identified saboteurs in his administration and on the political landscape, if he does not allow the security agencies to shake these people who are not even disguising, then the Nation may implode.

    Nigeria is not under any threat of incompatible geo – political structure.

    Singapore and other Asian Tigers did not become economic  powers by adopting ceremonial approaches towards economic and political criminals.

    The President must be firm.

    It is only an orderly Nigeria that can be restructured. Enough resources are being pumped to the states already and if only he would read the riot act to governors, local economies will bring forth comfort,  and reduce tension at the grassroots. If  he  does not assert himself, and force regulatory agencies to enforce price control, there will be a melt down.

    There are no components of dollars in tomatoes, vegetables,  gas etc beyond the penchant of Nigerians to exploit every situation to make life unbearable for  others.

    As you can see, the academic arguments of geo – political restructuring can come up later.

    Please keep the comments coming.

  • Euphoria of ECOWAS coups waning

    Euphoria of ECOWAS coups waning

    In Guinea, Burkina Faso and Mali, the coup euphoria that lathered their cities and other parts of West and Central Africa in the past few years has begun to die down. New realities are dawning, realities of abridged civil rights without a corresponding amelioration of the harsh economic and social environments that triggered the usurpation of democracy. In 2017, there was no part of the sub-region under military rule. By last year, four out of 15 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) had succumbed to military jackboot.

    There is no end in sight to the nightmare, or of the misplaced hope, or of the military subterfuges. It was at first thought that certain underlying conditions, mainly France’s stranglehold on Francophone West African economies, created the unfair, exploitative and pauperising conditions those countries needed to get rid of. Systemic exploitation is a problem alright, indeed a very big problem, but in two of the countries, Guinea and Niger Republic, the coups were triggered by their elected president’s attempt to remove influential military officers, Mamady Doumbouya, Special Forces commander, in the case of Guinea, and Abdourahmane Tchiani, head of the presidential guards, in the case of Niger.

    ECOWAS has been exposed as powerless in preventing coups or reversing them when they occur. Border closures and sanctions have been generally ineffective, as President Bola Tinubu came to realise after the Niger Republic coup. While Guinea has been chary of the risks and inconveniences of pulling out of ECOWAS, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger Republic suffer no such compunctions. The three Francophone countries, now bonded into a tripartite arrangement, have jauntily pulled out of the bloc and dared anyone to stop them. They have also gone ahead to invite the beleaguered Russian military expeditionary forces to replace the French Foreign Legion, first through the late Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner group, which was Russian state-funded, and later regular Russian soldiers, Russia now has an uncharacteristic foothold in Africa. It is uncharted territory for Russia and the three welcoming countries. No one can predict how the story will end: in farce, tragedy or comedy. What is certain, however, is that democracy is the main victim.

    Read Also: ECOWAS moves to deepen regional integration

    The fascination for coups, now afflicting mainly West and Central Africa, is hard to explain. There is not one of the countries in question, as their histories have shown, that was improved by military intervention. However, impatient youths searching for quick fixes and radical measures, including state-sanctioned killings, encourage military interventions despite a long history of state-sponsored violence and administrative and economic retrogression. One explanation may be the slim connection theoreticians draw between poor governance and military takeover. In fact, many Nigerian leaders, among them the uncritical ex-presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, have repeatedly harped on that linkage. But two reasons expose their fallacies. One, there is no proof that military officers who forcefully hijack power have either the competence to rule or the modernising instinct they pretend to possess. Two, there is nothing in their training to suggest that they have the tolerance for divergent opinions and perspectives or an understanding of the rudiments of governance in environments saturated with weak institutions.

    Reports coming out of Guinea and Burkina Faso are revealing ugly facts of their militaries clamping down on dissent and free speech. Critics are locked up, while there has been no perceptible change in the welfare of the people upon whose gullibility they rode into power. In Guinea for instance Lt-.Col Doumbouya overthrew President Alpha Conde in 2021, but has yet to announce a timetable for the return to civil rule. Instead in 2022, he announced arbitrarily that he would need some 39 months to transit to civil rule. He neither explained nor defended the timetable.

    Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have waved off any election in the near future, with Mali whimsically changing transition dates. For those countries, military rule has at once become a mirage and a charade. It despoils rather than develops. It leaves permanent scars on the psyche of the people; it does not heal wounds or extirpate scars. Those who have been victims of military jackboots have horrifying stories to tell. It takes excess of stupidity to encourage or promote military intervention. Inundated with poverty, poor education, farcical notions of leadership, coup-ridden countries only get worse, not better, more tyrannical, less free. ECOWAS should forge ahead with new ideas of regional unity and development, including in the arts, sciences, entertainment and security. They should leave laggards alone.

  • Sultan’s unusual counsel

    Sultan’s unusual counsel

    As Nigeria is threshed by hunger, inflation and insecurity, all manner of doctors and pharmacists have gathered around her bed juggling dire diagnoses and offering baffling remedies. Until the patient recovers, there will be no end to the excitement that has seized everyone – the uninformed, the informed, and those perched ungainly between. It is not immediately obvious what equilibrium the Bola Tinubu administration has set for itself beyond which he would be compelled by protests to reorder his priorities or recalibrate his economic policies. He is accustomed to the art and politics of bluffing, without which he would not be president today; and like a poker player, he will continue to gauge by instinct national endurance before changing course. What is, however, obvious is that he is still titrating the economy, but getting the titre value may still be some way off.

    In contrast, the Sultan of Sokoto and Chairman of the Northern Traditional Rulers Council, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, proved last Wednesday from his contributions at the 6th executive committee meeting of the Northern Traditional Rulers Council in Kaduna that he is not a poker player. He was agitated by northern restiveness to sense revolt in the air, he wailed, insisting that he and others like him were tired of pacifying disgruntled, unemployed and hungry youths. What he was saying, as will be demonstrated shortly, is not that he was concerned about just forestalling protests, but that he fears the protests, should they break out, might be of such severity as to compromise the stability of the country. Poverty is very pronounced in the North, and its youthful population statistically significant. That the region had not broken out in revolt iwas perhaps a testament, as the Sultan pontificated, to the calming influence of traditional rulers doing yeoman’s work for peace despite being sidelined in the scheme of things.

    The Sultan’s remarks, however, need to be interrogated, despite resonating widely with the media and engaging and stoking the radical imagination and propensity of many Nigerians. Those remarks constitute his understanding of the restiveness coursing through the country. Hear him: “I believe talking about insecurity and the rising level of poverty are two issues on which we cannot fold our arms and think everything is okay. I have said so many times and at so many forums that things are not okay in Nigeria, and of course, things are not okay in the North. What are the real issues bringing about poverty and rising cases of insecurity? I don’t think it is the issue of a new government. To me, this government is a continuation of the former government; it is the same party. So, what really is the problem?… I have said so many times that we never lack solutions to our problems; what we lack is implementation…Education is important, so whatever issue you want to bring to us here, you must talk about education, you must talk about health issues, and of the two monsters that have been harassing all of us here, those are insecurity and poverty.”

    But here is the most ominous part of his remarks: “And let’s not take it for granted; people are quiet; they are quiet for a reason because people have been talking to them; we have been talking to them; we have been trying to tell them things will be okay, and they keep on believing. I pray to Almighty Allah that they will not one day wake up and say that they no longer believe in you (us). Because that would be the biggest problem, because we can’t silence these people as traditional spiritual leaders and diplomats forever… Let us be very honest with ourselves; let us be very frank about what we are going to tell ourselves here; it is no time to hide things. We have reached that level. People are very agitated, hungry, and angry, but they still believe there are people who can talk to them…So, we have this onerous task of reaching out to everybody, calming them down, and reassuring them (that) things will be okay, and they should continue to pray and pray and still do something good because prayer without work will not bring anything. We must find jobs for our teeming youths that are sitting idle, and I have said it so many times: we are sitting on a keg of gunpowder, having teeming youths, millions of them, without jobs, without food, we are looking for trouble.”

    Given the anger everywhere, none of the aggrieved is keen on knowing where and how the problem gestated; they just need food at affordable prices. However, it is important, not only to solve the problem at hand, but to also find lasting answers in order to forestall a repeat of the problem or its worsening. The country has lost control of its population growth rate, particularly in the North. With unchecked population growth, desertification, and corruption, particularly with no matching economic growth and remedial measures, there will always be more mouths to feed than wealth created. The hungry and unemployed referenced by the Sultan, not only in the North but elsewhere, are undisputedly potential cannon fodder for revolts of every kind. The Sultan is right to suggest that the North has become a tinderbox, while his insinuation that some governors are also badly remiss in governance cannot be faulted. But the region has the highest number of states and local governments depending on federal allocations rather than internal wealth production and internally generated revenue. Those allocations have not translated into wealth production. Instead, centralised distribution of revenue, which negates the fundamentals of federalism, has produced nothing but complacency, sense of entitlement, inefficiency, corruption and massive poverty.

    Correcting the distortions, reorienting the revenue generation process, and inculcating state or regional economic self-sufficiency will take much more than fine words, threats and protests. Had the country persisted till now in the appalling mismanagement of its economy and finances begun in the past two decades and more, it would have gone bust. Indeed, as the previous administration showed, it merely succeeded in delaying the bust by a combination of massive loans and deferred tough measures. It is remarkable that in the ongoing crisis, states and to a little extent, local governments, have abdicated their responsibilities while conspiratorially encouraging Nigerians to look up to the federal government for solution. By choosing to address the crisis systemically instead of symptomatically, a decidedly slow and fraught path to rebuilding the country’s finances, the Tinubu administration is sailing near the wind and courting massive disaffection and even rejection. It is this fear of revolt the Sultan described in frustrating and alienating terms.

    Read Also: Sultan, Emirs seek urgent action on insecurity, joblessness

    The ruling elite have been profligate with power and national resources for decades, but what are the traditional rulers in the North and South also telling their people? How are they mollifying the anticipated rage on the streets, rage which in some cases they helped fuel? As inefficient as the Muhammadu Buhari and other previous administrations were, the country’s rot was not only engendered by the federal administration, it was also co-authored and given fillip by the states. The solution will, therefore, not come from the federal authorities alone, it must also be inspired and executed by states and the larger population who all share in the blame. Restructuring the country along federal lines will produce the needed changes; but in the near term, as things remain desperately tight and precarious, no tier of government will profit from the blame game, and traditional rulers who are integral to both the problem and the solution, despite their denial, need to adopt a different mindset to national renewal and regeneration.

    Since the inauguration of the Tinubu presidency, trade unions deploying the tool of protests, opposition leaders, many of whom have still been unable to reconcile themselves to the end of the campaigns, and a large swathe of the angry public worsted by shrinking economic opportunities have taken oath to oppose the administration whatever the cost, overtly or covertly. They have not convinced anyone how blistering opposition would produce or rekindle economic growth stalled by previous administrations. However, by fiery and overwhelming negative portrayals on social media, caustic and unsparing characterisation of the administration, and persistent and iniquitous calls for a coup d’etat or revolution, the country has remained on tenterhooks, its initiatives and reforms stultified, its energies drained, and its esteem lowered in the eyes of the world. Other than occasionally giving short shrift to critics’ arguments and perspectives, the administration has not calculated how much its efforts are stymied by the opposition.

    In addressing long-standing economic maladies, the Tinubu administration has introduced a mixed bag of economic measures, some of them revolutionary in scope. Though the inflationary, disruptive and security consequences of those measures have been mindboggling, they are not fully explained by the fuel subsidy removal or the floating of the naira. The administration probably has a deeper insight into the crisis bedeviling the country, much of it obviously far beyond the ordinary pros and cons of economic measures, some of them related to the attempt to rearrange the country’s power equation and make it less ethnocentric and capable of withstanding future stresses and threats to national stability. Nevertheless, the administration cannot give excuses; it must deal with those issues as they arise, even if they are daunting and conspiratorial, even if culturally opposition has become so apocalyptic and destructive rather than corrective. If the traditional rulers who expressed their frustrations last week in Kaduna do not understand the political and economic, indeed existential, nuances at play, then their boast of being closer to the people, or their campaign to be politically and financially empowered to join in pacifying the country, are merely buncombe.

  • The lost art of letter writing

    The lost art of letter writing

    I am old enough to remember when in many towns and even villages, the post office, irrespective of its size or finish was something of a centre piece. Indeed, they were usually the building which was familiar to everyone in town and featured in any exercise which required describing a route to any public fixture in any town or village. Like the police station, they were a focal point, but devoid of the grimness associated with policemen and their connection with all sorts of unpleasantness.

    The post offices in those days were not only conspicuous, they were often a hive of activity because of the broad spectrum of the transactions going on inside them and not all of them had something to do with their primary duties of delivering letters throughout the length and breadth of Nigeria. The post office was an institution all by itself, with tentacles which stretched all the way to everywhere. And come to think of it, how could any other aspect of government activity survive longer than a couple of uncomfortable days without the contribution of the post office or postal agency as the case maybe. With these little one room agencies in place, those small settlements which could not generate enough business for a fully fledged post office would have been excluded from participating in any form of government business.

    The first thing that comes to mind when the post office is mentioned is the posting of letters and parcels on the one hand and their delivery in any part of the country and far beyond on the other. But the post office represented more than that. For example, any time I drive along Station Road in Osogbo today, I am reminded of the fact that at the age of seven, my mother took me into the hallowed precincts of the post office on that long lived  road to open a savings account. That close to seventy years later, I have no savings in any account speaks loudly to diminished opportunities within a society which has successfully conspired against the continued existence of government controlled postal services among many other things.

    There was a time in this country when letters had a mystique all of their own. It was said and very widely believed that tampering with mail was a criminal offence punishable by long terms of imprisonment and so the safe and even speedy delivery of mail could be taken for granted and the postal authorities of the day worked assiduously towards ensuring that letters were faithfully delivered as promised.

    Post offices were at the heart of postal delivery but more than that, you could send money all over the country without any fear of disappointment through the failure to deliver. The instrument for this purpose was the postal order which was as good, if not better than handing over raw cash to someone standing next to you. You purchased your postal order at the post office, addressed it appropriately and went home confident that the addressee would be able to cash the postal order within the specified time of delivery. It was that simple and efficient.

    Members of my generation would no doubt have retained memories of the buff envelopes in which something called a telegram was delivered. Telegrams were delivered to the designated receiver anywhere in Nigeria within twenty-four hours but usually within a few hours. At the height of its relevance, a house to which a telegram was delivered was thrown into instant turmoil because the telegram was frequently the bearer of news of capable of changing the course of lives for better or worse. Whatever the nature of the news contained in that flimsy envelope, opening it was a step into the unknown as news of births, deaths, promotion, admissions, urgent summons or examination results were all speedily conveyed in the fewest words possible. Out of necessity, telegrams were terse since the cost of the telegram was weighted on the number of words in which it was composed. This being the case, the tight composition of telegrams was sometimes a challenge all by itself. Throughout my childhood, I received a brief ‘Happy birthday Bayo’ in a telegram sent by my uncle who worked for the P&T (Post and Telegraph). The telegram was usually delivered in the morning so that I could bask in it’s warmth throughout the day. Such a frivolous use of the telegram stopped, at least as far as I was concerned when my uncle left the employment of the P&T. Talking of birthdays, the post office once conspired with my brother and I to deliver an unforgettable birthday experience to our younger sister. She had just left home in Lagos for Queen’s School all the way in Ede, a place which would have been  absent from our consciousness but for the fact that we had spent a couple of years in the nearby town of Osogbo several years earlier. Still, we were of the opinion that she needed a lot of cheering up. One Saturday a few days before her birthday that year, my brother and I met up by appointment at Kingsway on the Marina from our respective schools in Lagos and after a great deal of deliberation and looking into our pockets found out that we could afford to send a box of chocolates to our sister to celebrate her birthday. After purchase, we took the precious box of chocolates to the in-house post office in Kingsway and confidently sent our purchase to Ede with instruction that it be delivered on our sister’s birthday. Much to our satisfaction, our wish was respected as the parcel was delivered on the target date.  Eat your heart out Amazon! The postal service in Nigeria at that time was that reliable and expectedly so too.

    The most important duty of the post office was of course to deliver letters and parcels to people all over the country. It was an indispensable support to the beautiful art of letter writing, an art that was assiduously cultivated by all genuinely educated people in an age when the number of people who could be so called was quite thin on the ground. However, this is not to say that letters were passed around only within the narrow circle of those who could boast of some acquaintance with formal education. Ensconced somewhere on the premises of virtually every post office of the day was a professional letter writer who for a small fee, took down the dictation of those who could not write but had something to say to someone living quite a long way off. There was of course someone at the other end of this transaction who was able to read the letter into the careful hearing of the recipient.  This way, communications were maintained by people separated both in time, literacy and distance. That was an age when letter writing was considered to be so important that it was taught in schools at both the primary and secondary levels of the educational system and was actively encouraged in an age when the written word had considerable power to determine the trajectory of a lot of careers. It is no coincidence that at that time, penmanship was also on the curriculum, at least in the primary school. People brought up in that age usually cultivated the art of writing legibly and in most cases, decoratively because the impression created on the recipient started from the quality of the shape of the letters forming the address on the envelope. Unfortunately, by the time I became a lecturer, penmanship had died and the atrocious writing of many of my students drove me beyond despair into desperation. I had been brought up to associate good writing with a tidiness of the mind and having to untangle letters and tease out the sense in a badly written script fairly sent me round the bend. Seeing me today many years after the event, many of my former students remind me, as if I could ever forget that above every question paper they confronted was my warning that ‘illegible handwriting and poor use of the English language would be penalised’ as I was set on edge by those inadequacies! They were, as far as I was concerned, evidence of poor scholastic upbringing which deserved punishment. Should any of them be reading this, they are to note that I never actually went through with the threat and all those of them who failed any of my courses did so in spite of my threat rather than because of it. The pain inflicted on me by their limitation is however neither forgotten nor forgiven.

    Read Also: NIPOST celebrates pupil for excelling in letter writing

    Letter writing was indeed an art, one which was assiduously cultivated and used to create an image. It was also encouraged in many schools. In my time at Igbobi College in the sixties, Sunday evening prep was devoted to letter writing or Bible reading both of which were keenly supervised by Prefects on duty in each class. I saw most of the important people in my life at that time regularly enough so I did not have to write letters home as we were expected to do and having sat through two church services earlier in the day saw no reason to bury my head in the Bible for another round of religious observance. At considerable risk of punishment, I turned to non-Biblical literature and against the spirit of enforced Sunday piety, enjoyed myself immoderately in the company of my favourite secular authors of the day. I am sure that my youthful indiscretions of those days have all been written off  through divine intervention. Those were the golden years of the post office and the art of letter writing.

    As things have turned out to be, those golden years were a brief interval between the complete absence of letter writing and the end of an era in which the art of letter writing withered and died as the much vaunted leaf on a tree.  All over Nigeria at this time, post offices, those sturdy buildings of colonial design stand empty as in most cases of have been taken over by people carrying out their legitimate trade in illegitimate premises. All the paraphernalia of letter distribution have now disappeared, never to be redirected by any force known to man and a couple of generations of Nigerians are blithely carrying on with their restricted lives never having been accosted at any time by a diligent postman delivering mail even in the remoteness of an insignificant settlement situated far away from any beaten track.

  • Our bottomless pit of heists

    Our bottomless pit of heists

    Is there truly anything novel left to articulate about the pervasive corruption saturating our nation that could still jolt any Nigerian? I dare to question. Save for those domiciled in the diaspora or those who purposefully cloak themselves in ignorance, shielding their ears and eyes from the ceaseless tales of gargantuan thefts unfolding daily in Nigeria, there seems scant new ground to tread. Even dating back to the days when it was in vogue to discuss the wholesale embezzlement of funds within ministries, departments, and agencies, it is universally acknowledged that the discourse has shifted. It has morphed from the transport of slush funds overseas to an entrenched pattern of pillage and despoliation, a veritable rape of the national treasury orchestrated by a consortium of power-wielding figures and their shadowy counterparts. What we confront is a swarm of ravenous, unscrupulous locusts – individuals poised with bated breath, for the chance to sink their fangs into the vaults of our endangered national economy.

    As the weakened coffers teeter under the ceaselessly innovative and rapacious onslaught of this cadre of greedy plunderers, the looting of our country’s riches persists, adapting and morphing in form, scope, and targets with each passing government, heedless of the yearnings of well-intentioned citizens for good governance and a corruption-free society. The singular focus of these voracious few remains fixated on the urgent craving to ‘make it big’ the moment one is beckoned to ‘come and partake’ (as the politicians of yesteryears would jest) in any government position.

    On another plane, it appears that all enduring safeguards, which have nurtured other democracies into their current form, either falter here or are rendered impotent by corruption. Criminal enterprises, particularly white-collar crimes, are exhibited with breathtaking ingenuity. The concept of checks and balances, even when powers are ostensibly separated, becomes compromised, existing merely in theory. Such checks are nonexistent in our version of democracy, where a handful of buccaneers, spanning the executive, legislature, and to some extent, the judiciary, coalesce to raid the national coffers and shatter the national dream. When they engage in petty squabbles, brandishing threats of fire and brimstone, it’s largely a theatrical performance for the cameras. They understand that the impoverished populace revels in the spectacle, oblivious to the hollow nature of the theatrics, perpetually longing for a semblance of earnestness.

    Since May 29, 1999, when this grandiose spectacle commenced its convoluted narrative under civilian rule, nothing substantial has shifted. And it is abundantly clear that nothing will change as long as the subjugated citizenry continues to condone the malaise and sheer buffoonery unfolding before their eyes. Why do I make such a claim? Allow me to elucidate.

    Beyond the sporadic cameo appearances and star-studded media trials of alleged kleptocrats, cunning tax evaders, and billionaire plunderers, can we honestly assert that Nigeria is making headway in the fight against corruption? We once believed that nothing could surpass the plunder of our commonwealth under the watch of General Sani Abacha, whose singular heist continues to stupefy even those born long after his demise on June 8, 1998. Yet, we may have erred in that assumption, particularly when not a single former leader, deceased or alive, has been indicted for corruption. While all these former leaders departed office enriched, only a handful of their loyal lieutenants have faced scrutiny, indictment, or trial for dipping their filthy hands into the public coffers with the intent of illicit self-enrichment.

    For example, three ministers – Chief Sunday Afolabi, Mahmud Shata, and Husseini  Akwanga were once charged with corruption offenses relating to a multi-million dollar contract awarded to a French firm, Sagem SA. These ministers, along with a former National Secretary of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Okwesilieze Nwodo, and a former Permanent Secretary in the Interior Ministry, Turrie Akerele, were accused of accepting hefty bribes to facilitate the $214 million contract for the execution of the national identity card project. Later, during his second tenure, President Obasanjo made a public spectacle of his resolve to combat corruption when he, in a national broadcast, sacked the Minister of Education, Fabian Osuji, for allegedly bribing lawmakers with over $400,000 to expedite the passage of that year’s budget without scrutiny. Although Obasanjo claimed the money had been recovered from the implicated lawmakers, including the then Senate President, Adolphus Wabara, he lamented that their actions not only “violated all known norms of good governance, progressive leadership, integrity, and credibility” but also risked undermining Nigeria’s plea for a $35 billion debt relief, given the perception of rampant corruption within its legislative apparatus.

    Read Also: Insider heists

    Some may dismiss these actions as the pot calling the kettle black. Yet, it should trouble us that many years after Obasanjo’s minuscule display of anticorruption fervor, not a single blow has been dealt to the rampant corruption that continues to metastasize. There is scarcely a sector in the national economy untouched by the blight of corruption. This pervasive corruption is why the country’s security architecture flounders daily, grappling to address our nation’s security challenges, despite the resolute vote of confidence it receives from an equally corrupt and patronizing legislature, more focused on securing a larger slice of the annual budget than holding itself accountable for its ineptitude and failures.

    How can they hold themselves accountable when they know the charade they engage in during scheduled and unscheduled oversight visits to various MDAs and closed-door budget defense sessions? Years after Obasanjo’s broad indictment of the entire National Assembly for corruption, leading to a change in leadership, has anyone endeavoured to alter the narrative? Is it not even more dire in the state assemblies, where lawmakers prostrate themselves as stepping stones for governors to trample upon at will? Is this not why, despite the increase in revenue allocation following the removal of fuel subsidies, state governors continue to line their pockets with lucre while citizens languish in poverty? Which lawmaker has deemed it a key duty to summon state chief executives to account for their stewardship in the past decade? I struggle to recall even one.

    The crux of the matter is that we will continue to bear witness to ever more staggering instances of corruption as long as we turn a blind eye to institutional malfeasance or fail to penalize proven cases. Just this Wednesday, a former French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, was handed a one-year sentence with a six-month suspended sentence for “illegally funding his 2012 re-election campaign.” While Sarkozy maintains his innocence, an appeal court in Paris upheld a lower court’s judgment that he had indeed enlisted a PR firm to conceal the excess funding lavished on extravagant campaign rallies and events. His UMP party had reportedly doubled the 22.5 million euros (money that is just used as occasional gift to Oga’s wife here) cap approved for the presidential campaign. For this, he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, later reduced to six months on appeal, pending confirmation by France’s highest court, potentially subjecting him to electronic monitoring, community service, or a fine. Such is the operation of justice in other climes.

    Here in Nigeria, cases involving politically exposed persons accused of siphoning millions of dollars for personal use are either dismissed for “lack of diligent prosecution” or shelved when the Attorney General submits a Nolle Prosequi, effectively halting the trial. There are even instances where the accused secure perpetual injunctions against prosecution for corruption by any federal, state, or government agencies empowered to carry out such responsibilities. Before long, society bestows chieftaincy titles and national honours upon these sons and daughters who, oftentimes, resort to plea bargains, where the culprits return an agreed sum to the national treasury and walk away with their ill-gotten gains. What an ingenious approach to combating corruption.

    As ludicrous as it may sound, no one can definitively state whether the billions of dollars recovered from the Abacha loot were utilized as intended. What is known is that a portion of the funds was either re-looted or distributed among a select few in government circles at some point. Tales abound of recovered funds from these unscrupulous individuals, including the sale of properties worth millions of dollars. Some were purportedly sold, while others were allocated to government agencies for use as office spaces.

    Yet, concerns linger regarding the manner in which these properties were disposed, amidst whispers of backdoor deals and underhand transactions. To this day, no comprehensive records exist detailing the properties sold or allocated to specific persons or agencies. The relentless rumor mill churns out a myriad of speculations concerning clandestine arrangements in the disposal of these assets, including luxury vehicles and more.

    In Abuja, on Tuesday, an audit report submitted to the National Assembly by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation (OAuGF) provided a stark illustration of the extent of decay within our institutions. The report unequivocally stated that the Central Bank of Nigeria failed to furnish records of funds recovered between 2016 and 2019, despite that period coinciding with the time when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) were proudly announcing the recovery of millions of dollars from alleged economic saboteurs nationwide. This was also a time when images of opulent structures seized from politicians, dubious contractors, and indicted civil servants were circulated, followed by court orders forfeiting these properties to the Federal Government. Given the ostensible incorruptibility of President Muhammadu Buhari, one would have scarcely imagined that institutions such as the CBN would flounder in their duty to account for these funds. How did this lapse occur, and what steps can lawmakers take to rectify this egregious anomaly? Answers to these questions may elude us. It has always been the case anyway. But one thing is unmistakably clear: Nigeria’s entrenched history of official graft and the perpetrators’ escape with nominal repercussions shows no signs of abating in the foreseeable future.

    This is not a curse; it’s a chilling reality. It stares us in the face with revelations that someone purportedly received a staggering $6.2 million directly from the CBN’s coffers via a forged letter bearing none other than the signature of the President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria! It’s utterly ludicrous that the funds were purportedly meant to pay foreign election observers, who historically had been the ones supplementing our election budgets. Now, those who orchestrated this heist are likely chuckling somewhere, mocking our collective folly for perpetuating a system that has elevated corruption to a national ethos. What a disgrace.

  • Portable’s tango with ‘elder’s meat’

    Portable’s tango with ‘elder’s meat’

    • Unto Cupid I commend this young man’s spirit over his decision to continue with Queen Damilola where the former Alaafin of Oyo stopped

    Although I have been hearing about ‘elder’s meat’ since I was a child, I got to know a different perspective of it after the owner of a prominent broadcast organisation in the country used it when reprimanding one of his employees who was running after a lady broadcaster in the organisation that the media owner himself was interested in. The chairman was then married; but wanted to add to his harem. The young toaster thought he and the lady had a bright future ahead of them; they were both young and single. So, he continued to do ‘kuru kere’ with the lady, pretending not to know that their employer was also interested in her.

    It was not long before he was summoned before the chairman’s one-man panel. At that point, the man thought the world was going to come down on him. But the chairman chose to be human. He made it clear to the man that the lady he was doing ‘kuru kere’ with was his proposed youngest wife and wondered where the young man got the teeth to sink into what he (chairman) called ‘elder’s meat’.

    The young man could not believe that the matter was going to be that simple. He had imagined the worst, to be crowned with a sack letter, for not knowing the difference between ‘bush meat’ and ‘elder’s’ meat’. The young man apologised profusely in appreciation of the chairman’s magnanimity. I guessed he must have told the chairman, to boot, that he should cut off his head if he ever saw him again within a reasonable radius with the lady. He disappeared from his ‘oga’s’ sight, apparently with a vow to ‘sin no more’.

    That was probably about two and a half decades ago.

    I had thought that was the height of audacity. But I was wrong.

    I have seen a more audacious young man, Habeeb Okikiola, better known as Portable. It is the same story about romance and love. There’s this saying in Yorubaland Southwest Nigeria that ‘enu kiniun lowo wa’ (money is in the mouth of a lion). Even if literally, we must have got the import of that saying. But from the story of the young broadcaster that I told earlier, and now that of Portable; it is not only money that is in the mouth of a lion: Love too. Or should I say beautiful women, and handsome men inclusive!

    Or, how do you explain an employee scrambling for, with a view to partitioning, a lady in whom his employer was well pleased? Someone who not only hired him but could fire him as well, with or without notice and or benefit?

    Talking about hiring and firing reminds me of one of my former bosses in those days at The Kingsway Stores on the Marina, Lagos. The woman, one Mrs Dina, would always joke with us whenever we fumbled on the job that Kingsway would first drive you away before following it up with your sack letter (Kingsway a koko le e lo ki won to fi ‘we da e duro)! God bless this Ijebu woman.

    By the way, Kingsway was like today’s Shoprite. There was nothing you wanted under the sun that you would not find at Kingsway. The only difference between Kingsway and what we may call its contemporaries these days is that what we were buying there were far cheap compared with the hefty price tags we see today on many items at today’s big stores. That was, of course, a function of the strength of our currency. I remember we were buying chunky meat pie, (I mean meat pie, not potato pie) that you cannot finish two of it went for 25 kobo. It’s like two times the ones we are now buying for N350 and above apiece in some of today’s stores. But, cheap as things were even then, not everybody had the privilege of going there to buy things. That is a story for another day.

    Back to Portable.

    The young Nigerian singer, rapper and songwriter has done what in those days would have passed for the unthinkable: To be in love with a former queen? Not just any ‘kue kue’ queen in Yorubaland but one of the former queens of the late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, iku baba yeye! This was a man that many revered not only for his greatness, opulence, native intelligence and what have you. He was also thought to possess a lot of mystical powers. As a matter of fact, this is where precisely I am going. This is where Portable’s decision to fall in love with a woman that once found comfort in Oba Adeyemi’s arms and laps, is audacious.

    I know Dami’s beauty is captivating. But when you consider the kind of aura surrounding the late Alaafin, you not only run, but flee, even if it is his queen (present or former) that is winking at you. King Sunny Ade it was who once sang that ‘to ba je odun meje ti kolokolo ti ku sile, won o bi iyalaya adiye ko lo sibe lo woran’ (even if a fox had died seven years ago, no fowl would have the temerity to go to where its carcass is for sight-seeing).

    Not only has Portable decided to go on sight-seeing, he has decided to even dig deep, perhaps deeper than that, less than two years after Alaafin Adeyemi died.

    I hear, rightly or wrongly, that, in Yorubaland, no one dared to marry a queen and that once the king died, his wives went into celibacy. Although I don’t know why this should be so, especially considering the fact that most kings then literally hijacked some of these women (oba gbese le), even in their prime. Whilst not suggesting that Alaafin Adeyemi commandeered Dami, the fact of the matter is that it is inhuman to expect a young lady at her age to go into celibacy so early in life. Although she once fled the Alafin’s palace in 2020, when she was about 26 years old. She later apologised publicly. This was obviously a sign that something was wrong somewhere because she was about the third queen to flee the palace then. Alaafin died on April 22, 2022. He was aged 83. ‘Ceteris paribus’, it is difficult for a lady about 50 years younger than him to find fulfillment in the union. This was even more so that she didn’t have a sole proprietary right over the Oba, he also had to satisfy the other queens. At that age? Obviously, some departments would have suffered severe damage that only a youthful and energetic man can fix.

    Until Friday, I had thought it was Dami that first posted about their love life online but discovered that Portable did his earlier in August, last year, more than one year after Alaafin Adeyemi’s demise. Hear him: “I am a real human being; she is my fan from day one. But I later hear you say King don die, after king na king. If to say king never die, you no see me with her. I no dey follow(ing) person wife, that’s why dem no dey follow my wives.”

    Read Also: Iyabo Ojo doesn’t get rubbished by gistlover, says Portable

    From this statement, we know Portable is not single and searching. He already controls a harem of six wives. So, what could have made him Damilola’s favourite? That is a question one may not be able to answer. Onyeka Onwenu said it all when she sang, alongside King Sunny Ade: “this thing dey call love, e get as e be o…”

    I carefully studied Dami’s post on Portable, and, from my little experience on this kind of matter, there must be something extraordinary for a woman to shower the kind of praise Dami showered on him. She says she is proud of him; that he is the most principled person she ever met, bla, bla, bla. Indeed, the former queen of Oyo town says she has no problem entrusting her all in his hands.

    Indeed, what Dami said of Portable, I cannot tell it all. The journey of the heart must have got to a high gear for a lady to proclaim: “My man, my whole heart, the love of my life, I love you for everything that you are, you are the strongest and most principled person I know. I want you to know that I’m so proud of you and proud to be yours. I also want you to know that I trust you with all my heart, and I believe my heart is safe with you.” This sort of encomium, especially coming from a beautiful queen, is enough to make any man’s head swell.

    Still, the question: even if Dami must remarry, why Portable? This made me to go in search of Portable’s net worth. I learnt it is about N139.5 million (equivalent to $300,000) as at 2023. I don’t think this is enough to ‘shack’ a pretty lady like Dami. I guess there are many men out there in the country who may be willing to ‘spray’ her with a substantial amount several times over to make the N140 million pale into insignificance. So, it doesn’t seem to me money played a significant role in the decision. Could those who could afford it have been so scared of treading where Portable dared to tread, for obvious reasons?

    All said, I think the credit should go to Portable for his daring exploit to go get what he wanted, even if from a lion’s jugular. Not many men would be ready to go that far just to dig for love, pleasure or whatever, with a woman that ‘iku baba yeye’ once held in his mystical, royal arms.

    Is this romance ‘peck and stay’ or is it ‘peck and go’? We may not know yet. But now that Portable ‘fe je n’be’! (or is he already?), I hope he has a mother with the requisite spiritual long leg to see him through this adventure?

    Unto Cupid I commend Portable’s spirit.

  • Regulating social media

    Regulating social media

    It’s understandable why many are usually wary of the government’s attempt to regulate anything related to the media.

    Governments at all levels and globally are known to usually misuse the opportunity to regulate what can hold them accountable to protect their interests instead of the overall interest of the people.

    The enforcers of the regulations are known to take the law into their own hands and need to be challenged in courts to be called to order. Even when they are overruled, they usually don’t easily comply with judicial pronouncements.

    What they call national interest are sometimes personal interests and we have many instances of the use of various media-related laws to hinder freedom of expression.  In Nigeria, many journalists have been arrested and held in detention for longer than the law permits.

    This explains why the recent call by the Chief of staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila for the regulation of social media at the public presentation of a book titled, Nigerian Public Discourse: The Interplay of Empirical Evidence and Hyperbole, written by a former Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has been faulted by many individuals and organisations.

    According to Gbajabiamila  “Social media has become a societal menace and must be regulated. Many people do not understand that once the send button is hit, there is a potential to reach millions of people around the world, which is capable of causing great danger not just in society but even unintended consequences to the individuals who are receiving information that may include security of life.”

    Coming after being a victim of many fake reports recently, Gbajabiamila’s call can be said to be informed by the need to protect himself and other top government officials and personalities from merchants of disinformation who are all over various social media platforms.

    However, beyond being for self-preservation, there is indeed the need to regulate social media against wanton misuse that has become the order of the day.

    While freedom of expression remains guaranteed in our constitution and no one should support any move to curtail it, no one should have the right to publish falsehoods about anyone without being cautioned or penalised.

    I agree with Gbajabiamila that social media has become a societal menace despite the well-intentioned original social and information-sharing purpose for which it is meant.

    It is not acceptable in the name of freedom of expression for known and faceless people to deliberately share unverified information or attack people online for reasons best known to them.

    Some unwarranted attacks can be so vicious that one has to be emotionally strong enough to ignore them.

    Read Also: Social media and Herbert Wigwe’s death

    The abusers of social media have made it impossible to be sure of what to believe online. It is criminal for people to impersonate others to create a false impression about them and mislead others.

    Though the platforms’ owners have come up with measures to penalise those who misuse their platforms, including restricting the use of some handles and taking some down, there is no indication that the abusers are ready to rethink their ways.

    While social media should continue to be veritable tools for holding governments and their officials accountable, the freedom of expression it guarantees should be exercised with a sense of responsibility.

    The evil being perpetrated on social media is not only about attacking people unjustly, it also involves those who defraud people through offers that are not genuine. In recent weeks, there have been sponsored posts of supposed free online courses by top universities in Nigeria which have been denied by the institutions but are still been promoted.

    There are enough reasons to agree on the need to regulate social media, what we need to agree on is the type of regulation and extent. Instead of coming up with another law, existing laws can be amended and enforced appropriately.

  • National Assembly constitution review jamboree: Here we go again

    National Assembly constitution review jamboree: Here we go again

    In an investigation lasting months, this newspaper found that between 2011 and 2015 the 53-member House of Representatives

    Ad-hoc Constitution Review Committee, and its 49-member counterpart in the Senate in the 7th National Assembly, withdrew N3,250,000,000.00 and N4,500,000,000.00 respectively to purportedly execute the fourth alteration of the Constitution.

    It is not immediately clear how the lawmakers spent the outrageous funds but insiders say a huge chunk of it was pocketed by members of the committees in what one source described as ‘unprecedented naira bazaar’ by a committee of the National Assembly” -Premium Times.

    In “My Memo To The National Assembly On Review of The 1999 Constitution’ dated 10 December, 2020, I reminded the Honourable members, who are about now again setting out on another fruitless journey, of what Nigerians think of any amendment of the 1999 constitution in particular.

    I wrote:”The constitution you are setting out to review has been variously described, but because of space constraint, let us restrict ourselves to how Chief Bisi Akande, former Osun state governor described it.   According to him, “the 1999 Constitution is Nigeria’s greatest misadventure since Lugard’s  amalgamation of 1914. It breeds and protects corrupt practices and criminal impunity in governance. It can never be beneficially reviewed, and the ongoing piecemeal adjustments, or amendments, can only completely blot out the essence of national values and accelerate the de-amalgamation of Nigeria. All the angels in heaven cannot make that constitution work for the progress of Nigeria. It should  be scrapped as a bad relic of military mentality”.

    The new one reminds Nigerians of the profligacy which accompanied the exercise  under the leadership of Ike Ekeremadu and Emeka Ikedioha when funds appropriated for the exercise were still being withdrawn from the national treasury long after the exercise had been done and dusted.

    This is one profligacy, among many others, which yours truly had believed that the administration of President Bola Tinubu would not permit, past ones being nothing but fraud.

    However, once they have become our worshipful ‘majesty’ since the Bukola Saraki days, and  President Tinubu probably believes that he is estopped by the principle of separation of powers from intervening nothing, not commonsense, not the country’s present economic miasma, largely a consequence of

     the same National Assembly looking away when President Muhammadu Buhari and then CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele conscientiously ruined Nigeria, would.

    While conceding the peoples’ helplessness about it, let me bring to the National assembly’s attention – so that the entire exercise won’t be a total loss – what a former Senator (when senators were properly so called in the 2nd Republic), believes should now constitute the ideal constitutional framework for a multi – ethnic country like Nigeria.

    What this means in essence is that I am taking off again today, exactly from where I left last week, when I urged President Bola Tinubu to set in motion the process of restructuring Nigeria.  Incidentally, I am not alone in this, as leaders of the Southern and Middle Belt Forum and others, have recently called on him to implement the 2014  confab report as well as revisit the recommendations of the APC Committee on Power Devolution. For the attention of the National Assembly, therefore, I  once again,  as is fast becoming my wont, go back to one of my myriad of past articles on the subject of restructuring Nigeria, namely, that of  24 January, 2010  titled: ‘At a Time Like This’.

    It reads thus:

    “I haven’t a scintilla of shame expropriating the above title which Professor Tunji Dare gave his article of Tuesday, December 29, 2009 in this newspaper, for mine  which will, in this piece, be edited for space.

    Time and again, the North has shown that its interests are not exactly coterminous with that of Nigeria. On many occasions  it has treated with disdain, things that would have  redounded to our mutual interest, whilst  holding, tenaciously, to things aimed at achieving short term regional advantage. A good example is the fate which the Obasanjo political conference         suffered as a result of  the North’s fastidious opposition to the demands of  Niger-Deltans, which requests are now being feverishly delivered  via the Amnesty programme, after it became obvious that oil money, to spend ‘yanfu yanfu’, was no longer as guaranteed as previously assumed.

    My honest suggestion is that Nigeria should begin a phased-out decentralisation in a manner that is  structured, and properly interrogated, to ensure peaceful coexistence.

    We have such a long shared history that, difficult as the process may be, we should be able to avoid going back to our atavistic ways, the type that led to the 30-month civil war.

    As a result of observed differences in the level of development between the South and the North prior to independence, the North wisely postponed assuming a self-governing status whilst both the East and the West proceeded apace.

    In  our current circumstances, I am proposing  a process which we need not dub Sovereign, since that word gives some people the jitters, but a process which will   painstakingly discuss a return to  Confederacy; one in which  every federating unit will have fiscal independence while  contributing to the Centre for common services, and with a clause as to how a part can exit the Confederation.

    The United Nations General Assembly has in September 2007 adopted the fundamental right of all peoples to freely determine their political status, as well as freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

    This novel approach should guarantee that, unless a part deliberately sets out to forment trouble, none will arise.

    Rather it will enable each part to develop at its own pace, as well as, create institutions that are most suitable for its peoples e.g. Sharia in the North or additional Local governments in the South.

    This arrangement should reduce insecurity and limit it to certain areas as each federating unit would be able to, unlike now,  institute policing arrangements it considers most suitable to its security requirements. It will equally reduce the humongous amount of money that goes into fighting insecurity especially in the Northern states where it goes back to a decade and a half. Each state/ region will then be able to devote substantial portions of such funds to improving education, health, road infrastructure etc.

    It doesn’t get more annoying than when a Northern leader, who couldn’t breathe a word throughout the  Buhari years,  now tells us “that Northerners will soon revolt; we can’t pacify them again”.

    What blackmail!

    The ’cause  célèbre’ for these musings was the  thought provoking letter I received, this past week, from   distinguished Senator (Professor) Banji Akintoye, now resident in the U.S.

    This, therefore, is my reaction to the letter in the strong belief that  Nigeria, not just  Yoruba land, can achieve the envisaged results in a planned, gradual and peaceful manner.Afterall, Yugoslavia has proved conclusively, post Bros Tito, that separation needs not be bloody or violent.

    The senate of the likes of Professors David Oke, Banji Akintoye and Pa Jonathan Odebiyi (1979- 83)  will go down as the golden era of  the Nigerian senate because that was when, with an indefatigable party leader like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, every  UPN parliamentarian  knew that his/her mandate was service, and more service, to the nation and to the people.

    Senator Akintoye’s letter to me read as follows:

    ‘Dear Femi,

    Though I have not communicated with you for a long time, I have not lost contact with your writings. The president of Ekitikete USA and Canada lives in the same state as I do, and he is diligent in ensuring that I read much of what transpires in the debates on the Ekitipanupo web-board. After reading what you wrote recently on the meeting that gathered at Ikenne on Jan. 14, (that was actually Palladium’s) and what some others wrote on Obasanjo and the loss of coherence among Yoruba leadership, I cannot resist intervening.

    First, I can’t resist expressing my appreciation of your powerful writings. And that is not only because, as works of literature, they make very admirable reading, but also, and in particular, because they portray you as someone committed to very high ideals of society, governance, leadership, and development. In you, the Ekiti character, further uplifted by the best that education can provide, has produced an inestimable gem. I am simply proud of you.

    In our culture, when our elders call a younger person aside to commune with him, they want to urge him to do something. So, what do I want to urge of you? The foremost is that you must never let yourself be drawn away from the honorable positions that you now hold. And, no matter how tough or even painful the situation may become, you must never quit. I urge you to consider this. Our people say that the greatest harm that an enemy can do to a man is to force the man to turn away from, and abandon, his real concerns and keep chasing the enemy.

    For those of us who sincerely lament the disaster (the disorientation, even the dissoluteness) that has befallen the Yoruba nation in the hands of OBJ, isn’t it time we begin to spend more of our time on seeking real answers to the future and destiny of the Yoruba nation, and less on bashing the enemy? In fact, shouldn’t we side-step the enemy and strike for new solid substance? Are we right in assuming that the future and destiny of the Yoruba nation resides inevitably with Nigeria? How many countries in today’s world contain within its border such large ethnic nations as are in Nigeria, all of them subject to, and sharing,  one sovereignty? Even Britain, the creator of Nigeria, is now in the process of being broken up by the ethnic nations in it. The Irish (with the exception of the small province of Northern Ireland) broke away not long ago and established the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland has been a pain in Britain’s neck ever since. The Scots and the Welsh have also been struggling for separate countries of their own, and following the elections of 2007, Scotland is now quite close to establishing a separate country for itself. The Welsh have set up a Commission to develop the Welsh language as their national language and chosen one of their towns as the capital city of their own country. The movement of independence for ethnic nations is spreading all over the world. You are a historian, and you surely know about the breaking up of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, of India at independence, and the countless ethnic national struggles going on in our world. I have waited and waited for somebody to make a hint of these things on the Ekitipanupo board, and it has not happened. Meanwhile, a few days ago, someone sent me an email to which two interesting letters were attached – and I wondered how much of Ekiti’s superior contribution is in what these letters are saying. Femi, I have watched the tone of agony in your writings – agony about the wholesale disintegration of order, ethics, and accountability in Nigerian affairs, and the sucking of the Yoruba nation into that horrendous mess. You represent the best of our products. Please shake yourself. I attach the two letters that made me decide to send this email.

    Accept my very best wishes.

    The man who proudly calls himself your teacher.

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    Banji Akintoye.

    Unfortunately, those letters are not for this space.

    However, what I want the National Assembly to take from Prof Akintoye’s letter is the inevitability of  power devolution in Nigeria, or in any multi – ethnic country. Enough then of this unitary arrangement by which over two hundred million people are held down against their wish. Enough of this suffocating federal knee on the neck of the federating units. There’s absolutely no need for this seeming dictatorship in which a state police commissioner must first get clearance from Abuja before he could take orders from a state governor.

    The disrespect shown to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, by a police officer, during the governor’s visit to the Magodo estate over a lingering land crisis in the area, still rankles and would not go away in a hurry.

    It is an unpardonable misnomer that there are as many as 68 items on the exclusive legislative list, on which only the federal government has authority to act, in a country that describes itself as federal.

    But much more importantly, if an elderstatesman of Professor Akintoye’s standing wrote all these in 2010, a whole 14 years ago, and Nigeria, rather than improve since had, indeed, degenerated very badly, particularly in the 8 years spanning 2015 – 2023 when insecurity defined our country more than anything else, then the views expressed here regarding power devolution must be, for the members, the urgency of now, and should constitute the raison detre of whatever amendments you hope to see go through.

    The National Assembly must wake up and serve Nigeria for once.