By Idowu Akinlotan

When the Ekiti State House of Assembly leadership crisis broke out on November 15, it was important to let all sides to the story have their say before anyone came to judgement. No one inside and outside Ekiti can now claim ignorance of the dynamics of the crisis: the election on November 15 and dethronement on November 21 of Gboyega Aribisogan as Speaker, the foisting of Bunmi Adelugba six days later as the new Speaker, the partiality demonstrated by the police pretending to keep the peace, the suppressed chuckles by vengeful ‘powermongers’ pulling the strings from barely concealed backgrounds, and reassuringly the umbrage taken by the state’s leading, if not also legal, lights. While the rigmarole lasted, Governor Biodun Oyebanji, who assumed office about a month before the crisis broke out, maintained stoic indifference in a matter that demanded candour, courage and involvement. He was probably being diplomatic and calculating.

Hon. Aribisogan was not the candidate of the state’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) hierarchs, but he had mustered a coalition of independents and the disaffected to pull an upset against the party’s favourite, Hon. Adelugba, a woman, by a healthy and unbridgeable margin of 15 to 10. There was no accusation of rigging or coercion. But incensed by their audacity and defiance of party wishes, party leaders instigated the police to lay siege to the Assembly on the excuse that arsonists threatened the complex, prevented any plenary from taking place, and bought some days within which to perfect strategies to procure what is now humiliatingly referred to as a legislative ‘coup’. Five days of dizzying rigmarole followed, culminating in the ‘election’ of Hon. Adelugba by, again, a chasm of 17 to 0, with seven obstreperous legislators suspended. No one has yet explained the sleight of hand that made those who voted for Hon. Aribisogan to turn apostate. But the gloves are off now, and the hapless pawn, Mrs Adelugba, has been introduced to the governor and other applauding and consenting party leaders. The beaming Adelugba crowd lauded the governor’s ‘benevolent neutrality’, and they praised party leaders, mainly ex-governor Kayode Fayemi, for their fairness.

The entire revolving door now widely acknowledge as humiliating to Ekiti State was plotted by relatively youthful politicians whose ethical sensitivity has been dulled by years of playing politics unmoored by great values and principles. They had plotted so many murders and got away with them, and have thus become accustomed to taken metaphorical blood at will. Luckily for Ekiti, the state still has elders, brilliant and learned men of steel and character. They had been quite loth over the decades to intervene in some of the shenanigans enacted by the state’s politicians, wary of being soiled by heedless youths and irreverent, obdurate politicians. Indeed their years of patience is now construed by the Ekiti APC spokesperson as a reflection of their indolence and partiality. However, unable to stomach the indignity of being affronted by the malfeasance of Ekiti politicians, the elders have finally stirred themselves and have given short shrift to the manipulators in the state legislature. They not only rejected the legislative ‘coup’, they have insisted on its reversal. They stopped short of mentioning names of those behind the plot, but they left no one in doubt who they were. Indeed, Hon Aribisogan was quite explicit in blaming Dr Fayemi for the whole imbroglio. The former governor’s spokesperson and the party’s spokesperson have denied the attributions and insinuations.

Read Also; Intrigues, power tussle tear Ekiti Assembly apart

The Ekiti elders led by the redoubtable Afe Babalola and Wole Olanipekun have taken up the gauntlet and will see the matter to the end. It is hard to see them lose. They may be slow to anger, and have demonstrated over the years an uncanny ability to stomach a lot of political provocations and indignities, starting from the bohemian Ayo Fayose era; but once roused, they are even more wary of giving up on issues and principles they know to be true and unassailable. The state APC leaders may have their reason to back Mrs Adelugba, but their approach was wrong, controversial and provocative. They know it themselves, but they had become complacent to think that the elders would be as usual chary of meddling in political issues, not being strictly politicians and not wanting to openly join the fray. But the revolving door at the House of Assembly was too flagrant to ignore. Mr Fayose’s buffooneries were happily terminated before he tipped the state overboard. Given the disrespectful manner the changes in the Assembly were mediated last week, the elders were simply unwilling to endure lightning striking the same place twice. Chief Olanipekun, chairman of the Body of Benchers, was the first to react a day after Mrs Adelugba was foisted. He counseled respect for the rule of law and legislative order. One day later, the elders came out with a strongly-worded statement that denounced the ‘coup’ and asked for a return to status quo. The statement warned that the ‘constitutional and democratic rascality (in Ekiti) must stop henceforth’.

While the elders’ statement was rough around the edges, and could have profited from some scrupulous editing, its logic and rationale are incontestable. Point by point, the statement tore apart the nefarious exercise of changing the Assembly’s leadership in just six days, not to talk of the appalling manipulation of the process and the unconstitutional suspension of seven members. The elders then concluded that the change was a legal and procedural travesty that must be challenged and not sustained. They restrained themselves from mentioning names, but they never hid their disgust at the manner the so-called progressive party and leaders failed to appreciate the burden of history placed on their puny shoulders. As indigenes of Ekiti, they of course knew those who orchestrated the infamy, but they have couched their statement in general terms in expectation that the malfeasant politicians who perpetrated the anomaly would initiate redress. They, however, did not spare the governor whom they surmise would be ultimately held liable should the problem escalate beyond civilised boundaries. They probably remember the Edo example where the potentate, Godwin Obaseki, governs with a minority legislature.

It was clear why the Ekiti elders mentioned the governor directly. It has perhaps not fully dawned on Mr Oyebanji, but the fact is that he is governor, not anyone who backed him in the election, mentor or otherwise. He was expected to rein in the police who sent in policemen to cordon off the Assembly just a day after Hon. Aribisogan was elected Speaker. The governor also knows those behind the coup, though no one thinks he was one of them. The public can only guess that he does not wish to be confrontational yet, and has not purged his mind of the time he was Secretary to the State Government, though he probably knew that the legislative coup was provocative and unconstitutional. He is an intelligent man, but last January, he also profited from unwholesome political tactics that gave him the APC governorship ticket after his opponents had been mauled insensate. After lending his soul and conscience to the coup plotters for this brief insurrection, he must hope that when they return them to him, they will still be intact, and that he can still recognise them and subject them to his will and control. Sometimes, one surrender may be all it takes to damage a personality for life.

It is inconceivable that Hon Adelugba and his backers can win this unseemly joust. No, they can’t. No judge in Ekiti or on appeal will give judgement in favour of Ekiti’s ‘political rascals’. Judges may in some delicate legal cases sometimes lack the integrity to deliver justice. But they are not stupid. They know what is happening, and they will not risk their reputation and career for a foolish, shortsighted and self-gratifying case such as the unconscionable overthrow of a Speaker who had not even acted in office for a day, let alone be accused of infractions such as sabotaging the supplementary 2022 budget. The plotters may be banking on fostering a stalemate in the Assembly until their term expires next year. They do not like Hon. Aribisogan for his outspokenness and sometimes iconoclasm. They think he is too full of himself, is not a team player, and would not take dictations. By his combative antecedents, he has seemed to justify the accusations. Even those who voted for him on November 15 may have done so not to endorse the Speaker’s style and personality but to demand their own pound of flesh from party leaders who denied them return tickets to the Assembly. What is clear overall is that the state’s elders will not be cowed and cannot be defeated, for they are standing on the moral high ground.

But if the elders think the case, assuming it is litigated, and their opposition to ‘constitutional rascality’ can be used to reform those who orchestrated Hon. Aribisogan’s overthrow and get them to toe the path of democracy, they are mistaken. What informed the coup was not just a loathing for the irreverent Hon Aribisogan, but a clear case of political self-aggrandisement that failed to take cognisance of the cultural and political dynamics of Ekiti State. The Ekiti plotters had probably hoped to reenact the tight political control evident in Lagos without quite appreciating the parallels between the two states. The ‘control’ in Lagos is predicated on successful programmes, policies and philosophies, all of which were embedded in a blueprint that luckily for Lagos leaders had a short gestation period. On top of these was a leadership style founded and anchored on deep empathy and self-effacement that somehow became inclusive and unintendedly avuncular. Ekiti leaders had no such foundations, no such style, no such resonant programmes, and were for the most part aloof, offensively patrician, and decidedly undemocratic. It was impossible for them to forge the kind of political environment that would enable them produce the outcomes they desire. Worse, they even lack the elementary strategic thinking required to successfully upend democratic norms.

After the Ekiti plotters failed to persuade Hon. Aribisogan to embrace their goals, and unable to divide the ranks of those whose ambitions for second term they had crushed at legislative primaries, Ekiti APC leaders adopted a more forceful approach, an approach that has now backfired spectacularly. And lacking the strength of character to own up to their shenanigans, they have cajoled APC as a party, through its spokesman, to rebut the Ekiti elders’ unimpeachable statement. The APC spokesman, Segun Dipe, issued a statement thereafter that tried to ape the legalese of the elders and imitate their reasoning and style. How he thought politics could successfully imitate law is hard to explain. But paragraph by paragraph, Mr Dipe tried to put the lie to the elders’ convictions and arguments, struggling in some parts not to sound ridiculous and offensive, and alternating between reverence for the elders, whom he dubbed Ekiti Wisemen or Ekiti Seven in one paragraph, and irreverence in another paragraph. But he was clearly tilting at windmills.

The APC spokesman baited the elders with suggestions that described them as wise men, but accused them in another breath of being partial. He even attempted to hoist them with them own petard by accusing them of acting sub judice since the House of Assembly ‘brouhaha’ was already being litigated. In other words, he was saying that these eminent lawyers didn’t even know their legal onions. He also wrote grandly of grundnorms, falsely denounced legislative independent-mindedness by drawing equivalence between loyalty to party and slavishness to party leadership, and in the same vein abjuring independent candidacy which he said the constitution forbade. In Paragraph 4, he accused the elders of ignoring and demeaning the APC constitution, and in Paragraphs 6 through 9, he berated the elders for suffering from amnesia and acting either duplicitously or not at all in similar and grave political situations in the past. Then he questioned their neutrality, gave them a slap on the wrist for flouting the principles of natural justice and coming precipitately to judgement in matters that required reflection and restraint. The remaining 10 paragraphs were little more than gratuitous insults that negated the essence of the Ekiti people, with a few of the paragraphs devoted to either sanctimonious drivel or homilies about the good citizen. Would the elders feel slighted? Unlikely. Instead, the insults would likely stiffen their resolve. Onlookers may be dismayed by what has come over Ekiti, a galling metamorphosis that had been in the offing since the state cut its nose to spite its face with the election of Mr Fayose, but they will hope that the litigation will not stretch to the point of making any victory nugatory.

Could the overthrow of Hon. Aribisogan have happened without both the surrender of the Clerk of the House, Tola Esan, and the recantation of legislators who initially voted for the dethroned Speaker when they could call their souls their own? It is doubtful. There was nothing wrong with the voting that brought in Hon. Aribisogan, nor did he get the chance to preside over the House before he was accused of wrongdoing and ‘impeached’. Mr Esan would graciously tell the public what went wrong with the first voting and who ordered another round of voting. Perhaps he may not be guilty of the demonstrable lack of character and courage for which he is being accused of and ridiculed. The legislators themselves owe the public explanation as to how easily they turned coat, what political sorcery instigated their remorseless show of cowardice, and whether they didn’t care about their image going forward, at least in the years ahead. Fifteen of them voted Hon. Aribisogan on November 15, with perhaps no one to prick their conscience, and 17 allegedly voted Hon. Adelugba. It is not the arithmetic that went wrong; it was their character, assuming legislators of that number actually turned up at the Assembly complex. There are states like Kogi where legislators have become mannequins, completely impassive to human feelings and destitute of any morality or character. Ekiti was not exactly cut from that cloth, but it had given the impression that regardless of the indifference of its first Fourth Republic governor Niyi Adebayo, and the gangsterism of the second, Mr Fayose, it was above suspicion. Now, no one is sure anymore. Dr Fayemi was always thought to be an intellectual in government, perhaps he still is, even out of government. But no one ever accused him of being a democrat. He is living up to that billing admirably, insouciantly.

Since Ekiti seems to be full of surrender, could the rest of the country please admonish the state’s leaders and elders as well as the principled lawmakers still standing, to stay the course. If the state’s APC leaders are too proud to let democracy bloom in the legislature, the Ekiti Seven, Hon Aribisogan, and the suspended lawmakers should in the name of God stand firm and litigate the monstrosity let loose on the state. This column and many other analysts and well-meaning Nigerians have invested too much in Ekiti to stand idly by as political adventurers play ducks and drakes with the affections of many people who love the state. Dr Fayemi does not appear incommoded by the crisis, so too the governor. Instead of disclaiming their participation in birthing the crisis, should they not more sensibly be outraged that the madness is being enacted on their watch?

In the past few weeks, Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, may have begun to fancy his chances of winning the 2023 presidential poll. He has not only infected himself with that optimism, he has reinforced it in his doting and exuberant supporters and seduced the normally cautious Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) into contemplating and planning for the possibility of a run-off election in case no candidate emerges clear winner. It is humbling to the New Nigerian Peoples Party’s presidential candidate, Rabiu Kwankwaso, that the 2023 presidential poll is shaping up to be a three-horse race, and what seemed a clear impossibility to the Labour Party (LP) months ago before Mr Obi plotted his insurrection in the hitherto fringe and sedate party has become a clear and present danger to both the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Except INEC declares a force majeure, in February, the contest will be between the APC, PDP and LP. The electoral body is right to exercise administrative caution in planning for the fateful poll, and should be encouraged to plug all the conceivable loopholes that might rear their heads. And whether he is encouraged or not, Mr Obi will also press ahead with his plans, trade-offs and relentless vacillations to snatch an implausible diadem. But the chances of having a run-off next February are unworthy of serious consideration.

The indomitable Mr Kwankwaso is, however, not the only person to be humbled by the transmogrification of the 2023 poll, the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, should also feel queasy, not safe or lucky, that the APC and LP have squared off in the public domain as if they are the only ones in the race. On social media, the APC candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is the most vilified candidate and politician in Nigeria today, a vilification obsessively authored by LP adherents and Obi fanatics as well as many freelance independents. Vice versa, Mr Obi is excoriated by all and sundry as a pretentious and superficial politician who is at bottom a Catholic fanatic. Alhaji Atiku, for the most part, is left severely alone, both in the traditional media and on social media. It probably suited him just fine in the early weeks of the campaign; it is not altogether certain that he has not begun to feel uncomfortable with the dominance of the Tinubu and Obi crowds in the media. In all this, Mr Kwankwaso is a cipher.

In fact, Mr Obi continues to command attention in a way and fashion inversely proportional to his performance, capacity and quality. His eight years as governor, as attested by his successors in the Anambra State House, Willy Obiano and Charles Soludo, had been uneventful and insignificant. His carefully cultivated rhetoric has shifted attention away from the lack of depth and vision of his programmes to the controversial morality of his actions, person and policies. Last Monday, Professor Soludo tore at the heart of Mr Obi’s sanctimonious rhetoric so much so that the former governor was left stupefied. His response, when it eventually came the following day at the Lagos Business School Alumni conference, to all the posers raised by the eminent professor, apart from being tepid and desultory, can be summed up in one disingenuous statement, to wit, if Obi used the amenities of a trader to govern Anambra, the current governor should feel free to deploy the facilities of a professor to govern. The response was facetious and self-deprecating and even elicited smirks from his audience, but it was shockingly a reflection and admission of the superficiality of his governance style, his lack of depth, and his enduring incapacity to properly understand issues, let alone frame wise and inspiring answers.

Prof. Soludo had during an interview on Channels TV the week before seemed to disparage Mr Obi’s economic ideas and investment choices. Mr Obi and his crowd of acerbic supporters, however, took exception to the professor’s judgement and called him names. The cyber bullying that followed elicited a lengthy and scathing rebuttal from the governor, which was widely disseminated last Tuesday to even more acrimonious debate and, in some quarters, approbation. The professor declared matter-of-fact that Mr Obi could not win, and that more pertinently the candidate himself knew, but was playing games. He reiterated his contempt for the amateurish economic policies of Mr Obi, and went on to denounce the wild-pack defending him and the futile politics of the candidate, convinced that these would further hurt the laudable Igbo project of producing a president in the near future. The professor was of course not the first person to decry the undiplomatic and frantic approach of the Igbo to national politics, with Imo governor Hope Uzodinma being the first last September, and both describing the Southeast style as Nzogbu-Nzogbu, but the Soludo challenge comes at a time when the acerbic crowd around Mr Obi had completely coalesced and begun to bud and even flower. The inflamed crowd, some of them educated and supposedly enlightened, swooped on the professor, denounced him and his family, and threatened his life. It probably does not occur to Mr Obi’s supporters that Nigerians, including some people initially favourably disposed to Mr Obi, were taking notes that these are the same people who would surround the candidate should he win the coveted office.

The Soludo attack and the frenzied and irrational response of the Obi crowd have, however, produced results. Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the apex socio-cultural and political group of the Igbo as well as other Igbo groups have all come out from the closet to defend Mr Obi, own him and his ambition, and have, to a man, finally given indication that their embrace of the candidate has little to do with his talent or competence, but his cultural background. In bullying the Igbo who warn of the dangers constituted by the unscrutinised candidacy of Mr Obi, the Southeast does a lot of harm to whatever is left of the modest accomplishments of their coveted candidate who has shown himself destitute of ideology or party loyalty. Prof Soludo will of course not back down, and the restless and instigative Obi supporters will soon find some other cause célèbre to draw their fiery ire. The point the Anambra governor has made is to invite the public, particularly the Igbo, to take another look at the horse they are betting their whole race on. He wants them to see whether Mr Obi is capable of any altruism, or even depth of understanding of issues, economy or politics. And he wants them to carefully consider how to produce a candidate who would build bridges, create networks, and cobble together a coalition that could win future presidential election. They won’t listen to him, however. The candidate and his supporters are mesmerised by the crowds around him, and what seems to be his acceptance in some states and among some Christians.

Apart from displaying no ideological and emotional affinity to the LP, in both Benue and Rivers States, Mr Obi also allegedly traded off LP governorship candidates on the spur of the moment for presidential votes, and is increasingly tantalised by the possibility he might actually win the poll or force a run-off which can then be traded, no pun intended. Everyone but the fanatical knows that Mr Obi cannot win on the first or second ballot, or any ballot for that matter, and they know in addition that Alhaji Atiku is trailing badly. So both the LP and PDP crowds will focus on the APC candidate, exploit his shibboleths, distract him with obtuse legal cases, cast aspersion on his health and fitness for office, and engineer falsehoods of all kinds on social media. Notwithstanding all the attacks, the APC candidate still remains mystifyingly the frontrunner. In the weeks ahead, the public may eventually be primed into taking a closer look at the quality and competence of the PDP and LP candidates, beyond their ethnic, religious or regional backgrounds. The public will be disturbed by what they will hear, but it will hardly matter to the supporters of the two candidates. However, enough unsettling facts will be unearthed and coalitions reinforced to make a run-off a chimera.

APC, CAN try a different tack

After playing cat and mouse with Christian groups for weeks over its choice of Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket, the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate finally met with the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) leadership over the 2023 poll. The APC had been harried by internal and external wrangling over its same-faith ticket, and in response, had tried to engage with as many Christian leaders as possible. The groups were at first too livid to engage with the APC presidential candidate, and evangelical Christian leaders had framed the issue into fiery sermons of denunciation against the ruling party which they accused of insensitivity and sectarian conspiracy. Initial attempts to involve key Christian leaders in APC public gatherings and conferences were rebuffed and visited with much backlash and ridicule.

Nearly three months later, and about two months into the campaigns, passions have cooled enough to allow for a dispassionate consideration of the issues and personalities involved in the 2023 race. The choice before CAN was stark: either to go with Atiku Abubakar, the Northern Muslim Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate after eight years of another Muslim northerner, or to amble along with Peter Obi, a Christian, of the Labour Party, or to resign themselves to the inevitable by sticking with the secularist Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC who had picked a Muslim running mate to their dismay. Now they know that the choice is not theirs to make. It is also not clear how the minds of the Christian leaders work at the moment, whether the listening ear they gave the APC candidate last Wednesday was unanimous or whether it was a reluctant exercise to fulfill all righteousness. Whatever it was, their consultative meeting with the APC candidate, which they indicated would also be extended to the other leading contenders, met the universal principle of fairness.

The Christian leaders were wrong to initially dismiss the ruling party for what they alleged was their insouciant disregard for balance and religious sensitivity. But having finally relented to give the APC a hearing at all, the Christian leaders appeared to have satisfied one of the tenets of their faith: eschewing bitterness and extending love to everyone, even their enemies. Though unplanned, they have also stumbled into a far better position, to wit, displaying both kindness and willingness to hear everyone while strictly refusing to endorse anyone. In the heady early days of the APC decision to go with a Muslim-Muslim ticket, CAN had sworn at the party and seemed to indirectly endorse Mr Obi to spite the ruling party. They did not consider that by the tenets of their faith they had no business corralling votes or herding their members into any particular pen. They also alarmingly turned their pulpits into soapboxes for expounding and disseminating political doctrines, in affront to the political plurality of their members.

But all is well that ends well. CAN has now calmed down to do what it should have done way earlier: interacting with the APC to hear them out, giving them a charter of demands, and letting the ruling party, should it retain the presidency, know how Nigerian Christians think and feel, what their fears are, and what their expectations are. Beyond public remarks and body language, it is possible that CAN leaders now have a better understanding of what led the APC to fly that controversial chute. It is also possible that, as Bishop Matthew Kukah later counseled after also denouncing the same-faith ticket, CAN leaders may be prepared to ask their members to vote their conscience. The fact that they will also go on to hear out the other leading contenders poignantly reference their determination to be ingeniously neutral. They know, even though they have not publicly declared it, that their survival and the blossoming of the gospel do not depend on who is president but what that president does, whether he endorses fairness, justice and righteousness or he does wickedness and oppression.

It is not yet known how CAN came by their resolution to give the leading contenders a hearing, whether they initiated the dialogue or they were prevailed upon. What matters, however, is that they have saved their bacons by adopting a form of neutrality that infers involvement as well as dispassion. They cannot now ‘order’ congregants to vote one way or the other, and so cannot be held responsible for the success or failure of the elected president. They will marvel why this brilliant position had not occurred to them much earlier. But better late than never. They had watched the Muslim community stay somewhat neutral, almost aloof, perhaps because head or tail they were not disadvantaged. And they had watched leading northern groups, such as the Arewa Elders Forum engage the leading contenders without seeming to overtly take sides. Surely, neutrality, even if disingenuous, has its usefulness. Having taken this stand now, Christian leaders can in future, if the shoes were to be on the other foot, stand on a superior moral ground to pontificate on tolerance as a model for public political behavior.

More, Christian leaders can now lecture both the Ayo Adebanjo-led Afenifere and George Obiozor-led Ohanaeze Ndigbo on the safety, logic and beauty of maintaining neutrality as well as engaging the leading presidential contenders to hear them out on their ideologies and programmes. The North set the example of engaging with the candidates rather than endorsing any of them. Pretending to have the authority to endorse a candidate or party may be fraught with huge difficulties. It is even meaningless. It is unlikely that the emotive Ohanaeze and Adebanjo-led Afenifere will take counsel from CAN. They are too far gone to change direction, even though both seem to be backing a losing horse. Whether by design or accident, the North keeps wrong-footing southern groups and showing them how politics should be played. They may not always achieve great results with the tendencies and policies they embrace, but they now seem to hold a patent on how political goals can best be achieved. Reassuringly, CAN leaders have at last done the right thing; hopefully they will now go on to restrain church leaders from politicising their pulpits and unleashing secular and incendiary bombs against opponents.

EFCC’s Bawa and currency theories

Last Wednesday, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, caused widespread bewilderment in the financial markets and among students of Economics when he suggested that naira redesigning could crash the dollar to N200 instead of the over N800 in the parallel market. Well, he at least did not go as far as President Muhammadu Buhari who before assuming office projected a magical parity between the dollar and the naira. But N200 to a dollar? Just by redesigning the naira? Were it so simple, why, every Nigerian would urge the Central Bank to redesign the naira until N0.50 exchanges for one dollar. Mr Bawa should stick to crime fighting and stop pontificating on currency and economic matters.

In the first instance, the parallel market is not the official forex market in Nigeria. If one dollar exchanges for about N442.66 in the official market, how on earth could the exchange rate be crashed so dramatically? Alas, just by redesigning, and perhaps by pursuing parallel market dealers up and down the nooks of Abuja and crannies of Lagos? And secondly, where did Mr Bawa get the strange notion that currency value no longer responds to the country’s economic output, inflation rate, interest rate, and current account balance, among other factors, but to redesigns and harassment of BDC dealers. If the EFCC chair wishes to delve into fiscal economics, let him go back to school first before propounding currency exchange theories.