Since we are all in a British state of mind with the passing of Queen Elizabeth, it is meet to sign off this week with three quotes from Oscar Wilde, the great Anglo-Irish wit, dramatist and literary curmudgeon.
The stalemated Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stakeholders’ meeting last Wednesday in Ibadan, Oyo State, showed clearly how difficult it is to resolve contentious issues in any big party. Instead of the party moving forward and constituting its army and coalitions to fight the 2023 presidential election, it is trapped in discord over calls by the southern wing of the party that Chairman Iyorchia Ayu, elected at a convention late last year to pilot the affairs of the party for four years, should resign and be substituted by a southerner in order to create a balance between the North and the South in the top echelons of the party. Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike has remained the most vociferous in calling for that balance. Last week, host of the meeting, Oyo State governor Seyi Makinde, also remained unrelenting in calling for Sen. Ayu’s resignation, while the party’s presidential candidate and former vice president Atiku Abubakar hemmed and hawed over the issue.
Newspaper reports of what transpired at the meeting were a little divergent. Indicating some kind of disingenuous thaw over the issue, a few newspapers suggested that the former VP had agreed that the resignation was achievable, even attainable, if the right things were done and an agreement cobbled among the party’s leading lights. Those right things, the papers explained, concerned adherence and fidelity to party rules and constitution. Other papers seemed to have quoted the former VP as ruling out the possibility of compelling Sen. Ayu’s resignation. Nigerians would distrust the party should it coerce the chairman to relinquish office, Alhaji Atiku reportedly groaned. It would also mean the reconstitution of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) only after the party’s constitution had been amended. But glossing over that bottleneck, Mr Makinde saw the dilemma as an opportunity for the party to prove it had some honour and integrity.
It is not clear in what mood Alhaji Atiku left Ibadan, whether he thought he was persuasive and had made the southern antagonists, who seemed united in their demand for the chairman’s resignation, to see reason, or whether he left the state convinced that a meeting point was a chimera. Regardless of the tenor of the reports of the meeting, it seemed all but certain that party leaders appeared gravely aware of the irreconcilability of their positions. For a fact, there is no way what the southerners are asking for can be achieved without a constitutional amendment. Party delegates at the convention had shot themselves in the foot when they bucked the trend early this year by cajoling themselves to elect a northern presidential candidate after they had clumsily elected a northerner as chairman in anticipation of a southern presidential candidate. However, after perusing the list of aspirants for the coveted position and discovering that no southern aspirant had the beam and heft to win the presidential poll in 2023, they balked.
The PDP has, therefore, boxed itself into a corner. Theoretically they can amend their constitution through a special convention. But they are smack in the middle of electioneering as it were, and pursuing amendments now, not to talk of inescapably handing over the party to a man whose loyalty might not necessarily be first and foremost to the presidential candidate, may be trying. Alhaji Atiku has the confidence of Sen. Ayu, which probably explains why the latter was able to win a vote of confidence at the last National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting. A new chairman, who would in all likelihood be a south-westerner, could upset the apple cart and create a disharmony in the party’s presidential campaigns. This danger is of course not inevitable; but Alhaji Atiku probably entertains that fear. Worse for him and the party now perched dangerously on the horns of a dilemma is the fact that the man pulling the strings from the background is Rivers’ Mr Wike who is still sore from how he was characterised after he was twice spurned by party leaders.
Assuming the party surmounts the theoretically obstacle of organising a special convention to tweak its NWC in order to please the party’s vociferous southern wing, it will also have to scale the even more practical and treacherous obstacle of injecting instability into its constitution as alluded to by the former VP. At the moment, should Sen. Ayu resign, his position can only be taken by the deputy national chairman from the North, Umar Damagum, not a south-westerner. Hence the call for a constitutional amendment. That provision was supposed to inject stability into the system and into the constitution so that a region/geopolitical zone is not disadvantaged by resignations or impeachments. The question then will be whether the party would again amend the constitution after it had won or lost the election in order to return to the status quo? Worse, apart from constitutional obstacles, the former VP and his allies fear that a change in the upper echelons of the party would hand the party over to the cantankerous loyalists and allies of Mr Wike. That possibility appears galling to them.
The only possibility left now is for one side to the conflict to step down from its hardened position. Should Mr Wike conciliate, he will see himself gaining nothing, with the possibility, as he has voiced, of being treated even more shabbily should the party win the 2023 poll. He has fewer incentives to conciliate. The only choice left is for Alhaji Atiku to adopt flexibility, a position that seems to him completely appalling. If he is desperate enough, he will. But the more he hesitates, the harder it becomes to exploit any elbow room as the campaigns loom into view in about 10 days. Albeit, this wound to the PDP is not really self-inflicted. Had the party a great southern aspirant for the presidency late last year, ceding the chairmanship to a northerner would have been a non-issue. In the end, Alhaji Atiku was probably their most sensible choice, not Sokoto State governor Aminu Tambuwal, and not former Kwara governor Bukola Saraki. Now they have the former VP; but concomitantly, they also have chaos to contend with. If they do not close ranks in the weeks ahead, they stand the risk of becoming hors de combat even before the battle is properly joined.
The shooting of Ayodeji Eweje last May by operatives of Ogun State Amotekun Corps has raised questions about the training, orientation and ultimate objectives of the state/regional security outfit. The shooting has become controversial, with the Corps insisting the victim was a cultist, and the family of the young man swearing that he was just an onlooker during the state governor’s inauguration of the Adigbe-Panseke road. The circumstances of the shooting, regardless of the alleged offence of the victim, indicate that there are question marks about the training and deployment of the Corps as well as the danger of the initial euphoria surrounding the Corps waning sooner than expected.
Conceived initially as a regional outfit, but later scaled down for legal and constitutional reasons to become state security outfit, primarily designed to counter threats by rampaging herdsmen and other cross-border attackers operating in forest redoubts, Amotekun Corps was expected in the hands of the polished and enlightened people and governments of the Southwest to set the pace in law enforcement. The region’s governments have perhaps kept their eyes on the initial objective, succeeding in a few of the states in countering the menace of attackers, but in a marked show of lack of discipline, some of the states have deployed the outfit for riot control and other tangential assignments.
Gradually, both the rule of engagement and effectiveness of the Corps are being eroded. If Southwest governments do not quickly arrest what is beginning to look like a drift, it is a question of time before the Amotekun is made to ape the methods and operations of the conventional law enforcement agencies riddled by graft, cruelty and imperiousness. The region held out great hope for the Corps; that hope is in danger of being compromised or even betrayed. If the Southwest with all its enlightenment and sophistication cannot make a success of Amotekun, and make the Corps an example for Nigeria and other countries to emulate, then perhaps there is no hope anywhere.
On Tuesday, 20th September, the public presentation of the book, “Nigeria’s Aborted 3rd Republic and the June 12 Debacle: Reporters’ Account“, written by eminent journalists who covered the political transition programme of the Ibrahim Babangida administration and the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election will be held in Abuja.
The book according to a press statement by the Chairman of the Launching and Publicity Committee, Dr Emeka Nwosu, renders a first-hand account of the issues in the implementation of the controversial programme which culminated in the fiasco of the June 12 annulment by the journalists who were members of the National Association of Political Correspondents (NAPOC).
It also offers a deep historical insight into the character and content of the transition process and the web of conspiracies that were deployed by key political actors in the military and their civilian collaborators to scuttle the June 12 election.
“The book reveals so many issues that have never been in the public domain, including the intrigues surrounding the emergence of MKO Abiola and Bashir Tofa as the presidential candidates of the defunct SDP and NRC respectively.
“The 242-page book provides a gripping account of many of the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres by President Babangida and his henchmen that set the stage for the infamous annulment. The narratives are compelling and unputdownable,” Nwosu stated.
As a former political editor and member of the Whatsapp group where the publication of the book was conceived, topics agreed on and the editorial board constituted to work on the various contributions, I fully agree that the assertions about the book by Nwosu are true.
It is commendable that about 30 years after the events captured in the book happened, members of the association are retelling them as eyewitnesses with fresh details and perspectives for the benefit of especially non-political actors of that era and members of the public who need to know more about what actually happened back then.
I know how much effort and sacrifices went into making the book a reality. It’s a worthwhile investment of time and resources which has produced a very valuable historical reference source on major historical moments in our political history.
The synergy deployed to produce the book by the old political reporting warhorse team members based across the country and abroad is a tribute to the power of networking that old and young journalists can maximise for enhancing the profession.
Coming on the heels of the preparation for the commencement of the campaign for the 2023 general elections, the book will be a good flashback to the politics of old highlighting the roles played by top politicians, some of whom are still active in the present political dispensation.
Present-day political correspondents and editors will also find the book very useful in understanding their crucial roles in reporting political issues in the country for the sustenance of democracy.
It is necessary for journalists to be impartial in reporting the various political parties and their candidates. They need to report in a way to help the electorates make an informed decision on the right candidates to vote for.
Politicians need to know that the media will hold them accountable for their electoral promises and performance in office and when their tenure is over.
Forty-three years down the line, Ajaokuta Steel Complex (ASC) is yet to fully take off, having been bogged down by one problem or the other. The latest was the contractual dispute between Global Steel Group and the Federal Government which had, since 2008, been pending at the International Court of Arbitration in Paris. The company, Global Steel Holdings Limited had sued the Federal Government for breach of contract. However, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, said about two weeks ago that the dispute over the share purchase agreement between the government and Global Steel Holdings Limited had been resolved. But that is at a hefty sum of about $496million that Nigeria has to pay the company.
The minister wants Nigerians to celebrate this as a feat, being about 90 per cent reduction in the claims the company filed against the Federal Government. It was in this light that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration accepted to pay the money and thus draw the curtain on the matter. But, this, clearly is an avoidable cost the country would not have incurred at all in a sane country as we would soon find out.
Indeed, this is a sad commentary for a project that was said to have been 84 per cent completed as far back as 1983, and on which between $8billion and $11billion had been spent, depending on whose statistics one is quoting. Just like most other projects in Nigeria, there is nothing that could point to how much exactly the country has committed to the project to date. Ajaokuta has thus turned out to be one of the numerous drain pipes that Nigeria has continued to spend on without returns. It has not produced any steel since its inception.
Nigerians who know the history of the steel rolling mills in the country, particularly the ASC), would be wondering whether Nigeria is under some perpetual spell, seeing how otherwise good dreams usually end up as mirage in their own country.
My membership of the Steel Writers Association of Nigeria (STEWAN), a group that was formed in the late 80s or early 90s by some journalists who felt there was a vacuum in the coverage of the then nascent steel rolling mills in Nigeria opened my eyes to the possibilities and prosperity that those companies portended. It also opened my understanding of why, one after the other, they collapsed such that today, Nigeria imports virtually all its steel needs, losing about$4billion annually.
I still remember the trips we had round the steel rolling companies then, including the Katsina Steel Rolling Company, Katsina, Katsina State, Jos Steel Rolling Company, Jos, Plateau State, Delta Steel Company, Aladja, Delta State, Osogbo Steel Rolling Mills, Osogbo, Osun State, as well as ASC. The trips were quite educative. Iron and steel was the in-thing then; it was as prominent as the power sector and we had a nice time going round these new-found love of Nigeria.
The trip to Ajaokuta was the most fascinating. I remember how we were transported by road and rail within the steel complex, underground and overground, on seemingly unending trip because of the sheer size of the company. Ajaokuta, founded in 1979, is sitting majestically on some 24,000 hectares (59,000 acres). It was established to serve as the bedrock of industrialisation in Nigeria.
The plight of ASC further exemplifies the way Nigeria silently kills the dreams of its youths. As a matter of fact, the thing did not start today. It’s been on for quite some time. I remember, albeit with nostalgia, how some of my friends who were employed as middle level manpower for the steel companies were sent abroad in the late 1970s and early 80s by the Federal Government, after finishing their school certificate examinations, when the idea of the country joining the league of global steel players was still given priority by the country’s government. By the time they began to return, the jobs they got in the steel companies were the envy of many of us, seeing how they were pampered then. Indeed, working in the steel companies then was like working in the telecoms or oil sector today. In a matter of months, our friends were able to buy some of the good things of life. It was difficult for any lady desirous of having a fairly good beginning in marital life to reject them. Unfortunately, the honeymoon did not last. Within a few years, things started to change for the worst for them, with the steel companies already having all manner of challenges that eventually ended up consuming them. Soon, they became shadows of their former selves. Soon, the young men and ladies who had looked forward to a prosperous career in the sector began to experience existential hiccups and that was how many of them ended up constituting a nuisance to themselves and the society since they had a rigid training in steel production; fitting into other places was therefore almost impossible.
But, it is not difficult to know why this bad fate became the lot of our steel sector. I remember the embarrassing story we were told by one of the steel rolling companies’ chief executives in the course of STEWAN’s tour of the companies that I mentioned earlier. The man told us in confidence what happened in one of the meetings of the highest ruling body in the military era how the then head of state exhibited what could pass for the highest form of ignorance when he asked his subordinates at the meeting why the sector was attracting the kind of attention they were giving it. In other words, what is the importance of steel to the country’s economic development?
With such level of ignorance at that level, is it surprising that the steel sector is virtually dead in the country? By extension, are we surprised that Nigeria is work in fits and starts? Are we still surprised that the country is where we are in spite of the huge resources that the nation is endowed with?
Anyway, to conclude the story on the country’s leader who did not know how important the steel sector is, the steel company’s chief executive said they had to start explaining to him like they would to a kindergarten pupil that the seat on which he was sitting had steel components; his wrist watch, the cars on his entourage, not to talk of aeroplanes, railway, ships, etc, all have steel components. It was at that point that he realised the importance of the steel sector!
When we look at the various trajectories of the steel sector as well as other sectors in Nigeria, we would have a clear sense of why Ajaokuta in particular is still-born. In Nigeria, only five percent of the people know, 30 per cent think that they know while the remaining 65 per cent, including many of those driving programmes and policy options in government do not even know. There is no problem with the five per cent that know and even the 65 per cent that do not know and acknowledge their limitation. The problem is with the 65 per cent that think that they know. Our penchant to put round pegs in square holes in terms of public appointments also worsens matters for us.
It is this kind of ignorance and pervasive corruption that led us to the situation where we are now going to cough up a whopping $496million in settlement of a trade dispute that ought not have arisen in the first place if only those who decided on the wrong policy option on our behalf had put the country’s interest above other considerations.
This is the reason why I am in support of the calls on the Buhari government to probe the circumstances surrounding this needless, even if benevolent settlement. It is immaterial that the settlement is coming at a terribly bad time for the country’s economy, even if that makes our plight as a people more precarious. This probe is important because, as The Punch noted in its editorial on September 15, “Regularly, Nigerian officials deliberately sign contracts that disadvantage the country and give advantages to foreign or local companies. Buhari and the NASS should investigate how a company that, as Malami admitted, “appeared unable to pay the first tranche for the Ajaokuta shares before the first anniversary of the agreement,” and could have been liable to pay $26 million to the Federal Government if the latter had waited for just 55 days, has emerged triumphant.”
The newspaper had in an earlier report expressed fears about the country losing over N7trillion in damages and other avoidable expenses on several other projects like the Ajaokuta debacle. We have many other bottomless pits that the government keeps funding even as we have areas that the country could make huge amounts of money from but are ignored, apparently because oil money comes so cheaply.
It is important to say that what we now have on our hands contradicts what we thought we knew as authentic state of affairs on the moribund ASC. For instance, a senator of the Federal Republic, Smart Adeyemi, had nine years ago told us that “the Federal Government has recovered the Ajaokuta Complex from Global Steel without any attendant financial obligation whatsoever.” Adeyemi should know. He had served on several committees in the senate, including that of privatisation. Moreover, five years ago, the Minister of Steel Development, Kayode Fayemi, had at the Second Annual Nigerian Mining Week given the impression that ownership of Ajaokuta had reverted to the Federal Government back then, with the signing of a “modified concession agreement.” According to Fayemi: “ownership of ASC has now reverted to the Federal Government, and we can now proceed to engage a new core investor with the financial and technical capacity to run the company.”
This new twist about paying Global Steel $496million is therefore curious. The Federal Government must investigate what actually is wrong about these conflicting information, coming from officials who are serving the same government. And if foul play is detected, those involved must be named and shamed. Where the Buhari government maintains its characteristic silence on the matter, Nigerians should ask questions and demand action. After all, it is their hard-earned money that is being frittered away.
I am not sure if the activities of the Sultan and the so called oligarchy have any political traction. The place of Kaduna Mafia in the polity is a hyperbole. The personalities you mentioned have never been on the same page with Buhari politically. During the last elections they went as far as efforts could go to defeat PMB to no avail. They would not make any difference this time around.
You recall how the president’s wife openly embarrassed him for not endorsing her preference. As for me, when I saw one of the closest aides of PMB canvassing for Tinubu, I knew who PMB was supporting and the game was up in favor of Tinubu. The emergence of Tinubu did not come to me as a surprise” –
I quote the above response to my chat from a very reliable, usually authoritative and impeccable, Northern source on the politics of the North, because he firmly, (and for me, happily) contradicts where I had thought the president might be leaning in the coming election as a result of his government’s very pro-North stance.
The quote, however, does not controvert my viewpoint that the Northern political establishment, that is, the feudal oligarchy which controls the levers of power in the core North, will do everything to retain the presidency in the North.
It is not impossible that the elections slated for February 2023 may be the very last for Nigeria as we know it. The hegemonists are not helping matters at all. And I am not trying to be an alarmist. The times are inclement. 2023 is pregnant with torrid forebodings and if care is not taken or unless some, otherwise, respected elders allow the presidential election be conducted in a manner not suggestive of an intent to continually subordinate other parts of the country, they may just hasten Nigeria’s denouement. This is because 2023 is a far cry from 1960 when the Sadauna described Nigeria as his great grandfather’s estate. The Sadauna had said on that occasion: “The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great grandfather, ‘Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We must use the minorities in the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future.”
Not a few Northerners still believe that, and are, this coming election cycle, being driven by that gratuitous wish.
Probably unknown to him, changing that hegemonic mindset is the titanic struggle governor Wike and his group are currently involved in. The struggle will not end soon because those who instigated Tambuwal’s stepping down for Atiku at the 11th hour on congress grounds, and thereby rigorously Northernised the PDP leadership as if it were some Arewa Groundnut Marketing(AGM) company, forgetting everything about fairness and inclusion in a multi-ethnic country will, out of groundless arrogance, not relent.
You won’t believe that this was the same party they – Kawu Baraje, Atiku Abubakar, Bukola Saraki and co, literally obliterated in 2014, giving the new APC all the help it needed to torpedo their own party. Not even the decision of the entire Southern state governors, across party lines, that for the sake of equity and inclusiveness President Buhari’s successor should come from the South, would mean a thing to them nor would the likely consequences of their disregard for the entire South.
Long before ALAROYE’S lead story in its Vol. 62(No.15) edition of September 20, 2022, I have foreseen what is going on now as far back as in my article of Sunday, 1 May, ’22, which I captioned: “Why Are Northern Elders This Overly Concerned With Who Emerges PDP Presidential Candidate?” It was written when I observed that the likes of former President Ibrahim Babangida, Professor Ango Abdullahi and some others had been coopted into what was essentially PDP’s internal affairs.
More about that anon.
ALAROYE in that edition’s lead article whose title can loosely be translated as: ‘Because of Tinubu, Northern Leaders Begin Suspicious Moves, went into the details of the devious rigmarole of some Northern leaders especially as soon as a so – called vote of confidence was passed on Iyorcha Ayu as PDP Chairman. Among such moves were the visit, individually, by each of the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, and the governor of Gombe state to former Heads of state, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdul Salam Abubakar.
The publication is of the view that if the visits were aimed at burnishing Tinubu’s chances, these APC chieftains (?) would not have visited their hosts all alone by themselves, meaning that they probably went there only to subscribe to the plan to retain the presidency in the North. More ominous, however, according to the publication, was the Sultan’s unusual visit to Governor Wike, at the very height of the Atiku – Wike snafu and, immediately after the vote of confidence on Ayu. ALAROYE believes that the visit has since quietened governor Wike somewhat. It wrote in Yoruba: “Sultan ti rin kini na pa”, thereby suggesting that the Sultan’s visit has demobilised Wike’s principled struggle.
With the visits to individuals believed to be influential enough to dictate the voting pattern in the North, it is not beyond conjecture to suggest that the trips were undertaken to swear an allegiance to put region before both party and country.
And if that turns out to be the case, they would not have been re- inventing the wheel as, thanks to former Niger state governor, Babangida Aliya, Nigerians now know that some notable Northern PDP chieftains, governors inclusive, deliberately hung President Goodluck Jonathan in the sun to dry, just to ensure that the presidency returned to the North by voting for candidate Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.
Fortuitously, it was Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the PDP presidential candidate himself, who only this past week, warned Nigerians to be wary of voting for enslavement in 2023. I can only hope that those who should really learn from Atiku’s warning would do so, lest we all become IDPs in our own country as they wish.
Nigeria is on tenterhooks and the only thing those who love her can do is make sure they do not allow those who would do anything to impede a free, fair and transparent election in 2023.
In the 1 May, ’22 article referred above, I wrote inter alia: “Last week on this column, I indicated that but for the obvious and patriotic selflessness of Northern APC governors, I would have concluded that zoning the APC presidential candidacy to the South was a ruse. I would have based that conclusion on two grounds: First, that given everything that President Buhari has done for the North, he could not, reasonably, be expected to rapidly undo them by so soon handing over power to a non – Northerner who, even if he were an Arewa hireling, cannot allow the North continue to enjoy all those unfair advantages. Not even during the First Republic of both the Sadauna, back in Kaduna, and Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, was the North in such total control of Nigeria as is presently the case.
The second reason for my viewpoint is ex- President Ibrahim Babangida’s involvement in the matter of who emerges the PDP presidential candidate. Past master in political trickery and feints, I suspect that General Babangida is actually working for the North, not just for the PDP. And his, and others’ involvement is the climax, not the beginning, of a plot which must have started as soon as President Buhari was sworn in for his second term to ensure that the presidency does not move an inch from the North. The kite was subsequently flown by none other than the President’s uncle,Mallam Mamman Daura when he pooh-poohed zoning.
Or when, in Nigeria’s political history, have Northern elders been this involved in who emerged the presidential candidate of any political party?
This is exactly where I have my fears for Nigeria, as any attempt to pull wool over Nigerians, especially in the North where hordes of foreigners and children routinely vote at elections, could backfire spectacularly.
Fortunately, the North is never short of the services of its hard- headed intellectuals. This is the time to press them into service, once again, because even though all their plans may read, and sound rosy on paper, but there are no fools anywhere, any more, in this country.
Nigeria is a multi-ethnic country where none should, ideally, need to be tutored on the need for equity, fairness and inclusiveness.
This brings me back to my article of 21 August, ’22 on these selfsame pages which I titled: ‘Why Are Northern PDP Leaders So Disdainful of Southern Nigeria?
There’s absolutely no reason for it.
Indeed, in Nigeria, with all her challenges of insecurity, terrible economy and with many of its peoples wanting out of the unworking federation, a little spark, just a little spark, especially arising from any attempt to unduly influence the 2023 presidential election, can make her come to grieve.
My prayer is that good sense prevails and that Nigeria survives.
“The study examined the causes and effects of building failure with respect to cost in Lagos State, Nigeria. The study concluded that the major causes of building failures were bad design, faulty construction, overloading, non-possession of approved drawings, possession of approved drawings but non-compliance, the use of quacks, error in design, poor workmanship, and poor communication. Also, the level of compliance with the approval of building plans before construction commencement was found to be very low. This could be hinged on the ineffective monitoring mechanism put in place by the relevant government agencies and the low level of awareness of the existing Building Control Agency by clients/contractors (sic).” – Oseghale, Ikpo and Ajayi (2015), Civil and Environmental Research, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 44-53.
In reminiscing the flora greenery, depicting natural beauty that bespeaks conducive ambience for learning, of the great citadel of learning that the then University of Ife, UNIFE, (now Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU)), Ile-Ife, Nigeria was, yours sincerely was opportune to be part of the undergraduates that passed through the four walls of that great institution in the early eighties. Aftermath of the preliminary one year, all prospective engineering students would then formally apply for their preferred departments in the then faculty of technology. It is instructive to pinpoint that one of the erstwhile vice chancellors of UNIFE, the late Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, once pontificated that the preliminary one year in the institution was needed to correct admission errors of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) as all students scoring less than Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 1.00 are advised to withdraw. It was an authoritative advice that all concerned had no choice but to accept. Such was the strict adherence to academic standards in the old UNIFE. Specifically, all students admitted into the faculty of technology would pass their first (prelim) year in the faculty of sciences to cut their teeth and see which department they would fit in the faculty of technology based on their CGPA in the first two semesters in the university. Students willing to be admitted to read civil engineering and architecture were required to score not less than CGPA of 3.50. This columnist’s desire before getting admission to Ife was to be a civil engineer. In order to make this dream a reality, yours sincerely had to put in dint of discipline and diligence to make the list of undergraduates to be admitted into the prestigious civil engineering department.
It is with great nostalgia I could recollect the rigors of learning, sharing, and engagement at UNIFE. Great lecturers with depth and dedication to didactic ethos that undergraduates of the days of yore had just two options: either fall in or out! Relevant to the topic of this article is one episode in the civil engineering class of one of the then highly revered professors, Olusola Ogedengbe, of blessed memory. Whilst lecturing, Ogedengbe would often slice in his jovial anecdotes to drive home his point as an experienced teacher. Then this particular day, he shared a bad episode of a surgeon who committed a blunder leading to amputating the wrong leg of a patient: instead of cutting off the left leg, he inadvertently severed the right leg; the latter was functioning normally! The grim outcome: the hospital was sued and ultimately closed down!! Professor Ogedengbe then admonished: “… Gee! You would have killed a lot of people before you know you are a bad engineer!!” An atmosphere of serenity, solemnity and soberness enveloped the lecture room as we glanced at one another whilst simultaneously shaking our heads. However, that singular sharing riveted into the fabric of virtually all of us till we graduated and even into the field of practice. Ogedengbe went further to say that a doctor, through error may kill one or a few; an engineer through his own error could kill in numbers! Imagine an overhead bridge, over a lagoon or sea, linking a commercial nerve centre with a vastly crowded residential district collapsing at a peak period of movement!!
Whist many would be congratulating the new Honourable Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban Development (MPP&UD), Engineer ‘Tayo Bamgbose-Martins, this columnist would, in satirical mien, be saying to the well-weathered engineer, in the words of the late sage, Tai Solarin, “may your road be rough!” Having served in various MDAs in the prestigious Lagos State Civil Service reaching the topmost echelon as Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Works and Infrastructure, till his retirement in 2015, he is not a novice in the State of Aquatic Splendour. However, with the incidence of incessant building collapse in the Centre of Excellence, will he restore sanity to the system such that this sordid menace will not only subside but stop? It is instructive to point out that Engr. Bamgbose-Martins cut his teeth under the tutelage of the revered Professor Ogedengbe, aforementioned in this treatise, at the Department of Civil Engineering of the then UNIFE, now OAU. In addition, Bamgbose-Martins is a Fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (FNSE) as well as a Registered Engineer with the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN). Factually and stating it saliently, in the context of the thriving building and estate development industry in Lagos, he is no stranger. In earnest, Engr. Bamgbose-Martins, with his men and women (his Permanent Secretary, Engr. (Mrs.) Abiola Kosegbe – a seasoned civil engineer too) in the Ministry of Physical Planning & Urban Development and the other agencies under the ministry must muster their competency, capacity, capability and cerebral acumen to cause collapse of buildings to cease in the Centre of Excellence. Enough is enough! Need anyone advising the new helmsman and his team to change the paradigm? It is said in management practice, that it is insane to expect a different result if we keep doing the same things.
Research studies have been conducted, with some fixating on Lagos, as to the causes and effects of collapse of buildings on the environmental and socio-economic spectrum of Nigeria. In a research study published in the Civil and Environmental Journal, the trio of Oseghale, Ikpo and Ajayi (2015), alluded to the humongous losses of lives, limbs, credibility, property and funds that any clime or country suffers when confronted with incessant cases of building collapse. It is worrisome and irksome that “no fewer than 84 persons have lost their lives in 18 building collapses in Lagos State in the last two years, …” (Punch, 10th September 2022). How to end this unwholesome occurrence should be uppermost in the mind of Engineer Bamgbose-Martins as he assumed office exuding excitement and eagerness to excel.
In the context of Lagos, the work of the new commissioner is well cut out for him with the grim and gory statistics staring him and his team at MPP&UD at the face. It would require a rational, robust and rigorous process to be imbibed, inculcated and institutionalized (overtime) for cases of collapse buildings to be checkmated in the state. What are the main causes of collapse? It would be good to meticulously and metrically establish these in going forward. It would be better not to be cognitive (thinking about it in the head) but rather explore rigorous research inquiries to decipher the actual causes as the record of collapse within the last two years is upsetting and unsettling! Within the extant practice and in the context of Lagos, known causes of building collapse are: use of substandard materials, bad design by not patronizing qualified professionals, adoption of crooked construction methods especially by quacks, unnecessarily loading of building beyond designed capacity, lack of maintenance, foundation failure, failure to carry out or non-adherence to soil and material testing, lack of modern monitoring and enforcement during construction, ignorance, negligence, corruption and sabotage. However, there are also natural causes such as earthquakes (almost non-existent in the context of Nigeria), flooding, heavy storms, etc.
In concluding this write up, it is rational to proffer ways and means of preventing building collapse within Nigeria context having practiced the civil engineering profession in Nigeria, involving designing, supervision, upgrading and construction of buildings, roads, bridges and drains spanning almost two decades. Cardinally, rigorous and proactive regulation by relevant government agencies is germane. Moreover, the professional bodies should monitor professionals and sanction errant ones appropriately as a deterrent to others. Furthermore, the professional bodies such as COREN, Nigeria Institute of Builders (NIOB), Nigeria Institute of Architects (NIA), etc. should engage or parley more with the state and federal governments for more proactive relevance in enforcing standard practices across board whilst punishing errant consultants and contractors irrespective of whose ox is gored. Secondly, there should be regular sessions of stakeholders’ engagement by government agencies so that citizens would understand the layers of processes and relevant agencies to contact in obtaining building permits. This is crucial and core to curbing or checkmating corruption in the context of Lagos State, the supposedly biggest construction site in West Africa. Thirdly, it is recommended to profile building collapse cases that had occurred in Lagos State within the last five years and statistically decipher where, what, how, when, which and who are the concerns, causes and culprits. This is referred to in monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) as “Lessons Learnt.” This would be fed into the system and aid policy makers in the future decision-making process. Fourthly, the extant law regulating building construction should be strictly applied and strengthened to ensure enforcement. Culprits should not be spared but appropriately sanctioned no matter their standing or status in the society. This would ensure that everyone would strive to conform to the law. Fifthly, there should be an allowance for whistle blowers to intimate particular department or unit of MPP&UD with imminent or impending occurrence of building collapse. Whistleblowers should be adequately rewarded in cash and kind. How would this work? MPP&UD will publish certain signs or symptoms of imminent or impending collapse in newspapers; run advertisements on radio and television; ministry’s website and on the major social media platforms. Such signs and symptoms to look out for are: buckling beams and columns; displaced columns or pillars; cracks in walls, floors, beams and columns; bulging walls; sagging floors or floor deflecting from walls; cracking or dropping arches; excessive peeling of plastering from walls; uncommon or cracking noise emanating from buildings; previous fire damage to a building; windows, doors, floors and stairs out of level. It is the submission of professionals in the building industry that there would not be occurrence of sudden collapse without the presence of at least one or two of the above early warning signals, which if reported early can save lives and properties whilst the regulating authority takes appropriate and timely action.
In another land, sane and wise
It’s the greatest blessing, an ample gift
The people prosper, their fortunes rise
They run the trade with tact and thrift
But in Naijaland it’s a messy doom
The tears of the people will fill a room
When it rises on the market, the people moan
When it dips and drops, they hurt and groan
It kills our rivers, it poisons our farms
It takes our joy from our very arms
Its wealth is stolen by Thieves of State
While we are left to our swindled fate
To a few it’s a blessing, to most a curse
We look every day at our empty purse
We wonder and worry where our wealth is gone
The robbers are fat with their hands on the gun
A land so rich and yet so poor
Caving and crawling on the wretched floor
For long misled by the dumb and blind
Whose venal likes are hard to find
We live on water and die of thirst
Our best is last, our worst is first
For so long lost in millennial sleep
Our snore so sore our pain so deep.
In my desperate search for a topic to write this week as it happens once in a while when one is tired of repeating himself about many national issues, I stumbled on a Facebook post by veteran journalist and human rights activist Richard Akinnola which I find very apt to amplify.
In the post he wrote: “I have written about it here before and l would repeat it -send your children to schools you can afford. Shame no dey there. When my children were in primary school, they attended Treasureland School in Surulere, Lagos, then a middle-class school.
“When they increased their school fees beyond my reach, l immediately withdrew them and put them in a “low class” cheaper school that l could afford. Shame no dey dia o. It is good to ask for financial help to pay your children’s school fees but l have stopped being emotional over such stuff when people bombard me with requests for school fees. If you can’t afford the fees, change the school or better still, negotiate with the school to pay by instalments. Nigeria hard for everybody abeg.”
I can imagine what must have forced him to openly offer the advice. Some people who those in need assume have more than enough get too many requests they can cope with. People who still have some resources despite the economic situation in the country want to help, but there is a limit they can’t go beyond if they are to meet their own obligations too.
My wife once asked me if some of the people asking her for help have a way of knowing when she gets some cash inflow considering the flood requests at the same time and I told her it may just be coincidental considering the state of our economy when many are unemployed or even those employed don’t get paid as at when due.
Even the best business idea that some invest their money in fails not because they are not good enough, but because of a mixture of the economic circumstances and policies in the country.
Notwithstanding the challenges many may be going through, Akinnola’s counsel is a very timely one for many who are unable to meet their normal obligations to even their immediate family members, apart from others looking up to them.
Instead of cutting their coat according to their clothe and not their size, some still put themselves under undue pressure and seek help when and where they should not. Unfortunately, they sometimes transfer their burden to others who they ask for help from.
Some are not even appreciative of the support they are given because they assume those who they ask from can do more than they give.
While it’s okay to want to give our children the best education, when it is impossible to do so, it’s better to opt for what we can afford and let the children know the truth about our finances. As much as I would have wanted one or two of my children to attend a private university, I knew it may be difficult for me to pay the high fees at some points and I urged them to perform well enough to get admission to public institutions.
Though the church I attend owns two universities, I didn’t have enough faith like some did and had to resort to all kinds of humiliating for them to remain in school.
The endless strike by the university lecturers has forced my family to consider our last born to get admission to a private university but I’m not worried because those who have graduated have assured me that they will make up for any shortfall.
Like Akinnola stated, “Nigeria hard for everybody abeg” Live within your means.
Let us begin with a solemn wager. It is economic destitution fueled by the absence of a truly nationalist political class that will see off many African postcolonial nations. The truth is that most of what we see as religious strife and political unrest afflicting the majority of African nations can be traced to economic malediction caused by political delinquency. In the absence of a viable solution to the fundamental economic crisis of providing life more abundant to their people, the elites simply weaponize religion and politics.
Humankind is fundamentally Homo Economicus. It was when people left the hunter-gatherer stage behind them, when they achieved a measure of self-sufficiency in food production that they began to organize and supervise themselves by building durable institutions. As it was noted, you cannot philosophize on an empty stomach. Insecurity arising from drastic shortages of food has always been the greatest threat to human society. It is an open invitation to revert to the state of nature.
Every society must explore and exploit its greatest strengths in material and human resources to provide prosperity and life more abundant to its people. It has been proved to the modern world that a society destitute in natural resources but with profound knowledge production can actually excel in food sufficiency for their people whereas societies with a surfeit of natural resources but led by knowledge-challenged rulers will come a sad cropper. This is the bane of contemporary Nigeria.
This is why it is important to set the economic agenda for the incoming administration. Let us interrogate and frisk our putative presidents about their economic mission for a nation in the throes of economic strangulation. Nigeria is truly in dire straits. In a world in which the entire paradigm of the nation-state is beginning to fray at the edge setting off unprecedented panic and chaos in many countries, Nigeria is stuck in the groove of a misbegotten unitary federalism.
The leading candidates must perish the thought that this is going to be business as usual. It is business unusual. They must come up with a visionary programme for rescuing a dying nation or the equivalent of a Rooseveltian New Deal for the injured and aggrieved of the land. Luckily, one or two of them are stirring.
One of the things that secretly thrilled this columnist about the second coming of General Buhari was the Economic Nationalism of his first coming. Alas, it has all turned out a damp squib. Except for the half-hearted and ill-coordinated attempt to turn the nation inward towards food production, there is no economic nationalism in view. The adversity of Boko Haram and sundry banditry coupled with a cavalier attitude have made a short shrift of all that.
Just as it proved impossible to argue with military dictatorships over thirty years ago about rational governance and a knowledge-based economy, it has also proved impossible to argue with a government with a unitary vision which sees the entire nation as a vast garrison to be dominated at will and reined in by force. The result has been democratic recession and economic retrogression, despite the triumph of electoralism, a chicanery in which regular voting replaces the grim modalities of true democracy.
To be sure, Economic Nationalism has its metropolitan detractors. But it is a reflection of a western agendum of perpetual domination of vulnerable countries and their fragile economies. Forgetting their own iconic statesman and humane economist, Lord Maynard Keynes, the London-based Economist, a famous listening post of western economic intelligence, has gone as far as dismissing Economic Nationalism as an unrivalled example of economic illiteracy.
But just say that to the Singaporeans, the Indians, Malaysians, the Vietnamese or the sturdy Chinese who actually closed off their borders in the most extreme instance of autarchy that the modern world has seen and watch their reaction.
The unarguable fact remains that vulnerable economies of developing nations need massive state intervention to jumpstart their economies and safeguard the interest of the most vulnerable sectors of the society. But this is not the same thing as turning the state into a huge economic almshouse. In multi-national nations, leaders without ethnic agenda always know where to draw the fine balance.
It is a telling reminder of a fundamental failure of governance that the subsidy hoax has reared its abominable head once again after the last and “final” removal. For the last thirty five years, this columnist has argued about a permanent subsidy trap that has ensnared the nation.
As long as the nation relies entirely on proceeds of oil sales without local refinery, as long as we operate a mono-cultural economy without any tangible productive capacity in other sectors of the economy and as long as there is a run on the naira as a result of untrammelled kleptocracy and the worst instance of executive and legislative larceny that postcolonial Africa has witnessed, a phantom subsidy will subsist. Whenever the naira hits a thousand naira to the dollar, the economic sorcerers and their apprentices will be back. And so will the ASUU people.
This morning, we bring to our readers a piece published thirty three years ago about SAP and its dire possibilities for the nation while the columnist was a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Birmingham. The anti-SAP riots were just a few days away then. Now, the full gale has hit us in the face. Lack of knowledge and the humility to admit wrong kill a nation indeed. It is a good place to begin the economic debate about the future of the nation.
It is now mandatory to offer a critique of the structural adjustment programme, SAP. Such a critique, I believe, is not incompatible with the highest of patriotic duties. Indeed, such a critique can be astutely deployed by a well-meaning but misguided government towards the clarification of its economic goals.
It is part of the intellectual tragedy of SAP that African governments which pursue this programme are driven by the very logic of SAP to listen to the sound of their own voice as well as the voice of the sycophants and professional cheer-leaders who surround these governments. Consequently, all one hears are shouts that there is no alternative.
Those who know their contemporary history very well must remember that this was also the war-cry of Margaret Thatcher in the early eighties. It was a cry that earned the Iron Lady the unflattering appellation of TINA, (There Is No Alternative) from a hostile section of the British press. If only to avoid the pitfalls of Thatcherite “Revolution” in an underdeveloped economy, a critique of SAP can no longer be postponed.
One major reason for this critique is the fact that it is necessary, before the cries of the alleluiah boys drown the anguished cries of millions, to offset the solid virtues of SAP against its horrendous social devastations. Second, it is necessary to demonstrate that contrary to official claims, the dismay of many intellectuals with SAP is not predicated on the withdrawal of social privileges purchased by an overvalued currency. Finally, it is imperative to debunk the myth that SAP is original or homegrown.
Three recent international developments have spurred on this critique. First, the publication in the Sunday Times magazine of the names of the leading two hundred rich families in Britain. The findings are startling. They show that after ten years of structural adjustment, after heroic attempts to create yuppies and yobos with Porsches, Britain is still dominated by old money.
The leading rich families are still the royalty, the feudal landowners and the retailers. England remains very much a nation of lords and shopkeepers. In this major respect, Margaret Thatcher’s revolution is very much a sound-and-fury affair.
The second development is the publication to coincide with Thatcher’s ten years in office of a very perceptive political biography of the Iron Lady by Hugo Young, a political columnist with the Guardian newspaper. Titled: One of Us, it is an absorbing chronicle of how Thatcher, by a combination of feminist guile and sheer ruthlessness, was able to rout the exhausted paternalist grandees who dominated the old Conservative Party and who gave it its human face.
The third development is Thatcher’s recent whirlwind tour of Africa during which several African leaders could be seen falling over themselves to be in the good books of the Dowager of Structural Adjustment and obviously the World Bank.
The structural adjustment programme has its solid merits. It is designed to encourage thrift and self-reliance. The greed for the consumption of foreign goods is discouraged. Waste in the public sector is curtailed. Social albatrosses are hacked down. Export drive is stimulated via incentives and a sober assessment of the strength of the national currency. The goal is a healthy balance of payments.
No self-respecting nation can ask for more. Thatcher’s achievement in transforming Britain’s economy from the utter stagnation of the Heath and Callaghan years is extraordinary. Even the socialist economies with their nationalized inefficiency and bureaucratic sloth are discovering that there may be something to learn from this.
As it were, the monetarist policy on which structural adjustment is based takes its inspiration from the ruins of Keynesian economics and social engineering. Lord Keynes, at the risk of vulgar brevity, was an advocate of huge government spending, of massive job creation, of the regulation of prices and of compassion for the poor.
Structural adjustment programme, on the other hand, deregulates, privatizes and encourages rich and powerful individuals to hold the society to ransom. Thatcher herself has given this its classic formulation when she remarked that “there is no society, only individuals”.
The hidden agenda of SAP, then, is to make inequality respectable, to liquidate the pathologically poor, to encourage a cult of the individual and to treat intellectual workers with philistine contempt. The success of the policy can be seen on the faces of the new beggars of London, the army of destitute, the million homeless in the underground and the mass exodus of intellectuals from Britain.
As a result of the huge social tension and unease engendered by SAP, a startling paradox comes into focus. Government must invade every facet of society to enforce social cohesion; everybody must be whipped into line. It is obvious that the leap to the Hobbesian jungle of economic deregulation leads to harsh political regulation.
No developing country nation can afford the huge social dislocation, the destruction of local enterprises and the massive flight of intellectual capital engendered by SAP. One can, of course, understand a developed capitalist economy adjusting its economic parameters, but an underdeveloped economy which is not even fully capitalist? This is the fundamental fallacy of SAP in Africa. There is as yet no structure to adjust.
The solution, of course, is a retreat from SAP. We must first build a structure through a national development plan which returns priority to local entrepreneurial initiatives, which resists the foreign imperative to artificially undervalue the national currency, which respects worthy intellectual pursuits and not philistine self-seeking and which, while combating official corruption and profligacy, also respects the obligation of all decent governments to the weak, the poor, and the needy.