The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Cleansing the Augean stables, Nigeria, circa 2016 CE (1)

    Cleansing the Augean stables, Nigeria, circa 2016 CE (1)

    Augean: a place or condition marked by a great filth or corruption Dictionary.com (online)

    There will be no “Dogon Turenchi”, no “Igilango Geesi”, no big, big grammar in the series of articles that begins with this week’s column. The main term in the title of the series, “Augean stables” comes from ancient Greek mythology. As a child in primary school, I was deeply fascinated by the story behind the term. Here it is: a mythical king of one of the Greek islands, Augeas of Elis, set Hercules, one of the greatest of the superheroes of Greek and world mythology, the task of cleaning out his stable. Well, nothing out of the ordinary in this, except that for more than thirty years, the dung of about thirty thousand horses had not been cleared from the stable, leading to a monumental pile up so vast that only by diverting the waters of two large rivers through the stable was Hercules able to achieve the task and rid the island kingdom of the filth, the rot and the smell that had overwhelmed the land for decades. The scale of the filth and the smell in the land boggles the mind: crap and ordure of thirty thousand horses in an accumulation that spanned thirty years!

    This mythical story – which I must have come across in Primary Three or Four – had such a powerful hold on my imagination that over the years and decades of my growth and development, I not only never forgot it but always tried to find symbolic or analogical equivalents to the miasmic filth and corruption depicted in the myth. Here are some places and times where and when I have found or detected aspects of “Augean stables” in our world in the last four decades: IBB’s years in office as Nigeria’s first military president; the tenure of James Ibori in office as Delta State Governor; the second term of Olusegun Obasanjo in office, especially in the run-up to his failed bid to obtain a third term in office; the four decades of the absolutist and deliberately dysfunctional reign of Mobutu in the DRC; the second term of George W. Bush as the 43rd American president, especially the last two years leading to the worldwide recession of 2008. In every one of these cases, the stench of corruption in the respective land(s), the terrible impact on lives, morality and the psychic health of the populace was unspeakably monumental precisely because it was “Augean”.

    For Nigerians, it is particularly important to remember the endlessly “Augean” scale of the corruption in the financial industry in particular and the economy in general in the last years of Bush or “Dubya” in office, if only because we are understandably so heartsick with the scale of corruption in our country and our continent that we do not pay attention to and seek to learn lessons from how monumental corruption has been either dealt with and/or “tolerated” in other lands, especially in the rich nations of the global North. So, before we come to Nigeria, circa 2016 of the present Common Era (CE) as our main locus of interest in the series that begins this week in this column, let us briefly go over what happened in the so-called “sub-prime” loan mega-scandal that led to the meltdown of the financial services industry of the whole world in 2008. This is unquestionably one of the very worst cases of corruption on a gargantuan scale since capitalism became the reigning economic order of modern society in our world. Greatly and deliberately simplified, here’s what happened.

    Hundreds of thousands initially, but ultimately millions of mortgage loan packages were given to people who not only could not afford the magnitude of the loans they were given but were actually expected to default on the loans and thereby lose their investments and assets through foreclosures.As a matter of fact, this is precisely why these loans were called “sub-prime” – they were deliberately and cynically intended to be so far below standard regulations and protocols of mortgage loans that they could lead to no other end than defaults and foreclosures. As absurd as it may seem to anyone reading this piece in Nigeria, a “sub-prime” loan is akin to lending N100 million naira to a mechanic, a tailor or a welder whose total business turnover isless than N5 million naira per annum; the only reason you would make such a loan is that you are absolutely certain that the mechanic, tailor or welder will default and all his or her assets would then be forfeited or “foreclosed” to you, the lender. Please note, dear reader, that in the American context, we are talking not about “mechanics” and “welders”; we are talking about the whole gamut of the members of the country’s fabled middle class: teachers, nurses, clerks, postal workers, salesmen and women, policemen and women, the mid-level administrative staff of universities, colleges, high schools and primary schools, and the phalanx of full and part-time workers in the hospitality and service industries, all in their millions. All were deliberately targeted, given loan packages they were neither qualified for nor could afford; all were eventually completely wiped out by defaults and foreclosures that were actually intended as the source, the driving engine of the super profits of the “sub-prime” loan bonanza.

    If that had been the end of the story of “sub-prime” loans in Bush’s America, the impact of corruption on such a scale would have been bad enough, but the worst was yet to come to destroy the whole structural edifice of the American national economy and ultimately, the global economy. This is because these toxicand “Augean” sub-prime loans were then “securitized” meaning, in layman’s language, that they were bundled together as “securities” and sold to investment banks, financial services institutions and hedge funds across the whole world. For about five years, these “securitized” loans portfolios were the “hottest” and the most “profitable” products in world finance, these same loans that were initially sold to millions of borrowers expected to default on the loans they were given. Vast quantities of investment capital all over the world were diverted away from economic and business activities in the real economy to these toxic “securitized” sub-prime loans. Perhaps the most horrific of these diversions was the transfer of assets in the pension funds of millions of senior citizens in the rich countries of the world away from government bonds, food, beverage and pharmaceutical companies and heavy industry to the securitized sub-prime loans. How did it all come crashing down and who paid the price? The answer to this question is remarkably simple: as millions upon millions of homes that had been foreclosed and forfeited increased exponentially, there were no buyers left for them precisely because actual and potential buyers had all been financially wiped out! As to the question of who paid the price, the answer is everybody, every tax payer in America and the other rich countries, all except the operators of the whole scheme!

    I have gone in such detail over this terrible financial debacle for millions of Americans in the last years of the “Dubya” presidency in the United States partly to underscore the fact that we in Nigeria and Africa have no monopoly of Augean corruption and its monumentally destructive impact on human lives. But more importantly, I wish to draw the attention of the reader to the fundamental problem in the ancient Greek myth of Hercules and his heroic cleansing of the Augean stables at Elis. What is this problem? It is the apparent belief that obstacles and challenges of epic proportions that human beings sometimes face can be successfully met by heroes endowed with superhuman powers. I have said that I first encountered this myth of Hercules and the Augean stable in Primary Three or Four. For a while, I was totally taken by the imaginative power of Herculean heroism, by the sheer breath-taking wonder of diverting the waters of two large rivers from their natural courses to wash away the mountain of ordure and stench in the stable. I do not remember now for exactly how long I held on to this Herculean fixation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some day, I came across evidence showing that it lasted throughout the years of primary school!

    But of course, and inevitably, as I grew older, I came to the realization that in the real world, human beings and human communities successfully overcome “Augean” challenges not through the super-heroism of one man but through the careful, determined, civic-minded and collective action of many members of the community. Let me give a rather blunt illustration of the point I am making here: I very much doubt that there are any readers of this piece who (still) believe that Muhammadu Buhari, like Hercules will, by the moral example and the charisma of his personality, clear away the Augean corruption that we face in this nation, but who does not know that the vast majority of Nigerians thought of Buhari as a modern-day Hercules when he first arrived as the new occupant of Aso Rock?

    Now that we know that Buhari is Buhari, that he is a mere mortal and not superhuman and if the First Lady, Hajia Aisha Buhari is to be believed, the president has surrounded himself with opportunists and cynics who are blocking the successful implementation of her husband’s “change” mandate, how do we successfully engage the challenge of Augean corruption in our country? That is the question that I will be addressing in this series over the course of the next four weeks.

    Four weeks? Yes, because corruption is not one single monolith that Buhari and the APC can and will tackle alone, all by themselves as if they are a composite formation of many incarnations of Hercules in the Party and the Government. Corruption is hydra-headed and is not confined to one stable from which it can be washed away once and for all. At any rate, here are the areas of the public sphere of Buhari’s Nigeria in which I will be focusing in this series with the aim of sparking a debate on what we, the people, the citizens, are doing or, conversely, not doing to “kill” or contain corruption before it kills off what’s left of our collective wealth and patrimony: the law; governance, as institutionally set up in the legislature and the administration; education, especially higher education; and religion and affairs of the moral and spiritual health of the nation. Which Nigerian does not know that corruption, Augean corruption pervades and infects each and every one of these spheres of our public and collective existence? And if we cannot, indeed mustnot expect a Hercules to come and save us, what are we to do?

    Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                              bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Beginning of renaissance in the Yoruba region?(1)

    Beginning of renaissance in the Yoruba region?(1)

    This column congratulates the governors for waking up after a long slumber spawned by the years of ‘collect and spend’ in a quasi-unitary system of government created between the 1970s and now. 

    Let’s face it. We cannot continue to pretend that we can deal with the issues confronting our Region and her people on a case-by-case, insular state basis. It will not work, and we cannot, no matter how hard we try, achieve long-term sustainable development and radical transformation in Yorubaland. Therefore, the key to leveraging our uniqueness is the regional approach to dealing with our afflictions, overcoming our difficulties, as well as creating sustainable pathway to progress together. State-by-state solution solutions, desirable as they might seem, are no longer enough. The capacity to optimise the space for development lies in collective thinking and actions, as well as effective collaborative governance. —AbiolaAjimobi, Chairman, Southwest Governors Forum & Host of Southwest Regional Development Summit on November 21, 2016.

    It is the recent summit of governors of six Yoruba states collectively referred to as the Southwest that is being referenced (though hyperbolically) as nascent renaissance in this piece. Since the emergence of renaissance in Italy in the 14th century and its spread to the rest of Western Europe, just about every nation in the world has experienced different forms of cultural rebirth or renewal. By renaissance, we do not refer just to cultural nostalgia about the past of a nation, we also mean the outcome of being born again: the growth of the culture of knowledge to replace superstition and surprise of freedom to eclipse feudalism in all forms. Our reference also pertains to the gust of creativity in all aspects of human effort that a renaissance mind set stimulates towards realisation of the imperative of progress.

    More specifically, today’s focus is on the rise of new attitudes to reality that was in evidence last Monday when six governors of the six contiguous states in Western Nigeria who had not met for years to discuss common interests, even after their counterparts in the North, the East, and the South-south had done so several times in the last one year of national experiment with change. We will give social scientists enough time to study the root of the conversion of all Yoruba governors from insularity to integration. But as belated as this summit is, it is the reasonable thing to do in the circumstances in which the region has found itself since the onset of what looks increasingly like a post-oil economy and polity. This writer warned on this page in 2012 in a four-piece essay on Petroleum and the Future of Nigeria that many things would have to be done differently when oil became more plentiful while the few knowledge societies across the globe continued to succeed in creating products that would give competition to petroleum, thus tilting the world in the direction of environmentally-sustainable development.

    Even though those who determine fiscal policies in the country at large have not fully bought the idea that we may be seeing the tail of rent collection from oil, they are not unmindful of the need to think anew about how to sustain the country as a whole and current federating units in the face of recession caused principally by fall in the price of oil and the ‘mega stealing’ of funds made possible in the days of oil boom. For example, President Buhari is still so optimistic about petroleum that he has given his junior minister of petroleum every encouragement to find petroleum in commercial quantity in the north. Many commenters have even expressed worry about the wisdom of using the little money in hand to look for more oil when the oil in the south from Calabar to Lagos is losing value. Others have argued that it is better to look for more oil wherever it may be in Nigeria so that it can be sold before it becomes useless in the fast-approaching Green ethos. Buhari’s administration has also invested emotional energy in promoting diversification as an alternative to putting all the eggs of the nation’s economy in one collapsing basket.

    Furthermore, it is encouraging that a region that had been for decades the pacesetter for other parts of the country and has in the last few decades become a dumping ground for all consumables is now being jolted by the summit of Yoruba governors to come to terms with the fallout from a philosophy and style of governance that was driven by compulsive consumerism— either in the allocation of funds from petroleum to national and subnational governments or in terms of stimulation of a national culture of sharing of national cake, with little or no attention for creating national or regional bakery. In fairness to the current governors, they came to power under a national system that viewed governance as the capacity to spend what is allocated to each level of government. This column congratulates the governors for waking up after a long slumber spawned by the years of ‘collect and spend’ in a quasi-unitary system of government created between the 1970s and now. While it may be late for an individual to come to terms in the evening of life with his or her problems, it is never too late for a nation to come to terms with its problems, because nations never get too old to take risks. As expected, turning the words of the summit’s communique into actions is bound to face challenges as well as opportunities.

    For example, challenges may arise from divergence in vision of PDP and APC governors. The two PDP governors at the summit have become in the last one year passionate advocates for re-federalisation while the four APC governors after the 2015 election are still on the verge of choosing between re-federalisation or diversification or combining both. However, it is remarkable that the six governors find working together agreeable, despite divergent views on creation of an appropriate form of government that can make governments perform their responsibilities to citizens. Therefore, the governors deserve to be congratulated for committing to turn what may look like challenges into new opportunities. And it is the opportunities that the essays under this title will focus on.

    Shifting from a political culture of consumption to production may not be achievable solely on the steam of change of vision by the governors. State legislators and representatives of Yoruba states in the National Assembly need to be re-educated about the need to buy into the new economic vision. In a situation where federal lawmakers are still spending huge sums of money on cars for their members in the name of constituency work (whatever that means), many state legislatures are calling for budget autonomy to allow them spend as they want, and the federal legislature is pushing for financial autonomy to 774 local governments that receive about 20% of funds in the dwindling distributable pool, it is realistic for the governors to involve other  levels and branches of government in the project of thinking outside the box on the way forward for a region that seems to have lost so much of its comparative advantage to decades of living off rents collected from sale of petroleum. Local governments should also be encouraged to have a conference to discuss modalities for migrating from decades of manna to productive economy.

    Let no one be deceived, other regions are already ahead in the project of managing their economies beyond or without oil. For example, northern governors have been at this project since May of 2015, notwithstanding that the current president is from the north. Northern governors have gone abroad to look for loans and investments from both sectarian and secular institutions for development of their regions. They have also gone to get foreign investors interested in partnering with them to mine minerals in their regions and assist in modernisation of their region’s agriculture. Although the economic situation of the Yoruba region at present is worse than outsiders can readily apprehend, there is hope for revival and renewal of lost glory, but all hands must be on deck to craft right policies, programmes, and projects to develop the region in a sustainable way that can continuously address the welfare of its people.

    To be continued

  • Testimony time: Day Ikeja Electric ‘shocked’ me

    Testimony time: Day Ikeja Electric ‘shocked’ me

    Uninterrupted supply, estimated billing in focus

    It’s testimony time! Actually, this piece could not have passed for testimony properly so-called but testimony in reverse, except for the fact that the word ‘testimony’ is now loosely used, perhaps bastardised or even prostituted, as seen from some testimonies I have heard or read about. I guess I must have shared one of such on this page. It was told by a lady in one of the Pentecostal churches where a friend is a pastor. According to the lady, her father worked with the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and for years, he was doing strictly administrative work in the office, pushing files. In a place like Customs, the meat is on the field, not the office where all you see are files that have gathered dust over the years. She said they had been praying fervently for a change in their father’s fortune so that he too would be posted to a border post. However, God finally answered their prayer and remembered their father as he was promoted and eventually transferred to one of the lucrative border posts! “Praise God”!

    Now the testimony on what Ikeja Electric has done. I must confess the company really scared me last week Sunday. I guess many other people connected to the same transformer with me would have been equally scared. What happened was that I had gone to the barber early in the morning but by the time I returned at about past nine, I saw our security light on. That told me that electricity supply had been restored to our area.

    I was glad; in Nigeria, that is something really cheery. What made it particularly instructive was the lead story in one of the national dailies the previous day to the effect that we should expect nationwide blackout soon. Reason? Unpaid debts, especially by ministries, agencies and parastatals and other customers running into about N400billion. I had already instructed my household that we should brace up for the worst. Not necessarily because we have been having electricity supply before but because it could last longer than we were used to, now that we are being served notice of the impending doom. Usually, those who hold electricity captive here do not serve notice. They just strike, for weeks or months and return it when they like.

    So, we filled all containers with water before going to church, even though we have borehole, surface tank and even underground tank in the house. In Nigeria, you prepare all-round; leaving nothing to chance. So, when I returned from my barber’s and saw that electricity had been restored (we had been in blackout for about a week during which the light did not blink), I had thought it was something that would last for the usual few hours. To my surprise, supply was not disrupted because I also observed the light in the church did not blink (we are on the same problematic transformer). There is hardly a month when that transformer has been well from morning till night.

    When I got home and still found that we had light; I then started to fret. This is unusual; about six hours of uninterrupted electricity! Something must have gone wrong at the Ikeja Electric office where they have the switch. Or, could it be that the person who was supposed to put off the light had hangover from the previous day’s social engagement and was not in the right frame of mind to do this hallowed duty of switching off the light?

    Fear then turned to panic. Indeed, I was in this state of stupor until it was ‘lights out’ at about 9.00 p.m. I was then relieved because I was too scared all the while that I made up my mind not to go out at all on that day until I was sure there was no cause for alarm. I finally heaved a sigh of relief when the owners of the light took it at about 9 in the night. At least that was evidence that all was well at Ikeja Electric as it was with the other electric distribution companies (DISCOs); I knew then that there was no cause for control since everything was already under alarm! It was not until then that I decided to go look for fuel to power my generator. I must confess the company has been fair to us since then. Indeed, I would have said they have turned a new leaf, but it is too early to conclude, because whenever I said that in the past, their progenitors, the National Electric Power Authority  (NEPA) and Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) ‘seized’ the light almost immediately again.

    It seems Ikeja Electric almost made the same record on Friday. I hope they will sustain the ‘shock’.  Praise the Lord!

    But that is for the testimony.

    Beyond that is the lingering issue of issuing estimated billing, which the Acting Chief Executive Officer, Ikeja Electric, Mr Anthony Youdeowei, said would inevitably continue, at least for now. For me, this was a problem the new owners of the electricity firms should have envisaged even before things went awry with the economy. I said this in the context of the prepaid meters that Youdeowei said has jumped from about N40,000 apiece to about N100,000. Whoever was buying the entities then knew the issue of metering and billing should have been accorded priority if the new owners were not intent on continuing with the ancient billing regime which was most unfair to Nigerians. If they had seen the issue in that context, they should have metered a substantial number of their customers before the recession set in and meters now became gold.

    When I first saw the headline about estimated billing to continue, I was annoyed because I was an experienced victim of it under both the defunct NEPA and its equally incompetent successor, the PHCN. Indeed, the matter got to a head when my estimated bill hit about N200,000 around 2002/2003. Knowing what electricity tariff was like in the country then, it should have been clear, even to the uninitiated, that one could be paying such an outrageous electricity bill of about N10,000 monthly if one had a bakery run on electricity. However, because I did not want to be seen as someone who loved enjoying light without paying, I kept paying (I think about N5,000 monthly even though I was usually slammed about N10,000 to N11,000 monthly) which was far above what my friends in the same area having more powerful electrical appliances and even more regular electricity supply than myself paid monthly. The matter became unbearable when in December of that year (or was it the next?), NEPA wrote those of us they claimed to owe them that they were offering us 50 per cent rebate and threatened to disconnect our supply if we did not take advantage of the bonanza.

    I then wrote to their offices at Akowonjo and Alausa both in Lagos that they should pocket their rebate or direct it at genuine debtors. As you know, it is not only the person who stole the fowl of the wretched of the earth that has stolen the property of the talkative. If you steal a journalist’s property, you also have to prepare for the loud noise. Eventually, the then NEPA sent some of its officials to my apartment to verify my claims without notice, and at different times. Guess what? They later discovered that they were the ones owing me after doing reconciliation and I was given a credit balance of an amount I cannot remember. I therefore continued to enjoy electricity supply for some time without paying.

    I thought I have had my fair share of estimated billing. But I was wrong. It was like somebody was determined to take back from me the credit that I enjoyed earlier. So, again, sometime in 2012, PHCN decided to jerk up my bill from N4,389.30 in March 2012 which dropped to N1,206.50 by June of the same year. Three months later, this again jumped to N11,311.50. Interestingly, it has been around the N11,000 mark until about four months ago when an enumerator from Ikeja Electric came to our house. Fortunately, I was at home and I reopened the matter with him. He did some inspection and left. Because I had done that severally with the PHCN which started the unfair billing severally without any result, I did not have any confidence that something positive would come out of it this time. Surprisingly, since then, my bill has not exceeded N3,500 per month. At a time we had a serious problem which was clear as there was no light for about two weeks; it dropped to about N2,000.

    So, you can see that I am eminently qualified to comment on estimated billing. As a matter of fact, I have a protest letter ready for the company because, despite paying N5,000 every month all through the years since the problem started in 2012, (even when we did not have light for about two weeks before the enumerator came), they are still putting a threat of disconnection notice on my bill. They should stop harassing me with this.

    However, my anger on the continuation of estimated billing subsided when I saw the full text of Youdeowei’s statement. First, he said the charges have reduced considerably on consumers placed on estimation as more are connected to the company’s data base. This is unlike the past when NEPA and PHCN based their billing on only the people they metered instead of ensuring that everyone using electricity was metered and billed appropriately. What they did then was look at a house and apportion charges that they liked. They failed to reckon with the fact that there are some people in ‘face-me-I-face-you’ apartments that have more powerful electrical gadgets than even those living in flats.

    All said, I sympathise with Ikeja Electric and other DISCOs if truly their tariffs are still low to make them break even. The thing though is that they caused the problem for themselves. I do not mind paying a higher tariff; and I believe many Nigerians are ready and willing to do same. That is not to say we would not have defaulters even if tariffs hit a rock-bottom low. But let me pay for what I consume. The companies should go after their debtors instead of trying to spread the defaulters’ charges on those they adjudge have the ability to pay, just because they want to meet their cost. There is no business that can ever succeed on such paradigm. The electricity firms will begin to earn Nigerians’ sympathy and respect when they learn to bill their consumers as they go.

  • Still on the Central Bank of nigeria

    Still on the Central Bank of nigeria

    As the government’s banker, financial and economic adviser, one would have expected that it needed no external push, however minuscule, to do the needful.

    “Experience has shown that corruption in public life in Nigeria cannot be obliterated by mere probes and commissions of inquiry or by the invocation of the criminal code under the ordinary legal system. The compelling need, therefore, arose to evolve and devise a system of justice swift enough, fair enough and serious enough to deal a lethal blow on corruption in public places’ –Gani Fawehinmi, recalled in Dare Babarinsa’s ‘One Day and A Story’. True today as when first made during Buhari’s first coming.

    Nigerians woke up Wednesday, 23 November, to read about the advice from the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Central Bank of Nigeria to the federal government to settle its domestic debts totalling N10.6 trillion while that of  the states stand at another N2.5 trillion, making it a staggering N13.1 trillion, because, according to the committee, “the accumulated debts have slowed business activities of economic agents most of who are indebted to the banking system thus compromising the integrity of the financial system.”

    I haven’t the slightest doubt, and this has nothing to do with any bragging rights, that last week’s article on these pages, titled, “Is the Central Bank of Nigeria Broke?” must have been the leitmotif for this sudden decision as it must have not only jolted, but completely rattled, the Central Bank Governor who must have felt not a little diminished by its negative import. At its 3rd quarter meeting, the committee took decisions on interest rates that were completely at variance with the views and wishes of Mrs. Kemi  Adeosun, the Finance Minister, who had canvassed that interest rates should, preferably, go south given the fact that  Nigeria is in recession. While affirming the independence of the CBN to act, it did not come as a surprise that the immediate consequence of that decision was that the rate of inflation soon rose up to 17.9 per cent, a more than 11-year high and the eighth monthly rise in a row, highlighting the depth of the country’s economic crisis. Most seasoned financial experts agree with the minister that what a recession calls for is a reduction in the lending rate.

    Coming so soon after my referenced article, the advice to government to settle her domestic debts leads naturally to the question of when, exactly, the Central Bank became seized of the deleterious consequences of such a huge domestic debt in an economy literally on its belly; where economic activities have not only petered out but in which a massive de-industrialisation was apace? A few weeks earlier, I drew attention on these pages to a recent action of the apex bank which involved its indiscriminately adjusting upwards, the exchange rate on previously approved Form M’s at a time when the companies affected were already expecting to take delivery of the raw materials they had previously paid for. As  recently confirmed by Babatunde Odunayo, the Apapa branch local Chairman of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria in his  address to the 45th Annual General Meeting of the Association, this has since turned into a nightmare, a massive N500B  loss to members of the association. Not unexpectedly many of the companies are now closing shop with the attendant loss of thousands of jobs in an economy crawling with millions of unemployed youth, especially university graduates, some of who completed their compulsory National Youth Service three, four years ago with nothing to meaningfully engage them. If the situation is this dire, why should it take the Central Bank this long to appropriately advise the government on the urgent need to pay off, or at least, substantially reduce its huge domestic debt? As the government’s banker, financial and economic adviser, one would have expected that it needed no external push, however minuscule, to do the needful. The reasons for this are legion. In addition to the MPC’s admission that the hanging debt has negatively affected economic activities, the Bank ought to have realised that besides institutional domestic creditors, millions of small, local suppliers, contractors and service providers constitute the bulk and bear the brunt of this humongous debt. As I showed here last week in the case of the Needs Assessment Programme in Nigerian universities, some of these debts go back many years with the result that many of the individual creditors have lost properties they pledged to banks as collaterals since many of the banks are themselves barely surviving. Besides their being the main lubricant of their local economies, these creditors are the parents of the millions of unemployed youth many of who have since resorted to extra-legal means to survive as their parents can only barely support themselves. Were the Central Bank acutely alive to its responsibilities, it should have informed government that paying off these debts would have been a lot more impactful on society, and the economy at large, than government’s so-called welfare programmes which, even if fully executed, can only reach an infinitesimal percentage of those affected but whose parents are obliged to, willy nilly, take care of.

    I am beginning to believe that the inability of key public officials to appropriately advise government, especially the Buhari government, derives from the fact that the president’s unimpeachable integrity has a way of intimidating them. His persona scares them so much that all they do is begin to first observe what they consider his body language on the matter at hand. In the instant case, I reckon that the Central Bank authorities, despite the advantages attributable to settling these domestic debts, could not face up to a president who is, seemingly, sweating, trying to get the funds to execute his  current budget. This attitude of our public officials is, unfortunately, not a monopoly of the Central Bank egg heads. His incandescent incorruptibility and, of course, age  – the latter, especially amongst his mostly insular kitchen cabinet of key advisers, must have turned them reticent in giving him needed advice on many issues, that is even when they do not believe that he knows better than they do given his cognate experience as a former Head of State. But truth is, nobody knows it all.

    In this particular case of  the government’s domestic debt, it is either the president is shielded from knowing its huge size, or officials of both the Central Bank and the Debt Management Office are scared stiff to raise the issue of payment to local creditors. At a colossal N13.4 trillion, alarm bells should have literally deafened the eardrums of the relevant officials in the two agencies. It  has therefore become unavoidable that the two institutions should now rapidly develop the appropriate synergy to enable them put in place an efficient debt management policy that will make a positive impact on the country’s economic growth and national development, especially, in reducing the debt stock as well as the cost of public debt servicing in a manner that will save resources for investments in poverty reduction programmes which is, in fact, the core function of the Debt Management Office. It is hoped that President Buhari will endeavour to act promptly on this matter in the interest of the country. Also, all officials who will be involved in crafting government’s response to this timely advice from the MPC, which has, indeed, unduly delayed in so doing, must be mindful of the present reputation of the Buhari government with majority of Nigerians who see it as a punishing government under which the people are going through unprecedented hunger. Only the other day, former President Olusegun Obasanjo who has, as yet, not shown his atavistic side to the Buhari government, could not help holding the government responsible for the poverty in the land. Yes, the Goodluck Jonathan’s government was an all-round disaster, suffused as it was by all manner of scams and the grandest looting ever in the country’s history, but this government’s failure to show that it has answers to the myriad of problems confronting the citizenry has not helped matters at all. This lacuna has continued to energise former President Jonathan on his lecture circuit from where he throws barely concealed darts at his successor.

  • The owl of Alagbaka

    The owl of Alagbaka

    “The owl of Minerva always begins its flight after the event”— Karl Marx.

     

    Many readers of this column have been asking the columnist to comment on the political imbroglio in Ondo State, particularly as it affects the nation and the fortunes of the ruling party. Whatever the playful and light-hearted pretences, snooper does not speak or write out of turn. Democracy is a problematic child in Nigeria and has to be nurtured with care and caution. One must not be seen to be setting off explosives against a house he has helped to build.  Like many other compatriots, this writer invested a lot of hope and considerable faith in the change mantra. The point is democracy is hard to build and sustain in multi-ethnic societies crippled by centrifugal forces. It requires patience, wisdom and a sensitive appreciation of mutual differences arising from disparities of culture, religion and social orientation. Nigeria is not yet an organic nation but a commonwealth of disparate nationalities afflicted by varying degrees of destructive political narcissism. It will take a political genius, a statesman of extraordinary talents, to keep the gargantuan mess from toppling over into anomie and chaos. In order to appreciate the nature of the democratic impasse in Nigeria, what we have done this morning is to situate the crisis of democratization in the country in its current post-military epoch within the global and continental crisis of liberal democracy. Hopefully, our leaders will find the strength and the mental concentration required to plot our way out of the historiccul de sac. Unlike human organisms, the beauty of democracy is that it can die and then be resurrected even if at prohibitive costto nation and people. Let us put on our thinking cap once again.

  • Liberal Democracy and its discontents

    Democracy is not, and has never been, a tea party. In many parts of the world where it seems to work, it has taken constant struggle, bloody strife and a permanent jogging of the institutional memory of the nation. Societies that practise forms and variants of structured national consensus do not seem to appreciate what they have until they are in critical danger of losing it.

    Once again, events occurring in different parts of the world point to a crisis of liberal democracy which may well be a shorthand for the crisis of the post-Wesphaliannation-state as bequeathed to the world by the west. Often touted as the finest and best form of governance, there is as yet no ideal democratic society anywhere in the world. However liberal in form or democratic in content, liberal democracy remains very much a work in progress everywhere.

    As it is, there is no single route or magic formula for the democratic emancipation of a society. Every nation, out of its given internal strengths and unique disposition, must beat its own path to popular governance. It must fashion its own democratic garment from its internal fabric. This is why the American founding fathers came up with a presidential system unique to the history and aspirations of the people. This is why Great Britain has plumped for a parliamentary democracy with a royal dynasty as titular head.

    Any surprise then that post-revolution France operates a quasi-monarchical democracy in which a president reigns and rules while a prime minister is saddled with day to day mundanity and minutiae of governance? China is experimenting with an economic liberalization which must eventually lead to political liberation and democratic freedom. After the collapse of the Soviet model and the USSR, Russia has pursued a Slavic democratic nationalism which would have been simply impossible within the context of the old Soviet Union.

    Yet even in the most advanced democracies of the world, it is argued that what passes for liberal democracy is at best a variant more correctly identified as illiberal democracy. With the total vote tally of Hillary Clinton topping Donald Trump’s by over two million votes, many have argued that the Electoral College in the United States of America is a fountain head of illiberal and authoritarian democracy.

    Yet this is not by accident but a deliberate design. The founding fathers of the modern American nation and their successors cannot be described as card-carrying populists and starry-eyed egalitarians. They did not trust the masses and their raw emotions. They were averse to choosing the leader of the most powerful nation the world has seen by a simple majority of the much contemned hoi-polloi.

    They hedged their bet accordingly by making sure that no huge conglomeration of electorate in a gargantuan corner of the new nation is allowed to determine the democratic destiny of the United States. Every state, including the slave-dominated states whose main denizens were denied popular suffragette at that point in time, was allowed to have their say, however insignificant.

    By so doing , they removed the possibility of electoral gazumping, or what has entered modern Nigerian political folklore as the infamous “Modakeke” model—— which itself was a function of sub-ethnic anxieties. But they replaced it with something more frankly elitist. It is a reflection of the patrician mind-set of the American political elite that over two dozens subsequent attempts to amend the Electoral College Act have ended in the political crematoriumof the Capitol.

    Yet things can get even more undemocratic and anti-people. Many scholars have noted that just as the much rhapsodized Athenian and Roman democracies were founded on slave-holding economies, modern liberal democracy came into its own after the forcible homogenizing of ethnic identities in Europe and the Americas.

    As a result of superior technology, superior knowledge production and superior firepower, ethnically disadvantaged people even where they were numerically superior have been known to have been “sanitized” to a point where they could offer no further resistance to the prevailing tribal consensus of the master-nationality. It is thus a momentous irony of modern history that liberal democracy despite its promise of individual liberty and personal freedom is founded on the liquidation of ethnic differences.

    So it is then that parliamentary democracy would have been impossible in Great Britain without the earlier defeat of the Scots and the Welsh, liberal democracy in the United States without the brutal decimation of the original Indian populace and the substitution by import of African slave labour, post-Franco democracy in Spain without the harsh suppression of the Basques and the Catalans, and of course Apartheid-powered South Africa without the cruel subjugation of the majority Black population.

    Multi-ethnic African nations created by colonial fiat continue to present the world with a democratic conundrum. In these roiling human conglomerations, democratic struggle accentuated by competing and countervailing ethnic nationalism is often a protracted and painfully exacting process marked by slow advances and sharp retreats into the tribal cocoon. With the National Question largely unresolved and in some cases largely unresolvable, the struggle for deepening and expanding the democratic vista is also a struggle for ethnic supremacyand a permanent rearguard revolt against internal colonization.

    As such, the electoral process is a dignified and disguised tribal census which often terminates in civil wars, military coups, pogroms and the odd genocide. In Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Cote D’Ívoire, Liberia, Guinea, Uganda, Sierra-Leone, the two Congos, Mali, Guinea Bissau, CAR and South Africa, disputed elections have led directly to civil wars while in Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya both actual and looming regime change from one ethnic cluster to the other has led to civil wars, genocide and pogrom.

    As long as ethnic divisions persist and are manipulated by the elite for political advantage, as long as these nations continue to be polarized along religious, regional and cultural lines and as long as an equitable power-sharing formula set in marble and acceptable to all continues to be elusive, these countries will continue to resemble permanent war-camps with economic insecurities feeding on political insecurities until something gives. As long as certain ethnic formations have the will to power and the hunger for hegemonic domination and as long as some other ethnic formations have the will to resist and the determination not to be browbeaten something must give.

    Believing that it is not possible for a continent or any nation of that matter to escape the harsh backlash of their precise location in the historical continuum, many have argued that what many African nations need in their current conjuncture is not the western type luxury democracies but talented strongmen who will preside over continuous economic boom while riding roughshod over national polarities until the contradictions disappear willy nilly and the ethnic gladiators exhausted to a point where they become historic relics of a misbegotten national phase.

    Yet for every YoweriMuseveni who has presided over such moderate boom and relative political transformation of his nation, there is a Robert Mugabe, the old wizard of Harare, who has superintended the political and economic collapse of his country with authoritarian and cheerful equanimity. For every Paul Kagame who has magically transformed his country from the ruins of genocide even while putting the entire nation on an authoritarian leash, there is a Paul Biya in Cameroons who has held his country together in stupendous and stupefying stagnancy for almost four decades.

    The situation in Nigeria with its actively competing and countervailing power-centres, its micro-pluralism of hegemonic political and economic oligarchies does not conduce to the emergence of such an all-conquering and all-dominating power patriarch. All those who have tried it in the past either under military despotism or autocratic civilian dispensations have ended up as miserable failures. This is simply because Nigeria was not designed or cobbled together like an ordinary African nation. There seems to be a divine method to colonial insanity.

    But to whom much space and astonishing human and natural riches are given, much should be expected. Count no nation lucky until its luck has helped it to achieve its manifest destiny. Embarrassment of riches can also lead to a richly embarrassing situation. That is if the hugely favoured turn out to be a huge disappointment. That is why the unfolding scenario should be a source of worry to all patriots who have laboured assiduously for the Nigerian project.

    When we achieved a historic regime change for the first time last year without a single shot being fired despite all the warmongering and bleak prognostications, the entire world applauded. There were a few who thought that the much rumoured Nigerian Exceptionalism was coming into prominent play. As a nation, Nigeria has proved to be a consummate expert in brinksmanship, always pulling back from the abyss in time and sometimes on time.

    It is sad to observe thatthe feeling of euphoria and national exultation is beginning to give way to national despondency and sheer frustration. Almost two years into the new regime, the government has shown neither much political wisdom nor economic sagacity. The harsh recession proceeds apace as if an economic free fall is the order of the day. The brilliantly strategic political coalition which swept General Buhari to power has all but disappeared and the ruling party is in a shambles.

    Faced with a choice between strategic reflation with its inflationary possibilities and measured devaluation with the possibility of depressed demand and stagnation, the government dithered and delayed until the nation was hit by a combination of both, a perfect economic storm known as stagflation, a crushing combination of stagnation and galloping inflation. It is so rare an economic ailment that there is no conventional cure. Thus we have spiralling inflation even as purchasing power is dramatically reduced.

    Three weeks after an economic neophytelike this columnist hinted at the advent of stagflation, the Central Bank governor has repeated likewise.  And so it is that a litany of unforced errors, political and economic failures and a curious inability to seize the day litter the roadmap. Even a much despised senate with its astounding ethical baggage is beginning to turn the table on the presidency. Yet there is a curious paralysis of will abroad and a languid and lackadaisical ineptitude on display.

    There are ominous echoes of the Express to Kisumu and the Kenyan debacle. It will be recalled that in 2008 faced with popular elections he was about to lose, MwaiKibaki, the old Gikiyu fox, simply barricaded himself in with the help of security forces thus plunging his country into a brief civil war and ethnic pogrom. With the Luo, Kenyan second largest ethnic group, inconsolable since then, Kenya remains a bitterly polarized and divided nation, saddled with a president dogged by allegations of complicity in the pogrom.

    But if Kenya is too far away, General Buhari ought to be reminded of the events that brought him to power as a military ruler. In 1983, the old Ondo State was the flashpoint and the final straw that broke the back of the Second Republic. Thirty two years later, the Owl of Alagbaka has returned to haunt the nation.

    It should be instructive to the Buhari presidency that General Obasanjo has joined in the widespread lamentation with an astringent putdown of the Buhari administration. The obtuse and abusive response of a Federal House whose denizens are shameless carpetbaggers is understandable.Crooked timber does not produce straight furniture. But whatever his many faults, the Owu born power-master remains very adept at gauging the mood of the nation. A government can only ignore him at its own peril.

    At the very least, General Buhari should go back to the drawing board to re-envision and refocus his government even if this involves a major overhauling of personnel. There are still many Nigerians out there who invested much hope and expectations in his second coming. He will never be able to live down the shame and misery if he were to disappoint them.

  • Industry- compliant graduates

    One of the expected responses I got to my last week’s piece on the need to stop teaching typing skills with typewriters in schools was from someone who sells the outdated machine I wrote about.

    He was alarmed that my view on the matter was capable of spoiling his business and had to call me to probably disabuse my mind against the continuous use of typewriters.

    However, by the time we ended the brief discussion on the issue, he agreed that it was a matter of time before he will stop getting patronage for the purchase and repair of the machines.

    Like I told him and he agreed, typewriters have no place in the present and future of processing and documentation of information. Notwithstanding the challenges of using computers, including lack of regular electricity supply, school authorities have no excuse to retain manual trying in the curriculum for secondary and technical school students.

    Just last week, the Lagos a State government announced plans to train  about one million students on technology coding under its Cope Lagos programme. If the Lagos State government aims to train students in coding on computer, while should typewriters still be a training tool in any secondary school.

    My concern again on this matter is the need for constant review of the curriculum for training students at all levels in the country. Authorities responsible for school curriculum must be conversant with changes in the society and reflect same in what students are taught if we really want them to match the exploits of their contemporaries globally.

    Giving the right atmosphere and resources to learn, our youths will excel like their counterparts elsewhere. Instead of sticking to old ways of doing things, our curriculum must be flexible and we must be ready to leap frog to join the race on the information super highway.

    For teachers to be able to meet up the demands of training the present generation of students and help them maximise their potentials, teachers and lecturers must also be willing to update their knowledge. The knowledge of yesteryears is not enough. The new definition of education for all is the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn.

    My first son once told me about one of their lecturers who usually boasts of teaching with the notes he wrote decades ago. The students were not impressed. They were able to prove to the lecturer the needed  to update his note when one of the students asked what period he was referring to as ‘recent times’ in decade-old note in 2013.

    I usually interact with Mass Communication students and I am shocked that some of the courses they are taking are not much different in content compared with what I learnt over thirty years ago. How are they expected to get employed in media houses when the changes in the industry are not well reflected in what they are taught?

    The need for constant gown and town interaction cannot be overemphasized if graduates of higher institutions are expected to be industry compliant.

  • These random acts of unkindness will not do!

    I understand that the House of Representatives’ speaker has just bought some new vehicles for his members. Ouch! That has got to be the unkindest cut of all, I tell you. Imagine, in these times…

    There is a huge amount of unkindness being passed, like offering plates, around the Nigerian atmosphere particularly of late. When we’re not hearing about huge sums of money stolen from the people in the most brazen acts of unkindness, we are treated to stories of bizarre behaviour that hover somewhere between the twilight zone of insanity and hilarity. Both are strange bedfellows, you will grant but in many Nigerian individuals and institutions, they cohabit comfortably.

     We are more used to random acts of unkindness that do not draw attention. We hardly bat an eyelid when we hear that someone has robbed a blind man. We hardly flinch when we hear about a beggar being knocked down by a car or muddy water being splattered on a passing pedestrian dressed in white. We hardly move a muscle when we come across cases of bullying. These are normal facts that we associate with free enterprise and a market-driven economy and our wicked, wicked ways. They do not alarm us, even though they should.

    There are rather other acts of unkindness that alarm us. First, we are all witnesses to the partitioning of Nigeria among the members of the National Assembly. Apart from the unbelievably humongous (I am normally scared of that word but I am more scared by the object it describes) pay they draw, I understand many of them are also bleeding their states dry by taking even more humongous pension funds after working for four years or a little more. Add to that the fact that many of them are the direct and indirect beneficiaries of the many contracts given out by the federal and state governments.

    Then, take the most recent story from the House of Representatives. While the country is grappling with this uncomfortable recession where salaries are not paid, I understand that the House of Representatives’ speaker has just bought some new vehicles for his members. Ouch! That has got to be the unkindest cut of all, I tell you. Imagine, in these times…

    Kindness, according to the encyclopaedia, is performing an act that shows consideration, compassion and caring. Unkindness is the opposite, when people are deliberately mean to others for the sake of it. So, I ask you, when was the last time you showed any act of consideration to anyone, home and abroad? At home, most husbands are used to passing across the housekeeping money like they were handing it over to an armed robber. Then the brows are knit together in a very deep frown should the wife deign to complain that the market is changing. In retaliation, wives have learnt to pass the food across the table like they had cooked for an armed robber. Then the brows knit together in a deep frown should the man deign to complain that the soup is watery. Unkindness rules the home, ok?

    True, the marital vows in any religion take it for granted that both parties understand they are expected to be kind to each other and treat each other with love and respect. Not so in reality; couples so easily slide into the frame of mind that allows them to treat the other like their worst enemy. I tell you, it is assuming an epidemic proportion. Just recently, I read that a court had handed down the death sentence to a man for allegedly stabbing his wife a whopping 76 times with a knife!!! Even the knife should have complained at some point. I ask you, I ask you! I bet you that the rage that caused this would have started with some unprocessed random acts of unkindness.

    Seriously, there are many husbands and wives stabbing their spouses more than a hundred times a day with some unseen knives psychologically, emotionally, economically, socially and even physically. These don’t kill at once but break down the spirit, humanity and dignity of the other, rendering them sub-human. Unfortunately, this situation brings some sadistic joy to many of the spouses with the upper hand. These are the random acts of unkindness that prepare the grounds for 76 physical stab wounds in a home that is supposed to be a bed of kindnesses.

    Abroad, i.e., outside the home, people are also used to spreading unkindness around like an illiterate spreading ignorance on astrophysics at a conference. For starters, the Nigerian traffic is the devil’s unkindness playground. Just drive through any Nigerian road now and it will amaze you how Okada riders, Civil Defence Corps, Federal Road Safety Corp, etc., dish out unkindness to motorists like Christmas soup being dished out to the cold and hungry. It is getting so bad now I am considering packing up and going to live on a farm. The animals would be a lot kinder to me; only the armed robbers may not so readily understand why I decided to isolate myself for them to pick on me.

    I once came across a fellow who was keeping bar just to keep body and soul together. Not long after, he had to close shop. What happened? His friends would come and drink on credit which they never honoured. Such friends! Such unkindness!

    Let me give you some quotations on kindness and see which one you can do. ‘Kindness is free; pass it on’; ‘Be kind to people; reach out: let them know there is good in the world’; ‘Believe, there is good in the world’; ‘The world is full of kind people. If you can’t find one, be one’, etc. Please don’t thank me, I did not write them. I found them floating around the internet.

    Certainly, there is no kindness in drinking someone’s bar of drinks dry without paying. There is no kindness in stealing the people of a country blind just because one is in a leadership position. It is most definitely not a kind act to see so much suffering in the land and continue to show off so much opulence as our assembly members are doing presently. I tell you, these random acts of unkindness will not do.

    Oh yes, there are advantages in being kind to others. I have reported to you here how a self-made millionaire woke up one day and decided he had had enough of being wealthy. He then upped and distributed his wealth to the poor and lived on the little he had left. He reported that he had never been happier. There was also this Hollywood producer who left all the fame and name and wealth and took himself off to some Asian country where he began to rescue children who had been forgotten. He reported he had never been more fulfiled.

    When we display acts of kindness, I hear, our moods improve. Have you see how Nigerians have been going around with these long faces for some time? I put it down to their random acts of unkindness. When we learn to be kind to others, our moods change and become better. And you know what happens when you perpetually go around with this huge smile on your face? Your ageing process automatically slows down. Your anxiety about salary and food will reduce and you’ll find yourself wanting to do more for others. The result is that your happiness quotient increases.

    If you have not been dishing out kindness to others, don’t despair and be driven to suicide. You can still change. Begin today to teach yourself how to be kind in readiness for the approaching Christmas. Believe me, it pays.

     

  • Why Acting CJN?

    Why Acting CJN?

    AT its emergency meeting of October 11, the National Judicial Council (NJC) recommended Justice Walter Onnoghen to President Muhammadu Buhari for consideration as the next Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN). He was to succeed Justice Mahmud Mohammed due for retirement on November 10. A few days before the former CJN retired, the president was yet to act on the recommendation. He neither said anything about the recommendation nor forwarded the name of the nominee to the Senate for confirmation. Eventually, he decided to swear in Justice Onnoghen in acting capacity. So, today, though the constitution envisages that a situation may arise to justify an acting CJN, it is still unclear why the president chose that option when he had enough time to forward the recommended name to the Senate, and the NJC decision was not in any way deadlocked.

    It is both wrong and unfair for the president to be silent on the matter. It breeds a lot of speculations and rumours about the president’s intentions. One of such speculations is that the acting CJN is corrupt. But when the Department of State Service (DSS) recently raided the residences of some judges, and Justice Onnoghen’s residence was rumoured to be involved, the secret service immediately issued a rebuttal, saying: “The service would want to clearly state that it has never invited Justice Walter Nkanu Onnoghen for investigation, neither is he being investigated by the service.” If the justice is not being investigated and there are neither petitions nor evidence of corruption against him, why was his name not forwarded to the Senate for confirmation? If the president is yet to make up his mind, surely he will have his reasons. What are they?

    The other speculation involves the politics of appointments under President Buhari. Should Justice Onnoghen be confirmed, he would be the first CJN from the southern part of Nigeria in 29 years. So, even if the president has genuine reasons not to want Justice Onnoghen as the substantive CJN, he has sufficiently given indication by his somewhat narrow base of appointments that suggests ethnic preferences that he is neither altruistic nor nationalistic. Many Nigerians will see his reluctance to heed the NJC nomination as further proof of his sectionalism. Had his appointments been representative, and had Nigerians seen him as a patriot and national unifier par excellence — someone completely blind to ethnic and religious considerations — he would have been able to convince Nigerians about his objections to the appointment of a substantive CJN, in case he has any. For whether he likes it or not, it is clear his refusal to immediately forward Justice Onnoghen’s name to the Senate has nothing to do with administrative laxity on his or his team’s part.

    Sooner or later, the president will have to do or say something about the CJN. Silence is not an option. He will either forward Justice Onnoghen’s name to the Senate soon or tell the country why he is hesitating. Judging from his actions and appointments since his assumption of office last year, and the discomfort and anguish these have caused many people, the president will find it extremely hard to justify approving a different CJN other than Justice Onnoghen, especially because the next in line to the Cross River State-born jurist hails from the North. Appointing an acting CJN is unprecedented. The constitution that makes provision for this option does not envisage that without reason, and suddenly, the president can simply embrace that discomfiting alternative, particularly in the judiciary.

    In the past few months, the Judiciary has been assailed on every side by law enforcement agencies and critics. While the former CJN and all other stakeholders acknowledged judicial corruption and the terrifying implication for the cause of justice, they nonetheless tried to defend the judiciary’s independence, sensing that far beyond the issue of corruption, the third arm of government was under invasion. Justice Mohammed barely sustained the independence of the judiciary during his tenure. How far the acting CJN will defend that independence remains to be seen, for he is assuming office at a time when jurists need all the wisdom in the world to navigate the treacherous rapids upon which the judiciary could easily capsize or shipwreck entirely. In acting capacity, the CJN could be tempted to concede too much, for his legitimacy is already called into question by the nature of his appointment. The power and prestige of that office are gradually being eroded. Indeed, in his first speech after being sworn-in, Justice Onnoghen assured the president of “…The fullest cooperation of the third arm of government in the continuation of the war against corruption and misconduct in the judiciary.” Those who have pressured the judiciary into some form of penance and rectitude in the past few weeks expected such an ingratiating statement. But to the judicious, that statement is fraught with a lot of anxieties.

    It is not the business of the judiciary to support or oppose the policies and programmes of the government of the day. Their duty is to dispense justice, pure and simple. By promising support, the wary could read troubling meanings into the acting CJN’s statement, fearing that the judiciary could begin bending over backwards to accommodate the judicial malfeasance of a Buhari presidency that shows itself increasingly intolerant of criticisms and dissent, whether from those who genuinely disagree with government policies, whom the presidency scornfully labels as naysayers, or those who caution against the presidency’s frightful meddlesomeness in the judiciary, but whom the government dismisses as part of the corruption force fighting back. The acting CJN’s statement may, therefore, be more troubling than its denotative meaning. Under the Buhari presidency, especially at a time many Nigerians are carried away by emotions rather than substance, the country desperately needs a truly independent and ethically sound judiciary. The acting CJN must not be tempted to give in to the government in any way in order not to justify the fears of many Nigerians that the acting appointment is nothing but a tool to subjugate the judiciary and ensure compliance. Justice Onnoghen needs to be resolute in the cause of justice and in the defence of the independence of the judiciary.

    In any case, since President Buhari has not explained why he prefers an acting CJN, no one can say for sure what his motives and intentions are. This is dangerous. Yes, somewhere along the line, Nigerian governments imbibed the habit of appointing acting Inspectors General of Police (IGPs); but that nonsense has not filtered into or at least become a habit in the army because of its harmful implications for national security. Appointing an acting CJN is unprecedented and totally undesirable, except of course the government has ulterior plans similar to those of the Borno State government under former governor Ali Modu Sheriff. Senator Sheriff today poses as a nationalist and patriot, but as governor he supervised a disgraceful agenda of ethnic chauvinism in the appointment of his state’s chief judge.

    Since the constitution provides for an acting chief judge, the Borno State government kept appointing chief judges in the state in acting capacity, though they were indigenes, until eventually the gangling Justice Kashim Zannah, a Kanuri, came up and was promptly confirmed as the substantive chief judge. Justices Ibrahim Shata Bdilya and Adzira Gana Mshelia, a woman, both acted for three months before being shunted aside. Both Justices Bdilya and Mshelia, a woman, are now in the Court of Appeal. Both are non-Kanuri Christians and believed to come from Hawul Local Government Area. It was even suggested that given the intensity of the terrible politics of the time, had any of the two Borno judges been Muslim but non-Kanuri, he or she would have been sidelined.

    It is hoped that the Buhari presidency is not acting out this deplorable script. That is why the president must speak up. Justice Onnoghen, who is probably aware of the chicaneries arrogantly enacted in the Borno State judiciary, will also hope that he is not a pawn in a convoluted game of chess. This is why he must intensify the work begun by his predecessor, Justice Mohammed, to cleanse the judiciary of corruption and fiercely defend its integrity and independence. The constitution provides for a three-month acting appointment, which can be extended only once. Justice Onnoghen should ignore whatever secret plans anyone might have, and instead focus on the task ahead. Let him face the cause of justice, and let him leave Nigerians, to the extent that they can be trusted to be discerning, to face up to the government on the curious and insensitive politics of the appointment of the chief justice.

    It is not just the history of the judiciary that is being written in these trying times. Given the presidency’s refusal to comply with court orders on those admitted to bail and the appalling genocide being perpetrated against the Shia community in Nigeria, for which there will of course be accountability sooner or later, the history of this government and its chief protagonists is also being written. That history will tell of pretentious and disreputable leaders who have neither instinct nor vision for nationally unifying ideals; of an impotent police force which engages in handwringing and genuflection before traditional rulers as paedophiles snatch underage girls from Kano and Katsina streets, forcibly convert them to a different religion and marry them off in sex-crazed obsession with children; of a state judicial system such as Kano’s that criminally connive at the murder of a 74-year-old woman, Bridget Agbahime, bludgeoned in the presence of her husband and other credible witnesses; and of a country being provoked into anarchy by jaded, extremely parochial and offensive ideas and policies. Hopefully, the Justice Onnoghen matter will not be added to the needless complications that have put the country’s nose out of joint.

  • Is the Central Bank of Nigeria broke?

    Is the Central Bank of Nigeria broke?

    Yes, Nigeria is in recession, but is it as bad as the CBN not being able to honour an e-payment advice in three months?

    In my part of the country, it is often said that there are some things which are worse or more embarrassing than stealing.  It is also often claimed by economists that the Central Bank, being the bankers’ bankers, can never be broke.  The question that then arises, as this article will show is:  Is the Central Bank of Nigeria broke, even though it has itself made a hash of claiming that the health of Nigerian banks is unassailable?

    Eons ago, in what now looks like ancient history, ex-President Jonathan, granted Nigerian universities some huge funds in respect of what is known as the Needs Assessment Programme in Nigerian universities, graciously extending it to state universities. As I once showed in an article regarding the subject on these pages, the result on the universities was instant and dramatic. Not only did new facilities spring up, members of the academic staff who had literally been asphyxiating, unable to acquire learned journals or attend conferences were re-invigorated as the new injection of funds changed all that. Sundry facilities, especially befitting, and much needed buildings, literally erupted from under the ground to make the work environment much more conducive. But for more than two agonising years now, many of the contractors who handled those projects have remained unpaid by the federal government.

    Then in August, 2016, something dramatic happened: the Federal Ministry of Education finally roused itself and sent an e-payment advice in respect of the contracts to the Central Bank. Ordinarily, being an electronic payment advice, the accounts of the universities should have been credited within 24 hours of its receipt.                              But not on your lives! As you read this, a whole 12 weeks after, many of the universities, and, ipso facto, the contractors, are still waiting, though some universities, selected on the usual demons of ethnicity and man-know-man, have since been paid. Needless to say that some of the contractors have long laid off many of their staff and some have, indeed, had their properties, pledged as collateral’s sold off by the banks. I doubt if the education ministry is aware that the payment advice the Minister signed on, and forwarded to the CBN three months ago is yet to be honoured since no responsible government agency would so advise, if its accounts with the CBN were not appropriately funded.

    Where exactly is a Nigerian building contractor then expected to turn if for three  years he remains unpaid in respect of a federal government project which he not only delivered on schedule, but which  has since been put to use by the respective universities? Worse is the fact that he has nowhere to go to demand payment; not to his client, the university, which will promptly send him to the federal government, nor to the ministry, where he won’t even know who to talk to. He has thus been left in the lush in a classical demonstration of man’s inhumanity to man especially when the same government has, during the same period, paid hundreds of billions of naira to road contractors to enable them return to their abandoned projects.

     I think it is time the Minister of Finance and the Central Bank governor came clean with Nigerians on the real state of the country’s finances. Yes, Nigeria is in recession, but is it as bad as the CBN not being able to honour an e-payment advice in three months? I think the Central Bank governor should find in his heart, the milk of human kindness, to end the agony of these traumatised Nigerians within, at most, the next 72 hours.

    A  plea now that the Ondo State governorship election beckons

    For reasons that will remain ever fresh in my memory, the 1983 governorship election in Ondo State remains about the most brutal event I have witnessed in my life. I was an observer/ participant just as was a much younger and very active Olusegun Mimiko, who is unlikely to forget those days of blood, tears, mayhem and death either. As we approach the 2016 Ondo governorship election, so increases my fears and my prayer is that Ondo State will never go back to those days. Party leaders in the state and the falconers from outside the state, beating the drums of war, but especially Governor Mimiko, must do everything to ensure that those days of  rampaging murderous gangs carrying severed heads are never again repeated in the state.

    While it appears like the maverick Jimoh Ibrahim, with no political structure he can call his own, would successfully play the spoiler for the PDP, I have been as concerned as the distinguished, Ibadan-based man of God, Pastor Ajibola Esan, who has dispatched series of peace appeals to dozens of progressive political leaders in the Southwest, regarding how best to ensure peace before and after the election. Certain that it will be in the best interest of the state to now find its way back into the progressive political fold with a victory for Oluwarotimi Akeredolu  of the APC, I contacted him some two weeks ago to ask in which area he needed the most help and his answer, which is anti-party activities, came  very promptly.  Because this is largely the result of some unhelpful meddling from party headquarters, I would like to use this opportunity to plead with all APC members, as well as the supporters, to kindly bury the hatchet and look ahead at the bigger picture. Why, in the year of our Lord, 2016, would the good people of a resource-rich Ondo State, whose complete buy-in is needed for a successful Southwest regional economic integration be heading into a totally peripheral political party like the AD where the likes of elder statesmen Mojisola Akinfenwa and co, with their well-known atavistic politics, will be the ones to look up to for direction? That Ondo State prospered somewhat under Governor Mimiko, as a lone ranger in the orphan-like Labour Party under its then showy, and grandiloquent chairman, was due mainly to the governor’s own enterprising persona and his ability to exploit his dalliance with a President Jonathan who could have given anything for his hoped-for victory at the 2015 presidential election. The AD candidate, Oke, on his part, shunting from one party to the other, has neither Mimiko’s charisma, nor the political reach to positively impact Ondo State. If Mimiko, with his political connections, still had to abandon the Labour Party for the PDP, a Governor Oke,- should he win – will forever be bogged down with concerns for political survival.

    These facts, in essence, is why I would like to plead with a consummate Senator Borrofice, my good friend of many years, and the highly regarded  Olusegun Abraham, to please let bygone be bygone. This, of course, cannot be the easiest of choices, given the efforts and sacrifices they have made, but they must look at the bigger picture, at the place of Ondo State and Yoruba land, going forward. Writing about a not too dissimilar circumstances in recent Yoruba political history, the highly perceptive Hon Wale Oshun commented as follows in ‘The Kiss Of Death – Afenifere and the infidels’: “Many people have argued that Afenifere’s problem started with D’Rovans. My view is that D’Rovans was not the beginning, but the most visible and irreversible manifestation of the Bola Ige’s problem in Afenifere. If there had been no problem, there would have been no need for D‘Rovans. And the Alliance for Democracy convention would just have been a coronation for the Ige candidacy. That there was D’Rovans at all, was a symptom of an existing disease.”

     I leave APC leaders in Yoruba land to appropriately factor that quote into the present Ondo State conundrum and then ask themselves: In Yoruba land, must we always be wiser after the event?