The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

A case note of two African giants

(Why restructuring is a coded battle for modernity)

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

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

Last week, Etienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba, the veteran Congolese opposition leader, returned to his country after a two-year absence to begin a fresh round of hell-raising and agitation against Joseph Kabila’s despotic rule, just as he has done in the past forty years or so against Kabila the elder and Joseph Mobutu. It is useful to note that unlike Nigeria which has held several elections and had managed a historic regime change through the ballot box in 2015, Congo has never since independence in 1960 effected a change of government through democratic means.

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

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

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

It goes to show how Nigeria is powered by a reverse nationalism in which the valorous myth of the nationality is more powerful and all-suffusing than the myth of the nation. It is as if nothing has been learnt or taught in the intervening five decades or half a century. In a bitterly polarized nation, politics of remembrance can easily degenerate to the politicization of institutional memory as can be seen in the attempts by rival ethnic sections to call to question the very heroism and altruistic nobility of a man whose exemplary courage in the heat of savage battle against Congolese rebels had earned him a colonial medal just a tad short of the ultimate British honour for a soldier. It was the first ever awarded to a Nigerian combatant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It can now be seen why the current shrill cries for the restructuring of the country are mere shorthand or coded battle signal for the swift and urgent modernization of the country’s economic and political parameters. All over the modern world, the trend is for a gradual devolution of power from a stifling and suffocating centre to other loci of potential and accelerated development. The sterling and stellar example of contemporary Lagos state is a model that commends itself to other sections of the country. Unfortunately, while vital segments of the nation hunger and thirst for economic and political modernity, some other sections take a dim view of this as an invitation to a summary dismemberment of the country.

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

August 7, 2016
On the matter of the timing, process and content of restructuring

The immediate challenge before us as a country is our economic survival and that is what should concentrate our attention.

Son of his father, the inimitable Professor Sam Aluko, Bolaji , a Professor of Chemical Engineering and former Vice –Chancellor of the Federal University, Otueke, Bayelsa state, is a delight on the many e-for a where he intervenes with seminal contributions on subjects ranging, metaphorically, from sand to steel, complete with a bewildering array of data to validate his viewpoint.

One such subject is Restructuring, about which there are now almost daily conferences in Nigeria. It is about it that a phalange of the Southwest political elite has needlessly been excoriating the Vice President, claiming, wrongly, that he had disavowed of it.

We benefited on Ekitipanupo this past week, from Bolaji’s intense fecundity. Unfortunately, his views are not the subject of this article sans including his short response to Goke Omidiran, who raised some issues with his position. Wrote Aluko in response: “Multi-tasking is already ongoing. For instance, anti-corruption, security and economic re-construction (the last in terms of diversification, local content encouragement and job empowerment) are going on simultaneously.

It just appears that the “economic development” you write about is not as fast as you and I want made difficult, as it is, by the international situation that impacts heavily on our monocultural economy and the disenfranchised corrupt past-actors or ancien regime politicians (or their proxies) who have opened another flank of security concerns that impact even more heavily on the economy”. I chose, instead, to concentrate on Tope Ojo’s rebuttal of Aluko’s position and my own reaction to the latter. Restructuring, Ojo says, “is not an end in itself. It is bringing innovation to some fundamentals in a system. It is a change of structure and a reshaping of the entity for the survival of an organization or nation. It could be done when there are problems or when there is need to take an organization or nation to a higher level. APC and the President made it a key campaign promise. We will hold them to that. Buhari has a 4-year, first term and a second term is certainly not automatic.

So, if he does not commence now, when? ”The northern cabal and all rent seekers, nationwide, he says, are not interested in restructuring and as Professor Ladipo Adamolekun said, Nigeria must restructure or die. The Country RISK Index for Nigeria is very high. There are insurgencies here and there just as there are agitations that are valid. The economy is in recession and Restructuring will take us out of the valley.

The modality for True Federalism, or Confederation, could be worked out. It is a concept that is hugely misunderstood but that is what will bring the changes we seek. The current unitary system has not taken us far as issues bordering on the exclusive and concurrent lists need urgent action. Restructuring is unlike building a house; it is about rebuilding a nation on the basis of equity and justice.”

I reacted as follows. Restructuring may be all you called it – unfortunately overstated what it is – in the process, conflating restructuring a country like Nigeria, with its size and complexities, with reorganising a company, however big. These are two different things and, almost, incomparable. Rather than dwell on that error, however, I will try to discuss issues concerning what I regard as the appropriate time for restructuring in a country you agreed is in recession. Unlike the 2014 Jonathan talk show, Restructuring is no tea party especially in a country as culturally variegated as Nigeria. Regional/ethnic diversities and perspectives in our country are such that I am surprised you could so casually invite a government plagued by a massive economic disequilibrium on top of other intimidating challenges to jump into the daunting task of restructuring now, important as it is. Indeed, given the level of animosities, the anger and the hunger pervading Nigeria today, it will require a modern day Solomon to preside over what will surely be a disoriented assembly of antagonistic entities.

Let me now proceed to take one single example of the consequences of our current economic circumstances. I have a friend, a big pharmaceuticals manufacturer whose company employs hundreds of Nigerians. According to him, several months ago, some Nigerian manufacturers got approved Form M’s to import raw materials.

Of course, these were, as expected, fully cash backed with the exchange rate officially around N197/$1. Many months later, just as they were expecting to start taking delivery of these items, the CBN which, incidentally, had not remitted the funds, comes back asking them to now pay well over 250 naira to the dollar. It got worse. Only last week, my friend got me to sit on a meeting where he discussed with his bankers about a fresh order for bottle caps. It was such a thoroughly agonising session with figures ranging between a band of N300 – 315 to the dollar that I won’t be surprised if, very soon, industries in Nigeria begin to lay off workers since this is a general problem, not just to pharmaceuticals manufacturers. Or is there anybody out there wanting to see a deluge of retrenched factory workers so restructuring can begin now, now? Obviously, about the only way to stave off this looming de-industrialisation of the country will be for President Buhari to urgently instruct the Central Bank to come up with an intervention fund for the affected companies if they are not to close down.

This intervention fund should enable them access forex at no more than what is on their approved Form M and it should not be treated as a loan since it was no fault of theirs. It must be appreciated that banks are now extremely reticent about granting new loans, knowing very well that manufacturers cannot easily pass any additional costs to their dwindling customers.I digress.

What is described above may very well be the least of President Buhari’s economic, not to mention, security and other headaches. Is that the government our people would like to see launch into restructuring right now? I have written tomes about the advantages of restructuring on these very pages. But those were during the relatively ’problem-free’ days of President Obasanjo when Boko Haram was light years away and he could even afford to toy with a Third Term Project as well as during President Jonathan’s days when you knew that not to do anything was to let him drag the country down with himself. God knows, I still believe very much in restructuring but this, certainly is not the right time when Obas are being seized from their palaces and, but for the strong determination and gargantuan efforts of a Governor Ambode, not only Ikorodu and its environs, but the high streets of Lagos, would have become staging grounds for Niger-Delta militants as we once saw OPC demonstrate in their campaign for President Jonathan.

Security challenges apart, there is the huge financial resources required to have even an encore of the 2014 jamboree which we were told gulped N9 Billion. It has been suggested that government could work with the recommendations of previous national conferences, even Abacha’s, and I say, yes, why not? But this obviously is not the right time.For me, come 2018, the country should treat Restructuring like Brexit; have a National Conference for about six months starting during the Second Quarter of the penultimate year of President Buhari’s first term and get the recommendations approved at a national referendum ahead of the 2019 general elections during which the political parties should treat the document as part of their respective manifesto.

This is slightly different from my earlier suggestion on the issue but it looks much neater since political parties do not become the sole driver of the process. Whichever party wins that election should be presumed to have the peoples’ mandate to restructure the country, beginning, 29 May, 2019.

That way, we would have cured the timing problem as well as effectively involve the citizenry in the decision making process. The immediate challenge before us as a country today is our economic survival and that is what should concentrate our attention. Murders have so spiked in Venezuela, on top of hunger, and general insecurity, that we should do everything to avoid their fate. Their problems arose, we should remember, strictly from non-diversification of their economy.

August 7, 2016
Ajaokuta in our hands again

Ajaokuta in our hands again

If I had not visited the Ajaokuta Steel Complex in Ajaokuta, Kogi State, before, perhaps I would not always be passionate about the abandonment that the place as well as the other steel plants in the country has suffered. Ignorance in high places, corruption and the ‘I don’t care’ attitude of our leaders have all contributed immensely to our underdevelopment through the neglect of the steel industry.

I will not dwell much on corruption in this matter because it is a familiar topic in our country. Today, even a dullard in form three would analyse how corruption has stunted the country’s growth. What I call “I don’t care’ attitude (or what one of my seniors in the secondary school used to refer to as our attitude of ‘I don’tcaritism’ and which we applauded in our ignorance because the English man is yet to invent such word) is also well known. I will however expatiate on the ignorance aspect and readers may be stunned just as I was when I heard the story; I mean a true life story as distinct from fiction.

Members of an organisation, the Steel Writers Association of Nigeria (STEWAN) undertook a tour of all the steel plants in the country either in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s. I was part of that tour which lasted about a week, as a member of the association. At Ajaokuta, we trekked on land and underground; we rode in a bus; we moved by rail; yet, we could not get to see everything there because the place, as its name implies, is indeed a complex; so complex that the more you look, the less you see! It was in the course of his briefing, that the helmsman of one of the steel firms in the north told us the astounding story of what happened at one of the meetings of (I think) the Armed Forces Ruling Council, the highest decision-making body in the country under military rule some years back.

He said at one of the sessions on the steel industry, one of the top military chiefs could not understand why steel was so important to the country to get the kind of attention some of the cabinet members were canvassing for the steel firms and the huge financial outlay required to make them functional! They then broke the issue down to the nitty-gritty, telling him that from aero planes to motor vehicles, the cutleries in the place, the chair he was sitting on, as well as his wrist-watch, all had steel components. It was at that point that he nodded in agreement that steel was crucial to national development! Who knows how many such other people had served at the top with the same mindset but who kept their own ignorance to themselves, whilst allowing it to trump superior argument in support of the appropriate investment in the steel sector?

But this is one of the most disappointing aspects of Nigeria. We have a country that is blessed with some of the best brains in the world; yet some of those calling the shots know next-to-nothing about anything. One would expect even a kindergarten pupil to know some of the things steel is used for if asked in the language he or she would understand. Yet, one of the people at the helm of affairs had to be tutored on the subject-matter before understanding what it is all about. How can the country develop with such ignorance at the very top?

Yet, those who conceived the idea of Nigeria having steel firms did so with the best of intentions as they saw into the future right from the late 1950s and early 1960s, and actually began preparations towards their take-off, even though they were not commissioned until some 20 years after. The attempt to have the first steel plant was shelved over political considerations of where it should be sited. However, on July 29, 1982, the fully completed Delta Steel Plant was commissioned and production started in the same year. In 1982 and 1983, the rolling mills at Jos, Katsina and Oshogbo were all commissioned and were expected to obtain their billets from Delta Steel Company at Ovwian-Aladja in Warri, Delta State. Then the Ajaokuta Steel Complex, a project on which Nigeria had sunk a hefty $10billion, according to Dr Kayode Fayemi, Minister of Solid Minerals Development, at the budget defence of the Senate Joint Committee on Power and Solid Minerals and Steel Development in February. Yet it has not been able to provide the country’s technological and other needs.

The commissioning of these steel firms was a thing of joy because, I remember vividly how some of my friends went abroad under one programme or the other in the late 1970s and early 1980s to get them prepared for work in the steel companies. They returned with fanfare, and but for the determination of some of us to further our studies in our chosen disciplines, we would have been carried away by the allure of overseas travels after school certificate and joined the bandwagon. When they returned, they were well catered for and quartered in staff quarters built for members of staff of the steel firms. Things appeared rosy initially. Regrettably, the euphoria, like most other good things in Nigeria, lasted for only a while. A few years after, the steel industry ran into stormy waters and many of those trained abroad were thrown into the labour market. This is a typical example of how a country wastes its youths and disorientates them. Imagine the money spent to train them abroad, the expertise and all that which went down the drain. Many of them did not recover from the shock for years.

It is against this background that one should see the headway made by the Federal Government in retrieving the Ajaokuta Steel Complex, Ajaokuta, Kogi State, the mother of all the steel firms in Nigeria, as a good development. The Obasanjo government had sold the complex to Global Steel Holdings Limited (GSHL) under the privatisation exercise. But the sale was soon to be rocked by allegations of downsizing and, worse still, asset stripping, and the dispute that arose from there was taken to the International Chamber of Commerce for arbitration.

Ordinarily, the agreement reached between the Federal Government and Global Steel, which has now effectively returned Ajaokuta to Nigeria would have been another plus for the Jonathan administration which initiated the process of settlement, if it had not been blinded by the ambition of reelection (when actually the government had not delivered in its first term), and had actually seen it to conclusion. The same thing applies to the Abuja-Kaduna train service, the first ever standard gauge rail track in the country recently commissioned by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Nonetheless, as Chairman, Federal Capital Territory Committee, Senator Smart Adeyemi noted, that government deserves some credit for the work that Dr Fayemi finished. That this is coming at no cost to Nigeria is equally commendable, as Global Steel has agreed to forfeit the $1billion it had earlier asked for as damages suffered by it while running the Ajaokuta Steel Complex and the National Iron Ore Mining Company (NIOMCO), Itakpe, also in Kogi State. Equally worthy of praise is the guaranteed supply of products to Ajaokuta plant and Delta Steel Company, after which (GSHL) would sell what is left to other interested parties.

For a cash-strapped Buhari administration, this headway is significant. If anything, the government, needs all the savings it can get, particularly the foreign exchange component; because of the slump in crude oil prices. That was why the government started harping on the need for the country to diversify its economy so it could better withstand the vagaries of the international oil market. Getting Ajaokuta back is good, but it can only yield maximum dividend if the government accelerates the process of concessioning it devoid, however, of the mistakes of the past.

Unless this is done, the about 10,000 jobs that Senator Adeyemi said are currently locked up because Ajaokuta is idle would remain trapped with the attendant social risks. And if 10,000 are officially working in or connected with Ajaokuta, then it should be expected that hundreds of thousands of others would indirectly have something to do when the plant takes off, because the complex is a complete town, given its size. This is a project designed to provide its own electricity as well as supply the adjoining community. Indeed, anyone who has been there before would weep for this country seeing how wasteful our leaders can be. But that is one of the consequences of governments not earning their income. In fact, it is part of our oil curse. If the money that was spent on Ajaokuta had been earned, tax-payers would have screamed blue murder when successive governments began toying with it. But very few people care about the neglect because we all go to the Niger Delta to get money that we did not know how it got there.

Anyway, a proverb says “when a child falls, he looks forward; but when an adult falls, he looks backward” to see what made him to fall. This country is no longer a child, 56 years after independence. So, we should know what has been our stumbling block concerning the steel industry. Dr Muhammad Sanusi, the Secretary General of African Iron and Steel Association (AISA) said in an interview in 2014 that we spent N2.1trillion annually on steel import. If experts’ claim that our steel requirement in the country is above 20 million tonnes per annum and we can only produce about 300,000 tones, we should know this is a far cry from what we need. Yet, we have steel companies that have been lying idle! To crown it, we have about 22 states that can supply us with iron and steel deposits such as iron ore, coal, dolomite, limestone, marble and clay, among others. So, what are we waiting for? All these should tell us that Ajaokuta is at the heart of technological development in Nigeria. If we can get the complex back, then, we would have made some progress in this direction. But that progress can only be meaningful if we disallow the lethargy, corruption and ignorance of the past from taking the shine off the present momentum.

August 7, 2016
As we adjust to a ‘post-petroleum’ reality

More positively, others see the Okorocha Formula or Plan as an opportunity to create a big group of farmers from the pool of part-time civil servants released to serve themselves legitimately for two days a week

One of the most visionary statements made by President Buhari since his coming to power recently is “we should plan our life as if we do not have petroleum.” It seems that his federal government has made efforts within its ken and competence to steer the country in direction of living outside the frame of a petroleum-driven polity and economy by insisting on revitalized agriculture, and exploitation of solid minerals, in addition to fighting corruption and creating a security system that can protect life and property. What the Buhari government has not addressed frontally and fully is whether it makes sense to do all these without weaning the country, particularly its elite, of the habit of overfeeding that petroleum stimulated especially in the era of dictatorship. But this is not the focus of today’s column.

Today’s column is about efforts embarked upon by states to avoid going into receivership and what else the federal government can do to assist political leaders in most of the states to stay afloat economically and politically. With about 28 states owing arrears of salaries, pensions, and on remittances to pension funds, state governors no longer look as buoyant as they used to and the body language of many of them suggests lack of enthusiasm and even fear of the people they are supposedly governing. After receiving one bailout and then sharing N90 billion loan facility from the central government, the situation of states vis-a-vis regular and prompt payment of workers’ salaries has not improved to a point to make governors visibly less apprehensive of their constituents. Many of them are trying their hands on what they see as creative financial management in the midst of fiscal and financial adversity.

One such effort is negotiation with workers and labour unions to prevail on civil servants to accept 50% of their regular salaries until the situation improves for such states. For example, Osun, Nasarawa, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, and Imo are some of the states making efforts to avoid denialism and to frontally deal with an uneasy situation. Imo appears to be the most radical in its approach to a problem of underfunding that may go on for a long time, unless a miracle occurs by way of sudden phenomenal rise in price of petroleum.

For example, Imo has proposed a part-time civil service that will allow public servants to work three out of the normal five days a week while lawmakers will remain fulltime legislators. Workers running this schedule are to be on about 60-70% of their normal salaries and benefits. Of course, critics of the Okorocha government are already pooh-poohing this proposal. It is being suggested that the proposal confirms the folk belief that there is nothing that civil servants do to advance the interests of citizens. Such critics say a civil service that has not succeeded sixty years after independence to provide electricity, potable water, good roads, security of life and property, proper sewage system for over 150 million of its citizens, etc might as well go on leave for ever until the country returns to another era of plenty from oil or solid minerals. Pro-labour pundits are reading riot acts to Okorocha for setting aside the state’s labour contract with civil servants while others are saying this is better than other options, such as mass retrenchment, early retirement with modest or no gratuity, or continuation of irregular payment of salaries that puts families, especially vulnerable children at risk physically and mentally. More cynically, some online commentators are applauding Okorocha for this proposal, which will allow civil servants to do legally and legitimately what they have always done at the expense of delivery of public good: buying and selling of new and used goods inside or in front of their offices. More positively, others see the Okorocha Formula or Plan as an opportunity to create a big group of farmers from the pool of part-time civil servants released to serve themselves legitimately for two days a week.

Furthermore, with states realising that the options of bailout and loan from the federal government may not occur again, most states that have ignored their UBE funds for years are returning to this with a new plea: President Buhari to prevail on the National Assembly to waive the requirement of providing counterpart funding for release of UBE funds. But states need to be more forthcoming on this matter. Are they going to use the money for purposes other than they are meant for? Can states that could not provide 50% counterpart funding in the years of plenty suddenly pluck the discipline to use the fund for the purpose of improving basic education? Reducing counterpart funding to 10% and insisting on transparent accounting should be generous enough.

These two proposals by majority of the states raise some important issues about the country’s federal system. If proper care is not taken, state governors may be nudging the Buhari government in the direction of more unitarism than they are willing to acknowledge. A system that ideally should have been about shared governance and shared sovereignty may soon become a worse form of superordinate/subordinate relationship between national and subnational governments than it is now. The signs are not there for a quick fix to the problem of a weak economy that has come upon the nation via loss of revenue from petroleum and a legacy of poor political and economic planning and hitherto uncontrollable venality of those in government. Solid minerals and even agriculture are not likely to change the funding situation for another year and petroleum price may even get worse. It will be difficult for the federal government to take loans from China and the World Bank to be doling out to states as loans, bailout, or special funds to pay salaries and provide security votes to governors.

Yet, both federal and state governments must recognize the danger in having millions of citizens going to bed hungry every night, given what happened in Tunisia a few years back. It is, therefore, significant that President Buhari has re-committed its government to fighting waste, in order to leave more funds for important national and subnational needs, in addition to fighting corruption with all vigour and recovering money from thieves of state.In terms of cutting cost, the decision to decrease the number of embassies abroad is not a bad idea. But deeper reflection has to go into deciding which Nigerian embassies should be closed. Just as the Oba of Ilawe (a seasoned diplomat himself) has aptly observed, it is not strategically right to close the country’s embassy in the Cameroon. Cameroon is perhaps the most strategically important country to us in the Central African region, for obvious reasons: a huge Nigerian diaspora in that country; a country that citizens in Cross River have concern about since the loss of Bakassi to that country; and a country with a long border that adjoins many Nigerian states. It is also not right to close the embassy in Brazil.

Brazil is a country with a large Nigerian diaspora: precolonial and postcolonial. With majority of over 75 million Brazilians who trace their origin to Nigeria; a history of Brazilian returnees making substantial contribution to Nigeria’s modernization, particularly in Lagos, and as South America’s leading economy and perhaps most technologically advanced society in the region; Brazil is not a country that should not have Nigeria’s diplomatic presence. If there is any country that has similarities with Nigeria in terms of vegetation, cash and food crops farming, Brazil is one such country that can provide models for our new agricultural revolution. Brazil is also one country that can be of help to Nigeria in its bid to be a tourist center. Brazil is a successful tourist nation in the tropics and one with a huge population of potential visitors to Nigeria to cement existing relationship between the peoples of both countries. Brazil, like Sudan, has very close ties to Nigeria that we should continue to nurture with diplomatic presence.

Undoubtedly, Nigeria needs to do more than juggling, such as states wanting to turn UBE funds to unconditional transfer and federal government’s needing to close some embassies to cut cost and the culture of waste that had hobbled the country for decades. The word that many people hate to hear: Restructuring may not be as odious as it sounds, if those who believe that the country’s past is better than what it can become and those who believe that a country, particularly a democratic one must be willing to re-invent itself agree to do proper cost and benefit analysis of restructuring, economically and politically.

August 7, 2016
Far less ingenuity in state governments

STATE governments owing backlog of salaries are not the only ones ignoring the lessons and perils of the current economic crisis. Everyone, including the progressively conservative Muhammadu Buhari presidency, is holding on stubbornly to the unworkable structures and habits of the past. The economy is not what it used to be, and will not be for many generations to come except revolutionary disruptions to the world economic system occur. The Nigerian political substructure has bred and fed the ogre of oppression, confusion and stagnation, yet governments and politicians have carried on blithely, gorging on the benefits of the past few decades and capitalising on the lassitude of incompetent officials. Until political iconoclasts, who are by the way few and far between, meet the great and grand demands of the times, retrogression and mediocrity will be the order of the day.

Last week, the Oyo State governor, Abiola Ajimobi, resigned himself to hopelessness over the state’s salary crisis. There was no way he could pay the N5.2bn wage bill from a N2.2bn income from the federation account, he groaned. Mathematically, he is right, for even if the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) were shot up to N3bn, it would still be impossible to pay. The state owes its workers about seven months salaries. The governor did not say it, but he implied that for decades, the country’s lack of fiscal federalism and the abysmal and suffocating unitarist structure gifted the nation by backward-looking military dictatorships had wreaked unquantifiable havoc on the country’s sense of innovation and experimentation. He did not also say it, but he implied that even he had become unimaginative and unsuited for the complex demands of the moment.

Mr Ajimobi is not alone. Even before the Oyo governor yielded to frustration and paralysis, and labour unions had begun to give him constipation, Osun State under Governor Rauf Aregbesola had become the poster child of unpaid salaries and stymied development, with the state pockmarked by unfinished but ambitious projects. Much more than Oyo, Osun presented a curious economic conundrum. Oyo does not pretend to any ideological cover for its stasis. The state economy was and still is a simple, uncomplicated arrangement located gingerly somewhere between mixed economy and ad hocism. Whatever comes from the federation account is added to the little IGR they can rake up, and a few development programmes are thus initiated to justify eight years or so in government with all its garish panoplies. Their ambition is moderate, their governing template is simple, and their future hangs precariously and wistfully between Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Osun, on the other hand, though its salary difficulties are not less complex or profound or disruptive, has managed to design a governance structure that vaults to the progressive and globalising future as pretentiously as it harks back to a socialist past. Not only was sufficient attention not paid to the state’s revenue base in anticipation of a possible general economic downturn, the state also embarked on such catatonic social re-engineering, especially in its educational sector, that it is hard to imagine anything more convulsive or more stiffening. But the state bristles against critics who insist that rather than reclassify or restructure, what the state needs is attention to quality, and that that quality can be achieved without the disruptions that have seemed to aggravate religious sensibilities and paint the governor in unflattering sectarian colour. The state thinks the future will underscore the far-sightedness of the reforms being carried out under Gov Aregbesola, and prove sceptics wrong. This is a tough verdict to coax out of posterity.

Perhaps the most frightening response to the economic crisis being faced by the country is the one inspired by the gaudy Gov Rochas Okorocha of Imo State. He is probably the most charismatic governor of the three used as examples of the paralyses debilitating the states. He may even be the most charismatic governor in this term. He is intelligent, eloquent and sometimes oratorically profound. The media reports many of his giant developmental strides favourably, and applaud his social finicalness and savvy. But, like many others, he suffers frequent bouts of flights of fancy. A week after he flirted with the unusual and befuddling idea of a three-day working week, the rest apparently to be invested in agriculture willy-nilly, even by those averse to farming, he simply presented the state with a fait accompli. That is his own ingenious way of solving a problem that is deep and systemic, a problem that requires profundity, not capriciousness. Does he by any chance hope to cut their salaries to accommodate their new work schedule? Would the unions entertain such driveling resort to arithmetic frolic?

The three states in discourse are not exhaustive of the lack of profundity in statecraft. They are merely an indication of what is almost a total Nigerian experience, as more than two-thirds of the states have met cash flow problems with near total lack of imagination. Unfortunately, the voters are themselves unable to distinguish between the many distorted realities politicians confront them with, between truth and falsehood, between genuineness and chimera. There is, therefore, no serious effort to interrogate those who present themselves for elective posts to find out how suitable they are, what the amperage of their temperament is, how their secularity rate, whether the depth of their knowledge can be plumbed, and what the scope of their wisdom is in comparison with the wisecracks and homilies of the ancients. It is indeed galling that most states are afflicted by poor leadership, just as the national level, in more than 50 years, has not found even one man worthy to be called a leader in the truest sense of the word.

August 7, 2016
Much ado about who to marry

One of the pieces of advice on marriage I owe my three male children is that they must not marry a lazy lady. Lazy in the sense that she is not good or willing to learn how to perform basic household chores.

She can’t wash, can’t clean, can’t cook and do any major home duties women are expected to do.

Having been brought up by their mother who is a workaholic and most times I have to advise her to do less, I am too sure my boys will find it hard to cope with a lazy wife.

Young men are usually advised not to compare their wife with their mother, but it will be hard for them not to considering that some mothers, like my wife, are as eminently qualified and exposed, if not more, than some ladies of today who don’t understand what it is to be a wife or mother.

My wife is usually the last to sleep in the house and the first to wake up. When you see her at work in the house, one cannot but feel guilty about leaving her to do so much. When I ask how I can help, her response is usually, with what, cook?

With the children away from home now, I sometimes have to insist on helping out, even if it is with the vegetables before being cooked.

Agreed that there is more to being a wife than being able to ‘cook, wash and clean’, there are just some basic assignments a woman must be able to do even if she can afford to employ aides to do it.

Too many cases of divorces these days and marital crises are somehow linked with the inability of some women to be in charge of their homes. When too many things are left to house helps to do, some husbands find it difficult to differentiate between the ‘madam’ of the house and the helper.

The above narrative is informed by the controversy over the advice the General Overseer of Redeemed Christian Church of God, (RCCG), Pastor E. A. Adeboye, recently gave on marriage.

He was quoted to have said at the just-concluded Convention of the Church that men should not marry a lady who cannot cook, wash and pray for at least an hour. Ladies were also admonished no to marry a man who is jobless.

Ordinarily, the advice should not have generated any controversy considering that Pastor Adeboye spoke at a closed session with ministers of the Church. The advice was meant for only members of the Church and not general members of the public who do not believe in the doctrine of the Church.

However, in the present global village we live in, the private conversation with your wife in the bedroom can become a debate on social media.

Pastor Adeboye is definitely not one of those men of God whose judgement cannot be trusted on an important issue like marriage. He sure knows what to say when offering advice on marriage being a successfully married man himself for decades and a revered shepherd of his flocks.

Apart from the issue of being able to pray for an hour which should not be too much for a devoted Christian wife, Pastor Adeboye’s advice is not different from what many parents insist on as basis for their children to choose their wives.

I asked a lady in our office if she can marry a man who has no job. Her reply was that she cannot even date a jobless man. A man without a job today can definitely find one later or become prosperous in future, but marriage should not be his priority until the issue of what to do to earn a living and be able to cater for his family is clearly resolved.

Young men can always claim to be contemporary in their thinking but most of them end up expecting their wives to be the kind of ‘cooking, washing, prayerful’ their mothers is or was.

It’s up to my boys to decide who they want to marry, but I know them too well to know that their wives will have a lot to learn from my super woman wife.

August 7, 2016
Baba Lekki solves restructure riddle for the nation

A propos of the saying that unhappy nations are not alike in their unhappiness, it is meet to report our finding that all unhappy cooks and drivers are alike. As the Air Force jets pounded the western creeks and impounded the crooks, Okon wore a sad and dejected mien. His illicit oil and “disel” business having evaporated in a fiery bonfire, Okon was a distraught and disconsolate sight to behold. Snooper pressed advantage.

“Oga Okon how market now?” yours sincerely taunted the crazy boy.

“Oga, monkey don go market and him never return, oil and gas don become yell and gasp”, the mad boy rejoined with a bitter grin.

“Alagba, don’t mind the yeye boy. Arepo don become Aorepo. As dem Yoruba people dey say, Adegun don become Adeogun”, Baba Lekki intoned with malicious gusto.

“Baba at your age, I don tell una make you no follow dem military monkey chop bush”, Okon countered with an irate frown.

“Ah you see yeye boy? Dem thin wey drive monkey come climb palm tree, him still dey wait for monkey below”, Baba Lekki sneered.

“You see dem Yoruba people?” Okon screamed. “You dey steal our oil blocks and when we come do our own oil block for Arepo, katakata come burst. Dem plane come dey spit fire. No be dem reason why we say make dem restructure dem useless kontri be dis?” Okon bitterly lamented.

“Ha Okon restructure ke? Wetin you dey restructure? You don join dem foolish bukuru people? You see when dem Ibrahim Baba Igida say him wan do adjustment for economy structure, I come ask am wey dem structure him wan adjust. If structure no dey, so wetin you wan restructure?. Dat one na intellectual misnomer and dem vulcanizer’s hot air. Dem thing to do na to destructure, make dem remove dem no-structure nonsense and replace am patapata.” The old contrarian volunteered.

“Baba, if una sabi dis much grammar, why you no dey practice dem law for court?” Okon snorted.

“Foolish boy, I don tell you say dem deport me from dem London Inn for two fighting. I come trek to Las Palmas. Each time I go court and I tell dem say I get am for Inter BL with dem LL. B in view dem dey ask police make dem finish me….”

It was at this point that some hooded men with the insignia of a dreaded local militia campaigning for self-determination came in looking for Okon. The crazy boy vamoosed like a walnut spirit.

August 7, 2016
What’s in a beer?

All I see around me are beer drinkers who wobble around on their feet carrying evidences of robust health in their large bellies. These, I understand, are called beer bellies. Now, I tell myself, these bellies must be bursting from pure health

This week, reader, we are going to take our minds off our many national and international problems. I definitely do not want to remind you about the odour oozing from the lower house of the national assembly regarding allegations of budget padding. No, I don’t think you need any reminder either of how the dollar is climbing steadily on the ladder of success in Nigeria while the Naira is crashing, just as, of course, is the worth of my salary. These days, I find that earning more does not necessarily translate to more wealth for me.

This week, I say, we going for something much more exhilarating. We are pushing aside everything related to politics and economy because, man, this is one depressing family! We are going to talk about beer, today being beer day and all! So please, I beg you, don’t change the page. Just sit tight and read on. Let us both agree to be pleasantly distracted this week.

Let me start by making it very clear and loud that I do not drink beer and I am not necessarily proud of this fact. Like someone said, I am a hypocrite, but I am not proud of it. In other words, I envy those who drink it, socially of course. Certainly, I am not talking about those who make beer their lives. To such a one, I have only one piece of advice: Get yourself a life!

So, here, I am addressing those who have lives but take THE BEER just to keep their social images and their friends. To start with, I had no idea that up to a staggering three (3) billion bottles of beer are drunk on these Nigerian shores every year. Imagine, such a large party has been going on behind my back and I had no knowledge of it! Come on, people, you think that is fair?! I am not invited to that party; and I have been left to pick up the bottles in this YEAR OF THE BEER!

Let’s see how. That number, I am told, amounts to N600b of sales for the beer manufacturing companies. And those companies did not even stretch out a bottle to me and did they even think to share the profits with me. The question that the writer of that text message asked himself was who drank it, considering this is a nation of religionists. But that is not my problem. I have no cares about who drank or who did not drink what. My own questions are two: under what rock was I living when all these cheers were being distributed; and what does the average social drinker see in beer? In short, what’s in a beer?

     The reason I do not drink beer is simple. I cannot abide the smell. However, from the figures quoted, I can certainly believe that the smell is not many people’s problem. Either that or their gazes are too trained on the cheer coming out of the cup for them to mind the smell. Whichever one it is, one thing is clear. This is officially a nation of beer drinkers, churches or mosques notwithstanding.

I giggle when I hear many people say that they do not take alcohol. They cannot stand alcohol. They are too pure to even smell alcohol. But, I assure you that is not my own problem. I think purity abandoned me a long time ago. That’s how I got the laughter to share with you, dear reader. Like someone said of a priest, he’s redeemed by his vices. Anyway, to those who say they do not take alcohol, I say welcome to the fold of The Purists. They can generally be found on the balcony of Life, looking down on the rest of us, for they do not take so much as cough mixtures.

Anyway, I will not try to answer that million dollar question about who dunnit posed by the writer of the text I referred to earlier. You can never know who drinks N600b worth of beer each year, mostly because you cannot see anyone do it. Many of the drinkers wait for the cover of dusk to do it. You see, they need all the peace and quiet for it.

My own second question is easily disposed of. I have been living in that seventies rock. It’s a place where you hear, see and know nothing else because the national corruption and economy have blocked your senses until you know nothing else. Now, let’s go to my first question.

       As I was writing this, reader, an unbelievable message came in that listed all the things husbands have to do and be in order to keep their wives happy. The list includes more than sixty items. To make a man happy, on the other hand, there was a list of only three items: his TV, his phone and his beer. Hmmn!

       This reminds me of the story of a man who was brought before a judge for being drunk. Oh, I’ve told you before? Good, you’ll hear it again. Well, asked the judge, why were you drunk? The man replied that he had been contracted by a woman to build a new henhouse from the materials of an old one but not to tear down the old one until he had finished the new. After listening to this, the judge was said to have dismissed the charges in sympathy. From that I got the idea that beer is supposed to contain some kind of stupid intelligence. I don’t think though that the man built the new henhouse. Now, I wonder why.

I really don’t know what it is in beer that makes it attract so many devotees to itself. I tell you, it’s almost another religion. Listen, some preacher somewhere announced that his chair had been taken away by someone. He then pleaded that they should please return it to him. That chair, said he, is what he sits on at the end of the day when he wants to take his beer. This was to impress upon his listeners what the chair meant to him.

I read in a report sometime back that beer is supposed to have some properties that prolong life. Seriously!; I thought that study had been contracted by someone deep in his cups. All I see around me are beer drinkers who waddle around on their feet carrying evidences of robust health in their rotund bellies. These, I understand, are called beer bellies. Now, I tell myself, these bellies must be bursting from pure health.

I have often looked with a kind of longing envy at men tired out from the day’s struggles, all sweaty and gloomy, faces longer than the rainbow drawn from one end of the sky to another. However, when the said faces light on a chilled can of beer even more sweaty than they are, they get transformed to one beatific look that resembles the type many of us have reserved for the second coming. I believe I hear their hearts racing and see the mouths drooling as the swoosh of can opening brings out the foamy substance. I am thinking: only in beer is there such worship of stupidity; such unholy communion!

So, I guess we’ll never know what’s in a beer, but I know it’s something the men, and a few women too, have pulled to their corner, leaving the rest of us wondering. Might it just contain a tad of intelligence, cheer, stupidity, escape, or the touching of tomorrow’s hope? I guess we’ll never know. There’s too much swoosh going on around us, 3b. Now, let’s go face that dollar exchange problem again.

August 7, 2016
What did APC tell itself?

Govs’ meeting with Buhari looks like the familiar ‘family affair’

If I had known on time, I would have sent an item for possible consideration at the meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling All Progressives Congress’ (APC) governors under the aegis of the Progressive Governors Forum at Aso Rock on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I read about the meeting in the papers less than 24 hours to the parley. But, did anyone frown out of the meeting? It is important we have an answer to this question because, if everybody came out all smiles, something must have gone wrong. It means they did not tell themselves some home truths. A meeting at that level and at this point in time ought to produce frank talks. And if indeed truth is bitter, when it is told, it must necessarily provoke anger in some of the participants at the meeting. Most of the pictures of the meeting that were published did not reflect that frank discussions took place about the most pressing matters in the land; otherwise, the governors and the president would not have been laughing as they reportedly did. The issues on ground are no laughing matter.

We read that part of what was discussed was the continued occupation of the seat of deputy senate president by Ike Ekweremadu of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Yes, the issue is important; first because with some people in certain positions, anti-corruption war cannot make any significant progress. Second, it is an aberration that a member of the opposition party would be sitting pretty on that chair; but that is part of the fallout of the rain that mixed up the pigeon with the fowl in the APC. The governors and the president cannot forget so soon how Ekweremadu got the position; when the party succeeds in reinventing itself; that will naturally disappear.

However, my worry is particularly about the APC as it concerns the south-west. Even at the risk of being accused of parochialism, I understand why. The region, (or, if we choose to use today’s political description) the geo-political zone had a political culture that was unbroken for years. Once its leaders decided the way; that was the way. Although at some point, some people started this talk about a region or zone putting all its eggs in one basket. I see nothing wrong in that if the people were sure of their choice. We have seen the folly in joining the party at the centre for the sake of it. It did the zone no good. Unfortunately, things have changed fast, especially in the immediate past era of the PDP, with some of the states in the geo-political zone falling like pack of cards into the hands of the then ruling party with little or no resistance. We’ll get back to that shortly.

My main worry today stems from the handling of the salary crisis in some of these south west states. For sure, the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo who made the Western Region a cynosure with the many firsts that he wrought there when he was premier: first television station in Africa; first skyscraper in Africa; first stadium in Africa; free education, also the first of its kind in Nigeria would be wondering in his grave what happened to enterprise and creativity in the zone. He would be asking himself what could have made things so bad that even governors of the zone cannot pay civil servants’ salaries for months, simply on account of a slump in the federation earnings.

Although this is a national problem, the point is that the way some of the governors in the geo-political zone handled or are still handling the matter suggests that they have not learnt much lesson from the past. There may not be money to pay; but there is a way this should be relayed to those affected that they would know their leaders understand what they are going through. It is regrettable that some of the governors in the zone keep behaving as if the place is still there all for their plucking. This is fallacy of the highest order. Unfortunately, these governors are in their own second term; so, there is nothing at stake for them again. But what of their party, the APC?

It does not seem to me that they care what happens to the party after they might have left the scene. The question to ask these governors is whether they would have handled the matter the way they are handling it now if their second term was at stake? We have a situation where the party was in charge before the governors were elected but suddenly lost control after, with the role reversal which now makes the party subservient to them. This is dangerous. The Yoruba people might be sophisticated politically; they sometimes may shock people with their voting pattern, especially when they perceive that their leaders have become unapproachable or cocky. When that happens, they can decide to put their caps on their navel instead of their heads, contrary to a popular saying in the area. Unless the party reclaims its mandate from the governors, the mess that some of them would leave when their second term lapses would be too much for the party to clear.

Moreover, the party has to do soul-searching on how its other governors are running their states. From reports, little has changed in some of these states; except that there is not much money to fritter as in the past. Otherwise, we would have seen the same display of ostentatious lifestyle by some of these governors as we used to complain about in the past.

Then there is the general performance of the Buhari government in the eyes of Nigerians. The governors could have pledged their support and loyalty to the administration. That was expected. It was also good they lauded the ongoing anti-corruption war. But beyond all of these, as people who are closer to the people (I hope I am right) they needed to have let the president know that Nigerians are not particularly happy that their lives are not being touched positively yet by his programmes. They may not be expecting miracles; and even if they are, it would not be an illegitimate expectation. But the point is; they think the government is not working as if it knows that it has less than three years to go. It is the same mouths they used to sing ‘Hosanna’ last year that they would sing something else if things continue like this till 2019; we need to start warning now so that the president would know the urgency of the matter. It is true the problems were inherited yesterday, but the way out too was expected as early as yesterday. When expectations take too long in materialising, doubts and frustration set in. It has been like that since creation. The government needs to think of something earth-shaking to rekindle hope that it is truly on top of the situation. Nigerians would not perpetually want to live under assurances by the president and his officials that they know they (the people) are suffering.

Then, some of the nonsense that the party inherited in the National Assembly – constituency projects and jumbo pay, to mention just two, ought to have become history by now in a government that came on the mantra of change. But what do we see? It is the people in the same ‘change party’ that are defending some of these things. Even while the generality of Nigerians are suffering; the lawmakers want to keep their rotund bellies.

I cannot imagine such a situation where people who won elections into the National Assembly under the banner of Chief Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) would be collecting the scandalous pays that members of our present National Assembly are collecting. They would not have been party to it and it would have been clear that it was only the then ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) that was involved. That it is taking this long even under the ruling party to abolish these ungodly perks for part-time lawmakers is worrisome. Change cannot make sense when members of the National Assembly collect such monies, even when the economy is in crisis as it is today. Look also at the budget-padding issue; it was unthinkable in those days of the UPN.

The APC must demonstrate change, not by sloganeering but more by action. I have said it before that as far as Nigerians are concerned; there is little difference between the progressives and the others. That was why people would not lift their fingers even when votes were blatantly rigged here in the south west in the PDP years. Was it not the same geo-political zone that was noted for its stout defence of its votes in the first and even second republics? So, why was the PDP able to get away with votes stolen in the region, not once, not twice, but severally, without any strong challenge? For votes to count in the region, for people to take the party seriously there and elsewhere, APC leaders must show that they are not like the first and last-born of pigs that all play in the mud.

If some people are still proud to say they are PDP today, it is partly because of the way and manner some leaders of the ruling party at all levels are conducting affairs and themselves. That explains the audacity. Ordinarily, one would not be thinking of the PDP in the picture at all by now because that party had sufficiently messed up the chances of its resurrection. But this is a country where anything goes; that is why some people would still be parading themselves as PDP members in the first instance. That is why such people would be hallucinating about returning to power under the banner of the godforsaken party, come 2019. It can be so in a nation where we have many shameless people around who have kept recycling themselves in the corridors of power.

The saving grace for the APC for now is Buhari’s integrity as well as the curse of Nigerians who are bearing the brunt of PDP’s misrule that have kept the PDP in disarray. We need much more than that to keep them down and out. And that can be achieved only when the difference is clear between the progressives and the others. So, when next the APC meets, these are issues to ponder.

July 31, 2016
Palladium at 10

FOR 10 frenetic and momentous years, this column, like this newspaper, has had the satisfaction of fairly accurately gauging public mood in a way that belies the surprising complexity and unpredictability of the phenomena that have convulsed Nigeria over the past 10 years. From the indescribably cocksure Olusegun Obasanjo to the staid and enervated Umaru Yar’Adua, and on to the fumbling and supercilious Goodluck Jonathan and the innately autocratic Muhammadu Buhari, the column reported on the four highly idiosyncratic presidents, passed judgement on their styles and policies, predicted their triumphs and defeats, and concluded, sometimes dismissively, that all four, because of their abysmal lack of philosophical underpinnings and principles, were fated to either falter very badly or fail most horribly. Some of Palladium’s judgements were indisputably harsh, brazen and definitive. While they sometimes inspired some readers, and perhaps political leaders too, they also undisguisedly provoked others into fury and contempt. At least, no reader has been indifferent.
A Palladium chrestomathy will probably be published next year. It will show thematically how and why the four presidents could not run the inspiring governments they proudly thought they were capable of; nor engender the stability, development and modernisation they consciously adulated and proclaimed with relish as their governing mantra. The column had drawn the ire of all the four governments and their agents. It will continue to do so regardless of whether anyone describes the column as insufferably arrogant and unfeeling. It will not worry that it is sometimes misunderstood, for the principles and values that formed the leitmotif of its writings are so complex and nuanced that they do not often lend themselves to direct analyses or appreciation.
From feedbacks, the column is reassured to note that it had shaped in some ways the prism through which the public sometimes moulded its own reactions to government policies and electoral issues. The column had been engagingly critical; but it had also been cynical and pessimistic. These were inevitable attributes spawned by the menace the Obasanjo presidency constituted to the country’s political health through his impatient, amateurish and short-termist approach to governance; the lethargy and atrophy the Yar’Adua government inspired in the body politic; the confusion, parochialism and retrogression the Jonathan presidency draped the country with; and the division and attrition being inculcated into the polity by the unyielding Buhari presidency. These governments all justify their styles and failures; but so does Palladium the integrity and accuracy of his observations and conclusions.
For 10 years, the column groaned about the lack of depth in the four presidents. If the superficial quartet listened to the groans, they thought nothing of the column’s pains. The joy and frills of being president were too overpowering for them to listen to any other legitimate cries or to entertain the amendments that would have saved their presidencies and rejuvenated the country. The late Yar’Adua was unassuming, and even seemed ideological at first, but perhaps as pain seared his mind and coursed through his frail body, he displayed the weakness, indulgence and lack of principles that enabled his aides to disembowel the nation. Before then, Palladium had dismissed Chief Obasanjo as too self-satisfied, too self-absorbed and too bucolic to visualise, let alone conceptualise, the ennobling and visionary principles and values a complex country like Nigeria desperately needed to construct a solid foundation.
Just as the column witnessed all ex-president Yar’Adua’s three painful and debilitating years in office, it also captured very succinctly all of Dr Jonathan’s five profligate years in Aso Villa. Those five years were of sheer waste, sheer indolence, and sheer mimicry. They had no pretence to be described as a presidency; and Dr Jonathan himself, once the crown settled around his ears, unleashed a presidency that operated in suspended animation, whimsically, hesitantly and distractingly. The column is happily a witness to the beginnings of the Buhari presidency. Just as this column accused Chief Obasanjo of laying a dismal foundation for the Fourth Republic, upon which both Mallam Yar’Adua and Dr Jonathan gingerly built their structurally defective presidencies, it also surmised that President Buhari kept the Obasanjo foundation, smashed it in many areas without repairs of any kind, and now appears determined to build his own presidency after pulling out the Yar’Adua and Jonathan building blocks and reinforced steel. There is rhyme and reason in the way President Buhari is building his presidency, but the structure favours only him and his close aides. Indeed, the structure shows contempt for both diversity and constitutionalism.
Palladium mirrored many other things. But the column is not just full of bile and anger. It sees itself as one of the greatest proponents of the rule of law. It denounced the clumsy attempt by national lawmakers to impeach Chief Obasanjo, arguing that though the effort could never succeed in the first instance, it was necessary to adhere to both the letter and the spirit of the constitution in removing elected officials. It scorned Nuhu Ribadu’s EFCC in the manner it inspired the overthrow of elected governments in Plateau State and Bayelsa State, and it suggested that malevolent leaders would always find excuse to dishonour selected provisions of the constitution. Like many others, the column also stoutly promoted constitutionalism during the farcical and needless struggle by Dr Jonathan to inherit the mantle of his late predecessor, a mantle first hidden by the late president’s aides, then torn, and then grudgingly surrendered.
But Palladium did much more in the decade under review. It resigned itself to a Yar’Ádua victory, but opposed the so-called Government of National Unity (GNU), also arguing that that was the surest way to destroy the opposition. Without opposition, it said, the survival of democracy could not be guaranteed. Being a natural progressive with a hint of radicalism, it also supported the candidature of Nuhu Ribadu for the presidency on the platform of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), but warned that it was impossible for him to defeat the incumbent, Dr Jonathan, who seemed at the time a closet pragmatist and redundant progressive. The dynamics did not favour Mallam Ribadu, and if he thought he could win with all the support he could muster from the ACN, he was an illusionist and starry-eyed idealist, the column concluded.
Last year, Palladium took punditry to an esoteric level when, against the run of play, he predicted and worked assiduously for the victory of President Buhari. It was in sync with the raison d’être of this crusading newspaper, The Nation, founded on the great principle of progressivism. Dr Jonathan was the incumbent, and no incumbent had ever lost an election in Nigeria, the column noted tersely, but Candidate Buhari, never really loved in the south for his rigidity and detachment, would win handsomely. It seemed more like soothsaying than a realistic projection from the prevailing political dynamics, especially because this column had warned that Candidate Buhari would be unable to transcend his lack of depth and instinctive authoritarianism. He would be a better president with whom the country could trust its money, but not its freedoms, said Palladium. The country must now hope that by the time his tenure ends, the increasingly divisive President Buhari would not leave the country embittered by ethnic politics, reeling from what is shaping out to be the most pernicious assault on the constitution and the judiciary.
The column has fought many battles, as it has endured pure vilification from many readers. One of those battles is the ongoing judicial fracas pursuant to the last Kogi State governorship election. Before the election itself, the column staked its reputation, as it often did, by suggesting that the challenger, Abubakar Audu, would defeat the incumbent. It was prescient, though certain forces have stepped in to thwart popular will. The whole Kogi usurpation story has not been written, and will not be written for some time to come, as the column promised shortly after the election. But he has championed the judicial activism going on in Kogi, valiantly supported the effort to reclaim the mandate from the excited charlatan ruling the state, and is prepared to fight that injustice to the bitter end as it is fighting the injustice visited on Shiites in Zaria last December.
But by far the most notable part of Palladium’s campaigns is the ideological and institutional support for The Nation’s writers and reporters created and nurtured by this newspaper’s founding creed. It is that libertarian disposition that has made this newspaper’s columnists, some of them conservative, but most of them progressive or even radical, to flower exceedingly to the chagrin of the federal government and some state governments. It is that unfettered atmosphere that allowed Palladium to take on Osun State governor Rauf Aregbesola over his controversial school policies, and to denounce even the APC itself, not to say the president, over the party’s mediocre handling of national affairs.
It is widely assumed among the public that columnists in this newspaper are sometimes herded into an ideological cocoon and spoon-fed or dictated to. This is fiction. Most of the writers in this paper are in fact natural progressives, combative, fiercely independent thinkers, and eager dissenters. They have fought one another, and also fought the Buhari presidency. They have been unsparing of humbug, as they have been intolerant of injustice once they can form a fine opinion of what constitutes that legal infraction. At any rate, Palladium has thrived and entertained essentially because of the freedom this newspaper has afforded its writers. That freedom has endured for a decade, and the paper’s owners, themselves democrats par excellence, have given no indication that now or sometime in the future they would circumscribe that liberal atmosphere that has turned the paper into a palladium of civil rights and justice, whether in politics or the economy.
Outsiders may find this great culture that has taken root in this paper somewhat mystifying. But if the topics and personalities this column has either addressed or attacked are anything to go by, many of them cutting across partisan, religious and ethnic lines, the ten years of this column’s independence, not to say anonymity, and this newspaper’s single-minded defence of civil liberties and constitutional rule, point to the robust and enduring pursuit of journalism’s noblest ideals. Such newspapering altruism, despite intense challenges from brutal censors and other forms of media, can only point to a grand and remarkable future.

July 31, 2016