The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tunji Adegboyega

  • Labour is at it again!

    Our problem is more fundamental than just salary increase

    Organised labour missed the point on Thursday when the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) president, Ayuba Wabba, led other labour unionists to the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, to bare their minds on certain burning national issues, including the bogus pay our lawmakers earn, minimum wage review and sundry other matters. Although the labour leaders were right when they said that the lawmakers themselves constituted drain pipes, considering what they take home, but they failed to call the lawmakers’ pay the proper name it should be called, i.e. corruption, given the steady rise their allocation has been witnessing, from about N23.347billion in 2003 to its current N150billion; and in spite of the downturn in the country’s economy.  And, despite the fact that minimum wage in the country has remained at the paltry N18,000 per month since 2010! Can anything be more callous and ungodly?

    Anyway, I won’t waste too much time on that because a lot has been said on it and we should be awaiting the review of the National Assembly budget that Senator Saraki promised when the issue took the front burner of national discourse a few weeks ago. We will always return to that again in full force if mum continues to be the word from him, in the usual expectation that Nigerians would soon forget the issue.

    My concern today is Labour’s notice to the senate president to the effect that it would soon come with a new National Minimum Wage proposal which the congress wants the senate to quickly approve in view of the country’s present economic realities. The NLC seemingly has a point to want to push for an upward review of the present minimum wage because if salary is expected to take people home, it has since failed in that regard. A time there was when Fela sang that 20 kobo bean cake was too small (akara nko, 20 kobo for one; na janjala e be); these days, I doubt if there is anything like that, not even in the rural areas. Moreover, at the current exchange rate of N242 to the dollar, the average Nigerian worker earns about $75 in a month, just a little more than $2 a day. Pray, what can anyone do with this? Yet, we don’t want people to steal. Yet, we want people to put in their best. Are we not deceiving ourselves?

    I sympathise with Labour on this matter, especially given its unassailable reasons to justify its position. As a matter of fact, too, I do not expect any member of the National Assembly with conscience to raise issues even if Labour eventually comes up with a N50,000 monthly minimum wage proposal for approval. In the first place, this is a figure that workers had been clamouring for all these years. Moreover, that would only amount to N600,000 per annum, which is about N100,000 more than our National Assembly law makers spend on clothes alone per year!

    But, jokes apart, asking for a new minimum wage is not the answer to the question posed by the Nigerian economy. When the present N18,000 was secured in 2010, it was well celebrated. Then, it never occurred to anyone that our National Assembly law makers would get more than double that amount as wardrobe allowance in a month. Then, no one thought the naira would be so devalued that it would now be exchanging at N242 to a US dollar, up from the N140 it was in 2010 when the now moribund N18,000 minimum wage was implemented.

    A quick travel down the memory lane on minimum wage reviews in the country will suffice to buttress my point. By the 2000 National Minimum Wage (Amendment Act), minimum wage was pegged at N7,500 for Federal Government workers (and N5,500 for state government workers). This was raised to N18,000 in 2010. So, within a period of just 10 years, our minimum wage had more than tripled. And this has been the pattern since 1981 when the minimum wage was N125 per month; it rose to N250 as a result of the Minimum Wage Amendment Decree 1990. Ten years later, it had ballooned to N7,500. The implication is that between 1981 and 2015, minimum wage in the country had jumped from N125 to N18,000! I am yet to see any good country with that paradigm.

    For example, when National Minimum Wage was first introduced in Britain in 1999, it was pegged at 3.60 pounds per hour. Between 1999 and now, a period of 16 years, it has increased only by 3.30 pounds per hour. Indeed, when salaries are increased in many other places, it is not as ridiculous as ours and the workers are far better off. Not so in Nigeria. Without doubt, the situation here concerning the astronomical rise in minimum wage over the years tells us that the problem is not about asking for high wage. It is much more fundamental.

    This is what the NLC should be in the vanguard of unravelling (assuming it does not yet know why) and clamouring for its correction. What successive increases in wages has done is to enable the politicians (whether those in military uniform or their civilian counterparts) to keep deceiving Nigerians and giving them the impression that all is well because, as soon as the workers get the salary increase, they jubilate. But when they get to the market a few weeks or months later, they discover that the money has further lost its value. I still remember what I was able to do with my N96 (sorry, N200) monthly allowance as a youth corps member in 1985. Those on national service now cannot boast of same despite the fact that they earn by far more. Even for the brief period I worked with my School Certificate result, I know the things I was able to do with my salary of about N110 per month. Today’s graduates who are lucky to have jobs are groaning because the wads of naira notes in their pockets can hardly buy anything of substance. My fear is that, at the rate at which we are going, a time will come when we would have to carry money in Ghana-must-go bags to buy an average loaf of bread as is the case in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe which I guess must be brimming with trillionaires!

    Therefore, what Labour should be clamouring for is good governance, not new minimum wage. Without good governance, we are only going to be wasting our time moving in circles, irrespective of the frequency of periodic reviews of minimum wage, or the magnitude. If we had done the needful in this regard, especially in the immediate past, this country would not be where it is today. If we had been alive to our responsibilities as Nigerians, we would not have had the kind of corrupt government that brought our economy to its knees as the Goodluck Jonathan government did, without giving it any serious fight until the General Elections.

    Perhaps Labour’s thinking by insisting on new minimum wage all the time is that this would mop up some of the surplus money that public officials steal. If that is the reasoning, we must have seen it has not worked. As a matter of fact, the public officials might grandstand and make negotiations for minimum wage tedious and laborious; they would be more worried the moment they see that the critical segments of the society are clamouring for good governance because that alone is the antidote to the massive looting of our treasury that has become our lot over the decades.

    My fear however is whether Labour itself is not complicit in the situation we find ourselves because if it had been doing what it should do to call the country’s leaders to order, things would not have been this bad. The other problem is the state of the labour union itself; recent revelations on its housing scheme, its transport scheme and NLC’s last election which almost reflected our national elections are enough cause for concern as to whether the congress can provide the desired leadership to take us out of the woods.

    Labour cannot be doing the same thing over and again and expect a different result.

  • Tribute to Prof Moses Akinola Makinde

    A philosopher departs

    A whatsApp message sent to the Editor of this paper on September 9, which he forwarded to me same day, hinted of the imminent death of Prof Moses Akinola Makinde, a retired Professor of Philosophy of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, and ex-consultant on The Nation’s Editorial Board. Good evening sir. How have you been? This is to inform you that daddy, Prof Makinde, has been critically/terminally ill for some time and has been in and out of hospital. It has been quite critical since June. Just that informing you and Vintage Press is necessary by virtue of his being a former Member of The Nation’s Editorial Board. Do have a pleasant week sir. Warm regards, Olumide Olumakinde (Prof’s son)”.

    That was the message. However, it was when I got this message that I realised it had been quite some time since I spoke with prof. Occasionally, he would call to find out how things were going on the editorial board and at The Nation, generally. Sometimes I would also call him as I do some of the older citizens on the board. It is an understatement to say that Prof Makinde really admired this newspaper. Even on his sick bed, he was said to be craving to read the paper despite the fact that his hand was too frail to hold it again.

    Then, on September 30, came the bombshell via a terse message: Good afternoon sir. This is to inform you of dad’s passage this morning. He was aged 80. The message came through the same channelas the first.

    It was at this point that we (members of the Editorial Board) realised that procrastination is indeed a theft of time. We had planned to visit him on his sick bed since September 9 when we were formally informed of his illness. Somehow, one thing led to the other and the visit could not hold until he died exactly three weeks later. But no one would say that a man who died at 80 in Nigeria died young. Going by the latest WHO data published in 2018, life expectancy in Nigeria is: Male 54.7, female 55.7 and total life expectancy is 55.2 which gives Nigeria a World Life Expectancy ranking of 178. As with such other indices of progress, Nigeria again, is very much close to the bottom of the ladder with regards to life expectancy. So, Prof Makinde was lucky to have been able to cross the 60 years threshold, the 70 threshold and even the 80th before giving up the ghost. One needs more than one life to survive for that long in this kind of country where nothing seems to be working.

    Prof’s longevity becomes the more startling when situated in the context that his generation saw, and indeed enjoyed, some of the best goodies that were on offer in Nigeria when, to paraphrase Chinua Achebe, there indeed was a country. That was a time when birds cried like birds, and rats cried like rats. The country’s gradual U-Turn from grace to grass is enough to shorten lifespan. Indeed, myself and my  contemporaries look on with envy and indeed listen with rapt attention when Prof Makinde and his contemporaries regale us with what life was like in the country generally, and in the universities in particular, in their time; how they had multiple scholarships, ate some of the best meals you could imagine as undergraduates and really had a good time. They told us how prestigious it was in this country to be an undergraduate then.

    The same way our own children would open their mouths in shock when my age mates also tell them about the ‘remnants’ of the good life that we met in the universities and the country, which, sadly, our own children cannot even fathom, considering what the universities and university graduates have become today. My children find it difficult to believe that in my time too in the university, a plate of good food cost our parents 50 kobo. Yes, 50 kobo, not N50.00! But that honeymoon died with our set, as the system that enabled us eat at that rock bottom price was dismantled as soon as we left the university. The ‘buccaneers’ had taken over affairs in Nigeria.

    If it was possible to find out what was uppermost in the mind of Prof Makinde in his last days, this sorry state of affairs must have occupied a prime position. But one thing that cannot be taken away from prof was his passion for the editorial board job. Apart from the initial stages when he did not understand the workings of the board on his assumption of the role of consultant, the rigorous debate that goes into making the editorials, Prof Makinde soon adjusted and that was it! He worked diligently on the topics he was assigned and did everything humanly possible to turn them in, to deadline. He would arrive punctually for the meetings every Wednesday, despite the fact that he was coming all the way from Ile-Ife, a distance of about 170 kilometres to Lagos. Because of the stress of the journey, and considering his age, he was later asked to attend meetings twice in a month, and he still tried to arrive punctually except when he could not help it.

    What I am saying is that whatever prof set his mind to do; he not only did, but performed (apologies to Shakespeare). Even on an occasion when his car was involved in an accident on his way to the editorial board meeting, his interest in the job did not wane. As a matter of fact, he would always call to inform us about the challenges he was having sending his editorial drafts from Ile-Ife due to internet problems. But for my close interaction with him in the course of getting the editorial drafts, I would not have known that a great university like OAU could be having such problem. Indeed, prof would go to town from the OAU campus where he lived in search of a cyber café from where to send the draft and would neither rest nor allow you to rest until you had told him the material had arrived. At times, his wife would act the role of his Personal Assistant in ensuring that the material got to Lagos, whatever the challenge.

    In spite of his sometimes uncooperative and argumentative nature, Prof Makinde was not the type who felt too big to have his editorial drafts reworked. I remember we have had cause to tell him, jokingly but rightly though, that whatever any of us turns in on the editorial board is not the editorial; that it is only a draft. It is what ends up being published that is ultimately the editorial. As a matter of fact, he would sometimes call to acknowledge such panel-beating and appreciate the outcome as far better than what he had turned in. Yet, he was himself a Fellow of the Nigeria Academy of Letters (NAL), as well as an editor of the academy. As a matter of fact, he even edited some of its publications including: Nigeria’s Cultural Tapestry (2013); Nigeria in Evolution (2013); Ethical Dimension of Citizenship (2015) and The Humanities and Societal Change (2016).

    Prof Makinde’s story would be incomplete without mentioning the fact that he was an Awoist to the core. Although he did not have a chummy relationship with some top shots in the then Action Group and even Unity Party of Nigeria, he, nonetheless, was able to establish close link with the Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, apparently as a result of his background in philosophy. It therefore did not come as a surprise when he was appointed Director-General/Chief Executive Officer of Awolowo Centre for Philosophy, Ideology and Good Governance (2012 to 2016). The centre was established to propagate Awolowo’s ideology.

    Prof might not have been a philanthropist per se, but he believed in rewarding people for worthy causes. In the course of his stay with us on the editorial board, he launched a book, (I think) Awo as a Philosopher. From his experience here, he must have learnt one lesson about book launch: that it is not everyone who pledged that fulfills such pledges. Unfortunately, the major culprits are those in power who should lay good examples by making their word their bond. I remember an arm of government that got copies of the book did not redeem the pledge for so long. I cannot recollect whether it eventually did despite much pressure from this end, leveraging on personal connections; but what I remember is that virtually everyone who had a hand in organising the book launch was rewarded for their effort. Not many people would do this, particularly when there was no profit-sharing agreement at the beginning.

    Born in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Prof Makinde bagged a Bachelor in Philosophy with first class honours from the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1969 and Master of Arts in Philosophy, University Western Ontario, London, in 1970. He held the Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science from the University of Toronto. A Fulbright visiting professor in the U.S. between 1983 and 1984, the late Prof Makinde also authored African Philosophy, Culture, and Traditional Medicine.

    He was a special teaching fellow at University of Western Ontario, London (1969-1970); junior fellow, Massey College University of Toronto (1970-1973). He was at various times lecturer in philosophy, OAU; acting head of the department as well as head of the department. Prof Makinde was also Editorial Consultant, Nigerian Journal of Philosophy, University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos.

    Prof Moses Akinola Makinde will be buried in his hometown, Ado-Ekiti, on Friday, after funeral rites in both Ile-Ife and Ado-Ekiti.

    May the soul of this erudite scholar rest in peace.

  • Gov. Akeredolu, Ute calling

    Travelling to Ute, a sleepy town in Ondo State on November 1 reminded me of a similar trip I made to Tonkere, Osun State, sometime in 1991. Just like the Tonkere trip, the one to Ute was also in connection with the burial of a friend’s father. On the Tonkere trip, it was bye-bye to civilisation as soon as we exited the back gate of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, from where we headed to the place. The road was nothing to write home about; with many ancient and mostly dilapidated structures by its side. We did not have to get to the town to have a feel of what to expect; it was rural through and through. Mercifully, things have changed. My friend whose father we went to bury in the place then told me when I called him on Tuesday that the state government has graded the road; that they now have  electricity almost 24 hours by seven days and that water taps now run in Tonkere. Some progress.

    Regrettably, Ute was a different experience. The journey from Lagos to Oluku Junction, via the Shagamu-Benin Expressway, a distance of about 300 kilometers was very smooth. As a matter of fact, I had thought of avoiding this particular road due to my experience the last time I travelled on it a few months ago.  But for Google Map that was my compass,  and a friend who had left for Ute the day before, who both advised me to take the Shagamu-Benin Expressway, I would have travelled on the Ibadan-Ife Road to Ute.

    Almost all the other roads I drove through were pleasantly memorable. At least until the last stretch of the journey to Ute. Even there was a bit of deception on Ute Road as we were told by a guide that we should turn to the right to take a tarred road when we got to a particular junction and that that is the way to Ute. As soon as we saw the tarred road, we veered to the right and were happy that at least the last stretch of the journey was also going to be smooth. But we were mistaken. A few meters from the junction, we discovered that we were in for a hard time. We danced all manner of ancient and modern dance steps in the car, from Palongo to Kokoma, Skelewu, Shaku Shaku, etc. in our efforts to manoeuvre through the many potholes and craters that define Ute Road. There were parts of the road where the trees by the roadside have fallen and were pulled off the road, apparently through self help.

    Where is the government (here) was the very first question any first time visitor to the place would ask. The road leading to Ute is an eye sore; so is the town itself. And so are most glorified routes that pass for roads in the town. Even water supply is largely from streams. Erosion is also a major problem.

    As a matter of fact, I kept asking myself as I drove into the town whether the area has any local government chairman, whether they have councillors, representatives in the state assembly, House of Representatives and even the Senate. Did these people come to campaign in Ute? When last did any governorship candidate come to the place to solicit votes? My take is that the town must have been a serial victim of deceitful politicians who would have come there to promise them heaven on earth during electioneering campaign only to forget the people as soon as they were sworn in.

    Apparently, the deplorable state of the road, a put-off to people who do not have any serious business to transact in the place is the reason we saw very few vehicles on the way throughout the three or four trips we made in and out of Ute to the hotel where we stayed in Sobe, Edo State. It also explained the near non-existence of any village or settlement on the long stretch of the road to the town. Much as we would have loved to stay close to the venue of the funeral that we came for, we soon discovered the sense in organising hotel accommodation for us in Sobe, about 50 minutes drive from Ute.

    Apart from the deplorable condition of roads in the town, I was also reliably informed that there has not been any trace of public power supply there in the last four years. So, the electric poles there are just for decoration, or mere sad reminders of the good old days when Ute people still felt they belonged to Ondo State, Nigeria. May be I have stayed too long in the city, hence, my inability or reluctance to ever contemplate that things could be this  bad in many rural parts of the country. But it is particularly sad that this is also happening in the south western part of Nigeria, a region where rural development was one of the cardinal points of focus of the Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo as Premier of the Western Region. As a matter of fact, some of the rural roads that the Awolowo government constructed then are still relatively standing in parts of the region, except that they are now ‘narrow gauge’, to put it mildly.

    Ute, in Ose Local Government Area of Ondo State must be a contradistinction to its counterpart, Ute, a city in Monona County, Iowa, United States, along the Soldier River. Its plight becomes the more depressing when it is realised that the major activity of this region is cocoa and plantain farming. As a matter of fact, we saw heaps of rotten plantains on our way to Ute, which reminded one of the fact that perhaps not much has changed with regard to agriculture and farming in the country. If there has been any significant change, we should not be seeing such huge heaps of rotten plantainsin a country, nay region, that agriculture played a significant part in its development in the First Republic. We have not learnt any lessons about storage facilities for agricultural produce. How do we encourage our farmers when right before their eyes, their labour rots away? How do we encourage them when after toiling to plant and harvest, they still have bad roads to contend with in their efforts to take their produce to the towns and cities where they could make money?

    Well, it is heartwarming that governors of the south-west region, as part of their resolutions after their meeting at the Osun State Government House on November 5, organised by the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria Commission charged the Oodua Investment Company to champion food security in the region. As they rightly noted, the region is blessed with a large expanse of arable land that can support agricultural production; hence, it does not have to depend on food from outside. But this should translate into concrete action and not mere political rhetoric that we are used to after such events.

    All said, and in line with what I found to be the only trace of modernity in Ute, the St Stephen’s Caring Heart Mega Primary School, where we had the social party of the event, Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu should please show a little compassion for the forgotten people of Ute; he should demonstrate a caring heart towards them. I do not know how many Utes exist in Ondo State or any part of the south west, or even Nigeria as a whole. But they all need help. The rural-urban drift that is becoming increasingly alarming can only be arrested if we replicate some of the allures of urban centres in the rural areas. I do not see any ambitious young man or lady staying put in a place like Ute because the place is, literally put, clinically dead. It is even incomprehensible how those who are there are coping. But the indigenes too must take the bull by the horns in calling the government’s attention to their plight. Once again,  Governor Akeredolu, please come over to Ute, and help them.

  • A world of paradoxes

    That life is full of paradoxes was further exemplified by two stories that were well reported in the newspapers last week. A Yoruba proverb succinctly captures these paradoxes: Adeyi nsunkun otutu, Adeyi nsunkun ooru (Adeyi is crying of cold while Adeyi is complaining of the scorching heat).  On the one hand, a Nigerian couple who had been trusting in the Lord for the fruit of the womb for about 39 years was ecstatic after their prayer was answered and the woman gave birth to a bouncing baby boy on October 20. The contrast was another Nigerian couple who had to sell off their day-old baby for N250,000, ostensibly due to economic reasons.

    Stories like these intrigue me because of their many ironies and the incomprehensible ways in which God works. Ever since I was a child we have always heard stories of abandoned babies. I could recollect how we used to race to dump sites, drainages and other places where the wicked mothers of such children used to dump them to catch a glimpse of these hapless babies. Sometimes, the babies would still be alive; with some of them crying and the innocent cries would continue to trouble our hearts for days, if not weeks. Even as far back as those times of innocence that I am talking about, the ladies who abandoned the babies had always claimed they had no choice than to throw them away because they cannot afford to cater for them.

    But it is difficult to blame these babies for their plight. In many cases, they arrived due to the waywardness of the ladies; some of whom were prostitutes, anyway. Sometimes it could be the result of the chance sex between some students, whether at the secondary or tertiary level. Sometimes it was because the men who made it happen simply absconded as soon as ‘bread started to rise’ (to use the expression in the poster in the toilet of two of my friends in those days). Or it could be that some of the ladies were simply not ready for motherhood or the fathers-to-be were not ready yet.

    While one is not justifying any of these cases, because in the real sense, they were the result of breakdown in our social values and pervading immorality in the land, it is a new low for couples to agree to sell the baby that they gave birth to. What usually happens is for one of the parties to discreetly do away with the baby either for ritual purposes or for sale. But that the husband and wife would sit and conceive the idea and even go to the extent of implementing it speaks volumes about the characters of both husband and wife. As a matter of fact, the media and the police should dig deeper into their antecedents to give a better picture of their personality.

    Who mooted the idea? Even if one of them did; telling the other should be a problem. That they had no qualms telling and convincing themselves of the devilish plot should be a source of concern to every parent properly so-called. As a matter of fact, there should be further investigation as to whether it was the couple that really owned the baby. I am not saying such stories are unheard of; what I am saying is that they call for scrutiny. We need to cross-check and confirm. We need to subject the case to forensic examination. How can a woman that carried a baby in her womb for nine months just decide to sell the baby off for a miserly N250,000? I ordinarily do not want to lay emphasis on the amount because that is irrelevant to me. Even if she had sold the baby for millions of Naira, it is still condemnable.

    This couple, we were told, already had three other children before the arrival of the fourth that they conspired to sell, and indeed sold. One of them, according to the wife, Chidinma Benson, is late. So, they are left with two which they seemed was just enough. She said they had to sell the baby due to poverty and to get them the money needed to relocate from the village where they are staying in Isiala Ngwa North LGA of Abia State for better life in Umuahia or Port Harcourt. Hear her: “We wanted to leave the village because we were living in poverty. My husband was a wheelbarrow pusher and we believed that if we sell the baby, we would have enough money to come to a town in Umuahia or Port Harcourt.”

    That is one of the things that confound me about this life. Here is a breadwinner, a wheelbarrow pusher who can barely fend for himself not to talk of maintain a family already having four kids; yet a professor who has all it takes to cater to the needs of kids is struggling to have one. Indeed, Professor Samuel Olu Otunbusin and his wife, Ajibola, had tried several places, home and abroad, in search of the bundle of joy, to no avail.

    Sometimes things like this make one ask if babies who are coming into this world have heard of the expression ‘look before you leap’. Apparently they have not; if they have, there is no way they will force themselves on people who cannot afford to take care of them, or even have little need for them whereas those with the means to spoil them are searching frantically for them. Do we take it to mean that the babies love suffering? See what the Bensons have done to their baby; they’ve sold it out for peanuts to others who have been making profits from the ‘round tripping’.

    Unless the police are able to make headway in their search for the baby, the couple may never see the child again! The poor baby may end up in someone’s home as just about anything imaginable, that is if he is not used for  ritual purposes. What kind of life is this?  And the parents want us to believe they were driven by economic circumstances?

    But that is the kind of thing that happens when one has something without sweating for it. Babies are supposed to be bundles of joy; and what the Otunbusins did on the arrival of theirs after a very long wait is what one expects whenever a family is blessed with them. “God revealed to me 35 years ago about the birth of my son Oluwatobi,” Prof. Otunbusin said, as he savoured the joy of the baby’s arrival. And the wife, “this might be hard to believe but I am 67 years old and I have been married for over 39 years. I have done several IVFs both in India and in Nigeria that failed.

    “At several points, I had said to myself: ‘So I will die without a child of my own?’

    “But I never gave up on God. I held on to the belief that at the appointed time, God would remember me. And my husband kept encouraging me.

    “In 2018, I was directed to St. Ives Fertility Centre by the Holy Spirit. I started the procedure with joy and I ended it with joy from above.”

    Now, tell me, how can people who paid this kind of price to get a baby decide to sell the baby or even be careless with this wonderful gift from above?

    While urging governments at all levels to address the country’s economic problems more seriously, the police already have their job cut out for them. They should intensify their search for the unfortunate baby sold by the Bensons even as they get set to prosecute the couple who sold it, to teach others a lesson. This kind of thing is unpardonable in an age when it is possible to make love without making babies. There is no point having one only to put it up for sale as if it is a commodity. Meanwhile, I congratulate the Otunbusins for the lessons they have taught the world on the virtues of patience, perseverance, faith and love. Most other homes had broken up as a result of such long wait for answer to the question of the fruit of the womb.

     

    A world of paradoxes

    HELLO! Is there anyone in charge here? That is the question that any road user would ask when passing through Markaz Road in Agege, Lagos. Although many roads in Lagos had before now been infested by potholes, in many cases craters, there is evidence that palliative works are now being done on many of the roads. But not Markaz Road, particularly the Old Ipaja Road end. The pain on the road is getting worse. Will those responsible please mobilise to site and help end or at least reduce motorists’ agony on this road?

  • Ekiti: on the march again

    With the swearing in of Dr Kayode Fayemi as governor of Ekiti State on Tuesday, it can only be hoped that all the stakeholders in the state project have learnt their lessons. Without doubt, the events of the last four years must have come with one lesson or the other for all of them. They can only relapse into that inglorious path if they want to be like Nigerian politicians who are usually taught nothing and consequently learnt nothing. Even in the days when coup d’état was fashionable, the soldiers themselves had not much to teach by way of morality or good governance, and so could not inculcate such attributes in the politicians. Fayemi, who was voted out of office in 2014 after a do-or-die election in which policemen, soldiers, and even hooded State Security Service (SSS) personnel played significant roles to facilitate victory for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the election, Ayo Fayose, now has a second chance, with his return to the government house in Ekiti.

    The question of lessons being taught and learnt might not have arisen but for the circumstances that led to the emergence of Fayose as Fayemi’s successor. Ordinarily, Fayose should not have been in the picture, so, the question of taking over from Fayemi would not have arisen. But it is not only the law that is an ass; democracy too sometimes can be. That explained why Fayose could use ‘stomach infrastructure’ to sway the otherwise erudite Ekiti people to his side.

    In spite of whatever criticism one may have against this year’s governorship election in Ekiti State, it was still by far more credible than that of 2014. So, we can say it fairly represented the wish of Ekiti people. Fayemi won the election with 197,459 votes against the 178, 121 votes polled by second-placed Prof Kolapo Olusola-Eleka of the PDP. This means Fayemi had 19,338 more votes than his opponent. Therefore, to the extent that the election result was not a landslide as we used to say in the Second Republic, this calls for reconciliation of the aggrieved parties and running an all-inclusive government. It does not call for dancing oneself lame so the temptation to forget the larger picture and relapse into irrelevance does not arise.

    By now, the governor must have realised the importance of collective effort or a united front. Imagine what the scenario would have been like without the cooperation of some of the people that were alienated in the party before. That might have meant an outright defeat for the APC or presented the Osun State kind of scenario whereby the party would have to be begging for support from the same people that it had earlier despised if there was need for a rerun.

    There is no doubt that Fayemi owes his allegiance mostly to the Ekiti people that voted him into office. One of the things going for his administration before his exit in 2014 was his rehabilitation of Ekiti roads such that one did not have to spend more than a reasonable time from one part of the state to another. There was also the rehabilitation of the Ikogosi Warm Springs Resort in Ikogosi that has returned to its derelict state in the four years of the Fayose administration. No one should be surprised that Fayose allowed this to happen. If it takes the deep to communicate with the deep, then it can only take someone with the right cosmopolitan approach to appreciate the value of such a facility. It was definitely beyond Fayose’s ken. A governor- to- be who sacked a sitting court and tore court records, among several infractions, cannot be taken seriously where serious matters of state are concerned.

    But, how did Ekiti State Government House beget the dictatorship of such a person? We cannot begin to cry over that spilt milk once again. This is why I talked about soul-searching on the part of all the stakeholders in the Ekiti project. Everyone, including the governor, must introspect and find out where he or she missed it before. Governors and political leaders generally need people who can look them in the face and tell them that they are going wrong whenever they are. I have said it often that many of their aides cannot do this. As far as they are concerned, once the political leaders say ‘do this’, it is not only done, it is performed (apologies to Shakespeare). Ekiti State government can do with credible town hall meetings where occasionally, some of the participants, including the governor, will come out frowning. When it’s all smiles, it means those gathered there have merely deceived themselves. It is at election time that the actual result comes out and people would now start to wonder ‘how come’, when it is either late or almost late.

    Fayemi has to dig deep into why people would prefer to wear their caps on their navels instead of their heads. Because that was what happened in Ekiti in 2014. Even if we agree that the election was rigged in favour of Fayose, as alleged by some people, the fact is; something must be amiss for people to simply accept such cheating in Ekiti or any other part of the southwest for that matter. When we talk of the ‘wild, wild west’, or ‘wet e’ (wet it!) what we are saying is that the people of the then Western Nigeria would not tolerate election rigging. This they amply demonstrated in the 1960s when they smashed their rediffusion sets that they regarded as the purveyors of fake election results. This was also reinforced after the massive rigging of the 1983 elections by the then ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN). There was massive revolt in the region. For instance, Akin Omoboriowo, who was declared winner in the election could not take over in the old Ondo State, despite the massive federal might that he enjoyed. The Court of Appeal eventually nullified his purported victory. So, something must be wrong for people with such antecedents to keep quiet when the sacredness of their electoral choice is being violated. Unless and until the progressives find answer to this question, they will continue to grope in the dark, looking for something that is not lost.

    Since the advent of this democratic dispensation, no political party has won governorship reelection in Ekiti State. The Alliance for Democracy (AD) that won in 1999 was ousted in 2003 by the PDP whose reelection in 2007 was overturned in favour of Fayemi that contested under the platform of the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), in 2010. Eng. Segun Oni who was declared winner before the victory was overturned had been in office for about three years before he was sent packing. Fayemi might have broken the jinx, given his superlative performance in government then, but since the best candidate does not always win in any election, he lost the 2014 election to Fayose that he has now  defeated at the polls. Although Fayose could not have contested again, having governed the state twice, his wish was to have his deputy succeed him. But, since wishes are not horses, then Fayose could not ride.

    Fayose has had the opportunity that Fayemi now has, but he did not take full advantage of it. If he did, it would not have been difficult for him to have his deputy take over from him. But we saw how desperately he wanted his deputy to succeed him; to no avail. The ball is now in Fayemi’s court. How he plays it in the next 42 months (yes, 42, not 48 months because we will be talking about the next election by then) or thereabout would determine whether he will be able to break the jinx in the state and ensure he is succeeded by the candidate of the ruling APC. He has aptly described the Fayose administration as ‘an error’; but the only way he can prove this is by ‘dazing’ the Ekiti people with even more superlative performance and getting his politics right, to avert a recurrence of such error.

     

    Markaz Road in a mess

    HELLO! Is there anyone in charge here? That is the question that any road user would ask when passing through Markaz Road in Agege, Lagos. Although many roads in Lagos had before now been ‘infested’ by potholes, in many cases craters, there is evidence that palliative works are now being done on many of the roads. But not Markaz Road, particularly the Old Ipaja Road end. The pain on the road is getting worse. Will those responsible please mobilise to site and help end or at least reduce motorists’ agony on this road?

  • The rejected stone

    Next year’s General Elections, particularly the presidential election, is beginning to become all the more interesting with the entrance into the race of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as the flag bearer of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) will be in grand delusion if it underrates the capacity of the former vice president to worm his way into the hearts of Nigerians. Well, if you like, you may call them gullible Nigerians. While you reserve the right to so refer to them, it should also be realised that ‘gullible’ is only an adjective. Both the gullible and the not-too-gullible are entitled to one vote each once they are of voting age. And, at any rate, is today’s world not being governed largely by gullibility? If not, what would a Donald Trump be doing in the White House in America? Coming back home, why would a governorship contest between APC’s cerebral Gboyega Oyetola and PDP’s governorship hopeful in the hotly contested Osun State governorship election, Ademola Adeleke, renowned for his entertainment prowess, almost have gone the way of Adeleke but for providence?

    For now, we can only console ourselves by hoping that the other front runners in the October 6 PDP National Convention which produced Atiku as winner would renege on their promise not to back whoever won the primary. But if they remain in the PDP fold, then the opposition party is likely to produce a formidable side to reckon with when the election comes. Make no mistake about it; those who ensured Atiku’s victory at the primary knew what they were doing. It was high-wire politics both from within the PDP and from without. To snatch the presidency from Buhari is too big a role for Lilliputians like Senate President Bukola Saraki. Atiku is more like it. That was their reckoning; and everyone of them in the race seemed to have accepted it that way because there is a common enemy that they all want out of power: Buhari, for very obvious reasons. Many of them who have survived the government so far cannot be sure of being lucky if President Muhammadu Buhari returns.

    But that is not to say that the Buhari government has not played into their hands several times. It would however be a tragedy of monumental proportions if the PDP gives the ruling APC a good run for their money during the presidential election, or even has a better showing in the election outright. Indeed, it is not good enough if we have a repeat performance of Osun governorship election at the presidential election next year. I mean the APC has to win the election, if it must, convincingly at first attempt. The party will have itself to blame if PDP gets so close as to warrant a rerun. It would be worse for the APC to be crying foul while the PDP is running away with the trophy. Yet, if any of these frightening scenarios plays out, President Buhari should accept responsibility. It would amount to sheer scaremongering if a ruling party is the one weeping that the opposition rigged it out.

    Trust former President Olusegun Obasanjo, he has swiftly endorsed Atiku, his one time political foe. What this endorsement of his former vice (yes, vice!) tells us is that in politics, there are no permanent friends or permanent foes, but permanent interests. We know that Obasanjo and Atiku had both gone their separate ways even while the latter was Obasanjo’s deputy in the Obasanjo administration (1999-2007). As a matter of fact, some account had it that Obasanjo prostrated for Atiku to get his second term when it seemed that his return ticket was under threat. Yet, it was Obasanjo that routed for Atiku while the latter was governor-elect in his Adamawa State. But, Obasanjo, who many believe neither forgives nor forgets, has not failed to demand his pound of flesh from Atiku whenever the opportunity presents itself.

    Only a few months ago, Obasanjo had vowed that nothing would bring him close to Atiku again, at least politically, and that as a matter of fact, God would not forgive him if he did. This was a vow to which Atiku too replied that if his former boss had any issues with his creator, he should go sort them out with Him. Obasanjo seemed to have eaten his words and has now anointed Atiku as his presidential preference in next year’s election. The former president even waxed biblical in pardoning Atiku. He said with Nigerians voting for him, next year, “It will be with the hope or assurance of a Paul on the road to Damascus Conversion. After all, change and conversion are of man. I believe that with a contrite heart, change is possible in everybody’s life and situation.”

    Again, just as this piece was being put together on Friday, I stumbled on a World Bank report that ranked Nigeria 152nd out of 157 countries. I know the government is going to react to this negatively rather than do introspection to see where its economic policies in particular require tweaking. That was the way the immediate past Goodluck Jonathan administration dismissed all such reports instead of doing something to change the situation for better. I wonder why government officials suddenly become paranoid about such reports when what is required is to do the rightful. But, the World Bank is not the only institution that is saying that something is wrong. The Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has warned that Nigeria may remain the world’s poverty capital even as former United States envoy John Campbell parroted what has always been known about Nigeria being Africa’s troubled giant.

    What one would expect is informed reaction to such statements and assertions from the seat of power. For instance, two take-aways from Chief Obasanjo’s statements when Atiku called on him centred on ethnicity and the economy; stupid! Again, Obasanjo said nothing new. These have remained sore points of criticism of the Buhari administration since its inception. What one expects is for the president’s aides not to dismiss these with a wave of the hand because they reflected the government’s style for long. Presidential aides or government officials who want to take on these allegations should tell us what has changed, instead of making it look as if the allegations are entirely baseless.

    Moreover, APC should dwell more on its own achievements rather than keep telling Nigerians that Atiku is corrupt. They have been hearing that for years. This is sad to say though; but the point is that not many people see the government’s anti-corruption war in the same light as they saw it in 2015. Not a few have the feeling, rightly or wrongly, that there is little difference among the parties corruption-wise.

    Honestly, this is not about sentiments. Notwithstanding my reservations about Obasanjo, the APC cannot want us to believe that his views now count for nothing. When he tore his PDP membership card about four years ago and pitched his tent with the Buhari team, the event was widely celebrated by the then opposition party and the then presidential hopeful’s handlers.

    Nothing I have said foreclosed anything happening because, as they always say, ‘it is not over until it is over, especially in politics. President Buhari and the APC still have about four months to change the tempo of the game. They still have an ample opportunity to step up their  performance in order to secure a straight, incontrovertible victory at the polls.

    We need no one to tell us that this might jolly well be Atiku’s last opportunity at the presidency.  He will be 72 next month; and if he loses the election, he has to wait till 2023, by which time he would be about 76 years old. Buhari became president at about the same age (72). But, going by the new mantra of not-too-young-to-run, a 76- year-old aspirant could be considered too old to run for the country’s number one seat by 2023. If Atiku sees this as his last chance, he would put everything into it. So, unless a miracle happens, the next elections would be tough. It is one in which virtually everyone concerned would put in their all to secure victory. If anything, Atiku is a veteran in the country’s political arena; he understands the game. Not only that, he also has deep pockets and he would spend as if spending is going out of fashion. Atiku has probably attained all that he craved for in life; fame, wealth, influence. Perhaps the only thing after his heart is the presidency. He would do everything to get it.

    At this juncture, what I expect the APC to do is to collate all the criticisms against it; distill them and provide credible answers/solutions to them, irrespective of whether the claims are true or false; it is all about perception. The government could be swearing that certain things are not the way they look; if Nigerians are not sufficiently persuaded, whatever the government says will amount to nothing. This is where the Buhari government has to be careful. It should stop talking to itself; it should as a matter of fact listen more because that is the way it would not delude itself that there is no cause for alarm when in fact, nothing is under control. Just as I said after the Osun State governorship election, an election that the ruling party should win hands down at the very first ballot should not become a subject of controversial rerun just on account of delusion.

    Like Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, shortly before meeting his political waterloo at the last governorship election when his dream of choosing his successor crashed under his very eyes, many Nigerians will be in great pains if APC, by omission or commission, allows the PDP that Nigerians rejected less than four years ago to become the cornerstone, and so soon. Most poignantly, that would not be a good emblem for the Buhari government’s anti-corruption crusade.

  • Ending the flare

    In spite of its potential for development, particularly in the generation of electricity, and its deleterious effect on the environment, indiscriminate gas flaring has been going on since the 1960s when oil production began in Nigeria. The international oil companies (IOCs) would seem comfy with flaring the gas rather than harnessing it for positive uses apparently because gas prices are low in the country and the penalty for flaring is by far too cheap to have any dent on their finances. Worse still is the fact that regulatory agents saddled with the responsibility of enforcing the fine are lax in the performance of their duties. At the receiving end of the evil effects of gas flaring are the people of the Niger Delta region, majority of who live in the rural areas despite the billions of petrodollars that the country has made from crude oil deposited in the region. For the Niger Delta’s about 30 million people therefore, it is not just the challenge of environmental pollution from oil spills; they also have to contend with pollution from gas flaring. The flaring is harmful to local health through emissions that have been linked to cancers, blood disorders, asthma, chronic bronchitis and other diseases.

    Indeed, gas flaring causes acid rain, which impacts soil fertility and is associated with reduced crop yields, causing hunger in the Niger Delta where fish populations have already reduced because of pollution by oil companies. Acid rain eats through villagers’ roofs that protect them from rain and sunshine. Yet, the villagers are too poor to replace their roofs that frequently.

    So, what is gas flaring? Justice in Nigeria Now simplifies it as “the burning of natural gas that is associated with crude oil when it is pumped up from the ground. In petroleum-producing areas where insufficient investment was made in infrastructure to utilise natural gas, flaring is employed to dispose of this associated gas.” According to the World Bank, Nigeria is the seventh highest gas flaring country in the world.

    The search for an end to gas flare began in 1969 when the Yakubu Gowon regime ordered that within five years of set-up, a company must cease flaring. The order was not respected. The Federal Government then came up with the Associated Gas Re-Injection Act Number 99 of 1979, that required oil corporations operating in Nigeria to guarantee zero flares by January 1, 1984. Nearly all successive governments set deadlines for ending gas flare. Thus, we had the 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2010 deadlines. As a matter of fact, the federal High Court of Nigeria ruled in 2005 that gas flaring by Shell and the NNPC, with which Chevron jointly operates, was illegal and a violation of the rights to life and dignity. Yet, flaring has continued 24 hours every day and 365 or 366 days all year-round.

    After these attempts at stopping the illegal and unjust practice, It would appear that the Federal Government is just getting serious about putting an end to it. It has just reviewed upward, the gas flare penalty from N10 per thousand standard cubic feet (SCF) of gas to $2 or N612.8 (at the official exchange rate of N306.4 to one dollar per thousand standard cubic feet of gas. But  the increase is for firms that produce 10,000 barrels of crude oil or more while those producing less than 10,000 barrels per day had their own penalty increased to $0.5 or N153.2 per thousand standard cubic square feet of gas.

    These were disclosed in the gazette Flare gas (Prevention of Waste and Pollution) Regulations, 2018 made available to a correspondent of The Punch last week Monday in Abuja by the Programme Manager, Nigerian Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme, Office of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr Justice Derefaka. According to the report, “The current meagre flare payment (penalty) of N10 per thousand SCF is increased, in the case of any one producing 10,000 barrels of oil or more, to $2 per thousand standard cubic feet of gas; and in the case of anyone producing less than 10,000 barrels of oil per day, to $0.5 per thousand standard cubic square feet of gas.” The report also stipulates a fine of N50,000 or six months jail term, or both, for anyone who provides inaccurate flare data. “There are mandatory additional payments by the producer of $2.50 for failure to produce accurate flare data; failure to provide access to flares or flare sites; failure to sign a connection agreement; in the event of continuous or egregious breaches, there is a possibility of suspension of operations, or a termination of the producer’s licence,” the report added. There is also a penalty of $2.50 per day where the producer fails to install metering equipment within the time required to do so by the Department of Petroleum Resources, or fails to agree to enter into a concession agreement with a permit holder.

    Of course the regulations made room for exceptions, particularly as regards circumstances beyond the control of the international oil companies. For instance it states that the producer will not be liable in a situation “where the flaring was caused by an act of war, community disturbance, insurrection, storm, flood, earthquake or other natural phenomenon, which is beyond the reasonable control of the producer.”

    But it would appear that the penalty for providing inaccurate flare data is still low, compared with the seriousness of the offence. How can the penalty for such a grievous offence be a mere N50,000 or six months jail term? There should have been no option of fine because that is the only language that many multinationals operating in Nigeria understand. Things they dare not do in their home countries or in a place like China, because of the stiff penalties, sometimes capital punishment, they do in Nigeria and get away with because our laws are weak and also because of the level of corruption in the country which makes it easy for public officials to collude with the foreigners to break our laws with impunity.

    All the same, it is commendable that the Federal Government, for the first time, now seems set to bring about a new order in the way and manner Gas is being wantonly flared in the Niger Delta. The new regulations would seem to be government’s answer to the pleas by several experts in the Oil and Gas sector for an upward review of the gas flare penalty to something higher than N50 per 1,000 SCF in order to stem the tide of gas flare. This is because the oil multinationals have opted for the option of paying the fine because it is by far cheaper than what obtains in some other countries.

    However, laudable as this might be, there is not much to jubilate over yet because, as we all know, in Nigeria, the problem is not about lack of laws or policies to address some of the country’s challenges but that of enforcement. From the provisions of the new regulations, it does not appear that those who drafted them reflected on this aspect of our national life. The regulations and penalties appear to be silent on what happens to Nigerians who collude with these multinationals to cheat the country. This is important because, even at the abysmal N10 per SCF, some of the IOCs had been accused severally of not paying the fine. As a matter of fact, the country was said to have lost about $14.298billion between April 2008 and October 2016 in form of penalties for gas flaring which the IOCs allegedly failed to pay.

    These companies are stupendously rich and are therefore in a position to grease the palms of willing public officials to defraud the country. Patriotism is in short supply here. The IOCs are ever ready to exploit our weak institutions because even when the oil companies’ corrupt officials and their Nigerian collaborators are eventually caught and arraigned in court, the wheel of justice is too slow to gift them their just deserts timeously in the country.  We have tried all manner of ways to fast track this to no avail. Not even the much celebrated Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) has been able to resolve the logjam. We see examples in the Halliburton, Siemens and other cases involving Nigerians and corrupt foreigners where the latter had long been sentenced whereas their Nigerian collaborators’ cases are yet to go past the preliminary stages.

  • September 22

    APC’s narrow escape in Osun calls for introspection and correction ahead 2019

    Ordinarily, the September 22, 2018, governorship election in Osun State should have been a walk-over for the ruling party in the state, the All Progressives Congress (APC). That it turned out to be a scrambling for, and partitioning of the state between the ruling party and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) should signal to the ruling party that all is not well. If it was this difficult in Osun State, there is nothing to suggest that it would be less difficult, especially in other southwest states, unless the APC does the rightful before next year’s General Elections.

    Governor Rauf Aregbesola of the APC came to power following the Court of Appeal judgment that declared him winner of the 2010 governorship election in 2010, having defeated the incumbent Olagunsoye Oyinlola of the PDP by198,799 votes to 172,880, a difference of about 25,919 votes. This was a significant margin. But then, Aregbesola increased the tally for the APC when he scored 394,684 votes, against Iyiola Omisore (the PDP candidate’s) 292,747 votes in the 2014 governorship election. This was a definitive statement of the acceptability of the Aregbesola administration and the supremacy of the APC in the state, at least up till that time. So, what happened between then and September 22, 2018?

    A lot.

    In terms of infrastructural development, the administration did quite well. But one thing that is becoming increasingly clear, at least as far as voters are concerned, particularly in the southwest, is that performance alone cannot take political aspirants, most especially governors, to the promised land. Again, it would appear that the term democratic dividend has become a nebulous concept that means different things to different people. Lest we forget, Governor Kayode Fayemi suffered what was to an extent a similar fate in 2014 when he lost the Ekiti State governorship election to Ayo Fayose also of the PDP. One thing that was not in doubt then was that almost everyone admitted that Fayemi did well in terms of infrastructural development. But they complained about his politics.

    Well, some people felt the election was rigged against Fayemi then. There was no doubt the Goodluck Jonathan administration unleashed the security agencies on the state and they did a lot to frustrate Fayemi’s reelection. Whether that alone explained Fayose’s victory would for long be a subject of debate.  But, if we even agree that the 2014 election was rigged in favour of Fayose in Ekiti State, are we going to say the same of the September 22 poll in Osun?

    Certainly not.

    What has been happening between the PDP and APC in the southwest in the last few years should be of interest to the APC. Although this might look like a national malaise, the party would do well to now begin to look at the role and influence of the party on candidates, particularly after winning elections. APC must be ready to tame the individuals who came to power on the party’s ticket. Never again should they be allowed to assume larger-than-life status. Most guilty of this are governors across the board. But the ruling party should be in a position to talk to its governors and other elected persons whenever they are going astray, as they are won’t to do. If we won’t deceive ourselves, it is easy for people in positions of authority to go astray because it is only in a few cases that some of their aides can look them in the face and tell them what they do not want to hear. Most of the aides react only after reading ‘oga’s’ body language. This is not good for the party; it is detrimental even to democracy.

    It is inconceivable that the PDP, a party that Nigerians killed and buried barely four years ago, had the guts to make the ruling party in Osun State sweat for what it should have got on a silver platter.  Personally, I feel pained and scandalised that this ever happened. That the ruling party, after eight years of what those involved would want to see as years of meritorious service, was struggling and literally looking for a ladder to get a thing it ordinarily should pluck just for the asking speaks volumes about the fact that all is not well. But only the uninitiated and those who, like the ostrich, want to bury their heads in the sand would claim the thing came to them as a surprise. Non-partisan observers saw it coming.

    So, let no one blame the PDP for its reactions to what it rightly saw as clear victory for its candidate, Ademola Adeleke, in the September 22 election. Any other party would have reacted the same way if in the PDP’s shoes. The point is; PDP stalwarts know that there is nothing wrong in declaring the election inconclusive as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did in the circumstance because this is not the first time such would be happening. As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court had affirmed the commission’s stand in the past and that should be the grundnorm. But the PDP had to say something sweet to their supporters’ ears probably to enrage them and make them take laws into their hands.

    In the same vein, it is difficult to condemn Femi Fani-Kayode who could not understand why Iyiola Omisore had to team up with the ruling party against his former party, the PDP, in the avoidably hotly contested election. But that is politics; where there are no permanent friends or permanent foes but permanent interests. One thinks Fani-Kayode should know and indeed knows this. No one can grudge Omisore for pitching his tent with the ruling party. He owes no one any explanation either. Fani-Kayode should wait until he becomes a beautiful bride like Omisore to know how easy it is for brides to fall for particular suitors and reject others.

    For me, the game was up the moment Omisore and the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Yussuff Lasun, decided to go with the APC for the rerun. As a matter of fact, that was what I said last week Sunday when the results of the election were announced. Even a political neophyte should have known the game was over for the PDP the moment these two persons in particular made public their positions as to which side to support. This may seem incomprehensible to the PDP but that is the reality. At any rate, as I said, I do not blame the PDP because it was the APC that put words in their mouth. If APC had done the needful and made the PDP take a shellacking at the poll, the opposition party would not be in a position to grandstand.

    The remaining APC governors, especially in the southwest, have some takeaways from the Osun election. As the Yoruba proverb says, ‘iku to pa ojugba eni, owe lonpa fun ni’ (apologies to non-Yorubas as I do not know how to translate this). But those to whom it is addressed understand. APC must also learn some lessons. As a matter of fact, that is the essence of September 22. Whoever wants to contest under the party’s platform has to be ready to abide by the party’s directives. What we have presently in the party, that is a situation where some people become party leaders after becoming governors, cannot endure. It will only continue to bring the party to the kind of situation where even the party leaders would be like the proverbial fowl that perches on a rope, with neither the rope nor the fowl being able to rest.

    Governors should not be at liberty to send people away from the party at will because when the repercussion comes, they won’t bear it alone. Even the party must be careful the way it dismisses aggrieved people as inconsequential if they defect. We can imagine how the Osun embarrassment could have been averted if some of the people that defected had remained in the fold. Yet, when the chips were down, the party had to swallow its pride and appeal for support from these same people. Perhaps this is where the idea of direct primary that the party has adopted now makes sense. Moreover, the party should revive the monitoring team that the Alliance for Democracy (AD) formed early in this dispensation. Such teams must comprise people of proven integrity, incorruptible; people who would be going round to feel the pulse of the people as well as monitor the performance of the governors. They must be able to look the governors in the face and tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The idea is to make them mend their ways so they don’t give everybody else hypertension.

    Printer’s devil

    Last week, this column appeared without my logo and there was no form of identification whatsoever to link the write-ups there to me. Apparently this was because, penultimate week, I did not feature and the logo was temporarily removed. I guess it was the pressure of the Osun State governorship election of September 22 that took the better part of us at this end, hence our absentmindedness to notice that the logo was missing on the eve of the election that the material went to bed. Yet, I raised issues on the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Ibrahim Idris as well as my usual customer, Ikeja Electric. There is no reason why I would not want my imprimatur on either.

    Fashola

    I said last week that we had been in darkness in my neighbourhood in the Oke-Odo area of Agege, Lagos, for three consecutive weeks and that, this has become more or less a monthly pattern. We usually experience blackout for some days, every given month. However, I do not know how Ikeja Electric did it; electricity was restored the following day, that is last week Monday.  I am looking forward to the month that this monthly jinx will be broken. Hopefully, you will join me to shout seven powerful halleluyahs if that time ever comes!

  • There is ‘oil’ in education and health

    In the past forty years or more, Nigeria had been a mono-product country exporting crude oil. This is understandable.  Crude oil produces easy cash without much effort. Much efforts would have been required if we had decided to refine the oil and sell the finished product.  Government had not made any sustainable efforts to divert attention to other sectors of the economy which are cash cows elsewhere.

    Prior to what has become a seeming disadvantage of oil discovery for Nigeria, agriculture used to be a very viable sector but the sorry state of that sector is not encouraging many investors to look at this direction. Many want a quick turn around of investment which is not guaranteed in that sector. Yes our stories here are gradually changing for good but we still have a long way to go.

    But given the opportunity in the information, technology-driven economy we now live in, coupled with the Nigeria population advantage, it is very clear if we are willing to drill the oil in education and health, Nigeria can take better advantage of the Africa market. This used to be the case before in the 70s and early 80s, but Nigeria has lost her capacity to be the real giant of Africa.  What we have now is shadow and bravado which leads to nowhere.

    The nature of our lopsided educational sector, aside from the little improvement with the private sector player, has opened the door for  Nigerians seeking better education standard outside the country. Each year Nigerians huge some of monies on education outside their shore

    According to Prof Adeyi, a Nigerian based in Canada, at least an average of $1.5trillion naira was spent by Nigerians seeking foreign degrees in 2016 alone. Imagine what that means if we use N360 as exchange rate! This is only the sum total of Nigerian students that were captured. Imagine if that amount is invested in Nigeria. Prof Adeyi maintained United Kingdom, Canada and United States top the list of the countries where Nigerians sought better education.

    As if that is not enough, UNESCO’s institute of statistics affirmed that in the past four years there had been increase of about 44 percent of Nigerians students seeking degrees from higher institutions outside Nigeria. If our education standard has been good enough and is in the top quality as it used to be in early 70s, our educational sector can still draw countless numbers of African students to our shore.

    What if we examine the level of capital flight in medical tourism?  Ebun Bamgboye, clinical director at St. Nicholas Hospital, in 2017 claimed Nigerians spent average of $1billion annually. Nigerians patronise hospitals in UK, USA, India as well as Germany.

    If government can make deliberate efforts in investing in our health facilities and make them match up to international, Nigerian and African market are big enough. It is amusing to note as of today if Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital will do one heart surgery, an estimated three months planning is the minimum requirement.

    Meanwhile in Ghana here, I am aware of a hospital which performs up to two to three heart surgeries a day. In nine hours the hospital usually finishes one surgery. All these capital flights do not add any value to our economy as we can neither tax nor repurpose such huge fund into something significant.

    Other countries blessed with oil like the United Arab Emirate, Saudi Arabia, amongst others, have done a great job with the money received from oil. Can we say our level of immorality and corruption at the highest places are responsible for our woes? Has trouble not accompanied Nigeria’s oil treasure and revenue, as the good book affirmed?

    It is never too late. Education and health sector can be another sources of ‘oil’ fund, if we annex it.

    • Yinka Olaito is a communications and media specialist based in Lagos

  • No contradiction Osinbajo’s misinterpreted statement on restructuring

    Ordinarily, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s statement on restructuring, while fielding questions from a cross-section of Nigerians at a town hall meeting in faraway Minnesota, the United States of America, on August 26 should not have attracted any criticism or condemnation from any quarters because it is the truth, the gospel truth and nothing but the truth. But, as we have seen over the years, the word ‘restructuring’, at least in the political context, has come to mean so many things to so many Nigerians. It has been taken beyond the ordinary grammatical meaning or even its meaning as a political concept.

    I will elucidate.

    Cambridge English Dictionary online defines restructure as simply “to organise a company, business or system in a new way to make it operate more effectively”. We do not have to waste too much time on the dialectics because, devoid of any ulterior motive, or a genuine lack of understanding of what the word truly means, this definition is just adequate for our purpose. In short, to restructure is to do business unusual because if we do business as usual, we are not likely to get the effectiveness that should come with  restructuring. Again, it would seem I have introduced another dimension to the debate; that of ‘genuine restructuring’. Maybe I am simply being a Nigerian and I crave your indulgence for that. But I do not know if there is any other place where people talk of ‘true federalism’, for instance, except our dear country. I only know of federalism, and if it is not federalism, it cannot be federalism. But our politicians have this penchant of inventing high sounding concepts that ordinarily make sense without any embellishment. Sadly though, the unnecessary adornments have not added any value to governance in the country. Rather, they have further compounded the misunderstanding by the ordinary folks, of simple concepts that should impact their lives positively.

    Enough of the digression.

    Now, what is political restructuring? If we accept the simple definition of restructure above, extended to the political arena, restructuring is simply tweaking the structures in the country for more effective result. One thing is clear: many Nigerians agree that the country is not working as presently constituted. The belief in many quarters is that we need to devolve more powers to the states while the Federal Government takes charge of areas like defence, currency and foreign policy; that states should be able to create their own police force as obtained in other federalist states, that there should be less emphasis on handouts from the centre which is the oxygen that some states live on, and without which they will simply die. In other words, states properly so-called should be able to fend for themselves; develop at their own pace and only pay some tax to run the Federal Government as was the case in the First Republic.

    All of these points were well articulated during the question-and-answer session that Vice President Osinbajo had with the Nigerians in Minnesota. This is why it is curious that no less a personality than a former vice president of the country, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Turaki Adamawa, has not only led the band of critics who have taken on the vice president on this storm in a teacup but has sustained it as if winning his party’s primary depends on it. Osinbajo has come a long way in the struggle for restructuring and it is late in the day for late joiners of the clamour to want to now play champion of the cause. Yes, the vice president did say that Nigeria’s problems will not be solved merely by tinkering with the geographical space, but it is mischievous to take this out of context, as former Vice President  Abubakar and some other people have been doing. Osinbajo spoke at length about other things that must be done to make for effective restructuring.

    He told his audience: “the problem with our country is not a matter of restructuring and we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into the argument that our problems stem from some geographical restructuring. It is about managing resources properly and providing for the people properly, that is what it is all about.”

    Is it not instructive that Alhaji Abubakar who is now behaving like the outsider that is weeping louder than the bereaved on restructuring was vice president for eight years and yet said nothing in support of (true) federalism then? Indeed, to what extent did the government he served advance restructuring? Did that government not do everything humanly possible to frustrate the very concept? President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government that Alhaji Abubakar served in as vice president did everything to frustrate the attempt of Lagos State to push for restructuring through some of its policies in the Bola Tinubu era between 1999 and 2007. It frustrated the state government’s effort to have its own independent power project. The same way the central government frowned at the state’s attempt to create local governments, thus leading to its creation of local council development areas in order to take governance to the grassroots.

    As a matter of fact, the Obasanjo government punished Lagos State for the audacity by seizing over N33billion of the state local governments’ allocations despite the Supreme Court ruling that it should be released. The government only released about N23bn of the money. It was the succeeding Umaru Musa Yar’Adua government that ordered the release of the balance shortly after assuming office.  But for the Lagos State government’s astute management of resources, that singular action would have crippled the state financially. Yet, these two incidents – the Enron Power Project and local government creation – were clear ways by which Lagos State tried to restructure or reorder the way things were done in the country. We need to ask the question whether Alhaji Abubakar is talking about restructuring as a true late convert or simply as a ploy to get votes from gullible voters because he has simply realised that restructuring is the vogue without which it would be difficult to enter into Aso Rock, come 2019; possibly beyond.

    We will also do well to remember that Prof Osinbajo was Commissioner for Justice and Attorney-General of Lagos State when all these issues were in the front burner of national discourse in the Obasanjo years. That is to say he played significant roles towards the advancement of restructuring in the polity. The state was inevitably locked in a lot of court cases to extricate Lagos, and by extension, other state governments from the apron strings of the almighty Federal Government and it indeed won some of those cases. For instance, the Federal Government was told in clear terms by the courts that it was illegal for it to seize the local governments’ funds. Even with regard to the creation of local governments, the position of the courts was that the creation was inchoate to the extent that the National Assembly had not tinkered with the list of local governments in the constitution by listing the newly created local governments. All those years, Alhaji Abubakar ‘s voice was never heard championing restructuring. Indeed, restructuring then was largely a southwest agenda and thus akin to the lone voice of John the Baptist in the wilderness.

    Nigerians have to be wary of turncoats masquerading as proponents or lovers of restructuring or federalism. Alhaji Abubakar, we should remember, is never consistent politically. I can hear you say this is a common problem in our clime. This means his convictions are not driven by any principle beyond the self. If anyone wants to challenge Osinbajo’s claim as a strong advocate of restructuring, definitely that person cannot be Alhaji Abubakar. The vice president has said nothing to deviate from his known stance on the issue. What he is saying is that there is nothing wrong in advancing the components of restructuring one after the other, especially so that the concept has become a nebulous one in terms of what it means to different Nigerians. We would have achieved something if we are able to get state police, resource control as well as get the components parts of the federation to develop at their own pace, among others, even though the overall objective is total restructuring of the polity.

    Even then restructuring is not the all in all. Good as it is, it cannot alone put food on the table of Nigerians; it cannot guarantee good healthcare, good roads or good schools and other infrastructure if corruption is not tamed. If we had it relative good in the First Republic, it was because the level of corruption was not as high as it is today. Corruption was still seen as anathema then. Today, it has become fashionable. Howthen  could restructuring alone have taken care of the humongous looting that has happened in the country, especially considering the statistics that the vice president gave as oil revenue from 1990-2014? “Under the IBB / Abacha administrations (1990 – 1998) Nigeria realised $199.8 billion; under the Obasanjo / Yar’Adua governments (1999 – 2009), the country got $401.1 billion; and during the Jonathan administration (2010 – 2014), Nigeria got $381.9 billion from oil revenues. The question that we must all ask is that what exactly happened to resources? The question that I asked is that where is the infrastructure?”

    This is the issue. Or, is Alhaji Abubakar afraid of talking about corruption, like an old woman that is never at ease when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb?  So, where did Osinbajo miss it?

    There is no doubt that all of this is about 2019 election. Even then, our politicians have to learn to go for the ball and not the leg. Fair is fair.