The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tunji Adegboyega

  • Ikeja Electric’s phantom estimates

    Ikeja Electric’s phantom estimates

    • Metering is much more urgent than appropriate pricing of power because that is a ruse under the present arrangement where figures are allocated to over seven million customers monthy

    I have been perpetually subjected to questionable debts decreed by Ikeja Electric in the last few months just because I was without prepaid meter for only four months.  As a ‘Band A’ customer, I had been spending between N50,000 to N55,000 monthly long before my meter packed up in October, last year. That means, at the maximum, I should have paid about N220,000 to the company for the four months had my meter not been faulty and retrieved. But, at the end of the four months, I had already incurred a bill of N317,774.85. Add that to the months from February to April; that should have fetched the DisCo about N385,000 considering my average consumption that the company can verify, over probably one year.

    But as at today, I have paid N436,600.58 to vend, including sundry fines and surcharges that the company never had the courtesy of breaking down for me, other than just yanking off 60 per cent of whatever amount I vended, giving me only 40 per cent since about March 30, save on two occasions when one of their workers intervened. Interestingly, as at yesterday, I was still said to be having a debt overhang of N81,367.22, the same amount there before I paid N30,000 on Thursday, May 8, 2025!

    Cumulatively, therefore, I would have coughed up about N517, 967 for seven months by the time I finish paying the debt, (that is assuming the company does not have to shift the goal post again, because my various contacts with them via their customer care have hardly produced the same result) as against the N385,000 I would have paid were my meter to be working. So, where and how did the N132,000 difference come from?

    One would think this is simple arithmetic. Unfortunately, with Ikeja Electric, it has become a jigsaw puzzle.

    But I needed to summarise the story first so that the Federal Government and its relevant agencies responsible for regulating the power sector and consumer protection would know how urgent it is to provide Nigerians with meters. They need to know there is need to declare emergency on metering for power consumers.

    Now to the details.

    My former meter was retrieved in October, last year, by Ikeja Electric because it was faulty. It was replaced early February, this year. In effect, what I had feared eventually became my lot. I have been subjected to all manner of forced payments and deductions by Ikeja Electric that should never have been.

    I was given a bill of N53,600.58 for October, 2024 and I paid all because it represented a fair average of my monthly consumption. In November of the same year, I was given the same amount and I was able to pay N43,000. The problem started in December, 2025, when I was slammed N104,273.39. I paid N50,000 because I couldn’t understand the basis for doubling the amount. I was given the same high bill of N106,300.30 in January, 2025. Again, I wondered how come. Somehow, I couldn’t pay on the bill until the meter was replaced early February, 2025.

    To my surprise, a debt of N114,000+ had been recorded against my meter as at December! Just like that? This ballooned to N171,174.17 the following month. Indeed, it would interest readers to note that that was still the debt against my account in one of their portals. It has been there, as we used to say in those days, ‘from time immemorial’!  As you would have noticed earlier, this contradicts the other figure in the same account as at yesterday, Saturday, May 10, 2025 which was put at a ‘benign’ N81,367.22!

    We have been at this since around January when I started writing emails to the company about my objections to the December 2024 and January 2025 bills. I sent emails again in March, even as I visited the customer care office at Akowonjo in Lagos on March 6.

    Surprisingly, there, I was told I was owing the company about N170,000 and that I MUST pay at least N130,000 to have access to electricity. You see, they would not write you or inform you about anything, knowing full well that they would always stop you when you want to recharge or vend, as they call it. They hardly respond to emails beyond the recorded message of telling you your complaints had been received and passed to the appropriate section for attention.

    Imagine a debt nobody informed me about, and which I probably would not have had any knowledge of if I had not gone to their office, suddenly leading to my coughing up N130,000 minimum to vend overnight or staying in darkness. In fact, at a point during the numerous chats I had with the customer care, they told me I had a credit balance of N41,000. How do you reconcile this with a debt of over N170,000 against my account!  Anyway, I had to look for N130,000 to pay to have access to electricity.

    As I told their business manager in one of my emails (SR 5564762), ‘’It would interest you to note that I had paid a total of N324,600.68 on my meter concerning the bills for four months and the so-called debts, including the forced deductions whenever I vend… This is one reason I have always wanted to avoid estimated billing. I had a running battle with the company on it a few years back and I would be glad if that history does not repeat itself.

    ‘’As far as I am concerned, Ikeja Electric could not have given me bills of over N100,000 plus in a month when it has a record of my monthly consumption, the basis of which, I guess, informed the rational bills of less than N55,000 that the company gave me in the first two months after retrieving my meter.’’

    I disagreed vehemently with the idea that I should bear cost of meter replacement because I knew that as a ‘Band A’ customer, I was not supposed to pay for it. But even when I tried to register for the meter, it was not going because I always refused to fill the space for payment for meter. This was the situation until around November or early December, 2024, when the company sent me text message that I was qualified for free meter. Again, I was always stuck as I refused to fill the space for payment as that, to me, meant consent to pay for the meter. As far as I was concerned, that aspect of the form should have been flexible, especially with the exemption of some group of consumers from payment. I knew that if I paid, the company would never refund the cash if they eventually agree on their own to refund. Rather, they would tell me that the thing would be converted to electricity units.

    Indeed, this is another bone of contention with the system, as it was what their customer care personnel always harped on whenever I confronted them; they always told me not to worry because the company would eventually refund me if they discovered they were wrong. But what gave them the impression that it is all customers that have such huge money to tie down in today’s economy (at about N130,000 for the cheapest single –phase meter), as if power supply is the only need of man? So, it was not for lack of trying that my application for meter was delayed till I eventually got their sms to apply for free meter. Even after that, getting through with the application processing was another hell.

    Unlike many other KYC websites that I patronise, when filling such forms, you merely continue later wherever you are stuck. With Ikeja Electric website, it was not so. Once you were stuck, you began again.

    To make matters worse, the company’s website was down for about three weeks in December, 2024. I was forced to tell the company in another email that its website was not customer-friendly as a result of all these challenges that one does not encounter elsewhere. As a matter of fact, I made all of these known in an email I sent to the company. None of these assertions was controverted and they could not have been because, in the first place, they represented a true picture of the website from my own experience. Secondly, as I said earlier, they hardly reply emails. It is annoying that despite the epistles I sent to the company on this matter, none was replied. It is only when companies or organisations reply communication that they can agree or disagree with certain assertions about them.

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    But, all of these are just one leg of the story.

    The other leg has to do with the 101 units in my meter that was retrieved. I ensured the personnel who retrieved it put it in the form he filled and gave to me and I had also sent emails to the company concerning this. I also have evidence of that. As a matter of fact, I did a photoshot of the form where the man boldly wrote in his beautiful handwriting that I was to bear the cost of replacement of the meter and also recorded the 101 leftover units in that meter which ought to have been credited into my account. It is unfortunate that the company seems to be less concerned about this, harping only, on areas that could fetch it money, whether legitimately or by duress.

    I guess this matter would still proceed appropriately to the next level, but I felt sufficiently concerned because I have heard many stories similar to mine, in some cases the so-called debts reaching very alarming proportions. Reconciliation properly so-called cannot happen within one party, and a concerned party at that. Which is what Ikeja Electric has done; and which is what many other DisCos do and keep doing, in a country that has government! In this matter, the company has served as the accuser, prosecutor and judge without the courtesy of informing me of the outcome of its findings (despite promising to do so). Their response is communicated through blocking vending channels. Is it such a company that you would trust that it would willy-nilly refund customers?

    Successive governments have helped these DisCos enough, with little or nothing to show for it. It is time to help Nigerians. And the only way to do that satisfactorily is by making metering top priority. What I see on ground as the response to the metering gap falls far short of expectation. That we have not metered over half of the 14 million power subscribers in more than 11 years of privatisation does not speak well of us as a country truly serious of making these power DisCos efficient.

    Let the metering be completed within one year, with the government focusing its aid to the firms on meters, and it would be clear that those of them who cannot survive because power consumers now have meters should be allowed to die naturally. After all, several other opportunities are now open for more investors to come into the market.

    Nigerians are tired of being inundated with government can no longer sustain subsidy in the power sector. That is not our most pressing issue. At any rate, whatever we have with the present order cannot give us a true pricing for power. A situation where figures are allocated to over seven million power customers can never guarantee that. Millions are suffering in silence.  

  • For FCCPC, another ‘haul’

    For FCCPC, another ‘haul’

    A barely-known commission floors another tech giant, Meta Platforms; parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram

    Even if you are just returning to the country from wherever and you hear the name, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), you would not be scratching your head trying to figure out what the hell they are talking about. Not anymore.

    At least not after the commission’s victories over two giants, MTN Nigeria and Meta Platforms.

    Let’s begin with the latter which just lost an appeal it filed against the commission’s $220million fine over discriminatory data practices against Nigerian users at the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) Tribunal.

    The FCCPC, according to a statement by its director for corporate affairs, Ondaje Ijagwu, imposed the fine on Meta Platforms, the parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.

    The three-member tribunal panel led by Thomas Okosun, which reviewed the FCCPC ruling not only reaffirmed the fine, it also ordered the tech giant to reimburse the commission the sum of $35,000, being the cost of investigation into the alleged abuses.

    Coming less than three months after the commission secured its landmark legal victory against MTN Nigeria, following the Federal High Court, Lagos’s, reaffirmation of its authority to regulate competition and consumer protection across all sectors, including telecommunications, the decisions on the two cases have come to reinforce the importance of the FCCPC in consumer protection and competition matters.

     A shareholder in MTN Nigeria, and a legal practitioner, Emeka Nnubia, had dragged the commission to court over its power on telecom matters.

    But the court disagreed with his view

    saying that Section 90 of the Nigerian Communications Act (NCA) 2003 which grants the NCC jurisdiction over competition matters in the telecom industry cannot be taken in isolation of Section 104 of the FCCPC Act (FCCPA) 2018. Being a more recent law, that, in fact, supersedes any conflicting provisions in the NCA 2003. This means both the FCCPC and NCC share concurrent authority, allowing for a coordinated regulatory approach that prioritises fair competition and consumer protection in the telecoms sector.

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    Furthermore, the court reinforced Section 105 of the FCCPA 2018, which mandates collaboration between FCCPC and sector regulators, including the NCC; it said this aligns with global best practices, which allow consumer protection agencies to work alongside industry-specific regulators for comprehensive oversight.

    Additionally, the court said that the FCCPC does not need to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with sector regulators before carrying out its own statutory functions but rather, it is the obligation of sector regulators to engage with FCCPC to define how they are to collaborate.

    The ruling said the FCCPC had the power to issue a Summons and Request to Produce to MTN Nigeria as part of its ongoing investigation into potential anti-competitive practices, and finally that the FCCPC’s actions were lawful and did not violate any data protection laws, as no personal data was requested.

    This was a landmark judgment that was enough to send the appropriate message to any institution about the extent or limits of the FCCPC’s powers.

    But it would seem Meta Platforms did not take adequate cognisance of this ruling; otherwise, it would have guided it in its own case against the FCCPC. Although it may be argued that the Meta matter had come up long before the court judgment on the question of the commission’s powers, it still tells us that many institutions, including giants in the land, were either truly oblivious that the commission had such enormous powers or Meta just decided to try its luck for some different result.

    According to Ijagwu, “The tribunal resolved Issues 1 to 7 largely in favour of the FCCPC, dismissing the appellants’ objections to the commission’s findings, orders, and legal competence.

    “One of the central issues (Issue 3), which alleged a breach of fair hearing, was decided in favour of the commission, with the tribunal affirming that the FCCPC fully discharged its quasi-judicial responsibilities by affording the appellants ample opportunity to respond. The tribunal found no violation of constitutional due process.’’

    As a matter of fact, the tribunal pointed out that Meta’s privacy laws were in conflict with Nigerian law, among others.

    Many organisations and individuals that had known next-to-nothing about the commission would now be waking up to the reality, not just of its existence but also its raison detre. Indeed, it is good that these giants are the ones involved in the infractions. If they could get the comeuppance that they got, then lesser organisations should know they have no hiding place if they get on the wrong side of the law bothering on consumer protection.

    But Nigeria would not be the first place where Meta Platforms would be fined such a huge amount.  The European Commission had cause to fine Meta €797.72 million as recently as last year, for breaching EU antitrust rules.

    Hear Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy, on the fine: ‘’Today we fine Meta €797.72 million for abusing its dominant positions in the markets for personal social network services and for online display advertising on social media platforms. Meta tied its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and imposed unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers. It did so to benefit its own service Facebook Marketplace, thereby giving it advantages that other online classified ads service providers could not match. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules. Meta must now stop this behaviour.’’

    Before this, specifically in May 2023, Meta was fined a record 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) and ordered to stop transferring data collected from Facebook users in Europe to the United States, in a major ruling against the social media company for violating European Union data protection rules.

    So, the fines are usually hefty; it’s not only about Nigeria, because Meta is also a heavy revenue spinner. A company that wants to operate in another country must be ready to abide by the laws of the host country instead of wanting to impose its own laws on others.

    So, rather than worry about the ‘huge’ fine, we should worry about how it would be spent in case Meta appealed and lost.

    Of course, as in the Nigerian experience, Meta has always defended its actions. It, for instance, described the EU punishment thus: “This isn’t just about a fine,” said Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan. “The commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multi-billion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service.”

    If all of these are happening in countries that are well structured, some with their anti-trust laws, we can only pity the consumer in Nigeria that has been robbed of his own crown a long time ago and is, in fact, still existing at the mercy of all manner of producers. From telecommunication to banking, digital broadcasting, air travels, products and services in virtually all sectors, Nigerian consumers face daily exploitation. What makes it very disturbing is the fact that it appears as if the practice has official stamp on it, in spite of complaints from the exploited consumers.

    But the government is not unaware of this. That was what informed its setting up of regulatory agencies in every sector. Thus we have

    NCC for telecoms, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission Forum (NERC Forum) for the electricity distribution companies (DisCos), the Central Bank of Nigeria regulates the banking sector, etc.

    But more often than not, their effects are hardly felt, sometimes due to corruption and often because they lack the capacity to carry out their onerous responsibilities.

    For instance, no matter how determined NERC Forum is, it cannot handle 30 per cent of the complaints in the power sector for the simple fact that most of the players there are too steeped in iniquities or unfair practices, to repent. The result is that the forum is overwhelmed. The same applies to the telecoms and other sectors.

    This is where the intervention of an organisation like the FCCPC is important.

    Mercifully the commission now has a tested technocrat with the will to succeed at the helm.

    It is often said that a tree cannot make a forest. In other words, a single individual might not be able to single-handedly turn things around in an establishment. But an individual with focus, determination and the requisite idea showing the way can make a lot of difference. We have that in an Ishaq Oloyede who has opened our eyes to the fact that the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) that he heads is not the desert that we thought it was before he got there. Today, the Federal Government smiles to the bank every year, with the billions remitted by Oloyede’s JAMB.

    Since July, last year, that Bello came on board as executive vice chairman/ chief executive officer, he has similarly been trying to reposition the FCCPC that many people and institutions should know like the lines on their palms, but do not know. If ever they knew, we would not be having giants like MTN and Meta Platforms seeing it as a meddlesome interloper in a matter that it has primary jurisdiction.

    True, the two major cases recently resolved in the commission’s favour predate Bello’s appointment. But then, that the commission continued to pursue them to the very end symbolised his commitment to the cause of ensuring fair competition and consumer protection.

     The matters were concluded in his time because he supported the cause. We have had many instances where similar matters were surreptitiously swept under the carpet by some bosses in his shoes. We have had instances where even when such matters had already opened in court, the people expected to bring them to conclusion entered “nolle prosecui”. And that would be the end of the story. This is especially so with mega establishments like MTN and Meta Platforms that have the money to fight or play with.

    Not only has Bello supported the cases since his assumption of duties, he has also held workshops, road shows, etc. to publicise the commission’s activities, enlighten both producers and consumers on their rights and privileges as well as register the FCCPC in the consciousness of Nigerians.

    But there is still room for improvement. Consumers should be encouraged to continue reporting instances of poor service delivery or exploitative practices through the FCCPC’s official channels. But these channels should be well publicised for effectiveness.

    Nigerian consumers have since lost their crown. The way things are, they do not even have caps on their heads. Ask electricity consumers without meters; they will tell you the DisCos do not respect any such caps on billing issued by the regulatory agency!

    There is no doubt that a well-funded and equipped FCCPC will facilitate result that would gladden the hearts of Nigeria’s hapless consumers who are perpetually in the firm grips of shylocks who behave like pigs that you can hardly differentiate the first from the last born, as they all play in the mud.

    I commend the FCCPC’s teams responsible for these victories for diligently prosecuting the cases.

  • Endangered ‘first baby’

    Endangered ‘first baby’

    Tinubu must come down hard on students loan fund thieves before it becomes another Nigerian mirage

    If ever there is any legacy project scam that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must react to like a wounded lion, the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) is it. This is a valuable campaign programme that is barely a year old, and distressing reports are already coming out that some people have turned it into another growth area.

    Just last week I wrote on the CBEX swindle, a new Ponzi scheme to which gullible Nigerians who were looking for easy money were said to have lost a whopping N1.3trn. I blamed regulatory agencies for looking the other way when the swindlers were harvesting cheap funds from their hapless victims.

    But why are we so blessed in reverse? From CBEX swindle to NELFUND scam, both in one week! The anti-corruption war, where is thy sting?

    It is sad that what is supposed to be a boon to indigent students is now being exploited by some unscrupulous Nigerians. But how could some people be so mean? So heartless!

    Harvesting monies that are meant for the training and upkeep of students in higher institutions. Haba! A new low in our corruption index.

    According to report, the stealing takes place in two ways: between some institutions, in collusion with some banks, that intentionally delay payment to students for obvious financial gains; and two, some universities that ask students to pay their fees after the institutions have received same from NELFUND.

    It is heartwarming that both the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) and the House of Representatives have promised to look into the allegations. The ICPC moved in following complaints by the National Orientation Agency (NOA) while the matter was brought to the attention of the House of Representatives Committee on NELFUND by the National President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Olusola Oladoja.

    Hear some of the students’ lamentations: Rahmon Kehinde, a student of the Kwara State Polytechnic, Ilorin: “I have written several letters and visited different offices, but no one has told me where the money is. Before my exams, the bursary told me to pay the fee myself and sort the issue out later. I had to look for the money. Now I’m stuck, who will refund me?”

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    Another student from Kebbi State University, Aliero, Kebbi State, who spoke on condition of anonymity, shared a similar concern: “The school insists that we must find the money and pay our school fees before we are allowed to sit our exams. Where do we start running to now? We want NELFUND to look into this issue so that students who don’t have the means to pay can be allowed to sit their exams.

    “What is the essence of NELFUND releasing the fund since last year, and why are our school fees still not cleared? This money is not a gift to us, but it is a loan that we will still have to repay. Students are already threatening to protest,” he said.

    These are only two of the many such mind-boggling experiences.

    ICPC spokesman Demola Bakare said “We are working on the allegations. The following day after the allegations were disclosed by NOA, a formal report was brought to the commission by NELFUND.

    “The ICPC chairman ordered an investigation into the matter, and I know we have started work on it and the NOA is assisting too,” Bakare said.

    If I could be as enraged as I was when reading the sad news, I expect more rage from the president who established the fund as one of his legacy projects.

    It is common knowledge that some of our banks harbour a lot of thieves because there is hardly any fraud that is perpetrated, especially through the banking channels, that some bankers would not be involved in. In the fuel subsidy racketeering the banks were conspicuously present. We are not even talking about situations where some of their members of the staff play yo-yo directly with customers’ accounts.

    It is so sad that the only thing some Nigerians look out for whenever the government comes out with a policy or programme is how to make illicit money from it. Not how to make it work for the benefit of the beneficiaries and the country at large.

    President Tinubu signed the Student Loan Scheme Bill on April 3, last year, and launched it on July 17, 2024.

    The president made his aim public at the launch of the digital NELFUND disbursement exercise at the State House thus: “As I earlier said, my belief is that education is the greatest weapon against poverty. Without education, there is no vision; without education, there will be no development; without education, you cannot successfully conquer poverty, insecurity, and abuse in society.

    “Education is that light at the end of the tunnel, and no matter how sluggish it moves, it will give you light and the hope you need. We are investing in it. We do not want to try ignorance as an alternative. We want education from the foundation to the topmost level.”

    Great thoughts from an equally great mind.

    Beneficiaries of the project are to commence repayment two years after completing their National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme. Given the projected number of its beneficiaries, it is an ambitious programme that is being financed with one per cent of the total annual collectable revenue by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).

    So far, about 561,174 students have registered for the loan while 497,717 have actually applied. Also, about N53, 036,673,649.40 has so far been disbursed under the loan scheme — N23, 173,240.000.00 as upkeep allowance to beneficiaries and N29, 863,433,649.40 as institutional fees.

    The saboteurs who are stealing funds meant for the students are not only committing economic crime against the country, they are invariably working towards the path that the president said at the launch of the scheme that “we do not want to try”, that is “ignorance as an alternative.”

    Much of the insecurity that we have been spending hugely to defeat has its roots in ignorance and economic deprivation.

    President Tinubu was apparently worried by the troubles that indigent students go through to acquire western education and decided to mitigate their suffering, hence, his resort to the loan scheme.

    Of course the idea of a student loan scheme is not new in the country, but it, unfortunately, happened to be one of those glorious things that the country lost, especially during the military era. Many of our professors and other old citizens had the advantage of multiple scholarships and loans in their time, local and foreign, and those opportunities gave them the platforms to be whatever they are today. There is no gainsaying the fact that many of them would have ended up as hewers of wood and drawers of water in the villages since not all of their parents would have been able to gladly embrace poverty in order to see them through university education.

    If scholarships and loan schemes abound then for students and at a time the country’s currency had much value, then we can only imagine how sorely they would be needed now, with the serious economic challenges the country is facing, which also invariably affect individual Nigerians. And with bursary also gone with the winds!

    Academic scholarships and student loans became extinct in the country not because there is no money to fund it. Or because the number of beneficiaries has soared. No. The good idea that is the norm in several progressive countries died in Nigeria because of lack of planning and corruption. Some of the beneficiaries (if not many) saw the loans as their own share of the national cake that only the elite were eating and so took the loans without bothering to repay. Being a revolving loan, it was only a matter of time for the source to dry up.

    As a matter of fact, some of those who took the loans far back as the 1970s and ’80s only repaid about a year ago.

    Expectedly, a scheme like this would have some teething problems.

    Like some of the beneficiaries who claimed that they have not received their upkeep allowance for about eight months since they changed/updated their bank details. This should be expected. And, the Director, Strategic Communications, NELFUND, Oseyemi Oluwatuyi, has an appropriate response to that. “The issue with that is a bit complex. It’s a security issue. Anybody can come and change account details.

    “What we try to do is do a lot of checks to be sure it’s safe. This is being done for the sake of the students themselves. But it will be resolved soon.”

    We can only appeal to the fund to try and expedite action on the processes.

    But we can also better appreciate its position against the reports of abuses now being perpetrated through the scheme.

    Those fiddling with students’ money are really audacious thieves. It tells us the extent of desperation that some Nigerians are ready to go in their attempt to make illicit money. Stealing from students is not only stealing from the have-nots (Agbalowomeri); it is also stealing from the most unlikely quarter that would remain silent when what belongs to them is stolen. “Eni gb’adiye otosi, o gbe talaroye” (whoever steals a poor man’s fowl has stolen what belongs to a talkative). Everyone in town will hear about it.

    President Tinubu should ensure that those who are stealing these students’ monies vomit same. Not only that, they must be unmasked for the heartless criminals that they are. If the president is not moved to demand tough sanctions against those trying to spoil this legacy of his, I don’t know what else would jolt him to action. These students are a time-bomb waiting to explode should they abandon their studies due to lack of funds.

    We have not finished chewing Boko Haram before Lakurawa came. Another just announced its debut a few weeks ago. We should not allow spineless thieves to rob our children of the rest and sleep that those we failed to train are depriving us of today.

    We must also bear in mind that what we are talking about are loans that would be repaid by the beneficiaries, not gifts.

    The ICPC must seize the initiative. These students should not be made to cough up tomorrow what they never ate. This is a serious matter that deserves thorough investigation. Nigerians want to know who did what. The commission should make its findings public, irresponsible of whose ox is gored. It is not a matter to be swept under the carpet.

    In normal climes, no one would dare steal a king’s goat. So, I see nothing wrong in audaciously disgracing people who are audacious enough to endanger the president’s baby.

  • The CBEX swindle

    The CBEX swindle

    Perhaps the scam would have been averted if the govt had arrested the promoters

    Swindling, like most other good or bad things, has been with us for some time. Indeed, Nigeria has had several examples in the past without many Nigerians learning any serious lessons. The one trending in the country now is (Crypto Bridge Exchange (CBEX), which also operates under the corporate identity of ST Technologies International Ltd, Smart Treasure/Super Technology.

    People have lost various sums deposited with CBEX, some as little as N50,000 and others, millions. A particular person reportedly deposited $10,000. Sometimes I wonder what such people want; you have that much money and you cannot think of a worthwhile business to do with it but to risk putting it in a place where it could be eaten up by ants and caterpillars.

    As at the time the company collapsed early this month, the owners had raked in over N1.3 trillion. They then reportedly vanished into thin air!

    I hardly have any feelings for people who hanker after easy money. Yoruba people say “eni nwa’fa, nw’ofo” (whoever is looking for freeby is looking for loss). I hope that translation aptly captures it.

    I have read the accounts of some of the victims of the CBEX swindle. Usually, most of them were introduced to it by friends, relatives, colleagues in the office, co-traders, fellow students, mosque or church members, neighbours, and what have you.

    Inasmuch as there is a long list of CBEX victims to choose from, that of an Ibadan-based ‘kuli-kuli’ (a local snack made from groundnuts) seller in Ibadan interests me most.

    She said in a video that was shared by ‘Punch’, that she “took a loan of one million naira to invest in CBEX,” adding that “they vanished with my money the second week I joined.” In pains, she said “They have ruined our lives in Soka; husbands and wives don’t agree anymore in the home. Please help me, I’m raising stranger’s children.”

    Today’s swindle business seems to me a modern version of the crude one that used to take place in Lagos when I was a child. One day, I was returning on holiday from Ijebu-Ode Grammar School, Ijebu-Ode, where I started my secondary education sometime in the ’70s when I saw this crowd, I think around Onipanu, Lagos. Curious about what could be going on, I put my trunk box down from my head and joined the crowd. I think they were doing both magic and money doubling. Not that I was interested in either, really, because my parents, like many parents of that golden era had warned me that the only wealth that pays is the one that one worked for.

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    But I joined the crowd all the same due to the typical juvenile curiosity. Unknown to me and some other victims of the incident, the organisers had planted pickpockets among the crowd. They were all adept at their duty. They made sure we the onlookers were carried away by what they were doing. Then, as we pushed and shoved ourselves trying to get candid views of what was happening, some of us stretching our necks almost to breaking point in the process, the pickpockets that had been strategically-positioned in the crowd swung into action. I only got to know what had happened when I decided to leave for home. My transport fare had disappeared!

    I began the long trek from that spot to Post Office Bus Stop near Oyingbo where I lived with my paternal grandmother of blessed memory, a distance of about 6.9 km. Even as a little boy then, it didn’t occur to me to beg for transport fare home because that was alien to us here in the southwest. There was no mobile phone then; even the table phones of old were then not for every Tom, Dick and Harry. So, there was no way I could have got across to my grandmother about where I was or what was happening.

    I eventually met her outside the house and when she finally saw me that night, she was extremely happy. She knelt down to pray, fervently thanking God after hearing the big lie I told as excuse for getting home so late. Of course if I had told her the truth, she wouldn’t have flogged me (many grandparents of old always pampered their grandchildren) but my father must never hear that kind of story.

    But that was swindling as we used to know it then. Today, swindling is now big business. It has transformed along with the tide, these days leveraging on technology. Anyone who tries the crude method of the 1970s and ’80s to defraud today would not only reap little, his or her chances of being caught like a chicken are very high.

    But, much as those involved in scamming have kept on upgrading themselves, travelling on the super highway that internet offers, their victims have refused to upgrade. They are still on the analogue lane that leads to regret and gnashing of teeth.

    Greed may be the dominant reason why so many people continue to fall victims of CBEX and other scams; ignorance is another.

    Imagine the ‘kuli-kuli’ seller who said she took one million naira loan to invest in CBEX. Is it not better for her to borrow half of that amount to improve and expand her ‘kuli-kuli’ business? You can imagine the kind of transformation that would happen to the business with such an amount. Five hundred thousand naira may not make a dent on many businesses in view of today’s low value of the naira. But it would have salutary effect on ‘kuli-kuli’ business. Let’s even concede that N500,000 would not be enough, why couldn’t she borrow the one million naira for her ‘kuli-kuli’? That business would no longer be the same again if she had enough knowledge or idea of what to do to better the lot of what she does for a living. Who told her that her business cannot be modernised and her ‘kuli-kuli’ packaged in a way to attract the patronage of people on a higher economic level?

    If many of us see where they produce some of the plantain chips that we eat with relish in traffic hold-ups, we would swear never to eat it again. But all we see is the final product, well packaged and we are even ready to pay a little higher premium to get it if only for that reason. That is the wonder of packaging.

    As a matter of fact, it is this kind of knowledge that many artisans and traders need to better their lot. I don’t know if governments can come in at this stage with programmes to empower people like this with the knowledge to improve their trades, or they go into cooperatives for this and other rewarding purposes. Politicians and philanthropic institutions giving these people start-up capital could also find time to train them on how to improve their businesses. Maybe, many of them who perished for lack of knowledge would have been saved through such programmes.

    Another Yoruba adage says you first ensure that you dye the cloth that you want to dash a lazy fellow (ta ba ma da’so f’ole, a paa laro). It is not enough to start them up, there must also be follow-up workshops and enlightenment programmes to ensure they keep modernising their trades. Many of them who inherited trades from their parents and grandparents have continued to do the trades the same way their ancestors were doing them many decades ago. No trace or evidence of modernisation.

    In the case of the ‘kuli-kuli’ seller, I want to believe that she did not tell those who gave her the loan the truth and the whole truth about what she wanted to use it for. She must have lied to them because it is unlikely those ones would have given her the loan if she said she wanted to invest it in CBEX. In fact, they would have advised her not only to run but flee from it if she had disclosed such a thing to them! Yes, they are eager to give loans and get interest from it; but they are also concerned about the risk element on the loan.

    Now, the ‘kuli-kuli’ seller and the many others who have fallen victims of CBEX are gnashing their teeth and biting their lips in regret. A dry morsel eaten in peace is better than fat meat in a terrible situation (okele gbigbe pelu itelorun san ju ora agbo ninu hila, hilo).

    Many of the victims said they were told that government approved the business.

    Some said they joined because there are no jobs. None of the excuses is good enough.

    But all of them have one prayer in common: they want the government to help them by probing those involved in the scam and punishing them. They want government to help them retrieve their deposits. Those are the kinds of things that happen when businesses go awry. Those ‘investors’ who participated in the CBEX deposits early enough have since smiled to the banks. I am not sure they paid tax, not to talk of government being aware that they made such profit for doing nothing.

    But such is life. A dog knows the way back to its owner’s house after using its head to pack faeces.

    As I said earlier, I have no sympathy for people who fall victims of a thing like this. Even then, I think the Federal Government ought to have done better by stopping the scam before many Nigerians became victims. It is true an institution like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) warned against patronising CBEX. It is possible the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) also did. But, was that enough?

    Could the operators not have been rounded up the moment the government saw they were operating without approval?

    I am a novice here. I only want to be educated. Is ‘siddon’ look as we did with CBEX the global best practice in the circumstance?

    Even if that is, methinks the government still ought to have done a little more to prevent this ugly situation. If government can take it upon itself to prosecute people who attempted suicide, nothing stops it from helping to stop a business like CBEX before it became a messy affair. Some of its victims may contemplate suicide. Without necessarily saying the ‘kuli-kuli’ seller is likely to consider that option, how many ‘kuli-kuli’ would she sell to get one million naira? Seen why the government

    ought to have done better than the warnings that its agencies gave on this matter?

  • No alternative

    No alternative

    • Even if govt tarried before speaking up on naira-for-crude policy, it was still better late than never.

    Just as well that the Federal Government has directed the continuation of the naira-for-crude sales to Dangote refinery and other refineries in the country. This was a masterstroke for Nigeria’s motoring public and that was why many Nigerians commended its introduction in October last year.

    But, the way the immediate past group chief executive officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPCL), Mr Mele Kyari, refused to make public his position on the deal until the expiration of the initial six months duration on March 31, it was as if he forgot, and so soon, that Nigerians did not gladly embrace subsidy withdrawal. They only grudgingly did after President Bola Tinubu announced on May 29, 2023, that “subsidy is gone”.

    Fuel subsidy or its withdrawal has ever since the military era remained a contentious issue in the country. It has always been a source of friction between Nigerians and successive governments that tried to remove it. And this is understandable: there is hardly any country whose citizens love to pay more for goods and services, or even taxes.

    As a long-time participant in the oil sector, Mr Kyari ought to have known that that was one area that should not be treated with levity even by the government, because of its volatility.

    The naira-for crude deal became a major tool that helped modulate fuel prices in the country, with the pump price going south to about N865 per litre at some filling stations, down from over N1,000 some months back.

    Naturally, prices of some essential food items also responded to this stimulus. Things appeared to be looking up until the unholy silence on the deal shortly before March 31.

    Whereas, when the Federal Government began the naira-for-crude policy, NNPCL was expected to supply 385,000 barrels of crude oil to the 650,000 bdp Dangote refinery which was the acting pilot of the project, the company could not meet up with the supply for the better part of the initial six months. As a matter of fact, the period was characterised by consistent low supply, compelling Dangote refinery to look beyond our shores for crude oil.

    According to ‘Daily Trust’,  “A document reviewed late January indicated that for February 2025, the scheme has been allocated only four cargoes, and for March, just two cargoes totalling 950,000 barrels (1.9 million barrels in total for the month). This represents an allocation of 61,290 barrels per day – far below the 385,000 bpd target under the scheme.” At a point, the refinery imported 12 million barrels from the United States.

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    NNPCL’s response to the development was too casual: “Discussions are currently ongoing towards emplacing a new contract. Under this arrangement, NNPC has made over 48 million barrels of crude oil available to Dangote refinery since October 2024. In aggregate, NNPC has made over 84 million barrels of crude oil available to the refinery since its commencement of operations in 2023.” Until Kyari was fired on April 2, no one knew the outcome of the discussions that the company said were ongoing. Just as the company had to remind us that its supply was subject to availability of products. Does that ring any bell?

    Of course, no one would have expected NNPCL to sell what it does not have, whether to earn naira or dollars. But the, the body language and, in fact, actual actions of Mr Kyari did not seem to support the deal ab initio.

    Otherwise, the so-called negotiations on the deal would have progressed and indeed an agreement reached before the deadline.

    Apparently, the government had been taking cognisance of this foot-dragging on the part of Mr Kyari, hence, its decision to relieve him of his duties as soon as there was nothing to show that he was ready to continue to support the policy.

    Perhaps the government also allowed the deadline to pass before firing Kyari so that it won’t be accused of acting in bad faith. Many considerations come into play when taking a weighty decision like that, especially in a country where people worship ethnic cleavages. So, Kyari provided both the petrol and the match with which to roast him when by the March 31 deadline, he had not announced what next.

    But government cannot afford to wait forever because there was an overarching need to sustain the gain of the gradual decrease in the pump prices of petroleum products that the deal succeeded in bringing about, if for nothing else.

    There is no doubt that this was already being eroded with pump prices of fuel rising in the absence of any clearcut decision on what had happened to the policy.

    This should be expected, with Dangote refinery stopping sales of refined petroleum products in naira. Nigerians could no longer understand what was happening. Even some of those who were beginning to see the subsidy withdrawal in positive light began to wonder about the basis of our being hopeful of the coming of Dangote refinery and others, if they would not make fuel affordable for Nigerians.

    What is more? Other advantages envisaged from the naira-for-crude deal like sustenance of local refining, bolstering of energy security as well as reducing the pressure on foreign exchange so as to help stabilise the naira would also in a matter of time become elusive.

    This fear becomes the more real with the country still spending hugely on fuel import.

    AI Overview says “Since September 2024, Nigeria has spent a significant amount on fuel imports. Specifically, oil marketers imported 2.3 billion liters of petrol between September 11 and December 5, 2024. In addition to this, NNPCL spent over N126.5 billion to import 136.7 million liters of PMS on a

    single day (February 10, 2025).  Furthermore, the total petrol import expenditure for 2024 reached a record high of N15.42 trillion.”

    I am sure this must be shocking to many Nigerians. How could we have spent such humongous amounts in foreign exchange to import fuel when Dangote refinery that is capable of producing 650,000 barrels a day all alone, and other refineries are working? This is a lot of strain on the forex that the country sorely needs to boost the value of our currency. So, how could someone have been foot-dragging on a policy like naira-for-crude that has some potential to bail us out of the forex quagmire? Somebody help me; something is not adding up here.

    It is now I am understanding what a colleague told me last year when I thought we would be saving about a third of our forex once Dangote refinery and others take off and that would help the naira gain some muscle. He said it doesn’t work like that. I am beginning to see sense in what he told me. That is the legendary ‘Nigerian factor’ at work, (or is it at play?)

    All of these explained the big relief that Nigerians had when the committee in charge of the deal finally spoke on April 9. Hear the Technical Sub-Committee on the Crude and Refined Product Sales in Naira initiative that convened an update meeting on April 8, to review progress on it as well as address ongoing implementation matters: “The stakeholders reaffirmed the government’s continued commitment to the full implementation of this strategic initiative, as directed by the Federal Executive Council.

    “Thus, the Crude and Refined Product Sales in Naira initiative is not a temporary or time-bound intervention, but a key policy directive designed to support sustainable local refining, bolster energy security, and reduce reliance on foreign exchange in the domestic petroleum market.”

    Of course challenges could come up in the course of implementing the naira-for-crude policy or any policy for that matter, they ought to be addressed. Not to throw away the baby with the bath water.

    Mercifully, the committee acknowledged this fact: “As with any major policy shift, the committee acknowledges that implementation challenges may arise from time to time. However, such issues are being actively addressed through coordinated efforts among all parties.”

    Now that the government has said the policy would continue, the new NNPCL group chief executive officer, Bayo Ojulari, and his team, must manage it sustainably.

    For now, there does not seem an alternative to it. If we have Dangote refinery, Port Harcourt Refinery and we look forward to more joining them, our fuel import bills must drop significantly. If we must import, it should be to help modulate prices and prevent one or a few producers from hijacking the sector and Nigerians would be at their mercy. That is the main reason many experts and the generality of Nigerians are happy that the naira-for-crude initiative has come to stay.

    • At least until further notice.
  • Bye bye, Kyari

    Bye bye, Kyari

    Welcome Ojulari. But we are tired of stories on NNPCL. We now want testimonies.

    Was Mele Kyari, the immediate past group chief executive officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPCL) Ltd,. fired by President Bola Tinubu? Was he not? Well, since the government itself did not expressly say he was fired, some Nigerians have chosen not to say he was fired. I therefore stand on that existing protocol.

    But that is without prejudice to what I know, to wit: that, as a civil servant, the man ought to have left office by January 8, when he clocked 60, in line with civil service rules and regulations. But he did not. And we were not told that he had tenure extension. As a matter of fact, he ordinarily ought to have proceeded on pre-retirement leave some months before.

    I also know that it took an official release from the government to announce his replacement as well as reconstitution of the company’s board.

    Kyari, as far as I am concerned (and I guess I am speaking the minds of millions of Nigerians) had outlived his usefulness in that capacity a long time ago. That President Tinubu kept him for this long is part of the mystique of government.

    At this juncture, permit me to extensively quote my thoughts on the man, as published in my column of September 15, 2024, titled” At last, Dangote petrol”.

    Olawale Edun, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy in September last year announced Dangote Refinery’s coming on board:

    “From October 1, NNPC Ltd. will commence the supply of about 385kbpd of crude oil to the Dangote Refinery, to be paid for in Naira. In return, the Dangote Refinery will supply PMS and diesel of equivalent value to the domestic market, to be paid in Naira. “Diesel will be sold in Naira by the Dangote Refinery to any interested off-taker. PMS will only be sold to NNPC, NNPC will then sell to various marketers for now,” he said.

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    “This, however, is my worry. I am sure millions of Nigerians must also be wary of this role assigned this company whose incompetence should qualify it for a space in the ‘Guinness World Records’. A company that tells you good morning when in actual fact it should be good night. A company that says it has sufficient stock of petrol to last for ages even when fuel queues have blocked all major roads in the country! NNPCL! Ha!

    “How the company would be happy that a private concern succeeded in doing what it could not do in decades — ensure its refineries produce fuel for Nigerians, and then cooperate with that private concern — is yet to be seen. And, even if NNPCL must be involved, why under the same incompetent management? People who had spent billions of dollars turning around refineries that have refused to turn around? People who should ensure we refine petroleum products as a major crude producer but have found the job of importing the products more lucrative?

    “I said it several times in the Muhammadu Buhari era that most of his cabinet ministers got the original of whatever spell they used on their principal that made him retain them and their incompetence until the very end when they all fumbled and wobbled out of government.

    “If there is any such spell that Kyari, the group managing director/chief executive officer of NNPCL and his team are using on the present government, I destroy it with Holy Ghost fire!

    “For me, Kyari has outlived his usefulness in that capacity and ought to have left that seat as early as yesterday. The Bola Tinubu government should do Nigerians the noble service of asking Kyari and his team to go home and rest.”

    I am not done yet: “A friend of mine usually tells us that somebody who eats stockfish and does not pick his teeth would never pay his debt. Something must be wrong with our oil industry managers, as exemplified by Kyari and the others, who don’t feel ashamed in the midst of their peers at international oil fora, that they are importing refined petroleum products despite being a major crude producer. With men like these, who feel comfortable in such company, we cannot make progress in that vital sector.”

    Those were my thoughts on this same page six months ago. I stand by them, largely.

    But thank God, Kyari has now gone in peace. God has finally answered my prayer that Holy Ghost fire should annul whatever spell he had cast on the president (if any) because the president could have extended his tenure and some people would still have justified it.

    However, for whatever it is worth, we have to credit Kyari for revamping the moribund Port Harcourt Refinery. Many people may be saying it is not the entire facility that is working despite the success and the humongous cost that the country committed to the revamping. This is true. But then, that we are now lifting some products, including petrol, from the refinery years after it had been dormant should still count for something.

    Even my personal belief that the refinery would still not have worked if President Buhari had remained in power remains what it is in spite of available ‘circumstantial evidence’ — mere conjecture! The fact on ground as at today is that the refinery has been in production in the last four months. That is some progress and kudos to Kyari for that.

    But, what I am saying is that given Kyari’s length of service in the industry, he ought to have understood the system, the global nature of the sector and how to truly reposition NNPCL as a force to reckon with in the comity of oil-producing countries.

    Energy Reforms Advocates (ERA), an energy advocacy group, in its reaction to Kyari’s exit commended President Tinubu’s decision. It described it as a courageous step toward reforming Nigeria’s oil sector and tackling entrenched corruption.

    A statement by ERA’s president Abdulkadri Isah, on Wednesday, barely a few hours after the announcement of Kyari’s exit said “The probe into fake refinery projects must be swift and thorough. Nigerians deserve to know how billions of dollars were allocated to non-existent or uncompleted projects while the country continued to rely on fuel imports,” he stated.

     But, true, beyond commending the president over Kyari’s exit, there is a need to probe his tenure. As a matter of fact, people had been calling for this long before now. Indeed, such probe should be a routine in the company, and especially when a chief executive is leaving. The kind of opacity that enveloped NNPCL’s accounts during Kyari’s tenure justifies the calls for probe. NNPCL handles a lot of money, the bulk of which was believed to have escaped scrutiny in the Kyari years.

    We also have turn-around maintenance projects that were handled under his watch which did not yield results. That should however be a project for the relevant government agencies.

    For me, the Bayo Ojulari-led NNPCL already has its job cut out for it. One of its immediate concerns should be how to resume the naira-for-crude arrangement that expired last month-end and which Kyari did not seem keen on renewing. In spite of its imperfections, naira-for-crude was partly successful in reducing fuel prices. And, to that extent, it was rekindling the people’s hope that subsidy withdrawal was truly the way to go. This is not the kind of policy to stop abruptly, especially given where we are coming from. If government removed subsidy, it should not simultaneously stop what seems a soothing balm of hope to it.

    Discerning Nigerians must have known, as I argued in my September 15, 2024 piece that Kyari cannot understand local refining of crude because, for the most part of his time in NNPC, all they knew was the template of importation of petroleum products. As a matter of fact, some people would argue that Kyari would never have wished for stoppage of fuel importation, for reasons they did not seem to be able to substantiate. But what is also incontestable is the fact that Kyari’s body language seemed to support the belief that he is more comfy with importation. Hence, he would not be in a hurry to renew the naira-for-crude deal.

    I stumbled on the humongous amounts that this country still spent importing fuel even after Dangote Refinery and Port Harcourt Refinery as well as others have started or resumed production and I couldn’t but keep asking why things hardly work to plan in this country.

    This was not what we bargained for before these refineries took off.

    I know the Muhammadu Buhari administration had sold some of our crude upfront and we therefore do not have enough for the local refineries to meet our demand. I know we may have to import fuel to engender competition, especially to prevent one or two major players from hijacking the market and all that. But the figure of the forex we coughed up within so short a period, and despite the availability of more functional refineries is staggering. It is unfortunate I couldn’t just lay my hands on it as at the time of concluding this piece, otherwise, we would weep for the country where things we hope to give us joy usually end up delivering melancholy.

    Ojulari and his team should quickly look into whatever was wrong with the naira-for-crude deal, with a view to resuming it. Reforms are embarked upon for the ultimate benefit of people, not for dead bodies.

    Enough on Kyari.

    In terms of qualifications, Ojulari fits the bill. In terms of experience and exposure, he appears spot-on. But sometimes these alone are not enough. I heard him saying at the handing over ceremony something like he would continue where his predecessor stopped. I hope that was mere political statement as he also quickly added that he looked forward to taking the company to the next level. They are not exactly the same thing o.

    Taking NNPCL to the next level is not just the government ‘s expectation from him and his team, it is also what Nigerians expect.

    We expect to see an NNPCL that would aspire and indeed take steps to do what its successful contemporaries are doing all over the world, that are fetching their owners cool money for developmental purposes. We look forward to seeing a truly improved and credible NNPCL that would tell us it is noon and we don’t have to bother to confirm. We want an NNPCL that its account record would be open to scrutiny.

    We are tired of stories concerning NNPCL. Ojulari, we now want testimonies.

    I congratulate and welcome you to the hot seat that you are now privileged to sit on. It is a seat many would fall over themselves to sit on, despite its hotness. So, you are lucky to be sitting on it today. Heard of good problem? Yours is one.

    Once again, congratulations. But remember: “oju la ri, ore o de ‘nu o.  

  • Still on emergency

    Still on emergency

    With both parties likely to return within six months, I can’t think of a less painful alternative

    It is now over two weeks since President Bola Tinubu declared state of emergency in Rivers State. Expectedly, virtually everybody with something to say must have spoken, and those of us now commenting on it have more than enough materials for research, including comments from armchair critics, motor park analysts and pepper-soup joints commentators.

    President Tinubu declared the emergency on March 18 and it was ratified by the National Assembly the next day.

    Coming at a time that everybody was looking in the direction of Governor Siminalayi Fubara’s impeachment, the emergency was a master stroke. We all knew how heated the polity was in the state even after last month’s Supreme Court judgment affirming the Martins Amaewhule-led house of assembly as the authentic legislators in the state. The governor had been working with only four legislators, claiming that since the Amaewhule-led faction had decamped from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), they had, ipso facto, lost their seats in the assembly. The apex court ruled otherwise and that threw spanners in virtually every action the governor had taken with the concurrence of the four legislators. It also stopped disbursement of funds to the state until it was ready to deal with the legislators recognised by the apex court.

    I had warned in my first piece on the crisis on March 9, titled ‘Fubara’s humble pie’, that those who start wars can only know the beginning; nobody can tell its end; so the political gladiators had to be careful.

    I doubt if any of them envisaged where they have all landed now. The governor had abused his powers severally while the dispute lasted and the legislators felt now that they had been vindicated by the Supreme Court judgment, they too should demand their pound of flesh, probably more, from their oppressor-in-chief.

    The legislators were looking in the direction of using their powers to impeach the governor and everything seemed primed for that when suddenly, the president pulled the rug off the feet of both parties. Now, they have to go and rest for six months in the first instance, in line with the provision of the emergency.

    I hate scheming but I doff my hat for whoever came up with the emergency as panacea to cool down the polity in the state. The alternative would have been bloody.

    Of course, it was expected that there would be divergent opinions on this, but, in all honesty, I don’t know if there is a better alternative in the circumstance.

    To be fair, there are those who genuinely feel concerned that we should be wary of giving the president too much powers in addition to the one he has because he is a human being. This concern is apt. If anything, we always have to be guided by the wise saying that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

    However, I have come to see that many of those criticising the emergency are doing so either for the sake of being seen to be politically correct, or for ulterior motives. We should not lose sight of the fact that there were some people waiting in the wings for the impeachment processes to gather steam or get concluded (if it would ever be, realising that that, in the first place, was one of the causes of rancour between the governor and the legislators).

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    Some people profit from the kind of anarchy that would have attended the impeachment or even its mere kick-off.

    So far, none of the critics of the emergency has advanced any convincing alternative beyond the emotive argument of an elected president ‘removing’ an equally elected governor. Yet, the presidency has made it clear that both the executive and the legislature are only on suspension. Second, with the approval of the state of emergency by the National Assembly, it is no longer a situation of an elected president asking an elected governor to ‘go away’.

    No doubt, what was playing out in Rivers was potentially dangerous, not only for the state but the country at large, and no government worth its salt would wait and watch until the crisis snowballed out of control. Let’s remember that security of lives and property is the first duty of any government.

    Many of those now crying foul over the emergency would have ended up blaming the Federal Government if it had allowed the crisis to degenerate beyond the level it was before the proclamation of emergency. This is evident, especially in a country where we politicise virtually everything. The opposition is forever waiting in the wings for the government to make mistake so they can have job to do. As far as the opposition is concerned, whatever the government did right must have been a mistake (to paraphrase a colleague).

    Apparently the government was guided by this aspect of our national life, hence its decision to do what seemed to it to be the needful on the Rivers State crisis, knowing that head or tail, it would be criticised.

    One way of knowing that many of those criticising the government now are doing so for purely personal or political reasons is to ask what they did when Governor Fubara was serially trampling upon the law. Was mum not the word from them when the governor destroyed the state house of assembly building for the sole purpose of averting impeachment, which is the legitimate prerogative of the state assembly? How many of them cautioned him that under no circumstance could he have been doing lawful business with only four out of 31 members of the state assembly? How could someone in all rational sense of it say a state budget running into billions of naira could be approved by that number of legislators? Even if people were deceiving Fubara and the dance-on-we are solidly-behind-you orchestra was singing his praise while committing those illegalities, he ought to have known that those actions were as good as building on shifting ground. You cannot build something on nothing. Fubara built something on nothing; hence, first, the Supreme Court judgment that put an end to those shenanigans, and then the state of emergency that came to ensure that the apex court judgment did not become a nullity; that it be given meaning so that governors generally can know the limits of their ’emperorship’. 

    True, there is an urgent need to put an end to gubernatorial rascality in the country. Fubara exhibited the tendencies of many governors, past or present. The tell-tale signs are all over the place. He was travelling down the lane of impunity at more than the speed of light. He needed to be stopped before other governors saw him as a model. With only five governors travelling along that trajectory, it is only a matter of time for Nigeria to become a huge Banana Republic.

    A governor who believed and indeed said that the legislature exists at his pleasure in a democratic setting really should not be there. He should first go for tutorials on the concept of separation of powers.

    A governor who pulled down the building of his state house of assembly ostensibly to stave of impeachment is like someone who conjured rain to fall only to start complaining about the accompanying thunderstorm. He may not have bargained for the thunderstorm but that is part of the package that could accompany rain.

    With Fubara’s experience, governors would start thinking twice before destroying state assembly buildings for the simple reason that they want to deny the legislators the right of impeaching them. Maybe Fubara would not have travelled that route if those who did it before him had been made to face the consequences. Such actions are condemnable. It is just that ours is a country where citizens are too casual about issues of governance, especially at the local and state government levels, whereas these are the closest tiers of government with direct bearing to their daily lives, and whose activities should therefore be of utmost concern to them.

     But everybody is concentrating on the centre. That is one of the reasons why many governors have become emperors and can wake up from the wrong side of the bed and commit blue murder and go scot-tree.

    So, is there no word for Nyesom Wike, Fubara’s predecessor and former godfather, now Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), in all of these?

    I have never been a politician, so I may not know how it feels for a successor that someone installed to want to be a man only after he had stooped to conquer, or to get power. But then, I know Wike and Fubara’s case is not the first and it would not be the last.

    People will tell you it is the failure or refusal of Fubara to do Wike’s bidding that caused their fight. At least, this is the summary of what is in the public domain, even if it might be pregnant with other meanings and insinuations.

    So, that has been why a whole state had to be on auto pilot, with the people’s fate hanging in the air?

    It may be true that Fubara practically snubbed presidential intervention on the matter but then the FCT minister too did not help matters with his caustic and inflammatory utterances.

    And, as if to confirm this, even as the minister is still chewing the Rivers crisis in his mouth, one of his aides was only a few days ago reported to have said that Wike would yet again abort Abubakar Atiku’s presidential ambition come 2027! Haba! Honourable minister, are you ‘Olodumare’ (God)? If you are not, why talking like Him?

    Back to Fubara because this is essentially about him. How could he have withheld the state legislators’ pay for over a year and expect that mere writing to inform them of his intention to present the budget or transact business with them would do? We are talking of human beings with flesh and blood here, not inanimate objects. And, to think that this was not an act of grace or penitence, but something done under compulsion!

    The governor missed the point big time, and, for me, it merely tells that he was yet to learn the appropriate lessons that he could not ride roughshod over the state legislature.

    All said, it is hoped that the six months suspension on both the executive and legislative arms of government in Rivers would be sufficient to let both sides decide whether they still want to remain relevant in the state’s political affairs or they want to fight to the finish.

    But the onus rests more on Fubara to come down from his high horse because he must have known the difference between being a sitting governor and a governor serving a six-month suspension term, even if in the comfort of his home.

    In Nigeria, ‘governor na enjoyment’. Something several shades sweeter than the ‘mudun mudun’ that the late Governor Abiola Ajimobi talked about.

  • Pious than the Saudis

    Pious than the Saudis

    What point do the four governors who have declared Ramadan holiday want to prove or achieve?

    Ibo la tun wa ja si yi’ literally means where do we find ourselves again? This is a Yoruba expression of shock or surprise at an occurrence or an outcome; that has been popularised on WhatsApp.

    This was the question I asked no one in particular when news broke about two weeks ago that four states, Bauchi, Katsina, Kebbi and Kano, have declared holiday in their public schools to ease the pains of the Ramadan fast on their students.

    The question of how did we get to the point that some state governments would declare Ramadan holiday is both

    poignant and scary. Our country is not yet there. Even countries that are already there are not shutting down their schools simply on account of observing Ramadan.

    None of the excuses given by the state governments for shutting down the schools holds water, at least given the experiences in Muslim countries that are supposedly holier than Nigeria. Muslims there are fasting without shutting down schools.

    It is easy to merely shrug off the decision of the four governors as their individual or collective cup of tea. That governors are at liberty to run their states however they like. But it is not that simple, especially in our kind of country where we must necessarily cross each others’ path in our quest to eke a living or even socialise.

    This is why I, like millions of other Nigerians who have seen the light and importance of Western education are naturally worried. We know we would be affected by some of these choices made or not made now or sometime in the future. Then, we would be told that, as Nigerians, there is freedom for all to move freely and live in any part of the country; a not-too-bad idea if, and only if we are on the same page on many issues. But how can we be on the same page in a country where people who need more than 24 hours a day to catch up with others in education are declaring frivolous holidays in addition to the numerous holidays attached to the school calendar?

    The Boko Haram that we have been fighting since 2009 is a product of this kind of mindset, but we did not seem to see it as a potential time-bomb. For several decades, we chose to see it as a mere religious or cultural matter, until it blew in our faces. Today, the entire country is pumping good trillions of Naira that could otherwise have been spent on more productive things into fighting it.

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     There is a Yoruba proverb that says we should be concerned when our neighbour is eating a particular insect because when he cannot sleep as a result, we too wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly. This is what is happening in these states and we seem to be glossing over it. Given the potential of the four governors’ decision to wreak havoc, we should still be talking about it to see if we can make it the first and last time such a thing would ever happen in those states or elsewhere. Boko Haram and banditry have proved to us enough that the repercussions would not be borne by those states alone when ‘jungle matures’, to borrow the expression of one of our embattled governors. We are living in an interdependent world in which where ‘A’s freedom stops, ‘B’s begins.

    It is policies like this that make true federalism a sine qua non in our kind of country. Inasmuch as states are largely at liberty to pursue policies and programmes that they think are best for their citizens, they must also totally bear the consequences, positive or negative, of those decisions.

    I am sure there won’t be any thought of governors declaring Ramadan holiday if governors were responsible for funding their governments because the first thing that would come into the governors’ minds is, who pays for the man-hours that would be lost to such frivolous holidays? People in the private sector who know they won’t eat if they don’t work can better appreciate the argument here. Those who only wear flowing ‘babariga’ to Abuja every month-end to collect the ready-made handouts may not understand.

    This year, we are somewhat lucky in that both Ramadan and Lent (the Christians 40 days annual fasting in many churches worldwide) are being observed simultaneously. Ramadan started in the evening of February 28 while Lent started on March 5.

    The four states that declared shutdown of their schools can only imagine how ridiculous and unserious the country would have looked in the international community if virtually all schools in the country are shut down so that Nigerians — Christians and Muslims — can fast stress-free! That would have been another low for a country that needs to grab every minute as if it is its last on the development super highway.

    Anyway, may be those who have declared the holiday now would even have wanted us to celebrate the simultaneous observance of the fasting as a blessing in disguise then because it would have saved about 10 days of holiday for the country’s educational system!

    What I am saying is that we would be talking of closing down the schools for a minimum of 55 days in the years that the fasting do not overlap; that is at least 22 days for Ramadan and 33 days for Lent, respectively. If you add these to the myriad other holidays for schools alone – first term, second term and the long third term; first and second semester breaks, etc., not to talk of numerous other annual holidays declared by both the federal and state governments, then how many months do students have to be in school in a country with an acclaimed world record of about 18 million out-of-school children, with many in these states that are declaring holiday for fasting?

    To me, this holiday is just about the most recent retrogressive step that any northern governor would take concerning education in recent times. And, like such steps in the past, it is only a matter of time for it to backfire. Indeed, it is another way of taking education to the back seat, instead of its rightful place as the bedrock of progress and civilisation.

    I stumbled on a report on a repentant Boko Haram terrorist, Fatima Musa, as I was putting this piece together. It is very instructive. Fatima told a community gathering organised by the Allamin Foundation for Peace and Development that “We were deceived in our youth through a misinterpretation of religion, only to later realise that we had gone down the wrong path.

    “I regret tearing up my NCE certificate when I foolishly embraced the distorted belief that Western education was Haram (forbidden),” Fatima said.

    But something must be wrong somewhere: people say Western education is sinful; yet all the tools of terror that they bring to bear in their nefarious activities are products of the same Western education, from bombs to motorcycles, to the helicopters that drop food and ammunition for them in.the forests?

    Be that as it may, fasting is all about denial; it is not a tea party or sallah. Almighty Allah who created people in the north knew about the weather in the place. He knew there would be a preponderance of Muslims there who would want to fast during Ramadan. As a matter of fact, have people in those states not been fasting and going to school simultaneously all these generations? What scientific or empirical evidence do the governors have to show that things are different now and the Ramadan holiday is the solution?

    This was a policy they did without a thought for other stakeholders and they are saying their decision considered the greatest good for the greatest majority. Nigeria’s elites have a way of bastardising virtually everything. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill who pronounced that theory obviously did not mean it the way the four governors have interpreted it.

    We know that our governors are powerful but they should be considerate in exercising their powers. The four governors that initiated this policy cannot be more pious than the owners of Islam, the Saudis. Mecca, in modern-day Saudi Arabia is considered the home of Islam. It is from this city that the religion spread. Yet, in Saudi, hot as it usually is, they have not declared Ramadan holiday in schools. What they have done is to adapt schedules, shortening hours or offering flexibility, to balance education with religious practice. If that country is developed today, one of the reasons is because it has taken education seriously. It is not

    about bigotry as some of our elite Muslims are won’t to do.

    Why would some governors here try to be more pious than the owners of Islam? Yet, it is not necessarily for Allah. This reminds me of a rather expensive joke cracked by one of our former presidents. Not too long after Sharia was introduced in parts of the north, the former leader saw a northern governor (I can’t remember whether at an airport or an event), and he expressed shock that the governor still had his two hands intact. The former president was referring indirectly to that governor’s legendary propensity for corruption! He was lost as to why Sharia had not taken its toll on the governor’s hands the way it had on a talakawa (Jangedi) that was amputated for stealing a cow!

    The northern religious and political elites must wade into this matter before the cankerworm becomes contagious and other states would see it as a model worthy of emulation. They need to impress it on the respective governors:

    Bala Mohammed (Bauchi), Dikko Radda (Katsina), Nasir Idris (Kebbi) and Abba Yusuf (Kano) that the holiday is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good.

  • Fubara’s humble pie

    Fubara’s humble pie

    • The governor had opportunities for fence-mending but frittered them

    How Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State thought he could have got away with his serial disregard for due process and rule of law beggars belief. True, many of our governors are emperors. They want to control virtually everything: from local governments to state assemblies, etc. And they can go to any length just to achieve those ignoble objectives.

    The crisis in Rivers began when in December 2023, Gov. Fubara stopped working with 27 lawmakers, including Martins Amaewhule, following an alleged defection from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC). The governor is PDP and a protege of the former governor of the state, Nyesom Wike, now Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

    But the scales soon fell off the eyes of the hitherto romantic pair of lovers and, like many instances of other political godfathers and their godsons, both men have since gone their separate ways.

    That is the main cause of the political

    brouhaha in Rivers State.

    Both Wike and Fubara are now in the battle of their lives for the control of the state’s jugular.  With neither set to retrace his steps, the situation is like that of the bird that perches on a tree; neither the bird nor the tree is at rest.

    But Fubara would seem to have got to his wits end, with the Supreme Court judgment delivered on February 28. I guess this was the last straw that broke the Fubara government’s back, as the apex court upheld an earlier judgment barring the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from releasing the state’s monthly allocation to the state government until it has seen the need to present the state budget in accordance with constitutional stipulations.

    The governor had earlier derecognised

    27 of the state assembly members led by Amaewhule, and had been dealing with only four members, including in the passage of the state budget.

    In fairness to Fubara, he is not the first governor to do this. Some governors had travelled the same route before and many others may be eyeing it if the appropriate lessons are not taught.

    Fubara’s mistake, however, was that he did not appreciate the fact that all circumstances and situations might only be similar, they may not exactly be the same.

    Fubara did not seem to appreciate the fact that Wike is a solid rock behind the Amaewhule-led Rivers State House of Assembly. And he is today politically relevant if only by virtue of his position as FCT Minister.

    So, it is not like that of Edo State under

    former Governor Godwin Obaseki, for instance, where Obaseki successfully muzzled the state house of assembly and got away with it.

    Politics apart, any right-thinking person would have known that Gov Fubara would soon get to a brick wall in the path he chose to tread.

    Our 1999 Constitution may not be a perfect document; no document or constitution is. But, as in all democracies, the constitution recognises the importance of the principle of separation of powers. But many of our governors don’t want to have anything to do with that.

     It is Fubara’s immaturity and naivety that his opponents continued to exploit by taking actions that continually made him sink deeper and deeper into gubernatorial impunity that has ended up putting him in his present cul-de-sac.

    Yet, it is not that the governor did not have options. He could have tried to break the ranks of the legislators. Or, could it be that Wike’s grip on his own was too much for him to tackle? Or, did Fubara think coming down from his high horse to the level of the legislators was demeaning for him as the executive governor of Rivers State?

    Whatever it is, the backbone of the majority legislators, that is Wike, may be politically correct today and so could be winning. The tide may turn tomorrow and God may turn what is a masterstroke of political correctness or sagacity today to the height of foolishness.

    But until then, one lesson from this Rivers episode is that it is not in all cases that governors can pocket the state legislators. Where there is unanimity of purpose and determination, the legislators can really assert their independence, especially when, like the whirligig, they have something underneath the water that is beating the drum for them. 

    The Rivers gladiators had the advantage of presidential intervention. But they did not take full advantage of it.

    Just as they also had other options that could have given them an amicable settlement that would have been a win-win for all. Again, they ignored that path. At this stage, we cannot say there is no victor, no vanquished in the matter unless we want to deceive ourselves. There is a victor; there is a vanquished, and all those involved know. Even those of us watching developments from the sidelines know. Egos have been bruised.

    There is a saying in Yoruba land that we cannot return from court and still be friends. This could be true.

    But then, there is still hope only if the gladiators decide to sheath their swords. The fact is; there is a job to do. Governance has suffered in the state since the beginning of the crisis, forget the governor’s braggadocio about his programmes and projects not being affected by the crisis.

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    A governor having impeachment axe dangling on his head cannot truly say all is well.

    But this is where Amaewhule and his colleagues must tread softly. Fubara can only be pretending not to be perturbed. Nigerian governors know the privileges they get in office, so Fubara won’t just go down if he is impeached. He would fight back. But since nothing guarantees that he too would win if things degenerate, he has to eat his humble pie. He should stop issuing threats. The fact is; he doesn’t have what it takes to dislodge Amaewhule & Co. So, he must find a way to reach an amicable settlement with them. Just as the majority legislators too must realise that they can only know the beginning of a crisis; they may not know how it would pan out. The deadline they are giving the governor to present the budget before them, for instance, seems unrealistic to me. There should be room to accommodate likely changes in the light of the new political reality. The point I am making is that whatever deadlines they are giving must have human face and should not be the product of the animosity between the two parties.

    I can understand how they feel but they must show they have the maturity that their opponents seem to lack.

     And if there are still elders in Rivers State, this is a time for them to stand to be counted. The head of a baby that is on his mother’s back can never be bent in a place where there are true elders.

    There is need to douse the tension in the state.

  • NAF personnel’s attack on Ikeja Electric

    NAF personnel’s attack on Ikeja Electric

    Nothing under the sun can justify the assault on workers at the headquarters of Ikeja Electric (IE) in Ikeja, Lagos, on Thursday, by some personnel of the Nigerian Air Force (NAF). Absolutely nothing.

    The Sam Ethnan Air Force Base in Ikeja was said to have been disconnected by IE on account of about N4 billion accumulated debt. So, the base has been without light for over 10 days.

    The NAF personnel not only went on the rampage at the company’s premises, destroying vital equipment, beating up some members of the staff and forcing

    some of them to lie down, etc., they also reportedly left with some personal belongings of their victims.

    These are despicable conducts, particularly coming from NAF personnel, an arm of the military that is reputed for its discipline and finesse.

    Of course some Nigerians have said it served IE right. That the experience was the comeuppance for some of the company’s disregard for its customers. I don’t think so. If only for the simple fact that anyone, just anyone, including Ikeja Electric visitors and customers could have been victims because the NAF personnel did not differentiate between the workers and others.

    Incidentally, I was at the Egbeda office of the company when I heard of the incident on Thursday. Meaning if that was where the incident took place, I could also have been a victim.

    I cannot remember when last I visited that place. As a matter of fact, I dread going to such places. But, it was one of the things I also dread most that took me there on Thursday: estimated billing. I had been at peace with IE ever since I got prepaid meter some years back, but the meter was retrieved in October, last year, when it became faulty and in just four months, I am already having issues over estimated billing.

    But my experience at the Egbeda office is an admixture of both the good and the ugly. As a matter of fact, I had to tell two of the workers that attended to me that their faces were not customer-friendly. Yet, I was impressed by the conduct of two other workers in the place. Fair enough. That is what obtains in several establishments.

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    If the NAF personnel had complained over estimated billing and taken to the appropriate channels for redress, I might have been sympathetic to their cause. But to owe a debt of about N4 billion (I have not seen anywhere this has been contested by the Air Force), and still expect to have light beats one’s imagination. I guess some of us having issues with estimated billings are the ones defraying some of the debts owed by institutions like NAF, otherwise IE would have closed shop.

    The Federal Government must quickly wade into not just this matter but other military installations in the country and work out a sustainable arrangement on how the institutions would be paying for their essential services.

    But the soldiers need to be educated that power sector is now privately owned, therefore they need to pay for services rendered. As government ‘pikin’, they could afford not to pay for services rendered by their ‘father’s’ agencies before privatisation. Not anymore.

    Meanwhile, who picks the bills of those injured during the attack? Who pays for the damaged equipment? NAF must ensure those involved in the attack are identified and punished.

    The optics of Thursday’s incident at Ikeja Electric headquarters is bad for foreign investment; it is equally bad for democracy.

    We should be done with the era of  ‘Unknown Soldier’ for good.