The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

Seek ye first the kingdom of politics

With foreign exchange earnings from future fuel sales mortgaged by Buhari’s government; with government spending close to 95% of our earnings to service our $40b debt, with the alleged mismanagement of close to 50% of N23trillion that CBN printed for government through ‘ways and means’, with Emefiele the immediate past CBN governor doing father Christmas with the nation’s limited forex earnings and with Chukwuma Soludo’s ill-advised mega banks declaring profit made from forex round tripping in trillions while the nation’s economy remains prostrate, there is every temptation to assume our problem is economics.

The truth of the matter however, is that our crisis of nation-building has nothing to do with economics but everything to do with politics. Like corruption, poverty, terrorism/ banditry and economic crisis arising from fuel subsidy scam and foreign currency speculators, are all but symptoms of our failure to first seek the kingdom of politics, as advised by the great Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.

By embarking on economic crusade, President Tinubu like his predecessors is engaged in a wild goose chase. It is however hoped the response to his government’s efforts beginning with the removal of fuel subsidy scam responsible for $800m monthly haemorrhage by ethnic irredentists who in an effort to foreclose distributive justice unleashed immigrant Fulani terrorists on their fellow compatriots and economic saboteurs responsible for flooding Nigeria with foreign manufactured substandard goods, and killer drugs in order to drive local manufacturers out of market, will convince him he is putting the cart before the horse. Politics and professional politicians are the greatest threat to the nation.

Unfortunately, the Fulani and the Igbo, both political rivals that regard every part of Nigeria as “a no man’s land’ have held the nation to ransom since the 1957 London Independence Constitutional conference when they first betrayed the country because the former wanted a Nigerian state that would be home to stateless Fulani from all over West Africa, while the latter, a landlocked group with hostile environment wanted their members to operate freely from any part of Nigeria without challenge of citizenship.

After the 1957 betrayal, fortune-seeking Igbo political elite and their power-seeking Fulani also betrayed the nation in 1962 when they illegally interfered in the affairs of the West against the letter and the spirit of the independence constitution.

Their dispute over the 1962/63 census outcome led to the 1964 constitutional crisis which snowballed to January 1966 mindless assassination of northern military and political leaders and the July 1966 Hausa Fulani vengeance killings of Igbo military officers. In 1967, the two rivals plunged the country into a three years civil war only to regroup between 1979 and 1983 to form the NPN/NPP coalition which again collapsed over sharing of spoils of office. They jointly imposed Obasanjo on Nigeria in 1999 and for 16 years behaved like an army of occupation by stealing the country blind.

Both the Fulani suitors and their Igbo ever alluring willing brides are opportunists ever ready to put their personal interest before that of Nigeria. At the Lancaster House Conference, while the North wanted a loose federation and the East, a unitary system, their compromise over non-creation of states for minorities paved the way for coalition of NPC and NCNC. Ahmadu Bello was reported by the Sunday Express of December 20, 1959 at page 2 as saying “I shall divide Nigeria into two and hand them over to my lieutenants just as Dan Fodio divided the conquered north among his two sons.” After the election, Balewa got the Holy Quran as Sardauna’s lieutenant in the north and Zik, a horse as the one that held sway for the Sardauna in the south.

Buhari with the help of Yoruba took over in 2015. For him and those hiding under his government to implement an ethnic agenda, it was a winner takes all. While armed Fulani immigrants from other parts of West Africa were unleashed on the reserved forests notably in the middle belt and southwest regions by Buhari’s loyal gatekeepers headed by Abubakar Malami, the Attorney General and Minister of justice, the Igbo indirectly supported IPOB as balance of terror in their five states of the east while maintaining their control of urban centres across the nation.

The mainstream Yoruba political tendency, led by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, with the support of some 11 northern governors, for the first time in the nation’s history, won the presidential election in May 2023. If, however, there is anything that has drawn closer the two rivals for the soul of the country since the 2023 presidential election won round and square by Tinubu and confirmed by sound pronouncement of the highest court in the land, it is their opposition to Tinubu’s presidency.

While Igbo political leaders have continued to insist Obi who came a distant third was the winner just to delegitimize Tinubu’s presidency, in less than seven months NLC tele-guided by Obi’s Labour Party (apology to Olumide Apata) and infiltrated by the “obidients” who have openly called for military take-over, have under Joe Ajaero who was exposed by events in his native Imo State to be openly partisan, has embarked on four major strikes. On their path, ethnic irredentists who but for the revolt of 11 northern governors opposed Tinubu’s candidacy are blaming the impoverishment of their compatriots they have always treated as mere tools for winning elections on Tinubu’s eight months administration.

President Tinubu must be reminded that our problem is politics and that the way forward after almost 80 years in the wilderness is to retrace our way back to where the rain started to beat us.

First, the reasons that led to the development of federalism as an innovative approach to governance at specific moments in history has been well articulated. From the experiences of other multi-ethnic nations, we now know that the federal arrangement as a coherent set of mechanisms, procedures and institutions are best at managing key public policy issues in contemporary democracies.

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We also now know that those shouting “banish tribes” while riding to power on the backs of tribesmen are playing the ostrich since tribes remain the building block for modern society. Europe, after two devastating tribal wars ‘formally recognized groups’ identities as legitimate and autonomous participants in the political process.’ In Spain, we have the Basque, Galician, Castilian and Catalan. British 25 tribes coalesce into Northern Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland. Elsewhere in the world, Japan, China, and India celebrate their various tribes.

This was why the British vision for Nigeria, according to Oliver Stanley in 1920, was a “national self-government that secures to each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality, its own chosen form of government, which had been evolved for it by the wisdom and accumulated experiences of generation of its forbearers.”

In line with this British vision, regionalism was put in place by Richards 1947 constitution while the 1954 Lyttleton ensured each tribe or group of tribes had powers over law and order, education, economic development etc. while Macpherson 1957 constitution consolidated everything.

If Nigerians who now know that nationalism is not often driven by altruism have to choose between the colonial masters, our military adventurers and their new breed politicians, Nigeria will choose in reverse order. But President Tinubu has an historic opportunity to change the narrative.

February 29, 2024
A nation held down by criminals

President Goodluck Jonathan in his independent message to Nigerians on the occasion of the nation’s 51st independence anniversary had on behalf of Nigerians thanked our founding fathers who “brought joy and hope to the hearts of our people after six decades of colonial rule by working together to restore dignity and honour to a multicultural and multilingual nation of diverse people with more than 250 distinct languages and ethnic groups”. This was achieved in spite of the initial lack of consensus on the national question with Nnamdi Azikiwe and his group canvassing for unitary system, Obafemi Awolowo and his Yoruba group insisting on federalism while Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who believed “Nigerian unity is a British invention” and Ahmadu Bello who expressed grief over “the mistake of 1914” settled for confederacy. But at the end, realizing their responsibility to those that look up to them for direction, these illustrious Nigerian pathfinders settled for a federal arrangement that allowed groups to develop at their own pace without interference from federating members.

Then came in January 1966, a bunch of criminals who like those “the gods want to destroy, they first made mad”, visited violence on themselves killing their best officers and their wives on their beds before descending on politicians – their benefactors who besides sending them for military training abroad set up military institutions for them at home. Forgetting that being the custodian of the nation’s constitution was a responsibility, they defied the constitutional provisions, imposed themselves as rulers and in a moment of madness turned a multicultural and multi-ethnic state into a unitary state. Six months later, a more vicious criminal group embarked on vengeance killing that eventually led to 33 months of civil war.

Most of those that have ruled our nation ever since have always behaved like outlaws. But General Ibrahim Babangida, the evil genius, who after a palace coup against his boss, hilariously called himself president stood out as the one that carried reign of brigandage to other institutions of society notably, the judiciary, the economy, the intellectual and the press on whose back he rode to power. It was Babangida’s Aso rock professor who fraudulently claimed political parties could be decreed. And it was they that undermined the nation’s political socialization process by assuring him he could ban old political parties which was like cutting the umbilical cord between a mother and his baby.

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His economic wizards include Olu Falae and Kalu Idika Kalu who in spite of Nigerians’ round rejection of IMF loan and its conditionalities insisted there was no “alternative to Structural Adjustment Programme”, (SAP) which opened our nation to imported goods from any part of the world.

Driven by greed, unpatriotic Nigerians who secured import licences decided to flood the country with substandard goods and fake drugs that killed local manufacturing companies including, electronics, car accessories, textile, ceramics, pharmaceuticals etc. While thousands of Nigerians lost their jobs, criminals were buying land at N1billion per plot in Banana Island and other choice locations in Nigeria.

For the nation, it was double jeopardy. Under Babangida’s dubious commercialization policies, the federal military government divested government holdings in many otherwise thriving government enterprises. State Military Administrators were equally directed to sell off state-owned public enterprises. Thus, Ikeja Cocoa Industry (CIL) owned by the ODUA Group was sold by Yoruba military administrators for an amount less than the cost of land on which the thriving industry with all its equipment was built.

New set of criminals emerged in 1999 in form of military-baked ‘new breed’ politicians that followed in the footsteps of their creator who like military invaders, often loot conquered territories. It therefore did not come as a surprise that about 17 of 22 governors elected under PDP and ANPP between 1999 and 2007 were dragged to court by EFCC for financial malfeasance against the states they governed. National Assembly probe of Obasanjo’s ill-implemented privatization policy also confirmed Nigeria’s total investment of about $100b put together between 1959 and 1988 was sold to PDP stalwarts and their cronies for a paltry $1.5b.

Babangida’s economic wizards found parallel in Obasanjo’s Chukwuma Soludo and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The banking crisis had its origins in the Soludo’s forced consolidation of the sector in 2005-2006. Like Olu Falae and Kalu Idika Kalu, Soludo, foreclosing a place for small banks in society went on with his program of consolidation and recapitalization which reduced the number of banks from about 90 in 2005 to 24 by 2006 and with 20 of them by end–2011, controlling ₦18.2 trillion assets and ₦12.5 trillion in deposit. The CBN also went on to inject ₦620 billion (about US$4.1 billion) of liquidity into the banking sector.

By September 2011, the recapitalization of the intervened banks was completed with AMCON purchasing all the Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) of the intervened banks while the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) paid N16.18 billion for depositors in the 20 banks.

It soon became obvious the banking sector had been taken over by a new set of actors. The chief executives of the capitalized banks became too powerful and with too much money at their disposal, compromised everyone while those below also embarked on massive stealing including the alleged 2015 CBN collusion with officials of commercial banks to defraud the country of N8 billion through recirculation of defaced and mutilated currencies (Premium Times of May 31 2015.)

Of those fingered by Sanusi for tampering with depositors’ funds, it was only Cecelia Ibru who apart from forfeiting assets of N191.4 billion including 94 choice properties around the world, was jailed in October 8 2010 by Justice Dan Abutu for 18 months. Other accused criminals were never brought to justice.

With incompetent President Buhari, and compromised CBN Governor Emefiele who was recently indicted by a special investigator’s probe report for allocating more forex than applicant’s request, allocating forex to those who never even applied and of fraudulent cash withdrawal of about $2.9billion, it became obvious that the stars of the leading commercial banks that engaged forex round-tripping that allowed them to declare profit in trillions were men with feet of clay.

Criminals including those who committed treason, economic vampires, intellectual frauds, compromised journalists and sponsors of terrorists and bandits are well known to us but remain untouchable. Their response to the president’s appeal to their humanity in the interest of our beautiful country has yielded no fruit.

If the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, is trying to attribute the “twin challenges of poverty, insecurity and “the untold hardship” arising from unemployment and hunger” in the northern region” to the painful but necessary decision of Tinubu’s eight months administration while ignoring the over 200 years feudal system that today fuels war of resistance between marginalized Hausa farmers and their Fulani overlords; if importers of second hand clothes, substandard products including fake drugs that contributed to the collapse of local industries continue to sabotage government forex policies out of self-preservation, the president should be reminded that what he needs as an elected sovereign, is not moral suasion but to borrow a leaf from Niccolo Machiavelli, (Italian statesman,1469-1572) the ‘arch apostle’ of naked force, who believes for a state to “fulfil its function of promoting the common good and preserving justice”, morality has no place. If in line with Machiavelli, his Yoruba forbears spoke of ‘Afobaje l’Oba npa’, the fate of opponents of his policies is sealed.

Tinubu asked for the job. His hands are on the straw. As an elected sovereign, there should be is no looking back.

February 22, 2024
President Tinubu and the vultures

If I were to choose between the governed and its government, I will choose the latter. This is because it has been established that the former are fortune hunters who in a world of ‘survival of the fittest’, seize every available opportunity to inflict hardship on their fellow compatriots while the latter is saddled with the onerous task of keeping man who is often insane under control. Nothing brings this home more vividly than the ongoing war of attrition being waged not just by the political and economic elite, but by ordinary Nigerians against Nigerians.

We have all become vultures feeding on the blood of the most vulnerable. From fuel subsidy scammers, foreign exchange speculators to the Kano food distributors who short-changed farmers but locked up food items in warehouses while people starve, the egg and bread hawker on the streets of Lagos who attributed high cost of their wares to dollar exchange rate, the first instinct is always how to exploit the vulnerable.

I discovered from a nearby grocery store last Sunday that the price of a loaf of bread had gone up to N1, 300. It used to be N1, 000. Since there was no value added, I decided to drive to another store where I thought I could get ‘coconut bread’ for N1,200. There also, I discovered the price had gone up to N1,600. After wondering when we started importing flour and coconut, I was forced to buy the bread. The story was not different from my neighbour who supplies us fresh eggs from his farm at N2,400 per crate. The price has gone up to N3,500, per crate. He attributed the difference to high cost of drugs needed to treat his birds.

High cost of living has led to demonstration against government in a number of Nigerian cities. Last Thursday, it was the turn of Kano State. The city’s residents took to the streets calling on President Tinubu to come to their rescue as they could not “eat three square meals even the one square meal is now becoming difficult, as a bag of rice which used to go for N25,000 now attracts N70,000. And “Sugar which was sold for N8,000 now goes for N75,000”.

But as if to confirm we are all vultures, three days later, on Sunday February 11, the Kano State Public Complaints and Anti-corruption Commission confiscated 10 warehouses with hoarded assorted foodstuffs in Dawakin Tofa Local Government Area of the state. According to Muhyl Magaji, the commission’s chairman, “The owners have been issued notice to report to the commission preparatory to facing charges before the court of law for their illegal activities”.

Perhaps we need a journey through memory to remind ourselves how greed by a few fortune-hunters led to the removal of fuel subsidy by government and the floating of the national currency resulting in current massive depreciation and escalating cost of living.

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Fuel subsidy scam started at the onset of the fourth republic when PDP stalwarts and their sibling defrauded the nation to the tune of N1.7trillion by “forging papers without importing a pint of fuel,” in the words of Audu Ogbe the then PDP national chairman. A probe by the National Assembly indicted a number of fuel marketers. (Otedola masterminded a DSS sting operation to nail Lawan Farouk for receiving bribe in order redmove his name from the list.)

Then a forensic probe of Sanusi’s (CBN Governor) allegation that $49.8b was not transferred to the federation account by NNPC confirmed $10.8billion was never reconciled. Andrew Yakubu, NNPC group MD later said $8.76B of the amount was used for subsidy. (An Abuja High Court presided over by judge Ahmed Mohammed who ordered EFCC and CBN to transfer $9.8 million and 74,000 pounds recovered from Andrew Yakubu to an account under the control of the Chief Registrar of the court in March 2022, discharged and acquitted him of all charges).

Sanusi however insisted such expenditure without appropriation was unconstitutional especially since subsidy on kerosene had been cancelled by Yar’Adua since June 15, 2009 when it was discovered that ‘if anyone was benefitting, it must be marketers and government officials. Sadly, about N500 billion was purportedly spent on kerosene subsidy in four years when the product was hardly available at filling stations or sold for N150 as against consolidated N50 controlled price. President Jonathan knew about the scam but shielded his friends in PDP, NNPC and the petroleum ministry.

Buhari similarly failed the nation. Isa Yuguda, former governor of Bauchi State and chairman of the committee on subsidy in 2009 told Channels television “I am sad to let Nigerians know what I saw. We came across situations where subsidy was claimed on pipeline that never existed…. Those that claim to pump the product and those that are in the subsidy scam, they just fill papers, invoices and they claim subsidy on it”.

Yuguda was sure Buhari as president who doubled as oil minister for eight years, was aware of the scam. Buhari lacked the political will to act. He chose instead to leave the poisoned apple for his successor by refusing to budget for fuel subsidy beyond June 2023.

But no sooner President Tinubu declared during his inauguration that ‘fuel subsidy was gone’, than the vultures in the guise of marketers swung into action. Within an hour of the statement fuel disappeared from filling stations across Nigeria or sold for about N700 per litre where available.

President Tinubu also admitted inheriting ‘a rotten’ financial system. The Jim Obazee-led special investigation of Emefiele’s tenure as CBN governor was to later unearth a damning report of monumental mismanagement, fraud and arbitrariness, looting, diversion of funds, forgery and collusion against Emefiele and about 15 others. Specifically, the was an investment of billions of dollars in over 500 banks IN USA, UK and China without approval of CBN board. There was £543,482,213 in fixed deposit in one of the banks in UK.

From alleged manipulation of the forex markets by banks, First Bank, UBA, Zenith, Access and GTB reported a combined N1.38trillion in forex revaluation in the first half of 2023.

As at July 2023, there was also N26.627 trillion in ‘ways and means’, whose “management was dogged by a lot of arbitrariness with funds taken out of the national treasury without necessary authorization”.

Government’s efforts at stabilizing the exchange rate through the unification of the official and parallel market exchange rates “hailed by economists and other stakeholders” have continued to be sabotaged by “some commercial banks who hold long-term foreign exchange positions to enable them profit from the volatile movements of exchange rate”.

In a move to reduce the pressure on the naira, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has raised a 7,000-man special task force across its 14 zonal commands to clamp down on dollar racketeers.

For President Tinubu, the subsidy removal and the floating of the national currency were fait accompli. Unlike President Jonathan and Buhari, there was no escape route. There was just no money to run the government. With 97% of our resources going into servicing debts, borrowing was not an option.

To reduce the burden of Nigerians, President Tinubu must recover our monies from all indicted oil marketers. The banks and some others owe AMCON close to N6trillion. These taxpayers’ monies must be retrieved from the banks and other debtors who are today serving senators or live like princes.

And as an elected sovereign, the president must be reminded he is free to take ‘protective measures including invasion of personal privacy and assault on group culture’ to safeguard the interest of the state.

February 15, 2024
President Tinubu and the National Question

The mismanagement of crisis of nation building in most post-colonial African states created without rhyme or objective criteria by self-serving imperialist powers has always been the source of disintegration of many of these states. The owners of these new states created to satisfy the greed of their colonial owners had no illusion. In deed many of their local public officials including Oliver Stanley, predicted their departure will result in a descent into turmoil of warring groups, outright civil wars and underdevelopment.

Attempts to delegitimize Tinubu’s hard-earned victory in the last February election by aggrieved southeast political elite and a segment of northern political elite who openly canvassed for military takeover or institutionalization of an Interim National Government because they lost out in what is often a zero-sum struggle for power, was one of the fallouts of our own unresolved national question.

Unfortunately, those who have the historic opportunity to change the narrative including Yakubu Gowon, Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari did everything except revisiting the unresolved national question. But because of President Tinubu’s many years of preparation for his current job, Nigerians had expected him to take the first step towards a national rebirth by ensuring distributive justice through resettlement of those condemned to IDP camps by terrorist that have been identified as immigrant Fulani herdsmen back to their ancestral homes.

Unfortunately, as if it were possible to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result, Tinubu like his predecessors, chose to focus exclusively on the ‘economies of the national question’. The result is that even with the new Sheriff in town, mindless killings, banditry and kidnapping for ransom continued in Plateau and other parts of besieged northeast and northwest. With last week’s killings of three Obas and kidnapping school children from his otherwise safe Yoruba nation that had hitherto provided succour for those fleeing violence from other troubled areas of the north, the battle has finally been brought home to him.

With what now appears to be an open challenge to his legitimacy, it is hoped the president understands it is time to stop playing the ostrich especially as regards immigrant Fulani terrorists and behave like an elected sovereign with a license to breach the constitution, if necessary, to protect the nation from those holding her hostage.

On the unresolved national question, the president has so far aligned himself with those who believe attainment of economic justice i.e. “Ensuring equitable allocation of resources and effective and sustainable production and distribution of appropriate goods and services is the ultimate solution to the national question”. The promoters of this approach led by Professor Dupe Olatubosun, formerly of NISER and a United Nations Consultant for many years and his fellow school of thought had argued that “promoting efficiency within existing structure will usher in all round prosperity and life abundant for all the people of Nigeria which will in turn lead to peaceful and equitable cohabitation of the various communities in Nigeria”. (The economies of the national question in Dupe Olatunbosun: An Autobiography (2005) pg. 175.

Unfortunately, today 24 years into the fourth republic, we are more divided than we were in 1999. Instead of ‘life abundant for everyone’, Nigeria has become world poverty capital. The problem with proponents of this approach is the assumption that every nationality wants life abundant for its people. Although, while they admitted we are a multicultural and a heterogeneous society, they however ignored the fact that it is the level of cultural development that determines if the ruling political elites create an egalitarian society or seek power to preside over an empire of slaves.

There is a competitive spirit in every Igbo man which makes him believe he could, with hard work, become a Coscharis (Cosmas Maduka, Kalu Uzor Kalu or Rocha Okorocha, Igbo multibillionaires who started by hawking on the streets. For the average Igbo man therefore, it is self, first.

The north remains the poorest part of Nigeria despite monopoly of power for the greater part of our history. The north harbours more than two-third of Nigeria estimated 15million of out school children while their political elites send their children to the best schools in the world. Rather than a crusade for ‘life more abundant’ for the impoverished people of the north, the goal of the northern ruling elite is presiding over an empire of slaves.

The South-south political elites especially the Ijaw, the fourth largest ethnic group in the country, share the same world view with the north they had aligned with since independence. Their leading light include the likes of Alfred Diete Spiff, governor of Rivers in his twenties and remembered more for shaving with a broken bottle, the head of a reporter who ran a story about the governor’s inability to pay salaries of teachers on the occasion of the governor’ birthday. It turned out that was at a time he was cruising around the Atlantic Ocean in his private ship according to Murtala Muhammed regime that demoted and retrieved a number of properties from him. We remember Peter Odili who secured a perpetual injunction against probe for financial malfeasance against his state by EFCC. There was the late Diepreye Alamieyeseigha who escaped arrest and prosecution in Britain for defrauding his state by disguising as woman while on a flight to Nigeria. We can add James Ibori who served a jail term in Britain for defrauding his Delta people as a governor.

And if Tinubu needed additional reasons to know the answer to our crisis of nation-building is politics, the ongoing conspiracy of dubious bank owners to derail his government through foreign exchange manipulation provides just that. The time to placate them is over.

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Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, our former foreign affairs minister once said that most Nigerian billionaires made their money through government. From the revelations from the ongoing probe of Emefiele’s leadership of the CBN, isn’t it time we beam light at the source of wealth of those who without inheriting industrial empire from their parents’ bought banks and today leave like film stars?

Yemi Cardoso, the current CBN governor last Monday told the nation that the Tinubu government met $7 billion in unpaid obligations and that the results of Deloitte forensic audit of what is valid or not, revealed that: $2.4 billion had issues including not having valid import documents; that entities that did not exist got allocation; entities who asked for forex got more than they asked; and that entities that did not ask got allocations. All these went through the banks that are currently engaged in foreign exchange speculation that has moved the exchange rate from about N750 to N1,400.

Do we need further explanation as to why some of these banks are declaring such huge profits that will make bankers in Europe and America green with envy?

It is on record that two-third of staff of the banks declaring profit in trillions pay slave wages of about N75,000 to their workers. President Tinubu, as an elected sovereign can borrow a leave from Niccolo Machiavelli, the apostle of politics of ‘the end justifies the means to charge the forex speculators trying to sabotage his economic policies for defrauding their workers.

The president’s other political battle over the national question is restructuring or devolution of power. There is no known multi-ethnic nation in the world that has survived by operating a federal constitution where close to 70% of the items are on the exclusive list. With about 23 states already managing one form of security outfit or the other, the time for state police is now. Local people are best at providing security for themselves even if elder statesman Theophilus Danjuma did not accuse the military and federal police of betrayal.

February 8, 2024
Internet crime, conspiracy of banks and state betrayal

One of Nigeria’s internet crimes’ celebrated investigation break-through was the December 1, 2019 murder of billionaire Chief Ignatius Odunukwe. The video of Ahmed Iliyasu’s (AIG zone 2 Lagos) press conference where he detailed how a killer squad made up of Daniel Bob Ibeaji, Solomon Cletus, Arinze Uzor Igwe lured the chief through his Facebook page account with irresistible business proposal to a hotel in Ajah area of Lagos where he was gruesomely murdered resurfaced in the social media again last week. He had said in the video that busting that particular cybercrime that shocked most Nigerians was made possible through a petition at the office of the Assistant-Inspector-General of Police in-charge of Zone 2 command, Onikan and the Tactical Commander of the Ikorodu Office of the Zonal Intervention of the Operation Puff Adder, that directed SP Uba Adams to go after the abductors. I think what has been of interest to those who are recycling the story was the speed and professional way the case was handled by the police authorities.

But it was obvious that what worked in Chief Odunukwe’s favour was the fact that as a billionaire, he was regarded as a citizen who is entitled to all the rights and privileges Nigerian citizenship conferred and these include the right to life, right to dignity, right to personal liberty and the ‘right to be protected by the state. But sadly, for every one-off celebrated Odunukwe case, there are scores of other victims of cybercrimes who as subjects as opposed to citizens, don’t have access to Assistant-Inspector-General of Police’s office Zone 2 command and by inference lose the associated rights of citizenship.

The reality today is that most hardworking Nigerians without access to those in power are never treated as citizens but as subjects. They are denied of freedom of worship, of right to dignity, right to life or right to state protection. Evidence abounds in the numbers of subjects periodically attacked, maimed, killed or uprooted from their ancestral home to IDP camps while government embarked on operations with meaningless names.

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Of course, you cannot miss those the state considers as citizens and deserving of state protection. When you see those being sandwiched on the high ways by a number of police vehicles with AK-47 wielding police men, residential houses with permanent presence of policemen or a lonely woman being followed to the market by a policeman, you will be right to conclude they are musicians, motor dealers, indicted politicians or governor’s mother in-law or niece.

But if you are confused about making a distinction between citizen and subjects in the approach to fighting cybercrime by our security bodies and the banking institution where most of cybercrimes take place, let me share with you dear readers the experience of another reader of this column, as reproduced below, when he took a cybercrime petition to the banks, police, EFCC and Alagbon Crime Unit late last year.

“We have this hardworking young lady from one of the north central states, the reader wrote, that lived with us for close to five years during which time she learnt some trades including fashion designing. Since she didn’t need to buy anything apart from sending money to her parents occasionally, the bulk of her money was saved for her. Following her plan to open shop and bring two of her five out-of-school junior brothers to Lagos to start school, we paid her total savings of N1m (one million naira) to her GTB account in October last year. Unfortunately, a day after the amount was paid into her account, she was swindled by one David Eze, a boyfriend she claimed to have met on Facebook and one Okoh Vera, David Eze had introduced to her as his mother, the reader concluded.

On October 25, 2023, she sent a petition titled “Fraud by David Eze” to divisional police station near the scene of the crime with copies to her bank, GTB and Access and Zenith, the banks through which David Eze channelled this particular cybercrime proceeds.

She stated in the petition that David Eze, her Facebook boyfriend directed her to send the sum of N1,045,000 (one million and forty five thousand naira) to Okoh Vera, her mother he claimed was shot by armed robbers.

She gave details of the account numbers and telephone numbers of the swindlers as follows:

1. Of the amount, she paid the sum of N635,000 (six hundred and thirty five thousand naira to Ifeanyi Okeagu, with Zenith bank account number 4206031565 and the sum of N410,000 (four hundred and ten thousand naira) to Okoh Vera, with Access bank account Number 1654011277, as directed by Eze, her Facebook boyfriend.

Telephone Numbers

(a) David Eze +17579827671 and 08148098598

(b) Vera Okoh 09137971902

The petition was however turned down by both the Alagbon Crime Unit and EFCC office in Ikoyi where according to him officials of both bodies who claimed they don’t handle fraud cases below N10 million barred their entry.

For a state that protects the interest of its people as citizens, this petitioner had thought there were no ambiguities in the case in view of stated government public policies.

First, since it was impossible to open an account without meeting the conditions set by these three banks which included submission of ‘a valid government issued identification, (National Identity Card, Driver’s licence or international passport), passport photograph and valid proof of residence including utility bill issued within the last three months, identification of a fraudsters by banks would not be difficult.

And for the police, tracking the fraudsters should also not be difficult since all telephone subscribers are expected to have their numbers linked to their NIN number especially with the Nigerian Communication Commission’s last December directive to all telecommunication operators to bar phone lines of unlinked subscribers.

But they were wrong. The periodic visits to the police station and the three banks since last October by the petitioner and her boss who by our conceptualization, are at best regarded as subjects, have always been “we are working on it”. It was even claimed one official of one of the banks spoke of the need to protect the identity of their client since there was no evidence the lady was forced to transfer the money to his account at gun-point. He might be right on that score.

But that is exactly because we are not treated as citizens by our government. And when a state fails to perform its responsibilities of protecting its people’s right to life, right to dignity and right to personal liberty, the state loses the right to expect its citizens to faithfully implement their duties to the state. It should therefore not come as a surprise that many frustrated Nigerians are not only not ready to die for their country, they in fact routinely sabotage the state by breaking laws through tax evasion, voters’ apathy, refusing to protect public properties, have empathy and compassion for others and take responsibility for their actions.

February 1, 2024
Akande: Of politicians’ occupational hazard

It is not just that politicians are the most distrusted group of professionals in the world, being a politician in itself is a nightmare as it carries a stigma of being an unprincipled, corruptible double-dealer. And as if to justify this, their zero-sum struggle for power is often anchored on the belief that ‘the end justifies the means’ or as John Lylys puts it in his novel Euphus: The Anatomy of Wits, ‘All, is fair in love as in war’.

Ironically, we need politicians more than they need us. We owe our survival as organized society to their brinkmanship and skilful exploitation of our infirmities. In a world where it is the survival of the fittest, politicians are the only people who are capable of reconciling private affluence with public squalor. It is they alone that can make us dream dreams and convert such dreams to reality.

It is this paradoxical nature of politics that is responsible for the dearth of politician statesmen. Committed politicians dedicated to the service of humanity often face what many regard as ‘politician occupational hazards.’ Nearer home, Awolowo in an effort to create a more egalitarian society for his people and the rest of the country, was framed up and jailed for 10 years by those, who because they did not share his world view, accused him of trying ‘to topple her majesty’s government’ citing as evidence, entries in his diary to the effect that he dreamt he became the Prime Minister of Nigeria. Adekunle Ajasin, Bisi Onabanjo, Bola Ige and Prof. Ambrose Alli whose only earthly possession was an empty plot of land at death, were jailed for a total of 400 years for creatively raising funds from state contractors to prosecute free education, free health and setting up of universities in their different states. Bisi Akande, Ige’s deputy was jailed 44 years.

For standing up against his fellow politicians who wanted to loot the resources of Osun State, Governor Akande was rigged out of office as governor of Osun State in the fourth republic. Long after some of those who fraudulently took over power have been found to be men with feet of clay, Akande was described by Buhari, his former persecutor, as “a man of inflexible integrity”.

If there is anyone who truly understands occupational hazards of committed politicians in Nigeria, Bisi Akande fits the bill. With Ambrose Alli going blind in Buhari’s gulag and his colleagues’ untimely deaths as a result of their inhuman treatment in detention, Pa Akande is in best position to raise an alarm about the danger of allowing fraudsters posing as anti-corruption crusaders take over power in the country.

It is from this context we must understand his last week’s timely warning about the danger that lies ahead with the prospect of take-over of power by those he described as “the new brand of vagabonds’, the drug barons, crude oil thieves,” who he claims “are among you; are richer than you; are calling you corrupt and hiding behind the cloak that they are not corrupt, but they are more corrupt and they will fight you.” For him the danger is real because “we are in a Nigeria now where everybody is struggling to be corrupt and the mind-set of everybody is corruption, and they don’t point the fingers to themselves; they are pointing it at you, politicians.”

Successive administrations in Nigeria according Chief Akande, have failed to defeat corruption due to the mind-set of Nigerians. According to him, “In a country where everybody is corrupt like Nigeria, The mind-set is corrupt. The man who wants prosperity by miracle is corrupt. You want to own a car, or house by miracle. Such a community can never be prosperous except of course “Nigerians have a change of mind-set and embrace the virtues of dedication and hard work”.

Akande has been around long enough to also understand Nigerian miracle seekers have short memories. He also knows how vulnerable we are as a people, especially with the advent of social media and some unprincipled main stream media who after changing all the rules of journalism, pretend to be driven by national interest.

Two events during the 2023 election exposed their hypocrisy. Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi were leading light of PDP, a party that raped the country for 16 years. Atiku Abubakar, as Obasanjo’s VP presided over the mismanaged privatization programme and was accordingly indicted by a National Assembly report. Peter Obi, who moved from PDP to Labour on the eve of the 2023 election was mentioned by the PANDORA Papers as one of the rich people in the world “who clandestinely set up businesses operated overseas, including in notorious tax and secrecy havens in ways that breached Nigerian laws” Curiously, the duo were presented as anti-corruption crusaders trying to save the nation from Bola Tinubu who had never held public office or engaged in federal government contract.

There was also the case of Godwin Emefiele who as sitting CBN governor, wanted to contest for the presidency of Nigeria on the platform of APC. He was ably promoted and supported by segment of the media. However as soon as his ambition was truncated by the judiciary, he donned the toga of an anti-corruption crusader. In October 2022, he embarked on a political redesign of N200, N100 and N1,000 bills. He ordered depositors to take their savings to the banks. He claimed his target were some presidential candidates and governors he accused of stashing funds to buy votes. His media promoters were less restrained. They made it clear the target was Bola Tinubu who they alleged shipped monies in bullion vans to his residence on the eve of Buhari’s 2019 contest against Atiku Abubakar.

It turned out that enough new notes were not printed. The result was that banks and bank staff were attacked by angry depositors who could not access their deposits when needed. A number of people died on the queues while trying to make withdrawal. Intervention by the Supreme Court declaring the old note legal tender was ignored by anti-corruption crusading Emefiele. Even as Nigerians groaned, he was egged on by the social media and his mainstream media sponsors.

Now out of office, the full report of the Special Investigator on Management of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), under anti-corruption crusading Emefiele, has revealed that the redesigned Naira is

“illegal and should be withdrawn from circulation with immediate effect while Emefiele and his group should be made to face criminal charges for an aberration that led to the loss of lives of many Nigerians, the closure of businesses and joblessness.”

That “The sum of N1,727,500,000, according to the Obazee report “was also spent on questionable legal fees on 19 cases that are directly traceable to the Naira Redesign and reconfiguration agenda”;

That in the UK alone, the Special Investigator said his probe led him to 543.4 million pounds kept by Emefiele in fixed deposit accounts. The report claims Emefiele manipulated the Naira exchange rate and perpetrated fraud in the e-Naira project of the CBN.

The investigator also discovered a “fraudulent cash withdrawal of $6.23 million” – about N2.9 billion at the then official exchange rate of N461 to a dollar.

With the above revelations, Nigeria would have been doomed under Emefiele and his promoters. Having experienced first-hand, the betrayal of corrupt elements in borrowed anti-corruption cloak, I suspect Pa Akande is trying to remind us of the danger ahead if we allow ‘a brand of vagabonds, powerful drug barons, crude oil thieves who share the same worldview with Godwin Emefiele, the fake anti-corruption crusader, to take over power.

January 25, 2024
Beyond Friday’s triumph of the judiciary

I sympathise with the Nigerian judiciary. This is because, of all the state institutions, executive, legislative, the judiciary, the press and Civil Society Groups, it is by far the most vulnerable. It has in the last few years gone through great stress and strain as a result of the conspiracy of the executive and the legislative arms of government which with lacuna deceptively left in their laws, tie the hands of the judiciary they both regard as a stumbling block because quite often they are driven by selfish interest as against public interest.

This perhaps explains why the political class and their political parties, according to the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Olukayode Ariwoola “could not manage their affairs well and ended up having about 600 cases from the party primaries alones in courts” during the last election. Unfortunately, instead of putting their rancorous house in order, the judiciary which is often made to carry the can for the malicious actions of politicians, often become becomes the scapegoat. The fear until last week was therefore whether tarred with the same brush with the political class, the judiciary that is increasingly coming under threat of political sore-losers, their supporters, their sympathetic media and those pretending to be public intellectuals, can as a part of a whole, be holier than the whole.

But the current leadership of Nigeria’s Supreme Court gave an indication of the direction it was headed when on Thursday October 22, 2023, it upheld President Bola Tinubu’s election through a unanimous judgment passed by seven Supreme Court judges, who threw out his challengers’ opposition which did not question the fact that he won the election ‘round and square’ with 37% of the popular votes at the expense of his warring opponents, but based on purely technicalities. It last Friday further consolidated this position when it chastised the justices of the various appeal courts that had attempted to upturn victories of popularly elected governors including Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Alex Otti of Abia, Bala Mohammed of Bauchi, Cross River’s Bassey Otu, Abba Yusuf of Kano, Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau, Francis Nwifuru of Ebonyi and Dauda Lawal of Zamfara.

With the Supreme Court’s last Friday judgment, hailed by the opposition as “representing the triumph of democracy…and reaffirming the sanctity of the ballot as the determining factor for democratic legitimacy,” came some relief for the embattled Supreme Court whose credibility had for years been under repeated assault of political gladiators.

Its travail started when the Supreme Court nullified the election of Emeka Ihedioha of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as governor of Imo State and declared Hope Uzodimma of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the March 9, 2020 governorship election even when the latter came a distant fourth during the state gubernatorial contest. The Supreme Court was to lose further credibility with the high-profile political cases of Lawan Vs Machina and Godswill Akpabio Vs Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and others, in which the court endorsed Akpabio and Lawan as candidates for the senatorial seats of their constituencies even though they were not available for the primaries of their political parties.

The cases according to a Punch newspaper editorial “have evoked excoriating public criticism and perceived somewhat as perverse… The decisions show that the Supreme Court is slavishly adhering to technical legalisms and formalism at the expense of substantial justice”. And for the same reason, Lasisi Olagunju of the Tribune accused the “the Supreme Court justices of abducting this democracy… and deciding who rules and who does not… They have evolved to become Bashorun Gaa of Old Oyo; they enthrone and dethrone as it pleases them.”(Nigerian Tribune Dec. 18, 2023).

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The credibility of the apex court got further battered with “All eyes on the judiciary’ smear campaign led by sore losers – Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi and their supporters in the February 2023 presidential election. They openly expressed lack of confidence in the ability of the current leadership of the Supreme Court to guarantee justice and went on to claim without proof, that the judiciary under him was the worst in 45 years. Last week they swallowed their words.

But there are others who were genuinely concerned about the fate of our country and that of our young democracy. Among such concerned Nigerian opinion leaders are ex-president Goodluck Jonathan and Femi Falana (SAN), a celebrated human rights lawyer). For President Jonathan “the ballot paper should decide who holds any elective office from the councillorship to the presidency. That is democracy. “I am not saying the judiciary is not doing well. But my point is that our laws should suppress the issue of the judiciary returning candidates… If a candidate is declared winner after a flawed electoral process, what the courts can do is to annul the election and order a fresh one, where a winner will finally emerge through the ballot.”

And for Femi Falana and others, “Judges are not suited to determine the winners of elections…determining winners of election is an exclusive reserve of the Independent National Electoral Commission” (INEC) if things are done properly”.

Last Friday’s Supreme Court ruling must therefore be seen as a tribute to all those who campaigned for the sanctity of elections based on electorate’s votes cast at the polling booths and as much a tribute also to the current leadership of the Supreme Court that chose to listen to the people.

It is on record that similar campaign carried out in the past was ignored by the past leadership of the apex court who was probably convinced that justice was better served by upturning victories of popularly elected candidates on technicalities to demonstrate the judiciary’s zero-tolerance for disobedience of court orders as was the case in Zamfara in 2019 when duly elected officials from governorship to state House of Assembly members lost their positions and in Rivers where candidates and their supporters were disenfranchised.

The current leadership of the apex court on the other hand, whilst not denying that there was disobedience of courts orders in Plateau State, was sensitive enough to protest by voters in both Plateau and Kano to come to terms with Lord Denning’s dictum to the effect that “Justice must be rooted in confidence, and confidence is destroyed when right-minded people go away thinking: “The judge was biased.”

But the current leadership of the Supreme Court and the NJC and the president must go a step further by ensuring those Appeal court justices chastised for ignoring Supreme Court’s earlier pronouncements and for presiding over cases in which they did not have jurisdiction in Kano and Plateau must be sanctioned. In the corporate world, once there has been an infraction of corporate rules, the opportunity of getting to the apex of one’s profession by the erring officer becomes very slim. The problem with the judiciary is that judicial officers are hardly sanctioned for infractions or incompetence but promoted even when their fitness is in doubt.

As argued by Abiodun Owoniko (SAN) while answering questions on ARISE Morning show last Tuesday, ‘there should be career progress delay’, before they are allowed to move to the next level which is the Supreme Court” because of the danger they pose to the health of the judiciary.

January 18, 2024
Plateau: Playing the ostrich

Bloodbath has come to define four areas of besieged Plateau State since 2001. And for the state’s beleaguered inhabitants, there has been no respite despite various interventions including, the Justice Nikki Tobi Commission report, introduction of vigilante group tagged ‘The rainbow Boys’, the Plateau House of Assembly anti-land grabbing, kidnapping bills, that the people had hoped would return land to their owners while the herdsmen return to where they came from, and “Operation Save Haven” (OPSH) and its successors. Instead of relief, what came in form of dividends to the state denizens as at July 2023, was a harvest of thousands deaths,18,751 displaced persons and annexation of about 102 villages by mostly immigrant Fulani herders. Two Saturdays ago, there was an additional harvest of 200 deaths in the Mangu LGA of the state.

Concerned Nigerians including military commanders involved in efforts at bringing peace between warring tribal Plateau groups and Hausa/Fulani settlers believe the orgy of killing and confiscation of community land has continued precisely because critical stakeholders and governments culturally and constitutionally equipped to mediate have perfected the art of ‘playing the ostrich’. The emirs made up of predominantly Fulani extraction that constitute the northern hegemonic ruling caste, the Northern Governors Forum (NGF), the Northern Elders Forum, (NEF) – an amalgam of Fulani and leaders of minority groups integrated into power through politics, business or marriage and the clerics (Muslim and Christian) seem to think that by ignoring the problem or believing they do not exist, it will disappear.

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The powerful and influential emirs continued to live in denial long after the World Terrorism Index declared Fulani herdsmen as the ‘fourth most violent terrorist group in the world’ and Sheik Gumi has identified those who lay siege on Nigeria as ‘disgruntled marginalized Fulani herdsmen seeking government recognition and compensation’ just as Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, Aminu Masari of Katsina and Nasir el Rufai of Kaduna who descried them as ‘Fulani immigrants without fathers who should be bombed for unleashing terror on Nigerians’. With the exception of Emir of Muri, Abbas Tafida who broke rank by issuing a 30-day ultimatum directing Fulani herdsmen to vacate his state forest for ‘terrorising residents of the state, kidnapping, killing and raping his subjects’, other powerful emirs including those who owned up to being patrons of Fulani herdsmen continued to live in denial.

Very few stakeholders are prepared to call the herders by their proper name-terrorists. Even the fearless and often outspoken Bishop Mathew Kukah while reacting last week to their latest mindless killings went metaphorical by speaking of ‘the invisible men’, ‘the children of darkness, sons of Satan’; ‘killers and harbinger of sorrow and pain’.

I think Bishop Kukah should be reminded that playing the ostrich or refusal to call a spade a spade was the answer to his questions as to why “the north has become the birthplace of so much bloodletting”; Why killings are seen as tools of negotiation with the Nigerian state by the protectors of ethnic interest and why the north has become ‘the incubator of all that is destructive-Boko Haram, banditry and shades of terrorism”.

And when it comes to playing the ostrich, members of the Northern Governors Forum (NGF) are the most pathetic. Bauchi’s Bala Mohammed, a non-Fulani not only defended illegal bearing of arms by immigrant herdsmen; he declared without restraint that all Fulani from any part of Africa have the right to Nigerian citizenship. And it cannot be any less bizarre when even the governors of besieged north-central states of Plateau, Benue, Taraba and Adamawa held a press conference last week where they appealed to the federal government to find out the motive of those who have turned the Middle Belt into a killing field.

With over 61 communities confiscated and renamed by invaders as early as 2010, with the figure today put at 102 while survivors were condemned to IDP camps where they face hunger, diseases and uncertain future, how can these hypocritical governors continue to play the ostrich by pretending not to know the battle for the Middle Belt region by immigrants driven by climate change and drying up of Lake Chad was battle over land? These clueless governors who have no idea of those who live within their states would rather play the ostrich than follow the example of the Southwest that inaugurated the “Amotekun’ security outfit, successfully deployed to check the menace of criminal herdsmen and their local criminal collaborators visiting deaths on the people of southwest.

Because playing the ostrich became an art for the Buhari’s administration, for eight years his government did everything except finding solution to mindless killings in Plateau. It has also now become apparent that little has changed under President Bola Tinubu.

First, experts have recommended institutionalisation of state and community policing as part of resolving social dislocations in Plateau and elsewhere in the Middle Belt region. President Buhari and “his loyal gate keepers” resisted this for eight years. Nigerians don’t think President Tinubu needed a year to start the process.

Recruiting members of the state and community police from among the warring people guarantees a balance of terror which experts believe will discourage warlords from seeking external help in resolving local problem that requires dialogue.

For eight years, the various military strategies including kinetic and non-kinetic adopted by President Buhari failed because he was playing the ostrich instead of addressing the issue of distributive justice. Tinubu cannot adopt the same strategy and expect a different result.

The military as custodians of the nation’s constitution has no reason to look at the body language of temporary office holders to perform its constitutional duty. Its objective should be distributive justice. The challenge in Plateau is that a group of those already identified by credible Fulani voices among us as violent foreign Fulani immigrant herdsmen are waging war on our fellow compatriots. They killed maimed and confiscated communities and condemned survivors to IDP camps.

Distributive justice requires these invaders to be first flushed out by our military, those in IDP camps resettled back in their homes and be provided with security to enable them carry on with struggle for survival.

Anything short of this will not be different from Europe and America arming and encouraging Israel to visit terror on their Palestinian cousins already condemned to refugee camps.

Of course it will also not be distributive justice to dismiss the legitimate struggles for self-determination, control over land resources and chieftaincy affairs by our Muslim Hausa/Fulani compatriots who claimed their forefathers first settled in Plateau around late 18th century but today regarded as “settlers” and “usurpers.”

The politically sophisticated Fulani emirs and leaders have managed peaceful coexistence among disparage groups in the north for close to 200 years by ensuring distributive justice. For them, leadership itself presupposes responsibility. That perhaps explains Uthman dan Fodio’s famous quotation “Conscience is an open wound only truth can heal”.

The enemies today are those who play the ostrich or live in denial at the expense of distributive justice.

January 11, 2024
Lagos where tenants dictate to landlords

As institutions of state, part of the responsibility of the media and civil society groups is to advocate for the less privileged in society. Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial and economic powerhouse which attracts thousands immigrants daily from across the nation and from neighbouring states, have not a few of this survivalists who with no relatives in Lagos often end up sleeping under bridges or turning Lagos Lagoon shorelines to illegal shanties. Civil society groups including those seeking attention of foreign donors have often picked up the battle for these fortune-seekers. And following their persistent blackmail, successive Lagos State governments have come up with most liberal laws that are not only protective of immigrants, but that which literarily put landlords at the mercy of tenants and squatters.

I remember a few years back when Governor Babatunde Fashola wanted to clean up Lagos Lagoon shoreline to encourage tourism, the media and the human right groups challenged him to first provide alternative accommodation for the trespassers. It was as if anyone could start the erection of a structure in any state of the federation without permission from the traditional ruler or local council chairman.

What has brought the helplessness of Lagos landlords home more vividly is the ongoing protests of tenants of recently demolished Police Officers Wives Association (POWA) shopping complex opposite the Computer Village in Ikeja. As it is often the case, the sympathy of the electronic media (Channels and TVC) that reported the case live and The Punch that reported it later on its “Metro” pages was with non-law abiding tenants.

The focus of the media was on the plight of the tenants, their losses and their false claim that they were never informed of the demolition. Even after admitting notices were issued by the owner of the distressed plazas in 2019 and 2020, little was done to correct the traders’ false narrative including the claim of the chairman of Computer Village Dealers Association, Tayo Shittu who accused Lagos State government of storming the complex with about 300 policemen at 12 am to bring down the two plazas with 300 shops.

This has however forced the Lagos State government to deny having any hand in the demolition of the Police Officers Wives Association (POWA) shopping complex. .In a statement issued by the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotoso, said: “The structure is owned by the Police Officers Wives Association (POWA), which ordered its demolition.”, adding that “those circulating the fake news that Lagos State government is demolishing Computer Village are opportunistic ethnic chauvinists who will always relish in vacuous propaganda that can fuel their fiendish mission; they will always fail in dividing Lagosians.”

What must not be lost on us was the fact that it took POWA two years to eject tenants from their plaza already declared distressed by Lagos State. And this was made possible because their husbands were able to mobilise 300 police officers to battle tenants that are ready to take laws into their own hands.

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Are you still wondering why Lagos landlords are at the mercy of Lagos State’s over-pampered tenants?

Although I will not consider myself a landlord but let me share with readers my recent encounter with two young men who lived with their young families in the boys quarters vacated by my children after marriage or joining the JAPA syndrome.

The first was introduced along with his wife by one of my daughters who is a pastor. She had claimed the young man used to stay in a boys quarter directly opposite our house while all of them were in the university. Claiming their apartment was ravaged by flood, she pleaded they should be allowed to pay just about a quarter of the going rate in the estate.

First year, the young man said he could only pay half of what he agreed to pay because his cousin was wedding at home. There was another excuse the second year. But trouble started when PHCN discovered he had paid only N7k in about three and half years despite almost 24 hours power supply during which he used his air-conditioner, morning, afternoon and night since he claimed to work from home.

PHCN calculated his backlog of arrears as N1m and advised me to seek the help of police because I would have to pay if he vacates the house without settling the outstanding. Because I turned down the request for money by the police officer in charge, he had declared after a few unproductive meetings, that it was not the job of police to collect debt on behalf of PHCN or anyone for that matter. Now I have a PHCN meter I cannot use except I pay N1m.

My second nightmare was introduced to me by my neighbour. He and his young wife wanted to do naming ceremony of their first child and there was no water where they were staying in the outskirt of the estate. I also discovered he was my 300L student at University of Lagos Distance Learning Institute. I was to later personally take them in my car to their church for the naming. The baby was often kept with our house girl when the wife was going out while the husband on some occasions borrowed my car for outing. We were that close that when he had his second baby, without telling me he removed my cars , erected canopies and took control of my generator to have a party from morning till late in to the night.

Again trouble started when it was discovered part of the house including the fence behind his apartment was distressed and needed a comprehensive work which would require us vacating the building. We both agreed on when work would start and for that reason he paid for six months. Instead of moving out like me as agreed at the end of the six months, he brought a long letter from a lawyer claiming he was never given a quit notice. Initially I had thought it was a joke. I approached my neighbour who suggested a refund of the six months payment he made even after the expiration of his tenancy period. He turned down the offer insisting his lawyers would have to decide. Meanwhile he got the police involved claiming inconvenience because of materials already deposited for repairs. Even while I remain a tenant elsewhere, this young man for the next two months held everyone to ransom until the POWA strategy minus the 300 police men option was adopted.

My last example was from my lecturer and senior colleague at the University of Lagos. A tenant who occupied his uncle’s house in Ikeja GRA not only refused to pay his rent for several years, he would not allow anyone entry into the premises. Relief only came when the then military governor of the state ordered an invasion of the premises by soldiers who discovered an erection of a new structure and the conversion of the old one into an illegal drug manufacturing factory.

I think most Lagos tenants desirous of taking advantage of Lagos State tenant-friendly laws are of the same colour. The two tenants that gave me nightmare are Yoruba from one of the southwest states.

January 4, 2024
Oshiomhole and battle for strong political parties

Adams Oshiomhole during last week’s launching of a book “APC and Transition Politics”, authored by Salihu Lukman, spoke of how he was illegally removed from office by APC Governors’ Forum led by Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, aided by Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State and Rochas Okorocha of Imo State among others who were aggrieved over his valiant efforts to enforce party supremacy as obtains in most parliamentary democracies.

Amosun, who deserted ANPP when the party lost and has been behaving like a woman with five husbands since finding himself in ACN and APC, in an effort to obfuscate the serious issue of party supremacy had claimed Oshiomhole was the architect of his own misfortune for conducting what he termed “one of the worst party primaries in the history of Nigeria’s contemporary politics.”

But I think he can save his breath as Nigerians who saw his attempt to impose his successor, the speaker and all the members of Ogun State House of Assembly and how he betrayed the party when his efforts failed can see beyond his subterfuge. Amosun who along some southwest governors were promised consensus candidature once Tinubu was disqualified, was believed to have worked with the likes of Okorocha who was also prevented from imposing his in-law as successor, to illegally remove Oshiomhole who they thought was sympathetic to Tinubu out of office. To change that narrative, he needs more than the mischievous attempt to set Oshiomhole against former President Buhari who by his treatment of Oshiomhole confirmed the fears of some Nigerians that Buhari who saw political party only as a vehicle to acquire power, loves only Buhari.

Sadly, what has come to define the party system of the fourth republic is governors’ illusion that they own the political parties by virtue of their spending their state monies to fund them. That was why in 2013, seven aggrieved PDP governors during what was described as PDP family quarrel, often over sharing of resources wrecked their party. It was for the same reason Nyesom Wike, who has continued to hold his party to ransom, in 2023 joined his other four PDP colleagues to exploit leadership deficit in PDP to prolong the party’s agony. And that was why APC governors despite the claim by Oshiomhole that not a dime was taken from them towards running the party thought they could illegally oust their chairman from office. What saved APC was Tinubu’s political brinksmanship that earned him the trust of northern governors despite betrayal by some of his southwest governors.

But political parties are never owned by sitting governors but by a democratic oligarchy often made up of founders, former office holders, current office holders and aspiring office seekers and others with interest which could be economic, cultural or sectional.

That the West had over two century’s head start because of institutionalization of political parties as modernization agents does not mean that in terms of philosophy and political ideas, Africans are inferior. For instance, the thoughts of Socrates, the greatest influence on Plato’s philosophical development according to late Professor Sophie Oluwole, was in no way superior to that of Orunmila, the father of Ifa divination, both of whom never wrote anything; the political realism of Machiavelli, the so-called apostle of naked force who believes ‘the end justifies the means’, finds parallel in Yoruba “afoba je l’oba npa”( the first victims of a new king is the king maker); liberalism, described as the West dominant ideology, finds parallel in Yoruba tales of the tortoise to celebrate principle of gradualism in the development process, and democracy and legitimacy as consent of the people and rule of law finds parallel in the check and balance’ provided by the Ogboni cult in the Yoruba traditional administrative system.

And of course, once we decided to acculturate the best of imported cultures, we are hardly left behind. It was only in 1923 that Nigeria embraced political parties as modernizing agents but by independence in 1960, Nigeria, because of the giant strides of Action Group, NPC and NCNC, Nigeria was being compared with Canada and Japan. The Western Region through the exploits of Action Group had the first television in Africa (WNTV) ahead of some European nations.

Again we must know where the rain started to beat us.

The military after destroying our party system, out of self- delusion offered to teach Nigeria what the nation had perfected 70 years earlier. Ibrahim Babangida came with his decreed two-parties, the NRC and SDP, headed by Tom Ikimi and Tony Anenih respectively. This was followed by Abacha’s five parties viz: the UNCP, CNC, NCPN, DPN and GDM which late Bola Ige described as ‘five fingers of a leprous hand’. The PDP, dominated by retired Generals and their contractors, described by John Campbell, a former US envoy to Nigeria as “an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria, a political party that came together with no ideological or programmatic basis, but simply as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’, was midwifed by Abdulsalami Abubakar in 1998.

The party between 1999 and 2015 went on to validate Campbell’s thesis with its leaders and their siblings stealing N1.7 trillion through the fuel subsidy scam, selling to themselves Nigeria’s total investment of about $100b for a paltry $1.5b through privatization policy and in the name of monetization policy sold to themselves inherited properties dating back to colonial period, kept in their custody for our children.

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It was against this backdrop that with the inauguration of APC, this column on these pages on January 31, 2023 said “What Nigerians want from Buhari and Tinubu is inauguration of a modernizing party in line with what obtained in the first republic and elsewhere in the developed democracies. The challenge before the two and their colleagues is to replace the current political parties moulded in the military image, with garrison commanders as party leaders…. What these times call for are men with eyes on history; men who would emulate the federalists Hamilton and Adams, the Republicans Jefferson and Madison of USA of the 1790s, the British enlightened elite of 1832, their French counterparts after French revolution of 1789 and the Japanese and their Meiji Restoration of 1867.”

Unfortunately, Buhari did not see a political party beyond instrument for acquiring power. Egged on by those who claimed he won the election on his own merit without the party, he ignored APC until the eve of 2019 election when Tinubu and Oshiomhole came out to salvage the situation. No sooner had he won the election than he sold Oshiomhole to APC governors opposed to his battle for party supremacy.

The difference between Buhari’s APC and PDP was that of six and half a dozen. Both have been adjudged corrupt, unable to dream dreams and total embarrassment even in the routine art of governance.

Bishop Kukah in his Christmas Homilies few days ago said Tinubu has no excuse for failure. He has had opportunity to study the Action Group and Unity Party of Nigeria of the first and second republic respectively. He was a part of AD before forming ACN with Afenifere Renewal Group as new investors and was the moving force behind the formation of APC.

Tinubu also understands that there can be no social change without an elite consensus and there can be no elite consensus without strong political parties. If he therefore wants to succeed and be remembered by history, he knows the supremacy of the party must be enshrined not only in APC but also in PDP and other opposition parties.

December 28, 2023