The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Restructuring and Buhari’s place in history

    There are too many people talking lazily about restructuring in Nigeria. Unfortunately people are not asking them individually what they mean by restructuring….And now we have 36 states and the FCT. What form do they want? They are just talking loosely about restructuring. Let them define it and then we see how we can peacefully do it in the interest of Nigerians.” – President Buhari.

    Suddenly, President Buhari, a political adviser’s nightmare who routinely shoots himself in the legs must have forgotten ‘the buck stops at his desk”. With unhidden disdain for public opinion, he speaks as if he is doing Nigerians who elected him a favour. Although many Nigerians believe the president is committed to the Nigerian project, but not a few including some of his ardent supporters, have in the last two years started to fear that this type of gaffe and hypocrisy beyond his inaction may at the end deny him his place in history.

    It is on records that the president sold restructuring as part of his agenda to the electorate in 2015. It is also on record that the committee on restructuring set up by the President’s APC presented its report to the president earlier in the year. The president, feigning ignorance of what advocates of restructuring want, must have no doubt been a source of great anguish to his advisers.

    Undoubtedly, the president knows Nigerian patriots such as the late Pa Tony Enahoro who  until his last breath fought for the country to be restructured  in line with what he and our other founding fathers negotiated at independence, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, who served 30 months in detention during the civil war, Emeka Anyaoku, former secretary general of Commonwealth of nations, Balarabe Musa, ex- governor of old Kaduna State, and  ethnic representatives such as Pa Ayo Adebanjo of Afeniifere, Prof Nwabueze and General Theophilus Danjuma speaking for besieged Middle-Belt region  cannot just  be dismissed as  “those involved in loose talk”.

    At any rate, the president is very much aware that the quest for viable federal arrangement is not new. More than half of the nations of the world especially in the multi-cultural societies have adopted the federal arrangement. Europe after two World Wars said “never again” and embraced federal system in order to reduce social dislocation in their societies.

    The struggle in Nigeria started in the 1920s with the colonial power’s recommendation of “a ‘regional government that secures for each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality and its own chosen form of government which have been evolved for it by the wisdom and by the accumulated experiences of generation of its forbearers’.  The constitutional changes of 1954, 1957 and the 1958 Lancashire debate at which October 1, 1960 was chosen as the date for our independence took their roots from this stated policy.

    Unfortunately, the core north’s political elite and their south-eastern counterpart who were opposed to any form of federal arrangement they would not control derailed it in 1962. The core northern political elite preferred a confederal arrangement but cajoled by British umpires to reluctantly embrace federal arrangement having negotiated and secured over 50% of the members of the House and guaranteed a perpetual hold on to power by virtue of higher population than the two southern regions since democracy is a game of numbers. The southeast ‘unitarists’ did not mind this because with a north desperate for qualified hands to man their regional bureaucracy, having just secured self-rule status, the junior coalition partner who according to Nnamdi Azikiwe had been destined by their god “to rule Africa”, a prospect which according to Daddy Oscar Onyeama “was only a matter of time when the Igbos would dominate others in Nigeria”, it was the manifestation of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

    With Tafawa Balewa as prime minister, the southeastern core political elite produced the Chief of Army Staff, the Chief of Naval Staff, the Chief of Defence Staff, the IGP, internal affairs minister, external affairs minister education minister, president of the senate, University of Ibadan VC, and University of Lagos VC. They similarly controlled the Nigerian Airways, the Nigerian Railways among others.

    Political calculations after the 1963 census crisis and the disputed 1964 election result forced the leadership of both groups to lobby the military. The January 1966 military intervention encouraged by southeast core political elite led to Unification Decree 34 of 1966 while the July vengeance coup sponsored by core north political elite resulted in Gowon’s 12-state federal structure.

    Successive northern military leaders  from Murtala Muhammed, Buhari, Babangida, Abacha, and Abdullsalami went on to consolidate northern position by creating in all 36 states and 774 LGAs, all looking up to the centre  that crafted a constitution without a residual list after taking over the sources of economic power of the states.

    Many Nigerians because of President Buhari’s antecedents had thought he is better placed to deal decisively with politicians and economic saboteurs benefitting from the unjust arrangement by restructuring the country along the line of sustainable development.

    Unfortunately, the president upon assumption of office, tried to hide behind one finger by directing advocates of restructuring to go through the National Assembly who, as beneficiaries of unjust order, are not likely going to commit political suicide.  Empire builders in many of the unviable states and LGAs that collect free money from the centre to which they are not accountable are not ready to change the status-quo. Rampaging herdsmen even from across the borders are hiding under the military constitution to justify mindless killing of Nigerians and seizure of territories.  Budding industries collapsed because smugglers of fake products are hiding under the same constitution to carry out their nefarious activities in the name of trading.

    Meanwhile the rivalry between those who destroyed our federal arrangement and have held the nation to ransom since 1962 is being rekindled anew. Professor Ango Abdullahi, former ABU vice chancellor and current spokesman for Northern Elders’ Forum has tried to justify killing and sacking of villages by suspected herdsmen by claiming Igbo traders have not been prevented from carrying out their trading activities around the country.  Professor Nwabueze, the author of the 1966 Unification Decree and 1993 Interim Decree  has proclaimed himself as the chief campaigner for Abubakar Atiku in 2019, a man he said would restructure the country.

    In a bizzare turn of events, President Buhari the messiah many had thought would free the nation from the strangle-hold of the warring enemies of our country, has been accused of taking side with the core northern political elite that did not only refuse to endorse him for his current position but in fact master-minded his defeat during his first three unsuccessful outings. His political foes have also drawn a parallel between his current provincialism and that of southeast core political elite in the first republic and under President Azikiwe Goodluck Jonathan presidency. And because of his slow response to the human tragedies in the Benue basin as well as  to the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association’s threat to resist anti-grazing laws in some 75 local government areas in 21 states, they have accused him of silently waging the late Ahmadu Bello’s unfinished battle against those he once described as his  “ancestors’  properties”.

    Suddenly, being a member of core north political elite has become a threat to the president’s 2019 re-election bid. Those who denied him membership of the group and rigged him out of election in the past have now found in it a potent weapon in the run up to 2019.

    True lovers of our nation however know the country is doomed without restructuring. The president by now should also know he alone cannot be right while all others are wrong. He can therefore  in spite of the theatrics of his political enemies still overcome some of his personal failings  and  save our nation from the impending doom even in the twilight of his first term which ends in May 2019.

  • Knowledge ASUU needs

    Nigerians have long come to terms with the fact that public universities can hardly have a strike-free session. It was therefore no news to many that Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) embarked on yet another round of strike last week after accusing government of lack of commitment to the 2009 pact between her and the government over the release of N1.3 trillion to address the decay in our tertiary institutions. The problems over which ASUU has battled government since the early 80s have not changed. So is ASUU’s strategy.

    The travails of tertiary institutions in Nigeria started with the incursion into politics of a military populated by the less-privileged in society who joined the military for a chance to climb the social ladder. Because they were envious of their better placed compatriots, their first set of victims when they forcefully took over power in 1966 were the politicians, considered as the source of their misfortune, intellectuals, bureaucrats and the press who they envied for their superior knowledge.

    The January 1966 coup plotters wiped out the politicians, the benefactors who had made it possible for them to get into the military in the first place. Yakubu Gowon then embarked on his own war against the intellectuals, ordering them to move out of their ivory towers. Murtala Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo who did not know the bureaucrats are the ‘salt of life’ embarked on a senseless retirement of highly trained and experienced civil servants ‘with immediate effect’. Obasanjo took over privately owned Daily Times, the most influential and most widely circulated newspaper in Africa south of Sahara. Buhari, besides jailing journalists for reporting the truth also jailed politicians irrespective of their offences for long periods ranging between 100-200 years. Babangida without contesting or winning an election hilariously called himself president. He and Abacha also deluded themselves thinking they could decree political parties and even teach democracy.

    The ill-educated soldiers did not stop at that. They effected what Tekena Tamuno called “a status coup”.  In 1960, only the prime minister earned more than a vice chancellor (4,500 to 3700.punds). A professor earned more than a cabinet minister and an army general while a first degree holder joining the civil service earned more than a second lieutenant. But all that changed by 1975 with generals not only earning more than professors but earning their salaries for life.

    But I think the misadventure of a military not trained in the art of managing society can at best be described as a folly. That their unpatriotic and unambitious creation – the ‘new breed’ politicians allocate outrageous salaries to themselves should only attract the sympathy from ASUU.  In any case, the entry point for professors as recently observed by Kayode Fayemi, the governor of Ekiti State is about N500, 000. Except those in the banking and oil industry, very few Nigerians earn that. And compared with the media, an institution which like the universities is engaged in the business of trading in knowledge, the universities are not doing badly.  As an executive director of Guardian newspapers with turnover in billions, for 18 years, four of them as chief operating officer, I did not earn anything close to that.

    But beyond issue of salaries, the current ASUU strategy and dubious claims such as the country is rich enough to execute free university education,  cannot move those who believe you can without education,  become president, chairmen of international conglomerates and earn higher salaries by merely allocating more weight to brawn than brain.

    We saw the effect of ASUU’s false and unchallenged claim aimed at blackmailing government on our students who unfortunately are incapable of articulating our current problems as they demonstrated on the street of Abuja last Monday demanding an increase in the current education budget to 28%.

    This was long after Adamu Adamu, the minister of education had made it clear that the pledged made by Yar’Adua and Jonathan  which the duo could not implement at a period of economic boom cannot be fulfilled now that the economy is just recovering from a recession. This was also after the   chairman of the implementation monitoring committee of the agreement, Wale Babalakin, citing other competing expenditure demands, that require funding ‘which, government cannot ignore’, has appealed to ASUU for dialogue. And this was after the government has said it has no money to pay except it takes a bond which will become a burden for the youths in future.

    And contrary to ASUU’s claim, there are very few places in the world where good and qualitative education is free. It is true Canada gives grants to its citizens, but this is because the country suffers a deficit of qualified professionals. And because such grants are tied to performance, those who fall below standard have access to students’ loan. It is also true the US and Britain give grants to their universities (US $76 billion in 2013, Britain £12.1 billion in 2016 – Punch editorial November 14). But in both nations, the grants are not substitutes for school fees. Hillary Clinton during the US presidential contest of 2016 was on record as promising to bring relief to those American youths saddled with $75,000 indebtedness after graduation.

    In Britain, most of the universities are self-sustaining through payment of fees, especially by foreign students and patenting their research findings. Fees charged to non-EU students are unregulated and higher than for UK and EU students. This income allows universities to fund activities where costs exceed income.  Unfortunately for the first generation universities that used to attract foreign students in the 60s and 70s, ASUU’s endless strikes have become a disincentive to foreign students.

    For years, ASUU has been unreasonably opposed to payment of school fees by university students .The usual self-serving argument is the protection of the children of the poor. But if one may ask, how many children of the poor can compete with the children of the elite who attend elite secondary schools where fees can be as high as N1.5m for admission to universities of Lagos, Ibadan, Nsukka and ABU?  Over 50% of those who get admitted to these first generation universities went through diploma or DUPEB where in some universities they pay as high as N400, 000. But as soon as such children get absorbed into 200 levels, their parents join the league of poor people who can only afford N20, 000 school fees.

    Unlike in the US, where federal aid in the form of Pell Grants is awarded to students from families with annual incomes generally below $60,000 per year, those who benefit from government subsidies to the universities here are the political, economic, military and intellectual elite.

    Sadly, the poor artisans, market women, fruit and vegetable sellers whose interest ASUU claim to be protecting  are the ones who pay through their noses to put their children who never stood a chance getting admitted to the first generation Nigerian universities in the private universities in Nigeria, Republic of Benin and Ghana.

    ASUU must stop celebrating their knowledge of history and politics of ‘what was, what is’ and ‘who gets what, when and how’ and acquire some knowledge of economics. Besides, as against infantile duels, current ASUU leadership should show interest in making contributions to the policy thrust of government. That was the case in the 60s and 70s.

  • Pa Adebanjo in service of his people

    Pa Ayo Adebanjo is undoubtedly passionate about Nigeria. But the service to his Yoruba nation is his life.   Indeed if there is any other Yoruba leader of his generation worthy of being described as a Yoruba irredentist after the death of his illustrious forebears – Chief Bode Thomas, founding member and deputy leader of Action Group, who died at 34 in 1953 and Chief SLA Akintola, the nemesis of the colonial powers and terror to the northern feudal lords killed as premier of Western Region during the January 1966 military coup, it is Pa Adebanjo. He has for over 60 years fought on the side of his people.

    He has been unequivocal as to what his people want out of Nigeria: “autonomy, within Nigeria as an independent entity, self-sustained but not subservient to any part in a true federation.” He has since the collapse of the first republic in 1966 insisted “We must restructure and put in place true federal constitution”; reminding Nigerians that “that was the agreement reached by our founding fathers: the Awolowos, the Azikiwes and the Sardaunas and sanctioned by the colonialists in London in 1954 and implemented in 1960. Those who don’t understand restructuring should go and read the agreement and even those who benefited from the agreement and are in office and not obeying the agreement”, he had advised.

    But he has an axe to grind with President Buhari. This may not be unconnected with Buhari’s 1984 treatment of his leader, Awolowo whose house he allegedly ordered ransacked and his other colleagues such as Olabisi Onabanjo, Pa Adekunle Ajasin, Prof Ambrose Alli and others who were jailed for spending their state resources to build universities for their people while their counterparts in NPN and NPP spent their states’ allocations to set up private banks or marry new wives.

    Even after publicly thanking his son, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu for liberating Yorubaland from Obasanjo and his PDP, he could not resist throwing his weight behind ex-President Jonathan and his PDP when it became obvious Buhari was flying APC flag in 2015. He has been very critical of his administration. As 2019 draws near, his attack and criticism have become more acerbic.  While appealing last week to his Yoruba people to reject Buhari in 2019, he said “People have seen him to be fake. He is not somebody anyone can rely upon and I have no doubt in my mind that Tinubu would have seen the stupidity of aligning with him”; adding without restraint, “three years down the line, Nigerians, especially the Yoruba, have realised that the president is not a man of integrity who also failed to keep to his promises, one of which is restructuring which is in the manifesto of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).”

    Before his last week eruption, Pa Adebanjo had picked the president up on nearly every issue. Starting with the rampaging herdsmen that turned the middle belt region into a killing field, he had warned “The herdsmen cannot continue to harass us, we are agrarian communities in the Southwest, many of our people cannot farm again because the herdsmen have taken over their farmlands, this cannot continue and that must stop immediately.”

    On MKO Abiola’s posthumous award, he had said: “I am not excited about it; it is welcome; however, it is late and belated. But he did not stop at that, he started to read motive to the award claiming “if Buhari has now done it because the presidential election is coming, well, he cannot bamboozle anybody with that”.

    While one had expected Pa Adebanjo to be happy that PDP was denied a foothold in Yorubaland, a project he had campaigned for in the past, he and Afenifere however in a bizarre move suspended Omisore who had joined resources with APC to make it happen. Pa Fasanmi, a fellow Afenifere member says of the action “It is laughable and disappointing for anyone to desecrate the hallowed name of Chief (Obafemi) Awolowo with conservative political tendency as being espoused by the Fasoranti and Ayo Adebanjo group that has crossed the red line. For him “The spirit of Chief Obafemi Awolowo will never forgive whoever has taken steps to bastardise the legacies he fought for all his life.” He says the Fasoranti-led Afenifere had no moral right to suspend Omisore for teaming up with a progressive party to win an election.

    But Pa Adebanjo and Afenifere are weighed down by other moral burdens. His current support for Atiku and Obasanjo was for instance on account of their promise to restructure the country. But In a chat with Jide Ajani of Vanguard newspapers during his 90th birthday celebration titled ‘Encounters with a man who likes TELLING IT AS IT IS’ (the title of his autobiography) (April 8), he had said “I will never agree to have anything to do with Obasanjo politically, because I don’t see any virtue in him, nothing credible in him, particularly as far as the interests of the Yoruba people are concerned.   Obasanjo is not a Yoruba man, he doesn’t want what the Yoruba people want and I’ve always said so.”

    This strong rebuttal followed Obasanjo’s betrayal of Afenifere on the issues of his national conference. Obasanjo, according to Pa Adebanjo “knew what he wanted all along. He drew AD leaders out and swindled them knowing that restructuring had become bait.”

    Obasanjo exploited the above moments of inattentiveness of the elders in 2003 to rig-out AD governors, substituting the ‘Omoluabis’ like Bisi Akande, Segun Osoba, Niyi Adebayo, Lam Adesina, with the likes of Ayo Fayose, Adebayo Alao-Akala Gbenga Daniel and Olagunsoye Oyinlola some of whom are currently in court defending their honour over financial malfeasance. Unfortunately the Yoruba nation paid dearly for the lack of attentiveness of the elders, as Obasanjo through his ‘mainstreaming’ agenda reversed all the gains the Yoruba made between 1952 and 1966 and also destroyed the second republic  legacies of Bisi Onabanjo, Bola Ige , Pa Ajasin, Ambrose Alli and others.

    Obasanjo derives his strength in proclaiming himself a Nigerian leader while denying being a Yoruba leader, a strategy that has allowed him to literarily climb the palm tree from the top by becoming president without a political base. Pa Adebanjo has not told us if Obasanjo now sees himself as a Yoruba leader and whether he now shares the aspirations of the Yoruba people.

    He has also not addressed Pa Fasanmi’s question as to why he wants to trade progressive with all its imperfections under Buhari with Obasanjo/Atiku conservative we all saw in action for 16 years beyond calling him an old man who has lost direction as if our revered Pa Adebanjo at 90 even without his current confusion is a young man.

    He is also haunted by another moral burden. General Alabi Isama recently claimed the Igbo have been part of every government in Nigeria since 1959. In other words, this is the first time the Yoruba mainstream political tendency is joining the north with Ayo Adebanjo’s son, Osinbajo, married to the grand-daughter of Awo, the leader on whose name he swears. This historic shift is what Pa Adebanjo says he wants to reverse so that power can return to the conservatives he had fought for over 60 years.

    Pa Adebanjo, a pride of Yoruba nation must take a journey back through memory. Yoruba never had a leader no matter how powerful they cannot handle. Sango brought glory to the Oyo Empire. But intoxicated with power, he dared the people. They humoured him with the talking drum until he committed suicide. In contemporary times, Akintola, a foremost Yoruba irredentist dared the people. (Akintola t’aku). The Are Ona Kankafo was to later commit suicide by confronting an army with a gun. Bola Ige, a well-loved leader took Yoruba through PDP, ANPP and AD. The people humoured him on as he embarked on a suicide mission to Obasanjo and his PDP.

  • Taming dynasty-building governors

    In the ongoing war of words between aggrieved APC’s governors, Okorocha of Imo, Amosun of Ogun, Akeredolu of Ondo and Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara State, I think Adams Oshiomhole as chairman of APC and custodian of the party’s laws, has the last word. He has been unequivocal as to his compliance with his party’s guidelines in the recently concluded APC acrimonious primaries. The party, he also said, gave aggrieved party members opportunities to seek redress.  APC national leader Asiwaju Bola Tinubu admonished the aggrieved governors to be conscious of the broader interest of the party while reminding them that Oshiomhole merely implemented rules and guidelines set by the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party. President Buhari, the leader of the party in spite of his many photo shows with some of the aggrieved governors especially Amosun and Okorocha, has shown by his body language that he favoured compliance with rules and guidelines of the party. With the above position of APC’s critical stakeholders,  one is left with the impression that the protesting governors who believe they are bigger than the party and have been threatening to damage the party’s fortunes in the 2019 election if their selfish demands were not met are just bad losers.

    And it is just as well Oshiomhole decided to call off their bluff. A political party after all is like a cult. You either comply with the rules or you are out. Loyalty is political party’s highest badge of honour.

    Oshiomhole however went on to list some of the aggrieved governor’s infractions against APC primary election guidelines. According to him, after eight years as governor elected on the platform of APC, Okorocha wanted to transit from the governor’s lodge to the senate while his wife becomes a member of the Lower House and his son in law succeeds him as governor of Imo State and another brother as deputy governor. This may appear obscene and immoral, but that was not the only problem.  The real scandal was that Okorocha and his family members emerged winners of a primary that was supervised by an appointed official of his government.  I guess it was for this reason Oshiomhole insisted he was not prepared to promote the building of Okorocha dynasty in Imo State especially when the state with her well educated elite is not Okorocha’s family fiefdom.

    As for Governor Amosun of Ogun State, he was accused by chairman Oshiomhole of coming up with a list of consensus candidate for the 2019 election without consulting critical stakeholders of the party including the vice president, the highest ranking political office holder from Ogun State. Consensus for him according to the APC chairman, is transiting from governor after eight years to become senate candidate by forcing the incumbent Senator LanreTejuoso who is from his senatorial district to step down. Consensus for him also meant single handedly handpicking the governorship candidate who will succeed him, the speaker of the state House of Assembly among about 16 other elective positions.

    Perhaps from the benefit of insight, Oshiomhole realising the consequences of APC’s failure to use the big stick when BukolaSaraki and Yakubu Dogara seized the leadership of the two houses and went on to make the county ungovernable for three and half years before their recent defection back to PDP, he was not going to allow the governors to hold the party to ransom.

    I think that was a bold decision. Democracy cannot survive without disciplined political parties and loyal members. That has been the experience in most developed democracies where the political parties have continued to serve as modernising agents. And this was also our experience in Nigeria between 1952 and 1966, a period regarded as the golden era of Nigeria. The first republic collapsed partly as a result of indiscipline of S. L.Akintola who was constitutionally removed from office by the governor of Western Region, Sir AdesojiAderemi, but sought the support of the NCNC/NPC coalition partners who exploited the intra-party crisis to destabilize and derailed the development programme of the region.

    Building a disciplined and modernizing political party is an arduous task that requires long period of political socialization. Unfortunately, Oshiomhole’s APC as presently constituted is an extension of PDP once described by Campbell, America’s former ambassador to Nigeria as “an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria 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”.

    AuduOgbe, a former PDP chairman was to later validate Campbell’s thesis when he said “When I was chairman of PDP, my son never got involved in oil but two PDP national chairmen after me, their sons pocketed over N400 billion without supplying a tea cup of oil.”

    The collapse of our political party system started with ill-advised proscription of the then existing political parties by our successive military regimes. Then the  idea that a political party can be an association of ‘equals without joiners and founders’ became a fraud sold by fraudulent Babangida military regime and its state house professors of political science

    Unlike what obtained during Obasanjo’s presidency when he took control of PDP, routinely and unilaterally removed and replaced party chairmen, imposed challenged presidential and governorship candidates, political parties in a democracy are not the properties of presidents of governors.  Political parties are the properties of party oligarchies made up founders and former political office holders. They are the stakeholders who as guardians of the ideals of the party are often saddled with providing a moral voice and direction when challenged by current office holders who are often driven by ambition as we currently have in the case of Oshiomhole’s “empire and dynasty-building” aggrieved governors.

    I am sure by first taming Okorocha and Amosun in order to underscore the importance role of discipline in a political party system, Oshiomhole who during his first meeting with APC lawmakers in August this year spoke of “a strategy of building a party “formed on the basis of shared ideas, shared values, shared commitment,” understands the arduous task ahead of him and the role of discipline in building a virile modernizing political party.

     

  • Restructuring and warring vice presidents

    Blame not Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and former Vice President Abubakar Atiku who have been trying to outdo each other in the last two weeks selling different narratives of their exploits in the struggle for workable federal arrangement in Nigeria. Precisely because Nigerians hardly read anything about how we got to this sorry pass, very few, including our political representatives have been able to properly articulate our crisis of nation building.  This is perhaps the reason the warring former vice president and the incumbent are waging subliminal war to reposition themselves as the best that has ever happened to the struggle for federal arrangement which started in the 1940s, long before both were born, as 2019 draws near.

    As his own major contribution to the struggle for workable federal arrangement, Osinbajo regaled us with the now very familiar story of how Lagos State created 37 local councils;  how  former President Obasanjo, then Atiku’s boss and now his sponsor for his 2019 presidential bid, frustrated Lagos State efforts and how he fought it up to the Supreme Court. Besides fingering Atiku as an accomplice in his principal’s assault on Nigerian constitution, he thinks Atiku has limited knowledge of what restructuring is all about: “People talking about restructuring, if you ask them what they meant by restructuring, they won’t even know what it means and that is the problem we have to face”, he sneered.

    Atiku has also tried to equate his treachery and unsuccessful coup against the second term ambition of his principal, Obasanjo when he mobilized self-serving South-south governors to demand that littoral states of the federation be allowed to get more benefits from offshore proceeds as his own positive contribution to the struggle for restructuring of Nigeria in line with what was bequeathed on to us by our founding fathers.

    He is also taking credit for the six geopolitical zones structure that came up for discussion but not authored by the 1995 Abacha’s dubious constitutional confab. If Osinbajo is in doubt about Atiku’s grasp of what restructuring is about, he took pains to explain. It is according to him, to “return some items on the concurrent list to the states; to reverse the epidemic of federal take-over of state and voluntary organisations, schools and hospitals which began in the 1970s” under Obasanjo his principal; transferring of federal roads to the state governments along with the resources it expends on them; devolving more powers to the federating units with the accompanying resources and ensuring greater control by the federating units of the resources in their areas. All these which both PDP and APC have been unable to accomplish in 19 years, he said ‘can be done in six months.’

    First, I sympathise with both warring leaders who suffer from the same affliction. Their principals, Obasanjo and Buhari, as former soldiers who believe they not only own the state, but are custodians of the constitution, see any discussion of restructuring as a threat to the unity of Nigeria they both fought to preserve.

    It is also not difficult to conclude the warring former vice presidents are playing on the intelligence of Nigerians. Osinbajo , a professor of law, a former Attorney General of Lagos and an active participant in the drafting of APC manifesto which featured restructuring of the country as part of its selling point in 2015 and Atiku, with a diploma in law from ABU and a vice president for eight years, cannot pretend not to know what Nigerians want.

    A return to a pre-independence federal arrangement has been widely canvassed by many credible and patriotic Nigerians across the country as well as Afenifere, Ohaneze, the Middle Belt Forum, and many others as representatives of their ethnic groups.

    Nigerians agitating for restructuring are not asking both men and the unambitious Nigerian governing elite to invent the wheel. They are only asking for a return to a federal arrangement embraced by our founding fathers which up to 1966 guaranteed ‘individual and group rights defined in form of language, culture, and religion or socio-economic status’ and guarantee freedom, liberty and equality for every group. This was a battle long fought and won by our founding fathers.

    Because of the nature of state formation in Africa, the colonial powers impressed it on us that the ‘Hausas of Zaria are different from the Bantu tribes men of the valley of the Benue’ just as the Scandinavians in the Baltic are different from the Slavs of Bulgaria; that we are a ‘collection of mutually independent native states, separated by difference of history and tradition, by ethnological and racial, tribal, political, social and religious barriers’.

    Consequently, Hugh Clifford, the then Nigerian Governor-General in an address to the Nigerian Council on December 1920 was unequivocal about a British policy designed to produce a ‘regional government that secures for each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality and its own chosen form of government which have been evolved for it by the wisdom and by the accumulated experiences of generation of its forbearers’.   This stated policy was what later influenced the constitutional changes of 1954, 1957 and the 1958 Lancashire debate at which October 1, 1960 was chosen as the date for our independence.

    As opposed to the military that has dominated Nigerian politics since 1966, their civilian accomplices benefitting from our current tragedy and the warring vice presidents trying to play the ostrich, what true lovers of our country pray for is a restructured Nigeria with constituents power over law and order, education and public information; a restructured Nigeria that guarantees freedom and justice for all;  that protects the right of indigenes as enshrined in the UN charter; a restructured Nigeria that can end the orgy of killing of defenceless  women and children in the Middle Belt region by unidentified suspected immigrants herdsmen from across West Africa‘, and a restructured country that will guarantee each constituent has the capacity to protect its citizens from killer fake drugs and other substandard goods imported by evil minded Nigerians.

    There is a consensus on the above demand by Nigerian opinion leaders and various leading socio-cultural groups. Chief EmekaAnyaoku, a former secretary-general of the Commonwealth, captured this when he said ‘the present   36 federating units and the federal capital territory, each with its full paraphernalia of administration, spending disproportionate amount of its resources on recurrent expenditure’, is responsible for the collapse of education and health sectors and infrastructural decay’. The most appropriate structure of governance for Nigeria, according to him should be a return to a ‘true federation of six federating units with each developing at its own pace, and the proceeds from “God-given” national resources’.

    Except warring Osinbajo and Atiku who are trying to play the ostrich and their principals – President Buhari and ex-President Obasanjo, there is no ambiguity in what Nigeria want and demand of their leaders.

  • NHIS as symptom of dysfunctional federation

    On October 18, the chairman of NHIS governing council, Dr.EnyantuIfenne, announced the suspension of Professor Usman Yusuf, the Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). She also announced the decision of the council to raise an administrative panel of enquiry to probe the allegations levelled against Yusuf by workers and establish the truth or otherwise of the claims. These allegations according to newspapers reports include “highhandedness. misappropriation of funds, nepotism, misconduct, flagrant disregard for  superior authority and use of inappropriate words on a senior officer; others include encouragement of the supply of fake products and substandard goods to the agency, inflation of cost of contract by over 100 percent, dropping of the name of President Buhari for disobedience of the minister of health, fraudulent practice in the selection of insurance broker for the scheme and collection of a flat rate of N7.2 million for registration of Health Management Organisations, (HMOs). He was also accused of mismanaging N860 million budgeted by the agency for training in 2016.”

    But for Yusuf, it was corruption fighting back. He alleged there was high level of corruption in the NHIS’s Information Communications Technology (ICT) department, which allegedly fraudulently enrolled up to 23,000 people into the scheme. He also claimed 57 HMOs in the country have no valid licenses, as their accreditation had expired.

    He had the sympathy of the National Assembly lawmakers who directed the minister to allow the suspended secretary to “continue with his sanitisation programme in the NHIS”. Following a motion sponsored by Chika Okafor and 34 lawmakers at a plenary presided over by Speaker Yakubu Dogara, the House of Representatives ordered the recall of Prof. Usman Yusuf. The committee also claimed “it was aware that the minister wrote to the Executive Secretary, through the Permanent Secretary, Mrs. BintaAdamu Bello, to pay N197, 072,500 for the rehabilitation of some federal medical centres, in a contract awarded by the ministry in 2016 even when there was no budgetary provision for the payment in the NHIS’s 2016 budget.” The house also alleged that the permanent secretary had in another letter asked Yusuf to pay $37,838 to six officials of the ministry to attend a World Health Organisation conference in Geneva.”

    Some sources claimed that President Muhammadu Buhari ordered Yusuf’s reinstatement because he found the allegations against him largely unsubstantiated after evaluating the report of the panel that probed the offences. The minister for information told the nation that “the fact that he has been reinstated does not mean that the EFCC will not continue with its investigation”. The outcome of the EFCC investigation was never made public.

    But employees of NHIS along with those of Joint Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (JASCSN) and the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN) saw Yusuf’s recall as an indictment of federal government’s corruption fight”.

    Suspending him again last week, the second time in eight months, Dr.Ifenne announced “if President Buhari is fully briefed about a tenth of Yusuf’s atrocities, he would throw him out! The truth, like health, has no colour, no tribe and no religion and no social class. The council stands by its decision.”

    There were newspaper reports that Yusuf forced his way back to his office on Monday this week.

    We have no reason to doubt either Ifenne and her council nor the embattled Professor Yusuf Usman. Let us also concede it to employees of NHIS, JASCSON, and MHWUN that now believes it is their right to determine who their employer employs. Of course we already know the president who suffers from a sense of self-righteousness is hardly swayed by public opinion. We can similarly not question the media owned by those who own society for doing what they do best-raising more questions than providing information to the public. Let us therefore assume they are all right since using the Maina scandal as a template, it is difficult to make sense out of actions of government that hardly talk to the people, even when it is in its interest to do so.

    But the president and his warring appointees are not the real issue. They are mere symptoms of a dysfunctional unitary system fraudulently described as federalism by those who are benefitting from our tragedy.

    For instance, NHIS is a brain child of ‘mainstreamers’. It is part of social engineering efforts of those who continue to play the ostrich instead of addressing our crisis of nation. Obasanjo who took over regional world class universities and university teaching hospitals which later became shadows of themselves officially launched the NHIS in 2005 with a mandate to enlist at least 70 per cent of Nigerians by the end of 2010. Today it covers only about 4%. As in most federal institutions, the programme enrolees experience poor service delivery. The scheme presently covered those in the civil service, the armed forces, paramilitary forces and other employees of the federal government. Since it is voluntary, only few private sector concerns such as banks participate. Of course the underprivileged majority, the destitute and children who are the most vulnerable and the target of such schemes in other societies are not covered. NHIS even with its control of more funds than it needed has been largely ineffective because of massive corruption. There have been reported cases “of collusion between agents of the regulatory body, the health care providers and health maintenance organizations”.

    In other words, the “unitary federalists”, the ‘mainstreamers’ that want to control the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the roads we pass through, our health, culture and history, cannot manage a scheme that covers only 4% of the population.

    Now let us go through memory to remind ‘mainstreamers’ and enemies of a restructured Nigeria that we once had a western regional government healthcare system that worked for the people between 1952 and 1966. Within that scheme, government provided dispensaries in every village and hamlet, manned by trained health assistants and midwives. They were often opened to school children between 8-10am after which they attended to others that needed medical attention in the community. But mainstreamers have dragged the west down from where it was in the fifties to the same level of Jos south LGA located in the outskirts of Jos city where 80% of women deliver their babies unassisted at their homes while one of their former governors shared out fifty pounds note to strangers in London.

    Today, Nigeria has the second highest maternal deaths in the world second only to India. “An estimated 830 women die from avoidable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth every day and about 58,000 death annually.” “With the new-born mortality rate of 29 deaths per 1,000 births, the global estimates rank Nigeria as the 11th highest on new-born deaths. This is partly because corruption marred the federal government’s rural community health programme initiative since the beginning of the fourth republic in 1999.

    Professor Adewole, the minister of health was once the provost of UCH, once acclaimed as one of the best three teaching hospitals in the Commonwealth of Nations which include Britain, Canada, Australia and India.  Today the UCH is a shadow of itself. LUTH is not any different. Sometimes patients wait as long as five months to see consultants. The minister who seems to be busy doing everything except finding a way to ensure 96% of Nigerian not covered by their NHIS get some joy was recently heard saying during a national television programme that our underfunded and ill-equipped federal teaching hospitals have too many consultants.

    Our problem is the dysfunctional centre. If after 50 years we do not know where we are going, we should at least be conscious of where we are coming from.

  • Obasanjo and canonisation of Atiku

    As it is often said, a week in politics is a long time. In just one week, Atiku Abubakar transformed from Saul to Paul. He was also canonized as Saint Atiku. He owes this change of fortune to the trinity of Catholic Church’s Arch-Bishop Mathew Kukah, David Oyedepo of the Living Faith Church and a leading prosperity prophet, and Abubakar Gumi, the Zaria based Islamic scholar and cleric, supported by Pa Ayo Adebanjo of Afenifere, all working for the imperial Obasanjo.

    It all started with Atiku Abubakar clinching the PDP ticket for the 2019 presidential contest at the expense of Bukola Saraki and Aminu Tambuwal in what some have described as the battle of dollars. Immediately the victory was secured, their lords spiritual, who have never hidden their sympathy for PDP, posing as peace makers, took Atiku to his former boss, ex-President  Obasanjo who had shortly before then said: “If I support Atiku for anything, God will not forgive me. If I do not know, yes. But once I know, Atiku can never enjoy my support”.  He went on to document in his “My Watch” what he knew about Atiku, i.e., his “propensity to corruption, his tendency to disloyalty, his inability to say and stick to the truth all the time, a propensity for poor judgment, his belief and reliance on marabouts”.

    With the intervention of their lords spiritual and Pa Adebanjo however, that became ancient history. Obasanjo who  likes playing god (Shagari, 1979, Yar’Adua, 2007, Jonathan, 2011 and Buhari 2015) after canonising Atiku a saint started referring to him as ‘the president to be’.

    Obasanjo who has also been described by his daughter as someone “who sees himself at the epicentre of the Nigerian nation, whose destiny, he literally cages in his pocket and nurtures to feed his whims”, does not believe he owes Nigeria any explanation for his Atiku volte-face. With an overbearing haughtiness, he went on to declare: “We have reviewed what went wrong on the side of Atiku. And in all honesty, my former vice-president has rediscovered and repositioned himself”. The ‘we’, is assumed, refers to the politicking lords spiritual who have all along engaged Buhari in silent war over his anti-corruption crusade, his alleged Islamisation agenda and his handling of the herdsmen’s mindless killings.

    And admonishing Atiku thereafter, imperial Obasanjo, the “ father of the nation” courtesy of PDP, declared: “And when you become Nigerian President which, insha-Allah, you will be, remember what we did together in government – we ran an administration by Nigerians for all Nigerians where merit and performance count more than blood relationship, friendship or kith and kin.”

    But first, what are those things they did together? We have it on record that in 2000, some elected PDP legislators said they needed to recoup their election expenses having sold their houses to raise funds. They created artificial fuel scarcity with queues at filling stations. Within three months, the PPPRA bill became law. A House probe later showed this was the instrument PDP stalwarts and their siblings used to defraud the country to the tune of about N1.7trillion under the fuel subsidy scam.

    It is also on record that Obasanjo delegated Atiku Abubakar to oversee the National Council on Privatisation that presided over the sales of the so-called dysfunctional federal assets between 1999 and 2003. A House probe later showed that what accrued to Nigeria from investment of about $100b between 1957 and 1997 after the exercise was about $1.5b.

    And when there was nothing left to share, they came up with ingenious government policy thrust called monetization policy. It was through this that inherited national structures dating back to the colonial period scattered across the nation including lawmakers and senate president mansions were shared among PDP stalwarts, their sympathisers and civil servants.

    Of course Atiku also secured the contract ‘for the monitoring and supervision of pilotage districts in the Exclusive Economic Zone of Nigeria on terms that permits Intels to receive revenue generated in each pilotage district from service boat operations in consideration for 28 per cent of total revenue as commission to Intels”, a contract which was illegal as it contravened the “express provisions of Sections 80(1) and 162(1) and (10) of the 1999 Constitution.

    Now let us also examine Obasanjo’s claim of merit and performance as the criteria for appointments during his administration.

    Again records show Obasanjo’s appointments from 1999-2007 were driven more by political consideration than merit or performance. For instance, many of those he handpicked and imposed as governors through the massive election fraud of 2003 were found to have exhibited serious character flaws. Many of them are currently in court trying to defend their honour. It is also on record that many of his former ministers have been fingered by various probes as being behind the derailment of many of the infrastructural projects his administration initiated. Their names featured prominently in the current Travel Ban list.

    Even where Obasanjo’s appointees were eminently qualified, their appointments were not often without a tinge of mischief.  For instance, in the run up to the 1999 election, Obasanjo had said, Chief Bola Ige, the Afenifere deputy leader was the only Yoruba leader he feared. Obasanjo was to later exploit Ige’s dispute with his Afenifere colleagues over the emergence of Chief Olu Falae’s as AD presidential candidate. He lured him to PDP as minister for power and later Attorney General. He was assassinated in his room in 2001 by yet to be identified assailants.

    Then Obasanjo, who admitted visiting NADECO and Afenifere leader, Pa Abraham Adesanya three times to seek Yoruba support for his 1999 presidential ambition with the old man insisting on each occasion that Obasanjo would not get Yoruba support because ‘he is not one of us”, after winning the election without Yoruba support, decided to appoint his daughter a minister despite Pa Adesanya’s protest. Then Obasanjo went after Awolowo, the sage himself. After working against him during the 1979 election and after claiming in his “Not My Will” that he achieved on a platter of gold what Awo had been fighting for when he Obasanjo was a bare-footed school boy”, he went on to appoint his daughter as Nigeria  ambassador to Holland.

    All the above appointments were but a celebration of Obasanjo’s victory to spite Yoruba voters who rejected him even in his ward in 1999 and their leaders who had told him to his face “he is not one of us”, for refusing to identify with Yoruba aspirations.

    One of the things John Campbell recommended as a way forward for Nigeria during his last book launch besides funding of primary school and women education in the north is bringing back the manufacturing sector. Obasanjo/Atiku and PDP are responsible for the collapse of our once thriving pharmaceutical, ceramics, furniture, textile, shoe, automobile, battery and other industries. They are responsible for the collapse of the health sector when PDP stalwarts without expertise cornered teaching hospital contracts. They also presided over the near collapse of some of Nigeria high flying institutions that produced the likes of Awojobis, Osuntokuns, Chinua Achebes, Soyinkas, Ishaya Audus, etc. through under-funding while they set up their own high fees paying private secondary schools and universities.

    But a people deserve the government they get. Nigerians therefore reserve the right to vote out Buhari if they think he has not met their expectations. But as Campbell has warned, we must be sure his replacement is someone who can outperform Buhari. Definitely such a person cannot be Obasanjo/Atiku who in an era of money without sweat turned our nation to importer of labour of other societies leaving Buhari to now cope with massive unemployment of our youths, hunger  and poverty across the nation.

    Obasanjo/Atiku era of debauchery is no substitute for Buhari’s well-advertised failings such as nepotism, disregard for public opinion and ineffective leadership.

  • Osun election and Yoruba quest for self-actualisation

    In a democracy, the masses are limited by the choices of their political leaders – a few powerful people who decide ‘who gets what when and how’ – (Thomas Dye and Harmon Ziegler ‘The Irony of democracy’). Of course intra-elite rivalry is a common feature of the ruling elite but one area of elite consensus is in the imposition of their preferred candidate. This is a fact that was lost on Ademola Adeleke’s PDP party men who, in an attempt to stop him, went to court  alleging  he  was ill-equipped to contest  for the office a governor having allegedly failed the only school certificate paper he attempted or those who defected from APC over  alleged breaching of zoning arrangement. But as it has turned out for both the PDP and APC, the final outcome of the election had very little to do with their candidates.

    What was at stake before the re-run election was the future of Yoruba, a great nation that according to Professor Banji Akintoye, has allowed smaller nations to run over it because ‘it has chosen to stand still as a result of its bad politics’. But after the Osun near-debacle, the Yoruba political elite, for the first time in several decades, rose to the occasion by going into an alliance with Iyiola Omisore, the strong man of Ife.  The prompt response of governor of Oyo and governor-elect of Ekiti to Senator Bukola Saraki’s visit to Omisore was a reminder of the defeat of Ilorin-led Jihad against Yoruba land by Ibadan in Osogbo and the deployment of 25,000 soldiers by Ekiti to defend Ife against any threat during the 19th century war. (Akintoye)

    But come to think of it, is it not first, immoral for PDP to attempt to reap where it did not sow? For rejecting him and his PDP in 1999, Obasanjo persecuted Yoruba all through his presidency (1999-2007). In pursuance of his doomed ‘mainstreaming’ agenda, he deployed military tactics to outwit the Afenifere leaders in 2003 and went on to rig all southwest governorship elections except Lagos State. For out-foxing him, he decided to punish Lagos by illegally sitting on Lagos State’s local council allocations for two years in defiance of court orders. His government rejected calls for the repair of Lagos International Airport road, Apapa Tin-can Island Port Road, Ibadan-Ilorin road, Lagos Otta road, Sagamu-Benin road and the rehabilitation of the Third Mainland Bridge.

    The marginalization of Yoruba by Obasanjo’s PDP was not a myth. Speaking during the selection exercise of the current Ooni, he said “I was here in this palace 10 days before the demise of kabiyesi and he told me how the Yoruba race is marginalised in the scheme of things. He also told me to ensure that the Yoruba race got its own share of things in the country.” That never happened. Before then the Alaafin of Oyo had also accused him of “paying lip service to issues that could assist the cause of the Yoruba’.Jonathan continued with his godfather’s legacies.

    Then in December 2017, the leading Yoruba contenders for the chairmanship of PDP were outwitted by Nyesom Wike who drafted Raymond Dokpesi and Uche Secondus very late into the race. While withdrawing from the race in protest, Bode George had said “”Since the ancient days when the Yoruba people began their historical challenges on the plains and the hills of Ile-Ife, we have always been defined by our instinctive integrity, our methodical industry, our consistent loyalty and our steadfastness in protecting and defending the truth.”He then went on to lament that PDP’s, “legitimate and morally sound micro-zoning principle has now been trashed, dumped in the waste bin, flung into the gutter by very little men who have compromised the pivotal moral anchor of civilised engagement for temporary selfish gains”.

    Chief Bode George also said: “PDP has lost its soul, lost its principled beginning and the predications of righteousness. It has traded the finer principles of democratic guidance and equity for the squalid, dirty and shameful resort to mercenary agenda where nothing matters save the putrid, oafish gains of the moment”. He lamented:”The Yoruba people have been openly maligned. The Yoruba have been savaged, tormented, treated with contempt, scurried, scoffed at, humiliated and denigrated by little men whose sun will soon set”. He then demanded that “Governor Nyesom Wike must as a matter of priority and ethical importance tender unreserved apology to the people of Yoruba land for his unguarded utterances on national television”.

    Except perhaps for Chief Olu Falae and perhaps Pa Ayo Adebanjo, who not too long ago praised Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu for liberating Yoruba land from Obasanjo and his PDP but today appears to have misgivings about the battle for self-actualisation he and his other Afenifere leaders had waged for over 60 years, I am sure Bode George who today understands the challenge before the Yoruba nation will have inner satisfaction that Wike’s PDP was prevented from reaping where it has not sowed.

    The historic action also has effect on the Yoruba renewed struggle for self-actualisation within the greater Nigerian nation. Yoruba want a more egalitarian society for themselves and for other ethnic groups in the country. For that task, Awo in early 50s assembled Yoruba educated elite of solid character, to fashion out a vision for his people. These young visionaries  set up the Western Regional Marketing Board in 1954 which  developed the cash crop industry in the West and together with other regional boards “became the dominant economic system in the Nigerian economy controlling 63% of the foreign exchange earned by the country in 1961”. They also set up banks and housing estates.

    Under the military, the promulgation of “Commodity Boards Decree in 1977” by Obasanjo destroyed the Western Region’s economy. As PDP’s elected president  between 1999-2007, some of the PDP governors he personally imposed on Yoruba states under his failed ‘mainstreaming agenda’ behaved like outlaws sharing government estates and haggling over who was to buy government banks and other industries they inherited.

    It was not until 2016 during Yoruba governors’ parley initiated by the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria, DAWN that it was agreed that “the key to leveraging our uniqueness is the regional approach to dealing with our afflictions, overcoming our difficulties, as well as creating sustainable pathway to progress together”.

    Wike’s PDP foothold in Yoruba land would have threatened this new reawakening.

  • Challenge of crusading youths

    Youth symbolises heroism and sacrifice. Through valour and overbearing assertiveness, theirs, is the earth. Major transformations of society through the ages bear the imprint of youth. American President Kennedy once admonished the youth of America not to ask for what their country can do for them but what they could do for their country. Jesus Christ, the greatest teacher and social crusader from Nazareth at a youthful age of 29, embarked on social transformation of his society. His sacrifice was for more than half of the world population who for the promise of salvation have embraced His vision of a good society. Crusading youths seek honour and glory, not for themselves but for society.

    Here at home, Nigerian youths, as nationalists, journalists, trade unionists and even soldiers have been in the forefront of nation-building since the pre-independence years. It was Nigerian youths studying abroad that first suggested that Nigeria be fashioned as a federal state modelled after Swiss constitution. They formed the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM) in 1933. The new inheritors of power in the 50s who set in motion the process of creating a more egalitarian society were youths in their 20s and 30s.

    With this history of heroic exploits of Nigerian youths, it is not a surprise our crusading youths are currently at war with those they claim mortgaged their present through uninspiring leadership. And because their cause is just, many have identified with their crusade. There is Senator Dino Melaye who has said he ‘is in politics to ensure the youths of Nigeria get their own share of our national resources’. There is Bukola Saraki, the senate president who having dismissed Buhari as too old and feeble to lead, is positioning himself as saviour of Nigerian youths. There are also Kanu Agabi (SAN), who has urged Nigerian youths not to allow artificial boundaries to split them, but work more on things that would unite them as a people; Governor Tambuwal who insisted that “we cannot keep calling youth the leaders of tomorrow without ensuring that we put in place deliberate measures that will aid their quest for public service.  “ We now even have a NotTooYoungTo Run Act, which reduces the age qualification for political office seekers.

    Of course the biggest masquerade behind Nigerian youth’s current struggle for power is Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.   “Don’t be afraid or be discouraged, they will try to intimidate you individually or collectively, but I will stand by you”, he recently reassured them. He was also the arrow-head of the formation of Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM), and its integration to African Democratic Congress (ADC). Speaking on a theme: “Preparing Successor Generation for Effective Participation in Governance”, during a recent event in his presidential library, Obasanjo made it clear that “there can be no transformation without youths.”   But while challenging them to tackle the old generation politicians and wrest leadership from them, he reminded the youths that “Leadership is never given on a platter of gold, (they) have to work for it.” But how equipped are our crusading youths who have so far anchored their quest for leadership on a sense of entitlement for the task Obasanjo set before them?

    The truth is that our founding fathers studied hard to understand the world and the place of their society in the world.  Obafemi Awolowo,  a self-made man, in 1947 wrote his master-piece, the ‘Path to Nigeria Freedom’  where he had argued “Nigeria is not a nation, it is a mere geographical expression; There are no “Nigerians” in the same sense as there are “English” or “Welsh” or “French” as a student. Enahoro had been an editor of a national newspaper, Nnamdi Azikiwe’s newspaper, the Southern Nigerian Defender, Ibadan, in 1944 at the age of at 21. Bode Thomas who died at 33 as deputy chairman of Action Group party was a successful and brilliant lawyer sought after all over the country and was the author of regionalism that we eventually embraced as the basis of our federal arrangement. Remi Fani-Kayode, ‘born in London, groomed in Lagos’ was the leader of the AG youth wing who set up his ‘mosquito squad’ believed to be a militant group. Akintola, an outstanding journalist and a successful lawyer was a wordsmith who Awo claimed could debate two opposing views and win both. Sadly, very few Nigerian youths in their 20s today know anything about our nation let alone the world.

    Not even our colonial masters underestimated the crisis of nation-building in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation like ours. Reflecting on this in 1948, Arthur Richards, Governor General of Nigeria had said: “It is only the accident of British suzerainty which had made Nigeria one country. It is still far from being one country or one nation socially or even economically… socially and politically there are deep differences between the major tribal groups. They do not speak the same language and they have highly divergent customs and ways of life and they represent different stages of culture”. Unfortunately, the Nigerian military and their collaborators benefitting from our tragedy have spent the last 50 years playing the ostrich.

    Most of our crusading youths below 50 years of age know only the military narrative. They similarly cannot appreciate that government policies in the First Republic succeeded only to the extent they were anchored on the value and culture of the people. The free education policy succeeded in the west because it was anchored on the ‘aaro’ a type of self-help system where age groups come together to contribute materially and physically towards successful implementation of members’ projects such as building houses, marrying a new wife or burying their old departed parents. On the other hand, the policy was violently resisted in the east because it was not part of their culture. By building on their cultural values, the old Western Region is widely today believed to be the most educated part of Africa.

    Unfortunately, most of our crusading youths, routinely cite Emmanuel Macron of France to justify their sense of entitlement.  It is as if his magic can be replicated in neighbouring Britain or Germany with different cultural values let alone Nigeria with over 450 distinct language groups. They also often cite American democracy which produces only a choice, imposed on society by two rival elite groups, no matter how idiotic.

    There are other intriguing questions before our crusading youths. Are they by any chance, thinking of alternative to the current expensive presidential system or even democracy, the reigning king which even with its celebrated major attribute – check and balance – is by far inferior to the old Oyo traditional administrative system? Are they going to continue the military hypocrisy of trying to dictate unity amidst clashing of cultures where for instance one group say “when calamity befalls the owners of the land, …they run back to our villages to allow the owners of the land who know how to appease their own gods confront their own demons” and the other culture that insists you must be prepared to swim or sink with your benefactor?

    The demand on youth is enormous. It is a call for service which requires adequate preparation.  Youth because of heroic exploits may own the earth. But it is at the behest of society. Because of youth’s brevity of life,

    “The garlands wither in your brow.

    Then boast no more your mighty deeds.

    Upon death’s purple altar.

    See where the victor-victim bleeds” James Shirley (1596-1666)

  • EIU/ HSBC’s tendentious reports

    The latent war against Buhari by western promoters of market-driven economy which started back in 1984 came up anew shortly after he was sworn in as president some three years back. It was rekindled by the London-based Economist, in  an article titled “Crude Tactics”, where ex-President Jonathan was first described as “an ineffectual buffoon” who allowed “politicians and their cronies fill their pockets with impunity” without acknowledging that Britain served as safe-haven for such looted funds, before moving on to criticize Buhari for “refusing to devalue the naira in order to battle the fall in global oil prices”. Two years down the line, it is difficult to know who between the state as net importer of labour of other societies, the privileged elite who had millions of stolen state funds in foreign currencies stashed in their rooms and in their domiciliary accounts who became multi-billionaire many times over overnight and the vulnerable poor who look up to government for protection but left to face the attendant inflation.

    The renewed war however assumed a new dimension last week with a new provocative report by the news magazine’s Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and HSBC, a scandal-prone multi-national banking and financial institution whose activities are mired in controversies in many parts of the world. The conclusions of the reports by these two institutions widely regarded as foot-soldiers of western imperialists was not only at variance with facts they presented but touted at a regime change in line with policy thrust about those who constitute a threat to the interest of their principals.

    And if anyone fills that bill, it is President Buhari. As pro-state and anti-free market economy messianic leader who questions the continued exploitation of our resources by foreign powers, Buhari has always been legitimate target of western imperialist powers’ strong arm tactics. His removal from office was engineered in 1985 after rejecting the IMF loan and refusing to honour terms of repayment of loans looted and domiciled in British banks by some second republic politicians. Babangida, working with foreign powers, exploited the sentiments of Nigerians Buhari  insisted had an option to starve if they could not produce their own foods, to play the Brutus in the night of many knives inside an army barracks in Victoria Island Lagos. Babangida’s acceptance of  IMF loan and its ‘conditionalities’, is responsible for the  turning of our country into a dumping ground for manufactured goods and today’s mass unemployment of our youths. For his pains, IBB got a state visit to Britain and was allowed to embark on a fraudulent ‘transition without end’ for eight years.

    But to understand the nature of the ongoing war against ‘Buharinomics’, we must first understand why Britain and other old European powers have no apologies for protecting their disproportionate share of world resources. First driven to Africa in search of food, goods, gold and glory by a hostile environment, they did not see anything immoral in first introducing Africa into the globalized economy through slave trade. From slave trade to colonialism, neo-colonialism and globalization, there is only one aim – profit or living on the sweat and blood of the less the privileged. The only difference between slave trade and globalization where pastoralists in the west receive $2-$7 for every head of their cow, while 70% of Nigerians live below $2 a day is only in nomenclature.

    Now let us critically examine this latest assault by these two western imperialists’ acclaimed foot-soldiers- the Economist and HSBC. First, the simmering two years war between Buhari’s government and South Africa multi-national telecommunication giant, MTN, it had ordered to repatriate back to the country the $8.1b it improperly transferred abroad was recently brought to the public attention.  Then last Sunday, Garba Shehu, the president’s media assistant, while challenging the HSCB report revealed an ongoing government investigation of  HSBC  which it accused of laundering more than USD 100,000,000 for the late General Sani Abacha in Jersey, Paris, London and Geneva. He went on to identify the following accounts as the channels through which the monies were laundered as: AC: S-104460 HSBC Fund Admin Ltd. Jersey ($12,000,000); AC 37060762 HSBC Life (Europe), U.K ($20,000,000) and AC: 38175076 HSBC Bank Plc. U.K ($1,600,000). He also claimed the bank is also suspected in the laundering of proceeds of corruption involving more than 50 other Nigerians, including a serving senator.

    All the above came to light because government handlers want to prove that any report by David Faukners who works for the Economist and HSBC (South Africa), cannot be anything but malicious. For instance he first admitted “Higher oil prices have brightened Nigeria’s macro outlook, boosting export earnings and the supply of foreign exchange, improving the external position and supporting NGN stability; conceded the trade account has registered a surplus equal to 6.2% of GDP in Q1 2018, while the capital inflows have recovered following last year’s FX reforms with a FX reserves almost doubled over the past 18 months”.  But this however did not stop him from predicting that “A second term for Mr. Buhari however raises the risk of limited economic progress and further fiscal deterioration, prolonging the stagnation of his first term, particularly if there is no move towards completing reform of the exchange rate system or fiscal adjustments that diversify government revenues away from oil”. It is also no less curious that after admitting that the PDP is not only fragmented without a known presidential candidate  but also with little known about its policy platform”, he went on to predict  the 2019 election  ‘favours a return to power for the opposition PDP’.

    It is difficult to disagree with government that now says it is corruption and its sponsors fighting back because ‘the medium is the message’. As proof of its culpability as an accessory to corrupt elements, Garba Shehu pointed out that not too long ago, HSBC was forced by the US federal authorities ‘to pay $1.92 billion to settle charges of money laundering; fined $1.2 billion in Hong Kong for “systemic deficiencies” in bond sales and was made to pay $100 million in currency rigging settlement’, as reported by The Telegraph of January 18.

    To further prove their report was malicious, the federal government has been flaunting a more balanced ADB report that states ‘Faithful implementation of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (2017–20) which focuses on six priority sectors: agriculture; manufacturing; solid minerals, including iron, gold, and coal; services, including information and communication technology, financial services, tourism, and creative industries; construction and real estate; and oil and gas, holds the promise of weaning the country off its dependence on oil’. And if further proof of mischief is needed, the government has called attention to HSCB’s report which incorrectly claim that “several local manufacturers have suspended operations”, and accused the president of being responsible for the death  of “much of Nigeria’s nascent industry”, at a period  the Nigerian Manufacturers Association has come out to commend President Buhari for ‘his anti-import policies as provided for in the budget’.

    With the above facts, it is difficult to disagree with those who claim the controversial HSBC’s verdict of “second term for Mr. Buhari raises the risk of limited economic progress and further fiscal deterioration”, was borne out of mischief by those who have more to lose from current ‘Buharinomics’ and his anti-corruption crusade.