Category: Jide Osuntokun

Last week, the Nigerian Academy of Letters held its 25th annual convocation to admit members and fellows into its fold. The academy also saw the change of leadership from Professor Duro Oni of the University of Lagos’s Department of Creative and Dramatic Arts to Professor Sola Akinrinade of the Department of History of the Obafemi Awolowo University. The handover was seamless and without the usual drama associated with the change of guards in our clime. There were no threats of going to court or of breaking a few heads as happens often in similar situations in our country and political parties. Perhaps the civilized way the academy handles its affairs should be a lesson to the country at large that elections and change of leadership can take place within a civilized space.

Read Also: BREAKING: Tinubu assigns portfolios to Ministers-Designate

The greatest problem facing our country is the question of harmonizing the disparate and different interests of the various ethnicities growing up in the womb of the Nigerian state in what a writer described as finding fusion from fission within the Nigerian ethnic space. (Please note the deliberate avoidance of the word tribe which denotes primitive people).

The theme of the conference largely centred around the issue of ethnicity and nationality in Nigeria. The issue was how we can have national unity without derogating from the importance of the various ethnic formations we have in our country. Those who presented papers came from different academic disciplines ranging from history, languages and linguistics, dramatic arts, philosophy and religions. They were all sure and certain that unless we find a way out of the descent into ethnic confrontation, bigotry and conflicts in Nigeria, our country would not only not progress, but would certainly die. Some of the scholars suggested that instead of overconcentration on ethnic studies, we should deliberately find issues of inter-ethnic relations in the past and the present as primary areas of research. They suggested that most of our languages, the number of which was not agreed upon, belong to the same KWA subgroup of NIGER-CONGO group of languages. The fact remains that our languages are not as different from one another and can be easily learned by young children if properly taught.

The issue of finding a common language we all can adopt as a national language came up. People made allusion to the fact that Nigeria is not as linguistically and culturally variegated as India, yet they found a common ground in the adoption of Hindi as an indigenous common language out of the multitude of languages in India. The consensus however was that the current use of English provides a unifying cement without the fear of an indigenous language of a group lording it over others especially if the language of one of the three main ethnic groups, the Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba was adopted. Besides, English gives us connection with the wider English world which is advantageous to all speakers of its national variants. The idea of a language like Igala was mooted, but it was simply laughed at out of consideration. Igala was suggested because it has many words from Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba and it is a language of a relatively small ethnic group.

The point of language is very important and previous governments that adopted the teaching of Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba in primary and secondary schools all over Nigeria knew what it was doing. It decided that if Nigerians can communicate with one another, the fear of each other will be removed and what currently is a riddle to those outside one’s language will be removed. Unfortunately the national language policy has not been effectively implemented perhaps because of insufficient teachers and budgetary allocations and the political will to implement what seems to be a practical solution to complex problem.

The conference was told about the seamless integration of different sub ethnicities of the Yoruba in for example, Ibadan and many of the Yoruba towns following the 100 years of warfare and the collapse of the old Oyo Empire. What made this much easier than it would have been was the fact that the people spoke the same language, albeit different versions of it. In the Islamic Northern part of the country, the religion of Islam cemented many groups together even when they spoke languages as distinct as Hausa, Nupe, Fulfulde and Kanuri. This seamless integration was absent among the Igbo, Ibibio, Izon, Urhobo, and Annang people and the various “chief-less” people in the Middle Belt of Nigeria such as the Tivs because of their segmentary political sociology. 

The point of urbanization as a factor of integration seems to have been ignored and I believe this is important. There also seems to be some concern among some people that research into ethnic groups about what distinguishes and separates them from others was not in the interest of Nigerian nationality but that focus should be on identifiable unity among people who on the surface appear not to have anything in common. For example, the Tivs and the Jukun who are different people were united by the Tivs borrowing chieftaincy ideas and even tittles from the Jukun. The same thing can be identified in eastern Yorubaland where there are existing cultural and political titles borrowed from either Bini or Nupe. The most important diffusion of political culture exists between Bini and Yoruba people despite people trying to erode its significance because of contemporary inferiority/superiority complex.

The problem is not just interrogating the issues of relations among people but their weaponisation for contemporary political advantages of the outcome of research. Avoiding the study of our differences may in fact destroy genius, innovation and creativity. No one can thoroughly understand some of Wole Soyinka’s plays and Chinua Achebe’s books without some knowledge of Yoruba and Igbo. There is absolutely no problem studying different ethnic cultures; what we should avoid is unnecessary comparison of them in terms of ranking them as to which is better. In the past, ethnicities like those of the Yorubas, Edo, Hausa, Jukun, Chamba and Efik were placed at a higher level of civilization on the basis of the kingdoms and empires they formed while segmentary groups like the Igbo, Tivs and so on, were regarded as people of lower level of achievements and civilization because they were organised in clans and villages. But this erroneous interpretation of cultural achievements belongs to the uninformed past.

The late Chief Obafemi Awolowo rightly said there should be no problem between being a patriot and nationalist; between being a  Yoruba and a Nigerian even though in 1947 he had dismissed the idea of Nigeria as “a mere geographical expression.” His idea of Nigeria being an artificial and administrative convenience was echoed by Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who had dismissed the idea of Nigeria in 1954 as a “British intention”. The Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello even went further by calling the amalgamation of Southern and Northern Nigeria the “mistake of 1914”.

One may be tempted to say all these doubts about Nigeria and fear of disintegration belong to the past but that will not be a realistic assessment of the present political reality. The country is more divided than ever before even though it seems young educated Nigerians are forging ahead with inter-ethnic ties but the politicians are way behind. Elections are largely determined on ethnic basis, emphasis is placed on state of origin instead of place of residence, political parties have no different or divergent ideologies; in fact they appear to be special organizations or mechanisms designed to capture power for personal financial aggrandizement by those in power.

I believe if there was all-round economic development and expansion of the labour market, the problem of ethnic divisions would be obviated. In Canada for example, no one seriously talks about whether one is of English, Francophone or Ukrainian origin because there are jobs for all who want to work but the case in Nigeria is different because of competition for scarce jobs and employment. Religious differences are constantly weaponized to the detriment of national unity. Until the politicians and the bureaucrats who egg them on realise the time bombs on which they are sitting and do something radical about it in terms of political engineering and ethnic balancing, our country is doomed to fall like  ethnic Humpty Dumpty which cannot be put together again.

For almost a month, hundreds of black Africans have been on the verge of starving to death and also dying of dehydration in the border between Libya and Tunisia where the Tunisian authorities have herded these poor  black African  economic migrants on their way to Europe  after the perilous desert crossing from sub Saharan Africa. Initially these people reached Tunisia where they were apparently promised crossing to Italy by smugglers who abandoned them to their fate. When they sought refugee status in Tunisia, the rabidly racist president of the country, Kais Saied came out to accuse blacks of being responsible for increasing crimes in his country forgetting that blacks constitute considerable proportion of the Tunisian population. In spite of a law against discrimination passed in 2018 and reaffirmed in 2022, President Saied’s increasingly unpopular government has singled out the blacks for his vituperative attacks. This is not surprising because it is a perennial problem in Arab countries to discriminate against blacks. Even the great Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat in the 1970s complained about being discriminated against because of his dark Sudanese mother!

Read Also: Gunmen kill prominent Islamic scholar in Gombe

The recent parliamentary elections for a third of the members of parliament was boycotted by the critics of President Saied who accused him of  being responsible for the serious economic problems that now make people see the country as a failed state. The president has turned down the stiff conditionalities of the IMF and the World Bank before economic assistance which he sought could be made available to the country thus compounding the country’s problems. It should also be remembered that the “Arab Spring” that swept the authoritarian regimes in the Arab world started in Tunisia in 2010 and not much has changed since then. Events happening in the country remind one that the politicians there have not learned anything nor remembered anything. The poor blacks, both indigenous and alien, merely provide a useful distraction for a beleaguered government.

The government in Libya which has been in disarray since Muamar Gadhafi was killed has at least recently sent some victuals to the black Africans pushed to their border by Tunisia. This has however not stopped the dying of these “wretched of the earth” (Les damnes de la terre) to put it in the words of Frantz Fanon. The people dying are now pleading with the world to save them from certain death from hunger and dehydration.  Many of the young people in sub Saharan Africa are admittedly impatient believing that the grass is greener in other countries no matter how those of us in positions of knowledge tell them it is better to temporize than take precipitate action of a leap in the dark in search of the so called golden fleece. Sometimes the parents of these young people even sell whatever they have including houses to sponsor these young people on journeys that sometimes become journeys of no return. It is only when something bad happens that the reality would hit  them like a thunderbolt and by then it is sometimes too late. It may be death in the arid desert or perishing in a leaking fishing boat turned into carrying human cargo that has nowhere to go than down the Mediterranean Sea.

Migration is known to international law and there are protocols guiding what governments should do when migrants turn up in their countries but in the case of the situation in North Africa particularly concerning black migrants, the law seems to be constantly ignored in order to preserve some notion of racial purity. The current situation is now very dire and it calls for immediate international intervention or by the governments of the countries where these people come from.  They now want to be repatriated to their different home countries in sub Saharan Africa. Listening to their sonorous pleas, one can identify substantial numbers of them are from West Africa and from Nigeria specifically. Should ECOWAS and the AU not mobilize their embassies in Libya and Tunisia to go to the border regions to rescue their people and send those willing to return home to their countries of origin? Should we not officially protest these people’s treatment with Tunisia and Libya at the highest level of our governments? This is an issue that should be raised at the UN and its relevant agencies for humanitarian assistance.  Indeed, the UN’s Secretary General has called attention to it without response. If these people were stranded dogs, Europeans and Americans would have been trying to rescue these bedraggled people. Black peoples are people too and they should be treated with all the considerations they deserve.

African governments should hold their heads in shame. These economic migrants were pushed to the desperate point of in order to survive; they travel through the forbidden Sahara desert subjected to death and murder in the hands of mindless and heartless roving Touaregs and other murderous tribes in the desert who rape and kill these unfortunate people as if they were game animals. The governments of their country remain condemnable and should be condemned for their failure to make provision for their people especially the young people. This is why every fair skinned person all over the world looks down at Africans as inferior. With all the mineral and forest resources on our land, we seem unable to convert them to capital goods necessary for technical  and material development until the so called white, brown  and yellow expatriates come to our country to rip us off. Now the development stage has passed us by and the rest of the world has moved on to a new stage of “green development” when within our life time, our mineral and forest resources may be declared “trusts of civilization “ out of bounds to us in order to save the global  environment! This is the stage we will soon reach and the recurrent military manifestation may be the crying of the youth for help and of course the usual African penchant for opportunities for self-enrichment and corruption.

But in the meantime, we must do everything to rescue the poor Africans dying in the desert of Libya and Tunisia. If we don’t do something urgently, posterity will not forgive all of us especially those in government and those of us who constitute the critical African intelligentsia.

Adams Oshiomhole, the APC  Senator representing Edo North in the senate issued a statement last week pleading with Nigerians that his party  the APC did not promise a miraculous solution to all the problems of our country within the first few months of coming recently to power under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This was a statement that came appropriately from the right kind of person who is close to the grassroots especially as a former leader of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC). Many Nigerians who are not used to hearing the truth of our current economic situation of a country borrowing money to subsidize consumption and even to pay salaries, have been complaining, some silently but others loudly, about how the Tinubu government is making their economic situation worse than before.

If one came from outside Nigeria, one can be pardoned for being uninformed about our situation before now. This government has not been in power for up to two months and people are behaving as if this government has been in power for years, not just two months. I think the government is not propagating its message effectively. Most people in this country are convinced that something radical has to be done to make our economy right apart from rushing to China and every willing lender to borrow money for infrastructure and salaries because our total income is not sufficient to amortize and pay interests on our local and foreign loans. Those benefiting from these loans and infrastructural development are not the peasants and the urban poor, but the hordes of bureaucrats and government employees in the states and national legislatures and the local government administrations. Unfortunately these are the same people complaining most. In my youth, there were about 11 permanent secretaries in the old Western Region covering most parts of Lagos State, the entire Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Edo and Delta- eight states ruled by one administration under a political leadership based in Ibadan with a cabinet of 11 or so ministers. Look at what we have today under eight governors and innumerable commissioners and hundreds of permanent secretaries and hundreds of thousands of civil servants running the most expensive administrations in the states and local government areas (LGAS). What was true of the old Western Region was also true of the eastern and northern regions.  Nigeria suffers from a surfeit of administration! I am not suggesting that we roll the hands of the clock back. This will be difficult but do we need the excesses that we see all around in the fleet of cars being used by those who should use their own cars the way all of us are expected to do? This is the time to cut the fat out of government. It’s not going to be easy but we must be seen to be cutting back in all areas of government.

The president in agreement with the legislature and the state governments must declare a state of ECONOMIC EMERGENCY.  The people must be carried along through the press and the various civil society organizations that mean well for the country. This is the time to cancel the humongous pensions for governors and other outrageous allowances that our economy cannot support. There is nowhere in the world where participation in government is the surest pathway to becoming stupendously rich as in Nigeria.

I am not advocating that governors should swear to an oath of poverty but all reasonable Nigerians just cannot agree to the current pensions and allowances that rubber stamp legislatures have been manipulated to give to former governors by cunning and clever governors on their ways to retirement sometimes after being in office for a mere four years! The present constitutional arrangement borrowed from the richest country in the world – the USA, is just not suitable for a poor third world country like Nigeria whose federal budget is not more than the budget of the FIRE DEPARTMENT of New York State. When taken together, the salaries, allowances and constituency allowances of our federal legislatures are a scandal to good governance anywhere in the world including even the United States of America. It is this overloaded government cost and the widespread corruption in government that have ruined and impoverished our country.

Anyone who cares should visit the hostels of our students in secondary and tertiary institutions and would be surprised that students living in such places cannot become responsible citizens when they grow up. In many of our institutions of learning, toilets, where they exist, are no longer functioning. Even some staff toilets, where they exist, are not functioning. I am just highlighting the areas I am most familiar with. All areas of our national lives require reforms and rehabilitation. This is why we have to prioritize the areas of need and our plans to deal with every sector incrementally.

This is why I think there ought to be committees looking into administrative reforms including pensions for all sectors including the military, educational reforms not just at any particular level but all levels from kindergarten, primary, secondary and tertiary levels as well as the apprenticeship system of training mechanics, electricians, bricklayers, carpenters, tailors, barbers, drivers and other kinds of artisans without which a country cannot run. If we have thorough examination of all these levels of education, we may be able to build an enduring peace and development in our country.

We also need to discuss the long term development of our country. We should ask ourselves whether the current structure of our country is working. This is not something that can be done in a hurry but we should begin to think about it and set in motion what to do about the multitude of states and 774 LGAs. We need to begin to realize that government is about people. If the people are not happy then it follows that government is failing and we should do something about it. Tinubu did not create all these problems but they have come to a climax under him.

But let us begin doing what is doable with our present economic situation in our country in such a way that we can carry everybody along the path of rectitude and reforms. Let us cut down on the cost of government. We can start the reforms immediately at the federal level. Do we need more than the constitutionally required 36 ministerial appointments? Why  then have more as we are usually inclined to do?. Ideally, we should reduce the size of the federal legislatures and have a unicameral legislature but under the present constitution we cannot do it.  But do we need to lavish so much on its members? Do we need to have constituency budgets for hundreds of members? No one is saying our MPs should not look well but not at the expense of the development of the country. Our MPs cannot afford to be seen as a plague on the country. What applies to the federal government should also in the same sense apply to the state governments. It is already crystal clear that the 36 or is it 37 states, if Abuja is taken as a state as the constitution says, are just too many. For the future, we should reflect on possible six zonal structures that would be viable rather than the unwieldy 37 state structure. In the meantime the governors should be advised to run lean administrations whose existence should be justified on the basis of how they touch the lives of the governed. Let the people perceive that government is working for them. The present state governments must be the centres of government activities and action while the federal government should only be seized with the question of the national and external security of our country including institutions like the army, police, foreign affairs, the national currency, the central bank, customs, communication and immigration that bind the country together while the federal government ensures that no state will be allowed to descend below irreducible minimum  of development .

The important thing is perception. No government can finish the job of government in one fell swoop. The job of government is continuous and cannot be done in the life of one administration. But whatever government that is in place must carry the people along and spread the pain. There must be no disconnect between the government and the governed. People are not stupid and can be trusted if they are given all the information available to government. The development and growth of information technology makes provision of information an imperative in today’s world. The unlettered have children who can explain complex issues of the economy to their parents but those in government must not expose their soft underbelly of conspicuous consumption while asking the ordinary people to shoulder unbearable burden.

The whole world is confronting an inflation spiral that varies from country to country. From the United States to China, the two economic super powers are facing inflation that they are historically not used to. The European Union and Great Britain have had like the USA to raise central bank rates many times in recent times. Interest rate in the central bank in Nigeria has always been so high that commercial banks have charged punitive rates to borrowers making it extremely difficult for small businesses to thrive.

Inflation is no longer an economic issue or issue of high finance; ordinary Nigerians unfortunately are living through it. We cannot certainly blame the present government that is still at its formative period. There is no cabinet yet to help the president navigate his ways through the tortuous and slippery way this particular government has to go especially after the ruinous years of the preceding government. Unfortunately, the present government is the one carrying the can of this rampaging inflation that is affecting all of us.

I was in Ibadan over the weekend and I had a craving for yams because I have not been able to eat yams for the past month because of the outrageous and excessive price the yam sellers in Lagos demanded. I drove to the market to my yam vendor in Ibadan and she said I would be very pleased with the fresh yams she had. I was indeed pleased that at last, fresh yams had finally arrived in the market.

I used to think I could pick yams that would be good either for pounded yams or just as boiled yams good as breakfast delight. I even know the names of yams such as “efuru”  “elentu” “Odo” “Aro”. My yam vendor is an Ibadan lady who had no knowledge about yams as an Ekiti man like me would have. So when I asked her what kind of yams she had, she said it was called “Gambari”. I asked which kind of yams was that? She said they were from Ekiti. I laughed and laughed thinking whether to an Ibadan woman, Ekiti people were “Gambari” which was what Yoruba call Hausa and all our Northern compatriots. Of course I immediately knew what she was saying. The yams were from Ekiti State where Ebira people from Kogi are farm hands growing the yams. After the rigmarole of the name of the yams, she brought out six yams costing N14,500 almost N2500 per yam! I could not believe this but the lady said her price was not subject to negotiations. She said she would not sell a bad stuff to me since I always bought yams from her. I had no reason to doubt her and paid and headed home phoning my friends about the cost of yams!

People may be wondering why I was in the market haggling over the price of yams. The reasons are straightforward. Since my wife passed on to eternity, I have had to do things not expected of men. Secondly my caretaker does not like yams or their derivatives and if I must bear my yam-eating father’s name, I had to go to the market to buy the precious thing myself.

The price of yams surprised me but I can understand why the price was so high. The cost of transportation has tripled since the price of gasoline has virtually tripled. This has nothing to do with the dollar/Naira rate. Most Nigerians understand that the subsidy palaver just has to end because unscrupulous Nigerians had fed fat on the scheme to the detriment of those who knew nobody in government. Nobody however expected that the impact of its removal would be so devastating as it now appears.

On Sunday when I went to church, the roads did not have the hustle and bustle characteristic of Ibadan roads on Sundays. In fact I was worried and I asked the newspaper vendor near my house if all was well. He quickly said there was no problem and that Christians were worshiping from their homes just to save money and taxi drivers were off the roads because there were no passengers to carry. This was the result of deregulation of the downstream oil industry and the merging of the official and unofficial rates of the dollar which in the long run economic analysts say is necessary for economic growth and seamless trade relations with our trading partners since we do not have a convertible currency. It is now clear to even illiterates that the cost of energy is the ultimate key to economic development. If the people generating electricity and those who are distributing it threaten to raise the unit cost of electric power, it is because they too are dependent on either hydrocarbons or hydroelectricity which are somehow related.

Read Also: Rising basic costs of living push inflation to 22.41%

We are entering a stage in which we must count the cost before we embark on any project or journey. It is not only the cost of food, energy and power that have become high globally, the cost of drugs are almost unsustainable. I was in Canada towards the end of last year and I needed to buy some drugs and I could not believe that they cost almost five times their cost in Nigeria. The reason was obvious. Canada has what Americans derisively called “socialized medicine” a system introduced into the English-speaking world by the Clement Attlee’s post Second World War Labour government in Great Britain that goes with the sobriquet of “National Health service”. The British copied this from the Bismarckian government of imperial Germany dating back to 1870. This involved paying high taxes on almost every service or transactions to pay for medical services available to all residents who are taxpayers. Since I was not a Canadian, I had to pay the market price of drugs because I had no medical insurance.

We have been playing around with medical insurance in Nigeria but our medical services remain primitive and undeveloped. The key to affordable medical services is local production of generic drugs for common diseases such as malaria, headaches, stomach disorders, respiratory problems and so on.

What can government do to fight the rampaging inflation in Nigeria? In one sentence, we must produce what we eat, what we wear, what we need to maintain reasonably good health and what we need whether for transportation, communication and security. This is a tall order. No country is totally self-sufficient. The old adage is still true that no country is an island sufficient unto itself. No country at the same time must be totally dependent on others. A country like that is inherently weak and at the mercy of those who supply it with what it needs. Our country however must plan not to depend on others for most things. There is no reason on earth for us to import textiles, food, and most domestic utensils. We must import advanced machinery in order to be self-sufficient. This should be the plan of the Tinubu government if it is to be taken as a serious government.

The recently announced reduction and cancellation of taxes on some goods and services are policies in the right direction. But it can hardly fight the kind of food inflation facing Nigeria. The solution may take a long time to put in place and the people may not be ready to wait. Public transportation has to be improved upon. Commercial vehicles traveling between states and cities can be provided cheaper fuel in designated fuel stations run by local and state governments hopefully with strict supervision so as to avoid corruption and misuse. This will reduce the cost of food and a full belly is not likely to cause trouble!  Once this is done, we must bring in price control mechanism to fix the cost of commercial transportation and the cost of food and other resources. The plan of railway resuscitation should be updated and fast forwarded so that food can be moved from areas of production to the cities. One of the reasons why food is expensive is the rural banditry caused by the Boko Haram insurgency which has lasted too long. Government should do whatever it takes to put an end to this rebellion.

The problems facing this nascent government are not insolvable. Unfortunately the poor people need to be helped immediately so that they do not lose interest in the ability of their government to find solutions to the myriad of problems they are trying to cope with. The most immediate problem is food availability at affordable cost. We have faced this problem before and we should look back into our past and revise the old methods of bulk buying of food from wherever they are located to solve the present problems even if for a short time until things get back to normal production of what we need to eat and how to cheaply transport what we produce to areas of need.

The news of mutiny in Russia came with surprise to everyone who has some knowledge of world affairs.  But when it became clear that the mutiny was by the WAGNER mercenary group fighting along Russian troops in Ukraine, there was some relief that it was not the Russian army. If it had been the Russian army, it would have obviously led to possible change of government after 23 years of Vladimir Putin’s iron fisted rule. However the 36-hour mutiny by this group raises some serious questions about the Russian state and the future of 70 year old Putin.

Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it has become obvious that the Russian leader was badly advised and was told that the campaign against Ukraine would be an easy task and that the Ukrainian army would collapse like a pack of cards when faced with the Russian army. Putin had been led to expect this and that he would make a triumphant trip to Kyiv and install a puppet government in Ukraine totally subservient to Russia. He had reasons to think like this because the two people are linked by culture, history, geography and substantially by language because a third of the people in Ukraine particularly in the Donbas region and Crimea speak Russian and even native Ukrainians understand Russian because their two languages are not totally different. But having tasted independence and nationhood, Ukraine had grown to like it and resented being ruled by a government in faraway Moscow.

In other words, Putin was misled by the intelligence department of his government to take an action which has now misfired. It then transpired that Russia was not prepared for a land war. Attempt to recruit bright young men to beef up the  standing army of  old soldiers and compulsory one year recruits  was undermined  by the desertion  of millions of such young men to Georgia and other states of the former Soviet Union. It was to improve the fighting quality of the rapidly recruited young  men in the Russian army that the Wagner group of mercenaries led by a mercurial person called YEVGENY PRIGOZHIN was called in. He was an ally and close confidant of Putin who had been useful to the president in  all kinds of situations, as a chef in Saint Petersburg and as someone involved in trying to meddle in  the  presidential elections in the USA in 2016 to assist Donald Trump defeat Mrs  Hilary Clinton. 

Prigozhin deployed his mercenaries to help President Putin seize the Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Recently, he has organized a mercenary group variously said to number about 50,000, some of them prisoners and hard core fighting men to do President Putin’s operations in Syria, Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR). While doing this, he has apparently amassed huge amount of money from trade in crude oil from Syria and gold and diamonds from Africa. He is an unusual character not directly under the state but apparently reporting to the Russian president. This kind of organization is not unusual in president Putin’s Russia where strong armed men are doing his bidding and dirty work in keeping subject nationalities subservient to him. Theirs is such a brutal army which his goons maintain in Chechnya. The Wagner group seems to be allowed considerable power as long as they remain absolutely loyal to President Putin .

This was the situation in which the WAGNER group and its leader YEVGENY PRIGOZHIN were deployed to the front in the war in Ukraine. He and his troops proved their mettle and their contribution proved decisive in the war in some parts of the Donbas particularly in Bakhmut.  PRIGOZHIN then began to deride the regular army and their officers as cowards and useless fighting men in the war against Ukraine. He began to call for the sack of the Russian chief of army staff and the Defence minister   Sergei Shoigu and the army chief fighting in Ukraine, General Valery Gerasimov accusing them for being responsible for the loss of more than a hundred thousand young Russians on the front.  He was apparently upset by attempt by the military to get the group absorbed into the army by July 2023.

His constant abuse and diatribe against the top hierarchy of the ministry of defence went on for weeks and months without restraint and many observers began to think that Putin was using him against the army which had not performed as well as expected in the war in Ukraine. The liberty granted him by the president was apparently taken for licence to do anything. He claimed the regular army sent a missile to his camp which killed some of his men .This led to PRIGOZHIN leading thousands of his troops from the front in Ukraine into Russia and seizing a southern army base called Rostov on Don in southern Russia and sending a column of his troops to Moscow apparently to take over the Ministry of defence and army headquarters.  This column was some 125 miles from Moscow when President Vladimir Putin panicked and took to the air on Saturday June 24 to brand PRIGOZHIN a traitor who stabbed Russia in the back. In the broadcast Putin compared what was happening to the rebellion against the Russian revolution in 1917 in which the czarist regime was overthrown and the Czar Nicholas 11 was overthrown and his entire family wiped out.

I personally found the comparison important though odious because Putin now sees himself as an anointed ruler of Russia like the Romanovs. Perhaps what may have jolted Putin was the attack on Putin’s claim that he went to war because of fear of Ukraine joining NATO. This was disputed by PRIGOZHIN who claimed it was because the chiefs of the army and the Defence minister wanted to be promoted Marshals and that certain oligarchs were benefiting from the industries and minerals in Eastern Ukraine and wondered why the sons of the rich Russians and other privileged groups were not in the Russian army fighting and dying in the war front in Ukraine. The mutineers were also welcomed with hugs and cheers on the street and their rebellion was beginning to take the shape of a long awaited uprising. Putin took the extra ordinary step of television broadcast calling PRIGOZHIN a traitor and that Russia would deal with him and all those involved in the rebellion with military severity.

The whole world was seized with fear not for Putin being put down but with the fear that a man like PRIGOZHIN could come to power and be in control of thousands of nuclear war heads.

NATO and particularly the USA tried meticulously not to get involved and for the whole thing being seen as a CIA plot.  But as careful as the USA was trying to stay away from the internal Russian rebellion, the Russian foreign minister without any evidence was suggesting that NATO probably had a hand in it. But NATO was put on a state of alert while Ukraine tried very much to exploit the chaos in Russia.  Not much appeared to have been gained by any Ukraine’s effort on the battle fields. Within 36 hours of the revolt, PRIGOZHIN called off his rebellion after the intervention of the Belarus dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko and because PRIGOZHIN said he did not want Russians killing fellow Russians. A deal was signed giving PRIGOZHIN exile in Belarus and a pardon as well as payment for his troops to join the regular army. No one, it seems will suffer any consequence for an act president Putin had earlier on called treason which would be punished with extreme severity.

The question to ask now is who are the losers in this debacle? PRIGOZHIN has definitely lost a lot unless we have not been told the entire tale of the settlement. He has lost his command of his unusual mercenary force. We don’t know what will happen to his troops and mines in Mali, CAR and Burkina Faso and his oil wells in Syria.  Will President Putin‘s Russia take over control of these assets and liabilities? PRIGOZHIN had better take care of himself because the long hand of the Kremlin reaches Belarus. In any case, if Putin gives orders for PRIGOZHIN to “be terminated with extreme severity “, that will be the end of PRIGOZHIN’s story.  But we are not even sure if PRIGOZHIN is in Minsk or still in Russia or that President Putin may pardon and draw him near before liquidating him. On the other hand, President Putin has lost face.  He has been proved not to be in total control of Russia to the extent that a rag tag army of mercenaries could have the audacity to threaten him.

The  fact that the column of the mercenaries got to within 125 miles of the Kremlin without any challenge by any of the innumerable security forces in Russia  raises fundamental questions of either lack of communication or inside secret support for the mercenaries. Although this incident may be a chink in his huge armour, it still however exposed some weakness which may not be fatal to president Putin’s regime. Nobody knows the effect of the mutiny on the morale of the fighting men in the Russian military, but it certainly would have undermined their valour, courage and fighting spirit and trust in their officers. 

No one can also predict the attitude of the mercenaries if they are forced into the regular Russian military. The effect of this is that the demoralised soldiers would become sitting targets for the hardy Ukrainian army. If this proves true and many of them are killed or taken prisoners, Putin may then be ready to negotiate on fairly favourable terms to Ukraine. If the Russian army were to collapse totally, Putin may order the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine and hopefully the American supporters of Ukraine would not retaliate in the same measure from their bases in Germany and England where they store tactical nuclear weapons, but if they do retaliate, this could lead to nuclear Armageddon. The other scenario is that a military collapse of Russia in Ukraine may lead to the overthrow of Vladimir Putin and his trial for war crimes and an end to the war  in Ukraine and  the signing of a peace treaty guaranteeing Ukraine’s independence and possible entry into the European Union and NATO.

Last week a delegation of the presidents of four African states of Senegal, Zambia, Comoros islands and South Africa and some  top government functionaries from Egypt, Uganda and Congo-Brazzaville, led by President Cyril Ramaphosa  of South Africa, went on a wild goose chase to Ukraine and Russia with what Ramaphosa called “an historic peace mission “ to work for  the resolution of the  conflict between the two countries arising from  the ongoing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy politely told the delegation that he was not interested in any peace talks while Russia continues to occupy a third of Ukrainian territory. Needless to say that Ukraine was not happy with many African leaders’ positions of not criticising Russia and not voting against Russia in the United Nations to condemn that country’s attack on Ukraine a weaker and non-belligerent nation on the grounds of Russia’s support during the African struggle against colonialism, racism and apartheid. On the other hand, Vladimir Putin who knows President Ramaphosa well as both of their countries are members of BRICS, a group of countries committed to finding another monetary medium of exchange outside the American dollar, received the delegation warmly even though the Russian president said the terms of the negotiations which included respect for each country’s territorial integrity was a non-starter and no go area after the Russian  invasion and annexation of Crimea and the eastern territories of Ukraine inhabited by Russian speakers who Putin  previously refers to as “Russia abroad”.

Any knowledgeable person should have known the two country’s positions before this doomed mission was embarked upon. The presidents of the African countries should at least have been well briefed by their missions in Russia and possibly Ukraine if they have diplomatic relations with the latter country. To go to Ukraine to ask it to negotiate with its powerful neighbour and trespasser on the grounds that Africa was starving because of the war in Ukraine and its inability to buy grains from both Russia and Ukraine sounds rather insensitive because Ukrainians in their tens of thousands were dying defending their country in what it regards as “a just war “against Russia. The authorities in Ukraine could justifiably have described the Africans as fighting for their bellies or shall we say “stomach infrastructure” rather than seeing the higher call and more honourable defence of the principle of maintaining the international order supported by the United Nations’ charter in which the principle of inviolability of international boundaries is enshrined. Although this point is in the 10-point negotiating platform the African mission suggested without getting adequate and listening ears and patience of the Ukrainians who rather brusquely shoved off the Africans out of their country on their way to Russia. The Russians were also not ready to listen to any plea of peace. The two countries seem to believe there cannot be any negotiations until they had apparently exhausted themselves on the battlefield. The much expected counter offensive against the entrenched Russians has just begun and Ukraine seems to feel the much advanced NATO armaments supplied it will help it see the backs of the Russians while the Russians with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and more available if needed, will eventually overawe the Ukrainians. With their fixed and unmovable positions there was no chance of a peaceful negotiation.  It is surprising that the Africans felt they would be able to move the Russians and Ukrainians where the much more influential Chinese government had previously failed.

Read Also: Google announces 25 African startups for $4M Black Founders Fund

On their return home to Africa, President Ramaphosa congratulated himself and his friends about making the “historic trip “in search of peace this time not in Africa but on a global stage in Europe.

I understand President Vladimir Putin will soon be meeting all African presidents, 52 of them in Africa-Russia summit. I sincerely hope the summit will not take place. What will they talk about? Wheat and fertilizer imports from Russia that cannot be done under normal business relations? Or will they be talking about bringing the Wagner group of Russian mercenaries to more African countries apart from Mali, Burkina Faso and Central African Republic? Or perhaps the sale of more AK-47 that are now manufactured all over world would be on the list of what to discuss. Russia is not in any position to offer African countries that have mismanaged their economies loans to be happily looted by African politicians and their bureaucracies and military who aid and abet the looting of their national patrimonies and even foreign loans. Honestly speaking, if there are things to discuss and I agree there may be things to discuss among friendly countries, this should be done at the level of the African Union and the African commission or at the level of the regional organizations existing all over Africa.

I hate to see President Putin at the welcoming party with 52 or so African heads of state lining up like school children being called one by one and approaching with two arms stretched to greet the Russian leader with placid face indicating boredom and wondering when the comedy would end.

I have the same views on France-Africa summit, China-Africa powwow, Britain- Africa meeting, Japan-Africa summit, and Germany-Africa or America-Africa summit. All these humiliations have to stop. If any African leader wants to go to any of these countries, it should do so solely on its own. I know from experience that these global powers are only interested in meeting a few key countries in Africa while the remaining countries can have summits among themselves and sort themselves out! It is about time African leaders understood that the task of developing their countries lies in Africa and not in Europe, America, Japan or China. We are in a world of competing nations and quietly understood but not spoken, competing races. Every nation is out to fight for its own well-being and no amount of propaganda will change this .There was a time when Chinese were derisively referred as “Chinaman”, when Indians were called “coolies”,  Japanese were looked down upon  as “Japs “but not anymore. I remember looking for accommodation in London as a student in 1965 and the hand written advertisement on the wall read “accommodation available, no Indian, Irish, Chinaman, blacks need apply, Jap ok “.  Of course things have changed all the races or nations mentioned in this racist advertisement have earned the respect of the whole world except the blacks and this is where our challenge is and not in gallivanting around the world in various summits in which Africans in the words of the racist British imperialist defender, Rudyard Kipling in his book The White Man’s Burden as “half children half devils”.

I hope the new president will not allow himself to be dragooned into any summits in which he and others will be lined up as curios from another world to be seen for the entertainment of others enjoying themselves at the expense of Africans.

The last time Nigerians benefited from their country being an oil producer was during the post-civil war years under General Yakubu Gowon. It was not that there was no corruption then but the head of state was clean of any allegation of corruption. Since that time, every regime has flagrantly soiled its fingers in corruption. It has been the story of one woe and fluctuation of prices after the other until the four major refineries collapsed despite the spending of billions of dollars annually in so called turn around maintenance (TAM). We also saw regimes of oil bloc allocation to all sorts of people including those who had no idea of oil except that it was the fastest way of becoming billionaires without any sweat. Nigeria is the only country that distributes national patrimony to individuals without anybody asking questions. The oil sector became the target of adventurers in power who overthrew governments just to corner the hydrocarbons sector and to distribute its commissions to friends and relatives while the rest of Nigerians were left with the crumbs coming from the table of the emergency billionaires and so-called “oil men”.  It became financially advantageous to know which men and women had access to getting you into the mystery of the hydrocarbons sale and commissions in the oil industry. Things got so bad that the local people of the Delta from where the oil and gas are located took up arms to try to get their own share of the oil booty. The security forces which are supposed to ensure that oil production, the  economic lifeline of the country, went on without disruptions got entangled in the problem of corruption to the extent  that it became expedient for people in power to hire some of the illegal pipeline breakers as protectors at billions of Naira per year since  the formal security forces appeared incapable or unwilling to secure this important national asset.

In a recent book on ExxonMobil with the title of EXXON MOBIL AND AMERICAN POWER,  a disparaging comment on the Nigerian Navy went thus: “American military officers come in here and they see a navy with  all the trappings, the ranks, the uniforms and so on, and they think it’s a real navy- poor but earnest. But it’s not that at all. It was not obvious what policies the Americans could bring to bear on a sister service that was mainly a criminal enterprise dressed up in epaulettes. It’s hard to get used to the fact Nigerian officials will lie to you straight up. The chief of navy staff told us there has been no incidence of piracy in Nigerian waters between 2006 and 2009. Exxon Mobil itself was struck in some seasons as often as three times per month. Arguably, the effect of American military assistance to the Nigerian Navy had been to abet attacks on the property of America’s largest oil corporation”. The book indicated that the Nigerian Navy was complicit in the theft of oil in the Niger Delta.  This account may be an exaggeration but is no smoke without fire.

At the height of oil production in Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s, the country was producing 2.3 million barrels daily and was a major player in OPEC – the international oil cartel that at one time its oil minister served as president of the organisation and recently the late Mohammad Barkindo served as its Secretary General. Over time, the corruption ruined the oil industry and production went down below one million barrels by the time Muhammadu Buhari became president.  Nigeria indeed was producing below its OPEC allocation. Although in recent times production has gone above one million barrels because oil pipeline vandalism has reduced due to better policing, not by security forces, but by some Niger Delta militants that the government has been compelled to hire to protect pipelines. The situation in which the country now finds itself is that money coming from crude oil sale cannot pay for the inflated cost of importing refined petroleum since the four local refineries are not working even though billions are spent annually in so called “turn around maintenance”. The most galling and sordid part of Nigeria’s oil industry is that while the refineries are down, the “workers” are being paid and promoted and sent abroad for training at humongous cost to government.

Read Also: Alleged N43.5m fraud: Absence of counsel stalls NOGASA chairman’s trial

For almost a decade, a regime of subsidies has been put in place to make imported oil cheap, so cheap that it provided an avenue for border communities to become very rich at the expense of Nigeria. Any observer can drive to Marua in northern Cameroons, Cotonou in Benin Republic, Zinder in Niger and Abacha in Chad republic and see how smuggled Nigerian imported petroleum is openly sold.  Col. Hameed Ali who was brought in by Buhari to knock sense into the heads of corrupt Customs officers cried for eight years that the daily consumption of refined imported petroleum put at 60 million litres was a fraud because the previous consumption up to 2015 was half of this figure. If this is true, the figure of $800 million spent on subsidies monthly should have been half of that figure. Curiously, Buhari apparently did not listen to him and 50% of imported petrol found its way out of the country to countries in ECOWAS, the Cameroons, Chad and as far as the CAR in central Africa. This is where we are now. Nigeria is importing refined petroleum virtually for the whole of West Africa using sometimes foreign loans in addition to the income from exports of crude oil and agricultural products since we now earn less than what we spend because of this corrupt subsidies regime.

The solution seems simple to any lay man: Ban the importation of refined petroleum and free $800 million from this corrupt system for development of education, infrastructure, security and health sectors. This is what the new government is trying to do and must do if our country is not to go under. Eggheads and ideologues may argue from now till kingdom comes but the task of government must be done. It is true that the opacity of the oil sector is so great that no one can come up with figures with mathematical exactitude about how much oil we produce or how much we consume. This is the shame of a country that has been producing oil since 1956 with little or nothing to show for it in terms of development and amelioration of the lives of the poor masses. But a serious government must take the bull by the horns and try to do something. This is what the new government is trying to do.

Of course the vested interests in this smuggling business and the beneficiaries of the subsidies regime will fight back. They will infiltrate the Labour movement and convince other ordinary people that their government, out of the wickedness of its heart, is deliberately bent on making the lives of everyone worse than it met it. Government must put on its thinking cap and campaign vigorously about its intentions and the reasons why certain actions are necessary to save the country. Government should invite top flight auditing company from outside the country to do a clinical audit of the oil sector over the last 20 or so years and come up with names of people and companies that have ripped off Nigeria. If we are paying billions or is it trillions in judgement debts, we must have facts with which we can sue local and international companies that have defrauded Nigeria over the years. This is going to be a long journey but as the Chinese say the journey of a long distance must begin by taking the first step. This government has taken the first step of abrogation of the subsidy regime and it must be backed by all Nigerians if they know what is the best for their country.