There has been so much controversy on who owns Lagos in recent times between the indigenes and the non-indigenes, between “omo Eko” (indigenes) and ”ara Eko” (residents) that a little knowledge of the history of Lagos may remove the blinkers from our eyes. The indigenes of Lagos have a saying “Awori lo l’Eko” meaning Lagos belongs to the Awori. The Awori were the original settlers of Lagos and their settlements still exist in various Awori settlements from Iddo, Iganmu, Apapa, Isheri and so on up to Otta. These Awori settlements were founded around the 12th century during the evolution of similar political entities in Yorubaland.

It was not until the 15th century that Oba Ewuare the Great sent an expedition to the island now known as Lagos for the purpose of making it a slave port for evacuating war captives to Europe through the Portuguese, the first Europeans to make contact with the Benin Empire. The Bini settlement or camp (Eko) was separate from the Awori villages and settlements and there was no attempt by the Bini camp to lord it over the Aworis. Waves of people from neighbouring Ijebu, Remo and Egba territories came to Lagos virtually overwhelming the Awori and the Bini camp. But since they were all of the same culture, there was no acrimonious contention about indigenous rights and the rights of new comers.

The Bini Group hunkered around their settlement at Igha Idugaran (pepper farm). The prestige of the Benin Empire made the settlement to be respected and the place grew into a kingdom replicating in a small way the royalty of Benin and its palace chiefs. On the island the Portuguese named Lagos but which the Yoruba’s appropriating the Bini word for camp called Eko. The independence of the Awori settlements on the mainland continued to be respected even until today and throughout the colonial period.

The sister empire of Oyo also put down a toehold at Ajase, west of Lagos, which the Portuguese called Porto Novo for the same purpose of the slave trade. Benin influence on the island of Lagos is an historical fact, but this does not mean Lagos is not part of Yorubaland. The Benin influence extended to  the dynasties of such places in eastern Yorubaland like Ado, Ikere, Ita Ogbolu, Igbara Oke and Akure. This does not make the people from these towns Bini. The fact, for example, that the ruling monarch in England is German does not make England part of Germany. Also the Bini inspired monarchy in  places like Onitsha  and the western periphery of  Igboland does not remove the fact that Onitsha and kingdoms west of Onitsha are part of Igboland neither does the replacement of the Ogisos in Bini by an Oduduwa dynasty make Bini part of Yorubaland. What is important to note is the dynamic relationship of people in the Bight of Guinea in the past and that the whole area shares a common cultural similarity.

When the British took over Lagos and its mainland in 1861 after naval bombardment of the town, it signed a treaty of cession with the Oba who surrendered his suzerainty to the British crown. From that time onwards the people of the crown colony became British subjects while the rest of what later became Nigeria was “terra incognita “at least for a while until the heydays of European imperialism of the 1880s to 1900s. 

At amalgamation of all British territories in Nigeria with the colony of Lagos in 1914 with Egba land remaining still independent until its independence was abrogated at the outbreak of the First World War, Lagos became the capital of Nigeria. 

The then Governor General hated Lagos with its “insalubrious climate and seditious press “and its “trousered niggers, dressed in Bond Street attire who send their laundry for  dry cleaning in England” and decided to build a new capital in the Centre of the country. He found this centre on the river infested with crocodiles named Kaduna which gave the new capital its name. Lugard embarked on feverish development of Kaduna using the same tax on “trade gin” banned from the north as well as revenue from custom levies and proceeds from palm kernel and palm oil and cocoa trade. The development of Kaduna continued during the Great War at a less frenetic speed as before. The whole idea of moving the capital to Kaduna was ended by Sir Hugh Clifford, a different kind of Governor from Lugard. Sir Hugh Clifford the successor of Sir Fredrick Lugard said he was not prepared to administer Nigeria from “specially fabricated isolated centre in the middle of the country”. Development of Kaduna was however never quite abandoned and its effect is the well planned Kaduna city compared with the chaos of Lagos. Hugh Clifford tried to improve Lagos by developing the so-called “Ikoyi plains” in the 1920s.

Contemporaneous with the Kaduna project were two other new towns built by Nigeria. Port Harcourt was conceived by Sir Fredrick Lugard as an alternative if not an outright replacement for Lagos. Lugard felt Lagos Port was too shallow and its development constituted a drain on Nigeria’s exchequer. The principal officers in the Colonial office in London were not persuaded about Lugard’s project and to outwit them Lugard named the port after the Secretary of State for the colonies, Sir Lewis Harcourt. Sir Lewis fell for it and action for the new port began in 1913. The city around the port was well planned by British architects which accounts for the town’s sobriquet as “Garden city”. Any visitor to Port Harcourt before the deluge of people from the hinterland would have described it as “little Lagos”.

With the outbreak of the First World War, it became difficult to get British ships to bring coal from New Castle to Nigeria. Coal was absolutely necessary to run the railways which crisscrossed the country from Lagos to Kano and from Port Harcourt to Jos. Coal was also needed to fire the generators to light up the European Government Reserved Areas (GRA). It was in this circumstance that the colliery in Enugu was developed. The native Wawa people were too primitive to work in the mines so people were recruited from all over the country to work in the Enugu coal mines. Enugu owes its well-planned lay out to its colonial origin. Another town that developed around the tin and columbite mines in the plateau was Jos. In fact the European impact was such that a certain part of Jos was known as “Anglo Jos” perhaps until recently.

There is no doubt that our British colonial heritage brought together heterogeneous population many of who had very little in common.

Now to Lagos the big elephant in the Nigerian room. Lagos is like New York big apple which everybody wants to have a bite of. Lagos since 1861 up to the amalgamation of all British territories to form Nigeria became a frontier of opportunity for Yorubaland and others immigrants from all across West Africa as well as the returnees from Brazil and Sierra Leone. After the amalgamation, Lagos was opened to all comers from the whole country. The colonial and post-colonial governments have spent considerable amount of money to make the place liveable.  Facilities such as new port, new airport and housing estate to decongest the unwieldy urban sprawl of Lagos sprang up. Those who were displaced by the civil war and other ethnic conflicts up country always found home in Lagos. Incredibly, people tend to find a way of living together in spite of differences in socialization from urban to village type of life.

Now this seems to be coming under severe strain by those who want to use the force of population to seize control from the owners of the place using spurious arguments about how one can move from one state to another in America to contest election. Africa is an old continent and not like America that is a recently settled country. Until recently you couldn’t become a German except by blood! It is foolish to deny the power of ethnicity in African politics as much as we deprecate it. It will be unreasonable for me to enjoy the right to contest in Lagos and in Ekiti at the same time or as Igbo propagandist TV has been threatening that an Anambra man will be the next governor of Lagos. Ideally that should be wished for through evolution but not by threat of unproved superiority of one ethnic population and tax contribution over those of the quiet majority who have been very generous to non-indigenes whose properties were preserved for them  during the civil war with accumulated rents collected unlike what happened in neighbouring states.  We need to build on trust that existed in the past and respect each other. There is no need for ethnic bellicosity and jingoism because at the end of the day, it is the poor people who are merely eking out an existence who will suffer. We need to preserve the past civility and not rock the boat because of electoral politics. “A ki je meji l’aba Alade”. Nobody disputes the ownership of Kaduna, Enugu and Port Harcourt; why is Lagos different?

When I was a child, I never had the chance or the opportunity to enjoy the company of my grandparents. My father, David Osuntokun, died before his father, Sapoloso Ojo. Papa Ojo was too old when I was young. My paternal grandmother died young. But on my mother’s side, I had the privilege of knowing my grandparents. My grandmother, Omotara, was very old when I met her and she was really too old to be interesting company to me. She was inherited by my grandfather, Adeosun, when Bolarinwa his brother and Omotara’s husband died as was the custom our people in the olden days.  Pa Adeosun was equally too old to be of any use as company to me in my youth. I also was not born in my home town of Okemesi but rather in Ilawe where my father had a depot as a business man, an Osomalo selling stuff in places like Ikere, Awo, Oye, and Egosi now Ilupeju.

This means I was physically removed from my grandparents and I never benefited from the rich stories they told my cousins who lived close by In Imesi. Even my father was an old man when I was born as the last child of eight children of my mother Elizabeth Ootoola. l write all these to show that I am a lucky man because I have seen my grandchildren growing up and they are benefiting from my being around just as I am benefiting from seeing and interacting with them. They may not know how much joy I derive from them. The most important aspect I benefit from them is their innocence, simplicity, naivety and trust in the fables I sometimes entertain them with. Of course they sometimes pose difficult questions to me which I mumble through without their satisfaction.

When I am with them, I try to bring them up in the way of the Lord as Christians. Even though they go to church once in a while but the coronavirus pandemic has in recent times made them home-bound most of the time which makes house worship very important. Secondly, some of my grandchildren live in the United States where violent racist  attacks on predominant black churches    are common and this have struck fear into my children who should have been taking their own children to church. This means the church has not been playing an important role in the lives of my grandchildren as it should have. The grandchildren are not very familiar with the Biblical stories of creation and the salvation credo of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Religion is not taught in American schools and in most schools in the western world. I remember teaching my American grandchildren the Lord’s Prayer beginning with “Our father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name …” My granddaughter who seemed to be more interested  in our morning prayers once asked me “papa what about our mother who art in heaven?” Well, I was caught unaware and I started telling the poor child the story of Adam and Eve and the young child then said she understood then that Eve was our “mother in heaven”. I said no that she was not and I suddenly remembered how venerated our Lord’s mother, the Virgin Mary was and I tried unsatisfactorily to equate Mary with “our mother in heaven”. Hopefully this girl as she grows up will find the right answer to her enquiry . This made me feel that referring to God in the masculine sense may not be right because God is neither a man nor a woman. God is divine being above sexual classification of man or woman. I think the young girl had picked up the demand for equality between men and women in America and she logically felt “Our father in heaven” must be complemented by our “mother in heaven”. She was right logically!

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One day, as one of my grandsons rummaged through my travel bag, he found my wallet and opened it and lo and behold, she saw my wallet and brought it to me that he didn’t know I was a millionaire! This was because I had N50,000 in my wallet.  He thought our N500 was the same as $500 dollars. Seeing the bundle of N50,000  in N500 notes  made him think his grandfather was rich. He then asked if I was rich. I answered in the affirmative. Then to rub it in I said I had a solid gold wristwatch. I brought out a shining gold-plated wristwatch which somebody gave to me and I was looking to give it to someone but not a child. The young man told his father “in confidence” that his papa was a zillionaire! His father asked him how he found out a secret that I had kept away from my children, then the young man told his father about the golden wristwatch. My son later asked me to do his son a favour of wearing the wristwatch to bed that night. This was a request that I had no problem obliging my son. The young man slept very well that night and the following day handed over to me the “gold watch”.

I finally found an old student of mine to offload the golden wristwatch to and I hope nobody finds out the genuineness or otherwise of the “golden wristwatch”. This same little boy once asked me “papa were you born in the olden days?” I had no problem in answering in the affirmative. But this kept me feeling that I must look like Neanderthal to my grandson who could only imagine what it would have been in the olden days when his papa (grandfather) was born. These and more are some of the interesting life I am having when I see some of my grandchildren.

Sometimes I am challenged to swim along with them in some cold lakes as was the case in Lake Huron, one of the deepest of the Great Lakes straddling the United States and Canada. Or when I am asked to go for walks or to buy school supplies during which they will make me walk tens of kilometres while I am telling them how old I am. Then they will encourage me by saying that as far as they were concerned, I don’t look too old to them. Despite the compliments from my grandchildren, I suffered from the pain and aches of long walks or vigorous swimming the following day.

Anyone of my age would have problems manipulating the computers at the airports. In Canada, one hardly sees any immigration officers checking passports because one has to put one’s passport through electronic gizmos which when a print comes out, that’s what you wave at the immigration officers as you go into the country. God knows I have travelled to many countries in my life and in these days one has to flow with the new innovations coming out of the brilliant brains of young people making lives better for young and old people without knowing that those of us old people sometimes find the new things difficult to understand. This is why when I am arriving where I have children or former students, I always like to see them welcoming me and seeing me off at airports.

I remember going to Heathrow Airport recently and one of my granddaughters asked her mother why they were seeing me off and why I couldn’t just check myself in without apparently bothering them. She then asked her mother whether it was because I am old. The mother was beating about the bush so that I wouldn’t feel offended. I told the young girl plainly that she was correct and that I needed help because of old age. I get asked the same question by my grandchildren all the time why I needed assistance at airports. I suppose these young people do not understand that old people may look well; they are certainly not as fit as they used to be.

One day, I challenged five of my grandchildren to a short race. I knew of course I could not beat them. As soon as we began, they all one after the other flew past me giggling. I enjoy such occasions tremendously and I am sure my grandchildren will remember all these occasions when my time is up!

A friend of mine after working in one of the Nigerian universities retired at the age of 70 and then picked up a job in one of the private universities where he had just retired after spending a decade there. I thank God for his life. I did the same but took a second retirement after I reached the age of 75 which was five years ago and I have been lazing around since then!

When I was a young man, people used to retire at 55. I remember that my distinguished brother,  Professor Kayode  Osuntokun was asked to retire at the age of 55  as professor of neurology at the University of Ibadan as if neurologists at that level could be picked up on the streets to replace people like him!

I don’t know how we came to retiring people at 55. I guess the British who could not survive in our own kind of climate and in our mosquito-infested environment fixed the retirement age at 55 so that they could return home with their fat gratuities and lifelong pensions while taking up new employment.

Things have mercifully changed everywhere in the world and professors and judges do not retire at all in the United States. It is a case of wine getting better as it ages. We may reach that denouement in Nigeria soon. Whatever anyone may say to denigrate ASUU, they fought for the new age of retirement of professors but we must add that not all professors and judges should be kept at their jobs at 70 but only the mentally healthy ones should benefit from this long tenure because there is no point keeping a judge or a professor at his or her desk if there is signs of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

What does a reasonably healthy person do when he is retired other than wait for the final call! There are many things one can do. One can if gifted with the skill of writing reflect on one’s life and documenting the changes one has witnessed in one’s life. In the case of Nigeria there is much to say. We should not let the future generations grope in the dark about what to do. We should so document our individual and national lives so that our succeeding generations can avoid the pitfalls of our lives which have brought us to the pedestrian level we now find ourselves. We should always speak up when we see something wrong being done because if we don’t speak up, it means we are complicit in whatever unrighteousness being committed in the name of all of us.

What should we be afraid of at our age of retirement? What can anybody do to us at this age when we have lived the better part of our lives? As the Yoruba people will say, anybody above 70 has swallowed death and people can only kill the body but not the soul and as Shakespeare said, cowards die a thousand times before their death. This does not mean throwing caution to the wind but a retired person should only fear his maker and always speak the truth and let the devil be ashamed!

Our people say a country without old people would go to the dogs. Old people are supposed to be the repository of wisdom. No one should be able to buy our voice at our age because whatever money anybody brings to us in our old age should be of no use to us. Are we now going to start building new houses? It will also be counterproductive to now start amassing wealth for our children and grandchildren. What we owe our children is good education and moral upbringing and with prayers, they would succeed if not in Nigeria certainly outside our shores as the stories of our children and grand grandchildren doing exploits can attest. At our age of retirement, contentment should be our goal. We should also see who we can help without jeopardising our own material interest. Many of us are involved in spiritual struggle to find meanings to our lives whether within the church or the mosque. I say this is a step in the right direction.

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I remember with fondness, a rather cynical friend when it comes to things spiritual which as a thorough academic, he had no patience for. He believed the only way to get at ultimate truth was not through religion or philosophy but through empiricism. Whatever that cannot be experienced or proved through practical demonstration was not worth wasting time on. But we know that only a mad man can say there is no God in spite of the complexity of the cosmos and our little planet in it.

There are of course many experiences of the supernatural as witnessed to by fellow human beings. The fact that man’s limited understanding cannot comprehend the complex transcendental ways of God does not mean God does not exist or that God is dead as posited by that German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who was apparently out of his mind! It is not my intention to argue and assert the existence of God because religion is an individual belief independently arrived at.

Retired people should try and go back to their beginnings in the towns and villages of their birth to try and pay something back to the society that produced and nurtured them. This will be difficult in these days of general insecurity and absence of community policing. Even in the best of times it was not easy relocating back home. The home folks will always think the man from the city has come with loads of money and he will almost be seen as a bank from which to take loans and grants whenever school fees had to be paid or somebody has to be buried. These obstacles can be overcome.

As an optimist, the problem of insecurity will be solved one day or the other. We can also persuade our rural folks through our lifestyle that not all returnees are incredibly loaded.

Once we settle in the rural places of our birth, we should also try and get involved in farming as a hobby. It’s always nice to plant seeds and see them grow. Living in the village will also prolong our lives by taking long walks and breathing clean village air and eating fresh food and fruits.

I remember the late registrar of the University of Lagos, Olufemi Eperokun while in retirement offering to teach senior students of a private college near his house English, of course free of charge just to while away his time. My late brother, Moses was teaching in a college in Okemesi just to make himself useful after retiring as high flying agricultural expert in government and in the old Barclays Bank.

I commend this kind of life to egg heads retiring to our villages. Those who are doctors can also bring some of their expertise to the villages while engineers and town planners can engage the rural folks in drainage and greening the streets.  The activities of retired people in our villages will also boost rural economy. If we make the rural areas beautiful we may see a reverse of the rural – urban drift and thus lead a revolution of making our country liveable again.

In one word get engaged. It is not over until it is over! In this way the countryside will not be the abode of rural yahoos and country bumpkins!

The Nigerian economy has been in dire straits in the last decade and rather than recovering, it has gone from bad to worse and this state is encapsulated in the declining rate of the Naira vis-à-vis other global currencies. The naira has become a valueless coloured paper, what the French will refer to as a mere piece of paper –chiffon de papier! The question to ask is what is responsible for this terrible situation? For ease of reference and for possible action, I hereunder list the reasons for the collapse of the economy in order of importance.

It is now clear that the NNPC is riddled with corruption and crime. The Controller General of Customs, Colonel Hameed Ali publicly challenged the NNPC to account for a third of the imported gasoline which it claims to supply daily to the motoring public in excess of what is needed while what it claims we use is already inflated as claimed by informed experts. This is the gasoline Nigerian government claims it uses between six and nine billion dollars to subside annually. If the corruption in the oil importation were to be stopped, there will be no need to go begging around the world looking for foreign loans which have to be paid by the current and future generations. One would also like to ask when the refineries being overhauled at the cost of billions of dollars are likely to come on stream.

The London based news magazine The Economist recently wondered why Nigeria is missing from the oil bonanza enjoyed by other OPEC members reaping billions of dollars from the high price of crude petroleum arising from the windfall caused by the Putin’s war in Ukraine. A country like Saudi Arabia has made about $86 billion since February and it is committing it to building a futuristic city in the desert while Nigeria is borrowing money to build ordinary railway lines. Nigeria is not benefiting because a third of its oil production is allegedly stolen. It is now clear that a grand larceny organised by some powerful people is squeezing life and strength out of the country’s economy. One lawyer says the “NNPC is a crime scene “and he proved it at the recent Nigerian Bar Association conference.

The chief of Naval Staff has publicly disputed the claim by government that crude oil is being stolen in the Delta by saying it would require hundreds of tankers  and small boats to move on daily basis the hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil claimed stolen by government. The government apparently as a proof of what it claims is being stolen has awarded a  protection contract for oil pipelines worth N48 billion  a year  to Tompolo, leader of one of the groups alleged to be blowing up oil pipe lines in the Delta and who had earlier been declared wanted by this  same government. This has generated a lot of brouhaha because some people are not happy about government’s abdication of its security responsibility to a private security company while wondering what work is left for the Navy, Police, Army, national security organisations to do. The president has now set up a committee to look into the situation of the oil industry of which he is the minister. This is a situation of national urgency and emergency that cannot wait for a snail moving presidential committee!

The corruption in the country  if judged by the situation in the NNPC will in the words of the president “kill this country if the country does not kill the corruption!”. What is the plan of the government to put an end to corruption in an organisation where the most important and influential topmost 20 officers are from one part of the country while other parts of the country and the oil producing part of the country is totally marginalised in the running of an industry critical to their environmental survival and also critical to the economy of Nigeria?

The CBN has not been properly run in the last five years. How does one explain the governor of the CBN buying a fleet of cars emblazoned with his presidential campaign logo and declaring to run for the president only to withdraw when the president asked all political office holders wishing to run for the presidency to resign? It was then he decided not to run for the post and kept his job. Is this action normal of the CBN governor or of any governor of a central bank anywhere? This is one of the reasons responsible for the declining value of the Naira among other reasons because our central bank is not above politics but buried in it.

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Our country is perhaps the only medium income country in the world where tax avoidance is the best game in town. Few people apart from salary earners pay income taxes. This is why the country relies on commissions from oil and gas exploitation and sale of our share of joint oil production with foreign companies since after more than half a century, we cannot on our own produce crude oil because capable people who could have mastered the art are routinely removed on the basis of federal character. The result is that we on our own cannot produce the crude oil neither can we even authenticate how much crude oil we produce and export.

The free for all corruption  in our country has eaten deep into every aspect of our national life that the Accountant General of the Federation can with confederates allegedly steal a humongous  sum of N109 billion from the treasury he is supposed to protect. This kind of unacceptable behaviour gives vent to the criminal behaviour buried deep in the hearts of junior officers in the various bureaucracies, agencies and parastatals of government in the country. In this way the economy of the country has been destroyed and whatever political and security problems we have are directly related to the economic hopelessness of many of our citizens who now seem determined to bring down the whole rotten edifice on all our heads.

The recent exposure in parliamentary hearings about corruption in the management of the country’s pension raises a fundamental question of trust. If workers cannot trust the management of their contributory pension scheme, they will therefore resort to self-help and indulge in corrupt schemes while in employment by putting away stolen money as a way of making hay while the sun shines thus worsening the corruption in government and thereby ruining the country’s future.

Our trading partners are losing interest in us because of our unreliability as suppliers of energy at a time Europeans are in critical need because of non-supply of oil and gas from Russia. Our place as an oil producing African country has slipped behind Angola and war ravaged Libya. Our relevance in the international community has therefore nosedived in relation to other countries. Our need for future FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) will never be met having failed to be a useful partner to our trading partners at a time of great need because one good turn deserves another. We will now have to fight for market share not only for our hydrocarbons but for our non-oil exports in what would be an increasingly complex and competitive world when the war in Ukraine ends .

Unrestrained and unbridled importation of all kinds of things like wines, rice and all kinds of consumer goods mostly from  Europe, China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia by unscrupulous traders who do not seem to know that they are shipping Nigerian jobs abroad and therefore weakening the Naira. The external trade needs to be monitored and all articles of trade not adding value to our national life should be banned.

The government’s primary responsibility of protecting lives and properties of its citizens has unfortunately not been met in the last seven years. The rural insecurity has destroyed agricultural production leading to our country’s dependence on food imports which has led to dramatic diminution of our foreign exchange and consequent decline of the Naira.

I believe there is need to declare a national economic emergency not only to rescue the economy from collapse but to challenge all stakeholders in the Nigerian enterprise to rise to the occasion and do their utmost to save the country .The country can be put on economic war basis. We can suspend the application of Habeas corpus for all economic offences and seize whatever resources that appears illegally acquired by people in the oil and gas sectors as well as in the military, security and bureaucratic arms of government.

We should put an end to oil subsidies and make payment of taxes mandatory and compulsory for citizens legally of age. We should ensure that the war against corruption is fought in fact and indeed with absolute transparency. If all these measures are taken, the economy would bounce back, the Naira will be strong again and government would be in a position to pay living wages to all its employees including members of ASUU.

On a final note, this president has not been well served by all those working with him including members of the legislative, executive and I dare say the slow acting judiciary, who from all reports in the public are not above board!

In 1947, while on a visit to South Africa, Princess Elizabeth, the heir to the British throne, then occupied by her father, King George the VI, made a commitment to serve the British Empire with unalloyed dedication until the end of her life. There is no doubt that Queen Elizabeth, who ascended the throne in 1952, fulfilled that commitment. In spite of her waning health, she still summoned whatever energy was left in her to accept the resignation of the ebullient but disorganised and disoriented Boris Johnson the British prime minister and appoint Liz Truss in his place two days prior at Balmoral castle in Scotland before her health broke irretrievably down leading to her demise.

She had a glorious reign for 70 years greatly aided by her unforgettable husband Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh who was her cousin and who died less than two years ago at the age of 99 while Queen Elizabeth the Queen mother died some years ago at the age of 100. The Queen has now been succeeded by her 73-year old son, Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales as Charles III.  There is therefore every chance that King Charles III will also be around for a long while because of longevity in his genes, all things being equal.

As any historian would know the first Elizabethan era (1558-1603) was a golden age in British history witnessed by great development in the arts, wealth and Britain’s mastery of the sea leading to her supremacy in Europe after the defeat of Spain, the then preeminent power in Europe. The second Elizabethan era has also been significant in Britain’s transformation from empire to the Commonwealth. The British Empire that survived the Second World War was mortally wounded and in spite of people like Winston Churchill not willing to sit over the liquidation of the empire, it had to go either peacefully or by force. It is to the credit of British leaders like Harold Macmillan that they bent with the wind of change in other to avoid the hurricane of revolution in most parts of the British Empire.

So much has be written about the deleterious effect of Britain’s imperial rule and the fact that Britain largely benefited from her empire economically. The colonised also derived from British rule the legacy of the unifying English language, rule of law, western education whose impact remain of considerable importance in the Commonwealth today. This is to say colonialism left bad and positive effects on the colonised. Britain is of course no longer a world power but it is still an influential power whose influence in its arts, culture, education, judicial processes and the English language give her considerable influence if not power in today’s world. This is the country the late queen presided over.

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There is no doubt that even though a constitutional monarch who was not involved in the day-to-day administration of her realm, she and the monarchy benefited from the immense economic accruals from the empire over which she was at a time empress. There is no way we can absolve the monarchy from some of the atrocities committed against subject peoples either during the trans-atlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean and the evils of imperialism. Queen Elizabeth I was an active participant as an investor and an encourager of captains of ships like Francis Drake engaged in the nefarious carrying of human cargoes from Africa to the Americas. The ports of London, Glasgow, Liverpool and Bristol benefited hugely from ferrying blacks from West Africa to the Americas. The same ports also benefited from the carrying trade during the colonial period from Africa and Asia to the rest of the world. I say all this so that those who feel hurt by the legacies of British and western imperialism do not think one is oblivious of the negative side of the Anglo-African or Anglo-Asian history. It is a common knowledge that wherever the British went whether in Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, the Middle East, Australasia and even Canada, they left unresolved issues which have permanently damaged human relations in those parts of the world including our own country Nigeria. I say however that it is time to move on from blaming the past but to face the future.

Even though constitutionally speaking, the monarchy remains an important part of the British constitution, yet it will be unfair to hold the departed Queen personally responsible for whatever problems the British government had caused in other parts of the world. The Queen could only advise but could not countermand any decision of government even though the government’s decision would be said to be the decision of her majesty’s government! This is just a matter of usage which outsiders may mistake as a fact that the monarchy is involved in the minutiae of government political process.

Of course the monarchy embodies in a significant way the nation. It provides a rallying point at difficult times of national tragedies such as in war or natural disaster. The monarchy is neutral in politics and stands above political shenanigans. The monarch in Britain is indeed and in fact head of state. Countries that don’t have the British type of monarchy envy them. The monarchs of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the restored monarchy in Spain look to the British for example, precedence, style and royal behaviour. Those who occasionally advocate the abolition of the monarchy usually realise that the alternative of elected president may not be better especially seeing the kind of people elected as heads of government in Britain and the United States in recent times who lack character.

The late Queen for 70 years has been a symbol of unity, security and decorum in a world wracked by political chaos and instability. For those who say the monarchy is expensive, the British monarchy and its elegant palaces have drawn tourists in their millions to Britain generating billions of pounds to the British exchequer which depends on the services sector particularly tourism in a post-industrial Britain.

The Queen was loved by majority of the British people and most of them alive have known no other monarch in their lives. It is natural for them to love the Queen and any bad-mouthing the Queen is in bad taste and should be condemned. I join the millions of people who did not know her but are saddened by her demise. It is only human to sympathise with those who mourn. I personally met the Queen three times in Malaysia, Germany and at the Buckingham palace and as it is usual with people like me who grew up in colonial Nigeria, I have photographs of her majesty the Queen and I decorating my sitting room. One of my grandchildren saw the photos and asked me “grandpa do you know the Queen?” I answered in the affirmative. After a minute or two he asked me again” Does the Queen know you?” I said “I don’t think so.” Somehow my grandchild made me to know how inconsequential I was in the life of such a powerful woman representing an age-long institution which has stood the test of time.

Rest in peace Elizabeth Regina! The Queen is dead long live the king!

 

The death of the last Secretary-General of the USSR Communist Party and the last president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, brought to an end the life of one of the most important statesmen of the 21st century by my own reckoning. My assessment of him derives from his role as a man of peace globally and among the countries in Eastern Europe that were members of the Warsaw Pact military alliance and among the constituent parts of the Soviet Union and what was left of Russia, which even in 1991 was still a considerably large country stretching from the Urals to Viladivistock on the eastern shores of Siberia.

Gorbachev’s commitment to peace compares favourably with the brutal USSR’s invasion of Hungary in 1956 ordered by Nikita Khrushchev to put out the embers of democracy and freedom in Hungary or the shutdown of democratic reforms by Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia on the orders of Leonid Brezhnev in 1968. When Gorbachev took over the reins of government in 1985 as secretary general of the USSR Communist Party from his predecessor Konstantin Chernenko, the country was in dire economic situation arising from military spending in competition with the USA during the 40 odd years since the end of the Second World War. Gorbachev genuinely felt the ruinous effects of the domination of the Soviet economy by what the former Allied Commander and president of the United States, General Dwight Eisenhower had described in 1956 as the “military industrial complex “in the USA while warning against subordinating the American economy to the needs and demands of the military.

Unlike in the USA, most people in the USSR were denied access to consumer goods which the young and rising population of the USSR earnestly wanted. To avoid economic and political collapse, Gorbachev embarked on the twin policies of perestroika (restructuring or reformation) and glasnost (openness or transparency) This policy led directly to freedom for the subject nations of Eastern Europe and the unification of Western and Eastern Germany in 1989 and the creation of a new Bundesrepublik of Germany.  For the first time since 1917, Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Gorbachev introduced the electoral principle into choosing members of the praesidium and other organs of government of the USSR .With the unfolding situation in Eastern Europe, the Americans as a mark of support, signed the strategic arms limitation protocol with Gorbachev. With the reforms he introduced, Gorbachev unleashed without knowing it, the forces of nationalism within the Soviet empire and the countries of Eastern Europe.

In 1991 most of the countries under the USSR’s domination asserted their independence and the countries of the USSR itself broke into 15 independent countries. While this was going on there was an attempted coup to remove him from office while he was in Crimea on break. This failed and his supporters prevailed on him to use force which he declined while the Russian part of the then still existing USSR under Boris Yeltsin declared itself independent forcing poor Gorbachev to resign in 1991 and went home to take care of his dying wife Raisa.  Even his taking care of his personal tragedy of a dying wife was seen as abdicating important matters of state for personal and apparently considered unimportant matter of personal health. He left office unlike the present rulers of Russia poor and bedraggled but without blemish.

His opponents including the current president of Russia, Vladimir Putin have been very brutal in their criticism of Gorbachev as the man who ended an empire thus making Russia an unequal power to the USA then and now to resurgent China. There is no doubt that Gorbachev has been a victim of unintended consequences. He wanted to reform the USSR and not to destroy it and work for its disintegration. His policy of political choice and moving a country ruled by conspiratorial system of military intelligence and force to an open society of social and democratic competition was definitely fraught with the danger of political explosion and disintegration. The western powers could have helped his legacy to endure if the NATO alliance had been dissolved following the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact. But its constant expansion eastwards since Gorbachev left power had given his enemies the ammunition for branding him a traitor. This is probably why Vladimir Putin did not deem it fit to dignify the man by attending his final obsequies.

Read Also: The life and times of Mikhail Gorbachev

Who was Gorbachev the man?

Perhaps his upbringing may explain his political disposition. He was born in Southern Russia where his father was a successful farmer during the brutal collectivisation campaign of that Georgian dictator Joseph Stalin. His maternal grandfather was born in Ukraine which made the present Russian military invasion of Ukraine a personal tragedy for him. His father narrowly escaped being branded a kulak or rich farmer  by which thousands were dispatched to Siberian gulag and never heard of again and this left an indelible mark on his conscience that socialism and freedom were not separable. He went to Moscow State University where he studied law before joining the youth wing of the Communist Party and rose through the ranks rapidly and joined the group around Nikita Khrushchev who in 1956 began a campaign to purge the Communist party of Stalinism. After 18 years of campaigning against the evil of personality cult and Stalinism, he came to the conclusion that things must not be allowed to go on as previously. He came to office in 1985 determined to give communism a human face.

He was instantly popular outside the USSR. Both Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister of the United Kingdom and President Ronald Reagan of the USA said openly that Gorbachev was a man they could do business with. The international community living under the threat of a possible nuclear conflict between the USA and USSR breathed a sigh of relief with the advent to power of Gorbachev. He was given the Nobel Prize for peace in 1990 a year before he fell from office humiliated and abandoned by all those who had been praising him to high heavens.

Gorbachev’s story is that of a well-meaning statesman and reformer whose reforms led to his undoing. It is a classic case of revolutions always happening at the signs or consequences of reforms.

Gorbachev may not be popular in the Russia of Putin, he is well regarded in the countries formerly east of the iron curtain and certainly in Germany which owes its peaceful unification to Gorbachev and George H. Bush. The little freedom enjoyed by Russians today, limited as they may be, are owed to the freedom given to Russians in 1989 which Vladimir Putin has been desperately whittling down. The present Russian nationalists can obviously not applaud Gorbachev for bringing down their own colonial empire in Eastern Europe and the USSR as was the lot of all colonial empires. What is obvious is that the other 14 independent countries of the USSR will, if not now, certainly in the future, acknowledge the contribution of Gorbachev to their freedom, independence and a new beginning and national Risorgimento. It is however a pity that Vladimir Putin, at the cost of war in Georgia, Moldova and now Ukraine is trying to roll back the hands of the clock with dire consequences for the entire world. The eastern expansion of the NATO alliance must vicariously be held complicit in unravelling the peace of the world of which Gorbachev was one of the greatest architects.

About half of the world’s population believes in some form of divine directive for all people to have a down time as regularly as possible. Ancient and modern medicine also support the idea that there is a time for everything, that is to say a time for work and a time for relaxation, reflection and contemplation.

Unfortunately, this idea is not usually practised until too late or until we break down and we are confined to bed or ordered to slow down by our doctors.

Most people believe or are made to believe that we should make hay while the sun shines because when we are old, we may not be able to work again. This is, of course, true and no one in his or her right senses will advocate a slothful lifestyle of lazing around when there is work to do.

But there is no reason why we can’t have a work and leisure balance throughout our lives. In the western world, this has become part of their lifestyle. Most people, including even the poor, have a time when they go on holidays. This means leaving one’s usual environment and going somewhere else to relax from the tedium of work.

Americans have their cabins, Canadians their cottages, Russians their Dacha. Getting away from routine day to day work is why an American president escapes to Camp David to think and reflect, and the British prime minister to Checkers, and the Russian president to his Dacha outside the Kremlin.There is no reason why our president cannot escape for a downtime to one of the 36 presidential lodges built in all the state’s capitals. After all, variety is the spice of life.

A life lived in the same spot and town is not a good life. Of course, not all of us have the wherewithal to travel on holidays out of our country but it should be possible for us to visit one holiday spot in our country or, at least, visit the home town or village from where one moved to the city.

If we do this often in Nigeria, the economy of the rural areas will improve.  Many Igbos go home from various Nigerian cities at Christmas but this is not the same thing as downtime because of the many activities and excitement that characterise Christmas. To be able to do this, there has to be good roads, but better still railways and, above all, security.

All these are absent in contemporary Nigeria. I remember driving in my youth to places like Maiduguri, Jos, Kano, Sokoto, Yola, Jebba, Lokoja, Makurdi, Port Harcourt, Aba, Owerri, Enugu, Onitsha, Benin, Warri, to mention places outside my immediate cultural areas. Being there was like holidaying in foreign countries with different languages and cuisine.

In the 1970s, my wife and I occasionally drove to Cotonou and Lome for weekends away from the madding crowd of Lagos. Such downtime provided us opportunities for bonding and for thinking and planning about the future and, above all, for rest and reflection.

Don’t we all need a time of reflection from the madness of this modern world? If citizens of any country need this, it is the people of Nigeria who are in dire need of a downtime every week. It does not have to be on Sundays and Fridays when most of us are trying to keep up with the frenetic pace demanded of us in our places of worship.

Perhaps on a Saturday every other week, we can go away somewhere to think. If our politicians and leaders of every sector of our society do this, perhaps they will realise that we can run our country in a better way than the present unworkable and unhappy way we seem to be doomed to live our lives. We may realise that we don’t need all the money we are looting and locking away both at home and abroad. Our billionaires may suddenly discover that if they pay living wages to their workers, these workers will be able to save and spend in the larger society thus creating more wealth and taxes to run a government that would be able to secure the country, and with security will come more wealth.

The point I am making is that we are not thinking rationally in this country because our selfishness will not secure us communally.  How much does anyone really need to the extent of wanting to steal billions of Naira belonging to the commonwealth of our people? All these vanities are pure vanities which will ruin the country unless we change course. We should stop, think and hold our breath, reflect, change course as a people and a country.

Unless everyone is secure, no one is secure in Nigeria.  Resources may be limited but resourcefulness is not. If we all do the right thing, which is the ordinary meaning of being righteous, things will be alright for the whole country and our present desperation will become a thing of the past. Creating downtime recreational facilities and environments for contemplative time may even help us solve some of our unemployment problems.

Just as one has written to advocate a more developed sports industry in Nigeria, we should also pay attention to the leisure, hotel and tourist sectors of our economy. Imagine the number of jobs that we can generate from a well-developed sports industry. We used to have a thriving soccer sector as far back as the late 1940s and the 1950s and 1960s. I think the civil war destroyed it as it destroyed most things in our country.

The unearned income of the nation from crude oil made us neglect a sector which by now would have rivalled the football industry in the smaller European countries. Sports also apart from providing employment for people in sports medicine, accountants, public relations, maintenance workers and grounds men and women in the stadiums, directly provide work for the players, coaches, scouts and lawyers drawing up agreements.  This will not be restricted to soccer alone but to all sports and athletics. These sports also provide downtime release and relief from tension for everyone and also some escape mechanisms from hard work or no work.

The same will be true if we develop our parks, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, arts galleries, museums and, above all, forests and hills as recreational facilities. The curative and regenerative force of nature was recognised by the Romantics in 19th century Britain led by the poet William Wordsworth, when the idea of nature being a healer and teacher was current. Men were prevailed upon to let nature sort them out naturally.

In our downtime, we should eat sparingly and make do with whatever is locally available wherever we are. Obviously, going abroad is not the best kind of downtime but escaping to the naturally existing works of nature which, if properly maintained, abound in our country.

We need to stop running, stop looting, stop doing evil things, start thinking and doing the right thing, and holding our leaders to their responsibility. There is enough for everyone in this country if we all do the right thing; and rest and think instead of breaking our necks in order to make it!

As there anybody who does not know that there is trouble in Nigeria? As an elder, I cannot pretend I do not know what is happening to higher education in our country. As a retired professor, I am a stakeholder in higher education in Nigeria.  Having studied at the University of Ibadan, and for higher degrees studied in Canada, Britain, Germany and France, and taught in a Canadian and a West Indian university as well as the universities of Ibadan , Jos, Lagos and Maiduguri and in the Redeemers university, and served as Director of the National universities commission in Ottawa and Washington and was  a member of council in four universities in Nigeria before becoming a pro chancellor and chairman of council of a state university, with all modesty, I know a little about universities worldwide.

This is why I am writing this article. It is extremely difficult for any retired professor not to be emotionally involved in the plight of university staff in Nigeria and particularly in the condition of academia generally.

Let me say right away that the current industrial action of the Nigerian universities has gone on for too long and would have more than destroyed the university system by the time it is called off. This could not have been foreseen by ASUU. But this is the reality.  Strikes in the universities began in the 1973/74 session and has been a yearly occurrence since then. It seems to me that ASUU has played into the hands of its enemies, so to say, because very few governments that I know would have allowed the current strike to go on for this long without doing something about it.

I know, of course, that these are trying times for this government. It is faced with the problems of insecurity, collapsed economy and corruption; and each of these problems is capable of tearing the country into pieces.  There is also the problem of over administration, too many states and too many local governments all guzzling disproportionate share of the national revenue. There is also the issue of over centralisation and concentration of too much power in the centre. The government is at the same time facing the demands of workers for better salaries in the face of rising inflation and wholesale devaluation of the national currency.

The fact is that these problems are intricately interwoven. Without corruption and insecurity, and with the right structure of government, the economy would not be in the dire condition it finds itself. Our country must undergo a complete overhaul of the economy to recover enough for the government to meet its responsibilities. Our country is not mobilised for production and productivity. We all rely on collecting commissions on oil and gas exports and our people, apart from the salaried ones, do not pay taxes, and our country is almost unique in this respect.

This is why we do not have a government that responds to the wishes of the people because it can exist while ignoring the people because it does not depend on their taxes. Whatever it, therefore, collects it can afford to dissipate and share it with whichever sector of the economy that is critical to its survival. That is why the security sector is favoured above the social sector of health and education.

If my people in ASUU will understand this, they will have a different strategy than going on strike every year and expecting different reactions from the government. This is the height of madness. What ASUU should now be fighting for is university autonomy, which the law has, in fact, granted. ASUU should take governments, both federal and state, to court over university autonomy.

Once university autonomy is granted, each university should cost what it will take to educate students across all disciplines in the universities in a differentiated school fees and come up with the economic cost. The government should then grant annually whatever it says it can afford while parents of students would have to come up with the remainder of the cost. Not all parents will be able to pay the economic cost of their children’s education. Such parents would have to be assisted by the federal, state and local governments scholarship awards. Churches and Mosques as well as NGOS, corporate bodies and individuals would also come in knowing that whatever assistance they provide will be tax deductible for those of them who pay taxes.

This will lead to differentiated payments of fees and salaries by each university. Each university will develop unique characters rather than the homogenised national, or is it federal character, that we currently have. For example, the universities of Lagos, Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello, Bayero, Obafemi Awolowo, Port Harcourt and Nsukka, because of their reputation and location, may be able to generate revenues that will make them pay their staff better salaries than the current poor national remuneration.

Governments at all levels must stop meddling in university administration. Some state governors that are not providing adequate funding for state universities are in the habit of announcing over the radio that their universities must not charge more than N50,000 per student per year when the actual cost of their programmes range from N500,000 to N1,000,000. The federal government also imposes arbitrary ceiling on fees for accommodation and tuition leading to poverty of accommodation and tuition not fit for human beings with the result that foreign students no longer come to Nigerian universities while young Nigerians flock to universities in neighbouring countries of Niger, Benin, Togo and Ghana, some of which are specifically established for Nigerians and, in some cases, by Nigerian business men and women!

A properly funded university system where the universities are allowed to generate their own revenues through fees, grants, innovation and copy rights will free them from the dead weight of government control. Economic fees may also put an end to irresponsible fathering of children that they cannot support by men and this may indirectly curb the galloping rise in our population.

A government that cannot fund existing universities finds it easy to announce new universities of “medicine” “transportation “”Navy,’’ “ Airforce, ‘’ “ Police “and “Army” etc. One former president during an after-dinner speech announced the establishment of eleven new universities with a grant of one billion take off budget!

The cost of higher education can be moderated if, instead of establishing new universities, the current ones are expanded thus saving administrative costs of paying tens of vice chancellors, registrars, bursars and so on.

My advice, therefore, to ASUU is to find a better way than embarking on strikes to fight a just cause. It should go to court to enforce university autonomy, and it should then raise revenue the way it must and allow the government to come up with whatever it says it can afford to grant the universities without any right to fix salaries and school fees. This is what university autonomy is all about.

If the universities can improve and fix their dilapidated infrastructure and dilute the local staff with distinguished academic staff, perhaps people on sabbatical leave from the international academic system, foreign university students paying hard currencies will come as it was in my days as a student at the University of Ibadan.

Universities, after gaining back their autonomy, can approach both Nigerian banks and the AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK, and the WORLD BANK, for loans and grants to improve their physical, laboratory, teaching and research infrastructures. If their programmes are well packaged, foreign governments’ grants will find their ways into the universities rather than into the bottomless pockets of the corrupt bureaucracy of government.

ASUU should pick up the gauntlet thrown at it by the government and methodically rise up to the occasion. Results will not be immediate and instantaneous but this is the way to go to put an end to this unending and degrading regime of annual strikes.

There is a general feeling of discontent all over the world. It is not only in Nigeria that gloom and sadness prevail. There is a general feeling of insecurity in the wider world because of the war in Ukraine which may eventually draw in the NATO alliance and the possibility of nuclear conflagration.

Added to this, is the possibility of conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan.  Furthermore, the enduring presence and the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and its disruption of the world economy are still very much with us.

We in west Africa feel threatened by ethnic, climatic and religious onslaught from the Sahara and the Sahel. The rest of the world is affected by this global uncertainty which is creating not only unease but trepidation about things going out of control. For the ordinary Joe on the street, what concerns him most are economic problems of food, inflation, cost of housing and health, job and family security and the future generally. There is a commonality of issues riling the public. Prices are going up all over the world while salaries remain the same. This feeling of helplessness is more acute in the developing world.

In Nigeria, the economy has virtually collapsed. This collapse manifests in the weakness of the national currency in relation to other currencies of the world. The Naira has become a glorified coloured paper! The result of this weakness on a largely dependent economy is the runaway inflation experienced in the country. Ordinary bread has been priced out of common reach and so also all products requiring the use of flour. Vegetable oils imported from Europe, particularly Ukraine and Asia, are no longer in the market, and when found the prices have gone through the roof.  All imports, including drugs, industrial goods, petroleum products like gasoline, diesel, kerosene, LPG, vehicles have more than doubled in prices. The price inflation of these products has inflationary effects on locally produced goods, including food like Gari, Yams, meat and meat products, even leafy vegetables have all become outrageously expensive because of the cost of transportation.

In other words, local inflation is being fuelled by imported inflation. We are getting nearer to the Sri Lanka situation where because of foreign exchange shortage, we are going to be cut off from the markets of our trading partners in America, Europe and Asia as well as countries on the African continent.

Recently, foreign airlines are either suspending flights to Nigeria or are making flights so outrageously expensive that it will be difficult to maintain regular contact with the outside world unless the situation changes soon.  How did we get to this pass? The answer is straightforward. Our rulers have so totally mismanaged governance to the point that they can no longer guarantee security and sanctity of lives. Neither can they assure economic productivity and production. There is neither a sane nor secure transportation grid by road, rail nor by air.

Peaceful agricultural pursuit by peasant farmers is no longer safe. Generation and distribution of power have become almost insurmountable. Education, particularly higher education, has broken down due to incessant strikes. Social activities and recreation and almost every aspect of artistic lives that make life worth living have been vastly eroded.

At a time when all members of OPEC are celebrating huge windfall of dollars, 87 billion in five months in Saudi Arabia, arising from the huge increase in the price of petroleum, Nigeria is caught in the web of outright roguery and stealing of a third of its petroleum production and therefore unable to meet its OPEC allocation. Instead of celebrating, our country is using virtually all proceeds from oil and gas to service external loans accumulated since 2007 after the Olusegun Obasanjo administration got us free of foreign loans peonage.

The Muhammadu Buhari administration, in the last 7 years, has succeeded in not only making us poor but ensuring that our children and grandchildren will remain poor and subservient to international finance and capital. In the face of all this, the state governors have come up with ramifying suggestions to rescue the economy, which in my opinion should be seriously considered by the federal government, but which are being ignored to the economic peril of the country. These suggestions include:

1. Elimination of PMS subsidy/ under recovery -(N6-7 trillion)
2. Elimination of NNPC’s Federation projects (N300 billion)
3. Cap social investment (SIP) and National poverty Reduction with Growth (NPRGS) budgets – (N200 billion – N570 billion)
4. Elimination of extra-constitutional deductions from FAAC – (N100 billion)
5. Reduce SWV items for SDG and NASS constituency projects – (N300 billion)
6. Reduce Duplications (e.g., Empowerment programmes) and wastes – (N100 billion)

7 Reduce 1 percent granted to NASENI to 0.2 percent in the 2022 Finance bill.

8 Reduce personnel costs of FG, MDAs

Offer federal civil servants above 50 years a one -off retirement package to exit the service – (N350 billion) and employ lower cost, more ICT compliant youths and women graduates.

9 Begin implementation of the updated Stephen Oransaye report (N1trillion)

10. Expedite privatisation of non-performing assets (Billions of Naira)
11. Planned 22 percent increase in salaries in 2023 to be reconsidered

12.Reduction of fiscal deficit to no more than 2 percent of GDP IN 2023-2025.

12All foreign trips to be put on hold.

13.Move from state income tax to consumption tax.

State sales tax at a flat rate of 10 percent should be enacted for all states and FCT

14. VAT to be increased to 10 percent and incrementally to 20 percent
15. End CBN financing of FGN expenditures and convert the 19 trillion-naira ways and means outstanding to 100-year bonds at 1 percent immediately.
16. Introduce a flat rate of 3 percent Federal personal income tax on all Nigerians earning more than 30, 000 Naira per month, all others to pay 100 naira per month

This should be deducted from phone credits of individuals by phone companies

17. All federal revenues, including federal oil and non-oil taxes, should be centralised into FIRS and CUSTOMS, NPA and others should merely issue demands.
18. Improvement of offshore crude oil and gas production
19. Give incentives to oil and gas companies to build thieves and vandalism resistant oil and gas pipelines.
20. Encourage and prefinance, if necessary, Dangote Refinery to early completion to reduce massive outflow of foreign exchange.
21. The CBN should refinance and recapitalise Bank of Industry and Bank of Agriculture
22. The CBN should focus on its statutory core areas of exchange rate management, control of interest rate and inflation, and should cease competing with Development and commercial banks.

These, and other suggestions, were made by the governors of Nigerian states and for any reasonable person, these suggestions make sense if we are to rescue our economy from total collapse and ruin. Since these suggestions are coming from a collectivity of state governors from all the political parties in Nigeria, they deserve immediate consideration now that the 2023 budget is being prepared.

Some may dismiss these suggestions as too late and not radical enough.   I think we should rather err on the side of caution than kill the patient with radical treatment. But since these suggestions arose from the collective wisdom and experience of the governors, they deserve to be scrutinised for adoption.

The economy and corruption are central to all our problems of insecurity. If we can solve the problem of the economy, we can then confront the serious issue of corruption. One also hopes that if we can rescue the economy from destruction, we will all be on guard to prevent a recovered economy from being destroyed all over again.