The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Corrosive effect of corruption on Nigeria’s security 

    Some three years or so ago, the Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations in conjunction with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a conference on Nigeria’s foreign policy at the foyer of the ministry’s beautiful Abubakar Tafawa Balewa House in Abuja. I remember Professor Ibrahim Gambari, then Under-Secretary-General for one of the divisions in the UN Secretary-General’s office saying our soldiers participating in UN peace-keeping operations in Darfur were poorly kitted. He said their equipment was below what the UN expected and what Nigeria in the past conformed with. This was an important matter because the UN reimbursed Nigeria for all its expenses during peace-keeping operations. The then Minister of Defence who was previously chairman of the PDP, the then ruling party gave a lame excuse that party bigwigs who got the contracts might not have performed well. He then casually dismissed the observation as if it did not really matter. I sat down there shocked about the levity with which state affairs was being handled in Nigeria. This was at a time when as a country we were going about laying claim to a seat on the UN Security Council  to represent Africa, and secondly, our candidacy was also based on the fact that we had participated on several UN peace-keeping and peace-enforcement operations . There we were, losing one of the planks of our credentials for permanent membership of the UN Security Council because of the greed and unconcern by one of the key persons in government.

    This reminds me of what a Zimbabwean minister, an academic colleague, asked me in 1990 about why during military regimes, Nigeria always got its act together but that during civilian regimes, there was a decline in the quality and dedication to service of the political leaders. Of course as a democrat I had no answer and it would have been out of place for me to endorse or support his observation. Even if he was correct, the behaviour of our men in uniform going by recent revelations leaves much to be desired.

    How can one explain the top echelon of our army and air force embezzling billions of Naira and millions of dollars meant to purchase arms and ammunition for soldiers in war time? These people were not only undermining the security of the country, they were also sending officers and men to die during unequal engagement with enemy troops of the Boko haram. Some of them had the temerity of trying unwilling soldiers in court-martial for refusing to go to the front with guns that would not fire!  National security should be sacrosanct. All officers and men should know this and if they have forgotten then there is a need to teach it not only to our security forces but to all citizens. In other climes, these military looters would have been tried in military courts rather than in civilian courts followed by a horde of so-called Senior Advocates eager to share in the loot and laughing all the way to the banks at the country’s expense.

    What can the country do? What can poor Buhari do? How many of our fights can he be expected to fight especially in a country that has seen so much misrule that it is almost inoculated to bad news and official thievery and dereliction of duty?

    Recently, the new Inspector-General of Police accused his predecessor of going away with 24 cars and his deputy inspectors-general and assistant inspector-generals went away with eight cars each. The question to ask is why is so much spent on cars and little or nothing spent on investigating tools and gadgets. Is this not the police that always claim it has no vehicles when people being robbed call on them for assistance? Are there no auditors any more in the various ministries and departments of government?

    A friend of mine told me recently that we all know that our country has gone to the dogs. He said our emphasis is what to do to reverse the situation. One hopes we have not gone beyond redemption. My suggestion is that there is a need for moral rearmament on a national scale. Our places and leaders of various religions should be called by the president and enlisted in to this campaign to rebuild Nigeria. We should encourage people who have gone astray whether caught or not to come forward and give testimonies of where they went wrong and vomit what they have like gluttons consumed even when they did not need to eat. They should demonstrate penance and be ready for restitution. We need to teach Nigerians to demand their rights from leaders who are not performing. Stomach infrastructure alone will not do. Man shall not live by bread and butter alone! There is also a need to challenge our people to work hard and that hard and honest work will be rewarded. Our people must be told not to celebrate people whose sudden source of wealth is not known. A review of all national honours since 1960 should be undertaken so that those who had earned them illegitimately should be dishonoured. In fact the award of national honours should be suspended until this suggested review has been carried out to remove those who are unworthy from the pantheon of national heroes.

    There is also a need to embark on serious educational campaign to all adult citizens and children in schools through teaching of good citizenship so that everybody would know that they are stakeholders in a future Nigeria where honesty would pay. Whatever has been surrendered by looters and whatever assets had been seized and monetized should be put into a special account from where special projects that will empower the people would be funded. The N300 billion that politicians had claimed since 2007 for so-called constituency projects must be recovered to be used for community projects as determined by the people. From now on, budgeting must be done in such a way that the people must have input into the process so that people’s concern can be factored into governance.

    Of course there is no country that is free of corruption. The difference is that punishment is usually sure and swift. This should be the way forward in Nigeria. The law is no respecter of persons. May I say I particularly admire the state of Israel which in recent time has jailed respectively a President for rape and a Prime Minister for corruption and is currently investigating a  sitting Prime Minister. It is only when we know impunity will be punished that people will sit up. People always respond to the stimulus of pain and pleasure; when people know that what they have illegitimately acquired could be taken from them or their children when they pass on, then the primitive accumulation of wealth now prevailing in Nigeria would become history. We need to know that all earthly wealth will end here on this terrestrial plane and that we brought nothing to this world and when we go we will take nothing with us. All that we think is important and pride ourselves in acquiring is vanity and our efforts at the end of the day is futile. This is the message our mosques and churches should be preaching. What will it benefit a man if he has the whole world and loses his soul? What is important is not how much one has but what good name and reputation one has built. Our heroes as a people should not be the rich and the powerful but the solitary workman providing for the needs of his family from the sweat of his labour and being contented with whatever he has achieved by dint of his exertion and hard work. This is what all our religions teach us and if we are true to our faith this is what we should try and do.

  • We are all guilty

    First, a confession. This is not my original thought. It is a subject of those occasional exchanges with my uncle, a retiree whose patriotism is remarkable. Unlike many others, he still indulges in the luxury of buying daily at least two newspapers.

    He called to find out how I was planning for a short break, which I had told him I would like to take. He was due to travel, but was worried about getting the forex to do this.

    The discussion veered off into the state of the nation – the trouble with the naira, leadership, governance, the future and all that. He concluded that three professionals are behind the fate of this country, troubling it and tossing it up and down like a leaf that has fallen off a tree into a river, its future left to the waves.

    “Who are they, sir?” I asked incredulously. He smiled derisively and replied: “Lawyers, journalists and economists.”

    “How?”

    “You don’t know? I will tell you. When people steal money, they run to lawyers, who defend them as if they did nothing wrong. And you journalists are not helping the government. I expect you to be less critical of this government because it is on a rescue mission. The mess is too much and can’t be cleared in a year. You know this but you churn out editorials that are so critical and I begin to wonder where you were two years ago. I don’t mean that all the newspapers are unsympathetic o”

    “This is interesting, sir. So, how about the third professionals o?”

    “Economists. They always talk theories that are far from reality. They are never realistic in their approach. Were they not part of the beginning of this crisis?”

    For a moment, I was gripped by a tough bout of laughter. A few minutes after the exchange, I reflected on it all and agreed that he was damn right. But, I do not feel that only these three professionals, who are guilty as charged in my uncle’s court, are the only ones troubling this country, blessed by nature, but cursed by the very hands that should nurture and nourish it.

    Lawyers defend blue murder. To them, the fountain of justice must soothe the throat of all – murderers, rapists and arsonists. All.

    A man confesses to committing murder, but his lawyer urges the court to free him because “ he was extremely provoked” to pull the trigger. If he fails to persuade the judge, he pleads “for leniency”. When all that fails, the prosecution insists that justice be served and the judge agrees with him, the defence pleads for the “mitigation of sentence”.

    Another confesses to robbing the state of cash, huge cash that is enough to build schools and hospitals, fight insurgents and pay our suffering workers. Lawyers – the ones called SAN; those are the best money can get, favourite of the rich and mighty because of their power to turn things around in a magical manner that keeps everyone exclaiming: ‘ah! Let’s fear God o’ – tell him to plead not guilty.

    They will, with so much passion and incredible certitude, tell the judge they object to the charge. If he rejects the objection, they urge him to disqualify himself from the case because, they will state boldly, there is a likelihood of his being biased because his cousin’s son was a party to a matter in a court of coordinate jurisdiction about ten years ago.

    If they see that this may not work, they will then ask the accused, the one who confessed to stealing but feels no sense of guilt, to surrender a negligible portion of what he has stolen. It is called plea bargain. No contrition. Nor remorse. He is left off the hook and he is told to go in peace and sin no more.

    The lawyer’s dexterity at using his skills to avert justice and pervert the principles of jurisprudence is not helping, but the question remains: don’t judges have the final say?

    Journalists don’t condone corruption and all the ills that ail Nigeria. No. The problem is that an average Nigerian loves the mob mentality. He would prefer that a thief gets jungle justice than being taken to court where he may get a slap on the wrist or be discharged for “lack of diligent prosecution”.

    The President Muhammadu Buhari administration is lucky. The criticisms have not been coming in torrents. They are trickling in, like the morning showers that caress the body before drenching it.  Besides, most of them seem to be in good faith. The scurrilous ones are understandable, coming from those who planned to rule for 60 years but lost steam in just 16 years of recklessness.They are entitled to their bitterness.

    The simple message is that, in fighting corruption, we should not lose our sense of justice and humanity. Nobody is safe when the state succumbs to the push to embrace a mob action, fast as it may be. If a court says an accused should be on bail, he should be let off so as not to give those turning it all into a rights issue a horsewhip to lash the government and its agents.

    Those crying that there is no economic direction should be more liberal in their criticism. The government has spoken about the past, where we are and where we are heading. Things are rough, for sure. But to say the government is unconcerned may not be right. Perhaps the treatment does not match the ailment, like pumping Panadol into a typhoid fever patient. He will never recover.

    Economists are busy propounding esoteric theories that do not work here. There is no accurate data for anything. This makes development tough to measure. Cash is stuffed in private vaults on farms, not in banks. Huge funds are diverted to private pleasures.

    In the immediate past administration, we had all manner of scatterbrained schemes and scams. You Win I Win, SURE-P and others that were founded on sheer expediency and never meant to endure, let alone boost the economy and better the lot of the citizenry.

    After the collapse of those schemes, we embarked on a face saving voyage and – without any thought for the future and based on mere juggling of facts and figures – we proclaimed ours  Africa’s biggest economy. Rebasing. It was as if we offended the gods. Ever since, the economy – and the people – have been writhing in pains. Rebasing has turned to “rebashing”.

    Now, we are in a recession. They say the contraction won’t last for long. Really?

    There is no need grabbing  these three professionals by the throat for our situation. We are all guilty.

    Consider the politicians who conceive policies for civil servants to implement. They make fanciful promises and paint the picture of an El Dorado, yet they deliver pains and misery.

    Besides, they soon after getting into office begin to swim in corruption. It used to be millions. Nowadays we hear of billions being shared by people desperate to remain in power, which they see as an end in itself and not a means to an end -better service delivery, justice, equity and a good life for all.

    Lawmakers are a wonderful lot. They get paid for sitting a few times in a year, but those who thought it was all about sitting allowances and influence peddling have now been proven wrong. Budget padding is here. When Buhari refused to sign this year’s budget, he was criticised as being stubborn. Now, our lawmakers are fighting over who injected extraneous financial matters into the all-important document. The new name is padding. Those who try to make it look innocent call it “insertion”, but the enlightened lot insist it is all a euphemism for corruption.

    The accusations are neither here nor there, but the sickening scenario portrays them as people whose accounts have been overdrawn in the bank of credibility. They are in the red.

    The upper chamber is hobbled by a corrosive test of integrity, its leadership accused of forging the rules that guided the controversial election that propelled them into their high offices.

    Civil servants are believed to be the ones showing the politicians how to steal. Contracts are inflated. Workforce is inflated so that somebody can collect salaries for ghost workers and pension funds are looted. Shame.

    The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has tried all the tricks in the book, yet the naira seems to be beyond redemption. The exchange rate is such that businesses that are import- dependent -many are – find it difficult to survive because they do not have the cash to bring in raw materials.

    You visit the bank for forex, but you return empty handed. The roadside mallam will at any time meet your need. This is not right. The popular accusation is that the bankers supply the mallams the cash they hawk at their own rates, which the official market is struggling to force down. Market forces have refused to force the parallel market to fall in line. Market forces have jammed street forces. What a battle of forces.

    We are all guilty. Every trade has its own bad guys. Musicians who deploy their creative skills to eulogise thieves are guilty as they celebrate rogues.

    How about accountants who doctor the books? Isn’t it said that stealing is successful only when the accountant is either hand in glove with the thieves or has fallen asleep?

    Auditors were there when fuel subsidy became a huge flea market of fraudsters, who drained the treasury of its blood, cash, and got us almost bankrupt until the government summoned – albeit belatedly – the courage to say “enough”.

    Unfortunately, when a time calls for understanding and patriotism, we deploy politics. The problem is not that of the leadership; the followership is also at fault.

    In other words, we are all guilty.

  • Budget blues

    T appears the row over the budget will never end. Right from the outset, the budget has been dogged by controversy. There was no stage of the document that did not have its own drama. Whether at the compilation, preparation, appropriation, documentation or signing stage, it was one drama after the other. It is as if we have never seen a budget go through the mill since the return to democracy in 1999. Yet, between then and now, 15 budgets have been presented to the National Assembly by a sitting president.

    Budget 2016 seems to have a life and a story of its own. These two elements derive from the persona of the person of the president, who we can safely call the author of the budget. The budget bears the imprimatur of President Muhammadu Buhari. He may not have personally prepared the budget, but his influence over its preparation cannot be ruled out. Known as a man of integrity, this attribute would have been at the back of the minds of those who worked on the budget.

    In discharging this onerous task, top officials of the various ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) charged with this task must have been guided by the philosophy of the president that every kobo must be accounted for. To account for every kobo, there must be transparency and prudence in the compilation of the fiscal document, which will guide the nation’s spending during the year. Some of them tried to play games with the process by adding their own figures to some areas of the budget. It was a trick that they used in the past and got away with. But this time around, with the wind of change blowing across the country, it was not business as usual.

    The president caused the process to be double checked with the eyes of an elder and it was found that certain things just did not add up. Since then, the budget has been reeling from one case of padding to the other. Officials of MDAs started this padding, which from all indications did not start with the 2016 Budget. It is more than certain that our budgets since 1999 would have been tampered with one way or the other by these people, who know where to hide some cash and how to get it out when the time comes. A budget cabal, it seems, exists in every ministry, department and agency.

    This cabal knows that without the National Assembly, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to steal from the budget. So, it infiltrated the National Assembly, with which it has been working for the past 17 years to steal our money via appropriations. The chicken has come home to roost with what is playing out among leaders of the House of Representatives. The lower chamber’s debacle clearly shows that there is something intrinsically wrong with the way our budgets have been appropriated over the years. The lawmakers, who are supposed to be the representatives of the people, have turned budget appropriation into an avenue for stealing.

    Under the guise of making a case for projects in their constituencies, they appropriate funds under bogus heads and when the cash is released they, in connivance with top officials of MDAs, take the money and share. Abdulmumin Jibrin, until about two weeks ago, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, knows all the tricks deployed in this budget-for-project-scam. His committee worked on the 2016 Budget and from what he is saying today, the panel did not do a good job. Instead, it was more interested in serving the needs of members under the pretence of serving the people.

    Members were using their influence to get money appropriated for fictitious projects, which cash will end up in their pockets. Jibrin, according to some members, was also into the game. He was said to have asked some of his colleagues to name projects for their constituencies which would be included in the budget. In some cases, he was said to have told his colleagues that he had put projects and appropriated money for them in the budget on their behalf. Just like that! Yes, just like that! Some played along with Jibrin, others allegedly raised the alarm, but nothing came out of it because Speaker Yakubu Dogara and Deputy Speaker Yusuff Lasun seemed to know what was going on.

    If they knew, as their colleagues are saying, why did the presiding officers keep quiet? Is it that they benefited from Jibrin’s ‘generosity’, that is if we can call what he did generous? We would not have heard of this matter if Jibrin had not been removed as the appropriations committee chairman. His removal, which he prefers to call resignation, triggered the budget padding scandal in the House. What annoyed him, he said, was the statement credited to Dogara who he supported with all he had for the speakership last year. He said Dogara painted him black, pointing out that the speaker’s statement suggested that he abused his position as committee chairman. Didn’t he?

    Known to be a fighter with the way he mounted the Dogara-for-speaker campaign, which no doubt fetched him the committee job, Jibrin is deploying the same arsenal and zeal in fighting the speaker over this budget padding matter. The speaker, Lasun, Chief Whip Ado Doguwa and Minority Leader Leo Ogor, among others, he alleged, wanted to appropriate to themselves N40 billion out of the N100 billion earmarked for the 360-member House. In all, he said the over N6 trillion budget was padded with N284 billion. Dogara has described his estranged friend as a blackmailer and asked him to withdraw the allegation or face legal action.

    Jibrin has said he would not withdraw the claim, daring the speaker to go to court. Before they go to court, Nigerians will be interested in knowing whether or not both of them benefited from the padding of the budget. Reason: It is now certain that some figures, which should not be there, found their way into the budget despite all the president’s efforts to ensure that that did not happen. Our lawmakers are just too much. See how they beat the president in his anti-graft war. Right under his nose, they smuggled their own figures into the budget and he signed it without knowing. I do not know what could be worse than using the president to perfect what could be called stealing from the budget.

    As if the president knew. Little wonder, he initially refused to sign the budget until the lawmakers removed some of the padded figures. How do we remove the remaining padded figures from the budget and bring those responsible to justice? This should be an urgent task for the law enforcement agencies.

  • Nigeria’s unity not negotiable? – 3

    This is my third and last intervention on President Buhari’s statement that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable. In my first two articles, I made the point that it is understandable for any president – especially a president under pressure as Buhari has been – to make the statement that his country’s unity is not negotiable or questionable. In our experience in this country, a statement like that by any president does not amount to anything. We have heard it in one form or another, again and again, from all our past presidents. What would amount to much, what we Nigerians want from any president – especially from our current president who expressly promised us change – is a plan to keep our country harmoniously together by removing the perennial reason why various ones among our indigenous nationalities have been questioning Nigeria’s unity and Nigeria’s existence as one country.

    Since Nigeria became a self-governing country in 1960, various Nigerian nationalities, or at least persons claiming to act on behalf of their nationalities, have, under certain circumstances painful to their nationalities, questioned Nigeria’s unity as one country and threatened (and tried) to terminate it. They are perpetually pushing, and forcing Nigeria’s unity to be renegotiated.

    Young Ijaw patriots led by Isaac Boro, and others subsequently led by Ken Saro-wiwa, did it. Youths of the Ijaw and other peoples of the Niger Delta are doing it now with methods that are hurting Nigeria very decisively. These youths are united by a common reaction to the horrible degradation of their Delta environment under the impact of the petroleum industry, by a rejection of the iniquitous sharing of the benefits of their homeland’s petroleum resources, and by the neglect of their part of Nigeria by an apparently uncaring Federal Government.

    The Hausa-Fulani political elite did it in May-October 1966 when they mobilized crowds of their people to demand Araba (separation) and to seek to enforce Araba by killing Igbo citizens in Northern cities.  They did these things partly because of their painful losses in a Nigerian military coup, and partly because the consequent Federal Military Government seemed determined to destroy all regional autonomy, to seize control of all power over Nigeria, and especially to subdue the Northern Region.

    The Igbo people did it by striking for a separate country of Biafra in 1967-70. They did it because their security as a people had become seriously compromised in Nigeria, and because the then Military Government under the North’s dominant control seemed to them to represent even greater   threats to their security in Nigeria.

    Youths of Kanuri and related peoples, choosing the banner of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and the name Boko Haram, have been doing it since 2009. We have been led to believe generally that their sole reason is religious and that their sole objective is an Islamic caliphate, and we miss the fact that Kanuri nationalism (with a strong dose of rejection of Fulani hegemony and a desire for a separate country) is a major motivation of theirs – and we fail to see the fact that their revolt derives much of its strength from indigenous local support in their homeland in the North-east.

    Youths of the Arewa North, led by highly educated young men, did it in 2014 by holding street demonstrations and demanding that the North should cut relations with Nigeria, that “the failed experiment of Nigeria” should be terminated, and that all Southerners should quit the North within two weeks and all Northerners resident in the South should return home immediately. They did these things because they felt that their Arewa North was being disrespected, neglected and marginalized by the Nigerian Federal Government of that day, and that the Nigerian Federal Government was incurably corrupt and incompetent.

    Among the large and considerably literate Yoruba nation of the Nigerian South-west, very many youth groups, called ‘self-determination groups’, have long been itching to do it, only restrained by their adult population and the cultural sensitivities of their nation. They are itching to strike for their Yoruba nation because their Yoruba nation has been losing too much, and declining too sadly, and becoming ever poorer, as a result of the excessive concentration of power and resource control in the hands of a Nigerian Federal Government that is always inclined to resist and frustrate the progress and development of the Yoruba nation, a Federal Government  that is characterized by stunted desire for modern development, by horrific incompetence, and by mind-boggling corruption – a Federal Government that seems to be on a mission to dampen development and spread corruption and poverty all over Nigeria.

    Yes, Nigeria’s unity is being questioned and threatened all the time by various Nigerian peoples. No presidential threats, no number of amnesties, no amount of presidential bribes, no security agency’s menace, and no amount of military violence, has succeeded in shutting up our nationalities – or is likely ever to succeed in shutting them up. The passion for Biafra is much more popular today among the masses of ordinary Igbo people than in 1967; Delta militants are sharper and more difficult to subdue today than in the time of Isaac Boro or Saro-wiwa; Yoruba self-determination groups are better informed today and much better ready to promote their nation’s interests, etc. And let us not deceive ourselves –  it is these peoples that hold the final say, and that will wield the ultimate knife, on the fate of Nigeria’s unity and Nigeria’s existence as one country – no matter what presidents may say, threaten, intend to do, or do.

    Moreover, while the international community was, on the whole, more inclined to support Nigeria’s unity against Biafran separation in 1967-70, the international community is today much more likely to arise and protect any Nigerian nationality being militarily attacked by Nigeria for demanding a Biafra or a Niger Delta Republic or an Oduduwa Republic. In recent decades, the world has become quite strongly, sensitized towards protecting its weaker peoples who, because they are trying to exercise their right of self-determination, are being subjected to brutalities and oppression by strong countries or stronger neighbours. The doctrine that weak nationalities have the right to protection by the world, and that the world has the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (cryptically put as R2P) is now a vital reality in our world.

    It is very probable, therefore, that, given the present trends, more and more Nigerian peoples will demand self-determination and separation (and a renegotiation of Nigeria’s unity) in no distant a future. It is also probable that they will do so with increasing intensity and capability. And, if some of them happen to do it together or even merely simultaneously, it seems probable that Nigeria would buckle under the pressure.

    Because more and more Nigerians worry about these probabilities, and because more and more Nigerian nationalities painfully reject the poverty, corruption, crookedness and impunity that the Nigerian Federal Government represents, more and more well-meaning Nigerian voices are being raised for the restructuring of the Nigerian federation. Meanwhile, leaders of a section of Nigeria, the Arewa North section, choose to oppose restructuring with all their might, for no other reason than to make the point that they ae dominant in Nigeria, and that only what they want has any chance of being chosen and done in Nigeria. They may appear to be winning their victory; but they are likely soon to be labouring under the terrible historic guilt of being responsible for Nigeria’s disappearance from the map of the world.

    The special point about President Buhari is that he belongs to the leadership of this Arewa North section of Nigeria, and that Nigerians, and the whole world, have the right to presume that he has the ability to persuade his people to change their stand on the all-important question of restructuring of the Nigerian federation. He has a historic duty here; and his place in history will obviously depend on what he does with that duty.

  • Restructuring and Military Avengers

    For many credible voices in our nation, the answer to our unresolved national question is a return to our 1954 structure, negotiated by our founding fathers ‘to promote the unity of Nigeria and protect the interest of diverse elements that make up the country’, with some modifications to reflect current realities. The open endorsement of agitation by some restive groups for self-actualization and ‘less centralised, less suffocating and less dictatorial’ central government by Atiku Abubakar seems to have brought a new focus on an old issue. The former governor of Kaduna State and leader of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, has added his voice. According to him, ‘a return to regional arrangement, where each region can create states they can cater for, would certainly reduce injustice and inequality among the people’. Emeka Anyaoku, the former Commonwealth Secretary-General has also renewed his call for ‘a return to the regional structure practiced in the First Republic, with the country’s six regions forming the federating units’. For Gen Akinrinade, “anyone that wishes Nigeria well and wants our states to develop will join in the growing agitation to restructure the country”. And reacting to the opponents of restructuring who have consistently said ‘Nigeria unity is not negotiable’, Wole Soyinka, regarded by many as the conscience of the nation has said the basis of our association needed to be renegotiated if we are to prevent a disastrous disintegration. Agreeing with him, The Guardian in an editorial in its edition of June 26, submitted “The present structure has bred identity politics of ethnocentrism, undermined national unity and patriotism, institutionalised corruption, violation of the rule of law and a dehumanisation of the people – antinomies that have led to state-led violence and enduring separatist impulses on the part of many nationalities that make up the country”. But long before now, other patriotic Nigerians such as the late Pa Tony Enahoro, Pa Adekunle Ajasin, two of our founding fathers, as well as human right activists such as Alao Aka Bashorun and Beko Ransome-Kuti, engaged in a life long struggle for a restructured Nigeria.

    While many concerned Nigerians agree with these patriots that Nigeria is just not working as presently constituted, the Nigerian military and their apologists who after destroying the inherited superstructure, imposed a unitary system, abridged the political socialization process, insisted on teaching Nigerians that started party system in 1923 how to form political parties, decimated the political class which was replaced with military- baked new breed politicians that bred nothing but corruption and wanted to maintain the status quo.

    Beyond these self-delusions, the Nigerian military have other reason to sustain the status quo. Studies have now shown that like their counterparts elsewhere in West Africa, who joined the military to climb the social ladder, they harboured deep-rooted hatred for the dominant groups in society such as the politicians, the civil servants and intellectuals they saw as the source of their marginalisation.

    In fact those first recruited by the British into what eventually became the Nigerian military from the north according to Ahmadu Bello ‘were slaves who ran away from their masters and labourers from the market places’. The status of a soldier was not better in the east. Professor Adekanye, quoting N. J. Miners called our attention to one Major Eze, who writing in the 1963 issue of old Nigerian army magazine after the Second World War said: ‘The army was a place for the illiterates and criminals whose duties were to kill and be generally brutal”. In the west, those who joined the military were considered rascals. Adekanye also told us the poor image of the military can be measured in terms of low remuneration; the army recruit was paid less than unskilled daily paid government labourer and the army members of the NCO earned less than their counterparts in the police.

    Like their counterparts in West Africa such as Liberia where Sergeant Doe, after taking over power, lined up, shot and dragged 11 bodies of President Tubman’s associates on the streets only to get himself  integrated into their Whig Party he had accused of corruption, Nigerian military also first murdered their benefactors, threw the political class into disarray, destroyed the bureaucracy and the university system ostensibly because of corruption but ended up paying themselves higher salaries,  awarding salaries for life to their Generals while many retired into life of opulence as owners of banks, captains of industries and owners of oil wells after murdering   benefactors they had accused of being ‘ten per centers’.

    The new acquired status provided Obasanjo an opportunity to appoint the 49 wise men that drafted the 1979 constitution which traded our inherited parliamentary system for a presidential system that unlike the former allowed him to be crowned President even after his rejection by his people.

    Babangida demonstrated his own complex by hilariously calling himself President after his palace coup, executed not because of his lofty vision for the nation but according to Buhari, to protect Gusau who was accused of corruption by the Buhari military junta. He humoured himself as the ‘Maradona’ of Nigerian politics, manipulated the political class, decreed two parties, institutionalized corruption through SAP, took the nation through eight years of fraudulent transition programme at the end of which he annulled the most credible election ever conducted in our nation won by his friend MKO Abiola.

    Abacha reduced the political class to comedians. For his own fraudulent transition, his five decreed political parties described as ‘five fingers of a leprous finger’ by the late Bola Ige were falling over each other to adopt him as their presidential candidate until he was visited by death, the leveller.

    General Abdulsalami Abubakar, using the same military tactics humbled the political class. The highly respected caustic mouth, Bola Ige who was credited with writing the PDP, APP and AD constitutions long after the military had decided to impose Obasanjo as President was no exception. He was tricked to lower his guard by Obasanjo’s patronizing “Bola Ige is the only Yoruba man I fear’ during the 1999 election he was programmed to win. His assassination as Attorney General of the federation inside his room remains unresolved.

    And of course Obasanjo did not disappoint his military constituency. PDP party chieftains became ‘garrison commanders’. Leaderships of the party as well as those of the two legislative houses were routinely shuffled like cards. The highly compromised legislatures often resorted to military tactics to outwit party members each just as the current leadership did in June last year.

    The nation cannot move forward with restructuring. The military and their fronts who become multi-billionaires in their late thirties, the senate where members who routinely pass resolutions to cover up alleged fraud, the lower house currently enmeshed in allegation of massive padding of the budget cannot be regarded as patriots that care about the future of our nation.

    We are therefore left with President Buhari who had restructuring as part of his 2015 campaign manifesto. He was voted President because Nigerians trusted him. He must remain faithful to his contract with Nigerians. Once a victim of betrayal by his military colleagues, he should know wealthy retired Generals and their fronts who insists “Nigeria Unity is not negotiable’ do not have history on their side. With those who have served jail term for corruption and others facing corruption charges in court openly canvassing for votes, it must be clear by now to the President that his lasting legacy will not be fighting corruption but a restructured Nigeria that prevents a disastrous disintegration.

  • The other class narrative

    The democracy we declared has recoiled into a spent shadow. Sixteen years on in the grip of blood-drenched mascots, it steals from our sweetest fantasies like the proverbial slut making a surreptitious exit with her drunken lover’s wallet.

    Consequently, we suffer poverty of character and this manifests as mean-spiritedness. It’s akin to that patience of the wild that holds motionless for endless hours the motorist at the police checkpoint, the kidnapper in his lair, the assassin in his ambuscade and the public officer on his perch – this patience belongs primarily to the predator while it hunts its prey.

    Oftentimes, it manifests in uncontrollable spasms that have seen us bury our best and elevate our worst in abject negation of the cycle of the universe and morality. But who needs morals in a nation where fair is foul and foul remains fair?

    As you read, many a Nigerian of commonplace roots live through each day without ever contemplating or criticizing their living conditions. They find themselves born into dehumanising squalor or somewhat indecent circumstances and they accept such sordidness as their fate thus exhibiting no conscious effort to better their lot beyond what their immediate circumstances dictate.

    Almost as impulsively as the beasts of the wild, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of the moment, without much forethought and consideration that by sufficient endeavor, they just might improve their living conditions. However, a certain percentage – comprising men and women of privilege – guided by personal ambition, consciously strive in thought and will to attain higher status but very few among these are concerned enough to secure for all, the advantages which they seek for themselves. This explains the number of self-centred and treacherous human rights activists, women’s rights activists, journalists and columnists parading our streets.

    Very few men are indeed capable of that humaneness that drives martyrs to persistently rebel against glaring social evils in the interest of less fortunate members of the society. But there exists a few however, that are truly bothered by the impoverishment of their fellow citizens regardless of any risk or discomfort it might attract to them personally.

    These few, driven by compassion tirelessly seek, first in thought and then in action, for some way of escape; some new system of society by which life may become richer, more joyful and devoid of avoidable evils that mars the present. But surprisingly, such men oftentimes, fail to curry the support of the very victims of the injustices they wish to remedy.

    This is because more unfortunate sections of the Nigerian populace are hopelessly ignorant, apathetic from excess of toil and disillusionment, apprehensive through the imminent danger of instantaneous chastisement by the holders of power, and morally defective owing to the loss of self-respect resulting from their degradation. To excite among such classes any conscious, deliberate effort in pursuit of general improvement of the status quo, proves basically a hopeless task, as antecedents of such efforts have proven.

    Thus despite our claims to modernity, higher education, sophistication and relative rise in the standard of comfort among wage-earners in the country, the Nigerian society have failed woefully to achieve better living conditions and a better society even in the throes of rising demand for more radical intervention and reconstruction of the social order.

    It is no surprise however that the Nigerian working class has persistently proved a dismal failure. And the reasons are hardly far-fetched: Nigerians have a problem with differentiating between appropriate and inappropriate political behavior.  That is why the nation’s democratic experiment like any other system of governance practicable by us was doomed from the start.

    What exactly has democracy offered? A 4-1-9 progressive plan that booms circumspectly like it had been doctored as part of a cold-war era propagandist scheme? But despite our self-righteousness and persistent cynicism with the current order, we really cannot explore a more worthy alternative than what we have now. The average Nigerian can’t bear to be led by a truly honest, visionary and accountable leadership. That explains our choice of the incumbent leadership.

    Apparently, we possess an overwhelming and oft-convincing inclination to self-destruct thus our lack of a coherent and defensible political ideology essential to the evolution of a progressive leadership and state.

    The average Nigerian is no more electable than the leadership he endures. Yet he loves to speak truth to power even as he functions simultaneously to smother his own voice, in the riotous gabble of his exultation of the same ruling class whose end he claims to pursue. No matter who is elected, the demographic and economic realities of Nigeria will persist, and there is a very limited range of politically-viable solutions for dealing with them.

    No man; be he a distinguished columnist, lawyer, soldier, or public officer in any office can command the tides of history. The few that appear to have done so–the Napoleon’s, Caesar’s, Hitler’s–were really nothing more than the most capable at making it appear that they command the tides, when in fact they were simply skimming along with them.

    Thus the need for the Nigerian working class to consciously evolve in thought and will in pursuit of a more balanced social order. Such conscious evolution could only be achieved by a re-orientation in scholarship and purification of thought and action.

    The foundations of scholarship and knowledge must be tirelessly reconstructed to guarantee more progressive responses to internal problems of social advance — problems of work and wages, of families and homes, of morals and the true value of life – and all these and other inevitable problems of civilization must be resolvable largely by an average member of the working class by reason of his exposure and constitution.

    This informs a greater need for study and thought and an appeal to the rich experience of past and current mistakes in the journey towards the reduction to the barest minimum, the possibility of future foibles. The answer to Nigeria’s widening income and social gap – which has so far manifested in preventable crises and persistent state of insecurity – is to found an educational process geared to steer successfully, the commonplace trains of thought away from the dilettante and the fool stereotype.

    It’s about time poor, struggling members of the nation’s working class learned to scorn the maxim that holds that if their stomachs be full, it matters little about their brains; the paths to stable peace and security winds between honest toil and dignified manhood. That proverbial better society that we seek calls for the guidance of skilled thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the low income earners and ambitious middle class emancipated by training and culture.

    Such human elements would no doubt be conscious of the fact that not even the sustenance of oil subsidy, higher wages and a fairer economic system could protect its members from the usual handicaps and monstrosity constituted by the incumbent and predatory ruling class.

    Hence they would be able to understand that the much clamoured social enterprise and gesture towards change must be mooted and achieved by the working class itself in further substantiation of the working class’ capacities to assimilate the culture and refinement of humane civilization; a veritable step towards such reality is to vote the incumbent administration out of office

  • This too shall pass

    It is no longer news that Nigeria is in a recession. What should be paramount now is how to get us out of it. That, we have been told, will be this quarter, which is July to September. With July ending on Sunday, that means we have two months left to ensure that the recession does not drag further. If it extends beyond this quartet to the next, we may be heading for another thing entirely, but certainly not depression, which name alone connotes fear.

    Last week’s confirmation by the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, that the nation is in a recession caught many off guard. Though we have known for long that things are not economically okay with the country, we did not know that they were of recessional proportion. A recession is not something to be afraid of because countries do get in and out of it, where properly managed. We can also get out of this recession, if we do the right things. Here is where the government should take the lead.

    Adeosun has assured us that we have nothing to fear. Again, I want to believe her, but all the same the people are still afraid. Reason : they have never before been confronted like this with the hard fact of a recession. Many are still wondering what she meant by a recession. ‘’Does it mean that the economy is dead?’’ ‘’How will we manage under this situation?’’ Will we still be able to afford the basic necessities of life?’’ ‘’Can we believe the government that things will change for the better soon?’’ These are some of the questions many Nigerians who are afraid of these times are asking. These are indeed trying times, which require the thick-skinned to survive.

    Having endured terrible economic times in the past, we cannot blame our people if they feel that they are still being asked to show more understanding before things get better. When will that be, they are wont to ask. Many find it hard to trust the government and you cannot blame them. They have been asked often times to tighten their belts, which they did, but those who made that request never practised what they preached. They slackened their own belts to acquire more from our commonwealth, while we, the people, languished in penury.

    This recession is all about tightening our belts until things improve in the third quarter. The improvement will be hinged on how well Adeosun and her Budget and Planning counterpart Senator Udoma Udo Udoma handle the economy. The prospects, according to Adeosun, are bright. Hear her : ‘’We are not the only country in a recession; many countries are doing far worse than us. But for Nigeria, what Nigerians want to know is ‘how’s that going to affect me’ and I want to assure everybody that what we are doing is going to work and it’s going to turn this economy around’’.

    How will this recession affect Nigerians? I expected Mrs Adeosun to dwell more on that when she appeared before the Senate last Thursday. But, she did not; she just mentioned it in passing. The only way Nigerians will make sacrifice during this recession is if they know how it will affect them. I had expected the minister to break it down in terms of naira and kobo so that we will know what we are facing. It is not the Buhari administration’s fault that we have found ourselves in the position we are economically today. It is, however, his administration’s lot to get us out of our economic mess.

    It is the cumulative effect of  past misdeeds that led to the two negative quarters growth we experienced between January and last month. It is soothing that Adeosun and Udoma are assuring the public that with what the government is doing we would soon be out of the woods. The government must work assiduously towards that because most of what we are going through today were brought about by some policies, whether made now or in the past. According to economists, high lending rates which reduce borrowing and investment, falling wages, falling consumer confidence, credit crunch, inflation and appreciation in exchange rate are some of the causes of recession.

    We cannot gloss over the fact that for quite sometime, the lending rates have been so high that businesses are complaining. Salaries too have become irregular. In some cases, workers go without pay for months and when they eventually get paid their purchasing power is reduced because of the enormous debts hanging over their heads. Banks are facing liquidity crunch, making it difficult for them to perform their roles as lenders. There are many medium/small scale enterprises that require loans to push their businesses, but they cannot get credit facility because the banks are going through hard times. What do we have to say about the exchange rate, with the naira selling for over N300 to the dollar at the official market.  We can go on and on. The brunt of the matter is that Nigerians are suffering.

    Even before the national recession set in, the personal economies of many have been in a recession, making  life harsh, brutish and short. Some have died from inability to pay hospital bills of as low as N500; some cannot afford to pay house rent or their children’s school fees; some have resorted to begging with their babies to make ends meet, yet they have continued to endure with the belief that tomorrow go better, to borrow a local slang. Yes,  this (recession) too shall pass, but by then, we pray that many of us would not be in the grave.

    The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) may have set the ball rolling in getting us out of recession, by raising the interest rate from 12 per cent to 14 per cent after its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in Abuja on Tuesday. Banks have been cheating depositors for long, paying them little or no interests on their savings, while they charge very high lending rates. The nation may have found itself in a recession today because of the activities of these banks. It is heartening that for once, the CBN is acting like a true regulator. If only it had acted like this before now, we may not be where we are today.

    It is never too late to do the right thing. If the CBN is canvassing pro-people policies today, it is a sign of good things to come and that sooner than later, we will not be talking of recession but of a swinging economy.

  • Government inefficiency and pains of Nigerians

    Professor Ayo Olukotun in his last week column in the Punch newspapers titled ‘Consumer woes in austere times” narrated his experience while trying to renew his monthly subscription to Direct Satellite Television owned by Multichoice. At the end, he could not but ‘marvelled at how helpless consumers had become at the hands of these service providers’. Once again, I think this is one more evidence of failure of governance.

    The capitalist economic system, the reigning ‘god’ worshipped by most societies holds no apologies to life being the survival of the fittest. Consequently, it allows the affluent to further impoverish the poor. This was why men traded their freedom and liberty for government’s protection of life and properties. The primary role of government therefore is to put measures in place to checks man’s greed especially in our own environment where some of our sick political leaders who according to Chinua Achebe, ‘have been in the rain for so long and swore none of their generation would go back to the rain’, steal from the poor to build mansions in which they and their children will never live over many capital cities of the world.

    Our own tragedy is that not only has our government in the last 15 years totally abandoned the poor to the vagaries of economic forces and merchants of greed, government itself has been an accessory in the impoverishment of the most vulnerable. This found expressions in such self-serving government policy thrusts as PPPRA designed as an answer to a contrived fuel scarcity to pave way for the theft of N1.7trillion under fraudulent fuel subsidy deal,  World Bank inspired liberalization and privatisation which did not only turn our country into importer of labour of other societies but ended with the country recouping only about $1b from $100b investments made between 1960 and 1999 and the monetization policy which led to the sharing of our inherited national patrimony in form of choice properties by those in government and their friends.

    But in March 2015, Nigerians in spite of impediments put on their way by those who had levied war against them voted for change. Sadly more than one year of government of change, many are increasingly becoming disillusioned as change appears a forlorn hope. Government effort is not made any easier by the current economic reality which is partly the fallout of massive looting of the nation’s resources, sponsored sabotage of the economy by those called upon to account for their past. As if these were not enough problems, we also have an APC government where the executive seems to operate independently of the party that brought it to power, (I sometimes wonder if Tony Momoh and Segun Osoba are still in APC); a pathetic Senate passing resolution upon resolution to evade prosecution for alleged criminal offences including forgery by its leadership and a Lower House enmeshed in scandals over padding of the budget by as much as N40billion.

    Four months ago, this column called attention to the creeping dictatorship in Abuja where everything seemed to begin and end on President Buhari’s table in an age when government has become a science susceptible to scientific laws. Attention was called to the over 500 ‘small governments’ the President and his party needed  to effect change but controlled by those opposed to change because of huge benefits they reap from the prevailing economic anarchy.

    Last week Segun Adeniyi, a former colleague at The Guardian, now of ThisDay newspapers, called our attention to President Buhari and his APC’s inability to reconstitute the statutory boards of regulatory institutions that are critical to the economy, dissolved over a year ago. He cited the following as examples the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), the Bank of Industry (BOI); the Nigeria Investment Promotion Council (NIPC); the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC); the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC); the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Commission (NDIC); the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) among many others.

    Now using NCC as a base, let me add to Professor Olukotun’s anxiety about absence of consumer’s protection, my own personal experiences which I am sure is not markedly different from those of other Nigerian victims of rip-off by unrestrained service providers.  A few years back, I roamed my telephone line from one of the telecommunication giants outside the country. Four days after my departure from Nigeria, I was told I had exhausted my N50, 000 deposit. This was not so much from usage but because of endless repetition of any message sent to me from Nigeria. During the last two weeks of my trip, I dreaded even switching the phone on because the stream of endless repeated messages had become a nuisance. On my arrival, I was slammed with a non-negotiable N200, 000 bills. I finally migrated from post-paid to prepaid. But that did not end my nightmare. Bombarded daily by unsolicited messages, I decided to visit the service centre of this communication giant more than once where all I got was apologies. With a subscription base of about 214 million as at March this year, with one unsolicited message at a cost of N1.00, Nigerian subscribers are ripped off to the tune of over N200m.

    A rival telecommunication giant to which I also subscribe was not different. All I got from several visits to complain about frequent disappearance of post-paid credit even when the phone was not in use was ‘android phones have in- built devices that consume credits whether the phone is utilized for internet services or not’. I think this type of rip-off is only possible in Nigeria.

    A few years back, a particular service provider taking a cue from a government that in an effort to raise campaign funds for the then impending election taxed motorists N24, 000 to have their old vehicle plate numbers replaced levied its customers N19, 000 to replace their existing functioning equipment for a new equipment because it was upgrading its processes. While the battle for devaluation of naira was raging a few weeks back, I branched in their office to renew my subscription only to be told in a manner of ‘take it or leave it’ that my package had gone up from N8, 000 to N10, 000.

    I did not get much joy either from a rival internet services provider to which I migrated. For instance when I went to renew my subscription after a month, I was told that N5,000 of the N7, 000 I paid was yet to be utilized but must be forfeited because I exceeded my renewal date by one day.

    What became apparent from the above interactions was that my actual monthly consumption of data was probably about N2, 000 but like many helpless Nigerians, I have been consistently swindled by as much as N6, 000 monthly for the greater part of five years.

    By retaining men of yesterday in their positions in PPPRA which has given no explanation as to why the price of 12kg cylinder of domestic gas or four litres of lubricants Nigerians depended on to service their cheap Chinese generators, products without much foreign content have gone up by as much as 100 percent, is partly the reason why many believe President Buhari and his APC are furiously squandering away the goodwill of Nigerians. Nigerians cannot understand why a government of change has continued to multiply their pains due to indolence and inefficiency. Theresa May if they needed to be reminded constituted her full cabinet within 24 hours of becoming Prime Minister of Britain.

     

  • On proposals for cutting costs in diplomatic service

    On proposals for cutting costs in diplomatic service

    I was saddened by the report in this newspaper last Friday about the deplorable state of the ‘Nigeria House’ in New York, as well as the poor condition of its staff. The report claimed that some of the diplomatic staff had not been paid for up to four months. While I was Ambassador at the UN (1981-84) I was involved in the early stages of the plans for the development of the property which was intended to bring the Nigerian Mission at the UN and our Consulate General in New York together under one roof, instead of two rented properties. The property was intended to save costs and was developed after I left New York in 1984. I have visited it a couple of times since then. It is a magnificent building of which Nigeria should be proud. But over the years I could see that lack of maintenance of the property has made it less alluring. Its neglect, like many other Nigerian diplomatic missions abroad, is due largely to lack of adequate funding, not really due to lack of funds. The following is an article by me, first published in my column in this paper in September, 2015, that sought to address the problem of inadequate funding for the Foreign Service. It is being published again unedited as I believe it addressed some of the critical problems of funding in the Nigerian diplomatic service.

    One of the main challenges facing President Muhammadu Buhari is the urgent need to reduce the overall cost of public administration in the country. This has soared over the years. There is a national consensus that the bureaucracy at all levels of government has become too large, and that a reduction in its size and cost has become imperative. The current sharp decline in oil revenues, which have fallen this year alone by over 60 per cent, leaves the governments of the federation with no other choice but to begin to think seriously about how these much needed cuts in the cost of public administration can be achieved. President Buhari is well aware of this challenge and has alluded to it publicly several times. But he has not yet taken any practical or concrete steps to address this lingering problem. It is a difficult and painful task which requires great care and circumspection particularly at a time of mass unemployment. It will adversely affect the diplomatic service as well.

    There were recent media reports that while being briefed by the Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Ministry, Ambassador Lulu, President Buhari expressed his concerns about the large number of Nigeria’s diplomatic missions abroad, and the huge number of its overall diplomatic staff. Ambassador Lulu told the press that the President informed him that he intended doing something to reduce the number of our foreign missions. It is also possible that the overall staffing of the Foreign Ministry itself will form part of the review being proposed. But so far he has done nothing about this.

    There is no doubt that the number of Nigerian diplomatic missions abroad has increased significantly in recent years. At independendence in 1960 Nigeria had less than a dozen diplomatic missions, mainly in Africa and Western Europe. In 1964, when I entered the diplomatic service this increased to about 25, largely in response to the need to have diplomatic representation particularly in the newly independent African countries. By 1976 the number of our diplomatic missions increased to 65. The civil war had ended and the need was felt for more missions to be opened abroad. From 1970 to 1976, over 100 new Foreign Service Officers (FSO) were recruited to staff both the expanded Foreign Ministry and the new diplomatic missions abroad. The surge in oil revenues made the increase in the number of missions and diplomatic staff possible and sustainable.

    Today, we have 119 diplomatic missions abroad and it is becoming increasingly clear that, in our present dire financial situation, it is going to be financially difficult to sustain such a large number of diplomatic missions and staff. In 1964, the overall cost of our total diplomatic establishment, at home and abroad, was only 33 million pounds sterling. Since then, the cost of running both the MFA and our diplomatic missions has continued to rise inexorably. According to an official document issued by the MFA in 2012, by 2006, total MFA budget appropriation was N25.2b, of which over N20.2b, or 81 per cent, was spent on running our foreign missions. In 2011, budget appropriation for the MFA had increased to over N40b, with our foreign missions still accounting for over 81 per cent of the overall cost. This is where the major operating cost of the MFA is incurred. Average annual personnel cost of the MFA is less than N4b. Huge as these figures may appear to be, they account for an average of only 1 per cent of the total federal budget. In fact, it was only in 2007 that budgetary allocations to the Foreign Service reached 1.34 per cent of the budget of the federal government.

    Two issues arise from this analysis. First, is the state spending more on its foreign representation than other public agencies? Relative to other agencies of the federal government, can we really say that the cost of running the Foreign Service, with its enormous global responsibilities, is too much? It is by no means clear that is the case, except that most of the cost incurred in running the Foreign Service and our diplomatic missions abroad is in foreign currencies. It is this that leads the public and the government to demand a reduction in appropriations to the MFA. For example defence and national security take an average of 15 per cent of the budget annually, education about 7 per cent, home administration over 12 per cent. So, in real and comparative terms, the overall cost to the nation of its Foreign Service is not as high as it seems. The second issue regarding costs is where the cuts, if necessary, are to be made. Is it in the cost of personnel or the number and size of our diplomatic missions abroad? I raise these questions because previous efforts to cut the cost of running the Foreign Service have on the whole focused on the senior staff of the MFA rather than on the large number of our foreign missions which account for over 80 per cent of the overall cost of running the Foreign Service. As a matter of fact in 1976 and 1984 when there were purges in the Foreign Service, more diplomatic missions were opened after. This showed that the purges were political and not motivated by any demonstrable need for cost reduction. Only a few years ago, a new diplomatic mission was opened in Juba, South Sudan, and our embassies in Caracas, Belgrade, the Vatican and Prague, which had been previously closed, were all reopened. Even the MFA complained officially about these inconsistencies in the manner our missions are opened, only to be closed later for lack of funding.

    The fact of the matter, often ignored by the government and the public, is that some of Nigeria’s diplomatic missions were opened to accommodate failed politicians and political hacks who demand diplomatic postings as compensation from the government. And non-career ambassadors cost more to maintain than career ambassadors. Of Nigeria’s 119 diplomatic missions, about 60 have non-career ambassadors. But only a handful of these can be said to have what it takes to be a good ambassador. Many of them go abroad to serve themselves and not the nation. A few years ago when I visited Argentina and called on our embassy in Buenos Aires, I met a junior staff there who told me the political Ambassador had been absent from his post for over six months. Again when I served in Ankara, Turkey, in 1975, with concurrent accreditation to Iran, I could not understand the reason for our having a diplomatic mission in Ankara at the time. Subsequently, I learnt that the two missions were opened to accommodate Brigadier Kurubo, a former head of the Air Force. When I went to Teheran to present my letters, I discovered that Kurubo was not even known in the Foreign Ministry. Our Mission in Teheran was being run by a junior attaché who had not been paid for six months. I duly recommended that one of the two embassies be closed as our residual interest there in those days did not warrant us opening full-fledged embassies there. In fact, in disgust, I requested a posting back to Lagos after only a year in Ankara.

    Many critics of our foreign representation have pointed out to the lack of resources in running our missions abroad. This is, in fact, the critical issue. For lack of funds most of our missions cannot be run properly and professionally. The Foreign Service is costly and cannot be run on shoe strings as is the case now. For instance, total MFA budget in 2009 was only US$306 million. That year, South Africa’s budget for its Foreign Ministry was US $702 million, nearly twice that of Nigeria. In 2010, while Nigeria’s Foreign Service budget fell to $232 million, South Africa’s was US$634. In 2012 our MFA budget was only US$317 million, while that of South Africa was US$720 million. Yet, South Africa’s GDP is only a third of Nigeria’s. As acknowledged by the MFA publication of 2012 , ‘Our diplomatic missions continue to suffer needless and painful embarrassments arising from  disconnection of utility services, ejection of staff from rented apartments, ejection of children from schools for failure to pay school fees and arrears of salaries of the diplomatic and other staff’. In 1989, after verification, the federal government settled an accumulated debt of $100m in our diplomatic missions. In 2005 a similar exercise took place with the missions being bailed out again. From the huge financial scandal of the Jonathan federal PDP government in which over $20b was simply diverted to private pockets, can we seriously say that our country cannot afford to run a decent and well funded diplomatic service? The MFA was not involved in any of these financial scandals. Less well endowed African countries fund their diplomatic missions better than ours.

    It is up to the government to determine how many diplomatic missions our country should have. A preponderant number of these diplomatic missions are in Africa, our primary area of strategic and political interest. It will be difficult to close any of them. The number and size of our diplomatic missions should reflect the government’s foreign policy objectives and strategies. Nigeria’s global responsibilities and obligations have continued to increase. Yet, in our present challenging financial situation, with oil revenue falling steadily, and the  GDP growth rate projected to decline this year to roughly 2.5 per cent, it is obvious that something concrete and urgent must be done to reduce the cost of governance. As far as MFA is concerned it is now inevitable, though regrettable, that the number of our foreign missions could be reduced. But it is going to be a difficult exercise. We have over 125 foreign diplomatic missions in Abuja. Exchange of embassies and ambassadors is reciprocal. Foreign countries from which we withdraw our embassies will not take kindly to it. They will almost certainly retaliate by closing their own diplomatic missions here too. The idea of ‘smart’ embassies proposed by the Foreign Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, is useful. It involves running the embassies with fewer staff. But this will not lead to much savings. Instead, it will create many more inefficient Nigerian embassies abroad.

      In conclusion, I have to say that we need to consider the fact that the total expenditure of the 125 foreign diplomatic missions in Nigeria is probably higher than the total cost of running our 119 missions abroad. In other words, the total cost of running our missions abroad is far less than what foreign diplomatic missions spend in Nigeria. That should be food for thought.

  • Nigerian politicians and “awoof” mentality

    Professor emeritus Akin Mabogunje, NNOM, shared with me a lecture he delivered on the occasion of the inauguration of the Oba Kayode Adetona chair in politics at Olabisi Onabanjo University recently. The thrust of Mabogunje’s lecture was that for a long time our country had been run on an economy in which resources appear inexhaustible and that no matter how buffeted the economy might have been, no apparent damage was noticeable until now when chicken has come home to roost and we are all going to pay for the sins of the past in one way or the other. One military ruler was once quoted saying that after all he had done to the Nigerian economy, he was surprised that the economy had not collapsed! I cannot vouch for the veracity of what the military ruler allegedly said but I can say without any fear of contradiction that much harm had been done to the Nigerian economy and yet it is still standing. We as a country are extremely lucky to have a resilient economy that has survived this far. Venezuela, a country of about 20million was producing eight million barrels of crude oil a day compared with Nigeria’s production at the best of times of two million barrels a day for a country of 170 million, yet Venezuela has collapsed while in spite of the terrible looting of its treasury, Nigeria wobbles on like a drunken sailor.

    We are told that the speaker of the House of Representatives and the president of the Senate rejected the N10 billion each allocated to them to build their residences. No reason was given for this but the report said they are living in their homes or perhaps in hotel suites and apparently drawing financial allowances for this. The question to ask is what happened to the previous residences of their predecessors? Were they also privatized like the ministerial houses and sold to their occupants at paltry and ridiculous prices? Are we going to be building official residences for Speaker after Speaker and their counterparts in the Senate? These two houses are debating according immunity to those who become speakers and presidents of the Senate as well as recognizing for purposes of pensions to the so-called principal officers for both houses. In the USA where we are told we borrowed these oversized legislative outfits from, it is the Vice President who presides over the Senate and in his absence the leader of the majority party. It is high time through legislation or constitutional changes we did away with this anomaly of president of the senate. Perhaps minor constitutional changes are actually needed now such as part time members of a unicameral house and severe pruning of members and reduction in the number of the multitudinous impecunious states. The time for a French-like presidential system combining the British parliamentary system with American presidential system has probably come if we are a serious country.

    What has informed the writing of this present piece is what I read in the Nigerian newspapers recently about the pensions and gratuities of governors their deputies and proposed pensions and gratuities of so-called principal officers of the National Assembly, that is, the Senate and the House of Representatives and presumably the state houses and local government legislative assemblies. Since it was not controverted, an ex-governor of Akwa Ibom State would earn as pension  of N300 million a year  plus six new cars every two years, medical expenses of his family at home and abroad, security detail, personal assistants and two houses, one in Abuja and the other in Akwa Ibom, annual holidays abroad for his entire family. I am using the Akwa Ibom case as a template for other states although I assume less-endowed states would not go as wild as Akwa Ibom State has gone. The fact remains that all the states of the federation have allocated this kind of outlandish and obscene largesse to their departing state executives and their deputies. These laws were passed during the time of plenty and awoof economy. One wonders if this kind of thievery can now be justified when states and even the federal government are not paying salaries when due. Even if we were still living in a time of plenty, can we in good conscience justify these humongous financial benefits to people who not only benefited while in office through unaudited so-called security votes? I call on President Buhari to shine some light on this unearned income by people who served their states for between four and eight years. In most cases the same people are again in the Senate or in the federal executive. Take for example the current Senate president who will like to retire on millions of naira while also collecting millions of naira from his impoverished Kwara State to add to his billions! And this in a country where government is not able to pay workers minimum wage of N18,000 a month! This is just not right and if things continue like this, the whole creaky state structure will collapse like a pack of cards. A house built on spittle cannot last. It is in the interest of all of us to do what is right before, in the words of George Rude, the crowd takes over affairs into their hands in a blind fury to correct the injustice in our country.

    I have not included the president and vice president in this veiled criticism of politicians not because politicians at that level are saints while those on other levels are Devils. I am convinced that anybody who has served at the apex of government at the national level deserves some rewards as long as they are not outrageously obscene. If they are, they should be radically pruned down. I do not see why anybody, be he a former president or vice president, should earn a pension of more than a million naira a month. Most of us after years of serving the country in our various capacities make do with a fifth of that amount a month. If we are going to be called to make sacrifices, everybody must be seen to be doing the same. The days of awoof is hopefully over and if we have excess money or windfall, we should learn how to save and invest for the future of our children because no generation has the right to squander what rightfully belongs to all generations. Oil that has gotten into our heads and made us drunk is a wasting asset which will soon finish or become useless and worthless as a result of alternative source of energy the search for which is driven by concern for the abused global environment suffering from hydrocarbon emission. This idea of putting aside money for the future was what informed Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and the province of Alberta to buy into blue chip companies all over the world against a future of scarcity of resources and lean years. I personally had an opportunity to suggest this to a previous civilian vice president of this country but the idea was dismissed as inappropriate for a large country with a huge population which was just an excuse for continued and continuous looting of the national exchequer.