The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • The road to June12, 1993

    June 12 1993 was the final nemesis of our military self-proclaiming messiahs and custodians our constitution. Although it lost its innocence when it first came in a trail of blood in 1966, murdering the most talented of its members on behalf of warring coalition partners –Zik’s NCNC and Ahmadu Bello’s NPC, it was June 12, 1993 that finally put an end to its fraudulent claim  that ‘it sacrificed its present for our future’.

    Massive looting of the nation’s resources started with the military. In 1975 when Murtala Mohammed sacked Gowon’s regime, only two of the 12 military administrators were found worthy of their uniform. By 1986, the military had become ‘an army of anything is possible’ with Generals ferrying money with boxes from CBN vault and military political office holders, leaders renovating government properties with government money before selling same to themselves at give away prices. It institutionalized corruption through its liberalization policy that allowed military officers and their fronts to buy off government interests in banks, hotels and other commercial enterprises at the centre and in the states.

    By 1993, the Nigerian military has been transformed in to a political party by military leaders in uniform. Lamenting the fate of the military, Obasanjo had observed that ‘prolong military rule was a declaration of war against the sovereign right of the people of Nigeria to chose their own leaders and conduct their own affairs’, adding that, under Babangida, “All the value we hold dear are under assault. The nation is racked by tension and despair. Hope has become a scarce commodity and fears a constant companion”.

    With the squandering away of the goodwill of the people, Nigerians on June 12, 1993 overwhelmingly voted for MKO Abiola, a southern Muslim and Babagana Kingibe a northern Muslim President and Vice President, to spite a military that had for 24 years exploited our religious, ethnic and other secret fears.

    Babangida’s ‘transition without end’ which  the Guardian newspapers described as ‘torturous’ and marked  by ‘false steps miss-steps, real, and contrived anxiety and doubt’, started  in 1986 with his inauguration of a19-member committee to search  for what he described as ‘a viable political future’. Fifteen months later, he decreed his two political parties – the National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The decreed parties described as ‘all joiners without founder’ must have no affiliation with the past and thus denied the lessons of our long history of party formation which started with Herbert Macaulay in 1923. Babangida thereafter embarked on a reckless waste of public funds to build political party headquarters which were later taken over by serpents and rats. Against the better advice of those who knew political culture and political socialisation are not taught in schools, Babangida went on to establish his own ‘university’ of democracy to produce ‘new breed politicians’.

    His decreed two parties on February 6, 1992 presented a total of 215 presidential aspirants for primaries conducted in 6,927 wards through a newly introduced Option A4 voting method. But Babangida and his Armed Forces Ruling Council on November 18, 1992 cancelled the results, claiming, “Stability of the nation cannot be sacrificed on the altar of time”. The date for handing over earlier fixed for January 2, 1993 was again cancelled and a new date for presidential election fixed for June 12, 1993.

    Meanwhile, Arthur Nzeribe’s Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) despite having been restrained by the courts from canvassing for ‘four more years for Babangida’ went on to secure a 9 p.m interlocutory injunction from an Abuja High Court presided over by Justice Bassey Ikpeme to stop the exercise two days to the election. The chairman of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Professor Humphrey Nwosu, however, appealed to Nigerians to ignore the ruling since there was a Decree 52 of 1993 that protects the election against such court injunctions.

    The election went on as scheduled on June 12. It was acclaimed by local and international observers as peaceful and credible. Celebrating the election, The Guardian in an editorial stated: ‘The presidential election was superbly conducted. Nigerians conducted themselves with unparalleled maturity. The verdict has been unanimously and universally accepted as the best election Nigeria ever had”. But Babangida and his miniosn saw only the pictures in their heads.

    To prepare the ground for what was to follow, Nduka Obaigbena, the Publisher of ThisDay newspapers was the first to appear on CNN, a day after the election, calling for the cancellation of its result. He alleged MKO Abiola breached the electoral law by wearing a dress with an emblem of his party to the polling booth. Okey Uzoho, the National Publicity Secretary of NRC immediately followed with a statement complaining of ‘intimidation of voters, falsification of results in most states and monetary inducement by the rival Social Democratic Party”. Tofa’s campaign Director of Organization, Dr. Walter Ofonagoro took off from where Usoho stopped. He issued a statement calling for “the disqualification of Chief Abiola, and Tofa declared duly elected or in the alternative, the June 12 election cancelled and a fresh poll conducted”, claiming the election was not free and fair.

    Babangida and his perfidious Generals that constituted the National Defence and Security Council (NDSC) usurping the function of Electoral Tribunal, annulled the election claiming in addition to fabrications by their cronies that MKO Abiola who won in all military barracks and formations was not acceptable to the military.

    Commenting on the military treachery against our nation, Pat Utomi had observed “What is most tragic about all this is that General Babangida was handed a great place in history by the June 12 election, even if undeservedly so. He could have gone in blazing glory…What sense of history we have.”

    A totally discredited Babangida and his army of anything is possible’ handed over power to an interim contraption headed by a usurper called Ernest Shonekan, an Egba man like the President-elect who was himself deposed 83 days later by General Abacha, Babangida’s comrade-in-arms and crime. Following MKO Abiola’s self-declaration as President-elect in 1994, he was clamped into prison by Abacha who was believed to be behind state sponsored assassinations of prominent Nigerians that called for justice in the face of military tyranny including Kudirat Abiola, the President-elect’s wife.

    Abacha who usurped the commonweal of Nigerians died mysteriously inside his treasured Presidential Palace allegedly in the hands of Indian prostitutes according to his political detractors; and Abiola who spent the four years of his presidency in detention died a prisoner, a month later, a victim of military conspiracy according to his supporters who claimed Abdulsalami Abubakar had no excuse to have kept him in prison after Abacha’s death.

    An exhausted military looking for a face-saving exit from politics opted for one of their own, the jailed General Obasanjo, as its 1999 preferred candidate despite his rejection by his Yoruba compatriots. Probably as part of the military conspiracy, neither Obasanjo, nor his imposition-Jonathan one of the military ‘new breed’ creations in all their 14 years in the Presidential Villa acknowledged MKO Abiola’s supreme sacrifice in caging the military to allow democracy flourish.

    This piece is for the 23-25 post-graduate students we are currently grooming in our universities to manage without a sense of history, our tomorrow which is but a summation of yesterday and today. June 12 1993, has become part of our unresolved national question whose ghost will haunt us beyond its 23rd anniversary as long as we play the ostrich.

  • We will remember karma when it strikes

    Man’s karma travels with him, like his shadow. But karma is nobody’s bitch. The universe’s agent of cause and effect, deterrence and retributive justice, can neither be owned nor placed on a leash. Unlike life, it doesn’t suffer the affliction of mankind’s dubious acquiescence to daunting, menacing bestiality oft attributed to life and summed by the terse, intense statement: ‘Life’s a bitch.”

    Karma is our open secret. In Nigeria, it is our sacred, secret space ignored in plain sight. It becomes our temenos or ritual precinct of reward and comeuppance. In this divine, marked-off terrain, the moral code of the universe operates at its darkest and most mechanical – there are no emotive shingles of pardon or persuasion, just causes and effects, actions and consequences.

    In 1932, the great developmental psychologist Jean Piaget found that by the age of 6, children begin to believe that bad things that happen to them are punishments for bad things they have done. The Nigerian society however, fights futilely to suspend the karmic laws of cause and effect, insulating individuals from the injurious effects of vice and poor judgment. Local gender activists, like their European and American role models, abandon more progressive causes to pervert birth control and abortion in duplicitous bid to detach sex from its natural results or consequences. Politics is equally rigged to reward greed, bestiality, indolence, illegitimacy and so on.

    Lest we forget the pervasive political and economic crisis bedeviling the country. The nation’s woes originate from her moral lapses. Endemic poverty, substandard healthcare and education, ethnic and religious bigotry, bribery and other forms of corruption manifest by the society’s poverty of morals and humane ethics.

    Hence those guilty of corruption escape the consequences of their wrongdoing in connivance with a bland, treacherous government. The karmic consequences of this anomaly are of course, better imagined – think Dasukigate, Mainagate, and so on. Until recently, there was no punishment for the wicked and no deterrence for the corrupt. On President Goodluck Jonathan’s watch, Nigeria was pilfered silly. The country was persistently sodomized and defiled by rampaging hordes of moral perverts. There was no good or evil. The cult of moral grayness bloomed on Jonathan’s watch. Thus our karmic reality of chronic indebtedness and bankruptcy.

    Enter Muhammadu Buhari, incumbent president and leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Buhari suffers the flipside of karma – from his ascension to power and ouster by military coup in the 1980s, to his recent emergence as democratic president, the retired General from Daura is widely appreciated and denounced along bigoted shoals of ethnic and religious extremists. Base sentimentality and impoverished logic fostered by the ruling class and espoused by segments of the citizenry, afflict President Buhari and his bungling cabinet.

    In the presidential cabinet, subtle cues abound, establishing the workings of unforgiving karma.

    We have ministers whose appointments were hotly debated and questioned on basis of their shameful antecedents either as governors, commissioners and other capacities in public and private sectors. One year after their appointment into the presidential cabinet, these ministers can only manage a hobble along the clogged, swampy corridors of the APC’s politics of “Change.”

    In Buhari’s cabinet, we have fabled genii asphyxiating in the stifling grip of intellectual squalor and the grotesque, institutionalised corruption plaguing the country. Nothing works. Contemporary political legend contend that some of the ministers are victims of hubris and karmic forces trailing their emergence through vile, subterranean tactics. President Buhari’s cabinet members in a nutshell, constitute impediments to his success – his personal and administrative inadequacies notwithstanding, if he has a formidable team, his shortcomings as an administrator and leader wouldn’t be so bothersome.

    Lest we forget the country’s Eighth National Assembly and its lack of character. Lawmakers in the country’s upper and lower legislative chambers currently constitute a great, shameful burden to national purse and pride. But groupies of the ruling class would have none of that. Left to them, their cronies and benefactors in the current administration can do no wrong. The absence of a critical electorate thus encourages the ruling class to persist in maladministration.

    In the karmic scheme of things, not only are the corrupt saved from their just desserts, the worthy and true are punished for their uprightness and industry through unjustly burdensome levels of maladministration, taxation and bureaucratic ineptitude. In the ensuing moral sepsis, the current ruling class treats equality as a moral baseline even as it establishes prosperity and poverty as fortunate and unfortunate draws in Nigeria’s cosmic lottery. Thus public office metamorphoses to moral insult and government officials make concerted efforts daily, to subvert the law of karma.

    The most prescient portrait of the Nigerian character and our ultimate fate as a nation however, resonates Hedges’ apt commentary on Herman Melville’s allegorical portrayal about the American character in his literary classic, “Moby Dick.” Melville makes our murderous obsessions, our hubris, violent impulses, moral weakness and inevitable self-destruction visible in his chronicle of a whaling voyage. He is our foremost oracle. He is to us what William Shakespeare was to Elizabethan England or Fyodor Dostoyevsky to czarist Russia, argues Hedges.

    In truth, Nigeria is likable to the fictional ship, the Pequod. The ship’s crew is a mixture of races and creeds which is reflective of Nigeria’s heterogeneous society. The object of the hunt is a massive white whale, Moby Dick, which, in a previous encounter, maimed the ship’s captain, Ahab, by biting off one of his legs. The self-destructive fury of the quest, much like the Nigerian society’s mad dash for wealth, assures the Pequod’s destruction.

    While Ahab and his crew eventually gained awareness of their imminent doom, very few Nigerians appreciate from experience that our prevalent culture of acquisition, fostered by insatiable greed and based on cutthroat politics, corporate profit and limitless devastation of farmlands by oil exploration accelerates doom.

    Nigeria, like the Pequod’s crew, rationalizes madness, scorns prudence and bows slavishly before hedonism and greed. The society yields to the seductive illusion of unbounded luxury, wanton idolatry, limitless power and acclaim. Thus the country unfurls to degenerate forces and systems of death.

    Those who foresee the impending doom lack the fortitude to rebel. Thus moral cowardice makes hostages of all. This shouldn’t encourage Buhari and his ruling class to scorn the subtle nudge of tact. History offers timeless lessons in the fate of Napolean, Hitler, Stalin, Joseph Mobotu (Mobutu Sese Seko), Saddam Hussein to mention a few. These men rose to lead with positive intentions. In time, they did good but later got drunk with power, losing touch with reality, causing misery for many with their own fate sealed in the Karma of their actions. Moby Dick eventually rams and sinks the Pequod. The waves swallow up Ahab and all who followed him, except one.  Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark. We are all karma’s bitches.

  • Muhammad Ali, an iconic personality

    Every one of my generation cannot but be sad about the final exit of the greatest athlete of the 20th century. I grew up watching the magnificent Ali upgrading boxing from sport to an art, more like ballet. To see a big man do what was called the Ali shuffle was simply unbelievable. I was introduced to boxing by a certain Sugar Ray Johnson who was my late brother, Chief OduolaOsuntokun’s driver and personal assistant who at one time was the light weight champion of Nigeria. Through him I got to meet a couple of great Nigerian boxers who were campaigning for world laurels in Europe.

    Boxing in the United States in the time of Ali provided young and energetic black boys avenue for self-development and rapid upward mobility. To white America, the best place for blacks was the prison where blacks spent the better parts of their lives. To avoid this fate, blacks generally suffered in silence. This was the United States Muhammad Ali grew up in. After leaving high school, his talent as a boxer was soon recognized by a white do-gooder.Boxing soon brought him into America’s notice when he represented the country as a light heavyweight boxer in the Rome Olympics of 1960 and won a gold medal.He was so excited by this victory at a young age of 19 that according to Wilma Rudolph, the black woman Olympic gold medallist in the sprints in the same games, that he wore his medal throughout the two weeks of the games.

    On returning home, a syndicate of white businessmen soon formed around him in Louisville to promote his boxing career. From one victory to another, the brash young man began to promote himself by boasting about what round he would knock out his opponent. In an uncanny fashion, his predictions always came true. He was nicknamed the Louisville Lip among other names. He began to call attention to himself as the greatest as well as asking people how beautiful not handsome he was. No doubt he was a beauty of a man to behold, tall, well-proportioned and with fair skin. By this time he had heard about the black Muslims,the followers of Elijah Mohammed in Chicago with their doctrine of separatism and virtually throwing at the white manthat black people too rejected integration. He liked their celebration of black women as queens to be treasured and respected unlike the beating his own dad and black men generally inflicted on his mother and black women generally.He however did not yet come out until after the fight against Sonny Liston the then reigning champion.

    Sonny Liston was a hard man who had killer instinct and was backed by the mobsters and many of the white folks secretly wished this ex-convict black dude would put an end to the boasting of the young Cassius Clay. Some even hoped Liston would kill Clay and put an end to this uppity nigger! But on the night of the fight against Liston, Clay turned the tables against the fearsome pugilist by not only beating him but knocking him out. The whole world was surprised and from that time on everyone wanted to know the trajectory of this handsome man. A couple of fights later including a second knockout in a rematch with Liston, Cassius Marcellus Clay jnr declared to the world that he had converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. No one is sure why he took the name Muhammad Ali. But it is safe to guess that he took the name of a major figure in the history of Egypt. Muhammad Ali was the khedive or ruler of Egypt early in the 19th century contemporaneous with the Meiji restoration in Japan and a modernizer like his counterpart in Japan.

    The moment Clay announced his conversion to Islam he drew the ire of white American establishment to himself. Even his father complained about the black Muslims taking away his son from him. But Ali stood his ground.

    The 1960s was a period of political and social ferment in the black world in the USA and in Africa. This was at the height of independent movements in Africa and the civil rights movement in the USA and each movement somehow fed on each other. This was also the period of American military campaign in Vietnam necessitating sending hundreds of thousands of young American soldiers to fight, killand be killed in the jungle of South-eastAsia. These young men were draftees who had to go to Vietnam as part of their citizen responsibility. Most of the draftees were usually the children of the poor and most were not university students like children of the affluent who either deferred serving in the military or escaped to Canada and Europe to avoid going to Vietnam.

    The radical wing of the so-called Negro rebellion included young academics like the beautiful young philosophy professor in university of California at Berkley, Angela Davis, one of the products of Hebert Marcuse a radical left wing professor. Others formed what was called the Black Panther Party led by Hugh Newton based mostly in the west coast of the USA with public declaration to resist police brutality by fighting back.One of their thinkers was the famous Eldridge Cleaver who wrote a successful book, Soul on Ice, depicting the plight of black men in America while in prison.On the east coast the likes of Stockley Carmichael and Rap Brown were raising hell.Young blacks were rioting from coast to coast burning down shops and shouting burn baby burn!The coming of Ali into the maelstrom confused white Americans. The reaction of most was that these niggers should be made to know who was boss.

    Muhammad Ali was drafted and was asked to report for posting to Vietnam. He of course refused that the Vietcong were not his enemies. But that the blue eyed Devils as the Nation of Islam called the whites were his enemies! He famously declared I ain’t got no problem with them Vietcong! He said Vietcong never called him nigger and if he must fight it will be in the USA.This brought anger and hatred to him. He was stripped of his title and sentenced to jail for three years. He appealed to the Supreme Court as a conscientious opponent of the war. It took the court three long years to deliver a judgement in his favour. This was at the height of his career as a boxer. The more he was persecuted, the more he attracted the attention and affection of the world outside the USA. When he tried to get his title back by fighting Joe Frazier the new champion, he met his Waterloo when he was defeated. The three years absence had had his toll. But Ali was an indomitable competitor. He later beat Frazier on two gruelling occasions including the so-called Thrilla in Manilla when these two black men nearly killed each other in order to assert superiority of  one over the other in an acrimonious relation that went way beyond the sport of boxing. Even though Ali tended to see his verbal abuse and teasing of Frazier as part of promotional tricks for their matches calling Frazier Uncle Tom and Gorilla,  it went beyond the pale and Frazier took it so personal that he said he wished Ali dead while watching the shaking and quivering Ali light the Olympic flames in Atlanta in 1996. The fight with Joe Frazier and the dramatic defeat of George Forman the giant from Atlanta by Muhammad Ali in the fight named Rumble in the jungle took a lot out of Ali. In spite of advice to stop fighting, he continued fighting and receiving blows unnecessarily to the head. I personally watched his fight in 1979, I believe in Bethesda Maryland where his former sparring partner and the then world champion Larry Holmes gave him the whipping of his life. The 61 fights he had must have contributed to the Parkinson’s disease that finally killed him after suffering for 32 years.

    To me it is not Ali’s skill as a boxer that is important. Of course he was the greatest athlete that ever lived. But besides that and most importantly he gave the black people of America a voice. He spoke truth to power and it is people like him that made the civil rights act of 1965 possible. Yes Martin Luther King jnr. was the eloquent preacher and mobilizer of the masses but it is Ali who epitomized the freedom sought by black youth. I must also not forget to mention the contribution of Malcom X to Ali’s psychological development as well as his own contribution to the African American liberation? Muhammad Ali’s appeal transcended race eventually appealing to the whole world to the extent that Oxford University wanted to elect him their poet laureate. To us in Africa he was a brother and to the Muslim world he was an iconic figure. It is fitting that the president of Turkey and the King of Jordan will be among many dignitaries who will be present at his burial today. What a pity that no African president will be at his funeral. To my generation Ali represents pride in our African personality and heritage which does not defer to the arrogance of racists who put Africans and other non-white people down.May God accept him and grant him  AljanatFirdaus

  • Atiku’s call for workable federalism

    Once again, ex Vice President AbubakarAtiku, two weeks back did what he does best – exploiting the weakness of his political adversaries. Atiku who has no apologies for his shifting party loyalty took advantage of President Buhari’s disdain for politics and politicians, forgetting he did not become President only on account of being ‘Mr Integrity’, a virtue that did not help him in his three previous outings until he learnt to play politics. Atiku deliberately chose to educate Buhari, whose government’s legitimacy is under serious threat by Boko Haram insurgency, Fulani herdsmen and Niger Delta militants that the overriding  objective of politics is the ‘protection of individual sovereignty against political coercers’ haddismissed off handedly the unresolved national question.

    Buhari’s attitude is in character with his predecessors’ in office. He has forgotten that he won election through the support of ethnic groups just as Obasanjo, an imposition of Fulani hegemonic class that distrusted MKO Abiola believed the national question was resolved once he became president, or Jonathan who was only allowed to rule in order to pacify the restive South-south warring groups or even MKO Abiola who on his way to winning election told a reporter  that with his election, there would be no need for a national conference to address the national question. Both Obasanjo and Jonathan resisted the discussion and resolution of the national question.

    Atiku’s call for restructuring has since been echoed by groups such asAfenifere, a Yoruba socio-political organisation, the pan-Igbo umbrella body, the OhanaezeNdigbo, as well as some other credible Nigerians likeChief EmekaAnyaoku, former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, and Maj. Gen. Ishola Williams (rtd.), an ex-chairman of the Nigerian chapter of Transparency International who understand a federal structure itself celebrates tribal identities.

    The truth is that patriotic Nigerians including the murdered SaroWiwa who advocated Nigeria’s 16,000 communities and about 350 ethnic groups be restructured into non-federal states are not the enemies of Nigeria but are driven by institutionalization of injustice by our successive leaders. The enemy of society, according to Ade Ajayi, a celebrated African historian and former Vice Chancellorof University of Lagos,‘is not tradition or ethnicity or nationalism but ….those for purely selfish reason and without love of community try to exploit ethnicity, religion or cultural differences to win popular votes, contracts or promotion’. When Obasanjo’s second term bid was threatened, a man who said he is not a Yoruba leader ran back to his Yoruba ethnic group and Jonathan another opponent of restructuring became an ethnic irredentist during his desperate bid for a second term in 2015.

    Injustice is the bane of Nigerian society. The 1954 census put the figure of the dominant ethnic group, the Yoruba in the western region at 76.4percent, Igbo dominant ethnic group in the east at 64.5 percent and Hausa Fulani in the north at 54 percent. The coalition partners ignored the aspirations of 35.5% and 45% of minorities in their region to create region for the 23.6 minority in the opposition region. Insurrection by the Tiv that demanded for self-actualization was violently and brutally suppressed by the coalition partners using the military.

    But with free flow of oil money from the Niger Delta, those who had resisted break up of their regions started scrambling for more states. Generals Babangida and Abacha went on to create more states and LGA funded from federal purse for the north, allegedly allocated 95%of of the oil blocks to northerners  with the support of a few Niger Delta ‘vultures’.  Babangida, Obasanjo and Jonathan sold $100b Nigerian investment for a paltry $1b. These leaders and beneficiaries of injustices visited on the nation are the only people who insist we are good the way we are

    Federalism as ‘a structured institutional approach to political participation, decision making and problem solving’ has been celebrated as the answer to inter-ethnic rivalry and mutual distrusts  by more than half of the world including the US (1787) and most part of Europe after two devastating world wars. In Nigeria, a vigorous debate and negotiation which started during the tenure of Cameron as Governor General of Nigeria (1931-1935) preceded our own federal arrangement designed to promote‘the unity of Nigeria and protect the interest of diverse elements that make up the country’.While Zik conceived it as an efficient method of administration in a multi-ethnic society,Awo saw it ‘as a philosophy of opportunity to enable various ethnic groups progress at their own pace’. And while Awo considered it best for us because‘Nigeria was a geographical expression (Awo, 1948) Balewa believed up to that time‘our unity was a British intention for our country (Balewa, 1947), and Arthur Richard persuaded the British House of Commons that it was  only the accident of British suzerainty which has made Nigeria one country’, (Arthur Richard 1948).The all Nigerian 1950 Ibadan conference recommended a federal system and in 1954 we had a truly federal arrangement. Our new inheritors of power because of greed betrayed the dreams of our founding fathers and returned us to pre 1954 Nigeria.The ongoing crisis of legitimacy and identification by restive groups which are results of injustice is therefore the challenge facing Buhari and his APC.

    And restructuring is by far cheaper than our current experiences or the uncertainties that lie ahead. It is the cheapest way to fight corruption because there would be no money to steal at the centre. It is the cheapest way to checkmate the menace of Fulani herdsmen because local communities are best at protecting their communities. Instead of some groups trying to impose their values on others, South-south, controlling its own resources will force its leaders to confront its own demons. It will allow zones threatened by desertification to deploy their youths currently condemned to spending nine months in the forest to planting trees while the food basket zone will be strong enough to protect its borders.

    The fears about the resistance of unviable parasitic new power centresto the dictatorship of old divisional centres are the fears of those benefitting from the current unworkable and wasteful system. They include traditional rulers collecting five percentfrom allocation made from Abuja, the local council councillor that built houses after two years in office, the commissioners,ministers and potential governors.

    Just as federal structure is a symbol of our pluralism at the centre, so it will be at the new geo-political zones. And just as Abuja will no more distribute resources itdoes not generate, the new centres will only provide broad policy outlines. They will similarly not carry the burden of wayward constituent units. Edo State in South-south with a resourceful leader payingN25,000 as against N18,000 minimum wage without default will not carry the burden of Bayelsa that is unable to pay its teachers despite earning in one month of what Edo earns in a year. Lagos, going outside to other states to lease land for agriculture, create jobs and guarantee food security for its citizens or Ogun State embarkingon investment drive that will lead to the building of two airports and three sea ports will not carry the burden of Ekiti whose governor’s idea of governance isto be accompanied to open market to buy imported fish and cow skin by hailing thugs and ‘okada’ riders who should be in farm, or an oil-producing state like Ondo thatcannot pay its workers.

    Restructuring and devolution of powers which are far cheaper than what we have experienced since the derailment of our federal structure by ill-informed military who still don’t understand that compromise rather than force is best in managing a multi-ethnic society will put an end to injustice by ensuring everyone sucks his mother’s breast.

  • Power sector lies

    In the past few months, the electricity distribution companies (DisCos) have been all over the place, trying to justify why they cannot discharge their obligations to customers. It is heartrending that instead of effective service what we are getting from the DisCos are excuses on why they cannot ensure uninterrupted power supply. The coming of the DisCos, we had thought, would end the power crisis, but unfortunately, Nigerians are today cursing the day the sector was privatised.

    The sector was privatised because the public utility running it was inefficient and ineffective. The Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) like the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) and Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) before it was like any other government agency, which was managed to fail. Though set up with tax payers fund, it was not run to make profit but to service the needs of those in power.

    The affluent and the influential were also favoured. All they needed to do when they had no light was to call the power  minister or the PHCN chief executive and pronto their supply will be restored whether or not they are owing. Then, some institutions, corporate bodies and individuals used light without remembering to pay their bills. It was convenient for them not to pay because there was no mechanism to check them. The problem with our power sector was self inflicted. We preferred to run the sector on the basis of man know man and ended up destroying it.

    Power is life; it is the engine of economic development. Without regular power supply, a nation cannot but be at the bottom of the development index. This is why I am pained by the excuses the DisCos are giving for their inability to meet the people’s needs. The promoters of these DisCos are not from the moon; they have been in this country ever since the days of ECN, NEPA and PHCN. They know what we went through in the hands of these public utilities. It is not an experience worth recalling here.

    The DisCos are supposed to wipe away our tears by ensuring regular power supply, but they are compounding our problem. What we are getting from them are cock and bull stories about why they cannot do their jobs. The stories they are telling us are not new. They are the same old stories that we are aware of and which they too must have heard about before investing in the sector. Their investment was a matter of choice. They could have decided not to put their money into the business because of its many challenges. But having decided to invest in it they have no choice than to deliver because we are paying for their services. They are not supplying us light for free. They know what to do to those using light without paying.

    But in punishing those people they should sift the wheat from the chaff. What is the point in disconnecting those not owing along with the debtors? That is the height of injustice and there is nowhere in the world that such a thing will happen, except in our country. Elsewhere, creditor-customers would have sued the DisCos for breach of contract. Why should we not enjoy the service that we are paying for just because some people are owing? The people are tired of hearing them blame  gas pipelines’ vandals for their inadequacies. An advertorial by the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED) says the DisCos should not be blamed for what it calls ‘’lack of electricity’’.

    Reason : vandalism of gas pipelines, according to the ANED, is equal to shortage of gas. Shortage of gas= low generation of electricity. Low generation of electricity= low distribution. ‘’We’’, it concluded, ‘’cannot give what we don’t have’’. Vandalism of pipelines did not start today; it predates the coming of the DisCos on November 1, 2013. So, it is something they knew about before buying into the power sector. Why did they take the risk when they knew that it is an endangered sector? Why did they invest in the business when they knew that vandals and militants can blow up the pipelines at any time under one guise or the other? How did they plan to handle this huge problem before investing in the sector? Or didn’t they consider such a scenario before their huge investment? If they didn’t that says a lot about them as businessmen.  Again, they should stop complaining about being owed. This too did not start today. It started long ago and they must have been aware of it before they acquired PHCN.

    The DisCos are the architects
    of their troubles. They knew
    of the sector’s enormous problems before buying into it with their eyes wide open, but they were more interested on the return on investment (ROI), which they have calculated in their minds’ eye will be in billionfold of whatever they spend. This calculation seems to have backfired and they are taking it out on customers through tariff hike and crazy bills. Many customers are not complaining about the tariff hike, what irks them is that they are not getting value for their money. The people are sick and tired with the way they are being treated by these DisCos. Will the government call them to order before things get out of hand?

     

    Ali: Forever The Greatest

    When the kid from Louisville, Kentucky in the United States (US), hit the world boxing stage in the sixties with his razor sharp tongue, many would have thought that he would soon burn himself out and become history. But he went on to dominate the game for almost 30 years, clinching the world boxing heavyweight title three times. Muhammad Ali captured the world’s imagination like no other boxer in history. He was as fast on his feet as he was with his mouth. It was a delight to watch Ali fight. He fought with his fists and mouth. As he pounded his opponent with his fists, he followed up by taunting him. Many times, he ran into trouble because of his costly remarks, but there was no stopping Ali. ‘’The man who will beat me has not been born’’, he once said. “I am The Greatest”, he also boasted and the world accepted him as such. Ali was master of his trade. His passage last Friday after a 32-year battle with the Parkinson’s disease showed that he was a fighter to the end. The world mourns as the Champ’s funeral rites hold today and tomorrow in Louisville. Adieu, The Greatest.

  • Let’s stop the sick joke

    Let’s stop the sick joke

    Former President Goodluck Jonathan seems so unpretentious you could vow he is like your next door neighbour. No airs. No ostentatious display of wealth. No professorial jargons of an exhibitionist academic. No boasting – except when he needs to remind us that to him we owe a world of gratitude for surrendering power to President Muhammadu Buhari instead of listening to the sharks who pressed him to hang in there even when it was obvious that it was time to throw in the towel. Poor fellow.

    There he was the other day in London sermonising on how he had fought corruption and how –irony of ironies- he had become a subject of investigation by anti-corruption agencies.

    “I did very well also to curtail corruption,” Dr Jonathan said, adding:

    “My approach to corruption was don’t make money available for anyone to touch. We made sure that the area of fertiliser subsidies was cleaned up and the whole corruption there was removed.

    “I tried to do the same in the oil industry, but the very people that were accusing us of corruption were the same people frustrating it; it’s unfortunate.”

    His Excellency had hardly left Bloomberg’s studio before the questions started coming in torrents from seemingly bewildered Nigerians and their friends. Which administration was Dr Jonathan talking about? Did he exhibit the courage needed to clean up the oil sector that had become a cesspit of corruption? Who are these people holding him by the neck and frustrating his bold bid to move even as they accused him of corruption? The same people who caged him for six years, as he once told the world?

    But Dr Jonathan was not done. He said in reply to a question: “Obviously, I’m being investigated.” Would he be found guilty?” He said: “I wouldn’t want to make certain comments because when a government is working, it’s not proper for immediate past president to make certain statements. I wouldn’t want to make comments on that; it’s not proper. After all these investigations, the whole stories will be properly chronicled.”

    Chronicled? Sure. The facts are already being assembled – in the courts where many who played key roles in the administration are saying all they knew about the stealing that went on as if it was a kind of sport in which the best thief would snatch away some golden trophy and then mount a city victory parade. Incredible. The chroniclers, I am sure, are already confused by the fact that it is all real. Masters of fiction are stunned by the surrealistic details.

    Huge cash being turned in voluntarily. A key security office turned into a mere cash machine dispensing cash to whoever had its not-so-secret code. A minister shelling out millions of dollars to bribe election officials. Phony payments for phony multi-billion naira contracts, including – wonders of wonders – prayers.

    All this and yet we are regaled with stories of how the administration fought corruption? C’mon Dr Jonathan, give us a break.

    We look forward to when our former president will take a break from the lecture circuit to write his memoirs. It will be quite interesting to know where he was when Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders took a sledgehammer to the treasury, hammered their way through and ripped it open for the unbelievable pillage that left it bleeding to death. Besides, he should remember to put on record how he tried valiantly to let Nigerians know the difference between “corruption” and “stealing”. He may also wish to add the definition of what many Nigerians believe is a brand of kleptocracy – “lootocracy”.

    Interestingly, many of those PDP leaders who have done well for themselves are  now either battling to free themselves from imminent charges being prepared by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Some are already in court. Others are being nostalgic about the past. They are romancing the past in which they saw life as one huge Lagos party that will never end. They have been threatening that in 2019, the PDP will –God forbid – return to power.

    A reporter asked elder statesman Ebenezer Babatope to assess Buhari’s first year in office. “I want to be honest with you, even though we are suffering, we have never encountered this kind of suffering before,” he said.

    With due respect chief, Nigerians know that Buhari is not the architect of their pains, which he is doing his all to stop by stemming the bleeding caused by the rapacious PDP. By the way, are PDP chiefs part of this suffering multitude? I doubt it. Whenever the condition in which we have found ourselves is discussed, it should be clearly stated that Buhari has got his teeth into clearing the mess of about 16 years in which PDP chiefs, at our expense, led a rollercoaster champagne life that would make Hollywood greats green with envy. They lived like kings and partied like movie stars. Nigerians said “enough”, kicked them out and handed Buhari the mandate to demolish the edifice of vices built by fraudsters, pranksters and gangsters parading themselves as leaders. Now the rebuilding has begun. It will take some time and patience, despite the hardship.

    I salute the courage of the PDP crowd. In other climes, a major calamity, such as losing power after 16 years – they threatened to keep it for at least 60 years, in the first instance – would have seen some committing suicide. Hara-kiri.

    Little wonder they have been grumbling and whining about how the Buhari administration has not been good to them. Senator Ben Murray Bruce has been all over the social media, complaining that a Department of State Services (DSS) official blocked him from shaking hands with Buhari during a dinner for lawmakers at the Villa. That was pettish of the distinguished senator, who has often been criticised for his inability to draw the line between an objective criticism and sheer bitterness and abuse of privilege that his blistering attacks on the Buhari administration constitute. He once offered to donate his salary to Osun workers. I wonder why he has not extended such a cheeky gesture to his home state Bayelsa workers who have not been paid for five months. Nor have the dying states’ pensioners got any such impetuous offer from the loquacious showbiz host turned senator.

    PDP governors who collected ecological funds and blew the cash have been exposed by the heavy rains that have caused floods in some states. All Progressives Congress (APC) governors were shut out of the revelry. Now such funds are not available to be easily diverted to oiling their fancies. And we say they shouldn’t grumble? Buhari, it should be noted, did not discriminate in the bailout funds for the states.

    They say the anti-corruption war is selective? How? PDP leaders’ blithe disregard for honesty and proclivity for impunity led them this far. They deserve to have their day in court; not those who knew nothing about the looting of the treasury.

    What those who blast the Buhari administration for its “slow pace”, especially in tackling our economic challenges, should think about is where we would have been if the PDP and its army of thieves had remained in the saddle.

    They should not talk only about what they think the administration has failed to do but spare a thought for its achievements in security, in the fight against corruption, in workers’ welfare (the bailout funds) and in the battle to save the naira –its present trouble was imminent, no doubt.

    Now, let’s stop the sick joke and put our hands on the plough to save our dear country. Have we any other?

     

    Stephen Okechukwu Keshi (1962-2016)

    I was barely two hours in bed at 5.12 a.m.when Sport Editor Ade Ojeikere called to break the news of former Super Eagles Chief Coach Stephen Okechukwu ‘Big Boss’ Keshi’s death.

    I recall how firm his grip was when I shook his hand. Ade brought him to my office at “The Nation” after an interview that preceded his appointment as the coach of the Super Eagles. I remember his broad smiles, his towering figure and his happy, carefree disposition. In a soccer-crazy country as ours, Keshi meant so much to the fans. Some saw him as bold, brash and brutal – in demanding his rights. But he was easily the most successful indigenous coach of our national team – and its longest serving captain.

    He had a great career, decked with trophies and accolades. Keshi was the first to lead the Eagles to the World Cup as a player, captain and coach. He was the first to win the Nations Cup as player, captain and coach.

    Keshi’s death was not just a family tragedy, coming about six months after his wife’s. It is a national calamity. May His soul find peace with the Lord.

  • Gov. Ibikunle Amosun, the people are still not smiling

    •(A reminder to a bungling governor)

    gun State still looms like a gothic platitude of pain and death from its transit townships but the “Gateway State” remains Governor Ibikunle Amosun’s bower of bliss. There, in his stately Eden, Amosun  lives immune and insensate to the ravages of ill-will and pent-up fury tearing the natives apart from inside out. Governor Amosun must be having a blast inside the Government House at Oke Mosan. He does not have to rise and retire to his bed everyday wondering if he would die along the deadly stretch of Lagos-Abeokuta highway, particularly at the spots where innocent children, mothers, fathers – dependants and breadwinners – die like stray fowls, accidentally or by installments, in his administrative landmine.

    Governor Amosun’s loved ones are extremely lucky; unlike the mother who left home with her three children only for them to be brought back as mangled corpses from an accident, caused by bad road, to the deceased’s husband. Amosun is certainly favoured by the ‘gods,’ unlike the bereaved families who sent their wards to school only to receive news that they had been crushed to death by a steel container in a gory accident along the Sagamu-Benin expressway. Is Governor Amosun neglecting that death trap because it is a ‘federal road?’ If that is the case, is Governor Amosun solely remunerated from revenue he makes from Ogun State or from the ‘federal purse?’

    Governor Amosun is one lucky dude as he does not have to live up to the promise he made to the poor, hopeless pupils of the Community Primary School, off Agoro road, Owode-Titun, Ota, Ogun State. One year and six months after they lost their classrooms to a violent rain squall, most of the 740 pupils have been learning with tears, under a crooked shed held together by wooden poles and corrugated iron sheets. The school’s Parents Teachers Association (PTA) constructed the shed last year when it was clear that the state government will not come to the children’s rescue. Although Governor Amosun promised to rebuild the school when his campaign train visited the area to seek re-election, he has since forgotten his promise and the area.

    Thus through scorching sun blaze and violent rain squalls, the pupils huddle together helplessly, in futile lunges for comfort and cover from the ravages of nature, tearing at their fragile frames. For the only public primary school in the community, the descent into decay started in May last year, when a rainstorm blew off the roof of the block of six classrooms and the staff room. The storm also tore off the entire side of the building. Yet Governor Amosun conveniently forgets the sad fate of the poor pupils of Community Primary School in Owode-Titun, Ota.

    Some cratered meters from the school, the stars are still a backdrop for the inhuman condition at Owode junction, just before you get to Ifo. Is Governor Amosun waiting for that expedient moment of disaster or road mishap of immense magnitude to occur before he swoops in with a bereaved mien and overzealous aides, to misappropriate anguish where he feels none?

    The natives of Ijoko, Agoro, Ijako, Iyana-Ilogbo, Ilepa, Ijoko, Alade, Oju Ore, Ilo-Awela, Elekunmefa, Imise, Onihale, Singer, Lusada, Ewekoro, Atan-Ota and Igbesa to mention a few, are still dying slowly and accidentally, from the perils of plying their muddy and badly cratered roads and there is still ugliness in Lafenwa, Aiyetoro, Olugbode and various communities along Itele road.

    From a distance, the piercing and indiscriminate glare of sunlight and moonshine desecrate these townships like tombs slipshodly carved along the graying highway that leads to Abeokuta, Ogun State’s capital city. Closer, the people and houses in the communities take shape like a stream of accidental shadows, their hard noises striking one’s face and making the senses numb with jarring clarity. It is their noiseless undertones that however, evoke intense feelings of awe and curiosity. Sad desperate glances of the natives inspire a thirst for buried narratives that they miserably learn to endure as unreal jests made by death.

    Guess his Excellency in Ogun State, has learnt to glance without flinching at the straggle of human suffering emblematic of the pale ghost of his “Gateway State.” Wonder if he is unaware of the deaths and squalor across the townships; wonder if he knows that there are schools with better structures, histories, progressive and ideological foundations that deserve as much attention and support as he is currently giving his model schools’ phantasm; wonder if he simply chooses to ignore the descent of the tourist tracts where decay and death spit venom at the hapless citizenry, like Siamese cobras every day.

    Governor Amosun is probably unmoved to affect heart-felt responses to the malaise. Perhaps he is making spirited gestures even as you read to extend citizenry-centred governance cum democratic dividends to the disillusioned natives of the state. Perhaps he just doesn’t know how to go about it.

    Ignorance is not an excuse for denying the citizenry good governance and their fundamental human rights. It is no longer tenable to hoodwink the citizenry by chants of ‘Change’ and platitudinous avowal to abolish squalor and foster general prosperity; time has revealed what section of the citizenry such ideological ‘life boat’ solutions are meant to deceive. It shall no longer be “politically expedient” to neglect a class of the governed just because, by will or circumstance, they inhabit parts of state the ruling class would rather not lose sleep over; except at the time of election or re-election.

    Governor Amosun is spending his second term in office which makes it even more dangerous for the APC to maintain dominance in Ogun State if he fails. When the party eventually presents its candidates for public offices in 2019, what glowing achievements will it point to as Amosun’s legacy and reasons why it should be given the people’s mandate again? The oft over-hyped and derided bridges and roads in Abeokuta? Or the equally contentious model school projects? These familiar arguments have gotten too old now and they are infinitely strange to the poor citizenry braving the perils of the state’s townships every day.

    Life in Ogun State’s townships is in grave decline. Together, these neglected tracts constitute an ambiguous ‘sick rose’ accentuating Ogun State’s descent into a food for worms even as you read. Though a sick rose, Ogun State is manouvered to mimic a growth cycle in the hands of Amosun and amid the rabid PR blitz launched and managed by Camp Amosun.

    That is why the state government will do nothing even if foreign investors  cum fortune hunters like cement giant, LafargeWAPCO Plc, subjects its host communities to terminal death, by its dangerous production activities, in desperate pursuit of profit. (It is instructive to note that LafargeWAPCO perpetrates in Ogun State, atrocities it wouldn’t dare commit in France and other European nations but that is a discussion for another day.)

    Ogun State’s manifestation as a sick rose satirizes Governor Amosun’s preferred portraits of it as a bower of bliss. It reveals an inner hostility; the governor’s flirtatious art of concealment necessitates that truth’s approach must take the form of a rape. If not, the people of Ogun State will continue to die by the onslaught of the conqueror maggots of hypocrisy, neglect, arrant betrayal and underdevelopment afflicting the state.

    Does Governor Amosun, like too many of his peers, consider truth as he hates to see it, as a perverse fetish? Does he believe that any critique or contradiction of his gospel of ‘Change’ is a swerve from goodwill and fruitfulness? If so, his much celebrated ‘Change’ project is diametrically opposed to the APC’s gospel of ‘Change.’

     

  • Mr. President, very many Nigerians live in fear

    Dear President Buhari, in the light of the on-going Fulani herdsmen’s killings and destructions in many places in our country, many of us Nigerians are living in fear. In most of our rural countryside, our farmers and their families are afraid to do their accustomed work on the farms. Across our country, farms, the handwork and means of livelihood of our farmers and their families, are being destroyed by roving cattle. When farmers’ families go to sleep in the night these days, they are no longer sure whether their farms will be there in the morning, or whether the cattle herds would have wiped out everything during the night. They are no longer sure whether their villages will be allowed to sleep peacefully through the night, or whether the killer herdsmen will come in the dark, kill villagers, destroy and burn the houses, and rape the women and girls. Nobody is sure where and when the sudden attacks will come, or what the magnitude of the killings and devastations will be. State governments, local governments, and traditional rulers, all are unsure what to do to protect their people. One governor burst into tears when he saw the scene of rampage in a village in his state.

    The situation is desperate, Mr. President. As you very well know, we seriously need to improve agricultural productivity in this country. To that end, most authorities and leaders of our country have been trying to encourage our people to return to the land. Since you became president, you have repeatedly contributed your very influential voice to the call for agricultural growth. And you have made it a priority in your policies, plans and programmes. In many parts of our country, especially in most of our southern states, the return to farming is still very slow and very hesitant. But now, the Fulani herdsmen are scaring farmers away from the farms. A very major disaster is being enacted.

    In response to the disaster, a whirlwind of agitated comments and cries is sweeping through most of our country. To allow these fears and this whirlwind to continue is inimical to the well-being of this country. It could even wreck this country – and lead to its collapse. Mr. President, you must take steps without delay to bring this dangerous situation to a satisfactory end. We need to have a definitive and lasting solution. Merely ordering the Nigerian military and police to stop these herdsmen from attacking farmers and villagers, as you have done, is not enough. As long as these killer herdsmen remain, and as long as important questions about them remain unexplained, the wild and inflammatory speculations will continue to shake Nigeria.

    We Nigerians need, want, and demand, to have answers to many questions concerning this situation. Who really are these so-called Fulani herdsmen? From official and non-official sources, we are getting loads of information about their identity, about why they are behaving as they are now behaving, and about the sources of their strength.

    We are told that these people are ordinary nomadic cattle herdsmen. We are also told that the recent civil commotions in the Maghreb (especially in Libya) makes it easy to get sophisticated weapons in the Sahel parts of West Africa, as a result of which these herdsmen have been able to acquire even such highly sophisticated guns as AK47. But, how do ordinary nomadic herdsmen afford to buy expensive things like AK47 rifles? How are they able to train to use such sophisticated weapons?

    The suspicion is being voiced in the media that some rich and influential Nigerian citizens have been supplying the herdsmen with these weapons, and training the herdsmen to use them. If yes, who are these rich and influential Nigerian citizens? What are these rich and influential Nigerian citizens trying to achieve?

    You, Mr. President, were recently reported to have revealed in an interview with CNN in London that some of these herdsmen are really Libyan militiamen, trained under Ghadafi, well-armed and well-trained fighters who fled southwards to West Africa after the fall of Ghadafi. If so, how did these militiamen become cattle herdsmen in Nigeria? Who gave them thousands of cattle to herd?

    You said in the interview, Sir, that these militiamen have become an Africa-wide problem. Why has the government of Nigeria never informed Nigeria about this problem? What steps has the Nigerian government taken to prevent the problem from coming into Nigeria or to expel it from Nigeria? If no step, why?

    Why have some prominent Fulani leaders been representing these militiamen to us as merely Fulani herdsmen and claiming Nigerian citizens’ rights for them – even though they must know that they are, in fact, extremely dangerous Libyan killers? Why have some Fulani spokesmen been threatening that they would break up Nigeria if these Libyan militiamen are thrown out of Nigeria?

    Do we now have the president’s word that Nigeria is under invasion by Libyan militiamen? And, what does the Nigerian government intend to do about that?

    A highly placed citizen from the Middle Belt, Governor Balarabe Musa, warned in 2014 that a new insurgency was in the offing – a new insurgency different from Boko Haram, better organized, better armed and much more dangerous than Boko Haram, and planned by some highly influential Nigerians for the purpose of achieving some major political objective in Nigeria. Are we now seeing part of that insurgency?

    Some Arewa North citizens have threatened again and again in recent years that the North would go to war rather than accept certain kinds of change in Nigeria. And they have also repeatedly assured us that the North is more ready for war than the South. In the background of these threats, there have been repeated reports in the media since 2012 that large quantities of arms are being illegally imported into Nigeria.

    Are today’s depredations by the Fulani herdsmen part of what these various members of the Northern elite have been threatening? Are the Libyan militiamen part of a mercenary army that some influential Nigerians have hired to wage war against some parts and peoples of Nigeria?

    Some Northerners are frenetically demanding “grazing reserves” for the herdsmen. Some are threatening that we Southerners will find ourselves in greater danger if we refuse to grant land for such grazing reserves. Some say that they will break up Nigeria if the herdsmen are refused entry into Southern Nigeria. We Southerners suspect a hidden agenda for these grazing reserves. What are the true purposes of the grazing reserves?  Are they designed by some people to house illegal armies of occupation in the states of the Middle Belt and the South, for the purpose of intimidating the peoples of those places? Are they meant to be jihadist instruments for forcible Islamization? Are they designed as weapons of one ethnic group’s conquest of Nigeria?

    Mr. President, you owe Nigeria clear, truthful, and statesmanlike answers and explanations on this situation. More importantly, you owe Nigeria policies and actions that will remove this horrible threat from our country – in the interest of the peace and existence of our country. We Nigerians pledge our strongest support to such policies and actions when you design and implement them. But delay is dangerous.

  • Appeal to Ijaw youths

    Niger Delta Avengers, citing the unfair allocation of oil blocks as part of their major grievances blew up Nembe Brass to Bonny trunk line belonging to Agip and Shell about last Saturday. This is the latest in the economic war that has reduced Nigeria oil production from 2.5million to 1.5million barrels per day. Delta State Information Commissioner, Jonathan Obuebite said ‘the activities of the group were adversely affecting Ijaw people whose only source of livelihood is the environment’. The Ijaw boys are shooting themselves in the leg. The communities affected will suffer the effect of pollution for the next few years. Investors are already moving to safer environments like Cross River and Akwa Ibom at a critical period when the area needs to get ready for the challenges of post oil period which globalised economy searching for renewable energy sets at 2030. Already Warri has lost its shine with the entertainment industry taking the greatest hit. In 14 years, oil as source of energy consumption will be near zero.

    The Ijaw unfortunately are Ijaw’s worst enemies. They have on account of a culture of entitlement been unable to compete with other ethnic groups such as Ikwere, a minority Igbo ethnic group that has dominated the politics of Rivers State producing the likes of Peter Odili, Rotimi Amaechi and Nyesom Wike. And while the Kalabaris showcase their Tam David-West, the Tamunos, Douglases, the Ijaw advertise the likes of Asari Dokubo who vacant-mindedly and without a sense of history denies the collective contribution of the rest of the federation to the liberation of Ijaw during the civil war and ex-militant, Government Ekpemupolo alias ‘Tompolo” who according to Chief Edwin Clark, lacks enough education to secure government job.

    But the fault is not in neither in Dokubo or Ekpemupolo’s stars but in the conspiracy of their leaders who in the past traded in their name in order to satisfy their greed. Most of the Ijaw leaders were in alliance with the north when Awolowo and his AG embarked on free education in the old Western Region. They were in politics in the Second Republic when Ambrose Alli of the old Bendel, Olabisi Onabanjo of Ogun State, Michael Ajasin of old Ondo and Lateef Jakande of Lagos established public universities to accommodate products of their free primary and secondary school programmes. But the Ijaw political elite and traditional rulers described by Saro Wiwa as ‘vultures’ denied their youth good education so that no one questions them as they collude with multinational oil companies to feed on the blood of the poor.

    What ill-educated Ijaw youths are now doing is nothing but a misdirected aggression. Their enemies are not Hausa-Fulani owners of oil bocks but their corrupt leaders and politicians who instead of confronting their past recently claim ‘Buhari’s war against corruption will lead to anarchy’. Ijaw leaders were part of past governments including that of Abacha regime alleged to have traded oil blocks to buy legitimacy. President Jonathan was Vice President for two years and President for six years. He had an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past. But like many other Ijaw leaders, he merely empowered ill-educated Ijaw youths useful only for proxy war.

    Before him was Alfred Papapreye Diete-Spiff, a Naval Lieutenant Commander  who in 1967 at 25 years of age was appointed the first military Governor of Rivers State. His greatest legacy was the shaving of the head of Nigerian Observer newspaper’s reporter who had published a story about an impending teachers strike in Rivers on Spiff’s birthday. When Murtala Mohammed toppled Gowon government in 1975, Diete-Spiff who could not pay teachers in Rivers was cruising in the high seas in his private ship named ‘OginaBereton’ later seized by Murtala Mohammed who also allegedly stripped him of his rank. Spiff was later detailed to forfeit a total of 18 properties located in the Government Reserved Area, Trans-Amadi, Borikiri layout, Recreation Layout and Ogbunabali, all in Port Harcourt. He is today the Amanyanabo of Twon Brass in Bayeslsa State, a throne he ascended in 1996. When Umaru Dikko during the Oputa Truth Commission called attention to marginalization of Ijaws by their leaders,  Spiff before staging a walk out with Rivers delegates insisted no one would dictate to them on how to spend their own money.

    Melford Okilo who later became governor and senator served as Minister for Commerce and Tourism during Sani Abacha regime when most of the controversial oil blocks were allocated.

    Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, ‘Governor General’ of the Ijaw was said to be the mastermind of the then rampaging Niger Delta militants. His involvement in corruption and money laundering was exposed by governments of Britain, United States, South Africa, Bahamas and Seychelles as well as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank under the Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative’. They revealed his portfolio of foreign assets which included accounts with five banks in the UK and further accounts with banks in Cyprus, Denmark and the United States; four London properties acquired for a total of £4.8m; a Cape Town harbour penthouse acquired for almost £1m, about £1m in cash stored in one of his London properties. When Britain’s Metropolitan police charged him to court, he jumped bail and escaped to Nigeria. He was later convicted in Nigeria but granted amnesty by President Jonathan, another Ijaw leader.

    Rivers State under Peter Odili (1999-2007) saw a surge in attacks on the oil industry by militants demanding greater benefits, kidnappings by ransom seekers, political violence and deadly robberies by gangs armed with AK-47 rifles.  EFCC in a 2007 report accused his government of ‘fraud, conspiracy, conversion of public funds, foreign exchange malpractice, money laundering, stealing and abuse of oath of office’. Human Rights Watch also issued a report detailing pervasive patterns of corruption and mismanagement at the state and local levels under Odili’s administration. In March 2007, Justice Ibrahim Buba gave “a perpetual injunction restraining the EFCC from arresting, detaining and arraigning Odili on the basis of his tenure as governor based on the purported investigation”. Odili was alleged to be the brain behind the split in Asari Dokubo-led IYC which led to the formation of MEND headed by Ateke Tom, Dokubo’s deputy in order to settle scores with Chief Edwin Clark.

    James Ibori was alleged to have spent Delta State money to fund Yar’Adua’s presidential election. On December 17, 2009, a Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, Delta State discharged and acquitted Ibori of all 170 charges of corruption brought against him by EFCC. Ibori was later found guilty of 10 counts of money laundering and conspiracy to defraud at Southwark Crown Court, London and on April 17, 2012, sentenced to 13 years. Some of his properties confiscated include a house in Hampstead, north London, a property in Shaftesbury, Dorset, and a mansion in Sandston, near Johannesburg, South Africa.

    Edwin Clark, 86, has been part of government since he was about 32. Kaita recently reminded him during one of his tirades against the north that he has always been a northern ally.  Clark shortly after a society wedding at age of 85 finally established Edwin Clark University in his village where students will pay about N400,000 per session. His response to critics of official looting by custodians of Niger Delta commonwealth was ‘‘who are they to tell us how we spend our money’?

    Ijaw youths, behold thy leaders.

  • The CBN adopts a flexible exchange rate adjustment strategy

    The CBN adopts a flexible exchange rate adjustment strategy

    Last week, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, announced that instead of the fixed exchange rate strategy the CBN had decided to adopt a more ‘flexible exchange rate policy’ for the naira. All nine members of the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted unanimously in favour of the new strategy in the adjustment of the exchange rate of the naira. The MPC stated that the worsening state of the economy and the slide into stagflation called for new strategies and monetary policy reforms. The economy has been in a recession since July, 2015. In response, the CBN is dropping the strategy of a fixed exchange rate for a flexible or floating exchange rate strategy.  The fixed exchange rate strategy had not worked. Some devaluation of the naira had become imperative and could not be put on hold for much longer. The naira had become overvalued because of the external oil shock and higher domestic inflation.

    Now, in my article in this column in October, 2015, I had urged the CBN to devalue the naira promptly. I could not see how the unrealistic official exchange rate of the naira could be maintained in view of the ‘external shock’ caused by the sharp decline in our oil revenues. I considered the naira exchange rate overvalued. The difference between the nominal official exchange rate and the parallel market rate of the naira had widened. Now, the proposed flexibility in exchange rate management by the CBN means the naira is to be devalued by a rate to be determined by the CBN. This will be based on the supply and demand for foreign exchange. In other words market forces will, to a large extent, now determine the exchange rate of the naira. Market forces may not be perfect, but human judgment is less perfect.. It is said that a stitch in time saves nine. The fact is that if we do not devalue the naira now compelling economic and financial developments will force us to do so later at a higher cost. The delay in devaluing the naira now will prove to be more costly later. The proposed flexible exchange rate adjustment is a sensible alternative to the rigid but doomed course the CBN was pursuing in its exchange rate management. The CBN has not yet announced a new naira exchange rate.  Of course, this new policy will need to be complemented by other policy instruments, including a moderation in money supply. How this can be achieved with an expansionary budget this year remains to be seen. The delivery of the intervention funds will have to be appropriately moderated to avoid additional downward pressure on the exchange rate of the naira.

    According to the Governor of the Central Bank the review was in response to the recognition that the economy was in a state of ‘stagflation’ (combined stagnation in economic growth and high levels of inflation in the domestic economy) and that a flexible exchange rate policy was the ‘least risky of the options open to the bank in Nigeria’s current economic and financial situation.’ The Governor added that one source of the stagflation was the delay in securing an early passage of the 2016 federal budget and the consequent time lag in implementing the stimulus package in the budget. But he should have added that growing uncertainties over the naira exchange rate added to the trend towards stagflation in the economy. Both local and foreign investments had to be put on hold pending stability in the naira exchange rate and other fundamentals of the economy, such as interest and inflation rates, both of which are now rising. Stability in the macro economy has to be restored. The banking sector and financial analysts have reported that foreign investment and equities have dropped by 74 per cent in reaction to currency overvaluation. Productivity in the industrial sector has also been falling in response to these uncertainties and a possible consumer resistance to increased prices, some of which is speculative. This has led to some job losses. An overvalued currency leads to currency speculation, capital flight and money laundering. It undermines economic growth. Industry has reacted to the new policy positively.

    For these reasons I fully support the new CBN policy of flexibility in the naira exchange. The response of the CBN to the grave economic situation is appropriate. Like the hike in the oil price, we had to bite the bullet again on exchange rate adjustment. The adoption of the new flexible exchange rate policy reflects these realities amply. My regret is that, for political reasons, including President Buhari’s known reservations about a floating exchange rate, the CBN waited for far too long to come to terms with these realities, which include a steady decline in foreign exchange earnings and low GDP growth rate, the lowest for decades. Much valuable time was lost in the doomed attempt to avoid a devaluation of the naira promptly. This strategy was bound to fail in view of the increasing demand for foreign exchange and the fall in Nigeria’s foreign reserves. Now that oil prices are on the rise again there will be a temptation to delay the necessary devaluation or to allow it to fall below the net effective exchange rate of the naira. This must be avoided at all costs.

    As admitted by Mr. Emefiele, the previous rigidity in exchange rate management, and the refusal of the CBN to consider some devaluation in the exchange rate of the naira, did not work. It could not have worked. Since 2015 the economy has been in a recession. Mr. Emefiele acknowledged this fact in the following statement by him: “As a stop gap the CBN has continued to deploy all the instruments within its control (including the resolve to resist devaluation) in the hope of keeping the economy afloat. These actions, however, proved to be insufficient to fully avert the impending ‘economic contraction’. In March 2016, the CBN tried the option of a tight monetary policy to stabilize the naira. But the 2016 budget is expansionary and inflationary. It was bound to put pressure on the exchange rate. A deputy governor in the bank is reported to have warned that when the 2016 budget comes into play these inflationary pressures on the exchange rate will certainly increase, compounding the CBN’s exchange rate dilemma. The planned financial stimulus package has to be moderated.

    It is difficult to understand why the CBN should expect anything other than a contraction in the economy when its exchange rate management strategy was not pro growth but contraction. Inflationary pressures through an expansionary fiscal and monetary policy were bound to aggravate our economic problem as high levels of inflation tend to undermine economic growth. The administrative import restrictions introduced by the CBN were certainly not pro-growth. They were intended to reduce imports and the demand for foreign exchange. This was bound to lead to a recession. If the objective was growth these fiscal and monetary measures could not have worked unless we got the economic fundamentals, including the naira exchange rate, right. Economic growth, not stagnation, should be the prime objective of our strategy of diversification of the revenue base. Diversification of the structure of our economy, still largely dependent on oil exports and revenues, will be enhanced by a realistic net effective exchange rate of the naira. It will restore the economic fundamentals to equilibrium and substantially increase the scope for higher prices in the agricultural sector and higher income for farmers. Government’s revenue too will increase. It will also promote other non-oil exports. All the available evidence suggests that, on average, countries where currency reforms have been implemented in a timely manner have also achieved better economic performance.

    Effectively, the real beneficiaries of the strategy of import controls and restrictions are our neighbors, with the loss to Nigeria of considerable import duties and revenue. This is bound to affect revenue derived by the government from non-oil sources. Increased tariff on non-essential imports would have been a better alternative to import restrictions. The same objective of reducing demand for forex would have been achieved with selective tariff increases. The CBN says it will open a ‘special window’ for vital imports. Obviously, the target here is industrial imports. But this could lead to abuses such as money laundering, capital flight and a distortion in prices.

    In addition, Nigerians hold a lot of foreign currencies (including looted funds) abroad over which the CBN has no control and which can easily be utilized for imports into Nigeria. Some of these funds are channeled through the parallel market over which, again, the CBN has no control. It is a source which the CBN should not ignore. Some $5 billion is involved. But if the naira exchange rate is considered to be unrealistic then these Nigerians with large foreign currencies will not go through official sources (the CBN) in making remittances to Nigeria, but through the parallel market. It is far better for the CBN and our economy for these funds to be channeled through official sources than through the parallel market as this will continue to drag the exchange rate of the naira down. But this will only happen if we narrow the difference in exchange rates between the official and parallel markets.

    Now that the CBN is compelled by our economic and financial realities to reverse itself on its exchange rate strategy and policy it should stay the course. The CBN should be given the leeway and autonomy it needs to manage our monetary policy more efficiently. Change involves breaking with the past and taking tough decisions when necessary to achieve better results. This is where we are now. The devaluation of the naira is one such tough measure needed now. In Africa, Angola and South Africa, among others, have already devalued their currencies by over 15 per cent in response to the external shock.