The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Fuel subsidy: The real enemies

    Buffeted from all sides by vicious vultures, the government last week finally caved in to the demand of advocates of deregulation by increasing   pump price of petroleum from N87 to N145. The increase, according to Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information was inevitable, citing as reasons the dwindling foreign reserve, the reduction in crude production from 2.2m bpd to 1.65 bpd because of vandalisation of oil pipelines by sponsored elements and the fact that the N16.4b needed monthly for subsidy was just not available. We can add the sabotage by independent oil marketers who openly declared that importation of over 70% of oil consumption requirement by a government that refused to give their members foreign exchange will not bring an end to long queues at filling stations because NNPC is dependent on their storage facilities.

    The government has other off-shore detractors starting with Forbes and Bloomberg magazines that described Buhari as ‘obstinate’ for refusing to devalue the naira and take IMF loan, their principals including the IMF itself and other western leaders like David Cameron who survives on proceeds of stolen funds warehoused in their countries and of course those who stand to lose from government’s ban on 21 items gulping $12b of our foreign exchange every four months. Unfortunately, Buhari and his cash-strapped government need cash from even his detractors to finance a deficit budget of N2 trillion. Hence instead of apology, he appealed to Cameron to return our cash. His efforts at making beneficiaries of funds illegally taken out of the CBN vault with boxes, vomit what they all admitted was shared, is not receiving the support of some judges and some unpatriotic senior members of the bench. The Arab world he turned to for cash to implement his N2b budget deficit, have said, as players in the global financial market,  access to their loans is also tied to IMF ‘conditionalities’.  China of course was not ready to give cash but projects.  And reparation of stolen funds creatively deployed by some western countries to solve problems of social dislocations in their societies is a slow process.

    Unfortunately, in what is nothing but an act of misplaced aggression, those of us,  whose battle Buhari is fighting at his old age, are being misguided by  Labour that looked the other way while salaries of civil servants including doctors were unpaid for six  months by 26 states of the federation while the current lawmakers engaged in profligacy. Meanwhile our real enemies, the political elite and their trader-capitalists who have since 1999 waged war against the impoverished poor earning between N10,000–N18,000 and the middle class have continued to behave as if they are doing us a favour by serving us.

    While the lowest paid workers may now have to spend their take home pay on transportation, going by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), each of the of the 109 senators earns N19.26m. His House of Reps counterpart earns a little less. This is apart from quarterly office running cost put at N192million per senator per quarter while their House of Representatives counterparts received N140 million (2009 figures). They also get about N500,000 as wardrobe allowance, N202, 640 as newspapers/periodicals allowance, recess allowance of over N200, 000. They collect interest-free car loans. They have official cars fuelled by taxpayers. In the past they executed multi-million constituency projects. They take severance package which is in millions after four years while pensioners are unable to collect their pension years after retirement. About 21 of them are ex-governors who after mouth-watering severance packages of houses, cars and cash still collect pension as well as scandalously high salaries.

    It was these self-serving lawmakers that started our nightmare shortly after Obasanjo’s inauguration in 1999. The inauguration was followed by long queues in filling stations as a result of artificial scarcity created by cash-strapped politicians who claimed they sold houses to fight the 1999 election. Obasanjo’ s award of contract to refurbish the refineries was sabotaged by the politicians who failed to deliver after collecting contract payment. Then a self-serving bill for the establishment of PPPRA was promptly  passed into law and quickly assented to by Obasanjo within three months, February to May 2003. Its mandate was to ‘liberalise the downstream sector of the petroleum industry, privatise the refineries, deregulate and liberalise the imports of petroleum products and, generally, make the products available at reasonable prices.

    But PPPRA became tool for political patronage. The body then went on to increase the number of fuel importers from less than a dozen to over 148 made up of PDP stalwarts and their siblings. In 2011, it inflated consumption of imported petroleum products by N1trillion. A House probe was to show later that these PDP stalwarts and their siblings allegedly stole about N1.7 trillion through fraudulent practices including forging of government documents to receive subsidy without ‘importing a bottle of fuel’. Thirteen years down the line, PPPRA with staff strength of 249, and a 22-man strong board, earning salaries and allowances of N57.9 billion per annum, serves only the interest of those that set it up. It is not a surprise that one of their former board members has been linked with the Panama scandal.

    Sadly, by the time Buhari was throwing in the towel last week, some of their other baleful legacies include dysfunctional refineries, the collapse of the  over 4,000 kilometres of oil pipeline commissioned by Obasanjo in 1979, as well as  government-owned fuel tank farms with PPPRA now dependent on the storage facilities of members of Depot Petroleum Products Marketers Association (DAPPMA) with some boasting of the largest and most modern storage facilities in the world and the Independent Marketers Company (NIPCO) that has invested billions in storage facilities.

    While the nation frittered away about $30b on fuel subsidy between 2011 and 2012, an amount enough to build several refineries, at the time, Dangote’s $14b refinery which will come on stream in 2018, will not only meet the nations demand for fuel consumption but also put an end to 100% importation of fertilizer. “Today, Nigeria imports 100 percent of its fertilizer, but when we finish, Nigeria will be the largest exporter of Urea and Ammonia in Africa, and it will meet our total domestic requirement and save foreign exchange”, Dangote recently declared. His director has also confirmed “The refinery is the largest single line in Africa’, with refining capacity of 650,000 barrels per day (bpd), production of 750,000 metric tons of polypropylene per year and 2.8 million tones of fertilizer per annum,” Adding his own voice, Emefiele  the CBN Governor said “it will fetch Dangote about $6b foreign exchange earning which will bring relief to a nation that until Buhari’s courageous moves last week  was spending about 38% of its reserve on subsidy.”

    Labour has a duty to let those it represents know that Buhari is not the enemy but David Mark, Ekweremadu, Saraki, Gbajabiamila who awarded themselves generous pay for oversight function they performed in default, their colleagues who engaged in on what Obasanjo once called ‘theatrics on the floor of the National Assembly’ over subsidy removal when there was no subsidy appropriation. We can add subsidy cartels that stole N1.7t,  those who according to ex-Governor Peter Obi “were paid for vessels that were not anywhere near the Nigerian waters”, the  25 marketers who were  ordered to pay back N382 billion to the government following the findings of the presidential committee that looked into the disbursement of the fuel subsidy fund, vandals engaged in vandalisation of oil pipelines and their patrons  and finally some of those unskilled or dubious Nigeria- trader capitalists  who are richer than Nigeria and now threaten the system with the idle $20b kept in domiciliary account.

  • House of Lords Nigeria @ 50 – 3

    The need to put more emphasis on proper education is fancied by Professor Peter Okebukola who argues that with proper funding, Nigerians would reach their goal of rapid transformation of the country. He mercifully does not believe that the standard of education has fallen. I agree. The present generation has more facility to access information than any generation before them. Digesting and assimilating information accessed constitutes the basis of wisdom. The present generation may not be as “grammatical” as we are but they are knowledgeable. What Okebukola advocates is proper training of teachers, and getting the right quantum of teachers, and appropriate facilities for learning and building of good schools for primary and secondary school pupils the type one finds in Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa and shall I say in Aregbesola’s Osun State.

    Engineer Vincent Maduka claims that Nigerians can be whatever they want to be if the will is there. The ICT sector gives one reasons for optimism. When the GSM birthed in Nigeria, foreign companies said there was not enough market to attract their investment. But now with the success and size of the GSM market, it has come to stay in a big way and Nigeria remains a prize the international investors in the field are dying to win. With the right education Maduka feels Nigeria should be able to make a contribution to the future development in ICT like India is doing. This will depend on carefully planned strategy not to be left behind considering the enthusiasm of the young Nigerians not only as consumers but as agent of change in hardware and software computing. Emeagwali’s contributions to the development of the internet super highway have shown, if given the chance, what Nigerians can do.

    The girl child should also be encouraged because any country that neglects more than 50% of its population does injustice to itself. There is no mental incapacity that can be proven in women, and women all over the world in the U.K, France, Sri Lanka, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Israel, Pakistan, Bangladesh, have become Prime Ministers or presidents. It is therefore a challenge argued Chief Solanke for Nigeria to give women a chance and their due. At the end of the day women are foundations on which nations are built.

    Home training, argues Professor Tomori, is the foundation on which further training hangs, whether we embrace PDP’s “transformation” or APC’s “change”, which he says mean the same if we are to judge by our recent election and the slogans of the defeated PDP and the victorious APC. What is required is not mere slogan but root and branch change. The insane roguery of politicians is the bane of our society. But change will not come unless everybody embraces the credo of change. We must change as individuals and as a collectivity but leadership is important. The leader of a country must be like a lighted candle which cannot be hid. His goodness must be manifested by how he lifts the entire country up so that history can be fair and remember the change he has brought for the better into their lives.

    With the emergence of Muhammadu Buhari as president of Nigeria in 2015, Professor Tomori is cautiously optimistic that we may yet get the change that this country requires and needs. The question to ask is whether Buhari, borrowing a leaf from the book of J.J Rousseau, represents the general will of Nigerians. And if he does, according to Rousseau, he will be right to force us to obey the general will which Rousseau says may not be known by the majority but by the minority or even one person. The problem of Nigeria is not just that of political leadership alone. So Buhari alone cannot solve our problem. Our problem is structural and systemic and we should rather err on the side of structures and systems that are long lasting than pin all our hopes and future on the ephemerality of persons.

    At the end of the day, whether it is 70 years or 100 years as some clerics say, we are allotted by God to live on this terrestrial plain we would all grow old and pass on to eternity. A country should be judged on how well it treats its old, and I dare say, its dead. A situation, argues Chief Akinyele, in which pensioners over the age of 80 are wickedly struck off the payment schedule on the ground that they should have died calls for change. People in charge of pension steal pensioner’s funds with impunity or put pensions fund in fixed term deposits so as to earn interest for themselves while pensioners die of hunger and in penury.

    Pensioners have been known to curse heads of governments while on their dying beds and God knows there is no way such curses would not come true.

    Reading this book has been a journey of how a well-endowed country has failed miserably on every count. Most of us are eager that our present experiment in governance will succeed. But for this to happen there is a need for a new architecture of government that will reduce the financial strength of the centre where most of the looting takes place and redistribute resources to the states. The centre must remove its hands from local government creation in a new restructured country. The federation must be between the states and the centre and the anomaly of a three-tier structure must be done away with like in all federations of the world. States must be left to create as many local governments as their resources permit and their people want.

    Whatever it will take must be done to bring Nigeria into the 21st century where potable water, regular electricity, security, motorable roads, railways, health, and education will be taken for granted as in most countries of the world, including some African countries.

  • Nigeria: How countries fail and fall

    The country named Yugoslavia in south-eastern Europe broke up in 1990, after 72 years of existence. While it existed, it was similar to Nigeria of today in many ways. Like Nigeria, Yugoslavia consisted of many different nationalities – the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Albanians, etc. Britain had thoughtlessly pushed many nationalities together to create Nigeria in 1914; Britain and France also thoughtlessly pushed many nationalities together to create Yugoslavia in 1918.

    Like Nigerian leaders, Yugoslav leaders were never able to manage their inter-ethnic relationships amicably. Like Nigeria therefore, Yugoslavia was always unstable, always about to break into massive inter-ethnic conflicts, always seeming about to collapse. One of the nationalities, the Serbs, were always obsessed with the ambition to dominate the other nationalities and the whole country, and that ambition led them into actions that frequently threatened Yugoslavia with disruption.

    During the Second World War, 1939-45, Yugoslavia, like most of Europe, suffered under German Nazi conquest and domination. A resistance movement of Yugoslav people developed to liberate Yugoslavia, and adopted communism. When the war ended, this communist group, under a leader named Joseph Tito, became the rulers of Yugoslavia. Tito and his communists ruled until 1980.

    The communist rulers hated the inter-ethnic troubles and adopted many tough measures to keep them under control. Until Tito died in 1980, therefore, the world heard very little about the Yugoslav inter-ethnic troubles.

    But, in reality, the inter-ethnic divisions did not go away. It is almost impossible to make inter-ethnic divisions in a multi-nation country go away. Each nationality took thousands of years to develop as one people, with one culture, one national image, and one national pride. If it happens that some nationalities find themselves combined as one country, the only successful approach is that each of the nationalities should be carefully respected, and that each be given some autonomy to manage its own unique concerns in the country. The only sustainable structure for the country therefore has to be a federal structure, and the federating units have to be, as much as possible, based on the nationalities. We see this in the Union of India, in Switzerland, and even in Britain – the country that created Nigeria. Wherever attempts are made to force the nationalities to surrender their individuality and integrity in order to unify the country, disharmony, hostility, violence, and ultimate collapse are usually the outcome.

    After Tito’s death, most of Yugoslavia’s ethnic leaders did try to save the country. Throughout the 1980s, they held national conferences to find a settlement. But the Serbs (the largest of the nationalities, though not a majority in the country) foiled all the attempts. The Serbs would not accept any agreement that did not guarantee their dominance. The country slipped gradually on – until it finally exploded in 1990.

    The explosion started when two of the nationalities, the Croats and the Slovenes, announced secession and proclaimed themselves as separate sovereign countries. The Serbs mobilized a large army and tried to suppress them, but more nationalities then followed and announced secession. Yugoslavia descended into a horrendous conflagration.

    The lesson here is clear. When different nationalities, each living in its own homeland, different in culture and religion, are forced together into one country, and the leaders of the various nationalities cannot agree on how to manage their country equitably and harmoniously, dark forces of rivalry, envy, fear, ill-will, hatred and domination, are often generated in the hearts of the nationalities against one another. That is what happened in Yugoslavia. It has happened in many Black African countries too.

    Signs of these dark forces have been gradually growing in Nigeria, especially since Nigeria’s independence in 1960. Sure, many of us Nigerians do desire that Nigeria should become harmonious and peaceful, continue to exist, and become a prosperous and powerful country. But, there exists the perpetual fact that the political elites of Nigeria’s various peoples do not know, and have never known, what it takes to make a country like Nigeria work. One of the largest of the nationalities, the Hausa-Fulani, because they were seriously behind the rest in education at independence, harbour the belief that the only way they can be anything in Nigeria is to hold perpetually to federal power and dominate all the other peoples of Nigeria. In the context of efforts to sustain this ambition, Nigeria has descended steadily into decline, a culture of electoral fraud and violence, and of mind-boggling corruption. Of course, most of the elite of the various peoples of Nigeria, eager to benefit personally or collectively from this confusion, have delved down into it – with the result that Nigeria’s problems have become essentially insoluble.

    In the vortex of this horrible situation, many attendant evils have grown. For instance, it has become widely acceptable for citizens of various nationalities to vent very disrespectful attitudes at one another. Those who, taking advantage of Nigeria, migrate to other peoples’ homelands and choose to live there and take advantage of the opportunities there, now think that the proper kind of behaviour is to be viciously disrespectful of their hosts, and to indulge in aggressive and unruly claims and insults against their hosts.

    Anybody who makes a habit of reading what Nigerians write on the internet against each other’s nationalities would wonder why Nigerians are claiming to be citizens of the same country. The Nigerian filthy kind of mind now regularly produces persons who give much time, energy, and intellectual effort to writing whole treatises to fabricate falsehood about one or other nationality, and to assert that cultural achievements known to belong to that nationality do not, in fact, belong to that nationality – or, even, do not exist in human experience.

    But these kinds of behaviour are not limited to the lowest fringes of Nigerian society, they also feature even in very high levels of Nigerian society. Under the Abacha and Abdulsalami military dictatorships and the Obasanjo civilian dictatorship, there arose a spirited effort to persuade Nigerians that their various nationalities do not exist or should not exist, that such nationalities are essentially myths – myths that are dangerous to the identity and progress of Nigeria, and that deserve to be suppressed out of existence. In those years some persons working for, or under the auspices of, the Nigerian Federal Government favoured Nigeria with serious writings which informed Nigerians that it is backward and perverse to include any consideration for our nationalities in any plans for Nigeria’s future, and that the nationalities are no more than myths. Even today, some prominent citizens still think that it is their patriotic duty to Nigeria to remind Nigeria of these things.

    It is therefore not strange that these adversarial patterns of relationship are today producing some actions and trends that may soon push Nigeria to its demise. A few years past, the frightful news began to surface that persons belonging to one Nigerian nationality were from time to time bursting upon peaceful villages belonging to other nationalities in the Nigerian Middle Belt, wantonly killing the villagers, destroying the villages, and occupying the land. Continued year in year out, this development has now assumed the stature of genocide.

    And this terrible outrage has now spread beyond the Middle Belt to the Southern regions of Nigeria. In most parts of Nigeria today, the outcry is up about armed and murderous Fulani cattle herders who lead their cattle to destroy farms, and who then attack farmers who protest, kill farmers and their families, and wipe out whole villages.

    By and by, Nigerians are getting to know more and more about these killers. We now know that some of them are Nigerians and many others are non-Nigerians. Of the non-Nigerians, Nigeria is now hearing from some official sources that these are in fact not cattle herders but militiamen from Libya – the ones that Ghadafi trained as his private army who, after the fall of Ghadafi, fled southwards to West Africa. The question is now agitating Nigeria as to how these trained terrorists have invaded Nigeria without the Federal Government doing anything to stop them – and even without the government alerting Nigerians that Nigeria has been invaded. Many are asking, is it possible that some influential Nigerians, intent on conquering and subduing the rest of Nigeria, have hired Libyan militiamen and added them to the Fulanis who have been massacring various peoples of Nigeria?

    Some days ago, President Buhari lamented that many Nigerians want Nigeria to be dissolved. Happily, he added that he would do everything to keep Nigeria together. But, in the light of the mutually hostile trends in Nigeria, is it surprising that more and more Nigerians peoples would wish to cease being part of Nigeria? This is an example of how countries fail and fall apart.

  •  The prodigal father

    How old was the prodigal son? The Bible did not say, but surely, he could not have been up to 60. The prodigal son may have been in his twenties or thirties.  From his story, he could not have been more than a child, a boy still being fed by his parents. Since his father was wealthy, he had all he needed. He and his older brother lacked only what they did not need!

    Like all rich and spoilt children, he rose one day and decided that he wanted his own share of his inheritance. How can a child inherit his father when the old man is still alive? His father acceded to his request and the boy left home. In no time, he had squandered his inheritance. Before he knew it, he fell into hard times and resorted to doing all sorts of menial job to keep body and soul together.

    The prodigal son could not cope with the change in fortune. He looked at himself and he did not like what he saw and the scales fell off his eyes. He wondered how he got into his lowly state. He resolved to return home and it was a happy ending for him as his father forgave him his trespasses. If the prodigal son was being childish, could that also be said of a man, who is above 60 and with his mental faculty intact, who misbehaved because he found himself in power?

    Doyin Okupe was not a newcomer to public office when former President Goodluck Jonathan appointed him as an aide. Okupe had worked for former President Olusegun Obasanjo and even served in a higher capacity then than under Jonathan. Mind you, there was nothing he did under Obasanjo that he did not do worse under Jonathan.

    He was voluble, abusive and always attacking his master’s real and imaginary enemies. Obasanjo enjoyed what Okupe was doing as his attack dog; he did not call him to order. He allowed the Remo-born physician a free rein and Okupe became a loose canon. So loose that he did not spare even Obasanjo when the tide changed.

    Okupe is not a boy that he should not know where to draw the line in the discharge of his duty. At his age and a Yoruba to boot, he should know that he did not have to call a cow brother because he wanted to eat beef. In order to show Jonathan that he is 100% loyal, Okupe took Obasanjo to the cleaners for daring to attack the immediate past president, forgetting that Obasanjo was his former boss. By attacking Obasanjo to please Jonathan, Okupe displayed the trait of those the Yoruba call alayi more (an unappreciative person).

    Like the prodigal son, this prodigal father has wormed his way back into Obasanjo’s heart. Penultimate Sunday, he went to Obasanjo’s Ota farm in Ogun State to beg for forgiveness. Does that mean he has withdrawn all the uncomplimentary things he said about Obasanjo? If tomorrow he finds himself in office again will he not still tear Obasanjo to pieces if the former president criticises his new master? The likes of Okupe do not change. They are blown by the wind. If the wind blows left, they move there, if right, they will be found there. Do not be surprised if Okupe changes gear tomorrow and attacks Obasanjo again. I tell you, he will do it over and over again to please his new masters, who ever they may be.

    People like Okupe are always on the side where their bread is buttered. I am not fooled by his prostration; so don’t be too. As the Yoruba say prostration does not portray good breeding. Obasanjo beware.

     

    Exit of a virtuous woman

     The  news of the death of Remi Ibitola’s wife, Abiodun, hit me like a thunderbolt on Sunday night.  Biodun dead? What could have happened? As soon as I got the information, my mind went straight to Remi. I knew that he would be shattered because he and Biodun were close. I know because I lived with them in Akure, the Ondo State capital, in 1992. I had joined the Daily Times from the Punch and was posted to Akure on relief duty. Remi, who was Punch’s Ondo State correspondent had also just been posted to Lagos. The late Dare Ajuwon replaced him in Akure. Remi knew that I had nowhere to stay in Akure, so he offered me his place. For six months, I was the guest of the Ibitolas. Whenever Remi came home from Lagos, we always had a swell time, with Biodun (I find it difficult to refer to her as late) striving to satisfy us. She was a woman who knew how to take care of her man. She really took care of Remi, ensuring that he lacked nothing whenever he was around.

    She did not say it; but she acted it. She would have preferred that Remi remained in Akure because she felt he was not receiving good care in Lagos. She was fond of asking him whenever he came home so jeun dada sha; mio feran bo seri yi (I hope you are eating well; I do not like how you are looking). Unknown to her, Remi’s posting was for his own good, career wise. Her prayers for him were answered when Remi became editor of the Sunday Punch some years later. Remi and Biodun were soulmates. They cherished each other’s company. They never got tired of gisting till very late in the night. When one went to the loo, the other followed, still talking and laughing. I kept asking Remi what they were talking about that could not wait for the other person to return from the loo so as to continue. And he would burst out laughing. Omo eko ni e tie Lawi, sha ba wo (You are a Lagos boy, Lawal, just keep watching). They were a study in love; true love. Remi loves Biodun (yes, he still does) and would never do anything without her. She was his confidante, partner, adviser and above all mother. Biodun mothered Remi. Her love for him was deep and true. There was nothing she could not do for him; she was always there for him. And the love was mutual. Remi too did not joke about her. Her death will shake Remi; I only pray that God will console him. May He grant him the fortitude to bear this great loss. Those of us who knew Biodun know that she was a wife in the true sense of the word to Remi.

    When I spoke with Remi on Tuesday, the voice I heard on phone was not that of the ebullient guy I know who is ever ready to throw banters at you. His voice was subdued and low. I immediately knew that he has not been finding things easy since the untimely death of his better half. I could only console him and pray for the repose of the soul of the departed. May she rest in the bosom of the Lord. Biodun’s funeral holds in Akure on May 27 and 28.

  • Citizens’ prayer

    Creator, we have come forth, when heaven lies at the tick of a bomb, when hell blazes in the spoken word. We come for hope and truth’s pure ray. We come to wish our strife away. Life was not what we prayed for under Goodluck Ebele Jonathan – it got worse every hour. It is still not we prayed for under Muhammadu Buhari, every second, it gets harder.

    Jonathan, the boy who had no shoes managed to snatch our dog-eared shoes from our feet. That self-confessed son of a poor fisherman came to snatch the few fingerlings we had in our nets. When we protested, he dished us tadpoles to eat and called it the rarest kind of nutritious fish. The one we hoped would accord us a breath of fresh air emerged to blow as another clean breath of fresh stench.

    We have grown from the era when our grief was of fuel subsidy to the era when our grief is of fuel scarcity. When Ebele baba removed that mythical subsidy we barely enjoyed. Fuel we used to buy at N65 sold at N141, N150, and N160. Under Buhari, we have bought fuel at N150 through N500 per litre. Now, our almighty Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu and company have pegged fuel price at N145/litre. Consequently, a decent meal has become the rarest luxury: vegetables and tubers, palm oil and vegetable oil, kerosene and gas, now sell at abominable prices.

    We cannot afford to fuel our cars: N3, 500 can no longer fill our vehicle tanks, we have to spend between N5, 000 and N8, 500 – or more when the fuel marketers decide to hoard fuel in order to sell it at a higher price. The price of public transport has gone through the roof. Yesterday, we spent N250 from Sango Ota to Ado Odo; today we pay N600 just to get there. Iyana Ipaja, Ikeja to Owode and Agbado respectively now cost N700 to and fro vis-à-vis the initial N300, on our worst days. It’s scarier for those of us who work on Victoria Island.

    Reluctantly, we keep faith in the incumbent regime, hoping President Buhari will remain a man of honour and keep his pledge to rid our lives of debilitating greed and corruption. But as we keep faith in Buhari, we remember how incumbent Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, taunted former President Jonathan’s bumbling oil subsidy and fuel price regime in 2014. Through spasmodic fits of politesse and duplicitous exuberance, he stated that: “Now we should be enjoying cheap fuel if the price of oil has dropped globally…If the price increases in the country when the price of oil goes up globally, then it should also reduce when the price of oil drops.

    “PMS price reduction by N10. Now they listen. Oil the raw material drop (sic) over 50%, N10 is just about 10%. Good try but Nigeria can get a beta deal,” Fashola subsequently tweeted. He has been discomfortingly quiet since the government increased pump price of fuel.

    Today, compatriots are saying that Buhari has forgotten his roots. They claim he has declared war on us whose fates he swore to protect. They claim that like Jonathan, he has chosen to wade deaf, against the storm and current of public opinion. But Camp Buhari would have none of that. Buhari apologists argue that his seemingly savage policies are fundamental to our healing as a people and a nation.

    Do not be deceived by the furor of our hastily conceived citizens’ protests on Facebook, Twitter and the streets of Abuja, we shall tire of the novelty of revolutionary slogans and mass actions very soon. Our backs shall remain against the wall. When Buhari’s policies bite harder, we will simply crawl into the walls like irritating wall geckos.

    Our labour leaders and columnists of note are quietly eating up their words in the wake of ‘crucial’ meetings with the ruling class. Soon, they will tell us to ditch the placards and save our chants till more auspicious hour. Whispers of currency shall smother our rant and the revolutionary cry. At the end, everything will remain the same. Our fates shall bend and break according to the whims of the ruling class.

    Thus we seek the comfort of your infinite mercies against the scourge of our merciless leaders. We pray that you repay our leaders in their own kobo. Dear author and finisher of faith, please rewrite our pitiful fates as the Christians pray. And even though “the pen has been lifted” as the Muslims say, please rework our fates as you do to your most favoured faithful.

    If our leaders are truly on the right path…if truly, they lead with honesty and unpretentious fear of you in their hearts, treat them as you would, your most favoured among humankind. But if they lead us with disdain and deceit in their hearts, treat them the way you treated Abu Ashram and the Abyssinians when they rose against Mecca.

    Afflict their mansions to tear down the comfort they build to our discomfort. Upset their bellies and purge them of the provisions they gorge like gluttons. As we spend our finest moments in darkness, make their access to light a luxury of the past. Reorder their fates that they too may go to sleep and rise in darkness. Make their wives hiss and fret for want of fresh air like our wives do. Make their kids and grandkids flail and choke in the grasp of unforgiving heatstroke, like our kids do.

    Bless them with noontime heat and bedtime heat even in the rains. And every time they seek from you the mercy they fail to accord us, treat their prayers the way you would, the wantonness of the gluttonous and accursed. Make their prayer points and praise-worship trail off in confusion. Smite their patronizing prophets till they become not much in sight.

    They pledge that money they save from anticorruption campaign and fuel subsidy removal would be used to improve infrastructure, agriculture and health sectors; if they fail to live up to their pledge, make their kids expire to indecipherable sickness and malnutrition right before their eyes, like peasant kids dying in agrarian communities for lack of infrastructure, balanced diet and good primary health care. Deny their trophy wives and newborns of oxygen and the best medical care as they deny kids of poor folk breathing their last, while their mothers are still pushing, in hospital labour rooms and corridors of death nationwide.

    Bless their kids with gifts of patricide and mindless violence like they do to our jobless youth for political gains, every day. Turn their swimming pools to raging deeps to drown their progeny and trophy wives, like the Oke Afa canal that claimed our poor, beloved folk fleeing from death, to their deaths, during the Ikeja bomb blast.

    Subject their lives and those of their loved ones to the elements of bad roads as they do to us. Blind their pilots’ to the safest course every time they flee our land for overseas medical checkup. Make their planes plummet to crash on humid rocks and plunge in the sea, as our beloved’s in the throes of bird-strike, and our dreams in the face of stillbirth.

    Let them not enjoy the fruits of their labour. Make their Ivy League-trained wards their sources of everlasting sadness. Make them the bad harvest of their inordinate lust for wealth at our expense. Despite their wealth, afflict them with the poverty of good health, peace and contentment. And for every one of them seeking our downfall, we pray: “Faja’alahum ka’asfin m ma” kulin.” Amin ya Rabbi! Amen! Ase Edumare!

  • Beleaguared PMB needs our support

    IMF, ill-famed for creating instability in underdeveloped post-colonial states to mitigate effects of social dislocations in the western societies, is waging a silent war against Buhari following his rejection of its bitter pill designed to further impoverish Nigerians.  As it was in 1984 when he did not only reject its Greek-gift but questioned the veracity of claimed Nigeria’s indebtedness and in fact went on to commission Chase Bank to carry out a verification exercise, Buhari is once again under a coordinated attack by IMF, its agents and its foot soldiers.  Kemi Adeosun, his Minister of Finance told them in far away France that if the Nigerian economy is sick, we will find a local cure. Perhaps as part of the local remedy, she late last week, on ‘Sunrise Daily’, a Channels TV programme, presented a Buhari economic plan designed  to eliminate waste, fight corruption, and make savings (instead of borrowing money to pay salaries as it has been for years) and placate those keeping Nigerian stolen wealth to repatriate them.  But apparently, the only thing acceptable to IMF and its western patrons in custody of looted Nigeria funds which Femi Falana estimated to be in the neighbourhood of $200 billion is outright devaluation of the naira so that we will be forced to join other troubled economies such as Ghana, Kenya and Angola that have swallowed the IMF bait. But to Buhari, with inflation as high as 20.20% and Labour agitating for minimum wage of N55, 000 even when about 26 states of the federation have been unable to pay the  N18,000 minimum wage, devaluation is a one-way route to bankruptcy and an invitation to share the terrible fate that befell Greece.

    Unexpectedly, IMF has deployed its foot soldiers. Even after the CBN governor had announced the depreciation of the naira from N155 to N197, Lamido Sanusi insists the country is only postponing the evil day. Oby Ezekwesili says Buhari’s policy is ‘archaic and opaque’ because according to her, we are ‘moving away from one-digit inflation and six percent growth of the Jonathan era. But what they did not tell Nigerians is that it was growth without development, growth without investment in infrastructure, growth where Egbin station has only two of its six turbines functioning, growth where NNPC could not maintain the four aging refineries nor government owned fuel farm in Ikorodu, growth where our defence industry in Kaduna re-bags rice while its counterparts in South Africa manufacture fighter jets.

    As for Kalu Idika Kalu, another IMF alumni, what the minister of finance presented as economic plan is no plan because he cannot see macro-economic indices like market determined exchange rate, increase tariff and taxes that will create opportunity for Nigeria to have access to ‘lending institutions and commercial banks like KFW Group of Germany, UK Export Finance Bank, Coface Bank in France, World Bank with the capacity to give long term loans for capital projects’.  He cannot understand why the government is afraid of devaluation when according to him, we have gone beyond devaluation. But what he has not told Nigerians is the inevitability of reduction in consumption if we increase VAT from 5% to 15%. He was also silent on the consequences of devaluation in an economy where inflation is already as high as 20.20% and Labour’s agitation for N55, 000 minimum wage when 26 states are finding it difficult to pay a minimum wage of N18, 000.

    But Idika Kalu has since his first coming as finance minister (1985-86),  like his fellow apostle of market driven realistic exchange rate such as Chu Okongwu (1986-1999), Olu Falae (1990-1990) and Abubakar Alhaji (1990-1993) insisted on what he described as ‘the inevitability of large scale programme of devaluation’ in spite of  warnings back then by even some western economists such as Ricardo Fari of John Hopkins University and Jaime de Millo, then a world Bank official  that the wholesale devaluation of our naira will not help our situation. They dismissed Obasanjo who took the battle to Columbia University where he dared Nigeria creditors and apostles of  devaluation to start charity at home by adopting ‘law of demand and supply’ by jettisoning ‘protectionism’ against Japanese goods and subsidy on their agricultural produce’ as a ‘frustrated chicken farmer’.  Tragically, their  first-tier rate of N2.80 to $1 in November 13, 1986, had by 1991 nose dived to  N11.312 kobo to $1 prompting  a warning by Augustus Aikhomu the then military vice president that the  ‘the value of the naira cannot be left absolutely to the whims and caprices of the market economy”. Twenty six years after and with the battered naira  standing at about N350-$1, their search for market determined realistic naira value continues.

    It is fruitless reminding apostles of ‘market driven realistic exchange rate’ who do not believe globalization is another name for slavery that models that failed in the West where the laws  are no respecter of anyone will not work in our environment where laws for our lawmakers are a means to an end? {Even the current 8th Senate according to the police manipulated its rules to achieve a desired outcome).

    For our purpose, let us examine only one institution- the Bureau de change, widely believed to be owned by those that drafted the laws guiding its operation. The (CBN), revised minimum capital requirement for Bureau De Change (BDC) operations is N35million with another N35m mandatory cautionary deposit to be deposited in a non-interest yielding account in the CBN. Because it is widely believed they are fronting for powerful people who have made cheap money from government, they don’t have to explain the source of dollars they dispense.

    How can we then have a realistic market driven naira exchange rate when although dollar is not our legal tender currency, imperial governors collect allocations and channelled same through Bureau de Change? How can supply and demand law determine the realistic exchange rate of the naira when the travails of the naira is closely linked with the unwholesome activities going on in the Bureau de change? Here, unlike the west, Bureau de change owes no one explanation when they get directive from Dasuki who after collecting $2.1b directly from CBN vault in boxes direct them to pay party functionaries?

    Add this to the fact that some individual Nigerians and companies who have over $20b deposit in their now frozen domiciliary accounts are also said to be behind the agitation for a market driven realistic exchange rate of N301 to $1. This amounts to double jeopardy for all Nigerians because if we apply Professor Bolaji Akinyemi’s thesis, there is no Nigerian billionaire who can in all conscience claim he has not exploited the state.

    And finally for a realistic exchange rate, I don’t think Nigerians need to leave the battle only to Falana who in spite of sabotage by his professional colleagues, has threatened to sue an embattled Buhari if he settles for loans instead of retrieving looted funds.  Currently at war with IMF and its western patrons and its Nigeria foot soldiers, Bureau de change and their unpatriotic Nigerian patrons and the greedy $20b depositors who want a pound of flesh, Buhari needs our support in his deadly battle with vicious enemies and understanding while he continues his current banana-peel approach to decisively rein in enemies of our nation.

  • PMB: Return to the drawing table

    Today, most of us Nigerians live in poverty. About 70% of us are estimated to be living in “absolute poverty” – meaning that we are barely keeping alive with just about one U.S. dollar a day. The days are gone when parents who sacrifice to give their children education can hopefully wait for those children to graduate and come back to help. It is sad to watch bright young graduates roam the streets jobless endlessly and, in desperation, turn to crime or terrorism.

    But it has not always been like this in our country. When I was a boy in the 1950s, we youths lived in great hope. Commonly, as we were graduating, we had letters of employment in our pockets. Weeks later, we were usually able to borrow money to buy our first cars. We were then able to help our parents – and our younger brothers and sisters with their education. Life was orderly, predictable and filled with hope – and with determination to succeed in life, and to help others to succeed.

    All this life of certainty and hope was rooted in the circumstances created for us by our leaders and rulers. My Western Region, under Chief Awolowo’s leadership, was doing best in the country, but the Eastern and Northern Regions too (under Dr. Azikiwe and Sir Ahmadu Bello respectively) were doing well. Schools were springing up everywhere, and so were modern roads, water supply, and electricity supply. We did not have petroleum and its enormous revenues in those days, but region by region, local government area by local government area, our people were vibrantly engaged in a common push for progress and prosperity – and the results were showing everywhere.

    Unhappily, since 1962, and until now, we have gradually and foolishly thrown away all this hope-filled scenario. It all started when the politicians who controlled our federal government at independence decided that the regions were too independent and needed to be subdued under federal government’s control. Targeting the strongest of the regions, the Western Region, they embarked on their ill-advised crusade against the regions in 1962. They disrupted, subdued and broke up the Western Region. But the crisis they thus initiated spiraled out of hand, generating military coups, genocidal pogroms, an outright civil war, and federal administrations (military and civilian) hell-bent on federally micro-managing all the affairs and resources of our country. Petroleum began to pour out its revenue bonanza in these years, and that created, for the controllers of the federal government, an added incentive to seize control of all our country’s resources. To make the total federal control sustainable, the controllers of the federal government decided to begin to use part of the oil revenues to bribe, buy, subvert and emasculate the elite from all over Nigeria, to make the total federal control acceptable to them. Public corruption became an avowed tool of governance in our land.

    At three different times during this growth of insanity, sanity and hope tried to rear their heads. First, in 1975, a young military officer named Murtala Mohammed seized power and, surprisingly, launched into a spirited war to kill public corruption and the widespread indiscipline that accompanied it among our leaders and rulers. Some of his initial methods were hard and painful, but his sincerity was never in doubt – and the promised goal of return to orderliness, progress and prosperity was intoxicating, especially among Nigerian youths.  But the influential enemies of his kind of goal got him killed within months, and got him replaced with other kinds of military men whom they could trust.

    Then, secondly, in the years from 1976 to 1979, when these military rulers promised a return to elective civilian rule, the former leader and guide of the era of progress and prosperity in the former Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, pulled together a broadly national group of patriotic Nigerians which then designed very ambitious programmes for the renewal of Nigeria’s progress and prosperity. Their goal was to transform Nigeria into a country of educated and skilled working youths, bubbling enterprise, modern farms, crowded industries, a magnet for investments from all over the world, and the source of massive exportation of goods to the rest of Africa and the wider world. As background to all this, they proposed to restructure Nigeria into a rational federation, in order to diversify the bases of enterprise and progress again, and to enable the peoples and federating units of Nigeria to share in the new transformation in their own ways and thereby make their own contributions to the growth of Nigeria’s prosperity. These programmes immediately became considerably popular countrywide, and the group seemed very likely to produce the next civilian Federal Government of Nigeria as well as the governments of many states. Hope began to revive among Nigerians. But the military rulers became instantly incensed against this group, preferring the group that was organizing to elevate corruption as Nigeria’s system of governance – the group that was determined to give the Nigerian elite the best of chances to acquire huge personal bounties, through corruption, from Nigeria’s oil revenues. The rest of this story is well known – especially the final story of how the military rulers manipulated the 1979 presidential election for the group that they preferred. There then followed four years (1979-83) of blisteringly corrupt governance.

    Then, thirdly, sanity and hope suddenly intruded onto the scene again. A military officer named Muhammadu Buhari, assisted by a no-nonsense younger officer named Tunde Idiagbon, pushed the corrupt group out of the government and embarked on investigating and punishing the corrupt politicians. By then, however, the forces of corruption had become far too powerful. Buhari and Idiagbon were soon pushed out – and then replaced by the military officer who now holds the record as the master architect of corruption in Nigeria’s life. All that has followed since has kept along the path that he charted for our country. This is how we have become what we now are – namely, a country where public officials steal trillions of Naira, where some politicians pocket billions of Naira or even dollars in loot, where powerful citizens buy million-dollar houses for their concubines abroad, where governors and their cronies buy jet aircraft for personal use, where federal legislators earn more than the president of America, where more than 70% of citizens live in “absolute poverty”, where the lack of infrastructures massively discourages enterprise, where more than 70% of youths are unemployed, where crime has virtually destroyed all sense of security, etc.

    But, yet again, the same old Buhari is back – this time as an elected civilian president. He has launched a war against public corruption again. And, again, most Nigerians welcome it.

    Yes, it looks and sounds good, but what are Buhari’s chances of succeeding? Those like me who have seen this kind of welcome effort two times before cannot help being skeptical. As I watch Buhari, I am painfully convinced that he does not know what he needs to do to win this war. And people around him say that he does not know how to listen to other people and use their wisdom.  He seems to think that finding and punishing corrupt big men is all that is needed – but he is flatly wrong. Corruption is much more deep-seated than all that. As he is proceeding now, he is likely to keep chasing corrupt big men without real success, until his four-year term comes to an end – if they will leave him to keep chasing them around for that long.

    Buhari needs to return to the drawing table and, with his men, reconsider the approach to this mammoth problem.

    If he does that, I believe that he and his men will almost certainly find that the approach needs to be more comprehensive. One cannot leave in place, and revel in, the system that upholds corruption, and then hope to eliminate corruption. It will not work – and the effort will only frustrate and burn Buhari. If Buhari sincerely desires to set this country on the right path, then he must seriously embark on convincing Nigerians to come with him to restructure and reorder the country. He will need particularly to persuade the elite of his own Hausa-Fulani nation who have generally believed that they have a special stake in the system as it has been concocted. He will need to persuade all of us that we have all been losing egregiously and need to turn around. He can succeed if he sincerely tries. Otherwise, he is likely to fail – and, for Nigeria, that could be a terminal disaster.

  • Bloody love in hard times

    Bloody love in hard times

    Does anybody care about this terrible trend?

    People committing murder with ease. Many threatening to commit suicide and some actually committing suicide or attempting to end it all when they can no longer bend it.

    There are also many cases of husbands killing their wives and wives killing their husbands in a macabre reversal of deep and psychic spousal affection. The Sophocles era all over again?

    Why do people kill their loved ones? The reasons are as many as the stars in the sky, but how many of them are rational? Psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists really have their jobs cut out for them. But does anybody care?

    The other day in Ibadan, a lawyer reportedly pounced on her sleeping husband and knifed him to death. A court is sitting over the matter, even as the man’s family is crying for justice.

    In Benue State, a 17-year-old boy killed his mother for, according to him, being the architect of his libidinal problem “in the last few years”. It doesn’t get more tragic. He shot his mother after accusing her of witchcraft, the police said.

    I wonder what the Lagos dockworker whose wife’s body was found in their home after a row will be telling the police now. According to his friends, Mr  Lekan Shonde had accused his wife of infidelity before the light suddenly went out on her life . “He has never been violent. I have known him for the past 33 years and I can tell you he is a gentleman,” Mr Sunday Nwobi said of the suspect who is now in police custody.

    After learning of his wife’s death, Shonde reportedly decided to commit suicide, but his friends prevailed on him to surrender to the police so that justice could take its course. The authorities will have to rely on scientific clues to determine the cause of Ronke Shonde’s death , which her husband insists he did not cause.

    Why did Shonde contemplate suicide if he was damn sure he didn’t do it? Is it true he called the man with whom his wife had an affair? Will the police question the suspected philanderer? Shonde said he called his mother-in-law to say that he had decided not to kill himself and the woman said she had forgiven him.

    At what point do people decide to commit suicide? When do they try to give up? And why? Cowardice? Isn’t thinking about suicide an element of cowardice? Should a man be hopeless? Is suicide a symbol of bravery? How will the victim know what the world thinks about him? Is the “final solution” a sign of honour and ultimate defence of integrity? This is neither here nor there.

    Songster Tiwa Savage should be gathering the pieces of her shattered marriage now. First we learnt of her husband  Tunji “Tee Billz” Balogun’s attempted suicide. He chose a fantastic site – the top of the bridge that links Lekki and Ikoyi, where the rich and powerful move in exotic cars; not on Eko Bridge with all those funny passenger vans. Set to jump into the water, he decided to make some last calls –in place of a suicide note? – and, as if it was all planned, his pals stormed the place to dissuade him from jumping. He obliged them.

    In the manner of the kiss-and-tell stories that usually swirl around  celebrities, the budding entertainment impresario accused his wife of infidelity, ingratitude and betrayal. Besides, he said her mother was behind his fate – an allusion to some unstated and unproven psychic forces Tee Billz believes the woman possesses.

    Tiwa picked up the gauntlet. She painted a mesmerising picture of her former manager and estranged husband’s life. A rock star’s champagne life – of drug, wine and women. She said Tee Billz had put her in debt and she needed to salvage her career.

    Trust Nigerians, these love-turn- sour stories- some of them are major calamities, no doubt – have revved into action the remarkable fecundity of the Nigerian mind. It is all in an attempt to explain that some of the situations that propel couples to end it all are not as harmful as they seem if we are patient. Consider this sent to me by a friend:

    “One day oga decided to give his wife a surprise package. He moulded a big heart cake, with the assistance of the house help. The project took almost a whole day. Madam returned from work to meet the house help snoring. She was fast asleep.

    “Madam: ‘Silly girl, will you get up now! What have you been doing since morning?

    “House help: ‘Welcome ma. A beg; no vex. Me and Oga dey make love since morning. Na now we finish. Na im I sey make I lie down small …”

    There is also this that tries to define love, that seemingly phantasmagoric and gripping feeling to which men and women ascribe some of their behaviours, and death – the end of all. It says: “What is love? Love is when your husband catches you in bed with another man and says, ‘baby, dress up; let’s go home’. What is death? Death is when you follow him.”

    In other words, when a couple begin to hurl at each other allegations of infidelity, it is time to watch it. They need not wait for the “final solution” for the resolution of their differences. Once suspicion elbows trust out of a relationship, what is left?

    Tee Billz was lucky to have got people to dissuade him from taking that fatally final plunge into the dark, murky river to cool off in the hereafter. So was Senator Kashamu Buruji. Remember the other day how drug law enforcement agents laid a siege to his home in a controversial bid to seize and ferry him to the United States where they insist he is wanted for drug offences. The distinguished senator said he had no case to answer in America. When it was obvious the operatives were set to storm the house and ferret him out, Kashamu threatened to commit suicide rather than being bound and bundled onto a flight to uncertainty.

    Then th e courts supervened. Now the senator is sitting pretty in the National Assembly, making laws for good governance and well being of the country. He even finds time, despite the mental exertion that lawmaking demands, to occasionally issue press statements commending the Muhammadu Buhari administration’s anti-corruption battle, urging Nigerians to back it. Ah! If only truth could talk.

    There are people who commit suicide or threaten to wave the final farewell to the world for the hardship they face.  An Abia State civil servant has just hung himself because he had not been paid for four months. De Nwakwo had a family of four. He couldn’t feed them, according to reports on the incident. He left a suicide note for his family, which said he couldn’t foot his children’s education bill and could not afford to buy a dress for his wife to wear on Mother’s Day. “I have no other place to go ; no hope, nothing to give to my children to eat and no salary for the past four months. I am sorry I have to do this,” Nwakwo wrote. Poor fellow.

    Last Thursday in Lekki, a Cameroonian, Frederick Gino, climbed an electric pole and threatened to kill himself. A report said it was all to avoid a mob that pursued him after he was suspected to have burgled an apartment. Another quoted him as telling the crowd that had gathered to rescue him: “Give me N5million or I jump!” He was brought down and taken to the hospital.

    Was it all a stunt? As many asked, if Gino wanted to end it all, he needed not have taken the trouble of looking for a ladder to climb the pole  and causing a nuisance. Why didn’t he just take a stroll to a humming transformer and just give the hot machine a bear hug?

    Is the law that bars a man from taking his own life still alive?

     

    Cameron’s cameo

    British Prime Minister David Cameron has been under attack since the news broke of his description of Nigeria as “fantastically corrupt” during a discussion with the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Right Rev. Justin Welby.

    Mr Cameron has not said anything new. What he has failed to say is that the Muhammadu Buhari administration is waging a war against corruption. He is forging ahead despite criticisms in some quarters of the style of fighting the war and what to his opponents is the utter neglect of other areas.

    Besides the fact that Cameron’s statement is undiplomatic and impolite, it is hypocritical. Most of those who stole Nigeria’s wealth live in Britain, their loot is kept in Britain, their kids school in Britain, their investments – mostly in property and stocks- are in Britain.  When Great Britain stops being a haven for looters, the greedy would have lost a great ally. And the time to do that is now. Cameron should lead the way instead of insulting Nigerians, most of who are living honest and clean lives.

  • House of Lords Nigeria @ 50 – 2

    As Chief Fola Solanke said in her piece, it is disgraceful that our children know very little about our history and collective wisdom of the past. It is a truism that a people who do not know where they are coming from cannot know where they are going. Perhaps in the whirling of time, our federal government would realize the folly of cutting off our young ones from their roots and restore the teaching of history in our schools. If I were to send a copy of this present book with all its distressing details of failure to my son and his young impressionable daughter, that would be ensuring that they would not come visiting to Nigeria again. Not even as tourists.

    The Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo said in 1979 that if he became president he would scrap the ministry of tourism. He argued that no sane person would come to Nigeria as a tourist. He said unless the person wants to know what hell would look like. Chief Awolowo had an uncanny sense about development or lack of it in our country.

    All the 11 distinguished writers of this book perhaps with the exception Chief Folake Solanke, Professor Peter Okebukola, and Engineer V.I Maduka, end their chapters on notes of pessimism about current and future development of Nigeria.

    Each person, using different imageries, end up painting the same picture of missed opportunities, missed steps and following the wide road that will eventually lead to perdition. But within their sad and clinical analysis, one can find preferred solutions if we changed course. One of the most telling aspects of this book for me is to see two of my former teachers who have now joined the saints triumphant, Professor Emeritus J.F. Ade Ajayi and Professor Emeritus T.N Tamuno virtually giving up on Nigeria in their evening years. Professor Ajayi, the quiet and deep thinker that he was, ends his chapter on a radical note that only the payment of reparations to Africa can balance the sheet of the debt owed to Africa by the West through the Slave Trade and Colonialism imposed on us because of our weakness. How the reparation is to be gotten did not seem to bother him too much. He apparently believed that the injustice done to Africa is self-evident and that the West will give in to our demand without a fight. Unfortunately it is not likely the West would surrender their position of privilege and power without a fight. Do we have the wherewithal to compel the West to accede to our request? The answer is no. Professor Tamuno is more pessimistic. He described Nigeria as “Lying in State” and that increasingly Nigeria, former giant of Africa before the civil war of 1967-70 “…Now resembles an ant or rat on global platforms of rectitude, justice, stability, security and peace”.

    He also accused our rulers of preferring “State security” over “National Security” and he said, government at all levels in Marxist terminology constitutes the state and the governments guzzles all the resources in order to secure themselves with little or no care and regard for the people who make up the nation. In the case of Nigeria of 400 or so nationalities brought together without consultation by the British, Tamuno argues that the only thing binding us together is the oil and even at that we continue to behave in the manner of “quarrelsome crabs in confined space”. Both Professors Sagay and Agbaje agreed with Tamuno that we deceive ourselves if we say we are operating a Federal System of Government. Rather Agbaje and Sagay say we live in deceit and that our so-called federalism is decentralized unitary system of government. In a normal federal system, the states create the centre and not the other way round of the centre creating states. The federal government should normally be co-equal with the states in all federations. It is the states that have land, the people and the resources. The state by agreement should be funding the centre which since the military seizure of power has become a Frankenstein monster, some kind of Leviathan breathing down everybody’s neck. Both Agbaje and Sagay advocate a functioning federal system, some kind of cooperative federation similar to that of Switzerland and Canada which incidentally are not without their own problems. In the same vein Prof Mabogunje goes over the unreasonable structure of our country in which the federal government not only creates states but local governments that are not rooted in the historical loyalty of our people. He suggests that instead of lumping together disparate settlements and breaking down large cities in order to conform to some mathematical demography, we should in fact have a new paradigm of local government that is not static but changes with demographic development of our rural and urban settlements. This is the only way the much required grassroots development will be meaningful.

    Professor Emeritus O.O Akinkugbe writes with tremendous lucidity, hilarity, and facility but poignancy. The municipal problems of inadequate water supply, shortage of electricity, insecurity, and poor medical facilities attract his attention. These municipal inadequacies are actually militating against our performance at optimal level in all our vocations. Imagine operations being performed using lanterns or the insomnia-inducing loud noise of generators.

    Professor Akinkugbe opined that to have a decent and functional life, each person has to assume the role of a local government, providing one’s own electricity, policing, water, and even roads not minding contributing to the general pollution of noise and carbon emission in the provision of electricity as a result of the absence or failure of the national grid.

    Prof. Akinkugbe wonders why Africa is poorly represented in the pantheon of scientific heroes. His implied answer is that mental ability is enhanced by a web of factors which are sadly absent in Africa whose total contributions to world economy is less than two percent. Perhaps Africa’s time has come and gone with the achievement of ancient and Pharaonic Egypt’s primacy in world civilization. After all Cheikh Anta Diop of Senegal claims that ancient Egypt was an African civilization or may be the time of African’s dominance will be in the future  if one were  to believe Professor Ludwig Dehio’s Theory of civilization coming in cycles.

  • DisCos of darkness

    POWER outage is not strange in this land. It is something we have become used to. We are only surprised when light is stable. We keep on wondering what is happening, expecting the light to go off any time. As long as there is light we feel uncomfortable. It is as if something is wrong somewhere; as if we are being propelled by a force to will the power authority to cut light. Call it the force of darkness, you may not be wrong.

    Living in darkness has been our lot since the days of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) – the forerunner of the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).

    With the explosion in our population by the time NEPA came into being in 1972, it was obvious that we may be having an energy crisis if we did not do the right things. We relied solely on hydropower for our supply needs then. It was not the era of gas turbines and power plants.

    Our inability to get the power sector right has done a lot of havoc to the economy. Many companies are today running below capacity because of irregular power supply. Many have sacked workers to remain afloat and yet many have relocated to other countries where the environment is friendlier. The story does not end there. Others have folded up because they cannot cope. In this category are the textile firms, which used to employ millions of people. Today, the textile industry is dead. Go to the Ikeja Industrial Estate on Oba Akran Avenue and see the carcass of the Nigerian Textile Mills. Many others abound like that in Kaduna and Kano.

    The real sector is hard hit by this problem. Manufacturing companies are now comatose because their machines cannot run at optimal capacity. These machines require uninterrupted power to function well.

    Like large scale companies, small businesses also suffer from the power problem. They are hard hit because they do not operate an economy of scale. Theirs is a cash and carry business run on the basis of what can be tagged as ‘’pay as you go’’. They cannot expand their businesses easily because they do not have the financial muscle. All they do is subsistence business – trading to get what to eat. These days, they can barely make ends meet because of the terribly low power supply.

    Ironically, it is the government that is asking Nigerians to be creative that is killing talents. As it is for businesses, so it is for individuals. In our respective homes, we run a mini-government, providing for ourselves services which should be rendered by the government. We dig boreholes for water supply; we run generators to provide light and through communal efforts we build our own roads. Yet, we pay tax; but we do not see what it is being used for.

    Getting power right is crucial to remaking Nigeria. There is nothing we will achieve as a nation if we do not address the power challenge frontally. The privatisation of the sector was meant to achieve this. The gains of the  2001 deregulation of the telecommunication sector opened our eyes to the inherent benefits of getting government out of business.

    We were upbeat about the privatisation of power because we thought it would change the electricity supply equation for good. The 2003 unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), which succeeded the NEPA in 2005, into 18 successive generation companies (GenCos) and distribution companies (DisCos), was supposed to end our power woes. We never knew that it will mark the beginning. The GenCos and DisCos have been in business for about three years now, yet we have not felt their impact. The other day, a friend disagreed with my observation, saying: “but they have been distributing darkness!”  Can you beat that? All we have been getting from these companies are excuses on why they cannot deliver.

    It seems they did not bargain for what they are getting. These firms probably thought that they were walking into money by acquiring the assets of the PHCN. They appeared to have forgotten that business is not a bed of roses. Acquisitions are not always what they seem from outside until you get inside. A seasoned businessman does not only look at the assets of a concern, but also at its liabilities. The GenCos and DisCos missed the way by looking at the good side of the books only; they did so because they were thinking only in terms of naira and kobo – that is what is in it for them in the short run and not what they were going to give to customers in the long run in terms of efficient service.

    Under them, power supply has collapsed, yet they keep on harassing customers to pay their bills. To pay for services not rendered? In recent times, they have been placing adverts in the papers, threatening to disconnect debtor-customers. What are they waiting for? They should go ahead and start the exercise having fulfilled the requirement of serving customers a notice before disconnecting them. What difference will it make if they disconnect debtors? Have they not thrown the nation into darkness already with their incessant power outages? Those of us not owing them do not enjoy their services. There was nothing to show for the N750 monthly Service Charge they used to collect from us before it was scrapped with the coming of the new tariff last February 1.

    They fought tooth and nail to retain the charge because whether or not they gave us light in a particular month, they will be entitled to the money. The DisCos, especially have not been up and doing; they should buckle up in order to win customers’ confidence. We know that there are challenges; but they, as corporate entities, should have factored these into their operations before taking off.

    We know all about the gas problem; the clash with former PHCN workers; the vandalism of power plants and cables and the resurgent Niger Delta militancy, but all these cannot justify the DisCos’ poor performance so far. They can do better and I hope they will change for the better before customers rise against them.