The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Deploying sophistry to support PDP fraud

    If further facts beyond the House of Representatives subsidy fuel probe that indicted PDP leading lights and their siblings for defrauding the country of N1.6 trillion, the privatisation scheme described as mere sharing of our common patrimony among PDP stalwarts and their fronts, the pensions scheme scandal which took place inside the office of Head of Service, to validate John Campbell’s thesis that  ‘‘PDP is an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria that came together with no ideological or programmatic basis, but simply as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils”, the revelations coming out of Dasukigate through which $2.1b earmarked for arms procurement for our embattled soldiers fighting an insurgency that has killed over 15,000 Nigerians and rendered about two million refuges in their own land, was shared by who is who in PDP provided just that.

    In fairness to those who have always provided intellectual support for PDP’s assault on Nigerians, they have never pretended to write out of ideological conviction. They have often given the impression they were motivated by altruism and patriotism. Unfortunately, with the sordid revelations coming out of Dasukigate, in the last three weeks, Nigerians now also know better.

    And if Nigerians were expecting some form of remorse from PDP for betraying the trust of Nigerians, that hope was dashed by the Saraki and Ekweremadu’s sardonic humour during the latter’s family thanksgiving service in Enugu last week. And similarly if critics who have always accused a segment of the press of deploying sophistry to support PDP fraud had expected to be proven wrong for once, their last week specious argument that the difference between PDP and APC when it comes to corruption is that of six and half a dozen only consolidated the unassailable position of critics.

    As if Saraki expected Nigerians to have suddenly forgotten the less than honourable way he hijacked the Senate of the Fourth Republic by trading off the victory of his party for Ekweremadu and PDP support, he was in Enugu to give a testimony before a priest that Ekweremadu is “a good example for us politicians”, and that he “will continue to work with him for the development of Nigeria”. He probably assumed Nigerians cannot make a distinction between those who work for them and those who are working for themselves.

    Ekweremadu’s own blasphemy before a priest was more unsettling. Despite his well-publicised self-confession that he, with the encouragement of his PDP family members responsible for the nation’s current nightmare, secured his current position as a trade-off from Saraki who for a pot of porridge was ready to bargain away the victory of his party, he now says his emergence was a product of ‘divine’ intervention.

    But beyond Saraki and Ekweremadu’s sardonic humour, it is now obvious that just as it was in the first and second republics, the strategy of PDP and those providing it with intellectual support is to tar everyone with brush of corruption relying on use of sophistry to blur the division between those who were out to genuinely provide public service and those who ravage the land. The crooked logic is that everyone in Nigeria is corrupt including candidate Buhari who accepted government donation of two vehicles which were his entitlement as a former Head of State. We were told last week that if sufficient light was beamed on APC, it would be discovered that its leading lights are also made up of men with feet of clay. This is similar to argument used to devastating effects by those who plundered the resources of the nation between 1954 and 1962.

    In 1956, the Foster-Sutton Tribunal found Zik guilty of channelling government funds through ACB, a bank he owned along with his children and Sir Odumegwu-Ojukwu his friend and concluded, “Were a UK minister to be involved in a series of transactions the result of which public funds were used to support an otherwise shaky institution in which he was directly interested, he would be forced to leave public life.” There was widespread corruption in federal government. The ministers, like President Jonathan’s ministers, acted with impunity. An unrepentant K O Mbadiwe, the Minister of Aviation, dismissed proceeds from Ijora shady land deals as ‘chicken feeds in the mouth of an elephant’ while Festus Okotie-Eboh, Minister for Finance, when asked by the opposition to explain the source of his wealth quoted the Bible saying ‘to those that have, more shall be given, from those that do not have, shall be taken even the little they have’.

    Then to tar Awo  and his AG supporters during the 1962 intra-party crisis hijacked by the federal government, they found a parallel in the marketing boards’ 1954 loans given to the Western Region Finance Corporation and the Western Nigeria Development Corporation and the National Investment and Properties Co. Ltd. for building projects such Western House in Lagos, the Cocoa House in Ibadan, the first television station in Africa, the Liberty Stadium  Bodija and Ikeja GRAs in Ibadan and Lagos etc. Even though there was no evidence that Awo and his colleagues personally benefitted from their efforts at encouraging an emerging middle class and building a solid economic base to absorb products of their free education programme, they found Awo guilty for failing ‘to adhere to the standards of conduct which are required for persons holding such a post’ of a premier.

    In the Second Republic, the battle was once again between those who genuinely believed in public service and those who looted the resources of the nation. Ambrose Alli of the then Bendel, Adekunle Ajasin of Ondo, Bola Ige of Oyo, Olabisi Onabanjo of Ogun and Lateef Jakande of Lagos creatively deployed government funds and proceeds from government concerns to provide free education, access to university education by building state universities, free health and provision of other social services. Their NPN and NPP counterparts channelled government funds, including foreign loans which never got to Nigeria, to build private empires, including banks leading to educational and infrastructural decay of their areas. Thousands of youths from NPP and NPN-controlled states invaded Mid-west and West to benefit from free education. In 1983 when the ill-equipped and self-serving military came, the current type of sophistry was used to convince the new powers that there was no difference between those who deployed government money to the service of the people and those who squandered their state resources on self and others like Sabo Barkin Zuwo who, when caught with raw cash running into millions claimed he was keeping ‘government money in government house’. Thus sinners and saints were subjected to the same treatment with many receiving prison terms of 200 years.

    The sufferings of aging Professor Ambrose Alli, Onabanjo and Ajasin contributed to their early death while the real enemies of the people deployed the looted funds to buy off government concerns through Babangida’s fraudulent privatisation economic programme. For example, in 1991, Oodua states military governors – Bode George, Sasaenia Oresanya and Mohammed Lawal sold 60% of 24-year old Cocoa Industry Limited (CIL) valued in 1989 at N97, 958,000 to a relatively new company called Emerald Packaging Company for N9m, an amount lower than the cost of land on which the company was built.

    While it will be fool-hardy to trust all politicians, especially since our people say it is the thief who can accurately identify the footprint of another thief on a stone, those who want Nigerians to believe that there is no difference between ex- and serving APC governors such as Fashola, Fayemi, Oshiomhole, and Amaechi and PDP indicted governors such as James Ibori, Lucky Igbinedion, the late Alamieyeseigha and Odili who was shielded by the judiciary, must go beyond mere sophistry.

    They will need more than those who according to Itse Sagay ‘just cooked up a panel made up of sympathetic, pro-Wike judges parading themselves in a most dishonourable manner’ to tarnish the image of Amaechi or those writing petitions against Fashola who ‘the whole world from the United States to Australia, to the Middle East, to even the United Nations, everybody knows has the best record in governance that this country has had since Awolowo’.

  • Buhari presidency: Where we stand

    It’s the end of one year and the beginning of another. In the past seven months, we have had the Buhari presidency. Predictably, his is probably one of the most important presidencies in the history of our country. So where do we stand today?  Buhari started his bid for the presidency with a big promise of change. His credentials for change were good and impressive. Moreover, the circumstances made him supremely believable. Most of us Nigerians were simply embarrassed to be ruled by a presidency that had become a byword for lack of thinking, planning, doing and achieving. So when Buhari with his history of opposition to corruption stepped on the scene, most of us were ready to believe.

    Today we can say that we are not disappointed. Buhari does sincerely hate and despise corruption. He consistently demonstrates that through his rhetoric and his actions. So what do we expect from his war against corruption? He waged war against it before as a military dictator but the barons of corruption raised up another military dictator to boot him out. Today he is fighting corruption as an elected leader of a democratic government. Can we expect better results than before? Of course we hope so, but the facts in front of us tarnish that hope somewhat. The barons of corruption are still very much at work and are achieving a measure of success against Buhari from various directions. Manifestly, they have recruited the National Assembly as their allies. They are also using the legal system to resist the Buhari anti-corruption agenda. They are evidently determined to maintain their position and the benefits accruing therefrom. So it is beginning to look to observers, that the role of Buhari in the war against corruption in our country may be only that of a forerunner. He may be the man who will re-awaken the awareness of the importance of anti-corruption as well as invigorate our hope that corruption can be beaten. Meanwhile, what the future may hold in store is that a young passionate patriot may somehow step into the presidency and proceed to do for Nigeria what Jerry Rawlings did for Ghana. That is gather the richest, the most recalcitrant and the most influential barons of corruption and line them up before a firing squad. It would appear, unfortunately, that nothing less will rid this nation of the scourge of such deep rotted corruption in the high places of our land. If that is what our future brings, we must not forget, then, that there had been a man called Buhari who inspired us never to give up the fight against corruption. That seems likely to be the heritage of Buhari in the history of our country.

    On the economic front, Buhari has stepped into the presidency at a most difficult moment. Since about 1970, Nigeria’s rulers have built Nigeria’s whole economic life on the assumption that crude oil will forever pump floods of revenue into our national coffers. Building on that assumption, they progressively neglected other resources of our country. They also systematically distorted our federation, accumulated all power and resource control in the hands of federal government and took away from our states all capabilities to champion and promote development in their domains. Ultimately they have turned our states into beggars, ever waiting for doles from federal government. They have turned governance in our states into merely taking financial allocation from Abuja and dispensing it. The result is that poverty has been enthroned in our lives. Education has collapsed in our state schools. Our youth is mostly alarmingly unemployed and un-provided for, our infrastructure has largely collapsed and our communities have deteriorated abominably. It is good to have a man of Buhari’s sincerity at the helm of affairs, but what can he achieve since the foundations have been so fearfully destroyed?

    We can all see that he faces serious challenges to needed action. One major challenge is the steep fall in the price of crude oil and the resulting revenues therefrom. From about $115 per barrel in mid 2014, oil is now selling for about $35 per barrel. Under the pressure, the naira is now declining precipitously – from about N180 per dollar just a few months ago to over N280 now. Inevitably, Nigeria’s borrowing capacity in the world is eroding out of hand, and so we must ask, what is the possible road ahead?

    Another challenge facing Buhari is one stubborn feature of our country’s political tradition. One section of our country insists on controlling everything in line with the system created by the British for us at independence. As we can all observe today, no matter how Nigerian-minded Buhari may be, he is still somewhat subject to the demands and expectations of the Arewa North. We saw this in his appointments into the non-ministerial positions in his presidency. After appointing northerners to almost all positions, he made the unfortunate statement that he had appointed only the persons known to him. Of course we know that Buhari is aware that his duty as president is to seek the best from all over the nation to fill such important posts. The feeling in other parts of the country is that he did so to satisfy the powerful Arewa North voices. Most Nigerians also believe that the way his party, the APC is being treated is also because he is trying to please the Arewa North. It looks as if certain forces are seeking to sideline the APC in the making and management of this presidency. And that is certainly not good for our country. Our system provides that a political party will put itself, its agenda and its candidates before us to vote for. After we have so voted, we are supposed to expect that the party will be fully part of the whole package of governance. The duty of our president is not merely to govern by the day, it is also to ensure orderly progression and growth to our future as a country. Operating the system as it is provided for in our constitution is critical to our future as a nation.

    Moreover it also appears that it is because President Buhari must yield to a section of our country that he is not responding at all to repeated demands for the restructuring of our federation. The demands come in daily from all areas and he has studiously abstained from touching the subject. Yet, restructuring is the key to a lot of the problems that we face now as a nation. To revamp our economy, we must now have a federation in which the states and their governments are dynamic centres and agencies of development. That means that we must show respect to our nationalities in the making of our states. It also means that we must redistribute power and resource control to give considerable power and capability to our states. This will also greatly advance the fight against corruption. Unfortunately our Arewa North leaders have consistently opposed these measures. Some of them have threatened to start a war rather than allow a disruption of the status quo. Most sections of Nigeria are saying that the status quo is untenable and President Buhari must respond to that. Some are even going as far as to threaten trouble for our country if these measures are not taken. Our President cannot continue to ignore these voices.

    President Buhari has earned himself many sincere friends across Nigeria. A decent man like him who so sincerely despises corruption deserves our respect and support. Therefore those of us who respect and support him must urge him to muster the courage to do the best by our country. That will make us very proud indeed.

  • Gulliver’s Troubles

    Nigeria, unlike in recent years of plenty, is not ending the year 2015 with a bang but with a whimper.  Our economy is in doldrums not because of what the present government has done or not done but because of years of lack of planning and foresight. President Muhammad Buhari in this regard is twice unlucky. When he first came as head of state in 1983, the government before him had so mismanaged the economy that we were down to barter trade and extreme rationing of foreign exchange. The Shagari and Jonathan governments shared the unenviable records of rampant corruption, irresponsibility and squander-mania that one can say they were two sides of the same coin. If these two governments had not been changed and had been allowed to continue in their corrupt ways, there would have been a break down of law and order if not an outright revolution. The mind-boggling revelation of the corruption in the Jonathan government bears an uncanny similarity with that of the Shagari government that one will be pardoned if one were to say history has repeated itself. This raises in my mind a philosophical question whether people learn at all from history. This is why we say when history repeats itself it is a tragedy. Those found guilty during the first Buhari administration were dealt with severely only for Babangida to come and pardon them and returned their loot to them. Some of them are again involved in the present tragedy. The economy in the homeland has run aground and the international economic situation is not favourable to a quick fix unless a major war was to break out in the Middle East. May God forbid. We therefore must embark on quick restructuring of the economy. There is too much money being spent everywhere on administrative overhead. There are too many states, too many legislators at federal, state and the 774 local government levels. This is the time to begin to think of a unicameral federal legislature as well as part-time legislators at all levels of democratic representation. We have gotten used to eating fatted meat that it will be difficult cutting out the fat from the meat. But in our own interest and for our health, we must cut out the fat from our flabby institutions. This will not be easy and it will come with a lot of pain. Like necessary surgery we must do it to save ourselves. Anything that can be done to reverse the present situation at all levels of government where recurrent expenditure is double that of capital expenditure must be done. This will involve government stepping on the toes of vested interests. Government also has to ask all those who have embezzled state funds to disgorge and vomit them before being sent to jail. Any thing short of this will not send the right message and lesson. I have a feeling that this is our last chance in this country to get our trajectory right.

    Any government doing the right thing by the people will not be popular with entrenched interest of those who want to have wealth without sweat. The government must therefore secure itself from those who would want to violently change it.

    Survival is the first law of nature. Governments are instituted for the good of the people but there are evil men out there who want to continue ruining this country and we must not allow them. Some of these people will hide under religious movements of all types to destabilize the state. We have enough trouble with Boko Haram. Others will hide under the camouflage of ethnic associations agitating for one thing or the other. Others may come in form of trade unionism, whatever the hue and colour in which they may come they must be engaged in dialogue and persuasion. Any reasonable person in this country must know that the economic problem facing us is global. During the years of plenty, we neither saved nor prepared for a rainy and lean day and years. We ate our fruits with the seeds.

    But honestly speaking we are not in the worst situation in Africa or the world. Of course we are impatient as a people and giving to whining and complaining. Whatever we are facing right now is our collective fault and we must face the problem together and not give the people the feeling of a quick solution to a problem that has been festering for years. The solid minerals exploitation touted as a way out of our economic problem will take time. We have to find investors ready to participate in their exploitation. We also have to ensure there is market for them. Whatever solid minerals available must be commercially plentiful that they will last years and exploiting them must be environmentally sustainable. I believe that there is enough study done by our department of geological surveys to determine which of our solid minerals the world may want.

    I read what the Minister of Information and Culture was reported to have said about tourism sector replacing the dwindling fortune of gas and crude oil exports. I just laughed. I want to remind the Honourable Minister, Alhaji Lai Muhammad what Chief Obafemi Awolowo said while running for president in 1979 that if he won the first thing he would do will be to ban importation of used clothes, stork fish and close down the tourism board. He correctly stated that only a mad person will come as a tourist to Nigeria. It is not that we do not have things people will be curious about, but where is the infrastructure for tourism? No roads, no railways, no light, no water, no security! We need first to put in place necessary things first before inviting the whole world to come for a visit. I agree no country is perfect and our short-coming may be due to our size and huge population. As Chief Awolowo continued there may be people who have enjoyed themselves so much that they may want to experience suffering in Nigeria. We cannot bank on suffer-heads coming as tourists to Nigeria as a basis on which to build an enduring economy.

    All is not lost. We must all be ready to work harder and be patriotic asking not what our country can do for us but what we can do for our country remembering what J.F. Kennedy told his American compatriots in 1961. We must go back to agriculture, not the cutlass and hoe kind but mechanized agriculture. Government will have to buy ploughs and rent these out to farmers and encourage young people to go into farming. All textile mills in the country should be resuscitated. This will allow us to export textile products to the USA under the rubric of African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) which other African countries have enjoyed while we were drunk on oil. The cotton for these textile mills must be home grown cotton. We must rehabilitate all tree crops like cocoa, rubber, palm oil, shea butter, and gum Arabic. We must also encourage massive growing of soya beans, groundnuts, maize, yams and cassava.  All schools like in my youthful years must have farms for practical agriculture.  We must not sink money into the bottomless hole of wheat production. We tried it during the Shagari and Babangida years with abject failure. We must go back to nature for sustenance. It is as simple as that. We must support animal husbandry through ranching and encouragement of our pastoralists to settle.

    There is so much to do that there is no time to waste. There are enough patriots all over this country that there is need to harness their ideas and efforts for purpose of production without being bogged down by innumerable meetings. We must get cracking so to say. In all these government must carry the people along including sensible members of the opposition who appreciate the predicament in which we find ourselves. Communication is very important. All ministers must give accounts of what they are doing through regular press conferences. The intelligentsia, that critical mass in the society must be carried along through periodic lectures by ministers in tertiary institutions. All Nigerians must pay taxes and they must be told what their taxes are going to be used for. In all these government must be accountable to the people. This is the only way we are going to get out of this quagmire. God will make a way where there seems to be no way. Happy New Year Nigeria.

  • President Buhari’s courageous budget

    President Buhari’s courageous budget

    Last week, on Tuesday, December 22, President Muhammadu Buhari presented his government’s budget estimates and proposals for FY 2016 to the National Assembly. In view of the falling revenues from oil and non-oil sources this year, it is a bold budget. The Federal Government intends to spend N6.08tr in the fiscal year, of which N1.84tr (more than 30 per cent of the budget) will need to be borrowed from internal and external sources. The FG is optimistic it can cover the deficit. As the president observed in his budget speech at the National Assembly, the budget deficit, though huge, is equivalent to less than three per cent of Nigeria’s GDP. But it will take our overall debt profile to 14 per cent of the GDP. This is well within the acceptable threshold of debt to GDP ratio.

    As it was his first after his election as president the budget was eagerly awaited by the public to see how the promised changes in the country would be reflected in it. Fiscal year 2015 had been quite bad for the domestic economy. It is estimated that the growth rate which had averaged seven per cent before 2014 dropped to less than five per cent this year. Revenue from oil exports fell sharply by nearly 70 per cent. In the course of the year, the FG resorted to huge deficit financing to the tune of about N1.5tr to keep the economy going. Twice, the outgoing PDP and the new APC federal government had to borrow from the CBN to pay salaries and pensions. Only a month ago the new APC federal government secured the approval of the National Assembly for a supplementary budget of N500bn. And last week the Finance Minister announced that funds available for sharing by the three tiers of government in November fell by N132bn from the previous month. The ECA has been virtually depleted. The SWF and the limited foreign reserves are facing pressures.

    Revenue/Expenditure Profile

    Revenue projection of the FG in 2016 is N3.86tr, a little over half of the proposed budget of N6.08tr. The FG intends to finance the deficit by a combination of domestic borrowing of N984bn and foreign borrowing of N900bn totalling N1.8tr. In both cases, it is going to be tough financing such a huge deficit. The crude oil benchmark is $38 per barrel but the price of oil in the global market has dropped to $32 per barrel. There is some expectation in official quarters that the oil price will rebound next year, but this is by no means certain. On account of this, the projected revenue from oil in 2016 is only N820bn. Non-oil revenues from Company Income Tax, VAT and Customs and Excise is expected to yield N1.45tr.

    On the expenditure side, the budget provides N1.8tr for capital projects, an increase of N557bn on the 2015 budget. The balance of N5tr will be accounted for by recurrent expenditure, still rising despite the government’s efforts to reduce the cost of governance. There is a special intervention fund of N200bn to take care of the government’s phased social welfare programme.

    A mildly reflationary budget

    The proposed FG budget did not elicit much surprise as it was, basically, a modestly reflationary budget, intended to give the spluttering domestic economy a short in the arm, Although many commentators thought it to be the biggest FG budget ever, it is not quite so. In 2014, the PDP federal government planned a bigger budget. It was forced to scale back the budget by prevailing economic realities. Its projected revenue was given as N7.33tr. In the current year it was N6.83tr. But there was a loss of some N1.5tr in revenue in the course of the year. The actual FG expenditure in the current year, including the deficit financing of some N1.5tr, is quite close to the budget proposals of N6.08tr for 2016. In spite of the fall in oil revenues the government recognised the need to increase public expenditure to stop the economy from going into outright recession. It was already stagnating. The approach of the new FG to the 2016 budget is neo-Keynesian. It is bold and it involves spending more to keep the economy afloat, even if it means a huge deficit financing, essentially more borrowing from domestic and foreign sources. The alternative to this mildly expansionist budget is slower growth, if any.

    However, some questions need to be asked regarding revenue projections. The obvious sources of additional revenues are company tax, customs duties and taxes, all of which are projected to rise in FY 2016. But I think that, in present circumstances, the optimism regarding revenue increases from those sources may prove illusory. In the case of customs duty, the prohibition placed on some imports will negatively affect total revenue from that source. This is one of the reasons that tariff increases are considered preferable to outright bans. In the case of taxes, revenue from company tax is unlikely to increase by much, if at all, as the manufacturing industry has slowed down in the last two years. With regard to VAT, an increase from five per cent to 10 per cent, will not lead to a significant addition to the national revenue as income from VAT represents an insignificant part of the total national revenue. An increase in VAT could also lead to a reduction in consumption and tax derived from it.

    Again, it was thought that savings from a reduction in the cost of governance would release additional funds for spending. Here, the savings will not be much as there are still 37 ministers. Though a commendable achievement, the reduction of federal ministries from 36 to 27 will not lead to much savings. The federal bureaucracy remains unduly large and President Buhari, understandably, does not want to stir up political and ethnic crises by applying a severe cut in the federal bureaucracy. A merger of some federal agencies is on the cards. While this has become necessary it may not lead to much savings. It was argued that privatisation of some public enterprises would reduce the cost of governance. It should have, but it has not as new FG agencies were started again.

    The Oil Subsidy

    Although President Buhari has carefully refrained from announcing the end of the so-called oil subsidy, it appears he has been finally persuaded that it is time for it to go. It is no longer financially sustainable. There is no explicit provision for it in budget 2016. Nearly 30 per cent of the total FG budget (some N1.5tr annually) was being spent on this subsidy. Even after the fall of global oil prices, the oil importers were still claiming subsidies on their oil imports. For instance, the price of diesel, long deregulated, at the gas stations has fallen by over 30 per cent. But not so oil. This shows clearly that the so-called oil subsidy was a massive fraud. Some of the fortunes made by the oil importers almost certainly found their way into the PDP electoral war chest.

    If a rigorous audit of the NNPC, a cesspool of corruption and theft, is done, it will be discovered that these oil importers were some of the biggest financial donors to the PDP in the recent presidential and general elections. If the subsidy is finally removed, there will be savings of some N1.5tr. This will substantially reduce the huge budget deficit of the federal government. It might not need to borrow more than N500bn in the next financial year. In fact, what the FG should do is to place oil imports on open licence. With competition among the importers the price of fuel in Nigeria will fall rapidly and significantly. It will then be seen clearly how, over the years, the nation has been massively defrauded by its oil importers.

    Sectoral Allocations of the Budget

    It is in the sectoral allocations of the budget that one can see a lot of bold initiatives by the Buhari APC federal government. Power, Works and Housing get a hefty N433.4bn, the highest ever. Considering Nigeria’s huge infrastructure deficit, this allocation is commendable. But though quite capable, many think that the Minister, former Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, is being overloaded with responsibilities for three key economic sectors. It is better for him to handle power alone, the most critical of the three sectors, while an additional minister is appointed for Works and Housing.

    Both Education (N369.6bn) and Health (N221.7bn) have also received reasonable allocations, while Transport will get N202bn, not unreasonable in our present difficult financial situation. However, it is doubtful that the continuing rehabilitation of the railways, the completion of the southern coastal road, the Lagos-Ibadan highway and the second Niger Bridge, can be fully addressed within these limited financial provisions for public transportation, unless it is the intention of the FG to resort to external borrowings for these huge capital projects. Alternatively, these projects may be included in the medium term plan and executed over five or more years. It is unlikely that foreign investors will show any interest in these giant projects, or lend funds for them. China and India have both been forced by the global economic slow down to cut back on their investments in Africa.

    Defence will get only N294bn. This is strange in view of the ongoing insurgency and other internal threats to the security of our nation. However, interior/police will get N145bn. When added to the defence vote, this is as high as the vote for Power, Works and Housing. It is also possible that the new APC federal government has found ways of increasing defence spending in the current fiscal year, including the $1bn it had planned to raise abroad.

    The Proposed Welfare Package

    To redeem its electoral pledge, the APC federal government will introduce two new welfare packages next year. These are the feeding of school children once a day and a welfare payment of N5,000 per month to the poorest in our country. The cost of these has not been shown in the budget. But it is likely to be minimal. First, there are less than 100 federal secondary schools in the country. The programme will not extend to the states, some of which have similar programmes. Equally, the number of the poorest to benefit from the N5,000 per month largesse will be kept pretty low, far less than the 25 million originally planned. If not, the two commendable programmes will be unsustainable. The President also deserves commendation for his plan to recruit some 500,000 university graduates as teachers in federal institutions. This will have a positive impact on the situation of mass unemployment that is a source of concern in our country, as it has the potential of fuelling social conflict.

    Altogether, this is a courageous budget reflecting official concern for the poor in our country. It points the way to the development of a more compassionate society. As usual, the implementation of the budget will be difficult, as there will be some major constraints, one of which is that Nigeria does not yet have the executive capacity for such a huge budget. Some aspects of the budget, such as the removal of oil subsidy will be resisted by Labour, which is also asking for an increase in the minimum wage. The government has to find a way of mollifying Labour on these issues to avert damaging industrial disputes and strikes in the country.

  • President Buhari, beasts of ‘Naija’ etc…

    Another year gone; let us begin to intuit its truths. Are we different from what we signified and who we were? We have President Muhammadu Buhari. He is the shining beacon of our hope. With Buhari, we hope to cross our threshold of tragedy, death and plunder, come 2016.

    Until then, our roads will remain cratered and ditched with death. Our youths will remain unemployable and bereft of hope. Our hospitals will remain corridors of death. Are our schools functioning yet? Are our lawmakers mature now? Has the executive grown in wisdom, the judiciary too? Have we wizened with age and grief as a people?

    Change is here, and at its dawn we encounter truth as we hardly knew it. What really is the tenor of the truth? Our truths? Shall we continue to weep like the fanatic, over our dying dreams and the faded fantasies we struggle to forget? Shall we begin to rejoice despite all odds, in spite of misery and death; our lives’ constant staple?

    There is not yet a Nigeria of defined, stable boundaries, and economies. There is not yet a sense of shared destiny save our unity of the downtrodden and the damned. The most prescient portrait of the Nigerian character and our ultimate fate as a nation shamefully played out over the last few months and in the last few days. It plays out even as you read; the persistent fuel scarcity and outrageous hike in pump price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), reveals our murderous obsessions, violent impulses, moral bankruptcy, our hubris and inevitable self-destruction.

    The tiresome avarice and predatory lust that drove proprietorships of filling stations nationwide to hike fuel price from N87 to N500 per litre at the twilight of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s regime recalls very sadly to mind, that violence of the wild that holds motionless for endless hours, the kidnapper in his lair, the assassin in his ambuscade and the public officer in his plunderous perch – this violence belongs primarily to the predator while it hunts its prey.

    In the last few days, of his administration, it manifested in uncontrollable spasms that saw us brutalise the helpless and enable our worst. As the fuel scarcity persisted, Nigeria gradually sputtered to a standstill, businesses shut down, banks cut short their work hours to midday, families starved – particularly those whose livelihoods depended on daily use of PMS- and the queues got longer like photographs of civil death in our homegrown dystopia.

    It became clearer at some level that Nigeria was gradually hitting rock bottom, many of us groaned that we were damned—just as some of us know that our citizenship culture founded on a national enterprise that survives on  corporate greed, limitless exploitation and the continued extraction of crude oil is doomed.

    The most frightening facets of the horror story unfolded in our filling stations and spilled over to our streets and neighbourhood mini-marts, utility service providers and  grocery stores. As fuel station managers hoarded fuel and closed shop in desperate bid to make a killing by selling it at outrageous prices to helpless motorists and folk whose survival depended on it, the neighbour next door on whom several families and businesses depended for supply of certain crucial products like cooking gas, kerosene, engine oil and so on, joyously inflated prices of the essential products, to the chagrin and discomfort of patrons in need.

    Consider for instance, the case of a notable pastor and gas dealer in Agege; the family promptly closed shop and hoarded gas for two days even as neighbours and friends thronged their doorstep pleading with them to resume business and sell gas to them. Of course, they did after effecting a hike in price of the product. The ‘godly’ family dispassionately sold gas to friends and neighbours at N6, 000 per gas bottle. That was an astonishing hike from the product’s initial N3, 000 price before the fuel scarcity.

    Friends and neighbours of the family grumbled under their breath as they paid for the product; those that couldn’t recoiled to seek kerosene, accusing the pastor and his family for their ‘lack of sensitivity,’ ‘amorality’ and fraudulent claims to godliness. Of course, pastor and wife responded in kind, claiming that they were duty bound to separate business from holiness. “Na holiness we go chop?” said the pastor. The latter, a Lagos State civil servant erstwhile paraded himself as a noble businessman and compassionate ‘man of God.’

    There is little difference between the family’s bestiality and the savagery of the ruling class and fuel station managers who accentuated the scarcity by hoarding fuel in order to sell it at N500 a litre. While their variously savage peers may advance arguments to support their monstrosity citing certain dreadful norms of commerce and industry, it need be told and understood that it is desperate, savage acts like theirs that ruins nations and enable the perpetual dominance of the haves over the have-nots.

    A similar malady manifests even as you read as fuel station managers persistently hoard fuel to sell at higher pump prices despite President Buhari’s directive that PMS pump price remain at N87 per litre.

    What is happening in Nigeria is a precursor to a dreadful war between the country’s elites and the impoverished, a war caused by diminishing resources, chronic unemployment and underemployment, overpopulation, declining crop yields caused by climate change, and rising food prices; capital and operating costs belie hope and prosperity for industry. The unfolding doom has nuances, put precisely, it has a thousand meanings.

    A recent Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report generated ripples over its summations on Nigeria. No thanks to the Economist magazine’s sister publication, the Nigerian newborn may arrive knowing he has come where the sun dies everlastingly for the bliss of the fig. The EIU report ranks Nigeria 80th out of 80 countries assessed in its ‘Where-to-be-born’ index.

    The 2014 Human Development Index (HDI) report ranked Nigeria amongst countries with low development index at 153 out of 186 countries that were ranked. Life expectancy in the country is placed at 52 years old while other health indicators reveal that only 1.9 per cent of the nation’s budget is expended on health; 68.0 per cent of Nigerians are stated to be living below $1.25 daily while adult illiteracy rate for adult (both sexes) is 61.3 per cent.

    ”As the population is growing, the resources that we all depend on, the food, energy, water, is declining. The demand for these resources will rise exponentially by the year 2030, with the world needing about 50 per cent more food, 45 per cent more energy and 30 per cent more water,” noted Dr. Aisha Mahmood of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

    She said: “In Nigeria, there is the issue of youth and employment; 70 per cent of the 80 million youths in Nigeria are either unemployed or underemployed. We are all witness to what happened recently during the immigration recruitment exercise and this is simply because 80 per cent of the Nigerian youth are unemployed.”

    This will inevitably lead to a class war as the deprivation of the working class will eventually morph into violence. In the background, a severe and scarier grotesqueness emerges; it is the acquiescence of presumably humane folk to the bemusement of prosperity. This blunts the sense, inflates the ego and inspires disdain for the less privileged. It is the affliction of the ruling class, fuel station managers and the gas-dealing pastor and his family.

  • New face of Nigerian press

    The Nigeria press played an important role in the socio-economic and political emancipation of our nation. It was not an accident that our foremost nationalists as well as our founding fathers were newspaper publishers or practising journalists. Unfortunately the press, like most state institutions the military touched, has been brought to disrepute. Its independence and vibrancy were first undermined by the takeover of the Daily Times and New Nigeria by Murtala Mohammed/Obasanjo regime in 1975. The emergence of Babangida in 1995 with his liberalisation of the ownership of broadcast media heralded new breed publishers and broadcasting media owners who depended on government support to establish their outfits or its patronage to survive in a competitive business environment. Thus the post-Babangida’s emergent press became not just friend of those in government whose activities it was constitutionally empowered to monitor, but an instrument with which the ‘chop I chop’ ideology of the ruling clique was imposed on the nation. They aggressively sold Babangida’s economic policy that allowed for the sharing of our national assets by a few privileged members of the ruling clique claiming there was no alternative to SAP and for his fraudulent eight years of ‘transition without end’,  crowned him the ‘Prince of the Lower Niger’.

    And when PDP finally  hijacked power from Babangida and Abacha’s ‘Nigerian army of anything is possible’ in 1999, a section of the press ceased being ‘an impartial and objective free market place of ideas’ as it was in the pre- and post-independence years to become  an instrument  for spreading PDP’s warped views to legitimize its holds on power. Sadly, in the months leading to the 2015 election, it degenerated into an instrument for the subjugation of helpless and oppressed Nigerians yearning for change.

    Long before the last haul of N2.1billion by Raymond Dokpesi purportedly for publicity and promotional services rendered to Jonathan by his AIT that is often in arrears in payment of salaries to workers, AIT had been close to all past successive governments. And long before Obaigbena’s haul of N670m (N120 reserved for NPAN), he had always been available for use by past successive governments. Shortly after the 1993 election, it was daring Nduka Obaigbena that was first sent out by Babangida to test the waters by appearing on CNN to canvass for the cancellation of the election on the ground that MKO Abiola voted wearing a dress with SDP logo. The editorial policy of his paper and his marketing strategies since 1999 seem geared towards the exploitation and promotion of the greed of the Nigerian ruling class. Towards this, he pioneered printing in colour to celebrate beauty and splendour. This influenced the consumption pattern of the masses while promoting the greed of those who control the material resources. His NPAN members soon joined him in the scramble for a share of the colour advertising media campaign appropriations.

    And to promote the views of those in power, Obaigbena did the unthinkable. He traded off the back page, a traditional major news page, with opinion write ups reflective of the prevailing ideology, first of Babangida and his Aso Rock professors and later of PDP. And in what many of his critics described as contempt for readers, he traded off pages two and three, major news pages for advertisements. And finally as if to validate  Karl Marx’s thesis that those who own material resources also control our thoughts,  Obaaigbena sold off his mast head for what he creatively called ‘wrap around’ . Thus both the front and back pages of the his paper are occasionally taken over by banks, politicians and others who are ready to part with millions in order to impose their views no matter how warped on the helpless readers. Obaigbena’s initial objectionable creative innovations soon became a fad even among serious newspapers that lay claim to setting agenda for society,

    Then business savvy Obaigbena graduated into giving of ‘awards of excellence’ to dubious bankers willing to pay for them. Obaigbena was smiling to the banks as banks chief executives were falling over each other to receive his media awards.  It was not long when other NPAN member envious of his good fortunes joined him. Two of his most decorated awardees, Erasmus Akingbola of Intercontinental Bank and Cecelia Ibru’s of Oceanic soon ran into troubled waters with the banking regulatory agencies. The former was found guilty of mismanagement of depositors funds and ordered to pay about 600 pounds sterling to the new owners of his former bank while the later was similarly found guilty and jailed for similar offence by a Nigerian court.

    From the banking sector, Obaigbena carried his award crusade to   serving governors. But as it also turned out, many of the governors who received his awards were later found to be men with feet of clay with some of them serving jail terms in Nigeria and abroad for financial malfeasances.

    Then Obaigbena came up with what is at best described as the ‘father’ of all awards titled ‘Life Time Achievement Award. Covered in this category were all who  grumbled in private about being  outwitted in their business transactions with Obaigbena, bankers who accepted his ingenious business  proposal of stationing banks staff on his premises to directly collect advertisement revenue to defray ‘serviceable loans’. Even some of his respected NPAN senior colleagues who had been critical of his unorthodox approaches were listed as awardees. Also on the list were captains of industries without industries, fuel subsidy fraudsters and prosperity prophets specialising in sales of grace. Obaigbena did not forget to fly in Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of Britain who has credibility deficit back home to preside over the presentation of Life Achievement awards to his chosen Nigerian achievers.

    AS NPAN president, the ‘Obaigbenisation’ of the Nigerian Press is complete. This has been reinforced by his personal negotiation of N670m of ‘Dasuikigate’s slush fund which he channelled through his Hydrocarbons energy Consulting firm. To ensure everyone is tarred with the same brush, he even collected on behalf of protesting NPAN members such as The Punch and The Guardian that insisted they never filed demand claims.

    I believe the place of Obaigbena in the development of the Nigeria press between 1995 and 2015 is assured. It is not threatened by virtue of being a recipient N670m of Dazukigate’s $2.2m slush fund. For betraying the trust of the people, it is ex President Jonathan, his Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala   and the CBN which ferried $47m cash in 11 boxes to Dasuki’s office in one night and Sambo Dasuki the ‘piggy bank’ who will face harsh judgment of history.

  • A staple’s apotheosis

    A staple’s apotheosis

    I really do not know how it attained its culinary deification, revered by all (rich, poor, young, old, men and women), including the super rich, who have extracted from it a multi-billion naira business that oils the economy, creating thousands of jobs, and mischievous politicians, who have found in it a formidable battle-axe to be pressed into service for vote harvesting. So strange.

    But, the apotheosis of its prestige is its pre-eminence as a metaphor for all that ails Nigeria, especially corruption and its corollary of hunger, poverty and underdevelopment.

    From an ordinary staple consumed in many homes at Christmas and during other festivities, rice has risen to be a magical delicacy with intercontinental connections and a strong tantalising aroma wherever it is served.

    In Nigeria, the Chinese have packaged it as their flagship menu – fried and coloured, with shrimps or prawns, ham and fried fish, dished in fine china and christened Yangchow Fried Rice – in a manner that only the rich can afford a bite, unlike what obtains overseas where it is available for all. In other words, rice is a status symbol, depending on how it is prepared, the chef who does the job and where it is served as well as other factors, such as the drink. Champagne, red wine and soft drink or just water, “pure” water and bottled water.

    How the late “strongman” of Ibadan politics, the redoubtable Lamidi Adedibu, did not stumble on the efficacy of rice as a crowd puller, attracting people as bees to honey, remains curious. He got them at his Molete redoubt with “amala, ewedu and gbegiri”, no doubt, but how could that have compared to the mammoth crowds now on queues all over the place, waiting to be handed some bags of the stuff?

    One can see that glint of pleasure in the eyes of Adedibu (you sure remember him) as his electoral battle formula becomes a major feature in government houses, now with an elegant and scholarly name, Stomach Infrastructure.

    A colleague has just recalled how a governor at Yuletide last year personally handed some poor residents small bags of rice and some chicken, which many  observed were not mature enough to be consumed. His Excellency, a seemingly humble man who many believe is rude and uncouth, promised to start breeding the chicks early enough for this Christmas. But, rather than encourage the governor, some of the residents- a few ingrates, among them those who often remind him that he was on trial for allegedly defrauding the state of N1.3b  in a doomed poultry project, have started grumbling that instead of the rice and chicken they were promised, they have been getting taxes and levies.

    There have been suggestions that the cash that parties and their candidates can spend should be regulated. Never a thought on how many bags of rice a candidate can deploy at any time.

    The story is told on the Internet of two university students from Ghana and Nigeria who were suspended in the UK over Jollof Rice origin fight. They had a fight which ended with one of them going home with two broken teeth—and a red eye.

    “Tracy Osei Assibey from Ghana and Lateefah Oyedepo shared an apartment’s kitchen. Lateefah was cooking her jollof rice when Tracy commented that she was doing it the wrong way and that she shouldn’t use the fat grain easy cook rice.

    “Lateefah then replied that how Nigerians cook jollof is the right way since Ghanaians stole jollof rice from them, adding that Ghanaian jollof rice tastes disgusting compared to the big Nigerian rice.

    “That’s how it started”, the BBC says. Things got heated and soon the two students started pulling each other’s weaves, followed by heavy punches.

    “For about two-and-half hours, the students fought each other and descended downstairs from their fifth floor apartment with the fight – until one of the college’s lecturers from Sierra Leone, Mrs. Adelaide Walters, jumped in-between them to pull them apart.

    “At a disciplinary meeting which led to their suspension, Mrs. Adelaide Walters, who was present as a witness to the fight, stated that it was absurd for two students who would possibly become future leaders to fight over the origin and cooking of jollof rice – especially when both of them are wrong about the origin and cooking method.

    “Mrs Walters indicated to the hearing board that jollof rice originates from her country, Sierra Leone and the way both Ghanaians and Nigerians cook it is wrong but she does not go about fighting anyone.

    “The third year students have been suspended indefinitely by the university.”

    Ah! The power of rice.

    Even before some Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chiefs confessed that they actually got some of the huge cash hauled out of the Central Bank to the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), ostensibly for arms purchase, and diverted it into former President Goodluck Jonathan’s failed second term bid, there had been all manner of postulations, chief among which was that the money went into   purchasing (what else) rice for would-be voters.

    There have been many figures bandied about by various analysts – $2b, N2.1b, $30,000 and N100m – as part of what is now known as the arms cash bazaar. A cynical fellow swore the other day that a big percentage of the cash must have gone into arms (o sorry, an error there, rice) purchase. He would like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to probe how much of this cash went into ferrying rice and kerosene into vulnerable states to oil the PDP’s vote harvesting machines. The anti-graft agency, sources have said, may  consider this novel suggestion and invite some auditing giants to join its investigations so as to determine exactly how much of the cash went into rice purchase.

    A renowned professor of sociology, I am told, is seeking a grant to launch a research into how our politicians have parlayed a common staple into a reliable electoral weapon that never fails to deliver the votes. The title of this work, which sources familiar with the proposal believe will shake the intellectual world, is “Changes in political dynamics: A comprehensive inquiry into the role of rice in the psychological mechanism of voting in a democracy. The case of Nigeria.”

    How much rice do we consume? Our statisticians are yet to resolve this puzzle. The Central Bank said in 2014 that Nigeria spent N800b to import rice. Many are talking about fuel subsidy. Only a few care about rice subsidy, yet it costs billions in hard currency to ensure that our favourite food never fails to appear on the dining table.

    The story is told of how some companies allegedly planned and executed a N117b rice import fraud, a charge against which they have been defending their integrity, insisting that all they did was a legitimate business. They got waivers to import rice at 10 % duty, but they allegedly overshot their quotas and the Customs Service insisted that they must pay the duty for the difference. Stalemate.

    The Senate has stepped in to resolve the logjam. Can it? Many do not think so. Why? A key member of the committee set up to find out the truth is said to be the owner of a company that was a major beneficiary of the rice duty waiver jamboree.

    While all this was going on, the Customs Service suddenly stumbled on a formula to fight rice smuggling and boost its revenue. It threw open the borders and rice flooded in – as  if from a river that tore through its banks – from the Republic of Benin and other neighbouring countries. Last week, the Service announced gleefully that it had been vindicated by its action because it earned N1.1b in two months.

    Great idea. Why not open the border for other commodities, such as tissue paper, lipsticks, toothpicks, bathroom slippers, plastic buckets, used clothes, used shoes, body lotion, vegetable oil, wines and fruits so that we can earn more money?

    To those who have invested a fortune in rice growing and milling, it has been a nightmare. They feel stabbed in the back by a government that encouraged them to shell out hefty sums to set up rice businesses that, in their view, are now being undermined. Their logic is that if cheap rice from neighbouring countries floods Nigeria, the competition will be unfair to local investors who may eventually close shop and send their workers home.

    Doctors have done their best to make us reduce our rice consumption. They say the magical grain is starchy and not good for our health – pot belly, fat and all that. Nobody seems to be listening. Didn’t they say so of good old pounded yam?

    Rice has refused to be blackmailed. The local stuff from Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, Igbemo, Ekiti State and others, many connoisseurs insist, are healthier than the Thai brands and others, such as Mama Gold, Basmati, Caprice and Uncle Ben’s.

    It is Christmas again. Suddenly, the rice flood is here. Prisons, orphanages, old people’s homes and offices are getting piles and piles of the stuff. We will all have a mouthful.

    Merry Xmas.

  • Look out!

    Something historically mighty is happening on the border between Nigeria and Benin Republic in the area of Kwara State. Like most of the borders created by European founders of Africa’s modern countries, the Nigeria-Benin border here splits an ancient African people into two, one half in Nigeria and the other in Benin. What is happening now is that the people themselves, the Bariba, are slowly erasing the colonial boundary and re-unifying themselves as one people. In the process, the Nigeria-Benin border is reported to have moved – and to be moving – eastwards in favour of Benin and against Nigeria, and as many as 16 villagesare reported to have changed from being part of Nigeria to being part of Benin Republic. And all of this is happening peacefully, almost imperceptibly. As far as is known, this is a first in Sub-Saharan Africa.

    It raises the big question: Is this a beginning of a trend in the future of the countries which European imperialist agents bequeathed to us in Africa? Could a time come when the political map of Sub-Saharan Africa would undergo massive redrawing?

    As a result of the largely irrational borders created by imperialist agents all over Africa, practically all Sub-Saharan African countries were faced immediately at independence by serious border problems. For instance, take Nigeria, Africa’s largest country in population and third largest in territorial size at independence. Hardly any one mile of Nigeria’s thousands of miles of borders stands free of serious, and potentially explosive, border conflicts. In its south-western length, it cuts through the homeland of the Yoruba; further north from there, it cuts through the homeland of the Bariba; in the north-west, through the country of the Hausa; in the north-east through the country of the Kanuri and related peoples; in the south-east through the homelands of peoples who straddle the Nigerian-Cameroons border in the Adamawa Mountains and the Cross River swamps. Naturally, since independence, Nigeria has more or less regularly had one border problem or other. The most publicized of such problems has been the dispute with the Cameroons over the Bakassi Peninsula. This dispute started soon after independence, was occasionally marked by armed conflicts, and sometimes threatened outright war between the two countries. It was resolved in 2006 as a result of intensive mediation by the United Nations. Even after that, significant residues of the bad blood have continued to linger. Even as recently as the first months of 2010, there were reports that Nigeria might send, or was sending, troops to the area because of seriously deteriorating security conditions for Nigerians living there.

    Though the Bakassi situation has attracted the most attention in the world, it has by no means been the only cause of dispute between Nigeria and the Cameroons. All along their 1,600 miles of border from Lake Chad in the north to the Gulf of Guinea in the south, Nigeria and the Cameroons have been locked in disputes since the 1960’s. Indeed, but for Nigeria’s intimidating size and influence in African affairs, the comparative weakness of the countries that are her neighbours and her own cautious restraint in her attitudes to border uncertainties, Nigeria should be perpetually engulfed in destabilizing border storms.

    Most other African countries have not been that fortunate. In fact, border conflicts became such a great potential threat to peace in the new Africa in the first years of independence that the OAU had to pass a resolution in 1964 binding all African countries to agree to maintain the borders bequeathed to them by the colonial powers. Even though most members of the OAU subscribed to that resolution, many neighbours have never been able specifically to settle their border disputes.

    In eastern Africa, Somalia and Kenya have suffered from serious border difficulties since independence. In fact, the great crisis that destroyed all order and government in Somalia started with multiple border problems – especially with Kenya and with Ethiopia.  With a substantial ethnic Somali population inside the Kenyan border provinces, independent Somalia has never recognized the border with Kenya. As soon as Somalia became independent, she began actively to encourage ethnic Somali insurgency inside Kenya and Ethiopia. Her quest for military help for these border situations pushed her into an alliance with the Soviet Union. Receiving substantial military help from the Soviet Union, Somalia became deeply involved in the world-wide Cold War between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers, and that meant very influential enemies from among the Western powers. When a revolution came in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian revolutionary government became Soviet allies, Somalia more or less found herself abandoned by the Soviets – and the fragile political system of Somalia (of clans and clan leaders) fractured under the pressure, and then in 1991 totally collapsed. With the collapse of orderly government in Somalia, her border conflicts became more tense and more confused, producing serious complications with Kenya and then with Ethiopia, and forcing Ethiopia to send troops repeatedly into Somalia in order to keep peace there.

    While battling border troubles with Somalia, Kenya has also had to face border problems with Uganda and, to some extent, with Ethiopia and Sudan. The British took some trouble to demarcate the Kenyan-Ugandan border in 1926, and the two countries subscribed to the 1964 OAU resolution on the preservation of colonial borders. Even so, their border remains unsettled. On their land borders, conflicts are caused by irregular crossings from either side, especially by livestock herders. In the area known as Migingo, the dispute has been particularly intense. The border through Lake Victoria, where no agreed demarcations exist, is even more problematic. And so also is the uncertainty of the border in the Bukwa and Morumeri area where the three countries, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan (now South Sudan), have conflicting claims. The Kenyan-Ethiopian border has been comparatively peaceful, but it too is occasionally disturbed by conflicting claims of pastoralist communities from both sides. A stretch of territory known as the Elemi Triangle, administered by Kenya, is claimed by Sudan and partly also by Ethiopia. This region of Africa is also the scene of one of the worst inter-state wars on the continent – the war over a disputed border between Ethiopia and Eritrea. For two years, 1998-2000, this border war reached a peak. In 2000, negotiations produced a settlement, but in spite of that, tension has continued between the two countries. An estimated 70,000 people have lost their lives in these hostilities.

    In summary, the border problems confronting our countries in Black Africa are very serious. And they are not our only fundamental political problems. The same irrational actions of the European colonizers that produced these tortuous border problems also produced for us countries that comprise many different nationalities with different political traditions and expectations, countries that are extremely difficult to manage and extremely difficult to make stable.

    Our tragedy as citizens of these wobbly countries with these trouble-prone borders is that we have never produced leaders who are capable of handling our fundamental problems with the needed amount of statesmanship. For virtually every Black African leader, the quest always is for power and more power. In Nigeria since independence, we have produced only the kind of leaders who seek to maximise power at the so-called federal centre – in a country where the obvious need is a policy of conscious respect for our nationalities and a constitutional arrangement guaranteeing a thoroughly rational federal structure. It is the same in virtually all other Black African countries. The result is that we Black Africans are citizens of countries that generate discord, conflicts and poverty, countries with very doubtful futures.

  • Clash of two wrongs

    Oh, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant – Shakespeare

    It is a well known fact that the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) otherwise known as Shi’ite has always treated Zaria, where it has its headquarters, as its fiefdom. The group rules the ancient town with iron fist. Members treat their leader, Sheikh Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, like royalty. His word is law and they are ready to lay down their lives for him.

    Many wear their faith like a cloak. Once you see such people you know  the faith they profess. I am not against being religious, but people should not allow their faith to get the better of them. No matter how religious we are, we should not lose our sense of reasoning. Let us be religious and reasonable at the same time in order not to hurt the feelings of others, who do not share our faith.

    According to the holy books, blessed is the servant that applies wisdom in his actions. This presupposes that we should not be overly religious because of the inherent danger. It is because of the atrocities that many cause in the name of God that Karl Marx described ‘’religion as the opium of the people’’.

    Let us face fact, many people misbehave when it comes to religion, notwithstanding their status. The big man will stay back and use the poor to fight his cause under the guise of religion. The poor, who know nothing about what the big man is using them to do, will go all out to execute the job in the name of God because they have been brainwashed that it is a religious cause. Since they believe that they are fighting for God they are ready to die and become  martyrs. But, martyrs are not made of such stuff. Martyrs are those who die in genuine pursuit of God’s work and not those helping their fellow man to keep his empire.

    What happened in Zaria, Kaduna State, on December 12 was avoidable if the self-styled Muslim Brothers as the Shi’ites refer to themselves and the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff had exercised restraint. But because they have become used to having their way in an area, which they have come to see as their territory, the Shi’ites insisted on defending their fort against what they perceived as an overbearing army. It was a little matter that led to unnecessary bloodbath. The army chief’s convoy wanted to pass through the sect’s domain on its way to the palace of the Emir of Zazzau en route the Army Depot for an official function.

    The sect, which was preparing for today’s celebration of Maulud Nabiyy (the Prophet’s birthday), reportedly refused the convoy passage. The Army Chief, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai, reportedly alighted from his vehicle to appeal to the sect members to remove the road blockade and let him pass. Other officers too were said to have joined their chief to plead with the Shi’ites. They reportedly stuck to their gun. But, the Shi’ites deny disallowing the army chief the use of the road. They claim that they did nothing to provoke the soldiers, who allegedly opened fire on them, killing many of their members.

    With these conflicting accounts, one does not know which to believe. Certainly, one of the parties is being economical with the truth. Be that as it may, the Shi’ites, as stated in Mohammed Haruna’s column of December 16, are known for denying top government officials the use of that road. Early this year before the March/April elections, they were said to have stopped immediate past Kaduna State Governor Ramalan Yero from passing through the road to visit a bereaved family. They reportedly asked the former governor and his entourage to disembark and walk to their destination.

    Enraged by their demand after all entreaties to convince them otherwise failed, one of Yero’s guards fired warning shots into the air. Since he knew what could follow, Yero rebuked his aide and submitted himself to the sect’s demand. Of course, the Shi’ites felt on top of the world that they could cut a governor to size. This might have got to their head and they felt that they could, in their own thinking, treat the army chief the same way. They forgot that khaki no be leather. You cannot deal with a soldier the way you deal with a civilian. And we are not talking about an ordinary soldier here – but the army chief. There was no need for the flexing of muscles between the soldiers and the Shi’ites; what was needed to resolve the matter was patience and understanding.

    The road in question is a public road and every Nigerian has a right to use it – whether a governor or not or whether an army chief or not. So, the Shi’ites cannot under the guise of their right to freedom of assembly block a road and stop the public from using it. If it were to be any other person that day, only God knows what  would have happened to him. Because let us face it, how many of us can face the Shi’ites when they decide to be unruly? If a then sitting governor can avoid their trouble by doing their bidding, is it lesser people like us that will challenge them? But this is not to say that the army was right in the way it reacted to the Shi’ites’ audacity. There is no way the Shi’ites can challenge the army to a fight. It will be foolhardy of the group to think that it can take on the army.

    This is why the army should have exercised restraint in the face of what it called extreme provocation by the sect. It should have known that whatever happens,  it will still carry the can at the end of the day. It would not have been cowardice if it did not react the way it did. Unfortunately, soldiers are not known to turn the other cheek when they are slapped. Whether it was provoked or not, many will still blame the army over this matter because it has all it takes to crush the Shi’ites.  For the army, it is a lose-lose situation. Why should a well trained army take on a ragtag bunch with no training at all in the art of warfare? The army may have a good case, but its handling of it was poor. Two wrongs, they say, do not make a right. Yes, the soldiers may have fought back in self defence, but the casualty figure paints a different picture.

    It is a picture of the kind of massacre that we witnessed in Odi (Bayelsa State) and Zaki Biam (Benue) in 1999 and 2001. The soldiers should learn how to apply their rules of engagement to avoid such calamities when dealing with civilians in future. For the Shi’ites, it is high time they reordered  their steps to avoid being seen as treating established authority and the public with contempt. May we not witness such incident again.

    Merry Christmas

    It is that time of the year when we send season’s greetings to our loved ones. It seemed like yesterday that we started the year and so soon, it is coming to an end. Christmas is tomorrow, but many will tell you that they have no reason to celebrate because they have no money. Yes, things are hard but that is not enough reason to give up on  life. Remember, there are some who do not even know it is Christmas. Also, spare a thought for the Chibok girls. Cheer up, despite the biting fuel scarcity; unstable power supply and the other ills plaguing our country. Merry Christmas.

  • Killing Lagos softly

    Some weeks ago I was in Lagos for an urgent business and I was shocked by the totally degraded environment of the city. This was at the height of a Saharan dust blowing across the whole of West Africa but it appeared more serious in Lagos because it was compounded by the smog hanging over the city. This smog was created by the exhaust from articulated trucks and petrol tankers evacuating petrol from the ports. The horrendous traffic snarl on the roads did not help. Vehicles remained on one spot for hours spewing carbon monoxide into the air. Added to this is the heavy human traffic in the town.

    These people have to be fed hence God knows how many pots were on open fire heating up the putrid air in the city and adding to the warming the city of 20milllion operating without the technological know how that would have been available to a city of this size in  a more civilized environment. While this was going on, many cities in China were faced with the same problem and city dwellers were shown covering their mouths and noses with protective gears. Of course in our own city of Lagos, people were breathing in this unsafe air totally oblivious of its consequences. There was no warning from government agencies and only God knows how many people suffering from respiratory diseases would have died.

    I can understand the bad smog in China with its 1.3billion people and its cities like Beijing and Shanghai of millions of people. But we should not be faced in Lagos with this kind of a killer of a smog I witnessed. This is the time when the federal government should insist that all vehicles plying the roads in our country must have catalytic converters to handle vehicular gas emission to at least purify the exhaust spewing out of the trucks, trailers and automobiles. The population movement to Lagos may have reached a tipping point when a solution would have to be found. Why can’t other ports be developed to diversify the ocean trade of Nigeria so that we do not put all our eggs in one basket? Between Lagos and Calabar are several ports crying to be developed to relieve Lagos of the unbearable and killing burden it is bearing. We must not ride a willing horse to death.

    It is unfortunate that all the plans to revive the railways in the past were clever plots to loot the national treasury, including as we are now told, loans taken from China which were deliberately diverted to other use to benefit the money-picking hands of political big-wigs in the recently defeated government of Goodluck Jonathan. If the railways were usable, the thousands of tankers and trucks on our roads and at the ports of Lagos would not have been necessary because heavy haulage in all civilized countries is done by rail. Imagine if we did not have the trucks and tankers on Lagos roads and ports, the place would have been saner.

    Those of us who grew up in Lagos remember how lovely Apapa  reservation area was in the old days being the other high-brow area apart from Ikoyi. This was before Victoria Island and of course Lekki. I know an in-law of mine who after working for many years in Saudi Arabia returned home and bought a property in Apapa. He is now regretting it because he is cut off  from all friends and relatives because no one in his correct sense will embark on a journey to visit anybody in Apapa no matter how much love one has for  such a relation. The vehicular madness in Lagos has made Apapa a no-go area. In December, most of Lagos roads are clogged with vehicles ostensibly those shopping for Christmas and the new year.

    The unloveable situation in Lagos is compounded by high rate of crime. The urchins known as area boys and those hawking all kinds of goods on the roads ranging from Asian junks to life chickens and other food stuffs use whatever they are hawking as a camouflage for robbery when it is dark after six o’clock in the evening. This has further reduced life in Lagos to hell on earth. The unavailability of electricity most of the time has led to everybody turning himself to power generating bodies. Virtually everybody generates his or her own power creating a nuisance in terms of noise and carbon emission.

    On top of this comes the religious houses of  some Christian and Muslim sects who compete with each other on who can make the loudest noise by the volume of their loud speakers. As soon as the Muslims finish their evening prayers, some Christian sects will drum through out the night and hand over to the Muslims who will wake  everybody up for their morning prayers.  Some of the Lagos people live in Ogun State but work in Lagos and even some who live in the outskirts of Lagos wake up as early as 4 a.m to hit the roads so that they can get to their offices at 8 a.m. The same people will not reach their homes until 11 p.m. It is a miracle that people do not go berserk and  kill others. The hardship in Lagos leads to  infidelity on  the part of husband and wife and lack of care and proper up bringing of children.

    Why does anybody subject himself or herself to this hell on earth? The answer is that there is no alternative. All the jobs are in Lagos. Rather than be jobless, up country people come to Lagos to die. I remember attending a conference of world cities when I was living in Germany. I proudly announced that I was from Lagos and that the city had over 10 million people. The mayor of Karlsruhe, a beautiful German city in the south of the country before I finished my introduction told me no African country can handle a city of that magnitude. I did not agree then but I now agree. The multitude of people in Lagos on the margin of society will help themselves and the Lagos government by returning home to their states where they will live a better life. When conditions for life in Lagos becomes impossible, the Lagos government supported by the federal government may do something drastic and dramatic before people kill Lagos .