The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

Global implication of Sino-Russia Entente cordiale

Last week, the president of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping who has been in power since March 14, 2013 and who has just been sworn in for another five years made a three day state visit to the Russian Federation. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin has been president, premier and again president since 2000-2008; premier 2008-2012, president 2012- to the present. He personally appointed Dmitry Medvedev president 2008 -2012, prime minister 2012- 2020, deputy chairman of the Security Council 2020 to the present. I state the above facts to show the kind of regimes the two leaders are heading without passing judgement. A country runs the system that best suits it and that guarantees its national interest and security.

China has a population of 1,412,360,000 that is roughly 1.4 billion. One would have said such a vast and populous country cannot effectively run a democratic system. But India with slightly more people runs a shambolic democracy of some kind. Russia has a population of 143,449,000 that is roughly 144 million people. China has a GDP of $17.73 trillion compared with the United States GDP of $ 23.32 trillion, whilst Japan has a GDP of $4.941 trillion and Russia has a GDP of $1.779 trillion.

I give these figures to give the relative sizes of the economies of the major powers of the world. But the economy is not the only yardstick of measuring global power. The United States and Russia have enough nuclear weapons, mostly intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMS) each, to bury the world twice over and China is not far behind them. A cynic once commented about the craziness of having nuclear weapons to bury the world twice over by saying once the world has been buried once there is no point doing it over again. Presumably, this folly made the nuclear powers to mutually decide to reduce the number of their nuclear warheads targeted against each other.

The coming together of China and the Russian federation does not pose an immediate challenge or danger to the world order. The Russian federation according to Putin was ready to champion the use of the Chinese currency, the Yuan as an alternative to the use of the USA dollar as an international currency of exchange. He also said many other countries are ready to join him in his crusade without mentioning those countries. Presumably, he has in mind the BRICS country of Brazil, Russia, India China and South Africa and other countries that may wish to follow them.

But this is such a fundamental question that it is not likely countries like India and Brazil and even China itself would precipitately jump into the use of another currency outside the dollar. It is unlikely that India would ever agree to use the Yuan instead of the dollar simply on the grounds of national pride. Chinese trade with the USA is 10 times its current trade with Russia and Russia does not have much to offer China apart from raw materials of hydrocarbons, other minerals and wheat.

The equally big economic bloc the European Union tried to build up the Euro as an alternative to the dollar when President Trump in 2017 unilaterally abrogated the joint nuclear treaty with Iran but it was not successful. Currently the USA economy is about 11% of the global economy and the use of the dollar has proved convenient over time that to abandon it will need to be carefully planned rather than as a result of a political rapprochement between two enemies of the United States.

Looking at Sino-Russian friendship over a long time, one is not too sure whether the friendship of convenience between a beleaguered Russia and a China fishing in troubled waters will endure. China’s relation with Russia has no solidity in history. Today Russia and China share approximately 4,300 kilometres long border. Not so long ago Sino-Soviet and Sino-Indian borders were hotly disputed and witnessed armed conflicts and bloody clashes like the Sino-Indian military conflict of 1962 and Sino-Soviet armed conflict of March 1969 over the Ussuri River Island, Damansky. The long border between them which are not clearly marked permits constant Chinese smugglers operating there leading to border incidents. This situation does not give much reason to predict eternal amity between the two nations.

Over time Russia may begin to resent the cheap price it sells hydrocarbons to China and even India as exploitation of Russia during her difficult relations with its European western neighbours because of its war in Ukraine. Russia needs China today to give it conventional weapons for use against NATO armed Ukraine because of the rapid use of its own weapons and munitions by its apparently poorly trained and led army in Eastern Ukraine. This desperation on the part of Putin has also led him to announce the deployment decision of tactical nuclear weapons in neighbouring Belarus, a decision that will be against the nuclear non-proliferation treaty of which Russia is a party to. It will be interesting to find out what China thinks about nuclear proliferation bearing in mind its possible embrace by South Korea and Japan its neighbours.

This nuclear move by Putin may be counter-productive because it could lead to revolt in Belarus because no country wants to be held a hostage to another country and the target of possible nuclear attack if Putin were to order attack on his enemies in the west which would have to reply in the same measure. In the new accord between China and Russia, what becomes of earlier Indo-Russian treaty of friendship and China’s support for Pakistan based on an earlier Chinese treaty of friendship with Pakistan. If these treaties are no longer in effect, what then becomes of the new Sino-Russian treaty when global situation changes? In other words how much emphasis can one really place on this current treaty if earlier ones are treated with levity?

Ordinarily there is nothing wrong in a Sino-Russian entente entered into with no ulterior motives by either side and also not directed at current enemies which by the dynamics of international politics may become allies tomorrow or a country with which a modus vivendi could be established to permit peaceful relations. There is no reason on earth why Russia cannot live in peace with the EU with which it shares a continent. The ties of trade may yet trump the expectation of military conflict between China and the USA. America may yet realise that a Hong Kong kind of deal between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China may be in the overall interest of the United States rather than involving itself in an unwinnable war with China over Taiwan which by history is a province of one undivided China. In any case, apart from the constant bellicose slogans in Beijing, there is no apparent move on the Chinese leadership to invade a 65 million thriving democracy of Chinese people with possible dire consequences and unpredictable results. If there was protracted and destructive war between China and Taiwan leading to the destruction of its thriving economy, the Peoples Republic of China would have to spend years and humongous resources to rebuild it. In other words invasion of Taiwan is not in the overall Chinese interest.

What has led to all these diplomatic and military moves are intricately tied up with the war in Ukraine and the need for military support for Russia to reduce the pressure on Russia by NATO. The Chinese has also been compelled to find ways to neutralise American intervention in a war of possible military acquisition of Taiwan which it considers a part of China.

Peace in Ukraine which will guarantee national sovereignty of the country while taking into consideration the political and military interest of a proud power armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons may untie the knotty problem of peace and war driving big powers to abandon peaceful relations which is in the interest of the entire world that requires a common and joint effort to save an environmentally challenged world.

March 30, 2023
Nigeria, as it could be remade

There is no perfect nation to be born yet Nigeria was deemed the worst nation to be born. In 2013, an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report ranked Nigeria 80th out of 80 countries assessed in its Where-to-be-born-index.

No thanks to the Economist magazine’s sister publication, most Nigerian kids may mature knowing they had been born where the neurotic tick-tock of midnight silences the whispers of dawn.

Predictably, the report inspired doomsday forecasts about the country; foremost newspapers and columnists penned editorials affirming the report and citing the poor fate of the Nigerian child; child advocacy groups plotted to squeeze international donors of grants that would never get to its touted recipients.

Amid the preachment and plots, a crucial voice died without recourse; the voice of the Nigerian child.

If there has been any change since the EIU’s damning report, it is barely discernible. Warren Buffett, probably the world’s most successful investor, once said that anything good that happened to him could be traced back to the fact that he was born in the right country, the United States, at the right time (1930).

Ten years ago, when the EIU ranked 80 countries according to where would be the best place to be born in 2013, Nigeria emerged 80th out of 80. What is the fate of a baby born in 2023?

Foremost media affirmed the EIU’s claims but very few would publish as their cover stories, for instance, the plight of teenage sex workers or child urchins across the country, unless there is a flurry of deaths or scandals involving the minors. Such stories could never displace political intrigues from the front page. And a deeper examination of the child rights campaign may reveal it a meal ticket for duplicitous advocacy groups.

Then, who speaks for the Nigerian child? To speak for the newborn and generations unborn, we must learn to speak ‘humane.’ We must evolve a national ethos and culture of citizenship to reinvent our country as a nation fit for adults, the newborn, and generations unborn.

How do we do this? By reclaiming Nigeria from the ruins of profligacy. Is this the country we inherited? Was it so badly mangled by our founding fathers?

If fathers earn, should sons deplete? Pacesetters in politics, arts and business hack their way through mortal wilderness to acclaim. They forge their identity, amassing fortunes and a name that they bequeath to heirs. The latter, having it all, however, suffer the burden of inheritance: sustenance.

Modern Nigeria suffers the burden of inheritance and freedom. And freedom binds all to the slaughterhouse of choice. When citizens make the right choices, the country soars and posterity salts the earth it thrives upon.

If condemned by wrong choices, they shut their eyes to the truthful and humane, as if in a deadly game of blindman’s bluff.

In the latter scenario, ignorance becomes the sanctuary of heirs; where too many children of illustrious fathers become spendthrifts, alcoholics, drug addicts, dilettantes, terrorists, secessionists, treasury looters, they deplete what their fathers procured.

The child, often heir to fortune on a silver platter, has little to measure or be measured against, except the accomplishments of his father – most of which get squandered.

If fathers build, should sons destroy? Not every generation must squander profits made by their forefathers. Even if loss is all it inherits, each generation may consciously reinvent itself from the declining fortunes of its forbears.

To reinvent Nigeria, must rid our souls of moral lesions, like avarice and conceit; we must quit being shameless and grand in disarray. We must redefine progressive consciousness to mean a lot more than promiscuity, cutthroat politics, degenerate sexuality, selfishness, gender war, and the dubious sociology funded and funneled to us by foreign governments and NGOs.

We must change the thrust of scholarship and grooming in the country from primary through secondary and tertiary school levels.

Ultimately, the Nigerian system teaches scholars to get ahead, and getting ahead means attaining high scores while defering to authority. The learner becomes adept at acquiring facts, argues Hogart, using only a small part of his personality and challenging only a limited area of his being.

He begins to see life as a ladder and endless examination with some praise and persuasion at successive stages. He becomes an expert imbiber and doler-out; his competence will vary, but will rarely be accompanied by genuine enthusiasm.

Such a student rarely feels the reality of knowledge and other men’s thoughts and imaginings on his own pulses. He has something of the blinkered pony about him; sometimes he is trained by those who have been through the same regimen, who are hardly unblinkered themselves, and who praise him in the degree to which he takes comfortably to their blinders.

This is hardly a fruitful way to proceed in the world we despise, in pursuit of the future of our dreams.

True knowledge essentially translates to being an emissary of kindness, truth, hope, superior culture, humaneness and progress to every segment of the human race: the rich and poor, old and young, male and female, weak and strong, literate and unschooled,

We forget too that the true essence of learning, that is, both intellectual and vocational learning, is never simply to teach breadwinning, furnish teachers for the public schools or be an epitome of polite society.

It should above all be the appendage of that fine adjustment between fantasy and the realistic knowledge of life. An adjustment which discovers the secret of civilization and the solution to its seemingly intractable problems.

Du Bois writes that the final product of learning must be neither a medical doctor nor journalist but a man. A full man to be precise. A full woman too, I’d say. Or rather, a full human.

To make such men, our learning process must be borne of ideals and inspiring ends of living. Not desperate, sordid, money-grabbing sound bites. The end product of our educational process must have learnt to work for the glory of his calling, not simply for pecuniary gains. The intellectual must think for truth and progress, not for fame or the applause of the gallery.

Until we attain a broad, busy abundance of such understanding, not all the finest flavours of the proverbial national cake – be they oven-baked or sand-baked – can save us from our lusts and affliction by predatory governance and citizenship.

Currently, we suffer the lack of honest and broadly cultured men. Patience, humility, good breeding and taste. Comprehensive high schools and kindergartens, universities and polytechnics, industrial and technical colleges, teacher training colleges, literature, tolerance and tact – all these spring from proper learning and culture.

We cannot achieve these overnight, however. President-elect Bola Tinubu must see the ongoing transition for the wonderful opportunities it offers; beyond his hard fought victory, the status quo provides a priceless opportunity to reconnect with broad segments of the electorate in realistic terms.

From his swearing-in on May 29, Nigerians expect him to lay the foundation for the fortune he promised. They expect him to midwife national prosperity built “on a fast-growing industrial base capable of producing the most basic needs of the people and an export track to other countries of the world.”

They expect him to deploy humane governance to resolve insecurity and socioeconomic crisis.

They expect him to rebuild Nigeria as the best nation to be born.

March 30, 2023
Beyond hubris (2)

Peter Obi’s groupies liken him to a revolutionary. En route to the presidential polls, they touted him as Nigeria’s only hope. The 61-year-old proclaimed himself the voice of the youth. Thus several youths romanticised his candidacy.

In their fantasy, Obi transfigures by revolutionary ecstasy and defeats all the odds; he defeats the incumbent political class, which he had always been a part of but from whose misdeeds he is curiously exonerated, for inexplicable reasons. Then he becomes Nigeria’s president.

The February 25 election was supposed to herald his ascent to the presidency. But Obi failed, coming third, in a fiercely contested election. At his defeat, his supporters, that is, the self-acclaimed ‘obidient’ herd, released a volley of threats, promising that Nigeria would implode.

They would rather burn the country to rubble than forfeit the presidency to the rightful victor by the ballot, President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

This “headless mob” as Anambra Governor Charles Soludo would say, expressed stupefaction over Obi’s defeat, screaming that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had rigged the election for President-elect Tinubu.

Against the backdrop of his supporters’ bloodcurdling threats, Obi held a press conference where he shed crocodile tears and declared himself winner of the presidential election.

That was the same election in which President-elect Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who scored 6,984,520 to emerge second. It’s a curious thing, however, that Obi who scored 6,101,533 to emerge third has declared himself the rightful winner of the election.

Obi craftily approached the court, urging his mob to eschew violence and await his victory through litigation. If wishes were horses, Obi would ride.

Thus he has filed a petition to challenge Tinubu’s victory. He also charges the court to either declare him the president-elect or nullify the election and order a fresh one.

Obi alleged that the election was characterised by irregularities, citing the non-qualification of Tinubu and his running mate, Kashim Shettima, to contest in the polls.

At least, for all its worth, Obi started a guileful albeit desperate struggle to sustain the support of his mob, hoping to reap by it a few governorship and state assembly seats for the Labour Party (LP) at the March 18 gubernatorial polls.

His plot, however, falls flat on the face as the LP suffered a dismal outing at the gubernatorial and state assembly polls. Obi’s party has only managed to win one state (Abia), more than 72 hours after the March 18 governorship elections.

Due to his impressive showing at the presidential election, many Nigerians had anticipated that Obi’s LP would clinch a number of governorship seats, having won 11 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, in the presidential election on February 25.

However, the results of 25 out of the 28 governorship elections announced at press time, show that the LP’s hope to produce at least one governor hangs delicately on Abia State – being one of the four remaining states where winners are yet to be declared by INEC.

So far, the APC has won 15 States, the PDP, eight, while the LP and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) have won one state respectively.

Notwithstanding his party’s dispiriting performance, Peter Obi will sustain his theatrics until his mob’s patience eventually peters out and they learn to accept the reality of his loss.

In truth, Obi has accepted defeat. He envisaged his shellacking. Thus his post-election antics are merely calculated artifice, a frantic theatre worthy of his supporters’ addiction to the pseudo-realism of his victory.

There is no gainsaying the ‘obidients’ are victims of repressed outrage, which is inordinately being fondled by their idolised demagogue. History may perhaps absolve them of righteous outrage and blame. After all, many of them have lived through tumult watching Nigeria wilt from policy failure, unemployment, nepotism, and insecurity.

Consequently, they conclude that the incumbent ruling class has led Nigeria to the precipice. They accuse the aging leadership of holding tenaciously to power, never letting go; and that when they do let go, they re-insinuate their interests in the corridors of power via their children, indebted stooges, and sworn associates.

Amid the malady, the youths romanticised the emergence of a ‘young’ presidential candidate. The fable persisted through the 2019 elections with abject failure. En route to the 2023 elections, the youths had another opportunity to coalesce their dissent to produce a youthful candidate of their dreams. But they blew it and instead chose to scream shrilly from the sidelines while familiar oligarchs consolidated their hold on power.

The LP mob, for instance, vilified INEC and rival parties for Obi’s loss. In their curious calculation, Obi scored decisive and fair victories in areas where he won but the election was rigged against him everywhere he lost.

Subsequently, they attack and threaten perceived “enemies” on and off social media for supporting any other candidate but their ‘saintly’ Obi.

The obidients liken themselves to revolutionaries. But they aren’t. Revolutionaries share much in common with devout puritans, irrespective of their flaws. They hold fast to a vision whatever the odds stacked against its attainment. They espouse humane politicking as a moral imperative, even if the hope of success is slim and at times impossible. More importantly, they embrace flexibility and recourse to rapprochement where obstinacy fails to yield.

Obidients, unlike the true revolutionary, however, lack that progressive yet humane characteristic of patriots. They are unwilling to accept deprivation and self-sacrifice, and they are inordinately obsessed with the attainment of victory at any cost.

Patriots are driven by profound empathy, even love, for the vulnerable, the persecuted, and the weak. Not the ‘obidients.’ In the wake of Obi’s loss, many of them scattered in disarray and crawled back dejectedly into toxic dens – from where they unleashed macabre threats on Nigerians of contrasting politics and ethnicity. This is hardly the way to live in an adult world.

Were Obi’s mob firmly heeled and well-founded, the Labour Party wouldn’t record such a dismal outing in the gubernatorial polls. It is inconceivable that a supposed ‘third force’ that scored 6,101,533 votes in the presidential election could only muster less than 700,000 votes nationwide in the governorship elections.

Elections aren’t won on a sweepstake. They require conscious planning, adventurous maneuvering, and commitment to justifiable ideals. No individual or group may commit to a general election nine months before the polls and expect to score massive victories. The best they could ever muster is discernible in the fate of Obi’s LP and his exploited traumatised mob.

The ongoing chaos in Nigeria surpasses blistering bigotries. It bristles between those who are amenable to reason and function in the real world of roots and consequences, cause and effect; and the petrified mob goaded by denial and desperation, now seeking meaning in a fabulous world of emotions – a universe of petulant lust and impulse, a world of magic and delusion.

The elections have been lost and won. Let all parties rise above nettlesome whim and hubris. Obi won’t win at the courts. He is simply play-acting to rankle and soothe his over-exploited herd. It’s a dodgy and reckless maneuver.

It’s about time Nigerians of vast vision, hope, and patriotism joined hands to salvage what is left of our homeland, guided by loftier purpose, maturity, and unflagging fervour.

March 23, 2023
Changing political and diplomatic situation in the Middle East

Recently the Chinese government brokered a diplomatic rapprochement between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran after two years of secret negotiations. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which used to be seen as the United States satellite in the Middle East has changed since the rise of 37-year old Muhammad Bin Salman (MBS) as effective leader even though his 87-year old father Salman Bin Abudulaziz Al Saud is king. The king is the 7th of the princes born to the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz Al Saud.

The kingdom is an absolute monarchy where the king exercises power supported by brothers and princes numbering over 2000 of them. In effect, it will not be too wrong to say the princes constitute the “royal party “ruling the country according to the Holy Koran embracing the Qadriyyah tariqa manifesting the Wahabi Islamic conservative rule on strict adherence to the Koran and the Hadith. The kingdom would not have been as significant as it is but for the fact that it is sitting on what can be called an ocean of crude petroleum which the world needs. The kingdom has also been fortunate that it has had Western-trained and knowledgeable technocrats who have been able to develop the country using its huge resources despite the fact that some of its innumerable princes have wasted huge chunks of its wealth in lavish living. But it has at the same time bought into productive companies in the West so that even if the oil wells were to dry up, its future is reasonably settled. On top of this oil wealth, the country is home and origin of Islam. The religion enjoins any adherent of Islam to go on the hajj at least once in a life time if he or she can afford it. Muslims have been going to Mecca and Medina since the advent of the religion in the seventh century (AD 610) our people in Nigeria have been going on the hajj on foot, donkeys and horses as far back as the ninth century particularly from Kenem- Borno. This accounts for the so-called large number of Fellata in the Sudan.

The hajj, one of the pillars of Islam has brought considerable wealth to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia because millions of Muslims have visited on holy pilgrimage and spent billions of dollars over the years. Saudi Arabia may not have power but has considerable influence because of its position as the origin and the practice of Islam. It is however several years behind Iran in technological development.

Iran on the other hand is large Muslim country of over 80 million people with a rich history of wielding power in medieval Islam in the region even having Saudi Arabia which did not exist then under the Persian (Iran) suzerainty. Iran also possesses vast amount of oil and highly educated people. It is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power. It practices a rather militant kind of Islam with a hierarchical clergy. Its brand of Islam is known as SHI’ISM as distinct from the orthodox SUNNI tradition practiced in Saudi Arabia and in most part of the Islamic world like Nigeria, Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Bangladesh, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Sudan etc. Having said this, it is also important to note that Shi’ism is followed by millions of people in countries that are officially Sunni. I have it on solid authority that the number of Shiites is grossly underestimated worldwide. Shia Islam originated as a response to questions of Islamic religious leadership which became manifest as early as the death of Prophet Muhammad (PBH) in 632AD. The issues involved not only whom to appoint as successor to the prophet, but also what attributes a true successor should have.

The place known today as Iran was serially ruled by Persian emperors and kings the last of them was Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was overthrown by the dreamy, ascetic Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 and since then the Iranian republic has been under the iron grip of the Muslim Mullahs of Iran headed by the grand Ayatollah.

The two countries of Iran and Saudi Arabia have largely freed themselves from the western hold of their oil resources. In the case of Iran, the tie has been severely cut while Saudi Arabia has remained within the economic and military sphere of the United States perhaps until now. The US maintains a military base in Saudi Arabia and still looks after the military security of the kingdom and supplies and trains thousands of young Saudi citizens in maintaining its military industrial complex. It seems the young Crown Prince Muhammad Salman wants to rule the kingdom with no deference to the United States.

President Donald J. Trump had during his presidency under the rubric of bringing together all the children of Abraham (Ibrahim) got Israel recognised and accepted by the UAE, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar, and was hoping that he could persuade Saudi Arabia to exchange diplomatic relations with Israel thus isolating Iran in the Middle East since Morocco in North Africa and the Sudan were already amenable to restoring ties with Israel. Saudi Arabia already permits Israeli planes overflight rights in Saudi Arabian space and many had thought it was just a matter of time before Saudi Arabia and Israel would have diplomatic ties thus opening up world-wide Islamic recognition of Israel without solving the question of occupation of Palestine. Since Iran was an enemy of Israel because of the threat of a nuclear armed Iran, and Iran was also perceived as an enemy of Saudi Arabia, the calculation then was that the Saudis would gravitate towards Israel but alas, what happened took everybody by surprise.

This is the background of the sudden Iran-Saudi diplomatic tie. The Americans claim they knew about the negotiations because Saudi Arabia kept them in the know of it. However the fact that it was the Chinese that brokered it shows the leverage of China in the Middle East. Many commentators have glibly said the Chinese presence and influence is a loss for the United States. I do not see it that way because of the problem of the Muslim people in Xinjiang is likely to bedevil the relations between China and the principal Muslim countries in the Middle East. Iran and the Saudis have for now said nothing about what the Chinese should do for the millions of the Muslim Uyghurs in Chinese north-western province of Xinjiang. I also doubt whether the Saudis have the stomach for the atheistic tendencies in communist China and Iran’s alliance with Russia to which it supplies drones in its war against Ukraine. I am not sure Saudi Arabia is internally strong to withstand subversion from within aided by hostile western powers if it moves too much into the Chinese and Russian orbit.

One positive thing that may come out of the Iran-Saudi rapprochement is the possible winding down of the war in Yemen in which the Saudis are supporting the government while Iran is arming and supporting the Houthis. Iran may also allow peaceful political settlement in Iraq between the majority Shiites and the previously dominant and ruling Sunni left over of the Sadam Hussein. In Lebanon, Iran would continue to support the so-called party of God -Hizballah, a Shia party, led by Hassan Nasrallah while Saudi Arabia will not abandon the Sunni faction in that unfortunate country.

The fate of Syria where Shite factions are dominating the Sunni majority may not easily be settled without Israeli acquiescence. For a considerable time to come, Israel will remain a formidable factor in the Middle East of course supported by the long arm of American military might despite whatever alignment is inspired by China in the Middle East. Nothing has really changed in the position of the Middle East because just like before, it remains a tinder box.

March 23, 2023
The lesson of 2023 election

To the extent that humans by nature always want to protect their identity, people of a particular race, ethnicity or religion will always form an alliance and organize politically to defend the interest of their group. It is for these reason elections are often wars among competing tribal groups. Our 2023 election took the same pattern as our past successive elections starting with 1954, 1959, 1964, 1979 and 1983 etc. The last week Lagos gubernatorial contest, greeted by pockets of skirmishes and violence which were, according to the police, promptly brought under control was not different from those of other states such as Delta, Bauchi, Kano, Cross Rivers and Rivers where 11 people were said to have lost their lives to violence.

But challenging some of the self-preservation strategies adopted by Lagos State in the run up to the election, ‘Obi-media’ has been beating drum of war in an effort to set the Igbo in Lagos against their Yoruba hosts. Reacting to a trending video of Igbo people holding a meeting in far-away Abia State where they declared: “We are not going to negotiate Lagos State. Lagos is our top priority. We must not give it up at any cost even if it cost us our lives”; the beating of war drum in Lagos by unruly ‘Obidient’ insisting “it must be Obi’s choice for Lagos governorship or nothing” and senior ‘Obidients’ feeding their uninformed youths with false claim that Lagos is “no man’s land”, the owners of the land sought refuge in the culture that has sustained their forbears from generation to generation. They offered rituals to ‘Esu Odara’, the god of confusion followed by parade of Oro and Ogboni cult members to sanitise their land.

This was a natural instinct of a people under siege. I am sure this cannot be strange to Igbo people that have lived with the Yoruba for several decades. Besides, the Igbo in foreign land by culture consider themselves as strangers who must escape home during periods of adversity to allow the owners of the land who know how to appease their own gods face their own demons. (Chinua Achebe: No Longer at Ease) In 1993, they did this successfully when fearing Yoruba would go to war over MKO Abiola’s annulled election, they escaped back to the East in droves.

Unfortunately, what would have been taken in its stride by Igbo who were not experiencing such development for the first time was blown out of proportion by ‘Obi-media’ that now want us to believe it is waging Igbo war. The hot exchanges and sabre-rattling that followed has inadvertently brought back sad memory of Igbo elites’ suspected lust for Lagos land dating back to 1949 and through the civil war when Emeka Ojukwu in a letter to Col Victor Banjo declared that his short-lived Biafra would determine the fate of Lagos after pacification.

Our new self-proclaiming defenders of Igbo interest have also unconsciously done a great disservice to Igbo youths by raising the spectre of “Wild – Wild – West operation wet e” of the 1960s without telling the youths that Yoruba always protect settlers in their midst. Despite the complicity of Igbo political elite in the travails of Yoruba in the hands of NCNC/NPC coalition partners of the period, no Igbo man was killed. Those targeted were Yoruba traitors that sowed the wind and made to reap the whirlwind. Professor Banji Akintoye also reminded us not too long ago, that even when the Fulani invaders were stopped by Ibadan warriors in Osogbo, captured Fulani Generals were allowed to return home while Yoruba Generals that worked hand-in-glove with the invaders were executed

But we have passed through this sorry path before. In the first republic, a section of the media also promoted ethnic rivalry. The West African Pilot was for instance “a fire-eating and aggressive nationalist paper of the first order. It was natural very popular, the very thing the youths of the country had been waiting for” (Awo P.85) But while the paper in its editorial of August 8, 1948 praised of Ibibio Union as “a model union”, Egbe Omo Oduduwa formed in 1947 was viciously attacked while its leaders and their properties were physically attacked in Lagos (Awo P.140 -142.)

To Nnamdi Azikiwe, social regeneration meant the elimination of tribal prejudice among Africans, insisting an African was an African whenever he was born and that tribalism was postponing African social unity (Azikiwe, Renascent Africa P. 28)

But it soon became apparent that Zik was not practicing what he preached when in his address as president of Ibo Federal Union he said: “It would appear the God of Africa has specially created the Igbo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of all ages” At the end, it was evident that all the nationalist drive and the “Elek-Zik-fication” of Nigeria press were not driven by altruism. Unfortunately it was the war between West African Pilot’s reckless journalists/columnists and those of the Nigerian Citizen, a paper owned by Northern regional government that prepared the ground for the collapse of the first republic.

And this is why it is dangerous to allow Obi-media to continue to beat drum of war even as it feeds the public with half-truth and untruths. Although what happened in Lagos was a child’s play to what happened elsewhere in the country, it has continued to whip up ethnic sentiments about the treatment of Igbo in Lagos, Obi’s victory without proof and how Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour whose only qualification was because he was Obi’s choice and of Igbo mother, was so out-rigged in Lagos that reconciliation would be impossible.

Again, as it was in the first republic, with the diversionary tactics and crude assault on all our institutions, the lesson of the 2023 election is lost. Atiku’s smooth win in northwest, Obi in southeast and Tinubu in southwest while the rest of the country is engulfed in tribal wars, was a reminder that we must stop playing the ostrich and come up with a workable federal structure.

As Awo put it back in 1945, “Nigeria is not a nation, but a mere geographical expression. There are no Nigerians in the same way as they are “English’ Welsh or French”. There as much difference between them as there is between Germany, English, Russian and Turks. Besides their cultural and social outlook differ widely and their indigenous political institutions have little in common. The best constitution for such diverse people is a federal constitution”.

This is as true today as it was some 78 years ago when we rejected ‘the path to Nigeria freedom”. But the good thing today is that we don’t have to invent the wheel. We can adopt an Indian, Canadian, Brazilian or the Australian template.

Democracy thrives better in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society with a workable federal arrangement. Those who therefore rage against those in quest for self-actualization and those who have resolved to protect their value system must be reminded that in America from where we borrowed the new value system, constituency boundaries are periodically redrawn to ensure inviolability of their constituencies just as Canada and New Zealand not too long ago told Muslim immigrants who were not ready to embrace the values of their host communities to return to their countries.

March 23, 2023
The elections: A post-mortem

The clock is ticking fast as the nation looks forward to Inauguration Day 2023 on May 29. That day, Bola Ahmed Tinubu will formally take over the reins of government from President Muhammadu Buhari. President-elect Tinubu won the February 25 poll, beating former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), former Anambra State Governor Peter Obi, Labour Party (LP) and former Kano State Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), among others.

True to bookmakers’ forecast, it was a four-horse race, with the quartet showing the stuff they are made of. The race was tough as there were upsets in places least expected. Its biggest revelation was Obi. He stunned the nation, nay the world, with his incredible performance, winning in states where he was never given a chance.

He ate into the votes that should have gone the way of his former principal, Atiku who he ran with in 2019 on PDP platform. He parted ways with Atiku shortly before the election, joined LP, grabbed its presidential ticket on a platter and captured the imagination of the youths. Obi did not need any magic to do that.

Though not a youth himself, the youngsters just fell in love with him. He did not have anything with which to sell himself to the youths or any other person for that matter, he just rode on the wave of public disenchantment against the ruling government to gain popularity. In no time, the Obi-Dient Movement was born, with the youths in its vanguard. They seized the social media space in a way never seen before in the land to push the Obi candidacy. Even his party never campaigned that much for him.

Some pastors, who had taken offence to Tinubu’s choice of a fellow muslim, Vice President-elect Kashim Shettima, as running mate, were on their side. Obi, a known Catholic became a regular face in those pastors’ churches and the social media. On both fronts, a grand campaign of calumny began against Tinubu.

Anywhere they gathered, their song was: Obi cherere nche, Obi. It was the beginning of the religionisation and ethnicisation of the presidential election. Sadly, this crept into the March 18 governorship election in 28 states. The pastors did not religionise the presidential election because of Tinubu’s incapability or incompetence, they were simply enraged by what they called a muslim-muslim ticket.

Lest I forget, the other charge against him is that he brought Buhari as president. To them, the President has not performed and who else to blame for that if not Tinubu. They made it look as if it is a sin to back someone for a job. Tinubu ran against many forces on February 25, he was only lucky to have won.

His party’s primary was the same. Many forces were arrayed against him, but he overcame them. God spoke at his party’s primary last June and spoke again in the February election. This is God’s project, said the pastor of a popular Lekki church a few days to the election, preparing his sheep’s mind for its outcome. Rather than heed the Lord’s voice, many chose to fight their shepherd who told them what he said he heard from God:

“That Saul came before David”. For effect, the pastor added: “This means that even if this election does not go the way you want it to go, don’t be disappointed. Every election will produce some disappointment for the camps of the candidates who lose. God’s will shall still come to pass in Nigeria”.This was a piece of spiritual advice they did not want to hear. But God had spoken and His will has been done.

The aggrieved have the right to challenge the outcome of the election and they have gone to the tribunal to do so. There is no need to fret about the tribunal’s integrity. It has always been open to all, litigants, lawyers and spectators alike. Nobody has ever been barred from attending its sittings, if they so wished. So, it does not need to adopt any strange procedures to prove that it will be fair and just to the parties.

The call for a public sitting is uncalled for. A public sitting by the tribunal will be alien to our judicial process. That something was done in another country does not make it right. It also does not mean that we should import it wholesale to satisfy the whims and caprices of those afraid of their shadows. Why a public sitting? Will it serve the ends of justice? Or be turned to a circus show? Their plan is to come there and make noise as they did at the collation centre when it dawned on them that they were losing the election.

The tribunal is not a place for that. It is a forum for serious business and not where to impress onlookers. Anyway, as Nigerians, we should be more bothered by the deleterious effect of the presidential poll on the governorship election. The March 18 election was too divisive. It set many who hitherto lovingly referred to themselves as brothers against one another and these are people who have lived, worked, eaten and played together for decades, despite not having blood ties.

It is regrettable how we have allowed religion and ethnicity to define us, all because of these elections. That is not who we are. In any election, as we all know, there must be winners and losers. Now that the elections are over, the healing process should start, if we truly love our country. Let us put the elections behind us and forge a new beginning.

A new beginning of building a new Nigeria where we will stand in brotherhood, though tribe, tongue and faith may differ. While not discounting the legal process, this is the country every citizen should join hands with Tinubu to build when he becomes the father of the nation on May 29. For Nigeria, it is morning yet on creation day.

March 23, 2023
Why Obi cannot impose governor on Lagos

In the run up to the February 25 election, Peter Obi campaigned mainly in the enclaves of Igbo urban immigrants. The outcome of the election has since confirmed Obi was riding on Igbo ethnic sentiments. If the defeat of Tinubu in his Lagos stronghold through clannish voting pattern was not enough confirmation, cornering 85% of Igbo votes in the five southeast Igbo states by Obi were unarguably a reflection of reality.

Obi has been dressed in borrowed robes of the messiah of Nigerian youths by his ‘Obimedia’ who are as much of a threat to the health of our nation as his unquestioning ‘Obidients’ with battle cry of “end INEC and Nigeria” if their principal’s imaginary ‘stolen mandate’ was not restored. There has been similarly no word of caution from Obi as his children of anger fed with misinformation are left to run riot in Ikeja, threatening peace with provocative declaration that for next Saturday governorship election in their host’s land, “it must be Igbo endorsed governorship candidate or no one else”.

It was Ahmadu Bello who first admonished Nigerians to understand their differences. The problem is that some of those given refuge by host communities seem not to remember that we are a multi-cultural society where our ethnic nationalities at the time of contact with the Europeans were at different level of cultural development. Whilst according to PC Lloyd, there were groups that were more developed than Europe using urbanization as index of measurement, there were also the ‘unfriendly inhabitants of the Mama Hills, the anti-social Mumuye of Muri Province’ and those Clifford in 1920 identified as ‘cannibals inhabiting some hill tops’, and ‘the naked warriors of the jungle’.

Quite often, our culture defines our worldview. Those celebrated as heroes by some cultures could be villains in others. It was perhaps for this reason the policy thrust of our departing colonial masters was “a ‘regional government that secures for each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality and its own chosen form of government which have been evolved for it by the wisdom and by the accumulated experiences of generation of its forbearers’. .

For instance, leadership among the Yoruba is earned through service to the people. In the run up to independence, the Yoruba’s new emergent political elite first became chiefs in order to understudy their fathers. They thereafter engaged in months of robust intellectual debate by experts from different disciplines, rounded up with various scientific surveys across the country before unfolding their manifesto of free education, free health and full employment.

According to professors Oluwasanmi and Aluko, they also set up, Western Regional Marketing Board, the Western Nigerian Development Corporation, the Western Nigerian Housing Corporation, the Western Region Finance Corporation, the Western Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation and the Western Nigerian Printing Corporation “to perform functions that are of fundamental significance to the economic, social cultural development of the people of Western Nigeria. That the old West was to later become the most educated part of Africa and most prosperous region in Nigeria was not by accident.

Bola Tinubu merely took a queue from his illustrious forebears. He paid his dues by staying in the trenches along with other NADECO leaders fighting against military dictatorship in the aftermath of June 12, 1993 debacle. Upon becoming governor in 1999, he challenged the best brains among his people to come up with a Marshall Plan for Lagos. That was the foundation of today’s Lagos’ massive infrastructural development, the reactivation or the metroline derailed by Shehu Shagari since 1983, the Lekki Free Trade Zone, the Lekki Deep Sea Port and airport and the Atlantic City in Victoria Island.

In politics, Tinubu has remained faithful to Yoruba progressive politics of Afenifere (wanting what is good for yourself for others). He worked hard to build consensus among progressive northern politicians who were later to ensure he emerged as APC presidential candidate and garnered 5.2 million northern votes for him during the last presidential election.

On the other hand, all Igbo political elite needed to do to win the minds of their unquestioning “Zikists or Obidients” is to play the victim card by misinforming those who look up to them for direction with claims such as ‘Nigerians hate Igbo leaders because of their resourcefulness’.

In 1947, NCNC went on tour of London to protest some obnoxious laws in Nigeria. On their return, Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Prince Adeleke Adedoyin and Dr A B Olorunnibe, members of the group accused Zik of mismanaging the thirteen thousand pounds raised for the trip. All Zik did to get the sympathy of his people was to claim he was under attack because he was Igbo, forcing Igbo urban workers and their Yoruba counterparts in Lagos to buy off cutlasses in Lagos market in preparation for war.

In 1952, Zik insisted on becoming the first premier of the West after rejecting Akinloye’s suggestion that a Yoruba member of NCNC be appointed premier to secure the support of six Ibadan members elected on the platform of Ibadan Peoples Party (IPP). At the end, five of them, except Adelabu, joined Awolowo to form the government. Zik accused Yoruba of tribalism and his people believed him. But it was no more tribalism when Zik and his supporters later removed Prof Eyo Ita, minority leader of government in the east, to pave the way for his emergence as premier.

Fast forward to 2023. It is still the same Igbo persecution complex. Peter Obi was governor of Anambra under APGA. He is best remembered for creating disharmony between the Catholics and Anglicans and for sacking of non-Anambra Igbos working in Anambra civil service. After his tenure, he joined PDP where he rose to become Atiku Abubakar’s running mate in 2019. Then on the eve of 2023 election, sensing the PDP presidential ticket would elude him, he resigned and ran back home equating his personal loss to Igbo nation’s loss. Of course he got the backing of his people. While Tinubu with all his years of preparation for recognition by his very critical Yoruba people got only 56% of Yoruba votes, Obi secured 85% of Igbo vote.

Of course the Igbo ‘Obidient’ and ‘Obimedia’ are at liberty to determine who their hero is under a democratic parliamentary federal system. What they cannot do is to question the right of the Yoruba to put their faith in Tinubu who they have continued to vilify, abuse and ridicule.

And lastly, ‘Obimedia’ should stop their unpatriotic attempt to undermine the integrity of an election many honest Nigerians including President Buhari believe may turn out to be one of the most credible elections since 1999, won ‘round and square’ by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. This was an election where President Buhari lost his state, the President-elect, his Lagos stronghold and the ruling party losing half of the 22 states it controlled in the run up to the election.

Finally, Obi’s surreptitious attempt to foist a governor on Lagos is a sad reminder of how NCNC/NPC coalition in 1962 attacked economic backbone of Yoruba in order to bring Yoruba to her knees. Lagos a product of long years of planning by our illustrious forbears including Awolowo who was spending 60% of Western Region’s health budget on her cannot be handed over to an unquestioning ‘Obidient’.

March 16, 2023
Beyond hubris

The journey to hubris is oft enchanting. It’s akin to surfing the outer galaxy, you see the stars glittering in front of you, it’s too tempting not to touch.

Bola Tinubu surfed his enchantment in Abeokuta, Ogun State’s capital city. There, he pronounced his path to glory, asserting his lifelong ambition to govern Nigeria.

His chant: “Emi lo kan (It is my turn)” boomed as both a prayer and lacerating whip – thus triggering a cloudburst of chatter and plots against his ambition.

To his virulent critics, his claim, “Emi lo kan” dripped of hubris. It rankled the sore nerves of a devious cabal holding progress and national glory hostage. It excited and incited in one breadth the applause and disapprobation of the long-suffering citizenry.

While the cabal plotted to hinder his strut, irate segments of the citizenry – largely supporters of the Peter Obi of the Labour Party – vowed to rebuff him. Left to them, Tinubu had done the unthinkable fielding a fellow Muslim, ex-Borno governor, Kashim Shettima, as his running mate.

To punish him, they plotted to execute the bidding of their pastors, who predicted Tinubu’s devastating defeat and Peter Obi’s unassailable victory.

Eventually, February 25 dawned with unforeseen upsets: Bola Tinubu coasted to victory defeating People’s Democratic Party (PDP)’s Atiku and Labour Party (LP)’s Peter Obi.

No power is eternal: all eventually fall to hubris or humiliation. That Tinubu scored an emphatic victory despite the spirited surge of the Labour Party (LP) and the heart-wrenching tragedy of the botched naira swap does not mean that Nigeria’s political landscape is static: LP’s astonishing showing asserts that the oligarchs may no longer act as Nigeria’s demigods. It also suggests that an unsettling future of clashes between the political class and bigoted ethno-religious entities beckons – all triggered by hubris.

In cautionary tales throughout history, hubris precedes failure: Osano in Fools Die, Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, Icarus in Greek Mythology, Biblical Lucipher,Tony Montana in Scarface, and Don Corleone in Godfather.

At the same time, Western culture venerates the overconfident: Babe Ruth calling his shot in the 1932 World Series, Winston Churchill ensuring victory in the darkest days of World War II, Han Solo entering yet another asteroid field, notes Barker and Marietta.

In Nigeria, we have PDP’s Atiku Abubakar and LP’s Peter Obi whose personal hubris goaded to part ways and contest the election as severely whittled and puny rivals to APC’s Tinubu

Tinubu polled a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, who scored 6,984,520 to emerge second. Labour Party’s Peter Obi scored 6,101,533 votes to emerge third and Rabiu Kwankwaso of New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) scored 1,496,687 to emerge fourth.

Even with Tinubu’s assertive victory, Obi, who came a distant third pronounced himself the winner and sought the cancellation of the presidential polls. And in an apparent bid to further ingratiate the mob of ethnic chauvinists and disgruntled youths rooting for him, he resorted to a court trial to prove his case.

In a recent interview with a local broadcaster, however, Obi tacitly affirmed Tinubu’s victory stating: “I have no issues with Tinubu. He is somebody I have so much respect for as a brother and regard as a father. I am only challenging the process through which INEC declared him as the President-elect. I have no issues with his declaration as the President-elect.”

While Obi speaks from both sides of the mouth, Atiku stormed the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Abuja demanding the cancellation of the February 25 presidential election.

The PDP candidate stormed the INEC office in the company of the party’s National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, and the Director General of his campaign and Sokoto State governor, Aminu Tambuwal. The party also submitted a petition to the commission, claiming that the election was not credible.

From Obi’s doublespeak to Atiku’s comical pantomime at INEC’s headquarters, a disconcerting truth manifests for the umpteenth time: that Nigerian politicians are mostly sore losers. Haunted by hubris, they approach every election with an impossible conviction to win, even when the run of play manifests convincingly to their defeat.

Aside from the politicians, so many Nigerians occupying the right and left of the political divide make empirically questionable claims with bizarre convictions and hauteur in the wake of the presidential election.

Consider the sweeping audacity of LP supporters; their frantic projection of Obi as Nigeria’s best hope for the presidency; they flagrantly ignore substantial scrutiny of Obi’s antecedents as an under-performing governor of Anambra State.

In a recent Instagram post, Paul Okoye of the P-Square music group, charged Nigerians to get their Permanent Voters Card (PVC) and vote for Obi. According to him, the failure to elect the right leader next year will lead Nigeria into another eight years of backwardness.

He announced his endorsement barely a few days after his twin brother, Peter, did the same via a post on his Instagram page. Peter said he usually didn’t engage in politics and said he was making an exception for Obi because he was the most qualified.

One might ask: Who appointed the Okoyes as arbiter and authorities on who is the most qualified to lead Nigeria? And how does their support for the LP candidate translate to patriotism? Was their support borne of altruistic intent or crusade in the interest of the collective?

Or did Obi simply serve as a medium by which they aligned with, and sought to actualise vanities of a bigoted herd raring to go rogue?

If the Okoyes’ endorsement of Obi resonates as a perfect example of the mentality people develop by exploiting the perks of celebrity, what do we make of my support for Tinubu, and several other Nigerians’ support for their preferred candidates?

Eventually, every Nigerian (including those sitting on the fence to chastise others’ political participation with venom) believes that his or her opinion should be made into law and enforced. It gets scary when political actors cohere into a murderous mob; tyranny is farmed and harvested with devastating results.

This is the great challenge of our time; the evolutionary imperative for every Nigerian to overcome affliction by hubris and sullied citizenship.

As President-elect Bola Tinubu gets set for the challenges of his new office, let him pay good mind to all classes of Nigerians, the youths included. Although, he promised to involve the latter productively in his government, let him not restrict such gestures to privileged youth divides.

There is a notion trending in youth circuits, that only big tech gurus, social influencers, celebrities, the children of the rich and “politically connected” may enjoy patronage by his leadership even though they are usually far removed from the travails of millions of rural, suburban youths.

Would the gifted policeman, social worker, teacher, journalist, soldier, or farmer, matter in his plan? Nigerians are trusting Tinubu to look beyond the superficial and popular as he engages with the youths.

Whatever the situation, it’s about time the average Nigerian, particularly the youth, engaged constructively with the homeland – irrespective of the fate of his or her preferred candidate in the presidential election.

To rebuild Nigeria, we must adopt a more peaceful, legitimate, and humane means of participation in the political process. We must eschew violence and the inclinations for hate speech and our synergies must be guided and adapted to repel hooliganism and sabotage, tribal toxins, fake news, religious venom, and filthy lucre.

March 16, 2023
When will the Naira scarcity end?

Since January 31 when we were asked to deposit all our old N200, N500 and N1000 notes in exchange for the newly coloured Naira notes, we have been in trouble parading in front of the banks from early in the morning till the banks close at 4 pm. If this is true currency change as required to be done every decade or so if we are to believe the CBN, why are N50 and N100 not being changed at the same time? It is simply unbelievable what is going on. As early as 5 a.m., people troop to queue up in front of the banks or to take numbers of entry before the bankers resume work in the morning. This is not hearsay. I take early morning walks and I see this every morning and wonder when the suffering humanity in Nigeria will have a reprieve from their government-imposed cruelty. Nobody even in other countries in Africa will believe what Nigerians are going through because of ordinary change of currency! This will have been understandable if there was really a wholesale change of currency.

What I see in the so-called change is just mere changing of the colours of the N200, N500 and N1000. All the talk about enhanced security features are not there. It seems the job has been hastily done with absolute lack of competence and our government fell for it under the promise of local production without the need of foreign intervention. The president was apparently sold this ruse and the poor man believed what the CBN governor and the managing director of the mint told him. The CBN governor sold the dummy of the change leading to reining in inflation, monitoring the economy, making it difficult for kidnappers to continue demanding ransom in Naira as well as facilitating tracking down hoodlums who do this through putting security digital tracers on the so-called new Naira. They also apparently told the president that they would mop all old Naira so that the corrupt politicians who had stacked up billions of Naira in their personal safes at homes in readiness for elections would not be able to buy electoral votes as they used to do. It seems some politicians were believed to have huge war chests especially those running to become president or governors.

Incredible as it may appear, members of the president’s own party seemed to have been targeted. The outcry of many APC governors and its presidential candidate appear to have strengthened the hands of the president and his CBN governor to believe that these politicians were involved in some shenanigans. Ironically both the Labour Party and PDP were vociferous in their support for the government policy. We had a situation where some governing party’s governors sued the federal government to the Supreme Court and won the case by which the old Naira notes have finally been declared legal tender until December 31.

This sordid case of the currency change raises several issues in my mind. First what is the purpose of government? Is government put in place to serve the people? Of course it is logically possible for the people not to know what is in their own interest. Should there be a disconnect between the government and the governed as in this case? Why should government’s policy be injurious to the welfare of the people? Is government’s purpose not the amelioration of the people’s problems? Why should a simple case of changing currency be so difficult and problematic as in our case? Are there no lessons to be learnt from similar situations in India, a vastly complex country of 1.5 billion people and some African countries if we don’t want to learn from highly developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom where currency change is gradual and lasts a whole year? Why could not this change have taken place months before now and what has the country gained by the rushed clandestine operations we have indulged in and qui bono? These are the questions any rational human being will ask. It is one thing for our president to want to clean up our highly monetised and supposedly corrupt electoral process, and I believe many of us support his efforts in this direction, but it is another thing to put the entire citizens of this benighted country on tenterhooks leading to heart attacks by many people, particularly the aged and the elderly who do not have the energy to struggle with the strong youth daily fighting to be on the line, to get in some cases, two or five thousand Naira from ATM or even from banking halls. As some commentator has said, do you because there is a snake in your house set the whole house on fire as has been done in our case? Does the president get correct reports about what is happening? Women are going naked in banking halls to dramatise, without shame, that they are not able to feed their children and to send them to school. Men are attacking poor bankers with machetes. Banks have had to close their banking halls to prevent their workers from being killed because the CBN dishonestly said it has given banks money and that the banks were hoarding it. Perhaps there were cases of hoarding but this was an exception rather than the rule.

I personally went to my bank several times only to be told with every honesty the workers could muster, that there just was no money. It got to a point where I had to sign a cheque and leave with the bank to call me when the elusive cash arrived from the CBN. Over a period of one month I managed to get N10,000 from my bank where I have current and savings accounts. Things got so bad for my sister-in-law who is closer to 90 than 80 that she gave her credit/debit card to her driver to go to the bank every day from dawn to the afternoon only for him to come back home with N2000 or N5000. Now I find the situation very unusual! Suppose the driver runs away with the card and converts its usage to other purposes or for himself? People had to do unusual things just to survive because of currency change.

I had a discussion with a retired academic like myself and I wondered whether we were being told the whole story about our economy. I asked him whether the economy was completely in ruins and the situation was being camouflaged as currency change. I hope and pray that that is not true because if it were true, millions of old people would depart prematurely from this world to the other side of the heavenly divide. How can one have substantial amount in the bank and be reduced to penury? Even most businesses are refusing to accept cards and transfers in some cases and cheques are absolutely no go area. One then wonders why banks continue to issue cheques. People are also complaining of their accounts being hacked by criminals who have become adept at intercepting transfer traffic. I hope that whoever wants to impose a cashless economy on Nigeria first ensure that the infrastructure is there before blindly jumping into a new scheme.

While we are still smarting from the elections and currency palaver, some people are sending out notices of census enumeration. Mr President, please stop this needless booby-traps for the next government. We have a situation of fuel and money scarcity on top of unresolved security situation and somebody is planning head count! Everyone knows the political complications attendant on conducting census. Right now, it is not the most urgent of our problems. Let us have peaceful political transition in a country where religion and ethnicity have been weaponised to a point where any little spark could lead to a general conflagration. Enough of this driving us to the edge of a precipice. We need to recover from the self-inflicted wound of cash scarcity and the myriad of problems blowing in the air.

March 16, 2023
Emefiele: Bull in a China shop

BY the time the Presidency finally broke its silence on the issue, a lot of damage had been done. Many lives had been lost and many businesses crippled. Till today, Nigerians are yet to get their bearings right over the naira redesign policy. It will be an understatement to say that things have turned upside down.

Under the policy, the old N200, N500 and N1000 notes, as they are now known, are to be replaced with new ones. But the problem is that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was and is still not ready for the exercise for which it hastily set a January 31 deadline. It introduced the policy in October, unveiled the specimen notes in November and fixed January 31 for the phasing out of the old notes.

The timeline for doing all these was 90 days. Ninety days! Is that possible with the shoddy way things are done in this country? CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele, who was in a hurry to push the policy through for reasons best known to him, said everything was in order. The Nigeria Security Printing and Minting Company (NSPMC), he said, was equal to the task of printing the required volume of new notes. It was a lie.

The Mint lacks the capacity to undertake the job if that magnitude and that marked the beginning of the problem with the policy. By then over N3 billion had been mopped up by CBN through the deposit money banks (DMBs), while only N500 million of the new notes were pushed out. How do you run an economy of over 200 million people with that amount?

Is the amount proportionate to the volume of the gross domestic product (GDP).

According to economists, the currency in circulation must take into consideration the content of the GDP to avoid a run on the sectoral components that make up the GDP. Emefiele threw all economic considerations to the winds. He was more interested in the political side of his policy which he claimed was to stop vote-buying during the elections.

Is it possible to run an election without cash? He answered that question himself when he was confronted by the electoral umpire, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, that they would need money to plan for the elections. Emefiele quickly said that he would give the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) the cash it required. “Just come to me and I will give you the money”, he said. Is it CBN’s job to disburse money to INEC. It is not, but we are in a country where anything goes.

So, it went on and on. Affected by this harsh policy, Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara states sued the Federal Government. The Supreme Court granted their request for an interim injunction restraining CBN from enforcing its February 10 deadline for phasing out the old notes.

On February 10, the Council of State (CoS), after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari said the old and new notes should co-exist to ease the people’s pains. Despite the interventions of the Supreme Court and the CoS, the President did the unthinkable on February 16. That was six days after the February 10 date that he promised to positively resolve the crisis.

His February 16 national broadcast was not positive, at all. It disobeyed the Supreme Court order validating the use of the old and new notes parri pasu. The President varied the order, by directing that only the old N200 note should co-exist with the new ones until April 10. It was a slap on the face of the highest court in the land.

The court did not find it funny at its March 3 sitting where it carpeted the President for flouting its ruling, thereby threatening the rule of order on which democracy is hinged. It consequently directed that the old notes remain legal tender until the end of the year, by which time hopefully, enough of the new notes would have been printed.

The government and CBN played deaf to the order. For 10 days, the nation was on tenterhooks. The people groaned as the cash crunch bit harder. Emefiele buried his head in the sand like ostrich, waiting for God knows what and who. Obey the Supreme Court; obey the Supreme Court, the President and Emefiele were advised. They did not.

When the pressure became too much, the Presidency issued a statement on Monday, disowning Emefiele and his accomplice, Abubakar Malami, Buhari’s attorney-general, over the disobedience of the order. The President said he never told them not to obey the order. But did he tell them to obey it? It is a two-way thing. As their principal, they cannot do anything without him. So, he must give the greenlight before they go, as he did in respect of approval for the naira policy.

Everything Emefiele did was with his approval. At a point, Emefiele even pursued Buhari to Daura, Katsina State, to get the approval for the extension of the policy deadline from January 31 to February 10. Emefiele has brought shame upon himself. He has lost his voice and he is now shying away from facing the public. He allowed himself to be used and dumped. He has turned out to be a bull in a China shop.

Emefiele has destroyed the Nigerian house which he was supposed to help grow with sound economic and monetary policy. CBN governors all over the world are men of their own. They do not crouch before their countries’ presidents because they want to keep their jobs. Emefiele is the architect of his infamy. His kind should never govern the CBN again.

Sanwo-Olu go pepper them

FORTY-EIGHT HOURS hence, the governorship and Houses of Assembly elections will hold. All eyes are on Lagos. Will there be an upset there? This question is flying about because of what happened during the February 25 presidential poll. Labour Party (LP) won the state. Things will be different this Saturday because the necessary lessons have been learnt. LP or any other party for that matter stand no chance in this race.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) will beat all other candidates hands down. He go pepper them to borrow the political lingo of the time. Why am I so confident? This is a different election from that of February 25. The religious bigots can also not use the faith ticket to demarket him. What about ethnicity and the youth factor? They will also not count much.

March 16, 2023