The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • The ASUU/SSANU Strike

    The ASUU/SSANU Strike

    Annual strike has become a recurring decimal in the life of public universities in Nigeria. There is no country in the entire world that experiences this terrible phenomenon without immediately tackling it to ensure that it does not happen again. But not in Nigeria, a country where any goes. This speaks volume for the decadence and lack of economic planning for development in our country. It is also a total disregard for the knowledge industry characterizing the planning for development seen in other countries of the world including even our poorer African neighbors.

    While I understand the reasons of my colleagues in the universities in their annual industrial disruption of academic life, I do not understand why industrial action seems to be the only strategy employed year in year out to confront the situation. Even in war there is always a place for peaceful resolution through dialogue and negotiations. The problem is that the government especially the current government does not seem to understand the nexus between knowledge and development and between peaceful academic sector and security. The constant closure of our universities and other tertiary institutions has a direct link to the insecurity in the country fueled by youthful restlessness and hopelessness arising from unrealized academic ambitions.

    What does a young person studying for a four-year course or six-year course in the universities but remaining there for a decade due to incessant strikes by the staffs of their institutions do to express his or her anger with society than to cause mayhem and chaos or join others to bring the evil system killing them down on all our heads? This makes them prone to destructive tendencies. I am writing as a father and grandfather witnessing this in the families of my children. This constant closure has serious effects on the mental conditions of these children and the medical conditions of their parents. Even though there are no jobs to absorb the new graduates streaming out of our universities and parents know their children may not get jobs after graduation, nevertheless they would like their children to graduate so that they can feel their mission is accomplished waiting to cross the unemployment bridge when they get there. There are loads of social problems tied to the constant strikes which the people in government do not seem to understand or care enough about. The students genuinely feel there is no resolution to their problems because the leadership of the country, not just the political leadership but all those in positions of leadership including people in the academic community itself, do not care about them. Young people know that the children of the ASUU and SSANU leaders or at least some of them send their children to universities abroad or to local private universities where academic terms are predictable because industrial actions in private universities are not allowed. The people in government and those in the private sector have the financial muscle to send their children abroad where courses run their normal terminal times and children return home to snatch the few jobs available in the public and private sectors thus perpetuating the division between the privileged educated elite and the locally certificated ones who are rushed through their courses after the ending of the perpetual industrial disruptions in our tertiary institutions. I hope we know that we are sowing the seeds of future explosion in the country which our current actions are sure to lead. It reminds me of the book by the Malian author Yambo Ouologuem with the forbidden title “Bound to Violence” (le Devoir de Violence) in which our actions inexorably leads to violence.

    Is there any logic in a country that cannot pay living wages to its academic staff constantly establishing public and private universities? Or is the constant licensing of private universities being done to replace the public universities the government is unable to fund? This cannot be the answer because it does not answer the reasons for the armed forces, the police, other armed institutions of government and some departments establishing universities. It just does not make sense. Announcing the establishment of universities or licensing of private entrepreneurs and religious and other organizations to run universities is not the end of the story. There does not seem to be any thought about staffing and equipment. Most tertiary institutions’ laboratories and other inputs are gotten from abroad. At a time when the country is broke if not outrightly bankrupt or at least is foreign exchange challenged, where will the forex needed to equip these mushrooms of universities come from? Even if the forex were available, where will the staff come from? The existing universities are poorly staffed. The possibility of recruiting foreign staff is absolutely ruled out. Academic staff will not come from Benin, Togo, Ghana or Sierra Leone where salaries are much higher than in Nigeria where a full professor earns less than a thousand dollars a month and where electricity is mostly not available 24 hours of the day.

    I honestly don’t know how our universities run their laboratories in the absence of electric power. We hear of PhD dissertations in the sciences sourcing data online instead of through laboratory experiments. Is it then surprising that knowledge for development is not coming out of our universities? One just has to go to our teaching hospitals where flowing water in the taps is a rarity. The lifts installed in the University College Hospital, Ibadan in 1954 has remained there as museum specimens. Relations of patients sometimes have to carry their sick relations on their backs to admission wards in the upper levels of the hospital. While there, they have to carry buckets of water for toilets and baths of their wards in the hospital and yet we call these institutions “teaching hospitals “and we are still establishing new ones  Doing the same thing which failed in the past again and again is regarded  as absolute madness. This generally describes the state of tertiary education in Nigeria or better still, the state of education in Nigeria at primary, secondary and tertiary levels.

    Even most poor people except in the villages don’t send their children and wards to government schools at primary level anymore and perhaps only patronize the sectarian secondary schools which still remain tolerable as places of learning. In short, the foundation for orderly development is being eroded with our eyes wide open and it does not seem we are aware of it and if we are aware of it, we just don’t care because we have existential problems of physical survival in the face of absence of electricity and potable water not to talk of security both physical and increasing food insecurity. Life in Nigeria is gradually becoming unliveable. We are just merely and barely existing without arts and civilization. We hardly have recreation facilities which are way beyond our pockets and time spent in running after the wherewithal to have a life and some living!

    How did we get here? This requires deep thinking and interrogation because it was not always like this and certainly it was not like this in my youth and adulthood. Even after the civil war, we were able to pick up the pieces of our lives and find social and political stability and equilibrium. We seem to have gone beyond the state of irredeemability in every aspect of our national life. We seem to have reached the nadir of our descent into decay. My worry is that we don’t know this fact and certainly our leaders are oblivious of this fact. They all seem to worry more about 2023 and who will be in and who will be out of Aso Rock. They forget that government is about people and the disconnect between the rulers and the ruled are daily widening into a yawning gap. The people now seem to abandon their reason and to abdicate their responsibility while transferring their duties as a people to the Almighty God presumably the God of Africa alone to save them from the impending political Armageddon. This seems more apparent among Christians than Muslims who are yet to begin to yearn for the imam of the age the Mahdi to liberate beleaguered humanity in Nigeria.

    Perhaps what my more religious compatriots are telling me is true that these signs in Nigeria are the signs of end times as contained in the Holy Bible. The end will probably creep in on us like a thief in the night. But before that time comes it may be the right time for our country to begin the struggle for moral rearmament  or some kind of ethical revolution so that we are at least are prepared for better times whether the end times come or not. The incessant disruption of our educational sector and consequential disruption of our lives as a people if not addressed quickly may hasten the collapse of civilized life in Nigeria.

  • 2023: Buhari zealots to the rescue

    2023: Buhari zealots to the rescue

    Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana not too long ago asked the electorate to first demand from all 2023 presidential aspirants, how they intend to tackle the security challenges tearing our country apart instead of dissipating energy on APC and PDP which he said are two sides of the same coin.  With bandits, foreign Fulani herdsmen and other insurgents levying taxes over ungoverned territories, attacking military formations, airports, railway, highways, many Nigerians today believe President Buhari’s government is overwhelmed in spite of its seven years heroic battle.

    Falana’s challenge resonated well with Nigerians, especially the besieged people of most parts of northern Nigeria. For instance, it was only on March 23, that 34 bodies were recovered following an attack on Kaura LGA of Kaduna according to Samuel Aruwan, the state commissioner for internal security and home affairs. On March 28, an Abuja-Kaduna train ferrying 970 passengers was attacked in Katari, area of the state by banditswho mined the track, killed nine, injured 29 and kidnapped unspecified number of people .

    Within 24 hours, the bandits were back on Kaduna–Abuja highway where they attacked motorists before escaping with dozens of passengers. There are reports of daily harvests of deaths from Zamfara, Sokoto, Niger,  Katsina states that are today neither safe for  residents,  farmers nor the over-stretched security forces.

    But last week’s emergence of Buhari’s  four zealot worshippers  as potential presidential candidates who supported their appeal to the electorate with their participation in  the president’s  seven years heroic war against insurgents and other challenges bedevilling the nation was a big relief. They include Vice President (Pastor) Osinbajo, Pastor Tunde Bakare, Minister Rotimi Amaechi and Yahaya Bello, all celebrating their joint participation in the giant strides the president has made in the areas of agricultural revolution, railway revolution, and heroic battle against insurgency.

    Osinbajo reminded Nigerians that on the order of President Buhari, he “visited our gallant troops in the Northeast and our brothers and sisters in the IDP camps and felt the pain and anguish of victims in violent conflicts, terrorist attacks”. He went on to give an undertaking to complete what he jointly started with the president viz: transforming our security and intelligence architecture; pursuit of justice for all and the observance of rule of law, advancing our infrastructure development, especially power, roads, railways, taking the agriculture revolution to the next level, ensuring that all Nigerians, male and female, attend school and finally assuring provision of jobs for our youths.

    Now with such assurances coming from Osinbajo, a man of God, celebrated for his integrity, I think those who have been jarring our ear-lobes with their daily sing-song of 40%-50% unemployed rate of youths,  unverified claim of 15million of out-of- school children, power outage and general insecurity across the nation, will give government a break and focus on Osinbajo’s message of hope. With Osinbajo remaining faithful to his principal’s policies, Buhari/Osinbajo train to the promised land is assured. And if you don’t vote for continuity in 2023, you are a traitor to a worthy cause.

    As for Rotimi Amaechi, his’ seven years as minister of transportation, eight years as governor of Rivers State; eight years as Speaker, Rivers State House of Assembly and twice as president of Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign organisation, have sufficiently equipped him for the post-Buhari’s challenges.

    And “instead of taking holiday to spend more time with his family, after more than two decades in the public arena, Amaechi was “compelled by the urgency of our present challenges to place his experience and proven capacity at the service of the nation at the highest level”. I on behalf of Nigerians commend Amaechi for his selfless service to the nation and hail his decision to ‘sacrifice his present for our future.’ Such patriotic act was last undertaken by Babangida and ‘his army of anything is possible’

    For Pastor Bakare, who claimed to have been ordained president for 2023, “the south is being set against the north, while Christians are set against Muslims’; he ‘remains the rallying point to restore order in the country’. His “PTB brand is a rallying point for all Nigerians”, and he is imbued with “a vision of a new Nigeria in which he will play a leading role and has therefore declared himself  “the best suitable candidate to address the problems confronting Nigeria”.

    My warning to those troubled by Bakare’s fake predictions of the past  including that of death before inauguration for Obasanjo who went on to complete his two terms of four years and even sought a third term: ‘don’t speak ill of a man of God.’

    But of all Buhari’s zealot worshippers, I am more intrigued by Kogi State’s Yahaya Bello, the youngest but the least competent of all Nigerian governors. The current  Nigerian youths who unlike Zik and Awo, their  forbears that studied and read widely to proffer solutions to their country’s crisis of nation building, put their fate in power of the social media, now have the potential of electing one of their own as president in 2023.

    And Yahaya Bello will ‘banish bandits, Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists in one year if elected as president’. On how he would accomplish a goal that has eluded General Buhari, a hero of war for seven years, he “will ensure that every chief executive of the various federating units sits up and do their jobs, will not tolerate any lackadaisical attitude or passing of the buck to the centre, will ensure that various federating units are strengthened, and will supervise and ensure that all security agencies carry out their duties as expected”. Above all, he “will punish those not doing well”. He did not say if these are lessons from is mentor.

    But with the above level of preparedness and commitment, it is perhaps only those who regard Bello as a comedian for proclaiming himself leader of Nigerian youths who will fail to acknowledge his readiness for the office of commander-in –chief come 2023 as I am sure the youths are earnestly yearning for him.

    Osinbajo wants a Nigeria “where our diversities, tribes and faiths unite, rather that divide us”. But dear compatriots, who else but Osinbajo who has been an accomplice in Buhari’s seven years battle against Nigeria’s return to path of freedom by refusing to correct a 52-year old mistake by our ill-informed soldiers that balkanized a working federation into 36 unwieldy and unviable unitary state?

    As for those who question the wisdom in Rotimi Amaechi’s continued expansion of the rail lines without first providing security along the completed lines, I will suggest they take Yahaya Bello for his words. He is going to banish bandits and insurgents from Nigeria within the first year of his presidency.

    And as for the rest of us complaining about absence of governance  even as Nigerians wage war of attrition against themselves,  with prices of food hitting the roof amidst the success the nation recorded in her agriculture revolution,  diesel oil refined in Nigeria going up to N650 per litre, kerosene meant for the poor disappearing  from filling stations, bread moving up from N500 to N1,000,  even as Lai Mohammed, the fake doctor continues to insist on our good health, and that the nation’s forlorn  hope lies in  Buhari’s four zealot worshippers’ promise to continue with his current policies.

  • This hell we made

    This hell we made

    EN route to the 2023 general elections, the cult of digital citizenship fosters a supreme theme: that of the maleficently-woke youth. Social media expanded to fill the space life provides, substitutes Nigeria’s bleak moon for digitized dawn.

    Call it science’s dark revenge or technology’s defiant stand against conservative norms. In the mix, Nigeria incinerates by the speed of blistering terabytes. Two planes of reality collide a la traditional versus new media; conservative ethicist versus deviant liberal. Nigeria erupts in primeval chaos, cyber-activated.

    The intelligible persistently loses to the unintelligible and citizenship gets redefined as malevolent youths vengefully debase and defy society’s conservative and arrogant hierarchs.

    The digitally-woke youth is technology’s heroic personae and his cult runs where dissent rebounds. He has a fearless disposition but is afflicted by dewy cowardice. In the cyberspace he inhabits, he personifies spirited narcissism, unfurling wildly to his articulated and unarticulated sinful lusts.

    The joke persists in contemporary circuits that the battle for Nigeria’s freedom would be fought and won in social space and by the cudgels and blades of such ‘woke’ youth. This notion sprouts from ideological fields at home and abroad, where pasture, copse, and tributary of thought, flourish from sickly seeds of violence and death.

    Being ‘woke’ is next to being a deity in contemporary youth circuits. It confers on the ‘woke’ a colossal ego, an exaggerated sense of awareness, and idolatry of fawning peers. To such youth, social media becomes theatre, a public agon. Every issue from policy failure, inefficient leadership, distressed economy, electoral fraud, and insecurity, to failing public institutions offer him an opportunity to vent.

    Unlike the conventional patriot for whom protest functions as a catalyst for positive change, the digitally-woke youth protests for ego, anarchy, and applause.

    In his element, he courts the admiration of the strolling spectator; he forgets that he is neither king nor god but a manipulable pawn. He is a victim of ignorance’s tyranny over intellect thus his susceptibility to being used by shady, criminally-minded others.

    He is arsonist, assassin and mugger at election time; he is canon-fodder for disrupting the state, in time of peace. He is the random cyber-rat with multiple monikers, preaching bigotries and a gospel of hate across several social media platforms and news sites as you read.

    Beneath his radical chants, however, subsists an immoderate hankering for money and safety. Some have traced this hankering to greed, cowardice, and a predilection for slumber. But he is ‘woke’ and ‘woke’ youth mustn’t snooze.

    Money, fast cars, and dubious acclaim are, however, a deal-breaker hence the morbid race against time to acquire wealth by ‘woke’ young assassins, internet scammers (Yahoo Boys), and prostitutes. Lest we forget the gangs of ‘woke’ political thugs, human rights activists, ‘youth leaders,’ public officers, pen robbers, armed robbers, and thieves comprising the nation’s youth.

    Due to the perceived trashiness and philosophical harlotry of the journalist, this band of youths would not leave the battle for their freedom from Nigeria’s predatory ruling class to the press.

    Cowardice is what we should conquer. Cowardice enslaves all to mean and homicidal politicians. It cripples the rage of impoverished youths and binds all to the wiles of dubious political parties and public officers.

    It takes courage to evolve a humane ideology and sustain it. As Nigerians, in our youth, we haven’t the courage and the will, and this interferes with our ability to accomplish progressive change.

    More worrisome is our violent attempt to be radical; eventually it resonates too feebly, like a kind of rudderless activism. This was reflective in the attitude of certain youth segments during previous general elections and the  #EndARS protest.

    Mistaking hooliganism for “higher political awareness” or “being woke,” they harassed their peers and the elderly who voted for President Muhammadu Buhari, among others.

    They frantically sought for votes for their self-styled messiahs, whose unique selling point (USP) was an exaggerated sense of self-worth. Extravagant sections of the press called the latter, titans. But they were no titans. They were simply merchants of rot, who emerged to clothe dross as gold and filth in newer, fanciful packs.

    Leading a motley pack of rabid followers, they condemned the incumbent ruling class to frantic applause. But soon after they spoke in brilliant, rousing cadences, their platitudes started to trail off in confusion.

    Today, their language echoes like the battle cries of four-year-olds playing war Generals against an army of hostile corn stalks. Having provoked the citizenry’s dormant passion with deceptive dialectics, as the elections wore on, their passion was shown for what it was, the spunk of beetles kindling wet wood.

    Most youth candidates failed to shine at the last general elections because their gospel of hope was untranslatable by realistic yardsticks. They spoke the same gibberish as the oligarchs they sought to unseat.

    Ultimately, they brought nothing new to the table, save a slew of platitudes and tiresome rhetoric. For instance, some dizzy candidate promised to turn marijuana into a national revenue earner and establish an N100, 000 national minimum wage package for the country in a manner reminiscent of the prominent parties’ lifeboat solutions.

    Another promised to rescue the Chibok girls, eradicate terrorism and entrench gender equality without a practical blueprint for achieving such.

    Eventually, their desperate rants and promises established them as dangerous daydreamers, who could and would rip apart a nation already fragmented and ruined by bigotries, maladministration, and plunder.

    Such is the quality of the ‘politically woke” youth. They identify all that is wrong with Nigeria but they are never specific about what must be done to correct them.

    It is relatively easy to join a picket line and tirelessly castigate our elders and ruling class for everything that is wrong with our lives, but these actions, while they demonstrate frustration, and in some instances, even heroism, deal generally with symptoms of· our problems and not the solutions.

    All the picket lines in the world would not resolve the maladies of corruption, fraudulent and impatient youth, greed, racism, disillusionment with learning, and substandard education.

    Yeah, bad news is in the air. We worry and gripe about it. Bloggers and columnists rant about it. We have even learnt to joke about it. But it’s time we do something about it.

    It is instructive that the Katari-Rijana train bombing was carried out by armed bandits “between 18 and 20” years old, according to the survivors’ accounts.

    It takes so much effort to be cynical and vengeful, let us channel such efforts into a more profitable enterprise, like visionary politics, honest labour, and reorientation.

    It’s about time we projected more progressive views of our world. Let us begin to seek the upright amongst us. They are the negligible few we love to haze and deride for being too ‘conservative,’ ‘boring’ and ‘pretentious.’

    They believe in justice, equality and the rule of law. They are pious without being self-righteous. They are responsible, tolerant, and in many ways, more evolved.

    We need such a breed of Nigerians to drive a practicable and all-inclusive plan; a proposal of shared targets and intentions with broad-based support and the moral and political will to implement its mechanisms and ends, with a profound understanding of the law, governance methods, economics and social organisation of humane statehood.

    Without these, we will continue to flounder in the sea of well-meaning but ineffective good intentions.

    These are dark days for Nigeria. We are going through a particularly unpleasant form of hell but it’s a hell that we have made for ourselves.

     

     

     

  • In defence of Nasir el-Rufai

    In defence of Nasir el-Rufai

    Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State is never afraid to walk alone. He is no slave to anybody’s laws. You know where he stands on any issue. In an effort to bring hope to a people divided by ethno-religion and economic differences, he has been described as ‘Fulani irredentist’ accused of ethnic cleansing and blamed by Buhari’s Aso Rock crowd who could not stand his guts of fuelling the Muslims/Christian crisis that predate him.

    But Nasir can be ruthlessly aggressive in the pursuit of his objective. At the period President Buhari’s ‘loyal gatekeepers’, were claiming out of mischief that those  sacking and confiscating villages in the Middle Belt region were ‘ghosts’, El-Rufai identified them as aggrieved  Fulani immigrant herdsmen.  He took pains to trace them to their various countries where, despite opposition by Nigerians, they were offered ransom to end attack on his people.

    At a period anti-Nigeria elements in the Presidency were fraudulently promoting a public funded RUGA policy to protect those Sheik Gumi, Governors Aminu Masari and Bello Matawalle claimed were immigrant Fulani herdsmen, El-Rufai opted for ranching and was shopping for N140billion to settle Kaduna pastoral farmers.

    When the president’s men settled for El-Rufai’s long abandoned policy of appeasement and imposed their hallucination as state policy – Rehabilitating and re-integrating repentant bandits and terrorists, El-Rufai insisted bandits who have graduated from making N100,000 from rustled cow to making millions by kidnaping one person must be bombed out of existence  and allowed to go and repent before Allah in the great beyond.

    El-Rufai holds no hostages.  For him, the president men are to be held responsible for near absence of governance. If he needed further proof that Nigeria is on auto-pilot,  last week’s avoidable violent attack on Abuja-Kaduna bound train resulting in about a dozen deaths and about 140 yet to be accounted for victims, was all that was needed.

    And El-Rufai is not sparing the presidency. In an attack the newly adopted APC chairman, Adamu likened to  ‘taking a knife to rip open one’s stomach’, El-Rufai exposed the nakedness of  some  of Buhari’s clowning ministers. One in the face a national tragedy was asking Nigerian to donate N2billion for the rehabilitation of damaged rail lines over which he ought to have resigned. Another  who subjected Nigerians to a harrowing experience at the peak of COVID-19 pandemic over registration for NIN we were told would end the insurgency’s ability to coordinate attack is, as we speak, still on his seat even as the exercise seemed to have been designed to help the insurgents.

    El-Rufai righteous indignation about government failure to heed warnings that would have prevented the attack is understandable. We have now gathered from newspaper reports that the Kaduna State government in a letter dated November 2, 2021 advised that “trains operate during the daytime only and that all arrivals after dark, to Kaduna or Abuja, should be avoided completely.”

    This was followed by a second letter dated January 27, signed by Kaduna’s Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan which states “Current developments indicate that the concerns over threats to train services…continue to exist.”

    Twenty five days before the attack, an intelligence report dated March 3, titled “Plans to Simultaneously Attack Rigasa Train Station…warned of an impending attack”. Yet, no one took pre-emptive action.

    Beyond the train attack, El-Rufai also said that government and security groups know the attackers, their locations and their telephone numbers through which they monitor their conversations’. He anguished:  “Why the security has not gone to kill them? Where are our soldiers?” and gave the above as reasons for going to see the president. And perhaps frustrated by the failure of the president’s earlier assurances after each meeting, El-Rufai gave an insight into what transpired between him and the president:

    “And also I have said that if these actions are not taken, it becomes a must for us as governors to take measures to protect our citizens, even if it means we will import mercenaries from outside the country to do it. If our soldiers fail, I swear to God, we will do that. This issue has reached an alarming state.”

    Unfortunately, instead of understanding where frustrated El-Rufai was coming from, his idea has been roundly dismissed by those who have only watched from the side-lines the daily harvest of deaths in Kaduna State.

    First were some Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) who called our attention to the unconstitutionality of the governor’s idea. But it is not difficult to see their intervention as either hypocritical or arising from El-Rufai’s hate. The senior lawyers cannot pretend that  President Buhari, who routinely disobeyed court orders, ordered midnight raid of Supreme Court judges’ houses and National Assembly by hooded DSS men, not to talk of murder of drug pushers through retroactive law as a military head of state, has ever been a respecter of rule of law. And they know better: In a democracy, an elected sovereign is allowed to breach the constitution in the overall interest of the nation.

    Some retired Generals were also too quick to remind us that the president is the Commander in Chief. Repeating what was supposed to be obvious is often seen as proof of scepticism. And  this is possible since the president outside the first few months of his presidency when Boko haram insurgents was brought to their knees, he has for the greater part of his presidency not lived up that title, the reason  Wole Soyinka the Nobel laureate rechristened him something like “the Mourner in Chief”.

    The heart-ache of some others was that it will lead to low morale of our soldiers. Again except that we live in denial, we all know the source of low morale in the military is the government. For instance, besides claims of inadequate equipment due to alleged corruption, with the upsurge in the number of daring attacks by insurgents on airport, railway, military institutions and ungoverned forests where bandits are said to be collecting taxes, it will be difficult to disabuse the minds of military officers opposed to government rehabilitation and re-integration policy of repentant militants.

    President Buhari who believes he can run Nigeria without asking Nigerian what they want traded off hope through his rejection of suggestions by Nigerian stakeholders as to the way out of our crisis of nation building. This includes his rejection of the demand by the 36 states of the federation for state police to replace the current ineffective centralised policing, an aberration in any federation.

    There was also the consensus by the 36 governors to substitute open grazing with ranching in order to end confrontation between farmers and herders often exploited by immigrant herdsmen and bandits. The president’s only known public reaction has been “I cannot contradict my minister of justice, who is reactivating pre-independence grazing routes across the nation.’

    Nigerians and President Buhari’s APC overwhelmingly settled for restructuring of the country to take care of those agitating for self-actualization and guarantee enough resources for the reconfigured states to protect their borders from unwanted immigrants. The president rejected the idea.

    If I have to choose between Buhari’s actions that foreclose hope and El-Rufai’s idea that promises hope for his besieged people, no matter how defective, I will settle for the latter.

  • Which 2023?

    Which 2023?

    WHENEVER he speaks, people listen. So, the man needs no introduction. Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye’s take on the elections billed for 2023 is scary. Scary because of the way he put it. The General Overseer (GO) of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) said God had not told him yet whether the elections would hold. He emphasised the word ‘yet’ before mischief makers would seize the space and say Daddy GO, as he is popularly known, has predicted that the elections would Adeboye was not saying anything new. Some Nigerians from different walks of life had expressed similar sentiments at one time or the other. They have not stopped expressing that fear. Although there is a caveat to Adeboye’s position on the issue, others have spoken with certainty that the elections would not hold, citing the prevailing economic hardship, social disharmony and insecurity.

    These are plausible reasons which could hinder the conduct of the elections. Long before now, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) too raised the alarm that insecurity could jeopardise the elections. The electoral umpire spoke in the wake of the destruction of its facilities and sensitive election materials in some parts of the country, especially the Southeast . Those expressing doubts over the conduct of the elections cannot be blamed. The portents are not good, contrary to the picture that the government is painting.

    The government may have given security its best shot, as it is wont to say, but it appears that its best is not good enough. It seemed the government came to power, underestimating the security problem. Insecurity is not tackled by mere words of mouth. It is addressed by employing tact, strategy, equipment and well trained personnel. Security is key to the social harmony of a country and where it is missing, there cannot be peace, progress and unity. When all these ingredients are not there, elections cannot hold.  Who can talk of elections in an atmosphere of fear, death and destruction?

    Adeboye is not a politician, as he rightly pointed out. The public knows him as a pastor, a calling in which he has excelled. He spoke out of concern for what he has been seeing and which all of us are seeing, except those who want to bury their heads in the sand like ostrich. Despite all the fears over 2023, many cannot wait for the elections to come and go. Ask them why, they will reply without batting an eyelid that the present administration has not delivered on its promises.

    If possible, they even want the government to leave now. But why are many afraid for 2023? It is mainly because of insecurity. Forget the rising food prices, the spiralling cost of cooking gas, diesel, kerosine, aviation fuel and petrol and the abject proverty in the land, it is insecurity that is gnawing at the back of people’s minds.

    The government promised to take 100 million people out of poverty. With the situation of things today, it is rather driving millions into poverty. There is, therefore, nothing to cheer about the report that India has taken over from Nigeria as the world’s poverty capital. Reason: India has a population of 1.38 billion, as at 2020, which is over six times that of Nigeria, which is put at 210.87 million as at 2021.

    The government brandishes its record in roads development and modernisation of the rail system.

    These gains are being eroded by insecurity. The rail, the air and the road are no longer safe. Look at what happened on the Abuja-Kaduna rail route on March 28. More than one week after the incident, many are still unaccounted for. The most worrisome of it all is that the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) does not know the actual number of passengers on board the ill-fated train. People look at things like this and thunder: “you are talking of 2023; which 2023?”.

    Those who think elections will hold in 2023 and those with contrary view agree on one thing though –  the present administration must go and “the sooner it leaves, the better”. 2023 is eight months from now. The elections will hold in nine, 10 months time. Between now and the hand over of government on May 29, 2023, we have close to 12 months. It is still a long way to go before the dawn of a new government. What will happen between now and 2023 is in the hands of God? Will there be elections in 2023? I believe that the elections will hold. I am an incurable optimist when it comes to Nigeria. We have survived bad times before and these harsh times too shall come to pass right before our eyes.

    To those anxious over 2023, Nigeria has never seen worst times than this. This is why the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is gloating over what it calls the misgovernance of the All Progressives Congress (APC), which wrested power from it in 2015. Indeed, people are benumbed by what they have seen under the APC government. They invested high hopes in the party, believing that it would show PDP how to run a country. Sadly, the joke today is on APC rather than PDP. Be that as it may, Nigerians should not lose hope. Our destiny lies in our hands.

    Must our choices be limited to either APC or PDP? We should look beyond them if our country must come out of the cocoon to which it has been consigned by these two parties in the last 24 years. We deserve something better than APC and PDP. So, our aim in 2023 should be to vote in a party that can turn the fortunes of the country around. We have been stuck in one place for 24 years because we limited ourselves to choosing between six and half a dozen. What is the difference?

     

    The butcher in Bucha

    RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has got more than what he bargained for in Ukraine. When his country launched what he called a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine on February 24, it was meant to be a short and sharp invasion. More than a month after, his army has not succeeded in taking over Ukraine. They are winning in the air, but losing on the land. His soldiers have been bombing apartment buildings, schools and hospitals, killing children and the elderly and maiming many others, but the Ukrainian army has stood firm on the ground.

    The most bestial act of the invasion happened in a town called Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital,  where the butcher went on a killing spree. The world is revolted by the pictures of the massacre so far released. Our people can now see what a massacre or genocide really is. Bodies littered the streets of Bucha. Some were headless and limbless. It was a gory sight to behold. These war crimes should not go unpunished. Otherwise, another, worse than Putin may rise again. If Putin could attempt to set the global community on the path of another world war despite what happened to Adolf Hitler, who caused World War 11, then a good example must be made of him to deter his ilk.

  • National Insecurity: Lord have mercy!

    National Insecurity: Lord have mercy!

    These are not the best of times in Nigeria. There is a general feeling of helplessness in the country when it comes to the issue of physical and economic security. The terrorism we all saw on the Abuja – Kaduna train last week was also seen all over the world and this makes Nigeria to become a no go area for local and foreign investors. This is the second attack on this route in the last six months in a place within 100 kilometres radius of Abuja the headquarters of the federal government and home to the headquarters of the army, air force, navy, police, national security service and other armed and paramilitary services of this nation all charged with securing our nation.

    The First Division of the Nigerian Army – usually seen as the teeth of the army is in Kaduna. Many army and air force formations are also in Kaduna. Somehow it seems our security organizations are either overwhelmed or are just incompetent or poorly armed and provisioned. In our local parlance, shall we will say “Abi water don pass gari?”

    What these terrorists have attacked and damaged was built with borrowed funds and it makes foreign investors and foreign creditors feel that Nigeria is a basket case not worth salvaging. The same time this is happening, we are also hearing the major foreign exchange earner of the country – oil and gas proceeds, are under threat. The oil being drilled is not getting to the terminals for evacuation and in some cases up to 80 percent of oil production is being stolen before reaching the Bonny terminal. There are many questions that come to mind. Who are the ones engaged in siphoning such a critical national asset? By what means is the stolen crude oil taken out of the country? Where is the navy that is supposed to protect the territorial waters of Nigeria? Some of the siphoning is done on land. Where are the police, and the military and other security organizations particularly the intelligence services set up to protect the vital resources of Nigeria? Which countries or international merchants are the buyers of the stolen Nigerian oil? These are questions begging for answers.

    We have never had this kind of malaise before and not even during the civil war when our then small army and security organizations were stretched to their limits. What is responsible for this security regression? Of course we have been challenged by the Boko Haram and ISWAP insurgency that has metastasized to a countrywide terrorism either called banditry or herders attacking farmers and other innocent Nigerians who are kidnapped for ransom.

    When these kidnappings and killings and ethnic cleansing began, we wrote on these pages that punishment should be swift and sure but our government prevaricated preaching to the victims to be more accommodating and to share their land with their oppressors and their killers. In fact one government spokesman said victims should choose between keeping their land or their lives. In other words, it seemed then that government shirked its responsibility and indulged the killers who have now taken liberty for license and become more sophisticated in the mode of their terrorism and are now not just content with killing but are now ready to murder on industrial scale such as blowing up a train and raining bullets on survivors and carrying the rest away as prize booty for ransoms.

    I must applaud Governor Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna who has consistently advocated tough stance in dealing with these terrorists. Even though as chief security officer of Kaduna State he does not have the means to enforce security in his state and the federal police and army are not subject to his command, he has however continued to shout and wail whenever his people are daily slaughtered by terrorists whose abode he claims he knows. What stops the Nigerian Army from going after these people in their hideouts beats peoples’ imagination. We must note that initially El Rufai was pampering some of the terrorists but it seems he is fed up with the situation that he is flying the kite of employing mercenaries to flush out the terrorists in his state and presumably in the rest of Nigeria. This is a dangerous scenario because we should not ride the tiger of mercenaries lest we find ourselves in them. We should remember what happened in the Congo in the 1960s when Moise Tshombe hired mercenaries to support him in Katanga province and they became lords to themselves, killing people and looting minerals in the state and it took a while to expel them. I would not go to the extreme of suggesting of hiring mercenaries to fight insurgents and terrorists in Nigeria. That is the job of a well-trained, equipped and motivated army. When we get to a desperate situation of inviting foreign warlords into our country, then we may as well give up. We opposed Goodluck Jonathan for allegedly hiring mercenaries to fight Boko Haram in Borno and I believe we should also oppose the move to hire mercenaries now.

    This brings me to the whole question of security architecture in Nigeria. Others and I, having looked at the problem of insecurity in Nigeria, have suggested that policing should start from the grassroots of city and local governments and move to state and from state to zonal and finally to the federal level in a coordinated fashion with each level securing its own area without subservience to the next level but all answerable to the government at each level and not all of them answerable to a super government, some Poobah, at the centre. This will fit in with our federal system if we were running a federal system in truth and indeed. Countries where I have lived like the USA and Canada not only have police organizations as I have suggested but also even allow universities to have their own police forces that are well trained and run in coordination with adjacent police forces. I don’t know what we are waiting for before responding adequately to the security challenges facing us daily. The issue of insecurity is not just a government affair. We are all involved. After all government is about people. Without security there can be no development and without investment both local and foreign there will be no employment, with mass unemployment comes mass poverty and immiseration which feed into insecurity. In a situation where even local people are afraid to invest in the future of their country, it will be foolish for our leaders to tell foreign investors to come and help us. The hydrocarbons sector which used to be attractive to foreigners have been ruined by oil bunkerers and pipeline busters that oil majors are winding up their affairs in the country and yet our government in Abuja, instead of leading the troops into the field against oil thieves issues languid directives which the thieves would laugh at. Even agribusiness investors in places like Kebbi and Plateau packaging tomatoes are regularly killed by hundreds of marauding terrorists wielding AK-47 with no one to challenge them. It is only the cement sector that seems to thrive and one prays that investors there are not driven away from their sites. Whatever little earned in foreign exchange and the huge foreign money sent home by struggling Nigerians abroad are either stolen from the CBN or taken to China, India and Vietnam and Southeast Asia by so-called traders to bring in substandard goods made at the instance and directive of unscrupulous Nigerian traders for quick and huge profits which are splashed on building palaces in the villages and wasted on burials of some of their parents who might have died of starvation.

    There is no doubt in my mind that there is a need for moral rearmament in whatever form it may take. If we don’t do something drastic like curbing corruption, confronting insecurity, building a new Nigerian economy based on agriculture, agribusiness, industrialization, running a government and administration based on career open to talents as opposed to federal character, favouritism, political jobbery and in a totally restructured federal system, this house built on injustice would collapse like a house of cards which it presently is. This may sound alarmist. But the handwriting is on the wall and as the wise saying goes, you don’t have to announce to a deaf and dumb person that war has broken out in his or her country because it will be obvious by the chaos which will be observable by the deaf and dumb. We can all see that things are not right in our country and the prayer of every one of my age is that we would like to leave the world better than the way we found it. If we die now, we cannot say we left Nigeria better than we found it because this country has been in regression since 1962.

    Security must begin from the grassroots village or city level by local police recruited among the people who know them, then moving up to local governments and then state, then to zonal police before  federal police, all operating independently but in a coordinated way and for the overall security of the country at all and every level.

  • Bola Tinubu at 70…The legend and the gloom

    Bola Tinubu at 70…The legend and the gloom

    At 70, twilight deepens on Bola Ahmed Akanbi Tinubu but his mettle attains the radiance of rebirth, like the proverbial patriot sculpted of spunk and spittle. Ornamented in self-creation, he suffers the muse of manic re-creators.

    In the flora of imagination, he is a hero, a villain, a mentor, and a political godfather. He is a father, a husband, a brother, an uncle, and grandfather. He is also a patriot. A human.

    In the estimation of friends and foes, the heart of his story is redacted and recast. Everybody defends or maligns Tinubu as politics and circumstances dictate – if this isn’t expedient belly magic, what is?

    We have seen recipients of his benefactive politics hurl caution to the wind and pay it forward with malice. Some mutate as foes. “This must be witchcraft if not juju,” the acerbic millennial prowling Twitter would say.

    Amid the clashing contrarieties triggered by his presidential ambition, only Tinubu’s deeds could validate him or otherwise. En route to the 2023 elections, many would rather see him decline in the shadows. Thus their wailing: “He mustn’t contest for the presidency;” “He should remain a kingmaker;” “What does he want again? He is too desperate;” “We need a youthful president;” “Is Tinubu what we need at this period?”

    Such is the tenor of argument against Tinubu aka Asiwaju, and Jagaban Borgu. But while a handful of internet trolls caw and nibble to impair his worth,  many more are rooting – online and offline. Through their clapperclaw, Tinubu will become whatever was penned in his Qadar. If this includes “Mr. President,” so be it.

    Facts don’t care about anyone’s feelings. The truth sprouts free of “stomach infrastructure.” Of the 2023 presidential aspirants, Asiwaju leads in stature and by his deeds. Nonetheless, he’s been frantically dismissed as infirm by parties threatened by his virtuosity and apparent bone strut.

    There is no gainsaying Tinubu vies for the presidency in dire times. He must appreciate this moment for what it’s worth – when the neurotic tick-tock of midnight silences our whispers of dawn.

    His cancellation of his annual colloquium to mourn victims of the Katari-Rijana train bombing by armed bandits suggests this much. About nine persons were reportedly killed by the terrorists on Monday night, while 25 others suffered gunshot wounds. More passengers have been declared missing.

    Tinubu vies for the presidency amid our self-inflicted tragedies: terrorism, comatose oil refineries, substandard health and education, corporate banditry, and Yahoo Plus pandemic, to mention a few.

    Critics of his ambition angrily crucify apologists of his candidacy irrespective of his merits. It’s that delicate. Many tales about him suffer enormous exclusions. In the foundry of political imagery, so much is excluded from Tinubu’s bust that we can feel his silhouette straining against the charged atmosphere, in combat with arbitrary sculpting.

    Having bestrode the political scene, like a colossus for three decades, grooming leaders, his politics culminate in pursuit of his presidential ambition. Tinubu banks on his experience as Managing Auditor and Treasurer at Mobil, the oil company where he made his fortune, his professional training at American based-accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, then ‘Deloitte Haskins and Sells,’  General Motors, First National Bank of Chicago, Procter and Gamble, among others,

    His re-engineering of Lagos’ fiscal regime, as the state governor, from a monthly internally generated revenue (IGR) of N600m to about N10 billion; and his exploits as a fiery warhorse, member, and financier of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), that fought the military to a standstill following the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election, are appreciable.

    He has subsequently proved himself politically consistent as a  Senator on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the aborted Third Republic, the Alliance for Democracy (AD), and Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

    The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was another attestation to his political savvy. He wooed the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) led by Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, the Congress for Political Change (CPC) led by Muhammadu Buhari, and his ACN, to form the APC thus thwarting the PDP’s boast to stay in power for at least 60 years.

    In politics, Tinubu flaunts a quintessential stone architecture, but the random troll wants him to give it up for the use of a wily, lesser protege. Even if the latter suggests he isn’t man enough, playing ‘hide and seek’ with his presidential fantasy – thus lionising Tinubu and projecting himself as earthen ovule, manhood as quivering scorched egg.

    Tinubu’s politics, honed through his lieutenants’ hostilities and betrayal, assumes tactical elegance – his principles of political sportsmanship are made more concrete. They serve him as you read. Ultimately, he is elevated or “reduced” to his essence. He is a blessing to those who truly know him and a role model to his closet and open detractors.

    At 70, everyone wants a piece of Tinubu. Perhaps because he is the politician to beat despite the clamour for a younger candidate by segments of Nigeria’s youths. None of their whispered alternatives, however, is in his youth. Those who are could never win the 2023 elections.

    None have shown the intellectual rigour, emotional maturity, stamina, discipline, native intelligence, and character displayed by Asiwaju.

    Tinubu is ritualized personality, a streamlined pond, and a totem for sloganeering. He is detestable to his foes yet excitingly speckless to loyalists. The former committed to thwarting his ambition – why not project the glories of their super candidate rather than squander expensive time maligning Tinubu? Perhaps because their preferred candidate’s perfection is chiefly for display, not exploitable. He can only tickle their fancy from his social media balcony – his window of appearance.

    If all politics thrive by a window of appearance, Tinubu’s face is the sun of consciousness rising over his professed horizon. The unrestrained malice of the anti-Tinubu campaigners, however, thrives by theft of morality. The same herd that condemned national heroes and ex-Super Eagles stars for celebrating with him has turned a blind eye to Timi Dakolo’s performance at serial presidential aspirant, Atiku Abubakar’s declaration launch- for the umpteenth time.

    To his rivals and detractors, Tinubu is both exposed and enclosed, a torment and an idol. He is naked yet armoured, vilified yet ritually adored. Thus he must understand if, for instance, his democratic credentials are radically questioned by a news medium notorious for its tyrant disposition to staff, institutionalized bigotry, and double standards.

    He’d appreciate why a TV station may hawk magazine slots, at millions of bribe naira, for anyone seeking to malign him; he’d appreciate why a Yahoo Boy (advance fee fraudster), a bitter rival, and the most acerbic cynic may write him off as anathema.

    He must appreciate too why he must soak it all in like a garbage dump, knowing it’s a prerequisite for a patriot seeking to serve Nigerians of vast bigotries, intellect, and stripes. He must respond in truth, patience, competence, understanding, and love.

    He must understand that his most bitter critics are essential to his pirouette to greater significance. If the presidency is divinely penned in his Qadar, no force in the world could thwart him.

    Of all his names, I am in love with his oriki, Akanbi, manifestly because I answer to it. An Akanbi is an Akanda Eda – inured to the odds, forged to triumph through tumult.

    Nigeria is in a state of war, a frigid blank zone under siege. It might take an Akanbi to liberate her.

    Happy 70th anniversary to Asiwaju Tinubu.

  • What to do about Nigeria’s deindustrialisation

    What to do about Nigeria’s deindustrialisation

    This last week, I drove past the Jericho area of Ibadan where most of the publishing houses in Nigeria like Heinemann, Oxford University Press, Evans Publishers and others are located and I noticed the absence of the usual activities of movement of people, cars and trucks and wondered whether they have all closed down. Is it another case of God has departed from the house of Israel?

    I hope we are not importing books and allowing local publishers to suffer. At least we ought to produce primary and secondary school books for the millions of our children going to school. What seems to be the lot of the publishers has been extended to the printers in Lagos and Ibadan whose machines are idle when not printing religious books for the churches and mosques since religion appears to be the only thriving industries in Nigeria. Of course religion is important but we can’t feed our huge population with religion alone they also need bread and butter, so to speak.

    In the last decade, we have witnessed industries closing down in different parts of Nigeria. It began with the closure of textile mills in Kaduna, Kano, Ikeja, Ado-Ekiti and Aba leading to the laying off of hundreds of thousands of workers with nowhere to go and with restricted skills and no institutions to retrain them and they all became part of the swelling army of the unemployed and unemployable. The same fate befell the motor parts industries of Michelin and Dunlop and Odutola tyres in Ikeja and Ibadan, battery factory in Ibadan, windshield makers in Ibadan and the Mercedes truck assembly plants in Enugu, Fiat and Peugeot in Kano and Kaduna respectively. Leyland and Volkswagen were also set up to assemble cars and pickups in Ibadan and Lagos respectively.

    Perhaps we should have focused on Peugeot cars and Mercedes’ trucks and busses instead of allowing too many of them to establish assembling plants in Nigeria. Then, we should have made sure no other brands came into Nigeria and reduced government participation the industries so that the best people from anywhere in the world would run them thus creating jobs for millions of people instead of focusing on the management appointees. There were plants making fertilizers in Port Harcourt in which Nigeria was producing all our fertilizer needs in association with Kellogg of America. We also killed the company by allowing politicians to go into importation of fertilizers which forced our own plants to become unprofitable because it had to generate its own electricity and sink boreholes for water, construct roads leading to site and buy trucks to evacuate products in the absence of railway connection to the country’s market. If we don’t solve the problem of electricity generation and distribution and continue to rely on individual diesel generating plants that are killing the environment, this country will never develop and the few industries we have will move to other countries where electricity is available, steady and cheap.

    I remember Nebegu Brothers in Kano in the 1990s making leathers and exporting them to Europe but most importantly to Japan where they were used to make motorcycle seats. Leventis Motors was assembling motor cycles in Lagos as well. I remember Mr Kornmayer, the managing director of the Mercedes plant in Enugu in the 1990s pleading with the Babangida government to stop importing luxury buses from Hungary and Brazil  so that the Mercedes’ plant in Enugu could be upgraded to produce buses for the Nigerian market. Government ignored him and kept giving import licenses to people to bring the big commuter buses into Nigeria thus transferring employment to foreign countries instead of helping the industries in Nigeria to expand. Gradually and one after another, the motor industries in Nigeria collapsed and many folded up including Peugeot assembly plant which showed promise and was heavily patronized by the various governments of Nigeria which used Peugeot cars as official vehicles.

    Recently, it was announced that Guinness breweries were moving out of Nigeria particularly the plant in Ikeja to Ghana because it is becoming increasingly difficult to produce their drinks profitably. This is surprising because Nigeria is the biggest market for stout for example in the whole world. We thank God that the cement companies in Nigeria are staying and producing hopefully profitably. One can only hope they will not price their products beyond the level of affordability of the average Nigerian. Perhaps in this case we should give kudos to the two Nigerian companies of Dangote and BUA joining the competition of cement production  in Nigeria with the French company of Lafarge.

    The  fate of the oil refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, iron and steel works in Ajaokuta and  the iron and steel companies in Aladja, Jos and Osogbo as well as the failed Aluminium complex in Ikot Abasi  which is the story of failed industrialization perhaps demonstrate the wrong approach  to industrialization and consequent ruin of this country. The question to ask is why all our efforts came to failure. The reasons are clear to any perceptive observer. Corruption is at the centre of our failure. The people charged with managing these industries lacked the sense of patriotism and saw their appointments as opportunities to loot rather than to grow the companies. Some of the management staff were appointed on the basis of ethnicity, political jobbery and religion. The effect of this was that the companies were packed with the wrong people who could not be fired because of their political connection. Some of the managers were young and inexperienced. I personally knew one who bought an executive jet for his company and was flying around with this toy instead of sitting down and running his company. Needless to say the whole place collapsed and the steel company was sold almost as scrap in subsequent years. What happened to the steel companies and to the massive Ajaokuta steel complex was repeated in the case of the oil refineries and the four companies collapsed like a house of cards under the weight of corruption and of putting wrong people to run them because they were/are the blue eyed men of those people in power. Now we are told that we haven’t seen anything yet in the case of the oil industry as a whole. The situation is so bad that in the Bonny terminal, more than 80 percent of oil production does not reach the legal market because unscrupulous people have invested in equipment to steal crude oil flowing into the terminal.  Recently the president issued a languid directive to the security people to stop oil stealing in Nigeria as if this is a problem that started yesterday and that will respond to a tame directive of the president instead of the president declaring a state of war on those who are bent on ruining the economy of the country. No wonder Nigeria can only meet 1.3 million out of the 1.8 million barrels of crude oil production allocated to it by OPEC. In the meantime, we keep awarding millions of dollars contracts for so called “turnaround” maintenance of these refineries which should have been offloaded to the market or sold as scrap to willing buyers while we wait for the Dangote refinery which seems to be a story of no return in terms of its completion and commissioning. It is amazing that the government is wondering why the oil majors are leaving Nigeria. If something is not done in time, the terminals in Burutu and Forcados will suffer the same fate as the looted one in Bonny.

    The lesson to learn in our failure of industrial development is that government should never hold majority shares in any company. If we had left the first refinery with Shell and Mobil, we would not be scrambling for refined petroleum all over the world and importing bad fuel to the country. We would not be in the current situation where we are promoting idle workers in the four refineries and spending billions on paying salaries to idle workers and more billions on turn around maintenance. If we ever find our feet again as a country, we must allow private investors – foreign and local – to run industries. The ridiculous situation in which governments are running hotels and busses and taxis should never be allowed. If governments want to be directly involved in the economy, it should go into agriculture and agribusiness and adding value to our farm products.

    Our aim as a country should be to produce what we eat and sew what we wear. Imagine if we had a policy like this, the millions of tailors who will be gainfully employed. This is what countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand are doing. We can then move from agribusiness into textile mills and food products for export. To do this we will need to have a well-focused government whose principal movers must know what they are doing like those who built Singapore from the backwaters to the first world economy in terms of services, finance, shipping, educational and social welfare of its people and light industries.

    To achieve success in this country, we can borrow a leaf from the development paradigm of countries in Southeast Asia located in less endowed places than Nigeria. But to do this successfully, we must decentralize our political structure and embrace cooperative federalism in which each part of the fundamentally restructured country produces at its own pace and embracing the practice of comparative advantage and then contributing to make the whole country prosperous, secure and as long as our people have jobs and money in their pockets, it won’t matter who is in or out of government.

  • The metamorphosis of APC

    The metamorphosis of APC

    Crisis-ridden APC finally had its much postponed convention last weekend. It survived the doomsday prediction about its possible collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. The convention however ended as a parody of PDP, its cloned senior brother. As it was with PDP during its own convention when nearly all contested offices including that of  all-important chairmanship position, were cornered by defecting fair-weather APC politicians without principle, vision or allegiance to any ideological orientation, so it was with APC. Just as PDP chair was clinched by Iyorchia Ayu, an APC defector, APC’s chairmanship position went to Abdulahi Adamu, a founding member of PDP and President Buhari’s favoured candidate

    The APC National Secretary position went to another PDP defector, Iyiola Omisore, a controversial divisive politician and until recently APC tormentor. The National Women Leader went to Betta Edu who decamped from PDP to APC only in 2021.  If we needed further confirmation that the difference between these two  political parties without soul, vision or ideological orientation, is that of six and half a dozen, the relative ease with which all key positions in each party were clinched by serial defectors was all that was needed.

    Yet, before the 1966 military misadventure that truncated our political party development, there were organic political parties which like their counterparts in France, USA. Britain and Japan were created as agents of modernization by dedicated youths who had their eyes on history. There was the Herbert Macaulay’s Nigeria National Democratic Party (NNDP) inaugurated in 1923 as a response to Hugh Clifford 1922 constitution  with defined objectives viz to seek a “municipal status for Lagos, local self-government, compulsory primary education, non-discriminatory private economic enterprise and Africanisation of the civil service.” There was the Jam’yyar Mutanem Arewa, Northern Nigerian Congress (NNC) inaugurated in June 1949 whose main objectives  according to Dr. A. R Dikko,  included ‘fighting ignorance, idleness and injustice’ in the northern region. There was also Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group’s (1950) whose well-articulated manifesto  promised “free education, free health, and full employment among many others”.

    The collapse of party ethos is one more evidence of regression in our political development as with all other aspects of our efforts at nation building. Ironsi and Gowon truncated the development of our political party system.  Babangida out of delusion decreed NRC and SDP of equal joiners without founders. Abacha came up with, the UNCP, CNC, NCPN, DPN and GDM which late Bola Ige described as five fingers of a leprous hand.  With Abdulsalami Abubakar came PDP described by John Campbell, former US envoy as ‘an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria that came together for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’. It was to become a haven for military-bred new-breed politicians that breed nothing but corruption.

    The birth of APC in 2014 was a big relief. Concerned Nigerians had told Buhari, Tinubu and other founding fathers that what they were being called upon to do was not just an inauguration of party to win an election, since PDP had already shot itself in the leg by its 16 years of mindless stealing of the nation’s resources but to provide alternative to PDP controlled by gangs with garrison commanders who, like all soldiers of fortunes, engaged in squabbles over the sharing of loot from conquered territories.

    Like most progressive parties, APC manifesto promised miracles: Exchange rate of N1 to $1; end to fuel subsidy, refurbishment of refineries, solution to power crisis in six months, sales of fleet of presidential jets, eradication of corruption and  political restructuring etc. They in fact dared people to stone them if they failed to deliver on their promises.

    For the Yoruba mainstream political tendency, joining ultra-conservative Buhari regarded as a religious fundamentalist by political foes was a risk worth taking. Their fathers had engaged in 60 years unwinnable battle over the need for an egalitarian society across the nation. After forcefully retiring their fathers for refusing to trust Buhari, they dressed him in borrowed robes of a progressive and carried him on their back across the nation for the 2015 battle which ended in victory for APC.

    But for promoters of APC, it was a pyrrhic. Despite warning by Pa Akande, its former chairman and Aisha Buhari, the president’s wife, about efforts at undermining the APC coalition that brought Buhari to power, his government was hijacked even before inauguration. Thereafter, with the support of a compromised section of the media, Buhari’s trusted gatekeepers embarked on revisionism. Night became day. Buhari, we were told won the 2015 election on his personal merit. Yoruba contribution to his victory was tangential. Buhari was an asset to a party on whose back he rode to power. Bukola Saraki who by his own admission sold APC victory to secure the presidency of the eighth senate, and whose father traced their Fulani origin to southern Sudan suddenly became Yoruba man representing the interest of Yoruba in yet to be constituted Buhari’s government.

    The President feigned ignorance as to the meaning of restructuring, the major plank on which APC won the 2015 election. Not even the valiant effort of Kayode Fayemi, his trusted ally who in order to allay the fears of those who are afraid of the word ‘restructuring’ clarified by saying  it is about “how best  we can move towards a more perfect union through better management of our diversity” could stop El-Rufai Committee on restructuring. It’s report never saw the light of the day despite APC’s control of 65 seats in the 109 Senate, 190 of the 360 Lower house seats and 21 of the 36 state governors and their state houses of assemblies.

    Then APC’s voice increasingly became muffled even as immigrant Fulani herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers visited violence on innocent Nigerians. It remained so until the president and those who caged him remembered a political platform was needed for re-election in 2019 and sought the help of Bola Tinubu, the neglected corner stone and Adams Oshiomhole.

    Oshiomhole, a giant killer who had in his home state of Edo retired Chief Anthony Akhakon Anenih, the Iyasele of Esanland  and PDP’s  “Mr Fixer and Chief Gabriel Igbinedion and his son, Lucky the two-term governor of Edo State moved over to  Ilorin  where he uprooted  Bukola  as senator, and his nominees as governor. He then moved to Imo where he “stopped Okorocha from establishing a dynasty by imposing his son in law in government house. In Ogun, he made it clear to Amosun that APC would not allow him pick himself as a senate candidate, nominate the governorship candidate and his deputy and the next speaker and deputy speaker.

    For his pains at attempting to build a disciplined party different from PDP, he was illegally removed by President Buhari who presided over the handing over of APC to PDP last weekend. Apart from imposing a PDP defector as APC chairman after forcing other contestants to step down, he celebrated the PDP defectors at the APC convention by declaring –  “It is gratifying that the party recorded massive and unprecedented defections under the caretaker committee administration. APC received three sitting governors, a deputy governor, senators, members of the House of Representatives and state assemblies…”

    With our newly refurbished APC and PDP exalted with neither vision nor ideological orientation, a sad testimony to the travails of our party system, welcome to the Babangida’s age of delusion when figment of imagination becomes article of state policy.

  • Doomed air, road, rail

    Doomed air, road, rail

    RAIL has become many people’s first choice of travelling since its modernisation began under the Buhari administration. Travellers, who hitherto avoided the rail like plague, now troop to train stations for a ride to their destinations. Good things have, no doubt, been happening in the rail transport subsector in the past few years.

    The Abuja-Kaduna route, especially, has become the talk of town, not mainly because of the tragic incident along the axis on Monday and Tuesday, but for its large volume of patronage. The route is the traveller’s delight because of the danger that the Abuja-Kaduna road has become. The road is a no-go area having beeen seized by bandits and terrorists despite the numerous military/police checkpoints there.

    These Checkpoint Charlies, if they can be called that, have failed the people. They are there for the show and not the work, with the innocent traveller paying the price for the security operatives’ laxity. The recourse to rail was essentially informed by travellers’ need for safety. It is not for the fact that they would get a good service. Fear drove travellers to use trains, but unfortunately, what they fled from on the road has become their nightmare on rail. Since the opening of the Abuja-Kaduna route, other rail services have also been running in other parts of the country.

    The Lagos-Ibadan rail service stands out among them. Those who have used the service, praised it to high heavens. But like its Abuja-Kaduna counterpart, all is also not well on that route. It is one day, one trouble. It is either a train is breaking down in the bush or running out of fuel, thereby endangering passengers’ lives. We may not have a situation where bandits or terrorists are waylaying trains on the Lagos-Ibadan route, but what is happening there is not different from what we see around Abuja-Kaduna.

    As it is now, people travel with their hearts in their mouths. No means of transportation is safe. The air, the road and the rail appear jinxed for travellers, who go into prayer and fasting and even do vigil before embarking on their trips. Until now, the air was the safest means of travelling. It is no longer so because of the activities of bandits, terrorists and herdsmen. The road too has become impassable for fear of kidnappers and herdsmen. Rail is no longer the odd one out as things are as bad there as they are in the air and on the road.

    Anywhere travellers turn to, there is no comfort. They are besieged at home, on the road, rail and in the air. By now, the Federal Government should have found a way round the security issue on the Abuja-Kaduna route, which from day one has been a source of trouble for travellers. Since service  started there, travellers have not known peace. They travel on the route in trepidation. As a people of faith, what they do is to commit their journey to God whenever they are boarding trains at the Idu Station. God has been faithful, protecting the travellers.

    But has the government played its part? It is not enough to have state-of-the-art trains on that route, it is also the government’s duty to ensure that the users are safe. No government puts a train on the rail line and leaves the citizenry to their fate while using it. What happened on the Abuja-Kaduna route on Monday could have been averted if the government had learnt from past incidents. Trains had been ambushed there before and travellers either killed or kidnapped. But that of Monday is amazing. The bandits and terrorists went a step further. They bombed a train.

    What will these terrorists not do to put fear into travellers? They have tried all sorts of tricks in their book, but they turned a new page with the introduction of bombing. Reports said improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were used in bombing the train, which had over 300 official passengers on board. Earlier claims said they were over 900. No matter what, getting IEDs on to the rail tracks could not have been easy. It must have been done under the cover of darkness and not in daytime. What this tells us is that the rail lines are not well covered.

    Security is paramount in any business. The government cannot spend billions of naira to acquire trains, build tracks and go to sleep, without securing the infrastructure. If the tracks and trains  were well covered and secured, Monday’s tragedy might have been avoided. Nobody puts up a fanciful structure without fortifying it. Terrorists, bandits and their like have had a free reign on that route for too long. They have struck not once, not twice, but several times. Each time, they killed, kidnapped and maimed people.

    Monday’s tragedy occurred some 24 hours after terrorists invaded the Kaduna Airport, killing one person. Some passengers on the illfated Abuja-Kaduna train have relived their harrowing experience. They said they were lucky to be alive. As usual, top government officials have also been speaking. Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi said his plans to acquire sensitive security gadgets that could detect any planted item on the rail tracks were hindered by civil service bureaucracy.

    President Muhammadu Buhari has directed that the track be repaired forthwith and rail services resumed. As usual, he ordered that the perpetrators be brought to book. The security and military chiefs promised to get the culprits, as if they apprehended those who committed the same atrocities in the past. This is the usual noise that they make when such tragedies occur. What the govermment can do now is to assure the people of their safety whenever they travel and by whatever means they choose to do so.

    As Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu noted while cancelling the colloquium for his 70th birthday on Tuesday, this is a time for sober reflection. My heart goes out to the families of the departed. May God comfort you and may your loved ones find rest in the Lord’s bosom. But the billion naira question remains: how should people now travel without their hearts in their mouths?