The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • LG: first Soludo, now Lagos…

    LG: first Soludo, now Lagos…

    “The military correct one problem but create sundry others” —EM Forster, A Passage to India.

    The quote above is not exactly the words of one of the characters in EM Forster’s famous novel on the British Raj (1858-1947).  But it captures the exact sentiments.

    The issue here is not even the military — brave souls! — and their sweet-sour image, either in junta rule, or when unleashed beyond war and gore, their core competence.

    It’s rather applying such military tactics to the Supreme Court verdict on council “autonomy” — hailed, by many, for stopping governors’ pilfering of council funds.

    But it is also ardently questioned by a few —Ripples included. That “autonomy” makes Nigeria more unitary than federal, despite the zesty howls over a so-called “third tier” as a federating partner.  It is not.

    Beyond military whims, unfortunately codified in the 1999 Constitution, there is nothing like local governments partnering the Federal Government for the Nigerian federation — or any federation for that matter. That’s a travesty — and that explains the fight back from the states.

    First, it was Chukwuma Soludo’s Anambra.  Next, it’s Lagos — incidentally, the first under Governor Bola Tinubu (now President of the Federal Republic), to secure judicial validation for states to create and manage their local governments.

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    Back then, the Supreme Court found for the state, after bullying President Olusegun Obasanjo had seized Lagos council funds: because Lagos had the temerity to create additional 37 local governments (added to the 20 that the 1999 Constitution listed).

    The apex court upheld the constitutional right of states to create local governments. 

    But it dubbed the exercise “inchoate”, until the National Assembly passed a “consequential listing”, so the new councils could be added to the 774, which the 1999 Constitution had listed.  That Supreme Court verdict was on 9 December 2004.

    Enter then, the Lagos Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) — until the National Assembly did the needful.  But since 2004, no consequential listing had come — and it couldn’t have been otherwise.

    “Consequential listing” means the right of the new Lagos councils to draw federal cash.  By that, the matter would have morphed from law to finance: and other states, citing Lagos, would have created extra councils, for extra federal cash!

    It’s realpolitik: the ugly face of Nigeria’s parasitic federalism, in which the central feudal lord, with gruff unitary temper, feeds the states, but on its own damn terms!

    So, the LCDAs — with many states copying that concept — had stayed inchoate, until the “autonomy” verdict of 2024 (by the way, a conceptual opposite of 2004: 20 years later), which just spurred them out of their deep slumber!

    Indeed, in his November 3 back-page piece, “LGs in more trouble than Nigerians thinks,” Palladium, The Nation on Sunday columnist, moaned, griped and hissed over how governors were plotting to subvert the Supreme Court’s “autonomy” verdict.

    Palladium, as many avid fans of this judicially induced “autonomy”, see the governors as rogues; and Abuja as saint in this matter. From strict morality, maybe yes: soulless governors have diverted council funds for much too long for the owners not to notice!           

    The proof? Municipal, suburban and rural services, the core duty of local councils, have lagged behind the funding poured down there from Abuja.  Too true.

    Besides, why near-hysterical reactions, to the verdict, by some governors? Seyi Makinde, the Oyo governor, openly blew his tops. He even tried to instigate an anti-verdict road show by newly (s)elected Oyo council chairs.  Futile. Impotent.

    Latterly, Soludo’s Anambra again hit its sour anti-”autonomy” mode.  A newly elected council chair from Anambra was nabbed in the United States for alleged romantic scams.  But Governor Soludo’s Information commissioner threw the poor guy under the bus, claiming Anambra had no dog in the fight — but the man’s electors had — since councils now enjoyed “autonomy”!  Talk of chronic sour grapes!

    Meanwhile, in the same story — as told in The Nation of November 10 —  the nabbed suspect is not only a member of APGA (Anambra’s ruling party), he was also among the candidates Soludo allegedly handpicked prior to the polls, which APGA swept!  So, what APGA — and the governor — have put together, “autonomy” has put asunder?

    Before the Supreme Court’s July judgment, when the issue came up for discourse at The Nation Editorial Board, Ripples had told co-members that Abuja would likely win the “autonomy” war.  Whether it would win the peace thereafter was another question.

    So, the current challenge by the states is all about winning the peace. 

    Abuja used the courts to force out a malady crippling local government administration and development.  Noble judicial legerdemain?  Hardly ignoble!  If the states roar back, by same systemic ploys, it’s hardly ignoble — nor illegal — too!

    Indeed, it’s the real war of the federating partners, gaming each other to preserve their turf, under the equal-opportunity eye of the law!

    Besides, the Supreme Court’s verdict is hardly a theocracy’s holy grail that must be worshipped and venerated by all, at the mortal risk of heresy!  That would appear the view of the pro-”autonomy” lobby.  But that’s hardly valid in a democratic republic.

    It’s rather the latest legal document, which contesting partners, in a secular federation, can — and should — question.  It’s all about thesis and antithesis providing a new synthesis that could work for all.  In a competitive federation, that’s hardly a crime.

    Let it be clear: governors gypping local governments of their due funds are execrable. But no less damning is a long-term sweet poison to Nigeria’s federal cause. 

    Whereas the Supreme Court’s 2004 judgment backed states’ federal rights to create own local governments, the 2024 verdict — by implication — all but took away such rights: all to push Abuja’s right to monitor its cash. 

    Yes, it does solve the problem of governors pinching council funds — or does it?  But in doing that, it creates a more fundamental breach that can’t be explained away by the so-called “third tier”.  Again, beyond military caprice, that’s hardly federal.

    Take the Lagos challenge.  It rolled back the LCDAs into the original 20 councils.  But it also gave the governor the power to appoint heads and councillors for the inchoate LCDAs — to be funded from allocated federal funds to the Big 20.

    How does that appointee power play against the constitutional guarantee of elected local governments?  Yet, not even the Supreme Court could “adjudicate” Lagos out of making laws for own councils!

    Anambra already passed a law that compels its councils to deposit part of their direct federal cash in a state pool for common services.  Hardly an unreasonable move too!

    But Lagos has even thrown the LCDAs back at the National Assembly. To ensure elected local governments at LCDAs, pass “consequential listing” the LCDAs had awaited since 2004 — quid pro quo!

    This piece will end as the original salvo (See “Autonomy — against who?”, June 18): let Abuja quit its military-messianic complex, charge council funds to states and leave the states to expand — or shrink — their local councils as they deem fit.

    Councils are strictly states’ business — no one else’s.

  • Again, the Rivers war!

    Again, the Rivers war!

    The latest front in the Rivers “civil war” is an Abuja Federal High Court halting federal allocations to Rivers State — till Governor Siminalayi Fubara legalizes his 2024 budget.

    Now, 2024 has less than two months to expire.  Yet, the Rivers governor — at least by the court’s verdict — has been spending illicit money!

    That order is double thunder that grates.  In the eye of emotion, it’s cruel.  But in the eye of law, it is dire, but hardly wrong. 

    Next to treason (which overthrows the democratic order) spending public money, without legal appropriation, is No. 1 political crime in a democracy — remember?

    The law is indeed very clear.  You could hardly question the propriety of that order.  But it could also prove very dire for Rivers.

    By a BudgIT ranking on states’ dependence on federal allocations, Rivers sits on No. 24, depending on federal allocations to the tune of 60.44%.  That means it needs more than N6 federal cash out of every N10 it spends.

    Lagos — the state that least depends on federal  allocations — does much better: at 26.55%, needing less than N3 for every N10. 

    Rivers does worse than hinterland Osun, with no oil wealth (60.11%); but far better than the other three oil “moguls”: Bayelsa (92.17%: this state’s internally generated revenue is near-zero!), Akwa Ibom (86.29%) and Delta (83.88%). Nigeria’s oil-rich states should really do better to grow their IGRs!

    But back to the Rivers’ blight.  With its level of dependence on federally shared cash, you can imagine the putative collapse awaiting it, when that order well and truly dawns.  Hard, hard road for Rivers!

    That’s why the pity symphony are shrill with their dolorous trumpets.

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    Peter Obi, with characteristic wailing, just weighed in.  His sweet prism only sees victims.  It’s blissfully blind to the clear appropriation crime Justice Joyce Abdulmalk fingered in her order.  To Obi and wailing clan, there is neither joy nor justice from that Joyce!

    “Consider the pensioner struggling to survive on a meager income alongside the health workers, school teachers, civil servants, and everyday citizens whose lives are already marked by severe hardship,” Obi rued, eye bleary with bumper tears, “How much can they endure?  This latest development risks pushing them even further into distress — even into untimely deaths — by compounding the challenges they face each day.”

    For good measure, “severe hardship” is a not-so-subtle dig at Abuja.  Cant!

    Still, the suit has a deep partisan root.  The 27 Rivers Assembly members, loyal to Nyesom Wike, ex-Rivers governor but sitting FCT minister, took the case to court, though on the solid ground of the governor spending public money without proper appropriation.

    “Proper” is key here: for Governor Fubara could also counter that he passed the budget through a four-man legislature — down from the five loyal to him, since Edison Ehie, the former Speaker that resisted Fubara’s rushed impeachment attempt, has since resigned to become Fubara’s chief of staff.

    He could even double down on that by claiming that the 27 lawmakers, now after his scalp, had crossed over to APC, from PDP on which platform they sought and won election; and had forfeited their seats, on the basis of that sole defection. 

    Indeed, this twin-claim Fubara has always pushed — no crime.

    Still, can a claimant come to judgment and reward himself victory?  That is the major chink in Fubara’s armour.  Turning a mere claim into gubernatorial power is nothing but self-help.  Self-help is the diametric opposite to due process.

    Worse: the optics!  How does four versus 27 look, even to the most ardent of the Fubara sentimental ensemble?  Forget clinical law!  Indulge in frothing emotion!  Shouldn’t four against 27, in a House of Assembly of 32 members, be defensive?

    Outright impeachment may well be the next stage in the war, should the court order not force Governor Fubara to regularize his budget.  If that push were to come to a shove, the governor would stay properly impeached, on the sole basis of spending public money without appropriation. 

    The evidence, naked and glowering, is out there in the public space — except he can prove that business concept of force majeure: meaning that as the 27 had defected, and government business couldn’t wait for fresh elections to replace them, he had no choice but to present his budget to the available and valid members.

    That would have been the Rivers’ domesticated Doctrine of Necessity, which the Senate adopted to romp President Goodluck Jonathan into office!

    Of course, both impeachment and shutting off Rivers from the federal cash spigot, would have grave political whiplashes.

    Fubara could brand Wike and co “enemies of Rivers”.  With the pocket hurting, that could gather quite some traction.  Wike, who often prides himself as the guardian-in-chief of Rivers’ interests and wellbeing, could suffer some psychological meltdown.

    Worse: the so-called “structure”, for which Wike risks everything, would have come unstuck — if not already unstuck; and the friends-turned-foes now fishing for fresh alliances for 2027.

    Still, the impeachment would happen and the heavens won’t fall.  Which prompts the wise to ask: is this fight-to-finish really worth the while? But others are quick to riposte: it’s the only way Rivers knows — that giant land of mighty gladiators!

    Still, should the worst happen, Governor Fubara would explain why he attracted a swarm of stinging bees to his once-upon-a-time serene homestead.

    Yes, Wike is domineering.  Wike is aggressive.  Wike is cantankerous.  Wike takes no prisoners!  Still, Fubara knew all that when he agreed, feigning dumbness, to be Wike’s power puppet, to maintain his “structure”.  Did Fubara think turning his back on all that would end well? 

    Moralists could squirm all they like.  But realpolitik — grim and dirty — is what it is!

    Besides, wouldn’t this court order have been avoided, had Fubara stuck to the original presidential peace treaty that directed him, for the sake of peace, to re-present his budget to the Rivers Assembly — read Wike’s sworn loyalists?

    Had he done that, wouldn’t he have craftily exposed the excesses of the Wike side, and thrown them on the defensive, to gain some concessions?  But no! 

    Fubara would rather be egged on by brazen Ijaw tribalists, some of them ace conflict entrepreneurs, who saw the Wike/Fubara tiff a growth area to milk!  They were not there when Wike and Fubara were striking their deal.  They would not also be there when the chips are down, and Fubara stands alone and naked.

    Fubara should present his budget to the majority of lawmakers, even while pursuing his suit to determine their correct status.  It’s called stooping to conquer. 

    The Wike side too should quit their hard stance; and not play politics with passing the people’s money, in utmost good faith, for the people’s welfare. 

    It’s high time both sides embraced a mutual truce, to work for the people of Rivers.  A win-win is better than a lose-lose that a looming showdown portends.

  • Lagos, Red rail and ‘now’

    Lagos, Red rail and ‘now’

    Forget the naysayers — the APC era, from 2015, has made more critical investments to secure Nigeria’s future than the PDP era (1999-2015). 

    Infrastructure is the hallmark of all that.  That’s why the Lagos Red rail — the city’s second, after the Blue rail — couldn’t have come at a better time. To shield commuters from insane petrol pricing, mass rail is it!

    Even then, the Bola Tinubu government, with its beehive of policy forays, is faced with the grim imperative of softening the harsh “now”.  It needs a balancing act — and fast!

    Its reforms — very clear with petrol selling at N1, 000-a-litre — bite too hard.  Petrol is just too central — critical is more exact — to Nigeria’s daily socio-economic living. 

    That general angst has given sundry malcontents the oomph for sundry mischief: pitch mayhem and anarchy; and pose as cynical champions for the helpless. 

    The danger is that even hitherto cloistered demographics — which always gives any ruling order the benefit of doubt — could be getting progressively snared by this bitter economic Armageddon.  Imagine a retired director of a federal broadcaster calling Ripples and ruing how insane petrol cost has blasted away his middling pension!

    The pocket sure hurts!  But that is sheer paradise for the pimps of chaos!  Which is why the president must think of a balancing act, to soften the very short run.

    But back to the PDP-APC years; and the present dystopia powered by arid pockets.

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the living emblem of the PDP years, can huff and puff as he likes in self-glorification.  But beyond his personal shrine — the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) — what public infrastructure (routine or ground-breaking) can his PDP era point to?

    True, former President Goodluck Jonathan did the bulk of the work on the Abuja-Kaduna rail, though President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated that project. 

    Still, the economy under Jonathan was at best a ghost, with all the grand pretensions of the Obasanjo years; and the raw bricks of Jonathan’s own effete years finally crumbling on him, culminating in his defeat at the polls. 

    But Jonathan has at least shown more post-power gumption than his loud and ever-grating predecessor!

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is another un-vanishing shadow of the PDP years.  He postures as some economic messiah but always ends a damp squib. 

    The more he bears down on the polity, the more he reminds the acute-minded of the wasted years of the PDP.  He could nevertheless fob the simplistic as some latter-day saint.  But make no mistake: he belongs to the past.  Only he doesn’t know it.

    Peter Obi is another PDP-era sidekick — or is it side chick? His political whoredom has shunted him from APGA to PDP.  Now, he is regnant punter, with his Obidients, in LP.  Another hysterical voice in these hard times!

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    But everyone knows Obi is a merry political cynic, who prays — and fasts? — for bad news, so he could blare and burnish his relevance with fitful lamentations. 

    He wouldn’t know anything about accumulating infrastructure — against cynical “savings” to support family business! — for the future generation, as his Anambra records as governor clearly shows.  The more the hardship hits, the more the cynical Obi would squeal, even if he hardly has any solution to anything!

    Still, the oddest of these voices — which nevertheless are sweet music to hurting pockets — is The Guardian newspaper: “Misery, harsh policies driving desperate choices” (October 25).

    A reporter obsessed with military rule.  An excitable cartoonist stokes the fire with suggestive, offensive military hardware.  The editor failed to properly angle the story.  Enter, a loud innuendo, as rash as a merry pitch for military rule by The Guardian!

    Now, it’s a democracy; and newspapers can stand wherever they choose.  Daily Trust just got its fingers burnt by pushing fiction as legitimate, if adversarial, reportage.  It just ate the humble pie and has duly apologized — rather noble, though avoidable.

    The Punch has always pushed its right to radical — some insist, infantile — journalism. From 11 December 2019, it thundered down at PMB as “The President, Major-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd)”, as if its arrogance and fulminations would strip PMB of his newly won second term!

    Nigerian Tribune too has been advocating views with which its founder, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, would have been well and truly shocked.  Its commentariat also pushes raw, lowest common denominator populism to titillate its captive readers.

    Now, Trust, The Punch and Nigerian Tribune are no devil any more than The Nation is a saint, for clambering on different sides of the opposition/support continuum.  Neither side has committed any offence, though each, by its stand, continues to miff or please the ruling order.

    It’s this delicate balance The Guardian just ruptured with its inglorious pitch for military rule.  Even if it balks at the present government’s policies — no crime — democracy behoves it to mobilize towards the next election, not its innuendo for military coup.

    Still, The Guardian’s ludicrous pitch is symptomatic of the Nigerian media — high priests of institutional memory that lack the most basic sense of institutional memory! 

    For many in the media, grafting the past with the present, for a balanced and more coherent narrative, is a no-no! Sweet scandals and thunderous sensation, spiced with sweeping generalizations is it!  Only today matters!  Yesterday is dead!  Tomorrow never comes!

    The media here loves to report with little or no context.  That is why every government is a continuation of the media’s cherished dystopia, from which it dutifully thunders!

    Which is why The Guardian, linked with military rule, is rich! Founded on 2 February 1983, its reportorial duo of Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor were in 1984 jailed under Decree 4, when Gen. Buhari was Head of State.  It’s ode to The Guardian’s near-zero sense of history that it even echoes street babbles for such a grim encore!

    The Guardian will stew in own juice.  Still, the President and his economic team must realize how hard the policy reforms bite; and how not a few would hug illicit rascalities, at the present order’s expense.

    It might be a reform badge of honour to, before IMF and allied Washington crowd, brag that, at last, petrol is now sold at a price determined by “market forces”. 

    But to the economically crushed at home, that’s crowing over harsh social costs. That  further drives up hunger and anger.  So, it is imperative to tone down on the “reforms”, without aborting its strategic goals.

    As the extant policies reform government accounts, they deform the household till.  Aside the stupendously rich, hardly any demographics is exempt.

    The TUC President already made a useful suggestion on short-term petrol subsidy, by fixing a special rate for the Naira to sell crude oil to local refiners. The president should listen, act fast and put in place lower petrol costs until CNG is mainstreamed.

    Incidentally, the Lagos rail — Red and Blue — points the way to beating high shuttle costs, and crashing inflation, in a glorious season of hiked petrol pump prices. 

    But how many states can boast the putative rail penetration of Lagos — acquired, by the way, despite the obduracy of the Obasanjo-led PDP years — to reduce their people’s pains, in the post-petrol subsidy economy?

  • General and gentleman at 90

    General and gentleman at 90

    The cake for Ripples, aside the thrill at 90 for General Yakubu Gowon, quintessential officer and gentleman if ever there was one, is former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s remarks at the special lecture marking the epoch.

    Gen. Gowon turned 90 on October 19. Obasanjo spoke on October 18. Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, President, African Development Bank (AfDB), was the guest lecturer.

    “This is a national celebration, and you’re worthy to be nationally celebrated while you’re still alive …” Obasanjo gushed, “I will just thank God on your behalf.”

    Wow!  But was it not this same Gowon, on whom Obasanjo poured concentrated scorn, in his Not My Will — Obasanjo’s post-Head of State memoirs?  Wow!

    The subject — highly emotive, to be sure — was the Bukar Sukar Dimka coup.  That coup failed.  But it took the life of Gen. Murtala Ramat Muhammed.

    In that venom-in-print, Obasanjo’s petulance knew no bounds. “Mr. Gowon”, he thundered down at his former commander-in-chief; and growled he would, pronto, be nabbed anytime he set foot on Nigeria — for alleged coup involvement not yet proven!

    Why, the Obasanjo junta would, in the passion of the moment, pass a draconian coup decree which — had the British government fallen for the regime’s rabid extradition howling — would posthaste have despatched the General to premature death!

    But irony of ironies: Gen. Sani Abacha, symbol of the starkest and most degenerate era of military rule in Nigeria, would dust up that same decree to can Obasanjo — and his No. 2: Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua — in own harsh gulag, for a phantom coup!

    Obasanjo made it out of that harsh odyssey to become a two-term elected president.  Not so lucky, Yar’Adua: he died in prison in controversial circumstances.  So long for the savagery of military rule, to which we must all say: never again!

    But thank God — now on Obasanjo’s behalf! — for keeping him alive to recant, live, the anti-Gowon fulminations he wrote in Not My Will, which he released In 1990!

    By the way, Gowon and Obasanjo epitomize the two strands of military rule in Nigeria — the one mild, the other harsh.  That unfortunate epoch had own bright spots.  But on the balance, it was clearly ruinous. 

    Nevertheless, a civilizing flash into that dark era would remain Gen. Gowon, though he made own mistakes too.

    Post-Gowon monstrosity peaked with Abacha. So, did the political military’s exit after decades of huffing-and-puffing in the wrong direction — brash and haughty messiahs.

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    Which is why the First Lady, Mrs. Oluremi Tinubu’s toast, at the Gowon thanksgiving at 90, was apt.

    “Your life of simplicity, humility, grace, dignity and patriotism to our nation gives us hope that Nigeria is all we have,” she said, “and we have to do everything in our power to make it work.”

    Simplicity.  Humility.  Grace.  Dignity.  These four words weave the Gowon essence — that noble penchant to have power, yet not lose your head over it.  These words fused in him sublime lessons in untrammelled, yet humane patriotism.

    If that was not glaring on the hill of his nine power years, it was clear in the dale of his power fall, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when an aide whispered to his ear his overthrow.

    “Don’t you worry,” the smiling ex-Head of State told a world press conference — did anyone ever see merrier stoicism in anyone? — “just take care of Nigeria for me.  I’m a professional soldier and I’m ready to serve my country in any future capacity.”

    The one they fondly called “Jack” has lived that self-imposed covenant — which makes his 90th birthday a clear national treasure.

    Ripples never met General Gowon, one-on-one.  But among hundreds of other Lagos Island public primary school kids, arrayed on both sides of the old Lagos — now the Inner — Marina, we all waved, screaming “Gowon! Gowon!”, as the newly wed General drove out of Christ’s Cathedral with his beautiful bride, Victoria. 

    It was a slow-moving, show-stopping, jaw-dropping motorcade, back in 1969. Magical!

    The kids’ zest was not altogether happenstance.  Their teachers had put them up to it, to honour the young, dashing and lovable Head of State. 

    But that Gowon love oozed — at least from my own personal experience — from the felt love of a caring state.  The Gowon government in Lagos, then the federal capital, with the Mobolaji Johnson Lagos State government, had put in place a highly subsidized mid-day meal regime, complete with fruits and chilled milk.   It was the kids’ — mostly from poor homes — earliest feel of Nigeria’s emerging oil wealth.

    Many of us had such exciting meals first at school — and even kept a part of it for our waiting siblings at home!  Such early state care builds patriotism in young hearts.

    But the Gowon-era felt benevolence wasn’t limited to feeding Lagos primary school kids alone.  To access university education, all you needed was an acute mind, a few pair of jean trousers and shirts, and you were game! 

    The high fees of yore were gone! Again, but for the Gowon state benevolence, Ripples, who passed out of a Lafiaji-Lagos public primary school, wouldn’t have accessed two universities — Universities of Ibadan and Lagos — and joined the commentariat in a national newspaper.  There simply would have been no family cash to attain all that!

    Now, Gen. Gowon didn’t get it all right — no.  His government was the first to expel striking academics from their campus cloisters — the mother of all humiliations!

    He also went after the likes Prof. Wole Soyinka (for his Civil War “Third Force”), the great Gani Fawehinmi, SAN, SAM, and sundry campaigners for human rights against creeping military despotism.

    Some eternally raze his rather infamous quip that cash wasn’t Nigeria’s problems but how to spend it. Bitter Biafra survivors sneer at his twin post-Civil War rally: “No Victor, No Vanquished” and the 3-Rs: “Reconciliation-Reconstruction Rehabilitation”, calling both a ruse. 

    But had Biafra won, it’s a moot point if Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu would have been capable of Gowon’s rare magnanimity and grace.

    Others say Gowon was so “soft” the so-called “super-permanent secretaries” became too powerful.  But the Murtala-Obasanjo regime, with their “immediate effect” purges, smashed a once secure and vibrant civil service into today’s loose and venal “evil servants” always on illicit hustle!  We know now which is better!

    The successive “corrective” regimes, of Gowon-era corruption, emerged as worse state captors — except Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, whose integrity fetched him two terms as elected president. Gowon, by the way, didn’t own a house after his overthrow.  Compare and contrast that to the illicit wealth his successors swam in!

    That’s the Gowon mystique — keeping your head while others lost theirs.  Again, his only peer, in that lonely chamber, is Gen. Buhari.

    Which is why, Gowon’s noble deeds earn him quiet awe.  He needn’t — like Obasanjo — drone for the rest of his life, rustling up others’ faults to bury own glaring ones, just to corral suspect respect.

  • LG ‘autonomy’ and the Soludo challenge

    LG ‘autonomy’ and the Soludo challenge

    The Supreme Court verdict, on “council autonomy”, was not unlike the deus-ex-machina, in ancient Greek drama.

    The governors, alleged parasitic butterflies, feasting on council funds as sweet nectar, blew the cash on anything but the grassroots — bad! So, the Federal Government moved to wire direct money to the 774 local councils the 1999 Constitution listed.

    But the governors, pushing the good, old federal doctrine, and never shy to push their right to run things within their states, would be damned to let their probosces off that sweet, old nectar. So, a sweet-sour political stalemate was afoot.

    Then came, wham! — the Supreme Court verdict. 

    The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) went to the Supreme Court to settle by law, what the federating partners could not settle by open politics — and mutual good faith. 

    Enter, the apex court’s verdict as legal deus-ex-machina!

    Well, as Chinua Achebe said in that Igbo proverb his numerous writings popularized, Eneke had learnt to shoot without missing, since birds had learnt to fly without perching!

    The governors licked their wounds in silence, strafed by a hostile public opinion — and rightly so — for why would they be so unconscionable over council funds?

    In own corner, the Federal Government savoured sweet victory, rolling out positive — and plausible — vibes: further enlisting and endearing the benefitting councils in its “Big Daddy loves you” camp, with the hated and “thieving” governors still sulking.

    That party was on — loud in Abuja! — when Chukwuma Soludo, the Anamba governor, threw in his spanner from Awka: a putative counter-deus, on the legislative front!  By this Soludo challenge, might the governors corral back what they thought was lost?

    Drama!  Could this high drama make nugatory the Supreme Court verdict, and yet render Abuja’s “council autonomy” victory pyrrhic?  Drama! 

    The Anambra State House of Assembly just passed a law, mandating Anambra local government councils to pool a certain percentage of their directly wired Federation Account earnings into the Anambra Joint State-Local Government Account for common projects!

    Will the Supreme Court now rule that states don’t have control over the local governments within their territories?  Or that state legislatures can no longer make laws “for the good and order” of local governments under their jurisdiction?

    Or will the Supreme Court, to consummate its earlier verdict on “council autonomy”, now oust powers given states by the Constitution?

    Or that the states (read the governors) have lost the right to coordinate common services and projects in their domains, simply because the apex court had granted their local governments “autonomy”?

    Interesting perspectives!

    Still, before memory-challenged folks start hailing Soludo as a rare lion for federalism, remember that this same Soludo flexed own the-centre-is-everything muscle, as former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s National Economic Adviser (NEA).

    Back then, Prof. Soludo theorized on NEEDS — the Nigerian Economic Empowerment Development Strategy — and pushed that NEEDS be rammed down as SEEDS (States Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy) and LEEDS (Local Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy), for these same 774 local governments the 1999 Constitution listed!

    To be sure, NEEDS and its SEEDS and LEEDS variants were no crime.  On the contrary, they were a brilliant piece of economic theorizing, without which a polity would perhaps never locate an effective compass to develop.

    But the dissonance — in a supposed federal set-up — was its one-central-shoe-fits-all diktat: a roaring contradiction to the federal principle, that provides for local diversities.

    So, for Soludo — from that dashing central prefect of old, shoving NEEDS down states’ and local governments’ throats; to a federal champion from Awka, now pushing back on states’ rights over councils, thus tackling “autonomy” — what has changed?

    Isn’t his old NEEDS temper more in tune with the Supreme Court verdict, than the law that the Anambra legislature just passed, and he gleefully signed?

    What’s that blinding flash, en route to Damascus, that has changed his Saul to Paul, when the issue is states’ rights, against a central Nigerian Leviathan? 

    Well, from a central hireling of the Obasanjo era, Soludo is now elected state governor — and pronto, has forgotten the sacred centralization dogma that propelled his NEEDS thunder!  Is that necessarily bad, though?

    Soludo played the role his principal expected of him as NEA. That was in the past. Now, as own principal, he’s trying to cut the best deal for his Anambra folks, as their governor. 

    If that past badly jars with his present, it is what it is.  But it shows that the more roles change, as individuals climb up the political ladder, the more the unresolved federal question stares everyone starkly in the face!  These changing roles make the federal principle even more immutable!

    Which goes right back to council autonomy.

    Though many voices, playing the propaganda of the moment, try to ram down the idea of the local governments as a so-called “third tier”, councils belong more to states — and should be their sole business — than they do to the Federal Government.

    Yes, it’s execrable conduct from governors for purloining council funds and leaving the grassroots in the lurch.  Highly condemnable behaviour. 

    But it’s doubtful if the solution to that is a mechanistic “autonomy” that virtually “tears” councils from states as Abuja’s golden “third tier”.

    That no two federal states are exactly the same beg the question.  Councils, counties and equivalents may be useful administrative divisions in all federations.  But in no federation — none! — could they claim a seat at the table as federating partners. 

    That would stand logic on its head, because only the federating partners, states — not the sovereign federation, which the Federal Government governs — are carved into councils and counties for closer local government administrations.

    Federalism — as Ripples often loves to insist — is a concept and not a mere badge, that could be stamped on exigencies, and everyone would live merrily ever after!

    The very idea, of a valid “third tier”, jars against that basic federal principle.  Yet, it’s on that “tier” that “council autonomy” — absolutely outside states’ control — is hooked. 

    That’s the lethal — if not fatal — challenge the new Soludo law poses to “council autonomy”.  On that, the Supreme Court has its job cut out!

    With the Awka challenge, the polity awaits, with quake or relish, a hot judicial battle –quake or relish, depending on which camp you belong!

  • Rivers: one day, one trouble

    Rivers: one day, one trouble

    The grim dramatics of Rivers State echoes Anezi Okoro’s One Week, One Trouble (published 1972), a popular child novel in the curriculum of yore. 

    But whereas adventure is adorable fare in children’s literature to tickle child-readers and rouse their imagination, this Rivers’ endless cast is driven by delinquent adults.

    The Rivers local government election of October 6 — the willy-nilly push to hold it at all cost; the never-ever binge to abort it with equal venom — filled that desperation bill.

    It’s the latest ugly grab for the soul of Rivers.  Between the often excitable Governor Siminalayi Fubara and the belligerent former Governor Nyesom Wike, now FCT minister, who paved Fubara’s path to power, it’s morning yet on brawling day!

    Since Fubara’s take-over of the Rivers reins on 29 May 2023, the drama has been long and drawn, wide and winding, jerky and bumpy, making it near-impossible to impose a particular act or scene on the latest showdown.

    The imperious Wike, only on August 31, ousted the infantile Fubara from the Rivers PDP structure.  The Wike caucus did a state congress that filled party elective offices, with the PDP state governor nowhere in sight.  But Fubara just hit back, scooping the local councils’ sweepstakes, though in partisan camouflage!

    Walter Oyatogun (God bless his soul!), that colourful sports broadcaster of yore, would have hollered in the heat of the moment: “It’s a one-one goalless draw!”

    But that “draw” has come with satanic dramas.  First, glorious and fashionable anti-party activities. 

    Even if it had any precedence, this would be very rare indeed: Governor Fubara setting his mind on a local government election, yet zeroing the PDP — the party that romped him to power — out of it!

    In a preening piece of self-damnation, His Excellency declared with glee: “I’m the greatest loser.  My party is not participating!”  But as the Supreme Court had ruled, the council poll must be done.  What humbug! 

    Still, “greatest loser” may yet become, for Fubara, a dire, self-fulfilling prophesy!  For now, however, for the governor and confederates, the Action People’s Party (APP) is the new council election messiah — and why not? 

    If the Labour Party (LP) could make a sweet national mash of opportunistic election-season hire, APP may yet make Rivers’ council polls own election gravy!

    But before you rush to nail Governor Fubara for his “party-cide”, remember that the national PDP backed the governor and his gambit all of the way — the same schizophrenic PDP that okayed Wike’s formal re-seizure of Rivers local PDP structure!

    It was the same “party-cide” that made the Wike-controlled Rivers PDP to “boycott” the poll; and goad Fubara to stall it, to obey the Federal High Court, Abuja. 

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    Rivers APC — hands of Esau, voice of Jacob? — had obtained the election-stay order.  Rivers PDP had pounced on it to boycott the polls and bludgeon Fubara into a retreat.

    Weaponizing court judgments was another sickly drama that played out before the controversial poll.

    Still, street-wise: the Rivers PDP knew that with Fubara’s adoption of APP, they were toast in the rubber-stamp poll. It’s dream legitimacy the governor craves, but the Wike faction is too smart to give.

    So, either side’s insistence on “obeying the court judgment” — one, federal high court at Abuja; another, federal high court in Port Harcourt — was clear cant to game each other; than any love for the Judiciary or even basic civility. 

    But it’s another low for the Judiciary that errant politicians used contrasting verdicts of courts — courts at the same level — to press counter-agenda and heat up the polity.

    Still, don’t be in a rush to roast the courts too.  Each court would float or sink on the strength of the evidence and facts placed before it.

    The Rivers APC went to court claiming the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC) had not fulfilled pre-election legal requirements — mainly, a 90-day notice during which INEC would update the electoral roll and give it to RSIEC on request, as the law demands.  Its lawyers argued that any poll, that didn’t fulfil these legal preconditions, was illegal, null and void.

    Justice Peter Lifu, of the federal high court, Abuja, found for the party and granted its prayers.  To further compel its order, it told INEC not to release any register to RSIEC; and the Police and DSS not to be part of the poll. Both Rivers APC and PDP weaponized this verdict as they ramped up the pressure against Fubara.

    But the Rivers APP — again, as PDP proxy? — went before Jusctice IPC Igwe of the federal high court, Port Harcourt, telling it to compel RSIEC to conduct council polls on October 5, based on the constitutional charter for elected local governments.

    Both might just be right, though they gave conflicting verdicts.  Yes, local government elections are constitutionally guaranteed.  Even at that, laid down processes must be followed, if the poll is not to risk being declared null and void.

    So, a more due process-driven and judiciary-loving combatants need not have resorted to pre-election clatter, thunder and banger in a bid to out-cower one another.  They could have patiently awaited the poll; and quietly gone to court to void it, if it contravened any legal provisions. 

    Sadly that’s not the pull-and-shove, kick-and-slap way of Rivers politics!  It’s hardly the way too of the contemporary Nigerian politician!

    Still, if during the excitement anyone ever danced more naked than any other, it’s Governor Fubara himself — and this is why: his panting hysteria.

    On Justice Lifu: “Even if we go by the federal high court judgment — did it say election should be banned?  Did Lifu, the judge that gave that fraudulent judgment, say no to elections?  Rather, he technically said don’t provide security.”

    On the IGP: “I don’t know what the relationship is between the IGP and one person who claims he has so much power in the state” — no prize for guessing right who that “one person”, in Fubara’s holy rage, is! — “I don’t know the relationship because it is beginning to go beyond the normal professional relationship.”

    This governor should really learn to gird his tongue!  With all due respect to him, both outbursts were reckless!  Didn’t his Christian Faith tell him what undid you was not what you ate but what you spewed?

    Yes, the cooker-pressure bait from Wike and confederates are real.  But the governor can’t afford to swallow — and flounder at — every bait his political foes throw at him!

    Belting with personal insults a judge only doing his work; and trying to draw the IGP into his fray with Wike are especially dumb.  Those two core institutions were forged to protect the governor’s — and citizens’ — right under the law. 

    It’s no good alienating either, even if they they are legally compelled to do their duties under the law.  Still, blood flows in their veins as it does in the irate governor’s.

    Some hot heads are already suggesting that President Bola Tinubu should seize the monthly allocation of Rivers’ local governments, on account of the disputed poll. 

    Perish that thought!  Let the judiciary settle the dispute and point the way forward.

    President Tinubu should not visit, on any governor, the evil that President Olusegun Obasanjo visited on him as Lagos governor, when he seized Lagos council funds. 

  • Edo and election deniers

    Edo and election deniers

    The stiffest challenge to democracy from 1999 to 2015 — effective 2003 when President Olusegun Obasanjo pulled off the first of the rotten elections under his watch — was nuclear-scale rigging that knocked everyone cold.

    Post-2015 though, technology-aided electoral reforms have crushed these brazen vote grabs. So, the new bad boys have become the growing tribe of strident election deniers. As it was after the 2023 general election, so has it been in Edo after the September 21 gubernatorial election.

    APC’s Monday Okpebholo (291, 667 votes) worsted PDP’s Asue Ighodalo (247, 274) with LP’s Olumide Akpata (22, 763) a mere cannon-fodder, after the grand delusion as a third force.

    The wanton riggers of yore have thus become the shrill election deniers of now!  But de-marketing elections, after what seems a fair loss, isn’t good for anyone.

    Still, back to the basics, after Edo ‘24 had been lost and won.

    Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, sitting Edo North senator, was not on the ballot on September 21.  But he might well have been!

    Starkly put, Oshiomhole won and Godwin Obaseki lost.  Okpebholo (Edo Central senator), “did”. Ighodalo (Lagos lawyer and boardroom guru) “died”.  Obaseki had proclaimed it would be “do-or-die”! 

    A cynic, in a macabre pun of the two candidates’ first names, chimed: Asue not only “died”, he was mere “asun” — Yoruba for grilled, spicy meat — in Monday’s Sunday election victory bash!  The winner was declared on Sunday, September 22.

    Still, Obaseki could fairly argue that he meant “do-or-die”, not exactly as President  Obasanjo’s chilly diktat of 2007.  He just meant if APC won — “did” — Edo (and the Obaseki El-dorado from 2016) would “die”. 

    Well, Obaseki got his “death” wish!  Talk of a dire, self-fulfilling prophecy!

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    Though not on the ballot too, the out-going governor plagued Ighodalo, his wished-for successor, all of the way, with so much baggage. For the Esan-born boardroom guru, it was bruising defeat waiting to happen. Only Ighodalo didn’t see what was clear to all!

    It was Obaseki in 2024, playing Oshiomhole in 2016.  What farce! 

    In 2016, Oshiomhole had carried Obaseki on his back. He flaunted his stellar feats from 2008 to 2016; and pushed his “technocrat” protégée as a good son in whom he was well pleased. Oshio-Baba’s goodwill paid off.  Obaseki was governor.

    In 2024, Obaseki too lugged poor Ighodalo, to make the same rounds.  But what leapt off the pair were Obaseki’s many sins, against too many people. 

    The revered Bini royal court groaned. Edo folks that felt cheated by Obaseki railed.  Betrayed political peers bawled! The Legacy PDP screeched! Yes, Obaseki didn’t lack own friends. But you could see where the pendulum would swing. It was payback time!

    That grim harvest buried luckless Ighodalo in Obaseki’s hubris.  Karl Marx was right: history repeats itself first as tragedy; and ultimately as farce!  The defeat of Obaseki and the return of Oshiomhole ticked all those dire boxes. 

    Obaseki’s farcical claim to godfather just went up in smoke.  Just as well!

    Still, the PDP, Obaseki’s acquired party for second term, has got to be the bristling haven for everything wrong with Nigeria’s democracy: cold election riggers when in power (1999-2015); hot election deniers when out of it (2015-2024 — and counting).

    Even Donald Trump, the perfect living master of election-is-free-only-when-I-win vile credo, must be picking up some new tricks from this terrible breed!

    In 2019, APC’s David Lyon won the Bayelsa governorship, thrashing PDP’s Duoye Diri by 352, 552 to 143, 173 votes. 

    But by cruel legal technicality, the Supreme Court gifted Lyon’s win to Diri, claiming that Lyon’s running mate, Biobarakuma Degi, “forged” his certificates — and on Lyon’s swear-in eve, 13 February 2020, when the governor-elect was rehearsing his inauguration parade drill in Yenagoa! 

    Though Degi, a Bayelsa East senator, would later prove in court that those changing names were of the same person, in different phases of his school life — thus making nonsense of the so-called “forgery” — Diri would gain office from an election he lost; before winning a legit second term, for which he is still governor.  To the PDP, that was beautiful democracy!

    But imagine Lyon’s fate befalling a PDP candidate?  All hell would have broken loose: the “international community” would have been told to write the obituary of Nigerian democracy — if not Nigeria itself; and the Supreme Court would have been branded as irredeemably corrupt and “bought” — just as PDP and LP did after the 2013 polls.

    Yet, that happened under APC President, Muhammadu Buhari, and heavens didn’t fall. But can you even imagine that under PDP President Obasanjo, the unfazed patron saint of do-or-die elections, with Maurice Iwu billeted as regimental INEC chair?

    In truth, you can’t put election gas-lighting beyond any party — not APC, not PDP, and certainly not the hypocritical LP, under the chimera-like Peter Obi, with his dramatic foams and fantastic claims.

    Indeed, Obi is holy political ogre, thriving on sacred lies and blessed fibs.  That’s why he and his Obidients are delusional beyond measure. Which explains why they become more and more fleeting, after that electoral over-performance of 2023. 

    Edo ‘24 is latest living proof of that meltdown, with Akpata no more than a footnote. But of course, the arch-delusional Obi had declared the Edo result wouldn’t stand — hell, it won’t!  Just as Obi’s fantastic claim of winning the Presidency stood in court!

    But again, no party is a saint in election deceit — not with the dominant cynical ethos of rig or be rigged out; and that habit to hang INEC for politicians’ execrable conduct.

    Even then, you could tell a decent election, even with all the fiercely competing bad grace. On September 21, Edo North stood firm — and tall — for the APC candidate; while both Edo Central and Edo South were veritable battle grounds. 

    While the APC posted towering wins in Edo North, PDP got close victories where it prevailed in Edo Central — where Okpebholo and Ighodalo hailed — and Edo South. 

    At the end, APC ran away with victories in 11 local governments out of 18, while PDP took two Edo senatorial districts — Central and South — in close wins that were effectively losses.  LP?  No more than dazed onlookers in the sweepstakes!

    Again, the drag was Obaseki, the self-made Macbeth, of Edo’s pay-back politics.  After killing off the “Banquos”, and the “Malcolms” of his Edo tenure, he was fated to “die” by sword of the “Macduffs” — Oshiomhole, reinstated Deputy Governor Philip Shaibu, rejected Deputy Governor nominee, former Edo Speaker Kabiru Adjoto, in his Akoko-Edo lair, and Kazeem Afegbua, in his Okpella bastion — all, by the way, in Edo North!

    Asue Ighodalo appears a brilliant lawyer and a decent gentleman.  So, let him quietly gather evidence to challenge his defeat at the tribunal; and shun post-poll fiction.

    But in the passion of the moment, let him resist joining brazen election deniers.

    Still, by Obaseki’s visit to the INEC Benin office on election night — in blind panic? — and Adamawa Governor, Ahmadu Fintiri, playing rogue INEC by announcing “results” with Ighodalo in-situ, he already risks fair and legitimate stain by association.

    That could blight his political career in the long run.  As for Obaseki, his political goose is cooked — and fairly so: his grating ingratitude riled almost everyone that paved his way to the top!  They were all too happy to send him crashing down.

  • The short run

    The short run

    Nigeria ticked more critical boxes on infrastructure — the most potent driver of any economy — between 2015 and now, against 1999 and 2015. 

    The latest arch-symbol of that push is Dangote Refinery (DR): the earliest local arrival in renascent crude oil refining. DR and budding refinery competitors promise sustainable fuel production. 

    That should rebuild a doughtier Naira forex parity, after decades of wasteful petrol imports, with all their ugly rackets. 

    It’s the first such solid promise since SAP kicked off in 1986; and reduced the Naira into a mere rag in the forex market, sapping the local economy with mega-inflation.

    Yet, all of these alluring promises could easily buckle if the short run is bungled. That’s the critical challenge the Bola Tinubu Presidency faces.  So, it needs creative thinking — and policy flexibility — to navigate this treacherous short term.

    Incidentally: 1999-2015 (16 years) and 2015-2024 (nine years and counting) — two power epochs — belong to two different ruling parties.  In the first, the PDP held sway.  In the second, the APC has been in charge — and their contrasts can’t be starker! 

    The first frittered away easy wealth.  The second grabs at vanishing resources to build hard bridges to the future.  But the people blame post-2015 — a redemptive epoch — because of an unbearable threshold of pains.

    By the way, a joke just went viral in the social media, on the current high inflation. It benchmarks the spike in the price of rice.  Before 2015, a bag of rice went for xNaira (ultra-low).  After 2015, it rocketed to yNaira (ultra-high). 

    It thereby decreed a time epoch: Before 2015 or After 2015 to capture the torrid times — it’s crazy inflation, stupid! 

    Yes, the pocket badly hurts.  Yet, that belly analysis could be so misleading: for the present ruins rose from the false prosperity of old.

    Indeed, that spike in the price of rice sprang from the heedless bazaar of yesteryear — the golden years of cheap foreign rice.  That crippled farming, sacked local farmers but enriched foreign ones.

    What’s more?  Years of high receipts from crude oil boom provided the free cash for reckless food imports: food that could be grown and processed here. 

    That twin-neglect accounts for the high hunger and low youth jobs today — crop processing could have resulted in a slew of cottage industries to provide rural jobs.

    That was the high point of the Olusegun Obasanjo — and the entire PDP — years.  The arch-emblem of that costly distraction was President Obasanjo forking out US$ 12 billion to “buy off” Nigeria’s debts — and patting himself on the back for it!

    Imagine what that cash would have done in massive critical infrastructure — rail, power, roads, education and health?  Penetrative rail could have neutralized high shuttle costs — and inflation — in this golden age of holy market forces, when a hint at any form of subsidy is heresy!

    Incidentally, aside infrastructure, the Muhammadu Buhari years (2015-2023) also saw an aggressive agricultural rebirth, with the administration virtually squealing “rice, o compatriots!” and investors reacting with a spike of rice mills. 

    It’s to be lauded that the Tinubu era has continued with that twin agriculture-infrastructure focus, with own legacy policies of student loans and consumer credit. 

    Still, the impact of these strategic policies are little felt — what with inflation piercing the pocket as a ruthless javelin; and pangs of hunger leaving everyone winded.

    It’s the horrid short term again!  Which is why the administration must do some quick thinking — tactical manouevers that don’t necessarily throw the spanner into its policy works but that will ease present pains.

    Here though, the policy makers must listen with an open mind: not a mind plagued with self-crippling policy bigotry, or aggressive defensiveness.

    No place for Lady TINA — There Is No Alternative.  TINA was the witch Gen. Ibrahim Babangida threw at everyone, in those very early days of SAP!  See where it has landed us!  There is always an alternative when there is creative thinking.

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    DR — and other refineries — could open a fresh window of opportunities to drive down petrol pump price, at least till when the government can mainstream compressed natural gas (CNG), the ideal fuel to power this low-cost economy.

    One thing is clear: it’s doubtful if this inflation-plagued economy can manage fuel pump prices around the N1, 000-a-litre belt — and the pricing template has its own laughable (though “market prices”) contradictions.

    Lagos, the vortex of business, opportunities and putative prosperity, buys petrol at N950-a-litre.  Maiduguri, the bastion of a prostrate economy — no thanks to Boro Haram and its aftermath — buys at over N1, 019-a-litre.  Isn’t that further reinforcing structural energy poverty, and deepening real poverty, as far as fuel pricing goes?

    Now, the issue here is not some sterile argument on how Nigeria’s West African, and nearest Central African, neighbours buy petrol at far higher than N1, 000-a-litre.

    For one, most of these countries are not crude oil producers.  For another, Libya that both has crude and refines its crude, sells petrol far cheaper.  In fact, it boasts the cheapest pump price in all of Africa.

    So, splitting hairs over these comparisons is akin to winning the “market forces” argument but losing the plot on the huge inflation that now plagues this economy. The social cost is huge and scary — and it seems to get heavier by the day.  That could yet prove explosive — except again, some smart thinking is done.

    So, why not tinker with the current policies to locate the cost profile — using locally refined petrol — that can work for this heated economy: at least until CNG fully comes on stream?

    October 1, with the policy of refineries buying crude in Naira kicking in, offers a fresh window of opportunities — a strategic investment in the local economy that could well cool off the inflation.

    Might it hurt anyone really, if the government were to adopt an exchange rate, well below the bracket of N1, 650 for the dollar, for the sale of crude to refineries? 

    O yes!  It would bore a hole in the government’s books — since it would earn far less on its projected Naira quantum from each dollar.  That could mean less to share from the Federation Account.

    Yet, that loss could translate into huge gains in social costs.  The government itself is gunning for CNG, in a smart move to wean the local economy from petrol and diesel.

    What would work for this economy — in this critical, make-or-break short term — is energy costs closer to the eventual destination of CNG, than the present cut-throat petrol.

    Market forces zealots would call that subsidy.  But since that appears heresy in current government thinking, Ripples prefers to tag it a strategic investment to radically push down costs. Most citizens simply can’t afford the current energy costs.

    Such creative tweaking will drive down transport costs and moderate inflation.  That way, this brutal short run would be much more tolerable. As someone quipped, you’re all dead in the long run!

  • Ajantala syndrome

    Ajantala syndrome

    The “Ajantala” tale, in Yoruba folklore, was simply magical: the wonder baby that, almost from birth cry, could speak, sing, rebuke, dance, gambol — almost beating the adults at their game, in almost every material particular!

    Of course, it was oral folklore hyperbole, which nevertheless sounded real in the simple mind of the child!  But that dramatic tale and its sweet hyperbole were only a metaphor for precocity and its extreme form, genius.

    Still, in real life, what’s the mode — the statistical regularity — of precocious children?  Even less, how often do you come across child-geniuses, that would grab a PhD at 17?

    Don’t most children follow the less dramatic pattern of cognition and logical development? 

    If so, why should the curriculum be skewed toward the genius — “Ajantala” — or even the precocious, while most children are simply outside that gifted twin-bracket?

    That’s the simple answer to the federal education authorities’ decision to enforce the no admission into universities — and other tertiary institutions — for Under-18s, from the 2025/2026 academic year.

    You would have thought enforcing that policy was common sense; and that eons of subverting it, since its emplacement in 1983, did not make any sense. 

    But from the serious controversy that has since ensued, it’s clear that in Nigeria’s public affairs issues, common sense in never ever common!

    You don’t need to go far: just x-ray some of the reported arguments of the pro-Under-18 admission lobby.

    One, writing in the Op-Ed pages of this newspaper, put forward as his proof for the mental rigour of the Under-18 for tertiary education: that early teens (between 10 and 13 years) are often enrolled as guild apprentices: in carpentry, auto mechanics, tailoring, etc.

    That is true.  But isn’t that the age belt a child should be in secondary school?  Wasn’t guild training an alternative to formal secondary school education, in that era before the 6-3-3-4 policy was put in place?  Was it ever an alternative to tertiary education?

    Even with 6-3-3-4: wasn’t the age for serious technical education pushed up to 15 years, since the Nigerian state decreed at least nine years of formal education for every Nigerian child — the ninth year culminating in the JSS?

    The only exit qualification at JSS, mind you, was that a child’s not-so-acute intellect should cope better with practical, as against more complex conceptual, stuff in SSS.

    So, how then can an apprentice’s age of 13 then qualify a child to enter university?  To be fair, though: the contributor was not making that as a frontal point.  He was only stacking his cards — a grave logical error in logic, nevertheless — before he was snared by his own fervour!

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    Another made the pillar of his contribution ad hominem: the cheapest form of fallacy in civil and logical discourse.

    He entered the university at 15 he crowed — whiz kid! — and by 23 he was out, qualified as a certificated medic — impressive!  But he just scooped that the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, did not enter university till he was 29!

    So, though the minister was Professor today, he —  “Ajantala”! — had breezed through university at 23 before the minister entered at 29!  Was it not clear then, he gushed, that the minister only made the policy because of own extremely late university education?  So, he made the policy in his dull image?

    Perhaps also: the professor, as a teen in 1983, had helped to rig the policy, knowing he was a future education laggard!  So long for gaseous, ad hominem thinking!

    That a high-flying medic would push such vacuous thinking, blissfully unaware of its gangling fallacy, itself indicates a basic shallow mind, despite being acute enough to practice medicine!  A paradox?  Not exactly!

    That sharp, though shallow, cognition helped the lad through university.  But might it also plague the young doctor — and his likes — all through life, when some depth is needed to think right and take complex decisions? 

    Is that then enough proof that breezing through school could lay a life-long foundation for sloppy thinking?  Not quite.  Some youths are well and truly precocious.  Some are outright geniuses too.  Yet, others learn from life’s hard experience.  But that spectre remains for many — if not most — outside this gifted class.

    Yet, another major lobby, the National Parent-Teacher Association, is threatening a law suit to challenge the policy — fair enough.  Still, by its emotive bluster, it sounded as if it could weaponize a suit as if it were a one-way challenge.

    Not so!  The good, old Lady of Justice, weighing her severe double-scale, is blind, deaf and dumb to emotions.  Only facts, figures and the logic with which they are put together ever register on her forensic mind.  So, no party can weaponize the court.  At best, that conduct is cheap appeal to threat or force, which doesn’t help any case.

    Still, beyond arguments and non-arguments, what really are the issues here?  It’s that simple — and fair wish — that educational policy fulfils the good old credo of Jeremy Bentham: the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

    Again, if most kids boast normal, regular cognition, why willy-nilly tilt the curriculum as if most kids are genuises?  Why rig the system that sees a child breeze through school, when it’s clear such infernal speed hardly helps the child, beyond parents’ empty vanity?

    Indeed why, in a country with clear education policy, would some private primary schools all but abandon the first school leaving certificate examination, making it some infernal pride to present pupils for the common entrance into secondary school in Primary 5, when the 6-3-3-4 policy is clear on six years of primary education — not a few of them even making that dash at Primary 4?

    As in almost every situation in this country, things are often so comprehensively rigged that the abnormal soon becomes the new shouting and grating norm! 

    That would explain the absurdity of even the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) — the arch-angels and core professionals that should explain and protect the integrity of 6-3-3-4 and its age correlation — are among lobby jumping ship.

    Link the NUT stand with that of the National Parent-Teacher lobby and you can begin to gauge how dysfunctional the education system may have become!

    Still, in fairness, serious pull for economic survival often forces young parents to dump their kids in school.  Hardly anyone has the “luxury” of keeping a child at home till six, the age the normal child should enrol for primary school.  The few that still do it are often brow-beaten by own peer pressure!

    Nevertheless, the clear danger of rushing very young teens into university should be clear to all.  A specific danger is that impressionable teens, from rich homes, are often lured  into cults, to consummate their newly found “freedom”.  It always ends in tears!

    Which is why the government should go ahead to implement the policy as set down by law.  Even then, there would appear enough provisions to cater for the precocious ones, without crashing everything in a mad rush, as not a few are baying.

  • Dangote sweet and sour

    Dangote sweet and sour

    Now, NNPC Ltd (and allied oil organs) have got to be the wettest of blankets in the world — and they have about proven that twice.

    On September 3, as everyone was toasting the final roll-out of petrol from the Dangote Refinery, NNPC Ltd jacked up petrol pump prices in a spectacularly insensitive version. 

    It’s reminiscent of 1986.  Prof. Wole Soyinka had just won the Nobel.  Then virtually the next second, Dele Giwa was letter-bombed by suspected agents of the Babangida military government.  Our inimitable WS quipped that the parcel-bombing made the Nobel Prize celebration turn “ash in my mouth.”

    In the same token, NNPC Ltd’s timing of its price-hike just turned ash, in our mouths, the alluring promise of local refining, on which not a few had banked upon to begin the final organic assault to rein in the current tear-away inflation.

    Pray, are our long-suffering citizens not entitled to re-assuring news of relief from this blighting inflation?

    Before September 3, while the see-saw over the petrol roll-out lasted, Farouk Ahmed, CEO of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) — industry regulators of local refineries  — threw a twin-bombshell.  That was June 26.

    Ahmed had alleged: Dangote fuels were sub-grade with alleged high sulphur content; and two: Dangote, the perennial “monopolist” was browbeating NMDPRA to capture  the new local refining market, as he did the then new cement market. 

    Dangote, of course, clawed back: some intra-NNPC Ltd/oil regulatory cabals were fending off local refining, to extend their sizzling gravy in costly product imports, because they allegedly had a blending plant and money spinner in Malta. Tit for tat?

    In truth, Dangote ventures stand fairly docked for their past hardly veiled monopolist instincts.  And surely, no one wants local petrol to end up like the ever-costly local cement, when we all look up to local refining to tame inflation and help re-set the post-subsidy economy?

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    But could that also be a deliberate — and cynical — whoop to hoist Dangote by own “monopolist” petard, knowing how such would resonate with the unwary?   

    Indeed, it’s the perfect emotive ambush! Your being quakes and flays the “monopolist”.  But your sharp intellect blissfully forgets not even a “monopolist” bait should trump the clear benefits of a critical national investment, as such a big refinery, come to wipe out eons of fuel importation.

    That — and only that — is epochal key to banishing wasting scarce forex to import processed crude: value to crude oil you could add locally at cheaper costs. 

    So, instead of NMDPRA cynically scapegoating Dangote to continue ruinous imports, it should rather strengthen its anti-trust protocols. 

    Besides, that reckless statement should have earned the NMDPRA boss a severe query, with no less severe reprimand.  Yet, mum has been the word since.

    Now NNPC Ltd is different from NMDPRA, even if both are not unfairly yoked by an historic umbilical cord.  Still, that the leading downstream player (NNPC Ltd) and the oil downstream regulators (NMDPRA) appear rather cold towards local refining should spike fair suspicion, shouldn’t it?

    Is there then some spectre of sabotage, locked deep in there, in the inner crevices of the government itself?  Without tarring anyone, this is worth probing.

    Still, a presidential memo at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) birthed the much celebrated decision to sell crude to Dangote — and other local refineries — in Naira.  That, at least, doused the NNPC Ltd-NMDPRA-Dangote “civil war”.

    That Solomonic wisdom was toasted by all with even presidential aide, Zach Adedeji, gushing at the possible “saving” of almost four out of every 10 US dollars, now spent on importing processed crude.

    That looked promising as a smart step to tame inflation — until September 3 when NNPC Ltd unleashed its latest price demons that unhinged everything.

    The grim message was clear: no matter what, local refining or no, Nigerians will continue paying outrageous prices for petrol.  If you you think “outrageous” here is emotive, why are some state governments already telling some grade of workers to come to work only twice-a-week, under the euphemism to “work from home”? 

    That is admission that such a price regime is unaffordable to most.  If that is so, how does it work for an economy that works for all? 

    Besides, if government workers skip work and still get paid, what about millions of self-employed citizens condemned to the daily grind of high transport costs? 

    What about private sector workers, without public sector cover?  What about those waiting to lose their jobs, from factory shutdowns, due to spiking operating costs?

    How about fresh sharp inflation that makes nonsense of the harvest season, with cut-throat shuttle costs, blunting out whatever relief, in expected lower food prices?

    Such is the centrality of petrol costs to Nigeria’s socio-economic life that whatever policy sweeteners added to explain or justify this latest hike simply don’t make sense.

    So, this is the crunch — get less fixated with dogma craps: subsidy is a crime, floating the Naira is divine and “market forces” are gods — malevolent, by the way — that must be worshipped, even if citizens daily perish at their callous and bloody shrines.

    By the way, “market forces” are elite greed, from which the masses themselves, dog-eat-dog, are not immune.  That’s why some wretched souls in the street don’t blink twice before selling petrol at N1, 500-a-litre, because it’s blessedly scarce!

    The crunch is this economy, for it not to tank, needs oil subsidy.  Fuel is just too central to the spine of Nigeria’s socio-economic life. 

    So, fix a reasonable Naira-dollar parity for the Naira at which NNPC sells crude, dedicated to the local economy, to local refiners. Heresy! — did you hear the neo-liberal dogmatic scream?  More of social common sense!

    If the pump price hits N320/N350-a-litre, it should somewhat cool off inflation.  The so-called “loss” in government accounting is smart investment to repair the hellish social costs, which subsidy removal has unleashed on the people.

    But even that “subsidy” is just for a while.  It should last till the government sufficiently mainstreams — two, three years, max — condensed natural gas (CNG) which, with no subsidy, is far cheaper than petrol.  By the time processed crude is exclusively exported to earn forex, the government would regain the full value in earnings.

    Far too much chirping about “market forces”.  It’s high time someone spoke loudly for the poor that have been thrashing under these excruciating pains. 

    Between policy boldness and policy foolhardiness, there is but a thin line.  Here is the moment to apply the brakes!