The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Wages of perfidy

    Wages of perfidy

    Karma!  The Edo revolution — sorry, perfidy — is consuming own children! 

    Embattled Deputy Governor, Philip Shaibu, just became history, vide his April 8 impeachment by the Edo State House of Assembly.  Doom foretold just dawned!  No tears from here.

    Governor Godwin Obaseki, the second hand in the anti-Oshiomhole perfidy, ironically played the crushing conk, sitting in judgment over Shaibu, his comrade-in-mischief, after months of hide-and-seek. The duo that danced and frolicked, after Oshiomhole’s stumble, have set upon each other!

    Both Shaibu and Obaseki had betrayed their joint benefactor, former Edo Governor Adams Oshiomhole, now the Edo North senator — the one, a mentee that scorned his mentor; the other, a “technocrat”, picked over and above many loyal confederates in Edo succession politics (including Pius Odubu, Oshiomhole’s own deputy governor), that nailed his benefactor.

    But sure enough, Obaseki’s own comeuppance comes in earnest.  If angry Shaibu and co didn’t go for broke to scuttle Asue Ighodalo’s election as Obaseki’s adopted heir, a future Governor Ighodalo himself reserves the right to blight Obaseki, as Obaseki had rubbished Oshiomhole.

    The double parallel in there is rather gripping: Asue, the “technocrat”, trumps conventional politicians, as Godwin did; Beneficiary Ighodalo gobbles own Benefactor Obaseki, as Obaseki did of Oshiomhole!

    In the explosive drama of long-term politics and sundry relevance, Godwin seems fated — to borrow that cutting phrase from Macbeth, the Shakespeare tragedy — to have murdered sleep, so Obaseki would sleep no more! 

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    The outgoing Edo governor had better get used to watching his back, for his savage but inevitable blow can’t be far away!  The Lagos-based “technocrat” and serial ingrate that took Edo by storm, crowing “Edo no be Lagos”, seemed leaving power with far less friends than when he grabbed it.

    It’s karma the immutable!  There’s little anyone can do about it. Karma has an elephant’s memory.  It never forgets!

    When that crushing conk comes swooshing, there would be no tears for Obaseki from here.  One who betrayed another is himself fated to betrayal by others. Karma!

    Still, let none of all of these be construed to mean Oshiomhole himself was more sinned against than sinning, to filch that memorable phrase from Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. 

    Far from it.  The famed “Oshio Baba” repaid the likes of Deputy Governor Odubu with flagrant disloyalty, ogling instead the tinsel of a “technocrat”, when he could have had, in his loyal deputy and other confederates, the raw gold to cement his legacy.

    Karma on three feet? — since Obaseki only paid Oshiomhole with the disloyalty coins Oshiomhole himself had repaid his loyal lieutenants?  Intriguing!

    Still, leaving the spiritual for the physical: it was the macabre jinx plaguing deputy governors all over again — a veritable kiss of death in the governorship sweepstakes.

    While deputies are good enough to run and win a joint ticket with the governor, they are seldom good enough for the reciprocation of succession.  That, again, ironically has played out in the Obaseki-Shaibu fall-out.  Loyalty is simply not enough!

    The big difference though is that while Oshiomhole, warts and all, stayed true to his political habitat, Shaibu, dashing but callow, risks vanishing into a political quicksand — scorned in APC, not exactly loved in PDP — while Obaseki remains the ideological vacuum he was while he took power.

    Obaseki’s credo?  Loyalty to no one but self-in-power, as both Oshiomhole and the Edo Legacy PDP have bitterly found out!  So, the end always justified the meanness!

    How all of these would play out in the fortune — or misfortune — of both parties in the looming election is yet not clear.  What appears almost certain is Obaseki may be heading for post-power doldrums. 

    You can’t, post-power, wield influence if all you left were rueful predecessors and bitter successors.  That appears the true and logical portraiture of Obaseki’s governorship.

    Still, away from men whose present jinxes their future!  Now, to democratic institutions, which continuous abuse continues to undermine our democracy.

    The Shaibu impeachment has again rubbished the office of the Deputy Governor, as if the occupier were some feudal serf, at the mercy of some feudal lord; and not a democratic institution, which the 1999 Constitution created and guarantees.

    We all saw how President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar desecrated the two highest positions in the land with open and graceless feuding. 

    Somewhat, through mutual respect for each others’ persons, both President Goodluck Jonathan/Vice President Namadi Sambo and President Muhammadu Buhari/Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, managed to nurse that high office back to dignity.

    At the gubernatorial level, however, the governor, as irrational “boss”, still rules the roost.  That’s why Citizen Obaseki (because he is governor) would punish Citizen Shaibu, for pushing his inalienable constitutional right to run for governor.

    Worse: it is the worst form of democratic feudalism (a jarring contradiction in terms), for both the Legislature and the Judiciary, hiding behind crass legalism, to continue being captive to governors’ power whims.  That adds no shine to our democracy.

    By the way, how the grovelling Godwins Omobayo took office, and his frothy lullaby about how Obaseki’s Greek gift had honoured his native Akoko Edo, simply sucked. 

    His name may be Godwins.  But that obsequious persona wins no new dignity for himself, the office of the Deputy Governor, or even his Akoko Edo people.  Democratic power is a right given by the people, not mischief gifted by cynical politicians.

    But by far the most worsted, of all the democratic institutions, is the Edo House of Assembly, though that also came with a piquant tinge of irony.

    This same Obaseki it was, that stalled the inauguration of duly elected Edo legislators, till their tenure expired, just to prove he was crude lord of manor.

    Back then his avid collaborator, in unfazed democratic subversion, was this same Shaibu.  Shaibu would rather, to borrow the John Milton-speak of Paradise Lost, reign in Obaseki’s hell of realpolitik, than serve in the heaven of rule-based politics.

    But alas!  The same legislature Shaibu conspired with Obaseki to subvert, just became Shaibu’s own Golgotha, oozing with his crushed and mashed deputy governor bones!

    Still, the ultimate humiliation: the humiliated legislature was still pressed into (dis)service, to do its humiliator’s bidding. When will state assemblies begin to resist executive bullying?

    History’s remembrance of Obaseki’s controversial governorship won’t be too far from the Obaseki Ovonramwen perfidy of 1897, against the Bini throne.

    But on the balance, is the latest Obaseki a force for good or for evil in Edo politics? The jury is out — and time will tell.

  • Trial of Bobrisky

    Trial of Bobrisky

    Prof. Wole Soyinka, our own WS, in his Jero plays, “spoke” of The Trials of Brother Jero and Jero’s Metamorphosis.

    In Nigeria’s distracted polity — with its penchant to focus on the utterly irrelevant — we just witnessed the trial (more of judicial inquisition, really) of the deviant cross-dresser that calls herself Bobrisky, even if he was born male: Idris Olanrewaju Okuneye.

    But like Jero, a likable rogue of an Aladura (white-garment) priest, gaming the naive on the Lagos Bar Beach of the late 1960s and early 1970s, will Bobrisky, post-jail, morph into even a worse cultural rebuke, as sure-footed Jero metamorphosed into a more sophisticated scam?

    That’s the risk of the iron-fisted verdict on Bobrisky!

    Meanwhile though, the finger-pointing moral police are busy celebrating their grand trophy.

    Bobrisky just got thrown into the can for six months, without options of fine, for abusing and mutilating the Naira — at least that read the charge sheet of the prosecuting Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

    But EFCC and the entire panoply of judicial prosecution can tell that to the marines!

    Everyone — at least anyone that can read between the lines — knows Bobrisky’s real “sin” is her flamboyant cross-dressing, which jars on the prudish nerves of rabbis, mullahs and sundry judgmental ensemble: puritanical folks that just can’t deal with Bobrisky’s culture-jarring audacity.

    The EFCC and its swift docking and conviction of Bobrisky echo that Chinua Achebe quip: when a bully sights anyone he can maul, be becomes hungry for a fight! 

    EFCC knows — don’t we all? — that many among the well-heeled had committed more brazen abuse of the Naira.  What’s that Christ’s quip again: he without sin, let them throw the first stone?

    Yet, hardly anyone in that rank — untouchables? — had been rushed post-haste to court and sensationally sentenced, though it’s fair too to add even that can’t justify Bobrisky’s own recklessness.

    Yes, Bobrisky is well and fairly convicted for mutilating the Naira, in an open court.  The accused pleaded guilty and begged for mercy. 

    As allocutus, Bobrisky even offered, as a social media influencer, to start an anti-Naira mutilation campaign on her social media platforms, to which no less than five million doting souls are reportedly captive.

    The judge, on her own part, was blameless for exercising her discretion under the law: she not only opted for the lowest sentence by the law (six months, when she could have pronounced the maximum of five years); she also decided against giving her the fine option, to serve as warning to others.

    Still, why does the judge’s act, with all due respect, taste more like the benevolence of Pontius Pilate, who though cleared the Christ Jesus of any crime, nevertheless threw him to the Jewish mob baying for blood, though he washed his hands clean of whatever crime that mob might commit after?

    Besides, what is it with a first offender, with no previous criminal record, that jail without option of fine would be the wisest remedy, even while (s)he was all remorse and cooperation, promptly pleading guilty; and neither wasted the time of the court nor public resources on a lengthy prosecution?

    The answer, of course, might be the clear elephant in the room: it just might be more about Bobrisky’s cross-dressing; and her penchant to show off as a woman, when indeed he is a man; and less about Bobrisky’s Naira mutilation.

    For starters, EFCC’s “elimination by substitution” was quite intriguing.  Bobrisky was hauled into the dock for money laundering, aside from Naira abuse.  But the more serious money laundering charge was dropped without much ado.

    That, by the way, is laudable — the judiciary promptly dismissing any charge not sustained by proven facts. 

    Still, might the EFCC have been stacking its cards, using “money laundering” as a mere decoy, knowing even Naira abuse might be good enough to put Bobrisky away for her cross-dressing — a moral rebuke that is nevertheless no offence under the law?

    That might sound like some conspiracy theory.  But given the peculiar circumstances, it would appear a legitimate poser, under the guise of a citizen’s legitimate choices, which though might assault other citizens’ moral — or even cultural — sensibilities, are no crimes under the law.

    Besides, what was all that over Bobrisky’s gender in the open court?  Okay, the court could argue — and logically so — that were it to sentence the accused, it had to be clear, since the person in question is rather ambivalent about his — her? — gender.

    The court got the answer — Bobrisky’s admission (s)he is a man, instead of the woman he makes out to be. The prison authorities, flush — with triumph? — pronto announced they’d keep Bobrisky in a male cell, and protect her from sexual predators. Bravo!

    Still, might citizen humiliation be now part of our legal system?  Under desperation to escape jail, Bobrisky — self-named Mama of Lagos — recanted.  Yet, all her recant could gross him was a six-month jail term! 

    Humiliation complete!  Mission accomplished!

    Still, nothing from this piece should be construed as endorsing Bobrisky’s gender deviancy.  Even, readers could testify to this piece’s uneasy interchange of pronouns, between Idris the man and Bobrisky the woman.  It’s not pretty — lexical and cultural.

    Still, deviancy is no offence, except it results in clear crime; though society that pushes acceptable mores and thresholds would scoff at it.  But deviancy could just mean harmless non-conformity, or just youth irreverence, or serious mental health. 

    Society should learn to manage such without necessarily criminalizing the deviant. Yes, the legalistic ensemble would howl in protest: absolutely no evidence Bobrisky was jailed for her cross-dressing!  They are entitled to their democratic delusions.

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    Still, why would Idris Olanrewaju Okuneye, a product of the high-brow King’s College, Lagos and graduate of University of Lagos — both among Nigeria’s local “Ivy League” schools — just abandon an otherwise assured life, for the now clearly risky world as Bobrisky, transgender and cross-dresser?

    Shouldn’t a caring society be more concerned with his mental health, instead of sating rabid rabbis and mullahs’ appetite to toss him into jail? That’s a fair question to ponder!

    Meanwhile, Bobrisky’s scapegoating should make the rich and the spoilt, plus market folks that squeeze the Naira anyhow as routine, to think twice.   That’s good.

    But honestly, Nigeria has graver challenges than going after cross-dressers, drawing to them needless sympathy, thus exposing a dirty underbelly of stinking hypocrisy. 

    Perhaps the government could help with a half-pardon that sets free Bobrisky, yet, as community service, condemns her to using her social media platforms to push for sane Naira handling, as entry point into a mental health therapy that could wean her from the willy-nilly fixation with being a woman?

  • Power as legacy

    Power as legacy

    It’s not exactly the Gen. Yakubu Gowon oil boom years of the early 1970s — with the glittering and new Eko Bridge, the Ijora Causeway complex of audacious flyovers, and the magnificent National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.

    Besides, there was the newly designed Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS) complex, from the traditional Lagos Race Course — aka “Odan”: Yoruba for lush green lawn, though this one had big tree boughs and mighty shades — where Ripples, with other kids in the Lagos Island public primary schools, went for schools inter-house sports; or just scurried there for sundry exercise and relaxation.

    Great era — that Gowon era — where everything looked spic-and-span; before the jumbo loans of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo’s first coming; where you felt a benevolent government in the air; and a child’s mind told you nothing could go wrong!

    Sweet reminiscences?  Maybe! That’s what you get cruising on the newly refurbished 3rd Mainland Bridge.  The tyres purring on smooth, black tar, was simply magical! 

    But watch it!  Anything above 80 kms-an-hour may cost you dear!  If you doubt, dare the cameras, and risk razing your pocket with avoidable fines!

    It’s good the Tinubu government has kept apace the infrastructural foxtrot of its Buhari forebear.  That Works Minister Dave Umahi has continued where the iconic Babatunde Fashola left off — and improving on it — is something to cheer!

    For the Buhari-era 2nd Onitsha Bridge, or the Loko-Oweto Bridge that links Nigeria’s South-South and South East with the North over the River Benue, the Tinubu era is touting the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway; and the Lagos-Abuja superhighway in six hours!

    Though work has already started on the Lagos end of the 10-lane Lagos-Calabar road, with a rail track in-between, not much is heard of the Lagos-Abuja road, after its initial announcement.  Minister Umahi should please fill us in.

    On rail, Abuja is set to join Lagos as only the second Nigerian city to have metro rail.  Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike, can’t wait to tell everyone about the great debut of Abuja’s urban rail, to mark the first anniversary of the Tinubu order.

    There are even talks of fastening pace on the Lagos-Kano standard gauge rail.  If that were true, that would be nice.  It just means, not very far away, travellers would have options: shuttling, say from Lagos to Abuja, by road, rail or air.  That would be nice!

    Still, were all of these infrastructural strides to be tracked; and branded according to administrations, none of them would belong to the Tinubu era, as laudable as the regime’s positive continuity is, in this critical sphere of road and rail infrastructure.

    Not even the re-emerging local refining of petroleum products would belong to the Tinubu era, though the current government has the golden chance to mainstream it.

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    With Dangote Refinery already pushing out diesel — and happy talks of pump prices “crashing” — the market can only look forward to the May date for the roll-out of the big one: petrol, formally called premium motor spirit (PMS).  It’s exciting times!

    In truth, the Tinubu government, also trying to re-jig the country’s tough financial infrastructure, is doing very well to still fix its eyes on the infrastructure ball. 

    That — need one re-state? — is the only way to energize and finally build the local real sector. That will finally earn the beleaguered Naira its real value.  Despite the “massive” gains of the Naira these past two weeks, it’s still too under-valued.

    So, despite its laudable continuity, it’s doubtful if the Tinubu era can earn itself the age of renewed roads; or of modernized rail; or even, of the return of local refining. 

    All three belonged to the much-maligned Muhammadu Buhari era, though it’s also nice to know that hysteria is wearing off, as the Tinubu era continues to find own feet.

    They would all be branded as belonging to the Buhari age simply because the old government did all of the heavy lifting — just as the Olusegun Obasanjo/PDP era fairly merits the age of infrastructure rust and bust — even as the Tinubu order is fated to flower on the Buhari age’s infrastructural bloom, if it continues on its current push.

    Still, there is a special space in history, that would trump all previous governments, if President Tinubu were to crack that ultimate conundrum: power. 

    It’s the ultimate power legacy! Can the president and his (wo)men reach out to grab it?

    Great question.  Except that, so far, the Power ministry, and all the power agencies under it: government, quasi-private and fully private, have been pretty unconvincing.  That would appear the weakest link so far in the administration’s infrastructure chain.

    Now, the Power terrain is intricate and complicated territory.  If you doubt, ask Fashola, whose campaign quip, during the 2014/2015 hustings, was that all you needed to get 24-hour power, was to vote out the doddering Goodluck Jonathan PDP government.

    Indeed, voters hearkened that call; and PDP and Jonathan became history, under the ferocious charge of APC’s “Change!”  Not only that: Fashola himself became PMB’s first Power minister, with his humongous tri-portfolio of Power, Works and Housing. 

    That Fashola quip has since become the butt of jokes on the irreverent social media.  Still, that the normally stream-rolling Fashola hardly made a dent on the Power problem exposes the folly of applying personal daring to a systemic problem.

    So, to just go for his jugular and dismiss Power Minister, Adebayo Adelabu, as “Minister of Darkness”, as the traduce-first-think-later denizens of X and allied social media are already doing, tends to miss the point.  That sector is too complex to just scapegoat an individual. 

    Yet, the minister himself seldom sounds convincing, in his seldom well thought-out public utterances. 

    If he’s not drivelling over cost-reflective costs, he’s giving galling counselling on why consumers should switch off their freezers in this severe heat, aside from running annoying jeremiads over the non-sustainability of the electricity subsidy regime, when folks still flail under the removal of oil subsidy. 

    And o: that was after emerging from impotent threats against electricity distribution companies (DisCos), thus cutting the sorry picture of either blaming the victims (consumers to which electricity is even becoming a bigger mirage), or indulging under-performing Power sector players, despite his public derring-do of impotent threats.

    Neither is good enough.  The crisis in the electricity market needs a clear thinker, who can both rally consumers to hope, yet marshal producers to deliver the goods.

    Still, it just might be frothing emotion to heap all of these blames on the current minister.  If it were a systemic problem — and Power is clearly one — changing ministers, even monthly, would likely return the same indifferent results.

    But what the government needs is do rigorous due diligence in getting to the root of the problem.  It can then tackle each problem from its source — generation (with its gas challenge); transmission (obsolete masts and lines needing massive upgrades), and DisCos (with their mass metering problem), etc.

    If the Tinubu government can give these discrete challenges discrete attention; and push discrete solutions, then it could earn the bragging right as the Power Age. 

    It’s a big legacy, and it won’t be easy.  But it’s not unachievable.  Let the regime give it a hard push.  How do the Americans spin it — no guts, no glory?

  • Abure ta ku!

    Abure ta ku!

    Abure “ta ku”?  Or Abure wins round one?

    How exactly do you couch the latest gripping melodrama from the Labour Party (LP)-Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) war front?

    If you want a true classic, steeped in high-octane power intrigues, reminiscent of the titanic political battles of Nigeria’s 1st Republic (1960-1966), dub it “Abure ta ku”!

    But if you’d prefer a humdrum headline, which nevertheless ruled the media roost from the late 1970s till the 1990s, toasting the courtroom histrionics of the late Gani Fawehinmi, SAN, SAM, then just say “Abure wins round one”.

    Abure wins round one — because it’s early days yet; and you can’t predict the final swing of the victory pendulum.

    But back to the 1st Republic Titans and classic battles.

    Abure digs in — that appears the closet English equivalent of Abure “ta ku”. Still, it’s too cold — indeed, too frigid — to capture the Yoruba original’s tonal dramatics.

    It echoes “Akintola ta ku”, a Daily Times front page banner headline of 28 May 1962, cast by one of Nigeria’s all-time journalism greats, Alhaji Babatunde Jose. 

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    Alhaji Jose, a Titan of the media, was then czar at Daily Times (now defunct), then Nigeria’s media market leader and foremost newspaper chain.  Alhaji Jose, in Walking A Tightrope, his autobiography and memoirs, confirmed he indeed cast that headline.

    Western Region Premier, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA), had just been fired by a majority in the Western House of Assembly — a majority loyal to Chief Obafemi Awolowo; in the bitter and dirty dispute for the soul of the Action Group (AG), between Chief Awolowo (AG Leader) and SLA (Deputy Leader but Western Region Premier).

    Akintola balked at the so-called sack, thus jarring against British Parliamentary conventions.  Hence, the dramatic Akintola ta ku — a headline, using today’s social media lingo, that immediately went viral!

    That western drama, because the federal authorities tried to strong-arm the process, would trigger a national crisis that would sink that republic on 15 January 1966.

    On the other hand, “Gani wins round one” would later ring out, during the best-forgotten military era, as Gani, SAM — senior advocate of the masses — won yet another of his many famous injunctions, in his many legal pursuits to secure the dignity of the powerless, against the mighty establishment.

    To be sure, Gani the Great won many famous and landmark cases, to huge media applause.  But that he always won “round one” did not mean he prevailed in every particular case. 

    That should hold some cold comfort for Joe Ajaero and his — shell-shocked? — NLC ensemble.  They just got outflanked by Julius Abure. 

    Foxy Jules just earned himself — by hook or by crook — another four-year stint as national chair of the troubled LP, to the chagrin of boisterous Joe!

    Joe Ajaero!  Who would have thought!  That he, the famed garrison commander of Labour’s “agbero” tactics, just got caged, if not outright cooked, by same “agbero” politics, for the control of the soul of LP!

    Who would have thought!  That Abure — meek and gentle Abure — would overawe the loud and trenchant Ajaero, who preens at intimidating others, over LP: via the March 27 Nnewi, Anambra State, LP convention, that just coronated Abure as LP czar for four more years!

    Abure!  He is Julius, yes.  But he appears very far from Caesar — that flamboyant  figure of imperial Rome and the tragic hero of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Julius Caesar! 

    Rather, he tends to mirror Cassius, in Julius Caesar.  Caesar himself spotted the Cassius danger: “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.  He thinks too much.  Such men are dangerous.”

    But Mark Antony dismissed such fears: “Fear him not, Caesar; he’s not dangerous” — a fatal mis-advice.  Mighty Caesar soon became cadaver at the Capitol: no thanks to a murderous conspiracy by Cassius, Casca and hateful gang.  Even the noble Brutus — who didn’t hate Caesar but only loved Rome — was part of that envious murder.

    Now, Abure may not look hungry or “dangerous” as Cassius.  But he certainly is lean! 

    He just showed Ajaero and his noisy Aluta crowd the lean-and-mean in the realpolitik of party power grab, beyond lousy picketing and predictable hell-raising. 

    Who would have thought!  That Ajaero and his NLC old guard could be noisy outsiders, from the LP mansion they conceived and actually built!  Who would have thought!

    Still, serves the NLC old guard right.  For too long, they kept mum, as political hustlers and Labour merchants raped LP for filthy lucre, their much flaunted ideology-exceptional maiden, each election season.  Now, they jerk awake with a start: heretics have elbowed their high priests off their high temple!

    For eight long years, the LP/NLC Jerusalem was Akure, where Ondo Governor Olusegun Mimiko (2009-2017) was busy playing LP chief boys scout and high priest. 

    Now, Mimiko was no better or worse than the hoard of South West hustlers, often hiding behind Awo’s social democracy ideology for power and political relevance.  But he certainly was no Labour ideologue. 

    So, when Mimiko was done with LP, he floated ZLP — Zenith Labour Party — before he hit his political nadir and returned to his PDP vomit.  He probably was too shame-faced to return to the Alliance for Democracy (AD)-AC-ACN-APC tendencies because he had razed bridges, in his futile rat race for a post-power South West political juggernaut.

    Alex Otti, the current lone LP governor of Abia, is even a starker capitalist — no crime.

    Still, while the war rages, he plants one foot in LP.  He plants another in NLC.  He wouldn’t host, in Umuahia,  Abure’s controversial convention.  Yet, he despatched his deputy to the Nnewi show.  Call it the sacred Otti doctrine of absolute non-alienation!

    Peter Obi?  That one is one trophy both Ajaero and Abure would feud to death to keep! Even as Abure holds fast to his poisoned chalice of a new tenure, LP assures its 2027 presidential ticket is Obi’s — except he refuses.

    For that cheeky promise, Ripples would give anything to see the face of Ajaero –Ajaero, the Obi fanatic — a gargoyle of a scowl?  Who knows!

    Still, what Obi did was flaunt his Obidient bona fides.  Obi may have lost the 2023 polls, he sang.  But his Obidients clearly won!

    Now, what’s that — the peripatetic Obi giving very early warning that he’d take his Obidients elsewhere, should the Labour war endure? 

    But perhaps too — to placate Ajaero? — Obi pronounced his distance from Abure’s controversial convention.  Enter the Labour political bride of the year — long after the great Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (God bless his soul)!

    The evolving doom of LP is that those who know ideology know no electoral victory; those who know electoral victory know no ideology. 

    Isn’t that a clear pathway to structural death for a party that keeps deluding itself with queer exceptionalism in Nigerian politics?

    LP had better snap out of its self-imposed delusion.  Still, the present crisis presents it an opportunity re-find itself and assert its ideological soul. 

    Otherwise, it should say its last prayers; and embrace the disgraceful death its partisan whoring of the last 20 years eminently merits.

  • Promise of Niger

    Promise of Niger

    A not-so-veiled message from the Captain and Vice Captain, at two high-profile events, and the jeremiads from some of the crew members have all but vanished.

    “Some of us are confused about whether to abuse the past or the present; or to make excuse for the future,” President Bola Tinubu observed in Minna, while flagging off the Niger State food security and agricultural mechanization programme, complete with adequate ranching for herders.  “But that is not in my dictionary.”

    Vice President Kashim Shettima, at the public presentation of Sam Omatseye’s book, Beating All Odds: Diaries and Essays on How Bola Tinubu Became President: “Yes, we are having challenges.  And we are not here to apportion blame.  Leadership,” he stressed, “is about accepting responsibility and finding solutions to national challenges.”

    And voila!  The anti-Muhammadu Buhari-era growling, fast becoming a sickening pastime among some Tinubu administration hierarchs, has all but vanished!

    That’s highly welcome.  Lamentation is nothing but emotional paralysis.  Paralysis never solves a problem.  Rather, It creates more.  But hard, punishing thinking does.

    Incidentally, the same period (of more gruelling thinking, less sweet grumbling) has somewhat chalked up relief from the Naira front — with the Naira highly appreciating, even if it’s still far too low, in parity to the dollar, given the strength of the Nigerian economy, relative to other African countries, anyway.

    “Lagos is Nigeria’s richest state, producing about US$ 90 billion a year in goods and services,” The Economist once gushed, “making its economy bigger than that of most African countries, including Ghana and Kenya.”

    Yet, Lagos is only a pie — a major pie, to be sure — from the Nigerian economy.  So, why would the Naira crumble more against the dollar, than the Ghana Cedi; or the Francophone West Africa CFAS; or the Kenyan Shilling?

    Also, potential glad tidings from the oil refining front.  With both the NNPC Ltd’s Port Harcourt Refinery and the Dangote facility set to push out wet products, news of a possible fall in pump prices of petroleum products is making the rounds.

    It’s, therefore, welcome to the brass tacks, after an impassioned bout of sweet lamentations and self-distractions.  It’s nice to start thinking development again!

    As the President and Vice President have rightly insisted, the Tinubu government was voted in to raise PMB-era achievements a higher notch, while also fixing that era’s drawbacks — without prejudice to investigating, prosecuting and securing conviction for any alleged crimes, by any member of the ancien regime.

    But tackling alleged regime felons is one thing.  Sweeping, omnibus tarring of the old order is another — particularly when both old and new are products of the same APC; and PMB’s scorecard also helped in getting President Tinubu elected, though, to be fair, the president’s campaign pushed out clear plans to further improve things.

    Besides, in partisan strategic tracking, which is smarter?  Intra-APC regime bickering? Or a neat, tidy contrast between what PDP did in 16 years, against APC’s own records, across sectors in eight, going to nine years?

    But even beyond partisan manouevers: wouldn’t such tidy categorization correctly track progress, stagnation and retrogress, and mirror a more definite status of things, than the customary penchant to feast on rot, wilfully deny credible achievements and proclaim doom, in a never-ending fit of avid self-loathing?

    Nothing epitomizes such positive continuity, not to mention an admirable re-focus, more than Niger State’s audacious agricultural plan, which President Tinubu flagged off on March 11.

    That may be a state programme, as distinct from a Federal Government’s.  But in it sits sound synergy that speaks to the Federal Government staying true on the critical theme of food security, driven by agricultural processing, if PMB’s agricultural activism must be built upon.

    That the president himself was there to buy into the project was a huge symbolism in Federal-state collaboration; and state-state economic partnership, to deepen the real sector using, as lynchpin, the various segments of agriculture.

    The promise of Niger! 

    The project, dubbed Total Agricultural Support Programme (TASP), in concert with Campo Company of Brazil, already has, in ready investments, 500 large capacity tractors, 50 harvesters of sundry grades, 200 power tillers and 1, 000 agricultural and irrigation equipment of varying types.

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    Irrigation speaks to all-year, all-round farming, to maximize Nigeria’s traditional two farming seasons.  The dam component speaks to power security, via hydro-powered electricity, so imperative for agricultural processing — by cottage industries linked to farms, providing job opportunities for the rural youth.

    “We are bringing about 140 kilometres of water irrigation to this place from Shiroro Dam,” Governor Bago told a visiting Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) delegation. “We are bringing 80 megawatts of power to the Airport City Project.”

    The “shop window”, for this extensive crop/animal husbandry processing mart, is an “Airport City Free Zone” — a free trade zone, projected to be the biggest of its type in Africa when in full bloom — processing diary products, vegetables and fruits; and moving such products abroad, or to other Nigerian states, as per appropriate orders, thus further deepening the real sector, creating fresh jobs along the value chain.

    But as the Niger government thinks processed crops, meat and dairy, the Federal Transport ministry should think rail link and penetration to further tackle food inflation.

    Again, pushing out diary products, with the level of mechanized investments in TASP, suggests a much more embedded livestock-processing industry, much deeper and far more sophisticated than herding from one spot to another.  That itself suggests a well thought out ranching policy, as an integral part of TASP.

    Visiting President Tinubu also gushed over restructuring the agricultural ecosystem, with happy farmers and settled herders, driving their trade in peace.

    “I know what it means for roaming cows to eat crops and the vegetation of our land.  I know it’s painful,” the president admitted. “But when we reorient the herder and make provision for cattle rearing (reading ranching) we can address that.  You are the governors who are to provide the land. I, as President,” he pledged, “am committed to providing a comprehensive programme that will solve this problem.”

    Besides, no less than four states — Benue, Kogi, Kwara and Lagos — have plugged into TASP, with memoranda of understanding.  Lagos, for once, needs a lot of paddy rice to feed its massive rice mill in Imota, via Ikorodu (the biggest in West Africa), send the price of rice crashing in its markets and give inflation a bloody nose.

    It exciting that Niger State, which boasts the largest land mass in Nigeria — 76, 363 square kilometres — is pressing its vast land resource into serious economic use. 

    The riveting promise of Minna is the glimmer of hope for inter-state agricultural collaboration for the good of all.

    Let everyone plug into it.  It might well be the latest step to ensuring food security.

  • Labour wars

    Labour wars

    It’s mutual opportunism gone awry — the Labour Party (LP)-Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) rumble.  But the surprise is the fierce — if not the sudden — bust-up.

    Can you imagine: Julius Abure’s LP excoriating the seldom introspective Joe Ajaero, earlier drubbed by irate Imo partisans during Comrade Joe’s illicit foray into Owerri — an LP politician-at-heart, moonlighting as avid Labour unionist, but fobbing no one but himself?

    Or Ajaero’s NLC Political Commission firing the first shot — the voice of Jacob but the hands of Esau, as LP’s Obiorah Ifor alleged — counter-blasting its rather territorial Aluta guardian archangel, even calling out  Ajaero to quit his “rascality” as NLC president; and come vie as LP national chairman, if indeed, he loves LP more than its card-carrying members?

    So, the height-challenged Joe and the tall, lanky Julius now go toe-to-toe on the Labour boxing ring — like Anthony Joshua and Cameroonian Francis Ngannou?

    Who is David and who is Goliath in this fierce battle for the soul of Labour — or rather in the gambit of political smart Alecs using Labour’s name to make hay?

    Indeed, mutual opportunism always cops a sorry end — and this would appear yet another living proof.  But it might be morning yet on the Labour rumbling wars!

    How will all that impact workers, in these harsh economic times, when they need focused leaders to extract the best possible deals from the government and the private sector, on the virtual eve of sealing a new national minimum wage?

    But maybe the spine of organized Labour deserves the often distracted Joe Ajaero?  His often comical resort to unworkable strikes ought to have sparked instant rank-and-file rebuke, if not outright mutiny.

    But lo!  The Labour “mass” seems to suffer, rather gladly, Ajaero’s costly distractions. Their cross!  No else would carry it but themselves.

    Still, this smouldering LP/NLC tiff oozed out with both sides posturing on high value, no matter how pretentious.

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    The NLC Political Commission lobbed the first bomb — Julius Abure was running a one-man show: a one-man show birthing needless crises in LP; the holy LP, which cadres and members must be beyond reproach, as the proverbial Caesar’s wife!

    The NLC bombed Abure, decrying the LP national chair’s inability to “showcase the leadership qualities epitomized in the founding ideology of the Labour Party”.  That, it claims, makes him unfit for the position, yet he clings to it, thus triggering crises all round.

    Is Abure fairly docked for alleged sit-tight syndrome?  Only LP insiders can tell.  But pray, what’s LP’s “founding ideology”, as the NLC Political Commission claims?

    From Ondo’s Olusegun Mimiko, that first gifted LP its first high political office in the Ondo governorship (2009-2017), to Peter Obi, candidate for the clannish and faith-zealot tendencies of Nigerian politics, and unfazed shaman for the starry-eyed youth, LP’s practical “ideology” has been partisan whoredom.

    In-between elections, LP ghosts into a sepulchral quiet — only to burst into life during election seasons, cat-walking for hire, to the highest bidder!  It’s a growth area LP’s smart Alec leaders have milked all their hustling and whoring years.

    It was same under Dan Iwuanyanwu, LP pioneer national chair (2004-2014). 

    It has been the same under Julius Abure, the “comrade” that has hugged the capitalist Peter Obi with such beatitude, as if his chairmanship life depends on it.  It probably does!

    It probably would be the same in the post-Abure years, when Peter Obi would have moved on — he did from APGA and PDP, didn’t he: despite his “oath” to the late Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu that he’d never leave APGA? — and LP, true to its “founding philosophy”, goes after the next partisan punters, to stay politically relevant.

    The NLC can huff and puff as it likes.  But LP isn’t about changing!

    For LP allegedly scorning its over-bearing control, the NLC sapped Abure with a sole administrator complex: “The sole administrator mentality of Mr. Abure,” the NLC roared, “has stood in the way of efforts by the NLC Political Commission to intervene and resolve the leadership crises in the Labour Party.”

    Again, only insiders could confirm or reject this charge. But might it be a case of madmen and specialists, to pun the title of one of Prof. Wole Soyinka’s popular plays?

    But Obiorah Ifor, LP’s national spokesperson since the ouster of Abayomi Arabambi — he of the Lamidi Apapa faction, bitterly feuding for the party’s soul — quickly dismissed any notion LP would be a sitting duck for NLC’s savage bazookas.

    Obiorah Ifor!  Since he took charge as LP national publicity secretary, he has always blazed away from the hips.  You don’t know what drives him, though: a clannish fealty to Peter Obi?  Or a rabid ideologue of LP’s rank opportunism during election seasons?

    Whatever drives him, the fiery Ifor hasn’t disappointed, with his staccato of return fire, since NLC opened the first front in the Labour war.

    He reminded the uppity NLC, should anyone suffer culpable amnesia:  “Labour Party has a life of its own, different from that of the Nigeria Labour Congress.” 

    Is that so, though?  Can the child, LP, be totally detached from his parent, NLC?

    He further dismissed NLC as a bundle of contradictions.  He opened a virtual can of worms in NLC-LP antipathy and alleged blackmail, reportedly dating back to 2014, giving Ajaero a free tutorial on drinking from the wise pool of the likes of Ayuba Waba (Ajaero’s predecessor) and Olaleye Quadri (former Trade Union Congress president),  on polite collaboration, as against Ajaero’s alleged crude domination.

    Then, the big gun: “This is an NLC which cannot think of calling a protest and sustaining it, in order to get the attention of the government for the interest of the workers.” 

    Ouch! — that hurts — for it underscores Ajaero’s strike-first-think-later habit — which he has deployed in four not-so-glorious strikes between 29 May 2023 and now. 

    Coming from inside Labour, that’s a sucker punch! Though it’s no secret that Ajaero’s rashness, coupled with his hare-brained politicking, may have hurt workers’ interest much more than it helped, such censure coming from inside Labour, is all the more nettling.

    But even more nettling, the Ifor rhetorical question: “Can the NLC of today in any way be compared to NLC of the then Hassan Sunmonu [the first NLC president, 1978- 1984], Adams Oshiomhole — charismatic and cerebral, though as physique-challenged as Ajaero — and a few others in the past?”

    Sour grapes?  Or searing fact?

    The NLC-LP rumble is yet another manifestation of the systemic void in the Nigerian political party system, which LP epitomizes, perhaps more than any other.

    But the double tragedy here is the tale of rampaging elephants.  When that happens, the grass underneath suffers. 

    Workers deserve far better than capitalist shamans spurring LP, at a gallop, for opportunistic power; or a wolf in sheep’s skin using NLC for personal power and glory.

    But then again, it’s the workers’ cross to lug — no one else’s.

  • Like cement, like rice?

    Like cement, like rice?

    Trust Peter Obi — perhaps Nigeria’s foremost political chichidodo — to mock, with relish, the Ukraine grains (yes: “war-torn” Ukraine) to North East Nigeria. 

    That was a World Food Programme (WFP) though, under the aegis of the United Nations. Boko Haram may have been degraded.  But  its war pestilence endures: hence the WFP donation to that war-weary, war-crippled, vast corridor.

    Still, such stunning reach for base emotions suits Holy Gregrory just fine, as it riles up his unthinking mob, ever hooked on empty but heady sensations.

    Like that Ghana bird that loathes human wastes but is hooked on maggots,  public rot — real, imagined or outright contrived — feeds Obi’s immaculate political papacy. 

    That’s why he would whip up the Ukraine grain to trumpet “hunger in the land”; and sneer at the tragedy of the Customs rice stampede in Lagos, to home in on the grand paradox of “war-torn” Ukraine “feeding” peacetime Nigeria!

    Sacred Peter is wired that way — the chichidodo that hates faeces but craves maggots!

    Yet, Nigeria suffers no food scarcity, though it also hugs the harsh paradox of ultra-high food prices.  The question is why?

    Indeed, despite the security challenges that threaten the food security gains of the Muhammadu Buhari years — even before that government exited — there is no famine. 

    Today, Nigeria is Africa’s No. 1 producer of rice: which explains the post-2015 spur of rice mills nationwide — no less than 199 mills, as at January 2024.

    By 2020, Nigeria produced eight million metric tonnes (MT) of paddy rice (up from three million MT)  — more than half of Africa’s average of 14.6 million tonnes. 

    In five short years (2015-2020), Nigeria overtook Egypt, hitherto Africa’s No. 1, according to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) statistics.

    With 59 million MT, Nigeria is also the world’s No. 1 producer of cassava: 20 per cent, which means one of every five tubers globally, according to FAO statistics in 2021.

    Rice and cassava are only poster-boy symbols for other grains and tubers, areas in which Nigeria made great strides during the Buhari years — feats the Tinubu order is anxious to consolidate and surpass, especially in agricultural processing to birth jobs.

    But it’s no uhuru yet on food security. 

    Even as Africa’s rice No. 1, and the world’s No. 13, Nigeria was still Africa’s top rice importer, though imports progressively plummeted, from 2015: 2014 (1.24 million MT); 2015 (244, 131 MT); 2016 (58, 260 MT) — just as China: No. 1 rice producer globally but also No. 1 global importer of the grain.

    There are even newer worries on new food challenges, via a report widely reported in the media on March 8.

    A caution from Cadre Harmonise, a global food security monitoring ally of FAO, has warned that no less than 31 million Nigerians could face some food crises between June and August; aside from 24.7 million others, already in it, from this current March stretching to May.

    Though the projection talks of 26 states, the epicentres are clear: Adamawa (1.1 million), Borno (2.1 million), Yobe (1.5 million) — all near-prostrate after the Boko Haram plague.

    Also Sokoto and Zamfara states in the North West — vortex of banditry and kidnapping — would be heavily impacted.

    So, the worst impacted areas lug heavy insecurity burdens: the large swaths of the North East (remnants of Boko Haram), and the banditry-prone North West.

    That gives a clear direction to the Tinubu government on where to train its big guns to wipe out these violent felons.  It also validates the WFP wisdom of gifting the North East timely Ukraine grains.

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    Still, imagine if all of these had happened pre-2015, with Nigeria growing just over three million MT of paddy rice! 

    Imagine if Russia had invaded Ukraine in 2015, not 2022: starting a war that imperilled Ukraine, with its global grain basket!

    Nigeria, it must be stated, dodged that grain bullet, thanks to the Buhari-era agricultural activism, with its whoop of “grow what you eat and eat what you grow!” 

    What earns credit for that push was the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Anchor Borrowers Scheme (ABS).  Now, from everyone is the maniacal condemnation of  the “corruption” that allegedly rocked that scheme — no crime. 

    But blowing your top over sharp practices — by all means! — but turning coy over clear triumphs, from that same process, is grand metaphor for the grand corruption of fairness.  That’s the mother of all corruption — of values! 

    Unfortunately, that’s typically Nigerian: embellish failures; tamp down triumphs, and cry in fashionable distress like lost hyenas!

    But if you don’t track success as robustly as you track failure, how do you accurately gauge your progress and build on them? 

    That’s the prime challenge before the Tinubu order, with many of its prime ministers developing a blame-game complex that could surely derail their focus on consolidating the good of the PMB era, while correcting the bad.

    Still, the crux of the message here is neither flaying this new order jeremiad, nor rallying for the ancien regime.

    It is rather to warn against the emergent Nigerian local rice industry going the way of cement: a few Oligarchs entrenching selves and fixing prices so ridiculous local rice may well be costlier than imported brands — pretty much the cement story!

    The time to crush such a tendency is now, before the folks involved get too comfy. Besides, while both rice (food) and cement (shelter) are basic human needs, one is more basic than the other — and rice anchors the food demand of the common folks.

    Indeed, the evolution of the cement market, with its perpetual high ex-factory prices, is intriguing.

    It dawned with the halcyon days of imported cement powder to be locally bagged.  Then, the roar for local production, since limestone — cement’s main raw material — nestles in huge quantities in Nigeria’s bowels: North, West or East.  Later, the admirable move to localize the industry. 

    But lo!  Cement was a buyer bargain when most of it was imported, with few local makers; but a clear buyer nightmare, as an entrenched local industry, with even many of the big boys branching out to establish plants in other African countries!

    Howzat? — to borrow that popular phrase of the game of cricket!

    While not acting as disincentive to new investments, the Tinubu government should move fast to sanitize the rice market, while building on the agricultural strides of the Buhari years, before rice acquires the notoriety of irrational cement prices.

    By the way, that should also be the mindset to approach the fuel market, now that Nigeria stands on the cusp of local refining of petroleum products. 

    Cement is such a prime bad example for local capacity.  No other emergent market should follow that self-destruct path.

  • Rail, o compatriots

    Rail, o compatriots

    For President Bola Tinubu, the inauguration of the Lagos Red Rail, on February 29, was a tri-triumph: an iron will that won’t be bent, a clear vision that won’t be smashed, a soaring dream that won’t be downed — no matter how hard others tried.

    “I am pleased to declare to you that the momentum of greatness we kick-started a quarter of a century ago has become an unstoppable reality,” he gushed.  “It’s not a crime to dream big.  Just stay focused and stay on course …”

    The PDP Abuja powers actually thought it was a crime — to be crushed with vicious federal might.  President Olusegun Obasanjo, flexing, bristling, rippling and preening, would share his rail right-of-way glory with nobody!  Lagos had better forget that rail pipe dream, or else …

    That was the titanic struggle for Lagos urban rail — the audacity of a federalist governor that dared to dream; dreams that must die as long as the overlords lived!

    Yet, that dream has lived, even if those powers have lived to see its bloom, in contrast to the inevitable wilt of own threats and muscle-flexing! 

    Tinubu, the underdog of Lagos in 2003, just returned in triumph to actualize his Lagos rail dream as president in 2024 — and in tough times too, that proclaim rail as central to any economic revamp.

    Call it the triumph of brain over brawn.  It’s the supreme spice of history! 

    Still, Obasanjo wasn’t the only federal czar against rail liberalization, even if he would blow an opportunity for redemption, though his government cobbled together a comprehensive national rail development road map, late in his second term: 2006.

    President Muhammadu Buhari, who like Obasanjo was military Head of State before serving two terms as elected president (2015-2023), grabbed that redemptive chance.

    Major Gen. Buhari got fairly docked for junking the Lagos Metroline rail project — the vision of Alhaji Lateef Jakande, the 2nd Republic iconic Lagos governor.

    But it was President Buhari, with Rotimi Amaechi, his rail czar, that gave rail its stunning rebirth.  Buhari went after rail — and Amaechi sure was walking the talk! — with such a harried hurry that branded fleeting time enemy No. 1: which indeed it was. 

    Ironically, Buhari latched onto Obasanjo’s national rail master plan for own rail redemption, though he traded his old military command mindset with a liberal rail temper, that hugged federal-states rail corridor-sharing.

    That suited Lagos just fine.  But for former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode that somewhat froze the Mile 2-Orile-Lagos Marina Blue Line corridor for four years, the Blue Rail could perhaps have come on stream during his tenure (2015-2019).

    With Amaechi bursting to and fro to secure the Lagos end of the Lagos-Ibadan standard-gauge rail, to get the Lagos-Ibadan section of the Lagos-Kano rail ready before the 2019 elections, it was rail business unusual! 

    Ambode’s successor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, somewhat cottoned onto Amaechi’s zeal — and born, in record time, was the 37-km Agbado-Oyingbo Red Rail corridor, co-sharing tracks with the Lagos-Ibadan rail, now set to tame the soaring cost of doing business along that long corridor — much the same as the Blue Line has been doing, at its own much shorter Lagos Marina-Mile 2 end.

    Imagine what routinized urban rail would have meant to petrol subsidy removal: neutering cost-push inflation from soaring transportation costs, smothering today’s soar-away inflation on food, arresting the mass hunger in the land?

    Imagine the smooth take-off of Lagos rail in, say, 2007, without having the federal arid bedlam of clinging to the rail right of way — a ferocious dog in a manger that can’t dream but won’t allow sub-nationals who can?

    Imagine other states following the Lagos example?  Imagine what difference penetrating rail would have done today to Nigeria’s struggling real sector?

    If only blind central powers of Abuja had allowed right things done at right times!

    Which brings the matter to the sweet myth that Buhari handed over an economy that was a “dead horse standing” — the hysteria now echoed by some Tinubu administration prime voices, to fend off momentary pressure from taunting opposition.

    A “dead horse standing” was original to Anambra Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), under Presidents Obasanjo and Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (God bless his sweet soul!).

    In a Channels TV video clip that went viral, Soludo, renowned professor of Economics, cooed and crowed, regaling how his five-year stint at CBN brought forth hitherto unknown monetary policy glories — with foreign reserves thundering, the dollar parity to the Naira crashing and sundry glad tidings, from the government’s banker.

    He now juxtaposed the activist tenure of the well-lampooned Godwin Emefiele, knocking it for contesting the fiscal space with the Federal Government, granting reckless ways-and-means facilities and dubbing that era a “failure” — which could well have been.  That has prompted the mass singsong: Buhari was a total failure.

    Still, the monetarist purity of the Soludo years: how many additional kilometres of highways nationwide did it avail the fiscal authorities?  How many extra kilometres of rail?  How did it revamp agriculture and boost food security?  How many old refineries did it fix; and new ones, built?

    Yet, the “failed” Buhari years accounted for the 2nd Niger Bridge, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Loko-Oweto Bridge, the Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge rail, the Dangote Refinery, which offered the Tinubu government the swagger to remove fuel subsidy, the raft of roads and bridges in marshy land, which, when completed, will link oil-rich Bonny to the Rivers mainland for the first time; and of course, rare agricultural strides that thrust Nigeria from “nowhere” to be Africa’s No. 1 rice cultivator, overtaking Egypt in five short years!

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    Now, if infrastructure is the spur of the economy, how can a Buhari government that doubled infrastructure to GDP ratio (according to the government’s exit stats) from 1:5 to 2:5, in ultra-lean times, be a total economic “failure”; but one that flaunted brilliant books, with hardly a dent on infrastructure, in times of robust earnings, a rousing economic success?

    Is that claim itself not a severe contradiction in terms?  Or the economists are just having fun, beatified in their “leisure of the theory class” — as Palladium, The Nation on Sunday back-page columnist, dismissed the Soludo Strategic Agenda for the Naira of 2007?

    The idea here is not to rubbish anyone — that would be rude and uncouth.

    It’s rather to remind the Tinubu administration to re-angle own narratives from 2015.  De-coupling Tinubu from the Buhari government is, at best, short-term cold comfort.  At worst, it’s strategic disaster: for the administration would have failed to show the salvage mission started in 2015, after the umpteenth PDP mess that lasted 16 years.

    That would give the arch-wreckers of yesterday — who now rail and screech more than anyone at the gargoyle their centralist stonewalling created — the delusion that they could be the arch-saviours of tomorrow.

  • What says the Power minister?

    What says the Power minister?

    Whatever pitch Power Minister Adebayo Adelabu is making for the electricity value chain, he should first glimpse own ministerial report card.

    Otherwise, he might just end up as the lousy salesman that crashed the market: no matter his golden pitch.  His sales persona would fire absolutely no confidence!

    No, this is no wholesale ad hominem dismissal of the message because you have a beef with the messenger.  It’s just perception, many times, clearer than reality.

    Now, the electricity chain is a complex continuum — if not outright conundrum: from generation companies (GenCos), to the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), and then the distribution companies (DisCos), which interface with the ever-harried consumer, even if DisCos hardly have any grip on what they hawk.

    As in any relay race, if a leg drops the baton, or strays into another lane, the entire team is cooked!  That’s a fitting metaphor for Nigeria’s ever-shambolic electricity supply system.

    Still, before Minister Adelabu took over, many households — and Ripples’ is a living witness — had at least 16 hours a day; at times, 20 hours, and — old glory! — that rare — very rare — 24 hours power paradise, for the odd day or two!

    Now, this was by no means universal.  Lagos — where  Ripples lives — is the vortex of electricity demand, to which supply must gravitate. 

    It’s also an up-market hub where Ikeja Electric Plc (I.E.) and Eko DisCo (the two that play in that business turf) are likelier to get paid, with relative ease.

    Even then, the Lagos market is segmented — with the wealthier districts that can pay higher tariffs corralling higher daily hours of electricity. 

    That situation lasted till October 2023, became fleeting by November 2023 and well neigh vanished by December!  By January 2024, it had become happy new year, sad, old darkness, with barely any electricity beyond 6 pm in many areas! 

    Worse: there is often no rime or reason to this shambolic supply.

    So, you can imagine customers’ irritation at a Power minister, without any tangible explanations for the dip, coming out to pipe the old tune of “cost-reflective tariffs”!  How insensate!

    To be sure, the push for cost-reflective tariffs is logical.  It’s all about prompt payment for power generated, transmitted, distributed and consumed, at each point on the value chain.  It’s about the only way to keep the market humming and all the traders happy.

    So, certainly the current power glitch is because traders, along the electricity value chain, are not promptly paying for “wares” — or even at all?  If that is so, is it not only a matter of time before the entire chain collapses?

    Still, how did the minister before Adelabu juggle the industry balls, to achieve the relative stability that vanished by November ending 2023? 

    By the way, that stability, against all odds, tried to build the market; and also prep the consumer — moving from utility as social service to utility as core commodity that must be paid for — that cost reflective tariffs are the logical end the power yo-yo. 

    But why did it suddenly collapse — and at the minister’s virtual arrival?

    The optics just rankled: Minister Adelabu haranguing harried consumers to pay more for electricity they were not even convinced was there!

    Yet, these are systemic challenges, which management must tax the ingenuity of any Power minister, if the government must crack the Power conundrum.

    For starters, the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) is a long chain, over which sits the Federal Ministry of Power. 

    The others in the chain are: Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), the industry regulators; GenCos, TCN, DisCos, Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET: call it the wholesale dealer, if you will); Gas Aggregator Company of Nigeria — the gas link is critical, since most of the GenCo plants are fired by gas) — and the Nigerian Electricity Management Service Agency (NEMSA).

    Now, without conflating personal daring with deep-seated systemic challenges, how has the minister somewhat integrated these outfits into his own policy vision, knowing that without efficient and effective power, President Bola Tinubu’s ambitious re-industrialization policy — an integral part of which is agricultural processing — is as good as belching gas?

    Besides, shouldn’t all the  Adelabu public talk about the Federal Government either pronto paying the subsidy on electricity, or allowing cost-reflective tariffs, be inside stuff for inter-ministry/agency memos, in files which “keep our secrets, secret”?

    If that had been so, the minister wouldn’t have handed the foes of the government he serves the added propaganda oomph of alleged “wickedness” to remove electricity subsidy, just as it did on petrol, to further inflict pains on the people — empty, hare-brained hysteria to be sure!

    That was dissonance that grated — and grated badly.

    Aside, what efforts has the minister made to ensure NERC pressures DisCos to clean up their questionable accounting systems? 

    The other day, the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) claimed Aso Rock Villa owed it N923. 9 million. But after “reconciliation”, the debt plummeted to N342 million — almost a third of the original claim. 

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    Now, if AEDC could slap such a flabby bill on the nation’s number 1 “household”, what other voodoo bills do other DisCos, as routine, slap on millions of other nameless Nigerian households?

    Besides, what inter-ministry/agency lobbies has the Power ministry done to rally other government outfits, including military facilities, to settle own jumbo debts to DisCos, even if you’d always put a question mark on the fidelity of DisCo billings?

    If most of these bills are defrayed, wouldn’t the DisCos have enough cash to promptly pay NBET, which can settle others in the value chain so that GenCos, for instance, can pay for gas, the prime driver of their turbines?

    The other day, “Hardball”, The Nation’s back-page column (see “I.E.: authority stealing?: February 5), reported how, citing prepaid meter No. 45702775466, I.E. “allocated” 0.9 kW — almost zero — for a N20, 000 top-up token that should have fetched no less than 371.8 kW back then?

    What has the NERC done to banish — and punish — such sharp practices, beyond spasmodic slaps on the wrist that the thieving DisCos often brush off en route to their next big steal? 

    And if NERC can’t adequately sanction sharp practices, how do you grow the market on false accounting and flabby billing, to attain that cherished threshold of cost-reflective tariffs?

    Let the Power minister do these basic industry homework before pushing for cost-reflective tariffs.  If he fails to do so, he’d only hit a brick wall. 

    Besides, in this high season of high-octane blame games, his ministerial report card would continue to seem as one of the weakest links in the Tinubu presidential chain.  That’s a nest of thorns no minister can enjoy — or even endure.

  • Gani talks the talk

    Gani talks the talk

    First, Gani Adams’ so-called letter to South West governors, for a mandate to “flush out” Fulani kidnappers in the region, was met with a yawn it eminently deserved. 

    Atavistic fears — or resent — hardly harbour the rigour to crack a contemporary problem, not the least a hardy security one.

    Then, the new presidential concession on state police.  That has got to be the most nimble thinking, since the military invaded the political space in January 1966. 

    Formalizing state police is the Nigerian state’s clinical riposte to the opportunistic din by non-state hustlers, craving relevance. Ignore too, the clatter of naysayers: mainly ex-police(wo)men, hung up on the old security regime, with its central near-paralysis.

    Such play up past and present fears.  In truth, such fears should be noted; and poured into the crucible of air-tight legislations that will re-federalize the Police system; but ensure state police doesn’t end up the wayward rod of cynical governors. 

    But back to Adams and co.  If your thinking flares and freezes with cross-ethnic wars, how can you be part of a security thinking for a modern, multi-ethnic, multi-faith state?

    Still, you’d be amazed at Adams’ penchant for the over-reach: the hubris that sank many Aare Ona Kakanfo — an irony totally lost on the Kakanfo latest modern mascot.

    By the way — as Ripples earlier pointed out — there’s hardly anything as Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland.  It was originally an Oyo title, imposed on Oyo’s vassal and tributary kingdoms in the Yoruba country, under the Oyo Empire.

    The Ijebu, for instance, never came under the Oyo imperial yoke.  Yet, they are no less Yoruba.  So, isn’t an “Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland” —  a Yorubaland that includes the Ijebu country — a laughable historical fallacy?

    Yet, from this presumption issued Adams’ letter seeking governors’ fiat to pacify the South West of Fulani felons.  But why would any right-thinking governor, worth his mandate, surrender his security authority to some non-state cells?

    Again, it’s an overreach, which bizarre irony again seems to escape Adams.  Yet, tragic overreaches, bordering on reckless hubris, plagued the paths, and triggered the tragic ends, of many previous Kakanfo — hence the title’s poisoned chalice.

    By the way, Adams would appear yoked in the lower rung of a neo-atavistic chain: nay-sayers thundering from newspaper columns; as TV anchors and as radio presenters, milking present angsts to proclaim past whims, as sure future catastrophes!

    That, to be sure, is not alien to a democracy, with a flower of contesting ideas. 

    Yet, emotively gloating over current challenges and pushing preferred Armageddon hardly equates thinking through policy options and proffering rigorous alternatives.  That’s what the media should do.  Unfortunately, the reverse is the case, in many cases.  The people — that crave guidance in troubled times — are the worse for it.

    That’s why a Gani Adams would proffer antediluvian solutions to a modern problem and hope to get traction.  But again, it’s voyage to nowhere.

    Back to previous Kakanfo and tragic overreaches, however.

    Ilorin’s Afonja leveraged his life-long beef with Alaafin Aole Arogangan to supplant his Oyo imperial state.  Afonja, as Kakanfo, was Oyo’s military guard(ian)-in-chief.  But for his treachery, he enlisted Alimi, his Fulani friend and his corps of quoranic teachers-cum-warriors.

    They supplanted Oyo all right but Afonja’s hitherto proud Yoruba town, founded by his great grandfather, Laderin, fell under Fulani liege.  He not only died tragically betrayed, he become a historic study in self-destruct perfidy. 

    Afonja was only the fourth Ilorin Yoruba ruler, after Laderin, Pasin and Alagbin, Afonja’s father, in that order.  After him, the Fulani, though of a mixed Yoruba-Fulani breed, took over.

    Ijaye’s Kurunmi perhaps had legitimate grouses against Alaafin Adelu.  But he too overreached himself by undermining Adelu’s authority, though Adelu’s father, Abiodun, made Kurunmi his Kakanfo.

    So, when the Ibadan army, under the Alaafin’s diktat, stormed his Ijaye redoubt, and Kurunmi’s five sons died in battle on the same day, the evocative tragedy of Kurunmi was wrought in sickening colour!

    Ibadan’s own Latoosa had decisioned Efunsetan Aniwura, the Iyalode and Ibadan native society’s opposer-in-chief to Latoosa’s not-so-hidden power grab schemes.  To him, the Olubadan, was a “woman” because the Ibadan constitution forbade the Baale from going to war.

    Yes, Efunsetan was down but the Ibadan constitution held.  So, off went Latoosa to “end all wars in the Yoruba country” simply because the intrepid Fabunmi, of Okemesi, had the temerity to behead an Ibadan viceroy, Oyepetun, for defiling Fabunmi’s wife. 

    That was September 1877.  But by 1893 when the smoke of Kiriji, the Yoruba Civil War, had cleared, the Oyo Empire, which the Ibadan opportunistic army of war spoils claimed to defend, had itself fallen — to a more ruthless British colonial army.

    Latoosa himself never died in battle.  But he fell ill and died at the tail end of the dire 16-year stalemate — a stalemate that tasted as defeat to the Ibadan army, but victory to the Ekiti Parapo battle-hardened troops; that called the bluff of the Ibadan bullies.

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    Again, the Kakanfo and their tragic overreaches of missions impossible!

    Gani Adams appears not so different.  In his letter, he boasted of having “troops and logistics to flush out undesirable elements” — great!  But troops and logistics!  What law gives a non-state player the fiat to harbour “troops and logistics”? 

    Even assuming without conceding — as the lawyers would say — that Gani’s ancestral “army” worked this magical wonder, how sustainable will it be, if the situation remains unchanged Nigeria-wide? 

    So long for quaint and romantic solutions to all-too-real problems!  Still, you can’t blame Adams for his passion and love for his native Yorubaland. In doing that however, he should be wary of talking himself into needless trouble.

    The truth is Nigeria’s security challenge isn’t a Fulani versus Yoruba ancestral feud; or the Junkun versus the Idoma, in Ajoche: that excellent epic serial beamed on DSTV; or even Fulani versus Hausa, which a research finding has fingered as the genesis  of banditry and sundry violence in the North West.

    Fulani herders accused some Hausa criminals of cattle rustling.  Hausa farmers countered with Fulani herders wilfully destroying their crops.  Both resorted to fearsome arms to settle scores.  Enter, the current security meltdown!

    So, Nigeria’s insecurity nightmare is the criminal, of whichever ethnic hue, versus the rest of us —  not some mascots settling ancient scores, real or imagined.

    The logical answer, after a rigorous diagnosis, is re-federalizing the police for more trained numbers and spread in police cadres.  State police is it.