The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • A nation of hubs

    Hardly a day passes in Nigeria without one structure or facility being advertised as a hub for one activity  or another.  If the structure is not already existing and thriving, it is going to come on stream and be designated a hub by the time you finish reading this article.

    That, at any rate, is the impression created by the news outlets, and such is the national fascination with hubs. Going by the frequency with which all kinds of hubs bob up in the media, a visitor to these parts writing an Instagram or tweeting for the benefit of friends back home might be led to describe Nigeria as  a nation of hubs.

    That would be no great exaggeration.

    In some important ways, Nigeria itself is already a hub.  It is the hub of international trade and commerce, though only a small portion of that is captured in the official charts.  Think of the thousands – nay, the tens of thousands – who stream into Nigeria on a given day from the West Africa region, through official entry points and a frontier that is as porous as a sieve, with many of the settlements dotted along it qualifying as authentic smuggling hubs in their own right.

    Lagos is of course Nigeria’s ultimate hub.  It is the point of convergence for people pouring in from the vast Nigerian countryside and from the ECOWAS region, the nation’s commercial capital, a pace setter in many ways, where with a little imagination and a great deal of hustling, you can get by.

    Abuja, where virtually everything runs a close second to Lagos as a hub – the hub of government.  It is the seat of the Presidency and a sprawling federal bureaucracy, the federal legislature, and the judiciary, the foreign missions.  Government in all its many guises and disguises is the business of Abuja.

    Back in 1990, South Africa’s hugely theatrical foreign minister, Frederik “Pik” Botha, proposed to the visiting General Olusegun Obasanjo, statesman-at-large and a key member of the Eminent Persons Group which helped pave the way for the dismantling of apartheid, the concept of a Pretoria-Abuja axis as a mechanism for advancing and consolidating the fortunes of the continent in the post –apartheid era.

    To that proposal, Obasanjo added a third component: Cairo.   (Full disclosure:  I was travelling with Obasanjo).

    The overarching idea was that South Africa, being the most developed country in Africa, and Nigeria being the largest and most influential Black nation, would together with Egypt, the preeminent Arab nation and gateway to the Arab world, work closely to shape policy for the Organization of African Unity, now the African Union, and the future of the continent.

    As far as I know, the proposal was never explored.  In light of recent developments, this is regrettable.  Instead of pursuing with Nigeria and Egypt the cause envisaged by the concept of a Pretoria-Abuja-Axis, South Africa has descended into xenophobia, looking the other way as its nationals terrorize and murder African immigrants in their midst and loot their property.

    This may well be the best time to revive the concept.  Africa’s best-known elder statesman Obasanjo, is best qualified to lead the effort, working behind the scenes and deploying his personal rapport with the leading statesmen and public figures across the continent.

    “Axis” carries an unsavoury connotation from the World War 1 alliance of Germany, Italy, and Japan rooted in fascism.  If Botha-Obasanjo’s proposal is to be taken up now, the arrangement will have to be called by any other name but an axis. The Lagos-Abuja-Cairo Hub, perhaps?

    As I was saying, if our policy makers had their way, virtually every facility or structure, actual or merely contemplated would be a hub or on the way to being transformed into one.

    On account of being an early adopter of the internet and other information technologies, more on account of their limited availability than his savvy in such matters, one peripatetic governor was lionized endlessly for having transformed his fly-over Sahel state into an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) hub, and for instituting “electronic governance.”

    He was at home everywhere except in his domain.  He travelled the world in search of the most vaunted  of economic operators – the foreign investor.  He was away for such a long stretch at one time that only the threat of impeachment by a state assembly that had grown weary of its own of docility brought him back.  Even so, he soon took off again, in search of foreign investors.

    It was a futile quest, as his successor would discover. There was nothing “on ground” to show for all that peregrination.  The ICT hub was nothing more elaborate than an assemblage of a server and ancillary devices in one room.  School children sat on dusty floors to take their lessons under the shade of trees, not in the smart classrooms he expected to find.

    The man who wrought those wonders lived for a while thereafter as a registered member of the Senate of the Federal Republic, with all the obscene privileges but only a few of the duties appertaining thereunto.

    Elsewhere, they build an airport of sorts in the middle of nowhere, literally, and call it a hub for cargo transportation in Nigeria and West Africa.  They build a three-star hotel that will probably go to seed after a year or two, and call it a hospitality hub.   They lay the foundation for a hospital and proclaim it a healthcare delivery hub, guaranteed not only to curb the medical tourism that accounts for huge financial outflows every year but actually reverse it.

    A private firm is building a huge oil refinery that will serve as the hub of oil processing in Nigeria and West Africa for export, with a capacity matching or exceeding that of the four government-owned refineries that have been on life support for several decades.  Yet they are going to expend billions of dollars refurbishing those plants again, over and above the zillions already spent refurbishing them.

    The goal must be that, by the time the refurbishing is complete, each of the refineries will function as an independent hub, to complement the one under construction.  Why settle for one hub when you can have    five hubs.

    In retrospect I am surprised that we still refer to some areas as Nigeria’s food basket. The basket is in reality a hub.  Thus we should be talking of Benue as Nigeria’s yam hub, Kebbi as the nation’s rice hub (no disrespect to Ebonyi and Abeokuta and other claimants) Ondo as the cocoa hub, those marauding cattle  herders permitting, Kano as the wheat and groundnut hub, Zamfara as the cotton hub, and so on and so forth.

    Former Agriculture Minister Akinwumi Adesina left some work undone in this regard.

    Our Pentecostal churches are now miracle hubs, with the biggest miracle hub of all situated appropriately along the busiest highway in Africa, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, where miracles are required all the time to avert looming disaster.

    Long live our hubs.

  • Much ado about new economic team

    Between lawyers and economists, there is a certain swagger.

    The lawyer quips, not unlike the tortoise in the Yoruba folktale, he had stuffed all learnedness inside a gourd, leaving only himself “learned”; and others merely “educated” — sweet delusion, to be sure.

    The public economist is well-nigh the unquestionable policy czar; because he bristles with arcane theories.  Still the economy is trite: when two or three are gathered, an economy dawns.  To survive, one needs the services of the other.

    Nevertheless, this economic oracle’s word must be law.  At the mention of his name, all plebs must kneel and bow!

    The New Testament may claim the ripping of the tabernacle’s holy-of-holies; and the gospel exposed to all, since Christ had paid the price.

    Not here!  The severe temple stands; its holy-of-holies holds, its immaculate creed, which only the sacred economic theory-priests understand, reigns!

    So, if not a few swoon and bow, at the advent of a new Buhari Economic Advisory Council (EAC), to replace the administration’s Economic Management Team (EMT) that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo chairs, you should know where the votaries are coming from.

    For one, the EAC is not so-called.  It boasts, in its ranks, among the most alluring minds in the land: Chair, Prof. Doyin Salami, of the Lagos Business School (LBS); Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, Obasanjo’s national economic adviser and Yar’Adua/Jonathan era Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor; and Bismarck Rewane, boss at Financial Derivatives Company Ltd, a Lagos-based financial consultancy firm.

    The others in the team: Dr. Mohammed Sagagi (vice chairman), Prof. Ode Ojowu, Dr. Shehu Yahaya, Dr. Iyabo Masha and Dr. Mohammed Adaya Salisu, the senior special assistant to the president on development policy, who will serve as secretary.

    Unlike the VP-chaired EMT which cuts across disciplines, the EAC is an all-economist redoubt, with members boasting expertise in varied areas in that field.

    Salami, EAC chairman but a member of the old EMT, is clearly the link between the old and the new; and therefore offers some continuity.

    A PhD graduate from Queen Mary College, University of London, his research areas include characteristics of small and medium enterprises, macroeconomic policy and the economic management of business, his forte at LBS.  He has also served as member of the CBN Monetary Policy Committee.

    Rewane struts his stuff at Financial Derivatives, a regnant Lagos financial analysis company, with more than 30 years’ experience as a banker, economist and financial analyst.

    Prof. Ode Ojowu, though little media-driven, is a veteran in the economic advisory corridor.  He was Obasanjo’s chief economic adviser (2004 and 2005), before the Soludo-Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala era, aside from being former boss at the National Planning Commission.

    Read Also: Race for more revenue gathers steam

    Dr. Iyabo Masha, immediate past IMF country representative in Sierra Leone, had a stint in the CBN research department (1998-2003).  From there, she has bloomed as an international economist, with a rich career in central banking, specializing in financial markets, economic management, international lending, finance and development and microeconomic stabilization policy, research and implementation.  She also boasts a strong Breton Woods culture, having worked for both the World Bank and the IMF.

    The triad of Sheu Yahaya, Mohammed Sagagi and Salisu Mohammed, from their CVs, could well be described as still waters running deep — all boasting PhDs; with Sagagi and Mohammed also earning a B.Sc. first class in Economics.

    Yahaya, current chairman of the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) board, was a one- time executive director at the African Development Bank (AfDB).

    Sagagi, aside from his PhD and other rich career strides, holds a certificate on how to make the market work for the poor, from the Springfield Centre, Durham University, UK.

    Mohammed’s thesis, en route to earning a PhD from Lancaster University, UK, was “Oil Exports and the Nigerian Economy: An Econometric Study.”

    Clearly, among the EAC members, Soludo most epitomizes the Obasanjo-era economic thinking (1999 to 2015).  But all that, with its surfeit of theories, crashed with the recession of 2015, prompting the Buhari-era new pitch: grow what you eat and eat what you grow.

    That pitch signalled new activism in agriculture, now resulting in increasing local rice mills, away from the old days of near-wholesale rice imports.  But the new spirit would appear more of praxis than theory.

    Indeed, it was a radical shift, in economic philosophy, from the Okonjo-Iweala ethos of rebasing of numbers, to signify economic growth, to tilling the land and firing the local furnace to enlarge and deepen the Nigerian real sector.

    As Obasanjo’s chief economic adviser, Soludo theorized on NEEDS — the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), with its SEEDS (states) and LEEDS (local governments) coordinates.

    It was a brilliant and comprehensive charter.  But it was shackled by over-centralized, trickle-down thinking; when what Nigeria needs is federalized, bottom-up thinking.

    As Yar’Adua’s CBN governor, Soludo also theorized with what he called the Strategic Agenda for the Naira, a re-decimalization strategy, which he had hoped would make the Naira lean but strong, at least in parity with the American dollar.

    That strategy was ingenious, for by switching decimals — and not strengthening the local real economy — it had hoped to strengthen the flabby Naira against the dollar!

    That created quite a public uproar; and elicited a turf war between the CBN governor (Soludo) and attorney-general and minister of Justice (Michael Kaase Aondoakaa) who belched fire and threatened a legal Armageddon, should Soludo not eat crow and retract his fancy Naira policy.

    That was how the decimalization policy collapsed.

    Earlier, Soludo had implemented a banking recapitalization, if controversial, policy; which ensured banks with poor capital bases merged, to avoid the collapse of the banking system.

    Some hailed it.  Others rammed it.  It did what it had to do. But it didn’t prevent the Sanusi Lamido Sanusi CBN era from bailing out some banks with public money.

    It is unclear how Soludo’s theory activism would fit into the new structure.

    Still, it is good the EAC is a conclave of minds that can grapple with the latest economic theories, and show the way forward for the economy.

    But all that would be naught, if it can’t increase the stock of local rice; birth policies that  ensure the full firing of local factories; without abandoning the key pro-poor programmes of the last four years, viz: the school feeding scheme; and access to cheap credit by the most humble of Nigerian ventures, epitomized by the Tradermoni loans.

    If their efforts bolster these schemes, then the Nigerian economy would have been on the way to genuine deepening, starting with food security; and agro-allied processing to feed local factories and provide jobs.  That would be the making of true legacy.

    But if it alters that course, it would be back to the old days of rich theorizing but arid concrete results.

    Nigeria is not bereft of theories.  What it lacks is the political will to make those theories work for its people.

    Nigeria must build an economy that works for Nigerians; not the structured outpost of some foreign metropole, which must continue to grow, even as Nigeria eternally shrinks.

  • Still on the nation’s hell highway

    The song by the late Robert Nesta Marley Those who feels it knows it would best capture the daily agonies of motorists on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway in the last three weeks. In a country where public health issues count for nothing, guess it’s futile to begin to talk of the metrics of the slow, agonising death daily visited on thousands of motorists all in their bid to move from one point on the segment under construction to another.

    Last Friday was yet another experience like no other. From Arepo, a settlement along the expressway to Matori, Mushin, a distance of 31 kilometres took five whole hours of driving time to cover!  A vehicle laden with Automotive Gas Oil, had, earlier in the day, fallen spilling its contents by Otedola Bridge, near Berger, Lagos. The result: several hours total lockdown of traffic on both sides of the freeway!

    The obviously overwhelmed officials were a sight to behold. In the end, professionalism was not only in short supply, synergy was the last thing anyone thought of hence an accident scene became more like a market scene thus anarchy was allowed to rule!

    Our situation is truly pathetic. We have an army that has a corps of engineers; yet the leadership is yet to fathom ways of bringing their services to bear whenever emergencies pop up. A Federal Road Safety Corps that would rather print plastic cards for motorists yet would remain a non-starter in matters of search and rescue infrastructure.

    We are truly a joke!

  • Further thoughts on border closure

    Until the Sunday Punch report quoting Babatunde Ruwase, the President, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry as saying that the Federal Government’s ‘indefinite’ closure of the country’s borders with its neighbouring African neighbours will ultimately hurt the economy and cross-border economic activities, I could have sworn that the Organised Private Sector (OPS) were on the same page with the Buhari administration on the border closure issue.

    That yours truly thought that much informed the minor piece I did on this page with the sub title Finally, the ECOWAS giant roars published September 3.

    I had written “I do not know if many Nigerians paid much attention to what happened at the Nigerian borders with Benin Republic last week. Without as much as a fanfare of a prior announcement, the Nigerian authorities finally, although temporarily moved to shut our western borders. President Muhammadu Buhari would later clarify that the measure had become necessary owing to the intolerable level of smuggling going on in that axis. Well, the measure is certainly overdue; the problem is that it did not go far enough. Why single out our western neighbour, Benin for a crime that Cameroun, Niger and Chad are guilty although in different degrees?

    Moreover, I understand why the federal government would focus on rice smuggling at this time. That menace is killing local initiatives. However, were Nigerians to be asked to choose between that menace posed by that class of smugglers and those posed by transhumance activities across the borders, I suspect that they would gladly opt for the lesser evil in the age of mindless terror!

    Freewheeling transhumance seems to me one area where urgent and drastic action is also needed”.

    Most certainly, no one expected the horde trading in the nation’s misery – big time smugglers and merchants dealing in illicit trade across the borders – to be happy at a measure specifically designed to put them out of business.  It is however different ball game altogether when a body like Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) that prides itself as think-tank of sorts would, rather than show understanding and hence plead for forbearance by citizens on the measure, actually pretend to be oblivious of the rationale behind the drastic action. To LCCI, the war could as well be won without as much as firing a single shot!  What a delusion!

    Here’s what the body’s president said as reported by Punch: “The closure of the land borders has enormous implications for cross border economic activities around the country.

    “The indications are now that the closure is indefinite.  While we share the concern of government on issues of security and smuggling, we believe that the indefinite closure of land borders is not the solution to the problem.”

    My response. First, that the closure has “enormous implications for cross border economic activities” is not in denial; the issue is whether this could be traded for national security or domestic socio-economic aspirations in the age of terrorism and in the face of continuing de-industrialisation of which the OPS are supposedly its worst victims!

    Second, no one says that the border closure is indefinite. Nigeria’s Comptroller General of Customs, Hameed Ali, was clear on this: the borders would remain shut until neighbours helped Nigeria to curb the widespread problem of smuggling! In other words, the ball is entirely in the courts of recalcitrant neighbours: either to stop availing their territories as transit bases for activities decidedly injurious to our local economy or risk the pain of prolonged closure.

    Third, LCCI claims to “share the concern of government on issues of security and smuggling”. Fine. Nowhere, as far as the statement went, did the body hint at any on-going efforts by the countries concerned to address the issues underlying the closure – issues deemed by the federal government, as constituting existential threats. Need one remind that efforts by successive administrations to control the border trade have either been thwarted by our club of home-grown whiners or the same countries long adept at waving the ECOWAS card!

    Imagine the speaker of the ECOWAS parliament, Moustapha Cisse Lo, saying the closure is “a hindrance to the achievement of the community’s main objective, which is to achieve the creation of a prosperous, borderless West African region where peace and harmony prevail.”  Hopefully, there will be sufficient time for the ECOWAS top brass to educate us on how a country that is perennially the butt of unfriendly acts from wayward neighbours would fit into his dream of “a prosperous, borderless West African region where peace and harmony prevail.”

    We need to be clear about what the issues are. The federal government didn’t close the borders in violation of any protocol; rather she was forced to take the drastic measure to stop its abuse by delinquent players on both sides of its borders. Which protocol are we talking about by the way? The one being daily observed in the breach by countries that would rather treat Nigeria like a beast of burden than a partner in quest of shared prosperity?

    Here is my candid advice: Nigeria should stand firm – ECOWAS or not. Hardly about the African giant throwing its weight around; rather, it is what leadership demands at such a time like this!

  • Banditry pays

    The contradictions in the northern part of the country is escalating. Politically, the north has dominated leadership of the country for better part of Nigeria’s independence, and for some, under President Muhammadu Buhari, that domination is more entrenched. Those who argue as such, point at the political appointments as a confirmation of the agenda to dominate.

    While President Buhari’s minders would use the ministerial list, to contradict this point, it is disheartening that instead of the appointments helping to elevate the north, rather, it is stymied in deeper existential crisis. Unfortunately, the greatest challenge facing the region presently is no longer its political battles with the south, but rather the war amongst its constituent parts.

    The banditry by the so-called cattle rustlers may actually be a war between the indigenous Hausas and the wealthier migratory Fulanis. While it may be preposterous to theorise an organized rise by the indigenous Hausa against their more sophisticated Fulani masters, there is no doubt that the crisis is a manifestation of a deep schisms between the two cultures. Of course, apart from the rise of the more exposed Fulani in the political ladder, the itinerant Fulani is also doing better economically than the sedentary Hausa.

    The Fulani herder is a roving economy, with his control of about 100 to 200 herds. As scruffy as he looks, he is actually a mobile ATM, at least for the armed bandit, who could disposes him, of a few of his cattle. So, the Hausa talakawas who have been politically disposed since the 19th century and whom the modern criminality in post-independence governments have made even poorer, have resorted to a banditry economy of fleecing the Fulani of their cattle by all means possible.

    Last week, Governor Aminu Masari of Kastina State, in an interview with this newspaper put the ranging debacle in clearer perspective. Earlier, he had posed with a bandit wielding an assault raffle, perhaps to show those in the bush that you can keep your gun while negotiating with the state. But more scarily, the governor had said that in some parts of the north-west, there are criminal gangs whose sole agenda is to kill any Fulani in sight.

    In describing the challenge posed by the bandits in neighbouring Zamfara, the governor said: “we have what we call volunteers who are not even vigilantes. These volunteers went about killing any Fulani man, or Fulani woman they saw.” Yet, the apparatchik of state power at the federal and state levels are substantially in the hands of the Fulani elite. Yet again, many in the southern part of Nigeria strongly believe the Fulani have an agenda to overrun the entire country and dominate it.

    Perhaps, even if a few of them nurse such a grandiose ambition, it is reasonable to doubt their ability to actualize it. With their northern redoubt on fire, that may explain the downward movement towards the Niger-Benue trough and its environments. That may also explain the desperation to establish new settlements elsewhere, otherwise known as RUGA settlement. That may further explain the desperate plea by President Buhari to Benue people at the height of their confrontation with the herders that Nigerians should accommodate their neighbours.

    Regardless of one’s emotional disposition to the deep rooted existential crisis facing the country, there is the urgent need for what the inimitable essayist of this newspaper, Snooping Around, usually call elite consensus on minimal templates for governance. If this column has the ears of President Muhammadu Buhari, it is urging him to devote his second tenure to build consensus on national economy and politics. Those so-called kitchen cabinet who have been fingered as more interested in the 2023 succession plan, should look back to history and learn.

    Hopefully, the new Presidential Economic Advisory Council may provide new ideas on how to turn the economy around. Many have argued that the appointees have the pedigree, but it is the president who ultimately determines which way to go. Considering that the president prefers conservative economic policies, some commentators are wondering whether the president would be willing to accept the liberal economic policies that may emanate from the liberal economists that make up the team.

    Perhaps, the president has become a convert to liberal economic policies, seeing that his conservative economic practices have not yielded the expected economic boom. Assuming the new team can make any difference, most of their efforts will come to naught, if the political environment spirals into a tailspin, if the initiative to stoke the political environment succeeds. So, just as he has done in the economic front, the president needs a broad based political committee to proffer solutions to the political crisis confronting the nation.

    Such an approach would serve Nigeria better. As this column has severally argued in the past, those who really love President Buhari must help him to achieve some legacies, before he leaves power. That argument has become even more trenchant now, considering that in few months going forward, President Muhammadu Buhari would become what the Americans refer to as a lame duck president. He must therefore resist the effort of those who want to succeed him in 2023 and are trying to derail his presidency in their blind ambition to consolidate their hold on power.

    A serene political climate will also benefit his ethnic group, which he loves so much. If they have benefited exponentially, because of the special privileges he has as head of state, he should worry about their fate when inevitably he leaves power? So, a more pragmatic approach should be, to be seen to act more fairly in the distribution of political privileges, so that there would no serious backlash when he steps aside.

    More importantly, the approach to the war in the north is not sustainable. The nation does not have the capacity to keep borrowing to sustain an unending debacle. Even when the borrower is desirous to keep borrowing, the lender would at a stage refuse to lend anymore. Clearly, we are approaching that bend, and the earlier the political differences are tampered with to allow for economic revival, the higher the chances of Nigeria surviving the approaching tornado.

    Nigeria therefore needs a better handling of the war in the north-west and north-east. The indecorous rapprochement in the northwest is even more frightening. You cannot first further empower the bandits in the bush by paying ransom to them, and then ask them to disarm later. It is also silly to compare the raison d’etre of the struggle in the Niger Delta with the uprising in the north. Perhaps, it is such failure of strategic thinking that has afflicted the north more any other malaise.

  • Musings on the PEC’s verdict

    MEANING no disrespect to the rank and file of the formation that used to advertise itself as the largest political party in Africa and to its legal team, I was not surprised that the Presidential Election Court dismissed their challenge to President Muhammadu Buhari’s victory in the    March 2019 election for lack of merit, or that all five justices of the court concurred in the ruling.

    I anticipated this outcome not from lack of confidence in the judiciary as a whole or in that branch of the institution, although evidence abounds there of perversity, a not infrequent flight from justice, timidity, and high susceptibility to unwholesome influences.

    Rather, I came to the expectation from the case laid out before the Tribunal by the combined legal team of the PDP’s candidate, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, and the PDP, as reported contemporaneously in various media outlets.  There was a great deal to complain about and even challenge in the election, but the case made by for the petitioners did not rise to proof of the skullduggery alleged in their depositions.

    Here, I must enter several caveats. The Court  is yet to furnish a transcript of the proceedings, against which the accuracy of media reports can be measured.  The reporting, it has to be said, was far from comprehensive and was generally marked by a scatter-shot approach.  However, to the extent that none of the parties nor the Tribunal has questioned its fidelity, the reporting must be judged substantially accurate.

    Atiku’s case rested crucially, first, on the existence of a server controlled by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to which the authentic election returns from the field were posted directly.

    A senior INEC official in one of the states had disclosed this arrangement at a news conference ahead of the election, according to testimony by a witness for Atiku. Any documentation of election returns that differed in any material particular from those retrievable from INEC’s master server must therefore be presumed to be a forgery.

    Now, several such documents had turned up, crediting Atiku with far fewer votes than he had actually scored as entered on INEC’s private server by field operatives.  If INEC had not knowingly collated Atiku’s votes downwards to rob him of his hard-earned victory, it must at the very least have somehow connived in that act.

    INEC rejoined that it hosted no private server.  It produced documentary evidence to the effect that its chair, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, had stated for the record that electronic transmission of election returns was not allowed under the electoral law, and that INEC had hosted no server for that purpose.

    While the PEC was grappling with claim and counterclaim, Atiku filed a lawsuit at the Supreme Court seeking to compel INEC to produce the alleged server.  The Supreme Court held that the existence or otherwise of the server was a substantive issue before another court, and that asking INEC to produce it would be prejudicial to the outcome of that other case.

    Nothing daunted, Atiku’s claim produced a field worker for INEC who said he had, as instructed, personally used some device furnished by INEC to transmit election returns to INEC’s server.  His testimony did not hold up during cross-examination.  More dramatic was the testimony of a computer specialist from Kenya, who said that certain characteristics of a document under review showed that the document could only have come from a server hosted by INEC. His testimony  shed no light on the controversy.

    The controversial server will go down as the dodgiest piece of electronic hardware in the annals of polling.  If it actually existed, was it kept in proper custody?  Was INEC the only entity that had access to it? If not, who else?  Is it inconceivable that another party, a rogue element, could have posted on it material that did not originate from INEC, or corrupted material obtained from it?

    In whatever case, its existence was not proven.

    The server certainly was not the trump card, the “Joker” (shades of Richard Akinjide and the 1979 presidential election) that was supposed to be the clincher. But the very prospect of bringing the existence of the dodgy server to light was enough to send PDP functionaries rhapsodizing about the certainty of the election being voided, and of the party’s imminent return to power and the good old days.

    By the way, where is Akinjide today, in these contentious times, when his hugely inventive forensic skills would have helped clarify and resolve many a mystery?   But I digress.

    Atiku’s case also rested, secondly, on proving that Muhammadu Buhari did not possess the minimum educational qualification for the office of president.  He should not have been allowed to run as a candidate in the first place.  Too bad he was allowed to run, but the lapse could be remedied by disqualifying Buhari after the fact, Atiku’s team contended.

    If INEC’s server was dodgy, Buhari’s West African School Certificate has been dodgier.  At one time, it was said to be in the custody of the military authorities.  Not so, the military authorities replied severely.  Perhaps the certificate did not exist, in which case Buhari must have been smuggled into the Nigeria Defence Academy, his determined adversaries said.

    Then the certificate was reported missing, not lost irretrievably.  Thereafter, it was said to have been replaced with a copy authenticated by the West African Examinations Council, and presented to Buhari by WAEC Registrar Dr Uyi Uwadiae, at a well-publicized ceremony, the issuance of an original back in 1961 having been ascertained.

    Still the controversy deepened.

    They challenged the name on the certificate.  They disputed the subjects Buhari offered and passed at the examination.  They said the school through which Buhari earned the certificate did not exist at the time he took the examination. They said anyone seeking evidence that the document was a forgery need not look beyond its shape and design.

    In vain was it pointed out that WAEC is an examining body comprising five member-nations, all of whom would have had to conspire to manufacture and award a certificate that was never earned, even if it was to a presidential candidate in one member-country.  That scenario seemed inconceivable.

    Still, they kept stoking the manufactured controversy.

    “Facts are stubborn things,” a learned man once said.  “They never go away.”

    The truth is that lies are even more stubborn.  They never go away.  They just grow and spread and ramify, as the controversy over Buhari’s School Certificate for his office has shown.  They defy commonsense and the rules of evidence.

    The Presidential Election Court saw through the subterfuge and held that Buhari was in terms of academic achievement, more than qualified to be president of Nigeria.

    Even so, I am not sure that its pronouncement will lay the matter to rest.  I will not be surprised if the matter is raked up before the Supreme Court on appeal, or continues to be litigated in the court of public opinion in the unlikely event that the Supreme Court finds for Buhari.

    Nor, switching gears, will I be surprised, if Buhari’s team continues to press the ludicrous claim that Atiku is a foreigner, to wit a citizen of Cameroun who had in all his adult life falsely paraded himself as a Nigerian citizen, and in the process risen to the second highest office in the land and amassed riches beyond the dreams of the most avaricious, especially since the Presidential Election Court  declined to consider the question.

    The penalty, the more desperate among them might even insist, is to strip him of his wealth and fortune and every distinction Nigeria ever conferred on him, and send him back to Cameroun.

    The silly season never ends here, remember.

     

  • Lagos: 3 governors, 3 destinies?

    Lagos — and it appears a case of three governors, three different destinies.

    Babatunde Raji Fashola charged in and stormed out, turbo-charged.  Jimmy Cliff, the Jamaican reggae great, would have crooned: Gone clear like a rocket!

    Akinwunmi Dapo Ambode ambled in and hobbled out — the gubernatorial equivalent of a vanished comet.

    Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu, is BOS of the new order.  Will he boss ideas and let the team bloom?  Or boss people and let the team wilt?  So far, a quiet, cautious cruise.

    Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the gubernatorial paterfamilias himself?

    That was another era — of David securing the kingdom, against the fierce political Amalekites, Philistines and Amorites, that gave no quarters: the imperial president, roaring from his Abuja liar; his Lagos viceroy-dogs, sniffing cheap partisan blood.

    It was an era of the power jungle, of the most reckless hue.  Yet, a foundation had to be laid.  Yet, the path had to be tracked — a Moses tracking post-Red Sea, to the Promised Land; a David fending off fearsome blitz, from formidable foes.

    Twelve years after Tinubu, it’s not quite the easy peril of Solomon.  But the kingdom would appear strengthened and stable enough to establish a pattern; and track a legacy.

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    Fashola dazzled his electors with low-hanging fruits — the BRT tracks and BRT Red and Blue buses; a restless environment policy that re-greened the Lagos Marina and allied city concrete jungles; cleared Lagos of filth, and rid the city of outlaw traffic, in ways never previously imagined.

    Eight years later, Fashola exited in near-universal cheer — the policy equivalent of Plato’s philosopher-king, though in a democracy that Plato decried!

    Ambode, at dawn, ran into a vicious LASTMA ambush, which hideous traffic gridlock sent fickle folks screaming: bring back our Fash!

    Four short years later, he hobbled out as virtual gubernatorial garbage — no thanks to a refuse reform turned hideous deform.

    In-between, he showed brilliant flashes.  The most spectacular rural-friendly Lagos governor, for one: witness his glittering infrastructure in Epe and rural Alimoso.  Rural Lagos was never so blest!

    At the city hub, a mixed grill: breath of fresh air, cruising on the new Lagos Airport-Oshodi road; unmitigated pestilence on the comatose Iganmu-Orile-Ojo-Badagry road-and-rail; sweet-sour on the Pen Cinema-Agege motor road-Oshodi front — no thanks to too many constructions at the same time.

    Ambode exited power the ultimate political equivalent of the tennis unforced error — the gubernatorial symbol of avoidable self-ruin, from blatant rotten choices.  Yet, he wasn’t the worst governor in town!

    Sanwo-Olu, after 100 days?  Neither the blistering entry-and-exit of Fashola; nor the sweet-sour hobble-and-tumble of Ambode.

    Gboyega Akosile, the BOS chief press secretary (CPS), would probably not echo Segun Ayobolu, Governor Tinubu’s first CPS, that the 100 days were sheer hell for the administration, given the media’s all-too-familiar penchant to just bark and bark, without recourse to context.

    Still, lobbies can legitimately claim BOS’s first 100 days have been comparatively quiet — lacking the blistering glory-to-glory of the Fashola years; or the grass-to-grace-back to grass of the Ambode era.

    Yet, there are serious problems requiring blistering solutions — the Lagos brazen road outlawry, for one.

    With the Lagos State Road Traffic Law 2012, Fashola was already winning the war against Okada road outlawry until “gentleman” Ambode entered and the battle flagged.  Now, though the first thing BOS did was sign an Executive Order to declare a traffic and environment emergency, free-wheeling outlawry still reigns on Lagos roads.

    The governor should walk his talk on this score.  Visit the Mile 2-Oshodi-Oworonshoki expressway (now under reconstruction) and see the menace of Okada, zooming against on-coming traffic, on an express on which, by law, they have been barred!

    And the Danfo commercial minibuses?  Sheer yellow peril, in that same corridor!  Of course, with no sanction in sight, private motorists have joined the bedlam — driving against the traffic from Oshodi to Mile 2!  Only God knows how many lives this brazen show would claim, if not checked.

    Words are rife that the administration is pondering working out some cohabitation with the Okada operators.  Whatever deal is cut, it should not include a triumphant legal return to expressways.

    Indeed, any thinking that concedes mass transportation to two wheels, with all its inherent dangers, can only amount to net-retardation in 21st century Lagos.  Some “choices” are just no choices!

    Still, away from traffic anarchy, BOS has displayed trite wisdom, which nevertheless cost Ambode dear  — the wonders of continuity and low-hanging fruits.

    While Fashola zestfully harvested the BRT, low-hanging fruits the departing Tinubu government had planted, Ambode wilfully shunned the housing estates the Fashola governorship started.

    For at least four years, those estates, under construction, stayed arrested.  But BOS, in three months — well, 100 days — raced to complete the Igando arm, rightly named for the public icon of contemporary mass housing, Alhaji Lateef Jakande.

    Wisdom of continuity; pleasure of low-hanging fruits; blessing of 100 days!

    It’s good the governor has pledged rapid completion of these estates, scattered in different locations.  But he should also ensure the allocations conform to the original protocols, so that the houses don’t end up with trader-shylocks; but with those who sorely need them.

    Learning from the Ambode pitfall is smart thinking for BOS early in his tenure.  But as the Bible says, the beginning is nothing.  The end is everything.

    Which is why BOS should also move fast to complete those Ambode era projects, particularly those ones that promise maximum impact on the people.

    One is the Oshodi transport interchange and shopping hub.  That completed, it could transform Oshodi into a 24-hour polite business hub; and boost city-wide security.

    Another is the gleaming Airport road.  It’s sheer bliss for motorists.  But it’s also pure hell for pedestrians, linking Ajao Estate to the opposite Mafoluku.  The many pedestrian bridges, on that road, need fast completion.

    Yet another is finishing the Epe-Eredo artery, which incomplete end rather plagues the Mojoda-Odo Ayan folks.  The other leg is completing the Epe-Ejinrin-Itoikin end of the project.

    As the administration grinds on, these two uncompleted ends will pose local challenge to “home boy” and Deputy Governor, Dr. Obafemi Hamzat.  If not given attention, it could well be another avoidable unforced error at election time!

    It’s reassuring though that BOS has committed himself to completing all the Ambode-era projects.  When he does and at commission time, he should give the former governor his due mention, recognition and honour.

    Not even Ambode deserves the black-out he gave Fashola, at the commissioning of the Okota-Amuwo Odofin-Mile 2 link-road.  The former governor was there, ironically as Works minister.  But no one acknowledged he, as governor, did and opened no less than 70 per cent of that vital artery!

    BOS, after 100 days?  Slow and steady!  But even that would win the race, only if the governor pushes less of individual success; but more of collective glory.

    That was the Ambode pitfall.  BOS must learn from that fatal slip.

  • Who says it won’t happen again?

    From Lagos to Harare, Lusaka, Accra to Johannesburg, it’s been nearly two weeks of unrestrained rage back and forth. For once, the victims appear to have had enough of the seasonal madness called xenophobia from the rainbow country. In Zambia, scores of bitter and angry students marched on the South African High Commission where they burnt tyres and an embassy sign in apparent frustration. Not done, they went after South African-owned shops such as Pick n Pay, Shoprite and MTN, forcing them to close shop. Accusing South Africa’s government of not doing enough to prevent the attacks against Africans in South Africa, Zambia National Students Union (ZANASU) Vice President Steven Kanyakula warned that “South Africa was not an island and the actions of South Africans pose a serious risk to South African investment and businesses in African countries”.

    By this time, Zambia Radio stations had stopped playing South African music; a friendly football tournament against Bafana Bafana, the South African national team, was swiftly cancelled by its football association.

    The Zambians were not alone. From the African Giant, the response would follow the same pattern. Sufficiently piqued by the madness in South Africa, cultural icon Tiwa Savage would release a volley on her twitter handle September 4: I refuse to watch the barbaric butchering of my people in SA. This is SICK. For this reason I will NOT be performing at the upcoming DSTV delicious Festival in Johannesburg on the 21st of September. My prayers are with all the victims and families affected by this.

    Perhaps even more dramatic however was Nigeria’s Sheila Chukwulozie, who left her booth at the Johannesburg’s FNB Art Fair empty – with a boldly printed message “Thanks, xenophobia,” on her space.

    Meanwhile, in Lagos, the mob simply descended on the Sangotedo and Surulere Shoprite malls carting away everything on sight. Typical of the police, an attempt to minimise the destruction would leave one dead. Similar attacks were reported on Shoprite malls in Abuja and Ibadan with varying degrees of destruction.

    Moments before, the federal government had announced its boycott of the World Economic Forum in Cape Town, to join Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s Félix Tshisekedi in the league of boycotters. All of this in addition to other diplomatic shuttles to contain what was already a festering crisis.

    By Wednesday last week, thanks to the local carrier, Air Peace, what would ordinarily have been deemed unthinkable happened: the evacuation of 178 Nigerians (actually the first batch) from the former apartheid enclave.

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    None of the above however yet compares with the cold reception accorded the South African leader, Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa, at the burial of former Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe in Harare at the weekend.  As reported by this newspaper, the crowd booed the South African leader as he was introduced by the master of ceremony at the funeral held at the National Sports Stadium.

    Thoroughly embarrassed, the South African leader could not but eat the humble pie: He apologized to the people of Zimbabwe for the acts of violence “directed at our brothers in other African countries”.

    Hear him: “I stand before you, fellow Zimbabweans, fellow Africans to say that we are working very hard to encourage all our people in South Africa to embrace people from all other African countries.

    “We welcome people from other African countries and we are going to work very hard that will encourage and promote social cohesion of all the people of South Africa working side by side with people from other part of our continent. This we shall do, because we want to embrace the spirit of unity that President Mugabe worked for throughout his life.”

    Call it a Pauline conversion coming from a man who, en route to the presidency, read what amounted to a Riot Act to foreigners who he tagged with operating businesses without permit. Of course, the born-again President Ramaphosa couldn’t have been speaking for Goodwill Zwelithini, the Zulu monarch who in 2015 famously declared that ‘foreigners must pack their bags and go home’! (He later blamed the media for grossly misrepresenting him, while nonetheless maintaining that “this country would be reduced to ashes” were he to issue such a directive).

    Or, Bongani Mkongi, the country’s deputy minister of police who while claiming that residents of the Hillbrow neighborhood of Johannesburg are 80% foreign born, insisted that “We cannot surrender South Africa to foreign nationals… We fought for this country, not only for us, but for generations of South Africans.”

    Official denial or not, the fact of the matter is that xenophobia is deeply ingrained in the country’s DNA. According to Xenowatch, more than 500 attacks occurred between 1994 and 2018.  In 2008 alone, more than 100 xenophobic attacks occurred during which more than 60 people died.

    Yet, much as the current outrage is understandable, xenophobia ought to be seen merely as a derivative of the same forces driving Trumpism, Brexit and other nativist sentiments.  In a fundamental sense, the objective conditions as indeed the forces driving them are the same. Both are fearful of the future in which they see themselves as losing out to an army of invaders. However, whereas the champions of ultra-nationalism exploit the fears of the mob while presenting present themselves as champions of a mythical past, the xenophobic mob seizes the initiative while the elites waffle in abdication.

    This is where Ramaphosa deserves pity. Special envoys might help to the calm nerves of the injured party; the question of how a government that was practically missing in action when the violence broke out will suddenly acquire the capacity to put a brood that has tasted blood on the leash is one that only he can answer at this time.  As Ramaphosa and his ANC crew will soon be finding out, statesmanship isn’t exactly the cheapest of commodities.

    Of course, Nigerians will remain Nigerians, warts and all; for sure, the brashness, the swagger and if you like, that tinge of deviance that evokes love/hate is unlikely to change overnight. It is even unlikely that this latest cycle of violence will curb their appetite for greener pastures. As far as I can see, the Rainbow Country will remain a fair destination.

    And the South Africans with their sense of entitlement?  Which is easier to confront between the hapless 3.6 million foreign nationals who make up a mere 7% of the population and the local white priviledged class who although make up a mere 8.9% of the population but hold the bulk of the nation’s wealth?

    Your guess is as good as mine.

  • Atiku’s Burden

    President Muhammadu Buhari’s camp is agog over his victory at the presidential election petition tribunal, which sat in Abuja. The panel of five justices of the Court of Appeal led by Justice Mohammed Garba delivered a unanimous judgment in favour of Buhari and his party, the All Progressive Congress (APC).

    According to the judgment, the petitioners failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Buhari did not poll the majority of lawful votes cast in the 2019 general election, as declared by INEC, and so they dismissed the petition as lacking in merit. The first petitioner and the candidate of Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar has vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.

    While congratulating Buhari on the expected victory, we must wish Atiku journey mercy, if he insists on carrying his evidential burden to the Supreme Court. This column was never apprehensive of an upset in favour of Atiku at the tribunal; because the burden of proof that a petitioner at a presidential election petition tribunal must discharge to cause such an upset is a near impossibility, except the respondents condone or connive.

    So, even though Buhari may have thoroughly beaten Atiku at the polls, his victory at the tribunal is because the judicial process makes it nigh impossible for a petitioner to garner the kind of evidence that is needed to prove otherwise. With 120, 000 polling units in the country, and a manual recording of the election results, a petitioner to succeed, must tender election results in majority of the units in dispute and lead primary evidence that elections in those disputed units were in his favour.

    Considering the size of the country, the impossibility of producing enough willing INEC officials as primary witnesses, the gamut of documentary evidence that needs to be tendered, the technical inhibitions of the evidence act, the limitedness of time within which to lead the petitioner’s evidence, and the available opportunity for tentacles and delay tactics by the respondents, the proof required of the petitioner is herculean.

    In the petition by Atiku and his party, the smoking gun would have been the existence of a central server which would have the collated result electronically stored. While Atiku and PDP claim such a server exists; Buhari, his party and INEC claim it does not. Unfortunately, there is no incontrovertible independent evidence that such a server exist. The electoral act also does not provide for such a server and so for Atiku to prove that he won the election, he must tender election result sheets from the disputed polling units, before the tribunal, and that would be thousands of INEC documents.

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    Whether for his lawyers or the tribunal, the size of the documents that need to be tendered would be so overwhelming to glance at each of them, not to talk of examining them critically to determine the evidential value. The weight of the evidential burden required can crush the best legal giants, and perhaps they have crushed Atiku and his lawyers.

    One glaring instance is the tribunal’s finding that relevant INEC document that should be tendered by witnesses were dumped on the tribunal by the petitioner, instead of tendering each and every one of them through a primary witness, who in accordance with the evidence act, must either be the maker, or receiver, or if a public document, produced from the custody of the document keeper, in such manner as provided by the evidence act.

    With the huge gap in the number of votes garnered by the two presidential candidates as declared by INEC, the petitioner had a lot of work to do, to prove that he, instead of Buhari won the election. In reality, there will be so many polling units to lead evidence on the outcome of its results. Even if INEC becomes a willing witness for the petitioner, it will need to produce witnesses from the polling units who will render primary evidence about what they witnessed, and give evidence that either the result was manipulated or the process was marred by violence.

    This column not long ago, wrote on the two main legal systems, the inquisitorial and adversarial legal systems, and called for a review of our present adversarial legal system. Without prejudice to the Atiku versus Buhari’s case; the outcome of several election petitions and the difficulties associated with proving the petitioners’ cases reinforce the need to re-examine our legal system. This column again pushes for a national review of the adversarial legal system vis-à-vis the inquisitorial legal system.

    In the adversarial legal system, the judge stands aloof and allows the theatre of legal combat between the lawyers, and even when one of them is taking an unconscionable advantage of the loopholes in the legal system, he must never descend into the arena. On the other hand, in inquisitorial legal procedure, the judge proceeds to find the truth and achieve a judgment that approximates to his findings based on the facts presented by the parties, and the findings he is able to make and the conclusions arising therefrom.

    But importantly, while President Buhari may have his second term judicially reinforced by the judgment of the presidential election petition tribunal, he must swiftly move to secure a legacy for himself and our country Nigeria, by strengthening the electoral process. He can do so by ensuring electoral reforms to gift Nigeria some form of electronically backed voting system. The president should work with the national assembly to improve the electoral laws to allow the use of technology to make the election more transparent and secure.

    There is no reason why election results at all levels, should not be sent to a secure INEC server, from which indisputable election results can be retrieved. Indeed, election results at every polling unit ought to be transmitted electorally to a nearby server, perhaps one server for each state; and which servers will electronically feed a central server. All such servers must be treated as national assets and as such secured from any form of hacking or unlawful interference. While Atiku’s petition may not have served its preferred purpose, it has promoted the need for an INEC central server, from which independent election results can be procured.

    Of course, while Atiku may have lost this time, he must recall that it was such challenge which he now faces that candidate Buhari faced in the three elections he lost, and challenged at the election tribunals. The lesson for everyone, including President Buhari and his party is that what goes round, comes round. While they APC may believe in the sanctity of their victory, they should appreciate the challenge associated with election petitions under the prevailing judicial procedure.

  • A matter of leadership

    IN the end, it was not the glorious event that India’s nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi had gone down to the Mission Control Centre for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), in Bangalore, to witness personally and celebrate. Instead, last week, India’s attempt to become the first country to land a robotic mission at the Moon’s South Pole failed.

    Engineers lost contact with the Vikram lander — part of the Chandrayaan-2 probe, just moments before what would have been a successful and historic soft landing.

    A miss, as they say, is as good as a mile, and nowhere is this truer than in space travel where pinpoint accuracy is the standard operational procedure.  The closest approximation won’t cut it. That India could embark with such confidence on such  an ambitious mission is nevertheless proof, were any still required, that when it comes to science and technology, India is a world power.

    If the mission had succeeded, India would have been only the fourth country in the world, behind the United States, the Soviet Union and China, to make a soft landing         on the lunar surface.  Even so, back in the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had failed in their early attempts to land on the lunar surface.  It is greater consolation that the lander is still in orbit, only incommunicado.

    Given the staggering poverty in India’s vast rural countryside and inner cities, there are those who say that such projects are misplaced, and that the resources poured into them are needed more urgently elsewhere.

    But scientific pursuits in outer space cannot wait until the earth’s problems have been solved. They often have an enormous multiplier effect, throwing up processes, procedures and products that help in tackling the problems of terrestrial existence.

    And the cost is often smaller than is generally supposed.  India’s lunar project, which began some 10 years ago with the launch of the Chandrayaan-1, a satellite that fired a projectile into the moon’s South Pole in search of water, carries a price tag of $150 million.  That is just 10 times what the 9th National Assembly plans to appropriate from the public purse to buy luxury motorcars for its members.

    If the Chandrayaan-2 were a Nigerian space vessel, the National Assembly would have gone ballistic since its loss.  The appropriate oversight committee would have staged marathon emergency hearings, to which the top ISRO scientists would have been summoned to testify on oath, most likely wearing their crisply-ironed lab coats.

    Then a foreign trip or two would most certainly have followed, estacode and all, to the United States and the Soviet Union, to seek insight into the remote and immediate causes of the mishap, and how future mishaps might be averted.

    In India, the whole endeavour is all a matter of national consciousness and pride kindled by its founders and sustained by a generation of leaders.

    Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, was a polymath. A brilliant lawyer and gifted writer, he also took a keen interest in planetary science. In one of the dozens of letters he wrote to his young daughter, Indira, from prison, he sought to explain to her in language that she would understand the working of solar system. She learned from an early age the place of science in human life.

    To fire the development of India’s vast human capital, Nehru established the Indian Institute of Technology in three strategic locations across the country.  Admission was as competitive as you could find anywhere.  You could not rig it.  You could not buy your way into the system. The syllabus was just as rigorous. Only the very best graduated from the system.

    Over the years, an institute patterned along the same line was established in every Indian state, with nary a lowering in the rigours of admission or instruction. In an interview on the CBS television programme, 60 Minutes, several years ago, a professor in one of the institutes, spoke of how his son, who could not secure admission there, nevertheless was accepted at Cornell on a full scholarship.

    These institutes, based on an education system that privileged science and mathematics, helped propel India to the status of global techno power.  Today, India has the largest pool of English-speaking scientists, engineers and doctors in the world.

    Recognising the potential of space technology in promoting telecommunications, distance education and rural development, Gandhi also set up the space research organisation, ISRO.

    In India on assignment for The Guardian in 1986, Dr Yemi Ogunbiyi and I were given a special pass by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, to visit ISRO, in Bangalore, the southern India city that has since emerged as the Silicon Valley of the subcontinent.

    We were guided through their research labs and manufacturing floor and conference rooms by alert, confident young men and women, scientists and technicians, all in their off-white tops and grey pants, explaining the functions of various component, large and small, and how they were fabricated or acquired.

    “This one?” a guide would ask, pointing to some huge component. “We made it.  We built it here,” he would say with that familiar Indian nod.

    “How about that one?”

    “That one?  We had a manufacturer build it for us,” he would explain.  We thought it would be cheaper that way. Even so, we designed it here.”

    Their pride was restrained, but palpable all the same.

    I had never felt so deflated, and I am sure I can say the same for Yemi Ogunbiyi.  Here we were, denizens of the Giant of African being shown the greatness of India already in the making, whereas the vision and thinking and the commitment that produced it were nowhere evident in our homeland.

    The Chandrayaan-2 failed its mission, to be sure. But the Indian space authorities are not in the least discomfited. “We came very close, but we will need to cover more ground in the times to come. Every Indian is filled with a spirit of pride as well as confidence,” Prime Minister Modi told the nation. ‘’We are proud of our space programme and scientists; their hard work and determination.”

    “. . . Resilience and tenacity are central to India’s ethos. In our glorious history of thousands of years, we have faced moments that may have slowed us, but they have never crushed our spirit. We have bounced back again, and gone on to do spectacular things.

    “. . . We are full of confidence that when it comes to our space programme, the best is yet to come.”

    Surely, Modi can be permitted a little nationalist chest-beating.

    Meanwhile, they are looking forward with confidence to manned missions scheduled for next year, for which ISRO has fabricated and unveiled most of the hardware.

    Here, we are still mired in our petty schemes and intrigues.