The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Time to love our neighbour less…

    When an individual who is not known to have successfully managed a thriving entity not only pontificates on the terrain but insists on assuming the role of salesman for pushing policies so diametrically opposed to the survival of the nation, Nigerians would be right to wonder if something entirely new isn’t on the brew. Now, that individual in question is no other than the old fox –former President Olusegun Obasanjo who in recent time has been on the road, not only playing the African statesman card, but selling the African Free Continental Trade Area (AfCTA) agreement as if it is the next best thing since David Ricardo developed the free trade idea into its modern form.

    So, he wants the so-called African giant to play in the big league. He said that much – again – in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the opening session of the Stakeholders’ Dialogue on Continental Trade and Strengthening the Implementation of the AfCTA. Confronted with mounting concerns about the implications of AfCTA without the sign-on of the continent’s biggest economy, he went on and on, to quote the News Agency of Nigeria, about “how Nigeria took over the processes leading to the AfCTA agreement from Egypt and wondered why it suddenly halted signing and was not even participating at the session”. He couldn’t understand why the famed African giant will develop the feet of clay when it mattered most – at the point of signing the agreement Kigali, Rwanda.

    Nigeria, he said, should resolve its domestic intrigues and not bring such to the African Union table.

    “It is nobody’s fault if your country cannot resolve its domestic problem. If you (Nigeria) is not signing the agreement, it is unfortunate. AfCTA will go on without Nigeria. You will recall that this is the first time, since 1976, that Nigeria is not at the table of a major continental process.

    Now, that would not be the first time Obasanjo would come down on Nigeria especially the Muhammadu Buhari administration on whose hand the lot falls the responsibility of signing the agreement. Last year in Bali, Indonesia, the same Obasanjo claimed – according to reports – that President Buhari’s hands were too weak to sign the African Free Trade Agreement (AfCTA).

    Said he of the reluctance of the president to sign the proposed $2.5 trillion continental free-trade zone agreement: “AfCTA is a good idea and for Nigeria, hopefully, we will have a president that will be able to sign it because the one that is there now, his hands are too weak to sign.”

    Well, I perfectly understand Obasanjo’s perennial quest for global statesmanship. And if we may forgive the old fox his dry humour and his cheap pot shot at his nemesis, his latest foray into trade policy would seem entirely dubious to say the least. More questionable however would seem his understanding of the so-called benefits of the agreement in the face of the stark reality of de-industrialization and the unprecedented level of unemployment that continues to plague the African giant.

    To begin with, what are the benefits of AfCTA? I will of course concede that they are many – all of them still largely, in my view, consigned to the realm of potentials. Currently, the global body – UNCTAD says that less than 20% of total trade conducted in Africa is between African countries – as against 80% with the rest of the world. It is argued that AfCTA stands the continent in good stead in boosting regional prosperity with potentials to lift millions out of poverty and misery. Then also is the issue of those costly customs duties whose removal the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) says could increase intra-African trade by 52% within five years. The other case that has been made is that it would at least help redress current global trade imbalances.

    These are certainly sound cases to be made. Unfortunately, those cases fly in the face of the current African reality in which most of the countries on the continent are still largely dependent on Europe and America for basic manufactured goods.

    For Nigeria, the problem is how the economy with its historic structural vulnerability, one so ill-served by its decrepit infrastructure; a country that is at best, a non-starter in manufacturing, one whose foreign reserves are denominated by the months of import cover it can fetch and one whose notoriety in conspicuous consumption is perhaps unequalled in the world can be prodded along a free trade agreement without something giving at some point.

    Even without a formal free trade agreement, we know the amount of pillaging going on in the name of ECOWAS protocols on free movement. The other day, it was Aliko Dangote, Africa’s foremost industrialist pleading with the federal government to take drastic action against Benin Republic over smuggling of products from its country into Nigeria. To him, ‘the biggest issue and challenge for the economy and also for the manufacturing has to do with smuggling and I think unless we really take a very drastic action against the Republic of Benin, I don’t think we are really going to be successful”.

    Today, we know for a fact that of the 15 countries that imported the highest dollar value worth of rice during 2018 by the World Top Export (WTex), our next door neighbour, Benin Republic ranks sixth with a total import valued at $930.5 million (N335 billion), coming after China, US$1.6bn (6.5% of total rice imports); Iran, $1.21bn (4.9%); Saudi Arabia, $1.2bn (4.9%); Indonesia, $1bn (4.2%); and United States: $959.5m (3.9%). On a trip from Ghana the other day, I actually counted nearly one score trailers on the stretch from Porto Novo, Benin Republic to Idi Iroko all loaded with rice from Southeast Asia –headed for Nigeria – and at a time the importation of the commodity through the land borders is a no-no. The same situation, I am told, is replicated in our northern borders with Cameroun and Niger Republic. And that is not restricted to rice alone; in March, the National Palm Produce Association of Nigeria (NPPAN) was forced to raise alarm over the unbridled smuggling of Crude Palm Oil (CPO) which they say is killing the investments.

    Today, our textile industry is dead as dodo – no thanks to the influx of cheap textiles from China. The petrochemical industry which would have formed the basis of a future industrial strategy has remained in the cradle. Our machine tools industry is yet to take off despite the billions sunk into it. Is AfCTA membership a show-off; does it bother anyone that the African giant will at this stage have nothing to put on the continental table in the event of its take-off?

    We must thank heavens that our go-slow President Muhammadu Buhari understands the signs of the times – certainly far better than the likes of Obasanjo will like to give him credit for. The route to industrialization might seem long and the steps already taken uncertain; the AfCTA route at this time in the absence of the safeguards to guarantee our national interests, might end up a one-way fare into the abyss.

    This is one moment when it would pay to love oneself more than one would –neighbours.

  • June 12!

    June 12!  Democracy Day!
    The day not a few prayed — and perhaps fasted — would never come is here!
    And, as it pleases the Almighty, those yesteryear gods are still alive, though not so well!  It’s the ultimate futility of playing god over fellow humans!
    Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, the self-named “military president” (whatever that meant), suffered the terrible delusion he could cancel the making of a real president; and live happily ever after, as they say in those moonlight tales!
    IBB, 26 years after his rash annulment, is not unlike a golden coin badly faded; or a once glowing, smouldering coal, now covered by grey cold ash!
    The haughty glow of military power and glory is vanished!  All that remains is the cold ashen folly of vanity — like bitter winter after sweet summer!
    At the ultimate triumph of June 12, our man that once boasted of dominating his environment, who had the power of life and death, and was not only in office but also in power, is all but a mere relic!  His is a living example of the ephemerality of power.
    Sani Abacha, the June 12 “friend” turned fiend?  The Khalifa that sustained the annulment, with blood and gore; pus and brine, long after the annuler had “stepped aside” in disgrace?
    Twenty-six years after the annulment and 21 years after Abacha’s sudden expiry, we are still assailed by the rotten ooze of his uncommon sleaze!
    There is this claim that the Yoruba hated Abacha, always demonized him and therefore played down his good side.
    To be sure, between Abacha and the Yoruba, there was no love lost.  However, the issue was more fundamental.
    Politically, by sustaining the annulment, Abacha was clear danger to Nigerian democracy.  That was hardly Yoruba sole business.
    Economically, his gargantuan greed, expressed by his sweeping sleaze, condemned many to a future of poverty and insecurity, as epitomized by the plague now ravaging Abacha’s native North.
    Sani Abacha might have had his good part.  But history would fairly remember him as a thief, a murderer and a plunderer. These negative traits exalt no nation.  If the yearly June 12 celebrations thumb down these evils, Nigerians would have had more than a public holiday.
    Still the pair of IBB and Abacha, by their June 12 debacle, gifted the polity an unintended pearl: no more looting and parasitic military, posturing as emergency saviours.  Twenty straight years of democracy is living proof!
    What of Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and Tony Anenih (both now dead), who mixed up settling personal scores with the inviolability of a people’s mandate, thus conspiring to trade MKO Abiola’s presidential mandate for the feckless Ernest Shonekan Interim National Government (ING) — brewed in perfidy, imposed by perfidy, collapsed in perfidy?
    Chief Shonekan is alive to witness the full glory of June 12, even if he cuts a sorry sight: a merry tool used to truncate the people’s democratic will!  That would be his lot in history.
    But the old man carries his cross with stoic dignity.  That can’t be said of his Egba kith and kin, the restless and restive Ebora Owu — but more on that presently!
    Yar’Adua (God bless his soul!) paid the ultimate price for playing politics with everything: he died in Abacha’s gulag, after conviction for a controversial (many would insist, phantom) coup attempt.  Might standing by June 12 have earned him a better fate?
    What became of Anenih, the national chairman of the victorious Social Democratic Party (SDP), that nevertheless traded away MKO’s mandate?
    For a moment, “The Fixer” ruled the roost: a ruthless turner of electoral fortunes – winners to losers; losers into winners; at the acme of PDP’s electoral heists!
    Still, he died a diminished electoral menace, eventually trumped by the sanctity of the vote.  At his fall in Edo, a triumphant Adams Oshiomhole declared that he had retired the Edo “godfathers”.  The PDP 2015 national fall marked his final political demise.
    Arthur Nzeribe, he of the notorious but cynically named Association for Better Nigeria (ABN)?
    Arthur! — As folks called him: half in dread, half in scorn was the name; Nzeribe was the man, in those heady days of halcyon mischief!  Why, he would even later in 1999 emerge senator, beneficiary of a democracy he strove so hard to scuttle!
    But today, good old Arthur, battling for health in his winter years, would wonder if all that swashbuckling infamy was worth all the while!  Glad he too is alive, if not so well, to witness the glory of June 12!
    Still, perhaps the most pathetic of the anti-June 12 elements, condemned to living to see its glory, is ironically its greatest beneficiary, former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
    Technically, June 12 gifted Obasanjo two elective presidential terms, to add to his three previous years as military head of state.
    Pre-June 12, Obasanjo’s was, near-universally, a respected voice, except among his fellow Yoruba, thus echoing the Biblical quip of a prophet not without honour, except in his own country, among his own people.
    Still, 26 years after June 12, diminution appears Obasanjo’s lot, no thanks to horrid personal choices.
    First, a rabid fear of June 12 perhaps drove him to supporting Atiku Abubakar, a former deputy he had traduced with venom, probably in last-minute desperation to stave off June 12 as Democracy Day, if Atiku had triumphed.
    However, with re-election going President Muhammadu Buhari’s way, Obasanjo, arguably the greatest southern beneficiary of “Fulanization and Islamization” – both made him military head of state and elected president – is busy dissing his northern patrons, with his latest opportunistic theory, clearly to divert attention from June 12 as ultimate political nemesis.
    But even then, Obasanjo ran into a crushing blow from Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the former commander-in-chief Obasanjo had left for dead in his Not My Will, Obasanjo’s post-military rule memoirs, throatily insulting the man and addressing him as “Mr. Gowon”.
    Honour fully regained, and never diminished by opportunistic meddling as Obasanjo is wont, the Gowon “Fulanization” rebuke, of June 5, came with biting severity:
    “They were all my juniors starting from Obasanjo,” Gowon said.  ”I know their characters more than anyone … Buhari is kind, most disciplined and most diligent in his responsibilities. Any Christian leader spreading propaganda of Islamization or Fulanization against the President is doing so at his or her own risk …”
    The ultimate rebuke might be Gowon’s.  But the ultimate irony comes from Obasanjo’s own Not My Will.
    In that book, a triumphant but callow Obasanjo pilloried Awolowo and Azikiwe as ending as tribal champions.  Now see Obasanjo, self-trumpeted Mr. Nigeria, who claimed MKO was no messiah, playing own “Fulanization” ethnic card, all because of June 12!
    Poor Ebora Owu! His May 29 Democracy Day Trojan horse not only gets buried from tommorrow, he is ending too as another ethnic hustler!
    June 12, the spiritual grave of many a plastic reputation!
    MKO and Gani Fawehinmi must be rolling, with loud laughter, in their graves!

  • Unlawful Earnings (9th National Assembly)

    As the 9th National Assembly is inaugurated, is there a chance the members will return to a constitutionally approved income bracket, or are they going to remain recalcitrant like their predecessors? The previous assemblies, particularly the 8th assembly, led by Senator Bukola Saraki treated the national treasury like a bazaar sales, open for raid by the fittest. From their vantage position as federal lawmakers, they maximally looted our common patrimony, through budget padding, unconscionable allowances and sundry extortion of the exchequer.

    All warnings by well-meaning Nigerians, that a legislative assembly operating as an outlaw is an anathema and because of its vantage position casts aspersion on the very foundation of constitutional democracy, fell on deaf ears. They treated with disdain section 70 of the 1999 constitution (as amended), which provides without equivocation that: “A member of the Senate or of the House of Representative shall receive such salary and other allowances as the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission may determine.”

    That mandatory provision has been treated with ignominy by majority of past National Assemblies, yet section 153 of the constitution created the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) as a federal executive body to determine the remuneration of certain public officers. Under its Third Schedule Part 1N (paragraphs31 and 32), itprovides the composition and powers of the RMAFC. By paragraph 32 (d): “The commission shall have power to: determine the remuneration appropriate for political office holders, including the president, vice president, governors, deputy governors, ministers, commissioners, special advisers, legislators and the holders of the offices mentioned in section 84 and 124 of this constitution”.

    Why our federal lawmakers choose to ignore a clear provision of the constitution is strange. But even stranger is the condoning of this illegality all these years. Between the executive and the legislature there appears aconsensusad idem to allow the breach in the spirit of brinkmanship. Even such a concordat will be unconstitutional, for the Supreme Court in A. G.Bendel State vs A. G. Federation (2001) F.W.L.R. Pt. 65 page 504 unequivocally held: “Neither a state nor an individual can contract out of the provisions of the constitution. The reason for this is that contract to do a thing which cannot be done without a violation of the law is void.”

    Any agreement between the executive and the legislature to allow the payment of any form of remuneration beyond the contemplation of the constitution is therefore void. Even when the previous legislators have unconstitutionally engaged in what amounts to self-help, ‘such arrangement’ can not estop a return to constitutionality. In the A.G. Bendel’s case (supra), the court held: “There can be no estoppel against the assertion of the supremacy of the constitution.”

    No doubt, the constitution has imbued the national assembly with enormous powers over the consolidated revenue of the federation. These powers are contained in the provisions of sections 80-84 of the 1999 constitution. But as humongous as the powers are, there is no provision for self-help with respect to the remuneration of members of the federal legislature by whatever name called. So the clear remonstration of the Supreme Court in Military Governor of Lagos State vsOjukwu 1 ACLC pg. 392 is apt, if the incoming federal legislature gives a damn about the rule of law.

    In that case, the learned Justices held: “The Nigerian constitution is founded on the rule of law, the primary meaning of which is that everything must be done according to law. It means also that government should be conducted within the framework of recognised rules and principles which restrict discretionary powers….” The 9th national assembly must resist the temptation to sustain the aberration of self-help, as practised by their predecessors in a constitutional democracy. Such strange behaviour was unequivocally deprecated by the Supreme Court in theOjukwu’s case aforesaid.

    In the words of the Supreme Court Justices: “In the area where ruleof law operates, the rule of self-help by force is abandoned. Nigeria, being one of the countries in the world, even in the third world which profess loudly to follow the rule of law, gives no room for the rule of self-help by force to operate.”

    There is no gain saying that the 1999 constitution operates on tripod, made up of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. The fine essence of such distribution of powers is to ensure checks and balances, without which democracy will slip into autocracy. The makers of the constitution knows that if the executive is left to raise the money and singularly determine how to share same, such enormous powers will be abused.

    In the same manner, since the legislature has the powers to legislate who gets what, their income cannot be left for them to also determine. The same principle is applicable to the judiciary and executive whose remuneration is not left by the constitution in their own hands. In the case of A. G. Federation vs Guardian Newspaper Ltd (2001) F.W.L.R. Pt. 32at pg. 87, the Supreme Court, despite the aberration of a military dictatorship held: “Under 1979 constitution (which is inparimateria with the 1999 constitution), the principle of separation of powers operated with the division of functions of government between the executive, legislature and the judiciary under Decree 107 of 1993.”

    Despite public opinion, formernational legislatorsunconstitutionally appropriated humongous allowances and other remunerations to pooh pooh the 1999 constitution, since the advent of the current republic. Going forward, the nation will see whether members of the 9th national assembly are possessed with the same genes as their predecessors, or whether they are children of constitutional order. If they persist in the error, the federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari owe a duty to test the constitutionality of the legislature interpreting the law as it suits its whims and caprices.

    After all, by the provisions of section 6(6)(b) of the constitution, it is the prerogative of the courts, to determine any dispute as to the interpretation of the laws of the country. That section provides: “The judicial powers vested in accordance with the foregoing provisions of this section: shall extend to all matter between persons, or between government or authority and to any person in Nigeria, and to all actions and proceedings relating thereto, for the determination of nay question as to the civil rights and obligations of that person.”

    Since the courts have been circumspect about who has the locus standi to institute an action to deal with this perennial challenge, despite public outcry, the next Attorney General must accept the gauntlet in public interest, should the 9th national assembly persist in the unconstitutional conduct of determining what its members earn.

  • Again, the Fulani ogre

    It’s testy, grouchy time in the Yoruba country — and for good reasons.  Some Fulani dregs have turned Yoruba forests into a vast kidnappers’ den.

    The land seethes with anger and resent.  That is why President Muhammadu Buhari, and his security chiefs, must act — and act fast.

    But that is no reason to tar every Fulani with the criminality of a few.  Or suggest a “Fulani” presidency spurs Fulani banditry.

    That would profane legitimate anger with reckless politicking; and could plant more potent ethnic danger, long after the current security crisis is history.

    It all appears a throwback to May 2015, though.

    Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani had defeated President Goodluck Jonathan, a Niger Delta minority; and just got sworn in as president.

    Buhari’s winning All Progressives Congress (APC) coalition comprised the Bola Tinubu-led Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), in a rare North West-South West entente.

    The Jonathan losing coalition had the Afenifere, led by Chief Reuben Fasoranti, but whose most vocal voices were Chief Ayo Adebanjo and Chief Olu Falae, though these partisans were formally no members of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), dominant in the South East and South South.

    So, for the losers, the after-loss strategy was heightened anti-Fulani hysteria.

    Because a Fulani just won power, the entire Fulani must be new — or more appropriately, renewed — Judases of the Federal Republic, docked, tried and guillotined, in the emotive courts, holding in the southern media!

    The Niger Delta Avengers, in a reckless staccato, fired the opening salvos, to make the country “ungovernable”; blowing up off-shore oil fields, blighting their home environment and sabotaging oil exports.

    Nnamdi Kanu, of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), later weighed in with his scalding tribal-hating; explosive ethnic-baiting; and reckless faith-ranting.

    That tanked with some so-called northern “youths” giving the Igbo an ultimatum to quit the North, in a grim echo of the tragedies of 1966.  Kanu himself would later scram out of town to emerge unfazed fugitive, but with scaled down mischief.

    Afenifere’s own contribution to this sour grape “war” was, on the surface, “restructuring”.

    But really, its twin-headaches were Tinubu (who masterminded a North West-South West entente) and pushed Afenifere into some political Coventry; and Buhari (the first chief beneficiary of that realignment). That twin-migraine has persisted, with the way the 2019 elections went.

    This 2015 back-grounding should illuminate the interpretation, as a Fulani ogre, of a grave national security challenge, that must be smitten in the South West, with all ethnic venom possible.  That is a tragic distraction.

    Along that line, however, the Yoruba Summit Group (YSG), claiming to act on behalf of the Yoruba, just weighed in with a diktat; and called whoever disagrees with it “traitor” to the Yoruba cause.

    While banding into pressure groups could be the summit of pressing democratic rights, YSG must know that branding contrary voices “traitors” is the very nadir of common sense.

    You can’t claim a democratic right with recklessly undemocratic swagger.  That is the very traitor to common sense!

    But having done with the body’s inanity of democratic fatwa (with all its violent contradictions), YSG is right, like everyone, to be gravely concerned about the dire security situation.

    This is more so when the South West, hitherto a safe oasis, in a national desert of unrest and violence, seems now captive to kidnappers.

    The state must go after and punish those criminals — and fast too!  But when you ethnicize a crime, you replace seasonal angst with perennial pain.

    That is the folly of the present hysteria, over Fulani kidnappers come to subdue the South West; shortly after the national hysteria of the Fulani herdsmen come to slaughter the rest of the country.

    It is a ringing and tendentious fallacy that might just plague the polity, long after Muhammadu Buhari must have retired to Daura.

    You blame the “Fulani president” for “Fulani banditry” today?  Fine!  Tomorrow, a “Yoruba president” would be roasted for Yoruba robberies; and an “Igbo president”, guillotined for “Igbo crime” – and a new bout of Nigerian national banality is born!

    O, the very inanity of “Fulani”, “Hausa”, “Igbo” or even “Yoruba” kidnappers (which of these ethnics doesn’t harbour own criminals?), compels the background to the current plague of kidnapping — the Zamfara security crisis.

    In southern Nigeria’s political lore, the “Hausa-Fulani” are one and indivisible; yoked in eternal and hideous power plotting.

    Yet, from a research finding, the Zamfara crisis started with a spectacular Hausa-Fulani blowout!

    According to research findings by the Abubakar Mohammed-led Centre for Democratic Development Research and Training, Zaria, armed robbers, suspected to be “Fulani boys”, were robbing local Zamfara farmers.

    A local vigilante, a Hausa answer to the local criminality, faced down these criminals.  In its moral fervour, however, it not only vanquished the criminals, it killed and drove almost every Fulani in sight into the bush.

    That provoked a counter Fulani reaction, birthing a Hausa versus Fulani ethnic show down — a classic “Gambari pa Fulani” (northern elements neutralize one another) Yoruba sneer, in full tragic Technicolor!

    That crisis, of killings and counter-killings, got traction from earlier Ahmed Yerima governorship land reforms, which allegedly grabbed Fulani ancestral lands and shared them among Hausa farmers.

    In the equal-opportunity bedlam, a third but overwhelming Leviathan swooped on the scene: rustling the Fulani herdsmen of their cows; robbing the Hausa farmers of their cash.

    A new anarchy just came upon the land!

    With rustled cows located among rustic robber barons, but with the robber Leviathan protected by AK47-totting toughs, kidnapping for cash, by the dispossessed but equally fiercely armed, joined the explosive mix!

    Four years down the line, kidnapping and banditry had become a national emergency; with the violence seeping down to pierce the serene South West, resulting in the current angst.

    These Zamfara dregs could be the Fulani plaguing Yoruba forests; extorting millions of Naira as ransom; killing and maiming; and worsening the security situation.

    So, instead of escalating their crime as “Fulani invasion”, is it not more logical to isolate the criminals as the soulless bandits that represent no one but own greed; and offering the security agencies the intelligence to bring them to heel?

    Should there be suspected criminal collusion and cover-up by the security agencies, specific lights must be beamed on the guilty; and everything done to punish and root them out.

    That would be a better strategy, than the current combustible hell-raising and ethnic-baiting.

    That way, Yoruba forests would have been rid of Fulani bandits, without stirring any ethnic slur. In any case, if these bandits devastated the Zamfara Hausa folks, why would they suddenly become crime ambassadors, of the Fulani, in the Yoruba country?

    Forget the tribe. Tackle the criminal. Then comes the pleasant epiphany: Nigeria has only two tribes: the good and the bad – and maybe, more clear-headed thinking; and certainly less “Fulanization” political mischief!

    Get rid of the bad; and every other thing would be added.  Nothing could be more liberating.

  • Plea of alibi

    In legal parlance, ‘alibi’ means ‘elsewhere’, but in ordinary terms it is understood as a reason offered to exculpate one from culpability. I suspect that some of the Governors who just finished their tenure will offer various alibi for untoward actions taken while in office, especially when confronted with the mismanagement of state resources. Many of them will seek alibi to explain the monumental disaster their tenure was.

    In Njovens vs State (1973)5 SC 17 at 68, the Supreme Court stated the position of law on alibi, thus: “There is nothing extra-ordinary or esoteric in a plea of alibi. Such a plea postulates that the accused person could not have been at the scene of the crime and only inferentially that he was not there.” Public officials who abuse their power while in office look back and seek for ways to escape culpability, but the law must rigorously examine their excuses and hold them to account.

    In Wisdom vs State ((2019) All FWLR Pt. 973 at page 393-394, Ariwoola JSC stated: “Ordinarily, even though the law does not saddle the accused with burden to prove alibi, but he is not expected to merely state that he was not at the scene of the crime without more. The law requires him, and it is a duty on him to give the lead and particulars of his where about as he claimed which will lead the prosecution in its investigation of the alibi.”

    In Chukwunyere vs State (2019) All FWLR Pt. 974, the deceased, one Beatrice Kwemma, was murdered in her farm. While she was getting set to go to the farm, her grandson Chijioke Kwemma noticed the appellant who was wearing dark glasses, and another person gazing at their house as they passed. At that time, the deceased was instructing her grandson to come to the farm later, to carry the harvest. While approaching the farm, the boy saw the appellant hacking down the deceased with an axe, while another person held her legs.

    Terrified, he ran and raised alarm that brought the villagers to the scene. Another witness testified the dark glasses were picked at the scene of the murder. While the appellant admitted owning the glasses, he lied that it was seized by the villagers a different day – a cock and bull story, the court rejected. The appellant gave an alibi that on that day he travelled out of town, but never gave verifiable details of where he travelled to or exactly when.

    Dismissing the alibi, the court while discharging the 1st accused person, believed the prosecution and convicted the appellant and sentenced him to death by hanging. Even though the appellant raised the alibi at the earliest possible opportunity, as required by law, the court did not believe him. In his lead judgment, Okoro JSC, opined: “It must be emphasized that the plea of alibi, whenever it is raised, the prosecution is under a bounden duty to investigate the alibi. This is so because the plea presupposes that the accused not only claim he never committed the offence but that he was not all at the locus delictis.”

    The learned jurist further held: “However, the alibi must be definite as to time, place and the persons who know about accused’s whereabouts. It should not be just to set the police on a wild goose chase.” Going forward, those who have mismanaged state resources in their care will attempt to lie about that, when confronted by their misdeeds. Post power, when they wake up without the retinue of officials waiting to receive commands, or to offer advices that are mostly ignored, even when such advice was in the best interest of the state, they will seek alibi.

    When the missed opportunities to do the right things while in power, return to hunt, they will plead alibi. Many of them who thought that eight years was so long it will never end, and were acting very recklessly, will seek alibi to cover their failings. For example, former Governor Rochas Okorocha was severally advised by this column to tread with caution, knowing that today will come. He was encouraged to lead his people diligently with humility and candour, but he ignored such advice, believing that he would install a stooge to cover his tracks.

    While he ruled like an emperor, instead of allowing elections at the local council level, Okorocha deceived the aspirants for eight years, conning them to pander to his hirelings, who misrepresented the true intentions of the emperor. What will he tell those he encouraged to sell their houses and businesses to raise money to participate in the local elections that never materialized? What alibi will he plead when those he encouraged to build roads without a formal contract meet him now he has no state bodyguards to shield him at marriages and naming ceremonies?

    There are other former public officials that mismanaged the rare opportunity God gave them to preside over states. Interestingly, to convict for murder or any crime, there must be intent on the part of the accused. On the proof of intent, learned Justice Okoro stated: “I accept the views expressed by the House of Lords in the English case of Hyam vs D.P.P (1974) 2 All ER 43 that an intention to cause death or grievous bodily harm is established, if is proved that the accused deliberately and intentionally did an act knowing that it was probable that it will result in the death of or grievous bodily harm to the victim.”

    Those who diverted to their personal use, the state resources put in their care, cannot be allowed to say they had no intent to steal, more so when they are definitely in charge at the material time. One serving governor that behaves as if there will be no tomorrow is el-Rufai of Kaduna state. He prattles and acts as if he owns everywhere. He treats part of his state with disdain, and yet he swore an oath to abide by the provisions of the 1999 which forbade discrimination based on tribe or religion. He treats his opponent like enemies of the state, and yet it is just his personal ego that is at stake.

    When the time to account comes, those who have abused their powers must not be left off on flimsy excuses. Like the appellant in Chukwunyere vs State (supra), they must be made to answer for their actions, and even inactions. As was held by the Supreme Court in Njovens vs State (supra), “If the prosecution adduced sufficient and accepted evidence to fix the person at the scene of crime at the material time, surely this alibi is thereby logically and physically demolished.”

    Those exercising authority granted by law must be ready to answer according to law.

     

  • Twenty years after

    Twenty straight years of democracy – and Nigeria is a scalding, hissing, whistling crucible.

    No wonder: it’s the high season of trendy lamentation; and fashionable melancholy!

    Rogue elements, with an eye for the deluded, may locate a parallel for their trauma in American playwright Arthur Miller’s The Crucible; and claim it is all persecution.

    Miller’s 1953 play made a stinging allegory of McCarthyism (1950-1954).  But he tucked it all under the Salem witch trials, of the Massachusetts Bay Colony of 1692/93.  So if folks, as corrupt as they come, now bawl “witch-hunt!” you know where that original sentiment came from!

    US Senator Joseph McCarthy was the hound-in-chief of McCarthyism — that nefarious five-year anti-communist hysteria, under which the United States purged its so-called “communists”.

    Miller himself was a victim, in 1956 facing congressional probe.  He got bullied by the so-called House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities; and got convicted for “contempt of congress”, because he refused to reveal the guys he had meetings with.

    The Nigerian crucible, from 1999 till now, could have its own dross still. On balance, however, it would appear squeezing the dross from the truly, truly loathsome.

    From 2015, those who had sowed the wind from 1999, appear reaping the whirlwind.  But that does not suggest the new order, from 2015, is not sowing its own fresh winds.

    Still, some hard core purification appears dawning.  Though most can’t — or don’t want to — see it in the current bedlam, the public space is going through some corrective heat.  That can’t be bad for any polity.

    From tomorrow, for instance, a grand symbol of pretence goes crashing — May 29 as Nigeria’s National Democracy Day, giving way to June 12: Nigeria’s true fount of democracy.

    With June 12 as new Democracy Day, MKO Abiola’s sacred but truncated mandate, of 12 June 1993; and his martyrdom, of 7 July 1998; get a laudable national rehabilitation.

    That would bring some closure to the grave injustice of Ibrahim Babangida’s electoral annulment.

    But as MKO soars, even from the grave; Olusegun Obasanjo plummets, even when very much alive.

    Obasanjo erected May 29 to blot, from the public mind, MKO’s personal sacrifice; and the more fundamental sanctity of the vote.  Both motives have turned ashen in his mouth.

    Besides, compared to his pre-June 12 (1993) heydays and despite gaining the presidency in 1999, a clinical track shows Obasanjo’s stock has faced what the economists would call diminishing returns.

    Now, the old soldier is self-relegated to a VIP among media hell raisers; most times embarrassingly self-serving, to remain willy-nilly relevant.

    The Greeks said it all: only the dead are truly happy — and MKO versus OBJ is a classic Nigerian contemporary example!

    But the corrective crucible of democracy goes beyond individual fortune or misfortune.  This 20-year democracy haul — haul, because it has been rather tedious and heavy going — appears to have tamed many an institutional hubris.

    Take the military.  In the 1st Republic (1 October 1960 – 15 January 1966), the gung-ho boys of military salvation only allowed the politicians five years of foibles.

    The 2nd Republic (1 October 1979 – 31 December 1983) was even shorter: four years and three months!

    At their peak of tragic conceit in 1993, the Nigerian military, in the grim Sani Abacha, even truncated their eight-year political transition, after Babangida’s wayward annulment of the result of the 12 June 1993 election results.

    Yes, in all three cases, the politicians were no angels.  Indeed, they buckled and fumbled and wobbled.  Also, they have not been angels, these 20 years past, any more than they were, in those two failed republics; and IBB’s stalled transition.

    Yet, what has changed these 20 years past, that didn’t plague the previous orders?  Practically nothing — except that the khaki boys have been smitten by the wild blunders of own conceit.

    That cannot be bad for the polity!  Besides, that grand illusion — nay delusion — is banished, hopefully forever: national salvation isn’t quartered in any military uniform.  It is rather quartered in the people, taking their destiny in own hands.

    That has been democracy these 20 years past, warts and all.  Though it hasn’t exactly been political El Dorado, hard progress has been made.

    The most spectacular of that, on the political plane, has been the defeat of the ruling federal party.  The year 2015 achieved all that – for the first time since 1960.

    That harsh reality just got reinforced, with the 2019 general elections — the ruling party can no longer go a-snoring at elections, simply because it is the ruling party.  The dynamics are fast changing.  That is good for Nigerian democracy.

    With their latest Zamfara debacle, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are fast realizing, the hard way, that they cannot afford the arrogant decadence that ruined and sank the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

    A political party has no choice: it must be bound by own rules — and party primaries are good starting points!  Though that hurts the APC today, it is good, over all, for Nigerian democracy, if the right lessons have been learnt.

    Still, look and listen around you: it’s free-wheeling jeremiad.  Contemporary Nigeria has developed the old Israelites’ complex: to howl and bawl and moan and screech, at every opportunity; like children whose lollies just got taken away!

    The partisan opposition feels obliged to bad-mouth, no matter what — hardly a democratic crime!  The sensation-crunching media finds it rather fashionable to criticize, many times blindly, with unfazed venom, rather than do reasoned critiques.

    On the balance, however, compared with the military era, a democratic Nigeria has experienced far better structured growth, even if the growth has come with new challenges.

    For starters, 2015 has brought to the federal plain more thoughtful pro-poor policies (emblematized by Tradermoni; state–supported credit for the humblest of trades); away from the PDP-era PAP (poverty alleviation programme), as epitomized by Keke Marwa, and its inevitable urban transportation plague.

    Besides, the wild cats, parasites that for too long fed fat while the rest of us shrivelled, are meeting their due nemesis.

    Still, the story would appear even more dramatic in the states. But for the democratic order, and the re-engineering that came with 1999, the Lagos economy would perhaps have ground to a halt, even if challenges remain.

    Abakaliki in Ebonyi, even post-1999, got dismissed by its dusty roads — not anymore!  Osun, a state that pre-1999 and much after, seemed trapped with poor infrastructure and structural poverty, is teaching the rest of the country how to maximize scarce resources, for the Jeremy Bentham ideal: “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”.

    Pray, what can you say of Borno?  Out of the ashes of Boko Haram, the state is building Osun-like futuristic mega-schools, for the talakawa kids to tap quality education!

    That is the colour of democracy, warts and all, 20 years after!

    Despite the present challenges, that can’t be bad for anyone.

  • Unlawful arms

    The recent presidential order revoking duly issued licenses to bear arms has sparked controversy. Many Nigerians are sceptical about the honest intentions of Mr President in making the order. They accuse President Muhammadu Buhari of double standard, in dealing with the security challenges constituted by the unlawfully armed herdsmen who have become a national menace. Majority of the commentators believe that such a measure will expose the law abiding citizens to danger, while giving advantage to the brigands who have made life nasty, short and brutish in Nigeria.

    Just before the presidential order, former President Olusegun Obasanjo raised the security stakes, by alleging plans by some extremists to Islamize and Fulanize the West African sub-region, using the Boko Haram and sundry criminal elements. While the charge to fulanize the sub-region is debatable, the Boko Haram had themselves owned up to the Islamization agenda, at least with respect to Nigeria. So while Obasanjo may be accused of bad belle against President Buhari’s re-election, the issues he raised are obvious security challenges facing our country and the sub-region.

    More so, the decision to cancel duly issued licenses, as an answer to the security challenges is largely a reactionary measure. After all, those who are terrorising the citizens, whether as kidnappers, highway robbers, cattle rustlers, armed herdsmen, and sundry bandits do not require licence to bear arms. So, those who will be affected are law abiding citizens who have taken administrative measure to stay within the law by applying for licence to own guns. They are the ones who use their guns to reasonably defend themselves from banditry, hunt for games and to socialize.

    Those opposed to the directive even argue that the presidential order is to give advantage to the armed herdsmen whom they believe the president has sympathy for. While that may be an extreme position against the president’s intention, the directive is clearly not the answer to the menace posed by armed banditry that is turning our country to a failed state. With more than half of the country under siege by various armed militia, it is strange that instead of confronting the bad eggs, the government is seeking the low hanging fruits as the answer.

    To exercise executive powers to render law abiding citizens powerless in the face of the inability of the state to protect them, is to submit the troubled citizens to general homicide. Of course, it is very easy to enforce the regulation against the law abiding citizens, but as has been shown, the state lacks the capacity to enforce it, ab initio, against the unlawfully armed persons who are the real dangers to our common well-being. Feeling disenchanted, a concerned citizen approached me for legal advice on the presidential directive.

    While this intervention is not a legal advice strictu senso, it is intended to enliven the debate about the state of insecurity and failing incapacity of the state to protect the citizens. The most famous legal provision about the right of citizens to bear arms is the second amendment to the American constitution. The amendment provides for: “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” This provision has been interpreted either as a collective or individual right to bear arms.

    Of course, Nigeria has no similar provision, and the law directly regulating possession of firearms, is the Firearms Act, Cap 146, Laws of the Federation 1990. The law generally provides that to bear arms, one must obtain a licence. Sections 3 provides that “no person shall have in his possession or under his control any firearm of one of the categories specified in Part 1 of the schedule hereto (hereinafter referred to as a prohibited firearm) except in accordance with a licence granted by the President acting in his discretion.”

    Section 4 further provides: “no person shall have in his possession or under his control any firearm of one of the categories specified in Part II of the schedule to this act (hereinafter referred to as a personal firearm) except in accordance with a licence granted in respect thereof by the Inspector-General of Police, which licences shall be granted or refused in accordance with principles decided upon by the National Council of Ministers.” By these provisions the Nigeria law intends to regulate the bearing of any form of firearms.

    However, the Act predisposes the use of licences to regulate, and the regulation is to be exercised as an administrative power. So, in the exercise of the administrative power, dose the Nigerian constitution or the extant law envisage that such power must be exercised judicially and judiciously? As a constitutional democracy, can an administrative authority exercise its powers, even when a discretionary power, arbitrarily? Can a citizen, whose rights have been infringed upon, or is likely to be infringed upon by the exercise of discretionary power arbitrarily, seek the protection of the constitution against such exercise of power?

    The courts may be called upon to answer these and more questions to determine whether the President acted within his powers as provided by section 36 of the Firearms Act. The section provides: “the president if he thinks fit may at any time by proclamation prohibit the possession of or dealing in any firearms or ammunition, either throughout the federation or in any part thereof, and either absolutely or except subject to such restrictions or conditions as may be specified.”

    Could it be that the firearm within the contemplation of S.36 are only those the president is authorised to licence as provided by S.3? Even in the exercise of the discretionary powers in S.3, can the president act arbitrarily?   The 1999 constitution in S.33(1) provides: “every person has a right to life, and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life.…” Can it be successfully argued that the right to bear arms to defend oneself in the face of the state failure to protect the citizens, is in tandem with section 33(1) aforesaid?

    In the exercise of discretionary powers, according to Ombudsman Western Australia guidelines, reviewed in April 2019, “the exercise of discretion requires good judgment.” Has the president exercised good judgment in making the proclamation of last week? Where a discretionary power is badly exercised, section 6(6)(b) of our constitution provides for judicial review. It is within such contemplation that it provides: “the judicial powers vested in accordance with the foregoing provisions of this section – shall extend to all matters between persons, or between government or authority and to any person in Nigeria, and to all action and proceedings relating thereto, for the determination of any question as to the civil rights and obligations of that persons.”

    Is the proclamation of the president such a matter for review?

  • Save Enugu Airport

    The threat by the Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika, to downgrade the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, has led to a frenzied demolition of structures around the runway to the airport. Sirika warned that the cluster of houses at a market and an abattoir close to the runway posed danger to aircraft which need the expanded runway to land. He also noted that the activities in the two places attract birds, and that could lead to a bird strike, which is detrimental to aircraft engines.

    After a state executive council meeting, Enugu State government swiftly directed the local council authority to immediately close the market and the abattoir even as efforts will be made to relocate them. While I sympathize with those who will be dislocated from the area, it is important that necessary measures be taken to ensure that instead of downgrading the status of the airport, the remaining facilities needed to ensure full operation of international flights from the airport be put in place.

    Sirika’s concerns for safety are genuine, as aircraft safety is of utmost importance in aviation industry. The immediate response of the state government is also commendable considering the significance of the Akanu Ibiam International Airport to the southeast zone. As the only international gateway to the southeast and parts of north-central, its continuous operation must be guarded jealously. If not for the duplicitous politics of our beleaguered federation, the Akanu Ibiam International Airport would be one of the busiest in the country and a top earner for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.

    Thankfully, instead of playing politics with the threat of closure by blaming the APC-led federal government, the Enugu State PDP-led government took immediate steps to address the complaints. Going forward, more collaboration is needed to finish the international wing of the airport, and rehabilitate the runway. Considering the crisis experienced in inter-state road travel, worsened by roaming armed bandits and kidnappers on the highways, every reasonable effort should be made to save international travellers the agony of going to Lagos or Abuja or Port Harcourt to catch their flights.

    The security challenges faced by our country gets graver by the day, and the aviation sector should not add further stress to the national security apparatchik, by adding international travellers going or returning to Enugu from Lagos or Abuja or Port Harcourt to their worries. If the Enugu airport is downgraded, the pressure on the facilities in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt will further heighten, and those cities are having more than their fair share of over crowdedness. The Port Harcourt International Airport in the south-south zone is no less stressful to access, with the Enugu-Port Harcourt road in very deplorable condition.

    Travelling out of the zone to catch an international flight in other zones, is also a disincentive to economic activities, as hotels, local transporters and other service providers will be affected. For those travelling or coming into the zone, landing elsewhere and taking a connecting flight or entering the fearful road is an extra expense that can be avoided. Also the hotel bills and delayed arrivals and departures are all avoidable stress for citizens and visitors. The airport authority knows there are already more than enough stress inducers to go round.

    Indeed, this column has always advocated for sustainable regional economic activities as the lack of it heightens the very deplorable security challenges facing our dear country. Many of the idle youths in the state and even across the zone would be gainfully employed with an increase in economic activities at the Enugu airport. Honourable Minister Sirika must bear this in mind and should therefore take necessary measures to ensure the airport remains open and even enhanced for the use of more international flights.

    If he wants to be fair to all parts of the country, he must advise the federal government on measures needed to bring the airport at par with other regional hubs. The upgrade of Akanu Ibiam International Airport to international status was late in coming, and it will be a monumental disaster to contemplate a downgrade, when Nigerians are expecting a further upgrade to open the airport to more international flights. Currently only Ethiopian Airlines is approved to operate international flight from the airport, and that is not a fair deal.

    The south-east is a traders’ den, and to deny the region international gateways is unfair. The PDP government at the centre gave the Akanu Ibiam International Airport half-heartedly, so, I strongly urge the APC-led federal government to give it with their whole-heart, by finishing the international wing and opening it to more flights. With flights into the airport far-between, substantial upgrade of the runway can be achieved with minimal disruption of flight schedules, both local and international.

    Also important, is that mutually agreed measures to keep the airport running will starve the cries of marginalisation, which separatist groups feed on. The government of Enugu State which is averse to such distractions has that as one more reason to collaborate with the federal government to keep the airport optimally functional. Indeed, if it can muster the resources, it should support the airports authority to turn the bend to make the airport a truly regional hub. After all, states build federal infrastructure and seek refunds later.

    On a mutually agreed procedure, the state government can join resources with the federal authority to fund some of the immediate needs of the international airport. Of course, this is not a call for the federal government to abandon their responsibility to the people of the region, but rather a call for collaboration to sustain a much needed infrastructure in the region. After all, it is the people of the region and particularly of Enugu State who re-elected Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi that will benefit more than other Nigerians.

    As I was putting this piece to bed, the newswire reported that the incoming Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has promised to end the intractable Apapa-Oshodi expressway gridlock, within 60 days of assuming the reins of power. To do that, he will assume the responsibility of the federal authorities to solve a nightmare for the people that elected him into power. If he succeeds, his government would instantly become a toast of the people of the state.

    While Enugu State is not as rich as Lagos State, and may not have the financial muscle to do much, it must do what it can to save the Enugu Airport from the threatened downgrade. Of note, it has taken the first step, by demolishing the houses complained of by the federal minister. Governor Ugwuanyi should follow up by sending his officials to the airports authority to agree on further steps to avoid a downgrade. The watchword should be inter-agency collaboration.

  • Baiting a needless crisis

    It started as local government reforms of 1976.

    It has, since then, proved virulent deforms; to centre-component relations, in a federal state.

    It is the howling misnomer of piping state money straight to constitutional strangers; in form of a so-called “third tier”.  That is fast tearing into shreds the fundamental canons of federalism.

    By such direct federal-local government dealings, Olusegun Obasanjo’s imperial presidency illegally seized funds belonging to Lagos State; during the Lagos council creation crisis of 2004-2007.  Patriotic nastiness was never more monstrous!

    Now, combative ignorance continues to triumph over reticent knowledge; on the federal question.  But its strategic chaos may yet wake everyone up to its ultimate folly.

    In a federal set-up, there can’t be anything like “local government money”, directly paid from the Federation Account.  That account belongs to two owners: the Federal Government and the 36 state governments.

    Any other body, outside these two, is an impostor at best; or a stranger, at worst.  Either way, none can be legitimate recipient of cash from the federal till; for strictly, they are constitutional nobodies.

    Yes, the 1999 Constitution (as amended) lists 774 local governments in its 4th Schedule; and wears this misnomer like some gargoyle.  But that was military-era paternalism, if not outright hubris, smuggled into the democratic grundnorm.

    Like the bastard in real life, however, whose coming of age causes inevitable chaos, this federal constitutional bastard, of regarding the local government as a federating unit, is set to wreak fresh constitutional havoc!

    That is because the Buhari administration just gave it new lease — a new lease that could provoke a constitutionally potent new diss, from the states across party lines.

    The polity could well then brace up for a rash of suits, challenging Federal Government powers, over its latest financial regulations.

    That is baiting a needless constitutional crisis.  Still, a rare stasis is needed to start the administration’s second term; and focus on rebuilding the economy, without any distractions.

    The genie popped off the bottle in 1976, during the Obasanjo military regime.  That paternalistic junta, clearly driven by the military command ethos, felt it could fund local governments, till then the exclusive business of the states, directly from Lagos, then the federal capital.

    Enter then, the so-called “third tier”— which was no novelty: local governments had always been an administrative part of the Nigerian polity.  But the anomaly, characteristic of military quick fixes, was decreeing it a component unit of the Nigerian federation.  That was clear military crap!

    It is that crap the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) just tried to sustain, by its May 6 new financial guidelines, concerning local government allocations from the Federation Account.

    Simply, that guideline decrees no one must touch local government money, warehoused in the state joint local government account (SJLGA), until it hits the specific accounts of the local governments.

    On the face of it, the NFIU diktat has its own merits.  For one, governors over the years have been accused of itchy fingers, concerning local government monies; thereby allegedly diverting the money away from local government needs.

    For another, in this age of free-wheeling money laundering, the SJLGA could also be a ready and thriving pool for diverting money for grassroots welfare to less noble stuffs.  Plugging that loophole is not out of order, especially by a government that puts a lot of stress on fighting sleaze.

    Still, that would appear chasing the symptom; but leaving the real disease to fester.  That the SJLGA was created underscored the legal brick wall, of the Federal Government purporting to shovel cash direct to local governments.

    The Federal Government can’t pay allocations to constitutional nonentities – who local governments are in a federal set-up, because they are no federating units.  On what locus, then, would they receive the cash?

    Hence, the compromise state-local government joint account – a military ploy to work to a pre-determined answer.  But that came with its own instant peril: the states, not the centre, eventually controlled the money; as unfazed governors bossed the joint account, and determined who got what, to the shrill shriek of local government chairs!

    Yes, local governments are constitutional creations.  But the local governments are domiciled in states, not in any central enclave – as the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja – over which the Federal Government has any direct control.

    In real terms, therefore, the so-called “local government money” is money that belongs to the states.  This is because the local governments ought to be exclusive concerns of the state, which should reserve the right to increase or reduce their number, in line with administrative conveniences.

    Any contrary thinking is a legacy of the military era, when local governments and their creation became a tool of political patronage and punishment, thus complexifying otherwise simple stuff.  These are, however, bad legacies the democratic era must correct – and urgently too.

    The gamely NFIU, by its sensational guidelines, is entering the public space with a bang – a new sheriff is in town; and you had better take a dive!

    Still, beyond all the entry fire and fury, NFIU is faced with correcting two formidable flaws: the corruption of the federal process (by directly piping money to local governments from the central purse); and the corrupt act of governors, allegedly diverting – and misusing – local government revenue.

    The one is basic.  The other is secondary.  But the NFIU ought to know the secondary corruption emanated from the rupture of the federal principle, by the central government trying to bypass the states.  It was fated to chaos.

    So, what to do to correct the original flaw? Cancel these direct allocations; and pass whatever money is due to the 774 local governments to their respective states.  If you did that, the secondary corruption would vanish – and NFIU would have fulfilled its mandate without much ado.

    This first task – a constitutional amendment – is beyond the ken of NFIU.  That is the job of the political elite, prompting the National and State Assemblies.

    But NFIU, pressing its corruption-battling mandate, could devise financial protocols to make the governors accountable for such monies. That would be careful thinking, contrasted to what appears brash macho, of its May 6 financial directives, taking off on June 1.

    By these guidelines, President Muhammadu Buhari himself risks rebellion from the states, across party lines.  This is because the guidelines touch the very core of states’ administration; far deeper than partisan affiliations.

    Starting a corrective second term needs all the sobriety and concentration the polity can muster.  But this NFIU directive risks breaching all that.

    It is tantamount to throwing the proverbial red rag at the bull – and it is doubtful if the polity could withstand the raging states’ ire, in form of furious court suits, to come.

    Indeed, it is baiting a needless crisis.

  • PMB’s other triple minister

    Way back in November 2015, an online medium – Financial Nigeria – had described Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN as the triple-barrel minister in President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet. Such was the excitement over the multiple portfolios assigned to the former Lagos helmsman that few bothered to fact-check the claim hence its amplification by other mediums soon after. Then, it was perhaps sufficient that President Buhari was bringing on board, a star performer to oversee three ministries considered not only critical to any prospects of the nation’s recovery but one needing extremely capable tending hands given their history of underperformance.

    Of course, there is another triple minister. His name is Okechukwu Enelamah – the minister superintending over the triple portfolios of trade, industry and investment.  While few would argue that the appointment of Babatunde Fashola was anything but borne of the need to deliver quickly and efficiently given the dire situation in which the nation had found itself; and while it would take membership of the most enlightened of circles to appreciate the vital role of the triune in the development mix, the president would appear to have convinced himself of the need to have a minister with solid pedigree holding the reins in the three core areas. Today, only few still harbor doubts that the president made the right choice.

    Few Nigerians know that Enelamah actually started out as a medical doctor after acquiring a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1985.  He later took a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard University in 1994 where he was a Baker Scholar and Loeb Fellow. He became chartered accountant in 1992 and Chartered Financial Analyst in 1997. He was Audit Senior and Consultant at Arthur Anderson (now KPMG Professional Services), worked in the New York and London offices of Goldman Sachs in 1993 before joining Zephyr Management as an investment manager where he rose to Principal in the Johannesburg office between 1995 and 1997.  He founded African Capital Alliance (ACA), a private equity firm in 1997 where he served as CEO until his appointment.

    That was the man on whose shoulder the triple portfolios were thrust by President Muhammadu Buhari. To capture the challenge he faced is to appreciate the nation’s development odyssey starting from the dawn of independence when the nation grew what it consumed and consumed what it grew – to borrow a familiar cliché from the renowned poet, Niyi Osundare. That was when we had serious manufacturing going on. I am talking of an era when the Cadburys, the Nestles, the Dunlops and the Michelins and the Unilever –operated most profitably in the giant African sun. Until the oil boom – or doom – and the consumption binge it spawned came right up to the phase when money was not a problem but how to spend it.

    And then, the moment of awakening – the bust in commodity prices; the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the eighties that followed – which in addition to taking everything out of joint, culminated in the disorientation of the nation’s consumptive patterns and the criminal dependency that the nation is yet to recover from. An era when industrial capacity took a dive and bureaucracy, red tape and corruption went on ascent. And thanks to the ineptitude and lack of patriotism of our officials, an era when trade agreements became wonky affairs skewed in the interests of you-know-who!

    Of course, the nation still had the oil; and so long as this flowed, it made just enough to cover its imports. Because it had money to pay for imported tomato puree and assorted grains, it could afford to throw away hundreds of billions in post-harvest losses on the same commodities. We even allowed our four refineries to become obsolete after spending billions in so-called Turn Around Maintenances (TAMs). The same with the ports, it became sadly a mirror of how a country should never be run.

    Again, the story of poor infrastructure, weak and ineffective regulations and governance systems, all of which forced investors to take a walk – and the long but steady journey to de-industrialisation is today a global reference in poor policy choices.

    That, approximately, was where we were in 2015 when Enelamah came on board. That was the challenge he was brought in to tackle. Of course, in a country where service delivery has tended to be measured in roads, bridges and megawatts of power as indeed other tangible items – whether delivered or not – it is certainly no surprise that few Nigerians bothered to track the silent revolution in industrial, trade and investment fronts.

    Yet, while the jury may be out in terms of how far the ministry under his watch has fared, they are many positive things to talk about. For instance, we can talk about how in 2018, Nigeria, thanks to the Presidential Enabling Business Council (PEBEC), moved 24 places on the World Bank’s Doing Business report. In an environment where nothing is said to move, it is certainly no mean feat that the global banking institution finally found something good to say about the country’s strive for competitiveness. We can also talk about the easing of the procedures for business registrations, the new visa on arrival policy meant to remove the frustration faced by foreign investors seeking to come to Nigeria.

    If you thought that the average man on the street would think little of these mercy droplets resulting from the new thinking in the trade, industry and investment ministry, how about the key policy reforms in sugar, tomato, cassava, cotton-textile- garment and palm oil meant to curb the import of these commodities in favour of local sufficiency? What about the return of the export expansion grant – a policy designed to encourage exporters?

    Not too long ago, my colleague, Kunle Abimbola with whom I share this page wrote glowingly of the National Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP) under which the federal government would “set up special economic zones (SEZs) to boost industrial jobs, push growth, improve the industrial skills of Nigerians and accelerate industrial exports; thus making Nigeria a hub, to its immediate ECOWAS neighbours; and the rest of Africa, in processed goods”. By design, the SEZs are supposed to galvanize the government’s Operation MINE — Made in Nigeria Exports.

    Now, that to me is a sign of another new thinking and hard work in the ministry; none however compares to the cautious approach adopted by the ministry to the continent-wide free trade agreement – the so-called African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).  I have heard many describe AfCFTA as the next best thing since Adam Smith gave the world The Wealth of Nations.  That Enelamah and his team in the Federal Ministry of Trade, Industry and Investment would urge caution despite the enormous political pressures to jump on the AfCFTA bandwagon seem to me the ultimate proof of the fresh thinking needed in the ministry at this time and beyond.