The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Between Osun and Ekiti

    Ekiti Governor, Kayode Fayemi, gave a lament, at the May 13 launch of Federal Government’s home-grown school feeding programme, in the state.

    “Your Excellency,” he told Vice President Yemi Osunbajo, who was in Ado Ekiti for the flag-off, “my government paid significant attention to social investment initiatives in my first term in office.”

    “We had a social security benefit scheme for the elderly,” he recalled, “which paid a monthly stipend of N5, 000 and covered 25, 000 old people; a youth volunteer scheme, which paid a monthly stipend of N10, 000 and covered 10, 000 graduates; … food banks across the state that served a hot meal daily …”

    But then came the Ayo Fayose debacle, and everything crumbled: “All these programmes were jettisoned in the four-year interregnum that we spent out of office,” Dr. Fayemi rued, “and this significantly affected the quality of life in our state. Not only did we lose our number 1 position in school enrolment we were in the country in 2014,” he added, “we now occupy the last position in enrolment in the South West as at 2018.”

    All those well-thought out schemes, gone — at the roar of vacuous “stomach infrastructure”!

    Ekiti’s fate could easily have been Osun’s – no thanks to reckless electoral choices; primed by selfish and irresponsible elite, with near-absolute contempt for the wellness of the collective.

    That is why, with the courts now revalidating his mandate, Osun Governor, Gboyega Oyetola, should consolidate on the development agenda of the Aregbesola years; of which, the governor himself was part-implementer; as the former governor’s chief of staff, for the entire eight years.

    This counsel is for good reasons.  By a report in the May 8 issue of Business Day, Osun’s 10.3% is the lowest unemployment rate in the country.  The report quoted the latest National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) figures.  That was no accident.  It was result of years of punishing thinking and gruelling work.

    Osun’s figures best the South West’s 14% (the lowest in regional spread in the country); and certainly dwarf South-South’s 32% (the highest national unemployment figures, even with the Niger Delta awash with crude oil cash).

    Still, in unemployment figures, 10.3% is not the lowest Osun has posted.  In 2017, the NBS unemployment and underemployment report, for the year’s first quarter, give Osun’s unemployment rate at 5.3%.

    Back in 2010 – the Aregbesola governorship started in November that year – NBS gave Osun’s unemployment statistics as 17.2%.

    That 12% fall, between 2010 and 2017, accounted for taking 406, 305 people in the state off joblessness.  Besides, by the same NBS figures, Osun created 393, 962 full time jobs, thus increasing the number of the fully engaged from 1, 524, 312 (in 2010) to 1, 918, 274 (in 2017).

    Still, if the latest NBS figure is 10.3%; contrasted to 5.3% for the first quarter of 2017 – might the Osun push against unemployment then be faltering?  Perhaps; but that shows the new government cannot afford to take its eyes off the ball.

    That reinforces the advice to the Oyetola government to further consolidate the social infrastructure segment, of the state’s development agenda, of the last eight years.

    Even then, the blip and dip could be due to the electoral distraction of the past months.  The Osun elite, baiting and goading, forced a fearsome electoral impasse.  For a moment, the spectre of a dancing but empty governor loomed.  Other things being equal, that would have completely drained Osun, of its eight-year gains.

    The Court of Appeal verdict, on the gubernatorial dispute, has somewhat reestablished some stability, pending the final stop at the Supreme Court.  It however shows how easily a state on the mend could take a knock; and return to old vegetative ways.

    That is one danger that must be avoided at all cost; and it would have been nice if the Osun political elite, even with their fierce progressive-conservative divide, could forge a consensus to put the people first – above gilt-edge elite privileges; that however put the majority in ruins.  But alas!

    People first — that would appear the simple but clear thinking behind Osun’s current social protection and social investment programmes, which have done much to lift the majority, driven by the following concepts: banish hunger, banish poverty, banish unemployment, promote healthy living, promote functional education and promote communal peace and progress.

    It’s early days yet – even after eight years and counting – but these Osun social infrastructure policies could well pass as the most transformational, since the old Western Region of Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

    During the Awo era, elite opposition came in form of nasty anti-taxation campaigns.  That made the Awolowo government to lose the first federal election, after the 1955 introduction of the epochal free primary education programme.

    During the Aregbesola governorship, it came in form of vicious media propaganda, headlined by the salary crisis; and charges of phantom “Islamization”, all targeted at diverting attention from real development going on, in a state that had been prostrate for too long.   That drove the Oyetola election into a hideous stalemate.

    But even with a lean purse, the Osun human development stats have been impressive: In 2013, with figures from the UNDP Human Development Index Report 2015, Osun’s human development index (HDI) was 0.4938, the 9th highest in Nigeria, despite not being among the Top 9 drawers from the federal purse.

    Three years later in 2016, despite a crippling recession in the Nigerian economy, the Osun HDI had notched up to 0.5123, according to UNDP/NBS figures, released in October 2018.

    So, whereas media headlines feasted on “hafsa” (half-salary) and allied banalities, suggesting some contrived economic meltdown, the glorious reverse was the case.

    Osun was on its way to becoming a model in citizen equity, judged by how state resources ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest number, to use the immortal words of Jeremy Bentham.

    That much was validated by Osun’s low misery index – the second out of Nigeria’s 36 states – for 2017.  According to figures compiled by Financial Derivatives Company Ltd, a Lagos research firm, the figure was 35.56%

    That means specific programmes like O’Meals (schools feeding programme), OYES (the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme), which apart from its 8, 000 cadet-volunteers, has also trained Osun graduates and non-graduates in specific skills; and O-REHAB, aimed at the mentally challenged and the destitute, have had a great impact on the majority.  Yet, these are programmes the political elite pooh-pooh.

    Osun is clearly on the mend.  But it is early days.

    That is why Governor Oyetola will do well to stick to the development charter of the past eight years.  With 12 cumulative years of those people-centric policies, Osun would surely be a state to beat.

    What is more?  Its purse might not be so lean.

  • Exclusion of majority

    The anger in her voice, as she relayed a 47 years personal experience of male chauvinism, was as foreboding as the cultural exclusion of women, who form 52 per cent of the working-age population, from self-actualisation, in most part of northern Nigeria. Luckily, unlike the aridity of the region, the air conditioner of the SUV she was driving towards the Milliken Hill, in Enugu, was chilling. Dr Cecilia Okafor, a political scientist and retired senior lecturer at the Enugu State University of Technology, was not given to anger easily, but there she was, a stealth volcano.

    It was Milliken Hill that brought back the memory. Many, including our father (1972) had accidentally plunged into the deep gorge, over the years. So, I was scared the ghost of the man, who made her angry at that trying period, may yet get at us, because driving through Milliken Hill required a calm disposition, just like walking on a handless rail, across a river. But soon enough, my apprehension was satiated, as I beheld the new Milliken Hill.

    Thanks to Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, the Milliken Hill road has become safer than the dilapidated alternative expressway, from Enugu to 9th Mile Corner. Since late 1970’s, when I became conscious of the Milliken Hill, the road was the most fearful four kilometre drive, one can ever make. Driving towards Ngwo, the roughly five-metres-wide road, is a fortified several-metres-high-wall on the left side – bearing down on motorists. While on the right, is hundreds-of-metres-deep-gorge, too fearful to look into, even while in a car.

    Soon enough, I saw why other passengers were relaxed, even as Dr. Okafor recalled the family tragedy and her pitiable experience. The government of Governor Ugwuanyi had ingeniously built a concrete fortification throughout the gully side of the road, with street lamps to aid night drive. So, as she narrated her story, I was inwardly remonstrating the cultural tragedy that has made majority of women in northern Nigeria uneducated and redundant.

    By United Nation’s estimate, the population of our country as at May 6 is 200,127,092, equivalent of 2.6 per cent of the world population, ranking number seven. By 2050, Nigeria would become the 3rd most populous country, with an estimated population of 410,637,888. Of note, majority of the humongous population will be in northern Nigeria.

    Tragically, that part of the country is lagging behind in education, not to talk of the cultural inhibition restraining women, who form a higher percentage of the working-age bracket, 15-64, from work and industry. According to The Guardian publication in 2017, the states of the northeast, northwest and north-central have majority of those who can neither read nor write. Amongst the laggards, Yobe State, one of the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency, had only 7.23 per cent, the lowest literacy level in Nigeria.

    Zamfara had 19.16, Kastina 10.36, Sokoto 15.01, Bauchi 19.26, Kebbi 20.51, Niger 22.88, per cents; while Taraba had 72 per cent as at 2017. Conversely, Imo State had the highest literacy level in Nigeria, at 96.43 per cent, while Lagos had 96.30, Ekiti 95.79, Rivers 95.76, Abia 94.24, Anambra 92.11, Osun 90.53, Enugu 89.46 and Cross River 89 per cents. Tragically, the situation since then had become even more precarious, with more states gradually becoming ungovernable. So, invariably, the illiteracy stats would get worse unless the security situation improves drastically.

    To make the already educationally disadvantaged states worse off, it is mainly in these states that the archaic cultural inhibition that puts majority of women in some form of restriction, estopping them from educational and economic activities, is still allowed by the government. According to The Guardian report, the states have received trillions of naira from the federation account over the years, with little to show for it.

    Indeed, Nigeria professes a universal basic education, which on paper means “free, universal and compulsory basic education for every Nigerian child aged 6-15 years.” That programme was launched in 1999, by the federal government, and it got a legal backing with the passage of Universal Basic Education Act in 2004. Yet, as at 2017, 18 years after the programme was launched, the northern states show such abysmal literacy level.

    Again, section 18(3) of the 1999  constitution as amended, eloquently provides: “Government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy, and to this end government shall as and when practicable provide: free compulsory and universal primary education, free university education, and free adult literacy programme.” As Dr Cecilia Okafor, superbly navigated the sometimes 300 degrees turn and twists of the Milliken Hill, in Enugu, where the vehicle carrying her father plunged into, in 1972, I was lost in thought at lost opportunities for the northern girl-child.

    Sensing the guilty patch on faces of the men in the vehicle, the other lady in the car, Justina Offor, threw in a cold relief. “Ogbueshu, (ie Prof Rich Okafor – Dr Cecilia’s husband), this car’s air conditioner is superb.” Thank you my dear, the Prof replied, I enjoy it most, each time I have the privilege of being chauffeured by Cecilia my wife. “Justina I hope you are listening” threw in Frank Offor, one of the other men.

    Cecilia’s story of exclusion mirrors the misfortune of women who are prevented from work and self-actualisation, even as men have proved inadequate as providers. This was barely two years after the Nigerian civil war, and though her father had a property in Enugu, nobody was living in the straggled building, so she had to go to the village, to wash the bandages, used to tend the broken leg of her father, from the Milliken Hill accident.

    “How could that man be so malicious and insensitive to my family tragedy, to order me to get out of sight, even when he saw the tons of bandage I was spreading”, she queried? Instead, “he accused me of hoping to catch a glimpse of the masquerade” as Imezi Owa celebrated Ogugochi. If she could lay a charge, the man would be charged for being contemptuous of women and for foolishly ordering her to be redundant, despite the burning urgency to save her father’s life.

    The ceremony Cecilia was driving to, was not gender discriminatory. We were journeying to Egede in Udi Local Government, for the continuation of the marriage ceremonies of Obudumma and Chibuko Ukeje. It was an occasion for Mrs Ngozi Tagbo, of Ezema Owa, the wife of late Nick Tagbo, (business mogul and political juggernaut) to give her enchantingly beautiful daughter, to the son of Dr Stan Ukeje of Central Bank of Nigeria and his amiable wife, in a three days grandiose ceremony, full of pomp and pageantry.

  • What will Baba tell Awo?

    Chief Ayo Adebanjo wondered, to The Guardian of April 21, how Baba Ayo Fasanmi would face Chief Obafemi Awolowo?

    He claimed Senator Fasanmi, an Action Group (AG) “firebrand” of yore, had lost his Awoist verve.

    Still, God sparing his life for many years yet, what would Baba Adebanjo himself tell Awo?

    That after all his Not My Will heroics, against author Olusegun Obasanjo, for his rude anti-Awo remarks in that book, Baba Adebanjo in 2019 merrily queued behind the same Chief Obasanjo, for nothing more than an electoral gambit that pitiably crumbled?

    That if Baba Fasanmi deserved the hottest corner of the Awoist hell, for supporting Muhammadu Buhari, a “Fulani who refused to be exposed” for president; Baba Adebanjo has earned the most blissful of Awoist paradise, for supporting the same Buhari, for whatever reason, in 2007?

    That Baba Adebanjo would push Afenifere, on blind Yoruba sentiments, to near-political harakiri on Obasanjo’s account in 2003; but would grudge the Fulani, allegedly on those same ethnic grounds, from protecting their own Buhari in 2019?  How would the ever-logical Awo take to that?

    And horror of horrors!  That aside being underneath the sheets with Chief Obasanjo, the great Yoruba prodigal, Baba Adebanjo would crow to Awo, how he deployed Afenifere, Awo’s puritanical legacy, as uncompromising pre-court bluff, for Atiku Abubakar!

    The same Atiku who, as Obasanjo’s vice president, publicly brawled with his boss over personal lollies; not over high principles of state?  Wouldn’t Awo have dismissed such as “ojelu” (political parasites) and not “oselu” (politicians), in that devastating Awo pun?

    Yeah, in 2007, Atiku was the presidential candidate of the Action Congress (AC), the party that Baba Bisi Akande chaired; and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu led.

    Ay!  But didn’t Baba Adebanjo already dismiss both Akande and Tinubu as infidels, in his exclusive conclave of holy progressives?

    Yet, in 2007, Adebanjo worked for Buhari (new devil) while Akande/Tinubu worked for Atiku (new saint)!

    Perhaps, zealots and infidels once co-mingled in Baba Adebanjo’s impassioned cosmos of iron-clad saints and sinners!

    All these contradictions just highlight the clear danger of canonizing self and demonizing others, dead or alive; in the rabid piling of cards to sway an argument.  That does grave harm to the integrity — and even utility — of public discourse.

    Besides, tarring personal opponents (most times, in tactics and strategies, not even on core principles), as Yoruba traitors (as Baba Adebanjo did in his The Guardian interview) is rich.

    But even more dangerous: for ideological differences, no matter how sharp, dubbing the Fulani as “Yoruba enemies” (as Baba Femi Okurounmu, another Afenifere elder did, in another interview with The Punch, some two years ago.)

    The formidable Yoruba progressive mainstream (that Chief Adebanjo and Senator Okunroumu seized to inflict their respective ”fatwas”, issued from the titanic battle Chief Awolowo fought against the Hausa-Fulani political forces of his day.

    Sure, Awo had the earliest reversals: the Western Region got the Midwest chopped out of it; while his northern and eastern traducers kept, intact, their respective regions.  He was also gaoled for charges of treasonable felony, a setback that suggested Awo’s dazzling political star would set at noon.

    Even then, before he died, Awo triumphed over his foes.  The first coup, even in his absence, silenced his national enemies; and sentenced his Yoruba traducers, and their offspring, as political pariahs, if not outright lepers.

    The second coup rocketed Awo up to the near-apex of state, under Gen. Yakubu Gowon, as highest-ranked civilian.  Were Awo as ideologically flexible as Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, his great political rival, Awo would have embraced, for personal short-term pleasure, Zik’s “diarchy” — a doctrine of military-civilian cohabitation for political power.

    But even the victory Awo never wrought while alive, he commanded after death; with the sheer rigour of his thinking.

    Proof?  About everyone — friend, foe or neither — is buying into “restructuring”; a tie-back to the federalism he enunciated, as far back as 1947, in his Path to Nigerian Freedom.

    It’s the making of the greatest thinker of his era — and perhaps, up till now.  So, if Awo had fought and won all of his wars, why does Baba Adebanjo’s faction of Afenifere always scald everyone, that disagrees with them, with Awoist puritanical blackmail?

    Perhaps it’s the tragic snare of the ideologue, matched against the uneasy perch of the pragmatic?

    The Afenifere grandees, unable to stay relevant in the fast changing political dynamics, cling to old Awo-era tactics, hoping that conjuring up Yoruba-Fulani ethnic bogey would whip everyone into line.

    But the potency or otherwise of that bulldog tactic appears clear.  While the Adebanjo faction wilts by the day, the other blocs: Tinubu/Akande progressives and Hon. Wale Oshun-chaired Afenifere Renewal Group (which Baba trenchantly dubs Afenifere Rebel Group, ARG), appear luxuriating.

    So, does the rival Baba Fasanmi Afenifere “Areopagus” — perhaps stung from quietude, to call the bluff of the Adebanjo faction, especially its excesses, in the name of Awo?

    Well, are all these the wide and merry way that leads to Awoist perdition — as Baba hints in his doomsday interviews?   Or are they the triumph of the progressive, as flexible pragmatic; over the progressive, as fixated ideologue?

    Pragmatism trumping fixation appears Baba Adebanjo’s main grouse with Tinubu’s APC (with Oshun’s ARG and Fasanmi’s Afenifere faction), over their ruling alliance with President Buhari.

    Still, how do you decry Fulani supremacy, yet project Yoruba irredentism?  Strip the Adebanjo group’s “restructuring” campaign of its media fizz and blitz, and its incubus: “I’m more Yoruba than you!” blinds you, with all its arrogant flash!

    Pray, how does haughty ethnic projection help anybody in a fractious polity?

    But even as cavalier Awoist puritanism masks this most swashbuckling ethnic arrogance, Awo’s grandson-in-law, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, is busy with PMB – the Fulani “feudalist” – planting pro-people and pro-poor policies, in the Nigerian national space: schools feeding programme; Tradermoni and Marketmoni (state credit for the humblest of traders); and conditional cash transfer, to the poorest citizens nationwide.

    These are classic progressive policies that would have warmed Awo’s heart.  Yet the dire verdict from Chief Adebanjo: PYO is “a disgrace” and a “dishonest intellectual”!  The thing though is, spite hardly vitiates the sweetness of honey!

    Afenifere, with all its media loudness, appears unaware of this apocryphal quote, credited to Gen. Gowon: I respect my elders but don’t fear them, for I already know what they can do.  My mates?  We can take care of ourselves.  But those coming after me?  Now, those are the ones I fear!  You never know the heights they’d scale!

    Perhaps with a little elderly humility, the Afenifere would realize why their ranks are thinning out.

    Maybe then, they’d appreciate why the ARG are less apostates to be crushed – as if the grandees could! – but only the natural inheritors of the Awoist legacy; without the ancestral poison of old.

  • Onnoghen: A postscript

    This piece is not about former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen, per se — and for two good reasons.

    First, the man has appealed his Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) conviction.  After a rash of immediate post-verdict comments, fairness demands everything be put on hold, until the higher courts concur or demur.

    Secondly, decency and good breeding demand you don’t kick a man already down.  It’s simple compassionate humanity, given the heights the former CJN had crashed from.

    But the rather puerile manner the Nigerian Christian Elders Forum (NCEF) tries to rationalize the Onnoghen conviction should well and truly alarm everyone.

    Ironically, both Onnoghen and NCEF are frightening symbols of contemporary Nigeria, perhaps in its worst-ever decadence.

    Onnoghen’s symbolism of rot has more to do with the shocking vanishing of honour in Nigeria’s public space; and less with law, even if the putrescence of our laws and lawyers — “lawyers” used in the widest generic form, to capture both the Bar and the Bench — is damning enough.

    An accused Onnoghen, head of the sacred Judiciary, ruins the critical code of a saintly conclave, come to bring to heel the rest of us.

    A convicted Onnoghen completely shatters all of that myth.

    Napoleon Bonaparte declared the throne no more than a bench covered with damask.  Our own Fela, the ultimate iconoclast, in the ultimate putdown, to the uppity Nigerian military: uniform na khaki, na tailor de sew am — and that, at the apex of their swashbuckling power!

    Perhaps a throne can soak such slur and reform itself?  Incidentally, the French monarchy never did.  Perhaps a political military could brush it aside, and still continue to corral power – another impossibility the Nigerian military learned the hard way!

    But no civilized society survives a debauched Judiciary without baiting anarchy.  That is the full and unvarnished tragedy of Onnoghen’s terrible judicial pass.

    But that puts, even in bolder relief, the greater danger of a critical moral centre, deodourizing such grave moral stink; because it plays the politics of ethnic hate and jaundiced faith.

    That is the unpardonable crime NCEF has committed on the Onnoghen question, when it suggested, in an infamous statement, that the troubled former CJN was removed by Fulani “stealth” — whatever that means!

    But then, the NCEF outburst would appear to climax the moral free-fall of Christendom Nigeria, as a moral force, in the anti-sleaze war, with all its un-Christian manoeuvres, unleashed on the political front.

    Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, fired the first salvo in 2015, when he pointedly told Nigerians to forget the nation-threatening sleaze of the Jonathan era and “move on”.

    True, he drew terrible flak from irate compatriots, shocked at the ringing illogic — not to add, the crippling immorality — of such a call.

    That was because it came from a distinguished scholar-priest; whose rippling logic and severe moral code ought to strike a hard blow for probity and public morality.

    But Kukah’s call would appear a Freudian slip.  Though no one gave it an official seal, the People’s Democratic Party’s bathetic campaign of 2015 was nothing but an emotive Christian-versus-Muslim sympathy-seeking stunt.

    Remember the “Janjaweed” quip, in regard to the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), by Femi Fani-Kayode, President Goodluck Jonathan’s chief campaign spokesperson?

    Father Kukah probably regarded Jonathan the closet “Christian” candidate.  After a drubbing by the “Muslim” one, the electorally vanquished sure deserved some post-defeat veneration, in holy sentiments.

    Well, if that was the case, it back-fired big time!

    Nonetheless, Kukah’s screeching whistle kicked off a virtual political match, in which leading lights of Nigerian Christendom would unleash, on the Muhammadu Buhari presidency if not outright on his person, personal bile cleverly pushed as Christian holy rile, to scam the gullible faithful.

    One of such has been Winners’ Chapel Presiding Bishop, Bishop David Oyedepo, and his periodic wail, against PMB and his government.

    In one of such, he got so worked up, over a mere satire.  That grand gaffe became a grand embarrassment to Nigerian Christendom — and Oyedepo himself, the butt of jokes.

    Prof. Olatunji Dare, celebrated columnist of The Nation, had satirized the hare-brained joke, that PMB was some cloned “Jubril” from Sudan.

    Like boiling ocean waves, the satire drove up the holy bishop’s darkest id (to borrow the language of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis) — burying all his inhibiting ego and super ego; consuming his entire priestly restraints.

    Right there on the sacred pulpit, the triumphant bishop, bristling with holy rage, read out the entire satire to the cheering faithful; passing it out as concrete facts, to bury his quarry.  But alas, everything blew in his face!

    It was perhaps God Himself confounding the wise!  In Oyedepo, the hunter suddenly turned the hunted — for who would save, from the biting jokes to come, the chancellor of a thriving private university, who nevertheless couldn’t understand simple satire?

    Indeed, God would not be mocked!

    Perhaps that realization – that God would not be mocked – pushed the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Nigeria’s apex Christian body, to some post-poll detente, of congratulating PMB on his re-election.   CAN itself had had its own fair share of pre-poll theatrics and rascality.

    But CAN’s possible morphing from Saul to Paul, after the blinding flash en route to political Damascus, NCEF won’t hear of; accusing CAN of some alleged sell-out!

    Which is why the CAN-NCEF tiff could well be likened to a contemporary equivalent of the Biblical Tower of Babel, when Jehovah scatter the tongues; and planted confusion, among a lobby locked in an illicit task.

    Both CAN and NCEF have wilfullly refused to press themselves into service, when their nation faced the most lethal moral crisis, opting to play instead some political hanky-panky.

    On that account, however, the Solomon Asemota (SAN)-chaired NCEF has become the most virulent; and the latest proof, aside from its sickening reading of “Jihad” and “Islamization” into everything, is its rather silly rationalization of the Onnoghen mess.

    Besides, NCEF’s emotive activism appears bereft of any strategic thinking.  If NCEF piles up so much bile and hate, against the “Fulani-Muslim rulers” of its troubled imagination, can its preferred “Christian” future rulers withstand future rabid Muslim bile?

    Where does that then lead the polity?  To Mogadishu or even Kigali, some vile killing fields, resulting from mutual faith intolerance?  And to think most of these elders could well be gone, when their present ill wind breeds the whirlwind!

    NCEF is, indeed, manifesting political rascality instead of the Christ-like propriety its name demands.  It’s high time, therefore, it changed tack.

    Still, NCEF is only a symptom.  The real disease is Nigerian Christendom, fleeing from battle, when the country sorely needs its corrective ammo, to survive a moral ruin.

    But history would dust its sandals, as dire evidence against the present Nigerian Christian order, for its epochal abandonment; just as Christ instructed the early disciples, against the willfully unreceptive to the gospel.

  • Inquisitorial vs. adversarial legal system (2)

    To effectively deal with the challenges faced by our criminal justice system, we must determine whether the adversarial legal system we practice meets the end of justice for our country. If it does not, we must take the bull by the horn, and replace the adversarial system with a better system. After all, at independence, we inherited the parliamentary system of government, but presently we practice the presidential system. Again, we moved from the monarchical to republic system, within three years of flag independence in 1960.

    In my view, the peculiar challenges of the adversarial legal system, has aided corrupt practices by ‘the rich’, instead of fighting the menacing scourge, because of our level of development. It has also subjugated the ‘poor man’ who cannot afford the huge cost associated with hiring qualified lawyers to offer robust defence in criminal trials, to suffer untowardly. Unfortunately, most of those who suffer prolonged detention even when granted bail are unable to meet the onerous bail conditions while awaiting trial. In an inquisitorial system, the judge or magistrate after an enquiry is entitled to deal with the case summarily, and bring justice to the parties.

    But under our adversarial system because the law presumes the accused innocent even when the facts evidencing guilt is glaring; the ‘poor man’ joins the ‘rich man’ to take advantage of the omnibus constitutional provision and plead ‘not guilty’ only to find himself in a kind of legal limbo when he is unable to pay a competent lawyer to pursue the case proffered against him to a logical conclusion. Having pleaded not guilty, the magistrate or judge can only convict or discharge the accused person after the prosecution and defendant have fully exhausted their legally allowable opportunities as adversaries.

    Of course, the trial in an adversarial system is usually laden with technical landmines, which the ‘big man’ exploits maximally. As defined by Wikipedia: “the adversarial system or adversary system is a legal system used in the common law countries where two advocates represent their parties’ case or position before an impartial person or group of people, usually a jury or judge, who attempt to determine the truth and pass judgment accordingly.”

    The challenge in the adversarial system would have been manageable if the judge or jury has the legal cover to ask questions, sift the grain from the chaff, and call persons or evidence which could help unearth the truth or engage in such other enquiries that will be beneficial to determine the veracity of the evidence presented. But the judge cannot. He is shackled by legal limitation to remain reasonably aloof even when the prosecutor is goofing.

    The judge must act as blind as a bat to any extraneous information or knowledge of the honesty or guilt of the accused, as he is bound to rely solely on the presentations made at the trial. Hypothetically, even if the judge or magistrate saw the accused committing the offence, or comes to that conclusion based on incontrovertible facts outside what the prosecutor is able to muster during trial, the judge is estopped from applying that knowledge in coming to a decision.

    While the above scenario aids the ‘big man’ who is able to hire a battery of lawyers and legal consultants to bamboozle booth the judge and the prosecutor, it however subdues the ‘poor man’ who cannot afford a lawyer and who also cannot rely on an investigation conducted by the judge or magistrate to gain an acquittal. As argued by learned author Andrew Perkins, the adversarial system: “empowers the parties to the dispute to take control of their own case on the basis that they (as opposed to a judge)  are better placed to present their best case.”

    In advanced countries, where the prosecution has developed the forensic capacity to gather and present evidence, the prosecutor is well equipped to confront the ‘big man’ in the legal tangle. But in developing counties, which unfortunately have higher propensity for corrupt practices, the lack of capacity by the prosecutor becomes a form of albatross, and thereby turns the criminal justice system into a huge joke, in many instances.

    In search of solution to the challenge posed by our inefficient legal system, President Muhammadu Buhari at the recent workshop for judges by PACAC and NJI, urged the judiciary “to come up with an integrated approach that balances process and substance, promote clarity to ensure a coherent and realistic formulation of objectives.” On his own part former president made his famous suggestion that the federal government should hire ‘ogbologbo lawyers’ to counter the highly skilled lawyers employed by the ‘big man’ to give the state a blue eye.

    At the lower rung of the criminal justice ladder, the tragedy is that being unable to hire a lawyer to defend him in court, the ‘poor man’ can easily be forgotten in jail while awaiting trial. In some instances, the case file gets missing, and the alleged offence committed by a prolonged detainee could become a conjecture even for the state prosecutor. According to a media report obtained from the Nigeria Prison Services in 2018: “the total inmate population in Nigeria Prisons stands at 73, 631, and of that number, 50, 159, which represent 68 per cent are awaiting trial.”

    With the number of prolonged awaiting trial men turning a national embarrassment, the judiciary has been called upon to decongest the prisons. In August 2017, the Attorney General and Minister for Justice Abubakar Malami promised that within two years the federal government will decongest the prisons. Save for the touted Virtual Automated Case Management System (V-ACMS) which the ministry has procured to aid collation of data of prison inmates, the prisons are still stuffed with prolonged awaiting trial inmates.

    On the other hand, quite a huge number of politically exposed high profile accused persons who have been in court for donkey years on charges of corruption, are rubbing the inefficiency of the criminal justice system into our national psyche, as they audaciously get elected into important political offices, while awaiting their own trial. Learned author Andrew Perkins capture the unfairness when he wrote: “in the adversarial legal system in situations where the parties do not have ‘equality of arms’; a better resourced party may be more able to gather evidence and present a stronger case to the judge than their opposition.”

    Of course, the inquisitorial system has its own challenges, which includes that the judge having participated in the investigation may be biased during trial. So, to better appreciate the fundamental changes our criminal justice system needs, relevant authorities should understudy the advantages and disadvantages of the two legal systems, to choose the way to follow.

  • Pity IGP Mohammed

    Although meant to address a problem that is at best tangential, it is difficult not to find sympathy forthe directive issued by the acting Inspector General of Police Adamu Mohammed at the maiden conference of Heads of Nigeria Police Medical Facilities held at the Force Headquarters, Abuja last week. Convinced that the 12-hour, two-shift work structure currently in place is terribly enervating as it is, Mohammed caused a reversal to the traditional eight-hour, three-shift standard.

    To him, this will not only improve the psychological disposition of our policemen but have the potential to curb the incessant cases of abuse of firearms by policemen on duty.

    Here is what he said: “Indeed, arguments have been raised that the resonating incidents of misuse of firearms and extra-judicial actions by police personnel often result directly from work-related stress and emotional conditions which disorient their rationality.

    “In consideration of this, I have ordered that with immediate effect, the shift duty structure of the Nigeria Police which is currently a 12-hour, two-shift system be reverted to the traditional eight-hour, three-shift standard.

    “This directive is specifically informed by the need to address a major, age-long occupational stress which long hours of duty engenders among personnel in the Nigeria Police Force and which occasions depression and abuse of power and other unprofessional conduct.

    “For purpose of clarity, henceforth, no police personnel should be made to perform any duty exceeding eight hours within a space of 24 hours unless there is a local or national emergency.”

    Although the background to the directive obviously is the embarrassing rate at which policemen resort to lethal arms even where emergencies are neither indicated nor their use justified, the measure seems to yours truly as coming late in the day. Indeed, whereas two cases – the killing of the 36-year-old father of one, Kolade Johnson, in Lagos on Sunday, March 31; and the felling of the 20-year-old Ada Ifeanyi by police guns barely three weeks after on Saturday, April 13, would appear the tipping point, such terrible incidences, it must be said, did not start then nor has ended as many licenced murders have since been added to the ever growing list from different parts of the country. The second reason it is coming late in the day is that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has, as far back as early 19th century recognized that working excessive hours posed a danger to workers’ health and to their families. Specifically, both the Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 (No. 1) and the Hours of Work (Commerce and Offices) Convention, 1930 (No. 30) set the general standard at 48 regular hours of work per week, with a maximum of eight hours per day.

    In the United Kingdom for instance, full-time police officers do an average of 40 duty hours per week, in eight hour shifts – although emergency call-outs are a regular feature of the job with provisions for overtime which are paid at a higher rate.

    Needless to state that IGP Mohammed sees the reduction of the shift duty hours from 12 to eight as having the potential to reduce work-related stress– a major factor he sees as predisposing the men on patrol to unlawful use of firearms.

    Not everyone, to be sure, will agree with the IGP on his diagnosis. With emotions still raw and running over some of the more recent cases, it seems likely that many will see the interjection by the IGP as no more than the usual attempt to either rationalise or to pass off the actions of those delinquent few. Among the latter is Abubakar Tsav, one-time Lagos Police Commissioner.  On one plain, he sees the problem as borne of lack of supervision: “If they supervised the people very well, extra-judicial killings would not have been an issue in the country”.

    Really? What manner of supervision would avail in circumstances when the man wielding the gun is no longer in charge of his faculties due to stress factors in the environment?

    More ludicrously, Tsav would in equal measure argue: “I disagree that stress is responsible. What kind of stress would make someone cock his gun and pull the trigger to shoot someone? Before shooting, a gun would be cocked after which safety catch would be applied to make the gun not to shoot”.

    Such views, like those pushing them, obviously belong in the past.

    To former IGP Solomon Arase,the new shift arrangement is not necessarily bad except that additional personnel – he projects 300,000 men –will beneeded.

    A reasonable question in the circumstance is whether Nigerians have been fair to these men charged with the thankless job of keeping the rest of us safe. Today, we have barely 350,000 men to police a country menacingly approaching the 200 million population mark and this at a time when issues of banditry, kidnapping and other high tech criminalities have become the order of the day. Of this,  nearly a third is effectively out of mainstream policing duties, engaged sometimes as bodyguards or body-bags depending on time and circumstances, by privileged officials and the moneyed class. Aside a police force so thoroughly overworked and overwhelmed to the point of being dehumanised – hence a danger to society – we have what in the nation’s budgetary lingo is referred to as envelop system that denies every segment of the public service the critical funds needed to justify their rationale. This is where we must thank states like Lagos, Oyo and Osun for devising creative, institutional mechanism to assist the police in their job of maintaining security.

    Now, it is given that the Nigerian Police is corrupt. Some will go as far as to say that the force is irredeemable.  I will agree that the force is irredeemable not because it is incapable of being salvaged but because the so-called midwives of change have no clues about how to salvage a critical national institution. The truth is  that the police is not any worse than your local electricity distribution company that would, on the one hand, deny you value for your money’s worth while at the same time insisting on preying on your helplessness for gain on the other.

    It’s been said countless times that the country’s police- citizen ratio falls below the UN prescription of 1:400 and that the country would require a doubling of the strength to achieve this threshold. The problem is that policemen are not picked on the streets as one might, for instance, do for a daily paid labour. He would need to be trained at the police college which at the current capacity can take no more than 10,000 cadet recruits for the nine-month long training required. That is assuming that the glorified pig-sties still have something to offer them. That simply means waiting for more than three decades to bridge the gaps to make IGP’s prescription truly work. We are not talking of investment in world-class infrastructure without which modern policing is nigh impossible.

    Does anyone see why stress is the other name for the Nigerian Police; the very reason we should pity IGP Mohammed?

  • No compromise on MINE

    The dawn of SAP (structural adjustment programme) clearly de-industrialized Nigeria. That was April 1986.

    Thirty-three years later, SAP is deep grave for Nigerian industries; down from the earliest agro-allied feats, by the coastal industrial agro-processing belts, of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Western Region of Nigeria.

    Still, 2017 may yet signal Nigeria’s re-industrialization.  In April 2017 too, President Muhammadu Buhari launched the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), 2017-2020.

    It’s a medium-term road map, with sectorial baskets such as agriculture and food security; industrialization and social investment; energy and transport infrastructure.  Under the ERGP, re-industrialization has a special place.

    To implement the National Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP), the Federal Government would set up special economic zones (SEZs) to boost basically 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.

    If that plan works — and there is no reason why it shouldn’t — manufacturing’s contribution to Nigeria’s GDP should peak at 20 per cent by 2029.

    The SEZs are supposed to galvanize the government’s Operation MINE — Made in Nigeria Exports.

    But a turf war between NEPZA, the SEZs regulatory agency; and NSEZCO, the government’s special purpose vehicle (SPV) to drive MINE, might just scuttle all that.

    That bruising war isn’t made easier, because it would appeaar a civil war between deep-rooted vested interests.

    Still, that war must be crushed; and both NEPZA and NSEZCO duly told the limit of their respective powers, even as both act, as checks and balances, on each other.

    Nothing must hinder the delivery of Project MINE, as it were, a national economic emergency. It holds the key to Nigeria’s re-industrialization, without which mass misery will continue to linger, with devastating consequences.

    NEPZA is the Nigerian Export Processing Zone Authority. NSEZCO is the Nigerian SEZ Investment Company Ltd.

    NEPZA is the regulator for SEZ activities; and has been around since Nigeria’s first SEZ birthed in 1992.  Its legal plank was Act No. 63 of 1992.  Its mandate: the government agency, to license and regulate economic free trade zones.

    NSEZCO, on the other hand, is a new kid on the block; registered as a limited liability company, at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), under the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 2004, on 12 June 2018.

    NSEZCO’s mandate is to serve as holding company, warehousing the Nigerian government’s 25 per cent stake, while other international institutional and business co-investors, interested in Nigeria’s various SEZs, can lap up the remaining 75 per cent.

    It’s a public-private sector joint investment paradigm, along the model of the hugely successful Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) venture, with the Nigerian government having even less stake: 25 per cent (NLNG is 49 per cent).

    In other words, it is the prime facilitator of Project MINE.  The project’s success — or failure — therefore rests on its young shoulders.

    Still, between regulator and facilitator, there are bound to be turf wars.  Indeed, among government agencies in a modern state, with growing sophistication and numerous links, turf wars come with the territory.

    Which was why the NEPZA did well by approaching the federal Attorney General and minister of Justice, to clear the legal grey areas, on the working relationship between NEPZA and NSEZCO.

    The AG’s advisory bears a fulsome quote: “The presidential Initiative on SEZs to drive national economic growth, the provision of funds in the 2017 and 2018 Appropriation Acts domiciled in NEPZA, and the Corrigendum of the National Assembly by the letter of 23rd November, 2018 in favour of NSEZCO,” he warned “should not be frustrated by NEPZA, in seeking to retain such funds on technical interpretation of the NEPZA Act.”

    The minister continued: “NEPZA should not be found working against the purpose and direction of the policy of this Administration which has not violated any extant law. Consequently,” he added, “the funds domiciled in NEPZA should be released to NSEZCO to enable her utilize same for the Presidential Initiative.”

    That ought to have settled it all, for it would appear clear, from the AG’s submission, that the N14.3 billion, which the NEPZA lobby was trying to retain was, ab initio, put in its kitty in error.

    But perhaps it wasn’t exactly pure error?  Perhaps it was error NEPZA induced by wilful parliamentary lobby; thus misleading the parliament on budgetary appropriation, as Bernard Okri, president of the Global Economic Policy Initiative (GEPIn), alleged in a chat with the media at Asaba, Delta State?

    But even if that were so, where was the NSEZCO lobby, with its critical sponsors: the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (which supervises the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority, NSIA); and the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment (FMITI), which gives policy guidelines to strategic partners, in the MINE project, like African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), Bank of Industries Ltd (BOI), Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) and African Development Bank (AfDB)?

    Snoozing in bliss, while NEPZA made illicit hay? NSEZCO should have done far better, since parliamentary lobbying is legit democratic endeavour.  Besides, the N14.3 billion in question is its virtual take-off and seed investment grant.

    With NSEZCO suffering a still birth — which could well be, if this controversy is not quickly resolved in its favour — other international private investors, which commitment to MINE is contingent on the model that birthed NSEZCO, may well dump the project.

    One of such is the Shandong Ruyi Group, integrated textile and garment giants from China, which has announced a US$ 2 billion investment, under MINE, via the Enyimba Economic City, Abia State, the Lekki Model Industrial Park in Lagos, and similar EPZs in Kano and Katsina states.

    Another is the CCCG Industrial Investment Holding Company (CIHC), a subsidiary of China Communications Construction Group, which has also committed to being lead investor, among a concert of international infrastructure firms, to develop the entire Lekki Free Zone in Lagos, taking care of power, water, access roads and bridges.

    NSEZCO itself is in the first phase of raising US$ 250 million in equity funding to deliver MINE, which if all goes well, should by 2023 peak at US$ 500 million, from Nigeria’s Federal Government and other strategic partners and institutional investors.

    All that must not go to waste, because NEPZA insists on its democratic right to turf-warring with NSEZCO, even if the records show the regulator was fully involved in MINE’s initial spade works.

    At the end of the day, President Buhari might have to wield the big stick.  For him, it should be a question of legacy.

    Gen. Babangida, “military president”, by SAP de-industrialized Nigeria.  Another General Buhari, though elected president, looks set, by MINE, to re-industrialize Nigeria.

    That is the stuff glorious legacies are made.  But that is if NEPZA is fast and conclusively sorted.

  • Nigeria’s post-coloniality of savagery

    It can be claimed, without much fear of contradiction, that human beings are by nature, corrupt and/or selfish, although they still have to live together as groups understandably because no single person is completely self-sufficient.  This behavioural trait is of critical importance to all human societies even as they chart the pathways of survival and economic progress through time and space. The above scenario also necessarily paves the way for stresses/tensions and occasionally, conflicts arising in most cases from hegemonic control of scarce resources. Consequently, scripted and unscripted rules, regulations and/or laws are developed in order to mitigate these crises/conflicts. These problems and challenges have no cultural, ethnic, racial or religious boundaries. They are often trans-generational and trans-oceanic in scope. However, their severity varies from one society to another.  In this connection, charismatic leadership and active followership are of the essence.

    It is on record that several assassinations happened/happen in the US despite its socio-economic and cultural sophistication. Thus, for example, in 1847, the governor of New Mexico Territory called Charles Bent was murdered in his residence. Similarly, John F. Kennedy- the then president of the US was killed in 1963. Arkansas Democratic Party’s chairman was killed in 2008 inside his party’s secretariat. But the level is much lower than in Nigeria where assassins were/are never arrested, let alone prosecuted and punished in accordance with the rule of law. In fact, demons are let loose leading to the spread of godlessness over the land! In the developed parts of the global village, institutions are allowed to work and nobody is above the law contrary to what exists in Nigeria. This primordial attitude of our political leaders since independence has been encouraging unbridled crimes and criminality.

    The Nigerian post-coloniality (especially in recent times) is defined by savage killings which threaten the corporate existence of the country. The devilry of an average Nigerian politician shows that he does not believe in the concept of service to humanity. This attitude turns the stomach of anybody even with the faintest idea of good conscience. It is most disturbing that Nigeria- the current world’s capital of   poverty – allows its parliamentarians to be the highest paid legislators on our planet. It is the height of economic exploitation and slavery for a senator to be earning over N22 million monthly while a national youth service corps member is paid less than N20,000. This scenario exposes the injustices of the Nigerian jungle system made possible by the docility or timidity of its followership. Politics is the juiciest engagement in Nigeria. The level of shamelessness during the First Republic was too low to be compared with what obtains today. Meanwhile, the followers are mere prayer warriors with the false hopes that Providence would re-locate to Nigeria to help us wrestle bad governance to the ground. This is a deceit! Senseless destruction of Nigerians can be understood against the background of Boko Haram insurgencies; assassinations; herders’/farmers’ conflicts; ritual killings; Shiite Uprising; Zaria massacre and kidnapping for ransom which occasionally leads to killing of innocent people. Up to now, the central government has not succeeded in crafting workable strategies aimed at beating the menace.

    Today’s Nigeria has gained a certain notoriety as a country where human lives and those of chickens are on a par. Thus, for example, over 1000 Nigerians mostly Christians were killed in July 2009 by Boko Haram insurgents in northern Nigeria. The killings have not stopped since then. But when would this orgy of killing and destruction end?  In December 2015, the Nigerian Army had a deadly confrontation with members of the Shiite group during the latter’s religious procession in Zaria. A conservative estimate of 1000 people lost their lives. This is in addition to the destruction of lives of some members of IPOB (otherwise called the Biafran protesters) between 2015 and 2016. About 80 Nigerians were mowed down. Numerous Christians lost their lives in Kaduna in May 2000 as a result of the introduction of Sharia Law. The Odi massacre in Bayelsa in November 1999 by the Nigerian Army led to the death of about 2500 citizens.

    Many politicians like Bola Ige, Tunde Omojola, Kehinde Fasuba, Ayo Daramola, Dipo Dina and Okon Uwah were assassinated between 2001 and 2015. Okon Uwah who decamped from PDP to APC made the supreme sacrifice in 2015. Ritualists are smiling to their banks as selling of human parts as beef is now a lucrative coping strategy/business. Who would get us out of the woods? Unemployment and dire material poverty coupled with spiritual deficiency are reducing many Nigerians to sub-humans. They have become cowardly souls fit only for the hottest part of hell.

    Killings in Zamfara, Benue, Plateau, Taraba , Kogi and Kaduna states reached an unimaginable level between 2015 and 2018. Indeed, the Zamfara case up to now is a near-complete genocide. Even the southern part of Nigeria is not completely spared of this beastliness or savagery of monumental proportions. The government can never succeed with a piecemeal approach. The whole world is heaping scorn on Nigeria because our leaders have clearly shown that they lack the capacity to manage the country’s internal dynamics and challenges. The Nigerian government is an unthinking, happy debtor and beggar. In April 2018, the American President- Mr. Donald Trump said as follows:

    “We are deeply concerned by religious violence in Nigeria including burning of churches and the killing and persecution of Christians.”

    According to some Civil Society Groups ( over 70 in number), the recent elections in Nigeria led to the mowing down or maiming of about 100 people including a few INEC officials. It is most disturbing that the political leaders still pride themselves on barbarities in the 21st century.  This Machiavellian mindset continues to rob Nigeria of its economic opportunities and social stability.  Thus, for example, tourism industry has almost totally collapsed at the domestic and international levels. Tourism is not a suicide mission! Many farmers have been displaced from their villages as a result of incessant herders’/farmers’ conflicts and other forms of banditry.  Consequently, Nigeria has just taken another title- one of the eight hungriest countries in the world.

    It is an insult to our collective intelligence whenever the presidency denies this new status (arising from the United Nations’ research findings), instead of reflecting deeply on the state of the nation. As far as the Nigerian leadership culture is concerned (especially in relatively recent times), only sycophants/cronies are correct. Therefore, Mr. President needs to begin to re-engineer the country through comprehensive strategies in order to take the pulse of the nation. This would enable him to avoid a bumpy flight during his second trip. Our current shameful narrative of savage attacks/ bloodletting, extreme hunger, despondency and religious/ethnic tensions is an irritation to humanity and Providence. This can be reversed in the face of sophisticated leadership embedded in proactive-ness, openness, empathy and unalloyed patriotism.

     

    • Prof Ogundel is of Dept. Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan.

  • Zamfara as metaphor

    After last week’s air raid of Zamfara forests by the Nigerian Air Force to decapitate the armed bandits that have held the state hostage, the story is thatthe criminals are back in the villages, strolling around without molestation. While that may not be true, no doubtthe state has been on the boil, such that the so-called illegal mining in the state which has been fingered as a cause of the crisis has been banned. Also the federal authority has accused the traditional authority in the state of complicity in the crisis.

    The situation is so precarious that the state governor,AbdulazizYari, has visited the presidential villa on several occasionsto lament the insecurity in the state. His opponents however accuse him of always junketing; perhaps because his state is insecure, he feels safer to always stay outside the state. The senate and House of Representatives have also been lamenting and have been making resolutions to compel the executive to act.

    But despite all the effort, Zamfara remains unsafe. Similar attacks by bandits have also hit Sokoto, Kebbi and Kastina states, even as Kaduna State appears permanently on the boil. On the other side of the northern divide, Borno, Yobe, Gombe and Adamawa are under the direct attack range of Boko Haram. Further down, Taraba, Benue, Kogi, Niger, Nassarawa and Plateau are not spared from armed attacks. So, the scary scenario is that presently more than half of Nigeria is under attack.

    Of note, the concerned states are amongst the poorest in the country. When Nigeria is regarded as the poverty capital of the world, these states, save for a few of them, represent the hardest hit by all the indices with which poverty is measured. By one of such indices, provided by World Poverty Clock, 86.9 million Nigerians live in extreme poverty as at 2018. Without doubt majority of these extremely poor Nigerians come from these states.

    So, if about half of Nigerians are extremely poor, and the country is waging a warin more than half of its territory, the poverty level will get worse and more people will get poorer.Such a scary scenario as we are in calls for a national emergency beyond mere political grandstanding and the federal government must do more than authorizing jet fighters to bomb the forests of Zamfara.

    While it should wage war against the enemies of our country, the solution to the extreme poverty prevalent in the north requires more than what jet fighters can do. The fundamental challenge facing the region and indeed the entire country is poverty, and the solution lies in rejigging the economy. From the crisis facing Zamfara, Nigerians have become aware that the state is awash with mineral deposits, such that illegal miners have turned the blessing to a curse. So, the solution may actually be the legitimate exploitation of the minerals.

    Instead of wringing their hands in helplessness as the northern elites are doing presently, they should wakeup and demand for economic restructuring of the country. In their recent intervention over the insecurity in the northern part of our country, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) led by Professor AngoAbdullahi, merely recanted the challenges facing the region without offering any solution. They spoke tongue in cheek when they said: “we demand for decisive, comprehensive and fundamental governmental action against poverty, underdevelopment and insecurity.”

    If the NEFand other elite groups in the region want to squarely deal with the challenge of poverty facing the region, they must champion the call for economic restructuring of the country. They should know that as structurally organised, the country cannot make the quantum progress that the region needs more than any other part of the country to begin the process of getting out of poverty and insecurity. Blame game will not do it, unless the idea is merely to grandstand.

    The first decisive step is to give Zamfara State the constitutional authority to mine its minerals, and thereby eliminate the illegal miners. The challenges facing Zamfara has shown that our country can no longer defer the urgent need to put states in the driver’s seat of what ordinarily should be their local economy. Clearly as Zamfara has shown, the lack of state economies have mutated beyond mere economic problem to security challenge, and it will be insanity for our country not to change the paradigm, while hoping for a change.

    Therefore, the northern elites must join those who have rejected the constitutional provision that the federal government should own exclusive rights to the mining of minerals in the country. The absence of a thriving and lawful local economy in the states, especially in the northern part of the country have become an existential problem. The precarious situation in many states across the country, is made worse by the dwindling revenue from the oil resources of the Niger Delta, and any further delay has become extremely dangerous.

    The second step is to constitutionally authorize states to have state police. A state like Zamfara may not bother much about recruiting police to patrol its cities, but will be interested in armed rangers to patrol its vast forests. Under the strange federal constitution we presently operate, it can only operate armed vigilantes at the mercy of federal authority. Without its own local police, the state will have to rely on policemen and women, most of whom may be posted to the state as a form of punishment.

    Unless the security challenges are quickly dealt with, Zamfara State and her sister states will continue to get poorer, and as their condition get worse, the nation itself gets poorer. The federal government in the past few years have relied on borrowed funds to argument its budget deficits. Such economic practice is clearly unsustainable, and one way to solve the problem is to expand the national economy. The federal government can easily do that by shedding the exclusive legislative list in favour of the states.

    Without being an economist, Nigeriacannot sustain the present scenario of borrowing to fighta war against Boko Haram and other armed insurgencies; not to talk of investing in infrastructure to boost the national economy. Without bridging the over one trillion dollar gap in infrastructure deficit, our country can easily slip back into recession anytime. The northern elites must worry about the financial capacity of the country to continue to wage the war against Boko Haram and other armed insurgents, which is exacerbating, because of poverty.

    President Buhari can justify his concern for the economic and security crisis facing the country, by preparing the necessary executive bills to amend the exclusive legislative list and also section 214 of the 1999 constitution which forbids the establishment of state police, for the incoming 9th national assembly. That is what we need, not rhetoric.

  • The dragon lives!

    Had Nigerians not lived for so long with the pathology of denial to the point where it is now second nature, one would be sympathetic to the feigned outrage over the latest reminder by the IMF about the rumblings of the ghost we thought we had long committed to mother earth. Having enjoyed the breather all these while, it took last week’s reminder by an institution that could, in the eyes of most Nigerians,  pass  for the veritable messenger of Satan – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to again draw attention to the under-recovery element in the fuel-pricing template. As far as Christine Lagarde, IMF Managing Director is concerned, that  element and the consequences thereof, which she says has claimed about $5.2 trillion, needs to be hived off – perhaps with automatic alacrity – so Nigeria can live!

    Soon after, the fuel marketers switched to the panic mode. The oil sector unions – theNigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) later picked up the gauntlet. In their joint response to the IMF, they blamed the body for creating panic the result of which was the hoarding of petroleum products, panic buying observed in some parts of the country last  week.

    Not only that, the two unions considered it “bewildering and baffling that the IMF is not considering the pains and agonies Nigerians went through even to achieve the acknowledged gains of 2018, with almost two-thirds of the world’s hungriest people among Nigerians”.

    “One wonders why the IMF is still callously and wickedly advising the government to inflict more pains and harm on the people”.

    The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) on its part says that the continued devaluation of the Nigerian currency is what has created the impression of the existence of subsidy. According to its president, Ayuba Wabba, as long as the value of the naira was left to market forces, the issue of subsidy would continue in the country.

    The arguments though familiar, are certainly as old as the subsidy itself.  I  understandthe current anger in the context of the existential realities that have defined the daily struggles of the ordinary citizen, particularly the stats which show how further down Nigerians have plumbed on vital socio-economic indices. Part of that reality is the finding in the report by The World Poverty Clock that Nigeria has overtaken India as the country with the most extreme poor people (some 86.9 million, representing nearly 50% of the population) in the world despite having its population seven times larger than Nigeria’s. Then of course is the latest Misery Index 2018, which ranks Nigeria as the 6th most miserable nation in the world.

    To those familiar with  the position of this columnist, the point of divergence has always been the denial of the basic economics which underlay the subsidy debate right up to the ensuing policy stasis that it bred. As it is, the only progress that the country could claim to have made is the agreement that the under-recovery element does in fact exist. If that is progress, the issue of how to address it in a way that does not further injure the economy or take more citizens down the poverty route has not only remained a tough call for successive governments, the rentier economy spawned by the subsidy and its associated culture of opacity has  made it a no-no to Nigerians.

    Let’s for once forget the IMF; does anyone know how much the subsidy currently cost the treasury? How many litres of petrol does the country consume daily? Doubtful if anyone knows for certainty. However, we know for a fact that the subsidy bill grew from roughly N300 billion during the administration of late President Umaru Yar’Adua to N1.9 trillion under President Goodluck Jonathan. Today, no-one knows how much the NNPC spends to bridge the price differential; the only thing Nigerians know is that their state oil corporation does little else than import fuel since importers, according to the government,  have long abandoned the business due to reason of under-recovery. Trust me, the busines is thriving with some estimates putting the annual spend on the subsidy alone in excess of N1 trillion – close to the 50 percent of the N2.03 trillion earmarked for capital expenditure in the 2019 budget.

    That is bad public finance and economics – if you ask me. The only thing that could be worse – or if you like more toxic – is the failure by IMF and cohorts to recognise the subsidy as something of a constantly moving target not only subject to the vagaries of oil prices but exchange rate fluctuations. For an import-dependent country like Nigeria with a relatively unstable currency, the IMF prescription is the surest route to disaster; as for the other  alternative, which requires the country to continue to shell out a trillion naira annually to subsidise petrol consumption, it is akin to swallowing poison in small doses.

    This is where the NLC and the IMF are both right and wrong.

    First,  had the NLC shunned its traditional brashness which tended to foreclose contrary opinions, the nation most probably would have long before now, made a headway in putting appropriate policies in place to address the problem. By the way,  what happened to the billions of naira loan given to NLC for its mass transit services to cushion the effects of the Jonathan-era subsidy removal?

    As for the IMF, apart from the fact the officials do not live here and so could be excused for assumptions that are at variance with the Nigerian reality;  theirs is at best advisory. What the Nigerian government makes of it is entirely its business.

    However, the issue at this time is hardly one of right or wrong but what is best for the country.

    Clearly, the easiest solution is to have the government build more refineries. I say the easiest but not necessarily the best solution as the option comes with the requirement that we trust a government that could not fix its ailing refineries to launch new ventures – a most unrealistic proposition at this time.

    The other option which is already bearing fruits, is to get more private sector players like Dangote Refineries on board to address not just the domestic supply gap but to address permanently the other macro-economic issues associated with the fuel import trade. Understandably, Nigerians claim to love the idea; the issue is whether they are prepared for the removal of any form of price ceilings by whatever name which will inevitably come with true liberalisation. With the commencement of operations of the largest single train refinery in the world slated for April 2020 – less than a year from now, only when that singular issue is firmly settled can we begin the talk of interring that Nigerian dragon.