The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Biafrans all…

    Biafrans all…

    Although the target was the unworkable Nigerian federation, last week clearly brought it more forcefully home, the vast disconnect between the masses of the South-east and their political leaders. Not only did the sit-at- home decreed by Nnamdi Kanu’s Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) an unqualified success (some accounts put the compliance at 80 percent), the spirited efforts mounted by the governors as indeed some religious leaders to abort the ‘decree’ fell flat. In the end, it exposed the regions mealy-mouthed leaders as being out of tune with the aspirations of the people. Thanks to a certain Nnamdi Kanu – the IPOB leader, a new locus of power has since emerged – so potent that local political players can only ignore to their peril – either now, in 2019 or beyond.

    I would of course agree that a new momentum has been added to the struggle by the South-east to redress perceived injustices inflicted by them. However, considering how similar histrionics by MASSOB ended, it would seem too soon to canonize Kanu and company, who just like the former, was wise enough to tap into the anger and bitter frustrations of the people. What remains to be seen – beyond the bombasts and derring-do – is how he plans to go about the task of opening of the invidious gate of the Nigerian zoo to let the animals walk their separate ways – even when, ironically, the geography of his famed Biafra keeps extending by the day!

    By the way, the last time I checked, Nnamdi Kanu’s Biafra boundary has, in addition to the traditional boundaries –the minorities of the Niger Delta – has since extended to my backyard – the Igalas of the North-central state of Kogi!

    We are all Biafrans after all!

    This is certainly not to wish either the symbolism of May 30 or the burning anger of the South-east away. To do that is to do violence to a peoples’ history. To be sure, this year’s is particularly epochal – being the 50th anniversary of the start of the war. In the context of the on-going discourse on the national question, nothing perhaps better demonstrates the recognition of this than the conference convoked by the Yar’Adua Memorial Centre, the Ford foundation and the Open Society initiative West Africa held on May 25. If only for the window it afforded Nigerians to further interrogate and engage on the national question – it would seem rather unfortunate that the ‘mock shows’ appeared to have overshadowed the event.

    The question of what to do with the “geographical expression’ would obviously remain a ‘live’ one for a lone time to come. However, like a big elephant, it is a case of what you see depending on what side you choose to sit. A colleague – Imam Imam – would remind us of this ancient wisdom with a post on his Facebook page on May 31 – if only to illustrate that the issue is not always a one-way affair as often assumed.

    It goes thus: May 30 – Biafra sit-in; June 12 – Yoruba sit-in; January 15 – Arewa sit-in… We are all victims of each other’s past misdeeds”.

    In other words, all are more sinners than sinned against.

    Of course, most of us – in some form or the other – somewhat agree that Nigeria, in its present form, is not only a political, but also an administrative, nightmare. That whereas Frederick Lugard and company may have designed it to secure maximum benefits for the colonial authorities, the structure has neither served to integrate the people nor fostered development; and that while the in-built dissonance is itself potentially fraught with challenges, our situation has been exacerbated by the crisis of governance that has dogged her since independence.

    This is where the contending groups appear to have taken their point of departure. Simply put; there are those who see the restructuring as the shortest route to that Eldorado that they badly crave just as there exists out there, the throng for whom a one-way fare out of the “suffocating contraption” is non-negotiable! Such of course is the depth of frustration with the unworkable structure currently in operation.

    Where do we go?

    First, we must be wary of the current champions of unbridled ethnic nationalism. I would of course agree that a new architecture of governance is desirable if only to remove the states in particular from the suffocating grip of the centre. However, to the extent that the crisis is what has cascaded to the local councils where the governors sit like the Lord of the Manor on council funds, the absence of civic consciousness on the part of the citizenry would ensure that any gains from restructuring would not last. Regionalism is of course a no-no. Aside taking us back several decades, it would not only reopen but deepen old wounds. For the minorities, it would unleash a new round of agitations that might be difficult, if not impossible to manage.

    As for the promoters of secession, that again is a simplistic solution to the crisis of governance. It seems to me that the whole quest has been more noise than reason!  The whole idea, as presented that is, seems more like seeking to escape from the clutches of some imaginary ‘taskmaster’ as against exercising the option of sitting at the table as equal partners to iron out perceived differences.

    Why no one has yet seen the injury being inflicted on the people’s psyche by the underlying persecution complex beats my imagination.

    Now, I do not seek to understate the realities that Igbos sometimes contend with; and while I would equally agree that history and our experience of governance – military and civilian – has not served our brothers in the South-east well, the same can be said of other parts of the country perhaps to a different degree. The issue is whether this justifies the call for the fiercely proud, industrious, highly competitive people to seek to walk out of a joint heritage.

    Nigeria is no doubt sick. The issue is whether the sickness can be cured by a band of accidental or opportunistic leaders of either the IPOB wing or their co-travellers in the Oduduwa Republic quest!

    Let me close with the following words from acting President Yemi Osinbajo at the Yar’Adua Centre outing: “The truth is that many, if not most nations of the world are made up of different peoples and cultures and beliefs and religions, who find themselves thrown together by circumstance. Nations are indeed made up of many nations. The most successful of the nations of the world are those who do not fall into the lure of secession, but who through thick and thin forge unity in diversity”.

    Did anyone listen? Is anyone listening?

     

     

     

     

  • A fortune and its claimants

    A fortune and its claimants

    The $43 million in mint-fresh $100 bills the EFCC found warehoused in an unoccupied luxury apartment in the opulent Osborne Towers in Ikoyi, Lagos, is without question the greatest fortune any person or institution ever chanced upon since Shell Darcy struck oil in Nigeria in Oloibiri, in present-day Bayelsa State, in 1956.

    Shell Darcy at least set out deliberately to find the black gold. It carried out seismic explorations, invested heavily in men and machinery, and set up a technical and administrative bureaucracy to manage and market the oil.

    No such exertion was required to locate the Osborne Fortune.  It just sat there piled up layer upon layer in a fireproof steel cabinet, and would have stayed in that condition if an ungrateful guard had not ratted on the mysterious woman who showed up at regular intervals lugging a Ghana-Must-Go sack.

    Looking very much like the domestic help, the woman would ride the elevator to the 7th floor, step across the landing to Flat 7B, unlock the armoured door and go in.  Some two hours later, mysterious errand concluded, she would emerge from the apartment, ride the elevator to the ground floor and walk out of the premises in unhurried steps, only to repeat the visitation the following week.

    The guard, whom she often gave large tips, had learned that there was money in whistle-blowing.  So, he bought himself a state-of-the-art-whistle that can be heard all the way to Abuja, and took a crash course in blowing it.

    The EFCC swooped on Flat 7B at the Osborne Towers and the Nigerian public sphere has not been the same since then.

    Early reports claimed that the haul was part of the “security” money former President Goodluck Jonathan had squirrelled away for fighting the 2015 presidential election that he lost gallantly.   He had been so crushed by the loss, they said, that he forgot the money.

    Even if he remembered, how could he now come forward to claim the money, especially when his wife, the formerly excellent Dame Patience, was fighting desperately to re-possess some N54 million in bank deposits that the courts had ordered forfeited on the suspicion that it was the fruit of crime?

    Plus, would it not have done grave and irreparable harm to Dr Jonathan’s goal of reclaiming the  Presidency in 2019 as the stragglers in what remains of the PDP have been urging him to do.

    Those who expected his consort, the formerly excellent lady aforementioned, to weigh in with an affidavit that the money at issue was her birthday gift to him when he turned 59 last November must have been disappointed.   Give it to The Dame:  she knows that there are only so many fronts on which even a person of her appetite can fight.

    Not so the heedlessly combative Nyesom Wike, governor of Rivers State.

    Without a shadow of doubt, he asserted without fear and without research, the haul, which he had framed as loot pure and simple, belonged to the Rivers State Government, being proceeds of assets his predecessor and current Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, had “fraudulently” sold off.

    The logical thing, Wike said, was for the EFCC to arrange to transfer the money to his administration.  Pro-active as ever, he set up a high-powered committee comprising Leaders of Thought and Action from all the 23 local government areas of the state, with the state’s deputy governor as coordinator.

    Its mission: to take the delivery of the fortune at Port Harcourt Airport, where it would be ferried by a special cargo plane escorted by a squadron of the latest fighter jets from the Nigeria Air Force fleet.

    The team will then march in a carnival procession to Government House to present the precious  cargo to His Excellency the Governor who, on satisfying himself that it was delivered intact, will proceed, under armed escort, to deposit it in one of the more viable banks, after personally signing the relevant papers and negotiating the most favourable rate of interest.

    To confound the usual tale-bearers, the transactions would be videotaped in their entirety.

    Wike’s plan was already at full throttle when the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ambassador Ayodele Oke, a spook whom few outside the community of spooks had ever heard of, claimed that the money belongs to the NIA.

    It has since come to light that the fund was duly appropriated by the Federal Government at the time of Dr Jonathan for projects that cannot be named, that Oke had periodically reported on those projects to the complete satisfaction of the authorities, among them National Security Adviser Babagana  Monguno, and by extension President Muhammadu Buhari.

    But why a luxury flat in Osborne Towers in Lagos, far removed from the NIA’s headquarters in Abuja? The NIA has no special vault or faux septic tank or overhead water tank or an even more imaginative receptacle where it can secret away ultra-sensitive material and monitor it  24/7 electronically?

    The NIA is so bereft of confidence in its own methods and personnel that it cannot find a safe place for its operating funds?

    On hearing the DIA’s claim, Wike, I gather, let loose a torrent of expletives that I cannot reproduce here, lest I offend the sensibilities of the discriminating readers of this newspaper.

    This past Saturday, he told Channels Television that a team of lawyers was already working to ensure the return of the loot to Rivers State.

    “We will follow due process of the law to get back Rivers Stationery found at the Ikoyi residence. This money belongs to the Rivers State people. We have conducted our checks.

    “We will stun Nigeria with this matter. We will come out with our evidence at the appropriate time.”

    Rivers would not fully reveal its strategy to recover the looted funds because of the games being played by the All Progressives Congress-led federal government, which had chosen to politicise the matter because it has a great deal to hide, Wike added.

    The audience gasped in disbelief.

    Wike who is famous for resorting to justice by self-help at the least provocation and sometimes without any provocation at all; the same Wike has decided to follow the due process of law?

    The old Wike would simply have led his armed stalwarts to the place where the money is being kept, forced his way inside, and carted it away

    The old Wike would have reasoned that the judiciary had not been cowed to the point that it would abjure the cardinal teaching of ancient and modern jurisprudence, namely, that possession is nine-tenths of the law.

    The new, improved Wike will be guided by the rule of law.

    His conversion must be counted, nay celebrated, as one of the more important gains of Nigeria’s ongoing experiment in democratic rule.

    Omissions, misstatements, and reiterations

    In the first part of “My Lagos story” (May 16, 2017), I omitted Ikorodu from the conurbations incorporated into Lagos State at its creation in 1967.  In the second part (May 23, 2017), I misstated the date of the 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts as 1978 – it was 1977.

    Nigeria defeated Guinea, not Ghana, to clinch the Soccer Gold at the 2nd All Africa Games.

    I reiterate, however, that the first goal on the pitch of the brand-new National Stadium was scored by Yakubu Mabo, a striker for Stationery Stores FC of Lagos, not Ismaila Mabo, the captain and doughty defender for the Mighty Jets FC of Jos, and one of the most durable    soccer figures of that era.

  • Obaseki: Six months on

    Obaseki: Six months on

    At a reception organized by reporters in his honour in November 2016, the then Edo’s fresh-mint governor, Godwin Obaseki was quoted as telling politicians and family members not to come to the Government House without proper appointment as he needed time to settle down to work. He also reportedly told his aides to avoid having what he called “unnecessary visitors”. If that presented a window into the mind of the new helmsman on the subject of the pervasive abuse of executive time among public officers – elected and appointed, the hardly endearing statement comes close to a ‘Satanic Verse’ in a clime where most government houses operate more or less like exchanges for trading influences.

    Satanic verses or not, it is safe to say that a new spirit rules in the state. On a visit  two weeks ago, the mood, though somewhat subdued, spoke of great expectation from the Obaseki administration. After the fiery reign of Adams Oshiomhole, the archetypal activist not known to take prisoners, Obaseki, seems to be finally be coming to his own as reflective, deliberative yet no less decisive leader. (Witness his last week’s closure of Edo Line, the state transport company ran aground by its management).  Whereas the momentum may appear slow and different from those of his immediate predecessor, the shared template of strong progressive governance is certainly hard to miss; the same with the determination to leapfrog a state only recently laid waste by the rampaging PDP buccaneers.

    The team of visiting editors from Lagos took on some hierarchs of the administration on a number of issues facing the new administration.

    Is the administration “slow”? Without a cabinet six months after, many would of course be tempted to think so. However, to many a hierarch in the administration, that charge would be contestable. Indeed, many actually insisted that the charge of lull or inertia would amount to an unpardonable denial not just of all that is going on in the backrooms of government but in the vast public spaces across the state.

    Osarodion Ogie, the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), obviously number among those as reels out the accomplishments already in the kitty. Ditto, Dennis Oloriegbe, Edo’s traffic czar, head-hunted from Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LASTMA) to head the new Edo State Traffic Management Authority (EDSTMA) – a man whose readiness to rewrite the Edo traffic story bordered on the infectious.

    Ogie in particular will insist that the administration has done quite a lot. Listed among the achievements in the last six months are the promulgation of the Community Development Association (CDA) law which outlawed the activities of community development chairmen (land speculators) known to harass people over their property; the abolition of the collection of government revenue by non-government officials; the take-off of the state’s agripreneur programme under which the state government undertakes to clear the farmland for interested members of the public has taken off. According to the SSG, the state government has cleared over 500 hectares of land in Sobe, Akoko-Edo for those interested in farming. Aside providing seedlings for the farmers, he told the visiting team that the state government has substantially de-risked the venture to the extent that off-takers to buy off the produce are standing by. The state government, he said, is already set to move to the second phase of clearing additional hectares of land for farmers.

    Not all, he also informed his visitors that the state has developed a data base of unemployed youths – an initiative under which 150 thousand youths have been registered with their vital details and bank verification number for possible placement in government programmes. Some 150 of the lot were said to have been pencilled for absorption at the traffic agency at the time of the visit.

    Joseph Eboigbe, the Executive Director and coordinator of the state and strategic team (who incidentally was Obaseki’s deputy at the Economic and Strategic Team in the last administration) spoke on what the administration has done preparatory to the take- off of the cabinet. He spoke of a strategic dialogue held in December 2016, which set the tone for Governor Obaseki first term, the outcome of which was distributed into quick wins, immediate and medium terms initiatives. The quick wins, he said, were incorporated into the 2017 budget and are being implemented. Part of the next steps included convening sectorial workshops to further drive down the high level strategic outlook held in December. The outcomes of this sectorial workshop, according to him, will feed into key performance indicators that will be handed over to heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that will form the cabinet. As soon as they come in, relevant orientation programmes will be delivered and it will be very clear what they are expected to deliver on quarterly basis, all this will feed into the objective of the governor as articulated in his medium term plan for this his first term in office.

    He also spoke of the administration’s industrialisation plans; its plans to make the state very conducive for large scale industrialists to locate especially those that are interested in agriculture and entities using gas as raw materials particularly as the state has one of the highest reserves in gas. He spoke of the first private sector led NIPP – the Azura power plant currently being developed, other expressions of interest in gas power plants and one or two expressions of interest to set up fertilizer plant using gas as raw material, the industrial parks and the development of Gelegele Port, the historic port in the southern part of the state.

    It is however Anselm Ojezua, Edo APC chairman and Prof. Julius Ihonvbere, the state’s former SSG that supplies the emerging template of the synergy between the ruling party in the state and Obaseki government – something that the ruling party at the centre can borrow from. For appointments, the party at the grass root level is availed the opportunity to nominate people at all levels to a screening committee at the state level. Thorough screening at the local level, party level, is to be followed up by another committee chaired by Prof Dennis Agbonlahor for further screening. The idea is to ensure that those coming on board are, according to him, “persons who are morally up right, intellectually solid, ICT-compliant to a large extent, who have experience and who have some legitimate bearing, so that when they are put in position, they will hit the ground running and not trying to learn how government works”.

    Related to this is the plan to restructure the entire civil and public service. Here, the plan is to reduce the number of ministries, abolition of moribund committees that have been overtaken by time, and whose continuous existence constitute impediment to the flow of policy initiation and implementation; restructuring some of the ministry to make them more efficient, stronger to deliver services to the people,  training for the public, civil servants in particular to increase efficiency, capacity building to enable them work effectively in the 21 century and to key into the developmental objective of the government.

    While it seems early in the day to pass definitive judgment, the overall impression is one of an administration roaring to go.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • From old Biafran to new: war is nasty business

    From old Biafran to new: war is nasty business

    Correct the mistake of 2015. Vote out the corrupt legislators

    Today, exactly 50 years ago on 30 May 1967, the Republic of Biafra was born.
    “Now Therefore I, Lieutenant-Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Military Governor of Eastern Nigeria, by virtue of the authority, and pursuant to the principles recited above,” he announced in a broadcast, which thereafter triggered wild jubilations in the streets, “do hereby solemnly proclaim that the territory and region known as and called Eastern Nigeria, together with her continental shelf and territorial waters, shall henceforth be an independent sovereign state of the name and title of Biafra.”
    That set off a horrific civil war (1967-1970), in which millions, from both sides, perished, though Biafra, which eventually conceded defeat, was more hard done by.
    After, all appeared quiet on the Biafra front — until 2012, when the late Chinua Achebe released his swan song, There was a Country, a long tale of one-sided victimhood and suppressed bitterness, which would appear to have triggered the present neo-Biafra ferment. The loss of President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 election, who the South East solidly backed, provided the final push, sending the present advocates of neo-Biafra into a tizzy.
    But after everything, war is grim business.  Col. Azubike Nass, a retired officer of the Nigerian Army, who saw war as a member of the Boys Brigade, before later going on to train at the Nigerian Defence Academy, writes on Baifra’s 50th anniversary. Ripples dubs it, “From old Biafran to new: war is nasty business”.

    The write-up titled, “The case for Biafra”, credited to an American former government official, Bruce Fein, is most probably written by a young Igbo guy who never experienced the civil war and never read Nigerian pre-Independence history.  It is as if all he knows is limited to the current pro-Biafran propaganda on Radio Biafra and the trending, mostly anonymous, online propaganda messages.

     

    It contains a lot of emotional fabrications and demagogic falsehood.  The social media space is littered with a lot of junks and, in many cases, the persons mentioned as the authors have vehemently dissociated themselves from the writings.

    Just a few examples, in italics:

    1. “Britain asserted authority over Biafra, based on tyrannical doctrine”.  I ask: which Biafra existed in pre-independence Nigeria, and what areas did it cover?
    2. “Ongoing ethnic-inspired killings and persecution of Biafrans by Nigerian elected military dictator from the North touting Sharia law, President Buhari.” Rubbish.  Who are those the writer refers to as ‘Biafrans’?”  I am of Igbo ethnic origin and such talk is rubbish to me.
    3. “Prior to British colonization in 1906” and”1913, came the amalgamation of Nigeria into three administrative bloc areas.”  I don’t know where the writer got that piece of wrong history [amalgamation was 1914, not 1913]
    4.  The “British failed to offer Biafrans the right to self-determination,” and “Biafrians were never provided [with the chance] to vote for their independence, according to their freely expressed will and desire; and were never consulted on the project when Nigeria became independent in 1960”.  That is kindergarten rubbish!  Nigerian leaders, across ethnic lines, took part in the talks and negotiations (in Nigeria and in London).
    5. “After independence, Biafrans were left to the tender mercies of the Hausa-Fulani of the North and the Yoruba of the South in a unitary state.”  This type of fallacy borders on mental sickness.  It is a fact of history that Igbos (then commonly called Ibos, including Zik — Dr. Nnmandi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first ceremonial president) dominated the Nigerian civil service, the military and the police in the post-independence years before the first military coup and the crisis it caused.

    There are more junk details in that nonsensical write-up but I stop so far.

    One common feature of the misguided pro-Biafran agitation is to present a cocktail of doom-mongering, as if it were a recipe for realizing a false dream.  I witnessed the Civil War (1967-1970) first-hand.  I vividly remember the hunger and starvation, the picture of “kwashiorkor”, and the refuge camps.

    I remember how Biafra public enlightenment service on radio and other channels was encouraging people to seek out and kill lizards, rats, toads and frogs, as substitute for meat.

    Meanwhile, the very few well-placed senior officials and senior military officers and their families lived in relative comfort and smartly cornered the best of the best of stock fish (okpoloko) and conmeal donated by the international charities (the most prominent of which was the Catholic charity, Caritas).

    I remember that some clergymen entrusted with distributing available relief to the hungry and dying masses turned the whole thing into a heartless game of greed and fraud, with some of them hiding the relief foodstuff in dry wells and deny having them.

    I remember that by 1969, most of the senior leaders of Biafra had moved their families overseas while continuing to tell the masses that even the grass would fight for Biafra, and that victory was assured.

    I know of a few of Biafran military and civilian leaders who started acquiring property and building houses just some two years after the war, when most Igbos could still not feed twice a day — and more.

    I want to warn the misguided war-mongering youths and their supporting dubious elders that when they spark their dream war, they will get more internal factional warfare than they ever imagine.  It may be such that would require “foreign” peacekeepers to try  to bring some sanity.

    Not all of us can be cowed  into the false dream of Biafra.

    I experienced that civil war at first hand.  I was in primary five when it started and some of us, who were in the Boys Brigade, eagerly joined; and were made to be assisting soldiers on errands.

    I was initially among the most fanatical youths itching to fight and die for Biafra.  I was heavily swayed by the war propaganda; and my parents were struggling to keep me at home.

    But as I mixed with adult soldiers, and heard some muffled reports, my proving mind started doubting many talks we were fed with.

    After the war and after my earning my secondary school certificate, I set my eyes on the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), and succeeded in the second attempt.

    As an army officer, I was addicted to war history in general.  My contemporaries recognize me for that.  I am not a lover of raw sentiments and emotions.  I am known for that — even if my mother or father is involved.

    I have spent decades in the study of wars, ancient and modern, my starting point being the Nigerian Civil War.  I devote my life to the acquisition of knowledge in vast fields of human endeavour, unlike many, who may have rather spent their active years chasing contracts and money.  So, that explains my attitude towards this neo-Biafra campaign.

    Besides, having vigorously campaigned for a presidential candidate that shielded corruption and treasury looting, and that candidate having lost to an anti-corruption candidate in the democratic election of 2015, many appear unable to recover from the electoral loss.  The result is frustration and the release is the new “struggle” for Biafra!

    Therefore, reselling twisted civil narratives seem to have become the only consoling subversive daily occupation, as if that provides escape from reality.

    As a long standing seeker of knowledge in vast fields, and also as a soldier who had committed time to study wars and had tough combat experience in foreign wars, I don’t belong to the present Biafra mindset — a sort of escapist daily vocation.  I have more studies doing with my valuable time.

  • My Lagos story (2)

    My Lagos story (2)

    Returning to Lagos in 1971, I found the city vastly transformed.

    In the five years I was away, it had assumed an identity of its own as one of the 12 states created by General Yakubu Gowon’s military administration in 1967 to correct somewhat the pernicious federal structure Britain had  bequeathed to Nigeria.

    Before then Lagos was the federal capital, the stage on which federal might in its rawest form was displayed.  It was administered by various local councils and the Ministry of Lagos Affairs, but for all practical purposes, it was a political orphan.

    That changed in 1967 when Lagos became a state, incorporating Lagos metropolis, Epe, Badagry, and Ibeju-Lekki. This status gave indigenes of Lagos State an identity of their own, and a sense of ownership.  With the return to democratic rule in 1979, Lagos would acquire the full apparatus and powers of a state.

    Meanwhile Lagos metropolis had sprawled in every direction.  The population had exploded. Former residents who had fled on the eve of the civil war returned in large numbers, to a welcoming environment and to the property they had left behind.  In Lagos, there was no “abandoned property.”  There was no pogrom.

    Hundreds of Nigerians poured into the city from the hinterland and from neighbouring countries, Ghana in particular, to seek a piece of the thriving economy fuelled by the oil boom.

    The pathologies of runaway urbanisation soon set in. Old shanties expanded and new ones sprouted.  Armed robbery, now replaced by kidnapping for ransom, became an industry, crippling night life and the night economy.  Gridlock was choking the life out of the city.

    A four-fold increase in the price of crude oil, and a quantum leap in production following the end of the civil war poured so much petrodollars into the federal exchequer that General Yakubu Gowon was moved to declare that money was no longer Nigeria’s problem but how to spend it. The corruption we battle today is rooted in that era.

    But there was much to show for the sudden wealth. Enhanced pay benchmarks in the public sector were established, and hefty salary arrears backdated a year were paid out.  Today’s ageing infrastructure was built at that time, with new settlements like FESTAC Town, Navy Town, and Satellite Town.

    Lagos hosted the 2nd All-Africa Games in January 1973, in the glittering new National Stadium in Surulere.  I was in the main bowl of the stadium at the first event held there, an international soccer match between Nigeria and Mali, during which Yakubu Mabo scored the first goal ever on the pitch.

    I witnessed the opening and closing ceremonies and all the soccer events, thanks to free tickets you could obtain just presenting your student ID Card.

    It was such a joy to watch the national soccer squad the Green Eagles beat Ghana’s Black Stars to clinch the Soccer Gold.  With the victory came the re-naming of the team as the Golden Eagles. The bulk of the national team came from Stationery Stores FC, which enjoyed something close to a cult following in Lagos.

    It was on the pages of the Daily Times that I broke into column writing and flourished.  This development resulted from desperation. As junior faculty at the University of Lagos, I found myself blockaded on almost every front by my head of department

    One day, I asked myself:   Was there something I could do for credit and self-actualisation, without the HOD’s affirmation?

    Write, an inner voice told me.   Write for the media.

    That was my stepping stone to The Guardian, and to the most fulfilling 10 years of my professional life.  I actually looked forward to going to the office on Sundays. The lady of the house could not understand it. There had to be much more to the whole thing than editorial work, she often said, half in jest and half in earnest.

    I told her she was free to come check things out, and that she didn’t even have to give me a notice.  The day she showed up, she found me in the editorial suite with my colleagues who, unlike me, did not have to come to work.

    For one month from mid-January through mid-February 1978, Lagos hosted Black humanity and people of Black descent in a giddy celebration of their culture and civilisation. This was a time of heady optimism when Nigeria seemed set, finally, to claim the greatness for which everyone said it was destined.

    An activist, Afro-centric foreign policy broke with the cautious, conservative and conciliatory posture of the immediate post-colonial period.  Nigeria moved the Organisation of African Unity to recognise the Marxist MPLA over rival claimants as the legitimate government of Angola after Portugal’s colonial regime fled.

    At a time when most countries would have regarded it as an honour that U. S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s plane flew over their airspace, Nigeria turned down his request for a visit.

    Preparations for return to civil rule set off robust and ennobling debate. Nigeria’s military  leaders and a burgeoning intellectual and political class dreamed great dreams and planned on    a grand scale. That period, spanning the time the Murtala/Obasanjo administration assumed power and the time Shagari administration took office, is now nostalgically remembered as Nigeria’s Golden Age.

    I was in Lagos when a regression set in almost as soon as Shagari assumed office.

    But Lagos State was spared the contagion.   It had frontline newspaperman Lateef Jakande as its dynamic and progressive governor. Mushroom schools caring only for the money were running two, sometimes three shifts in a single day, as if they were factory assembly lines.  Within a year, his administration ended the racketeering.

    Few remember now that Lagos under Jakande was the first state to declare May Day work-free, and to proclaim it a public holiday subsequently.  The Federal Government felt compelled to follow several years later, as did other states.

    I was in Lagos when Chief Obafemi Awolowo died, and the city went into an orgy of mourning.  I was there when General Murtala Muhammed was assassinated and the city almost dissolved in tears,

    I was there when Wole Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Africa’s first.  I was there when Dele Giwa was blown up by a parcel bomb in his home.

    I was there in 1992 when a military transport plane plunged into the Ejigbo swamp, minutes after takeoff, killing a generation of officers on board.   For more than 18 hours, the authorities mounted no rescue effort.

    I was in Lagos when military president Ibrahim Babangida scurried out of town to safer harbour in Abuja, following the April 22, 1990 coup attempt that almost toppled his regime.  Lagos was the epicentre of the prolonged resistance to the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by Bashorun MKO Abiola.  It was the spine of the opposition to Sani Abacha’s barbarous rule.

    The former president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, discovered to his eternal grief that Lagosians could not be purchased for any amount in any currency.

    During his time as governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu built on and expanded the progressive template of the Jakande years.  He discovered the vast, scarcely-tapped source of wealth that has made Lagos the most viable state in Nigeria today. As the PDP-led Federal Government set out to paralyse what it could not control, Tinubu was the last governor standing.  He defied a federal might and survived to tell the story.

    Babatunde Fashola carried on from there, and humanised the city.  Akinwunmi Ambode is carrying on in that tradition, executing urban renewal projects on a grand scale

    Together, they have given Lagosians splendid glimpses of the future of their city as a global megalopolis. They have done so with vision, imagination, creativity, and commitment.

    Since 1971, I have lived for the most part in Lagos, until 1997when I fled to the United States, following a tip-off from an insider in Sani Abacha’s terror machine.  Thereafter, I have visited regularly and followed its fortunes closely, for the city is nothing if not addictive.

    I should add that it was in Lagos that I got married, and that two of my four children were born there.

    Thank you, Lagos, and happy Golden Anniversary.

  • Edo: Renaissance afoot?

    Edo: Renaissance afoot?

    In Benin City, there is a sweet whiff of Lagos.

    In Lagos,  Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, like the Biblical David, came and fought all the battles, state and federal, to soundly establish the Lagos neo-political economy.

    Two “Solomons” after, in Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN (2007-2015) and Akinwunmi Ambode (2015-date), that “kingdom” is so solidly anchored.

    At 50, Lagos is the toast of everyone nationwide, taking public service delivery to dizzying heights, despite Nigeria’s stifling unitary-federalism.

    Everyone loves a winner, don’t they?

    In Edo, Governor Adams Oshiomhole (2008-2016) came, in his own biting though apt words, to “slay the Edo godfathers”.

    Those self-made “gods” not only shared and gobbled the common patrimony, they also beggared the metropole of the old Mid-West (created in 1963) to near-destitution.

    The comrade-governor was a political cross-breed: between a nation-famous Labour agitator (the street “rofo-rofo” skills of which he put to telling use, in his many Edo political battles); and the conventional, street-wise politician (with the abiding trust-deficit).

    But new governor, Godwin Obaseki, dawns with neither asset — nor liability — that comes with a political mix-breed.

    He is the quintessential “technocrat”, that set not a few drooling, with great expectations of immaculate policy; away from empty politicking.  That builds trust.

    But “technocrat”, in contemporary Nigeria, could also connote soulless opportunism.  The conventional politician must take all the electioneering heat, so the so-called technocrat could push his divine right, to play god in the government’s policy chambers!

    So, after the street-buzzing charisma of Oshiomhole, how does Obaseki ease into the fray, even after a gruelling electioneering for governor?  In other words, would Oshiomhole play the politics for Obaseki, just as Tinubu did for Fashola in Lagos?

    Not exactly, though there appears a clear parallel of continuity, ala Lagos,  of which Oshiomhole is the spiritual head.

    For starters, the new governor enjoys the buffer of consummate politicians: Deputy Governor, Comrade Philip Shaibu, ex-House of Representatives;  Secretary to the State Government (SSG),  Osarodion Ogie; lawyer-politician and Edo APC chairman,  Anslem Ojezua, as well as the robust political mobilization machinery of the Oshiomhole years.

    But behind that fount is a new politics-friendly nest, carefully woven to properly position the governor.

    Yes, Obaseki would retain his core as a policy wonk; but not the distant and cold type.  Rather, it’s the policy wonk that glows in Edo streets, bolstered with as much political buy-in as possible, factored into government policies, no matter how sweeping.

    According to Prof. Julius Ihonvbere, interacting with a select group of visiting top editors and columnists, this elaborate arrangement, anchored on the “Oshiomhole foundation, but in a different way and perspective”, comprises the governor’s personal representative, in every ward in the state.

    These ward gubernatorial special assistants transmit policy in the lingo the grassroots understand; and obtain prompt feedback to the governor.

    In the loop, of this political communication buzz, are the traditional party channels as ward, zonal and state chairs and their executives, special interest groups as the women caucuses, the party’s parliamentary caucuses, traditional rulers, local guilds, Labour unions, and religious lobbies.

    As a result, there is extensive party consultation at every policy baking session, closer party-government fusion for appointments, especially of would-be commissioners, and a robust strategic dialogue with the people, across party lines.

    That about sums up the elaborate political infrastructure, for a policy-wonk governor, to mainstream his policies and make them glow with popular appeal.

    Still, would-be commissioners, more than six months after taking office?  Whatever happened to the popular cliche of hitting the ground running?

    Well, going by inputs from top government and party hierarchs, the Obaseki government had indeed “hit the ground running” — but not by barging in on the public, but by rigorous thinking to conceive and re-tool, as prelude to sure-footed service delivery.

    Everyone that interacted with the visiting journalists made this point: Mr. Ogie, current SSG; Prof. Ihonvbere, ex-SSG; Mrs. Gladys Idaho, Head of Service; Mr. Ojezua, Edo APC chairman; Joseph Eboigbe, Obaseki’s deputy in the Oshiomhole policy think-tank and now policy shaft in the new government; Edo Works Ministry’s Ferguson Enabulele, a key driver of the new government’s road policy, with its stress on the concrete technology and 100 per cent local inputs; and Dennis Oloriegbe, ex-LASTMA and Edo’s new traffic czar, as head of the new Edo State Traffic Management Authority (EDSTMA), among others.

    Indeed, since the November 2016 swearing-in of the new governor, Edo has morphed into a caravan of workshops, importing experts in different fields, from all parts of the country, to help forge a comprehensive policy roadmap for the new government.

    That strategic dialogue has not only shaped the new administration’s vision, but also envisioned the profile of the putative cabinet, and, in the new spirit of government-party close collaboration, given the party wards enough notice to shop for sharp minds, with stellar character, to fill the incoming cabinet.

    That charter, however, comes with clear-cut short, medium and long-terms goals, which a cabinet member must meet, or resign — or be fired.

    The policy thrust, according to these hierarchs, targets mass job creation through massive investment in large-scale agriculture, without sacrificing the interest of traditional small-scale farmers; a land-banking system, complete with data on soil texture, which matches crop cultivation with suitable land; enhanced security; gas-powered electricity; massive waterworks; affordable housing, massive road construction (“no economy without roads”, one of them quipped); and a vibrant traffic management system, complete with modern bus stops and termini, and well-trained traffic marshals.

    But the most exciting part of the Edo policy roadmap has got to be the new stress on technical education to raise a corps of skilled artisans — electricians, plumbers, carpenters, masons, auto-mechanics, and skilled road construction gangs — courtesy of a re-tooled Edo Technical College, complete with an industrial park that, the Obaseki government figures, would seamlessly absorb its products.

    Still on technical and artisanal competence, remember Sandra Aguebor, she of the famous Lady Mechanic Initiative (LMI) fame?  She has set up shop, with her girls, adjunct to Government House, the czarina of the garage that fixes vehicles in the Edo Government’s fleet!

    Surely, some Edo Renaissance is afoot?

    Maybe.  But that is if the Obaseki government walks the talk of its elaborate planning, in pin-point service delivery.

    Still, watch it, Lagos!  If its plan works out,  Edo is gunning for Number 1!

    That can’t be bad for pre-restructured Nigeria, can it?

     

  • A mid-term reflection

    A mid-term reflection

    The Nigerian economy is gradually coming out of its worst recession in years… we are beginning to see the signs and we will come out to become stronger”. That was Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, at an Abuja Town Hall meeting penultimate week. The federal government, she also added, is working to block wastages, increase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and embark on single window project execution.

    Less than a week to Buhari administration’s mid-term in office, the signs are as upbeat as they are unmistakable: things are beginning to look up; at last, the legendary Nigerian good fortune appears to be holding out.

    Oil, the main driver of the economy is back – on a rebound. Production is being gradually ramped up – thanks to the return of calm to the troubled Niger Delta. The naira that has been on a free-fall in the last one year has begun a steady climb to respectability, selling at the so-called parallel market for N380 to the greenback last week. If that would not suffice to assuage Godwin Emefiele’s army of critics to hold their fire, they can take solace in the fact that inflation which only a short while ago stood at above 18 percent has been on a climb-down to 17 percent.

    For an economy that has been stuttering, the administration would seem to have found some basis – although limited – to stake a claim at progress particularly in the non-oil sector. The restriction on rice importation as indeed other choice grains has had some salutary effects on local production.  The CBN Anchor Borrowers rice programme, for instance, has provided a big boost to local production efforts just as the news across the rice producing states somewhat suggest farmers’ embrace of the initiative with enthusiasm. Here, the federal government’s target on self-sufficiency in rice production in 2018 would seem firmly on course. The same with other grains; federal government’s restrictions seems to be paying off.

    Here – as in all cases with the value chain – the challenge is how to strengthen the linkages between the farms, storage, transport, processing and marketing.  That obviously requires massive and sustained investment in infrastructure – the huge gap of which the administration has been rather too timid to confront.

    The other challenge is how to evolve a system of price guarantees without which the farmers would be subject to cyclic fluctuations in farm-gate prices – something that can prove catastrophic to the current efforts. While there can be no better time than now for government to look at the issues, addressing them obviously holds the key to the future. For now, we continue to wait and see.

    The same with manufacturing sector. Currently, the sector is best described as anemic. If the power situation has constituted its main albatross, the huge dependence on forex for raw materials and spares would appear to be its major undoing. Beset by multifarious operational and environmental challenges, the sector, despite the best efforts of the federal government, has remained not only uncompetitive, but quite frankly, a non-starter.

    Here is my worry: Is there something in the Nigerian environment that has made the goal of backward integration unworkable despite its acclaimed merits? Why is it not possible for a company that has been operating in the local environment for decades to be able to source its raw materials locally or in the alternative sell a part of its products abroad to cover its forex needs? Imagine the local margarine producer using imported palm oil in local manufacture of the product. How low can a people go? Is there something wrong with us?

    The situation obviously calls for deep thinking.  There has to be a way out.

    A word for the states. The story across the board is no less upbeat. Two bailouts plus – including a Paris Club debt refund; not only is life beginning to return to the states, their finances have experienced considerable restoration. There are now claims that a sizeable chunk of salary arrears have either been paid or are in the process of being paid. If you ignore the increasingly troubling whispers about alleged diversion of slices of the Paris Club refund by some governors and their confederates, or the unending tales of agony by pensioners, the situation today is admittedly, a far cry from the fiscal cliff-hanger which most had perched precariously in nearly the whole of the last two years. Here, the exception would perhaps be Yahaya Bello’s Kogi State whose endless workers verification has become something of a rod of affliction; whose tertiary institutions,  in spite the serial bailouts,  have remained on lockdown for months over issues of finance.

    What has changed? Pretty little – as far as one can see. At least, nothing that the governors have done. Lagos is of course an exception. As against their promises to do so, not much appears to have been done on the restructuring of their bureaucracies let alone priming them to deliver improved services or even to grow their internally generated revenues.

    Are our governors waiting for the fire next time – which will surely come except a deliberate effort is made to restructure the political economy?

    By the way, aside sharing bailout or Paris Club refunds, what do our governors discuss at their National Economic Council meetings? Imagine; if they could pay billions of naira to ‘consultants’ to reconcile their Paris Club refund claims, what stops them from getting a battery of attorneys to prepare briefs for a possible push on some of the more troubling aspects of our fiscal federalism particularly those hobbling their capacities to survive as economic entities?

    For the Buhari administration, it must have been a tough job cleaning the mess inherited from the immediate past administration. While scale of corruption and its allied subversion of fiscal process are still being revealed, there can be no overstating the fiscal crisis brought by the collapse of oil prices on the one hand and the impact of the strangulating hold on oil production by aggrieved Niger Delta militants. While there are those out there who, understandably, would swear that the problems inherited were overstated, what is debatable is that any administration could have done better in the short term, in dealing with problems that are profoundly structural in nature.

    What has the administration done in this direction in two years? The so-called Economic Growth and Recovery Plan document – a patchwork of the same fancy ideas which although beautiful, never gets to leave the paper on which they are written?

    How far will the current stability hold? A lot depends on what the administration chooses to do in the coming months. Power of course key. Here, we must attest to Power, Works and Housing Minister, Babatunde Fashola’s frustrations and lately, impatience with the operators particularly the distribution companies. Again, like I noted last week, I am yet to see how the anger will get the job done. What would deliver is a plan of action matched by a strict regime of implementation.

    It’s certainly not late in the day for our administrations at the federal and states to get cracking.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • My Lagos story (1)

    My Lagos story (1)

    In my consciousness, Lagos was that city of the fast-paced life, where everyone was trying to swindle everyone else and only the wiliest survived, a city where crime stalked the streets and fear was a constant companion.  I had heard stories about its sheer villainy told and retold.

    So, despite the opportunities said to abound there, going to Lagos was the last thing on my mind.  After leaving high school in Zaria, I headed to Kano, which had become like home.

    You can therefore imagine my apprehension the day I received an 82-word telegram from the Central Bank of Nigeria asking me to report for a job interview in Lagos in four weeks.  I had sent my application to the Kano Branch of the CBN, not to the Headquarters.

    The same Lagos, about which I had heard blood-curdling stories?  To head there, left entirely to my own devices, with no guide and with nowhere to lodge?

    Though unemployed, I did not go for the interview.

    Some six months later, in August 1963, Lagos bobbed up on my horizon but in far more agreeable circumstances.  I was offered a place at the Federal Advanced Teachers College, in Akoka, Yaba.  I would be travelling by bus — railway workers were on strike— from Kaduna, in company of returning and new students, many of whom I knew.   The prospect of such a journey of adventure was exhilarating

    The day after we left Kaduna, the bus pulled up on the sparkling Akoka campus, at night.  A rickety bridge across a stream at the end of an unpaved road linked Abule Oja and environs to Akoka, also home of St Finbarr’s College, where Rev Father Slattery, the soccer luminary, was the legendary principal.

    I still remember my first foray into the city.  A casual stroll from campus took us through Onitiri and the entire stretch of Atan Cemetery to St Agnes Bus Stop where we boarded the Lagos Municipal Transport Service (LMTS) bus that had originated at the Yaba bus terminal and proceeded to St Agnes through Montgomery, or had approached from the Ikorodu Road end. The fare was six pence.

    The bus took us all the way down Herbert Macaulay Street, then a single carriageway with traffic flowing in one direction, to Ijora Causeway, past the Railway Terminus at Ebute Metta, through an underpass, and then on to Carter Bridge, Idumota Square and all the way down Nnamdi Azikiwe Street, stopping finally near the fountain on Tinubu Square.

    No visit downtown was complete without stopping by at Kingsway Stores.  It was there that I first rode on an escalator.  Leventis Department Store was a block up the Marina, and down the other side was the UTC Department Store.

    Each had a delicatessen that was like a meeting point for yuppies and would-be yuppies.  From the UTC restaurant on the second floor, you got a stunning view of the sea and ships waiting to berth at the Apapa Wharf.  The shore line was less than some 60 feet from the UTC building.

    Across Broad Street from UTC was perhaps the most frequented by men who set much store by their wardrobe. Esquire it was appropriately named and it was chockfull of dress shirts bearing the most reputable designer labels of the day, among them Rael Brook, Double Two, Aristocrat, Arrow and Van Heusen — the real stuff.  Not a slap-on label originating from some sweatshop in Bangladesh or Thailand

    Shopping or, to tell the truth, window-shopping in these stores and in the shops on Nnamdi Azikiwe and Broad Street, was a monthly routine, with occasional bus rides to the Bar Beach, to see wave upon wave from the Atlantic Ocean crash on the shoreline with the sound of a dozen thunderclaps

    Ikoyi and Victoria Island seemed remote, unattainable, Adeniran Ogunsanya Street was the crown jewel of Surulere, or what they called New Lagos, a planned, graceful settlement, the precise opposite of the chaotic, older parts of the city.

    Small, single family-owned bungalows with well-kept gardens and lawns dotted Yaba.  You did not have to leave home at 5 am to reach Lagos in time to start work at three hours later.  And you were reasonably sure to be home within two hours of closing from work.

    It was in Lagos I had my first dress suit, a protocol- black affair made to measure by Ogundero the Tailor who catered to the most fastidious clientele, and matching bally shoes. It was in Lagos, at Birch Freeman High School, that I had my baptism as a classroom teacher.

    It was there that my hairline began to recede and it was there, some 20 years Iater that my first grey hairs sprouted.  It was there that I ate my first meat pie and my first scotch egg.

    I was in Lagos when Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and later Chief Anthony Enahoro, and stalwarts of the Opposition Action Group were sentenced to prison on a charge of treasonable felony.  I was there when the majors struck on January 15, 1966.  I had gone to Lagos that day and had ventured as far as the Race Course, close by Parliament Buildings.  I had noticed a few soldiers here and there, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.  By the time I got back to campus, everyone was talking about the military coup.  They asked me about what I had seen in Lagos.  I had nothing to report.

    Months earlier, on an excursion to Parliament, our group from campus had gathered round Minister of Finance Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh’s limousine when the man himself suddenly materialised, with his trademark bowler and traditional loincloth trailing him like the tail of Halley’s Comet.

    “What are these Communists doing around my car?” he shouted as he approached us, police orderly in tow.  We dispersed quickly.  It was notorious that Himself the Omimi Ejo had a pathological aversion to bearded men.

    The National Stadium was an open field.  Not even its huge signboard and its massive wrought-iron gate could disguise the fact that it was little more than a statement of intent.  Driving toward Ibadan on the scrappy Ikorodu Road, you had the sense that Lagos effectively ended at Obanikoro and that Ikeja was another town entirely.  Going from Ikeja to Agege was like journeying through the countryside. A trip to Badagry and back took a whole day.

    Back then, the most the national soccer squad could hope for in their yearly encounter with Ghana’s Black Stars was a draw.  A humiliating defeat was the usual outcome. How exhilarating, then, that the junior team the Academicals, beat their Ghanaian counterparts in 1966 and broke the myth of Ghana’s invincibility

    On Saturday nights, we would walk to Casino Cinema after dinner, watch the movie on offer – any movie would do — and on the way back call at Kakadu (KKD) Night Club to check things out. You could expect to find Roy Chicago, Fela Ransome-Kuti (as he then was), Victor Uwaifo, or Gentleman EC Arinze in scintillating performance.  In the wee hours of the morning, we would head back to campus, walking past Atan Cemetery and through unlit streets without a care in the world.

    I was there when Lollipop Girl Millicent Small, backed by Fela, thrilled huge audiences in Lagos and television compere Rosemary (Miss Independence) Anieze’s riveting show “Saturday Squares” captured the beat and the rhythm and the spirit of the Swingin’ Sixties and showcased many a budding artiste. The Daily Times was then a generic name for newspapers.

    I left Lagos in 1966.  When I returned four years later to study at the University of Lagos,  I found the city vastly  transformed, though not always for the better.  But it remained stubbornly familiar, and welcoming.

     

  • The troika self-rouses

    Generals Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, all former military heads of state, rouse themselves at the scent of presidential ill health.  Rendezvous point: IBB’s Minna hill top mansion.

    Is that exemplary statesmanship for a nation in dire straits?  Or just an umpteenth season of cold power gaming?

    Even if the motive were clean, can a brilliant future lie in a rotten past, where this triad were commanding shapers?

    Of the three, the most tolerable is Gen. Abubakar; and that, strictly on account of his taciturnity.

    Whatever his faults during his brief shot at power (June 1998-May 1999), he has saved the polity insensitive and vacuous prattling that grate.

    Still, that hardly puts him in the clear; for MKO Abiola died under his charge, in the most curious of dramatic circumstances.

    Some claim MKO’s death was an alleged “final solution” that would clear the deck of June 12 malcontents, and re-start the country on a clean slate.

    What a costly illusion, proved grand delusion, snaring the taciturn general as among Nigeria’s troublers of Israel!

    Pray, if there had been an MKO presidency, would there have been a compensatory Yoruba presidency that drafted Obasanjo; and created the solid foundation for this present mess, despite the Ebora Owu’s huffing-and-puffing, over eight costly years, and ever after?

    With all due respect, until Abubakar comes clean on Abiola’s death, he loses any right to pose as part of any solution to Nigeria’s problems.

    That takes the tale back to the root of the debacle: IBB’s reckless annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election results.

    A colleague on Friday wondered why, despite the havoc IBB had inflicted on Nigerians, there was still an elite stampede at the wedding of his last daughter, Halima, at Minna, Niger State, on May 12.

    What would that be — endorsement or forgiveness? — he snapped, somewhat seething with revulsion; suggesting that IBB, by his past power rascalities, should have earned the fair status of a pariah.

    Still, IBB’s public troubles must not foreclose his private right to intensely sweet family rituals, of which marrying off a darling daughter is key.

    Besides, IBB is IBB; and his children are his children.  Though the deeds of the father often robs off on the children and vice-versa, visiting the sin of the father on the child is rather queasy, even if the Bible gave a divine stamp to that dire fatalism.

    Then, the question of bonhomie!  Indeed, with the possible exception of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first and last ceremonial president, perhaps no Nigerian leader, living or dead, boasts the IBB charm!  The self-named evil genius is such a charmer!

    Still, as all the waters of the Atlantic could not wash regicide off the vile hands of Lady Macbeth, in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, all of IBB’s charm could not blot out the guilt of his rash annulment of June 12, which eventually pushed a citizen to early grave, for winning a clean election, and earning the first truly pan-Nigeria mandate.

    That is where IBB’s intense family bliss, contrasts the intense collective angst, for victims of his annulment; which is pretty much all Nigerians that voted on June 12, whose sacred mandate he crushed.

    Besides, as IBB made merry  on May 12 with friends and family, MKO and wife Kudirat lay stone-cold in the grave, their five offspring complete orphans, for having the temerity to fight IBB’s reckless annulment!

    So, what was IBB thinking, embarking on that essence suicide?  The June 12 blunder may well haunt him to his grave — and just as well!

    That makes audacious and rankling, his hosting of the Minna meeting, over presidential health.  With all due respect and absolutely no intention of being nasty, it conjures, in arresting technicolor, the image of the vulture rousing to the thick smell of carrion!

    IBB is the fundament of a seedy past.  He cannot be part of a sane future.

    That brings the discourse to former President Obasanjo, but before then a military head of state, like IBB and Abubakar.

    First, despite his professed holiness, the reflex of rushing to Minna to meet with IBB, over Buhari’s health, reflects the rather low ethics of Obasanjo’s politics.  Yet, the Ebora Owu never tires of telling everyone, in words and in deeds, that he is the best ethical champion that ever happened on Nigeria!

    But from the philosophical to the bare basics: Obasanjo is directly responsible for the present mess President Buhari is trying to clear, even at the risk of his life.

    Like Nigerian federal leaders at independence, who took all the wrong steps to crash an otherwise promising polity, Obasanjo took all the wrong steps to stifle hope in the crucial first eight years of the 4th Republic (1999-2007).

    First, he went on a binge of megalomania which, truth be told, linked some decent economic reforms to his personal indispensability.  But while he pranced and preened over those “reforms”, to flatter himself as the “father of modern Nigeria”, the infrastructure stock collapsed, signalling the economic collapse now causing mass anguish.

    On the political front, he embarked on a deliberate and systematic destruction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the special purpose vehicle (SPV) that actualized the Army Arrangement (apologies to Fela) that gifted him presidential power.  By militarizing the PDP, he drove away almost all the decent elements, leaving behind only the mere chaff and yes (wo)men, nevertheless crippled by hubris!

    The failure of his third term gambit gave rise to new desperation.  First, the presidential enthronement of a decent but fatally ill gentleman, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.  His death, in office, put the North in a power bind.

    It has also made that region ultra-sensitive over Buhari’s health, and the disturbing spectre of deja vu, not helped by an ultra-insensitive media fixation, driven by ghoulish thinking.

    Then, the beginning of the end, for the Obasanjo political dynasty: the rise of the presidential vacuum that was Goodluck Jonathan, under whom everything just collapsed!  That made the second coming of Muhammadu Buhari an imperative for national salvation.

    So, with these parlous records, how can the triad of Obasanjo, Babangida and Abubakar self-rouse as ultimate do-gooders to fix a media-driven hysteria over presidential ill-health?

    They are the bastion of the seedy past.  So, they cannot be part of a newly minted future, after the harsh crucible of the present.

  • BRF and abiku Discos

    BRF and abiku Discos

    Last week’s putdown of the club of incompetent operators at the lower end of the electricity market by Power, Works and Housing Minister, Babatunde Fashola, at their 15th edition of their monthly power sector operators’ meeting which held in Jos, capital of Plateau State could not have come as a shock to many. Indeed, to millions of Nigerians forced to endure the tyranny of the clueless operators, it was something long expected. However, if the operators saw it coming via the minister’s hardly suppressed irritation with the long running campaign by their cartel – so-called the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), what they could not have bargained for was the text and tone of the minister’s language at the Jos meeting.

    The minister’s frustrations, although somewhat understandable, is however coming late in the day. Clearly, the issue isn’t just that the club of players have broken all the elements in the rulebook to deserve being shown the way out, there are, as yet, no signs that they know what needs to be done to take the sector out of the current morass.

    As I observed on this page not too long ago, the Discos in particular seems to have done better in procuring alibis to explain away their incompetence than they have done at implementing the Service Level Agreements (SLA) made with the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) – a critical agreement – which guaranteed the metering of electricity consumers as well as significantly reducing the collection and technical losses in the sector within five years. This is not to talk of the investments which electricity consumers were told to envisage under the privatised entities, and which provided the justification for their sale in the first instance.

    That these are nowhere forthcoming several years after leaves little wonder why the system is still stuck on the obsolete equipment and business methods, starved as it were of the new thinking needed to turn things around.

    For an administration that promised change, the realisation of the difficult route not taken must truly sobering more so as begins its countdown to its mid-term barely two weeks from now. However, that the bunch of clueless operators would dare to mount the high road of offensive in spite of their proven incompetence, and this after taking hundreds of billions of naira from the public till with nothing to show merely extends the frontier of popular Nigerian narrative about actions not carrying consequences.

    Clearly, if the minister’s statement at the Jos meeting is any revealing, it is the futility of putting the electricity consumer’s hope in a club that continues to demonstrate incurable disdain not only the rules of the market but the elementary principles of fairness and equity. For while they could be forgiven their routine offering of old wives fables to rationalise brazen incompetence, not so their latest vocation in pushing an agenda so egregiously injurious to the public cause.

    Some examples –from the minister’s Jos statement – would suffice.

    First is the Discos claim to exclusive rights on their distribution areas – a claim so laughable were it not to be tragic. Imagine an anaemic Enugu Disco seeking to contest the space with the 188-megawatt Geometric Power, Aba over power supply to that industrial enclave in the Igbo heartland; and this at a time the Disco could not provide minimum service households in the East! Talk of asking the good people of Aba to wait for a disco that has neither demonstrated sufficient understanding of its rationale nor taken any first step forward!

    Listen to Fashola: “Your statement does not address the illogic of standing in the way of a consumer seeking to get for himself what the service provider, Disco, has failed or is unable to give them.

    “What is important is that the law is followed, consultations are held, and decisions are taken. No Disco has exclusive rights over any area and its ability to retain an area must be consistent with its ability to provide service to the area.”

    Second is the contentious issue of a central pool – an escrow account – into which electricity tariffs are paid.

    On the surface, the Discos would seem to have a point here. If anything, the proposition is potentially problematic. The alternative, going by the experiences of other operators in the industry, is however even more so. For those who see the decision to centralise and escrow power sector revenues as anathema, this is how Fashola puts it to the Discos: “…the escrow condition was agreed by you with the central bank as a condition for offering you stabilisation funds by way of loans to fund the business you invested in because commercial banks were reluctant to do so…

    “What you also failed to state was that the loan was at 10 per cent interest rate which is well below commercial rates.

    “What you also failed to state was that you also agreed under that arrangement to establish letters of credit to guarantee future payments to NBET and the TCN Market Operations, and that the agreed commercial terms of the letters of credit authorises NBET and TCN Market Operations to draw on the letters of credit for any default in payment to them, and that such defaults have occurred and continue to occur.”

    So, what do in the case of the glaring breach of duty to the National Bulk Electricity Trader (NBET) and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) by Discos?

    Allow them– including gas suppliers– to go under and by extension imperil what is left of the system?

    To quote Fashola again:  “Your statement did not tell members of the public that these companies were not getting paid because you were not remitting all what you are supposed to be remitting to the market operators.”

    These are just a few of the problems nurtured by the Discos. Ever heard of operators seeking to reap where it has not sown?

    To go back to the main point: neither anger nor frustration would solve the problem any more than the pampering would. Only effective, even-handed regulatory action would. Again, as I noted in the article earlier referenced, the challenge is for the Buhari administration to find a way to wrest the citizens from the clutches of the clueless operators in a fair, transparent manner, shorn of abuse and arbitrariness. The situation, I noted is akin to a case of a terminally sick patient; while a surgical intervention may not necessarily guarantee that the patient would live, it does offer a shot at life; the same way that the option of doing nothing would most certainly hasten the demise.

    ANED or not – I guess it would not be a bad idea for the government to make examples of one or two laggard Discos if only to prove that it means business.