The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Pen and sword in a changed landscape

    Pen and sword in a changed landscape

    Few developments illustrate how much Nigeria has changed in the past 16 years as the bubbling kerfuffle between the Nigerian Army and the online newspaper Premium Times.

    Back then, you could not even have framed the issue as I have done.  There was no symmetry between the military and the media as public institutions. If any section of the news media or for that matter the collectivity went beyond its bounds as defined by the military, it was taught in sundry ways to stay in place.

    The rules were unspoken and unwritten, but the news media learned them by osmosis as it were.  Abiding by them was the beginning of journalistic wisdom.

    Here, in all its improbableness, is the scene that has been playing lately.

    On December 22, 2016, the Nigerian Army wrote a letter, signed by Maj-General IM  Alkali and addressed to Premium Times publisher and managing director Dapo Olorunyomi, demanding retraction of “unauthorised, false, libelous and defamatory” statements it said the paper had made about the person of Lt. General TY Buratai, the Chief of Army Staff, and about the army’s counter-insurgency operations.

    In substantiation of these charges, the letter cited three stories Premium Times had pubilshed, the latest of which appeared on December 12, 2016. The story was to the effect that Buratai had appeared before the Code of Conduct Bureau in connection with a false declaration of assets.

    The second, published on October 21, 2016, stated that 83 Nigerian soldiers were missing days after a Boko Haram attack.   The third, said the letter, alleged without evidence that the army killed a priest and                then put on the body a label identifying the deceased as a “militant.”  It was published on November 19, 2016.

    These publications, the letter said, were “unprofessional through and through, and confirmed the paper’s unalloyed loyalty to the terrorists’ cause.” 

    The letter closed with a demand that  Premium Times retract the stories and apologise to the Chief of Army Staff, General Buratai, the retraction to be published  in three national dailies and online media on three consecutive days, December 29-31, 2016, and the apology to be executed in like manner,

    Failing this, the letter stated, the Nigerian Army‘s team of lawyers would be instructed to proceed at law against Premium Times.

    Not too long ago, the military would not have bothered with such niceties.

    Why take the trouble to write a letter when you can invite the editor for a “chat” and from there whisk him off to detention in places unknown? Or invade the paper’s premises and seize the editor and the staffers who wrote the stories? Or shut down the newspaper until its proprietors promise solemnly never to publish any material that could move the authorities to anger?

    Why risk legal action that will drag on interminably, with an unpredictable outcome, when you could storm the printing hall, collect copies of the paper as they rolled off the press, and cart away the entire day’s print run. Or blockade the newspaper’s premises.  Or arrange a fire to put the newspaper out of business.

    Those at the receiving end had no recourse at law.  They could not demand compensation for any injury,

    The Nigerian Army’s current mode of engagement is far different from what Dapo Olorunyomi, to whom the letter was addressed, experienced.  It was being bruited that he was one of the operators of a clandestine radio station that was broadcasting pro-democracy messages during the “June 12” crisis, to the discomfiture of the military authorities.  The Abacha regime placed a price on his head and he went underground.

    The regime went for his wife.

    In the dead of night the security people stormed her residence with such a show of force that the entire neighourhood was paralysed with fear.  They tore down the door and ransacked the place, without the slightest regard for their little boy and his infant sibling.  When they did not find Olorunyomi, they took away his wife and left her children to fend for themselves. Only when it was clear that the raid was over  did the neighghbours venture outdoors.

    Nor was this a singular incident.

    When they wanted but couldn’t find Paxton Idowu, editor of The Republic, since defunct, they went for his wife.  She was eight months pregnant. The calculation was that if he truly loved his wife and cared about their unborn child, he would give himself up.  He did, and his wife was freed.

    It did not matter whether the publication at issue was scrupulously factual.  The governing principle seemed to have been taken straight out of the rulebook of Star Chamber:  The greater the truth, the greater the libel.

    Despite its apparent civility, the Nigerian Army’s letter nevertheless contains language that would have in those dark days sent many an editor scurrying out of town, unless he or she were possessed by a death wish.  Remember how the security people confronted Dele Giwa with an allegation that he was stockpiling  munitions with the aim of overthrowing the military government, and how, less than a week later, he was blown up by a parcel bomb delivered to his home?

    That section of the letter that said publication of the stories at issue “confirmed” the paper’s “unalloyed loyalty to the terrorists cause” must have set off alarm bells in Olorunyomi’s head, perhaps even leading him to see with his mind’s eye Dele Giwa’s mutilated body on the bed in a hospital in Opebi, Lagos, that unforgettable third Sunday in October, 1986.

    So, Olorunyomi did what Giwa had done when similarly circumstanced:  He referred the Nigerian Army’s letter to the principal attorney for Premium Times, the human rights lawyer and activist, Jiti Ogunye.

    Whereupon Ogunye struck back with the pugnacity of an attorney determined to keep his client out of harm’s way.  In a letter dated January 9, 2017, he stoutly contested and rejected the Army’s allegations against Premium Times and instead literally put the complainants in the dock.

    He said he rebuked the “false assumption” that the military, exclusively, are “an epitome of patriotism and national sacrifice,” or that they love Nigeria more than Nigerians do.

    “Sir, the Nigerian Army, of which you spoke so glowingly,” Ogunye continued, “is an heir to a military that unpatriotically subverted, many times, constitutional governance in Nigeria, plunged Nigeria into a three-year internecine civil war, committed unspeakable human rights violations against the Nigerian people and thwarted the efforts of Nigerian s  to restore democratic governance to Nigerians.”

    Ogunye said the Army’s letter had threatened the” lives and well-being” “ of his clients, and that his clients were therefore obliged to put the public on notice that,  should any harm come to them, the Chief of Army Staff and the Nigerian Army would be held accountable.

    The Army’s allegations, Ogunye noted, falsely imputed to his clients the commission of treasonable offences and aiding the enemy, offences punishable by 20 years imprisonment.  He  demanded that the Nigerian Army publish a letter withdrawing the allegations and assuring his clients of their safety and protection  by the security and law enforcement agencies, in particular the Nigerian Army, within seven  days of receiving his letter

    Failing that, Ogunye said, his clients would not hesitate to take legal action against the parties identified in letter at issue, their principals, the Nigerian Army and the Federal Government of Nigeria, to enforce their fundamental rights under the Constitution.

    This back and forth, as I see it, is a healthy development.  The Nigerian Army deserves praise for pursuing its grievances in a civil manner in place of the reflex rush to self help of a bygone era.  Premium Times has done well to stand its ground, to refuse to be intimidated.

    But its response is a tad overblown.  In this kerfuffle, the Nigerian Army as an institution is not on trial any more than the media as an institution is on trial.  The issues should have remained narrowly defined.

    The various deadlines set by both parties have expired, but I do not know at this time whether court filings have been made.  I hope the matter does not go that far.

    A person of stature and of undoubted goodwill and who enjoys the confidence of both parties should step in and reconcile them.

    I am thinking of Dr Matthew Hassan Kukah, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, if he is not now irretrievably absorbed in the effort to restore amity in southern Zaria after the latest slaughter of innocents.

  • Not the anti-Christ

    Not the anti-Christ

    Ten days after the sack of Jim Obazee the erstwhile executive secretary of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, the mood across a section of Nigeria’s Christendom would appear far from assuaged; never mind that the ‘cheeky fellow’ who dared the ‘church’ establishment has been taken out; it seems there can be no appeasement – not after that sensational ‘stepping down’ by Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, the revered leader of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, from the office of General Overseer in the early hours of January 7 – until all his acts in office are undone.
    Clearly, if the boundless triumphalism and backslapping that greeted the news of his forced exit any reflection of the new-found power of a wing of Christendom, it would hardly surprise if the institution which deigns to entrench the culture of corporate governance into all facets of the nation’s public life is dismantled brick by brick.
    At least, that much was said by Musa Asake, the cleric who currently doubles as the General Secretary of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in his first reaction to the sack last week.
    “The sack of Jim is good riddance to bad rubbish. Anybody that wants to fight the church will find himself where he does not want.
    “Jim got to the position by the grace of God but set out to probe and destroy the church of God. I spoke with him several times on this issue but he wouldn’t listen. He was going to take the church to what is worse than Armageddon”.
    “That code should be thrown out completely because government should not interfere with the church. The church is a no-go zone for the government. Doing that has serious implications. If they attempt it, it will lead to confusion in the nation.”
    The code in question of course is the National Code of Corporate Governance 2016 issued by the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria effective October 17, 2016. A three-part code covering the private, public and the not-for-profit sectors, it advertises its intentions as: “to develop the principles and practices of Corporate Governance applicable in Nigeria. Whereas the Code of Corporate Governance for the Private Sector is mandatory; that for Not-for-Profit entities is governed by the rule of “Comply or Justify non-compliance”; while that of the Public Sector is said to be awaiting executive directive from the Federal Government.
    That regulation designed to entrench corporate governance in the nation’s public life has now been “suspended”.
    Beyond what is now falsely presented as Jim Obazee versus The Church, or even FRC versus The Church; it is doubtful that many Nigerians can claim to understand what the issues at the heart of the brouhaha are. Simply because a section of the church is currently leading the charge, I have struggled to understand the basis of the unhelpful posturing which suggests that corporate governance is not just as an alien concept but a needless intrusion into the sacred terrain. Aside having no basis either in the scriptures, church traditions, or even recent church history, one only needs to refer at the template put in place by the early church to cast out any doubts about what ought to be the position of the church in the face of the raging contentions.
    By the way, didn’t Apostle Paul say that the righteousness of the believer should surpass those of the Pharisees, the keepers of the law?
    Taking the story as told in the book of Acts of Apostles Chapter 6: 1-4 as guide, it is clear that the early church not only anticipated the complexity that would inevitably attend to the quantum growth in the church, they actually left us a handy template to follow. I quote the entire four verses of chapter 6: 1 About this time, when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenists made a complaint against the Hebrews: in the daily distribution their own widows were being overlooked. 2 So the Twelve called a full meeting of the disciples and addressed them, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the word of God so as to give out food; 3 you, brothers, must select from among yourselves seven men of good reputation, filled with the Spirit and with wisdom, to whom we can hand over this duty. 4 We ourselves will continue to devote ourselves to prayer and to the service of the word.’
    Will the above not pass for a clear delineation of the priesthood from the mundane routines of administration? While that is self-regulation at its best, is there anything in the tradition and practices of the more established churches that suggest the kind of separation between the church and the state as being canvased by some?
    Not in the age of terrorism and certainly not in an age of world without borders can that be contemplated. Certainly not when the churches are registered under the Corporate and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) – a factor that comes with its own obligations; not when the draw huge pool of funds from the public much of which are deployed not necessarily for not-for-profit ends.
    Of course, I understand some of the anger about ‘term limits’ for General Overseers – a provision that is at best superfluous. Apart from the “comply or justify’ rule which render it nugatory, a careful reading of Section 9.2 which says “In the case of religious or cultural organisations, nothing in this code is intended to change the spiritual leadership and responsibilities of Founders, General Overseers, Pastors, Imams and Muslim Clerics, Presidents, Bishops, Apostles, Prophets, etc. which are distinguishable from purely corporate governance and management responsibilities and accountabilities of the entities” –should ordinarily dispel any fears about the intention of the regulation.
    But then, this is Nigeria, a country where matters of faith are hardly amenable to reason.
    Thank God Pastor Adeboye has taught by his force of personal example, not just the duty of obedience to the law, he has by so doing, displayed those virtues that sets him apart as a leader among leaders. It is something that the Nigerian church should be justly proud. In the long run, the Nigerian church can only be better for it.
    Finally, I recall a book I read several years ago with the title – The man who could do no wrong written by an American Televangelist Charles E. Blair. To those canvassing the argument that matters of the church are best left for the celestial plane, it comes highly recommended. It is an account of a tragic but nonetheless riveting life story of a man who transformed Denver’s Calvary Temple into one of the largest non-denominational churches and presided over its growth for 50 years only to sink into the abyss after running foul of the law. I also invite them to take out time to read the story of the South Korean pastor, David Yonggi Cho, founder of the world’s largest Pentecostal congregation sentenced to three years in prison (suspended) for embezzling 13 billion won (US$12 million) in church funds.
    You want to know my takeaway in all of these? First, is that neither the FRC nor its disgraced executive secretary is the awaited anti-Christ. Second is that the Nigerian church will be better served by greater openness and transparency. I speak here of the institution to which I am privileged to belong – by Grace.

  • Three days in Wawa country

    Making the Amalu matriarch’s funeral, at Enugu, was going to be difficult.
    She, of the other room, was livid.
    “You’re very stubborn — you know that?” she snapped, with supreme anger, in her supreme headquarters.  “Must you make this trip?”
    “I must,” was the quiet answer.
    That swallowed her ire, like water consuming a raging fire. But you could still feel, in the dark room, the cold ash of impotent rage.
    It was end of year, complete with baleful superstitions about travels.  And there, on those cratered roads, were more than a fair share of mad drivers.
    Missus didn’t hate the mission.  She only loved her husband.
    The journey itself — all 14 hours of it — couldn’t be more uncomfortable. With massive Yuletide East-bound travel home from Lagos, the traveller was strung virtually on the wheels, on one of the ill-reclined back seats, in the Libra minibus.
    The first, out of many for the day, left its Okota, Lagos terminal, at around 6:30 am. But the passenger didn’t disembark until around 8:35 pm, at Mopol, Umunba, near 9th mile, in the Enugu country.
    The driver, a cheerful rogue with a gravel voice, jived incessantly in Igbo, spiced with the occasional English, and condemned the bus to roaring laughter.
    But his Achilles heels were his tyres. At Ajebandele, near Ore, he stopped to replace tyres. At Asaba, he did same.  That consumed valuable time.
    Indeed, at Asaba, the tyre-fixing ritual took no less than two hours.  The passengers, worried and anxious, watched the Onitsha-bound heavy traffic slowly roll, in a sluggish jam, towards the Niger bridge.
    Once gaining the bridge, however, the traffic was clear.  And the bus skipped, like an excited deer, on a pleasurable dash — until caught up again, in the Onitsha evening traffic, on the massive Onitsha-Awka-Enugu expressway.
    Onitsha, that early evening, magically winked at you, with its incandescent Christmas lightings. To a traveller from Lagos, that evoked the lost paradise of the Fashola years, when Lagos streets, at Yuletide, preened with buntings during the day, and, at night, were a blaze of colours.  Not anymore!
    Awka was no less enthralling, posing like some village beauty, showing off her glittering new dresses, complete with her three iconic flyovers, not entirely completed but which nevertheless sparkled, again echoing the Fashola cable bridge, in Ikoyi-Lekki, Lagos.
    But then came the blues of Awka-Enugu cratered — sorry, express — way!  From the blaze of Christmas incandescence, came oil lamps, burning naked on barriers at checkpoints, as brave policemen flashed down buses, to ensure travellers’ security.
    Not less than four of those checkpoints were on that stretch, that night of 20 December 2016.  That area, the traveller was told, was notorious for armed robberies and allied crimes, with the Oji River sector reportedly the most notorious.
    But all the blues vanished the moment the traveller disembarked at Umunba.  Just some 15 metres away, a vehicle was parked.
    “Amalu?” posed Uche Eze, the gentleman Gabriel Sunny Amalu, the lawyer and colleague on The Nation Editorial Board burying his mother, had detailed as chaperon, with assistants, Nnabuike and Emeka in tow.
    “Yes,” the traveller returned.
    “Welcome!”
    He grabbed the light luggage, threw it on the backseat of the parked salon car, and off went the party to the nearby Amofia, in the Ogwofia-Owa Kingdom.
    Amofia!  Every grain of its red earth, as plentiful as beach sand, reminds you of Chinua Achebe’s fictive Umuofia, where Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond.
    Amofia’s Okonkwo would appear Joseph Amalu, Gabriel’s illustrious uncle, who  was said to have started it all — not only for his Amofia clan, but pretty much for Ogwofia-Owa and environs, as recorded by the documentary, Daybreak at Udi, which in 1950 won the Oscar, at the Academy Awards.
    Like Okonkwo, Amalu (Eze in the documentary) rallied for his culture, against intrusive progress the Oyibo decreed was development.  But unlike Okonkwo, he eventually made his peace with that “modernity”.
    Joseph Amalu’s was a classic grass-to-grace story.  With nothing but his sterling character, he went to Lagos. Though illiterate in English, the colonizing Europeans soon discovered his heart of gold, and adopted him as one of theirs.
    He not only signalled  his siblings, to come eat of this new-found town’s munificence, he himself would later return home, to become a traditional ruler, jurist and modernizer per excellence, though he spoke no English.
    Indeed, the Amalu Amofia compound is as much an echo of the Okonkwo Umuofia’s, with its many obi (huts), as it is architecture as vintage tell-tale of the Amalu family history.
    Aside from the one-storey building to the left as you gained the wall-less compound, which Gabriel always told you belonged to the “big Chief Amalu in Lagos”, the rest is an array of bungalows.  You could tell the age, the era, and the history of each, just by its design.
    The Joseph Amalu bungalow occupies an artistic centre, from where others seem to fan out.
    To the right is Ezinne Uzodumma Amalu’s (1930-2016), the matriarch everyone had come to bid farewell. And just at its back, like a chick, under the protective wings of its mother, is Gabriel’s own bungalow, with its more contemporary design.
    And talking vintage: Gabriel’s late father, Michael Amalu’s Peugeot 403 salon car, nestles under a tree, just in front of Ezinne’s obi, a museum piece for present and coming Amalus. The senior Amalu retired as chief superintendent of prisons in 1964.  He died in 1991.
    Between mother and son’s obi, Ezinne would find her final resting place.
    The toast of the December 20 wake, the funeral mass at St. Patrick Catholic Church, Nwankwo Ogwofia-Owa, and sumptuous post-funeral reception (both on December 21), with its exquisite Igbo cultural extravaganza,  were Bolade Opaleye, Esq., barrister-at-law and Ripples — two Yoruba folks.
    Patrick Okafor, the Amalu in-law and fizzy MC, never tired of telling everyone, how the non-natives had braved all to come give the Ezinne a befitting farewell.
    And Gabriel’s “big Chief Amalu in Lagos”, Chief Godwin Chuma Amalu, turned out a winsome gentleman, and charming epitome of poise, civility and modesty, who instantly invited the duo to his Lagos home!
    Thank you, Amofia, for golden memories!
    But the celebration was now ended (in the poet, Gabriel Okara’s words); and Bolade and I were back in the hands of the ever true Uche Eze — Bolade to Enugu Airport and, Ripples, to the Libra park at Enugu.
    Uche splendidly delivered — and the December 22 rush back to Lagos, for Christmas: the one by air, the other, by road, resumed.
    The return journey was much more comfy, though the Enugu country roads were no less cratered, Awka still preened with its new flyovers, and Onitsha — why does that concrete jungle, of multi-storey houses, bawl at you: that housing is nothing but a billion-naira hustle?
    Around 6:15 pm, at Berger, Lagos, came this text from Bolade: “Just landed 20 minutes ago.  We left Enugu 3:45 pm.  You should be nearer Lagos now.  I am now going through the hectic traffic from Ikeja to Lekki.  What a life!”.   His flight was billed for take-off at 9 am!
    Here, the rich also howl!
    Do have a happy new year

  • Holiday gifts, then and now

    Holiday gifts, then and now

    You know that recession is well and truly with us when the usual Christmas and New Year hampers are not forthcoming, and when the few that do arrive look so anaemic that you have to make sure that they have not been delivered to the wrong address.

    Not too long ago, holiday gifts from military president Ibrahim Babangida’s used to be conveyed to the homes of his ministers and key officials in trucks laden with sacks of with rice and beans, vegetable oil, fresh farm produce for cooking, crates of the choicest wines and alcoholic beverages, the finest confectionery and the latest big thing in electronics, not forgetting live turkeys, goats, and sheep

    One yuletide, the story went round that when the truck arrived at his gate, the Minister, scion of a family of famous contrarians, asked to know its mission.

    “It is your Christmas present, Sir, the leader of the delivery crew told him.

    “Christmas present?” he asked in a tone indicative of surprise, if not alarm.  “From who?”

    From the Presidency, he was told.  Each minister was getting a truckload of yuletide goodies.

    He told them to return it to sender.

    They did not even get a chance to bring out what was supposed to be the icing on the cake: a heavily- wrapped rectangular bundle that looked tantalizingly like a pile of crisp banknotes  The package was secured at the corners and across its length and width with industrial-strength tape.

    In the circles where this story made the rounds, a good many were conflicted about whether the Minister should have rejected the Christmas bonanza.  Since every minister was scheduled to receive it, some said, the gift could not have been designed to compromise him or undermine his autonomy in any way.  Others said if the Minister did not need the stuff, he should have accepted and then distributed it to those who could use it, or to charity.

    Not to be left out, the police came to Rutam House, siren blaring at the head of a convoy of armed riot police, with a bullion van in tow.  They drove tight to the entrance to the newsroom, and a senior officer brought out a hefty package and asked for a responsible official to come forward to collect it and sign up, courtesy of Force Headquarters.

    Nobody went forward.

    A good many offices at Rutam House were cluttered with Christmas hampers.  But only a few landed in the office of my colleague, deputy editorial page editor and senior member of The Guardian’s  editorial Board, Dr Edwin Madunagu.  He was not complaining, you know; he rarely complained, merely making an observation to the hearing of everyone around.

    To which Amma Ogan, newly assigned the Editorial Board from her editorial chair at The Guardian on Sunday rejoined, apropos of the ‘Back to Lenin” essay that had appeared in Madunagu’s weekly column for some 15 weeks running, “Everyone is abandoning Lenin. But you are saying they should go back to him.  Do you think that is the way to get Christmas hampers?”

    All this was in an era of boom, which made it relatively easy to dispense goodwill, if not always to all men, and to court goodwill in return.

    Harsh times are here and will be with us in the short term at the very least.  Even so, members of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Federal Executive Council must have exulted on learning that the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, had a holiday gift for them.  It could well be that Buhari, not given to ceremony, had deputed Osinbajo to perform the task.

    To be sure, the gift was unlikely to be as bounteous as those that came from the master of subversive generosity. Still, it was sure to be substantial and substantive.

    When they beheld the bags neatly arranged in the chamber of the Executive Council they must have developed that familiar sinking feeling. What kind of holiday gift is this that doesn’t even fill up a fancy shopping bag, to say nothing of a Ghana-Must–Go sack?

    Size is not everything, they must have rationalised. Plus, has it not been said that some of the best things in life come in small packages?

    I doubt whether many of the Ministers can recall with confidence what transpired at that meeting, for their minds must have been on those bags and their mysterious contents. So, as soon as the meeting was over, they repaired to a conference table in at one end of the chamber to retrieve their gifts.

    A hush descended on the room as the ministers opened their bags. They stared at each other, stunned.

    Books, of all things. Books. Books with prosaic titles like The “Tipping Point” and “Outliers.” A third volume “David and Goliath” struck a chord so familiar that it almost seemed like a calculated affront.  Who does not know the biblical tale of the wispy Jew and the Philistine behemoth?

    An eyewitness sworn to confidentiality told me he had never seen such profound disappointment on so many eminent faces at any setting in his entire life.  And he is a person who has seen a great deal in high places at home and abroad.

    “Books,” he said he heard several ministers saying in lament. “Ordinary books. Who does Osinbajo  think we are? His students? Next he will be asking us to take a quiz on the books.”

    Those books are probably now lying where they must have been dumped.  Personally, I will not be surprised if some of the ministers had donated the books to the first person they encountered on coming out of the executive chamber.

    A few among the ministers will read the books. Some may even have read them well before taking office   But as a rule, ours is not a reading culture. Many of our policy makers will be hard put to indicate when they last read a book. Yet, reading, serious reading is the best nourishment for the mind and the foundation for clear thinking and sound planning.

    It is not for nothing that two of the world’s great religions, Islam and Christianity, emphasise the primacy of reading.  The Holy Bible tells us that in the beginning was “the word” – to be spoken and written and read. The first word in the Qur’an is “read.”

    One cannot, however, make a sweeping generalisation about the poor reading habits of our leaders. There are many exceptions, General TY Danjuma being the one I am most familiar with. His London office usually ships books on The New York Times Bestseller list to him, and he used to read them a avidly until recently – biographies, memoirs, books on history, philosophy, business, management, innovations, military warfare, and international affairs. Again until recently, if you pressed him to make a request of you, he would most likely ask for a good book.

    Several years ago, General Danjuma asked me to join him in Philadelphia from Peoria, Illinois, for a ceremony at Lincoln University, during which a museum housing its African art collection would be named for him.  The ceremony over, we took a short rest in our hotel back in the city and set out shopping.

    Destination?

    The Barnes & Noble Bookstore downtown, where the General picked up a stack of books, plus a pair of walking shoes from a store close by. At breakfast the following morning, I found that he had gone through the local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as The Washington Post.

    As he has advanced in years, his reading has slowed down.  But give him a compelling read, and he will zip through it with pleasure.

  • A curious affliction

    A curious affliction

    Since it started looking more closely and critically at the line items in the Federal Budget some four years ago, the attentive audience must have noticed the symptoms of an obsessive-compulsive disorder among those charged with allocating resources for the internal economy of the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

    This disorder consists in an obsession with “kitchen equipment,” with cutlery and crockery thrown in, and a predilection for purchasing them year after year, without reference to the quantity purchased the previous year, without having to justify any new purchase, without having to account for the previous year’s purchase, and without the least consideration for cost or consequences.

    The budget makers are lucky in one respect:  They have not been deluged with calls from people asking how or where to obtain the delectable table birds on which, judging by the cost to the exchequer, the Villa must have feasting from dawn to dusk every passing day.

    Surely, it is not for nothing that the Villa’s haute cuisine has been the envy of visiting world leaders since the time of Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and his wife, Dame Patience Faka, who is highly regarded for her fastidiousness and nice sense of discrimination in the finer arts.

    I say they are lucky because many yuletides ago, my uncle, a prim and proper gentleman of exquisite taste who lived in a tony neighbourhood in Surulere, still called “New then, posted a sign on his gate announcing that he had some crockery for sale.

    Within hours, the house was besieged by residents seeking bargains for their holiday cooking, the way Lagosians flocked to LAKE Rice outlets recently.

    “Where are the hens?” they demanded.

    My uncle gestured toward an array of plates and dishes and bowls and saucers and tea cups and teapots and mugs of bone china.

    They hissed and shook their heads in disbelief and sulked and cursed under their breaths as they dispersed.

    “Yeye acada confusionist, one of them said in a voice that was part rebuke and part threat. “He can’t even come out straight to say what he is selling.”

    Even without their spelling it out item by item, there is no confusion about what the people who make the budget for the Villa mean by “kitchen equipment.”

    It includes, but is probably not limited to gas stoves, grills, ovens regular and microwave, freezers, refrigerators, grinders, mixers, pots and pans and bowls of all shapes and sizes, chopping blocks, carving knives and meat cleavers and grindstones for keeping them razor-sharp.

    Even in this age of planned obsolescence, these things are built to last.  They call them hardware for good reason.  They are durable.  They should withstand the grind even when employed in making cassava bread, from the raw tuber all through to the finger-lickin’ loaves Dr Jonathan loved so much that he never again touched another kind of bread.

    So, they do not have to be replaced every year or even every other year.  Nor do they incur large maintenance costs.  Once in a while, a piece of equipment will need replacement.  That is cheaper than repairing them, as anyone who has tried to “repair” a refrigerator or deep freezer knows only too well.

    Which makes it all the more puzzling that vast sums of money have been earmarked for kitchen equipment year after year since 1999 when President Olusegun Obasanjo was voted into office.  Before then, of course, the budget was not subject to public scrutiny or debate, assuming it was not a classified state secret.  Those were the days, of secret, off-shore budgets. .

    Even so, it is safe to assume that military president Ibrahim Babangida, with his delusions of grandeur, was not one to skimp on any artifacts that projected sumptuousness.  His activist foreign policy, especially on the Africa front, and Mrs Maryam Babangida’s drive to move African first ladies out of the shadows of their husbands, culminated in a constant stream of dignitaries to Abuja where they were treated to the very best.  Even FW de Klerk, South Africa’s last apartheid president, came calling.

    Babangida’s goggled successor Sani Abacha –forget the pathetic poseur Ernest Shonekan —was   by comparison a hermit, more used to conducting business in the other room than at lavish State dinners and banquets.  Set before him a tray of sizzling, spicy suya and a stack of cassettes of action-action-packed Indian films and women flown in from the Orient, and he was in his element.

    If the kitchen equipment Abacha left behind was too rusty to pass on, the Villa would installed             a new set as President Obasanjo took office.   Thereafter, kitchen equipment became a line item and a perennial in the federal budget.  But it drew little public attention until 2015, in the budget executed jointly by the outgoing Jonathan Goodluck and the in-coming Muhammadu Buhari administrations.

    That year, N237. 4 million was allocated for kitchen and catering equipment items.  It that was not serious money in real terms, it certainly was no piddling sum compared with the earmarks for subjects no less compelling.

    In the notoriously padded 2016 Budget, anotherN325.5 million was spent to purchase “catering and kitchen equipment” all over again.  In fiscal 2017, N100.8 million stands to be invested in the same pesky subject, as “payment of outstanding balance on acquired canteen/kitchen equipment for banquet hall, auditorium and defence house.”

    Will there ever be an end to this kind of expenditure, which flies in the face of the economic recession and the privations that have become the constant companions of Nigeria’s less privileged citizens?

    Such spending is flagrantly inconsistent with the President’s modesty of taste and living.  It is, withal, subversive of his reputation for fiscal prudence.

    Despite their obsession with kitchen equipment, the President’s Budget Office has at least kept faith with the public by laying out the spending plan for the Villa.  The same cannot be said about the National Assembly, which has the acquisition at public expense of limousines as its own peculiar obsession, and in its finances has been as transparent as a celestial black hole.

    On vaulting himself into the leadership of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki promised to make the budget of the Green Chamber public.  More than a year later, he is yet to deliver on the promise.

    With each passing day, he seems less inclined to do so.

    Fresh from taking delivery of a flotilla of exotic American-specification SUVs to be assigned   to his colleagues, he announced the other day the Senate was set to enact laws to promote to promote patronage of Made-in-Nigeria goods.

    Lead from the front, Right Honourable Distinguished Senator.

  • Not yet the magic year

    Welcome to 2017. Talk of a year that is pregnant with expectations – a year like no other. Year 2016 may have been the year bookmakers fell flat in their predictions, the onset of the new year has again proven how far humanity is from giving up on the ancient art of future-telling. Trust many a Nigerian who never stepped in church from January to December; they made it just in time for the cross-over service not necessarily to offer their supplication but with an eye on what the prophets would declare. Like the ancient art of crystal-ball gazing, and considering that a good chunk of the predictions/prophecies of the past year went far off-target, one imagines that there would always be room for improvement. Anyway, that is a different story altogether.
    For sure, the economy will dominate discourse this year. Again, it should not be hard to imagine. After being through a major recession – the worst in more than 20 years – brought on by low oil prices, it would seem inevitable. Today, the impact is felt across the board – the acceleration of inflation to an 11-year high of 18 percent, the continuing scarcity of forex in an atmosphere of unbridled demand; the record low trading of the naira at N490 to the dollar on the parallel market at the close of the year.
    Of course, to the extent that the old problems of epileptic power supply, constrained industrial capacity from such factors as scarcity of forex, unstable macro-economic policies, inflation and record high unemployment, the economy would continue to take the centre-stage.
    Only last week, I wrote about a future hung on faith for the simple reason that the odds facing us remain not only daunting but impregnable. Aside the unprecedented infrastructure gap which would ordinarily require massive investments to turn the corner – something that the treasury cannot underwrite, nor the leadership shown the inclination to find the means, the inherent defects in the current economic structure are such that makes the prospects of any real recovery forlorn. I wrote about the continuing absence of any substantial manufacturing capacity; the near total dependence of our manufacturing companies on forex market almost without exception, the unbridled capital flows which goes on under various guises – all of which flow directly from the failure backward integration. These forces would certainly persist without fail in 2017 and beyond. Unfortunately, so powerful are these forces holding the country down that the country appears helpless to do anything about them.
    And so, it does not matter what the prophets claim to see on the crystal ball – this year cannot be the year of the turnaround. To see anything different is to imagine that the country will not have to spend some 40 percent of its forex to bring in fuel to keep our vehicles on the road; that it would somehow find the will to cut back on its $22 billion food import bill and the countless other billions spent on raw materials, machineries and other invisibles of trade.
    We know that will not happen – at least in year 2017.
    Clearly, if the moods in the land are any upbeat, it’s probably more out of our propensity to pray than anything that we have done. I need to qualify that: quite a number of things are being done not necessarily by the government. One of such is the ambitious Dangote Refineries and Petrochemical complex – a project whose completion would see the country refine 650,000 barrels of oil per day. The project unfortunately will not come on stream until the first quarter of 2019; in other words, the nightmare that fuel import has become, is not about to come to an end until two years’ time –if that is any consolation!
    The tragedy of a country said to be pursuing the course of substantive change is that there’s yet, little evidence of commitment to science and engineering infrastructure – except when it suits officials to make a show of so-called industrial parks – that are no more than secondary school technical workshops.
    Presently, a nation that one aspired to a world-class machine-tool industry has become a byword in wastefulness and missed opportunities. For our bolts and nuts, we run to Asia, Europe and wherever and this at huge cost of forex while the billions of dollars invested in the Nigerian Machine Tools Industries, Osogbo, Osun State lies in waste. Ever heard of a country going into automobile manufacture not having a machine tool industry? Or even ancillary industries on the basis of which it could anchor a strategy of backward integration? Just imagine that for something as ordinary as resins used in industrial packaging – a petrochemical product – we run to South-east Asia; for paper and paper products, we run to South Africa and India – that is after investing (wasting) billions of naira in three paper plants – Oku Iboku (newsprint for the newspaper industry); Iwopin (art paper for book publishing) and Jebba (for exercise books). Little wonder that a country so blessed has become a joke among nations.
    Does anyone see why I laugh each time anyone talks about imminent recovery? Recovery from what? Do you recover what you never had?
    Let’s be clear what the current business of recovery is all about. It can only mean one thing: an oil price rebound. Only in these parts does recovery equate oil price rebound. Tragic. For sure, a rebound would translate to our ability to import as many objects of our fancy as we want; in fact, it would guarantee that we can import toot-picks bathroom slippers and all manners of junks without bothering about forex availability or costs – the same old inexorable path to the valley!
    We have certainly been on this path before. Our situation reminds of the story of the village layabout who thinks booze would drown his sorrows. For our luckless country, it would appear that another season of revelries is here. With peace somewhat returning to the Niger Delta and the bickering oil producers finally agreeing to present a common front, the season seems set upon us. Need proof? Wait until mid-year when those gleaming SUVs; when those ships bearing rice and other household cargoes announce the arrival of the season! And who says we can’t savour the goodies before the real boom comes?
    Once again, happy new year!

  • The year of, em, whatchalicallit

    The year of, em, whatchalicallit

    This has been the year when so many things happened, from the heroic to the pusillanimous, that it is almost impossible to frame it judiciously; hence, the year of whatchamacallit.

    In Nigeria, you can with justice call it the year of padding – as in padding the National Budget.

    Didn’t they inflate the planned expenditure on so many items in the Bill, and insinuate into it so many items that were not contemplated at the point of origin, and graft so much fiscal scaffolding on its overall architecture that, by the time they were done, it bore almost no resemblance to the plan that had come from on high, or to the nation’s pressing needs?

    You can also call it the year it was finally established, beyond whispers and denials, but so far not beyond reasonable doubt,  that some high officers of the judiciary, high priests at the Temple of Justice, may after all be on the take.

    Midnight raids on their homes reportedly yielded enough local currency to rescue some of the failing banks, and enough foreign exchange to jolt the long-idled wheels of industry roaring back into production.

    I say “so far not beyond reasonable doubt” because the accounts of how the judges said they came by all that wealth are not entirely implausible.

    One judge sold rice, the hottest item on the Nigerian market, on the side.  Another had wisely saved up and stored in various receptacles in his home all his earnings from the day he collected his first salary.  Yet another had taken in, at his son’s request, the young man’s savings over several decades for safe keeping.  And there was another who simply didn’t know how the booty found its way into his house.

    An undiplomatic kerfuffle between the Executive and the Legislature must also be accounted a major feature of the year.  The list of non-career ambassadors President Muhammadu Buhari took almost an eternity to compile seemed headed for trouble the moment it was released.

    It contained the names of many who had not been consulted at all, some who had been consulted and had declined, and many who would not have survived the most perfunctory vetting.

    For a while the Senate kept up the pretence of actively deliberating on it, then returned it to sender, saying it was incurably flawed.  But those who really need pity are the career diplomats confirmed as ambassadors by the Senate.   Congratulating them on their appointments the other day, the President said there was no relief in sight for the underfunded missions they were heading to, and that they would just have to make the best of the situation.

    Think of unpaid utility bills, with constant threats of disconnection; of peeling paint and shabby waiting rooms; of dependents sent down because of outstanding school fees; of living under Nigerian conditions while serving Nigeria abroad.

    You have to be practically unconscious not to apprehend that this has been, above everything else, a year of recession. In the economic turbulence, you have to cut and shave and pare and scrape and even scrounge just to keep afloat.

    Nigerians are doing that admirably, with their accustomed resilience. But don’t raise false hopes by declaring again and again that the recession will end next year or even the year after that.  A recession is a stubborn thing; rather than go away at your command, it develops a life of its own.

    Sadly, this has also been a year of carnage.

    Deaths from infernos that consumed hapless passengers on our cratered highways, house fires, collapsing houses and places of worship, communal strife, sectarian violence, parcel bombs deployed by Boko Haram’s agents, election violence and from the unchecked depredations of so-called “Fulani cattle herders,” paint a frightful picture of a country at full-blown war.

    Nobody knows the number of such casualties.  Nobody knows their names.  The authorities and the media treat them as an undifferentiated mass and move on to the next carnage.  Here, we keep no records.

    This is also the year in which Change has come under serious questioning, especially from those who assume what used to be assumed about Progress, namely, that it is linear.

    Change, like Progress, follows a zig-zag trajectory; an advance here and a reversal there, the latter especially, when yesterday’s people in today’s clothing and their confederates fight back with all the vast resources at their command, and as the forces of globalisation constrain policy options.

    Change may be subtle and take a while to apprehend, especially if it is not of the dramatic kind.  But if over time the advances do not add up to much more than the reversals, if people see a deterioration rather than an improvement in their conditions, they may well begin to yearn for    a return to the preceding era.

    The news from the dreaded Sambisa Forest is indisputable news of Change, and it is good to end a dismal year on such a strong note.  Expectations run high that more of the Chibok Girls will be recovered.

    Shifting gears to the foreign front, the surprise election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States has got to be the most stunning event of the year.  Even Trump himself did not expect it.

    I was prepared to swear that he lost the race the moment he declared that if he won he would shut the door against Moslems seeking to enter the United States until the world had figured out what to do with them.

    When he called the U.S. military “a disaster,” I was convinced beyond doubt that he had committed political suicide.  In America you do not denigrate the military when you are a candidate for political office.   Nothing is more self-destructive.

    But that was then.

    In tweet after outrageous tweet and rally after incendiary rally, Trump broke every rule of political engagement.  Not only did he get away with it, he was amply rewarded for it.

    That is the new reality in America.  Trump framed it best when he declared that he could shoot someone in broad daylight on (New York’s) Fifth Avenue and nothing would happen.  If his campaign rhetoric and his dystopian cabinet are any guide, Americans and the world had better brace itself for a rough ride.

    Brexit, championed by the same kind of people who cheered Trump on to victory had signalled that a Trump presidency was not inconceivable.  It had also reinforced the growing doubts on the solidity of opinion polls.  They had predicted a close outcome, with the Tories and the coalition that wanted Britain to stay in Europe maintaining a slight lead.

    In the event, the Brexiteers won, just as the Tories had won the previous General Election that Labour was widely expected to win, based on the polls. In Israel, the polls said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was toast.  He survived and waxed stronger, to continue frustrating a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Even with the FBI resurrecting the e-mail controversy that had dogged Hillary Clinton’s campaign all along, she remained the favourite on practically all the reputable polls. But they turned out to be disastrously wrong.

    Will polling ever recover?  Will it ever regain the authority it once commanded – authority  that should, if anything, grow stronger in the age of powerful mathematical tools that can help structure, analyse and manipulate Big Data and make them intelligible?

    This was also the year of refugees. From Afghanistan to Sudan, and from Algeria to Ethiopia and points between, they poured out in their hundreds of thousand, fleeing war and persecution and poverty, enduring hunger and suffering and rapine and extortion en route.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel defied local and regional opposition to grant entry to tens of thousands of refugees.   For this courageous and humane gesture, she now runs a clear risk of defeat in next year’s general elections.

    We are entering, it seems, an era of meanness, in which it is politically unwise to show kindness, to enter into solidarity with the other.

  • Future hung on faith

    Future hung on faith

    A week after the formal presentation of the 2017 budget by President Muhammadu Buhari, there has been no shortage of prognostications on what it represents for an economy that has endured two quarterly cycles of depression. Never mind that the 2016 budget, dressed in superlative, reflationary robes ended a huge disappointment;, already, all eyes are on the N7.298 trillion spend – a 20.4% top up on the 2016 estimates – tagged “Budget of Recovery and Growth”, a budget described as pivotal to the administration’s growth and recovery strategy, “a road map of policy actions and steps designed to bring the economy out of recession and to a path of steady growth and prosperity”.
    Never one to fail to rue the past, the 2017 budget presentation was another occasion for the President to bemoan the years of locusts during which the country is said to have wasted our large foreign exchange reserves to import nearly everything we consume – from food, clothing, manufacturing inputs, fuel, to basic household items. How for the past 18 months of low oil prices, foreign exchange earnings plunged by about 60%, while our reserves eroded and our consumption declined as we could not import to meet our needs.
    Yet the President could not be more upbeat: The “old Nigeria is slowly but surely disappearing and a new era is rising in which we grow what we eat and consume what we make” is on the horizon. He spoke of farmers “who today are experiencing bumper harvests”, the manufacturers already substituting imported goods for local materials, the car assembly companies who today are expanding to meet higher demand” leaving the rest to wonder which economy the President was talking about!
    “We will”, the President further said, “CHANGE our habits and we will CHANGE Nigeria…we will increasingly grow and process our own food, we will manufacture what we can and refine our own petroleum products. We will buy ‘Made in Nigeria’ goods. We will encourage garment manufacturing and Nigerian designers, tailors and fashion retailers. We will patronize local entrepreneurs. We will promote the manufacturing powerhouses in Aba, Calabar, Kaduna, Kano, Lagos, Nnewi, Onitsha, and Ota. From light manufacturing to cement production and petrochemicals, our objective is to make Nigeria a new manufacturing hub”.
    While the President’s unbridled optimism is perhaps understandable if barely comprehensible, in vain has yours truly sought to find the concrete pillars on which his rather exaggerated expectations are to be erected. Surely, it cannot be the size of the budget which although bigger than last year’s in numerical terms is in fact smaller in real value terms. Certainly not the industrial sector – a sector that remains anemic from the stifling policies of successive administration; or oil sector, where although the signs would appear to indicate that the good times may be here sooner than later, there is nothing as yet, to suggest that the swing is over let alone the parting with the old ways other than the promise of being able to better finance our needs from the basic consumables to the exotica. And so it goes again that serious questions about the direction of the economy will have to wait – hard questions about our skewed industrial policy and, the imponderable lacuna as a result of which the entire industrial landscape is permanently hung on forex with a nary a prospect of backward integration; hard questions on a financial services sector unhinged – expressed in the predatory behaviours of operatives in the foreign exchange market; the preference by operators in the financial system for recycling of questionable so-called financial derivatives that are a little less than Ponzi schemes and other unconscionable activities that render them laws unto themselves. Nothing about the bloated bureaucracy and the associated overheads that continues to sap the nation’s vital juice; and nothing about the expensive tastes of our political operatives known to routinely demand sacrifice from the common folk. And yet the coming year is touted as one of redemption!
    At a time like this, one could not but be reminded of the words in the holy writ to wit: Faith without works is dead! Whereas, the leadership of the country have just about enough faith to decree mountains out of existence, in reality, they have invested very little in tangible work to make things truly happen! Even if we grant hierarchs of the administration the illusion that things are beginning to look up, certain facts are at least incontrovertible.
    The first is that the country remains effectively out of work! Minus the hawkers of all manners of currencies and their allies – the fat cats in the financial services sector who daily reap where they have not been known to sow, businesses, be they small, medium or big are in states best described as one of suspended animation. We know why. The country is a giant laboratory of self-help – everyone for self; no one for the collective.
    Our financial houses would rather trade in money market instruments than lend to the productive sector. Banking top guns would rather trade off the careers of their operatives for their individual comforts hence the unending cycle of job cuts even when compensations for the top cream are on the rise.
    The public sphere is in shambles. Public service is dead. Electricity supply is presently at its lowest ebb. Road infrastructure belongs in the past age. Railways are still no-starters. While our farmers have mercifully been spared the terrible cycle of crop failures – and so we celebrate little mercies – post-harvest losses continue to dampen any real prospects of the sector’s long-term sustainability.
    The second is that the country does not even have any substantial manufacturing capacity to boast of. Now, has anyone quite figured out why our so-called manufacturing companies are permanently hung on forex market almost without exception? Today, many of them are known to source for forex to buy raw materials and equipment only to return to undergo the same ritual of Form M few months after. Does anyone worry let alone count the costs of the perennial capital flows?
    Isn’t a shame that so-called blue-chip companies that have operated for more than 50 years which although cannot boast of 10 percent local raw material utilization continue to insist on being on the first charge on forex allocation? Whatever happened to their R&D units given the advantages which backward integration would ordinarily confer? Or is backward integration an exclusive preserve of affluent countries?
    Again, I ask: do we really have an industrial policy?
    How about a petrochemical complex on which a futuristic industrial strategy can be anchored? Has anyone in government yet figured it out given its centrality to any future industrial take-off? Why are we so unblest?
    No wonder we grope on thinking that things would change. Now, we know what ‘change’ means: patching of few roads across the federation, building one or two dams, awarding all manners of contracts for all manners of purposes under the sun. Nothing about the fundamental reordering of the economic base that has not only ill-served but has yoked us to international capital.
    Still think our problem is money? Wrong. Our problem is that those in government stopped thinking a long time ago. The result is the absence of a coherent strategy to get things moving and in the right direction.
    Here’s wishing you Happy New Year in advance.

  • Coming soon: A mega-circus, without the bread

    Coming soon: A mega-circus, without the bread

    This past fortnight, they have been planting broad hints at strategic moments and in strategic places about the coming of a mammoth political formation – a “mega-party,” its promoters, self-avowed and clandestine, have chosen to call it until it takes on a concrete existence that warrants a proper name

    You could almost hear me scream “Megawetin?” when the report first bobbed up on the computer monitor.

    Another political party, whether mega or mini or midi, perhaps to supplant, now that it is in terminal decline, the PDP which, without fear and without research, proclaimed itself Africa’s largest political party, destined to rule Nigeria for 60 unbroken years in the first instance?

    Or to shove aside the ruling APC, the bumbling amalgam of very strange bedfellows, concerned more to share the spoils of office than to wield its enormous mandate to make a dent on the privations in which the vast majority of Nigerians are mired now and for the immediate future?  The APC that was so stunningly successful in getting elected, but has been, alas, so  remiss in office?

    In whatever case, why is the political class so obsessed with the size of the parties that give expression to their policies and programmes?

    In a sense, that obsession, like a great many of Nigeria’s festering political ailments, goes back to the time of General Ibrahim Babangida and his duplicitous transition project, in which he  set the political formations seeking registration as political parties on an impossible obstacle course.

    He required them to supply, in the words of the late and much lamented political scientist Claude Ake, “a level of documentation that was absurd in meticulous detail, phenomenal in  bulk and prohibitive in cost…”

    Labouring under the misapprehension that size was everything, each of the associations accumulated as many as 13 truckloads of documentation.  In the end, none was deemed qualified.

    Babangida then ordered six of the associations that came closest to winning recognition to dissolve themselves into “two mass, grassroots democratic parties,” one a little to the left, to be known as the Social Democratic Party, and the other a little to the right, to be called the National Republican Convention.

    Neither the NRC nor the SDP could make a plausible claim to being grassroots political parties.  They were deeply rooted in the Babangida presidency, which funded them covertly, prescribed what they could and could not do (remember those “no-go areas”) and manipulated them in every conceivable manner, to the point that it would amount to a flagrant abuse of language to call them political parties.

    Nevertheless, Babangida advertised them as democratic fortresses capable of withstanding the fiercest assaults from anti-democratic forces and destined to lead Nigeria to a glorious rebirth.  They collapsed right under his nose, like the house of cards they were.

    Another factor in the obsession of the political class with size stems from the very definition of politics in these parts as “a game of numbers.”   Forget about programmes and policies rigorously thought through, about short-term objectives and long-term goals. Consider strategies and tactics only in so far as they relate to getting the numbers right.

    And remember, the whole thing is a game. “Get the numbers and everything else will be added thereunto” is the unwritten rule and the controlling ideology of Nigerian politics and governance; hence the padding of the voters’ register, ballot returns, budgets, payrolls, contracts, and indeed anything that can be padded.

    By one account, the so-called mega party was conceived in the first quarter of 2016, less than a year after the APC took office.  Back then, signs that the economy was headed southwards were already in the air.  Oil prices had crashed to their lowest in decades.  But the economy was not yet in recession – at least not officially.  The Naira had not been orphaned.  And there was little of the despondency and desperation one sees everywhere today.  Optimism, which many regard as the defining attribute of the Nigerian character, had not taken flight.

    And yet, the mega-party’s promoters, mainly careerists who lost out or had not secured as much booty as they had hoped in the patronage sweepstakes, were already scheming to bail out.  The problem, as they see it, is the vehicle in which they had been doing business, not the nature of the business, nor the way they have been conducting it.

    The vehicle is broken, they say; another craft must be fabricated, one that can take those on board safely to a more prosperous destination and deliver whatever they ask for.  But the passenger manifest will be more or less like that of the ship they are abandoning, and so will be the captain and crew.

    To swindle the credulous, they are spreading the word that the principal promoters include two titans of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who has been alienated and marginalised by the APC he had laboured like no other person to create, and Abubakar Atiku who, in speech after speech, has voiced dissatisfaction with the way President Muhammadu Buhari and his team have been running the country.

    Tinubu and Atiku have separately issued forceful denials, but they continue to be linked with the scheme which apparently will involve, among other things, mass defection of governors and elected officials in various parts of the country to the mega-party.   They are planning to take a leaf from the playbook of the ACN/CPC/ANPP merger that produced the APC.

    Can’t they come up with something more innovative and more inspiring?

    In ancient Rome, the emperors distributed bread and staged circuses and gladiatorial shows to distract the public from the problems of the day.  Here, the promoters of the mega-party are scheming to divert and distract the public with circuses only.  Forget the bread.

    Buhari is not yet half-way into his term.  The country is beset by formidable problems.  It cannot pay its way without massive borrowing.  Unemployment among young persons willing and able to work stands at a scandalous high and is growing.  Inflation stands at an alarming 20 per cent. The infrastructure is so broken that it would not match 1990 conditions if 50 per cent of the budget were to be devoted to it for the next five years.

    Even in retreat, Boko Haram has continued to show a capacity for engaging the military in lethal firefights and for striking almost at will on soft targets.  There has been a lull in the murderous ravages of armed cattle herders devastating farms and communities.  But who can say that such brigandage is ended?

    If just a small fraction of the casualties of roads and domestic accidents reported daily had occurred in six months in a community, the elders would have set out to appease their gods.  Since we are such a prayerful country, it is a wonder that President Buhari has not declared  a National Day of mourning, prayer and atonement.

    In the midst of all this, the people that are lining up to join the mega -party are as self-absorbed as always. They are demanding that 20 per cent of the budget be handed to them for bogus “constituency projects,” in addition to the millions they appropriate unto themselves with scant regard for transparency and due process. They will not touch motorcars assembled in Nigeria.  Nothing less than exotic American-specification SUVs fit for their distinguished and honourable frames.

    This mega-party thing, it has to be said, is a flight from responsibility, and a distraction the country cannot afford.  Its promoters can best serve the country by carrying out to the best  of their abilities the tasks enjoined by their elective or appointive offices, and in keeping with their oaths of office.

    The vehicle is not the problem, gentlemen.  You are the problem, individually and collectively. If you empty it and fill it with passengers and crew cut from the same cloth as the former passengers and crew, you will get the same outcome.

     

    Correction

    I was in error when I stated in my December 12 column (“Sit-tightism:  A Primer”) that descendants of Sheikh Alimi have been sitting tight on the Ilorin royal throne for 120 years. Actually they have been at it for 192 years, no shaking.

  • This time last year

    A couple of days from now, Christendom will roll out the drums to celebrate one of the most epochal days on its calendar – Christmas. For a good number of Nigerians, it’s time of reflections on a year arguably one of the most challenging in recent memory. No doubt, for the vast majority of Nigerians, describing the impending yuletide as bleak is probably an understatement. It’s like passing through a hell corridor. From the blue-chip forced to recalibrate operations in the terribly inclement operating environment; the small business bowled over by the asphyxiating monetary and fiscal policies to families forced to reset household priorities at a time of fast-shrinking incomes, there are just about enough tell-tales of a year better described as rough. Were Nigerians asked today to list their fears and concerns in the order of priority, it is predictable what the list will look like: Economy; Economy and Economy – in that order. Like it was in the beginning, everything stands – or falls apart – with the economy.
    Talking about reflections, yours truly recalls that the same concerns ushered in last year’s Christmas. Indeed, so terrified by the relentless battering of the naira by the forces ranged against it, I wrote a piece published December 15, 2015 titled – Naira: What’s going on? Today, not only do I find the views expressed still relevant today, the reality, sadly is that things have gotten worse.
    Here is what I wrote then. Enjoy.
    “If the wailing of the business class has not reached the ears of the landlords of the villa, it must be due to either the impervious nature of the walls, or the pig-headedness of the dwellers of that rarefied abode of power. After months of shouting themselves hoarse about how much the stifling policies of the apex have come to hurt the real sector with no one pretending to have heard, the crunch may have finally come with the naira hitting the nadir trading at N260 to the greenback at the parallel market in the past week.
    That development seems the closest sign to the troubling times that lie ahead, particularly in an in an economy which manufactures next to nothing and which exports only crude to finance its obsessively compulsive consumption habits. The exception perhaps would be Godwin Emefiele’s world of utopia where monetary policy comes close to doing nothing or where economic management is locked on autopilot!
    Today, the naira is practically fixed at N197-N199 per dollar; it’s been so since Emefiele’s apex bank put the brakes on banks’ ability to buy foreign-exchange from autonomous sources, followed by its tightening of the noose on importers of some 40-odd items, ranging from toothpicks, glass to rice.
    Several months on, the real sector complains of delay in the processing of Form M to import their raw materials and spares. The organised private sector, in particular cannot seem to make sense of what is going on. Businesses with outstanding settlement before the new policies commenced were particularly hardest hit with many unable to remit their due payments. Bills for collection, the facility which allows companies to ship in goods for weeks, months before paying back has dried up because of default arising from inability to transfer fund giving rise to credibility issues. In summary, very limited activities appear to be going on in the productive sector.
    Meanwhile, the apex bank, like the Federal Government, insists on living in denial. And while the former swears by heaven that it has enough forex to finance all legitimate imports, virtually every sector of the economy complains of being ill-served by its current forex regime. The situation reminds me of the story of a surgeon who after a delicate operation pronounces the operation successful only that the patient had succumbed fatally to the knife! The surgeon, as you might imagine in this case is the CBN which insists that everything is fine; the patient of course is the economy currently reeling under the threat of extinction and with it the hordes of disparate players being criminalised essentially by the apex bank’s stifling monetary policies!
    All of these – unfortunately – would hardly have mattered were the policies to be seen as delivering on their objectives. The reality is that this is far from being the case! One ready proof is the sinking naira – no thanks to the booming parallel market fostered by the CBN; the other is the constriction forced on the economy by lack of access to forex. The derivative is the parallel economy where no one can truly claim to be in charge.
    Of course we know what the situation is at the moment. Despite the so-called restrictions put in place, our ever the smart Alec club of importers have practically made nonsense of it with their heavy patronage of the alternative but hugely expensive parallel market. Now, thanks to the piggy banks of rich Nigerians in Diaspora or the club of Nigerians with fat off-shore accounts, you can access all your forex requirements without having to go through any financial institution provided you are ready to pay premium. One financial sector operative actually told yours truly last week that these accounts – which at the moment appear inexhaustible despite its attendant risks – are available to settle all manners of foreign exchange transactions but only at rates far above that obtainable in the local parallel foreign exchange market! With daily reports of trafficking in Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) cards and with recent reports of young Nigerians swallowing foreign currencies, there appears to be no limits to the desperate measures being adopted by Nigerians to beat the CBN measures. Given the situation, would anyone still be talking about respite for the naira anytime soon?
    Is that what we bargained for? Has anyone out there yet figured out how the measures will get our factories roaring back to life? Today, with barely $30 billion in reserves – just about enough to finance seven months of imports, and with oil prices hitting a new low over of $36 a barrel at the weekend, some levels of control of foreign exchange utilisation have become somewhat inevitable. But while I would go as far as to argue that a return to the ancien regime of mindless liberalisation is neither desirable nor wise, I would also make the point that the current foreign exchange regime cannot and should not be seen as an end in itself. If anything, the goal should be an economy that is less dependent on imports for its day to day requirements.
    This is where the CBN ought to have taken the views of the organised private sector more seriously in the making of the controversial policy. Insularity, in the current situation, is neither unhelpful nor productive. I say this because the business class wear the shoes; hence they ought to know where it hurts the most. The truth is – the restrictions are simply not working as it ought to. Moreover, it seems to me that the challenge facing the economy isn’t so much about curbing the influx of foreign goods as it is about giving the local entrepreneur the muscle to produce those goods locally and more competitively. Thus far, it has not…”
    That was exactly a year ago. The question is – has anything changed? You be the judge.
    Merry Christmas to you, dear readers.