The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Divorce made in heaven

    Some nine months after serving notice of possible ejection, J.P Morgan, the American lender finally made good its threat to kick Nigeria out of its Government Bond Index for Emerging Markets (GBI-EM). Tuesday last week, the bank announced that Nigeria would be phased out of its index by the end of September citing reasons of ‘lack of liquidity and transparency in the nation’s foreign exchange market’. In the view of the bank, the cup of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s meddlesomeness in the foreign exchange market has now run over. The cup was full in January hence the note it despatched to its clients putting Nigeria on Index Watch. That was sequel to the apex bank’s introduction of ‘administrative measures’ to prevent bets against the naira in the wake of the oil price collapse.

    A week on, our local players in the exclusive club of high-finance have done little else than parrot what their principals in global finance capitals have sold as the gospel on what is packaged as a sentence of death on the local economy. Today, foreigners – even if they are no more than currency speculators and traders – have become the authorities whose views must be treated as received gospel. If we are not daily harangued with the claim that the so-called diversified index is the most frequently used local emerging market debt gauge (as if that means anything to the struggling manufacturer struggling to survive the nation’s inclement operating environment), we are told that kicking Nigeria out of its indices could have a severe impact on Nigerian government funding at a time when many international investors are already wary of lending to the country. And who says an economy the size of Nigeria can be ignored for any length of time?

    We have also heard that Nigeria cannot do without a slice of the so-called $217bn investor money benchmarked against the GBI-EM suite of indices. I ask: when are going to be tired of the club of portfolio investors known to hit the road at the very sign of trouble in the local economy?

    Again, we have also heard that Standard & Poor and Fitch Ratings would follow suit in the coming weeks. Isn’t it supposed to be a free world? For sure, we will hear more of these and other doomsday predictions as the weeks roll by.

    Of course we know where all these are coming from. Our economy is in trouble and the vultures are merely hovering to see whether the elephant will go down. Oil prices are going down, and Nigeria is – supposedly – in no position to do anything about it. Foreign exchange – the gods on whose altar the traders and speculators worship – are in short supply. While the supply of forex continues to be in dire short supply, the demand for same unfortunately continues to grow in leaps and bounds – and now to such an extent that could not be explained by the volume of economic activities going on. Yet the vultures would rather have the monetary authorities throw their hands in the air and do nothing – so that naira could find its value even if in the end this value is indeterminate!

    Lest we forget, Nigeria was only listed on the index after the CBN removed a restriction for foreign investors to hold government bonds for a minimum of one year before they could exit. That was in October 2012. In other words, JP Morgan and their ilk would still have the CBN behave as if the conditions which existed then are the same today!

    The difference this time is that the CBN believes that with good tending, the situation could somehow be mitigated if not entirely redeemed. This thinking obviously informs the measures which it rolled out recently and which it considered as absolutely necessary at this time to halt the betting on the national currency. The idea being that if you cannot do anything about the supply end, you can at least put in some measures to ensure that frivolous demands and those bordering on speculation are kept out. That was CBN and Nigeria’s unforgivable sin for which JP Morgan and company would have the nation roast in noon-day sun – so bad that one analyst, Kevin Daly, a money manager at Aberdeen, Scotland, as reported by Bloomberg dared to describe the loss of the index status as “a classic own goal”.

    Of course, the analyst also let out a slip which he claimed forced JP Morgan’s hand as “squeezing the FX market and not allowing any locals to trade it, they just pushed investors to the sidelines”. (My emphasis). In other words, the CBN stands accused of not allowing further betting at the risk of putting the national treasury in jeopardy!

    Now, we can debate the measures by the CBN as to its effectiveness in the long run. I would certainly agree that some of the measures would require some fine-tuning. Overall, the measures would appear to bode far well for the economy at this point in time than the alternative being promoted by JP Morgan and its allies. The CBN has in my view, acted wisely to avoid the calamitous consequences of an un-moderated demand for forex.

    That takes me to the fetish that has come to be made of foreign investment. In an environment where the local business remains endangered, it is quite ironic that governments at various levels do very little else than pander to the whims of some foreign salesmen even when they have shown that they are mere soldiers of fortune. It seems to me a measure of how pretty little the nation has learnt of the lessons of the global credit meltdown of 2008 when the exit of the same portfolio investors sounded the death knell of our capital market.

    If there is any lesson in all of this, it is that the nation’s interest should come first; which is why it is hard to fault the CBN.

    ‘If you cannot do anything about the supply end, you can at least  ensure that frivolous demands and those bordering on speculation are kept out. That was CBN and Nigeria’s unforgivable sin for which JP Morgan and company would have the nation roast in noon-day sun ’ 

  • Waiting for the President’s men

    Nearly four months into his four-year presidency (in the first instance I guess), President Muhammadu Buhari has still not picked his team of Ministers to help bring about the change he promised Nigerians in the run up to the April election that ushered in this presidency.

    And as you are aware, the man has promised to unveil the wise men and women with which he intends to take Nigeria to the next level not later than the end of this September. And expectedly, Nigerians are eager for this all important list of Ministers-to-be.

    Following their failure to accurately predict the composition of President Buhari’s kitchen cabinet (Chief of Staff et al) named a couple of weeks or so ago, political pundits have learnt to keep their predictions to themselves this time, keeping their fingers crossed like the rest of us. In truth and in fairness to them, that is the best course of action to take since our president is an unpredictable man. Hmmmmmm.

    His picks as members of his inner caucus, though impeccable, have raised questions about whether he is a narrow-minded/parochial leader as some like Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State and his co-travelers in the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) would want to paint him, or a patriot, interested only in what is good for Nigeria, if majority of Nigerians who still see in him the Messiah that we need, are to be believed.

    While the jury is still out on what kind of a leader President Muhammadu Buhari would be in comparison to General Muhammadu Buhari as he then was when he held sway as Head of State between January 1984 and August 1985, the composition of his cabinet should tell what the man thinks of the rest of us outside his narrow ethnic enclave. More importantly,  his choice of Ministers should clearly show the direction he intends to take us as a nation.

    If truly he chose members of his kitchen cabinet because of the strength of their character, integrity, incorruptibility and unalloyed loyalty to the Federal Republic of Nigeria ( known only to him) then we expect nothing less from the gentlemen and women whose names he will soon send to the Senate for screening as Ministers. Did I hear you say “trust Buhari not to compromise in matters like this?”  But even at that it needs restating that those he intends to bring on board must be of proven integrity. But are there people like that still left in this country? Cynical as this may sound, it will be an uphill task for the president to fish out such people to join him in the Executive Council of the Federation.

    Not that there are no good Nigerians out there any more but getting them to accept to serve is the problem. In a society where selfless service is considered a foolish act, anyone going into public office is deemed corrupt from the outset and is expected, even by members of his own family, to line his pockets with public funds. To do otherwise, then he must be a fool.

    You get elected or appointed into a public office and the next thing is your phone begins to ring more than usual and the incoming traffic in your mailbox increases as well. And virtually everyone is asking for one favour or another, not minding whether you are in a position to do it or not. You explain to them what you can and cannot do or advise them to follow the normal process, then you are labelled a bad person. Tell me, how is the society expected to make progress with this kind of mindset. And it is from this sort of society that President Buhari is expected to bring out the angels to join him in this change crusade that we embarked on with his election last April. I don’t envy him.

    Unofficial reports have it that nearly everyone on his initial list of aides/ministerial hopefuls was tainted somehow by one form of corruption or another, hence the list has had to be redrawn and updated again and again. So, where is that clean person who would be able to look at corruption straight in the eyes and give it a dirty slap? Who is that Nigerian without sin that will throw the first stone at Mr Corruption? This is the challenge before Mr President as he begins the composition of his cabinet any moment from now and the challenge is also for us all to accept his nominees. Not without thorough scrutiny though. But since the beautiful ones are not yet born so to speak, let us accept the most beautiful among the ugly ones available and get the job done. The most important thing is to get our First Eleven into the cabinet and ensure that they not only follow and obey the new rules of the game but also get all the spectators/followers to do the same, after all the new team captain is a no nonsense man.

    While we await the introduction of the new team, a look at what the captain has been doing since his appointment a little over a hundred days ago should give us an insight into what to expect from the team. While some have said that Buhari’s first hundred days in office were nothing to write home about, and by inference we should expect nothing tangible in the course of the life of his administration, it would amount to self denial to pretend as if nothing good has happened to the nation since the Buhari presidency.

    During the Alhaji Shehu Shagari years in the Second Republic, I used to write the president off each time he mentioned peace and security as the biggest achievement of his presidency, but the Boko Haram insurgency, especially under former President Goodluck Jonathan has brought the importance of peace and security sharply into our national consciousness. I bet I am not the only one just realizing this now or rather appreciating it better.

    If all goes as planned, the battle against Boko Haram should be over on or before the end of the year, while the war against terror continues.

    It is not a mere coincidence that terror is being defeated under Buhari, it was the result of a focused leadership that knew what to do and is doing it. But then we should not read too much into this until we are reunited as a nation with the Chibok girls still in the hands of the terrorists.

    But if Buhari is winning the battle against terror at least in the north east, insecurity is building up in the south in the form of increasing armed kidnappings of innocent people. As I write this, the wife of  the deputy Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of the Sun Publishing company, Mrs Toyin Nwosu was kidnapped at their home early morning on Monday. Her kidnap came two days after the release of Ms Donu Kogbara, the celebrated columnist with Vanguard Newspaper who was snatched at gun point at home in Port Harcourt by criminal elements about two weeks before.

    It is hoped that these two incidences are not related or symptomatic of the emerging trend of making journalists targets of kidnap. No Nigerian, let alone a journalist should be subjected to this kind of experience and it is hoped that the security agencies will up their game to curb these crimes. For Nigeria to be truly secure and safe for all Nigerians, the president and his security chiefs must not lose sight of the fact that the challenge of insecurity faced by country is not from Boko Haram alone, kidnappers are on the prowl too, and it is a multi million naira business that must be smashed the same way as the  Haram insurgency.

     

    While I was away

     

    Its  almost three months since I last appeared on this page and between then and now a lot of water has passed under the bridge so to speak. I took time off to try my luck at the presidency of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), the umbrella body for all practicing journalists in the country. Thank God I made it at the first attempt, although it came after three previous, albeit failed attempts to become the deputy national president of the Union.

    While thanking those who put their trust in me by electing me the NUJ President on July 25,  I wish to state clearly hereTHAT THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY ME ON THIS PAGE ARE MINE AND NOT IN ANY WAY REPRESENTING THE POSITION OF THE NUJ. Whatever you read here is from me in my capacity as a journalist/columnist and I wish to be so understood.

    Nice to be back.

     

  • One hundred days later

    One hundred days later

    One hundred days ago, heady optimism filled the air as President-elect Muhammadu Buhari took the oath of office.  The momentum had built up steadily through the campaign, and not even Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s panicked postponement of the presidential election could stop it.  Buhari’s emphatic victory consolidated the momentum, rendering the change that lay at the core of his agenda more insistent still.

    Not since 1975 when Murtala Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo shoved aside General Yakubu Gowon’s exhausted military regime has such optimism swept the country.

    The enthusiasm was understandable.  Jonathan had inflicted grave damage on virtually every aspect of Nigerian life in his six years of misrule, the culmination of which was a systems collapse.  There could not have been a more eloquent epitaph to his tenure.

    The change Buhari and the APC had promised was about to be launched and, finally, the translation of Nigeria’s vaunted potential into actuality was going to start in earnest.

    However, large swathes of the country refused, for all kinds of reasons, to be caught up in the wave, some from habit, some from genuine doubt, some from indifference and some from fear of retribution, especially those individuals and groups and blocs that had profited immensely from the systemic corruption and impunity that were the directive principles of the Jonathan administration.

    Iyiola Omisore, a stalwart of the PDP, spoke a greater than he intended or realised when he admonished the faithful on the eve of the last election that the PDP was “nothing without the Presidency.”  Message:  Win the presidential election at all cost, or face decline and oblivion.

    That prospect is real.  Desperately short on cash, the PDP secretariat recently served notice that it was going to cut its army of staffers and hangers-on by 50 per cent, and then cut by 50 per cent the pay of those who survive the attrition.

    Back when the PDP, the self-proclaimed biggest political party in Africa, was in power, that was unthinkable. The so-called Presidency, of which it was an arm — or was it the other way around? – would have stepped in with a train-load of cash to keep it going.

    But it is a tribute to the PDP’s tenacity that as it struggles for its life, it is showing the kind of innovativeness it could not muster in its glory days, even its life depended on it.   It has launched a hi-tech national campaign, biometrics and all, to recruit young persons into its thinning ranks – the same young people whose lives and prospects it blighted for 16 years.

    For six of those 16 years, the Jonathan-led PDP government saw the young people mainly as a reservoir from which to rent its crowds to create the illusion of popularity, only that the young men and women were sometimes not paid the promised rent at all, or were heavily short-changed.

    None in the PDP is trying more desperately than its pathetic National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, to shore up its sinking fortunes.  Day in day out he is grinding out hysterical screeds that say more about his detachment from reality than about Buhari’s failings, real or imagined.

    Does he seriously believe his own charge that Buhari has in just 100 days destroyed not only the robust economy he allegedly inherited from Jonathan, but indeed all the wonders allegedly wrought by Jonathan’s transformation agenda?

    The truth is that Jonathan inflicted grave damage on every aspect of Nigerian life, and the consequences will be with us for a long time.  What he handed to Buhari was a poisoned chalice.

    That is the background against which Buhari’s first 100 days in office must be judged.

    Those who saw him as the new messiah who would build all the road networks and hospitals and fast trains within that period and deliver to every home trays of fresh-baked potato bread that was reserved exclusively for Dr Jonathan’s breakfast table will doubtless be gravely disappointed.

    So also would those who expected Boko Haram to hand over the Chibok girls or morph into an international relief organiszation, or that Nigeria would overnight become a net exporter of electric power, or that importers would resume paying premium price for Nigeria’s crude oil, or that the Naira would attain parity with U.S. Dollar and greater purchasing power than the Euro.

    And so also would those who believed that Buhari would make life more abundant for all Nigerians within his first 100 days in office.

    They all are entitled to their disappointment, but they must blame it more on their delusions than on what the man said he was going to do or what he could reasonably be expected to do.

    If Buhari’s supporters and opponents can agree on one thing, it would have to be that he has not moved mountains.  He has not moved mountains.

    But he has arrested the drift of the Jonathan years and given purpose and direction to governance.  He has served notice that the depredations of the Jonathan years will no longer              be tolerated, and that the brazen impunity of that era will have no place under his watch.

    In the past, you could abuse the public trust with the utmost contempt, confident that you could use the elastic framework of the law not merely to escape but to prevent justice, and then live happily ever after with your loot.

    Henceforth, that will not be so easy. Buhari has set up a committee of eminent jurists and scholars to devise ways of removing, without doing violence to fundamental legal principles, those loopholes and technicalities that have stood as barriers to justice.

    To be effective, the war on corruption must be as comprehensive as possible.  But in practical terms, it must have a boundary.   However you draw it, the boundary will necessarily be arbitrary. The important thing is to start somewhere, and make sure that appropriate lessons are taught.

    Corruption has reached such an alarming degree in public life in Nigeria because no lessons were taught. And because no lessons were taught, no lessons were learned.

    Nigerians are used to judging government performance mainly on the basis of tangibles – roads and hospitals built or rehabilitated, electric power generated, jobs created, etc. On this score, Buhari has achieved next to nothing.  The period in review is too short even to process a contract for a major project.

    But governance is also about restoring faith and confidence in the system, creating a climate for recovery, in which people believe that government can be made to work for them rather than for a few — intangibles on which the attainment of other deliverables may well hinge.

    Buhari has instituted a dynamic of accountability.  By making public his material assets and those of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, he has set an example that other public officials will find it hard to ignore.  He has begun the difficult task of re-building the value system that the political class in and out of uniform has destroyed.  He is establishing an environment in which mountains can be moved.

    I suspect that most Nigerians now feel more optimistic about the country’s prospects today than they did in the twilight of the Jonathan era, if not throughout its duration.

    That, as I see it, is a good start.

    But there is much more work to do.  Buhari should name a cabinet immediately, not only to give shape and direction to his administration, but also to stem growing criticism that he is running the country as if he was leader of a military regime rather than a democratically-elected president

    His cabinet should reflect the abundance of talent and expertise with which Nigeria is endowed,  as well as the country’s plural identities.

  • Buhari: between image and substance

    No hee-hawing: Muhammadu Buhari, president of the Federal Republic, is provincial!  But is that necessarily bad?

    In a multi-national country, with a parlous record of northern political domination, that would appear a disaster.  The image of the Nigerian Presidency as bastion of northern hegemony creates a disturbing déjà vu: we had seen it all, in those bad old days, many would sneer.  Now, are we condemned to living it all, in this season of purported change?

    Believe it, the image is not exciting!  But the substance?

    Put another way, does provincialism automatically negate Buhari’s fine natural traits which, in part, powered him to the Nigerian presidency?

    Before you answer that question, just ponder these two situations, between President Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo — Osinbajo, said to be as cosmopolitan as his principal is provincial — on account of picking their very close staff: chief of staff and senior special assistant for Media.

    If you discount Femi Adesina, Buhari’s and Osinbajo’s picks, for chief of staff and chief of media, follow the same geographical parallel.  The president picked Abba Kyari, as chief of staff; and Garba Shehu, as senior special assistant (SSA) media; both northerners.  The vice-president picked Ade Ipaye, as chief of staff; and Laolu Akande, as SSA media, both Yoruba.

    Now, what is the definitive difference between these two picks?  Still, that Osinbajo picked fellow Yoruba as closest staff — does that then re-make him as provincial; or even make his choice evil?

    And if both cosmopolitan and provincial end up with similar principles to choose close aides, shouldn’t it be clear there could perhaps be more fundamental dynamics driving both — indeed, everyone — beyond the political correctness of being “Nigerian”, to hypocritical applause?

    Indeed, there is a deeper principle; and it is that Nigeria is a federation.  A federation is no fancy tag: it is a country peopled with different peoples, though it is hoped these different peoples will eventually yoke, in a melting pot; and that alchemy would produce a “national” culture.  Still, a person gets to know first, families and friends; and not a few go through life trusting this immediate environment, no matter how limited or extensive their exposure has been.

    In Nigeria’s often emotive media, such people have often been demonised as tribalist or bigoted; but go ahead to glamorise the other extreme as detribalised, whatever that means.  So, to be a proper Nigerian, you must erase your cultural nativity?

    This emotive imaging has caused a lot of havoc in the political space, though it is fair to say such havoc resulted from mutual distrust, which emanated from real and potent fears of unfair domination.  Three names, in Nigeria’s political history, past and present, will just anchor this point.

    Obafemi Awolowo.  He was the most rigorous political thinker of his generation.  Yet, conventional “Nigerian” wisdom dismissed him as “tribalist”.  Why?  Because his closest aides were generally Yoruba; who he often despatched to sensitive duties all over Nigeria, even during election time.  Still, there is no proof the tribalist tag diminished his rigour or vision.  But on that sole score, he never became Nigeria’s prime minister or president — hard as he tried.

    Olusegun Obasanjo.    He is Awolowo’s very opposite, unabashedly “Nigerian”; and his admirers followed up to gift him the eulogy of “father of modern Nigeria”, which Baba Iyabo merrily lapped up.  As elected president, he went ahead to reflect perhaps the most pan-Nigeria outlook in appointive decisions.  But after all that, what?  Not unlike the Biblical white sepulchre: all-gleam outside but all-rot within — for beyond imaging, Obasanjo’s pan-Nigeria ensemble didn’t appear to have got the job done.  If they had, Nigeria won’t be in this terrible pass today.

    Muhammadu Buhari.  By Nigeria’s terrible political-speak, Buhari would be the first “tribalist” to make the Nigerian presidency.  During electioneering, his opponents threw everything at him: tribalist, northern irredentist, religious bigot.

    Yet, such was the rot; and such were his perceived sterling basic qualities that they shone through the clouds of negative coloration, that his coalition powered to the presidency: on account of massive votes in the core North; and his make-over in the South West and the Middle Belt.

    But the distemper of electioneering would appear to linger, coupled with new-found panic in the South West.

    That brings the discourse to the rather unflattering reaction to Buhari’s latest appointments which, in truth, is skewed in North’s favour.  And the South East, somehow not unusually, has been most strident.

    No doubt, the South East, as any other part of the country, has the right to yell and kick, if it feels short-changed.  And despite that region’s clear general anti-Buhari electioneering and electoral posture, some South Easterners still stuck out their neck for the president.  These presidential allies would be most hit.  They face “we told you so!” jeers from their people, but little to cheer from their stubborn electoral choice.

    Still, the South East stridency would appear hobbled by its mainstream political elite’s culpable indifference, particularly when such appointive injustices are in their people’s favour.  Strictly on principle, Buhari’s perceived northernisation of his government is no worse than Goodluck Jonathan’s easternisation of his.  Yet, the South East elite appeared comfy with the Jonathan-era injustice — a case of the Achebe quip that you don’t spew out palm kernel put in your mouth by benevolent spirits?  If that were so, what is the justice in the present South East’s shriek of alleged injustice?

    As for the South West and South-South, the dominant political elite would appear a confused lot.  In Ripples‘ opinion, Lagos’ Babatunde Fashola and Rivers’ Rotimi Amaechi would appear the best two governors in the national gubernatorial class of 2007-2014.  Yet, both blocs, though fired by different motivations, went on over-drive demonising the duo.  But when the dust cleared, and appointments had gone elsewhere, they suddenly jerked awake to bawl “northernisation!” and “marginalisation”!

    Even if Buhari was really “northern” in his outlook, what chances did these sniping South West and South-South ancestral warriors give him, to essay a change of heart?  Please note that the Fashola and Ameachi examples are only metaphors of the wilful lack of strategic thinking demonstrated by these two blocs.  It didn’t mean both Fashola and Amaechi were in contention (even if they were, Ripples was in no position to know), though either making the list would have drastically changed the Buhari Presidency’s perception as “northern”.

    Still, nothing from this piece should be interpreted as an endorsement of Buhari’s northernisation of his presidency, perceived or real.  Just as Obasanjo’s pan-Nigeria imaging shielded his government’s rot until it was too late, Buhari’s emerging image of a northern presidential laager may too early blind the polity from the president’s promise of a nation-changing tenure.

    If Buhari’s electoral coalition could boast a pan-Nigeria mandate (though located more in the North’s three geo-political zones and the South West), it should be capable of pan-Nigeria citizens of quality and  character, from all parts of the country.

    Any rationalisation short of that standard is nothing but presidential cant — and presidential cants can’t agree with the president’s mantra of change.

     

    Quote: “Buhari’s perceived northernisation of his government is no worse than Goodluck Jonathan’s easternisation of his.  Yet, the South East elite appeared comfy with the Jonathan-era skewing“

  • That circus of ‘name and shame’

    Now that things have relatively quietened down after the last bout of industry-scale ritual of ‘naming and shaming of delinquent borrowers, we can now reflect on the aftermath of an exercise that has done more to confound than resolve problems. Until most recently, I probably assumed that debt is not necessarily a vice. With perhaps the exception of our cash-hung economy, my understanding was that debt constituted the main fuel on which modern businesses run – a serious business at that.  Whether we are talking of a giant corporation or a struggling household business in some remote corner of town; debt is like oxygen – the presence/absence of which determines whether or not a business will live or die.

    In this wise, I must say that the controversies that have trailed the exercise is hardly surprising. It is a measure of the banality that the debt instrument has become particularly in our clime. After all, those who hunger for it a la credit – that is its other name – hardly ever gets it while those who get it are those who hardly needs it. Call it the Nigerian paradox; it explains why the manufacturer who has a factory to run – whose operations are hobbled by dearth or inadequate working capital – is left dry in the sun while the economic vagrant, whose only net-worth is in the number of cars in his convoy, commands all the attention. It is at the root of why the Zungeru cash cropper cannot cut an impression with our stiff-necked banker while the fuel importer is given free rein into the vault.

    To be sure, yours truly would have been most surprised is if the parties involved had quietly sorted out their mess while allowing the rest of us some peace. However, for an exercise that was said to have been designed to shake up the so-called delinquent players, it seems doubtful that it achieved anything of substance aside ruffling a few feathers. Yes, it stoked anger – lots of it – and with it threats and here and there. Beyond that, there is as yet, little evidence that it achieved much in terms of getting the wayward debtors to pay what they owe, and certainly far much less in addressing a problem that has become rather systemic.

    No wonder the exercise ended as an elaborate farce – which is what made it tragic. For if merely by the tone of its letter of April 22 to banks and discount houses, the apex bank left no doubts about the seriousness it attached to the exercise. The relevant part of the letter read – “The CBN has managed to keep the banking industry safe and sound in collaboration with all members of the Bankers’ Committee….But some data shows that it is increasingly becoming difficult for some debtors to pay up their loans. So it was decided that going forward, one thing that we may do is to stop them from getting access to foreign exchange. This is to ensure the continuous safety and soundness of the banking industry”. That understandably was the reason behind the pill handed the so-called delinquent debtors – the three months of grace, effective May 1, during which they were to turn their accounts from non-performing to performing status, failing which their names would be published in major newspapers.

    After two massive shakedowns – call it – comprehensive, industry-wide restructurings both of which were massively promoted as designed to deliver a brand new financial services industry – it says a lot about how very little has changed that the very afflictions that necessitated them – the appetite for uncalculated risk, sundry abuses of insider credit and other forms of abuses – have simply refused to go away. Merely by what the CBN letter suggest, the plague appears to have morphed into sublime but no less malignant forms.

    For sure, we know who is getting what. The oil and gas sector tops the bill. The reason is not far fetched; that is where money could be made without breaking a sweat. You ask how? Tell me of a sector that would shell thirty-something percent interest all in a year’s cycle of investment and I would show you a modern-day Robin Hood come to town. It also happens that the sector which claims the lion share of the available credit also carries with it the maximum risk.

    Now, this is far from pronouncing guilt on everyone as charged. Indeed, I am reminded of an a rather interesting riposte fired by the powerful Federation of Construction Industry (FOCI) – a body that has on its membership list, big names like Julius Berger Plc, C&C Construction, Costain West Africa, Hitech, Brunelli Construction, Jagal Nigeria, G. Cappa Plc, PW Nigeria Limited, Dantata and Sawoe and RCC – in the wake of the publication of the debtors list. Their position was simple: the CBN cannot isolate ‘delinquent debtors’ from the toxic environment which produce them. The body gave the example of the Federal Ministry of Works which it claims owes its members over N500 billion just as it admonished the apex bank to also publish names of government ministries, departments and agencies indebted to their members for Nigerians to have a fair appreciation of the problem. Here is how their President Solomon Ogunbusola puts it: “We are indebted to banks and CBN is threatening our members, saying that it will publish their names as chronic debtors. How can you explain it that someone borrowed money from the bank for two to three years and government refuses to pay for the contract done with the money? What will CBN do to government that refuses to pay the contractor? The names of such governments must be published too”?

    I am also aware of another set of people – those whose names have no business being on the debtors list as published. And we are not here talking of few muddled up names but individuals, who despite not having borrowed a dime from the banks, have had their reputations sullied by their appearance on the infamous list. Again, it says a lot about the appalling record-keeping in the financial sector as a whole that those charged with keeping custody of other people’s funds cannot be trusted to keep a clean list of debtors. When added to the poor judgment behind a good number of the credit decisions, the financial services sector would emerge as standing in graver risk than anyone could have imagined.

    That, to me is the salient danger we must reflect upon, more so at these difficult times.

    ‘It says a lot about the appalling record-keeping in the financial sector as a whole that those charged with keeping custody of other people’s funds cannot be trusted to keep a clean list of debtors. When added to the poor judgment behind a good number of the credit decisions, the financial services sector would emerge as standing in graver risk than anyone could have imagined. 

     

    Glad to be back

    I must apologise that yours truly made a rather dramatic disappearance from this page for more than four weeks running. Some personal exigencies dictated that I take some time to sort things out. Now, I am back, fully refreshed to continue in the struggle to make our nation what it truly deserves to be…

  • The power of definitions

    The power of definitions

    The international news network Al Jazeera sparked off a debate the other day about what to call the tens of thousands of persons from Africa, the Middle East and Asia flocking to Europe in a wave the continent has not seen since World War II, most of them enduring misery and suffering on a Biblical scale:  Are they primarily refugees, or just migrants?

    An opinion writer for the UK Guardian sought to widen the debate still:  Why not just call the multitudes what they are basically:  people?

    At first blush, this debate may seem academic, a semantic excursion at best, and unhelpfully diversionary to boot.  But it is nothing of the sort.  Definitions matter.  As the sociologist Ruth Benedict noted long ago, if we define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences.

    By whatever name you call them, those arriving in such large numbers in the European Union – some 100, 000 in July alone— constitute a daunting challenge to its member-nations grappling with serious social and economic problems of their own. But how you characterise them will influence, if not determine, how they are perceived or received.

    Call them refugees, and they could in good measure be received with empathy and fellow-feeling.  Call them migrants, and they could face the visceral hostility of those who regard the “other” as the source of all problems, as elements who must be kept away at all cost.

    Not surprisingly, Germany has been more welcoming to the beleaguered persons pouring into Europe, seeing them principally as refugees fleeing from war and persecution in their homelands. Forty percent of them are likely to find accommodation in Germany, as against eight per cent France and four per cent in the United Kingdom where they are viewed principally as migrants seeking better economic opportunities at the expense of the nationals.

    Poland and Slovakia will accept only Christians; no “Islamists” please, and no “jihadists.”  In Hungary, vigilantes actually took up arms to chase away asylum-seekers who manage to navigate the120 km-long barbed-wire fence it has erected to keep them away.

    The news media are the principal purveyors of the frames through which we select and interpret and organise what we see and experience, and by that fact the purveyors of our definitions of “reality”. Through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion and elaboration, the media suggest, and large sections of the attentive audience come to accept, what the issue is.

    That is why countries pay particular attention to, and often seek to influence, the way they are profiled by the international news media.

    Defining the situation is a task not to be taken lightly, and Al Jazeera is right to examine its own role in performing that function. In this, it is following the BBC which long ago decided to drop the term “terrorist” from its news reporting on the Israeli -Palestinian conflict, if not from its entire reporting, and to employ less evocative terms, such as “militants” or “insurgents.”

    To the Israelis, the Palestinians are invariably “terrorists,” a definition echoed by the largely sympathetic Western news media.  There is no redeeming grace to that term, no patience with and no sympathy for any cause espoused by any person stamped with that label.

    Its effect is to strip individuals or groups identified as “terrorists”of their humanity and to render whatever is done them not merely acceptable but just.

    But framing is an indispensable element in the contest for influence and preferment in the policy debate. Sparing no effort, no expenditure, each side seeks to come up with a frame that will dominate the debate and ultimately shape its outcome.

    Take as an example the September 11, 2011, attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, masterminded by Osama bin Ladin and executed in the main by his fellow Saudi nationals.  Few disputed the attacks as acts of terror, and few questioned the American response – a war on terror.

    But that soon morphed into an invasion of Iraq, which had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, framed as an expedition to oust Saddam Hussein, rid Iraq of its frightful arsenal of “weapons  of mass destruction”and plant the seeds of American democracy – genetically engineered, to be sure —  in the barren sands of the Middle East.

    That frame, kept alive by relentless propaganda, dominated the debate and won enthusiastic support in America and even abroad, notably from former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who would be undone by the misadventure.

    The term “weapons of mass destruction” was a key element in the framing.  It was designed to conjure up weapons so novel that the English language had not yet found names for them, or so frightfully destructive that their names were unmentionable.

    Iraq had no such weapons.  It had nothing resembling the nuclear, thermo-nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that those who invaded and occupied it have in super abundance. Today, Iraq lies in ruins.  Millions of Iraqis, combatants and non-combatants alike were killed, and much of the country’s population has forcibly dispersed.  Several thousand American and several hundred British soldiers in the occupation force lost their lives.

    Definitions matter. And as the case of Iraq shows powerfully, they can have tragic consequences.

    Back home, former President Goodluck Jonathan, remembered now more for the culture of grand larceny that thrived during his tenure than for the “transformation” he claimed to have wrought, even tried his hand at framing the debate on probity in public life.

    Chafing at those who were forever talking glibly about the lack of public accountability, he said the issue was not corruption but stealing and that the one must never be mistaken for the other.As usual, his point was not entirely clear.  Was he saying that stealing was a lesser, more acceptable, crime than corruption?

    There were those who thought he was only creating a distinction without a difference.  I thought he was advocating plain speaking; a thief is a thief in the exact sense that a spade is a spade and not a device for excavation.

    Too bad Dr Jonathan did not avail us of his seminal thoughts on the difference between mere stealing and outright looting, the term that has come to dominate the discourse on the conduct of a good many of the men and women who served with him.

    What cannot now be disputed is that a great deal of what Dr Jonathan preferred to call stealing went on unchecked during hiswatch.   Each passing day brings forth staggering new allegations of stealing that make the revelations of the previous day seem like amateur pilfering.

  • A princess and her angels

    Meja Mwangi, the Kenyan novelist, in Going Down River Road, did a good parody of the all-mighty Kenyan parliament.   His fictive People’s Parliament, of the over-worked, underpaid, hungry and angry workers, during their break time, railed at the high-and-mighty.

    From their break-time hell-raising came an immortal line: “Germs don’t kill Africans, only hunger does!”  That, beyond the biting sarcasm, makes the pungent point: millions of Africans do need help — and maybe the government alone cannot provide all of that help.

    The American playwright, Arthur Miller, was even more audacious, gifting his creative space to the common man, the “everyday people”, in  his tragic play, Death of a Salesman.  Classical tragedies enjoyed the artistic pleasure of cruelly cutting to size, the proverbial movers-and-shakers, who often love to play god, over fellow men.  The gods, ever so malevolent, seize alleged hubris to mercilessly humble these greats.

    But Willy Loman (pun it as low man, and you probably would get the full gist), the tragic hero in Death of a Salesman, is not Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony or King Oedipus.  Still, by Miller’s contraption, he fell from his low and humble level to a no less profound tragedy.  To make the point hubris is no exclusive preserve of the great?

    Well, this is no foray into literary appreciation.  It is rather a dramatic way of saying today, Ripples stays the with lowly and the humble, even if the polity booms, quakes and aches with blistering crossfire, over President Muhammadu Buhari’s latest set of appointments.  Maybe next week, if the battle still rages, and the controversy still “trends” (as they say on the social media), Ripples may yet join in the fray.

    But right now, it is full attention on a princess and her angels, one the benefactor, the others the putative beneficiaries, of a heroic (o, that word again!) effort to ease the mass pain and anguish in the land — if not aborted for lack of funds.

    First, the “princess”.  Bukola Fasuyi is chief executive of Proclips Media Communication Ltd, a Lagos PR firm, movie producer, and fashion entrepreneur with a bent for culture.  She owns an Adire fashion line (wears and accessories), with a special eye for the Diaspora market.  Adire is a traditional Yoruba tie-and-dye fabric, native to Osogbo and Abeokuta.  She also runs a charity, Lady of Africa and Advocacy Foundation.

    By virtue of this charity, Miss Fasuyi would appear, indeed, a princess of the streets, with the NGO funnelling help to the distressed and disadvantaged, basically in the field of health and education.

    Indeed, it was in the cause of this charity that the “princess” met with her “angels” — poor children rendered orphans, after their parents, and former Lady Africa Foundation (afterwards cited as Lady of Africa) charity beneficiaries, had died of  cancer.

    One is Kayode Olabiyi, 12, whose mother, Bunmi Olabiyi died of breast cancer, in the course of raising the N7million estimated bill for her treatment in India.  Kayode, with his two siblings, Balikis and Emmanuel, were taken in by Lady of Africa, with the permission of their family.

    Another is Ifeoluwa Bello, 6, who also lost her single mother to breast cancer.   Baby Ife was barely nine months! After the death, according to a Lady of Africa release, Ife’s aunty (her mother’s elder sister) took over her care.  But she too would die when Ife was three.  Afterwards, Lady of Africa took over her care, with her family’s permission of course.

    Ifeoluwa, and the Olabiyi siblings, are only four of the 10 kids in the Miss Fasuyi’s charity NGO, all at different stages of formative education, courtesy of a collaborative scholarship by a Lagos private school, Tohibat Group of Schools, at Gbagada Estate, in Lagos.

    The Foundation had approached the school’s founder, Alhaja Tohibat Adeniji, herself a philanthropist, for help.  According to the Foundation, the school agreed to take in the children, and bear part of the cost.

    Instead of N450, 000 per child for a term, the school charged each of the children, all boarders, N50, 000 a term, plus another N30, 000 monthly fee for boarding expenses.  Thus, instead of N450, 000, each child pays N140, 000 a term, N310, 000 less than the normal fee.

    Not only that: Tohibat School is also in the process of helping two of the Foundation pupils secure admission into the Iran University in Ghana, an Islamic faith-based university, with a N200, 000 yearly fee, and another N50, 000 a month for feeding and allied living expenses.

    Still, why would Lady of Africa charity send these poor kids to expensive private schools in Lagos, where the state government runs free schools?  On the surface, no reason — for the government runs free schools because it pays the bill for the majority poor, who cannot afford it.

    But Lagos public schools are day-schools; and the Foundation was anxious the children, who otherwise could have become street urchins, and maybe laboratories for future criminals, needed boarding facilities for something closest to a home setting, so that it is only during the holidays that the Foundation has to worry about providing them homes.

    Despite the Foundation’s efforts and Tohibat’s gamely response, it is a case of the spirit willing but the body tired.  Tried as it has, Lady of Africa has been finding it difficult to raise the children’s school fees, thus subjecting these young minds to some hiccups and disruptions.

    On the Tohibat front, it so happens that a new set of investors are taking over the school.  Alhaja Adeniji, 92, the founder, is advanced in age.  But it is not quite the coming of a Pharaoh who knew no Joseph — no.  The new investors are still willing to help.

    Indeed, the Foundation has got a further rebate of N40, 000 on each child: the cumulative fee is now N100, 000, instead of N140, 000, aside from an additional N10, 000 rebate for ICT training (with other pupils paying N15, 000).  So, instead of N140, 000, each child now pays N110, 000.

    The snag though, is that the N100, 000 would now be paid off-front, at the beginning of session, instead of the former practice of N50, 000 off-front, while the monthly N30, 000 feeding fee is paid as it falls due.  That payment front-loading creates a huge challenge for a cash-strapped NGO.

    That therefore is the essence of this appeal — for the Foundation needs urgent help, if it is not to abort the education of these children.  If help does not come, the children would not resume with others, when Lagos schools reopen in two weeks.

    ‘If help does not come, the children would not resume with others, when Lagos schools reopen in two weeks’

    You want to help?  Thank you.  Please reach Princess Fasuyi, of the Lady of Africa Empowerment and Advocacy Foundation on 08027647056 and 08093287614 or visit the Foundation’s website: www.ladyofafrica.org.

    If you did, you have save the soul of a part of Nigeria’s future.

  • A top cop and tales of sleaze

    A top cop and tales of sleaze

    How I wish I were playing the proverbial fly-on-the-wall when President Muhammadu Buhari received a delegation from the Ministry of Police Affairs and the Police Service Commission  the other day in Abuja and warned his visitors that it was “totally unacceptable” for applicants to pay bribes, as was the case in the past, before being recruited.

    Media reports have it that the President told his visitors that the police board must be above board and eschew every form of extortion or underhand dealing in the coming recruitment of 10,000 officers.

    I would have scanned every muscle on the face of Mike Okiro, the chairman of the Police  Service Commission, as Buhari delivered that poignant charge.  For it was under Okiro’s watch as inspector-general of police that a recruitment scandal broke.

    Taking unconscionable advantage of desperate job-seekers, the police charged a fee of N2,000 per applicant, presumably for handling and processing.  To be fair to the police, it has to be stated that other government ministries, departments and agencies were also charging application fees.

    The practice was illegal through and through and the police, more than any other institution, should have known that.  But that was not the most troubling aspect of the matter.

    The police authorities said N1.6billion from the N2 billion realised from the application fee had gone into paying the consultancy fees to an IT company identified only as Bharmos Ventures Nigeria Limited, widely believed to be a front. The names and identities of its owners were never disclosed.

    Nor was this again the most troubling aspect of it all.

    The most troubling aspect, as I saw it, was that in this digital age, the Nigeria Police Force lacked the capacity or the will to develop a computer programme to handle a procedure as elementary as recruitment, and instead outsourced the task, at a price that should have gone into making life better for its ill-paid, ill-clad and ill-housed personnel.

    Nigerians have long been conditioned to expect nothing but the worst from their rulers and leaders. Hence, on any given day, damning allegations of sleaze proliferate about them even in the more responsible newspapers.  In the less discriminating newspapers and the misnamed social media, the public gets little more than a steady diet of actual sleaze and rumours of sleaze, at the centre of which are the men and the women we have been conditioned to regard as persons of great consequence.

    This may well be the case with Mike Okiro

    Still, few in the attentive audience can have failed to notice what appears to be an affinity between former police Inspector-General Mike Okiro and allegations of sleaze since his days as the top cop to the present, quite apart from his uncanny capacity for multi-tasking long before that term entered popular usage.

    Only such a facility could have explained how Okiro hounded former EFCC chair Nuhu Ribadu out of the anti-corruption agency so as to get him off the back of sleaze grandmaster James Ibori, now serving time in a British jail with his wife and his mistress and his lawyer; how he worked tirelessly to ensure a PDP victory under the most improbable circumstances; how he chased contracts for his pipe-laying company, raked up huge non-performing loans for his many businesses, and how he cranked  out a book on policing in a democratic Nigeria –  all this while holding down a full-time job as a senior police officer.

    For these and other services, Okiro was at his retirement rewarded with an appointment as chair of the Police Service Commission by former President Jonathan Goodluck, a position he holds to this day, and the capacity in which he was received by Buhari and handed a terse admonition.

    Just several days later, that curious affinity between Okiro and allegations of sleaze surfaced again, big-time, and in copious detail.

    Aaron Kaase, an official of Okiro’s Police Service Commission, had filed a petition with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICRC) linking Okiro to acts most unbecoming, following which ICPC operatives had grilled him and several officials of the Commission in their Abuja offices and thereafter granted him “administrative bail”.

    In the complaint, Kaase asserted that Okiro had obtained N350 million, purportedly for the training of PSC staff due to be deployed to monitor the performance of the police in the 2015 general elections.  Of the prospective trainees, 500 were to be selected from PSC staff in Abuja, 200 from Kano PSC staff, another 200 from PSC Lagos staff, for a total 900.

    Based on Okiro’s projection, the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPE) had duly cleared the project and approved payments to designated contractors in the following amounts:  N95.3 million for training the 500 Abuja participants, N93.5 million for training  the 200 Kano participants and N85 million for training the 200 Lagos participants.

    I must digress again, for the last time.  Why is Lagos, our Lagos, always being short-changed at every point?

    To return to what is now likely to be a significant entry in the annals of official sleaze in Nigeria, actual or rumoured, Kaase stated that the entire staff of the PSC number no more than 400.  It is his contention that Okiro misled the BPE into approving a dodgy disbursement of N275 million out of the N350 million the Commission had obtained from the National Security Adviser.

    How Kaase arrived at his figure for the dodgy disbursement is not clear. But there is no imputation in his deposition, and none in this space, that Okiro personally profited from it.

    It is, however, instructive that, at the end of its investigations, the ICPC directed Okiro to remit the sum of N133 million to the Federal Government, being the difference between the N350 million the PSC obtained from the National Security for training 900 staffers nationwide, and the N217 million it actually expended in training 391 staffers in Abuja.

    The deposition goes personal when Kaase asserts that back in 2013, Okiro obtained N4.6 million for a first-class airline ticket for a trip to the United States that he never made, and that he routinely used fronts to collect allowances from the PSC at various times.

    In what seems to establish a pattern, Kaase charged in his deposition that Okiro collected travel grants for two conferences scheduled for the same time frame in Orlando, Florida, in the United States, and Dublin, in the Irish Republic, but attended only the latter meeting.

    The ICPC’s report does not dispute the fact.  But instead of taking a dim view of it, the Commission recommends that Okiro return the grant for the Florida conference only if the Federal Government rejects his offer to apply it to another conference coming up in October.

    Meanwhile, Kaase has been suspended from his duties in the press and public relations department of the ICPC , allegedly for leaking his deposition to the media.

    Compared with the trillions being casually tossed round in recent and ongoing allegations of Jonathan-era sleaze, the figures Kaase cited in his deposition amount to no more than a pickpocket’s haul on a good day.

    But what counts is the principle, not the sum.  And the principle here is that the chair of the Police Service Commission should live and be seen to live above the merest suspicion of impropriety, financial or otherwise.

    The cumulative evidence suggests powerfully that Okiro has not done so.  If he does not know it, his friends must tell him that his continuing tenure as chair of the Police Service Commission is incompatible with the temper and tenor of these times.

  • Ooni: reign sweet and sour

    First, some conceptual clarifications.

    Court records, of the late Ooni, Alayeluwa Oba Okunade Sijuwade, Olubuse II, (reigned 1980-2015) often referred to him as “His Imperial Majesty” — how so?

    This is not only a historical negation (the Ooni never headed an empire, so he could not have been His Imperial Majesty), it is also an affective downgrade of the Ooni institution in the Yoruba essence.

    Despite all the power and the glory (echoing Jimmy Cliff, the Jamaican reggae star), empire building is essentially evil.  The conquerors flaunt prestige and power.  But the conquered suffer greed and plunder.

    In all of Yorubaland, only the Alaafin could rightly claim “His Imperial Majesty”, for only Oyo historically enforced the prestige of power and the notoriety of plunder.

    But Oyo, even at the height of its glory, only compelled love by force; while Ife, even at the nadir of its decline, commanded love by choice in the Yoruba soul — if not in the secular realm, then on the spiritual plane.

    “For about five centuries, Ife was the most revered of all kingdoms of the Yoruba people,” wrote Prof. Banji Akintoye, in his definitive and much more inclusive book, A History of the Yoruba People.  “Its territory was sacred and inviolate to all Yoruba people, by a universal consensus.”

    Even the much more Oyo-centric The History of the Yorubas, by Samuel Johnson, the 19th century ethnic Oyo cleric and Pastor of Oyo, confirmed the primacy of Ife, even if it also blared the Oyo imperial glory.

    True, at the height of its glory, when Ife was but a humble settlement, Oyo struck naked fear.  Also at its decline, and wind-down with the Kiriji War (1877-1893), a pan-Yoruba armed rebellion against Oyo imperialism, the Ibadan army, the most fearsome back then in the Yoruba country, still regarded the Alaafin as their sovereign, since Ibadan was only a garrison town, with pan-Yoruba appeal for all the rough necks that loved war and plunder.

    But at its own zenith (14th century AD, though the Ife civilisation spread from 11th-15th century), according to Akintoye, Ife was close to what pertained in the Athens of Pericles — the most golden age of any of the ancient Greek city states — when no thinker, philosopher or general literati was complete, before benchmarking his acute mind with peers in the great academies in that city.

    Prof. Akintoye, again: “ … A cultural ferment (with strong intellectual character) was in progress in Ile-Ife in the centuries following the creation of the city, a cultural ferment whose light gradually spread to the rest of Yorubaland.”

    So, as Greece was the bastion of Western thinking, Ife was the fundament of Yoruba civilisation: spiritual, political and economic.

    So, how much of that Ife all-round awe did Ooni Sijuwade retain, compared to his predecessor, Ooni Adesoji Aderemi (reigned 1930-1980)?

    That is no straight question.  For one, both monarchs reigned in two dramatically different epochs, with dramatically different dynamics: Ooni Aderemi under colonial rule (30 years: 1930-1960), and the first 20 years of independence (1960-1980); and Ooni Sijuwade, 35 years, the bulk of which was under military rule, with its cascading decay of public morality.

    For another, feudalism (the bastion of royalty) suited military rule just fine, for as unelected rulers, soldiers-in-government courted the royal fathers to shore up their legitimacy, in exchange for some visibility in governance.

    But even with that, Ooni Sijuwade was much diminished in perceived influence than Ooni Aderemi was enhanced, both under colonial indirect rule (somewhat, a legitimacy-starved precursor to military rule), and under democracy, as 1st Republic, first governor of Western Region (1960-62), under the Action Group (AG) government; and even under early military rule (1966-1979).

    Besides, the military-era Land Use Decree (now Land Use Act) eroded the royal economy, so much so that the landed wealth of many a royal father was drastically curtailed, sentencing not a few of them as military contractors, to the quiet chagrin, if not open disdain, of their subjects.

    Indeed, there is this school of thought that claims Chief Obafemi Awolowo and associates actively encouraged Oba Sijuwade’s ascendancy because of his established wealth which, they thought, should come in handy to preserve Ife’s primacy, in the conclave of Yoruba royal courts.

    Besides, that financial muscle should also help to checkmate any untoward politicking, backed by mischievous extant powers, from the Alaafin end, for the Alaafin, Oba Adeniran Adeyemi II, paid dearly with deposition (in 1954), for his rebellious disposition to the Awo AG establishment.  But with his son, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III already back on the throne by 1970, an Oyo-Ife tussle for Yoruba primacy was anticipated — the one claiming its latter-day imperial exploits, the other leveraging its pristine spiritual-cum-civilising sovereignty.  That indeed came to pass.

    So, how did Ooni Sijuwade fare?  On the culture front, very well.  To the Diaspora Yoruba, there was probably no better ambassador of pristine Yoruba tradition and splendour.  Add that to his ultra-regal fashion sense, and he was almost nonpareil.  It is no surprise, therefore, that the Cuba Diaspora Yoruba are deeply mourning his passage.

    He also distinguished himself as custodian of Yoruba history, particularly regarding Ife’s place in it.  The only dark clouds, in the late Ooni’s glittering sky of culture, was his seeming penchant to merchandise Ife honorary titles, rebranded as whatever titles “of the Source”.  It bordered on crass venality, with awards to some really controversial characters.

    It was, however, on his perceived lack of empathy with Yoruba popular aspirations, especially on the political plane, that Ooni Sijuwade dragged that institution into the mud — at least by popular perception — from the immaculate and dizzying heights that Ooni Aderemi had vaulted it.

    On 12 June 1993, Moshood Abiola, an ethnic Yoruba, won the presidency, in a spectacular pan-Nigeria mandate, hitherto thought impossible, given the balance of regional powers.  It was no thanks, in part, to the late Ooni’s pathetic hee-haw, that the criminal annulment of that historic mandate was sustained, at the end of which Chief Abiola lost his life in detention.

    Later, the military conspirators would fall upon themselves, when Sani Abacha declared himself the victim of an attempted coup, in which Oladipo Diya, his No. 2, was allegedly implicated.  If Gen. Diya escaped the gallows, it was not because the Ooni, his pan-Yoruba spiritual monarch, raised a voice in his defence — in any case, not in public.

    It was the cumulative effects of such faux pas  that diminished the late Ooni in the estimation of not a few, at least in Yoruba streets.  Still, it is only fair that as he inched towards his creator, the late monarch became much more tempered than his early years on the throne.

    ‘Ooni Sijuwade was not the angel his co-elite piped at his passage. Neither was he the devil many in the streets would swear he was. He was rather an embodiment of his age, warts and all’.

    Ooni Sijuwade was not the angel his co-elite piped at his passage.  Neither was he the devil many in the streets would swear he was. He was rather an embodiment of his age, warts and all.

    It is therefore left to whoever succeed him to vault the Arole Oodua throne to that height every Yoruba would be proud of.

  • Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

    Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

    “Who will guard the guardians?”

    This question, perhaps as old as human community, has been looking for a definitive answer  since the ancient Greek philosopher Plato placed a master-class, the philosopher-kings, or guardians, at the head of his utopian polity.

    But even in this age of separation of powers, with an elaborate system of checks and balances entrenched in written constitutions, the question, if less insistent, still awaits a definitive answer.

    Who, indeed, will guard the guardians?

    The National Assembly sees itself once as a repository of the popular will and a custodian of the people’s interests, mandated to make laws for the advancement of both. This is no idle claim; it is backed by the Constitution

    To discharge these functions, the National Assembly debates the appropriations prepared by the Executive, modifies them based on the prevailing sentiment, and passes them into law.  In addition, it prepares its own budget, debates it (ha!), approves it and passes it into law, almost without any interference or modification from outside its ranks.

    It is all so incestuous, this process by which the National Assembly determines how much the Exchequer will expend on its operations for a given year, based almost exclusively on what its members decide they want to appropriate from the public purse.

    They see no conflict of interest in this arrangement.  After all, the Executive can countermand it if it so desires.  But when the Executive and the Legislative branches are controlled by the same political party as happened in Nigeria from 1999 until the APC came to power last May, and when impunity rather than probity was the directive principle if not the fundamental objective of state policy, there were no checks and no balances.

    Each branch extracted whatever it wanted from the public purse in a game of mutual aggrandisement.  There were signs all right that the purse was not inexhaustible, and that the practice was unsustainable.  But crunch time lay far ahead.  Why ruin the game by needless anticipation?

    But crunch time is finally upon us.  And to its great credit, the National Assembly says it is  prepared, in broad terms, to “make sacrifices.”  As proposed by a committee of the Senate, this will translate into a 30 percent cut in what has been the official operating budget of the Senate.

    I speak deliberately of the official operating budget, because nobody outside its ranks knows what the actual operating budget of the National Assembly is today or has been since 1999.

    In its finances, especially what accrues to members in one guise or disguise as compensation for one contrived activity after another, the National Assembly has been as secretive as an oyster, and just about as  transparent as a black hole, in astrophysics the hulk of a collapsed star so dense that not even light can escape from its bowels.

    Because of this secrecy, many a commentator has taken the liberty to portray the National Assembly as an institution concerned not with achieving sufficiency for the general public, but superfluity for its members.  Some have even gone so far in their contumacy as to cast the distinguished and honourable members collectively as predators in parliamentary garb.

    The commentators seem to think that this strategy would goad the lawmakers out of their silence and engender a healthy debate.  If they say their earnings are not an outrage on public sensibilities, let them spell out their earnings clearly and unambiguously.

    Out of a sound instinct for self-preservation, the lawmakers have refused to oblige.   And so, there has been no end to the dark insinuations masquerading as “common knowledge,” which has it that our lawmakers routinely pocket hefty compensations for activities including, but by no means limited to the following:

    Sitting, standing and maintaining every position in between; for meeting and not meeting; for clearing their throats to talk, talking, and not talking; for belching and refraining from belching; for staying in one place and going everywhere; for the upkeep of their harems and their cars and their pets; for their clothing, right up to their intimate apparel, and generally keeping up with the latest fashion trends;  for their grooming – hair care, manicure, pedicure, massage, face and body massage, etc, and for sleeping on the job or staying awake.

    It has even been claimed by their detractors, no doubt out of pure envy, that our lawmakers have parlayed the — to their critics – sedate and cushy job of making laws into the most hazardous enterprise in Nigeria, which should be bounteously rewarded in cash.

    Such indeed is the calumny of these detractors.  That, at any rate, is how we arrived at this pass where, instead of applauding the lawmakers for submitting to debate  a proposal to cut their allowances by 30 per cent when they could have preempted discussion or raised the emoluments to keep pace with soaring inflation and the misfortunes of the Naira, the detractors have been quipping:  30 per cent of what?

    An answer, by no means conclusive, has come from a report in one of the weekend newspapers,  with the salacious title “Naira rain at NASS as Senators collect N23.4 million each.”

    Over the same two months during which the Senate’s main achievement was the election of principal officers based on documents widely believed to be an inept forgery, members of the House of Representatives received N17 million each.

    Even taking into account fixed costs, this is a hefty charge on the treasury for an Assembly that has gone on recess three times since its inauguration last May and has not passed a single bill.

    In whatever case, it is now universally acknowledged that Nigerian lawmakers are far and away the highest-paid in the world, raking in by way of “wardrobe allowance” alone at least three times the national minimum monthly wage of N18,000 that many states cannot or will not pay.

    The payments made out to members of the National Assembly, it is necessary to state,               are not for actual reimbursable expenses  but outright grants. To cite just one example:  Each senator, it has been reported, stands to pocket or has already pocketed N3, 500,000 as local travel allowance and N2,500,000 for international travel.

    It is not clear whether this payment is for the month of July alone or for the first quarter of the current session, but that is beside the point.

    The point is that the whole thing is obscene, no matter how you dress it up.  It cannot be left to the National Assembly to perform “oversight functions” on its own finances when it has thus far proved unequal of carrying out that task on issues not shot through and through with conflict of interest.

    This ravenous guardian cannot be left unguarded.