The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Matters miscellaneous

    Matters miscellaneous

    With yesterday’s men and women well and truly gone, and with today’s men and women not yet settled in, this seems to be an appropriate time to touch on some noteworthy events, recent and not-so-recent, in broad strokes and short takes, lest some people feel ignored.

    Time for “Matters miscellaneous,” the rubric I patented some three decades ago for dealing journalistically with the glut of occurrences in Nigeria, where there is never a dull moment.

    Each time the APC faithful came out in their tens of thousands during the presidential campaign brandishing their brooms, I was somewhat conflicted. On one hand, I was glad for those who made the brooms and those who traded in them.  The proceeds must have filled a gaping hole in their domestic budgets, assuming the brooms were not their sole source of income.

    On the other hand, my heart bled for the environment. It is going to take a long time for the palm tree population to recover, and for the environment to regain that portion of its equilibrium supplied by palm trees.

    I was also concerned about its potential impact on the supply of palm oil, palm kernels and, of course, palm wine.

    If there is ever an acute shortage of palm oil or the foaming-white beverage, you can be sure that the PDP, in keeping with its new role as vigilant opposition and defender of the public interest, will not hesitate to blame it on the APC.

    Lai Mohammed, don’t say you were not warned.

    In another picture that clings to my memory from the campaign, President (as he then was) Goodluck Jonathan is sitting, head bowed penitently in a high-backed chair, surrounded by wizened functionaries of the royal court – or maybe lesser royalty – pointing their symbols of authority at his head and chanting incantations in tongues he does not understand, the object being to bring him blessings from on high.

    Since, according to a reliable source, there were no translators on hand, how could Dr. Jonathan be sure that they were blessing him and not cursing him? You don’t ask that kind of question when you are desperate. Plus, you can never tell where salvation will come from.

    In whatever case, he seems to have got pretty little for all wads of dollars he dished out for that intercession. I hear there has been some murmuring in his camp about a “royal swindle.”

    It is probably just as well that the valedictory summit of the African First Ladies Peace Mission that Dr. (Mrs.) Patience Jonathan was planning to host in Abuja did not take place.

    It would no doubt have afforded the host a chance to show how much power and influence she wielded. If a summiteer was unable to fly in, Mrs. Jonathan would have dispatched a jetliner from the Presidential Fleet to ferry her here and back, as she did for the last summit. How she would have held court and reveled in all the attention and glory!

    But the long queues for fuel, the enveloping darkness and the pervading sense of despair would have shown how her husband, with not a little help from her, and had made a hash of things. The experience would certainly have eroded whatever regard they had for her.

    Of all the departing governors, none has had a more eventful exit than the Chief Servant of Niger State and Scholar of Minna, Dr. Babangida Aliyu.  Hs eight-year run was traumatic enough. On one occasion, some disgruntled elements rammed his boat as he was crossing the River Niger in an attempt to sink it and drown him. Mercifully, they failed. They had not reckoned that the Chief Servant is a crack swimmer.

    There they were again, the disgruntled elements aforementioned, at the venue where the Chief Servant was to formally transfer power to his successor. They serenaded him with taunts and jeers, and pelted him with “pure water” sachets and even stones! Not even his security staff could fend off the missiles.  In the end, Chief Servant had to be smuggled out of the stadium through a back door.

    What a way to reward a governor who chose to be called Chief Servant rather than “His Excellency the Executive Governor” and conducted himself as such?  Base ingratitude, that’s what it is.

    The massive flight from the PDP has continued, and so has the blame game for its disastrous showing in the recent general elections.  When the PDP brought in former Bauchi State Governor Adamu Mu’azu as national chairman, they advertised him as a game changer. Where former chairmen created the illusion of momentum, he was going to get the party moving.

    He got it moving all right, but not in the direction they expected.  They turned on him with such fury that he had to flee. The last we heard from him was that he was in Singapore for medical treatment. It was from there that he announced his resignation.

    Others have followed suit, perhaps the most notable being Himself the Arch Fixer, Tony Anenih.  When Anenih cannot even fix himself after being out-fixed by Professor Attahiru Jega and INEC, you know the game is well and truly up.

    The PDP may no longer be the largest political party in Africa, but it can still claim to be the only political party not just in Africa but probably the whole world, to have a nuclear physicist, and a professor of that arcane science to boot, as its national secretary.

    Physicists in that line of business deal with the smallest particles of matter. Now that the PDP has disintegrated, Professor Wale Olajide may just be the person to pick up the fragments and, in one huge leap for reverse engineering, put them together again into one formidable entity.

    Fortunately, he is staying put at Wadata Plaza, not heading to a centre for advanced nuclear research.

    Back in the time of military president Ibrahim Babangida when no pronouncement from on high was complete without ritual denunciation of “banned and discredited politicians,” I used  to look forward to the day when I would be able at the very least to qualify him and his confederates as “discredited.”

    I never had the pleasure of doing so. By the time the opportunity arrived, I had taken a break from active newspapering.

    This time, as the nation grapples with the detritus of the past 16 years in particular and the last eight years especially, I am not going to let pass a chance to acknowledge at least some of the persons and institutions that have merged from the period hugely and irredeemably discredited.

    Nominations, please.

     

  • Nigeria and the snag of false steps

    From flag independence in 1960, Nigeria has been plagued by a series of false steps — the wrong set of people taking over affairs at crucial junctures.

    Is that about to change?

    In a multi-national, multi-cultural state like Nigeria, history is often laced with ethnic pride, rationalisations and justifications.  So facts, notorious facts, appear to become first and grand victims.

    Still, some hardy facts manage to shine through.

    At independence, at least in popular-speak, the South fought more for independence.  But the North, with conspiratorial, if not outright subversive, nudge from the departing British, gained power.

    That, of course, was the simple “truth” from the surface.  But it was far more complex.

    The British were loath to quit Nigeria.  They were even more loath to hand over to a set of radical and irreverent successors who, with dispatch, would render them absolutely irrelevant to their old dominion.  The South rippled with such.  For a foothold on independent Nigeria, therefore, they found the North’s “reverential advocacy” most appealing.

    The North, at a disadvantage almost on every count on the development index, was scared stiff of southern domination.  With the South sneering at the North’s laggardness in western education despite its Arabic and Quranic scholarship, only political power would give it life in independent Nigeria.

    Also, only a skewed political geography, of the Northern Region bigger than its two co-federating units, Eastern and Western regions, would sustain that power.  So, quid-pro-quo, the North and Britain cozied up to a sweetheart deal: power to the North, in exchange for continued relevance to Britain in independent Nigeria.

    But the South, to paraphrase Thomas Hardy in Tess of the d’Ubervilles, was far from being sinned against than sinning.

    Nnamdi Azikiwe, acclaimed father of Nigerian nationalism after Herbert Macaulay, would appear not averse to shaping independent Nigeria in his own worldview.  In a 1948 speech at the Ibo State Union gathering in Lagos, Dr. Azikiwe declared the gods of Africa had destined the Ibo to lead.

    To be fair, Zik made this statement in the context of ethnic solidarity and romanticisation, not necessarily in bad faith.  Still, though Zik was born in the North, schooled in the United States and was well and truly cosmopolitan, the Igbo culture was the only one he knew.  It was a crucial mark of identity, in an emergent state of conflicting and competing cultures.

    Obafemi Awolowo, on the other hand, made his own push for the Yoruba worldview as the dominant ethos.  Awo’s push came from his well articulated doctrine of cultural federalism, in which he pushed the tongue as a potent force for development; and called for Nigeria’s three regions to be further pared into “states”, with minority blocs, in all regions, balancing out the majorities’.

    So, he argued, independent Nigeria should be carved into cultural blocs as states; and each area should leverage on its tongue and cultural affinity to develop its own area — and may the best bloc, equal-opportunity wise, push its magic to the centre, so other Nigerians could drink from its developmental genius.  That was clear from his trend-setting government in the old Western Region; and his attempt to move to the centre to replicate those development wonders.

    So, Nigeria at independence lacked a Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, a Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika (later Tanzania) or even a Sekou Toure of Guinea, forceful characters that approximated, for good or for ill, the collective vision of a new nation-state.

    At that crucial start, it lacked a Zik that had the panache, an Awo that had the rigour or even an Aminu Kano that typified the talakawas (common masses).  All it had was Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa, he of the golden voice and reported even temper.  But even he was viceroy to Sir Ahmadu Bello, the powerful northern leader, bent — not without good reasons — on keeping the rude southern barbarians from his idyllic realm.

    That false start had been replicated at every crucial juncture, since the collapse of the 1st Republic (1960-1966).  But if the 1st Republic continues to be the reference point in development, it is simply due to two reasons: the apogee of regional federalism; and the progressive rot, for most part of corrective (which turned out, defective) military rule.

    After the first military coup of 15 January 1966, Chukwuma Nzeogwu and co that plotted that putsch were not the ones that gained power.  Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, a conservative general, was chief beneficiary of a radical coup — another critical failure at a crucial juncture.

    If Nzegwu and co had gained power, would Nigeria’s story have been radically different for the better?  Legitimate conjecture, there!

    Even with the re-advent of democracy in 1979, it was another tale of unprepared leadership.  All Alhaji Shehu Shagari wanted was to be a senator.  But the reluctant politician would end up the first and only president of that republic, of four years and three months.

    But President Shagari was only, back then, the last in a relay of reluctant leaders: Gen. Yakubu Gowon became head of state after the counter-coup of 29 July 1966, not because he led the putsch but because he was the most senior — and most likely acceptable — Northern officer around.

    Before President Shagari, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo had, after Murtala Muhammad’s assassination, taken over, as another reluctant leader, “against my wish and personal desire”.  But Alhaji Shagari’s 2nd Republic failure would unleash a more virulent strain of military rule (1984-1999) which ironically, Muhammadu Buhari, new elected president, pioneered.

    With Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and the late Sani Abacha, the military-in-power would drag both itself and Nigeria to the very nadir: between them, IBB and Abacha annulled Nigeria’s freest and fairest election ever on 12 June 1993; and ensured that the winner, Moshood Abiola, exercised his mandate in gaol — before dramatically dying in detention, for winning a free election.

    Even the return of the current season of democracy, in 1999, was marked by an Obasanjo theatrics of “reluctance”: “How many presidents do you want to make out of me?” he asked his lobbyists, with the body language of the great Julius Caesar who, though his whole sinews rippled to grab the Roman crown, still rejected the offer.

    Eventually, Obasanjo didn’t.  But see where the 16 years he pioneered, as first president of the  4th Republic, has led the country — its knees; with his estranged protégé, former President Goodluck Jonathan, almost supervising a total collapse.

    So, will the second coming of Muhammadu Buhari — only the second after Obasanjo to rule Nigeria as both military head of state and elected president — veer from this perennial curse of false steps, and for once be the long-awaited blessing for long-suffering Nigerians?

    For one, Buhari is no reluctant leader.  He chased power for 12 years, and only got it at his fourth try.  It is, therefore, his bounden and patriotic duty that Nigeria veers from that perennial curse.

    But the time to make that clean break is now, at the very beginning.  That is why the Buhari government must hit the ground running — in the right direction!

    Anything contrary is just too grim to contemplate.

    ‘Will the second coming of Muhammadu Buhari veer from this perennial curse of false steps?’

  • Cry, the beloved Kogi

    Much as I am a fervent believer in the principle that which concerns one should come last, certain developments within the last two weeks in my home state of Kogi have made it necessary to as it were – return to base so soon after my piece on the deplorable state of the roads and how it has fostered in the current siege by hoodlums and terrorists.

    The first is the reported abduction of a Kogi High Court Judge, Samuel Obayomi by gunmen. The judge, said to be on his way to work was, according to reports, accosted by the gunmen who ordered him, his driver, Ajayi Kolawole and orderly Usman Musa, to lie face-down; they then shot the orderly dead. The incident is said to have taken place in front of the Executive Guest Villa at Okene GRA in the Okene Local Government Area. Although his abductors are said to have demanded N150 million in ransom, the judge’s whereabouts remains unknown.

    As if the early morning abduction of a judicial officer is not ominous enough, barely a week after, it would be the turn of a serving commissioner in the Idris Wada administration, Stephen Maiyaki. The commissioner, who holds the Lands and Housing portfolio in the state executive council, was reportedly kidnapped by about six people at about 8.30 a.m. in his farm at Osara in Adavi Local Government Area on Sunday.

    Ordinarily, it might seem unsettling that the two events came within days of the setting up of a special anti-kidnapping squad by the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, following the noticeable resurgence of kidnapping in the two neighbouring states of Kogi and Ekiti. The reality however is that this is how things have always been. Not only have hapless citizens learnt to live under the throes of insecurity, theirs is a classic case of double jeopardy in the hand of their absentee government!

    Much as I hate to say this, the truth is that if ever there was a state where thinking stopped a long time ago, it must be Kogi. Yes, Kogi – my dear state is in full flight to regression!

    Evidences abound. From the state capital looking more like a glorified village – with its sprawling beach-fronts looking like more like a marsh-land that have just suffered massive oil spills – which an acute sense of beauty and planning could have transformed to a world class tourist resort. Do I talk of the vast sleepy country-sides that seems a mere whiff from pre-history? From East to West, the evidence is one of no thinking! It does not matter whether the issue is the state bureaucracy – the inert public service that is at best a haven for indolents; the local government where teachers are treated as orphans and where what is left of school infrastructures have since collapsed; all across the state, you are left to wonder if locusts have taken permanent residence!

    I hate to talk about the roads. Last year, I wrote on this page a piece with the title Nigeria’s most dangerous road! In it, I tried to capture the living reality the state of the arterial roads traversing the Western axis of the state – particularly the Ilorin-Kabba-Lokoja, Lokoja- Obajana-Kabba roads. That was when the marauding Bororo Fulani-herdsmen ruled the highways with their deadly order firmly in place; then, armed gangs routinely sacked banks and other artefacts of modern governance with policemen taking to the heels on their approach!

    The hapless citizens thought they had seen the worst – then. In February, a new police helmsman Adeyemi Samuel Ogunjemilusi came into town with a bag full of promises. Among others, he promised to tackle the issue kidnapping and the incessant Fulani\farmers clashes. He also spoke of the incessant armed robberies along the Lokoja-Okene-Okpella and other major roads. Four months after, the kidnappers have not only relocated their capital to the state, their armed kiths – herdsmen and robbers – are having a field day unleashing their reign of terror unchallenged! To imagine that this is happening in a state where the capital plays host to a military garrison!

    Why is the state so unblest?

    Once upon a time, we had a Prince Abubakar Audu as governor. A charming prince with sartorial sense and extremely good taste, his problem was attempting to play the monarch in a democratic setting. Yes, Audu loved to play god – enjoyed the fawning adulation of his horde of courtiers – but then, he also built roads, refurbished schools and medical facilities; recall that he even gave the state a university which he named after himself! With the benefit of hindsight, I would wager that the man gave meaning to governance – far more than any of the wayfarers that have mounted the saddle in the state! I have heard that his undoing was his attempt to treat citizens as subjects!

    Ibrahim Idris – Ibro was however of a different class. Of modest intellect by any standards, he was clearly a disaster as far as governance is concerned. He had neither a sense of justice nor an understanding of what it meant to government a complex, heterogeneous state like Kogi. A carpenter by profession, he apparently saw everything about governance within the prism of wood and nails – the result of which is the unprecedented experience of regression despite massive inflow of funds.

    Whither Idris Wada? For an individual known to be permanently on the move, shuttling between Abuja and Lokoja, it does seem to me that not much is known about the Pilot-Governor by residents of the state capital let alone the citizens over whom he governs! Those who should know have whispered their fears about a governor, who has neither the stomach for the humdrum of governance, nor capacity for the office and yet insists on carrying on all the same. Does anyone still wonder why the state is in such a sorry state that it has found itself? It’s hard to find kind words for a leader under whom the state has since regressed to a Hobbesian State of Nature!

    The man Wada, like the state over which he pretends to preside, needs help. While the state needs rescuing from the siege of the terrorists; the governor needs to be relieved of the unwanted burden of office. Seriously, the people need to be delivered from the clueless, indifferent administration holding them hostage.

    Can anyone imagine the state under the current leadership for another four years? That would be worse than disaster!

    ‘The man Wada, like the state over which he pretends to preside, needs help. While the state needs rescuing from the siege of the terrorists; the governor needs to be relieved of the unwanted burden of office. Seriously, the people need to be delivered from the clueless, indifferent administration holding them hostage’ 

     

  • From GEJ to GMB: A poisoned chalice

    From GEJ to GMB: A poisoned chalice

    Early in Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency, I asked an eminent and influential public figure who was in a position to know — I asked him whether Dr Jonathan was up to the task.

    ‘Without hesitation, no,” he said, his voice tinged with pained disappointment.

    He went on to relate how Dr Jonathan would arrive at meetings not having studied his briefing papers, and how he would often doze off during meetings he himself had convened.

    Nor was the eminent person impressed by Dr Jonathan’s inner circle, men and women who had  no business being on such hallowed ground – “ ragamuffins,” — he called them.  They caroused far into the night, with their host holding court– as it were.

    I had no reason to doubt my source, a person of few but measured words. But I checked his assessment with two other public figures, persons of consequence in their own right, who were also in a position to know whether Dr Jonathan was up to the job.

    Each, separately, concurred in the assessment of my first source.

    That was early in the Jonathan presidency.  As the years passed by, he may have cut down on the night-time carousing and learned to stay attentive and engaged during meetings. But mastery of his brief, or of any public issue for that matter, eluded him throughout his presidency, now mercifully set to end next Friday.

    You could never accuse him of having a firm grasp on any issue, be it commonplace routine or recondite, despite his advertised doctorate in ichthyology.  You could never accuse him of profundity, of lofty thought, the type that springs from a lofty mind.  You could not even accuse him of honest-to-goodness blandness.

    Dr Jonathan was, well, Dr Jonathan.

    It has to be said, however, that he did not seek the office.  He did not envisage public office outside the bucolic enclave where he had spent his entire life until national service took him to Osun State. And as soon as he completed the one-year deployment, he returned to familiar surroundings. All his three degrees came from the University of Port Harcourt, which further locked him into the insularity that he was never able to shed.

    Catapulted from deputy governor in Bayelsa to state governor, to vice president, and then to president of the Republic in two dizzy years, from obscurity to celebrity and to the global stage as it were, Dr Jonathan was more than overwhelmed.

    Nothing had prepared him for such preferment. He never rose to its opportunities.

    Instead he took refuge in a Transformation Agenda that was more slogan than substance, so much motion but, alas, very little movement.   Meetings of the Federal Executive Council became contract bazaars, at the end of which contract awards were solemnly announced as if they were epochal achievements.  And for the most part, nothing was heard again about them.

    Dr Jonathan felt much more comfortable traipsing all over the country in gaudy apparel to attend to the affairs of the dysfunctional PDP than sitting down and contemplating how to make Nigeria work for the masses of the people.  Nigeria was working well for him and his cronies. The formerly shoeless boy had a fleet of 11 executive jets at his beck and call, a one billion naira budget for food and beverages.  What could be sworn with a system like that?

    Despite all the talk of transformation, Dr Jonathan could not build an independent power facility for the Presidential Villa and its complementary facilities.. Nor could he raise to world class the National Hospital that serves the Presidency to world class.  Why bother when he could always hop off in an executive jet for treatment in European hospitals?

    Being at the helm and reveling in the perks was what mattered the most to Dr Jonathan.  Performance was of no consequence, whether at the national level or in the states where the PDP held sway, more by crook than by hook.  Perversity and impunity thrived without even perfunctory remonstrance, especially in the PDP states or in the ministries, departments and agencies headed by its stalwarts.

    It is in fact the case that, the greater the perversity and the impunity perpetrated in those domains, the greater the tacit support of the Jonathan presidency.

    The PDP was never a political party, in any case.  It has always been a patronage organisation, held together by the power of federal patronage.  One of its chieftains, Iyiola Omisore, spoke a greater truth than he intended or realised when, in a plea for party unity, he urged squabbling camp followers to remember that the PDP was nothing without the presidency.

    Omisore was splendidly vindicated when, following the PDP’ rout two months ago in the general elections, its senior officials and card-carrying supporters started jumping ship by the thousands.  The cookie on which they had gorged themselves remorselessly for 16 unbroken years had crumbled.

    Jonathan presided over a comprehensive collapse of state institutions and the national value system.   In almost no area of national life can Nigerians say with confidence that they are better off today than they were four years ago when Jonathan was voted into office on his own.

    At its best, Nigeria generated in the Jonathan years only a small fraction of what a platinum mine in South Africa generates for its operations.  When they work at all, Nigeria’s four oil refineries produce less than one-half of the nation’s needs; the balance is imported through a system that is about as transparent as a steel door.

    Nigeria has been mired in corruption on a scale beyond belief.  But to Dr Jonathan, the problem is ordinary stealing, and we only compound matters when we call it corruption.

    Faced with the devastation over which he has presided, it might be thought that a contrite Jonathan would accept that he was not up to the task, thank Nigerians for the jolly good ride he has had, and humbly vacate the scene.

    Instead, he engineered a false consensus to clinch the PDP’s presidential ticket and sought desperately to buy or steal the presidential election, employing in the process some of the most despicable tactics ever seen in these parts.

    Instead of consolidating the ethnic solidarity that had triumphed over the machinations of a cabal  bent on preventing him from taking power following the death of his principal, and had thereafter given him a strong mandate for a substantive term of his own, he resorted to ethnic-baiting and incitement.

    In the twilight of his disastrous tenure, Dr Jonathan launched out on an activist streak, making major appointments, dismissing senior personnel, setting up new institutions,  threatening to link all 36 state capitals by rail, and even vowing to become a statesman, as if that is a position to which one can appoint oneself.

    He has even cast himself as a super patriot who has always been ready to lay down his life for Nigeria. Coming from a president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces who could not bring himself to go near Chibok where Boko Haram abducted 230 young women from their      school hostel and stole their future, this has got to be the height of delusion.

    The system collapse Nigeria is experiencing now is an eloquent epitaph to Dr Jonathan’s inept rule. The damage he has inflicted on every aspect of Nigerian life will be with us for a long time. What he is handing to President-elect Muhammadu Buhari is nothing less than a poisoned chalice.

  • GEJ: Not in blaze of glory

    With barely three days left to depart from office, not a few Nigerians, it appears, would rather see the back of the Jonathan administration today. With fuel queues springing up in every corner of the federation, coupled with the regression in the power situation that has since assumed a frenetic pace, the Jonathan administration would appear to have become one rod of affliction too many for the long-suffering Nigerians. Today, an administration which only weeks ago could have managed a decent exit has since sunk to such depths of ignominy in the eyes of the populace that the single factor of its redemption is the knowledge that it has hours left in office!

    Exactly two weeks ago on this page, I wrote of the Jonathan administration as having gone on AWOL. The situation, I believe has since gone from bad to worse. No thanks to the contrived fuel crisis, the entire nation is in virtual lockdown. Businesses cannot run because there is no energy to power their operations; many industries – particularly those that depend on alternative power wholesale – have joined other Nigerians in the fruitless chase for fuel for the most part of three weeks. With the naira dancing yoyo against major international currencies particularly the dollar of which it now trades at N222 to the USD, and with interest rates hovering between 22-25 percent, one does not require advance lessons in economics to appreciate why our industries have remained endangered species.  All of this happening in the twilight of a regime that only few weeks back sought a renewal of its mandate based on claims of stellar achievements.

    Suddenly, Nigerians are asking – what happened to those superlative claims of economic growth – the textbook stuff macro-economic fundamentals said to be so strong and impregnable to withstand any shocks? The claims of achievement in the power sector said to have berthed in power stabilisation – in what is supposedly the turning point in that long dark tunnel. The unprecedented reforms said to have delivered the magic in the fuel distribution chain (minus the refineries of course) – the song of which the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) regaled us with a little less than two months ago? Is it a case of sabotage or were Nigerians sold a dummy?

    With the events of the past few weeks, Nigerians ought to, by now, have a better appreciation of the Jonathan legacy.  The lies have been laid bare but then, only because the evidences of serial failures have long passed deniability. Before now, it was sufficient for the administration to throw figures in our faces as evidence that the country was working. Now we know why: while oil price remained stable, and growth rate said to have averaged seven percent guaranteed, all seemed fine – except the missing factor of unemployment – particularly youth unemployment – which actually hit the roofs at over 50 percent under Jonathan! Nothing has changed. What the oil price crash has done is lay waste the dressed up statistics – showing the economy for what it truly is – despite the administration’s claims to the contrary.

    I recall when we complained about the administration’s humongous appetite for foreign credit at a time of bumper earnings; then we were told that the country –still doing fine with crude oil exports – was under-borrowed. Lost to the profligate administration were the bitter lessons of the Paris and London clubs debt peonage which the country exited in 2005 after shelling a whopping $12 billion from the treasury.

    Today, the chicks have since come to roost earlier than one could have imagined. And while it seems a long way from the crisis of the 80s when the country plumbed into severe balance of payment crisis as a result of oil price collapse, our country, to all intents and purposes, aside being practically bankrupt would appear set on that same course. Evidence: More than 24 states are said to be in arrears in wages and salaries; not even the federal government is exempt with several parastatals and agencies said to owe their workers.  Trust the administration ever so ready to deflect responsibility from itself, it has has passed off the challenges to the single factor of oil price slump rather than own up to its culpability in foisting the free-for-all climate under which the theft of Nigeria’s crude festered, its terrible legacy of public accounting, and the mindless looting of the commonwealth!

    Is one being uncharitable to the departing administration? The facts tell the story better. In 1999, former President Olusegun Obasanjo inherited $30 billion foreign debts. At the time of his exit in 2007, the amount outstanding was $3,348.22bn after the administration paid off the London and Paris Clubs debts. Under late President Yar’Adua, the external debts grew marginally from $3,348.22 billion to $3.94 billion. This climbed steadily under President Jonathan to $9.3 billion – nearly a triple. By Friday, the administration will be leaving a whopping $60 in debts – domestic and external with nothing on ground as proof of where the funds went.

    As for the foreign reserves, it is also worth recalling that President Obasanjo at his exit in 2007 left $45.0 billion.  Although the reserves grew to $63 billion in September 2008 under Yar’Adua, it slipped to $47. 7 billion when Jonathan took over in 2009. Today, it is hovering around the $30 billion mark despite the Jonathan administration’s record earnings.

    The power sector is perhaps where the administration’s non-legacy would appear better pronounced. President Obasanjo it was who prepared the institutional basis for an enduring reform via the Power Sector Reform Act 2005; indeed, the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) were initiated by him. President Jonathan, no doubt, could claim credit for the Power Sector Roadmap; the same could be said of the completion of the privatisation exercise. However, if the results are anything to go by, the exercise would appear to have been bungled. In place of the centralised chaos of the past, what we have now is a sector of disparate players with no clue on how to proceed, a sector that has delivered more units of excuses than electric energy.  While the nation is in virtual darkness, the administration does not even pretend to have a clue on how to get the nation out of the mess. From 4,000Mw advertised few months ago, the administration is barely leaving 1,000MW after pouring billions of dollars into the sector.

    If merely by the anger in the street corners, it would seem that not many Nigerians would have kind words for their departing President; at least not at this time. However, he can take solace in Nigerians legendary capacity for forgiveness.  Trust Nigerians, they will sooner pass off everything to distant memory in due time.

  • Cry, his beloved country

    “You see this card [PVC]? It is what we shall use to sweep out this government of thieves. If the coming government is not better, we shall use it to sweep them away too” — Two unlettered Nigerian female voters, as captured in Prof. Niyi Osundare’s May 17 lecture in Lagos.

    It wasn’t quite Alan Paton in his 1948 classic, Cry, the Beloved Country; on his native South Africa, soon to formalise apartheid, to which, though White, he was uncompromisingly opposed.

    It is a big irony though, that South Africa survived apartheid, only to convulse in murderous Black-on-Black xenophobia.

    It was rather Niyi Osundare, professor of English, ace poet and 2014 Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) laureate, rhapsodising Nigeria’s new-found voting power, which the two unlettered women quoted above enthuse.

    But even as the rest of Nigeria rejoice, can Osundare’s native Ekiti, in all good conscience, join them?

    That was why, even with his Nigeria civil rhapsody, Osundare decried the haunting evil, gripping Ekiti under Ayo Fayose.

    Cry, his beloved country!

    Prof. Osundare’s lecture was in 21st century Lagos.  Yet you could swear Plato, the old Greek and democracy cynic, was ensconced, having a wry laugh, in that Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) hall, that Sunday evening.

    Plato, the philosopher, had no faith in democracy.  He would rather have philosopher kings, high in wisdom and deep in knowledge, rule over the rabble.  To him, the borderline between electoral sovereignty and electoral captivity was a spider’s web too thin to risk!

    Contemporary Ekiti provides both the Plato dream and Plato nightmare.  That would appear glaring — at least to the perceptive — at that May 17 lecture.

    Osundare, himself an alumnus, spoke to the cream of Ekiti, distinguished alumni of the elite Christ’s School, Ado Ekiti and friends; men and women of solid achievements and refinement.  They would have been Plato’s contemporary dream crowd: philosophical kings — and queens.

    All too fitting, Kayode Fayemi, former governor of Ekiti, was among the high table.  When called to make a brief remark, his elocution, poise and gait were simply imperial — and Plato would have cheered, despite his grim misgivings about democracy.

    But Fayemi’s imperial governorship only grated as imperious, on the Ekiti electorate; hence the Fayose comeback.  So came Plato’s worst democracy fears: a rude mob just sacked polite government, simply because they had the numbers!  It is the fatal cross-over from electoral sovereignty to electoral captivity.

    Anytime that happened, as Plato feared, the first scalp the mob claimed was polite society.

    That would explain Ekiti today.  In Fayose’s Stone Age “democratic” empire, Okada riders, burly transport union stalwarts, with weather-hardened denizens of the street and allied muggers, not coffee-sipping policy geeks of Fayemi’s ilk, rule the roost.

    In Osundare’s own words, it was “ruling one of the nation’s most enlightened states like a medieval jungle”!

    The pro-Fayose lobby would scoff: despite Dr. Fayemi’s much vaunted policy brilliance, his politics, to both friend and foe, was toxic.  Anti-Fayose forces would gamely counter: despite the Osoko’s brilliant demagoguery, all is assured is Ekiti’s future toxicity, the Ekiti electoral captives with it!  So, the proverbial slip from fry pan to fire?

    The paradox of the putative regress of his native Ekiti, even while hailing the probable advance of Mother Nigeria, both hinged on conscious and deliberate electoral choices, was not lost on the distinguished lecturer and stubborn believer in Ekiti as “one of the nation’s most enlightened states”.

    But again, to him, it’s all a throwback to the basis.  An illegitimate foundation, even with the mediation of the vote, seldom anchors a legitimate fortress.

    “When the governorship race was about to start in Ekiti and Osun states, and the ruling party’s field was swarmed by all manner of gubernatorial hopefuls,” Prof. Osundare delved into very recent political history, “the largest political party in Africa reached out for the most tainted of the lot and told the bewildered world: these are the two sons in whom we are well pleased.”

    These two sons, also named in the Ekitigate audiotape rigging scandal, were Ayo Fayose (Ekiti: who won) and Iyiola Omisore (Osun: who lost).  So stunning was Fayose’s grand winning philosophy of stomach infrastructure that corn-grubbing Candidate Omisore presented himself as the ultimate cynical man of the people.  Still, Osun rejected him.  Now, Ekiti and Osun live with the consequences of their electoral choices.

    But that is cold comfort to the Ekiti Plato philosophical school, to which the professor counts himself an esteemed member, who believe — and rightly too — that “stomach infrastructure” maroons you in the past, even as “mind infrastructure” catapults you into the future.

    That probably explains Osundare’s pithy wailing of the dire symptoms of Fayose’s pact with the past and the conspiratorial support from the Jonathan Presidency, with uproarious cheer from Fayose’s Ekiti electoral captives.

    “Today, one of those two sons is living out the vote of confidence … There is no crime of his that is wrong in the president’s eye, no violation by him is considered outrageous,” he rued in his lecture.  “As governor-elect, he led a crowd of ‘party faithful’  (called thugs by some ignorant opposition media), beat up judges, tore up their robes, destroyed their dockets, trashed the proverbial temple of justice, and got all the workers fleeing in different directions”.

    Even as governor, Fayose has moved from outrage to outrage, sacking parliament and even suborning a segment of the thinking class and elders, royal and common, to cohabit in his Mephistophelean empire.

    Even the bluest of Ekiti blue bloods and most iconic of its legal icons, appear more impressed with “amicably settling the problem” than lambasting Fayose’s constitutional outlawry”!

    But again, Ekiti would follow the natural order: stimulus and response, acts and consequences, crime and punishment.

    Goodluck Jonathan exits in a haze of total paralysis: no fuel, no electricity, no movement, no nothing — a complete gridlock!  It’s the telling result of a daft electoral choice, four years ago.

    The poet was right: “Every thinking and feeling human being knew for sure,” he said in his lecture, “that four more years of the PDP government would reduce Nigeria to a state more horrifying than the one the world had ever witnessed in the failed states that litter the African landscape.”

    But the pan-Nigeria electorate has at least made amends for its gargantuan mistake of 2011.  Yet, it is still conked by Jonathan’s gargantuan exit paralysis.

    The reverse, however, would appear the Ekiti case.  While Nigeria, ceteris paribus, has tried to negotiate itself out of a cul-de-sac, Ekiti appears to have rammed itself straight into one.

    Pray, ace poet: will Ekiti still be “one of the nation’s most enlightened states”, after four years of Fayose?

    Cry, his beloved country!

    “Goodluck Jonathan exits in a haze of total paralysis: no fuel, no electricity, no movement, no nothing — a complete gridlock! It’s the telling result of a daft electoral choice, four years ago”

  • An unwelcome visitor

    An unwelcome visitor

    Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, also known as Phony Tony, and as Tony Bliar, came calling last week in Abuja, one of the few capitals where he can still count on a respectful welcome.  It was his third visit in just a little over four years.

    In February 2010, his hands still wet with the blood of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis liberated from this world and from their relations in a military invasion that he helped gin up  with a raft of lies, Blair was invited – along with fellow war criminals former U.S. president George W. Bush and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – by one newspaper basking in false affluence to speak at a ceremony in Abuja honouring distinguished Nigerians past and present.

    Blair even got to meet acting President Goodluck Jonathan, as he then was, to discuss “matters  of mutual interest” between Nigeria and Britain, and how he would like that relationship to remain strong.

    He was back nine months later, declaiming with the unctuousness that becomes him so well that the “international community” was nursing a great deal of interest and excitement in Nigeria’s elections scheduled for 2011.

    More to the point of his new career as a money-grubbing influence peddler, he declared, with JP Morgan chief executiveofficer Jamie Damon beside him, that the global financial giant’s decision to upgrade its Nigerian office to a full branch was a demonstration of confidence in Nigeria and in President Jonathan’s effort to transform the economy.

    Shortly after that visit, JPMorgan bagged a huge chunk of Nigeria’s controversial Sovereign Wealth Fund, even as it recorded huge losses resulting from reckless transactions.

    His most recent visit to Abujawas no accident.  It was designed to secure future access in the Buhari dispensation for the major players in international high finance, for which he is a well paid lobbyist.

    It was entirely in character that Blair should have presumed at every stop to speak for the “international community,” though he holds no public office and is in fact a hugely discredited politician who, in a just world, should be in prison serving time for war crimes.

    So unpopular and discredited had he become at the end of his record tenure as prime minster that he could not embark on a farewell tour of Britain, where he was sure to be greeted with shouts of “Liar, Liar” and pelted with tomatoes and eggs. They even re-christened him Bliar. And so, he travelled instead to bid farewell to British troops in Basra, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan.

    Blair’s quest to become president of the European Council ended in humiliation. The British Government withdrew its backing when it became clear that member countries wanted nothing to do with him.  The Middle East for which Blair was designated international mediator has rarely witnessed greater turmoil.

    The last time Blair went to testify before a parliamentary committee looking into how the UK entered the unholy alliance that invaded, occupied and destroyed Iraq, he had to be smuggled into the committee room through a back door, to save him from the wrath of protesters.

    This was not the way the script was supposed to end for the youngest prime minister since 1812, the accomplished politician who rescued Britain from the exhausted Tories, redefined its place in world politics, and led his Labour Party to three successive election victories.  He seemed destined for greatness.

    But hubris and delusion soon set in, and glory turned to ashes.

    The September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States presented him an opportunity to project himself as a statesman of global reckoning.  The United States would not fight alone, he assured Americans.  Britain would stand “shoulder to shoulder” with them as they confronted the terrorist threat.

    From then on Blair made it his business to confect a casus belli, just in case the United States could not come up with a compelling one.  First he published a dossier on what he said was Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-production programme.  It was a “dodgy” document, copied in part from a sophomoric doctoral dissertation that an American university had rejected.

    Next, he put it out that Iraq had sought to buy uranium cake from Niger Republic.  The document detailing the alleged transaction was a transparent forgery.  The minister who purportedly signed on behalf of the Niger Government had left office at least eight years earlier.   It is as if Federal Government documents dated May 2014 were to surface today bearing the signature of Sule Lamido as Nigeria’s foreign minister.

    He also claimed, falsely, that Iraq had developed nuclear weapons that it could assemble and deploy for combat within 45 minutes — the same Iraq that could not shoot down a single plane from the armada that had been patrolling its air space and since the end of the Gulf war and bombing military and non-military assets at will.

    The United States quickly latched on the document as proof that its homeland was imperilled, and that it could not afford to have its skies darkened by a mushroom cloud before striking.

    For his domestic audience, Blair declared that Iraq had developed missiles capable of hitting  British forces in Cyprus. Why Iraq would want to attack British troops in Cyprus he never explained.

    So determined was Blair to take Britain to war that even when Bush offered him a chance to change course, fearing that the British parliament might not share America’s enthusiasm for war, Blair deployed his forensic skills to stay the course, with no consideration for the massive anti-war demonstrations in London and around the world.

    Whenever he prefaces a statement with “to be perfectly honest” or “to be absolutely candid,” which he does very often, you could be sure that he was going to zap you with a falsehood, a barefaced lie.

    Contrived earnestness, evangelical fervor, and the ability to tell a blatant lie with a straight face: That is the quintessence of Tony Blair

    No weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq.  But by the time British forces pulled out, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi had been killed.  Hundreds of thousands more had been displaced, and Iraq lay in ruins.  Hundreds of British soldiers had also been killed – all for a lie.

    Blair says he is not sorry for that lie because others also believed it.  True, Britannia no longer rules the waves, but when did Britain become just another country?

    He compounds his war crimes each time he asserts that removing Saddam from power was the right thing to do.  But at what cost?

    The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whom Blair’s warmongering removed from this world, and the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis it turned into refugees or otherwise brought to ruin have no place in Blair’s consciousness.

    He condoned or turned a blind eye to torture.  Four years ago, to head off trials that would have embarrassed the authorities, the British Government agreed to pay out millions of pounds to persons tortured by officials in parts of Iraq occupied by British forces.

    No wonder then, that when Blair offered to donate the earnings from his memoir to the families  of British troops killed or wounded in Iraq, they rejected it angrily, calling it “blood money”.

    In a just world Tony Blair would be serving a long jail term — my aversion to capital punishment is total and unconditional, unlike his — for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    By receiving Blair in Abuja, President-elect Buhari has returned whatever favour he owes for  the photo opportunity Blair accorded him in London earlier this year. Henceforth, the Federal Government and other Nigerian institutions must stop inflicting him on the public

     

    Portions of this piece first appeared in this space on November 23, 2010.  The column was titled “Phony Tony:  The Liar’s progress.”

     

  • When comes a federalist Buhari?

    Between his first and second coming, Muhammadu Buhari’s conversion from the martial man of steel to a self-confessed democrat of reason is quite dramatic.

    It is the political equivalence of the rabid, anti-Christ Saul turning the zestful, pro-gospel Paul, on the way to Damascus.  But the democratic General’s life-changing journey to Damascus took no less than 13 rigorous years.

    Within that short period, he ran for the Nigerian presidency four times, got marooned at the courts thrice, while his rivals savoured, with reckless abandon, the fruits of his quest.

    Why, his party even once abandoned him for opportunistic appointments from the rival party, which purported victory he was challenging, in a marathon court process!

    Gen. Buhari told his own tale, when a delegation from Taraba State paid him a courtesy call in Abuja.

    By the president-elect’s own account, his democratic evolution took a whole of 24 years — from 1991 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed; to 2015, his year of presidential triumph, after three failures.

    Though the president-elect spoke strictly in the context of the sanctity of the vote, as the basis of democracy, it is instructive that his democratic epiphany came with the USSR collapse.

    Lack of democracy may well be one of the complex reasons the USSR collapsed.  But beyond ideological colouration and ethnic domination, the USSR (1922-1991) fell because it was a faulty federation — a grave similarity it shares with Nigeria, which even after the proliferation of “states”, remains an ultra-centralised entity.

    Now, no two situations are exactly alike.  Whereas USSR’s centralised planning delivered rapid industrialisation, Nigeria’s version has delivered the exact opposite — de-industrialisation: for varied reasons, of course.

    Still, not even USSR’s material prosperity could save it from its dire structural deficiency.  Again, this plague it shares with Nigeria, though with double jeopardy.  Though USSR collapsed even if it was one of the globe’s accomplished scientific and technological leaders, Nigeria would take its survival chances, even as a global scientific and technological laggard!

    One final comparison, on the ethnic plane.  The USSR was a federal union of “republics” — Ukraine, Byelorussia, etc, even if every inch of that vast territory  was ruled by the local communists.  But the ruling temper was decidedly Russian, the clear majority in the union.

    Nigeria too stumbled into independence as a Federal Republic of three, and later, four regions.  That federal essence has since been whittled down with a progressive fissuring into states, the latest number of which is 36 — with the elite still calling for more!

    But from the very beginning, and till now, even with the 12 June 1993 presidential election annulment fiasco, the ruling temper is perceived to be northern.

    Indeed, that anti-North sentiment, triggered by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s Katsina Cabal that tried to stonewall the then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan from the Presidency, helped to propel Dr. Jonathan to the acme of Nigerian power.

    But no sooner did President Jonathan attain that height than he himself attempt a Niger Delta hegemony, in which the South East sentimentally tagged along.  Again, that triggered a rare North-South West entente, which drove the All Progressives Congress (APC) though, to be fair, the South East political elite enjoyed a right of first refusal, as it were, in that political alliance.

    But the South West-North entente, without a formal political restructuring, only alienated the Afenifere segment of the Yoruba dominant political temper.  That put them at cross-purpose with Bola Tinubu, the basic driver of the political accommodation.

    Indeed, Sir Olaniwun Ajayi, in his latest book, Nigeria: Political Power Imbalance, and earlier ones like Nigeria: Africa’s Failed Asset? had railed at a certain northern power hegemony treacherously packaged — to eventually undermine Nigeria — by the exiting British colonialists.

    Though not a few have hinted at Sir Olaniwun’s own perceived Yoruba irredentism, his thoughts continue to gather suction, particularly with the ideologues of restructuring as the very minimum basis for Nigeria’s survival as a prosperous nation-state.

    But why all this hard analysis?  Simple.  The whoop of election victory is gone.  So, is the terrible moan of defeat.  Now, comes the brass tack.

    Gen. Buhari would appear the best deal, by miles, for now.  For one, he is no reluctant leader.  He chased power the hard way; and is tempered by the gall that getting power — democratic power — is very difficult.  So, he is likelier to exercise it responsibly.

    For another, he is a self-confessed new democrat.  Being a neophyte in that peculiar temper, all glory to democratic redemption, he is likely to dazzle the polity with his new essence, much more than “seasoned democrats”, who take their essence so much for granted that all they hit the polity with are anti-democratic acts!

    Besides, contrasted to two of his three immediate predecessors, he speaks of further reassurance.  An unprepared Jonathan got power by accident.  He dissipated it without much ado.  Olusegun Obasanjo was a power megalomaniac, too convinced of his own inherent goodness to fully grasp his place in history.  Muhammadu Buhari, thankfully, appears to differ from the two.

    Still, all these would count for little, if the president-elect does not get right the structural angle of the immense problems.

    Even right now, delegations have been pouring into his door stead; and their pleas are near-uniform: O, presidential emperor and magic worker, only you can solve our problems, as they tender their shopping lists!

    But structurally, that should not be so.  If you operate Federal Nigeria as it should be, the president and his federal government should not be mythical magicians.  Indeed, the federating regions will solve most of the problems, leaving pretty little for Abuja to worry about.

    Ripples believes Buhari would be fair to all.  But again, that would be resorting to the default-setting of the president as some benevolent emperor.  He is nothing of the sort.  In any case, he should not be.

    What Nigeria needs is a fair and equitable federal system, under which every part of the country works hard and be fair to itself — instead of looking up to some central dole.

    Besides, that Nigeria has fallen on bad times pushes the imperative for a paradigm shift.  Right now, the federal government is the sole giver.  But what the Buhari government must do is open up the revenue-driving base, taking advantage of the federal doctrine, and amending extant laws for every part of the country to drive its own resources.

    To do that, Buhari must develop a federalist mindset.  That would be a pleasant combo for the latest democrat on the block.

    That is why the APC South West caucus must not be coy, pushing restructuring as the ultimate correction to Nigeria’s deficient and defective federalism.  If this coalition fails, they would be the first to be conked.

    Besides, it would be a travesty to gain democracy and federal power; yet lose sight of restructuring, Federal Nigeria’s potent tool to deliver development.

    ‘Buhari must develop a federalist mindset.  That would be a pleasant combo for the latest democrat on the bloc’

     

  • Subsidy: Time to let go

    The fuel queues are back – as if you didn’t know that already. The tragedy isn’t just that OPEC’s one-time sixth largest exporter of crude has again suffered another crushing relapse of the familiar plague of dry pumps – no thanks to the feud between fuel importers and the finance ministry – it’s like the nation has come under a spell of some ancestral curses!

    Trust Nigerians for their inventiveness, guess they have since moved on; while we are back to the same old wearisome arguments about whether or not the subsidy exists, our go-go nature appears to have gotten the better of us. Majority – call it the silent ones if you like – it would appear, could no longer be bothered with either the economics or even the semantics of fuel subsidies, they have since swallowed the full pill of deregulation – this time through the back door. Scarcity or not, I know for a fact that you could purchase fuel in some stations in Lagos without as much as breaking a sweat – so long as you are willing to part with N140 for a litre in the deregulated market downtown! Seems one moment when Nigerians wouldn’t mind to cut their noses – even if temporarily – to get going!

    Truly, the subject of fuel subsidy never ceases to fascinate. As in the round leather game of football, it is one subject that every Kasali, Chinedu and Usman would claim, with some air of certainty, some degree of knowledge if not expertise. You know why? Everybody is involved – from the jerry-can clutching vulcanizer to the barber next door; what about the welder or even the ubiquitous taxi driver all of whom the liquid gold has come to mean the difference between life and death?

    Yes, everyone is involved.

    Agreed, subsidy is a touchy subject. I have seen otherwise brilliant minds relapse into some wild, witless garbage when the subject is fuel subsidy. Many would rather be politically correct rather than risk ruffling feathers. And so argument persists that simply because oil is of nature’s finest gift to us, we can continue to dispense with the niceties of economics!

    To be sure, I have looked at the contending arguments; it seems to me that the difference between the most vociferous proponents of fuel subsidy removal and their opponents is actually more shadow than real substance! Forget what the marketers and their hordes of middlemen say; the truth is that they want the subsidy regime to continue; it is their surest route to unearned wealth. What about the bureaucrats, the men and women wielding awesome powers over our lives? It is their surest guarantee of raw, invisible power – without control. As one would imagine, the politicians want it for a different purpose; for them, it is a fascinating subject for politricking any day.

    Did I hear the “ogas at the top” describe the subsidy regime as “unsustainable”? What their lucre-addicted lordships meant to say is that they could do with more of freshly minted wads in the piggy bank to do as they please.

    The irony of course is that a section of the hoi polloi actually believes the lie that the petrol and kerosene subsidy – together with its impregnable infrastructure of graft that services it – actually comes close to their share of the proverbial national cake! That for me is the most tragic part of the raging debate.

    Is there really a subsidy? I have heard the question over and over again. To the question I say – we wouldn’t be who we are if we are not found debating whether or not the weekend May 14 Platts reference price of $718.49 per metric tonne (that is N105.55 per litre) is real! Note that this is not yet reflective of distribution costs as well as the marketers’ margins!  With petrol price officially pegged at N87 per litre, the above should ordinarily solve the arithmetic.

    Next question – why can’t the federal government build new refineries? Or its variant – why can’t the government compel the International Companies (IOCs) to build refineries in the country? Or still, get the private sector to build new refineries? Good question – all of them!

    Let me proceed from the known to the unknown. Again, as if we don’t know, the reality is that OPEC’s leading crude oil exporter refines only a miniscule fraction of its domestic fuel needs. Daily requirement for petrol is said to range from 40-45 million litres daily of which the four refineries combined is said to deliver a miserable 10-15 percent. To bridge the gap, we rely on imports at deleterious costs to our foreign reserves and the larger national economy. From an ordinarily hefty subsidy bill of barely N250 billion in 2011; the nation has since the literally broken the banks – spending close to a trillion on kerosene and petrol alone annually!

    So why can’t the government build new refineries? Guess the answer is obvious: the same reason the government is unable to bring back the national carrier; it’s the same argument about government’s inability to fix the multiplicity of our roads; the reason the power sector is considered as jinxed! I daresay here that the old cliché about the government not being good at business is true only to the extent that our government lacks both the means and the discipline to run a modern enterprise! The tiny Island country of Singapore is a living exception to that rule!

    As for getting the IOCs to build new refineries, it seems rather too easy to overlook the terrible effects of government’s meddlesomeness on the downstream sector. Does anyone still remember that the first refinery in the country was actually built not by government but by Shell? It seems aeons ago when the motorist in Lagos bought fuel at a different price from his compatriot in Maiduguri! That was when market ruled – long before our leaders pronounced that money was not our problem but how to spend it!

    I am of course reminded that above everything else that the business of refinery is an investment decision – pure and simple. Those clamouring for the legislation to compel IOCs to build refineries only need to imagine going into a business where product price is fixed before production costs are known!

    To my main point. There comes a time in the life of a nation when citizens just have to make hard choices. The current season would appear such a time. The simple truth is that the nation cannot afford, even if it wants, to sustain the current regime of price support called subsidy. Something simply has to give. Moreover, I have stated elsewhere that the subsidy regime is unfair to the extent that the burden is regressive. In short, it is time to let go! Agreed, it is not the end; it’s one sure step on the path to dismantling the infrastructure of fraud currently sapping the nation’s vital juices. That done, with supporting policies, the goal of local refining might actually be closer than many would dare to imagine. I rise!

  • Osoba: The veteran politician at bay

    Osoba: The veteran politician at bay

    In my time, I have seen a great deal as observer and gone through a great deal as participant-observer.  But few things have unsettled me as seeing Chief Olusegun Osoba’s picture displayed prominently, following the general elections, in the gallery of “those who failed.”

    There was something so jarring, so incongruous about the characterisation

    Osoba, crackerjack reporter, astute manager of men and resources, media administrator who ran two regional newspapers with roaring success and steered the tottering Daily Times back to its glory days, pace-setting governor of Ogun State for one aborted term and a full term,  a pillar and symbol of the struggle against Sani Abacha’s brutish rule and the evisceration of the choice of the sovereign people of Nigeria, and one of the architects of the realignment that culminated in the formation of the APC, now a government-in-waiting:  How can such a person be characterised as a failure?

    It is true that Osoba served only one term as governor of Ogun State after the return to democratic rule in 1999, losing, in the official account, his re-election bid four years later to Gbenga Daniel.  They said he lost because he was remote, arrogant, and lacked the popular touch.

    I am in a position to say that this was not true, having witnessed him up close interacting with visitors who had gone to his office without an appointment but hoping to see him nevertheless.  It was around Christmas, in 2000, and President Olusegun Obasanjo was being expected on his sprawling farm in Otta for a short vacation.

    Visiting from the United States, I had gone to Otta in the hope of meeting the President and renewing ties.  Security and protocol were so suffocating that I could not even get past the farm gate. So, I headed to Abeokuta, hoping to meet Governor Osoba and pay him my compliments.

    After registering my presence at the reception, I was ushered into a waiting room.  Eighteen visitors had preceded me, all of them wanting to see the governor.  My heart sank.  This was going to be a very long day, surely.

    Some 30 minutes later, his voice wafted into the room, borne by the crisp harmattan wind.  I thought he was going to take the elevator to his executive suite.  Instead, the door handle turned, and into the room stepped the Governor Osoba himself.

    He surveyed the room for a minute or so, and began attending to the assembled visitors, starting with the person seated nearest to the door and proceeding counter-clockwise.

    There was the young man who said a federal agency in Ogun State was hiring and that the governor’s endorsement would enhance his chances.  Osoba endorsed his application on the spot.

    There was the elderly woman, a motor accident victim recently discharged from hospital. Apparently she had sought and received help from the governor, but needed more help still.  Osoba listened solicitously, and directed his personal assistant to attend to her needs.

    There was an official of the National Union of Teachers which was at that time locked in a trade dispute with the Ogun State Government.  From what I could make out, the official had conducted himself in a manner the governor considered contumacious of his office.  He told the official he would not treat with him until he apologised for his contumacy.

    In this manner did Osoba attend to all his visitors who, like me, had no previous appointment.  He invited the three of us he could not attend to on the spot to follow him to his office.

    Where in all this is the arrogance, the aloofness to which they ascribed his 2003 election loss?

    We now know that he did not lose the election; that official result was a cruel travesty, a product of ballot stuffing on a scale almost beyond belief.

    Hounded ceaselessly by Gbenga Daniel who never saw an opponent he did not want to destroy, Osoba went into political hibernation in Lagos, where he busied himself rebuilding the Ogun State ACN and positioning it to return to power in 2007 with Ibikunle Amosun, a former PDP Senator, as Governor.

    The day Osoba returned to Ogun State and his home in Abeokuta has got to be one of the most glorious in his eventful life.   He was met at the Lagos –Ogun boundary by a cavalcade of jubilant party men and women, admirers, and supporters, and escorted to the state capital and his home with song and dance.  Rarely had the ancient city witnessed such a carnival.

    Then, things began to go sour.  Osoba could not get his nominees appointed to the state’s cabinet or given senior positions in the Amosun Administration, I gather.  Though chair of the ACN in Ogun State, his influence was at best slight.  He found himself being pushed closer and closer to the margins.

    As rumours circulated that Osoba was set to dump the ACN because he felt he was not getting the respect he felt was his due, I talked with some friends about putting together a platform for reconciling him with Amosun.

    Before we could launch our effort, Osoba dumped the APC.

    But he did so with his accustomed refinement.  The PDP had been wooing him mainly out of spite for the ACN, and would gladly have paid any price to have him join its ranks.   Instead, Osoba pitched his camp with the little-known Social Democratic Party that had virtually no chance of supplanting the ACN and the PDP, the entrenched political parties in Ogun State.

    The outcome was all too predictable.  The SDP was clobbered in the general elections and now faces an uncertain future.  The ACN that Osoba played a significant role in setting up and nurturing is set to take office at the Centre in some three weeks – without Osoba.  I am sure he has no regrets but sees the outcome as the price of principles.

    In the winner-takes-all paradigm of Nigerian politics, the bell may well be tolling now for one of the most engaging and colourful careers in recent Nigerian politics.

    That would be a pity indeed.  Osoba’s superb managerial skills, his suavity, his excellent social and public relations skills, his perspicacity, his graciousness and his quiet competence, not forgetting his regal bearing, recommend him powerfully for a significant role in General Muhmammadu Buhari’s administration.

    He would make an excellent High Commissioner to the Court of St James’s.

     

    GEJ: Wrong on de Klerk

    Where on earth did Dr Goodluck Jonathan come by the information he dispensed with such solemn authority during worship at the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Abuja last Sunday, namely that the wife of FW de Klerk, South Africa’s last white president, left him because he ended apartheid and surrendered power to the African majority?

    Dr Jonathan intended the remark to make the self-serving point that doing the right thing as De Klerk did, and as he himself had done when he conceded defeat in the presidential election, often carries a heavy price.

    If it is any consolation to Dr Jonathan, Marike and her husband of 39 years separated in 1998 – four years after Nelson Mandela was sworn in as president – when she discovered that he was having an affair.