The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • A new dawn?

    A new dawn?

    There are understandably, a tribe out there who believe that, next to the tribe of politicians, Nigeria’s problems begins and ends with the national oil corporation the NNPC, whether in the shape of the defunct Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) or its mutation, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL). Were the metrics of trust deficit to be put on the Richter scale, its measure, not without reasons, will most certainly tend to the highest point on the seismic wave. An instance of the messenger being the message; such is the ignoble perception of an entity whose mandates cut through the core of our existence – one that has suffered such extensive historical distortions to the point of having its rationale obliterated – that few Nigerians are prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt not to talk of giving it a sympathetic hearing no matter the issues involved.

    While the transition from NNPC to NNPCL may have been pragmatic, I sometimes wonder the world of difference it would have made had the company chosen a completely different name and brand strategy. Truth is, many Nigerians that have long given up on the erstwhile inept outfit that could neither fix its refineries nor its vast pipelines network; and so they must have wondered – Petroleum Industry Act or not – if that same old leopard suddenly adorned in the fancy garb of an assumed new beginning could be trusted to shed its colours by mere substitution, without a complete remake of its processes.

    Surely, while the issues of gross mismanagement of the refineries and its management of fuel prices continue to endure, Nigerians ought to be forgiven for treating the NNPC and the NNPCL as one and the same despite the strident clarification about its transitioning. To the extent that the NNPCL itself has not helped matters when, rather than act the true player that it is supposed to be, it either opts to play the megaphone of the government when it suits it or venture into the delicate terrain of regulation hence the confusion that current pervades across the industry today. A part of the joke of the muddled role it has found itself as captured in a widely circulating cartoon read: ‘Someone can leave his four wives and be chasing a side-chic? This is the story of NNPCL that abandoned its four refineries to be a distributor of Dangote Refinery’. 

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    That of course is an oversimplification of the NNPCL/Dangote Refinery story. The real story, more nuanced, is certainly more complex. The story, to put it simply, is borne of the intriguing dynamics of the market situation, part of the necessary rites of transition in which the entity, as the exigency foremost player and state-owned entity, is expected to play the lead.

    No doubt, if the issues were simply about winning the argument, the NNPCL will obviously stand no chance with Nigerians. In the first place, it is doubtful if anyone believes the arithmetic of pricing. Equally, its assumption of an off-taker in what was supposed a market governed by its own dynamics could only have been held suspect by those Nigerians who had long made up their minds that nothing good could come out of the company.

    What of its claims that the reason Nigerians can’t have enough petrol to go round is because the local cost of petrol being cheaper comparatively to those of its neighbours creates an irresistible incentive for smuggling?

    Also, Nigerians heard the forth and back argument not just about the price the NNPCL supposedly bought the product from Dangote Refinery, but the actual quantity supplied to the market. The impression here was that the local refinery’s price is far cheaper than those imported with suggestions in the febrile social media that the Dangote Refinery was ready actually offering to supply the NNPCL at about N600 per litre and that the new refinery had enough capacity to flood the market with petrol. 

    By the way, does it matter now that those long-held myths have now been shattered by the event of the past week? I refer here to the announcement of the company’s exit from the self-appointed off-taker role for Dangote Refinery petrol. Going by the announcement, every player can go to the Dangote Refinery’s gantry for a fill to their heart’s content subject to cash availability. 

    Yet, hard as it might seem to accept that the NNPCL in some respects would appear the more sinned against than the sinning in all of these, the truth is that the company’s underlying message of reforms, its positions, sometimes confused and confusing, are difficult to fault. Of course, we might agree that the company has a long way to clean its image as an opaque, corrupt, inefficient and unaccountable entity; the real enemy would appear the long sustained expectations by Nigerians that the company would always exist over and above what the market dynamics dictate.  

    The entrance of Dangote Refinery has certainly changed all of that. Unfortunately, petrol price, rather than come down has gone a notch up. A part of that new reality is the restiveness occasioned by the hike which although Nigerians may have found intolerable, is nonetheless inexorable in the current circumstances.

    Which takes us to my earlier piece with the title Petrol: It’s the math, stupid! The argument is that those making the NNPCL the issue miss the point; the real issue is the cost of petrol at the pump and how to ensure supply sustainability. Again, the point was made: while its benefits are manifold and perhaps transformational, the old assumptions about local refineries being the elixir to the subsidy conundrum has been hopelessly exaggerated. More than that, the era of treating the cost issue as a minor element in the fuel price template would seem gone for good. Much as Nigerians would rather finger the NNPC(L) as the main culprit in the national debacle, the entity would seem culpable only to the extent of Nigerians’ self-indulgence. While the dawn of the PIA may have sought to cure Nigerians of this malaise, the other reality of a crippling $6 billion debt on the neck of NNPCL leaves it with nary a choice on the matter. That is simply the way it is! What Nigerians need at this time is patience and understanding.  

  • LG ‘autonomy’ and the Soludo challenge

    LG ‘autonomy’ and the Soludo challenge

    The Supreme Court verdict, on “council autonomy”, was not unlike the deus-ex-machina, in ancient Greek drama.

    The governors, alleged parasitic butterflies, feasting on council funds as sweet nectar, blew the cash on anything but the grassroots — bad! So, the Federal Government moved to wire direct money to the 774 local councils the 1999 Constitution listed.

    But the governors, pushing the good, old federal doctrine, and never shy to push their right to run things within their states, would be damned to let their probosces off that sweet, old nectar. So, a sweet-sour political stalemate was afoot.

    Then came, wham! — the Supreme Court verdict. 

    The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) went to the Supreme Court to settle by law, what the federating partners could not settle by open politics — and mutual good faith. 

    Enter, the apex court’s verdict as legal deus-ex-machina!

    Well, as Chinua Achebe said in that Igbo proverb his numerous writings popularized, Eneke had learnt to shoot without missing, since birds had learnt to fly without perching!

    The governors licked their wounds in silence, strafed by a hostile public opinion — and rightly so — for why would they be so unconscionable over council funds?

    In own corner, the Federal Government savoured sweet victory, rolling out positive — and plausible — vibes: further enlisting and endearing the benefitting councils in its “Big Daddy loves you” camp, with the hated and “thieving” governors still sulking.

    That party was on — loud in Abuja! — when Chukwuma Soludo, the Anamba governor, threw in his spanner from Awka: a putative counter-deus, on the legislative front!  By this Soludo challenge, might the governors corral back what they thought was lost?

    Drama!  Could this high drama make nugatory the Supreme Court verdict, and yet render Abuja’s “council autonomy” victory pyrrhic?  Drama! 

    The Anambra State House of Assembly just passed a law, mandating Anambra local government councils to pool a certain percentage of their directly wired Federation Account earnings into the Anambra Joint State-Local Government Account for common projects!

    Will the Supreme Court now rule that states don’t have control over the local governments within their territories?  Or that state legislatures can no longer make laws “for the good and order” of local governments under their jurisdiction?

    Or will the Supreme Court, to consummate its earlier verdict on “council autonomy”, now oust powers given states by the Constitution?

    Or that the states (read the governors) have lost the right to coordinate common services and projects in their domains, simply because the apex court had granted their local governments “autonomy”?

    Interesting perspectives!

    Still, before memory-challenged folks start hailing Soludo as a rare lion for federalism, remember that this same Soludo flexed own the-centre-is-everything muscle, as former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s National Economic Adviser (NEA).

    Back then, Prof. Soludo theorized on NEEDS — the Nigerian Economic Empowerment Development Strategy — and pushed that NEEDS be rammed down as SEEDS (States Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy) and LEEDS (Local Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy), for these same 774 local governments the 1999 Constitution listed!

    To be sure, NEEDS and its SEEDS and LEEDS variants were no crime.  On the contrary, they were a brilliant piece of economic theorizing, without which a polity would perhaps never locate an effective compass to develop.

    But the dissonance — in a supposed federal set-up — was its one-central-shoe-fits-all diktat: a roaring contradiction to the federal principle, that provides for local diversities.

    So, for Soludo — from that dashing central prefect of old, shoving NEEDS down states’ and local governments’ throats; to a federal champion from Awka, now pushing back on states’ rights over councils, thus tackling “autonomy” — what has changed?

    Isn’t his old NEEDS temper more in tune with the Supreme Court verdict, than the law that the Anambra legislature just passed, and he gleefully signed?

    What’s that blinding flash, en route to Damascus, that has changed his Saul to Paul, when the issue is states’ rights, against a central Nigerian Leviathan? 

    Well, from a central hireling of the Obasanjo era, Soludo is now elected state governor — and pronto, has forgotten the sacred centralization dogma that propelled his NEEDS thunder!  Is that necessarily bad, though?

    Soludo played the role his principal expected of him as NEA. That was in the past. Now, as own principal, he’s trying to cut the best deal for his Anambra folks, as their governor. 

    If that past badly jars with his present, it is what it is.  But it shows that the more roles change, as individuals climb up the political ladder, the more the unresolved federal question stares everyone starkly in the face!  These changing roles make the federal principle even more immutable!

    Which goes right back to council autonomy.

    Though many voices, playing the propaganda of the moment, try to ram down the idea of the local governments as a so-called “third tier”, councils belong more to states — and should be their sole business — than they do to the Federal Government.

    Yes, it’s execrable conduct from governors for purloining council funds and leaving the grassroots in the lurch.  Highly condemnable behaviour. 

    But it’s doubtful if the solution to that is a mechanistic “autonomy” that virtually “tears” councils from states as Abuja’s golden “third tier”.

    That no two federal states are exactly the same beg the question.  Councils, counties and equivalents may be useful administrative divisions in all federations.  But in no federation — none! — could they claim a seat at the table as federating partners. 

    That would stand logic on its head, because only the federating partners, states — not the sovereign federation, which the Federal Government governs — are carved into councils and counties for closer local government administrations.

    Federalism — as Ripples often loves to insist — is a concept and not a mere badge, that could be stamped on exigencies, and everyone would live merrily ever after!

    The very idea, of a valid “third tier”, jars against that basic federal principle.  Yet, it’s on that “tier” that “council autonomy” — absolutely outside states’ control — is hooked. 

    That’s the lethal — if not fatal — challenge the new Soludo law poses to “council autonomy”.  On that, the Supreme Court has its job cut out!

    With the Awka challenge, the polity awaits, with quake or relish, a hot judicial battle –quake or relish, depending on which camp you belong!

  • Rivers: one day, one trouble

    Rivers: one day, one trouble

    The grim dramatics of Rivers State echoes Anezi Okoro’s One Week, One Trouble (published 1972), a popular child novel in the curriculum of yore. 

    But whereas adventure is adorable fare in children’s literature to tickle child-readers and rouse their imagination, this Rivers’ endless cast is driven by delinquent adults.

    The Rivers local government election of October 6 — the willy-nilly push to hold it at all cost; the never-ever binge to abort it with equal venom — filled that desperation bill.

    It’s the latest ugly grab for the soul of Rivers.  Between the often excitable Governor Siminalayi Fubara and the belligerent former Governor Nyesom Wike, now FCT minister, who paved Fubara’s path to power, it’s morning yet on brawling day!

    Since Fubara’s take-over of the Rivers reins on 29 May 2023, the drama has been long and drawn, wide and winding, jerky and bumpy, making it near-impossible to impose a particular act or scene on the latest showdown.

    The imperious Wike, only on August 31, ousted the infantile Fubara from the Rivers PDP structure.  The Wike caucus did a state congress that filled party elective offices, with the PDP state governor nowhere in sight.  But Fubara just hit back, scooping the local councils’ sweepstakes, though in partisan camouflage!

    Walter Oyatogun (God bless his soul!), that colourful sports broadcaster of yore, would have hollered in the heat of the moment: “It’s a one-one goalless draw!”

    But that “draw” has come with satanic dramas.  First, glorious and fashionable anti-party activities. 

    Even if it had any precedence, this would be very rare indeed: Governor Fubara setting his mind on a local government election, yet zeroing the PDP — the party that romped him to power — out of it!

    In a preening piece of self-damnation, His Excellency declared with glee: “I’m the greatest loser.  My party is not participating!”  But as the Supreme Court had ruled, the council poll must be done.  What humbug! 

    Still, “greatest loser” may yet become, for Fubara, a dire, self-fulfilling prophesy!  For now, however, for the governor and confederates, the Action People’s Party (APP) is the new council election messiah — and why not? 

    If the Labour Party (LP) could make a sweet national mash of opportunistic election-season hire, APP may yet make Rivers’ council polls own election gravy!

    But before you rush to nail Governor Fubara for his “party-cide”, remember that the national PDP backed the governor and his gambit all of the way — the same schizophrenic PDP that okayed Wike’s formal re-seizure of Rivers local PDP structure!

    It was the same “party-cide” that made the Wike-controlled Rivers PDP to “boycott” the poll; and goad Fubara to stall it, to obey the Federal High Court, Abuja. 

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    Rivers APC — hands of Esau, voice of Jacob? — had obtained the election-stay order.  Rivers PDP had pounced on it to boycott the polls and bludgeon Fubara into a retreat.

    Weaponizing court judgments was another sickly drama that played out before the controversial poll.

    Still, street-wise: the Rivers PDP knew that with Fubara’s adoption of APP, they were toast in the rubber-stamp poll. It’s dream legitimacy the governor craves, but the Wike faction is too smart to give.

    So, either side’s insistence on “obeying the court judgment” — one, federal high court at Abuja; another, federal high court in Port Harcourt — was clear cant to game each other; than any love for the Judiciary or even basic civility. 

    But it’s another low for the Judiciary that errant politicians used contrasting verdicts of courts — courts at the same level — to press counter-agenda and heat up the polity.

    Still, don’t be in a rush to roast the courts too.  Each court would float or sink on the strength of the evidence and facts placed before it.

    The Rivers APC went to court claiming the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC) had not fulfilled pre-election legal requirements — mainly, a 90-day notice during which INEC would update the electoral roll and give it to RSIEC on request, as the law demands.  Its lawyers argued that any poll, that didn’t fulfil these legal preconditions, was illegal, null and void.

    Justice Peter Lifu, of the federal high court, Abuja, found for the party and granted its prayers.  To further compel its order, it told INEC not to release any register to RSIEC; and the Police and DSS not to be part of the poll. Both Rivers APC and PDP weaponized this verdict as they ramped up the pressure against Fubara.

    But the Rivers APP — again, as PDP proxy? — went before Jusctice IPC Igwe of the federal high court, Port Harcourt, telling it to compel RSIEC to conduct council polls on October 5, based on the constitutional charter for elected local governments.

    Both might just be right, though they gave conflicting verdicts.  Yes, local government elections are constitutionally guaranteed.  Even at that, laid down processes must be followed, if the poll is not to risk being declared null and void.

    So, a more due process-driven and judiciary-loving combatants need not have resorted to pre-election clatter, thunder and banger in a bid to out-cower one another.  They could have patiently awaited the poll; and quietly gone to court to void it, if it contravened any legal provisions. 

    Sadly that’s not the pull-and-shove, kick-and-slap way of Rivers politics!  It’s hardly the way too of the contemporary Nigerian politician!

    Still, if during the excitement anyone ever danced more naked than any other, it’s Governor Fubara himself — and this is why: his panting hysteria.

    On Justice Lifu: “Even if we go by the federal high court judgment — did it say election should be banned?  Did Lifu, the judge that gave that fraudulent judgment, say no to elections?  Rather, he technically said don’t provide security.”

    On the IGP: “I don’t know what the relationship is between the IGP and one person who claims he has so much power in the state” — no prize for guessing right who that “one person”, in Fubara’s holy rage, is! — “I don’t know the relationship because it is beginning to go beyond the normal professional relationship.”

    This governor should really learn to gird his tongue!  With all due respect to him, both outbursts were reckless!  Didn’t his Christian Faith tell him what undid you was not what you ate but what you spewed?

    Yes, the cooker-pressure bait from Wike and confederates are real.  But the governor can’t afford to swallow — and flounder at — every bait his political foes throw at him!

    Belting with personal insults a judge only doing his work; and trying to draw the IGP into his fray with Wike are especially dumb.  Those two core institutions were forged to protect the governor’s — and citizens’ — right under the law. 

    It’s no good alienating either, even if they they are legally compelled to do their duties under the law.  Still, blood flows in their veins as it does in the irate governor’s.

    Some hot heads are already suggesting that President Bola Tinubu should seize the monthly allocation of Rivers’ local governments, on account of the disputed poll. 

    Perish that thought!  Let the judiciary settle the dispute and point the way forward.

    President Tinubu should not visit, on any governor, the evil that President Olusegun Obasanjo visited on him as Lagos governor, when he seized Lagos council funds. 

  • Nigeria @64 and related matters

    Nigeria @64 and related matters

     The weekend before last Tuesday 64th Independence, I had stumbled into the reunion meeting of a set of old boys/girls of my alma mater, Titcombe College, Egbe, Kogi State. Call it divine orchestration, the same set, had exactly four years back, invited yours truly to offer my reflections on the past and the present situation of the school. After the usual forth and back greetings with some of the familiar faces, discussions naturally zeroed on the direction the country was headed. As one might imagine, the context was the independence anniversary celebrations which was only a few days away.

    Not surprisingly, everybody somewhat agreed that things are hard even if only a few could intelligently dimension the problems not to talk of their origins. Not a few referred to the cost of living crisis and how it is increasingly challenging for families to make ends meet. There were discussions on the state of insecurity and how this has fostered the atmosphere of despair and gloom all of which has made any thought of renewal of hope an illusion. One fellow in particular, could not understand why a democratically elected government would elect to punish the people at the time this administration did through the twin policies of fuel subsidy removal and the ‘forced’ convergence of foreign exchange rates!

    Of course, the discussions went on and one about how the economy was not headed in the right direction, how they were disappointed that the government couldn’t swing the magic to get the naira to wake up from its deep slumber, how nothing worked, how food items have suddenly become essential commodities over which Nigerians needed bouts of prayers and vigils to get to their tables and how, on the whole, it is increasingly hard to see the way out of the mess that the country has found itself.

    Mercifully, most in the emergency panel would agree that most of the identified problems actually predated the current administration; and that states in recent time have had more funds flowing into their coffers to address some of the developmental challenges facing the people (some say they couldn’t be bothered about where the funds were coming from). Although many doubted that the government had the power to unilaterally fix the exchange rate, not a few nonetheless appear to still believe that the old discretionary method of foreign exchange management, (which they also concede merely served the interest of those connected to those in the corridors of power more, at least to the extent that it satisfies their illusions of a performing currency), should have been allowed to rule! Same with the petrol subsidy; none of the rational argument about the need to remove the subsidy and the allied infrastructure appeared to make sense! It is our oil – they said – and so we should be free to what we please with it!

    The irony was that these discussions actually took place in that same old school of ours; an institution that is now only a shadow of its glorious past.

    However, while I was more embarrassed than alarmed that a group that I shared that common heritage neither showed a willingness to interrogate the issues more deeply nor an inclination to move beyond the emotive cants that have become wearisomely commonplace, my real consternation was in their grim failure to see the connection between the decadence of their once distinguished school now thoroughly run down and their equally ‘disappointing’ Nigerian story.

    So much for the finger-pointing, free-loading generation: this was a generation which only a while back, would have claimed to have held the promises of a future in their hands. Some two-score years on, they are apparently, trapped in what is now a national pastime of lamentation; part of a generation that assumes that their country owed them a perpetual debt!

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    By the way, I had only some weeks before the trip re-read the tiny paperback, It Just Happened to Happen– authored by Howard F. Dowdell one of the pioneer Sudan Interior Mission missionaries who founded the school that was named after another pioneer missionary, Rev Tommy Titcombe. The book, a riveting story of a young Canadian missionary sworn to reach out beyond the comfort zone of his homeland to get the simple message of the gospel across to the interior of West Africa is a study in human grit and heroics. 

    Drawing insights from the story, I concluded it would not hurt to tell my indignant audience another facet of the Nigerian story – that of a trio – not the Hebrew Four thrown into the lion’s den – but the exertions of Walter Gowans, Thomas Kent and Thomas Bingham – Sudan Interior Mission’s distinguished Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) missionaries who braced the odds to lay the foundations of the foremost church that is today known as the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) – the once proud owners of the famous school! In fact, two of the trio actually died within a year of arriving Nigeria while the only one left shouldered on! Think of his Nigerian peer at this day and age choosing to risk his life in some backward country when there are rich fields in Europe and America’s to conquer!

    Yes, I reminded my friends that their beloved Titcombe, at 74 is actually older than Nigeria by nearly 10 years and so has more bitter tales to tell!

    I challenged those willing among them to take a study of what has happened to the legacies bequeathed by those pioneer founders. I tasked those present to take a tour of the Challenge facilities in Jos, the headquarters of ECWA and those in Ibadan, Lagos, Ilorin and in nearly a dozen other locations where the mission chose to have their bases. And then the question of what they – as individuals and collective – have done to sustain those legacies of the founding fathers!

    As inheritors and beneficiaries of that proud legacy, to them, surely belongs that other version of the other Nigerian story that is yet to be told! 

    As for their famous school, I have twice on this page written about the sorry state of the school, how the school lies not only lies in ruins but of how those sturdy structures, the exemplars of the labours of those heroes past, have become an unflattering testament to the callous indifference of those generations that once took shelter under its broad canopy. Yes, both the governments of Kwara, and later Kogi, that took over our beloved Titcombe, may have failed her; but so also have the successive generations that have passed through its walls contributed through neglect, to the incremental demise of that foremost citadel whose motto is ‘Learn and Worship’. 

    Counselling my friends to be more hesitant when it comes to passing judgment on the role of the leadership in the unmaking of our beloved Nigeria, I told them that the school’s story parallels that of the Nigerian Railways, the Nigerian Postal Services and a few other public service institutions bequeathed by the colonialists but which have been left to decay. 

    And my point? Simply that our beloved Nigeria can only be built, bottom up! All of us – the leaders and the led – are equally culpable in the mess that is today’s Nigeria. The earlier we start sacrificing the comforts of today for the future that we desire, the better our prospects of national redemption.

  • Surviving fuel price hikes

    Surviving fuel price hikes

    I travelled home, the penultimate weekend, to bury my step-sister, Monica Chukwujimma Amalu who had died at 90 years. Sister Monica, a retired nurse, was a privileged child, who was sent to Britain, in 1962 to train as a nurse on the income of our father, a senior civil servant, with the Nigerian Prisons. As I said in my tribute to her, she grew up, mgba ezi di na ukwu ukwa, a common saying amongst my people, depicting, when life was more predictable.

    Clearly, life has become improbable. Considering that I was travelling with three of my family members, and needed to stop at the Ministry of Education, in Awka, Anambra State, to deliver 100 copies of a book, I wrote with Emeka Agbayi in 2008, titled, Service Above Self, featuring the state governor, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, amongst others, I decided to hire a Toyota Sienna car. To my amazement, I was charged a whopping N260,000. With the high cost of fuel as the chief culprit, the driver told me that the cost of a single one-way ticket, on that vehicle was N45,000.

    On getting to Enugu, I discovered that the price of fuel was about N1,500 a litre, unless you queued in the few and scarce, NNPC fuel stations. And so, for a journey of about 45 minutes, to my village, Amofia, Ogwofia-Owa, I paid a staggering N30,000, to hire a cab. With electricity, a scare commodity, in my village, we had to buy about 200 litres of fuel, for the four days, we spent, to power the two generators, needed to light up the environment and supply energy to the disc jockeys that played to entertain.

    Even with the environment lit up, we still had to higher the local vigilante and the Civil Defence, at huge costs, to provide security, during the ceremonies, to avoid ‘had I known’ as my brother-in-law, Frank Offor, warned against. Feeling the pinch, I was interested in knowing how the people were coping with the fuel price hikes and the attendant high cost of transportation. Sooner than later, two of our family friends showed up, at Offor’s expansive compound in Enugu, to expose the survival tactics, for civil servants and business men.

    One, an architect and a contractor, came to park his Toyota pick-up van, in the compound. After exchanging pleasantries, he told me, the keke that will drop him off at the park to enter a public transport to Owerri, where he has a project, was waiting outside the gate. He explained that he dares not travel to Owerri with his van, considering the high cost of fuel. I was told, he has a vehicle parked in Owerri, for his local runs.

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    Shortly after, another family friend, a lecturer at the Institute of Management and Technology, IMT, came in a keke, to drop off his little girl, at my sister’s private school. Again, while exchanging pleasantries with me, he explained that his car was parked at home. He said, that it was economically suicidal, to do the school runs, with his private car, considering the cost of fuel. He noted that it was cheaper, to hire a keke, which consumes a lot lesser fuel, than his car bought when fuel price was more reasonable.

    He said some time, akin to Chinua Achebe’s assertion in, Things Fall Apart that Eneke the bird, ‘says that since men have learnt to shoot without missing, he has learned to fly without perching’. I also noticed that many have resorted to the use of solar panels, to get electricity. I am not talking of the bigtime solar panels, but the small single panels that light up single flood lights. Many of such solar lights are now common in my village and in the compounds in Enugu.

    But a lot more needs to be done, by the governments to help the people deal with the challenges posed by the removal of fuel subsidy and the attendant hike in the transportation costs and the inflationary pressures arising from that and the deregulation of the Naira. One of the low hanging fruits should be the conversion of cars and buses to use CNG, which the federal government is championing. This writer thinks the state governments should show more interest in that programme, than many of them are currently doing.

    Proactive governors, like the governor of Enugu State, Peter Mbah, should show interest in that programme. The first place to start is to train technicians to carry out the conversion. The state government can raise an army of interested technicians and pay for them to be trained at state cost, to nurture the programme in the state. Also, private entrepreneurs can also be encouraged to go into the conversion training programme, by making soft loans available to them, to access the training and acquire necessary equipment.

    While I was in Enugu, I didn’t notice the CNG powered commercial buses, similar to what the Ogun State government is doing. The Enugu State governor, I hope will show interest in procuring CNG buses if he has not already done that. If the reputation that is following the CNG buses in terms of lower costs of fuel is true, then this writer urges every state governor to show interest in that programme to help reduce the inflationary pressures on the cost of goods and services, especially transportation.

    Should the states join forces with the federal government, in driving the CNG programme, it will have greater impact on inflation, which thankfully, is beginning to dip, since July. While according to the Consumer Price Index, inflation, has dipped to 32.15% in August, from the 33.40% recorded in July 2024, the cost of food, is still too high for the majority of Nigerians. Food inflation, which stands at 37.52%, still makes mincemeat of the income of the average Nigerian. And, one sure way, to further deal inflation a blow, is to dip the cost of transportation.

    Coming back to Lagos, my wife and I, had to pay N140,000, out of the entire cost of putting the Sienna on the road, as there were not enough Lagos bound passengers, to fill the vehicle. To get some passengers, my driver had to make a deal with another driver, who had only three passengers, not reaching Lagos. In the words of the driver, the era of putting your vehicle on the road, with less than full passengers, were over, otherwise the cost of fuel will swallow the entire earnings.

    One imagines what savings, this writer would have made, if there is a train running from Lagos to Enugu, as against the exorbitant costs of travelling by road. Of course, the cost of travelling by air, in our case, paying for return tickets, was fearfully prohibitive.

  • Edo and election deniers

    Edo and election deniers

    The stiffest challenge to democracy from 1999 to 2015 — effective 2003 when President Olusegun Obasanjo pulled off the first of the rotten elections under his watch — was nuclear-scale rigging that knocked everyone cold.

    Post-2015 though, technology-aided electoral reforms have crushed these brazen vote grabs. So, the new bad boys have become the growing tribe of strident election deniers. As it was after the 2023 general election, so has it been in Edo after the September 21 gubernatorial election.

    APC’s Monday Okpebholo (291, 667 votes) worsted PDP’s Asue Ighodalo (247, 274) with LP’s Olumide Akpata (22, 763) a mere cannon-fodder, after the grand delusion as a third force.

    The wanton riggers of yore have thus become the shrill election deniers of now!  But de-marketing elections, after what seems a fair loss, isn’t good for anyone.

    Still, back to the basics, after Edo ‘24 had been lost and won.

    Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, sitting Edo North senator, was not on the ballot on September 21.  But he might well have been!

    Starkly put, Oshiomhole won and Godwin Obaseki lost.  Okpebholo (Edo Central senator), “did”. Ighodalo (Lagos lawyer and boardroom guru) “died”.  Obaseki had proclaimed it would be “do-or-die”! 

    A cynic, in a macabre pun of the two candidates’ first names, chimed: Asue not only “died”, he was mere “asun” — Yoruba for grilled, spicy meat — in Monday’s Sunday election victory bash!  The winner was declared on Sunday, September 22.

    Still, Obaseki could fairly argue that he meant “do-or-die”, not exactly as President  Obasanjo’s chilly diktat of 2007.  He just meant if APC won — “did” — Edo (and the Obaseki El-dorado from 2016) would “die”. 

    Well, Obaseki got his “death” wish!  Talk of a dire, self-fulfilling prophecy!

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    Though not on the ballot too, the out-going governor plagued Ighodalo, his wished-for successor, all of the way, with so much baggage. For the Esan-born boardroom guru, it was bruising defeat waiting to happen. Only Ighodalo didn’t see what was clear to all!

    It was Obaseki in 2024, playing Oshiomhole in 2016.  What farce! 

    In 2016, Oshiomhole had carried Obaseki on his back. He flaunted his stellar feats from 2008 to 2016; and pushed his “technocrat” protégée as a good son in whom he was well pleased. Oshio-Baba’s goodwill paid off.  Obaseki was governor.

    In 2024, Obaseki too lugged poor Ighodalo, to make the same rounds.  But what leapt off the pair were Obaseki’s many sins, against too many people. 

    The revered Bini royal court groaned. Edo folks that felt cheated by Obaseki railed.  Betrayed political peers bawled! The Legacy PDP screeched! Yes, Obaseki didn’t lack own friends. But you could see where the pendulum would swing. It was payback time!

    That grim harvest buried luckless Ighodalo in Obaseki’s hubris.  Karl Marx was right: history repeats itself first as tragedy; and ultimately as farce!  The defeat of Obaseki and the return of Oshiomhole ticked all those dire boxes. 

    Obaseki’s farcical claim to godfather just went up in smoke.  Just as well!

    Still, the PDP, Obaseki’s acquired party for second term, has got to be the bristling haven for everything wrong with Nigeria’s democracy: cold election riggers when in power (1999-2015); hot election deniers when out of it (2015-2024 — and counting).

    Even Donald Trump, the perfect living master of election-is-free-only-when-I-win vile credo, must be picking up some new tricks from this terrible breed!

    In 2019, APC’s David Lyon won the Bayelsa governorship, thrashing PDP’s Duoye Diri by 352, 552 to 143, 173 votes. 

    But by cruel legal technicality, the Supreme Court gifted Lyon’s win to Diri, claiming that Lyon’s running mate, Biobarakuma Degi, “forged” his certificates — and on Lyon’s swear-in eve, 13 February 2020, when the governor-elect was rehearsing his inauguration parade drill in Yenagoa! 

    Though Degi, a Bayelsa East senator, would later prove in court that those changing names were of the same person, in different phases of his school life — thus making nonsense of the so-called “forgery” — Diri would gain office from an election he lost; before winning a legit second term, for which he is still governor.  To the PDP, that was beautiful democracy!

    But imagine Lyon’s fate befalling a PDP candidate?  All hell would have broken loose: the “international community” would have been told to write the obituary of Nigerian democracy — if not Nigeria itself; and the Supreme Court would have been branded as irredeemably corrupt and “bought” — just as PDP and LP did after the 2013 polls.

    Yet, that happened under APC President, Muhammadu Buhari, and heavens didn’t fall. But can you even imagine that under PDP President Obasanjo, the unfazed patron saint of do-or-die elections, with Maurice Iwu billeted as regimental INEC chair?

    In truth, you can’t put election gas-lighting beyond any party — not APC, not PDP, and certainly not the hypocritical LP, under the chimera-like Peter Obi, with his dramatic foams and fantastic claims.

    Indeed, Obi is holy political ogre, thriving on sacred lies and blessed fibs.  That’s why he and his Obidients are delusional beyond measure. Which explains why they become more and more fleeting, after that electoral over-performance of 2023. 

    Edo ‘24 is latest living proof of that meltdown, with Akpata no more than a footnote. But of course, the arch-delusional Obi had declared the Edo result wouldn’t stand — hell, it won’t!  Just as Obi’s fantastic claim of winning the Presidency stood in court!

    But again, no party is a saint in election deceit — not with the dominant cynical ethos of rig or be rigged out; and that habit to hang INEC for politicians’ execrable conduct.

    Even then, you could tell a decent election, even with all the fiercely competing bad grace. On September 21, Edo North stood firm — and tall — for the APC candidate; while both Edo Central and Edo South were veritable battle grounds. 

    While the APC posted towering wins in Edo North, PDP got close victories where it prevailed in Edo Central — where Okpebholo and Ighodalo hailed — and Edo South. 

    At the end, APC ran away with victories in 11 local governments out of 18, while PDP took two Edo senatorial districts — Central and South — in close wins that were effectively losses.  LP?  No more than dazed onlookers in the sweepstakes!

    Again, the drag was Obaseki, the self-made Macbeth, of Edo’s pay-back politics.  After killing off the “Banquos”, and the “Malcolms” of his Edo tenure, he was fated to “die” by sword of the “Macduffs” — Oshiomhole, reinstated Deputy Governor Philip Shaibu, rejected Deputy Governor nominee, former Edo Speaker Kabiru Adjoto, in his Akoko-Edo lair, and Kazeem Afegbua, in his Okpella bastion — all, by the way, in Edo North!

    Asue Ighodalo appears a brilliant lawyer and a decent gentleman.  So, let him quietly gather evidence to challenge his defeat at the tribunal; and shun post-poll fiction.

    But in the passion of the moment, let him resist joining brazen election deniers.

    Still, by Obaseki’s visit to the INEC Benin office on election night — in blind panic? — and Adamawa Governor, Ahmadu Fintiri, playing rogue INEC by announcing “results” with Ighodalo in-situ, he already risks fair and legitimate stain by association.

    That could blight his political career in the long run.  As for Obaseki, his political goose is cooked — and fairly so: his grating ingratitude riled almost everyone that paved his way to the top!  They were all too happy to send him crashing down.

  • The short run

    The short run

    Nigeria ticked more critical boxes on infrastructure — the most potent driver of any economy — between 2015 and now, against 1999 and 2015. 

    The latest arch-symbol of that push is Dangote Refinery (DR): the earliest local arrival in renascent crude oil refining. DR and budding refinery competitors promise sustainable fuel production. 

    That should rebuild a doughtier Naira forex parity, after decades of wasteful petrol imports, with all their ugly rackets. 

    It’s the first such solid promise since SAP kicked off in 1986; and reduced the Naira into a mere rag in the forex market, sapping the local economy with mega-inflation.

    Yet, all of these alluring promises could easily buckle if the short run is bungled. That’s the critical challenge the Bola Tinubu Presidency faces.  So, it needs creative thinking — and policy flexibility — to navigate this treacherous short term.

    Incidentally: 1999-2015 (16 years) and 2015-2024 (nine years and counting) — two power epochs — belong to two different ruling parties.  In the first, the PDP held sway.  In the second, the APC has been in charge — and their contrasts can’t be starker! 

    The first frittered away easy wealth.  The second grabs at vanishing resources to build hard bridges to the future.  But the people blame post-2015 — a redemptive epoch — because of an unbearable threshold of pains.

    By the way, a joke just went viral in the social media, on the current high inflation. It benchmarks the spike in the price of rice.  Before 2015, a bag of rice went for xNaira (ultra-low).  After 2015, it rocketed to yNaira (ultra-high). 

    It thereby decreed a time epoch: Before 2015 or After 2015 to capture the torrid times — it’s crazy inflation, stupid! 

    Yes, the pocket badly hurts.  Yet, that belly analysis could be so misleading: for the present ruins rose from the false prosperity of old.

    Indeed, that spike in the price of rice sprang from the heedless bazaar of yesteryear — the golden years of cheap foreign rice.  That crippled farming, sacked local farmers but enriched foreign ones.

    What’s more?  Years of high receipts from crude oil boom provided the free cash for reckless food imports: food that could be grown and processed here. 

    That twin-neglect accounts for the high hunger and low youth jobs today — crop processing could have resulted in a slew of cottage industries to provide rural jobs.

    That was the high point of the Olusegun Obasanjo — and the entire PDP — years.  The arch-emblem of that costly distraction was President Obasanjo forking out US$ 12 billion to “buy off” Nigeria’s debts — and patting himself on the back for it!

    Imagine what that cash would have done in massive critical infrastructure — rail, power, roads, education and health?  Penetrative rail could have neutralized high shuttle costs — and inflation — in this golden age of holy market forces, when a hint at any form of subsidy is heresy!

    Incidentally, aside infrastructure, the Muhammadu Buhari years (2015-2023) also saw an aggressive agricultural rebirth, with the administration virtually squealing “rice, o compatriots!” and investors reacting with a spike of rice mills. 

    It’s to be lauded that the Tinubu era has continued with that twin agriculture-infrastructure focus, with own legacy policies of student loans and consumer credit. 

    Still, the impact of these strategic policies are little felt — what with inflation piercing the pocket as a ruthless javelin; and pangs of hunger leaving everyone winded.

    It’s the horrid short term again!  Which is why the administration must do some quick thinking — tactical manouevers that don’t necessarily throw the spanner into its policy works but that will ease present pains.

    Here though, the policy makers must listen with an open mind: not a mind plagued with self-crippling policy bigotry, or aggressive defensiveness.

    No place for Lady TINA — There Is No Alternative.  TINA was the witch Gen. Ibrahim Babangida threw at everyone, in those very early days of SAP!  See where it has landed us!  There is always an alternative when there is creative thinking.

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    DR — and other refineries — could open a fresh window of opportunities to drive down petrol pump price, at least till when the government can mainstream compressed natural gas (CNG), the ideal fuel to power this low-cost economy.

    One thing is clear: it’s doubtful if this inflation-plagued economy can manage fuel pump prices around the N1, 000-a-litre belt — and the pricing template has its own laughable (though “market prices”) contradictions.

    Lagos, the vortex of business, opportunities and putative prosperity, buys petrol at N950-a-litre.  Maiduguri, the bastion of a prostrate economy — no thanks to Boro Haram and its aftermath — buys at over N1, 019-a-litre.  Isn’t that further reinforcing structural energy poverty, and deepening real poverty, as far as fuel pricing goes?

    Now, the issue here is not some sterile argument on how Nigeria’s West African, and nearest Central African, neighbours buy petrol at far higher than N1, 000-a-litre.

    For one, most of these countries are not crude oil producers.  For another, Libya that both has crude and refines its crude, sells petrol far cheaper.  In fact, it boasts the cheapest pump price in all of Africa.

    So, splitting hairs over these comparisons is akin to winning the “market forces” argument but losing the plot on the huge inflation that now plagues this economy. The social cost is huge and scary — and it seems to get heavier by the day.  That could yet prove explosive — except again, some smart thinking is done.

    So, why not tinker with the current policies to locate the cost profile — using locally refined petrol — that can work for this heated economy: at least until CNG fully comes on stream?

    October 1, with the policy of refineries buying crude in Naira kicking in, offers a fresh window of opportunities — a strategic investment in the local economy that could well cool off the inflation.

    Might it hurt anyone really, if the government were to adopt an exchange rate, well below the bracket of N1, 650 for the dollar, for the sale of crude to refineries? 

    O yes!  It would bore a hole in the government’s books — since it would earn far less on its projected Naira quantum from each dollar.  That could mean less to share from the Federation Account.

    Yet, that loss could translate into huge gains in social costs.  The government itself is gunning for CNG, in a smart move to wean the local economy from petrol and diesel.

    What would work for this economy — in this critical, make-or-break short term — is energy costs closer to the eventual destination of CNG, than the present cut-throat petrol.

    Market forces zealots would call that subsidy.  But since that appears heresy in current government thinking, Ripples prefers to tag it a strategic investment to radically push down costs. Most citizens simply can’t afford the current energy costs.

    Such creative tweaking will drive down transport costs and moderate inflation.  That way, this brutal short run would be much more tolerable. As someone quipped, you’re all dead in the long run!

  • Elections at state councils

    Elections at state councils

    Like many other commentators, this columnist condemns the culture of every ruling political party, in every state, winning all the seats for the chairmanship and councillorship election, contested in the local governments of the state. That is impunity writ large. But, forcing elections or quasi elections, at the local government councils, will over the years, create a pool of experienced local administrators and eventually, the culture of democracy at the grassroots, will blossom. That is why I commend the Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, and the federal government for the Supreme Court judgment that has forced all states to conduct local government elections.

    Our country’s democratic journey, would be better off if there is opportunity for potential leaders to train, starting from the local government councils, before proceeding to the state and federal levels. Persons, who go through the leadership ladder from bottom up, are usually more passionate and empathetic in the art of governance when they get to the top. Perhaps, the leadership crisis Nigeria is facing stems substantially from the recruitment process. Take Edo State for example, the outgoing governor, Godwin Obaseki, was recruited straight from the private sector, to the Government House, in Benin City.

    While Obaseki is definitely not the worst governor in terms of performance, he exhibited a poor understanding of party politics which contributed to his falling out with his predecessor and godfather, Adams Oshiomhole. Obaseki, thinking like a political neophyte, also battled the Oba of Benin, believing that because he has executive powers over all state indigenes, he also has the power to coerce the people against their monarchy held in reverence for many centuries. Obaseki also opened battle lines with state legislators without remembering that they would wait for him at the next election cycle. 

    The same is applicable to the governor of Rivers State, Simi Fubara, who was a civil servant, before he was promoted to the position of a governor. Of course, he failed to understand the enormous resources invested by his predecessor and godfather to make him a governor. Like a prodigal son, he wanted to squander what took former Governor Nyesom Wike and his protégées a lot of resources to build. Because he was not schooled in party politics, he underestimated the resultant volcanic eruption that nearly smelted his tenure.

    While rightly we must condemn unequivocally, the corruption associated with godfatherism in Nigerian politics, there is no doubt that godfatherism is a fundamental practice in party politics. In faraway United States of America (USA), when the road became too rough for President Joe Biden to continue his quest for a second term bid, he personally chose Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him. Of course, he became a godfather to Kamala, and has been campaigning vigorously for her to succeed. For Kamala to succeed, she also sought the godfathers of the Democratic Party, to endorse her candidature.

    In Edo State, Obaseki, who won his re-election in 2020, on the notion that he was slaying his godfather Adams Oshiomhole, never raised that campaign mantra this time as he sought to help Asue Ighodalo take over from him. He didn’t, because, having become a godfather himself, he dares not rail against that political concept during the campaign. So, having a godfather is not a problem; what is the problem is what the godson and the godfather make of the symbiotic relationship.

    Read Also: Tinubu to citizens: your sacrifices will soon yield enduring economic benefits

    If godfatherism is steeped in corruption, then everyone is doomed. But if it is substantially that a godfather helps a godson win a political office, then there is nothing untoward about that. So, while this column wishes for an improvement in the election process at the local government level, it celebrates the return of democratic practice at all local governments, however tenuous. After all, a child must falter many times, while learning how to walk. And surely, there would be very bad examples of the imposition of candidates at the local council, but the majority will benefit from the system.

    In states where elections have not been held for years, one imagines the kind of excitement and political activity the election campaign will bring. With many contenders seeking the position of councillors, across the wards, the people will feel the impact, much more than when a gubernatorial aspirant comes, once in a long while. Again, since the candidates come from the local community, including the one who will be declared a winner, the people will have names and faces, they can easily relate to as their representatives.

    Where a chairman or a councillor fails to perform in office, the governor who selects, as sceptics believe, would be bound to choose another preferred candidate at the next election cycle. Of course in reality, while the governor may have the final say, he is bound to listen to local party leaders, to make the final choice. Again, as the Labour Party candidate, in the Edo State governorship election, Olumide Akpata, would have realized, one needs the support of the local leaders to win an election.

    That is what political pundits call the party structure and where it is lacking, the campaign message would be lost in transit, as happened to the cerebral and entertaining campaign of Akpata. Again, many political pundits have railed against that political necessity as if the term and the idea is evil in itself. This columnist thinks otherwise. For where a political party has no men and material to prosecute election, it will not be able to go far. Those, who point at the Labour and its presidential campaign miss the point.

    While the party had no pre-existing structure when it turned to a whirlwind, there were many young men and women who volunteered to become the party’s emergency political structure. But like the biblical parable of the sower, those structure was like the grain which fell on rocky places, which had little soil, and sprang up quickly. But when the heat associated with party politics came up, many of them withered away. As seen, the Edo State election made a mockery of the tsunami of the 2023 LP’s presidential election.

    A very interesting fallout of the local government election, in Enugu State, for this writer, is the election of Dr. Ibenaku Onoh, Ph.D., as the chairman of the municipal council of Enugu State, otherwise called Enugu North Local Government Area. Elected in 2019, as a very erudite, young lawmaker, representing Enugu North constituency, this writer had after an encounter with him, predicted that he is headed to the Lion building, in the future. But, the Peter Obi tsunami, of the 2023 general election, temporally derailed that. In his middle thirties, Dr. Ibenaku Onoh, no doubt, is one rising political star that should be nurtured to stardom. 

  • Ajantala syndrome

    Ajantala syndrome

    The “Ajantala” tale, in Yoruba folklore, was simply magical: the wonder baby that, almost from birth cry, could speak, sing, rebuke, dance, gambol — almost beating the adults at their game, in almost every material particular!

    Of course, it was oral folklore hyperbole, which nevertheless sounded real in the simple mind of the child!  But that dramatic tale and its sweet hyperbole were only a metaphor for precocity and its extreme form, genius.

    Still, in real life, what’s the mode — the statistical regularity — of precocious children?  Even less, how often do you come across child-geniuses, that would grab a PhD at 17?

    Don’t most children follow the less dramatic pattern of cognition and logical development? 

    If so, why should the curriculum be skewed toward the genius — “Ajantala” — or even the precocious, while most children are simply outside that gifted twin-bracket?

    That’s the simple answer to the federal education authorities’ decision to enforce the no admission into universities — and other tertiary institutions — for Under-18s, from the 2025/2026 academic year.

    You would have thought enforcing that policy was common sense; and that eons of subverting it, since its emplacement in 1983, did not make any sense. 

    But from the serious controversy that has since ensued, it’s clear that in Nigeria’s public affairs issues, common sense in never ever common!

    You don’t need to go far: just x-ray some of the reported arguments of the pro-Under-18 admission lobby.

    One, writing in the Op-Ed pages of this newspaper, put forward as his proof for the mental rigour of the Under-18 for tertiary education: that early teens (between 10 and 13 years) are often enrolled as guild apprentices: in carpentry, auto mechanics, tailoring, etc.

    That is true.  But isn’t that the age belt a child should be in secondary school?  Wasn’t guild training an alternative to formal secondary school education, in that era before the 6-3-3-4 policy was put in place?  Was it ever an alternative to tertiary education?

    Even with 6-3-3-4: wasn’t the age for serious technical education pushed up to 15 years, since the Nigerian state decreed at least nine years of formal education for every Nigerian child — the ninth year culminating in the JSS?

    The only exit qualification at JSS, mind you, was that a child’s not-so-acute intellect should cope better with practical, as against more complex conceptual, stuff in SSS.

    So, how then can an apprentice’s age of 13 then qualify a child to enter university?  To be fair, though: the contributor was not making that as a frontal point.  He was only stacking his cards — a grave logical error in logic, nevertheless — before he was snared by his own fervour!

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    Another made the pillar of his contribution ad hominem: the cheapest form of fallacy in civil and logical discourse.

    He entered the university at 15 he crowed — whiz kid! — and by 23 he was out, qualified as a certificated medic — impressive!  But he just scooped that the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, did not enter university till he was 29!

    So, though the minister was Professor today, he —  “Ajantala”! — had breezed through university at 23 before the minister entered at 29!  Was it not clear then, he gushed, that the minister only made the policy because of own extremely late university education?  So, he made the policy in his dull image?

    Perhaps also: the professor, as a teen in 1983, had helped to rig the policy, knowing he was a future education laggard!  So long for gaseous, ad hominem thinking!

    That a high-flying medic would push such vacuous thinking, blissfully unaware of its gangling fallacy, itself indicates a basic shallow mind, despite being acute enough to practice medicine!  A paradox?  Not exactly!

    That sharp, though shallow, cognition helped the lad through university.  But might it also plague the young doctor — and his likes — all through life, when some depth is needed to think right and take complex decisions? 

    Is that then enough proof that breezing through school could lay a life-long foundation for sloppy thinking?  Not quite.  Some youths are well and truly precocious.  Some are outright geniuses too.  Yet, others learn from life’s hard experience.  But that spectre remains for many — if not most — outside this gifted class.

    Yet, another major lobby, the National Parent-Teacher Association, is threatening a law suit to challenge the policy — fair enough.  Still, by its emotive bluster, it sounded as if it could weaponize a suit as if it were a one-way challenge.

    Not so!  The good, old Lady of Justice, weighing her severe double-scale, is blind, deaf and dumb to emotions.  Only facts, figures and the logic with which they are put together ever register on her forensic mind.  So, no party can weaponize the court.  At best, that conduct is cheap appeal to threat or force, which doesn’t help any case.

    Still, beyond arguments and non-arguments, what really are the issues here?  It’s that simple — and fair wish — that educational policy fulfils the good old credo of Jeremy Bentham: the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

    Again, if most kids boast normal, regular cognition, why willy-nilly tilt the curriculum as if most kids are genuises?  Why rig the system that sees a child breeze through school, when it’s clear such infernal speed hardly helps the child, beyond parents’ empty vanity?

    Indeed why, in a country with clear education policy, would some private primary schools all but abandon the first school leaving certificate examination, making it some infernal pride to present pupils for the common entrance into secondary school in Primary 5, when the 6-3-3-4 policy is clear on six years of primary education — not a few of them even making that dash at Primary 4?

    As in almost every situation in this country, things are often so comprehensively rigged that the abnormal soon becomes the new shouting and grating norm! 

    That would explain the absurdity of even the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) — the arch-angels and core professionals that should explain and protect the integrity of 6-3-3-4 and its age correlation — are among lobby jumping ship.

    Link the NUT stand with that of the National Parent-Teacher lobby and you can begin to gauge how dysfunctional the education system may have become!

    Still, in fairness, serious pull for economic survival often forces young parents to dump their kids in school.  Hardly anyone has the “luxury” of keeping a child at home till six, the age the normal child should enrol for primary school.  The few that still do it are often brow-beaten by own peer pressure!

    Nevertheless, the clear danger of rushing very young teens into university should be clear to all.  A specific danger is that impressionable teens, from rich homes, are often lured  into cults, to consummate their newly found “freedom”.  It always ends in tears!

    Which is why the government should go ahead to implement the policy as set down by law.  Even then, there would appear enough provisions to cater for the precocious ones, without crashing everything in a mad rush, as not a few are baying.

  • NNPCL’s many mutations

    NNPCL’s many mutations

    One issue that has not ceased to agitate many in the aftermath of the coming of Dangote Refinery is the role that the state national oil company – the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited continues to play in the fuel supply matrix. For an entity whose Port Harcourt Refinery’s scheduled turn around completion date has been shifted countless times, the difficulties in tracking its continuing metamorphosis from being the country’s sole petrol importer, then to a major product supplier and now to its self-assigned role sole off-taker of Dangote Petrol can only be understood in the context of the extraordinariness of the current season.

    For even if we agree that circumstances actually forced the company to transit from being the importer of last resort to being sole importer of premium motor spirit (PMS), clearly, its assumption of sole buyer role for Dangote petrol, an entity of which it is supposed to be in competition, would itself be deemed extraordinary at any time.

    Which is why yours truly actually considered the weekend’s brickbats between the NNPCL and Dangote Refinery over the pricing template for petrol ridiculous. But then, I am reminded that these are neither normal nor ordinary times.

    And now with the fuel price template rolled out by the NNPCL came the joke across different social media platforms about the company further mutation, not into an effective competition which Nigerians expected of it or as prescribed by the Petroleum Industry Act, but to the industry’s front-bencher in matters of price determination despite failing to get its own refineries to work.

    Today, the downstream sector’s bone of contention remains the price of petrol, or if you like, the mechanics of its derivation. Moments after it the loaded the first set of consignments of petrol from the $20 billion Dangote Refinery, NNPCL’s spokesperson Olufemi Soleye had set off the firestorm with Daily Trust quoting him as saying: “We successfully loaded PMS at the Dangote Refinery today. The claim that we purchased it at N760 per litre is incorrect. For this initial loading, the price from the refinery was N898 per litre”. 

    Anthony Chiejina, the spokesperson for Dangote would, hours later, dub the statement as “misleading and mischievous”. He claimed that the statement was “aimed at undermining the milestone achievement recorded today, September 15, 2024, towards addressing energy insufficiency and insecurity, which has bedevilled the economy in the past 50 years.”

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    Said he: “We sold the products to NNPCL in dollars with a lot of savings against what they are currently importing”, even as he urged Nigerians to disregard the statement and to “await a formal announcement on the pricing, by the Technical Sub-Committee on Naira-based crude sales to local refineries, appointed by His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR, which will commence on October 1, 2024, bearing in mind that our current stock of crude was procured in dollars”.

    Note that he did not contest the figures supplied by Soleye’s NNPCL. For all he cared, Nigerians may well continue to savour the illusion (fleeting?) of Dangote petrol being the answer to the nation’s energy woes! In other words, the brouhaha was not so much about the truth of what was said; it is rather about the quarters from where it came from and by extension the bursting of the myth.

    Never mind the wildfire speculations about Dangote petrol being cheaper than the imported petrol; or the social media being agog with a so-called N760 per litre for the Dangote petrol.

    NNPCL’s guilt, it would appear, may have derived from its attempt to burst the illusions of those who believe that petrol prices would dramatically come down with the coming of Dangote petrol. By putting the records out, particularly in the context of the exasperating disinformation campaign against her, the NNPCL may have, understandably ruffled not a few feathers. And for a Dangote Refinery still riding on the crest of nationalist fervour, the attempt to distract the historic import of the moment could not but anything but a treasonable conduct.

    Which is why the mind game – which is really nothing outside mere symbolism – has settled nothing; that is aside deflecting attention from the main issue at stake, which is what it costs to produce a litre of petrol for which most Nigerians have long hungered.

    In the meantime, the NNPCL would on Monday publish a new price template. The product, it stated, will, henceforth, be sold at N950.22 per litre across all its retail outlets in Lagos. Residents in the northern part of the country are expected to pay more for the product with consumers in Borno expected to pay the highest pump price of N1, 019.22.

    The template, it claimed, was based on Dangote Refinery’s gantry price of N898.78 per litre, the industry regulator’s fee of N8.99, inspection fee of N0.97, distribution cost (Lagos) of N15.00 and the marketers’ margin of N26.48 – bringing the total price for the Lagos area to N950.22 per litre.

    The company would on its X platform add for emphasis:  “The NNPC Ltd also wishes to state that, in line with the provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), PMS prices are not set by government, but negotiated directly between parties on an arm’s length.

    “The NNPC Ltd can confirm that it is paying Dangote Refinery in USD for September 2024 PMS offtake, as Naira transactions will only commence on October 1st, 2024. The NNPC Ltd assures that if the quoted pricing is disputed, it will be grateful for any discount from the Dangote Refinery, which will be passed on 100% to the general public”.

    For an entity that has known nothing but serial vilifications by Nigerians, one can only hope that the NNPCL is not only right but knows what it is talking about.

    This takes us to the main point of today’s piece, which is the NNPCL’s rather dubious metamorphosis. Thanks to the company’s capacity for unforced errors, it chose to announce the new template instead of allowing a relatively more credible institution like the industry regulator – the Nigeria Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) or even the technical subcommittee empanelled by the government, to do so. For if it seems that an entity so utterly distrusted by Nigerians would be the one to avail Nigerians of the new template, even more so is that the entity in question is a failed competitor.

    Earlier on, I spoke about the jokes in the social media circles – and the absurdity of a physician carrying innumerable ailments setting up an infirmary to treat local ailments. Thanks to NNPCL’s assumption of mandates neither covered by its articles or memorandum of association nor conferred by the Petroleum Industry Act, Nigerians are increasingly forced to return to the most fundamental question: How long shall we continue to wait for the completion of the Turn Around Maintenance programmes for the refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna? So long as the NNPCL continues to either dither or fail to address the question, so long will Nigerians regard its role in the market as either self-serving or plain dishonest.