The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Minimum Wedge (2)

    Minimum Wedge (2)

    Some nine weeks ago, as the work of the tripartite committee on minimum wage progressed, I wrote the piece titled: Minimum wedge, imploring relevant stakeholders to avoid unnecessary distractions, so a national minimum wedge can be agreed. I said: “Even for a slave labourer, N30,000 a month, as wage, even before the present runaway inflationary pressure on goods and services, is abysmally ridiculous. Now, with the value of the naira so badly depreciated, every genuine patriot in government and the private sector, should contribute his or her best efforts to help the tripartite committee on minimum wage recommend a realistic new minimum wage, for necessary legislation.”

    It appears my advice fell on deaf ears, as the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), at the meeting insisted on its minimum wage proposal of N615,000, which even the most ardent supporter of the labour unions would agree is an unrealistic demand. As if to also show lack of seriousness on its part, the federal government last week offered a ridiculous minimum wage of N48,000, which the labour unions immediately rejected, and walked out of the negotiation meeting. The Bukar Goni-led committee has since written to the labour unions to return to the negotiating table this Tuesday.

    I recall that in his address to the committee at inauguration, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had said: “The minimum wage represents the least amount of compensation an employee should receive for their labour, and as such, it should be rooted in social justice and equity.” That advice was presidential and depicted a leader interested in what is fair and equitable for the Nigerian workers. To also show commitment to the welfare of workers, the president had while the negotiation was going on, approved a wage award of N35,000 as a stop-gap measure in the face of inflationary pressure.

    That intervention had stemmed the agitation of Nigeria workers, while they waited for the new minimum wage, to follow the legal process. Last week’s N48,000 offer must have turned a damp squib for the disconsolate workers. This writer agrees that the offer is a non-starter and the meeting scheduled to restart today should discuss a much improved offer that is rooted in PBAT’s social justice and equity. What this writer understands that to mean, is a wage that can sustain the least paid worker.

    Clearly, this writer is not enthused by the arithmetic prowess of the NLC president, Joe Ajaero, who gives the wrong impression that a first level entry worker, who is nonskilled, at the point of entry, should have four children, live in a flat, and make monthly expenses that would culminate in the unrealistic N615,00 that the union he leads is demanding. Unless the idea of the labour leader is to push his people to aim for the sky, while hoping to hit the ceiling, as the saying goes.

    Sometimes, leaders make unrealistic demands just to excite their followers and give the impression that they are on top of their game. Otherwise, how could the labour leaders hope to get a minimum wage higher than what sadly a professor who teaches in public university earns? That piece of information on the earning of the university teachers show the need for a review of the wage structure across board in our country. This writer is hopeful that PBAT will get to deal with that underlining cause of corruption in public service in Nigeria.

    Of course, to hope on the present administration is not misplaced considering PBAT’s antecedent in Lagos State, affirmed by the recent salaries, allowances and fringe benefits review for Justices and judges in the country. The Chief Justice would henceforth earn an impressive total monthly package of N5.39 million, while other Justices would earn N4.21 million. On his part the President of the Court of Appeal will earn total monthly package of N4.48m. To achieve that, PBAT sent an executive bill to amend Certain Political, Public and Judicial Officer Holders (Salaries and Allowances etc) Act, No 6, 2002, by deleting provisions relating to judicial office holders.

    For this column, the new salary structure for judicial officers is an indication of what is possible where there is a will. That when hopefully the national economy is substantially revamped by this administration, salaries and wages would become more equitable and just. As the former labour leader, Senator Adams Oshiomhole advised the present labour leaders in a televised interview, the congresses should also be interested in the revitalization of the national economy, which in turn would enhance and guarantee the wage bill of workers, in both the public and private sector.

    The NLC and Trade Union Congress (TUC), which are the main labour unions, should be interested in the economic blueprint of the federal and state governments. For instance, they should be interested in governments’ plan in the electricity sector. For clearly, unless that sector is revolutionized, the real sector would keep doddering. The unions should be interested in government plans to revitalize the key national industries, like the textile industry. They should monitor the macro and micro economic policies of the government, and its effects on the economy, so they can raise alarm when the government is going the wrong way.

    Read Also: Finance Ministry embraces performance management system for improved service delivery

    Where the government is on the right track, they should give support and time for the benefits to trickle down to workers. In essence, this writer is urging the labour unions to collaborate with government, both at federal and state levels, in the overall interest of Nigerians. Considering the fragile national economy, and the severe negative impacts any major disruptions could cause, the national minimum wage committee must ensure that the labour unions are not pushed to engage in nationwide strikes.

    Of interest, Edo State government has pegged the minimum wage in the state at N70,000. While many have dismissed the gesture as a political deft of hand by Governor Godwin Obaseki, who is campaigning to elect his preferred candidate as governor, the gesture depicts what is possible, where the masses have an equal balance of forces at their disposal. Perhaps, if the labour unions can muster enough concerted pressure on the federal and state governments, they would also agree to a minimum wage that can sustain the minimum paid worker.

    This writer hopes the tripartite committee would do the right thing, by urging the federal government to make a substantially improved offer to the workers. On their part, the workers should tame their unrealistic wage demand. For this column, the minimum wage should not be less than 70,000. While the poorer states pay that, the richer states should pay more as minimum wage. The National Assembly members, who used their statutory powers to self-help themselves, to earn world class salaries, allowances and fringe benefits, should ensure a living wage for workers.

  • Of airports, visible and invisible                            

    Of airports, visible and invisible                            

    If asked to name their favorite public space, I doubt whether any person, indigene or foreigner who has travelled to or within Nigeria in recent years, will in good conscience cite an airport within its shores.

    The best among the airports are clean and render service briskly but in operation, they are just as chaotic and riotous as the rest.  The architects who designed them seemed to have been sworn to an inviolable oath: Make them as passenger-unfriendly as possible. 

    Hence, in the absence of security fences, cattle grazing in the area have been known to take over the tarmac.

    The airports make no concession to seating and relaxing in the arrival hall.  Passengers and their escorts have to stand for all the time to clear passengers for the flight, the firm and the infirm, the old and the very old.  Areas provided in the seating design have been sold to corporate bodies, demarcated clearly and reserved for their top executives.  Hence, making the least concession to seating in whatever passes for a general lounge.

    It is no accident that parking is like an obstacle race; that access to Arrivals and Departures is fraught and cumbersome; that checking in is flagrantly disorderly, and gets truly menacing when uniformed officials inspecting your baggage request that you “appreciate” them.

    After running the gamut of obstacles, of which I have mentioned just a few, the passenger runs the risk of taking a taxi cab that would take him to a quiet corner where the driver’s accomplices, toting real handguns, would emerge, rough him up, strip him of everything except his clothing and, if he is lucky, leave him to his devices while the taxi cab heads back to the airport in hopes of picking up another luckless fare. 

    Read Also: Electricity tariff hike: Nigerians paying for darkness – NLC, TUC tackle NERC

    The shadowy accomplices retreat to the dank, unlit brush from where they had emerged, there to await the next catch.

    I have said nothing about toilets that don’t flush, electronic walkways that don’t work, climate control devices that spew out hot air, and sudden power outages that plunge the entire facility into darkness.

    Some of them are mockeries of the real thing.   Monuments to delusions of grandeur,         they lie in various stages of incompletion or abandonment.  But they pretend to be the complete package, even when they have no control tower, and no passenger halls.

    They call themselves cargo terminals but have no cargo to haul anywhere. Commissioned with a great deal of fanfare and merriment, they lie idle. Many a commentator, including me, had warned that this would be their fate, at least in the short and medium term.

    The warning went unheeded. 

    Imagine my discomfiture then, when my assistant informed me that one of the founding grandees of Ekiti State (name withheld) had asked to talk with me.  I knew instinctively that it must be about my column obliquely dismissing the Ekiti Cargo Airport project as misconceived

    “Professor,” he began, dispensing with pleasantries.  I held my breath and steeled myself for the worst.  “I have read and reread your column for today and sent copies to some of the naysayers.  I am calling to thank you for endorsing the project so forthrightly.  It is a magnificent piece.”

    He went on to congratulate me on my perspicacity, a quality lacking in many of my peers  who, he said, were too far gone in their negativity to recognize a laudable scheme even if they saw the blueprint in broad daylight.  I have paraphrased him here to strip his actual expression of its colour,  this being a newspaper for the entire family.

    Despite their many dysfunctions and sketchiness, the cargo terminals have one thing in common with the fully operational airports strewn all over Nigeria from Birnin Kebbi to Calabar and Lagos to Maiduguri:  They exist, in time and space.  You can experience them, navigate them, and transact business with them.

    Unlike Abia International Airport which, after five years of frenzied construction and N8 billion, could not be traced on any map, ordnance survey, by reconnaissance flights, spy satellites, or by any known system of divination.

    This was the ghost airport Abia Governor Alex Otti says his predecessor, Okezie Ikpeazu, bequeathed to his administration.

    Ever so dutiful, the Abia State Assembly decided to take up the challenge of locating the missing airport.

    Pursuant to a unanimous resolution, all members present and voting, The Assembly solemnly resolved to set up a high-powered committee to search for, locate and identify the airport by all means necessary and, sparing no expenses or exertions, ascertain its condition, and enunciate the strategies and tactics by which it may be speedily repossessed by its rightful owners, the government and the good people of God’s Own State.

    No precedent was required for this exploration, but one Honourable Member supplied one all the same,  He recalled that when a Nigerian communications satellite designed and positioned by China went missing from its geostationary orbit, the National Assembly in a unanimous resolution set up a committee with a sweeping mandate to go anywhere to locate and retrieve.

    The Honourable member could have cited an earlier precedent. 

    When Radio Kudirat burst upon the June 12 scene and shattered the complacency of Sani Abacha and his killing squads, the authorities explored every means that could help locate and destroy it.  According to friendly sources in Aso Rock who tipped us off regularly about the regime’s plans and proceedings,  such was their desperation that the authorities even recruited the leading marabouts of the time and paid them hefty retainers to help in the search.

    I lost a good friend, a prominent broadcaster with the NTA, when I asked him testily at a diplomatic reception how the marabouts were doing.  I will never forget the scowl on his face.

    To return to the vanished satellite:  It was only when the complexity and the cost implications of the quest were spelled out in plenary that the Distinguished Senators and Honourable Members decided to shelve the project, pending further studies to be conducted by three sub-committees, and a Public Hearing in each of the nation’s six geopolitical zones.

    Back in Abia:  Just before the crack team of seasoned explorers appointed by the State Assembly set out on their expedition to locate and retrieve the missing airport, the former governor, Dr Ikpeazu, clarified the state of play.  He said N10 billion was voted for the project, but not a shishi went into executing it.

    Leaders of Thought and Royal Fathers had at various fora counselled that it would be more judicious to spend the money improving and expanding the road network to serve the less privileged than to spend it building an airport that would cater only to the elite, who were already well served by airports in neighbouring states.

    Being a listening Administration dedicated to serving the best interests of the majority of Abians, the government had decided to plough the funds into the massive construction and rehabilitation of the road network recommended by the Leaders of Thought and Royal Fathers.

    And the wisdom of it all, the result, could be seen in the beautiful, multi-lane highways, inter-city and inner-city roads on which Governor Otti and his entourage zip through the state at every opportunity without knowing how they were built, and without showing any gratitude to the previous government, Dr Ikpeazu remonstrated.

    Something tells me that we have not heard the last word about the National Assembly’s plan to conduct a comprehensive search for the missing Nigerian satellite, and about Abia Assembly’s determination to locate, at the very least, the site for the proposed airport and to determine whether its disappearance resulted from force majeure or other attrition.

    The team’s remit was recently widened to include an exhaustive inquiry into whether the  airport was requisitioned by extra-terrestrials to test the efficacy of their brand of Artificial Intelligence as astrophysicists at the Abia State University are reported to have postulated in a confidential memo to Governor Otti.

    Expect updates as they become available.

  • Home boy, home oil, home guts

    Home boy, home oil, home guts

    Alex Neyin, the author of this autobiography, titled it I Dared to Explore.

    Evidence of his daring, twice at the point of death, facing off vicious armed robbers at two different occasions, abound in these many vignettes of a living profile in courage.

    Here is vintage Alex wrestle with Titans of his work, cultural and political environments, as some gutsy Lilliputian wrestling with mighty Gulliver — but prevailed!

    With all-mighty George Kirkland, MD of Chevron Nigeria Ltd (CNL), who craved his managers to chorus “Yes, George” to whatever policy diktats he barked out:

    “Why are you not responding?  Hey Alex!  I’m talking to you.”

    “George, I thought we’re on a war front and the General is issuing an order …”

    “Okay.  If that is the case, what do you have against what I have just said so far?”

    “Do you really want to hear?”

    The boss wanted his managers to flog CNL wells to produce 500, 000 barrels a day. But Alex disagreed.  He wagered that should the wells make 420, 000 barrels a day, he would resign.  At the end, the wells made 410, 000 barrels — but with a lot of water!

    And this one, with Chief Edwin Clark, at his Kiagbudu lair, when Alex somewhat made nomination to succeed Funso Kupolokun, as NNPC MD:

    Clark: “Do you know me?”

    Neyin: “I know you.  When you came back from the United Kingdom as a lawyer, you stayed in an apartment on Robert Road in Warri.  When I was in Urhobo College, you were a lawyer.  You used to come to Urhobo College in a Volkswagen car to chase a particular HSC girl.

    Read Also: Eight highest-paying courses in Nigeria

    And more!: “When you were Commissioner for Education, you brought your brother-in-law to be the Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin amid highly qualified Bendelites and that led to confusion.  The student body decided to invite you. The plan was to get you embarrassed.  I was the one that arranged and passed the information for you not to attend that meeting.”

    Clark, whose instinct was to oppose his nomination, switched to his support.  But no matter!  He lost that bid — just as an alleged Igbo-Yoruba intra-CNL plot blocked his appointment as Escravos Operations Manager — the third highest in CNL. 

    In both cases, however, the losses were Nigeria’s and Chevron’s — not Alex’s.  He would have added unheard-of value.

    Then, this big one of youth idealism, that almost scuttled his scholarship to Texas A & M University (TAMU), USA, after his meritorious picking, with eight others, to read Petroleum Engineering, from their freshman engineering student years, at the University of Benin (UNIBEN).

    As secretary of the Revolutionary Radicals (RevRads) at UNIBEN, Alex Neyin had, in 1974, signed a document stating “25 reasons” why General Yakubu Gowon could not continue as Head of State beyond 1975. 

    That proved prophetic, for Gowon was overthrown in 1975.

    Gen. Gowon — to whom a copy was posted — probably ignored the document. But the Secret Service did not.  They used it to can his passport, while the other scholars flew to America to start their studies. 

    How Magnus Eweka, then a Commissioner of Police at Moloney Street, Lagos, Police Headquarters, helped him out of that jam is another gripping story.  Eweka was an old boy of Urhobo College!

    Of course, this mother-and-son dialogue, when Alex received his first salary as a teacher at Urhobo College, after completing his Higher School Certificate, pending admission into university:

    Alex: Mama, this is my first salary.  Take what you want.

    His mother: No. Na your money.

    Alex: It’s yours, mum,  I would never have gotten to this point if not for your effort.

    Alex had seen his father block his elder sister, Ogbe’s bid to enter School of Nursing, after Modern School — a two-year post-primary school back then.  His mother wanted Ogbe to train as a nurse, so both — mother and big daughter — could pool resources to train the two younger boys, Alex and Atete.

    But their father wanted Ogbe to marry. He promised to pay the boys’ school fees but failed to keep his promise. This failure irked both mother and son.  The mother left the husband to live with own mum, at Ikpisan, an island village, off Warri.

    “From this point onwards,” an angry Alex wrote, “I never drank or ate from him till he died in 2017.”  That was from 1966 to 2017 — 51 years or thereabouts!

    Ikpisan! That was, even before Madam Newe Odumu-Neyin — Alex’s mother — and his boys relocated, where grand uncle, Ugbukukon Mero, a master carpenter, would shape the life of his grand nephew. 

    He first called the boy “Engineer” because of his curiosity in carpentry.  He would later groom Alex, nurture him in the ways of Itsekiri elders, tradition and culture, and turn him into a fit and proper home boy.

    This autobiography of Alexander Akumeme Neyin, born in Ikpisan in 1949, is a practical handbook to those who dare to differ, particularly in a corrupt setting.

    To the compliant and quiescent, he left this quote: “If you keep listening to what people say, to appease them, you’ll do wrong things.  With time, the wrong things become the right thing for you.  Then, you’ll lose yourself.”

    No review can do justice to this book.  You just need to read it and luxuriate in its unceasing well of courage and wisdom.

    Yet, it suffers grave technical glitches.  First, the full title page carries names that seem like co-authors. The project collaborators ought to have limited their credit to just the copyright section.

    Then, the printing is rather poor, with many words erroneously linked. That will create problems for young readers, who could get easily confused.  Even poorer is the quality of the pictures, with poor colour separation, and the black-and-white pictures seldom sharp .

    But even with all that, it is a gold mine in character building; and practical tutorials in model citizenship and patriotism.

    Great kudos to Elder Frank Ede for this book landing here.  I was even out of town when his call came: he was en route to The Nation, to drop three copies of his friend’s autobiography: one for Ripples, one for Tatalo Alamu, and one for Sam Omatseye. 

    Thank you sir, Elder Ede, for spreading the word on this beautiful work.

  • Fubara: An emperor at work

    Fubara: An emperor at work

    “Is the Assembly quarters not part of my property? Is there anything wrong in going to check how things are going on there?

    “You are aware of the developments. We have a new speaker, and I went there to see for myself how things are. There might be a few things I might want to do there for the good of our people. (Italics mine).

    The above were straight from the lips of Siminilayi Fubara, the Rivers State governor moments after staging the psych-op that could well have passed for Nigeria’s variant of the Storming of the Bastille.

    Students of History would remember that revolutionary moment, when on the morning of July 14, 1789, hundreds of Parisians stormed the state prison, seizing 250 barrels of gunpowder and freeing its prisoners. A pivotal moment in the French Revolution, its consequences would not only reverberate in France, but also beyond its borders for years after.

    Today, if anyone still needed a crash lesson in semiotics to appreciate the gravity of those words in the context of the turf war between the executive and the legislative branches in the Rivers State capital, they only need to stretch their memory to a related event of October 29, 2023, when the parliament, the symbol of representative government, was razed to the ground by elements (anarchists), who, supposedly for the loved for their governor, threw the niceties of law and legalism into the sewers. And that was just few days before the governor, in an unparalleled demonstration of executive delinquency and self-help, moved in the bulldozers to complete the rite of destruction on an edifice that was built with taxpayers’ money.

    Read Also; Nigeria is a complex country, but not difficult to rule – Obasanjo

    That was last year. Today, Nigerians, are already familiar with the intriguing power-play starring Nyesom Wike, the godfather and his now estranged governor-godson, Fubara. I mean the high drama of the godfather wanting the godson out and the inevitability of the actors along the divide lining up behind their principals; the account of the lawmakers, one-score and half of them, and their mission to impeach the governor with the governor’s supporters doing what they had to do – razing the complex which served the parliament – to stave off the process. And then the governor, if only to be certain that such a dream would never recur again, moving in bulldozers as if to complete the job begun by the arsonists!

    Lest we forget, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was at some point, urged to step in. And he did at the end of which an agreement was signed and sealed. Don’t ask me if the parties implemented the terms of the agreement to the letter. There was just about enough of bad faith on both sides to scupper the deal and with it the end to the truce.   

    Unfortunately, while the good people of Rivers State have no idea of how long the current drama will last, even more inconceivable, at least at this point is the cost that would be put on their necks as the horror drags on!

    To understand why fancy treatise on ‘rule of law’, the imperatives of constitutionalism’ and such other nuances of public order is unlikely to make sense to the feuding parties is to appreciate the true character of the elements in that combat particularly their contempt for the law and critical institutions designed to breathe life into society as an orderly, organic entity. As it was in the post-succession era of Peter Odili, so it has been till date. It has all these while being a case of– to borrow the words of The Nation’s revered columnist, Tatalo Alamu – the end justifying the meanness!

    However, while it seems bad enough that these elements sworn to neither hold prisoners nor listen to voices of reason, and who see politics as war by other means are perennially in the forefront, what must alarm is the ease with which the nation’s organic law – the constitution – is being shredded under a false indignation by the same elements who think it is either their way or hell’s highway.

    In this, Fubara, with his changeover from being the underdog to the deal breaker and now lawbreaker, has of late, proven to be more sinning than sinned against (in matters of public peace and decorum) – with Wike – the tormentor-in-chief doing no more than throwing jibes from his Abuja redoubt on occasions! 

    Ways back, a Port Harcourt-based legal practitioner, Angus Chukwuka, had darkly hinted of the days ahead: “We have illegality challenging illegality; I don’t know whether one will cancel the other. But it’s important that the state actors take caution that what they are doing will actually draw the state into unnecessary crisis”.

    The good lawyer may have understated the looming anarchy. No thanks to the army of conflict entrepreneurs, the state, surely, has entered a new phase of an executive-induced anarchy. The governor, now battle-charged would appear not only ready to take on his enemy, but the constitution at whose behest he still pretends to hold his office.

    I guess it’s a small matter that the governor has withheld the account of the local governments, barred the heads of the councils from answering to the parliament aside other extra-constitutional steps taken in his self-assumed but clearly deluded expediency. He obviously believes that the law (which he also treats with contempt) is such that afford him such latitudes to do as he pleased with anyone and whomsoever.

    Surely, if the governor, before now, thought little of declaring the seats of some 27 state lawmakers void, going the extra-mile of empowering a three-member parliament to make laws for the running of his dear state; argue as you might, it seems highly unlikely that the governor and his ‘people’ ever heard of, let alone read Section 91 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) which puts a minimum number of state lawmakers at 24 and maximum at 40 members.

    And now with the governor not done with implementing a budget passed by a four-member parliament, only yesterday, he actually sought to get his nominee for a cabinet position approved by a House of three odd members; those 27 lawmakers can only ignore the weekend threat to pull their official residences down to their peril.

    Does anyone still doubt that a new emperor is in town?

  • Fubara versus Wike

    Fubara versus Wike

    “Fubara me, I will Wike you” or “Wike me, I will Fubara you” may be a more tantalizing heading for this piece. Of course, that would be aping the age-long “Tarka me, I will Daboh you” by Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, of the Daily Times newspaper fame. Another potential title could be “Rivers State of confusion.” And unless the contending political factions put a break to their descent into anarchy, the next headline could be “Rivers State of blood.”

    Watching the governor of Rivers State, Siminilayi Fubara, ask reporters: “Is the Assembly quarters not part of my property? Is there anything wrong in going to check how things are going on there?” it dawned on me that His Excellency may be belabouring under a grave misconception about his powers and privileges. And that may eventually be his undoing, in the power struggle with his erstwhile mentor and godfather, and current Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Nyesom Wike.

    Even as governor, the Rivers State’s public property does not belong to him; and so it was extremely foolish to utter those words in public. Another politically silly comment the governor keeps making, is that the peace deal made by the president and commander-in-chief, is merely political and not constitutional. Each time, he says that, I feel like drawing his ear, and reminding him that the process of his becoming the governor and how successful he would be as a governor will depend of politics.

    After all, there was no constitutionally provided aptitude test where he came tops before he was anointed by Wike as the preferred governorship candidate. So, choosing him, clearing out opposition within and outside the party, providing resources and campaigning for him, are all political actions. So, his political misdemeanour, by biting Wike’s finger that fed him, assumes another dimension when he keeps shouting that the agreement brokered by the commander-in-chief is of minor consequence.

    Read Also: AIDO holds 6th convention to celebrate African culture in Nigeria

    As governor, while constitutionally he does not serve at the pleasure of the president, he needs the friendship of the president to serve pleasurably. Even as a veteran of several political fights, with former President Olusegun Obasanjo, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) as then Lagos State governor, never disrespected the former president publicly, even though his attorney general kept filling cases in court to whittle down the abusive powers of an imperialist federal government. For his own success as governor, Simi must project respect, even when displaying strength, in dealing with Nigeria’s presidential behemoth.

    But, as clear to the public, President Tinubu has not even been obtrusive. He had intervened, to mediate between Governor Fubara and Minister Wike. Following that mediation, the governor had only fulsome praises for the president. He never claimed that the president unduly influenced the outcome, but projected himself as a man of peace, who would keep his promises in the interest of Rivers State. If Fubara was properly guided, he ought to go back to the president, to complain of any infractions, or ask for renegotiation of certain issues, if he is finding it difficult to implement the agreement.

    But instead of laying the challenges before the president or even the general public, and scurrying sympathy as the oppressed, Fubara is thoughtlessly projecting the image of an aggressor. To further compound his image, he went to the Rivers State House of Assembly quarters, were the legislators live and temporary sit, to threaten another day of bulldozer. The first day of bulldozer, saw Governor Simi order the demolition of the state House of Assembly, after hoodlums allegedly sympathetic to him, torched the edifice.

    The arson took place following treats by the House to impeach the governor, and as if on cue, the governor quickly moved in bulldozers, when reports showed that the fire incident didn’t do much damages. While the governor is not expected to fold his hands, while his political enemies plan to remove his green biro, as he joked about the impeachment plans then, burning down and bulldozing public property, should not be one of the strategies to forestall a threatened impeachment, as alleged.

    Interestingly, the visit to the legislative quarters appears to have coalesced some Rivers elite against him. Over the weekend, political leaders and elders across party lines matched to the quarters on a fact-finding-mission, after the governor’s insinuation that the quarters need renovation. In public glare and before television cameras, the contentiously impeached Speaker of the House, Hon. Martin Amaewhule, and other residents confirmed that the Houses built about two years ago do not need any renovation, and that professionals engaged by the House confirmed that.

    So, what excuses would the governor offer, if he forcefully evicts the legislators from their quarters? Perhaps, the lame excuse that he wants to renovate them. As if to give impetus to his opponents who are alleging malice, the governor signed an executive order, to compel the House of Assembly, to sit within the government house. The illegitimate order is premised on the burning of the state House of Assembly last year, even though the House has been sitting since then within their legislative quarters.         

    In the midst of these faulty passes, the governor appears to have scored a potential win in the court. A High Court in the state, by way of an interim injunction declared the seats of the legislators who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressive Congress (APC) vacant, pending the hearing of the motion on notice. The court relied on the provision of section 109(1)(g) of the 1999 constitution (as amended). The section provides that a member of the House shall vacate his seat, if before the expiration of his tenure he cross-carpets to another party.

    Section 109(2) provides that the speaker of the House of Assembly shall declare the seats vacant, after presenting satisfactory evidence to the House that any of the provision has become applicable. The proviso to section 109(g) excuses cross-carpeting, if there is a division in the party, or a merger of the parties. It appears that the said proviso and subsection 2 have been used by guilty legislators, to defeat the implementation of section 109, as all manner of subterfuge is usually employed by the guilty parties. The Rivers State case is more intriguing, as the Speaker is amongst those said to have violated the provision.

    In the days ahead, the court would be expected to determine whether there was division within the PDP, to warrant the cross-carpeting of the assembly members. Also whether by the proviso, it is only the duly elected speaker who can declare legislators’ seats vacant, and whether the courts should issue an order of mandamus compelling the speaker to act, or usurp the powers to declare the seats vacant. Minister Wike, has derided the ex parte order as purchased, and vowed that it would amount to nothing, soonest.

  • Peculiar mess

    Peculiar mess

    His grandfather, Adegoke Adelabu (1915-1958) — aka “Penkelemesi” — dashing hero of Ibadan yokels of pre-1st Republic politics, first coined the term “peculiar mess”, to describe the Nigerian politics of his era.

    His grandson, Adebayo Adelabu, sitting Power minister sits and sweats, breathless and harried, in the peculiar mess of contemporary Nigerian electricity. 

    Indeed, the vanishing dramatics of this critical spark, since he arrived as minister, has made his irate compatriots to, without much ado, dismiss him as the rather unloved “minister of darkness”!

    Yet, let no one get ahead of themselves.  For one, Nigerians are notoriously short-fused; often spewing rude name-calling, just to push their right to democratic anger.

    For another, the power conundrum — as mentioned in a previous column here — is very complex.   So, scapegoating the minister and calling for his scalp may be far from grabbing the elixir to crack that conundrum.

    Read Also: PTAD deletes 51,000 ghost pensioners

    Still, even if Minister Adelabu is not on trial, the entire electricity value chain is.  Indeed, since the turn of 2024, following the sudden electricity dip in the last two months of 2023, the power sector has been a constant alarming beep: as the most likely legacy-killer for the Bola Tinubu administration.

    This bears repeating: without fixing electricity, whatever President Tinubu achieves would not chalk up its full value. 

    Worse: whereas other segments of critical infrastructure — basically roads and rail — are building on the gains of the Muhammadu Buhari era, power has been regressing, from the modest heights of that era.

    Both former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and ace political shaman, Peter Obi, have gone ga-ga over the Lagos-Calabar coastal road, with a rail line in-between.

    Atiku wailed and neighed on why the project should start from Lagos, and not from Calabar.  Obi has been gnashing his teeth over a project that he claims wipes out jobs — another classical cant, because it is a tribal whoop powered by sweeping over-generalization, masquerading as a national voice that really cares. 

    Holy Peter should crow that to the nearby marines!

    Still, both Atiku and Obi know the game they play only too well. Should that critical coastal highway become reality, birthing an exciting corridor along which Nigerians of all ethnics gleefully drive their personal economies, the margin for election-time deceit becomes painfully tight.  That’s Bad News 2027!

    Which is why it’s all so refreshing that Dave Umahi, minister of Works, dazzles all the Atiku-Obi jeremiads of doom and desperation with enchanting road spurs, linked to the Lagos-Calabar expressway — the Badagry-Sokoto highway, for instance. 

    Add the proposed Lagos-Abuja expressway, with shuttle time at six hours maximum — little has been heard on that of late though, prompting the legitimate question of what is happening? — and the prospects of good network of roads nation-wide becomes brighter.

    Now, that is Umahi brilliantly building on work done during the Babatunde Fashola ministerial years.

    On rail, Uche Diala just lobbed a bomb at South East naysayers, whose dark and wild yammering derided work on the Port Harcourt-Aba narrow-gauge rail; and how Rotimi Amaechi, then Transport minister, shut out the hubbub.

    Now, that commercial line just opened.  As the exultant denizens out there look forward to daily shuttle on that 62-Km route, Dr. Diala could not resist his “I told you so!” rebuke to doomsday agents, who always put bitter politics over development.

    But again, in rail: Said Alkali, current Transport minister, appears busy consolidating on the Amaechi-era works, with a firm promise to firm up the Ibadan-Kano and the Kano-Abuja legs of the Lagos-Kano standard-gauge rail, funds-permitting.

    On the power front, however, the picture appears the diametrical opposite.  What happens along the value chain — generation, to transmission and finally, distribution — remains nebulous, as the three critical anchors pass the buck at one another.

    Still, from the distribution end — the final contact with the market — electricity has badly regressed, compared to the Buhari years. 

    If you have the fortune to work from home — turned misfortune by DisCos — the day you project to do serious work is same day Ikeja Electric (I.E.) will sap you with blackout all day — with no rime or reason. 

    That is in the heart of Lagos — and only Eko DisCo customers can tell what happens in that trade zone.  Yet, I.E. and Eko DisCo are clearly the best of the DisCos.  But their performance is still abysmal.

    Two years ago, the present dip in performance was near-distant memory — again, umpteenth warning that progressively failing power could hurt the Tinubu era legacy.

    No wonder, this present crunch has thrown up new-fangled “solutions”: bury the distribution companies (DisCos) and move on!  But the question is: move on to where?

    On DisCos, no tears from here.  From their inglorious forebears: NEPA (cynically: Never Expect Power Again) and PHCN (Problem Has Changed Hands), the DisCos had gone ahead to mount own trade notoriety, ranging from that brazen corporate robbery they call estimated billing; and soulless meter racketeering.

    Indeed, the greatest failure of the Power sector reforms, since its enabling act of 2005, is that none of the DisCos could boast meters to secure their revenues.  How can such outfits then secure the cash from consumers, to routinely pay the generating companies (GenCos), for the not-so-cheap gas that powers their thermal turbines?

    Still with all that, DisCos can’t be the most critical problem, though they are closest to the consumer — the ugly shop windows of the skewed electricity mart.

    For one, they have absolutely no control over the wares they sell. Thermal GenCos grumble they lack the cash to pay their gas vendors, no thanks to huge debts from electricity market traders. Gas-powered GenCos control 80% of the market, with hydro plants making up the remaining 20%. 

    So, erratic gas to GenCos, erratic power to DisCos, erratic electricity for consumers.

    For another, the core transmission challenge.  Though the total installed capacity of power plants — hydro and thermal — is some 16, 384 MW, no more than 4, 000 MW gets wheeled.  Even then, the transmission lines of the national grid often collapse.

    True, there is ongoing the Siemens work to bolster these high-power lines, run by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN). But until that is strengthened, and GenCos earn ready cash to pay for gas, this twin, ever-recurring operational glitch, will continue to strip naked the DisCos.

    In all the current melee has crept in “federalization”, the supposed new open sesame to breathe instant life into the comatose power market!  But on which reinforced technologies are we “federalizing”, with states as new champions?

    These then are the stark power issues facing the Tinubu administration, approaching the end of the first quarter, of its four-year tenure.  Tough action it must take, even if that means a complete blow-out of the present power sector.

    Otherwise, it should brace itself for power — poor power — as its ultimate nemesis.

  • The coming injunctions  

    The coming injunctions  

    How did we arrive at this point where the judiciary, or at least some sections of it, consider it a proper exercise of their remit to restrain the police or law enforcement from interrogating, arresting, or detaining a suspect in a criminal matter, or taking the preliminary steps on which a prosecution must be grounded?                   

    I ask this question in light of the ongoing standoff between Yahaya Bello, the fugitive most recently governor of Kogi, and the EFCC, which sought to question him on charges that he bilked the state’s exchequer of some N80 billion in the eight years he held that office.

    Yahaya Bello rushed to court to purchase an order restraining the EFCC from performing its constitutional duties, though not before going into hiding.  At this writing, he is holed up in parts unknown.

    I used the word purchase advisedly, and I use it in all its connotations and denotations, not unmindful of what the writer Humbert Wolfe (1885 – 1940) said of the British journalist of his time.

    You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God, the British journalist, he noted sardonically, adding:

    But seeing what the man will do Unbribed.

    There is no occasion to.

    There is some redemption in this.  If supplicants know what Nigerian journalists, judges, and other meditators in the socio-political process will do unbribed, there would seem to be no occasion to do so.  If they know that they can achieve the same outcome without bribing anyone, why take the trouble?

    To get away from the rhetoric and get back to the concrete business of the flight from justice and from reckoning of the heedless and power-besotted Yahaya Bello:  the court, knowing what he would do if it denied his quest, dutifully assented.

    The EFCC appealed but kept the heat on Yahaya Bello.   Out of the blues, Yahaya became a convert to and a fervent apostle of the rule of law, especially in practice.   So, he headed to the court again in a bid to arraign the EFCC for disobeying the court’s order, convert to the rule of law and its primacy.

    There is compound irony here.  Yahaya Bello, taking cover behind a court injunction of dubious value,  makes it impossible for law enforcement to serve him with court papers. Yahaya Bello removes himself from the reach of the law, and asks the court to commit the EFCC for contempt. 

    For sheer temerity, it would be hard to beat this, which meets the definition chutzpah.

    Chutzpah, remember, is when a person who killed his parents begs the trial judge to be lenient because he is an orphan.

    Read Also: FG to prioritise satellite technology to advance national dev’t – Keyamo

    A different court that refused to be suborned has denied Yahaya Bello’s request, and the standoff continues between a resolute EFCC and an inventive fugitive.

    I return now, pardon the long digression, to the question I posed at the beginning:  How did we arrive at the point where the courts can lend their authority and majesty to block law enforcement from carrying out their legitimate duties, absent a breach of due process duly established, and absent a showing of probable cause?

    Its genesis is usually traced to the time of Peter Odili, governor of Rivers State, whose two-term tenure ended in 2007.  The EFCC moved to arrest him in the investigation of charges that he diverted a humongous amount of public funds to build and equip a private teaching hospital and medical school.

    They say his wife, a judge of the appellate court at the time, played a part in fashioning  his response:  Seek a perpetual order to restrain the EFCC and the police and any of their agents from arresting him and, it must be supposed, interfering with his enjoyment of his well-earned peace of mind.

    The injunction stands to this day.  Curiously, it was never appealed. Was that part of the bargain negotiated in the dark and dank recesses of the judiciary? We may never know.

    What we know is that the implications are far-reaching.  From restraining the police and law enforcement from carrying out their lawful duties, it is but several small steps away from restraining the courts from functioning.

    With Odili as precedent, the journey has begun here in earnest.  It remains to imagine or contemplate its probable course.

    One day, the dispossessed could seek an injunction restraining the Fire Service from combating a conflagration in the luxury estate in the neighbourhood on the ground that it was built with stolen funds.

    A litigant could seek an injunction blocking the establishment of new universities because the existing ones are ill-equipped, poorly funded, cater only to the elite, and stand to fall into utter decrepitude if scarce funds were to be used to build to recreate them instead of refurbishing those on the ground.

    A case like that could drag on for years, with untold consequences for higher education in general and the educational industries in particular.

    It could get worse. 

    One day, Boko Haram and its affiliates will seek a permanent court injunction restraining the government as well as voluntary agencies from imparting Western education in any guise or disguise in any institution, saying that it corrupts the mind and the body politic.  If its forum shopping is halfway diligent, it will find a court willing to grant its prayer.

    Being a creation of the law, the best authorities say, the courts positively must obey the injunction restraining the government.  If, by act or omission, the ruling is not appealed, it becomes the law of the land and remains as such until and unless it is set aside by a superior court.

    The case could go all the way to the Supreme Court and drag on for years, given the interminable delays the judicial system itself condones.  And while all this is going on, who can tell what might happen to the education industries?    

    Obtaining justice at the level of interpersonal relations will also be fraught.  It is not hard to imagine the usual people disinterring the musty archives and presenting as a binding precedent a court ruling from the Babandiga era, in which it was implied that a father could not bring a wrongful-death suit against the police when they killed only his litigious self.

    That day cannot be long in coming when, finally, the long-suffering United Litigants will petition the courts for an injunction restraining the National Assembly or a State Assembly in perpetuity from enacting laws designed ostensibly to promote good governance in Nigeria, whereas they only advance the good fortunes of the lawmakers and their fellow-travellers. 

    Leaving nothing to chance, United Litigants will, through the instrumentality of the same petition, seek to have declared null and void and of no consequences whatsoever any law or measure purported to have been enacted by the bodies aforementioned or their proxies.

    For good measure, they will ask the courts to commit to prison the President, the governor or any official who purports to sign into law any such measure purporting to issue from any source whatsoever.

    The foregoing has sought to explore only a few of the issues that are likely to surface, mutatis mutandis, from the ruling in Odili.  The surprise is that they have not yet surfaced. 

    The possibilities are, of course, endless.                                       

  • Nigerians’ nightmare

    Nigerians’ nightmare

    It’s been a little more than a week since Nigeria’s old nightmare crept upon us again. Never mind the usual rationalisations much of which range from plain asinine to the heinous about why OPEC’s leading producer of crude can’t get petrol to buy, it has become, for most citizens, a familiar window into the morass to which the country has fallen. For if Nigerians are by now familiar with the utter cluelessness of that rentier entity that once prided itself as strategic national institution, the joke out there now is how that old leopard has refused to change either in essence or in character long after the name change.

    Yes; even Nigerians with their infinite capacity to tolerate even the most heinous alibis must be asking themselves if indeed anything has changed between the past and the present. I am here referring to the transition of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to the so-called NNPC Ltd. For whereas Nigerians may have long complained to end about the old contraption –NNPC –its legendary corruption, opacity and lack of strategic focus; it is increasingly apparent that the successor-entity, NNPC Limited, with the same old cocktail of excuses, is proving to be no better.

    Read Also: AIDO holds 6th convention to celebrate African culture in Nigeria

    It could actually be said to be – in many respects – proving to be worse with some of the old vices mutating into new, perhaps more malignant ones! Imagine; NNPC Ltd treating Nigerians to the same old refrain about their need not to panic only because it claims it has some 1.5 billion litres of petroleum products available, enough to last for at least 30 days! Is that the issue? What of the question of how the system was overnight thrown into such degree of spasm and disequilibrium as currently being experienced across the country? Would that be too inconveniencing or self-indicting for comfort?

    Most probably in the NNPC Ltd book, Nigerians are expected to accept the situation as some chance occurrence over which the corporation had little or no control! Does anyone still ask whether anything has changed?

    Of course, the story out there is more complex than the NNPC Ltd has managed to put out. Surely, the number one problem is inadequate supply. As the sole importer of fuel at this time, it bears huge chunk, if not the principal responsibility for the current crisis. The fuel marketers in their emphatic push-back on the NNPC Ltd claims have since addressed the issue as forcibly as they could – which is that the country presently does not have enough fuel to go round. Outside of that, a source actually told me last week that the other factor, which no one wants to talk about, is that the NNPC Ltd, for reasons best known to it, decided to use private depots to service the system rather than its own depot for its fuel imports. The source claims that the NNPC depot would have been more robust, equitable and hence would have benefitted the system more! And so in opting for the private depots which is in fact not free, the few, mostly private but favoured outlets (with limited distribution spread) are able to access the quantity available to their heart’s delight while the others not so favoured have to pay premium to access what is on offer! In other words, a return to the same old racket where cronyism – as against market rules – rules!

    See where the problem lies?

    Yes, the NNPC Ltd may even have 1.5 billion litres of products or more. This, in itself, does not guarantee that the products will go round. To the extent that the distribution is still based on its preferred but curious model, the pressure is unlikely to ease anytime soon! Little wonder why the so-called black market for fuel has been thriving. Yes; yours truly bought a litre of fuel at Omu-Aran, Kwara State for N1,500 penultimate Sunday! Don’t ask me if I had a choice! I wish I had!

    Now, so much for the corporation’s quest for believability; Tuesday last week, its spokesperson, Femi Soneye, had assured that the current shortage would abate by May 1. Well, that has not happened. Remember that the same corporation had sometime last year promised the December 2023 delivery date for the Port Harcourt refinery. That, too, didn’t happen. Last month, it again promised that loading by marketers from that refinery would begin. Again, Nigerians are still waiting for that to happen. Now, don’t ask me whether the other Port Harcourt refinery – the older one that is – will ever see the light of day; or the one in Warri or even Kaduna – all of which the NNPC Ltd had promised would soon come on-stream! Your guess is as good as mine!

    Which of course pops up the question – why are our officials so hungry for the klieg light, even when nothing substantive are on ground to suggest a new dawn for the corporation? Hasn’t the country been sold a proverbial pig in the poke?

    Someone once ask yours truly about the role of the regulator – the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA in all of these. I wish I knew! The much I know is that whereas its predecessor, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) was once upon a time described as toothless; NMDPRA seems to have chosen to remain in the sleep mode since its establishment – leaving Nigerians to wonder if the industry’s governance framework – the Petroleum Industry Act – as sold – isn’t exactly a hoax!

    That is the situation – the sum total of the unfolding national tragedy.

    As for the Nigerian nightmare; don’t ask me if it will ever end. If I may put matters simply, there is, presently, no end in sight!  Not with the NNPC Ltd as confused as ever about its essence! Imagine a corporation that has had a whole of its lifetime playing at the margins suddenly wanting to be everything in the industry – from upstream, midstream and downstream – all at the same time!

    Even if we indulge the corporation with its fancy dream of seeking to take on the world, shouldn’t its charity rather begin with the basics – like for instance, fixing its obsolete products pipeline network so critical to its business and the industry – without which the sector will continue to limp?

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has no doubt taken a significant step to reset the industry. What is doubtful is that the current leadership actually possess the fire to give the industry not just the verve but the strategic direction that is needed at this time. Clearly, if rewards and sanctions are to have meaning in these parts, a shock therapy – from the president – may not be out of place given all that has happened in the last few days.

  • DSTV: Of market and its malcontents

    DSTV: Of market and its malcontents

    You, dear reader already know where the above title was borrowed from. It is straight from Prof Joseph Stiglitz’s acclaimed work with the title Globalization and Its Discontents. Although different in their broad areas of interest, I consider the title apt to underlie what I now perceive as the culture of ceaseless hounding of corporate entities in the guise of consumer resistance.
    It was my late Professor Olatunde Oloko’s undergraduate class in the early 80s that Talcott Parson’s functional imperatives first caught my youthful imagination not just as a living concept that underlies the rationale of any organisation but as a critical factor of its survival. Those were the days of starry-eyed, binary Marxian idealism where labour and capitalist were supposedly on polar ends of the societal wealth divide, in which societal progress was measured only by the destruction of the old older and the emergence of the new. Nonetheless, it was also a measure of the profound intellectual honesty of the time that issues were appropriately framed as mere paradigms in what was truly engaging search for understanding the complexities of human evolution.
    Today, whereas the fad about Marxism and its strident denunciation of the capitalist appropriation of the ‘surplus value’ has since died, not a few still think that the pre-eminent factor of survival, in maintaining equilibrium should be thrown overboard – no thanks to market malcontents!
    So here we are – with my subconscious stirred into the theoretical excursions in the wake of Nigerians latest round of ‘holy’ tirade against Multichoice – since its alter ego – DSTV, announced another upward review of tariff last week. Trust Nigerians in such situation not to take prisoners, hell has literally, been let loose over nothing really!
    “The review is unacceptable; in fact, satanic” – I have heard some say moments after – never mind the rationale given by the broadcast entertainment outfit, which is that the forces of economics dictated the move at this time. I heard not even a few whispers that the government ‘do something’ about the obduracy of our ‘insane’ service providers – which they trenchantly mischaracterised as shylock-ism! Over all, the subtle suggestion, and that is in nearly all the submissions I came across, is not just that the Nigerian consumers should have none of it, but that that the government, through the consumer protection agency, should actually find a way to impose a price cap on a private entity so the ordinary folks could breathe!
    That is supposed to be the way of the free market economy a la Nigeriana – a clime where although some economic actors of note – from cement manufacturers, to electricity service providers, right up to the retailer next door – have justifiably exercised their rights to adjust product prices, a player like Multichoice is expected to hold things down, with the government – the same apparatus that has a hell of trouble delivering the enabling public good – expected to step in as the enforcer!
    Does it bother Nigeria’s outraged company that Star Times has also increased its tariff; or Nextflix? What of Nigerian Breweries Plc that has, this year alone, raised product prices no less than three times, or Guinness and International Breweries that have followed suit. Need I add the airlines, which, caught in the wave of the inclement operating conditions, have also had to raise fares?
    I love the way an X (twitter) user @Letter_to_Jack – thanks to Punch – captured the situation: “Electricity tariffs increased: Small rage. Cement prices through the roof: Small rage. Diesel to 1700/L at a point: Small rage. Indomie at 13k = small rage. DSTV increases prices: OUTRAGE! At this point, you’d think DSTV/MultiChoice is the only trigger Nigerians have.”
    That is framing the situation elegantly!
    Does it matter that the single common denomination in all of these is the intolerable operating conditions which those entities are forced to put up with?
    Or is it a case of some economic players expected to find the situation more tolerable than others? Does it speak to anything fundamental that the telecommunications companies also came out last week to say that they too are considering raising their tariffs?
    So much for the latest ding-dong between some vociferous Nigerians and Multichoice; the issues, hardly new, merely draws from that same the old but jaded script. Ordinarily distilled, they fall into three parts: the right of a service provider to determine its tariff based on the interplay of internal costs and environmental dynamics; the issue of pay-as-you-go which some see as a matter of value-for-money but which the service provider insists is misconceived; and that it is not technologically feasible under their service model; and finally, the field of play of the regulator in maintaining the sector’s equilibrium. Fully understood, it comes to the fundamental question of whether or not Nigerians would ever allow the same set of cherished rules to prevail for all classes of corporate players.

    Read Also: HIV/AIDS: NACA to tackle mother-to-child transmission frontally


    Let’s start with the first identified issue. I mean the sheer ill-logic of an external body – regulator, parliament or whatever – asserting the right to set the price on a good or service over whose input costs it does control? That would be crazy! Once upon a time, it was Babatunde Raji Fashola who, as minister in charge of housing reminded Nigerians that whereas their quest for low cost, affordable housing is legitimate, there is (as yet) no low cost cement or inputs on the basis of which that legitimate policy ‘construct’ could be formulated! Simply put: like it or not, not only does economics retain its primacy, it trumps everything else.
    I actually thought that was hitting the nail on the head! In other words, hate as Nigerians might, of the averment by that distinguished public servant, the policy makers can only afford to ignore the dictates of the market to their peril! That is wisdom.
    On the second, I do think that the matter ought to have been settled by now. Thanks to Nigerians love for their love for comparisons; it seems one instance when a service provider cannot be compelled to adopt a model that it deems not feasible any more than Globacom was compelled by the National Communications Commission (NCC) to adopt per second billing system. Competition and technology took care of that. Lest we forget: the clamour for telecoms tariff reduction was roundly rebuffed by President Obasanjo, who, unlike many of today’s hyperactive National Assembly members, understood the danger of staying in the comfy corridors of parliament to decree prices for other peoples’ products!
    In any case, no one has yet disproved Multichoice’s insistence that the whole notion of pay-per-view is actually misconceived. I add that the market out there is big out enough for anyone willing to dare.
    On the third, ought to be forgiven for conflating the concept of value for money with affordability. For whereas the former could be deemed the province of regulation, nothing of the latter, which involves a strict interplay of market forces and economic decision, and so are quietly easily resolved on the individual’s scale of preference, comes anywhere the sphere of regulation! Most certainly, none could be said to inform the perennial hounding of Multichoice over its legitimate quest for corporate survival. That was perhaps why in 2015, the two public interest lawyers – Osasuyi Adebayo and Oluyinka Oyeniji who had approached a Federal High Court in Lagos to challenge Multichoice’s right to increase tariffs could not have their way since in the opinion of the court, the duo was simply not obliged to use the company’s products!
    It seems to me time Multichoice is allowed to breathe.

  • Yoruba nation and sundry delusions

    Yoruba nation and sundry delusions

    Democratic Republic of Yoruba (DRY) – isn’t that the very epitome of a dry joke?
    Which was why before you could say “Gbogungboro!”, Prof. Banji Akintoye, eminent professor of history, grand doctrinaire of Oodua Republic and theorist-in-chief of Yoruba Nation, had disowned the Ibadan tragic romantics of April 13, with the same fervour as he had serenaded Sunday Igboho’s earlier rascality on the same cause.
    And Igboho himself! Wasn’t he too, on the double, doing a fervent relay of refutations! — first, a disavowal, posthaste? Then, his lawyer’s forceful formal denial?
    Where, in God’s name, is that pre-Benin Republic gung-ho guy, with imperious dash to protect Yoruba “nesan” and defend Yoruba “territory”?
    And Gani Adams! He too bawled and hollered, as he scurried from the Ibadan sorry comics. True, at the height of Igboho’s impetuous dash, the Aare Ona Kakanfo mascot of a dead empire cautioned Igboho not to subvert the “struggle”.
    Yet, Adams too was among the South West non-state actors punching above their weight, at the feverish froth of anti-Fulani hysteria.
    Then, Muhammadu Buhari was President; and President Bola Tinubu was himself tarred as some “Afonja”, read: Yoruba traitor-in-chief.
    Still, his “crime” was no more than yoking a legitimate political alliance that birthed a North West-South West entente, which delivered federal power to his hitherto opposition fragments in 2015.
    These folks lost out; but powered back with fearsome anti-Fulani bogey, hidden behind heady ethnic jingoism, powered by preening Yoruba ultra-nationalism.
    “Gbogungboro”, you will recall, was Professor Akintoye’s now rested column in The Nation. It did for the Yoruba what Camara Laye’s Radiance of the King and the French Negritude Movement did for the Black race: over-praised the past of both almost to a stupor.

    Read Also: OPC to Tinubu: don’t allow Niger Republic coup distract your govt


    Gbogungboro soon burnt itself out. But its intellectual ferment would later find a new and vicious home in Yoruba arrogance and gangling hubris during PMB’s Presidency.
    In that high noon of ceaseless plots, the ubiquitous “Fulani herdsmen” committed every crime in the Yoruba country. That formidable band had retired every Yoruba criminal from home turf!
    That hysteria of froth and bile joyfully re-made a nation-wide security meltdown into a high Fulani plot to subjugate Yorubaland, simply because a Fulani man was president.
    Why, from Olusegun Obasanjo, arch-nationalist and former President of the Federal Republic, came own theory of “Fulanization” — the same “Fulanization” that, in 1999, had romped him into the Presidency, with the Yoruba screeching blue murder!
    That was the explosive ogre that brought Sunday Igboho storming into the picture as “saviour” of the Yoruba interior from the imperial Fulani — Igboho, hitherto known as a partisan fixer and enforcer.
    But Professor Akintoye’s Yoruba Nation theorizing white-washed all of that — and pronto, a swashbuckling Yoruba redeemer had galloped into town!
    Yes, the good professor was right: the April 13 comedy was indeed “insanity in Ibadan”. But the root of that insanity was the Yoruba Nation whim, sans any Yoruba mandate, beyond the tragic presumption of excitable activists, projecting own caprices.
    It’s rather rich, therefore, for these principal actors to pass the buck and scurry away from the monster they created — more so when Prof. Akintoye, Igboho and one Ola Ademola just fired a letter to President Tinubu, demanding “Yoruba exit” from Nigeria. That letter — no surprise — crawled with wild Fulani distemper.
    Between the “peaceful” bragging of the Akintoye/Igboho letter of April 17 and the DRY damp squib of April 13, it isn’t clear which was more reckless.
    On whose authority are Akintoye/Igboho demanding a negotiation team, within two months, to cook a deal on Yoruba exit from Nigeria? What arrant presumption! But it’s good the Federal Government has met that letter with the icy snub it deserves.
    Indeed, the entire gambit could be traced to an Ibadan parley of 22 August 2019, that “elected” Akintoye as “Asiwaju Yoruba”, itself a classic in the Yoruba nest of intrigues.
    Despite wild Fulani-baiting, PMB just won re-election. Tinubu had been “eternal” Asiwaju of Lagos. Nothing suggested an “Asiwaju Yoruba” fitted into his strategic plan.
    Yet, Tinubu (who wasn’t even there or represented at that assembly) got “nominated”; and was promptly “defeated” by Akintoye as the Asiwaju Yoruba! Talk of a “me-too” syndrome! It was the classic Yoruba “egbinrin ote”!
    The ensuing uproar did little to douse the zeal of the Yoruba Nation lobby, with Baba Akintoye’s ceaseless theorizing; and Igboho’s hare-brained street forays — until the Igboho battering ram ran itself into a ditch (while those egging him on fled); and cooled his heels in a Benin Republic jail, despite the empty braggadocio from the Akintoye lobby.
    The Ibadan DRY revolution of April 13 — as comic as it was tragic — was the zenith of that insanity.
    It’s funny though: the shrill grandstanders and rabid hell raisers, on Oodua Republic and allied fancies, deserted the sorry ragtag that tried to “capture” the Oyo State Secretariat, and the historic Parliament Building of the old Western Region!
    At last, the bemused majority just denounced that costly gambit, with the Ooni of Ife — the No. 1 moral force of Yoruba traditional feudalism — disowning the DRY sponsors, with their rag-tag army, as mere impostors that represent no Yoruba cause.
    About time!
    Yet, the Yoruba ought to have, long ago, nipped in the bud this lunatic relay of costly presumptions and comic delusions, given the Igbo experience next door.
    The Akintoye lobby waxed poetic on a “Yoruba Nation” with a mandate from no one. When the chips were down, they blamed a “lunatic fringe”, led by Dupe Onitiri. Some defence!
    Yet, Prof. Akintoye’s Yoruba radicalism at old age hardly differs from Prof. Chinua Achebe’s exit drama. That iconic writer left his people that bilious book, There Was A Country, with its skewed history of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970).
    That woke up the buried ghosts of Biafra. Now, the good professor sleeps in peace. But his Ndigbo live in pieces — no thanks to the IPOB anarchy loosed upon the East.
    Nigeria must re-federalize to give everyone a fair deal. But that must not be through vacuous ethnic pride, and vicious ethnic-baiting — like IPOB’s, the Yoruba Nation lobby’s choice strategy.
    For the elite that crave ethnic tension and combat to stay relevant, this “lowly” traders’ guild, from Mandate Market in Ilorin, Kwara State, is rather telling: “United Association of All Tribes Perishable Traders of Pepper, Tomatoes and Onions”! These folks buy and sell, totally blind to the ethnic shade of the next shop or stall.
    Even the market hoi polloi know that hunger – not tribe – is their enemy. Let the manipulating elite realize this truth and know peace!