The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Abuja cow tribunal

    Abuja cow tribunal

    Last week Monday, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, swore in 45 ministers, to constitute the Federal Executive Council, as required by the 1999 constitution (as amended). Nigerians anxiously look forward to the capacity of the Tinubu cabinet, made up of talented technocrats and politicians to unlock the economic potentials of a country in dire need of economic rejuvenation. Among the notable ministers, is the former governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, who is the minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

    A man of theatre and accomplishment, Wike immediately sparked a row when he thundered that he would pull down illegal structures to restore the Abuja master plan, regardless of whose ox would be gored. He stirred the hornets’ nest of land speculators when he promised to revoke the land allocations of those who have failed to develop them as provided by law. He dared the itinerant cattle herders, who see the flowered and paved streets of Abuja as their customary estate. But some commentators are daring Wike to walk his talk, and face the consequences.

    Read Also: JUST IN: Tinubu to ministers: Roll out policies that will revive Nigeria’s economy

    A commentator said that once a new FCT minister boasts that his priority is to restore the Abuja master plan, he dismisses the person as unserious, because it is impossible to restore the master plan. He also claimed that it is anachronistic for someone to be boasting that he would restore a plan designed more than 40 years ago, instead of thinking how to review the archaic plan in the light of overriding developments.

    For this column, one boast which will task Wike’s implementation stratagem is the eradication of open grazing in Abuja, considering the sense of entitlement of the practitioners of that manifestly unfair business practice. For those who have been deceived to believe that open grazing is an unchangeable cultural practice, which requires understanding from other non-practitioners, this column has severally argued otherwise, in the past. Clearly, open grazing is an economic practice which allows owners of cattle to enjoy economic benefit of rearing cows at minimal cost.

    That culture endures because the owners of the cows are economic shylocks, who do not see the necessity of liberating their kit and kin. If the owners are fair minded, they would rather support any program that would liberate the herders from roaming the wild, and encourage them to live in communities where they could go to school and enjoy other socio-economic benefits of a modern life. There are also allegations that the herders are missionaries and agents of counter-civilization and conquest.

    As a friend of former governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, Wike should be privy to the problems that befell his friend, following the crisis of confidence between the governor and the federal government over the handling of the herders-farmers clashes in that state. On many occasions, Ortom openly accused President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime of engineering insecurity and mayhem in his state, for untoward expansionist agenda of the Fulani. At other times, Ortom claimed that the former president used the nation’s security agencies to provide covert support for that agenda.

    Wike will recall that as a counter to the open grazing law passed by the Benue State House of Assembly, criminals alleged to be Fulani militia intermittently attacked communities in the state, killing hundreds, burning entire communities and engaging in genocidal acts, to foster open grazing. Some herders defied the state government and breached the open grazing law, daring the governor to do his worst. When the governor seemed defiant to the acrid warnings of the herders, he was attacked when he visited his farmland at the outskirts of the state capital, Makurdi. 

    Many other states came under siege over their efforts to enforce an end to open grazing. Some states were afraid to pass the law banning open grazing, because of the massive lobby by the Buhari government. Simon Lalong of Plateau State, now a minister, who resorted to political détente as a political strategy suffered severe political backlash at the 2023 polls. And tragically, his rapprochement could not save communities in his state from attacks, killings, and malicious destruction of property by the rampaging militia.

    So, how will Wike end open grazing in Abuja, without backlash from the economic exploiters masquerading as cultural practitioners of a destabilizing economic activity? As he would soon realize, those who do not wish the nation’s capital the dignity of streets devoid of cow dungs and its putrid smell, would place obstacles on his partway to keeping Abuja clean. They would throw laws, politics, religion, and culture at him, to maintain the status quo. They may even resort to the rough tactics of destabilizing the federal capital as witnessed in many states.

    This column hopes the federal executive and legislative councils would throw their weight behind the new minister to sanitize Abuja. It is a shame that the laudable efforts of Nasir El Rufai, while he was the minister of the federal capital territory under President Olusegun Obasanjo, incrementally degenerated, until the mess left behind by the immediate past minister, Mohammed Bello, under President Muhammadu Buhari. Obviously, for a minister to succeed, he must have the implicit thrust of his principal, the president.

    The task ahead of Wike and his fellow ministers are enormous. As they ought to know, the biggest challenge facing them is the stabilization of the economy of the country. The nation’s currency has to be stabilized and inflation tamed. Again, what is paid to workers currently as the minimum wage is provocative and should be addressed as soon as practicable. The education sector, particularly tertiary education, with emphasis on university education, needs immediate attention. The federal and state government should quickly reach a sustainable compromise with the Academic Staff Union of Universities, the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics and that of Colleges of Education.

    Insecurity across the country may have tinned down, but those in charge must realize that some of the causative factors of insecurity are seasonal. Even in rural settings, when the community are in their harvesting season, peace and tranquillity reigns, unlike during and after planting season when hunger reigns across the land. So, security agencies must plan precautionary measures to forestall the worsening of insecurity, as the high season of insecurity approaches.

    Even the challenge of open grazing gets worse during the dry season, when the northern part of the country becomes unhospitable for the cattle herders, and they are forced by survival instincts to head south, which inevitably results in the clashes with farmers whose crops turn to food for cattle. So, the time to plan is now. Cows must not become a dictator in our lives. But how will Minister Wike manage those who will defy his plans? May be he will seek for laws to set up tribunals to try cows and their herders.

  • All alone, Mr. President

    All alone, Mr. President

    It’s all so reminiscent of the poet, Gabriel Okara’s ‘The Fisherman’s Invocation’.

    “The celebration is now ended,” he wrote, “but the echoes are all around/whirling like a harmattan whirl-wind throwing dust around/and hands cover faces and feet grope …”

    The government of President Bola Tinubu, with a near-full compliment of ministers, is all but made up.  Of 48 ministers, 45 are already in; three, expected.

    The sheer number — the highest since 1999 — has evoked the cliché of “bloated” (which it could well have been); against its supremely preferred opposite: “lean-and-mean”, among the many armchair critics, making eternal clatter in the media.

    Read Also: JUST IN: Tinubu to ministers: Roll out policies that will revive Nigeria’s economy

    Still, beyond the easy groupthink of thundered doom, simply because of the lean economic times, “bloated” is no vice any more than “lean-and-mean” is a virtue.  It all depends on how a government deploys its talents, to achieve its goals.

    A government can adopt the accountant’s ethos: severely counting the beans; brutally  cutting costs; or be the audacious marketer: splashing the cash, in the supreme gusto  of landing the big trove, so long as it suffers no financial recklessness.

    Still, each would pay (or earn plaudits) for its adopted philosophy — and so, would the Tinubu Presidency.  That about sums up the sanctity of starting right.

    So, after all the zip-and-zoom, and the go-go talk by new ministers, dazzling with a can-do spirit of a new order, even the reception shrieks are becoming a distant echo.

    Now, the president and his (wo)men are all but alone, faced with the clinical cold of it all; by the starkness — if not outright heaviness — of their daunting historic tasks.  

    Alone.  All alone.  At the top — and just as well!

    Still, earliest nay-voices boom.  Some lobbies appear somewhat determined, fair or foul, to run out of town Hannatu Musawa, the new minister of Art, Culture and Creative Economy, even before her ministerial tour begins.  

    They claim she’s a serving National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member; and growl no “corper shun!” can legally and legitimately be minister of the Federal Republic!

    Others already wax lyrical over the alleged duplication of roles and non-specificity of assigned ministerial mandates: making a huff over “innovation” domiciled in both the Communications & Digital Economy; and Science & Technology ministries.

    Without splitting hairs, “innovation” is neither here nor there.  Indeed, it could be the hallmark of any ministry, depending on its creative zip.  

    Still, for all it is worth, the administration should take early notes of these faint echoes before they assume rumbling thunders, particularly with an eternally distracted media, ever chasing explosive shadows over quiet substance.

    Still, for once, what the media must do, if it must be part of the solution in these troubled times, is clamber off its noise-making zone; and play in the more exerting pedestal of clinical x-ray of policies, generating vigorous debates and helping to birth possible solutions to long-running national challenges — from its long-cherished bangs of sterile howling and barren finger-pointing. 

    But that might be asking for too much; and the administration should take note. 

    Again — and this bears re-stating: it will soar or sink by the sheer rigour of own reason; the grit to push through its agenda; or even the cunning of its wiles: to game its eternal fiends posturing as pro-people crusaders, in a mutual showdown in brutal realpolitik!

    It’s not always pretty.  But the one that blinks last scales the brink — and laughs last!

    Still, if folks would just levitate over the easy and the noisy, they would perhaps see, instead of 48 “bloated” ministers and hangers-on, just ministerial clusters not more than 12!

    These clusters, though grafted from differing ministries, form the building blocs to pivot exciting new opportunities; built upon very challenging fundaments, erected by the Muhammadu Buhari order from 2015, after the wanton crash of the PDP years.

    Now, is the President, though commander-in-chief, policy musical-in-chief enough to weld and whip these concentric clusters into winsome harmonics that not only capture his vision but also brings it to life with rare élan, class and dash? 

    Again, the start isn’t always pretty — just as the mess in making sausages — but the end graft might well be worth the trouble.

    Take Wale Edun and his Finance and Economy Coordination ministry.  Junking subsidy without local refining and floating the Naira may well sate instant elite (read market) greed.  But it’s a double-whammy that further roasts mass pockets.

    But all these market reforms, complete with tax administration and revenue-collection tinkering, are to fix the state’s financial infrastructure.  Capture more cash and shovel them towards financing core goals.  So, you’ll begin to talk less debts but more revenue.  But it’s no open sesame.  It’s exerting fresh thinking and back-breaking work.

    Then, the cluster of two that virtually runs through everything: Justice, which produces a legal cover for everything — isn’t democracy the celebration of the rule of law?  And Power: which energizes everything — didn’t God say let there be light: and day and night — and life as we know it — were birthed?

    While Justice goes ahead to fortify Defence, Police, the courts and internal security (which by the way, by the administration’s pretexts encapsulates food security), Power provides the spark for everything: from agricultural processing, to manufacturing and all types of businesses.  If this twin-cluster thrives, the prospects would be very bright.

    Then, the other “coordination”: Health and Social Welfare.  Add Education to that cluster and you’re thinking, pin-point, of human infrastructure: health, education and general social wellness.  That’s the bastion of real development: human development.

    No less exciting: the core physical infrastructure ministries: Transport (auto and rail), Aviation (air, safety regulations and infrastructure) and Marine and Blue Economy (Shipping and Maritime).

    This core, calibrated into three, holds the ace for economic rejuvenation and eventual redemption.  The tri-ministers here are condemned to succeeding — or it would be bad news for the polity and the president, were they to falter.  Add enhanced agricultural output and processing, and you can build on the agriculture-infrastructure hub of the Buhari years.

    But on that plain, it’s dawn yet.  For all its borrowing, the Buhari order only raised infrastructure-to-GDP ratio from 1:5 to 2:5.  In 2015, the economy was near-dead!  So, these ministers must push that ratio to at least 3.5 to 5.  That would be brutal work!

    Still, it’s rather exciting that a David Umahi is taking over from a Babatunde Fashola, as Works and Housing minister.

    Fashola, the golden boy of Lagos governance, and Rotimi Amaechi were Buhari’s most sparkling infrastructure ministers.  Umahi worked wonders in Ebonyi, and is raring to go as Works czar. Other things being equal, that corridor looks rather promising.

    Draw Communication and Digital Economy and Science & Technology as a symbiotic cluster, and you could be looking at a putative bastion for youth-powered jobs, particularly in the digital and technical fronts.

    Can President Tinubu weave these clusters into a winning symphony of turn-around governance?  Time will tell!

    Still, let there be less clatter!  Let the lonely souls at the top think!  Fond hope!

    •Reader apology: A bad malaria kept Ripples off this page last week — fulsome apologies! 

  • Desperadoes at work

    Desperadoes at work

    Free speech is not absolutely free.

    In every jurisdiction, it is settled law that when speech or is with good reason considered likely to result in “substantive evils” that the constituted authorities have a right to prevent, it may be suppressed or punished.

    The phrase is from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s opinion for the Supreme Court of the United States in Schenck (1919). Justice Holmes backed his opinion with a telling analogy that has endured over the decades:  If a person shouts “fire” in an empty theatre when there is no fire, no punishment will lie.  He is more likely to be considered a nut case, I might add.

    But if he were to shout “fire” in a crowded theatre where there is no fire, he is a candidate for the maximum punishment the law allows.  For the alarm would set off a stampede as theatre-goers dash toward the nearest exits, and many would be trampled underfoot and  crushed.

    Some four decades after Schenck, the United States Supreme Court held in Yates (1957) and in subsequent rulings that speech, alone, and even speech advocating violence, enjoyed First Amendment protection and should  not be suppressed, much less punished. But speech directed at producing imminent lawless action did not merit such protection.

    The foregoing is a preface to this intervention on the taking down by the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON)  the billboard  that sprang up in strategic locations in Abuja and other places proclaiming that “All eyes are on the judiciary.”

    Read Also: Between Oshiomhole and the desperadoes

    Of course, all eyes should always be on the judiciary, given its centrality in the polity.  But coming at a time when the courts are set to rule on the validity of the last presidential election, there is something insidious about the message.  It is all the more insidious when one considers how individual judges and even attorneys who have nothing to do with the cases have been pilloried and slandered and tarred with unsubstantiated charges of perjury, and of subverting and corrupting due process.

    The calumniators fear that the courts may not rule in favour of the candidates challenging the result of the election at issue, and are determined to foreclose that outcome by every means; hence their resort to all the base tactics they have been employing across media platforms, including slanting or faking the news, outright intimidation of judicial officers, and impugning the progress and the machinery of justice.

    In his opinion piece for this newspaper, my colleague Lawal Ogianegbon entered this terse comment on their scorched-earth tactics:  “Let the judiciary breath.”  All who are committed to the due process of the law should endorse that plea.

    As with all our national institutions, there is much to say against the judiciary.  It is far from perfect.  It often moves in mysterious ways.  Timidity often governs its proceedings, and it has now and again proved susceptible to corrupting influences.

    Still, its tempered interpretation of the law is to be preferred to the frenzied agitation of the mob.

    Plus, the judiciary is the only one we have.  And when it appears that some vested interests seem determined to scare it into following a particular line, it is important to insist that it be allowed to operate free of such malignant influences.

    Context is almost everything.  So, it is necessary to consider the context in which the speech and action at issue occurred. 

    The billboard message carried no identifiable sponsor, its promoters merely ascribing it to “Nigerians in the Diaspora.”  There are no such animals.  That fanciful term is a study in            obfuscation.  The body it seeks to identify has no concrete existence.  I am a Nigerian living in the United States as an individual, not as a witting or even unwitting member of a collectivity.

    My opinion has never been sought or solicited on any on any matter by any group purporting to be an organ representing “Nigerians in the Diaspora.”  Nor have thousands of my fellow expatriate Nigerians in the United States ever been canvassed.  The label is fake through and through, and not just in this particular instance but wherever and whenever it is employed.

    The entire operation was stamped with duplicity.  The  message that ended up on the billboard had been rejected categorically by the regulatory authority ARCON on the ground that it smacked of harassment and intimidation of the judiciary, and could stir the public to lawless action.  But its promoters could not care less.

    One version of the message, ARCON, had been approved in error, by officials who apparently were not seized of the potential consequences of publishing it.  If it  was taken down, along with the other version that was not authorized, a case can still be made that the recourse is reasonably justified at this fraught period, and is not a derogation of democracy or freedom           of speech

    Taking down the billboard then, cannot be construed as an assault on freedom of speech, much less as the beginning of a full-blown “dictatorship” in Nigeria, as one hysterical commentator declared.  Democracy and freedom of speech have to be protected from those who would employ them to subvert, if not destroy, the very ends they claim to value most.

    Nor does the desperation of the promoters help their cause.  The misnamed social media is perfused with their fulminations every passing day.   They have even turned human bodies decked in T-shirts of all shapes and sizes emblazoned with their insidious advocacy into platforms  of mass communication; so also have they done to carry-on bags and shopping bags, and just about anything on which their message can be inscribed.

    Why the desperation?  What are they afraid of?  Why are they so determine to make the judiciary run according to their craven desire?

    It does them no credit that they are borrowing from the playbook of the addled, disgraced, foul-mouthed, twice-impeached, rabble-rousing, fake news-peddling, conspiracy-theorizing and totally amoral former president of the United States, Donald Trump, in his demonic bid to wrest by blackmail, threat of dire consequences, incitement, coarse and vulgar abuse, and brazen lying, a victory in the 2020 election he had lost decisively.

    He had challenged the outcome in more than 50 lawsuits and had lost every time, but that has not deterred him from pursuing his deluded claim.

    Advocates for electoral justice and the rule of law in Nigeria ought to choose a better model. 

  • Palliatives must alleviate

    Palliatives must alleviate

    A buzz word has been added to the lexicology of political governance by politicians and even the military. They call it kinetic and non-kinetic methods of dealing with the fury and aggravated madness that come from the hungry and bad Nigerians, respectively. Governors in whose domains there are crisis and banditry talk of applying kinetic and non-kinetic methods to the raging challenges. Clearly what the users in the Nigerian context mean is that they use the soft and hard approach to solve those challenges.

    Luckily for the governors, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu last week approved a whooping N5 billion per state as palliative to tame the gruelling challenges faced by Nigerians, especially the poor. It is such palliatives that politicians and even the military refer to as non-kinetic method. This column hopes the governors know that if the palliative is not well shared to ameliorate the hunger in the land, it may create circumstances that could lead to the use of kinetic measures to deal with.

    Read Also: I’m open to criticism, says new AGF Fagbemi

    For the governors who were not there during the COVID-19 crisis and the resultant palliative war across many states, and even the EndSARS uprising, they should not make the mistake of treating the money due to their states as a private war chest to do with as they wish. They must use the money to deal with the brewing crisis waiting to erupt. They should invest in public transportation programme in cooperation with the labour unions in their state, to stem the anger amongst the workers, while awaiting the central negotiation for new wages.

    The state could also pay up some long outstanding pensions and salaries, abandoned by their predecessors. Some can also create state-based social register of the poor and make at least a one-off payment to ameliorate poverty for those hardest hit by the fuel subsidy removal and ravaging food inflationary pressure. Another non-kinetic measure is the purchase and distribution of basic food items to households. Governors can also consider distributing vouchers to its workers or making a one off payments as hardship allowance.

    Of course, not the abusive hardship allowance collected by members of the National Assembly, who recently made a joke of the poor in their chambers. The senate president, Goodswill Akpabio in presenting a motion by Senator Akintunde Abiodun of Oyo Senatorial district on stopping the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and distribution companies from increasing their tariff, was accused of mocking the poor, when he referenced it as “let the poor breathe” motion. Though the senate president has apologized, those scandalized may be waiting for their pound of flesh.

    Regardless of the motive of the senate president, he struck a chord that the poor needs to be allowed to breathe, and if I may add, so the nation can side-step a potential uprising over the economic pains ravaging the country. As has been rightly highlighted by experts, President Tinubu inherited an economic mess from the past regime, and unless he applies the difficult measures of subsidy removal and harmonization of the foreign exchange market, Nigeria would plunge further into an economic quagmire, which may consume the country.

    For this column, Nigeria is standing at crossroads. It either reforms with the attendant pains, but with a hope of better economic future if the reforms are well implemented; or avoid the difficult reforms and allow the economy to fail. The two roads are fraught with danger, but at least the reformatory road has the potential of birthing a new economically viable nation. Of course, if the reforms are not well thought out, the nation may yet be consumed by the fury in the streets.

    A peep into the economic statistics before the Tinubu presidency and the present inflationary pressure would explain the challenges faced by the country. As has been reported, President Muhammadu Buhari was literally operating with borrowed funds, both for recurrent and capital expenditure. Some statistics claimed that the country was spending about 95% of its total income on servicing its humongous debts, leaving the paltry balance for government expenditure. And experts agree that to unlock progress for our country at doldrums, the equation must change.

    The two measures taken so far by the Tinubu presidency, which is the removal of fuel subsidy and merging the foreign exchange market have been hailed. The outcome of those difficult but necessary measures is that the government at all levels is no more as broke as they were before the measures were taken. However, on the part of the people, the inflationary pressure put at 24.08% as at July is becoming nearly unbearable, necessitating the N5 billion per state intervention by the Tinubu administration.     

    Interestingly, the federal executive council has also been constituted yesterday, and while there is the concern about the large number of ministers, this column in promoting the emergence of the Tinubu presidency, always argued that the president’s special skill is to increase the size of the cake to be shared. So, the expectation is that while the expenses will grow, the result would glow. This writer agrees that at the current income capacity, Nigeria is comparatively a poor country. According to available statistics, Nigeria GDP is expected to reach $491.71 billion by end of 2023, while that of South Africa the second largest economy in Africa, will be $407.49 billion. But conversely, the per capita for South Africa is expected to reach $6043.00 by end of 2023, while that of Nigeria will reach $2523.00.

    So, for those who say Nigeria is the largest economy and bring out their vuvuzela to compare human and infrastructural development in other countries with the life of poverty Nigerians live, they miss the vital economic point that with a population of over 200 million, the GDP we relish is nothing. What is needed is to increase the wealth-creation capacity of businesses and governments at all levels. The proverbial Nigerian cake needs to be quadrupled if majority of Nigerians would be able to leave a life of a middle income nation.

    Of course, the road to that threshold would be fraught with many difficult patches both for the governments and the people. President Tinubu, an ex-governor and a people-person should understand and connect to the excruciating sufferings in the land. The way to go is to encourage transparency in governance at the federal, state and local government levels. If it requires publication of the accrued revenues to all tiers of government, and less ostentatious governmental expenses especially under his federal government control, so be it.

    Finally, the palliative shared by the Federal Government to the states, and hopefully by states to local governments must significantly alleviate the sufferings of the masses. Those in power must not ignore the tell-tale signs of a nation at it breaking point.

  • Emefiele: While men slept…

    Emefiele: While men slept…

    It is not typically the norm that the apex bank gets to make the front page of newspapers as ours has been doing of late; certainly not for those unsavoury things that the bankers’ bank and its erstwhile top gun are being linked of late. Even for all the strange things right up to the bizarre misbranding that happened to the institution under Godwin Emefiele, it is certainly a new thing the lender of the last resort, is not only being stripped of its traditional mystique, but is clothed with the most unflattering colours of impunity.

    We have seen some rather disturbing images of the institution in the past. Nigerians would most likely recall a former CBN governor being accused of doling a whopping N1.257 billion for lunch for policemen and private guards; of making bogus payments to airlines for currency distribution as well as holding an account balance of N1.423 billion for an unidentified customer since 2008. And yet another charge – alleged payment of N38.233 billion to the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company Plc in 2011 for the “printing of bank notes” whereas the turnover of the entire printing and minting company group is N29.370 billion”.

    Read Also: I’m open to criticism, says new AGF Fagbemi

    For most Nigerians however, the image of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) somewhat endured of an institution still largely steeped in best practices, a piggy bank where the nation’s vast trove of cash is warehoused for the public good and the place for the banks to run when things sunder; an institution not afraid to wield the big stick when the situation called for it. 

    Even when the institution appeared to have morphed into a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for all manners of schemes and purposes under the sun, there remained a multitude only too willing to give the bank the benefit of the doubt. Of course, if you were a beneficiary of those massive ‘interventions’ that have since turned to freebies under the most specious monetarism ever conceived by a financial services regulator – from the hundreds of billions spent on the scam called anchor growers scheme that has left the populace yearning for rice and more rice to the other sectoral interventions that ended up as a gross betrayal of our penchant to throw money at fundamental problems – you’d probably have a word of prayer for the ‘accident’ that was the immediate topmost banker.

    The lessons have been rather slow in coming, no doubt. The chicks, however, would appear to have come to roost soon enough. True, if the country saw the early signs of the affliction  in the unbridled incursion into the fiscal space by Godwin Emefiele’s apex bank, most Nigerians probably considered it a lesser affliction than the permanent ‘sleep mode’ of the do-nothing Buhari economic management team.

    Remember, we are referring here to a time when global oil prices headed south and production dwindled – a time the EMT, clearly out of their depth had no answers let alone the presence of mind to venture into any deep thinking. Theirs was to pile up debts and more debts even as the nation bled from forces that an otherwise serious leadership could have controlled or mitigated.

    Example: our paltry OPEC 1.6 million per day quota could not be met because the government couldn’t confront the menace of crude theft. Yes, a nation that one did two and half million barrels per day found itself barely able to do a quarter of that output. And with neither the capacity nor the will to ratchet up the tax to GDP ratio then at a measly 7.5 percent, the economic management team, faced with a revenue crisis, and without the foggiest idea of how to get out of the bind thought little of outsourcing the tedious work of finding a solution to a man ever too ready to play the errand boy to special interests. And our man: like the Idi Amin of old, decided to flood the space with massive amount of naira notes without as much a thought for national productivity or inflation, reducing the banks in the process, to mere guinea pigs in his one-track inflation targeting obsession.

    Sure enough, that bizarre orthodoxy that borders on brazen outlawry that characterised Emefiele’s tenure as CBN governor would eventuate in the N23 trillion overdrafts – the so-called ways and means that the nation’s treasury is currently burdened with.

    Even that would not compare with the mind-boggling arbitrariness and abuse of office that is currently the subject of an inquiry by a special investigator.

    That takes us to the CBN financial statements covering the period 2016 – 2022.

    While men slept…

    The above phrase echoed in my mind as I ruminated on some of the key findings that bordered crass mismanagement of the apex bank by Emefiele as captured in that financial statement. We are here referring to the financials covering the whole of six years of Emefiele (2016 to 2022) only now being made public after his suspension from office!

    Guess why no one bothered to ask? The N23-point something trillion naira ways and means advances! Why bother to open the books to those already drowning in illicit credit advances – a simple case of quid pro quo!

    We have further learnt from the books that Emefiele’s CBN borrowed humongous sums from foreign lenders while pledging our assets (securities) as collaterals. Courtesy of Emefiele, our dear country is indebted to two United States banks – JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs in the sum of $7 billion and $500 million respectively. Nigeria’s treasury – again thanks to Emefiele has, additionally, been committed to a 30-day forward contracts totalling N3.15 trillion with undisclosed counterparties; and this is aside another $3.2 billion owed an unnamed party as foreign currency forward contract payables—with no notes providing clarity on the transaction accompanying that item – all of them collateralised with Nigeria’s foreign assets!

    Read Also: Emefiele charged with fraud, abuse of office, others in Abuja

    And what did he do with the dollar-denominated loans? The answer, it would appear, is still blowing in the wind! As for the foreign reserves which Emefiele and company have long fetishized, we are learning yet again that the actual figures are only half of the tidy sum often advertised! Our dear country Nigeria, it would appear, may have long been on the wild ride to nowhere!

    I do understand why, in a country where sleaze comes in their dozens, and where the cost of impunity is denominated in dollars, the racy developments would shock no one; but then, to the extent that the underlying issues of opacity, of a clearly out-of-control monetary authority with chief texts in brazen outlawry that is unprecedented in the annals of the nation’s central banking history, the country can only overlook their dire implications to its peril.

    All said and done, Emefiele might well be the chief culprit in the slow-motion scandal; but then, so also are those who slept while the rape went on. They, the abettors, are no less sinning than the lone individual currently on trial. Like Emefiele, they deserve to have their days in court also!

  • Chronicle of a forlorn quest

    Chronicle of a forlorn quest

    Growing up, I wanted to be a lawyer or a journalist, and was admitted to the University of Ife (as it then was) to study law, and to the University of Lagos and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, to study journalism.  I chose journalism and Lagos.

    I was completing my first semester at the University of Lagos when I received Ahmadu Bello University’s reply to my application for admission to its Law programme.

    “We regret to inform you that your application was unsuccessful,” the letter said, adding portentously and gratuitously that “no further correspondence would be entertained on the matter.”

    The joke was on ABU.

    But ABU at least showed greater adherence to formal process than the UNN could even pretend to manifest in its handling of the entrance examination I sat in 1963 in Zaria for a place in its four-year degree programme in journalism. 

    A week later, I received a letter from UNN stating, “In view of your performance in the recent entrance examination to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, we regret to inform you that you did not qualify for admission.”

    The letter was written and mailed several days before the examination.

    Well into my journalism career as an opinion editor, I began to ask myself:  What next?  Journalists, the consensus seems to indicate, usually make good ambassadors.  Their training and work habits have equipped them to cultivate productive relations with the relevant publics, to absorb and digest large amounts of information, and to send home dispatches rich in detail and nuance – cables that influence if not shape relations between the home country and the country of accreditation.

    So, if the chance arose, I resolved that an ambassadorial position was going to be my second act – or rather the third, a teaching career having preceded my time in journalism.

    But I kept that resolve to myself.

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    Until one day in 1993 when, as the Falcon jet from military president Ibrahim Babangida’s executive fleet streaked across the Gulf of Guinea and down the South Atlantic en route the Angolan capital, Luanda, General Olusegun Obasanjo asked me what role I thought I could one day play in government.

    Obasanjo, a respected statesman-at-large, was flying to Angola to monitor the stalled peace process involving elements of Jonas Savimbi’s rebel UNITA and the MPLA government.  With him on the executive jet was his confidant, the suave and avuncular Obafemi Olapade, since deceased, a security aide, and this reporter.

    During our back-and-forth on the Nigerian condition, Olopade had turned to Obasanjo and said: “Segun, you must find something for this young man who quietly carries out all kinds of tasks for you,” or words to that effect.

    “Like what?” Obasanjo replied.  “Ngbo, Tunji, what would you like?

    An opening, at last!  “I would like to be an ambassador,” I replied as if cued, adding:  “Journalists usually make good ambassadors.”

    “Ha ha ha,” Obasanjo chuckled.  “So you want to go and enjoy abroad?   You are going nowhere.  Home is where the challenges are.”

    I was not surprised, then, that early in his first term as elected president, Obasanjo named me acting chief executive of the moribund Daily Times. Even if I had not relocated to the United States to resume university teaching, I would still have declined the offer.  The paper was so far gone in its decline that not even the most resourceful miracle worker could revive it.

    The thought of an ambassadorial posting did not bob up in my consciousness again until I retired from the Bradley faculty in 2015, though it did so not for the reasons people usually seek that position, as I will explain shortly.

    President Muhammadu Buhari’s powerful chief of staff, Abba Kyari, a one-time schoolmate with whom I had for years maintained a relationship anchored on discussions on public policy, asked whether I was available for some role in government.

    Pronto, I said I would like to serve an ambassador and followed up with my résumé.  Nothing came of it.  I would learn later from inside sources that my name had indeed been forwarded but that there were two nominees for the only vacant slot for my home state Kogi, and that the other nominee, being a long-standing friend of the President, had clinched it.  Who can begrudge him or blame the president? 

    My only regret was that it denied me a chance to appear before the Senate and do what I had always craved an opportunity to do since the National Assembly put all pretences away and revealed its true character as a self-dealing, money-grubbing, ward of the state right from its rebirth in Obasanjo first term. 

    It appropriated for its members a larger “furniture allowance” than Obasanjo judged reasonable.  With no thought for the future, its members gobbled up for next to nothing the elegant houses that had been built to serve as official quarters for lawmakers.

    “Allowances” piled up on scandalous allowances under all manner of pretexts –  a  monthly “wardrobe “ allowance twice the national minimum monthly wage, and a “recess” allowance.  There were allowances for newspapers, for utilities, and most ridiculous of all, for “hardship”, the exceedingly arduous task of contributing to the making of good laws for the governing of Nigeria.

    Some of the perks, it is necessary to concede, were approved by the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission.  But the lawmakers compensated themselves under the table –  or is it under the gavel – in so many other ways unknown to the public.  The institution that gives them cover is as transparent as a brick wall.

    They awarded themselves “constituency allowances” ostensibly meant to execute projects that would have an impact on the lives of the people who elected them.   A 2018 Report by the public watchdog BudgIT found that, of the 1497 projects with a price tag of N11 trillion it surveyed across 26 states, only 475 had been completed; 144 were “ongoing,” 536 were “not done,” 42 were “abandoned,” and 224 “could not be located.”

    They went after high-end automobiles like deprived children let loose in a toy shop.  At the end of each legislative session, they divided whatever remained of their operating budget as if it were a trading surplus.  Absent completely from the way they discharge their remit has been the very notion of service; so is any awareness of conflicts of interest. And their propensity for self-aggrandizement has grown only more brazen over the years.

    What has all this got to do with why I wanted to be considered for appointment as an ambassador?

    Just in case I was nominated,  I had prepared a statement encompassing the critique I have laid out above that I would present before the National Assembly as a preface to the confirmation hearings.  I would have in conclusion stated, with all due respect, that, as constituted, its members lacked the moral qualification to judge my fitness for public office.

    Whereupon I would have thanked the President for honouring me with a nomination, apologized that I could not accept it under the circumstances, and urged him to withdraw it.

    I never got a chance to act out that scenario.  But one of President Bola Tinubu’s more inspiring nominees and former governor of Kaduna State,  Malam Nasir el Rufai, came close to doing just that last week, though for a different reason, when he cut through all the posturing at the National Assembly and announced his withdrawal from candidacy.

    May his example multiply.

  • Moment of reckoning

    Moment of reckoning

    If Nigerians are not, by now, sufficiently alarmed by the unceasing onslaughts and the wholesale de-legitimisation of our institutions by the supporters of those yet to come to terms with their electoral losses, it can only be on account of the entertaining value of the hare-brained delinquency being daily exhibited by those dwellers of the parallel, virtual universe of the Net-dom.  With the development of the past few days however, Nigerians must begin to ask themselves whether enough would ever be enough for that throng of atavistic folks for whom it is either their way or hell’s highway.

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    Thanks to the still bitter partisan atmosphere, we have seen those traditional dividing walls between the good versus the bad, virtue versus vice, morality versus amorality, believing versus the disbelieving, not only shrink to the point of being nearly unrecognisable, a generation defined only by entitlement as opposed to knowledge may have been thrust into the mainstream of our political life while the rest of the orderly society barely took notice. Now, they are everywhere; whereas the EndSARS and the associated tragedy may have been the moment of their revelation, the 2023 general elections would supply the crown to their infamy.

    Defined more by anger and unreasoned rage, they are the opposition army opportunistically split into the two camps of Atikulates or Obidients. Unafraid to unleash the awesome power of the social media – potentially the most lethal weapon invented since civilisation came upon humanity – the two separate armies like the proverbial wrecking ball, have certainly been at work to do maximum damage to the polity and society.

    In their post-truth world, nothing is given, let alone held as sacrosanct. That an election was held and a clear winner emerged under rules that are neither spurious nor ambiguous was not their problem; it was sufficient that the first runner-up wants the winner disqualified so he could be handed the trophy; as for the second runner-up, he says he won the election on the strength of the supervotes in Abuja, the seat of the federal government and so it must be. If Nigerians were initially fed with the garbage that votes tally, between the polling units and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) was the problem, the cases filed in court which alluded to nothing of the sort, would ordinary pass for the scam of the century! But then, what does it matter?

    The wheels of course have turned full cycle for the two groups co-joined in their worlds of mischief, rascality, and alternative reality. From denying that February 25 never happened let alone its clear, emphatic and unassailable outcomes, to impugning not just the process but the character of the electoral umpire and its leadership when that failed, the speed have been turning in such rapidity as to leave Nigerians breathless.

    Yes, at some point, the group and their paymasters, in some bizarre twist of spurious inventiveness, even attempted to fly the interim government kite all in the bid to scuttle an already concluded process. And when that also failed to fly – and that failure was spectacular – they brought in their palace seers, false prophets who would decree that May 29, will not be. Of course, that date came and passed without incidents to their shame!

    And now finally that the rest of us await the final stage of the process to run their full course(s) as prescribed by law, elements in the group, sworn to ensure that this happens only on their terms, have resorted to the most venal and destructive tactics.

    From twisting the submissions of counsels in the crude Goebellian tradition to the skewed reportage of proceedings, we are finally at the point where guns are literally trained on the heads of  judges adjudicating on the presidential election petitions. Imagine judges being routinely hounded and ridiculed as some would of common felons with all manners of invectives poured on them for no crime other than their acceptance to sit on the electoral panel!  The whole idea, I suppose is to browbeat them into delivering judgments deemed favourable to them.

    What else have we not seen? The other day, one Umar Sani, a Twitter user, without any basis, claimed that Boloukuoromo Ugo, a justice of the court of appeal, had withdrawn his membership of the presidential election petition panel. The faceless (?) Sani even claimed that the judge, in his resignation letter, stated that he was asked to “cripple the independence of the judiciary” by ruling in favour of a certain political candidate!

    “Justice Ugo’s resignation has caused a serious uproar and a setback to the activities of the presidential election petition court,” Sani would claim in the tweet that soon after went viral.

    This came barely 48 hours after, one Jackson Ude, who would later become a star cast in the crude and dangerous gambit, would falsely and most maliciously report that the president spoke with Olukayode Ariwoola, Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), on the pending presidential election petition.

    None of these of course happened as the National Judicial Council and the Supreme Court would later put out – save perhaps in the twisted minds of their purveyors; yet, it was nonetheless sufficient for the warrior tribe in the netizens to run with, convinced without a scintilla of proof, that the cases, still under adjudication was as good as compromised. 

    Talk of Jackson Ude and his mindless muckraking, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, former Lagos State governor and some lawyers of the All Progressives Congress (APC), he would also go on to allege, were writing a judgement the ruling party intends to hand over to an unnamed judge sitting on the electoral petition. And also that, the most distinguished Justice Mary Peter-Odili, retired justice of the supreme court, was, “negotiating a pathway for President Bola Tinubu” and that “she meets regularly with Appeal and Supreme Courts” in that regard.

    Of course, there are countless others, although not so brazen, all over town selling their noxious stuff in what is supposed to be an appeal to the conscience of the justices. In all, the underlying message is not for the jurists to do justice according to the evidence and the law, but on such other grounds that those behind the enterprise would deem acceptable.

    Lest I forget, there are, already mementoes and other memorabilia with such texts emblazoned demanding the poor jurists to do justice by rules unknown to established norms of jurisprudence being parcelled out as gifts to the undiscerning public!

    To borrow a familiar analogy: first, they came for Mahmood Yakubu, the world class academic and chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) but no one came to his rescue; then they went after clerics whose theologies offered different perspectives to theirs; again no one offered a word in their defence; now that they are making a mince-meat of the revered institution of the judiciary, no one is even feigning to lose sleep! Unfortunately, in choosing to take on the duo of Fashola and Justice Peter-Odili, Ude or whatever he calls himself, may have murdered sleep! As they say among the country-folks, every day for the thief…

  • Omooba Sosanya at 80

    Omooba Sosanya at 80

    Nipples’ earliest recollection of Omooba Samuel Olumuyiwa Sosanya was a twain: one tall and dark, the other slight and fair; but both, as a tag team, always making regular sorties to the Bourdillon, Ikoyi, Lagos, home of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, now president of the Federal Republic.

    The Omooba was the slight and fair one, with a rather formidable moustache, which somehow reminded you of the Wizard of Kristen Hall himself, Herbert Macaulay.  The tall and dark one was Engr. Adedayo Adeyemi.

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    Folks there always said they were partisans of the late Funsho Williams.  Ripples would accord them courtesies befitting elders and move on — until Otunba Sosanya turned 70 and, from the blues, called me to do the review at the public presentation of his book on ANAN: Revolution of Accountancy Profession in Nigeria, as part of his 70th birthday!

    Ten years later, the invite to his 80th birthday (on August 6) also came no less from the blues — with a free Aso Oke cap material to boot!  The Omooba must have treasured that review, with a play on the English nursery rhyme, Solomon Grundy: for he caused it to be read again at the 80th birthday bash!  Baba is a grateful and graceful soul!

    Omooba Sosanya battled tooth and nail to ensure the Association of Nigerian Accountants (ANAN) got chartered (1993) to train accountants in Nigeria, despite the dark whispering campaigns of the Institute of Chartered of Nigeria (ICAN), that fought no less grimly to mainly its monopoly since 1965.

    Baba is also a study in deep loyalty, anchored on principled politics.  The Omooba recalled how the PDP order deprived Mrs. Hilda Williams, widow of Funsho Williams, the 2007 Lagos gubernatorial ticket that she won at the party’s primary election.  

    That sent the Williams Campaign Organization (WILLICO), which rooted for the cheated widow, scuttling out of the PDP, to team up with the Action Congress (AC) candidate, Babatunde Fashola, after groundbreaking talks with then outgoing Lagos Governor, Tinubu.

    Today, Omooba Sosanya is a pillar among the Lagos APC elders, as a member of the Lagos Governance Advisory Council — the highest elders think tank in the Lagos governmental cosmos.

    All came in numbers to shower Baba their love: Lagos Deputy Governor, Dr. Kadiri Femi Hamzat; presidential adviser and ministerial nominee, Mr. Wale Edun and former Ogun State Governor and journalism icon, Chief Segun Osoba, among numberless others.

    A thrilled Omooba Sosanya, who lost his own father at age 45, announced he was opening a new chapter in his book of life at 80!  What a grand opening, with the West Indies community in Nigeria enriching the fun and flourish.  The Sosanya matriarch is a native Jamaican.

  • Return of the natives

    Return of the natives

    It was Gala Night, on August 11, at the Ilese-Ijebu reunion 2023.

    Ayanfola, an equal-opportunity troupe of male-female artistes, brought down happy thunder, as the hall exploded with their heavy percussion and frenetic dancing. 

    As this male and female ensemble nimbly interchanged roles: now on the drums, then sassy with dance steps, and even after, audacious on the vocals, eternal MC, ace broadcaster Balogun, aka “Aji se bi Oyo”, joked that the troupe was so good, and in such high demand they had been booked for Ukraine; and thereafter, Niger!

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    That evoked a clatter of guffaw — Ukraine!  Under Vladimir Putin’s cruising bullets?

    But before Ayanfola had come, well, a musical Poke Toholo.  Toholo was fictional character in one of James Hadley Chase’s crime thrillers, Want to Stay Alive?  He boasted he had found a formula to open all wallets — wielding his ruthless gun.

    But Babatunde — Stage name: Steel Pounds — wasn’t like that.  He was blind — so blind that an aide had to steady him on stage, while performing.  He so reminded you of the American, Stevie Wonder.

    Without Toholo’s evil tactics, Steel Pounds proved he too had developed his craft to prise open pockets.  For his sweet sweat, he got showered with a confetti of cash.

    But the dead too were not left out, at the 18th edition of what the natives dub the Annual Convocation of Ilese-Ijebu People, to which they yearly returned in numbers.

    At the final rally on Saturday August 12, the community’s 2023 posthumous award was conferred on Alhaji Adesanya Ayoola (born: 1962; died: 2016), a proud Ilese son, trained nurse and pharmacology/physiology graduate of the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), according to his posthumous citation.

    Ayoola did his best and left — not exactly at dusk but at mid-age.  Yet, Ilese never forgets its own.  He must have beamed down at that gathering, as his grateful family soaked in all the good things said about him.

    Return of the natives!  A distinguished “native” that ever hardly misses this yearly show is Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola.  Yes, the former Osun governor is a prince of Okuku, Osun State.  But here in Ilese, he’s an adopted son in whom Ilese is well proud.  He was there to honour the folks that honour him.

    Otunba Kunle Kalejaye, SAN, aka KK, clear magnet of this yearly convocation, regaled the gathering with how Otunba Olufemi Okenla, another distinguished Ilese son, chief launcher for 2023, never turned his back on any Ilese son or daughter on the job front.  Okenla is CEO, Ibis Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos.

    It was all about community value — and Okenla did not disappoint.  Apart from a generous donation into the community purse for ever ongoing projects, he also offered to sink five boreholes to meet the water requirements of the people.

    For a second year running too, Oyo Governor Seyi Makinde sent a representative and also made a generous donation to the Ilese cause.

    Home governor, Ogun’s Dapo Abiodun, was also represented.  His government just upgraded the Ogun State College of Health Technology, Ilese, into a full polytechnic status.  

    Otunba Gbenga Daniel, ex-governor but now senator for Ogun East, the Ilese senatorial district, also sent aides to offer some informal feedback on his legislative tenure, thus far — particularly his bill on the South West Development Commission, now going through legislative grills in the Senate.  

    But beyond VIP speeches and benevolence, the Ilese Day final rally was youth-powered: in-situ Ilese youths and children, in colourful carnival floats and dashing choreography, having practiced all year long for the big day!

    Then, there was the formal crowning of Miss Ilese 2023/2024, earlier picked at the Gala Night pageant the previous night.  It had the winning cheque of N500, 000.

    As all went down under the royal grace of the Elese of Ilese, Oba Owolabi Obayomi, the town’s traditional ruler, all thanks go to Otunba Segun Demuren, a barrister-at-law and chairman, Ilese Development Council (IDC); and Otunba Sola Mogaji, FCA, a chartered accountant of first crust and chairman, Planning Committee, Ilese Day 2023 and his team of hardworking planners.

    Of course, there is the ubiquitous KK: soul of the yearly show, a rich study in community value, with unfazed love for his Ilese-Ijebu kingdom.

    The youths would dance away all-night at the post-rally party, bidding Ilese Day 2023 goodbye.  But a goodbye echoes a welcome: when comes Ilese Day 2024?

  • Jokers of Niamey

    Jokers of Niamey

    Just as well the military option isn’t gathering much traction.  But that doesn’t mean the jokers of Niamey, the coup plotters that on July 26 blasted their country right back into the past, are sitting pretty.

    It’s as the Yoruba say: the callow child throatily traduced the Iroko and brags that he lives — did he ever think his doom, the Iroko crush, would be instant?

    For the Niger putschists, it’s a prolonged psychological siege until they wilt.  Proof? The growl from Mali and Burkina Faso, co-military-in-government lepers, barking that a war on Niger would be deemed a war on both.

    But a growling dog manifests rabid fear and manic panic, hardly cold courage!  That Guinea Conakry, another military-blighted state, is less excitable is wisdom.  

    Guinea knows as international attention beams on Niger, it would be a long night for the notorious West African quad, now under jackboot rule.

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    The Niger coup was in-your-face bluff and cynical bluster: you fail in your primary duty and claim you are toppling your commander-in-chief for a security meltdown?

    The soldiers claimed they took power because President Mohamed Bazoum’s war against Jihadi insurgency was flagging! Pray, what was the president supposed to do: snatch the guns from his incompetent army (if that allegation was even true) and go storm the battlefield himself?  

    Blare the Niger Army’s cowardly tale by the moonlight, sizzled with alleged sleaze — irresistible condiment for such power grabs — and set minds are already spewing set-theories, like some set cant: good governance is the only antidote to putsches.

    No heresy!  But what’s the antidote to an irredeemably corrupt ruling junta, as Nigeria saw in own best-forgotten era of military rule?  Coup and counter-coups that wouldn’t stop until the Army is disgraced and the country brought to its knees?

    That’s the point.  With democracy, you at least have term limits and periodic polls. Those are structural checks which even the best of junta rules don’t have.

    Yes, Africa teems with tragic self-perpetuators — as Russia is under Vladimir Putin and the United States would have been under the yet unfolding tragedy of Donald Trump.

    Another African catastrophe is brewing in the Central African Republic (CAR) where a sitting, term-bound President Faustin-Archande Touadera just conducted a sham referendum to amend the CAR constitution and gift himself more years in power.  

    Uganda and Rwanda — the one still bears the gargoyle of Idi Amin; the other, the trauma of the 1994 genocide — have already fallen under that spell.  Rwanda is all Kegame glitter now but that mirage may yet buckle, cropping stark catastrophe.

    The ultimate antidote is thriving democracy, with routine elections that reward performance but punish governmental failures.

    Yes, on that, there are challenges; but even over those, Nigeria offers stunning triumphs.  

    It already triumphed over attempted illegal term extension by former President Olusegun Obasanjo (incidentally, a former soldier as Rwanda’s Paul Kegame and Uganda’s Yuweri Museveni); and over rotten elections his two terms epitomized.

    Now here, illegal term extension is all but banished. Junta rule too, a distant echo.  

    Challenges remain though: PDP’s Atiku Abubakar and LP’s Peter Obi, with sore losers, spiritual and temporal — ala Trump — strain to stain the 2023 polls, clearly the best since 1999.  

    Still, the judiciary, doing justice to all, should be fit asylum for lunatic voices.

    Nigeria and ECOWAS should press ahead to smoke out any form of military rule in West Africa.  That’s the lone and sane path to the region’s shared prosperity.


    Niger coup and the bluff after

    • By Azubike Nass

    Nigeria President Bola Tinubu and the West African regional group — ECOWAS – which President Tinubu chairs, have condemned the coup in Niger.  So has the African Union (AU), with support from some Western powers.  They all tell the coupists to scram.

    But restoring President Mohammed Bazoum would include negotiation and failing, perhaps military force.   The coup plotters, of course, balk at outside interference. 

    Other African nations currently ruled by military coup leaders are Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, all in West Africa.  All the coups happened within the last three years. But the three wobble, with internal and external pressure to restore democracy in Niger.

    A goodly number of analysts caution against military force, citing possible backlash with catastrophic consequences. 

    But many of such arguments lean on one-sided emotions that do not adequately balance strength and weaknesses. Rather, they tend towards scare-mongering.

    But the spate of recent military coups, particularly in West Africa, requires a collective and firm action to check the trend. Otherwise, we could be heading back to the uncomfortable past, instead of moving in the direction of the future.

    There is the common cry of exploitation of Africa by foreign nations: former colonial masters or not. But it is a global trend, applicable to all, of nations seeking for their interests: USA, Europe, Russia, China, etc. None is free from such accusation. 

    For Africa, the greater problem is the high level of corruption among leaders, entrusted to handle their nations’ resources.

    So, we will be dishonest to attribute the whole problem to foreign nations exploiting our natural resources while our people remain poor. It’s a common pattern of excuse with corrupt African nations, to whip up cheap emotion and divert attention.

    Every reckonable nation could have cause to use military force when deemed necessary. It could be USA, UK, France, Russia, China, etc. Russia invaded and seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and invaded Ukraine mainland in 2023 (fighting still going on). China has a very aggressive foreign policy ready to use military force in the island nations of South China Sea, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, and so on. 

    When the Nigerian-led ECOMOG troops were sent on peacekeeping mission to Liberia and Sierra Leone in 1990 — it lasted for about 10 years: actually it was a peace-enforcement mission because there was no peace to keep — many Nigerian public affairs analysts warned against it and predicted doom. 

    But today, Nigerian influence in West Africa, Africa and beyond, is built on sacrifices it made on those critical military intervention missions.  Former President Muhammadu Buhari, of recent, mobilized Nigerian troops to restore democratic governance in The Gambia. The predicted doom, by those who opposed it, never happened.

    This writer, a retired military officer who had taken part in peace-enforcement missions in other lands, is in full support of actions to reverse the present situation in Niger. 

    Negotiation should be from the position of strength: with the readiness to use military force. President Bola Tinubu should not be weighed down by scare-mongering of possible worse-case scenario. It’s normal. 

    It doesn’t stop nations from taking actions when deemed necessary. No venture, no success.

    • Azubike Nass, a retired colonel of the Nigerian Army, writes from Enugu, Enugu State.