The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Matters miscellaneous

    Matters miscellaneous

    At the height of the carnage over which he was presiding without fear and without remorse, I wrote on this page that, whenever an account of the era was rendered, former Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Godwin “Mefi” Emefiele was sure to emerge as the most execrable figure.

    How wrong I was! 

    Now, the nation’s searing economic pains are being discussed as if Emefiele never happened:  Emefiele who confiscated the bank notes of millions living on the smallest of margins in aid of a crackbrained scheme of “re-designing” the currency when he only dabbed the template from which only a fraction of the old notes could be pulled – notes that bled on the fingers like a kindergartner’s crayon sketch, and at a cost rumoured to be close to the national budget.

    Emefiele, who put the National Mint to work overtime printing as much paper money as former president Muhammadu Buhari might need to indulge his delusion of grandeur.  Emefiele, who crashed the Naira exchange, making it sub-par to what the Zim dollar fetched in Robert Mugabe’s final days.

    Read Also: Emefiele gets court’s nod to serve bail order on DSS

    Emefiele, who could not hear the cries of the disconnected millions nor empathise with their grinding privations.  

    His overarching concern was to prevent a particular presidential candidate from “buying” the election, having himself being stopped in his tracks from buying up the nomination without quitting his day job.  Subsequently, his goal was to line up a sweetheart “study leave” at a prestigious institution abroad to prepare himself for another cushy engagement.

    Emefiele, the record of whose tenure as governor of the Central Bank reads like a calendar of Nigeria’s economic woes.  Emefiele, whose depredations go on and on and on . . .

    And yet, it is as if he never happened. 

    Something tells me that if Emefiele had appeared before the Senate in consideration of a new appointment, he would have been asked to “take a bow and go” in keeping with the ho-hum nature of the proceedings, or would have been asked some perfunctory questions and cleared.

    It could be worse, to be sure.  He could have landed in a “gotcha” ambuscade like Dr Bosun Tijani, a ministerial nominee from Ogun State whom an excited senator sought to impale on the strength of a tweet he made during the #EndSARS crisis expressing disappointment with Nigeria’s lacklustre place among nations and lamenting the woes his Nigerian passport has brought him as an international innovations and applications expert.

    Is it still your position, Senator Fatai Buhari (APC Oyo North) taunted him, “Is it still your position that Nigeria is a bloody expensive tag to have against your name?”

    Our sunshine patriots had their day at centre stage.

    I was at that stage reminded of United States Senator J.  William Fulbright’s intervention at a critical time in the debate on America’s war on Vietnam. Young men were denouncing the war and leaving the country in huge numbers to evade conscription. Supporters of the war, led by President LB Johnson, dismissed them at every opportunity unpatriotic elements.

    Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas and cerebral chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, dissented.    Criticism of one’s country, he declared, is “the higher patriotism.” It is a compliment rooted in belief that one’s country is capable of doing much better and should indeed strive to do better.

    To return to Mefi:  There is something to be said for having a short national memory, if that is the phenomenon is at work here.  It is conducive to healing.  But it could also induce and even reward the supine recklessness with which Emefiele conducted the public trust he was handed.

    They are saying in his defence that he never took a step that Buhari did not order or approve or approved it.  So much for his professionalism.

    The confirmation hearings show no inclination of returning to their original purpose, which is to consider a nominee’s office fitness for a particular office, not just for any office.  They grind on in the belief that anyone adjudged fit for higher office based on the most perfunctory questioning can be assigned any office the President chooses. 

    Under this theory, the person cleared can be appointed Minister of Parks and Gardens, or Minister for Nuclear Energy and Research. Is it any wonder, then, that apart from a few honourable exceptions, few appointees distinguish themselves in ministerial office?

    The attentive public, and the progressives within it, have a right to feel disappointed that President Bola Tinubu did not break with this aberration that dates from the Shagari era.  It has served its time and should be discontinued

    The “gotta ambuscade” was not the only moment of drama in last week’s Senate proceedings.

    Dr Maryam Shetty, a nominee from Kano State, was standing by in the Senate’s precinct, rehearsing and perfecting her opening lines, when her nomination was pulled, in another move that shocked those who expected a sure-footed approach to these matters from Team Tinubu.  It was humiliating.  In fact, I am almost prepared to state that it was cruel, even though probably not calculated.

    Did they not do their homework?  Did they have to sacrifice their credibility to satisfy some dyspeptic stakeholder?

    Dr Shetty’s reaction is a study in graciousness.  Those who engineered the debacle will do well to learn from it.  As for Team Tinubu, it is too early in the game to allow itself to be labelled accident-prone.

    Senate President Godswill Akpabio, the former Akwa Ibom governor who left the state so uncommonly transformed that there was nothing for his successor to transform, spoke movingly the other day about the death of a grandchild in circumstances all too indicative of the parlous state of the nation’s health care delivery system.  My condolences, Your Excellency.

    In what facility did this tragic incident occur?  Why was the child not airfreighted to that uncommon hospital complex you built in Uyo and equipped and commissioned to end medical tourism bit just in the ECOWAS region but in the whole of Africa?

    Finally, a word on the sartorial revolution quietly weeping the political landscape.  Since the First Republic, every change in government has been accompanied by some perceptible change in the wardrobe of the new people.

    When Shagari came into office, his one-gallon cap sprouted on so many heads in the National Assembly, the Cabinet Office and the public service.  It sat rather uncomfortably on most of them and reportedly irritated Governor Olabisi Onabanjo of Ogun State to the point that he thought of banning its use by government officials.

    Not so, Onabanjo said.  But have you seen any Fulani donning the gobi? He quipped

    In the time of President Olusegun Obasanjo, the tilt of the cap was held to emblematize a Power Shift in the national political configuration.  Under Goodluck Jonathan, the wardrobe screamed Resource Control.  In Buhari’s time, it was nondescript.

    Today Tinubu’s signature cap, with the iconic Infinity motif, is fast becoming the headgear of choice for politicos, except in the Obidient enclave.  They say it stands for awalalambe, or Na we dey there.

    –

  • Emefiele born anew

    Emefiele born anew

    The joke is on the suspended governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, in the social media, over how he clutched a Bible and was led like a lamb to the court by a lady alleged to be an official of the Federal High Court, last Tuesday. But the joke is also on the officials of the State Security Services also known as Department of State Security (DSS) and the Nigerian Correctional Services (NCS) over their disgraceful conduct in fighting over who takes custody of Emefiele, after the court granted him bail.

    This writer goes to court regularly, but has never witnessed such emotional attachment by a court official as exhibited by the lady who held Emefiele’s hand like a doting mother to shield him away from vagrants who may be lying about on the walkway to the court. One wonders what interest she had that prompted such display of emotional attachment. Was she merely acting in the line of her duty or was she motivated by other interests?

    On his part, Emefiele tenaciously clutched a Bible, in the same manner a zealous preacher would, to show his fervent believe in the words of the Holy book. But all the while Emefiele was abusing his office as governor of CBN, he never showed the fervour of a Christian believer, as portrayed last week. In fact, this writer remembers vividly and indeed condemned Emefiele on this column, when he abused those who cautioned him that he should not mix his position as CBN governor with politics.

    Read Also: Emefiele’s case: NCoS’ right to custody vs DSS’ power to detain

    He said something to the effect that like an unruly bull, he was forging ahead with his illegal participation in politics while exercising the functions of the CBN governor, and anyone who contends otherwise should come forward for a bull fight. It is therefore surprising that he has become as humble as a lamb. Perhaps he has been born anew in the confines of the DSS and has become a firm believer in the contents of the Holy book, which enjoins humility as the hallmark of public service.

    Unfortunately, not so for his present adversaries – the DSS. In flagrant disobedience to the rule of law, the agency rearrested Emefiele within the court premises after he was granted bail, by the court. Like Emefiele has found out now, the court remains the fall back for everyone, and to ridicule the court is actually to remove the carpet from under our collective feet. This column recalls that Emefiele now a victim refused earlier this year to obey the order of the Supreme Court on the issue of naira redesign, preferring to await the directive of then president, Muhammadu Buhari.

    Perhaps, the DSS is aping Emefiele, before it would obey the clear order of the court, forgetting that one day they too may need the help of the court. Of course, the court could not have refused Emefiele bail, to punish him the way he and his cohorts punished Nigerians late last year and earlier this year, in a flagrant manipulation of the monetary policy for a political end. Hopefully, the probe of the Central Bank as ordered by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, would unearth the level of mismanagement of public trust by Emefiele.

    But while condemning the use of public office for private gain by Emefiele, we must also condemn the public shame of the NCS and DSS, two agencies of the federal government fighting over the custody of a detainee. While not exculpating the DSS for its contemptuous conduct within the premises of the court, the NCS which has a corrupt reputation about how they treat detainees with deep pocket as VIPs, showed its desperation to have the former governor of CBN in their custody regardless of how long.

    As reported in the media, senior officials of the NCS were in court, as if they had a premonition that their net was going to catch a big fish on that day. And when the DSS illegally wanted to torpedo the fishing expedition, the NCS lost their cool and became desperate. On their part, the DSS who many believe are hamstrung to charge Emefiele for the more serious offences he was earlier accused of, before he was arrested, are desperate to keep him in custody.

    There is the believe out there that the DSS is restrained from charging Emefiele for more serious offences, because that would ruffle the feathers of top members of former president Buhari’s kitchen cabinet. Considering the likely offences Emefiele could have committed as the apex bank chief, there is the challenge of what offences the DSS can legitimately investigate and prosecute, considering the limitation of their constitutional responsibility. While there are potential possibilities of economic crimes against Emefiele, he doesn’t look like someone with the capacity to fund terrorism against the state, as earlier alleged.

    While awaiting the probe ordered by the president, the DSS should admit Emefiele to bail as ordered by the court. In obedience to the rule of law, any further evidence they have should be presented to the court which granted him bail, and if the court is disposed to the new issue raised, would revoke his bail. The attempt by DSS to use ex parte order of a court of coordinate jurisdiction to keep him in detention is an abuse of the court process. The conduct demeans the DSS before the court of public opinion.

    While court of public opinion may be slow in meting out punishment, it is the ultimate court for all Nigerians. If the public loses confidence in the state to such an extent that the state fails, there would be no DSS and no state to protect its internal security, which is the primary function of the organization. The DSS, NCS and even the courts must appreciate the low level of public confidence in public institutions, and the best service to Nigerians is to enforce the tenets of democracy to shower up public confidence in their institutions.

    Those who abuse their offices as Emefiele did in the past, can only be dealt with in accordance with the provisions of the law. To do otherwise is to foist a state of anarchy on the polity. This column hopes the DSS and NCS would conduct internal administrative processes to deal appropriately with their officers who depicted the country in very bad light, before Nigerians and the international community. And they will buoy public confidence by making such administrative process transparent and public. 

    On the wheels of social media, the shame of last Tuesday at the Federal High Court Lagos, in flagrant disobedience to the order of Hon. Justice Nicholas Oweibo, would have travelled round the world, without any diplomatic cover. Those who hold public positions should always remember they hold it in trust for every Nigerian, and must exercise judiciously.

  • Blues orchestra

    Blues orchestra

    Beware! A Blues orchestra blares out there since 2015: lest its virus turns you into a bitter, ever-grumbling wretch!

    The Tinubu tenure is hardly 100 days, from a four-year term.  Yet, what this lobby see, gazing through their tear-soaked crystal ball, is nothing but sure catastrophe.

    Indeed, from 2015, it’s been near-permanent sessions of gloom: uppity priests and pesky imams, loud churches with strange preachments, ethnic champions gaming the naive as rights activists — all abandoning their calling to play self-destruct politics.

    All that is not about to stop.  Yet, subversive sobs solve nothing!  

    Which is why the administration, aside from gauging sensible citizen feedbacks, should buckle down, undistracted, to its policies and programmes. 

    From 2015 to 2023, it was wailing unlimited.  But with strategic deafness, former President Muhammadu Buhari kept out that din.

    He made his mistakes — as the Tinubu order will make its: every regime does.  But those that claimed that government did “nothing” now wished they were blind, so as not to see clear landmarks that it left!

    The sheer futility of subversive tears, though all is still work-in-progress! 

    Read Also: Emefiele’s case: NCoS’ right to custody vs DSS’ power to detain

    That droning will probably get worse in the first four Tinubu years, as policy options bite hard.  As the pocket hurts, simple souls surrender to sweet sadness.  But it’s a journey to nowhere but wilful self-deceit. 

    Now, a juxtaposition of the opening gambits of Buhari and Tinubu. 

    President Buhari shunned fancy theories for stark pragmatism: grow what you eat and eat what you grow!  It was a fierce re-focus on agriculture.  

    Its rail modernization was loud symbol for its twin-policy pillar: infrastructure.  Without fixing those two pillars, the economy would continue in a perpetual crawl.

    The missing link in infrastructure was electricity — but even that was not for lack of trying.  There were no low-hanging fruits just because power transmission had terrible deficits in crucial investment — and for much too long — to yield any sudden sparkle.

    Even at that, that government worked the Siemens Germany-Nigeria government-to-government transmission upgrade, still ongoing; and bound to yield appropriate results.  President Tinubu has no reason not to build, on that foundation, his own power security policies and programmes.

    To support its stress on crops and grains, Buhari emplaced the Anchor Borrowers’ Scheme, driven by Godwin Emefiele’s Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).  

    For infrastructure, it installed a slew of funding options, chief among which was the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund.  PIDF was to accelerate strategic infrastructure projects, under which came the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and the 2nd Niger Bridge — the umpteenth mirage across the Niger that Buhari finally gifted life!

    Aside, there were Sukuk bond funding for specific sections of federal highways and tax-concession-for-projects, under which private sector players like Dangote, BUA and even NNPC Ltd agreed to rebuild public roads, in the best tradition of public-private sector partnership (PPP).

    Still, was what the nay orchestra’s response to these Buhari-era initiatives?  Stone Age Buhari-nomics! — its economic theory class howled.  

    Every pyramid of rice paddies was a “scam”.  Every new mill to process new rice — a symbol of new sundry grains — was “fake news” and “government propaganda”.  

    Even the negative impact of insecurity on crop cultivation — real enough — was over-blown as if it was in every material particular!

    Yet, without this aggressive path back to the farm, you just wonder what Nigeria’s hunger level would have been, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    On infrastructure, the “debt burden” was the ultimate blot.  Such triumph was the debt crow that it “cancelled out” long-term assets — rail and roads — those debts procured; and how they would strengthen the real sector.

    Politically driven eternal moaning often cripples the brain! 

    That brings the discourse to President Bola Tinubu’s opening gambit.

    In 2013, 10 years before winning power, President Tinubu, with American Brian Browne, co-authored Financialism: Water from an Empty Well — a rather iconoclastic work on how good, old capitalism (booming production of goods and services) was tapering into “financialism” (booming money stock for money’s sake), leaving in its trail global poverty.

    That appears reassuring, for it presupposes that the president’s policy entry tactics of tweaking the public purse — junking oil subsidy and floating the Naira — are no ends in themselves but a means to an end.

    Removing subsidy could ballon state earnings but hardly boost citizens’ pockets.  Floating the Naira — effective devaluation — could harvest quite a confetti of the local currency.  But it hardly makes the real sector hum to deliver short-term prosperity.

    So, opening gambits are neither good nor bad in themselves.  Good or bad greets the success or failure of the overall strategy.

    The Obasanjo-PDP era prided itself in its “reforms”.  Yet, it birthed no lasting economic legacy, with the near-zero infrastructure the PDP left behind in 2015. 

    Indeed, the former president handed out good cash for “debt forgiveness” — capital that could have developed infrastructure, got the economy humming, and eventually defrayed those debts; even as the economy grew stronger.

    President Goodluck Jonathan, the last of his successors, preened over a bland “rebasing” — an accounting artificiality that proclaimed Nigeria Africa’s biggest economy, yet with no especially vibrant real sector: either in higher manufacturing or any agricultural boom.  Both could have created mass jobs and reduced poverty.

    Classic “financialism” — aided by equal-opportunity sleaze — that vanished at the first sign of economic storm?

    So, the winning strategy, if the Tinubu-era reforms must salvage the economy, is to sink most of the subsidy savings (outside the palliative budget) and the Naira-float cash in further infrastructure upgrade and agricultural processing, without letting off on crop production, aside from playing in the digital economy and allied services.

    That way, the overall strategy won’t be that different from the Buhari era, though the market-friendly opening tactics are.  

    That indeed would be a fit continuum from 2015 — now that the new order is dreaming improved electricity, commodity boards for food security and a credit-powered consumer market that could attract big manufacturing plants to Nigeria, and create millions of jobs.

    Still, the sad ensemble don’t bother about these fine details.  All they do is milk the present pains for own rogue politics.  

    So, the administration has its job cut out: adroitly manage political merchants of grief for now, but leave landmarks that deliver a productive economy that banishes poverty. 

  • The rich vouching for the poor

    The rich vouching for the poor

    It’s not entirely new.  But the lack of empathy, across the Nigerian class divide, gets more choking, as the neo-liberals seize Nigeria’s policy framework by the jugular.

    When Chief Obafemi Awolowo started Nigeria’s greatest social revolution — Western Region’s free and compulsory primary education (1955) — the opposing National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon (NCNC), led by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Awo’s great rival, scoffed it was a social “crime” to deny farmers their family farm work force.

     But Awo’s stubborn resolve turned that “crime” into a potent social capital. That head start still redounds to today’s South West, compared with the rest of Nigeria. 

     When much later, in 1979, the inimitable Baba Kekere, Alhaji Lateef Jakande, proud apostle of Awo’s progressive politics, unleashed his own doughty social capital, as Action Governor of Lagos, the naysayers went ga-ga with venom.

     His make-shift, start-up public schools (which in Lagos banished forever the shift system) were “poultry sheds”.  His social housing interventions were “civilian barracks” hardly fit for humans.

     But today, we know who was right and who was wrong.  But that hasn’t quite robbed the naysayers their empty crow, each time any government tries to serenade Nigeria’s poorest in its policy sun. 

     Such Babel and racket are greeting the Tinubu Presidency’s proposed N8, 000 conditional cash transfer (CCT) to Nigeria’s poorest of the poor numbering, according to the Nigeria Social — read poverty — Register (NSR), some 12 million households.

     Now, the rich — or just rich wannabes in the vanishing middle class — are all howl-and-growl, swearing that to the poor — who they know not, or even bother to know — N8, 000 is an absolute waste!  What heady arrogance!

     Well, to President Bola Tinubu, it’s all a hideous market din.  The thing though is that the president, and (wo)men in his policy suites, can ill afford this ill distraction.  

     In an ever divisive Nigeria, where base ethnicity and cynical religiosity grab the centre stage at crucial elections, a strong pan-Nigeria social capital, powered by the poor and most vulnerable, united by pan-Nigerian poverty, could just always tilt the scale.

     That was what the NSR started.  Common sense dictates that register be deepened, even as the administration, by its policy choices, viciously tears at the roots of poverty.

     The NSR perhaps explains why the ever-demonized President Muhammadu Buhari won two terms, in spite of vicious attacks on his person, and the hideous slur of his Fulani nativity.  

     For the first time ever, PMB’s Federal Government had a support register for the poor — by the way, a classic South West progressives scheme stretched nationwide.

     That might also explain why Tinubu himself won the 2023 polls, despite blatant anti-Tinubu lies, Atiku Abubakar playing the “northerner” card; and Peter Obi playing the ‘Christian’ divisive joker, aside from weaponizing to the full, his Ndigbo clannish bent.

     Meanwhile, the poor-are-too-rich-for-N8,000 band just got a new eureka: the claim, by the National Economic Council (NEC), that the “Buhari” NSR teems with sleaze. 

     That was the ultimate bogey: you hear sleaze and your brain is supposed to freeze!

     But if you can’t even think through a bogey, what value can you add?  That’s today’s uppity media for you.  That’s why rumour thrives.  No surprise: the media echoed the NEC claim with near-manic triumph!

     To be sure, NEC, Nigeria’s apex constitutional economic body, chaired by the Vice President, must have its facts.  Still, that’s at best a claim — a claim yet to be confirmed or disproved by an informed, independent body.

     That’s where failures in media reporting and analyses hit you smack in the face.  CCT, from its nursery in Osun, under Governor Rauf Aregbesola from 2010, is 13 years in Nigeria.  PMB escalated it, as part of his government’s social safety nets, from 2016.

     Yet, there appears no serious media focus on CCT, so much so that no independent voice can confirm or debunk NEC’s claim on the NSR.    Again, hardly surprising: everyone was too busy writing empty treatises on Argbesola’s “mullah” beard; or chasing Buhari’s ubiquitous “Fulani herdsmen” that committed all crimes, while their criminal cousins from other tribes were in blissful retirement!

     Still, to all the anti-cash transfer huff, This Day’s Kayode Komolafe wrote “For Cash Transfer”, a powerful and incisive riposte, citing the Bolsa Famila (Family Grant) of Brazil, under Inacio Lula da Silva’s first presidency (2003-2011). 

     KK even referenced “What Buhari can borrow from Lula”, published on May 9, 2016 — seven years ago — clearly a lone voice crying in the wilderness of distracted peers!

     Even then, the Osun example (2010-2018) demonstrated how safety nets could shore up a state’s economy and how abandoning such — total or partial — could crop voter whiplash (witness: the Osun APC governorship defeat of 2022), if you have a developmental mindset.

     As earlier stated on this page, the World Bank’s Nigeria Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO) got its initial inspiration from the Osun Youth Employment Scheme (OYES), which WB wanted to adopt as primer for its global war on poverty.

     So, YESSO started building the NSR, with Osun OYES managers helping to build the NSR in Osun, with a uniform template, as other YESSO managers nationwide.  

     That would explain the WB’s readiness to extend, to Nigeria, the US$ 800 million post-subsidy palliative facility, based on the same YESSO-developed NSR.  It was a part-developer of it all and it had done its due diligence.

     So, how come the same NSR has become “Buhari’s” article of “corruption”?  

     Besides, what’s the guarantee that the states would attain higher rigour for new registers, with the present social pressures?  Does it not make more sense to sanitize the NSR, instead of embarking on new social registers?

     The good thing though is that NEC, even with its dissonance with the NSR, isn’t trashing CCT, as many neo-liberal hawks are screeching — a right step.

     CCT, with parallel measures, proved a huge recharge to a drained Osun economy, starting 2010: poverty rate fell from 37.5% in 2010 to 10.9% in 2018; state GDP: N191 billion (2010) to N398 billion (2018); unemployment rate: 17.2% (2010) to 5.3% (2018) — according to cluster stats from the National Bureau of Statistics, the World Bank and other international development agencies.

     CCT paid N10, 000 to each of four sets of 20, 000 OYES volunteers: totaling 80, 000, all through eight years (2010-2018), but with the last set serving beyond 2018.

     But the classic CCT was the Agba Osun register.  By it, some 114, 000 dirt-poor, scientifically picked Osun seniors were paid N10, 000 monthly, aside from the state picking up bills for their old age Infirmities.  

     It was ultra-smart investment in social capital: the riled youths just starting their lives; the frail elders at the departure lounge.  It’s a structured pact with the poor and the society’s most vulnerable.

     A structured pact with the vulnerable is logical balm to neo-liberal angst: though the books sizzles with excess cash; the poor seethe with excess crush!

     A vibrant NSR is an imperative now.  But as more and more are eased out of poverty, the register itself will gradually ease out.

  • The best palliative

    The best palliative

    Since the advent of COVID 19, the word palliative has become a political lexis with dynamism, especially in Nigeria. It became synonymous with the sharing of largesse to ameliorate the suffering of the masses. Political pundits extol it as the desiderata of all types of socio-economic commotion of existentialism in Nigeria. Last week, the National Executive Council (NEC), principally made up of the vice president, Kashim Shettima, and the 36 state governors in their monthly meeting in Abuja, made palliative a top agenda.

    While NEC over the years has made the sharing of the money accumulated in the coffers of the federation account its top priority, and a handsome N907 billion was shared amongst the three tiers of government for the month of June, what made headlines was discussion on the palliative to ameliorate the impact of removal of fuel subsidy, on Nigerians. The council members threw away the opaque social register used by former president, Muhammadu Buhari’s regime and proposed state registers to share the forthcoming palliative.   

    On their part, Nigerians are arguing whether the proposed palliative can deaden the inflationary pressure on the lives of ordinary Nigerians. Social critics are making comparison between the sum of money allocated for palliative to the ordinary Nigerians, and that budgeted for the benefit of the political elites in the legislature and the judiciary. As for the erudite Femi Falana, SAN, the elites are the greatest beneficiaries of palliatives, otherwise called subsidy. And he gave several examples.

    While not discountenancing palliative in whatever form the political actors may choose to caste it, this column believes the best palliative that would alleviate the economic, social and political well-being of Nigerians is the judicious use of the windfall from fuel subsidy removal. It is judicious use of the available resources that will strengthen the nation’s currency, crush inflation, reduce unemployment, increase productivity, eschew political violence and dim social upheavals. Where and when such improvements are made, the value of the naira would bring down the cost of fuel and other inflationary pressures.

    So, the best palliative will be the prudent management of the impending massive windfall from the bold initiative of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. By several accounts, Nigeria distributable revenue increased from N786.161 billion in May to about N1.9 trillion in June, more than 150% increase. Luckily, the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) shared N907.054 billion, albeit the highest since January, instead of the entire earned revenue. In the past, bigoted constitutionalists argue that relying on section 162(3) of the 1999 constitution (as amended) all money in the federation account must be shared, without savings.  

    One imagines the massive impact on the national economy, should the N907.054 billion shared amongst the three tiers of government, be efficiently infused into the economy of local government councils, the states and the federal government. Hopefully, the present governments would reduce the waste associated with public offices. Already, Nigerians are worried that the National Assembly allocated to themselves a humongous sum of N110 billion, substantial part of which will be used to buy exotic cars which will merely enrich foreign manufacturers and the importing contractors.

    Again, imagine if public officials could resist ostentatious lifestyle, bearing in mind that most Nigerians, especially the impressionable youths, are assailed by the waste they see amongst public officials. A prudent management of the nation’s resources would result in job opportunities for graduates and skilled Nigerians. Presently, unemployment in Nigeria is estimated at 41% by KPMG. Clearly, that is a ticking time bomb, and while the unemployed would need immediate palliatives, what they need most is employment opportunities.

    A hefty increase in employment opportunities would reduce insecurity in the land, and that should be the concern of the political actors. With the eradication of the corrupt multiple-exchange window of the Buhari administration, the nation’s macro-economy is now attractive to foreign direct investment (FDI). But what will determine where the FDIs would go within the country, is substantially within the control of the state governments. States where the ease of doing business is taken seriously by state governments and local government administration would attract higher percentage of the FDIs.  

    With its first steps, the Tinubu administration appears determined to put in place economic policies that would galvanize national and state economies. The creation of an Infrastructure Support Fund (ISF) attests to that. According to the president’s spokesman, Dele Alake, “the new infrastructure fund will enable the states to intervene and invest in the critical areas of transportation, including farm-to-market road improvements, agriculture, encompassing livestock and ranching solutions, health, with a focus on basic healthcare, education, especially basic education, power and water resources, that will improve economic competitiveness, create jobs and deliver economic prosperity for Nigerians.”

    As I wrote on this column, few weeks ago, the emergence of super states may be imminent, as the critical enablers are falling into place. The 5th Alteration Act, which made electricity production and distribution a matter for the concurrent legislative list, gave states the opportunity to solve perhaps the most critical dissonance retarding economic growth in Nigeria. Hopefully, states would latch on the ISF and in partnership with private capital, create competitive business environment to attract FDIs to their state.

    Obviously, the president’s body language is a quick-march economic rejuvenation of our country. This column enjoins the state governors and local council administrators to join the federal government to ensure the rebound of the national economy. If they succeed, many of the socio-political challenges that have been debilitating our nation’s progress would disappear across the country. Those who fail to collaborate would lose out in what may be referred to in future, as the Tinubu plan.

    Luckily, as a former two-term governor of Lagos State and a federal legislator, Tinubu has the experience for collaborative opportunities with states, and how federal government funding can support states. As governor of Lagos, Tinubu initiated collaborative partnership in power production, even though he was eventually frustrated by the federal government. But for that frustration Lagos State would have been self-sufficient in electricity production and distribution by now. Again, he initiated the Lagos State Security Trust Fund, a collaborative effort that enhanced the capacity of security agencies operating within Lagos.

    So, with Tinubu in power, state governors have the best chance to tap into the expansive resources available to the federal government. Last weekend, Niger Delta stakeholders charged their state governors to feel the pulse of President Tinubu’s administration, and tap into the impending infrastructure revolution, for the benefit of the people of the region. That is a wise call. An industrial revolution, and enhanced derivative principle, is the antidote to the age long crisis that have squelched progress in the region. Massive infrastructure development is the best palliative for Nigerians. 

  • Solomon at a time like this…

    Solomon at a time like this…

    Solomon in his wisdom wanted to find out who the mother of the child truly was. He had a dilemma for the two women who claimed the child was theirs. Back then there was no DNA test so this could only be solved through unusual wisdom. Solomon said to bring out a knife and attempt to kill the baby. Whoever truly owned the baby will rather have the baby live even if not with her than to see the child die. There and then the owner of the baby was revealed for a true mother will rather see her baby live with another than witness the baby crying in deep pain as she bleeds to death under the slice of a sharp knife. Selah.”

    The above ancient Bible story, recast in such elegant language would have been taken as one of those brilliant exegeses which, although commonplace among our high-flying Pentecostal pastors, are nonetheless evocative of profound Biblical jurisprudence that couldn’t but leave modern judicial establishment in awe.

    Unfortunately, it came from Poju Oyemade, the presiding pastor of The Covenant Nation. Merely by the rain of abuses that followed the tweet, one would be forgiven to imagine that he had committed the mortal sin of blasphemy.

    Here is the leader of a church whose highly-regarded programme The Platform first thrust Peter Obi, the Labour Party candidate into national prominence – never mind that he, Peter Obi governed Anambra State for eight years; that he spoke candidly on a subject that he knew best was sufficient for the cult of supporters dubbed Obidients to call him out.

    Let’s take some samples of reactions to the ordinarily harmless post. The first by @CharmXtova read: “Since the sham elections, everyone on the opposing side has pushed Obidients. They stole our mandate and asked us to go to court. We did. They said we shouldn’t come out to protest and allow the courts do their job (but they came out to protest). We allowed the courts do their job.

    “They told us not to protest on inauguration day so as to not scuttle the peace of the nation. We heeded. The case at the court have (sic) begun to seem like it’ll end in our favour, they have already started protesting and threatening the peace of the Nation.”

    Another, Dr. Kelvin Alaneme as reported by this newspaper also fired a salvo: “You cannot gaslight your way to the truth. As a pastor, you are meant to be an apostle of truth. But alas! It is a shame to see your unravelling. Retrace your steps before it is too late. You know the truth. Only that truth will set you free. Selah.”

    And yet another from Kelechi Ugonna (PhD): “Thank you @pastorpoju. And the disciples asked him, what is the meaning of this parable. And he said unto them. The baby is the seat of power in Nigeria. The mothers are the presidential contestants in the past election, and Solomon is the judiciary.

    “The mother who stole the baby is that candidate who was illegally declared the winner with fraudulent documents. He did not care if he’s putting a knife through the heart of democracy in Nigeria; he wanted the prize at all cost. The other mother is the one who chose the path of peace through the courts to reclaim his stolen mandate, and asked his people to follow the process.”

    Not that it came as any surprise though; such have been the mindless wave of intolerance displayed by the mob in the build up to the general elections as indeed its aftermath that comments which run against the grain of their delusions are treated as treason. An earlier post, I believe in July last year, by the same Pastor Poju had similarly drawn the ire of the mob.

    In the tweet, now-deleted, he had stated: “Faith is not just the blind belief or hoping for a miracle. Faith sees. Faith has her eyes opened and possesses the evidence upon which it builds its belief. Faith prepares long, sometimes for years just as Joseph did for the years of famine. Faith counts the cost before embarking…

    “Without having real evidence upon which you are acting nor preparation for the task, recognising real obstacles that lie ahead and making concrete plans, one is just being delusional about the outcome. The enthusiasm of the youth must not be wasted on poorly planned projects.

    “Noah spent month/years planning for the flood & and he was operating in faith. Jesus said no man goes to battle without taking stock first nor lay the foundation of a tower without counting the first lest he will be mocked. Our faith is intelligent it doesn’t live in denial”.

    More than a year after, (the earlier tweet was also followed by torrents of abuses), none of the profound truths contained in the 145-character tweet appeared to matter. For while their principal, Peter Obi and the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, may have gone to court to challenge the victory of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, nothing in the legitimate step appears to have doused their foul, anti-democratic temper as their most recent onslaught against the mild-tempered cleric has shown.

    Let’s take the story from the middle: two men in court to challenge the victory of the third. Both insist that they won – which is why they are in court to prove that they did. The first, Atiku Abubakar wants the victor disqualified so he could take his place. The second, Peter Obi, not only wants the victor disqualified, he is staking his claim of ‘stolen mandate’ on the 281,717 super votes delivered to him in Abuja! And the victor, President Tinubu, says; look at the votes returned by the electors – not the specious technicalities!

    Back to Pastor Poju’s tweet on Solomonic wisdom earlier referenced.

    Were the reactions borne of the underlying truth contained in those few words being extremely hard to bear? Talk of the mob being at work:  From mindlessly hounding innocent clerics, they have since gone up several notches.  Today, judicial officers have become fair game; when they are not being bullied, they are being called out even when no offences are indicated. As for opposing counsels, when they are not being openly derided or vilified, their written submissions are twisted in such manners that would have done Joseph Goebbels proud.  And that would seem a child’s play compared with the verbiage being served as true reportage of the events in the court rooms including the hare-brained propaganda that could only have been carefully curated to foist a regime of anarchy! And all of these in the media and the cyber-sphere.

    Yes – and that is even permitting the Obidients with their disdain for the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, between truth and fiction, between reality and make-believe – there remains still, something in that old-time Solomonic template ever so seductive and alluringly captivating as to be troubling!

  • The last nationalist

    The last nationalist

    He was barely out of his teens when he plunged into the struggle to free Nigeria from colonial rule, stirring huge crowds all over the country at public lectures and rallies.

    He recalled one such engagement, a lecture in Ilesha (Osun State) during one of many discussions I was privileged to have with him, at his home in Benin City and in Lagos, between 1992 and 1996.

    He and Ojeleye Fadahunsi, later ceremonial governor of Western Nigeria, and Adewale Fashanu, the firebrand Žikist, were the featured speakers. Ilesha was agog with expectation.

    Two days before the lecture, the colonial police blockaded the town, searching every motor vehicle entering or leaving to make sure the speakers could not get to the venue of the lecture.

    They got there all right but well past 10 o’clock p.m., some six hours behind schedule. Yet the room was packed full. Men and women old enough to be their parents and grandparents had waited all day to hear them preach the gospel of the nationalist awakening.

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    More than five decades later, Anthony Eronsele Oseghale Enaharo still had a glow in his eyes as he told the story. He had never felt so humbled and so reassured, he said, that he had chosen the right path.

    Public acclaim on a scale not witnessed since the death of Chief Awolowo would come later still to Enahoro, legendary newspaperman, platform orator, pamphleteer, raconteur, public servant, the ablest parliamentary debater and one of the most cerebral politicians Nigeria has ever known, when he returned home on April 10, 2000, after four years of penurious exile in the United States.

    He was received at Lagos airport by the vanguard of NADECO, the democratic opposition that had rendered military rule unsustainable. A mammoth crowd cheered him as his motorcade drove through the streets. School children chanting kaabo, kaabo, kaabo, Baba kaabo (“Welcome, welcome, welcome Father welcome”) lined his route. And for several days, it was as if the entire metropolis was staging a carnival.

    But more was to come. A powerful Lagos State delegation led by Governor Bola Tinubu escorted him to the border with Ogun State, where he was received with befitting ceremony by Governor Olusegun Osoba and members of the state’s Executive Council.

    Ceremonies over, Osoba and his team escorted Enahoro to the Ondo border and de- livered him to Governor Adebayo Adefarati. More ceremonies, and it was then Adefarati’s turn to escort Enahoro to the border with Edo State.

    Governor Lucky Igbinedion anchored the relay, ushering Enahoro, amidst chanting by jubilant crowds, to Enahoro’s home in the state capital. For the better part of the following weeks, all kinds of civic receptions were held in honour of the returning hero

    There is some irony in all this.  Enahoro made his mark in the anti-colonial struggle. Until he died last week, aged 87, he was engrossed in the struggle to enthrone democracy and justice in self-governing Nigeria.

    He paid a fearsome price. As a crusading newspaper editor and public orator, he was jailed three times for “sedition” by the colonial authorities. The third jail term resulted from his being drafted to chair, in the absence of the designated Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, a lecture titled “A call to revolution” at Tom Jones Hall, in central Lagos, delivered by Osita Agwuna.

    The military regime of Ibrahim Babangida crippled his business interests. Sani Abacha, had billeted in his Uromi country home as commander of Nigerian troops bivouacked in the town. The civil war ended the week Abacha arrived but the house continued to serve him as residence and operational headquarters for another three years.

    Landlord and tenant got on quite well, to the point that Abacha always referred to Enahoro as “uncle.”

    In his craving for maximum power, Abacha forgot all this. He had Enahoro detained in squalid conditions without trial, and would have had him killed if Enahoro had not taken “evasive action,” as he called it, minutes ahead of Abacha’s goon squad.

    Then followed forced exile in the United States, from where he served as the rallying point of the opposition to military rule. In their evocative power, Enahoro’s broadcasts to Nigerians at home and abroad on Radio Kudirat called to mind Charles de Gaulle’s broadcasts from England to his compatriots in Nazi-occupied France.

    Temperamentally and socially, Enahoro would have felt more at home in the United Kingdom than in America.  But he must have remembered how, in 1963, the British Government had extradited him to Nigeria to face dubious charges of treasonable felony. 

    A judge who should have recused himself on account of a notorious conflict of interest sentenced him to 15 years in prison, reduced to 10 years on appeal.

    Sprung from jail three years later, he became, as Federal Minister of Information, the most eloquent spokesperson for the Yakubu Gowon regime and the Federal Cause which had to contend with a hostile foreign press that doted on the Biafran leader, Colonel Emeka Ojukwu, and was fixated on his Oxford education.

    How, it has been asked, could Enahoro have pitched his political tent in the camp of the conservative and predatory NPN on the return to constitutional government in 1979? How could the high-achieving lieutenant to whom Awo would have handed the mantle of premier of Western Nigeria if he had not been countermanded by chauvinistic elements in the Action Group — how could such a person make peace with the mediocrity that the NPN emblematised?

    The answer can be found in his memoir, Fugitive Offender: The Story of a Political Prisoner. .On reaching age 40 – the age at which a man should no longer take his own immortality for granted – Enahoro took stock of his circumstances. The few grey strands of hair on his head had multiplied. The anti-colonial struggle and the aftermath had left him bruised and battered. But he had little to show for it by way of material possessions.

    And so, he vowed never again to be on the outside. Henceforth, he would be on the inside, with the majority, profiting from whatever came from the territory.

    It is to his everlasting credit and to Nigeria’s greater fortune that Enahoro soon renounced the vow and entered into a Second Act. When the Buhari/Idiagbon regime embarked on draconian measures that most Nigerians thought could never be contemplated here, much less pursued, the fighter and mobiliser in Enahoro stirred again.

    He decided to rouse survivors of the vanguard of the nationalist struggle to challenge military rule. Chief Awolowo, with whom he had reconciled, assured him of his support. So did Dr Azikiwe. And so did the vast majority of others Enahoro consulted throughout the country.

    Enahoro then went to work, designing the form the challenge was going to take, and the occasion for its launch. And just to be sure that he had a solid platform, he set out on a final round of consultations.

    The whole thing came unstuck in Enugu where, he told me, he spent three days in a hotel waiting for word that it was okay to head to Onuiyi Haven, Nsukka, to confer with Dr Azikiwe. The word never came. Dr Azikiwe, he was told, was under strict orders from his doctor not to receive – nor apparently talk – with any visitor.

    Though Nigeria did not requite his labour, Enahoro never gave up on Nigeria. The principal mission of his Movement for National Reformation was to fashion a Nigeria that would be truly federal and would be governed by what he called “equitocracy,”  following a new coinage by a political scientist.

    That dream lives on.

    The best way his admirers and followers can honour him is to continue to pursue it, until it is realised.

    If President Jonathan Goodluck had not recently named Liberty Stadium, Ibadan, for Chief Awolowo, it would have been fitting indeed to name it for Enahoro who had, as Western Nigeria’s Minister of Home Affairs and Information, supervised its construction, along with the establishment of Africa’s first television service.

    Benin Airport would be a fitting memorial. But that would not be expiation enough. 

    According Enahoro a full state burial would be a significant step toward paying the huge debt Nigeria owes his illustrious memory.

  • Much ado about palliatives

    Much ado about palliatives

    Had our ever excitable horde of emergency experts not been too self-absorbed in their debate on the desirability or otherwise of the N8000 conditional cash transfer to miss out on other items of governance on offer, we’d probably on the way to examining, in a more structured format, the whole gamut of interventions being put in place by the Tinubu administration to address the challenges brought on by the current lean season. If merely by the way some emergency experts have gone on and on about the cash transfer specifically targeted at the segment regarded as the poorest of the poor, one would be tempted to see the lone item of intervention as mutually exclusive somewhat, to other bouquet of initiatives designed to address the current dire emergency.

    Yes, there are those who have contemptuously dismissed the cash transfer initiative as non-starter. While no one has yet accused President Tinubu of seeking to emboss his signature on the N8,000 cheques a la Donald Trump’s Covid-19 vouchers, there is even now, just enough staccato of condemnation to drown any good that the initiative could have been deemed to represent. From rantings in the supercharged netizens parliament to no less frenzied agitations in the mainstream media right up to the whining on the main street, most would seem to agree that the cash transfer would neither provide sufficient elixir to the current hardship nor address the problem of poverty in any tangible, let alone sustainable manner.

    By now, a good number of Nigerians must have come across a particularistic recommendations currently being recycled among various WhatsApp groups: That the N500 billion will purchase approximately 8,000 luxury 60-seater buses with each state and the FCT getting 216 buses!

    Again, the argument would appear simple and straight-forward: the latter option will deliver more value in terms cheaper transportation and employment to thousands of Nigerians than the government’s plan.

    Yes or no? That, I guess, is debatable.

    Of course, there can be no denying the countless options through which public funds could be deployed. That is what the economists mean when they talk of opportunity cost – the cost of a forgone alternative. In this wise, the government, having considered the many options, chose the cash transfer option as being the best in the current circumstances. It is something it is eminently entitled.

    Suffice to add at this point also that none of the options being bandied around can be said to vitiate the need for the lifeline to the poor; in any case, one doesn’t even need to be a dyed-in-the-wool monetarist to appreciate the economic impact of the N500 billion cash injection into the local economy at a time like this. To the extent that it answers to the rationale of governance as being about the greatest good for the greatest number, the inherent wisdom would, itself, seem unassailable.

    As for the other fear about its sustainability, I think the federal government has sufficiently responded to that: the cash transfer, expected to run for six months, is what it is – it is a temporary reprieve to assist the recipients tide over the current hardship. Clearly, if the government could bail out manufacturers, bankers and all manner of actors in the economy, it seems unthinkable that anyone would oppose such lifelines being extended to the poor. 

    The above obviously takes us to an unlikely item in the palliative menu, yet one that goes right to the heart of the current crisis: the state of emergency declared by President Tinubu to tackle the issue of rising food prices and shortages. It is interesting that the proclamation didn’t quite make the headlines in the same way that the N500 billion approved for the palliative did!  Talk of a minor news item clearly displaying the major in a moment of national crisis!

    To better appreciate the context of the event, we only need to look at the stats by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on the situation. In its report titled “Crop Prospect and Food Situation”, the body projected that some 25.3 million people in Nigeria would face acute food insecurity during the June to August lean season.  

    It went on to note that the situation “…is mostly driven by the deterioration of security conditions and conflicts in northern states, which as of March 2022 (latest data available) have led to the displacement of about 3.17 million people and are constraining farmers’ access to their lands”. The results are evident – from 24.32 percent in January, there has been a surge in food inflation to 25.25 per cent in June.

    That projection, by the way, predated the removal of the fuel subsidy. True, if the administration appreciated that the subsidy removal and its aftermath have merely brought in fresh complexities to a long festering problem, it seems to have adroitly set its eyes on the bigger picture, which is how to contain a more dire emergency. This is where the ardent critics of the administration, in their mindless obsession with the form and shape of the palliatives, appear to have conveniently missed out on the import of that presidential declaration on food security!

    These are interesting times no doubt.

    And talking of the emergency declaration, Mr Dele Alake, the president’s spokesman, while giving vent to the president’s thought, certainly did a good job of capturing the president’s as indeed the mood of the administration on the issue: “That all matters pertaining to food and water availability and affordability, as essential livelihood items, be included within the purview of the National Security Council.”

    For starters, he announced: “We will immediately release fertilisers and grains to farmers and households to mitigate the effects of the subsidy removal.

    To give direction, he also stated: “There must be an urgent synergy between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Water Resources to ensure adequate irrigation of farmlands and to guarantee that food is produced all-year round.

    It is of course the elements contained in the plan that Nigerians should actually pay close attention to. Among these are the creation of special purpose vehicles like the commodity boards to liberalise the food production value chain, immediate activation of land-banks across the country (some 500,000 hectares of already mapped land that will be used to increase availability of arable land for farming are said to be waiting for deployment), as well as putting an end to the age-long and problematic nomadic animal husbandry – to be replaced with government-managed ranching.

    Nothing, it would seem, was left out – from transportation infrastructure, to food storage, the agricultural research institutes right up to the 11 largely dysfunctional river basin authorities, and of course the Central Bank of Nigeria. All of them are being brought together under the new impetus to save Nigeria and Nigerians. Taken together, the elements are bold, broad and ambitious. In that context, the current noise about palliatives might well prove to be one of those needless distractions.

  • Sit-at-home and starve

    Sit-at-home and starve

    There are varied accounts about the cost of the Monday sit-at-home order, originally imposed on the southeast states by the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) movement, led by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, but now allegedly hijacked by a renegade arm of the group, led by Finland-based Simon Ekpa. Surprisingly, while the acclaimed spokesman of IPOB, the fancifully named Emma Powerful has continuously distanced IPOB from the excruciating sit-at-home order, Ekpa still gives the release of Nnamdi Kanu, as the condition precedent to end the crisis.  

    According to Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State, the state loses N10 billion every Monday the state is grounded by the sit-at-home order, while Governor Chukwuma Soludo, said, Anambra State, loses N19.6billion, every Monday of sit-at-home. Cumulatively, according to the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), the southeast economy lost N5.375 trillion between August 9, 2021, and December 19, 2022, while the annual loss is put at N4.618 trillion. The ICIR report is based on the losses by micro-businesses across the five states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states.

    According to a newspaper report, in 2023, the federal government budget estimate was N20.51 trillion, out of which N6.31 trillion or 30.8 per cent would be spent on debt service. The aggregate capital expenditure was put at N5.34 trillion. Interestingly, the entire southeast 2023 budget was put at N1.197 trillion, compared to Lagos State which budgeted N1.768 trillion for the same year, raising the entire southwest states’ budget to N3.074 trillion. While the northwest budgeted N1.637 trillion, the north-central, northeast and south-south budgeted N1.068 trillion, N1.121 trillion and N2.855 trillion respectively.

    As if the Monday sit-at-home, which has seen the region bleed profusely, is not enough, Ekpa recently raised the stakes to a week-long sit-at-home, to hell with all the grave consequences. Without regards to the life-threatening challenges faced by people living in the region, Ekpa has again issued a threat to enforce a two week sit-at-home all in the name of pressuring the federal government to release Kanu. The seemingly embarrassed spokesman of IPOB, has disassociated the group from the maddening punishment of the people of the region as a liberation strategy. 

    Of course, this column had argued for Kanu’s release from prison after the Appeal Court ordered his release while President Muhammadu Buhari was in power. Some governors, eminent Igbo statesmen, including late Mbazurike Amaechi, also visited Buhari to plead for Kanu’s release, all to no avail. Now, the pressure has shifted to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to release Kanu from prison. Recently, state governors, pre-eminent Igbo sons and daughters met with Ohanaeze, in Abuja, to strategize how to end the southeast debacle with the help of the federal government.

    They plan to meet with President Tinubu to plead for the release of Kanu. This columnist humbly joins in the plea. But as I wrote in the past, IPOB and her sympathizers must show willingness to eschew violence as a political strategy. Before Kanu was forcefully and unlawfully returned to Nigeria, after he jumped bail granted by the Federal High Court, IPOB was considered a threat by governors of the southeast states. The members in occasional show of bravado match through major cities in the southeast, threatening the political and security control of the states by the governors.

    For a lasting stability of the south-east region, IPOB should be willing to allow those who have been elected, to govern with minimal distraction. Of course, they are entitled to disagree with the leaders, and even to form a political party to challenge those misgoverning. As has been rightly argued by legal and political scholars, a call for self-determination by any group of persons is intrinsically lawful, and IPOB can pursue that cause politically within the ambit of the law.

    One may argue that section 2(1) of the 1999 constitution (as amended) provides that Nigeria shall remain “one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign state”, but section 38 provides for freedom of thought, and section 39, the freedom to express such thoughts. Moreover, with the appropriate numbers every section of the constitution can be amended. For emphasis, this column believes the southeast can thrive well in Nigeria, and the present struggle for secession is a distraction.  What fundamentally disable Nigerians and make groups like IPOB thrive is bad governance. 

    Evidentially, the people of the southeast are the most travelled amongst the ethnic groups in Nigeria. They live literally in every nook and cranny of the country, and even across the world. They own properties, inter-marry, worship and take titles in all parts of the country. While they may be loud and obtrusive sometimes, they substantially adapt to the custom of their hosts, easier than other ethnic groups in Nigeria. So, sociologically and anthropologically speaking, it is therefore strange that Ndigbo are agitating for the dismemberment of the country.

    A study of the remote and immediate causes may show reasons for the trenchant agitation, which astound Nigerians of other ethnic groups, and who see the agitators as crying wolf where there is none. Could it be that the agitators are impatient with the slow pace of development in Nigeria, and therefore believe that the only way out of the quagmire is to opt out?

    Could it be that the army of agitators are substantially those who have become economically disempowered by the poor governance that has been the lot of Nigerians over the years?

    Perhaps, state governors who have shown determination to stem the hard-hitting sit-at-home order ravaging the economy of the region, may also discreetly commission a study, to know the root causes of the crisis, instead of just buying arms and ammunition to win the war. The governors must also know that it is not only members of IPOB that are fed up with the poor governance ravaging the region, as majority of their people like the rest of Nigerians, are disillusioned by the bad governance that plagues every part of the country.

    To gain the confidence of Nidgbo, and others living within the region, the governors, local council chairmen and legislators should make a commitment to govern well and in accordance with the provisions of the extant laws of the land. If they gain the confidence of the majority, the few that have sworn to only live with separatist ideology would become isolated, and easier to deal with, should they fail to change their debilitating tactics.

    In the meantime, those who are haemorrhaging the economy of the Southeast, in the name of liberation movement must realise that their tactic is backfiring. In a competitive Nigeria, the agitators must rethink their strategy, otherwise the southeast which is already disadvantaged economically, could retard to a state of nature. People cannot be forced to sit-at-home and starve to death. Enough is enough.  

  • Kukah, no cook me nonsense 

    Kukah, no cook me nonsense 

    Kukah, no cook me nonsense rather sweetly segues into Fela’s Tisa, no teach me nonsense — talking of plucky irreverence in the public space, the cathedral of democracy!

    Fela was unfazed master of the ultimate put-down, in that best-forgotten epoch of the political military crashing everything; and with it, their country’s public morality.

    Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, the formidable Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto, was fiery moral force under military rule.  He is no less a fiery voice now.

    But progressively, he appears the disturbing symbol of priests leveraging pulpit trust to impose ecclesiastical whims: more to push personal beefs; less to spruce up the rotten moral fabric.

    Were he alive today, Fela would perhaps have been miffed enough to release a follow-up blaster: Kukah, no cook me nonsense, in all of Fela’s Abami Eda’s iconoclastic glory!

    Thank God it’s a democracy, not a theocracy!  

    In the one, reasoned discourse triumphs. In the other, brash dogma prevails.  From the medieval era to contemporary times, humanity has learned the hard way!  

    Ask Galileo Galile: wronged in 1632; didn’t earn a Pope John Paul 2 apology till 1992.  Yet all along, Galileo was right, and the Church was wrong!  The holy evil of dogma!

    But back to Bishop Kukah.  Compare Kukah’s two end-term comments — one in 2015, the other in 2023 — and the sacred noxiousness of the Bishop’s Ado-Ekiti claim on Buhari-era “corruption” would be clear.

    On July 10, at the diamond anniversary of the call-to-Bar of Chief Afe Babalola, SAN, Bishop Kukah claimed the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency limped with bare-faced corruption, worse (in his opinion) than any other government in Nigeria.

    That was holy hyperbole, at best, holy mischief, at worst; but hardly a crime in a democracy, which allows opinions, right or wrong, so long as the law isn’t breached.

    Still, tracked back to what Kukah said in 2015, the mischief in his Ado-Ekiti comment is as clear as the Bishop’s cassock is immaculate.

    In 2015, the PDP cowboys and cowgirls had cleared out the stable, with their prodigious greed.  They had all but gobbled the entire common wealth. 

    Though they served under the goodly Goodluck Jonathan, the abiding image of that era was that of the rapacious high priest who not only ate of the shrine but outright pawned his sacred altar to sate his insatiable greed.

    But what did the goodly Father Kukah say?  ”Let’s move on!  Let’s forget the past!”  

    To be sure, Bishop Kukah gave his reason: President Jonathan lost an election, respected himself, honoured his high office, bore his loss, and quit with rare grace.  

    Pure nobility, unmatched in Nigerian electoral history! To Jonathan, that eternal credit!

    But even that rare nobility couldn’t blot out the concentrated rot the former president bossed (or was trapped) — and the roar of near-unanimous disavowal of the Bishop’s queer exultation made that crystal clear.

    Eight years later, it certainly wasn’t El Dorado.  But a lot of re-building had taken place, though most of them wilfully denied by a media, fatally self-distracted: echoing sweet bile from bitter partisans, ethnic champions and posturing confederates from the political Church.

    Gauging corruption under the revenue-boom PDP and revenue-lean Buhari era, go no farther than Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State, South West Nigeria.

    A friend just beamed, as his Face Book display picture, the Wole Soyinka Train Station, Abeokuta.  On the virtual flip side of that station, at Laderin in the Abeokuta country, is the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL).  

    The two perfectly exemplify these two eras.

    The WS station is public asset, funded with public wealth, for public use — and it’s only one of so many, from the Bola Tinubu cargo station at the Lagos Apapa Port, to the Obafemi Awolowo Station, Moniya, Ibadan, on the Lagos-Ibadan standard-gauge rail.  

    The OOPL is private trove, funded with public “donations”, for private pleasure.  It’s only one of its kind in all Africa.

    True, the Obasanjo Presidency (1999-2007) was way ahead of the Jonathan Presidency (5 May 2010 – 29 May 2015).  But OOPL is about the only reminder of the PDP era, although through Obasanjo’s personal prism.  

    Contrast that loner to the Buhari era’s many public works and assets — rail, roads and bridges — the difference couldn’t have been starker, even with plummeted earnings.

    More perilously for the Jonathan tenure — the last leg of the Obasanjo-PDP era — its legacy was crippling graft.

    Yet, the good Bishop cries blue murder at Buhari’s exit, but exults with halleluyah at Jonathan’s!  How’s that? 

    Might the Bishop then sing or cry by base love or hate; and not by reasoned x-ray of the intrinsic quality (or otherwise) of the regimes he thunders in judgment over?

    That must be worrisome for a voice long presumed, at least by many a starry-eyed, as public conscience, trusted and revered.  

    But it’s hardly surprising, given the gangling social illiteracy that stumped the public space, all through the Buhari years.  In all that, popular clerics were happy-go-merry cheer leaders.

    One set up shop as fecund political pundit, masked as prophesy, for the feel-good pleasure of his co-partisans.  But the God he claims to serve ensures his so-called “prophesy” always falls flat.  Still, he appears too blinded by hubris to even know!

    Another, set up a two-pronged temple: one titillating with prosperity, mammon be damned; in the other, ensconced as fiery curser-in-chief, letting fly sacred malediction at his foes, real or imagined, Satan be damned!

    The Bishop himself turned base southern Kaduna, anti-Fulani, resent into potent strafing of a Fulani president, posturing high national ideals and pushing a fierce Christian persecution syndrome.

    Which explains why Kukah would lionize Obasanjo, to high heavens, for appointing southern Kaduna natives to high offices but bitterly demonize Buhari for national projects in his native Daura, simply because Buhari was sitting president.

    If indeed Buhari was guilty of Fulani “nepotism”, as much of the southern media crowed, with the political Church in tow, Kukah’s stand wasn’t imbued with any less base embrace of his southern Kaduna ancestral folks.  Both committed no crime.

    But to condemn one but commend the other, even pressing the Church into suspect service, is the height of cant and holy hypocrisy.

    In any case, which of these social gatekeepers partnered Buhari in his anti-sleaze war — the Church, the media, the judiciary?  Which of them?

    The moral of all these?  The Tinubu order, while buckling down to work, should carry along everyone.  But they should crave no overt validation from anyone.  Without sounding nihilist, these normative agencies themselves crave new norms!  

    The political Church is perhaps the most noxious: its ecclesiastical distemper gives the Church a bad name; then pumps the captive congregation full of bile.