The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • ‘The Spirit of June 12’

    ‘The Spirit of June 12’

    Seventeen years and six days ago today, on August 19, 1993, as military president Ibrahim Babangida was flailing and threshing for a formula that would seal his annulment of the 1993 presidential election and keep him in office and in power, a frontline member of the Nigerian Senate made the following remarks in the course of a debate.

    “I quote:

    ‘Distinguished Senators, we have a situation today that suggests that the abortion of June 12 election is another coup d’état.  My question is, when are we going to stop tolerating injustices, coups, and abuse by people on whom we have invested much resources – the public funds of this country? 

    ‘The highest portion of Nigeria’s budgets since independence is being invested on the military, from their barracks to the ammunition provided for them and up to their uniforms. The oath of office taken by the military is to protect the citizens and the sovereignty of this country. 

    ‘Should we therefore continue to tolerate the situation where the military turn that investment against us, to abuse and restrict and to prevent justice taking place? 

    Read Also: June 12: Hope to Renewed Hope

    ‘Yes, it is true that we have a crisis but, to every action, there is a reaction.  This is a self-inflicted crisis because, without the abortion or annulment of the June 12 election, there would be no crisis like this. 

    ‘We have a government that made laws and abused its own laws.  Therefore, the present military administration by virtue of the abrogation and violation of its own decree has committed a crime . . .’

    End of quote.

    “The Senator who uttered these historic and courageous words, who insisted on justice and refused to take refuge in opportunist compromise, the Senator who defended the sovereign right of the Nigerian peoples to elect their own rulers, is  our Chief Presenter, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Emeritus Governor of Lagos State, and a pillar of the coalition of democrats and progressives.

    “The book is dedicated to the memory of Bashorun Moshood Abiola, winner of the historic June 12 1993 presidential election, who would have been 73 years old today, August 24, 2010, and to “The Spirit of June 12.”

    “What do I mean by “the Spirit of June 12?”

    “As I see it, the Spirit of June 12 is the spirit of service and sacrifice.  It exalts keeping faith with the sovereign electorate over and above considerations of personal gain and comfort, over self-preservation even. 

    “That was the spirit that impelled Bashorun Abiola to hold fast to his historic mandate even when the cost of doing so was nothing less than his freedom and possibly his life, to reject compromises that would have made a mockery of the right of the people to elect their own rulers.

    “It was the spirit that moved Kudirat Abiola to carry on the struggle long after Bashorun Abiola had been taken into captivity, and for which she paid the ultimate price.

    “It is the spirit that has sustained the discreetly but deeply engaged members of the Abiola household – Dr Doyin Abiola and Hajiya Bisi Abiola.  That same spirit animates Hafsat Abiola, who lost her mother to Abacha’s assassins when she was still in her teens, and her father to the machinations of the “international community” and their local proxies well before she could settle into a life of her own.

    “Dr Doyin Abiola is here, but Hafsat could not be with us today.  Please join me in saluting their inspiring example.

    “The Spirit of June 12 is the spirit of firm resolve, of never counting the cost, of going the distance, the spirit of resistance to, and defiance of, arbitrary power. 

    “It was the spirit that sustained many in our midst today and thousands across the country even as they were jailed, tortured, dispossessed, and subjected to all manner of privations, just because they stood up for justice, for democracy, and for the rule of law. 

    “It was the spirit that impelled hundreds of our politically engaged compatriots to abandon kith and kin and home and hearth to move to distant, not always welcoming lands, there to continue the struggle for justice in their homeland.

    “The June 12 Spirit reaches out and is not opposed to compromise.  But it insists that compromise for the sake of compromise is barren, and that fundamental principles must not be sacrificed at the altar of compromise.

    “The June 12 Spirit holds that fundamental rights belong to all; that they cannot be saved for some and denied to others.  Thus, it defends those rights without equivocation wherever it finds them assaulted, even if, or rather, especially when the victims are sworn enemies of the June 12 Spirit.

    “It is the Spirit of June 12 that has kept alive, against formidable odds, the long, dogged struggle to reclaim the stolen mandate of the people in Osun, and Ekiti; it contributed significantly to the restoration of the popular mandate in Edo and Ondo.

    “The Spirit of June 12 is not merely about the struggle for democracy and justice, however.  In a practical sense, it is also about the delivery of goods and services to the public.  It is about improving the human condition.  In this practical dimension of the June 12 Spirit, our Chief Host, Governor Babatunde Fashola, SAN, stands out as an exemplar.

    “The June 12 Spirit enjoins us to build bridges of understanding across Nigeria;         it transcends the divisions of tribe and tongue and creed and class; it enjoins us to forgive and summons us to find in ourselves that charity which is the surest foundation for a just society.

    “But the Spirit of June 12 does not enjoin us to forget; indeed, it cannot enjoin us to forget.  Individuals and political communities and indeed nations put their very existence at risk when they forget. This fundamental truth is embedded in the names that many communities across Nigeria bestow on infants – names that translate into “forgetting is dangerous.”

    “Bashorun Abiola breathed and lived the Spirit of June 12 in his private and public life. 

    “Today, that Spirit finds probably its most robust expression in the tireless exertions, at home and abroad, of our Chief Presenter, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

    “Finally, a few words about the book.  And here, I would like to return to the subject of forgetting, or rather, not forgetting.

    “Every society cherishes its stories.  All of us – adults, no less than children, enjoy listening to those stories.  The story is our vehicle for conducting surveillance of the environment, transmitting the cultural heritage, and entertaining ourselves.

    “It is the story that helps us locate where we came from when we have strayed.

    Through the story, we draw inspiration from the past to prepare for the struggles ahead.  From it, we learn of the blunders of bygone years, even if we are sometimes  doomed to repeat them.

    “That is the reason for this book – to awaken memory, to restore that which

    has been forgotten, in the hope of perhaps helping to stave off a debacle even more tragic than the one I have tried to chronicle within its covers.”

    The foregoing comprised my remarks at the public presentation of my book Diary of a Debacle: Tracking Nigeria’s Failed Democratic Transition (1989-1994), at the MUSON Centre, Lagos, on August 24, 2010.

    What a delicious irony that Nigerians now celebrate June 12 as Democracy Day, some three decades after Clement Akpamgbo, the attorney-general and backroom legal fixer in Babangida’s lawless military regime, warned darkly that invoking it for any reason and in any context would be construed as a treasonable felony.

    And how fitting that on the 30th anniversary of the capricious annulment of the 1993 presidential election, the person who most emblematizes the Spirit of June 12, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is the President of Nigeria and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

    For the first time in Nigeria’s history, an authentic progressive and a “June Twelver” is at the helm. May the Spirit of June 12, the Spirit that animated the formation of the ruling All Progressives Congress and pervaded Tinubu’s presidential campaign – may the Spirit of June 12 at its fullest be his guide and his anchor.

  • A time of reckoning

    A time of reckoning

    The day they said would never come has passed, and  the event they said would never take place was staged in a grand style.  On May 29, Bola  Ahmed Tinubu was inaugurated as Nigeria’s 16th president.

    He was not, as the counter-social media and its denizens had predicted, seized as he arrived at the parade ground and whisked to prison to await the grim fate reserved for grand impostors, to be replaced at the seat of honor by Peter Obi, who had placed third in the presidential election, to the triumphal chants of the Obedient.

    He did not collapse halfway through the ceremony, as had been bruited by those who wagered that no amount of steroids pumped into his bloodstream from vials sewn into the sleeve of his buba could keep him on his feet for more than one hour. 

    Even at his best, you could never accuse him of crisp delivery.  But in the event, it was nothing near the mumbo jumbo they had primed their followers to expect.

    But the Inauguration had been boobytrapped all the same by the collective vacillation, the irresolute posturing and, it has to be said, the complicity of the leaders who had ruled Nigeria for roughly four decades. 

    I am of course talking about what has come to be known as the oil subsidy.

    Failure to address it forthrightly over the years had driven the economy to the edge of collapse.  Papering it over or resorting to another cosmetic fix was no longer an option, Tinubu said in his Inaugural Address, adding tersely that the subsidy was ended.

    Since then, his Administration has been grappling with the dislocations resulting directly from the announcement.  The weeks ahead will most likely witness more of the same.  There will be no honeymoon for the new government.

    For the past 38 years or so, virtually every measure trumpeted as a solution to the instability in the supply and pricing of gasoline has turned out to be a gigantic swindle.

    The epic swindle began, like most swindles in Nigeria’s recent history, during the era of the self-designated military president, General Ibrahim Babangida.    The country was set to take a loan from the IMF, and as a sop to that latter-day Cerberus, the currency was to be devalued, import restrictions were to be lifted, and anything remotely suggestive of a subsidy was to be abolished immediately.  “Market forces” had to govern every transaction.

    Gasoline came to be identified as the soft underbelly of the Nigerian economy. It was grossly underpriced, they said, because it was heavily subsidized, with the pernicious result that a gallon of gasoline cost less than a bottle of soda or milk.  One image that clings in my memory of that time is of the engaging correspondent Chris Anyanwu, later a Senator, peddling that line night after night on national television in her smooth, silky delivery.

    What subsidy?

    The difference between the price of a gallon of gasoline in Lagos and the same gallon of petrol in Fargo, North Dakota, they said.

    Wasn’t that what economists call an opportunity cost? If the cost of getting a gallon of gasoline to the pump exceeded the retail price, you could perhaps talk about a subsidy. What were the actual costs?  And whatever happened to comparative advantage and all that if Nigerians were to pay for gasoline produced on their soil the same thing as consumers half a world away were paying for it? 

    Was the whole thing not at bottom a tax?

    Shifting gears, they said gasoline was so cheap that it was being mindlessly wasted.

    How?  Were Nigerians using it to wash their hands after a meal, or to prepare their vegetable stew in place of regular cooking oil, or as a beverage to entertain their guests, since it was so much cheaper than Coca-Cola?

    Shifting gears still, they said because gasoline was so cheap in Nigeria, it was being smuggled to neighbouring countries to reap windfall profits.

    Now, you could not do that on any meaningful scale by lugging 50-litre petrol cans through bush paths.  Only sea-worthy vessels or motorised tankers driving on paved roads across international frontiers manned by immigration and customs and security officials had that capability.  Those vehicles had to be owned or controlled by political and military officials with guaranteed access to refined petroleum products.

    Why was it, then, that not one of those vehicles had been arrested and charged with this illegal traffick, only a few stragglers transporting smuggled gasoline cans in leaky dugout canoes or in rickety trucks across the border?

    And why make genuine, honest-to-goodness consumers pay for the sins of syndicated smugglers?

    Gasoline was so cheap, they piled on, that it was being adulterated.  When substituted for kerosene in hurricane lamps and stoves, the adulterated mixture caused horrific explosions that maimed and sometimes killed entire families.

    Read Also: Bola Tinubu era begins

    Why not make kerosene cheaper than gasoline, then?  In any case, why would anyone adulterate a product that was already obscenely cheap?  Whoever heard of adulterated zinc?

    From the funds to be realised from ending a subsidy, the existence of which was never proven, new oil refineries would be built not merely to satisfy growing domestic consumption but also for export, to generate foreign exchange.  Those long, snaking lines at filling stations would be things of the past, they said.

    Whether framed as “correct pricing” or “de-regulation” or under any other label, this has been the standard litany, with a few variations here and there, whenever the government has needed to raise revenues during the last three decades.

    The more they cut the alleged subsidy, the more remained to be cut.  It reminded one of what they said of the whale that was beached in Lagos in the early 60s that the more they hacked away at the carcass, the more remained to be hacked.

    At every hint of economic decline, gasoline pricing has been the first resort and quite often the  only one. The “subsidy” had to be cut or abolished; if not the economy would collapse.  Humongous figures are conjured up as revenues that will accrue to the exchequer from cutting the alleged     subsidies.

    Committees are set up to manage the projected cash inflow and to ensure it is put to the most judicious use.  “Palliatives” to cushion the average person from comprehensive price increases that will follow are announced.

    Those measures sprang more from panic than from sound reasoning.  Within a year, the “mass transit” buses running on subsidized fuel and charging subsidized  fares vanish from the roads.  A striking project here, a thriving scheme there, but much of the money went the way of other   state money — to satisfy the awoof proclivities of officials high and low and their confederates.

    The one thing they never built was a new oil refinery.

    Rather, they patched up the old refineries at costs that defy all reason.  They functioned fitfully at best.   Periodic Turn-Around Maintenance (TAM) gulped vast sums of money, but only the  fortunes of the contractors and the supervising officials actually got turned around

    When the refineries produced at all, their output was shipped several miles from the loading platform and returned as imported fuel to reap windfall profits in subsidy reimbursements for an untouchable criminal syndicate.

    Organised labour and civil society rouse themselves, vowing that the cuts will not  pass. The government says there is no going back.  The scene is set for a titanic struggle between an irresistible force and an immovable object. 

    Government yields a little ground, and so does organised labour, as well as civil society. A prolonged crisis is averted, but the seed of future conflict continues to germinate, undisturbed, until the subsidy phantom stirs again.

    That, in sum, is the sad history of attempts to end a subsidy that has been underwriting the theft of 40 percent of Nigeria’s oil production for decades.  The best time to end it, even some of the stoutest protagonists of a genuine subsidy are saying, is now, before the Administration gets bogged down by other issues.

    Ending it is not going to be easy; certainly not for a government with the most progressive credentials in Nigeria’s history.  It cannot proceed on the facile calculation that only the elite who operate fleets of gas-guzzling vehicles have been profiting from the so-called subsidy.  They can absorb the steep price increases that will likely result from ending the subsidy.

    Owners of capital, on the other hand, will pass the increase that will likely result from on to the general public, those eking out a marginal existence form one day to the next.  This public  must be  cushioned from the impact, which will cut across every aspect daily living – be it the education of their children, food, clothing, rent, cooking, transportation, lighting, health care even at its most rudimentary, and child care. 

    The usual “palliatives” will not do.  The protections will have to be substantial, well-targeted, and delivered transparently.

    But what is to be done about those who corruptly appropriated the national patrimony for decades and brought the economy to the edge of ruin through syndicated scams?  Should they not covenant to hand back quietly to the public treasury a negotiated but equitable fraction of their documented rip-off or face prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.

    This teachable moment must not be wasted.

  • Tinubu: no honeymoon

    Tinubu: no honeymoon

    With a Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)-threatened national strike from tomorrow (June 6), the Bola Tinubu era opens with scant any honeymoon.  

    It’s a virtual biting of the bullet from the very first second!

    Yet, there’s a historical parallel, dating back to the very early days of President Tinubu as governor of Lagos (1999-2007). 

    As not a few today believe Nigeria could always find the cash for fuel subsidy (despite the doomsday stats by the anti-subsidy lobby), everyone believed Lagos — former federal capital — would always generate the cash to get by.

    Everyone — except the new governor and his team: to whom the resources of Lagos were puny, linked to the great voter expectations, after eons of military rule.

    So, against the Oracle computerization of the Lagos public services, the late Ayodele Akele, chair of the Lagos NLC, planted himself and his union.  Today, however, we know who was right and who was wrong.  

    The Oracle software not only secured prompt salaries and stress-free gratuities and pensions, it signposted revenue computerization that made Lagos a national model.

    But not even this blast from the past can completely knock the winds off Joe Ajaero’s aluta wars to come — since subsidy removal would ensure the pocket badly hurts.

    Even then, Comrade Ajaero is also fired by historical parallels: to stave off subsidy removal, Adams Oshiomhole, former NLC president, fought bruising — and immensely popular — pump price reversal battles against the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency.  

    The snag though is that by Greek philosopher Heraclitus and his state of flux, Ajaero isn’t quite stepping in the same NLC “river” from which Oshiomhole triumphantly splashed.  

    Yet, Ajaero’s NLC is applying exactly the same tactics.  This rashness may well prove costly, especially against the approach of sibling Trade Union Congress (TUC), which resumed talks with the government on June 4, while NLC stayed away to mobilize for its strike. 

    But beyond contrasting NLC-TUC approaches, a lot has changed on the subsidy debate front.  

    Not a few still regard anti-subsidy stats as vile red herring to clobber folks into gulping the hemlock of costly petrol.  Yet a public unanimity, over the vexed matter, appears coalescing — showing a near-complete u-turn from the glorious Oshiomhole years.

    What is unclear, however, is whether these changed voices belong to the vocal minority — among whom the subsidy removal lobby would count — or the often silent majority.  For the new government, a correct gauging is imperative for right policies.

    Read Also: Call off strikes, Tinubu urges health workers

    But beyond feelings and hunches: that a President Tinubu would, in 2023, risk subsidy removal, an attempt that in 2012 forced a President Goodluck Jonathan into a hasty retreat, shows some positive structural development, likely to blunt Labour agitations.

    For one, the “feel good” promise of Dangote Refinery and Petrochemicals — even before its first drop of fuel, expected in July.  

    That is a piece of critical local refining infrastructure the Buhari order nurtured for the benefit of the economy, from which the Tinubu Presidency now taps.

    Poor President Jonathan!  The preceding PDP administrations — over which former President Obasanjo loomed — left Jonathan with no structural backbone for a brutal make-or-mar petrol pump price war!  Hence, he bolted at the first boom of heavy artillery from the street!

    That’s one hobble Tinubu doesn’t have.   A crucial Labour pre-condition for ending subsidy is local refining.  Though Labour can correctly argue local refining is still at least one month away — and so subsidy should stay till then — it knows it’s a highly defanged joker.

    Still, that infrastructure redound is why President Tinubu himself must work extra hard at critical support infrastructure all-round.  His immediate challenge, on the oil front, is to deliver more refineries to compete with Dangote.  It on this front, of vibrant market competition, that fair pricing of fuel can be won.

    Also changed, from the Oshiomhole era, is the legal framework: the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2022.  PIA has clothed the old Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in a new commercial toga of NNPC Ltd (NNPCL).

    NNPCL has bought the old behemoth, often loathed and untrusted, more time to prove it can fix and profitably run Nigeria’s four public-sector refineries, now under refit — perpetually so, more or less, since 1999!

    So, to keep or to throw?  NNCL’s performance should decide.  Still, PIA offers a fairly fresh start for these refineries, to which organized Labour has sentimental attachment as public assets — and fairly so.  Fixing them will ease the battle over fuel pump prices and its aluta roars.

    But back to the looming Ajaero strike.  Ajaero comes with baggage Oshiomhole didn’t have — and it’s mainly on the Labour Party (LP) and its platform whoredom.  With its latest liaison with presidential candidate Peter Obi, whose capitalism violently jars with LP’s socialist ideology, that dissonance screeches. 

    So, on Obi’s account alone, Ajaero and his NLC should expect vicious strafing from the anti-subsidy forces.  Besides, Obi, on the hustings, also committed to subsidy removal — as did Atiku Abubakar, the PDP candidate — a stand NLC dogmatically opposes.

    If he escapes that, he won’t escape merciless pummelling on ethnic fealty to Obi, a fellow Igbo. That, to be sure, could be hitting below the belt.  Yet, Ajaero’s careless electioneering — and immediate post-poll — posturing would offer him pretty little joy.

    Still, whatever the dramatics, pro or con, the government and Labour must realize there are huge social costs to manage; and therefore focus more and grandstand less.

    President Tinubu has broached a possible general salary re-work to absorb part of the cost-push inflation already here.  Feedbacks suggest TUC is warming up to that idea.  

    NLC should follow suit.  Dogma won’t feed workers and families hit by a vicious flare in living costs.  That’s what subsidy removal has done — and it’s just dawn in a long, long day of economic angst.

    But beyond salaries, the government should make ameliorative policies to shield the non-salaried too: perhaps in some cheap mass transit, by which the bulk of the people can escape cut-throat commuting costs.

    In Lagos, the Blue and Red urban rail lines may well come in handy — and the sooner they are pressed into service the better.

    For most parts of the country, however, urban rail is at best a distant echo — another reminder of the centrality of rail to a post-subsidy economy; and how the Tinubu order must continue with the aggressive rail modernization of the Buhari era. 

    This is a wake-up call to birth a solid economy — which is why Labour must quit aluta theatrics and secure for workers fair deals, to tide them over this bumpy ride.

  • And so, May 29 came…

    And so, May 29 came…

    Sunday May 28, yours truly had made a rather cryptic ‘joke’ on my social media (Facebook) page: Today is May 28…Tomorrow is May 29…and with it a new beginning! It shall happen! And I’m not even a prophet!

    Of course, the pun was fully and comprehensively intended! With the background in the prognostications of doomsday prophets many of whom had either pronounced that the day would never come, or if it came at all, would be a terrible one (for them); recall others wishing that May 29, 2023 be expunged from the calendar since the man they wanted in Aso Villa was out of reckoning; it was something of a timely reminder that the moment finally was at hand!

    Needless to state that the post, a bare-knuckle jab had a defined target in mind: the purveyors of that toxic theology that permeated the electoral season; and then of course the notorious, but now discredited school of fake prophets and their sons who equated the prophetic office with necromancy and for whom the call involves the upending of the divine will; that none of their ‘theorising’ came to pass at that point was for me the moment to call out the deluded band.

    Trust the fellows not let such moments pass without a challenge. The reactions which followed came in torrents. On the one side were those who, as one might expect, chorused an Amen to the leg of the post relating to the prayer for a new beginning, with copious heart-felt prayers for the incoming administration, to succeed. Others perhaps convinced that Nigeria’s problems are such that require Divine intervention merely asked that God took control.

    On the other was the throng who saw the ordinarily harmless post as another extension of their so-called battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and so promptly called out yours truly. One of them, whom I held utmost respect, was aghast.  To him, the post bordered on apostasy hence his angry riposte: “This comment leaves me cold as a Child of God. First, Muslim-Muslim ticket. Second, who truly is BAT? Thirdly can we as Christians say this is a true reflection of what happened on February 25th and finally if we are OK, may the Lord bear witness”.

    And that was some few hours to the H-Hour! That for me was the moment of realisation that tried as one might, to ‘educate’ some people on our constitutional imperatives, and that God is not in the business of fostering let alone promoting confusion among his people, some people are far too gone to be cured of their delusions!

    My response, admittedly betraying angst, was swift and laser-guided: “Yours just leaves me just as cold! Muslim-Muslim? I thought Nigerians have settled that on the ballot? Seems so easy to forget that a constitutional process did take place during which the candidate emerged, followed by general elections!

     “It was never in my place to reject anything but to vote, and that I did and a winner emerged! Perfect or flawed? Isn’t that why those who claim they won have gone to court to challenge the result?

    Specifically referring to the main thrust of the irksome post, I had added: “My only problem is with religious deities who insisted that God spoke when He didn’t and so declared that May 29 shall not be! Now that May 29 is here, is it that God changed His mind? Will someone be humble enough to admit that they lied and God didn’t speak? I’m Christian enough to know that God’s ways are not our ways…

    “Part of my Christian duty is to pray for BAT to succeed as president so we can have a better country. God can use anyone that He pleases. Unfortunately, many Christians appear to want to substitute their preferences for the Divine Will. Hence the current frustrations across the land! I’m sorry if my theology sounds strange; it is what it is!”

    Well, May 29, came. None of the dramas as predicted by our band of deluded prophets came to pass; if anything, the day was heralded with generous showers of rain – a sign of cool refreshing across the country, even as the world beheld the glorious moment of transition during which former president, Muhammadu Buhari handed the baton to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    Read Also: Ndume begs NLC to call off planned strike over subsidy

    Talking of prophets and prophecies, how about one, Feyi Daniels, described as founder of ‘I Reign Christian Ministry’, who in a fit of prophetic rascality, had posted on his YouTube channel on February 19 the following: “About to be sworn-in, that day, everybody that said he (Tinubu) is the next president will be rejoicing and they will be saying, I told you, prophets that don’t see far will start telling you that, didn’t I tell you that Tinubu is the next president? At that event, it looks like a very open ground, like a stadium-like centre, while at that event, military men will come in and they will arrest Tinubu.”

    Well, none of his predictions (delusions) came to pass. In fact, the last I heard of the ‘prophet’ was that he is cooling his feet somewhere in jail over an alleged rape! Whether he would still have enough ‘anointing’ left, after his current ordeals, to apologise to his congregation and to Nigerians for misapprehending the prophetic message and thus proclaiming a false prophecy – would remain moot at this point. Not so the great harm unleashed in his unguarded utterance on the body of Christ –that will surely take time to heal.

    Yes, our dear country marches on, in renewed faith and hope for a better tomorrow, under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. As for those wishing themselves ill under his leadership, theirs is the choice to make! As for me and my house, prosperity beckons!

    NLC: As it was in the past

    Had the Joe Ajaero-led Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) bothered to properly gauge the national mood, it would, most likely have been a bit more deliberative over a matter which most Nigerians would appear to have left the ranks of the organised labour behind. By going ahead to declare nationwide strike effective tomorrow, Wednesday, should the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNCPL) fail to reverse the new petroleum price regime, the leadership would appear to have fallen prey into a delusion of exaggerated power!

    Imagine a strike notice issued barely four days after the new president, Bola Tinubu, declared that there would no longer be a petroleum subsidy regime as it was not sustainable.

    Thanks to its somnambulist leadership, an NLC that could not find the intellectual resources to stop the National Assembly from passing the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), in July 2021 and former president, Muhammadu Buhari, from signing it into law a month after, has suddenly found the ‘courage’ to demand a halt in its implementation simply because a new administration, has dared to communicate an obvious fact –and which most Nigerians had already accepted as gospel – which is that the just departed administration made no provision for the subsidy in the second half of the year and so has settled the subsidy question!

    I do understand why the resort to brusque methods might be tempting in such circumstances. The truth however is that the subject is one on which the new president had not only made a commitment but which circumstances had somehow forced on the ballot, the very reason other presidential candidates – including Peter Obi which Ajaero’s leadership not only endorsed but actively supported – made specific commitments too.

    Now, the NLC, rather than engage on how to bring succour to its members, wants to bring down the roof simply because President Bola Tinubu not only kept his word but has taken steps to give effect to the desires of Nigerians to have a clean break with the fraud-ridden subsidy regime.

    Under President Tinubu, economics, law, justice and equity, national survival and common sense may have, finally, found a meeting point in the subsidy question. While an NLC leadership still steeped in the old gung-ho tactics of the past can’t see it, they must never be allowed to set the clock backwards.  

  • Petrol hike and NLC strike

    Petrol hike and NLC strike

    The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) has issued a notice to proceed on a nation-wide strike by tomorrow, following the removal of subsidy on petrol by the federal government, which resulted in hike in the petrol price by over 200 percent. Regardless of the procedural legitimacy, over the years the labour unions have used strike as the most potent weapon to pressure government to accede to their demands, especially at the federal levels. But unfortunately for the NLC, presently they stand accused of partisan interest in the 2023 general elections, being promoters of the Labour Party, and so that tactics may backfire in the present circumstance.

    Expectedly, they have been accused of playing the script of the Labour Party which lost the presidential election. Tinubu’s campaign media director, Bayo Onanuga, has accused the Congress of working to destabilize the Tinubu presidency, and he reminded them that their presidential candidate Peter Obi, called the petrol subsidy, ‘an organized crime’, which he promised to end on his first day in office, if elected. The leadership of NLC would therefore face the dilemma of sifting their labour related interests from the political interests of their preferred party.

    They should also know that the Tinubu presidency may soon ask the courts to determine, whether a governance policy decision, such as regulating the price of petrol comes within the definition of trade dispute over which a Trade Union can go on strike? Section 47(1) of the Trade Disputes Act, defines trade dispute: “as any dispute between employer and workers or between workers and workers which is connected with the employment or non-employment or the form of employment and physical condition of work of any person.”

    Again section 54(1) of the National Industrial Court Act, 2006, defines trade dispute as: “any dispute between employers and employees, including dispute between their respective organisations and federations which is connected with – (a) the employment or non-employment of any person, (b) terms of employment and physical conditions of work of any person, (c) the conclusion or variation of a collective agreement, and an alleged dispute.” Even where there is a trade dispute, the legal right to strike is tenuous, because of the legal rigmarole provided by law.

    In Tram Shipping Corporation V.  Greenwich Marine Incorporated (1975) ICR 261, at 276, Lord Denning stated that a strike is “a concerted stoppage of work by men, done with a view to improving their wages or conditions of employment, or giving vent to a grievance or making a protest about something or sympathizing with other workmen in such endeavour. It is distinct from stoppage brought by an external event such as a bomb scare or by apprehension of danger.”  I think Lord Denning will define strike over price of fuel as also distinct.

    In Oshiomole vs F.G.N (2005) 1 NWLR (pt.907) 414 AT 436, the Court of Appeal, gave an injunctive relief against the Labour Union, in similar circumstance. Indeed, on a plain reading of the Trade Dispute Act, striking against increase in price of petrol is not within the contemplation of the Act.  The Federal High Court had held a similar reason for the threatened strike by the NLC not to fall within the contemplation of a Trade Dispute, and of note, the National Industrial Court recently upheld the common law principle of “no work, no pay”.

    Read Also: NLC should rethink proposed strike

    So, if the NLC carriers out the treat to proceed on a nation-wide strike tomorrow, it may prove a turning point for labour unions in Nigeria, considering the change in dynamics, with the ascent of President Bola Tinubu as president; and the dire national challenges which made the removal of fuel subsidy the only reasonable way out of the financial mess that stares Nigeria in the face. Most likely, Tinubu’s presidency, levitating between the devil and the deep blue sea, with respect to the fuel subsidy palaver, may choose the lesser evil of confronting NLC, considering the financial mess left behind by the Buhari regime, which makes retention of fuel subsidy an impossible option.

    Read Also: NLC to FG: restore old fuel price or face industrial action

    In the circumstance, this column calls on the NLC and TUC to engage in collective bargaining with the federal government. No doubt politicians have handed workers the short end of the stick while they live in affluence; as the present N30,000 minimum wage is unjustifiable in the face self-aggrandizement that holding political office entails. To make matters worse, poor governance presages the continuous devaluation of the nation’s currency, which in turn renders the marginal increase in minimum wage insignificant. Consequently, over the years, workers and ordinary Nigerians continues to suffer double whammy in the hands of incompetent public administrators.

    So, what is the way out of the present quagmire for both the government and the Labour Unions? Dialogue. Prior to the notice of strike last Friday, the NLC and the federal government met to hammer out a compromise in the face of the economic challenges that the doubling of petrol price would have on welfare of workers. The government representative also met with the TUC leadership, and the congress has given government their demands to avert strike. Earlier, after the National Executive Council meeting of the NLC, the congress gave the federal government a five-day ultimatum to reverse the petrol price hike or face strike that could paralyze the entire country.

    Of course, the NLC knows that the threatened strike action will be declared illegal by the court, if the provisions of the Trade Dispute Act is applied. But interestingly, veteran labour leader and senator-elect Adams Oshiomole who is in the federal government negotiating team, was in the shoes of NLC president Joe Ajaero many years back, and knows where the shoe pinches. Also President Bola Tinubu as governor of Lagos State, had a running battle with the state labour unions, in his early days as governor, before the state civil service was reorganized. 

    But ever since the Lagos State public service sector was reorganized, the state workers have arguably remained the best paid in the country, stretching back to the Tinubu era as governor. So, the federal government and labour must sit down and negotiate a living wage for workers and the ways and means government needs to make the resources available to pay. By means of collective bargaining, the government and labour can hammer out a collective agreement on all the thorny issues that TUC have been raised, which undoubtedly also agitates the NLC, and the time-lines for enforcement.

    This column urges the Tinubu regime to continue the dialogue with the NLC, and the congress to give the new government a chance to prove itself. An economically recalibrated Nigeria is the only way to save the nation from imminent doom. Neither water canons and tanks and intrigues to break strikes, nor the unleashing of public rage on the new government is the sensible way out.

  • A hustler at work

    A hustler at work

    Like the proverbial bad coin, former British prime minister Tony Blair – Phony Tony and Tony,  to millions of his compatriots – surfaced in Abuja last week, in nearly the same circumstances as he had done exactly eight years earlier

    Then, Blair was in a curious failure of judgment that almost ruined the epochal event, invited as keynote speaker at ceremonies to herald the inauguration of Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s 15th president.

    On the eve of his scheduled outing, he scurried out of Nigeria, and his one-time secretary of state and ideological soulmate, Peter Mandelson, was ferried in to take his place.         

    Last week, he hustled his way into Abuja, wangled an audience and a photo opportunity with President-elect (as he then was) Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and offered gratuitously to help the in-coming administration launch Nigeria on the path of democratic governance and development at home, and as a respectable international actor

    Granting Blair an audience was a misstep in an otherwise finely calibrated countdown to the inauguration that culminated in yesterday’s inspiring rite of renewal.  He has no core convictions.  He has no political or moral capital that he can deploy for Nigeria’s benefit.  President Bola Tinubu and his administration must not allow him to indulge in that pretence again.

    I was reminded the other day that it was my column for May 19, 2015, “An unwelcome visitor,” that scuttled Blair’s scheduled presentation before Buhari’s first inauguration.            I would like to take the liberty to draw substantially on it for this submission.

    Abuja is one of the few capitals where Tony Blair can still count on a polite welcome.  His 2015 visit was the third in just a little over four years.

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

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

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

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

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

    Blair’s 2015 visit was no accident.  It was designed to secure future access in the Buhari dispensation for the major players in international high finance, for which he is a well-paid lobbyist.

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

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

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

    When Blair went to testify before the Chilcot Inquiry into how the UK entered the unholy alliance that invaded, occupied, and destroyed Iraq, he had to be smuggled into the Committee Room through a back door, to save him from the wrath of protesters.

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

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

    Blair seized the  September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States as lifetime opportunity to project himself as a statesman of global reckoning.  The United States would not fight alone, he assured Americans.  Britain would stand “shoulder to shoulder” with America as it confronted the terrorist threat.

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

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

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

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

    For his domestic audience, Blair declared that Iraq had developed missiles capable of hitting  British forces in Cyprus. Why Iraq would want to attack British troops that had been garrisoned in  Cyprus since the 1970s he never explained.

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

    Whenever he prefaces a statement with “to be perfectly honest” or “to be absolutely candid,” which he does very often, you could be sure that he was going to zap you with a falsehood, a barefaced lie.  He did just that when he claimed in a debate in the           House of Commons that “weapons of mass destruction” would be found in Iraq within two weeks.

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

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

    Blair says he is not sorry for that lie because other countries – Australia is the example he and George W Bush frequently cited – also believed it.  True, Britannia    no longer rules the waves.  But when did Britain become just another country?

    Germany did not believe it.  France did not believe it  China did not believe it.  Russia did not believe it.

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

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

    He condoned or turned a blind eye to torture.  To head off trials that would have embarrassed the authorities, the British Government in 2011 paid out millions of pounds to persons tortured by officials in parts of Iraq occupied by British forces.

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

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

    In the meantime, the Federal Government and other institutions must stop inflicting him on the Nigerian public.

  • Tinubu era begins

    Tinubu era begins

    Amidst pomp and pageantry, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was sworn in as the 16th president and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, at the Eagle square in Abuja, yesterday. He took over from President Muhammadu Buhari, whose overall performance as president was lack lustre in many respects. President Tinubu swore to defend the republic and ensure that his personal interest would not affect his decision as the president.

    No doubt, President Tinubu has taken over Nigeria at a very difficult time in its history. The economy is in shambles, many parts of the country are insecure, the nation’s ethnic fault-lines are bare, corruption and ineptitude in government is a mantra, political opponents are desperate and uncompromising, poverty is bursting at the seams, more than one-third of employable Nigerians are unemployed, and despondency about the future of the country especially amongst the youths is unparalleled.

    But President Tinubu has asked Nigerians not to be sorry for him, since he sought for the job of president and now he has got it. The days and months ahead would determine whether President Tinubu needs pity or praise, as he unfurl the symbolic national and defence flags that were symbolically handed over to him at the swearing in ceremony. It is only then that he would know whether the goat which Buhari packaged and handed over to him has broken legs.

    Agreeably, President Tinubu is a man of immense faith in his personal capacity. His decision to contest amidst the belief that his predecessor’s poor governance has foreclosed any chance of the All Progressive Congress (APC) returning to power in the 2023 general election is awesome. Many well-meaning persons considered it inauspicious for President Tinubu to throw his hat into the ring. When he bravely decided to run, many swore that he will be punished for imposing a bumbling former president, Buhari, on Nigerians.

    The common mantra amongst the doubters was they await to see the performance indices Tinubu would campaign on, considering the abysmal performance of the outgoing government. But regardless, President Tinubu ran for president and ingeniously navigated the delicate balance of praising what was good about President Buhari, without antagonizing Buhari by condemning what was very degrading about his era.

    In his speech at Eagle Square yesterday, he laid a broad spectrum of the policy direction of the new era. He expressed his deep love for the country, unwavering faith in her people and absolute trust in God. He prayed for the democratic light never to extinguish. There is no doubt that President Tinubu is a lover of people, and that is why despite not occupying any political office since 2007, thousands of people mill around him at every turn. Will he be able to sway Nigerians regardless of tribe and religion to love him the way his associates do?

    President Tinubu promised to observe the rule of law in governing Nigeria. He promised never to put down anyone for holding a view different from his own. He promised to defend the exercise of rights of all persons, including his opponents who are contesting the result of the election. He acknowledged that obedience to the spirit of the constitution is as important as the pieces of paper upon which it is written. We have seen presidents treat the constitution from which they derive their power with ignominy when it obstructs their selfish desires. Will President Tinubu behave differently?

    Read Also: Full text of President Tinubu’s maiden speech

    In obedience to the rule of law, President Tinubu promised to govern with prejudice towards none and amity towards all. In essence he would treat those who overwhelmingly voted for him the same way he would treat those who voted for his opponents when it comes to their rights and privileges under the law. He promised to ensure the concept of good governance, by obeying the rule of law, ensuring the security of Nigerians and to grow the Gross Domestic Product to 6% per annum.

    President Tinubu promised to create at least one million jobs per annum, relying on digital economy as the main source. He promised a reformation in the agricultural sector, and to create a commodity board to secure reasonable income for farmers and ensure the abundance of food at reasonable price for the people. He made promises to the women and youth, and to work hard to eliminate extreme poverty amongst the people. With Nigeria struggling for the poverty capital of world with India, the task ahead of President Tinubu is indeed a tall one.

    President Tinubu promised to ensure the indissolubility and security of Nigeria. Without sending a warning to the separatist movements, he used former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon as the totem to send message of solidarity with the sanctity of one nation, one destiny. As a veteran of progressive politics and struggles to ensure good governance in Nigeria, this column believes that President Tinubu knows that what will ensure his promise of indissolubility is good governance and not the force of arms.

    His promise to ensure the security of Nigeria would be tasked by the herdsmen-farmers clashes that pushed our country to the brink. On that thorny issue, President Tinubu has promised to ensure a nationwide programme to diminish the clashes. He will also be tasked to deal with the insurgency in the southeast and the banditry attacks in the northwest and north-central; without letting down the guard in the Boko Haram infested northeast.

    President Tinubu has promised to secure Nigeria internally and externally. In furtherance of the internal security, he promised to reorganize and reenergize the Nigeria Police. He promised better welfare, more equipment and better trained manpower. Many Nigerians expect President Tinubu to address the issue of state police which as governor of Lagos State, he witnessed the impediments for state executives who had no control over the most basic aspect of internal security. Will President Tinubu toe the path of those who oppose state police while in power, but support same when they leave office?

    President Tinubu’s major forte is economic and financial management. He has promised budgetary reform, and measures to stimulate economic growth without triggering more inflation. He promised that Nigeria under his watch would promote domestic manufacturing and less dependence on importation. To stimulate that, he promised to double electricity generation and improve distribution across the country. He promised local and international investors that he would review multiple taxation and anti-investment policies.

    President Tinubu boldly announced the end of fuel subsidy and multiple foreign exchange rate, two twin drains on the economy. With his promise to dialogue, and not to impose his views on those with different views, the days ahead are indeed, going to be interesting. This column prays for God’s guidance as President Tinubu start his era as president.

  • PMB: Exiting on the high

    PMB: Exiting on the high

    Second Niger Bridge.  Dangote Refinery, Lagos.  BUA Refinery, Akwa Ibom, due 2024. Nigerian rice and sundry agricultural strides. Loko-Oweto Bridge, on the Benue River. 

    Lagos-Ibadan rail and expressway.  Apapa-Oshodi-Alapere expressway, Lagos.  Bodo-Bonny road and bridges — first time ever that oil-rich Bonny Island, home of NLNG, would have a road link with the Rivers mainland!

    Contrast the serious headwinds, local and global: Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) and oil facility bombings.  IPOB’s murderous campaign.  Boko Haram.  Two recessions.  COVID-19. #EndSARS’ arson and killings. Russia-Ukraine war and global grain crisis.

    But even with tough challenges and the harshest of economic climes, pockmarked by dwindled cash, the Muhammadu Buhari administration signed off yesterday with the most impressive of term-end harvesting of critical infrastructure since 1999.

    Going back in time, it could well be the most impressive in Nigerian history, despite the negative hubbub from droning naysayers.  

    Yes, the Yakubu Gowon government might have done better in those halcyon days of oil boom and easy wealth.  But no government has ever posted more in dire times than PMB’s — dire times imposed by past greed and sleaze.

    But that all of these only lifted infrastructure to GDP ratio from 1:5 (in 2015) to 2:5 (in 2023) — from former President Buhari’s own admission — shows not only how crumbled Nigeria was in 2015, but also the yeoman’s efforts that the new government — and many after — will need to get the economy sprinting again.

    This grim reality was wilfully lost in the snarl-and-growl temper of the Muhammadu Buhari years.  Here, a media fixated with bile and irrational blame was chief culprit.

    That combative vice, Ripples must warn, won’t just vanish because a new government is in town.  But it would push the press even further behind the people it’s supposed to lead and guide.  That would be quite some catastrophe, though well-earned.

    Despite this emotive babble, however, the fundamentals are far better than in 2015 — though there is still a long way to go.  So, no respite for the new Bola Tinubu order.  

    It must press harder on infrastructure, until it reaches, at least, 3.5:5 infrastructure-GDP ratio.  Strictly, no economy can fly without support infrastructure — and good the president, in his inaugural speech, just pledged himself to exactly that.

    Still, Muhammadu Buhari 2nd Niger Bridge!  That itself is symbolic on at least two levels.

    One: critical infrastructure need not be sweet mirage: to harvest cynical votes, but leave doting partisans in the lurch, as PDP did to the South East, all its 16 years in federal power.  After eons of brazen deceit, that bridge is now reality.

    Two: Muhammadu Buhari, at least by grand hateful propaganda from a loud section of the South East political elite, was Igbo Enemy No.1.  

    Read Also: A farewell note to PMB

    Yet, that “enmity” didn’t stop the former president from throwing in everything to give the Igbo their due — as he did to other parts of the country.

    That’s rare in contemporary Nigeria, where public officers often assume a paternalistic complex: pamper friends, thrash foes, and crow about it in supreme arrogance. 

    Still, by dint of his own hard work, PMB is stamped — for aye — in the South East subconscious, even if all he got while toiling were boos and jeers.  Yet, the South East wasn’t the sole guilty party.  It was vicious din from the nay-ensemble all-round.

    But as the economy gradually powers back to life — especially if the new Tinubu order continues with the infrastructural heavy lifting of the Buhari years — the joke of history, on the naysayers, will be loud. 

    Then, Dangote Refinery — the ultimate “game-changer” — in the “friendly” territory of Lagos!

    The birthing of the Lekki, Lagos, Free Trade Zone (FTZ), now home to a deep sea port, Dangote Refinery and sundry other ventures, is a golden tutorial on visionary politics, even as opposition.

    The Lekki FTZ was conceived during President Tinubu’s tenure as Lagos governor (1999-2007).  The imperial instinct of the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency was to crush whatever golden ideas that came from the Lagos front.  The president simply hated the guts of the governor and his nimble — and audacious — mind!

    But see how that dream from the past has paved the future for President Tinubu, as a putative game-changer in local refining, en route to a sweeping economic rebirth?

    Tinubu had clear and lofty policy dreams.  But it took another president, as focused on the collective as the Obasanjo Leviathan was distracted by personal glories, to make that dream a reality. 

    Still, to ensure the revived downstream petroleum market doesn’t cake into an early monopoly, the Tinubu government should facilitate the coming of rival refineries, public and private, to make for healthy market competition and birth fairer pricing.

    But even ahead of all that, economic recovery prospects, other things being equal, appear bright and far more exciting than they were in 2015.

    But away from the stark to the near-intangibles, as public morality in politics.

    For starters, the 2023 election was eons ahead of any other from 1999 — never mind the inconsolable jabber and yammer of sore losers and their fascist media, abetting losers that insist they must be declared winners, or else …  

    As Obasanjo bellowed do-or-die at his exit in 2007, PMB harped on clean polls; and walked his talk with requisite support laws, in concert with the  National Assembly.

    Besides, a direct comparison between the only two full eight-year terms, so far from 1999 — Obasanjo: 1999-2007; Buhari: 2015-2023 — is quite instructive.

    2007: In-between a surreptitious hustle for an illegal third term, the outgoing president was busy slanging with Atiku Abubakar, his deputy, in a fight-to-finish: mutually exposing who allegedly poured public funds to buy new cars for side chicks and allied concubines; and who allegedly cooked up sweetheart deals for friends and cronies. 

    2023: The much maligned PMB publicly declared he never stole anyone’s kobo.  True every past leader has made that claim.  But that it sparks little controversy coming from Mai Gaskiya — the honest one — speaks volumes. Also note-worthy: he neither accused Vice President Yemi Osinbajo of vaulting ambition nor illicitly buying up the whole country!  That’s rare decency in Nigeria’s power corridor.

    Besides, while one president anchored his legacy on a last-minute peer gaming for a presidential library of dubious motive, the other, tenure-long, invested in priceless public assets — again, Muhammadu Buhari 2nd Niger Bridge, on Ripples’ mind!

    In truth: PMB set new heights, in decent governance, difficult to match.  Yet, many a medium wails, and won’t be consoled, at his exit.   History will have a good laugh at their comical outpouring!

    Still, blame not the errant media.  They just mirror a Jewish messianic complex, gripping the polity.  Many Jews still await their “messiah”, more than 2,000 years after Christ Jesus had salvaged the world, according to the Christian tenet.

    That temper is to thoroughly lampoon the sitting president, in blissful hope of some messiah-to-come.  PMB won’t be the last to be scourged by that scurrilous bulala.  

    That is why President Tinubu must deliver value, undistracted by any elite rabble, sure to make a non-stop row.  

    Adieu, PMB.  Welcome, the Tinubu era!

  • Parable of the cabbage and the rose 

    Parable of the cabbage and the rose 

    I have come by several jibes on idealism but the most provocative to date was Mecken’s slur that an idealist is one who concludes that a rose makes a better soup than a cabbage simply because it smells better.

    In essence, fragrant idealism thrives as Utopia. It wholly diminishes if unaccompanied by the preconditions essential to its actualisation.

    Without grit, the most radiant ideal dims to smut; flaming and curling, it sears with promise until it scalds the heart of the idealist, leaving him with a charred psyche.

    The best idealism is mined inside out, deep down in the trenches. It surpasses the splendour of pontification or a snobbish purge of the mind. Thus to attain actual relevance under the incoming dispensation, the Nigerian idealist must descend from his arrogant perch and hop into primaeval mud.

    Torrid idealism, alone, could never demolish the castle gates of malfeasance ingrained in the Nigerian psyche. Our multiplex of corruption is celebrated and worshipped by several raptorial divides.

    The Nigerian public office is not for the faint-hearted; treasury looters, paedophiles, rapists, advance-fee fraudsters, ex-convicts, and thugs vie for public office – often against the patriot.

    All is fair in pursuit of power thus politicians sponsor carnage and hate speech in pursuit of public office. At their victory or defeat, they recruit all shades of characters – intellectuals inclusive – to condemn their defeat or celebrate their victory.

    To such end, a few privileged idealists assume the role of courtiers; to validate power in unworthy hands, they create a pseudo-reality plausible enough to redefine truth and distort facts. It is instructive, for instance, that a good many of them are still egging on Labour Party’s ‘obidients’ that Peter Obi is set to grab power through the trapdoor of the electoral court, even though he came a distant third to the winner of the February 25 election, President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    Outside the corridors of power, they plot pseudo-events and pretend to speak for the people. They claim to work for the country’s good but they are performers whose chief intent is to make money. Conflict is their treasure trove. Call them political profiteers or merchants of misery.

    In the corridors of power, they shamelessly parrot official propaganda, polluting public discourse with sycophancy, and doublespeak, among other behavioural toxins. 

    Government and corporations allow courtiers into their inner circles imbuing them with instant celebrity but as Saul points out, no class of courtiers, from the eunuchs behind Manchus in the 19th century to the Baghdad caliphs of the Abbasid caliphate, has ever transformed into a responsible and socially productive class.

    Courtiers are, ultimately, political degenerates. They are intellectual hooligans committing the violence of pretence against Nigeria and her people. When they claim to be pro-citizenry, they carry on like “political hobbyists,” often lending their ‘voices’ to front-burner issues, and sponsoring hashtags to attain clout.

    There is little difference between them and the proverbial fawning page, who plays smooth flatterer and thug to both the government and citizenry-herd, twisting and turning with changing circumstances.

    They are deucedly reactive, a spectacle of submission and ideological sodomy, their words and deeds boom as a cloying mime of irate mobs, corrupt politicians, and corporations’ reprobate wiles.

    Eitan Hersh, Associate professor of political science at Tufts University identifies courtiers as “political hobbyists,” and highlights their perfect contrast in the person and politics of Querys Martias. The Dominican immigrant, resident in Haverhill, United States, presents a rare exemplar to supposedly educated eggheads.

    For Matias, politics isn’t just a hobby. In her day job, she is a bus monitor for a special-needs school. In her evenings, she amasses power. By leading a group called the Latino Coalition (LC) in Haverhill, she unites the Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Central Americans who together make up about 20 per cent of Haverhill. The coalition gets out the vote during elections, but it does much more than that, notes Hersh.

    The coalition once met with the Haverhill representative in Congress and asked for regular, Spanish-speaking office hours for its community. It advocates for immigration reform and federal assistance in affordable housing. The coalition has also met with the mayor, the school superintendent, and the police department requesting more Latinos in city jobs and on city boards.

    Matias’ political participation is strategic; the 65-year-old influences governance to the benefit of her community. Under her leadership, the coalition operates with discipline, combining electoral strategies with policy advocacy under her leadership.

    Unlike Matias, Nigeria’s college-educated intellectuals personify Hersh’s political hobbyist stereotype. They are disproportionately educated, flaunting several awards, titles, and postgraduate degrees.

    They espouse politics of the soapbox; a wanton game in which they debate Nigeria’s big issues on abstract merits – often mouthing off their “superior” logic or sounding off for clout in social space, at events sponsored by meddlesome foreign consulates or on government-sponsored think tanks.

    Their assemblage thrives on pseudo-realism, their ability to propound and market spurious experience. In reality, they are toxic to politics and harmful to the country. 

    Nigeria would do better if her eggheads redirected political energy to serve the people. For instance, they could start at the grassroots, where government presence is non-existent. 

    To re-establish relevance and repair integrity, Nigeria’s idealists, revolutionary heroes, youth leaders, or whatever other labels they answer to, must detach from ideological voyeurism and fault-finding – a tactic of assault and defence that eventually becomes their nemesis and tomb.

    They must seek to empower people. For so long, they have united to market cunning and rhetoric, for and against selfish segments of the political class; it’s about time they united in the interest of the electorate.

    Grassroots politics thrives on empowerment; helping imperilled peasant farming communities defeat desert encroachment, insecurity, and flooding; improving fringe communities’ access to health care, electricity, and good roads, and provision of soft loans to unemployed youths, SMEs, and agricultural start-ups – all these can be championed and facilitated by the social critic and idealist. The latter would foster societal progress in no small measure by championing such initiatives and drawing attention to the plight of society’s underprivileged.

    These could be achieved by influencing real political power. Nigeria’s eggheads could seek collaboration in modest and large organisations to meet the immediate and long-term needs of the people. Then, when an election dawns, the community would show up. Call it dividends of their investment in the people’s emotional bank account.

    Some would call it strategic citizenship. It’s pragmatic, humane, and real politics. It’s the kind of engagement that public intellectuals must perform to give substance to their professed clout.

    And it’s precisely the kind of politicking that helps the electorate shun the tokens and humiliating food packs, often handed out by the political class in exchange for their votes, at election time.

    If we humanely engage with the people, we might attain noble repute with the grassroots and the grudging respect of the political class. We might assume a prideful place in the pantheon of Nigeria’s finest patriots and statesmen.

    True, fancy repute and ghostly online clout may earn us money in the short run but we shall lose it all in the long run to the same system that taught us to be soulless hobbyists.

    We have used fiery intellect and the soapbox as mirrors to reflect society’s hypocrisy, moral corruption, and injustice.

    It’s about time we walked our talk in the interest of Nigeria and the populace

  • Weep not for Ike Ekweremadu

    Weep not for Ike Ekweremadu

    Even as Deputy President of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria – fourth in the nation’s pecking order— and a five-term senator representing Enugu West to boot, Ike Ekweremadu was hardly known outside Nigeria.  Even within the country,  his was not a household name. 

    You could ask any number of persons selected randomly from a crowd in any part of the country outside Enugu State to name 10 or even 20 federal lawmakers, and his name might not figure.

    The world began to take notice about a year ago when he and his wife were arrested and detained in the UK, and subsequently arraigned on a charge of unlawfully procuring an indigent street trader in Lagos and transporting him to London for the purpose of harvesting his kidney for transplanting in their daughter who is battling renal issues.

    Their trial, conviction and sentencing some three weeks ago, along with their confederate in the UK,  a practising physician of Nigerian origin, catapulted the Ekweremadus from relative obscurity to international notoriety, if not infamy.  Their names and pictures made the front pages and the headlines of media outlets across the world and their story, marshalled into a devastating summation by the presiding judge, reached a global audience.

    The plight of Ekweremadu’s ailing daughter, Sonia, and Ekweremadu’s desperation to obtain a remedy that could save her life, rightly evoked the sympathy of the trial court and counted for some mitigation.

    The trial judge also took judicial notice of the pleas and testimonials entered for Ekweremadu by eminent political figures in Nigeria, among them former president Olusegun Obasanjo and senior clergy, all attesting to his good citizenship, and his public spiritedness.

    In the end, they were not enough to assuage the enormity of the crime.  Ekweremadu, the principal figure in the matter, was sentenced to nine years imprisonment. His wife is to spend six years in jail.  Their daughter Sonia was spared to attend to her ailment.

    Ekweremadu’s travails began well before the organ harvesting quest, however.  You cannot serve five terms as an elected lawmaker in Nigeria’s upper chamber, with all the obscene remuneration in cash and kind, and be spared the not-so-pleasant attention of the envious.  His adversaries were legion, and they pursued him with a zeal that must be judged excessive even by Nigeria’s standards.

    He was marked even before he “emerged,” as Deputy President of the Senate, just one breathless step behind Dr Bukola Saraki, who had with accustomed guile fashioned his own “emergence” as Senate President.

    The attentive reader will recall that as Saraki was being ferried to the courtroom day after day to answer charges of falsification of assets, Ike Ekweremadu was always in tow, a study in fraternal solidarity.   In their appearance before another court to answer charges of forgery in relation to the documents with which they had allegedly procured their “emergence” as the leaders of the Senate, each sought to come across as victim rather than perpetrator.

    It would be claimed that this latter charge had been withdrawn, without the Attorney-General of the Federation formally entering a nolle prosequi.  The consideration seemed to have been that if the charge was pressed and it stuck, if it was established that Saraki and Ekweremadu had obtained their positions in the Senate by fraud and deception, every act done or purported to have been done by the Senate under their watch would be a nullity, void and of no consequence whatsoever.

    As weeks passed by without any indication that the Attorney-General was set to re-open the case, Ekweremadu’s determined and envious adversaries could hardly contain their impatience.  As far as they were concerned, he was a poseur. He had   to be unmasked by all means.  And if he was no poseur, make him out to be one.

    What, they wondered in their desperation – what was the secret behind the glittering career that had seen Ekweremadu  through a metamorphosis without parallel from Deputy President of a Senate controlled by his party, the PDP, to the same office in a

    Senate in which the PDP belonged in the minority Opposition?    How had he managed the transition with no apparent loss of credibility and authenticity?

    What had he done for his constituency with the N31.5 million he had been taking home every month as “running expenses” since goodness knows when, plus other incomes not captured in the official revenue flow?

    As if he had not already enjoyed more than a fair share of the political goods that properly belonged to all of Enugu, he announced in March 2022 that he was set to step up from merely representing one-third of the state for some 20 years in Abuja to governing its  entire territory. 

    Three months later, and before the primaries for the selection of candidates for the gubernatorial race, he suddenly withdrew from the race. Citing “public safety” concerns.

    His adversaries continued digging.  By one account, they tried hacking into his computer to filch vital information with which they could shame him and end his career.  They came up short. The Yahoo boys could not help them, nor could consultant hackers.  By one account, they could not get around the firewall Ekweremadu, a man for a digital age.  had built around his private information.

    Time, then, to try something different.

    With friends in high places, and with the right inducement, there are few barriers you cannot breach in Nigeria.  So, without much fuss, they picked their way into the inner sanctum of the Probate Registry where, voila, an unhurried search turned up Ekweremadu’s Last Will and Testament.  But their joy was short-lived.

    The package they filched was slender, not remotely as hefty as they had expected.  They ripped away the seal, only to find within the covers several pages detailing only a few solid assets in Enugu and Abuja and Lagos – nothing that a middling, God-fearing public servant living frugally and availing himself or herself of the usual opportunities could not have acquired in 20 years within the system.

    A week later, so the account went,  the raiders were back at the Probate Registry, this time lugging a chest containing four hefty volumes of documents purported to be the original, authentic Last Will and Testament of Ike Ekweremadu, signed and sealed and delivered with the usual attestations and affirmations.  And they entered   the documents into the official record of the depository.

    The disclosures which were strikingly similar to those detailed in the EFCC report on Ekweremadu’s hidden assets,  were nothing if not explosive. They credited Ekweremadu with luxury property on a scale beyond belief in virtually every city of consequence in the world, property of all shapes and descriptions: studios, condos, bungalows, duplexes, triplexes, quadruplexes, office suites, apartment blocks, etc., all situated in the most desirable part of town, thus giving a whole new meaning to globalization.

    The public was left to wonder how an individual, even one as influential as the Deputy Senate President, acting from his base in Abuja, could have acquired such a property empire sprawled across the world through lawmaking or any other business for that matter. 

    Ekweremadu did not refute the report.  Nor did he dare the EFCC to go ahead and take over the assets if it was sure they belonged to him and had been acquired unlawfully.

    The EFCC obtained a writ of forfeiture all right,  but Ekweremadu struck back and moved the same court to rescind its own order, arguing that it had been obtained mala fide.

    To all intents and purposes, the assets at issue remain in his portfolio.  So, weep not for Ike Ekweremadu.  Weep not for his wife.  The assets stand as a guarantee of life more abundant after they will have served their truncated jail terms.

    Weep for their ailing daughter Sonia, and pray that a bona fide kidney donor will come to her aid soon.  Weep and pray for David Nwanini, the street trader who, according to the trial court, was ensnared into the organ harvesting scheme. Pray for the thousands of impoverished compatriots who are available for recruiting into schemes of that nature.

    Meanwhile, the question must be asked.  The amici curiae who glorified Ekweremadu in unstintingly in their pleas of mitigation:  Were they innocent of his record? Or was it in their reckoning trumped by solicitude for Ekweremadu and his ailing daughter? Did they care nothing for Nwanini, who was inveigled into a scheme that went awry?