The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • The anatomy of opposition

    The anatomy of opposition

    That the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration has given Nigerians, nay the world, a lot to chew upon in the last two years of being in the saddle is certainly beyond debate. For while most Nigerians would not readily characterise the president as a disruptor in the mould of United States President Donald J. Trump, whose mission to carve the global socio-economic and political landscape after his liking continues to roil global capitals, the fact remains that nothing in the course that his Nigerian counterpart has set upon in the last two years can be said to be any less tremor-inducing in terms of their impact in fundamentally reordering the nation’s beleaguered political economy.

    From the swirling controversies over the removal of the graft-ridden fuel subsidy to the termination of the atrocious regime that left forex management in the hands of corrupt bankers and their allies, right up to the steady revamp of the decadent public finance infrastructure, there is, most certainly a lot to be said of the dismantling of those elegant castles of corruption as marking a turning point in the nation’s redemptive journey.

    Already, we know what the numbers are. From allocations to the federal, states and the local governments that have grown exponentially to the steady rise in foreign reserves that has brought relative stability to the foreign exchange market, the returns on the GDP (this newspaper, quoted a World Bank report as stating that the GDP grew 3.4% in 2024, the highest in a decade) the gradual moderation of the troubling inflation with foreign reserves now at $38 billion, there is a sense that things will return to normalcy in no distant future. In fact, only yesterday, inflation, the scourge of the working class, reportedly declined from 23.71 percent in April to 22.97 percent in May – a decline of 0.745.

    Today, if those numbers are any indication of the soundness of policy, a reflection of the extent to which some of the issues holding down the economy are being tackled headlong, what Nigerians must find exasperating isn’t just the unceasing denial of the reality by the so-called opposition, but their desperate insistence in foisting their specious, alternative reality on the people in the bid to make their prognostication of gloom and doom a living, self-fulfilling prophecy!

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    For while the idea of an opposition being unable to live down the prospects of citizens’ hope finally being renewed by an administration that has demonstrated far more grits in tackling the demons which have held the country down than those before it would not seem entirely strange, particularly concerning is the state of opposition politics in the last two years, given the inability of the leading parties, the PDP of Atiku Abubakar and the Labour Party of Peter Obi, to reinvent themselves after the gruelling 2023 elections.

    Nigerians will recall the blatant campaign by these sore losers to de-legitimise the election outcome at every turn. When allegations of widespread malfeasance of electoral practices increasingly sounded hollow, their spin-doctors trained their attention on the I-Rev portal said to have ‘suddenly’ malfunctioned. They would neither countenance nor accept the rational explanation that this actually has nothing to do with the credibility of the outcomes – not with party agents in all of the 176,974 polling units already having in their custody, copies of the already scanned result sheets, which at that point, were being uploaded, albeit slowly on the I-Rev viewing portal. That a glitch occurred along the line was apparently sufficient to declare the entire process as compromised!

    But then, this would be child’s play compared with the vicious campaigns that followed, home and abroad, to kick out the winner, not on the basis of the election that had just been held; certainly not in any breach of any of its known guidelines, but on matters that could only have been conjured in their opportunistic flight of fancy! To ensure clinical execution of ‘righteous’ anger, their supporters had to literally put the guns to the heads of our eminent jurists in the Supreme Court in their bid to secure what could only have been justice pleasing only to them! As for the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, not only did they declare the body the number one public enemy, they wanted the body sequestered and their leaderships condemned to the guillotine!

    In the whole of 24 months, they have done little else but rant – over anything and everything that has to do with the Tinubu administration and its handling of the economy – which, by the way, is no crime – unfortunately with no coherent alternative suggested.

    Apparently, no lessons was learnt from the events prior to, and in the aftermath, of the 2023 elections; no time to reorganise and reflect; and no strategy to reconnect with the people after that electoral cycle. Rather, it was sufficient to retire to the shadows to plot, to keep playing the victim, to accuse the government of not working for the people; to claim that the removal of fuel subsidy – which they themselves – I mean the leading opposition candidates Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi – also swore to do – was callous – going as far as branding other notable reforms being undertaken to get the economy going as nothing but self-serving.

    Never mind that when the Labour Party candidate in particular was asked what he would do differently on the subsidy issue, he could only utter some incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo about doing so IMMEDIATELY but in an organised manner!

    Touching on corruption, he claims, in his utmost naivety, to possess the magic to stamp it out overnight, although he would admit that a good number of the policies that he wants to pursue, like the one the administration was being criticised for, would also require some time before gestation since he didn’t claim to be a magician! As far as the LP candidate is concerned, the policies aren’t working simply because, he, Peter Obi, is not the one in charge! Hubris or plain dissonance?

    Now, between the trio of Atiku Abubakar who would rather spend valuable time and cash in the (vain) pursuit of a vehicle of convenience that would guarantee that his perennial quest for the presidency finally comes to fruition, a confused Peter Obi, whose credo of leading from behind is largely responsible for the crises afflicting his Labour Party, and the brood of entitled wayfarers from the ruling APC, the most prominent of which are Rotimi Amaechi and Nasir El-Rufai, individuals,  who, apparently , could no longer bear the thought of life out of power – the anatomy of Nigeria’s current opposition may have finally come, fully unveiled. The sight, to say the least, is unflattering.

    Glad to be back from vacation, dear readers.

  • Sani’s loot, Mariam’s tale

    Sani’s loot, Mariam’s tale

    The three witches, in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, scammed that tragic hero into regicide. 

    But the then Thane of Glamis little knew that the actual witch was his wife: the no less tragic Lady Macbeth.

    Yes, the three witches teased Macbeth into illicit crown and doom, with co-General Banquo consumed as collateral damage — no thanks to blind royal ambition and paranoia.  But the evil Lady Macbeth drove the entire catastrophe.

    Still, beyond the avoidable tragedy that consumed both, let no one compare the Scottish Macbeth with Nigeria’s Sani Abacha, beyond that they were both generals.

    Before his self-induced fall, Macbeth was a noble general in the Scottish Army. 

    The doomed but grateful King Duncan confirmed Macbeth’s chivalry, after the “hurly-burly” was done; after “the battle was lost and won”; and Macbeth was romped from Thane of Glamis to Thane of Cawdor. 

    That promotion was even fore-crowed by the witches, who also “fed” Macbeth with regicide!  Poor Duncan! He was fatally naive to have lodged in traitor Macbeth’s castle!

    Abacha was none of Macbeth’s nobility, though he shared his treachery.

    Contrasted to Macbeth, Abacha was always a thug-in-uniform and a coup rat who, no thanks to military ethnic politics, was promoted above his stark mind into the red-neck cadre, when he ought to have been weeded out.

    Even as ratsy Head of State — he ratted the pitiable Ernest Shonekan out of power by sacking his illicit Interim National Government (ING) to impose himself — he was anything but noble: infernal bully, stark killer and ace thief with gargantuan greed.  His blasted memory is defined by stupendous sleaze, popularly tagged “Abacha loot”.

    Indeed, his name is an eternal stain on the Army rank of “General”. His humongous loot, which over-powering stench from his grave even 27 years after, continues to warn our present service (wo)men: Abacha is a classic tutorial on how not to be a General!

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    So, does widow Mariam Abacha think an insensitive TV interview, from the loot-cushioned luxury of her private space, would wipe out her husband’s horror from the Nigerian public mind?

    On this one, Mrs. Abacha looked rather like the evil, but much less delusional Lady Macbeth, even after she had lost our mind.  Lady Macbeth admitted that not even all the waters from the Atlantic could wash her hand clean of King Duncan’s blood.

    Mrs. Abacha clearly thinks otherwise in her grand delusion!  But she kids no one.

    Not even all the looted wealth the Abacha family now wallow in, nor all the insulting platitudes she spewed in that ill-advised interview, could blot out her hubby’s horrible memory: from a country he raped, the people he killed and maimed, the exiled families he split, and the Nigerian Army he disgraced and near-destroyed.

    The cheek of it — Mrs. Abacha grumbled about her husband’s unfair demonization; and moaned about fraternal love!

    Pray, how can you demonize the demon that her husband was?  How?

    Then, fraternal love!  Wasn’t Abacha, the brute that killed and maimed, to retain grubby power, the violent opposite of love?  Weren’t Abacha and love two parallel lines that would never meet?

    Where was Mrs. Abacha when her husband was bumping off Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, wife of the Basorun MKO Abiola, whose only crime was protesting her husband-in-Abacha’s gulag, for winning the June 12, 1993 presidential election? 

    That protest, for the grim and murderous Abacha regime, was high treason — high treason that earned Heroine Kudirat, and hundreds of nameless patriots, the death penalty in the streets of Lagos, from Abacha’s illicit bullets from licit arms!

    Yes, to be fair, Abacha didn’t kill MKO.  Abacha had expired in disgrace before MKO’s sudden death.  Thus, that query belongs to Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who ran a short transitional government that made the political military scurry into the barracks, after an “Army Arrangement” transition that handed power to Olusegun Obasanjo.

    But with MKO spending his entire presidential term (1994-1998) in his gulag, Abacha sure dug MKO’s open grave. So, what’s Mrs. Abacha’s newfound “love” to the Abiolas? 

    That it was okay to be brutally rendered full orphans, for rogue political reasons?

    Their patriarch won a free election — the freest and fairest in Nigerian history.  Gen. Ibrahim Babangida annulled that election.  Abacha, the cursed Khalifa, sustained it. 

    Now, 27 years later, Mrs. Abacha now preaches “love”, to protest the “demonization” of the brute that her husband was, without any apology for his heinous crimes?  Now, is that not raw witchery?  Love indeed!

    Again, an Abacha/Abiola comparison.

    The one stole his country blind, leaving cursed riches for his offspring. The ones he left behind push their democratic right to the inviolability of that loot.

    The other — though a military-era contractor accused of sweetheart deals — used his first-class mind and brain to grow his wealth in almost all sectors of the economy, not even mentioning his larger-than-life compassion for the poor and generosity to all.

    Now, the lean Abacha cow — to borrow that biblical image — gobbled up the fat Abiola bull, assassinated his wife and destroyed his thriving many ventures, aside sitting on the N45 billion debt the Federal Govermnent owed the man — classic military outlawry!

    All his wife could mutter, after 27 years, is growl demonization and moan false love!

    Spread the justifiable hurt and noble ire of the Abiola clan, into millions of Nigerian households no less furious at Abacha’s savage power play, and you’ll gauge the level of legitimate anger against the Abachas, because of their patriarch’s grim sins. 

    If Mrs. Abacha even realizes the tenth of that resent laced with contempt, from millions of Nigerian families, she would not have been so sanguine in her interview.

    Her hare-brained lies, to edify her best-forgotten husband, is best dismissed without much ado.  She claimed the ace thief didn’t steal but saved money for Nigeria. Really?  In his private and coded foreign accounts? 

    Perhaps Abacha was Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) personified; or the Nigerian state, cloned after the French King Louis XIV: L’Etat, c’est moi — The state, it is me!

    The other fib is that her husband was so powerful and well-loved!  O sure! 

    His might was powered by strutting cowardice, so much so that he had to kill whoever disagreed with him, having no brain for civil discourse, anyway!

    As for love, Abacha was so well-loved that when he expired, it was thrilling news that Nigerians capered in the streets, screaming “divine intervention” had taken away such a plague!

    But the ultimate perverse joy, from the show of shame by Mrs. Abacha — at least for the history-minded — is the umpteenth whodunit over June 12!

    IBB claimed Abacha did it.  Abacha’s wife counter-claimed her hubby, dead as dodo, didn’t.  For the entire clan of the political military, dead or alive, June 12 — and MKO who they thought they infernally cheated — continue to be their nemesis.  May their agony last forever!

    The Abacha matriarch’s rant again stresses the arch-evil of military rule.  May we never experience such plague in our country again — never!

  • Amaechi’s peculiar hunger

    Amaechi’s peculiar hunger

    Rotimi Amaechi’s peculiar hunger sucks.  It makes him talk a lot of rot.

    Nyesom Wike, at his belligerent best, mocked: how would Ameachi not be hungry? Speaker for eight years; governor for another eight; minister for yet another eight: 24 unbroken years, from 1999 to 2003!

    Why would Baby Rotimi not screech, His Bristling Majesty, the Ezenwo, pressed, if you removed that “feeder”?  Gofment pikin, as they would say in the pidgin high street!

    Why does Amaechi’s political naïveté upbraid Karma for Siminalayi Fubara, Wike’s embattled successor, who now skins Wike — at least, pre-Rivers emergency rule — as Wike himself had skinned Amaechi, his predecessor?

    Why does Amaechi’s loose talks ennoble Wike, even at his most combative form?

    Amaechi also brags: he didn’t support APC candidate (now President) Bola Tinubu — and that he told him so, to his face — because of “capacity”!  Pray, what capacity?

    Make no mistake: Amaechi was a fine governor of Rivers. His avant-garde public primary and secondary schools, complete with tartan tracks for healthy school sports, was uncommon brilliance and people-first service.

    As a minister too, he brought infectious passion to his rail modernization mandate. That plan was not new: it was the comprehensive rail revamp of the dying years of the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency.

    Yet, Amaechi’s passion and the sheer grit of his principal, President Muhammadu Buhari, brought it new life; the same parallel grit that got the Dangote Refinery over the line, which made the Tinubu-era removal of fuel subsidy less foreboding, because of the twinkling possibilities of local refining in pump price moderation.

    Still, who is Amaechi to talk of “capacity”, when Tinubu is the subject?

    First, the policy front.  Peter Odili, Rivers governor (1999-2007) when Amaechi was Speaker of the Rivers legislature, was Governor Tinubu’s peer: Tinubu was Lagos governor, the same time Odili was Rivers’.

    Odili was of the federal ruling party, PDP.  Tinubu was from the opposition: the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD), from with he carved out AC, in time for the 2007 polls.

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    Despite Tinubu lumbering under a comatose AD — and the constant strafing from Obasanjo and his PDP, being the sole survivor among the South West AD governors from 2003 — which of two showed more “capacity”: Odili or Tinubu?

    The one, despite PDP’s famed “federal might”, was content to milk Rivers’ oil wealth, via thumping derivation from the central purse, with little or no value-added. 

    The other birthed a completely new economy, in IT-powered revenue mobilization and capture, that propelled the Lagos economy alone to be stronger than any economy in West Africa, except Nigeria’s.

    While the Tinubu Lagos order pushed the high engineering that eventually saved Victoria Island, and gifted Eko Atlantic City as gilt-edged bonus, Amaechi, as governor couldn’t even carry through his Okrika beachfront renewal project — “over the dead body” of Okrika girl and former First Lady, Patience Fika Jonathan.

    To those who love to brag that Wike had no godfather, Mama Peace, in the Jonathan court, was the mighty godmother that pushed Wike to the Rivers governorship; and rendered Ameachi a politically displaced person (PDP) in Rivers, even after he had junked PDP, as APC’s high-flying Transport minister.

    Besides, Amaechi’s urban rail, years after he let office, is still only a hanging dream. The Lagos urban rail, brewed during the Tinubu years, is already on, with Blue and Red lines done and dusted, work starting on the Green line, the Blue line on the brink of extension to Okokomaiko from Mile 2, and talks buzzing on the Purple line, from the Redeemed Camp in Ogun State to Ojo, in Lagos.

    Capacity!  So, what pre-presidential capacity was Amaechi talking about?

    Then, to politics, which is even starker!

    Pre-1999 from 1993, when Amaechi’s political ancestors were still hedging their bets, not deciding if the war against the political military wasn’t class suicide — democracy be damned! — Tinubu threw himself, and everything he had, into the fray.

    Even after anti-democracy forces had gained ascendancy, from the panicky, military-rigged transition, it was this same Tinubu that bided his time and eventually chased them all away: first from his native South West from 2007; then from Abuja, in 2015.

    Did Amaechi ever think he was as pivotal to the APC alliance and eventual merger, as Buhari and Tinubu, the most senior partners? Did he ever think, colourful court rumours aside, that Buhari would junk his partner, and pick Amaechi as his successor, even within the democratic framework?

    Believe that, you believe anything! 

    Besides, as the Odili Rivers house is sundered — witness Amaechi, Wike and Fubara, pulling in different directions — the Tinubu Lagos house still stands, though a little frayed at the edges too.  Yet, Amaechi blabs “capacity”!

    This same conceit pushes Amaechi to another wild goose chase: the Atiku-el-Rufai-Amaechi gang-up, simply because they all declared themselves tired of power Siberia!

    This though, comes with a caveat — or two.

    Court commentators and avid meddlers have hardly been fair to el-Rufai, on his post-2023 poll blues. Even if el-Rufai was dumped by the president, must they always rub it in? If they can’t make new friends for the president, must they mint him new foes?

    The president himself, for good or for ill, will answer for his harsh surgical policies.  He campaigned as a “progressive”.  But his ultra-right economic policies — business first, the people much later — paints him as a pragmatist, now powered by neo-liberalism.

    Even then Tinubu, warts and all, still towers above these three in the so-called “capacity” — policies or politics.

    Abubakar Atiku is fated to political self-destruct.  He’s only in for what he can get out.  As Obasanjo’s Vice President, he made himself president of vice to upstage his boss.

    As part of APC, he scurried off immediately he couldn’t land the presidential ticket. 

    At a critical juncture of North-South power-sharing in 2023, he chose self over PDP, his party; and self over the North, his region.  By that, he near-completely smashed PDP in the South.  That party may never recover from that setback. 

    His blind power ardour is yet again leading him to familiar doom in 2027.  The grim logic is simple: if you’re not there for anyone, why should anyone be there for you?

    El-Rufai’s self-nemesis is emotional retardation.  As acute is he is — one of the most brilliant minds of his generation, North or South — he’s emotionally stunted. 

    That explains his tragic presumptions: as rushing to declare himself SDP — but thinking deeply about it much later! — just to spite real or phantom APC foes.

    It’s this deluded company that Amaechi joins, in strutting naïveté, to further shatter his mystique. 

    Well, he comes with a rich resume!  Who would shun his ruling APC Abuja presidential glory, to join the Umuahia inauguration of LP Abia Governor, Alex Otti, just to make the point he is sulking, over an election lost and won?

    Politics might be a leveller, where everyone is free to brag. But for Amaechi, comparing himself to Tinubu on “capacity”, is raw conceit that shows nothing but full emptiness!

    Again, colourful pidgin has the last word — and laugh: capacity kee you dia!

  • Ejeagha as a philosopher

    Ejeagha as a philosopher

    Gentleman Mike Ejeagha, the exponent of the popular, gwo gwo gwo ngwo, was a man who saw his tomorrow. He foretold his glorious end, in one of his folklore, “uwa ngbede ka mma” which can be translated as, “the good eventide is the best”. That song enjoins patience and orderliness in life. He narrates that after a child is born, it takes caring to nurture the child to begin to sit, to crawl, to stand and to take the first step. And eventually, to walk, and before long, to work for the parents.

    He intones that from the ground we begin to climb. From counting one, we move to two, three and eventually to a billion. He juxtaposed life with the two types of palm tree, which produces a variety of palm wine. While Ngwo when harvested produces a lot of wine, like a broken dam; it however dies off within a few days. After, the tree trunk dries up, and at best the owner can only use it as fire wood, to cook.

    But conversely, the Nkwu, which gives out a little wine, every day, produces for many years. It lives very long, productively. Ejeagha, prayed to God that his life should not be like that of Ngwo tree, but rather should be like the Nkwu. He prayed for long life and of course to be perennially productive like the Nkwu. He admonished everyone to note that it is more sensible to first secure a land, before one puts up any structure on it.

    He philosophizes on the planting process. When one gets a land, the first step is to cut the bushes and gather the rubbles and burn them. Then the farm space is cleared and heaps of mounds are cultivated, after which the yam, is sowed. The owner keeps watch and continues to clear the weeds, nursing the yam until maturity. After the harvest, the owner decides how to enjoy the harvest. He exercises what in law is referred to as acts of ownership. He can choose to cook, roast, pound or do whatsoever pleases him, with his yams. The owner enjoys the revelry of a feast, as he takes his snuff after a munificent meal.    

    The law maxim which says quicquid plantatur solo solo cedit, which means, he who owns the title to the land, owns what is permanently affixed on it is applicable to the philosophy expounded by Ejeagha. Should a trespasser without settling the ownership of a land, go ahead to build on it; when the rightful ownership is determined, the owner owns what is on the land. Ejeagha calls for the virtue of patience, as anyone who lives by the sword dies by the sword, and if one acquires hastily, one may dispense hastily.

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    Ejeagha, lived to be 95, and remained a veteran of highlife music, till the end. Like the Nkwu, he continued to be productive, even in his nineties. Last year, one of his hit songs, Ka esi Le Onye Isi Oche, was re-popularized with the gwo gwo gwo ngwo challenge by, Brain Jotter, a content creator. Ejeagha, through a satirical fable, sang on the consequences of greed. The song tells the story of how the tortoise tricked the elephant into submitting itself as a gift to the king to enable the tortoise marry the king’s daughter.

    In the story, the king first called a democratic assembly, of his entire household, to know why the Princess, Adaeze refused requests from suitors, for her hand in marriage. Ejeagha, enjoins leaders to once in a while call such an assembly, so the governed could air their views and any displeasure, as to how they are being governed. At the meeting, was the queen and all the siblings of Adaeze. The king asked the princess to tell them why she has refused all marriage proposals.

    The princess, explained that whoever wants to marry her, must present the king with an elephant, as a gift. So that whenever, there is a ceremony, she will climb the elephant to showcase to all and sundry, that she is a princess. The tortoise, who was interested in marrying the princess, went to his friend, the elephant, and cajoled him that the king has set a date for a festival in commemoration of his enthronement as a king, and that he has requested the elephant to be the chairman at the occasion.

    The elephant who has been thinking of how to endear himself to the king, so he could marry the daughter saw that as an opportunity to get close to the king. He accepted the offer and got himself ready for the occasion. On the big day, the tortoise deliberately came late to take the overexcited elephant on the trip to the king. The elephant kept urging the tortoise to hasten up, so they don’t miss the ceremony. Cunningly, the tortoise told the elephant it may be better for him to climb on the back of the elephant, who has a faster pace.

    Without thinking, the elephant asked the tortoise to climb on his back. Again, the tortoise, asked that the elephant put a rope on his neck, so that he can use it, to hop on the back of the elephant. Again, the elephant agreed, as his mind was set on the big occasion where he was going to be the chairman. Approaching the king’s palace, the tortoise raised a song, my lord the king, I have brought a present, the elephant. When asked by the elephant what he was singing, he said he was praying for long life for the elephant, who will be the chairman of the ceremony, but it sounded as if he was saying, he was making a present of the elephant to the king. 

    With pomp and pageantry, in the giddy atmosphere of music and dance, the tortoise led the elephant to the king, and handed him the rope, and intoned that the elephant is a gift to marry the king’s daughter. As I listened to the music again and again, my mind searched the dramatis personae, in the many gwo gwo gwo ngwo dances, in the political scenes. The more I look, the more the various role plays in the political arena, is increasingly bearing some resemblance to Gentleman Mike Ejeagha’s folklore.

    Ejeagha, who hails from Umuagba Imezi-Owa, a stone throw from Amofia, Ogwofia-Owa, where this writer comes from, must be chuckling in his grave, as fiction is comingling with reality in the political sweepstakes. As the All Progressives Congress (APC), engages in unending harvests and thanksgiving, I have been trying to decipher the role-players. Who is the tortoise and who is the elephant, in each of the harvest? Of course, it will be silly, to ask who is the king.

  • Courageous at two

    Courageous at two

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) celebrated the second anniversary of his administration on May 29th, and he had a lot to brag about, even though his political enemies tried to dampen his enthusiasm. A neophyte president on May 29th, 2023, PBAT exhibited the courage of a well-entrenched president, and slayed the economic monster of fuel subsidy and multiple exchange windows. Expectedly, the impact of that economic policy has been far-reaching, which perhaps explains why PBAT’s predecessors were afraid to slay that dragon.

    PBAT courageously released a thunder at his inaugural, and the sound has travelled as far as other countries in West Africa. Fuel subsidy is gone, he said, and the immediate impact was an unprecedented inflationary pressure on goods and services. From a worrisome headline inflation rate of about 21.34 percent as at December 2022, according to one account, it ran up to 33.9 by June 2024. To put it in perspective, the average rate of inflation for goods from March 2021 to July 2022 averaged 9.2 percent in the PCE price index.

    Comparatively, over the two decades before Covid19, being 1999 to 2019, the inflationary pressure had averaged 0.4 percent. But the inflationary rate for 2020 was 13.25 percent, an increase of 1.85 percent. It went up to 16.95 percent, in 2021, a 3.71 percent increase. By 2022, it hit 24.66 percent, a 5.8 percent increase. By December 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, the headline inflation rate increased to 28.92 percent. From there it jumped to 34.19 percent by June 2024.

    While many, especially those who never believed in the wisdom of the removal of fuel subsidy, may expect that by the second anniversary of PBAT’s administration, the headline inflation would be chasing the 50 percent mark, the inflationary pressure has done an about-turn. By March 2024, the headline inflation eased to 24.23 percent, and by April 2025, it further eased to 23.71 percent. With the current economic trajectory, and the apparent improvement in the macroeconomic indices, there is the chance that the headline inflation will continue to ease.

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    The latest data on GDP shows a growth rate of 3.84 percent, the unemployment rate dropping to 4.3 percent, a positive balance of trade, a stable interest rate and easing of inflation. So, the PBAT administration has every reason to be upbeat at its second anniversary with respect to macroeconomic indicators. Interestingly, as the national economic indicators are rebounding, the sub-nationals are also doing better than the early days after the bold economic reforms were initiated. Many states in the federation are signing the Hallelujah Chorus for the Tinubu administration.

    A news source indicates that many states in the country are paying down their debts. According to a report, Delta has reduced its debt by over 50 percent, having repaid N265.83 billion out of N465.4 billion. Jigawa paid N41.8 billion out of N43.13 billion, which is about 96 percent of the debt. Ondo reportedly paid N61.6 billion out of N74 billion, amounting to about 82 percent of the debt owed by the state. Without doubt, the improved capacities of states is an outcome of more resources received by the states from the federation account.

    According to the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) disbursed an unprecedented N15.26 trillion to federal, states and local governments in 2024. The report indicated that the increase in revenue is attributable to sustained fiscal reform policies of the Federal Government, particularly the removal of fuel subsidy and the unification of the foreign exchange window. It is interesting that many states now engage in massive infrastructural development without resorting to the capital market as in the past.

    A breakdown showed that states recorded the highest percentage increase of 62 percent, from N3.58 trillion to N5.81 trillion. The local governments had a 47 percent increase. The Federal Government had a modest increase of 24 percent from N3.99 trillion in 2023 to N4.95 trillion in 2024. The report also indicated that FAAC allocation increased from N9.18 trillion in 2022 to N10.9 trillion in 2023, and N15.26 trillion in 2024.

    The PBAT administration, despite the initial vehement opposition, is working hard on tax reforms. The administration has indicated that the tax reforms would benefit businesses in the country, even as it expects that the efficiency the reform would wrought will increase the general income potentials for the country. The bill now awaiting the assent of the president is deemed the most comprehensive tax reform in decades. It is expected to streamline tax administration, simplify compliance, promote equity, and improve revenue generation across all tiers of government.  We will see how the apprehension about over-taxation in the public space will be doused when the new tax law kicks in.

    The Tinubu administration has also engaged in significant infrastructure development within the two years of its life. The flagship, the Lagos to Calabar coastal highway, is bold, positively disruptive and unprecedented. Cutting across Ogun, Ondo, Delta, Edo, Bayelsa, Rivers and Akwa Ibom states, that highway, when completed, will significantly change the economic fortunes of the affected states. The Lagos end of the highway has, however, left many property owners affected by the development weeping and gnashing their teeth. It is hoped that adequate compensation would be paid to those whose properties were affected.

    Another challenge which the administration must address is the impact of its economic reforms on the poor and the vulnerable. The challenge, however, is that a federal bureaucracy is not close enough to determine those who actually need the stipends it shares. The result, as always, is that the bureaucracy takes a higher share of the available resources than what actually gets to the downtrodden. The statistics about the level of poverty in Nigeria is scary. The World Bank projects that over 54 percent of Nigerians will be living in poverty in 2025, and within that,

    75.5 percent of rural dwellers live below the poverty line.

    As should be obvious, poverty is a significant contributor to insecurity in Nigeria. The PBAT administration must begin to execute policies that would significantly reduce poverty where it is most prevalent in the country. Northern leaders should be persuaded to discard the old tactics of keeping their population uneducated and uninformed, some argue, for political reasons. The World Bank report indicated that 15 out of the 17 states with poverty rates above the national level are in the northern part of the country. It says that Sokoto and Taraba states have the highest poverty headcount ratio at 87.8 percent.

    No doubt, the Tinubu administration has taken bold and drastic measures to return Nigeria to a path of sustainable growth. The old tactics of subsidising fuel and borrowing to sustain and stabilise the value of the naira were never sustainable.

  • Born-again Fubara?

    Born-again Fubara?

     It was “Hardball”, The Nation’s unsigned back-page column, that first flagged the new Fubara, in “Fubara comes of age” (May 16).

    Far from the threaten-first, think-later cruise of his pre-suspension days, embattled Rivers Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, was sounding radically different: more conciliatory, less combative.

    He warned his supporters, who even at the event, had their victimhood orchestra blaring at its loudest decibel to, for once, swallow the chill pill.  “Oshobay” — no-retreat-no-surrender — he warned, could be counter-productive.

    He told them to bawl less and think more.  Between tactical din and strategic quiet, Fubara just voted the loud quiet — and he picked no bones about it!

    Lest anyone, he further warned, goes blabbing after the event that wily Fubara begs in the day but plots in the night!  Enough of “Oshobay”! 

    Now, is this a born-again Fubara? 

    No insulting of judges in hallowed courts of justices? No traducement of the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and his troopers, over a local government poll, later declared null and void?  No colourful signals to “youths” — with raucous cheers — to await instructions at the right time, even as Rivers was about to go up in smoke?

    Indeed, is this Fubara born-again?

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    “Hardball” really played hard ball with devastating lexis, over the collapse of that rash tactic: “Fubara has eaten crow.  Clark is gone to meet his maker.  ‘Oshobay’ is in the morgue”!  A stinging satire never sounded more biting!

    The irony though was that old man Edwin Clark, in whose sweet memory that occasion was forged, was the unfazed champion of “Oshobay”. 

    The radical old man, even at his “departure lounge”, never tired of pushing hot Ijaw nationalism and frothy Fubara exceptionalism: nativist twin-pillars to propel the governor to victory, despite his clear lack of “structure” — beyond cunning conflict entrepreneurs edging him on for own hot bucks; and sundry hustlers goading the governor to buck the Wike boat, for own sinecures!

    The thunder from Delta barked and quaked: the presidential peace papers were infra dig for the Rivers governor.  By virtue of his all-mighty office, he must hold all of the aces! 

    But now?  The rage is gone.  Clark is dead.  All is quiet on the Delta front.  And Fubara, on the Rivers front, finds himself holding the short end of the political stick!

    A power tale is never more sobering!  The surrender, never more craven and shattering — in any case, to Fubara’s gung-ho supporters! Still, a retreat, in the face of cold reality, would appear harsh common sense.

    That harsh reality comes clearly across as Fubara marks his “second year” in office, though in exile!  A four-year term could now be short by six months.  Still, half-bread is better than none!

    That’s the clear message from the Fubara camp, with the governor himself playing the loud messenger-in-chief. And NBA, that hitherto played to the gallery on the emergency question, is funereally mum!

    Unlike the dead Clark thunder that blasted the Abuja peace accord and torched the Rivers emergency declaration papers, the living but wiser Fubara is praising the president to high heavens, as his second-year message.

    The governor’s chief of staff, who hitherto had threatened a fight-to-finish with the Wike camp, is content with happy ads about the “old” times of halcyon power, set to return in less than six months! 

    It’s another cruel reality check, that further decries the old tactics, without necessarily saying so.  Between the Wike and Fubara camps, it’s fresh clamour for presidential adoration!

    Still, both sights are set on different spots: Fubara, to at least regain lost diadem. Wike, to fully control the 2027 Rivers sweepstakes.  President Bola Tinubu appears in the roaring vortex of both. 

    Common sense demands that he be courted — and so be it, from both camps!

    So, if Fubara, who virtually declared, at the Clark tribute, that his “soul” had departed the Rivers State House, now says he wants new peace and amity with his “Oga” — read Nyesom Wike — then you know why!

    Both may yet get what they crave in the very short term: Fubara’s return to office after six months, or even less, if the armistice and peace terms are fast firmed up.

    As Fubara is pushing new conciliation — and Wike too, claiming he never fought his “boy”: only the crass opportunists that led him astray — Fubara could return to office under a tight Wike leash. 

    It’s left to the President: to whom both camps swear fealty; and other chefs in the peace kitchen — blessed are the peace makers! — to cook honourable and non-humiliating peace. 

    Good luck on that though, for Wike never resists a canter and gallop of triumph, though that might bury the vanquished in the dust!  But who cares?

    Yet, honourable peace is imperative. 

    Let it not be the Rivers equivalent of Germany’s Weimar Republic (1918-1933), chafing from the harsh terms of the Treaty of Varsailles, only to breed Hitler. Hitler and killer gang seized a craven German surrender in War War 1 (1914-1918), to lunch a worse Armageddon in World War 2 (1939-1945)!

    It now might appear all quiet on the Rivers front. But there is enough tinder lying around, like dry thatch in the harmattan, to convulse the place, with any careless move!

    Which makes this counsel to bear repeating: as Fubara re-shapes self as peacenik, gentle as a dove, Wike too should learn to be less abrasive and belligerent.

    But even with both coming to party with their best behaviour, the crunch will come with second-term sweepstakes.  Fubara should not kid himself: the Wike “structure” can’t trust him with power again. 

    Neither should Wike too suffer any illusion: Fubara would grab a possible second term, within or without Wike’s structure — not after losing six months from his first.

    Everyone waits — holding their breaths — as the two friends-turned-fiends, navigate this testy juncture.  Will fiends yet turn friends again?  Or would it be “To your tent, o Rivers”?  Time will tell!

    But the auguries are hardly good.  As President Bola Tinubu works hard at changing the conventional path to the presidency, amid a ferocious gang-up by Atiku-led “me-too” ensemble, Rivers could well become a veritable battle ground.

    The old fiefdom of Peter Odili is carved into three: under Wike, Fubara and Rotimi Amaechi, with General Peter himself all but a bemused spectator!  He backed a wrong horse in Fubara!

    Who carries the day? Will Fubara, junked by the Wike camp, team up with the Atiku/ Amaechi forces, to grit out who owns the land?  We wait!

  • Two years

    Two years

    S’eru bawon vs d’aya ja won! — Intimidation vs intimidation!

    That’s the government thunder versus the opposition bomb, with 2027 in view, as the Tinubu order clocks two!

    The starry-eyed, easily swayed by dummies and counter-dummies, sundry sensation and allied stuff, have more than enough popcorn to crunch, at a gripping movie!

    Atiku Abubakar, spurred as always by a wild presidential obsession, trots, canters and gallops all over, in search of a coalition — or even merger — to live his dream.

    But he forgets he’s no Bola Tinubu who though declared being president his “life-long” ambition, knew when to feint and when to thrust, until he landed the big prize.

    Atiku — jooro, jaara, jooro — (apologies to Fela and his explosive Zombie album), to alleged marabouts’ sweet prophecies, easily forgets his insensate tragedy of 2023! 

    In response — or is it parri-pasu now? — the Tinubu order, grandmasters of political cut-and-thrust, mounts own foxtrots.

    After Delta, another tsunami looms in Akwa Ibom, like Delta since 1999, a PDP fortress! It appears another grim tale of a ragged umbrella torn and ripped in ceaseless gale!

    Baba Iyabo, in his Ebora Owu lair, must be taking quite some sombre tutorials! After his garrison command tactics of crude hug-and-crush, he is fated to gawking — with saliva trickling from both sides of the mouth! — as the real McCoys wave the real charm, yet potent opposition poison!

    First, Delta.  Looming: Akwa Ibom.  Next? 

    It’s defections and rumors of defections all over! And all that from the fella Obasanjo’s powerful machine once rendered the “last man standing” in 2003!  It’s true: vengeance is best served very cold!

    What did Heraclitus, the old Greek say?  You can’t step in the same river twice! Indeed!

    As the opposition plots, old paths to the Presidency are fast going up in smoke!  These blokes are not unlike the doomed Saddam Hussein, who arrayed his elite Republican Guard in the old staid way of battle, only to be blown away by some nimble, fast and furious, “shock and awe” monsters, from George Bush’s America!

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    Still, is 2027 a wrap for the president?  Not a chance!  But the Atiku armada seems off-pace too by the day!  We’ll await how all the high drama pans out.

    To seize the people’s minds, the policy front is another theatre of claims and counter-claims.

    The Tinubu order claims it’s putative nirvana. The opposition rank scoffs it’s regression to sheer hell.  Both play on the hyperbole.  The stark reality is in-between.

    Still, seeing the Federal Government dish out stats about the economy turning the bend gives you the feeling of deja vu — have we not seen all of this before?

    Indeed, the well-loved Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, both under Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, once bandied similar stats, giving the impression that it was some quarter to paradise.

    You have that same feeling, as Tinubu’s ministers belt out their feats two years later.  Both eras belong to elite testimonies. The bemused masses are but distant onlookers!

    Still, to be fair, there would appear some hard progression. 

    While the Obasanjo era celebrated “debt-forgiveness”, the Tinubu order is posting the payment of hardcore debts, as any nation with honour and dignity would.

    From “rebasing” by Okonjo-Iweala to fatten the cow, a Wale Edun-driven fiscal order, even from a lean cow, is posting the alluring promise of a US$ 1 trillion economy; and seems intensely in the works, doing all the hard restructuring, to make that a reality.

    Indeed, the stats look impressive, even to the apolitical; but outright scary to the opposition: exit from the IMF debt list, with the body itself, the harsh doctor from Bretton Woods, issuing a clean bill of health; a US$ 14 billion reduction from the government’s inherited debt stock: US$ 108.2 billion to US$ 94.2 billion in two years.

    Sounds far superior to craven — and futile — “debt forgiveness” of the Obasanjo era, which blew oil windfall that could have rebuilt infrastructure, on a pipe dream!

    Then, a 4.6% year-on-year GDP growth in 4th quarter 2024, with even more mouth-watering prospects for 2025.  Also, 3rd quarter 2024: a record trade surplus of N5.81 trillion: N20.5 trillion exports vs N14.7 trillion imports, powered by non-oil exports.

    These stats just prompted Reno Omokri, a Tinubu Saul-turned-Paul, to announce his ringing endorsement for the president to run for second term.

    But even for those that cannot crunch economic numbers, there is something much more banal, in the metamorphosis over the years. 

    The Obasanjo years — the former president loves to brag it was the best of the PDP years — was defined by Works Minister Tony Anenih’s moans of “no cash backing”. That explained the infrastructure limbo of those years; prompting the economic sink.

    The Tinubu years — just two years — are boasting good stats, complete with David Umahi, the Works minister that not tantalizes with audacious infrastructure in the works, but also strategic public-private sector initiatives, for all-season funding, to free critical infrastructure of the plague of no cash backing for budgets.

    But if the administration were to play less the Titan Atlas, it would admit that it was an admirable renaissance it inherited from the Buhari Presidency. 

    Had it logged on to that from the beginning, it would by now have built a clear-cut case for a definitive difference between the PDP and APC epochs. That means the government can do far better in strategic communications — at least to counter the cheap talk that APC is no different from PDP.  In infrastructure, they are day vs night.

    But alas!  It would appear the last-regime-must-be-painted-bad-for-mine-to-shine is wired to the DNA of government propagandists!  It’s all so infantile.

    So, with the Tinubu order seemingly worsting the opposition in both defection politics and solid stats from policies, is the coast clear for 2027?  Hardly!

    The twin-pillars of its reforms — oil subsidy removal and floating of the Naira — have shovelled far more cash into governments’ till, at all levels.  But the frightful inflation both have triggered has made the majority far poorer and miserable.

    Though a few rogues have been fingered for both decisions, the “savings” from subsidy have not quite percolated into households, rich or poor. 

    Folks buy fuel at hiked pump prices. But even when the so-called subsidy thieves ruled the roost, citizens enjoyed far lower pump prices, translating into far lower inflation. That appears a lost paradise now!

    Oosa b’oole gbami, se mi b’ose ba mi!  — the Yoruba often quip: if the deity can’t improve my lot, let it at least return me to how I was!

    Yes, the Tinubu order always says the pains are temporary; and also that inflation is trending down.  Maybe. 

    But for 2027 to be sure, it runs an explosive race against time, for all of these sweet stats to resonate in citizens’ pockets.

    In truth, it appears an eerie recap of May 2001 in Lagos, when Governor Tinubu turned two in office.  It was a classic ebudola — throaty curses-turned-deluge of praises — as the governor hugged his third year in office.

    That might well be a fine historical augury for his presidency.  But to make assurance doubly sure, the masses must have a feel of the rumoured coming good times.

  • Elasticity of a shadow

    Elasticity of a shadow

    The proposed Big Tent Coalition Shadow Government by erudite Professor of Political Economics, Pat Utomi, has elicited a lot of interest, such that the State Security Service (SSS) has threatened to bring an action in court against him, to stop what they consider a subversive endeavour. Prof. Utomi, a well-sought public intellectual, must have rankled some nerves to warrant such attention. Many public commentators have critiqued the proposal, some arguing in favour and others against what they regard as a shadowy enterprise.

    No doubt, a shadow government or cabinet is clearly strange in a presidential system. In the parliamentary system where Prof Utomi may have borrowed the concept, what they have in Britain is a shadow cabinet; and in some other jurisdictions like Canada or New Zealand what they call Opposition Critic or Spokesman. Usually, it is the elected members of the opposition parties in parliament that constitute their representatives into a shadow cabinet, and as Sam Omatseye pointed out in his piece on the subject matter, they are referred to as the loyal opposition in Britain.

    Considering that in a presidential system of government, the winner alone forms the government, it is strange to constitute a shadow cabinet. If as Prof. Utomi proposes, unelected members of opposition parties can form a shadow cabinet, it may create chaos. One imagines what would be the outcome if as many political parties as we have decided to create a shadow government. Again, for a presidential system, where the opposition do not sit in parliament with the elected government, there will be no opportunity for a robust debate between the real thing and its shadow.

    It must be noted that a critical benefit of the Westminster shadow cabinet is the opportunity for a robust debate of proposed programmes in the parliament. When the substantive minister proposes a programme, the shadow minister knowledgeable in that area of state affairs would counteract him or her with facts and figures, or even propose an alternative policy. With such robust interactions, the policies of the state are chiselled through an anvil. The robust debate also presents the public with alternative views from the opposition party.

    Again, the robust interaction helps members of the parliament, even of the ruling party, to know when the government is veering off course; and when a major policy is defeated in parliament, a snap election is usually called. So, both the ruling cabinet and the shadow cabinet made up of elected members have interest in the survival of the system, and having sworn their oaths as parliamentarians, they owe allegiance and loyalty to the institution which they belong to as well as the larger interest of the country.

    The challenge with Prof. Utomi’s proposal is that members of the shadow cabinet would not be elected, would not take any oath and so would owe no allegiance to any institution or the country. Without such institutional checks and balances, not even the Big Tent Coalition proponents can vouch for the integrity of the purpose of the shadow cabinet, or have the ability to bring them to account, if they chose to fly off the wheel. If they even chose to engage in subversive actions, the coalition would have no way to bring the shadow cabinet member to account.

    Again, without the opportunity for the Westminster type of head-to-head heated debates, what benefit would the shadow cabinet serve? The best we would have is a cacophony of voices in the media, of persons who claim to hold alternative views to that of the government in power, without the interrogation the parliamentary system provides. Again, with the indiscipline that politicians across political parties have been exhibiting, is the Prof. not worried that his shadow cabinet members would disagree in the public glare and ridicule the coalition for private political gains?

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    The presidential system is structured for periodic elections as the only legitimate way to sack a government in power. The periods between the elections give opposition parties the time to organise, criticise and prepare for the next election. Commendably, Nigerian democracy has matured enough, and the government in power does not openly muzzle opposition as we see in some countries. As I write, there is no opposition figure in jail or undergoing trial for one trumped-up charge or the other. And that is the way to grow democratically.

    The opposition figures are freely meeting and canvassing one form of coalition or another, geared to unseat the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the 2027 general election. However, the challenge facing them is the capacity to agree amongst themselves, as it seems every one of the leaders wants to be the presidential candidate in 2027. Former vice president Atiku Abubakar, who is in the twilight of his political career, as I wrote weeks ago, is desperate, and will do anything to run in the 2027 presidential election.

    The candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 presidential election, Peter Obi, obviously understands that he cannot work with an Atiku who sees 2027 as his last chance to contest the presidency, when his own last chance may be the same 2027. It is such a clash that leaves the coalition talks that Atiku claims to be championing in tatters. Without the two working together, the rest of the interests masquerading as coalition are mere jokes.

    Without the Atiku and Obi factors, the much-touted Big Tent coalition will amount to mere political shadows of no import. So, Prof. Utomi, instead of dispensing energy over forming a shadowy shadow cabinet, should use his intellectual and organisational ability to form a coalition capable of giving the ruling party a run for their money at the polls. No matter how fanciful the name may sound, or even the idea may seem, building a political coalition with the momentum to oust a sitting government is a big task.

    Even the coalition that Atiku and his unhappy brethren from ADC, SDP, PDP and Labour parties are talking about has a lot of shadows masquerading as interested parties in it. All the four parties have splinters and who knows which splinter will enter into the coalition. From what is going on, there is the likelihood that such disagreement may be carried into the new coalition. Without trust amongst the founding parties, the coalition would be filled with shadows.

    Like a little child running away from his shadow, the shadow follows him as he runs. Even more worrisome is that the shadow turns to a scarecrow. The members in the various opposition parties need to examine the challenges facing their various parties, and unselfishly find solutions to them. If they keep running from one party to another like a little child, from his shadow, fear and trepidation will be their lot.

  • Traore’s nirvana

    Traore’s nirvana

    “After all,” Jero quipped, “it’s the fashion these days to be a desk general!”

    In Burkina Faso, it’s Ibrahim Traore’s dizzy season as giddy messiah — all tizzy lies pushed as redemptive balm: the making of a junta nirvana on X!  What mirage!

    Whatever fibs this junta upstart feeds the long-suffering Burkinabe is no concern here. What’s of concern is sons and daughters of perdition, pushing Traore’s lies as model for redemption in Nigeria — after eons of best-forgotten military rule!

    But back to Brother Jero.  That closing quote, in Wole Soyinka’s Jero’s Metamorphosis,  wasn’t just the rogue beach prophet mocking the Nigerian military-in-power of his day.

    It was Prof. Soyinka, piercing  wit, devastating humour, lacerating political generals.  Pray, how’s a “desk general” different from the desk sergeant in your neighbouring police station? Neither has gone to war!

    But those were even the early Gowonian era, with comparative sublimity and sanity. Headlined by the cherubic Gen. Yakubu Gowon himself, many of the top guns could still pass as the archetypal officers and gentlemen. 

    By the time of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and cronies, pepper soup generals had taken over! 

    Peeper soup, so-called because Alozie Ogugbuaja, an otherwise high-flying Police spokesman, blurted that Nigerian soldiers of his day were gloriously idle they retired early to their mess, to soak selves in pepper soup and beer, and plot endless coups! 

    That got poor Alozie, a Police Superintendent, a quick-march posting to Siberia!

    Under Sani Abacha?  It was the age of well and true brigands — again, headlined by Abacha himself!  Abacha  would loot and plunder, with relish.  But at the risk of hot death, he would keep out a looting ensemble!  Thank God for small mercies?

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    Even Abacha’s chief of army staff (COAS), at near-forced retirement, as near-sole martial archetype in Abacha’s dream army of rich rot, declared the army he was leaving was an “army of anything goes”! 

    The post-June 12 annulment mess proved exactly that. But until Sani himself mercifully expired — with thrilled folks hollering “divine intervention” it was a close shave!  He died so the country he wilfully raped could exhale!

    Why this foray into a best forgotten era, though?  Another upstart from Burkina Faso spins a ceaseless yarn about turning his dirt-poor country into instant paradise.

    You believe that, as British crime thriller writer, James Hadley Chase, would have quipped, you believe anything?  But tell that to the Traore plebs on X, as gullible as they come, touting Traore as some new revolutionary-saint, come to chisel the whole of Africa in his power robber’s pan-Africanist image!

    Those campaigns, particularly by “African Hub” on X, are as hare-brained as they come. Indeed, it seems a savage tweak of the famous Awo quip: only the shallow call to the shallow!  Chief Awolowo’s deep called to the deep.

    What does this fella think he is — some reincarnated Kwame Nkrumah, in military fatigues?  Isn’t that galloping absurdity, just thinking of it?  Nkrumah’s pan-Africanism wasn’t frothy X stuff.  It was deep scholarship, captured in liberty classics as Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism.

    Yes, Nkrumah was friendly with Soviet Russia, which threw the West into a tizzy of panic, leading to his military overthrow. 

    But he wasn’t pawning Ghana’s new freedom for USSR’s new shackle, as Traore now does, trading Burkina Faso’s old French cuffs, for new golden chains, from Vladimir Putin’s rogue Russia — all for regime survival! 

    How far that will last, in the dog-kill-dog grim poetry of junta rule, is left to be seen.

    Traore is even no Thomas Sankara, the idealist young officer, that changed his country’s colonial name of Upper Volta to Burkina Faso — Land of the Honourable! 

    His treacherous pal, Blaise Compraore, sure proved every inch a cad.  But Sankara, for redemption, only reached deep into his African roots, not trade French slavery for Russian thrall — and feeling hip about it.

    Still, even the Burkinabes themselves, victims of Compraore’s wasted years, ought to know nothing good comes out of military rule.  Their cup of tea!

    The Alliance of Sahel States (ASS), with which these power outlaws bluff ECOWAS, is yet another quandary. What mandate do power bandits have to commit their countries to such a union?

    But even beyond that: a land-locked three-member ASS is imposing union duties on the 12-member ECOWAS regional bloc!  Isn’t that act of ASS well and truly asinine? 

    If that doesn’t show outright the sterility of military rule, nothing will!  Should ECOWAS respond in kind and freeze out this trio, who loses?  There simply have got to be a limit to junta bluff and bluster! 

    In Mali, Assimi Goita, soon to plague his country with severe political goitre, just awarded himself a five-year transition.  But transition to what exactly — political death, as IBB/Abacha unfurled in Nigeria?

    Traore is busy misguiding himself on X.  Niger’s Abdourahmane Tchiani has settled down to uneasy quiet, after an initial anti-Nigeria sabre-rattling. 

    In Guinea Conakry, head of the junta there, Mamady Doumbiya, has quietly — but wisely — stayed off the asinine rascality of ASS.  In Gabon, former junta head, Brice Oligui Nguema, just transmuted in an elected president, posting a too-good-to-be-true vote tally, after elbowing from power, his Omar Bongo clan cousins.

    This quad again underscores the futility of military rule, as the sad Nigeria experience. A confirmed route to perdition can’t change into a sure path to salvation.  There is no Pauline conversion here.  No blinding flash on the way to Timbuktu!

    Which is why you wonder at the Traore Nigerian plebs on X — were they living in Mars?

    Didn’t they live through the military mess in Nigeria?  If they were not born then, didn’t their parents gist them? If their parents were too busy, didn’t these kids, now “forming” governance sages on X, read even a tiny bit of Nigerian contemporary history?

    As a University of Ibadan undergraduate in 1984 — the opening year of the Buhari-Idiagbon junta — a hall mate sent everyone into a wild guffaw. It was his grandmother’s x-ray of the ruling junta:

    “Buhari ni di agbon? Abasha!” — a devastating pun in Yoruba, suggesting it would all end in tears.  How prophetic!

    Abacha expired, but not before living the ultimate mess of military rule.  IBB lives to rue his June 12 election annulment.  Obasanjo, the “Army Arrangement”, planted to cover the flanks of the retreating military, blew it up on the altar of self-worship.

    Of the lot, only Muhammadu Buhari, as unsung as he is, grabbed a historic redemption: the general that aborted the Lagos Metroline became the president that federalized rail; and commissioned the Lagos Blue Line, Nigeria’s first urban rail.

    PMB also drove Nigeria’s renewed infrastructural vim, from the dead alley of the PDP years, which the Tinubu presidency has admirably kept aglow.

    Democracy is no magic pill.  But it’s corrective and sustainable — away from military quick fixes, that lead nowhere but ruin, as our giddy ASS will soon find out.

  • Dollar trumps kinship

    Dollar trumps kinship

    Historically, the ancestors of the white citizens of the United States of America came mainly from western Europe. The majority of the immigrants came from the big powers around the 16th century, like Spain, France, and Great Britain. According to Wikipedia, Donald Trump’s father was a son of a German immigrant from Bavaria, while his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, was a Scottish immigrant. His predecessor, Joe Biden’s ancestors came primarily from Ireland and England.

    That common ancestry, perhaps, explains why the foreign policy of the US has been Eurocentric. As the 45th president, Trump followed the tradition of making Europe his country’s foreign policy thrust. But as the 47th president, it appears as if ancestry and all such emotional indulgences are damned, as Trump has instead embraced those with shiploads of dollars. Many have dismissed him as a transactional president, what we may refer to as ‘a buying and selling person,’ in our street lingo.

    But Trump has shown he is unperturbed by such claims, as he pushes what he refers to as his America First policy. By that policy, he will rather pursue a foreign policy that will economically benefit America than police the world in the name of expanding democratic freedom across the world. With a federal budget deficit of $1.8 trillion in 2024, equal to 6.4 percent of gross domestic product, America has strong economic challenges.

    Again, with a trade deficit of about $918 billion in 2024, Trump as a businessman has been paranoid about how less endowed countries are doing better economically than his country. Perhaps looking at the financial bottom line of his country, and with his buying and selling mentality, he fears that his country could become bankrupt if drastic measures are not taken. As Trump sees it, in the rat race for economic survival, there should be no traditional friend or pity or sympathy for the weak countries.

    In pursuit of what benefits America, Trump does not care whether you are practising democracy, or you are a dictator, or even engaged in terrorism. As long as your actions do not impact America negatively, he is fine. Drawn by dollars, Trump chose the Middle East countries of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates, all awash with dollars, for his first major foreign trip as the 47th president. In fairness to Trump, the visit had yielded bountiful harvests, and he has been triumphantly gloating about it.

    From the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Trump triumphantly secured an investment package of $600 billion. Included in the deal is an arms deal worth nearly $142 billion, which the White House dubbed the largest defence cooperation agreement. Of course, unlike some of his predecessors, there was no talk about whether the kingdom is a democracy and what the weapons can be used for, when supplied. Such a gag, as we heard, was placed on the Tucano fighter jets Nigeria bought from the US under former President Muhammadu Buhari.

    Interestingly, the Saudis got Trump to openly surrender America’s pretences or moral high ground about making sacrifices to advance democracy and fight terrorism, in defence of so-called western ideals. The Saudi royals requested, and Trump had no scruples to receive in audience the Syrian leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, a member of al-Qaeda, and on whose head was a $10m reward for his capture. Trump also announced that based on the request from Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, he would ensure that sanctions against Syria are lifted.

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    According to reports, the defence deals cover air and missile defence, air force and space, maritime security and communications. The agreement between Trump and the crown prince reportedly covers energy, defence and mining, among others. Trump is also pushing for a better diplomatic relationship between its Gulf partners and Israel. Such a relationship, he touts, will help fight the spread of terrorism by Iran and its allies. But while purportedly fighting for Israel’s interest, the country was not on the list for his visit, obviously because there are no bounties of dollars to reap.

    The next country on his business visit was Qatar, and according to Aljazeera, he was the first US president to make an official visit to the country. The White House claimed that the two countries had signed an agreement to generate economic exchange worth at least $1.2 trillion. A total of $243.5 billion was announced by Trump over a wide range of activities. The next stop was the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he secured $200 billion in deals. Trump did not fail to talk about the $1.4 trillion promise in investment over the next 10 years, made by Sheik Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a brother to the UAE leader Sheik Mohamed, when he visited Washington recently.

    While Trump is gloating about the success of his visit to the Gulf region, and the millions of job opportunities the deals will guarantee for his country men and women, his opponents and the western world are worried that the free world, under Trump’s leadership, may be in regress. While Syria may have turned the bend with the defeat of Bashar al-Assad, after his 24-year dictatorship was toppled, they are concerned about the unmeasured warming up to the new leader.

    While warming up to his new friends, Trump’s commitment to his old allies appears to be waning. The kinship and mutual defence commitment with European countries, which led to the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), in 1949, in Washington, may suffer under Trump. While he is legitimately demanding that European countries increase their defence spending so that they can have the capacity to fight should Russia attack, there are genuine fears that Trump may ignore Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which provides that an attack on one member is deemed an attack on all.

    Across the Americas, Europe and farther off, China and even Africa, Trump’s Sword of Damocles had been tariff, and more tariff. The economy of the rest of the world has been in turmoil since Trump began his trade war. Her close neighbour, Canada, had to reciprocate the imposition of tariff to regain its composure, after Trump threatened to make it the 51st state of his country. China, on its part, showed determination to match the US, with respect to the trade war,

    and it appears the world is merely having an interregnum, as Trump firms up his new relationship with the Gulf states.

    Those who are worried that the Trump era will set a new world order may be right. It appears that in his world view, what matters more than any other thing is economic prosperity. And to make it even more worrisome, Trump has no scruples about how the end is achieved, as long as his country would earn more dollars from any deal, whatsoever.