Happy New Year! Like one of my friends is wont to say, it takes grace to survive the entity called Nigeria. Just imagine the array of forces massed to do the citizens in; from businesses that are a little more than glorified ‘ponzis’, the hordes of complicit if not entirely conniving regulators whose instinct is to look the other way, right up to an uncaring and utterly indifferent government that watches on as Nigerians are being mauled by so-called service providers.

You will certainly agree that survival in Nigeria in recent time require far more the famed Nigerian resilience; nothing short of the five-letter word – GRACE – is required to beat the odds.   

Call it an unusual way to start year 2023 – and I will agree 100 percent. But then, when you have endured a month-long ill-treatment in the hands of an irresponsible service provider like Ikeja Disco, you are left with no choice. The real shame here is that my story – like those of countless other Nigerians marooned on the island of indifference – doesn’t even pretend to be extraordinary; talk of the living reality daily forced on Nigerians by the conniving tag team of crooked institutions and corporate brigands!

Let me cut straight to the chase.

First week in December, my wife had gone to the neighbourhood office of Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKJDC) to top up our pre-paid meter. Although she wanted N20,000 loaded on the card, she ended up being charged twice, no thanks to the glitches routinely suffered by Nigerians on the erratic payment platform. Not to worry; she was assured that the first transaction, which the official had assumed did not sail through, would be reversed in due time. Days of waiting for a reversal that didn’t happen, she went to the bank to lodge a formal complaint. Only then was she told that the two transactions actually went through and that the IKJDC account had been duly credited with N40,000 for which she was supplied proof!

At this point, the matter looked quite  simple and straight-forward: She would get IKJDC to transfer same to the card in the unlikelihood that they would want to refund the money. 

Soon after, we realised that our nightmares had only just begun. At the IKJDC headquarters in Ikeja where she went to lodge a formal complaint, the customer relations staff on duty, after perusing her documents including the bank statement admitted that the fund in question (N20,000) was in their account alright, only that this could not be loaded because the card – yes, the same card on which the earlier credit was loaded days before – was no longer supported on their company’s payment platform!

She was then availed two options: pay for a new meter which attracts a free of N115,000; never mind the interminable waiting time for installation during which we would be thrown back to the old estimated billing system; or in the interim, do another top up on the same old card and by that forfeit the N20,000 already into their piggy bank!

Just like that!

I took over at this point. I told the officials that neither of the options made any sense. In the first place, I had absolutely no problem with the current pre-paid meter to warrant my coughing out N115,000 for a new one under the current difficult economic climate. Second, to the extent that any technical/operational issues that have rendered the old meter obsolete had nothing to do with me, the consumer, (need I also remind that the same meter in question was duly paid for), the cost of any proposed upgrade ought to be borne by IKJDC, not me the hapless consumer! Third and most intriguing suggestion- that I could actually load new units on the old card but that would mean forfeiting the N20,000 that was the subject of the original complaint. And all of these in the raging background on what to do when the already purchased units run out considering that Christmas and New Year celebrations were only few weeks away!

Convinced that I could at least pull some levers to get the problem sorted out, I called everyone I knew. From their field staff to the customer relations personnel right up to some supposedly top guns in the public relations department; none, as one would imagine, could offer any practical help. Even at that, what I could never have bargained for was being taken through the lecture circuit; the customer relations officers with their standard, icy templates that left no accommodation for common-sense, fairness or equitable dealing; the antediluvian public relations directorate that suffered no pretences about being either ‘public’ or ‘relational’. In all, you are told that the system has been long on this process of upgrade, only that the electricity consumer opted to remain light years behind by neglecting to pay for the modern digitised meters!

Summary: Either it is the ways of IKJDC or hell’s highway!

In the meantime, I was expected to ‘comfortably’ endure the agony of spending the holidays without public electricity supply! And that’s exactly how the holidays went! And all of these for the sole prize of running from IKJDC’s pillars to their outposts! 

Well, this is my story a la Ikeja Disco. I guess it captures the agonies of millions of electricity consumers in the hands of the clueless, shylock operator.

I must say that the story has only just begun. I have since paid the N115,000 for their ‘digitised meter’ just as the discussions on my N20,000 ‘overpayment’ is currently on hold. As for their promissory note of ‘direct connection’ following the intervention of officials, this has remained undelivered although a friend has assured that a timely delivery of an estimated bill covering the period is more than guaranteed! And this is supposed to be a 21st century service provider.

Meanwhile, the gospel out there, according to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) is that installation of electrical assets remains the responsibility of Electricity Distribution Companies (Discos). At least, this was what we heard as one of the outcomes of the three-day NERC/Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) Customer Complaint Resolution Meeting held in Abuja last week.

Here is how NERC’s Commissioner Consumers Affairs Aisha Mahmud puts it: “It is not the responsibility of the consumers to buy meters, poles or any assets for the Discos because we have already provided for that in the tariff of the utilities”.

Well I just did.

She didn’t even stop there. In the circumstances that you have to purchase these items and you cannot wait for the Discos to make that investment, it has to be done through an agreement. The consumer, she emphasised, has to sign an agreement with the DisCos stating when and how the consumer will be refunded.

“The agreement should contain a dispute resolution clause and all other items that are expected of a standard agreement”.

My question – what options are available to the electricity consumer literally forced at gun point to pay for a meter in place of another which the service provider has deemed obsolete, and who must in addition, be denied service at the sole pleasure of a most irresponsible corporate like the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company? 

Over to you NERC. Happy new year folks!

Just as one would expect, there have been as varied interpretations of the recently released stats on multi-dimensional poverty as the number of those making them. Although barely understood even by those who would swear by heaven that it is the next best revelation since the excitable Archimedes famously enthused his Eureka, much capital has been made of its dire prognosis as if it is some new epidemic in town. And now, so serious has the matter become that the federal government and the states would, rather than declare war on the phenomenon, hurl brickbats on the matter of its causation.

Multidimensional Poverty Measure (MPM). Just imagine; a new-fangled index that seeks to understand poverty beyond the traditional monetary deprivations to include access to education and basic infrastructure has become something of a casus belli in which the federal and the states would be locked in mock combat?

Now, the governors are indignant (not troubled) – and we might as well debate as much as we can about their right to be or not to be – that the grave findings of the MPM have been reduced a noisome contestation between an utterly misguided, self-righteous federal government and the king-size egos of members of the apparently bruised elite club of governors!

Thanks to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS)’s new MPM methodology, we now know that 133 million poor people live with us and that 86 million of this live in the north and the rest, 47 million in the south. The report also found that poverty is higher in the rural areas where 72 per cent of the people live compared to 42 per cent in the urban areas. And then of course that Sokoto and Bayelsa tops the league of the poorest among the poor. Now, the latter is not only interesting but also revealing – the inference here being that factors of so-called proximity to political power and resource endowment –two factors that Nigerians routinely duel on – actually have no bearing on the incidence let alone, the severity of poverty. Otherwise, Sokoto, which prides itself as the bastion of power and politics a la Nigeriana, and Bayelsa which tags itself as the Glory of all Lands, would not be at the bottom.

None of the two factors appear to have counted in the final score.

There is an equally interesting dimension. For instance, we are also finding that the matter of the over 133 million Nigerians living in poverty – some 63 per cent of the nation’s population – are not so much an issue to the governors (after all, the holy writ says that the poor will always be among us) as the accusatory finger of the federal government!

Of course, moments like this reminds of my Sociological Theories class of the early 80s. I refer here to my readings on the fiery exchange between M. Proudhon and the legendary Karl Marx, the outcome of which produced two seminal works – the Philosophy of Poverty (Proudhon) and Poverty of Philosophy (Marx). Both of course remain an awe-inducing intellectual joust on the dimensions of poverty but also a measure of how controversial and passionate things can sometimes get. Unfortunately, much as the two treatises belong to another era and age where complex issues are dimensioned for clarity and ultimately for the societal good, in our case, a different scenario is presented – of a blend of false if not entirely hollow intellectualism, and the politics of crass opportunism.

It certainly seems a new day in the weaponisation of the statistical instrument by officials of state!

Of course, the federal government, through the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clement Agba, it was that drew the first blood. His position, premised on the MPM report, is simple and direct: Those Nigerians looking in the direction of the federal government as the main source of the problem are missing the point. The problem, he would insist, resides in the states. Many of the governors, he said are, “basically functioning in their state capitals”. And so with neither the preparation nor the time to attend to the hands-on business of governance, many of them have tended to act more like the erstwhile District Officers –or worse – taskmasters for whom the nuances of real, responsive and effective governance means next to nothing. The result, he said was that those governors would rather prioritise the building of bridges and airports in cities rather than improving the lives of the people in the rural communities.

His principal, President Muhammadu Buhari, uncharacteristically pugnacious, was just as unrestrained. Stopping short of labelling the governors as thieves, he would put the blame of the stunted development experienced at the grassroots one of whose consequence was the benumbing poverty on the itchy fingers of the state governors.

He drew from a ‘personal experience’ of a certain unnamed governor, who after collecting, say N100 million from the federation account, would send a paltry N50 million to the chairman who would be coerced to sign that he received N100 million.  “The governor”, he said “will pocket the balance and share it with whoever he wants to share it with”.

As one would imagine, the governors through their umbrella body, the Nigerian Governors Forum, have certainly not been quiet. Speaking through its Director General Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo, the body reminded the Buhari administration of its campaign message in 2019, particularly its promise to take 100 million Nigerians out of poverty; its failures to stem the scourge of insecurity and which has turned farmlands into wastelands; the billions spent on the Social Intervention Programme that seems to have grown more numbers of the poor than reduce same; and how the country’s cash cow, the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), has been laid waste by criminals as result of which it has failed to remit statutory allocations to states in several months – while urging the federal government to look into the mirror for the culprit.

That is where the nation is at the moment. As for the issues highlighted in the report, they would remain unattended to; or were they actually meant to be attended to? Those big officials at the states and federal level can bicker for as much and as long as they please; money surely is guaranteed to be poured in and it does not matter whether or not they expected outcomes are met.

Remember the story of the strange N206bn said to have strayed into the budget of the humanitarian ministry an issue that has since been passed off as no more than a minor storm in a teacup?

Because we are in a season of multi-dimensional poverty, permit me, dear reader, close with what I consider as the supreme revelation in the entire saga – another dimension of the subject, so deeply ingrained and perhaps incomparably lethal that it remains a mystery that our hordes of statisticians have yet to devise a measure for it let alone factor it in as a major element in all the discourses on poverty.

Yes, it is great to dwell on the MPM level of traditional monetary deprivations, access to education and basic infrastructure. Yet, it seems to me that the root of the problem lies elsewhere. These are – competence and character – qualities so sorely missing in governance that everything else hardly matters. Setting out to work on them will certainly be an important contribution by the NBS. In other words, factoring of the two elements into the equation would, beyond, deepening our understanding of the subject in a country where nearly everything else seems perfectly in place minus the factor of leadership, shed some light on why some states are on the regression ladder.

With that, you wouldn’t be needing a copy of the book by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson to grasp the essence of Why Nations Fail.

By Sanya Oni

You guessed right; the above is borrowed from Chinua Achebe’s book of the same title; let’s just say that it best describes the on-going soap opera in Abuja starring the finance minister and her humanitarian affairs counterpart.

Now, for the better part of the past week, the news was all over the place of how the finance ministry not only fiddled with federal government’s Budget 2023, but also took over from the National Assembly as the paddler-in-chief. Unfortunately, much as the news was too big miss in a country where sleaze has long become the directing principle of state policy, the reportage of the news not only fell short of grasping the nuances of the drama in which a member of the federal cabinet would accuse her colleague of padding up her ministry’s budget but also in the understanding of the sub text.

News – of course is – what it is. And so went the headlines– 2023 Budget: Finance Ministry On The Spot Over N424bn ‘Padding’; Humanitarian minister blames Ahmed for N206bn budget padding; 2023: Senate summons finance minister over unexplained N206bn in ministry’s budget.

To be sure, it is certainly not often that you find a female minister tackle another female colleague in such brutal fashion publicly; and certainly not when we are talking of billions of naira allegedly padded into another ministry’s budget by a top gun of another ministry. And this is long after most Nigerians had long assumed that our esteemed senators and distinguished members held exclusive monopoly to the ignoble ‘art’!

There she was – Minister Sadiya Umar Farouq, the no-nonsense minder at the Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development ministry, at the senate chambers, not only spitting fire but threatening to rip Zainab Ahmed – her counterpart in the Finance, Budget and National Planning ministry – apart.

First, she denied knowledge of N206 billion inserted into her ministry’s 2023 budget; secondly, she feigned shock that her previous request for funds under the same line of expenditure, which had earlier been rejected by the finance ministry, suddenly resurrected in the 2023 appropriation document – in multiples of 10!

Read Also: N424 budget padding allegation misleading – Minister

A case of – hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – you say?

“We are also going to seek clarification from the Ministry of Finance to know why the increase occurred despite the fact that the previous year, the money requested wasn’t released for the projects. So, we will get the details and then send them to you”.

Here is how an eyewitness reported the affair as captured by Vanguard: “I was there, the Senate committee asked the minister how she came about the additional money outside the initial proposal submitted to the Budget Office and the minister responded that she didn’t know. Truly, as a ministry, we didn’t know how the N206 billion found its way into the ministry’s budget proposal.

The whole truth? The reality would appear a bit more complicated than what the minister has attempted to put out.

At least, that is one inference that could be drawn from the statement issued on Sunday by the Finance Minister Ahmed.

First, she says the charge of padding – whether it is of the humanitarian ministry, defence or power is –misplaced, or if I may borrow the ministry’s words, “fabricated and misleading”.

Second, that those ministries crying foul over strange insertions not only failed to do their homework, they were actually indulging in mischief at least to the extent that they had all the time in the world to review and pass their observations at the federal executive council – but which they failed to do!

“The proposed 2023 budget for each ministry was circulated for review and feedback… then reviewed by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) before it was submitted to NASS by President Muhammadu Buhari”.

Did they?

The third – and the main part is that those expenditure heads are real; whether it is the N206 billion complained about by Minister Farouq; or the N11 billion which defence minister Maj. Gen. Bashir Magashi (rtd) disclaimed and the N195 billion by the power ministry.

The error, she would carefully point out, was one of ‘description’ and even at that the issue only became problematic because the ministries under which they were captured are not necessarily the spending ministries! In other words, the funding sources being either the World Bank or other multilateral agencies are governed by different protocols of disbursement. To that extent, she and her ministry could, at the very best, be justifiably accused of sloppiness rather than bad faith!

The above is the sum total of the minister’s defence as published by this newspaper on Sunday.

Do I believe her? To me, it is not a matter of whether or not one believes but whether her accusers have the credibility to cast the first stone. In any case, there is just about enough sloppiness, if not mediocrity, in every department of government that making a song of another discovery as in this particular circumstance would ordinarily be deemed as superfluous. And what difference would it make should the charges against the minister be found to be true in every material particular in any event? Is it that the plague has finally berthed in same the executive branch under whose nose the nation’s number one accountant allegedly ferreted out N109 billion undetected?

Never mind the programmed distraction, we are talking here of a country where the size of the budget a minister is able to draw to his corner is hardly a matter of functionality but the raw power and undeserved privilege – minus the gravity and responsibility – of the office.

So those pitching tents on either side should know that it is not about us but them. The quarrel is not about lifting the 100 million out of poverty; rather, it is who does get the power to spend. Remember the mystery billions spent on school feeding during lockdowns with no questions asked; and the countless other billions annually thrown away on dubious social intervention programmes?

In effect, only a few should still be fooled about what it is that drives the turf war between our lovable Amazons. Never mind grave risks these pose to the image and the pretensions of the government and of course the interest of the public that they claim to serve; I guarantee that things will turn out fine.

Don’t forget, we are dealing with a country that has long earned sobriquet of a crime scene.

Contrary to the predictions of the many that had feared the worst for our beloved naira, the currency not only rebounded last week but appears to have beaten a strategic retreat from the path of Golgotha charted by the smart Alecs for whom all is fair in war as in brutal, rapacious pillaging. Sunday night, this newspaper reported the naira as closing at N680/$ at the parallel market, something of a dramatic new wave after weeks of depreciation. That was the same currency that crossed the N900/$ mark some few days before.

Whether that resurrection is a fluke, a chance event or mere serendipity remains to be seen; suffice to say however that the development appears to have buried the argument of those who had dismissed off-hand, Emefiele’s latest gambit of naira’s redesign. Whatever the case might be, those who took the bet must be ruing their losses now.

Howbeit, in a country where every nth citizen is an expert and financial analyst – without the encumbrances of the nationalist flavour – the perennial battles over non-substance as opposed to solid policy, while expected, are also not supposed to settle anything since they are not so much about policy but the many egos involved. In fact, the last thing to expect would be a more nuanced if not entirely reasoned appreciation of those complex dynamics said to have informed the action of the apex bank; not in the politically charged atmosphere of the current time; and certainly not when nearly every player of note in the economy – whether of the productive or speculative segment – maintains a piggy bank – a dugout of sorts in earthen vessel to hold their troves of cash.

You can now understand why Emefiele, the CBN chief, is supposed to play dumb, act marionette, or better still, hold his peace since we are supposed to be dealing with a pristine antediluvian economic environment where any planned change will hurt the poor the most!

Never mind the logic or illogic; or better still, Nigerians’ love for confusing apples for oranges, you hear catch-phrases like the ‘measure is dead on arrival’; ‘it is utterly insensitive’ based on premises that are either faulty outright or laden with uninformed prejudices.

Changing the N200, N500, and N1,000 notes, it is said, won’t change anything; it would only “pauperise” the citizens more. How?  And, if I may use the words of the Islamic cleric, Sheik Gumi, “it would trigger an unprecedented socio-economic turmoil”. Where?

Read Also: Naira redesign: Hoarders scamper for safety

As for kidnapping, he would add that the menace “can only be stopped by robust policing, social justice for all, and equitable wealth distribution, stressing that any cosmetic measures will not stop it”. And who says the measures are mutually exclusive?

Other religious leaders, perhaps not to be outdone in the morbid, reflexive cynicism have issued ex-Cathedra synopsis. Sample: “And while people are hungry, trying to find enough money to buy bread to eat, our bosses are thinking of making the Naira more beautiful”!  Holy Moses!

And these are separate from those that have chosen to frame the fight as one between Emefiele and the rest of the orderly society!

Talk of as many diagnoses of the naira problem as there are clinicians. Anyone looking for agreement on the nature of the problem not to talk of the way out had better save his/her breath.  So much for Emefiele’s economy said to be suffused with cash (excess liquidity). For Citizen Joe who is permanently falling behind on his dues, the reality is a lot different. To him, the notion of excessive liquidity is academic – a pastime of the elite and the moneyed. For him, life goes on whichever way!

Although the trader say in Oke-Arin, Central Lagos would see such concerns differently, maintaining a trove of cash to him has nothing to do with Emefiele’s fancy rites of monetary supply management; it is something of convenience to keep things under control and to be truly in charge – in a country where just anything could go wrong without notice. To this class of actors, the elite must be the only class that sees problem where there is none exists as steady flow of cash between them and their bankers are something of a daily occurrence! As they say – nothing spoil!

Which leaves us with the class that most Nigerians love to hate – the politicians. And then of course the kidnappers and terrorists. Didn’t one writer say that a little inconvenience is good enough for the soul? Or better still, how about the latter issuing own currency to serve their underworld enclave?

When all is said and done, there is at least one point to which we all can, at least agree. It is the fact that the naira is in big trouble. Not just against the major international currencies, but also as a store of value. Thanks to Emefiele’s monetary-creation binge and of course the fiscal side that would rather talk than do, the economy has been kept in the awkward position in which the government, unable to earn its due revenues, have had to go a-borrowing from Emefiele’s apex bank. Called ways and means, it is more appropriately, a desperate mechanism involving the printing of new notes by the apex bank; and this at a time production and related economic activities are at a nadir.

Now that the seeds sown in the heat of the revenue shortfalls have now ripened and the excessive naira unleashed in that season has become our giant albatross, the least we can do is chart a different path forward.

Even without the additional burden of squaring with the colony of currency counterfeiters, sound pragmatic reason would seem to dictate some rather stern measures to deal with a problem that has become somewhat malignant.

Of course, I understand the position of some who see the planned redesign of the naira as merely scratching at the surface of the problem. They are probably right. Yet, one of the immediate lessons from the naira’s rebound is how the so-called impregnable wall of the parallel market tumbled down at the mere signal of government’s firm resolve. If one considers that this could happen in a market ordinarily known to defy gravity and one which exists solely by its own rules, one begins to appreciate of how much the ruse the so-called powers of the parallel truly is. The truth of course is that the market has survived thus far only on the wings of the high and the mighty in and out of government.

Nigeria may well be the only country in the world where foreign currencies are hawked as one would, groundnuts, on the streets; who says things can’t change for the better? Why should currency trade pay far more than honest, productive work?

I believe Emefiele and company still have enough time to chew upon those.

Thanks goodness; the good people of Kogi – after the optical illusion of the last seven years – are finally being availed the opportunity to see through the charade being presented as ‘governance’ by the self-branded White Lion whose reign has been pockmarked by terror and crudity.

Reminds me of the saying in Yoruba about a certain weird behaviour which, because it applies to a family member, is passed off as ‘high fever’ but would otherwise be tagged acute schizophrenia were it to involve an outsider.

The madness in Kogi may have finally hit the home run going by the macabre dance of the past fortnight over the ownership of the largest cement plant in Sub-Saharan Africa – Dangote Industry Limited (DIL)’s Obajana Cement plant.

Now Nigerians –not least the enablers of the autocracy and its string of absurdities –have, finally, begun to appreciate the affliction that Kogites have had to endure under Governor Yahaya Bello (GYB) for what it truly is. By this I mean, everything, from the administration’s atrocious provenance right up to its second term that has equally become a reference in unparalleled electoral chicanery; their derivatives of incompetence, stifling governance, weaponised poverty and immiseration not excluding the climate of terror in between, and now the brazen outlawry, are, thanks to the current tango between GYB and DIL, only now beginning to come together.

Didn’t they say that who the gods want to kill they first make mad?

Whatever anyone may say of the National Security Council extraordinary directive requesting Kogi State government to back off its threat to shut down Dangote Cement’s Obajana plant, it seems the least the body could do to halt what was fast becoming the state administration’s embarrassing descent into arbitrariness, self-help and mob rule.

The narrative, which GYB wants the world to believe, is that my beloved Kogi – has been scammed by DIL and successive administrations in the state. In other words, that the story of largest cement plant in Sub-Saharan Africa is not exactly as presented by successive occupants of Lugard House, Kogi’s seat of power. By the narrative of the governor and his henchmen, not only does the state own 10 percent of the firm, the DIL conglomerate has been wanting in the discharge of its fiduciary responsibilities to the state and its people.

That is their story. Do I believe them?

My short and simple answer: Don’t just make the claim; show proof – iron cast irrefutable evidence and proceed to establish them in the court of law; not the arena of sentiments where raw muscles or street actions rule! Do not our learned men say that he who asserts must prove?

As it appears, GYB and his people would have none of that!

First, the state House of Assembly ordered the multi-billion dollar plant to shut down. Interestingly, the order would be enforced by an army of hoodlums who, while breaking into the plant also managed to break a few heads not forgetting to cart away few prized items that caught their fancy.

And, if you thought of the absurdity of parliament playing the accuser and the judge at the same time on a matter that was purely commercial and transactional; a day or two after, a 10-member technical committee led by Folashade Ayoade, secretary to the state government (SSG), claiming to have been set up much earlier by the governor to evaluate the legality of Dangote Cement’s claim of acquisition turned in its finding that Dangote Cement did not pay a dime to the state government for the purported transfer of the facility.

And the governor, now needing no further reconsideration, long convinced beyond any iota of doubt that wrongdoing had been firmly and irrefutably established, thereafter decreed a 48-hour ultimatum on the management of the plant to close down – not minding the jobs of thousands hapless Nigerians.

Read Also: Dangote and Obajana Cement dispute

And all of this in a country that still harbours all pretences to the rule of law?

As they say in Yoruba of the mad one – this time s/he has finally hit the market square!

Although typically taciturn, DIL – by now scandalised – hasn’t been exactly quiet though. Its account, which it has put out in a number of newspapers, has been different. Yes, Obajana Cement Company Limited was acquired by it. However, what it acquired, it maintained was no more than a piece paper considering that the state government could not put a single block on another! It had to acquire the land on which it paid compensation to the landowners, secured necessary approvals from the federal government and of course a memorandum ceding 10 (is it 5 percent) to the state government which the state had to pay but which it neglected to do!

Whether you believe their account does not matter. Isn’t the determination of who is right or wrong is what the courts exist for? Apparently, this does not obtain in GYB’s Kogi where the might of the state is supposed to trump the rule of law! We are here talking of a process that took place nearly 20 years ago!

If the issues are about the firm’s corporate social responsibility, are there no better ways to lay them out?

My point: only those living in denial would fail to detect something quite typical in the way that the GYB administration has gone about the Obajana business. Or the chicanery disguised as public interest. From a dispute so inelegantly contrived that you could smell opportunism a mile off; to the ugly, hare-brained contestation that speaks to the bizarre predilection of those supposedly calling the shots, there is, undoubtedly, something of a programmed entitlement/impunity that suggests a mind-set given to lawlessness.

Lest we forget, here was a governor who was not on the ballot but was nonetheless crowned king; and who had to ensure that every segment of the state was pummelled and pulverised to submission as a form of assurance to guarantee that nothing stands in the way of a second term.  Thanks to the internet which never forgets, the then viral Ebira song in which a throng of youngsters were seen, gyrating to the rhythm of gunfire, *ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta will remain memorable if not evergreen.

Sure, GYB has since gone past all of those to issue his now infamous Ihima Declaration.

Ihima, by the way, is the capital of Okehi Local Government in the central senatorial district of the state which GYB comes from. Why GYB chose that venue to lay out such chilling agenda is unclear; suffice to say that he felt comfortable enough to request them to record it for posterity. And they did! The result is that video that has since trended in which he spoke in his Ebira dialect subsequently sub titled in English, where he let it be known that he was “a seasoned gun-handler”  with a promise to pursue his political adversaries, all the way into their hiding holes.

“I’m coming after those who abuse us, who poke their hands in our mouths. Those fingers will be severed from their hands. I will pursue them to their bedrooms and hiding places… Anyone who opposes my agenda will be picked up and kept in a place where he will never see the sun again.”

Chilling, you say?

For now, let me just say that in Aliko Dangote, the White Lion may have finally met his match!

We are just wailing every day! We are a captured people! We deserve the government we elected. Don’t we have elected officers from this axis – Councillors, House of Assembly, House of Representatives, Senate and other political appointees? Another election is coming!

The above, copied from a WhatsApp platform – Lagos Ibadan Road Update 3 – is just one among the dozens daily shared on the messaging platform created by motorists on the nation’s busiest corridor – the Lagos – Ibadan expressway. The statement goes beyond merely expressing the anguish daily suffered by Nigerians from the hand of the construction giant, Julius Berger and of course the indifferent federal government; it aptly captures the utter helplessness, the grim alienation by the citizens long condemned to slavish, hellish living.

To describe the experience of the past two months on the inward-Lagos bound journey on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway as nightmarish would be an understatement; slow motion lynching will come close to describe the hell that motorists on Nigeria’s busiest traffic corridor have been subjected. Those Nigerians who thought they had seen the worst in the earlier phase of the construction work may have rejoiced too soon; in fact, many are wondering if indeed Julius Berger hasn’t chosen to save the bitterest of the pill for the last minute with the final phase of barely six kilometres stretch already visiting unequalled trauma on hapless motorists.

Now, a journey from Arepo on the expressway to Alausa Secretariat, which my Google map puts at 11 kilometres, can take anything between three to five hours! And it does not matter whether it is early morning rush or evening-time shuttle. And that is when one gets lucky not to be mugged by those ubiquitous miscreants while stuck on the Warewa Long Bridge!

By the way, the remaining stretch of work, according to Minister of Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola, a mere six kilometres on the Julius Berger end, is expected to end in December – for those still lucky to  be alive then!

Months into that final push, the daily experiences remain as diverse as they come. I know a family friend who works in Ikoyi. To get to work by 8 a.m., she has to hit the road by 3.30 am daily. She tells me that she gets back home at about 10.30 pm with barely enough time to catch some sleep before she takes off again on the clock! A young lady who also lives in Arepo, and who just got a job in Lekki could no longer be sure if the high-paying job is a blessing or a curse just after a week-long stress. Once I witnessed a lady, pressed, abandon her car to answer the nature’s call right on the bridge and in full glare of other prying citizens.

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Tales like the above goes beyond exemplifying the chaos unleashed by Julius Berger and its enabler, the federal government; they emblematise the colossal failure of governance as indeed the absence of compassion at its highest levels.

In a country where mismanagement in the broadest sense isn’t just the norm but the directing principle of everyday life and living, it is even pointless to conceive of an evaluation by anyone of the physical and human toll that the latest phase of gridlock has wrought. In any case, who cares for the man-hours lost in a country where national productivity is cheap, textbook stuff? Or the public health correlates more so in a country where death is barely worth a dime?

Certainly not after our government, which for the love of us, has since determined that no costs be it material, physical or even human lives deserves to be spared on the project; same for its partner, Julius Berger. It seems to have taken it for granted that Nigerians would put up with any pain – or even death if it came to that – if only to have a taste of those autobahns for which the Germans are renowned! For that favour, we must thank the government – and Julius Berger – never mind the quantum indeterminable costs already borne!

I have heard countless of times that Julius Berger wouldn’t dare to put the citizens through such trauma in their home country of Germany. The Nation’s columnist, Dr Jide Oluwajuyitan puts it succinctly in a piece on the matter last December.

“Julius Berger”, said the much revered columnist “represents everything that is wrong with the nation. It  shares all the negative attributes of the Nigerian governing elite – impunity, insensitivity, greed and lack of empathy for Nigerians they often treat as subjects as against citizen”.

Let me simply state that the statement is true in every material particular. Indeed, it could not have been better put.  It is hard to imagine any country in the world, save Nigeria, that would leave a project with such profound impacts on public health/safety and convenience to the whims and caprices of a powerful contractor or service provider. One would ordinarily imagine that a work plan detailing the flow and how the inconveniences to citizens would be mitigated, would be incorporated into the project. And then of course, the government being the enabler of the public good would immediately put its agencies on the alert to mitigate the pains while the provider is kept on its toes. Not in Nigeria.

What do we have here? A company left to do as it pleases while the agencies of government watch pathetically on. And while it can afford to take all the time in the world to carry on its own business, well assured of the sanctity and inviolability of its own contract, other economic actors are supposed to stew in their own juices – including the trillions of naira in losses – incalculable man-hours, in materials and other allied costs that must be borne – underwritten by the same wearied but hapless citizens as collateral costs.  Only in Nigeria!

Nigerians are said to be an impatient lot; but then, there is something in the programmed anarchy in the public service delivery that would weary even the owl – a bird renowned for its patience and solitude. In any case, isn’t the programmed anarchy thus enabled that allows our super-citizens the open license to promote their brand of chaos on the highways and from which the lesser citizens have taken their cues? Yes, the cycle is not complete without the blaring of the siren, to alert the rest of us, that the man of power is not just passing through but has an urgent assignment which must involve driving against the flow of traffic. And then of course the police and sundry traffic officials making of hay of the extortion business as Nigerians roast.

Again, isn’t that how we roll?

To think that seven months after, the nation is nowhere near cracking the proverbial knot in terms of the substantive issues at the heart of the current FG/ASUU imbroglio is to appreciate not just the depth of the nation’s leadership crisis, but why the nation is virtually on hold on all fronts.

Yes, all manners of expletives have been spewed on the government for what many have come to term as its obduracy that bothers on criminal indifference.; but so have a good number of the discerning public said of Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU which has, in addition to assuming the role of the opposition, become so consumed in its righteous indignation to such an extent that the otherwise powerhouse of rationality has allowed reason and the liberal tradition to take flight.

Obviously, if a part of the tragedy of the current time is how the feuding parties let pass a great opportunity to reset the framework of the tertiary educational sector, the bigger revelation must be the deafening silence of the voices of reason and moderation in the entire saga.

And what do we have: Banalities and unhelpful grandstanding at the centre-stage as against what was initially presented as a battle for the soul of the university; an orderly society squirming in utter embarrassment at what has since become a contest of egos.

Say what you may of last week’s ruling of the National Industrial Court ordering ASUU to call off its seven-month-old strike, it seems to yours truly, a face-saving breather that the parties –ASUU as much as the government– truly need at this time – if only to get back on track.

At this point, it is worth reminding that the matters which have brought the country to this level are no more new than the solutions, most of which are already in the public square, are novel. ASUU wants an overhaul of the learning environment in our universities, an improvement in the current funding levels and, crucially, an enhanced package for university staff and such other incentives intrinsic to their job.

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Interestingly, the government does not disagree that the system needs better tending or that university teachers aren’t deserving of fair remuneration. Overall, what appears to be at issue is the extent to which the government can go in the circumstance that agreements from the time it was originally penned in 2009 and its subsequent review in 2013, have been observed in the breach by successive administrations. Needless to state that ASUU is insistent that the funds are not only available but that the government has a duty find them by any means possible. And then the government on its part says that ASUU itself has neither been helpful nor realistic given the nation’s dire economic situation. In other words, the implementation of the agreement, which ASUU insists is cast in stone, is only to the extent that the revenue of the government would permit.

Had the whole brouhaha not been reduced to winning arguments as against pressing for real, fundamental changes in our university system, we’d probably by now be framing the questions a bit differently.

Of course, every government in the past was simply deemed the culprit since, ASUU could do no wrong. And when it does go on strike – as it is wont not infrequently – the entire blame goes to the supposedly tone-deaf government for its failure to act – hence the demand on the treasury to pay restitution even for the work not done. Today, things are changing.  There is apparently now a new sense of awareness of the limitation of the government in the environment of declining national revenues and unprecedented infrastructure gap; and then increasingly, a growing weariness with ASUU’s frustratingly one-sided, winner-takes-all methods, particularly when it insists on getting paid for the duration of the strike.

Trust ASUU, it has, like in times past, regaled us with fine arguments on how lost academic grounds would be recovered as soon as the strike is called off; it has, true to its nature, artfully played up the dreary alternative – wholesale cancellation of sessions/programmes should government insist on obeying its own law that denies them the purse on account of strike! Only that in their well-articulated arguments, they have neglected to work out the human and material cost of a compressed academic calendar on the students, the educational sector as indeed the society as a whole, and whether or not the elements can be redeemed!

To ASUU, getting universities back on track could only mean government drawing the cheque. As for the issue of sustainability, that would either come later or perhaps wait another round of wildcat strikes that would remind everyone of the folly of the current model!

For all the good that it has done to keep the system running, we have certainly reached a point where ASUU has to re-examine the current paradigm of funding our universities as indeed its fixation with it.

This suggestion is certainly not new.  This newspaper’s Thursday columnist, Emeritus Professor Akinjide Osuntokun, not too long ago canvased a model which would involve a shared responsibility between the government and the beneficiaries. Most recently, Professor Hamman Tukur Sa’ad, one-time vice chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Minna and chairman of the Federal Government Visitation Panel on the 2020 crisis at the University of Lagos also lent his voice to the need for a different approach. His suggestion is for the universities to take their autonomy seriously and for the councils do the needful, including paying good salaries to lecturers. But then, it seems given that that could only happen if everyone comes to a basic agreement on what it costs to run the programmes and related services in the university system. Indeed, only thereafter could we begin an enlightened and fruitful debate on the appropriate charges – and flowing from this, the all-important question of that fraction of the cost to be borne by the government and the rest to be covered by the recipients through appropriate institutions and mechanisms.

Would the proposed framework not lead to the weakening of ASUU?

Most likely, it will. But then, we are talking here of the future of the academe; for only ASUU in this day and age still pretends that some bored bureaucrats siting in their comfy offices in Abuja would be interested in the welfare of the university staff or the students.

Which of course leads to the final point in this piece, which is: Who will bell the cat? Would ASUU be prepared to climb down its high horse to consider the bigger picture – which is the future of the sector? What about the governing councils of the universities; would they be amenable to leading the charge to redirect the course of the current engagement?  And the committee of vice chancellors; what can they do and what should they be doing at this time to bring amity? Time is running out.