Category: Sanya Oni

By Sanya Oni

Exceptionalism. That unsettling word – again! Like yours truly is wont to say, these are strange times indeed. If we started off on the note of that galling concept which insists on exclusive privileges for migrant herders, and the fulsome attempts to rationalise the correlates, warts and all, we have finally arrived at a junction where no less than the nation’s number one law officer has, after combing for the specious legalism to oxygenate it, has finally delivered that official imprimatur!

The setting of course is what is now described as the Asaba Declaration. Fifteen southern governors had, after a four-hour meeting in the Delta State capital rolled out a 12-point communiqué on those issues currently tearing the country apart: open grazing, devolution of powers, state police etc. – broad, if you like, general governance issues that have in recent time, tended to drive the nation apart.

As it turned out, the most contentious of the lot is the ban on open grazing, the source of most of the conflicts between host communities and migrant herders.

“It is about constitutionality within the context of the freedoms expressed in our constitution. Can you deny the rights of a Nigerian?

“For example: it is as good as saying, perhaps, maybe, the northern governors coming together to say they prohibit spare parts trading in the north.

“Does it hold water? Does it hold water for a northern governor to come and state expressly that he now prohibits spare parts trading in the north?”

That was Abubakar Malami, the federal government’s attorney-general and minister of justice. As it appears, that doctrine – that the Fulani herders deserves especial consideration in all matters pertaining to governance, and public policy – is now official.

From Bauchi’s Bala Mohammed and his odious exceptionalism to Zamfara’s Bello Muhammad Matawalle’s opportunistic posturing, the nation seems to have turned full circle.

If you think that those views could as well have come from the lawyers to the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN); consider the fact that such views, no matter how distasteful, are increasingly being mainstreamed. I recall Prof. Usman Yusuf, former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), once described what he mischievously labelled as “blanket ban” on open grazing by 15 elected governors as “irresponsible.” His grouse: the southern governors did not consult Fulani leaders before making their regulation! The National Secretary of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, Alhassan Saleh, simply described the ban as “empty policy:

“The governors are confused and mischievous; are herders the problem of this country? Are they IPOB killing people up and down, burning police stations?”, he was quoted to have said in his reaction to the communique of the southern governors.

So also is the National President of Kulen Allah Cattle Rearers Association of Nigeria (KACRAN), Khalil Mohammed Bello, who said the ban negates the 1999 constitution. According to him, the constitution allows every citizen to freely move peacefully.

What is ‘new’ is that the number one federal government lawyer would not only lend his voice to the perverse logic behind these effusions, but would, in framing the issue, call to question, both his understanding of the law and his duty and oath of office. If you add to these his equally intriguing equivalence of comparing the settled spare parts sellers in the north with the itinerant pastoralists with their wanton destruction of lives and farmlands (note the barely concealed ethnic baiting), ethnocentrism – that terrible predilection of evaluating other cultures by the standards and customs of one’s own culture –couldn’t have come across in a more brazen variant!

Talk of more appropriate comparison: why not bring up those countless cases of licenced liquor dealers whose cargoes sometimes valued in hundreds of millions are routinely destroyed by the Hisbah, the religious police under the untested doctrine of prohibition even when those cargoes are merely transported through territories considered ‘off-limits’? Are those supposedly, exceptions to Malami’s roll of freedoms?

Now, if it seems utterly disingenuous that a senior lawyer couldn’t make the distinction between a ban on transhumance – which the entire body of governors had earlier recommended and which the southern governors only affirmed, and an outright ban on cattle rearing/business – which was never on the cards – but which the likes of Malami maintain that it is; Nigerians could then begin to appreciate not just the depth of the crisis, but the clever manoeuvres of those whose agenda could best be described as opportunistic and devious.

For even if we concede to the rights of the nomads to freely move and settle in any part of the Nigerian federation, certainly not the most expansive interpretation of the ‘freedom’ could conceivably be extended to their cattle save under Malami’s warped notion of constitutionalism. Surely, the learned Silk couldn’t be referring to the Nigerian constitution, which by the way, leaves little ambiguities about those entitled to the ‘freedom’ of movement as indeed the curbs designed to delimit them.

And while it suits the so-called chief law officer of the federal government to talk glibly of ‘freedoms’ while pretending to be oblivious of the rights of other Nigerians in the event of wilful trespass on their property or even injury to their lives, does that also abrogate the powers of the sub-national entities to make such laws as to engender communal peace in the face of the massive destructions being wreaked by the lawless herders?

In all of this, the tragedy really is that many actually believe and actually subscribe to such jaded notions of the law as espoused by Malami. Too bad that southern governors are not exactly models where matters of good governance are on the table; but then, the truth is that the Northern governors with their 10 million-odd out-of-school kids should ordinarily have more to worry about in a ‘freedom’ that seeks to consign a generation to the forests as either bandits and terrorists – some 15,000 years after mankind domesticated the first set of animals – and in an age where other 10-year-olds are already solving complex tasks on their computer tablets!

Talk of a country where meanings attached to everyday symbols are as diverse as those making them, part of our tragedy is our inability to agree on the definition of the problem on the basis on which we might begin to proceed on an enduring solution. Whether the talk is federalism, devolution of powers, state police, name it; everything has been reduced to “we” versus “them” – or more appropriately, north versus south, even as the country, our so-called beloved federation, continues in the slow descent into anarchy and chaos. Who says our country is not jinxed?

By Sanya Oni

So much for the Buhari administration’s pathetic response to the spiraling tensions stoked by the pervasive insecurity; is there anything else there is to say of the administration’s astounding, world-record mismanagement of the country’s diversity? And now with the adds-on in the grim socio-economic indices so terribly revealing of how much we have plummeted on the human development scale, comparing the regression under Goodluck Jonathan with the meltdown – or if you like, the stasis – under the Buhari administration has suddenly ceased to be academic.

Talk of a country living on borrowed time. Six years and two cycles of recession after; and with nary fundamental changes in the sub structure of the economy, Nigerians obviously now know better than to judge the administration by its averments. For while the Jonathan administration may have been the ultimate spendthrift; the Buhari administration which in the guise of doing more with less resources yet is unmatched in its appetite for foreign loans with odious conditionalities might yet earn a place in the Guiness Book of Records for state-licenced impunity! Not that it matters anyway in the eyes of to the administration’s die-hards; issues bordering on transparency is supposed to come to nothing when a leader – Mai Gaskiya – who could do no wrong is involved!

However, if the administration’s waywardness seems somewhat forgivable given its modest effort on the infrastructure front, the economy, it must be admitted has not been exactly sparing. So much for the statistical fantasy of a lift by a fraction of one percent out of the recession zone, Nigeria has remained in every material particular in regression mode. The omens, far from good, is to put it mildly, highly disturbing. Simply put – the country is flat broke! No doubt, oil prices have remained largely stable; but then so also have global demand for oil yet to pick up. In a country where a whopping 40 per cent of entire forex outlay goes into fuel importation, and where manufacturing entities depend almost entirely on foreign raw materials, forex scarcity can only mean more troubles ahead. As for the implications for the feeding bottle federation, the omens are frightfully ill for the states in particular most of whom are no more than cash points for sharing their federally allocated revenue.

But then, as if this prognosis is itself not worrisome enough, the federal government has tended to gloss over a related but no less grave problem – the unprecedented surge in southward migration at a time ethnic tensions are at an all-time high. Such migrations, traditionally cyclical flowing with cropping cycles, have since acquired a feature of permanence in the wake of the collapse of the security infrastructure notably in the Northeast, Northwest and the North-central. Presently, it has since taken on the nature of desperation with truckloads of migrants ‘deposited’ daily in different state capitals in the south. This is of course separate from the notable invasion of vast forests in the south by roving bands of well-armed criminals posing as herders and whose activities have done much to stoke ethnic animosities in the country. What the trend bodes, not just for national security but for the tenuous inter-ethnic relations is something that the administration’s hierarchs can answer. For now, those at wrong end of the stick are simply urged to show tolerance or accommodation; or better still, to ignore the mass – a legion with neither discernable skills nor social ties to the community swarming their neighbourhoods – and the associated disruptions to their hitherto ordered lives, since, in the opinion of a certain Bala Mohammed and his ilk, the earth belongs to all and no one! With such potential anarchy being primed for the inevitable moment, trust me, it seems to me that the prize of political correctness might be far beyond what the Nigerian state could afford – and this in no distant future.

Simply put, if terrorism qualifies for the Nigerian nightmare, the official approach to its many correlates quite typically perfunctory, is dangerously unnerving – to put it mildly. Six years after President Muhammadu Buhari spoke of “official bungling, negligence, complacency or collusion…”; and of how “Boko Haram became a terrifying force taking tens of thousands of lives and capturing several towns and villages covering swathes of Nigerian sovereign territory”, pretty little has changed in terms of acute understanding its complexities or in the management of its variegated fallouts. So much for its pretensions; those same words would certainly hold true if they were to be uttered today and that, sadly after billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money have gone into the defence sector.

Talking of the phenomenon of irregular migration, and given that their impacts on both the living environment and community cohesion and ultimately societal order are no less grave, those in the southwest for instance, I would argue, need no Sunday Igboho to alert them to the dangers lurking in their neighbourhood from the army of undocumented ‘strangers’ with neither fixed addresses or known abodes. The same I presume would apply to those parts of the country where ethnic tensions stoked by what appears to be an invasion is unrelenting. Here, the operative word is management a la best practices! While the northern governors may not have provided a perfect example by their forced repatriation of the almajiris to their home states, there has to be a deliberate programme to manage the hordes of migrants by the government. Yes, Nigerians belong to all; but then the very idea that some citizens can simply convert public spaces to shelters are not only criminal, they fly in the face of public policy.

Take for instance, a city like Lagos, where a simple regulation restricting the operation of commercial motorcyclists popularly known as Okada has been fraught with problems. Here, the problem, isn’t just the the herd mentality of those engaged in the trade when caught on the wrong side of the law, ethnic sentiments have tended to come into play. And then of course is the growing army of destitute most of whom are now found in street corners without homes or shelters.

This to me is where the call for a state of emergency makes eminent sense. By this I mean a different kind of emergency, where the federal government not only takes the lead in stemming the riotous migration with a clear programme of action, but in which the partnerships of the states are enlisted to address the looming time bomb. Presently, the federal government talks glibly of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty. Meanwhile, there is already, an unprecedented 23.19 million officially unemployed. Would this also include the vast army of migrants most of whom have neither the most basic of education or skills to operate in the market place? Will it be too much for the Bello Matawalles of this world – the self-acclaimed champions of northern interests, to come up with a programme to take their people out of their despondency?

Think of the alternative of the road not taken; only then would Nigerians realise the truth about living on borrowed time!

By Sanya Oni

Sadly, if one had thought that the nation had reached that point where voices of moderation would drown the babel calling not just for a showdown but baying for blood, recent events would seem to have reduced such to mere illusions. In other words, if we thought that we had had enough of the conflict entrepreneurs stoking the fires across the board; it is only because we are yet to reckon with their co-travellers on the other side of the opportunistic train: the ethnic champions with their galling exceptionalism, and whose sense of justice is as warped as their psychology of entitlement is egregious.

These are interesting times no doubt. The other day it was Bala Mohammed, the Bauchi governor with a rather strange doctrine of extra-territoriality as touching the Fulani nationality. The Fulani, he said, could not be restricted to any part of the sub region. They are, according to him, citizens of the world and so are free to move to anywhere of their choosing in the promotion of their trade of pastoralism. Then, he did say also that simply because the Fulani “has been exposed to cattle rustlers who carry a gun, kill him and take away his cows, he has no option to carry AK 47 because the government and the society are not protecting him”.

By the way, that is supposed to preclude the other victims – the farmers who in recent time, have had to bear the brunt of the intransigence of the pastoralist Fulanis.

And talking of the ownership of the forest ranges, he would aver, in reaction to the eviction notice served on illegal occupants of the state’s forest reserves by Arakunrin Rotimi Akeredolu, the Ondo State governor based on security reports on the untoward activities of some criminal herders residing there that:  “Nobody owns any forests in Nigeria, it’s owned by Nigeria. Under section 23, 24 and 25 of the constitution, every Nigerian is free to stay anywhere”.

Those provisions, at least in the opinion of the governor, would suffice to extinguish the rights of other Nigerians to acquire property – and that to a brother governor, a learned Silk! A case of the rights of those herders to reside albeit illegally in the state reserves being superior to the rights of others including to the security of the generality of the people of the state!

That was Bala Mohammed, some months past.

Now, a former Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen. Abdulrahamah Dambazau (rtd), has since picked up from there. Addressing participants of Course 5 of the War College last week, the former army top brass puts the activity of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) on the same pedestal as the Boko Haram’s bloody campaign in the northeast!

Take note of his clever (opportunistic) choice of words: “The two groups have been making efforts to ignite nationwide inter-ethnic conflicts through their violent attacks on northerners resident or transacting businesses in the south as a quick way to realise their dream for a divided Nigeria”.

“We” – I guess he could not have meant any other group other than his beloved North – “see parallels between Boko Haram, a religious extreme (sic) group, and the IPOB and OPC, both ethnic extremist groups. All the three groups operate on the platform of extremism.”

The army chief is no doubt entitled to his views. Not so however, his deliberate mischaracterisation of the different groups. That is not only opportunistic but is patently disingenuous. The truth of course is that the three groups are different in their stated missions and objectives as indeed their modus operandi. If there is anything that unites them, it would seem in their common rejection of the way the country is currently constituted.

Interestingly, he has not a word for the other source of terror – the activities of the criminal herders known to give vent to the simmering tensions between tribes and regions – and of which the entire world – save the leadership of the north – has long acknowledged as posing the most existential threat to all!

That takes us to the latest offering by Bello Mohammed Matawalle, the Zamfara governor. Again, this is typical. Here is a man whose domain is not only besieged but seems set to be overrun by the bandits but is nonetheless convinced that the source of his headache lies elsewhere.

Imagine such an individual thrusting himself forward as the champion of the northern interest! These are strange times indeed.

To Matawalle, the time for fine preachments is long past; the north, his beloved region, is not only aggrieved, but is prepared to reply in kind to provocations from any quarters, especially those he claimed has made his people ‘target sport’.  Northerners, he claims are facing unsearchable conditions in many parts of the Southwest and Southeast in particular. He was particularly miffed by the clashes in Sasha Market, Ibadan, Oyo State and the reported killings of northerners in Imo State.

“We have seen the destruction, the killings and the devastation recently at Sasha Market against northerners and their economic interests.

“Properties worth billions of Naira were lost in addition to human lives, yet some leaders in the Southwest are downplaying the atrocities committed or, worst (sic) still, justifying it”, he claimed.

He wondered why northern leaders and elites have remained silent while they are supposed to stand firm, in the manner in which other leaders of the south are doing “even when they know that their people are at fault”.

On the alleged killing of northerners in Imo State last Saturday, he called on all leaders with conscience and fear of God to speak out “against this continued barbarism and hatred.”

“We will not take that any longer as no human life is worthier than another,”

He then followed with a dire warning – no community or region has the monopoly of violence.

Said he: “If northerners and their means of livelihood will not be protected, accommodated and be dignified anywhere they choose to stay in any part of the south, southerners should not expect protection from the north as the north has more than what it takes to respond to any kind of aggression and hatred.”

We must of course be clear about the general meltdown in the security situation in the country. Whether it is in Ibarapa area in Oyo State where non-state actors are having a free reign in the clear vacuum created by the absentee national government that insists on holding on to the security apparatus even when things are falling apart, or in Imo as elsewhere where criminal elements continue to unleash mayhem for the same reasons; these are unfortunate as they are condemnable.

But then, the tragedy must be seen in the low grade leadership foisted on the country at all levels. One refers here to a leadership class which sees problems through the blinkers of ethnicity and religion and has no shame about pushing noxious notions of unequal citizenship. And yet would say in another breadth that Nigeria belongs to all!

By Sanya Oni

 

The other day, the National Bureau of Statistics released, what ordinarily would have passed as a ‘sobering’ statistic on the unemployment situation in the country. In an environment where nothing shocks anymore, where the most outrageous have become routine, it would seem part of the new normal that the revelations merely passed off as one of those things – something that the federal government could afford feign indifference and the legislature couldn’t be bothered with.

Now, much as it could be argued that no cold dreary stats could adequately capture the intricate and complex dimensions of the unemployment crisis, suffice to say that the figures in some way provide a window into not just the depth of the crisis facing us but offer a sort of prognosis into a malaise that poses grave threats to the fabrics of national cohesion with serious implications for national security and stability. Clearly, if the figures are any revealing, it is of a country literally sitting on a keg of gunpowder!

Did I hear someone say we’ve heard that before? Very true, at least in part. Nothing in the broad finding is actually any new. If there is anything new, it is that the situation, far from improving, is actually getting worse. Take for instance this one: That the unemployment rate not only increased from the 27.1% in the second quarter of 2020 to 33.3%. Or even more specifically, that some 23,187,389 Nigerians out there have either nothing to do or worked for less than 20 hours a week. Or still, that some 1,422,772 persons were added to the labour market between the second quarter of the past year right up to the time the economy slipped into recession.

These indices must be seen as frightening; frightening because the trend continues to surge despite the administration’s claims to have tried every trick in the rule-book to tame the monster. Thanks to Godwin Emefiele, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), we have just enough ‘interventionist’ programmes for every activity under the sun and for all the problems identified. From agriculture to agro-business; micro, small and medium scale enterprises; just name it.  On each, billions of naira have been poured, not just in the expectation of a stated goal of self-sufficiency in the intervention area, but also to create jobs across their value chains while taking as many as possible out of the loop. Yet, these seems to have made little difference.

As for the federal government, it has also not been sleeping easy. In this, Nigerians would recall the N-Power initiative launched by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016 aimed at addressing youth unemployment. The scheme, which initially targeted 500,000 Nigerians in three batches is said to have gulped some N279 billion in the three years running from 2016-2019. Not forgetting the administration’s brainwave – the Special Public Works (SPW) programme– a three-month programme initiated by the Ministry of Labour, designed to engage some 774,000 mostly artisans across the 774 local governments in the country for public works. The latter, unfortunately seems to have been thrown into the jeopardy as one might expect of a project conceived, not necessarily to address the problem in any fundamental sense, but something as a scheme to ‘keep the boys happy’.

Whereas in their conception, the initiatives might not be lacking in good intentions, none can be said to aspire to the level of creative thinking in the context of the so-called problem.

Talk of a country with a penchant to grope in the dark even when a tiny spark of light would do a world of good – little of course is known of the profile of this mass and for which the government seeks the targeted intervention. Clearly, if the NBS stats gave little away about the character of this huge army, their skill sets, level of education or what some prefer to call ‘employability’, it is more often than not, treated like the other army – the 13 million out-of-school kids many of whose destinies has long been determined as “irrecoverable”. In other words, the dense figures about the mass are only brought up when some high officials want to impress about their grasp of the Nigerian reality!

Yet, they are a force we can neither ignore, nor would they allow us some peace. At least not when they are known to supply the bulk of the other army in the counter-culture of crime and social maladjustment and deviance, providing as it were, the recruitment grounds for the other lumpen: the bandits; the local terrorists with a mission to kill for anything and nothing; cultists out to exact revenge from society for whatever; the drug abuser that mirrors a society that prefers the fancy world of escape; among these number the ladies of the night; the ethnic agitators and cyber-criminals.

Meanwhile, we shudder about what the future holds, not just for the mass but for the rest of the country, even when we have neither been able to find the means nor seem to be able fashion a creative response to the challenge they pose, both in the context of the rapidly changing world of work, and also in the context of the imperative of social adjustment.

Which is why yours truly is not exactly surprised at the reaction of some Nigerians to the suggestion by the National Leader of the All Progressives’ Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu  at the colloquium marking his birthday on Monday last week. As against some of the ad hoc measures being pushed out all of which have had little impact, his prescription, rather than being outlandish as some appear to suggest, actually came across as bold and daring: some five million youths to be recruited into the security services to help tackle the variegated security challenges facing the country. For while those eager to pick issues prefer to dwell on the mechanics, the real substance, which is that the country needs a completely new approach to the unemployment crisis can hardly be faulted. Of course, it begins with the recognition that the nation has already lost a generation to the planlessness of the past; and that the country would somehow have to the will to bring back the displaced army into the economic fold. And that this requires something of a New Deal.

 

By Sanya Oni

 

Early January, yours truly had stumbled on a report by Reuters on an on-going move by the NNPC to raise $1 billion in prepayment with trading firms to refurbish the Port Harcourt refinery. Quoting unnamed sources, the report stated that the money would be repaid over seven years through deliveries of Nigerian crude and products from the refinery once the refurbishment is complete.

More, it named Afreximbank, the Cairo-based financial powerhouse as leading the financing. Trust the officialdom to keep mum in such matters, a terse statement from the spokesman of the bank did confirm the development: “Afreximbank is looking into a facility for the refurbishment of the Port Harcourt Refinery. However, the borrower is yet to be determined”.

Now, it is official – Not only is Nigeria plodding on the matter of rehabilitation of the dead entities, it will be pouring in some $1.5 billion to bring one of them to life! More than that, an Italian firm, Maire Tecnimont has already been selected by the government to undertake the repair work at the refinery.

“We are happy to announce that the rehabilitation of productivity refinery will commence in three phases…” said Minister of State for Petroleum Timipre Sylva of the 210,000bpd. The first phase of the refinery overhaul project, he said, is scheduled to complete in 18 months. The idea is to bring the refinery’s production to 90% of its nameplate capacity.

For a project that has gone through countless twists and turns, Nigerians will certainly be more than interested, first in the the basic outlines of the business case made to justify the patent misadventure, and why those behind it think that the current time is momentous.

Unfortunately, given that ours is a country where the most basic documents relating to routine matters of governance have the official seal of “classified” affixed to them, trust the masters of the subterfuge to keep the rest of us guessing on the details of a deal that would probably pass as one of the most egregious decisions of all time. Indeed, like every single item of public policy in these parts, we are supposed to see it as something of a de ja vu – subsumed under the nebulous doctrine of ‘national interest’ even when it is apparent such are neither nationalistic nor of beneficial interest!

We have no doubt, come a long way from when the Multi-Purpose-Vehicle (MPV) Bluestar Consortium put up by the billionaire industrialist, Aliko Dangote staked some $ $721 million to acquire Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries. Like Grandpa’s Oldsmobile that ought to have been retired into the scrapyard but which must be retained at all costs so as not to be seen as suffering alienation of a beloved patrimony, so badly did some Nigerians want the two refineries back after the sale to Bluestar that the then President Umaru Yar’Adua was forced to succumb to the forces of populism. Well, that choice has not only turned extremely expensive in all its ramifications, it has revealed the sheer folly of allowing emotions to rule when reason is dictated.  Now, nearly a decade and half since that administration handed back to Dangote his cheque and two presidencies in between, we have merely dipped a notch further in the national trajectory of decline.

By the way, it should not surprise that none in the administration would dare to present a business case that is outside of the statist mindset of the Buhari administration. That was one lesson the former Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr Ibe Kachikwu was forced to learn the hard way.  Like Samuel Finer’s man on the horseback, he rode into town like one consumed by a certain streak of messianism. When he announced to the whole world that, as far as he was concerned, those refineries were beyond salvage, he spoke to the rationality of the moment; the need to permanently fix the massive holes that the refineries had become by simply getting rid of them! That was in 2015. By the way, that view actually aligned with those of experts who had come to see the refineries not only as a bottomless pit, but their sale as surest way out of the refining quagmire.

Of course, he hadn’t reckoned with the ‘body language’ of the big man, or if he did, he probably used the wrong visors. Later, like St Paul after this Damascus U-turn, he would recant, not once but serially; putting the long-suffering but then weary and frustrated public through his countless timelines, without a sense of accountability or integrity.

Here, Nigerians will recall his infamous encounter with BBC’s Stephen Sackur on HardTalk: “Our target is 2019… don’t worry, I put the date, I’ll work it…”

Don’t ask me if he made good his threat to take a “walk” if that target was not achieved. His self-awarded testimonial says it all: “If there is one area where I feel sad, it’s the refineries because there is a huge gulf between my pronouncements and where I’d like it to be and what we’ve been able to achieve.”

But that’s not all there was to it of the self-indictment rendered in flowery language. Said he: “The reality today is that we are still below 15% of utilisation of those refineries because they need to maintained, reworked, they almost need to be shut down and completely refurbished”.

That was after billions of naira of taxpayers had been poured into them over a four-year period!

Today, we are back on that same old path of astounding opacity and mindless profligacy. Only that this time, no one is making pretences to due process.

So here we go. Minister Timipre Sylva says Nigerians need not be apprehensive about where the cash is coming from. Nigerians, he said, should read his lips: No debts – or if any at all, it is only peripheral – next to nothing!

I believe him. Better still, I should. Nonetheless, it will still help to take a good look at where he says the money is coming from. Never mind that this is a season when public officials on record turn around to claim being misquoted, yours truly still considers it worthwhile to quote the minister.

“The NNPC is going to spend about $200 million from its internally generating revenue sources, while the federal appropriation will put in about $800 million and it is already broken down into three parts.

This, according to the minister, are to be broken into tranches of $350 million each for the 2020 and 2021 appropriation cycles with the balance of $100 million charged on the 2022 budget. The balance of $500 million, he says will come from Afreximbank.

On the $500 million coming from Afreximbank, the terms and conditions remain unknown at least at this time. Could it be, as earlier reported by Reuters, crude swap?

It is – I guess – taken that the petroleum ministry will, by fiat, corral another $200 million from the NNPC subsidiary, the National Petroleum Development Company, NPDC – without recourse to appropriation!

In all however, none is more intriguing than the federal government’s share of $800 million said to be tucked into the budgets.

Think of charging $350 million on 2020 budget that itself was debt-financed to the tune of N6.1 trillion; imagine the current budget with an in-built deficit of N5.16 trillion already padded with Sylva’s $350 million refinery bill; and then another $100 million from a 2022 budget that in all likelihood will also be partly debt-financed.  And all of these to revive a contraption whose book value tends to zero and for whose outcome is not guaranteed!

Like Minister Timipre Sylva, I verily believe in the miracle of resurrection. But a $1.6 billion bill to wake up a contraption soon to be sold by the government, the same government supposedly set for the deregulation of the sector; that’s hardly a wise way to spend public money? Even in our typically laissez faire, incoherent environment of public policy, that will still be a tough one to swallow. Believe me, it stinks!

By Sanya Oni

In a country where avenues for legitimate business is akin to ramming the proverbial horse through the eye of the needle, I can understand the anger if not the frustration of those who saw the so-called ban on cryptocurrency as another instance of the regulatory overkill for which our dear country has long acquired continental, if not global, notoriety. That some have actually equated the CBN hammer to withdrawing the operating licence of an entity and at such an inauspicious moment that reeks of bad faith is therefore no surprise! Indeed, as far as many among our fledgling tribe of techies are concerned, Nigeria has only again lived to its reputation as killer of dreams, a graveyard for talents and dreams to boot – with the CBN merely acting as a not-too-sympathetic undertaker!

So much for the purported ban; whereas only a few can claim to know how the “digital or virtual currencies issued by largely anonymous entities actually work, suffice to say that its growing popularity – never mind its opacity –has since made the endeavour a little more than one of idle curiosity.

At a church forum some two years back, we had a speaker talk to us on the business. Trust me, my primary instinct was to raise the issue of regulation. Trust the old-fashioned investor in me, I needed more than the cold assurances offered by some shadowy, invisible players – far beyond the alluring promises of hefty returns on investment –to take a plunge! Yes, you guessed right – I never did precisely because there was no such thing as regulation!

Yet for those who remains persuaded, the crypto business is supposed to be the stuff of which the next big dreams are made, ranking perhaps topmost in the league of the drivers of the next fintech revolution. Merely by the portfolio size – some $500 million by the last account, it has become something of a force too difficult to ignore. And while not necessarily exclusive to the Z-Generation, it is increasingly touted as an investors’ delight both for the returns on investment and as a veritable store of value. Which explains why not a few actually see it as the next big thing after oil!

To describe the CBN directive as a “ban” would certainly be an overstatement of the matter. For contrary to what is being peddled around about the measure, the apex bank merely directed those under its regulatory orbit to close the accounts of cryptocurrency exchanges. In other words, whereas the latter are free to carry on their activities, these can only be done outside of the CBN’s remit – the mainstream financial system. Rather than the talk of killing the business therefore, those familiar with how the business works have since pointed at nearly a dozen outlets through which the business could be carried out.

Which takes us to the ratio presented by the CBN to justify the drastic measure. The first is that “their use in Nigeria goes against the key mandates of the CBN, as enshrined in the CBN Act (2007), as the issuer of legal tender in Nigeria. Simply put, the use of cryptocurrencies is a direct contravention of existing law. On this, there is pretty little to add. Second, that the very name and nature of “cryptocurrencies” suggests that its patrons and users value anonymity, obscurity, and concealment. Which of course begs the question: why would any entity seek to disguise their transactions if they are legal? “Cryptocurrencies”, the CBN would equally aver, “have become well-suited for conducting many illegal activities including money laundering, terrorism financing, purchase of small arms and light weapons, and tax evasion”. Again, no one has yet denied the charge as lacking some grains of truth. And finally, that some cryptocurrencies have become more widely used as speculative assets rather than as means of payment, thus explaining the significant volatility and variability in their prices – something against the grain of monetary system stability which the CBN sees as the core of its many but variegated functions.

If one had thought the well-reasoned positions have moderated the rage directed at the apex bank, the contrary turned out to be the case – a fact that would underlie why public policy is such an impossible undertaking in these parts.

That was before Vice President Yemi Osinbajo weighed in. With his powerful interjection, it is hard to know how far things have since changed. Far beyond providing validation to what some among the army of critics of the CBN measure have put out, he actually sought to press the apex bank on the need for a rethink. His premise is as simple as it is persuasive: “Rather than adopt a policy that prohibits cryptocurrency operations in the Nigerian banking sector, we must act with knowledge and not fear and develop a robust regulatory regime that is thoughtful and knowledge-based”.

He said more: “There is no question that blockchain technology generally and cryptocurrencies, in particular, will in the coming years challenge traditional banking, including reserve (central) banking, in ways that we cannot yet imagine.”

And then: “We need to be prepared for that seismic shift. And it may come sooner than later”.

And finally: “There is a role for regulation here, and it is in the place of both our monetary authorities and SEC to provide a robust regulatory regime that addresses these serious concerns without killing the goose that might lay the golden eggs.”

Good observations, no doubt. I understand where the VP is coming from. As a lawyer, everything comes basically to the sacrament of the printed word –using the instrumentality of the text to envision the future – the province of learned men!

In this, the erudite professor appears to have overlooked two crucial matters: the first is that the apex bank, under the current strictures have neither the depth of understanding of the cryptocurrency environment nor the sophistication in terms of the instrument required to regulate the business, which by its nature, is not only supranational but one whose network is as complex as it is incomprehensible! At this time, the quest is not so much about our aspirations to the global orbit; rather, it is whether a country that cannot properly identify its citizens could afford to launch into a world where a mild trigger can send the entire framework of global finance crashing on everyone’s heads.

If I understood the CBN and SEC’s positions, it is that the financial sector is far from ready to assume such risks at this time!

The other worry is the challenge that cryptocurrencies present to the ethos of work! Nigerians are understandably adventurous lots. It explains their ubiquity – in medicine, finance, ICT, name it. But then, we have also seen another growing counter-culture – the appetite for risks of a most heinous kind –from gambling to the endless craving for wealth without work – an inversion – if you like –of the protestant ethic by a ruthless band for whom money and more money is the driving force!

Think it doesn’t matter? You only need to remember how, for the delinquency of a few bankers, the treasury in 2008 was nearly emptied to save the financial services sector from ruin.

By Sanya Oni

With every passing day comes new prognostications on what to do with the rabid band of criminals that have taken arms against the Nigerian state, the lot that have reduced our humanity to the level described by Thomas Hobbes as ‘brutish and short’. Trust our opportunistic political elite in moments like this, not only have rigours – the good old endeavour of scrupulous interrogation of ordinary day events  for context to aid understanding – taken flight, we are suddenly finding that good and bad have not only become relative. In place of truth now lies the seduction to a brand new world of alternative reality which once promoted by one Donald Trump has now been fully domesticated by the Nigerian politician. In Nigeria’s convoluted moral space, not even the so-called armour-bearers of truth and everything in between, seems to have been spared. Now, no one is sure of anything – anymore. It’s Nigeria’s season of new normal!

Talk of a country where things – particularly of the negative kind – are known to move at the speed of light, we have gone beyond mere debates on the moral underpinnings of the open embrace of criminals. Once the talk of exploring back-door channels to engage the murderous bandits was deemed as academic –  more like the testing of the waters at the time in the context of the creeping anarchy in that part of the country. Now hierarchs of state not only pander to them, the ill-clad, bazooka-bearing fellows have since become regular faces in the places of power, laying out demands and giving instructions on what the government needs to do for the rest of us to have peace.

Guess that those Nigerians who, a short while ago expressed outrage when the federal government granted amnesty to 600 so-called repentant Boko Haram terrorists saw what the rest of us could not have seen. Their grouse – which is that many of these people were not only known to have committed mass murder but should ordinarily be objects of interest for their crimes against humanity, couldn’t sway a federal government that was only too eager to advertise tokenism as progress!

Today, that train, of the thoughtless absurdity called amnesty has since berthed in the northwest states of Zamfara and Katsina. In July 2019, Governor Aminu Masari had on behalf of his Northwest counterparts after their one-day security and reconciliation meeting with security agents, vigilante, and volunteer groups, herdsmen and farmers in Katsina issued what came close to a decree at the time: “As from today, no vigilante group member or volunteers should attack or kill any herdsman, as sacrifice must be made by both sides to ensure peace reign”.

Apparently bent on ensuring that the armistice worked, he would a month after, play host to the representatives of the bandits terrorising the eight frontline local government areas in his state. There again, he re-emphasised the need for them to respect the amnesty granted to them by his government.

As things turned out, not only did the governor overstate the bandits understanding of the text of the amnesty but also their sense of honour as the entire thing fell apart few months after. He would later tell the BBC Hausa Service that his administration would no longer engage in any negotiation or peace talk with bandits as they did not honour the agreement they signed!

A lot has happened since. First, was the frontal display of criminal impunity in which some 300-plus schoolboys of Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina were abducted in December last year. Now, the latest tale is that Awwalun Daudawa, the leader of the criminal gang alongside six other co-masterminds of the abduction have handed over their weapons, swearing on the Holy Quran not to return to their former practices – all in exchange for amnesty. Talk of a sweet deal in which different figures– all them dizzying – have been bandied as settlement for one of the biggest crimes of all time; surely, some variants of criminality not only offer rich rewards, they actually guarantee access to the good life!

As for the latest – the Kagara abduction, we may never really know all that has happened. Suffice to say that a group of outlaws – so powerful as to get the entire machinery of Niger State government scampering like some rain-bitten chicks couldn’t have gone that far for a few pieces of silver! And now we are talking of the amnesty franchise being merchandised like some piece of silverware and as if it is some sort of incentives for uncommon display of ethical behaviour.

But then, absurdity also comes in different shades or variants. Talk of a country of moral relativists: last week, I referred to a certain Governor Bala Muhammed who verily believes and so insists that his kinsmen – the herdsmen – who have since established themselves as the clear aggressors in the unequal conflict with their farmer-counterparts have nonetheless still earned the rights to bear sophisticated arms since, they are apparently more endangered than their victims!

Now, compare this with a governor, who says that herdsmen should vacate the state’s forest reserves, which in any case, they illegally occupied and which they have since turned into a vast theatre of crime, the latter being accused – by the promoters of crude inverted logic and specious morality – of executive overreach and of ethnic profiling – and all in the bid to ensure the safety and security of the vast majority of the citizens in his domain.

I have earlier on the matter written of the barely acknowledged tragedy – that a governor in this day and age could not draw a distinction between the rights to free movement as guaranteed by the law and the curbs equally set by the same law on the violation on other citizens’ spaces! But what do you make of the number three citizen, the number one lawmaker and the head of the legislative branch not only stoking the fire but carelessly and needlessly inserting himself into the fray at a time all eyes are on the leaders to calm the situation.

At the Hausa Service of the BBC at the weekend, the Senate President Ahmad Lawan, claimed that ethnic clash at Shasha market in Ibadan was sparked by the utterances of some governors from the Southwest. To the extent that he fell short of naming the governor, one can only hazard a guess; and that is if one finds such necessary or even useful.

Yes, what happened in Shasha market in Ibadan was unfortunate. I will even go as far as to say that the tragedy was not only avoidable, it is inexcusable in this day and age. However, as against the superficial explanation by the likes Lawan, what the facts point to are certainly far deeper and more complex.  Which is why his inferences, draped as it were, with the same blinkers of ethnocentrism as those of Bala Mohammed, are just as hollow, unhelpful as they are opportunistic. Yes, I understand why Lawan’s fixation with an unnamed governor might provide some therapeutic effects in a season of abdication. But only if he truly desires to find the chief culprit in the national malady would he fdare to look inside Abuja’s sprawling Three Arms Zone!

By Sanya Oni

 

I have in the past couple of days been struggling to recall where I first came across the word – un-leader. Be that as it may, I understood it then, as I do now, that it typifies the exact opposite of what leadership is all about. In other words, leadership in reverse!

Now, of all the things that could be said of the anger and simmering animosities currently ravaging the Nigerian federation, a major one that stands out is the absence of leadership. So much for the babel of voices on the current situation in the country; if these were all that was required to banish the Nigerian nightmare, the nation ought, to, to, by now, be on a steady cruise to Blissland as against Destination Kigali that it seems currently headed.

Within the past fortnight, much has certainly happened none of which bodes well for the future of our republic. In Uromi, headquarters of Esan North-East Local Government Area of Edo State, scores of women trooped to the streets in protest against the activities of criminal herdsmen which they said have brought hardship to their communities. At the palace of their monarch, Onojie Anselm Edenojie, they demanded the immediate removal of herdsmen from their lands.

Premium Times quoted one of the leaders, Angela Esangbedo, as saying that they could no longer access their farmlands for fear of being raped.

“We are demanding that Fulani herdsmen must leave our communities because we can no longer go to our farms for fear of being kidnapped or raped by the herdsmen. They have taken over our farmlands and have destroyed our farm produce”.

The story from Yewa North Local Government Area of Ogun State is no different. Here, a group of youths is said to have served a seven-day quit notice on cattle herders following the storming of the Igbooro, Oja-Odan communities during which three people were killed with two others sustaining gun injuries.

And now, Ibadan, the famed city of the warriors. Incidentally, yours truly, on a short visit to the ancient city, was actually caught up in the mayhem that could only have leapt out of a scene in Dante’s Hell. What began – as I was told – as a group of hoodlums said to be on a mission to avenge the death of a young man following a minor dispute became an occasion for free-for- all fight between two major ethnic groups. And now with the death now being counted in nearly a score, no one as it appears can tell where the next anarchy is coming from.

Unfortunately, if the current descent into chaos was foreseeable, some members of the political class have either chosen to play the McCoy or simply have no clues as to what the current season demands. To some unfortunately, it’s probably just another phase of the darned game that politics have become.

That to me is where the difference between Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State and his Bauchi State counterpart, Bala Mohammed comes out stark clear: one a leader; the other, you can guess!

To the likes of Ganduje, the incessant farmers-herders clashes are not hard to solve: all that is required is for federal government to come up with a law stopping the movement of cattle from the North to the South and the rest could follow. His solution: “My advocacy is that we should abolish the transportation or trekking of herdsmen from the Northern part of Nigeria to the Middle Belt and to the Southern part of Nigeria.

“There should be a law that will ban this, otherwise we cannot control the conflicts between herdsmen and farmers and cannot control cattle rustling which is affecting us greatly.”

Talk of a governor’s good thinking;  today, he has the $95 million Kano State Agro-Pastoral Development project, KSADP, a flagship project of his administration as proof that things can actually take a better, less morbi, turn. Which explains why his colleagues in the Nigerian Governors Forum have since embraced the idea!

Not so however, the Bauchi governor. Not only does he see things entirely differently, he has probably little bother about the constitution which is supposed to guide his action as a public official much less the oath to which he swore on taking office. No thanks to his notion of Fulani exceptionalism, to him, nothing should stop his beloved Fulani from their age-long practice of transhumance. Declaring his support for the carrying AK-47 rifles, he says this has become necessary to enable them to defend themselves against bandits, kidnappers and assassins since security agencies cannot protect them. He didn’t stop there: the woodlands in the south, he claims, should be fair game to which everyone – including I suppose – foreign pastoralists are entitled; the rampaging herders, he contended, should be at liberty to freely help themselves without risking charges of land grab!

Lest I forget, he also let it be known that the Fulanis, being stateless should be accorded the right to free movement – without any inhibitions – across the sub region.

I ask – as I also did last week: what happens then to those on the receiving end of his prescription of entitlement? To turn the other cheek? And what happens should they choose to resists as it is increasingly becoming the case daily?

We must thank God for small mercies. The governor has not only recanted, he has literally gorged on his own vomit. Like Saul after the botched trip to Damascus, he now claims to have finally ‘seen’ the light; that there’s no such nonsense as extra-territoriality to which anyone could claim; and that local laws (land tenures) exist to define access to lands across the federation of which no tribe can claim exclusion. And moreover, that his prescription on the bearing of arms is not only unlawful, but is actually a recipe for national destabilization!

Don’t forget that we are talking about leaders at such a time like this!

I have said it before and I will say it again, none can compare with our absentee presidency when it comes to abdication and irrelevance.  Unfortunately, if the events of the past few days are any pointers of what lies ahead, which is that the country no longer has the luxury of time let alone the option of inaction or indifference, the administration would seem to have long convinced itself on the wisdom of either doing nothing or yielding the space to non-state actors!

Sunday Igboho. Sheik Gumi. I see both as two obverse sides of the same coin. They are as much the symptoms of state impotence as they are of leadership failure. Only a few weeks back, a friend, who once regarded himself as Buharist unable to hide his frustration any further had blurted out: the country has entered “one chance”. Now, I verily believe that he understated the looming tragedy.