The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

  • World Bank and Nigeria

    World Bank and Nigeria

    It was inevitable that the Nigeria Development Update, the World Bank’s biannual flagship report will generate some talking points. Titled “From Policy to People: Bringing the Reform Gains Home”, it claims, as usual to be a broad overview of the economy in terms of trends, policy outcomes, and key challenges after what is arguably, the most aggressive reform path to be undertaken by any administration since independence.

    As far as its summary goes, it was particularly telling as it was instructive: “Nigeria has made substantial progress on macroeconomic stabilization”. The economy, it noted, expanded by 3.9% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, up from 3.5% in the same period of 2024. So was growth, driven largely by strong performance in services and non-oil industries. And just as oil production maintained a steady course, agriculture was also not left behind.

    It noted the steady rise in foreign reserves currently in excess of $42 billion with current account surplus rising to 6.1% of GDP – all of these thanks to higher non-oil exports and lower oil imports. On the fiscal side, it noted that despite lower oil prices, the federal deficit is projected at 2.6% of GDP in 2025, broadly unchanged from 2024, while public debt is expected to decline for the first time in over a decade—from 42.9 to 39.8% of GDP.

    While acknowledging these positive sides, it was also no time for fulsome praises for the administration’s reform efforts: “Stabilization gains”, it noted “have yet to substantially improve Nigerians’ livelihoods”.

    Food inflation and poverty both of which Nigerians already acknowledged as the country’s albatross, remains unbearably high, even as the report drew attention to the need for urgent action to reduce inflation, enhance public spending efficiency, and expand social protection. It referenced the estimated 139 million citizens, said to be living in poverty, even as it warned that the country risks losing reform gains if they fail to translate into tangible improvements in people’s welfare.

    Not surprisingly, the report has since torn Nigerians into two camps: the army of critics who couldn’t imagine the Tinubu administration ever getting anything right on the economy on one side, and the government and its hordes of supporters on the other, particularly with regards to the referenced 139 million citizens said to be living in poverty.

    Bolaji Abdullahi, the megaphone of the African Democratic Congress, the Special Purpose Vehicle cobbled together to realise former vice president, Atiku Abubakar’s presidential dream, has since gone to town with the claim that “the report exposes the widening gap between the government’s propaganda of progress and the harsh realities faced by millions of citizens whose lives and livelihoods have… been devastated under the All Progressives Congress-led government”.

    President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Media and Public Communication, Sunday Dare has also countered that the methodology used by the World Bank in its determination was not only dated but somewhat suspect given that the “figure was derived from the global poverty line of $2.15 per person per day, set in 2017 using Purchasing Power Parity”.

    Drawing opposing conclusions from the same set of facts being an old game is certainly not exclusive to politicians. It is nothing new particularly to development scholars depending of course on which side of the ideological spectrum that one belongs. And while it seems a fair game that a party like ADC, sworn to displace the ruling APC, will seek to weaponise that aspect of the report, I believe that the government spokesman has provided a robust rebuttal possible in the circumstance.

    Yes, the economic situation in the country is bad enough, without the World Bank compounding our misery with its mystery figures whose values are utterly questionable! So much for the Breton Wood institution’s age-long fixation with the orthodoxies of ‘single stories’ of which our own dear Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her 2009 TED Talk, warns – ‘creates and reinforces stereotypes, robbing people and cultures of their dignity and complexity’; it has become for most Nigerians, like an old wife’s tale to be recycled!

    So, Atiku and his ADC people as indeed those interested, may as well run to town with it! That is if it helps to supply the opposition with some oxygen at a time when everything else seems to be falling apart. The government on its part should move past the acknowledgment that things are bad to pressing the throttle. Like most Nigerians, I believe that the signs are clear enough that a lot is moving in the right direction. Time to move the needle to the micro-economy.  

    Away from hugging the headlines, I think Nigerians should take another look at the report to discover the one part of the report so easy to miss: the self-serving prescriptions that have, more often than not, defined the institution’s relations with developing countries. It calls it the three urgent priorities to address the problems of inflation and poverty.

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    I start with the first and perhaps the most curious of them all: the prescription that the government tackle food inflation by “removing trade barriers such as import bans and excessive duties, while addressing structural bottlenecks in seeds, input supply, security, logistics, and infrastructure (including transport, power, storage, and cold chains)”. Familiar?

    How about this in the age of Trumpism, of trade barriers and protectionist walls?  Imagine a hugely-endowed agrarian economy being asked to throw its borders open for unrestricted food imports so the army of its poor can avail of cheap foods!

    Yes, the prescription is right there in the book!

    So also is the other prescription: the removal of ‘structural bottlenecks in seeds, input supply’ – all in the guise of enhancing farmers output and productivity, policies that have proven over time to perpetuate the same old cycle of dependency and the despair that our farmers have suffered and continue to suffer.

    With friends like this, who needs an enemy?

    And finally, the same barely tolerable, long-winding, if meaningless sweeteners: improve the efficiency of public spending through greater fiscal transparency, stronger discipline in Federation Account (FAAC) deductions, and a national pact to align fiscal policy with development objectives, especially human capital investments, and, expanding and institutionalizing social protection, including regular, domestically financed cash transfers for the ultra-poor and a shock-responsive safety net system to help households manage crises – bland grammars which merely masks their true intent?  

    My question: What will it take for these busybodies to remove themselves from our national affairs so we can concentrate on fixing our broken parts?

  • PENGASSAN: Same old tactics

    PENGASSAN: Same old tactics

    Save for the disruptive, needlessly atavistic waves generated in its wake, it is at once tempting to pass-off the latest showdown between Dangote Refinery and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) over an alleged disengagement of 800 workers by the management of the refinery as the last kicks of a dying horse.

    However, with PENGASSAN not merely stopping at threatening fire and brimstone on a wearied nation, but apparently sworn to bring the roof over the heads of everyone, Nigeria and Nigerians ought to be alarmed at the extent to which our industrial unions, many of whose self-entitlement are as legendary as their resort to union power has become mindlessly destructive, could go to force their will on just any institution and anyone.

    Guess it was inevitable that PENGASSAN would again put the country on the war mode so soon after its alter ego, the no-less powerful tanker drivers unit of the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG-PTD) sought to disrupt the nation’s peace.

    Thanks to their nemesis, Dangote Refinery, it has been a case of each breaking of the dawn forcing new lessons on an unwilling, recalcitrant pupil.

    For NUPENG, it came to a challenge of their strange financial orthodoxy: a hefty levy of N50,000 delivered to the union coffers on every single truck loaded at the gantry – an imposition neither sanctioned by the industry regulators nor the tax authorities, but which has been accepted as convention to keep the union fat cats happy but for which business mogul, Aliko Dangote insists on applying its rightful appellation of plain extortion!

    Imagine calling out the Dangote behemoth for refusing to play the enabler for that extortion ring whose operative motif is power without responsibility!

    It is not exactly that the elements in the PENGASSAN industrial action are not worthy of careful consideration. Starting with the issue of the sack of 800 locals, PENGASSAN says Dangote Refinery has since replaced them with 2000 foreigners – an unpatriotic act, if true. PENGASSAN president, Festus Osifo noted that the problem actually started when close to 1000 workers filled forms to join PENGASSAN in accordance with Section 40 of the constitution. He claimed that the union wrote to Dangote Refinery to inform it of the development and that the company sent teams from unit to unit to verify those names only to issue them sack letters thereafter. 

    Dangote Refinery has since denied that this was not the case. It frames the entire saga as one of a union overreach; a schism designed to buoy the union’s fading relevance as well as enhance its purse. In fact, its summary of the issues as contained in the four-page advertisement in yesterday’s edition of this newspaper obviously says it all:  PENGASSAN, given its antecedents, has long ceased to be a force for good, in terms of enhancing the welfare of its members, but rather as a destructive force in the industry. One example it cited, and which has become an albatross on its neck, is the union’s role in aborting the sale of the Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries to Bluestar Consortium promoted by business mogul, Aliko Dangote.  More than a decade and half after, the entities have remained the relics they were, and these after billions of dollars of public funds were sunk into their Turn Around Maintenances (TAMs).

    So, to suggest that there is no love-lost between the Dangote and PENGASSAN is merely stating the obvious. Like parallel lines, their interests are as divergent as to be irreconcilable. The point here is that there is nothing new in what PENGASSAN has said of the Dangote Refinery or Dangote’s other business interests that have not been said by Nigerians in one way or the other.

    At this point in time, my guess is that the issue is not that those in charge of regulation and fair consumer practices are unaware, but a case of the behemoth being entitled to some forbearance given that the terrain could, for the most part, be described as uncharted. That it continues to find sympathy among Nigerians is essentially because, its promoter, Aliko Dangote, chose to plod on where his peers would rather engage in buying and selling. This, most certainly, could not be said of PENGASSAN whose role has been more of an enabler of the rot for which the industry has long earned notoriety.

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    Talking of union overreach: calling its members in various offices, companies, institutions, and agencies, including those in the field to cease all services effective Monday, September 29 offers of classic example of mindless use of union power.  Just as ominous was the strike instrument as signed by its General Secretary, Lumumba Okugbawa: “All processes involving gas and crude supply to Dangote Refinery should be halted immediately…All IOC (International Oil Companies) branches must ramp down gas production and supply to Dangote Refinery and petrochemicals.”

    It is akin to a declaration of war, not just on the refinery as an entity, but the citizens of this country; a case of the interest of the 800 workers towering above those of 200 million odd citizens. Perhaps lost to PENGASSAN is the irony of its invocation of the constitutional safeguards regarding the right of the workers to join any association to advance their interests and presenting those rights as so expansive as if to strip the management of its prerogatives to determine how their enterprise is run, while seeking to deny other Nigerians their rights to live in peace and to enjoy those services that they are ordinarily entitled.

    Where will all of these end? It seems doubtful that the two unions ever understood the import of the saying about ‘an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object’ else they would have been more restrained in calling for a war they could never hope to win. Between union power and management prerogative, who says the former is fated to win?

    Moreover, to the extent that the lessons of the past weeks has proven a revelation of their astounding lack of strategy, I believe that their very survival would depend on their ability to better appreciate the nature of the current time and the imperative of flexibility in the choice of means to fight whatever cause they deem fit. As of the moment, our two foremost unions in the oil industry, have, sadly not even begun the slow march to unlearning their old, destructive ways!

    Two weeks ago, I had ended my piece about NUPENG’s sunset and those of its DAPPMAN allies as potentially ‘slow and drawn out’, and that ‘hoping against hope that the ship that had long departed the shores could still be halted midstream would at best be an exercise in futility’; I believe the statement applies as much to PENGASSAN as those two.

  • Dangote and ‘friends’

    Dangote and ‘friends’

    Last weekend, the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) resumed their hostilities with the Dangote Refinery over what it alleged to be ‘violations of the resolutions reached during a truce brokered by the federal government’. In its notice posted on Thursday, September 11 in Abuja, NUPENG President, Comrade Williams Akporeha, and General Secretary, Comrade Afolabi Olawale, alleged that commitments made at a meeting facilitated by the State Security Service (SSS) which had in attendance Finance Minister Wale Edun, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) officials, and management of Dangote Refinery, were already being flouted.

    Interestingly, while it seems unlikely that most Nigerians barely understood the issues beyond those nebulous claims about monopoly on the one hand and the disruptive union power on the other, the fog, nonetheless, would appear to be clearing by the simple fact of NUPENG’s insistence of making it a holy grail.

    We are referring to a so-called agreement that not only let out few details on the basis of which the ordinary citizen could make an informed judgment, but was so carefully couched in ambiguity thus raising more questions than answers.

    Talking of the agreement, let’s consider the origin of the latest round of tiff to see whether sense could be made of it. According to NUPENG, based on the agreement reached by the parties Thursday last week, their members working with Dangote Refinery were free to have their stickers, their insignia on the trucks, to facilitate loading at the refinery complex. The problem, according to them was that Dangote Refinery’s Alh Sayyu Aliu Dantata saw things differently; he instructed all his truck drivers who are supposedly NUPENG-PTD members to remove them! Not only that, he, allegedly instructed them to forcefully drive into Dangote Refinery to load during which union officials stopped them from entering the refinery to load because their trucks violated union loading rules and regulations. (My emphasis).

    To quote one of the union leaders who spoke to Daily Trust: “When we came here this morning (Thursday), we noticed that all the pasted stickers had been removed. This negates the agreement we had during the Tuesday’s meeting,”

    Now, the billion naira question is – what exactly is contained in the agreement? Was it part of the agreement that every truck must carry the stickers? Note the union’s reference to an alleged violation of union loading rules and regulations; to what extent could those regulations by the unions be forced on a private entity based solely on the fact their members earn their living there? And what is the big deal about the stickers anyway?

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    To understand the issues, let’s start with how the furore started.

    Weeks back, NUPENG had served notice of impending strike to protest against what it described as anti-union labour practices, linked to the deployment of newly imported compressed natural gas trucks by the Dangote Refinery, for direct distribution of petroleum products.

    In this, Nigeria Labour Congress and some of affiliate unions like NARTO openly decried Dangote’s plan for free distribution of petroleum products, citing its unsustainability and potential to eliminate independent transporters who operate over 30,000 trucks across the country. NLC president, Joe Ajaero, in particular would accuse the Dangote Group of “exploiting Nigerian workers while disregarding their constitutional rights.” Perhaps not unexpectedly, the depots owners, under their umbrella, the equally powerful Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria (DAPPMAN) would  join the tango in what promises to be an interesting play of the giants.

    In all of these, Dangote Refinery on its part continues to insist that the different actors and their backers are mere crying wolf where none exist, and that the issue is not so much about unionisation but a play by vested interests to maintain their iron grip on the industry for their narrow and ostensibly subversive ends. Its investment, whether in the refinery or in the fuel haulage business, it insists, is guided by national interest, a principle long subverted by the activities of a cartel that would rather feast on the misery of the people than deliver real solutions.

    The truth is in between.

    To start with, NUPENG is entitled to stake its claims as a leading player in the industry within the limits of the law. What it is not entitled to is operate as a law unto itself.  Again, most interesting, NUPENG would allege that some truck drivers removed their stickers overnight as directed by the Dangote Group managing director. That might well be. What the union could not have told Nigerians is that these drivers were coerced at any point to do that.

    To anyone with the barest knowledge of the industry, the whole idea of getting every truck to carry NUPENG stickers, is actually a ploy by NUPENG to enforce their rules on just about any driver – member or not!  As a matter of fact, that truth, loudly spoken in whispers, is that the stickers attract an extortionate fee of N70,000 or thereabout, levied on every single truck passed by NUPENG for loading daily, ostensibly to keep the boys happy! Dangote Refinery would of course have none of that!  Yes, the casus belli!

    In other words, the referenced loading rules and regulations, said to have been violated by Dangote Refinery management and for which the entire country would have to pay a steep price!

    Dangote Refinery’s unforgivable sin, in the circumstance therefore, is letting in those trucks without stickers into the gantry, minus the gravy. Does anyone still see why the love of money is the root of all evil? Or why their declared war is not about us let alone any budding monopoly as alleged, but one designed to retain that old gravy from which the greed of the shadowy players are serviced?   

    Granted, the fear of the coming of Dangote trucks is somewhat legitimate; but this is only to the extent that it might in the end put NUPENG members under severe strain of competition; thus exposing the inefficiency that the union in particular, has nurtured. The chicks are therefore merely home to roost. Even at that, this is neither unlawful nor unheard of; flowing from the wholesale inefficiency that have long characterised that segment of the supply/distribution chain, there is no doubt, some logic to it.

    In any case, it is certainly not the fault of Dangote Refinery that the industry segment failed to retool in the last few years; it was somewhat assumed that the evisceration of the pipelines network, of which the unions are primarily complicit, the result of which the nation continues to burn its candle on both ends – through unbearably high logistical costs and the daily destruction of the roads infrastructure – would remain in perpetuity! Now that the wheels are beginning to turn, it seems the easy way out is to enlist Nigerians in praying out the individual who knew how to put his money where his mouth is!

    NUPENG’s sunset as indeed those of its DAPPMAN allies may be slow and drawn out, however, throwing tantrums and hoping against hope that the ship that had long departed the shores could still be halted midstream would at best be an exercise in futility.   

  • NBA’s fatal regression

    NBA’s fatal regression

    It must be deeply troubling, that in none of the running commentaries on the recently concluded Nigerian Bar Association conference has there been any acknowledgment of anything profound or even serious coming from the annual conclave of the supposedly foremost professional body. More like a gathering of a people needing the time out to escape the humdrum of the times, what emerged could be described as a charade – like those ubiquitous parliaments of anything goes in street corners, where serious issues of governance, drenched in extravagant hilarious banters, are reduced to the puerile, partisan stuff as one might expect in typical street debates.

    Nothing of a serious dissection of the ailments plaguing the justice sector let alone the society as a whole; none of the searing questions about the depth that the profession has sunk let alone where it is headed, particularly the derogation of the meaning and the purpose of justice by the supposed ministers in its sacred temple, a tribe which insists on being dubbed as learned!

    Again, aside jarring partisan rants that has since become the trademark of the Obidients of which a good chunk of its attendees insist on being numbered, nothing in the entire deliberations suggested any appreciation of the dire situation which came upon the nation, let alone a robust interrogation of the policies of the Tinubu administration on the basis of which an actionable suggestion(s) could be availed the government, going forward.

    Even the appearance of the Minister of Interior, Tunji Ojo, meant to give informed perspectives to what the government has done to address those age-long structural issues that had plagued governance was reduced to a spectacle of sorts with incessant howling by those for whom the administration could never do anything right; and with the all-knowing, fit-for-every-purpose Obiageli Ezekwesili on hand to proclaim with her typical magistracy, all that is wrong with the Tinubu administration, the perfect setting for the inquisition that became of it was all but in place.

    For me however, the biggest joke of the farcical outing was when a poorly scripted act by Channel TV’s Seun Okinbaloye turned out to be a revelation, not so much about the inherent biases, but the pathetic lack of depth of the boisterous presenter! For an individual who proclaims a ‘commitment to delivering accurate and unbiased news’, it was shocking if not shameful to hear the questions framed the way he did.

    “Is Nigeria better today than two years ago?”

    That was supposed to be an ‘educated’ question to the lawyers in conference! For those still enamoured with their specious one-liners, how about flipping the question this way: Could Nigeria have continued on the ruinous trajectory of keeping fuel prices below their actual costs using the funds it does not even have to keep up the appearance of a caring, welfare state? 

    Or this: “Do you think the nation is on the right path with the policies of the Tinubu government?” Even granted that the issue of perception is valid to the individual, the very idea of framing things in the manner that he did would seem ordinarily ‘uneducated’, not only because he failed to narrow it to the specifics but that it was done in clear ignorance of the complex variables which underlie and shape them.

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    So which of the policies could he be referring to here? Is it the most contentious one – the removal of fuel subsidy on which the treasury gets to shell out trillions of naira for the joy of keeping the millions of rickety contraptions on the poorly maintained roads? Or the state-licenced bazaar under which only the high and mighty could access foreign exchange at official sources which are more often than not sold at the black market at premium with nary value addition to the national economy? Could it be a return to the ‘good old days’, when foreign airlines, hit by the non-remittance of sales proceeds were leaving Nigeria in droves? 

    Still, there is another question that came forth: “Is your hope renewed now?”

    Aside being the uncharitable, it is perhaps the most banal and uneducated. Of course, our ‘world acclaimed’ journalist got the answer that he wanted. Yet, I verily believe that he did himself a lot of injustice in the way he pandered to street narratives on the history and the trajectory of the economy. That question – ‘Is your hope renewed now’ – would at normal times, stand as an indictment to a profession that require depth and rigour as indeed a proper, contextual frame of analysis. Once let out, it is hard to imagine greater violence to the ancient craft by an individual, all in the service of narrow, partisan ends.  It is, like someone said the other day – like law; like journalism. Sad. 

    But I digress.

    At issue of course is the future of the justice sector itself. The other day, I saw a video of an elder of the profession openly lament the supplanting of the rules of seniority by the latter days actors; the new kids on the block – the television lawyers, emergency activists and the usual stragglers. Poor fellow, he couldn’t understand why the front row, ordinarily reserved for the elders were taken by baby lawyers leaving them to scramble for the back seats. And why would he, when only a few days prior, one of the freshly minted wigs, was on the social media to advertise his sprawling chambers which he claimed was worth more than the value of his innumerable exotic cars at N50 million! In other words, since when did a wig cease to be a wig?

    By the way, I choose to pass off, the moral question posed by the leadership of the elite body, a body with scores of millionaires in its rank, going cap in hand to state governments, for funds to host its conference. So also is its leadership’s insistence on keeping Rivers’ N300 million when the latter asked for a refund after it reneged on the hosting rights.

    To those who still care to remember, neither the rot nor the ingrained delinquency, start yesterday. Once upon a time, there was a well-reported story of a learned fellow, who brazenly accused a judge in the open court, of demanding a bribe from his client! The judge, far from rattled, merely insisted that the matter be promptly be investigated so the business of delivering justice could proceed, unimpeded! It turned out that the accusation was baseless as the innocence of the judge was firmly established beyond doubts.

    Here is the twist: the same counsel, whose mouth spewed the gibberish  would go on to request that the judge recuse himself, since his (the counsel’s) travesty, already deemed unpardonable, would not allow the hapless judge to dispense justice without bias! Talk of a sample of how to be a minister in the temple of justice, the Nigerian way!

    Let me close with the words of the ancient proverb – physician heal thyself! Seems to me that this particular physician, being far too gone, is unlikely to be of use to anyone let alone the society, anytime soon!

  • Tunji Bello: A witness to history

    Tunji Bello: A witness to history

    Nearly a week after the official handover of the 550-seater architectural masterpiece that is now the Olatunji Bello Auditorium at the Epe Campus of the Lagos State University (LASU) to the officials of the institution, quite a lot has certainly been written about the rare philanthropy of my dear friend and brother, Olatunji Bello, the executive vice chairman of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to fill a book of tributes. While much of the story has run in bits and parts of which the running threads in the various accounts is the exemplary generosity of the donor, the timeliness and uniqueness of the sacrifice, the public spiritedness that have come to define not just his chequered private and public life, I believe yours truly couldn’t but to preface this piece with an innocuous detail which I consider as bearing the imprimatur of Divine approval on the initiative as yours truly, and my colleague Tunji Adegboyega (Cyclone) undertook the 127-kilometre journey to the venue last Wednesday morning.

    We had arrived at the venue early enough – that is some few minutes after the 10 am kick-off time to meet the venue nearly packed full. It turned out a roll-call of who-is-who in public service and the professions; time to reconnect with old time buddies, friends and colleagues. The governor was there, so also was his deputy, Femi Hamzat, and the chair of the occasion, the minister of education and Tunji’s namesake, Tunji Alausa.   It was in every way, Tunji Bello’s day with past and present Lagos State executive council members represented.

    However, just before the event proper kicked-off, the skies suddenly became pregnant with the foreboding of a possible disruptive rain. Given that the event was an outdoor one, the prospect was somewhat troubling. In fact, the cultural troupe brought in to perform actually staged their performance under the light showers.

    By the way, with yours truly and Cyclone seated in a position that was particularly vulnerable, he on his part couldn’t but wonder aloud if the donor had thought of the minor rite of African logistics of putting the rainmakers on the standby particularly with nearly one-score traditional rulers clad in their traditional regalia seated on the front rows!

    While any thought of such question popping up was not only  bizarre but also late in coming, yours truly could only chuckle that the light showers which had become somewhat threatening at the point could only be a sign of blessing; or better still, a note of approval from the celestial realm which only the discerning could interpret; which probably explains why the blue skies soon after receded to give way to the clear sunny skies that would provide the much needed warmth to the event and thus put the stamp of Divine approval on the exemplary offering from a noble heart!  In the end, it was like the elements had determined that being Tunji Bello’s Day, they would ensure that nothing would be allowed to mar its success.

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    Call it an awesome moment in which the anxieties and not least the endless wonders of the nights, would melt into a beautiful testimony. It was a sight to behold.

    Of course, the story behind the auditorium story is already in the open. So are the lessons. Indeed, the story that began some 14 years as an annual prize in five disciplines of Law, Mass Communications, Social Sciences, Engineering and Medicine for brilliant but indigent students offers great lessons in the power of the small but silent beginning, of commitment and the perseverance to see worthy causes through. For while 14 years might seem like nothing given TB’s blessedness, yet, in a clime where showmanship has become something of popular culture, it is certainly a big deal that the seed of those years has not only survived but thrived. Seen in that context, the 550-seater auditorium would seem a mere icing on the cake, a natural progression of a life constantly in the purpose – an attestation to the character, something in the DNA of the dreamer that is beyond the ordinary.

    To those who somehow conceive of giving as something of a painless art, Tunji would offer two pragmatic counsels: nothing good comes easy; the other, a reminder of the Biblical parable that “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God”.

    For Tunji, the moment came when he had to sell a prized property so the work could go on.

    Also worthy of note is that the project actually predated the vice chancellorship of his dear wife, Professor Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello. In fact, a huge dose of the credit deservedly belongs to her. As Tunji himself is wont to testify, the idea of giving back to the university was originally hers. However, on receiving what could only be the tiny mustard seed, his was to mull on the idea until it found concrete expression in the gigantic project that became the auditorium.

    Call it a divine arrangement: an idea conceived in the womb of our doughty professor being fertilised by the spouse and delivered during her tenure as vice chancellor.  I love the coincidence!

    My colleague, Segun Ayobolu has written on the Tunji Bello phenomenon and the grace of selfless giving just as Tunji Adegboyega has in his Sunday column echoed the same sentiment of the cheerful donor.

    Let me add that the Tunji Bello that I have known since 1986 on the Features Desk of the Concord newspapers actually embodies the truth about giving as life itself! However, while it is no surprise that names like the late Bashorun MKO Abiola and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu feature among those that inspired and continues to inspire him, those close to him, particularly those who have benefitted from his generosity, including yours truly, cannot but testify to the uniqueness of his persona, particularly his innate propensity for charity and charitable causes.

    Let me end this with a simple takeaway: the fact that one does require a big pocket to start giving. I love how Tunji elliptically puts it: If God gives you a dream or an idea, he will somehow avail the means to bring it to accomplishment!

  • Canada and Nigeria’s wayward children

    Canada and Nigeria’s wayward children

    In a country where many would not hesitate to sell their country for a morsel of bread, the case of Nigeria’s Douglas Egharevba, whose asylum petition was rejected by the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), would ordinarily have numbered among the unlucky dip from the pool of those known to have filed baseless claims of ‘persecution’ and ‘primitive cultural practices’ against our beloved country. 

    However, with the Federal Court in Canada upholding an earlier decision of Canadian Immigration Appeal Division (IAD), which had earlier on denied him asylum, our dear country seems to have arrived at the point where the harvest of daily indiscretions by errant nationals have finally berthed in kind of judicial monstrosity that would not have been associated with so-called developed countries at normal times.

    I refer here to the ratio decidendi advanced by the court for the decision.

    First, the court found issue with Egharevba’s membership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Peoples Congress (APC) (sic). Second, it agreed with the IAD that the PDP in particular, engaged in conduct amounting to terrorism and subversion of democratic institutions. And third, that the PDP were perpetrators of political violence, intimidation, and subversion and were protected being the governing party in power during the elections.

    The PDP, it also averred, conducted unlawful acts such as ballot-stuffing, ballot box snatching, intimidation, violence, and murder of opposition supporters and candidates in the elections, and that the party had knowledge of the crimes committed by members and supporters but apparently did nothing to discipline its members or discourage violent and subversive practices, noting that the use of political violence was a long-standing feature of the PDP!

    And finally, that the rank and file of the PDP, to which the petitioner had admitted to its membership, was vicariously liable for the violence and subversion of Nigeria’s process, thus rendering the applicant inadmissible in Canada!

    Nigerians, understandably have been fulminating against this novelty of a trial under which a political party that was not even remotely a nominal party was found guilty of terrorism and subversion and those deemed to have associated with it condemned to suffer its dire consequences, and this in immigration proceedings!

    “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”; so says the holy writ.

    Like many of our compatriots, our dear national may have in the moment of a desperate struggle escape Nigeria’s Titanic thought little of the dire consequences of munching sour grapes. Now, his teeth and perhaps those of the rest of us are condemned to the edge!

    For a story that began nearly eight years ago, the judgment must have come as dramatic, unwanted, if not entirely unimaginable, twist.

    It began in September 2017, when our man, Douglas Egharevba, filed an inland refugee claim. The Background Declaration Form which he completed had stated that he was a member of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) from December 1999 until December 2007. He claimed to have ported, thereafter to the All People’s Congress [APC] in December 2007 and remained in the party till May 2017.

    (Note that the APC was never at any time known as All People’s Congress but All Progressives Congress; in any case, the party was not formed in 2007 when the applicant was said to have joined but in 2013). 

    Anyway, he was referred to a Canadian Border Services Agency [CBSA] to determine his admissibility to Canada. A year later, in September 2018, he would make his appearance before a CBSA officer. Although the official would in January 2019, declare him inadmissible to Canada on the grounds of being a member of PDP, an organization which in the opinion of the immigration official, had engaged in ‘acts of subversion against a democratic government, institution, or process and engaged in terrorism, based on his earlier affirmation of membership of the PDP’, the Immigration Division [ID] would, nonetheless determine that the applicant, Egharevba, was not subject to inadmissibility under the relevant provisions of the Canadian law.

    That reprieve turned out to be temporary. Canada’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness immediately took the matter to the Immigration Appeal Division (IAD). In the end, the ID decision was overturned.

    Next, Egharevba turned to the court for judicial review. Well, it came on June 17, when Canada’s Justice Phuong T.V. Ngo affirmed the judgment of the (IAD). Notably, the judge also found Egharevba’s membership of the PDP alone as sufficient to make him inadmissible to Canada under paragraph 34(1)(f) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) – in what could arguably be the most expansive, if not egregious rendition of the doctrine of vicarious responsibility in modern jurisprudence. 

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    Like most Nigerians, I join in the outrage on the simple ground that the law needed not be an ass as the Canadian court would have us accept. And just like one commentator noted, the decision wasn’t just an immigration one; it was in every sense a political one, very pregnant, with the consequences so dire that the Nigerian government will do good to pay attention. Yet, to the extent that the judgment purports to put the entire political system to trial, the pronouncements, with all due respect, smacks of a jurisdictional overreach.

    The other equally troubling part of the judgment is the imputation of guilt by mere association and this in the absence of any specific charge, particularly against the applicant in the aftermath of the court already deeming the PDP’s sins as treasonable and so, unforgiveable. It explains why the Canadian court would cite a specious interpretation of ‘terrorism’ and ‘violence’ to validate what could only be a strange decision. That is absolutely unnecessary. Surely, the Canadians can make their immigration decisions without pulling the roofs over the heads on everyone or as in this particular case, (mis)appropriating the frustrations of the citizens with the electoral process for purposes that are not entirely altruistic. It is neither helpful nor right.

    For while the Nigeria’s electoral system is certainly far from perfect, its greatest critics are by far Nigerians themselves.

    This takes us to the deeper question of how Nigerians, caught in the vortex of immigration challenges, would not hesitate to throw their country under the bus. Surely, the Egharevba story is only one out of many. As it is, the real story behind the movement from the PDP to APC only to end up as fodder for an asylum bid in faraway Canada will most likely remain untold. So it is for other countless asylum applicants known to have sought asylum for variety of reasons ranging from female genital mutilation (circumcision) even where the cultural practice no longer exist, to the Boko Haram insurgency even when those filing the claims have never in their lives crossed to the other side of River Niger! In all of these, the end is supposed to justify the means.

     Thanks to the global strongman, Donald J. Trump, assumptions about immigration are fast-changing as the myths that have sustained them have been whittling. Across the globe, things are no longer at ease. For while the grass may be greener outside, the pathway to that other side has continued to narrow.

    For the Canadian court, the terrorism tag on the PDP goes beyond a ratio decidendi of convenience; more like a symbolic invitation for Nigerians to take note. 

  • NNPCL: Distractions all the way

    NNPCL: Distractions all the way

    Anyone who has dared to pay more than a scant attention to the latest rumblings – within and without – in the national oil corporation in the past few weeks must have come to the same verdict that nothing good can ever come out of the behemoth. Exactly three weeks ago, this columnist had written about the not-exactly-shocking announcement by the NNPCL-GMD Bayo Ojulari, in faraway Austria on the company’s plan to sell the Port Harcourt refinery.

    That was coming two months after the refinery was shut down for ‘maintenance’ and this also coming six months after its well-publicised re-start which at the time was celebrated far and wide. Never mind that the country had expended a whopping $1.5 billion of Nigeria’s hard-to-get forex to get it to that point,  just like the typical Nigerian puzzle, what informed the piece and the barely suppressed outrage, wasn’t so much about the huge amount spent on the turnaround, but the grave potential scams insinuated.

    First was the reported arrest of a former Chief Financial Officer of the NNPC, Umar Isa and the former Managing Director of the Warri Refinery, Jimoh Olasunkanmi. The duo was reported to be under EFCC investigation over an alleged $7.2bn fraud linked to the rehabilitation of the three refineries in Kaduna, Warri, and Port Harcourt. The second which followed, and which this columnist actually considered graver, is the suggestion that the entire country may have been scammed!

    To use Ojulari’s words: “So refineries, we made quite a lot of investment over the last several years and brought in a lot of technologies. We’ve been challenged. Some of those technologies have not worked as we expected so far. But also, as you know, when you’re refining a very old refinery that has been abandoned for some time, what we’re finding is that it’s becoming a little bit more complicated”.

    Talk of a project on which the whole nation had pinned its hopes of full rehabilitation and which the country had committed a whopping $7.2 billion being declared as not only unproven, untested, but also offering no guarantees.

    Now, the same Ojulari, who only a short while ago stated that “sale is not out of the question. All the options are on the table, to be frank, but that decision will be based on the outcome of the reviews we’re doing now” has since walked back on that. He says the sale of the Port Harcourt Refining Company is no longer on the table, and that the company is rather committed to ‘completing high-grade rehabilitation and retention of the plant’!

    And then the caveats: “the earlier decision to operate the Port Harcourt refinery, before full completion of its rehabilitation, was ill-informed and sub commercial.

    “Although progress is being made on all three, the emerging outlook calls for more advanced technical partnerships to complete and high-grade the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery. Thus, selling is highly unlikely as it would lead to further value erosion.” (My emphasis).

    His simple verdict: Those that conceived, planned, and executed the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) did a terrifically poor job. Meaning that the ‘process’ was so flawed that it would amount to grave injury to describe it as such; since the technologies (which the NNPCL-GMD has openly declared to be suspect), would require another layer of procurements and technologies to ‘upgrade’.

    I suppose no one vetted the contract papers (if there were any) to fully understand what value the country is supposed to be getting in the end or are expected to be delivered by the main contractor, Tecnimont.  Between March 2021 when the federal government awarded the contract for the refurbishment and modernisation of the refinery complex and its May shutdown for ‘maintenance’, we are again at a point where the refinery would require “more advanced technical partnerships” to see things through!

    There have been other side-attractions going on. There is the ding-dong between Senator Aliyu Wadada-led Senate Committee on Public Accounts and the NNPCL-GMD over unresolved financial infractions said to amount to N210tn! In the wake of the serial invitations by the senate to the GMD to help clear the fog on the infractions which the latter only honoured at the pain of a sanction, the latter finally showed up at the senate chambers with a plea for more time to address the queries. A minor part of that side show is the clarification by the senate committee chair that contrary to reports suggesting “theft”, the sum flagged in audit reports was only “unaccounted for”, and not “stolen”!

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    Which is why the latest twist in the tale – the rumour of the so-called ‘forced resignation’ of Ojulari by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Department of State Security – has merely added a new layer of distrust to the image of an entity where the only permanent item on the menu is bad news and more of bad news!

    As it is, the company’s initials may have changed, pretty little else has changed. A little more than three years since its supposed transition into a commercial, independent entity, similar to other national oil companies worldwide, more and more Nigerians are questioning the wisdom in the mere name-plate change (from NNPC to NNPCL) as against creating an entirely brand new national oil company with its own distinct corporate culture. 

    Of course, the joke out there is that Nigeria is so fixated on the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of refineries that little else matters; nothing on the sprawling depots and network of pipelines that requires urgent attention to relieve the pressure on the road infrastructure and to grow its long term competitiveness; and, no indication, as yet, of its readiness to play in the big league as one would expect of it given its immense assets.

    And while the irony is lost that a terminally ill NNPCL, an entity itself in dire of TAM, is actually the one leading the charge to redirect the course of the nation’s energy transition, it manages to serve Nigerians with sufficient distractions to prevent them from asking deep, profound questions about its continuing relevance while ensuring that things remain the same! 

    I believe the time has come for the federal government to tear down the edifice brick by brick.

  • Nigeria’s Abiku refineries

    Nigeria’s Abiku refineries

    The news, far away in the Austrian capital of Vienna couldn’t have surprised any Nigerian that has paid more than fleeting attention to the woes routinely visited on the hapless country by Nigeria’s perennially delinquent entity – the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL). Whether in its old drab colours of opacity and sleaze, or its mutation into everything that a supposedly retooled business entity should never aspire, you are guaranteed that nothing good or exciting ever comes out of its quarters.

    A little while back, precisely two months ago, Nigerians woke up to the news that the refinery, just refurbished six months prior, and one which had gulped $1.5 billion in hard-to-get forex, has been shut down for ‘maintenance’. The public notice, by Olufemi Soneye, the then chief corporate communications officer of the company had read: “The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) wishes to inform the general public that the Port Harcourt Refining Company (PHRC) will undergo a planned maintenance shutdown. This scheduled maintenance and sustainability assessment will commence on May 24, 2025.

    “We are working closely with all relevant stakeholders, including the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), to ensure the maintenance and assessment activities are carried out efficiently and transparently,” so went the notice to a bewildered nation.

    Although nothing in the statement suggested any timeline for the maintenance, this week, Thursday July 24 makes it exactly two months since the refinery was shut down. If Nigerians had assumed that the abrupt maintenance, which some newspapers actually reported would take 30 days, was ‘routine’, the rather interminable silence ever since, and subsequent developments may have hinted at the manifestation of the old plague in the behemoth, in its full malignancy.

    Between May 24 and Ojulari’s Vienna outing of last week, the pieces, may finally be coming together. A month after the shutdown, operatives of the EFCC reportedly arrested a former Chief Financial Officer of the NNPC, Umar Isa. This was said to be in connection with an alleged $7.2bn fraud linked to the rehabilitation of the three refineries in Kaduna, Warri, and Port Harcourt. At stake was the $1,559,239,084.36 allocated to the Port Harcourt refinery, $740,669,600 released for the Kaduna refinery, and $656,963,938 approved for the Warri refinery.

    As reported by Punch: “All key officials involved in the maintenance and other major NNPCL projects are also under investigation for alleged abuse of office, corruption, diversion of public funds, and kickbacks from contractors”. Former Managing Director of the Warri Refinery, Jimoh Olasunkanmi, was also among those arrested.

    And just like the old African fable about the witch said to have cried all night only for the dawn to herald the death of the baby of the house, Bayo Ojulari, the NNPCL helmsman would appear to be at his wits end to find matching words to what is going on!

    Here is what he told Bloomberg at the 9th OPEC International Seminar in Vienna, Austria on the state of the refineries: “So refineries, we made quite a lot of investment over the last several years and brought in a lot of technologies. We’ve been challenged. Some of those technologies have not worked as we expected so far. But also, as you know, when you’re refining a very old refinery that has been abandoned for some time, what we’re finding is that it’s becoming a little bit more complicated,” he was quoted to have said.

    “But what we’re saying is that sale is not out of the question. All the options are on the table, to be frank, but that decision will be based on the outcome of the reviews we’re doing now”.

    I believe I know what NNPCL-GMD Ojulari stopped short of saying. While he may not have declared the process, from design to execution, as being incurably bad – particularly the idea of retrofitting the old, antiquated 60,000 barrels per day refinery for what would at best deliver 90 percent performance at the optimum level – he nonetheless left no doubts about his conviction that the entire idea could only have made political, certainly not, business sense!

    And while he was also not categorical on the way to go, he also somewhat implied that the entire $1.5 billion may have gone down the drain considering the nigh impossibility of realising anything near that figure in sales value. 

    Note his allusion to an implied bad investment decision; his retort about the flawed technologies in place and by extension the fatal admission to what is already deemed, an ill-thought out process. Never mind the implied joke that the country should not only write them off as scraps and so move on with whatever terms of sale the auctioneers might deem to be comfortable with, (after it is merely another line item in the criminal schemes that the country has been serially afflicted with) – which was what those behind them intended, anyway; it was, for him, sufficient to put all the cards on the table for all Nigerians to see!

    Uncomfortable as it is, the issue seems unlikely to go away. By this I mean the question of the future of the four refineries. At this time, the signs, even to the most incurable optimist, must be deeply unsettling, more so, with the latest revelations by Ojulari. While the focus at this time is on the old refinery in Port Harcourt, the auguries would appear to be the same for the other Port Harcourt refinery as they are of the other two in Warri and Kaduna.

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    Yet again, we are being reminded of the folly of 2007. Then, Nigerians, supposedly for the love of country, rejected the sale of the refineries in Port Harcourt and Kaduna to Bluestar Consortium put up by businessmen Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola. Whereas the argument was that the process was flawed, in reality, it turned out that Nigerians would rather hold on to their beloved but utterly useless ‘patrimony’ even when such had long lost its rationale as a going concern. Now, we are back to learning the hard way, the fine lines between hard business decisions and hollow nationalist effusions! 

    Only last week, a colleague wanted my view on what I believe should be the way forward. I thought the answer was simple enough: Selling the contraptions remains the way to go! As it was in 2007, so it is even today. It is even more pressing now that Nigerians – unlike what they were led to believe years back – no longer harbour any worries about whether the fuel being discharged at the pumps is Dangote’s or NNPCL’s petrol!

    Here’s hoping that the usual quarters would spare Nigerians their hollow, noxious and uneducated computations of what the value of the refineries should be! As yours truly is wont to say, only the investors, as against our hordes of arm-chair valuation experts, understand the meaning of values in any real sense!  After all, you can’t, for the pain of refurbishing your old Toyota Camry insist on selling it as new only because the engine, tyres, suspension and other critical components are supposed to be brand new!

    But that should not come without proper accounting for the money spent and the value delivered. At this time, Nigerians and relevant agencies should be asking Maire Tecnimont SpA and the NNPCL, hard questions about the terms of the contracts and what has been delivered. Are there protection clauses or implied warrantees on which the NNPCL could draw upon? Old or not, it is unimaginable that a thoroughly refurbished refinery will break down after barely six months of use. The same question obviously applies to Daewoo Engineering & Construction Nigeria Limited, the contractor in charge of Warri and Kaduna refineries. Or are we dealing with another Process & Industrial Developments Ltd (P&ID) here?

  • Old wines, ruptured wineskins

    Old wines, ruptured wineskins

    Only a clime given to celebrating form over substance can explain the perceptible overdose of excitement in some quarters over the transmutation of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) from being a political party worthy of its name into the vehicle of convenience for internally displaced politicians, especially those for whom the lure of power particularly the nation’s number one office has become a morbid obsession.

    Now that the migratory band have all but sealed their hostile takeover of the party against its governing rules and the established norms that governed its operations, Nigerians ought to be spared any further pretences about the niceties of rules and basic decency, let alone the grave charges ceaselessly thrown at the APC by the desperate band. 

    Thanks to this newspaper’s Monday July 7 edition, Nigerians are better informed of a major misstep that is very much in the character – call it the DNA – of the roving band, but which in the end is fated to doom the assembly. I refer to the July 3 purported crowning of Messrs David Mark, Rauf Aregbesola and Bolaji Abdullahi as the interim chairman, interim national secretary and interim publicity secretary respectively.

    Going by article 23, Clause 4 of the party’s constitution, that act alone would appear a grievous error. The section reads: “If a vacancy arises in any party office, the appropriate executive committee shall appoint a replacement from the same zone or constituency as the outgoing office holder.

    It says further: “This appointment is to remain in effect until a new election is conducted at the next congress or convention.”

    David Mark, the paper would note is from Northcentral while Nwosu is from the Southeast; and whereas Aregbesola is from the South, Sa’id Baba Abdullahi National Secretary is from the North.

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    Talk of impunity writ large!

    In any case, there was no known national executive committee meeting where the interim national officers were elected. In fact, Nwosu, according to this newspaper only announced his resignation at the event in grave violation of the provision of Clause 3 of the same article mandating him to resign from office by submitting a 30-day written notice to the appropriate executive body.

    Ditto Mark – a two-time numero uno lawmaker of the republic: it was sufficient that he announced his exit from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – a party that gave him all he ever attained as an elected official – at the floor of the event.

    And we have not even touched upon the question of eligibility for their offices. Here again, this newspaper, citing a part of the same Article 23 says: “To be eligible to hold any party position, a member must be in the party for at least two years for national and zonal offices, and at least one year for state, local government and ward positions”.

    To all of these weighty issues, Nwosu, playing the emergency placeholder had a ready answer: “Why are people so scared of change? Why should the restructuring of a political party cause such panic?”

     Believing that by stepping down, he has done his party, nay the country, a world of good, he says: – “If a leader steps aside for the greater good, that is not a weakness but a show of maturity”.

    In other words: All are invited to the great feast; no rules are in place and none is there to be broken!

    Better still: Nigerians shouldn’t be seen to bother about the ethical fibre of the coalition; at least not this particular assembly birthed in iniquity and impunity as to put any pretence to legitimacy as anything between a farce and a fraud. Nigerians should just tolerate them because their good, in view, will more than atone for everything in the end! 

    Well, the Yoruba saying, which loosely translated means –from the black pot comes forth the creamy-white pap – may provide some consolation in the event of anyone ever daring to question their good intentions. How about the scriptural wisdom about “the little leaven that puts the whole lump to waste” and the evergreen saying that a tree is known by its fruits?

    So much for the coalition of the hungry and the angry, the promoters of Nigeria’s Hungry Incorporated; Nigerians surely know the individuals by name and by their antecedents. What else is left unknown about that serial political philanderer in perennial quest for a special purpose vehicle to realise his political dream? Or the individual who has been on government payroll since he stepped his infant feet in the soil of a military school as boy-soldier, spending decades in the army thereafter, capping his public service with the nation’s number three position for eight unbroken years, and only now in the evening of his life claiming to be seized of a new vision?

    Is it the one who spent eight years as speaker, another eight years as governor and still another eight years as minister of the republic claiming to have gone hungry barely two years after leaving government job? And still the other that served as commissioner for eight years under a benevolent leader from where he was thrust into the governor’s mansion and much later as a minister in the republic? Is it the most insufferable one, the arrogant, divisive and the supremely entitled former governor whose wounds from a botched ministerial outing seem unlikely to heal anytime soon?

    Now, all of them, without exception are asking Nigerians to judge them by their past – which, far from being unreasonable is the right thing to do. Of course, the records are all out there in the open: In the bungled privatisation exercise under which the nation still reels and which no one is yet to be called to account; in the botched mono-rail project and the crude alienation of power projects to friends and cronies that have gone into a faded memory, the learning tablets that would not avail the pupils for whom they were intended because the entire thing was badly thought out; the humongous loans allegedly diverted by those whose sense of unchallengeable power is unequalled. All of them linked one way or another to actors who have practically nothing new to offer beyond their obsession for office, those who sowed division among their people and whose sense of exceptionalism borders on lunacy; those whose costly experimentation and activist mind-set borders on the bizarre, and those who feel entitled apparently because they have nothing else to do.

    They have charged the Tinubu administration with sundry crimes ranging from the removal of fuel subsidy to collapsing the infrastructure of forex manipulation that has served the powerful elite for so long; of spiralling inflation and the cost of living crisis and, that over all, the government has done pretty little after two years in office – conveniently forgetting the quantum of mess the administration inherited. One thing remains though. Nigerians are still waiting to know what their ADC mutation would have done differently in practical terms! Only thereafter will Nigerians begin to take them seriously.

  • As Fubara capitulates!

    As Fubara capitulates!

    Expectedly, opinions have remained divided on the truce between the feuding parties in the Rivers State crisis as hammered out by President Tinubu, particularly in terms of what it bodes for the peace of the state. Going by the sketch of the details already in the public domain, it is clear that the suspended governor came out far worse than his supporters could have imagined. Going by the terms of the settlement, not only is the governor precluded from having a go at a second term which he is constitutionally entitled, his boss and nemesis, Nyesom Wike, still retains the prerogative to nominate all the local government chairpersons across the 23 LGAs of the state.

    In fairness to the suspended governor, he appears to appreciate, at least for the time being, the imperative of peace, going as far as to declare his willingness to make difficult but necessary sacrifices.

    His words: “The sacrifice that we are going to make for us to achieve this total peace is going to be heavy, and I want everybody to prepare for it…Without a total reconciliation, which by the grace of God both of us have gotten, there’s no way we can make progress in this state, there’s no way the president can come in to save the situation…So, I want to appeal to everyone, I have accepted that we must accept this peace no matter how it looks. No matter how you feel, we must accept it.”

    He also left no one in doubt of how much of the native wisdom that must have come his way, in the past few months of grim reflection. Using the analogy of the native fish ‘Atabala’, (tilapia) to make his point, he says: ‘The native tilapia doesn’t grow big. The mother tilapia tells the kids that if you want to grow up to my own size, hide your head inside the mud’ – an apt reminder of the folly of duelling with one’s chi!

    Now, Nigerians cannot but wonder how different things would have been had the ‘Atabala’ wisdom availed him in those early days.

    Of course, the beautiful, multi-billion naira edifice that served as parliament building would have been spared the torching by arsonists and subsequently, the bulldozers of a desperate governor.

    Second, the needless turf wars and the resort to brigandage would have been needless; in fact, Nigerians would have been spared the debate on parliamentary quorum and the question of whether a governor could pick which faction of the parliament to work with. Third, the whole point about the president being dragged into the fray between godfather and son would have been most unnecessary. Indeed, the president would have been spared the indignity of having the settlement he brokered torn into shreds by the governor and his army of conflict entrepreneurs.

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    Fourth, the ordinary citizen would have been spared the affliction of those asinine talking points daily regurgitated on prime time hours on television by those whose interests are barely disguised.

    Fifth, the section of the judiciary which insisted on playing the errand for soulless politicians would have been spared the indignity of being de-robed in the market square by the apex court, followed by the weighty characterisation of the governor as a ‘dictator’ and serial lawbreaker and with it its frightening constitutional portents by the highest court in the land!

    We can add to these the ordeal of kicking the executive and the parliament out of office – temporarily – to stave off further impunity!

    Little wonder the Holy writ counsels that one gets wisdom as it is the principal thing in all of life’s endeavours.

    As it is, it must be interesting to see the parties back to the same spot where they left off: the feet of the same president whose counsel the suspended governor and his supporters had once scoffed. This time around however, he’s probably emerged far worse than the last time. Once out of power, he suddenly realises that has no jokers left to play.

    Faced with the new reality, the governor, now powerless, is forced to carry the burden of marketing the gospel of conciliation to his Simplified Movement even when all they could see is plain, undisguised capitulation! Nothing about his willingness to swallow the humble pie to enable peace to return to the state appears to make sense to them. One particular group that calls itself the Rivers Emancipation Movement says Fubara’s concessions amount to a “surrender” of his authority; and that they were made without sufficient consultation! (Did they bother to read the constitution?)

    As far as the group is concerned, any settlement that falls short of restoring their man to his erstwhile pre-eminence is akin to a blow to the solar plexus.

    Never mind that the governor and he alone, will have to bear his cross!

    Of course, the group of 27 lawmakers must be having a good laugh at the turn out of events. After all, it is an open secret that even before the governor’s rustication, he had neither regard for them nor the institution they represented. Unable to carve the institution in his image and likeness, he, Fubara, had thought little of abolishing the institution, opting to work instead with a renegade minority that had no quorum and so no authority to conduct any business let alone the all-important legislative business. Now they are back, with their powers fully restored. They have nothing to worry about in whether or not their due emoluments would be paid, or who had the authority to pass and oversight the state budget.

    In all of these, I believe the lesson is clear: there can be no fighting a right battle in a wrong way or vice versa. Nyesom Wike and the Group of 27 may have been Lucifer and his fallen angels combined; they may actually represent everything odious in politics and leadership to some, there is no reported incident of brazen lawlessness on their part. It was not his group that torched the parliament or desecrated the sacred institution that is at the heart of constitutional democracy; they had no part in the pulling down of the parliament building, which although not illegal outright in the circumstance, amounts to an egregious mocking of the law. Wike’s group had nothing to do with it! Or what the apex court aptly described as the reign of the dictator or autocrat, in a constitutional democracy. It was a case of one group taking to brazing outlawry while the other watched.

    May it never happen again!