The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

  • When PMB met Talon

    Guess who came calling – Nicodemus-style – at the Aso Villa the other day; Benin Republic’s President Patrice Talon. Another strongman seeking to carve democracy in his image and after his likeness in his country coming to meet President Muhammadu Buhari behind closed doors at the Presidential Villa, Abuja Thursday last week. Although reports said that the meeting came moments after he arrived at the forecourt of the presidential villa at 11.35am, the agenda was not made public. Coming however in the wake of the April 28 parliamentary election which shut out the opposition parties and the accompanying clampdown on their leaders culminating in the restrictions imposed on former President Boni Yayi – a development which notable leaders in the sub region have since condemned – there can be no guessing what the discussion was all about.

    Chair of Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism, Professor Ropo Sekoni, also a visiting member of this newspaper’s editorial board first drew home to me the unmitigated travesty going on in Benin via an open letter titled – Call from the international scientific community to Patrice Talon, president of the Republic of Benin. The missive,  penned by scholars and activists drawn from the international scientific community and the international community of artists and intellectuals which include himself, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, Henry-Louis Gates Jr. Sekoni and nearly two score others was a clarion call on Talon to end the charade.

    Months after that letter, Talon continues to play deaf. More than that, he has, thus far, done well to hold down any challenge – including getting his soldiers to mow down demonstrators who dared to protest. By the way, this individual was elected in 2016 at a time his predecessor was supporting another candidate. Think of this happening in a country whose practice of multi-partysm – once upon a time – could have been deemed a model.

    Today, the country sits, precariously on the edge. Only 11 days ago, Olusegun Obasanjo, and his Ghanaian counterpart, John Kufuor, had rallied for the intervention of the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States. The duo, while acknowledging the “general feeling of violation of the individual and collective liberties which has invariably culminated in the restrictions currently imposed on former President Boni Yayi and some other opposition leaders”, concluded chillingly: “The ongoing political crisis appears to be worsening the security and humanitarian situation which might open a floodgate to terrorist incursion that will lead to further destabilisation of the West-African sub-region”.

    Until last week, the country’s Big Brother and neighbour, was practically (at least officially) missing in action. Not a word on the political travesty or the killings that have accompanied it; not on the threatening anarchy – perhaps a case of Big Brother choosing not to fight other people’s fires when its abode is engulfed in conflagration. Yet, much as one would readily acknowledge the feelings of those who would baulk at the idea of the country poking its nose into what is going on next door at a time the country’s hands are already bloodied fighting banditry, kidnapping and other variants of insurgency, (no matter the dire situation in that enclave of 11 million people), one is quickly reminded of the proverb about feigning indifference while one’s neighbour gobbles a suspicious insect; the same would require more than a pill of endurance to keep from staying awake all night when the full effects of the toxic intake inevitably sets in. That is assuming that the country has not already, suffered enough in the hands of this listless, parasitic neighbour whose destiny, though inextricably linked to ours, continues to make good feeding on our flesh and blood.

    Sure, the situation in Benin calls for drastic action. Getting former President Yayi out of the jailhouse will be an important first step. And then for President Talon to dismantle his democracy of exclusion and to undertake a fresh credible and transparent process; after all, what is democracy without a vibrant opposition and an open and transparent process?

    Now, I understand why the Big Brother will be dragged in to quell the fire stoked by that wayward actor next door; which of course explains the shuttle to Abuja last Thursday. One can only hope that our president was frank and brutal in conveying the expectations of the entire civilised world to the wayfarer, hoping that reason prevails and all goes well in the end.

    Remember, this is about Benin Republic a country whose relationship with our country is as insufferable as they are toxic. Never mind that Big Brother is routinely summoned to help pull their chestnuts out of the fire as exampled in the delinquency currently ravaging their polity; their leaders think its fair game to keep setting our own economic backyards on fire!

    I speak here to the menace of smuggling and cross-border banditry which the country aids and abets; the associated subversion that have undermined our trade policies and in the process, reduced the swathe of our common borders to an ungoverned space; the slow, agonising death visited on our farming communities and our textile industry – all of which can only guarantee that our national aspirations would never be met.

    Surely, no one could have put things better than Africa’s foremost industrialist, Aliko Dangote: “There is no country that can survive with Benin Republic as a neighbour”.

    He did not exaggerate. Ask the rice producer, the palm oil producers, the textile manufacturers; all, without exception share a common story of how their businesses have wilted under the menace of smuggling with our darling ECOWAS neighbour tacitly providing facilitation.

    Does anyone see why the official indifference to the existential challenge posed by the country’s policies on our country’s well-being is so galling? It seems such a long time ago when Obasanjo shut the country’s borders against Benin Republic. I couldn’t now recall the roof caving in; instead, Nigeria actually got some reprieve with smuggling and cross-border banditry taking a dive.

    Sure, President Buhari couldn’t have brought up these issues at that short meeting. Or did he – considering that the matter is not only grave but has become an existential one?

    Yet, the conversation is long overdue if ever the country desires to make progress. Guess it’s time to rethink elements of the farce called ECOWAS under which grave injurious, toxic trade practices are perpetrated against Nigeria; for enablers like Benin, time for the Big Brother to demonstrate that injury to her can attract severe consequences.

  • Time to love our neighbour less…

    When an individual who is not known to have successfully managed a thriving entity not only pontificates on the terrain but insists on assuming the role of salesman for pushing policies so diametrically opposed to the survival of the nation, Nigerians would be right to wonder if something entirely new isn’t on the brew. Now, that individual in question is no other than the old fox –former President Olusegun Obasanjo who in recent time has been on the road, not only playing the African statesman card, but selling the African Free Continental Trade Area (AfCTA) agreement as if it is the next best thing since David Ricardo developed the free trade idea into its modern form.

    So, he wants the so-called African giant to play in the big league. He said that much – again – in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the opening session of the Stakeholders’ Dialogue on Continental Trade and Strengthening the Implementation of the AfCTA. Confronted with mounting concerns about the implications of AfCTA without the sign-on of the continent’s biggest economy, he went on and on, to quote the News Agency of Nigeria, about “how Nigeria took over the processes leading to the AfCTA agreement from Egypt and wondered why it suddenly halted signing and was not even participating at the session”. He couldn’t understand why the famed African giant will develop the feet of clay when it mattered most – at the point of signing the agreement Kigali, Rwanda.

    Nigeria, he said, should resolve its domestic intrigues and not bring such to the African Union table.

    “It is nobody’s fault if your country cannot resolve its domestic problem. If you (Nigeria) is not signing the agreement, it is unfortunate. AfCTA will go on without Nigeria. You will recall that this is the first time, since 1976, that Nigeria is not at the table of a major continental process.

    Now, that would not be the first time Obasanjo would come down on Nigeria especially the Muhammadu Buhari administration on whose hand the lot falls the responsibility of signing the agreement. Last year in Bali, Indonesia, the same Obasanjo claimed – according to reports – that President Buhari’s hands were too weak to sign the African Free Trade Agreement (AfCTA).

    Said he of the reluctance of the president to sign the proposed $2.5 trillion continental free-trade zone agreement: “AfCTA is a good idea and for Nigeria, hopefully, we will have a president that will be able to sign it because the one that is there now, his hands are too weak to sign.”

    Well, I perfectly understand Obasanjo’s perennial quest for global statesmanship. And if we may forgive the old fox his dry humour and his cheap pot shot at his nemesis, his latest foray into trade policy would seem entirely dubious to say the least. More questionable however would seem his understanding of the so-called benefits of the agreement in the face of the stark reality of de-industrialization and the unprecedented level of unemployment that continues to plague the African giant.

    To begin with, what are the benefits of AfCTA? I will of course concede that they are many – all of them still largely, in my view, consigned to the realm of potentials. Currently, the global body – UNCTAD says that less than 20% of total trade conducted in Africa is between African countries – as against 80% with the rest of the world. It is argued that AfCTA stands the continent in good stead in boosting regional prosperity with potentials to lift millions out of poverty and misery. Then also is the issue of those costly customs duties whose removal the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) says could increase intra-African trade by 52% within five years. The other case that has been made is that it would at least help redress current global trade imbalances.

    These are certainly sound cases to be made. Unfortunately, those cases fly in the face of the current African reality in which most of the countries on the continent are still largely dependent on Europe and America for basic manufactured goods.

    For Nigeria, the problem is how the economy with its historic structural vulnerability, one so ill-served by its decrepit infrastructure; a country that is at best, a non-starter in manufacturing, one whose foreign reserves are denominated by the months of import cover it can fetch and one whose notoriety in conspicuous consumption is perhaps unequalled in the world can be prodded along a free trade agreement without something giving at some point.

    Even without a formal free trade agreement, we know the amount of pillaging going on in the name of ECOWAS protocols on free movement. The other day, it was Aliko Dangote, Africa’s foremost industrialist pleading with the federal government to take drastic action against Benin Republic over smuggling of products from its country into Nigeria. To him, ‘the biggest issue and challenge for the economy and also for the manufacturing has to do with smuggling and I think unless we really take a very drastic action against the Republic of Benin, I don’t think we are really going to be successful”.

    Today, we know for a fact that of the 15 countries that imported the highest dollar value worth of rice during 2018 by the World Top Export (WTex), our next door neighbour, Benin Republic ranks sixth with a total import valued at $930.5 million (N335 billion), coming after China, US$1.6bn (6.5% of total rice imports); Iran, $1.21bn (4.9%); Saudi Arabia, $1.2bn (4.9%); Indonesia, $1bn (4.2%); and United States: $959.5m (3.9%). On a trip from Ghana the other day, I actually counted nearly one score trailers on the stretch from Porto Novo, Benin Republic to Idi Iroko all loaded with rice from Southeast Asia –headed for Nigeria – and at a time the importation of the commodity through the land borders is a no-no. The same situation, I am told, is replicated in our northern borders with Cameroun and Niger Republic. And that is not restricted to rice alone; in March, the National Palm Produce Association of Nigeria (NPPAN) was forced to raise alarm over the unbridled smuggling of Crude Palm Oil (CPO) which they say is killing the investments.

    Today, our textile industry is dead as dodo – no thanks to the influx of cheap textiles from China. The petrochemical industry which would have formed the basis of a future industrial strategy has remained in the cradle. Our machine tools industry is yet to take off despite the billions sunk into it. Is AfCTA membership a show-off; does it bother anyone that the African giant will at this stage have nothing to put on the continental table in the event of its take-off?

    We must thank heavens that our go-slow President Muhammadu Buhari understands the signs of the times – certainly far better than the likes of Obasanjo will like to give him credit for. The route to industrialization might seem long and the steps already taken uncertain; the AfCTA route at this time in the absence of the safeguards to guarantee our national interests, might end up a one-way fare into the abyss.

    This is one moment when it would pay to love oneself more than one would –neighbours.

  • PMB’s other triple minister

    Way back in November 2015, an online medium – Financial Nigeria – had described Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN as the triple-barrel minister in President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet. Such was the excitement over the multiple portfolios assigned to the former Lagos helmsman that few bothered to fact-check the claim hence its amplification by other mediums soon after. Then, it was perhaps sufficient that President Buhari was bringing on board, a star performer to oversee three ministries considered not only critical to any prospects of the nation’s recovery but one needing extremely capable tending hands given their history of underperformance.

    Of course, there is another triple minister. His name is Okechukwu Enelamah – the minister superintending over the triple portfolios of trade, industry and investment.  While few would argue that the appointment of Babatunde Fashola was anything but borne of the need to deliver quickly and efficiently given the dire situation in which the nation had found itself; and while it would take membership of the most enlightened of circles to appreciate the vital role of the triune in the development mix, the president would appear to have convinced himself of the need to have a minister with solid pedigree holding the reins in the three core areas. Today, only few still harbor doubts that the president made the right choice.

    Few Nigerians know that Enelamah actually started out as a medical doctor after acquiring a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1985.  He later took a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard University in 1994 where he was a Baker Scholar and Loeb Fellow. He became chartered accountant in 1992 and Chartered Financial Analyst in 1997. He was Audit Senior and Consultant at Arthur Anderson (now KPMG Professional Services), worked in the New York and London offices of Goldman Sachs in 1993 before joining Zephyr Management as an investment manager where he rose to Principal in the Johannesburg office between 1995 and 1997.  He founded African Capital Alliance (ACA), a private equity firm in 1997 where he served as CEO until his appointment.

    That was the man on whose shoulder the triple portfolios were thrust by President Muhammadu Buhari. To capture the challenge he faced is to appreciate the nation’s development odyssey starting from the dawn of independence when the nation grew what it consumed and consumed what it grew – to borrow a familiar cliché from the renowned poet, Niyi Osundare. That was when we had serious manufacturing going on. I am talking of an era when the Cadburys, the Nestles, the Dunlops and the Michelins and the Unilever –operated most profitably in the giant African sun. Until the oil boom – or doom – and the consumption binge it spawned came right up to the phase when money was not a problem but how to spend it.

    And then, the moment of awakening – the bust in commodity prices; the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the eighties that followed – which in addition to taking everything out of joint, culminated in the disorientation of the nation’s consumptive patterns and the criminal dependency that the nation is yet to recover from. An era when industrial capacity took a dive and bureaucracy, red tape and corruption went on ascent. And thanks to the ineptitude and lack of patriotism of our officials, an era when trade agreements became wonky affairs skewed in the interests of you-know-who!

    Of course, the nation still had the oil; and so long as this flowed, it made just enough to cover its imports. Because it had money to pay for imported tomato puree and assorted grains, it could afford to throw away hundreds of billions in post-harvest losses on the same commodities. We even allowed our four refineries to become obsolete after spending billions in so-called Turn Around Maintenances (TAMs). The same with the ports, it became sadly a mirror of how a country should never be run.

    Again, the story of poor infrastructure, weak and ineffective regulations and governance systems, all of which forced investors to take a walk – and the long but steady journey to de-industrialisation is today a global reference in poor policy choices.

    That, approximately, was where we were in 2015 when Enelamah came on board. That was the challenge he was brought in to tackle. Of course, in a country where service delivery has tended to be measured in roads, bridges and megawatts of power as indeed other tangible items – whether delivered or not – it is certainly no surprise that few Nigerians bothered to track the silent revolution in industrial, trade and investment fronts.

    Yet, while the jury may be out in terms of how far the ministry under his watch has fared, they are many positive things to talk about. For instance, we can talk about how in 2018, Nigeria, thanks to the Presidential Enabling Business Council (PEBEC), moved 24 places on the World Bank’s Doing Business report. In an environment where nothing is said to move, it is certainly no mean feat that the global banking institution finally found something good to say about the country’s strive for competitiveness. We can also talk about the easing of the procedures for business registrations, the new visa on arrival policy meant to remove the frustration faced by foreign investors seeking to come to Nigeria.

    If you thought that the average man on the street would think little of these mercy droplets resulting from the new thinking in the trade, industry and investment ministry, how about the key policy reforms in sugar, tomato, cassava, cotton-textile- garment and palm oil meant to curb the import of these commodities in favour of local sufficiency? What about the return of the export expansion grant – a policy designed to encourage exporters?

    Not too long ago, my colleague, Kunle Abimbola with whom I share this page wrote glowingly of the National Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP) under which the federal government would “set up special economic zones (SEZs) to boost industrial jobs, push growth, improve the industrial skills of Nigerians and accelerate industrial exports; thus making Nigeria a hub, to its immediate ECOWAS neighbours; and the rest of Africa, in processed goods”. By design, the SEZs are supposed to galvanize the government’s Operation MINE — Made in Nigeria Exports.

    Now, that to me is a sign of another new thinking and hard work in the ministry; none however compares to the cautious approach adopted by the ministry to the continent-wide free trade agreement – the so-called African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).  I have heard many describe AfCFTA as the next best thing since Adam Smith gave the world The Wealth of Nations.  That Enelamah and his team in the Federal Ministry of Trade, Industry and Investment would urge caution despite the enormous political pressures to jump on the AfCFTA bandwagon seem to me the ultimate proof of the fresh thinking needed in the ministry at this time and beyond. 

  • Pity IGP Mohammed

    Although meant to address a problem that is at best tangential, it is difficult not to find sympathy forthe directive issued by the acting Inspector General of Police Adamu Mohammed at the maiden conference of Heads of Nigeria Police Medical Facilities held at the Force Headquarters, Abuja last week. Convinced that the 12-hour, two-shift work structure currently in place is terribly enervating as it is, Mohammed caused a reversal to the traditional eight-hour, three-shift standard.

    To him, this will not only improve the psychological disposition of our policemen but have the potential to curb the incessant cases of abuse of firearms by policemen on duty.

    Here is what he said: “Indeed, arguments have been raised that the resonating incidents of misuse of firearms and extra-judicial actions by police personnel often result directly from work-related stress and emotional conditions which disorient their rationality.

    “In consideration of this, I have ordered that with immediate effect, the shift duty structure of the Nigeria Police which is currently a 12-hour, two-shift system be reverted to the traditional eight-hour, three-shift standard.

    “This directive is specifically informed by the need to address a major, age-long occupational stress which long hours of duty engenders among personnel in the Nigeria Police Force and which occasions depression and abuse of power and other unprofessional conduct.

    “For purpose of clarity, henceforth, no police personnel should be made to perform any duty exceeding eight hours within a space of 24 hours unless there is a local or national emergency.”

    Although the background to the directive obviously is the embarrassing rate at which policemen resort to lethal arms even where emergencies are neither indicated nor their use justified, the measure seems to yours truly as coming late in the day. Indeed, whereas two cases – the killing of the 36-year-old father of one, Kolade Johnson, in Lagos on Sunday, March 31; and the felling of the 20-year-old Ada Ifeanyi by police guns barely three weeks after on Saturday, April 13, would appear the tipping point, such terrible incidences, it must be said, did not start then nor has ended as many licenced murders have since been added to the ever growing list from different parts of the country. The second reason it is coming late in the day is that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has, as far back as early 19th century recognized that working excessive hours posed a danger to workers’ health and to their families. Specifically, both the Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 (No. 1) and the Hours of Work (Commerce and Offices) Convention, 1930 (No. 30) set the general standard at 48 regular hours of work per week, with a maximum of eight hours per day.

    In the United Kingdom for instance, full-time police officers do an average of 40 duty hours per week, in eight hour shifts – although emergency call-outs are a regular feature of the job with provisions for overtime which are paid at a higher rate.

    Needless to state that IGP Mohammed sees the reduction of the shift duty hours from 12 to eight as having the potential to reduce work-related stress– a major factor he sees as predisposing the men on patrol to unlawful use of firearms.

    Not everyone, to be sure, will agree with the IGP on his diagnosis. With emotions still raw and running over some of the more recent cases, it seems likely that many will see the interjection by the IGP as no more than the usual attempt to either rationalise or to pass off the actions of those delinquent few. Among the latter is Abubakar Tsav, one-time Lagos Police Commissioner.  On one plain, he sees the problem as borne of lack of supervision: “If they supervised the people very well, extra-judicial killings would not have been an issue in the country”.

    Really? What manner of supervision would avail in circumstances when the man wielding the gun is no longer in charge of his faculties due to stress factors in the environment?

    More ludicrously, Tsav would in equal measure argue: “I disagree that stress is responsible. What kind of stress would make someone cock his gun and pull the trigger to shoot someone? Before shooting, a gun would be cocked after which safety catch would be applied to make the gun not to shoot”.

    Such views, like those pushing them, obviously belong in the past.

    To former IGP Solomon Arase,the new shift arrangement is not necessarily bad except that additional personnel – he projects 300,000 men –will beneeded.

    A reasonable question in the circumstance is whether Nigerians have been fair to these men charged with the thankless job of keeping the rest of us safe. Today, we have barely 350,000 men to police a country menacingly approaching the 200 million population mark and this at a time when issues of banditry, kidnapping and other high tech criminalities have become the order of the day. Of this,  nearly a third is effectively out of mainstream policing duties, engaged sometimes as bodyguards or body-bags depending on time and circumstances, by privileged officials and the moneyed class. Aside a police force so thoroughly overworked and overwhelmed to the point of being dehumanised – hence a danger to society – we have what in the nation’s budgetary lingo is referred to as envelop system that denies every segment of the public service the critical funds needed to justify their rationale. This is where we must thank states like Lagos, Oyo and Osun for devising creative, institutional mechanism to assist the police in their job of maintaining security.

    Now, it is given that the Nigerian Police is corrupt. Some will go as far as to say that the force is irredeemable.  I will agree that the force is irredeemable not because it is incapable of being salvaged but because the so-called midwives of change have no clues about how to salvage a critical national institution. The truth is  that the police is not any worse than your local electricity distribution company that would, on the one hand, deny you value for your money’s worth while at the same time insisting on preying on your helplessness for gain on the other.

    It’s been said countless times that the country’s police- citizen ratio falls below the UN prescription of 1:400 and that the country would require a doubling of the strength to achieve this threshold. The problem is that policemen are not picked on the streets as one might, for instance, do for a daily paid labour. He would need to be trained at the police college which at the current capacity can take no more than 10,000 cadet recruits for the nine-month long training required. That is assuming that the glorified pig-sties still have something to offer them. That simply means waiting for more than three decades to bridge the gaps to make IGP’s prescription truly work. We are not talking of investment in world-class infrastructure without which modern policing is nigh impossible.

    Does anyone see why stress is the other name for the Nigerian Police; the very reason we should pity IGP Mohammed?

  • The dragon lives!

    Had Nigerians not lived for so long with the pathology of denial to the point where it is now second nature, one would be sympathetic to the feigned outrage over the latest reminder by the IMF about the rumblings of the ghost we thought we had long committed to mother earth. Having enjoyed the breather all these while, it took last week’s reminder by an institution that could, in the eyes of most Nigerians,  pass  for the veritable messenger of Satan – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to again draw attention to the under-recovery element in the fuel-pricing template. As far as Christine Lagarde, IMF Managing Director is concerned, that  element and the consequences thereof, which she says has claimed about $5.2 trillion, needs to be hived off – perhaps with automatic alacrity – so Nigeria can live!

    Soon after, the fuel marketers switched to the panic mode. The oil sector unions – theNigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) later picked up the gauntlet. In their joint response to the IMF, they blamed the body for creating panic the result of which was the hoarding of petroleum products, panic buying observed in some parts of the country last  week.

    Not only that, the two unions considered it “bewildering and baffling that the IMF is not considering the pains and agonies Nigerians went through even to achieve the acknowledged gains of 2018, with almost two-thirds of the world’s hungriest people among Nigerians”.

    “One wonders why the IMF is still callously and wickedly advising the government to inflict more pains and harm on the people”.

    The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) on its part says that the continued devaluation of the Nigerian currency is what has created the impression of the existence of subsidy. According to its president, Ayuba Wabba, as long as the value of the naira was left to market forces, the issue of subsidy would continue in the country.

    The arguments though familiar, are certainly as old as the subsidy itself.  I  understandthe current anger in the context of the existential realities that have defined the daily struggles of the ordinary citizen, particularly the stats which show how further down Nigerians have plumbed on vital socio-economic indices. Part of that reality is the finding in the report by The World Poverty Clock that Nigeria has overtaken India as the country with the most extreme poor people (some 86.9 million, representing nearly 50% of the population) in the world despite having its population seven times larger than Nigeria’s. Then of course is the latest Misery Index 2018, which ranks Nigeria as the 6th most miserable nation in the world.

    To those familiar with  the position of this columnist, the point of divergence has always been the denial of the basic economics which underlay the subsidy debate right up to the ensuing policy stasis that it bred. As it is, the only progress that the country could claim to have made is the agreement that the under-recovery element does in fact exist. If that is progress, the issue of how to address it in a way that does not further injure the economy or take more citizens down the poverty route has not only remained a tough call for successive governments, the rentier economy spawned by the subsidy and its associated culture of opacity has  made it a no-no to Nigerians.

    Let’s for once forget the IMF; does anyone know how much the subsidy currently cost the treasury? How many litres of petrol does the country consume daily? Doubtful if anyone knows for certainty. However, we know for a fact that the subsidy bill grew from roughly N300 billion during the administration of late President Umaru Yar’Adua to N1.9 trillion under President Goodluck Jonathan. Today, no-one knows how much the NNPC spends to bridge the price differential; the only thing Nigerians know is that their state oil corporation does little else than import fuel since importers, according to the government,  have long abandoned the business due to reason of under-recovery. Trust me, the busines is thriving with some estimates putting the annual spend on the subsidy alone in excess of N1 trillion – close to the 50 percent of the N2.03 trillion earmarked for capital expenditure in the 2019 budget.

    That is bad public finance and economics – if you ask me. The only thing that could be worse – or if you like more toxic – is the failure by IMF and cohorts to recognise the subsidy as something of a constantly moving target not only subject to the vagaries of oil prices but exchange rate fluctuations. For an import-dependent country like Nigeria with a relatively unstable currency, the IMF prescription is the surest route to disaster; as for the other  alternative, which requires the country to continue to shell out a trillion naira annually to subsidise petrol consumption, it is akin to swallowing poison in small doses.

    This is where the NLC and the IMF are both right and wrong.

    First,  had the NLC shunned its traditional brashness which tended to foreclose contrary opinions, the nation most probably would have long before now, made a headway in putting appropriate policies in place to address the problem. By the way,  what happened to the billions of naira loan given to NLC for its mass transit services to cushion the effects of the Jonathan-era subsidy removal?

    As for the IMF, apart from the fact the officials do not live here and so could be excused for assumptions that are at variance with the Nigerian reality;  theirs is at best advisory. What the Nigerian government makes of it is entirely its business.

    However, the issue at this time is hardly one of right or wrong but what is best for the country.

    Clearly, the easiest solution is to have the government build more refineries. I say the easiest but not necessarily the best solution as the option comes with the requirement that we trust a government that could not fix its ailing refineries to launch new ventures – a most unrealistic proposition at this time.

    The other option which is already bearing fruits, is to get more private sector players like Dangote Refineries on board to address not just the domestic supply gap but to address permanently the other macro-economic issues associated with the fuel import trade. Understandably, Nigerians claim to love the idea; the issue is whether they are prepared for the removal of any form of price ceilings by whatever name which will inevitably come with true liberalisation. With the commencement of operations of the largest single train refinery in the world slated for April 2020 – less than a year from now, only when that singular issue is firmly settled can we begin the talk of interring that Nigerian dragon. 

  • Back on hell’s highway

    If the daily anguish of motoristsplying the Lagos-Ibadan expressway has not reached heaven by now, put it to the growing irritation at the celestial realm with Nigerians penchant to bombard its gates with sundry, mundane issues that modern civilization has long taken for granted. The other day on my Facebook page, I tried a light joke of my terrible experience on Sunday morning of how a journey between Arepo and Magboro – along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway – a distance of less than three kilometres took the whole of four hours to make. A friend in his reaction advised I relocate; another thought I should have left my residence much earlier to beat the inevitable gridlock; yet another concluded that I most likely forgot to pray to stave off the principalities and the powers that seems to have taken residence on that road.

    Of course, just when you think you have seen enough in the hell corridor called the Lagos–Ibadan highway to remind you of Dante’s Hell, an entirely new experience makes you wonder whether the great Lucifer hasn’t finally moved its doomed habitation to Nigeria’s famed “Bible Belt”. Today, that 127.6-kilometre highway, perhaps the busiest in the country if not the entire continent, not only mirrors the dysfunction that Nigeria is, but has become everything a vital national artery should not be.

    On my way to the office a week ago, a tanker said to be laden with Automotive Gas Oil reportedly lost control and in the process spilled its contents somewhere not too far from the popular Long Bridge in the early hours of the morning. With elements of security on holiday and rescue infrastructure nowhere in sight, it was the moment for the devil to take over. And yes he did for nearly 18 hours that would cost the nation millions in man-hours aside the unimaginable public health costs. In my case, I got home very well past midnight – for a journey that would ordinarily take 30 minutes.

    The truth of course is that last Monday’s accident, like the other experience on Sunday, is only one among many of the daily experience of gridlock that has become the lot of the motorists on that corridor. Only yesterday, three persons were reported to have been killed in an accident involving a tipper loaded with granite and a Dangote truck at the Ogere, Ogun State end of the expressway. For those of us living on that corridor, like the millions of commuters on that road, we have probably done little else than hope and pray for divine intervention – even as I sometimes left in wonder if those fruitless hours spent on prayer rain couldn’t have been better deployed in organizing to get the contractors and the federal government to either move forward the completion date from 2021 or at least put measures in place to relieve the daily sufferings experienced on that road.

    For now, the agony endures.

    The unfortunate part of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway story is that nothing of the present suffering is inevitable.Rather, it reflects not only the absentee states of our institutions but alsothe systematic collapse of the norms of the orderly society – the combination of which is the reign of anarchy currently unleashed on the country.

    I have heard it said – not once or twice – that the construction giant –Julius Berger – will not dare to do to citizens of its home country, Germany. I certainly would agree that the laws of their home country wouldn’t allow them were the circumstances to be the same. In fact, such afflictions would readily pass foran assault on the dignity of the people on whose behalf they are called upon to render a service. However, while the laws avail to supply the institutional safeguard, the greater consideration wouldn’t be so much for the law but the imperative of business and the awareness of what corporate citizenship and responsibility entails. That is what distinguishes the civilised world from the rest; ability to put the interest of citizens first at all times.

    What do we have here?

    A federal government which aside being impervious to the grind, continues to feign indifference to the potion of slow death dailyadministered on its own people. A federal government so utterly oblivious to the requirements of the basic infrastructures of safety and rescue on which modern transportation are anchored? Imagine aroad safety institution that is only a little more than an agency for the issuances of drivers’ licenses in this day and age! Who even care about public health issues resultant from the problem when bigger issues beg for attention? What about its responsibility to the contractors given what is known to be its serial failures to meet up with its obligations to them?

    Ours truly isn’t just unusual country; it is probably the only one I know where citizens tolerance limits are infinitely elastic!

    Could things have been different? To the extent the problem is fairly easy to isolate, the answer is yes. Clearly, the first layer of the problem is law enforcement. At the moment, there are simply too many vehicles on the road that ought to have been confined to the scrapyard. Lagos with its Vehicle Inspection Service has proven a clear leader in charting the course of ensuring that vehicles on the road are roadworthy. Time to tighten the screws across the board. Ridding the highways of vehicles that are not roadworthy should henceforth be of utmost priority.

    Now, it remains a wonder to see how things quickly slip out of joint when accidents happen considering the plethora of officials manning the highways. All too often, I have seen FRSC officials act more like spectators even whendire emergencies are indicated. Many, in some cases, are actually complicit in the making of some of the bedlam. It should be possible for officials to be held to account when ugly situations arise. Simply put, something drastic has to be done about the penchant by undisciplined motorists to drive against traffic. That lack of will to punish offenders is probably responsible for 90 percent of the problem that has turned the corridor into the nightmare that it has become. I think it is about time FRSC shows that it can truly bite by enforcing that law.

    Here is my appeal to Julius Berger; surely you can do something – even if our government wouldn’t lift a finger to help us. Let no one hide behind some technical nonsense to suggest that nothing can be done. Julius Berger knows that a lot can be done. The problem is that the company hasn’t even begun the finding. Now is the time.

  • Ajimobi: Politics trumping legacy?

    The debt for the above title goes to my colleague, Republican Ripples’ Kunle Abimbola’s whose didactic piece on the odyssey of Abiola Ajimobi, the outgoing governor of Oyo State, stirred this piece.

    Never one to shy from rippling through difficult terrains including those where angels feared to tread, Abimbola’s article, ever point-blank and incisive, couldn’t unfortunately resist ther overture to that popular, yet simplistic narrative that although Abiola Ajimobi may have delivered stellar performance, his supposed conceit did him in!

    Now, I understand the point about Ajimobi being an unlikely candidate for a popularity contest – a terrible flaw supposedly for a politician of such a stature – if you ask me. Again, if you ask me, a steward of state asking a bunch of unruly, red-eyed undergraduates to respect ‘constituted authority’ isn’t exactly good company on a day the mob is not only primed to action but have long declared a fatwa on the establishment.

    You know the other stories – the most striking being the bruising encounter with the musical icon, Yinka Ayefele; the parallel but contemporaneously running sub-narratives of supposed mindless officialdom and the false moral equivalences routinely presented by those with axes to grind; and then the story of an alleged dabbling into the chieftaincy affairs of the ancient city of Ibadan etc. On the latter, I am willing to bet, given the man’s deep roots in tradition, that the entire story has not been told!

    Those are supposed to be Ajimobi’s cross for which he must bear to Golgotha. But unlike Golgotha which, in the eyes of Christendom, was mankind’s redeeming point, such has been the spirited attempt to treat these as unforgivable sins for which an electoral shellacking isn’t sufficient recompense but something as would require a legacy of excellent performance to be wiped off the books!

    That is a-historicity at the worst and poor judgment as best.

    In a clime where losing an election is akin to a death sentence, I understand why the pain of being banished to Siberia can be difficult to bear.

    It is certainly a familiar story. A man known to have done well loses and election which would ordinarily been a walkover. In my own state of Kogi for instance, we had a governor who performed excellently only to be suffer the pain of rejection few years later for the same sins that Ajimobi is accused of – of talking too much and for being rather brash.

    I am talking of the late Abubakar Audu – a man who wasn’t just an enigma but an acknowledged star performer. Apparently, the people of Kogi would rather have a tribe of incompetents take turns than have a man who made things happen call the shots! Today, the people of Kogi know better.

    With successive disasters occupying the Lugard House ever since, and the state barely leaving where the late Audu left it aeons ago, perhaps only death could have aborted the triumphant return of the cocky prince once rejected by the electors to the coveted throne in 2015! As they say, the rest is history.

    Back to Ajimobi – the man who defied all the odds to earn a second term (koseleri), losing election is supposed to big deal. In fact, losing to Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) Kola Balogun in the contest for the Oyo South senatorial seat by a mere difference of 13,502 is supposed to be terrible, irrecoverable injury – a re-enactment of the so-called myth of koseleri!

    Never mind that the man has since moved on: “I hereby accept the result as announced. Although there were a number of grievous infractions and established electoral malpractices, I have decided to let go in the interest of peace…” – a treatise on leadership –the finest grade – from a man known to shoot from the hip. Rather than let him be, some people, it would appear, are only too eager to suffer his legacy to terribe revisionism. That, in my view, should not be allowed to happen.

    Which takes us to the crux of this piece – the Ajimobi legacy. In a country where performance is reckoned in bridges and roads, the story across the board is that the man has peformed excellently well. Yes, away from the urban jungle and cesspit of filth and squalor that it was barely a decade ago, I can tesify that the capital city, Ibadan currently wears a modern face. For a city which owing to its military origins, is known to lack any element of planning, it’s hard to miss the deliberate order that have been imposed in the area of physical planning and urban aestethics under Ajimobi’s watch. The roads are wider and neater; the inner cities are on a steady path of renewal.

    For a city that never had a masterplan, I hear that one is finally in place; ditto a drainage masterplan to ensure the banishing of flooding in the ancient city permanently. From Oke-Ogun to Oyo and Ogbomoso, the testimony is virtually the same of how the administration of Ajimobi has done valiantly well to transform their rustic landscapes into modernity through massive infrastructure upgrades; how he has delivered on virtually al items of modern governance, perhaps surpassing previous administrations before him – all with the caveat that the man could have even done better if he had talked less.

    To yours truly, the man greatest achievement is to be found in how he succesfully terminated the reign of the warlords – the rival transport unions who see themselves are not only above the nation’s law but would routinely unleash violence and mayhem on innocent Nigerians even without provocation. The other part of the story is the matching of the security infrastructure with current and future needs to ensure that the state does not in fact relapse into the wild era preceding him.

    As he departs, it must be with the firm conviction of leaving the state far better than he met it. Clearly, he has certainly laid the foundation for those coming after him to build upon – something that his famed humanity, or earthiness cannot detract from.

    My friend Abimbola puts it beautifully: “Long after present politics recedes into memory, legacy (Ajimobi’s that is) will emerge from that mist to robustly proclaim his case”.

    I concur.

  • The many shades of an election

    This weekend, electors in six different states will again head to the polls, this time, to complete their outstanding elections.These are Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Kano, Plateau and Sokoto where elections were declared inconclusive by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Although INEC claims that the issue at stake is that the margin of victory in each of the affected state was less than the number of cancelled votes, a case by case interrogation not only reveals different levels of mismanagement that threatens to undermine what should ordinarily be a straight-forward, uncomplicated, process. Except for the case of Bauchi expected to be settled later today, voters in the other states will have to redo the exercise on Saturday.

    Poor electors; it iscertainly bad enough to be dragged out to repeat an exercise which the politicians and their agents not only rendered extremely hazardous but rendered practically a nullity. Imagine being reduced to playing the spectator in a game where they are supposedly the sovereigns.  Only this this time around, things promiseto be twice as vicious and deadly as the gladiators seek to procure victory by means more foul than fair.

    That however is only one side of the intriguing March 9 election story. As it is, not a few have pointed to apparent double standard of the commission given the scenario in Abia North Senatorial District where INEC returned a victory verdict in favour of Orji Uzor Kalu even when the margin of victory between him and the PDP candidate Mao Ohuabunwa was less than the cancelled votes. In that instant, the winner, Orji Kalu had polled 31,201 votes to defeat Ohuabunwa who polled 20,801 – a difference of 10,400 votes in a contest in which 38, 526 votes were reportedly cancelled.

    Orthe more bizarre story from Rivers – whose gladiators are currently locked in deadly combat.  Not only have the two factions contending to seize the big prize been bandying dizzying outcomes from an exercise best described as farce, the electoral umpire would appear at sea over the applicable rule to apply to resolve the conundrum nearly a fortnight after.

    Sure enough, it would be time for lawyers to do battle over matters that are not so much about the merit or justice-ness of the causes of the principal actors let alone the promotion of some nobler ideals of electoral jurisprudence; a battlenot so much about the number of the votes cast on the election day but more about finding the law which ultimately crowns the electoral higgledy-piggledy.

    Talk of the Nigerian electoral cancer fully metastasising; so much for the chicanery called elections in these parts.

    By the way, the 2019 elections were supposed to be marked improvement on the 2015 experience both in substance and style. I do not here refer only to the logistics and the works but in terms of the totality of the voter experience. Thanks to the Card Reader, a seamless experience is not only supposed to be guaranteed;the integrity question which had been at the heart of previous elections would seem ordinarily settled.

    Well, the jury is still out nearly a months after the first round of contest; it needs to be said however that that the mounting evidence of the same old pathologies are certainly enough to unsettle even the valiant of hearts.As we saw in the Southwest, most parts of the Northcentral, Northwest, Northeast and the Southeast where the systems generally delivered passable outcomes, it was only to the extent that local party chieftains and the people cooperated with the umpire to deliver a credible process.Elsewhere particularly in the South-south state of Rivers for instance, there were neither pretences about letting the system run nor to the niceties of rules of procedure as one might expect in a rule-based contest; each party, aided by the military or the police and in some cases, the militia, took solace in self-help to claim victories even without reference to the umpire.

    This takes us to the lessons of the elections. I do understand the pain of the losers; to the extent that the electoral business is a bloody expensive one, a loss comes close to throwing billions down the drain. Moreover, in a country where the only thriving industry is politics, and where the sole motivation for being in politics is money and power, the threat of a looming political and economic Siberia is quite frankly an existential one hence the Hobbesian struggle that have characterised our politics.

    But then, to impugn an entire process only because of a few glitches here and there to me is akin to defecating in the communal pond. Yes, hordes of angry chieftains in both parties are free to let off as much as they want. Unfortunately, much as the umpire still has a lot to do to emplace a credible and transparent process, it needs to be said that this itself alone does not guarantee that rules and institutions put in place to deliver are not suborned to devious ends by unscrupulous actors.

    In the end, getting political players to play by the rules seems to me a bigger challenge than getting INEC to strengthen its processes.

  • Success Adebor: Shame of a nation

    I had consigned the story of the angry seven-year old allegedly sent out of school for inability of the parents to pay a school levy to the stuff of fiction – the type you daily hear on our hyperactive rumour mills. Although the story had been shared in different variants on the social media, I initially considered the story too incredible to be true. Until Sunday night when I finally got around to see the trending video.

    Success Adebor – that is the name of the girl – was thrown out of the classroom over a levy of N900. The angry young lass would not understand why her teacher would not apply alternative sanction of flogging instead of the humiliating treatment of being sent out of school over a school levy.

    “They will flog tire”… she shot back at her interlocutor, in a somewhat mocking defiance.

    As it turned out, little Success is not only a pupil of a public school – Okotie-Eboh Primary School, Sapele, in the oil-rich state of Delta, at her age, the Universal Basic Education (UBE) is supposed to guarantee her free education at least for the first nine years of school.

    I understand the state government has stepped into the matter. The issue goes beyond the attempt at window-dressing to understand why at this time and age, a seven-year old girl-child will be subjected to such cruelty.

    Over to you – Delta State government.

  • A poll and its aftermath

    Here we go again – was my gut reaction to the rejection of the outcome of the February 23 presidential election by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, former vice president Atiku Abubakar.

    “If I had lost in a free and fair election, I would have called the victor within seconds of my being aware of his victory to offer not just my congratulations, but my services to help unite Nigeria by being a bridge between the North and the South”.

    That was Atiku moments after INEC declared the incumbent president, Muhammadu Buhari winner of the February 23 presidential poll. Well, he didn’t “lose”; rather his opponent won. And the victory is as emphatic as can be: 15,191,847 votes for the incumbent as against Atiku who polled 11,262,978 – which means that Muhammadu Buhari and Yemi Osinbajo will remain in charge for the next four years.

    By the way, when compared with his showing of 15,424,921 in the 2015 election against incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan, the latest showing might seem not only modest but indicative of how fewer friends the president has made since; however, when his foray albeit limited,into such states as Akwa Ibom, Abia and Rivers – states which hitherto presented as a formidable iron curtain are factored in, the surge in the mandate become understandable. And this is aside the four million-vote margin between him and the closest challenger. That is as unassailable as can be.

    Could Atiku have won the election?

    I certainly understand the anger of those who, frustrated by what they perceive as the many ‘sins’ of the Buhari presidency,are led to think that the country deserves better than what is on offer more so at this time. To this group, the sins of this presidency are legion:they range to an allegedlack of sensitivity to the nation’s diversity evidenced by the lopsidedness in appointments, the administration’s rather poor handling of the herdsmen/farmers clashes to the slow pace of governance etc. To them, nothing of the so-called infrastructure deliverables can assuage for the grievous sin of a lack of inclusion.

    But then, let’s flip the question in another way: could the incumbent, President Buhari, with all the foibles of his administration in the last four years, have lost against an Atikuwho in fact offers nothing spectacularly different from the incumbent?

    To begin with, Atiku is hardly a new product on offer; other than the singular factor of name-recognition which unfortunately carries with it a lethal baggage, the only other thing that can be said as going for him is that he has been there before and so should able to understand how the system works. Yes, Nigerians know Atiku – but for what? Secondly, he says nothing new that Nigerians are not too familiar with. As for his public thoughts on governance and economy, not only are they dated but are increasingly seen as toxic! While he boasted of his pedigree as a job creator, Nigerians struggled to find the vintage entrepreneur but found instead the archetype Nigerian comprador-investor who thrives in state subsidies! In any case, I didn’t hear our policy wonk offer new perspectives on the unemployment situation or a coherent strategy to deal with it. In the end, his touted recordcould only sound hollow if not dubious. And that is not counting terrible damage inflicted on his brand by no less a personality than his former boss, Olusegun Obasanjo.

    That was the man presented by the PDP to run against the saintly Muhammadu Buhari, the perceived nemesis of the corrupt elite; and friend of the talakawa in a process that became more of a referendum on the performance on the incumbent rather than a true electoral contest. While it amounted to a censure of sorts for the incumbent, it was in the end, a case of no contest between them.

    So where do we go from here.

    All of course depends on how the victory is managed. Given the volume of bile spewing daily on the world-wide-webfrom partisans on both sides of the national divides, you’ll think that the country is already on a full-blown war as against merely ruing the import of a mere electoral fest. Currently, all it takes is a minor joke on the social media sites for textual fusillades to be unleashed by those presumably hurting from the loss of their candidate on perceived enemies.

    Welcome to the season of ethnic baiting – a season when nothing is held sacrosanct and our common humanity perches on a fragile thread. As friends turn enemies over differences in political choice,our traditional fault-lines have not only been exacerbated, our country is left swinging dangerously towards the precipice. It is truly Silly Season 11. Whereas the election may have produced clear winners, now itseems increasingly doubtful that the country will be allowed to savour the fruits of victory.

    I am not here writing of an Atiku going to court to retrieve his “stolen mandate”; but of growing animosities that have divided the country along the lines of faith, geography and ethnography; along the tribe of wailers and hailers. The battle unfortunately is one the country is least prepared for or even likely to be able to win.

    To be fair to President Buhari, he has been most conciliatory – and statesmanlike in victory. I wish yours truly can say this of the hordes of supporters of ruling APC who in their moments of mindless triumphalism have long cast off any restraints or humility; or their sparring partners who think little of delegitimizing the process simply because they came short.

    For a country in the throes of terrorism and its malignant variants, the omens are simply not good. It is like pouring more petrol on an already combustible surface. It is the surest route to Armageddon.

    As it is, President Buhari has his work out: time to embark on a healing mission. As the president may have found out in nearly four years of being in the saddle, it requires far more effortto court the minds of menthan it would in building concrete bridges on the Niger. Imagine his poor showing in Anambra – a state where the on-going Second Niger Bridge would ordinarily have guaranteed a haul of votes. That task must begin now.