The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

  • A familiar game of denial

    Like everything with Nigeria – it’s been hard deciding on which of the two positions is more credible: the claim by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that Africa’s most populous country will still remain the world’s biggest rice importer after China by 2019, or the bland denial by a government perennially seeking to cart the trophy home before the game is called.

    You know the ‘big story’ as published by the influential Bloomberg: “Nigeria’s rice imports”– the medium writes quoting the U.S. Department of Agriculture in its latest Rice Outlook – “will jump 13 percent next year to 3.4 million metric tons, making Africa’s most populous country the world’s biggest rice importer after China.

    “China and Nigeria are projected to remain the largest rice importing countries in 2019, followed by the EU, Cote d’Ivoire, and Iran…Nigeria and Egypt are projected to account for the bulk of the 2019 import increase.”

    For the Nigerian government, the above is akin to a doomsday prophecy. Not the story of the flood-ravaged fadama plains which saw more than 20,000 hectares of unharvested rice swept away this year in Kebbi alone – according to the same Bloomberg.

    An earlier report that Nigeria’s rice imports actually increased by 400,000 tonnes in the current year had been dismissed by CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele as “false and fake news”. Here is what he said on the issue at the 2018 Nigeria Investment Conference hosted by the Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA) Society of Nigeria in Lagos recently:

    “I was reading a report where the United States said the volume of imports of rice increased by 400,000 tonnes.

    “I am not a politician, but people should be very mindful when they open their mouths to say what is untrue because we would come out as central bank to attack it particularly if you use data incorrectly.

    “I seize the opportunity to say that it is untrue. The data that we have today shows that rice imported legally into the country is less than 25,000 tonnes in 2018 so far.

    “Then how come an agency which has not been to Nigeria or even been to the farms to see what we are doing, just come up and say that Nigeria has imported 400,000 tonnes above what it normally should import?

    “Go to the data of countries that export rice, you would see their data; you would find the quantity of rice imported by Nigeria. This is false and fake news.”

    Note his operative word legally. He should know, after all, he has been careful to ensure that no single dollar in the piggybank goes into the importation of rice. More than that, he currently leads the charge to get the local staple into every Nigerian home.I ndeed, under his watch over N100 billion has been invested in the cultivation of rice, wheat, sorghum etc.

    However, while I understand his anger if not frustration,over the attempt by a group of foreign ‘busy-bodies’ to poke fun at the expense of his laudable efforts; not so the dubious attempt to play the ostrich over a matter that is so easily verifiable. Simply put: between the quest for domestic sufficiency which the federal government stridently projects as alternative reality, and the real world of commodity availability in the market place, there remains lots of grounds to cover.

    If only in deference to Emefiele’s counsel, we start with the cold figures. For this, we turn to those supplied by the Thai Rice Exporters Association figures. From their latest data, we know that Benin, our next door neighbour imported 1.1 million metric tonnes of rice compared with Nigeria’s 1.2 million metric tonnesin 2014.

    That Benin’s import of rice declined to 0.8 million metric tonnes the following year. By the way, Nigeria’s rice import also declined to 0.6 million metric tonnes that year. However, by 2016, Benin’s rice imports dramatically surged to 1.4 million metric tonnes while Nigeria’s figure came further down to 0.1 metric tonnes. By 2017, Benin’s rice imports soared to a record 1.8 million metric tonnes at a time Nigeria recorded zero imports!

    Is it mere coincidence that whereas Nigeria’s official rice import has been on a negative slope, that of Benin Republic has been on a steady growth path?

    Again, let’s look at the figures more closely.  Yes, Nigeria’s rice import has been on a steady decline since 2015. However, Benin Republic has not only kept to a steady, positive import trajectory, the country has in effect, doubled its record of rice imports within the same space of time. And so while it pleases our government to tout the decline of official imports as evidence that things are looking up, or that the country is finally inching closer to domestic sufficiency in rice production, our ECOWAS neighbour has steadily moved in, using our porous borders, to fill the demand-supply gap!

    You call the deleterious trade practices across our border – ‘progress’?

    The implication must be seen as frightening enough; but even more troubling is the culture of denial which the development  has spawned. Yes, the country may have done so much to boost the cultivation of rice and other grains, some of the current claims of achievement are to put it mildly,  wildly exaggerated. Indeed, in a world where trade information is only a click away, only the Nigerian government can afford to live in the delusion that those rice-laden ships, officially headed for Benin are not destined unofficially for the Nigerian  market –which is what makes Emefiele contention laughable.

    By the way, if the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, NBS, the CBN, or even the agricultural ministries are not too high-minded to consider a survey on the status of imported rice vis-à-vis those produced locally beneath them,  it might well be the beginning of the long voyage of recovery.

    Here is what I would do if I were to be the agriculture minister: rather than worry about statistics which have sound basis in reality, I would worry about what Benin, Cameroun and Niger Republic are doing to our economy.  I will do what countries do when faced with existential threats – read the Riot Act! After all, nothing in the ECOWAS treaty permits a supposedly friendly neighbour to provide transit services for smuggling into another sovereign country.

    For now, it should be hard to decide which, between the Americans and our ECOWAS frenemies, is a friend or foe.

  • Problem in search of definition

    These are interesting times, no doubt. As if Nigerians needed some sabbatical from the daily grind that state failure has  foisted on them hence their never-ending quest for basic existential issues long settled by more serious societies, the main gladiators in the restructuring debate continue to stoke the fire to keep Nigerians busy talking for the rest of the current electoral cycle. Which of course leaves one wondering whether the love for polemics or good old patriotism defined by love for fatherland it is that drives public discourse?

    True, Nigerians have since been talking, torn as one would imagine, into the two opposing camps of the restructuring debate: restructurists and those opposed to it. Never mind that the divisions, hardly ever ideological or even intellectual, remain basically along opportunistic lines – and with it the deliberate blurring of issues to create maximum confusion.

    Enter Atiku Abubakar. I understand why man who craves power perhaps more than life itself would want to be everything to all men; a man whose views keep changing like the British weather– all depending on time, space and audience – wanting to force the debate apparently because that seems to be the only thing left on the plate.

    One thing that cannot be denied him though his clarity on a subject that his opponents have done no more than waffle.

    Of course, the man couldn’t be clearer on the subject: return some items on the concurrent list to the states; yes, a reversal of the “epidemic of federal take-over of state and voluntary organisations, schools and hospitals which began in the 1970s”.

    To Atiku, restructuring means tinkering with the current federal structure “so it comes closer to what our founding leaders established, in response to the very issues and challenges that led them to opt for a less centralised system.

    “It means devolving more powers to the federating units with the accompanying resources. It means greater control by the federating units of the resources in their areas.

    “It would mean, by implication, the reduction of the powers and roles of the federal government so that it would concentrate only on those matters that could best be handled by the centre such as defence, foreign policy, monetary and fiscal policies, immigration, customs and excise, aviation as well as setting and enforcing national standards on such matters as education, health and safety”.

    He thinks these could be achieved within six months just as he believes that a good number of the measures do not actually require constitutional amendment.

    Good sound bites; no? Or simply politics?

    Whether the views could be described as realistic let alone workable given the formidable political strictures is open to question.How these will jell with the demands of his allies in Afenifere and the Ohaneze – two groups obviously more inclined to a more radical, geographical restructuring on the one hand, and a north sworn to anything but restructuring on the other, remains to be seen.

    President Muhammadu Buhari of course thinks the restructuring talk may well be a fancy topic for busybodies. Pressed to offer his thoughts on the raging subject during an interactive session with Nigerians in France, he says: “There are too many people talking lazily about restructuring in Nigeria. Unfortunately, people are not asking them individually what do they mean by restructuring? What form do they want restructuring to take?”

    “Do they want us to have something like the three regions we used to have? And now we have 36 states and the FCT. What form do they want? They are just talking loosely about restructuring…Let them define it and then we see how we can peacefully do it in the interest of Nigerians.

    “They are just saying they want Nigeria restructured and they don’t have the clue of what the form the restructuring should be. So, anybody who talks to you about restructuring in Nigeria, ask him what he means and the form he wants it to take.”

    Really?

    A president whose party manifesto actually promised restructuring? The leader of a party under whose direction a 10-man committee was actually set up to articulate the party’s position on restructuring? And to imagine that the president still does not have a position on the document that was submitted to his party some 10 moons ago!

    Ever heard of being sold a pig for a poke?

    So, what is the matter with Nigeria and where does restructuring fit in? Put another way, what is the relationship between ‘good governance and the restructuring of the kind that some Nigerians have long clamoured?

    For answers, we turn to Professor Ropo Sekoni, The Nation’s distinguished columnist and foremost scholar in what smacks of a masterful repudiation of Atiku’s treatise on restructuring in his piece of Sunday. By the way, the good professor is an unrepentant federalist hence his description of the Nigerian challenge as that of re-federalisation’. To him, it is “a more precise word for solving the problems militating against liberty, progress and development in the country”.

    He says of “good governance” that it is “not specific to federal or unitary governance model. It is expected to exist in all democracies—be they unitary like France, Netherlands, and Singapore, or federal like Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, the United States of America, and United Arab Emirates”.

    Devolution, he also said “is not specific to federalism; unitary governments do devolve or transfer powers to sub-national governments without making such system federal”. And that “promotion of privatisation of the economy” is”not a prerequisite for federalising a country. Privatisation is as visible in federal societies as it is in unitary polities”.

    Re-federalisation he says refers to “the degree of freedom available to sub-national governments to have autonomy to govern itself in response to its values”.

    Do I hear the chant – To thy tents oh Israel? It’s a long way – yet! See why nation-building is such a serious, never-ending business?

    To get back to the word – restructuring; is anyone still mystified? No one should be. According to the dictionary, it means “to organize a company, business, or system in a new way to make it operate more effectively”; to change the jobs and responsibilities within an organization, usually in order to make the organization operate more effectively”.

    Ask corporate chieftains;  not only do they know what the word entails, it is something they do routinely. In the shark infested waters of business, it is the only way to survive competition. It comes basically to fine-tuning business processes to ensure optimum performance; only when applied to politics and governance does it stoke fears and panic!

    So, is re-federalisation a la Sekoni or the all-purpose variant – restructuring, the cure all to Nigeria’s multiple maladies?  Here is my simple answer: constitutions or the form of government to which it gives rise can only be as good as the operators make it to be. Ever witnessed a brand new car with full options being driven by an incompetent and ill-mannered driver on a multi-lane highway? That can only be a recipe for disaster. Whereas restructuring  can only do so much to make things better; to make any real progress, a lot more obviously depends on the character of the leadership.

    Call it the value imperative and you are damn right! As they say, it is worth the weight in gold.

  • Fuel subsidy through the back door

    Pity a country that never gets its sums right; where what you see is not necessarily what you get; a country where good and bad are intertwined; one in which those charged with public policy perennially play on semantics to hoodwink, confuse and confound.Yours truly refers to the latest ‘spat’on the subsidy starring the Senate, the NNPC and the Ministry of Finance over the recurring issue of oil subsidy.

    Recall that Abiodun Olujimi, Senate Minority Leader had at plenary on Oct. 16 and in a point of order, alleged the existence of a $3.5 billion dollar “Subsidy Recovery Fund” being managed only by the GMD and Executive Director, Finance, of the NNPC”. The Senate in apparent consternation had immediately set up a committee, chaired by the Majority Leader, Sen. Ahmed Lawan to investigate.

    Recall also that Ben Akabueze, Director General of the Budget Office, had alerted Nigerians to the existence of a N53 subsidy on every litre of petrol consumed by Nigerians which at the current petrol consumption level of 45 million litres comes to a princely N2.38 billion in daily under-recovery.

    But then, simply because we are dealing with a notoriously opaque entity that has long lost its rationale both as a business concern and as a national oil corporation, an ordinarily simple and straight-forward matter has not onlybeen made complicated but has been, quite characteristically, shrouded in the corporation’s dubious semantics.

    After initially denying that a $3.5 billion dollar subsidy fund exists in a statement on Oct. 17, last Thursday, NNPCthrough its GMD, Maikanti Baruhas now admitted to a”revolving fund of $1.05 billion dollars to defray the cost of under-recovery in the importation of fuel”.

    Pressed by the lawmakers to differentiate between subsidy and the “cost of under-recovery”, heclaimed that whereas subsidy was usually captured in the national budget, the latter was not! Ostensibly sensing an implied affront to the nation’s organic law, he would later claim justification in section 7 (4) (b) of the NNPC Act, which mandated it to defray its operational costs from its revenue!

    “This $1.05 billion is being administered under a steering committee that was set up, and a working committee that handles daily operations of this fund.

    “These committees comprise representatives of the Minister of Finance, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Accountant General of the Federation, CBN, Petroleum Pricing Regulatory Agency, Petroleum Equalisation Fund Management Board, Directorate of Petroleum Resources and the NNPC. “The fund is being transparently administered according to laid down processes and governance.

    “The actions of NNPC” he said “were in compliance with the National Assembly directive that NNPC, as the supplier of last resort should, and has, maintained robust petrol supply and distribution to the nation. Currently, no other oil company imports petrol due to the high landing cost above the N145 per litre price ceiling on sale of the product, and also due to the lack of provision for subsidy in the Appropriation Acts since 2016”.

    Although well said, it is no less self-indicting. In the first place, good intentions cannot be a substitute to law. The law is clear enough on how public funds can be spent, which is through the appropriation instrument. The management of the corporation ought to know, and the point is elementary, that NNPC Act cannot be superior to this simple requirement. As for the steering committee set up to administer the so-called under-recovery, surely, Nigerians would be interested in knowing the legal instrument that set it up and the relevant law applicable.

    Read also: NNPC denies alleged existence of $3.5bn fuel subsidy fund

    These are strange times indeed.

    The issue really is that the fuel subsidy issue, once emotive, is no longer what it used to be. Indeed, while majority of Nigerians would seem to have long incorporated the concept into the nation’s fiscal lexicography, only those in government, for reasons best known to them, continue to, in the manner of ostrich, play the hide and seek over a matter borne of simple arithmetic and common sense.

    So, where is the difference in the claim by Olujinmi of a “Subsidy Recovery Fund” (which she alleged was created surreptitiously by NNPC) and so-called revolving fund for under-recovery which NNPC admits is actually in operation – a pool neither known to law nor within the contemplation of the Nigerian constitution?

    For a government ever so eager to brandish the implementation of the Treasury Single Account as achievement, it comes as curious novelty that NNPC could claim the leeway to operate an account neither known to law nor subject to the dictates of parliamentary appropriation. So where is the difference between the reforming Buhari-led administration and the ancien regime which it so trenchantly vilifiesat every turn?

    More fundamentally, what does one make of the bizarre economics under which the country gets to burn off billions of naira under the disgraceful subsidy regime, cloaked as it were, with the veil of secrecy which ensures that business of under-recovery is guaranteed to thrive?

    Think of the double whammy: the country spends some $8 billion annually to bring those auto-contraptions we so much love to advertise on our pockmarked highways; citizen-entrepreneurs forage the scrap-yards in Europe and America for used auto-parts in what some estimates put at $4 billion business; our self-serving elite, ever so ready to conflate their rentier interests with the public good thinks nothing of government shelling out some $3.5 billion in petrol import alone of which approximately $1.5 billion is borne by the government in under-recovery and associated rent on behalf of the owners of the 12 million vehicles on Nigerian roads.

    And now with energy prices on gallop, we are suddenly finding that we need more and more of scarce funds to underwrite the subsidy.

    Hardly common sense or economics; it is more appropriately, profligacy.

    I understand why the subsidy issue is an emotive subject. I have heard the argument, and it is a familiar one, that a country which exists only in name and where the limited available resources are cornered by rapacious elite and basic social services are non-existent have no business denying the ordinary citizen his enjoyment of one of nature’s most beautiful gifts! Nothing disagreeable in the sentiments – if you ask me; the debate about what to do with the wasting asset is unlikely to be resolved either now or anytime soon. But then, what is not going to help is the denial of its econometrics and the recourse to outlawry by an administration supposedly sworn to change.

  • Labour’s rumble

    Even without the latest threat by the unions to commence a nationwide, indefinite strike from November 6, if the government does not meet their demands for a new minimum wage, the outcome of theirtango with the governments would seem predictable. With few months to the General Elections and an economy already tottering on the brink; and with workers obviously primed to press things to their maximum advantage,and with neither the federal government nor our all-conquering governorshaving any answer to the challenge that is potentially debilitating to the national economy, it seems a straight one-sided affair. The best that the rest of Nigerians can hope is an outcome that will not further push the economy down the alley.

    These are perilous times no doubt.

    The story out there is that the federal government is pushing for a new minimum wage of N24,000from the N18,000 set in 2010 by the Goodluck Jonathan administration. Referencing a “tripartite agreement of N30,000 which it insists was a “compromise to demonstrate the willingness of Nigerian workers to make sacrifices towards nation building”, the organised labour thinks it has a deal which the government denies. For this, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), through its president Ayuba Wabba, accuses the government of “mischief” while urging “the organised private sector “to speak up on this matter”.

    That is the latest twist in the story. While Nigerians are being primed for the inevitable showdown, for the parties and their allies in tango, the matter may well come to finding the arguments that suit the moment. Trust labour which had initially demanded N50,000 minimum wage,the climb down to N30,000 is not only reasonable, the fact that the current wage, set more than eight years ago, and in a completely different economic context and with vastly varied  parameters, would ordinarily make any thought of compromises a non-issue. As for the typically doddering federal government, it surely couldn’t make the argument enough: the offer of N24,000 (as against states’ proposal of N20,000)is merely pragmatic.As if it is any different from the states that it is wont to pillory, the federal government would further argue that many of the states are not doing enough to generate internal revenues to meet the recurrent expenditure; that too many avenues for corruption still exist in their bureaucracies. Moreover, considering that majority of states in the federation are in different degrees, in arrears of wages and pensions despite the massive federal interventions by way of bailoutsand the so-called Paris Club refunds, it should ordinarily be easy to understand why the burden of an extended burden of wages reviews will be a terrible pill to swallow particularly at this time.

    Both, surely have enough points to press. The Nigerian worker, as archetype wretched of the earth, far more than sympathy, deserves justice which the current wages deny him.  Aside the squalid conditions under which he iscalled to work, the terrible compensationswhich are such that can only guarantee a life of servitude – assuming s/he is any different from the pulverised counterpart outside of the orbit of the formal economy. On the other hand is the grim reality of a country, far from the illusion of being awash petro-dollars, is either perennially in debt or one struggling to pay its bills.

    So, why wait till now to push the minimum wage matter?

    The answer obviously lies in labour’s timing of what it sees as government’s vulnerability.  With an election around the corner, neither the federal nor state governments obviously wants to be seen on the wrong side of the organised labour on the issue as indeed any issue for that matter. Which is unfortunate really, considering that labour’s position of the matter is unassailable. Are there lessons the organised labour movement can learn from countries where express provisions are made by parliament for periodic reviews of minimum wages – if only to make such quests less disruptive to the economy? Is there anything that the current quest would achieve that a  more structured presentation of the issue would not have achieved at a more auspicious environment and time?

    So, who wins? Labour is certainly right to assume that it will have the upper hand at this time. But then, it will not always be the case.  To begin with, if the lessons of the last eight years are any instructive, one thing is to have a minimum wage on paper; the other is to have the ability to pay. Today, in many of the states where arrears of wages of workers are owed, all manners of formulae and improvisations are being deployed as the otherwise neat wage structures are turned on their heads.  Secondly, although the brouhaha is supposed to be about minimum wage, it is actually a programme of wage review across the board and with it the grim possibility of an inflationary spiral. Thirdly, that the quest applies only to those in the formal sector means that the brunt of the ensuing inflation will be borne – and this disproportionately by the segment of the population regarded as most vulnerable.

    Fourth, at a time the economy is actually shrinking – as against expanding – has anyone, including the leadership of labour considered the implication on industrial employment and capacity?

    How can anyone hope to win in the face of massive deficit in infrastructure; poor work ethic and overall poor productivity – again across the board?  Or is the quest simply about getting few additional crisp naira notes into the pocket?

    While we are at it, let me suggest something less disruptive that labour can do at this time: lead a fight for maximum wage – a peg on executive compensation. It can begin the fight at the corporate suites – starting with those meaningless Annual General Meetings where heist is lionised and legitimised. Not forgetting the heist-dom at the National Assembly. Sure will be hell of a fight but will be worth ever penny of it.   

    Has anyone truly considered the issue of unbridled executive compensations in the face of corporate failures as anything but toxic for the economy?

    I suggest that labour leads the charge.

  • 2019: Finally, the race begins

    I have in the past week seen not a few partisans frame the 2019 presidential elections in strictly binary times: good versus the bad; saint versus sinners etc. Not a few, I must confess, have somewhat framed it as one battlebetween anti-corruption crusaders and that formless, internet tribe that calleditself the Bring Back our Corruptionmovement –drum majors for the freeloading ancien regime that Nigerians sent packing in 2015.

    Today, withAtiku Abubakaron the ballot for the Peoples Democratic Party, a man who supposedly wears corruption on his shoulder like an epaulet, it seems to me that that issues underlying the contest would certainly not be framed so narrowly. Of course, in a race, which only few months ago, seemed one-sided if not entirely closed, the nation should consider itself indebted to the TurakinAdamawafor finally injecting the long expected verve.

    And so here we are: Atiku Abubakar versus Muhammadu Buhari. As The Nation’s highly esteemed columnist Idowu Akinlotan argued with his usual candour in his column on Sunday, had the APC a choice in the matter, Atiku, the Turakin Adamawa would certainly be one opponent they would rather not have on the ballot. That Atiku is a formidable opponent is certainly undeniable. In fact, had the ruling APC ever nursed the illusion the 2019 presidential contest would be something of a cakewalk, the choice ofAtiku has since changed that; today, the challenge that he representsis certainly one that the APC can afford to ignore to its peril.

    Yet, there is something intriguing about the latest quest by Atiku. This was an individual who flunked the APC primaries in 2014. Never mind that he has been a perennial sojourner in virtually all the leading parties in the quest to realise his presidential dream.  Add to that the baggage – corruption – that most Nigerians revile, the question of his electability immediately pops up.

    Well, that is the individual that PDP has thrust forward for the highest office. My colleague Segun Ayobolu had raised the poser in his back page column in this newspaper on Saturday: Is this the Atiku moment?  That Atiku’s quest has since moved from a wild proposition to a distinct possibility seems to me not just a measure of how easily the tides can change in the affairs of a complex country like Nigeria, but how easily too success can be mismanaged, this time by the APC.

    Proof of course is the near alarm in the camp of the ruling APC since his emergence as the PDP flag bearer! Just imagine the number of tanks already rolled out even when the real battle is not even joined – yet!

    We must of course understand what makes the Atiku challenge a viable proposition . If I may make the preliminary point: nothing makes the Atiku candidacy any less sellable than of Mai Gaskiya, the ramrod, Daura-born infantry General who in 2014 was painted by the PDP as unelectable: put it simply to the issue of messaging!

    I have heard many dismiss the Atiku surge as merely underlying the craving by corrupt elements for the return of the ancien regime under which slush funds are freely shared among the elites. They are right to the extent that there are no free funds anymore for anyone to share – thanks to the Treasury Single Account (TSA), which ensures that entities which hitherto operated outside the strictures of the appropriation process are now brought into the orbit.

    However, it would certainly be the height of conceit for the administration to frame issues so narrowly. To be sure, the economy is certainly not in great shape despite the vast improvements in oil earnings. In any event, there is a sense in which the economic environment, despite the ambitious reforms being undertaken, is still light years of what is needed. A part of the administration’s unflattering scorecard is the ‘emergence’ as global capital of poverty; it certainly says a lot about the efficaciousness of current therapies that the population of out-of-school children has since jumped from 10 to 13 million. Despite oil prices being above $80 a barrels, the economy continues to wobble. For a country whose economy in the last three years has been in reverse gear, the kind of appetite for development  that one would expect is to put it mildly – missing. Where new thinking is indicated in our public finances and project implementation, what is more apparent are old wines being put in old wineskins and then labelled as new!

    The result, which is the ‘stasis’ across the board would ordinarily suffice to feed the current angst.

    Agreed, the seeds of the rot were sown by previous governments including the PDP. But then, the Buhari administration has had the whole of three years to fix some of them. Had the administration shown greater verve and dexterity, there is some chance that the current regression could have been mitigated. Again, the charge has always been – and this is not entirely without some merit – that the Buhari administration has tended to operate like the famous Red Sea – neither open nor welcoming to ideas different from its own. For a country so gifted with diversity, it is unfortunate that the administration has neither tapped into this nor reflected this in its policies and programmes.

    Indeed, had the administration been less insular, it would probably have availed itself of different perspectives other than its own – in dealing with some of the challenges facing the country.

    Is Atiku therefore the answer?

    Here, my simple answer would be that there is simply no evidence to support this. So much for the hype about being  business savvy, Atiku is neither in the mould of a Dangote nor in the class of Mike Adenuga or Oba Otudeko – individuals that have either built or are building world-class institutions. In any case, while a fair knowledge of the economy will be a clear advantage, these are hardly requirements to run a country like Nigeria where talents could easily be assembled and pressed to work.

    Although it has been said – and this would be a strong point if true – that Atiku has a way with talents, at this time, that is merely conjectural – yet to be proven.

    In any case nothing says that the Buhari administration cannot spring surprises. And this, it must!

  • Another recession?

    Today makes it exactly a week since the Central Bank of Nigeria warned about the threat of another spiral of recession. Coming shortly after what I had called the “doomsday prognosis” by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) – the research unit of The Economist magazine and the multinational banking and financial services company – HSBC, I believe that there is something more than mere coincidences in their shared but generally grim conclusions about the economy at this time. This is not just because of what appeared to be their agreement on probable causes but also their firm conclusions that the economy, despite the so-called heroic efforts of the current minders and the vast improvements in oil revenue, was delivering at sub-optimal levels.

    To start with, the figure from the CBN is as grim as could be in the current circumstances: From 1.95 per cent GDP growth rate in the first quarter of the year, things are said to have slowed to 1.5 per cent in the second quarter. The reasons as one might guess are as old as they are familiar:the late implementation of the 2018 budget, weakening demand and consumer spending, rising contractor debts, and low minimum wage.

    There is also the talk of the impact of flooding on agricultural output, continued security challenges in the Northeast and North-central zones, and growing level of sovereign debts.

    Nearly a year after the nation is said to have exited the recession, Nigerians must be worried that the country is back at the same starting blocks of “weakening fundamentals”; the same old story of”inflationary pressure”,of “capital flows reversals” and sundry liquidity issues.

    Thanks to the inclement forces of nature, the menace of flooding currently ravaging most parts of the federation has now been thrown into the mix. And now the story is that a country said to have been placed on a sound economic pedestal is againheaded in the same direction it claimed to have departed aeons ago; and this despite the vast improvements in oil earnings considering that a barrel which only recently sold $30 now sells for $80!

    This is where the story our dear country continues to be an intriguing one. Whenever oil prices went bust as it happened of late particularly in the closing years of the Jonathan administration,things understandably went haywire. During the last time, we saw how the country couldn’t finance its imports – which were in fact unlimited; how our factories, which were few and far in between, couldn’t operate optimally because they could not get forex to bring in raw materials and spares.

    And because we needed forex to import fuel, to bring basic consumer goods into the country, to service the fledgling demand for medical tourism and to meet the needs of our young ones studying abroad, the ensuing mad scramble turned the business of forex procurement to an industry in itself. Whereas those who needed forex genuinely couldn’t get forex to buy; meanwhile, middlemen, oil importers and all manners of shadow economic operators had a surfeit hence the ensuing reign of anarchy in the economic system. The result predictably was recession.

    Today, whereas the elements are significantly different, the end-game is unfortunately the same. With foreign reserves at an impressive $44,380,658,133 as at September ending as against $29 billion a little while ago, the fetish about forex and the scramble that came with it have since worn off. While that may seem positive, the other part is that oil prices has brought with it unique challengesof which the recurrent squabbling at the Federal Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) over sharing –has since become one of its more manifest symptoms; another benign one is the humongous cost of maintaining the differentials between the cost of fuel at the pump and the actual cost of the product more appropriately called subsidy.This time, the story is that the country is choking from having things smooth and easy – and so inflation and macro-economic imbalance.

    However, if we are to believe Godwin Emefiele and his Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) members, none of the malignancies come anywhere near the threat posed by election-related spending in a country where access to credit by economic actors is akin to the Biblical camel attempting to go through the eye of a needle!

    The truth, long denied seems to be out: the financial services sector may not have nearly enough for the real sector with their low returns and longer gestation to do business with, it retains more than enough to finance the ambitions of our high risk, high yield,but short-tenuredpolitical players!

    The organic disease which is at the root of the country’s problems has not only resurfaced but metastasized into a new form of malignancy!

    Poor Emefiele; we now know why those elegantly couched monetary policies of his apex bank are either ineffectual or simply unworkable; why so-called obligor limits have come to mean nothing and why credit appraisal by banks are such a joke.

    Although uncomfortable,that singular admission that the political class, and not the monetary authorities, control money supply speaks to a poignant truth that the managers of the economy have lived in denial all along which is that our financial services sector exists only in name!

    Sobering as it appears to be, that still – unfortunately – falls short in explaining why the government cannot get its economic acts right. It does not explain why budgets are not prepared on time, and why the budget, when finally passed are not implemented; or even the finger-pointing that perennially dogs the budget process.

    And the above in fact says nothing about the budget’s extremely modest ambitions in the face of a staggering  $3trn infrastructure gap.

    Or, aren’t the monetary and the fiscal policies supposed to be the complementary sides of the same economic management coin? Away from the same received orthodoxies that, at best, bear little relevance to the issues facing the economy,for how long should we wait for those policy initiatives and coordination needed to kick-start the economy in the throes of an emergency?When do we expect the real activism on the scale that matches current challenges?

    Or the clear-headed thinking as one might expect in the current circumstances? Until the next cycle of recession?

  • Much ado about EIU, HSBC report

    On the death of an elephant, expect to see all manners of knives at work. Much has certainly been made of the unflattering, or if you like, the doomsday prognosis on the state of the economy and the nation in general by two international bodies – the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) – the research unit of The Economist magazine and HSBC, the multinational banking and financial services company. Aside their shared believe that the Buhari administration is not doing nearly enough to address the problems facing the economy, also united by the duo is their conviction that the 2019 elections would prove momentous for the struggling economy.

    Says the EIU: “Nigeria’s leadership will struggle to deal with a range of challenges to political and economic stability. Campaigning ahead of the 2019 elections will complicate the situation as politicians focus on shoring up support (and undermining opponents) rather than more prudent policy reforms. Economic growth will be constrained by the weak policy environment and dire infrastructure provision. The prospects for 2020-22 are slightly stronger, with elections out of the way and oil prices strengthening”.

    The report ended with a dire prediction that President Muhammadu Buhari will not win next year’s election.

    HSBC on its part pushes things further: “A second term for Mr. Buhari raises the risk of limited economic progress and further fiscal deterioration, prolonging the stagnation of his first term, particularly if there is no move towards completing reform of the exchange rate system or fiscal adjustments that diversify government revenues away from oil.”

    “Economic growth remains sluggish and reliant on the rebound in oil output while the non-oil economy, which accounts for about 90 per cent of GDP, continues to languish with many service sectors still mired in contraction.

    “Joblessness continues to rise, up almost three-fold in three years to 19 per cent in Q3 2017, pushing the number in poverty to 87 million. “Meanwhile, current account improvements may have pivoted on higher oil prices, but they also derive from on-going import restrictions and limited FX access for many sectors of the economy.”

    Now, if you consider the ‘garbage’ (I choose to describe it so) – so patently self-serving and needlessly condescending – packaged as economic outlook as outrageous and offensive; just as galling must be the attempt by the duo to insert themselves into the nation’s domestic affairs going by their subtle hints at regime change – no matter that some of the premises are grounded on incontrovertible facts.

    Of course, the economy is still in the woods. And there can be no denying that. Thanks to global rise in crude prices, oil retains its status as a major driver and with it the potentials for future instability. In the absence of the vital infrastructure required to leapfrog the economy in record time, what we have is an economy locked in the cyclic mode all depending on the direction of the swing!

    Clearly, there can be no better testimonial than those supplied by members of the organised private sector (OPS) as reported by this newspaper on Sunday. First is the one from former Director General of the Nigeria Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), and consultant to the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), John Isemede:”The country cannot be said to have exited recession with the figures being released for the economic performance of the first quarter (Q1), which recorded growth of 1.95 percent, and the second quarter (Q2) is 1.5 percent”.  To him, the economy could”go into depression this time around, if right recovery policies are not put in place and properly managed.”

    “The real sector” he further said, “is still wrestling with serious productivity challenges arising from the constraint of infrastructure, particularly power and logistics. It is imperative that efforts are geared towards investment and policies focusing on improving logistics and enhancing the power sector. The manufacturing sector also slowed from 3.39 percent in Q1 to 0.68 percent in Q2 as a result of massive infrastructural deficit, and logistic challenges”.

    He says “The Apapa gridlock, access and cost of credit, weak purchasing power, multiple taxation amongst others are points to ponder.”

    To Frank Jacobs President of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN): “Technically, Nigeria has exited recession, but the economy… is still vulnerable. The macroeconomic indices and structural reforms need urgent attention to contain vulnerability and support sustainable private sector-led growth.”

    Or the equally insightful view of the chairman, Policy Committee of MAN, Engineer Reginald Odiah: “Nigeria is just lucky that oil price is on the increase; otherwise, manufacturing is consistently dwindling. If you look closely at it, most businesses have closed down. I am not seeing clear policy direction and political will to bring the country out completely out of recession completely. The government is just focusing more attention on the 2019 general election. We just need to make one more mistake and the country would plunge back into deep recession.”

    In the same vein, it does not require special grace to acknowledge the number of things that the administration has done to jumpstart the economy. Notably among these are the array of fiscal reforms that have boosted the treasury while also blocking all avenues for the endemic wastes and corruption that hitherto hobbled and undermined the nation’s fiscal processes.  We have also seen a lot of investment in rail transportation which of course promises to be a game changer whenever they finally come on stream. To these we can add the ongoing rehabilitation of road infrastructure, investment in hydro-power.

    By far the most credible charge is that the current administration could do far more than it is currently doing to turn the tide. First is the reality of mass unemployment with its continuing potentials for social dislocation. Second is the snail-paced attempt at infrastructural renewal at a time of unprecedented infrastructure deficit. Most hobbling of course is the lack of clarity in policies and programme.

    The real problem as I see it is that the Buhari administration has neither found the hunger for development on the scale that matches our current realities nor shown firm resolve to undertake extraordinary measures to avert the looming socio-economic cataclysm. For a country with a population growth rate of 2.7 percent to be doing 1.9 percent in GDP growth is the surest way to court disaster.  Put simply, Nigerians haven’t quite seen the scale of change envisaged when, three years ago, they threw out the incompetent PDP administration.

  • China and Nigeria’s development dilemma

    If you are not yet familiar with the story of the Hambantota Port Development Projecttouted by the influential New York Timesas one of the “most vivid examples of China’s ambitious use of loans and aid to gain influence around the world — and of its willingness to play hardball to collect”, perhaps you should. It is an interesting story of the growing power of Chinese money – and debt – that the poor countries of the south can afford to ignore at their peril. It is a story of how the Sri Lankan government, last December, signed off its strategic port of Hambantota to China on a 99-year lease – the consequence of $8 billion debt owed to state-controlled Chinese firms – a move, government critics said threatens the country’s sovereignty.

    Think that is far flung?

    How about the latest oneemerging from Zambia – whose electricity utility company, ZESCO is ‘rumoured’ to be on the line for China’s takeover after default on loan repayment? In a report by Africa Confidential, titled Bills, Bonds and even Bigger Debts,Zambia isreportedly in talks with China over a possible takeover of the electricity company.  Already, the national broadcaster, ZNBC is owned and run by China.

    Move over to Djibouti, the East African which lies more than 2,500 miles from Sri Lanka whose public debt put atsome 88 percent of the country’s overall $1.72 billion GDP of which China owns the lion’s share. Again, the story is one of possible takeover of vital national assets– the consequence of a debt default.

    Now, if you ignore the paranoia of the West on what is perceived to be the 21st Century Scramble for Africa, certainly not so the crushing burdens of the debts on economies that are best fragile, and more so on projects that have failed to deliver any real value beyond swelling the accounts of unscrupulous officials. Scarier of course is the real prospects of re-colonisation as most of the debts prove increasingly unrepayable. That is the tragedy of a continent that claims to have very limited resources for development, and yet borrows massively for ill-conceived projects.

    This is why thedebate on the extension of $60 billion infrastructure financing package for African countries by President of China, Xi Jinping, at this year’s Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) – first announced in 2015 – has suddenly become animated.

    Here in Nigeria, the subject, debt of course remains a touchy issue.Barely 13 years ago, the country celebrated its exit from the iniquitous creditor cartel of London and Paris Clubswith a chant– Never Again – after hefting out US$12 billion in full and final settlement.

    Today, the reality is far different. With an infrastructure gap estimated to cost about three trillion dollars in the next three decades and a terribly unpredictable revenue base, even the most rosy-eyed nationalist would deny that Nigeria, the so-called African giant, would require the scale of funds injection such as its internal resource profile – public and private combined – can deliver in order to make a dent on the infrastructural situation. Picture this side by side with the unpredictable nature of oil revenue a huge chunk of which is stolen or mismanaged and the country’s tax to GDP ratio of amiserable six percentwhich makes any serious development effort a non-starter, Nigeria’s dilemma would seem fairly easy to understand.

    And so the Chinese have been coming – with their money – lots of it. For good or for ill, we might well face it that they are going to be here for a long time – either as partners or foes depending on what our leaders make of it. Whether in the railways where they are supposed to be doing a brand new multi-billion dollar standard gauge; or in the road sector where their state-backed construction  company – China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation, CCECC,increasingly looms large, or even the manufacturing sector where they are known to churn out domestic items ranging from plastics to chinaware, or in the entertainment where they are making a determined foray in the battle of over our minds in the pay TV sector, it is now the case that the petit folks from the Far East are no longer the aliens from outer space that many had thought they were. Not only are they here as engineers, contractors, consultants, they are also trooping in as domestic workers, laundry men and women, labourers and even call girls – in a country where one out two potentially employable youth is out of job.

    How much do we owe the Chinese? Like everything Nigerian, it is doubtful if anyone truthfully knows. Whereas the Debt Management Office (DMO) – the agency managing the country’s debt stock – puts the figure at a little over US$1.9billion as at the end of June, (that is what its website says), the presidency puts its own figure at US$5 billion. To paraphrase President Muhammadu Buhari at the just concluded FOCAC summit, Nigeria is leveraging Chinese funding to execute $3.4 billion worth of projects. The projects,at various stages of completion, include the upgrading of airport terminals, the Lagos – Kano rail line, the Zungeru hydroelectric power project and fibre cables for our internet infrastructure. The president also referred to the $1billion loan for additional rolling stock for the newly constructed rail lines as well as road rehabilitation and water supply projects.

    Just for the asking: And where does the $5.792 billion (about N2.096 trillion) 3,050MW Mambilla Power Project fit in all of these? Any ideas?

    Should we fear the debt situation getting out of control? Fear, ordinarily, should be out of the question. With nearly 200 million people, the nation’s entire foreign debt, officially over $22 billion would seem modest by any standards. Rest assured however that Nigeria is neither Zambia with 16.59 million in population nor Djibouti, a country of less than a million people. That is not even talking of our GDP currently in excess US$405.1 billion which, despite the parlous infrastructure situation, puts us miles ahead on the African continent.

    What should we fear then? The answer is the 10-letter word – Leadership. In a world where leadership is everything, Nigeria continues to suffer the plaque of a blighted leadership – a blind, corrupt and utterly self-serving crop of leaders.Elsewhere, the sum $10 billion is a lot less than  the amount required to deliver one leg of the railways. Even for the Chinese, it is a pricey bill to pay for interests considered strategic to their national and geo-political goals. Thrown into Nigeria’s impregnable infrastructure of  corruption, it would come to pretty little really. The Chinese know asmuch as the multinationals ever so adept at preying on the folly of our leadership to pad up their bloated compensations do. And so they play – while we lose. Imagine blaming the oil majors for the half of century-long joke called local content policy? Or blaming MTN for hefting our billions of dollars in underserved compensation for the sins of the failure of the regulator to raise the red flag when it mattered?

    Rather than fear the Chinese or their loans– as many invariably fear they will go bad – we should rather fear the artful crooks ever so ‘careful’at leaving enough gaps in the contracts for themselves and their partners to profit from whenever the bubble bursts.

    As it was in the beginning…

  • MTN’s cross

    It is unlikely that many Nigerians have full grasp of the issues that led to the action taken by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) against four banks and Nigeria’s leading telecommunications company, MTN. Days after, I still hear otherwise knowledgeable Nigerians shrug off the issue as if it does not matter ostensibly because, in their opinion, the matter concerns a company’s legitimate earnings as against what truly aspires to be a corporate scandal of the century!

    Let’s take a close look at the issues. Four banks were alleged to have aided the telecommunications company in illegal repatriation of funds. In all, the five entities together were said to have procured a dubious Certificate of Capital Importation (CCI) on the basis of which billions of dollars were shipped out of the country – conducts adjudged as flagrant violation of extant laws and regulations of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, including the Foreign Exchange (Monitoring and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1995 and Foreign Exchange Manual, 2006.

    Standard Chartered Bank which led the pack of alleged offenders got a hefty fine of N2.4 billion; Stanbic –N1.8 billion, Citibank – N1.2 billion and Diamond Bank N250 million.

    In all, the banks and their principal – MTN Nigeria are to jointly refund the US$8.134 billion illegally repatriatedabroad to the coffers of the apex bank.

    Even if one is able to set the seriousness of the alleged crime aside – a nigh impossible task given the immediacy of the plunge in MTN’s share value by 25 percent few hours after the regulatory hammer –particularly riveting must be the surprise sprung by Godwin Emefiele’s Central Bank of Nigeria on a matter that has been subject of intense whispers in corporate corridors for some time now.

    It is not that corporate malfeasances are anything new. What is a rarity is a player being caught out flat footed. This time, the CBN appears to have had its case well laid out in the individual letters sent out to the banks and to the telecommunications company. The high point of the letter is the reference to a meeting between the Committee of Governors of the apex bank with the management of the four banks as well as representatives of MTN in Lagos on May 25, “to give all the parties fair hearing, towards taking an informed decision on the matters.”

    Little wonder the tepid – or if you like measured – responses by the offending banks – minus of course MTN. For MTN it certainly comes across as the return of an old nightmare. Coming three years after the company was handed down a $5.2 billion fine (later reduced to $3.2 billion) for not meeting the deadline for disconnecting the Subscribers Identification Modules (SIM) with improper registration, the CBN action comes close to a blow to the solar plexus.

    And what is MTN Nigeria’s defence to the weighty charges? The standard response that one might imagine –denial and rationalisation – doused with a tinge of blackmail.

    First, it insists that it has done nothing wrong; that the CBN it was that goofed.

    Said the company: “The issues surrounding the CCI’s have already been the subject of a thorough enquiry by the Senate of Nigeria. In September 2016 the senate mandated the Committee on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions to carry out a holistic investigation on compliance with the Foreign exchange (monitoring and miscellaneous) Act by MTN Nigeria & Others. In its report issued in November 2017, the findings evidenced that MTN Nigeria did not collude to contravene the foreign exchange laws and there were no negative recommendations made against MTN Nigeria”.

    Really?Does the MTN truly believe that the matter under reference ever “went” anywhere?No doubt, the corpse may have been considered long buried by the MTN; only that in this particular case, the unseemly sight of the limbs stubbornly jutting out of the earthat best makes it a fantasy that only the MTN could afford to luxuriate in.  In any case, MTN did not allude to any statute of limitation such as could be taken to preclude further inquiries on the alleged infractions at any point in time – which of coursemakes the claim utterly self-serving.

    Remember that we are talking here of issues straddling criminal conduct, of corporate misdemeanour and wilful subversion of the laws of the republic by a leading player in the economy – issueswhich ordinarilywould take more than the Committee on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions of the Upper House to thrash out. Most certainly, nothing of the spectacular charade carried out by the senate committee could be deemed to be anything near “holistic investigation on compliance” gleefully presented to the world by MTN in the so-called defence.

    Even at that, does it even matter that the senate actually returned a verdict of”improper documentations in respect of capital repatriation and loan repayments” byStanbic IBTC Bankfor which sanctions were actually recommended at the time? And does this not establish aprima facie case of infractions which, in normal circumstances would have dictated further clinical and forensic investigations with a view to establishing the degree of the infractions?

    Here, by the way, is what the senate found:”There was evidence of massive capital outflow but that fact alone is not conclusive that a crime has been committed”. In other words, not that there were no crimes committed but that proofs were not supplied!

    Far from any presumption of closure which could not have been anything but premature at the time, it seems to me an open invitation to the only authority that could have supplied the proof to step in and finish the job! And now that it has turned in its verdict, it seems just about time also for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to step in to clear the remaining fog!

    Secondly, it counter-charges that “The re-emergence of these issues is regrettable as it damages investor confidence and, by extension, inhibits the growth and development of the Nigerian economy”.

    The comment, certainly unfortunate smacks of blackmail. For a company that has never pretended to be a model corporate player, the subtle embrace of corporate misdemeanours would seem not entirely out of character – the very reason the company is on the black book of severalAfrican countrieswith the staggering cumulative fines of $400 million since 2014 – an average of $100m each year. That’s aside the $5.2bn fine imposed by the federal government on the company in 2015.

    Finally to the question – what does it matter?

    First, for a country which not only lacks the capacity to produce basic goods but in fact depends almost exclusively on imports, it matters the use to which we put our limited store of forex. Second, if only for the corrupting influence and deliberate subversion that the development represents for our institutions, they do matter. Third, to the extent that it represents a measure of the extent to which we are able to enforce our laws and regulations, it does matter. Indeed, it matters a great deal that a country on endless shopping for foreign direct investmentcurrently takes no thought about the scourge that illicit capital transfers continue to wreak on its fragile economy. Finally, it matters because laws were allegedly broken for which the country deserves a just recompense. Over to you EFCC.

  • These strange times

    I have just read your today’s piece. I have this question to ask you. You wrote so glowingly about how it will be dictatorial to use executive orders to haul thieves into the jailhouse by the president. Where is the judiciary to which you altruistically refer? I am miffed at how we hypocritically denounce corruption with one hand and cozily embrace same with the other, forgetting that the cancerous disease deserves all round attention”.

    That was the reaction to my piece by a reader – W. Jones to my column of last week. There were of course more extreme reactions to the suggestion in the piece that the Buhari administration would certainly do better to create legacy institutions that would guarantee equal opportunity to the citizens as against the current preoccupation with fighting the fires after the event.

    As for the other suggestion on due observance to the due process of law which in normal, democratic settings would be deemed as given and inviolate, I also got reactions which tended to suggest that niceties of rule or law and due process were the kind of luxuries that Buhari’s war on corruption could ill-afford at this time.

    In all, I could almost hear the now famous Trumpian chants – Lock ‘em up – among the hordes that constitute the Mai Gaskiya base, shorn of any pretense to any law or reference to a statute under which citizens could be herded into jailhouses without the rigour of process. The president, some seems to be suggesting, should neither be circumscribed by the due process of the law nor those age-long conventions that imbue the democratic spirit.

    These are extraordinarily unsettling times no doubt. Remember that few weeks ago, a certain senator-to-be, Lawal Yahaya Gumau, actually declared that his sole interest in wanting to go to the senate is to join other like minds to make President Buhari life president. Before then, one heard not too infrequent whispers in supposedly knowledgeable quarters about deploying extra-legal measures in the push for a new ethical and moral order. Now, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has been sniffing round in its lone war that betrays more of showmanship with nary rhyme or method leaving the judiciary, ever the whipping boy, to gawk in horror at the critical tasks left undone.

    Of course, to every pushback that the current constitutional arrangement neither recognizes the rule of a lone sovereign nor does it contemplate the idea of an elected government governing by decrees let alone ouster clauses by whatever name; or that the task ahead requires more than the agencies appear willing to undertake, the inevitable counter push goes like – since the author and finisher of the anti-corruption war is himself without blemish, just about any means and tool ought to be permissible in the bid to rid the country of its Augean stable!

    Again, these are strange times.

    However, stranger still is the treatise by President Muhammadu Buhari at the 2018 Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Abuja on Sunday. According to the president, the rule of law must be subject to the supremacy of the nation’s security and national interest.

    “Our apex court”, he said, “has had cause to adopt a position on this issue in this regard and it is now a matter of judicial recognition that where national security and public interest are threatened or there is a likelihood of their being threatened, the individual rights of those allegedly responsible must take second place, in favour of the greater good of society.”

    The president has, clearly not hidden his frustrations with the unrelenting criticisms that the continuing detention of former National Security Adviser (NSA) Sambo Dasuki, the Shiite leader Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his wife has courted for his administration, despite the unambiguous ruling of the courts. Even at that, his patently specious interpretation of the position of the nation’s apex court on an issue that touches the heart and soul of constitutional governance seems to have stretched the issue beyond comprehensibility!

    What is national interest? Aside failing to provide the context for the statement credited to the apex court, the president didn’t bother to explain how the continuing incarceration of an individual and his wife would fall in the realm of “national interest” more so after the individual in question has since been arraigned before the courts. But even permitting that citizens could in exceptional circumstances be held indefinitely, our practice of constitutionalism, which borrows extensively from the United States, also allows courts to intervene through writs of habeas corpus if only to convince the judiciary – another arm of government – that a valid reason exists for that person’s detention.

    To the extent that this goes to the heart of the doctrine of separation of powers, the least the president could do is recognise and accept it as such. Even then, it seems strange that a converted democrat could not see that such failures to observe such measures necessary to prevent arbitrary exercise of power by one arm of government against the individual as something to be avoided. That route can only take the country straight right back to the era of divine rights of kings where arbitrariness rules!

    Which takes us right back to the growing disdain for the rule of law in the frenzy to extirpate corruption. It needs putting simply that the rule is everything. It is a guarantee for inviolability or sanctity of contracts; its observance regulates behavior of parties in business and where dispute arises, the parties are guided to seek succor in the process. Far from being another catchy phrase, it is the surest insurance against arbitrariness. It goes therefore without saying that the open deprecation of the concept by the president who should ordinarily play the country’s marketer in chief can only spell trouble in a republic where foreign investment has become something of a religion.