The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

  • Nearer to moment of truth

    With most states of the federation presently surviving on the financial lifeline packaged by Abuja, and with majority practically living only for the present, we must put it to the nature of the times that our attitudes to crisis have neither reflected the gravity of the situation we currently face, nor has it elicited the kind of radical measures that would ordinarily be expected in the circumstance.

    By itself, the extraordinary measure of shelling out N338 billion to bailout some nearly one score insolvent states ought to ominous enough. However, merely by the emerging attitude both at the level of governments and the labour unions, there is almost the temptation to see the emerging development as nothing unusual; and that just because the nation has been through this route before, that it would somehow manage to pull through. That probably explains the demands on the governors of the affected states to simply get on with the business of sharing the windfall.

    Now, no matter how one looks at the bailout package itself, it must be admitted that the intervention, in the circumstance, makes eminent sense. It is after all, elementary economics that massive injection of cash would give fillip to the economies of the states, shore up demand for good and services and generally boost economic activities. Beyond that, short of practically shutting down the states’ bureaucracies and hence the states’ infrastructure of governance and hence risk possible destabilisation of the polity, the options available to the federal government would appear limited.

    So – here we are with 19 out of the 36 states collecting the huge sums with no strings attached, on terms that ordinarily qualify as extremely generous and as some have argued, tended to reward fiscal indiscipline and profligacy. I must say that the latter point is not without some merits. This is to the extent that no questions are asked about how the individual states got into the mess; their plan get out of the hole; and as far as anyone can see, no verifiable premise  on the basis of which the lending authorities can make informed judgment about the abilities of the state to pay what they have collected. Here, the assumption appears to be that there is no limit to the extent to which sovereign debts can be pushed down the road since there would always be something in the distributive pool to share. So, as always, life goes on.

    The trouble here is that our nightmares have only just begun. To start with, in the unlikelihood of imminent recovery in crude prices whether in the short, medium or long term, the federal government has merely helped to postpone the evil day. If the call by some governors on their workers to understand that there will still be governments to run after the settlement of the arrears of wages; or that the bailout is nothing more than a temporary balm; and that those outside of the public service are just as entitled to their share of the bailout via improved service delivery; if these and many such calls have been heard at all, the message does not appear to have sunk in. In the event of the failure of the state governments to re-order their priorities, hearken to the call to realign their bloated bureaucracies, cut down on wastes while boosting their internally generated revenues, that message would certainly dawn much sooner than later.

    Those sufficiently knowledgeable about the events of the eighties which eventuated in the unwelcome intervention by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the painful adjustments visited on the economy ought to be able to recognise the tell-tale signs of a looming financial Armageddon. Much as we pretend that we are nowhere there yet, the same old symptoms of insolvency, trade and currency imbalances are such that we can ignore them to our peril. It seems to me only a matter of time before something gives.

    And what can we do? I must confess that there is not much we can do as far as the price of our main export product is concerned. However, the much that can be said of the Buhari administration in the last few months is its resolve to confront the multiple demons of corruption headlong and to get behemoth institutions like the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to play strictly by the rules by remitting their revenues appropriately to the federation account. Now, with all the hues and cries about the operation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) as having the potential to hobble the operations of some agencies, overall, it is somewhat accepted that the measure has become necessary to stop further bleeding of the national treasury.

    Of course, there is still the question of what to do with fuel subsidy which currently gulps billions but which the Buhari administration thinks is the least of our problems.

    However, good as some of the measures already in place are, it must be said that they are not nearly sufficient given the magnitude of the problem. For even if we block all the avenues of waste, bring corruption to the barest minimum, there is little indication that what would be available would still suffice to go round, let alone to service the needs of the bureaucracy or fund the yawning infrastructure gaps.

    Beyond all of these is the more problematic issue of what to do with our current distributive federalism with its premium on sharing which in my view, is our number one problem.

    This is where my sympathy goes to the governors. It is their tough luck that that they have found themselves in a mess they didn’t create. To the extent that it is how things have always been, they are merely the victims of a distorted fiscal practice that have persisted for so long.

    My problem is the whining and moaning currently going on in most Government Houses. If one expected fresh thinking on the crisis, yours truly has found absolutely none. Save the wild embrace of the Buhari palliative across the land. As with all things easy and cheap, the bitter reality awaits sooner than later. That will be the ultimate moment of truth – for everyone.

    ‘My problem is the whining and moaning currently going on in most Government Houses. If one expected fresh thinking on the crisis, yours truly has found absolutely none. Save the wild embrace of the Buhari palliative across the land. As with all things easy and cheap, the bitter reality awaits sooner than later. That will be the ultimate moment of truth – for everyone’

  • Divorce made in heaven

    Some nine months after serving notice of possible ejection, J.P Morgan, the American lender finally made good its threat to kick Nigeria out of its Government Bond Index for Emerging Markets (GBI-EM). Tuesday last week, the bank announced that Nigeria would be phased out of its index by the end of September citing reasons of ‘lack of liquidity and transparency in the nation’s foreign exchange market’. In the view of the bank, the cup of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s meddlesomeness in the foreign exchange market has now run over. The cup was full in January hence the note it despatched to its clients putting Nigeria on Index Watch. That was sequel to the apex bank’s introduction of ‘administrative measures’ to prevent bets against the naira in the wake of the oil price collapse.

    A week on, our local players in the exclusive club of high-finance have done little else than parrot what their principals in global finance capitals have sold as the gospel on what is packaged as a sentence of death on the local economy. Today, foreigners – even if they are no more than currency speculators and traders – have become the authorities whose views must be treated as received gospel. If we are not daily harangued with the claim that the so-called diversified index is the most frequently used local emerging market debt gauge (as if that means anything to the struggling manufacturer struggling to survive the nation’s inclement operating environment), we are told that kicking Nigeria out of its indices could have a severe impact on Nigerian government funding at a time when many international investors are already wary of lending to the country. And who says an economy the size of Nigeria can be ignored for any length of time?

    We have also heard that Nigeria cannot do without a slice of the so-called $217bn investor money benchmarked against the GBI-EM suite of indices. I ask: when are going to be tired of the club of portfolio investors known to hit the road at the very sign of trouble in the local economy?

    Again, we have also heard that Standard & Poor and Fitch Ratings would follow suit in the coming weeks. Isn’t it supposed to be a free world? For sure, we will hear more of these and other doomsday predictions as the weeks roll by.

    Of course we know where all these are coming from. Our economy is in trouble and the vultures are merely hovering to see whether the elephant will go down. Oil prices are going down, and Nigeria is – supposedly – in no position to do anything about it. Foreign exchange – the gods on whose altar the traders and speculators worship – are in short supply. While the supply of forex continues to be in dire short supply, the demand for same unfortunately continues to grow in leaps and bounds – and now to such an extent that could not be explained by the volume of economic activities going on. Yet the vultures would rather have the monetary authorities throw their hands in the air and do nothing – so that naira could find its value even if in the end this value is indeterminate!

    Lest we forget, Nigeria was only listed on the index after the CBN removed a restriction for foreign investors to hold government bonds for a minimum of one year before they could exit. That was in October 2012. In other words, JP Morgan and their ilk would still have the CBN behave as if the conditions which existed then are the same today!

    The difference this time is that the CBN believes that with good tending, the situation could somehow be mitigated if not entirely redeemed. This thinking obviously informs the measures which it rolled out recently and which it considered as absolutely necessary at this time to halt the betting on the national currency. The idea being that if you cannot do anything about the supply end, you can at least put in some measures to ensure that frivolous demands and those bordering on speculation are kept out. That was CBN and Nigeria’s unforgivable sin for which JP Morgan and company would have the nation roast in noon-day sun – so bad that one analyst, Kevin Daly, a money manager at Aberdeen, Scotland, as reported by Bloomberg dared to describe the loss of the index status as “a classic own goal”.

    Of course, the analyst also let out a slip which he claimed forced JP Morgan’s hand as “squeezing the FX market and not allowing any locals to trade it, they just pushed investors to the sidelines”. (My emphasis). In other words, the CBN stands accused of not allowing further betting at the risk of putting the national treasury in jeopardy!

    Now, we can debate the measures by the CBN as to its effectiveness in the long run. I would certainly agree that some of the measures would require some fine-tuning. Overall, the measures would appear to bode far well for the economy at this point in time than the alternative being promoted by JP Morgan and its allies. The CBN has in my view, acted wisely to avoid the calamitous consequences of an un-moderated demand for forex.

    That takes me to the fetish that has come to be made of foreign investment. In an environment where the local business remains endangered, it is quite ironic that governments at various levels do very little else than pander to the whims of some foreign salesmen even when they have shown that they are mere soldiers of fortune. It seems to me a measure of how pretty little the nation has learnt of the lessons of the global credit meltdown of 2008 when the exit of the same portfolio investors sounded the death knell of our capital market.

    If there is any lesson in all of this, it is that the nation’s interest should come first; which is why it is hard to fault the CBN.

    ‘If you cannot do anything about the supply end, you can at least  ensure that frivolous demands and those bordering on speculation are kept out. That was CBN and Nigeria’s unforgivable sin for which JP Morgan and company would have the nation roast in noon-day sun ’ 

  • That circus of ‘name and shame’

    Now that things have relatively quietened down after the last bout of industry-scale ritual of ‘naming and shaming of delinquent borrowers, we can now reflect on the aftermath of an exercise that has done more to confound than resolve problems. Until most recently, I probably assumed that debt is not necessarily a vice. With perhaps the exception of our cash-hung economy, my understanding was that debt constituted the main fuel on which modern businesses run – a serious business at that.  Whether we are talking of a giant corporation or a struggling household business in some remote corner of town; debt is like oxygen – the presence/absence of which determines whether or not a business will live or die.

    In this wise, I must say that the controversies that have trailed the exercise is hardly surprising. It is a measure of the banality that the debt instrument has become particularly in our clime. After all, those who hunger for it a la credit – that is its other name – hardly ever gets it while those who get it are those who hardly needs it. Call it the Nigerian paradox; it explains why the manufacturer who has a factory to run – whose operations are hobbled by dearth or inadequate working capital – is left dry in the sun while the economic vagrant, whose only net-worth is in the number of cars in his convoy, commands all the attention. It is at the root of why the Zungeru cash cropper cannot cut an impression with our stiff-necked banker while the fuel importer is given free rein into the vault.

    To be sure, yours truly would have been most surprised is if the parties involved had quietly sorted out their mess while allowing the rest of us some peace. However, for an exercise that was said to have been designed to shake up the so-called delinquent players, it seems doubtful that it achieved anything of substance aside ruffling a few feathers. Yes, it stoked anger – lots of it – and with it threats and here and there. Beyond that, there is as yet, little evidence that it achieved much in terms of getting the wayward debtors to pay what they owe, and certainly far much less in addressing a problem that has become rather systemic.

    No wonder the exercise ended as an elaborate farce – which is what made it tragic. For if merely by the tone of its letter of April 22 to banks and discount houses, the apex bank left no doubts about the seriousness it attached to the exercise. The relevant part of the letter read – “The CBN has managed to keep the banking industry safe and sound in collaboration with all members of the Bankers’ Committee….But some data shows that it is increasingly becoming difficult for some debtors to pay up their loans. So it was decided that going forward, one thing that we may do is to stop them from getting access to foreign exchange. This is to ensure the continuous safety and soundness of the banking industry”. That understandably was the reason behind the pill handed the so-called delinquent debtors – the three months of grace, effective May 1, during which they were to turn their accounts from non-performing to performing status, failing which their names would be published in major newspapers.

    After two massive shakedowns – call it – comprehensive, industry-wide restructurings both of which were massively promoted as designed to deliver a brand new financial services industry – it says a lot about how very little has changed that the very afflictions that necessitated them – the appetite for uncalculated risk, sundry abuses of insider credit and other forms of abuses – have simply refused to go away. Merely by what the CBN letter suggest, the plague appears to have morphed into sublime but no less malignant forms.

    For sure, we know who is getting what. The oil and gas sector tops the bill. The reason is not far fetched; that is where money could be made without breaking a sweat. You ask how? Tell me of a sector that would shell thirty-something percent interest all in a year’s cycle of investment and I would show you a modern-day Robin Hood come to town. It also happens that the sector which claims the lion share of the available credit also carries with it the maximum risk.

    Now, this is far from pronouncing guilt on everyone as charged. Indeed, I am reminded of an a rather interesting riposte fired by the powerful Federation of Construction Industry (FOCI) – a body that has on its membership list, big names like Julius Berger Plc, C&C Construction, Costain West Africa, Hitech, Brunelli Construction, Jagal Nigeria, G. Cappa Plc, PW Nigeria Limited, Dantata and Sawoe and RCC – in the wake of the publication of the debtors list. Their position was simple: the CBN cannot isolate ‘delinquent debtors’ from the toxic environment which produce them. The body gave the example of the Federal Ministry of Works which it claims owes its members over N500 billion just as it admonished the apex bank to also publish names of government ministries, departments and agencies indebted to their members for Nigerians to have a fair appreciation of the problem. Here is how their President Solomon Ogunbusola puts it: “We are indebted to banks and CBN is threatening our members, saying that it will publish their names as chronic debtors. How can you explain it that someone borrowed money from the bank for two to three years and government refuses to pay for the contract done with the money? What will CBN do to government that refuses to pay the contractor? The names of such governments must be published too”?

    I am also aware of another set of people – those whose names have no business being on the debtors list as published. And we are not here talking of few muddled up names but individuals, who despite not having borrowed a dime from the banks, have had their reputations sullied by their appearance on the infamous list. Again, it says a lot about the appalling record-keeping in the financial sector as a whole that those charged with keeping custody of other people’s funds cannot be trusted to keep a clean list of debtors. When added to the poor judgment behind a good number of the credit decisions, the financial services sector would emerge as standing in graver risk than anyone could have imagined.

    That, to me is the salient danger we must reflect upon, more so at these difficult times.

    ‘It says a lot about the appalling record-keeping in the financial sector as a whole that those charged with keeping custody of other people’s funds cannot be trusted to keep a clean list of debtors. When added to the poor judgment behind a good number of the credit decisions, the financial services sector would emerge as standing in graver risk than anyone could have imagined. 

     

    Glad to be back

    I must apologise that yours truly made a rather dramatic disappearance from this page for more than four weeks running. Some personal exigencies dictated that I take some time to sort things out. Now, I am back, fully refreshed to continue in the struggle to make our nation what it truly deserves to be…

  • The way the cookie crumbles

    The fate that has befallen the parallel segment of Nigeria’s foreign exchange market in the last one week reminds me of James Hadley Chase thriller with the above title. For a market whose staying power has been in its ability to defy the laws of gravity, it says a lot about the changing tides that the naira which has been on a free fall in the last three weeks not only regained its verve but did in a rather dramatic manner.

    On Saturday when the news that the naira has recovered ground first broke, yours truly initially considered it as one of the offerings from the rumour mill. A quick check would confirm that the naira which had traded in the low band of N240-N245 in the parallel market segment for three weeks running had truly gained strength (it sold for between N210 and N215 at the weekend); the reason would emerge later: domiciliary account holders had been barred from paying into their foreign-denominated accounts!

    Of interest to me was that a measure which seeks to set the currency on an irreversible course – and which has expectedly brought much wailing and gnashing of teeth to currency speculators – was actually effected by the monetary authorities without the usual fuss.

    I considered that as too good to be true. And to think that no one actually saw the measure coming; at least to the extent that the CBN did not – officially – do as much as firing a shot to bring this about!

    Was it a case of the newshounds missing in action when it really mattered? Apparently, not even the CBN website had much to offer by weekend. The press release, issued by the apex bank only on Saturday, titled Renewed Vigilance to Prohibit Illicit Financial Flows in Nigeria’s Banking System – at best ex-post factum explanation – neither gave anything away nor said anything really.

    Yes, it expressed concerns about the report by the Global Financial Integrity group, which ranked Nigeria as one of the 10 largest countries for illicit financial flows in the world, and which estimates that about US$15.7 billion of illicit funds go through the nation’s financial system annually.  It reminded the public of the existing protocols on illicit fund flows, money laundering, and terrorism financing both in Nigeria and around the world, followed by a terse warning that “the CBN will increase its vigilance to ensure that Nigerian banks are not used as conduits for illicit fund flows, especially in foreign currencies”.

    In the end, it merely acknowledged that “Nigerian banks have started to curtail the acceptance of foreign currency cash deposits, much the same way as customers in other countries cannot just walk into banks and make foreign currency cash deposits without proper documentation” – and with it, a reminder that the apex bank’s “foreign exchange rules have many windows for accessing foreign exchange for legitimate business as well as for personal commitments including payment of medical bills, school fees, mortgages, demand notes and other bills”.

    There was simply no suggestion of any specific measures taken aside the general assurances to “all citizens seeking foreign currencies for legitimate personal and/or business interests that there remains ample opportunity to do so within the law”. To imagine that the operators were at this time were already counting millions in losses.

    To be sure, not a few Nigerians would be happy that the so-called Black Market is being served the same bitter potion it enjoyed administering on the economy. The truth of the matter is that only in the context of the inexcusable paradox of Nigeria’s traumatised economy can the suzerainty of the unofficial market be rationalised or even condoned. For far too long, we have seen the so-called parallel market not only rule; we have watched as the operators insist on setting the direction for the monetary authorities to follow.

    Before now, I actually wondered what made the black market tick. Convenience? The so-called ease of transactions said to flow its lack of stringent rules? In the past, that would probably be true. In today’s world, technology has made all the difference. With a plastic card or at a touch of a button, you can effect payments in financial jurisdictions that would have been unthinkable only a while ago. I recall that yours truly once kept a domiciliary account. The idea behind it was to enable me pay for magazine subscriptions. Five years after, the account would be rendered redundant –superfluous. Really, Nigeria may third world in several areas of its national life, its payment systems currently aspires to first world status – and that is the truth!

    The real story of the weekend is however the unspoken part. We know the story behind the panic which the PDP amazingly sees as the flight to communism. It is the morbid fear of what would happen to their castle of dollarised economy in the event of the rules finally closing in. That their trove of dollar holdings would shed nearly 10 percent under one week must truly be a frightening proposition. Seems about time the malcontents brought out their vast hoard of forex to save our dear naira.

    After all, a firm naira would be good for the economy, particularly the small and medium scale industries currently gasping for breadth.

    The reason I wonder why the CBN couldn’t simply step in and make it real. Or is it a return to the familiar game of playing the ostrich?

    ‘Only in the context of the inexcusable paradox of Nigeria’s traumatised economy can the suzerainty of the unofficial market be rationalised or even condoned. For far too long, we have seen the so-called parallel market not only rule; we have watched as the operators insist on setting the direction for the monetary authorities to follow’

  • JAMB of trouble

    This must be a difficult time for the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and its helmsman, Dibu Oyerinde – a professor. If you can imagine the miracle moment when Jesus Christ had the arduous task of feeding 5,000-throng band of followers with two fishes and five loaves of bread, you will probably understand the dilemma of the egg-head on whose head lies the burden of placing 1,475,600 individuals in barely available 500,000 spaces in the nation’s tertiary institutions. Unfortunately, not even the knowledge that he is no Jesus Christ – nor a miracle worker – seems likely to spare him the sentence that befell the Christian avatar with hundreds of thousands already demanding his sack – if not his head on a platter!

    We saw a bit of that at the University of Lagos gate last Wednesday when hundreds of angry, placard-carrying candidates and parents marched to demand the removal of the professor over the so-called new policy. On that day, yours truly actually received nearly a dozen calls from friends and relations – all frustrated parents –  alleging that their wards were denied opportunity to write post-UTME tests into the University of Lagos for reasons which, according to them, they found difficult to comprehend. There was a specific case of a parent, who claimed that his daughter who had applied to study Mass Communications scored 254 – a figure slightly above the University of Lagos adopted cut-off point of 250 – and yet was excluded in the list forwarded by JAMB to the university authorities for the post-UMTE test. The gripe of the protesters was that by raising their cut-off point to 250 as against JAMB’s 180, the University of Lagos authorities changed the rules midway.

    The protesters obviously deserve a sympathetic ear. After all, last year, the cut off point was the same 180 – and everyone was invited to the meal that everyone knew would barely go round a quarter of the famished souls lined up for the feast. Now, everyone wonders why things would be different this year. Imagine, we are back to the same cycle of recriminations; the futile search for solution of the arithmetic of making 500,000 spaces go round 1.5 million candidates. They forget the basic difference between an academic and a miracle worker!

    And the new policy? Allow individual universities to determine their cut-off points while JAMB redistributes applicants!

    Yes, they have a point – as always even if in the end they win the argument and come critically short on the issues at stake.

    Let’s also admit that the defence by JAMB is just as persuasive. JAMB’s head of media, Fabian Benjamin, for instance, told us last week for instance that the national cut-off marks of 180 for universities and 150 for polytechnics, colleges of education and innovative enterprise institutions in the 2015 UTME were merely benchmarks to set the tone for this year’s admission exercise. They were, according to him, no more than ‘guides’; ‘pruning’ tools to give the institutions manageable candidates to choose from.

    As far as his JAMB is concerned, “universities and other levels of tertiary institutions are at liberty to go higher, but not lower, depending on their peculiarities and the performance of candidates that choose them…”

    Really?

    On the widespread criticism that has greeted the new measure, he insisted that the decision… was done in good faith not to jeopardise the right of candidates due to individual cut-off set by some Nigerian tertiary institution. Those candidates who do not meet the cut-off marks of such institutions will be placed in needy institutions within their geopolitical zone depending on available space in such institutions”.

    The man in the eye of the storm, Dibu Oyerinde, was, as one might expect, conciliatory, if not altogether defensive. He says “Father forgive them, for they know not what they are saying…We are actually helping the candidates not only to get admission but to get it on time. The big universities are overloaded. Can you imagine 8,000 students seeking for admission to study law in a university that will take only 250 candidates for law? The remaining 7750 candidates will wait endlessly and hopelessly till the end of the admission. Or imagine 7500 candidates seeking for medicine in a university. Of these 7500 candidates, 2000 scored above 250 in the UTME. The university has a carrying capacity of only 150 candidates for medicine. The remaining 7350 who scored above 200 will be wasted. Particularly, 1750 candidates who scored above 250 will be wasted while other universities either do not have enough candidates or high scoring candidates. Courses like Biological Sciences, Agric Engineering and related courses are lacking in candidacy!”

    Not done – he says “We are saying, let’s give them a feel of chance somewhere else that has not gotten enough candidates by sending the names of these HIGH scorers to “needy” universities. The names of such surplus candidates are being distributed to first, federal institutions, then state and finally private institutions in that order depending on – availability of space in other universities, choice of the course of the candidate, geographical zone of the choice of the candidate, and performance of the candidate”.

    See the huge cost of being misunderstood? Or why the search for a fall-guy or the attempt to skirt around the main issues at the heart of the brouhaha merely postpones the evil day?

    A quick one for JAMB. Can anyone explain the essence of asking candidates to indicate their preferred institutions only to have JAMB redistribute them for whatever reasons? Why should it be JAMB’s headache that one million candidates applied for 1,000 spaces in Lagos even when there are 100,000 spaces to be filled in Kaura Namoda? A case of the god of bureaucracy insisting that things could only be done its way?

    Questions of course remain. In today’s Nigeria, tertiary level admission is akin to a fundamental human right. Yet, we know that the performance paints a different picture across the board. In the 2015 UTME for instance, only 455,639 of the nearly 1.5 million actually scored 50 percent and above. That was the minimum threshold in the good old days. Why not stick to this manageable number? Why make things worse by lowering the threshold when available spaces are not enough?

    More fundamentally – why not raise the profile and number of technical colleges to shore up the pool of technical manpower? And what’s the big deal churning out hordes of certificated illiterates only to have them end up pounding our cities in search of jobs?  Why not bring back the old Trade Test system under which artisans and skilled trades were graded and remunerated as befitting their status?

    ‘Why not raise the profile and number of technical colleges to shore up the pool of technical manpower? And what’s the big deal churning out hordes of certificated illiterates only to have them end up pounding our cities in search of jobs?  Why not bring back the old Trade Test system under which artisans and skilled trades were graded and remunerated as befitting their status?’

  • PMB: The road not taken?

    Early last month, the international news agency, Reuters, reported on what it called “shadowy build up of oil in the Atlantic Basin”. A somewhat riveting account of the hordes of “homeless cargoes of crude turning into unintentional floating storage” in the absence of ready buyers, the report offers an interesting perspective to the raging fuel subsidy debate, the future of the hydrocarbon industry, as indeed, the overall economy itself.

    Of particular interest to yours truly was the report that six million barrels of Nigeria’s sweet crude from its May programme was stranded – some already loaded onto vessels – looking for buyers; the medium reported another 65 million barrels left of the June/July programme as doomed to the same fate, seeking salvation in some far-flung refineries!

    Trust Nigeria’s legendary immunity from shocks, we have since carried on as if the development – despite our near total dependence on oil – amounted to pretty little! And this at a time when, the treasuries of most states across the federation, laid waste by corruption and poor policies choices of their administrators, continue to shrink with workers and pensioners in several arrears of salaries and wages. Of course, we know that the federal government is exempt only to the extent that it has more money – far more access to slush funds – to play with than it can wisely and productively use.

    It is certainly no overstatement to say that the future is grim. With manufacturing and the real sector remaining comatose as the infrastructure remains essentially at Stone Age, it’s hard to see the end to the current steady descent into the abyss.  Today, the naira is on a slippery path with no respite in sight. Last week for instance, it traded for N241 to the United States dollars in the parallel market. Barely seven months ago, the same naira traded for N160 to the dollar. Now, picture this is a nation where just about every commodity – ranging from raw materials to finished goods – is imported and where the local manufacturer that could have stepped in to bridge the gap has been under a sentence of death from a whole gamut of inclement policies for as long as anyone can remember.

    I don’t think that Nigerians, as yet appreciate the enormity of the challenges let alone the extremely limited choices facing them at this rather difficult time. But then, I am not entirely surprised that not a few Nigerians still believe that we can continue on the current path while expecting a different set of outcomes. Yes, we can talk and hopefully deal with the different manifestations of corruption in our public institutions; there would still be the issue of what to do with some of the myths which under-gird policies.

    Today, one of the undying myths is that a bankrupted country can, simply because it is generously endowed with crude, retain the differential between the real cost and pump price of petrol and kerosene at humongous costs to the treasury, and also at a difficult time such as the nation is currently going through. A simple arithmetic will obviously tell the story better: At a net differential of N44.86 on every litre of petrol sold, we are talking of N1.794 billion daily reimbursements to a club of rentier marketers at the current estimated consumption level of 40 million litres of petrol only!

    Honestly, I had thought that by now, the era of an external body fixing a price for a product it does not produce would have been history. That was what I thought – at least until recently when President Muhammadu Buhari finally spoke on the subsidy issue. And what did the President say?

    Very little – and yet so much!

    First, the President said that he will handle the issue of subsidies on petroleum products with care. To quote the President: “I have received [a lot of] literature on the need to remove subsidies, but much of it has no depth. When you touch the price of petroleum products, that has the effect of triggering price rises on transportation, food and rents…That is for those who earn salaries, but there are many who are jobless and will be affected by it.”

    Then his submission: lack of security, sabotage, vandalism, corruption and mismanagement are the most serious problems of Nigeria’s oil sector, not subsidies! Finally, he directed the NNPC to review existing agreements for the swapping of crude oil for refined products. In so doing, the President did not fail to romanticise the past: “We have to go back to the good old days of transparency and accountability”!

    The issue of security, sabotage, vandalism, corruption and mismanagement is no doubt a living reality which the government must confront. However, I’ll say that overall the president’s message belongs to a different era. In the first place, while I may agree broadly with the President on the need to provide social safety for the poor and the underprivileged, I guess the myth has endured for far too long that cheap fuel – whether kerosene or petrol – comes close to being the most effective social safety net that our poor really need! Where is the evidence that the poor actually benefits from the daily spend of N1.794 billion on the petrol subsidy alone? Has anyone considered the option of direct cash handouts as substitute – since it is all about proving our love for the hoi polloi?

    Even more ludicrous is the presidential directive to the NNPC to review existing agreements for the swapping of crude oil for refined products.

    Here is an institution we are all agreed is a bastion of fraud; whose corpse we all wished interred; the same institution is being unwittingly given a fresh breadth of life – to do exactly what it has always done – with expectation of different results! Haba!

    Why not simply dismantle the infrastructure that has proven to be so amenable to fraud? Where are thebeautyful Nigerians that would do the job? Will the President bring them from the moon? And where is the big picture – a return to the ancien regime in which the national oil corporation plays the godfather and the bureaucrats’ god? And where will the funds come from – the same empty treasury that has been a source of lamentation?

    And where does private investment fit in all of these? Are you going to ask them to bring in their money under the hazy circumstances? Think of this as the hard choice that the Buhari administration is called to make. It’s not easy – if you ask me; the choice, to put it mildly is limited! Will he? Can he?

  • NLNG: Opening the Pandora’s Box

    From the look of things, the controversies generated by last week’s payment of $2.1 billion cash by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas into the federation account seems unlikely to go away anytime soon.  While there is a throng out there who couldn’t’ be bothered about the nomenclature ascribed to the “intervention” so long as funds are made available to bail out the cash strapped states, I also understand the feeling of those who insist that the payment be seen as nothing more than what it is – a timely but nonetheless routine rendition of accruals into the federation account.

    To be honest, I must confess to having a bit of difficulty accepting the idea of the NLNG cash haul as “bailout’”. To be sure, not only in the most expansive definition of the word can a measure which merely underlies the resolve of the Buhari administration to be more open and accountable to the different tiers of government can be so generously described. The confusion, in the circumstance, is perhaps best explained in the context of the lingering perception of the federal government as “Big Daddy”, and of course pervading atmosphere of despondency being experienced across the affected states.

    The issue at the moment of course goes beyond the mundane issues of semantics or nomenclature of what bailout is or what it is not. Here, we are talking about the riddles behind our perennial insolvency; the familiar story of how a vastly endowed nation, is held permanently hostage by special interests; how the economy is being bled left, right and centre by those charged with managing her affairs.

    Now, in the NLNG affair, the nation may well have opened the Pandora’s Box by that simple exercise of fiscal rectitude. Little wonder tongues are wagging; debates animated from all sides. I guess we are on to something here.

    To imagine that it all started with the mercy droplets of $2.1 billion by the NLNG. Whereas the federal government does not believe it has done anything extraordinary aside pushing its mantra of change by doing what is right by the law; the opposition PDP has been sulking that the federal government is playing the opportunism card.

    Let’s look at the claims and counter-claims by the parties. To the Federal Government, the money represents the taxes and dividends that have only fallen due for which the states are justly entitled. The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), says the money is merely a fraction of the $5.6 billion held in some saving account somewhere ostensibly for the Buhari administration.

    Here is what the party’s National Publicity Secretary Olisah Metuh was on record to have said: “in actual fact, the LNG dividend stood at $5.6 billion even before the handover date of May 29 and would have been shared but for the insistence of former President Goodluck Jonathan that it be left for the incoming administration.” (My emphasis).

    He would add that “the issuance of the bailout with funds from the LNG proceeds and the Excess Crude Account (ECA) has exposed the fact that the PDP administration actually left behind huge sums of money, contrary to the impression earlier given to Nigerians and the international community that the new administration met a virtually empty treasury.”

    The ruling APC disagrees. Yes, there is a $5.6 billion somewhere, but it is nowhere captured in the books. According to its spokesman, Lai Mohammed, “We can tell Nigerians that apart from the said $1.6bn NLNG payment for 2015, NLNG also paid $1.4bn as Income Tax/Education Tax in May 2014, paid $0.3bn as Education Tax to the FG in 2011, 2012 and 2013 and $1.2bn in VAT and Withholding Tax to the Federal Government  since 2009….In addition, dividend payments totalling $4,728,136,946 was paid to the Federal Government between 2004 and 2009, out of which only $127,851,348.19 was credited to the Federal Government’s Independent Account with JP Morgan, leaving a balance of over $4bn. The questions to ask, therefore, are why were all the past taxes and dividends neither fully paid into the Federation Account nor shared by the three tiers of government and what happened to the funds?”

    Let’s look at the issues a bit more closely.  Let’s even assume that the opposition PDP’s claim of saving the $5.6 billion is true. If so, it seems to me as curious that the party would find nothing wrong with the Federal Government locking up such a whopping sum in some foreign account at a time most states couldn’t pay their wages. And more so at a time when its own finances are in bad shape!

    So, where is the money kept? And why was it not reflected in the handover notes to the Buhari administration? Of course, we know the truth; the money is nowhere in any bank vault – local or foreign – but are rather domiciled in some private vaults! That is a tragedy of a nation led by men with neither a shred of morality nor conscience.

    The issues here are two fold. First is whether the federal government actually believes that the money in question belongs to it in which case it could do with it as it pleased behind the states and without the knowledge of the National Assembly. The second, more ominous is the kind of rules under which the chieftains of the federal government could assume the power to stack away the funds which neither belongs to it and over which it has no powers of appropriation. One considers the latter important not only because of their constitutional import but also because they touch at the heart of the warped fiscal practices foisted on the nation by modern-day Robin Hoods purportedly sworn to defend the constitution of the republic.

    And to imagine that this is what PDP’s Olisa Metuh has striven to defend; that the money is some savings held in trust somewhere even without as much as showing the law or the authority which permit the impunity and brazen arbitrariness!

    The issues involved are certainly grave enough as it is. However, the way forward is hardly as muddy as would seem. The matter goes to the heart of the question – a fundamental one at that – of what to do with the hordes of federal leviathans, egged on by powerful interests, to operate in strict defiance of the nation’s laws.

    The APC in my view has helped frame the issue correctly: the nation surely deserves to know not just the accounts into which the NLNG taxes and dividends were paid but how these funds were utilised. The party will do well to draw up the list of similar agencies that have acted wilfully in defiance of our laws. If it amounts to opening the Pandora’s Box, or even time for retribution, so be it. The knowledge will make the nation better for it; it would also signpost the dawn of the new beginning for which Nigerians have long signalled their embrace.

    ‘The APC in my view has helped frame the issue correctly: the nation surely deserves to know not just the accounts into which the NLNG taxes and dividends were paid but how these funds were utilised’

  • Slaying the beast

    “No matter what anybody says, we have a complete fiscal system breakdown; we can’t pay salaries; we can’t pay wages; we can’t pay our debt. And we don’t even know how much we owe, and how much deficit we have…I have said it before and I have heard people say with some authority, that when we started, deficit was about N1.3 trillion; by the time we finished people were talking about N7 trillion”.

    Those were the words of elder statesman Ahmed Joda in a recent interview with Thisday published June 28. Those statements were made shortly after the handover over the report of his transition committee to President Muhammadu Buhari. Now, if you thought that the old man was given to exaggeration by his sweeping allusion to the collapse of the fiscal system, you will need to read newspaper accounts of the inaugural meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC) which although focused on the financial crisis facing the three tiers of government, was an opportunity for the council to beam its searchlight on the criminal mismanagement that has been the lot of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

    While the saying may be true that there is nothing new under the sun, this time around, Nigerians would hopefully get to see the monstrosity of their national oil corporation in its truest element – a government within a government, an octopus that is neither encumbered by the niceties of financial regulation, nor bound by the strictures of parliamentary control – in short, an outlaw corporation.

    You think yours truly is hasty to have drawn such harsh conclusions? Let’s go back a bit in time. Once upon a time, we had a Funsho Kupolokun in charge of the leviathan. Those were the days when the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) could not be said to be short in activism. Against the grain of conventional wisdom, the then Engr. Hamman A. Tukur-led body insisted that the entire proceeds from oil sales be paid first into the federation account before any withdrawal is made.  The argument then was simple: the NNPC as the collecting agency on behalf of the three tiers of government can only draw its sustenance from the pool after the entire rendition is made. In this, the revenue body merely drew strength from the 1999 Constitution which made it clear that all revenues accruing to the three tiers of government be paid first into the federation account. Paragraph 32, Part I (a), of the Third Schedule in fact specifically empowers the RMAFC to “monitor the accruals to and disbursement of revenue from the Federation Account”.

    Like now, the puzzle then was – how do you guarantee fair accruals without a sound basis for establishing what is taken as costs? Ordinarily, the answer would seem as simple as getting NNPC to prepare a budget.  It never did. More than a decade and half after, no one can be sure that the NNPC ever did anything near preparing that financial instrument!

    I recall Engr Kupolokun’s ready-made answer to the raging controversy: “You cannot talk about revenue without mentioning costs…” In other words, there could be no issues as to what constitute the cost elements – it is what the NNPC says it is!

    Several years on, the nation unfortunately would seem far from resolving the puzzle. The result is that we are still effectively at the mercies of the principalities and powers at the NNPC; the only difference this time around is the hope that the correct questions are finally being asked with the governors not surprisingly picking the gauntlet.

    I need to make myself clear here. I am not writing about the $2.1 billion said to have been withdrawn by the Goodluck Jonathan administration from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) which NEC stumbled upon at their inaugural meeting last week. Given the highwire politics surrounding the operations of the ECA, I guess the governors are perfectly entitled to make all the noise about the wierd incomprehensible accounting practices the stuff of which can only be found in the NNPC Towers.

    That is not the subject today. I am rather interested in the ‘undeclared’ revenue – the differential of N3.8 trillion retained – or if you like withheld – by NNPC over the 2012 – 2015 period as alleged by NEC last week.

    Nigerians are of course familiar with the image of the corporation as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for executing all manners of schemes under the sun – except its principal rationale as a state oil corporation. Now, the marvel is that the earn-and-spend image is being presented in such living colours by the governors! While there will be a lot of drama in the coming days as the actual probe kicks off,  Nigerians will do well to take seriously the import of their latest ‘discovery’. Just imagine; NNPC, a collecting agency for the federation account which also doubles as an agency of the federal government setting aside a whopping 47 percent of the entire oil earnings only because it lies in its power to do so! You think that is outrageous? Think about a corporation permanently awash with cash yet suffers the perenial inability to meet up with Joint Venture (JV) obligations; a corporation that can’t or wont fix its ageing pipelines, an outfit that does better collecting rents than go after new oil finds.  That is NNPC for you!

    It seems to me that we may have focused too much on the owners of the distributive pool, the throng made to assemble monthly at the conclave to share a remnant of 53 percent; a group which suffers the strictures of appropriation, as against the outlaw corporation which insists on living only by its own rules. It is about time we paid serious attention to what the corporation does with our money and the process through which it is expropriated.

    If you ask me, I will just say that the governors, like Pa Ahmed Joda in the referenced interview in Thisday, have helped to raise the right questions. Yes, the nation has a fair idea of what has accrused into the federation account. After all, isn’t that what the Abuja monthly conclave for sharing all about? We also know that the ritual of appropriation – no matter how farcical – still goes on accross the different tiers of government if only to fulfil all righteousness. The same however cannot be said of the NNPC which insists on puting the lids on funds illegally retained. For once, Nigerians truly want to know if truly the NNPC has what it can refer to as working budget. How is it appropriated? They deserve to know the quantum of value delivered with the three-point something trillion naira spent. Surely, that can’t be asking for too much? The same would apply to its kiths –Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) as indeed others whose running costs not only exceed those of states but which more often than not, escape parliamentary appropriation. This is after all, the season of change.

    ‘We may have focused too much on the owners of the distributive pool, the throng made to assemble monthly at the conclave to share a remnant of 53 percent; a group which suffers the strictures of appropriation, as against the outlaw corporation which insists on living only by its own rules.

  • The wage crisis

    Aside ushering the chariot of change and its riders and with it the promise of new possibilities, the Fourth Republic should consider itself in great debt to Providence that the PDP’s quest to retain power at the centre was aborted on March 28. Imagine, we are not even a month into the new season; yet yesterday’s carefully orchestrated overstatements, lies and other prognostications about the economy are already coming apart – not incrementally as one might expect – but at the speed of light. Before now, we thought that things were bad enough – so bad that our tearful “reformer of the unreformable”, her imperial majesty, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, would deign to lament about “a deliberate attempt to sabotage the economy and bring it to a halt”. That was after she pronounced the whining debtor-governors fiscally irresponsible –never mind that her Finance Ministry had reportedly borrowed N473 billion in the course of four months to meet recurrent expenditure, including salaries and overheads for the workers in the federal bureaucracy.

    Merely from the look of things, the true picture of the actual shape of the economy has only begun to emerge. However, if we go by the findings by the Ahmed Joda-led transition committee, it is worse than previously imagined. Sure, Nigerians cannot now rightly claim ignorance of the industrial scale theft said to bleed the nation’s entire oil output by some 20 percent. After all, that was supposed to be the price for Jonathan’s absentee government and its indifferent, free-wheeling ways. What is new is the revelation that the spendthrift administration known to have earned more than previous administrations combined, actually left a N7 trillion hole – as against its claim of N1.3 trillion – in the treasury.

    Of course, we know the other factors gnawing away at the polity; two-thirds of the nation’s federating units already several months in arrears in their recurrent bills with majority having not the foggiest idea of how to get out the mess; there is also the shale revolution that has not only berthed in the current glut but has since eventuated in producer nations like Nigeria scampering to find new markets at the cost of marked discounts. By the way, could anyone have foreseen the 10 million barrels of Nigerian crude said to be stranded in foreign seas looking to find buyers three years ago? That of course is the new reality that we must live with.

    To say that things could hardly be worse is merely understating the obvious.

    Suddenly it’s like the nation is back to 1982/3. Then and now, oil was the trigger with corruption merely supplying the catalyst. As it was then, the economy was in deep crisis with civil servants owed arrears of salaries. President Shehu Shagari and his National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in their famed moon-slide had defied gravity by returning itself to power. For an answer to the grave crisis, the administration sought refuge in a hastily conceived Economic Stabilisation Act otherwise called austerity measures. The measures came in doses of massive cutbacks in public spending, rationalisation of the bureaucracy, rationing of essential commodities – measures that would seem ordinarily just fine except that they fell short in the areas that really matter – which is production to take care of the nation’s needs. As it would turn out, the economy simply plunged further and further into crisis until the military finally terminated the nightmares of the citizens in the hand of that clueless regime.

    The nation is luckier this time around. Like the old man Joda said, I shudder to imagine what would have happened had the PDP returned to power under the current circumstances. Imagine the utterly corrupt and unimaginative PDP federal government asking ordinary citizens to make further sacrifices after putting their future in jeopardy? That would be akin to a declaration of war.

    That is where the Buhari administration comes in. But then, as we are sooner going to be finding out, Providence can sometimes be a tough caller. Agreed, the new administration offers more than mere prospects of new beginnings; a golden opportunity for a national conversation about the missed opportunities and hence the prospect that a different path could be charted to the future.  That is as far as it goes. Nothing is guaranteed. So, as they say, the future is what we make of it!

    Aside not having the luxury of time, the Buhari administration would certainly be tasked in multiple fronts in the coming days. Most obvious is what to do with the issue of the bankrupt states.  Somehow, everyone seems to imagine that a bailout therapy would do some magic. Here, the argument goes that the Federal Government, as lender of last resort, can always get the Central Bank of Nigeria to use the traditional tool – ways and means – to fix the problem in the short term.   So what happens in the medium to long term? Put the affected states on the life support until things get better? And how far can we go in the use of the ways and means instrument which is basically about printing new notes without going the way of Zimbabwe where you require a glistening one hundred trillion dollar bill to pay for a lunch pack for two?

    I certainly do not envy the administration.

    The other issue is what to do with the fuel subsidy which currently saps the nation of a sizeable chunk of its vital juice. Again, given the state of the nation’s finances, I do not think that the options are open-ended. As it stands, it is one demon that the administration would have to confront headlong as soon as possible.  We have certainly gone past the debate on whether or not to let go of the subsidy. It is as wasteful as it is unsustainable.  The same goes for the refineries said to have been primed to resume production in the coming weeks; the news of their imminent restoration should merely come with the prospect of enhanced value at sale. It is time to let go of all of them.

    What about stripping the Leviathan – the Federal Government – of a part of its 54 percent share from the federation account? I agree that it might be necessary at some point; however, if you ask me, I would say it is merely facet of the sharing mentality that has produced the club of leeches called states. The same about the need to revamp states tax infrastructure. Surely, these are ordinary governance issues which require no emergency to either contemplate or undertake. But then, the much we know is that Nigeria has never been under anything but an emergency.

  • Cry, the beloved Kogi

    Much as I am a fervent believer in the principle that which concerns one should come last, certain developments within the last two weeks in my home state of Kogi have made it necessary to as it were – return to base so soon after my piece on the deplorable state of the roads and how it has fostered in the current siege by hoodlums and terrorists.

    The first is the reported abduction of a Kogi High Court Judge, Samuel Obayomi by gunmen. The judge, said to be on his way to work was, according to reports, accosted by the gunmen who ordered him, his driver, Ajayi Kolawole and orderly Usman Musa, to lie face-down; they then shot the orderly dead. The incident is said to have taken place in front of the Executive Guest Villa at Okene GRA in the Okene Local Government Area. Although his abductors are said to have demanded N150 million in ransom, the judge’s whereabouts remains unknown.

    As if the early morning abduction of a judicial officer is not ominous enough, barely a week after, it would be the turn of a serving commissioner in the Idris Wada administration, Stephen Maiyaki. The commissioner, who holds the Lands and Housing portfolio in the state executive council, was reportedly kidnapped by about six people at about 8.30 a.m. in his farm at Osara in Adavi Local Government Area on Sunday.

    Ordinarily, it might seem unsettling that the two events came within days of the setting up of a special anti-kidnapping squad by the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, following the noticeable resurgence of kidnapping in the two neighbouring states of Kogi and Ekiti. The reality however is that this is how things have always been. Not only have hapless citizens learnt to live under the throes of insecurity, theirs is a classic case of double jeopardy in the hand of their absentee government!

    Much as I hate to say this, the truth is that if ever there was a state where thinking stopped a long time ago, it must be Kogi. Yes, Kogi – my dear state is in full flight to regression!

    Evidences abound. From the state capital looking more like a glorified village – with its sprawling beach-fronts looking like more like a marsh-land that have just suffered massive oil spills – which an acute sense of beauty and planning could have transformed to a world class tourist resort. Do I talk of the vast sleepy country-sides that seems a mere whiff from pre-history? From East to West, the evidence is one of no thinking! It does not matter whether the issue is the state bureaucracy – the inert public service that is at best a haven for indolents; the local government where teachers are treated as orphans and where what is left of school infrastructures have since collapsed; all across the state, you are left to wonder if locusts have taken permanent residence!

    I hate to talk about the roads. Last year, I wrote on this page a piece with the title Nigeria’s most dangerous road! In it, I tried to capture the living reality the state of the arterial roads traversing the Western axis of the state – particularly the Ilorin-Kabba-Lokoja, Lokoja- Obajana-Kabba roads. That was when the marauding Bororo Fulani-herdsmen ruled the highways with their deadly order firmly in place; then, armed gangs routinely sacked banks and other artefacts of modern governance with policemen taking to the heels on their approach!

    The hapless citizens thought they had seen the worst – then. In February, a new police helmsman Adeyemi Samuel Ogunjemilusi came into town with a bag full of promises. Among others, he promised to tackle the issue kidnapping and the incessant Fulani\farmers clashes. He also spoke of the incessant armed robberies along the Lokoja-Okene-Okpella and other major roads. Four months after, the kidnappers have not only relocated their capital to the state, their armed kiths – herdsmen and robbers – are having a field day unleashing their reign of terror unchallenged! To imagine that this is happening in a state where the capital plays host to a military garrison!

    Why is the state so unblest?

    Once upon a time, we had a Prince Abubakar Audu as governor. A charming prince with sartorial sense and extremely good taste, his problem was attempting to play the monarch in a democratic setting. Yes, Audu loved to play god – enjoyed the fawning adulation of his horde of courtiers – but then, he also built roads, refurbished schools and medical facilities; recall that he even gave the state a university which he named after himself! With the benefit of hindsight, I would wager that the man gave meaning to governance – far more than any of the wayfarers that have mounted the saddle in the state! I have heard that his undoing was his attempt to treat citizens as subjects!

    Ibrahim Idris – Ibro was however of a different class. Of modest intellect by any standards, he was clearly a disaster as far as governance is concerned. He had neither a sense of justice nor an understanding of what it meant to government a complex, heterogeneous state like Kogi. A carpenter by profession, he apparently saw everything about governance within the prism of wood and nails – the result of which is the unprecedented experience of regression despite massive inflow of funds.

    Whither Idris Wada? For an individual known to be permanently on the move, shuttling between Abuja and Lokoja, it does seem to me that not much is known about the Pilot-Governor by residents of the state capital let alone the citizens over whom he governs! Those who should know have whispered their fears about a governor, who has neither the stomach for the humdrum of governance, nor capacity for the office and yet insists on carrying on all the same. Does anyone still wonder why the state is in such a sorry state that it has found itself? It’s hard to find kind words for a leader under whom the state has since regressed to a Hobbesian State of Nature!

    The man Wada, like the state over which he pretends to preside, needs help. While the state needs rescuing from the siege of the terrorists; the governor needs to be relieved of the unwanted burden of office. Seriously, the people need to be delivered from the clueless, indifferent administration holding them hostage.

    Can anyone imagine the state under the current leadership for another four years? That would be worse than disaster!

    ‘The man Wada, like the state over which he pretends to preside, needs help. While the state needs rescuing from the siege of the terrorists; the governor needs to be relieved of the unwanted burden of office. Seriously, the people need to be delivered from the clueless, indifferent administration holding them hostage’