The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

  • Osun: The morning after

    Osun: The morning after

    In the sweetness of the resounding victory handed to their visionary, hardworking governor, Rauf Aregbesola last Saturday, it is so easy to forget that the victory did not come at a bargain price. To be sure, nothing in the outcome deviated from expectation. To anyone familiar with the real-politik in the state as against the hype, it would have taken an outright subversion – or if you like, an electoral coup – to achieve a different outcome.

    Guess it seems so easy now to celebrate the process said to have delivered the outcome. The truth however is that the real credit belongs to the iron will and determination of the people. Like the Rock of Gibraltar, they stood together in their defiance of tyranny; theirs was not going to be a conquered territory.

    Now, there will be enough time for the good people of Osun to relive the comic sides of the process: the spectacle of one gubernatorial wannabe on Okada clutching two cobs of corn; the farcical reductionism of the context to one of choice between real development and stomach infrastructure; the desperate but opportunistic play of the religious card by the PDP candidate, Iyiola Omisore.

    Yours truly was certain that these were going to be unlikely deciders of the contest. Is yours truly right? You be the judge!

    Victory at last? That is unmistakeable. The figures, as returned by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), says it all. In 24 out of 30 Local Governments, it was a clear, emphatic show of superiority by the incumbent. The number of votes returned in favour of the victor and their spread comes close to rout – a shellacking!

    The result of the election obviously goes beyond returning a verdict of victory for the incumbent. First, it is a major set-back for the unscrupulous wayfarers pretending to the high pedestal of political leadership in the South-west. Clearly, the people have spoken of the place of reward for honest and well meaning service. They have affirmed their rejection of strange corrosive values of instant gratification which the PDP insists on foisting on them. Theirs was a clear repudiation of PDP’s divisive politics, their cynical play on the sensibilities of the people for megalomaniacal ends. Above all, it was the opportunity for the people to demonstrate that no amount of brute force would suffice to cow them.

    No doubt, there has been a lot of talk about the cost of victory. Those worrying about the humongous cost of electoral management have good reasons to be. Under President Goodluck Jonathan, we have seen every successive cycle of election grow in leaps and bounds. By this, I do not mean mainly of naira and kobo, in men and materiel terms, but in the sheer number of agencies suborned to the process. Once we thought that the cost of the Edo governorship was barely passable; Anambra would turn out to be worse; and then Ekiti and now Osun – each cycle progressively mounting in their costs. But then, the per capita cost comes nowhere the cost of impunity, the abuses of the security agencies, the trampling on individual rights and freedoms. What about the trauma forced on the people only because they have the burden of an election to discharge? Do these matter, and to who?

    Obviously, in President Goodluck Jonathan’s book, neither the economics nor the socio-political factors matter; the end would suffice to justify the means. Has anyone considered the economics of the deployment of 55,000 boots in an election where less than one million voted in a nation with 20,000 men fighting in the increasingly one-sided war in the North-east? Madness or desperation – a sign of insecure presidency?

    Where would they get the numbers in 2015? Recruit more of the hooded enforcers as we saw in Osun? And where would that lead to if not Jonathan’s self-help republic? Isn’t that a curious route to democratic consolidation?

    Now to the good in the madness. Surely, the lesson from Osun must be the fact that no force on earth would suffice to stop the march of a people determined to be free. I honestly shudder to imagine what could have happened had the outcome of the election ran against the grain of the people’s expectation. Osun should be a sobering lesson in the limit of raw power.

    This one for Pa Ashadele

    As a general rule, I try to refrain from joining issues with readers of this column. I understand that the burden of writing a column carries the risk of being misunderstood. But to go as far as imputing base motives to nearly every idea published on this page is not just cheap but clearly opportunistic.

    Here is what Pa Lai Ashadele wrote in response to my column titled “Power Sector: Lest we forget” published last week.

    He writes: “It should not have been the caption for your article but OUT TO BLAME GOVT (sic)”.

    He went on: “where is the justification for your beration (sic) of the government if there was an increase in power generation from 1500MW then to 5000MW now?

    You mentioned vandalisation of the structures that would assist to increase the megawatts by hoodlums, the receding flow of water to power plants and non availability of coal, which depends on nature, but offered no solutions. Media men in the past blamed government at various times of meddling in the affairs that were preserves of the private sector and called for the privatisation of the power sector which the present government has brought to fruition and yet all it gets are unending blames by the same media in spite of their bereftness (sic) of ideas on the way out all premised on political bias. A positive attitude is all we need now for survival”.

    Clearly, this is not the first time yours truly would be adjudged guilty of political bias. I offer no defence. As for my piece on the power sector, I didn’t say anything extraordinary, at least nothing that the Man on the Street has not expressed in one form or the other. My understanding of the purpose of government is that it exists to solve the problems facing the people. In this case, it has failed. What is interesting is that Pa Ashadele does not believe that the nation deserves better than what presently obtains – after pouring more than $20 billion in the last decade.

    No wonder Pa Ashadele touts handing over the power entities to private sector as an achievement! Before now, I had thought that the privatisation was only a means to an end. Pa Ashadele believes it should equate abdication.

    Talk of the divide between an analogue and digital generation! No offence meant please!

     

     

  • Power sector: Lest we forget

    Power sector: Lest we forget

    These days, it is doubtful that Nigerians still pay attention to the happenings in the cesspit of incompetence and graft described rather charitably as the power sector.

    I refer here to the latest report that the federal government has revised its power supply target to 5,000Mega Watts (MW) by the end of the year. Only last month, Minister of Power Prof. Chinedu Nebo, had raised hopes while addressing a delegation of Indian investors that “Nigeria will hit 10,000MW by the end of 2014”.

    But at an inter-ministerial briefing last week, Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke would have no soothing words for Nigerians expecting the December turnaround: The best, she said, is “a generation capacity of at least 5,000MW within 4-5 months” – and “barring unforeseen circumstances”.

    So much for the plague of confusion ravaging Jonathan’s power sector. It’s certainly been a long, confounding exercise in the reducing arithmetic of Jonathan’s power sector where the more money they throw at it, the less the value that is delivered in return.

    Let’s see how we started. In 1999, the nation’s generation capacity was said to be 6,000MW (ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo would have us know that the actual deliverable was 1,500MW”). Even at that, Obasanjo summary of the state of the power sector as rendered to the Ndudi Elumelu panel of the House of Representatives which probed his administration remains instructive: Ijora and Oji River stations, both of which utilised coal, were down due to lack of coal production; Afam and Delta, both of which were gas thermal plants were obsolete. The hydro plants of Kanji, Jebba and Shiroro were no better. Apart from silting and/or inadequate flow of water into the dam, there was also the problem of poor maintenance. Egbin, the thermal plant suffered disruption of gas supply through vandalism and poor management and maintenance by staff. And so, the effective output was 1,500MW.

    What did he do and how far did he go?

    First, a new Afam 276MW thermal unit was installed and commissioned. This would be followed by Agip’s 480MW thermal unit at Okpai.  Then Papalanto, Omotosho, Alaoji and Geregu plants each of which could provide close to 1000MW.

    The next would be the National Integrated Power Projects located at Sapele (Delta), Ehobor (Edo), Egbema (Imo), Gbaram (Bayelsa), Calabar (Cross River) and Omoku (Rivers).

    From this stage, the riddle begins. A total of 34 companies were awarded contracts to bring in turbines under the NIPP. By design, their output, combined with the four thermal plants was to deliver 10,000MW by 2007/2008. That is aside the existing 1,500 MW which Obasanjo claimed he met. Nearly 10 years after, we are still struggling to hit 6,000MW by December!

    Where did the megawatts disappear to? What happened to the turbines? Is gas really the only problem; or is it merely a smokescreen covering an intricate web of criminality? Who are the contractors by the way? How many performed or failed to? In the confounding riddles which have brought the sector to this sorry pass, we may never get the answers. True, Obasanjo may have brought plenty of motion without locomotion to the sector;  and methodical Yar’Adua, his signature inertia; with President Goodluck Jonathan, there has been neither rhyme nor method to the reign of abdication and the culture of criminal indifference that it has spawned!

    Where are the excuses for an administration – which, courtesy of the Gabriel Suswan committee on the NIPP – was allowed to warehouse the NIPP funds? Or have we forgotten so soon? For how long will the ancillary gas infrastructure remain in the pipeline?

    Between the grandmaster con-artist and his minion handmaiden in crime, there is a lot that needs finding out!

    By next year, the nation would mark the 10th anniversary of the much trumpeted Power Sector Reform Act (PSR 2005).  Many – including yours truly, had welcomed the legislation convinced that it actually held the key to unlocking the potentials of the sector.

    Among the key expectations was that it would end government’s near-monopoly which had bred lethargy, corruption and inefficiency in the sector. The story was that because the sector was wholly in the hand of government, the incentive to align its business practices with the dictates of the market was simply not there; and so was the will and the discipline to anticipate future needs and plan appropriately lacking – hence the steady decline into the moribund sector that we now have.

    Underlying the reform therefore was the need to liberalise the sector, to get more players on board in the spirit of true competition, and to ensure a steady flow of investment, which, no thanks to the erstwhile environment was stifled.

    And the result nearly 10 years after? The promises have since disappeared into the wind.

    It is still the same old wearisome excuses, of alibis being recycled or repackaged and sold to the weary electricity consumer with very little signs of impending change.

    Indeed, what we have is a new wine of instruments of legislation and regulation in the old wineskins of poor and ineffective governance. The old PHCN behemoth is gone for good; now we have a group of disparate club of players – that have demonstrated neither the financial muscle nor the business intelligence to suggest that they are able to get things going. The result is the endless promises as against actual delivery of electricity to homes and businesses just as the regulator appears clueless.

    Ten years during which the nation is supposed to have made some progress, we are only moved marginally from where we were 10 years ago. This is in spite of the massive investment sunk in to stabilise and upgrade the sector – an outlay known to have exceeded $20 billion under the decade.

    The explanations are not far-fetched: good as the principle of liberalisation is, in the hand of an utterly incompetent government, it becomes an exercise in abdication.

    For instance, how does one explain the fact that a government that has divested substantial interests in its erstwhile entities could still not muster funds to invest massively in gas infrastructure known to be critical to the reform package?  And that nearly 10 years after establishing Letters of Credit for the NIPP plants, a good number remains uncompleted?

    The Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) would rather we do not talk about the mess their messiah has wreaked on the power sector, the economy and the polity as a whole. Much as they try deodorising their principal, there are simply some truths that cannot be wished away.

  • Osun: It’s April 16, 2011 all over again

    Osun: It’s April 16, 2011 all over again

    Eleven days from today, the good people of Osun will march to the poll to elect the man who will steer the tender ship of their beloved state for the next four years. As they say in these parts, with the death of an elephant, it is expected that all manners of knives would be summoned to active duty.

    Now, it’s been a month plus of high-voltage hustings and with just enough drama and excitements to provide entertainment for a lifetime. Part of the ‘entertainment’ may well be the vast field of gubernatorial wannabes in a state which morphed from being in the PDP financial death row to a toast of credible investors in a space of three years.

    Add that to the brainless revisionism being served by a frontline aspirant in the name of politics and the rather expensive play on the psychology of voters by the cheap stunt in which a leading candidate would mount an Okada with two roasted corns in hand; what comes revealed is the politics of the most opportunistic, cynical variant. These are interesting times, no doubt.

    The Osun governorship election is of course interesting in a number of ways. After the Ekiti tsunami, Osun is naturally expected to provide the next laboratory to validate the PDP’s thesis on the trumping of performance by stomach infrastructure. But even more than that, it is supposed to be the affirmation of the so-called wind of change blowing across the South-west by which it is meant the triumph of the main-streamers.

    Let me add one reason why Osun holds a personal interest for me: I am actually working on an hypothesis – and I am prepared to take a bet on that – that the outcome of the August 9 poll would not be substantially different from what happened on April 16, 2011 presidential election!

    Remember that hell of a shellacking for citizen You-Know-Who! Wait for Scene Two.

    Still wondering about my interest in the Osun ‘guber’ race?

    Let me add that I am a silent admirer of the governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. I have met him a few times since he became governor and each time, I found myself not just enthralled by his sheer energy and passion to get things done, but also his deep sense of purpose and understanding of his mission. I have read not once but severally his lean “Green Book” which encapsulates his mission – thanks to Femi Ifaturoti, his Director General of Osun State Bureau for Social Services. Each successive reading not only reinforces my earlier impression of him as no ordinary sojourner in government; the book has gone a long way in aiding my understanding of this unusual enigma of a personality which of course is the reason I chose to stick my neck out in his second term bid.

    Three years in the saddle at the state of Omoluwabi, very few will doubt that Aregbesola has delivered on all fronts. Today, it’s hardly remembered that Aregbesola actually came into office to meet a staggering debt of N18 billion – contracted by the departing PDP administration which he successfully restructured within months. Under his watch, the economy of the once laidback state is not only being repositioned, it’s been three years of deliberate efforts to tackle major structural impediments to the realisation of its potentials headlong.

    From the massive road works going on, the complete overhaul of the educational sector, the careful attention to agricultural modernisation through investment in a new generation of farmers, to massive urban renewal programmes, it would take the most impervious not to appreciate that the foundation of a future economy is being carefully erected in Osun state.

    Of course, we can talk about his revolutionary learning tablet the “Opo Imo”, the youth employment O’YES programme as well as the school-feeding programme all of which stands out in sheer novelty.

    What about the governor’s interactive programme – Gbangba d’ekun – a forum during which he engages the ordinary citizens on issues of governance? Or the Walk-to-Live programme, an important governance tool through which the government seeks to inculcate healthy living habits on the populace?  Clearly, it is hard to imagine all that the governor has been able top achieve despite its ranking among the least of recipients from the federation pool.

    Was the governor perfect? The last time I checked, saint-hood was not one of the qualifications for being in government. I have heard the word “controversial” or worse used to describe him. The much I know about him is that he is not pretentious about his beliefs unlike the chameleon being egged on by some narrow interests. As for whether he been faithful to his stewardship – my answer would be an emphatic yes!

    Now, let’s talk briefly about his main opponent – the PDP’s Iyiola Omisore.

    What does the PDP candidate stand for – on education, job creation, infrastructure and health care? No one, it appears, have the foggiest idea on where he stands. The closest I have heard him say is that he will undo all that Aregbesola has done all these while. Just like that! Where is the policy framework – or the hard thinking behind such? You guessed right: it’s the season when populism is expected to trump hard choices. Between the builder and the demolitionist, the good people of Osun have just enough time to make their choice!

    Now I know a legion out there who would swear that the Ekiti tsunami wasn’t just the game changer but the defining moment for the good people of the South-west. Guess we have 11 days to put the hypothesis to test. Let me however speculate on the list of unlikely factors in the August 9 poll: Number one on that list is that mocking ride on Okada with corns in hand; at best it’s poor example in salesmanship. The other is the nocturnal visits to clergies in a play of the religious card. The good people of Osun know better to cast their lots with Lucifer and his seductive overtures.

    Now, let me summarise: After the breadth-taking developments of the past three years, it certainly would be worse than tragic for the state to fall into the hands of a political adventurer.  I can bet a million it wont happen.

  • It’s Jona country, period!

    It’s Jona country, period!

    Thanks to the outbreak of the latest strain of the virus of political delinquency, the nation marches perilously towards its long predicted unravelling year 2015. Although, the twists, turns and high-wire intrigues had long been expected, what no one could have predicted was the latest strain in which the impeachment instrument would become the main driver of the process with barely six left months of the current tenure of elected public officials. But then, like an untreated flu that would spawn other opportunistic ailments, what was initially assumed to be a play of political delinquency has since metastasised into full-blown political pathology, spreading so fast across the polity as to pose grave threats to the health of the republic.

    It is not as if the nation did not pay enough attention to the farce which started in July last year in the Rivers State House of Assembly during which five renegade members moved to impeach Hose Speaker Otelemaba Amachree, in their bid to pave the way for the removal of Governor Rotimi Amaechi. Indeed, it wasn’t that they failed to recognise the virus when it resurfaced in Edo State in June this year when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) plotted to upstage the leadership of the State House of Assembly, in their bid to get at the comrade governor.

    Perhaps, the problem was to assume that simply because the wily lawmakers in the two instances met their matches in their equally foxy governors, a permanent antidote of sorts had been found. That costly misjudgement would seem partly responsible for what now threatens to be full-blown epidemic of impeachment.

    No doubt, many expected that Murtala Nyako of Adamawa, an ex-military brass-hat would not only anticipate the desperation of those determined to do him in long after he parted ways with President Jonathan, particularly after he followed this with the accusation that the Jonathan administration committed genocide against the North, but would actually take pre-emptive steps to foil it.

    Too bad that he failed; now, he is not only down and out, he suffers the collateral damage of being a potential fugitive on the run from charges ranging from graft to treason. And from the look of things, his neighbour and fellow APC governor, Tanko Al-Makura, seems set to share his fate following the quit notice served by the PDP-dominated House of Assembly. As it appears, not even the factor of the aggrieved citizens taking to the streets for nearly the whole of last week to protest the lawmakers attempt to oust their governor looks likely to change anything with the lawmakers again serving the notice and that the process would go ahead as planned.

    Now, the issue really isn’t that the use of the weapon of impeachment is anything new in the nation’s democratic practice. After all, we saw how the weapon was used in the Second Republic of Shehu Shagari by the implacable lawmakers of the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) to truncate the PRP administration of Balarabe Musa in the old Kaduna State. It was even more so in the Fourth Republic under the Obasanjo administration, when without any pretences to the niceties of process, it found it a ready tool to nail those deemed as political foes as we saw in Joshua Dariye’s Plateau State and of course, in Bayelsa where Jonathan would be the beneficiary.

    The difference under President Goodluck Jonathan goes a tad beyond cynical manipulation of process for political advantage; what we have is vintage Jonathan opportunism –a hubristic conversion of national institutions for regime perpetuation, an outright subversion of the democratic process.

    This is where those who currently feign surprise either failed to pay heed or chose to ignore the tell-tales signs of the budding fascism. We have certainly gone a long way from the time the president played the meek and humble card. I recall here that my colleague Sam Omatseye long ago warned Nigerians about the danger of falling into the ‘homeboy’ seductions of the man from Otuoke. That when it was still fashionable for officials in the Presidency to encourage the boss to play the victim. Not anymore. The true victims can roast in the merciless sun with no one giving a damn. The once coy regime is off the leash, and with it, an awesome sense of unchallengeable power. Once it was content to merely sow divisions in the polity, now it seems determined to take on its foes by means more foul than fair. For the opposition, the message ought to be clear enough: for every trouble, they had better prepare for the double. Truly, the race to 2015 has begun!

    By the way, does anyone still remember the administration’s serial promises on the power sector that has remained un-kept? I do not mean the nebulous claims about power stabilisation but its own self-advertised delivery target of 10,000MW power generation by 2013 or is it now 2014?

    Does anyone still remember that the infrastructure of Africa’s fastest growing economy in 2014 still belongs in the Stone Age? And lest I forget, that the economy since 2013 has virtually remained hostage to the cartel of oil thieves said to be responsible for the industrial-scale theft of Nigeria’s crude on account of which the 36 states are now visited with the bizarre financial scorched-earth policy ever in perhaps the nation’s fiscal history?

    More questions. I hope we’ll get around to these and many more – including the question of how a President invested with a broad pan-Nigerian mandate a little less than four years ago has shrunk almost beyond recognition – before everything else.

    These sort of put everything in perspective, or what do you think?

     

    $1 Billion to fight Boko Haram?

    It’s no longer news that President Goodluck Jonathan wants a $1 billion loan package to fight the Boko Haram. Having thrown in something in excess of N3 trillion in the last three budget cycles with limited results to show, it seems reasonable to expect that citizens would demand, hard probing questions about the overall conduct of the war on the insurgency.

    First, we have not been told where the loan is coming from and on what terms. Second, we have also not been told why the loan request is coming outside of the normal budgetary cycle. Clearly, that the nation is at war should not alone vitiate the requirement for due process.

    Beside the two, I have, times without number, expressed what I consider, a fundamental reservations with the framework of our so-called foreign loans. By this I mean the idea of taking a loan at say five percent or more interest, whilst locking up one’s investment at a measly two percent. Can somebody explain the sense in making a deposit at two percent while paying five percent on loans?

  • Aganga: more questions on auto policy

    Aganga: more questions on auto policy

    These days, it’s hard to tell whether Olusegun Aganga is a minister of the federal republic or the head of a powerful lobby of auto-makers. In a clime where patriotism – or if you like, economic nationalism – is seen as the exclusive preserve of public office holders and their business class allies; and where reforms – at best hare-brained economic experimentations – are measured by the number of international awards as against their impact on the Main Street, we will do well not only to understand the motivation of our high-minded reformers but what constitutes their staying power.

    Now, the subject here is Olusegun Aganga’s dream Nigerian auto. Like a man seized of the messianic bug, he seems determined to leave no stone unturned in his bid to see the dream come to fruition – which, if you ask me, is not necessarily a bad idea in a nation where everything – from tooth picks to our high officials’ fanciest toys – are routinely allocated fat portions of our foreign exchange.

    The issue is that the minister is yet to communicate to Nigerians as to whose interest he is serving.

    Let’s even admit that the minister means well – when he says that Nigeria can no longer afford the $3.4 billion annually sunk into importation of vehicles – used and new; or the need to curb the influx of the terrible contraptions regularly shipped in by those in the vehicle trade in their bid to satisfy Nigerians’ transportation needs.

    How about his punitive composite levy of 70 percent for daring to bring imported or foreign used cars all in just one year to bring the changes desired about? To punish potential car owners even when the capacity of the local assembler remains unproven? How does that help the local car assembler who, under Aganga’s proposed package, already enjoys import duties advantages ranging from zero to 10 percent duty on knocked down parts; and who, according to Minister Aganga have free rein to bring in two new cars for one assembled locally at 35 percent duty?  Could there be a better illustration of a case of private interests adorned in public interest garb?

    What about the operability? Will the local assemblers sell the two at the same price? In other words, how does the differential in duty play out in price determination –I mean the fact that Completely Knocked Down (CKD) components attract zero percent duty as against Semi-Knocked Down (SKDs) whose duty range from five percent duty to 10 percent? I ask: why not make things simple – as in, for instance, settling for a flat import duty rate – to leave little room for manipulation?

    That, obviously is not way things run here; the more the business is made prone bureaucratic shenanigans, the higher the returns to the fat cats in the system.

    Today, even without the policy in full bloom, another round of import duty racket is said to be back at the ports. Ask any clearing agent who has undertaken the business of clearing a vehicle at the nation’s port in the last month. They have enough tales to tell of their ordeal under the so-called auto-import regime.

    But I digress.

    Let’s look at the grand idea – which is to assemble vehicles locally. In an environment where purchasing power has been on steady decline, and the cost of doing business is on rise, the question which our policy wonks have hardly bothered to address is whether the nation can actually sustain a competitive auto-industry at this time. The problem here isn’t so much the desire to return to the “good old days” of Peugeot in Kaduna, Steyr in Bauchi, Leyland in Ibadan, and ANNAMCO in Enugu but whether the conditions responsible for their exit are any different today than what they were in the 80s.

    This is where those like Aganga, who insist on diagnosing of the problem as one of the love for foreign automobile which must be kept at bay with punitive tariff even what is presented as ‘local’ has barely taken off. And what qualifies for an assembly line to enjoy Aganga’s generous rebate? Wait till when your neighbourhood garage shows up with verifiable proof of transformation to an assembly line. It’s after all Aganga’s world where Nigerian autos would soon be king.

    We must worry that a minister of the federal republic cannot make the critical distinction between good intentions and sound policy – or worse, when he is shown to betray such awful understanding of sociological issues involved in the making of policy.

    You know what I think: this policy is dead on arrival. First, in the absence of critical infrastructure, it is simply a non-starter as far as competitiveness goes. Think of it this way: with no machine tools industry to boot, no critical skills pool support; add this to the absence of the still-in-the-works financing infrastructure; what you have is a policy guaranteed dead on arrival. As for our big-time car dealers, trust them to smile to the banks even when there are no guarantees that the auto-industry would ever receive any appreciable boost. Who buys new cars anyway? The same government officials who can afford to buy at any price? Trust the smugglers to have a field day as Nigerians – determined to own their choice autos –find a way. All of these to Aganga’s hubris and needless experimentation.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Ekiti 2014: A post mortem

    Ekiti 2014: A post mortem

    Eleven days on, it seems we haven’t done nearly enough of the post mortem on Ekiti gubernatorial polls, and certainly not least, the President Goodluck Jonathan’s ‘guided’, garrison democracy which formed a major part. Long after the incumbent Governor Kayode Fayemi of the APC conceded defeat to his opponent, Ayodele Fayose of the PDP, pundits of different shades and hue, would appear far from done with theorising on how the battle was won and lost. Just like a good friend from the Land of Honour tried, over the weekend, to ‘sell’ the so-called ‘Zimbabwe model’ now spreading like wild-fire, I confess that some of the emerging theories have opened vistas in political sociology that yours truly cannot claim to be schooled in, and hence thoroughly ill-equipped to even comment upon!

    The much that I can aver at this time is that the election appears to have validated the rather disturbing thesis that a passable electoral outcome should suffice to render the means – fair or foul – legitimate. I refer here to the build-up right up till the election day, particularly the widely reported cases of intimidation of APC’s Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, and the grounding of the aircraft which would have ferried Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State to join his colleagues in the Ekiti State capital – all on the eve of the election.

    Taken together with the estimated 30,000 boots unleashed on the people in an election in which barely half a million actually voted, the nation is at once let into the into the inner sanctum of the Jonathan’s guided process. That is why I couldn’t agree more with The Nation’s columnist Gbogun Gboro when he described the exercise as ‘tainted’. I would in fact wager that it was worse given what I consider as the needless show of muscle by the security agencies. In this, the good people of Ekiti at least have a lot to be thankful for that no heads were broken by the invading army.

    All said and done, the people of Ekiti can reasonably claim to have made their choice. What remains ‘live’ is the debate as to how our compatriots from the Land of Honour could have fallen to the seduction of a supposedly morally-challenged individual over an incumbent generally credited with sterling performance.

    And if it counts for anything at all, the dominant thread appears to be that the people have resolved their preference for the democracy of the stomach as against development.

    To begin with, I do not want to be uncharitable as to join in the stomach infrastructure-trumps-good-governance chant. First, I consider the explanation not only reductionist, but one capable of undermining any real prospects of understanding of the other factors behind poor electoral showing of APC in the poll. Here, my main concern is whether the APC as a party is prepared to understand the message underlying the loss outside of that one-liner explanation of ‘stomach infrastructure’.

    This is where last week’s intervention by Governor Babatunde Fashola has become relevant particularly his rather interesting attempt to frame the dillemma in terms of stark choice between development and the seduction of populism.

    This was how the governor framed the dillemma: “Developmental work is difficult to initiate and to execute. And developmental work that brings on change which is what every election ask for, will also from time to time occasion debates and policy thrust. And which legitimately must be criticised… But it must be a very dangerous message to simply suggest that once you give people money then this is the way it will happen. It is frightening for me in a democracy”.

    He then asked: “Should we just be giving money and when people ask about security, we say that we have given you money, go and rent your own security? When people ask for healthcare, we say that you have collected money. Is that the model for development?”

    And finally: “But to simply suggest that All Progressives Congress (APC) states where a lot of development is taking place; the road to winning power and we want to keep power and I am not pretentious about that. We want to remain in power but to suggest to us that in the aftermath of this, that the way to do that is to give money, for me it is a very worrisome lesson to learn”.

    Let me start by saying that I find nothing fundamentally disagreeable with the premise of Governor Fashola’s dilemma. However, as attractive as it seems, it certainly would amount to a grave misunderstanding to frame the Ekiti issue within the narrow alley of development versus stomach infrastructure – even if one concedes that the latter indeed, played a good part in the election. This is where I find the spirited attempt to rub the matter of “wrong” choice on the voters as not only unhelpful but capable of breeding resentment for the party among the people.

    Perhaps, the fault lies as much with the media as it is with the Ekiti political elite which appear to have promoted the choice as one between the two. As one governor that has blazed the trail in matters of development – and who has since supplied a worthy template for other APC governors to follow – Fashola is probably entitled to be disappointed as many Nigerians, including yours truly, who believe that Governor Fayemi deserves a reward – and not a censure – for exemplary performance. But then, that is what democracy is all about – the right to be wrong!

    In the situation, what should be more paramount at this time is the understanding of what went wrong! Surely, by every account, the governor did well. Indeed, the general opinion is that his administration delivered real value for every kobo spent. Was it a case of governance leaving the electors behind? Was it one of alienation of the organs of the party? Or communication, as some appears to suggest? There is great merit in finding out.

    Hard as development is to define, it is even harder to achieve. Ask Lee Kuan Yew, the man credited with Singaporean miracle. If his country is pejoratively described as nanny state, it owes mostly part on the tough choices forced on them by Yew and co. Today, Ekiti, Edo or Lagos, the APC has demonstrated that it is both capable and willing to make the difficult choices needed to make a difference to the lives of Nigerians. That is what makes them different. And that is what gives hope.

    Rather than occasion despair, the Ekiti experience might actually be a blessing of sorts – an opportunity to take stock. If only for its sake and the sake of the nation in dire need of rescue, we can only hope that APC finds the language to communicate the message without compromising its mission.

  • LASU: Still a season of unreason?

    LASU: Still a season of unreason?

    It is likely that many Lagosians would be the disappointed by Lagos State University (LASU) students’ flat rejection of the60 per cent slash in school fees offered by the state government last week.  First, the students would make clear their suspicions of an offer they consider as laden with technicalese: “We do not accept the percentage reduction offered by the government because in 2011 when the fees were increased, it was not done on percentage level; rather, they made the pronouncement in Nigerian naira and kobo. Secondly, they would equally make clear: anything short of 67 per cent across board slash in the fees would be unaceptable.

    Now, if you consider government’s offer of 60 percent and the students counter-offer of 67,  I think we can begin to talk of some progress. It’s hard to see the seven percent holding the system down any further. Way back in November 2011 when the animosisties over the new fees first broke, it was a case of emotions simply running riot – a measure of how fixated many of us had become on the old paradigm with its deep roots in entitlement. For many, the quantum 275 percent increase was not just insensitive but primed to make university education elitist. Couldn’t imagine a more winning argument!

    Here is how I saw it then.  Very little appears to have changed.

    “Trust reason to take flight where emotions rule, discussions on the attempts by LASU and by extension the Lagos State government to make the beneficiaries of its tertiary education system come to terms with current realities of funding is now akin to sacrilege. In other words, we are not supposed to explore new paradigms outside of the existing framework that has reduced the university idea to the current ignoble level!

    Now, I appreciate all the fancy arguments about the new regime of fees at LASU being steep. That seems fine by me except that the argument is responsible for feeding some of the myths that have brought education, particularly at the tertiary level, to this sorry pass.

    Let me start by saying that I do not claim to know how the authorities in LASU came by the current figures – said to be a 275 percent jump over the previous fees. It seems to me however that a more productive argument is to actually establish what the per capita cost of training a student is. I say this because, without that parameter being established in the first place, the idea of building some fancy models on some opaque statistics seems at best an illiterate way of presenting an argument.

    This is where, I think, both parties have clearly missed it. My view is that you do not say a commodity is overpriced until input costs are not known! I love the idea of our universities aspiring to be world class –with excellent research and teaching facilities. The much that I know is that world class institutions require world class funding!  Part of the problem – in my view – is this tradition of romanticising the golden past of our university system even when the imperative of change looms so large on the horizon! Isn’t it about time we sat down to address the problem of university funding once and for all?

    Now, where do I stand on the LASU fees imbroglio? Simple. Let’s have the figures. Thereafter, we can go to debate who bears what portion of the burden. Having said that, the point remains that it is hard to fault the principles of redistributing the burden of getting the university going which is what the new LASU regime of fees is all about. Those principles are beyond question, sound and pragmatic. While it may sound satanic to some, I call it practical economics!

    The alternatives? Science laboratories without reagents; ill-equipped libraries; overcrowded lecture rooms and hostels that qualify to be described as pig sties – translating into what I describe as the slow lynching of the university idea!

    I haven’t said anything about government shirking its responsibilities in the area of funding…But the greater crime is the culture of denial of the responsibility to make the desired changes particularly when it calls for sacrifices on the part of the recipients of tertiary education.

    If I may put it in a simpler way – it is time to set the boundaries on entitlement! Basic education is a right – an entitlement. Tertiary education does not qualify.  Liberalisation of access – yes! University for all – impracticable! Much of the current debates appear to have been informed by the problematic of distinction! (I can hear some people calling for my head). Fact is – no amount of liberalisation of access would make everybody a university graduate! There is an inescapable law of natural selection that takes care of everything.

    That above leads to the other issue – the fear that the new fees would price university education beyond the reach of the poor. Good point.

    Question is – who is going to be the ultimately losers at the rate we are going – with mushroom institutions awarding worthless certificates? Isn’t it the so-called poor who cannot afford to send their wards to universities in Ghana or wherever? We delude ourselves to imagine that the world is not paying attention to our declining standards; I hear that foreign institutions are already demanding re-certification of our diplomas. Just how bad would things need to get before they get better?

    I go to the final point – the tendency to understate the heroic contributions of the so-called poor in their relentless struggle to break the shackles of poverty through education. Coming from a rather humble background myself, I perfectly understand the painful sacrifices made by my folks to get me through university education. I know a father who sold the family’s prized Raleigh bicycle to pay for son’s school fees. As it was in the past, so it is today – perhaps till kingdom come. No matter how it is presented, the idea of contributions or sacrifice to education is certainly nothing new or particularly alien. Surely, our people know that nothing venture, nothing gain!”

    The above was written in November 2011.

    Is the war then over? I don’t think so. Clearly, the myth endures. I refer here to the myth that the government has a pocket so deep that it can shoulder the entire cost of tertiary education. It has been with us for so long that calls for behavioural modification are now seen as sacrilege. We claim to be enamoured of world-class institutions, but would rather shy from the debate on what it costs to produce, say for instance, a university graduate, prefering instead the typical advocacy of rule-of-the-thumb subventions that bear no relations with funding needs.

    Let me be clear here; the issue really isn’t really about the responsibility of governments to fund tertiary institutions. Rather, it is the quantum of sacrifice that beneficiaries of tertiary institutions should be called upon to bear. For me, true progress begins when we accept the need for everyone to increase the stake, no matter how modest the  percentage.

     

     

  • Media Haram?

    Media Haram?

    Nigerian media may yet have cause for thanksgiving. In a country where 276 school-girls could vanish into the vast forest of Sambisa without trace, call it the tiny droplets of mercy that the Jonathan administration has not denied responsibility for the latest wave of clampdown on the media. For no matter how much we detest or even deplore the antediluvian tactics unleashed by Jonathan’s Military High Command on newspapers distribution crew in the last few days, it seems no one would again dare to describe the administration as an absentee one. If anyone still harboured doubts as to whether Jonathan was in charge, the onslaught ought to have settled that.

    Let me begin recall here that when the news first filtered late last week that this newspaper’s distribution vans couldn’t reach their destinations because some men in uniform had intercepted them, my first instinct was to put it to either the work of fifth columnists who mean nothing well for the Jonathan administration, or the administration’s arch-nemesis – the Boko Haram – the throng which the President had claimed infested his government. In the weeks following the abduction of Chibok girls and the barrage of global media spotlight it spawned, I thought I could at least credit the administration with sufficient gumption left to resist opening another flank of battle – not least with the local media – and not while the girls are still in captivity.

    How wrong I was.

    By even time on Friday, the question of whodunnit had been fully answered. Lo and behold, it was Jonathan’s federal government. An administration sworn to promote civil liberties, free speech and constitutionalism was the one on the prowl. Soldiers, for whatever reasons, had been issued strict orders to prevent newspaper vans from reaching their destinations. The nebulous statement from Defence Spokesman, Major General Chris Olukolade would confirm our fears. He would claim that: “security agencies had received intelligence reports indicating movement of material with grave security implications across the country, using the channel of newsprint related consignments”. He would add on Friday that “the exercise has nothing to do with content or operations of the media organisations or their personnel, as is being wrongly imputed by a section of the press”. How very convenient.

    Were the political authorities aware of the clampdown – given the dire implications on the constitutional responsibility of the media to keep the citizens informed on the activities of their government, and of course the image of the administration?

    Doyin Okupe, the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs would on Saturday supply the answer.  While he would not expressly deny that his boss, the President was in the know of the onslaught which had paralysed media operations for two days running, he would instead offer the administration’s sympathy for the discomfort suffered as a result of the curious security checks!

    While the rationalisation(s) would have been laughable were they not to be so tragic, everything about the plot would appear to add up. Just as it seems given that the media would not necessarily the best of friends with the bungling administration, the tenuous relationship appears to have been exacerbated in the wake of the Chibok affair. Today, the media’s cup appears filled to the brim and hence running over with their rather generous coverage of #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

    For a country that is supposed to be in a state of war, we are expected to accept the ‘mild’ operational discomforts of the past week as nothing extra-ordinary. How mild?

    The issue of course goes beyond the question of whether President Goodluck Jonathan can pretend to have played fair with the media to one of whether indeed he has not abused his authority as commander-in-chief.

    It is beside the point that no one would dare again to accuse him of lacking the balls to take on his enemies. We have certainly seen enough of the acute symptoms of persecution complex to help understand the current situation in which friends and foes are banded together as enemies to be fought to a standstill. At the moment, it seems a question of how far down the shrunk Presidency would go before full anarchy is loosed upon our firmament.

    My grouse really, is whether the brazen abuse, or if you like, subversion of the military institution is tolerable under any circumstance. Here, I do not mean to be uncharitable, but the reality is that the military has no business doing the administration’s dirty work for it.

    I understand that no questions are supposed to be asked about the nature of the “intelligence” that would dare to present sheaves of newsprint as probable purveyors of death. I also understand that the Military High Command would rather be spared the hard, probing questions as to why, after interrogating the drivers and subjecting each of the distribution vans to a most rigorous search in the circumstances they had sought to paint, the poor drivers would still not be allowed to proceed on their mission after.

    Couldn’t things have been done differently if indeed it was true that terrorists had actually sought to use the vans to move their deadly wares around? And why not go about the job in such a way as to lessen the disruptions to media operations?

    By the way, would it have hurt the intelligence were the media executives to be taken into confidence? Questions. More questions.

    Answers to the questions, as difficult as they appear, are obviously critical to the larger quest of salvaging the image of the military in these difficult times.

    Did Nigerians ever swallow the yarn spun by the military? Doubtful.

    Did they believe their government’s we-are-not-involved tale? Even more doubtful. Bad enough that both didn’t even think it necessary to summon the rigour to press their case; but worse is that the storyline put out would be incredibly infantile!

    Now, considering the state of the war on terror, it ought to be seen as truly tragic that Nigerians neither believe their government nor trust their armed forces. Trust Nigerians, they may appear timid, they are no fools; they have lived with budding tyrants for far too long not to recognise one when it shows up with a sneer while adorning the bowler hat. I guess they perfectly understand the plot; the desperation to label the fourth estate Media Haram – good enough for mass slaughter.

    Seems the perfect way to say that one Haram is as good as the other!

    Trust Nigerians; they know enough to affirm that this too shall pass away!

    My understanding is that this is no prophecy; it’s something as sure as daylight.

     

     

     

     

  • Cross River: Audacity of vision

    Cross River: Audacity of vision

    As yours sincerely set out for Calabar, the Cross River State capital last week, the mood was one of high expectations. If my earlier visit in June 2013 – set in the background of the anniversary of the loss of the state’s derivation revenue exactly a year earlier – was one of tempered expectations, this was to be entirely different. Shortly before that 2013 visit, I could not but recall that the state’s last derivation cheque in the sum of N345 million came exactly a year before the visit – the aftermath of the July 2012 apex court ruling terminating its membership of the oil-producing club. That was subsequent to the ceding of its entire 176 oil-wells to its neighbour, Akwa Ibom. While that particular development came as dampener to any serious expectation, the visit turned out to be most revealing – or rather a most rewarding one. In the end, I could only surmise that while the state may have lost those prized oil wells, it has demonstrated that it had a lot going for it in the iron-clad determination of its leadership to turn things around in quick time.

    Of course, the main highlight of that visit was the ground-breaking ceremony of General Electric’s $1 billion manufacturing and training facility at Calabar, said to be one of two of its kind under the corporation’s Greenfield investment drive. But then, it was also an opportunity for the officials to showcase the impressive strides recorded in the area of direct foreign investment through the activities of the one-stop shop – the State Investment Promotion Bureau. Top on the list of the gains was Wilmar Limited’s $400 million investment in agriculture and agro-processing – which unfortunately I could not visit on that occasion. There was also the Brentex Petroleum $300 million pipe mills manufacturing; the $700 million Essar Power Limited 660MW Integrated Power Project; Southgate Cocoa, and the Artee Group’s investment in shopping malls –more than mere proofs of a state determined to move against the tide.

    You can therefore understand the basis of my heightened expectations as I flew into the state capital, last week. In a sense, it was for me an opportunity to play catch-up on the earlier visit.  Today, I can confirm that what whereas the state may have lost something in excess of N20 billion in the more than 22 months of non-receipt of derivation funds, it is, presently, not only fully poised to recover them through the burst of entrepreneurial energy to be unleashed from the massive investment in infrastructure and human capital, it appears even more determined to push new frontiers of development.

    This is no exaggeration; whether one is talking of tourism, sports infrastructure, urban renewal, agriculture rural development, education (particularly vocational education) or, health, the sense of urgency in the mission by the Imoke administration to lay the foundation for a prosperous, sustainable future is discernable.

    In Calabar, it was sheer marvel to behold the world-class Calabar International Convention Centre springing up, next to the Tinapa complex –both set within the sprawling Summit Hills – an integrated lifestyle real estate development complex. If ever a project would claim to speak to the determination of the state to become a force in global tourism, this would be it. And for Tinapa, it would be a case of the dream coming into realisation whenever it finally comes through; after all, nothing better speaks to the imperative to address the challenge which had rendered the utilisation of the multi-million dollar Tinapa investment sub-optimal than the coming of the 5,000-seat capacity auditorium, to be linked with it by mono rail. At completion, the centre would also host a 200-bed Convention Hotel under the state’s Public Private Partnership model; to complement these is the New Calabar Golf Course.

    Also in Calabar, the U.J Esuene Stadium is beginning to wear a new look under the massive rehabilitation going on; we saw the NYSC Demonstration Secondary School – one of the prototype schools conceived under the Cross River standard – a model of what a learning environment should be – with libraries, laboratories, ICT facilities and modern conveniences. At the newly built Institute of Technology and Management, Ugep, in Yakurr Local Government, we saw evidence of a state determined to change both the face and the paradigm of vocational education.

    In the area of road infrastructure, we drove through the newly built airport road bypass; the hundreds of kilometres of rural and urban roads, stretching from Calabar to Ikom, to Ogoja right up to Obudu – the ranch town; along the way, we inspected water and stadium projects in Ogoja and Ikom. Throughout the entire journey, we observed a deliberate effort to redress the neglect of the rural areas; so also is the effort to maintain the delicate balance between man and environment.

    For me, two projects particularly stand out as deserving of mention.  The Songhai farm complex in Abi; the other, the multi-million dollar Wilmar farm complex in Akampa. The former, a demonstration farm promoted by the state government to train the youths, is an integrated system under which waste products from plants, birds, fish ponds, which are ordinarily disposed off, are recycled as inputs. Earlier on, I had mentioned the huge agricultural complex owned by Wilmar, a multinational company. Both, aside showcasing the immense possibilities in commercial agriculture, offer immense promises in skills transfer for the youths of the state but also in the area of agro-processing.

    Let me conclude by summarising the lessons I learnt in the course of the tour. The first is the power of vision. I guess it makes all the difference that the state strives “To become the leading Nigerian state with prosperous, healthy and well educated citizens living in harmony with people and Nature; and pursuing legitimate interest in freedom moderated by good governance”.

    I consider that a clear, powerful statement to run with.

    The second lesson is the importance of continuity. Here, it is so easy to draw upon the lesson of Tinapa which is that the project, as well conceived as it appears, could never have come to its own without the Calabar International Convention facility. By picking up from where his predecessor stopped, Governor Imoke simply gave life to what is potentially, another white-elephant project. The good people of the state would, in years to come, have Imoke and his team to thank for this.

    Finally, I guess the point cannot be sufficiently made about how dysfunctional our practice of federalism has become. Asked about the terrible states of federal roads in the states at the Town Hall meet, the governor couldn’t agree more with the view that the notion of federal road in state jurisdiction is a strange.

    I should add that the National Assembly consider turning over the budgetary allocation for maintaining federal roads to the states. From what I saw of the quality of Cross River roads, I have no doubt that the state could deliver a far better job than the federal maintenance agency could ever.

  • FAAC: The road not taken

    FAAC: The road not taken

    To state that the 36 states in the federation plus Abuja have fallen on bad times in the last one year is to state the obvious. The truth is that most, perhaps with one or two exceptions, are already tottering precariously towards insolvency – the result of the industrial scale theft said to have taken out nearly one-fifth of the domestic output of the nation’s crude. All across the 36 states capitals, the story of massive cutback in capital spend has since become the rule rather than exception. With shrunk monthly allocations, most states have barely enough to take care of recurrent expenditures let alone take on development projects. And with paltry Internally Generated Revenues, many have had to resort to borrowing to augment their finances. In the circumstance, it should be easy to understand the renewed clamour by states under the aegis of the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) to hive off petrol subsidy; it smacks of attempt to shore up the distributive pool and hence boost their share.

    Now, this is something that would have been unthinkable a few months ago. Indeed, the nationwide protests which greeted the January 2012 attempt would have rendered such contemplations a death wish. That the nation is back – or nearly so – where it left off in 2012 is a measure of how much the issue will simply not go away.

    To be sure, we have heard of the denial by President Jonathan during his last media chat that any such plan to hike petrol price was in the offing. However, I don’t think Nigerians can be fooled by such tepid assurances in the background of the rather insistent and strident pressure by the commissioners on the federal government to take the issue on. Moreover, it is hard to miss the import of recent findings by the controversial pollster – NOI polls – which suggest that more than 90 percent Nigerians are already buying their fuel above the official prices. Nigerians understand the game well enough to appreciate the theme as part of an elaborate, choreographed plot by the Jonathan administration to force the bitter pill.

    Of course, knowing how emotive Nigerians are when it comes to any discussions on the subject, one can only infer that the reason citizens have not bothered to denounce the still unfolding “satanic agenda” is because they have more serious issues to worry about in Boko Haram at the moment! Even at that, I do not see them yielding any grounds now or in the near future in any further discussions on the issue given the apparent lack of sincerity and bad faith on the part of government since that last time out in 2012. The indications are that the citizens would in fact be more resolute next time around.

    And why not?

    The reason(s) is at the heart of the story underlying the clamour which seeks to draw more of our blood. The single official line of course is that the FAAC hasn’t enough to share. In other words, the nation could not meet up the daily crude production target of 2.5 million barrels per day as set out in the 2013 budget. We have been told that for nearly the whole of that year, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its principal, the federal government, could only deliver, on average, four-fifths of the projected budget output. And that the situation seems unlikely to change in the current fiscal year. In other words, our federal government, under President Goodluck Jonathan, is unable to tame the black market economy of oil theft.

    You think it’s hard to imagine the scale of industrial theft and associated production shut-ins in which a nation would be bled by nearly 400,000 barrels of daily crude output? You guessed right: Only in Jonathan’s impunity republic would such quantum of losses be conceivable. Like their Boko Haram counterparts, the oil-thieves are evidently ghosts!

    But then, think about the fact that no hard questions are asked nor explanations given as to how the army and navy would sit idly by while watching the nation loose a fifth of its projected earnings. And now imagine that state governments, co-beneficiaries from the federation account that couldn’t take the lead to demand that the federal government rise up to its responsibility and NNPC to give proper renditions of its accounts beyond the monthly show of walkouts to protest revenue shortfalls now assuming the leadership of the remove-the-subsidy orchestra! We are talking of an industry in which the overseeing minister is on record to have shelled out N10 billion for the love of the luxury toys.

    By the way, what does our body of finance commissioners know about the nation’s transparently opaque oil industry? How much of its rentier value chain that feeds fat on the citizens’ misery do they know? What do they know of the bungling Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the so-called oil industry police that looks on while all manners of economic saboteurs carry on with their rape and plunder? How much of the activities of the department do they know? Or their kith, the club of fuel importers and their allies in the bureaucracy who between them are known to have fleeced the treasury of trillions of naira in illicit earnings in the last few years?

    And then you ask: of what value is the monthly conclave FAAC beyond the monthly ritual of sharing unearned money?

    I haven’t exactly said that the states could not do with more money. As a matter of fact, they do. I would even go as far as to argue that they deserve far more than the paltry 24 percent they are getting under the existing revenue sharing formula. Even here, my understanding is that states are not even seriously considering pushing this route. Or even the more enduring route of tapping into their latent potentials, preferring, as it were, the usual route of easy money without breaking a sweat. This is where the problem lies.

    For the purposes of clarity, I need to make the point: the case for the states needing more money can also be made for the need to enhance citizens’ disposable incomes. Whereas the states need funds to execute their programmes, the larger economy needs citizens’ enhanced disposable incomes to run. It is called cash at hand –economists call it effective demand. As it is, the Nigerian citizen is overburdened enough with governmental inefficiencies without the need for the cyclic rod of affliction.

    Does that amount to a foreclosure on the subsidy debate? Far from it. Yours truly has never denied that the argument for the subsidy removal is anything but compelling. It is a matter of cold, rational economics. The point of departure is whether to treat the subsidy as cause or effect. For me, only when citizens and the government come to a common understanding on this point can we begin to make headway. For now, the states will do well to consider thinking out of the box to boost their revenues. It is the smart thing to do.