The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

Jonathan bares his fangs

After last week’s duel between President Goodluck Jonathan and the Nigeria Governors Forum, it seems unlikely that anyone would ever again dare to underrate the capacity of the President to take on his opponents or even doubt that he has come to his own. Not with the serial victories of the last fortnight starting with the one over his nemesis, Olusegun Obasanjo. Like a good learner, such has been the unaccustomed dexterity of the erstwhile godson that the structure inelegantly put together by his Baba has been taken down with barely audible whimpers. Like the Biblical quest, Jona’s lines are at the moment falling onto their right places!

Now, the anointing of Anthony Anenih as the chair of PDP Board of Trustees was supposed to be the icing on the presidential cake. The president obviously got a double in the long-awaited onslaught against the Nigerian Governors Forum – and by extension, the spat with the irrepressible Rivers Governor Rotimi Amaechi – which came within micro-seconds of the former.

Thanks to President Jonathan and his PDP Governors Forum, the nation has a lot to learn from the power arithmetic in which a part is deemed to be more than the sum of the whole. A PDP Governors Forum is after all, some steps to decapitation of the bigger body. The President may not have had the head of the chair of the NGF on a platter –John the Baptist-style, the journey to its internment is well on course. The trophy of the PDP governors’ forum is after, all as good any.

If we add last week’s judicial victory clearing the coast for candidate Jonathan in 2015, the momentum of unchallenged and unchallengeable power would seem infinite. We expect more of such victories – either procured or earned – even as the premature countdown to the 2015 polls begins in earnest. And as Governor Godswill Akpabio, the President’s Man Friday cared to remind last week, part of the sideshow is to fix the Judases and the traitors in the party. By then, the move to carve the PDP in the image of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan would have been near perfect – completed.

Not even for most part of the imperial Presidency of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, did we see him herd the club of governors to the Villa with the sole aim of choosing their leader for them. Of course we know why the Presidency would pay so much attention to a body it once charitably (?) described as an extra-constitutional body. One Presidential minion – Ahmed Gulak – actually described the body as a trade union. Earlier, Presidential godfather Edwin Clark had described it as an opposition movement perpetually in breaches of both the 1999 Constitution and the constitution of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

The story goes all the way back to a minor incident in the Okrika waterfront in 2010. Nigerians would recall how a visiting Dame Patience Goodluck chided the elected governor of her home state over the latter’s use of “must” to convey his administration’s resolve to demolish and upgrade the blighted Okrika waterfront. The spectacle of the President’s spouse snatching the microphone from Amaechi and the equally dramatic putdown of the former with undisguised venom is one Nigerians are unlikely to forget: “I want you to get me clear. I am from here (Okrika). I know the problems of my people. So, I know what I am talking. I do not want us to go into crises….But what I am telling you is that you always say you must demolish. That word ‘must, you use is not good. It is by pleading. You appeal to the owners of the compound, because they will not go into exile. Land is a serious issue.”

Of course, Amaechi’s sins have since grown in leaps and bounds. His leadership of the NGF has been uncompromising in its opposition to the Federal Government’s expropriation of funds belonging to the states and local government to establish the Sovereign Wealth Fund. There is also the lingering matter of the excess crude account which the federal government sought to disburse as it pleased but which his leadership of the NGF would insist on contesting in court. The dispute between Bayelsa and Rivers over the status of some oil wells and which the Rivers Governor had openly accused the President of meddling in favour of his home state of Bayelsa merely added salt on a gaping wound.

Governance is however not the only area of disagreement. If the raging battle in Adamawa is a revelation of the extent to which the governors club is locked in combat with the President and the national chairman on just about every and any issue, the tension between the National Working Committee of the party and its executive council are as equally revealing of a party in turmoil.

However, just as much has been written about the struggle for the soul of the PDP as the 2015 race hots up as the driver of the animosities, there is another factor often glossed over. Psychoanalysing the President is certainly far from my mind. However, one only needs to go back to the travails of former Governor Timipre Sylva for an inkling into the character flaws of the number one citizen. I refer here to his intolerance of those perceived as remotely challenging his authority, plus his inability to overlook a hurt or forgive an injury. To these add his penchant to elevate personal issues to state matters and his lack of restraint in the use of state instruments to push a personal agenda.

Now, where do these lead? I make some guesses. Already, with two fixers in office, there shouldn’t be shortage of enemies to find and fix in the run down to 2015. It is futile to ask a man riding the crest of victory to slow down or dismount.

Not unexpectedly, the developments have come with interesting side shows. Just like in Sylva’s case in which an alleged insubordination would become the subject of a thriller at the Villa, Amaechi story is already being promoted in Jonathan’s court as a block buster in gubernatorial insolence! How about something to excite the bored presidency?

The point is – this presidency knows a bit or two about the use of power – in a perverse way. Gone are the days when presidents drew from the well-spring of moral authority to get things going. With President Jonathan, the seduction to raw power has become so irresistible as to constitute the barometer to measure the decline of the moral authority.

Sure enough, everyone is guaranteed to learn the unknown equation in power relations: the rule of unanticipated or unexpected behaviour. It’s something for the gloaters to ponder over.

March 5, 2013
Wages of National Assembly overreach

Last week, the spat between Abdularasheed Maina and the National Assembly finally hit the home stretch. On Thursday, a reluctant President Goodluck Jonathan was forced to issue a directive to the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation Alhaji Isa Bello to commence disciplinary action against the embattled chairman of the Pension Reforms Task Team (PRTT). An Abuja court also removed the remaining obstacles setting the stage for his possible arrest.

From the look of things, the prospect of being hauled before the self-appointed magistrates at the Red chamber would seem a far worse prospect than the civil service noose of possible dismissal for absconding from duty.

Check out the rules of the Civil Service to find out why the latter option would be preferable. It is no accident that the civil service is described as the bastion of due process. There, anything goes! Whereas some members of the political class enjoy the privilege of immunity – (whether conferred or not), the civil service has something of an equivalent in their turgid rules of General Orders and due process which comes close to making their class invincible. The point may have been missed by the distinguished senators in their self-righteous anger. That may yet prove fatal to their cause(s) in due time. And trust Maina; he should know one or two tricks in the GO to make things work his way! Had the distinguished Senators realised this early enough, it’s mostly likely they would be wary of starting a war they could never hope to finish!

Now, let’s get back to where the hoopla started from. Sometime in March last year, the Senate committee on Pension held a public sitting. In the course of that exercise, a Chief Superintendent of Police in the Police Pension Office, Toyin Ishola, accused Maina and his PRTT of fraudulent activities.

He told the committee that the task team, headed by Maina, “unilaterally opened three accounts in different banks without recourse to extant financial rules and approval from the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Minister of Finance”.

He claimed that one of the accounts domiciled at the Abuja Central Business District branch of Fidelity Bank, operated by the younger brother of the embattled Maina had a fixed amount lodged with monthly interest of over N100m. Another N3bn was said to have been deposited in UBA with no proper documentation. The PRTT boss was also acused of spending N240m on the biometric exercise of 20 retirees.

As it turned out, that was only a tip of the mountain of scam. The Senator Kabiru Gaya-led panel would later discover from the records of the Accountant General of the Federation, huge discrepancies between pension releases and the actual funds spent totalling N195 billion.

Could the Senate have handled the Maina saga better? Note that the issue here is an alleged scam in the pension office – not a contest of egos.

Let’s start with the Senate inquiry. I do not think anyone questions the powers of the Senate to undertake any inquiry under the sun, more so from the official of an institution charged with the onerous responsibility to administer the pensions. Indeed, anyone that has followed the probe of the PRTT could not have failed to recognise the deliberate stone-walling and open defiance of the authority of the parliament from the government appointee, in this case Maina. Agreed, it comes with the territory that the subject of an investigation will try stall for time. In the case of the PRTT boss, his overall conduct somehow gave him out as an individual with something to hide.

But so also is the sack order by the Senate on Maina a case of legislative overreach. Obviously, the Senate could not draw the line between the disrespect shown to the institution by Maina (a misdemeanour) and the crime of heist said to have been committed. Whereas the Senate may impose punishments in a manner it deems fit and consistent with its rules in the case of the former, the punishment for crime is altogether a different matter.

Was the President right when he artfully parried the demand for the big stick by going for a more probable offence of AWOL governed strictly by the applicable rules of the service? Whether those baying for Maina’s blood recognise the presidential directive as face-saver or not, it seems unlikely that they will have the final settlement on their terms anytime soon – that is, if ever they will. In any case, only the high minded Senate could have contemplated the summary trial and sentencing of a public officer without reference to applicable rules of engagement. What the President did was find a way out of the dilemma even when it came by way of substituting the serious charge of stealing with the lesser charge of AWOL at this point in time. As it is, the prospect of administrative punishment, which again is most likely to be contested in courts, seems the price the nation would pay for what is said to be a crime of heist.

Earlier, I raised the question of what the Senate could have done differently. The answer seems obvious: the Senate ought to have called in the anti-graft bodies the very moment it sniffed crime. After all, the institution is no court of law; and no matter how painstaking its efforts at fact findings are, the exercise cannot substitute for a due process of trial in the courts. The drama of Maina-chase, other than stoke excitement across the land, has neither advanced the cause of institution-building nor offered a pathway to restitution. And, given the judiciary’s unknowable ways, it would be dangerous to speculate on the direction in which the pendulum will finally swing.

And the lesson for all concerned? There can be no wrong path to a good intention.

Is the matter therefore settled? I do not think that it has even started. N195 billion seems too hefty to vanish without trace. Now that the drama has ended with the Presidency officially declaring their man AWOL, it may well institute its own inquiry to determine where the money went. That should offer some balm to the sore egos of our distinguished Senators.

February 19, 2013
After outrage, then what?

Outrage may have been an understatement to describe the aftermath of the conviction of John Yakubu Yusuf, the pension thief, for his role in the N23 billion pension scam. In a clime where delinquency not only rules but has as its companion, impunity as directing principles of state policies, I couldn’t have imagined the quantum of emotive energy generated in the wake of the controversial ruling by the Federal High Court of Justice Mohammed Talba in Abuja. I guess that is the way we are.

So much for our collective sense of outrage. I watched as Nigerians raved, ranted and chanted all manners of expletives targeted at the judge. Did anyone ever imagine this would be our Mohamed Bouazizi moment? (Remember the Tunisian youth whose act of self-immolation prefaced the Arab Spring?)

And what was it that Nigerians griped about? Simple. That a man who admitted to being complicit in defrauding the Police Pensions Office to the tune of N23 billion – of which N3 billion represented a personal haul – was asked to pay N750,000 and to go home and sin no more!

What’s the N23 billion to the hundreds of billions allegedly carted away by subsidy thieves? Who refers to the 2009 class of alleged bank robbers these days? Does anyone remember the trillion-plus naira sunk into the banks to bail the sector out of the delinquency of the principal actors?

Nigerians, most likely would have tempered their outrage if they had bothered to recall those moments.

Note that the latest issue is essentially about the discretion of the judge to hand out fair sentence; in this case, the maximum sentence applicable was a two-year jail term with or without an option of fine. This is what those who question the prerogative of the judge miss. Need one add that discretion is what it is – and this within the confines of the law.

Why should Nigerians gripe?

Put in another way – what is the difference between the farcical pronouncement of a jail term under which a convict would spend his execu-thief time at a place and pleasure of his own choosing as we saw of a bank thief and the option of asking the felon to go home and rest after the due stress of trial as in the pension scam?

Now, seriously; when did that become an issue in our legal jurisprudence? Do we need to back to the 1999 – 2007 classes of politically exposed persons to appreciate the terrible dimensions of the crisis aptly described by the late Justice Akinola Aguda as the jurisprudence of unequal justice – a phenomenon under which different classes of society are exposed to different facets of the same law?

Does anyone remember the case of one Lucky Igbinedion who also got a slap on the wrist for abusing the public trust? And James Onanefe Ibori currently cooling his heels in a British jail? Now, was it a coincidence the judgment on the pension scam came in the week in which an Ibadan High Court sent the provost of the Federal Cooperative College, Ibadan, Mrs. Ruth Adehwe Aweto and the school bursar Adekanye Komolafe to jail without an option of fine for the crime of defrauding the same federal government?

The Ibadan case is interesting for the amount involved. Both provost and the bursar claimed to have employed 41 permanent staff for their institution for which they handed the federal government a wage bill of N7 million. As it turned out, their wage bill was no more than N4 million as all the staff were casuals. For ripping off the federal government of a paltry N3 million, the duo will spend four years apiece behind the bar without an option of fine.

Here is my point: I find the outrage against the ruling of Justice Talba somewhat misdirected. To start with, not a few of the genuinely outraged citizen would concede that the option of a plea bargain was the next best thing to end the ordeal for both parties. That way, everyone goes home happy: the government could claim that the war against corruption is no fluke; the thief left off the hook to enjoy a fraction of his loot. And for the bewildered citizenry – you guessed right: theirs is outrage therapy!

I must add also that no dilemma can be more confounding. We need the judiciary to help us fight corruption, but it seems to me that the niceties of its rules and the procedures – the age-long safeguards against arbitrariness of state power – have somehow become a cog in the path of justice. The result is that justice is increasingly sought off-shore while our judicial officers pretend that all is well. Is it part of their reading of the globalisation manual?

Let me highlight another aspect of the corruption story that seems to have escaped deserving attention. I refer here to the farce that our public finance system has become. The question of how a handful of officials could manage to cart away billions from the treasury without detection or without the trigger of an alarm obviously begs to be addressed. Of course, the problem is pervasive, cutting across every sector of our national life. It seems about time to re-examine the effectiveness of those extant controls in the system, those early warning systems that once served. Aren’t they ultimately cheaper and less frustrating than the current chasing after the wind after the act has been committed?

Finally, to say that the nation is engulfed in a moral crisis is to put things mildly. The truth is that the nation is dying in instalments; it is only a matter of time before corruption brought the nation to its knees.

What is the way out? Honestly, the solution is complex. First, we need to do something about the corrosive value system which promotes crass individualism. We need to put systems in place to reduce the possibility of heist being committed. A renewed national will is needed to stand up to the monster.

How can anyone talk of a fleeting chance of success when those who should ordinarily champion the war are not only pointing fingers but living in denial?

February 12, 2013
Amnesia or amnesty?

I do not think anybody ever doubted that the federal government would, at some point, surrender to the artful manoeuvres of the Boko Haram terrorists and their hordes of sympathisers. I had predicted that it was only a matter of time before the federal government went for the old template of appeasement now described as amnesty.

Well, that moment seems to have come, finally. On Monday last week, the sect declared a unilateral ‘ceasefire’ after a reported closed door meeting with the Borno State Governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima and his top officials as well as religious leaders from the state.

The commander-in-charge of North and Central Borno, Sheikh Abu Mohammad Abdulazeez Ibn Idris, who briefed the media shortly after the meeting stated that the group had agreed to lay down their arms and embrace peace after due consultation with the leader of the sect, Sheikh Abubakar Shekau, as well as intervention and pleading from respected individuals and groups in the state.

There was also a proviso that government immediately release all their members from custody unconditionally, rebuild their places of worship, and compensate them. And as proof that the group still retained a shred of humanity, its leader would not just acknowledge but was actually quoted as lamenting that “a lot of Muslim women and children have suffered”! Really?

Quite expectedly, it was the moment for the weary, frustrated and increasingly out-of-depth but policy-challenged federal government to swing in into frenzy. On Saturday, Vice President Namadi Sambo sneaked into Maiduguri, the Borno State capital – the first by any high official of the Jonathan presidency and perhaps the federal government since the insurgency blew into full scale terror in 2009. Earlier the pacifist Borno Elders Forum had latched on the ceasefire offer to demand that federal government accept the offer, perhaps without preconditions! The group leader and elder-statesman, Shettima Ali Mongunno was unusually ecstatic: “we expect that they (the federal government) will embrace this positive opening and capitalise on it in order to open wider space for sustainable peace”.

Victory at last? Well, I hope.

At this point, it seems necessary to look at the prognosis – possibly the events that have made ceasefire suddenly attractive. First, so-called war has become un-winnable in the increasing unlikelihood that the federal government will accede to the demand by the Borno Elders Forum to pull back the forces of the military Joint Task Force anytime soon. Second, the Boko Haram’s tactics, by now familiar, are such that Nigerians are far less disposed to accord them further psychological advantage that they once enjoyed. The third point is that the developments in Mali and the foul mood it has spawned in the international community has made the unilateral offer of ceasefire not only pragmatic but inevitable.

Having said that however, the ceasefire offer seems to me the first of a two-part play. The first part involves the use of the template– the mechanism which apart from excusing the government of the rigour of multi-level engagement that had long been canvassed, fits snugly into the culture of trading peace for cash. The other half of the package is the push for blanket pardon for the class of mass murderers.

I must say that the latter, when it finally happens as I am sure it will, can only take the nation to a new depth of low even by Nigeria’s bizarre standards of public policy and morality. Yes, Nigeria continues to sink on virtually all indices of human development. It seems to me really, a different kind of call for a self-respecting government to be asked to sit at communion table with terrorists for some payout negotiations.

In case the federal government pretends not to know, there is a world of difference between the Niger Delta militancy and the variant of terror unleashed by the Boko Haram. At least we knew what the Niger Delta militants wanted. Theirs was a quest to control the resources beneath their soil. Their main target was the oil industry infrastructure and different classes of actors in the oil industry chain. Kidnapping and other forms of terror were merely deployed in furtherance of their objectives. That obviously explains why it was fairly easy to draw the gangs from the creeks into the open with promises of amnesty and other goodies. It is therefore given that the current peace will hold for as long as the flow of goodies to ex-militants is not disrupted or threatened.

But the atavistic Boko Haram? How do you place a maniacal group which seeks rewards of multiple score virgins only in heaven’s tableland? Ship them to a colony of delectable virgins where they can have their heart’s content?

Has anyone considered the difficulties in reconciling the long term demands of the sect with those of a modern, secular, self-respecting and orderly society? Do we then surrender to the crazy demand for a theocratic space within the polity without altering the notion of sovereignty as we know it?

And the fundamentalist ideology which feeds the insurgency? What chance does the federal government have to extirpate it? Or is the current quest merely about purchasing peace at all costs?

What happens 10, 15, 20 years from now? Where does one begin the discussion on accommodation for the crime of mass murder?

Let’s look at what the group is putting on the table in the so-called ceasefire. They want their members released from custody – unconditionally. In other words, for the federal government to overlook the grievous crimes committed against the state. Note that the crime here is mass murder. Also, the group wants their places of worship rebuilt. They want compensation for their members. I hear the figure of N26 billion has been proposed.

To the group and their cohorts, injury to victims and their relations, not to talk of the larger society, counts for pretty little. No, the lives of innocent citizens, many of them women and children, gruesomely terminated in their places of worship do not matter. The scores of religious houses brought down by their lethal bombs obviously means nothing? For Boko Haram and their sympathisers, justice is akin to living in mortal dread of their terror.

Still want to ask what I think of the ceasefire business? Amnesia would seem to me as by far, more preferable. That way, we won’t have to worry about ever calling anybody to account for crimes against humanity, or contemptible aversion for basic universal standards of justice and humanity.

By all means, let’s have the amnesty – a comprehensive one at that – for all manners of crimes under the sun. After all, isn’t it said that all have sinned?

As for when the nation would rise up to say ‘no more’, I don’t think we are there yet. At least, not now or in the foreseeable future.

February 5, 2013
Police and the President’s indignation

Whichever way one looks at the Channels TV’s searchlight on the Police College Ikeja and the presidential indignation to which it gave rise, the programme conceived as a talk-shop under the TV station’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiative seems to have achieved more than it could ever have intended.

If we can discount the presidential gaffe of describing the affair as a smear campaign, it was perhaps sufficient that the President was roused by the graphic imageries as shown on TV to visit. What it means is that changes may be in the offing for the orphaned establishment. The question of whether they would come in the sense of creating the institutions that would ultimately redress the decadence of the state institution is however, an entirely different matter.

Most likely, some heads would be broken to assuage the Presidential anger. Indeed, some dozen careers would most probably be herded to Siberia ostensibly to presage the presidential charade of an intervention. We know what will follow: a classy, all-stars’ cast of a presidential committee to look at the problems that are so obvious to all – except the government! And we also know where it always ends: billions of naira intervention funds. The latter should gladden the hearts of government contractors.

Now, what do I make of the Presidential outrage? In a context, it would seem perfectly in order, if the President can show Nigerians proof of what his administration has done –differently– on which his exaggerated expectation of the police institution could be grounded.

Accusing unnamed citizens of embarking on a smear campaign against his administration – or attempting to cow the police hierarchs into silence – only because the images shown of the college affront the senses, without evidence of what his administration has done to change the situation would seem out of order. It is un-Presidential and cheap; needless to state that it is unhelpful both to the cause of the police and the image of the Jonathan administration.

So, the President is outraged because the Police College Ikeja looks like some refugee camp?

He needs one night of vigil to see the trainees as they troop out daily clutching empty buckets in search of the essential commodity called water as if the chore is a necessary part of endurance training for cadets. He would also need another day out at the police forensic laboratory somewhere in Alagbon, Ikoyi where officers trained with millions of dollars of tax-payers money loaf around – waiting to accompany exhibits requiring forensic investigations abroad – for no other reason than obsolescence of vital equipment.

And the police communication rooms in the various commands? These are said to belong to the Stone Age. And the hell-holes called police barracks? The less said, the better. Obviously, those are no subjects of presidential outrage.

Far from suggesting that the administration is responsible for the state of the police as it is today, the issue is to put into proper context, the factors responsible for the decapitation of the institution. At the heart matter is the issue of finance – the gross under-funding of the police, which although was more pronounced under the military, has since been sustained under the current democratic dispensation. While these factors predate the Jonathan administration, the administration has clearly not lifted a finger about redressing the situation –the reason it stands as no less complicit.

Let’s turn to the numbers. In Budget 2012, the entire budget for the police was N331.2 billion. Of this, the Ministry of Police Affairs took N5.8 billion leaving the Police Formations and Commands with N307.9 billion. Of this, N290.7 billion went for personnel costs for the nearly 400,000-strong personnel. The overheads for running police operations was a mere N8.1 billion. We are here talking of the amount set aside to run 1,115 police divisions, 5,515 police stations and 5,000 police posts spread across the six-geopolitical zones of the federation.

The reader is here invited to read Malam Nasir El-Rufai’s illuminating piece on the police in Thisday of March 2, 2012 to have a fuller appreciation of the odds facing the police. There, he showed in some graphic detail, how the per capita allocation to a police division came to no more than N696,000 annually, a further breakdown of which came to less than N2,000 per day – a sum just enough to purchase 20 litres of gasoline for an operational vehicle – and this supposedly to run a police station in the age of kidnappers and the Boko Haram!

Does it therefore surprise that the police training institutions would cut the picture of neglect?

By the way, N851 million was voted for training, with an additional N55 million for associated travels in 2012 – in a nation where billions are earmarked for presidential gourmets! These are verifiable facts.

The obtuse public finance system under which the police gets whatever peanuts that a benevolent executive grants, though a major part of the problem, is however one part. The other part is the culture of criminal denial of the extant rot – a chief example of which the Presidential visit merely illustrate. Like the President, the police authorities are just as complicit, if not more, as their principal in this culture of denial. Asides, both also share in the pathology of being utterly uncreative, if not entirely clueless, when it comes to evolving a workable funding strategy. This is why it came as a surprise that the Police authorities gleefully threw the institution open to Channels TV’s filming crew!

Like the example of Lagos and some states in the South-west where the Police Security Trust Fund have kicked into operation have shown, the problems facing the police institution does not require any magic wand to solve. What is required is a willingness to think outside the box, meticulous planning, an iron will to follow the chosen course through and, above all, demonstrable commitment to transparency. The states that have adopted the Trust Fund idea would seem to have substantially addressed the question of whether a sustainable mechanism for funding police operations – outside of the anachronistic, rule of thumb budgeting process – is possible. What the President does not need is the superfluity of the recent mock show to get at it.

January 22, 2013
The vandals of Arepo

It is no accident that the casualty figures from the vandalisation of the so-called System 2B pipelines in Arepo, Ogun State have been somewhat indeterminate – days after. How about a nation that has had very limited success counting itself taking so much trouble counting the hordes of the expendables blown into the creeks as a result of greed? But then, what does it matter – that scores of Nigerians have swelled the legion of the nation’s expendables?

One thing that cannot be suggested of the weekend pipeline disaster in Arepo Ogun State is that it was entirely unexpected. However, it seems to me that we are at the turning point – the terminal stage of the pathology described as the Acquired Institutional Delinquency Syndrome (AIDS), a measure of how far the culture of self-help has metastasized.

Let’s go back a bit. In August last year, the same System 2B pipeline – the main artery for fuel distribution in the South-West was destroyed by the vandals. For weeks running, the nation could not put out the fires. Or, rather, the security agencies had much trouble putting out the fire as a result of the difficult terrain. It also emerged that they had to contend with the intrepid vandals who could not sit by and watch their criminal enterprise ruined. Why should they not fight since their very lives depended on it?

We know the rest of the story. A group of NNPC engineers called in to repair the broken pipelines were gruesomely murdered; so was the attempt to retrieve their bodies from the creeks resisted by the goons. The vandals of Arepo obviously thought little of the security agencies and perhaps far less of the authority of the federal government. It took weeks before the goons were dislodged from their gangland republic and only after did the NNPC move in to fix the pipelines.

That was in September. And the pipeline was not even put into use until December 2012. The entire affair is best described as pathetic.

So, who is feigning surprise at last week’s disaster? The security agencies lulled into sleep after claiming premature victory August 2012? The national oil corporation yet to figure out how to secure its pipelines and make them safe? Or the federal government that is as good as clueless when matters about evolving strategies to secure vital national assets pops up? How about a nation rendered complicit by fact of indifference?

I do not know where the idea came from that the derring-do vandals have suddenly become less daring or perhaps born-again because the security agencies managed to arrest a few persons.

Should it surprise anyone that the NNPC does not seem to have learnt anything from the previous incident which claimed the lives of three of their top engineers and disrupted of the fuel supply chain in the South-West? Isn’t it the way the business of governance is conducted in these parts?

I watched Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State on TV as he bemoaned the complicity of the national oil corporation in the tragedy. So unsparing was the governor as he charged that: “NNPC with their inaction, they are part of this problem. I want to believe that they are part of the people aiding and abetting this pipeline vandalisation”. That obviously was an understatement. The corporation seems to me the root and branch of the problem.

I do not think anyone can deny the criminal complicity of a good many of our institutions in the countless instances of mass murders in the country. Do we begin with the death traps described as highways? Or the health-care system that dispenses deaths in their thousands? Or the educational system as purveyors of tradition, ignorance and superstition? Are these institutions not part of the making of the criminal state called Nigeria?

The question of course is why anyone would expect the NNPC to be different.

There is however, another way to view last week’s development. There are those who will argue that the Arepo incident is only a tiny dot in the nation’s slow regression to the famed Hobbesian jungle. No doubt, they are right to the extent that what we see is actually no more than the extension of the elaborate, individualized self-help scheme that governance has become in the country.

Of course, what we call governance is actually no more than an institution in the service of a few oligarchs, a two-way affair between beneficiaries of unearned wealth: the contractors, fuel merchants, beneficiaries of all manners of duty waivers and their cohorts and the dispensers of patronage. It is between the two that the wealth of the nation is shared. We are here talking of wealth running into trillions of naira annually. So what could be wrong with some hoodlums taking their turn?

So much for our collective outrage at what the vandals have done to themselves and the society. The question is; are they more culpable or even more rapacious in the despoliation of the nation than those whitewashed criminals in public service? Between those public servants who routinely help themselves to the public till while denying service to the public and the pipeline vandal, which is there to choose from? Howe about the high net-worth businessman whose worth is actually no more than access to the nation’s marble palaces? Are they not of the same class, the same species? Do they not represent the symptoms of the same disease of self-help, of impunity?

I do not think that anyone should suffer the illusion that they are different. They are not. That is what makes the future so frightening.

January 15, 2013
David versus Goliath (The cement war)

Lanre Opakunle, Plant Manager of Lafarge WAPCO’s Lakatabu Ewekoro plant in Ogun State gave rather insightful contribution on the raging controversy as to the cause(s) of the so-called-cement glut over which Dangote Cement had drawn the shutters on its Gboko Cement plant. (See The Nation December 31, page 6). It could not have been better timed given the raging low intensity corporate warfare between Dangote Cement and Ibeto Cement, the fringe player now accused of flooding the local cement with imported cement.

No doubt, the Lafarge chieftain helped put, in perspective, the problems plaguing indigenous industrialists. Unfortunately also, he left a gaping window on what I consider a troubling aspect of the corporate behaviour of our indigenous venture capitalists. I shall return to that later.

Let me attempt a summary of the views of the Lafarge chieftain on the rage over the so-called glut in the cement said to be a grave threat to the multibillion-dollar investment in the industry.

First, he confirmed the glut, which he attributed to the increase in local production of cement and the continued importation of subsidised cement. Secondly, he acknowledged – and I consider this important – the problem of low sales and high inventory – the logical consequence of weak and ineffective demand. While admitting the cyclic nature of demand for cement, he could not understand why sales have not lifted since the onset of the so-called peak season.

His words are particularly instructive: “the market was dull during the rainy season. The current period is supposed to be the peak of production and demand. But the reverse is the case as there is no demand. It means something is wrong. About 220,000 tonnes of clinker are on ground, not being used…Most of our workers are roaming. Ninety percent of our trailers are idle. We are operating at less than 50 percent capacity. The cost of production is high. Our plants are experiencing challenges…Once the place is filled up, we have no choice but to shut down”.

Unfortunately, he would in the same vein lapse into the same deliberate misdiagnosis of the problem – the issue of the so-called glut arising from the influx of cheap, substandard foreign cement. He would bemoan the fact that cement importation has continued despite the glut in the local market, a situation he says, “calls into question, the backward integration policy of the federal government”.

Some of course would argue that it comes to no issue that two foremost players in the industry – Dangote Cement and Lafarge WAPCO – have found a common enemy in Ibeto on which to hang all of the problems facing the industry. I started this by referring to what I consider a troubling aspect of the corporate behaviour of our indigenous venture capitalists. The point I seek to make is that the near paranoid anti-competition instincts of the typical local venture capitalist has never been given the attention it truly deserves. Given their grave implications for our trade and market practices, I think the time to beam attention to these practices has come.

Lest I be mistaken, I have not sought to understate the problems of the industry or even industries generally. The problems are real as to be indisputable. And as I have always argued on this page, the local industry needs all the muscle that a federal government can give by way of tariff walls, duty waivers, and other forms of direct incentives to make them truly competitive. But then, the question that most Nigerians have not bothered to ask is where will the Dangotes of this world, the Lafarges and other thriving multinationals without the hefty support in the first place? And should they be allowed to deny others the use of the same ladder with which they rose to their pre-eminent positions?

The point therefore is that the so-called survival quest of the local venture capitalist must be balanced by considerations of consumer interest. Year in, year out, we read of billions of naira declared as profits to shareholders – nothing wrong as that is what keeps business going. Of course, we do know that the other leg of what keep businesses going is the ability of the consumer to make a purchase. At this time, no one seems to bother. And the future: to get as many players as possible on board and hence unlock the vice-like grip of the current players on the industry.

How many Nigerians can afford to buy a 50kg bag of cement at the ruling price of nearly N2000? Given the reality of declining disposable incomes, the answer would seem obvious: fewer and fewer Nigerians. Where is the housing industry in which the industry is expected to make its bumper sales? Or even the construction industry?

But more pertinent is whether the price actually represents the best price in the circumstances? To start with, it is doubtful that many Nigerians would agree; even more doubtful is that government will agree going by its tepid attempt in the past to get the producers to bring down the price. The problems of the industry are certainly not new; the problems affect the cement manufacturers as indeed other players in the economy. The yarn about the influx of foreign cement is obviously designed to court the sympathy of Nigerians. Of course, with the prospects of another factory closing shop at a time of high unemployment, government’s back would expectedly be on the wall.

However, the larger issues remain. Clearly, the suspicion has lingered that the pricing regime is sustained by the current structure of the industry – which permits the existence of a few dominant players, a situation which effectively renders the consumer a price taker. The emerging oligopoly should ordinarily be troubling in an industry where the consumer should ordinarily be king. But more troubling is the failure of the government to anticipate the possibility of collusion and other anti-competition practices in the absence of anti-trust legislations.

Above all, we must shudder at the one-sided equity in which few manufacturers would enjoy some incentives while denying others the same; clearly, the Santa Claus image of government as one that dispenses favour to operators by the rule of the thumb, or one that is aligned to special interests, must be deplored.

I need to make the additional point that the so-called war is not about the cement consumer. It is about access to the Nigerian gravy – the winner-takes-all industry where only the fittest survive. The consumer is only a hapless bystander in a game they are programmed to lose. So we watch. And enjoy.

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January 8, 2013
A President’ New Year promise

Welcome to 2013, a year declared by President Goodluck Jonathan as one that will witness improved governance. Just as it is natural at this time of the year for individuals and households to project on the promises of the immediate future, our President, in addition to his charming Goodluck, seems to have taken to the ancient mystical art of crystal-ball gazing in the bid to assure us that the journey to his Nigerian Eldorado is on course.

First, was the occasion of the foundation laying ceremony of Living Faith Foundation Bible College in Kaduna on Christmas Eve where the President spoke of better times for the citizens in the New Year. His words: let me assure all of you and indeed Nigerians that 2013 will be better for us than 2012 in all aspects of the nation’s history (sic). The New Year shall be better for us in terms of job creation, wealth creation and improved security among others”.

Days after – this time at the Christmas Service in Abuja, the President broached on the subject of perception of his administration as being a slow one.

Again, his words: “people say this government is slow. Yes, by human thinking, we are slow; but I can say that we are not slow. He added, perhaps for emphasis, that “the government will not, because of the perception, begin to rush….”

Although, the latter must have come to many Nigerians as a new one, from the President, it may well be evidence that the cries and anguish on the Main Street have finally pierced through the impervious walls of the Villa.

A snail speed administration? C’mon, that would be far more tolerable than the astonishing inertia or even the outrageous but expensive presidential indulgence of outsourced governance – the variant of which finds expression in irrational fatalistic abdication; the practice of leaving routine matters of governance in the hand of the supernatural in a supposedly secular, presidential democracy.

Without taking anything from the rare candour of the presidential admission that the past year was a colossal disaster as far as governance went, I have struggled in vain to find the substance in the so-called solid foundation on which the President plans to erect his transformational infrastructure.

Let’s begin with the touted claims of achievement. The most obvious one of course is the “improved” performance in the power sector. Considering the state of power generation which is said to have hit the 4,500 Mw, it must be galling to most Nigerians that a federal government that has poured over $20 billion in the last decade has been on an orgy of wild jubilation over the incremental achievement – a notional improvement that is no more than 25 percent – in electricity supplies.

Or the railways. Amazingly, the nation is supposed to be in frenzy that the railways has been primed to run –on the same old, disused Lugardian tracks. How about touting the “feat” of the overpaid Chinese contractors in fixing the relics in the age of high speed trains as “transformation”!

In the last year, more industries closed shop than we have had new start-ups. We know why: the same old, worn, recycled but nonetheless valid tales of inclement policies, infrastructure deficit, high interest rates, and other countless bureaucratic impediments which constitute the body and soul of industries’ lack of competitiveness.

And the result? Manufacturing remains at the abysmal low level of 4 percent contribution to the GDP – the level it was at independence. We remain net importer of just about anything – from refined fuel to domestic consumables, and to industrial spares.

We have since found a magic in starting our charity abroad. Not for Olusegun Aganga, Jonathan’s Trade and Commerce minister, the reciprocity subsumed in global trade relations. Progress, Nigeria style, is denominated in foreign investment: the higher the number of those high-octane cocktails in off-shore hotels packaged as foreign investment drive, the more progress is said to be made. The question of how foreign investments would thrive in an environment littered with carcasses of dead industries hardly matter. How about herding our policy wonks for a refresher course in Globalisation 102?

Today, the single greatest threat to the nation’s socio-economic stability is unemployment. The figure is said to be some 25 percent with youth unemployment put at a frightening 50 percent rate. That’s nearly twice the population of our neighbour, Ghana. What’s being done? The last I heard was that the inelegantly couched Sure-P headed by Christopher Kolade, an extra-constitutional contraption very much like the PTF, has been drafted to the rescue.

What more can be written about the security situation that is not already known? There is war with the Boko Haram in the North; kidnappers are threatening to overrun the South. The capacity of the nation’s military is stretched thin – bogged down with internal security operations with no signs of respite on the horizon. The police, being no match for the sophistication of the criminal gangs on rampage appear overwhelmed.

Why the picture of these realities? It is to show where the nation is coming from. It seems to me the only way to evaluate the President’s prognosis for the year. After all, isn’t it said that were wishes to be horses, beggars would ride?

So much for the President’s exaggerated picture of 2013; last year for instance, it took a paralysing protest over the fuel price hikes to move the President to act on the racket of fuel subsidy funds administration. Twelve months after that holy rage forced the President to commit his administration to the establishment of three new refineries, it has since backtracked: the refineries are no longer on the table.

In the year ended, the nation spent N1.3 trillion on fuel imports; this year, the figure is likely to be much higher. Lost on the hierarchs of the administration are the drag-on effects of the avoidable fuel import regime on the nation’s foreign exchange reserves and the economy as a whole.

Consider also that it took the threat of impeachment to prod the President to implement the capital provisions of the 2012 budget. Thanks to executive-bureaucratic inertia, the roads remain a picture of abandonment. Sprucing up airport terminals may be Minister Stella Oduah’s idea of modernisation, the aviation sector is nowhere modern or safer any more than new entrants are willing to venture into the sector.

My prognosis for the year? Nothing will change. Not in the quality and pace of governance. The bazaar driving its processes will continue no doubt. Industry capacity utilisation is likely to remain, pretty even. Surely, no one expects unemployment to come down; Not the interest rate. The monetary authorities will continue their ‘inflation targeting’ while the real economy grinds to a halt.

You ask why? I say there is too much thinking within the box. Isn’t it said also that ‘what you see is what you get’?

Happy New Year!

January 1, 2013
Same old story

With barely two weeks to the end of 2102, Nigerians should have just enough time to ponder again on the bizarre econometrics of fuel consumption and its associated Ponzi scheme dubbed subsidy-gate. As if to confirm the degree to which the rentier enterprise has defied gravity, President Goodluck Jonathan last week made a request for supplementary appropriation of N161 billion to take the subsidy payout for the 2012 fiscal year well beyond the trillion naira mark.

Eleven months after the debilitating strikes over the removal of petrol subsidy, the question is whether anything has changed since then.

I do not think that anyone needs to look far for an answer. The indices seem as clear as daylight.

First, the fuel supply situation has remained as fragile and unstable as it was pre-January 1. Secondly, the request for supplementary appropriation has confirmed that the nation is nowhere near solving the riddle of how much fuel it consumes. If anything, the indication is that the shadow- boxing and the posturing by our high-minded reformers have been comical show, a waste of time – a colossal chasing after the wind.

No doubt, the substance of subsidy-gate has been confirmed, beyond any iota of doubt. The nation is said to have been fleeced to the tune of N232 billion. Of course, the inquiries also produced an interesting derivative now better known as Farouk-gate (or is it Ote-Dollar gate) involving an alleged giving and/or taking a $620,000 in bribe in full glare of camera.

Howbeit, depending on how much stock one places on the value of the naming and shaming of the alleged subsidy thieves and their comical arraignments with the full photo-op sessions, to the extent that the nation cannot be said to be near getting out of the fuel supply conundrum anytime soon, the so-called progress cannot be anything but imaginary.

There is a fourth, signal – a disturbing one at that –the increasing possibility that the promises on the new refineries are unlikely to be kept.

Where do we go from here? The future is certainly scary as it is.

Indeed, the atmosphere of incapacitation/abdication under which the conundrum has become intractable must itself be seen as worrisome. Government’s unquestioning faith in market orthodoxies and by extension, the fixation with the removal of subsidy on petrol has unfortunately endured to the point of constituting the sole plank of its liberalisation mantra. Newspaper reports last week suggesting that the federal government may have junked the idea of building new refineries have since reinforced the view of a government ill-prepared to show leadership in a sector that continues to drain not just the national till but the nation’s store of foreign reserves.

At the moment, it seems out of the question that the ordinary citizen will tolerate any further tinkering with fuel prices under any circumstances especially if it has to do with subsidy removal.

Does anyone yet see the bind? Obviously, we are back in circles, preparing perhaps for the next cycle of subsidy removal and, you guessed right, mass resistance!

That is the way we are, and perhaps that is how things will continue.

It used to be said that when there is the will, there will be a way. This is no doubt a truism for our federal government to the extent that it is bogged down by the specious mantra of liberalisation that precludes its participation either directly or by way of partnership in business. As for the government’s claim that the trillion naira subsidy has become unsustainable, I think we are nowhere there yet – at least not while the current inflows into the piggy bank called excess crude account remains guaranteed.

By the way, is it not the same federal government owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that has proposed to build some 30 retail outlets under the 2013 fiscal plans? So what is the difference between building service stations and refineries? It seems in the character of the morally-challenged government to make exceptions when it suits it.

Sanusi lays an egg

Readers of this column should by now be familiar with my views on the wave of sanitisation that have swept the financial sector since 2009. Clearly, whatever misgivings anyone may have of the management of the aftermath of the sweeping reforms embarked upon by Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and crew, the exercise was clearly inevitable. One area I considered disturbing was the failure of the CBN management to accord forbearance to the hordes of shareholders that were not found to have been culpable in the bazaar which plunged their financial institutions into ruin. Against all entreaties, the CBN insisted that the shareholders knew of the risks, and like any investor, should have expected to bite the bullet when the bubble burst. That to me was legalistic particularly as I felt that some accommodation could have been extended to these shareholders.

Now, that was then.

Today, a new scenario seems to be playing out which, unfortunately suggests that CBN regulations are not necessarily cast in stone. The issue concerns the Savannah Bank and Societe General Bank which the courts granted reprieve some years ago. Here is my concern. I must say that I have no problem with the apex bank warehousing the licences for the duo. However, I have had a bit of a headache understanding the regulatory abracadabra which forbade forbearance for one set of players while denying same for another.

The two banks are planning to stage a comeback. That seems fine. What I cannot understand is the idea of a lifeline from the apex bank to them. Can somebody explain what is going on?

December 18, 2012
Recovering the nation’s soul

If Nigeria‘s unflattering scorecard on the Transparency International’s corruption perception index had meant to stoke a soul-search by the Jonathan administration to appreciate how far metastasised the cancer of corruption has become, and by extension, the lack of seriousness by his administration to confront the monster that threatens the foundations of the polity, it has clearly failed to achieve anything near those. Rather, the administration has opted to mount denials while it struggles to persuade itself (certainly not the now cynical citizenry) that the war against corruption is being fought with vigour.

The context of course is the latest ranking of TI and the nation’s place as the 35th most corrupt nation in the world. Should anyone lose sleep? Is anyone suggesting that the report is spurious given the scale of sleaze in high and low places being daily revealed? Whereas the claim that the government is doing its heroic best to fight corruption is neither here nor there, the issue is whether the so-called strategies are having the desired effect of curbing the virus of corruption. The answer, being so obvious, makes government’s defence of its so-called efforts, rather egregious.

No doubt, government’s claim to activism may not entirely be without some merit. After all, if only for the heightened tales of trillions looted outright by officials, plus the countless trillions siphoned via undelivered value for monies said to have been lawfully appropriated, the soulless machine described as the Nigerian government under Jonathan’s watch could, with some justification, claim success – at least going by the number of probes it has instituted – the same way a medic could choose to measure success by the cycle of visits made by the patient to the infirmary.

The question is – does this amount to winning the anti-corruption war?

Just as the administration’s claim of commitment and achievement in the prosecution of corruption cases comes across as questionable, there are countless reasons to suggest that the full dimensions of the malaise are far from being fully grasped. I do not wish to dwell on government’s so-called records of achievements, particularly the racket now described as subsidy-gate in which a cartel of 197 oil barons were alleged to have shared of N232 billion, or even the countless other findings from probes spawned in the wake of January 1 protests and the sour tales of vanishing billions. For an administration that appears to have aided and abetted many of the bazaars in the first place, should anyone be fooled by the burst of energy in what is increasingly a half-hearted attempt to punish the alleged subsidy thieves?

I am alarmed by the increasing reality that corruption has become a way of life. Once, it was tempting to see corruption as exclusive to the public sector. Today, it is as pervasive as it is engulfing – sparing no institution of society. Not the sacred precincts of the religious institution or the hallowed chambers of the judiciary or even the family institution, are exempt. These days, the rule appears to be that the bigger the heist, the higher the likelihood of being able to suborn state institutions to fob off attempts at enforcing restitution.

Measuring the impact of corruption can be quite daunting. In the public sphere, the cost is reckoned in terms of undelivered value on every unit of public funds spent. In the last decade alone, we have seen how the gap between the value appropriated and value delivered have continued to grow – no thanks to the culture of graft in the public sector.

But then, the private sector is hardly better. Just as the last financial crisis has shattered the myth about the so-called discipline of the private sector, the impact of the delinquency on the public sector can be quite as devastating. It is worth recalling that the treasury had to shell out more than a trillion naira in bailout funds for its club of delinquent lenders.

That is how steep the wage of corruption can be.

Now, I do not pretend that curbing corruption is going to be any easy – any more than one can pretend that it can be a wholly government affair. Indeed, it seems to me as a battle that must be won if the nation’s lost soul must be retrieved. Clearly, there is a lot that the government can do to tame the culture of impunity, to expand the scope of service delivery to facilitate deliverables of governance, and of course to strengthened the institutions in the justice delivery chain.

Of course, the current strategy of catching the culprit after the act is hopelessly flawed particularly as the larger society appears to have surrendered in some morbid complicity to the monster even when the countless obstacles on the path of institutions notably the police, anti-graft bodies and the judiciary makes the prospects of an all-out battle against the club of social delinquents truly daunting.

But then, it seems to me that the Nigerian corruption story cannot be explained outside of the collapse of the moral order as we knew it. Once upon a time, Nigerian relished the virtues of hard, honest work and the privileges attached to it. That now belongs to some distant past. Whereas our capitalists, unlike their western counterparts, have long dispensed with the protestant ethics in their wild embrace of a spurious capitalism stripped of any known rules, what is on offer is a grotesque capitalism in which the due discipline of work and the finesse of regulations are missing.

As a consequence, society has since relapsed into a kind of jungle in which crass individualism rules.

Where do we go from here. Good question. I do not think that we need new Nigerians. What we need instead are new attitudes. Here, the starting point is to make our governments work for us. I suspect that we will all require a new theology which although heaven bound, also stresses the virtue of civic responsibility. Just as the mission to recover the nation’s lost soul promises to be long and bumpy, it is something that has become urgent. However, if there are any consolations about the challenges which lie ahead, it has to be in the knowledge that the seeds of regeneration will emerge, from nowhere else, but from the ashes of the current rot.

Happy to be back.

December 11, 2012