The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

  • Neither World Bank nor IMF

    Neither World Bank nor IMF

    For daring to put its snout into the Nigerian trough uninvited, and also for going as far as to proffer an endorsement to Tinubunomics at a time the wailing tribe have desperately sought to declare it a disaster, a good number of Nigerians have since drawn the daggers at the Breton Woods institution – the World Bank. 

    So much for his audacity for saying what most Nigerians probably hate to hear about the twin pillars of Tinubu administration’s reforms – the removal of fuel subsidy and abolition of the multiple foreign exchange regime introduced by the current administration – the World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Ndiame Diop insists that while the reforms may bring hardship, they are actually the tonic needed at this time to ensure the nation’s long-term stability.

    “Reversing these reforms would be detrimental and would spell doom for Nigeria”, he was quoted to have said.

    The bank’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, Indermit Gill, would echo a similar sentiment: Nigeria requires the next 10 to 15 years of the reforms to establish itself as a leading economic power, in sub-Saharan Africa and the global stage.

    I guess that it does matter that the message is coming from a quarter that most Nigerians have come to loathe. After all, Nigerians are only too familiar with the Breton Institutions with their misery-inducing conditionalities. Such have been their meddling in the political economy as indeed our officials’ wild embrace of their doctrinae prescriptions, warts and all, that Nigerians’ patriotic instinct should ordinarily be roused into action at the mention of their name. 

    Yet, for the tribe that have long gone past convincing about the current path as being anything but ruinous, they are free to see the endorsement as taking nothing from an assumed toxic brew, but rather as supplying a quick-acting, but no less lethal enzyme to the mix!

    So much for the Tinubunomics and its lofty promises of renewed hope; the metrics, some 17 months after, not least the harsh realities that Nigerians are forced to contend with, are to say the least, dispiriting. And so also the pains that Nigerians are forced to bear together with the palpable frustrations that have attended to them. Not discounting the palpable anomie and the helplessness in the face of the increasingly unbearable cost of surviving the current time.

    My question: couldn’t these have been foreseen; or better still, couldn’t these have been foreseeable? Shrugged off as many are wont to about the answer which are in plain sight, it seems to have been long settled that the demon, of which Nigerians and their utterly irresponsible elite has long opted to live in its denial, will somehow have to be confronted someday. That is the essence of Tinubunomics, an exigency forced on the nation in the moment of dire emergency.

    It is precisely why those fingering the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as the author and finisher of the ongoing reform and so blame them for the current predicament, alongside their partners framing the issues as ideological could not be more wrong! In fact, the old anger about some external bodies forcing an unpopular pill down the throat of a hapless nation would seem not only diversionary but an extension of that old culture of denial that birthed the lingering debate on the subsidy.  

    The point really is that the problems are ours to fix; aside the plain common sense of it, it is hard to see anything that remotely suggests a meddling by any external body in what the government has done.

    But then, as the government may have also now realised that forcing a shift from the programmed misapprehension of the subsidy question by a section of the vociferous elite is not exactly the same as getting the majority of Nigerians to accept either the fact or the justice of it. One thing is clear though: to say that Nigerians are no more convinced that the government acted right on the matter than they were pre-May 29, 2023 is merely stating the obvious. Sadly, none of the argument about the quantum of under-recovery known to run into trillions every year, the industrial scale smuggling of our relatively cheaper fuel across the borders, seems to have settled anything.

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    The same could be said of the merging of the forex rates. The government’s explicitly stated rationale about dismantling the arbitrage-laden infrastructure that characterised the old forex management regime might seem the right thing for all times and seasons, not a few, apparently, are still of the persuasion that the forex regime under which those connected to the corridors of power had free passage to a world of wealth without work through discretionary forex allocation should still be in place!

    As it appears, the problem isn’t just that the government chose to tread a difficult, but sensible path, but that an institution like the World Bank also thinks it is the most pragmatic thing to do! And that in our clime is supposed to be treasonable! Can anyone beat that?

    World Bank officials or not – Nigerians surely, do not deserve the programmed confusion that have trailed them. For nothing in the consequential measures undertaken by the administration could be deemed to be outside of what the then candidate Tinubu said he would do. And surely, the administration has never been in denial about the pains that would be associated with the measures. As for those having problems with the prerogative of an elected government to undertake such reforms as it deems proper and right for the people, they are certainly entitled to their fantasies; only that administration will not be judged by those standards as much as the ultimate deliverables.  

    I guess takes us to the final point. Surely, the administration has assured that the current pains are temporary. It has to be. With Nigerians currently are at the tipping point, the challenge is for the government to make the people feel the impact of the various ameliorative measures it has put in place.

    Take the CNG initiative as an example, the government still has a long way to deepen its penetration particularly among the commercial transport workers. At the moment, the progress in that sector would seem too slow given the dire emergency currently facing the country. Same with the other broad initiatives rolled out by the government; somehow, they have been rather tardy in delivering on their objectives. Now seems the best time for Nigerians to begin to see results.

    As for the exchange rate, this columnist has made the point before: there is nothing sacrosanct in the exchange rate. The only solution is for the country to export more. We know the challenge with oil production; the problems in that sector are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. As an alternative, there has to be a renewed focus on the non-oil sector. Thus far, Nigeria seems to have made a bad job of it!

    Time in view, for a strategic rethinking of the economy!

  • A new dawn?

    A new dawn?

    There are understandably, a tribe out there who believe that, next to the tribe of politicians, Nigeria’s problems begins and ends with the national oil corporation the NNPC, whether in the shape of the defunct Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) or its mutation, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL). Were the metrics of trust deficit to be put on the Richter scale, its measure, not without reasons, will most certainly tend to the highest point on the seismic wave. An instance of the messenger being the message; such is the ignoble perception of an entity whose mandates cut through the core of our existence – one that has suffered such extensive historical distortions to the point of having its rationale obliterated – that few Nigerians are prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt not to talk of giving it a sympathetic hearing no matter the issues involved.

    While the transition from NNPC to NNPCL may have been pragmatic, I sometimes wonder the world of difference it would have made had the company chosen a completely different name and brand strategy. Truth is, many Nigerians that have long given up on the erstwhile inept outfit that could neither fix its refineries nor its vast pipelines network; and so they must have wondered – Petroleum Industry Act or not – if that same old leopard suddenly adorned in the fancy garb of an assumed new beginning could be trusted to shed its colours by mere substitution, without a complete remake of its processes.

    Surely, while the issues of gross mismanagement of the refineries and its management of fuel prices continue to endure, Nigerians ought to be forgiven for treating the NNPC and the NNPCL as one and the same despite the strident clarification about its transitioning. To the extent that the NNPCL itself has not helped matters when, rather than act the true player that it is supposed to be, it either opts to play the megaphone of the government when it suits it or venture into the delicate terrain of regulation hence the confusion that current pervades across the industry today. A part of the joke of the muddled role it has found itself as captured in a widely circulating cartoon read: ‘Someone can leave his four wives and be chasing a side-chic? This is the story of NNPCL that abandoned its four refineries to be a distributor of Dangote Refinery’. 

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    That of course is an oversimplification of the NNPCL/Dangote Refinery story. The real story, more nuanced, is certainly more complex. The story, to put it simply, is borne of the intriguing dynamics of the market situation, part of the necessary rites of transition in which the entity, as the exigency foremost player and state-owned entity, is expected to play the lead.

    No doubt, if the issues were simply about winning the argument, the NNPCL will obviously stand no chance with Nigerians. In the first place, it is doubtful if anyone believes the arithmetic of pricing. Equally, its assumption of an off-taker in what was supposed a market governed by its own dynamics could only have been held suspect by those Nigerians who had long made up their minds that nothing good could come out of the company.

    What of its claims that the reason Nigerians can’t have enough petrol to go round is because the local cost of petrol being cheaper comparatively to those of its neighbours creates an irresistible incentive for smuggling?

    Also, Nigerians heard the forth and back argument not just about the price the NNPCL supposedly bought the product from Dangote Refinery, but the actual quantity supplied to the market. The impression here was that the local refinery’s price is far cheaper than those imported with suggestions in the febrile social media that the Dangote Refinery was ready actually offering to supply the NNPCL at about N600 per litre and that the new refinery had enough capacity to flood the market with petrol. 

    By the way, does it matter now that those long-held myths have now been shattered by the event of the past week? I refer here to the announcement of the company’s exit from the self-appointed off-taker role for Dangote Refinery petrol. Going by the announcement, every player can go to the Dangote Refinery’s gantry for a fill to their heart’s content subject to cash availability. 

    Yet, hard as it might seem to accept that the NNPCL in some respects would appear the more sinned against than the sinning in all of these, the truth is that the company’s underlying message of reforms, its positions, sometimes confused and confusing, are difficult to fault. Of course, we might agree that the company has a long way to clean its image as an opaque, corrupt, inefficient and unaccountable entity; the real enemy would appear the long sustained expectations by Nigerians that the company would always exist over and above what the market dynamics dictate.  

    The entrance of Dangote Refinery has certainly changed all of that. Unfortunately, petrol price, rather than come down has gone a notch up. A part of that new reality is the restiveness occasioned by the hike which although Nigerians may have found intolerable, is nonetheless inexorable in the current circumstances.

    Which takes us to my earlier piece with the title Petrol: It’s the math, stupid! The argument is that those making the NNPCL the issue miss the point; the real issue is the cost of petrol at the pump and how to ensure supply sustainability. Again, the point was made: while its benefits are manifold and perhaps transformational, the old assumptions about local refineries being the elixir to the subsidy conundrum has been hopelessly exaggerated. More than that, the era of treating the cost issue as a minor element in the fuel price template would seem gone for good. Much as Nigerians would rather finger the NNPC(L) as the main culprit in the national debacle, the entity would seem culpable only to the extent of Nigerians’ self-indulgence. While the dawn of the PIA may have sought to cure Nigerians of this malaise, the other reality of a crippling $6 billion debt on the neck of NNPCL leaves it with nary a choice on the matter. That is simply the way it is! What Nigerians need at this time is patience and understanding.  

  • Nigeria @64 and related matters

    Nigeria @64 and related matters

     The weekend before last Tuesday 64th Independence, I had stumbled into the reunion meeting of a set of old boys/girls of my alma mater, Titcombe College, Egbe, Kogi State. Call it divine orchestration, the same set, had exactly four years back, invited yours truly to offer my reflections on the past and the present situation of the school. After the usual forth and back greetings with some of the familiar faces, discussions naturally zeroed on the direction the country was headed. As one might imagine, the context was the independence anniversary celebrations which was only a few days away.

    Not surprisingly, everybody somewhat agreed that things are hard even if only a few could intelligently dimension the problems not to talk of their origins. Not a few referred to the cost of living crisis and how it is increasingly challenging for families to make ends meet. There were discussions on the state of insecurity and how this has fostered the atmosphere of despair and gloom all of which has made any thought of renewal of hope an illusion. One fellow in particular, could not understand why a democratically elected government would elect to punish the people at the time this administration did through the twin policies of fuel subsidy removal and the ‘forced’ convergence of foreign exchange rates!

    Of course, the discussions went on and one about how the economy was not headed in the right direction, how they were disappointed that the government couldn’t swing the magic to get the naira to wake up from its deep slumber, how nothing worked, how food items have suddenly become essential commodities over which Nigerians needed bouts of prayers and vigils to get to their tables and how, on the whole, it is increasingly hard to see the way out of the mess that the country has found itself.

    Mercifully, most in the emergency panel would agree that most of the identified problems actually predated the current administration; and that states in recent time have had more funds flowing into their coffers to address some of the developmental challenges facing the people (some say they couldn’t be bothered about where the funds were coming from). Although many doubted that the government had the power to unilaterally fix the exchange rate, not a few nonetheless appear to still believe that the old discretionary method of foreign exchange management, (which they also concede merely served the interest of those connected to those in the corridors of power more, at least to the extent that it satisfies their illusions of a performing currency), should have been allowed to rule! Same with the petrol subsidy; none of the rational argument about the need to remove the subsidy and the allied infrastructure appeared to make sense! It is our oil – they said – and so we should be free to what we please with it!

    The irony was that these discussions actually took place in that same old school of ours; an institution that is now only a shadow of its glorious past.

    However, while I was more embarrassed than alarmed that a group that I shared that common heritage neither showed a willingness to interrogate the issues more deeply nor an inclination to move beyond the emotive cants that have become wearisomely commonplace, my real consternation was in their grim failure to see the connection between the decadence of their once distinguished school now thoroughly run down and their equally ‘disappointing’ Nigerian story.

    So much for the finger-pointing, free-loading generation: this was a generation which only a while back, would have claimed to have held the promises of a future in their hands. Some two-score years on, they are apparently, trapped in what is now a national pastime of lamentation; part of a generation that assumes that their country owed them a perpetual debt!

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    By the way, I had only some weeks before the trip re-read the tiny paperback, It Just Happened to Happen– authored by Howard F. Dowdell one of the pioneer Sudan Interior Mission missionaries who founded the school that was named after another pioneer missionary, Rev Tommy Titcombe. The book, a riveting story of a young Canadian missionary sworn to reach out beyond the comfort zone of his homeland to get the simple message of the gospel across to the interior of West Africa is a study in human grit and heroics. 

    Drawing insights from the story, I concluded it would not hurt to tell my indignant audience another facet of the Nigerian story – that of a trio – not the Hebrew Four thrown into the lion’s den – but the exertions of Walter Gowans, Thomas Kent and Thomas Bingham – Sudan Interior Mission’s distinguished Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) missionaries who braced the odds to lay the foundations of the foremost church that is today known as the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) – the once proud owners of the famous school! In fact, two of the trio actually died within a year of arriving Nigeria while the only one left shouldered on! Think of his Nigerian peer at this day and age choosing to risk his life in some backward country when there are rich fields in Europe and America’s to conquer!

    Yes, I reminded my friends that their beloved Titcombe, at 74 is actually older than Nigeria by nearly 10 years and so has more bitter tales to tell!

    I challenged those willing among them to take a study of what has happened to the legacies bequeathed by those pioneer founders. I tasked those present to take a tour of the Challenge facilities in Jos, the headquarters of ECWA and those in Ibadan, Lagos, Ilorin and in nearly a dozen other locations where the mission chose to have their bases. And then the question of what they – as individuals and collective – have done to sustain those legacies of the founding fathers!

    As inheritors and beneficiaries of that proud legacy, to them, surely belongs that other version of the other Nigerian story that is yet to be told! 

    As for their famous school, I have twice on this page written about the sorry state of the school, how the school lies not only lies in ruins but of how those sturdy structures, the exemplars of the labours of those heroes past, have become an unflattering testament to the callous indifference of those generations that once took shelter under its broad canopy. Yes, both the governments of Kwara, and later Kogi, that took over our beloved Titcombe, may have failed her; but so also have the successive generations that have passed through its walls contributed through neglect, to the incremental demise of that foremost citadel whose motto is ‘Learn and Worship’. 

    Counselling my friends to be more hesitant when it comes to passing judgment on the role of the leadership in the unmaking of our beloved Nigeria, I told them that the school’s story parallels that of the Nigerian Railways, the Nigerian Postal Services and a few other public service institutions bequeathed by the colonialists but which have been left to decay. 

    And my point? Simply that our beloved Nigeria can only be built, bottom up! All of us – the leaders and the led – are equally culpable in the mess that is today’s Nigeria. The earlier we start sacrificing the comforts of today for the future that we desire, the better our prospects of national redemption.

  • NNPCL’s many mutations

    NNPCL’s many mutations

    One issue that has not ceased to agitate many in the aftermath of the coming of Dangote Refinery is the role that the state national oil company – the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited continues to play in the fuel supply matrix. For an entity whose Port Harcourt Refinery’s scheduled turn around completion date has been shifted countless times, the difficulties in tracking its continuing metamorphosis from being the country’s sole petrol importer, then to a major product supplier and now to its self-assigned role sole off-taker of Dangote Petrol can only be understood in the context of the extraordinariness of the current season.

    For even if we agree that circumstances actually forced the company to transit from being the importer of last resort to being sole importer of premium motor spirit (PMS), clearly, its assumption of sole buyer role for Dangote petrol, an entity of which it is supposed to be in competition, would itself be deemed extraordinary at any time.

    Which is why yours truly actually considered the weekend’s brickbats between the NNPCL and Dangote Refinery over the pricing template for petrol ridiculous. But then, I am reminded that these are neither normal nor ordinary times.

    And now with the fuel price template rolled out by the NNPCL came the joke across different social media platforms about the company further mutation, not into an effective competition which Nigerians expected of it or as prescribed by the Petroleum Industry Act, but to the industry’s front-bencher in matters of price determination despite failing to get its own refineries to work.

    Today, the downstream sector’s bone of contention remains the price of petrol, or if you like, the mechanics of its derivation. Moments after it the loaded the first set of consignments of petrol from the $20 billion Dangote Refinery, NNPCL’s spokesperson Olufemi Soleye had set off the firestorm with Daily Trust quoting him as saying: “We successfully loaded PMS at the Dangote Refinery today. The claim that we purchased it at N760 per litre is incorrect. For this initial loading, the price from the refinery was N898 per litre”. 

    Anthony Chiejina, the spokesperson for Dangote would, hours later, dub the statement as “misleading and mischievous”. He claimed that the statement was “aimed at undermining the milestone achievement recorded today, September 15, 2024, towards addressing energy insufficiency and insecurity, which has bedevilled the economy in the past 50 years.”

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    Said he: “We sold the products to NNPCL in dollars with a lot of savings against what they are currently importing”, even as he urged Nigerians to disregard the statement and to “await a formal announcement on the pricing, by the Technical Sub-Committee on Naira-based crude sales to local refineries, appointed by His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR, which will commence on October 1, 2024, bearing in mind that our current stock of crude was procured in dollars”.

    Note that he did not contest the figures supplied by Soleye’s NNPCL. For all he cared, Nigerians may well continue to savour the illusion (fleeting?) of Dangote petrol being the answer to the nation’s energy woes! In other words, the brouhaha was not so much about the truth of what was said; it is rather about the quarters from where it came from and by extension the bursting of the myth.

    Never mind the wildfire speculations about Dangote petrol being cheaper than the imported petrol; or the social media being agog with a so-called N760 per litre for the Dangote petrol.

    NNPCL’s guilt, it would appear, may have derived from its attempt to burst the illusions of those who believe that petrol prices would dramatically come down with the coming of Dangote petrol. By putting the records out, particularly in the context of the exasperating disinformation campaign against her, the NNPCL may have, understandably ruffled not a few feathers. And for a Dangote Refinery still riding on the crest of nationalist fervour, the attempt to distract the historic import of the moment could not but anything but a treasonable conduct.

    Which is why the mind game – which is really nothing outside mere symbolism – has settled nothing; that is aside deflecting attention from the main issue at stake, which is what it costs to produce a litre of petrol for which most Nigerians have long hungered.

    In the meantime, the NNPCL would on Monday publish a new price template. The product, it stated, will, henceforth, be sold at N950.22 per litre across all its retail outlets in Lagos. Residents in the northern part of the country are expected to pay more for the product with consumers in Borno expected to pay the highest pump price of N1, 019.22.

    The template, it claimed, was based on Dangote Refinery’s gantry price of N898.78 per litre, the industry regulator’s fee of N8.99, inspection fee of N0.97, distribution cost (Lagos) of N15.00 and the marketers’ margin of N26.48 – bringing the total price for the Lagos area to N950.22 per litre.

    The company would on its X platform add for emphasis:  “The NNPC Ltd also wishes to state that, in line with the provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), PMS prices are not set by government, but negotiated directly between parties on an arm’s length.

    “The NNPC Ltd can confirm that it is paying Dangote Refinery in USD for September 2024 PMS offtake, as Naira transactions will only commence on October 1st, 2024. The NNPC Ltd assures that if the quoted pricing is disputed, it will be grateful for any discount from the Dangote Refinery, which will be passed on 100% to the general public”.

    For an entity that has known nothing but serial vilifications by Nigerians, one can only hope that the NNPCL is not only right but knows what it is talking about.

    This takes us to the main point of today’s piece, which is the NNPCL’s rather dubious metamorphosis. Thanks to the company’s capacity for unforced errors, it chose to announce the new template instead of allowing a relatively more credible institution like the industry regulator – the Nigeria Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) or even the technical subcommittee empanelled by the government, to do so. For if it seems that an entity so utterly distrusted by Nigerians would be the one to avail Nigerians of the new template, even more so is that the entity in question is a failed competitor.

    Earlier on, I spoke about the jokes in the social media circles – and the absurdity of a physician carrying innumerable ailments setting up an infirmary to treat local ailments. Thanks to NNPCL’s assumption of mandates neither covered by its articles or memorandum of association nor conferred by the Petroleum Industry Act, Nigerians are increasingly forced to return to the most fundamental question: How long shall we continue to wait for the completion of the Turn Around Maintenance programmes for the refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna? So long as the NNPCL continues to either dither or fail to address the question, so long will Nigerians regard its role in the market as either self-serving or plain dishonest. 

  • Petrol: It’s the math, stupid!

    Petrol: It’s the math, stupid!

    For Nigeria’s legion of activist/analysts, the past week must have been a particularly busy one. The subject, as anyone would imagine is the premium motor spirit aka petrol and the econometrics (or is it the economics?) of its delivery at the pump. For if most Nigerians had thought they have gained substantial understanding of the subsidy factor in the fuel price matrix, what the latest round of adjustment in the pump price has most certainly revealed, is in fact, the merely suppressed chasm between the government and the generality of the citizens.

    Yes; it is not just that Nigerians are forced to reopen debate on the subsidy question much sooner than they could ever have imagined; the facts and figures being thrown around costs as indeed the conclusions said to have been derived therefrom for the most part of the past week can only be a measure of, not just the gross misunderstanding which subsists on the matter, but also a reflection of how deeply entrenched the illusions have remained.

    So, it was when citizens first reported the resurgence of fuel queues across the country, some three weeks back. First, the denial, by the country’s sole petrol importer – the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, (NNPCL) that the product was in short supply even when the facts clearly indicated the contrary. As usual, the initial line was that some logistical issues impeded the distribution and thence copious assurances that normalcy would soon return. Second, and because facts are such that could not be wished away like that, the days after will follow with the admission by the NNPCL that it was actually in the hole –and that the burden of $6 billion owed creditors for the supply of gasoline was not only choking but threatening to its survival as a going concern. Recall that the same NNPCL had earlier dismissed the report of indebted to international oil traders to the tune of $6.8 billion, which the report has stated was responsible for non-remittance to the Federation Account. Recall also that the same NNPCL had, even way back still, denied payment of subsidies on petrol when the reality of under-recovery was also reported. If I may recall, Nasir El Rufai, the former governor it was who first stirred the hornet’s nest when he declared some time ago in Maiduguri: “The Federal Government is now subsidising fuel; many people don’t know this. It is the right policy. I have always supported the withdrawal of oil subsidies; but in the course of implementing the policy, the government realised that subsidy has to be back; right now, the government is paying a lot of money for subsidy, even more than before.

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    “You start implementing a policy because you are sure it is the right policy, but in the course of implementation, you come across bottlenecks, and you modify.

    “The keyword in leadership, in my view, is pragmatism. You should be pragmatic. So when you make a policy, you start implementing it and it doesn’t seem to work well. You should have the humility to stand back and say this is not working, and you modify it,” the former governor had stated at the time.

    Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Heineken Lokpobiri had responded at the time thus: “I don’t want to delve into that issue. It is a very sensitive issue. It is better we get all the facts. As far as I’m concerned, the president removed the subsidy and it remains removed till today. Anybody who is saying that subsidy is being paid, it is left for the person to bring the facts and then we will talk about them.” Questioned further on whether the fuel pump price for petrol at that point was market reflective, the minister had replied, “It may not be determined by market forces but let us deal with the price as it is today”.

    Well, the wheels have finally turned full cycle; that day, which the minister had hoped could tarry, seems to have arrived sooner than expected. Last week, the NNNPCL moved the price from N568 to between N855 to N897, for a litre of petrol, depending on location, in what signals the clearest indication of where the government is headed.

    As always, the arguments have remained essentially the same. Unfortunately, it is not, as has long become popular, about the price of a litre of petrol in Nigeria being among the cheapest in the world – even if true; or the other equally wearisome argument about the huge price differentials between us and our ECOWAS neighbours as a major incentive to trans-border smuggling – also a valid argument to make. We also hold to be true, the argument about another petrol price hike – occasioning another spiral of inflation – even if the latter is more or often than not driven by mob instinct considering that the price of diesel on which the haulage industry actually depends has long been deregulated.

    The main argument is simply whether it makes a rational sense to sell a product at a price far less the cost of producing it simply because the product is petrol. This, to yours truly, is where the issue has thus far, been poorly, if not improperly joined! For while I am willing to indulge the sentiments of those who locate the problem in the inability of the nation to refine crude for its domestic needs, it ought to be obvious by now that the old assumptions about local refineries being the elixir to the subsidy conundrum has been hopelessly exaggerated. Need proof? Check out the prices of diesel and aviation – two essential fuels currently being produced by Dangote Refinery to see whether this myth is actually borne out. If anything, that myth would appear to have been finally shattered!

    Surely, even without the odious mind games between the NNPCL and Dangote Refinery on whether the former should play the off-taker for the latter; or even the nauseating twists and turns and the bad faith that have accompanied their business relations. The question that must be begging for an answer at this point in time is the price of a litre of Dangote petrol; related to this is whether this price compares with the (Free on Board (FoB) value quoted on global platforms.

    To yours truly, there is where the focus should be at the moment – as against the blatantly uneducated exertions of the tribe that have chosen to foreclose the possibility of the government ever making sense on the matter.

    Here, Nigerians might be interested in finding out the reason(s) behind NNPCL’s sudden disinterest in playing the off-taker role for Dangote Refinery as announced by the company at the weekend. Will the company be open to taking the price deemed to be ‘under-recovery’ from Dangote Refinery? And who will bear the difference? Why despite the professed nationalist pretensions, the Dangote Refinery has chosen to keep its cards close to its chest; making clear its intention to move its products off-shore should things not go its way – price-wise?

    Seems to me that the answers to these may yet be found in the mathematics of cost – which Nigerians love to loathe!

  • War over nothing

    War over nothing

    In a season where every Tom Joe touts the bragging rights to attack the government or anyone believed to be close to those in government over anything and nothing in particular, it comes as no surprise that the directive by the Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman to the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council not register candidates who are below 18 for next year’s school certificate examinations has become something of a casus belli around which some have found a new rally.

    If my memory serves me right, it’s been some six weeks since the Joint Admissions and Matriculation (JAMB) first broached the idea of returning our tertiary institutions to what they should be: a citadel of learning for matured minds. If that Abuja meeting, which I understand didn’t pass without its own fair dose of controversies, and one in which vice chancellors of universities were in audience, was to communicate government’s resolve to restore what was already an existing policy of pegging the university age at 18, only a few of us pretended to understand not to talk of taking the time out to chew on the implications of what was to come.

    Well, that day has some. The federal government has taken that final – or better still- necessary step to clean the mess! If a child is not expected to be in university until 18 – and so the reasoning went – why allow them, in the first place, to sit for the qualifying examination that would in the end, cause a breach to the rule?

    I perfectly understand the anger of those who think that the government acted rashly, and that some kind moratorium be granted to allow those caught in the web to sail, or even still, that those innocent children should not be punished for the mess they didn’t create but are merely the victims. Still have emerged, related arguments, that the government loses nothing by allowing the status quo since it poses no injury to anyone; and stranger still, that a government that condones marriage of under-18s should have no trouble finding space for 16-year-olds in its university system.

    These are persuasive arguments – details of which could be worked out; surely, they neither detract from the substance of government’s position nor whittle down the import of what the government seeks to do. 

    The irony is that some actually believe that the government shouldn’t even bother about pegging the university age for its would-be entrants. That in today’s world of precociousness, parents should have the liberty to offload their infants on the school system since the society, nay the world, is expected to pivot around their geniuses! In other words, the barely disguised outsourcing of parental responsibilities to teachers and minders counts for nothing since, in some people’s opinion, the society ultimately benefits from early learning by kids!

    To be sure, there have been many more things that have been said about the new measure in our peculiarly certificate-crazy society that citing them would simply add no value save for their nuisance!

    That is how banal things can sometimes get.

    Talk of the new age; the old rule under which children are expected to be properly weaned off their mother’s breast milks before thinking of ‘school’ is gone forever. What of that mandatory stipulation of yore that the child’s right hand, slung over the head, must touch the left ear before venturing near the school gates? All are supposed to belong in the past!

    Convenient isn’t it – since it relives the parents of the guilt that an outsourced parenting brings!

     Imagine the government now stepping in to remind of a 6-3-3-4 policy said to be anchored on that golden rule and which carefully observed would leave no room for arguments. To some, the government rather than propelling the society forward is actually doing the opposite! See how jaded an argument can be?

    Yes, I understand the penchant for the rat race the stuff of which has turned every nth neighbourhood shed into schoolrooms; the associated culture that has turned parents, with neither the luxury of time nor the pleasure of parenting, to perfect strangers to their children. The abominable pressure of moving the children at neck-breaking speed to the next level no matter how nebulous and uncertain is what stands condemnable and must be condemned.

    I recall a riotous scene in my son’s school years back: the commandant of the school, (it is a military school) had, at a PTA meeting insisted on not allowing students in the second year of their senior secondary school programme to have a shot at external WAEC and NECO on the ground that it was distracting to the students and hell was let loose! The parents, apparently couldn’t understand why the school authorities would not indulge their wards the luxury of having their O’ Level grades in the kitty before their formal shot at it a year after! The rat race, as it was as now, remains to yours truly, stranger than fiction.

     How about the unholy matrimony between school proprietors and parents which has eventuated in the crash programme of primary and secondary education as indeed the engulfing anomie which the government now seeks to purge?

     It seems inevitable that the changes which seek to reset the deviation from the normal to the normal will be fiercely resisted. That is the point the country is at the moment.

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    And while we are at, we must thank Prof Farooq A. Kperogi for letting Nigerians know that in United States, ‘students apply to enter universities between the ages of 18 and 19’ and that in Finland, Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, South Africa, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, etc. countries that Nigerians love to cite, that anything less than 18 is an aberration in the university system.

    And whereas these countries have a special place for their exceptional gifted pupils; they are treated as exceptions rather than the rule. And the idea of gifted children is certainly not new to Nigeria and Nigerians as some critics of the measure by government appear to suggest, which was why the one in Suleija was established.

    To get back to the point; Prof Mamman is right. He deserves the support of everyone that means well for this country. Needless to add that he’s done nothing outside of the statutes to justify the demand for his head. One urges his critics to let him – and Nigeria – be.

  • The creeping anarchy

    The creeping anarchy

    Nearly a month after as the Endbadgovernment protests and the attenuating rage have ended, its aftermath has certainly left an unsettling trail of which to those who truly claim to love Nigeria will do well to pay attention. For much as our legion of activists have made much song of their constitutional guarantees to protest if not necessarily its correlates of peaceful assembly, it is certainly the case that the fears of the government as indeed those of the orderly society have been borne out. Hopefully, the tribe of those seduced into accepting that the so-called rage was all about hunger would have thinned out substantially by now.

    We saw what happened in Kano, Yobe, Borno, Kaduna and one or two of other northern states where the large army of the Almajirs, once unleashed on government institutions and other hapless but generally peaceful populace, knew nothing about holding back; going as far as flying a foreign flag and calling for a regime change.  Even now that the well-choreographed but artfully programmed rage under which the protest organisers had sought cover to rally and inflame public anger against the government have ended as a bitter disappointment, the unsettling security issues which played out in the course of the protests, have become too grave to ignore.  

    The war of course rages still.  In fact, anyone expecting armistice anytime soon will be sorely disappointed. Not with the revelation that the tribe which has long insisted that the government can never put its foot right, moving from merely scoffing at government at every turn into the dangerous terrain of subversion; and certainly not when the government has finally signalled its intent to do battle with the elements who obviously assume that they are above the laws of the land.

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    Yes, the government no longer makes pretences about the drama of the past weeks as being of the routine stuff. Last week, the government got the Federal High Court in Abuja to freeze the accounts of 32 individuals and companies linked to the #EndBadGovernance protest. The government’s lawyers had argued that the accounts were used ‘to promote the offence of criminal conspiracy, terrorism financing, treasonable felony, cyberbullying and cyberstalking’. Earlier, the government had frozen more than $37 million worth of cryptocurrency held in wallets believed to be owned by some organisers of #EndBadGovernance protests. Earlier still, the police had also ‘invaded’ the Nigeria Labour Congress complex in Abuja over suspicions that one of the suspects on its trail actually operated from one of floors of the building.

    For now, it is the words of the security agencies, nay the police versus those of the NLC; suffice to say however that if the elements sworn to oppose government at every turn, and who convinced of the sacredness of their cause would not baulk at crossing the dangerous line of incitement, subversion and treasonable activities, the least expected of the government as the guarantor of public peace and societal order is to assume the responsibility to act proactively and decisively before things spiral out of control. After all, the protest movement, far from done with their old playbook of de-legitimation, bullying and subversion that seemed to have served her so well in the aftermath of the 2023 presidential election, can’t be accused of lacking the means to fight their battle through. And they have been doing precisely that in their dirty fighting, daily in the cyber-sphere!

    Unfortunately, if it seems a part of the illusion that having conquered that vast jungle, the price of ‘victory’, no matter how nebulously defined, would appear worth every ounce of their exertion. This should be more than sufficient to satisfy their paymasters and their local and foreign backers just as the latest twist must have thrown the rule of unanticipated behaviour into the equation with the government showing that it is truly awake!

    No thanks to the traditional and the social media, the big story is supposed to be the so-called budding tyranny of the government, its intolerance of dissent with sub texts in clampdown of the media and opposition! In the unfolding narrative, a simple invite by the police authorities on the labour leader to clarify alleged links with a suspect has suddenly become a cause around which the nation’s entire labour movement has chosen to spoil for war! To this has been added the never ending feeds in the social media by the usual NGOs and civil society groups of tales of ‘mass abduction of journalists and other activists artfully designed to blackmail the government. In all of these, the government is supposed to pretend that the weighty issues unveiled by the protests be either ignored or glossed over, perhaps until next time – just like that!

    Talk of intransigence breeding impunity; Nigerians, surely will recall the last chapter of intransigence, or better still, outlawry, by the labour movement. That was in June. Then, it was not sufficient for the NLC and its affiliates to embark on strike to press its demand for a new minimum wage; it had to corral players in the essential services sector, the electricity union, into committing a grievous crime. Although renowned for its epileptic services, it seems highly unlikely that the cost of that criminal subversion will ever be known especially in the number of casualties undergoing surgery, the premature babies whose incubators were callously switched off and such other countless emergency situations. That is what impunity has sired. The wounds, if it will ever heal will most certainly take a long time.

    Today, the Canadian government offers a good lesson in how to stand strong in the face of mindless intimidation.  A so-called Freedom Convoy which began on January 22, 2022 as a protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and its restrictions would soon develop into calls for regime change. Recognising the thin line between the rights of the protesters and the brazen anarchy they represented, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government did what they had to do to stop the impunity; they went after the accounts of the organisers even as some aggrieved citizens took to class action against the protest leaders.  We have seen a similar lesson is repeated in Britain today.  There, the fresh mint British Prime Minister Keir Starmer couldn’t bat an eyelid when it came to the issue of the far-right instigators of the wild fire riots that gripped his country during which more than 100 police officers were wounded. To him, the United Kingdom has no place for the kind of outlawry that gripped the country some weeks back. Against the hordes of rioters, the government chose to stand tall and strong. They went for broke.

    Here, we are told that some individuals wouldn’t even honour police invitation; or that if they did, it could only be strictly on their terms. Assuming themselves to be beyond reproach, they are sworn not to give the police or the security agencies the benefit of the doubt. Same for those already called in by the security agencies to answer for their roles in the last mayhem; the government is expected to do nothing, perhaps until the next time. These, surely are dangerous times. Yet, wisdom informs on the need for the government to stand strong.

  • Dangote vs. NNPCL: The pin in the haystack

    Dangote vs. NNPCL: The pin in the haystack

    Finally, Nigerians may have begun to come to terms with the fact that the long awaited messiah – the Dangote Refinery – on which they have pinned their hopes for rescue isn’t about to live up to its promise anytime soon. Only yesterday, it again emerged that the company’s earlier pledge to supply the premium motor spirit (petrol) to the market anytime from August 10 – 12 is no longer realisable.

    With just about everything that could have gone wrong going tragically haywire, there has been no let-up in rationalisations,  arm-twisting, blackmail and other psych-ops; and with a good dose of nationalist sentiments thrown into the mix, Nigerians are left to struggle in their bid to make sense of what is going on. If searching for the truth in the circumstance is akin to looking for a lone needle in a proverbial haystack, the overwhelming nationalist sentiments would appear to convey the uncanny impression that niceties of process and regulation could be dispensed with in moments of assumed national exigency particularly when a major player is involved! 

    Truth however is that months after the country ought to have turned the corner in domestic refining, it remains a struggle of who to believe, between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited which claimed to have ‘technically completed’ its Port Harcourt refinery and Dangote Refinery. Recall that Aliko Dangote had promised at the company’s inauguration on May 22, 2023 that the products would be in the market by August 2023. Well, if the production of diesel and aviation fuel that only commenced this year qualifies as progress, it was perhaps a case of expectant Nigerians not caring a hoot since public funds were not involved!

    But then, shouldn’t Nigerians worry at the on-going revelations about the company’s neglect of those fundamentals considered so basic to business processes that a sophomore Business Administration student would find a failure in the regard as astounding? For if we are to believe everything that is being offloaded into the public sphere by Africa’s foremost entrepreneur himself, it is that his $20 billion conglomerate has only recently begun work on securing access to its most important raw material – the old sweet Nigerian crude – to service his 650,000 barrels refinery!

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    For an entity that has been nearly a decade in the making, one which is known to have sent hundreds if not thousands of young Nigerians on overseas training in anticipation of this moment, it seems to yours truly that this particular lapse in judgment (or dereliction?) is at the root of the problems between her, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and the regulators.

    Hopefully, by the time the dusts finally settle, both the grandmaster and the cohort stridently pushing the blatantly one-sided narrative would have had one or two things to teach the rest of the world about business the Nigerian way, particularly the world of difference between what obtains here and the rest of the organised world in matters of planning and future contracts!

    For when truly reduced to its basics, the matter between the NNPCL, the regulators and Dangote Refinery comes basically to the very point: the latter wants the right of refusal for NNPCL’s share of oil production! You ask: how does that add up to a company with existing contractual obligations? More than that, it wants International Oil Corporations (IOCs) to extend the gesture to her, convinced that it is eminently deserving of it! Talk of other matters surrounding it as mere passing derivative!

    As a Nigerian, the company would ordinarily have my sympathy at any time. This sympathy, I guess is what has berthed in the hordes of Nigerians trooping to its Ibeju-Lekki facility in solidarity. And so the familiar argument that the country, having dwelt so long on this path, is deserving of the respite that Dangote Refinery is in vantage position to give; and that any obstacle, no matter the cost, ought to be considered fair game to be removed. With most Nigerians already trained to see that flick of light in that dark tunnel of hopelessness, it seems only natural that they would be up in arms in what is advertised to be a defence of the nation’s best interest.

    The problem is that the situation is more nuanced than has been presented. First, if it seems unimaginable that the refinery didn’t appear to have done its homework as would be expected, in signing valid contracts for crude supply, more baffling is that the company wouldn’t  even think of getting down to hard-nosed negotiation with the parties to address the obvious lacuna!

    And so enters the season of muck raking: currently, the story out there is that the NNPCL is not only a kill-joy; it has found a partner in the IOCs sworn to ensure that the refinery does not see the light of day! And for daring to accuse Dangote Refinery of pushing for unfair trade practices and other sundry regulatory infractions, the company wants the head of the regulator – the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) – served on the platter!

    As for the upstream regulator – Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) – the latter is being upbraided for failing to force producers to abide by a law that stipulates they supply local refineries, saying that lax enforcement was raising its operational costs! Nothing matters, including the argument, which I believe has been well made, about existing contract obligations to third parties and such other constraining issues. They are apparently irrelevant in what appears to be a war that Dangote Refinery is sworn to vanquish every single actor in the value chain.

    At this point, the few still discerning Nigerians must wonder about what it is that makes the Dangote people right all of the time and every other player of note and/or institution in the country, wrong at the same time. For while I have nothing against those for whom the enthralling wonders of the $20 billion facility has held their awe, my understanding of the current situation is that the country’s best interests are best served when the parties – the crude suppliers, the regulators and Dangote Refinery management – are able to lower the temperature, engage meaningfully and respectfully as against the road shows that seems to have been designed to muddle if not obfuscate the issues.

    To restate the obvious, yours truly wants Dangote Refinery to succeed. It has to!  It deserves the support of every Nigerian to make the dream come true. In fact, I have on this page, written of how proud one should be that a single Nigerian, Aliko Dangote, has dared to dream that big in a country that is easily the graveyard of pious dreams. Having come this far, I do understand why the seduction to messiahnism can sometimes prove irresistible. We are talking of a time royalties, leaders of parliament, ex-presidents, journalists, politicians of different shapes and hues including the high and the mighty are coming together to sing praise of his achievement. Perish the thought that yours truly would dare to offer a word of counsel to Africa’s richest man to tread softly! Yet, it seems one instance when less noise would serve the moment!

  • After the rage

    After the rage

    When the dusts finally settle, Nigerians, it must be acknowledged still owe the security agencies a debt of gratitude for their rather measured response in the wake of the so-called hunger protests. For while it is regrettable that some lives were still lost to the mayhem in parts of Kaduna, Kano and Niger states, over all, there have been largely no credible reports of excessive use of force by the security agencies even when some of the actions of the protesters amounted to a death wish. This must have constituted terrible embarrassment for our hordes of fledging conflict-preneurs and their mercy-industrial complex for whom an alternative outcome would have meant more donor funds pouring in! 

    Yes, we have been reminded over and over again in the last few days that the rights of the citizens to protest are absolute and inviolate; and that the best the government is expected to do in the face of the advertised protest is to sit back and watch in the vain hope that things would by itself calm down!

    Government’s appeal, as indeed those of traditional, religious and other leaders in the civil society, urging restraint was not supposed to matter a jot. After all, the protesters, in their righteous indignation and, if you like, mindless rage, having long made up their minds that nothing short of capitulation by a government that is barely 15 months in office would be acceptable, still nonetheless deserve their day!

    As for the police, head or tail, they could not be seen to win the battle. Ironically, while insisting on their rights to police protection while their rage lasted, the same protest leaders, when asked to offer their own counter guarantees that things would not go awry simply retorted without scruples that it is not theirs but the police to give!

    So much for their craving for power without responsibility; for amorphous groups that prefer to see themselves as leaderless and whose point of departure is to draw attention of the government to the hunger ravaging the land, does it matter that their preference was for crude threats not least the pointless hyping of rage to press their cases? It was for them the time for elected leaders at every level to be routinely insulted and called names. Dignitaries, including faith leaders, pleading for restraint, were mercilessly mauled by the mob. In some cases, names, telephone numbers and addresses of public figures said to be government officials and their sympathisers were gleefully splashed on X (twitter) with accompanying calls on members of the protest movement to bombard them with unsolicited, hate messages!

    Should it therefore surprise anyone that their hateful messages somewhat robbed negatively on more discerning Nigerians? We saw the carnage in Niger, Kaduna, Kano, Yobe and Borno where the earth shook with the mindless mob unleashed on a hapless people accompanied by massive looting; has the fears of the everyday Nigerian about the possible descent to anarchy not been borne out?

    So much for the subsidy issue said to be at the heart of the crisis; if one had thought that the issue of the had long been settled or that Nigerians were, more than a year after, in better understanding of why it had to go, it seems to me the height of mischief that some so-called activists could still convince themselves and their supporters to see its return as the elixir at this point in time.

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    After all, this was an item that presidential contenders in the 2023 elections had all staked their honour as having no place in their political lexicon. More than that, this administration in particular, is not known to have minced words about how the old iniquitous foreign exchange regime encouraged rent, arbitrage and hence corruption, and so had to be jettisoned. Mercifully, the administration has since passed a new national minimum wage of N70,000 which the organised labour, despite initial objections has since accepted as pragmatic in the current circumstances. Noteworthy is that the same opposition elements have somewhat convinced their ranks – not Labour – that nothing short of N300,000 was acceptable – a case of their crying more than the bereaved!

    Yes, it is also to the administration’s credit that it admitted that the reforms would occasion a huge dose of discomfort particularly in a country with an ignoble record of import dependency. In fact, it never at any time fought shy of admitting that there could be no such a thing as anyone waving the magic wand for the problems to dissolve overnight. What the administration is on record to have promised is that things would certainly get better with time and this with a plea for understanding and patience while waiting for the fruits of the reforms to cascade.

    As to the question of whether or not the administration could have done things differently, particularly in mitigating the pains of its reforms, again, this is open to debate. What is intolerable is that the elements, massing under the umbrella of their right to protest think little of holding the gun to the head of the administration while scuppering the rights of the silent majority in the process.

    By the way, the protesters also demanded that the president speaks directly to them.  Well, he did on Sunday. He regretted that lives were needless lost; deplored the looting that attenuated the protests, and then went on to enumerate some of the measures his administration had taken to address the problems – fundamentally. As if to tell the folks that this is no time for placebos, he called for patience and understanding, while assuring citizens that the country has since turned the corner.

    Expectedly, none of the measures he enumerated seems to have impressed his implacable foes; not even those policies designed precisely to address the supposed agitations at the roots. Those among them who heard the president pretended to be tone deaf while those saw the text claim they couldn’t make sense of them. To some others still, it would have been in order had the president chosen not to speak at all!  In other words, the battle isn’t one that this presidency can win!

    Let me end this piece with a words for those said to be craving for good governance. It seems to me that good governance and good citizenship are the obverse sides of the same coin. You simply cannot have one without the other! It is hypocritical to mouth Endbadgovernance while exhibiting the most heinous forms of political delinquency! How about a matching campaign for EndBadCitizens?

    Yes, the government, as the ultimate guarantor of public should be able to know when to draw the line beyond which wayward citizens could only cross at the pain of retribution. This is what the ongoing riots in the United Kingdom clearly instruct. 

  • A note on Prof Olatunji Dare @80

    A note on Prof Olatunji Dare @80

    My colleague and managing editor of the newspaper, Lawal Ogienagbon, had most fittingly, described the outing as Dare’s Day in his column of last Thursday. Although he had also described the colloquium held the day before – a collaboration between The Nation and the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), to celebrate one of its own, an industry icon, an acclaimed teacher and mentor to many who had only four days before the event turned 80 – as ‘rare’ in the media world; however, it seems unlikely that anyone who knew the celebrator would be surprised at the turn-out of the high and mighty at the high profile media event.

    I heard someone describe the event as a media event. Admittedly, the presence of industry’s big names like the ‘ageless’ Aremo Segun Osoba, Lanre Idowu, Sully Abu, Clem Baiye and Richard Akinnola were such that left no questions of it being primarily a media event; but then, these are also distinguished thought leaders who have also earned their stripes in other theatres of the nation’s public life.

    As one of the behind-the-scene players, I must confess to an initial apprehension over the issue of timing given that the celebrator lives in a different time zone in faraway United States. I actually thought that the appointed time of 12 noon was somewhat a bit late for members of the pen profession; I had reasoned that majority of our still practicing colleagues, pressed in their impossible schedules, would either at this time be heading for their desks for the day’s job, or if they managed to attend at all, would only be for a few minutes.

    And then the notoriously hellish Lagos traffic; the situation of the latter had been compounded by the heavy rains and the attenuating flash floods which had kept many off the roads in the preceding week. All of these raged in my mind as my colleague, Kunle Abimbola and I perused the odds as we embarked on the countdown to the D-Day. Of course, my managing director, Victor Ifijeh, long convinced that those Lagos daemons were no match for the Olatunji Dare brand and all that the celebrator represents, gave the marching order to proceed, no matter what!

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    The rest – as they say – is history. It was, to put it mildly, a glorious outing.

    Surely, if the fully packed 120-seater Radisson Hotel meeting room where the event held was any proof of how the celebrator is held in Nigeria’s media firmament, the theme of colloquium – Dare at 80: Same craft, changing times – The columnist as societal conscience would serve, not just as a telling reminder of the contributions and the unquantifiable sacrifices of this foremost public intellectual, but the eternal relevance of his views as the nation struggles to find its place under the sun.

    Like countless other Nigerians, my ‘knowing’ of Prof Dare predated my physical encounter with him in this newspaper. Surely, nothing about Prof Dare that is not already public record. Here, I couldn’t but borrow from the paper delivered by Lanre Idowu, another distinguished elder in the profession where he writes: “He is one distinguished Nigerian from the confluence state of Kogi, who studied mass communication at the University of Lagos where he excelled as the first to earn a first class degree in the department. He later studied Journalism and obtained a master’s degree at Columbia University, New York before adding a PhD at Indiana University in Bloomington, USA.

    “He was a lecturer in the University of Lagos before crossing over to The Guardian where he was a columnist, editorial page editor and later, chairman of the editorial board. He later fled to the United States when troubling developments to his craft and life dictated so. He taught in Bradley University, Peoria rising to be an emeritus professor. He is the author of Matters Arising (1993), a selection from his collected journalism, and Diary of a Debacle: Tracking Nigeria’s failed Democratic Transition, 1986-1994… Professor Dare has written columns for such publications as the Guardian, Comet, and The Nation”.

    The above of course were very well known about Prof Dare. The part that is perhaps less celebrated and so is often understated is his Spartan discipline and unbending principles – two virtues exampled by the needless sacrifices forced on those, like Prof Dare, with principled opposition to the exercise of arbitrary power.  While this would prove extremely costly in the hey days of the maximum ruler – Sani Abacha –  that he and his likes, would not flinch in the face of intimidations and the attenuating deprivations would remain a huge lesson that the current generation needs to take one or two lessons from.

    My pain is that I didn’t get to know the eminent scholar beyond what I read in the newspapers in those dark days.  Although I studied at the University of Lagos, I couldn’t recall coming across his name while in the university. My discipline being Sociology and not Mass Communications would perhaps explain why. Only long after leaving the institution would I find myself among the league of his virtual students, and that was long before the internet and its virtual learning correlates invaded and redefined that vast space of public communication.

    Thanks to his regular appearance in The Guardian at the time, the Tuesday edition of the paper was not just a delight but a must-read for those of us who saw his style as refreshingly unique in substance, subtlety and forthrightness. You could, with every piece he penned, laugh and snigger on any subject he broached upon without missing out on the message. Like the other favourite elder and writer of mine, Dan Agbese of the Newswatch, every single piece became for me a cherished collector’s item. How could I ever forget the piece he wrote about the menace of street trading in Lagos and how, in the snarl that permanently defined the Lagos traffic at the time, you could literally order anything from groceries to kitchen wares from among the hordes of itinerant hawkers, who despite not offering any guarantees of quality are nonetheless the delight of the motorist and the passengers alike? Or the other equally unforgettable one he wrote about the steep price he has had to pay for his chosen art form – satire – by those who would not find the grace to read beyond the surface?

    That was vintage Prof Dare. Sadly, all of that would come to an abrupt end – at least temporarily – when Sani Abacha happened with its bruises and scars.

    You can then imagine my joy at joining this newspaper to meet the eminent professor whose encounter up till that point could only have been in the dreamland. Clearly, if the meeting was, for yours truly, a big deal, my subsequent interactions would prove his profound humanism as indeed his abiding concerns for the welfare of those of us privileged to cross his path. True to his nature, he would become an encourager in every sense of the word, a model character in its truest essence and a worthy exemplar in personal integrity.

    Here’s wishing the distinguished emeritus professor many more years in good health and peacve of mind.