The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

  • Emefiele: Finally the chicks are home to roost

    Emefiele: Finally the chicks are home to roost

    The above were the concluding words in the piece by this columnist on August 22. That was barely a month after President Bola Tinubu appointed Jim Obazee as a Special Investigator to probe the apex bank and related entities.

    Well, the long awaited report is out. While there were little surprises contained in it at least in a general sense of the findings to yours truly, the team certainly did a yeoman’s job of putting the dots together, going as far as putting faces and names to those activities that border on heist, subversion if not treason. I had titled the piece Emefiele: While men slept…to underscore which I considered the criminal complicity of the Buhari presidency, the supine indifference of the National Assembly and of course the somnambulist anti-graft agencies that would only act after the deed is done.

    That was some four months ago. Enjoy… 

    ‘It is not typically the norm that the apex bank gets to make the front page of newspapers as ours has been doing of late; certainly not for those unsavoury things that the bankers’ bank and its erstwhile top gun are being linked of late. Even for all the strange things right up to the bizarre misbranding that happened to the institution under Godwin Emefiele, it is certainly a new thing the lender of the last resort, is not only being stripped of its traditional mystique, but is clothed with the most unflattering colours of impunity.

    We have seen some rather disturbing images of the institution in the past. Nigerians would most likely recall a former CBN governor being accused of doling a whopping N1.257 billion for lunch for policemen and private guards; of making bogus payments to airlines for currency distribution as well as holding an account balance of N1.423 billion for an unidentified customer since 2008. And yet another charge – alleged payment of N38.233 billion to the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company Plc in 2011 for the “printing of bank notes” whereas the turnover of the entire printing and minting company group is N29.370 billion”.

    For most Nigerians however, the image of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) somewhat endured of an institution still largely steeped in best practices, a piggy bank where the nation’s vast trove of cash is warehoused for the public good and the place for the banks to run when things sunder; an institution not afraid to wield the big stick when the situation called for it. 

    Even when the institution appeared to have morphed into a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for all manners of schemes and purposes under the sun, there remained a multitude only too willing to give the bank the benefit of the doubt. Of course, if you were a beneficiary of those massive ‘interventions’ that have since turned to freebies under the most specious monetarism ever conceived by a financial services regulator – from the hundreds of billions spent on the scam called anchor growers scheme that has left the populace yearning for rice and more rice to the other sectoral interventions that ended up as a gross betrayal of our penchant to throw money at fundamental problems – you’d probably have a word of prayer for the ‘accident’ that was the immediate topmost banker.

    The lessons have been rather slow in coming, no doubt. The chicks, however, would appear to have come to roost soon enough. True, if the country saw the early signs of the affliction  in the unbridled incursion into the fiscal space by Godwin Emefiele’s apex bank, most Nigerians probably considered it a lesser affliction than the permanent ‘sleep mode’ of the do-nothing Buhari economic management team.

    Read Also: Emefiele as personification of Nigeria’s systemic rot

    Remember, we are referring here to a time when global oil prices headed south and production dwindled – a time the EMT, clearly out of their depth had no answers let alone the presence of mind to venture into any deep thinking. Theirs was to pile up debts and more debts even as the nation bled from forces that an otherwise serious leadership could have controlled or mitigated.

    Example: our paltry OPEC 1.6 million per day quota could not be met because the government couldn’t confront the menace of crude theft. Yes, a nation that one did two and half million barrels per day found itself barely able to do a quarter of that output. And with neither the capacity nor the will to ratchet up the tax to GDP ratio then at a measly 7.5 percent, the economic management team, faced with a revenue crisis, and without the foggiest idea of how to get out of the bind thought little of outsourcing the tedious work of finding a solution to a man ever too ready to play the errand boy to special interests. And our man: like the Idi Amin of old, decided to flood the space with massive amount of naira notes without as much a thought for national productivity or inflation, reducing the banks in the process, to mere guinea pigs in his one-track inflation targeting obsession.

    Sure enough, that bizarre orthodoxy that borders on brazen outlawry that characterised Emefiele’s tenure as CBN governor would eventuate in the N23 trillion overdrafts – the so-called ways and means that the nation’s treasury is currently burdened with.

    Even that would not compare with the mind-boggling arbitrariness and abuse of office that is currently the subject of an inquiry by a special investigator.

    While men slept…

    The above phrase echoed in my mind as I ruminated on some of the key findings that bordered crass mismanagement of the apex bank by Emefiele as captured in that financial statement. We are here referring to the financials covering the whole of six years of Emefiele (2016 to 2022) only now being made public after his suspension from office!

    Guess why no one bothered to ask? The N23-point something trillion naira ways and means advances! Why bother to open the books to those already drowning in illicit credit advances – a simple case of quid pro quo!

    We have further learnt from the books that Emefiele’s CBN borrowed humongous sums from foreign lenders while pledging our assets (securities) as collaterals. Courtesy of Emefiele, our dear country is indebted to two United States banks – JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs in the sum of $7 billion and $500 million respectively. Nigeria’s treasury – again thanks to Emefiele has, additionally, been committed to a 30-day forward contracts totalling N3.15 trillion with undisclosed counterparties; and this is aside another $3.2 billion owed an unnamed party as foreign currency forward contract payables—with no notes providing clarity on the transaction accompanying that item – all of them collateralised with Nigeria’s foreign assets!

    And what did he do with the dollar-denominated loans? The answer, it would appear, is still blowing in the wind! As for the foreign reserves which Emefiele and company have long fetishized, we are learning yet again that the actual figures are only half of the tidy sum often advertised! Our dear country Nigeria, it would appear, may have long been on the wild ride to nowhere!

    I do understand why, in a country where sleaze comes in their dozens, and where the cost of impunity is denominated in dollars, the racy developments would shock no one; but then, to the extent that the underlying issues of opacity, of a clearly out-of-control monetary authority with chief texts in brazen outlawry that is unprecedented in the annals of the nation’s central banking history, the country can only overlook their dire implications to its peril…’

    Here’s wishing you, dear readers, a most prosperous New Year!

  • Rivers roforofo

    Rivers roforofo

    By the time the on-going spectacles of solidarity marches and high street choreographies in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital finally dies down –which seems unlikely anytime soon – one hopes that the good people of the Treasure Base of the Nation, as indeed the rest of Nigerians – will still retain the presence of mind to reflect on the humongous of the cost of the crisis that they have been sucked into by actors whose understanding of political brinksmanship borders on insanity.

    By this I do not refer to the cost merely in naira and kobo terms but also breaches in communal relations, resurgence of ethnic animosities and, as you might imagine, the brazen disregard, if not outright contempt for of the constitution and the constitutional order by those ever so eager to mouth the need for its protection.

    To declare the play by the political actors as anything short of an all-out war is to understate the enormity of the looming tragedy. While the guns may not have begun booming as yet – at least at this point – the way the two sides of the divide are massed in their dug out trenches can only be a foretaste of the looming battle – the equivalent of political war of Armageddon.   

    Clearly, if the attempted arson on the very symbol of representative democracy – the parliament – was meant to be a teaser, the blatantly crude and monstrously riotous play by the various shades of actors in the divide are certainly pointers to the dangers lurking on the horizon.  Last week’s despoliation of the parliament by the raging bulldozers of an endangered and apparently frightened governor can only but signpost that the grave matter has finally reached a point of no return. Never mind that it was orchestrated by a fazed executive, the act reaches beyond mere symbolism; it is bad for the law and process, the orderly society and of course democracy. It smacks of desperation.

    Yes, the joke is on the Rivers State governor – Amaopusenibo Siminalayi “Sim” Joseph Fubara. His metamorphosis is all by now, complete. The one-time meek, genuflecting executive has – as it is – fully come to his own. He is not only now described by his hordes of fawning supporters as the lordly Mayor of the Garden City state, he now adorns the full armour of the Creek Lord primed to vanquish every foe. Talk of one moment providing invaluable lesson in human transformation; the world now sees the man in his true essence. And what an unsightly image to behold!

    Last week, the governor became at once the structural engineer, the site demolitionist and the governor all rolled into one – not so much in defence of democracy or its institutions, but in the morbid game of survival and regime preservation.

    Surely, Nigerians are entitled to believe what version that suits them on the on-going ruckus between political godson and godfather in Rivers State. The one says the governor has no right to destroy the structure that brought him into office; the other insists he did no wrong and so could not be seen to live under the shadow of anyone –in carrying out the business of the good people of Rivers State.

    Thanks to conflict entrepreneurs, the conflict has also been framed as a war of liberation, in which the governor’s crime is asserting his ‘independence’ from the godfather, who, permanently condemned to crossing the line of political decency by his high-handedness and overbearing nature, needed to be tamed for the good people of Rivers to breathe! 

    Again, thanks to those adept at weaving the single-story narrative, Fubara, has been riding the crest, egged on, by those who insist he could do no wrong since Wike is involved!

    My worry is not the game at play – and there are many strands to it: his so-called war with Wike, his now estranged godfather, the unending drama on the streets and Government House precincts by political jobbers and countless others with axes to grind; the self-serving rallies supposedly staged to strengthen the hands of the governor; the now legendary opportunism that would see the governor present his first budget to a motley assembly of four persons in a 32-member parliament, and the chief of them all – the unequal contest between, for now, an all-conquering governor and an effectively decimated parliament.

    Hopefully, all of them would be straightened out one way or the other – either by the judicial process or the political process in the fullness of time.  For far beyond the aberration is the extent to which some Nigerians would be willing to tolerate, if not encourage a bigger evil, in the bid to extirpate a lesser one – just because it is expedient to do so.

    Read Also: Tinubu to NPC board: start work now, I won’t tolerate non-performance

    As I see it, it would seem that the man, Fubara, will not hesitate to pull down the roofs, if it came to that!

    By this I mean his ongoing cynical assault on the constitution and process. As has become obvious now: those who trained him certainly trained him well in that old school of political subterfuge of which Godwin Obaseki, the Edo State governor is now its acclaimed poster-boy!

    Remember, in Godwin Obaseki’s Edo, 14 elected lawmakers in a parliament of 24 members were shut out by their colleagues – never to return – all because the governor wanted the leadership of his own choosing as against that of his one-time godfather. That was in June 2019.

    Of course, we had, before then, other aberrations such as governors banishing their lawmakers to Abuja because they couldn’t bear the thought of anyone but them calling the shots in the arena they are expected to dominate! Even the all-knowing Olusegun Obasanjo, who has, at various times, morphed from being president, statesman, letter writer to being lately, a ‘governance expert’  couldn’t resist, during his time, suborning state minority lawmakers to do his bidding from the cosy comfort of his Abuja Villa!

    Today, courtesy of an all-powerful governor, a four-member parliament now sits and passes bills – including the all-important Appropriation Act and this in less than 96 hours, and that would seem just fine! And if that seems a mockery of the process; how about the equally mocking ex parte order gleefully handed the minority lawmakers by the court to take over a parliament at the expense of their majority members? And what do we say of the governor seizing upon the crime scene – the partially burnt parliamentary edifice – to order its summary demolition in what smacks of a final act of self-preservation?

    Strange isn’t it that those who are now condemning the godfather are yet to see the damage being done to their state by their governor?

    Yes – Nyesom Wike may in fact be guilty as hell of the charges against him. His methods may have been weird, eccentric and sometimes crude; what no one has yet suggested is a embrace of raw outlawry. Sadly, one wishes that this could be said of Governor Sim Fubara after barely seven months of being in the saddle.

  • Tudun Biri: Beneath the blame game

    Tudun Biri: Beneath the blame game

    More than a week after the unfortunate bombing that claimed scores of lives of innocent Nigerians at Tudun Biri village in the Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State, there has been enough outpouring of blames to reach every single Nigerian that has ever adorned the military fatigue. Strong words such as ‘incompetent’, ‘state sponsored massacre’ among other emotive phrases have been used almost without let, to describe the action of the military. All of these freely bandied by different shades of actors – ranging from those with heartfelt, humanitarian concerns to those that have one axe or the other to grind – including those so blinded by their ethnic and religious prejudices that nothing outside of those visors really matter.

    Thomas Aquinas it was that said– “He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust”.

    Reasonable Nigerians, as if heeding the Aquinas admonition, continue to express their anger and outrage. They have a right to be. They are right to demand that military actors subscribe to the highest levels of clinical, operational efficiency in combat missions. And this one in particular could well be – to put it mildly – one disaster to many – the deadliest since the 2017 air strike on Rann village in Borno State which killed 115 civilians. On that occasion, a Nigerian Air Force jet had mistakenly bombed an internally displaced persons’ camp believing it to be Boko Haram encampment. Listed among the victims of the bombing were six Red Cross aid workers – aside the more than 100 injured.

    How many of such incidents have we had since the Rann incident? The answer unfortunately is – many. Take a few examples. On April 13, 2020, 17 people, including children, were killed after a NAF fighter jet bombed Sakotoku village in Damboa LGA, Borno State. A year and half later, an air strike by the Nigerian Air Force killed 64 people in Mutumji village in Zamfara State. And this year, we have recorded two incidents – one in Doma, Nasarawa State involving 40 herders, and the other in Galadima Kogo, Niger State, during which dozens of vigilantes were killed during a military air strike.

    Read Also: Tinubu to Army: don’t be partisan, be vigilant to protect democracy

    If Nigerians ever needed reminders that war is a terrible thing, this ought to be such moment. Nothing like a good war – so to speak; worse when it is one between fellow citizens. But even more importantly is whether any lessons have been learnt. By this I do not refer only to the military now under the eye of the storm with strident calls for thorough investigations, but by the broad spectrum of the elite particularly those un-leaders ever too eager to cast the first proverbial stone.

    I guess that the point has been sufficiently made that the demands for investigations are in order! In fact, such calls, if anything, being entrenched into military doctrine – is something of a standard operating procedure, globally – and shouldn’t therefore be such a big deal.

    But then, this is Nigeria! Where have previous investigations landed us – some have asked? And to imagine that some have gone as far as to prejudicially accuse the Nigerian military of ‘genocide’!

    As they say in my part of the country – at the death of an elephant, expect all manners of opportunistic knives to show up for freebies!

    Currently, the people of Tudun Biri as indeed distraught Nigerians are in deep mourning. But so also are religious bigots and other opportunistic players in the Nigerian divide out, like vultures, in their familiar pastime of stoking passions, denigrating and de-legitimising just about every institution that passes their fancy, in their customary play for power and relevance!    

    Take the example of a certain Usman Yusuf, professor of medicine and a supposed thought leader in the North. The individual, who has no qualms about switching roles from being a spokesman of the marauding band of heartless herders to a defender of the outlawry; the Tudun Biri tragedy is something of an undeclared war on the Muslims and the North – at least to the extent that the South is yet to be visited with the calamity of such scale by the Nigerian military! 

    And so he wants, in the first stage of the peace offering, the entire military top brass to go! He says a high-powered, independent committee headed by a retired Chief Justice of Nigeria, which should have a service chief as a member should follow – to investigate the bombing, perhaps as a second stage.

    I presume the issue of compensation to the traumatised people of Tudun Biri, for which nearly a thousand lawyers have reported lined up – would come later perhaps as part of the third stage of the ritual of appeasement!

    As one might expect, the professor is not alone is demanding for action. Amnesty International Nigeria, has also lent its voice: “The Nigerian authorities must promptly, thoroughly, independently, impartially, transparently and effectively investigate the killing of more than 120 civilians in two military air strikes on Sunday, instead of engaging in attempts to cover up the crime.

    “The Nigerian military’s recklessness is a result of the authorities’ consistent failure to hold them to account for a long list of such atrocities. These unlawful killings of civilians cannot be swept under the carpet”. The above are the words of its country director, Isa Sanusi.

    Let’s just say that yours truly couldn’t agree more with the calls for thorough investigations. And then compensation. But then, that demand should go beyond the figurative baying for more blood as it seems to be in the current case, to make real sense. For if those thought leaders in the North currently calling down fire and brimstone will care to be truthful, they ought to know that we are actually dealing with the symptoms rather than the cause of a debilitating disease. Here, if we agree that have two issues here to contend with which are the military and the raging banditry, the apparent operational rustiness and the general inadequacy of the military would seem be far easier to handle than the million man army of bandits that the self-seeking, utterly irresponsible elite in the north have sired – the same army so thoroughly embedded among the population that it would take more than a contraption of poorly mastered technology of an organised military to root out.

    Here we are in an environment of creeping anarchy, where governance has failed and traditional institutions are in limbo; imagine the likes of Yusuf being called to lead the charge to address such dire emergency. Seems to be the surest guarantee that the trauma would endure till eternity!

    May God grant the innocent souls of the dead repose and the living, speedy healing.

  • Lest we forget…

    Lest we forget…

    These days, I couldn’t but think of how much has changed in nearly six months of the Bola Tinubu presidency. With everyone talking of how much things have not only gone south and sour but have become utterly hopeless, one might be forgiven to imagine that the dreaded Armageddon has finally berthed on our shores. 

    Sure, things are bad – really bad. So bad that nearly everyone that one meets has something to say about how terrible the current situation is. Before now, Nigerians could write a book on the soar-away inflation, the record unemployment and growing poverty and immiseration; the corruption and self-interests and how these have hobbled the nation’s development.

    Six months after, they have just enough materials to do wholesale book on the correlates of the new exchange rate regime and the fuel subsidy removal both of which combined, are believed to have brought the roof down on everyone’s heads. The town – as they say – is not smiling at all.

    Of course, the naira – our beloved currency is down and under. Rather than bring respite, the liberalisation of the forex market would seem to have compounded its woes. Even with the best of assurances, there are, as yet, no cast iron guarantees of its imminent bounce back with consumer price index – no thanks to our reliance on imports for items ranging from food to basic household goods – already threatening to spin out of control.

    The other day, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, released its October headline inflation report showing an increase in rate to 27.33% relative to the September rate of 26.72% with year-on-year headline inflation at 6.24% points higher compared to the rate recorded in October 2022 (21.09%).

    With so much gloom abounding, it has become extremely hard to see any tiny flick of light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. 

    Yet, one is constantly reminded of how a nation that barely escaped the Process and Industrial Development (P&ID) noose has a lot to be thankful for. It seems a measure of the changing tides that the P&ID vultures which once held the nation by the balls are currently stewing in their own juice as the one-time underdog has now been afforded the sweet song of victory.

    Did I hear – free at last?

    Not quite. Whereas the battle that finally ended at the English court may have brought relief at the passing of that nightmarish chapter, it seems early in the day to roll out the drums. At least, not with the other vultures – known and unknown – still lurking menacingly by!

    In any case, if the P&ID saga and its aftermath is any revealing, it is how numbed Nigerians have become with their ever unending but dreary ‘drama of existence’; and from their apparent surrender to those dark forces massed against that very existence.

    Read Also: 2024 budget: Katsina govt allocates 20% to water, education sectors – Commissioner

    It is precisely that drama that today’s piece is all about. Another dark chapter in the story of how – you guessed right – the same Nigeria – was allegedly defrauded by such an amount that reduced the whole P&ID saga to a mere child’s play. We are here referring to a tidy sum of $62 billion said to have been ferried away – without arbitration –while Nigerian officials conveniently slept!

    Guess the culprits? The so-called International Oil Companies (IOCs), whose altars our so-called leaders are known to bow and worship!

    P&ID, as you already know, was accused of seeking to reap without as much as turning the sod. How about actors who, after ploughing on another’s field, went on to harvest but chose to render nugatory, the articles of settlement choosing instead, to cart away what belonged to another, enabled by minions and fifth columnists?

    Thanks to former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, for going public with it, hereunder is how the international wire agency – Reuters – reported the affair on October 10, 2019.

    “Nigeria is seeking $62 billion from oil companies under regulations that allow the government to revisit revenue sharing deals on petroleum sales if crude prices exceed $20 a barrel, the attorney general told Reuters on Thursday”.

    The medium, quoting Malami said: “Computing the amount that should be credited to the Nigerian government if the law was effectively applied, that translates to around $62 billion against the IOCs (international oil companies).

    All options are on the table and there is no limit to what we can do in terms of engagement, in terms of settlement, if the need arises”, he was further quoted to have said while also conveniently short of naming the offenders!

    In truth however, it is the governments of Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Bayelsa that deserve the plaudits for going to court to enforce the PSC contracts. The apex court in 2018 had ruled that the federal government take steps to recover all outstanding amounts due under the PSC.

    At issue most certainly, was not the regulation. Rather, at a time of low oil prices and the government in the bid to incentivise the oil majors, had deservedly availed the operators sufficient fiscal leg-room to allow them breathe and to recoup their investments. Only that the sharing contract would automatically change should oil prices exceed $20 a barrel – as it later did!

    The problem was that our officials chose to look away even when oil prices rose. And for whatever reasons, neither of the parties that drew up the agreement – not the government and certainly not the IOCs – pretended that such an agreement existed let alone the thought of bringing it up. Not even when oil prices hit the $80 mark! In fact, at some point in 2014, oil prices actually hit the $100 mark.

    Unfortunately, while the IOCs and their Nigerian enablers smiled to the bank, the Nigerian government was too distracted to call for the books or went on Rip Van Winkle sleep. At least, not until Malami made the computation public through the highly publicised demand notice!

     And so far from being a call to charity, or even a play at brinksmanship, it was, ordinarily, something of a straight forward demand for equity and fair-play on behalf of a short-changed people and on which the Supreme Court as the final authority had pronounced upon!

    As one might imagine in such circumstances, the real scandal would soon follow. Like they say of the death of an elephant when all manners of knives suddenly spring out for a piece of the action, one such was the emergence of one Trobell International, described as the recovery agent with the letter of authorisation from AGF Malami to collect five percent (or $2.15 billion or N774 billion) commission on performance(?)!

    Surprised, President Muhammadu Buhari had ordered the contract whose commission he also described as “excessive” suspended. Indeed, the president’s then Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, had also insisted that the government did not even need the help of the company to recover the debt as the Supreme Court had already directed the companies to pay up!  And so the matter was rested. That precisely is where we are today.

    Think of what an inflow of $62 billion can do to the value of the naira as indeed the economy as a whole. We are talking of non-debt, unencumbered cash, which the law already deem to belong to the federation account, but is being withheld by a cartel of lawless operators. The least the Tinubu administration can do for the country at this difficult time is press for the recovery of every dime of that money.

  • Naira: Questions, more questions

    Naira: Questions, more questions

    For those who had feared and most probably predicted the worst fate for the naira, it must have come as a surprise that the currency has in the past few days been making spirited gains. From hitting the lowest ever level of N1,315/$ in the week ending October 28, the currency continues to gain strength such that by last weekend, it had exchanged for N950/$ on the average in the same parallel market.

    If it comes as any refreshing departure from the norm in a country where things hardly come down once they go up, the development itself has certainly provoked hard questions about the forces propelling the movement in either direction.

    Yes, the big story is that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has started clearing over $10 billion foreign exchange backlogs of commercial banks and foreign airline operators. A move to shore up confidence in the economy – a calming effect of sorts on the oftentimes irrational behaviour of the disparate players in the forex market – to be sure, the choice was not whether those claims are legit or not but whether the apex bank actually has the means to pay.

    Now that the apex bank has dared what in the circumstance could be deemed as impossible, surely the import of the measure can hardly be lost – either in terms of its optics or its signposts for the overall economy. Surely, the message out there is that the country is not only back in business but that the apex bank is on the restorative track; one only needs to add that the bigger, unanswered question remains what should be the appropriate exchange rate given Nigerians’ long abiding fixation with the United States dollar.

    Yes, we know what happens when the exchange rate goes up; everything from transport costs to prices of basic consumer items goes up with it. Indeed, such has been the lot of the citizens in the past few months following the removal of petrol subsidy, necessitating the rash of palliatives across the board to ameliorate the cost of living crisis.

    I have heard many out there describe the current fate of the naira as a crime against humanity. In a season more marked by emotion than sound logic, that is partly understandable. Trust me, those are not even among the partisan mob who wish to see the naira hit the N2000/$ if only to sustain their continuing rage against a government that they would rather see fail! You know who! These are people who simply can’t understand why a unit of Nigeria’s currency would exchange for a thousand of another’s!

    Few, if any, seems to remember, how the nation got to this point: the years of sabotage and production shut-ins in the oil producing Niger Delta which eventuated in the nation being unable to meet its OPEC quota and hence its forex needs; the continuing lack of appreciable manufacturing capacity as a result of which the country has to depend on imports even for basic goods; our wholesale reliance on fuel importation, the utter neglect of our agriculture among others.

    Suddenly, it is like the Central Bank of Nigeria or the federal government could print dollar notes just as in the days of yore when Emefiele and company churned out crisp naira notes as they pleased! Now that the chicks are home to roost, it is like some people are expecting the government to conjure the miracle of turning stone to bread.

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    Yes, we must thank God that naira is steadily improving. Fact is that the neither the CBN nor the federal government has done anything extraordinary – at least, not up until this point. While the optics is good, it remains to be seen whether the effects will endure. In fact, a lot would have to be done to keep the trend.

    As for the exchange rate, it needs to be said that there is really nothing sacrosanct about it. At least, that is what the example of South Korea has taught.  The Asian country’s currency, the Won currently exchanges at 1311.85000 KRW/$ – the same band with Nigeria’s so-called parallel market. However, that is where the similarity ends. The former, an industrial powerhouse, has a vast array of goods and services to export – and so could afford the luxury of a severely weakened currency to boost its exports. The self-acclaimed biggest economy on the continent, on the other hand, being a non-starter in manufacturing and lacking any appreciable capacity to export anything, thus relying virtually on oil exports, risked any devaluation of its currency at its grim peril!

    That has been Nigeria’s story – a case of double whammy!

    Interestingly, what Nigeria lacks in productive, manufacturing enterprise, it seems to have made up in the speculative activities of its unscrupulous businessmen, their allies in government and the bureaucracy, whose main line of business is hawking foreign currencies! 

    The long and short of the story is that the naira is in bad shape against major currencies mainly because the country has little else – aside oil – to export. Meanwhile, it needs loads of forex to bring in everything – from consumer items to industrial spares and raw materials to fees for trade licences and refined fuel! We can add to the long list the millions carted out in illegal repatriation through over invoicing and other trade malpractices as indeed other millions routinely packed through other illegal channels including our porous borders! While our net outflow is known to be far in excess of what the nation earns through exports, ours must be the only country in the world where currency speculation yields far higher dividends than real economic activities!

    Obviously, the government and the CBN would have to focus on these activities and many more, if indeed, they are truly desirous of rescuing the naira.

    The other area the government needs to beam its searchlight is the so-called diaspora remittances. This area is supposed to be growing in leaps and bounds with the CBN reporting that last year alone the country netted $ 21.9 billion. In fact, Agusto & Co. expects that remittance flows into Nigeria will rise to about $26 billion by 2025.

    Here, the real question – which the CBN has failed to answer satisfactorily – is whether the country is in actual receipt of those remittances. Sure, we know how easy it is, using those foreign apps, to transfer funds to Nigeria in seconds. Are they licenced by the CBN? Or better still, is the apex bank aware of them? If yes, how much control does it have over them?

    Simply put, can it guarantee that the forex equivalent actually hits the correspondent banks for onward remittance to Nigeria after settlement in the local currency?

    These and many more are for Yemi Cardoso’s CBN to ponder upon.

  • P&ID: Not yet a closure

    P&ID: Not yet a closure

    It was a case of a Daniel coming to judgment in faraway United Kingdom yesterday where Judge Robin Knowles of the Business and Property Court finally dismissed the so-called $6.6billion arbitral judgment won by Process & Industry Development (P&ID) Ltd against Nigeria over a failed 2010 deal to develop a gas processing plant. While granting the country the long sought reprieve, the court held that the award was obtained by fraud and that what has happened in the case is contrary to public policy.

    The saga centred on a 2010 agreement between P&ID and the federal government to build a gas processing plant in Calabar, Cross River State. Along the line, nothing happened. The company later claimed that the contract failed because the Nigerian government did not fulfil its end of the bargain. Although the was no record that the company ever moved to the project site not to talk of turning the sod, it sort of guaranteed itself ample protection in the perverse, blatantly one-sided and artfully worded contract documents to sustain any claim of injury in the unlikelihood of the project ever seeing the light of day!

    And so the claim went before international arbitration, that Nigeria, the giant with the feet of clay, deprived P&ID the potential benefits expected from 20 years’ worth of gas supplies with “anticipated profits of $5 to $6 billion.” The country, on its part, had countered that P&ID actually failed to acquire the site and build Gas Processing Facilities and that this failure was a fundamental breach as “no gas could be delivered until this has been done.”

    To the arbitral tribunal however, Nigeria’s obligations under Article 6B of the contract were not conditional upon P&ID having constructed any gas processing facilities!

    Summary: Nigeria, for all its care, could spend billions to pipe its gas to anywhere or nowhere; nothing in the contract expressly commits P&ID to providing an onsite receiving facility to take the gas! And for this, Nigeria was to pay P&ID $6.6 billion as damages, as well as pre-and post-judgment interest at seven per cent!

    For a contract that would ordinarily be deemed to be perverse – at least according to UK’s Judge Knowles – the ensuing arbitral award would stand apart in bizarre, public policy jurisprudence!

    Yours truly could not but rue the fate that would have befallen our beleaguered country had yesterday’s judgment gone the other way. We are here referring to an award which at the time of the judgment was already in excess of $11 billion. Think of the accompanying shock waves at a time the country’s standing in global financial circles is already shaky; a time when there are already, silent whispers about our trading partners rejecting Nigeria’s letters of credit. I thought for a moment about our foreign assets and what would happen to them in the dark, conspiratorial, shark-infested waters of global finance!

    Was yours truly frustrated? Supressed anger would be a better description. For if it seems hard to imagine Nigeria’s Corruption Inc. and its allies walking away with the massive trophy after brazenly scamming a whole country, the audaciousness of a plot that would reduce a whole country to a most cruel joke in global capitals would most certainly be impossible to swallow.

    Thanks to The Cable – Nigeria’s online medium for breaking the story and staying on it till this very moment. Now we know the story is not your typical single, straight line story of two parties locked in dispute over perceived breaches of contractual terms; rather, it is an intriguingly complex, confounding story of fraud: the collusion between cross-border crooks and fraudsters, high profile Nigerian lawyers and their evil or is it ‘civil’ servants counterparts.

    As one would imagine of the typical Nigerian story, there were interesting twists and turns, such as when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, in a parallel investigation actually found evidence of two bank transfers totalling $20,000 made by Dublin-based Industrial Consultants (International) Ltd. — part of the P&ID group of companies — to a Nigerian government lawyer, Grace Taiga, who oversaw the award of the gas plant contract, purportedly for “medical costs!

    Or another interesting aside featuring Olasupo Shasore SAN, Nigeria’s first counsel in the P&ID arbitration saga, who despite receiving the sum of two million dollars, allegedly worked against the interest of his client! In fact, one Mark Howard, said to be Nigeria’s legal representative, stated point blank that in the first two stages of the arbitration, Shasore, deliberately “defended the case thinly”. More than that; that Shasore also allegedly made questionable payments of $100,000 each to Folakemi Adelore and Ikechukwu Oguine, both legal representatives of the ministry of petroleum resources and NNPC respectively. In short, the trio, who also discouraged Nigeria from strongly contesting claims of the British firm, formed the settlement team that jetted to London for settlement negotiations with P&ID!

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    Yes, all of that and perhaps more were said to have happened!

    The problem with P&ID case is that the company did not confine itself to playing in the local league which, thanks to our inept institutions and their consort of criminal enablers would ordinarily have afforded them maximum protection. They would rather go after a much bigger prize – our foreign reserves including, where possible, other assets domiciled in foreign shores. Had the company chosen to play local, the story would have been different.

    Safe to say that Nigeria only got lucky this time around; in a country where spurious judgment debts have become something of an industry for fortune-hunters, the case of the P&ID only sticks out because of the greed quotient and the fact that the sought out trophy is huge – far beyond our borders! Talk of a more malignant variant of Nigeria’s Corruption Inc.

    Recall that the Buhari administration with only a few days to leave office in May reportedly shelled out  $566.75 million, 98.52 million pounds sterling ($124.35 million) and N226.28 billion naira ($491.92 million) allegedly incurred by federal ministries, department and agencies as judgment debts! How much of that is spurious is something that Nigerians would never know.

    Again, Nigerians would also recall the story of the $418 million Paris Club refund ‘consultancy fee’ over which the Nigerian Governors Forum is locked in dispute with ‘consultants’ whose services the governors body maintained, were neither solicited for nor were offered, remains live. The last we heard was the governors vowing to continue to explore all legal channels available to them in ensuring that ‘’resources belonging to states are not unjustly or illegally paid to a few in the guise of consultancies.’’

    Far from closure, the P&ID story is only partly ended. There will certainly be no closure until all the company’s named accomplices are served the bitter pill of judicial retribution. It is something that yours truly – as indeed all lovers of Nigeria – can’t wait to see happen. 

  • Beyond the CBN reset

    Beyond the CBN reset

    While it seems inevitable that the house Godwin Emefiele built would fall apart in the aftermath of President Bola Tinubu’s clean sweep of the top echelon of the apex bank, I suspect that not a few Nigerians are still either confused by what is going on or simply unable to make sense of the direction that the new team headed by Yemi Cardoso is headed.

    Yet, nearly a month after assuming office in acting capacity, there is not only a sense that a new Sherriff is in town, but one primed to chart a completely different course from Emefiele’s.  

    Call it the Cardoso manifesto; the elements, shorn of the typical of media glitz and hypes could easily have passed unreported save for its rather lucid and straight-to-the-issue declarations which obviously speaks to the new mood at the apex bank. 

    Take a few samples: The CBN will no longer be involved in direct development finance interventions. That means an end to the several intervention programmes of the CBN; the so-called darling of the farmers – the Anchor Borrowers Programme, the 100 for 100 Policy on Production and productivity (PPP)), the Real Sector Facility (RSF) and the Nigeria Electricity Market Stabilization Facility and countless others that have hitherto, attracted the interventionist eyes of the apex bank and which, combined have gulped over N9.71 trillion, are gone for good.

    Observing that the apex bank’s forays into development financing has been such that blurred the lines between monetary policy and fiscal intervention, the Cardoso manifesto also affirmed:  “in refocusing the CBN to its core mandate, there is a need to pull the CBN back from direct development finance interventions into more limited advisory roles that support economic growth.

    “Those advisory roles, it would further clarify, would include acting “as a catalyst in the propagation of specialised institutions and financial products that support emerging sectors of the economy.

    Secondly, the bank seeks to “facilitate new regulatory frameworks to unlock dormant capital in land and property holdings. Third, it seeks an accelerated access to consumer credit and expansion of financial inclusion to the masses.

    Yes, the CBN under the new thinking “would also focus on de-risking instrumentation to increase private sector investment in housing, textiles and clothing, food supply chain, healthcare, and educational supplies…”

    Summary: the era of the apex bank acting as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for all manners of interventions was over. Put in another way, the era of looking for rice pyramids in Abuja is not only gone forever, the apex bank would henceforth be spared of such farcical shows that promote the vanities of personages.

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    The other measure, which to yours truly also believes tips the scale is the lifting of foreign exchange restrictions hitherto placed on the importation of 43 items.

    Recall that the apex bank had way back in 2015 put 43 product categories on a list of items not valid for forex. The idea, as understood, promoted and stridently defended by Emefiele at the time, was that those goods that could be better produced in the country shouldn’t be found on the queue sourcing for scarce forex. For an institution that had long moved from being the lender of the last resort to your run-of-the-mill player in the arena, it was taken as one of those orthodoxies dictated by national exigencies and so went unchallenged! Never mind that the same individual broke every known rule in modern apex banking; to him, the Nigerian exigency, it would appear, would suffice to trump every conceivable consideration even when facts dictated otherwise!

    If our revolutionary banker ever thought that a fiscal prop was needed to guarantee sustainability considering that none of the 43 items were under any import prohibition list, neither he nor the Economic Management Team considered it necessary to put any such measures in place! In the circumstance, our chief pilot was left to fly solo in the turbulent weather that would ordinarily require all hands to be on deck! To him, it was sufficient to ask the importers of the 43 items to either set up factories for local manufactures or in the alternative source for forex from wherever!

    Yes, the new wisdom is that the restrictions actually pushed importers into the parallel market, fuelling the demand for forex and thus further weakening the naira in that segment of the market. And so the argument goes that they have to go! Just like that? Yes, just like that.

    The reason is self-evident: the exclusionary forex policy was not borne out of a sound policy let alone common sense. What it did was to play up to the familiar activist, populist sentiment. Second, the exclusion would appear an intrusion into trade policy – an arena outside of the CBN remit. Third, there is no evidence that the restrictions helped the forex situation either in terms of boosting domestic production of those items or in curbing the demand for them. It is like the federal government did when it closed the borders without putting in place matching policies to address those  fundamentals that made local  entrepreneurial initiatives so herculean.

    The message here is that the CBN could be a better job of focusing on its core functions of monetary system regulation, banker and adviser to the federal government while the fiscal side of governance come up with complementary policies to spur growth.

    What about the implications of the reversal on the gains already recorded in the production of those items? Nothing has changed, if you ask me. Remember: the good were never on any prohibition list. In fact, those with independent forex sources could freely import them! That they are found everywhere in our markets simply indicates shortfalls in domestic output. That shortfall will certainly not be cured by forex restriction or import prohibition!

    On the one hand, while the domestic producers of those hitherto excluded items could rest easy knowing that the government would inevitably deploy complementary fiscal policy tools to achieve the some price parity, the importers on the other hand could take comfort in the knowledge that the same market rules govern the allocation of scarce forex!

    And the point here: Nigerians didn’t elect the CBN to fix the variegated problems of the country. At best it is an enabler – a help to the government achieve its macro-economic objectives. While its role in promoting inclusive growth, in bringing down the inflation and ensuring overall macro-economic stability cannot be overstated, those looking in its direction for ultimate solution will do well to fix their gaze on what President Bola Tinubu and his team does in the coming months to fix the economy.

  • An expedition and its aftermath

    An expedition and its aftermath

    Finally, I do hope that Nigerians have truly begun to pay attention to the declared end game of the high-octane drama staged by former vice president Atiku Abubakar and which, while it lasted, took country to the edge. For those that the fishing expedition in the courts of Magistrate Jeffrey T. Gilbert and Judge Nancy Maldonado of U.S. Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, United States, had created the exaggerated expectation of sorts, their pain after the disappointing voyage is certainly understandable hence their resort to inferences neither borne of the written text nor supported by the facts deposed at the proceedings.

    Clearly, if the past few days have been interesting, it certainly cannot be on any ground of ‘discovery’ of a new facts as it is in the desperation to confuse and to confound, and when these fail, resort to the default setting of haranguing the poor justices of the apex court on a case yet to be properly brought before them. Even in this, it would appear that the Atiku Abubakar, the self-styled democrat by conviction couldn’t afford to wait for his legal team to do their job nor the adjudicating justices to sit.

    A ‘world press’ conference in the circumstance simply became the logical next phase. Obviously, the judges needed to be served notice that Atiku means business, even if that meant rewriting the rules of court or providing some form of accommodation for his juridical fantasies, so be it!

    No questions about invoking either the law or new compelling facts to persuade the learned justices; suffice at this time to invoke the spirit of Gani Fawehinmi, the Senior Advocate of the Masses of revered memory of whom he says ‘inspired him on this path of discovery…and that he can truly rest in peace in the assurance that what he started about 23 years ago has come to fruition! Political opportunism does not come by any other name!

    By the way, Atiku has since found a new hero – David Hundeyin, ‘an independent journalist whose extraordinary work and those of many more young people like him has become a source of inspiration’.  Let me just say that Atiku is certainly in good company here.

    To yours truly however, the high point of the Atiku conference is his strange call “on all well-meaning Nigerians, leaders of thought, our religious leaders, our traditional leaders, our community leaders, our political leaders, and in particular, Governor Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP and, the leaders of every political party in Nigeria, and, indeed, every single person who loves this country, as I do, and who wishes nothing but the best for the country, as I do, to join me in this campaign to enshrine probity, accountability and the basic principles of justice, morality and uprightness in our country and in our government. This is a task for each and every one of us”.

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    That, although dangerous, is a familiar call. Earlier on, we heard similar calls by those who, unable bear the thought of a Tinubu presidency, had called for an extra-constitutional contraption of an interim government. Add to the group the Obidients, the league in the forefront of delegitimising the electoral outcome; the cyber warriors for whom it is either their way or the hell’s highway? 

    Is Atiku merely echoing the minds of Nigeria’s principalities and powers before whose altars he’s known to bow when it suits him? It is certainly a new day that Atiku Abubakar, the democrat of convenience, now seeks an alliance with those in whom he is in competition for the same prize, to chase out the legitimate government through such means that are beyond the contemplation of the law!

    Earlier in this piece, I raised the issue of Atiku’s end game. The issue as it appears, bears restating: what does Atiku want? Here was a man who although lost in the February 25 presidential elections somehow believes that there still exists for him a viable path to the presidency. Clearly, if that quest is legitimate, he seems to forget that the path to that office is circumscribed by the provisions of the constitution and the Electoral Act. The law of course recognises a two-tiered process for resolving all disputes arising from the presidential election. The first part has been concluded. That stage has since found – with all the five justices concurring – that Atiku’s case as indeed that of his co-traveller, Peter Obi, lacked merit. Having gone to the highest court in the land in line with the provisions of the law, one would have thought that Atiku would hold his peace.

    Yes, I understand why the Chicago expedition might be deemed a mere distraction, a judicial afterthought sort of, or even a chase after the wind by some people. To yours truly however, the issue of whether it falls within the right of the fishing party to pursue his case as he deems fit is clearly beyond debate! It is after all, the man’s money and he can use it for any causes even if they lead nowhere! That right, inbuilt in the democratic spirit, would seem to be tolerant of all manners of specious interpretations by all manners of actors even when they sometimes border on the lunacy!

    It is however a different kettle of fish when a principal party in a case already in court, a former vice president, supposedly a statesman, begins to call for extra-constitutional measures apparently because he thinks the system would not pander to his whims. That is one red line that should not go unchallenged!

    See how ridiculous things can get for the ultimate democrat? He says the former Lagos State governor abandoned him as well as the Action Congress of Nigeria to support Umaru Yar’Adua of the PDP in the 2007 presidential poll. And that he saved Tinubu by not allowing former President Olusegun Obasanjo to take over Lagos State in the 2007 general elections. Yes, the star cast in the mind-boggling corruption cases running from the shores of Nigeria to the United States Congress, and on whom Olusegun Obasanjo once issued a most scathing ‘recommendation’ is out there talking public morality. That is Nigeria!

    So where do we go from here? As it is, the Wazirin Adamawa has long indicated that he has little faith in the Nigerian judiciary – except things go in his favour. In other words, the Supreme Court judgment is unlikely to settle anything – so long as it does not favour him. I believe Nigerians should begin to pay attention.

  • Mambilla: OBJ as Pontius Pilate

    Mambilla: OBJ as Pontius Pilate

    In a week marked by a mirthless drama of an Obasanjo sanctimoniously waving a headmaster-like cane on the heads of supposedly ‘errant’ Oyo monarchs, Nigerians might be forgiven for missing out on the other tragi-comedy starring the same Obasanjo and his one-time minister, Olu Agunloye,  which also played out at the weekend. While the former has drawn spontaneous flaks from the quarters of traditionalists and their likes for what is considered the sheer impudence of the  former president,  only just unfolding, partly explains why reactions have been rather measured if not entirely slow in coming.

    Yet, merely going by the forth and back revelations, our dear country may in fact be dealing with the conning of the country by an individual whose notoriety for casting the proverbial first stone is now legendary. At the heart of it  is a scandal which is not only threatening to embarrass the country, but which if successfully litigated will cost the nation’s treasury a whopping $2.3 billion in compensation.

    Call it the Mambilla Hydro Power Project scam; the star casts are Olu Agunloye, Olusegun Obasanjo, Sunrise Power and Transmission Limited and its promoter, Leno Adesanya versus the people and the government of this luckless republic!

    The story, merely from its outlines would seem simple and fairly straight forward. Agunloye, as minister of power and steel, had presented a memo to the federal executive council (FEC). The subject was a build, operate and transfer (BOT) contract for the Mambilla Hydropower Project being promoted by Sunrise Power and Transmission Ltd, owned by Chief Leno Adesanya. The then FEC, was apparently unconvinced that the business case as outlined by the promoter made sense and subsequently directed the minister to withdraw it. 

    End of story? Not quite. In fact, the macabre story had only begun.

    Agunloye, as it turned out, would still proceed with an offer letter to Sunrise conveying the “approval” of the federal government for the award of the contract at a “provisional sum of $6 billion”. The latter gleefully accepted the offer from the minister, all of these within days to the exit of the administration!

    That was not all. Three months into a new administration, Sunrise, on the strength of the ‘contract’ wrote to the ministry in asking for payment for “pre-EPC” development on a supposedly BOT contract! The succeeding power minister, Senator Liyel Imoke, unable to locate the approval engaging Sunrise simply wrote back to convey same adding that a bidding process would soon open and advised Sunrise to tender! All of these happened some two decades back!

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    Since then, the country has known no peace with legal fireworks and other arbitrations being staged in local and foreign jurisdictions over all alleged breach of contract! And all of these on the single strength of a letter written by an official, whose authority, the government would have the world believe, had at that point in time, been ousted by the highest decision-making body in the land!

    Today, if it seems any curious that the response of the lord of Ota has taken the whole of two decades to come forth, even more curious still must be the tacit admission that the same all-knowing principal neither knew of the anomalous situation let alone act on it in the whole of the four years of his second term!

    For this, Nigeria and Nigerians must consider themselves indebted to The Cable for helping to beam its searchlight on a scandal whose bits and parts are only now beginning to come together.

    “When I was president, no minister had the power to approve more than N25 million without express presidential consent. It was impossible for Agunloye to commit my government to a $6 billion project without my permission and I did not give him any permission”. That was former president, Obasanjo in the interview under reference.

     “When he presented his memo to the federal executive council (on May 21, 2003), I was surprised because he had previously discussed it with me and I had told him to jettison the idea, that I had other ideas on how the power sector would be restructured and funded.

    “I told him as much at the council meeting and directed him to step down the memo. I find it surprising that Agunloye is now claiming he acted on behalf of Nigeria. If I knew he issued such a letter to Sunrise, I would have sacked him as minister during my second term. He would not have spent a day longer in office.”

    Of course, that was vintage Obasanjo! He even claimed that Leno Adesanya, the promoter of Sunrise Power, ran away from Nigeria during his time president:

    “I would have jailed him if he was in the country because of the things I knew about him. After I left office, he returned and I saw him. I told him that he was lucky I was no longer president. Otherwise, I would have jailed him”!

    Yes, the former president has spoken even if his tone reeked of the sanctimony that was vintage Obasanjo.

    But then so has the former minister, Olu Agunloye presented his own side of the story. In a letter that has since gone viral, he accused his ‘Baba’ and former boss of distortion of facts on the multi-billion-dollar project. In fact, he only stopped short of calling him a liar and his role in the entire affair as sordid!

    First, he claimed that  his involvement with the project started when the former president on November 28, 2002, the very day he resumed office as Minister of Power, handed him a presidential approval on the Sunrise proposal with an instruction that Sunrise be invited “for the final negotiations for the execution of the Mambilla Power Project.” (To his credit, he also admitted that the president later changed his mind, preferring instead that the government used public funds).

    Secondly, that there is no such thing as $6 billion contract being bandied around as the plant was to be at no cost to the government.

     “The former president was not correct when he referred to the award to Sunrise simply as a $6 billion contract (that is, N800 billion in 2003) under his watch. In truth, it was a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) contract in which the FGN did not need to pay any amount to the contractor, Messrs Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Limited (Sunrise)…

    He would add that the 3050 megawatts plant was only “adjudged at a maximum of $6 billion by four Ministers of Power and the former president (Chief Obasanjo) before I became Minister of Power”.

    Finally that the late president, Umaru Yar’Adua only terminated the contract in 2008 when it became clear that the funding model put up by the Obasanjo administration was merely a scheme by its officials to defraud the government.

    Some quick questions for Agunloye: From where did he derive the authority to award the contract particularly after the FEC had turned same down? In other words, is it a case of an earlier approval being superior to any other consideration, this time the FEC? Why bother to bring up at FEC if this was the case? And the big question: why would Sunrise be asking for payment for “pre-EPC” development on a project that was supposed to cost the federal government nothing?

    The former minister would not as much as attempt to give an answer in the so-called letter.

    And now to Obasanjo: From the late President Yar’Adua alleging that Obasanjo’s administration spent $11 billion on the power sector “with nothing to show for it”, to the latest but still evolving scandal on the Mambilla Hydro Power project, Nigerians must find it interesting, if not sad, that the individual, who has long assumed the self-assigned role of being the scourge of successive administrations on matters of corruption, continues to be the recurring name where grand heist is mentioned. 

  • Law, not an ass after all!

    Law, not an ass after all!

    To the vociferous few who have sought to strip the law of common sense and its supreme evidential correlates, the unanimous decisions of the five eminent justices of the Presidential Elections Petitions Tribunal, which affirmed the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the February 25, presidential elections, may have come across as profoundly stunning.

    For the greater majority of Nigerians however, the judgment, rich in rigour, lucid and resounding in its clarity, could not have been otherwise. For far from being mere reminders of the saying about the law not being an ass, the justices, right from the artful ways they set out the issues from the copious submissions of the parties, to their well-reasoned submissions on every single item in contention; they left little doubts what their jobs were: to deliver justice to the parties in accordance with the strict dictates of the law; to teach the hordes of deluded and obviously miseducated throng that call themselves Obidients that their high decibel chants were mere gas; that all that matters in the end is the spirit and the letters of law.

    It is certainly a new day that the justices achieved these and perhaps more. Of course, we had a presidential election whose result was disputed by the leading contenders. But that could hardly have been the problem since every electoral cycle since the beginning of the fourth republic has always been like that. In any case, the Electoral Act makes ample provisions for judicial review and political actors have been known to take advantage of this provision to run the process through the judicial route.

    The 2023 presidential electoral cycle was however different. Clearly, if muck raking was barely permissible in the contact game that politics is; the opportunistic attempts at delegitimatisation of the process on account of perceived glitches; the cheap but choreographed misinformation campaign designed to promote confusion and anarchy, the supplanting of facts with fantasies by dwellers of that alternative world divorced from reality, right up to the ceaseless but utterly baseless attacks on judges and the judicial institution by supporters of the losing parties, and some so-called lawyers, are/were, to put it mildly, unprecedented.

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    Have things calmed a bit? For now, it is still early to say; at least, not with those talking heads with their sorties of talking points still unrelenting in their opportunistic mind games. In all, my worry is not that the matter is one that every Nigerian have opinions, but rather, the fact that those who should help illuminate the raging issues are actually the ones stoking the embers of confusion and possible anarchy.

    The other day, I watched on Arise TV, a supposed senior lawyer, impugn the integrity of their Lordships at the Supreme Court on a case that is yet to be brought before them. When cautioned by the moderator, he simply retorted that he knew the consequences of his utterances and couldn’t care. The same individual would on the same programme pronounce with magisterial authority, that the members of the PEPT were wrong in not taking public opinions to account (apparently in the absence of evidence) to arrive at their judgments! Talk of a leading lawyer defecating in the communal pond in an unguarded, politically charged moment!

    Muddled as the attempt by the petitioners was, it is certainly to the credit of the justices that they helped to delineate the issues. It was not to be An Excursion into Frivolities, as the baying Atikulated mob had sought to frame it. Neither was it a Journey into Fantasia-land as their counterpart, the Obidients, had sought to convince world. Theirs was serious business that required proofs, iron cast proofs.

    In this, the President Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) made clear that their work is essentially about the process and the outcome of the February 25 poll. Whereas the 1999 constitution of the republic and the Electoral Act, were to constitute their standards, the Evidence Act would provide the guidance. The matter, as the eminent jurists apparently understood it, required neither forays into the national archives nor ego trips to Chicago or wherever, to establish. The petitioners had alleged and so must carry the burden of proof. It was as much about who won the election as it was about whether the electoral umpire, was in substantial compliance with the dictates of the law.

    There were other issues which the PEPT touched upon, such as the status of Abuja in the electoral calculus, the prerogatives of the parties to nominate their candidates as indeed other minor details which in the bizarre, specious opinion of the petitioners, should have vitiated that resounding democratic outcome that came out of the February 25 presidential poll. All of these were carefully touched upon by the judges in the marathon session that took nearly the whole of 12 hours. Clearly, if those moments served to remind that the bilious electoral mode ought to be over; it was also the moment to jar the disputants into the hard reality of the due dictates of the law as against the justice of the mob. 

    Did the jurists acquit themselves well? If I understood the Atikulates and Obidients well, their angers are not necessarily about the let-down by their much hyped but clearly overrated counsels; they are pained by the panel’s refusal to be swayed by the “weight of evidence” which they erroneously assumed would be harvested from by the eminent jurists at the click of the computer mouse. If it is any measure of the depth of the miseducation of the throng, the real danger is that the country may not have even now begun to pay attention to the impudence of the generation steeped in entitlement. As for the lawyers who, while seeking to profit from them, do not mind bringing the roof down on our heads, it seems to me a matter of time before the chicks come to roost. 

    We await the next stage of the ‘fireworks’ at the apex court. Let me at this stage hazard what would happen: It is unlikely that the apex court would require any last-minute evidence from any imaginary back-end servers on the I-Cloud to come to their judgment. I understand that Atiku Abubakar, will be making an appearance in a United States court today over the president’s certificates and diploma. Much as it is a free world, the effort will come to naught. Who knows; the perennial presidential candidate might need the emerging piece of evidence for his 2027 run!

    As for the status of Abuja, the issue seems to me also as already settled; those expecting any dissension would be disappointed.

    In all, those expecting the winner of the presidential election, a one-time senator and two-term governor of the most prosperous state in Nigeria to be disqualified on the basis of an unproved and unprovable charge, to be disqualified by the courts are living in wonderland.

    I rise!