The Nation Newspaper

Category: Festus Eriye

  • ‘Nexit’ and the illusion of an ethnic paradise

    It’s the season of the separatist. For several months Biafra-seeking agitators have held boisterous and sometimes fatal demonstrations across the South-East.

    A few miles down the road, a rash of militants led by the so-called Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) have upped their demands from resource control to agitating for a ‘Niger Delta Republic.’

    When a dyed-in-the-wool member of the political establishment like former Vice President Atiku Abubakar comes out to forcefully back ‘restructuring’, you know something serious is afoot. To be fair to the man, I should point out that his own idea of ‘restructuring’ may not be as radical as that envisaged by the militant agitators down south.

    If the advocates of restructuring or separation were not getting the sort of response they expected – given that President Muhammadu Buhari keeps retorting that the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable – they received a boost from the historic Brexit referendum.

    If Britain could peacefully exit from the European Union after 43 years, who says a Biafra or any other group so minded cannot do likewise? We can’t we just copy the Europeans and have an amicable divorce they ask. An exit from Nigeria, ‘Nexit’ if you like.

    Such arguments ignore the fact that what happened with Brexit was a sovereign nation voting to leave a regional bloc. It wasn’t a vote to dissolve Great Britain. The sentiment for separation had been tested the year before with those who wanted Scottish independence losing out. But people will interpret these things in ways that suit their agendas.

    I do disagree with Buhari when he says Nigeria’s unity is not up for discussion. Negotiations never stop within a nation state. It is those negotiations that altered the nature of our federation over the past 56 years.

    At some point we have the three regions, which later became four. As a consequence of the civil war 12 states were created. That number rose to 19 and today we have 36 states.

    It is those negotiations that restructured revenue sharing such that today oil-bearing states receive 13% on the basis of derivation. It was not always so. Who knows what the possibilities are if our people keep on talking?

    Beyond the headlines there are sufficient reasons to doubt whether these agitations are truly deep-rooted. Scratch the surface and you quickly find evidence that they may be no more than the outward expressions of a frustrated political elite.

    The regions where the agitations have been most vociferous are those which lost more in terms of economic and political opportunities when President Goodluck Jonathan lost power. Although not Igbo, he calculated correctly that retention of the South East was vital to his winning a second term and assiduously courted the region.

    While he was in office that there was no Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) or Radio Biafra because he took care of the South East elite in the power equation. His loss was therefore their loss.

    Yes, MASSOB existed, but at best it was just some people’s idea of staying relevant. It was never a serious threat to the country and by the time of the 2015 polls, along with the likes of the Oodua Peoples’ Congress (OPC) had been reduced to street demonstrations demanding ‘Jonathan must win.’ A supposed separatist organisation had become a trumpet for the perpetuation of the structures of the Nigerian state.

    I can understand the historical background of Biafra given that the people have one language and live in a contiguous territory. We also have the fact that the entity actually existed for a little over three years until its eclipse in 1970.

    The same cannot be said for what the Avengers claim they want. If they are asking for an Ijaw Republic I can understand, but the notion of some kind of Niger Delta Republic embracing the units which currently make up the South South zone, is a joke. While the name may be an apt description of the territories clustered at the exit of the Niger to the Atlantic, there’s no comparable political reality to back it up.

    General Sani Abacha’s national conference and the constitutional reforms it produced threw up six states with different political journeys into an artificial South-South zone.

    The old Bendel State – now Edo and Delta – used to be part of the bold Mid-Western State or Region, which in turn used to be part of a larger Western Region. Overnight it got thrown together with Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Rivers which used to be part of the old Eastern Region.

    In today’s South South zone the people are as disparate as are their political agenda. The Ijaws who are found in several states have a cat and mouse relationship with other groups like the Itsekiris and Urhobo. Imagine when they become one happy family in some ‘Niger Delta Republic.’

    Under Jonathan there were lots of rumblings with the South South zone claiming that he favoured his Ijaw kith and kin to the detriment of other groups. He was nevertheless always quick to call for Niger Delta solidarity when it suited his ends.

    In the South West, calls for separation are decidedly lukewarm. The most vocal tendency have favoured some form of regional autonomy at best – believing that this is a sure of replicating the glory days of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. That said, the West has done fairly well within Nigeria and is certainly going nowhere.

    I believe that people of Buhari’s generation who actually fought in the civil war always viscerally reject any idea of a break up because of what it cost to keep the country one at that time.

    However, by insisting that breaking up is a no-go area, he and others who hold such views only make separation more attractive to the agitators.

    More than anything what is needed to today is an open discussion of the pros and cons of remaining one, or breaking up into tiny bits. Those who gleefully point to Brexit don’t mention that there were lots of Britons that voted to leave the EU, who only started googling the implications after the cost of exit became manifest.

    Many of those who talk glibly about a break up, or are jumping up down in some separatist street rally, don’t have a clue what they are asking for. Before we start printing passports and currencies we should give this matter deeper thought.

    Restructuring might just mean tinkering with our existing political arrangements, or it could be stretched to mean breaking up the entity called Nigeria. Whatever it means to you it is not an end in itself.

    In the end it isn’t just all about freedom and a sense of identity. Nations and their governments have a responsibility to provide their people with a decent life. Can we honestly say that these envisaged states that may emerge from our collective shipwreck would offer us and our children a better deal than what imperfect Nigeria currently does?

    There are many countries that exist as independent states, yet have failed in their responsibility of providing for the wellbeing of their people. The result are the overloaded boats of the desperate making the deadly dash from Libya to Italy only to perish in the Mediterranean Sea.

    Getting your own ethnic enclave is no guarantee that your people would get their dream of the good life. Speaking the same language is no guarantee of love, peace, unity or equity. In every region of this country people from the same ethnic stock are slaughtering themselves in communal clashes.

    Just as pro-Brexit campaigners sold their supporters many half-truths, those propagandists selling the separation pie-in-the-sky are only selling their people short.

    Truth be told, no matter how far we go with restructuring, neither Biafra nor a future Niger Delta Republic would be heaven on earth. In anger, some of the haters of today’s Nigeria refer to it as hell or a zoo, I suspect that the ethnic enclave they are preparing for their people may not be marginally better. A jungle perhaps?

  • Nigeria is a ‘foreign’ country

    Nigeria is a ‘foreign’ country

    It is not too often that wives jump into the argument when their spouses are having problems with their government employers. But whenever they do things get interesting.

    Near the end of the Goodluck Jonathan administration, when the army was having trouble reining in rampaging Boko Haram insurgents in the North East, wives of soldiers who had been posted to the war front with only a handful of bullets, took to the streets to protest against what they considered a government move to make them widows.

    But as far as telling your government bosses where they get off, the riposte of the wife of the late Super Eagles coach Amodu Shuaibu surely wins the prize. I believe Chief Alex Akinyele was the then Sports Minister who in a moment of crisis for the national football team declared that the Super Eagles needed a foreign coach.

    The coach’s wife had a classic response: if that was the case they might as well get a ‘foreign’ Sports Minister while they were at it, madam declared! Ouch!

    Nigeria is country in love with all things foreign. President Muhammadu Buhari declared sarcastically not too long ago that going through the records he found the national foreign exchange reserves had been blown importing non-essential things. This prompted him to make the sarcastic statement: “I didn’t know when Nigerians became so sophisticated that the only toothpick they use are Chinese ones!”

    Nigerians love all things foreign because we somehow believe that the solutions to our issues lie in someone else’s tried and tested methods. All we have to do is simply import the solution in a container and begin implementation.

    It’s always a funny sight watching members of state houses of assembly – and even local government councillors – embarking on trips to the US, Canada, Japan and the likes ‘to learn how to make laws.’

    When our attempts at governing ourselves democratically, using the Westminster model foundered in the First Republic, our search for a solution to our peculiar Nigerian political problems took us to the United States where we appropriated the presidential system hook, line and sinker.

    We didn’t pause to ponder whether it was a system suited to our temperament, or one that would be ideal for managing our complex ethnic mix.

    Close to 40 years after introducing this ‘foreign body’ into our polity, we have discovered to our rude shock that our ‘body’ is rejecting it – leading to an unending series of amendments, that is, when we are not moaning about one branch oppressing another.

    This past week there were moans aplenty in the National Assembly after the Senate’s two topmost leaders – Bukola Saraki and his deputy Ike Ekweremadu – were docked for allegedly forging the Standing Rules that was used to elect them last year.

    Saraki issued the obligatory statement about dictators and oppressors, and spoke of his willingness to be martyred with a stint in Kuje Prisons. His deputy was more creative in staging a subliminal protest from the dock by donning a traditional Igbo outfit – complete with a woollen hat that looked suspiciously Scottish.

    My Igbo colleagues, however, assured me it was an outfit associated with warriors in the South East. The sartorial statement was supposedly a coded warning to his persecutors that he was ready for war.

    The warrior in Ekweremadu didn’t stop there; he went beyond the codes and internationalised his fight for democracy. The Deputy Senate President fired off protest letters to the United Nations General Assembly, European Union parliament, United States Congress, European Union, United States government, United Kingdom government and House of Commons, as well as other foreign diplomatic missions over “an attempt to truncate Nigeria’s democracy.”

    Again, my interpretation is that the senator had lost faith in the ability of all our local institutions to resolve his peculiar trouble and sought help in potential foreign saviours.

    The amusing thing is that at the point he was engaging in his copious correspondence, those he was writing to were engaged in dealing with greater domestic and continental challenges of their own. Britain and the rest of Europe were still coming to terms with the stunning verdict of the Brexit referendum.

    Across the seas in the United States Congress, Democrats and Republicans were engaged in mortal combat over gun law reforms following the mass killings at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

    Were these politicians – some of whom don’t even know whether Nigeria is capital of Egypt – going to leave their pressing national issues to start debating the personal legal troubles of two African legislators?

    Perhaps it would have mattered if the Senate forgery trial had some remote bearing on the national interest of the US or UK. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

    Indeed, if Ekweremadu had thought through his actions he would have realised that what turns America off isn’t the mere mention of the word ‘dictator.’ In the last century the US – celebrated as the great bastion of freedom and democracy – has been one of the most unabashed patrons of dictators across several continents.

    Most recently, it closed its eyes and blocked its nose when current Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi – then head of the army – staged a coup to topple the civilian President Mohammed Morsi and crush the massive nationwide protests of his Muslim Brotherhood party supporters.

    America always readily sacrifices its avowed support for democratic values wherever its long term strategic interests are involved. It is to such a foreign saviour that Ekweremadu has placed his hope of deliverance from a dangerous legal problem.

    I am not sure what his expectations are, but it is highly unlikely that any of those he’s corresponded with are going to be making any public statements soon, or intervening in any meaningful manner, in what is a local issue within Nigeria’s sovereign environment. Buhari isn’t going to get a lecture from Barack Obama or David Cameron over the trial.

    From time to time parliamentarians face criminal investigations and trials in the US and UK, but no one interprets such proceedings as attempts to truncate democracy. We are truly a dramatic society.

    It is possible that Ekweremadu realises that his letter-writing is an exercise in futility and probably just aims to embarrass the Buhari government. He should not forget, however, that foreign countries also have diplomats in Nigeria that make their own independent assessments for their governments.

    They should be able to decide whether democracy in Nigeria is on the verge of collapse because the Senate’s leaders are facing legal proceedings.

    The trial only damages the egos of Saraki and Ekweremadu; it doesn’t incapacitate the Senate from carrying out its functions. Where parliamentary work is hampered it has been by the deliberate choice of senators to abdicate their duties in order to spectate at the court.

    The protestations by the Deputy Senate President won’t resolve anything because the genie has long since escaped from the bottle. The trial is now reality and he must deal with it.

    Thankfully, the senator is a lawyer and hasn’t said he has no confidence in the courts. His best bet for salvation still lies in applying his energies to proving his innocence through the trial process rather than dreaming that some foreign government or parliament has solutions for his predicament.

  • Buhari, CBN and naira devaluation

    Buhari, CBN and naira devaluation

    Times without number President Muhammadu Buhari has stated his opposition to the devaluation of the naira. When he has the chance he recalls with fondness the glory days of our national currency and bemoans the fate that has befallen it in recent times.

    One such occasion was when he hosted prominent members of the business community at the Presidential Villa, Abuja roughly a week ago.

    “I don’t like the returns I get from the CBN concerning the devaluation of the Naira.  In August 1985, the naira was N1.3 to a dollar but now you need N300 or N350 to a dollar. What do we derive from that? How much benefit can we derive from this ruthless devaluation of the naira?” he wondered.

    “I’m not an economist neither a businessman, I fail to appreciate what the economic explanation is. What has happened to us now is that we have manoeuvred ourselves into mono-economy which led to the collapse we are seeing now.”

    The president’s remarks confirm that he was dragged kicking and screaming to back the CBN’s resort to a more flexible exchange rate policy. That’s just another way of saying that devaluation was sold to him wrapped in sugar-coated economic jargon.

    He signed on and told the country so in his May 29 Democracy Day broadcast. At that point the official rate was N199 to the dollar, while on the black market the currency was being exchanged for as high as N370 to the greenback.

    What was going on was that the CBN found itself in an impossible situation where it could not meet demand for forex and was blowing reserves to maintain the artificial N199 peg. It was not sustainable and something had to give.

    In truth, the government was just living an illusion if it believed the true exchange was that artificial peg. It lay somewhere between N199 and the street rates that are driven by raw demand and supply factors and speculation. Which is another way of saying the reality had devalued the naira but the president and those who supported maintaining the official rate didn’t want to wake up and smell the coffee.

    I don’t believe Buhari should work himself into a state over the floatation or official devaluation of the naira. What should be of concern is whether the policy helps us to achieve our goals for the economy.

    So far, the portents are not so good because the crash of the naira to more realistic rates has not made the dollar more readily available. The scarcity has as much to do with fact that we are not earning as much from external sources, as it has to do with the fact that those who may have huge dollar holdings locally wouldn’t dare open up their ‘vaults’ for fear of the scrutiny they would attract.

    Still, what the CBN has done might be the best among a range of options. Allowing the markets to determine the rates takes out much of the abuse of the official rate that was done through round-tripping.

    We all need to be patient – and that includes the president. The naira being at a particular figure to the dollar or pound is not the issue. As Buhari pointed out our woes are hemmed to the mono-cultural nature of our economy. Until we deal with that structural problem all our mourning over the state of the national currency would be meaningless.

    The problem, perhaps, is that those who sold devaluation or floatation to Buhari probably did so making it look like a magical solution.

    But the naira isn’t going to recover just by some economic sleight of hand. It’s going to be a long waiting game. Earnings have to go up to shore up reserves, foreign investors have to be convinced again to bring in their cash and non-oil sectors of the economy have to begin to deliver on their potential before we can see real change.

  • Ekiti and its man-made disaster

    Ekiti and its man-made disaster

    It is a state famed for the high intellectual attainments of its people. Just as you would associate crude oil with Bayelsa or Rivers, the mere mention of Ekiti conjures up visions of a land crawling with professors and PhDs.

    But curiously for a people so enamoured of learning, the political leader that has captured their imagination the most in the last 16 years is one not noted for his educational accomplishments.

    It is as if the people became bored with the snooty ways of their super educated elite and hankered after someone earthy. Out of nowhere, Ayodele Fayose happened to them – igniting an on-and-off romance.

    When he first ran for governor he would drive into a village without potable water and distribute the liquid free to villagers. While he was meeting the people’s most pressing needs, his rivals who probably felt better qualified because of their pedigree, were lulling the people to sleep with the same old promises of what they would do.

    Not surprisingly the man form nowhere swept away all in his path to become governor. After leaving office in ignominy and roaming the political wilderness for years, the connection he had with the people still remained. It was something his rivals just couldn’t explain.

    The attraction between the people and Fayose could only be likened to the magnetic pull that draws good girls to bad boys. He can turn on his ‘man of the people’ charm one minute, and the next he’s leading a band of unruly supporters to rough up a High Court judge in his chambers.

    It is not as if the people didn’t know his flaws. Still they chose him over a hardworking intellectual in Dr. Kayode Fayemi whose only sin was that he was aloof. But buyer’s remorse may very well be setting in.

    Fayose is a gaffe machine that never stops giving. Just when you thought he had done his worst, he outdoes himself by drilling down into the basement.

    He is bad news – and that’s not just his critics or members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) talking. Ali Modu Sheriff, one of the claimants to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) chairmanship, has dismissed him as an embarrassment.

    Governors are elected to govern and improve the quality of life of their people. The Ekiti governor views his time in office as one long drama sketch.

    Many states like his can’t pay salaries. But the more serious among his colleagues are restructuring their economies and engaging the Federal Government to get needed funds. Some are blocking leakages, cutting budgets to save funds.

    But what does our ‘man of the people’ do? He stops his cavalcade by the roadside to cut ponmo! Great photo opportunity which cuts no ice with the hungry. At other times, he jumps on a motorbike amidst a swarm of Okada riders and dashes up and down the lone decent road in his rustic state capital and scurries back to Government House. Problem solved!

    But news flash! Ekiti workers are still on strike and say nothing short of three months arrears of payment would do.

    The governor loves to position himself as some political grandmaster whose perceived madness has some underlying method. Those who buy this pitch love him to bits. But even among his fawning followers the act may be wearing thin. This past week, may come to be remembered as the week Fayose unravelled.

    It all began with the dramatic announcement by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that courtesy of a court order it had frozen a couple of accounts held by the governor, his family members, associates and the former Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro. The amounts involved run into billions of naira

    Fayose would have us believe that President Muhammadu Buhari goes to sleep at night and wakes up in the morning thinking about him. So his first reaction was to launch a stinging personal attack at president’s wife, Aisha, with the intention of getting some mud splattered on the once who had been sold to the world as a paragon of integrity.

    There was just a little problem. Two former EFCC chairmen – Nuhu Ribadu and Ibrahim Lamorde – who were involved with the Halliburton bribery scandal confirmed that an impostor ‘Aisha Buhari’ was the one involved in US Congressman William Jefferson’s case – and not the president’s wife.

    But rather than staging a tactical retreat to allow other events to take away the poignancy of his blunder, the rattled Fayose staggered from one unforced error to another.

    In a bid to distance himself from the disbursements made from the office of the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), he threatened to unmask his financial backers if they didn’t speak up in his hour of distress.

    Making good the threat, he makes the disturbing claim that Zenith Bank bankrolled his political campaign. With bank maintaining a stony silence, Fayose’s movie production subsidiary went into overdrive. Lo and behold within 24 hours we were watching edited videos purportedly showing the bank’s officials stammering and grovelling before the governor. He said they had come to ‘beg’ him. For what sins we are not told.

    Given the governor’s past antics one may be tempted to dismiss the episode as another charade. A similar thing happened not too long ago when his erstwhile ally, Dr. Temitope Aluko, started giving tell-all interviews all over the place.

    But before you knew it Fayose had managed to get Aluko into a setting where it seemed like the prodigal had repented having seen the folly of his ways. Before rolling cameras the governor patted his one-time ally fondly on the back, declaring ‘he’s my boy!’

    Next day, a stunned Aluko was repudiating what occurred the day before as a well-orchestrated charade. Is this what we just witnessed with the supposedly begging bank officials?

    Ordinarily, there are one or two ways by which banks part with money. They either give you a loan of sorts or a donation. A loan would require documentation and security no matter how big the customer is.

    Was Fayose given a loan by a conservative bank to prosecute an election against an incumbent without any guarantee he would win? Is it even credible to imagine such a scenario given that the risk analysis would have killed off the proposal?

    If he was given a donation, what was the amount involved and how does that action line up with provisions of the law?

    Section 221 of the 1999 Constitution states: “No association, other than a political party, shall canvass for votes for any candidate at any election or contribute to the funds of any political party or to the election expenses of any candidate at an election.”

    There is a similar prohibition in the Companies and Allied Matters Act Cap. C20 L.F.N. 2004 (CAMA). Section 38 (2) of CAMA provides that:

    “A company shall not have or exercise power either directly or indirectly to make a donation or gift of any of its property or funds to a political party or political association or for any political purpose; and if any company, in breach of this subsection makes any donation or gift of its property to a political party or political association, or for any political purpose, the officers in default and any member who voted for the breach shall be jointly and severally liable to refund to the company the sum or value of the donation or gift and in addition, the company and every such officer or member shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine equal to the amount or value of the donation or gift.”

    The allegations made by the governor are not only grave, they have legal implications such that an institution with the profile of Zenith Bank cannot afford to keep mum for too long – hoping this embarrassing episode will just disappear.

    Such an explanation could shed more light on the contents of the frozen accounts. While Fayose is tying himself up in knots bleating about his precious immunity from prosecution (not investigation), he could help the discussion by telling the world how he came about the frozen billions.

    The governor may still have his diehard loyalists, still I suspect that many who were chanting ‘Oshokomole’ on Election Day must by now realise that they’ve been had.

    Many now mock the Ekitis by saying that they sold their future to Fayose by collecting his miserable ‘stomach infrastructure.’ Without much sympathy they urge the people to live with the choice they have made. On this point though I have a different perspective.

    It might not be entirely correct to say that Fayose was the will of the Ekiti people reflected on voting day. The revelations of Captain Sagir Koli over the Ekitigate scandal have been corroborated by the emerging details of how the PDP moved billions into the state to topple Fayemi.

    So in reality the incumbent was virtually imposed himself on the people in a brazen exercise in subversion of the democratic will. Of course, the people have their own share of the blame because Fayose could not have risen to challenge for power if the people – masses and elite – had not fallen for his allurements and tolerated his excesses.

    Unfortunately for the governor stolen waters are not really enjoyable. He knows what legal troubles are waiting for him when the screen of immunity is lifted. That perhaps explains why he keeps shouting ‘I’m not afraid of Buhari’ when no one has accused him of being afraid.

    It reminds me of the story of a man who had been on death row in Kirikiri for close to 30 years. One day God showed him mercy when a prominent pastor visited and helped set him free. He later told the man of God that his worst nightmare all those years was he couldn’t sleep between the hours of 12.00 midnight and 4.00 am.

    He said the hangmen used to come during that period to take those to be executed. So each night he would stay awake all night when he heard footsteps, wondering whether they were coming for him.

    Forget the noise and drama, Fayose surely dreads what’s coming to him.

     

  • Is Buhari the problem or solution?

    Is Buhari the problem or solution?

    THIS piece is inspired by a recent OP-ED article by the Wall Street Journal writer Pete Hoekstra titled “The Three Changes Nigeria Needs.” The writer concludes that President Muhammadu Buhari is actually Nigeria’s problem and not the solution. He then warns that rising ethnic tensions are a threat to the country’s future.
    It’s always refreshing to have such outside interventions in our national debate. An analyst looking in from the outside is liberated from accusations of partisan bias, but could also be guilty of ignorance and a rush to judgment.
    In some cases people spend three days in a country and they become instant experts on her travails and have all the magical solutions to her problems. How helpful it would have been if they were saying something new.
    Let’s begin by saying the never-ending projections of Nigeria’s imminent demise have been grossly exaggerated. Many tiptoed into 2015 conscious of the projection by some Western security agencies that the centrifugal forces troubling the country would come to a head with the once-promising giant breaking into tiny bits.
    Although the doomsday scenario didn’t play out, we came pretty close. What with Abubakar Shekau’s Boko Haram setting up a ramshackle caliphate on the desert fringes and a desperate Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) regime pressing every ethnic and religious button in its bid to retain power.
    In the end the nation has remained intact after a fashion. But twelve months after Muhammadu Buhari was installed as president, and with his political honeymoon will and truly expired, the divisions are back with a vengeance in the form of the Niger Delta Avengers in the South-South and Biafra agitators in the South-East.
    It is increasingly quiet up north with the Boko Haram threat in recession. But whatever positives have been gained on that front are swiftly neutralised by the emergence of Fulani herdsmen as cross-country agents of death and devastation.
    Add to the stew of woes an economy that is tanking, a national currency shedding value by the minute, states that are so insolvent they can’t pay their workers, and you know you smack in the middle of a crisis.
    At such times everyone has an opinion as to the way forward. Some even look back longingly to the cucumber, leek and onions of Egypt even half seriously requesting ‘bring back our corruption.’ The imputation being that life was rosy comparatively in the last dispensation.
    Former Senate President David Mark captured the sentiment best when on the May 29 Democracy Day anniversary he told Nigerians to judge whether things were better under APC rule than they were in the PDP days.
    I read a funny post online that said when the All Progressives Congress (APC) were in opposition they had all the answers, but now that they find themselves on the hot seat all they offer are excuses! Funny, but the neutrals know one wisecrack doesn’t tell the whole story.
    Nigerians understand that the ship landed in choppy waters because of the path chosen by those who were steering in times past. What we have now is the picture of a vessel in a raging storm taking in water faster than the captain’s ability to bail it out.
    The question now is not the commitment of the skipper to scooping out the water to prevent a shipwreck. What is at issue is both the vigour with which he’s applying himself and the technique he’s deploying to resolve the problem.
    By now it would have been obvious to everyone that the president is given to deliberation and would not be stampeded on any issue until he’s good and ready to go. For a nation of people permanently rushing somewhere, he’s a mismatch.
    By taking his time he opens himself up to accusations of being ‘Baba Go Slow’. But I guess the ‘slowness’ comes from getting him to move from his long-held positions to new options that he remains deeply suspicious of.
    This criticism is rehashed by Pete Hoekstra in his Wall Street Journal piece which cast Buhari as “Nigeria’s problem and not its solution.”
    The article attacked the president’s “stiffness, lack of vision and reactive approach to issues.” The writer also argues Buhari’s ideas ‘to rebalance the economy and regenerate growth, his damaging and outdated monetary policy has been crippling.’
    It is not a new thing to be said about Buhari. During the campaigns the PDP repeatedly derided him for his years and the age of his ideas. But fair is fair.
    The president may have a reputation for stubbornness, but it would be fraudulent to accuse him of being as inflexible as his erstwhile starched khaki uniforms.
    A man who was viscerally opposed to a hike in petrol price and removal of subsidy bowed to the advocates of deregulation. The man who romanticised the naira’s glory days when it exchanged in single digits to the dollar, surrendered to currency floatation or devaluation.
    The only thing that addresses the nitpicking are results. In order for ‘change’ not to become a moving target, the administration must desperately pray that the measures it has taken on several fronts begin to deliver the desired results. So far, the jury is out.
    Even within the administration there doesn’t appear to be clarity as to the way forward. Take the issue of nipping resurgent Niger Delta militancy in bud. During the week we witnessed the embarrassing spectacle of Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi and Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu openly disagreeing over negotiations with the militants and the controversial Maritime University at Okerenkoko, Delta State.
    To hear both men talk you would have thought one was in government while the other sat with the opposition. It was not the sort of display to give a sceptic confidence that the administration has a handle on one of its most disturbing challenges.
    The divisions in the cabinet mirror the differences of opinion on the outside. It is understandable that the government is still feeling its way forward, but what is needed now is for Buhari to come down clearly on one side of the argument for progress to be made.
    He did so with the deregulation of the downstream of the petroleum sector and the floatation of the naira. While the measures didn’t satisfy everyone naturally the president’s decisive move earned him plaudits. He needs to move with such despatch on many other fronts.
    What Buhari and his team must appreciate is that a juncture has been reached where the mere retailing of the history of our predicament is no longer enough for a people desperate for change. The people know what PDP has done and repeatedly saying it doesn’t ameliorate their suffering, it just becomes annoying after a while.

  • A president and his luck

    A president and his luck

    PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has the distinction of being Nigeria’s oldest president. He may yet turn out to be her luckiest much more favoured than the ex-president who was presciently named ‘Goodluck’ by his parents.
    The Goodluck Jonathan story is a well-worn tale. It takes an uncommonly generous providence for a man in any country to climb the political ladder to become president without actually contesting an election!
    But like most things that come easy, they often depart with similar ease. And so, within the span of four years, good luck and goodwill separated themselves from our former leader handing him the dubious distinction of being the first civilian incumbent to be toppled by a challenger.
    His successor was handed a broken country that needs to be fixed in a hurry. From Boko Haram, to rampaging herdsmen, Niger Delta militancy, Biafra agitation, corruption and an economy speeding to the pit of recession, these are all problems that demand instant treatment.
    Any combination of these deadly afflictions can torpedo a politician’s career especially if that combination negatively impacts the citizen’s stomach. Hunger pangs demolish party affiliations and political loyalties.
    Last year in Greece governments fell like cards in the face of the country’s economic crisis. Today in Venezuela an oil producing country like Nigeria that forgot to diversify its economy people are revolting against the Socialist government because they can’t find basic food items to buy even after queuing for days.
    Venezuela has economic woes but it isn’t contending with insurgents and agitators north, east and south. On top of its troubles it doesn’t have to tackle the phenomenon of killer herdsmen whose blood lust is straining the fabric of national unity at the seams.
    But with all he’s had to contend with Buhari has gotten off lightly. It is all down to the fact that political foes who should have been training fire on him, are preoccupied fighting each other. Such luck!
    In the main opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) two chairmanship claimants are charging at each other like raging bulls. The bitter rhetoric emerging from the contending camps shows that the dispute which has landed in the courts isn’t about to be resolved soon.
    Such is the paralysis of the opposition that during the half-hearted protests that trailed the recent hike in petrol pump price, not a peep was heard from the PDP because they busy fighting at a so-called convention in Port Harcourt.
    Backtrack to 2012 and a similar price increase. Recall how the then opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) used the protests to damage Jonathan politically. Imagine what they would have done if roles were reversed today.
    The collapse of the traditional opposition has been compounded by the own goal scored by the Ayuba Wabba-led Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) for long the unofficial opposition. In the annals of political miscalculation the union secured its place of prominence with its ill-timed strike action.
    The upshot is that as a platform for political action at national level, the NLC is damaged goods. Worker power will never be what it was in Nigeria at least for the short term.
    Of course, there’s always the National Assembly to provide constitutional checks and balances to the Executive but it cannot play the role of political parties.
    In any event, where nominally APC is in charge, PDP is really the power behind the scene because of the coalition that enthroned Senate President Bukola Saraki.
    Unfortunately, the fraught process that brought Saraki to power has destabilised the Senate for the foreseeable future that it can hardly be a strong voice to face down the Presidency. To make matters worse, Saraki’s ongoing trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal hangs around his neck disconcerting him and eroding his moral authority.
    So what we have now is a president and an administration free to do as much as they please which can be good and bad. On the positive side, the government can ram through its agenda without bothering about opposition peskiness.
    The downside is that every democracy needs a vibrant opposition not only to hold the government accountable, but also to provide an alternative.
    That role has been abdicated by the PDP whose leading lights are either in EFCC cells or scattered to the four winds in ignominious exile.
    It is so bad that even those who are frustrated with Buhari turn around to ask’ What is the alternative?’ A country as big as Nigeria needs an alternative. APC also needs an opposition that keeps it on its toes so it doesn’t die from complacency like the PDP it replaced.

  • Robin Hood, Avengers and emergency militants

    Robin Hood, Avengers and emergency militants

    Suddenly, militancy which has been out of fashion in the last six years, is all the rage in the Niger Delta.

    The emergence of the so-called ‘Avengers’ has unleashed a rash of would-be liberators of the peoples of the South-South zone. One group is called ‘Ultimate Warriors of Niger Delta’, another goes by the moniker ‘Niger Delta Liberation Force (NDLF).’

    Another band dedicated to avenging a different kind of loss has just popped up. They are called the ‘Bakassi Strike Force.’ Their mission is simple: the Nigerian government must recover the Bakassi peninsula ceded to Cameroon or face the wrath of the group.

    To send shivers down our collective spines they’ve sent out the obligatory photo of gunmen covered in body paint dancing in a war canoe.

    So what does it take to prosper in this new growth industry? At best a Twitter or Facebook account and you are good to go!

    You can blow up an isolated pipeline in the backwaters of Bayelsa and the sound of your triumph would be amplified worldwide by a thousand screaming front page headlines.

    It doesn’t matter whether your armoury of missiles exists only on Facebook with your name creatively ‘Photoshopped’ on them; be assured that your threats would be helpfully ventilated on social media; or by traditional media desperate to outdo social media for shock and sensation.

    Which is just great as it solidifies the notion that in today’s Nigeria, only the gunman, rebel or outlaw gets the attention of the powers-that-be.

    And so, barely a week after it rolled out what seemed like an armada of warships, and set a stream of fighter jets cartwheeling through the skies over the Nigeria Delta, the tough-talking Federal Government has been quickly brought to heel to ‘negotiate’ with the militants who have successfully disrupted the country’s crude oil production.

    Such is the vulnerability of this nation which in 55-years has contrived to put all its eggs in one basket. Now a band of characters it cannot control is stomping on that basket to devastating effect.

    Whether the hurried talks of the last few days between Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, service chiefs and governors of the South South zone were borne out of genuine conviction, pressure from world powers or simple realisation that the petroleum cash tap was being effectively turned off by the hardline militants, is not really important. In any conflict it is always cheaper to talk.

    But very rarely do you find an early consensus for dialogue. Parties in most conflicts always want to negotiate from a position of strength, or talk only when they have been virtually brought to their knees.

    It is no surprise, therefore, that the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) have spurned the olive branch offered by the government – signalling their intent by taking out a couple more oil production facilities.

    At this point the militants have their tactics spot on. Their attacks put the government under tremendous pressure as every facility destroyed results in lost revenue and torpedoes budgetary projections.

    The government, too, would be frustrated by the fact that rather than being intimidated, the militants have reinforced that old belief that you can’t fight insurgents using conventional military tactics. That is why the jets roaming the Niger Delta skies haven’t been able to stop the bombings.

    Which is not to say that the vandals can prevail against the might of the Nigerian military in the medium or long term. We’ve been here before. In the first year of the late Umaru Yar’Adua’s presidency, the amnesty deal was only procured after a lightening military offensive that destroyed an extensive web of militant camps in the creeks.

    The impact of that military action was terrible on local communities – turning thousands of terrified villagers into refugees. No one knows how many lives were lost but the outcry from Ijaw leaders forced the hitherto recalcitrant militants to reach a deal with the government.

    Hopefully, the window for dialogue that has been opened would be exploited by the Avengers despite their  bluster. But, again, that might just be a fond wish.

    Anyone who has followed what the NDA has had to say about its actions and mission would have noticed an evolution in their rhetoric. Their latest statement has the sophistication of something written by a professor or some seasoned activist.

    “We are not like some of these personalities who run champagne parties or turn Rivers State Government House into a house patrimony of god-sons and prebendalism,” it states.

    This is a far cry from some of the barely literate stuff they dished out at the outset. Still, the overall message is no different from what their forerunners like the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) trumpeted. They want control of the oil pumped from beneath their feet and self-determination.

    I would gladly line up behind any initiative that guarantees that the wealth of this longsuffering region trickles down to the people. But while the NDA talk a good game, I am very suspicious of them and their fast-breeding spawn.

    Let’s start with their name. What’s in a name you ask? Plenty, I say. It tells you so much and speaks to their mindset. A mission of vengeance is not ennobling, edifying, redemptive or positive in any sense. Who wants to be hitched to people whose raison d’etre is destruction without a roadmap to some future Eldorado?

    These are not some latter day Robin Hood reincarnations – robbing rich, oppressive Nigeria to redistribute to the poor denizens of the creeks.

    They are no different from the class of warlords who prospered under former President Goodluck Jonathan while their erstwhile foot soldiers remained pauperised.

    Speak with some of these ex-militants who supposedly signed up for the amnesty programme and they would regale you with tales of how only a fraction of the stipend due to them ever reached their hands because along the way their ‘leaders’ and sundry middlemen had creamed off a generous portion.

    Today’s emergency militants and their sponsors have seen that the fastest path to fantastic wealth in the Niger Delta isn’t through education or enterprise, but by taking up arms albeit in the name of the region but ultimately to feather their own nests.

    That is why you won’t hear them talking about serious developmental and environmental initiatives but the sharing of oil blocs.

    Some of the militant groups are demanding that 60% of ownership of oil blocs be allocated to persons from the South-South zone. On the face of it this would appear to be one of the issues that should be easy to resolve. I believe the government has indicated its willingness to revisit the issue of the oil blocs with a view to ensuring more transparency and equity in their allocation.

    How I wish that ownership of oil blocs were the solution to mass poverty in the South-South region. Unfortunately, it isn’t.

    The advertised data concerning present ownership of the blocs shows that that they are unduly skewed in favour of prominent individuals from the north. But what advantage has it conferred on the region? It remains the poorest section in the country – behind in all the measurable development indices.

    What about the few southerners who own oil blocs? How have they been an advertisement for how ownership of these valuable assets can be a tool against poverty and a catalyst for developing their backward communities?

    If anything, elite greed has ensured that the billions funnelled into the Niger Delta under existing revenue sharing arrangements have disappeared into the pockets of so-called leaders of the region who will not mind funding militancy as long as it protects their interests.

    If truly the Avengers and their ilk are concerned about the despoliation of the Niger Delta how come they didn’t let loose their vengeance all the years Goodluck Jonathan was in power and the ‘oppression’ of the region by ‘Nigeria’ continued unabated?

    Did the issues they would now have us believe has driven them to arms disappear all those years only to reappear magically in the last 12 months after Muhammadu Buhari became president? Is this not just about the fact that the spigot of cash has been turned off?

    I believe that the way out of the Niger Delta crisis is not to return to the old, discredited practice of paying protection money to warlords and gunmen to buy an illusory peace. Pay off this batch and another set would emerge with even more outrageous demands.

    I am all for engaging the communities in dialogue but I am also for terminating the criminality that promotes the wrong values in our region.

    What is unfolding in the creeks is very grave and once again the government could be repeating the same mistakes made by Jonathan early in the Boko Haram insurgency. Back then many called on him to take a tough stance and stamp out the burgeoning violence. But he kept repeating the politically-correct rhetoric about not “waging war against our people.”

    By election year 2015 “his people” had evolved into Frankenstein monsters – so much so that six weeks to the presidential polls, with his seat under serious threat, the peacenik president morphed into a hawkish commander-in-chief parading from place to place posing for photographs in army fatigues.

    I understand that some South-South governors have been making the same noises about not being “at war with our people.” I beg to differ.

    This is a shooting, bombing war against the nation’s economic interests. It is affecting what comes to Bayelsa and other states in the region. The militants have the nation by the jugular and some people think they are in a warm, cuddly embrace!

  • Atiku and his 2019 manifesto

    Atiku and his 2019 manifesto

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is man God has blessed tremendously. He is fantastically wealthy and has a doting family. By divine providence he was promoted to Vice President when all he had aspired to in 1999 was govern Adamawa State.

    So what more can a man ask for? Simple answer: the Nigerian presidency. Atiku has run unsuccessfully for president for 23 years beginning in 1993 with the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP).

    I am reminded of Atiku’s unrelenting push for the presidency by his powerful but pregnant intervention at the presentation of Chido Onumah’s book ‘We are all Biafrans’ in Abuja recently. The central thrust of his speech at the event was that Nigeria wasn’t working and the federation needed to be restructured.

    That is by no means a novel observation. Indeed, our unresolved national question has been at the root of sundry national and constitutional conferences since the late 70s.

    While it is hard to fault much of what Atiku had to say, it is equally difficult to condemn Buhari after 12 months because he never made any commitment to ‘restructure’ Nigeria during the campaigns. His focus was on the corruption, economy and insecurity.

    Atiku makes all the correct noises but cannot defend himself against critics who say that while in office as Vice President – especially in the first four years – he had all the clout to influence and actualize some of the things he’s now criticising the incumbent for.

    A deeper reading of what the former VP had to say shows clearly that this was no ordinary speech. This was an assessment of the state of the nation, a review of Buhari’s first year in office and a proposal of what he would have done differently if he were president – by one of the incumbent’s erstwhile rivals.

    This is a man putting himself in the shop window saying ‘hey, look, I’m your alternative’. The speech read like the outline of the manifesto for a possible 2019 run.

    I was stunned by what looked like a blithe dismissal of what Buhari has done in 12 months or is likely to accomplish in what is left of his tenure. These were the remarks of someone who had lost hope in what is possible and attainable with the current leadership.

    Soundbite after soundbite was unsparing. Here are a few choice quotes.

    “If I had won, I would have sold 10 per cent shares in the NNPC; that will give me 20 billion dollars which would build infrastructure for the Niger Delta but we will always end up with accidental leadership.

    “Again, here we come back to the same economic challenges that are facing the country but we also have a leadership that is not prepared to learn from the past and the leadership that is not prepared to lead.”

    Having said all that, Atiku then does his grading.

    “He promised to look into issues like power, insurgency, unemployment, corruption and diversification and if you are to take two out of five, you can give him a pass mark. He has dealt with corruption and with Boko Haram. For power, give him time.”

    Where I schooled two out of five is not a ‘pass mark’ but fail grade. So Atiku’s generousity is not supported by the parameters he has laid out. If he was trying to soften the impact of the hard knocks he had just delivered, he was unsuccessful.

    There’s something to be said for telling truth to power. But such friendly fire coming from a ruling party grandee like Atiku can only be indicative of frustration and disaffection. It should disturb the APC given that it was delivered at a time the government was taking flak from all sides for what some consider a less-than-stellar outing in the last 12 months.

    Like the clever politician that he is, Atiku’s speech has something for everybody. For advocates of restructuring in the South West and South East this is music to the ears; for separatists groups like MASSOB and IPOB there’s something; for Niger Delta militants and sundry avengers the prospect of selling a chunk of NNPC to develop the region should cause their heads to swim with dollar signs.

    I have no doubt that Atiku has prepared to be president and has a good idea of what he would do if he ever got there. In some ways, he’s like the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo who prepared himself rigorously but never found a way through the political thicket.

    I suspect that even if Buhari and APC lift their game in the next three years, Atiku would still run. However, he’s unlikely to do so on the platform of the APC which would probably still present Buhari if he’s good health.

    He won’t run on the platform of the PDP because the damage done to the former ruling party isn’t something that can be undone in one electoral cycle.

    That means he would most likely seek out a third force – an amalgam of refugees from PDP and APC as well as stragglers from existing parties.

    It would be folly to dismiss such a proposition out of hand. If APC formed barely two years to the 2015 polls could go on to win a comfortably victory, all things are possible.

    That is why rather than dismissing the Atiku speech, Buhari and the APC should regard it as a warning shot fired across their bows.

  • Buhari’s baptism of fire

    Buhari’s baptism of fire

    Successful political figures are often defined by their ability to distill a message that resonates with their audience.

    As a fresh-faced state governor back in 1992, the then US Democratic Party presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, understood he could not prevail against the incumbent George Bush on matters of national security at a time when the country was at war.

    But while the Washington elite and television talking heads understood that America’s national security interests could be negatively impacted by developments in the Gulf, the average US citizen who at the best of times is insular and couldn’t be bothered by developments thousands of miles away, was more interested in the fact that the national economy was struggling.

    Clinton was savvy enough to key into that latent vein of discontent in the electorate that year and came up with a phrase that captured the issue that would determine the race. It wasn’t the Gulf War. ‘It’s the economy, stupid,’ he declared. The rest is history.

    President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress’ (APC) triumphant 2015 campaign pulled off something similar. The candidate chose not to promise everything under the sun; he simply boiled his agenda down to three words: economy, security and corruption. At every campaign stop he hammered home these three themes.

    The focus on these three issues was largely down to the fact that at that point they were Nigeria’s most obvious problems and the Achilles Heel of then President Goodluck Jonathan’s government.

    Such was the depth of dissatisfaction with the performance of the sitting government that the APC’s change seduction struck a chord with the hearts of the people. Only a deep sense of rejection could have caused Buhari who lost to Jonathan in 2011 by 10 million votes, to prevail in 2015 by three million votes. How did the incumbent manage to blow 10 million votes?

    Something awful, even traumatic, happened in those four years to trigger the political sea change that happened. It was the economy – falsely arrayed in borrowed robes as ‘Africa’s largest’, but which was still plagued by mass unemployment, fuel scarcity and power outages.

    It was insecurity defined by a Boko Haram insurgency that actually carved out its ‘caliphate’ on sovereign Nigerian territory. Bombs were going off in barracks, market and in major cities across the north. Adding the insult to our collective injuries, we became the captive audience of Abubakar Shekau’s regular ghoulish video productions.

    It was a corruption epidemic that was finally embraced by an officialdom that ought to have been its nemesis. Ministers and other high officials of state caught in dodgy endeavours were left to get away with murder. Confronted with unending allegations about mindboggling theft in high places, an increasingly defensive Jonathan chose to bury his head in the sand.

    By the time he came up for air at the start of his presidential campaign in Lagos, he acknowledged he had a problem by promising he would fight corruption with technology. Even if his late awakening had been sincere, it rang hollow pitched against the pledges of a Buhari who not only had words to offer, but also a reputation to back them up.

    The easy part was distilling the message; the difficulty lay in delivering results in short order. Unfortunately for Buhari and his party the problems they were tasked to solve don’t have overnight solutions.

    A monoculture economy is not going to be diversified in a matter of months. But when the financial mainstay crashes under your watch you have to deal with the painful fallout across the land.

    The hungry and the frustrated have issues that need to be dealt with immediately; these people are not amenable to logical discussions that trace problems to their roots. They received the promise of change with the faith of children who don’t care how daddy will pull it off. You may call it change, call it magic, they just want a dramatic turnaround in their lot.

    An already impossible job is made worse when politics is thrown into the mix. There is the standard politics of an imperfect federation that often triggers movements for self determination in different parts of the land.

    Today, the so-called Niger Delta Avengers are avenging themselves on pipelines in anonymous creeks. This latest manifestation of Nigeria’s discontented hordes has economy implications for foreign exchange earnings and power generation. When the oil doesn’t flow and gas cannot be fed to plants, the consequences are grave.

    But there is an even worse variant that pollutes the polity: it is the politics of bitterness which rank odour hangs over the land long after the 2015 elections. In recent memory last year’s politicking would go down as the most negative.

    There are many who couldn’t bear the thought of Buhari becoming president they actually wished him dead. He survived rumours of illness and imminent demise and found his way into Aso Villa to the chagrin of his foes. For many of these people the death wish tweaked has become a failure wish.

    Even some who claimed to have voted the president have been heard to mutter ‘Oh God, we made a mistake.’ Others simply ask in bemusement ‘Is this the change we voted for?’

    Yes, the price of petrol has gone up and the exchange rate of the naira against major global currencies has crashed over the last 12 months. But the question we never ask is ‘why.’ Actions have consequences; inaction also has its repercussion. What we are experiencing in 2016 is partly the result of what was done or not done in the last few decades.

    But then a sense of perspective is not our strongest point as a people, and if there was a global impatience index, Nigerians would rank in the top 10.

    When people ask ‘is this the change we voted for’, I answer yes. Buhari’s ‘Change’ is like the elephant described by six blind men. Each one had a distinct sense of what he had just touched and explained it in his own unique way.

    By voting Buhari, we repudiated the Jonathanian way of doing business. But it now appears that what some actually wanted was only a change of personnel. They may have wanted Jonathan, Dame Patience and their hangers on out, but business as usual.

    However, change, as the word implies simply means an alteration of the status quo for the better or worse. Sometimes, things may get worse before they get better.

    The optimist in me looks at the first year of the Buhari presidency and I see the progress made in the North East against Boko Haram insurgents. I acknowledge the efforts of the administration in fighting graft. However, the government has its work cut out on the economic front. Its one step forward two steps backward actions on some issues are not the sort of moves that inspire confidence in the business community. Here’s hoping that as the administration enters its second year it would walk with a steadier gait.

  • NLC: When is a battle won or lost?

    NLC: When is a battle won or lost?

    How long can the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) sustain its current adventure? From across the country, the consensus is that the nationwide strike it announced with so much fanfare is a damp squib. In a couple states there were signs that something was amiss, but in most places – it was business as usual.

    Past strikes that have been hailed as triumphs of worker power never achieved 100% compliance. What created a sense of success was the ability of the unions to paralyse the largest cities in the country. So far, Lagos, Abuja and similar cities have spurned the strike-the clearest indicator of how well the union’s action is faring.

    In a bid to spark life into the strike union leaders in some states are taking desperate measures. In Ekiti, NLC Chairman, Ade Adesanmi, and Secretary of the Joint Negotiating Council, Blessing Oladele, reportedly stormed some banks to disrupt business. They warned those who had been defying the ‘stay-at-home order’ to be wary or face the consequences.

    It makes you wonder what part of the constitution gives union leaders the power to ‘order’ Nigerians to stay at home.

    But all credit to NLC president Ayuba Wabba and his comrades. In the face of an unprecedented rebuff, they soldier on with rhetoric that suggests the strike action is going great guns. It is either they truly have the courage of their convictions or are simply living in denial.

    The advertised goal of the strike is to force government to roll back the recent fuel price hike and the deregulation policy that informed the increase. So far, nothing in labour’s three-day show-of strength – or exhibition of a lack of it – looks likely to force the hand of the administration.

    NLC has used the most potent item in its arsenal – the much vaunted nuclear option: the nationwide strike. Now that the action has been received so unenthusiastically across the country, its hand has become weaker even if the government deigns to talk with it now.

    The only choice open to it is to find a face-saving way to cut short its misadventure. But that might not be as easy as it appears given that egos are involved and that the unions have not lost this sort of confrontation in the last 16 years.

    It is hard to imagine how the NLC can come out of this smelling of roses. It is up against a government which has its back against the wall; an administration that says the nation is broke and deregulation is its last card.

    The unions don’t make it easy for themselves to win the battle for minds because they don’t offer an alternative beyond chanting ‘No! No! No!

    Interestingly, they have said in the past that, in principle, they were not opposed to deregulation. So both sides agree on something. This was what I had to say about the matter in my piece of May 17, 2015:

    “Times have changed and the unions also need a reality check. The NLC has argued in the past that while it isn’t opposed to ending fuel subsidy, it wants certain measures put in place before such an action can be contemplated. Among other things it wants the refineries working, an efficient public transportation system as well as other welfare measures in place first.

    “While these are not unreasonable demands they are not very practical. Fixing the existing refineries or building new ones could take anything from 24 to 36 months. Those who would like to see new refineries sprout also have to realise that investors are not philanthropists. It is a non-starter to think they would be attracted to a system that expects them to pour billions into a project only for the state to fix the price at which they sell what they produce.

    “Again, putting in place the sort of mass transit system that could move millions daily at a cheap rate could take up to five years – if not longer.

    “In the interim as we wait to create the perfect conditions for a painless exit from wasteful subsidies, we are forced to continue with payments that the country cannot afford! It is a vicious cycle and not the right way to go.”

    The issue remains the same. Another government – long after former President Olusegun Obasanjo started it – decides to raise the pump price of petrol and deregulate the downstream sector of the oil industry.

    Every time that happened, labour unions successfully got the leaders of the day to roll back the measures without addressing the fundamental problems. The pain was postponed but so also was the evil day.

    In 2012, after days of street protests and the transformation of Fawehinmi Square, Ojota, Lagos into a symbolic center of active resistance, then President Goodluck Jonathan’s government caved into and slashed petrol price after a surprise hike on New Year Day.

    Just like others before him, he merely pushed the deregulation ball further down the line – as though a time would come when it would be convenient to deregulate. But that time is often illusory.

    Any observant person knows that beyond the sloganeering of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), a lot has changed in the country over the last 12 months.

    President Buhari has described it as the worst economic crisis Nigeria has faced since 1960. He rates our present travails as far worse than anything we experienced during his brief military reign – and that is saying a lot.

    Today, Nigeria and Nigerians are poorer than they were any time in the last 16, not necessarily because of anything contrived in the last 11 months, but more because of our profligacy and wrong choices over the last two decades.

    The vast majority of our people face a crisis of existence. Many are engaged in a hardscrabble daily grind to eke out something for themselves and their families to survive another day.

    No doubt, the increase in prices would impact them negatively. But the NLC strike option which would keep them at home penniless for an indeterminate period is the impracticable option.

    Union leaders in announcing the strike warned Nigerians to ‘stockpile’ food for a long struggle against a so-called ‘neo-liberal agenda.’ These pretentious, high-sounding words don’t distill what this struggle is about in a way that the Danfo driver who lives on his daily takings can digest.

    If he was to make a choice between embarking on some esoteric journey with his would-be saviours, or wheel out his jalopy for another day or earnings, it is a no-brainer what his choice would.

    This was where the unions made their first miscalculation – using the same old tactics without realizing that the times in which we live call for a change of tack. Someone made this wise-crack: NLC leaders asking people to stockpile food didn’t realize that workers who hadn’t been paid for months were in no position to stockpile anything.

    Consider also that the workers and civil society coalition that successfully brought the government to its knees in 2012 no longer exists. The NLC has since become factionalised – with some of the more powerful unions pledging allegiance to the Joe Ajaero-led group. The unions never had this problem in the last 16 years.

    Some notable leaders of the then opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) who gleefully fired up protesters at the Ojota park with incendiary speeches are now in government.

    It would have been wise to fix that fractured alliance before taking on a behemoth that is the federal government. Many of those ACN types had become hardened by many years in the opposition wilderness and thought nothing of standing in the sun for hours – hurling verbal grenades at the government of the day.

    Fast-forward to 2016. There’s a new opposition in town. This group would have been the natural allies of the NLC as it tried to take down a supposedly unpopular policy. But somehow I just can’t picture PDP fat cats after 16 years of delicate living, trudging in the hot sun with some militant unionists.

    A little introspection, instead of charging arrogantly into battle on presumptions of its invincibility could have saved NLC the embarrassment and demystification it now faces.