The Nation Newspaper

Category: Festus Eriye

  • 2013: Beyond promises of deliverance

    2013: Beyond promises of deliverance

    There’s something about a new year that gets everyone giddy with excitement and hope. Whereas the Bible speaks about a hope that never disappoints, for several decades Nigerians have had to go through the gut-wrenching annual ritual of the evaporation of their dreams when our national peculiarities and weaknesses kick in as the months roll along.

    One of the great mysteries about this country is that in virtually every area of human endeavour you find the best minds – world beaters who excel when they are in a different environment. This is not an original thought or observation, yet it remains relevant as we begin the excursion into 2013.

    We need to crack the riddle as to why a nation of energetic, hardworking, creative people living in a land blessed with endowments many nations only dream about, have contrived to make their homeland one of the most wretched on earth.

    For a while the thinking was all we needed to get the country moving was to assemble our brightest and best in a federal cabinet. In 2011, fresh from a comprehensive victory at the general elections, President Goodluck Jonathan set about one of the most long-drawn cabinet construction exercises in recent history.

    Excoriated by impatient critics for his undue deliberation, he explained that he was putting together a first class team. In the end, even he would have agreed that what he finally assembled could in no way be accused of being Nigeria’s finest.

    A little over a week ago, an exasperated president who has been at the wars since that distant victory in 2011, offered a new explanation why this country continues to fail in delivering on her immense promise. Speaking at the funeral of his erstwhile National Security Adviser, General Andrew Azazi, in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, he suggested that attitude and not corruption was Nigeria’s problem.

    He said: “If Nigerians would change their attitude, you will realise that most of these issues being attributed to corruption are not caused by corruption.

    “Recently, I met with officials of the Federal Road Safety Corps who told me that they had discovered that majority of the road accidents are recorded on good roads. So you can see it is not a matter of corruption, it is an issue of the people’s attitude. If we change our attitude to life, if all Nigerians do what is right, Nigeria will change.”

    For daring to suggest that corruption was not the problem, Jonathan received a fusillade of flak. Beyond caring, he would weigh in a few days later with another philosophical observation that national transformation was a job for all – not just the president.

    Let me say that, as the name suggests, leaders have a responsibility to lead. So ultimately a president or governor will take responsibility for progress or failings in his area of authority – even when those success stories are the products of chance, or some other X-factor. That is life.

    Still, I find myself agreeing with some of the positions of the president. Long before his Yenagoa speech, some other Nigerian leaders had come to the conclusion that the basic problem of this country was lawlessness. The then Major-General Muhammadu Buhari and his sidekick, Tunde Idiagbon, ran their short-lived regime prosecuting a War Against Indiscipline (WAI).

    Of course, they went over the top in trampling people’s rights. But truth be told: if you give a pig a bath in a Sheraton bathroom it would soon find its way into the nearest gutter. Nigerians, unused to orderliness strained at the leash, and were only too glad to return to their old ways when General Ibrahim Babangida offered them a shiny object that looked like freedom.

    No government will work in this country, no president can succeed in this land, for as long as Nigerians, retain their contempt for order or the rule of law. Those nations we all love to escape to only work because the people have accepted that order is paramount.

    To understand this country you need to observe how we conduct ourselves on the roads. No one wants to obey any sign; traffic lights are just flashing objects to be ignored. Only fools drive on designated lanes; wise men drive against traffic. No one wants to be regulated; commercial bike riders want to be free to break every rule in the book. The upshot is that the Nigerian road is a jungle where only the craziest and most cunning survive; the larger society is its mirror image.

    Nigeria’s problem is not just one of legislation, or amending constitutions to produce the perfect document. In the end a people whose mission in life seems to be the subversion of all things lawful, would be expected to implement these same laws.

    It is not just a problem of building infrastructure. It is also a question of a gang of people banding together to disrupt the national electricity supply network by stripping off miles of transmission cables with a view to selling same for personal gain. It is about vandals who will rip aluminum railings meant to safeguard motorists off bridges for the sole reason of profit making.

    It is hard to explain away this sort of deranged behavior by crying poverty. Even in the United States, United Kingdom and other parts of Europe with very high standards of living you still find the poor and homeless. Their poverty has not caused them to descend on public infrastructure like a plague of locusts.

    Yes, corruption is a problem, but it doesn’t explain everything about where we are. It is the old chicken and egg debate. Is it corruption that causes our bad attitude, or our indiscipline that manifests as corruption?

    Even if Jonathan and his team deliver on their promises on power, the larger economy and insecurity, Nigeria will still not work if we carry on the way we are doing. Nigerians know what is good and right – that is why we are a nation of vociferous critics. But you will find that some of the loudest noisemakers are the first ones to do something disruptive to order when things get inconvenient.

    Deliverance will not come from Jonathan in 2013; it will only come when a majority of us determine to do the right thing in our little corners. It is a commitment very few are willing to make; it is the reason Nigeria is the way it is.

  • Old soldiers and loose cannons

    Old soldiers and loose cannons

    When is political criticism beyond the pale? Is former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s criticism of government’s handling of Boko Haram the unforgiveable sin?

    Former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, has added a new dimension to the controversy over comments made by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, suggesting that incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan’s handling of the Boko Haram insurgency leaves a lot to be desired.

    Speaking mid-week at a book launch in Lagos, Nigeria’s war-time leader said: “Obasanjo is highly irresponsible to have made such comments about the present government. Many people have condemned what he (Obasanjo) did in Odi and Zaki Biam. So, it was irresponsible for him to defend it or accuse the present administration.”

    For a man widely regarded as mild-mannered, genial, not given to controversial utterances – except where they have to do with Biafra and genocide – this was uncharacteristically hard-hitting.

    At the same event, Nigeria’s doyen of accounting, Mr. Akintola Williams, similarly took the position that Obasanjo could have been more circumspect. “I am sure if he considers his statements, he would not say such things. I would have expected him to observe complete silence, especially commenting on offices now held by somebody else other than himself.”

    After last weekend’s intervention by Jonathan in which he described the military invasion of Odi as an unmitigated disaster which resulted only in the deaths of old people and children, the controversy has now snowballed beyond analysing Obasanjo’s methods, to discussing the etiquette of political criticism.

    Conventional wisdom suggests that it is bad form for predecessors to openly criticise their successors in such high offices of President or Prime Minister. Although this is a widely accepted convention, it is not law. There is no rule of thumb anywhere.

    Former United States President George W. Bush virtually disappeared and hardly ever made a comment during the first four years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Similarly, former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, hardly said a word about his successor, Gordon Brown’s stewardship – even when it was becoming apparent that he was about to truncate the Labour Party’s long tenancy in No. 10 Downing Street. When he did speak out in his memoirs, it was to score his performance as Chancellor and an irritant second-in-command.

    Across the border in Ghana, Jerry Rawlings and his politically-ambitious wife, Nana, often exchange brickbats with the successors to the flamboyant former military ruler.

    But before you jump to the conclusion that former military rulers given to dictatorial ways do not understand civility, then consider the fact many predecessors don’t shrink from laying into successors in certain countries running the parliamentary system. Examples like Israel, Pakistan and Italy, to name a few, are relevant. Again, it could be down to the temperament of the people and country.

    I guess individuals have to decide what they want. You can choose to play the statesman who stays above the fray, or elect to be an influential but partisan power broker. Obasanjo would like to have the best of both worlds, but his temperament always causes him to slip of his perch on any sort of high ground.

    Although Gowon has called the former president’s criticisms of the Jonathan administration’s handling of security issues ‘irresponsible’, there are many who are happy that a high profile figure like Obasanjo is ventilating in the public square what they’ve been moaning about in their homes, bars and offices.

    When this sort of exchange happens we hear talk of how the former president could have expressed his views through the “usual channels” – rather than making statements that “overheat the polity.”

    Truth be told: the polity is already suffering from heat stroke. One more pungent comment is not going make things any worse.

    I suspect that when persons of the caliber of our former heads of state – their personalities and temperament notwithstanding – beginning to criticise their successors so publicly, frustration at lack of access, or inability to get their message across may be at the root.

    People like Obasanjo have long since renounced popularity, and would say what they want irrespective of whether Gowon or some other eminent person approves. He would also be aware that if lack of access is the problem, things are not going to be made better by pungent comments that undermine the credibility of the government.

    So, it could be one of two things, and we should be careful not to rush to any conclusions. In the days of the military regime of former President Ibrahim Babangida, Obasanjo famously spoke up to denounce the regime’s mismanagement and dictatorial ways.

    At a time when the vast majority of voices had been silenced by fear, his intervention was not wise from a personal point of view. His utterances were the swiftest way to jeopardise access and patronage.

    On the face of it, a supposedly democratic setting offers greater freedom for expressing contrary opinions. However, given the centrality of government in our society, the business of criticising and opposing the powers-that-be has never been more unattractive. Speaking truth to power is now an undertaking for only those who have burnt every bridge leading to Aso Villa or some state government house.

    Obasanjo’s intervention while not elegant, or correct, could be viewed as bold and patriotic. Those who demur are free to argue that it is nothing but one more sop to a gargantuan ego.

    Although this back and forth between the former president and the incumbent hardly tells us anything we don’t already know about their character, it is further evidence of the chasm that now separates the one-time allies.

    It is also a signal of the looming civil war in the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) as the scheming gathers steam ahead of the 2015 election season. All the pointers are that Jonathan’s greatest booster in 2011 would do everything in his power to frustrate his second term bid.

    Again, the exchanges throw some light on the nature of interpersonal relationships within the exclusive club of Nigeria’s former rulers. Gowon is the most senior of the lot – having been head of state in the Civil War years and head of the defunct Supreme Military Council (SMC).

    Anyone who has taken the pains would have noticed that on several occasions, Gowon has taken it upon himself to be the one to take Obasanjo down a peg or two. Where many who are practicing politics presently may be intimidated by the profile of the former president, Gowon who was OBJ’s boss suffers no such affliction.

    Calling another former head of state “irresponsible” is not only overly aggressive, it is not diplomatic. The comment just reeks of underlying animus.

    But then it will take more than that to stop a man who has had drag down public fights with virtually all his colleague former heads of state.

  • Amend the people, not constitution

    Amend the people, not constitution

    Changing the 1999 constitution without changing attitudes will be a wasted effort

    Most people would agree that Nigeria’s 1999 constitution is a flawed document. The product of a succession of manipulative military juntas, it was the shaky platform used to usher in a Fourth Republic that could not wait for the perfect thing – given the tense political atmosphere in the country in the immediate aftermath of the deaths of General Sani Abacha and Chief M.K.O. Abiola.

    Any constitution written for a country with Nigeria’s diversity is bound to be problematic because of the need for endless compromise. In our case the agreement seems to have been to leave all the hot button national issues alone in the vain hope that some sages down the line will get around to addressing them.

    That has not happened. Instead all those questions have come back to haunt us on an almost daily basis. That is why most reasonable people won’t argue with the need to amend the constitution to enable our democracy grow.

    But much as amendments are desirable, there’s much about the current process that just makes you wonder whether it won’t all end in tears.

    At the last count the Senate Ad-hoc Committee on the Review of the Constitution headed by Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, disclosed it had received 240 memoranda on the subject. A similar committee in the House of Representatives says it has also received well over 200 such memos.

    This will suggest feverish interest in the process. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Powerful interests like governors and other factions of the political elite have seized the process – predictably – and this is reflected in context of the issues that are emerging as top of the agenda for review.

    Among them are things like state creation, state police, tenure for political office holders, independent candidacy, proportional representation, onshore-offshore dichotomy, indigeneship and adjustment of the 13% derivation principle.

    Some Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are evening pushing items like rewriting the whole document in gender-neutral language, or more explicitly so that references would be made specifically to “he” or “she” rather than the politically-incorrect current references to only “he”.

    In the unlikely event that this massive shopping list of amendments pass muster, then the advocates would celebrate the fact that Nigeria has finally joined the ranks of countries with so-called ‘progressive’ constitutions.

    I beg to demur. What may be progressive or desirable for some might not necessarily be in the national interest at this point in time. There are those who argue that you don’t need a constitutional amendment in other to create states. They say the procedure is already clearly spelt out in Section 8 of the present document.

    I would go further to say it is downright unpatriotic to be talking about creation of new states when many of the existing ones are virtually on their knees. State creation is a slippery slope. The Nigerian politician will never get sated until we have one for every ethnic nationality.

    Again, take the issues of a six or seven year single tenure, and the requests by registered political parties for proportional representation (PR) as means of taking heat out of the contests for political office. I doubt whether the introduction of these items into the constitution will change what is wrong with our politics.

    Even if we provide a single tenure, blood will be shed over who gets it at any point in time. As for a PR system that replaces the current first-past-the-post arrangement, all that it will do is ensure that more people – outside of the current ruling parties – hop on the gravy train. But is that in itself a guarantee that these new office holders would be coming to serve? You know the answer to that one.

    Let me reiterate that I am all for amending the constitution. But I think we need a bit of a reality check here, and not go around thinking that we have found the perfect cure for the problem with Nigeria.

    Let’s not forget that there are countries which don’t even have a written constitution and things still work in a reasonably organised fashion. Three of those nations are New Zealand, the U.K and Israel.

    A constitution alone is no guarantee that the system will work. Indeed, amending the 1999 document without amending the attitudes of the people who will operate it will simply make the on-going exercise an expensive wild goose chase.

    A reckless and irresponsible driver will readily crash the best engineered and retooled car on earth, and the problem won’t be with the vehicle but the driver’s immature conduct. In the Nigerian case, rather than work on the driver we would start tinkering with engine of the blameless automobile.

    In discussing this issue I always project a hypothetical scenario. Most independent-minded people will say that the US constitution works. Now, if all 200 million plus Americans were removed from their country and replaced with all 160 plus Nigerians, would that constitution still work in the hands of the new arrivals? A document does not a country make.

    For all the flaws of the 1999 constitution, my position is that we have not given ourselves enough time to use and test it. The United States constitution which is 225 years old has only been altered18 times in that period. In our case I have lost count of the number of occasions when we’ve sought to touch up the document in the last 13 years.

    A few of those occasions we tried to do so for blatantly selfish reasons. A case in point is when former President Olusegun Obasanjo tried to amend the constitution to give himself a third term – a stunt that blew up in his face and short-circuited the process.

    Given the interest of presidents, governors and legislators in some of the items listed earlier, I believe that some sort of broad review of the constitution will happen in the not too distant future. It is in their collective career interest to see that they push this through. But what they will end up producing will be a document by the political elite for the political elite – never mind the empty boasts about being the people’s representatives.

    The overwhelming majority of Nigerians are not engaged with what is going on, and very few understand how it could affect their future. Many are probably battling with the devastating impact of floods that have swept away their homes to care about new states and single tenure.

    But if the ongoing review is to be free from the stain of illegitimacy which the 1999 military construct suffers from, it has to be subjected to some form of mass participation. If there will be no sovereign national conference, a decent compromise would be a national referendum that allows ample time for national discussion at grassroots level.

    I suspect that were this to happen, some of the things that are so important to our politicians will swiftly bite the dust. Unfortunately, the middlemen in the National Assembly will never let this happen.

  • Sultan, the Archbishop and the Nobel

    Sultan, the Archbishop and the Nobel

    It is the Nobel season once again. This time Nigerian names are in the frame more than at any time in recent memory. Already, perennial favourite, Chinua Achebe, has lost out in the literature stakes to the Chinese writer, Mo Yan.

    This year, in one of the more curious nominations, the shortlist for the Peace Prize has thrown up the names of the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammed Sa’ad Abubakar III, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, John Onaiyekan.

    Ordinarily, the prospect of two of our countrymen picking up the coveted prize is something that should fill Nigerians with a sense of pride. Such an honour would be a welcome bit of good news amidst an unrelenting deluge of the bad stuff.

    But coming at a time when the brutal actions of the fundamentalist Islamic sect, Boko Haram, are threatening to tear the country apart, this ranks as another in the long line of controversial nominations for the Peace Prize.

    Without question the insurgency in large parts of northern Nigeria is the greatest challenge to peaceful coexistence this country has faced since the Civil War. The Niger-Delta insurgency was limited in scope to targeting Nigeria’s economic interests and making it impossible for multinational oil firms to operate.

    But Boko Haram, combining the incendiary mix of politics and religion, has set as its goal the toppling of the current constitutional order, and replacing it with a theocracy where Sharia law will be the law of the land.

    Such is the level of brutality deployed by Boko Haram in its campaign, that it has been cited – along with military agents of government – as committing possible crimes against humanity in the present theatre of conflict in the North-East.

    Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimates that in the last three years the intense war between the sect and Nigerian security forces might have claimed at least 2,800 lives. With their use of crude IEDs for mass killing, we can credit the bulk of that body count to the terrorists.

    A new report by HRW says some of these attacks were “deliberate acts leading to population ‘cleansing’ based on religion or ethnicity”. These are very grave charges indeed. They hold out the prospect that those being accused – whether on the side of the extremists or the government – could one day find themselves facing justice at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague.

    Despite its deployment of military force as the sect’s attacks became more brazen and catastrophic, the government has not been able to crush it. But many argue that this failure is also down to collusion on the part of local communities and their leadership who have shielded known elements of Boko Haram for years. This protective cover has made it almost impossible for security forces to get quality intelligence in their fight against the group.

    Of course, Boko Haram has been able to cow large sections of the North – both ordinary people and elite – by showing potential collaborators with the Federal Government that they and their families could only expect sudden, brutal death for their folly.

    A little over a year ago former President Olusegun Obasanjo embarked on a peace mission to Maiduguri to meet Babakura Fugu , the representative of the late Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf’s family. A few days later he was shot dead by assailants suspected to be from a faction of the sect.

    Little wonder that such collaboration has been few and far between, and over the last few years a blanket of silence has descended upon the entire region. It is hard to get any major regional leader to publicly denounce the actions of the sect with the kind of trenchant rhetoric they deserve.

    Where they have been forced to comment, such statements have been embarrassing balancing acts that in one breath offered anodyne words of condemnation while at the same time making excuses for the killers – or finding fault with the actions of the security agencies.

    There is no question that in the North the Sultan remains the most influential and powerful traditional-cum-religious leader. But beyond making the usual bland, politically-correct statements, I cannot recall when he ever denounced the activities of Boko Haram with force that they deserve.

    We do know that the sect are not exactly enamoured with him. If anything they hold defenders of traditional Islamic orthodoxy like him in great contempt, and would do anything to destroy his influence and all he represents. So it is a mystery that he has not come out as hard as he could have on the issue of Boko Haram.

    As for his fellow nominee – the archbishop, I have no doubt that as a man of the cloth he is equally committed to peaceful coexistence of the two major faiths in Nigeria. I recall seeing a picture of him serving fruit to some Muslims at a gathering he organised to help them break their fast during the last Ramadan.

    Still I am not convinced that such gestures alone, or offering the right platitudes after some terrorist outrage, qualify one to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

    But again, stranger things have happened. After all United States President, Barack Obama, while still trying to find his feet in office was handed the Peace prize on a platter less than one year after he was elected.

    In one of the most embarrassing chapters for the Nobel Academy in recent times, they strained for a reason for giving the prize to a president who at that point was superintending wars in two different theatres outside the American mainland. The best that apologists could offer was that the prize was to encourage the ‘apostle of hope’ to work toward global peace in the future – ‘a call to action’ they said it was.

    How I wish the Sultan and the archbishop will win. What I am not sure of is whether Boko Haram insurgents who have not responded to the deadly persuasion of Joint Task Force (JTF) bullets, would be impressed by some shiny medals minted in Sweden.

  • On the Port Harcourt horror show

    Last week, a mob descended on four undergraduates of the University of Port Harcourt – beat them to death and burnt their bodies. They allegedly stole some cell phones.

    The lynching in the Aluu community of Port Harcourt was said to have been overseen by the traditional ruler who in a moment of madness appointed him not as only as judge and juror, but must have so fancied his own eminence he was deluded into thinking he had the power to take life.

    This act of impunity which has filled the entire country with revulsion is just a mirror of how we take the law into our hands in this country. In Nigeria, every man is a law unto himself.

    As though that was not bad enough, we are reveling in new levels of bestiality that it is amazing some us still have the capacity to be shocked. Last week, unknown gunmen slaughtered over 40 students in Mubi. Shortly after this new outrage at Aluu. Add all of that to the regular diet about ritual killings in the newspapers.

    Surely, Nigeria is very sick. A society where a baying mob can gleefully burn four youngsters who have not committed murder, but may or may not have stolen cell phones, needs urgent self examination. Aluu shows us how low we have fallen. The question this morning is we can we descend any lower? I answer with trepidation: in present day Nigeria anything is possible.

  • Shades of Imelda Marcos

    It’s not every day that the much-maligned Nigeria Police gets to celebrate success. Its Kano State command was in good spirits the other day as they announced that after one year tracking a five-man gang of robbers who had the temerity to scavenge for loot at the Nassarawa Quarters, Kano home of late Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, they finally snared their quarry.

    At the celebratory press conference, they paraded a haul of jewellery worth N30 million said to belong to Abacha’s widow, Maryam.

    While we rejoice with the former First Lady on the recovery of her bling, we doubt whether the bandits dispossessed madam of all of her expensive metal – causing us to suspect there must be more gold left behind in ‘Fort Knox.’ That is another way of saying that madam’s overall jewellery inventory is abysmally undervalued at N30 million.

    It just reminds you of Imelda, spouse of the late, unlamented dictator of The Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos. After her husband fell from power, hungry hordes overran the Malacanang presidential palace in Manila to get a first hand view of the opulence in which the erstwhile first couple lived. And they got more than they bargained for.

    In the lady’s closet they found over three thousand shoes! How many shoes would one woman wear in a life time? In the end her closet became a museum for pieces from past seasons. We must equally wonder about the mindset that can amass over N30 million in jewelry, when just down the street thousands of almajiri are dying of hunger. Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!

  • Mubi massacre and the limits of outrage

    Mubi massacre and the limits of outrage

    Nigeria’s descent into depravity is a challenge that is now beyond President Goodluck Jonathan and the security agencies

    The cowards who slaughtered forty-something unarmed students of the Federal Polytechnic, Mubi on Independence Day are yet to openly own up to their devilish act. So we may never get a full understanding of their motivations and agenda.
    Still, there are all kinds of pointers that put the usual suspects in the frame. All the circumstantial evidence suggests that this was something sectarian and political; it was not just the arbitrary act of rival school gangs fighting over turf or girls.
    This was cold, calculated and pre-meditated. The guns started blazing at 10.30pm the previous night and did not stop booming until 3.00am the next morning. For over four and a half hours more than 40 young Nigerians were methodically executed in their hostel for reasons they will never know.
    The act was also deeply symbolic. The killers could have carried out their deadly spree on any other day, but they chose to do so on the day Nigeria celebrates her independence as a nation. If you think that is coincidental, then think again.
    The timing is important because beyond damaging national cohesion, it presents a public relations conundrum for a beleaguered government which rose out of the ashes of one of the bitterest political contests in Nigeria’s history.
    The attackers asked for the identity of their victims before dispatching them to untimely death. Other eyewitnesses said they called the victims by name and then killed them. Clairvoyance is not required to conclude that the identification parade would have been to sort out Christian from Muslim, Northerner from Southerner.
    Several months ago in the same Adamawa State, gunmen burst into some churches and slaughtered over 20 worshippers. Other innocents would be killed where they gathered to grieve their loss. A couple of weeks ago in Bauchi, it was another tale of unprovoked deadly assault against a hapless community.
    What should be evident by now – going back to similar attacks in places like Bayero University, Kano – is that certain people and forces are hell-bent on pushing our buttons until we slide into an undeclared sectarian and ethnic war.
    Their strategy is clear. If past outrages have not done the trick, then up the scale by killing more people in the kind of numbers that will generate global headlines, and stir even the most stable and sober to reach for their sword.
    What is especially depressing about the Mubi massacre is not just the sheer scale of its savagery, but its exposure of the helplessness of the authorities to guarantee the security of citizens. Senate President, David Mark, captured this reality vividly in his reaction to the killings.
    He said: “Today it is Mubi, who knows where and when it will happen in the next town. How many policemen can you put in various universities and polytechnic in this country? It is absolutely impossible. There is no way; it does not matter how well you fund the security agencies.”
    One of the reasons the execution-style killings have riveted attention is because the victims are students. But the reality of present day Nigeria is that in the North-East and other parts of the north, the mindless slaughter of scores of people has been a weekly occurrence. We are only shocked when the body count is especially high.
    Let’s forget the hollow posturing: what is happening is a national crisis that is far beyond the capacity of President Goodluck Jonathan and the security agencies to manage. The almost daily killings give the lie to claims by the president and other officials at different international fora that government is containing the Boko Haram insurgency and the freelance killings.
    Mubi is evidence that this crisis will not be addressed by merely reshuffling the leadership of the national security apparatus. General Andrew Azazi was fired as National Security Adviser (NSA) and Colonel Sambo Dasuki hired in his stead, but the switch has not made one jot of a difference. Dasuki has shown that he’s no magician.
    It’s not as if the agencies have not had their moments. But where they make some progress like in the slaying of the Boko Haram spokesman, Abu Qaqa, that gain is immediately cancelled out by a statement-making type of Mubi massacre.
    After each of these bestial outings, Jonathan and the National Assembly leadership serve up the usual chorus of outrage. This time, for added effect, Mark has called for the death penalty for perpetrators of such heinous crimes.
    Unfortunately, knee-jerk reactions based on the emotions of the moment will not solve anything. The death penalty is a dubious solution that has not stopped serial killers in America, or mass murderers whether in Rwanda or the Balkans.
    Nigeria needs help and Jonathan even more so. He needs to call an urgent national gathering, or family meeting, that transcends political affiliations and ethnic origins.
    Such a gathering is imperative to hammer out a national consensus that certain things like the mass murder of innocents are unacceptable. We need to agree that our differences can be resolved without recourse to senseless slaughter.
    We need to agree that we can pursue our political aspirations within the ambit of law, without recourse to the bloodshed blackmail.
    We have to agree that that all who will not subscribe to this national compact become our common enemy who should be fought and defeated by all means necessary.
    Without such a consensus, no president – whether of minority or majority ethnic group origin – will be able to deal with what is happening right now. Without such a deal, we will never have enough men under arms or in our security agencies, to thwart evil men when they decide to embark on killing sprees in deserted outposts of our vast land.

  • N5, 000: Who’s the bad economist now?

    N5, 000: Who’s the bad economist now?

    One magic note, irrespective of its utility, will not pull us out of the economic slump

    I confess that while it lasted I found the brouhaha over the Central Bank’s plans to introduce the N5, 000 note something of a hurricane in a very tiny tea cup.

    But on the positive side, the passion it ignited was such that for the first time since the Super Eagles were thrown out of some tournament, we forgot whether were from South-South or North-West!

    Sure, there were all the arguments about how the anticipated currency reforms could set off an inflationary spiral. Many who had these worries were not only critical of the big note, but also pointed to plans to coin the lower end denominations below N100.

    Over the years Nigerians have developed a strange resistance to coins. This manifests in the form of traders simply ignoring the metallic money and fixing prices for the cheapest of items beginning with the lowest of notes.

    This irrational behavior, like most things in the Nigerian economy, has nothing to do with the basic laws of economics. The artificial and opportunistic price hikes are not triggered by demand and supply factors, but by a mindset that cannot be supported by anything in our history.

    From Independence and well into the 80s, our people embraced the coins that were in circulation. It is equally revealing that the same Nigerians, who supposedly have a cultural aversion to coins, gladly use and carry them around when in the UK, US, Italy, South Africa and many other places.

    So is the problem the coin, the evaporation of its value, or some strange mentality we have acquired? I believe that even the irrational has triggers that can be traced. Primary blame must go to the CBN which over the last two decades has allowed the bizarre thinking that paints coins as an inferior repository of value, to take hold.

    When other factors set off inflationary pressures in the economy, and the existing coins were rendered nearly worthless, the apex bank ought to have released not just a new set of notes, but also coins responding to our new reality.

    They should have put in place policies and rules that counter the notion that only paper denominations that count. Traders, business people and public transportation owners should have been encouraged to have coin boxes in place.

    The CBN gave the impression it was not really interested in coins because banks were never sanctioned when they discouraged bank hall transactions in coins.

    As for the elephantine N5, 000 note, I believe the CBN never made the case why it was such a compelling proposition at this point in time. Countries usually resort to printing such huge bills when hyperinflation has rendered their currencies useless. We’ve seen this happen in the likes of Zimbabwe and Ghana. But surely, inflation in Nigeria is not yet running at 1,000%.

    As has been argued by many, the aborted note would most certainly have exacerbated graft, money laundering etc. Rather than help the CBN’s vision of a cashless society, it would have made it even easier for people to hoard millions under their beds or tote it around.

    The apex bank’s governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, would have us believe that those who opposed his bright idea were either illiterates or voodoo economists.

    He made this point in his now infamous put-down responding to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s criticism of the controversial note. For suggesting that it will cause inflation and worsen hardship, Sanusi dismissed him as “a very successful farmer, but a very bad economist.”

    Obasanjo was not the only VIP who flayed the big bill. Former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon and several other high profile figures did. The Senate and House of Representatives were set to ask for Sanusi’s head on a platter if he defied them by going ahead.

    But OBJ’s comment particularly irritated the CBN governor because according to him Obasanjo introduced more high currency denominations in Nigeria than any other head of state.

    Still, for all of Sanusi’s knowledge of economics, I thought his comments were rather impertinent. For one thing, he was dismissing the knowhow of a man who presided over some of Nigeria’s better economic times. Surely, such a person would know a thing or two.

    This whole N5, 000 episode is another useful lesson for the CBN governor. He was convinced that having made his economic argument and sold same to the President and cabinet, the whole country would just fall in line.

    Sanusi forgets that economics is often not black and white, and economists are just like politicians – each one has a different prescription for the same malady. Some of the most vociferous critics of the N5, 000 note are economists of unimpeachable pedigree.

    Now, President Goodluck Jonathan, barely a fortnight after signing off on the proposed note, has executed a 360 degree pirouette by putting Sanusi’s plans on hold – ostensibly to allow more time for public education.

    Opponents of the note are already performing its burial rites. Who can blame them? Back in January the government pulled the plug on the policy of total deregulation of the downstream sector of the oil industry, again, to allow more time for people to be better schooled on the joys of living without subsidised petrol.

    Eight months after, there’s not a single half-hearted tutorial going on. Rather we are staggering around in the morass of a full-blown fuel subsidy payment scandal. That is why it will be quite a surprise if Sanusi ever gets to print his cherished note before his tenure runs out.

    Lesson for the governor: on certain matters economics is not enough. Remember how late President Umaru Yar’Adua stopped Prof. Chukwuma Soludo – another bright economist –from executing his own currency experiment?

    What has stopped the N5, 000 are not economic factors but political ones. Jonathan simply checked the Richter scale of political criticism and decided there was no point making himself even more unpopular. Sanusi may sneer at this, but in real life this is how it works.

    Once upon a time there was another brilliant economist who used to see what the rest of the less-endowed populace could not see. His name was Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu and he served as Finance Minister in President Ibrahim Babangida’s regime. As Nigeria struggled to overcome her economic woes in the mid-80s he pressed for the nation to take an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan. In the end he was overruled by Babangida in the face of strident national opposition.

    It is good the ghost of the N5, 000 note has been laid to rest: not necessarily because it is bereft of merits. But one magic note, irrespective of its utility, will not pull us out of the economic slump. There are fundamental issues to be addressed if we mean business about turning the economy around. Let’s tackle the basics and put the drama to one side.