The Nation Newspaper

Category: Niyi Akinnaso

  • Tinubu’s adversaries and the planned protests

    Tinubu’s adversaries and the planned protests

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is an unparalleled target and survivor of character assassination, political intrigues, negative social and mainstream media, and adversaries of all shades. We have watched him wade through them all as Governor, as National Leader of his political party, as Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Congress, and as the eventual winner of the 2023 presidential election. Even after he was rightly declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission, his victory was litigated not only in Nigeria but even in the United States. There were protests. There were calls for an interim government. And there were calls for the Army to take over! He survived them all. But the onslaught has continued from the day of his inauguration till today.

    There have been two major external and some internal adversaries since the formation of his government. The internal adversaries consist of various overlapping groups. There are those who are there not for you and me but for themselves. These are political appointees and civil servants, who make transactions of official duties by engaging in under-the-table dealings, including outright corruption. There are others, who are just under-performers. They include some civil servants, some ministers, and other top government officials, who simply should not have been appointed to their positions. These appointees are candidates for cabinet reshuffle by midterm. And they are not few. I have reviewed various lists of “performing” appointees of this government. Not one has been able to name over a dozen out of 50 or more top appointees. By the way, not one ever listed the Secretary to the Government of the Federation as a performer! That is the official who should drive the Center of Government. The contrast with Tinubu’s high performing cabinet as Governor of Lagos state could not be starker.

    While the internal adversaries are less transparent, the external adversaries are more sinister, although some are more visible than others. Political opponents, mainly top election losers, are the most vociferous adversaries. Their duty as the opposition is similar in some ways to that of the press, namely, to hold the government accountable. But, unlike the press, they have a duty to propose alternatives, where they oppose the government’s policies. Unfortunately, Tinubu has an opposition that is determined to destabilise his government, rather than propose their own agenda. What really spells danger in their work is not so much what the opposition leaders say but what they leave unsaid to their supporters, who are spread across the globe, especially in cyberspace. Some of them live on social media, spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories.

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    A second group of external adversaries consists of profiteers from fuel subsidy and foreign exchange speculation. These are people who lost out as a result of Tinubu’s removal of fuel subsidy and the unification of the exchange market. To be sure, the two policies have driven a hitherto unhealthy economy into the Intensive Care Unit. While the activities of fuel subsidy profiteers are difficult to control, because they operate outside government regulations, the Governor of the Central Bank, Dr. Yemi Cardoso, has maximised efforts to control foreign exchange speculators, ranging from commercial banks to Bureau de Change operators. Nevertheless, the sinister activities of this group of adversaries continue to make cure impossible for an economy in the emergency room. For example, as recently as Monday, July 29, 2024, the International Police Organisation (INTERPOL) revealed that “hundreds of thousands of dollars” are being laundered out of Nigeria across the world every hour (read full report in Daily Trust, July 29, 2024), despite Cardoso’s efforts. This is yet another case of Corruption fighting back as the President himself rightly anticipated.

    There is yet a third group of adversaries, which straddles the internal and external divide. They consist of state Governors, who are simultaneously members of the National Economic Council, which advises the President on economic affairs. These are the same Governors, who have been sitting on Local Government Funds and are now sitting on funds intended to cushion the negative effects of the removal of fuel subsidy and the leveling of the foreign exchange market. Besides, some of them are known to smile to the President during the day, while holding sinister meetings with forces inside and outside government that are planning to take over power in 2027. Their immediate goal is to subvert government activities one way or the other.

    Perhaps no subversion plan to date has been as elaborate as the planned 10-day protest for August 1-10. If carried out as planned, the intention of the protesters and their planners is to paralyse the economy and send it further into a tailspin. If the goal is to avoid the hardships amid rising cost of living, a dialogue with the government would have been more profitable. The labor unions learned the hard way that negotiations yielded better results than protests. The President has since signed the agreed Minimum Wage Bill into law.

    It is a misreading of President Tinubu and his government to conclude that they are gripped by fear over protests. Far from it. He himself has led or participated in protests. What he is trying to avoid is the wanton destruction of property by miscreants, which the nation witnessed during the #EndSARS protests.

    To be sure, we can only speculate about the sponsors of the August protests at this stage. What we do know for now is that a group, known ominously as TAKE IT BACK MOVEMENT, is being represented by lawyers in its interface with law enforcement agencies. We also know that many of their demands have nothing to do with hunger or hardship. They include the release of Nnamdi Kanu (whom Tinubu met in prison custody when he came into power), abrogation of the 1999 constitution, and request for Diaspora voting. Besides, one of the hashtags of the planned protests includes #DaysOfRage. Which government would see that and not take action?

    The above notwithstanding, there is still a lot the President can do to ameliorate the current hardships, even if the protests were to begin tomorrow as planned. The truth is that the hardships are real, and his policies have contributed in no small measure to them. The future he sees for positive outcomes does not matter to the people’s lived experience at the moment. Whatever the President plans to do, he needs to communicate directly with the public and not via surrogates. It is still not too late today. In conjunction with security agencies and representatives of national and zonal Governors’ forums, he needs to speak directly with the people, outlining what he has done to douse the hardships and suffering, obstacles he has encountered along the way, what he plans to do henceforth, invite the protesters for dialogue, and then wish them peaceful outings, should they still insist on protesting.

  • On the march toward devolution of powers

    On the march toward devolution of powers

    There comes a time in the life of a nation that certain momentous decisions have to be taken. But it takes decisive leadership to champion such decisions in the form of consequential policies. Notwithstanding a few missteps and a vociferous opposition, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been such a leader. Early in his tenure, he treaded paths that previous leaders stubbornly avoided: He removed fuel subsidy and unified the foreign exchange market.

    Unfortunately, however, saboteurs within and outside government have continued to draw back the hand of the clock on these policies, thus prolonging their negative consequences, notably, inflation soaring prices. Within government, there are leaked stories about deals and indications of poor performance, both partly aided by a weak Centre of Government and stunted periodic performance evaluation. Besides, conspicuous consumption among elected and appointed government officials at a time of economic downturn and high inflation continues to deepen trust deficit in government. Oil theft has led to reduced output, escalating the high petroleum prices following the removal of fuel subsidy.

    Worse still, the Federal Government’s efforts to cushion the hardships occasioned by the negative economic effects of fuel subsidy removal and attempts to harmonize the foreign exchange market are hardly reflected at the state level. Many state Governors repeatedly fail to distribute palliatives to needy citizens or engage in agricultural development for which they were given incentives. Inquiries from some state finance officials indicate that additional (extra-budget) funds in excess of N50 billion have gone into each state since Tinubu came to power. For example, a recent release by the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning confirmed that as much as N438.3 billion had been released to the states from a World Bank-supported intervention fund locally framed as the Nigeria Community Action for Resilience and Economic Stimulus (NG-CARES) programme.

    Unfortunately, however, protesters, largely sponsored by the opposition, have targeted President Tinubu and the Federal Government, instead of their state Governors and state governments, where the funds for ameliorating the suffering of the masses are located. Yet, few citizens know little or nothing about the funds already targeted at them for disbursement by their state governments. Citizens reside within particular local governments in their states. Yet, few (if any) knows how much money should go to their local government for development. It is the responsibility of state governments to inform their residents of available funds and to disburse such funds appropriately.

    It is the failure of state Governors to do so for over two decades that led the Tinubu government to take legal action against them. This led to the Supreme Court Judgement, which empowers the Federal Government to bypass state governments in the disbursement of LGA funds. While this may serve as a punitive measure against state Governors, who have sat on LGA funds and ignored constitutional provisions on the election of LGA Councils, it also raises the question as to whether the Supreme Court has recognised LGAs as federating units at par with states.

    It is against this background that the recent calls for the devolution of powers find their most strident resonance yet. Many believe that the unwieldy nature of the present arrangement gives room for corruption and lack of accountability. So far, the Federal Government has taken a gradualist approach in deference to certain vested interests from the same quarters that has resisted progress for their own people and for Nigeria as a whole since colonial days.

    The gradualist approach consists of piecemeal attempts to enhance the powers of state governments. Three such attempts have been made. One is the decentralisation of the rail system, which allows states or groups of states to build rail lines for local transportation or to enhance existing structures. The Lagos state government has taken advantage of this decentralisation to build its own rail lines. A second decentralisation effort focuses on the generation and distribution of electric power. States or a group of states can now embark on their own power supply project independent of the epileptic power supply.

    A third decentralisation project was discussed at a meeting between President Tinubu and state Governors in February 2024, where agreement was reached in principle on the need to create state police to enhance security at the state level. It was agreed at the meeting that the modalities would be worked out later. In furtherance of this agreement, as many as 16 states submitted reports to the National Executive Council, expressing their support for state police and calling for appropriate changes to the constitution to fast-track the process.

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    It is unclear whether the remaining 20 states have submitted similar reports to NEC. However, as of May 16, 2024, Speakers of the various Houses of Assembly in the 36 states announced their support for the establishment of state police. This means that at least the required 24 out of 36 states are ready to support a bill to that effect from the National Assembly, where only two-thirds of its members are required to pass such a bill. It would now appear that the ball is in the court of the National Assembly to make appropriate modifications to the constitution and pass on the bill for the President’s signature.

    The larger issue remains, however, as to how the relationship between the centre and the federating units would be structured. Will the federating units be the existing 36 states or some larger chunks of the federation? When and how will the exercise take place?

    Undoubtedly, the need for devolution of powers in Nigeria has been a recurrent topic of discussion since the return to democratic rule in 1999. For one thing, the 1999 constitution has far too many inconsistencies, including an excessively powerful centre, which makes states financially dependent. It also recognises a finite list of Local Government Areas, while also empowering state Houses of Assembly to create and supervise LGAs. It is even unclear what status is given to LGAs in the constitution.  Above all, it is believed that proper devolution of powers will minimise, if not eliminate, incessant separatist agitations. It all depends, however, on how the federation is structured.

    Older Nigerians, who experienced governance when there were only three (later four) regions, grew up to know two federating units, the federal government and the regions, each semi-autonomous from the others. Each region had its own constitution, flag, education system, and so on. The Western and Northern Regions had Native Authority Police but none in the Eastern Region. However, there was no Regional Police. The military centralised the entire Police Force when it first seized power in January 1966.

    It is too late in the day to go back to the regional structure. At the same time, however, the present 36-state structure is wasteful. A good starting point for federating units should be the six geopolitical zones, each of which consists of six states, except the Northwest, which has seven, and the Southeast, which has five. Each geopolitical zone should be free to decide on what to do with the states and the local governments within them. But this is a topic already too large for the present essay.

  • Why the North needs power devolution

    Why the North needs power devolution

    It has become well known by now that the North has been a burden on Nigeria for over a century and its leaders a burden on their region since the inception of self government (see The Northern question again: Facts unknown or ignored, The Nation, June 26, 2024).

    However, there was a short period of possible grace for the North, when Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, was the Premier of the Region between 1954 and 1966 (see Suleiman A Suleiman, The North in tatters, Daily Trust, July 1, 2024). Mindful of the huge gap between the North and the South at the time, Ahmadu Bello instituted various economic, educational, and political policies, aimed at putting his region on a path of development in order to catch up with the Western and Eastern Regions. During this period, agricultural boom in the North was typified by the ubiquity of groundnut pyramids in major towns just as cocoa and palm oil were rampant in the Western and Eastern Regions, respectively. I still remember visiting Premier Hotel in Ibadan in 1967, a year after it was built, and finding bowls of roasted groundnuts served freely in the reception areas and in the hotel rooms.

    Unfortunately, the military coup, which took Ahmadu Bello’s life in January 1966, put an end to the developmental strides he initiated. While cocoa and palm oil production continued till today in the South, groundnut pyramids continued to disappear in the North. The incursion of the military into governance in 1966 coincided with, and rapidly promoted, the shift in production from agriculture to oil. This shift, which was put in high gear in the 1970s and 80s, completely decimated groundnut production in the North as military leaders, mostly from the North, focused on resources from the centre, which they shared as they liked but without developing their region. As if to facilitate ready access to the centre, northern military leaders moved the seat of government from Lagos in the South to Abuja in the North. This focus on resources from the centre to the neglect of the North has continued under democratically elected northern Governors since the return to civilian rule in 1999 (see How much shame can Northern Governors endure? The Nation, July 10, 2024).

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    If today’s Northern leaders pretend not to be aware of the backwardness of their region, credit must be given to their predecessors for displaying full awareness of the wide gap between their region and the rest of the country. In fact, one major reason Northern parliamentarians opposed Chief Anthony Enahoro’s proposal in 1953 that independence be granted in 1956 was their awareness that they lacked the resources to face the challenges of self-governance. Here’s how elder statesman, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai, once put it: “This was because as of 1953, the entire Northern Region … had only one graduate. At the same time, the South had thousands of graduates from different fields of expertise … about 90 percent of the public services manpower in the North were made up of expatriates or Nigerians from the southern part of the country” (Why North rejected Enahoro’s 1956 independence motion, The Punch, December 31, 2020).

    Incidentally, in their persistent opposition to the devolution of powers, Northern Governors and their federal legislators have been playing the same opposition script that their former leaders played against the proposal for independence. The difference is that, while their former leaders were playing for time to catch up with the South, today’s Northern politicians are opposing the devolution of powers for selfish reasons and out of fear of losing largesse from the centre.

    What they do not seem to realise, however, is that, if the devolution project goes well, they will have more access to resources than they even have now. Effective devolution involves the transfer of substantial powers, authority, and finances from the national to subnational governments. This will give more money to subnational governments and enhance their ability to source funds through tax and exploitation of natural resources within their borders (subject to the payment of agreed taxes to the national government). They also will be better placed to implement policies geared to the specific needs of their local communities. Moreover, states will be better able to defend their territories with state police, who would have better local knowledge of their environment. Such an arrangement will leave the national government primarily with defense and security, monetary and fiscal policies, social welfare, foreign relations, and overall policies on shared goals in education, agriculture, commerce, and so on.

    India, the largest democracy in the world, and the United States, the oldest presidential democracy in the world (which provided the model for Nigeria’s presidential system), are successful models for the devolution of powers and finances to subnational governments. While the devolution of powers was central to the formation of the United States from the beginning, India worked hard at it through the executive and legislative branches. And India is still working at it. But devolution had come to stay to the point that Indian states are now the ones resisting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attempts to interfere with the process. This would never have been possible had devolution not been initiated and taken root in India.

    This puts the burden on the Nigerian President and the legislative Houses at Federal and State levels. It is unclear what’s on the National Assembly’s agenda for constitutional review. What we do know is that the Committee in charge was given two years to complete its work, which takes the process to election season, when the President would have become a lame duck as is historically the case. This means that the time for President Ahmed Bola Tinubu to act is now. This could take the form of an executive bill and/or intense negotiations with the leadership of the National and even State Assemblies. Fortunately, such a bill is not difficult to draft, given the records of two National Conferences, focusing on the reorganisation of the country, and the January 2018 report of the el-Rufai Committee on True Federalism, which was established by the APC government in 2017.

    The bottomline is that this country cannot continue with business as usual, without some deliberate attempts to change the structure of governance at federal and state levels. One of the major reasons President Tinubu’s economic policies have been slow in effecting desired change is precisely because business is still being conducted as usual at federal and, particularly, state levels. The time to initiate change is now.

  • How much shame can Northern governors endure?

    How much shame can Northern governors endure?

    Northern Nigeria is in tatters, politically, economically and socially. Almost everywhere you turn, the news is of death, destruction and despair as if we were a rudderless and leaderless people …

    The Bank of the North building in Kano, the Turaki Ali House in Kaduna and other tall buildings erected in several northern cities and towns in the 1960s and 70s were a sky-is-the-limit statement for the future of the northern private sector. That future is here, but we might as well return to the 1960s because Sardauna’s heirs now know only to erect silly flyovers in a region where the predominant means of township travel remains the human foot.

    —Suleiman A Suleiman in The North in tatters, Daily Trust, July 1, 2024

    The living reality in Northern Nigeria is very explosive. If anyone is interested in finding the practical meaning of the Hobbesian description of life being ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’, just look at what life is in Northern Nigeria. Indices of poverty, unemployment and inequality are beyond description. Conditions of schools and hospitals are, to say the least, depressing. The civil service, in virtually all the 19 states, is only a shadow of itself, with hardly any public service activity taking place. Our illustrious and respected traditional institutions have been devalued and reduced to a state of hopelessness. Most of our religious leaders and centres are far removed from God’s way of life. Few industries exist in the region. And on account of insecurity, agricultural activities, the mainstay of the economy of the region, is highly on the decline.

    — Salihu Mohammed Lukman, in Open letter to Northern politicians, Daily Trust, July 1, 2024

    The courage to provide a comprehensive analysis of the prevailing realities in Northern Nigeria has been a rare commodity, especially when the speakers or writers are Northerners themselves. But the two writers cited above were hardly the first to point out the Northern problems in Nigeria. At different times, but largely in passing comments, highly influential Northerners had highlighted in various ways the multiple problems besetting the North. The list includes former Governor of the Central Bank and controversial Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi; former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai; and Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote. However, none had addressed the issues as comprehensively as Suleiman and Lukman.

    But, as I pointed out two weeks ago, the Northern problems in Nigeria date back to colonial times, when the erstwhile separate Northern and Southern Protectorates were merged into a single colony in 1914 in order to use the economic and human resources from the South to sustain the North (see The Northern question again: Facts unknown or ignored, The Nation, June 26, 2024). In the last two decades, these problems have been complicated by the scourge of insecurity that continues to decimate the region’s homes and farmlands. The social, economic, and political underpinnings of the region’s backwardness today, which Northern leaders have continued to ignore, provided the basis for the scathing rebuke of the present crop of Northern leaders by Suleiman and Lukman. In the light of this rebuke, how much shame do Northern leaders wish to endure over their negligence in developing their region all these years?

    But the most critical question now is what to do to solve the Northern problems and, by so doing, solve Nigeria’s problems. What should be done to make Northern leaders look inwards, rather than to Abuja, in order to develop their region? Let’s go back again to history.

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    According to Suleiman, the glorious North existed when it was a region by itself, following the foundation laid by Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, who was the Premier of Northern Region from 1954 until his assassination in a military coup on January 15, 1966. With various economic, educational, and political policies, Ahmadu Bello put his region on a path of development in order to catch up with the Western and Eastern Regions. The opposite has happened since his death.

    Hence Suleiman’s historical references in the opening quote and this one in the body of the essay: “… none of the North’s two layers of leadership – the federal government and the 19 state governors – has proven capable of reimagining in 25 years what Sardauna achieved economically for the region in 10”. Embedded in this comment is Suleiman’s rebuke of former President Muhammadu Buhari in the same essay for looking away while the North was being decimated under his watch, despite his campaign promise to unify the region. Never mind that Suleiman left out decades of military rule under Northern leadership, which did next to nothing to improve the fortunes of the region.

    An interesting takeaway from Suleiman’s reference to Sir Ahmadu Bello is the fact that there was a time in history when the North was on track for development, championed by Sir Ahmadu Bello himself. This implies that the North has lacked leadership for 25 years since the return to democracy. Perhaps Northern politicians need to be shamed some more.

    A close look at their bahaviour reveals several findings. One, each of the 19 state Governors has turned his state into a small fiefdom and then, with a few exceptions, milked the state’s resources dry. They are not bothered that, vis-à-vis the rest of the country, their state or region as a whole has the lowest literacy rate, the highest number of out-of-school children, the highest poverty rate, the highest unemployment rate, the lowest contribution to GDP, the lowest Human Development Index, and the most insecure.

    Two, the Governors allowed insecurity in their region to fester until it got mapped unto old historical wounds between Fulani and other groups, who owned the land and farms. The result is unbridled herder-farmer clashes, cattle rustling, banditry, kidnapping, and other crimes. Some of these crimes have since spread across the country.

    Three, the same Governors and insecurity have compromised possible interventions by traditional rulers in their region, who are either threatened with deposition or kidnapped.

    Urgent solutions are necessary, which will require presidential and legislative actions. But that will be the subject of another essay.

  • The Northern question again: Facts unknown or ignored

    The Northern question again: Facts unknown or ignored

    Early in the colonial period, Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria were administered as two separate colonial territories under British control. However, right from inception, the North had posed serious problems to the British government. Chief among the problems was economic—the territory was being run at a budget deficit. The Northern Protectorate was also an administrative nightmare. According to colonial records at the time, the Northern protectorate was “predominantly Muslim and animist”, whereas the Southern protectorate was largely Christian and aggressively “westernizing”. The early adoption of Western education produced surplus personnel to assist the colonial administration. That was not the case in the North, where Western education was resisted. The colonial government also wanted better ways of moving people and goods across the two protectorates.

    The colonial government’s solution to these economic, administrative, and commercial problems was the infamous amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates of 1914. The merger allowed the colonial administration to use the budget and personnel surpluses from the South to run the larger territory together. But the Northern problems persisted. This was particularly evident in the education sector. The resistance to Western education persisted so much so that, on the eve of independence in 1959, less than ten secondary schools were located in the entire North, whereas about 150 were already functioning or taking off in the South.

    One whole century plus ten years later, the Northern question remains the Nigerian problem. This is manifested today in many ways, three of which are paramount and interrelated. First, the legendary educational underachievement of the North persists. True, there are now many highly educated Northerners, but the North lags seriously behind the South in literacy rate. One distinctive feature of education in the North is its limitation to the children of the elite in their bid to reproduce themselves in power. In the colonial and early postcolonial periods, the children of the elite predominated in the few secondary schools in the Northe, such as Barewa College in Zaria. Today, the elite outsource the education of their children to foreign institutions in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. The vast majority of the talakawa, including the almajiri, are left largely uneducated.

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    Today, none of the 19 states in the North has attained 50 percent literacy rate, whereas all Southern states are beyond 50 percent. For example, according to the latest UNESCO data, the top three Northern states and their percentage literacy rates are Kwara (49.3); Kano (48.9); and Plateau (46.6), while the bottom three are Taraba (23.3); (Katsina (21.7); and Borno (14.5). However, on the other hand, the top three Southern states are Lagos (92.1); Ekiti (80.0); and Ondo (75.1), while the bottom three are Bayelsa (62.0); Ebonyi (53.0); and Imo (53.2). On the whole, the average literacy rate across the North is 34 percent, whereas the average literacy rate across the South is 68 percent.

    Poverty is another major drawback for the North. The World Poverty Clock currently has Nigeria at 71 percent poverty level. The bulk of the poverty burden is borne by the North. As with high illiteracy, poverty is at its highest level in the region. According to World Bank and NBS data, the North accounts for 87 percent of Nigeria’s overall poverty level, whereas the lowest poverty rates are to be found in the South. Poverty is so pervasive in the North that as many as nine states have poverty levels in the nineties!

    The third burden the North has made Nigeria carry is insecurity. Boko Haram, banditry, kidnapping, cattle rustling, and other violent crimes are rooted in the North and continue to draw the North and the rest of the country back. As President Bola Ahmed Tinubu indicated on Monday, June 24, 2024, some of the conflicts underlying insecurity in the region are rooted in “historical injustices” that have torn communities apart.

    What is really mystifying about insecurity in the North is that the region has produced two Presidents (Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, 2007-2012, and Muhammadu Buhari, 2015-2023), both from Katsina state. Their state and region remain largely illiterate, poor, and insecure. Since he became President in 2023, Tinubu has focused on insecurity in the region, by repeatedly drawing attention to the problem and by deploying resources and homegrown personnel to the region. Accordingly, the Chief of Defence Staff, the Defence Minister, the Minister of State for Defence, the National Security Adviser, the Vice President, and as many as 19 state Governors are all from the North.

    This is not to say that insecurity in their region is their problem alone. It is a Nigerian problem. But everyone from the region has a duty to do something about it. This is particularly true of state Governors, who are the Chief Security Officers of their states. It’s a shame that instead of focusing on the triple problems of education, poverty, and insecurity in their region, some of these Governors are chasing power (as in Kano and Kaduna) or building elephant projects (as in Bauchi state).

    The conjunctive implications of these problems in a single region could be overwhelming. Illiteracy limits employment opportunities. Insurgency feeds on illiteracy, poverty, and unemployment for recruitment. Rampant insecurity hampers farming and food security, which further deepens the poverty level. To be sure, there are a few factories here and there in the North, the region continues to supply some foodstuffs to the South, the region still depends largely on resources from the South, distributed as federal allocations. At the end of the day, the North remains a burden on Nigeria, recalling the economic burden on the colonial government, which led to the amalgamation of the North with the South in 1914.

    I grew up learning from the elders that you do not count the number of fingers of a nine-fingered person to his or her face. However, if a section of the country continues to lag behind the rest of the country for over a century, it is high time the problems were highlighted addressed one way or the other.

  • Another look at how we got here

    Another look at how we got here

    The promised meta-analysis of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s first year in office will have to wait as more assessments are likely to keep coming in until next week. Instead, I bring an edited version of How we got here, which was first published over three months ago (The Nation, February 14, 2024). In the original article, I interviewed a variety of artisans on their views of the economic situation in the country. Sensing shallowness of knowledge about the backgrounds to the present economic situation, I provided them with a brief survey.

    Nigeria’s problems revolve around regionalism, ethnicity, religion, corruption, greed, and to varying degrees, they all found expression within the three distinct forms of government we have had since independence, namely, parliamentary, military, and presidential systems. Two of the systems (parliamentary and presidential) involved partisan politics, while the third (military) was an outright dictatorship. The parliamentary system did not last long. Nevertheless, intra- and inter-regional and partisan power struggles within the period precipitated the first military coup in 1966 and started a chain of coups and countercoups and even a devastating civil war.

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    Military dictatorships, starting in 1966, suspended the constitution, dispensed with the legislature and the judiciary, and suppressed the press. They told and showed us only what they wanted us to know and see. The civil service was emaciated, if not incapacitated, and erstwhile regional assets, including corporate and educational institutions, were federalised overnight. Even universities owned by the regions then were not spared. By the time the military handed over power, corruption had been institutionalized.

    With the advent of democracy in 1999, there were many more people to share the loot. In no time, it became a case of “My loot is bigger than yours”. You only need to go to Abuja to see the humongous houses, hotels, and businesses, built by politicians, legislators, civil servants, and government contractors.

    Matters began to get worse under President Goodluck Jonathan, beginning in 2013 as preparations got underway for the 2015 general elections. Incidentally, that was the year the All Progressives Congress was formed, mounting a very strong opposition to the Jonathan administration. The treasury was turned into an ATM for election funds. The returned Abacha loot was one such fund that was found to have been distributed to various party supporters and even allies in other political parties. That was the background to what came to be known in the press as Dasukigate.

    Apparently, with recent revelations, things got worse under the Buhari administration. Domestic and foreign debts went through the roof. The nation’s foreign reserve was depleted. The Governor of the Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele, appeared to have colluded with the Buhari administration to perpetrate untold atrocities. Naira was printed illegally in order to increase loan to the government.

    By the time Buhari was handing over to Tinubu, the CBN had loaned the government over N20 trillion, with nothing to back up the loan and with no clear terms of repayment. Foreign loan was almost four times that amount. So much was borrowed and so much was looted that Charles Soludo, former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria and present Governor of Anambra state, declared recently that Tinubu inherited a “dead economy”. The National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, had as much to say when he declared that the “treasury was empty” when Tinubu assumed office.

    On his own, Emefiele set up multiple exchange rates within the banking system and gave different customers different rates. The so-called anchor borrowers programme intended to assist farmers was used to assist those he wanted to assist, even when they had no farming businesses. He was also giving loans to friendly individuals as if the CBN was a commercial bank. He allegedly opened numerous accounts at home and abroad and funneled money into them. Part of Emefiele’s scam was the botched currency swap ahead of the 2023 general elections, which caused untold hardships for millions of Nigerians. Already, Emefiele has been facing multiple charges of financial fraud, including printing N684.5 million new notes at a cost of N18.9 billion Naira!

    Between Buhari and Emefiele, a subsidy regime was maintained to keep the country going, while also getting deeper and deeper into debt. Electricity was subsidised. Even the Naira was prevented from devaluation by keeping the official forex market low and supplying the dollar to the market, when necessary. Then there was fuel subsidy, which had become a scam to put money into a few hands, some of which did not even supply fuel at all.

    For years, many previous governments had planned to end fuel subsidy but failed to do so for political reasons. The plan was completed by the Buhari administration. However, for political reasons, he stopped short of ending the subsidy. Instead, he left the job for Tinubu by making sure that there was no subsidy in the budget as from June 2023, when Tinubu took office. In other words, Tinubu had no choice but to end the subsidy. It was equally necessary to provide a level playing field for foreign exchange transactions by unifying the exchange rate.

    What Tinubu did was to end the tradition of money for a few so that there will be money for all in the future. However, such a transformation can never be instant. The intervening period will be difficult. There will be pain. There will be suffering. There even will be hunger. But not for too long. That’s the situation we are in now. However, how soon remains uncertain. That’s why he released billions of Naira as palliative, which state governments are meant to disburse. He also provided funds to states for transportation, agriculture, technology, and entrepreneurship. 

    Against the above backgrounds, it is evident that per capita growth would be stalled; that poverty rate would be higher; and that the rate of insecurity would spike. Yet, as the IMF recently pointed out, Tinubu has “limited fiscal space” within which to tackle these problems. Equally limited are social and political spaces occupied by social media and opposition politicians, who refuse to see any good coming out of Abuja. Then there are internal and external saboteurs, who continue to disturb, distort, or divert government’s well-intentioned policies, projects, and proprammes.

    Against the above backgrounds and the parameters laid out last week, assessors of Tinubu’s first year in office have their job well cut out for them.

  • Assessing Tinubu’s first year in office

    Assessing Tinubu’s first year in office

    In a piece published below my column on the back page of The Nation newspaper on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, titled Tinubu propelling Nigeria towards renewal, the Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, outlined five key foundations or “core principles” underpinning the renewed hope agenda and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s leadership vision in order to make it easier for assessors of his one year in office to be able to connect the dots between his vision and its outcomes, both short-term and long-term. He prefaced the principles with Tinubu’s corporate background and exemplary achievements as a two-term Governor of Lagos state.

    The five principles cover (1) policies and actions that will attract long-term local and foreign investments to Nigeria, including rebuilding the credibility and capacity of the Central Bank and a robust tax infrastructure to lesson the burden on businesses; (2) policies involving difficult decisions, such as the removal of fuel subsidy and multiple exchange rates, always bearing in mind that such decisions would cause temporary pain and taking measures to assuage those pains; (3) policies and programmes that will provide targeted relief and benefits by way of grants, education loans, consumer credit, cash transfers, food and fertiliser distribution, and so on; (4) the need to make necessary adjustments to policies, programmes and decisions, where necessary, in order to accommodate public response—we saw this in the adjustments to the palliative and Student Loan programmes; and (5) the need to establish a robust communication network in order to keep Nigerians abreast of the policies, decisions, and programmes being made on their behalf; hence, the formation of a pioneering National Communications Team.

     Without any intention of discouraging the Minister, I hope he knows that his rather nuanced analysis is not likely to influence assessors of the President’s one year in office, which comes up in a week’s time. As a matter of fact, none of the assessments already published or discussed on radio and television has taken cognizance of the Ministers brief. But why is this so?

    There are three major reasons. First, many politicians and pundits hardly read newspapers, and even if they do, many of those who would assess the President are not likely to read the Minister’s piece. Of those who are likely to read it, many may not recognize its import as they might even not have read the Renewed Hope Agenda, being the President’s manifesto during the campaigns.

    Nigerians’ non-reading culture is widespread, even among the highly educated. I recall devoting one of my columns to the inaugural lecture of a Professor in one of our universities. Another Professor casually asked on the floor of the University Senate if anyone had read the article the previous week, which brought the university to global limelight. Only three others put up their hands. One of them was the Professor, whose inaugural lecture was highlighted in the article. Without prompting, he confessed that it was another Professor in another university, who alerted him to the article! But that is a subject for another day.

    Second, most assessors have made up their mind, based on partisan, ethnic, and religious biases as well as personal vendettas. Against this backdrop, Tinubu should expect acerbic criticisms, bordering on condemnation, by politicians of the opposition parties, especially the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party, their ardent supporters (especially on social media) and pundits fronting for them. Besides, there are newspapers and their editorials as well as TV stations, which have hardly seen anything acceptable to them in the Tinubu administration. This group of assessors has hardly grown out of the bitterness of electoral loss. Besides, as the politicians begin their spadework for 2027, they are not likely to see anything good coming out of Abuja.

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    Third, most members of the ruling All Progressives Congress as well as supporters and friends of the President are not likely to find fault with his policies, programmes, decisions, and actions, at least not in the public square.

    Apart from these three groups, however, there are assessors, who would look at Tinubu’s policies, programmes, and projects dispassionately, and assess their short-term and possible long-term impacts. This group will include economists, financial institutions, such as Goldman Sacks, and international bodies, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These are professional assessors, who would look at all the facts before reaching a conclusion.

    In assessing Tinubu’s one year anniversary, one set of data worth looking at critically is the financial situation of the country, when Tinubu took office in May 2023. Everything had gone downhill. The Central Bank was in a big mess. There were multiple exchange rates for different categories of customers. Banks were hoarding dollars and selling them at high profits. There was palpable dissonance between monetary and financial policies. The nation was deeply in debt. Fuel subsidy was already technically removed as it was not in the budget as from June 2023, leaving Tinubu with no option than to announce its removal on taking office. While it was in vogue, fuel subsidy was a potent instrument of corruption and a cash cow for only a tiny segment of the population. Its removal allowed the general population to benefit from the subsidy fund by adding it to state allocations. Unfortunately, state Governors have not lived up to expectations in adding the value of the additional fund to the dividends of democracy in their states.

    The above notwithstanding, it is now getting late in the day for Tinubu to blame his inheritance. According to Bill Gates, “If you are born poor, it’s not your mistake, but if you die poor, it’s your mistake”. In governance parlance, the buck stops on the President’s desk.

    To complicate the President’s poor inheritance problem, many citizens are still hurting from the economic effects of the President’s policies, some of which are inevitable, as indicated above. Nevertheless, none of these factors should impede a thorough assessment of the President’s effort so far.

    A meta-analysis of the assessments will be undertaken next week.

  • Memories of my father

    Memories of my father

    As I entered my octogenarian years, I began to remember my father more and more. I searched the invisible archive in the deep recesses of my memory for reasons for the reminiscences about him. I came up with one strong reason—the close relationship he established with me when I was young and growing up. This was manifested in a variety of ways, four of which stand out and recur frequently in my memory.

    No.1. I cannot remember when the practice started but I always found myself on his shoulders on the way to and from the farm until I was about age 6 or so. I would sit on the back of his neck, with my two legs dangling on his rib cage, one on either side of his neck. He would hold me by my thighs, and I would grab his head for support. Occasionally, I would remove his cap and put it on my head. It once fell off when I dosed off and neither of us knew until we got to the farm. Fortunately, someone behind us found it and hanged it on a nearby tree stump. We found it there a few days later on our return journey. That was in the late forties, when traditional Yoruba culture still maintained its essence.

    No.2. Another memorable frequent episode was sitting on the floor between his legs at arbitration meetings. He was so popular and highly respected in the village that he was often the first choice in the settlement of family disputes. They usually came knocking before 5am in the morning before setting out for the farm. On one such occasion, one of our neighbours came to report his recalcitrant son. I recall that my father had settled the dispute when the same son sold one of his father’s cocoa farms and blew the money. On this latter occasion, he had sold his father’s Hercules bicycle, one of the most prized bicycles in those days. The man insisted this time around that he was going to drive his son out of the house, because he could no longer tolerate a troublemaker in his house. My father’s words to the man have continued to resonate with me. “Don’t drive away Troublemaker,” my father told him, “because he will be needed to confront Trouble, when Trouble comes knocking. A house without a troublemaker is an empty house.” Years later, as I reflected on my father’s words, I came to understand his admonition as a reference to the universal concept of the black eye in the family.

    No. 3. I will always remember and thank my father, first for apprenticing me to an Ifa priest to become a diviner and later for withdrawing me from the divination school to learn to read and write. His father, he later told me, was a practicing diviner, but he on his own decided not to learn divination but to become a cocoa farmer. That’s why he joined other cocoa farmers from Oke Idanre to establish Ajegunle village in the valley below in 1926. But he promised his father that his first son would be a diviner. That explains why I was apprenticed to one.

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    However, as his prowess in cocoa farming grew, he was made the treasurer of the farmers’ association, even before the Cooperative Society was established by the Western Region government. My father was intrigued by the ability of the association’s secretary to recall details of the association’s previous meeting, by deciphering some scribbles on paper, which, to my father, looked like an extension of Orunmila’s markings on opon Ifa, based on the configurations of the opele.

    By the time I was enrolled in school, my father had partially converted to Christianity, but never at the expense of Ifa. He regularly consulted his diviner between church services, although he owned a copy of the Holy Bible and the Catechism. He had heard stories about Genesis and the creation in church, and he wanted me to read the Book of Genesis to him. I was in primary school but could read and write at the time. After over 30 minutes of reading the Yoruba Bible, my father stopped me to ask if I knew which part of the Bible spoke about Oduduwa and Orunmila. All I could tell him as a small boy was that the stories in the Bible were not about Yoruba people. By the time I learned enough in anthropology classes to give him a full answer, he was already gone.

    I would later combine the experiences of Ifa and of learning to read and write, by doing my doctorate research on divination and writing my PhD dissertation on the subject. One of my defining contributions on the confluence between Ifa and literacy was an article I wrote in 1992, titled Schooling, language, and knowledge in literate and nonliterate societies, and published in the Cambridge Journal, Comparative Studies in Society and History.

    No. 4. In recent months, memories of my father became more frequent. I began to see in me what I noticed about him when last I saw him alive—getting slower at simple tasks; taking longer to finish a meal; taking more time to get in and out of a car; forgetting things once in a while; mismatching names with faces; and so on. But I keep seeing some positive similarities as well—the unending love of our children, and dedication to our calling, he to farming and I to reading and writing.

    One other thing, and this is very important. During one of our last meetings, as I was preparing to go overseas, he warned me not to make sacrifices like him for any family member or relative. Anyone who knew my father knew that any family member’s or relative’s problem was his problem. He would go all the way to render any and every possible assistance. He wanted me to have none of that. Why? I asked him. He confirmed that his diviner told him to warn me, if I wanted to have a long life.

    He died a few years later on the eve of my dissertation defense, while I was away in California. I got the news around 2:00am but told no one until after the exams that afternoon. I could not have dedicated the dissertation to no other than my father.

  • The highway by the coastline

    The highway by the coastline

    Many years ago, after driving along Highway 101, otherwise known as the Pacific Coast Highway, along the California-Washington corridor in the Western United States, I asked myself why Nigeria did not have such a highway running along our 700+ kilometers of coastline. The Pacific Coast Highway runs about 1,650 miles (about 2,655 kilometers). The Highway is known as Highway 1 to the South up to the Mexican border and Highway 101 to the North up to the Canadian border. Apart from the sea breeze and breath-taking views of the Pacific Ocean along the way, travellers get to see scenic views and visit numerous historical sites, relaxation points with eateries, and forest walk trails. The Highway and its points of attraction bring in millions of tourists and regular travellers every year and billions of dollars to the economies of the states along the route.

    I was happy when the Goodluck Jonathan administration seemed to provide a much-awaited answer to my question by initiating the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway along the Atlantic (Gulf of Guinea) corridor. The project would connect nine Southern states, namely, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Edo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa-Ibom, and Cross-River, exposing them to unprecedented tourism and bubbling economic activities. My hope was dashed when nothing came of it, only to be raised again when the Mohammed Buhari administration began paper and verbal work on the coastal road. As usual, nothing concrete happened. Nevertheless, that administration provided some foundation for the succeeding administration to build on.

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    It is against this background that I expected President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to be congratulated for bringing the project to the limelight to the point of even commencing on its first phase. Instead, three major criticisms have surfaced, some genuine but others baseless. Questions about transparency and cost are in order but questions about procurement are red herring as adequately pointed out by the Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, an engineer of repute. The cost of the project, he argued on an Arise TV interview, was informed by costs of materials in similar road projects being handled simultaneously in other parts of the country, while skills and track record were used to award the contract to Chargoury’s Hitech Construction Company Limited, just as the Third Mainland Bridge was awarded to Julius Berger for similar reasons.

    In the manner of his Chicago certificate trip during the presidential election, the PDP candidate and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, embarked on a smear campaign against the project and even against the person of the President. Oh, he is Chargoury’s business partner, because his son, Seyi Tinubu, is on the Board of a subsidiary company, which manufactures ceramic tiles and sanitary towels. It does not matter to Atiku whether the fellow had been on the Board before his father became President.

    Perhaps the most critical question raised is about the cost of the project, especially at this time of the nation’s economic downturn. What these critics fail to realise is that it is at such times in US history that the government spends the most money, especially on infrastructure and economic bailout for banks, factories, and struggling citizens. The lessons of the Great Depression (1929-1939) may have been lost or even unknown to many Nigerian politicians today. However, those among them, who read, would have learned that President Franklin D. Roosevelt developed programs to bail out failing banks and industries as well as pass the National Labour Relations Act of 1935. Above all, the government invested in infrastructure in order to strengthen roads and bridges and thus prepare the nation for heavy loads that may come with economic recovery.

    Perhaps a better example that many Nigerian politicians may be familiar with is the Great Recession, which heralded in the Barrack Obama administration in 2008. Tinubu’s administration began in 2023 in similar circumstances, although the causes of the recession varied from one country to the other. For example, in the US, the burst in the housing bubble led to decline in the mortgage market and caused many banks to go under. However, here in Nigeria, our banks were feeding fat on consumers and even on the government, while the economy was heavily depressed. Or how does one explain trillions of Naira in profits by Nigerian banks just as the economy entered one of its worst recessions?

    What is important here, however, is the similarity in the economic recovery approaches. In the US, Obama engaged in huge infrastructure funding in order to get more people back to work, ease transportation, and create economic opportunities along the road network value chain. Besides, he invested heavily in bailing out banks and the auto industry. He also provided support for those who could not meet their mortgage obligations and paid unemployment benefits to those who were laid off at work due the recession. That was the American version of palliative.

    President Joe Biden (then Obama’s Vice President) followed the same template to aid recovery from the downturn in the economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, by paying directly to seniors on Social Security benefits and those who were laid off. He also passed a huge infrastructure bill for the same reasons Obama did.

    Here at home, President Tinubu is using a time-tested template to revive the economy. Interestingly, the stressors in the Nigerian economy are more varied and more serious than those of the US economy during Obama’s time. Here at home, we have different small fractions of the population feeding fat on the majority. Hence the need to stop fuel subsidy, harmonise the foreign exchange market, improve labour conditions, attend to the poor masses, cut back on electricity subsidy, while also working to improve electricity supply, and, above all, improve the transportation network.

    A common denominator in the recession recovery efforts mentioned above is heavy investment in road infrastructure, and that is what President Tinubu has embarked upon. He got work resumed on the East-West Road and many other highways, which some critics mischievously claimed he had abandoned. One Peter Obi, for example, advised focusing on inland roads, omitting that President Tinubu is already doing so, and criticising him for embarking on the coastal highway, without highlighting the huge advantages of such a venture. Others criticise the choice of Lagos as the starting point. Haba! Isn’t Lagos on one end of the coastline? And what better end to start than the economic hub of the nation?

    Of course, it will take years to complete the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, but it has to be started, just as the other roads President Tinubu inherited were started by previous administrations.

  • The debate on electricity tariff

    The debate on electricity tariff

     The ongoing debate about the increase in electricity tariff could not have peaked at a worse time. First, after about two weeks of steady Naira appreciation, dollar scarcity precipitated slight depreciation of the Naira. Second, delayed arrival and offloading of petroleum-laden cargo ships led to petrol scarcity, leading to a further hike in the pump price. All of a sudden, already high food prices began to rise again. This latter development could only heighten the problem of energy poverty in the country as typified by perennial fuel shortages, inadequate power supply, and rising costs of both sources of energy.

    The discussion about electricity tafiff has been very useful in letting the public know that about 10 percent (N2.8 trillion) of the national budget is spent on electricity subsidy. Believe it or not, this is the first time that many Nigerians are learning that electricity is subsidised. The direction of the discussion so far is to the effect that electricity subsidy should not be removed within the same year that fuel subsidy was removed. If that were to happen, more people will be thrown into abject poverty.

    The problem now is that the government is between a rock and a hard place. Should it remove electricity subsidy outright so it can save money enough to revamp the power sector, which is said to require about $10 billion annually for ten years? Or should it continue with electricity subsidy and still be able to improve on the infrastructure, generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity? It would appear that the government is meeting each of these challenges halfway: Charge Band A consumers higher tariff but continue with subsidy for other consumers. Then work gradually on improving the power sector.

    Thus, recently, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed an agreement with the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to have Siemens inject 12,000 megawatts of electricity into the national grid. Regulations are also relaxed for state and local governments as well as the private sector to supplement the government’s Rural Electrification Project in generating electricity for rural areas.

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    For years, the Federal Government has been struggling to improve the infrastructure, generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity with minimal success. It is universally acknowledged that corruption has repeatedly dampened the efforts. That’s why, today, the maximum electric power generation capacity the government could boast of is only about 14,000 megawatts. However, with grid collapse every now and then, only about 5,000 megawatts of this capacity has ever been in use. This is abysmally low for a population of over 200 million. The result is that nearly half of the population, living mostly in rural areas, has no access at all to electricity. Of those who have access to electricity, about 80 percent do not have a supply of more than 10 hours a day. This implies that most households and businesses do not have access to electricity for more than 10 hours a day.

    If, according to international standards, a population of 1 million people needs at least 1,000 megawatts of electricity, then Nigeria needs at least 200,000 megawatts of electricity for its present population. Good planning would require that this number be doubled in less than 30 years, when the country’s population is also expected to have doubled.

    There are at least three reasons Nigerians have been complacent with low electric power output. First, those who can afford it find an alternative power supply in diesel- or petrol-fueled generators and/or solar powered backup units, while others limit their energy consumption to kerosene, cooking gas, and, of course, raw firewood, all used for cooking.

    However, with a steep rise in the cost of petroleum products, due to the removal of fuel subsidy and multiple exchange rates, many households are finding it difficult, if not impossible, to keep up, while many businesses, including manufacturing industries, are closing down. It is within this context that a hike in electricity tariff has been meeting stiff resistance from various quarters. Although it was stated at the outset that only Band A customers (that is, those getting up to 20 hours of electricity supply daily) would be affected, most Nigerians were not sure whether it was not a ploy to increase the tariff across board.

    Second, older Nigerians have been used to hard times. Whether it was the Electric Corporation of Nigeria, Nigeria Electric Power Authority, or Power Holding Company of Nigeria, epileptic or no power supply had been their lot.  For most of them now, it is a case of nothing is new under the sun. However, the younger generation is more intolerant and restive. As this restive population grows in number and in age, the government can expect a revolution, if the present trend of poor electric power supply persists.

    Another reason for complacency is the periodic distribution of palliatives by federal, state, and local governments as well as by individual politicians, especially those currying favour for the next round of elections. But palliatives only provide temporary cushions for the poor in harsh economic times. They do not fix the energy deficits.

    Today, however, complacency is challenged by the digital world we live in. We must charge phones and computers. Industries must power the assembly line, including sophisticated robots. As we move from fossil fuel to electric cars, such as Tesla, electricity supply has become more crucial than ever.

    Nevertheless, caution is needed on electricity tafiff at this time. A hike in electricity tafiff, no matter the category of consumer, will jolt an already destabilised economic situation. The government currently has the sympathy, although not necessarily the support, of the majority of the population on its economic programmes. Nothing should be done to incur their distrust.

    That’s why the government has to come out in clear language about the direction it is taking on the energy crisis, especially on electricity tariff and petrol supply. Admittedly, NNPCL has spoken on the delay in supply and assured the public of supply in no distant time. However, the Minister of Power has not been the best messenger regarding electricity tariff. Rather than explain the government’s position in clear terms, he resorted to blaming the consumers for their electricity consumption patterns. Besides, till today, the idea of Band A customers is jargon to the roadside welder, who hears about tariff hike and gets nervous. The government surely needs to do more on retail communication of its programmes. It must be realised that government programmes are supported or rejected, depending on how they are presented and understood by the public.