The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Freed children! Stop Nigeria’s ‘Failure to Perform’

    Freed children! Stop Nigeria’s ‘Failure to Perform’

    Hurray for the release of the Kuriga, Kaduna State children and teachers. There were nationwide tears of joy, including mine. Congratulations to the president, government, the armed forces, the governor of Kaduna State and others responsible. 

    We must memorialise the valiant murdered vigilante with family support and an honour, e.g. school named after him.

    May the terrorists, their spies, promoters, defenders, mouthpieces, promoters,  supporters and bankers be arrested, tried and punished. May this be the last attack. Amen. Do not trivialise terrorism.

     The kidnap video shows the school’s state, similar to Chibok School of (little or no) science! Not an inviting learning environment to return to.

    Why is Nigeria financially disadvantaged with millions working hard lifelong?

    Nigeria has missed dedicated decisive developmental leadership, supervised monitored and the disciplined followership required to become a 2024 Sustainable Development Goals equal partner country. Instead, and despite adequate resources thrown at us by oil, shipping, airport, mining, banking and educational earnings, Nigeria stagnates, a shadow if its projected self.

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    Nigeria has chronically suffered political self-serving mediocrity manifesting as ‘developmental impotence’ and a ‘political failure to perform’. If Nigeria is the beautiful bride, the political class is just raping us, financially, leaving us with physical scars. This is recently manifest by the ‘off the mic’ or recent financial scandal in Senate raising forensic financial questions in the latest stinking and disgraceful ‘Constitutional Projects Scandal’. Read past EFCC investigation reports.  

    Past political impotence and rape have resulted in massive backlogs of unpaid pensions and salaries, electricity and water bills, genuine contractor fees and even, and quite unforgivably, unpaid  counterpart funds for Basic Primary Education Board jeopardising brain development, future career choice and earning ability.

    This massively incompetent and impotent pathetic but politically widespread approach has not only been detrimental and actually stagnated development nationwide. There is no proper supervision to make sure everyone at each point in government is doing the correct job in time and as-and-when-due or maintaining and improving standards.

    So now instead of multiplying, the water taps in homes and streets in the 1960s have dried up for years. Instead of 60-100Kw power, we have 2-5Kw and every home is condemned to an environmentally murderous generator. School libraries are mostly a memory of grandparents, not even parents. School sports are mostly theoretical.

    Without pensions and salaries, the famed Nigerian Extended Family, the real traditional and historically first bank in Nigeria, has been murdered. This has destroyed the financial, social and moral fabric of the Nigerian extended family. Youth sneer at, disrespect and disobey un-providing parents and grandparents who, salary and pension-less, cannot even buy sweets for them.

    This greed-driven approach has allowed those impotent and corrupt leaders, and their followers to identify a lot to steal in 100s of billions of naira. If that money had been properly disbursed, remitted and spent as-and-when-due, monthly, there would never have been any single  steal-able mountain of N100m, N500m, N1,000,000,000, N100,000,000,000 i.e. N100b  scattered throughout Nigerians MDAs and banks. Even presidential ticket forms and then copycat kidnap demands are now N100m.

    If they did everything right according to their sworn obligation to the General Orders of government schedule imposed on the citizenry, the money would have been spent correctly and there would have been nothing to steal. 

    If bills and debts are unpaid by the leadership as-and-when-due, all defaulters will automatically run into trouble. This is the golden rule of fortune and misfortune in life and government budgets. How dare government agencies owe years of electricity bills? EFCC must charge past defaulting office holders for dereliction of fiscal duty.

     Nigeria’s financial woes started long ago. The political class’s greedy sense of ‘assets entitlement’ not ‘assets management and maximum service delivery’ changed them from custodians of public funds and day-to-day government running, into corrupt criminal monstrous  ‘masters of our money’.  

    ‘WHAT CAN I DO FOR MYSELF? 

    ‘SELF(ISH) DEVELOPMENT’ cannot lead to the ‘DEVELOPMENT OF ALL OTHERS’ which is the only key to developmental success. They deliberately dismantled, diverted and disabled many essential maintenance schemes inherited from the colonialists. Their failure to perform, a form of impotence, resulted in the ‘systematic deterioration’ in our infrastructure. 

    This failure to perform was manifest first by the politician’s greedy nature demanding generators and fuel forever, borehole water, police security and several allowances and money for mansion(s). Every family subsequently became a Local Government. The political class rejected denigrated professional advice on maintenance and needed infrastructural expansion to empower the development agenda. This destruction of first-class civil service and private sector culture of maintenance resulted in countrywide destruction of road, rail, water, electricity and building infrastructure. The maintenance money disappeared as did our dream of a Great Nigeria.

    Simply by not being on seat to sign payment vouchers, evil persons can accumulate billions in banks which pay huge finders fees and the same money can be delayed, diverted and ‘disappeared’.  Of course, Nigeria had and has honest leaders and followers. But one thieving person or politician who withholds a cheque and boldly gets away with it, or is promoted after stealing, inspires others.

    A stolen N100b ruins millions, cripples and disgraces governments and reverses development.

    To recover quickly, requires politicians, officials, banks, indeed all Nigerians to stop stealing in 2024.

    Remember Nigeria’s money, especially in budget 2024, is insufficient for the needs of service delivery and also the greed of political democrazy stealing.

     Just stop!

  • Governors and palliatives

    Governors and palliatives

    By the end of August, 2023, media platforms—TV stations, newspapers, and social media—were full of stories, columns, opinions, questions, and suggestions about the nature, distribution, and potential effects of palliatives in providing some relief to those who were most affected by the removal of fuel subsidy. Such is the nature of the Nigerian press. A lot of noise is made at the inception of a programme or project, followed by dead silence. No one follows through to know how the programme or project has fared.

    Those who questioned the implementation of the palliative programme misdirected their questions at the Federal Government instead of the state governments which had taken custody of the funds. That’s why shortly after the palliatives were released to the states, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu himself made it clear that he could not give orders to state Governors about the distribution of the palliatives as that would undermine the federal system. Later in November, 2023, the Federal Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris Malagi, amplified this position by urging state Governors to use the funds as outlined and ensure the effective distribution of the palliatives to needy citizens.

    Today, eight months after the release of the funds, no one knows exactly how much was given to each state government as part of the palliative package not to speak of knowing how the funds were disbursed. At some point, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, mentioned a huge amount, which the Governors quickly contested, but without mentioning how much exactly they got.

    To be sure, there have been reports about the distribution of palliatives in some states; however, most states have been silent about such activities. The press quickly jumped at the deadly stampede during the distribution of palliatives in some states but asked no probing questions about the palliative funds and what else the affected state governments have done beyond distributing rice. For example, whatever happened to the funds for infrastructure and agricultural development? What about the N35,000 wage award for eligible recipients?

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    At the inception of the programme, there were talks of a register of those in need of assistance. Nothing else has been heard about whether or not such registers exist and in what states. At least that is the case in my own state of Ondo, where nothing has been heard about how much was received as palliative fund, who has received what, when, where, and how.

    What is known is that elaborate preparations were made by the administration of late Governor Rotimi Akeredolu. Unfortunately, however, the state was embroiled in power transition politics up to his death. One would have thought that the elaborate palliative programme would be implemented after the Governor’s obsequies, but all we hear about is the forthcoming governorship primary election, with Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa reportedly buying endorsements here and there.

    Accordingly, newspaper reports about the state have focused on the aspirants and speculations about their chances. Most of the speculations have been vacuous as none is based on verifiable qualifications, administrative or governance experience, domestic probity, personality traits, and verifiable opinion polls. Nevertheless, the question of who is most suited to rule the state in the near future is secondary to the focus of this essay.

    The central question is about the palliatives made available to the states within the last eight months or so. Three or four distinct entities have a duty to inform the public about which state got what and when as well as how and when the palliatives were disbursed.

    First, nothing prevents the Federal Government, through the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Services, Disaster Management, and Social Development or the National Bureau of Statistics from releasing ALL details about the palliative funds and materials disbursed to each state of the federation since August 2023 or so. One would have thought that, by now, data onda the palliatives per state should have been available online months ago. However, when I visited the website of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs yesterday, the information under programmes and policies has not been updated since 2021!

    Second, each state and Local Government Area should tell its citizens how much was given in cash and in kind and how they were disbursed. Moreover, who gets how much cash and/or rice, when, and where? This means that a verifiable register of recipients should exist somewhere for curious citizens to see.

    Third, the media should probe this issue, by sending out investigative reporters to find answers to these questions from federal and state governments. True, many media houses are facing fund shortages for large-scale investigations. But then every newspaper has at least a reporter or correspondent in each state headquarters. They surely can do more than he-said, she-said in their reporting.

    Finally, instead of waiting to sue the federal or state governments for information, civil society and non-governmental organisations, such as the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, interested in holding government accountable should first find out what data federal and state governments have on palliatives. That failing, they could then sue for the release of necessary information.

    I raise these issues now because of the persistent failure to provide necessary and correct information to the public. A case in point was the recent abduction and subsequent release of Kuriga schoolchildren of Kaduna state. For two weeks until the children were released last Saturday, March 23, 2024, the figure reported worldwide was 287 children. Some reports even indicated “nearly 300” children. Such high figures were even still reported by various newspapers hours after the children were released.

    However, both the state Governor, Uba Sani, and the Army confirmed later that only 137 schoolchildren were abducted and that all of them were rescued from neighbouring Zamfara state. Where did the additional figure of 150 plus children come from? Why didn’t the school authorities or state government correct the erroneous figures when the abduction took place? Why didn’t a reporter visit the school or at least the Local Government headquarters to find out how many children were enrolled in the school, how many attended the school that day, and how many were actually abducted?

    In this digital age, government and governance are driven by data. Not only does lack of data hinder effective planning and project implementation; data deficit also promotes trust deficit in government.

  • The strange case of the Binance escapee

    The strange case of the Binance escapee

    The mysterious escape of Binance executive, Nadeem Anjarwalla, from custody in Abuja has left the authorities with the proverbial egg all over their faces.

    The timing couldn’t have been more disastrous nor the paradox more stark. This was the week in which President Bola Tinubu praised National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, and the armed forces to high heavens for their work in rescuing I37 abducted Kaduna pupils and another group of 17 students snatched in Sokoto State.

    While the nation was still revelling in the double dose of good news, reports of Anjarwalla’s escape came like a slap across the face – terminating even the slightest hint of euphoria.

    The circumstances leading to the escape would make many question whether the near-flawless extraction of the abductees from captivity was entirely down to the skill of security forces or mere happenstance. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that kidnap victims would be freed and the Police and others try to grab the glory, only for it to emerge that ransom had been paid.

    What is known thus far is that the 38-year-old Briton who also holds Kenyan citizenship, waltzed his way out of the guesthouse where he was being held with another colleague and vanished into thin air. It is said guards who were supposedly watching over them led him to a nearby mosque for prayers.

    It has also emerged that the detainee fled the country by way of a Middle Eastern airliner using a smuggled passport. What remains a mystery is how he was able to get on an international flight while his British passport remained in the hands of the authorities. It’s the stuff of which spy thrillers are made.

    In a typical case of medicine after death, the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) says officers who were guarding the Binance executives have been arrested and a global manhunt launched for the fugitive from justice. All the best with that!

    Read Also: Power sector worse off 12 years after privatisation – NLC

    The immediate questions are many and troubling. Yes, this episode reeks of compromise and incompetence on an epic scale. But it is also a deep conspiracy executed to perfection.

    If these were truly high profile detainees whose activities may have negatively impacted Nigeria’s national security and economy, the circumstances in which they were held at some so-called guesthouse couldn’t have been more lax. If they needed to pray, couldn’t they have done so within the confines of where they were kept?

    How on earth did the guards who led Anjarwalla to the mosque lose sight of him for so long that he had sufficient time to get on a plane without some sort of alarm being triggered? At what point was his disappearance noticed?

    Were the guards really watching the subject or did they conveniently abandon him to his devices? Were they drugged and put to sleep by other co-conspirators? Was this visit to the mosque a regular thing or just one wrong move that backfired?

    This was clearly not happenstance. You don’t just hop on an international flight on the spur of the moment – especially when your primary travel documents have been seized. This was an elaborate scheme that involved the procurement of a fake passport – probably with a false identity. It obviously had been in planning for a while. It involved people turning a blind eye long enough for him to get on pre-arranged transport to the airport in a foreign city.

    All of this happened without the so-called guards giving chase or alerting possible entry and exit points out of the city and country!

    Even if your vessel of flight were a private jet you still have to run the gauntlet of myriad security agencies at the airports. If it is not the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), it is the Department of State Services (DSS) or some other murky outfit. It is unbelievable that Anjarwalla’s name wasn’t on their watch-list, or his visage wasn’t plastered all over their systems.

    No conspiracy would work without the target to be extracted having communication with outside helpers. Clearly, the Binance executives had sufficient contact with external collaborators for Anjarwalla to have known when to move and where to be in order to be spirited out of the country. It just makes you wonder whether he and his colleague were in detention or on vacation.

    We’ve seen in this country how tightly security agencies can keep a prized detainee. The late dictator General Sani Abacha held Chief M. K. O. Abiola, winner of the June 12, 1993 elections, for four years in so many faceless facilities such that he was cut off from the world. At every point he had as many as fourteen agents watching him. They guarded him as if their lives depended on it.

    Perhaps, the circumstances are different, but it is pointless seizing a man’s passport, announcing to the world that you’ve detained him, only for him to take the next available flight out, right under your nose. Just another strange tale out of Nigeria!

    Of course, these daring gambits occur from time to time. Three years ago, Nigerian security agents entered Kenya and arrested the fugitive leader of the Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu. He had briefly stepped out of his lodgings in Nairobi and was without his travel documents when he was seized. Next thing, he was being paraded in handcuffs in Abuja.

    In this instance it was clear security agencies of the two countries had worked together to apprehend the separatist leader. The mystery that the authorities now have to unravel is the chain of collaboration that led to Anjarwalla’s disappearance. It involves compromise from his immediate guards to those at the country’s exit points. Everyone implicated must pay a steep price.

    While this episode is embarrassing, we shouldn’t just focus on the shame but see it as a window into why our security challenges are so complicated and unending. It is a difficult thing to admit, but there are many individuals in the different forces whose integrity or loyalty to the country cannot be vouched for.

    Those who allege that many in the forces are available for rent are being proven right in different theatres of conflict from the Northeast to Northwest to South-South. In the Niger Delta, oil theft continues unabated because of security compromise. The giant ocean-going vessels that berth in our waters to lift stolen crude can only do so with connivance of those who should be arresting them.

    The whole of that region is swarming with make-shift refineries that produce black market diesel from stolen crude. They then move their illegal products to markets across the country in tankers that move in and out with little or no hindrance.

    All the major roads are lined with checkpoints manned by soldiers, yet the trade keeps booming. An activity that is draining life out of the activity won’t stop for as long as those sent to stamp it out are busy lining their pockets – unconcerned about something called the national interest.

    Even in the recent tragic events at Okuama community in Delta State which resulted in the killing of 17 soldiers, one of the allegations is about security agents for hire complicating matters. Ultimately, a proper investigation would unmask what happened in a communal dispute between two hitherto anonymous villages.

    Just as he’s doing with certain institutions critical to the wellbeing of the economy, President Tinubu needs to pivot to rooting out the rot in the security agencies. It would be a long, hard fight, but it is one that has to be engaged quickly otherwise his much-vaunted reforms would end up being frustrated.

  • The mystery of mass abductions

    The mystery of mass abductions

    Nearly ten years have passed since that dark day in April 2014 when fighters from the terrorist Boko Haram group lighted on a government secondary school in Chibok, a small town in Borno State, and kidnapped 287 hapless schoolgirls. Some escaped captivity by their own devices, others as a result of the efforts of civil society groups.

    An indeterminate number remain in capacity either as wives or sex slaves of the fighters of this extremist group, and yet many others succumbed to death in the course of their harrowing experiences.

    Until the Chibok girls episode the phenomenon of mass abductions was relatively unknown – even in the North – which now appears to be the main theatre for its manifestation. That was the reason, perhaps, why the government of then President Goodluck Jonathan, received initial reports of the kidnapping with much skepticism.

    The then governor of Borno, now Vice President, Kashim Shettima, was hauled into Aso Rock for a grilling as to how it was possible for a ragtag bunch of thugs to march in and spirit away almost three hundred girls with such ease. Poor guy, though he was governor and supposedly chief security officer of his state, he didn’t really control troops and had little say in their deployment.

    Such was the suspicion that the incident was just political mischief to embarrass the government of the day that then First Lady Patience Jonathan got in on the act and convened her own panel of inquiry to get to the root of the matter. The result was a comic, shambolic affair that end with her famously wailing in frustration “there’s God o!”

    Unfortunately for Mrs. Jonathan and the rest of Nigeria, those who engineer and execute mass abductions of vulnerable people don’t dread or regard the God she was drawing their attention to.

    Abubakar Shekau, the late, unlamented monster who controlled Boko Haram, would confirm the reality of the kidnapping shortly after through several propaganda videos with the largely Christian girls now wrapped up in the Muslim hijab. His maniacal laughter taunting the authorities to come and get the girls if they could was national humiliation.

    The motive of Shekau and his goons in pulling off their crime was to advertise their extreme ideology to a global audience that hardly paid attention to them. After Chibok, the world knew the name Boko Haram.

    The Jonathan administration’s inability to bring back the girls, or to rein in a campaign of terror unleashed across the North by the extremists, was part of the contributory factors that defined it as weak and clueless. It would pay the price at the 2015 presidential elections.

    The opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) which had done an excellent job of defining the then Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government as inept, soon inherited the headache. Back then, the ruling party encouraged the insinuation that the opposition were complicit in the Chibok kidnapping and other terror acts as it would help them politically.

    After taking power in 2015, the best efforts of the Muhammadu Buhari administration still didn’t bring the girls home. If the dark suggestions of his political rivals had really been true, then it would have been relatively easy to organise their return and repeat a massive harvest of goodwill. That didn’t happen. Not long after, those who were accused of knowing about the Chibok incident soon found themselves having to deal with another mass abduction – this time on their watch.

    In February 2018, a faction of Boko Haram stormed into a girls’ science school in Dapchi, a town in Yobe State and captured 110 girls. Almost all would be released not longer after, less five who lost their lives in this episode.

    In mid-December 2020, gunmen riding on motorcycles arrived another secondary school in Kankara, Katsina State and seized 300 boys. The state government went into negotiations and six days later their release was announced.

    Six years after Shekau’s goons plucked the Chibok girls from their hostels, it was evident that the nature of mass abductions in the North had changed. There was now clearly an economic motive given the swift manner in which the crisis was resolved after negotiations. No doubt, ransom had changed hands – never mind what the authorities said in public.

    From February 2021 to July of the same year, a slew of mass kidnappings would happen across three Northern states that left the Federal Government and myriad security agencies looking helpless. On February 17, gunmen wearing military fatigues visited the science school in Kagara, Niger State and abducted 27 students and three teachers.

    Nine days later there was a nighttime attack on a boarding school in Jangebe, Zamfara State, with 300 schoolgirls taken captive. A few weeks after, all were released after money exchanged hands. In March 2021, 39 students of the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation at Afaka, Kaduna State, was kidnapped, only to be freed in batches in April and May. In the same state, armed men visited the private Greenfield University and took away 20 students.

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    More trauma was in the offing when in April bandits stormed into the Bethel Baptist High School in Chikun area of Kaduna State and took 100 students. They would later be freed in batches after the payment of ransom by parents and the church. When a particular security agency tried to claim credit for the release of the initial batch of abductees, irritated parents shut them up by revealing the mind boggling sums that had been paid for their freedom.

    In the last two to three years, it seemed like the criminals had lost appetite for their evil enterprise. Not so. They are back with a vengeance. On March 7 this year, the usual suspects raided a school in Kuriga, Kaduna State and seized 287 pupils who they are still holding. They have asked for N1 billion to set their captives free; a demand that has been rebuffed by President Bola Tinubu.

    The same questions that people asked ten years ago are still relevant today. How is possible for gunmen to move hundreds of children on motorcycles with no one being any wiser? Didn’t this raucous procession pass through any community? On tarred roads such movement would be a logistical nightmare; in the forest it would be no easy undertaking.

    In an age where the skies have technological eyes, it is easy for security agencies to identify the location of the kidnappers. That not much has been done with the information they have is down to the fact that the kidnappers use their victims as human shields. Unfortunately, knowing this is cold comfort for parents and the authorities who are under pressure to rescue the abducted.

    A reckless military action might destroy both captor and victims and generate even worse outrage than doing nothing. The recent incident of error bombing in Kaduna State showed how difficult things can become in such circumstances.

    While it is possible to sympathise with the authorities, things cannot continue this way. Yes, they are under pressure to act. But make no mistake about it, the kidnappers are also under pressure to resolve things. It cannot be a tea party having to mind 287 little children in the middle of nowhere.

    The first step towards ending the menace of mass abductions is to refuse to pay up. Take away the economic incentive and the monster will begin to die. The business is alive and well because it is yielding profit for its perpetrators. Tinubu must hold firm on not paying ransom or his administration would end up infusing the monster it wants dead.

    Secondly, the public must be prepared for the fact that the stand-off cannot last forever. At some point government would have to intervene forcefully if it is going to be any different from its predecessors. As often happens in these circumstances, there could, unfortunately, be loss of lives. But mass kidnapping would only decline when people realize they would pay a steep price for abductions.

    Lastly, the question must also asked as to how much communities are committed to frustrating this phenomenon. Criminals hide victims in their midst and in nearby forests – not in thin air. They can provide intelligence that would be useful to the authorities. But how much cooperation are they offering to those they want to deliver them?

    How much are elite Northern voices speaking out to denounce the evil of mass abductions? Not much, I would say. Instead, we have the likes of Sheikh Gumi making a case for dialoguing with bandits as though they’ve become a fact of our lives we much live it. An end must come to indulging evil.

  • Haiti in trouble again

    Haiti in trouble again

    History, they say, repeats itself. This is particularly true of the Caribbean Island we have come to know as Haiti. For the umpteen time, the Island is again embroiled in multiple crises—the crisis of leadership; the crisis of hunger; the crisis of infrastructural decay; and the crisis of insecurity. These crises are worsened by gangster-led attacks on citizens and state actors alike, particularly security agents and state structures. The present spate of gang violence began on February 29, 2024.

    However, when it comes to Haiti, it is often difficult to know precisely when one crisis ends and another begins. True, Haitian history is typified by one type of crisis or another, the present spate of crises could be said to have begun in 2010, following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, which destroyed much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, killed up to 300,000 people, and dispossessed over one million people.

    In the aftermath of the disaster, various gangs developed or consolidated in association with various members of the economic and political elite. Gang competition for territorial space has been going side by side with elite struggle for power. The competition and power struggle escalated with the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, which left a power vacuum occupied by Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

    In the last few weeks, a federation of gangs, including the gang of Jimmy Cherizier (a.k.a Barbeque), a notorious Haitian gangster, has seized power, by seizing the airport, burning down the house of the police chief, and trading fire with police, which is outnumbered by weaponised gangsters. In the face of these crises, nobody seems to care anymore about how Haiti came to be and why it remains a troubled nation.

    Political conflicts

    What eventually became Haiti was originally born out of conflict between the Spanish and the French over the western portion of the Spanish island colony of Hispaniola. In resolving the dispute, the western part of the island, where the French had settled by 1625, was ceded to France in 1697.

    For nearly two centuries (1625-1804), the French colonists extracted the last drop of labour from West African slaves brought in to work on the sugar cane and coffee plantations. By the time of the French Revolution in 1789, the colony had emerged as France’s richest colonial possession and one of the richest colonies in the world.

    However, the economic boom would soon perish. It all started with the struggle for independence. Piggybacking on the French Revolution, the slaves mounted their own revolution against the French. After 12 years of conflict, Napoleon Bonaparte’s army was defeated, and the French territory was renamed Haiti on independence on January 1, 1804. By this feat, Haiti became the only nation in history that was established by a successful slave revolt; the first country to abolish slavery; and the first independent nation of the Caribbean and Latin America.

    These feats notwithstanding, Haiti would know no peace. First, fearful of the spread of independence revolt to American slaves, the American government pursued international isolation of the newly independent nation.

    Heavy debts

    Second, the French returned with warships in 1825 to demand compensation for the loss of their colony and the plantations. The agreed sum of the compensation seriously undercut Haiti’s economic activities for 122 years! By the time the compensation was fully paid in 1947, Haiti was already sinking under political turmoil.

    For a century after independence, Haiti struggled but made no progress. Continued political instability in the early 1900s led to American fears of foreign intervention. As a result, the United States occupied the country for 19 years between 1915 and 1934.

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    Although the Americans tried to stabilize the economy during their occupation, their exit was followed by even more political instability and more debt. True, power did not change hands as frequently or violently as before when the Duvalier family (Papa and Baby Doc) took over for 20 years (1956-1986). However, instead of stabilizing the country, the Duvalier dynasty was marked by state-sponsored violence, corruption, and economic stagnation. Worse still, the dynasty incurred additional debts. Although the debts were eventually forgiven, political instability and corruption would prevent national development.

    Political instability

    Haiti has never been able to sustain democracy. Neither America’s Operation Uphold Democracy nor the United Nation’s Stabilization Mission has been able to salvage democracy in the country. Its leaders were either ousted in a military coup, forced to resign and flee the country, or assassinated. At least five Haitian leaders have been assassinated since independence, the most recent being Jovenel Moïse, who was killed in his bedroom on July 7, 2021.

    Natural disasters

    What is worse, nature has not been kind to Haitians. In 1994, Hurricane Gordon killed between 1,122 and 2,200 people. In 2004, over 3,000 people were killed in flooding and mudslides by Tropical Storm Jeanne. Again, in 2008, a series of Tropical storms killed over 300 people and left as many as 800,000 in dire need of humanitarian aid. Two years later, in 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck, killing as many as 300,000 and displacing over one million people. Then in 2021, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck another part of the country, killing thousands more and destroying property.

    Images of the devastation from these disasters showed helpless people and grossly inadequate or weak structures, obviously a result of poverty and government neglect. Many were picking debris with bare hands, looking for loved ones still buried beneath the rubble or scavenging for food or something of value.

    Gang violence today

    Genuine efforts to deliver food and medical aid to thousands of victims of natural disasters were often disrupted by criminal gangs and mob violence. Haitians fought for 12 years for self determination and attained independence 220 years ago. Today, they are the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere, struggling for survival. On several occasions, the international community, led by the United States, has come to Haiti’s aid.

    Unfortunately, gang violence has delayed the latest attempt at a temporary resolution. A nine-person (recently reduced to eight-person) transitional council set up by the international community has been prevented from naming a transitional Prime Minister, following Henry’s planned resignation. It is now hoped that the council would meet next week.

    Some Nigerians may begin to see some of Haiti’s problems here at home, such as poverty, hunger, and infrastructural decay. They may think that there is no difference in the violence by gangs and violence by Boko Haram and bandits. After all, they are all non-state actors. Nevertheless, only those who have been to Haiti or otherwise know the country well would realise that there really are no comparisons. The differences between Nigeria and Haiti are far more than the similarities in substance and scale. But that is a subject for another day.

    Given Haiti’s enduring historical and cultural ties to Africa as well as its use as a reference point for Blacks, the time to acknowledge Haiti’s problems as Africa’s problems is now. This is particularly true of the West African subregion, from where most slaves in Haiti were taken over 400 years ago.

  • TV name runner; murdered military; school security

    TV name runner; murdered military; school security

    Why, when guests are on TV, is the name runner left for such a short time for both local and international programming? If the foreign media does not leave the name of the person speaking for an intelligently long period of time, why must local Nigerian programming follow suit? How can a person who tunes in late watch for 15 minutes an interview with no name appearing, just because ‘That is how we were taught’? It is now obvious that you were taught wrong and should improve on your teachers’ efforts.  Does leaving the name runner permanently hurt anyone or limit the view in some way?

    Conclusion: Leave the name runner on the screen throughout the appearance so it can be read and remembered. It costs nothing!  Why hide the name of your media guest during an interview in AFRICA? Both the viewed guest and the viewing public lose.

     Murdering soldiers on peace missions…In a country in which no war has been declared, there can be no justification for the murder and capture of the weapons of 14 decorated soldiers and distinguished officers of the armed forces while on a peace mission between two communities. These soldiers and officers were already recognised for their dedicated combat experience in theatres of Nigeria’s many ‘We Are Not Yet At War’  combat areas in our over 20-year terrorist incursion mainly in the North.

    Now it has been murderously shown that even where there should be relative peace, a war-like situation can arise in seconds and transform military peace path into a pirate or terrorist driven bloodbath and a watery grave. Even the hostage they sought to negotiate release of, was also found dead, executed and floating in the water with his hands tied behind his back and some of military bodies had been mutilated. Many mourning widows and children. Nigerians remember Odi, a town Bayelsa, in which 12 policemen were similarly murdered by local gangs on November 5, 1999.  Under President Obasanjo the military went in on November 20, 1999 to reassert authority with many more casualties and homes lost. A court in 2013 ordered the federal government to pay N37b of a demanded N100b, as compensation, for completely destroying the town with loss of an estimated 60-100 civilian lives according to the court records.

    It remains to be seen what lessons the federal government reaction will show have been learnt  in 2024- 25 years later, as we struggle to understand this callous and needless loss of military lives and family men on national services  at the hands of yet another gang or group of terrorists using villagers and townsfolk as human shields. Is there any ‘measured response’ to such mindless violence?

    Will history repeat itself or will the real criminals be brought to book? Human rights are of maximum importance when human wrongs have been done on such a massive scale. It is reported that areas have been destroyed. We pray the gang was neutralised or arrested. 

    Note that those ‘We Are Not Yet at War’ skirmishes have still managed to have caused over five million Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, in and outside camps and cost the blood of hundreds of thousands of murdered and millions of injured, physically and mentally abused suffering from PTSD and the scars of losing thousands of homes, hundreds of thousands of hectares of land – stolen and insecure-. Lost jobs, schooling and even identity and entire future. 

    Read Also: Senate passes N446bn FIRS 2024 budget

    The callous kidnapping of 280 children, a heinous crime, is still raw on our minds as the military grapple with the task of liberating them from their kidnappers who use the children as human shields who could easily become their killers as they have no human value of even children apart from cash. You cannot imagine the anger, terror, anguish and torture that child, parent and siblings are going through.

    Have we lost the opportunity of a 280-child rescue without ransom and reward for the kidnappers? Every police and armed forces report and documentary earmarks the value of the first 2 and 48 and 72 hours. It is 10 years since Chibok more than 1400 children demonstrate that needed lessons learnt are yet to reach the classroom or they should have caused a different, more positive outcome from what we have seen.

    What happened to the much talked about ‘SECURITY VOTE’ and the longed-for realisation of the apparently fictional tweaking of the mysterious ‘SCHOOL SECURITY ARCHITECTURE’. We had expected to hear of panic buttons, secret alarms, sirens, cell-phone spies, bush fires and even different colour of clothing as signs of passing terrorists should all be in place as well as drone surveillance. By now Nigerians hoped for an Emergency Elite Anti-Mass Kidnapping Airborne Brigade which can be flown to an advanced location to obstruct, encircle, redirect, restrict and contain such gangs of assassins and hinder their exit while larger forces quickly move up from behind to encircle the offenders. Even if the children were force-marched or forced to run, an immediate  perimeter at 10 or 20 kilometres within an hour or two would have been able to cause disruptive release of many  of them, without any shot being fired.

    The whole country is praying in support of the 24 hours/ day efforts of the various political and security organs linked with international satellite heat-seeking surveillance to bring our children home alive. Amen.

  • Trust deficit in Nigeria

    Trust deficit in Nigeria

    Societies function smoothly on the basis of trust. You drive on the roadway, trusting that other drivers will obey traffic rules and regulations. You eat at a restaurant, trusting that the food will be safe. You go to the polls, trusting that your vote will count. You pay your tax, trusting that the government will do the right thing with the money. You deposit your money in the bank, trusting that you will have perpetual access to your funds, and without unnecessary charges for doing so.

    However, trust deficit occurs when social, economic, and political activities are shrouded in doubts and misgivings. Trust deficit is optimal when a large segment of the population lacks faith or trust in social, economic, and political institutions. Trust deficit is a global phenomenon these days, leading to the rise of populist candidates, who ride on voters’ distrust of political institutions. We saw this in the election of populist, autocratic leaders in otherwise democratic countries, such as Viktor Orbán (Hungary); Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil); and Donald Trump (United States).

    In Nigeria today, trust deficit goes beyond social, economic, and political institutions. It extends to traditional and religious institutions as well. Trust deficit is particularly high in public perception of government and its institutions in every sector.

    True, trust deficit is quite high today, but it has been festering since colonial days. Trust deficit killed the development of Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba as national languages. Yes, they were later written into the National Policy on Education and the constitution but the implementation was never enforced. It also delayed the attainment of independence as one part of the country said it was not ready yet. Trust deficit within and across regions led to the collapse of the second republic and subsequent military take-over. Mistrust also led to various coups and counter-coups thereafter. With the return of democracy in 1999, the opportunity to rebuild trust was again truncated by personal, ethnic, and religious rivalries.

    In no time, rigged elections, poor governance, corruption, oppressive banking policies, and the erosion of moral values further destroyed the basis of trust in social, economic, and political institutions. More recently, social media came to provide a fertile forum for promoting distrust in government through misinformation, negative propaganda, and false representations. The result is the juxtaposition of truth and untruth and their interpolation with ethnic and religious divisions.

    Perhaps at no time has trust deficit in government been this notable, starting with the 2023 presidential election won by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission to upload results to its viewing portal created doubts about the results of the election, leading to the neglect of other areas which attested the authenticity of the results.  Political opponents, notably in the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party, have carried over the animosities of electoral defeat and tripple legal losses, by opposing every move the President has taken so far, even when they promoted similar policies as candidates.

    To be sure, things are really hard on the masses as a result of the removal of fuel subsidy and the elimination of multiple foreign exchange rates. Detractors have capitalised on the negative effects of both policies to drive a trust wedge between the public and the government. Yet, these policies are necessary to end decades of putting money in a few hands at the expense of the same masses, who now mistrust government.

    Leading economists have pointed out repeatedly that these negative effects are temporary and that things will be better over time. We are already seeing some positive results. The Naira has appreciated in value, by gaining as much as N600 in dollar exchange. Direct foreign investment is picking up, and the economic outlook is shaping up better than before.

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    The truth is that public trust in government institutions can neither be taught nor legislated. The best cure is to strengthen social, economic, and political institutions in order to optimise their performance. The starting point is to strengthen the civil service, which is responsible for implementing government policies. A situation whereby the Head of Service of the Federation, Mrs Folashade Yemi-Esan, and other senior civil servants were absent from an event honouring eminent retired Permanent Secretaries does not indicate that the civil service is on the mend, the more so when the Head of Service was expected to declare the conference open on behalf of the President (see Martins Oloja, Reflections on Nigerian Public Service: An outsider’s perspective (1)).

    At the same time, ministers and subnational leaders, especially Governors, have a duty to ensure implementation of mandates and directives from the Federal Government. The President did not need to remind state Governors, as he did recently, about the effective distribution of wage awards and palliatives, which have been made available to them.

    In the meantime, however, the government needs to develop better ways of reaching different segments of society about the advantages of government policies and the state of implementation. Palliatives should not be limited to Naira and rice alone. There should be lexical palliatives as well—soothing words from the President, Governors, Ministers, legislators and other leaders to assuage the pain and raise public hope. In particular, there should be periodic updates about improvements in the economy and public assurances that those improvements will trickle down over time. It is important to realise that trust deficit also thrives on information deficit.

  • 280+ children taken; pension arrears= capital offence

    280+ children taken; pension arrears= capital offence

    We had the exciting phrase ‘security architecture’ bounced around in relation to the despicable Chibok ‘assault on the country’s children’.  Now more desperate parents face more torture with further mass kidnappings, 280+ children and teachers last week. At what point do we ‘ADMIT WE ARE IN A STATE OF WAR’ and know militarily that we must surround and destroy the enemy and not just confront the enemy and allow it to relocate to kidnap more children elsewhere tomorrow? Nigeria is well covered by satellite should pay for access to  European Union, United States, Russian, Chinese, Australian, Middle Eastern cross-referenced satellite information covering 200 kilometres around the Ground Zero from seven days before the attacks till today. It is the only remote way to get ‘WHERE THEY CAME FROM’, ‘HOW THEY CAME’ and ‘WHERE THEY HAVE GONE’. But I guess the military is doing this already. We pray for their safe release with minimum trauma.          

    A state in Nigeria has pension arrears since 2007. The governor has announced that the effort to pay is ‘a Capital Project’ meaning that it is being moved from a budget item under ‘Recurrent Expenditure’ to ‘Capital Expenditure’. This is indeed a unique solution to a shameful, disgraceful failure of past administrative performance and an example of bad governance. We must congratulate the governor for tackling this huge burden. Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State met a similar criminal accumulated pension debt and has since liquidated it. Congratulations.

    It demonstrates a serial ‘Failure to Practice Good Governance’ or fulfil the serious responsibilities of office on the part of the 2007-to-date governments. Imagine the despair of the thousands retiring from a working life for government. The huge devastation, deprivation, denial of normal life and devaluation of the person -emotionally, economically and socially-, in the Nigerian nuclear and extended family and wider Nigerian society is unimaginable. 

    The state of ‘chronic pensionlessness’ has certainly led to more disease and worsening of disease and more early death of pensioners and their loved ones because medical treatment is  out of reach of the penniless pensioner. The pensioner also loses the respect of the children and grandchildren as they cannot perform simple grandparent tasks like providing ‘sweet, biscuit or akara and emergency supplementary pocket money’. The unpaid pensioner is immediately turned from an earner and retiree to a koboless beggar with no hope and a burden dependent on the children for medicines, food, shelter, transport and clothing.

    So, because pensioners and their family members sometimes die, the non-payment of pensions should be designated ‘Capital Offence’ and past governments and the leadership should be accused of such ‘Capital Offences’ and punished accordingly especially as worldwide politicians and sportspersons and others are in court for past irresponsible offences  when they were younger.

    Past governors and even presidents and their top government officials have a lot of negligent behaviour to apologise and make reparations for. They must forfeit their personal property to partly offset the unpaid pension. Yes, governors complain that previous governments deliberately employed political deadwood just to economically and politically annoy and destabilise incoming governors by giving them an added salary and pension burden.         

    The governor or president faced with a multiyear and multibillion naira backlog of pensions is very frustrated at the irresponsible behaviour of his predecessors in office who, by failing to pay pensions, failed to keep their Oath of Office and are seen to be getting away with negligence, fraud, diversion of funds, and spreading misery and even murder among their voter population.

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    What an insult to Fellow Nigerians  who elected or were forced to allow the leadership  to be ‘selected’ and imposed on the population which looked up to them only to be exposed to malignant criminal leadership failure. No one should be in responsible public office, elected or promoted, if they do not want to meet their sworn obligations to use the available funds for the budgeted needs in recurrent expenditure. Is there a single governor or president who does not know he must pay pensions along with salaries, electricity and water bills? Look at NASS and the presidency. They happily pay outrageous petrol and diesel bills but not electricity bills.  Sadly too many governors and even presidents have allowed both salaries and pensions to become ‘Party Political Pocket Money’ and just another usable item in the long list of mis-usable and abusable items like ‘Maintenance’ under ‘Party Political Propaganda’, Even granted that governors hate leaving things in good order for the next government, they should remember they are ‘governor’ and not ‘God’ denying the Human Rights of citizens to salaries and pensions and shirking their responsibility to honour their oath to provide them.

    Let us not pretend that the pension office like the tax office is somehow without fraud and immune from corruption.

    It was not so long ago that armed forces pensioners were forced to take over streets in Abuja. Recently we are told that 1000 widows of police or armed forces were given their rightful financial dues -how many years overdue?  Why was each widow not paid immediately as aright and honour?

     We are told fine new words ‘N3trillion legacy debts in electricity etc’. Legacy debt is misapplied to criminally ‘unpaid bills’ transferred government to governments as a yoke-a bad governance ‘inheritance’. They are evidence of financial crimes demanding EFCC investigation of the criminal burden passed to subsequent governments.

  • Ajaero on errand

    Ajaero on errand

    Some persons deserve pity for their actions. Others deserve education in order to modify their actions. Yet others deserve outright condemnation. Joe Ajaero, National President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, deserves all three for his incessant calls for strikes against a young government doing everything possible to correct decades of social, economic, and structural imbalances in the country.

    Pity

    Ajaero deserves pity for not knowing how to run a slave errand like a freeborn. As the leader of a large umbrella organisation, such as the NLC, he should not have agreed, in the first place, to run any errand for any political organization. But he did, and he chose to run the errand like a hungry lad, who, having come upon some food, used both hands to squeeze big portions into his mouth.

    True, historically, the NLC owns the Labour Party, which was established in 2002. However, under Ajaero, the relationship was reversed. The NLC was subsumed under the Labour party such that Ajaero’s bosses are the leaders of the party with whom he publicly associates, and who often quickly come to his aid, whenever he is in trouble or is simply criticised. Of course, it is well known that he shares ethnic and religious affiliations with the party’s presidential candidate during the 2023 presidential election. But his relationship with that party’s vice-presidential candidate is not all that clear. We do know, however, that he recently earned a law degree from Baze University, owned by the would-be VP.

    It would appear that Ajaero’s political agenda continues to becloud his judgement. That’s why his protest in his native Imo state attracted physical confrontation the other day.  It was election season, and a Labour party candidate was flexing muscles against the incumbent Governor, Hope Uzodimma, who was seeking reelection.

    Nobody believed Ajaero when he argued that the protest was against Uzodimma’s failure to fulfill his promise to the NLC. The timing was wrong. Listen to Uzodimma: “What has happened in this ugly coincidence is that the National President of the Nigeria Labour Congress is from Imo state and has not been able to demarcate the difference between being a national leader of an organisation and then an interested party in local politics”. The non-partisan South East Transparency Initiative confirmed the Governor’s observation, by alleging that Ajaero had a mission to derail the November 11, 2023, governorship election for political reasons.

    Senator Adams Oshiomhole, himself a former Governor and former National President of the NLC, corroborated this view: “Unfortunately, this strike is not about those (economic) issues. And I think we have to be careful not to mix our political opinion with our responsibilities.” Recalling his own experience as NLC President, Oshiomhole added: “I was not anybody’s boy. I wanted to make my decisions. I took responsibility for those decisions. You couldn’t find me in the house of a politician.”

    Let me make it clear: In civilised democracies, there is nothing wrong with a union endorsing a presidential candidate. Just last week, several workers’ unions in the United States endorsed Democrat, Joe Biden, for the forthcoming 2024 presidential election. The unions include the United Auto Workers Union, the Actors’ Equity Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the American Federation of Government Employees.

    What is different from the Ajaero-led NLC is that, beyond endorsements, the American unions do not identify with any political party. Moreover, they do not participate in political meetings, and are not paid for their endorsements. Most importantly, they do not harass the government. Rather, they direct their protests at specific employers. For example, on different days last year, President Biden and former President Donald Trump joined the Auto Workers strike against the leading auto makers, demanding better pay.

    Education

    Ajaero should not be in want of knowledge about the economic situation in the country and why we are in this mess. He is well educated, having earned a Bachelors degree from UNN, a Masters degree in Business Administration from UNILAG, and several diploma and certificate courses from Cambridge and Harvard Business Schools as well as from the International Labour Training Institute in Turin, Italy. He is also a trained journalist.

    Read Also: NLC can’t be compelled to work with other unions, says Ajaero

    Against these educational backgrounds, Ajaero cannot claim not to know about the plundering of the Nigerian economy by previous administrations. He cannot claim not to know that between the immediate past CBN Governor and the immediate past President, the nation’s debt portfolio reached an all-time high. He cannot claim not to know that the present administration inherited not only a high debt profile but also an empty treasury. He cannot claim not to know that more oil is reportedly being stolen in the creeks, at pipelines, and in the high seas than is reported to the government. He cannot claim not to know that the former President deferred the removal of fuel subsidy for Tinubu to confront on assumption of office, by not including fuel subsidy in the budget as from June 2023.

    If Ajaero knows all this, where does he expect the government to find the funds to meet all his demands? And why not give the young government some more time for its policies to mature and for the fulfillment of its promises?

    Condemnation

    Ajaero’s problem, is his inability to know the appropriate time for action. It is bad enough for him, as NLC President, to wear the cap of the Labour Party. It is worse not to know where and when to wear it.

    After all, he has an alibi for protests. It is true that the economic situation is dire: Inflation is high. Food prices are high. The prices of petroleum prices are high. Youth unemployment is high. Yet, salaries and wages have stagnated. Only the rich can do philanthropy these days.

    Ajaero does not need a strike to make these points. They are all self-evident. They are existential. Nor does he need the militancy once associated with unionist culture. He does not need to shout down from rooftops. What he needs is continued engagement  with government and with other employers of labour. In negotiating with the government, he should realise that, in the present economic dispensation, it is as difficult for government as it is for the people.  

  • Nigerians and silver bullets

    Nigerians and silver bullets

    A little over 13 years ago, a 53-country Gallup poll scored Nigeria 70 points – rating it the most optimistic nation on earth. It even outperformed Britain which only managed 44 points. People were incredulous given that the country was still grappling with the old demons of poverty, corruption and violence.

    Last year, the Global Happiness Ranking after analysing data for four years beginning with 2020, placed the country 95th out of 146 countries polled worldwide and sixth in Africa.

    Many would compare the findings above with their reality and cry: lies, damned lies and statistics! Today, the buzzwords are ‘hunger’ and ‘hardship.’ They are in most newspaper headlines; on the lips of many people. It’s not dissimilar to the situation in early 2023. What with the fuel scarcity and Godwin Emefiele’s disappearing naira.

    Pain has never been popular anywhere in the world. Even the most stoic people just bear it and carry on, waiting for better days. In a notoriously impatient nation uncommon economic challenges have created an air of crisis. Everyone wants a solution and they want it now.

    You can say the current problems have come about because fuel subsidy was removed and the naira floated. You can even hark back to the N30 trillion ways and means outlay which the Central Bank under Godwin Emefiele afforded the Muhammadu Buhari administration and, in so doing, snuffing life out of the naira.

    What you cannot ignore is that many are cashing in to make a bad situation worse. Some are doing so to make a point and justify their political choices; others, simply out of spite and hate.

    Such is the breakdown of trust between government and the governed that not many believe anything that comes from officialdom. That’s why claims of sabotage are often quickly dismissed as propaganda and excuses. Of course, we know the economic problems are down to more fundamental structural issues.

    They have been long in the making and would require an extended period to unmake. It’s the politically-incorrect thing to say in an environment where many expect a silver bullet to be deployed to bring dramatic change.

    You hear people tell the president to do something urgently. They warn the country is sitting on a keg of gunpowder, about to be blown to smithereens. For all the alarm bells they have rung, I am yet to hear anything that approximates a magic formula. I suspect that’s because no one has it.

    Instead, there have been a few short, medium term and long term solutions proffered. The trouble with these is the assumption that our problems are down to systems of governance only, ignoring the human dimensions to our troubles. It is for this typically Nigerian factor that methods which work optimally elsewhere, fail woefully down here.

    One of the more interesting proposals is the move by 60 members of the House of Representatives to return the country to the parliamentary system of governance.

    Spokesman for the so-called Parliamentary Group, Abdulsamad Dasuki, which has introduced a constitution amendment bill, argues that the failings of the presidential system are glaring.

    He said: “Among these imperfections are the high cost of governance, leaving fewer resources for crucial areas like infrastructure, education, and healthcare, and consequently hindering the nation’s development progress, and the excessive powers vested in the members of the executive, who are appointees and not directly accountable to the people.”

    If proponents successfully navigate the long road to passage, the amendment would take effect in 2031.

    The strongest selling point of their plan is cost-cutting. Perhaps the 2031 vintage of the parliamentary system would work if foreigners are imported to implement it. We’ve travelled this road in the First Republic and it all unravelled in just five years.

    The same factors of ethnicity, regional competition, personal ambitions, corruption, violence and incompetence which the military used as excuses to intervene in January 1966 are still there today. If this system was the cure-all that the country needed, the military under the late General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi wouldn’t have introduced a unitary system. They would have returned power to the next in line following the death of then Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa.

    As part of the process that preceded the Second Republic, a Constituent Assembly presided over by the late Justice Udo Udoma engaged in lengthy debates that ultimately rejected the parliamentary system and plumped for the American presidential model. Many of the members were active participants in the First Republic – with experience in the system that some would have us believe is Nigeria’s solution today.

    The British parliamentary system is 223 years old and still going strong. The American presidential system invented in 1787 is even older. Both nations have had their challenges. The United States fought its civil war. They never changed their way of governance – beyond occasional amendments; they changed those who ran the system.

    For all its imperfections, Nigeria’s democracy has been self-cleansing. The Fourth Republic is 25 years old. In 2015 an incumbent president lost to the opposition candidate and handed over peacefully. Some would have us junk this model completely because of present challenges. The replacement would be something we last experimented with 60 years ago.

    At least, we can credit the Parliamentary Group for proposing that which can be actualised through lawful means. In the last few weeks we’ve also received proposals from the lunatic fringe in the form of calls for military intervention.

    Although the Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, has strongly denounced those soliciting soldiers to embark on treasonable actions, yesterday Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Taoreed Lagbaja, reiterated the military’s commitment to defending democracy and constitution.

    While many may not have taken the coup talk seriously, whatever unease may have existed probably came from the recent rash of such excursions in the likes of Niger, Mali, Gabon and others.

    An even stronger reason for dismissing it is because there was such solicitation by the Anyone-but-Tinubu gang in the days following the declaration of the results of the February 2023 presidential elections. Their goal was to scuttle the inauguration of the winner. They never got over their loss and see in current challenges an opportunity for regime change.

    Only the total clueless would consider the military a viable option. Nigeria is not Niger. It is a strategic and massive country with over 200 million people. The world won’t stand for military the meddling in its governance. It would be swiftly turned into a pariah with the pain flowing to us all.

    Nigeria of 2024 is a totally different proposition from the country it was in the heydays of coups in the 70s and 80s. The world has changed politically and technologically. We saw in the experience of Turkey how in 2016 a putsch was frustrated by the populace using social and traditional media.

    Despite our frustrations with politicians and the process, the last time Nigeria was under the military was 25 years ago. It is the longest stretch of civil rule ever in this country and evidence of our commitment to democracy. The reactionary forces who would love to take us back forget that when soldiers intervene, they don’t just sack individuals, they overthrow the constitution with all the rights it guarantees.

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    They bulldoze every political institution – be they presidents, senators, Reps, governors, state assemblymen, local government chairmen etc. It doesn’t matter whether the office holders are APC, PDP, Labour Party or APGA. That’s why people must be careful what they wish for.

    Perhaps, the most annoying aspect of military intervention is the presumption. A bunch of unelected gun-toting soldiers impose themselves without our consent. They govern without proof that they can do a better job than those they ousted.

    A history of modern Nigeria can be titled: ‘How the Armed Forces Underdeveloped a Nation.’ They come promising to clean up but end up worse than the bandits they toppled. Long after his death, Nigeria keeps receiving repatriated millions of dollars looted by General Sani Abacha whilst he was Head of State.

    Some West African countries that allowed they to be seduced are learning the hard way. Take Guinea for instance. In September 2021, General Mamady Doumbouya overthrew President Alpha Conde.

    The junta banned all demonstrations in 2022 and arrested several opposition leaders, civil society members and journalists. Internet restrictions imposed three months ago were lifted recently, just days after unions declared a general strike over rampant inflation and hardship. The Guinean military haven’t been an improvement on the flawed democracy they truncated.

    Every country goes through trying times. In the 80s, it was as if half of Ghana emptied into Nigeria. When they were humiliated and chased out of this country, departing in cramped lorries, with their belongings stuffed in Ghana-Must-Go bags; they left to begin the long process of fixing their home. It wasn’t long before Nigerians started flocking there to buy property and enjoy stable electricity.

    It’s time we accepted that only hard graft and staying the course will get us out of the woods, not aimless chasing after silver bullets.