The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Scrap ‘Passport LGA Letter’; 56 women kidnapped; Three Obas murdered

    Scrap ‘Passport LGA Letter’; 56 women kidnapped; Three Obas murdered

    Stop blaming INEC for any last Saturday’s bye-election disruption and thuggery. Blame instigating politicians who should be prosecuted and they and their party banned for 10 years. 

    We must reiterate last week’s call on this page for the need for an urgent solution to the new bureaucracy-created delay in ‘Renewing or New Passports’ demonstrating how a good beginning can fail to cross the ‘for public good’ finish line’.  Government should please SCRAP The OFFENDING LGA LETTER REQUIREMENT which, as expected is converted into a corruption scam with delays and costs to citizens. Certainly, we must exclude criminally-minded foreigners from access to our treasured citizenship and passports without due process especially with the influx of millions from war-torn Sahel areas illegally for nefarious ‘electorate inflation’ voting, violence, terrorist, bandit, and herder reasons. However, punishing all, especially ‘passport renewals’ with this requirement, turns the much anticipated and wonderfully intentioned ‘Seamless Easy Passport Issuance’ into a new 2023 nightmare. Exactly what the government is trying to prevent, it is precipitating -delays, bottlenecks, extra bribery costs.

    The grand laudable ‘New Passport Plan’ was to put into simply practice compliance with worldwide standards of a ‘Speedy Contactless Passport Process’. ‘A letter from the LGA’ in the ‘List of Requirements’ is a negation as citizens’ LGAs have nothing to do with their right to hold a passport. An in-house review of the scheme as it stands is an advance on where it was before this regime took over. However, we are moving directly backwards to square one as the in-house corruption and delays of the Passport Office have merely been transferred to the LGAs which will happily and greedily take us back to the still very recent age of bribery and corruption. Let us add the dangers, difficulties and terrors of the long trip to an unwelcoming and hostile LGA probably not seen in the lifetime of the citizen needing a passport.

    Read Also; No petrol supply issues, says NNPCL

    Government officials often ignorantly make rules and regulations without streetwise context or thought for repercussions or strategic scenario studies on ‘WHAT CAN GO WRONG? HOW CAN THIS BE ABUSED?’ The result is a positive policy becoming negative and detrimental in practice, sometimes by accident, sometimes by design. Of course, the LGA chairmen will lobby against the cancelation of the letter requirement claiming potential loss of income and relevance. But a government review will show the LGA letter is more harmful than good with delays, costs, psychological trauma and corruption. The non-Nigerians who government is hoping to exclude will, sadly, be the first the bribe or intimidate to collect the letter ASAP. If not, they will terrorise and perhaps terminate the ‘stubborn, honest’ LGA officials who refuse demands. Were three Obas sadly, not killed in cold blood, executed, last week?

    Let us stop preying on Fellow Nigerians and treat them as true ‘Fellow Nigerian’. It is undoing or unnecessarily delaying the planned, but as yet unfulfilled, ‘contactless two-week passport issuance’, damaging both citizens and Nigeria’s ‘ease of doing business’. There is nothing contactless about getting to the LGA.

    We await the urgent removal of the LGA LETTER FROM THE PASSPORT APPLICATION REQUIREMENT BY THE WISDOM AND CITIZEN-FRIENDLY AND ‘SEAMLESS PASSPORT’ MINISTER. IF HIS HANDS ARE TIED, BY WHOEVER, THEN THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT MUST BE ASKED TO OVERRULE THE INSTRUCTION.

    In Katsina, 56 women kidnapped, and hundreds nationwide. Fear and sorrow everywhere! And now the execution of two Obas, and then a third Oba, a retired military general, the Oba of Koro, Peter Segun Aremu, should be shaking the ‘security architecture’, verbose words meaning nothing, to its foundation. The murderers aimed at three Obas in the first attack but one Oba escaped by the grace of God. Sadly, Oba Aremu’s wife and others were kidnapped for an unimaginably high N100 million ransom, others killed or wounded are also Fellow Nigerians. N100 million was the cost of the presidential aspirant’s form and was quickly adopted by kidnappers, from politicians, as a benchmark for ransom. Was Oba Aremu’s murder a separate killing or related? Yes, these murders are nationwide. Personally, we narrowly escaped after being surrounded in an attack on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway at Km 41 in 17-3-2017 at 3-4pm.  

    Why do we do not ‘declare war’ instead of the reactionary mobilisation activities and operations to areas long abandoned by the killers who escape unchallenged after attacks, kidnappings and murders? We must applaud the police and security services victories and sacrifice as we do know our armed forces are doing their best. But are available weaponry and logistics support modern enough? Our NASS legislators received N160 million bullet proof jeeps but Abuja is now a kidnap zone. Self-security over community security will fail. If that money had been spent on everyone’s security, Nigeria would be safer. Do our troops have night goggles, bullet proof vehicles, adequate IT and drone support and attractive salaries?

    Our NASS members are the only ones worldwide who have deviously arrogated to themselves annually multiple millions so as to afford to ‘give away’ millions in misnamed ‘DOD-‘Dividends of Democracy’ aka ‘Deception of Democrazy’. No! It is our money. Meanwhile insecurity bars many from their LGAs. Let us stop this ‘LEGALISED ILLEGAL LEAKAGE’ of Nigeria’s funds, and strip politicians of the ability to misspend the citizen’s money noisily in the media on ‘criminally self-branded palliatives’, grinders, motorcycles, sewing machines, etc. while fattening the or political pockets -a corruption photo-trick. 

  • Renewed Hope Agenda: Waiting for the harvest season

    Renewed Hope Agenda: Waiting for the harvest season

    In an exchange with a revered elder statesman recently, my attention was drawn to the venom with which the opposition criticizes the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration, especially on social media. I had made exactly the same point to a group that sent to me a purported video of a party allegedly attended by a state Governor. To be sure, no law prevents any Governor from attending a social event anywhere in the world. However, critics are often eager to jump on the optics against the backdrop of the present harsh economic realities. Even where the Governor is spending his own money, it is assumed that he is spending state funds.

    The criticisms get much sharper when experts debate Tinubu’s economic policies. The same experts who praised his boldness in removing fuel subsidy and initiating a level playing field for foreign exchange have since turned around to blame him. They were aware then that the preceding administration did not even include fuel subsidy in the June 2023 budget, which Tinubu inherited. They were equally aware that the consequences of both bold policies would be with us for some time to come. However, for them, 8 months is too long. It is like planting coconut and hoping to harvest it in one year. It surely will take much longer. How long will depend on the variety.

    That was the tone of the criticisms of the President’s Renewed Hope Agenda at the 21st Daily Trust Dialogue, titled Tinubu’s Economic Reforms: Gainers and Losers, held in Abuja last Thursday, January 25, 2024. That critical tone was best represented by the Labour leader, Joseph Ajaero, who categorised himself as a Loser in the discussion and spoke about the losses of the masses in the face of Tinubu’s economic reforms. His position was not unexpected, not only because of his alignment with the opposition Labour Party but also because of the harsh economic consequences of the reforms on the citizens.

    However, other participants were more circumspect in their criticisms of the reforms. While agreeing that it was too early to judge the effectiveness or otherwise of the reforms, the consensus was that their immediate negative effects cannot be denied. Not only do these negative effects persist, they are indeed worsening as both the cost of fuel and the dollar exchange rate hit their highest levels in the country’s history. It is true that millions are finding it difficult to make ends meet.

    Just two days ago, I went to a Pharmacy in Abuja only to discover that a drug I bought for less than N6,000 in 2022 now sells for N36,650! I was immediately confronted with three realities: (1) the skyrocketing increase in the dollar exchange rate; (2) the mopping up of the dollar in the black market by merchants, such as pharmacy owners, who need to purchase their drugs from the international market, and then pass the high cost to the consumers; and (3) the inability of the masses to access healthcare and purchase needed drugs. The escalating cost of drugs is symptomatic of the rising cost of living across the country.

    While there is no research finding to link the high cost of living with rising criminalities, there is a logical link. When graduates are unemployed, artisans become jobless, and millions more fall below the poverty line, many look to all kinds of criminal activity to make ends meet. Very soon, with the rise in criminality, agricultural production will decline as it did at the height of criminality a few years ago.

    Read Also: Shettima woos more support for administration’s Renewed Hope Agenda

    It is, therefore, not just important for the Tinubu administration to put in place necessary monetary policies to enhance the value of the Naira, it is imperative: The higher the value of the Naira, the lower will be the cost of goods and the easier it will be for reviving the moribund manufacturing sector. Even more importantly, the expansive informal economy will once again rise, while artisans will get more and more jobs. There is no doubt that the revival of these critical sectors of the economy will lead to more employment, while also reducing the lure into criminality.

    What remains unclear regarding the Daily Trust Dialogue was the conspicuous absence of the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, who, according to sources, accepted the invitation but failed to show up, without apologies. It was a missed opportunity for three reasons. First, if, indeed, he accepted to attend, an apology for absence was necessary. After all, the event was chaired by Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, who had held three key positions as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, Minister of Finance, and Minister of Budget and National Planning. It shouldn’t have mattered under which political party he held these positions. Second, the absence of the government’s perspective during the discussion gave room for various conspiracy theories, one of which, unfortunately (if not mischievously) is that the government lacks clear solutions to the economic problems its policies complicated. Third, Edun’s absence was a grievous mistake from media and public relations perspective.

    I have always maintained that this government needs all the opportunities available to explain its policies to the public and how the government plans to assuage the concomitant economic pains. Palliatives alone may not be able to assuage the pains. Inspiring words of government officials, such as the Finance Minister, will go a long way too.

    This leads to a critical question: How are the palliatives going? How is their distribution being monitored? Who gets rice or Naira, where, and when? What about the infrastructure fund? What and what have been put in place in which state? Certainly, there should be some reckoning, and the time is now.

  • Passports: stop LGA letter; Lawan; 2024 Police: labs, fingerprints

    Passports: stop LGA letter; Lawan; 2024 Police: labs, fingerprints

    Minister Ojo: New bureaucratic delays in ‘Renewing or New Passports’ demonstrate how a good beginning can collapse into ‘deliberate of accidental’ administrative culpable failure. Please SCRAP THE LGA LETTER REQUIREMENT which has mutated into a corruption scam with delays and costs and maybe apologise for failure to anticipate?

    Sixty-one year-old Farouk Lawan’s timeline to jail: Four-term House of Representatives member 1999-2015 [from 37yrs old, almost a permanent  member?] until accused in 2012/3 [11 years ago], as chairman of committee investigating fuel subsidy fraud, demanding  and/or receiving [under his hat?] $500,000 from Femi Otedola to remove his company’s name from a fraud list – a paradox. Otedola recorded him. After failure to blame Otedola for corrupting an ‘innocent’ Lawan, he, Lawan, was sentenced after eight years in court to seven years jail, later reduced to five years on appeal, in 2021, and forced to pay $500,000 to the federal government. The Supreme Court’s confirmation of conviction is relatively fast. Amen. Eleven years from crime to definite punishment, less than two years at Supreme Court. But despite pressures justice faced, delay machinations by ‘legal illuminati’ and this delivery of justice is still too slow to deter others.

    Note the ‘N100 billion fraud cases’ and ‘lesser thefts’ with Lawan-minded politicians and government officials, some hindering justice with technicalities and some still undiscovered.  Too many slow cases are winding through the courts, hampered, delayed and diverted by ‘any ‘SAN-itary means necessary’. What is the cost/punishment ratio? $500,000= N5,000,000,000 at current rates of N1000+/-N200:$1.He is being jailed for taking  $274/day[N274,000]x5 years – an expensive criminal.

    The citizens have victories as Pastor’ Feyi Daniels is sentenced to life imprisonment for two rapes. How many more were in his dreams for the future from his congregation and how many will nightly torment him from memory? 0, 100? He also predicted an ‘Interim Government’ displacing PBAT.  There as a conviction of a rape doctor and an academic for sexual harassment.  We must  congratulate and encourage the legal teams, NGOs, specialised police units, medical and social services especially of Lagos and other states who ‘TAKE RAPE SERIOUSLY’ and, instead of intimidating and insulting rape complainants into embarrassed silence, welcome, comfort, embrace, protect and guide them towards justice.

    The Minister for Police Affairs Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim must bring Police Investigation methodology and laboratories into 2024. Violated and socially disbelieved and victimised girls and women appear at security services, police stations and clinics everywhere. But they face an archaic, crime-insensitive police service with no ‘POLICE INVESTIGATION LABORATORY SERVICE’ backup. International television news, and Crime Scene Investigations (CSI), Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) etc. teach Fellow Nigerians the norm in what crime investigation should be, not nuclear physics. Nigerians maintain investigative laboratories like Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and food and beverages laboratories across the private sector and institutions – universities, polytechnics, IITA, etc. Are Police Pathology Labs internally sabotaged with diversion of funds? There are thousands of unemployed laboratory technicians sadly selling foodstuff because the laboratories do not exist to employ them. There is so much unsolved crime because THERE IS NOT EVEN COMMON FINGERPRINTING used in UK since 1858 AND STILL NOT USED BY NIGERIAN POLICE routinely who do not have a PROPER PHOTO DATABASE OF CRIMINALS. 

    Read Also: Immigration promises quick issuance of e-Passports to pilgrims

    The police must enter the 21st Century, 2024 and budget for best quality SON-approved POLICE LABORATORIES, FINGERPRINT, & PHOTO [MUGSHOT] & TATTOO DATABASES on national and state level as well, obviously, with adequate financial injection, relevant modern laboratory training in police colleges and upgrade to meet the 2024 need of victims of rape, robbery, bodily harm, kidnapping and murder.

    There is need for widespread introduction and familiarisation of a ‘STANDARDISED RAPE PROTOCOL’. Such a protocol is on Google, adaptable for the local environment. Acute rape cases are tragic and urgent and clearly expose the police and crime lab as deficient in their attitude and training capacity to properly secure and document the crime scene. I remember the hundreds of politicians, media and onlookers police tramping all over my first cousin, late Funsho Williams’ upstairs landing where he was murdered. No crime scene restrictions activities. Ditto for Uncle Bola Ige.  Does any police station have  a ‘ PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION KIT’ to secure the crime scene, duck-tape, plastic gloves and shoe-wraps to prevent contamination and evidence plastic bags and cameras [every inspector has a cell-phone with camera capabilities] and FINGERPRINTING SET to take and secure evidence of a quality and quantity that can get quick clear convictions.

    This chronic, dare I say congenital, persistent police laboratory crime scene deficit in collecting court-worthy evidence allows many cases to fail to reach court, leaving many victims suffering two assaults – the rape and then the robbery of getting justice through the fault of the investigating police. This makes many victims back away from the police/medical/justice system and live raped and robbed with no justice, and likely to see their rapist daily, in offices, pulpits, homes and streets.

    The victims and supporters must not be treated with embarrassment but encouragement, support, welcoming and being embraced. A recent rape victim must be rushed to see a medical doctor and police must take immediate possession of clothes, bedding etc. especially as now DNA is available. Do not rush them to the bathroom ‘to purify the victim or prevent pregnancy’ before medical exam as that washes away the evidence.  

    To demonstrate the stupidity of ‘mis-pastoring’ sometimes, what has God got to do with a ‘pastor’ ‘mis-predicting’ football match results between Nigeria and Cameroon?

  • Northern interests versus national interest

    Northern interests versus national interest

    Never mind their nationalistic posturing, many of our elite are at heart closet tribal champions and ethnic jingoists waiting to manifest. Squeeze them a little and they break out in their true colours.

    Their rhetoric shows that more than a century after the amalgamation by the British in 1914 of the Northern and Southern Protectorates, the lure of the tribe remains quite strong. That’s why we proudly rally round such groups as Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Middle-Belt Leaders Forum, Ijaw National Congress (INC) etc.

    Deep down there remains much anxiety about the long term sustainability of the Nigerian project. So, while pretending to be committed to some sense of nationhood, we spend our days prosecuting mini tribal wars – with unelected warlords leading the charge.

    One such war just broke out over the relocation of a few departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the headquarters of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) from Abuja to Lagos. Given the heat these seemingly innocuous actions have generated, you would think secession was imminent.

    In reality, these are just two out of hundreds of parastatals and agencies owned by the Federal Government. So why would matters of administrative convenience in a couple of organisations stir such much controversy? Politics, sheer political mischief!

    Here’s what happened. On January 12, the CBN announced plans to decongest its head office in Abuja.

    It explained the rationale behind the move thus: “The action plan focuses on optimizing the utilization of other Bank’s premises. With this plan, 1,533 staff will be moved to other CBN facilities within Abuja, Lagos, and understaffed branches.

    “Our current occupancy level of 4,233 significantly exceeds the optimal capacity of 2,700 designed for the Head Office building. This overcrowding poses several critical challenges.”

    Affected by the relocation are five departments: Banking Supervision; Other Financial Institutions Supervision; Consumer Protection Department; Payment System Management Department and Financial Policy Regulations Department. That’s just five out of the institution’s 17 departments. The headquarters and the office of the Governor remain domiciled in the federal capital.

    Just to confirm that there was nothing sinister about the move, a former Deputy Governor of the bank, Dr. Kingsley Moghalu, in a post on X, revealed that the CBN’s Lagos office was inaugurated 12 years ago but had been underutilised.

    He noted that the relocation addresses the overstaffing challenges at the Abuja headquarters, where the staff count exceeds recommended health and safety limits.

    Moghalu argued that the decision was logical because affected departments primarily oversee market entities situated in Lagos.

    With conspiracy theorists still chewing on the CBN decision, the announcement that the headquarters of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria’s (FAAN) would also be moving, was confirmation that that the end of the world had come!

    The organisation in a statement by Obiageli Orah, its Director of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection said: “Those affected by the decision to move the headquarters to Abuja have since returned to Lagos as there is no office space for them in Abuja. It was ill-advised in the first place to move the headquarters to Abuja when there was no single FAAN building in Abuja to accommodate all of them at once.”

    She explained that retaining the status quo would mean abandoning “the old FAAN building in Lagos to rot away and to use its scarce resources to rent an office space in Abuja for millions of naira of public money when in actual fact more than sixty percent of its activities are in Lagos given the huge passenger volume of the Lagos airports. The stakeholders and the Minister decided against that and to save the country from this waste.”

    Those vociferously opposed to the relocation would rather ignore important matters of waste of public resources that has been going on since the headquarters was moved in 2020. They are not concerned about prolonging the bleeding at a time when the nation is struggling economically. So much for love of country!

    What is particularly provocative about this controversy is the way it has been spun as an attack on a section of the country. ACF’s National Publicity Secretary, Prof. T. A. Muhammad-Baba, claims the moves were part of a plot to under-develop the North.

    “The CBN’s decision is no means of isolated or normal administrative action to fix some logistics problem. Rather, it fits into a disturbing pattern of antagonistic actions often taken by certain federal administrations against the interests of Northern and other parts of Nigeria,” he said.

    This raises immediate questions as to how the CBN and FAAN movements affect the North. Is Abuja capital of Nigeria or of a particular region? Is the federal capital the property of the North or of all Nigerians?

    This curious sense of ownership is perhaps borne out of the fact that in over 40 years either by design or otherwise only Northerners have been Ministers of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). When President Bola Tinubu broke that pattern with appointment of former Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, he was attacked by the likes of Sheik Ahmad Gumi as though he had done something sacrilegious.

    If people want to make a political mountain out of something as simple as the movement of an agency’s departments, then they invite awkward questions that people have chosen not to ask for reasons of national cohesion and peaceful coexistence.

    For instance, is there any provision of the country that requires that all parastatals of the Federal Government be located in Abuja irrespective of their operational peculiarities? For instance, does it make sense to site the headquarters of a marine-based agency in the federal capital?

    Have those hyperventilating about the CBN and FAAN asked why the overwhelming majority of the nation’s defence establishments are located in the North – Kaduna specifically? No one is making waves about this.

    Read Also: I’ll take on your concerns one by one, Tinubu assures South-south indigenes

    Can they, beyond an inexplicable sense of entitlement, explain why over the years certain federal ministries like Defence, Agriculture, Education, FCT, Water Resources etc. always ended up in Northern hands and no one cried foul?

    I would have been alarmed if the relocation meant Northerners working in these two establishments would lose their jobs. But that’s not the case. So in what way has the region’s interests been hurt?

    The curious position of the ACF has received backing from the Northern Senators Forum (NSF). Aside rejecting the CBN and FAAN relocation to Lagos, they argue the 2024 budget was not favourable to their region and threatened legal action to address their grievances.

    It is amusing that the legislators have just discovered that this year’s Appropriation Act doesn’t favour their region. It bears pointing out that all 58 of them participated in discussions that led to the passing of the budget in December 2023. Whether at committee level or as part of the whole house, they signed off on what was allocated.

    Are they now suggesting that someone cast a spell on them to pass a spending plan that doesn’t favour their region? As willing participants in this legislative equivalent of scoring an own goal they have no one else to blame but themselves.

    In trying to inflame passions or bully the rest of the country, the ACF, NSF and their co-travellers want to start something they cannot finish. Every section of the country can play the game of threats and bluff. But before going further they should spend quality time reading the constitution.

    Rather than wasting their days on mischief, there’s so much they can do to better the lot of their people. They can throw their collective energies into reducing the number of out-of-school children, synergise to get more people back to farms, improve access to healthcare and attack widespread poverty in their region.

    Their parochial agitation is a distraction the country doesn’t need at this time. I understand that individuals may be aggrieved over loss of privileges and access. Yet, in all their scheming they can never get to the point of convincing majority of Nigerians that what they define as their regional interest is superior to our overall national interest.

  • As Ondo enters 2024 election season

    As Ondo enters 2024 election season

    In line with relevant provisions of the Constitution and the Electoral Act, the Independent National Electoral Commission has fixed Saturday, November 16, 2024, for the governorship election in Ondo state, barely two months after the Edo governorship election. Moreover, according to INEC, party primaries will be held in Ondo state from April 6-27, 2024. It is left to each political party to choose a date within this period for the conduct of its primaries.

    A zoning convention, by which the governorship is rotated among the three Senatorial Districts, emerged by chance rather than by design. It became clear in 2016 that the first three Governors of the state since 1999 had come from one or the other of the three Senatorial Districts in the following sequence: Chief Adebayo Adefarati (North), 1999-2003; Dr. Olusegun Agagu, (South), 2003-2009; and Dr. Olusegun Mimiko (Centre), 2009-2016. Incidentally, too, each of these Governors chose a Deputy from the Senatorial District that produced his successor, although none of their Deputies ever became Governor. Thus, Adefarati chose Afolabi Iyantan from the South; Agagu chose Oluwatuyi from the Centre, and  Mimiko chose Olanusi and later xxx, both from the North.

    It was the desire to repeat this sequence that led the All Progressives Congress to zone the governorship to the Northern Senatorial District in 2016. This led to the candidacy and eventual election of Rotimi Odunayo Akeredolu, SAN (North) as the Governor in 2016 and his reelection in 2020. Akeredolu’s second term was terminated by death, after a protracted illness, and his Deputy, Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa (from the South) was sworn in on Wednesday, December 27, 2023, to complete Akeredolu’s term.

    By the original rotational sequence of North-South-Centre, it is now the turn of the South to produce a candidate, the North having done so twice. By convention, it will be the turn of the Centre again after the South has had its second chance. With the major aspirants for this year’e election coming from the South, it would now appear that the zoning issue has resolved itself once again.

    The erstwhile Deputy Governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, now Governor on account of his boss’s death, is doubly advantaged to run this year. First, he hails from the South and, therefore, meets the zoning requirement. Second, he is the incumbent Governor and can take advantage of his present position. Accordingly, as recently as Monday, January 22, 2023, newspaper and social media reports hinted at Aiyedatiwa’s approach to the appropriation of state funds to further his political ambition (see APC Primary: Aiyedatiwa begins consultations, The Nation, January 23, 2024).

    In the meantime, the APC party leaders have laid two precedents that should guide the primary election of its flag bearer in Ondo state. First, the party has been consistent in providing a level playing field for all aspirants, by not giving automatic ticket to anyone. Thus, in 2023, the party did not provide automatic ticket to David Lyon, who was declared the Governor-elect of Bayelsa state in 2019, but whose election was invalidated by the Supreme Court on the eve of his inauguration. Similarly, even where Governor Uzodima of Imo state had no contestant, he was still made to go through a primary election before he was declared the party’s flag bearer.

    It is against this background that the declaration by Felix Morka, the APC spokesperson, should be understood, when he said on January 18, 2024, that the APC has ruled out an automatic ticket for Aiyedatiwa, Governor of Ondo state in the 2024 election. Morka’s statement notwithstanding, Aiyedatiwa told a large group of selected party stakeholders on Monday, January 22, 2023, that “there is no vacancy in Alagbaka” that is, the Ondo state Government House.

    Read Also: EFCC to arraign ex- Anambra Gov Obiano over alleged N4bn fraud

    The second guiding precedent established by the APC leadership is the mode of primary elections. It has now become standard practice to hold direct (also known as open) primaries for the election of the party’s flag bearer in governorship elections. Accordingly, direct primaries were employed in the off-season primaries in Ekiti and Osun in 2022 as well as in Imo, Kogi, and Bayelsa in 2023. Even in Imo, where Governor Uzodimma was the sole contestant, a direct primary was still held.

    These two precedents have cleared the stage for the Ondo governorship primary contest in April this year. Already, many potential aspirants, mostly from the Southern Senatorial District, are lining up for the contest. It is as yet unclear how many contestants will enter the fray. However, three things are clear about Ondo state that should attract the serious attention of APC party leaders and the electoral umpires.

    First, Ondo citizens are highly politically conscious. As a result, they are willing to fight back if they felt that their mandate was stolen. This happened in the elections of the early 1960s, in 1983, and in 2007. In each case, Ondo state voters fought back, and won their stolen mandate, where possible.

    A second characteristic of the state is its progressive political leaning. As part of the old Western Region, Ondo state citizens aligned with Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his progressive political party, the Action Group. After Chief Awolowo’s death, the mantle fell on Chief Michael Adekunle Ajasin, also a progressive and a long-term ally of Chief Awolowo. Today, their political hero is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, also a progressive, for whom they voted overwhelmingly during the last presidential election. That’s why his recent intervention in the governance crisis in the state was met with complete compliance.

    Third, the state is still in mourning over the loss of their Governor, Oluwarotimi Odunayo Akeredolu, SAN, who is being buried on Friday, February 23, 2024, just about two months before the primary election. It is very important to remember him as we enter this election season. His memory should not be so quickly replaced with electoral machinations.

  • Bodija explosion; Neighbourhood responsibility or members’ irresponsibility?    

    Bodija explosion; Neighbourhood responsibility or members’ irresponsibility?    

    Hurray for rescue of the Al-Kadriyah victims, sisters of murdered Nabeeha. A callous killing demanding we have a paid informants’ network, IT and anti-terrorism structures.

    The Bodija, Ibadan explosion killed Fellow Nigerian citizens, injured many, destroyed about 20 houses, some uninhabitable and condemned, damaged 50-100 buildings, caused actual heart attack and death and terrified thousands. For me, the huge explosion suggested a kitchen gas explosion as the house shook and some small debris fell onto the roof. I ran downstairs to find my wife in the sitting room equally alarmed. There was no problem in the kitchen. We went outside. All normal. Nothing in the neighbourhood. So, where was it from?

    Then reports flowed like an internet river of disinformation, led by ‘Fake News Experts’ swearing it was gas, petrol tanker and then bomb. It was miners, political, incompetence or neighbourhood watch failure. We await the investigative report.

    If the explosion had been just one kilometre away from ground zero, it would have impacted Mokola, Sango with 500+ bodies due to higher population density. So, should we also be grateful that whatever error, omission or commission, was committed, it did not involve those areas of mass humanity? Yes!

    Our hearts go out to the families of the killed and injured ones, suffering unimaginably. There is and will remain Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, PTSD, beyond what anyone can imagine, predict or prevent with present and long-term therapy for the lead-weight, heartfelt, gut-wrenching, stomach-churning grieving on-going in families as you read this. Everyone affected should be encouraged to utilise any mental health support organisation available including, Asido Foundation [pls. Google ], of which I am a Trustee [full disclosure, I am not looking for anyone’s money], and individual psychiatrists and clinical psychologists offering themselves or are identified for this long-term purpose. Beyond fear, terror, despair and real anger at those, as yet ‘unknown’ perpetrators, be they innocent, passively guilty or genuinely guilty, there are other issues.

    There is the very real, immediate and long-term additional cost and consequence of a ground zero explosion crime scene, closed down for samples for international terrorism testing, collapse of the destruction, clearing of the mangled debris, repairs if possible and for many, the construction of completely new structures. Hopefully the exemplary authorities in government buildings controlling property in Bodija, will be encouraged by the governor and instructed to be very sympathetic and not see the disaster as ‘Manna from heaven’ to delay or [God Forbid] extort. Instead, it should be a call to deliver exemplary normal accepted service to innocent and mostly elderly retired poorly pensioned victims, largely depending on their children,  and for authorities to be ‘Faithful, Loyal, Honest and Just’ in their dealing with families of the ‘Ibadan Explosion Victims’ or ‘Bodija Explosion Victims’, whichever it becomes in future history books.

    Neighbourhood authorities are in focus as being associated or complicit by negligence with the explosion. Was it their own failure, or a security failure, which led to the explosion? I can make certain clarifications having been involved in Bodija Neighbourhood Associations since 1981 to date including patrolling at night. Neighbourhood associations depend entirely on the level of dedicated energetic involvement of minds, bodies and money of the dwellers. Sadly, too many dwellers do nothing, may or may not drop money and run away from work or are actually hostile, negative or toxic, poisoning neighbourhood relationships and stunting neighbourhood growth. They see the paid guards, unpaid by the truants throughout the year. The truants are unresponsive to good members who fund the N150-200+k /month or N1.75-2.4m annually to actually pay salaries of gatemen. What callousness.

    Read Also: Court adjourns Saraki’s suit against EFCC, ICPC, others

    But the Neighbourhood Association executive members cannot force un-responding refusers to pay. They can only appeal/beg for payment with no results. Even school/business/corporate members refuse/delay payments cruelly. So, most Neighbourhood Associations are maintained by a few dedicated realistic Fellow Nigerians probably just 20-30 out of 100 houses/flats/businesses in any neighbourhood while most just ‘siddon-look’!

    So, what stops anyone keeping dangerous things in neighbourhoods? Nothing. Neighbourhood associations have weakest links with too many refusing participation and active membership. But they are happy to use the gatemen, paid by others, to open the gate, even late. The weakest link is in neighbourhood dwellers out-rightly refusing to join the association or joining in name but no action. They are unavailable, their gate locked, permanent absentees at monthly meetings, refusing to pay even cheap dues [N1-4k/month] dues and Christmas/New Year Get-together levies and Project Support [road bumps to stop killing children and residents, pothole filling, gatehouse building and repairs. But they call police and make trouble when the gatemen, paid by few members, fail to open the gate for their visitors in a timely servile manner.

    Know that other bad-minded, serially intentional law-breaking members, can be model members, under the radar,  sometimes paying monthly as-and-when dues and  ‘donations’ and parade as active Neighbourhood Association members and friends of local and state security and may be awarded ‘Exemplary Neighbourhood Association Members’, while also criminally ‘open-secretly’ explosive-stockpiling in an obvious ‘zero-explosive stockpiling’ patrolled residential neighbourhood.

    The neighbourhood associations are hamstrung, with mostly older women and men, un-empowered, have no authority, but are truly worthy of great praise in the fight against robbery and terrorism. Shame on you/your company/school/ business if you do not voluntarily and timely, without being begged, support your Neighbourhood Association with your presence, dues and support.  Blame yourself, not the Neighbourhood Association. Act Responsibly.

  • MM Airport parking; Customs; Give millstones for corruption

    MM Airport parking; Customs; Give millstones for corruption

    We hail the new experience at Murtala Mohammed Airport (MMA). The officials generally are more courteous and willing to work as their responsibility, not a favour. Access and unloading remain problematic. We all hailed the four or five lane highway to the MMAirport, Lagos, thinking it would bring succour to the agony previously experienced trying to drop off passengers. Of course, it did, briefly. But why did Nigeria spend billions per kilometre, to meet international standards, only to close all but one lane to traffic by ‘security’ fiat? Wasteful. The Military Command should upgrade the MMAirport Checkpoint to open and monitor all four or five lanes and not a ‘one lane checkpoint’.

    It is not a 2024 airport access strategy to shut three or four lanes ‘for security reasons’. This bottleneck is costing Nigeria dearly in reputation, time and money. It will cost Nigerian nothing, but a larger military detail of 20 men in three or four rotations, to man all 4-5 lanes at once, 24/7 and keep the lanes open. Airport authorities and the federal government should not allow a bottleneck single lane security detail to frustrate their efforts. OPEN, BUT CONTINUE TO SECURE, ALL AIRPORT ACCESS LANES. This is 2024.        

    As we exit the MMAirport from the luggage hall we all face two exits ‘GREEN’ NOTHING TO DECLARE and ‘RED’ SOMETHING TO DECLARE. Surprisingly we witnessed Customs officers herding, like cattle, all passengers towards the ‘RED’ and stopping them from voluntarily going down the GREEN lane. Since two flights had arrived at the same time, imagine the unnecessary human and luggage jam, of 500 passengers that such a unilateral decision caused, against standard Customs Control standards. A Customs official has no right to force arriving passengers TO GO RED when they have nothing to declare and move TO GO GREEN. CCTV review by senior customs and airport staff in the luggage/customs exit will reveal the uniformed Customs officer culprits. Perhaps for them they prefer the old ways of everyone running the gauntlet of Customs greeting ‘wetin you carry’.

    Read Also; How I became Buhari’s special adviser on media, Femi Adesina narrates

    On exiting the Customs, after search, there is an unusually long journey to where the cars are. The journey included carefully guiding, with dangerous difficulty, heavily laden luggage racks down too steep ramps threatening the lives of passengers walking down the ramps ahead of the racks. Finally on ground level it is not yet Uhuru! Where is the car?

    ‘Car finding’ is a career move at MMAirport for every passenger on arrival back home. Worldwide, millions of passengers arrive and drop off and pickup seamlessly every minute of every day except in Nigeria, where car finding is actually made so hard as to appear to actually be nuclear physics. Why can the MMAirport authority’s transport division not work out a better passenger friendly mode instead of clamping at every opportunity? We do not even have to think. Why do we not follow the lead of Heathrow, Dallas, and Gatwick etc. and separate the pavement with high overhead labels into 10 metre A, B, C, D, E etc. 10 metre segments.  This will make it easy for passengers and drivers to locate each other especially now that all cars look alike. Immediately simply giving passengers more exit access to the apron making it longer. This is essential as the key is to spread the passengers and their mountains of luggage evenly out over a wider area, not confine them to the immediate exit area where no one wants to take second place.         

    The federal government should get the leadership of the country’s MDAs embroiled in massive anti-masses corruption to apologise to Nigerians on their way to prison. Nigeria likes to keep massive theft separate from the health and infrastructural losses caused by the theft of that stolen money. Let us actually equate stolen money to blood loss and life loss.  A pint of blood is N6-8,000. When you steal N8,000,000, the human cost of the mass criminality  is that you deprive Nigeria of 1,000 pints of blood. What is a life worth? Everything and nothing? You name the price please.

    My lifelong work, like for others, revolved around assisting brave women to bring life, truly priceless, into the world and sometimes seeing them lose their own lives and the babies in ‘The Most Dangerous Day In The Life Of A Woman’ and totally needlessly because someone had stolen the money for the blood through administrative theft or there was no electricity- a ‘from Abuja with love’ problem. What is the price of life? We need a price to quantify the human loss from the massive financial criminality in governance. N1m/life? So, someone stealing N100m actually takes 100 lives, N1b=1,000 lives. Corruption is certainly, a life sentence crime.

    In fairness, government sometimes comes up with genuine people-uplifting programmes, but without close forensic and ICPC and EFCC preventive monitoring, they too often are rubbished by the greed of the delivery chain which mutates into a greedy frenzy government food chain with little for the children. For years the school feeding scheme, NSIP, and even the NSITF, National Social Insurance Trust Fund activities, could have been textbook normal, amazing, but were subject to administrative and operational greed, stealing from children, women and workers nationwide. To steal the food and schoolbooks of children is a heinous crime, as it ‘better that a millstone, not a diamond chain, be put around the person’s neck etc. We need a lot of millstones. Think about it.

  • Kidnappings: Time for emergency action

    Kidnappings: Time for emergency action

    The brutal slaying of Nabeeha Al-Kadriyar, a 400-level student of Biological Sciences at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, by bandits who had abducted her entire family in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), has the nation riveted.

    She was the daughter of Alhaji Mansoor Al-Kadriyar, a senior official of the National Population Commission (NPC) whose life was turned upside down last Friday after he and his six children were snatched by men in military fatigues.

    Their abductors released him to go source for ransom. Where they were asking for N60 million, they are now demanding N100 million, threatening to kill another child if their demand is not met. The merciless killing of Nabeeha shows the threat is credible.

    Let’s not forget that the ruthless gunmen also murdered Al-Kadriyar’s brother, Abdulfatai, after he led policemen to chase after them.

    For Oladosu Ariyo, a lawyer, his nightmare began on the night of Sunday, January 7, when kidnappers seized 11 residents of Sagwari Estate Layout in the Dutsen-Alhaji area of FCT. Four of them included his wife and their three children. Their abductors have since killed Folasade, his 13-year-old daughter, over his tardiness in raising ransom.

    These are just some of the latest and most disturbing kidnappings which have been enveloping the nation’s capital in slow burn fashion over the past few months. It is estimated that at least 15 persons were abducted in Abuja and surrounding areas in the first two weeks of 2024. Last year, there were over 50 incidents involving more than 300 victims.

    Read Also: We’ll embark on massive education effort to combat insecurity – Tinubu 

    What I find most troubling is not just the increasing number of kidnappers, but their viciousness. Typically, they use the threat of harm to pressure their victims’ families. But in the callous killing of the Al-Kadriyar and Ariyo children, we see a different kind of animal has entered the fray; one for whom human lives mean nothing.

    While the country has become accustomed to mass abductions in Northern states, there’s something unnerving about the rash of such incidents in the nation’s capital – which ordinarily should be a haven of peace and safety. You could argue that in the hinterland security resources are stretched thin; but you can’t say the same thing about the FCT. 

    Late in December 2023, Defence Headquarters gave an update on troops on operations across the country, indicating soldiers killed 8,256 terrorists and rescued 4,620 kidnap victims in the past year. Such statistics are supposed to project success, but they also underscore the gravity of the situation. Where nearly five thousand victims were freed, depend on it that there are thousands of perpetrators still roaming free.

    In one recent incident at Nahuta in Kaduna State, 100 gunmen reportedly overran a military post and then descended on the local community in an orgy of looting.

    In many parts of the North, communities have learnt to live with the reality of bandit rule – surrendering to their taxes and torture. Over the years the tolerance level has increased where there should have been zero tolerance. This slow but steady surrender is partly responsible for the audacious forays into the FCT.

    Nothing appears to be working against the criminals. Bombings have not had the desired effect. To complicate matters, the recent misfiring at Tudun Biri in Kaduna State means it’s an option that’s unlikely to used too frequently given the backlash when things go wrong.

    Some thought that the introduction of harsher punishment might do the trick. At least 10 states have introduced the death penalty or life imprisonment for the crime – among them Kano in the Northwest.  Unfortunately, the bandits didn’t take notice. Actually, it’s not the severity of punishment that deters, but that certainty that it will come. In Nigeria, there’s no guarantee that punishment will swiftly follow your crime. 

    How many of the kidnappers who abducted scores of students from secondary schools in Zamfara or from several tertiary institutions and the Bethel Secondary School in Kaduna State two years ago have been apprehended and prosecuted? In all of those cases ransom running into hundreds of millions was paid to criminals who rode off into the sunset to live happily ever after. Those watching on the sidelines saw practical evidence that crime pays with little or no consequence.

    It’s hard to see the ransom economy suffering a downturn any time soon because the establishment no longer makes any pretence about discouraging such payments. In the recent case of the unfortunate Al-Kadriyar family, we saw former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, trumpeting his role in raising money to free the abductees.

    Why would anyone give up a line of business that pays hundreds of millions of naira for a few days’ work? Indeed, most people freed by kidnappers were let go, not because of the efforts of security agencies, but through payment of cash.

    In office, Pantami championed the NIN-SIM linkage as a game-changer in the war against insecurity. A few days ago he was moaning about security agents not using his pet formula to track kidnappers and others – evidence no doubt that what works elsewhere isn’t guaranteed to work here.

    Yet, solutions must be found urgently to what has become an emergency. Not too long ago President Bola Tinubu warned that his government’s target of a $1 trillion economy was in danger of not being met because of widespread insecurity.

    For the situation to change there must first be an understanding of why kidnapping and banditry are thriving. This crime isn’t tied to any political struggle like was the case in Colombia. Available evidence shows it is linked to the state of the economy. The decline of the last ten years has been followed by a dramatic rise in abductions for ransom by criminal gangs.

    While the economy may be a may be a major factor, there’s need for caution. A significant proportion of Nigeria’s 200 million population lives under the poverty line. But not all have used that as justification for taking to kidnapping. In fact, given the ambitious sums demanded for ransom it is clear that this isn’t just about people struggling to put food on the table but organised, big crime syndicates at work.

    How long it would take to stabilise the economy is a matter of conjecture. So, if that’s the magic cure then we are headed for further uncertainty. Still, an improved economy is no guarantee that criminality would end.

    Widespread economy prosperity remains a longer term fix, but there are short term interventions that must be implemented without further delay.

    For one thing, a national security emergency must be declared. This shouldn’t be the typical ’emergency’ that’s been proclaimed in other areas with little to show. It must have a few simple, implementable steps.

    For instance, the classic interpretation of roles for the armed forces and different security agencies must be adjusted. If we accept that the traditional definition of armed conflict has evolved and that the nation is currently at war with enemies within, then walls around turf must be brought down. More troops should be inserted to take back our forests and rural areas.

    We are not facing any current external threats so the considerable resources of the armed forces can be deployed elsewhere. The thousands of policemen loafing around on major roads inspecting vehicle documents can be deployed to rural areas to protect remote communities.

    The president should give service chiefs six months ultimatum to stabilise the situation or be fired. During the American civil war, President Abraham Lincoln kept sacking commanding generals in the face of consistent reverses at the hands of the Southern confederacy until he found the whiskey-swilling Ulysses Grant who appeared to be the only one winning battles.

    His appointment marked a turnaround in the federal war effort to defeat the rebels and keep the United States one. It is time to ratchet up pressure on our plethora of security agencies because bandits and kidnappers killing and maiming people just miles from the seat of power is terrible optics.

    Ultimately, the reform of Nigeria’s policing structures is something that can no longer be delayed. What is happening in Abuja and large swathes of the Northwest and Northeast show that current policing resources are grossly inadequate for the security challenges of these times.

  • Multiple cheers for Chief Bisi Akande at 85

    Multiple cheers for Chief Bisi Akande at 85

    Millions of Nigerians at home and abroad know him today as an elder statesman. However, such a label is both too general and too restrictive to describe the person and contributions of Chief Abdulkareem Adebisi Bamidele Akande, who celebrated his 85th birthday yesterday, January 16, 2024. He is often reverently referred to as Baba Akande, not so much in recognition of his age as in recognition of his leadership role in the fight for democracy, good governance, national development, equity, social justice, and true federalism.

    While this recognition led many communities to confer on Chief Bisi Akande various chieftaincy titles, including Asiwaju, Balogun, Basorun, Agba Akin, and Jagunmolu Oodua, various political leaders across the nation recognise his many qualities with superlative accolades. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu summarised these qualities: “He has always been a progressive; always noble and disciplined in thoughts and actions, as well as given to rational and enlightened ideals. He is a cherished friend and confidant, ever so generous with his wise counsel”.

    The accolades came together yesterday at the University of Ibadan International Conference Centre, when Chief Bisi Akande’s group of friends, led by his childhood friend, Emeritus Professor Olu Aina, launched the Bisi Akande Foundation on the occasion of Chief Bisi Akande’s 85th birthday. The encomiums by various participants, from President Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima to Governor Seyi Makinde, the host, and various State Governors only go to show that no single label could capture Chief Bisi Akande’s congeniality, his approachability, his invaluable counsel, and his immense contributions to education, corporate business, community development, politics, governance, statecraft, democratic growth, and national development.

    However, most Nigerians only came to know Chief Bisi Akande in the late afternoon. They marvel at the breath of his knowledge, his sagacity, and his congenial disposition, because they don’t know enough of his background. The truth is that Chief Bisi Akande is a self-made man, who, in the course of his own development, combined multiple tasks, professional orientations, and worldviews. While growing up, he freely  moved in and out of mosques and churches just as he admired his grandfather’s warring amulets, while also sympathising with his poor parents. Having lost both parents rather early, he drew strength from his traditional warrior background; multiple religious practices; complex life experiences, spanning different professions; multiple worldviews; and unparalleled self-discipline.

    Read Also; Why I didn’t sack Emefiele, Buhari explains in Adesina’s memoir

    Here is a man, who wanted to be a Mechanic but ended up as a classroom teacher for eight years between 1955 and 1963. He started building his own house in Ila with his first salary arrears at about age 20; shunned a funeral party for his mother in order to save money for his brother’s education; and, at the same time, saved enough money to enroll in correspondence tuition. After training professionally as a teacher in a Teacher Training College, he combined his teaching duties with professional training simultaneously to become a Chartered Secretary and an Accountant through correspondence courses from three different correspondence institutions in England.

    At age 23, he became an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries (ACIS) and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Cost and Management Accountants (FCMA). He would later join British Petroleum for the next 16 years, where he rose to managerial level, the last being Manager, System and Computer Services. The position opened him up to professional workshops and inservice training in Europe and the United States. The BP experience would prepare him for his respect for the management of funds, data preservation, and his current dexterity with modern technologies of communication.

    Just as he engaged in training in another profession while working as a teacher, his services with BP were interwoven with involvement in community development activities in Ila-Orangun, his hometown, until he was drafted into local politics as a Councillor and later as an elected member of the 1977 Constituent Assembly that wrote the 1979 Nigerian constitution. The experience brought him in contact with Who is Who in Nigerian politics at the time and prepared the way for his contact with Chief Obafemi Awolowo, whose political party he joined and whose model of progressive politics and governance he would adopt.

    By the time Chief Bisi Akande entered the upper echelons of partisan politics, his progressive teeth had been cut and refined, featuring a focus on projects and programmes that benefit the majority. He would serve progressive political parties as Secretary to Government, Deputy Governor, and Governor. Like Chief Awolowo, he believes that universal education and healthcare are possible, and he successfully put the ideology to test as Governor of Osun state.

    Once he quit elective politics in 2003, he was drafted again to the chair a political party. He would chair four progressive parties in a row, namely, the Alliance for Democracy, the Action Congress, the Action Congress of Nigeria, and the All Progressives Congress as foundation Chairman.

    What is easily discernible from the above summary is the progressive growth of Chief Bisi Akande’s activities from local to state to national and even international levels. As his activities expanded, so did his mind, his heart, his outlook, and the richness of his capacity to arbitrate disputes and offer invaluable advice. At the end of the day, Chief Bisi Akande became an encyclopedia of knowledge, who is able to discuss any aspect of national life as if each was his specialty.

    It is against the above backgrounds that Chief Bisi Akande’s contributions to the political process should be understood. His uncharacteristic boldness came from his warrior background; his firmness and didacticism from his teaching background; his prudence from his accounting and corporate experiences; and his foresight from his expansive store of knowledge.

    Those who know Chief Bisi Akande know that he only says what he means and means what he says. He tells it as it is, as in his autobiography, My Participation, which led Professor Wole Soyinka to tell the author to expect war, because the book burns many known politicians today with “the fire of truth’s passion that leaps at the reader from between the covers.” Similarly, Chief Bisi Akande does only what he believes in, regardless of market noise. For example, as Governor of Osun State, he had fewer than a dozen Commissioners; laid off redundant and unproductive workers; and built schools, hospitals, roads, and a monumental government secretariat being used till today, all without borrowing a penny.

    Unknown to many, Chief Bisi Akande is an avid reader and consumer of information from a variety of sources, including social media. He processes information with intellectual alacrity and writes his views in books, monographs, and speeches with uncommon clarity on topics, such as, education, devolution of powers, restructuring, obstacles to peace in Nigeria, and governance.

    I have known Chief Bisi Akande for over 70 years. One distinctive feature that has become his signature is his effusive smile, evident in photographs in which he appeared over the years. The smile is symbolic of the transparency of his inner core. With Chief Bisi Akande, what you see is what you get. He is as forthright as he is frank; as sympathetic as he is forgiving; and as true to himself as he is to others.

    May his years be long for us to continue to draw from his wealth of knowledge.

  • Energy poverty as the bane of development in Nigeria

    Energy poverty as the bane of development in Nigeria

    Energy is a shorthand for various sources of power, such as electricity, petrol, diesel, kerosene, gas, solar and other renewable energy sources. One of the major deprivations fueling world-wide poverty is lack of access to regular and affordable energy. Other deprivations include lack of access to healthcare, education, and meaningful income. These deprivations are rampant in Nigeria, where at least 46 percent of the population is rated as poor. That’s at least 104 million people, according to recent World Bank estimates. Majority of them have limited or no access to any source of energy beyond age-old firewood.

    Unfortunately, however, energy deprivation has not been given due attention, because it is either tucked away under living standards along with housing and drinking water or considered as part of infrastructure, where the focus is often on roads and bridges. Yet, energy, especially electricity, is universally acknowledged as the most potent catalyst for economic development and for lifting people out of poverty. It is needed for operating factories; for transporting crops and other goods; for powering or charging modern technologies of production and communication; for illuminating homes and offices, refrigerating foods, and operating household appliances; for powering schools, hospitals, financial institutions, and media houses, and so on.

    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 at all. Of those who have access to electricity, about 80 percent do not 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.

    Right now, the United States, our model country for the constitution and structure of government, has a generating capacity of about 1.3 million megawatts of electricity for a population of less than 345 million people. The electric grid in the country has been described as an engineering marvel: It has more than 9,200 electric generating units, producing more than 1 million megawatts of generating capacity connected to more than 600,000 miles of transmission lines! What is more, the largest source of electric power in the United States is gas. This is a commodity we produce in large quantities but have failed to properly harness it. Instead, we flare most of it!

    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. A hotelier in Lagos expressed doubts about keeping up with diesel costs to power generators, because of the high cost of diesel and continued electric power outage, sometimes for as long as three or four days in a row!

    Read Also: NSIA, All On collaborate on energy access

    Second, Nigerians from about age 45 and upwards 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, mostly their own children, are 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. Here, for example, is what a 32-year-old welder told me: “Sir, I changed from welder to okada rider when my generator packed up after one heavy job. I was using it everyday for two years. Now, I don’t get enough riders to make profit and petrol price is killing us. Now I want to go back to welding, but I can’t because I can no longer afford to buy and fuel a generator. The one I bought for 180,000 three years ago is not about 400,000. Where can I find that kind of money? If they (government) don’t do something about light (electricity), in two or three years, the youths will rise. The suffering is too much.”

    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.

    That’s why what manufacturers need to hear the most from the Minister of Trade, Industry and Investments, Doris Uzoka-Anite, during her ongoing tour of selected manufacturing industries, are assurances of stable, regular, and affordable electric power supply.

    Yet, we know that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is aware of the shortcomings of electricity supply and has robust plans for power generation and power sector reform in the country (see Renewed Hope 2023, pages 30-32). That’s why he acknowledged that “Our economy is constrained by our inability to generate, transmit and distribute power efficiently” (page 30). He has taken several measures to improve on the power situation. For example, he recently signed an agreement with the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to have Siemens inject 12,000 megawatts of electricity into the national grid. Regulations are 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. Furthermore, the presidency and the National Assembly are working on reforming the regulatory and governance structure of the nation’s power sector.

    But we have heard many of these ideas before, including contracts with Siemens by previous administrations. The expectation is that this one will be different, by producing desired results.