The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Restrain reckless rhetoric: Beware; mixed-ethnicity children listening!

    Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the APC has been declared by INEC as the winner of the Presidential Election 2023. Congratulations. 

    Some parties are going to court over the results as is their right. As an army of lawyers gear up, we should expect the usual jumbo-legal payouts. Is it time that a different group of lawyers attempt to sanitise the process in the pre-election period? Fear of an instant lawsuit for slander or libel could reduce lies flying about adversaries. This calls for “pre-election lawsuits” for serious deceptive information dissemination. Such information included confusing fake news like a ‘candidate has stepped down’.

    Hopefully the absent 60million voters in the February 25 election out of the 93 million registered voters will present themselves on March 11 if they can overcome the terrible orchestrated cashless-ness, the threat of criminal violence and any criminal disenfranchisement strategies by the political parties concerned and any colluding INEC officials. Or are the 60million voters fake?

    As we wait for the election of March 11, it is worth addressing an issue that has raised its ugly head. It is the RECKLESS RHETORIC of the current ongoing pre-election campaign. Political rhetoric is nothing new in a politics where the destruction of the reputation of the opponent with lies and mistruths is the norm and acceptable usual practice. Why? Nobody knows.   However where do we draw the line? When is RECKLESS RHETORIC dangerous, inciting, capable of causing a threat to life and property?

    It is so when you see that you cannot repeat to anyone what has been said by the individual for fear that there will be a temper rise and even incitement to violence.   

    A new dimension in RECKLESS RHETORIC is the open attack targeting ethnic lines, out of all proportion to the subject matter- merely electing a politician. The words and phrases that have been freely used would frighten any child with two different ethnic parents into asking the often happily married parents from two different ethnic groups what is going on and where do they stand on the statements made. There are tens of thousands of children of mixed ethnic parentage watching the social media exploding with virulent uncomplimentary and disgusting comments about one or other of the ethnic groups’ blood running in their veins. In Nigeria mostly the father is the ethnic lineage followed by the children in marriage unions between two ethnic groups. This is not detrimental in any way to the revered position of the ethnic group of the wife. The children do not, and should not, feel inferior in either ethnic group’s company.

    Listening to the RECKLESS RHETORIC is also alarming to adults and citizens of the concerned states. We did not know that so many citizens were held in such low esteem by a large number of fellow Nigerians of different ethnic persuasions. One would have thought that even if some other groups thought so low of others, they would not actually say it. And of course, to every action there is a reaction, but often much more than equal and opposite and so the replies to the RECKLESS RHETORIC have been equally vitriolic and filled with worse RECKLESS RHETORIC.

    Certainly, we each have a right, indeed a duty to expound and advertise the abilities and qualities of our candidates but why ethnicize the election, especially in a Nigeria with a much higher proportion of mixed inter-ethnic marriages than ever before. They have produced children who are adults in their own right also with children in many cases. How do they, who have never had to question their parents for marrying each other, answer the question of their own children when confronted with the avalanche of negative social media messages, emphasizing ethnic divides which most people would never have brought up in order for peace to reign.

    We have at various times all had to swallow our ethnic pride for the progress of the society in peace and harmony. Of course, we each belong to one and increasingly more than one of the 350+ ethnic groups. So, many Nigerians are of mixed ethnic groups having married across ethnic lines and this is not always easy to discern. Nowadays, Nigeria is old enough for people to be mixed not once but twice i.e. in the parents and then in the mixed children’s own marriages. So, they can claim several ethnic groups. How are they to react to the denigration of even one of the four groups, parents and grandparents in their DNA?

    What we need are good political campaigners and politicians who see far beyond ethnic jingoism and RECKLESS RHETORIC and instead, promote the values and vision of their political principles through all-inclusive political messaging. There can be no room in 2023 politics for irresponsible and needless and uncalled for vociferous denigration of other ethnic groups who have been more than generous with extending their hand of fellowship only to be insulted for their accommodating actions.

    RECKLESS RHETORIC has been obviously counterproductive to the psychological wellbeing of many on all sides of the political divide. It remains to be seen how this will affect the poll come March 11. Nigeria is in desperate need of the best men and women to win. Nigeria and all states need to recover quickly from its drawbacks and sprint ahead in the coming years to take their correct places in the community of nations.                

  • INEC performance; President: act presidentially

    INEC performance; President: act presidentially

    All hail genuine social media electoral malpractice videos! Get ready for ‘Election 2023 Malpractice Video Awards’.

    Is this country completely fraudulent? We invited the world to our ‘Election Show2023’ sadly rapidly deteriorating into a ‘Show2023 of Shame’. Why must we always turn gold to grit/dirt, and spoil opportunity with acts of impunity? We must control and contain election corruption and violence.

    Opportunities to showcase become a disgrace in front of African and other worldwide foreign observers including elderly past heads of foreign states. Have we no shame? Starting with the number of people. Where are the people, the registered voters? We boasted worldwide 93million+ registered voters. Will we have up to 30m voters? Will the number just be thumb-printed up to 90m??? Seven million registered voters in Lagos of whom less than 1.2m voted. Ditto nationwide. Let us assume several million voters were disenfranchised by intimidation, cashlessness, petrol-lessness, violence and INEC shortcomings and deliberate failures. Where are the other voters? Were they too far from their voter booths? Roughly only a quarter voted nationwide. Did the rest disenfranchise themselves by registering in their workplace or tertiary institutions and not near their homes or did cashlessness, petrol-lessness hinder movement? Every vote counts.

    Are two-thirds of all Nigeria registered voters fictional, non-functional, intimidated, japa-ed, dead, or nonexistent voters? 

    INEC put itself in the firing line! Its members are mostly ordinary helpful Fellow Nigerians wrongly visited with violence, intimidation, and enticement by politicians and Fellow Nigerians. Some INEC officials and ad hoc staff were compromised and arrested? Is INEC disobeying its own RULE Book Electoral Act when it does not immediately upload to the INEC collation PORTAL? Did IT specialists japaism kill the portal? Is that to allow mathematical increase in unsubmitted results?

    The citizens’ verdicts are variable; some praise INEC and BVAS for reducing fraud, others identify INEC shortcomings like late, absent or inadequate voting material and polling photo-posters, failed or manipulated or deliberately destroyed BVAS and failing to ensure electronic uploading to INEC Results portal. Everything electronic can breakdown-with a little help from a bribed official.  

    Election violence is a terrorist attack by some politicians on Nigeria@2023. We must prosecute those arrested. Which party politicians considered, conceived and delivered violence@2023? The National Peace Committee peace accords were mostly abandoned. Rumour of a murdered NYSC official and Fellow Nigerians horrify families and honest Nigerians.

    Is Nigerian election violence inevitable? No. Election violence is GBH-Grievous Bodily Harm, Grievous Mental Harm, murderous and criminal and a DEMOCRACY DISASTER & DISGRACE. Remember who is to blame. INEC DOES NOT KILL, INJURE or TERRORISE. POLITICAL PARTIES DO. INEC does not vote-buy or vote-sell or rent thugs to disrupt INEC polls or gun down voters and INEC officials. Politicians do!

    INEC: Plenty of room for improvement.

    1: INEC’s LOGISTICS demands ‘INEC MUST KNOW THY BOOTH’ AND RECONNOITRE. INEC POLLING BOOTH PATHFINDER’ Designated drivers and boat pilots MUST VISIT THEIR DESIGNATED POLLING BOOTH DAYS PRE-ELECTION.

    2: THE VOTING BOOTH: This is insecure. One of the two voter points will always be within eye view of voters. Care must be taken to ensure privacy.

    3: INK. ONLY A LITTLE INK is needed so as not to stain through to the back of the paper which can be read by other voters.

    4: FOLDING PAPER: a] LENGTHWISE & b] TOP-TO-BOTTOM & c] COLOUR CODE THE BACK AS WELL AS FRONT OF BALLOT PAPER. The voting paper was recommended to be folded once lengthwise. The paper should be folded first LENGTHWISE & TOP-TO-BOTTOM folding it in half to make it less cumbersome and harder to spy.  At this point it is easier to open the corner of the ballot and see the colour code inside without revealing the voter thumbprint. Privacy 100%.

    Best solution:     INEC should consider PRINTING THE COLOUR CODE ALSO ON THE BACK OF BALLOT PAPER.

    5: PARTY LOGO QUALITY ON BALLOT PAPERS: THESE MUST BE EASILY VISIBLE, READABLE, INTERPRETABLE, AND IDENTIFIABLE.  The final draft of the ballot paper should be approved by all parties.

    6. CASHLESS PETROLLESS ELECTION? Success or failure? From the record, several financial figures have been flying around during this election. One man’s seized political $550,000 =N412,500,000? Another N30,000,000 IN new notes =150 visits to the ATM @ N20,000/VISIT.

    HOW DO POLITICIANS GET ELECTION MONEY? Cunningly politicians are mopping up all available business cashpoints like eateries, suya spots, nightclubs, traders, clinics, pharmacies, petrol stations [and ?brothels]. They collect the cash and transfer E-MONEY equivalent to the business account. This paralyses the banks needing this money daily to give out as cash the next day to Nigerians.    

    As we interrogate a new president, regardless of his ethnic cap, Igbo, Fulani or Yoruba, he will have a seemingly uphill task trying to ACT PRESIDENTIAL [aka bring joy to every one of our 350+ ethnic groups and politically inflated overestimated population of NIGERIA. Presidential service delivery is lacking in Nigeria.

     Will our politicians disrupt or allow us to leave this ‘OUR PERSECUTED LAND’ for ‘OUR PROMISED LAND’ or are they still too greedy to release us? A honest election 2023 is a prescription and direction to our promised land, the happy ‘I love Nigeria-Nigeria loves me back’ country-to-nation transformation working without bribery and corruption where passports take two weeks.  Salaries, pensions, roads, railways, river transport routes, bridges in new directions, school running costs, scholarships, bursaries, vehicle allowances, medical care, education, naira value/ black market are Demands of 2023-Democracy.

    New President, Act Presidentially!   

  • Nigeria’s Elections: Understanding that Lagos surprise

    Nigeria’s Elections: Understanding that Lagos surprise

    Nigerian election outcomes are all too easy to discern. Once one side starts crying too loudly know it has lost. On the basis of that simple test, the poor imitation of a three-year-old’s tantrums by the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) agent, Senator Dino Melaye, was an indication of how things had gone for his principal former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

    As you read this, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), is on the verge of being formally declared winner of one of the most bitterly contested presidential elections in recent memory. His victory against the backdrop of giant odds is well nigh miraculous. The formidable forces who never wanted him to get the ticket fought him all the way to the finishing line. Yet, because it was his destiny, he prevailed.

    This election would be remembered for many things, but most especially because of its stunning surprises and twists and turns. For Tinubu, what would been a perfect triumph was soured somewhat by losing his Lagos stronghold to the unheralded Labour Party (LP).

    In the larger scheme of things it didn’t really matter because he wasn’t running for governor. However, such has been his grip on the state politically that it had been taken as a given that electoral contests here could only go one way. Little surprise, therefore, that his foes celebrated like they had won the World Cup.

    Long after the dust would have settled many would be trying to make sense of how Peter Obi’s LP managed to pull off what PDP and other more endowed political organizations have not been able to do for more than  twenty years.

    The biggest error would be to ascribe this victory to some sort of superhuman effort on the part of Obi and his Labour cadres. Rather, it was the result of the perfect storm produced by a coalition of the incensed. Forces that had one thing in common – anger towards Tinubu – banded together to wreak maximum havoc.

    One critical piece in the coalition was the ethnic symbolism around Obi’s candidacy. Although, he tried his best to present his bid as pan-Nigerian, Southeasterners saw in him their best opportunity of producing a president of Igbo extraction in a long while. So, backing from his kinsmen was total as has been reflected in the lopsided voting patterns across Igboland and some areas of the South-South zone. But as motivated as these voters were they couldn’t have tipped the scale on their own.

    They were joined by a huge chunk of the Pentecostal Christian vote triggered by Tinubu’s strategic choice of a fellow Muslim as running mate. The unyielding rejection of the same faith ticket by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). While they stopped short of openly endorsing anyone, taking the politically-correct position of asking their followers to vote according to their conscience, some pastors were not so circumspect.

    In the run up to polling day, leaders of some of the nation’s leading Pentecostal congregations were openly telling members what to do. Those who weren’t doing so publicly were employing blackmail on their in-house WhatsApp platforms. They made it clear that voting the Muslim-Muslim ticket was some sort of mortal sin. Many bought into such thinking as if opposing such a ticket somehow made them better Christians.

    Obi understood how offended many Christians North and South were by the Tinubu and Kashim Shettima combination and he milked them religion card for all it was worth. He became a regular visitor at worship services of these mega churches, receiving raucous welcome from excited members and posing for photo-ops with their  pastors. It all paid off handsomely on Election Day.

    Just as devastating as the religion factor was social media. The damage done to the APC candidate didn’t just start with the campaign season. Over the last few years he has been the target of the most savage attacks sponsored by those who were less than pleased with the performance of the Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. Although, he wasn’t in government many blamed him for facilitating the president’s rise to power.

    These attacks became more personal and vicious once he announced his intention to run for president. He was caricatured as the ultimate bad guy who was just grasping and power drunk. He was painted as infirm and too old for the office he sought. For many who would go on to vote on February 25 the only source of information by which they would make their voting decisions was largely fake news. While his opponents were on rampage his supporters underestimated the harm that was being done on social media. By the time they took the fight to their foes the damage was already done. Tinubu had been defined in terms his enemies wanted.

    Another vital part of the coalition that pulled off the Lagos surprise were youths – many of them first time voters who were just babies when the APC flagbearer was a governor. Some of them were not even born when he was an active part of the pro-democracy movement in the 90s.

    Many were part of the #EndSARS demonstrations which grounded the country two years ago. What was supposedly an anti-police brutality movement was soon turned into an anti-Tinubu action in Lagos. For many young people who took part in the demonstrations their impressions of the former Lagos State governor were shaped by that ugly episode in 2020. Unfortunately, the aggrieved from those events have been waiting to exact their pound of flesh from APC and it’s leaders in Lagos. They found common cause with others who had it in for Tinubu last Saturday.

    The final component of the electoral Molotov cocktail was the twin scarcities of new naira notes and petrol unleashed against citizens inexplicably in the election season. The former which was supposedly targeted against would-be vote buyers became an agency of nationwide misery and suffering for the masses of the people. The natural reaction was to vent frustration against Tinubu and the government he installed. Many were motivated to vote against the ruling party and its candidate as punishment. Others simply elected to stay home resulting in widespread apathy and low turnout.

    So was what happened during the presidential election a watershed in Lagos? Not exactly. Every election is local and the governorship and state assembly polls holding across the country on March 11 would be no different. In many states there was tactical voting which suggests that outcomes could be different in 10 days. In Lagos no one should get ahead of themselves.

    For one thing, the ethnic edge would not be as pronounced. Obi isn’t running and all the candidates of the leading parties are of Yoruba extraction. Religion also wouldn’t be a factor as the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, is at the head of a balanced ticket.

    Of course, those who gave APC a bloody nose last weekend would love to do it all over. But in pulling their surprise they delivered a wake-up call to the ruling party. That’s why I doubt whether thunder would strike in the same place twice come the next polling day.

  • This democracy must prevail

    This democracy must prevail

    I use the term democracy here in two senses, as a form of government and as a system by which the people elect their representatives in government through a free and fair electoral system. It is important that politicians and the electorate allow both to prevail as we seek to reproduce this democracy for the 24th year.

    The focus today is on the electoral system as progress is being made with the collation of the results from the presidential and National Assembly elections held last Saturday, February 25, 2023. Let me begin by underscoring the significance of one word often used in describing democratic elections. The word is FAIR, which implies that perfection is never expected as no election is perfect, not even in the United States, the contemporary bastion of democracy.

    This, however, does not mean that electoral umpires should be sloppy at their job. Rather, they should aim at ensuring that every voter has a fair shake at the election and that every vote counts. In this regard, the appearance of fairness in the electoral process is critical to its credibility and the legitimacy of the eventual winner. There is no doubt that Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, led by Professor Mahmood Yakubu, started out with good intentions and made adequate preparations for the elections.

    But preparation is one thing; implementation is another. It is apparent that INEC faltered on implementation in a few areas, namely, timely delivery of materials to some polling units; adequate and timely staffing of some polling units; and timely uploading of the results to the IReV portal for public viewing. However, these shortcomings are peripheral to the overall conduct of the election, which many observers adjudged as generally free and fair, notwithstanding a few skirmishes here and there.

    At the end of the day, only a few of the nation’s 176, 846 polling units experienced delay and, in such cases, INEC gave more time for voting. It is also not the case that INEC failed completely to upload the results to its viewing portal. It was a question of delay due to technical problems. Unfortunately, however, INEC delayed its explanation for the delay. But who knows? The communication delay might have been due to security reasons in connection with the INEC server. Hopefully, we will know the real reasons in due course.

    In the meantime, the losing opposition parties, led by the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party, had found an anchor for their complaints. After initially basing their argument on INEC’s failure to upload the results of the presidential election on its viewing portal on time for the public to see, they moved on to organize a media blitz to launch into full blast condemnation of the entire electoral process, accusing the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, of complicity. Ultimately, they called for the cancellation of the results and the conduct of another presidential election.

    While their complaints need not be dismissed, it is necessary to point out that they all amount to red herring. The reasons for this assessment are not far-fetched. First, the agents of all political parties at the polling units have copies of the results at their polling units. The same results were collated at the ward, Local Government, and state levels. There was plenty of room for complaints at any and all of these preliminary stages before the results were brought to the National Collation Centre for submission. In other words, the results brought to the National Collation Centre had passed through three successive stages of verification in the presence of party agents.

    Second, all political parties had compiled their results in their respected situation rooms as submitted by party agents. Therefore, the loss of the election was already obvious to the complainants. Accordingly, the escalation of their complaints was meant to achieve two purposes. One was a message to their supporters to get ready for protests. That’s probably why, in one of the press conferences, the Chairman of the PDP said that they may not be able to control their supporters. In this regard, it is noteworthy that only the All Progressives Congress has called for calm. To his credit, the party’s presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and the Lagos Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, appealed for calm from their supporters right after Lagos, their home state, was lost to the Labour Party candidate.

    The second reason for the escalation of complaints and calling for the cancellation of the election was to discredit the election, first by discrediting the electoral umpire and by using that to dampen the legitimacy of the winner of the election. However, in the process, the complainants have succeeded in raising the political tension among their supporters.

    Why are we at this point at all? First, most Nigerian politicians hate to lose and can hardly deal with defeat. Second, the LP and PDP candidates had unrealistic expectations going into the election. This is particularly true of the LP candidate, who has been projected as the winner of the election by various pollsters. Third, the escalation of the LP protest was aided by the godfather of Third Force in Nigerian politics, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who led the call for the cancellation of the election in a public statement.

    The focus on complaints has dwarfed the major positive developments in the course of this election. There is a significant change in the nation’s electoral dynamics. For example, no politician can now take victory for granted as erstwhile strongholds were lost to other parties. Thus, the presidential candidate of the APC lost Lagos, his home base, to the LP candidate, while incumbent APC President, Muhammadu Buhari, lost his state to the PDP candidate. Besides, a number of (former) Governors, who used to scale through Senatorial elections, lost their elections.

    At the same time, however, some features of our political culture persist:  Ethnicity and religion still loom large. Just look at where the leading candidates won the most votes. It is in their ethnic enclaves. This is particularly spectacular in Obi’s case. He won most Igbo and Christian votes virtually across the country. Even more significantly, while he won states outside his Southeast zone, no other candidate won any state in his zone. Not even the APC candidate, who had the widest spread of states won beyond his zone.

    The above developments notwithstanding, it is important to honour the investment in this election by concluding the collation of results so that the processes of review and redress can begin. This is the message of the Inter-Party Advisory Council, the West African elders forum, and well meaning Nigerians.

  • Tinubu-Shettima: Coasting home to Renewed Hope 2023

    Tinubu-Shettima: Coasting home to Renewed Hope 2023

    As if following the sagacious advice of Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as always, set forth at dawn on this presidential journey. He went about it methodically, starting with close friends and longtime associates. After officially informing the President in 2021 about his plans, he started nationwide consultations in January 2022. Atiku Abubakar, now presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, was still in far away Dubai, while Peter Obi, now the opportunist presidential candidate of the Labour Party, was still in the Peoples Democratic Party with Atiku. While Tinubu has remained within the same progressive fold all his life, Atiku and Obi have crisscrossed various political parties in search of the political golden fleece.

    After his mega rally finale in Lagos yesterday, Tinubu has covered more mileage at home and abroad in over a year than any other presidential candidate. At the same time, he has surmounted many more stumbling blocks than the other candidates.

    For example, in the week leading up to the APC party primary, Tinubu surmounted the last-minute putative “consensus” candidacy of Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, and defeated him and other contestants in a landslide. A day after the primary, Tinubu set out to meet with all co-contestants and secured their support.

    The campaign proper was greeted with vitriolic attacks, including social media misinformation; fake stories about his ancestry and academic qualifications; fake stories about American drug conviction; exaggerations of gaffes; irrelevant questions about his age and mental capacity; and a fake website claiming that the EFCC raided his “underground home” and recovered N400 billion of new notes.

    One by one, the attacks began to fall on their face as Tinubu’s campaign strengthened state after state. The American government denied ever indicting, charging, or convicting him of any offense, despite the false documents paraded by a Nigerian-American, who claims to have investigated the matter. The EFCC issued a statement denying ever raiding his home of stashing away new notes. But come to think of it: The amount Tinubu was alleged to have stashed away equals the total amount of new notes the Central Bank claimed to have printed and distributed to Banks across the country. Much of the new notes is already in circulation, although grossly insufficient.

    But the fake website appears not done. When I visited it just yesterday, here’s what I found:  “8 forty-fit (read feet) container loaded with old Naira notes has been captured leaving Tinubu House to bank”!

    Like all negative campaigns, the goal of these fake stories was to achieve a variety of aims, including defamation of the person and character of Tinubu, misinformation of his campaign activities and messages, and deflection of attention from Tinubu’s main campaign promises, encapsulated in his 80-page manifesto, RENEWED HOPE 2023, available online.

    As if these negative campaigns were not enough, the Governor of the Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele, came up with a last-minute currency redesign policy, which plunged the country into a cash crunch, thus complicating ongoing fuel shortages. It will be recalled that, contrary to global norms and standards, Emefiele, as incumbent Governor of the CBN, made every effort to run for president, including branded vehicles and obtaining the N100 million expression of interest form on the APC platform, but failed.

    Not a few have seen his currency swap on the eve of the presidential election as a way of getting back at the successful candidate in the party primary in which his attempt at participation fell flat, even including his attempt at seeking court clarification. He must have felt deflated. Others surmised that he wanted to assist his townsman, who is the Vice-Presidential candidate of the PDP.

    Sensing the possible damage to the APC-led government and political party, leading opposition candidates quickly sided with Emefiele’s policy, although some of them are now speaking from both sides of their mouth as the negative impact of the began to bite throughout the country. It took much convincing before the President began to appreciate the possible damage of the policy on his own government and political party. Even then, his attempt at amelioration still leaves much to be desired.

    None of these negative developments has stopped Tinubu from making significant strides with his campaign. But why wouldn’t he gain more support, given his nation-wide campaign, focusing on strengthening national security, including stopping oil theft; revamping the economy, including diversification and expansion of revenue generation; improving on national infrastructure, including providing steady energy supply (electricity, oil, and gas); creating the necessary environment for industrial growth and private sector participation; creating jobs and providing jobs training for Nigerian youths; enlarging women participation in governance; and, above all, recruiting the best hands into the executive branch.

    For those who still want more reasons to vote for Tinubu on Saturday, look for the videos and TV programmes in which former Lagos Governor, Babatunde Fashola, spoke about Tinubu’s achievements as his boss and read the latest articles by Mahmud Jega (One last pitch for Tinubu, Thisday, February 19, 2023) and Sam Omatseye (A Lagos Original, The Nation, February 20, 2023).

    By the way, were you aware that much of the misinformation and fake website have been traced to Peter Obi’s campaign? Besides, did you ever notice that none of the opposition candidates ever attacked Tinubu’s ideas or programmes? Rather, they copied them in creative ways and attacked the achievements and non-achievements of the APC-led government of President Buhari and sought to put Buhari’s toga on Tinubu. On one occasion, Tinubu had to retort: The President is Muhammadu Buhari. I am Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    Tinubu was drawing a contrast between Buhari’s experience and governance style, which derived from military training and service as well as his close advisers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, his (Tinubu’s) own experiences, which derived from decades of corporate accounting expertise, legislative experience as a Senator of the Federal Republic, and governance wizardry as a two-term Governor of Lagos State. The vision with which he created a template for growth and development in Lagos derived from these experiences and that template has been copied in part by both the Federal Government and the federating states. Those experiences underlie the robustness of Renewed Hope 2023 with which he hopes to create a template for lasting national growth and social development.

    As implied above, it should be understood that all the attacks, fake stories, and relentless misinformation were intended to chip away from Tinubu’s sterling qualities and achievements, which no other presidential candidate could match.

  • Why Tinubu will be president

    Why Tinubu will be president

    IN another seventy-two hours Nigerians will queue to elect Muhammadu Buhari’s successor. I have argued over the last six months that of the most talked about candidates, only two have a realistic chance of being elected president based on existing rules.

    They are Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). I recognise that Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) would be a critical factor as a disrupter, but that disruption can only weaken one of the big two – it won’t make him president.

    As for Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, former Kano State Governor and federal minister, I keep scratching my head to understand his game. It certainly isn’t to win on Saturday because the best of his New Nigerian People’s Party’s (NNPP) efforts thus far haven’t given him traction beyond his home state and a few surrounding ones. I can only assume that he is trying to reenact the old Aminu Kano phenomenon of being a sub-regional powerhouse. His People’s Redemption Party (PRP) had phenomenal following mainly in Kano and, to a lesser degree, in Kaduna.

    Kwankwaso, like Obi, would have a disruptive influence on the presidential election in Kano. This state has the second largest vote pot in the country and it is one in which any potential winner must perform well in to have any hope. It had been a traditional PDP stronghold until it switched to the APC column in 2015 following the then governor’s defection.

    In this cycle, APC retains the power of incumbency. When Kwankwaso pulled out to found NNPP, he virtually sucked life out of what was PDP in the state – leaving it enfeebled and riven with factions. Today, most analysts expect it to emerge a distant third after the dust settles.

    For Tinubu and APC everything seemed to going well until they receive the sucker punches of petrol and naira scarcities. It created the worst case scenario for a ruling party going into an election. In the annals of own goals, this was a spectacular strike and not many could have seen it coming. It was friendly fire coming from the most unexpected of quarters – a feast for conspiracy theorists.

    Until this February surprise, the presidential candidate and his party had managed to present a united front, papering over bitter fallouts that have lingered since the primaries. This is in direct contrast to the PDP’s intractable civil war which has seen a reenactment of the Gang of Five governors’ revolt of 2014.

    That rebellion led to the so-called New PDP joining forces with other legacy parties to birth APC and ultimately topple a ruling party that was so confident of its strength, it’s one-time leader bragged it would govern for an unbroken length of sixty years.

    Eight years ago the PDP under Goodluck Jonathan and then party chair, Bamanga Tukur, dismissed the five governors along with their allies as troublemakers whose exit would herald a new dawn of peace. They refused to meet them half way. But in doing so they empowered a fledgling opposition, transforming it overnight into a national platform with sufficient spread to win the presidential polls.

    In an uncanny way, the party has repeated the same mistake. In not bending over backwards to secure the commitment of Nyesom Wike and his G-5 colleagues, PDP has jeopardised its chances in a must-win state and four other potentially pivotal ones.

    Anyone who knows Nigerian politics understands that any winner must take all or most of Lagos, Kano and Rivers States. As things stand the big three are well outside the influence of Atiku and firmly inclined to fall into Tinubu’s laps. If the former Vice President falls below his 2019 vote levels in these states and the APC support holds or grows, he is toast.

    Bear in mind that most analysts expect Obi to do well in Lagos and Rivers – eating into the traditional PDP base. They also expect him to win in almost all of the Southeast states – fishing grounds that Atiku would ordinarily be banking on. In fact the expectation is not just that Obi will prevail on home ground, the only unknown is how much he would devastate the PDP vote.

    The main opposition party’s strategy in plumping for Atiku – a Northerner – to succeed Buhari, another Northerner who would have spent eight years in office, was the assumption that regional/ethnic solidarity would trump all else. Against his calculations, the intriguers who tried to sell the lie that only a fellow Northerner could go against the ex-VP, failed to successfully execute their plot at the APC primaries.

    They tried and failed to sell Senate President Ahmed Lawan as consensus candidate. It was because there was really no such regional agreement either with APC or cross party. In the end it was 14 Northern governors who decided that power must shift South and that Tinubu would be the beneficiary of their support. In taking that step they entwined their political destinies with his.

    From that moment on Atiku was no longer running against Tinubu alone, he was up against the APC candidate, his Northern governor allies and everything their powers of incumbency can bring to the table. For every time the Turaki Adamawa tries to posture as a regional champion, he comes up against the likes of Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, Kano’s Abdullahi Ganduje or Vice Presidential candidate, Kashim Shettima, who can also rightly claim to be power brokers in the same zone.

    That’s another way of saying Atiku is no Buhari and would not be inheriting the incumbent president’s captive 12 million votes just because he is Fulani or from Adamawa State. As the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola showed in 1993 when he defeated the National Republican Convention’s (NRC), Bashir Tofa, with the right allies and platform, a well-connected Southerner can floor a flawed Northerner on his home turf.

    So if Atiku isn’t sure of the Southeast, Southwest, South-South and is not certain of pulling 12 million votes from the hat like Buhari, where’s his pathway to the presidency? Obi’s fatal handicap is how to secure 25% of votes cast in 24 states given that his support is anaemic in the North and Southwest.

    That leaves Tinubu in a very strong position. He only needs to produce a good performance at home, perform better than Buhari in the South-South and Southeast, and using his party structures manage a strong outing across the three Northern zones. His reception as he campaigned across the region shows this is quite attainable.

    In the end all candidates have made their case to the Nigerian people. They have told us their grand plans, although in many instances conveniently left out how they intend to make these things happen. What they have said they would do isn’t enough reason to vote for them. What if they don’t keep their promises? Obi and his running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, sometimes glibly respond “hold us responsible if we don’t deliver.” How? When you are already in office wielding presidential power?

    Instead of depending on a politician’s words, look at what he has done; look at his track record when he had the power to do good. Examine what his vision produced when he was governor or Vice President.

    I have assessed the leading candidates. Like all humans they have flaws. For every salacious story peddled about Tinubu, you would find an equivalent surrounding Atiku or Obi. But these are the ones the process has thrown up for us to vote as our next president.

    Based on what we know about them I have no difficulty endorsing Tinubu for president. As Lagos State governor he outlined a vision that many states have copied. He is celebrated for his ability to put together a brilliant team and the succession process he put in place has worked fairly well. Many testify that he is a compassionate man and God knows Nigeria desperately needs an empathetic leader at this time.

    He is bold. He spoke out against the anti-people naira redesign fiasco at a time most politicians would have gladly sulked in silence for fear of offending the powers-that-be. When he sensed that powerful forces were conspiring to deny him the APC ticket, he cried out ‘Emilokan!’ The rest is history.

    Just as important, the country needs a strong president with the courage to take the hard decisions needed for a turnaround. He was tough enough to take on former President Olusegun Obasanjo when he confiscated Lagos State funds. He fought him when he was rampaging through the country sponsoring crooked impeachment against governors.

    Even his decision to pick someone of same faith as running mate has turned out to be inspired and justified. Once he was clear about his objective, the fallout that would follow didn’t matter. A country that has wobbled because of a long running leadership problem needs a firm hand at the tiller. Tinubu is the man this moment calls for.

  • Vote with analysis not anger

    This government must renew its efforts to release all the kidnap victims before the end of its tenure. Leah Sharibu has been kidnapped for a tragically long five years now with thousands kidnapped since then and just last week, a fresh batch of kidnap victims for which the kidnappers are boastfully demanding ‘new notes’, a step that was recommended to them by journalists in the face of the now catastrophic naira redesign/currency swap. It is the responsibility of this outgoing government to wrap up each and every kidnap case and rescue each and every kidnap victim before it leaves office. While government is a continuum, no government should carry forward kidnapping to the next government.

    The Presidential Election is in three days’ time. Are you ready?  There is a lot of suffering going on currently with the cash crisis destabilising every person in Nigeria and deliberately colliding with the election in timing for whatever reason, and many reasons have been given.

    Each member of the electorate must individually come to terms with the important fact that a president is not voted in for a day or because of a cash crisis. The election day will pass. The disastrous and deadly cash crisis will pass regardless of its origins – be they incompetence, political or economic or both, corruption or anti-corruption strategy. Though traumatic in the extreme to each of the 160million + Nigerians with empty pockets today, the cash crisis will definitely soon be over one way or another. Sadly those who are damaged have been forced to make huge sacrifices and several citizens have died and were forced to make the supreme sacrifice during the election and struggling with the fallout of the cash crisis. Death is an absolutely unnecessarily sacrifice in this absolutely artificial cash crisis. For comparison the Syria/ Turkey earthquake and the South African flooding and the Cyclone Cheneso in Madagascar are natural disasters with largely unpreventable deaths.

    Our election and the cash crisis are producing deaths of Fellow Nigerians who should have been alive but for the mismanagement of the election run up and the devastating cash crisis.  When all has blown over, and even the Abacha era with all its terrors has blown over, though the dead have not risen, then we will be saddled with the president we would have voted for on Saturday February 25. Pray that whoever he is, he will be willing and able to carry Nigeria out of the hole that has been dug for it by its political and financial administrative class.   

    It had better be the president we voted for out of careful analysis and not out of crazed or blind anger assuming that our analysis produces who we individually think is the very best candidate to rescue Nigeria from what has been a long period of economic darkness.

    Will the Dangote Refinery work and if so why will it work when the others in the country have been epileptic and mostly offline? We understand that a refinery is being fixed again, by imported experts, probably to take care of certain interests after election. To give government fuel at special prices? Let us study it and see. My guess is that it will not break down.

    But let us wait and see. If it does not break down, it will show us our suffering was absolutely man-made and perhaps those who benefit from importing fuel may have had a remotely controlled or even a direct role in the disease and death of NNPC refineries. Should that be the case, imagine the cost to each Nigerian of that serial massive sabotage of the refinery industry. Even more important than that catastrophic sabotage will be the question of what next? Yes, what next after destroying the refining capacity of a country? The destroyers must be planning something really big after their total success with the refining capacity reduced to zero.

    Put yourself in their evil hands. What next? Will they go after the Dangote Refinery or leave it well alone and go after something refreshing different? I cannot think what and do not want to give them any ideas, so we shall have to wait and see. But watch out.   

    Remember the devil finds work for idle hands. All these hands, or is it one master mischievous Machiavellian hand, which has hung like a noose around Nigeria’s lifeline oil-to-petrol neck and sabotaged four refineries repeatedly by thought, word and deed for upwards of 30years.

     Then there are the suspected killers of the Nigerian family, killed and burnt in their home, their children taken away, one escaped and other was captured and he was killed by throwing him into the river, who have been arrested. Kudos to police. Wow! The gang leader was an employee demanding more money and a loan for an okada. When he did not get it, instead of leaving for greener pastures, he vengefully and mercilessly killed and set fire to them. Were they on drugs? Why have we descended into such a hole of totally insensitive homicidal maniacal actions, spreading more and more throughout the country? If our politics was honest, it would have helped. Now suddenly there may be terrorist near you and me, in your driver, domestic, roommate, family, and workplace. Morals have been wiped away or at best are a thin layer of seeming sanity over volatile, violent tendencies. 

  • Open letter to Nigerian youths

    Open letter to Nigerian youths

    You may not know me but I know you, not as individuals but as a group. For at least 70 years, I have been around young people as classroom teacher, university Professor (now retired), mentor, employer, and adviser, at home and abroad. I know your aspirations and I understand your frustration with the situation of our country. Many of us, who are much older, are equally frustrated: Nothing seems to be working right. Electricity supply is grossly inadequate. So is water supply. Roads are bad. Insecurity is high. The education and health systems are underfunded, under-equipped, and understaffed. Underachievement in university education has led to a mismatch between skills training and employers’ requirements in the job market. Just as the youths protested police brutality in 2021, so did the Academic Staff Union of Universities in 2022 protest government’s neglect of university education.

    Many parents who could afford it have reacted to the educational deficiencies by sending their children abroad for training. Industries and manufacturing outlets have reacted to infrastructural deficits by closing down. Many small and medium enterprises have also folded up for lack of an enabling environment to function. Even recently, the formal and informal markets have been strangulated by the cash crunch following the Naira swap instituted by the Central Bank of Nigeria. The overall result of accumulated deficits is increased youth unemployment.

    I am writing to you today because the 2023 presidential election, which comes up in ten days, provides an opportunity to elect someone who can change the course of this nation. You may have been told that you have the ace in the election because many of you registered to vote, although it remains unclear how many of you got your Permanent Voters Card and how many will actually vote. For those of you who will vote on February 25, the big question is: Who, among the four leading candidates, has the experience, the track record, the financial wizardry, the international network, and nation-wide acceptability?

    When all these factors are carefully considered, you will discover that there is only one choice before you. Not Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party; Not Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party; Not even Peter Obi of the Labour Party despite the deceptive poll results all over the place, which seem to put him on top. I know that a number of you don’t care much about Kwankwaso, especially in the South. Similarly, Atiku’s youth following is not that great in the South.

    However, not so could be said about Obi. He appears strong in the South. I know that some of you belong to the Obidient movement dominated by his kinsmen from the Southeast and part of the Southsouth. The movement also has some traction in the Northeast, especially with the Christian population. But let me tell you something: Obi cannot have the majority of the votes as his support is generally thin in the North, notwithstanding his Northern running mate. Besides, his path to 25 percent of the votes in 36 states is pretty thin, if not nonexistent.

    But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that he wins the presidency. How do you think he will be able to “build a new Nigeria” and change the nation “from consumption to production” as he has repeatedly claimed he would do? How will he improve on the deplorable national statistics he has been spewing out on the campaign trail? By a magic wand?

    The truth is that Obi can hardly last one year in office because he will be frustrated by a hostile legislature as there are no LP candidates of note who could win election to the National Assembly to support his agenda. In the final analysis, he may be impeached and the presidency will revert to Senator Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, his running mate.

    Have you asked yourself these questions before following the ethnic youths behind the Obidient movement?: How many of his appointees when he was Governor of Anambra state are on the campaign trail with him? Why did he quarrel with his successor, former Governor Willie Obiano, and why did he (Obi) eventually leave the party that brought him to power as Governor? Why did the present Governor of Anambra State, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, describe Obi’s investment in Anambra State as being “worth next to nothing”? Why did Obi leave the PDP, which fielded him as Vice Presidential candidate in 2019? Have you ever read the Premium Times of October 4, 2021, which detailed Obi’s businesses, which “he clandestinely set up and operated overseas, including in notorious tax and secrecy havens in ways that breached Nigerian laws”?

    The truth is that Obi is not an angel. And none of the candidates is young: Obi is 61; Kwankwaso is 66; Tinubu is 70; and Atiku is 76. They are all politicians and they are all wealthy.

    But, of the four of them, only Tinubu has the clout, the experience, the national and international network; and the financial knowledge to rescue this nation as he rescued Lagos, even when the state’s Federal allocations were withheld. His focus on the economy is unparalleled (see his manifesto, Renewed Hope 2023). So are his agenda for education, youth employment, and entrepreneurship. During this campaign, Tinubu led the national debate on ending the petroleum subsidy; on optimizing the exchange rate regime; on fuel shortages; and on the cash crunch caused by the failed Naira redesign policy.

    What is really important is to rescue Nigeria and provide an enabling environment for everyone to live to his or her potential. Tinubu’s  corporate experience as an Accountant; his democratic credentials; his ideological consistency as a progressive; his legislative experience as a former Senator; his governance experience as a two-term Governor of Lagos State; and his mentorship of budding politicians and technocrats, all put him shoulder high above other candidates. Name another Nigerian politician whose former cabinet members went on to become State Governors; top Federal Legislators; Federal Ministers; and successful business men. Name another politician who had five or six persons pass through his tutelage and made it to the present Federal Cabinet from different states. Have you asked yourself why his candidacy is given priority by Governors and leading politicians from the other side of the Niger? It is because they know he can do it well.

    Tinubu is approachable. He is a thinker, not a talker. He is a planner, not an opportunist. He is consistent, not here and there. He governed Lagos well. He will govern Nigeria even better.

  • Before Valentine’s; Monetary misery amidst cashless catastrophe

    Before Valentine’s; Monetary misery amidst cashless catastrophe

    Happy Valentine’s Day yesterday. Please watch Before Valentine’s. Amazing. You will totally enjoy it. Always watch what critics say is bad, because it is usually good, maybe not too intellectual but good! The Netflix film speaks to everyone without bias. Over-love, unrequited love, no love, sex vs love, young and old love, stepfamily love. It is situational, gushing with life-as-it-is and very, very “jistable”. The plot is amazingly innocent in the beginning but grows with Machiavellian devilishly genius and is divinely choreographed. Yes, the actresses are mostly beautiful and the boys are mostly handsome.

    Yes, the plot is typically haywire and unpredictable and misleading as in everybody’s life and in every expert plot. What a writer! What acting! Please watch first! Criticise later! Nigeria has little to enjoy now with cash, fuel, work, visa queues. Enjoy our Nollywood while you can. We should deliberately wear Niga designer clothes, Niga branded T shirts in Nollywood and Femi bags, not Gucci. Before you criticise, watch. I did. It has multiple messages.  

    Our journey has been fraught with CINS – Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence and Selfishness. And this in a country which was always in the past renowned for its hospitality and friendliness, we face a change in attitude to suspicion. These honourable traits have been lost through repeated assaults on our generosity of spirit. Each of us has been cheated, 419ed, been stolen from, been lied to, been disappointed, lost out in something of value like a job or a position in a queue to less scrupulous family members, friends, colleagues and individuals and strangers. The human condition, I suppose! Any perceived good thing here always manages to be contaminated or converted to dirt.

    Now we do not catch thieves of our corporate wealth until the theft is in the multiple 10-200billions of naira and dollars.

    Because the court process was slow, a bright legal spark introduced foreign plea bargaining and now criminals are complaining that old plea bargaining agreements are being broken. A plea bargain that leaves a public servant thief withholding billions of the citizens’ money should be re-examined. The thief should be taken on a tour of deprived Nigerians slums, public hospitals, outpatient queues, traffic jams, mortuaries, cemeteries, IDP camps, pension queues, police cells, underbridge living areas, drug dens and especially labour rooms in poorer public hospitals. Such a tour may extract the remaining billions. Why is a money crime treated like a political crime-petty crime? All such crimes cause disease, deprivation and death- directly or indirectly.

    We catch a murderer, blood everywhere, evil. We see the body. Prison, death row… Justice. We catch a mega-thief of say pension funds. He is a murderer of many pensioners and their dependents who die from lack of finance to buy drugs as and when due-mostly diabetes and hypertension. Their children and grandchildren suffer the extra burden of having to care for the aged, reducing their own income and quality of life and even reducing their children’s level of education and healthcare. No blood but a much higher murder toll than the murderer of one person. Only the doctor and other medical personnel see the deaths and the blood from inability to pay for operations, treatment and investigations.

    The mega-thief of road repair/ construction funds is a real mass murderer. We see the tens of thousands of potholes, unheard of in pre-independence times, the vehicle and pedestrian crashes, the blood, the victims bleeding out with no medical facilities worth the name nearby. Such thieves should spend time in orthopaedic hospitals witnessing the operations, the amputations the transfusions the crutches and wheelchairs and the mortuaries. Only then can you sit with such people to plea bargain and extract every naira with maximum interest. The bargain should never be about keeping a kobo of stolen loot. Every kobo must be extracted with the accumulated interest. The plea will be about how many lifetimes are worth N20 billion public money.

    Plea bargaining should not be in private but in public. By stealing this money, the individual has lost the right to a private plea bargain. We want a ‘PLEA BARGAIN OPEN COURT’. The unbelievable sums involved would corrupt a saint. Only a large number of citizens can collectively extract the sums stolen to help pay for the damage done.

    When such huge billion-naira amounts are recovered for specific needy places like the pension fund, for example, should the court not direct that the pensioners and the families of the dead pensioners deprived of this money be given the money in arrears urgently with apologies form government for failing in its watchdog responsibility over its own employees?                               

    Meanwhile Turkey and Syria face an earthquake, not man-made unless you factor in building non-quakeproof buildings on a fault line. It claimed 30,000 innocent lives. Nigeria’s problems are self-made. We undereducated our children and are surprised at their poor performance. When properly educated, we see what stars they become. We created the petrol, diesel, the japa and cash crisis. A cashless society demands preparations for hundreds of millions of transfers daily. But the collapse in naira value last year precipitated the ‘japa syndrome’ among specialists especially IT staff responsible for maintaining bank IT services.  Now we have ‘Monetary Misery Amidst Cashless Catastrophe’ caused by the printing of a tiny N400b 2023 notes to replace the N2.7tr deposited. The Cashless War was lost from the start. Poor planning. Period!  

  • The naira as political football

    The naira as political football

    The longstanding national debate about the role of money in Nigerian politics has come full circle. In the last two years, a seeming consensus on the need to reduce the impact of cash led to inclusion in the new Electoral Act of campaign spending limits and stringent sanctions against voter inducement.

    Despite these efforts, we find ourselves back in square one with the naira, again, on the front burner as potentially a factor that could decide the outcome of this month’s polls.

    Going into elections, incumbents and their parties are often on the defensive because they have records to defend. In the course of their tenure they might have been forced to take tough decisions that they have to defend. For damage limitation purposes, they try to ensure that the best conditions that guarantee their electability exist at the time of polling.

    Contrariwise, the opposition are usually on the offensive, attacking the record of the incumbent. Given that they have nothing to defend they revel in the failings of their opponents, twisting the knife for maximum effect. They offer untested promises of a better way forward and invite an antsy electorate to take a gamble with them.

    That’s why the Central Bank’s decision to redesign the naira as a cure-all for insecurity, money laundering and vote buying, has spun out of control and become political football to be kicked in every direction by all interested parties. Don’t be fooled, not much about what’s going now is altruistic.

    If you needed evidence of how political things have become consider the litigation that the contentious policy has triggered and the litigants behind the cases. On Monday, a court granted an injunction barring the apex bank from extending the deadline for return of old notes. The suit was filed by a clutch of fringe parties led by Action Alliance (AA) asking the court to force the CBN to press ahead.

    Action Alliance went to court to stop All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on grounds of certificate forgery. On December 13 last year, a Federal High Court in Abuja dismissed the suit as ‘incompetent.’ The judge said the plaintiff lacked locus standi, saying it acted like a busybody, having interfered in the internal affairs of another party.

    The same AA, instead of canvassing for votes for its candidates on the hustings, is campaigning in the court over CBN naira redesign. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that some mischief is at hand.

    Same day, governors of Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara States approached the Supreme Court for an order restraining the CBN from continuing with the naira redesign policy. They cited the scarcity of new notes, chaotic rollout and widespread suffering it has engendered in their states.

    For the candidates of the ruling APC, it has been a trying few weeks. From the presidential candidate to others running for positions in the National Assembly, it has been frustrating having to campaign weighed down by the double whammy of petrol scarcity and the very original headache of denying the people access to their cash – all in the name of transiting to a cashless economy.

    Fuel queues on their own are bad enough, but the sight of hapless, angry ordinary Nigerians besieging ATMs and fighting in bank halls in desperate bid to access cash, seemed like the ruling party was provoking the electorate not to vote for them. If it was a naive and innocent miscalculation on the part of President Muhammadu Buhari who no longer needs votes, it was a gift to a factionalised opposition that had so far run an uninspired campaign for months.

    The twin unforced errors caused Tinubu to cry out about a plot by Fifth Columnists to derail his presidential bid. But it wasn’t only his aspiration that was endangered. Suddenly, governors realised that because they were hitched at the waist with the presidential candidate, anything that hurt his chances also endangered their National Assembly and gubernatorial candidates.

    They, too, have been howling about how the twin scarcities were politically-induced. They questioned the timing, traced the implementation of the dubious policies to a cabal surrounding a notoriously hands-off president. They questioned the motivations of the promoter – a Central Bank Governor who unprecedentedly openly pursued a presidential bid and still managed to be retained in office after what many considered an unpardonable sin for a man in his position.

    Even if Emefiele’s intentions were pure and patriotic, he introduced not just a policy but a weapon that the opposition could manipulate in the heat of battle. Citizens angered by their experiences in the last few weeks would be inclined to lash out emotionally at those they blame for their woes. They can’t be bothered if the alternative is the devil with two horns.

    All said and done, Emefiele has come up with a cure that’s infinitely worse than the disease. The redesign was supposed to flush out all illicit cash, but more than a month after close to a trillion is still supposedly out there in the wild.

    This exercise was supposed to devastate the finances of terrorists and kidnappers. But the quarry has instead been having a good laugh. A few days ago, the notorious bandit leader, Kachalla Baleri, posted a viral video of himself posing with mint-fresh bundles of the new notes. He boasted he had up to N10 million of the currency – enough to purchase more weapons. So much for putting violent criminals out of business!

    The policy was also supposed to starve potential vote buyers of the cash they needed to induce voters. It is doubtful whether this has been achieved. Politicians had adequate notice of the CBN’s intentions and would have cornered enough of the initial billions released for their own ends. There are plenty of reasons to believe this is the case. After all, less powerful skit makers and actresses are all over social media abusing bundles of the supposedly scarce new notes at their bacchanals.

    And who says that inducement would necessarily be by physical cash on voting day? Chinua Achebe famously quoted Eneke the bird as saying since men had learnt to shoot without missing, it had learnt to fly without perching. Politicians who are determined to reach potential voters with money may find it even more convenient to do so under the new rules. After all, their transfers are not likely to carry the narration ‘For Vote Buying.’

    Buhari and Emefiele have accused the banks of sabotaging their beautiful policy through hoarding. But the accused, through the Association of Corporate Affairs Managers of Banks (ACAMB), just rejected the allegations, pointing to the fact that having ploughed in over N100 billion into IT infrastructure to facilitate cashless transactions, they couldn’t now as group turn around to endanger such huge investments.

    Clearly, someone isn’t telling the whole truth here. Did the Central Bank provide enough new notes to guarantee a seamless rollout or are all banks complicit in the display of corporate greed on an industrial scale? The evidence suggests that this not the case. As some have pointed out, the new naira is being rationed despite repeated assurances of its availability. Unfortunately, you don’t ration that which is readily available.

    Remember when the CBN Governor furiously blamed the naira’s woes on a certain Aboki FX – a website that publishes the daily official and parallel market rates of the naira. Scandalised at how he was suddenly transformed into a villain for posting the obvious, the owner of the site decided to test Emefiele’s theory by shutting his operations for four weeks so the naira could appreciate. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, the precipitous decline against major global currencies became more pronounced afterwards.

    With such a record, it is doubtful whether anyone can take the prescriptions of the CBN boss as gospel truth any more. Even if angry Nigerians blame him for their traumatic experiences in recent weeks, there’s not much they can do beyond cursing him to high heavens. After all, the man is not running for office.

    Emefiele is a billionaire banker who for the rest of his days wouldn’t be worried about money. But he should be disturbed that when his time in office comes to end, all that people would remember him for is the new naira disaster.

    President Buhari faces the same challenge. His achievements in infrastructure, agriculture and decimation of insurgents in the Northeast would be overshadowed by the currency shambles. Surely, he wouldn’t want that as the image Nigerians see whenever they look in the rear mirror post May 2023.