Category: Tony Marinho

Elections, with some serious crimes of ballot snatching and burning, terrorizing voters, have passed. Sadly, several have died during the exercise-a mere election. Those who sent the criminals are alive with their own children. No answers for the dead or their mourning families?

Where are the voters?  Over 60% of 87-93m registered voters were nowhere at the elections.

A party protested that Governor Seyi Makinde had been ‘bribing’ the citizenry by paying the backlog and current salaries and pensions. Governor Makinde who said correctly that he was doing his duty as governor to his employees and his elders. A party or persons not paying salaries and pensions are committing a crime and should not stand or should lose elections. Citizens’ welfare is first and foremost because with no salaries and pensions, the family, the bedrock of the state, and its hierarchy are destroyed, children rise against and ridicule parents and guardians, the extended family fabric is torn and the state disintegrates from within.

Seyi Makinde has won re-election in a state where citizens do not grant second term easily. He reached across to other parties in neighbouring states to achieve interstate cohesive development – an almost unheard-of progressive strategy in the past and the recommended way forward. Congratulations to Governor Makinde who will continue to shine through concrete achievements because he, with the G5 governors, have experience crossing party lines fighting for North/South rotation and electing our president-elect. Expect great things from Seyi Makinde through interparty collaboration and people-focused performance. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu also won re-election in Lagos and Governor Dapo Abiodun in Ogun. Congratulations. More great things ahead??

A warning: The electorate must stay involved. Politicians are our employees. We need a ‘NO STANDING LAW’ demanding we sit when they enter and leave a room except for the president. 

The president signed into law 16 constitutional amendments. Too little too late at the end-of-term-LastMinute.Com?’ But any devolution of financial and development power is progress needing incoming government expansion. Is there a president’s strategy, including the cashless election and non-interference in elections process in expectation of Mo Ibrahim Good Governance Prize of $5m? Will any decisions require budgetary allocation changes in the supervisory federal ministries? And a revenue allocation formula change.

Hurray, among the most widely significant constitutional amendments were the removal of electricity, railways and correctional services from the exclusive list, sadly, the jealously guarded federal government preserve. It has cost Nigerian development years of backwardness. These items were inserted into the Concurrent List meaning now shared with states and local governments. The journey has been long and tremendous kudos have to be given to all those Nigerians, both federal and states, civil servants, political office holders and social activists who have contributed to the struggle against the ‘Exclusive List Lovers’ objections.    

The impact on the psychology of most Nigerians will be very positive as most believe that the federal government is overbearing, underserving and incompetent precipitating  a massively and unapologetically ‘failure to deliver’ to a country requiring at least 100,000Mw power.  The country is affected by the cost of alternative energy sources especially petrol and diesel generators and the noise and environmental pollution effects caused.  Every family is affected by repeated power failure suffering educational, health, food, business and social losses and financial costs of incalculable magnitude.

Every state governor leads a state population larger than 20 or more other countries each of which proves uninterrupted power. Our governors are equivalent to heads of state in their states and responsible for citizens’ basic needs especially 24/7 power supply. Now that this is a shared responsibility perhaps results of 100,000Mw power supply will be achievable in our lifetime? However, there is the recent federal Siemens Masterplan to be accelerated and upscaling renewable energy especially maximizing solar energy use and the quagmire Mambilla Hydroelectric problem needing liberation.

 But above all, we need honest governors who introduce executable plans and projects within their tenure to avoid the evil ‘Abandoned Project Syndrome’ in their states, the bane of development in Nigeria.

Railway development has suffered and created year-round traffic jams kilometres long while the railway systems rotted. They are now beginning to be upgraded and becoming useful to the citizenry. The strangulating federal government grip has finally been lifted with transfer of powers for intrastate railways to states, though interstate rail appears to remain on federal exclusive list. Half bread is better than none.

Prison is also changed to Correctional Services and also moved to the concurrent list allowing states to have their own state prisoners and confinement structures. Of course, this will be abused by politicians and those with connections, but it is necessary and long overdue. This is presumably a prelude to the much-awaited State Police Law being enacted early in the life of the next government.

We are seeing a form of piecemeal devolution of power to the states to reverse the damage to democracy inflicted by the military since 1966. How long will the whole devolution process take? Forever?

President Buhari and the outgoing National Assembly can take the belated ‘glory’ for kick-starting this devolution of power and reduction in the exclusive list, so debilitating to Nigeria’s development and for not kicking the ball down the road into the next government.

The constitutional amendments law now makes it compulsory to name ministers and commissioners within 60 days to counter the sometimes one year plus delays by some governments.

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.                

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. 

Nigerians, accused of not queueing in the past and disciplined by WAI and its kobokos are now involuntarily queueing for their rights. Nigerians struggle with at least four queues. They are construction foul-ups like the Lagos end of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, (LIE); Petrol- both vehicle and jerry can; PVC; CBN’s callously self-created new Naira currency crisis. Every single one of these queues is caused by one government failure or other-negligence and incompetence and poor planning and poor execution. Let us take them in order.

The LIE queue: A serially criminal government failure to urgently provide the funds to initially maintain it motorable and then finish the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway with an extra lane. Remember our 30 years of problems would have been far less if the third lane approved by the Gowon regime had been included then. Instead, it was mysteriously stripped without reduction in cost. Today’s problems started with a leadership lack of a vision. Those with vision were shut down. It is the responsibility of our universities social and political research institutions and Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER) to calculate the costs of inaction on all the roads nationwide and tell us the findings.

There is a huge cost to government negligence. Seeing 10-20 kilometres of stand-still traffic, five lanes deep, daily for years, screams negligence. Every time is more traumatic than the time before. No Nigerian becomes accustomed to preventable traffic queues. And all, with no apology. The cost of government failure to the Nigerian traveller and transporter is incalculable but must be calculated in the cumulative billions of go-slow hours and consequent x 4-6 times petrol, engine oil, wear and tear costs which increase our petrol consumption with no productivity. Remember that many transport operators have operated 1-2 trips rather than 2-3 per day, thus compounding the agony and fears of a cumulative billion road uses by users. Add to this a total misunderstanding of basic transport and civil engineering principles in the contract which allowed constructing of the access before the exit roads and you have created our huge traffic jam disaster. Engineering 1-0-1 says do the exit roads before the access road.

The petrol AND the jerry can queue: Government is an ostrich hiding its head in the ground while exposing its butt to ridicule. Power shortage is endemic in Nigeria, paralysing health, education, business services. Almost every single business in Nigeria now runs on petrol generator now that diesel is so expensive. But apparently in a country with over 10 million generators running hospitals, clinics, homes and offices, government has a hospital & business killing law which says ‘NO SALE OF PETROL INTO LARGE 25LITRE JERRYCANS. Are we to drive the 5Kva generators in unfuelled cars to the petrol station? Modern cars do not allow syphoning of petrol from the tank once it is in there. This was to prevent theft of your petrol. Government should not allow its security services to stop petrol stations helping hospitals, schools and businesses to survive to pay the huge new energy bills.

GOVERNMENT: The fuel and electricity problems are yours not ours. Allow petrol to be sold in jerry cans to legitimate citizens with generator-run businesses, hospitals and homes with immediate effect. Smugglers will always smuggle but hospitals and businesses will die.  Do not close stations or arrest petrol staff for solving your problem.

THE PVC queues would never have existed in the first place if we had a year round registration and pickup or used our National Identity Number. Thank goodness very many are actually picking up their PVCs for the election on February 25 and March 11, IT REMAINS FOR THE PVC holder to use the card not for sale but to buy our future by making the right choice at the election a very personal decision. The PVC queue will soon transform into the longest Election Day Queues we have ever had. The longer the queues, the more difficult it will be to bribe, steal the people’s will. The people, given the freedom to voice their political opinion must express it with the future in mind.

The new naira deadline has been extended as expected in spite of the posturing, as always happens in Nigeria.  The CBN governor put Nigerians in endless queues, needless time wasting, energy consuming, and money losing due to its late announcement of the extension till February 10. The announcement was annoyingly too late to be welcomed by the very distressed citizenry, panicking everywhere. Many banks illegally and arrogantly threatened a refusal to accept the legal tender one to four days before the CBN deadline of January 31. That must be a crime and it will be repeated definitely before February 10 if government does not fine such illegal deadline behaviour. The CBN typical of our institutions got everything wrong in logistics, spread and availability of sufficient new currency even if we factor banking hoarding, corruption up and down currency food chain.

It is no use boasting that N2tr has been changed when so many honest Nigerians have no access to the new money and probably possess most of the N1tr+ still outstanding. Can CBN correct its unforced ‘CBN currency crisis’ errors and make currency exchange easier, with no cost  Nigeria-wide before February 10 and direct to CBN till 17 days before the election. Experts say the time is still too short quoting two years for the Queen-to-King change. But that change is cosmetic and not economic.