Hardball

President Muhammadu Buhari should beware of his economic advisers telling him to remove fuel subsidy.  When the huge social cost comes, only the president would bake in the furnaces.  These so-called (mis)advisers would chill in their air-conditioned suites.

Indeed, that the 6th regular meeting, of the Doyin Salami-chaired Presidential Economic Advisory Council, told the president to remove fuel subsidy should worry everyone, given the state of stress and disaffection in the land.

Without prejudice to the expertise and knowledge base of the economic council, that advice rippled too much of IMF fetish — that all-too-glaring penchant to toss the people under the bus, just that some cold numbers could look good.

The irony is these “periphery of the periphery” votaries screech in worship of their people-last orthodoxy, when the metropole god himself, in the so-called “centre of the centre”, had all but junked this doctrine, at least in this terrible season of COVID-19.

President Joe Biden has not only pumped some cash into the pockets of hurting Americans, congregants in the high cathedral of IMF orthodoxy, he is also dreaming an ambitious infrastructure programme, not only marked by power, roads and bridges, but which radically pushes the primacy of humans, as the ultimate infrastructure.

Prof. Salami and co are advising a contrary path, even if Nigerians under President Buhari are experiencing probably more stress than Americans, under President Biden –to orthodoxy be the glory!

The economic council drove in its advice with a slew of red herrings:

No subsidy was captured in the 2021 budget — couldn’t there be a supplementary budget?

Subsidy payment, directly by NNPC, could shrink the cash available for state governments to share — what dents have these governments, as a collective, made on the people’s misery, except joining in the anti-centre cacophony?

Retention of fuel subsidy would repeat 2015, when states survived by federal bailout –just a stacking of cards.   It’s debatable if this council, which would live or die by IMF orthodoxy, would have approved such bail-out back then. It would have claimed some arcane theories that trumped common sense!

That lands the matter back at the very beginning.  It doesn’t take any especial acuity to spot the dissonance that has plagued the Buhari economic policy, just because it craved some economic “expat experts” [of the IMF hue] — to mimic Wole Soyinka’s immortal quip in the novel, The Interpreters.

The old Economic Management Team (EMT), under Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, bossed the administration’s safety-net programmes — schools feeding, Trader-moni micro-credit, N-Power, conditional cash transfer, etc, all targeted at youths and the country’s most vulnerable.  That was in rightful recognition of Nigeria’s dire poverty situation.

Yes, the first fuel pump price increase took place back then.  But the trade-off, of doing something to combat poverty, served as dampener.  Pray, what trade-off is the Salami council offering, aside from IMF bean-counting?

The president must learn to say no to some hurtful advice.   When trouble comes, these advisers could even join in sweet finger-pointing, the Nigerian popular cynical pastime.

Rather, it should focus on local refining, which should eliminate the paradox of fuel pains, when crude prices go up.  But that is the umpteenth Obasanjo-era illogic of liberalizing the oil downstream by fuel importation.  It was always going to end in tears.

Hardball

How about this: getting a suspended sentence converted to a real one, because you got flown abroad, for a life-threatening case?

Is the court saying you should die, sticking to the sentence terms?  But frown at rallying for treatment, to stay alive, to serve your sentence?

That is some grim categorical imperative, that would have made Immanuel Kant, the philosophical author of that rigorous concept, bristle with envy!

Yet, that appears the verdict of a Moscow court on Alexei Navalny, Russian dissident and arch-critic of Russian strongman, President Vladimir Putin.  Some Russian logic!

While serving a suspended sentence in 2020, Navalny, on board a domestic flight to Moscow, got critically ill.  He was alleged to have been poisoned with a nerve agent, that put his life in peril.  The poison was first alleged to have been slipped into his tea.  Later, Navalny himself alleged it was slipped into his underwear.

What was indisputable was that life was ebbing out of a screaming Navalny, as his airplane made emergency landing.  After initial stabilization, he was flown to a German hospital, which confirmed that indeed, Navalny was a near-victim of a military grade, lethal nerve agent.  However, the German medics nursed him back to health, in company of his distraught wife.

But January 17, Navalny headed back to Russia, and landed right into trouble!  For starters, Russian state agents diverted his airplane to another airport (from the one hundreds of his doting supporters were waiting and cheering), though still in

Moscow.  From there, he was wheeled straight into gaol, sparking outrage, local and global.

When the dust cleared a little, Navalny was back in the dock: accused of breaching the non-travel terms of his two-and-a-half-year suspended sentence.  Pronto, the court threw him into the slammer for real!

Again, that voice-of-Jacob-hands-of-Esau Moscow court verdict set the global sympathizers of Navalny seething; and his local Russian supporters storming the streets, country-wide, in forceful but peaceful protests.  The court could have been the gaoler.  But the long arms, of the slight, lean and mean Putin, was clear in all the political-judicial manoeuvres.

From Navalny, however, hardly a retreat, hardly a surrender.  Even while being trundled into gaol, Navalny was all jab and hook at his formidable opponent, in this Russian rope-a-dope.

“The reason why it all happened is one man’s hatred and fear ….” Navalny roared.  “I mortally offended him by surviving an attempt at my life … and then I committed an even more serious offence: I didn’t go into hiding.”

And how about this for the closing flourish of Round One? “Murder is the only way he (referring to Putin) knows how to fight … We all remember Alexander the Liberator and Yaroslav the Wise.  Well, now we’ll have Vladmir the Poisoner of Underpants!  That’s how,” Navalny landed his stiff clincher, “he will go down in history”!

Even the Russian logic, has its own roiling street echoes!

•First published February 8, 2021

Hardball

Spirituality is a divine attribute that rises above base tendencies of human character. That must be the perspective from where the saying comes that to err is human and to forgive is divine. Religion involves systematic cultivation of spiritual values, and theology has to do with espousing religion.  When human behaviour, including criminalities, get spiritualised in narratives, you could say you are confronted with toxic theology. Hardly, though, would you would expect to see this theology adroitly espoused both by a professional cleric and a self-avowed occultist with ‘traditional’ powers as we saw of Catholic priest and Spiritual Director of Adoration Ministries, Enugu Nigeria (AMEN), Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka, and Yoruba rights activist Sunday Igboho lately.

Before his ‘disappearance and reappearance’ early last week, Fr. Mbaka vocalised his bitterness with Imo State Governor Hope Uzodimma, whom he alleged had been ‘killed’ by bad advisers though he remains physically alive. “If he is receiving advice from this sanctuary, he will not be messing up; those advising Uzodimma have killed him while he is still alive,” the cleric stated as he provided some ‘spiritual’ explanation for the jailbreak early April when gunmen attacked the Owerri facility of the National Correctional Service and set the place on fire, springing 1,844 inmates free. “I can never support terrorism, neither will I allow you to brand our children terrorists when they are not. If some people broke into the prison in Owerri and you caught them, interrogate them. It may be that no human being broke into that prison, it may be jailbreak from God. It happened in Acts of Apostle: there was no jailbreak and nobody was arrested. God can set the prisoners free,” he argued.

It was a similar theology espoused by Igboho last weekend when he said God would judge whoever was not in support of his Yoruba nation cause and would “continue to kill their wives and children since they don’t want us to reach our promised land.” Even the Yoruba culture teaches empathy and shared grief with those bereaved. But when asked to commiserate with Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) General Overseer, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, over the sudden demise of his son, Dare, 42, Igboho said he had no condolences to offer because the respected clergyman had not voiced support for his self-determination crusade: “Has Baba supported the Yoruba nation that we will now be greeting him?…Adeboye has never spoken about the Yoruba issue. Look at how huge his congregation is, why hasn’t he spoken for the Yoruba nation? We don’t need to commiserate with him…Whoever does not support Yoruba nation but have the crowd in their churches, God I invoke you, you own me and everything I own belongs to you, and they have seen how the Fulani kidnap us and demand ransom, continue to kill their wives and children. So be it!”

Hardball says God is not an agent of human vendetta, and it is toxic theology to so suggest.

Hardball

Nasir El-Rufai, the stormy petrel of Kaduna and governor of that state, has of late been firing from all cylinders!

The other day, he told the Igbo political elite to all but go jump into the Bight of Biafra — and get all blighted for all he cares — if they think, even for a second, that grandstanding-by-secession, could fetch them the Nigerian presidency.

It was classic El-Rufai, never one to pull his punches; though not a few also think a huge dose of emotional intelligence could do his naturally sharp mind a load of good.  Otherwise, he runs the risk of sounding like a soulless braggart, no matter the intellectual acuity of his stand.

The South East political elite have returned the favour, telling El-Rufai too to go jump into Kaduna River, and enjoy the hospitality of the vicious crocodiles in there!

But no sooner had El-Rufai despatched the Igbo elite than he pounced on Sam Ortom, the Benue governor, who also returned Ortom-atic — sorry, automatic — fire!

Watching the video of the Benue governor’s railing against the Federal Government, at the scene of an attack on some Benue communities, courtesy of a webinar by the African Leadership Group (ALG), El-Rufai reached for the big guns and strafed Ortom to his heart’s content.

“I did not hear what Governor Ortom said [in the video]” he admitted, “but I know him and he is not somebody I take seriously, frankly.”

It’s not clear which hurt more: the mere chutzpah of the frontal attack or the lacerating “facts” — the staccato of flying bullets, from El-Rufai’s vicious gun: “He has other issues of governance that he is using the Federal Government as a punching bag to distract from his failures”; and El Rufai pointed at specific examples:”Go and find out how many months’ salaries are being owed teachers and public servants in Benue State, then you can understand a lot of what Ortom is doing.”

Unfortunately for Ortom, El-Rufai nailed what lawyers would call “notorious facts”, even if the Kaduna governor himself lugs a salary crisis, that has resulted in the mass sack of some workers.  But in playing to the gallery, with the Federal Government as its whipping boy, Ortom would appear only next to Nyesom Wike, the arch-narcissus from Rivers.

But the same lawyers would quickly tell you that Ortom’s alleged governmental failures — even if they are true and proven — can’t foreclose his right to protest (and vigorously too) attacks on his people.

Of course, from the Ortom camp, came instant ire: “Nasir El-Rufai is a sycophant, ethnic champion and religious bigot who hates anyone who does not share the same faith with him,” Terver Akase, Ortom’s chief press secretary, growled.  “He is among the very few persons who have misled President Muhammadu Buhari.”

Ortom’s right of response, to El-Rufai’s unprovoked attack, can’t be faulted.  Yet, not a few would squirm at the torrent of vulgar abuse, understandably from due anger.  Nevertheless, it all signposts a troubling low civility, in the public exchanges of contemporary Nigeria.

This crudity doesn’t enhance the quality of Nigerian democracy.  The law that guarantees free speech comes with the cherished convention of civility.  You can always disagree without being disagreeable.  But the fundament of all that is mutual respect, even when you disagree in politics and policies.

Hardball

Obviously, the problematic Herdsmen Question won’t go away if it is not resolved.  It is obvious that the solution won’t come from highlighting alleged casualty figures under the previous Goodluck Jonathan administration, which is the latest response from the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, reportedly said in a video he posted on his Facebook that over 756 people were killed by herdsmen in two years under former President Jonathan. He said: “Something that is disturbing that I have heard about it is linking those developments to the fact that a Fulani man is President and so, he is brooking such kind of evil acts. I think that is very unkind. And I will try to back my position with statistics.”

His statistics: “In 2013, particularly, there were nine cases of herdsmen invading communities in Benue State alone and more than 190 people were killed. In 2014, there were about 16 of such tragic developments with more than 231 people killed. And then there was a change of government in May 2015. But between January and May 2015, there were six attacks which left about 335 people dead. Now, the question is, during that period, did we have a Fulani president?”

It is curious that the presidential spokesman failed to supply statistics related to herdsmen killings since May 2015 when Buhari became president. This silence makes Adesina’s presentation calculatedly one-sided. There is no point in giving figures of those allegedly killed by wild herdsmen when Jonathan was in power, and not providing such figures under Buhari.

For instance, the New Year tragedy in Benue State that soured celebrations is still fresh. Here, a report:  “At least, 20 persons were killed in attacks on Benue communities by suspected Fulani herdsmen after they invaded some parts of the Guma and Logo local government areas of the state on New Year’s Day. The attacks, which spilled over to Tuesday, came on the heels of the implementation of the anti-open grazing law, which the Fulani herdsmen considered detrimental to their means of livelihood.” At the centre of this alarming drama is the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, described as “the apex body of Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria.”

A proper comparative analysis based on real casualty statistics is needed to show that the Herdsmen Question has not become more complicated, and herdsmen killings have not worsened under Buhari. What Adesina served was a self-serving picture that was not the whole picture.

• First published January 12, 2018

Hardball

You would think it was a love affair made to last, until it came crashing like a house of cards. President Muhammadu Buhari fell at odds with controversial Catholic cleric and spiritual director of Adoration Ministry, Enugu Nigeria (AMEN), Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka, who vociferously supported him for the 2015 election that brought him to power and his 2019 re-election. The parting of ways has been bruising and mutually damaging.

When the romance was sizzling hot, the President celebrated Mbaka as a rare embodiment of courage and credibility that God specially gifted Nigeria with, while the cleric declared Buhari God’s anointed one for this country. In the aftermath of the 2015 poll, a statement by presidential spokesman Femi Adesina cited the President praising Mbaka for having opposed ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, adding that he (Buhari) rated Mbaka’s sermon against Jonathan honest, good for Nigeria and “one of the best exhortations” he ever heard from the pulpit.

Mbaka lately delivered another sermon and the presidency isn’t gushing with applause. During worship at his ministry last week, he castigated President Buhari over worsening insecurity in the country, saying he “should have resigned honorably following his failure as a leader” or the National Assembly should impeach him if he fails to resign. It wasn’t much different from his call early 2015 on Jonathan to resign because of the poor state of the economy and insecurity.

The Buhari presidency didn’t take the Mbaka tirade supinely and dismissed it as sour grapes following its refusal to gratify his dubious request for payback. Presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said the point of departure was when the cleric brought some contractors to Buhari to ask for contracts in compensation for his support, but was rebuffed by the President who never breaks “laid down rules in dealing with contracts or any other government business for that matter.” By some coincidence, a 2018 video showing the priest attacking President Buhari allegedly for being stingy and unwilling to make donations to his church has resurfaced on social media. Mbaka responded last Sunday, however, describing the charge of sour grapes as laughable and childish, and claiming that “no amount of money can merchandise the Holy Ghost anointing” in him. He admitted, though, that he led three experts who offered to help with Nigeria’s security issues to meet with the President during his first tenure but they were turned down.

Those exchanges between Mbaka and the presidency ring of ‘tell-all’ by estranged lovers. In this case, they both look like whores who stole the pleasure. The credibility of Mbaka’s prophetic anointing is dented because he has been highly indiscretional and unguarded in utterances and actions. But the presidency too looks cheap and out of touch with reality for joining issue and dismissing Mbaka’s alarm as sour grapes, despite genuinely existential threat of insecurity we presently face. To both: better romance with respective future partner!

Hardball

Who is responsible for the brewing campaign of anarchy in the South East?

If you believe Enyinnaya Abaribe, Senate minority leader, they are conspiratorial Martians from space, who nevertheless know the crevices of Igboland intimately enough to wreak non-stop havoc on the police and allied security agencies, in provocative attacks that are ill winds that bode no good for Igboland.

Counterintuitive and hardly true, isn’t that?

But Abaribe was bold in his assertion to The Nation: “Anybody who is seeing all these problems in the South East as coming from the IPOB, anyone trying to pin the insecurity situation in South East on IPOB or MASSOB is making a mistake.”

Pin it on IPOB!  It’s unclear when Abaribe became spokesman-in-chief for IPOB and MASSOB, without prejudice to the innocence or guilt of the two bodies.  Still, that was rich coming from somebody who got into trouble after Nnamdi Kanu sprung bail and bolted, leaving in his trail, unceasing stream of incendiary claims and cross-ethnic hate.

Even then, Abaribe’s denialism, in his fifth columnist theory, is well and truly benumbing: “Those of us from the South East here know that this is nothing but fifth columnists imported into Igboland to destabilize it.”  Some claim!

Imo Governor, Hope Uzodimma’s claim is a bit diffuse, though he too tip-toed on the IPOB affair, even if he was a victim of bare-faced arson and murder, at his Omuoma country home: “The mayhem in Imo State was carried out by hoodlums, bandits and a small percentage of IPOB members and aggrieved politicians who decided to sponsor violence to derail the government of the day.”

But witness the sequel: the attack on Uzodimma’s property came closely after security agencies took out an IPOB commander and arrested a few of his lieutenants.  And after that came an Nnamdi Kanu threat that the governor had stepped on the tail of a viper!

Why a section of the Igbo political elite would deny the near-obvious is not clear.  But the reason would appear an all-too-common ambivalence that can only propel further insecurity that could really ramp up Igbo-on-Igbo violence.  The only way to avert that is to condemn evil in clear terms, no matter where it comes from; and save innocent and law-abiding folks, fated to become cannon-fodders, when the chips are down.

The redeeming grace though is the Ohanaeze Ndigbo’s call for rapprochement, among Igbo agitating lobbies.  That, Hardball thinks, is the voice of reason and wisdom.

The idea is not to stop agitating for what these lobbies think is right.  The idea is not to seek peace for peace sake but end up with peace of the graveyard, which is what peace without justice is.

The idea is rather to agitate smart, so that you don’t end up cutting your nose to spite your face.

That is why the Ohanaeze call is much smarter and wiser than the Abaribe empty grandstanding, based on conspiracy theories that are ludicrous to say the least.

A word is enough for the wise.

Hardball

It is unclear how a change of name will boost the country’s counter-insurgency effort in the Northeast. Renaming the operation against Boko Haram is the latest move by the Nigerian Army in an anti-terrorism war that has gone on for more than 10 years. The army leadership may know something the public does not know about the effect of a change of name on fighters, which is yet to be seen.

The renaming is aimed at “having an army that is repositioned to professionally defeat all adversaries in a joint environment,” according to a statement by Director Army Public Relations, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Yerima. The army “needs to re-align for better efficiency,” he said.

Operation Lafiya Dole, launched in 2015, is now Operation Hadin Kai, the army announced on April 30. The Hausa expression Lafiya Doye means peace by all means. Hadin Kai, another Hausa term, means cooperation/ unity. Before Operation Lafiya Dole, there was Operation Zaman Lafiya, a Hausa term for peace.

The previous emphasis on peace is ironic because the geopolitical zone has not known peace for more than a decade. This means the army failed to achieve the stated goal. The zone comprises six states: Bauchi, Borno, Taraba, Adamawa, Gombe and Yobe. Now the emphasis is on cooperation and unity. It remains to be seen if this new focus will result in peace.

The new Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, believes “the complete defeat of insurgency is a process that requires the participation of the entire nation using all elements of national power,” the statement added.  The question is: If national power means state capacity, how can an ill-equipped military defeat the insurgents?  It has been established that the country’s military is ill-equipped.

The army needs to adequately equip the fighters. That is a major challenge.  It is more important to make the fighters prepared for the operation than change its name. Indeed, the operation may not need a formal name. There is no point renaming the operation when the fighters lack adequate weaponry.

Another challenge facing the army is low morale among troops. When the fighters are well equipped, and well taken care of, they will have the confidence necessary to win the war.

The army leadership should pay more attention to tackling the challenges that hinder the success of the war on terror. Renaming the operation without addressing the more fundamental issues is cosmetic.

Hardball

There is something galling about loss – material or more – suffered at the hands of people who are neither identifiable for personal liability nor available to be held accountable for damage done. And some motorists must have felt that way early this week in Ojoo, Lagos, when members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and commercial motorcycle (Okada) operators clashed over ticketing tariff.

Sporadic gunshots rent the air and missiles were freely used on Monday at the Iyana Iba / Alaba Rago market area of the Lagos suburb as members of the transport union and commercial motorcyclists, mainly Hausa-speaking, squared off in supremacy of brigandage. Reports said what began as a mild standoff rapidly degenerated with use of dangerous weapons, amidst insinuations that an ethnic conflict was underway. The fracas, according to eyewitnesses, ensued when the commercial motorcyclists rallied to protest harassment by the NURTW members after one of them was brutalised (some accounts said killed) over ticketing by agents of the union, which had raised its levy on Okada riders in the area – a move the motorcyclists resisted.

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For over an hour, the motorcyclists blocked the Lagos-Badagry expressway with burning tyres, wielding cudgels and machetes to attack defiant motorists and hapless passers-by. Some commercial buses that dared the barricades had their wind screens smashed. Commercial establishments in the precincts hurriedly closed shop, with the operators fleeing for safety. The fracas, which started around Iyana Iba, spread to the gates of Lagos State University (LASU), Ojoo where vehicles parked by owners were wantonly vandalised by the rampaging motorcyclists. Video footages on social media showed the mob smashing those vehicles, unchallenged or restrained by security agents seen in the vicinity.

The Lagos State police command subsequently denied that the clash had ethnic intent, arguing it was rather “a mere conflict between transport unions and their Okada units on ticketing and increment in tariff.” A statement by the command’s spokesperson said Police Commissioner Hakeem Odumosu had ordered deployment of additional police personnel in the area to maintain law and order, adding that he also directed the relevant Area Commander to “invite leaders of the affected Okada riders unit for an urgent meeting.”

It is obvious that the police’s concern is to reach a negotiated truce between the feuding groups, which is fine to foster peace. But why should aggrieved motorcyclists wantonly vandalise vehicles parked by owners who had nothing to do whatsoever with the ticketing dispute? There should be accounting for such collateral lawlessness, shame that the police doesn’t seem interested. In any event, it is high time there was firm regulatory oversight on the transport union’s tariff system and enforcement, otherwise another fracas, perhaps in another area, may not be too far away.