Category: Letters

SIR: The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has been a formidable platform for the Nigerian people to query government policies, action and inaction, not only for the working class, but the entire Nigerian people.

The immediate past national leadership of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has no doubt replaced commitment to agitations for the common good with cupidity and duplicity, especially in the recent time. This is abhorrent. 

Where else do Nigerian masses place their hope? Should it be taken that our trust has been utterly misplaced? Why sit impotent in the face of tyranny, maladministration, economic morass, social malaise, political imbroglio, excessive use of power by the doyens of the country and their indifferent attitude to the sufferings of ordinary Nigerians?

Could there be any justification for muteness? Must we have instinctual cravings for materialism in place of idealism?  Is it difficult, if not cumbersome, for National Labour Congress (NLC) leaders to place premium on the import of reason over that of emotion in their leadership?

It is no gainsay that Nigerians are languishing in anguish and acute agony for the past couple of months, due to exponential rise in the price and hoarding of petrol. This artificial scarcity created by lovers of mammon have immeasurably immersed vast majority of Nigerians in penury and intense famine epidemic. The fuel hike is really taking its toll on food and other necessities of life. It is indeed a chain reaction.

Recall that in January 2012, when a miniature of this challenge emerged during Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s regime, leaders of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) hit out immediately and various corrective measures were taken by those at the helm of affairs within few days. Those leaders are heroes whose names and their good deeds would never be forgotten.

There is no disputing that, monetary policy is the prerogative of Central Bank of Nigeria with a view to fostering economic growth and development. The recent introduction of new naira notes is unarguably a veritable tool to stem the tide of some seemingly insurmountable crimes in the country, provided all hands are on deck to make it work. However, there is also denying that the implementation of the policy has become something of an anathema – an albatross to the wellbeing of the masses, as it has given the bankers and Point of Sale (POS) operators the latitude to extort innocent customers nation-wide.

CBN governor consistently claims that naira notes in circulation are sufficient, while the commercial banks’ officials deny. Who is deceiving who? Nigerians are now buying naira with naira, while banking services have turned to a survival of the fittest.

And what was the position of the immediate past leadership of NLC on fuel hike and the scarcity of new naira notes? Silence and inaction.

 The same thing applies to the issues of wages of workers – the touchstone for workers’ livelihood. Amazingly, some employers of labour, especially the state governments, owed workers outrageous salaries, ranging from one to 15 months, and yet fell unburdened by the excruciating pains workers are facing. They have turned workers to beggar, indigents, and emotional cripples.

Yet the leadership of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) refused to wake up from its slumber and actuate its tools, if not strike action, towards extricating its members from perpetual state of despair and despondency.

Truly, the eight years of just concluded administration of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) was a complete failure. Whatever the administration may have gifted us was a mere whit, compared to the mandate Nigerian workers bequeathed to it.

I hereby wish to make a clarion call to all the new leaders of the NLC as well as political big wheels in the nation to heed the dictate of oaths of office taken before assumption of office.

More importantly, the NLC leadership of should not be oblivious of the fact that the masses have started taking stock of their activities right from the day they took the mantle of leadership. They should not also forget in a hurry that any act of deviance from these oaths will incur the wrath of God. This position is lucidly validated by the major scriptural books in Nigeria.

•Comrade Ojo Akinyemi,

Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo, Ondo State.

SIR:  “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

 The warriors are gearing up, preparing for the jungle ahead, and the drums begin to beat in the distance. The path ahead is rugged with obstacles and challenges lurking around every corner. We have walked this road before, and we know that the journey is not an easy one. General elections in Nigeria are not just a game, and we cannot entrust their outcome solely to the politicians.

Nigeria is a country with so much potential, but it has been held back by decades of corruption, ethnic and religious tensions, and a general lack of leadership. One of the biggest challenges the country faces is ensuring free and fair elections, without violence and vote buying.

Regardless of who wins the election, it is important to remember that violence should have no place in Nigeria’s democracy. It is essential to ensure free and fair elections, where every vote counts and is not influenced by money or intimidation. Nigeria needs leaders who can unite the country and work towards a common goal of making the country great again. These leaders can only come through a credible democratic process.

One of the biggest challenges Nigeria faces is the issue of security. The country is plagued by terrorism, banditry, and kidnapping. It is important for the new president to take a tough stance on security and work towards ensuring the safety of all Nigerians. As Nelson Mandela once said, “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” This statement holds true for Nigerians. While the election may be a time of heated political debate and differing opinions, it is crucial to remember that all citizens are ultimately working towards a better future for the country.

The country has witnessed significant security challenges in recent years, and it is crucial for all Nigerians to embrace the ideals of peace, love, and harmony during this election. Let us remember the wise words of many leaders who have emphasized that peaceful elections are the foundation for a stable and prosperous democracy. The future of Nigeria depends on the ability of its citizens to shun violence and vote buying, and instead come together in the spirit of peace to build a brighter future for all.

I would conclude this piece with another quote from Martin Luther King Jr. who once said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Let us choose love over hate, peace over violence, and progress over stagnation. Together, we can build a Nigeria that we can all be proud of.

•Shafi’i Hamidu,

 Doha.

SIR: There is a popular theory that Nigerians are resilient. The CBN naira redesign policy put that famous theory to the test in several ways. People have been stretched in a myriad of directions in the scramble to overcome the scarcity of new naira notes. Banking halls, ATM points, and POS stations are packed out with people seeking cash to handle everyday transactions.

Every day over the last couple of weeks has been a nightmare for most Nigerians. Many have struggled to pay for the essentials including food not because they don’t have money but simply due to the challenge of accessing funds from the banks.

Banks have been vilified for this reason. Some have even called them ‘economic saboteurs’. This perception unfortunately led to attacks on bank branches including arson. Preventable.

There are other villains in this stodgy tale – the POS operators who overcharge to exchange cash, the bank staff who sell cash and the regulator of the financial sector, the CBN.

 The CBN failed on two fronts. Number one, it was slow to wise up to the antics of the banks as they refuse to dispense the new naira notes all through December and the first three weeks in January. Also, the CBN hardly appeared to have had a communication strategy for the naira redesign policy. 

Now, when a central bank introduces new currency notes, it’s important to communicate the change to all citizens in the country. And it must do it effectively. The bank must take certain steps to get the message out there.

The central bank should have launched and pushed educational campaigns to educate the public about the new currency notes. Brochures, flyers, and posters would have been produced during this campaign and distributed to schools, banks, and public places such as shopping malls, markets, and bus stops.

In addition, the CBN could have sought opportunities for collaboration with banks and financial institutions to ensure that they are aware of the new currency notes and can help in spreading the message to their customers. It could have partnered with the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), the National Orientation Agency (NOA) and the Federal Ministries of Information and Communications and Digital Economy.

How many people can honestly say that the central bank used a variety of communication methods to ensure that the message reaches all citizens in the country?

The answer to these questions is a measure of the effectiveness of the CBN’s naira redesign 

communications strategy. The reality is that the CBN could have done more. The truth is that all through the period, the CBN acted like it couldn’t be bothered.

The central bank was almost asleep while the banks withheld new naira notes. It played the ostrich when people complained about the unwillingness of the banks to load ATMs with the new notes or pay across the counter.  

Furthermore, the collection of feedback from stakeholders, such as citizens, financial institutions, and businesses should have been a priority. This enables it to evaluate the satisfaction with the new currency notes and the project’s overall progress.

How about the area of identifying potential risks to the project’s success and the development of plans to mitigate or manage them? Were there contingency plans in place in case of unexpected events? Did it activate these plans when things went south?

Did the central bank seek external expertise to provide an independent assessment of the project’s progress and suggest areas for improvement?

Did the CBN do everything that it could to ensure that the project achieved its intended objectives?

The first time that I saw a new note was the last week in January. Of course, I didn’t mind because I could still use the old notes. Panic began to set in when the January 31, deadline drew close.

As (patriotic) Nigerians, we pretend to understand the haste but we can’t excuse the shortcomings, failings and gross inefficiency with which the process was handled. 

The CBN, it would appear, didn’t rate the citizens. It pretended not to hear genuine complaints, ignored veritable solutions and refused to evaluate the process to improve it.

The CBN could have done a lot of things differently and better. The suffering the people went through was needless and we should be talking about compensation.

The central bank didn’t do justice to the naira redesign communication. So, the CBN should be rightly counted as a villain in this naira redesign imbroglio.

•Elvis Eromosele,

Lagos.

SIR: The arrest of pro-Biafra separatist, Simon Ekpa by the Finnish authorities is a welcome development. This is coming on the heels of calls by Nigerians all over the world for him to be apprehended and made to account for his hate-filled and inciting rhetoric which has unleashed an orgy of gruesome killings and destruction of properties in the Southeast. I commend the federal government for heeding the cry of Nigerians and liaising with its Finnish counterpart to do the needful which is a step in the right direction towards restoring peace to the Southeast.

Simon Ekpa though a Nigerian by birth is also a Finnish citizen and the possibility of him being extradited to Nigeria for trial is very slim. The Finns are renowned for providing cover for all manner of separatist groups and hardly extradite their citizens to other nations for trial no matter their crimes. Therefore, the Nigerian government should push for his trial in Finland under international terrorism laws the same way they did with the Niger Delta militant, Henry Okah who is currently languishing in jail in South Africa. Not demanding for his repatriation to Nigeria will also avoid making him a symbol of resistance like his leader and mentor, Nnamdi Kanu.

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), which both Kanu and Ekpa belong to is a proscribed organisation and has been fingered as the brains behind the current wave of insecurity in the Southeast. The federal government should go beyond just arresting its leaders and start going after their sponsors and collaborators both locally and internationally. The security agencies should liaise with their foreign counterparts to get information about those Nigerians and foreigners who are the brains behind this group and move against them through arrests, freeze their assets and place ban on their visas. A holistic approach towards tackling this hydra-headed monster is the only recipe for restoring lasting peace in the Southeast.

•Peter Ovie Akus,

New Jersey, USA.

SIR: Once upon a time, I was cynical about ordinary Nigerians’ incurable docility – even  when they are pushed to the wall by the glaring failures of their governments and the inherent dysfunctionalities of the system.

Unlike the French and Americans, even the Sudanese and Tunisians closer to us here in Africa, Nigerians do not seem to possess the drive to spill out into the streets and do demonstrations to demand for change.

For decades in this country, we witnessed citizens being subjected to the most dehumanizing and horrendous living conditions and denied a basic commodity such as petrol which should ordinarily be in great abundance in a leading crude oil producing country. That is aside the widespread insecurity, arrant disregard for citizens’ rights and privileges and the corruption that lurks in high places, which has now become an accepted norm.

Yet, all Nigerians did was grumble, call on God in urgent supplication to intervene and then went back home to sleep,  most times on empty stomachs.

As a result, our elected leaders have become impervious to being accountable to the electorate, one of the supposed cornerstones of our democracy. Governments have come and gone, each with its own contrived disasters which task our extraordinary patience and inflict untold pain and misery on us.

Yet, all you heard were the usual lamentations, blame game and, once again, our consolations to ourselves that the Almighty God would get us out of the woods. Then we went back home, hardly able to sleep, our mental states in disarray.

But the next day we trudged on. We continued with the daily grind of either sleeping at filling stations to buy a gallon of petrol or waking up at 12 midnight to go queue up at a bank to be rationed N5,000 out of one’s hard-earned deposits.

We are an incredibly good people who take suffering good naturedly, with complicit equanimity. Fela’s cynicism was at its best when he captured this self-destructive ‘virtue’ so fittingly: suffering and smiling. That has also been the lot of Nigerians in recent weeks as the cash crunch and fuel scarcity intensified.

 It happens that, this time around, Nigerians are happily enduring the current frustrations and disappointments because they know that they are on the cusps of a new dawn that will be of their own making. The have refused to be lured into resorting to street protests or such other public displays of anger, pain and discontent.

 This revolution will be wrought through the ballot box. Despite the extreme vexations caused by government policies and provocations by some politicians and vested interests, the people have relatively remained calm, even though there have been isolated cases of violence here and there.

On the whole, they have maintained a resolute stoicism and deliberate forbearance, even in their greatest moments of suffering. Under the circumstances, docility has turned into a willful determination to radically change things for the better.

This revolution will also be unlike the sometimes violent protests that marked the Arab Spring which erupted in Tunisia in 2010. It will be different from the prolonged and riotous Sudan street demonstrations which led to the ouster of long-time dictator, Ahmad Al-Bashir, in a military coup in 2019.

You don’t need a radical unionist to tell you that the current dispensation in Nigeria urgently needs to undergo a fundamental shake-up. The biting hunger churning in the belly is strong enough inspiration.

You do not need the opposition to tell you that the Buhari administration has failed to deliver on the promises it made to Nigerians, beginning from 2015.

 The pervasive ghosts of disillusionment, social dislocation, penury, misery, insecurity and apprehension stalking at every turn are enough catalysts for one to take a bold step towards personal redemption and salvaging the motherland from the precipice.

•Chris Gyang,

chrisgyang01@gmail.com

SIR: I am a member of our great party; concerned by the happenings in our party as regards the forthcoming gubernatorial primaries of our great party in Kogi State.

History, they say, is replete with examples and they remind us of how similar happenings in the past helped shape or mar the fate of many political associations and political parties.

The APC is built on the tenets of justice and fair play and that is why it is today recognized as the best political institution in our democratic journey as a nation. 

Any deviation from this ethically-oriented or ideological posture of our great party through acts of deliberate omission or commission would ultimately be calamitous, leaving in its trail destabilization of our treasured and respected party.

Why am I writing you this open letter at this time? It is because, as an African proverb says, the bird cried in the night and the baby died the next morning.

It has come to our attention that there is a plot by the Governor of Kogi State and leader of APC in the state, Governor Yahaya Bello, to hand-pick the delegates to the forthcoming gubernatorial primaries of our party in the state.

There are tons of visible evidences on the ground.  It is no longer in the realm of rumour. Mr. Chairman, it is now really annoying as the governor, who is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the magnanimity of due process as enshrined in our party’s constitution, is now the one scheming to negate the tenets of same due process, which our party is known for.

We, the party supporters, will not allow anybody, no matter how highly placed, to think he can preside over the erosion of the party’s democratic values.

I therefore wish to use this open letter to apprise you of what is clandestinely happening in the party; worrying occurrences which are now in the public domain. Our objective is simply for you to use your good offices to nip these in the bud.

The presidential election is at hand and as party men, I think we should not engage in anything that would bring our party to disrepute as the political consequences would be too grave for us as a party to bear.

If Imo and Bayelsa states are opting for direct primaries, which is the most acceptable and transparent form of primaries, why is the approach of our party in Kogi State different and shrouded in secrecy?

Kogi people are now more politically sophisticated and must be allowed, through a credible process, to recruit their leaders. This is what differentiates APC from other political parties. 

Mr Chairman, something fishy appears to be happening. The signs on the horizon seem not to be favourable to our party, especially as polls inch closer. You must step in to correct the anomaly of hand-picking of delegates. That is the way to bring great joy and hope to millions of Kogi APC supporters. 

•Musa Wada,

muswady@yahoo.com