Category: Letters

By Chief Emeka Asinugo

SIR: Recently, Anambra State Governor, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo pleaded with President Buhari to release the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, who had been in the Department of State Security detention since July 29, 2021, to him unconditionally. 

Urging President Buhari to release Kanu in order to douse the tension and insecurity prevailing in the Southeast, Soludo promised that he was ready to sign as surety for Kanu’s release, and make him available whenever and wherever he would be needed by the federal government. He emphasized the need for a roundtable dialogue among all the stakeholders across the Southeast zone for peace and development in the zone. 

In response, the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami was quoted by the press as saying that the renewed call for Nnamdi Kanu’s release had not been invoked officially for the consideration of the Federal Government. 

Said Malami: “There is no such request formally before the federal government or the judicial process. As of today, I am not in receipt of any application arising from the public statement made by the governor of Anambra State (Chukwuma Soludo), either through the judicial process or extended to me as the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF). When a matter is pending before the court, the right channel through which any request or perhaps concession can be presented for consideration is through the judicial process. The renewed call for Nnamdi Kanu’s release has not been invoked formally for the consideration of the Attorney-General.”

This is a very important development that has created the opportunity for Professor Soludo and the other Southeast governors to resolve the rising tension in the region with the political expediency it deserves. It is a challenge they must accept with precision if they mean well for the youths and the future of Ndigbo now that they are in the position to declare their concern. 

Can Professor Soludo take the lead to see his effort come to fruition? Can he get his demand made through the law courts and copy the justice minister? What the minister is saying in effect is that it was not enough for Governor Soludo to simply mouth his demand. He should write it down to the minister through the law courts. That is not asking for too much. Backed by other Southeast governors, Governor Soludo should do this at least to test the sincerity of the federal government. 

• Chief Sir Emeka Asinugo, London.

By Bukola Ajisola

SIR: Many laudable policies that have been implemented in other climes with verifiable success rates and have been taken further to constitute the basis for many enduring institutions have simply failed in Nigeria not because those policies are geographically immune to our ecosystems but they fail for lack of altruism and sincerity of those behind the implementation of those policies.

One example of a laudable monetary initiative that has been messed up and hence a quantum failure is the new Naira redesign which the CBN imposed on the nation just a few months before the general elections.

In Nigeria, elections are conducted as if there would be no country thereafter and as if the incoming administration must start everything afresh as the incumbents luxuriate on the latitude to either engage in spending sprees, negotiate thoughtless debt overhang or simply remain aloof on critical issues of governance and economy as we have witnessed in the case of the CBN practically running riot with its monetary policy indiscretions.

The way the cashless policy is being implemented prompts the poser on whether Nigerian government prognosticates any marshal plan upon which governance is nuanced.

To have waited almost eight years when the administration is winding down having no constitutional room for a renewed mandate to foist a rudderless cashless policy is not only seen as an attempt to assail the general election but also a surreptitious political move to cripple the incoming administration.

It’s an apotheosis of failure of this administration to have attempted a policy that can make a country like Nigeria a cashless economy within three months when no developed nation has completely achieved the feat in decades.

A cashless economy is achieved by means of deliberate, steady, consistent and measured piecemeal approach to making electronic transactions more appealing to the citizens.

Due to the CBN’s permissive indulgence, most commercial banks have become laws unto themselves, their Automatic Tellers Machines are deliberately not funded, electronic transfers and POS transactions are bedevilled with all manners of irregularities with customers losing millions of Nara in unreversed transaction failures.

Suffice to say that Nigerians have never been in this kind of quandary situation where in most circumstances having navigated the long queues at petrol stations, the POS machines would be malfunctioning or without network, they run to the banks’ ATM and met redundant machines starved of cash and when a final attempt at over-the-counter withdrawals are made, the banks are unabashedly intrepid to say that they have no cash in their vault.

One administrative tool that has proven effective and result-oriented in extenuating circumstances such as we have at hand but which President Muhammadu Buhari has refused to explore is to lay off the inept public officials in mass cabinet overhaul.

Wielding this executive big stick over the leadership of the CBN, NNPC, and other languorous institutions existing as draining pipes is overdue.

The May 29 handover date is too long a time for Nigerians to endure this paraplegic incompetence which is sure to constitute significant headwinds for the next administration.

However if the president decides not to act on cabinet re-engineering and watch the institutions of governance tank to the bottom, the verdict of posterity on him may not be too auspicious.

• Bukola Ajisola, bukymany@yahoo.com

By Ogungbile Oludotun

SIR: The “Japa syndrome”, a phenomenon in which hordes of Nigerians are leaving the country in droves, is getting worse by the day. A recent survey by the Nigeria Social Cohesion Survey shows that seven out of 10 Nigerians are willing to relocate to other countries for various reasons, with a good number of them recording success. It itry than those immigrating. It’ in droves depressing that Nigeria is sinking deeper and deeper in brain drain, a situation that calls for emergency.

Recall that the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors last year revealed that about 50% of Nigerian doctors had already found their way out of the country. The University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan also corroborated the trend with more than 600 of its clinical workers said to have resigned their appointments, while just some days ago, the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) also revealed that more than 150 nurses resigned their appointments with the tertiary hospital.

It is disheartening to note that those on the “Japa” train are mostly the highly skilled individuals with useable talents across different sectors of the national economy.

In July 2022, the Association of Nigerian Students in Europe revealed that Europe alone has more than three million Nigerians enrolled in different educational institutions. A survey also found that 89.87% of Nigerian youth prefer to study in a university outside the country. Imagine this: 60% of doctors and 89.87% of students want to japa! They want to flee the country.

What are they really seeing that the government are not seeing?

Nigerian youths are frustrated with socio-economic challenges fuelled by unfulfilled government promises and bad leadership marked by absence of transparency and accountability. In 2022, the unemployment rate in Nigeria was estimated to reach 33 percent in 2023. This figure was projected to 32.5 percent in the preceding year. Chronological data show that the unemployment rate in Nigeria rose constantly in the past years. Nigeria’s youth population eligible to work is about 40 million out of which only 14.7 million are fully employed.

Rather than being empowered, Nigerian youth have been reduced to a bunch of frustrated citizens with many of them becoming political thugs and agents of destruction in the hands of the enemies of the country.

Nigerian youth aren’t frustrated because President Buhari failed to create his three million jobs per year. They aren’t frustrated because President Buhari called them lazy. They’re frustrated at the lack of basic amenities, lack of electricity, bad roads, and the distorted academic calendar that springs up every year. They’re frustrated with the lack of enabling environment for good business.

Why won’t they leave when the level of insecurity in Nigeria has continued to worsen over years? Before, it used to be only the Boko Haram insurgency. Now herdsmen crisis, kidnappings, attacks by known and unknown gunmen, and unnecessary bloodshed in the country are provoking dangerous signals. Now, who will really want to stay behind? Who? 

The country is dangerous for its dwellers. The economy has been stagnant for years; inflation is consistent, unpredictable.

I do not think that the Nigerian government will ever come to realization of how the services of these “Japa” Nigerians will impact on the situation. What happens to the quality of health of the citizens? Who and what are replacing the services of the relocated nurses and doctors? Our good heads are forsaking the Nigerian dream on a daily basis; they are watching out and grabbing opportunities in greener pastures. 

When 73% of the entire population would want to leave the country, what would this translate to?

Just some days ago, the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) projected the unemployment rate in Nigeria to rise to 37 percent in 2023 while  the United Kingdom is offering to pay an annual salary of over N15 million to Nigerians who are willing to migrate there and work as teachers.

Tell me who will stay to starve? It’s a Peckham call.

• Ogungbile Emmanuel Oludotun, Lagos. 

Thank God for BVAS. No doubt, this is what those in the camp of Governor Gboyega Oyetola will be saying. Oyetola and his loyalists have every reason to thank God, some six months after the July 16, 2022 election which he was said to have lost to Senator Ademola Adeleke. On January 27, the tribunal voided Adeleke’s election, and returned Oyetola as Osun governor.

What saved the day was BVAS. The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) is a technological device, which is central to the conduct of elections. Interestingly, it was introduced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in its determination to ensure free, fair and credible elections. Until Osun happened, BVAS was the deity with which INEC swore.

What happened in Osun shows that election riggers’ desperation knows no bounds; they are ready to do anything in their power to win elections. INEC might have meant well by introducing BVAS, but it appeared it did not understand the workings of the device well, before deploying it for use.

In an era that tech prodigies abound, it should have known that BVAS cannot be foolproof. The BVAS may not have been broken into during the Osun election, or the Edo and Ekiti polls before it, there is no gainsaying the fact that, with the findings of the Osun tribunal, the device can be breached.

The human element is a critical factor in election matters. Despite that, BVAS works and this we have seen from the tribunal’s verdict, which tore through the human manipulation of the results and the purported synchronisation of same to uphold BVAS’ integrity. 

INEC is set to guard this integrity jealously, with the mock accreditation of voters in 436 polling units across the country ahead of the February 25 presidential election. BVAS has shown its worth, with the way the Justice Tertse Kume-led tribunal resolved the Osun election dispute, using the data from the device. BVAS collects the voter’s data on its own and stores it. If not tampered with, the information remains intact until required as was seen in the Osun case. If 200 voters were accredited to vote in a polling unit, BVAS will store that number.

This stored data must correspond with the number of voters from that unit recorded in the Form EC8A result sheet. Any discrepancies in figures will mean only one thing – tampering, altering or falsifying. What this means is that there cannot be either under or over voting. Where there are voided ballots, whatever the number is, when added to the valid votes must tally with the total number of accredited voters in the BVAS. In one word, the total number of voters and those accredited to vote must correspond. Where there is excess, that is overvoting, as recorded in some polling units in Osun, there must be an explanation for it.

What happened in this instant case? INEC has been trying hard to explain. Did it discover the overvoting before the tribunal? If it did, what remedial steps did it take to correct the anomaly? Did the Electoral Act envisage overvoting, as an INEC National Commissioner, Festus Okoye, is claiming? How can a law envisage the commission of the same crime that it is expected to prevent? The essence of BVAS is to ensure a free, fair and transparent election, not to encourage its rigging, which overvoting amounts to. What about synchronisation?

When should the BVAS data and information in Form EC8A be synchronised? Before or after an election is won and lost? It is better done before the results are announced to avoid premature celebration by a winner whose victory may be eventually upturned for not substantially complying with the law.

Can INEC issue multiple BVAS reports in respect of one election as it did in the Osun case and hold on to them steadfastly as emanating from it? Which of the reports should the protagonists believe? The thing is, with or without any other document like even Form EC8A, BVAS speaks for itself because it is the primary source of information about the accreditation of voters.

Any other document outside of that could only have been made up. Can INEC, which is a strong advocate for free and fair elections, ever be part of that? Unfortunately, it has left itself open to criticisms for its shoddy handling of the Osun case in the aftermath of the BVAS row. It cannot afford to do that with the presidential election, which is just 23 days away.

Emefiele’s bad verse

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele continues to play games with Nigerians over the redesigned N200, N500 and N1000 notes. On Sunday, he extended the deadline for phasing out the old notes from January 31 to February 10. He gave the impression that those with the old notes after the deadline would be on their own. Since he unveiled his plan to recall the old notes for reasons best known to him, Emefiele has been running rings round Nigerians.

He consults with only President Muhammadu Buhari on the matter and informs the public about the outcome of their meetings. His long term plan is to create a cashless economy. There is nothing wrong with that. What the people are saying is that he should make haste slowly. He does not want to hear that because he has a different agenda. Despite trying to force his way through, he is not making a headway. The new notes are scarce.

The banks, he claimed, have the notes but are not dispensing them. A good CBN governor would have made a scapegoat of one or two bank chiefs by now. In the midst of the hue and cry over the matter, he has said depositors could still take the old notes to their banks for exchange after the February 10 deadline. The money would only cease being legal tender (that is can no longer be spent) after that date. Why did it take him this long to explain these things? For now, he should let us know how we can get the new notes with ease. We leave him to deal with the saboteurs accordingly!

SIR: He speaks as if he owns tomorrow. He spouts in some self-righteous mightiness of those with the mastery of earth and heaven. There is no restraint about this man at all.  None. No conscious humbling awareness that he is just an ephemeral errand, a dismissible agent in an instant, flung into the gutter when he is of no use. 

Not this character swollen in hubristic largeness as he defies the national parliament and the wisdom path, mouthing and prattling in omniscient indifference, stubbornly perceiving himself in all knowing certitudes. 

He doth lie.  He has reached his cul de sac.  But he doesn’t know it. Or he pretends not to know the end has come

He is now limited by the necessary confines of fate. This flawed character is still marooned in the tenuous protection of the present, thinking that the privileges of today will be enlarged in some crude infinity.

It will never happen. A man without the basic rudiment of economic theory, wheedling and bowing before transient power to gain a favour; mangling morality while he sits atop the apex bank and yet would want to contest for the highest office in the land! 

What crass idiocy? What madness of blinded power and distorted vision! 

Truth be told: this man serves no one but the greed of ephemeral power and the delusion of a dubious infinite relevance in the calculations of a warped soul, believing that masquerading behind the gods of today will elongate his relevance. 

Not true.  

Never happened!

He has now earned for himself the  necessary presence in infamy having thrown the nation askew with his warped inking of a new naira notes which is unavailable everywhere even including the recesses of the banking halls merely days to a crucial presidential election . 

Surely something is rotten in Denmark!

How does this time-server convince anyone that he harbours no hidden agenda as the  economy goes into a spiral of inflation, with darkness haunting the land, with man-hours halted and wasted in  petrol queues, with anger flaring on the streets, with market women rejecting the old notes while  the new one is not to be seen? 

The nation stirs and dangles dangerously on the precipice provoked by those whose ultimate agenda is to create a swelter of chaos that will make the election impossible and fling before us a manufactured force majeure. 

But Nigerians are wiser. The sudden scarcity of fuel is no fluke. The emergency introduction of an ugly looking, blurred, newly inked naira notes with punitive imposition of limited withdrawal are conjured array of destabilizing insertions into the Nigerian polity borne upon some vindictive evil to sever the democratic path. 

Again, we stand as sentry against the augurs of tyranny. We stand firm and steady against the crude conspirators of the hour who would mangle democracy to satisfy the ephemeral powers who deem themselves in infinite latitude. 

Godwin Emefiele has become a crude partisan agent, an emblem of conspiratorial actors who is clearly unfit and unsuitable to lead our apex bank.  The Department of State Security has levelled some grave allegations against him.  He should make himself available to clear the air. The joint houses of parliament have summoned him to explain his voodoo fiscal theory. Here again he should respect the representatives of our people by submitting himself to legitimate scrutiny. 

We assert that there is no nation on earth totally pivoted on cashless economics, not even the United States. For virtual wiping out of paper cash is a direct road to a police state where the Big Brother monitors all basic rudiments of life. Surely our democracy must never recede to this darkness. 

The truth be told: Mr Emefiele has reduced the Central Bank to a partisan arm of governance. He has ceded his neutrality by overtly canvassing to be president, even going to court to seek validation. 

We demand that Godwin Emefiele should be removed immediately as the governor of Central Bank of Nigeria for his serial abuse of constitutional mandate and he should submit himself forthwith to the DSS and various agents of the state to probe his activities. Hiding under sponsored cheerleaders to distract the grave issues at hand is insulting the Nigerian populace.  It will not work. Emefiele is a Trojan horse with all the destructive concomitants. He should quietly go into the good night.  The day of accounting has come.

•Prince Uthman Shodipe-Dosunmu,

The Patriots Roundtable, Lagos.

SIR: The father of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl, was wrong, when he wrote that “History is nothing but noise, noise of arms and noise of advancing ideas”. It is ideas – opposing ideas – that spark off wars. It is also ideas – government policies, military philosophies, strategic doctrines and tactical plans – that dictate the outcomes of wars. So, the noise of arms is just an appearance of the noise of advancing ideas. Therefore, history is nothing but noise, noise of advancing ideas.

Like most countries that muffle the noise of advancing ideas, Nigeria is, in every sense of the word, in the boondocks. The Nigerian society is tyrannical and repressive. To protect the self-importance and follies of a privileged few, it suppresses dissent and freedom of expression. It consigned the generality of Nigerians to vegetate in fear and timidity: quaking in the fear of the police, soldier, landlord, pastor, etc., and cringing like slaves in their own country.

The purpose of a university education in Nigeria must be to free the students from the ignorance, timidity and trepidation that blight the lives of so many Nigerians. It should be to turn the quaking, obsequious man, cringing like a slave, into a proud and confident man, with the knowledge that his individual rights and legal immunity from abuse of governing officials are guaranteed by the constitution, and that all the institutions of government were designed and built purposely to serve him. That is, in addition to cramming text book knowledge, a university education must produce self-assured and independent-minded youths exorcized of diffidence, self-doubt and fear of the system.

These can only be achieved in an environment of free thought and free speech, which encourages alternative views, and tolerates free thinkers, mavericks and dissenters. To reprimand and/or suspend a student, as in some church-owned universities, for not attending church services is the height of bigotry. It is in gross misinterpretation of the Bible by self-seeking pastors, and a throwback to medieval obscurantism.

The object of a university education is not to turn men into Christians but to turn Christians into men. Education develops the mind, and a developed mind must inescapably be informed and free. An informed mind knows that God is too magnificent and indescribable. He is bigger than all the religions of the world put together. It is therefore fantastic absurdity for any religion to claim a monopoly on the true knowledge of God. Religious devotion should be left to the individual’s persuasion and prejudice. He should choose his religion, not by coercion, but conviction. Different individuals have found superior validity and/or spiritual fulfilment in different religions of the world.

Disturbingly, Nigeria universities are gagging students and railroading them into conformity and orthodoxy. To curb indecent dressing, some universities are insisting that their students adhere to certain dress codes, and others have gone as far as demanding the wearing of uniforms by students. And in many universities, students are coerced into signing the “Indemnity Form”, which commits them to be of good conduct.

What is good conduct, in this context, if not docility and kowtow? The “Indemnity Form” and wearing of uniforms are powerful tools of enforced servility and passivity. If such Procrustean enforcement of “good conduct” continues unchallenged, our universities will, with time, degenerate to monasteries ruled by the cold severity and ruthless regimentation of medieval Abbots, where divergent and dissenting views will be considered mortal sins, deserving of severe punishment.

For the good of this country, our universities must be the most vivacious, vociferous concourse of variegated advancing ideas. They should be bastions of intellectual ferment and free speech; accommodative of all spectrums of human thoughts and beliefs; and the abodes of iconoclasts, renegades, and even, dissolute; where students have the freedom to explore new lifestyles, notions and viewpoints. It is in such hubs of contact, comparison and contention of diverse ideas that ideas and systems of knowledge are challenged and enriched. It is the flowering and effervescence of enriched ideas that lift societies to the crest of social, moral and political development.

•Tochukwu Ezukanma,

Lagos.

SIR: The recent airstrikes which killed more than 50 people in the Doma Local Government area of  Nasarawa State will be put down to a deadly accident, another deadly accident. That is even if desperate attempts to blame terrorists for it fail.

The herders were said to have been retrieving about 1,250 cattle which had been confiscated by the Benue livestock guards while the airstrikes were coordinated by a drone deployed by the Nigerian Armed Forces in continuing operations to flush out terrorists.

Whatever it was, no explanation would possibly be enough for the man who lost nine family members to the deadly airstrikes

The Nasarawa incident is certainly another black mark for ordinary Nigerians in what is surely a compelling and  utterly excruciating experience of what it means to be a Nigerian. For all its prodigious potentials, promises and problems, Nigeria remains a country roiled by uncertainty.

Although there is no explanation that can satisfactorily stanch the bleeding of the hearts of all those who have lost loved ones to the explosions, it is time Nigerians began to receive some explanation about why they drop dead  like flies in their own country again and again.

Nigerians deserve to know why life has become so cheap in a country which has everything to make life not only safe but worth living.

People should not be attacked and dropped so frequently an in the country as randomly as if the country is fighting an all-out war. People should not have to live under the suffocating cloud of insecurity and uncertainty that has become the lot of many Nigerians in recent times.

It all boils down to leadership at the end of the day, to how a country has been run in the last decade or so since terrorism  became an existential  challenge. A lot of what has refused to change has simply refused to change because those whose merry-go-round had taken them into and through the corridors of power in Nigeria were simply content to do the rounds even if things only became worse as they did.

It is rather unfortunate that the war against terror is claiming so many lives at the moment. Whether it is security personnel, the terrorists themselves or innocent civilians being killed, result is the same and the conclusion inescapable that there are too many unaccountable deaths in Nigeria at the moment.

Nigerians can do with more clarity about the situation they find themselves in today. But more than clarity, Nigerians could do with a lot less deaths lest the country becomes one vast graveyard.

For the victims of the bombings and their families who have to pick up the pieces once again, it is another poke at the dreary puzzle that Nigeria has become.

•Kene Obiezu,

keneobiezu@gmail.com