By Andrew A. Erakhrumen

We do acknowledge and appreciate feedback on our articles. Interestingly, a number of them conclude that we have been dwelling so much (or too much?) on leadership as the main challenge to Nigeria’s development without paying attention to followers as being partly responsible for this. Those holding this opinion are entitled to it even as they are not absolutely correct considering that in the past we had similarly stated that “…..we have been criticised for, and confronted with questions relating to, holding ONLY people in government responsible for Nigeria’s challenges…..” We went ahead to agree that “…..the challenges encountered, today, by our country have the active contributions of the followers…..”

Yes, glaringly, we have been prioritising our efforts toward getting leadership right but it is rather untrue that we have not been talking about challenges encountered from irresponsible followership. For instance, in earlier articles, we stated concerning the oppressive tendency of Nigerian leaders that “…..those who got the short end of the stick [the oppressed]…..also aspire to transmute themselves into the other state [oppressors] [in order] to also oppress…..” Certainly, “…..political leaders – many of whom, formerly, were followers before attaining ‘leadership’ status – are from the same society as their followers…..”

Therefore, in order to buttress the position of those who hold the opinion, sincerely, that followers are part of the problem, we asked “…..Is it people in government that cheat consumers by selling inferior products for the price of higher quality ones in our markets? What about those tampering with measuring devices in order to cheat buyers? …..After selling eight ‘cups’ of grains as 10, what moral right do such a person have to criticise government? What of the artisans whose intention is to cheat their clients in all transactions? …..” In addition, “…..When those saddled with the responsibility of preventing fake or substandard products from getting into the country connive with importers to flood the markets with these same products, how do we explain this? When civil servants refuse to do their job, and/or decide to hide files, in order to be bribed, what do we call this?

The civil servants who steal, and aid politicians in stealing, public resources, cannot be said to be morally upright…..what make you…..followers – who regularly drive against traffic or do not obey traffic lights – different from…..law-breakers that call themselves your leaders?…..If all [of us have been doing] things…..right, in individual’s varied corners, we are very much likely to not have experienced this unfortunate…..decadence in our country today…..”

These and more, as enumerated in a couple of our earlier articles, are some negative contributions from followers to the deepening underdevelopment being experienced in this part of the world. Nonetheless, without making any attempt – in any way – at justifying immorality, illegality, unethical practices and corruption; we have submitted, objectively, somewhere that “…..you cannot be engaging in huge stealing at the top and be expecting moral uprightness from petty thieves below! You (and those in government) cannot be stealing the commonwealth dry and simultaneously preach moral fidelity to others. This is sheer hypocrisy! …..”

Of course, this story is completely incomplete at this stage! Part of it is that there cannot be any moral justification for employees (or followers) to ruin the investment (public/private) of investors. Businesses have been forced to temporarily close shop, collapse completely or relocate because of infrastructural challenges, government’s brutal predatory and rentier mentality, policy somersault and sabotage by workers. Sadly also, potential investments and businesses are being frustrated by employees’ fraudulent practices! Morally unacceptable ‘anomalies’ have now become ‘explainable’ and ‘acceptable’!

It appears as if those employees see most entrepreneurs as representatives, or members, of the Nigerian ‘ruining’ elite. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that those running Nigeria aground are not investing in things that generate wealth here! Even when in government, their mind and loots are domiciled in foreign lands! Employers of labour have different tales of woe to tell. It is so pathetic that many potential employers of labour have decided to not venture into legitimate businesses in Nigeria. Unbelievably, these are successful people in those businesses in ‘saner’ climes. What, then, make the difference here? The existing mind-set and attitude! Appallingly, those things seriously considered immoral, yesterday, are accepted, today, even by older generation! Nigeria has established a choking but infectious negative super-structure that need dismantling. This super-structure is built on virulent predatory tendencies and modalities that resist interrogations and criticisms. It also refuses to give in to any system that encourages well-defined criteria for rewards and sanctions. We must tell ourselves that Nigeria is now a dog-eat-dog society! This is partly why we opined in another intervention, and still maintain here, that followership is certainly a part of the PROBLEM Nigeria is encountering but the PROBLEM is actually the leadership!

The foregoing is contributory to an interwoven and knotty underdevelopment network requiring solutions from a new leadership cadre that can positively disrupt the status quo represented by the aforementioned predatory super-structure. This new group of positively disruptive leaders, with solutions, is unexpected from those “…..criticising government in power only for the purpose of getting into power and to not add any value to governance…..” It is a tall order to expect this disruption from beneficiaries of the existing warped system. However, if peace, security and tranquillity must be sustainably ensured; then, proper leadership that gives high priority to equity, fairness and justice must be enabled and supported. This kind of leadership is ‘easily’ installed and legitimated through popular support with its positive objectives and clearly defined system of reward and sanctioning being readily acceptable. Leaders are supposed to chart a positive course while followers support them. This is the way to go!

Contrary to the misconception that Nigerians are difficult to lead, the reverse is the case as long as leaders, themselves, are not lawless as it is – currently. Followers are sensitive to roadmaps! Whose responsibility is it to give roadmaps? Is it not leaders’? This is why all efforts toward finding solution(s) to poor leadership cannot be overemphasised.

• Erakhrumen teaches at the University of Benin.

By Kola Amzat 

SIR: Since the turn of 4th Republic in 1999, no presidential candidate has been so harassed, attacked and subjected to all forms of character assassination or the other, by members of opposition parties as Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the APC presidential candidate for 2023 general elections.

Admirably, he has remained absolutely undaunted by the loads of falsehoods, fabrication of lies and insults being hurled at his personality, as well as the presidential project, preferring to remain very focused –eyes only, on the ball. He has equally de-emphasized and downplayed all barriers he’s encountered so far and still encountering in his quest to lead the country.

Nigerians recall that on account of tempestuous, acrimonious and rancorous APC presidential primary, the party was largely expected to disintegrate. But, to the consternation of many, Tinubu immediately reached out to most of the fellow contestants, as well as powerful power blocs behind them for reconciliation.

From the available records of parties’ campaigns, none of the presidential candidates of opposition parties has covered 50% of locations Tinubu and his team have been able to cover since INEC signalled for the commencement of campaign exercise.

Opposition parties particularly, PDP have desperately made every attempt to halt Tinubu’s ascent for obvious reasons. They’re obviously wary of his presidency.  They know he’s a thinker and doer. They’re aware that Nigeria would take a rebound under his watch. They’re aware there would be significant turn-around in the economy, education, health, power generation and distribution, rail and road, as well as aviation infrastructures with Tinubu in charge.

They’re aware there would be a new impetus in manufacturing, oil and gas and agricultural sectors. They’re in the know that there would be a deliberate and strategic policy to halt the scourge of unemployment. Of course, PDP members aware that they won’t have another regime of squandering of the nation’s resources.

Really, it is an auspicious time for Nigeria nation to fulfil her potentials. It’s time for those diverse natural endowments buried in all the nooks and crannies of our land to be unearthed and turn into wealth for the optimum benefits of Nigerians. It’s appropriate time for Nigerians home and abroad to live the glorious life that providence has prepared for them.

Asiwaju Tinubu has the innate capacity to bring this dream to reality. He has made submissions severally in different fora, that he indeed knows the road to prosperity and Nigeria should do the needful by following him. Why should we doubt him? Why must we continue to move in cycle with trial by error leadership?

Lagos presents a classic example of what he’s capable of doing. If he could achieve those wonders and awesome feats in Lagos, we could imagine miracles that he could engineer across the nation with the humongous resources at the centre!

Tinubu has the aura of success. He’s imbued with incredible organizational and coordinating ability. He has the Midas touch.

One is particularly fascinated with his eagle eyes for talents discovery. And no doubt, he would obviously deploy those eyes to fish out the best of Nigerians anywhere they are for the purpose of building, resetting, repositioning as well as reconstructing this wonderful nation.

• Kola Amzat (FCA, FCIB) Lagos.

By Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi

The world is making rapid progress in the areas of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. These are the core drivers of what many analysts have come to refer to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, epitomized by the increased whittling away of the boundaries that hitherto existed between the physical, digital and biological worlds.

There is a clear imperative for pharmacists, pharmaceutical scientists and medical professionals in the field of research and development in developing countries like Nigeria, to increasingly tap into this world of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and partake of the revolution that is happening before our very eyes.

And the reason is simple. Artificial Intelligence is helping to make pharmaceutical research and new drug discovery less expensive and definitely more productive. Researchers realize that in the time that it would have taken to test the efficacy of say a handful of chemical molecules manually, with AI, it is possible to test several hundreds of different chemical molecules. With AI, therefore, we can create better, safer and more affordable medicines, within a much shorter time frame too.

Then, there is the issue of collaboration among scientists. In a world that has become so intricately networked, there is no excuse for our researchers to work in silos anymore. Pharmaceutical researchers, therefore, need to digitize their work in order to facilitate access by other scientists to such work-in-progress and in so doing enhancing the possibility of collaboration with fellow scientists both within and outside the country.

I am aware that there are ongoing initiatives to establish a national open access repository and research data management platform. I want to encourage academics and researchers to seek out the promoters and be part of this project. As an academy, we will also be looking at collaborating with the Nigerian Association of Pharmacists and Pharmaceutical Scientists in the Americas, NAPPSA, towards setting up an open access pharmaceutical research depository and data management platform in Nigeria. Such a centralized and readily accessible repository of research data would be invaluable at enabling researchers have a clear view of ongoing researches, curtailing unnecessary duplication of effort and as I said earlier, facilitating collaboration. I would be particularly keen to see collaboration not only across country boundaries but also across disciplines. It would be our delight as an Academy to witness researchers in diverse pharmaceutical and medical disciplines collaborating to discover new and better drugs to halt the march of illness and disease.

I want to quickly acknowledge that there is a handful of pharmacists who are already deploying Artificial Intelligence towards solving real world health challenges. Adebayo Alonge, the founder of a company called RxAll, has made a name for himself with his Scanners which detect fake drugs, using the power of Artificial Intelligence. Naturally therefore, his organization has attracted not only global media attention but also venture capital from offshore.

What needs to happen now is for the penetration of Artificial Intelligence to deepen and broaden especially among pharmacists, pharmaceutical and allied scientists who operate in the critical areas of research and development.

Pharmacists, pharmaceutical scientists and indeed medical professionals of all hues in the developing world must refuse to be left behind in a world that is being formidably impacted by the forces of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. We must make a deliberate effort to stake a claim to this global revolution.

The obstacles are of course, formidable, but we must continue to think outside of the box. Indeed, we must imagine that there is no box, whatsoever.

I appreciate that penetration of Artificial Intelligence will naturally be impeded by the relative scarcity of AI expertise in these parts. But we can begin to look at incorporating elements of programming, machine learning and other forms of data management in our training curriculum for pharmacists at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels.  This way, pharmacists can very early on, begin to imbibe the digital mind-set and relate more empirically with the manifold possibilities of deploying digital solutions to solving real world problems including drug discovery.

If the experience of companies like RxAll and the several successful fintech companies that have originated from Nigeria is something to go by, then clearly, funding appears to follow good and profitable causes. If we are able to demonstrably prove that we are capable of harvesting the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in contributing to the emergence of new and better drugs, we will attract the interest of Venture Capital firms and Angel Investors from around the world.

So let us go back and rededicate ourselves to tapping into the new digital phenomena that are changing our world.

This is not forgetting that the government, as always, has a central and crucial role to play in all of this. As an Academy, therefore, we are also calling on the government to help create the right environment that makes meaningful research possible. In addition to helping to ensure that basic facilities including clean water and electricity are available, government policy direction must also be such that deliberately enables AI to take root and grow. For instance, government can help to create a level playing field for all by providing free and open access to big data. It could also help to deliberately, through incentives and subsidies, attract technology incubators in the AI space.

We must, both as individual scientists as well as an Academy, continue to emphasize the importance of research and development to the march of human progress and why Nigeria must not abdicate its role and responsibilities in this all-important quest. While imploring the government and society to live up to their responsibilities to support research and development, we as researchers, must also live up to our responsibilities to latch on a blossoming new world of possibilities opened up by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Just as we have witnessed in the financial and fintech space, there is considerable potential for AI in the pharmaceutical space and that potential can translate not only to the relief of pain and suffering from disease but also to economic growth and development.

• Adelusi-Adeluyi, a former Minister of Health and currently President of the Nigeria Academy of Pharmacy, made these remarks at a recent investiture of new Fellows of the Academy.

By Mike Kebonkwu

According to the Organizations of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Nigeria ranks 7th on list of crude oil production globally from the  6th position previously.  This is not a poor ranking by any means even though we could have fared better; with the heist in the system supervised by the operators. With all the oil wealth, Nigeria remains poor and under-developed. The poverty and under-development of the country is not caused by lack of deposits of natural resources. Nigeria sits on the underbelly of huge mineral deposits in huge commercial quantity across the geo-political zones. Our Bent Crude is one of the finest in quality and cost, raking in huge revenue.

On November 23, the federal government rolled out the drums as President Muhammadu Buhari commissioned an Oil field in Kolmani in commercial quantity near Bauchi – Gombe borders.  The commissioning was signposted as one of the greatest achievements of the Buhari APC-led government at the twilight of its tenure. The Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is responsible for the management of the petroleum industry.

The NNPC is one of the state run bureaucracies of the federal government with hefty pay check for the civil servants under the ministry. It is a preferred department of government that earns arguably the highest or most competitive salary in the country.  Civil servants and workers in the department earn their salaries and promotions regularly like their counterparts in other ministries. There are also regular recruitments and appointments in the department without production.

Since 2011, Nigeria has suffered perennial scarcity of gasoline with progressive acute intensity in succeeding years.  People queuing for hours on end at the petrol stations to top up are a regular feature. Since the turn up of this year in early February, fuel scarcity has become phenomenal and biting. Matter is made worse by government mute indifference with humungous sums on fuel subsidy. The ordinary Nigerians have developed limitless capacity to absolving pains and hardship visited on the country by bad leadership and a clique of the elite.

And on top of it all, the president who doubles as the Minister of Petroleum, whose portfolio he kept to himself for inexplicable reason has never had the presence of mind to address the problem.  For the junior Minister of Petroleum who is from one of the oil-producing states, the office is a mere share of political cake in recognition of his position and contributions to his party’s victory.  Everything about the Nigerian oil industry is shrouded in doubts and speculations.  The only verifiable and empirical fact about Nigeria oil industry is that we have four refineries.  Nobody has told us the state of the refineries, whether they are producing refined products at all and at what capacity.  The same is true of the subsidy; no figure is placed on the amount of subsidy which is a matter of conjectures; no data, no statistics. The wage bills are not known, including the ghost workers.  Nigeria has become a badly mismanaged project.

We have taken the waste and mismanagement of the country as normal without questioning, and without protest.  We are not blessed with the grace to demand for accountability from our leaders.  Rather, we go about on the streets venting anger on one another that are equal victims of the exploitation and oppression of the ruling elite.  We know what our problems are, and we know who are responsible for it but we prefer to inundate God with supplications night and day to come down and carry our cross. We may weep and cry but that cross will remain with us until we take step to remove the cyst and scale from our eyes and break the chains of servitude that we are wearing like beautiful ornaments.

Why are you paying salaries to workers whose department do not provide services for which they are employed?  What are you promoting them for?  What is the basis of their assessments?

The discovery of oil in Nigeria has become an anathema and a story of pathos. The moment oil was discovered, the Nigerian state closed its eyes to every other potential sources of wealth and revenue to the country.  We also abandoned agriculture, leaving it only as a means of subsistence for rural folks. Nigeria sits on the underbelly of huge mineral resources across the country in all the geo-political zones. The mineral deposits in the country can drive the entire world and provide wealth to Nigerians, but we have ignored all. The mineral deposits in the North alone can sustain the biggest economy in the world.  It has been left to non-state actors and free for all; fuelling banditry and insurgency in that geopolitical zone.

All the oil wealth in the south and Niger Delta region has left it in a state of despoliation and damaged ecosystem, militant agitation, restiveness and irreversible pollution. Today, most of the oil producing communities in the Niger Delta have been submerged under flood and the people have lost all their lives earnings and live in IDP camps.

Some analysts have described President Buhari’s commissioning of the Kolmani Oil field as a strategic masterstroke in geo-political balancing that would douse agitations for resource control and true federalism.  That is balderdash! You may discover oil in every household in the country today; it is not going to translate to national wealth and improvement in the living standard or condition of the people if we do not break ties with this type of rapacious government and ruling elite with the appetite of anaconda.

The oil we have before now, what have we done with it?  It is good that the NNPC is prospecting for oil in every backyard and like Mungo Park, and has discovered oil in Kolmani river basin.  I pray that you do not take my argument out of context.  If we discover oil in every household it is good; and so what?  Give 13% derivative to the host communities, yes!  So there is oil in the North, yes! We can now negotiate with it in national discourse as contributing to government revenue; to what end?

For one year running, there is scarcity of petrol in the entire country with intermittent supply.  There is arbitrary hiking of price of the product at the whims and intuition of the marketers. For all that you may care to know, the Kolmani project and the oil wells may have been shared in the usual sweet-heart deals to government officials and their cronies.

Commuting to anywhere in Nigeria and mass transit of people, even for daily survival to their work places is traumatizing, including intra-city.  People who have private cars can hardly fuel their vehicles due to scarcity of petrol.  Whenever there is availability, you spend an upward of three hours at least where you have to buy at the government price.  Otherwise you are sentenced to go and buy at the “black-market stations” selling petrol at the suffocating price of N250.00 per litre to N300.00 per litre. Railway services are not available throughout the country and for the few places that have the privilege of rail lines that are operational, the fare is out of the reach of the ordinary citizens, go and check.

We are at a breaking point and the solution is not in transcendental or ecclesiastic supplications. Praying to God is good but God said that He will bless the work of our hands.  Man can only remove the chain of his captivity with his own hand.  It may not be broken by fasting and prayer alone if we do not take step to remove it. Let us leave this appeal and recoil to ethnicity and religion. The elite are united in their grip and hold over us; they do not show religious or ethnic differences when they allocate huge allowances and salaries to themselves at the National Assembly. They celebrate together, not across religious lines or ethnic divide.  We should borrow sense now that it appears we are still thinking and ignore the oil politics.  Kolmani oil project is not going to transmute to good governance.

• Kebonkwu Esq writes from Abuja.

By Charles Onunaiju

By all estimates, the elections scheduled for February 2023 especially the presidential poll will be a defining moment for Nigeria. It will be the second time since 1999 that an incumbent would not be on the ballot and whosoever is elected, whether from the ruling or other opposition parties, would be a defining moment in Nigeria’s political history. While the outcome of the 2023 elections would add to the reputation of the country in deepening civilian-led political process, the emerging trends of widening misery and poverty, amidst contentious and even acrimonious civic bond, would bring enormous strains and constrain the generation of enabling consensus to heal post-election contestations.

However, a deeper and broader challenge is to govern in a way that is radically different from the routine we are all familiar. The imperative to govern in a different way is simply because the familiar routine of governing have proved totally unable to engage the existential challenges that have bedevilled the country and even exacerbated the crises. Traditional apparatus and other formal institutions of governance have also been unable to generate vital mechanisms for efficient service delivery to the generality of Nigerians. They need not be disbanded as that would amount to overthrowing the constitution but adroit, intelligent and patriotic leadership in post-2023 election can creatively explore the constitutional ambit to build shadowy smart platform to generate efficiencies and competencies necessary to deliver on the transformation of Nigeria.

Nigeria’s most insidious cankerworm that have viciously thwarted the best of intentions and even the correct policy measures is the endemic presence of vested interests at every turn of Nigeria’s effort to translate her famed potentials in to concrete aggregates for sustainable development. The whole gamut of existing institutions from the formal centres of power – executive, legislature and judiciary and the bureaucracy to the departments and agencies are all victims of manipulating and vicious vested interests, The stranglehold of vicious interest in all the country’s traditional state institutions demands in objective terms, a revolutionary cleansing requiring the complete overthrow of the state  But, such revolutionary upheaval is not only impossible but even undesirable because its consequences are usually beyond the scope and managerial competence of its progenitors. But something more thorough going than the chaos of revolutionary upheaval is possible to clean the Nigeria’s Augean stable.

Gladiators of all sorts are priming and positioning themselves in all the political parties especially the major ones to negotiate themselves into vintage state and public institutions with the baggage of vested interests for which they are mere surrogates. In every step and in all circumstances as experience has shown, protection and advancement of these vested interests are the characteristic and defining nature of public office holding in contemporary Nigeria. The extensive, pervasive and corrosive influence and impact of vested interests have completely hollowed out traditional institutions of the state, deprived them of capacity, integrity, credibility and competence to act in the public interest. While they exist and are maintained with public resources, they are distracted and incapacitated by vested special interests.

Read Also: 2023 Presidency: Early predictions and scenarios (5)

In the context of the contemporary Nigeria, where special vested interests reign supreme, rules, procedures, norms and even laws are converted to provincial ordinances reduced to the subjective preferences selectively and meekly applied to the pleasure of the powerful. The traditional demarcation of making, interpreting and executing the laws designed to bolster and strengthen the efficiency of governance through both institutional independence and collaboration in functions have been sullied and compromised. While influence peddling is a feature of public life almost everywhere in the world, there may be nowhere in the world where it has so malignantly affected public institutions and so thoroughly vitiated their capacity to render and deliver services to the people than in Nigeria.

The reality in contemporary Nigeria is that pockets of special vested interest has overthrown the constitutional order, hollowed out the substance of public interest, and left them as glorified shells, only good for viewing. Everything that is purportedly done in the open and supposedly in the best of public interests have actually been negotiated and traded in the secret. Public office holders who enforce rules and regulate various sectoral actors are themselves key bidders, and major actors.

With the virtual overthrow of the constitutional order and due process under the suzerainty of special vested interests, Nigeria’s manifest destiny to inspire the black race and lead Africa has remained a pipe dream despite obvious potential both in human and material resources. The early gains of post-independence Nigeria in establishing a virile public service and a responsible political process have been summarily reversed.

The election scheduled for first quarter of 2023, will not automatically recover the famished fate of the country, but any one among the contestants who win, can make a decision to hold down the haemorrhage and turn the tide.

To seek to confront vested interest and their powerful practitioners is not an option. Persuading them either to give up the privileged vintage position will be exercise in futility. But because they are banal and vain, they can be tricked as their ego can be massaged to irrelevance.

As they have stomped the country, seeking votes on behalf of different candidates with a view to being catapulted into public office as ministers, and other choice and key offices.

While letting the political jobbers fill all the designated positions to their satisfaction of having summarily captured the state institutions, a wise and patriotic leader determined to break jinx can create a shadow cabinet within the ambit of the law. A presidential Think Tank, a long overdue summon of the country’s intellectual capital, composed of thinkers and scholars in broad range of disciplines, prepared to work with little or no visibility and modest emolument can work to seek mechanisms, device informal rules and develop templates for dismantling the sovereign impunity of vested interests without courting the mortal peril of confronting them or breaching the constitution.

When the famed boundless energy of Nigerians is unleashed in a true republic when public institutions are genuinely primed to serve the public, the transformative impact of a Nigeria that is awakened would be far more reaching than the celebrated Asian dragon, the awakened Peoples Republic of China.

2023 can bring about more of the same or can be truly a defining moment. But Nigeria’s defining moment cannot come if there is no radical break with the old way of doing things and neither would total disruptions set us on the path of recovery.

• Onunaiju is a research director of an Abuja Think Tank.