Category: Opinion

Big shocks to the global economy, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, understandably capture the most attention. But a new worldwide pattern of “little fires everywhere” may be equally consequential for longer-term economic well-being. Over time, these small fires can coalesce into one that is just as threatening as the initial large fire that acted as the catalyst.

In addition to causing widespread death and destruction, and displacing millions of people, the Ukraine war continues to stoke strong stagflationary winds throughout the global economy. The resulting damage — whether in the form of higher food and energy prices or new supply-chain disruptions — cannot be easily or rapidly countered by domestic policy adjustments.

For most countries, the war’s immediate economic consequences include higher inflation (which erodes purchasing power), lower growth, increased inequality, and greater financial instability. The multilateral system, meanwhile, now faces greater obstacles to the type of cross-border policy coordination needed to deal with pressing global problems such as climate change, pandemics, and life-threatening migration.

The challenges are particularly acute for fragile commodity importers in the developing world, especially when compared to the problems facing advanced economies. It is the difference between legitimate worries about the cost-of-living crisis in the United Kingdom, for example, and fear of famine in some African countries.

The United States’ higher trade and budget deficits appear considerably less problematic than potential defaults by heavily indebted low-income countries. And while the recent decline in the yen’s value may be attention-grabbing in a Japanese context, a disorderly collapse of poorer countries’ exchange rates could fuel widespread financial instability.

As Michael Spence, the Nobel laureate economist and an expert on growth and development dynamics, pointed out to me recently, the probability of simultaneous growth, energy, food, and debt crises is worryingly high for too many developing countries. If that nightmare scenario materialises, the effects will be felt far beyond individual developing countries — and will extend well beyond economics and finance.

It is therefore in advanced economies’ interest to help poorer countries reduce the mounting risk of little economic fires everywhere. Fortunately, there is a rich historical record, especially from the 1970s and 1980s, to draw on in this regard. Effective action today will require policymakers to refine proven solutions and support their sustained implementation with strong leadership, coordination, and perseverance.

For starters, a pre-emptive multilateral debt-restructuring and relief initiative is needed to provide essential space for overly indebted countries and overstretched creditors to achieve orderly outcomes on a case-by-case basis. A multilaterally-coordinated approach is also crucial to reduce the disruptive — and sometimes paralysing — risk of free riders, and to ensure fair burden-sharing among official creditors, as well as with private lenders.

Reinvigorating emergency commodity buffers and financing facilities is critical in order to reduce the risk of food riots and famines. Such measures can also play a useful role in countering some countries’ understandable but short-sighted inclination to ban agricultural exports and/or engage in inefficient self-insurance through excessive stockpiling.

Finally, rich-country governments will need to provide more official development assistance to support individual countries’ reform efforts. This aid should be extended under highly concessional terms through long-maturity, low-interest loans or outright grants.

Absent more rapid progress in these areas, the little-fires-everywhere phenomenon will damage global economic well-being by further weakening growth, increasing the risk of a recession, and fuelling additional financial instability. This would add to current migration challenges, impede efforts to tackle the climate crisis, and delay the worldwide vaccination drive that is key to living more safely with Covid-19. Moreover, all these problems would promote geopolitical instability at a time when the global system is already subject to growing fragmentation pressures.

The rich world has shown impressive unity in helping Ukraine counter the Russian invasion. It now needs to demonstrate the same level of resolve to protect the well-being of its own citizens and of the world in the face of mounting economic and financial challenges. Policymakers must aim to ensure that the many economic fires fuelled elsewhere by the Ukraine conflict do not end up causing a second devastating inferno that destroys the lives or livelihoods of many of the world’s most vulnerable people.

• This article was first published in Project Syndicate. Culled from Mail & Guardian.

Escalating pockets of regional tensions and their impacts beyond the immediate centre of conflict is generating and inflaming security threats across countries. For example, the immediate consequences of the collapse of the Colonel Muammar Gadhafi government in Libya is the flow of light weapons and military instructors which has fed insurgencies in the Sahel in West Africa, with Nigeria as a principal victim where extremist insurgency has mutated to violent criminal activities of banditry and kidnapping. The violent overthrow of the legitimate government of Libya in 2011, with the active connivance of the U.S-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization, (NATO) and subsequent assassination of its leader, Colonel Gadhafi, was the crucial enabler to the chain of destructive insurgencies, banditries and other forms of venal criminal activities that has engulfed the Sahel region and Nigeria. The conflict in the Sahel inspired by extremist insurgency has fuelled political instability paving the way for the return and establishment of military regimes in Mali and Burkina Faso, two countries in the Sahel, caught up in the murderous backlash of the violent regime change in Libya, promoted by the U.S-led NATO.

Nigeria’s Northeast has long combusted in the murderous insurgency of Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa Province, ISWAP. The Northwest and other parts of the country is not spared the spate of criminal impunity fuelled by the flows of illegal weapons traded from the huge Libya armoury flung open by the NATO’s inspired destabilization of the country.

With the confluence of these and other factors fuelling tensions and feeding the increasing security governance and productive capacity deficits across the world, China’s recent global security initiative is worth a careful scrutiny and interrogation.

At the 2022 annual conference of the BOAO Forum for Asia, China’s President Xi  Jinping in announcing the proposal for a “Global Security Initiative,” outlined that its crux would be “to stay committed to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, stay committed to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, uphold non-interference in internal affairs and respect the independent choices of development paths and social system made by people in different countries, stay committed to abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN charter, reject cold war mentality, oppose unilateralism and say no to group politics and bloc confrontation; stay committed to taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously, uphold the principle of indivisible security, build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture and oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others security.

Further, the Chinese leader proposed that any meaningful and collective global security architecture must “stay committed to peacefully resolving differences, and disputes between countries be resolved through dialogue and consultation with efforts made and tailored towards peaceful settlement of crises and rejection of double standards, principled opposition to the wanton use of unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction and working together on regional disputes and global challenges such as terrorism, climate, cyber security and bio-security”.

President Xi Jinping in justifying the initiative and call to working together to tackle global governance challenges, pointed out that “countries around the world are like passengers aboard the same ship who share the same destiny”, and therefore “for the ship to navigate the storm and sail toward a bright future, all passengers must pull together”.

The contemporary security challenge that has considerably vitiated the stability and development of the countries in the Sahel and Nigeria in particular would have been avoided, had the U.S-led NATO initiative for violent regime change in Libya given way to negotiated settlement of the conflict which was then, an initiative promoted by the African Union, but which was vehemently rejected by the Libyan armed opposition encouraged by NATO’s desperate insistence on violent regime change. The U.S led Western military alliance, went as far invoking its Article 5 of collective defence, which has absolutely no application in the instance of the then Libyan crises, except that it served to promote the intransigence of the NATO alliance to accomplish regime change in Libya at all costs. Ironically in achieving regime change, NATO abdicated responsibility to protect Libya’s national assets including its heavy military armoury, paving the way for it to collapse and serve as conduit for weapon flows to the Sahel and other countries in the region, including Nigeria. The illicit weapons flow and the burst of open market for military instructors and trainers fed directly to then creeping insurgency in the region.

The China’s new security initiative, which seeks to return consultation and dialogue to the heart of promoting collective global security, would eliminate the brash and rash of regime change strident advocacy and its concomitant collateral damage of a chain of multiple security meltdown and threats affecting other countries and regions beyond the immediate hotspot.

As a major country, taking on an enormous international responsibility to promote collective security and common development, China has not shied away from reaching down to its wisdom, and outlining constructive, measured and practical ways to engaging the numerous challenges that confront humanity. China’s proposed initiative is not empty rhetoric as her reputation for saying only what means and meaning exactly what it says is well known. China’s constructive initiative matter, because Beijing has the political will and even the wherewithal and more importantly, enormous political goodwill across the world to see it through.

While China’s key and major initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative has decisively impacted the world and triggered development within countries and across countries in the world, Beijing is not thumping its chest, but insisting that the success of the project so far, is because most of the world has assumed ownership of the initiative and like a global orchestra, collective wisdom and different voices of all participants have enriched it and made it more prosperous.

Last year, at the United Nations 76th session of the General Assembly which also coincided with the 50 years anniversary of China’s return to the world body for which, she was a founding member of first signatory of its charter, President Xi Jinping proposed the “Global Development Initiative (GDI) which has since then be supported by the United Nations, more than 100 countries and International Organizations. In the proposal, China offered its experience of tackling extreme poverty, which has resulted in the elimination of extreme material deprivation from among 1.4 billion Chinese people, to drain the swamp global poverty.

Food security and efforts to accelerate post Covid-19 global recovery were some of the highlights of the initiatives. A critical aspect of China’s global initiative is that, they are not one size fits all, but has implicit mechanism that could be tailored to engage different national initiatives and synergize them for optimal results. Basically, China’s initiatives are usually a call for broader participation and contributions of wisdom from different countries and other stakeholders to give the collective ownership of all.

Given the emerging serious security deficits across the world and more importantly in Africa and especially Nigeria, China’s initiative on global security would be worth a considerable food for thought for Nigeria political leadership and it is expected that they would leverage the enormous goodwill in Nigeria-China bilateral cooperation to scale up more productive partnership in the security sector.

• Onunaiju is of Centre for the China Studies (CCS), Abuja.

Oyo State is currently the only PDP governed state in the Southwest since 2019 and right from the beginning of Governor Seyi Makinde’s administration, the broom party, which lost the last gubernatorial election due to many factors including the egoistic contradiction of some of its proximate actors, has not ceased to tell anyone that cares that Makinde  is in for a  run for his money and APC will not also stop at nothing, to make his second term bid a tall order.

A cursory gaze at the early days of the Makinde’s administration gives one an opinion of a people’s man. First was his public accountability posture with his public declaration of his assets right from the start of the administration. Not yet done, the governor also took a step further by sponsoring a bill in the House of Assembly that later cumulated into the establishment of Oyo State Anti-Corruption Agency (OYACA), indeed a bold policy stride that clearly opines that business would not be as usual, as far as corruption is concerned in Oyo State.  It was one move that most pundits would agree is a good development in our contemporary corrupt political system and the first of its kind in the history of pacesetter state.

Not done with that, Governor Seyi Makinde also within the first year of his administration developed a new Internal Generated Revenue framework that increased the IGR of Oyo State to N2.7bn monthly.

This writer also remembers that Governor Makinde orated in 2020 that within one year of his administration, he ensured that sanity was brought to transportation sector in the state by constituting Oyo State Park Management System to bring order to that industry – although his opponents believe that the governor only embarked on the policy to give legal and political coverage for Alhaji Lamidi Mukaila better known as ”Auxiliary”, a factional leader of Oyo State Chapter of Nigerian Union of Transport Workers, as enforcer of his second term bid.

Of course, there are many more acclaimed achievements of Governor Makinde such as rehabilitation of roads and his zero pothole policy across the state, the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project which according to Oyo State Government, would enable it rehabilitate about 1, 000 kilometres of rural roads across the state. The digitalization and geo-referencing for electronic Certificate of Occupancy which would enable people get Co f O within 60 days. Supporting Makinde’s digitalization and E- governance strides, his enthusiasts boasted that in 2021, Oyo State under the governor emerged the best State in Digital Technology Human Capital Development and Best State in Digital Technology Infrastructure Development at the 9th regular meeting of the National Council of Communications and Digital Economy.

But unfortunately, all the aforementioned achievements and those unmentioned are simply what his contenders called “audio achievements”. To Makinde’s traducers, for instance they opined that some of the rehabilitated roads done by his administration were poorly constructed with substandard products and to worsen this, contract funds were highly inflated. This to them contradicts his administration’s anti-corruption and public accountability mantra.

However, beyond the polemics on Makinde’s performances are two major factors that he must overcome to make his second term ambition a reality. First is the allegation that the governor has marginalized many of the proximate political actors in the coalition parties on which he rode to power. It is no secret that politicians like Chief Adebisi Olopoeniyan, Hon. Mulikat Adeola Akande, Senator Kola Balogun, Ajia Balogun Olubadan, Adegboyega Adegoke, Senator Kola Balogun, Sen. Olufemi Lanlehin, Sarafadeen Alli and many hundreds of Governor Seyi Makinde’s foot soldiers across the state have parted with PDP to different opposition parties.  The perceived unhealthy way which the governor pocketed the party’s leadership and selfishness according to the aforementioned made them to leave. In such period as this, losing critical stakeholders like those mentioned will definitely stand in the way of the governor’s second term political ambition, if not well navigated.

Besides, the internal dynamics in Oyo State chapter of the PDP and its internal contradictions, the current   growing strength and sense of unity of purpose of the APC chapter of Oyo State against Governor Makinde (if not a smokescreen) may be another political encumbrance. As it stands and as far as Oyo State politics is concerned, Ibadan zone is the most strategic and usually determines where the political pendulum swings. The APC having realised this, has begun firstly, to put the contrasting egos of its proximate actors under check and equally zoned the governorship ticket to Ibadan.  This is the first political permutation with potential to obliterate Makinde’s dream.  It is the believe of the opposition that it will take an Ibadan man to stand against Makinde and thus the likes of Senator ‘Folarin Teslim (who might likely win APC’s gubernatorial ticket not without controversies), Chief Adebayo Adelabu, Chief Niyi Akintola etc. have indicated interest to unseat PDP in Oyo in the coming general elections.

In the build up to the gubernatorial election in Oyo State against 2023 therefore, whether Makinde’s performances are real or ‘audio’ may remain insignificant but how he is able to navigate, subsume the conflagrations of contrasting internal adversaries, former political associates that have formed unholy political coalitions  with his other political challengers. Most significantly, Makinde’s re-election ambition may be interrupted if APC gets his house in order, supported by federal might and big cash, otherwise, to borrow Makinde’s supporters’ chant  ”Seyi si mase ekan si” (Seyi will do another term) might come to reality.

• Ojo, a media communications/public affairs professional, writes from Lagos.

Unpacking the main takeaways from President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire, starts with the gain from a side event, not the 15th Conference Of Parties to the United Nations Conference on Combating Desertification, UNCCF, which was the main event, considering the significance of what the President set out to achieve.

For the records, this was the first official event hosted by President Buhari following his election in December last year, as the President of the Conference of Heads of States and Government of the member states of the Pan African Great Green Wall Agency, PAGGW.

The background was that in February 2021, the French President Emmanuel Macron, Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres, and President of the World Bank Group David Malpass, organized the fourth ‘One Planet Summit’ which will focus on biodiversity to mobilize commitments to protect ecosystems and links to human health.

The summit brought together Heads of State and Governments, leaders of international organizations, financial institutions, companies and NGOs, at the end of they demonstrated strong commitments that will lead to actions to preserve and restore biodiversity, and systemic transformations of economies.

President Buhari got elected to and found on the table of the One Planet Summit Initiative pledges amounting to $19 Billion to support the activities of the PAGGW.

The necessity of this meeting was the need on the part of the 11-member bloc, made up of Nigeria, Senegal, Niger, Sudan, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Mali, Eritrea, Djibouti, Burkina Faso and Chad, facing dire and present danger due to the devastating effect of desertification and drought, impacting negatively on the security of their communities and the livelihood their people to confront these challenges associated with desert encroachment and drought.

The major objective of the President’s meeting was to draw attention to the USD 19 billion pledge and to trigger the process for accessing the funds in order to immediately embark upon land restoration and tree planting, investment in small and medium sized farms/support to small holder farmers, development of climate resilience infrastructure, institutional framework to enhance security, stability and governance and capacity building.

The President, in his capacity as the President of the member-states of PAGGW called on the World Bank, African Development Bank and the One Planet Summit Initiative to support this drive by setting up a ‘Task Team’ to work with PAGGW, and further requested the UNCCD and One Planet Summit to advise on a suitable Financial Consultant for the PAGGW that can coordinate the process under the auspices of the UNCCD and PAGGW in a transparent manner.

If these steps follow as expected, access should immediately be ensured to these huge funds in the of opening “a new era for the GGW.”

As emphasized by the President as well as Amina Mohammed, the Deputy Secretary General representing the United Nations, what is needed at this time is action “with scale and urgency,” to set in motion the re-greening of the Sahel and changing the fortunes of the 1.3 billion people inhabiting the entire region.

President Buhari, who over the years had taken the advocacy for Congo River Inter-Basin Water Transfer, a project that would redistribute water from the Ubangui River into Lake Chad saw an opportunity in the pledges and charged the GGW agency, the funders and the consultant to-be to give a serious consideration to the issue.

He also highlighted the several environmental challenges including creeping land degradation, desertification and drought in the Northern region, to wanton deforestation, land encroachment, invasion of coastal line, biodiversity loss, flooding and coastal erosion in the Southern region of the country.

According to him, this reality is what reinforces Nigeria’s commitment to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification 2018-2030 Strategic Framework, geared towards mitigating the effects of desertification, land degradation and drought. In line with this, he urged the Parties to seize the momentum created by the conference to accelerate their commitments to achieving land degradation neutrality in order to restore the productivity of vast expanses of degraded land, improve the livelihood of more than 1.3 billion people and reduce the impact of drought in the affected regions.

President Buhari saw in the theme “Land, Life, Legacy: From scarcity to prosperity” as a clarion call to action for global leaders to halt and reverse the three “Ds” planetary land crises of desertification, degradation and drought, as envisioned by the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration; and to restore our lands, in order to fulfill our food, water and energy needs. He charged the international community to demonstrate enough political will and commitment towards the realization of the pledge to restore one billion hectares of land by 2030, which should hopefully save humanity from starvation and preserve the planet for future generations.

President Buhari welcomed the UNCCD’s goal of land degradation neutrality and went on to highlight Nigeria’s commitment to its National Action Plan which is being implemented through National Policies, Institutional and Legislative Framework, Sectoral Programmes and Partnership Building that have been put in place to address the problem of drought and desertification.

For example, he reported establishment of an early drought warning system that involves local people in designing, implementing and managing of natural resources conservation programmes for combating desertification and ameliorating the effects of drought. Furthermore, Nigeria has been collaborating with development partners in areas of training, research, development and transfer of affordable and acceptable environmentally friendly technologies to mitigate drought and desertification.

Nigeria has also revised its National Forest Policy in 2020 which he said is a remarkable improvement on the previous one which had been in use since 2006. The country has also launched the National Strategy on Combating Wildlife and Forest Crime in 2022. The new policies are anchored on the need for continuous socio-economic development that will provide optimal benefits to the people and government of Nigeria in a sustainably managed environment.

There are also Forestry Programmes implemented by Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria to tackle the problems of desertification through the establishment of woodlots, shelterbelts and windbreaks. Through these programmes, the government is able to establish a Green Wall or Shelterbelt across the frontline States over hundred kilometers in width, stretching from the Northwest to the Northeast of the country.

Nigeria, reported the President, has also established a National Forestry Trust Fund aimed at improving afforestation programmes in the country, ensuring sustainable financing from non-government sources for the restoration of Nigeria’s forest estates and reserves and production of landscapes in order to achieve significant increase in our forest cover.

Through the nation’s National Afforestation Programme under the green bond project, Nigeria has successfully forested over Six Million, One Hundred And Ninety-One Thousand, Three Hundred And Sixty-Three Hectares of land through the green bond project. The target is to increase the nation’s forest cover to Twenty-Five percent in line with global best practices and also in fulfilment of the pledge he made at the 74th Session of the United Nations General assembly in September, 2019, of planting Twenty-Five Million trees towards achieving restoration of degraded forest reserves and other landscapes nationwide.

Nigeria has also expanded protected areas by creating ten additional National Parks, including two (2) Marine Protected Areas, cutting across the various ecological zones of the country, and accelerated the implementation of the ongoing Ogoni Clean-up for restoration of polluted land as well as implementation of the Great Green Wall programme hinged on ecological restoration and rehabilitation of degraded land in the Southern part of the country.

The National Agency of the Great Green Wall in Nigeria has made progress in land restoration of over Three Thousand Eight Hundred and Ninety-two hectares of land.

Furthermore, the Federal Government of Nigeria, in partnership with the World Bank, expended enormous resources to establish Agricultural Development Programmes in all the Thirty-Six States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory. The ADPs operate the Training and Visit system of unified extension system covering the areas of Crop Production and Protection, Livestock Production and Animal Health, Fisheries, Agro-forestry and Gender related issues in Agriculture popularly referred to as Women-In-Agriculture.

He gave assurances that Nigeria is dedicated to fulfill the pledge to the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative that seeks to restore 100 million hectares of degraded and deforested landscapes by 2030 in response to the Bonn challenge. To date, the initiative has 128 million hectares in pledges from 32 African countries. In 2017, Nigeria committed to restore 4 million hectares of degraded forest landscapes under the AFR100 initiative. So far, over Five Hundred and Fifty-Five Thousand, Four Hundred and Eight Hectares of land restoration have been recorded, including the planting of Fifteen Million tree seedlings covering over Twelve Thousand, Five Hundred Hectares of deforested lands.

On finance, domestically, the President said that the country has made efforts for funding a pipeline of projects in our path to a greener economy and that Nigeria has issued its first and second Sovereign Green Bonds. So far, two rounds of the green bond have successfully been executed. The first round of the green bond amounted to $27.3 million, the second amounted to more than $41 million. We are currently on the verge of launching the third green bond to the tune of $68.7 million. Through the instrumentality of the green bond programme, innovative funding streams are being unlocked in order to finance environmentally and climate friendly projects with focus on both adaptation and mitigation.

In reiterating Nigeria’s commitment to the goals of the conference, the President highlighted the major obstacle, which is finance, and used the platform to appeal for the redemption of the pledges made by International Technical and Financial Partners to provide the $19 billion dollars as assistance to the Green Wall Member Countries to enable them meet their commitments.

Although the meeting was focused on the problems of desertification and drought, the President observed that without a peaceful world, there can be no development. In the light of this, he called for a ceasefire and cessation of conflicts where they exist and especially the Russian – Ukraine war. “We call on all the parties to return to the negotiation table with a view to putting an end to this needless conflict,” said the President.

As a leader, President Buhari over the years has shown the world that he is at the forefront of world leaders determined working to save the planet from the ill-effects of climate change.

In this role as the President of the Conference of Presidents and Heads of Government of the Great Green Wall countries, he has found a perfect chance to do for Sub-Saharan Africa, what he is doing at home in Nigeria. This, he is determined to do.

• Shehu is the Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President, Media & Publicity.

Leadership is a serious affair. From the family unit to the global political space, a leader might not always be the strongest or the most brilliant individual but a person imbued with some innate and acquired qualities to influence the actions of others in ways that stimulate growth and progress.  It determines how a family unit, a community, a nation succeeds or fails.

Leadership requires a certain level of excellence and strength of character to sacrifice for others. There is a level of empathy and compassion that a leader must have to work for the good of the led. There are other tangible and intangible qualities that come with good leadership. Best of all, there is a great sense of duty and visionary commitment that inspires the led across centuries, reason some dead leaders defy mortality.

The biblical example of the good shepherd can be a benchmark for leadership at the most basic level. The good shepherd weathers all storms to protect and provide for his flock. The loss of any sheep almost equates the loss of all and so the good shepherd could leave his ninety nine to go search for the single sheep that strayed away. It is significant.

.As the political parties prepare for their primaries, the Roundtable Conversation is worried that even the highest office in the land – the presidency is witnessing the influx of some willing and ‘unwilling’ individuals whose nomination and declaration of interest forms are being sponsored  by some groups or total strangers who know next to nothing about what leadership means.  Make no mistakes about it, democracy gives room for campaign donations to political parties but the fact that the Nigerian system cannot yet effectively track such donations in ways that violators are prosecuted means that the system suffers.

The Roundtable Conversation feels that at this point in Nigeria’s political journey, the political parties have the duty to sieve the aspirants and because they are the ones whose party delegates elect candidates in their primary elections, they must understand that patriotism must be paramount, there should be consideration for those who understand that leadership comes with responsibility.

The Roundtable Conversation spoke to Dr Okey Ikechukwu, an Executive Director at Development Specs Academy and a member of the Editorial Board of Thisday newspaper. We wanted his views about leadership and the Nigerian political scene. To him, leadership has a responsibility of managing the resources, environment and ensuring development through empowering the people to achieve their personal developmental goals which invariably translates to an overall development of the nation.

Leadership to him must and should not be an investment in the sense that most politicians appear to understand it. It is not about self-aggrandizements or ego. The followership also has its responsibilities. A situation where the motive for aspiring for leadership is not altruistic negates the essence of it all. On the other hand, the followership has a role to play too. The common objective of leadership and the led must have a nexus which means each group must play their roles effectively.

In a developing economy like Nigeria, mortgaging the future by making selfish demands of those aspiring to lead at any level makes the whole process very transactional and ephemeral. Two issues stand out in politics and must be critically evaluated. To aspire to lead is a freedom that people enjoy in a democratic setting but that is not where the matter should end. It should not be about the individual. Those aspiring to lead must have a full understanding of their roles and at the level of followership, there must be no unreasonable economically expedient demands that mortgages development.

All citizens must have serious introspection. For governors or other public officers whose report sheets attract no applause, should they in good conscience aspire to move on to other political duties when a string of failures trail their current or past positions? Governors, Ministers and heads of Ministries, Agencies and Departments of governments for instance must be able to catalogue developmental projects in significant sectors of the economy; infrastructure, education, health and other indices of progressive input during their stewardship either currently or in the past.  How does a governor mention donation of bags of rice and clothing to widows or internally displaced people in his state or other minor contributions to communities as achievements in a twenty first century economy? Any serious leader must be visionary enough to lift a nation from consumerism to production.

The followership must also know what they want, if they make demands and elect or select only those who meet their immediate demands, they should be ready to live with their choices.  Motives again influence the vision or lack of it. The idea of some aspirants to leadership  being just to be politically visible, target future appointments having been on the scene or just to flaunt a bogus CV is very regretable.  An aspiration for leadership ought to be arrived at with sound self- evaluation which most fail to do.

Most aspirants are delusional and overrate themselves. Some have very good policy directions and are visible in the media but they lack sound political strategy and community support across the country. Another problem in the political space is the complete lack of standards and paradigms from political parties. So everyone aspires to any office both at the executive and legislative level.

For governors for instance, one would want to know how their actions increased school enrollment, reduced poverty  or increased employment.  To progress in a democracy, you must earn the votes through verifiable statistics.

Political parties should be more patriotic and stop the noise about popularity of candidates, merit should be the criteria. Each individual wants the best doctors to treat them but push out incompetent candidates for elections based on very dysfunctional parochial reasons that  do not aid development. Dr Ikechukwu believes there must be a self-assessment and party criteria as basis for expression of interest in the first place. An expenditure and consumption oriented economy is what we have and that must be corrected through the emergence of focused  leadership.

We must as a country be honest enough to agree on elite failure when it comes to leadership as it not just about political parties. We must agree on critical assessment processes and the quality of leadership we need.  The rot is across political parties. Leadership failure of the political class equally includes the intellectual,  business and religious elite. They can do more.

There are institutions manned by notable professors whose actions negate their professional pedigree.  The Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) for instance has no business declaring profits because we are talking about fees from poor parents in a very weak economy. As professionals, they might be doing a good job but they can also initiate changes in that sector by making the forms cheaper given value and the demographics affected.

He says  that despite the fact  that our democracy is coming on the heels of military governments the nation must be weaned into better leadership structure as democracy dictates. We must realize too that the military is not a perfect  institution and must not be taken as a permanent model of government. The tenets of democracy must not be adulterated the way we have experienced since after independence.

The elite must beware of a conspiracy of silence and apathy.  We as a people  must understand the value of political education.  Everyone must be involved actively in political education at the grassroots level. Most of the political parties do no educate their members about any vision they have for the nation There is no emotional attachment to any ideals of the party and no efforts to monitor members in offices.

He believes political parties must sit up and be more deliberately functional. They must have identifiable ideologies that all party members must align with in the first instance. They must seize from being mere gathering of a group of people who assemble during elections at state capitals to do adhoc strategizing just to win elections.  Political education will help both the leadership and the followership as our democracy journey progresses.

Democratic governments become viable when built on strong political ideologies and generations watch and study them and build to advance what they met. In Nigeria, the political elite seem not to bother about the future. This attitude cannot grow our democracy. According to Dr Ikechukwu, enduring democracies require intellectual investment in the system. There must be a better and more lasting system that educates the people about a functional and sustainable system that keep leaders in check.

In his view, a large percentage of party members do not know the  history of the party, have no emotional or party bonding and it is more of a market place where people ‘buy and sell’ with no patriotic zeal. Election periods must not be the only time that bring members together, there must be some fundamental addressing of leadership issues. Members must know the value of political parties in a democracy and be ready to hold leaders accountable.

Most leaders’ lifestyles amount to negative mentoring to the young and that diminishes the essence of leadership. A situation where supposed leaders live like monarchs and flaunt their pecks of office with long convoys in  local communities send the wrong signals about leadership and it goes from one generation to the next.

However, while we talk about leadership failure, we also know that each leader emerges from the people and the values the leaders come to espouse in office is often a direct reflection of what the larger society approves. There must be a value re-orientation for the nation to progressively purge itself and develop.

The dialogue continues…

SIR: Abraham Lincoln‘s masterful definition of democracy as a “government of the people, by the people and for the people,” certainly holds many truths, and speaks to democracy‘s ultimate goal of allowing people hold, feel and taste power for themselves so that they are put in vantage positions to veto the lies of those who would wield power as their personal property once they get into office.

Unfortunately, many Nigerian voters are ill-equipped and do not possess the tools with which they can easily identify the weasels who come to willfully lie to them on the campaign trail.

The effect of this is then that the same hoodwinked voters are made to rue the chances they never took and learn the hard way. It is hard enough.

Between the months of June and July, governorship elections will be held in Ekiti and Osun states and the elections will give voters in the states an opportunity either to continue with the old order or to try something new. The elections will be about the good people of Osun and Ekiti State and their choices, but across Nigeria, many will keenly watch events in both states.

Nigeria‘s democracy is one that very much remains on the path to rapid growth. In just over two decades, democracy in Nigeria has grown in leaps and bounds even if difficulties remain. Traditionally, a free and fair election has always been the crowning jewel of any democracy. In spite of the wobbles of the other institutions of democracy at any point in time, the moment a democracy  can show that it has in place structures which allow people to robustly express their  choice  through the ballot box,  that democracy can  be said to be healthy.

Unfortunately, healthy democracy has not been the experience of many people in many parts of the world where elections are deployed many times by dictators as a smokescreen for their tendencies to sit tight.

Feelers are that the conduct of elections in Nigeria and the participation of the electorate have continued to improve with each election. The Independent National Electoral Commission which is the body constitutionally empowered to conduct elections in Nigeria has continued to build upon and improve its capacity with each election. There was a time INEC which is at all times required by law to be independent and impartial was known to blatantly hold the brief of the powers that be.

The Nigerian electorate has also continued to improve. The level of political awareness and participation has continued to improve with each election and the hope is that the Nigerian electorate will someday get too sophisticated for those whose specialty is the inducement of voters.

Both Ekiti and Osun states have sobering stories to tell of the days when those who wanted power by all means in those states blatantly broke into the ballot box in broad daylight. That the conduct of elections in both states fall outside the electoral cycle of the rest of the country bespeak the days when the courts found that people‘s mandate in both states were stolen by those whom the people did not elect and proceeded to intervene by breaking the malice of electoral thieves and brigands.

With such difficult pasts, the good people of Ekiti and Osun must again be ready not just to troop out en masse to vote but also defend their votes at the end of the day.

Just like the election in Anambra State last year, the elections in both states will foretell what the country can expect in 2023 when Nigerians will have to choose robust participation in the political process above sitting on the fence and becoming sitting ducks.

• Kene Obiezu, keneobiezu@gmail.com

SIR: The Igbo young today, particularly those who take up residence on social media, are quick-tempered, oafish and ready to maul anyone who holds a plural view. They are unthinking, rash and uncritical. It must be their way or the highway to hell. What a retrogressive evolutionary trajectory! How did a critical mass of the Igbo young become so narrow-minded and uncultivated?

Maybe these ones do not know that to be Igbo is to be liberal; it is to be egalitarian; it is to be expansive; it is to be accommodating of all views and people; it is to be critical and circumspect, questioning everything and believing nothing until there is proof. And most importantly, to be Igbo is to not deify any earthling or make any human a god.

Since Peter Obi, former Anambra governor, declared his intention to run for president, a horde of internet contagion has been attacking anyone who does not show support for him. His supporters have been the most intemperate. Wielding virtual cudgels, they bludgeon anyone who refuses to acknowledge Peter Obi as a better presidential candidate. They empty their bowels of invective, hate and threats against anyone who points out the obvious political weaknesses of the former Anambra governor.

Peter Obi’s political network is abysmally limited. He is the creation of an internet fad and does not matter to the hoi polloi. But he is a decent man with the potential of a progressive president. If only wishes were horses, Peter Obi would ride them to the presidency. Sadly, they are not.

Only Igbo votes cannot make Peter Obi president. He needs first the votes of PDP delegates from across the states. And if by some twist of kismet, he becomes the PDP presidential candidate, he needs the votes of all Nigerians, particularly the north. His supporters are perhaps too self-absorbed or utterly ignorant to understand that belching ethnic slurs against other Nigerians on the internet because they are not so taken in by him is actually de-marketing his candidature.

This is not how to win popular support in a country like Nigeria with a very diverse population. Instead of pulling moderates and the undecided to the umbrella of Peter Obi, his supporters are setting them apart and even turning the minds of those who are sympathetic to Obi’s candidature.

Who would want a Peter Obi presidency where his supporters are rabid, caustic, bigoted and hateful? It is becoming obvious that some of Peter Obi’s supporters may be from the same gene-pool as those who promoted southeast secession. It is the same non-strategy – hate, anger and more hate.

Peter Obi’s supporters may think they are aggressively promoting him, but they have only succeeded in reducing him to an ethnic champion. How unpropitious that a good product should be so jinxed.

It appears the southeast is in dire need of a messiah; so, any person that fate throws up is summarily crowned as a lodestar to lead the Igbo out of eight years of wandering. But we must realise that we are the messiah we seek. It is our collective action that matters.

Peter Obi is a gentleman, peace-loving, soft-spoken, refined, expansive and cerebral. I know he will not support the hate that his supporters trade on social media. In fact, what his supporters do is antithetical to what he stands for. I think it is wise he addresses the mobilisers of his campaign on social media to put some decorum and decency to their crusade for him. He needs Nigerians to be president.

• Fredrick Nwabufo, <fredricknwabufo@yahoo.com>

SIR: The country has two major political parties; the All Progressive Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).  These two political parties have ruled Nigeria in the recent times.  One functions as the opposition party when the other is the ruling party.  It has become evident from the manner the politicians cross carpet between the two parties that there is no ideological difference.  No moral or philosophical disparities distinguish the politicians.  This flippancy makes it difficult to establish institutional democratic advantages between the parties.

The high point of the drama is that the former President Goodluck Jonathan who was the last president under PDP leadership has indicated interest in registering as a member of APC.  His plot is to take over government from President Muhammadu Buhari of APC, the same president who was his immediate successor.  President Buhari has blamed his woeful leadership on the scandalous administration of President Jonathan.  This may sound like the matching of whims of the two dunces.  That notwithstanding, Nigerians see no hope of a better society since evidently there is no separation between the two administrations in terms of ideology.  President Jonathan switching over to APC to replace President Buhari signifies that he applauds his administration.

Nigerian politicians have thrashed the role of opposition government. The function of checks and balances of opposition party against the ruling party has been diminished for selfish interest.  The country’s democracy becomes immobile because there are no futuristic leaders to fight for the advancement of the overall society. The leaders are ready to compromise for personal gain instead of taking a stand based on principle. President Buhari will have to swallow his vomit after commenting throughout his administration that President Jonathan’s government was corrupt. And likewise, President Jonathan will have to sing the praises of President Buhari’s administration which before his embrace of APC was adjudged clueless by the PDP.

The political jamboree that Nigeria’s leaders are playing with governance needs to force the citizens to become activists. The political leaders of the two major parties have not demonstrated any visible determination that one party is better than the other in bettering the conditions of the masses.  The ideal position for the electorates will be to look for a candidate with exemplary leadership qualities and rally around him or her outside the mainstream choices.

The role of the opposition party must be strictly distinguished for a democracy to run effectively.  Politics in any society must swing between the ideals of the liberals and the conservatives to have a balance. These ideological differences have appeared inherent in the nature of human beings. The Nigerian political system cannot be any different otherwise, it is a farce.  Nigerians should rise against leaders who are not serious with improving the country.  They should form a unity of purpose and elect competent and progressive candidates for a better society for all.

• Pius Okaneme, piusokaneme@yahoo.com

In announcing his plan to partner with Rwanda to manage migration, Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed, on April 14, 2022, that the UK is “a beacon of openness and generosity”. He lauded the great British tradition of offering sanctuary to those who seek it through legal routes while outlining how he intends to curb what he termed illegal migration.

Under this new scheme, people claiming asylum in the UK are to be relocated to Rwanda, where their cases will be processed. If they are granted asylum, they will be encouraged to remain in Rwanda for at least five years.

While the UK government has promised smooth operations, it is unclear how asylum seekers relocated from the UK might be accommodated in Rwanda, beyond temporary plans to convert a former hostel into a detention centre. There is also no sense of what will happen to those who are not granted asylum.

Religious, international and human rights organisations are questioning the legality of this process. However, this attempt to move the immigration process offshore is not unique. It is part of a wider strategy deployed by the powerful governments of richer nations, from Australia to the EU, to discourage unwanted arrivals by creating conditions that are hostile or inhumane.

And while they outsource migration management to low-income countries, these richer countries are furthering their own geopolitical interests. Human displacement is becoming a motor for what experts – from Canadian activist and author Harsha Walia to British political scientist John Smith – identify as 21st-century imperialism. Migration is not merely a consequence of poverty, inequalities, conflict and environmental crises. It is a political tool.

Politics of exclusion

Sending asylum seekers to another country strips them of their right, as afforded by the International Refugee Convention, to have their cases considered in the country in which they have chosen to seek refuge. It denies them agency. It doubles their displacement. And it exposes them to prolonged uncertainty and further risk, namely, Rwanda’s worrying human rights record. In 2018, in particular, a dozen refugees were reportedly killed by Rwandan police after protests outside the offices of the UN high commissioner for refugees in Karongi district.

The UK government has said that the scheme will apply mainly to undocumented single men. Its key aim is to tackle the business model of people smuggling.

Research shows, however, that for the most part, undocumented migrants are fleeing areas affected by conflict, poverty and environmental crises, among other problems.

Comparing the Rwanda deal, then, with the safe haven opened up to Ukrainian refugees in recent weeks, it is clear that UK immigration policy is biased in terms of race, religion and skill-set.

Further, Johnson has called the Rwanda scheme a prototype, suggesting that it could be replicated elsewhere. There are certainly precedents, including Australia’s infamous arrangements with Nauru and with Papua New Guinea to house asylum seekers on Manus Island These so-called processing centres are effectively places of detention.

The EU, meanwhile, is in talks, via its border and coastguard agency Frontex, with the government of Niger to establish frontier zones on African soil. With the support of the International Organization for Migration, the aim is to keep undocumented people there while their cases are processed.

21st-century imperialism

Research shows that plans like these are a strategy of empowerment for already powerful nations. They allow them to offload, back to poorer countries, unwanted migrants, especially those who come from outside of Europe. At the same, they give those richer nations a political and economic foothold in regions of interest.

When Johnson’s government closed down the Department for International Development in 2020, merging it with the Foreign Office, he effectively did away with international aid. International development was, instead, folded into diplomacy – directed by national and international political strategy.

The UK’s offer of £120 million to kick-start this partnership is attractive for Rwanda precisely because it comes under the aegis of development. The country is ranked 160th out of 189 in the 2021 Human Development Index, has long been a recipient of UK foreign aid and international assistance and already hosts nearly 130,000 refugees, 90% of whom remain in refugee camps and transit centres. The scheme would help elevate Rwanda’s international profile as an engaged partner in global migration and refugee governance.

For the UK, meanwhile, it represents yet another business interest in Africa.

At the UK-Africa Investment Summit held in 2020, Johnson emphasised the UK’s ability to “support ventures” and desire to “strengthen partnerships” with Africa. While this growing relationship with the continent is framed in the positive terms of development, the question arises about the UK’s larger intent.

As partnerships go, these are fundamentally unequal. They seek to fortify the UK’s economy by way of foreign investments that bring back more revenue than the original outlay. Investing in poorer countries overseas is financially beneficial to the UK. It is also part of the UK government’s post-Brexit strategy.

Evidence shows that, in the long term, the surplus from such investments inevitably flows back to the richer countries. This perpetuates global structural inequalities. It does little to sustain development.

Africa is both struggling to develop amid myriad environmental, social and economic problems and is rich in resources. Not only does Rwanda have a mining industry in tin ore, gold, tungsten ore and methane, it is also home to Lake Kivu, which is enormously rich in gases and a potential source for energy generation.

The Rwanda scheme presents troubling echoes of the UK’s imperial past: the colonial transportation of slaves and indentured workers across continents and seas; the empowerment of the imperial heartland through the violence that accompanied its historical ravages, for which reparation can never be complete. In a repeat of colonial politics, it tasks Africa yet again with working to the UK’s interests for only short-term financial benefits. In the long term, Africa’s needs remain unmet.

• Culled from the Mail & Guardian