The Nation Newspaper

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  • Digital ID and the Nigerian inclusion question

    Digital ID and the Nigerian inclusion question

    • By Muhammad Mikail

    Every person has a right to participate fully in their society and be recognized as a person before the law” (UDHR & ICCPR article 16). Yet, as of 2021 an estimated 850 million globally have no official proof of their identity, which is essential to protecting their rights and enabling access to services and opportunities. Around half are children and the vast majority live in lower income countries in Africa and South Asia. (2021 World Bank report on ID coverage).

    The Sustainable Development Goal sixteen-target-nine (16.9) by 2030 seeks to “…, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.” Interpretatively, the target under this goal of the broader SDGs, aims to ensure that every person no matter their background – babies, women, children, IDPs, refugees and people living with disabilities – have an official proof that shows who they are and where they live. The mantra of the SDG 16 is to ensure inclusion such that individuals can enrol and be issued IDs, have means of being verified from anywhere, a sense of belonging and integration into the society; a cardinal point to fighting extreme poverty. 

    So many countries like India (Adhaar), Estonia, Philippines, Turkey, Rwanda, and Kenya (Huduma), recognized the significance of having robust digital identity systems in place to help their country secure their pride of place in today’s increasingly digital global economic sphere, and as a sure way of meeting the needs of their citizens and making life easier for them. They have successfully enrolled all their citizens into robust digital identity systems.

    Asides providing access to the underserved and unbanked population mostly domiciled in the rural hard-to-reach areas to loans and credit facilities more conveniently, a robust digital identity system makes government’s distribution of fertilizers, agricultural inputs, and subsidies to rural farmers effective by eliminating intermediaries thereby strengthening social accountability and transparency. 

    In Nigeria, many have some form of identification or the other, from driver’s license, passports, National ID number and so on particularly owing to the fragmented nature of the ID ecosystem before now. At various points, Nigerians and legal residents that are desirous of any of these are subjected to fresh enrolment and biometric captures at various points by these issuing government agencies or agents. This system as expressed by a vast majority of Nigerians is cumbersome, largely insecure, weak, and unsuited for the digital era and most times fail to safeguard people’s rights and data. 

    To address this, the government of former President Muhammadu Buhari in a show of commitment and strong desire to harmonize the existing identification ecosystem prepared a Strategic Roadmap for Developing Digital Identification in Nigeria. The roadmap was endorsed by the Harmonization Committee on January 31, 2018, and by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in September 2018. The roadmap highlighted the need for a minimalist, foundational, and eco-system-based approach to identification that can be leveraged to improve service delivery in the country.

    Part of the recommendation of the strategic roadmap was to create the Nigeria Digital Identification for Development Project, NDID4D, managed by a team to be supervised by a Project Ecosystem Steering Committee (PESC). Project Development Objective (PDO) is “increasing the number of persons with a national ID number, issued by a robust and inclusive foundational ID system that facilitates their access to services”.

    Similarly, the NDID4D project seeks to address the current fragmented ID system and boost overall ID coverage and use in Nigeria. This is captured under four components which include strengthening the legal and institutional framework, including for data protection and privacy; establishing a robust and inclusive foundational ID system, including civil registration; enabling access to services through IDs; and project management and stakeholder engagement. 

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    The project whose implementation began in December 2021 is to among others, collaborate with all ID related agencies, ministries, and departments in addressing the challenges millions of Nigerians faced during NIN enrolment including long processing time, extortions, and administrative errors. It is also mandated to support the federal government in the enactment of significant laws including the Nigeria Data Protection Act which is the legal framework for the protection of data of citizens in Nigeria, amendment of NIMC, NPC Acts to ensure digitization and harmonization of civil registry with the National Identity database, the Cybercrimes and Cybersecurity Acts, as well laws that protect electronic transactions in collaboration with the Office of the National Security Adviser. In the same vein, the project is to support the upgrade of National Identity Management Commission, National Population Commission infrastructures, human capital development and ensure effective engagement of all relevant stakeholders in the ID ecosystem.

    These will go a long way in strengthening the National Identification Number and widening of the NIN issuance and enrolment net such that every Nigerian and legal resident including women, PWDs, children, refugees, migrants and IDPs can enrol, be issued a NIN, and can have access to services. This means that asides the NIN becoming the single most important form of ID required in Nigeria, the marginalized, underserved, and vulnerable groups, women, children, refugees, migrants and IDPs will be saved from discrimination and exclusion.

    This was echoed by the acting Director General of the National Identity Management Commission NIMC, Engr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote, recently. She said, “in the digital age, integrated identity is the backbone of e-governance initiatives.” According to her, an integrated identity system will strengthen the government’s fiscal management, promote good governance and transparency through inclusivity and social equality. It ensures that marginalized and vulnerable populations are not excluded from government services.

    The significance of a robust inclusive digital identity system that enables access to services where every Nigerian has a NIN linked to every aspect of life from banking, communications, employment, to security, healthcare, education, and social services is too huge to overlook. The issue of digital identity in ensuring inclusion is a critical one for Nigeria.

    Inclusion is a fundamental aspect of a thriving society, and Nigeria’s Digital Identity system plays a crucial role in achieving this. As citizens, we must recognize the importance of having a digital identity and actively participate in the process to ensure no one is left behind.

     The government must also ensure that citizens’ data is protected in accordance with the new data protection law. To achieve all these, the Nigerian government, critical stakeholders, ID ecosystem partners, traditional institutions including civil society, and the private sector must work with the National Identity Management Commission and the Nigeria Digital Identification for Development Project to ensure no Nigerian and legal resident in the country is excluded from the ID ecosystem. By doing so, we will be on a clear path to a more just, inclusive, equitable, peaceful, and economically prosperous Nigeria for all.

    •Mikail writes from Abuja, and could be reached via muhammadnmikail.mm@gmail.com

  • Re: Unite for peace in the world and Taiwan inclusion in the UN

    Re: Unite for peace in the world and Taiwan inclusion in the UN

    • By Charles Onunaiju 

    The article of the above title written by a staunch member of the Taiwan separatist clique and published in the prestigious The Nation is aimed at bringing the Nigeria’s long-standing and historic “One-China” policy to disrepute. Nigeria participated with 75 other countries in the world to vote for the expulsion the representatives of Chiang Kai-Shek from “the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all organizations relate to it” and thereby entrenched the spirit of the historic resolution as a core cornerstone of its foreign relations and especially with People’s Republic of China.  

    Joseph Wu, a member of the Taiwan separatist clique, chose in the article to distort historical facts with the potential aim to stir ambiguity in the facts contained in the iconic UN resolution 2758, which has gone down as one of the core principles of contemporary international relations with the United Nations system as the central pillar. 

    Joseph Wu, claimed “Since the mid–20th century, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has vowed to take control of Taiwan and refuse to renounce the use of force, despite never having ruled Taiwan.” This is rather disingenuous. Beijing has vowed that the reunification of China is a historic condition for the rejuvenation of their homeland and it is a well-known fact that the aspiration for unification is a common wish of all Chinese people living both in the mainland and the island. Wu and his separatist clique has deviated from the long claim of General Ching Kai-Shek,  who  maintained that there is only one China and his rebellious regime protected by the US armour is the legitimate representative of all the Chinese people. He held on to this illusion until the UN expelled his representative from the world body, while re- admitting Beijing as the sole and only representative of all the Chinese people.

    The argument of a separate Taiwan was recent and principally advocated by the extremist and ambitious Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that has played into the hands of Washington geo-political games to contain China.

    For the record and clarity, China has never vowed to take Taiwan by force and this is simply because no country invades part of its own. Beijing has emphatically maintained that it would use force as a last recourse to deter any attempt to balkanize its homeland, in this case, if any foreign force dare to collude with local separatist hotheads to create “two China’s” or One China, One Taiwan”. In other words, the People’s Republic of China would not only resist but would decisively thwart any effort to infringe on her sovereignty by any attempt to create “independent” Taiwan. Beijing has created enormous and conducive room for cross straits cooperation between the mainland and island Chinese and has demonstrated strategic patience to accomplish national unification through peaceful negotiation.

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     The 1992 consensus reaffirmed that both sides of straits belong to One China and should work together to strive for national unification.

    Joseph Wu, who ostensibly think that the iconic UN resolution 2758 is too long in the past and therefore, can be so brazenly distorted as he sought to do in his article may just have to have a rethink. He claimed the “resolution neither states that Taiwan is a part of the PRC nor gives the PRC the right to represent the people of Taiwan in the UN and its specialized agencies”. For the avoidance of doubt, the resolution stated as follows:

     ”Recalling the principles of the charter of the United Nations; 

    “Considering that the restoration of the lawful rights of the People’s Republic of China is essential both for the protection of the charter of the United Nations and for the cause that the United Nations must serve, 

    “Recognizing that the Representative of the Government of the People’s Republic of China are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations and that the People’s Republic of China is one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, 

    “Decides to restore all the rights to the People’s Republic of China and to recognize the representatives of its government as the only legitimate Representative of China to United Nations,

    “To expel forthwith, the representatives of Chiang Kai-Shek from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it”. 

    To bring clarity and context to this historic resolution, which Nigeria voted, the reference to the “Government of the People’s Republic of China are the only lawful representative of China to the United Nations” is unambiguous and very categorical and there is no reference to Taiwan because Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and part of the totality of her sovereign expression. 

    Wu’s desperate attempt to distort both the letter and spirit of the UN historic resolution was a matter of recent separatist delusion, which even Chiang Kai-Shek did not harbour.

    China has emerged as a responsible power, playing important roles in shaping the emerging, inclusive and law based international order anchored on the principles of the United Nations. Beijing has been a foremost advocate of international understanding and in this regard, has consistently offered initiatives to generate dialogue on global development, security and civilization and to be driven by the collective wisdom of all humanity.

    The Taiwan separatist clique, driven by ambition to betray their homeland has chosen a path that leads to nowhere, as their future, if they have any, rests squarely in a dialogue with their compatriots across the straits on the basis of their national unification, a sentiment broadly and widely shared by all the Chinese people which view it as their most assured roadmap to rejuvenation.

    •Onunaiju is director of Abuja based think tank.

  • God did not create stomachs to go empty

    God did not create stomachs to go empty

    • By Akinwumi Adesina

    The world faces many complex challenges. At the top of this is climate change which poses existential risks for the world. We must do all we can to keep global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. We need innovations to power the world better with renewable energy.

    We must do all to feed the world. It is not acceptable that over 2.3 billion people in the world go hungry every day. God did not create stomachs to go empty. He created them to be filled. There must be a hunger-free world.

    The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us the importance of global pandemic preparedness and to ensure no one is left behind as far as access to affordable health care is concerned. Afterall, all lives matter, for the rich and poor.

    Recently, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres raised the alarm that the world is off course on meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — our collective agreement to shape a better world for all.

    A better world for 940 million people who are without electricity in the world. A better place for 3 billion people without clean cooking energy – a majority who are women, and of which millions and their children die from inhaling smoke while trying to cook decent meals for their families.

    A better world for 2 billion people without access to clean water and 4.5 billion people without sanitation.

    A better world for the 1.7 billion people without access to basic finance, credit, savings, payments, or insurance.

    A better world for the 244 million children that are out of school, including 129 million girls. Many of them have dreams just like you today.

    However, they cannot achieve their dreams, and neither can our world achieve our collective dream of a more just and equitable world unless we prioritize financing for developing countries to accelerate development.

    The global financial architecture is failing development in the world as it faces multiple challenges. The global financial architecture needs to be modified to tackle global challenges, move effectively, and to accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

    The global pension funds and institutional investors, which many of you will go on to work for, have over $145 trillion in assets under management. As you do, I encourage you as leaders to ensure that these vast resources are directed towards the collective good.

    We must ensure equal opportunities for all. Regardless of one’s economic, social, or racial background, we must create a level playing field for a more just, fair, and equitable world.

    More than ever, the world needs change makers. Change makers that can carry the love of God into a turbulent world. Change makers with a heart. You cannot shrivel, you must blossom. You cannot be hidden; you must stand out. Learn to commit yourselves to working hard and making a difference.

    Regardless of where you find yourself, live a purposeful life. Inspire others. Support others. Pour yourselves into helping others unleash their potential. Live for others, do not live for yourselves. Then, you would have fully made the only wealth that counts: the wealth of creating hope for others.

    Do not get me wrong, we need wealth, we just have to make sure we are not creating wealth at the expense of our common existence. We need a more just and a more equal world. One where the riches and wealth of the few do not undermine the potential and possibilities of the majority.

    As MBA graduates, you have been provided with the tools you need to help generate more wealth, and to manage corporations and economies better. Put those skills and tools to work to make our world a better place for all.

    Whether as entrepreneurs, financial analysts, asset managers, or leaders in the public sector, you are destined for success by virtue of the first-rate education you have received at Oxford’s Said Business School. Today, you join over one thousand graduates from here that have gone on to set up successful business ventures.

    Bring into the workplace a mindset to work for others not just yourself. A selfless mindset. A dedication to justice, equity, and fairness. A determination to promote transparency, inclusion, honesty, and integrity. A determination not to be sucked in by the slimy allure of insatiable corporate greed that has wreaked havoc on the lives of millions, through creative accounting, misrepresentation of the valuation of companies, or the selling of securities that lead to insecurities.

    It is often said that history repeats itself because people do not learn lessons from the past. As many of you will go into the world of global finance, let me remind you that history matters. Let me remind you that reckless lending, weak underwriting of mortgage-backed securities (subprime), poor regulations, unbridled risk taking, and the selling of risky financial derivatives to unsuspecting investors, helped pull the world economy down, and led to the Depression in 2008.

    The global financial contagion effects swept like wildfire across Europe and Asia, especially, as global output and trade declined, commodity prices fell, countries faced liquidity crisis, tens of millions around the world lost their jobs, and poverty levels rose as social programs were reduced. The insatiable greed of a few for wealth triggered a financial contagion that caused immeasurable life-long consequences for many around the world.

    The recent Silicon Valley Bank collapse is yet another case in point. SVB assets had grown from $72 billion in 2019, to $220 billion by 2022. Tech companies had stacked up deposits in the Bank, rising from $62 billion to $198 billion. But SVB’s business model quickly unraveled, as interest rates rose, and the value of its bond portfolio plummeted. Depositors made a run on the bank. HSBC had to buy SVB for £1, securing the deposits of clients. But for this, once again, we would have seen the businesses and livelihoods of millions of people in jeopardy.

    There is no doubt that the withering down of financial regulations that prevent unbridled speculative activities led to the 2008 global financial crisis. The tightening and toughening of the regulatory environment put back the guard rails. But those guard rails are now being gradually removed. This may portend well for quick wealth creation for a few, but could trigger greater risk taking and financial speculation, again – all oiled by greed.

    I read a screaming headline recently that said, “greed is good.” Really? I do not think so. Greed is the spark that leads to financial forest fires that blaze unchecked until all in its path is consumed. There is a need for greater regulations to protect the lives and livelihoods of millions of peoples from the predatory practices of speculators. But more than ever, there is a need for strong ethical and governance standards in financial institutions and corporations.

    Read ALso: JUST IN: Biden’s wife tests positive for COVID-19

    The drive for high risk-adjusted returns should not lead to moral hazards that put at risk the lives and livelihoods of people. It is not just about growth or competitiveness. It should be about security and stability.

    You’ve got your MBA. Congratulations!

    You deserve it and you worked so hard for it. Now add to it the key for success — integrity. Integrity is about honesty, transparency, authenticity, and trustworthiness. Famous investor, Warren Buffett once said, “In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.” In other words, intelligence, and energy, without integrity is a disaster.

    While your MBA will open doors for you, it is integrity that will keep you successful and make the world a better place. Integrity is the currency you will spend throughout life. Do not squander it.

    Lose your integrity and all you will have left is nothing but emptiness.

    There is a litany of business executives who have been derailed by greed and succumbed to unethical behavior, financial gimmicks, creative accounting, and fraud. There is no alternative to truth. Truth is truth.

    As you go out into the business world, stay within the rules and regulations. You all look great in your suits today. Keep it that way. Don’t trade your striped business suits for orange jumper suits. Do honest business —stay out of trouble.

    Set your goals and stick with them. About four years ago, I wanted to raise the capital of the African Development

    Bank. A major shareholder who spoke with me at the time, said, “this is dead on arrival. You are a first-term President. No first term President of the Bank has ever done this”. Subsequently, a barrage of others expressed similar sentiments.

    I was undeterred. My team and I were convinced we were on the right path. We persevered. Two years afterwards, the shareholders of the Bank unanimously approved an increase in the capital of the Bank from $93 billion to $208 billion, the largest capital increase in the history of the Bank since its establishment in 1964.

    And we achieved even more. Last year, the African Development Bank was ranked as the best multilateral development finance institution in the world. This year, the African Development Bank was ranked as the most transparent financial institution in the world for our lending operations to governments.

    Here is the lesson: Never doubt yourself. If you do not believe in yourself, no one will believe in you. Your worth is not based on what people think, or say about you or your ideas. It is the value you place on yourself and your ideas. Those who succeed do not check the pulse of public opinion to see how they are doing every day. They set goals, drive to achieve them, and remain tenacious when others doubt them.

    To succeed, build alliances and partnerships. Don’t try to be successful alone; be successful together with others. An African proverb says if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

    An African tree you may all be familiar with is the “Baobab.” Its trunks are huge and under it elders in many villages gather and tell stories, or hold meetings.

    If you try to wrap your arms around the Baobab tree it is impossible. But if you join hands together with several others, your collective arms can embrace the Baobab tree.

    That’s what I call the “Baobab approach.” At the African Development Bank, I use the Baobab approach with great successes. Earlier this year, we wanted to support Africa to mitigate the effects of the disruption in global food supplies, due to the Russian-Ukraine war. We had developed plans for countries across Africa to be self-sufficient in food within five years. We now needed to get this financed.

    I told my team: deploy the Baobab approach. We did. We worked with development partners around the world. Within six weeks of the Summit, we had raised $70 billion in commitments to implement investments across Africa.

  • 2023 presidential election and PEPT: Ballad of the blind men and an elephant

    2023 presidential election and PEPT: Ballad of the blind men and an elephant

    • By Tiko Okoye

    Once upon a time, as the ballad goes, a group of blind men heard that a rather strange animal called an elephant had been brought to their locale. The blind men were flushed with curiosity and enthusiasm at the thought of meeting the animal, but the only way they could make their dream come true was by inspecting and knowing it by touch.

    Upon being led before the animal, they started groping around it. The blind man who wrapped his arms around one stout leg screamed: “The elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk.” For the second whose hand touched the trunk, “the elephant is like a thick snake.” The third person, whose hand felt an ear, shouted, amid giggles: “The elephant is flat and wide like a huge fan.” The blind man who placed his hand on a side of the specimen interjected with “the elephant is a wall!” Another who felt its fail countered that “the elephant is like a rope.”

    Many versions of the parable state that the ensuing disagreements led the blind men to suspect others to be economical with the truth, culminating in mutual distrust and exchange of blows! The moral of the ballad is that truth is relative to one’s own perspective which, however, is inherently limited by its failure to account for other truths or a totality of truth, as well as the need for deeper understanding and respect for different perspectives on the same object of observation.

    Considering the awful din that was generated – and is still being generated – by the verdicts delivered by the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) last week Wednesday, with respect to the petitions brought by the presidential candidates of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Labour Party (LP) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it’s easy to think that different versions are in circulation!

    In this piece, I very much intend to point the reader to 13 things you may know or not know and/or do not want to know within the period between party presidential primaries and the PEPT verdicts.

    One, former President Muhammadu Buhari never wanted Bola Tinubu to succeed him. And the cabals within Aso Villa as well as within and without his ruling All Progressives Party (APC) did everything possible to stop Tinubu in his tracks, but like that old-time Volkswagen ‘Beetle’ car advertisement used to gloat, there was no stopping the emi lo kan exponent.

    Two, opposition party aficionados and their supporters just love to pursue shadows rather than aim for the substance. Abusing and cursing out the judiciary on account of not obtaining the type of verdicts they expected amount to illogically behaving like the chicken owner who chose to berate the pot that was used to cook his chicken rather than the knife that killed it. If only Atiku and Obi hadn’t allowed self-exaltation and their larger-than-life egos to get the better of them, they would’ve easily emerged winners by a long mile, if they had contested as a tag team, making the PEPT moot.

    Three, even at the risk of sounding pedantic, let me state for the umpteenth time that if ‘progressives’ in the North-West and their counterparts in the South-West – with a little help from the North-East – remain in their honeymoon bubble, they would continue to occupy Aso Villa ad infinitum, as long as opposition groups can’t conjure up a countervailing stratagem like APC did in 2013/4. Disagree with this stance if you must, but it is what it is!

    Four, contrary to claims by some senior lawyers, including Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs)  and a past president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), about the “sordid” state of electoral jurisprudence in Nigeria, the truth remains that the verdicts meticulously delivered by this PEPT significantly enrich the country’s legal framework with respect to litigating election petitions.

    Was it not in this same country that the Supreme Court ordered that its mago-mago verdict should never be referenced as a legal precedent? Wasn’t another Supreme Court so split down the middle that the then-Chief Justice of Nigeria cast a deciding vote to break the deadlock – even as the beneficiary of that compromised judgement publicly conceded that the electoral process that brought him to power was farcical and shambolic? What has changed between then and now that justifies calling the present-day apex court “the worst ever”?

    Five, it is inconceivable and preposterous that leading lights of the bar would openly declare their “loss of faith” in the Supreme Court and even go as far as recommending that its “silly decisions” be subjected to “legislative scrutiny.” Talk of moronically cutting one’s nose in a vain attempt to spite the face! So, would that make the National Assembly the de facto highest court in Nigeria, while the erstwhile Supreme Court becomes just another appellate court?

    Ain’t these fat cat senior lawyers simply being too selfish and insensitive? Why destroy the same constituency where they made their fame and wealth? Aren’t they bothered about what would become of the careers of thousands of young lawyers and the long-term status of their profession if enthusiasm by potential students wanes rapidly as a consequence of their mandibular diarrhoea?

    Six, if those maintaining that the judiciary has been irredeemably compromised are to be taken seriously, why don’t they just demand that their principals cease and desist from appealing to the Supreme Court, or is the apex court no longer an integral part of the same “corrupt” judiciary?         

    Seven, the framers of our Constitution never intended that the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) should enjoy a superior status over a State. Noooo! In the United States of America – from where the constitution was copied – the District of Columbia (DC) is not at par with a State. The only perversion in the master plan is having an appointed minister preside over the FCT instead of an elected Mayor – as is the case in the USA. Please note that as against an appointed superintending minister, a State governor is elected.

    A State has local government areas while the FCT has area councils. Each State has a House of Assembly while the National Assembly oversees the legislative needs of the FCT. All these only go to prove that the FCT is technically inferior to a State, and it should not hold the rest of the nation to ransom with a standalone 25 percent requirement. Let the language be amended if the letter – as opposed to the spirit – is confusing anyone.  

    Eight, the APM, LP and PDP simply embarked on a fishing expedition. They allege that violence occurred in some parts of the country and that their votes were deducted and added to Tinubu’s count but they neither produced any hard evidence to prove how violence being alleged would’ve substantially affected the outcome of the election nor detailed exactly how many votes were deducted and at what polling units, and how redistributing them would’ve skewed the results in their favour.

    Nine, does forfeiture of assets – even under a plea bargain – amount to a criminal conviction? Suppose, for the sake of argument, it is, does a Constitutional provision not render it time-bound (maximum of 10 years)? And although INEC appallingly stonewalled their requests for certain vital documents, it still won’t have mattered if they could produce relevant evidential materials in their possession.

    Ten, all that high drama of hauling more than 60 Ghana-Must-Go bags of such “evidence” to the courtroom turned out to be exactly a question of “Where then is the beef?” Truth be told, LP particularly found it extremely difficult to produce relevant signed Forms EC8A to back up their claims of over-voting simply because it lacked party agents in far too many polling units nationwide.

    Eleven, seeking to get US courts and the FBI to make pronouncements on Tinubu’s alleged certificate forgery and drug dealing should end forthwith. The Chicago State University has already confirmed that he graduated in 1979 and the Department of State issued a press statement through its embassy in Nigeria declaring that Tinubu has no case to answer. It also reeks of the worst type of colonial mentality. We, the Nigerian People, have the sole right to determine who governs us.

    It should be completely left to us to live with the consequences of the independent choices we make. Barack Obama reportedly dealt drugs as a youth in Ohio but subsequently served as the American president for an unbroken two terms of eight years. What can be said of Donald Trump – a proven narcissist, racist, rapist, corporate swindler and coup plotter who’s still very much in contention to return to the White House in 2024?

    Besides, it’s an axiomatic saying that he who comes to equity must do so with clean hands. The ghosts of Siemens-gate and the Petroleum Development Trust Fund (PDTF) as well as the Panama Papers are still menacingly lurking around.

    Twelve, the effective solution to our underwhelming electoral process doesn’t lie in disparaging the judiciary and wrestling with each other on account of our different perspectives – just like the group of blind men – but in thoroughly eye-balling the existing laws and making needful amendments, including improving internal party democracy and re-evaluating the independence and effectiveness of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

    Thirteen, this is arguably the first time since 1979 when there was no dissenting/minority opinion in a presidential petition; and it’s inconceivable that the Supreme Court would overturn verdicts unanimously made by the appellate court! A word should save time and multiples of millions of naira for the wise.   

  • 100 Days: The untold stories of President Tinubu’s leadership acts

    100 Days: The untold stories of President Tinubu’s leadership acts

    • By Tunde Rahman

    In the last one-week since President Bola Tinubu clocked 100 days in office, commentators and analysts, political observers and politicians have busied themselves, dissecting the President’s performance in office, particularly his major decisions and policy options. Many have also commented on the achievements recorded and the areas that require improvements.

    The newspapers and electronic media have been awash with many lauding the giant strides recorded within just three months and a few days in office. Some top politicians like former Zamfara State governor, Senator Abdulaziz Yari representing Zamfara West, and the Minister of Interior, Hon. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, for instance, bought the front pages of some newspapers to celebrate the President, his exemplary leadership and well-thought out economic policies in just 100 days. Some others, particularly the opposition, behaving like sore losers that they are, however, refuse to acknowledge the gains achieved, even amid the prevailing challenges.

    Assessing a President’s performance in 100 days in office seemed to have become the norm from the days of 32nd US President Franklin D. Roosevelt who in his inaugural address on March 4, 1933 indicated he wanted to move with unprecedented speed to address the problems facing the United States of America, yet it was acknowledged even at the time that to judge an incoming President on the accomplishments of his first 100 days in office is to hold him to an impossible standard. 100 days in the life of a nation may appear like a drop in an ocean. Yet a lot was achieved within that space of time under the Tinubu presidency such that it would be very appropriate to talk about them.

    The achievements recorded, which included resetting the economy by removing the ruinous fuel subsidy, thus freeing for development activities money that would otherwise have illegally gone into a few pockets, unifying the many exchange rates that paved the grounds for arbitrage, the humongous amount now being raked in ensuring that the Federal Government and the sub-nationals now have more money to share from the Federation Accounts, the compensatory palliatives now coming from the states as a result of the increased allocation, the gradual return of Nigeria’s preeminent status on the international stage, and many more, are worth talking about and repeating.

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    For instance, unwittingly drawing attention to the huge amounts states now receive from the Federation Accounts, the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, in a 2nd quarter 2023 Federation Account Statutory Revenue Allocations Report, disclosed that the 36 states of the federation received about N1.51 trillion or 34.5% of the total N4.37 trillion shared by the three tiers of the government between January and June 2023. “On a year-on-year basis, the report showed that when compared with the corresponding period in 2022, allocations to the State Governments from the Federation Account in 2023 grew by about 11.2% to N1.42 trillion from N1.26 trillion,” the report said. Not a few economic watchers would know the bulk of that money came in June 2023 alone when around N1trillion was distributed.

    This intervention is not really about these accomplishments, which are very remarkable by all standards within just 100 days. It’s about President Tinubu’s acts of leadership. The untold stories of courage, the boldness and audacity he has brought into governance, the ability to accept mistakes and make correction, the empathy he has demonstrated, how he engaged youths in government, the vision behind it and the way and manner he carried it about. Stories abound about all of these, which are either not properly highlighted or remain largely unreported. The true test of a leader’s capabilities emerges when his actions and utterances are gauged in those moments he lets down his guards, oblivious that he is being watched. These are the stories told in this article.

    The first is about the empathy President Tinubu has brought into governance. The President lived in his Asokoro, Abuja residence for around two months or so, while the Presidential Villa accommodation was being readied, before he eventually moved in. Sensing that the main residence at the Villa was going to take much longer to be fully repaired, he caused the 3-bedroom apartment, popularly called The Glass House, which will take a shorter time to be put in good shape for use, to be worked on. However, in the meantime, before that Glass House got ready, and uncomfortable that he was causing the people around his Asokoro house some discomfort by his daily movement to and fro the Presidential Villa, he instructed his staff to print a letter of apology, circulated in and around Asokoro, appealing to the people for understanding and urging them give him a little time to sort out himself. That was awesome and humbling in my view.

    Secondly, while not dwelling so much here about his boldness in removing the twin subsidies- the one on fuel and foreign exchange- even as he acknowledged that there would be some accompanying difficulties, you would recall that the President at every turn kept urging Nigerians to be patient and to know that the pains would be temporary. He even made a broadcast to the nation on this. Appealing for patience and understanding, he had said in the broadcast:

    “I understand the hardship you face. I wish there were other ways. But there is not. If there were, I would have taken that route as I came here to help not hurt the people and nation that I love.”

    He would say the present pains could be likened to birth pangs and that the moment the baby is born, the pains disappear and that the ultimate joy of a woman is in seeing her baby.

    Thirdly, in 100 days, President Tinubu demonstrated his ability to accept mistakes and make corrections, which is rare among many leaders. The President, on further reflection, dropped a ministerial nominee he felt was not up to the billing to be the minister representing conservative Kano. He also reshuffled and readjusted the portfolios of some ministers even before they took office, accepting some mistakes were made and correcting the errors. He effected changes in the composition of the Board of the Niger Delta Development Commission with respect to the nominations of Ondo and Cross River States representatives. In my view, it is an act of good leadership and courage to accept mistakes and to correct them.

    Fourthly, appointing young persons like 37-year-old renowned surgeon and former Cross River State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Betta Edu, former House of Representatives member, Hon. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, and tech expert, Mr. Bosun Tijani as ministers is commendable. President Tinubu, however, upped the ante when he went ahead to pick 32-year-old entrepreneur and another tech-expert, Khalil Halilu, as Executive Vice Chairman/CEO of National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI). As he assumed office, Halilu pledged to use STI to drive the President’s socio-economic priority areas.

    But the real story here is about the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy Bosun Tijani. Visiting the Presidential Villa to thank President Tinubu for his appointment three weeks ago or so, just before the inauguration of Ministers, he met the Chief of Staff, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Mr. Dele Alake, this writer, and one or two others in the President’s Office that fateful day. And then one of us in that office mentioned something about how Tijani in the heat of exasperation with the country excoriated his fatherland and upbraided the governing APC. President Tinubu promptly shut the person up, saying what Bosun did in the heat of anger was understandable and should be forgotten, adding that he too had at one point during the dark days of the military frustratingly condemned the country. That was a forgiving and fatherly leader on display in that statement. Any need to tell more stories that President Tinubu, like many people had remarked, is indeed an appropriate man for the present time given his leadership experience, temperament, unique skills, competence, international exposure and extensive contacts which are required to take Nigeria to the next level.

    •  Rahman, former Editor of Thisday on Sunday Newspaper is a Presidential Aide.
  • Ambassadors’ recall and unending funding crisis

    Ambassadors’ recall and unending funding crisis

    • By Bisi Olawunm

    The  Presidency  on September 2, 2023 announced world-wide recall of Nigerian ambassadors in its diplomatic missions, except for those at the United Nations in New York and Geneva. Presidential spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale, who  announced this, said the two UN ambassadors were  excluded to allow them prepare for the president’s attendance at the UN General Assembly ( UNGA ) later in  the month.

    The recalled ambassadors, appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari and deployed in January  2021,  were given a grace period of two months, for a proper disengagement, till October 31, 2023 when they are all expected to be back in the country. The total recall  is apparently to allow the president set a new foreign policy thrust reflective of his administration’s objectives. Nigeria has 109 diplomatic missions, worldwide, comprising 76 Embassies, 22 High Commissions and 11 Consulates.

    ‘’ The president is determined to ensure that world class efficiency and quality, will henceforth, characterize foreign and domestic service delivery to citizens, residents and prospective visitors alike’’, Ngelale  stated. He explained  that ‘’the president’s  directive is sequel to his careful study of the present state of affairs at Nigerian Consulate Offices and Embassies worldwide’’ and in line with his renewed hope agenda.

    Communication from The Presidency sounded grandiose in its rationale for the immediate recall of the ambassadors. The question is : What are the highlights of the findings from the “study of the state of affairs  at  Nigerian embassies worldwide “  which warranted this tsunami of total recall of ALL the ambassadors  with immediate effect ?   Secondly, the recall appears rather precipitate. This, therefore, does not give the impression of a well thought out process.   Thirdly, the recall signals   continuing  policy tumbles which have emerged as the trademark of the Tinubu presidency – from the cavalier statement of ‘subsidy is gone’ in his inaugural address;  the delayed and eventual summersaults on ministerial nominations ; ethical deficit of the corper-minister appointment and lingering untidiness in palliative management. 

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    This set of ambassadors had faced trauma in their posting. The diplomats, 95  of them, made up of 52 non-career and 43 career ambassadors, appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari, had been screened and ratified by the senate in July  2020 but were not deployed till January 2021. They were appointed for four year tenure but the mass recall less than three years was justified on the basis that they serve at the pleasure of Mr. President.  However, you wonder :  What is the urgency of the moment for a fledgling administration,  buffeted by political turbulence and requiring some stability,  to embark on this mass recall of ambassadors, worldwide  ?  

    What is particularly confounding is that no lesson seemed to have been learnt from the president’s disastrous outing in his first foray on the foreign policy front in leading ECOWAS to the precipitate threat of military  invasion of Niger Republic to restore democracy and reinstate toppled President Mohammed Barzoum.   Up to this point in time, it is the force of unanimous public opinion, opposed to military invasion as first option, that has restrained and rescued Tinubu from a headlong rush into a catastrophic war in Niger Republic.

    However, it is not enough to just recall all ambassadors, perhaps only for the hurried purpose of  giving patronage appointments to the president’s men and women.  The word, ‘’ hurried ‘’, is used advisedly, given the rather impulsive tendencies of the administration.  

    So, the posers for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Amb. Yusuf Tuggar  are :  What are those modalities being put in place to ‘’ ensure  world class efficiency and quality  service delivery‘’ by the country’s diplomatic missions ?  What are those core foreign policy values  the ambassadors are to implement ?  To what extent should Africa remain centric to the nation’s foreign policy, given the minister’s ‘’ Strategic Autonomy ‘’ doctrine ? 

    From personal experience as a Foreign Correspondent in Washington, D.C. United States, from 1985 to 1989, and on several  visits thereafter, three major  issues can be identified  with our diplomatic missions. .  These are inadequate funding of the embassies, laid back attitude of many diplomats and their hostile relationship with Diaspora Nigerians  in their host countries. 

    FUNDING.  The poor funding of Nigerian embassies is a scandal.  There are instances where diplomats are ejected from their residences while many embassies suffer embarrassing deficit in running costs, a recurrent issue that seriously constrain activities of the missions. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs ( MFA )  in its recalibration would need to creatively address this protracted funding problem. It is instructive that Saturday PUNCH of September 9, 2023 had this banner front page headline :  ‘ NIGERIAN EMBASSIES IN FINANCIAL CRISIS AS FG DELAYS FUNDS ‘. It is an indictment of and shame on successive leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that 38 years after my 1985 report on the irresponsible operational under funding of our embassies, the problem has persisted till date. Destitute diplomats constitute a national embarrassment in their host countries. To imagine that these are the same state officials expected to project the positive face of the  country abroad !  The PUNCH  report showed that not only are budgeted funds to the missions drastically cut, their remittance  get delayed for months. A Foreign Service Officer ( FSO), speaking on condition of anonymity, highlighted the plight of the diplomats : ‘Many of our staff members have been evicted for not paying their rent . It happened in Budapest, Hungary, in 2021 when some Nigerian staff members were evicted from their apartments  for failing to pay their rent’.  Continuing, the FSO had stated :  ‘There are cases where diplomats borrow money to settle school fees and rents to avoid eviction. Some borrow from their friends in Nigeria and also from the Nigerian community or the local churches they attend in their country of service’.  That is the extent to which diplomats are brought to ridicule.  Even when they are recalled, it is usually a struggle to get paid the months of backlog  foreign service allowance owed.  I knew a diplomat at the Nigerian embassy in Washington D.C. in the late 1980s who got stranded in the U.S. when he was recalled  prematurely after two years, against his expectation of a four-year tenure, was owed months in allowances and could not face the shame of returning to Nigeria literarily a destitute – no car, no savings.   A retired diplomat, Rashid Akinkuolie, corroborated the FSO’s statement on funding crisis :  “It is a perennial issue, it is not something that is just happening today “. According to him,  the problem was that their “vote is converted to dollars, euros, pounds and other currencies and this causes  devaluation  and a lot of issues. Sometimes, they can’t pay salaries in two or three months, they can’t pay utility bills, local workers and meet other responsibilities”.

    With the wholesale recall of ambassadors, to what extent is the MFA is a position to settle the outstanding and relocation entitlements of the diplomats ?  Why has it been impossible to make a SPECIAL CASE for denominating budget allocation to the foreign missions in dollars, as a universal currency , to save the missions from the vagaries of a crazily  declining naira value ?  The government should consider reducing the number of the nation’s diplomatic missions to what it can conveniently fund. Going forward , the level of strategic importance,  economic relationship and the population of resident Nigerians  should determine location of the country’s diplomatic missions while some  other countries can be covered, concurrently, from a neighouring country.

    While the funding burden remains an albatross on government, ambassadors, on their part, should imbibe cost cutting measures in terms of cost of rent on accommodation and public school for children of diplomats in advanced countries.  Ambassador Ignatius Olisemeka, Nigerian ambassador to the U.S. took such prudent measure in the mid 1980s when he got  diplomats serving in the mission to withdraw their children from fee-paying  private schools to free public schools. Public schools in the U.S. have top facilities, so, going to private school, particularly at elementary and high school levels, was just ego-induced status symbol for diplomats!.

    LAID BACK WORK ATTITUTE.   Many diplomats are not proactive in terms of working to timelines and deadlines, a carry-over from the bureaucracy  they are used to in Nigeria. This lethargy applies particularly with political officers and Information Attaches, requiring performance monitoring unit at MFA headquarters.

    ECONOMIC DIPLOMACY.  Activities  in many embassies are routinised  and mainly about Protocol Diplomacy  and the Cocktail Circuit !  There is need for a paradigm shift with emphasis on  Economic Diplomacy, which Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi had insightfully promoted as Foreign Minister between 1985 and 1987. 

    EMBASSIES’ – NIGERIANS’ RELATIONSHIP.  It is a notorious fact that there is a prevalent hostile relationship between many embassy staff and Nigerians in the Diaspora.  This sour relationship has persisted over the years.  The diplomats, generally, relate with  Nigerians with aloofness and condescension. Two issues generally bring Nigerians in Diaspora in contact with embassy staff – passport/immigration matters and education/scholarship issues. I will cite three instances in Washington D.C. over the decades.  In 1986, while I was still a Foreign   Correspondent in Washington, my intervention got a woman and her three kids from North Carolina  who  got shut out of the Embassy for arriving five minutes to 1.00pm when the embassy closes to the public, got her admitted into the embassy, attended to and her problem resolved.  On another occasion, a PhD  doctoral student who was to be wrongly deported had sought the intervention of our diplomats but was shunned at the embassy. He came to NAN office at the National Press Building in Downtown Washington to narrate his ordeal. I filed a news report on his plight to Nigeria that attracted the intervention of the Foreign Ministry in Lagos and his deportation was stopped. That is how dismissive of Nigerian embassy officials can be.  The third instance was in 2018 while I was on vacation in the U.S. I went from Baltimore, Maryland  to Washington D.C  with a Diaspora Nigerian who was having issue with her passport renewal only to be told that passport booklets have not been available for months !!   Passport booklet scarcity is a recurrent problem in Nigerian diplomatic missions which the new Minister of Interior must tackle, head-on.

    • Dr. Olawunmi, Senior Lecturer, Department of Mass Communication, Adeleke University, Ede, is former Washington Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria and Fellow, Nigerian Guild of Editors. 
    • Email  :olawunmibisi@yahoo.com   PHONE :  (SMS ONLY )   0803 364 7571 Sunday. September 10, 2023.
  • Philosophy, meaninglessness and the nature of politics in Nigeria

    Philosophy, meaninglessness and the nature of politics in Nigeria

    • By Tunji Olaopa

    Let me start this piece on a reflective note, and then connect the reflection with my concern for the political trajectory of the Nigerian state. And where else to start than with one of the wisdom quotes of Socrates. According to him, “By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” To be sure, this is not just an advice on marital bliss. It contains a gem of philosophical insight that is both universal and particular, as I aim to demonstrate. Marrying a bad wife is Socrates’ own way of signaling dissatisfaction, discomfort and distress as the key to making sense of life. We then immediately understand the cogent sense in Karl Marx’s reaction to the opiate quality that religion brings to bear on the critical sense the people ought to have. By saying “religion is the opium of the people,” Marx meant to say that religion deadens the emancipatory possibilities that discomfort and distress bring to human existence. And even when Jesus began to espouse the theology of being “poor in spirit,” it points to the same issue of coming to a full spiritual awareness only with the realization that you are first poor in spirit.

    Life, and the experience of existence and who we are, revolves around the meaning we ascribe to who we are and how we interpret life and the meaning of human existence. This is where one will recognize, again, the genius of Fela Anikulapo Kuti in capturing the tragic and traumatic rhythm of existence in Nigeria. In “Shuffering and Shmiling,” we come face to face with a realistic assessment of Nigerian life, and especially the complacence we all sit comfortably in while we are getting traumatized. While the Imam, Pope and Archbishop are enjoying, Nigerians are somnolent in suffering. And their enjoyment derives from their capacity to keep Nigerians politically mute about their situation. However, and without slinging any mud, is it not interesting that while those who brought Christianity to Africa have adapted their faith to a capitalist ethos—a la Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism—we are still trooping to church, spending our hard earned money, and always looking towards heaven without equally sufficient thought on how to actively navigate the path towards progress on this earthly plane?

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    And we can easily see how this reflective path I am taking in this piece leads inexorably into the understanding of what Nigerians have made of their capacity for an active citizenship that vigorously queries the government on what it is making of the commonweal or the social contract which is meant to make their lives qualitatively better than they presently are. And yet, in most instances, Nigerians have often retreated. The recent fuel subsidy and the #EndSARS protests are exceptions from the rule of consistently backing away from a constructive engagement with the government and instead building “local government areas” in communities. In other word, every community takes up the responsibility of government in self-help arrangements where private guards and vigilante groups replace the state security framework, boreholes and wells replace water boards, generators and solar inverters replace electricity providers, private schools take over from public schools, and so on.

    The perceptive reader would indeed have preceded me to the point I have reached in this reflection; the point of asking what the nature of politics really is. Let me return to the Greek philosophers. Plato once said that until philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers, cities will never have rest from evils. The reason for his insistence is simple: political greatness and philosophical wisdom ought to meet in one person. And yet, even the great Athenian city-state could not make that aspiration of a philosopher-king possible. Plato wanted to become a great politician, like Solon and Pericles. But then Athens was rapidly declining, and with it also the counsel of justice. And this was exactly the reason Socrates, Plato’s teacher, was judicially murdered, and Plato’s aspiration of becoming a philosopher-king summarily aborted. With Solon and Pericles, there was a progressive and increasingly successful attempts at rehabilitating the Athenian constitution to make it better able to serve the Athenian citizens.

    The unfortunate thing is that the understanding of the nature of politics, or who a politician is, is still very crucial till today, and especially in a postcolonial state like Nigeria. And unfortunately, still, the trajectory of the decline of ancient Athens and her struggling to regain her democratic antecedent has remained my perception of the failure of politics in Nigeria since 1966. Nigeria’s governance experiment has birth series of false starts, wrong moves, uncritical governance models as well as an evolving political class that kept undermining the hope of an emerging political culture around which the Nigerian project can be finally and fully resolved. All these coalesce into the terrible dynamic we have grown to call the “Nigerian Factor”. Permit me to highlight just four dimensions of that enigmatic dynamic that has constrained Nigeria’s progress and national development since independence.

    The first, for me, is the lack of a coherent vision of national well-being by a clueless political class that points at a blueprint for a better future for Nigeria and Nigerians. This is to say that the elite nationalistic framework that has served as the pathway for enlightened reflection on development for other countries is still floundering in Nigeria. On the contrary, the elite has been rather preoccupied by an extractive logic that operationalize primitive accumulation to the detriment of the commonweal. The second dimension, and a logical corollary of the first, is the incapacity of Nigeria’s political parties to serve as the framework for defining the ideological deployment of power that condition governance models and development direction. Capturing power, the fundamental objective of all political parties, is in this case not aligned with a purposeful transformative agenda which makes the party a change agent and also ensures legitimacy for those the parties are fielding for political positions.

    The third issue comes from the inevitable listlessness of the development agenda that has not yielded any headway for transforming the lives of Nigerians. And hence, Nigeria has been benchmarking the failure of her development planning for sixty-three years. An extractive political class, riding on political parties that just want to capture power, could only lead to a development agenda without any content. And lastly, we see how the epileptic development agenda would fail to backstop the rehabilitation of the Nigerian national project of integrating the diverse constituents of the Nigerian state around a civic nationalism—making ethnic nationalities believe in one Nigeria.

    The great lesson, which sixty-three years of Nigerian attempt at making a headway of politics and governance, is that the task of making Nigeria great—and politics a vehicle for good governance—can no longer be left for professional politicians alone. It is this same conclusion that led to the institutional expansion of the concept of governance to bring non-state and non-governmental actors within the same confines with government officials, functionaries and apparatuses in making governance work for the citizens. now, it is time to expand the field of politics, and make it a mechanism for taking Nigeria more seriously that the politicians and the political class in Nigeria has taken. I am arguing that the idea of the “elite” in elite nationalism now needs more genuine and patriotic coalition of professionals and intellectuals, including the civil society organizations and other professional associations.

  • Bankers delight

    Bankers delight

    Although a couple of my secondary school classmates became bankers, I don’t remember that any of us confessed at any time that they were looking forward to a career in banking. There was however no shortage of those who had strongly stated ambitions to become doctors, engineers, lawyers and members of other such related liberal professions. We were in school at a time when it had just become possible to aspire to these professions which required a university degree and we found it inconceivable to even entertain any thought of not proceeding to a university with all possible speed after our Higher School Certificate examinations. We were confident or perhaps cocky enough to think we would pass our exams well enough to secure admission into a university, one of the new Nigerian universities which seemed to have arrived with independence. That ambition was well within our competence and in the end, only a handful of us did not get to attend a university. As far as we were aware at the time, you did not need a university degree to become a banker or perhaps more appropriately, a bank worker. This being the case, a banking career was thought to be well below our notice. Ironically, one of us who ended up in a bank did so only after he had taken a degree in Economics. For good measure however, he took early retirement from the bank and conformed as the rest of us had done by taking up another degree in law.

    My first interaction with bankers took place far away from a banking hall and it was quite memorable for me nevertheless. Nigeria was a far more sporting nation then than she is now as there were a great many sports clubs playing their chosen sport with varying degrees of seriousness and skill. The Police and Prisons services for example, were powerhouses of sports and the Police football team was one of the most formidable football teams in the land whilst Ejoke, Abidoye and others from the Prisons Athletics Club thrilled the nation with their athletic prowess. These people were at least semi-professionals and belonged to an elite group of easily recognisable people who were talked about in glowing terms. However, most of those who took part in sports of an evening were no more than gifted or even not so gifted amateurs who came out to play their game for the sheer joy of doing so.

    There were many sports clubs to be found in Lagos in the sixties, each of them associated with big companies, some of which had built clubhouses on expansive grounds with good facilities for various games. Shell, UAC, Ports Authority, Railways, to mention a few were in this group and members of their staff had use of these facilities. This was at a time when Lagosians did not spend half of their time in traffic jams and had some spare time on their hands after getting back home from work. At that time, Barclays Bank had a cricket team which came over to Igbobi College to offer the school team a game and give me the opportunity of rubbing shoulders with dyed in the wool bankers who, as far as I was concerned, lived in a world of their own. That afternoon however, we were united on the platform of the game of cricket. That game was of special significance for me as it was my first game for the school and we won handsomely. Games like that could also be important from career points of view as some school boy players were introduced to prospective employers in the course of such brief interactions.

    In that period of the mid-sixties, bankers were few and very thin on the ground. They were surrounded by a mystique all of their own and were accorded a great deal of respect. They, together with doctors and clergymen were perennial writers of references for those seeking admission into educational institutions or those looking for employment in government establishments. They wore a cloak of respectability which could not be bought for love or money. Talking about money, bankers were not associated with this commodity except as custodians of money placed in their care by a trusting public. This is not to say that they were paupers by any stretch of the imagination as by the standards of the day, their paygrade was not to be sniffed at. What they did not do and perhaps could not even think of doing was to flaunt whatever change was clinking in their cavernous pockets. In other words, they as a group were self effacing almost to the point of anonymity.

    In those days unlike now, banks were the source of housing loans and those who worked in banks had access to loans with which to build their own houses and from this point of view had no reason to entertain any fears about a decent roof over their heads. In other words, to be a banker was always a cynosure even if my friends and I were lamentably ignorant of the opportunities which existed in banks all around us in a world which revelled in academic achievement as guaranteed by a university degree.

    That cricket match took place long before the indigenization decree was promulgated in those heady days of the seventies. It was indeed a few months before our rather unreflective soldiers went right off their heads and seized power for themselves. Power which they had no idea how to use properly and only ended up driving the country into a gully. There are many who think that so many years later, we have not yet been able to manoeuvre our way out of that gully. Now, we have politicians, many of them so called because they have been brought up in the age of military anomy and cannot appreciate the rule of law. In the twilight period of real democratic rule in Nigeria and because most commercial institutions were international in terms of ownership, the Barclays Bank team on that day was made up of both Nigerians and expatriates, some of whom had lived and worked in Nigeria for decades. A few years later, all the expatriates had gone and the bank itself had become a government parastatal as were other banks and a new and patently uncomfortable era had begun.

    Banks are the powerhouses of any modern economy and it was soon clear that the government parastatals masquerading as banks were totally out of their depth and were not fit for purpose. The bankers were now civil servants who wore slightly more stylish suits than the real civil servants who worked in government ministries. They continued to run their banks after a fashion but had no time for cricket or any other games. The days of sports participation were long gone, swallowed up by the fumes of history and the exhaust clouds generated on the constipated streets of Lagos by thousands of idling  internal combustion engines.

    By the middle of the eighties, the Nigerian economy was on life support and against the advice of the great Nigerian public, the flaky Nigerian military government of the day invited the IMF to repair the broken economy which they were trying to manage after a fashion.

    The first sign that we had escaped the frying pan only to land in a roaring fire was the devaluation of the Naira. This generated an unhealthy appetite for hard currency as shown by the sharpness of currency speculation which followed the devaluation. Foreign currency became a commodity which was bought and sold every week. It was sold by the Central Bank and bought by speculators who promptly sold them at enormous profit to people who needed foreign exchange with which to import all manner of stuff into the country. Banking services became severely limited but not exclusively so, to making hard currency available. At the same time, all manner of banks, or as they were called, finance houses started opening their doors to all manner of gamblers who played with money rather than chips. You deposited money into one of these finance houses on the promise of fantastic returns in a few months. Many were taken in by these rosy promises but it was not long before the air was filled with the lamentation of those who had fallen victim to the sharks; very well suited sharks it has to be said, with the audacity to run a scam yielding them vast sums of money within a very short time. The Nigerian banking landscape was changed forever. All those careful, conservative men of substance who entered the bank with their school certificate tucked in their file and rose steadily, if unspectacularly, over a period of thirty years or more to run their banks were pushed out of their berths, to be replaced by very bright and impatient young men and women with MBAs and banking degrees from all those British polytechnics which had been almost magically transformed into brand new universities in the Thatcher years. It did not matter what you studied in the university, all you needed to get on in the so called technologically driven new generation banks was the ambition to attract money to your bank which was ready to pay you handsome dividends for your troubles.

    We are now in the age of the banks and Nigerian bankers, who through thick and thin are laughing all the way to the bank. They are not likely to be distracted by indulgence in such untemunerative frolics as a game of cricket on a Saturday afternoon.

  • The bitter truth

    The bitter truth

    General Yakubu Gowon was attending the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) meeting in Kampala, Uganda, when the coup that removed him from power occurred on July 29, 1975. Yet, the organisation, the precursor to the African Union (AU), was helpless in the circumstance because the OAU charter then forbade any form of interference in member-states’ internal affairs.

    Today, both the AU and the Economic Community of West African States‘ (ECOWAS) rules allow for interference in member-states’ internal affairs. This is probably normal in a world where no country is an island unto itself, and one that technology has made a global village.

    In theory, there is nothing wrong with the new order. This is especially so because it is some countries that would bear the consequences of the humanitarian crisis that results from boilovers in other countries. So, countries should be interested in what is happening, especially around them.

    Lest we forget, the latest coups  in Africa started when soldiers in Niger Republic sacked the government of their president, Mohamed Bazoum, on July 26. The world was yet to recover from the shock of this when, a few weeks later, precisely on August 30, his Gabon counterpart, Ali Bongo, was similarly sacked by soldiers. The coup brought an end to Mr Bongo’s 14-year rule and his family’s 56 years hold on power in Gabon.

    Without doubt, military rule is an aberration. It has merely continued to bring soldiers into the political terrain which they have the least knowledge or expertise to handle. In the end, they usually left the stage worse than they met it. Nigeria is no exception.

    But, much as we have always argued that military rule is undesirable, the question that is still begging for answer is how then do you remove political leaders who have overstayed their welcome? Unfortunately, Africa has a surfeit of such leaders.

    The best answer I have heard so far is that the people should change such leaders at the ballot after the expiration of their tenure. But those who want to be sincere with themselves know this is easier said than done. The point is that the civil society that should be in the vanguard of such peaceful transfer of power is never allowed to blossom. Their leaders are perpetually hounded by Africa’s sit-tight leaders. The benevolent ones among the leaders put all manner of charges against the opposition or civil society leaders. Others simply orchestrate their disappearance from mother earth, for merely demanding for good governance.

    In this kind of scenario, we are back to the same question of how do you remove such leaders by peaceful means? Yet, we know, as former American President John Kennedy, said that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” If Africa’s sit-tight leaders detest military rule, they are as well averse to revolution or civil insurrection. That is why they crush every protest against their misrule in the most brutal manner.

    When the coup in Niger Republic took place, I initially hesitated to comment on it for obvious reasons: there was no way one would give an opinion on it without sounding like an apologist of military rule. Yet, this is far from the truth.

    That the coup in Gabon followed suit  should tell us something about the determination of that country’s soldiers to disregard sanctions or threats of sanctions for removing their president by force of arms.

    As a matter of fact, I knew, ab initio, that any attempt to return Bazoum to power in Niger Republic would end in fiasco. In the first place, the coup was welcomed by the Nigeriens who were the people wearing the shoes and therefore knew where they pinch. ECOWAS’s intervention in that case would be more like an interloper or an outsider weeping louder than the bereaved.

    In any case, the mood in Nigeria where ECOWAS’s chairman comes from was not in support of any war with Niger Republic. Nigeria has its own challenges to tackle. Moreover, there is no surplus funds to commit to such an expedition in these austere times. We should also not lose sight of the fact that our compatriots in the north would rather prefer their kith and kin in Niger Republic sort out their problems themselves rather than having ECOWAS going to wage war there, ostensibly to defend democracy.

    I did not envy President Bola Tinubu who doubles as ECOWAS chair, while the threats of war were strident. He would have been torn between going with ECOWAS or going with Nigeria. Mercifully, that would seem to be over now. With wars, no one can tell. What was envisaged to be a walkover could end up being problematic. Ask Vladimir Putin.

    However, if I initially refused to comment on the coup in Niger, that position would no longer be tenable after that of Gabon.

    Perhaps the immediate reason for my change of position was the comment by one commentator after the Gabon coup to the effect that former President Olusegun Obasanjo had asserted in one of his books that a particular African leader tried to discourage him from handing over power to a democratically elected government in Nigeria when he did in 1979. In other words, that would run against the norm on the continent!

    If I had any iota of doubt that this remained the mindset of many  African leaders on the issue of succession, this disclosure or reminder, as it were, erased such doubt completely. With leaders like this dominating the continent, we do not have to look far for the basis of the self-perpetuation in power on the part of many African leaders and the perpetual under-development of Africa.

    As a matter of fact, this is the most annoying part of the whole African tragedy. The problem is not much of these leaders not wanting to stay put even when their time is up; it is more about their inability or refusal, or both,  to develop their countries. How can a continent develop with sit-tight vision-less leaders who number their days only by their long stay in power? 

    And, to rub salt on an injury, some of these leaders, apart from further deepening poverty in their countries and leaving the stage generally worse than they met it, transfer power to their sons, as if their countries were their personal property.

    I had cause to write ‘From Gnassingbe Eyadema the father to Eyadema the son’ when the former despot died on February 5, 2005. Gnassingbe was then Africa’s longest serving ruler (1967-2005). I can see you chuckle! His son, Faure, took over in the most shameless manner.

    It was good that ECOWAS has soft-pedalled on the threat of war because if it had not faced reality, Bazoum would either have been dead by now or he would be battling for survival in the intensive care unit of a hospital. The truth is that the man has outlived his usefulness. Even if the soldiers who overthrew him were those that receive bullets in the war front on their buttocks, they would not want to appear to the outside world as fretting generals. Just as Bazoum is gone for good, Bongo too should be considered gone for aye. They have done more than enough damage to their peoples, the continent and humanity at large.

    Rather than the AU and ECOWAS bemoaning their exit from power, the two organisations should think of the way forward. Africans who welcome soldiers whenever they stage coup are not doing so necessarily because they love the soldiers. They are doing so because they are fed up with the existing order that has been demeaning their humanity, in some cases for decades, and those midwifing that decadent order are still not ready to relinquish power willingly.

    The task before both the AU and ECOWAS therefore is to reform. The two organisations have become dysfunctional to the extent that they serve only the interest of those in power as against that of the people. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily about lack of structures to address some of these observed lapses but  because the structures exist only in name. For instance, the AU has what it calls peer review mechanism. But only good peers can objectively review themselves. When you have a conclave of tyrants who see their long stay in office as their only objective or achievement, the result is what we have almost all over the continent.

    The same peers who cannot call themselves to order when some of their own, after ruling for decades, still want to stay put even when all the indices of development are showing their countries are worse off under them? Where were the two institutions when some of these leaders, after messing up their countries’ resources, installed their sons as their successors, either via rigged elections or barefaced manipulated processes?

    No self-respecting people would take threats from such organisations serious when their despots are removed, even if through the barrels of a gun. At that point, the people, like the drowning man that would not mind clinging to a serpent for help, have been pushed to the wall and anything but the existing order is welcome.

    So, rather than barking after despots on the continent have been removed, the organisations must convene an emergency summit where those of them who have been in power for decades through manipulated processes or the force of arms should be encouraged to retire.We all know them. Africa would not have been the mess that it has been if they had governed well. And, in case such leaders insist on staying put, they should know they are doing that at their own risk. The AU and ECOWAS must exist for the peoples of Africa and be so seen. Not for some selfish, never-do-well misbegotten despots. That is the lesson that the wind that will still blow in some other parts of Africa is teaching us all. President Tinubu and the AU chairman, Azali Assoumani, would do well by allowing the reform to come from above.

  • The First Accountant

    The First Accountant

    • Chief Akintola Williams lived a worthy life by all reckoning

    He was neither born great nor had greatness thrust in his lap on a golden platter. But one of the most accomplished, illustrious, productive and fulfilled lives in Nigeria over the last century, Chief Akintola Williams, was born into a reasonably comfortable upper-middle-class family. His grandfather, Z .A. Williams, was a merchant prince from Abeokuta while his father, Thomas Ekundayo Williams, worked briefly in the colonial civil service, after which he trained in England as a lawyer and set up a legal practice in Lagos. Yet, this background was not in itself responsible for the success that Nigeria’s first chartered accountant and one of the enduring and consistent iconic doyens of the profession made of his life. Rather, he attained greatness largely by his unstinting focus, industry, discipline, fortitude and unwavering sense of purpose.

    Chief Akintola Williams’ longevity spanning 9th August, 1919 when he was born and 11th September, 2023 when he transited to eternal life at the age of 104, was remarkable for any age. Although he was a man of many parts who impacted other spheres of society, his inimitable legacy rests principally on his enviable status and stature as Nigeria’s and Africa’s preeminent chartered accountant. When we consider the heights he attained in his beloved profession and his enviable and indelible contributions to its evolution in Nigeria and Africa, it is no exaggeration to say of Chief Akintola Williams that ‘Accountancy was his life.”

    After his primary school education at Olowogbowo Methodist Primary School, at Apongbon on Lagos Island in the 1930s, he attended the CMS Grammar School in Lagos for his secondary education. Thereafter, he obtained a diploma in commerce from the Yaba Higher College on a UAC scholarship, indicating an early scholastic streak. Akintola Williams graduated from the University of London with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1946 after studying Banking and Finance, and was the first African to qualify as a chartered accountant in England in 1949. Williams was the first President of the Association of Accountants in Nigeria which was a forerunner to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), which he founded along with F.C.O Coker and served as its first President.

    After a brief stint in the Inland Revenue Department of the Civil Service as an assessment officer between 1950 and 1952, he founded Akintola Williams & Co in Lagos, the first indigenous chartered accounting firm in Africa. The firm took root, flourished and opened branches in other parts of Nigeria including Port Harcourt and Enugu before making its mark in Africa establishing branches in the Cameroons, Cote d’Ivoire, Swaziland, Ghana, Egypt and Kenya among others. Between April 1999 and May 2004, Akintola Williams & Co merged with two other accounting firms to become Akintola Williams Deloitte, known as Deloitte candidate Touché, which is the largest professional services firm in Nigeria with a staff of over 600. As a critical player in the economy, he was actively involved in the founding of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).

    Read Also: Tinubu, Akpabio, others mourn accounting guru Akintola Williams

    While studying in London, he was a founding member of the socio-cultural group, Egbe Omo Oduduwa, with Dr. Oni Akerele as President and Chief Obafemi Awolowo as Secretary. This did not, however, result in a foray into partisan politics as Akintola Williams’ considerable contributions to public service over the years were essentially non-partisan for the most part. He was, at various times, Chairman of the Federal Income Tax Appeal Commissioners (1958-1965), member of the Coker Commission of Inquiry into the Statutory Corporations of the former Western Region of Nigeria (1962), member of the Board of Trustees of the Commonwealth Foundation (1966-1975) and Chairman of the Public Service Review Panel to correct the anomalies in the Udoji Salary Review Commission (1975), among others.

    A lover of classical music, Akintola Williams was the founder and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON), and he played an active role in constructing a music centre and concert hall for the organization on Victoria Island, the popular MUSON Centre. He was the founder and a council member of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation as well as a president of the elite Metropolitan Club in Victoria Island, Lagos.

    In recognition of his exemplary life of service, he was honored with the award of Officer of the Federal Republic (OFR) by the Nigerian government in 1982. Earlier, in April 1977, he was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. On May 8, 2011, the Nigeria-British Association presented awards to Williams and a past President of Ghana, John Kufuor, for their contributions to democracy and development in Africa. It is instructive that throughout his long life, there was never a whiff of scandal around him either in his private conduct or his record of public service. His was an illustrious legacy of impeccable integrity. May his soul Rest In Peace.