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Tag: PBAT

  • Ex-Militants back Tompolo’s door-to-door campaign ahead of 2027

    Ex-Militants back Tompolo’s door-to-door campaign ahead of 2027

    Ex-militants from Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, and Ondo states have declared their support for the recently launched President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) Door-to-Door Campaign spearheaded by Chief Government Ekpemupolo, popularly known as Tompolo.

    The ex-militants, who pledged to campaign and vote in line with Tompolo’s directives, made the declaration in Benin City during the inauguration of the national executives of Phase 3 of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), led by General Godstime Ogidigba.

    They also vowed to continue supporting security agencies and Tantita Security Services Limited in maintaining peace across the Niger Delta region.

    Speaking at the event, General Ogidigba assured that Phase 3 members would contribute to sustaining Nigeria’s oil production and pledged to unite aggrieved members under the programme.

    He further commended the Administrator of the PAP, Dr. Dennis Otuaro, describing him as the best administrator to have led the scheme. According to him, Otuaro restored several benefits previously denied to ex-agitators since assuming office.

    He said, “As ex-agitators, our loyalty is to Government Ekpemupolo, popularly known as Tompolo, because what we are benefiting today is because of his steadfastness, persistence, and consistency. And I want to make it clear that we are joining Tompolo’s door-to-door campaign to make sure Tinubu returns to the Villa.

    Read Also: Kemepadei, Tompolo, PAP coordinator launch voter sensitisation, empowerment drive in Niger Delta

    “We are also poised to work with Tompolo’s Tantita Security outfit to protect our oil infrastructure from oil thieves. We will support Tompolo by reaching out to some of our brothers who are still interested in doing some scanty bunkering because most of the people bursting the pipeline here, and some people were not captured during the amnesty program.

    “I know many of them who surrender their arms and were not documented got angry and resort to bunkering because they see it as their national cake. Over time, I have been talking to them, and they said nothing is coming to them. Now that I am the National Chairman, it will be easy for me to tell them that a new dawn has come and our father Tompolo has changed things.

    “Since Tompolo’s Tantita took over, the production of oil has increased, and sometimes we beat OPEC quarter, but that does not mean we have a hundred percent security in the area of pipeline”.

    Other members of the Phase Three. Amnesty national executives are Gen. Godwin Governor, Gen.Akpos Jericho, Gen Oyin Bolowei, Gen. Eniyekenimi, Gen Francis Akpohoro, Gen. Don Oney, Gen. Biboye Wilberforce, and Gen. Jokpa Emovon.

  • PBAT, hunger and the fierce urgency of now (2)

    PBAT, hunger and the fierce urgency of now (2)

    The radical political economist, Professor Claude Ake, wryly noted in his classic, ‘The Political Economy of Africa’ that “It is true that man cannot live on bread alone. But it is a more fundamental truth that man cannot live without bread”. Although Ake was taking a subtle dig at the Lord Jesus Christ’s contention that man needs spiritual nourishing as much as material sustenance, the truth is that implicit in Christ’s cryptic assertion is the realization of the vitality of food to human existence. Such is the degree of hunger in the country today largely as a result of the soaring prices of food items beyond the rich of the vast majority of Nigerians that a special report in the Vanguard Newspaper yesterday that many families are being forced to resort to desperate, unhygienic and dangerous means of feeding themselves with negative consequences for their physical, psychological and mental well-being.

    The insufficiency and unaffordability of food can constitute a huge security risk in a fragile democracy like ours where elements of the opposition are all too eager to exploit all means to discredit not just the government in power for which they harbour visceral hatred but also delegitimize democracy and destabilize the polity. For instance, the Tinubu administration’s implacable adversaries attribute the unfortunate deaths as a result of stampedes for food palliatives in some parts of the country during the last festive period to the degree of poverty created by the government’s policies while others derisively refer to the queues in front of the President’s Bourdillon residence in Ikoyi, last December waiting to collect Christmas and end of year handouts as indicative of the negative implications of his policies.

    Yet, this had been the practice during festive periods since the inception of this dispensation in 1999 long before Tinubu became President. Indeed, I recall that in the 1970s in the GRA area of Ilorin along Police Road where the late Senator Olusola Saraki had his residence at the time, large crowds always gathered at his house both at festive and other periods to benefit from his generosity. I am sure that this practice has been replicated across the country over time and has as much to do with our cultural orientation as a people as with the unacceptable degree of material deprivation and inequality in our society.

    In the same vein, rushing for food or other items as well as our penchant for poor organization during social, political and other activities involving large gatherings of people has been well known and has routinely resulted in avoidable mishaps, sometimes tragic, long before now. Even then, the government in power particularly at the centre will sound like giving untenable excuses if it resorts to offering such explanations. Rather, it should utilize the immense powers of the state to mobilize the people to produce food in abundance and allow the interplay of the forces of demand and supply to substantially force down prices when there is a superfluity of food available. The truth of the matter is that given the munificence of fertile land and Favourable climate in large swathes of the country, there is no excuse for our inability to feed our population or the continued high level of food imports in Nigeria.

    True, the administration has made large allocations of funds available to the state governments in several tranches since the removal of the fuel subsidy. As at the first half of 2024, for instance, it was estimated that no less than N570 billion was released by the federal government to the 36 states to expand livelihood support to their citizens in addition to the direct distribution of food items and cash disbursement to the vulnerable by the central government. While a few of the states have performed creditably in making food and other palliatives available to large numbers of their people, most of the sub-national units of government have been adjudged as being ineffective and making a negligible impact in this regard. In any case, the distribution of palliatives is too susceptible to corruption and diversion and can, even in the best of circumstances, reach only a limited number of people to be a sustainable policy is all too obvious now.

    There is thus no alternative to taking necessary measures by all levels of government but especially the sub-national units to dramatically ramp up food productivity to bring down food inflation considerably thereby mitigating current poverty levels. Here again, the Tinubu administration cannot be credibly accused of not making desirable and well-meaning efforts towards achieving this objective. For instance, during the week, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, disclosed that 255 tractors of the 2,000 to be supplied to the country have been delivered and the remaining are expected to arrive on schedule.

    Along with each of the 2000 tractors, he explained, 2000 harrows, ploughs, seeders, planters and boom sprayers will be supplied. Accompanying equipment included in this procurement are 1,200 trailers, 9000 sets of spare parts and 10 combined harvesters of 330 horsepower. According to Senator Abubakar Kyari, “These are huge combined harvesters that will be able to do about one and a half hectares per hour. So, if you just imagine, in one hour you’ll be able to do nothing less than 10 hectares. 10 hectares is like 13 football fields…We also have service vehicles, about 12 service vehicles that will come, it’s a mobile workshop with all the items that will be placed in all these areas that we’re going to have those tractors.”

    Again, the Agriculture Minister said work was in progress towards the recapitalization of the Bank of Agriculture (BoA), before the end of the first quarter of 2025 to enhance funding of smallholder farming activities. Noting that the recapitalization of the bank had been stalled for several years, Senator Kyari stressed that repositioning and strengthening the bank would ensure adequate funding of commercial agriculture to redress a situation whereby the highest commercial loan to the agricultural sector between 2014 and 2021 was N1.04 trillion, a meagre 5.15 per cent of overall commercial bank loans for the seven-year period. In the words of the Minister, “BoA has branches in all the 109 senatorial districts and can reach out easily to those farmers. Smallholder farmers lack capital. We are reorganizing BoA to support what the government is doing in the sense of public financing in the budget and what have you.”

    In a similar vein, the sum of N132 billion was provided in the 2025 budget to support farmers through the National Agricultural Development Fund (NADF) being set up to address identified impediments to the effectiveness and productivity of the agriculture sector. The Fund would be channelled to achieve improved seedlings through targeted interventions as well as provide grants and subsidies to promote mechanized agriculture, storage facilities and advanced agricultural facilities.

    Read Also: FG, states, LGAs share N1.424trn in January 2025

    No less significant is the report by the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, that the Federal Government has approved a N30 billion grant to 30 public universities of agriculture to commence mechanized farming. Stressing that agriculture is a key sector that must be integrated into academic and research frameworks by these institutions to address rising food insecurity, create jobs and stimulate the economy, Dr. Alausa said each university would receive a take-off grant of N1 billion. This is indeed a radical initiative that will set the pace for the mobilization of the country’s underutilized intellectual resources to achieve set developmental objectives in diverse sectors. For instance, the expertise in the universities of agriculture can be tapped to promote mechanized agriculture and the much needed storage facilities to address the menace of pervasive food spoilage.

    Despite the destructive flooding in some states and continued insecurity that affected agricultural harvest in 2024, experts report a continued impressive level of food production in the country hampered, however, by logistics difficulties in transporting food produce from farms to markets across the country. In a statement during the week, the Nigerian-born founder of the Canadian Black Farmers’ Association, Tosin Ajayi, cited the excessive exportation of food as one reason for the food shortage in the country.

    He said that the high demand for Nigeria’s staple food items by the country’s citizens in the diaspora has led to a substantial amount of food produced in the country being exported. The problem with agriculture in Nigeria is thus not insufficient productivity but sustainable preservation and local retention of most of the food produced for domestic consumption.

    The government should certainly consider Mr Ajayi’s advice on the need to obtain accurate data on the volume and types of foods exported from Nigeria with a view to putting in place measures to control food exports. But then, the impressive policies and structures being put in place by the administration will not automatically translate into improved agricultural productivity without diligent and meticulous implementation as well as the effective mobilization and organization of critical stakeholders, particularly farmers to be active participants in the process. This much is a lesson to be learnt from public policy in the agricultural sector by successive administrations since independence.

    Contrary to the oft-repeated view that agriculture was neglected by government in Nigeria with the discovery of petroleum, considerable resources continued to be channelled into agriculture by various governments with only marginal results and the country remaining as food-dependent as ever. In a review of agricultural policy in Nigeria prior to the adoption of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in the mid-1980s, Abdul Raufu Mustapha, asserts that “the problem of Nigerian agricultural investment from the 1970s was both relative neglect and wasteful expenditure”.

    Mustapha notes that “There was the ‘mass exhortation’ programme, Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), which expended much money and effort in getting ill-prepared university undergraduates to go to the rural areas to ‘teach’ the peasant farmers how to farm. Secondly, there was direct government involvement in production through programmes like the National Accelerated Food Production Programme, the National Livestock Production Company and the National Grains Production Company. Thirdly, massive irrigation schemes were constructed under the River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAs). Fourthly, World Bank-sponsored Integrated Rural Development Projects (IRDPs) were initiated in many parts of the country. Finally, there was the encouragement of large-scale capitalist farming through the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund…”.

    Under the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, for instance, humongous funds were pumped into the Anchor Borrowers Programme to boost local rice production and achieve self-sufficiency in the product. It remains unclear if there was any correlation between what was achieved in this regard and the amount of resources channelled into the scheme. The Tinubu administration would do well to study why previous efforts at positively transforming the agricultural sector in Nigeria failed so as to avoid past errors this time around.  Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s advice in August 1980 on the urgent imperative of organizing Nigerian farmers into modern Cooperatives must be taken seriously and pursued by the current administrations at the federal and state levels as a necessary condition for enhanced agricultural productivity and self-reliance.

    If we are to lift the farmers from the prevailing morass of social degradation and economic miseries in order to make them maximally productive, Awolowo argued, “Firstly, the State Governments should take immediate steps to mobilize and organize our farmers into Cooperative Societies throughout the country. A Cooperative Unit of between 100 and 200 practicing farmers, all depending on the type of crops to be cultivated, could be the optimum. In this regard, it must be borne in mind that the individual farmer, except a rich landowner, is not a viable proposition”. He advised that the cooperating farmers be provided with areas of farmland adequate for their aims and objectives as well as massive financial and technical assistance with the proviso that cooperating farmers must “register their organizations as limited liability companies under the Cooperative Law of the state. “

  • Crippled insecurity:  Kudos to PBAT

    Crippled insecurity:  Kudos to PBAT

    • By Oluwole Ogundele

    Happy new year to all Nigerians at home and abroad.

    I had a dream that this country would be much better in 2025 and beyond, through the lens of great commitment and truth. I detest flattery in all its ramifications. Excessive praising of the political leadership class is an act of spiritual deficiency or spirit-lessness of monumental dimensions. Only little minds celebrate evil or bad leaders just because of their ugly stomach or unfettered materialism.

    It is time for the opposition group members to learn to separate politics from governance in order to engender peace and progress on a sustainable scale. That is what the ordinary people want, regardless of their ethnic and/or religious affiliations. Opposition political culture must be rooted in constructive/sophisticated criticism instead of myopia and unbridled self-interest.

    Given the above explanation, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu deserves commendation, with a special emphasis on the issue of insecurity that defined and ruled the immediate past administration. It is on record, that the immediate past government was characterised by all kinds of crimes particularly banditry and kidnapping for ransom. Indeed, foreign and local criminals laid siege to Nigeria, as if the society was rudderless. During this pre-Tinubu period, the country reached unprecedented levels of insecurity.  The rhetorical champion of Africa was in a coma. Many innocent lives were wasted. Not every Nigerian has a memory like a sieve. The difference is clear! This is with reference to the all-important issue of insecurity. Security is the foundation for economic growth and development both at the sub-national and national levels.

    Read Also: No disagreement with Govs over local government administration — Tinubu

    Bandits among other evil men now know more than hitherto, that the fear of President Tinubu is the beginning of sanity and by extension, wisdom. No more defecation in the public space. The remaining deadly criminals and their collaborators must change or perish! PBAT is now in charge, given the huge power conferred on him by Providence.

    However, the liberation struggle has to go on unabated until the country becomes very liveable for all. The state governors should not go to sleep or be telling stories. They are the chief security officers of their constituents (states). Security is their most paramount assignment.  Any governor who thinks that security is in the domain of nauseating rhetoric should resign. Enough is enough!

    If I were President Bola Tinubu, I would consider any governor with rampant cases of banditry and kidnapping in his state, to be a saboteur. I would see such a governor as an enemy of Nigerians. Each governor gets a heavy allocation monthly from the federal government. The people need to focus more than before on their state governors. Traditional rulers are the best social surveyors of their communities. State governors must encourage them to play some critical roles in security management. These local leaders know the criminals and new strangers within their territories.  This underscores the centrality of community policing to peace and progress in Nigeria.

    Governors, using available structures should be able to fish out a few community leaders colluding with criminals. All culprits must be severely dealt with, within the confines of the law. Sentiments must not be given a space to stand. Outsiders cannot enter a community to do evil, without the knowledge of some locals.  Nobody should frustrate the efforts of the federal government as it tries to crush insecurity across the land.

    Agricultural productions will certainly begin to go up in the face of relative peace and stability. More and more people who had fled their farms would return. Many Nigerians are ready to work and reduce material poverty to the barest minimum, when our roads, villages and farms are no longer under the control of insurgents, kidnappers and armed robbers from within and without Nigeria. Our immigration policy must be revisited. Many criminals are entering Nigeria through the numerous porous borders.

    The recent deaths arising from stampedes across the country were a testament to the current unprecedented, multi-dimensional poverty. This arises from many years of cumulative governmental failure. Therefore, it is dangerous to begin to analyse the situation within the framework of reductionism. Poor crowd management was just a peripheral factor. 

    Again, many Nigerian technocrats particularly in economics continue to flamboyantly bamboozle us with statistics that our economy is growing.  This thesis is meaningless to an average Nigerian citizen whose income diminishes daily as a result of hyper-inflation. The Nigerian economy actually grows when the incomes of workers can take them home.  That is, a scenario that enables house wives to go to the market, and return home without becoming rigorous mathematicians-calculating and re-calculating. I often pity our women in this connection.

    PBAT needs more rigorous policy evaluation and re-evaluation, in order to liberate Nigerians from the bondage of poverty and hopelessness. There is need for more efforts in the sphere of non-kinetic methodology. Sustainable peace may remain a wild goose chase, in the face of monumental poverty.

    I humbly submit here, that there should be no more taxes to bear by the already highly impoverished Nigerian masses. They must be allowed to breathe. No doubt, the government needs a great deal of money to function optimally. But there are people-friendly options. Block most of the economic leakages such as illegal oil bunkering and other corrupt practices of many of the political class members. Government policies (no matter how aesthetically appealing), are not cast in iron. Nothing is fixed once and for all especially in a democracy. In this regard, openness and of course, humility are of the essence. Effective communication with the led also occupies a central position in the scheme of things. It is one critical element of robust democracy.

    Cost of governance has to be drastically reduced. The political class members take a disproportionately/godlessly large chunk of the national wealth while the led are desperately hungry. This is one of the reasons why peace and progress continue to elude Nigeria, despite its huge natural and cultural resources. The Nigerian citizens want to see a financially disciplined leadership with a great deal of human compassion and empathy.

    Nobody is excited about the stolen monies claimed to have been retrieved by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Where did all the ones retrieved earlier go to?  There is no transparency! No probity! Consequently, there is a trust deficit. It seems to me, that demons are let loose upon the Nigerian space. Nigerians need to know how their commonwealth is being managed by the leaders.  Shockingly, big thieves are hardly punished. Our system only jails or kills those who steal goats and fowls in the neighbourhood. This is an illogical approach to societal development in all its ramifications. What a country!

    We cannot continue to do things the same way and expect different results.  Dear President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Nigerian masses are looking up to you for salvation. Kindly kill (or at least tame) corruption-Nigeria’s number one enemy of peace and progress. Give some knock-out punches to terrorists, kidnappers and their collaborators, so that Nigeria can become liveable again.

    •Prof Ogundele is of Dept. of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan.

  • PBAT, governance and the poverty question

    PBAT, governance and the poverty question

    When the group of eminent Nigerian statesmen and leaders known as ‘The Patriots’ visited President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the Aso Rock Villa in Abuja recently, the Chief Emeka Anyaoku-led association urged the President to pursue as a matter of urgency the drawing up of a new constitution for the country predicated on a fundamental restructuring of the polity. In response, the President did not disagree with his August visitors but said the immediate priority of his administration was to see through its far-reaching economic reforms to elevate the country to a new pedestal of productivity and prosperity.

    Speaking this week as the Chairman at the launch of a new biography of renowned academic, diplomat, and administrator, Professor Jide Osuntokun, Chief Anyaoku, a former General Secretary of the Commonwealth, reiterated the view that the extant 1999 Constitution is at the root of Nigeria’s protracted multidimensional crises. Unless there was a fundamental change from the constitution and a return to the regional constitution of the first republic, which he considered more in tune with federal practice and the country’s complex cultural realities, Chief Anyaoku was of the view that not even angels presiding over Nigeria would succeed in extricating her from the current existential predicament.

    Of course, this point of view ignores the fact that the much romanticized 1963 Constitution could not prevent the massive corruption, political intolerance, rabid ethnicity, divisive regionalism, blatant election rigging, and brazen disregard for democratic norms that resulted not just in the collapse of the first republic in January 1966 but ultimately led the country down the slope of destructive civil war between 1967 and 1970.

    The ills we complain about in Nigeria today under the current Constitution were thus already prevalent in the first republic even if they have naturally expanded in scope and intensity in post-first republic Nigeria including this dispensation since 1999. It would thus appear that the more fundamental challenge we confront is that of a perverse and dysfunctional political culture which will sabotage and undermine any constitution no matter how elegantly and meticulously crafted. Just as the change from the parliamentary to the presidential constitution in 1979 did not eliminate the negative behavioral traits of political actors that continue to taint Nigeria’s politics and jeopardize her development, the adoption of a new constitution is no magic wand to usher in the Eldorado that idealists dream of.

    In any case, while it is easy to advocate the abrogation of the 1999 Constitution, there is no reasonable consensus on what type of legal framework and attendant political structure should replace it. That is partly why this column agrees with the Tinubu administration’s decision to prioritize its ongoing restructuring of the economy to create the material basis for a more stable and equitable political order rather than squander valuable time and resources on constitutional engineering adventurism with indeterminate and unpredictable outcomes.

    Central to the administration’s economic reform agenda are the twin policies of removal of fuel subsidy as well as the merger of hitherto existing parallel exchange rate markets, both of which had facilitated the criminal enrichment of a privileged few to the detriment of the public good. Unfortunately, these policies have occasioned existential hardships for millions of Nigerians arising largely from inflationary spirals affecting essential food items, essential drugs and healthcare as well as fuel, transportation, electricity and other costs among others.

    Read Also: Police reject N174m bribe from alleged notorious fraudster

    Writing on the current hardships attendant on these reforms, a popular media scholar and columnist recently quoted at length President Tinubu’s arguments in opposition to fuel subsidy removal in 2012 when he was the country’s foremost opposition leader. He averred that nothing had changed fundamentally to warrant the President now implementing the same policy on assuming the country’s apex leadership position. But the Nigeria of 12 years ago is not that of today. As of 2012, the country was earning far much more from oil revenues while also exporting amounts of crude oil far in excess of today’s crude oil productivity levels. Unfortunately, such revenue bounty was not leveraged on to make the country’s comatose refineries functional, rehabilitate and expand critical infrastructure, promote economic restructuring and diversification or enhance self-reliance in diverse sectors.

    During the campaigns for the 2023 presidential elections, there had been a consensus across partisan political lines that the fuel subsidy in particular must go. The presidential candidates of the major political parties all committed themselves to the removal of the subsidy. This decision was informed among others by the reality of substantial revenue shortfalls, soaring indebtedness, unsustainable debt-servicing to revenue ratios and dearth of funds for the provision of critical infrastructure without which there could be no meaningful economic recovery of future development.

    Many economic analysts contend that the administration’s courage in making hard policy choices that successive administrations had refrained from is already yielding positive dividends. These include the attraction of foreign investments worth over $30 billion in less than two years, near-tripling of the revenue earnings of the various tiers of government, achieving a favorable trade balance of N6.5 trillion in the second quarter of 2024, growing the country’s foreign reserves to over $40 billion, reducing debt-servicing to revenue ratio from over 90% to about 60%, doubling the minimum wage from N30,000 to between N70,000 and N85,000, increasing the nation’s daily crude production by one million barrels to 1.8 million barrels per day and the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) collecting total revenues of N5.97 trillion from January to November 12, 2024 surpassing its 2024 target of N5.07 trillion. All of these are indicative of an economy gradually emerging from distress with positive signs for the future despite current excruciating hardships.

    However, without losing focus of its long-term economic growth objectives, the PBAT administration must also treat as an emergency the high poverty levels that have become a threat to social harmony and national stability. It is obvious that the removal of fuel subsidy has negatively impacted more sectors than was envisaged by many before the implementation of the policy. One of the sectors most seriously affected with painful consequences for millions of Nigerians is agriculture. Prices of food staples such as yam, rice, maize, beans, eggs, poultry, fish, vegetables, pepper, tomatoes and groundnut oil among others have soared beyond reach.

    While experts predict bountiful harvest in the near future given current policy initiatives, it is believed that more concerted efforts can be taken to crash food prices in the short term. The food crisis can be utilized as an opportunity to mobilize and organize idle youths back to the land across the country to engage in massive food production. A few months ago, the Southwest Governors Forum announced with fanfare that states in the region would work in concert to boost agricultural productivity and food availability. Unfortunately, not much more has been heard of this effort despite the abundant fertile land available for farming that was the mainstay of the region’s economy in the first republic.

    Incidentally, the First Lady, Senator (Mrs) Oluremi Tinubu is showing an example for others to follow through various programmes of her Renewed Hope Initiative to promote and support farming among women and youths. Again, the impact of the waiving of duties on the importation of some essential food items is yet to be felt and the appropriate authorities must investigate why this is so with a view to expediting action on achieving concrete results in this area. Urgently boosting agricultural productivity and food availability to drastically bring down prices both through local farming and imports is key to decisively tackling the larger challenge of poverty.Considerably reduced food prices which more people can buy will minimize the need to resort to palliatives distribution which with few exceptions reach only a negligible number of people.

    Again, given the demonstrated impact of fuel prices across the economy, the NNPCL cannot continue to offer excuses on why domestic refineries under its control remain dormant while the Dangote Refinery, on which so much hope was invested, is having minimal impact on fuel prices despite coming on stream. It is critical to find out why the initiative of paying for crude supply in Naira and the stoppage of all importation of refined petroleum as announced by the NNPCL is not being felt both in terms of fuel prices and pressure on the exchange rate. Perhaps the NNPCL and the petroleum industry as a whole is in need of the kind of forensic auditing carried out at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), an exercise that has eliminated opacity, enhanced transparency and minimized opportunities for corrupt enrichment at the apex bank.

    When talking about poverty alleviation and the hardships in the country, the focus tends to be mostly on the federal government and the President in particular. While accruals to the states from the Federation Account have more than doubled since the removal of fuel subsidy, most of the sub-national units of government are not making the desired impact in terms of meaningfully alleviating the poverty of their people. True, some have argued that the rate of inflation and devaluation of the Naira have eroded much of the value of the Naira revenues to the states. Yet, the National Economic Council (NEC) which is a critical economic policy making body to which all governors belong can do much more in terms of peer review of the governors and ensuring improved service delivery to their people in consonance with the quantum of revenue available to them.

    Despite the empowerment of states to generate and distribute electricity within their domains for instance, why are efforts not being exerted in this direction by more states apart from Lagos given the key role of electricity supply in mitigating poverty levels? One of the positive developments under the PBAT administration is the resurgence of a body like the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) under the leadership of Mr Tunji Bello to curb price fixing, price gouging and practices injurious to fair competition. The unethical antics of unscrupulous middlemen also contribute to the unrealistically high prices of many commodities.

  • PBAT and economic crisis as opportunity (2)

    PBAT and economic crisis as opportunity (2)

    Citing the historian, Arnold Toynbee, in the first part of this piece, we contended that crises can be utilized as an opportunity to respond to a challenge that can help propel a human community further along the path of progress and development. In this regard, for instance, colonialism in Africa was a challenge of oppression and exploitation that elicited a response in nationalist struggles that resulted in the liberation of former colonized and dehumanized territories. Again, the unjust annulment by the military of the June 12, 1993, presidential election in Nigeria won by the late Chief MKO Abiola was a challenge that engendered the response of resistance by elements of civil society to continued military

    Last week, the President demonstrated his sensitivity to the deleterious existential conditions in which the vast majority of Nigerians live since the removal of the fuel subsidy and parallel exchange rate mergers, when he personally attended the National Council of States (NCS) meeting as a special guest and mobilized all governors to collaborate with the federal government in a joint effort to tackle the current food crisis in the country.

    The choice that stares the nation squarely in the face is either to complain and lament ceaselessly about the current astronomical cost of staple food items in the country such as garri, yams, rice, beans, beef, poultry, eggs, vegetables, tomatoes, pepper, etc or take urgent steps to begin to tap the abandoned potentials of our agricultural sector to produce abundant food to feed ourselves and also serve as a basis for agro-allied industrialization. Of course, it is the leaders who can take the initiative to achieve this objective as the President and many governors are already doing. However, it will require more than mere resolutions or good intentions to achieve a revolution in agricultural productivity in Nigeria.

    Rather, those in the position to do so must have well-conceptualized and efficiently implemented policies to actualize this objective. The federal government has made humongous amounts available to state governments to procure grains and make other palliatives available to cushion the severe hunger in the land. However, the efficiency, transparency and sense of urgency, and mission with which governors have utilized these resources to attain the desired ends differ with huge variations from state to state.

    The widespread perception is that a substantial chunk of these palliative funds in many states end up being misappropriated by unscrupulous officials and that when foodstuffs are made available to members of the public at all, they are channeled to political partisans or those with connections to high state officials. Government policy at all levels must most certainly begin to move from the provision of palliatives to substantially boosting domestic food productivity to bring down food prices.

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    It is important at this point for the National Council on Agriculture comprising the Minister and Minister of State of Agriculture, State Commissioners of agriculture, national and state parastatals as well as other stakeholders in the agriculture value chain sectors to hold an emergency meeting to chart an urgent path to agricultural self-sufficiency in the country. This will necessarily entail decisively addressing the security challenges that have kept large numbers of farmers away from their farms in substantial agricultural swathes of the country. If the complications arising from the ongoing exceedingly slow effort to actualize state police will prove too complex to address in the short run, the PBAT administration should fast-track its plan enunciated during the campaigns to establish well-armed and equipped forest rangers to safeguard our vast forests and expansive farmlands.

    One paradox of the food availability crisis in Nigeria is that, despite the fragile security situation, substantial amounts of food produced on farms in parts of the country get spoilt due to difficulties in transporting them to urban markets. This is not a new problem. Decades ago, in one of his publications, Chief Obafemi Awolowo noted that “enormous waste and artificial scarcity of food products occur, from time to time, simply because we have no modern storage, processing, transport, and marketing facilities to deal with them in and out of season. This ill must be corrected”. It is inexcusable that this scenario still obtains over six decades after independence. Our state governments, particularly those that are potentially viable but dormant agricultural zones, should prioritize rural-urban roads, rural water and electrification, and rural as well as urban agricultural storage facilities over urban flyovers and other essentially vanity projects.

    However, allocating humongous amounts to agricultural revitalization cannot achieve the desired objectives if the sector remains largely unorganized and pre-modern for the highest number of our farmers. Here again, Awolowo, whose administration in the Western Region in the first republic ran a vibrant and prosperous agricultural sector has wise words of admonition which are still relevant to our situation today. According to him, “The state governments should take immediate steps to mobilize and organize our farmers into Cooperative Societies throughout the country. A Cooperative Unit of between 100 and 200 practicing farmers, depending on the type of crops to be cultivated, should be the optimum. In this regard, it must be constantly borne in mind that the individual farmer, except a rich landowner, is not a viable proposition. Secondly, each state government should provide the cooperating farmers with areas of farmland that are adequate for the fulfillment of their aims and objects. Thirdly, revenue should be allocated to the states in such a manner as to enable each of them to give massive financial and technical assistance to cooperating farmers who must, of course, register their organizations as limited liability corporations under the Cooperative Law of the state”.

    If we utilize the present food crisis as an opportunity to respond to the challenge of hunger and achieve not only food availability and affordability, we can also emerge as a major food exporter thus earning external revenue and reducing pressure on our national currency. Apart from the agricultural sector, President Tinubu’s recent Executive Order suspending import duties and Value-Added Tax on crucial medical imports has also been praised by stakeholders in the sector as being capable of helping to boost local production of drugs and other healthcare products thus bringing down current high medical costs. This is clearly another example of turning a crisis into an opportunity to respond appropriately to a challenge and recording progress in a sector critical to the general well-being of the citizenry.

    In a report on Thursday, this newspaper’s Associate Editor, Adekunle Yusuf, quoted the Director-General of the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA), Mr. Adewale-Smatt Ayorinde as commending the initiative of introducing zero tariffs, excise duties, and VAT on specific pharmaceutical raw materials and specialized machinery”. According to the NECA DG, “This sector can now breathe…The Executive Order comes at a time when local pharmaceutical companies are grappling with an acute shortage of productive raw materials, high production costs, and low output due to the high cost of importing productive machinery and other input materials”.

    Still on the issue of economic crisis as challenge, response, and opportunity for progress, the Director-General of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Mr Segun Ajayi-Kadir, was quoted by a national newspaper on Monday as stating that the recent exit of some multinational companies from Nigeria offers a golden opportunity for homegrown manufacturers to thrive in the country with proper government empowerment.

    According to the report in the Vanguard, “Ajayi-Kadir noted in a media chat that the apparent setbacks suffered due to the exit of the multinationals could be turned into an opportunity by placing the spotlight on homegrown manufacturers by the government empowering the domestic manufacturing sector. He stated: “I think there is a strong lesson to be learned here. The big ones leaving are the multinationals, which should send a clear signal to the government. We need to be strategic in what we promote. He is unlikely to go anywhere if you have a challenged local manufacturer. That is why we say foreign direct investment is excellent but it should come secondary to empowering the local investor, the existing manufacturers, because that is what is enduring”.

    Over three decades ago, as one of the guest speakers at the First Obafemi Awolowo Foundation Dialogue, the renowned economist, the late Professor Pius Okigbo, citing the experience of Biafra during the civil war, stressed the capacity of crisis to create the requisite opportunity for Nigeria to achieve the technological breakthrough imperative for national economic transformation and development.

    In his words on that occasion, “Why do I seem so confident that Nigeria is capable of producing the technological change required to propel the country into the next century? I am heartened by the fact that it has been done before. The Nigerian civil war proved beyond doubt that with determination and a conducive environment, the Nigerian can be induced to recreate a technological civilization. The “Biafran” scientific community was able to develop entirely out of pure local materials, weaponry that included anti-aircraft rockets, mortar bombs, land mines, tanks and armoured troop carriers, food substitutes involving the use of hitherto unused plants and crops”.

    Continuing, Professor Okigbo said that Biafran scientists “succeeded in building out of entirely locally fabricated materials a giant petroleum refining facility and thereby made the technology so diffuse and more universally understood and applied than anywhere else in the world. They installed an air traffic control on wheels for use in an airport utilized only in the hours of darkness. Yet, save the airport of Johannesburg, that airport was able to handle more flights in those few dark hours per night than any other airport in Africa operating twenty-four hours of the day. These are solid technological achievements started and learned in less than three years of wartime…The conclusion is inescapable that for our innovative genius to flourish, it is, perhaps, necessary to recreate a synthetic crisis or emergency atmosphere”.

    Due to no fault of its own but largely to inherited challenges, Nigeria confronts today, under the PBAT administration, a situation that is the economic equivalent of warfare. That crisis can propel us to rise to the occasion and break the chain, particularly of technological dependency but, among other imperative factors, the Tinubu administration must create the requisite conditions for the scientific, intellectual, and technological communities to be appropriately remunerated, motivated and respected to lead the charge.

  • PBAT and Nigeria’s solar energy aspirations

    PBAT and Nigeria’s solar energy aspirations

    • By Jasper Itodo

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at a recent event, made an announcement. He said his administration will make Nigeria the solar panel and EV Battery Manufacturing hub of Africa. Since then, he has taken a huge leap forward to actualise the dream. Jupiter Project has announced that it is fully committing its resources and creating the infrastructure to support the president’s goal for Nigeria.

    President Tinubu, who in May said he envisioned Nigeria as the future hub of solar panels in Africa, noted: “There are other aspects of lithium that you are exploring in the country, especially in battery production. Nigeria is a huge market for solar panels. Africa is a major consumer of solar technologies. I do not see why these panels and batteries cannot be produced here.

     “The labour is cheaper. Our youths are vibrant and skilled. Our people are brilliant and adapt to new technology. The economy is increasingly more vibrant, and Nigeria is dependable. We have the consumption capacity and a surplus of steady-handed citizens with gifted minds and an innate drive to work and produce.

    ”You must not leave the community in ruins as you explore for our high-grade minerals. You must be concerned with cooperation and always care for the community.

     “We are caring partners. We want your investments to succeed so that you can expand further. Whenever you call on us, we will help you. You can, in mutually-beneficial collaboration with us, dominate the solar panel market as part of a revolution in Africa and the West African sub-region.

    ”You can always promote the interest of China and Nigeria as the best place in Africa to do business. We are preparing to produce in this country the solar technologies that the entire continent will use.

     “It is part of our campaign that Nigeria is open for business. We congratulate your courage in believing in us and the inauguration of the new factory.

    Read Also: PBAT and economic crisis as opportunity (1)

     “I can assure you that we will continue to give you the necessary support and encouragement. This is an opportunity for you to help tell the rest of the investment world that Nigeria is solid and open for business.”

    At another forum in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tinubu said: “Here, you must encourage investment, and equally consider: how would this investment affect us? Yes, we have the market and sufficient housing that you can electrify with solar panels. There is iron ore; there is investment there, too. Risk management is very key for Africa. The opportunities must be translated soonest. We are moving forward with urgency, and we will maximize the value given in return for those.”

    At the centre of Nigeria’s mining awakening, lies the Jupiter Project, Nigeria’s first Tier 1 mining spanning 462 square kilometres of lithium-rich terrain. With a projected investment of $2.5 billion, this project is expected to create additional 100,000 employment opportunities.

    The size of the project will elevate the global position of Nigeria as lithium is increasingly powering the world. Importantly, the Jupiter Project is also creating sustained local improvement in the quality of life in host communities, by already providing enhancements, including potable water, electrification, schools, and education scholarships.

    Basin Mining Ltd and Range Mining Ltd, joint developers of the Jupiter Lithium Project, have formalised an agreement with the Kaduna State Government to develop Nigeria’s largest Lithium and Critical Minerals. Mining approval has been granted to Jupiter Lithium Project in Kaduna State, by Nigeria’s Minister for Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, marking Nigeria’s first Tier One lithium and critical minerals mining operation.

    Read Also; ‘Solar energy manufacturers can provide adequate power’

    This approval represents a transformative leap for Nigeria, according to Ambassador Hassan Tukur of Range Mining, highlighting the government’s commitment to strategic investments in sustainable resource development. Range Mining’s lithium operations will boost local employment, enhance technological skills, and promote community engagement, aligning with President Tinubu’s goals in solar energy and electric vehicles.

    The Jupiter Lithium Project, located near Kafanchan in Kaduna State, spans over 400 square kilometres and adheres to global standards for sustainable mining practices. Supported by an agreement with the Kaduna State Government, this project promises substantial economic growth and development for the region and this key development grants four Mining Licenses (MLs) to Range Mining, establishing the foundation for Nigeria’s premier Tier One lithium and critical minerals mining enterprise.

    Managing Director of Kaduna Mining Development Company Ltd, Mohammed Nura Sanu Usaini echoed the importance of local empowerment and environmental sustainability, stressing that the target is to produce an electric vehicle in Nigeria.

    It’s a very important and significant project which, of course, conforms to the goals of the administration of the governor of Kaduna State, Senator Uba Sani, he stated.

    The approval of these mining licenses and plans for new concentrator plants highlight Nigeria’s appeal as a destination for global mining investments. This development strengthens Nigeria’s industrial capabilities and also enhances its reputation as a hub for international mining ventures.

    Stephen Davis, director of Range’s parent company, Jupiter Lithium Ltd, said the concentrator plants to be built by Range on the mine site will generate additional employment opportunities for locals to be trained in new and modern mining technologies during the construction and operations of the plants and his company looks forward to further engagement with the local communities achieving this outcome.

    Range’s operations manager, Lekan Olaniyan, said the decision to build the concentrator plants on the mine site will have significant benefits in relation to safety and the environment by substantially reducing the quantity of material that is transported away from the mine site.

    Olaniyan added that this initiative has two substantial benefits for safety and environmental outcomes where nearly 85% of the mined material can remain on site after it passes through the Concentrator Process Plant and can be reused in the environmental rehabilitation after mining.

    This onsite operation drastically reduces the number of trucks on the roads which will significantly reduce dust, noise and safety hazards as well as prevent damage to the public roads from excessive heavy trucks.

    Recent concerns have emerged over Lithium Concentrator plants in Nasarawa and Kaduna which are not associated with licensed mining operations. Issues regarding the sourcing practices of these plants, including potential links to illegal mining, have sparked calls for greater transparency and protection for legitimate operations in Nigeria’s mining sector. The ethical implications of sourcing materials from operations that may not adhere to legal and environmental standards are under scrutiny.

    With Nigeria’s first Tier One lithium mining operation, Ambassador Dr Tukur said “the Jupiter Project is a transformative impact on the local economy, setting a precedent for sustainable resource management and inclusive growth in the region.”

    •Itodo is a media personality and sent this piece from Abuja.

  • Attacks on PBAT’s northern appointees

    Attacks on PBAT’s northern appointees

    SIR: Today, we are witnessing incessant attacks and smear campaign against political office holders of northern extraction serving under the Tinubu administration by some busybodies and enemies of the North and Nigeria as a whole.

    The ongoing campaign of calumny against our leaders is unwarranted, malicious, insidious and baseless, and therefore has to be stopped. Insults and character assassination have no place in the cultured north.

    The recent uncharitable deployment of insulting words against respectable northern leaders by the former national vice chairman, Northwest of APC, Salihu Lukman, is utterly disgusting. What he said against the National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu is a blatant lie. Honest and sincere Nigerians know who Nuhu Ribadu is, his character, antecedents and his current performance as a National Security Adviser.

    So, also, our formidable vice president, Kashim Shettima and all our ministers and aides serving this government.

    We expect people like Salihu Lukman would study the scorecards of those people before launching his unprovoked assault.

     There is a difference between being a regional champion and being a mischief maker. The latter is trying unsuccessfully to create disharmony between the president and the vice president. When this tactic didn’t work, they came up with another narrative -northern marginalization. Now they have started raining abuses on their fellow northerners serving the government. They even claim that the North is being short-changed under this government.

    The same President   Bola Ahmed Tinubu that has  given the north the critical portfolios of education, defence, agriculture, health, police affairs, in addition to key offices such as  Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), the National Security Adviser, NSA among others?

    Look at the number of gigantic infrastructural projects the Tinubu administration is executing across the north. These range from roads, housing, schools, agriculture, etc. These are apart from nationwide projects which every Nigerian is entitled to benefit.

    It is interesting that now it is not the easterners playing marginalizing card but the north that just relinquished power one year ago. Little wonder our brothers from the South label us as people with born-to-rule mentality.

    It is high time the political manipulators understand that their old fashioned divisive politics is no longer effective in extracting personal favour. The common man now is conscious and cannot be bamboozled by politics of parochialism. Northern political elites know their game of deception is over because they had all the opportunity in the world, yet they didn’t use it. They enriched themselves and their families, sent their children abroad for education, and left behind the children of the poor without even food.

    • Comrade Bishir Dauda Sabuwar, Unguwa Katsina.
  • PBAT: 365 days after

    PBAT: 365 days after

    The knives, as one might expect at a time like this, are out! It is less than 24 hours to the Bola Ahmed Tinubu first anniversary in office. Clearly, if Nigerians understood the depth of the rot that the administration inherited and so were initially prepared to give the administration the benefit of the doubt in those early days, trust a good chunk of that number, increasingly unable to see the possibility of that tiny flicker of light on the horizon anytime soon, growing weary over time.

    Today, it seems the best time ever to remind Nigerians of how the journey began if only to appreciate the larger picture of the current happenings in what should be a productive mission to stimulate the discussion on where the country should be headed.

    It shouldn’t surprise that some self-appointed jurors have already gone out to pronounce what could only have been a jaundiced verdict. It seems a necessary rite of opposition by the same elements known to be resolute in their ill-will against the administration and by extension, the republic. After all, they have since sworn that it is either their way or hell’s highway!

    Imagine one particular individual – the acclaimed letter-writer whom I prefer to call headmaster – known to have openly called for civil disobedience as soon as it became clear that his preferred candidate had lost in the last presidential election, lately holding court to pronounce judgment on an administration that has had barely 12 months to do a job that he, had a whole of eight years to do but left mostly undone. He is not only pontificating but asking to be taken seriously!

    Hear him: “Our economy has consistently suffered from poor policies, lack of long-term sustainable policies, discontinuity, adhocry (sic) and corruption firmed on personal greed, avarice, incompetence, lack of knowledge and understanding and lack of patriotism.

    “For instance, the statement and proposed actions given 45 years ago to stop fuel scarcity are the same statement and action being touted today. I recall when I made the statement that the refineries will not work, the sycophants and spin doctors of this current administration went out to castigate me as not being a petroleum engineer and that I did not know what I was talking about.

    “They forgot that the attempt that was made in 2007 to partly privatise the refineries was made by me after a thorough study of the situation. But the decision was reversed by my successor and the 750 million dollars paid was refunded.”

    How about that, coming from Chief Olusegun Obasanjo!

    By the way, he forgot to say that he actually ruled for nearly 12 out of the 45 years; or that he could have, if he was so minded, taken those same measures he is accusing others of neglecting to do in his two terms of eight years! An administration that wasted taxpayers’ money to import gas turbines for electricity generation only to discover on arrival at the ports that the main bridges to the site could not carry the weight of his import! 

    Who will tell this individual that his beloved Nigeria is where it is because he, in particular, failed to do what is right by her!

    That is not what this piece is all about!

    Today, it is about charting the path forward. Yes, the past 12 months under President Tinubu, have been terrific, breath-taking. The president has taken some tough measures – measures that those before him knew were right but which they could not do because their nerves, for whatever reasons, failed them. Never mind that those previous administrations understood them to be albatrosses that they were but did nothing about them.

    I refer here to monstrous regime of fuel subsidy which takes from the poor to subsidise the rich – an unquestionably regressive system that sucks out nearly N3 trillion in a year to shadowy elements, and the multiple exchange regime which fostered the culture of wealth without work while actively encouraging corruption and crony-capitalism!

    But then, like everything Nigeria, those bold measures which even the worst critics of the Tinubu administration have long admitted was necessary, have, suddenly, like the headmaster’s cane become the scourge to whip the administration. As they say – all is fair in war…

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    Without question, the measures taken by the Tinubu administration have engendered the spiralling inflation with food prices in particular hitting the roof tops. The food supply situation in particular, would seem a case of double jeopardy: the farmers claim they can’t undertake their business due to insecurity while the harvest can’t reach the market no thanks to the unbearable cost of transportation. The same with the naira: with the best of the efforts by the current government to tame the inflationary spiral, the national currency is still, at best unstable. No thanks to naira’s devaluation, everything from basic household items – whether imported or not – is badly hit.

    Now, the question is – has the administration done enough in the past year?

    Interesting, isn’t that everyone somehow believes that the government possess some kind of magic wand to decree hardship out of existence in one fell swoop. We are talking of problems that the Great Obasanjo himself has admitted has endured in 45 years!

    Most certainly, I will agree that there is a lot that the government can do – and if I may add, is doing – to make a difference. Surely, there are is a sense that the administration is steadily tackling the issue of insecurity more robustly. That obviously gives a lot of room for hope.

    I have much earlier on this page argued that the current understanding of food insecurity suffers a crisis of definition. Even with the current internal security challenges, we have not reached the point of crushing shortage of food that could be described as crisis. And there have not been widespread reports of crop failure to warrant any panic. Yes, the prices have gone up beyond the reach of the common folk. Like I said, this is because the costs of transporting them from the hinterland to the markets have gone astronomically high. The government, both states and federal, have to crack the conundrum of rural access roads. I understand that a lot is being done already. So we should see thing coming down soon.

    Let me close on the subject of the naira – our beloved currency. Surely, those looking up to Yemi Cardoso and company to work some magic on forex rates miss the point. The apex bank is merely the banker to the federal government. Its job is merely to process the bills of exchange; it has no power to mint the dollar or any other foreign currency for that matter. Yes, no one should lose sleep over the current forex rate; what should worry is whether the right things are being done to boost domestic production and exports while curbing our appetites for foreign goods.

    I believe that the administration is well on course to doing something big in these areas.

  • PBAT and political development in Nigeria

    PBAT and political development in Nigeria

    Being his first birthday after he was elected President of Nigeria at the 2023 presidential polls, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s 72nd year on this side of eternity last Friday, March 29, would most certainly have been celebrated with elaborate pomp and pageantry by his supporters and admirers. Yes, not a few of those who do not necessarily take a liking to him or his politics would equally but hypocritically have joined in the festivities with an eye to gaining some benefit sooner or later from the powerful office the Jagaban occupies.

    Such extravagant commemoration of a birthday that is not necessarily a landmark would have been prompted by the epochal obstacles and veritable mountains he has scaled at every critical phase of his still-evolving life trajectory. In particular, loud and lavish celebratory convivialities would have been prompted by the gargantuan scale of the ferocious and relentless opposition to his presidential aspiration by formidable forces both within and beyond his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the focused single-mindedness with which he met and trounced them all.

    But then, not only were the sounds of throbbing drums and triumphal, mellifluous music not to be heard, even media houses that made an annual kill from pages of celebratory adverts on the occasion had to painfully endure the equivalent of a Ramadan financial fast. In recognition of and identification with the excruciating pains being experienced by the vast majority of Nigerians as a result of his administration’s scorching but inevitable economic reforms, the President wanted all commemorative activities shelved and money that should have been expended on adverts diverted to provide succor for the poor and vulnerable.

    It is obviously this kind of uncanny ability to read the mood of the people and demonstrate empathy with them over the years that has given President Tinubu an edge over his often impotently feral political opponents and made him a formidable long-distance, marathon political athlete who today occupies the apex position of authority in Nigeria.

    In commemoration of the birthday of one of the most deft and dexterous political actors in the country over the last three and a half decades, this column today focuses on Tinubu’s no mean contribution to the political development of contemporary Nigeria. The concept of political development has elicited much debate and contestation among political science scholars. It is what the late Professor Billy Dudley would describe as an ‘essentially contested concept’. But there is a general consensus, I believe, that it refers to some sort of improvement or progress towards a desired goal or ideal of the appropriate political structure and organization of society.

    But what constitutes progress or improvement in the character of political institutions and values? As Professor Jean Blondel wonders, “The very idea of progress has come to be questioned in the process. Is humankind truly capable of progress on the political front or is there only cyclical change? Are we so diverse in our views that we shall never be able to work together towards a common idea of political progress?” These are no doubt intriguing questions but which we must leave to competent academic political scientists to continue to dilate on in learned journals.

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    Here our focus is on how President Tinubu has contributed in a concrete and indelible manner to the ongoing evolution of Nigeria in the direction of strengthening the institutions, values, and practice of liberal democracy and progressive ideology in contemporary Nigeria. When at a crucial phase in the gathering momentum towards the last APC presidential primaries and the intra-party opposition to his ambition was thickening, the President adumbrated his ’emilokan’ thesis in Abeokuta, he was subconsciously elaborating on his unequalled contribution to the strengthening of party politics and the deepening of federal practice in this political dispensation immediately before and after 1999. In the process, he built enduring friendships, forged strategic alliances, and accumulated invaluable political IOUs that played critical roles in his ultimate emergence as President of Nigeria.

    Let us take, for instance, the issue of a vibrant, vigorous and vibrant opposition without which liberal democracy is imperiled in any society. President Tinubu’s role in preserving and conserving an effective opposition that ultimately helped to thwart the bid by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to become a one-party-dominant behemoth at the steering wheel of governance in Nigeria for at least 60 unbroken years cannot be overstated.

    A critical date in this regard was the governorship election of April 19, 2003. It was an election in which the wily Ota General, who had cajoled and deceptively manipulated the chieftains of the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD) to win the majority of the votes in the South-West in the preceding week’s presidential elections, suddenly turned around to pull the rug from under the feet of the AD in the gubernatorial polls. Wielding the power of presidential incumbency, OBJ had commandeered a rampaging PDP to victory in the South-West in one of the worst electoral heists ever in the political history of Nigeria.

    As the results from the elections trickled in on the evening of the 20th April 2003, it was obvious that the PDP tornado had swept away the AD in five of the six states in the region- Ogun, Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun. Tinubu remained the only man standing as it was impossible for the PDP to dislodge the AD in Lagos despite its candidate, the late Funsho Williams’ relatively formidable structure in the state and OBJ’s deployment of troops to intimidate the electorate in the nation’s commercial nerve centre. Yours truly was in then governor Tinubu’s office at the Roundhouse in Alausa alongside some commissioners and other personal aides monitoring the results as they came in.

    The governor was devastated by the routing of his fellow AD governors in the other South-west states. PDP chieftains in Lagos openly boasted that he would have no choice but to defect to the ruling party as the sole governor of the AD. I had my doubts, I must confess, that Tinubu could resist for long the lure and pressure to join the fabled PDP mainstream of Nigerian politics. After all, it was not fashionable to be in the wilderness of opposition in Nigeria’s ‘come and eat’ political culture. But Tinubu was grossly underestimated. Not only did he not decamp to the then-ruling party, he rallied the ousted AD governors and together they began to rebuild and revitalize the party in the region.

    Had Tinubu jettisoned the opposition and clambered on the PDP bandwagon in the aftermath of the 2003 elections, it is doubtful if a formidable opposition to the domineering PDP would have been forged. The then-ruling party would most probably have achieved its dream of being in power for at least six decades. Let us not forget how Mr. Peter Obi, as two-term governor of Anambra State on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), had promised the late Chief Odimegwu Ojukwu never to desert the party. Yet, on completion of his second term, Obi wasted no time in dumping APGA, joining the PDP, and becoming a Special Adviser to then-President Goodluck Jonathan.

    In 2007, Tinubu had provided former Vice President Atiku Abubakar a platform, the Action Congress (AC), to contest for the presidency when the latter had been harassed and intimidated out of the PDP by a vengeful OBJ. Yet, after he had lost to the late President Umaru Yar’Adua in the 2007 polls, the Waziri Adamawa wasted no time in returning to his vomit in the PDP saying that he could only function in a national and not a regional party. Had Atiku been consistent and stayed within the progressive fold to nurture the then AC into a national party, it is doubtful if anyone could have denied him the presidency in an emergent national party.

    Today, the Waziri is paying the price for his ideological inconsistency and political vagrancy. Were Tinubu to be as fickle and politically unstable as Obi and Atiku have proven to be, it is unlikely that we would have an APC today and the PDP, despite its internal contradictions and congenital dysfunctions, would probably still be in control of the centre today. Between 2003 and the next electoral cycle in 2007, Tinubu led his ousted colleagues- Aremo Olusegun Osoba, Chief Bisi Akande, the late Alhaji Lam Adesina, the late Chief Adebayo Adefarati and Chief Niyi Adebayo- to work collaboratively to rebuild and reorganize the progressive movement in the South-West. And helped by the sheer lack of vision and utter incompetence of the PDP governors in the South-West, the progressives made a dramatic comeback in the region in 2007.

    Of course, once again, the imperial OBJ presidency, which treated the Maurice Iwu-led INEC as an appendage of Aso Rock Villa, simply announced fabricated results in Osun, Ekiti, Ondo, and Edo in the South-South awarding victory to the PDP in these states. But unlike in 2003, when the governors who were rigged out took their ouster with equanimity and refused to challenge the outcome in court, Tinubu once again motivated the party to successfully challenge the results announced in Ondo, Ekiti, Osun and Edo states in court thus recording another milestone in the political development of Nigeria.

    A related critical feature of a viable liberal democratic system is the existence of well-grounded political parties that are ideology-based at least to a reasonable extent. Here again, Tinubu’s role in nurturing and building bridges of national collaboration through party coalitions that can win power at the centre cannot be denied. True, the parties formed by the late sage, the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo – the Action Group (AG) and Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), were undoubtedly the most disciplined and ideology-focused in the political history of Nigeria. But Tinubu’s ingenuity in collaborating with diverse elements to forge a national party that succeeded in achieving pan-Nigerian success and wresting power at the centre from a ruling party is unprecedented. Of course, it is true that his working with others to achieve this feat came at the cost of bringing disparate bedfellows to cohabit under one political tent with negative consequences for organizational discipline and ideological coherence.

    When the fractures within the contending Afenifere camps created an irreparable chasm within the AD resulting in the party’s inevitable moribundity, Tinubu led other like-minded elements in forming first the Action Congress (AC) which was then further strengthened and consolidated to form the Action Congress of Democrats (ACD) and ultimately the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), which won hegemonic control of the South-West through the ballot box. Tinubu and other leaders of the ACN then led the party to work with others in the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), a faction of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the breakaway New People’s Democratic Party (nPDP) to form the broad-based APC that made spectacular electoral history in the 2015 elections and is the ruling party today.

    It is instructive that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and a chieftain of the Labour Party (LP), Professor Pat Utomi, have in recent times, on different occasions, spoken of the need to create broad-based political party structures by the opposition as a necessary condition for displacing the APC from power come 2027. Tinubu and the APC have a patent on this template in Nigerian politics. The attempts by opposition political leaders in the first and second republics to achieve this feat always failed abysmally.

    But the willingness of opponents of Tinubu and the APC to emulate the model without necessarily admitting it is a clear indication of its efficacy. If the ongoing surreptitious attempts of opposition parties to forge such an alliance work, it may have the desirable consequence of curbing the APC of any tendency towards overconfidence, putting it on its toes and pressuring it towards placing a greater premium on becoming a genuinely development-driven political party.

    No office holder either at the federal or state levels of government in this dispensation has impacted more on the welfare and strengthening of the judiciary as a critical arm of government than Tinubu. The judiciary settles disputes not only between individual citizens and corporate groups but also between different arms and levels of government. A well-remunerated and motivated judiciary is thus indispensable to the meaningful political development of any polity. When he assumed office as governor of Lagos State, the Tinubu administration set the pace in taking steps to considerably improve the salaries of judicial officers as well as providing them such amenities as free accommodation and transportation which they continued to enjoy on retirement.

    We have earlier referred to how Tinubu inspired governorship candidates who had been robbed of their electoral victories in Osun, Ekiti, Ondo, and Edo states, respectively, in the 2007 elections to challenge the purported outcome of the polls in court. The success of those litigations demonstrated that with careful, meticulous accumulation of forensic evidence and diligent prosecution, electoral fraud could be detected and overturned through the courts. It was again the instrumentality of the courts that Tinubu as governor of Lagos State and his Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, utilized to challenge the centre’s usurpation of state powers under the 1999 Constitution and in the process helped to significantly deepen federal practice in Nigeria.

    Under Tinubu’s leadership as governor, the Lagos State government challenged the federal government’s constriction of state rights on at least 13 issues and obtained victory in all of these at the Supreme Court thus substantially influencing the evolution of contemporary federalism in Nigeria.

    Suffice it to say that his contribution to the emergence of the constitutional rule we enjoy today through his frontline role at the vanguard of the struggle against the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election and the perpetuation of praetorian rule has reserved for Tinubu a cardinal place in the roll of catalysts of political development in Nigeria. But as President of Nigeria, this places on him the even greater burden of ensuring that under his leadership, the country experiences an unprecedented consolidation of the foundations of constitutionalism and the rule of law, respect for human rights, increased autonomy of the constituent units of the federation as well as greater integrity and credibility of the electoral process.

  • RHIDF/EET: PBAT ramping-up infrastructure, economic governance

    RHIDF/EET: PBAT ramping-up infrastructure, economic governance

    President Bola Tinubu‘s 44th week as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was an exceptionally loaded one. A lot happened in this last one week than most of the preceding weeks could boast of.

    In just this last week, the President introduced some of the most critical policies and programmes that will in the coming months and years determine the outcomes of governance, as well as the economic survival of not just Nigeria, as a nation, but for most Nigerians who will see the opportunities being created by the State and will take advantage of them in various sectors. For instance, during the week’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, the President presented an infrastructure development marshal plan called the Renewed Hope Infrastructure Development Fund (RHIDF), targeting to bridge the nation’s $878 billion infrastructure gap.

    As explained by the Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Zacch Adedeji, who is also Special Adviser to the President on Revenue, at the post-FEC briefing, and later elaborated in a statement by Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, the RHIDF, which will absorb an earlier vehicle, the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF), will invest in critical national projects that will, among other things, promote growth, enhance local value-addition, create employment opportunities, and stimulate technological innovation and exports.

    The RHIDF, according to Adedeji, will be launched after the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning has presented a Supplementary Appropriation Bill that will take care of the projects to the National Assembly. He said it will include establishing an innovative infrastructure investment vehicle to attract and consolidate capital, serving as a dynamic driver for economic advancement; executing strategic and meticulously chosen national infrastructure projects across several key sectors, including road, rail, agriculture (irrigation, storage, logistics & cold chain), ports, and aviation, among others; and utilize and aggregate accessible low-interest loans such as concessionary loans and Eurobonds, supplemented by the procurement of other favourable financing options, in addition to budgetary allocations, efficiently.

    Also, during the last week, President Tinubu, in his bid to make the nation’s economic governance framework more robust and properly aligned, as well as to urgently attend to the real sector growth, especially as the monetary and fiscal policies have been adequately dealt with, created two economic platforms; the Presidential Economic Coordination Council (PECC) and the Economic Management Team Emergency Taskforce (EET). The PECC, which is now the highest body for economic coordination, under his chairmanship, will oversee the outcomes of all economy-related organs of government. The EET, which has a six month mandate to execute its set targets, also has a mandate to formulate and implement a consolidated emergency economic plan.

    Other members of the PECC include the Vice President, who is also the vice chairman of Council; President of the Senate; Chairman, Nigeria Governors’ Forum; Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance; Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN); Ministers of Agriculture and Food Security; Aviation and Aerospace Development; Budget and Economic Planning, Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy; Industry, Trade and Investment; Labour and Employment; Marine and Blue Economy; Power; Petroleum Resources (State); Gas (State); Transportation; and Works.

    It also has thirteen key members of the organized private sector joining for a period not exceeding one year, subject to the President’s directive. The private sector leaders include Alhaji Aliko Dangote,Mr. Tony Elumelu, Alhaji Abdulsamad Rabiu, Ms. Amina Maina, Begun Ajayi-Kadir, Mrs. Funke Okpeke, Dr. Doyin Salami, Mr. Patrick Okigbo, Mr. Kola Adesina, Mr. Segun Agbaje, Mr. Chidi Ajaere, Mr. Abdulkadir Aliu andMr. Rasheed Sarumi.

    For the EET, which is more like an ad-hoc arrangement because it was designed to address immediate economic challenges and expected to achieve targets within six months, the President tasked the team to submit a comprehensive plan of economic interventions for 2024 to the PECC within two weeks of its inauguration. The team, which is made up of selected members of the Economic Management Team (EMT), the private sector, as well as the sub-nationals, has the mandate to formulate and implement a consolidated emergency economic plan. Since the EMT, which traditionally meets once a month or as required, has the core of its membership drafted into the EET, the EMT will suspend its meetings for the six months when the EET will be operational.

    The EET comprises of Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance (Chairman of the EET); Minister of Budget and Economic Planning; Minister of Power; Minister of Agriculture and Food Security; Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare; Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment; Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria; National Security Adviser; Chairman, Nigeria Governors’ Forum; Governor of Anambra State; Governor of Ogun State; Governor of Niger State; Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service; Director-General, Budget Office of the Federation; GCEO, NNPC Limited; Director-General, Nigeria Economic Summit Group;               Special Adviser to the President on Energy; Dr. Bismarck Rewane, Economist; and Dr. Suleyman Ndanusa, Economist.

    Read Also: Why it’ll be fatal to stop PBAT’s reforms

    Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, while speaking about the establishment of both bodies during post-FEC briefing at the State House on Monday said “I did share with the Federal Executive Council, Mr. President’s approval of a request to set up an Economic Management Team Taskforce to over the next six months implement major measures in that growing the economy, increasing production, thereby creating jobs and reducing poverty and of course, achieving rapid sustained inclusive growth that is the mandate and commitment of Mr. President. So currently, we do have the Economic Management Team and, of course their work feeds into the Federal Executive Council, National Economic Council and even the Presidential Economic Coordination Council, which is the highest body for economic coordination, chaired by Mr. President himself, with the Vice President as his vice chairman of that Council.

    “So below that there is now, instead of just the Economic Management Team, an Economic Management Team Taskforce and for the next six months, that task force, made up of selected members of the Economic Management Team, the private sector, as well as the sub-nationals, representative of the Nigerian Governors Forum, will work assiduously to ensure that having dealt with major issues of monetary and fiscal policy, that the real sector growth is assured; companies are helped through these difficult times with fiscal incentives and other measures to ensure the survival of companies, both the large scale as well as the medium and small scales. That is the real meat of this Economic Management Team (EMT) Taskforce, and they will be starting immediately, reporting regularly to Mr. President on over the next six months, rolling out initiatives aimed at growing economy”, he said.

    Like I indicated at the start of this piece, I wrote about how the week was so loaded with achievements and actions that not many of the previous weeks could rival, the President found time and opportunity to speak his mind on a couple of issues. By now those with open minds know that our President does not just do things, he does them with reasons. He does not go out just for fun, he does so to achieve goals, either immediate or long term. For instance, each time he has to travel, it has to be with the intent to achieve something for Nigeria. So since the Ramadan month commenced, he has had to host a couple of Iftar, which is the fast-breaking dinner for Muslims, and during those Iftars, he has achieved one goal or the other.

    He did it again last week. First it was with the Nigerian Judiciary on Tuesday; justices and judges, both serving and retired, all led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Olukayode Ariwoola. They had their dinner, but he had a message to the Bench, they are the ones charged by the rule of law to be the forthright and fearless arbiters. Their duty is to pass judgments without fear or favour , they are the ones who must be above induced prejudiced. So the matter of criminals who kidnap, especially children, came up and his opinion to people who might have to judge them when they are captured and brought before the law was how they ought to be dealt with.

    “We must treat kidnappers as terrorists. They are cowardly. They have been degraded. They look for soft targets. They go to schools and kidnap children and cause disaffection. We must treat them equally as terrorists in order to get rid of them, and I promise you we will get rid of them”, the President said, even as he hinted them of his view of their welfare matter. Indicating that there will be a change of story about the judicial workers’ welfare, he said “I recognize that the judiciary has one of the most unrewarded responsibilities. They are yet to modernize equipment and recordkeeping, and their progress towards improvement is slow. When you look at the career path of a judicial officer, they cannot practice the vocation for which they were trained after retirement. While the framers of the law may have their reasons, I perceive this differently and see this from a fair compensation angle that should benefit all”.

    Then on Thursday, he had another Iftar, this time it was with traditional rulers and religious leaders from across the country. He said so much, at least he spoke for more than fourteen minutes, but the message that resonated most was the appeal to clerics to pass the right message and be the right examples. To the clerics he said “pray for our country, educate our children, the sermons we preach to the members of our churches and mosques are important. Do not condemn your own nation. This is your country, do not condemn it in sermons, do not abuse the nation. Leadership is meant for changes. Yes, this leader is bad, fine. Wait until the next election to change him, but do not condemn your country. Do not curse Nigeria. This is a beautiful land”.

    Happy Birthday Mr. President

    Then it was the week of his 72nd birthday and the first birthday anniversary he would be celebrating in the Aso Rock Villa. His last birthday was just after he won the mandate to lead the nation, then he was just President-elect. Usually, his birthday anniversary has always been marked by his annual colloquium, countless newspaper and electronic advertorials across the media and the dinners. However, this year, because of the solemn mood of the nation, he called all these off, just to let the nation know he is not oblivious of the state of things. If anyone feels so religious about celebrating him, he directed them to use the resources to cater to the need of the less privileged.