The Nation Newspaper

Tag: PMB

  • Re- PMB: If this not inertia?

    SIR: Steve Osuji’s article on the expectation of President Muhammadu Buhari government forms an interesting reading.  The print press particularly some columnists have been very hostile to this government in trying to stampede him into avoidable pit-falls and calamities. Thank God, the President is an avid reader of Nigerian newspapers and with his two seasoned media advisers he can wave the storm.  These were the mistakes of our immediate past president that left him confused by the parade of solicited and unsolicited advice leaving him of no grabs and losing control of his government.

    The few appointments recently made by the president have been criticized to be pro-North; the same people advising him to immediately make appointments of his cabinet ministers are obviously not prepared to take his terms.  The removal of the fuel subsidy by President Jonathan immediately on assuming office on advice of the uninformed columnists almost threw him out of office.  The I.M.F apologists were the brain behind this costly government’s decision.  Governance especially in a multicultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious setting like Nigeria should be taken with care and I say extreme care.  While people need change and of what they voted for, but the president should not be stampeded and his government to take decisions that are not well researched upon.

    Governance is not a hundred metres dash but a long distant marathon which takes off on reserved energy and to peak up at the halfway. We need not to rush this government.   The least we can give this government is to support it with patience and understanding because if it should fail, God forbid, this could be our last chance.  We all want change but the change must start with each individual.

     

    • Biyi Adesanya Ring Road, Ibadan. 
  • El-Rufa’i, PMB and our oil misfortune

    El-Rufa’i, PMB and our oil misfortune

    Penultimate Monday July 13, the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), Lagos, held the seventh in its series of annual lectures in honour of the Nigerian Nobel Literature laureate. The venue was Abuja Sheraton Hotel and Towers and the theme “Nigeria and the Oil Fortune.”

    Not being an oil man himself, the reason for the centre’s choice of Malam Nasir Ahmad el-Rufa’i, the governor of Kaduna State, as guest speaker was not quite apparent. But then as a self-styled “accidental public servant”, the first class quantity surveyor has had an abiding interest in public policy and public finance for many years. So it was no accident that WSCIJ picked him to speak on what is probably the most topical issue facing an oil-rich country that has virtually bankrupted itself precisely because it is oil rich!

    El-Rufa’i’s over 3,000-word lecture reminded me of the trademark one-inch column front page editorials New Nigerian was famous for in its halcyon days.  Those editorials were compulsory readings if only for their style, syntax and substance. This particular one was published 41 years ago last month – on June 29, 1974, to be precise. At that time the late Malam Turi Muhammadu was editor and Malam Mamman Daura, nephew of, but older than, President Muhammadu Buhari, its managing director.

    Entitled “Oil Money: Honey or Poison”, that editorial is to me the most prophetic any Nigerian newspaper has ever written in post-colonial Nigeria. For that reason alone – not to mention its precision, clarity and relevance even today – it is worth reproducing in all its roughly 460-word length.

    “It is,” the editorial said, “commonplace to say that Nigeria is at the moment very lucky because of oil revenues. In a very real sense we have much more money than our system can absorb. Unofficial estimates put the figure added to our reserve this year at N2,000m. In many essential respects this bounty has been a blessing. It has enabled us to repay some of our outstanding foreign loans, liberalised commercial and industrial policies and has enabled increased revenue to be diverted to building of modern infrastructure commensurate with our executive capacity.

    “But the reverse side of this coin is painful to contemplate. The nature and source of oil money put it in a class of its own. A few years ago, a disturbing international report was published arguing in stark terms the failure of all underdeveloped oil producing countries to make more than marginal use of their splendid fortune. No effort is involved on our part. It is the foreigners who employ their capital and skills to exploit this resource and we simply receive huge autonomous additions to our national income.

    “Such un-worked for riches can land a country in trouble of a peculiar kind. There is soulless opulence of the few, in evil contrast to crushing poverty of the many. There is unimaginable corruption and disastrously wrong allocation of resources. Above all there is the absence of hard work without which the country cannot pull itself together. In that sense the oil money becomes poison rather than honey. How will an economic historian 50 years hence explain the relative expenditure on agriculture and on the various forms of so-called “culture”: All-African Games, Black Arts Festival and all the rest of it? He must conclude that we had taken leave of our collective senses.

    “Happily, in the Nigerian case, the situation is by no means irretrievable. We could deploy considerable energies and resources in producing a commodity which is more important even than oil: food. We must at all costs get agriculture on the move again. There are millions of acres lying fallow when they could be used to grow food for our burgeoning population. The setting up of the two River Basin Commissions is a great step in this direction (although the staffing has ensured that the two schemes would not take off for some time.)

    “Nor are we unmindful of individual state efforts. But fiddling about with N10-15m is just like one grain in a silo. We need a monumental plan. A N500m plan with the help of, say, Danish and Chinese experts under our direction, would do wonders for grain productivity in this country. We may or may not have oil in 50 years. But to survive we must have food. The ground work can be done now.”

    The New Nigerian’s economic historian still has nine more years to go before he enters his verdict on how we have managed our oil fortune. Yet even today the historian would be dead right to conclude that we took leave of our collective senses long, long time ago.

    In five years of Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency alone, for example, Nigeria, el-Rufa’i quoted United States Department of Energy as saying, earned nearly $500 billion from oil and gas trade, which comes to a stupendous N130 trillion! Yet today most human development indices say 40% of Nigerians, or about 70 million of them, live well below poverty line obviously because we’ve blown away all that good fortune in an orgy of incredible waste and venality.

    It all reminds one, again, of a survey The Economist published about the state of Nigeria’s political-economy in its edition of May 3, 1986, a few months after our soldiers overthrew the fiscally reckless Second Republic under President Shehu Shagari and Muhammadu Buhari took over as military head of state.

    “Nigeria,” the newsmagazine said in its abstract of the survey, “has had a stupendous party, but the wine merchants forgot to collect their money in advance. Now the debt collectors have arrived to find the winnings spent, the bottles and glasses mostly broken or stolen by the guests, and the soldiers who came in to keep order shooting each other.”

    Twenty nine years on after The Economist’s survey it’s like we are back exactly where the Second Republic ended, only far worse and only also that instead of khaki, the same Buhari has returned in mufti to clean up the huge mess left by 16 years of PDP misrule.

    Last time he hardly had enough time to start cleaning up the mess before he was thrown out in a bloodless palace coup. The question is, can he do the job this time, especially now that he cannot simply order people around? To rephrase this question using the words of the theme of el-Rufa’i’s speech, can a civilian President Buhari turn Nigeria’s oil misfortune into a fortune?

    Like most ordinary Nigerians, el-Rufa’i believes the president can – provided he can slay what the governor has described as three “huge dragons” that stand in the way, namely “(1) a fixation with public ownership and control of every major oil asset, (2) the corruption and distortion that oil subsidy is inflicting on our economy, and (3) the NNPC in its current form…”

    Put simply, el-Rufa’i’s solution is that the president should privatise our refineries, remove fuel subsidy and abolish the NNPC as it is, whereby, as he said, it has, at least since 2012, kept about 42% of its revenues meant for the federation, for its self-aggrandisement!

    El-Rufa’i is, in a sense, right about fuel subsidy and NNPC in so far as they are creatures of the corruption that has eaten deep into the nation’s fabric. However, I am not so sure about his own fixation with privatisation. Public ownership of the means of production may have its downsides but then so also does private ownership. We have, for example, privatised our banks and our airlines but they have hardly been any more efficient or transparent than they were. Even the relatively successful privatisation of our telecommunications industry hasn’t made it as efficient as it can be, given its huge profits. The truth is, good governance and transparency, and even efficiency, is no preserve of any ideology.

    As for the corruption that has eaten into the nation’s fabric, the problem is not so much corruption itself but the impunity with which it has been practised. After all, no society can be corrupt-free. What is important is to make sure people see that there will in the end always be a day of reckoning, no matter anyone’s station in life.

    To succeed in this fight against impunity, the president, as el-Rufa’i said in his speech, needs every support he can get from the media and civil society organisations (CSOs), for no other institutions in the society have the power for advocacy, education and enlightenment that the media and CSOs possess.

    Only time will tend how consistent the president will be in his war against impunity and how much support the media and CSOs will give him.

    Re: Asiwaju and the National Assembly leadership crisis

    Sir,

    I refer to the above article of last week and wish to submit that Chief Akande should have used the phrase “Most Nigerian elite” instead of “Northern elite” and that the conspiracy was against APC as a party and Buhari’s anti corruption crusade and not against the Yoruba.

    Secondly, you mistakenly wrote that APC has 69 senators. The correct number is 59.  

    Ademola Akande,

    Port Harcourt. +2348057224608.

     

    Sir,

    The APC leadership should realise that the party is no longer ACN but a conglomerate of different political tendencies. Therefore, it should consult with all stakeholders and interests before rolling out decisions. Buhari’s government has had its task cut out for it, which is enormous. The crisis his party is witnessing at the moment is a distraction. Time is ticking and people are expecting action and not altercation.

    Adewuyi Adegbite.  +2347013065440

  • PMB and his security

    SIR: While  we  appreciate  the  doctrines  of  faith  and  fate,  we  must  also  understand  the  doctrine  of  necessity  because  Heaven  helps  those  who  help  themselves  and  where  there  is  a  will,  there  is  always  a  way.

    I  was  shocked  and  annoyed  that  despite  the  enormous  security  threat  in  the  country,  and  despite  being  a  target  before,  the  man  who  everyone  hopes  will  bring  forth  the  desired  national  sanity  was  left  carelessly  to  obvious  security  lapses.

    President Muhammadu  Buhari was  reported  in  almost  all  the  the  national  dailies  of  Saturday,  July  18,  to  have  fallen  to  a  vulnerable  security  situation  after  marking  the  end  of  the  Ramadan  fast  at  a  Mosque  in  Abuja.  While  his  believe  in  God  and  fate  since  the  beginning  of  his  public  service  life   is  evident  in  his  modest  life  style,  he  must  know  that  his  War  Against  Indiscipline  was  not  fought  by  angels  but  by  mortals;  it  was  not  also  fought  by  fate  but  by  vigour;  he  must  be  aware  that  though  destiny  has  a  place,  but  its  not  an  excuse  for  laxity,  and  he  must  also  know  that  being  a  man  in  white  trying  to  change  people  from  the  dirt  culture,  he  must  be  ready  to  undertake  the  needful  security  checks  and  alertness.

    The  President’s  security  retinue  must  never  again  be  carried  away  by  his  popularity  but  live up  to  the  expected  need  and accord  utmost  priority  of  protecting  him. The  case  of  former  Head of State, the late  General  Murtala  Mohammed  is  still  fresh  and  a  food  for  thought. John  F.  Kennedy  also.

    And  finally,  as  those  enthusiasts  continue  the  maniacal  chant  of  Sai  Buhari, the  General  and  his  security  details  must  know  that  not  all  the  glitters are  golden.  Remember  the  story  of  the  wooden  horse  of  Troy,  used  by  the  Greeks  to  trick  their  way  into  a  medieval   city  as  recorded  in  Virgil’s book,  Aaneid,  written between 29 and 19 BC:  “Do  not  trust  the  horse,  Trojans,  whatever  it  is.  I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts”.

     

    • Akinola Iwilade,

    Owode,  Oyo.

     

  • SOS to PMB on Kabba-Okene -Lokoja roads

    Sir: Following the withdrawal of soldiers from manning of military checkpoints nationwide, the spate of kidnappings has increased on the ever busy Kabba-Okene, Kabba-Lokoja and Okene-Lokoja roads in Kogi State.  Within a period of less than one week, not less than three cases of kidnapping have been reported on the aforementioned roads.

    Without mincing words, the frequency of nefarious activities of the men of the underworld and kidnappers along these roads and in Kogi State in general calls for immediate action on the part of both the Federal Government and the Kogi State government.

    In addition to the promise of deployment of more policemen to Kogi State by the Inspector-General of Police in order to check the rampant kidnapping saga and bank robbery cases across the state, the state government should look into the possibility of drafting the services of local hunters in the state to complement the efforts of the police in providing adequate security for the life and property of the people.

    Considering the strategic positions of these roads notably the Kabba-Okene and Okene-Lokoja ones as  the only link between the Federal Capital, Abuja on one hand and most of the southern states such as Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Edo and Kwara states and two senatorial districts of West and Central in Kogi State on the other hand, appeal is being made to our security-conscious president, to please reconsider the return of soldiers to these and other roads in Kogi State to stem the dastard acts of criminals who have no doubt laid siege on Kogi State and whose activities continue to send jitters down the spines of the people, travelers and commuters who ply these roads.

    • Odunayo Joseph,

    Mopa, Kogi State.

  • PMB: The road not taken?

    Early last month, the international news agency, Reuters, reported on what it called “shadowy build up of oil in the Atlantic Basin”. A somewhat riveting account of the hordes of “homeless cargoes of crude turning into unintentional floating storage” in the absence of ready buyers, the report offers an interesting perspective to the raging fuel subsidy debate, the future of the hydrocarbon industry, as indeed, the overall economy itself.

    Of particular interest to yours truly was the report that six million barrels of Nigeria’s sweet crude from its May programme was stranded – some already loaded onto vessels – looking for buyers; the medium reported another 65 million barrels left of the June/July programme as doomed to the same fate, seeking salvation in some far-flung refineries!

    Trust Nigeria’s legendary immunity from shocks, we have since carried on as if the development – despite our near total dependence on oil – amounted to pretty little! And this at a time when, the treasuries of most states across the federation, laid waste by corruption and poor policies choices of their administrators, continue to shrink with workers and pensioners in several arrears of salaries and wages. Of course, we know that the federal government is exempt only to the extent that it has more money – far more access to slush funds – to play with than it can wisely and productively use.

    It is certainly no overstatement to say that the future is grim. With manufacturing and the real sector remaining comatose as the infrastructure remains essentially at Stone Age, it’s hard to see the end to the current steady descent into the abyss.  Today, the naira is on a slippery path with no respite in sight. Last week for instance, it traded for N241 to the United States dollars in the parallel market. Barely seven months ago, the same naira traded for N160 to the dollar. Now, picture this is a nation where just about every commodity – ranging from raw materials to finished goods – is imported and where the local manufacturer that could have stepped in to bridge the gap has been under a sentence of death from a whole gamut of inclement policies for as long as anyone can remember.

    I don’t think that Nigerians, as yet appreciate the enormity of the challenges let alone the extremely limited choices facing them at this rather difficult time. But then, I am not entirely surprised that not a few Nigerians still believe that we can continue on the current path while expecting a different set of outcomes. Yes, we can talk and hopefully deal with the different manifestations of corruption in our public institutions; there would still be the issue of what to do with some of the myths which under-gird policies.

    Today, one of the undying myths is that a bankrupted country can, simply because it is generously endowed with crude, retain the differential between the real cost and pump price of petrol and kerosene at humongous costs to the treasury, and also at a difficult time such as the nation is currently going through. A simple arithmetic will obviously tell the story better: At a net differential of N44.86 on every litre of petrol sold, we are talking of N1.794 billion daily reimbursements to a club of rentier marketers at the current estimated consumption level of 40 million litres of petrol only!

    Honestly, I had thought that by now, the era of an external body fixing a price for a product it does not produce would have been history. That was what I thought – at least until recently when President Muhammadu Buhari finally spoke on the subsidy issue. And what did the President say?

    Very little – and yet so much!

    First, the President said that he will handle the issue of subsidies on petroleum products with care. To quote the President: “I have received [a lot of] literature on the need to remove subsidies, but much of it has no depth. When you touch the price of petroleum products, that has the effect of triggering price rises on transportation, food and rents…That is for those who earn salaries, but there are many who are jobless and will be affected by it.”

    Then his submission: lack of security, sabotage, vandalism, corruption and mismanagement are the most serious problems of Nigeria’s oil sector, not subsidies! Finally, he directed the NNPC to review existing agreements for the swapping of crude oil for refined products. In so doing, the President did not fail to romanticise the past: “We have to go back to the good old days of transparency and accountability”!

    The issue of security, sabotage, vandalism, corruption and mismanagement is no doubt a living reality which the government must confront. However, I’ll say that overall the president’s message belongs to a different era. In the first place, while I may agree broadly with the President on the need to provide social safety for the poor and the underprivileged, I guess the myth has endured for far too long that cheap fuel – whether kerosene or petrol – comes close to being the most effective social safety net that our poor really need! Where is the evidence that the poor actually benefits from the daily spend of N1.794 billion on the petrol subsidy alone? Has anyone considered the option of direct cash handouts as substitute – since it is all about proving our love for the hoi polloi?

    Even more ludicrous is the presidential directive to the NNPC to review existing agreements for the swapping of crude oil for refined products.

    Here is an institution we are all agreed is a bastion of fraud; whose corpse we all wished interred; the same institution is being unwittingly given a fresh breadth of life – to do exactly what it has always done – with expectation of different results! Haba!

    Why not simply dismantle the infrastructure that has proven to be so amenable to fraud? Where are thebeautyful Nigerians that would do the job? Will the President bring them from the moon? And where is the big picture – a return to the ancien regime in which the national oil corporation plays the godfather and the bureaucrats’ god? And where will the funds come from – the same empty treasury that has been a source of lamentation?

    And where does private investment fit in all of these? Are you going to ask them to bring in their money under the hazy circumstances? Think of this as the hard choice that the Buhari administration is called to make. It’s not easy – if you ask me; the choice, to put it mildly is limited! Will he? Can he?

  • PMB: Is the waiting game over?

    Mahatma Gandhi, the celebrated Indian statesman with a political philosophy of peaceful emancipation that reverberated round the globe, once reasoned: In matters of rigidity and indifference, the law of the majority has no place. President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB), confirmed the truism in this aphorism when he kept eager-for-good-governance people of this country waiting for nearly a month and half in the saddle before he could change the army service chiefs that he inherited from the inept administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Nigerians that placed too much hope in PMB cannot be blamed, for the President in all conscience, has been slothful despite the alibi of his being tactical in dealing with the clutter he met on ground. But the reality is that Nigerians that have suffered 16 years of indignity and pilfering of public till under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government will not understand why PMB has become enslaved by his own rigidity and avoidable political indifference to scheming that could help him achieve, in reasonable time, his promise to change the country for good. Justifiably, Nigerians believed that they voted for a president that had contested and lost the presidency on three occasions and having clinched the presidency the fourth time, he was assumed to have been well fortified with ideas, plan of and policy direction on how to move the country forward without prevarication or delay.

    Nigerians naively believe that a president with such Abraham Lincoln-like electoral defeats should have become repository of how every agency of the federal government operates and what to be done to put them aright where necessary by the fourth time that he won. But they are still waiting for the Buhari-Wonder to happen. Nigerians expected that by the time they voted for PMB on March 28 and the time he was declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on March 30 as the winner – one month to his swearing- in – he should by now have known how to handle the legislature in a way that would not stagnate or distract his government; they thought he should by then have known how to handle the issue of fuel scarcity; that PMB would come up with panaceas on how to solve the plummeting price of naira against the dollar and that a direction would have been shown on how he plans to create more jobs, resolve the epileptic power quagmire and mitigate the gorge of corruption that has destroyed the foundation of values system in the country.

    The reality today is that most Nigerians, including yours sincerely, were bemused by the politically naive statement of PMB that he was ready to work with anybody that emerged as Senate-President and Speaker in the bi-cameral federal legislature of the land. The president even said in his inaugural speech that he belongs to nobody but for everybody. Now that the treacherous duo of Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara have emerged as Senate-President and Speaker of the House of Representatives respectively, against the ruling party’s position – but with the support of opposition PDP – why is the president reportedly now avoiding the Senate President? Was it not the same president that declared that the constitutional process had run its course with the emergence of Saraki and Dogara that has now belatedly realised his political imprudence?

    This column wants to ask: At what point did the president realise that the emergence of the duo ran contrary to the position of APC? What does PMB mean by his latter-day mantra of party supremacy when whether overtly or covertly, he as the leader of the ruling party, undermined its supremacy with his lethargic but deliberate and indifferent rigidity to political issues that can make or mar his presidency? This presidency has been quite unstable with its approbation and reprobation on important political and policy issues of state. This is one of the manifest distasteful attributes of the inglorious PDP regime that this presidency must drop.

    Sadly, the deliberate but injurious taciturnity of PMB informed the bad solipsism that made some Nigerians to give credit to what they termed as the ‘decisiveness’ of the despot called Olusegun Obasanjo on political/policy issues of state. What a bad comparism between a man of integrity like PMB that Nigerians reposed so much confidence in and a hypocritical oppressor and anti-democratic element like Obasanjo. PMB should be politically discernible and must know, in case he has forgotten, that without the same party and support of an important national leader of the ruling party in the southwest like Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that the likes of Abubakar Atiku, Saraki and Dogara among other mischievous political elements are futilely trying to decimate, he will not be president today.

    This column is happy that the president, all of a sudden, seemed to have realised his groove and from nowhere, took one belated glorious step that the public had long been yearning for. What did he do? Precisely 43 days after inauguration and 72 days after being declared President by INEC, PMB on July 13, 2015, after keeping Nigerians in needlessly prolonged and embarrassing suspense eventually named his National Security Adviser (NSA) and also effected the long-awaited removal of the despondent service chiefs inherited from the inept former President Jonathan administration. And this column could not but ask: Is the waiting game over for the PMB presidency or what he did earlier in the week just a flash in the pan? Will he henceforth start putting things in the rightful place? Only time can tell.

    But, the president needs to move ahead and form a cabinet of very good hands that could think for him. In these past weeks, his government has been indecisive and also not been thinking as it should and this is bad if the desired change promised Nigerians would be achieved. Nigerians want no excuses from the PMB government but positive action that could lift their morale and remove them from the current morass. The president must know that Nigerians are tired of the political harlotry of Abubakar Atiku and his goading of the politically perfidious Saraki and Dogara whose inordinate ambition for power is fast becoming an inexorably impediment (if not nipped in the bud now), to the focus of the PMB administration. PMB needs the steadfast commitment and fidelity to the ruling party by its true pre-registration promoters like a Bola Tinubu and occasional matured intervention of a statesman like Maitama Sule amongst others.

    PMB must know that his integrity is on the line except he succeeds in putting in check a society that is on the precipice of irredeemable rot. Despite his wild political acceptance in the north, which indubitably more than anything else, made him the best candidate best suited to achieve the epochal record of sending a sitting government out of power at the federal level, he needs not put this to waste on a platter of political naivety. He should fear God and listen to only one voice that is his conscience by rewarding the political goodness towards him of benefactors like Tinubu with good which he is not doing by his reticence to the mischief of political opportunists that are out to bring him down without him knowing this. PMB should shed his Fulani pride and embrace political realism without necessarily compromising standards. By now, he should see beyond the dramatics of Saraki/Dogara and realise that beyond the average conscience, there is a still, low voice that should be saying to him that something is out-of-tune with the slow pace and avoidable indifference with which he has so far approached governance.

  • As PMB visits PBO: 10 points to ponder

    This visit: Is it sight-seeing or strategic? If our leaders are seeing what we are seeing from our obscure corner, then President Muhammadu Buhari’s (PMB’s) visit to his American counterpart, President Barack Obama (PBO) next week ought to be the most significant visit any Nigerian leader made to the US since independence in 1960. Hitherto, most Nigerian helmsmen have viewed it as some profound achievement to be granted audience in the White House. The late President Umaru Yar’Adua epitomised this in one moment of extreme awe as he sat before Obama when he noted that it was the greatest day of his life. Yar’Adua’s now famous faux pas only points to the undeniable power of the United States of America in world affairs since the end of World War II.

    Why must this visit be different and indeed historic if previous ones by nearly all Nigeria’s leaders had been mere exercise in vacuous ceremonies and photo opportunities? This column wagers that hardly any of our former heads of state had any remarkable strategic reason for visiting the White House.; they were no better than an average tourist to America gawking at that whited bastion of U.S power and essence.

    This house is falling still: This column expects PMB’s visit to be special for two reasons. One, Nigeria as the most important nation in Sub-Saharan Africa has come full circle after over five decades of so-called independence and utter folly. Today, the world’s 7th most populous nation has become a real and present danger to the civilised world. It has been roiled and brought to her knees both by her post independence leaders and currently by a silly band of local terrorists that have comprehensively exposed her ugly rump and hollowness.

    Two, crude oil which rent has sustained and contained the Nigerian madness since independence has become less valuable and a non-essential commodity in world’s energy market today; therefore this behemoth is broke – perhaps irretrievably so. These two factors: the petty insurgency and loss of cheap oil revenue will and should drive PMB’s visit to PBO. The journalist, Karl Maier, wrote over a decade ago about Nigeria that “This House Has Fallen”. Well it has not come down crashing but it remains a cracked and tottering edifice.

    Though not many of our so-called leaders seem to have seen the futility and un-sustainability of this precarious house, in which case they would be going on a sight-seeing (as usual) to the White House, the Americans should reveal the harsh reality to them as much as possible. If our delegation understands the deal, there is no doubt that they will be armed with some tough agenda and also be open to pragmatic and radical alternatives for the years ahead.

    Ten points to ponder

    One: complete overhaul of the armed forces Nigeria must at this point determine that she is ready to join the rest of the world in which case she must anchor appropriately and build the right alliances. A major defence pact will necessarily preface the requisite economic boost Nigeria needs sorely now. In clear terms, a US military base in the Gulf of Guinea needs be considered as part of a major package.

    While that is going on, we can then set about building a proper modern military infrastructure. Anyone who knows anything would agree that the entire architecture of our military cannot support a modern boys’ scout. We need a total overhaul and we neither have the funds nor the gumption to do it by ourselves. We either elect to revamp now with the aid of the Yankees or we forever live in the muck. Today Cameroon and Chad are fighting to rescue us; tomorrow they would fight to conquer our territories if we do not act now.

    Two: revamping our policing and intelligence systems: The same principle as in number one above applies here. Modern policing and intelligence gathering have long eluded us. We are actually cave people in this regard. Worse, we lack the capacity – both financial and intellectual – to begin to help our situation. In one word, we need help and we must bear this in mind while in the White House.

    Three: arms policy and superpower diplomacy The biggest black nation in the world cannot mould even enough small arms to defend herself from hoodlums without having to scurry all over the world even to smaller and far less endowed countries to acquire rifles. We all saw how easy it was for the West to frustrate the purchase of medium range arms to fight even our small-time terrorists. Imagine for a moment what happens if we have to confront another nation! How are we ever going to join the league of arms producing nations if we do not forge the right alliances now?

    Four: international border management and operations Nigeria must rank among the countries with the most porous borders in the world. Everyday dozens of long, laden trailers drive in and out through most of our land borders. Our border security is as compromised as a harlot on the highway. This has gone on for decades. No country functions like this. We need modern border technology and infrastructure. We need help.

    Five: border (nations) diplomacy Is it by chance that all the countries bordering Nigeria are from the Francophone zone? What are the implications for our security and socio-economic well-being? Though these countries: Benin, Niger, Chad and Cameroon (not overlooking Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe and even Gabon down the Atlantic) are minions comparatively, how has Nigeria brought them under her strategic sphere of influence for the larger objective of making the requisite economic and security capital? There is a vacuum there begging to be filled if only we can get our bearing right. We need quality alliances.

    Six: prisoners’ management How many Boko Haram prisoners are under the custody of the Nigerian state today? The other day, an obviously distraught Federal Government was apparently shopping for facility to keep about 47 prisoners. One would have thought that a special purpose penitentiary (SPP) would have been created somewhere in the Northeast in the last five years. We need help.

    Seven: judiciary and terrorism trials Just like the point above, how many Boko Haram terrorists have been tried successfully in the last five years? For a country that is almost prostrate, it seems nigh impossible to try any terrorists in this land. Nigeria simply lacks the capacity. In fact, until a few days ago, trying moneyed and influential Nigerians had almost become impossible.

    We need special courts, specialised security and of course, impregnable detention facilities. We saw the trial and jailing of former Egyptian president, Morsi and his murderous gang recently. He and about 500 of his men have been sentenced to die. That is the mark of a state that is alive and functional and got her world politics right.

    Eight: IDP management If any element in the skirmishes against Boko Haram exposed the weak underbelly of the Nigerian state, it is the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) crisis. A situation where a large chunk of the citizens are in ordinarily times, psychologically and economically displaced would give a pointer as to why the IDPs are doomed. Again, it is the capacity thing. Both funds and know-how are acutely lacking. We need help quick.

    Nine: the global economics of terrorism Why is Nigeria’s war against terror different from the wars going on in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen? Why is America and her allies spending huge defence funds in these countries; sending men and arms and ammunition to these places, yet have virtually shunned Nigeria? This is the question we must ask the people in White House and insist on honest answers.

    Ten: where there is no economy The reality for those who can see, is that there is little business left here now except petty merchandising. With enormous petro-dollars we had lacked the will and leadership to build a decent state girded by basic institutions, not to think of a modern state. Today, we have no bargaining chips anymore; we have no goods to bring to the market any longer. All we have is a horde of largely impoverished and half-baked population.

    What we need now is a smart leadership that appreciates our precarious condition and can create a platform for a massive Marshall Plan for Nigeria. None of such tokens as Power up Africa, AGOA or MDGs; only a Marshall Plan will do now.

  • Our Girls;  PMB: SOS at Mowe/Ibafo by JBerger; End ‘DRACONIAN DEMOCRACY’ in State, LGAs

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15 2014. More suicide bombers every day.

    President Buhari must engage Julius Berger about the failure of the Mowe/Ibafo-Lagos expressway causing 40km, five hour, five lane wide traffic jams every Sunday evening. It took four hours to jet to Lagos on Saturday morning, July 11. The problem is bad road sections which almost stop traffic, lack of pedestrian flyovers with thousands crossing the road daily and lack of laybys for domestic passenger vehicles in the towns of Mowe and Ibafo.

    Nigeria has had 1999-2014 the ‘The Democracy Years of Plenty’ or ‘The Democracy Years of the Locust’ – the locust being the greedy and corrupt political, administrative and contractor culture. This created a monster which consumed all we produced and borrowed more to steal and even pay salaries. The years 2015-2019 will be ‘Years of Famine’- financial famine. ‘We the people’ are forced to pay for the thieving and mismanagement signalled by the fall by the 50% in the dollar-from N150 to N232 in nine months, the 50% fall in oil prices and the 50% reduction in demand for Nigeria’s oil due to distance, new nearer markets, foreign political discrimination against Nigeria and reduction in oil demands by America from the rise in shale oil. This is lack of disaster planning.

    Nigeria failed to save adequately during the Years of Plenty. Remember the political outcry against the Sovereign Wealth Fund and the Excess Crude Account, by gluttonous governors greedy for more to spend on thin air and not salaries? Today, both federal and governors have nothing! And salaries are owed, mostly due to ‘diversion’ and corruption. What a tragedy and travesty of Nigeria’s inheritance? If Nigeria was a bank, it would have collapsed and the thieves would be in jail for financial crimes and the money restored to government coffers. A ‘Confession’, saying ‘Sorry’ without ‘Restitution’ is unacceptable. Of course there was a trust issue between states and the Federal Government which has managed to keep 52-4% of the budget. Such trust issues include inter-party suspicion, unfair federalism, uneven access to Ecological Funds and corruption.

    About now the federal government, governors and chairpersons of LGAs and their ‘hooligans’ have begun to seriously plan, against the ‘financial drought’. They are planning to substitute for the lost ‘oil money’ revenues by ‘drilling’ the local population to extract what was lost in oil prices and corruption. Even the corrupt have the need to feed their greed. ‘Buhari fiscal discipline’ cannot be in everybody’s heart, eyes and bank account. The Nigerian citizen is a mini-LGA while struggling against the corrupt uniformed officer in all colours white to black. Many Nigerians have been held, intimidated, insulted and robbed by armed robber ‘official’ thugs with LGA ID cards at a LGA roadblock -a scam.  This and excessive government taxes on the few with violent harassment of the rest have generated a massive citizens’ anger. This pain is aggravated by the natural inclination of any UNSUPERVISED uniformed or authoritarian personnel to have attitude, aggression, arrogance, abusive language and violence with malicious vindictive seizures of signboards, goods, vehicles, motorbikes etcetera with destruction, loss or even theft of seized items or release for a bribe.

    Governors and pension fund handlers do not all have clean anti-corrupt hands. The huge cost of tax consultants and the fate of the money raised have left many citizens disappointed. The Extended Family is the oldest NGO and ‘Bank’ charging ‘No Interest And No Security’ in Africa though irresponsibly unrecognised in academic, economic and tax circles. Africans look after the Extended Family. Yet there are no ‘Personal Tax Reliefs’ covering unemployed family members, parents and families of deceased members. These characteristics of African society support systems are unrecognised even by African Tax which takes ‘TAX TEMPLATES’ directly from the World Bank, Woe Bank, and the IMF, ‘International Morticians Funeral Fund’ who as Europeans, look after only their nuclear family. ‘Be thy brother’s keeper’ is a reality in Nigeria and only a church charity matter in Europe because of the support systems of the dole and incapacity handouts. In Nigeria we have no such safety nets but are denied tax rebates for substituting for government social network failures. This is one area where ‘A HOME-GROWN TAX SYSTEM IS NECESSARY’ giving reliefs for extended family members and activities.

    The drive for IGR, Internally Generated Revenue, must no longer be devilish resulting in more Draconian Democracy. This is the time for ‘change’ in the way government treats its people. The people did not steal, government agents did.

    The hallmark of Draconian Democracy is deliberately and unreasonably inflated demand notices and bills and hyper-inflated fines. This is a quadruple crime of 1] Abuse of office; 2] Official intimidation; 3] Attempt to steal under false pretences, and, 4] Extortion. This amounts to a Human Rights Criminal Offence requiring a monitoring body against any official proved to be extortionist. Such officials should be exposed, demoted, jailed and sacked and denied pensions.

    Nigerians expect a change in ridiculous corruption-driven taxation demands and utility bills, ‘crude, rude letters’, ‘demand notices’, intimidation and attempts to extort. State assemblies and the National Asembly (NASS) should quickly enact a LAW AGAINST UNREASONABLE/STUPID TAXATION, IRRESPONSIBLE OVER-BILLING OR IRRESPONSIBLE BACKDATING. This may aim at forcing the government and its agencies to give their bills for vetting to A CONSUMER PROTECTION TAXATION/BILLING OMBUDSMAN appointed by civil society. This ombudsman may arbitrate disputes.

    ‘The drive for IGR, Internally Generated Revenue, must no longer be devilish resulting in more Draconian Democracy. This is the time for ‘change’ in the way government treats its people. The people did not steal, government agents did’

     

  • Re: Questions from Nigerians for PMB

    SIR: Mobolaji Sanusi’s piece on why the president is slow in appointing Chief of staff, Secretary to the Government of the Federation and delaying in the selection and presentation of his ministers to the National Assembly is well posited but untimely.

    The eagerness behind the asking of these questions can be  understood from the point of view of the unarguably high hopes of the electorates who invested their votes in. causing change in governance so that the challenges that have plague this country  can start to be fixed differently without delay.

    There is definitely a thin line between the personal virtue of the president and his performance which is not an end in itself but a means to achieving the end of honest, effective and efficient service delivery. In the circumstance in which the APC has found itself as a result of reward expectation fight-back,  which was never envisaged, it has been difficult to send the list of ministers already selected to the National Assembly which presently is divided against itself. With the appointment of people into the principal offices of the two chambers of the National Assembly, against the zoning formula sent to the assembly by the party and barring any reconciliatory concession to vacate already filled offices, there will be a need to readjust the ministerial list in consideration of the unexpected emergency. Unless the party and the president know those who will finally be retained in offices or those that will thread on the path of party discipline and yield position from their already occupied positions, there cannot be a standing list of ministers because there will be need to balance the selection of ministers already selected, so as not to over concentrate appointment in a zone while others are denied opportunity.

    As it is now, the president would seem to be combining diplomacy with conciliation to make peace the cornerstone of all action he might intend to take to prevent this from happening. This obviously is the main reason why all the appointments mentioned in the questions are being delayed. Those who have shared position in the Houses come from certain geo-political zone and need to be balanced with appointments to other zones when the party is sure that no further changes would be made in the list of those appointed. All these have made it impossible for the appointments to be made in just 30 days. The president with his endowment of honesty, courage, passion, and commitment to deliver on promise can never be confused. He knows the direction he wants to go and understands what his party mantra of change stood for in the life of the people hence he cannot afford to offer excuses for failure.

    The President is too experienced and exposed to be misdirected when talking about fixing the problems of   16 years of unproductive, fraudulent and clueless government of the PDP.

    Reasonable Nigerians know that kick-starting a good government should follow on the foundation of due process built over the rubble of the old order left behind by the PDP and need not be rushed in other not to play into the waiting hands of the same opposition that is bent on discrediting the new government on every step it takes to expose the government and present it as a non-starter and inexperienced.

    The President needs not be stampeded into taking actions at the prompting of the PDP which has been thoroughly discredited by its own failings in strong leadership and good governance.

    Granting the desired patience, it is certain that Nigerians within a short period of time will start seeing, feeling and enjoying   the positive effects of the efforts presently being made by the president to reposition the country and re-order its priorities especially  when the teething problems being encountered in the National Assembly is finally resolved.

     

    •Comrade Mashood Erubami

    Ibadan, Oyo State.

     

  • Why PMB is right to hasten slowly

    Why PMB is right to hasten slowly

    Last week I promised to publish more of the responses to my column of June 17 on the controversy that has trailed Dr. Bukola Saraki election as Senate president, a controversy that does not seem about to go away or even subside so soon. Accordingly I have devoted about a third of today’s column to some of those responses.

    Before then, however, some words about President Muhammadu Buhari’s seeming slow speed of decision making and his orders to the country’s service chiefs on June 12 to dismantle the military checkpoints that had riddled our highways and towns.

    First, the military checkpoints. In the last four years, travelling on our highways and commuting within our towns had become a nightmare, especially in the North where the checkpoints had been more prevalent. They had, on average, nearly doubled travel time within and between towns, had become avenues for extortion of travellers and had occasionally led to the harassment, maiming and even killing of those who dared resist such extortions.

    The trade off was supposed to be at least the curtailment of the movement of Boko Haram personnel and their arsenal. Their abduction of Chibok girls two years ago and their frequent bombings of soft targets – schools, churches, mosques, markets and the like – clearly exposed the ineffectiveness of these checkpoints. Indeed, far from securing society from such attacks, the checkpoints constituted potential killing fields; it was a miracle that it apparently never crossed the twisted minds of the insurgents to explode bombs in the massive traffic go-slows and hold-ups caused by the checkpoints. One shudders to imagine the level of human and material destruction that would’ve resulted therefrom.

    However, for some inexplicable reasons, former President Goodluck Jonathan rejected all entreaties, including those from some ex-military heads of state who obviously knew a thing or two about national security, physical or otherwise, to dismantle the checkpoints. It was as if someone somewhere was intent on inflicting suffering and pain on Nigerians under the guise of keeping them safe from Boko Haram.

    Some people have argued that without the military checkpoints things could’ve been much worse. This is not impossible but the argument is more speculative than factual, given the limited military capacity of Boko Haram, even compared with our hitherto seemingly out-gunned army.

    President Buhari may have seemed slow in decision making, but on this issue of military checkpoints, his orders to dismantle them within a month of being sworn in could hardly have been prompter – and more right; if nothing else, it is bound to drastically reduce the cost doing business in the areas affected and lift the terrible trauma of siege mentality the checkpoints had inflicted on people.

    All of which takes me back to the first issue of the president’s seemingly slow speed in decision making. Nothing captures this better than a caption story in The Guardian last Sunday. In what is potentially an award winning piece of photo journalism, the newspaper devoted half of its front page to a beautiful picture of a lone tortoise crawling across the huge, but at the time apparently empty, forecourt of the Aso Villa with the bold caption “Slow And Steady Wins The Race.”

    Few readers would miss the newspaper’s sarcastic but subtle dig at the president. And as if to agree with it, on the same day, the Daily Trust on Sunday, whose stable no one can accuse of being an enemy of the president, published an editorial which clearly suggested it is unhappy with the speed of his governance.

    “We urge President Muhammadu Buhari,” the newspaper said in concluding its editorial, “to immediately appoint an SGF (Secretary to the Federal Government), appoint a full complement of personal staff and nominate ministers without further delay.”

    I agree with Trust that he should appoint the SGF and his full complement of personal staff without further delay. Indeed he should’ve done so from day one, especially as he has had close aides who possess the requisite skills, integrity and loyalty for the jobs and have done similar jobs for him long before he entered politics in 2003.

    However, I disagree with the newspaper and those who share its sentiments that he ought to nominate members of his cabinet immediately. By implication, the president does need a cabinet to deliver on his promises. But nothing in the constitution says there is a deadline for constituting it. Of course, doing so should not take forever. At most it shouldn’t take more than his first hundred days in office.

    In that case the man still has about two more months to go. If his current pace looks too slow to meet his 100-day covenant with Nigerians, I think it is because, as Nigerians, we seem too much given to drama. It is also because we underestimate the depth and scope of the mess which the hitherto ruling PDP had made of Nigeria in the last 16 years.

    In the lead editorial of its June 20th edition, The Economist of London said Buhari’s coming to power is an opportunity for Nigeria as “Africa’s most important failure (to) at last come right.” In that same edition, the newsmagazine carried a 16-page special report with the president’s picture on its cover captioned “Opportunity knocks” on how to get it right this time.

    Opportunities like this come only once in a long while in the life of a nation. It is therefore better and safer for the president to err on the side of caution than rush into judgement and risk getting it all wrong. One hundred, even 30 days may be too long to pick one’s closest aides, but it is certainly not too long to put together a team competent and sincerely committed enough to do the heavy lifting that should turn this country around from the mess it is in.

     And now to the Saraki controversy

    Sir,

    Much as I share some aspects of your analysis on Saraki in The Nation of June 17, the last paragraph was off the track. In eight years, Saraki transformed Kwara in the areas of urban facelift, education, agriculture and roads.

    Olatunde Ayodabo,

    +2348033604983.

    Sir,

    You got it right when you said “Saraki served himself more than he served society.” You only forgot to add that he ruined Societe Generale Bank and the bank’s customers’ businesses. He has ruined so many things in Kwara. Now, who will deliver the 8th Senate from being ruined by him? Only time will tell.

    Leke Adeyemo

    Ilorin. +2348134616449.

    Sir,

    I don’t think it is fair to blame President Muhammadu Buhari on the recent election of Saraki and Dogara as President of the Senate and Speaker House of Representatives on the wrong assumption that he is the leader of the party. There is nowhere in the APC Constitution which says that the elected president or governor from the party shall be leaders of the party at national and state levels respectively. The constitution only says the president shall be a member of the National Executive committee and governors, members of state executive committee. Party chairmen are leaders of their party at all levels.

    Secondly, APC   senators and House members must learn to cooperate with PDP senators and House members for the smooth passage of their bills since they lack two third majorities in both chambers.

    Hussaini Dangaladima,

    Dan’iyan Zazzau Suleja

    +2348163422383

     

    Sir,

    I read your piece of Wednesday, June 17, 2015 titled “Saraki as President of the 8th Senate.”  President Muhammadu Buhari at 72 cannot be wrong when he said he was not interested in whoever emerged as the principal officers in the two legislative houses. He said and did the right thing and should have been fully backed and supported by the party.

    Instead, the party chieftains decided to act in their own wisdom but with what result? DISGRACE! They have since learnt the hard way and have been crying over spilt milk. They forgot the Yoruba adage which says that “Oroagba bi o se laaro, a se lale,” which means  “The saying of an old man, if it does not come to pass in the morning, will surely do in the evening”.

    The strong man of Lagos politics should be told in plain language that this is politics at the national level and not at state or regional level. APC should wake up. PDP is prowling around and roaring like a hungry lion looking for whom to devour. Let them put the episode behind, reflect on the lesson learnt and bounce back stronger.

    Ologun B. Freeman,

    Utako, Abuja.

    ologfreemania@hotmail.com

    Sir,

    There should be no soft landing for Bukola Saraki. The best option for him is to resign. The decisions of the party hierarchies remain sacrosanct. He must be told in clear terms that Nigeria Federation is not Kwara State that his family members see as their patrimonial estate.

    +2348073344775.