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Tag: President Buhari

  • President Buhari erred in his endorsement of Local Government autonomy

    President Buhari erred in his endorsement of Local Government autonomy

    This, in spite of the mess we daily see local government chieftains make of local council funds resulting in their being, individually, richer than their respective councils and with no meaningful impact on the lives of the communities that make up the councils.

    First, Re:  SENATORS CALL FOR SACK OF MINISTERS:

    1. Then what should happen to the Senators, if not simply guillotine them?

    They deserve to suffer the worst fate possible, given their dismal level of competence, performance and integrity- Ayo Omowumi.

    1. Saraki should address cost of governance which is not sustainable with, or without recession by removing the beam in his, and his colleagues’ eyes. The senate should lead in adjusting to these austere times. – Okan Adetunmbi.
    2. Fascinating, seeing alleged treasury looters knocking the anti-corruption war, claiming its sweeping approach was scaring investors away. Will these people, ever learn, purge themselves, disgorge all they have allegedly stolen and help Nigeria out of recession?

    Given the huge misuse to which all Nigerian military Heads of State  had put local governments during their time,  especially during the administration of the ‘allocation snatcher’, it would have tantamount to  a Pauline conversion to see President Muhammadu  Buhari do anything other than endorse local government autonomy. I had read, and casually dismissed his endorsement until something else brought me back to the need to urge him to re consider his position. That was the short birthday lecture Dr Olusegun Mimiko, the Ondo State governor, gave this past Monday, at the 70th birthday celebration of Chief Ishola Filani. Brilliant, tactical and, ever calculating, reasons the APC should waste no further time in putting its house in order ahead of the Ondo State governorship election, Mimiko gave an extremely poignant lecture, devoted mostly to restructuring but with emphasis on the place of local governments in a federal system. Given their historic misuse as earlier referred to, it should not be a surprise that all manner of potentates have grown around local governments, feeding fat and, cornering to themselves and their cronies, huge portions of the funds coming in from the federation account.  So massive is the level of corruption in local governments that during the administration of Dr Kayode Fayemi as Governor of Ekiti State, a traumatised elder statesman told me about how  certain categories of local government officials in the state were not only making a monthly contribution of not less than N1million, but  owned – as at the time- most of the hotels and gas stations in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, which information I promptly passed on to the governor and who, in turn  quickly fast tracked his government’s introduction of the e-payment system to check mate this mother of all corruption.

    Governor Mimiko was categorical in denouncing federal involvement in a matter that should, absolutely, be a state affair, drawing attention to how military Heads of State deliberately gifted the north an abysmally disproportionate number of local governments, using such nebulous parameters as some sterile land mass. To buttress his point, he  cited the specific case of  Kano State which, even after Jigawa State had been carved out of it , still dwarfed Lagos State, three or four times, in the number of local governments. You only have to mentally calculate how much money goes to each state monthly from the federation account, to fully appreciate the wicked, but deliberate intent of that treacherous act. However, in order not to get subsumed in the muddle  of  present day Nigerian politics, let me very quickly excuse Governor Mimiko and invite, far from the great beyond, for further elucidation on this matter, unarguably Nigeria’s foremost  political commentator ever:  the evergreen Uncle Bola Ige, legal luminary and former governor of Oyo State who wrote , mutatis mutandis, on what he captioned: “Man -Made Avoidable Local Government Troubles”, in his column in The Sunday Tribune of 27 April, 1996 from which I  shall quote at some length.  Wrote Chief Ige,  “anyone who has a good knowledge of the local government system, its history, theory and practice, not only in Nigeria but also in civilised countries, cannot be surprised at what is happening in various parts of the country since the Federal Military Government announced the “creation”of new local government areas. I personally have been shocked and pained by the violence that has been unleashed in some places and I am apprehensive that the tinder box is waiting to be ignited in some places where uneasy calm exists. There are modalities that govern local government systems all over the civilised world. The first is that a local government must be truly government at local level. In other words, the people of a given area must be allowed to come together, of their own accord, and in a spirit of agreeing to some sort of social contract, to run their local affairs. The community must of course be easily identifiable – usually they must be people of the same stock, or citizens who inhabit a town, or a village or a quarter as existed both during the colonial times and when we had regions.  That was also what happened when I was governor of the old Oyo State. Local government system was based on emirates where they existed or administrative units where there were no emirates in the north; in the west, it was based on the combination of the Obaship system and innate democratic inclinations of the peoples of Western Nigeria; in the East where the people were largely republican, the local government system was based on the clan. Unfortunately, the Murtala-Obasanjo Federal Military Government began the nonsense that has remained with us. Pretending that they wanted a better local government administration, they set up a Commission, headed by Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki. In my opinion, the recommendations of that commission were the worst disaster to have happened to local government system in Nigeria. For instance, it was from there that the idea of uniformity in size, scope and administration was introduced. I confess that I suspected a hidden agenda in the recommendations: in order to strengthen the administrative stranglehold of the emirates, all of Nigeria was advised to base its local government system on defined populations and elaborate administrative system. Also, the military wanted to be able to manipulate the local governments, and ipso facto, the entire country.  Fortunately, it did not work, nor will it ever work.

    Concluding, the legal luminary wrote: “In a federal set-up, the federal government must have nothing to do with the creation or running of local governments. Nigeria is the only federation in the whole world where the federal government decides how, where, and when a local government council must run. In all civilised countries, and in all democratic countries, it is the state or provincial or regional government that legislates on local government.”  As solution to the unending problems of local governments in Nigeria, “the federal government must hands off local government affairs.  State governments should formulate guidelines for the setting up of local government councils. They must be of universal application and not tinkered with. Once any community satisfies the criteria in those guidelines, they should have their own council. What a people or community always want is a community of interests-not handouts by the authorities. Only then shall we be saved from man-made avoidable local government troubles.”

    It will be describing President Buhari’s endorsement very mildly, indeed, to suggest that it is a huge surprise that a whole 20 years after Chief Ige made those Socratic suggestions, the president comes round, with his endorsement of local government council autonomy, obviously expressing his preference to have local councils set up as competitors with state governments which, the world over, has full and undiminished authority over them. This, in spite of the mess we daily  see local government chieftains make of local council funds resulting in their being, individually, richer than their respective councils and with no meaningful impact on the lives of the communities that make up the councils. In voicing this endorsement, President Buhari has the good fortune that, as my co-columnist, Olakunle Abimbola, recently put it: his ‘sheer moral authority, powered by his unchallenged integrity’  to thank, as  that forbids us from  accusing him of political opportunism as he made the remarks while receiving the leadership of  the Association of Local Governments in Nigeria (ALGON), one of those bodies that have perennially, unduly, profited from our wayward local government system even as the communities atrophy.

  • What is President Buhari doing with the economy?

    What is President Buhari doing with the economy?

    LET me start by asking an important question: who wants to kill racy introspection?

    There is a cacophony of voices telling the Muhammadu Buhari administration to close its eyes to the past; that given the enormous tasks that lie ahead, history and its consequences for our nation should be the least of the government’s preoccupation at this juncture.

    I disagree. Let us keep a fiery memory of the past so that we don’t repeat its mistakes. Look back, look ahead. The future must of necessity be built on the foundations of the past.

    The Conservative Party took power in Britain six years ago from Labour. Check the British press, they are talking about Labour 24/7, is anyone complaining?

    Japheth Omojuwa, one of Nigeria’s top three influencers seemed tasked in his patience reacting to calls that we must stop talking about the immediate past administration in this country. “People are still talking about who ran governments in 1865 you want us to forget those who left government last year? (Expletive)”

    Music icon, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who many agree was a philosopher disguised as Afro-musician taught in one of his songs that without knowing where you are coming from, you won’t know where you are going. Wise men say that the empty can doesn’t disappear by simply kicking it down the road.

    To avoid repeating the past mistakes, Nigerians must come to terms with what went wrong with the past, how bad were things, what was done wrongly, what the past government should have done, before we come to what needs to be done to right those wrongs. Believe me, episodes from the Jonathan era can fill books, and other possibilities such as courtroom drama thriller.

    Against this backdrop, I sought to hear our erudite Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun on where we are coming from, vis-a-vis the administration’s chosen path to recovery and accelerated growth. What is the administration doing to revitalize the economy? She spoke at length on the many measures being put in place, many of which are not glamorous. They of necessity come with pain. Why should Nigerians be asked to endure pains? Why should they be asked to make adjustments?

    The simple explanation is that the economy was broken, and just as they do the broken leg, you must bear the pain of fixing it. The current situation was caused by years of mismanagement and corruption.

    As explained by President Buhari again and again, trumpeted by Madam Adeosun and other senior officials, we solely relied on oil, the price of which was as high as US$140 per barrel. Government simply reticulated oil revenue through personal spending by corrupt leaders, wasteful expenses and salaries. This was done rather than investing in what would grow the economy. Economies grow due to capital investment in assets like seaports, airports, power plants, railways, roads and housing. Nigeria has not recorded a single major infrastructural project in the last 10 years. In short the money was mismanaged.

    In addition to failing to spend money on what was needed, no savings were made by Government unlike other countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Norway.

    To compound the problem, the previous government was borrowing heavily and owed contractors, and international oil companies. When this government took over we had accumulated debt back to the level it was before the Paris Club Debt Forgiveness.

    All these factors were building up to Nigeria heading for a major crisis if the price of oil fell. Nigeria did not have fiscal buffers to withstand an oil shock.

    The oil shock should and could have been foreseen.  These are matters that both the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II and Professor Chukwuma Soludo, both of them eminent former Central Bank Governors had occasions to warn the government of the day about, but they were clobbered. The dire warning was written all over the wall, but they were ignored by Nigeria’s economic managers.

    What should they have done?

    They should have had the courage and vision to do as the present administration is doing through the Economic Team, the Ministry of Finance under Madam Adeosun and the various agencies of the state to envision a better future by first of all fighting corruption. Look at what a civilian administration is today doing to the military, investigating their finance and accounts that the military could not do to themselves.

    See what the current administration is doing sanitize the huge salary bill by eliminating payroll fraud. So far, the federal payroll has been rid of about 40,000 ghost workers. More than eight billion Naira stolen monthly has been saved.

    We are also saving on wasteful expenses like First Class Travel and Private jets for official trips.

    The Federal Government is not limiting the reforms to the centre but forcing State Governments to reform their spending and build savings or investments.

    Government is also increasing spending on capital projects especially on infrastructure needed to make Nigerian businesses competitive and create jobs. The administration is at the same time blocking leakages that allowed government revenues to be siphoned into private hands.

    Currently, there is focus on key sectors (apart from oil) that can create jobs and or generate revenue such as Agriculture, Solid Minerals and Manufacturing. If these things had been done when the oil price was as high as US$140 per barrel, Nigeria would not be in the current predicament. We would not be suffering now if we had no cash reserves but we had regular supply of power, a good rail system, good roads and good housing.

    Now that the oil has fallen as low as US$28 per barrel, it is very difficult to do what is needed but they must be done to save Nigeria. There is no other way if we want to be honest.

    If PDP were still in power they would have continued deceiving people, by borrowing to fund stealing and wastage and the problem would have simply been postponed for future generations to face.

    There are many who say that this Government’s economic strategy is unclear whereas the previous government seemed well co-ordinated. I will make the confession that we, the officials hired to communicate government policies, that includes myself, have not done as well as we should have.

    The truth is that more than any other time before, there is a clear direction and strategy for achieving growth and development. Revisionists may not agree, but the truth of the matter is that the previous administration only had one issue, which was how to spend money (oil revenues and borrowed money).  As mentioned earlier this spending was focussed on the wrong things and even though the economy seemed to be growing it was not sustainable,  it was, as described by Minister Adeosun, a  classic “boom and bust”’ driven solely by the oil price.

    Unemployment was and remained high (never forget the NIS jobs  that exploited thousands of desperate graduates in a scam that was used to fund house purchases in high brow areas and claimed so many lives)

    Inequalities were growing (our then President boasted about the highest number of private jets when most Nigerians could barely afford to eat).Terrorism and social unrest were growing. Real development was lacking. As soon as the oil price fell, these vulnerabilities were exposed.

     From its records so far, this administration is trying to reset the Nigerian economy and ensure that it attains its potential and is diverse and resilient. We are doing this at a time when the global economy is in crisis due to the oil price collapse. Even rich nations like Saudi Arabia are experiencing problems

    The Government is people-focussed and wants the economy to grow in a way that will create a more stable future which is not dictated by world oil prices (over which we have no control). No more boom and bust (thanks Minister Adeosun).

    Nigeria wants to take responsibility for its own destiny, therefore our policies will ensure that Nigeria returns to growth in a sustainable manner. No more dependence on oil. Every part of Nigeria has a role to play in contributing to our growth. We will create an environment where people can thrive and where business can grow.

    To this effect, all relevant agencies have been reoriented to:

    • Focus government spending on infrastructure which will create jobs and opportunities for Nigerians across a number of sectors (not just oil).
    • Ensure that we reduce our reliance on oil by developing other revenue streams such as taxes, efficient customs collections and other government revenues.
    • Develop key sectors in which we have comparative advantage.
    • Encourage development of agriculture to ensure food security for our huge population.
    • Develop petro-chemical industry on the back of the oil industry.
    • Develop solid mineral extraction and
    • Develop light manufacturing to provide locally made basic needs and reduce importation.

    If you are an official of this administration and a mixer, that is someone who mingles with citizens high and low, a charge you are forced to defend is that this Government seems to be bringing austerity and suffering to the people. Blame not, Buhari.

    The current pain is due to the mismanagement of the past. What Nigeria is currently experiencing was inevitable. This government is simply being honest with the people instead of piling up debts and concealing the truth by pretending all was rosy. This government believes that Nigerians deserve to know the truth.

    People stole unbelievable amounts of money. The kind of money some of these ex-officials hold is itself a threat to the security of the state. Since it is not money earned, they feel no pain deploying just anyhow to thwart genuine and well-intentioned government efforts.

    Sadly, even that which was not stolen was wasted. Government coffers were left empty, with huge debts unpaid and unrecorded (this government is working to quantify the amount owed). Even the current high food prices can be traced to past deceit.  For example, the previous government purchased fertiliser in 2014, worth N65Bn and left the bill unpaid. In 2015 the suppliers could not supply fertiliser which resulted in a low harvest, shortages and high food prices. This government had to pay off the debt so that the suppliers could begin to supply fertiliser again.  Across Nigeria a green revolution is occurring as Nigerians are going back to the farms, from rice in Kebbi and Ebonyi to Soya and Sesame in Jigawa and Kano. At the same time Nigerians are looking inwards to identify commercial opportunities from agri-businesses.

    Most of our road contractors had not been paid since 2012, many of them had sent their workers away adding to the unemployment problem. This government has released capital allocations in the last three months that is more than the whole of 2015. In 2015 Nigeria spent a paltry N19Bn on roads, in three months we have spent N74Bn and we are already releasing more.

    In the transport sector in 2015, government spent just N4.2Bn; we have spent N26Bn with more to follow. We are starting a concession that will revive our old rail system for freight, whilst we build a new high speed rail system. Moving heavy goods by rail will reduce our transport costs which will reduce food prices and will save our roads from damage from heavy loads. Government will embrace the private sector through PPP, concessions and other collaborations to deliver services and infrastructure efficiently.

     Nigerians expected a lot from President Buhari and are right to have done so. Many feel disappointed. While much of this warranted, a lot more is arising from opposition politics.

    A man who has promised good things is being accused of failing to use the palm to cover the sun or that he is unable to stop the rain. Nigerians are right to be disappointed but they must direct their anger at the right quarters. The bad management and corruption of the past are firmly to blame.

    This government is fighting corruption. It is working hard to do things right and do them in a manner that will endure. No government has ever considered the poor like this one. Under the current budget, the administration devoted N500Bn for social intervention programmes for those who need and deserve support.

    There are also programmes for affordable housing with mortgages which will transform thousands from tenant status to homeownership.

    Any process that will endure, must involve some pain but things will begin to improve. There is always a time lag between policy and effect. That is why the bad effects of past policies are manifesting now. Similarly, the positive impact of the work being undertaken to fix Nigeria’s problems will soon begin to show and we will emerge from this period stronger, wiser and more prosperous.

    There is hope for Nigeria, a hope that was previously clouded by corruption, greed and lack of focus.

    Nigeria is starting over and everyone has a role to play. Look back, look ahead.

  • Concerning President Buhari’s order for oil exploration in the north

    Concerning President Buhari’s order for oil exploration in the north

    Whatever amount is to be spent now, prospecting for oil in the north, should, in my opinion, be considered a bargain.

    I Just like football does to Nigerians in general, President Buhari’s last week directive to the NNPC to commence oil exploration activities in the Benue Trough, in addition to his earlier order to the corporation to re-ignite its search for oil in both the Chad Basin and the Kolmani River area following the reported discovery of hydrocarbons by Shell in the area, has since concentrated the attention of critical segments of the Nigerian society. The directive has seen literally all the politico-cultural divides in the country as well as relevant professionals, weigh in, for or against. Not surprisingly, the 19 northern state governors have been sufficiently optimistic about oil production in the region that they have since hired a British firm through the auspices of their regional development company, the Northern Nigeria Development Company, to embark on oil exploration activities.

    Quite understandably too, interventions have been both politically and economically driven. To each of the Ijaw Youth Monitoring and development Group and the Urhobo Monitoring Development Group, the directive is ill-motivated, driven, as Kinsley Oberuruaria of the latter organisation said, by a strong desire ‘to annihilate the people of the region’ While Eric Omaleof the Ijaw Youth Council described it as a good initiative, he had no doubts whatever that the timing is wrong because of the prevailing situation in the oil industry worldwide, makes it ill advised. For that reason, according to him, the venture is economically unwise. While Muhammad Ibrahim, the National Publicity Secretary of the Arewa Consultative Forum, claimed complete ignorance of the directive, the Afenifere, whose two chieftains differed in their reactions, was more forthcoming. For Chief Seinde Arogbofa, Secretary-General of the highly regarded Pan-Yoruba Socio-cultural organisation, it is a move in the right direction as it is in accord with restructuring which the group has canvassed, like forever. Said he: “There is nothing wrong if they find oil in the north. That is why we are calling for restructuring. If that is Buhari’s own restructuring agenda, it is okay.” But not for the  organisation’s usually combative spokesperson, Yinka Odumakin, who sees it as a waste. Why? Because, 58 years  ago this year, a colonial Secretary of state divined that as a result of the north’s “ fears and dislike for the more educated southerners, if they were not economically bound to the federation, they would be glad to be quit of it.”  This, he concluded: “may explain the desperate search for oil in the north at a time oil is becoming worthless.”

    Much more than the political commentary, I am, however, more enthused by the more nuanced interventions by the oil, financial and economic professionals who weighed in and spoke to the issues involved. For Dolapo Oni, Head of Energy Research, Ecobank Capital, the move must have been informed by the need to reduce the reliance on the Niger Delta with a view to reducing the country’s vulnerability to attacks in the region. Good as it is, the ideal model, he says, should have been a concession, emphasising that NNPC could gather data and allow companies to do their own search. But, he continued, it may not be the best of times if we are dedicating the NNPC’s scarce resources to going beyond the 2D and 3D.”

    Abdullahi Bukar of Uquo Gas Field Development described the renewed efforts towards exploring for oil in the Benue Trough and Chad Basin as a very good development, hoping that ”a well-thought-out policy will be put in place because anything that will increase Nigeria’s oil and gas reserves is very welcome.” To Johnson Chukwu, CEO, Cowry Asset Management Limited, “the effort to diversify the nation’s oil and gas production is a good move, depending on the level of resources being committed to it.”

    And as is usual on the ekitipanupo  web portal, the subject generated considerable interest, attracting as at the time of writing this, not less than 25 posts. One of them, by a university lecturer, was targeted at the objections from those who spoke for the Niger-Delta region.  According to Dr Eniola, the Ijaw Youth Council that could not call their rampaging youths to order lacks the moral right to talk about how to diversify an economy they are trying everything to cripple. If the monies realised from cocoa and groundnut had not gone towards building the infrastructure for oil exploration in the Niger Delta, where will Nigeria be today? Continuing, he   admonished the Ijaw  Youth  Council to busy itself with  unravelling why the  six years of Ijaw presidency,  with the  billions of dollars in appropriations through duplicated ministries and intervention agencies, have not impacted on the ordinary Ijaw man nor on the entire Niger –Delta area. What he believes should now concentrate the mind of the average  Ijaw  person is the decimation of their area by Niger Delta sons and daughters, even elders,  who collected huge amounts of money in the name of  Niger Delta development but simply refused to invest in their homeland.

    If that was political commentary, not so Goke Omidiran, a geologist who commented as follows: “This is one development agenda that may have economic benefits for the nation.  I have been somewhat involved in my time in oil and gas exploration in Nigeria, including the Chad Basin.  Let me say first, of all, that this directive is  within  the president’s  powers and may be applauded if those who will implement  it would use their best business judgment to determine what steps to take and how far to go to achieve the goal. The advantage of finding oil is enormous when we think of what it promises – especially, its political implications on one hand and its economic benefits on the other.”  He would like to suggest the inclusion of the following processes:

    1) NNPC should take the road of opening bids for oil prospecting licences (OPL) from interested and capable parties, both local and international,

    2) NNPC should provide the exploration companies with the enabling environment including tax holidays and hefty rebates in area of customs and exercise and other relevant expenses.

    3) Instead of basing exploration activities in the subject areas on the same mindset as the Akata-Agbada Formation sequencing prevalent in the Niger Delta basin, new models should be developed to determine the oil and gas trapping mechanism rather than rely on the Niger Delta model.

    4) Finally, NNPC and the federal government must know when to pull the plug on the effort, should it end up  showing no prospects.

    In concluding, I would like to say that I see the directive as a win-win situation. I believe that any attempt directed at increasing our oil resources is worth the while since we are not obliged to sell the end product only as crude which would involve so much money building a lengthy pipeline infrastructure from the north to the sea ports located in the south. It can therefore jump start our manufacture of the many byproducts as NNPC did when I was personally buying polypropylene from them with Ms Nzeribe as the manager in charge. Geo-politically, I strongly believe that discovering oil in commercial quantities in the north will create for the country, a ‘balance of terror’,  as a greater part of the   agitations/criminalities in the Niger-Delta area are fuelled  solely by the availability of oil in the region. It is the reason, for instance, why Nigeria no longer has as much as a third of the electricity generating capacity it had at the beginning of the present administration. Those worried about the huge funding exploration in the north would involve should   equally  think  of the huge resources that  would be required to resuscitate the oil  facilities bombed out of existence by those avenging political defeat in addition to the colossal   amount of money that will go into the Ogoni land clean up, for instance. It should also be of some moment that in the case of everybody going his/her different ways, which we can only pray God forbid, a landlocked  north, with no oil source of its own, can be trusted to fight with everything until all oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta becomes history. Whoever has seen what has become of Southern Sudan would never wish that for our dear country. Whatever amount is to be spent now, prospecting for oil in the north, should, in my opinion, be considered a bargain. However, seized, as we all are, of  NNPC’S  historic, endemic corruption and profligacy, the  president  must ensure that more than an eagle eye is trained on the expenses on this huge and  open-ended  national  assignment.

  • Change for good takes time, Bakare pleads with Nigerians

    Change for good takes time, Bakare pleads with Nigerians

    ….Urges Nigerians to be patient with Buhari

    The General Overseer of the Later Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare on Friday urged Nigerians to be patient with President Muhammadu Buhari as he steers the ship of state.

    According to him, any change for good normally takes time.

    Bakare, who was the running mate to Buhari during the 2011 Presidential Election under the platform of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), spoke with State House correspondents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

    He met behind closed doors with President Buhari for about fourty five minutes.

    Bakare said: “I will like to appeal to all Nigerians that we should just excise a bit of patience. This change will not become chain that will tie all of us down. Change for good takes time and we should just exercise a little bit more of patience.

    “We trust that government is listening and the leaders are listening too and they will respond to the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians.” He added

    Speaking further on the change agenda of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bakare said: “When you are driving on a wrong direction, for example, you are going to Ibadan and you face Badagry and you get to Cotonu and you realize you have gone in the wrong direction for too long a time, then you turn back and make a U-turn, there will be some suffering you have to go through.

    “Pain is part of gain. No pain, no gain. The years of wastage and all that we have done wrong has finally caught up with us. All we are praying for is wisdom for this government to do things right and to do the right things. So that gradually, we can begin to come out of the woods,” he said.

    He said that it is too early to begin to judge the performance of the administration.

    “If there is anything I know about Mr. President, it is that he has a good heart. He loves this country and he wants the country to run well. But it takes time. I know we are all impatient and in a hurry and I trust we will come out of the woods.” He added

    Bakare declined to speak on the Budget padding controversy at the National Assembly, stressing that he is still studying the allegations.

    “I just return to the country last Friday. I am reading about it. I will make my decision when I have checked both sides. And I will definitely speak on that,” he said.

    When asked if the time has not come for the President to carry out cabinet reshufflement,  he said that it is left for the President to take the decision anytime he wants.

    “He knows what he has given them. For example, I have not given any appointment to anyone so I can’t judge their performance. But if there are yardsticks and standards given to them and if they have performed below par, definitely, the president would not mind at the right time to do those things.”

    On why he visited the Villa, he said: “I came to see the President and he is doing very well health wise. That’s all I came to do.”

  • As we adjust to a ‘post-petroleum’ reality

    As we adjust to a ‘post-petroleum’ reality

    More positively, others see the Okorocha Formula or Plan as an opportunity to create a big group of farmers from the pool of part-time civil servants released to serve themselves legitimately for two days a week

    One of the most visionary statements made by President Buhari since his coming to power recently is “we should plan our life as if we do not have petroleum.” It seems that his federal government has made efforts within its ken and competence to steer the country in direction of living outside the frame of a petroleum-driven polity and economy by insisting on revitalized agriculture, and exploitation of solid minerals, in addition to fighting corruption and creating a security system that can protect life and property. What the Buhari government has not addressed frontally and fully is whether it makes sense to do all these without weaning the country, particularly its elite, of the habit of overfeeding that petroleum stimulated especially in the era of dictatorship. But this is not the focus of today’s column.

    Today’s column is about efforts embarked upon by states to avoid going into receivership and what else the federal government can do to assist political leaders in most of the states to stay afloat economically and politically. With about 28 states owing arrears of salaries, pensions, and on remittances to pension funds, state governors no longer look as buoyant as they used to and the body language of many of them suggests lack of enthusiasm and even fear of the people they are supposedly governing. After receiving one bailout and then sharing N90 billion loan facility from the central government, the situation of states vis-a-vis regular and prompt payment of workers’ salaries has not improved to a point to make governors visibly less apprehensive of their constituents. Many of them are trying their hands on what they see as creative financial management in the midst of fiscal and financial adversity.

    One such effort is negotiation with workers and labour unions to prevail on civil servants to accept 50% of their regular salaries until the situation improves for such states. For example, Osun, Nasarawa, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, and Imo are some of the states making efforts to avoid denialism and to frontally deal with an uneasy situation. Imo appears to be the most radical in its approach to a problem of underfunding that may go on for a long time, unless a miracle occurs by way of sudden phenomenal rise in price of petroleum.

    For example, Imo has proposed a part-time civil service that will allow public servants to work three out of the normal five days a week while lawmakers will remain fulltime legislators. Workers running this schedule are to be on about 60-70% of their normal salaries and benefits. Of course, critics of the Okorocha government are already pooh-poohing this proposal. It is being suggested that the proposal confirms the folk belief that there is nothing that civil servants do to advance the interests of citizens. Such critics say a civil service that has not succeeded sixty years after independence to provide electricity, potable water, good roads, security of life and property, proper sewage system for over 150 million of its citizens, etc might as well go on leave for ever until the country returns to another era of plenty from oil or solid minerals. Pro-labour pundits are reading riot acts to Okorocha for setting aside the state’s labour contract with civil servants while others are saying this is better than other options, such as mass retrenchment, early retirement with modest or no gratuity, or continuation of irregular payment of salaries that puts families, especially vulnerable children at risk physically and mentally. More cynically, some online commentators are applauding Okorocha for this proposal, which will allow civil servants to do legally and legitimately what they have always done at the expense of delivery of public good: buying and selling of new and used goods inside or in front of their offices. More positively, others see the Okorocha Formula or Plan as an opportunity to create a big group of farmers from the pool of part-time civil servants released to serve themselves legitimately for two days a week.

    Furthermore, with states realising that the options of bailout and loan from the federal government may not occur again, most states that have ignored their UBE funds for years are returning to this with a new plea: President Buhari to prevail on the National Assembly to waive the requirement of providing counterpart funding for release of UBE funds. But states need to be more forthcoming on this matter. Are they going to use the money for purposes other than they are meant for? Can states that could not provide 50% counterpart funding in the years of plenty suddenly pluck the discipline to use the fund for the purpose of improving basic education? Reducing counterpart funding to 10% and insisting on transparent accounting should be generous enough.

    These two proposals by majority of the states raise some important issues about the country’s federal system. If proper care is not taken, state governors may be nudging the Buhari government in the direction of more unitarism than they are willing to acknowledge. A system that ideally should have been about shared governance and shared sovereignty may soon become a worse form of superordinate/subordinate relationship between national and subnational governments than it is now. The signs are not there for a quick fix to the problem of a weak economy that has come upon the nation via loss of revenue from petroleum and a legacy of poor political and economic planning and hitherto uncontrollable venality of those in government. Solid minerals and even agriculture are not likely to change the funding situation for another year and petroleum price may even get worse. It will be difficult for the federal government to take loans from China and the World Bank to be doling out to states as loans, bailout, or special funds to pay salaries and provide security votes to governors.

    Yet, both federal and state governments must recognize the danger in having millions of citizens going to bed hungry every night, given what happened in Tunisia a few years back. It is, therefore, significant that President Buhari has re-committed its government to fighting waste, in order to leave more funds for important national and subnational needs, in addition to fighting corruption with all vigour and recovering money from thieves of state.In terms of cutting cost, the decision to decrease the number of embassies abroad is not a bad idea. But deeper reflection has to go into deciding which Nigerian embassies should be closed. Just as the Oba of Ilawe (a seasoned diplomat himself) has aptly observed, it is not strategically right to close the country’s embassy in the Cameroon. Cameroon is perhaps the most strategically important country to us in the Central African region, for obvious reasons: a huge Nigerian diaspora in that country; a country that citizens in Cross River have concern about since the loss of Bakassi to that country; and a country with a long border that adjoins many Nigerian states. It is also not right to close the embassy in Brazil.

    Brazil is a country with a large Nigerian diaspora: precolonial and postcolonial. With majority of over 75 million Brazilians who trace their origin to Nigeria; a history of Brazilian returnees making substantial contribution to Nigeria’s modernization, particularly in Lagos, and as South America’s leading economy and perhaps most technologically advanced society in the region; Brazil is not a country that should not have Nigeria’s diplomatic presence. If there is any country that has similarities with Nigeria in terms of vegetation, cash and food crops farming, Brazil is one such country that can provide models for our new agricultural revolution. Brazil is also one country that can be of help to Nigeria in its bid to be a tourist center. Brazil is a successful tourist nation in the tropics and one with a huge population of potential visitors to Nigeria to cement existing relationship between the peoples of both countries. Brazil, like Sudan, has very close ties to Nigeria that we should continue to nurture with diplomatic presence.

    Undoubtedly, Nigeria needs to do more than juggling, such as states wanting to turn UBE funds to unconditional transfer and federal government’s needing to close some embassies to cut cost and the culture of waste that had hobbled the country for decades. The word that many people hate to hear: Restructuring may not be as odious as it sounds, if those who believe that the country’s past is better than what it can become and those who believe that a country, particularly a democratic one must be willing to re-invent itself agree to do proper cost and benefit analysis of restructuring, economically and politically.

  • What inspired President Buhari’s security architecture?

    What inspired President Buhari’s security architecture?

    Is it true that these herdsmen are now to be guarded by members of the Nigerian Civil Defence? Can President Buhari truly approve that public funds be spent on this lucrative private business?

    I write this piece with considerable pain not only because, as happened to Professor Segun Gbadegesin, some admittedly serious readers could, albeit, set out to ask one totally illogical questions if they read you questioning positions you took before the last Presidential election – in Gbadegesin’s case, he had  argued,  quite rightly, that you could not reasonably postpone a democratic election just so you could debate restructuring – but because I remain convinced that  contestant Goodluck Jonathan was no viable option to APC’s Muhammadu Buhari  even as President  Buhari has since committed what I consider some major gaffes.

    Trust some people, therefore, to say: serve you right.

    Once convinced that Buhari was Nigeria’s only reasonable choice – no thanks to the country’s parlous circumstances occasioned by 16 unbroken years’ of PDP’s planless-ness and indescribable corruption – all I had to do to canvass contestant Buhari first, as APC’s ideal Presidential candidate, and subsequently Nigeria’s best, was to present to Nigerians, in fine detail, how low PDP had taken the country. I did not limit this to my opinion alone. Rather, I leaned on the views of some highly regarded elder statesmen like Ambassador Dapo Fafowora and that of some young Nigerians whose future the PDP was unashamedly mortgaging. I did this in a trilogy of articles which ran on these pages between 19 September – 30 October, 2014 and was captioned: Periscoping APC’s Ideal Presidential Candidate 1 – 3.

    In addition to presenting a foretaste of what the EFCC has subsequently shown the world of a viscerally corrupt PDP, I also took the opportunity to state the unique selling points of candidate Buhari which made him indisputably preferable to his main opponent in the election. It may be pertinent to mention that most of the challenges President Buhari is faced with today, sans some of his appointments, are all legacies of PDP’s 16 years’ stranglehold on the country. As I will show below in quotes from the referenced articles, Nigeria generated more megawatts of electricity in 1999 than it does today. And that was after the Obasanjo regime claimed it spent 16 billion dollars on power. That 27 states out of 36 cannot pay salaries today must be put squarely at the feet of both President Jonathan and Diezani, his Petroleum Minister, who, between them, ensured that billions of crude oil money was never paid into the federation account and the fact that Boko Haram became a sinkhole, as well as a ferocious terrorist organisation, must be hung on military officers who decided to steal funds meant for arming our soldiers against the well-armed bandits. It is therefore, not only funny but ludicrous, seeing people, who literally stole Nigeria blind, criticising President Buhari for our current circumstances.

    Writing in his column in The Nation of Thursday, September 25, 2014, the highly regarded Ambassador Dapo Fafowora clinically dissected one of the evil consequences of PDP’s screaming corruption.  On why Nigeria is no longer respected at the international fora, he wrote:  ‘It is because of the widespread corruption in Nigeria which has continued to undermine economic and social development. Virtually all the state institutions, including the executive, legislative and the judiciary, have broken down completely. The other day the Chief Justice of the Federation was reported as complaining that the judiciary was rotten, with many judges openly taking bribe to distort justice.” The bench too, he went on, is believed to be equally corrupt. Quoting a columnist with The Nation, I wrote: As  Gbogungboro  of The Nation  reminded us this past week, no thanks to the PDP, Nigeria is now one of the foremost contributors to poverty in the world and , according to  him, quoting from  a World Bank Report,  Nigeria ‘will by 2030,  be one of  the main contributors to global poverty’.  On the   Human Development Index  which  is a measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development, Nigeria has, since 1999 occupied the lowest of the three categories of  high, medium and low, placing between 147 -182 in company of lowly countries like Djibouti, Lesotho and Swaziland. Nigeria actually currently ranks 158.  Rather than deal decisively with corruption, PDP prefers to romance it, serially dropping corruption charges against its members”.

    In contrast to the PDP record,  however, it was all thumps up for candidate Buhari about who Fola  Aiyegbusi, a young Nigerian patriot wrote as follows: “Today in Nigeria, General  Buhari stands out as an epitome of incorruptibility, very  much unlike the rest. As Head of State  between  1983- ‘85 , his  government  gave a monthly account of  crude oil lifted, how much it was sold for, and what  government was going to do with the revenue generated . As a Military  Head of State, he  was not obliged to do it  but because of  his  innate  transparency  and  that of  his Chief of Staff, General Tunde  Idiagbon,  they  opted to lead by example. Today under a PDP administration, reports of unremitted oil revenues are legion. Rather than openness in the Nigerian extractive industry,  it is corruption galore  and  we now daily hear  of millions of barrels of  stolen crude oil in spite of sweet heart , multi-billion  pipeline  security contracts awarded  to  some of the president’s  Ijaw  compatriots.

    About the most fascinating testimony to candidate Buhari’s integrity would, however,  come from a distinguished, elder statesman, Chief Oladeji Fasuan, a retired Permanent Secretary, who  quoted on page 337 of his book:  ‘SCALING ACCIDENTS OF LIFE , a letter  he addressed to Governor Fashola of Lagos  on 1 June, 2011.  The letter read as follows: “Dear Governor, during the last elections, I voted for a non-existent Buhari/Fashola ticket. Some of my friends (notably Afe Babalola SAN) laughed at me. I pity them because until there is, a Buhari/Fashola ticket, or something containing the characters of these two men, Nigeria will continue to tumble and stumble till we get the right national leadership. Know what these two represent? BELIEF, COMMITMENT, RAW DETERMINATION plus CAPACITY, WILLINGNESS and TRANSPARENCY”’.

    Now to the crux of this article. If my views about President Muhammadu Buhari have been so well attested to by distinguished Nigerians, young and old, what led him to appointing a literally all North/Muslim heads of Nigeria’s security agencies? I am personally too scandalised by the appointments to include them here. I also fear they could go viral, which, for me would be counterproductive.  That said, why has President Buhari not conclusively dealt with the murderous Fulani herdsmen question particularly given that he is already on record as saying that these are foreigners, all the way from Libya, who had been shedding so much Nigerian blood without a single one of them arrested even when they attack in numbers? Is it true that these herdsmen are now to be guarded by members of the Nigerian Civil Defence? Can President Buhari truly approve that public funds be spent on this lucrative private business? Being Fulani himself, and in the business, how does he expect Nigerians to see this especially as none of the herdsmen had even been taken to court to answer to the grievous charge of murder? At the last count, states like Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa, even Ekiti, have collectively lost over a thousand lives to these outright predators.  Even as tough as things are for Nigerians today, and even though a negligible few have called for a return to the era of unmitigated corruption, President Buhari is celebrated, at home and internationally, for his anti-corruption war. Nigerians are with him in this titanic battle against corruption.  But it was not for nothing that Igbos met, upper week, to tell all and sundry that they are an integral part of this country and would not stand aloof to be trampled by any other Nigerian ethnic group.  Fortunately, Presidential spokesperson, Femi Adesina, has always spoken glowingly about this administration being a listening one. It will therefore be gratifying to see President Buhari rethink these burning issues.

     

  • On President Buhari’s fight against waste in government

    On President Buhari’s fight against waste in government

    The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission should be re-invented to do proper cost benefit analysis before allocating funds to politicians and civil servants, if waste is to be curtailed and equality and social justice are to be achieved

    Just a few days ago, President Buhari reaffirmed his commitment to fighting not just corruption but waste in government. Given the alarming nature of cases of political and bureaucratic corruption, it is understandable that the presidency, the media, and even the citizenry seem to have focused more on corruption than waste control. Yet wasteful spending of the common wealth of the country is believed by many to have the capacity to raise eyebrows of the average citizen, if as much information about the disproportionate share of the nation’s resources passed to political appointees and public servants has been available to citizens as the volume of information about graft.

    Waste as attempts to squander or use resources carelessly has been a part of our country’s governance culture for a long time. It just got worse with time as more resources accrued to the nation’s treasury from sale of petroleum. Generally, knowledge of waste in government and by government officials—policymakers and civil servants—falls into two types: one is open to the general society through government policies and the other is popularised in the informal media in the fashion of urban folklore. However, both types have basis in the reality of what accrues to politicians and public servants in every state of the federation. The first type is illustrated by periodic acknowledgement by governments since 1966 of existence of ghost workers in government employment while the second is captured in urban stories about what is generally hidden from the public, such as conjectures about the income of lawmakers.

    Variants of the first type is as old as colonialism in the country. In the days before independence, persons serving in the colonial service from the United Kingdom took all sorts of allowances that included Bush or Inconvenience allowance for leaving their country or leaving Lagos or the provincial headquarters in which they served for short assignments in other towns and villages. Expatriates in colonial government even earned more money than their Nigerian counterparts doing similar jobs. The policy about gratuity in addition to pension started during the colonial era as a way to thank members of the Civilising Mission that came to serve the natives.

    Our own leaders at independence adopted and eventually added to such benefits, having been convinced that they were the new white masters over their people and thus deserved special privileges. British colonialists were not under any obligation, as they were at home, to do proper cost and benefit analysis of any policy they made in respect of their compensation. It was assumed that leaving the comfort of Britain to work among the natives carried a lot of risk and hazards for which they must be properly compensated. This was the formation of the Nigerian political and public service elite, a special group of citizens that had to be pampered disproportionately for the work they do, regardless of the cost-effectiveness of such benefits.

    I still remember when I started as a young clerk in the Federal Office of Statistics in Obalende in 1963 and had to be transferred later to the Ibadan office in Mokola. I was asked by the accounts officer in Lagos to list what I needed to carry to Ibadan on the train. I told the man, “just my box.” He laughed and said that to compute my entitlements profitably I should have a few things.When I received my allowance for my train ride to Ibadan, I was awarded money for bicycle, boxes, and many other things I cannot remember now. Counting the money in the envelope, I looked puzzled and the man in the cash office reminded me that that was the benefit of going to school to qualify for such jobs.  Elite or those being prepared for that status had to dress differently from other people in the country; they had to eat more extravagantly than them as illustrated by serving undergraduates then a quarter of chicken on Sundays when an entire family had to make do with one chicken. Grooming the elite in Nigeria after independence was on the model of the expatriate coloniser. The post-colonial elite was organised and nurtured till this day to illustrate exploitation of the many by the few.

    Since the example of structure of compensation for colonial administrators, Nigeria had not had time or reason to rethink and adopt rational cost and benefit approach to compensating its politicians and public servants, particularly those considered to be special by the compensating agency which invariably include those who also receive the prizes of being special citizens. For example, our lawmakers’ access to outlandish benefits that set them apart from others is a bastardisation of the remuneration system inherited from colonialism. How else does one explain wardrobe allowance for men and women in the legislature, special allowance for houses, cooks, drivers, domestic assistants, etc., given the fact that many of such lawmakers did not even have any respectable livelihood before they were selected to contest elections? What makes the job of lawmakers in the NASS any more rigorous than the job of medical doctors in our hospitals? In terms of outcomes, what indicates that the lawmakers add more value to the society than teachers of mathematics in our colleges and universities?

    Extravagant compensation of people in the public service is not only in terms of cash compensation. For example, the new IGP implied in his complaint against his predecessor for vacuuming 24 cars that four cars should have been enough for anyone (meaning retiring IGP) to appropriate as he or she leaves office. Urban folklore is also overflowing with stories of many governors and their deputies being entitled to one two houses built for them after leaving office and three or four cars provided for them periodically free of charge. Even local government chairmen are believed to take with them cars bought for them to use while in office. Urban folklore also tells stories of governors and deputy governors who take with them the furniture provided for them while in office, to tide them over before they receive the new ones for their new homes built for them from public funds. Should anyone be surprised that lawmakers are asking for similar perquisites?

    Even as we speak, former ministers and members of the legislatures who have been paid generous severance benefits, after failing to be re-elected or re-appointed are still going around with three or four police escorts in a country where police-citizen ratio is more than 1 to 1000 citizens. Worse still, even ministers under Obasanjo and under former military dictators are still accompanied by policemen in a country that is not at war. Retired senior civil servants are still receiving free diesel to power their generators as part of non-cash gratuity for donating their talent to the nation.  Many ministers and top civil servants were rumoured to have complained about Buhari’s austerity measure regarding restricting our top men and women in politics and bureaucracy to travelling in business class, instead of the first class that they had been used to. Although all of these may not come under corruption, they are certainly graphic illustrations of a culture of waste that favours the elite while their counterparts in public service not considered special are quickly forgotten after send-off parties.

    Of course, feudalisation of the economy and polity (despite constitutional avowal of equality, equity, and equality to all citizens) through over compensation of political officers and bureaucrats would not have happened if there had been no huge flows of petroleum to make such irrational compensations easy for policy makers. Whatever rents political leaders—military and civilian—were able to collect was always enough to justify policies designed to pamper a few members of the post-colonial feudal class all over the country, for as long as the concept of their special status is made difficult for non-elite members to contest.

    Now that the source of easy funds is dwindling fast, and President Buhari and his party have reaffirmed their commitment to create a just society and reduce poverty, there is no better time for the president to re-commit to bringing waste or squandering of national resources without any consideration for cost-effectiveness, like corruption, under the radar for reform. The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission should be re-invented to do proper cost benefit analysis before allocating funds to politicians and civil servants, if waste is to be curtailed and equality and social justice are to be achieved.

  • EDO 2016: Buhari will not rig election for APC

    EDO 2016: Buhari will not rig election for APC

    All Progressives Congress ,  Edo State chapter has assured the people of the state that President Mohammadu Buhari does not believe in electoral fraud and will therefore not help anyone to rig election no matter his stake in the contest .

    Comrade Godwin Erhahon , State Publicity Secretary said Leaders of All Progressives Congress in Edo State should therefore humble themselves and work hard sincerely if they truly hope to win September 10, 2016 governorship election.

    The State Publicity Secretary of the Party  gave the assurance in reaction to an appeal made to President Buhari by PDP leadership at a rally in Auchi that the President should allow level playing field for all parties.

    Comrade Erhahon therefore advised the gold-diggers in APC who are refusing to make peace with those they maliciously and viciously offended during the intrigues that proceeded the June 18, primaries, hoping ignorantly that incumbency factor at federal level would sail them through.

    “As one who has been with President Buhari since the beginning of his political struggle in 2003, I can vouch for him that his anti-corruption fight is not hypocritical.

    “He will never encourage electoral fraud nor push EFCC against anyone.

    Even as a popular but poor Presidential candidate of CPC in 2011, President Buhari rejected donations from some of his well-wishers whose source of income he didn’t trust.

    “Likewise, let no one think that the outcome of the forthcoming election will make or mar Chief John Odigie-Oyegun as National Chairman as it is now known to all that he is completely sidelined  and snubbed in the entire  process.

    “There are signs already that the Binis who are his home community with about fithy-three percent of voters in the State may not allow him take part in the campaign for those who derive pressures in pulling down Benin leaders.

    “The only solution is for President Buhari himself to intercede and pacify the people of the great Benin Kingdom before it is too late. The President should not expect mad men to heal themselves. “

  • President Buhari’s appointments and the federal character concept

    President Buhari’s appointments and the federal character concept

    Not since Abacha has the North so completely dominated all the three arms of the Nigerian government.

    The amalgamation, by fiat, of the Southern  and Northern parts of Nigeria was done based largely  on  a 1914 letter from Lord Lugard to the Secretary of State for the Colonies part of which read as follows: “For some time it has been realised that the total isolation of the North from the South cannot continue indefinitely. The North has no access to the sea except through the South. Its revenue is insufficient to maintain its administration and deficits have to be met by annual grants from the South and the imperial treasury. It is expected that the unification of the North and South would relieve the imperial treasury of the necessity of making such yearly contributions”.

    The amalgamation consummated, it became inevitable that genuine efforts be made to ensure that no part of the country is left behind. These efforts finally culminated in what  is known  as the  Federal Character Concept which, by “virtue of the provisions of the Third Schedule, Part I-C paragraph 8(1) of the 1999 Constitution, is to give effect to section 14 (3) and (4) of the Constitution which states that the composition of the government of the federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the Federal Character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that government  or in any of its agencies.”

    Given Nigeria’s multi-ethnicity, therefore, this is a constitutional provision no Head of State, who wants to succeed, will treat with levity.

    Unfortunately, these provisions have been observed mostly in the breach especially in federal ministries and agencies. For instance, I weighed in on this same subject on an occasion when INEC was becoming something of a Northern fiefdom. In: WHAT GAME IS THE NORTH UP TO  AT INEC? , The Nation September 23, 2012, I wrote: “Can Professor Jega, a celebrated academic and former University Vice-Chancellor, double as an ethnic bigot?  Is the ‘famous’ Professor Oba, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, working in tandem with Jega in his historic role  of a northern irredentist? Or is it as simple as the Federal Character Commission becoming comatose or completely blind and toothless wherever in the Nigerian polity the North wields an unfair advantage?”  To his eternal credit, Professor Jega subsequently effected some changes though not in the appointments which had become a ‘fait accompli, but in the membership of key INEC committees which were strategically put under the control of directors of Northern extraction.

    That ethnic control of federal agencies was one of the shenanigans Nigerians believed they would see discontinued in Buhari’s CHANGE administration .Unfortunately, we are daily seeing evidences of more of the same. So unfair, and very rampant has it become that I have come to the conclusion  that those around the President are not  being  honest  in letting him have the  feed backs  arising from his appointments  most of which have gone to the North with hardly any consideration for the Southern part of the country. It started with his earliest appointments  of  those generally referred to as  his kitchen cabinet  which many Nigerians believe  can very easily  conduct  its business in the  Hausa language.  However, if those around the President have decided to cocoon him, barring him from hearing  negative  comments, I have no doubt, whatever, of my having personally  earned the right to tell the President the truth. This is because, long before his party’s  Presidential primaries  which he won, I have cast my lot with contestant Buhari and was so gun ho in my support for him that Professor Tam David West,  his  very good friend and supporter , readily quoted me where I had written in an article that “Nigeria needed Buhari more than he needs Nigeria”. I did not limit my support for him to my own views only but went further to quote from my readers’ responses; views that were very supportive of his candidature.  I am sure I won him, not a few Nigerians who ended up voting for him at the election proper. While I am impressed with his anti- corruption war which, amongst other things, has exposed the Nigerian army as an institution far worse now than when it was described, by its one time Chief of Army staff, as an army of anything goes, the President has hugely disappointed with his very insular, North-centric appointments.  Or could it be a benign disrespect for the South  as alleged by those who claimed that the President is on record as  saying  that he should not be expected to treat Southerners who voted him 5% the same way as Northerners who voted him 95 %? I can only hope that this is more than a fabrication. His appointments are so unerringly disdainful of   the South that  one begins to think  that the President has been captured by a cabal – a Katsina Mafia – as Dr Junaid Mohammed  suggests, who is dictating who to appoint to where.

    Much as I hate the comparison, these appointments very uncannily mirror what we had during the reign of the goggled general when  you  couldn’t  name  four  Southerners in  the topmost  20  positions in the country. It is extremely sad that we could have in Buhari’s administration, anything  that bears this striking similarity to what  operated  under  Abacha.  It will cheapen this column to start listing the many appointments that are circulating in the social media, all going to Northerners as if the Federal Character Commission and the law setting it up have been abrogated. And the silence, from the Presidency to the allegations goes a long way to confirm their truism.  I will be very surprised if  the otherwise hardworking pair of  the President’s  spokespersons  can, in all honesty, claim not  to have read the NIGERIAN VILLAGE SQUARE, where it quoted TheNiche’ interview with Dr Junaid Mohammed, a one time supporter of President Buhari, wherein he  said, inter alia: “Muhammadu Buhari’s relatives are the ones dictating policy in Aso Rock for 170 million Nigerians,  thus  adding nepotism to the festering allegation of narrow mindedness levelled against the president who critics say surrounds himself with Northerners in running national affairs”. This is not one allegation in which silence will be golden because Mohammed went on to name at least seven relatives of the president who are the power behind the throne in the Villa – this in addition to the heads of ALL vital security agencies who are from the North.  Dr Mohammed did not shy away from naming them  and  describing their blood relationship  with the President. He even went further to say that two of these seven are already plotting the ouster of the Acting chairman of EFCC for touching somebody  they consider  a sacred cow. I sincerely hope they won’t dare Nigerians who are still largely supporting the President because they know he did not cause their suffering.

    A troubling consequence of these appointments is that whether in the Executive, the legislature or the judiciary, the dominance of  the North is so overwhelming  and  unmistakable.  Their conquest of the leadership of the judiciary is such that a Southerner can hardly be appointed the Chief Justice of the Federation in the next twenty years and that will be in addition to decades of their complete domination. Not since Abacha has the North so completely dominated all the three arms of the Nigerian government.  I have heard not a few Yoruba  say  that  we have been sold  cheap to the North and much as  I reply by saying that  we were  divinely sent  to save Nigeria  from President  Jonathan’s brood of kleptomaniacs ,  I think  I must say that  President Buhari  owes  those of us who literally carried him on our heads, even when all we relied upon was his integrity,  an obligation to  govern fairly  and with due  respect to all parts of the country.  That is the only way he can have a lasting positive legacy.  We, in turn, owe him a duty of  always reminding  him  that   the Federal Character provision has  not  been  edited out of the Nigerian constitution.

  • Nine key milestones in President Buhari’s first year

    Nine key milestones in President Buhari’s first year

    Senior Special Assistant to the President Media and Publicity, GARBA SHEHU, in this piece, writes on nine critical areas his principal recorded landmarks on his first anniversary

    TWELVE months ago, President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.  He came to power following the decisive victory of his party – the All Progressives Congress (APC) – over the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.  The victory ended the 16-year reign of the PDP.

    President Buhari campaigned on a promise to fight Boko Haram terrorism and secure the whole country, fight corruption and develop the economy to the point that it creates jobs for the teeming unemployed. The campaign message caught on very well with most Nigerians, against the desperate efforts of the Jonathan administration which deployed incumbency as tool for its own campaign.  They literally threw the kitchen at candidate Buhari.  The government media were used against the opponent.  The private media sold their outlets to a free-spending government, pouring out venom, hate speech, libel and defamation.

    The public treasury was personalised and its content poured into a campaign that shared out money for weapons, purchase to fight Boko Haram terrorism into the pockets of party leaders and their campaign staff.  The Army, which served as the glue that held the country as one through the years, was compromised to such extent that they claimed not to be aware that a former General in the Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari, had a secondary school certificate.  Of course, the certificate resurfaced shortly after he won the election.

    President Buhari came to office amidst massive hope and expectation at home and abroad, that here at last, was a leader who would stop the slide and lead Nigeria to progress, development and the realisation of her destiny. The mood all over Nigeria, the continent, and the world at the time he took over, was euphoric.

    In line with the promises, Nigeria, under Muhammadu Buhari, has begun to show that it will be a radically different country than one the world had become used to. Below are proofs:

     

     Promise of transparency, 

    accountability

    A promise kept by the President is of a government that not only preached, but also practiced transparency and accountability.  The President and the Vice President made public their assets as declared before they took office on May 29, last year.

    For the first time in the annals of our Executive-Legislative relations, this country had all ministers nominated, screened and passed without any casualty. What is important is that not a single incident was reported involving exchange of money in bribery of parliamentarians.  The President’s first budget, the 2016 Appropriations Bill was passed, though after some delays, without the usual bribery allegations that attended the passage of budgets.  The Senate and the House of Representatives, under its leadership must be proud of this happening under its watch at this time.

    Still on the budget, the President must take credit for the exposure of a particular kind of fraud known as budget padding, itself a known and ongoing practice until the whistle was blown by diligent ministers and parliamentarians. For once, the country has a budget, the 2016 Appropriations Bill,  that is rid of added billions ending up in the pockets of officials. By putting these changes in place, the government has established a model for transparency in public expenditure.

     

    Treasury Single

    Account (TSA) implementation

    The President has been trying to right the many wrongs he inherited, especially in terms of securing leaking government revenue or that was out right diverted to private accounts. President Buhari didn’t invent the TSA. What he did is to bring political will to bear on its implementation.

    By this, government has a snapshot at any given time of incoming revenue and expenditure following the centralisation of government accounts domiciled at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

    At the last count, the President said he has saved the country funds in excess of N3 trillion, which would otherwise have been wasted or shared out to officials at the end of the financial year.

     

    Austere government

    The President kept his promise to reduce superfluity in government administration by cutting down on the number of ministers, ministries and government departments.  The delay in the coming of ministers was first to reduce the number of ministries, and then initiate a new set of ground rules to stop the theft of public funds through systemic leakages.  Boards of directors will come only when the President is satisfied that agencies of government are brought in line with existing ministries structure and that a new foundation is laid, in all cases, to replace the rotten past that allowed a free-for-all when it came to dealing with public assets.

    Fighting insecurity,

    stabilising the state

    The first priority of this government as repeatedly restated by the President is security. “You must secure the country before you can manage it well”, is a classic statement the President has continued to repeat.  Where we stand on this today is best captured by the country’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice,  Abubakar Malami in saying that “the capacity of Boko Haram to hold territory has totally been decimated. Our focus now is on dealing with the remnants of their forces and re-focusing on the unfortunate humanitarian challenge caused by their activities.” This was achieved following the change in the leadership of the armed forces, the movement of the command and control centre to Maiduguri and realisation of how much can be achieved with greater international cooperation.  In this respect, the coming together of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Benin in the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTJ) under a centralised command had been helpful in forging a common, regional response to the Boko Haran threat.

     

    Waging a war against corruption, ending insuregency, impunity

    Nigeria is country of paradoxes. One in which the VIP steals an elephant and runs away with it but the poor man stealing a goat goes to jail for up to 30 years.

    The President has severally expressed his frustrations over the fact that known thieves, 419 kingpins fly over our heads in private jets and run around in Jaguars and Rolls Royces, as we wait endlessly for the law to take its course.