Security is too important to be left in the hands of security agencies and their political principals alone. That much is clear to every Nigerian now. Most of us are mere sitting ducks, unsure of whether we shall someday fall victim to the kidnapping gale terrorising the country from the desert to the coast.

When Muhammed Yusuf founded Boko Haram in 2002, the Nigerian government arrogantly thought that a mere police action would be adequate to stamp out the extremists and consign their madness to the trash bin of history. Two decades later, the fire of insecurity ignited by the terrorists has birthed new franchises across the length and breadth of Nigeria.

Collective War

The choice before Nigerians and their government is simple: We either join hands together to collectively fight the war against the various manifestations of insecurity or continue acting in our various tribal silos and perish together. Self preservation is the first law of nature. We must, therefore, cast aside the luxury of political partisanship and assist the authorities with ideas on how to defeat our collective foe.

In my view, there is no difference between Boko Haram terrorists and their cousins-in-crime, euphemistically called kidnappers or bandits. Anyone who unjustifiably takes the life of another person does not deserve to live. If we had applied that simple rule to the problem instead of speaking from both sides of the mouth and lionising the criminals, perhaps we wouldn’t have been supplicating on our knees today.

Our lethargy has emboldened the criminals to the extent that each gang now digs deep into its book of horrors to enact new ways of inflicting physical and psychological pain. Take the gut-wrenching case of Nabeeha Al-Kadriyar, a 400-level student of Biological Sciences at Ahmadu Bello University, who was kidnapped with her father and five sisters. The criminals released her father to go and arrange the payment of the ransom of N60 million demanded. While the man was still running from pillar to post in search of donors or benefactors, the bandits became impatient and killed Nabeeha with a promise to continue executing the other sisters one by one if the ransom was not promptly paid. She has since been buried.

The family and well wishers took to social media to try and raise the ransom. As usual, the traditional official statements and assurances by security agencies rent the air. The police are always “on top of the situation” while other security agencies always claim to be “on the trail of the fleeing criminals”.

If we have any respect for ourselves at all, it is about time we stopped our habitual perambulation. Enough of those heartfelt nonsenses we parrot instead  of taking concrete action to ensure that parents won’t have to be burying their children again. During the Buhari years, a circus was always made of every tragedy— “Mr. President has held a closed door meeting with service chiefs” — as if the holding of the meeting was in itself a great achievement.

No Ransom

The Minister of Defence, Alhaji Abubakar Badaru, recently frowned at ransom payment. “We all know there’s an existing law against payment of ransom”, he said. “So, it is very sad for people to go over the internet and radio asking for donations to pay ransom. This will only worsen the situation; it will not help. If we stop, over time the kidnapping will not be profitable and they will stop. It is not easy though but that is the law,” he said.

The minister’s statement was not well received by the grieving public. And that is putting it politely.

Let’s do things differently henceforth. As I have stated above, security is not an exclusively esoteric matter on which ‘bloody civilians’ are not allowed to comment. If I was the president of Nigeria, I would make use of as many patriots in the creative industry as possible. We first have to out-think the bandits before we can rout them. Agatha Christie, the English crime novelist, short-story writer and playwright, was never a ‘security expert’; but I wager she would have given any security chief a run for his money in scenario planning. If the government opens the space, they’d be surprised at how resourceful some ‘non-experts’  currently being overlooked could be.

Many knowledgeable people who have spoken out have wondered how kidnappers always manage to collect ransom without being detected by the police. In other cases where money is wired to the kidnapper’s bank account, why are the authorities still unable to lay ambush for the criminals or trace the owners of such accounts? It doesn’t take much thinking to come to the conclusion that there is collusion in some of the cases. It is not impossible that the terrorists share part of their loot with officers of the law.

In the dying days of the Buhari administration, the United Arab Emirate (UAE) handed over a list of over 200 sponsors of terrorism to the Nigerian government. That list is still being kept under wraps because, as some officials explained, investigations are still ongoing. President Tinubu has to read the riot act to those in custody of that list so that they can be made to face the law.

Also, those romancing terrorism under the guise of religion have to be told in unmistakable terms that the state can no longer tolerate their duplicity.

Mercenaries

Extreme diseases deserve extreme treatment.  We must not close our minds to the plan rolled out during the Jonathan presidency to engage some foreign entities to assist in winning the anti-terror war. The truth is that there are several mercenary groups now called private military companies (PMCs) which play an ever-increasing role in armed conflicts. They are not so anonymous anymore. And some are bigger than the combined armed forces of many countries.

Mercenaries are hired professional soldiers who fight for any state or nation without regard to political interests or issues. Employment of mercenaries could be politically dangerous as well as expensive. Nevertheless, the outsourcing of a number of basic functions which traditionally were carried out by national armies or police forces— known as the top-down privatisation— has blurred the borderlines between the public services of the State and the private commercial sector creating a dangerous “grey zone”.

PMC Wagner Group is a Russian state-funded private military company (PMC) controlled until 2023 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former close ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. Evidence suggests that Wagner has been used as a proxy by the Russian government, allowing it to have plausible deniability for military operations abroad, and hiding the true casualties of Russia’s foreign interventions.

Whether acting individually, or in the employ of contemporary multi-purpose security companies, the mercenary is generally present as a violator of human rights. On occasion he acts as a professional agent in terrorist operations; he takes part in illicit trafficking; he commits acts of sabotage, among others. But, most times, he gets the job done because as far as he’s concerned, he’s executing a contract. In our peculiar situation, mercenary operations are best supervised by the office of the National Security Adviser while policing is democratised to include state police and even local government police services.

Shields

In Iraq, the number of “private contractors” fulfilling a number of military and quasi-military tasks varies according to different sources and the manner they are counted, ranging between 20,000 and 100,000 persons working for PMSCs. The US uses contractors in order to shield its normal forces from the atrocities which inevitably attend such assignments.

So, President Tinubu can take his hard decision now. The goal is clear: rid our land of terrorists, bandits, kidnappers or other violent criminal elements by whatever name called. Anyone who routinely commoditises Nigerian lives and makes money from hostage taking or cold-blooded murder does not deserve to live.

A former Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has disclosed that the only financial benefit he receives from the government is N577,000 monthly pension as a former governor of Lagos State.

He also said that he is not receiving billions of naira from the federal government as speculated by some Nigerians, after serving eight years as the minister.

Fashola said this on Saturday while appearing as a guest on Arise TV programme, “Perspectives.”

When asked if there were financial benefits accrued to him as a former public servant, he said, “The benefit I get I think is N577,000 monthly pension from Lagos State. That’s all I get.

“So, in spite of all the stories that we got several billions of money (after leaving office), I’ve come out to deny that repeatedly. Well I don’t know how long it lasts, but all I know is that I get N577,000 per month consistently.”

When asked if there were other benefits from the federal government, he said “no.”

Responding to a question on if he could advise current public office holders, the former Lagos governor said he was not in the position to issue advice but admonished that they “should remain true and authentic” in their duties.

In September 2023, Fashola said he did not need to hold office for serving in President Bola Tinubu’s administration.

“I do not need a title to serve: the president can only appoint at least one minister, for example, from each state in which he has done that,” Fashola had said.

[DailyPost]

United States Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Molly Phee has given an insight into what Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will discuss with President Bola Tinubu in Nigeria next week.

Phee spoke at a teleconference.

The Secretary is also visiting Cabo Verde, Cote d’Ivoire and Angola.

He said the internal security challenges in Nigeria will be a major talking point between Blinken and Tinubu.

The U.S., he said, has had a longstanding security partnership with Nigeria, which has been battered by ISIS-WA, Boko Haram and bandits.

“We can never get away, though, from peace and security issues. So, when we are in Cote d’Ivoire, we’ll talk about the situation in the Sahel and coastal West Africa.

“As many of you know, Nigeria is dealing with a lot of internal security challenges. And Angola has played a really important role in trying to address and reduce the tensions in the eastern Congo.

“So those will also be topics I expect we’ll discuss,” Phee said.

The talks in Nigeria, he said, will also include artificial intelligence, an African seat on the Security Council, and Security Council reform. 

“So, there’s a lot to discuss, a lot of work we do together on the continent and globally, and that’s going to be the focus of the trip,” Phee said.

He added that the visit was a follow-up to last year’s U.S Africa Leaders Summit.

Phee said: “It’s in part a follow-up to the very successful U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit that we held in December 2022.

“The Secretary wants to go to the continent and demonstrate and assess the follow-up that the United States has undertaken to implement the commitments and topics we discussed during the summit.

“So, we’ll be looking at issues like our economic partnership, how are we promoting the development of commercial ties?

“We’ll be looking at our longstanding health partnership. We’re looking at areas that really excite the Secretary, particularly in food security. 

“We’ll be, of course, sort of furbishing our diplomatic constant engagement on so many issues, not only on the continent but in the global conversation.

“So, there’s a lot to do to show where we are, what we’ve done, and where we’re going.

“We think this trip will hopefully be very positive. A lot of times, the news out of Africa is negative.

“I think it can highlight the great capacity of the African people, particularly the youth.

“It can show really forward-looking types of engagements – for example, our partnership with Angola in outer space.

“And I think it will demonstrate the advances that Africans have made that will contribute to the continued progress on the continent.”

On the military bombing in Kaduna, Phee said: “I wouldn’t call it an attack.  The Nigerians have admitted it was an operational error that tragically killed people in Kaduna State.

“I think the Secretary will definitely talk about that with the president.

“The president and the leadership of Nigeria went to Kaduna State.  They acted with transparency, immediately acknowledged the horrific accident.

“They set up a reparation process and a transparent investigation. So, they have, I think, responded to that tragedy in a constructive way that will contribute to rebuilding confidence of the Nigerian people and the security services.

“And these issues of how to protect civilians when doing complex operations in a fraught security environment, which Nigeria is dealing with, the importance of promoting and protecting human rights, including religious freedom, and, again, sort of the best practices of accountability and transparency, are part of our ongoing dialogue with the government and with the security services.

“We host – we are hosting this week a Nigerian delegation led by the national security adviser, and we hosted about four hours of discussions here at the State Department yesterday, and that was a running theme throughout the day.

“So, I’m certain the Secretary will talk about it when he sees the president and the foreign minister.”

[TheNation]

A survivor of the explosion which occurred in Ibadan, on Tuesday, Mr Abiola AbduIsalam, said he jumped from a storey building on Dejo Oyelese Street, Adeyi Avenue, Ibadan, where the explosion happened, to save his life.

AbduIsalam  spoke with Sunday PUNCH at one of the wards of the University College Hospital where he was receiving treatment.

Recounting his experience, he said, “If I can recollect, I was inside Harrington Hotel around the area where the explosion occurred. So, immediately I heard the bang, I had to jump from the first floor of the building where I was with my friends.

“After I had landed the on the ground while still conscious, I tried to stand up and walk but I couldn’t, and it was then I noticed I had a fracture on one of my legs.

“While alone in that state for about three minutes, my friends who had escaped through the staircase, which I couldn’t easily locate because of panic caused by the explosion, searched around and found me still conscious, and swiftly brought me to this ward.”

In another development, Aare Onakakanfo of Yoruba land, Iba Gani Adams, on Saturday, condemned the Tuesday explosion in Ibadan.

Adams urged Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, to bring the culprits responsible for the explosion to book.

Adams, in a statement by his Special Assistant on Media, Kehinde Aderemi, described the incident as very unfortunate, and advised the government to unravel the perpetrators and bring them to book.

In another development, the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Tunji Alausa, visited the University College Hospital, Ibadan, on Saturday to empathise with victims of Tuesday’s massive explosion in Ibadan.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the minister and members of UCH management, led by the Chief Medical Director, Prof. Jesse Otegbayo toured the hospital to assess the impact of the explosion.

[Punch]

It was only one match, but it moved Nigeria several notches up the rung of victory at AFCON 2023.

The match against Cote D’Ivoire confirmed the often-held notion that a potential Champion can be identified when a team can win a crucial match even when it does not play brilliantly. That’s what happened on Thursday night.

The Super Eagles played with the attitude of potential champions – winning a most difficult match against the host team by deploying with very disciplined style of play, and, with a bit of luck, curtailed an anxious and determined Elephants of Cote D’Ivoire.

The Super Eagles definitely earned their victory! What most people have refused to consider here is to credit Jose Paseiro for any part of that victory. The man has gone too far down the bad books of Nigerians that more of the credit seems to be going to a player-William Troost-Ekong. He was the ‘coach’ on the field of play that the team lacked outside it.

Troost – A new leader of the Super Eagles?

A new leader of the Super Eagles may be finally emerging from the shadows. His individual performance on this night reminded Nigerians about ‘Gentle Giant’ Uche Okechukwu, ‘Chairman’ Christian Chukwu, and ‘Big Boss’ Stephen Keshi.

The three were excellent Liberos, organisers of their defense from the centre-half position, clearing all loose balls that resulted from the close-marking and hard-tackling of their co-defenders, and taking on the responsibility of unofficially ‘coaching’ the team ON the field of play.

William Troost-Ekong may have joined that special class when he stepped forward and took responsibility to nail the Ivoriens by taking a very ‘dangerous’ penalty kick that was heavily laden with pressure and tension! It was a very thin line to cross for him – between becoming a hero and new leader in the team, or becoming a ‘villain’ for the rest of his career (had he missed the kick).

Troost-Ekong’s individual performance made a big difference in that match. He was a deserving ‘Man of the Match’. He played with his heart and head, stabilising the defense, in particular, and rest of the team, generally.

Uncharacteristically, the Nigerian defense line was cool, calm, confident, well-organised and impregnable.Thanks to Captain Ekong!

Are the Super Eagles back to their best?

No, not yet. It is a team in progress, coming up slowly but steadily.

Should the Eagles win the last match against Guinea Bissau very well, they will remain in Abidjan to play their round-of-16 match. That will be a huge advantage for them that they can use as launch pad to get to the top of the pyramid.

Against all the odds, the Super Eagles looked better and more organised in their defensive play. When Osimhen, somehow eventually finds his feet and his rhythm, the team will become better and stronger. Stopping them will now become a huge mountain to climb for any team at AFCON 2023.

The AFCON 2023 Roadshow — Report

Last Thursday evening, 30 minutes before the end of the Eagles/Elephant clash, my crew and I finally landed in Abidjan. It was too late to go watch my first LIVE match at the stadium.

I immediately converted the ‘disappointment’ into an opportunity to catch up with Ivoriens and watch them react to seeing their team is slowly and steadily asphyxiated by the Eagles.

We drove to Treichville, downtown Abidjan metropolis. The streets were quiet and traffic was light. Many shops had become temporary viewing centres. People massed around big and small TV sets, anxiety written on their faces as the minutes ticked on to record Nigeria’s first victory at AFCON 2023.

Anxious faces concocted into mournful looks, frustrated by the impregnable wall of defense put up by the Eagles.

According to commentators, as the match moved towards the closing moments, both the town and the stadium terraces went into silent mode, like a graveyard.

Into this mood and mourful environment we drove in a very colourful branded van, with the logos of some Nigerian products and services, into the Treichville neighbourhood, downtown Abidjan, attracting a lot of public attention.

Then, out stepped some Nigerians in their customary Green and White Tee shirts and face caps, branded ‘Peculiar Ultimate Concerns’, proud ambassadors of their country and of the beautiful game.

That neoghbourhood immediately became the unofficial centre of celebration for some Nigerians in a few bars in that part of Abidjan that remained open for business after the pain of their country’s loss.

Some Ivoriens took the punch on the chin well, and remained in some good spirit. Some coolly accepted their fate and went on with their lives in painful submission and silence.

Travelling to Abidjan

I shall surely produce a documentary of my experience travelling on the single existing road linking the countries along the coastline of West Africa.

The dream of an East to West superhighway connecting the cities was birthed in the late 1950s, and construction work must have started shortly after on the Dakar to Lagos road. 70 years later, the dream remains largely unfulfilled.

All the way, from Seme to Abidjan, there is not a single dual-carriageway.

The distance that we covered through 4 countries to get to Abidjan are on single lane, face-me-I-face-you, roads.

There is potential danger every inch of the way. No room for any careless driving throughout that long route. It demands the utmost care and concentration by drivers.

In Nigeria and most of Ghana, the roads are bad (worse in Nigeria), littered with patches and small irritating potholes.

Speed breakers, bumps and security checkpoints are endless on the roads in Ghana, and easily double travel time.

Although reassuring for safety purposes, the checkpoints are at 2 or 4-kilometre intervals through most of our travel inside Ghana. We were stopped at every one of those check points because of our unique van and colourful branding. The security officers were mostly very friendly but still created delays. Night travel, which we did only once, going to Cape Coast in Ghana, was worse.

Generally, the roads through Togo are better, smoother, and with less check points.

In Cote D’Ivoire, we found a delightful surprise – the best roads, but single lanes until you get to 14 kilometers to Abidjan. To enter Abidjan is like entering a new world – the road opens into the most beautiful dual carriageway in this part of the world.

Gbenga, our driver from Lagos, for the first time on this journey tested the speed of our 8-cylinder Chevrolet Van. He put his foot down on the throttle for an experience that I have not had since I was 25, driving my new Mercedes 280E on the freshly completed but yet-to-be-opened Ibadan/Lagos expressway. I covered the 120 or so kilometres to Lagos in 45 minutes.

By the way, on this trip, in the past 4 days, we have driven and covered a distance of 1100 kilometres, the single, longest but slowest journey I have ever undertaken. At the same time, it has been a unique and incredible experience.

Vanguard News

Two weeks ago, this column in a piece entitled “Neither at War Nor in Peace” lamented that Nigeria has entered a new normal. We are neither a nation at peace or in a declared war. Instead, we are perennially in a state of psychological and physical siege. Even in that state, our government continues to live in perennial denial, behaving as if they are presiding over a normal democratic state. That hybrid status puts us in a unique category among troubled nations of the world.

Side by side with a count of Nigerians who have recently been killed, abducted, kidnapped or just missing, we have entered a new category of a nation with more hostages than those at war.  When Hamas militants and hotheads attacked Israel on  October 7, 2023, they took a little less than 250 hostages. That led Israel to the ongoing Israel-Hama war whose end we do not yet know. Today in Nigeria, kidnappers and bandits are holding any number of Nigerians as hostages as we speak. No one, not even the police, knows exactly Nigeria’s total hostage population, where exactly they are being held, who is holding them and for what reasons beyond ransom. We have hostages of bandits and terrorists dating back to the president Jonathan days and stretching to the present. When Buhari handed over to Presdient Tinubu, I am not so sure he handed over the precise number of hostages held by different criminal groups allover the country!

Those Nigerians kidnapped or abducted are hostages of an adversary without a face and without a name. Worse still, those that are killed by these criminals are victims of a nameless evil. An enemy without a clear identity has entered the fray of Nigerian’s insecurity. They invade, fiercely assault, collect hostages, execute innocent people in cold blood and disappear into thin air. They then make contact with the families of their hostages to demand huge sums as ransom. The negotiations are mostly between the affected families and the bandits, hoodlums and terrorists all wearing interchangeable badges. The final onus is on government to take over from there. But the government seems to be in quandary. It does not know exactly the identity and character of whom to negotiate with in these many instances of serial and viral kidnapping. With each new instance of kidnapping or abduction, the faceless enemy shows a different colour. Government is comfortable in the thinking that it is dealing with crime control. I am not so sure.

One question that has not been addressed is whether we are dealing with random bands of criminals and killers or a concerted force with a larger political purpose. The instances of kidnapping and abductions are many and widespread. They seem to wear differential regional badges. The ones in the North East tend to be inspired by ISWAP, Boko Haram and retail versions of Sahelian jihadism. In the North-west, they tend to be sundry opportunistic criminals originally bred by residues of geo -ethnic  and religious animosities but now fired by poverty and economic desperation. Further south, in the mid section of the nation, the crisis of killings and kidnappings takes on a more sectarian and occupational character. Angry migrant herders, mostly Moslem,  against equally angry impoverished settlers farmers who are presumably Christian.

In the South-east, what began as separatist anger has blossomed into an enterprise of criminality powered and controlled by political and business moguls. In the cities of the South-eest and Lagos, urban criminal gangs and cults carry out opportunistic attacks to kidnap for quick cash or in quest for victims for the more gruesome harvest of body parts to fuel a thriving trade in rituals for money.

This national canvas of internal warfare has been with us for the better part of the last eight years. We have just entered a new phase in both the magnitude and geographical location of kidnapping and abductions. In the past one month, many incidents have occurred in and around the Abuja area. Families have been thrown into tragic mourning and anxiety as bandits have routinely abducted many members of families and executed some without even waiting for the requested ransom. In the Abuja kidnappings, the quantum of ransom sought has tended to be so huge as to befit the reputation of the capital city as the home of huge free cash.

In one celebrated instance, a friend of an affected family said to be a minister in the immediate past Buhari government disclosed that he had to come up with a princely N50 million to free remaining members of a family even after the innocent girl, Nabeeha, was executed by her captors.  As families and concerned citizens try to grapple with existing cases, the criminals are at work with new exploits, new abductions and more dastardly killings especially in the Abuja area.

While the ring of kidnappings closes more on Abuja, the time has come to ask whether there is a larger political purpose to the latest onslaught of bandits and criminals on Abuja. Yes, Abuja is attractive to all manner of criminal enterprises. Some see it as the centre of a criminal tradition of government in which there is a disproportionate relationship between work and reward. Politicians and their hangers on enter Abuja literally as destitutes only to emerge a few months down the road as mega billionaires. Some who came to Abuja by night bus have been known to fly home a few months later in their personal private jets. Such gold rush reputation can attract mega criminals who convert vulnerable innocent people into merchandise and hostages of greed in order to get a share of the city of gold. Beyond the economic ecosystem of Abuja, there remains a perennial political question mark about the city in the geo ethnic and sectarian calculus of those interested in Nigeria’s future. To this extent, I want to insist that the latest spate of kidnappings, abductions and killings in and around Abuja constitute a clear and urgent to Nigerian politicians.

At the highpoint of the fundamentalist assault on Nigeria, Abuja was the scene of some of the most severe terrorist attacks. The United Nations offices, the Police Headquarters, churches in neighbouring areas, the facilities of THISDAY Newspapers and sundry other places were hit by a gale of terrorist bombings. The terrorists took direct responsibility for the attacks. Therefore, the interest of forces seeking to destabilize Nigeria through attacks on Abuja has never been hidden.

In the later parts of the Buhari administration, criminals and armed zealots became intensely interested in Abuja.  Followers of then imprisoned Shiite leader, El Zakzakky, carried their war for his freedom into Abuja city center. They engaged security forces in days of sporadic episodes of gunfire right in the centre of Abuja. Further down the line, a horde of ISWAP and Boko Haram foot soldiers invaded the precincts of an Abuja maximum security correctional facility and freed nearly every inmate including numerous dangerous terrorists. Still further the road of tragedy, fanatic terrorists mounted an assault against the centre of power, engaging soldiers of the presidential Guards Brigade in a fire fight that led to the death of a number of officers. At some point, schools and major institutions in the outskirts of the city had to be shut or evacuated for fear of terrorist invasion. So, Abuja has been a place of interest to a competing avalanche of criminals and armed factions with diverse interests and motives.

But for the rest of us, the city is our national capital. It is the seat of the federal government. It is home to all major diplomatic missions in the country.  In response to the repeated instances of security threats on Abuja, nearly every major diplomatic mission in Abuja has issued frightening travel advisories  warning their citizens against unnecessary travels to nearly all parts of the country. In the latest one in later 2023, the United Nations warmed all its staff in Nigeria to avoid nearly every state in Nigeria for fear of being kidnapped or abducted. The Nigerian government itself has repeatedly tacitly admitted the state of universal siege around the country by agreeing that combined military and police security operations are ongoing in all of our 36 states.

Ironically, until the last one week, the new Tinubu government had feigned indifference to the threat of massive insecurity in and around Abuja. Understandably, it is hard to pay attention to personal security when you are surrounded by armed goons of state security and elite wings of the armed forces. So, both the presidency and the FCT administration had feigned indifference until a week ago. While the spate of kidnappings, abductions and killings raged, Mr. Nyesom Wike, Federal Minister of the FCT, was to be found more in Port Harcourt, capital of his home state of Rivers where he is waging an endless war of political attrition against the state governor, Mr. Fubara, his now rebel surrogate. At last, both Mr. Wike and his boss the President have finally thought it necessary to summon meetings with security chiefs on the bad situation in Abuja. If tough talking and grand standing could end insecurity, we probably would not have any more kidnappers and bandits left in Nigeria by now.

There is now an urgent need to interrogate the existing approach and machinery of internal security in the country. The existing system has not worked. Nothing indicates that Mr. Tinubu’s approach to the problem is in any way different from that of his predecessor. The popular myth was that Mr. Buhari as a former soldier with combat experience would end insecurity as he himself publicly undertook to do. But instead, after his eight years in office, the insecurity around Nigeria has graduated into a nightmare emergency situation. There is therefore little hope that Mr. Tinubu who literally does not know the difference between a rifle and a pistol will fare any better.

He has appointed new service chiefs and decorated them with new ranks and many shiny medals. He has appointed a familiar ex -police man as NSA.  But the problem is not that of appointments and fancy titles. It is one of resources and strategy. The old strategy of throwing money and armed men in Hilux vans allover the place has not quite worked.

The government has recently bought a few helicopters from Turkey and the United States in addition to a consignment of Super Tucano jets from the United States. Many experts argue however that you do not wage a low intensity internal security war among your own citizens with the instruments of an all out war as if you were out to conquer an external adversary.  Unintended collateral casualties and human rights violations are bound to result, thereby deepening the internal bitterness among the populace and making resolution harder. We already have had quite a few of these, regrettably.

Budgetting for an increase in defence and security spending in a season of galloping inflation is futile. It leaves less money for actual security spending. In addition, much has been said about leakages  and corruption in the administration of Nigeria’s security business. Our insecurity has been around for so long that it has bred an industry of its own corruption enterprise in a country where government is seen as a criminal enterprise.

More importantly, in all the instances of kidnapping, abductions, terrorist attacks and other security breaches around the country,  the staging theatres have been the ungoverned spaces. Our vast forests, bushes, savannahs and farmlands have been the favourite hiding places for bandits and criminals. The criminals strike the governed and inhabited areas and take their hostage into the ungoverned spaces from where they demand and negotiate ransom. Admittedly, the manpower available to the armed and security forces is inadequate to man these ungoverned spaces.

That creates the imperative of employing available technologies to ensure effective coverage of the entire national space. This calls for increased investment in areas like satellite surveillance and coverage of the entire Nigerian space including night vision scoping. The use of drones needs to be guided by proven know how to avoid the kind of ‘accident’ that led to avoidable loss of innocent lives in Kaduna State recently.

In all of this, we cannot diminish the overwhelming place of social factors associated with poverty in the epidemic of new crime from that we are witnessing. The ultimate long term situation is for government to ameliorate the prevailing poverty while taking effective active security measures  to make crime and criminality  unattractive for citizens.

The Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) has issued a stern warning about potential industrial action due to delays in establishing a committee to discuss the new minimum wage for public sector workers.

The Federal Government’s inertia in naming its representatives to the committee has been a primary cause for concern, particularly as labour unions have declared their readiness to commence negotiations.

This development comes amidst growing frustrations among workers grappling with the surging cost of living.

Since the removal of the fuel subsidy by the Federal Government, there has been a significant increase in the prices of goods and services, leading to rampant inflation.

The impact has been profound, with workers finding their current wages insufficient to cover basic needs.

In June 2023, a group of workers and labour leaders called for a substantial increase in the minimum wage, from N30,000 to N250,000, citing the dire economic situation.

This figure was later adjusted to N200,000.

The Assistant General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Chris Onyeka, highlighted the plight of many workers who are struggling to pay rent and school fees for their children.

He also noted the dramatic 300% increase in transportation costs, forcing many civil servants to walk to work.

President, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, had earlier pledged to prioritize the improvement of living conditions for Nigerians, with a focus on people-centric economic policies.

He assured that the national minimum wage would be reviewed to reflect the current economic realities.

Despite these promises, the hardship for Nigerian workers continues, exacerbated by soaring inflation.

The last minimum wage revision was on April 18, 2019, from N18,000 to N30,000. However, implementation has been uneven across the 36 states, with several yet to comply with the new minimum wage.

The then-Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, emphasized the necessity for all employers in the country to adhere to this national law.

He mentioned that a committee was being formed to propose new wage adjustments for those earning above N30,000.

The TUC expressing its impatience with the government’s slow response, has threatened to launch a strike if the issue is not addressed with urgency.

The Deputy President of the TUC, Tommy Etuk, expressed dissatisfaction in an interview with Punch, stressing the overdue need for a new minimum wage, which was expected by April 2024.

The TUC and other labour organizations have already appointed representatives for the National Minimum Wage Review Committee, which is legally tasked with overseeing negotiations and advising the government on suitable wage rates in line with economic changes.

He said, “If there is no agreement on the minimum wage review, there’s nothing anyone can do. I assure you that it is a recipe for industrial disharmony. The government should inaugurate the committee and let it start work on time to see some grey areas where we can agree or disagree, and work in tandem with the principle of collective bargaining so that we can arrive at a collective agreement.

“We believe it’s the best option rather than waiting for the 11th hour to decide what to give to the organised labour. It will not work that way.”

Etuk added that the right thing for the Federal Government to do was to set up the National Minimum Wage Committee to oversee the modalities across the board.

He said, “The National Minimum Wage Committee should have been inaugurated because the task ahead is a difficult one. It’s not about getting the committee in place and there is a lot to be done. It is about the government to inaugurate the committee and appoint a chairman so that they can start work in earnest.

“April is around the corner, and if things are not done this January, things might get out of hand. This isn’t going to be a fire brigade matter like they always do.

“But I can assure you that the organised labour will not leave any stone unturned to ensure that the needful is done. Whether it is a delay strategy on the part of the government, or not, we have got to follow due process, because it is a matter of law.

“This is because it will go to the National Assembly and the President before it becomes a law.

“The government is conscious of this, and on our part, we’ve done what we should’ve done. It’s just for them to inaugurate the committee and the committee will start working.”

Etuk added that Tinubu seemed like a man who would not play with the welfare of workers since he had been talking about living wage before he became President.

Speaking on the living wage, Etuk said a lot of things must be considered such as transportation, housing, health and education.

He said, “These are critical components that will form the negotiation for minimum wage. With what’s going on now, it’s not even enough. In a month, a worker will spend not less than N70,000 on transportation. We’ve not even spoken of rent where a one-bedroom apartment goes for about N400,000.

“When you consider all these and look at the negotiation of the N200,000 minimum wage that was then. It’s no longer realistic to look at the inflation rate, which is 28.9 per cent as of today.

“Whatever is being given as minimum wage is to be consumed by inflation. Even the N200,000 being clamoured by organised labour, I don’t think that is the right thing to do. This wage doesn’t cover the National Health Scheme and you don’t expect a worker to die because of cancer or another life-threatening disease.

“These are the components that will form the discussion and engagement with the government on a minimum wage that will be measured.”

Etuk added that negotiations had successfully started across the 36 states for a living wage as a result of the removal of fuel subsidy.

He stated, “When it comes to the issue of palliative, it is to ensure that there is industrial peace and harmony, and also to stop the socio-economic challenges facing the workers. We believe that it is incumbent on the NLC and the TUC in the states to develop a strategy to engage the government to do the needful.

“Most of the state governors have been saying they’ve given palliatives in terms of an additional N10,000 every month, some said they’ve paid 13th month salary and also distributed grains.

“It is incumbent on every organised labour in the states to develop a strategy to engage the government to do the necessary things. We are also begging the Federal Government to live up to the memorandum of understanding they consciously signed on the payment of the N35,000 wage award. I can also assure you that the Minister of Labour recently acclaimed that they’re working on it and they know the implications.”

May I congratulate Alhaji Aliko Dangote for finally giving birth to a “bouncing” refinery after being in the labour room for a decade. It is heartwarming to learn that father and baby are doing well. Of all the adventures Dangote has embarked upon in his life — starting from his primary school days when, according to him, he was buying sweets with his lunch money and giving them to the maiguard to resell for him — the refinery project is surely the roughest and the toughest. For someone who took a multibillion dollar loan at N160/$ and has had to repay at the prevailing exchange rate per time, the refinery venture is enough to ruin his empire and turn him to a forgotten man. But he survived.

I am also thankful that I am alive to witness history. Since the early 2000s, I have been a fierce advocate of building of refineries in Nigeria, although my agitation was that the government should do it since the private sector was reluctant because of thorny issues around deregulation and subsidy. When Dangote announced in 2013 that he was going to build a refinery, I was over the moon. I celebrated it with an article, ‘The Refinery We’ve Been Praying for’ (THISDAY, September 22, 2013). As at then, he was thinking of 400,000 barrels per day and working with a budget of $9 billion, covering two other petrochemical projects in Edo and Ogun states which were initially in his plans.

I asked him why he would build a refinery despite the failure of the Nigerian government to deregulate the downstream sector. Most private sector investors had said they would not build refineries without deregulation. Dangote replied: “With or without deregulation, there is nothing stopping anyone from building a refinery. I am not a marketer. All I will do is buy crude oil at the market price, refine and sell to marketers at the market price. It is marketers that deal with subsidy. If government continues to subsidise, marketers can buy products from us and then collect the subsidy from government. If not, they can sell to motorists at the market price. It’s not complicated.”

Now that the refinery has taken off, the notion that it will bring down the pump prices of petrol and diesel, etc, needs to be toned down. This notion has been promoted by unionists and activists for decades: that local refining would eliminate subsidy. No, it won’t. Dangote Petroleum Refinery Ltd buys crude oil at the going rates in the international market. It will price its refined products accordingly. You can’t buy raw materials at higher prices and sell the finished products at lower prices. Marketers will buy the products from the refinery and sell to motorists. It is now left for the Nigerian government to decide whether or not to subsidise at the point of purchase by Nigerians. 

Dangote reminded me then that when marketers imported petrol from foreign refineries, they bought at market prices over there before claiming subsidy payments from government. He went a step further by saying Nigeria should start focusing on exporting petroleum products. “The way forward is for us to start exporting refined products rather than crude. We will get far much better value that way. In the next five to seven years, we should stop exporting crude altogether. Apart from South Africa, the refining capacity in Sub-Saharan Africa is grossly insufficient. Angola has a refinery that can only handle 30,000 barrels per day, whereas they consume 120,000 barrels,” he said.

While promising that his own refinery could be completed by 2016, he projected that other African countries would be coming “to buy products from our refinery… that is our strategic plan”. A lot of things changed along the line. Costs ballooned and deadlines were shifted various times. I must confess herein that at a stage, I was doubting if the refinery would ever be. This was worsened by unending negative media reports about the hiccups and setbacks. But on January 13, 2024, the refinery finally came alive. Mr Femi Otedola, his billionaire friend, calls it the “eighth wonder of the world”. For those of us who had followed the trajectory for so long, this was indeed momentous.

The stats, as made public by Dangote Refinery, are very impressive: sitting on about 2,635 hectares in the Ibeju-Lekki export-processing zone, the $19 billion facility is the world’s largest single-train 650,000 barrels per day refinery with a polypropylene plant that will produce materials for plastic packaging, plastic parts for machinery as well as fibres and textiles. For comparison, the combined installed capacity of Nigeria’s four sick refineries is 445,000 bpd and it has been so since 1989, when President Ibrahim Babangida inaugurated Port Harcourt II. Both Port Harcourt refineries were built to be able to refine 210,000 bpd; Warri, 125,000 bpd; and Kaduna 110,000 bpd also. All on paper.

Several stats have been published by Dangote Refinery, but the one that easily pops at me is that when producing at full capacity, it can meet all our petrol, diesel and aviation fuel needs. In other words, we would not have to import refined products again. I find this satisfying: my dream has always been that we would stop importing products. We pride ourselves as an oil-producing giant but we are not even enjoying most of the benefits in the industry chain because of poor thinking. I used to campaign vigorously that government should take the bull by the horn by investing in a mega refinery to meet our local needs. It could then lease out management and sell it off in the future.

I received a long lecture from the CEO of a downstream company at the time who told me emphatically that building refinery was a waste, that it was not a profitable business. He said no new refineries were being built globally. He also said, ominously, that there would be little or no difference between local refining and importation of petroleum products, concluding that the business case for a refinery was bad. “The difference between refining in Nigeria and importing from Europe is shipping cost,” he said and I paraphrase. “If you may know, shipping is the cheapest form of transportation in international trade. There is no advantage with having a refinery in Nigeria.”

I did not agree with him, even though he sounded convincing. I was thinking of the local jobs and the value chain, but I was not ready to argue my case. He was enjoying so much patronage in the fuel importation business under the President Obasanjo administration that I did not expect him to agree with my proposal. And he had a strong voice in the policy direction of the government in the oil sector. Government officials consistently said privatisation was the way to go and that Obasanjo was not going to build a new refinery. Since then, we have been spending billions of dollars on treating our sick refineries without success. (Well, the jury is out on the latest Port Harcourt rehabilitation).

Now that Dangote Refinery has seen the light of the day, I am thinking of what might have been. If we were a thoughtful nation, we should be having regrets. Maybe someone would do the math one day and unearth the amount of forex we have been burning on fuel imports since 1999. There are many reasons for the sorry state of the naira today and fuel importation cannot be considered as a trivial factor. Fine, we are earning billions of dollars from oil export, but so also are we concurrently burning our forex income on fuel imports. The resources that should go into building our reserves are depleted on importing fuels. Let us now hope that forex demand for fuel importation will end.

The second regret is the way we have been trading away value through crude swap deals in the last 10 or more years. We created an arrangement under which we would basically barter crude oil for fuel imports. Using traders, we would exchange a barrel of crude valued at $70 for litres of petrol worth $70. I have always been wondering: what happens to the other products and byproducts in the same barrel? For all you care, those ones could be worth another $70 (just guessing). What a waste! But that is what happens when you have more oil than sense — or, to put it less dramatically, when the buccaneers, who know where all the value is, collude with those in authority to skin us.

Now that Dangote Refinery is onstream, we should expect an end to this. There will be byproducts both for export and local utilisation. Fertilisers aside, there is the carbon black which is raw material for paints, inks, rubber products, car tires and food colorants. The refinery plans to produce bitumen, which Nigeria currently imports. These are some of the benefits we threw away for decades, swapping crude oil for petrol and arguing that shipping cost is the only difference between local refining and fuel importation. Take a moment to imagine the lost forex revenue and the jobs that we bartered away while complaining that unemployment, poverty and crime were on the rise.

All said and done, we cannot undo the past. We took a lot of missteps in the past two decades. Some were genuine mistakes. Hindsight is usually a perfect 20/20 and we can all become wise after the event. But some missteps were self-serving. Remember that the fuel import and subsidy regimes created a generation of rent-made billionaires who were nothing but devourers and cankerworms. The past can remain in the past while we make the best of a possible new order. I know many people are suspicious of Dangote because of his business practices, but that is down to regulatory failure. I want to sincerely hope that the success of this project will attract more investors to the sector.

If the Port Harcourt Refinery really works as promised by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), that means we could start exporting refined products sooner than later, having achieved self-sufficiency in Nigeria. That would be a dream come true for me. I have always hoped that Nigeria would be among the world’s biggest exporters of refined products. The forex income is the first thing that jumps at you today given the parlous state of the national currency, but there are several other benefits. What about the tens of thousands of jobs? What about the potentially huge new economy around the petrochemical industry? Dangote took a big risk. Let us start enjoying the benefits.

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

FCT KIDNAPPERS

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nigeria’s seat of power, has come under unwanted attention recently with the upsurge in kidnappings. It has never been crime-free — we should remember how Boko Haram used to bomb FCT with ease — but hopes that it has become a safe haven in recent years are fast disappearing. The brutal nature of the kidnappings — a young student was killed while ransom money was still being mobilised — might suggest a touch of terrorism. Kidnappers hardly kill their victims who are co-operating with them, but terrorists are usually desperate and murderous as they seek to raise funds for their operations. This is for the security agencies to consider. Terrifying.

IBADAN ARMAGEDDON

Wednesday night brought trauma to Ibadan, Oyo state, with the explosion that rattled the city, grinding houses to dust and sending five people to early graves. Those who survived need attention. Some will develop hearing problems, mental health issues and PTSD. Treating physical injuries and discharging patients from the hospital should be complemented with therapy. I can see we are trying to blame foreigners for the disaster, but maybe we need to look inwards too. What sort of system allows a private residence to stockpile explosives? This is a national security issue. The trucks must have passed various security checkpoints after paying the dirty tolls on its way to that house. Porous.

TWO PLANETS

The company at the centre of the social register verification contract saga is New Planet Projects Ltd, founded in 2009 by Mr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, now minister of interior, and not Planet Projects Ltd, as I mistakenly wrote last week. Planet Projects Ltd, the transport infrastructure company, was founded by Mr Biodun Otunola and is best known for building the Oshodi bus terminal. It was registered in 2007. Although I am not making any excuses, the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) surely created a room for the mistaken identity. By just adding “new” to an existing name, you can get the CAC to register your company with the help of insiders, even when it could amount to “passing off”. Chaos.

NO COMMENTS

On Thursday, Mr Ola Olukoyede, chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), said something we knew all along but had been silent upon for years: that the anti-graft body stinks. The elephant in the room. “The craze and quest for gratification, bribes and other compromises by some of our investigators are becoming too embarrassing and this must not continue,” he lamented. We should pray for him as he prepares to take on the monsters within. Olukoyede may also want to find out why Nigerians pay N60,000 under the table to get the SCUML certificate. Restoring public faith and confidence in the commission will definitely take a while, but it is worth a try. Uphill.