Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro won re-election with 51.2 percent of votes cast Sunday, the electoral council announced, after a campaign tainted by claims of opposition intimidation and fears of fraud.

The President of the CNE electoral body, Elvis Amoroso, in its majority loyal to the government, told reporters 44.2 percent of votes had gone to opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.

Independent polls had predicted Sunday’s vote would bring an end to 25 years of “Chavismo”, the populist movement founded by Maduro’s socialist predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chavez.

Maduro, 61, addressed supporters minutes after the announcement, saying: “There will be peace, stability and justice.”

As his supporters celebrated, downcast opposition voters waited to hear from Gonzalez Urrutia and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken immediately expressed “serious concerns” that the result did not reflect the will of Venezuelan voters.

Since 2013, Maduro has been at the helm of the once-wealthy petro-state where GDP dropped by 80 percent in a decade, pushing more than seven million of its 30 million citizens to emigrate.

He is accused of locking up critics and harassing the opposition in a climate of rising authoritarianism.

Gonzalez Urrutia had replaced popular Machado on the ticket after authorities loyal to Maduro excluded her from the race.

Machado, who campaigned far and wide for her proxy, had urged voters on Sunday to keep “vigil” at their polling stations in the “decisive hours” of counting amid widespread fears of fraud.

Maduro had previously warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses.

– ‘Prepared to defend’ –

Rejecting opinion polls, the government relied on its own numbers to assert Maduro would defeat Gonzalez Urrutia, a little-known 74-year-old former diplomat.

Maduro counts on a loyal electoral apparatus, military leadership, and state institutions in a system of well-established political patronage.

On Friday, a Venezuelan NGO said Caracas was holding 305 “political prisoners” and had arrested 135 people with links to the opposition campaign since January.

Gonzalez Urrutia had said the opposition was “prepared to defend” the vote and trusted “our armed forces to respect the decision of our people.”

He added there had been a “massive” voter turnout.

Ballots were cast on machines that print out paper receipts placed into a container. The electronic votes go directly to a centralized CNE database.

The opposition had deployed about 90,000 volunteer election monitors to polling stations countrywide.

– Watching ‘very closely’ –

Sunday’s election is the product of a mediated deal reached last year between the government and the opposition.

The agreement to hold the vote led the United States to temporarily ease sanctions imposed after Maduro’s 2018 reelection, which was rejected as a sham by dozens of Western and Latin American countries.

However, the sanctions were snapped back after Maduro reneged on agreed conditions.

Washington is keen for a return to stability in Venezuela — an ally of Cuba, Russia and China that boasts the world’s largest oil reserves but severely diminished production capacity.

Economic misery in the South American nation has been a major source of migration pressure on the US southern border.

Most Venezuelans live on just a few dollars a month, with the country’s health care and education systems in disrepair and the population enduring biting shortages of electricity and fuel.

The government blames sanctions, but observers also point the finger at corruption and government inefficiency.

Machado said earlier Sunday that if Maduro “grabs power,” another “three, four, five million” Venezuelans will likely join the exodus.

“What’s at stake here goes beyond our borders, beyond Venezuela,” she said.

Concerns over the fairness of the vote were further stoked when Caracas blocked several international observers, including four Latin American ex-presidents, at the last minute.

The foreign ministers of seven Latin American nations called Sunday for the electoral process to “fully respect the popular will” of the Venezuelan people.

About 21 million Venezuelans are registered as voters, but only an estimated 17 million still in the country are eligible to cast ballots.

AFP

The only thing that is not changing in Nigeria is politics. Since independence in 1960, politics in the country has remained dirty. At first, we had local heroes who ‘won’ electionsthrough crude force such as political assassinations as well as the abduction and imprisonment of political opponents before voting day.Although not much of that happens these days, what has changed has been the methods employed for achieving the same goal of fake elections.As a result, it has been difficult to recruitinto government at any level, visionary leaders that canformulate and implement viable public policies for developing our society and improving the welfare of Nigerians. This is why our country has had an unending stunted growth. 

Except genuine efforts are made to put a halt to the practice of plantingincapable hands into governmentparticularly at subnational level, each successive government would continue to complicate the challenges it inherited. In other climes that we seek to emulate, many of their leaders show ample regards for principles while Nigerian politicians remain experts in jumping from one political party to another as if our political parties are not made up of persons of likeminds.In fact, Nigerian politicians behave as if democracy is about the ruling political party whereas political opposition is an integral part of democracy. A nation without a viable opposition party is a dictatorship and not a democracy. There is therefore the need for well-meaning Nigerians to assiduously support an end to mercantile political defections in their country.

Only last week, Onyewuchi Ezenwa, a senator representing Imo East defected to the All Progressives , APC, from the platform of the Labour  LP through which he won his election. The senator claimed the defection was due to factions in the LP. Not many are persuaded that the disagreements among members of the LP can fully explain the senator’s disposition. Perhaps his claim would have had little weight if he moved when the LP had two contending and acrimonious chairmen – Julius Abure and Lamidi Apapa. Today, the problem in the LP is not about factions that can sharply divide a party into two,but about the same disagreements among stakeholders that are happeningin other parties.

How come there were no defections in the APC where some members grumbled over the election of the national chairman of their party from the North-west instead of the North-central which was the zone that was entitled to completingthe tenure of the immediate past chairman? Would a senator of the Peoples Democratic Party PDPgenuinely defect from the party only because the current acting chairman is not from the appropriate zone?Against this backdrop, some analysts believe that Ezenwa’s defection may not be different from the trend of defections to the ruling party of a state of a defector because of the quantumof material gains likely to flow to a defector.

In neighbouring Abia state,it was probably the same reason that influenced two members of the State House of Assembly–Ihenacho Nwogu and Fine Ahuama to defect from their party, the Young Progressive Party YPP to the ruling Labour party. Well, as Governor Alex Otti of the state is being hailed in several circles for his developmental strides, the inclination to find one’s way into his campcan be far more tempting than other excuses.As for senator Ezenwa, not much was heard of his efforts as the highest leader of the LP in Imo state towardssettling the supposed squabbles within his party before succumbing to defection in protest against the said squabbles.Expectedly, the Imo state chapter of the LP is set to seek his withdrawal from the senate through the courts.

With the recent judgment of the Supreme Court concerning the local government system, it is obvious that the Apex Court has what it takes to tackle the nation’s huge political rascality. Indeed, the judgment elicited several reactions from many people. To the affected local officials, the judgmentespecially the aspect in favour of financial autonomy was a source of joy as they hitherto had no control over funds for developing their local constituencies. Although the judgment virtually amended the constitutional provision for the existence of a joint local/state government account, many analysts still hailed the judgment because everyone had become tired of the excessive control of local officials by state governors. Many persons were similarly satisfied with the Court’s nullification of the use of caretaker teamsinstead of democratically elected officials to run the councils.

The Supreme Court has thus showed that the best solution to Nigeria’s political problems is to focus more on the spirit rather than the letters of the law. Unlike other countries which rely on the federal system of governmentthat has two tiers, Nigeria deliberately designed a third tier to put a halt to its special situation in which rural communitiesare abandoned by state officials who always concentrate on urban centres especially state capitals. To give financial autonomy to local governments is therefore a positive approachof using the intendment of the law toensure more development in rural areas. Again, to make sure that Nigeria remains a true democracy, it is salutary to stop governors fromstarving local communities of democratic norms and structures. 

Our Supreme Court can no doubt further assist Nigeria’s growth if it also tackles mercantile political defections which have refused to abate. This it can do by ignoring technicalities that defectors have over the years employed to sustain their movements. Considering that votes cast in an election belong to both a candidate and his party, no candidate should be allowed to transfer the votes of his party to another simply because he personally desires to change his political affiliation.In the case of the legislature, lawmakers should be dissuaded from trumpeting certain disagreements among party members into a justification for defectingfrom one party to another. The claim that everyone is entitled to freedom of association really concerns those who are holding no office which they attained through electoral votes.

It would be recalled that during President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, Governors Ben Ayade and Dave Umahi of Cross River and Ebonyi states respectively absconded from the PDP into the APC. The judiciary refused to remove them from office on the ground that defection was not one of the conditions for removing a governor from office. To some people that decision looked only at the letters of the law; it ignored the fact that the governorswere not the sole owners of the votes that brought them to office.Our view then which we still hold today is that the governors should have been told that while they have freedom of movement and association, they couldn’t move with votes which the law recognizes to belong to the party they were defecting from. That approach would have curtailed the propensity for politicians to exploit the nation’s political system.

There are many other areas of politics that the judiciary can positively interrogate to save Nigeria. One of them is the issue of internal democracy in which political leaders often display crass irresponsibility.Why should a party work against some of its own members? A party which presents a non-contestant as its candidate to INEC for general election while slide-lining the true winner of the primary election is unduly reckless because what the party is suggesting is that party primaries are voluntary. If so, why provide for primary elections? A court which similarly hides under the claim that it is an internal matter of the party is inadvertently supporting the recklessness of political parties. If not, why is INEC mandated to monitor party primaries? 

In today’s Nigeria,there is tension everywhere because some activists are reportedly planning to hold nationwide protests against what they call bad governance. Whereas it is unfair to hold only the current one-year old administration liable for it, bad governance will never end if politicians are not called to order. Over the years Nigerian politicians have never listened to our cries that politics and governance are not the same and that politics all the time is responsible for bad governance. Even palliatives meant for us allare diverted by the ruling party to only their members. It is thus unfortunate that Nigerian politics has remained on the same page with irritating comedy.

IN my consciousness, humanity is defined as the trinity of fundamental human rights, democratic rights and workers’ rights. I believe that if we get these right, we would get our well-being right.

This is because, embedded in the deceptively simple words of these declared rights are the needs of humanity, the laws of nature and social justice.

But since we are humans, our views on these rights can be coloured by our perception, culture, ideology, experiences, politics and well-being.

For example, the West makes the wild claim that it is the birthplace of democracy. It points at the 5th Century BCE practice of democracy in Greece. But was that really a democracy? Take the case of the philosopher, Socrates Aeschines, who was accused of making the youths to think independently and ask questions.

The specific charges against him were that: “Socrates does criminal wrong by not recognizing the gods the city recognizes, and furthermore by introducing new divinities; and he also does criminal wrong by corrupting the youth.” For these, he got the death penalty and was given hemlock to drink. So, could Greece have been a democracy if the citizen must believe in all the official gods, could not believe in any new god, had no freedom of speech and could not think independently of the official position of the state?

If democracy is a system of government by popular representation based on the consent or vote of the electorate in which the will of the people prevails, then it is not a creation of the West or its thoughts. Various states in Asia and Africa practised it. For example, this was the practice amongst the Ijaws who eventually built city states. It was also widely practised amongst the Igbos.

Regardless of its origins, contemporary democracy is a rainbow of various colours. Contrary to the bogus claims of the West, democracy is not a single concept. It has neither a single definition nor a monolithic interpretation. Its practice is also different. For instance, China holds regular elections, has the largest parliament in the world with 2,977 members, a judiciary and one of the largest press in the universe. Its democracy also delivers on free, qualitative healthcare and education and, it is the only country in the world that has virtually wiped out poverty. Yet many say China is not a democracy; they claim its elections are not ‘free and fair’. They also claim that its parliament, judiciary and press are not free from the ruling Chinese Communist Party. It is this mindset that has led the Western press and the uncritical section of the media in Africa to refer to the Chinese media as “state-sponsored”. Interestingly, the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, for instance, is funded by the British state which now raises an average five billion pounds for it annually. So, what is the BBC, if not a “state-sponsored” press? The Voice of America, VOA, charged with carrying out American propaganda abroad, is funded by the American state which spends $200 million on it annually. These are just examples of state-funded media organisations across the universe. Yet these media organisations are not labelled “state-sponsored”.

The Chinese can argue that it is more democratic than most countries in the world, including the USA, because amongst other things, it meets the basic needs of its citizenry, including ensuring that 1,425,142,254 Chinese or 22 per cent of the human population are fed daily.

So, is the American democracy which cannot guarantee its citizens the basic needs of life like food, more democratic? Is the American democracy in which Donald Trump who in 2016 had 2.9 million less votes than Hillary Clinton was declared the “winner” and sworn in as President, the ultimate democracy in the world?

In his four years as USA President, Trump told 30,573 lies or 21 lies everyday in the White House. When he lost his 2020 re-election bid, he and his supporters tried to reverse the elections by use of arms. Since then, he has been convicted on 34 counts of felony. Yet, today, that same Donald Trump is leading the polls in the scheduled Tuesday, November 5, 2024 USA presidential election. What kind of democracy rewards a felon, a cheat, a liar and a person who has no respect for women?

So, for me, democracy is not a garb, but a way of life in which basic human rights are guaranteed to all, the people’s basic needs are met, their electoral choices are respected and their sovereignty over all powers are guaranteed.

These were some of the ideas I expressed on Thursday in Ilorin at the Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies, MINILS, 2024 Seminar Series.

I submitted that the International Labour Organisation, ILO, established in 1919 as a tripartite body of government, employers and workers, by its Conventions, deepens democratic and human rights far more than most organisations on earth.

The ILO’s core conventions include that of 1930 against Forced Labour; 1948 on Freedom of Association and Right to Organise; 1949 on Right to Collective Bargaining; the 1951 Convention on Equal Remuneration; the 1973 Minimum Wage Convention; and the 1999 one against the Worst Forms of Child Labour.

I posited that the Nigeria Labour Laws are some of the best in the world. I explained, for instance, that while Nigeria has ratified 44 ILO Conventions, the USA has ratified only 14, including just two of the eight Core Conventions.

So, the problem of Nigerian workers is not the lack of good labour laws, but that of implementation.

In conclusion, I submitted that part of the drawbacks of the UN is that it is essentially a gathering of governments with five countries wielding the veto. In contrast, the ILO is composed of governments, employers and workers, and, is much more democratic with emphasis on social dialogue and consensus building. So, the the ILO tripartite structure, its social advocacy and consensus-building processes, offer a model humanity can build on.

In answer to the questions by MINILS Special Duties Director, Adekunle Theophilius Tinuoye and Gabriel Akiwowo of the Food and Beverage Union on how to ensure labour laws are implemented, I said it is by praxis. I argued that if, for instance, the managers of companies that deny workers their right to unionise as specified in Section 40 of the Constitution are taken to court and jailed, others will exercise caution.

MINILS Director General, Comrade Issa Aremu, said the trilateral institute is the product of democratic gains; basic statistics such as on Minimum Wage, show that workers gain far more under democracy and, that workers and other Nigerians should not take democracy for granted. He announced that human and trade union rights would be main-streamed into the programmes of the institute.

Without moving his body, African Development Bank (AfDB) president, Akinwumi Adesina, watlzed his tall frame in a dance last week. He danced to the rhythm of Gwo Gwo Gwo Ngwo of Gentleman Mike Ejeagha’s trending song track, Ka Esi Le Onye Isi Oche. A rhythmic refrain track from an album titled Akuko N’Egwu Vol. 1., Ka Esi… has a lot of similarities with A o m’erin j’oba, both taken from Igbo and Yoruba cosmologies respectively. Both are from rich traditional African folklore.

While both had Elephant and Trickster Tortoise animal totems as their major characters, these folklores teach the moral of never throwing benefactors under a moving train. Released in 1983 by Ejeagha of Imezi Owa, Ezeagu in Enugu state, Ka Esi… recalibrated an ancient Igbo folklore of trickster Tortoise who sacrificed the huge and mountainous elephant for his selfish desire to have the king’s daughter as wife. The elephant thought he was assisting a friend.

Folklorist/writer, Joseph Odunjo, like Ejeagha, brought A o m’erin j’oba into vivid perspective in his Alawiye Yoruba literature series. Using the animal world as a motif, Odunjo told the story of gross human deception and how human beings are easily susceptible to and capable of mischief. Represented as a character with power, majesty and acclaim, the mammoth-sized elephant beast was the untouchable king of the jungle whose humongous size was a huge bother to other animals in the jungle. Several efforts were made to oust his prowess, to no avail. So, a plot was hatched using his majesty as his destruction. Tortoise, a clever and serpentine animal, was procured to do the hatchet job. Tortoise resolved that, given the Elephant’s size and height, violence would not bring him to his hilt but a strategy of deception, praise-singing and bootlicking.

Tortoise then travelled to the wooded savannah jungle to see his friend, the Almighty Elephant. His message was that all animals had purposed to make him king of all animals. The Elephant was to come to the palace adorned in the full regalia of a king. Before the day, Tortoise had dug a very deep hole by the palace that could occupy Elephant’s mammoth size, decorated with a beautiful wool carpet worthy of a king’s royal feet. He completed it with an ornamented chair just at the edge of the royal carpet. Encircling the carpet, all the animals in the town clapped and hailed the new King dressed in flowery royal robes as he walked majestically towards the royal carpet. They cheered the Elephant on, shouting “A o m’erin j’oba, eweku ewele“. Fascinated by the splendour and cheer, Elephant walked majestically, acknowledging the cheers, until he fell into the ditch and unto his death.

Ostensibly marrying the morale in both Ka Esi Le Onye Isi Oche and A o m’erin j’oba, Adesina deployed them to paint a picture of a Nigerian establishment in whose veins flowed the blood of cruelty, shamelessness and greed. Either intended or stray, Adesina threw a bomb into their fold, a bomb whose shrapnel hit the innermost recess of Nigeria’s sleaze and slush petroleum sector. In a tweet on X last week, while upbraiding the apparent systemic gang-up to frustrate Aliko Dangote’s refinery by the Nigerian government, Adesina said, “Investing is tough. Pettiness is easy. It sadly sends a signal that the price for sacrificing for Nigeria is to get sacrificed.” In the short tweet, Adesina denounced the government’s attempt to profile Dangote as a selfish monopolist Tortoise, as reflected in Ejeagha and Odunjo’s reworking of the Igbo and Yoruba folklores. He ultimately situated the gang-ups as an attempt to sacrifice the monstrous Elephant refinery of Aliko Dangote to governmental pettiness.

Adesina’s cryptic quip of “sacrificing for Nigeria (and getting) sacrificed” also finds a corollary in another ancient anecdote, the killing of the proverbial hunchback, Abuke Osin. The hunchback was the favourite servant of Obatala. Among the Yoruba, Obatalá is known as the munificent and benevolent father of all Orisa – gods – and indeed, of all humanity. Obatalá is also reputed to be the owner of all ‘heads’ and minds of all human creations of Eledumare – God. While Eledumare created the entire universe, Obatala created humanity in its entirety. Everything pure without blemish emanates from Obatala because he is the source of purity and wisdom. Obatala was peaceful and compassionate

According to the anecdote as told by the renowned living archive of Yoruba traditional institution, Yemi Elebuibon, in his The Adventures of Obatala: Ifa and Santeria God of creativity, (2016) Obatala sent the hunchback on errands and impressed by his service to him, Obatala chanted some incantations which deposited precious beads, gold and other ornaments inside the carapace-like chest of the hunchback. He however chanted that anyone who made him happy and rubbed his chest would partake of the wealth deposited therein. Ojugbe, the hunchback’s neighbour, benefitted from these gifts due to his good neighbourliness. When Abuke complained of pain in the chest, Ojugbe rubbed it for him and became stupendously wealthy therefrom. Not knowing the caveat attached to Ojugbe’s wealth, Tortoise envied him. But, unable to compete with Ojugbe-kind care, one day, Tortoise lured Abuke Osin into his house and forcefully rubbed his chest. It refused to emit money. He then resolved to kill this servant of Obatala and incurred the wrath of the god.

I do not want to go into details about the Nigerian establishment’s battle with this 650,000bpd state-of-the-art refinery which erupted last week. They are in the public domain. Since 1973 when it was created, the NNPC has been a cesspit of corruption and a vehicle for haemorrhaging Nigeria’s petro-dollars. It is a haven for white-collar criminals. According to Stephen Ellis in his This Present Darkness, (2016) by the late 1970s, an illegal trade in Nigerian oil flourished like a new bride. Corrupt politicians and military big epaulettes connived with NNPC officials to funnel Nigerian oil abroad. They did this with the connivance of Greek and Lebanese traders. All manner of internal and external sharks feasted on the Nigerian crude. In the process of this feast, scant consideration was paid to the goose that laid the golden egg, the refineries of Port Harcourt, Kaduna and Warri. Today, they have become moribund, resulting in Nigeria exporting its own crude and importing petroleum products from them. The refineries are grounded due to fossilized technology, humongous corruption and a wicked ploy by petrol cabals to keep the goose perpetually castrated.

In October 2023, the Nigerian senate attempted to probe Nigeria’s expenditure on rehabilitation of the four refineries which were yet unproductive. A senator representing Kogi West, Sunday Karimi, presented a motion which revealed that “Between 2010 to date, Nigeria is estimated to have spent N11.35 trillion (N11, 349, 583, 186, 313.40) excluding other cost in other currencies which include $592, 976, 050.00, €4, 877, 068.47 and £3, 455, 656.93, on renovation of refineries, yet they are unproductive.” Karimi further said, “Despite the moribund state of the four refineries, the operating costs of these refineries between 2010 and 2020 were estimated at N4.8 trillion. The refineries are estimated to make a cumulative loss of N1.64 trillion, within four years.” Indeed, in the last 25 years, NNPC has spent something in the neighbourhood of $25 billion on TAM on these obsolete dinosaurs called refineries. The world was shocked recently when told that an NNPC subsidiary, PHRC, expended N23 billion on salaries and maintenance of a refinery that was too crude to refine even a gallon of crude. For these oil vampires who grow rotund tummies out of our ancient comatose refineries, the Dangote refinery must be stopped from functioning.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, in a revelation, said he was advised by experts that aside from their obsolete equipment and infrastructure, the refineries were mere scraps which needed to be sold. He thus sold two of the refineries’ plants in Port Harcourt and Kaduna to Blue Star, a consortium of Aliko Dangote, a man who Bloomberg assessed as worth more than $15 billion, for a whopping $670 million. Instigated by a sleaze-steeped oil cabal, labour unions and other oil rats pressurised President Umaru Yar’Adua to reverse the purchase. Dangote Cement, his financial empire’s jewel, is also one of Nigeria’s traded companies, becoming one of Nigeria Stock Exchange’s companies to reach a market capitalization of N10 trillion. Since the reversal, Nigeria has spent multiple of the amount it would have collected from selling the refineries and is still expending huge costs on sham Turn Around Maintenance and the bottomless pit of corruption in the NNPC. The corporation is alleged to be one of the most non-self-accounting conglomerates in the world with an allegation of a $32 billion haemorrhage in the Goodluck Jonathan administration’s corruption-ridden oil-for-product swap agreements.

The Dangote $20 billion refinery, the biggest in Africa and second in the world, built on 2,635 hectares of land in Ibeju-Lekki, was a protest against the Yar’Adua government’s unconscionable reversal of the sale of the two Nigerian refineries by Obasanjo. With its 650,000 barrels of crude oil refining capacity per day, it surpasses the refining capacity of 435,000 of Nigeria’s total moribund refineries. It is said to be capable of supplying almost all of Nigeria’s daily consumption needs. The downside is that it will eliminate Nigeria’s bottomless pit sleaze called subsidy and kill the roaches who have over the decades fed fat on this brand of Nigeria’s cesspit. Dangote’s almost 50,000 staff is said to be made up of over 90% Nigerians and a meagre expatriates number of 11,000. Dangote Cement is also said to have paid N200 billion in tax since 2003, paying N27 billion VAT monthly and corporate tax of N40.39 billion. FG also collects 52% tax on every N1 Dangote companies earns in profit. This is the context of Adesina’s X tweet of “pettiness is easy.”

Opposition to the Dangote refinery was initially amorphous. Platformed on the allegation of Dangote’s famed monopolistic tendency, it soon branched into an allegation that the quality of the refinery was suspect. At long last, the masquerade abandoned its costume – “ago” – to reveal Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) chief executive, Farouk Ahmed. Last week, Ahmed openly alleged that the diesel produced by the Dangote Refinery, compared to the one imported, was inferior. Ahmed also alleged that the Dangote fuel had high sulphur content, which he situated at between 650 to 1,200ppm ppm. He was most likely shell-shocked when asked where his or NNPC’s test laboratory for sulphur level resides. It was only then that Nigerians learnt that Lagos labs – Sewort, SGS and GMO perform this task for Almighty Nigerian oil colossus.

Several surreptitious, faceless persons and groups have been used to push a Mafia-like battle against the birthing of the Dangote refinery. If disrobed of their identities, it will be clear that these persons are angered by the obvious reality that the success of that humongous refinery means an end to their decades-old bazaar in the Nigerian oil industry. A couple of weeks ago, the media reported Aliko himself as confirming that the blood-baiting oil sharks had run a ring around him. He acknowledged his awareness that they could even be within his organisation.

The other leg of the accusation came in last year’s Financial Times report. It alleged that Tinubu was putting the squeeze on Dangote for not supporting him during his presidential bid. When EFCC raided his Lagos company in January, ostensibly on allegation of an investigation into the foreign exchange allocations under CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele, the thinking was that Tinubu was exerting the powers of his presidency on Aliko. It was alleged that while his business rivals, Abdul Samad Rabiu and Tony Elumelu, showered bounties on Tinubu during his presidential campaign, Dangote queued behind Atiku Abubakar. Anyone who knows how the Nigerian state runs will know that only Aso Rock authorises such high-level infiltration.

Those who are opportune to visit the Dangote refinery have labelled it one of the most awesome wonders of our world. A television anchor called it the Dangote Planet. The most depressing reality about Dangote is that, in practical terms, he is not the richest Nigerian. At a conservative estimate, he could be one of the 20 richest. The bulk of the 19 others are mostly politicians who, in our sane moment as Nigerians, we ask, in American voice, we have seen the bucks, where is the shop? They take our stolen wealth to Malta, Dubai and other countries where their billions of dollar investments are beyond prying eyes. Dangote certainly isn’t richer than Olowo Eko who, in a moment of grandstanding immodesty told a monarch during a visit to Osun state, “Kabiyesi, ee l’owo mi!” – Kabiyesi, you don’t have my kind of money! But, does anyone know Baba Olowo’s shop? We are his shop!

Let’s even accept that all the charges against Dangote are true – monopolist, feeding off closeness to successive governments, and all that – investing $20 billion in this economy, excluding his behemoth fertilizer and cement plants – is courage, valour, and patriotism. Dangote and his refinery are Nigeria’s national assets. So also are the Mike Adenugas of our world. We must protect them from the Shylocks, Saurons, Lord Voldemorts, the Ikoko aje’ran je’gungun – foxes that devour human flesh and bones – and the Komodo dragons of this world who want to swallow our economic saviours.

Hardship protest: Tinubu, “bi iwo ba se rere…”

All of a sudden, President Bola Tinubu is running from pillar to post. The febrile fear with which his presidency tries to stave off the proposed August 1 hardship protest is baffling. It seems to remind one of the biblical verse in Genesis 4:7 which says, “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?” This English interpretation does not convey the message’s total interpretative capturing as its Yoruba version rendition. That particular scriptural verse is interpreted in Yoruba as “Bi iwo ba se rere, ara ki yio ha ya o?” It was God speaking to Cain, Adam and Eve’s firstborn, who was enraged because he reaped what he sowed. Cain leapt into a fury because God rejected his paltry offering and accepted his brother, Abel who was God-respecting. Rather than see this rejection as his own doing and take a redemptive detour, Cain took a callous step further. He murdered his younger brother.

Recounting Nigerians’ groaning lot in the last 14 months here will be an overkill. The man they hyped as coming from a pedigree of dancers whose eclectic dancing feet attracted donations of slaves now dances and is barely gifted a wrap of corn meal. Rather, his feeble dance steps attract curses and boos. A pre-dancing cheering audience now jeers as its stomach hisses and rumbles. To say Nigeria tastes as bitter as Jogbo leaf would be an understatement. Our country is Jogbo leaf itself. Wherever you turn, it is bitterness. And this is under the grip of a man who was said to be King Midas whose touch turned everything to gold.

Nigerians’ unusual resilience makes the world agape with incredulity. They are a people who could weather the storm, no matter the turbulence. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti couldn’t understand such orthodoxy of suffering which he called cowardice. “My people sef dem fear too much… My Pa dey for house…I nor wan die…” he dramatises our pacifist spirit. Rotimi Amaechi said something worse recently about Nigerians. In a viral video which appeared to be a lecture on Nigerians’ famed pacifism, he said even if you kill a Nigerian’s father and mother, they would move on and say it was God’s wish for them. What many do not know is that Nigerians detest their leaders taking them for granted. Wily General Ibrahim Babangida knew only of the first sheaf about Nigerians’ resilient spirit. He didn’t however know about the other sheaf – the people’s tendency for rebellion. The truth is that, when Nigerians flip the other side of the cudgel, they are difficult to tame. By the time Nigerians made up their minds about IBB, they dropped his heap by the dumpsite of history.

Revisionists say that the key to Nigerians’ docile tendencies can be found in their history. What they call a history devoid of bloodshed. They juxtapose Nigeria with Kenya. In the latter, the Mau Mau rebellion in the British Kenya Colony between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as the Mau Mau, and the British authorities lasted for a good eight years. So they submit that whilst rebellion against oppressors was a Kenyan DNA, pampering oppressors were Nigerian’s. Which is not true. Our forefathers fought, and shed blood for the freedom we have now. Collective fights against white aggressors may be rare but we had the Ovonramwen Nogbaisis. Ovonramwen was the Ọba of the Benin Kingdom who fought British usurpation. He attacked British Deputy Commissioner and Consul for the Niger Coast Protectorate, James Robert Phillips, killing him and virtually all of his entourage. A punitive expedition against the Benin kingdom resulted in its razing in 1897 and the looting of its bronzes.

Nigerians do not expect their leaders to be magicians, apologies to Madam RAT. They even know that the taciturn Mallam from Daura inflicted his Janus persona on the economy so fatally that the wound would take a long to heal. But Nigerians detest governmental deceit, incompetence and hypocrisy advertised as leadership. In the last 14 months, this has been the broth served Nigerians a la carte. To worsen matters, our leadership has carried on with an I-don’t-care attitude which Yoruba describe as a “let the angry torrents of rainfall pierce into shreds the helpless cocoyam leaves if it can — òjò pa ewé kókò, b’ó le ya, k’ó ya”.

So when this same leadership runs from Ankara to Kutuwenji in its bid to stop Nigerians from letting the whole world know of their plight, the apt response to it is the same that God gave to stubborn Cain, “Bì ìwo bá se rere, ara kì yíò ha yá o?” In the last couple of weeks, the government has been funnelling scarce resources into bribing cash-tivists who call themselves activists not to come out and demonstrate on August 1. Students’ union leaders have received theirs. Journalists have. The Three Gbosas people have. Traditional rulers across Nigeria, too have visited an Aso Rock which changes people into unfeeling mummies.

So many reasons have been proffered for why Nigerians must not protest their deplorable plights. One is that criminals could hijack the people’s constitutional right to protest. So, why spend people’s money to pay policemen if they cannot be funnelled out in their thousands to protect protesters on their constitutionally mandated responsibility to an absent government? The second reason from the government on why Nigerians should dress their punches in velvet gloves is that the government is finding a way around the hunger in the land. One is reminded of someone who is spending 20 years to practice madness. They even say that since the protest has no identifiable leadership, it could be uncontrollable like scattered pellets of a dane-gun bullet. The police also came out to Afghanistanize the protest by claiming that intel told them foreign mercenaries were part of the ploy. Since they know anything security is opaque, it is quite easy for them to befuddle the people with such scary lies. This is the same police which no calamity has ever befallen Nigeria that they forewarned Nigerians about. But, shouldn’t Nigerians let the world know about their plights?

Let me mimic judges at the temple of justice: Considering all the evidence before me, Nigerians must protest on August 1. Nigerians need to retrieve their country from the hands of leaders who don’t care about their plights. Not violently. Violence under-develops a people. Do you think, if he ever survives his ongoing ordeal, William Ruto, in his own words, “the village boy (who) has become the president of Kenya,” will ever take Kenyans for granted? Let the man whose ambition it has always been to live in Aso Rock be made to commit to making Nigerians live a meaningful life.

Gbolagunte: Good night, great jurist

On Friday, I listened to one of the most impactful sermons ever at the New Reservation Baptist Church, Iyaganku, Ibadan, Oyo state. It was devoid of the depressing low of “style-style fundraising” and motivational prosperity sermons that Pentecostalism has sunk into in Nigeria. Church Pastor, Dr. Kayode Oyedemi, taught about how death was man’s companion which should be loved and not hated. He brought the reality of death into our lives so vividly that I doubt if anyone who attended that service would unnecessarily reify life, going forward. It was at the burial of My Lord Justice Adegboye Ayinla Gbolagunte, son of Oyo State Second Republic House of Assembly Speaker under Governor Bola Ige, Jagunmolu of Eruwa, University of Ibadan pioneer student and lawyer, Mokolade Davidson Gbolagunte. Justice Gbolagunte was aged 64.

My path and that of Justice Gbolagunte crossed in 2019 during my court externship. The Nigerian Law School had attached me and other colleagues to his chambers at the Oyo State High Court. There, I saw him in his true self. After each sitting, Gbolagunte would call us into his inner chambers and the teacher in him took over. He would lecture us on the judicial background of his pronouncements.

Our friendship began from there. It was later I realised that he saw my quest to combine journalism with law in himself. He had gained admission to study History at the University of Lagos in 1978 but later ported to Mass Communication. At the funeral, I met one of his friends, the highly respected journalist, Kayode Samuel. Gbolagunte later studied law at the University of Ibadan from 1983 to 1986.

Before Law, Gbolagunte was a lecturer of Journalism in different institutions. He particularly taught News Writing, Editing, Press Law, Marketing and Insurance Law at The Polytechnic, Ibadan and the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, Ogba, Lagos. He was also a prolific writer. From his holiday job at the then NTV Ibadan in 1980 where he began his reportorial job, he spent time with the Imo State newspaper, Nigerian Statesman, during his NYSC. While on the editorial board of the Times newspaper, Gbolagunte covered the famed visit of Nelson Mandela to Nigeria in 1991.

When he later learnt of my passion for Apala maestro, Ayinla Omowura, he told me he passionately retained his middle name, “Ayinla” because of the profound manner Ayinla’s music arrests him. He called to request a copy of my biographical portraiture of the musician upon its publication. I honoured the request by couriering an autographed copy to him through the first President of the Oyo State Customary Court of Appeal, My Lord Justice Adegboyega Akinteye (rtd) which he acknowledged.

While still interning in his chambers, Justice Gbolagunte proposed that we both collaborate on a biography to mark his 60th. I guess the ailment which took him killed that dream as well.

If commendable testimonials could wake Gbolagunte, last week, the jurist would leave the morgue and go embrace his wife, Wuraola. If corroborations of his unusual integrity, humility, service to God and humanity were the passport to heaven, he would be by the feet of his Creator now. A valiant and courageous judge, Gbolagunte fought judicial powers and principalities who he considered to be thieves in judges’ robes. When he received a medical judgment that his death was afoot, Gbolagunte took time to arrange his home and proceedings of the funeral. He paid for his casket, the vault where he would be buried and in the words of one of his sons at last week’s wake service, “he arranged every part of this burial service, who to meet, talk to” and how he should be buried.

Good night, great brother, Great Akokite, Great UIte.

The big news of the week is that the federal government is distributing 24,000 bags of rice to each state of the federation in a desperate move to stave off mass protests nationwide planned to begin next Thursday. On receiving its share, the Akwa Ibom state government announced that it would add another 24,000 bags so as to reach as many people as possible in the state. The commissioner for agriculture and rural development, Dr Offiong Offor, noted that the gesture is “to mitigate the high level of hunger, food unavailability and poverty” in the state.

She announced that each of the officially recognised 2,272 villages will receive some bags of rice of rice. She did not specify the quantity, but on average, each village should get 21 bags. Each bag weighs 25 kg and in the market, it goes for around N40,000. If the government bought them for N50,000 each (government procurements typically attract higher prices), it means that the 24,000 bags cost a whopping N1.2 billion.

Each village in the state has between 1,000 and 2,000 persons, according to the recent population estimates, and they will have to share 21 bags. How do 1,000 people, for example, share 21 bags of rice? You can be sure that the bulk of the 21 bags will go to the village heads, the clan heads, family heads, the youth leaders and other influential persons in the village; and this brings me to the question: Is spending N1.2 billion to procure rice for sharing a worthy idea? Could the money have been used in alternative ways to obtain better results?

Welfare schemes are usually designed to benefit very poor individuals and households or persons living with disability who are not able to provide for themselves. Such schemes are actually more effective if they entail honest and transparent transfer of cash to the intended beneficiaries. With cash, the recipient could buy preferred items of need which may not necessarily be rice.

As a matter of fact, a lot of rural folks have access to tubers and other sources of carbohydrates, but they lack money to buy protein-rich foods which are very essential, especially for children. In this particular case of rice distribution, I actually believe that the government would have made a greater impact on the greatest number of people if the N1.2 billion was given out as grants to smallholder farmers in each village to assist them in food production.

The village economy across the country is dominated by subsistence farming. These subsistence farmers require little or no capital for their businesses. Thus, any little additional capital input will trigger a significant output increase. They obtain inputs (mostly seeds and cuttings) from friends, relatives or neighbours and are the source of their own farm labour, often with the help of children in the household. If the government could provide as little as N20,000 to each farmer in rural Akwa Ibom, the N1.2 billion would reach 600,000 of them and that would make an enormous impact on overall food production in the state.

Alternatively, if the government could invest N387 million in setting up a farming scheme in each of the 31 LGAs in the state, the total outlay would not be more than the N1.2 billion spent on the purchase of rice. The rice, I am afraid, will not even get to the poor! Better still, since pest prevalence has been a major problem impeding food production in the state this season, the government could have spent N1.2 billion in procuring and spraying pesticides across farmlands in the state.

I urge Gov. Umo Eno to rethink some of his welfare schemes, otherwise, he will only succeed in catering for only PDP stalwarts in the state. When I visited Uyo in June, a prominent politician who owns a transport business told me that he had succeeded in enrolling his mother as a beneficiary of the state’s N50,000 monthly cash transfer scheme. ‘’But I am not proud of doing that because I know that my mother ought not to be a beneficiary’’, he told me rather ruefully, adding that ‘’my siblings and I are capable of taking care of her. But because I am in a position and I have contacts, I got her enrolled’’.

This is the way many government welfare schemes go, and it applies to every state of the federation, including FCT. The governor may be sincere and well-intentioned in buying thousands of bags of rice (or other foodstuffs) to share with his people, but he should be well aware that the bulk of the items will never get to the intended groups of citizens. They are seized by those who can afford them.

Last Christmas, Senator Godswill Akpabio distributed bags of rice to each LGA to be shared among APC members. My friend, Dr Ita Udosen, who is a prominent APC official and a successful medical doctor, told me that soon after, he received a call from his local leaders that two bags had been reserved for him. ‘’I wasted no time in turning down the offer. I can afford to buy rice for my family,” he told me. Not many are that conscionable, but this is further proof that the so-called palliatives hardly get to the right quarters.

Prof Tahir Mamman,

The Honourable Minister of Education,

Federal Republic of Nigeria

Dear sir,

Congratulations on the recently concluded policy meeting that your office held with the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and other higher education stakeholders. I commend your ongoing efforts to improve our educational systems.

With the hope that this letter will be graciously received by you, I am writing to address a pressing concern arising from one of the policy decisions announced at the meeting: the implementation of the 18-year age limit for higher education admission. 

As an education researcher and policy advocate with experience specifically in Nigerian higher education, I have observed the public discourse surrounding this decision. Rather than merely expressing dissent through social media, I thought it would be more constructive to present my concerns directly to you on behalf of the Nigerian people. In this letter, I outline three reasons why this policy will not eventually be in the best interest of the nation and its youth.

• Exacerbating inaccessibility to higher education

Honourable minister, in 2018, the World Bank estimated Nigeria’s higher education enrollment rate at about 11.7%. Recent data from various sources has estimated it between 12 percent and 16.5 percent. That is, only about six to eight of every 50 eligible Nigerian youths get to attend tertiary institutions due to several reasons including socioeconomic and cultural factors. A crucial factor important to the conversation is the difficulty of the admission process worsened by the limited number of university admission slots. On average, students, including those deemed “academically bright” students struggle to get into the university on the first attempt. This is not surprising seeing that Nigeria has only about 274 universities (both public and private) for about 27 million eligible university-age youths. 

In a country with a rapidly increasing youthful population, projected to reach about 127 million by 2050, it is already really precarious to limit young people’s access to education. It is even worse when those with limited chances are productively unengaged for 2-3 years of their young adult life, considering the average high school graduation rate is between 15 and 17. The current economy is not designed to productively engage high school leavers. Unlike in the 1980s and 1990s, there are now extremely limited organizations providing quality work or internship opportunities for high school leavers. This is not surprising, given that university graduates even struggle with employment opportunities, as you well know, sir. 

Given these challenges, do we want to add another obstacle for the Nigerian youths seeking tertiary education? In a country where the average high school graduate typically faces a 1 to 2-year wait for higher education enrollment, do we want to extend the wait?

• Limiting the capacity of Nigerian human capital

Honourable Minister, I would like to use my story as a case study to illustrate this point.  I was fortunate enough to start my university education before my 17th birthday. It is, however, important to mention that I had to “stay at home” for over a year because I was less than 16 when I graduated; and aside from being considered underage, I didn’t even secure university admission despite having 3As, 3Bs, and 3Cs in WAEC and 259 in my UTME in 2008. But I digress.

I had known I wanted a career in academia. Despite starting my undergraduate degree relatively early, I wasn’t going to finish my Master’s Degree (the minimum requirement for an academic position) until I was over 25. Yes, between ASUU and local university strikes during my undergraduate years, the clumsy NYSC calendar, and further strikes during my Master’s Degree, it eventually took me 9 years to officially qualify to even start my career. By that time, my peers who left Nigeria immediately after our 4-turned-5.5-year undergraduate program were already wrapping up their Ph.D.s abroad. Note that I began my MSc in the next admission year immediately after completing my NYSC.

Prof Tahir Mamman

Sir, I am certain you are well aware of our nation’s unique educational challenges, which are unlikely to be resolved completely anytime soon. It therefore becomes imperative to give our people a good head start to mitigate the impact of these challenges on our ability to cultivate talent for the nation.

With our Human Development Index recently pegged at 0.548 by the UNDP Human Development Report (2023/2024), ranking us as 161st of 193 countries, I believe you will agree that we cannot afford the long-term implications of this policy.

• Disproportionate Effect on Women and Girls’ Education in Nigeria.

The average Nigerian girl already faces unique challenges in accessing quality education at all levels, with higher education being the most difficult for females to access. From social and economic barriers like poverty and teenage pregnancy to cultural issues such as prioritizing marriage over education for girls and growing concerns about their safety, women and girls are often placed at the lower rung of the already limited educational opportunities available in the country. 

Sir, based on your knowledge and experience as an educator, do you think staying at home for 1-3 years (considering many students graduate high school between 15-17 years old) would aggravate or alleviate these issues? If a teenage girl has to stay at home for 2 years without being intellectually /productively engaged, do you think she stands a higher or lower chance of experiencing teenage pregnancy, for example? Answering such questions easily highlights the impact of this policy on the advancement of women’s and girl’s education, which the nation is striving to improve.

Beyond access to education, Nigerian women still face gender-specific issues in their careers, often progressing more slowly than their male counterparts due to the additional roles they typically undertake at certain life stages. For instance, the ongoing World Bank Africa Fellowship Program application, which encourages women to apply, requires them to be well advanced or done with their PhDs and be under 32 years old. Even, without the 18-year-old university admission limit, the number of Nigerian women eligible for this application is significantly smaller compared to the true potential of the Nigerian woman.

In conclusion, Honourable Minister, I believe that when you and your team crucially consider these arguments and many others being raised in public discourses, you will agree that this policy will only do more harm than good for the nation and its people. I strongly believe could never be your intentional seeing your record as a distinguished educator yourself. On behalf of Nigerian youths, I appeal that the policy be rescinded as quickly as possible. Thank you for your selfless public service to our dear nation.

Yours sincerely,

Oluwatoyin Ajilore-Chukwuemeka

Education researcher and concerned Nigerian.

Oluwatoyin is a Doctoral Researcher in STEM Education, Social Impact Leader and Education Policy Advocate.  She writes from Nigeria and the United States. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or on LinkedIn here.

Mohammed Bello Adoke, a former attorney-general of the federation (AGF), says the death of Ifeanyi Ubah, the senator representing Anambra south, is a loss for the country.

Ubah, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Capital Oil and Gas Industries Limited, died in London, United Kingdom (UK), on Friday.

In a statement on Sunday, Adoke described Ubah as someone “who prioritised the welfare and economic prosperity of his people in particular and Nigerians in general”.

“His contributions on the floor of the senate, where he served two terms (from 2019 when he was first elected and re-elected in 2023) bear glowing testimony to his belief in the Nigerian project and unwavering commitment and resolve to uplift the masses of this great country from the shackles of poverty, hunger, and disease,” the statement reads.

“Senator Ubah was ebullient and full of life. The news of his demise was therefore a rude shock to Nigerians and has understandably evoked a deep sense of loss from those who had the good fortune of working and interacting closely with him.

“I was introduced to senator Ubah by Chief Gabriel Chukwuma (A.K.A. Gabros), another fine gentleman, sports enthusiast, and businessman of repute. The friendship quickly blossomed to a level that our families became quite close.

“I recall during my travails in exile, he visited me severally. On such visits, he would pray with me and counsel me on the need to have faith in God and eschew bitterness towards my traducers and that at God’s appointed time the travails would end as he was convinced that I was just a victim of political machinations.

“He openly identified with me and provided support at a time I was considered a pariah even by those I regarded as friends, but for reasons of self-preservation and determination to remain in the good books of the political leadership of the country, they considered it expedient to disassociate themselves from me.

“I wish to place on record that in all my official and personal interactions with Senator Ubah, I found him to be passionate about the economic empowerment of his people and the development of our dear country.

“He demonstrated this commitment through his numerous business ventures, especially in the oil and gas sector, undertaking developmental projects in his constituency, and empowering the people.

“It is therefore not surprising that his people kept electing him overwhelmingly to the senate even when he contested on the ticket of a fringe political party such as the Young Progressives Party (YPP) from where he recently decamped to the APC.”

Adoke added that despite Ubah’s enormous wealth and political attainment, “he remained calm, humble, and unassuming.”.

“These are rare qualities that are lacking amongst our political elites today. Nigeria has indeed lost an outstanding advocate for social justice and economic empowerment,” he said.

“I, therefore, join his family, the good people of Anambra south senatorial district, and millions of his well-wishers around the world in praying to the Almighty God for the repose of his gentle soul.”

[TheCable]

The proponents of violent protests are not relenting. They have fixed August 1 to August 10 as the days of rage. They are insisting that the house must be burnt down in anger. Like W. B. Yeats’ wrote in his poem, The Second Coming, “the falcon no longer hears the falconer.” In this case, the champions of violence are not willing to listen to wise counsel. There’s a loss of order and guidance as the forces of chaos and destruction no longer heed the call of reason.

To what end are many Nigerians asking? The desire to destabilise the country has always existed. It is a combination of dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs and a penchant for chaos among certain citizens who harbour resentment for the country and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The option to cut their nose to spite their face is perplexing. Just how far does their discontent extend?

There is no denying the prevailing hardship and the weight of pain Nigerians are experiencing. However, we must also acknowledge that the foundation for the current situation was laid before this government took over on May 29, 2023. Past governments have made many bad choices over the decades, which have pushed the country precariously to the cliff edge. It is beyond reason that successive governments opted to kick the dirty can down the road, leaving it for the next guy to bell the cat.

The option we had pre-2023 elections was to go for the broke. We needed a president who could pull us away from the tipping edge and who dared to apply the necessary measures, even if that would bring temporary pains. Many Nigerians rooted for President Tinubu because he fitted the bill. He is a man of courage and conviction.

He is hands-on, always focusing on the outcomes. He has an outstanding pedigree in governance. He is a proven reformer. And he is not given to pleasing the crowd. Personalities with these attributes don’t enroll in popularity contests. They would instead do what is right. And the end always justifies them.

Reforms. Bold reforms are what Nigeria needs now. This is what the Tinubu administration has embarked on. This government has taken a number of courageous decisions aimed at revamping the economy and bringing prosperity to the citizens. We cannot achieve this in a day. Seeds take time to germinate. Hunger, however, cannot be cured by mere hope of a bountiful harvest.

But hope has its essence. It can be a springboard for patience. And patience is needed for the country to reap the fruitful outcomes of the outstanding reforms of President Tinubu’s administration. Shall we then exercise restraint? Shall we pull together at this critical period and prevent those who do not mean well for the country from burning down the barn?

WHEN two elephants fight, the grass, they say, suffers. But when cabals fight, and fight dirty like the NNPC and Aliko Dangote are doing, what happens? Dogs eat dogs and chickens gnaw at each other’s intestines. Can of worms explode in the open and cupboards full of skeletons, hitherto securely locked, are forced open. For instance, Dangote alleged that his refinery was being sabotaged by oil cabals bent on the continuation of refined petroleum products. NNPC countered that the said refinery was not yet completed and certified and that its products were inferior to imported stuff. Dangote has fired back with his Malta oil-blending allegation to support his claim that well-heeled personalities want to continue to make a killing with fuel importation at the expense of hapless Nigerians. Understandably, the stakes are high. A single write-up cannot perfectly put all the pieces together. Call it a maze, labyrinth or jig-saw puzzle and you will be right. So, here today, we take a look at some of the information available and allow our readers a better understanding of the issues at stake.

STORY NUMBER 1: In 2023, Dangote had a meeting with his select strategists for the purpose of deciding who, between Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar, and Bola Ahmed Tinubu he should back in the February 2023 presidential election. After analyzing each candidate’s profile, merits, and demerits, the consensus was that Atiku was the best option to back.

Dangote made donations as well to Tinubu’s campaign but his body language showed he preferred Atiku… His business arch rival, Abdul Samad Rabiu of BUA Cement, pitched his tent with Tinubu and did not donate money to Atiku.Rabiu’s support was so personal that he donated his private jets for use by TInubu’s campaign. The same is said of Tony Elumelu who reportedly provided the much-needed cash for Tinubu’s camp during the ill-fated cash crunch and scarcity before the election. No wonder Tony was the first person Tinubu visited in Lagos as president-elect!

That Dangote did not support him was one of the reasons why Asiwaju stayed away when Dangote refinery was later commissioned by Buhari. The election is over. Asiwaju is the president and the chicken has come home to roost. For the first time since the return to democracy in 1999, Dangote is not the favourite of a sitting government. Rabiu and Elumelu have taken his position. The biggest casualty from the politics of Dangote is his 650,000 per day Dangote refinery.

Before Asiwaju, Dangote had an agreement with NNPC that it would invest $2 billion in Dangote refinery or, if it cannot invest in cash, it would provide crude oil worth that amount for Dangote refinery to process. This investment will give NNPC a 20% stake in the Dangote refinery. NNPC is too broke to drop $2 billion, so it chose to provide $2 billion worth of crude oil in lieu of cash. But there is a problem: Buhari, who was the president when the deal was sealed, is no longer in power. The new Whiz kid is not a fan of Dangote anymore; so the NNPC guys read the body language… NNPC, which was at the mercy of Dangote when Buhari was in charge, turned to hard nuts to crack under Tinubu.

This government is also investigating forex allocations made to Dangote when Godwin Emefiele was the CBN governor.

STORY NUMBER 2: By Taiwo Olanegan: I did not believe it when I heard that the Dangote refinery’s capacity is 650,000 barrels of oil per day. Where would the billionaire get that feed stock (crude oil) volume? Is he going to lay pipes from Escravos to Lagos? At that time, our production figure was 1.8m bpd. Would the lOC agree to sell 30% of production volume to Dangote? Where will he get the forex to buy such? And which market would receive his refined products, knowing that the FG was frenetic about making Warri and Port Harcourt refineries to work?

The oil industry is a global cartel… Nigeria’s age-long economic and security challenges are not far from the yo-yo and high-level manipulations in the global oil industry. These intrigues are intentional, international, and sometimes wicked in every sense of the word. That’s why, since 1999, almost all our presidents have added the ministerial supervision of NNPC to their job.

Oil politics is ballistic… When I gave an opinion that the recent cement scarcity and price hike was a war between Tinubu’s Kitchen Cabinet and the Dangote Group, folks shouted at me. Cement price is still high in spite of pleadings and threats by the new government. It was a battle Dangote won. But he is not going to win this new war. The powers-that-be and the international oil players are bigger and more experienced than Dangote. His romantic seasons with Goodluck Jonathan and Buhari are over! Dangote’s trade history, his file and use of forex allocated by Godwin Emefiele are with the government. This is a presidency headed by a man who knows some accounting. The figures are suspicious. Dangote would have been arraigned with Emefiele after the EFCC made attempts but the optics would be terrible for him and the government. So the government chose to put a pedal on it. However, a 650,000 bpd refinery is too large a plate for a person. How can only one fellow own a refinery that could cover the petrol needs of West Africa? What happens when he goes into steel and oil exploration?

In the September 2013 edition of Harvard Business Review, the journal warned about the consequences of allowing Dangote to keep the major stake in the proposed refinery “as it would concentrate too much power in one man’s hand”… Antitrust laws, propaganda, and outright denial of feed stock and certifications will force Dangote to the negotiation table.

 STORY NUMBER 3: NNPC VS DANGOTE REFINERY: THOSE WHO TALK DON’T KNOW THE WHOLE TRUTH AND THOSE WHO KNOW THE TRUTH WON’T TALK

In May 2021, NNPC went into marriage with Dangote Refinery (DR) by proposing to acquire 20% equity in DR. Early 2024, NNPC promised to supply crude to DR. In July 2024, Dangote alerted the public that NNPC did not own 20% in DR but 7.2%. In July 2024, Dangote accused the government of importing bad fuel into the country and that the International Oil Companies and internal forces were bent on sabotaging him. A week later, NNPC fired back that DR is not licensed and its fuel is inferior to the imported one. Hell was let loose.

What lessons can we learn? Dangote cannot complain about the system now. Why? The system has served him well in the last 30 years! The system made him emerge as the richest African alive. Dangote is a one-man cabal! But like DAEWOO in South Korea and the late MKO Abiola, you can be 99% correct in your political calculations but the day you are 1% wrong politically, the financial empire  built through political connections and manipulations will face existential threat.

This is a big lesson: It is dangerous when you have a business that is government-dependent; even though it is the easiest way in developing countries to make  MEGA money (the type that can put you on the FORBES list) through concessions, FX allocation preferential treatment, monopoly, direct printing of money by CBN and sharing of same among the elites, etc. Emefiele allegedly printed N30 trillion and a whopping 85% could not be accounted for or traced to any national projects, according to CBN auditors!

Dangote should sit down with NNPC and resolve issues amicably. Let him do what Bill Gates did when he was faced with similar huge opposition that threatened his survival.  Gates divested from Microsoft – retained only 5% – and took his cash to electricity and health business. Immediately, peace returned. It is the way the world (of business) runs. Once the wealth of the nation resides in your house, peace eludes you! Ali Baba’s experience is also instructive here. Jack Ma, China’s richest man, said: “To get rich is glorious but among the richest men in China, only a few have a good ending!”

STORY NUMBER 4: WHY NIGERIA’S REFINERIES WILL NEVER WORK  – Former President Olusegun Obasanjo

“When I was president, I invited Shell to a meeting. I told them I wanted to hand over the refineries for them to help us run. They bluntly told me they would not. I was shocked. I repeated the request and they stood their ground. When the meeting was over, I asked their big man (MD) to wait behind for a chat. Then I asked him why they were so hesitant about not taking over the refineries. He said did I want to hear the truth? I said yes. He listed four reasons. One, he said Shell makes its money from upstream and that is where its interest lies. Two, he said they only do downstream or retail as a matter of service. Three, he said our refineries would be bad business for them, that globally, companies are going for bigger refineries because of the economics of refineries. Four, he said there is too much corruption in refineries. I thanked him for his honesty. I knew we had a big problem in our hands. I had virtually given up hope on the refineries when God did a miracle. Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola approached me and said they would be interested in buying two of the four refineries. They said they would buy 51 percent stake in Port Harcourt and Kaduna. I was over the moon. I said, finally, this burden would be taken off the neck of the government. They offered $761 million and paid in two installments. Unfortunately, Umaru (President Yar’Adua) canceled the sale and returned the refineries to NNPC. Today, we are still where we were. Someone told me Tinubu said the refineries would work by December. I told the person the refineries would not work. This is based on the information I received from Shell when I was the president”.

STORY NUMBER 5: “Dangote now feels what Nigerians with no government connections are going through in doing business”, activist Aisha Yesufu.

 STORY NUMBER 6: NIGERIA’S ONE AND ONLY GOAT IS PROVING TOO DIFFICULT FOR DANGOTE’S SNAKE TO SWALLOW:

Dangote wanted to take over NNPC assets at the dying hours of Obasanjo’s administration but President Yar’Adua thought it was not proper to hand over the nation’s assets to two individuals who wanted to buy them as scraps. Consequently, the contract was scrapped by Yar’Adua. Buhari/Emefiele came in and provided ENOUGH OXYGEN for Dangote to “complete” his own refinery and even pay 70% of his loan on a factory that was yet to refine one litre of gasoline! It was commissioned by Buhari even when it was not ready!

Meanwhile, Buhari had made substantial forward oil sales that would prevent Dangote from getting crude without breaking existing contracts. Apparently, all is not well with that project ab initio. It seems what took Dangote to the top can no longer sustain him there: i.e. MONOPOLY.  IOCs, NNPC, CBN. In 100/100 circumstances, MONOPOLY is injurious to the health of any national economy.

OLIGOPOLY is a state policy in South Korea; the State deliberately empowered some individuals like DAEWOO, SAMSUNG to create wealth. But the rule of LAW is SACROSANCT. DAEWOO, once the richest South Korean, ended in jail when he broke the law. The CEO of Samsung was sent to jail recently for breaking the law. That’s why Jack Ma (Ali Baba), China’s richest man, also ran into trouble in China. That’s why Google and Microsoft ran into trouble in the West. Monopolists (ALL OF THEM ) build their wealth through unfair exploitation of the Commonwealth…

Nigeria’s OIL BUSINESS belongs to 220 million Nigerians: It is not just a BIG GOAT but Nigeria’s ONLY GOAT. NNPC probably has realized the full implications and that’s why they refused to pay up their counterpart funding to acquire 20% equity as earlier agreed. What should Dangote do in this circumstance? He should come out publicly and sell  at least 49.5% equity to Nigerians in a transparent manner. Only he can’t swallow Nigeria’s only goat, it will CHOKE him! Even in Saudi Arabia, ARAMCO was sold to the whole world and the Saudi government became better thereafter.

STORY NUMBER 7:

I don’t think it’s in anyone’s place to advise Dangote to sell his business to the public. It is inflated and, therefore, he should keep it to himself but he should not be allowed to monopolize our common patrimony. According to experts, a 650,000 per day refinery should not cost more than $8b but he claims he built it for $19b. So, where do we start the discussion if he wants to sell to the public? It’s a single train refinery. If something goes wrong somewhere, the whole plant shuts down.

What can we make of the above and where will it all end?