At the just concluded 65th annual conference of the Nigerian Economic Society (NES) in Abuja, one of the highlights of the annual ritual was the conferment of the 2024 Distinguished Economic Service Award on seven eminent Nigerians. And yours sincerely is one of the awardees. This is one award that holds a fundamental significance among all the other ones I have been conferred with. And the singular reason is that this conferment articulates a significant plank in my institutional and governance reforms campaign in Nigeria. That plank insists that there is an intellectual component in the imperative of institutional reform that demands a collaborative engagement between professionals and academics/intellectual. This is because a crucial part of the diagnosis of reform failure in Nigeria is the failure to understand that reform itself has an intellectual and theoretical basis that many reformers are not aware of. We deride theories as if they have no practical import. There is no one engaging with Nigeria and her development dynamics that would not get involved in conversation with economics and economists. This is why associations like NES and the National Economic Summit Group (NESG) are critical to the understanding of Nigeria’s governance and economic predicaments, and how we can find a way or ways out of the woods.

I deeply appreciate Prof. Adeola Adenikinju, president of NES and the entire governing council for this unquantifiable honor. It is an honor I would never have expected, but one I am delighted about so much. That my essentially basic understanding of the economic and developmental component of institutional reform is noticed by an erudite association is no mean feat. My reflection on this critical award therefore enables me to connect my conversations and collaborations with economists and economic discourses with my institutional reform agenda. And all these come together around the trajectory of the mentoring experience I had with the late Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade, great economist, erudite scholar and president of the NES from 1973 to 1974, and indeed my townsman and a singular influence on my professional and intellectual maturation. Those who understand my relationship with Aboyade—the fact that I literally grew up in his formidable but mentoring shadows at Aáwé and in the presidency—would immediately understand why I had no choice in my reverence for economists.

Under the tutelage of Aboyade, my entry point into the public administration scholarship was through public policy implementation research, which had the likes of Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky as the key pioneers. Their groundbreaking 1973 book, Implementation, grounds implementation studies as a subfield of public policy research. Indeed, from that book, I began to notice early in time the role that politics and policymaking play in facilitating a near-seamless implementation process in administrative reforms. Most significantly, the authors insisted that the evaluation of policies and their implementation are two different issues that must not be conflated. As a young researcher, I immediately saw the sense in seeing implementation, according to Pressman and Wildavsky, as “the ability to forge subsequent links in the causal chains so as to obtain the desired results.” Hence, once this causal chain involved in implementation is longer necessary, the more complex the implementation becomes. Or, in the case of Nigeria—as I would eventually see, the longer the implementation chain, the more definite it becomes that bad politics has intervened.

With this as my starting point, it was not too long for me to make a research entry into the discursive space of institutional economics, and the relationship between institutions and the capacities they generate in economic actors that lead to innovation, performance and productivity. The theoretical relationship and disagreements between the old and new institutionalism, especially on the compatibility of individual agency and social structure eventually would play a deep role in articulating the emergence of the managerial revolution that backstopped the new public management (NPM) movement around which the global public administration praxis was designed. The NPM is the managerial attempt to unseat the bureaucratic stasis that has kept the Weberian system ineffective, inefficient and unproductive. Indeed, within the Nigerian administrative context, it has made it quite difficult to birth a developmental state.

The idea of the developmental state clearly serves as the focal point for an ongoing conversation between economists and institutional reformers. The idea of the developmental state tasks the public service system on the need to achieve the efficiency that will operationalize democratic governance to deliver infrastructural development for the citizens. Thus, to achieve economic development, such a state must first be oriented towards institutional reforms that bring the structures and institutions to capability readiness.

From the vantage point of my research into institutional reforms and development policy management, it was so easy but unnerving to work out the historical trajectory as well as the administrative dynamics that facilitated the series of aborted transitions, policy somersaults, the conception-reality gap, the motion-without-movement development hiccups that translate into protracted state and governance failures in Nigeria. And we see the basis of these failures in the (non)performance of the Nigerian economy and the debilitating effects on Nigerians. It therefore should come as no surprise that the role of economists in the Nigerian predicament became all the more heightened. This is where I think my experience as the directing staff coordinating the public policy executive education component of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) remit for three years was so professionally fulfilling. That professional status brought me close to the economic and policy sides of understanding the Nigerian predicament as well as the connection with my expertise in institutional reform. I had the opportunity to facilitate at once policy conversations and discourses around critical issues of the fundamentals of public policy, the public policy design and formulation process, policy implementation and decision science, policy evaluation and tracking, the political undercurrent of policy decision-making, as well as policy exploration and scenario projection that factor the VUCA (vulnerable, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) administrative environment into the urgency of building a twenty-first-century policy architecture that the Nigerian state requires to achieve democratic service delivery.

All the above therefore makes the theme of the NES 65th annual conference—“Socio-Economic Development in Nigeria: Imperatives, Implications and Impacts”—all the more fundamental given the present state of the Nigerian economic change management challenges. The conference theme is ready-made as the instigating forum that could have served some brainstorming and learning context for the PBAT governance and economic teams. It was especially a grand tutorial for me as a member of that team in terms of the analyses, forecasting and incisive critiques around the implementation possibilities and prospects of delivering the Renewed Hope Agenda from the perspectives of Nigerian economists. There are two crucial takeovers that my attendance at the NES Conference brought out into very stark relief.

One, it has now become imperative that government needs an ongoing and consummate engagement with Nigerian experienced economists and other intellectuals and experts. This becomes critical, especially with regard to the near absence of a political economy framework that could have served as the analytical and technical perspectives for articulating and sequencing the two major policies of the federal government, namely, the removal of fuel subsidy and the floating of the naira. While these two policies have a sound basis, they are flawed in terms of change management detailing and technical correctness, and their disruptive consequences could have been averted with the benefit of deep economic intelligence and the possible analytical frameworks and policy instruments that competent policy analysis could have been provided for risk analysis, mitigation and management. Here, we already begin to see how the implementation chain—and the possibility of success—is already compromised. Policy implementation and impact cannot just be the result of just policy correctness. On the contrary, it must reflect a dynamic and holistic and not a partial understanding of Nigeria’s economic structure and predicaments.

Two, we have to deal with the critical disjuncture that is playing out between the Renewed Hope Agenda and the policy implementation detailing of the government. We cannot ever hope to make that agenda work if the policies that would empower it are out of joint in terms of implementation sequence. The implementation of policies raises the crucial issue of those for whom the policies are meant in the first place. Thus, if, as democratic governance demands, these policies are meant to be people-oriented, then it implies that the change management strategy must be fashioned in a way that puts the people at the centre without necessarily yielding to unreflective populism. For example, to achieve a reasonable buy-in by Nigerians, the change vision and objectives must embed much more inclusive instruments which are however strategically communicated to Nigerians.

While receiving the award, it dawned on me that I have been drawn into the circle of a wider reform cohort that would further challenge my understanding of what it takes to articulate, track and evaluate institutional reforms in Nigeria. I am very glad for this incorporation, and the opportunity it affords me to sharpen my learning capacity and keep the discussion on the future of the Nigerian state in the right direction.

Olaopa, a Professor of Public Administration, is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Abuja

It seems the contrived, ill-advised controversy over the ‘ownership’ of Lagos will not go away anytime soon as more and more agent provocateurs are deployed on the worldwide web to drive a wedge between the historically liberal aborigines of Lagos and non-Yoruba residents of the mega city. That development is an unkind payback to the aborigines who are, by nature, one of the most liberal people on the surface of the earth.

There are Lagosians and there are Lagosians. Some Lagosians are aborigines, some are Lagosians by birth and acculturation, while some are just residents of Lagos. Don’t confuse one with the other. When you encounter a Lagosian of any hue, his comportment will tell you where he belongs in the classification above, even if we agree to call all of them Lagosians. There is a marked difference between an ‘Omo Eko’ (the Lagosian) and an ‘Ara Eko’ (the migrant resident).

Lagos is like a lagoon. It tolerates any kind of filth but also harbours some choice marine life. In line with its Yoruba linguistic and cultural heritage, its Oríkì says it all: It is the city of wisdom, ready to bend and contort but not break. Who’s contending with Lagos? If you go to Lagos and don’t end up wiser, throw in the towel – you’re unteachable! Lagos, where the man on stilts runs faster than the prized athlete. City of aquatic splendour, solid in the knowledge that if its marshes are not denuded, neither will Lagos. Eko will prevail!

Half-Lagosian
I am as proud of my half-Lagosian maternal heritage as I am of my father’s Oyo ancestry. Growing up in the melting pot that Lagos was, one couldn’t avoid noticing that the temperament of the average Lagosian was founded on the principle of live and let live. Before the early colonial days, Yoruba people from other parts of today’s southwest had been migrating to Lagos in such numbers that the local chiefs and kings gave them large parcels of land to settle. That’s how you have names like Abule Egba (village of the Egbas of Abeokuta) Ijeshatedo, (named after ethnic Ijeshas from today’s Osun State).

Lagos means “lakes” in Portuguese, the language of the first Europeans to arrive at the land already inhabited by the Awori who are a sub-ethnic group of the Yoruba people. By the early 19th Century, it was a small kingdom and a tributary to the Oyo Empire. It sent embassies to the Portuguese colony of Brazil, and became one of the first countries to recognise the independence of Brazil in 1823. With the collapse of the Oyo Empire, Lagos assumed the leading economic position regionally, becoming the most important market in the Yoruba territories as well as growing substantially.

The truth is that Lagos, over the years, has emerged as a forward-looking Yoruba city which opens its hands wide to welcome all manner of people.

Contrary to what obtains in most parts of Nigeria, Lagosians don’t discriminate against non-indigenes. That is why, from time immemorial, they allowed outsiders to acquire properties and settle down. They are so self-assured that they don’t feel threatened by the prosperity of migrants who choose to make the place home.

Tolerance
A visit to Ajegunle will show the extent of the tolerance of aboriginal Lagos people. There, you’d see Ijaws, Ilajes, Uhrobos, Itsekiris, Igbos, Etsakos, Ikas and other micro-nationals who are, to all intents and purposes, now Lagosians. Musician Daddy Shokey, whose forebears hailed from Olomoro Kingdom in Isoko South LGA of Delta State, is an Ajegunle Boy and is celebrated by Lagosians as one of their own. He has earned his stripes.

In terms of jobs, I wager that there is no other state in Nigeria with the number of non-indigenes that Lagos employs. And their promotion and retirement prospects are the same with the locals. Contrast this with what obtains in some parts of the country where non-indigenes are employed only by contract, never on a permanent or pensionable basis, and are not allowed to own landed properties.
I think what has fuelled the fire of the current rancour is the renewed drive to abuse the tolerance of Lagos aborigines after the last elections and the “Oro” festival that accompanied it. Last week witnessed the wide distribution of a podcast claiming that Lagos was a No-Man’s-Land. According to the misguided fellow, all Yoruba towns were founded by Igbos. He went on to stand history on its head, making one wonder why we haven’t restored history to its pride of place in our schools from primary to university level.

Lagosians have refused to tolerate the reinvented insults to their heritage and some of the most unlikely, otherwise taciturn, indigenes have publicly intervened to call the migrant cyberwarriors to order.

Conspiracy Theory
It is quite possible, as some have argued (considering the irrationality of the podcast and other such irritants), that there is an orchestrated attempt to smash the cordiality existing between the indigenes of Lagos and Igbos who, together with other micro-national groups, have contributed positively to the development of the megacity.

Could there be an agenda to set up the Igbos for extermination when the doomsday predicted by Igbophobes finally arrives? If there is, it won’t be the first time such a thing was used to demonise a people and set them up for extermination as happened in the run-up to the Rwandan massacre.
A visit to the genocide museum in Rwanda convinced me that any kind of ethnic phobia built on ultra micro-nationalism is bound to lead to mass depopulation. I had never seen so many human skeletons (and the last clothes worn by the butchered victims) under one roof!

The Other Side
Those propounding the theory of a possible setup of Igbos for mass attack are countered by others who argue that the Igbos are their own worst enemies because their style is grating, chauvinistic and pompous. They also point to the anti-Yoruba, anti-Fulani, anti-Nigeria broadcasts of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu and his acolyte, Simon Ekpa. But would that be sufficient reason to target them for destruction?
They wonder why it is only Igbos who complain of harassment when they are not the only set of non-indigenes living in Lagos. They insist that latter day arrivals among the Igbos are the ones fuelling the problem because they are not acculturated, bringing their gruff attitudes to a cosmopolitan setting. They don’t want Igbos to be chased out of their land; rather they want them to imbibe the Lagos spirit. Whichever way you look at it, you’ve got to salute the generosity of the Lagos aborigine.

As I straddle both sides of the divide, I often wonder what the political elite are doing about these kinds of development. These are the issues that ought to engage the attention of the major socio-cultural groups. Igbos need Lagos as much as Lagos needs everybody, thanks to its magnanimous spirit.
The renewed brickbat over the ownership of Lagos is dangerous because if the aborigines of Lagos (the most welcoming, most expansive, most cosmopolitan people in southwest Nigeria) decide to move against the interests of any single group in Lagos, the sight won’t be pretty at all — and the fount of amity existing between that group and the aborigines of Lagos would have been poisoned for all time.

Erling Haaland’s double sent Manchester City three points clear at the top of the Premier League in a 2-1 win over Brentford.

City took full advantage of Liverpool’s defeat to move clear at the top by stretching their 100 per cent record to four games despite a disastrous start.

However, Haaland’s form at the start of the season remains unstoppable, even if the Norwegian just missed out on a record third consecutive hat-trick in the Premier League.

The 24-year-old’s powerful deflected effort brought City level before he showed a combination of strength and skill to shrug off Ethan Pinnock and dink the ball over the onrushing Mark Flekken.

Only the post denied Haaland another hat-trick after half-time but he now has a Premier League record nine goals in the first four games of the season.

“He’s just an absolute machine in front of goal and I can’t speak highly enough of him,” said City’s Jack Grealish of Haaland, who had been doubtful due to the death this week of a close family friend.

“It does speak volumes about him as a person and his mental strength.”

[DailyTrust]

“I am beginning to wonder how many fools it takes to make the term ‘My Fellow Citizens’” -Honore de Balzac, 1799-1850, in LOST ILLUSIONS

You were probably one of those who eagerly awaited the completion of the Dangote Refinery while labouring under the illusion that it will crash the price of fuel nationwide. Welcome to the unpleasant reality. Underlying that self-deception was the un-stated but implied assumption that Alhaji Dangote was embarking on a venture designed to free Nigeria from fuel importation. Well, “when you assume, you make an ass of you and me.”

Gullible Nigerians, especially many media commentators, had committed the blunder of forgetting that Dangote is a businessman caught in a global race for position among the world’s richest people. He went into refinery primarily to make as much money as he can; and stopping fuel importation is a distant second objective – except that securing a monopoly of the domestic fuel supply would help achieve the ambition.

When the first batch of Dangote petrol hits the filling stations, it will carry an official price tag of N890+/litre – the highest in history and the end is not in sight for pricing.  Additionally, the fuel will arrive with another quality controversy in tow. Never in the history of Nigeria has colourless petrol been offered for sale – until now. The same thing happened with the diesel on offer from the refinery. Dangote and some of his admirers argue that the colourless product is better than anything else. I beg to disagree.

A COUP AGAINST THE PEOPLE – COLA CATASTROPHE INEVITABLE

“How can we rationalise a situation where doctors who earn an average of $300 per month, are expected to cope with such astronomical increases in the cost of living? The recent hike in PMS prices has worsened an already unsustainable economic reality for healthcare professionals and all Nigerians, making it nearly impossible for them to manage” – Saheed Kehinde, Chairman, Nigerian Medical Association, Lagos Branch.

Doctors and their COLA – cost of living allowance – are very crucial; definitely.

If doctors cry out, what would drivers do? The worst part of the entire calamity is still to come for several reasons. But, some issues will serve to illustrate our national predicament. It is simply terrifying. Our lives have been changed forever; unfortunately not for the better for most Nigerians. 

First, Mr Adedapo Segun, the Executive Vice President of Downstream NNPCL, told Nigerians, on television, on September 5, 2024: “The market has been deregulated, meaning that petrol prices are now determined by market forces rather than by the government or NNPC Ltd. Additionally, the exchange rate plays a significant role in influencing those prices.” If that does not open the eyes of those who had been touting the Dangote Refinery as our saviour from high fuel prices, nothing will. However, just in case more is needed to open the eyes of those self-blinded, there is more bad news.

“Further hike looms as NNPC says N897/litre not market reflective” – Report.

For those individuals and groups –NBA, PDP, CNG, Reps Minority caucus and YCE – shedding tears and requesting for price roll back, there is only one advice: Stop shedding tears now; you might need to shed blood later. The Yoruba Council of Elders, YCE, in particular, sounded hypocritical. Tinubu is their President; they voted massively for him. They have a right to talk; but, nobody can take them seriously. This is the direct consequence of their votes!!! From my own projections, market-determined prices will end up ranging from N1, 100-1, 230/litre ultimately. The consequences of that eventuality will be explained later in another article.

DANGOTE VERSUS NNPCL REFINERIES

“Against [official] stupidity, the gods themselves labour in vain” – Frederick von Schiller, 1759-1805, VBQ p 235, available online.

The approval of Dangote’s brand of petrol, when combined with NNPCL’s role as the initial sole distributor of the first colourless petrol offered for sale in Nigeria, has opened several issues for public debate. To begin with, NNPCL’s four refineries, if ever they produce petrol, will distribute conventional yellow coloured fuel. The two types of petrol conform to standards approved in different parts of the world. The claim that Dangote’s fuel meets American specifications constitutes partial information and defence of the brand.

Every car manufacturer selling cars in the US builds engines that meet American specifications – V6, V8 and even V12. Americans generally love big cars. Europeans and Asian manufacturers favour smaller cars – V4 and V6 – but seldom anything bigger. The fuel specifications are consequently different. Because almost all the cars on Nigerian roads are made in Japan, South Korea, and increasingly now China, the fuel specification has not changed for decades. The attempt to bring ‘super petrol’ to Nigeria in the 1970s resulted in massive failure; and it was eventually abandoned.

Nigeria’s refineries will produce conventional petrol; not white petrol. Nigeria will then become the first country on the globe offering two different types of petrol for consumption. That raises a fundamental technical question; which neither Dangote nor NNPCL has bothered to address. Can the two types of petrol be mixed in the same tanks – cars, generators etc — without problems for users? Even the villager can understand the implications of that question.

Obviously, if for some technical reasons, the two brands of petrol are not safely mixable, Nigerian consumers are being exposed to great risks with regard to their investments in generators and cars. The risks are considerable; given the fact that for most low income people, a generator is probably their biggest investment; while for the Middle Class, the family car is the largest investment. Damage those two items and the economic calamity would be incalculable.

In a better governed society, the NNPCL and the Ministry of Petroleum Resources should have answered that question before Dangote’s fuel is released. They should have mixed the two to determine if they are safely mixable and then run the mixture in several cars to test the performance of the mixture in cars and generators.

It is only because we are Nigerians, who frequently refuse to learn from history, that most people in my generation have forgotten the damages super octane petrol did to the small engines of Volkswagen Beetles and other mini cars. What sort of people are we; that we accept fundamental and risky shifts in our lives without finding out if the change would be beneficial? Was it not a mere ten years ago, when we succumbed to the fraudulent noise of CHANGE? How many of us would not be too happy to return to the way we were then?

COLOURLESS PETROL

“Not all changes are for the better.” That was the verdict of a sage who lived about three hundred years ago. Buhari’s and APC’s eight years in government have proved that to us. Colourless petrol might turn out to be indeed better than conventional fuel; but, mixing it with other types of petrol might turn out to be problematic. Colour-coding products that are similar, but different, have been an age-long method in industries for avoiding horrible mistakes. Hydrochloric and sulphuric acids are almost colourless, but, they produce different results. We learnt that from the tragedy of cough syrup killing kids. Colourless petrol might be susceptible to mixture with water or any other colourless chemical. The results could be fatal.

ARE WE NOT OVERATING EDUCATION?

“However, in Nigeria, high illiteracy levels have created a populace that cannot effectively participate in the process leading to good governance” – Dakuku Peterside, VANGUARD, September 3, 2024.

VANGUARD is read more thoroughly than any of the five other papers to which I subscribe everyday – irrespective of whether I agree with the writers or not. Dakuku Peterside is one of my favourites. I was reading his article of September 3, 2024 and this assertion hit me like a sudden slap in the face. Dakuku made a statement which most of us had taken as self-evident. Suddenly, it occurred to me that we might all be wrong; or at least partly wrong.

Education without character or moral courage produces a lot of monstrous situations globally. China, Russia, Cuba, and North Korea have some of the highest literacy rates in the world. But, to me, they are nations of well-educated cattle being driven by sole dictators. Three have the resources to create great economies; but, Cuba is a sad place. It is a poor nation perpetually enslaved.

Back home, Nigeria is more badly governed today with millions of graduates than in 1959 when the number of university graduates could not be up to 1, 000.

Today’s leaders – Presidents and Governors – as well as their appointees are uniformly better educated than those who served with Ahmadu Bello, Awolowo and Azikiwe. Nigeria was growing steadily under the three Premiers and the Prime Minister. Nigeria, since 2014, has experienced negative growth; and we are worse governed than in 1959. Of what use is the education without character? That is a missing ingredient inhibiting our efforts at nation-building.

A brief look at the total number of voters that elect political office holders in Nigeria would easily reveal a rather negligible figure. Many factors account for this. First, the voter turn-out which is always exceedingly low is further abridged by the large number of spoilt ballot papers defaced by many people who do not really know how to vote. Another causative factor is political apathy which refers to general lack of interest in politics.

At the same time, some voters are largely discouraged by the long distances between their homes and the nearest voting centres to them as well as the rigidity of the electoral process which restricts voting to only the centre where every voter was registered. Although all the factors responsible for low turn-out are probably too many to be listed here, the one that may probably never improve is political violence which scares many people away from the voting centres.

In the case of the 2024 Edo governorship contest which is just about a week away, it is likely that many voters may not come out to vote because of the terrifying disposition of politicians especially members of the two major parties- the APC and the PDP. The level of aggression portrayed by some of them in the last few weeks has never been this dreadful since 1999. It all started with pure denigration which this column a few weeks back described as pedestrian electioneering campaigns akin to the activities of local heroes of the first republic who took delight in using their privileged positions to put their opponents under house arrest just before voting day.

Today’s politicians are employing not only the use of political thugs to harass opponents but are also embracing every malaise that decent societies would generally not encourage around elections which ought to produce visionary leaders for the benefit of society. The nearer the Edo contest, the more the politicians issued threats against one another thereby inadvertently imposing on the sub consciousness of every peaceful and unarmed voter to choose between coming out to vote and his life.

In truth, those threatening each other are not joking because in Edo and perhaps in many other states, the reality which we ought to reiterate is that governorship election is not a game, but a war in which all is well that ends well including the elimination of opponents. At the peak of the battle, history tells us that even the governor may serve as the warlord of his army – another word for party during Nigerian elections.

In 2012 for example, a mere rumour that some secret voters’ registration was holding in a particular location was enough to provoke massive protests all day in Benin City, the state capital in which at least one life was lost. No one bothered to interrogate INEC on the rumour; instead, followers of the ruling party were suddenly mobilized to troop out behind the then governor Adams Oshiomhole to protest what turned out to be untrue. When asked by the media if it was right for him as a governor to lead a protest, Oshiomhole said: “I will conduct my office according to my own style. I have a mass background; these are the qualities that brought me to this office including mass protest.”

At the point of the protest in question, the current governor, Godwin Obaseki was Oshiomhole’s best man and political disciple which aptly explains why the on-going electoral feud must be stopped before it is too late. Those who are in doubt as to whether evil days are ahead need to listen to a number of sources such as the Nigerian Civil Society Situation Room which has since recorded 19 major incidents of preelection violence.

One of them concerns the July 18, 2024 attack on Monday Okpebholo, the governorship candidate of the APC in which a police inspector was killed. The APC is convinced that the attack was masterminded by PDP leaders that they insist must be brought to book using their own federal might as the nation’s ruling party. Another credible evidence that there is trouble is an advisory from the Oba of Benin’s palace directing all traditional chiefs and elders to perform the traditional ‘Bisusu’ ceremony to ward off evil ahead of the coming governorship election. Our Oba does not speak in vain.

Those who imagined that respected elders of the national peace committee led by former Head of State, General Abdulsalam Abubakar would be able to put a halt to the volatile situation were shocked to see that the politicians were more vociferous during the peace agreement signing week. The PDP which is the ruling party in the state has already declined to sign the agreement suggesting that it is unreasonable to pretend that peace is attainable when the playing field is not level.

The party says it will only sign the peace agreement when among other things, some of its chieftains who have been detained in Abuja without trial for whatever offences allegedly committed are released. Although the Edo State commissioner of police, Nemi Edwin-Iwo has promised that the police are neutral and would remain so, the message being sent to the ordinary citizen by body language that Edo based suspects are arrested not by Edo based police but by Abuja based police is that the fight ahead would be fierce. Are we sure the police should not also sign the peace accord?

There is also the issue of whether INEC as presently constituted can really be neutral in the coming election. To start with, some politicians are calling for the removal of Anugbum Onuoha, the Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, deployed to Edo State. They say Onuoha is a relation of the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike and that the latter who is believed to be a great adversary of Governor Obaseki may be used against the PDP.

The call is no doubt unreasonable because if it is followed,how easy will it be to find a REC who is no one’s relation? A more serious issue however is the allegation that Onuoha is one of the electoral commissioners that ought not to have been appointed because he has been known to be partisan – a point which the Nigerian constitution forbids. Indeed, we do not even need a law to avoid appointing members of the ruling party into an independent electoral body. How can the referee of a game be one of the players of one of the teams in a match?

It will be recalled that when the last set of nominations were made for appointment into INEC as electoral commissioners, well-meaning Nigerians including civil society groups and the media pleaded fervently for the exclusion of those with political affiliations. But as usual, the pleas were ignored; indeed, the senate cleared such persons without looking into the allegations and without considering the impact their appointments would make on the political system.

If there is tension in Edo State now, we cannot claim to be unaware of when the seeds were sown. The pain the rest of us have is that if the PDP finds an opportunity to return to power someday, it would waste no time in repeating the same conduct it is deprecating now meaning that Nigerian politicians are never desirous of free and fair elections, they only mouth the attributes.

Politicians probably do not care what happens to society but analysts have a duty to posterity to record the numerous negative activities of political actors which mar elections in the country. The same smartness going on now in Edo State has largely followed how the people of Anambra State ended up having only 10 percent of their voters electing the governor of their state. Other citizens were either disenfranchised, beaten up or manipulated to produce a people’s governor by an insignificant minority. 

This should be discouraged. As Yiaga Africa, a frontline international election monitors suggested recently, Edo politicians need to reduce the current high political tension in their state. Accordingly, all well-meaning Edo citizens should realize that they still have a tiny window to appeal to political actors to let reason prevail, to allow for a free and fair election, to let the votes of the people count and to allow the best candidate come to power to develop Edo State for the benefit of all. 

Recently, Olufemi Soneye, the Chief Corporate Communications Officer of the NNPC Limited, utilised his “right-of-reply” privilege to debunk the assertions made by Dr. Muiz Banire, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), when he described NNPCL as the “black hole of Nigeria” in his opinion piece.

To the best of my knowledge, Dr. Banire is not the only person who is concerned about the state of affairs in Nigeria’s oil industry. Several public affairs commentators and concerned Nigerians as well as stakeholders have used the radio, television, newspapers (print and online) and the social media to express their views, either for or against NNPCL – a fully-owned government oil company. When is NNPCL – the big elephant in the room – going public?

I understand Soneye’s difficult position as spokesperson of NNPCL, but I’m sure many Nigerians are not swayed or convinced by his explanation. He tried to paint a picture of what is going on at NNPCL, especially on issues relating to petrol scarcity – that has become a way of life for us – and failed attempts to remove subsidy payments in the past.

However, it is wrong and superfluous to even suggest that those who criticise NNPCL are “intentionally mischievous” or “standing facts on their heads” or “want to be in the good books of the public.” Maybe Soneye doesn’t even know that the public image of NNPCL is in tatters – that is if there’s still any semblance of any public image left, apart from the bright colours of its logo which was launched with so much fanfare with billions of naira in a major rebranding effort two years ago – and no matter how he tries to spin the NNPCL story, it will always be a hard sell.

I do not envy Soneye, but he has a job to do. A very difficult job indeed. This is the same oil company that initially denied that they were owing suppliers when the story first broke. There was really no point being economical with the truth in the first place. But as it turned out, NNPCL admitted in a statement that they were facing “financial constraints,” and indeed petroleum products suppliers were being owed about $6.8 billion because it pays to import these products rather than making our refineries work.

This debt burden – amongst others – is responsible for the long and winding queues at petrol stations, where productive man-hours are lost with the resulting negative effect on our economy. After lying shamelessly, NNPCL should apologise to Nigerians for their bad behaviour.

So who is responsible for the perennial fuel scarcity? Who was also responsible for importing bad petrol that damaged our vehicles and generators two years ago? Were there any sanctions or consequential management?

Soneye can commission a perception audit on NNPCL and tell the whole world the findings. I’m not too sure he would fancy the report. He reacted to the views of Dr. Banire and Pat Utomi, a professor political economy, because he could not ignore them, knowing fully well that they have “strong” voices in the court of public opinion, in addition to their stature in the society as public intellectuals and thought leaders.

Soneye cannot, in good conscience, say that these two gentlemen don’t know what they are saying. NNPCL cannot rule out more “vitriolic attacks” as the days go by; that would be mere wishful thinking when everyone is concerned about energy security. NNPCL is the one holding the keys and padlock to our oil quarters.

I don’t know whether Soneye was expecting The Punchto shower praises on NNPCL or garland the oil operator with medals of extraordinary achievements in the newspaper’s editorial. Wouldn’t that be rather farfetched? Does he truly understand the heritage and editorial policy of the newspaper that is over 50 years old?

The story of NNPCL will fill a book, and it could be a best-seller, depending on who the author is. Whether NNPCL is a “cesspool of corruption” or a “danger” to Nigeria, Soneye should understand that Nigerians are tired of the shenanigans, and lack of transparency and accountability of the fuel provider of last resort.

Shortly before former President Olusegun Obasanjo left office in 2007, he wanted a cure for a nagging migraine that had refused to go away. The migraine was diagnosed as Nigeria’s four moribund refineries. According to Obasanjo, he invited Shell Petroleum to run the refineries, even with the offer of an equity stake, but the oil giant refused, citing reasons that included massive corruption in the oil industry.

Obasanjo’s nagging migraine increased, but he could not believe his luck when Alhaji Aliko Dangote and Mr. Femi Otedola, two prominent billionaires, set up Blue Star Consortium to acquire stakes in the Port Harcourt and Kaduna Refineries – 51 percent for Dangote and 21 percent for Otedola. They were ready to “change the game and transform Nigeria’s energy landscape” for an investment of $750 million in both refineries.

The deal was made on Obasanjo’s watch only for it to be reversed by his successor, late Umaru Yar’Adua, in an “utterly obnoxious” manner as Otedola described it.

When Obasanjo learnt of the reversal, he went to ask Yar’Adua – who was now President at the time – why he took the decision, thereby frustrating the vision of Dangote and Otedola. Yar’Adua told Obasanjo that the henchmen at NNPC and other vested interests assured him that they would fix the refineries. We are now in 2024. Are the refineries working? That assurance given 17 years ago entered a mysterious voicemail.

In a viral video, the late Chief M.K.O Abiola who was the presumed winner of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election, said that he would demystify the “layers of mystery” around NNPC by making it more transparent and accountable after being sworn into office. Abiola promised to publish the price of daily sale of Nigeria’s crude oil, but he died under mysterious circumstances as he fought to reclaim his mandate. That was 31 years ago.

The testimonies of Obasanjo and Abiola are just two examples that underscore the urgent need to lift the veil of opaqueness surrounding NNPCL. At a time Nigerians are struggling to survive, another layer of hardship was added – Nigerians in search of petrol sleep at filling stations because NNPCL cannot guarantee energy security.

The Guardian Weekend of September 7 – 8, 2024 did an excellent reporting on NNPCL. According to the newspaper, after spending about $3 billion on Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) on Nigeria’s four refineries in the last three years, NNPCL has not been able to give Nigerians one drop of petrol, yet there are huge salary bills and employee benefits paid every year running into billions of naira. The failure of NNPC and now NNPCL, it must be stated for the umpteenth time, is rooted in allegations of mind-boggling corruption, poor corporate governance and political interferences.

There are two refineries in Port Harcourt, one in Warri, and one in Kaduna. It was the 61-year-old Port Harcourt refinery that received approval of $1.5 billion in 2021 for total rehabilitation. The Warri refinery is 46 years old while the Kaduna refinery is 44 years old. The Kaduna and Warri refineries also received about $1.5 billion in 2021 after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved the contract awards in August 2021. The four refineries have an installed capacity of 445,000 bpd distributed as follows: Port Harcourt refineries (210,000 bpd); Warri (125,000 bpd), and Kaduna (110,000 bpd).

These refineries are just waste pipes. If you check their record of debts in the 2022 audited statement of the company, the Port Harcourt refineries are owing N806 billon; Warri refinery is indebted to the tune of N597 billion while the Kaduna refinery is owing N487 billion. Even when the refineries were shut down, the losses continued to mount. I’m sure Soneye will agree with me that this is a poor score card by any standard. If NNPCL were a private sector company, the entire management would have been fired a long time ago.

“What’s the future of NNPC refineries?” The Guardian Weekend asked. Is there indeed a future after what we have witnessed in the last 40 years? The newspaper quoted Dr. Muda Yusuf, the chief executive of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE), as follows: “NNPC lacks the capacity to effectively manage critical oil sector assets, including the refineries. The high standards seen in other national oil companies such as Saudi Aramco and Petrobas are missing in NNPC’s operations. Merely injecting more money into the sector will not solve its problems.”

Dr. Yusuf went on to recommend that the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) model be adopted to manage the four refineries. Indeed, talking about solutions, NNPCL shares should be listed on the stock exchange where government control should be diluted to not more than 25 percent.

As of 2021, NNPCL had 7,338 staff. The four moribund refineries spend N68 billion yearly on salaries and over N500 billion on employee benefits in a single year. In 2022, the employee benefits stood at N266.923 billion, but it rose dramatically to N583.797 billion in 2023 – that’s more than double, an increase of about 118 percent, according to the audited statements released last month.

The statement also revealed that the company’s general and administrative expenses increased from N1.704 trillion in 2022 to N2.991 trillion in 2023 – an increase of 70 percent. Is this how they spend our money at NNPCL?

Nigeria is a major oil producer with four refineries, but in nearly 30 years, we have been importing petroleum products that are heavily subsidised. If Nigeria is flat broke today, it is mainly due to the huge subsidy scam and oil theft that are perpetrated by the enemies of Nigeria. Personally, I feel ashamed that we have been unable to manage our oil assets. While monumental oil thefts, subsidy scams and smuggling have posed significant challenges, NNPCL continues to multiply its own problems.

The bulk of our crude committed to forward sales by NNPCL is creating supply challenges to local refineries with our daily oil production at only 1.3 million bpd. Last year alone, over N7 trillion was spent on subsidy payments, and this figure is likely to go higher this year. In six months from January to June, 2024, our petrol import bill is already at N5.8 trillion.

NNPCL is now searching for private firms (Operations and Maintenance (O&M) companies) to operate the Kaduna and Warri refineries. This is like history repeating itself if we recall the Blue Star Consortium story when the sale of both refineries to Dangote and Otedola 17 years ago was reversed. I would be glad if the national oil company is able to sign an O&M deal for the two refineries. By the way, we must thank Dangote Refinery for coming to the rescue of NNPCL after a series of oily twists and turns.

Going forward, NNPCL should turn a new page, and intentionally seek to have a clean break from the past. For example, instead of making unrealistic projections, it is better for the refineries being rehabilitated and revamped to begin operations before any public announcements are made. That approach would be a better public relations strategy.

Soneye, join me and my colleagues as we advocate for a better Nigeria. That is what we are doing under the auspices of Naija Times Journalism Foundation (NTJF), the nonprofit arm of Naija Times, our online newspaper. We are guided by three ideals: building strong institutions, upholding the rule of law and defending the public interest.

We do not have any other country to call our own, except Nigeria. We must therefore join hands in the task of nation-building and make Nigeria, the greenest nation in Africa, realise its full potential.

Braimah is a communications strategist and publisher/editor-in-chief of Naija Times (https://ntm.ng)and Lagos Post (https://lagospost.ng). He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Christopher Nkunku was the matchwinner for Chelsea in their 1-0 victory against Bournemouth in the English Premier League (EPL).

A few minutes after coming on as a substitute, Nkunku ensured Chelsea left Bournemouth with all points in consecutive matches at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday.

The last match of the day was an entertaining encounter bereft of goals until Nkunku’s strike four minutes to the end of the pulsating game.

Bournemouth dominated early on but failed to take their chances. Marcus Tavernier hit the woodwork 22 yards out, Evanilson went close from a header, and Chelsea goalkeeper Roberto Sanchez denied Justin Kluivert.

The goalkeeper would switch between hero and villain in minutes, first conceding a penalty when he brought down Evanilson before brilliantly saving the attacker’s spot-kick to keep the scores level at the break.

The Cherries continued to dominate the chances in the second period, and Sanchez had to tip Ryan Christie’s effort onto the bar before Nkunku won it for Enzo Maresca’s side late in the encounter.

The injury-ravaged French forward created space after collecting Jadon Sancho’s pass and prodded home a neat finish to snatch all three points for the Blues.

With seven points after four matches, Chelsea are in seventh place, while Bournemouth stay 11th with five points.

In earlier matches, Manchester United won 3-0 at Southampton, with Andre Onana saving a penalty kick before goals by Matias de Ligt, Marcus Rashford, and Alejandro Garnacho won the Red Devils their second game of the season.

Manchester City maintained their 100% record thanks to Erling Haaland’s brace in a 2-1 win over Brentford. Liverpool suffered their first defeat of the season with a 1-0 loss at Anfield to Nottingham Forest.

Everton surrendered a two-goal lead for the second successive match, losing 3-2 at Aston Villa.

RESULTS
Southampton 0-3 Manchester United
Liverpool 0-1 Nottingham Forest
Crystal Palace 2-2 Leicester City
Fulham 1-1 West Ham United
Brighton 0-0 Ipswich Town
Aston Villa 3-2 Everton
Manchester City 2-1 Brentford
Bournemouth 0-1 Chelsea

[TheCable]

Order in every credible democracy is a balance of compassion and hard policy choices. The hard choices, often of a reform nature, which confront new leaders only make sense if they are for the common good. Otherwise, a  barrage  of crushing reforms with no tinge of compassion can suffocate the afflicted citizenry and cast the reformer in a bad hue. In that situation, even the best intentioned reformer could become a mindless autocrat. Democracy then breeds, not a charismatic leader but a mindless authoritarian. The equation is somewhat like this: the pain of reform must be balanced by the appearance of compassion. The tough committed purposeful leader who is both feared and capable of being loved.

President Bola Tinubu insists that he has unleashed reforms to make Nigerian better. Not everyone of his compatriots agree. Contrary to the chorus of his Abuja choir, most citizens now contend that today ‘s Nigeria is beginning to look more like a training ground for cruelty and a practice field for apprentice authoritarians. Many are swearing that Mr. Tinubu may have turned his back on the ways of democracy and popular governance and now faces a frightening direction. I am among those who are very frightened to live in this place. An assumed democracy has replaced sweetness with bitterness, citizens are now afraid of the very government they went out to elect only a few months ago.

The far sighted and perceptive never  expected Tinubu’s tenure to be any different from what is unfolding before our eyes . When he chose his inauguration podium on May 29th to mouth ‘fuel subsidy is gone!’, sensible people expected a balancing reassuring statement. None came immediately or any time afterwards. Instead,  more draconian acts of serial wickedness have been heaped on citizens like burning coal. For all these, the government insists that it is on a reform path.

The Naira was floated with no scientific benchmark. An astronomical tax was heaped on electricity. Pump prices of gasoline headed to the sky and have been shooting upwards ever since. Taxes on practically everything followed: basic food, basic medications, transportation costs, house rents, cooking gas, basic banking transactions etc have since last May shot up beyond the rational.

When gasoline prices shot up and the Naira was shredded in value,  organised labour raised the urgent matter of a commensurate national minimum wage. The public supported labour’s pressure for an increase of the national minimum wage. A series of negotiations and arm twisting manipulations led to an agreement on a contentious N70,000. While workers at federal and state levels are still waiting for the promised minimum wage, a new vortex of new gasoline prices have been allowed to kick in. The public is confused and has been thrown into a further life support mode. Predictably, the  latest Increase in fuel pump price has taken its toll in the wrong places. Schools can hardly resume because of high transportation costs. Edo , Kano and Borno states have postponed the resumption of schools for the new school year. Other states may follow suit.

Since May, 2023, hardly any pleasant news has come our way except for announcements about bags of rice scattered in a few states. The government that took away our little sweetness has responded with rice and noodles. A myriad taxes have followed. The rice of offer has turned out a mirage. By its nature, rice is a tax-laden palliative. If you give people rise, they need money to buy meat and fish, oil, onions and other ingredients. In short, a gift of free rice reminds people of their immense poverty. So, people desperately access the free rice as an article of trade, something to be re-sold to raise money to douse the ravaging poverty. That has led to fierce warfare in locations where rice is being shared. People who went out to fight for rice returned in body bags as the fierce battles were  do –or- die duels. 

The pursuit of cruel reforms and draconian levies and taxes has created a country of numerous precedents.  Nigerians living today may have seen far too many precedents in our national life already. In one life time, we have seen more new milestones than any other generation. We have seen the  highest inflation rate- 43%  ever. Since its introduction in the early 1970s, Nigerians have seen the most abysmal exchange rate for the Naira in national history. We have seen the highest poverty rate in our national history, leading to the creation of Nigeria as the world’s poverty capital. For the first time in our life time, hunger has become a widespread national affliction, graduating into an object of nationwide protest and massive street brawls between hungry mobs and armed security personnel.

Today ‘s Nigerians have seen the highest price per liter of gasoline ever. In some parts of the country, there are reports of prices of up to N1,500 per liter. Similarly, Nigerians are seeing the highest cost per unit of electricity even as darkness envelopes  the land. Nigerians are seeing the most expensive cup of garri, beans, corn or millet  in their life time. It is the worst of times and the most trying of times.

It is also the most dangerous of times and the most precarious of times. Never before in peace- time have Nigerians seen such a high  casualty rate as this. People are being killed needlessly on an industrial scale everyday. In no other nation’s peace time do so many people die needless deaths. Peace time Nigeria is ranking shoulder to shoulder with Sudan, Syria, Somalia and other dangerous places in the world on a scale of insecurity. The English language has run out of terminologies for describing the variants of Nigeria’s bad state and its architects: terrorism, banditry, abduction, kidnapping and other unnamable crimes.  At no time in our national history have we lived in a more dangerous country, not even in the civil war years.

Youth is ordinarily the time to hope, to look forward to a long life stretched ahead of you. The youth dream dreams and cherish longings. As youth, death and mortality was far and remote from us. But in today’s Nigeria, death has become the constant refrain in the language of youth. Our university campuses have become common grounds for suicide among our youth. Our children are being killed or are killing each other because the landscape beyond is bleak and hopeless. We are living in a place where suicide has become an easy escape route for frustrated youth.

Other silly and laughable precedents have also been created in Nigeria under the Tinubu presidency. For instance, we have never seen such extensive motorcades trailing men of power as are being displayed by Akpabio and Tinubu. Nor have such humongous sums been spent on luxury items at the apex of power anywhere as in today’s Nigeria. Nor have we seen single civil construction projects of such magnitude as the Calabar-Lagos highway (N18 trillion!). No previous president so prioritized his personal comfort as to purchase a different presidential jet in under two years in power without parliamentary appropriation or any known budget provision. These are clearly precedents in national profligacy! 

Democracy devoid of compassion or prudent consideration for the welfare of the lowly runs a clear risk. When a democracy proceeds with reckless impunity, it runs the risk of drifting into authoritarianism, a routine insensitivity to the common feeling. The feelings of the people begin to matter less. The state carries on as though it is a self- empowering entity.

At the moment, Mr. Tinubu’s bumbling embrace with power is by far a greater threat to Nigeria’s democracy and survival than anything else. When a democracy fumbles, its readiest temptation is to be attracted towards dictatorship. The Tinubu government is beginning to arrest journalist for no stated reason. Labour leaders are not immune either. Innocent people who went out to protest their own hunger and poverty have been arrested and are being prosecuted for disturbing the peace of the rulers. Of course, it is easier to arrest people than to manage them in freedom. It is also easier to clamp down on dissenting voices than to loosen a million free voices. People who cannot afford expensive  lawyers to defend them or speak English to state their rights are easy to put away until the jail houses are filled with those who should be voting at the next election.

Compassion is an issue when the common good is of concern. But the  common good is an issue when power is wielded on behalf of the people. But when power becomes an end itself, the common good recedes into the background and becomes a concessionary  afterthought. The pursuit of power, its consolidation, warehousing and monopoly becomes the end of state power. It does seem that barely one and half years after Tinubu’s ascendancy, we are down to that level where the values of democracy are being goaded towards the route of authoritarianism.

A Nigerian authoritarianism under a rule like Tinubu’s will be untidy. Our power hegemony is never evenly spread. It usually wears a sectional ethnocentric color. Already, Tinubu has erected what is easily the most blatant and unabashed Yoruba ethnic hegemony in Nigerian history. Name any strategic segment of national life and it stares you in the face. Open. Shameless. Even disgraceful to the dignity of the otherwise decent and sophisticated Yoruba nation. We are faced with an impending calamity. Nigeria’s democracy is about to give birth to an ethnic authoritarianism. It will be a sad day when we descend from today’s increasing repression to the hounding of political opponents into political exile out of fear for their own safety. Over and above today’s japa droves, we may soon witness swarms of political asylum seekers heading in many directions. The freedom which our people trooped out to welcome in February is slipping away under our very eyes. 

Saturday’s governorship election in Edo State will feature a keen contest among political gladiators whose names are not even on the ballot. On many fronts, the race has all the trappings of a proxy contest. Of the 17 candidates on the ballot, the three frontline candidates are: Senator Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress, APC; Mr. Asue Ighodalo of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP; and Mr. Olumide Akpata, of the Labour Party, LP. They will put up a good fight on their own and two of the three will run on their accomplishments in other fields. But all three are political newbies. Their three-way exertions will be dwarfed by the vigorous test of strength by other and more politically-experienced individuals and entities both within and outside the state.

This is because there are outstanding scores to be settled and new advantages to be scored by those who are not even on the ballot. These outside gladiators have a greater incentive than the candidates for the outcome to favour them or their camp. If it doesn’t work out, the APC flagbearer will return to the senate while the PDP and the LP candidates can return to their day jobs, take lessons from their first political outing, then give it another shot.

But more seems at stake for the external parties. For them: there is a grudge to be settled, there is an unfinished business to attend to, and there is current and future political relevance to contend with. These are some of the factors that drive desperation in Nigerian politics. Already, one of the external actors has described the election as ‘do-or-die’ and ‘existential’ while another could be mistaken as a candidate in the election. The Edo governorship election is of outsize significance and is likely to generate more heat, and attract more attention, than other regular off-cycle governorship elections. A week to the election, the heat is so palpable that it can be felt even beyond the state.

A briefing paper released on September 10^th by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) brilliantly captures the various issues at play in the Edo governorship election and points out its larger implications for future elections in Nigeria. I fully recommend the paper. In my intervention today, I intend to tease out the proxy dimensions of the September 21^st poll, then close with how zonal dynamics within the state (itself a form of proxy) may impact the outcome of the election.

The first proxy contest will be among the presidential candidates of the top three political parties in the last presidential election: Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of APC; Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of PDP; and Mr. Peter Obi of LP. A major shift occurred in Nigeria’s electoral pattern in 2023 when the presidential contest expanded beyond the traditional two-way race of the previous six electoral cycles of the Fourth Republic. Obi alongside Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwanso of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) bucked the trend and turned the contest into a truly competitive multi-party poll only close to the one we had in 1979, which incidentally was our first presidential election. Edo gubernatorial contests used to be a two-way affair, as no third-party candidate ever scored up to 1% of the votes cast between 1999 and 2020. This will definitely change this time around, mostly due the Obi factor.

One of the states where the Obi wave made a significant landing in the 2023 presidential poll was Edo State. Obi garnered an impressive 56.97% of the votes in the state and even denied his more experienced competitors and their established political structures the mandatory 25% of the votes cast. Tinubu, who won the overall election, could only muster 24.86% in Edo State. Alhaji Abubakar, whose party had been a dominant force in Edo and national politics since 1999 and was the ruling party in the state at the time of the election, got only 15.41%. Even when Saturday’s election is a local one, and we should not forget the maxim that all politics is local, the 2023 presidential candidates and their political parties have different points to prove in Edo State on Saturday.

For all three presidential candidates and their parties, winning the governorship election is way more than symbolic. To start with, governors remain dominant figures in our politics and the number of states controlled by a political party is a signifier of its relative electoral strength or a factor that can, to a large extent, be leveraged for electoral success. For Obi and LP, the Edo governorship election is an opportunity to show that 2023 was not a fluke and a chance for the party to be in charge of a second state (the only one being Abia State). A victory for LP in Edo will burnish Obi’s standing and relevance whether he chooses to stick with the party or not in the future.

Retaining Edo State will be a face-saving opportunity for Atiku and PDP, which was rudely upstaged in 2023 in the South South and the South East, two zones that had been the party’s strongholds in six previous elections. PDP had a particularly terrible showing in the federal elections in Edo State in 2023: it failed to produce a senator, and had only one out of nine House of Representative members. Retaining the governorship of Edo will keep PDP’s tally of governors at 13.  However, losing the state will increase the diminution of a party that at its height controlled 28 states and once boasted of ruling the country for 60 unbroken years.      

Winning Edo will grant APC a chance to regain a state it had governed for 12 years (2008 to 2020) and only lost in 2020 when the outgoing governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, and APC’s candidate in 2016 was denied a re-election ticket by his estranged godfather, Senator Adams Oshiomhole. Obaseki had to decamp to PDP, which successfully flipped the state. Victory in Edo State will increase APC’s governorship tally to 21. This will take the party close to its best showing so far since in came into being in 2013. In 2015, APC won governorship elections in 22 states.

For Tinubu, Edo State is a bit personal. This was where in 2007/2008, he successfully launched the bid to take his Action Congress (AC, later Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN) beyond its South West enclave and part of the strategy that eventually landed him the presidency. The 2008 victory came via the courts, but ACN won 76% of the votes in the 2012 governorship election in Edo State when its candidate, Oshiomhole, sought re-election. By 2016, ACN had merged with other parties to form the APC and APC’s candidate, Obaseki, won by a decent 55%. However, things soon fell apart between Obaseki and Oshiomhole.

Tinubu not only took sides but also openly showed his hands. He made and released a video close to the 19^th September 2020 governorship election in Edo State, and called on the people of the state not to vote for Obaseki whom he accused of many things. In response, the Obaseki campaign adopted and popularised a very effective slogan: Edo no be Lagos (in reference to Tinubu’s overbearing influence in Lagos politics and the way in which he, in 2019, denied Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, then incumbent governor of Lagos State, the party’s nomination).

Obaseki personally replied Tinubu and promised to end godfatherism not just in Edo State but also in Lagos State. Obaseki said: “In Edo, we have been fighting godfatherism and by Saturday we will put an end to it, and after that go to Lagos and put an end to godfatherism in Nigeria.” Obaseki went on to win the governorship election by a handsome 57% of the votes cast, with the support of some APC members who had scores to settle with Tinubu and Oshiomhole. Tinubu, now the president of Nigeria, got eggs on his face for the manner he tried to intervene in Edo politics in 2020. He is thus unlikely to be disinterested in the outcome of the Saturday poll, even when he may not go for the ill-advised approach of 2020. And this is not just about merely wanting his party to triumph. There is an outstanding slight to settle.

But the most obvious battle on Saturday will be a proxy rematch between Obaseki and Oshiomhole. They have had two electoral face-offs since 2020. While Oshiomhole triumphed in the federal elections in 2023 by wangling two senatorial seats and six House of Representatives’ seats for his party, Obaseki clawed back in the state House of Assembly election, where PDP eventually won 15 seats compared to APC’s eight and LP’s one. For Oshiomhole, this is the final opportunity to put Obaseki in his place; while for Obaseki, this contest is clearly the last time he is in a prime position to show his former benefactor that he has grown to a formidable political force in the state.

A lot has happened in the last four years to change the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two gladiators cum godfathers. Oshiomhole is still in control of the APC structure in the state, remains the strongman of Edo North, has been a magnet for PDP members who have fallen out with Obaseki, and is in a position to attract federal support from a president who is not a disinterested party. Though term-barred, Obaseki has incumbency at the state level on his side and is from Edo South, which boasts of about half of the voting population of the state. Both frontline gladiators have major handicaps, which may rub off negatively on their parties’ candidates.

As said earlier, the three leading candidates have scant political experience. Ighodalo and Akpata are contesting for political office for the first time while Okpebholo was elected as a senator only last year (and was victorious largely on account of the decision of PDP not to respect the zoning arrangement within the Edo Central senatorial zone). The fact that the real contestants are political newbies with limited political capital further magnifies the likely impact of their backers. All the three candidates emerged from contentious primaries. The extent to which their various parties and the various tendencies within the parties have been able to pull together post-primaries will have some impact on the electoral outcome.

But beyond the godfathers and other interested parties, the Edo election will be largely shaped by zonal dynamics within the state. This is another dimension of the proxy contest. On the basis of equity and justice, the governorship of the state seems to have been zoned to Edo Central, a zone that has been unfairly locked out of the exalted position in the Fourth Republic. While indigenes of Edo South have served as governors of the state for 16 years (Mr. Lucky Igbinedion, 1999 to 2007 and Obaseki, 2016 to 2024) and Edo North senatorial zone has done eight years (Oshiomhole, 2008 to 2016), Edo Central has only had a shot at the highest elective position in the state for a very brief and annulled period (Professor Oserheinem Osunbor, 29^th May 2007 to 12^th November 2008). In addition, Edo Central has not produced a deputy governor for the state since 1999.

There seems to be an elite political consensus to correct the injustice meted out to the zone in this election cycle. Incidentally, the last time someone from current Edo Central served as governor was between 1979 and 1983, when Professor Ambrose Alli was the elected governor of Bendel State (which on 27^th August 1991 was split into present Delta and Edo states). It is ironic that someone from the zone could be governor of a much larger entity (Bendel State) but the zone has been struggling to be given a chance in a smaller space (Edo State). The Esans, who are the predominant ethnic group in Edo Central, are significant minorities in Edo State, the same way the Okuns are in Kogi State and the Idomas are in Benue State.

Prominent Esans have played important roles in national politics and national life. Some of these include Chief Anthony Enahoro (who moved the motion for Nigeria’s independence in 1953 and edited a newspaper, the Southern Nigerian Defender, at the record age of 21), Chief Peter Enahoro (better known as Peter Pan, renowned editor, publisher and satirist), Admiral Augustus Aikhomu (former military vice president of Nigeria), Chief Anthony Anenih (former chairman of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, former chairman of the Board of Trustees of PDP and former Minister of Works), and Chief Tom Ikimi, (former minister for foreign affairs and former chairman of the National Republican Party, NRC).

The Esans ironically have been relegated to a bit role in Edo politics because their senatorial zone is the smallest of the three: Edo Central has only five of the 18 LGAs in the state, compared to seven and six for Edo South and Edo North respectively; and going by the result of the 2020 elections, Edo Central accounts for only 18% of total votes in the state, compared to 47% for Edo South and 35% for Edo North.

However, it seems Edo is ready for restitution on its Esan problem (and hopefully Kogi and Benue would find similar political resolution for their Okun and Idoma challenge). It is thus not surprising that two of the three leading candidates, Okpebholo and Ighodalo, are from the favoured zone, Edo Central. On paper, this consensus puts Akpata at a disadvantage. An Akpata victory will mean another four to eight years for Edo South, which apart from having done 16 of 25 years since 1999 is also the zone of the outgoing governor.

However, Akpata is from the most populous zone in the state. It is not clear if the everyday voter in Edo South has bought into the elite consensus for power shift. However, it is also not clear that Akpata would have Edo South all to himself, given that the running mates of the two other parties (Mr. Osarodion Ogie of PDP and Honourable Dennis Idahosa of APC) are seasoned politicians from Edo South. The state’s most populous zone will probably be a hotly-contested ground.

The odds seem to favour one of the two candidates from Edo Central. There is an intra-zonal dynamic at play here too. Edo Central has two axes: Okpebholo and Agbazilo. The APC candidate is from the former while the PDP candidate is from the latter. The APC candidate reportedly won the senatorial seat in 2023 because of an attempt to upturn the agreed rotation between the two axes. In 2024, the argument is that the Okpebholo axis should not produce both the senator and the governor. There is also a not-so-subtle contest about who is more Esan and who is more accomplished/articulate between Okpebholo and Ighodalo. The score is even here.

But these are unlikely to be the major deciders of the race. To get over the line on Saturday, one of the two Esan candidates will need to make a respectable showing in his home zone, lock down one of the two other more populous zones, and be competitive in the other. This again brings into prominence the electoral capital that those not on the ticket, especially Oshiomhole and Obaseki, can muster on Saturday. It is sure a race to watch.  

In the current state of Nigeria’s economy, many are grappling with unprecedented levels of hunger. A glance at local markets reveals a grim reality; prices of basic foodstuffs have soared beyond the reach of the common man, making survival a daily battle. What is unfolding in Nigeria today eerily mirrors a moment of extreme desperation in the Bible when hunger drove people to horrific lengths, including cannibalism. The alarming conditions of today invite us to reflect on that biblical story, highlighting the urgency of Nigeria’s hunger crisis.

In the book of “2 Kings 6:24-30”, a severe famine struck Samaria after the city was besieged by the king of Aram. So devastating was the hunger that two women made an unthinkable agreement, to cook and eat their children to survive. The first woman sacrificed her son, but when it was time for the second, she hid hers. This gruesome act, born from the depths of despair, prompted the king of Israel to tear his clothes in mourning upon hearing the cries of one of the women: “So we boiled my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.” (2 Kings 6:29)

The extremity of this situation, with people resorting to cannibalism as a last resort, mirrors the distress many Nigerians are facing today. The story from Samaria paints a bleak picture of what hunger can drive people to do, revealing that when all hope is lost, even the most unimaginable actions seem justifiable.

While Nigeria has not reached the point of such catastrophic human behavior, the country is witnessing a hunger crisis that is intensifying by the day. Promises from the government during election campaigns, especially regarding food security and subsidies, now seem like distant dreams. Many Nigerians recall the assurances that cassava, ewa (beans), and agbado (corn) would be cheap once a new government was voted in. However, the paradoxical reality is that even these staple foods have become luxuries for many.

Market women, such as mummy Deborah from Lagos, express the frustration of millions of Nigerians. “Shebidem tell us say cassava, ewa, and agbado go cheap when we vote for them. Today, we no fit buy dem for market,” she lamented. Her cry is echoed across the country, as inflation spirals and salaries remain inadequate, leaving millions unable to afford even a simple meal.

The prevailing situation has left many households with no alternative but to reduce their meal portions, skip meals entirely, or rely on charitable handouts. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently reported that food inflation surged to over 25%, the highest in nearly two decades. Basic staples such as rice, yam, and bread have seen their prices double or triple in some areas. Parents watch helplessly as their children cry from hunger, while once-vibrant markets are now ghostly, with food items sitting on shelves, too expensive for most to buy.

According to a recent report by the World Bank, over 70 million Nigerians are now living below the poverty line. This dire situation is exacerbated by the removal of fuel subsidies, which has significantly increased transportation costs and pushed food prices even higher. Across Nigeria, families are being forced into deeper poverty, with little hope in sight.

The knock-on effects of hunger are visible everywhere. School attendance is dropping as parents can no longer afford the transportation or meals to send their children to school. Health issues are rising as malnutrition, especially among children, becomes rampant. As hunger intensifies, so too does the sense of helplessness, and in some cases, hopelessness, in the population.

In response to the growing hunger crisis, the Nigerian government has introduced various palliative measures, distributing rice and other relief materials. Recently, the government announced a N5 billion palliative fund for each state to mitigate the effects of the subsidy removal, with the goal of distributing food to the most vulnerable citizens. However, these efforts have proven inadequate, as corruption and mismanagement continue to plague the distribution process.

Many Nigerians have expressed their frustration over the unequal distribution of these palliatives, with some regions receiving more aid than others. In many areas, these relief materials are reportedly intercepted by corrupt officials or sold in black markets rather than reaching the people they were intended for. The question remains: Is this enough to prevent an impending catastrophe?

Additionally, the government’s decision to provide cash transfers of N8,000 to vulnerable households as part of its palliative measures has been met with widespread criticism. Vice President Kashim Shettima’s statement that “N8,000 can change the life of a youth who knows what he is doing”* was viewed as deeply insensitive, given the current economic realities. In a country where the cost of basic food items exceeds this amount, many believe this intervention will have little to no impact.

The situation calls for not just temporary relief but long-term solutions that address the root causes of the food crisis. As in the Bible, when hunger turns desperate, people may resort to measures they would never have considered before. Without urgent intervention, Nigeria risks seeing further social unrest and public outrage, as citizens feel increasingly abandoned by those in power.

Nigeria’s agricultural sector, once the backbone of its economy, has been neglected for too long. The country must invest in mechanized farming, improve infrastructure, and tackle insecurity, which has forced many farmers to abandon their fields. Additionally, addressing inflation and stabilizing the naira are critical to ensuring that food remains affordable.

The hunger situation in Nigeria today serves as a grim reminder that we are teetering on the edge of a deeper crisis. While we may not witness the same level of desperation described in 2 Kings, we are faced with a moral imperative to act before it is too late. If nothing is done, history teaches us that hunger can strip away the humanity of a people and lead to horrors no one should ever have to endure.

The leadership in Nigeria must urgently address the crisis before it spirals out of control. Just as the king of Israel was struck with grief and sorrow at the news of his people’s desperation, Nigeria’s leaders must also recognize the pain and suffering of the citizens and implement genuine solutions. If they fail to do so, we may find ourselves in a situation so dire that the cry for help becomes impossible to ignore.