Fifty-eight of the 164 member states of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) members have voiced support for a proposal from the African Group backing incumbent Director General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to serve a second term.

The 58 member countries of the trade association made this known at a July 22 meeting of the WTO General Council, according to a statement by the world trade body.

“The African Group requests that the current Director-General make herself available to serve a second term, and has proposed that the process of reappointing the Director-General should be started as soon as possible,” the statement partly read.

“Fifty-eight members, several speaking on behalf of groups of members, took the floor to comment and express their support for the African Group proposal. They called on DG Okonjo-Iweala to make her intentions regarding a second term known as soon as possible. Most of these members praised the DG’s hard work and her achievements during her first term.

Okonjo-Iweala, 70, said she was very grateful for the support from members. “Everything that I’ve accomplished, we’ve accomplished together,” she said.

The director general said that she took the call of members very seriously and was favourably inclined. She said she would get back to members very soon regarding her intentions.

Okonjo-Iweala, the seventh WTO boss, took office on March 1, 2021 for a single term of four years which will expire on August 31, 2025. She is eligible for a second term.

The former Nigerian Finance Minister navigated stiff opposition to become the first woman and the first African to serve as WTO Director-General. Before her current appointment, she twice served as Nigeria’s Finance Minister from 2003 to 2006 and from 2011 to 2015. She also briefly acted as Foreign Minister in 2006, the first woman to hold both positions.

The skilled negotiator had a 25-year career at the World Bank as a development economist, rising to the number two position of Managing Director, Operations.

[Channels TV]

A lot of media people have been talking to Alhaji Aliko Dangote lately; more would give an arm to be able to reach him – all because of the refinery which was advertised as the answer to our perpetual fuel problems. Laymen and women have developed the notion that, when it starts supplying fuel, prices would crash to pre-subsidy removal levels – among other expectations. More unsolicited write-ups have been sent to me by strangers and friends, alike, about Dangote himself and his refinery than I have ever received in a long time.

Suddenly, the Dangote Refinery, apart from pervasive hunger, appears to be the only subject worthy of attention. The opinion leaders are almost evenly divided – those sympathetic to Dangote and those totally against – even though the latter are often afraid to be identified. That is power – the ability to make people fear you even when you don’t know them.

  However, of all those who published articles on the subject, Segun Adeniyi of THISDAY made revelations that are pertinent to my article today – which does not seek to advise the man or even request for an appointment. According to Segun, Dangote was invited to Saudi Arabia by a top official of the Ministry of Petroleum of that country.

The Arab leader pointed out to the Nigerian businessman that only global oil companies or nations build petroleum refineries – not individuals – in a bid to persuade Dangote to stop. He was told point blank that his advice was not needed. A more expensive waste of lunch would be hard to imagine. To some extent, Dangote was right to reject the counsel. By then, he had invested too much to turn back. Moving forward was the only option left.

He moved forward; and in May 2023 the refinery was commissioned by President Buhari who played a major role in bringing about the problems now associated with the Dangote Refinery. On that day, the Nigerian Factor, symbolised by Buhari was on full display. The refinery which was not close to processing crude was presented as if   tankers could line up the next day to collect fuel for our use. Deliberate, but subtle, falsehood is at the heart of the Nigerian Factor. It leads people to believe that they have been promised something; when indeed nothing definite was offered. Americans call it a swindle.

Who promised Dangote 650,000bpd of crude?

“The combination of these two has now seen us restoring production in our country, and we believe that, as the Honourable Minister has said, we will soon hit the target of 2 million barrels of oil production per day.

  “Yes, this country, as we have said, will be a net exporter of petroleum products by the end of this year.”

Mr. Mele Kyari, Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, Abuja, July 16, 2024.

If you believe that, then you will believe anything from Kyari and the FG. Nigerians remember the promises made last year when fuel subsidy was hastily removed and the economy was thrown into a tail-spin from which it has not recovered. NNPCL promised to get the refineries pumping fuel by December 2023 and Dangote Refinery would start by March 2024. None of those promises has been redeemed till today. As late as last month, Dangote fuel was again supposed to start flowing by this month. Nigeria’s obsolete museum pieces, misnamed refineries, are now expected to be fully operational by December this year. The goal posts keep receding each time the GMD-NNPCL opens his mouth without the decency of any apologies to the stakeholders he had misled each and every time. This is not the time to explain why Nigeria cannot be a net exporter of petroleum products. We wait until December to address that.

“Impress it on the mind of any man [or woman] that he [she] can do no wrong; and he [she] will soon convince you of your mistake.” Joel Barlow, 1754-1812.

  However, one promise made by Kyari is emblematic of the way every government, since Jonathan’s has misled investors in the petroleum sector. In the 2014 presentation of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had projected 2.3 million barrels per day of crude oil for 2015-2017, at a time Nigeria was struggling to produce 1.7mbpd. In my response, several reasons were given why FG’s projections were off the mark and would result in larger deficits and negative economic variances every year. The National Assembly, NASS, accepted it without a single dissenting vote; perhaps out of fear of questioning a world class economist. Since then, 2 mpd has become almost sacrosanct. Every year FG’s budgets have been based on 2mpd; yet in no single day since Okonjo-Iweala made that error, had Nigeria been able to produce and export up to that level. In fact, the average daily production has averaged less than 1.5mbpd since 2014. For January to June this year, the average has been less than 1.4mbpd.

That is fact; unlike the wishful thinking which is the basis of Kyari’s promise. To begin with, no oil-producing nation can unilaterally increase its production by 50 per cent without triggering a major disturbance in the global market. Furthermore, Nigeria remains a member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC; and its weakest member. Nigeria needs OPEC   more than the organisation needs its poorest member. Nigeria’s interests are served by operating within OPEC’s quota system than by violating it. Kyari knows that 1.7mbpd is Nigeria’s quota for this year. Why then is he promising 2mbpd to the NASS?

  Possible crude oil production is a function of the number of rigs in operation and their capacities to deliver. Under Buhari, there has been a steady decline in the number of oil rigs in operation from over 30 in 2014 to less than 15 last year. Rigs, meanwhile, are not things you start and stop like your private car. To be able to deliver 2mbpd of crude from our present low levels regularly must mean that more rigs will return to operations and remain in business henceforth. Kyari has not told Nigerians how many more rigs are re-starting this year. And, invariably, producers are tied to binding long term agreements. Thus, even if Nigeria can ramp up production, not all of it will be made available to Dangote.

  Obviously, Dangote, while embarking on his 650,000bpd refinery, had been given assurances by top FG officials – President, Ministers and GMD-NNPCL – which they knew were dubious. They knew, ab initio, that there was no way Dangote could receive that amount of crude oil from Nigeria. Yet, they encouraged the man to develop a sense of “entitlement” – the feeling that the nation owes him a duty to deliver the crude oil and, perhaps at a discount. It is certain that he will not receive 650,000 bpd of crude from Nigeria. But,   I strongly believe should be entitled to quantity discount; which is standard practice in commercial transactions. People might raise the question of fairness with regard to smaller private refineries. That is always a difficult issue for marketers of commodities. I know how the matter is handled by brand owners. That should not delay us here. There is an important question needing answers which only Dangote can provide – if he wants.

Why did Dangote embark on a 650,000bpd refinery without settling the issue of steady supply of crude? Surely, supplying Nigeria’s needs cannot be a good reason for such a large country.

In 2019, I was covering the Mo Ibrahim Governance Weekend, where Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, sat with British-Sudanese billionaire, Mo Ibrahim, to discuss everything from investing to passports, to even Dangote’s status as Nigeria’s most eligible bachelor.

At this event, Dangote complained about needing 38 visas to travel across Africa. By 2024, while speaking at the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, the Nigerian billionaire said he now needs 35 visas to travel the continent. In five years, Africa’s richest man could only reduce his needed visas by 3. This is the best picture of how slow progress is on the continent.

Despite this knowledge, Dangote has continued to build in the continent. His admirers say it’s because he believes in the continent, but his detractors say it is because he gets undue incentives in Africa and knows how to crush the competition in Nigeria.  The events of the last few days have widened that division. Some believe the challenges Dangote and his most prized asset are facing is punishment for offending someone or some people high up in government, while others say he is now facing what the average Nigerian eats for breakfast in the hands of the Nigerian state.

Whatever the case, we know it’s Dangote’s biggest fight on the record.

ENTER TINUBU’S SILENCE

If you have watched President Bola Tinubu closely since he took office, he has made it a duty to make sure any war he fights is a proxy war. You will never find him on the battleground. Nyesom Wike Vs. Sim Fubara, the two-fighting of Rivers state, appeared before the president but the fight continued. Tinubu has never taken a side on the matter.

Muhammadu Sanusi II Vs. Aminu Ado Bayero, the “two emirs” of Kano, have had their cronies go from one court to the other with the hope that the federal might step in and pick a side, but the battle has continued for two months with no end in sight. Minister of Women Affairs Vs. Niger State Assembly on the planned marriage of 100 orphans, Mr President did not intervene.

The most recent is Ali Ndume, recently removed chief whip of the senate Vs Umar Ganduje, the chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Mr President did not say a word. Tinubu has lived in the shadows while his boys pull the trigger to the shots he may be calling. This is the Tinubu style. In Burna Boy’s words “Them they call me the Godfather, Move like an Italian“.

I could go on and on with critical issues that previous presidents would have stepped into, but the president has stayed away from — at least in public.

This is the same deck of cards dealt to Aliko Dangote, who has been the man in the news for the last two weeks. Dangote Refinery Vs. Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL) is in full swing. And while the minister of petroleum resources has called for a truce on Monday night, my history lessons on Nigeria tell me we have not seen or heard the last of this matter.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

When politicians play politics, I always ask myself: Are the Nigerian people gaining or losing? The answer to this decides where I stay on every issue. Sadly, this time, we are losing. We are losing big.

For almost 10 years, we have watched every government say “when Dangote refinery comes on stream, Nigeria will stop spending scarce FX on importing petrol”. We have seen friends of Dangote, members of the APC, and agencies of the federal government campaign with Dangote Refinery.

We all watched former President Muhammadu Buhari shut down roads in Lagos to “commission” the Dangote Refinery before his exit from office, only for Farouk Ahmed, CEO of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), who was also at that commissioning, to say the refinery is 45% ready with its product inferior.

The message is loud and clear to every intending investor in Nigeria; if the Nigerian state could maltreat its biggest entrepreneur this way, then your business stands no chance.

My second problem is the “I told you so” challenge. With this open battle between the many hands of octopus NNPCL and Dangote, the failure of the refinery will be a good chance for NNPCL to gloat, while the triumph of that massive investment will be Dangote’s last laugh. If a good win-win is not sought, both parties could sabotage themselves into heavy losses for Nigeria.

Sadly, when it is a fight between the federal government and anyone else, we know who wins. Dangote sourced lots of forex from Nigerian banks and the Central Bank of Nigeria, under the leadership of Godwin Emefiele. And doing forex business with Emefiele is perceived as a cardinal sin to Tinubu. It would not be hard to punish.

All of this is just the politics of building something big in Nigeria. As long as politics trumps economics, this opera has a lot more episodes to offer. Hopefully, I can tease out the economic part of it at a later date.

Till then, let this be a reminder to us all that in Nigeria, when great care is not taken the man whose head is used to break coconut does not live to partake in the eating.

...Says it has been nine years of Retrogression

The Labour Party Presidential Candidate in the 2023 poll, Peter Obi has taken a hard look at the Nigeria economy in the last nine years of APC administration and laments that it has been retrogression all through.

Writing on his X handle on Monday with statistics, Obi said that no effort is being made to address the growing poverty and unemployment in the land as the government fund its luxury lifestyle.

"When Nigeria returned to democratic governance in 1999, it maintained an average GDP growth of about 6.72% for 16 years from 1999-2014. The impressive growth trajectory, unfortunately, was not sustained by the then-new government and our GDP growth collapsed to 2.79% in 2015 and then recession in 2016 with a negative growth of -1.58% and 0.82% in 2017.

"For the past 9 years, Nigeria's economy has seen unprecedented retrogression on many fronts. In 2014, just before the inception of a new administration a year later, Nigeria had the biggest economy in Africa with a Gross Domestic Product of $568.5 billion and a GDP Per Capita of about N3200. Our economic indices pointed towards hope and prospects for the future growth of the economy.
"Nine years later, the giant of Africa has retrogressed to the 4th largest economy in Africa. Reports showed our GDP in 2023 stood at $375 billion with a per capita of $1700. In 2024, our estimated GDP declined further to $253 billion with an estimated per capita of $1087. This portrays how our 9 years journey since 2015 has resulted in a sharp decline in our national prosperity.

"Today, poverty is on the increase. Unemployment is rising. Food inflation is skyrocketing. Our foreign and local investors are losing faith in the future growth of our economy and are leaving. Businesses are shutting down. Urgent actions need to be taken to salvage the nation from further collapse and move it from consumption to production!
"However, instead of concerning ourselves with all these challenges threatening our collective existence, and finding ways to recreate an inclusive and sustainable economy, pull millions of people out of poverty, and return our over 18 million out-of-school children to schools, our leaders are more concerned with funding their selfish luxuries and individual lavishness, while throwing blames at others who are only committed to solving the nation's problems.

"I have always believed that politics should be about service to the people and the betterment of society. In the face of all these challenges, we the leaders should commit to inclusive and sustainable growth to end the hardship which has continued to burden our fellow Nigerians. Only through that can we achieve a peaceful and secure society.

"A New Nigeria based on better economic and patriotic thinking is Possible."

Signed
Yunusa Tanko
POMR SPOKESMAN

The role of the public intellectual is particularly important in Africa, with such individuals having a responsibility to promote a cosmopolitan Pan-Africanism and pursue seemingly “lost causes” such as reparations for slavery and colonialism.

Late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said consistently insisted on the need for secular intellectuals to engage with the public to “speak truth to power”, stir up debate and controversy, and avoid patriotic nationalism and corporate thinking.

Said regarded intellectuals as iconoclastic, marginal exiles who belonged to no tribe and subscribed to no creed. They had therefore to speak out for their fellow displaced and dispossessed, challenge the status quo and seek to uphold “eternal standards of truth and justice”.

He defined genuine intellectuals as crusaders against corruption, promoters of human freedom and knowledge, defenders of the weak and voiceless, confronters of orthodoxy and dogma, and challengers of oppressive authority. For Said, intellectuals also traverse disciplines and demolish idées fixes.

Late Kenyan intellectual Ali Mazrui noted that “we can imagine intellectualism without Pan-Africanism, but we cannot imagine Pan-Africanism without the intellectualisation of the African condition”. He observed that Pan-Africanism’s founding fathers — WEB du Bois, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah and Léopold Senghor — were all intellectuals.

Mazrui described the rich public intellectual tradition in the East Africa of the 1960s where he became the youngest professor at Uganda’s Makerere University, engaging in public debates with the country’s founding president, Milton Obote. This was also a period when founding Tanzanian president and philosopher-king Julius Nyerere translated Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice into Kiswahili.

However, Mazrui criticised the lack of intellectual diversity of Tanzania’s largely Marxist University of Dar es Salaam School of Political Economy — championed by scholars such as Guyanese Walter Rodney — which he accused of suffering from an Nyerere-infatuated “Tanzaphilia”.

The Kenyan further lamented that increased autocracy and the decline of Pan-Africanism by the 1970s eventually stifled public intellectualism across the continent. He thus called for African universities to keep a political distance from the state while staying culturally close to society.

Late Malawian economist Thandika Mkandawire similarly bemoaned the widespread autocracy in post-independence Africa, which had often co-opted intellectuals into silence as part of development and nation-building projects. He argued that many African intellectuals adopted statist definitions of social transformation that excluded important non-state actors.

Mkandawire noted that even Kwame Nkrumah sought to coerce the University of Ghana into serving state interests. The Malawian observed that by the 1980s intellectuals were accusing African leaders of having betrayed the nationalist cause, while governments in turn accused academics of engaging in research that was irrelevant to their development needs.

Mkandawire further lamented the World Bank-enforced cuts to higher education budgets across Africa, which decimated the sector and resulted in a “brain drain” of 50,000 African academics a year to Western institutions by 1995. He bemoaned a new era, by 2005, of “postcolonial pessimism”, an obscurantist anti-“victimology” discourse represented by scholars such as Cameroon’s Achille Mbembe, as well as a donor-led consultancy industry harmful to research.

Late Burkinabè historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo elegantly captured the dearth of intellectual dissent in post-independence Africa as involving leaders proclaiming: “Silence: development in progress.” He called for African intellectuals to exhibit “responsible citizenship” and advocated the independence and autonomy of civil society from national governments.

Like Mazrui and Mkandawire, Ki-Zerbo advocated a return to an integrationist pan-African vision involving diasporas in the Americas that could transcend more parochial ethnic identities.

SA was deeply isolated from the rest of Africa during the apartheid era. It is thus yet to produce many public intellectuals with a deep pan-African ethos who can help transform the inherited Eurocentric epistemologies that still dominate the country’s post-apartheid universities.

These institutions often tout themselves as pan-African, but are frequently promoting a poor parody of the ideology.

• Adebajo is professor and senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.

So, who wants Mr. Donald Trump, the former US president and front-runner for the November 5, 2024, presidential election, dead?
There are four (4) possible suspects.

The first is Iran, which recently declared it would exact revenge for the US-inflicted murder of its senior military commander in Iraq, Hassan Soleimani. Iran, which was sanctioned by the United States and Western European countries for her alleged support of terrorist organizations Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, is highly motivated to stop former President Trump from returning to office as president in 2025.

During Trump's administration, billions of Iranian dollars were frozen in addition to other sanctions imposed on her for allegedly participating in covert activities aimed at developing and obtaining nuclear weapons.

However, under President Biden, the funds that were seized were released subject to Iran ceasing to build nuclear weapons and ceasing to finance terrorist groups globally, especially in the Middle East.

Iranians may be worried that their Torchorer-in-Chief is on course to retake the White House and carry on punishing them from where he left off in 2020, given the increasing likelihood that former President Trump will return to office in January 2025.
Experience has shown that Iran can be tenacious in its pursuit, so this is not an extreme supposition.
However, that nation has refuted any role in the Trump assassination attempt.

The second is Russia, which has been the US's fiercest adversary since the days of the Cold War till date. That nation could be held accountable for the ongoing conflict it is having with Ukraine, a former USSR territory that the US is leading NATO, the North American Treaty Organisation, to arm and finance to fight on Ukraine's behalf, a war that has claimed thousands of Russian lives. In the scenario outlined above, every prominent US citizen or official becomes a potential target for murder.

China ranks third on the suspect list with the second-biggest economy in the world, after the United States, which holds the top spot. China is the closest competitor to the United States and is projected to surpass it economically in 2050.

The fact that China is waging an unofficial war against Taiwan, a territory it claims to be Chinese but which the Taiwanese reject only serves to heighten mistrust of the country.
In the manner that tension hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, a former USSR republic, escalated into a full-scale war, if the tension between China and Taiwan, an ally of the US, were to escalate into a war, Taiwan would be relying on the US to provide her with protection.
So, targeting the likely next president of the US for assassination is not implausible.

The Democratic National Convention (DNC), the political party of President Joe Biden (who is Trump's primary opponent in the presidential contest), is the fourth suspect. Interestingly, this is the second time that Biden and Trump will face-off in a presidential contest in the last decade. The first was in 2019/2020, and the second will be in November 2024, (if Biden does not step down) when the winner will be elected to the White House.

When former President Trump’s supporters rejected President Biden as the presidential contest winner in 2020, they stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2020, setting off a disastrous chain of unpalatable and unsavory events.

As a result, former President Trump's allies and advisers, including his then strategist Mr . Steve Bannon and White House counsel Mr.Peter Navaro, have been imprisoned, and the Democratic-controlled Congress has impeached Mr. Trump. He was only spared from being fully impeached by the Republican-controlled Senate at that time.

The former president was also hit with an extraordinary number of criminal and civil court lawsuits, some of which have been rejected or are pending decision. He has been found guilty of one of the charges and is currently awaiting sentencing.

It seems more like a supernatural intervention than human ability and aptitude that President Trump has overcome all the legal and political roadblocks erected in his route to the White House—what he has rightly labeled a witch hunt of the hue associated with third-world countries where the practice of democracy is yet to attain maturity. The fact that Mr. Trump not only survived a COVID-19 infection in 2020 but also narrowly avoided an assassin's bullet on 13 July suggests that he has twice cheated death.

As a result of his dexterous navigation of the political path to the White House strewn with roadblocks that were intended to hurt his brand rather than help him, Mr. Trump's popularity has exploded, as shown by the most recent surveys showing him well ahead of his primary rival, President Trump and DNC in all the battleground states.

It is understandable why supporters of the man who appears to be unstoppable—Donald Trump—have come to the conclusion that his political opponents in the Democratic Party have become so desperate that they felt compelled to attempt his assassination. That is even though the man who attempted to assassinate him -Mathew Crooks is a registered Republican.
How amazing that after all their attempts to stop him from employing both legal and clandestine strategies/ tactics, Mr.Trump has remained the front-runner in the race to become president on January 20, 2025.

Indeed, presidential assassinations in the United States date back to 1865. In fact, it was especially popular in the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy was slain in November of 1963, to be exact. On March 30, 1981, there was also an attempt on President Ronald Reagan's life. Presidents Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in July 1881, and William McKinley in September 1901 were assassinated before the attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life in 1981.
So, Donald Trump the 45th president, and Ronald Reagan 40th president share a common destiny of escaping assassin’s bullets.

It was not surprising that the first person to accuse the Democratic National Committee (DNC) of being behind the July 13 assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump was Senator J.D. Vance, just moments after the attempt and before he was selected as the vice presidential candidate and running mate of the GOP presidential candidate.

Without equivocation or mincing words, Senator J.D Vance wrote on X formerly known as Twitter:

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,”

And made the following conclusion “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Several other Republicans have echoed similar comments in public, notwithstanding the victim of the shooting. Mr Trump has been gracious in preaching togetherness and rejecting violence, just as his opponent, President Biden, has strongly opposed political violence while conceding that his bulls-eye statement about Trump was an exaggerated phrase that he should not have made.

The discussion of whether 81-year-old President Joe Biden had the capacity for a second term took on a life of its own following the scathing debate on June 27 between the 45th President of the United States of America, USA, Mr. Donald Trump, who President Biden succeeded in 2020 and is determined to reclaim the mandate that he lost to the incumbent about three and a half years ago. This is because the outgoing president was always correcting himself when he lost his line of thought during the debate.

But, unlike the 45th President of the United States, Mr. Trump, who is set to return to the White House as the 47th President in January, he is not bragging about his landslide victory over the 46th and incumbent President, Mr. Biden, in the first of their scheduled series of debates (another one is scheduled for September) before the November 5 presidential election. Instead, the typically no-holds-bared former president Trump let it blossom and become a hot-button issue about President Biden's flaws, particularly his age-related issues.

There is a consensus of opinion among the democrats, republicans, and indeed all Americans as well as television viewers around the world, that the 46th US president, Joe Biden, gave a dismal performance in the debate. As he struggled to put his thoughts together, some critics claimed he unintentionally revealed to the audience that aging has taken a toll on him. This was so obvious as he was muttering gibberish to the dismay, indignation, and discomfort of both his fellow Democrats and his opponents in the Republican Party, as well as politically neutral Americans.
It is no surprise that about 30 congressmen/ women have been calling for his stepping aside from the contest.
Somehow , it is reminiscent of the Watergate Scandal that resulted in the resignation Richard Nixon as president of the U
The awkward memory loss reminds politics watchers of the equally aged and former Senate majority leader (now minority leader), Mitch McConnell, who recently lost his train of thought in the middle of a speech, humiliating himself and other politicians when he practically went blank in the course of given a speech. People would probably prefer not to take a chance on witnessing President Biden's aging health deteriorate to the extent of McDonnell's.

After the debate, even President Biden's most ardent supporters began to question his ability to govern the US for an additional four years. As a result, a wave of Americans is currently demanding that President Biden give up on his goal of running for reelection at the age of 81.

The main arguments made against President Biden's reelection candidature are that his mental capacity is being questioned and that his faculties are purportedly in poor shape, as seen by the poor performance and result of the CNN-organised debate.

One of former President Trump’s staunchest opponents and a former White House staffer during Trump’s tenure, Alyssa Farah Griffin during the debate twitted“viewers of all political stripes and the consensus is Biden needs to be replaced,” and the debate is “worse than I believe most people imagined.”

Longtime GOP pollster Frank Luntz wrote on X that his focus group of undecided voters is “surprised and concerned about Biden’s voice,” adding “This doesn't bode well for questions about his health.”

CNN Chief National Correspondent, John King said: “Right now as we speak, there is a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party,” adding that “It involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, and it involves fundraisers. And they’re having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was dismal . . . some of those conversations include “‘should we go to the White House and ask the president to step aside?’”

The preceding harsh conclusions are only a handful of the criticisms that dominated media headlines during and soon following the June 27 discussion.

Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House of Representatives with significant influence in the DNC, reportedly recently spoke privately but bluntly to President Trump, telling him that polls show he cannot win the presidential race against GOP candidate Mr. Trump and that if President Biden remained in the race, he would destroy Democrats' chances of regaining control of the House of Representatives.

Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Adam Shiff, both firm supporters of President Biden, have allegedly joined the rising chorus of Democratic party leaders asking that Biden abandon his re-election bid.
It is a plea and demand that the besieged President Biden has resisted thus far, reminding his opponents that his potential replacement is not performing well in polls as well.

To make matters worse, the president has just succumbed to the COVID-19 virus and he is self-isolating instead of campaigning to save what is left of political life which Mr. Trump is about to bury.
Could that be a final sign, perhaps from divine forces or the so-called hand of God, to listen to the voice of the people, which is thought to be God's voice? (vox-populi-vox-Dei)

The truth is that the Democratic National Convention, or DNC, is in no less of a risky situation than when they insist that Joe Biden can not continue to be their presidential candidate and force him to withdraw, enabling Vice President Kamala Harris to run against the highly popular Republican nominee, Donald Trump, who is currently leading both Biden and Harris in the polls.
Remarkably, the presidential contest is just over 100 days away and the reality check is that opinion polls show that neither of the DNC candidates has an approval rating above 40%.
As of February 12, President Biden's rating was 38.9%, while Vice President Harris's rating was 37.5% as per the average of surveys conducted by FiveThirtyEight, a company that uses data and facts to enhance public awareness.

Two (2) years ago, I authored an article titled "The Donald Trump that Africans Do Not Know". That was after spending about a week getting to know him at his Palm Beach golf club and home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. In the story, I made the following observations:

“The first thing that springs forth from the mind of some Africans as soon as the 45th president of the United States of America, USA, Donald J Trump is mentioned is the impression that he does not like Africans, which is so untrue. And that wrong notion of President Trump disliking Africans stems from the fake news planted by his political opponents in the media and attributed to him such as Africa is a shit hole country.

Although the statement is flawed in a fundamental way, most people who believe and therefore are not enamored by President Trump have not bothered to critically identify and examine the flaw. That is the reason emotions seem to have clouded their judgment and why they have swallowed the falsehood hook line-and-sinker.

As we all know, Africa is a continent of 54 countries and not just one country.
So how could President Trump have made the comment attributed to him by his traducers: “Africa is a shit hole country”.

l then further made the following clarifications:

“Since most Africans failed to critically scrutinize the comment because they were eager to believe all the vile things that the so-called Never Trumps had to say, the flaw or illogicality of referring to Africa as a shit hole country, whereas it is indeed a continent, has unfortunately been lost on some of them.

“Those who are hell-bent on generating friction between Africans and the 45th president of the US had done a ‘good’ job as most people of black race have remained trapped in that mind-bending spell which l intend to dispel with this intervention.

“Hopefully, by debunking the myths about how Mr. Trump feels about Africans and what he had done to elevate Black Americans and those residing in the continent during his tenure as president of the US, there would be a rethinking and resetting of Africa/Trump relationship that would position the continent to benefit more from Mr. Trump’s presidency of the US, if he returns to the White House as he plans to in 2024.

“Not only because Nigeria has the largest population of black people on earth or by its being the biggest economy in Africa by GDP, but based on my personal experience as a Nigerian who has met President Trump one-on-one, I would like to use Nigeria as a reference point for assessing Trump-Africa relationship which is currently foggy owing to calculated misinformation.”

As if to confirm my favorable opinion of President Trump and inspire fellow Africans and Black Americans to feel the same way, surveys conducted recently have shown that, between 2016 and 2020, when President Trump was in office, the jobless rate for Black Americans fell dramatically.

The information supported my previous position that, if elected president, he would not emasculate Black people but rather provide them greater chances to realize the mythical American dream.
And it would seem that, two years ago, I was being prescient when I projected that he would win the 2024 presidential election, which he appears to be on course to do and become the 47th president in a little one hundred (100) days.

Naturally, not everyone shared my positive opinion of Mr. Trump, and they retaliated with criticism of my findings, which prompted me to write a follow-up article titled "The Donald Trump Magnus Onyibe Does Not Know," using their criticisms as the main talking point because the title was not originally mine but was instead created by a critic who forced me to present the following arguments:

“Perhaps, because a stereotypical opinion had long been formed about the 45th President of the US following several years of unmitigated public relations faux pax on the part of Mr Trump who never bothers to correct some misrepresentation of facts about him, my presentation of the persona of the former president of the US which is inconsistent with the mindset already shaped and propagated by a session of the Western media about Mr Trump generated a mixed bag of vile and vicious attacks as well as enlightening and encouraging comments. The anti-Trump sentiments expressed against the article and my further comments are the subject of this follow-up opinion piece.

“So basically, the purpose or raison detre for this further intervention is to shed more light on the areas of contention via the reproduction of the points of view of those that vehemently disagree with me on the need to engage with the 45th president of the US who is poised to be the 47th by contesting for the office next year when the incumbent president, Joe Biden’s first tenure would be over.

“As earlier stated, one particular critic made a case that l do not know Mr. Trump well enough to warrant my trying to market him to blacks in the US and Africans on the continent, simply because they have already formed the opinion that Mr. Trump is a racist and anti-Africa.”

It is my sincere hope that by now the doubters of former president Trump's divine mission to lead the United States and, in fact, the world, whom the evangelical community in the US saw in 2016, and who threw their weight behind him to win the presidency that year before he lost it in 2020 to president Biden, have been thoroughly weaned of their negative bias.
The fact that Mr. Trump twice cheated death—once by surviving a deadly COVID-19 infection during the pandemic that killed one million Americans and a second time by eluding an assassin's bullet during a campaign stomp in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.
With President Biden now struck down by Covid-19 infection of which we wish him a speedy recovery, it is incredible that covid-19 that played a role in his ascendancy to the presidency of the US in 2020 is once more playing a critical role in his political future if it compels him to step down from seeking reelection.
For the time being, except if an apocalypse happens, former President Donald J. Trump appears to be on track to return to the White House after beating President Biden or replacement at the polls on November 5, all things being equal.


Magnus Onyibe, an entrepreneur, public policy analyst, author, democracy advocate, development strategist, an alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA, and a former commissioner in Delta state government, sent this piece from Lagos, Nigeria.
To continue with this conversation and more, please visit www.magnum.ng

Lagos, Nigeria - We are pleased to announce that Ehi Braimah, the publisher of Naija Times, has been selected as a recipient of the University of Roehampton's 20th Anniversary Chancellor Alumni Award.

This prestigious recognition is a testament to Braimah's dedication, passion, and outstanding contributions to his field. He will be honoured at an exclusive event on October 22, 2024, at the Lime Tree Suite, Elm Grove, University of Roehampton, London.

Braimah completed his MBA degree at the University of Roehampton in 2016 and is excited to be recognised among an impressive pool of talented alumni. He expressed his gratitude, saying, "This recognition means so much to me, especially being part of a large community of alumni comprising great minds and talented professionals."

The Chancellor's Alumni Award recognises the outstanding achievements, success, and impact of Roehampton alumni worldwide. Braimah's selection is a reflection of his hard work and commitment to excellence.

We congratulate him on this well-deserved recognition and look forward to celebrating his success on October 22.

Signed,

Toby Udo

For Naija Times Newspaper

Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) has announced the appointment of Engr. Chijioke Okwuokenye as the acting Managing Director, with immediate effect.

This appointment, which is part of the transformation agenda of the company, will see Engr. Okwuokenye drive the positioning of AEDC as the foremost, customer-focused electricity distribution company in the Nigerian power sector.

Prior to his appointment, he served as the company’s Chief Operating Officer, where he oversaw strategic support units and embedded generation projects of the company. He brings to the role a wealth of experience and expertise in the power sector, as well as a passion for the attainment of the vision for the Nigerian electricity supply industry.

Speaking on the appointment, the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Dr. Stanley I. Lawson, said, “Chijioke Okwuokenye is an experienced leader who has been a part of the company’s transformation agenda and is well suited to drive its corporate turnaround. I am confident that, with his technical and commercial background, he will continue to drive value for all AEDC stakeholders”.

The company also announced the appointment of Olumide Jerome as the Chief Operating Officer. Prior to this, he served as one of the company’s Chief Business Officers. He will drive efficiency and operational excellence across the company as part of his new responsibilities.

Abuja Electricity Distribution Plc (AEDC) is an electricity distribution company in Nigeria, committed to delivering dependable electricity to millions across the nation's key commercial centres - Federal Capital Territory (Abuja), Kogi, Niger, and Nasarawa states.

In May 2023, a Transcorp-led consortium, became the core investor in AEDC, following its 60% acquisition of the company's shares. Since this strategic acquisition, the company has intensified efforts to upgrade substations, expand distribution networks, and integrate cutting-edge technologies, to enhance power supply reliability and operational efficiency. AEDC prioritizes customer experience and consistently strives to create value for all stakeholders, while contributing to the socioeconomic development of the regions it serves.

For inquiries, please contact:
Adefisayo Akinsanya
Head, Marketing and Corporate Communications, Abuja Electricity
Distribution Company (AEDC)
08030507514 | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

“The West prescribed the bitter medicine which Tinubu has been administering to us. The western press hailed Tinubu when he pronounced subsidy dead on May 29, 2023 and pushed the naira downhill. They described him as a star reformer, almost putting on him the messiah’s cassock. But the patient is now in a coma and they say something else about their lovely doctor and his competence. Read this: “In the nearly 15 months since Bola Tinubu became president, he has forced his 220 million fellow Nigerians to swallow some bitter medicine. He removed a generous fuel subsidy, one of the few benefits citizens receive from their inefficient and corrupt state. He allowed the country’s currency, the naira, to enter free fall, fuelling imported inflation and triggering the worst cost of living crisis in a generation.” It is difficult to believe that this statement you just read came from an editorial published last week by the Financial Times. That is a newspaper that hailed Tinubu last year when he withdrew subsidy on petrol and floated the naira. In an October 3, 2023 editorial, the newspaper said he “started well” and “with a bang” by removing “a costly fuel subsidy and in shifting towards a market-driven exchange rate which has sharply weakened a previously overvalued currency…” Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

An old friend reviewed the ways of this government and said he thought Bola Tinubu should be afraid of the Greeks. “Yes, especially if they come with gifts,” I added to my friend’s warning. He smiled; I nodded. In that short conversation, we had just gone through the mythical Trojan War, the Greek story of a siege, a gift, a city and its destruction.

For ten years, the Greeks and the Trojans fought a war which you and I would describe today as senseless. A Trojan prince eloped with the wife of a Greek (Spartan) king and because of that, a decade-long war had to ensue and thousands had to die. David Bevington, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago and world authority on Shakespeare, says the causes of the Trojan war were “the betrayal of love, the absence of heroism and the emptiness of honour.”

More than once, you’ve read and heard about ‘Greek Gift’. That expression is from that war of the stone walls of the city of Troy and a grueling Greek siege on the city for a full decade. Troy’s igneous walls won’t let the Greeks in for ten bad years, the besieging warrior king dropped his spears and shields; he changed his strategy and tactics. He went for guileful warmth to get what swords and fires couldn’t fetch him. The Greek built a giant wooden horse and donated it to the gates of Troy. The Greek king dropped the artful gift and then sailed his army’s ships out of sight.

The Trojans thought the Greek had gone back home in frustration. The Trojans took the horse as a gift of peace from their enemy. They thought wheeling it into their city and even worshipping it wouldn’t be a bad idea. A lone voice belonging to a priest warned the Trojan General and his troops against having anything to do with the horse gift from the Greeks: “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes (Fear the Greeks, even those bearing gifts).” The priest’s warning rang round the city. But the voice of caution was drowned in the Trojan ocean of a binge party. They said what is this one saying? They had defeated the Greeks who even left the horse as a gesture of peace. The ‘valiant’ Trojans wined, they dined and danced in a celebration of victory. Then they all went to sleep, blind drunk. One historian wrote that while they were in that state of stupid stupor, “a host of armed soldiers crept out from the belly of the horse and opened the city gates. Troy was overrun and destroyed and the ‘Trojan Horse’ became revered as one of the most successful military tactics ever.” The story is told in Homer’s Iliad; in Shakespeare’s ‘Troilus and Cressida’ and in Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Troilus and Criseyde.’

Now, the Greeks are surrounding the Nigerian Troy. Some persons clapped or feigned sleep while Muhammadu Buhari’s regime raped town and gown, forest and flowers. They are now crying war and threatening to cross the Rubicon and confront Pompey. It is interesting. They are threatening a protest for early next month. “It is treason,” the government has warned. It has also told the dog handlers to put their canine on a leash. We hope they listen. We also hope the government shuts them up by doing good and draining its swamp of excessive wetland of mosquitoes.

The protest pledgers, like master wrestlers, even gave a definite date – August 1. We call it Ogun Àwítélè (Foretold War). There is a popular play of that title by Adebayo Faleti, late Yoruba playwright of excellence. A band of robbers write to a town of hunters that they are coming to rob and pillage the people and their palace. And the thieves truly come as promised. But how are they received? Well, the robbers fail, not because they are not worthy of their promise, but because their intended victims are not led by arrogance and ignorance. The community of hunters win because it is not commanded by chiefs who are deaf to reason and receptive to disruptive flattery.

The Nigeria we have today is a forest of the heartless – Igbó òdájú in Yoruba. In the last years of Goodluck Jonathan as president of Nigeria, he received many Greeks into his fold. And almost all of them came with one ‘gift’ or the other. A prominent politician (from the North) told one of my female friends: We will help him to make enemies. We will turn him against his true friends and turn the people against him. Nothing he works on will work. My friend reported that encounter to me and we agreed to watch as events unfolded. It turned out that the promise was delivered as promised. As I type this, I see Troy and its history repeating themselves.

I hope Tinubu takes ownership of himself at this moment and listens to his inner voice. I think his wife should get for him ‘Iwe Itan Ibadan’ published in 1911 by Oba I. B. Akinyele. It is a book of ambition, gallantry, treachery, bravery,
conspiracy, flattery, rebellion, private and public protests, justice and fairness, deposition, even, forced suicide. Tèmbèlèkun is the Yoruba word for mixtures of conspiracies and insurrections. There are more than a slew of it in the book. Reading it may help our man now that the jungle is maturing. But, why am I even writing this? Meddlesome interloper. A Lilliputian reporter telling the powerful how to use his limitless powers.

Some people advised President Muhammadu Buhari not to withdraw subsidy on petrol during the pendency of his presidency. They said if he did it, it would make him hugely unpopular. He sidestepped it. The same people are around his successor now telling him that today’s excessively expensive petrol can still sell for any amount per litre, and that nothing will happen if he endorses it. That is how you charge a child that is not yours – you send them on an errand with an order that they must come back home no matter how late. A child who would not get lost in the darkness of the way would take direct charge of his journey.

The West prescribed the bitter medicine which Tinubu has been administering to us. The western press hailed Tinubu when he pronounced subsidy dead on May 29, 2023 and pushed the naira downhill. They described him as a star reformer, almost putting on him the messiah’s cassock. But the patient is now in a coma and they say something else about their lovely doctor and his competence. Read this: “In the nearly 15 months since Bola Tinubu became president, he has forced his 220 million fellow Nigerians to swallow some bitter medicine. He removed a generous fuel subsidy, one of the few benefits citizens receive from their inefficient and corrupt state. He allowed the country’s currency, the naira, to enter free fall, fuelling imported inflation and triggering the worst cost of living crisis in a generation.” It is difficult to believe that this statement you just read came from an editorial published last week by the Financial Times. That is a newspaper that hailed Tinubu last year when he withdrew subsidy on petrol and floated the naira. In an October 3, 2023 editorial, the newspaper said he “started well” and “with a bang” by removing “a costly fuel subsidy and in shifting towards a market-driven exchange rate which has sharply weakened a previously overvalued currency…” Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

Today’s lord of Abuja, just like his predecessors, loves Greeks and their graven gifts. Among the Greeks are the lawmakers housed in our federal capital. They enact any law that gives erection to their purse. Tinubu so much loves them because the gifts they give are what Caesar craved – imperator perpetuo. The losers, ultimately, are the lawmakers. Almost a century ago, Roger V. Shumate in his ‘A Reappraisal of State Legislatures’ published in January 1938 said the legislature was largely seen as a haven for “ward heelers, petty politicians and yokels”. He adds that the disquisition could even be worse with some people saying lawmakers “are more or less equally engaged in clowning and enacting laws designed to loot the public treasury or to favour some special interest at the expense of the common good.”

The battle for Abuja has always been intense because it is a Treasure Island. Read Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 classic adventure novel of that title; read the sequel, ‘Return to Treasure Island’ (1985) by John Goldsmith; read the sequel to the sequel – ‘Silver: Return to Treasure Island’ (2012) by Andrew Motion. Read all about the ugliness of the pirates in those stories. Read about mutiny, about murder, sword fights, about treachery and – blood-curdling romance. The island called Abuja will always be in turmoil as long as unearned treasures are there for pirates to pillage.

All these take us back to the urgent need to make Nigeria work as a federation. At independence, our constitution provided enough safeguards and guardrails against ambitious corrosion from an excessively opulent centre. John P. Mackintosh’s ‘Nigeria Since Independence’ (1964) says it well. He says the independence constitution provided “both the Federal Government and the regions with adequate independent sources of revenue. The central government was allocated most of the import and excise duties, corporation taxes, and death duties, while the regions had income tax, export duties on primary produce, import duties on tobacco and petrol, and a half of mineral royalties and rents. Some revenues had to be paid by the central government into a distributable pool and this was then allocated according to fixed proportions among the regions.”

Read the above again: The regions took half of mineral royalties and rents. Crude oil and gold and other precious stones are minerals. The regions took export duties on primary produce. Cocoa, cotton, groundnuts and palm oil are primary produce. These are what a centralised structure took away from the regions when it splintered them into states. The federal government bites more than its share of the Nigerian cake. Yet, it wants more.

The federal government keeps creating offices and duties for itself because it has careless, excess funds in its kitty. The creation of a livestock ministry is one of such errant actions. The bill on federal agency for local government election is another. We don’t know what else is yet on their to-do list on how to undo this federation. At independence, the centre knew its limits and rarely went beyond its bounds. On the powers of the constituent units, Mackintosh recalls that the constitution provided as follows: “The Federal Government was charged with foreign affairs, defence, external borrowing, the currency, capital issues, customs and excise, control of the exchange rate, shipping, railways, trunk A roads, posts and telegraphs, and aviation. There was a concurrent list, the main items being industrial development, labour conditions and relations, water, power, and higher education, while the regions were left all residual powers. Of these, the most important were health, education, agriculture, public works, and secondary roads, so that the regions could engage in their own economic development.” That was the constitution the British gave us.

A leader is as good (and bad) as his advisers are. Look at how the planners of Abuja designed the axle of power there. There is in there the three-arms zone: The lawmaker, the law giver and the law breaker. The principalities of Nigeria lie right there – with all the puns embedded. Collectively they are leading us into a situation almost like Ruben Östlund’s ‘Triangle of Sadness’ – a 2022 comedy drama in which a couple “sails on a lavish cruise ship” led by a drunk captain. And, as a reviewer says “what seems glamorous at first comes to a horrific end, with survivors battling for life on a barren island.”