Mohammed Idris, minister of information and national orientation, says Nigerians can now apply for and obtain visas to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Idris said the federal government has reached an agreement with the UAE to allow Nigerian passport holders to obtain visas for travel to the Arab nation starting today, July 15.

More to follow…

[TheCable]

I was one of the 102 senior journalists invited from all over the country to tour the Dangote Fertilizer and Petrochemical Refinery Complex last Sunday and it turned out to be an unbelievably humbling and revealing experience. Unmistakably visible to us was the power of vision, determination to succeed in the face of many hurdles one man’s love for country. We were reminded that it is only we, Nigerians, that will develop our; but not some mythical ‘foreign investors’ that our leaders have been looking for. The visit lasted 11 hours during which we went around every corner of the massive complex, occupying 2,635 hectares of land (seven times the size of Victoria Island, Lagos). It is located in the Dangote Industries Free Zone (different from Lekki Free Zone which is owned by the Lagos state government). In all, we probably covered most of the 112 km of road network crisscrossing the vast compound (some journalists termed it ‘The Dangote Planet’), walking and being driven. On hand to lead the tour were Aliko Dangote himself (Group President); Edwin Devakumar (Group Vice President, Oil & Gas) and Fatima Dangote (Group Executive Director, Commercial).

Dangote informed us that the fertilizer, petrochemical and refinery business would be quoted on the stock exchange on or before the first quarter of 2025 in what could be one of the biggest IPOs in recent years; that the NNPCL has only 7.2% stake in the refinery, not 20% as stated previously ‘’Although we had offered them 20%, they could not pay for all of that and so we had to reduce it to 7.2% which they paid for’’, he said matter-of-factly. He spoke on the politics and economics of crude oil supply from the NNPCL; the $100 million payment to Lagos state government; his encounters with shrines during construction and the role of Ooni of Ife; why he did not build the refinery in the Niger Delta region which is the nation’s hydrocarbon base and why Ogun State lost out as the initial location choice; why he has no home outside Nigeria and his plans to reconstruct the Lekki expressway. He also announced that the company will soon move into its 18-storey towers on Alfred Rewane Road, Ikoyi, not far from its current location.

We arrived the refinery complex about 9.30am after a two-hour ride from the corporate headquarters of Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), Falomo, Ikoyi. The first port of call was a facility called Land Fall Point (LFP). ‘’Twenty-five kilometers from here into the ocean, we have our three single point mooring (SPM) where ships discharge crude oil into our subsea pipes’’, Devakumar said. An SPM is a floating buoy anchored offshore that allows the handling of liquid cargo in areas where dedicated onshore facility for loading and unloading cargo is unavailable. From LFP we went to the port and quays constructed by DIL with a load bearing capacity of 25 tonnes/sq meters to bring heavy and large cargoes close to the site to handle liquid cargoes. Soon, we were off to the fertilizer plant where the pungent smell of urea welcomed us. The plant has an installed production capacity of three million tons/yr, but it’s currently producing at half the capacity due to inadequate gas supply - the same problem that is plaguing Nigeria’s electricity supply and impeding production at NLNG.

The fertilizer plant is the largest in Africa and the second largest in the world. Nigeria consumes one million tonnes of fertilizer per year; meaning that Dangote is able to meet local demand and while excess is exported to USA, Brazil and other places.

From the fertilizer plant, we dashed to the conference room where Dangote gave detailed and comprehensive briefings on his businesses, right from its inception, detailing his transition from commodity trading in 1978 to a well-diversified conglomerate comprising cement, crude oil and gas exploration, agriculture, fertilizer and petrochemical refinery. He appeared disarmingly simple; mild-mannered and convincing. His voice was gentle and there was no iota of indication that this was Africa’s richest man. I sat close to him, with Kayode Komolafe of Thisday (we call him KK), sitting between us. Even though I knew what the answer might be, I asked Dangote why he didn’t site the refinery in the Niger Delta. He said that would have made the investments less expensive, but he was frightened away by the volatility in the region. ‘’But Sir, Akwa Ibom State is peaceful. There’s no violence there. You should have come Akwa Ibom’’, I pushed. Others chuckled, but Dangote contemplated my pitch briefly and said, ‘’Yes. I know your governor. I saw him last week in Lagos …’’.

We left the conference room to tour the refinery, the labs and the control rooms. I didn’t know what to expect, but suffice it to say that the refinery is just a labyrinth of big pipes, running overhead in the open skies, without roofs, and on the ground and beneath the ground. It is a network of big and small pipes bending, twisting and contorting all over the place from its beginning at the Single Point Mooring 25 km offshore to the loading bay where refined products are pumped into tankers. As we walked around, I tapped Mr. Devakumar at a point and asked, ‘’Do you have an idea of the total lengths of all these pipes. I’m sure they’d run into thousands of kilometers. ‘’Yes’’, he answered. ‘’We are inviting Guinness World Records to register it’’. Dangote chipped in, ‘’They will have to come and audit it before they register and announce it’’. We continued walking. This is the world’s largest single-train refinery with capacity to process 650,000 barrels of crude per day. It will meet all of our needs for refined products with enough for exports. ‘’It is a game changer’’, exclaimed Devakumar.

After the refinery, we returned to the Conference Room for more briefing, Q & A and lunch. There were questions on varied topics, including impact of energy transition on the sustainability of the refinery; title documents from Lagos state and NNPC shareholding. One cheeky journalist asked if the Dangote Refinery will also undergo the kind of turn around maintenance that government-owned refineries have been experiencing and another queried if Dangote knew why the Port Harcourt refinery has refused to work despite the billions of dollars pumped into its overhaul. The underlying mischief behind the two questions were obvious and we all had a good laugh. I asked two questions on the politics of supply of crude oil to the refinery by the NNPCL and whether he will take the refinery to the capital market. I had earlier made a note to ask Dangote about his relationship with the Tinubu administration given the dramatic and embarrassing visits from the EFCC last year. But I changed my mind and dropped the question. Dangote addressed the questions one after the other. He said fossil fuels will be around for sometime to come despite the drive for renewable energy and explained that the need for NNPCL to supply domestic refineries with crude. He is optimistic that the guidelines recently announced by the NNPCL on crude supply will make a difference, adding, ‘’I hope the IOCs will respect the guidelines. Right now, we are paying $6 premium on every barrel we buy from them, but luckily, our refinery was designed to refine different grades of crude and so we can actually buy from everywhere. But importation brings in poverty and ships out jobs’’.

He said that Lagos State government had insisted on being paid for the land in dollars and he willingly paid the $100 million price. Although the government promptly issued the title documents, construction was delayed because of community issues. ‘’You know they have a lot of shrines here…’’, he said. We laughed heartily. ’But I must thank the Ooni for his kind interventions which quickly resolved the issues’’, he added. The delay cost him $60 million in interest charges from the banks. The refinery was initially scheduled to be sited in Ogun State, but the state government had delayed in providing the land because the governor then was making unethical demands. Dangote walked away and approached Lagos State government. But the delay cost the company about $500 million in interest payments. That’s one of the negative outcomes of corruption.

By now we were all tired, but nobody complained. The mood was convivial and the conversation was interesting. The refinery currently employs 30,000 people, of which 97% are Nigerians. The figure will go up to 100,000 as productions ramps up. The plant will meet all of our domestic demands for liquid products (gasoline, diesel, kerosene and aviation fuel). Currently, it is producing diesel and aviation fuel; petrol will be pumped out next month, Dangote assures. The Group President says his refinery has been able to bring down diesel price and may also moderate petrol prices at the pump, depending on variables like source and price of crude and exchange rate. The event closed with a passionate vote of thanks from Ms. Fatima Dangote. She praised her father’s energy, commitment and love for Nigeria and thanked Nigerians for their unceasing love to daddy. We rushed back to our hotels to watch the England-Spain Euro final football game!

Last week, Nigeria’s Supreme Court took a fundamental step towards dismantling the grip of state governors on the local government(LG) system and local government funds. The Supreme Court ruling on a suit filed by the attorney general of the federation, Lateef Fagbemi SAN, pointedly said the governors were undermining the functionality and operations of the LG system. They stretched it further by inferring that the governors were hell-bent on destroying democracy. In this landmark judgement, the Supreme Court made it clear that it is unconstitutional for state governments to control, withhold or tamper with funds meant for local governments and prohibited any further allocation of LG  funds to state governments or funds to councils without elected officials. Even with the best of intentions, the judiciary exercised legislative authority and redefined the fundamental concepts of federalism. With this move, Nigeria’s 774 local government councils will receive allocations directly, circumventing State-LG joint accounts prescribed by the constitution in Section 162(6) and governors’ interference. This decision aims to ensure that state governments do not misappropriate LG funds and provide financial independence for LGs. The court further directed that governors cannot dissolve democratically elected LG officials because it violates our 1999 constitution. 

Presently, LGAs are provided for and captured in the constitution, but they are just extensions and appendages, in fact, at the mercy of state governments. Governors and regional leaders have consistently opposed any attempt to provide LG autonomy from the post-independence days (1960-1966). The subordination of that level of government and the alleged embezzlement of its finances reached a fever pitch in 1999.  At some point, governors elected on the APC platform cautioned the National Assembly in 2013 to focus on their business and forget local government autonomy. The governors contend that other presidential-style federations, from which we derived our model, all have two tiers of federating units. The LGA system in all such two-tier federations is entirely and discretionarily the responsibility of the state government. 

Governors perceive local government autonomy as a danger to their power and influence at the grassroots. They want to maintain a firm grip on LG politics and administration. Governors believe state autonomy and local government autonomy as congruent and not separated. These ruling challenges this assumption and tries to establish LG autonomy and financial independence from the state. However, some have argued that it affects the balance of power between the federal and state governments when the federal directly funds the local governments and may use it to control or challenge the state power or other political leverage. 

For decades, governors have been seen by the populace as meddling in the smooth functioning of LG councils, especially tempering the funds allocated to that tier of government. The trust of the Supreme Court ruling, which evidently was influenced by popular yearning, is on the issue of financial autonomy and did not extend to other fundamental issues affecting local government functionality in Nigeria. It is a no-brainer that the fight to liberate local government from the shackles of control by different tiers of government may have started with financial independence; much more needs to be done.

Like most Nigerian institutions, the most significant reason why the LGA system is functioning sub-optimally is the complete absence of free, fair, and credible elections. Without free and fair elections, accountability and transparency are just wishful thinking. Leaders at that level, or any other level for that matter, do not owe their emergence to the power of the people and, therefore, have no sense of responsibility. The creation of state independent electoral commissions, practiced in other federal systems  , has become our albatross in Nigeria. Except for a few states, abusing that constitutional provision merits an award for infamy.

Related to the abuse of the electoral process, which is widespread and deeply rooted in the country’s political landscape, is the issue of the quality of persons “elected” to that level of government. The dearth of capacity is not limited to elected officials but is also established in the LGA civil service. The outcome is disastrous when charlatans and political jobbers are forced on the people in local governments with little or no capacity to lead or even manage resources. The practice is that governor’s gift local government chairman positions to their cronies and touts who are experts in rigging elections but have no modicum of decency, leadership capacity or intellectual dexterity needed to lead LGs.  

Another reason LG autonomy is a mirage is the recruitment, discipline, and appointment of top LG civil servants by the state government through the LG Service Commission. This is where political interference is most located, and we have given the least attention. There is often a need for more qualified and motivated personnel in local governments. This shortage of skilled workers affects the quality of services provided and the implementation of development projects. Bureaucratic inefficiency, red tape and slow administrative processes hinder the effective delivery of services and the implementation of development projects.

We have been seduced to believe that financial autonomy is  the only pathway  for LGs to define their own development priorities and implement them independently. This can be compared to giving you a coin in one hand and taking it from another hand. The devil is often in the details. We must dig deep to evaluate the quality and capacity of the human resources needed for effective and modern local government governance. 

The institutional frameworks within which local governments operate are often weak and poorly enforced. This results in a lack of accountability and transparency in the management of local government affairs and that is the greatest problem of a financially independent LG system. Weak institutions and poor oversight are the other stumbling blocks to LG system that can achieve a modicum of results or development. The legislative councils, where they exist, are comparable to living furniture in the chairman’s office or a waiter for the most powerful state-level politician in the LGA. Annual audits from the office of the auditor general of LG and internal auditors in the Council are more of a ritual than any serious assignment of examining and verifying financial transactions.

Corruption has since been democratized in LGs. True, it is rampant at all levels of government in Nigeria, including the local level. Funds meant for development projects often get siphoned off by corrupt officials, leaving local communities needing more resources for growth and improvement. Also, in many parts of Nigeria, local governments face significant security challenges, including insurgency, banditry, and communal conflicts. These security issues divert resources away from development projects and create an unstable environment for effective local governance.

Finally, there is high public apathy and low civic engagement in LGs. The populace are too distant from the LG administration to insist on accountability . Many citizens need to be more engaged in local government activities. This lack of public involvement and oversight allows dysfunction and corruption to persist unchallenged. Addressing these issues requires comprehensive reforms to improve governance, increase transparency, ensure adequate funding, and foster greater civic engagement.

Beyond these anchors on the neck of LGs, the Supreme Court verdict is a starting point for a long-drawn process. It will help the LGs in three ways. First, the  profound constitutional change by the Supreme Court  will put them on a journey of financial independence and accountability. Second, this ruling may become the catalyst for the further reform of the LGs to become fit for purpose. It will help set the agenda of having a holistic look at LG to make it more functional and purposeful. Third, we must decide whether to take LGs seriously as the third level sub sovereign  with attendant functions and responsibilities or to scrap it and have proper two level federating units. Some have argued that it does not help to have a superstructure that recognised LG as micro sovereign tier of government  on paper and not in practice. 

Aside from financial autonomy, LGs  must achieve administrative and political freedom to foster grassroots growth. They exist as separate legal entities free of state government apron strings or should be removed from the constitution to create a two-tier structure. Free, fair, and credible elections are the most critical step towards genuine LG autonomy without contestation. We must revisit this and decide how best to achieve this, either through the existing state Independent Electoral Commission (state INEC) or by allowing the Federal INEC to conduct all elections in Nigeria.

Nigeria is held down by economic losses and threats to lives due to the perennial insufficiency in public power supply. According to a report, “what Nigerians spend on self-generation of power – on fuelling and servicing their generators – is N16.5 trillion” yearly. Imagine the economic outcomes of investing this sum elsewhere. Yet, the federal government is seemingly indifferent.

Though there have been successive attempts the power sector is still yearning for robust interventions.

The latest was the privatization of the generation and distribution segments of the electricity value chain with Nigeria retaining the transmission component. It was designed to last for 10 years, from 2013 to 2023, for possible renewal.

Presently, the 10th Senate is investigating several messy deals perpetrated in the last administration which cumulatively heightened the debt profile of the country.

One of them is the Make-Up Gas (MUG) transaction involving the Niger Delta Power Holding Company Limited and the Calabar Generation Company Limited.

Nigeria recorded a scandalous loss in this project.

Going by the preliminary outcomes, Nigeria cannot attain availability and affordability of electricity except decisive actions are urgently taken.

Establishing the overall ineligibility of NDPHC, the panel, through its vice chairman, Senator Lola Ashiru, retorted that “looking at all these things, there is issue of capacity to enter into contract. When there is no capacity to enter into contract, what it means is that the existence of your business is in doubt. The only way we can get out of this is a total renegotiation and when you are doing total renegotiation, you must be sure of your own capacity to do business. If you are not sure of it, we will just be going round and going deeper into debt”.

The committee further lamented that “now we are talking of our own GenCos and every day of our lives we are going deeper and deeper into debts. I don’t know what we should do at this stage, but I think it is important for you to carefully restructure your business, to carefully restructure yourself and repackage all these indices into a new contract renegotiation”.

This is just a reinforcement to the persistent outcries that the licensed operators lacked the integrity, competence and capacity to discharge their obligations.

But sadly, political expediency and sundry narrow interests would not allow for necessary actions.

According to Senator Ahmad Lawan, sitting then as the president of the Senate, “the federal government in recent years has invested billions of dollars in this sector, most of which money appear to have gone down the drain as the problems of inadequate power supply continue to plague Nigeria. Even the subsequent privatisation of the sector has had no visible impact. In fact, many Nigerians believe that we allowed ourselves to be further defrauded through the privatisation of the sector”.

Continuing, “the truth is that we all know what is wrong. What we really need to do is to have the political will to take on the challenges generally. From the electricity power reform of 2005 to the privatisation of GenCos and DisCos and to what is happening today, we know that everything is a fraud”.

Fraud?

He therefore warned that “if we play the ostrich, in the next 10 years we will be talking about the same things. I think the time has come for us to have courage”.

Elsewhere, he stressed that “the distribution companies have no capacity to supply us power. We shouldn’t continue to give them money. They are private businesses. We need to review this whole thing”.

Note: “We shouldn’t continue to give them money”. Also, this was a verdict by the head of a crucial arm of the federal government which was unchallenged, even to date.

So, what happened afterwards, one may rightly ask?

Lawan’s 9th Senate investigated “all federal government interventions in the power sector since the privatisation of the sector with a view to ascertaining the adequacy of such interventions and their desired impact”.

But while Nigerians were feeling upbeat, the Senate handed down two directives.

The first was for “the Ministry of Finance to include the Nigerian Electric Power Sector in the disbursement of the proposed N500bn COVID-19 Crisis Intervention Fund in order to ameliorate the financial hazards and operational challenges” while the other was for the Central Bank of Nigeria “to allow operators in the power sector access to foreign exchange for procurement and materials”.

Nigerians were taken aback at this display of inconsistency. Rather than dealing with the identified “fraud” the government kept empowering these private investors in their desperation to milk the already ailing economy, in addition to subsidy payments.

How time flies!

Exactly four years after Lawan’s outburst there was yet another subtle threat of imminent calamity in a 10-year interval. The minister of power, Adebayo Adelabu, stunned Nigerians with the revelation that “for this sector to be revived, the government needs to spend nothing less than $10 BILLION ANNUALLY IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS”.

He had earlier justified the outrageous electricity tariff increase with the claim that the federal government owed N3 trillion to the operators in addition to about N1.5 trillion for the 2024 subsidy.

For the record, the 10th Senate twice opposed the hike without success because with the weak constitution, the legislature has its say but the executive has its way.

Meanwhile, the privatisation terms provided that Nigeria would generate 40,000 megawatts by 2020. Yet, 10 years later, it remains a herculean task exceeding 3500 despite all the successive noises about economic prosperity.

Just recently, Aliko Dangote reminded us that “nobody can create jobs with an interest rate of 30 per cent. No growth will happen. NO POWER, NO PROSPERITY. No affordable financing, no growth, no development”.

But the craving for political correctness would still not allow for the acknowledgement that the inefficiency of the regulator, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, catalysed the “fraud” in the first place.

Realizing that the operators lacked the financial capacity and convictions to invest, but were only out to make profits, a patriotic regulator would have saved Nigeria the harrowing experience.

Bola Tinubu is the third president in the lifespan of the ill-fated privatization. His first five months in office were coincidentally the last five months of the deal.

He admitted that “10 years on, I believe it is fair to say that the objectives of the sector privatisation have by and large, not been met”.

But moving forward, “the poor performance must not continue to drag the sector down. All licensees must not only have the technical capacity to deliver on their license but must also have the financial muscles to invest to improve their operations”.

Supporting Mr President, the power minister emphasized that “10 years down the line the licenses are expiring, and it is high time for renewal. Renewal is not automatic. Any of the privatized companies that have not lived up to expectations will not have the license renewed. We have to consider whether you have complied with the terms and conditions of the licence you were given. We will look at the technical capacity of the GenCos and the DisCos. We will look at the financial credibility”.

What a reassuring presentation!

But right away, both Tinubu and his minister were mercilessly punctured with the revelation that the failed operators’ licences had since been renewed.

According to NERC, “it has been rumoured that the licenses of the DisCos will expire this year, but the truth is that the DisCos were given a 10-year license, but AS THEY TOOK OVER, the commission extended their license by five years. So, the DisCos have 15 years license. So, their license will expire five years from now which is 2028”.

This is enough proof that somebody is not actually in charge!

Who says that Adams Oshiomhole was not right in his assertion that the people driving governance are the ones sabotaging the economy?

However, Tinubu has fairly demonstrated a sense of commitment.

Within his first week in office, he exhumed and signed into law, the Electricity Bill that was passed by the 9th Assembly but was not processed. Ideally, this legislation holds a great future for the power sector, especially in the areas of empowering the states and other independent entities to produce electricity as well as the vast opportunities in the Green Economy. Again, he approved the settlement of the debts owed to the operators and exempted them from paying “withholding taxes” and also, removed the electricity subsidy, albeit, ill-timed.

Then, he created the Presidential Economic Coordination Council to among other targets, achieve “energy security”.

But respectfully, Mr President, there are already, sufficient policies. Implementation is the issue. You can only extract views from critical stakeholders to enrich the existing frameworks for purposeful implementations. Rather than billions of naira, it is better to inject discipline and efficiency in the power sector, primarily, to diminish the ‘saboteurs’. Nigerians are eager to know what informed the questionable renewal of the operators’ licences.

To fully unleash the inherent potentials of the Electricity Act, the headship of the MDAs should be about competency and capacity rather than political patronage. The minister should embody the policy direction, key performance indicators and operational framework for productivity.

Finally, Your Excellency, please, further demonstrate that yours is a forward-thinking government. Restore and renew citizens’ hopes with available, accessible and affordable electricity towards revamping the economy. It is only in this that Nigerians can believe that truly, the era of playing politics with the power sector is now buried with a genuine commitment.

Egbo is a parliamentary affairs analyst.

Treacherous was the moment. Most editors got a whiff of the story but were either afraid or reluctant to publish. Meffy (Godwin Emefiele, then CBN governor) had gone rogue in a perfect depiction of either state capture or paralysis.

Unfolding before the nation was a farcical drama in which Meffy, long declared wanted by DSS for a raft of alleged weighty felonies against the fatherland, had not just continued to disobey Supreme Court ruling against the Naira freeze but added the novelty of being chaperoned around Abuja by a battalion of troops of the Nigerian military whose Chief of Defence Staff, Lt General Lucky Irabor, had his spouse, Victoria, planted as a director in an agency reporting directly to the errant CBN governor.

In ordinary times, only the commander-in-chief is considered worthy of such significant deployment of soldiers. The second round of the 2023 general polls, already touted as the most consequential in two decades, was only days away.

The pervading suspense in the land could, therefore, only be imagined given that the results of the presidential polls in which a toxic combo of region and religion was weaponised were still being collated across the country.

The lead floating in the media was a plot for an encore. That is, a repeat of a not-so-secret release of hefty tranches of banknotes to certain candidates a few days before the first election at the expense of other contenders. Even as the rest of the populace roiled in an induced fiscal pestilence in which Naira notes were clinically drained from circulation.

Lagos, the nation’s economic nerve centre, was particularly targeted for “hostile takeover” by the Abuja power cabal in cahoots with Meffy now leaving no one in doubt he had descended into the political arena.

At Matori (The Nation newspaper’s headquarters in Lagos), the customary bolt and nut of the big story had been tightened, with discreet help from Tunji Bello leveraging his vast network of contacts in the intelligence community to double-check the facts.

Regardless, as the production deadline approached, a big dilemma seized the newspaper’s Editor-In-Chief, Victor Ifijeh, whether to approve as the lead story for the next day, considering its “high sensitivity”. At such dire moments of clouds, The Nation newspaper customarily never looks up to another oracle other than Dr. Olatunji Dare for direction.

So, a frantic call was made to his base in the United States. In this particular case, without hesitation, the old journalism professor gave unqualified approval “however the risk, if only in the defence of truth and democracy”.

On account of the dramatic turn of events thereafter, The Nation’s lead story on the Monday preceding the state elections in March 2023 could then be described as the tie-breaker in a perilous season of power abuse at the highest level in the land, all obviously calculated to force the outcome of a national poll in a certain direction.

For the heat it generated right from the break of dawn the next day was so earth-shaking, was sufficient enough to force the hitherto vacillating presidency — conspiratorially silent, some said — to finally issue a clear statement disowning Emefiele in his continued disobedience of the Supreme Court that hoarded Naira cash be released to suffering bank depositors across Nigeria.

The recourse to Dr. Dare in faraway United States by The Nation, it bears restating, is a measure of the absolute trust reposed in his professional and moral judgement.
Indeed, as the exemplary teacher turns 80 (July 17), there can be no better time to celebrate a life dedicated entirely to the pursuit of the very symbiosis intended in the conceptualization of the idea of town and gown on the one hand, and an unstinting exhibition of the nobility of spirit and moral purpose at a personal level on the other. And one who, with the force of personal example, demonstrated professional courage at a dangerous hour in Nigeria’s history.

As philosophers already postulated, the ivory towers should serve as the nursery of ideas that nourishes and regenerates society.

As the first-ever first-class graduate of Mass Communication at UNILAG at a time when tempting offers awaited those in such an elite academic category in the job market, Dr. Dare deliberately chose the far less materially rewarding but socially sacrificial: teaching.

Though most professorial in thoughts and articulation (having bagged the much-coveted President’s Prize for Meritorious Service from the prestigious Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, and long been proclaimed a full professor until August 2015 when named Professor of Journalism, Emeritus following retirement), Dr. Dare still prefers to be addressed simply as “Dr. Dare” till date.

Thus affirming the aphorism that empty vessels make the loudest noise. Certainly not when the title is increasingly bastardised by just any quack and con artist now also prefacing their cognomen with “Professor”.
In nearly five decades, he has taught and practised journalism at the elite level and is widely acclaimed today more as a master satirist, bagging coveted medals along the line, too numerous to list here.

He has reported from more than a dozen datelines on three continents and interviewed several statesmen of global stature. His professional journalism has appeared in West Africa, Newsday, and The Seattle Times.

His popular and respected weekly column, “At Home Abroad”, is in its fourteenth year in The Nation.

Literary scholars will compare Dr. Dare to Charles Dicken, often acclaimed as one of the greatest British writers of the 19th century, in terms of this inimitable facility to command words to inflict otherwise lacerating blows with the most insidious guile. In Nigeria’s contemporary media space, his is now regarded as the gold standard in satire writing.

In fact, his satire has been the subject of two M.A. theses in Nigerian universities and articles in learned journals. It has also been featured in courses on Stylistics in programs in the English Department of some universities.

However, faced with clear death threats in 1996 under Abacha’s military despotism, he had to flee Nigeria through the fabled “NADECO route” and had no difficulty in picking a ready faculty position at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, U.S on account of his academic reputation.

A year earlier, he was awarded the Louis M. Lyon's Prize for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, recognising his steadfast commitment to journalism’s best practices.

In 1994, when compromise was quite profitable in Nigeria under a military dictatorship intent on silencing dissent, Dr. Dare, as editorial page editor, conscientiously objected to joining The Guardian mission that went to Abuja to beg Abacha as pre-condition to re-open Rutam House following the sweeping clampdown on media houses with the resurgent agitation for June 12.

To the bitter pain of the Nigerian dictator, exile only seemed to have further energized Dr. Dare’s satirist sorties against the evil rule at home at the time.

When they could not get him, the evil men on a rampage in Nigeria soon pounced on his younger brother in the Army and retired him prematurely. Years earlier, the Dare family had another illustrious son, a promising officer in the police, reported dead in suspicious circumstances.

A conscientious detective, he had bumped on probable leads to unmasking the faces behind the 1986 murder, via letter bomb, of journalist Dele Giwa. He would not yield to threats from anonymous callers to back off the investigation of a murder in which circumstantial evidence clearly established a prima facie case against Babangida’s ranking intelligence chiefs.

Then, one day, the police told the Dare family their son had died in a motor accident without any convincing proof. So much for one family to bear in the search of truth and defence of liberty.

As a Mass Comms tutor at UNILAG for ages, Dr. Dare was directly involved in nurturing of minds and moulding the character of generations of media practitioners who have excelled in the outside world. By their fruits, says the holy Bible, you shall know them.

Today, you don’t have to look too far or think too hard to identify products of Dr. Dare’s sterling pedagogy. Among them is John Momoh, now an icon of broadcast journalism and founder of Channel TV. Another is Azu Ishiekwene, winner of multiple awards and arguably Nigeria’s most syndicated columnist.

Not forgetting Victor Ifijeh, the self-effacing prodigy who has steered The Nation from a rather small beginning to its present Olympian height in Nigeria’s print media space within a record time.

Despite a colossal record of accomplishments, Dr. Dare remains a study in modesty. Whenever home and he chooses to stop over at The Nation‘s Lagos office, there is hardly any trumpeting to herald his coming. If he were to meet you at the opposite side of the staircase, there is a high probability that Dr. Dare would be the first to concede the right of way to you. Such is the intensity of his humility.

But don’t be fooled.

The saunter of a lion at leisure is starkly different from its ferocious leap when enraged or in offence. An experience perhaps best described by another senior columnist from Arewaland who once found himself in a literary cage-fight with the ordinarily gentle warrior from Kabbaland in Kogi state over a decade ago.

The equally respected writer had made an innuendo in a piece. But as they say in Dr. Dare’s native Yorubaland, only a coward afraid of the fight will conveniently choose to misinterpret a poignant innuendo to be a compliment. The ink of that insult had barely dried when Dr. Dare responded in kind.

Here is wishing the king of satire a happy 80th birthday.

Coping with Lufthansa’s racist discrimination

Travelling surely comes with its own vicissitudes: fun sometimes and nightmare at another. But one’s recent experience with Lufthansa, a German airline, was worse than a nightmare.

First, the flight from Lagos to Frankfurt was delayed more than six hours!

When we landed in Frankfurt, my connecting flight to Texas, U.S., had departed. Long story short, I spent 48 hours in transit on a journey scheduled to be less than 24 hours. Worse still, it took bouts of epistolary hell-raising before my two luggage were delivered 96 hours after departing Lagos!

But that was even a child’s play compared to my ordeal on my return trip a week later. Again, the trip was delayed by almost four hours from the take-off point such that by the time we arrived in Houston, the connecting flight had again gone. Eventually, I spent four days in transit, missing an important meeting in Lagos!

Annoyingly, on arrival, I left the airport empty-handed. It took another 48 hours to receive my luggage.
Worse still, it turned out that one of my bags was completely destroyed. When I lodged a complaint demanding compensation consistent with international best practices, Lufthansa would not accept liability. Hear their apology:
“Kindly note that Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004 applies to flights departing from EU member states and flights arriving in EU member states from third countries. As your journey starts in Nigeria and ends in the United States of America, we cannot accommodate your request for compensation according to Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004.

“We would appreciate the chance to earn back your trust in our service and hope to welcome you on board again soon.

“Sincerely, Yogesh Umarani”

President Bola Tinubu extends his congratulations to Prince Nduka Obaigbena, CON, on the occasion of his 65th birthday.

President Tinubu notes the enterprising spirit of the former President of the Newspaper Proprietors' Association of Nigeria (NPAN), who founded ThisWeek Magazine, and later, THISDAY Newspapers, Arise Magazine, and The Arise News Channel.

The President prays for greater achievements for the renowned publisher, whose philanthropic efforts, especially in education, have demonstrated his passion for human development.

Chief Ajuri Ngelale

Special Adviser to the President

(Media & Publicity) 

If you were to choose between three infrastructure, which is also often referred to as social amenities, which of these three would you choose? Or, better still still, how will you prioritize power supply, water supply and good roads? Which will come first in your order of preference? 

Power supply is the life-wire of economic activities, apart from its domestic use as well as for relaxation. Power supply also aids security. In the dark, anything can happen. That is why our people say darkness does not recognize who is VIP and who is not. Important as power is - it was the first creation of God (Genesis 1:1-5) - we can still do without it but no one can do without water. In one of Fela’s songs, he said “water no get enemy”.

 As a general rule - there may be exceptional cases - a man can only survive without water for about three days. According to Google, wilderness guides often refer to what they call the “rule of 3”, which means that a person can live without air (oxygen) for 3 minutes, without water for 3 days, and without food for 3 weeks. Water is also the soul of hygiene. Without water, it is impossible to keep our environment clean, tidy and hygienic.

Now, what are good roads? If you travel by road as often as some of us do, you will realize the importance of good roads as critical infrastructure that cannot be relegated to the background. Apart from over-speeding, one of the major causes of avoidable deaths on our roads is bad roads. Other causes include reckless driving, mechanical fault and, wait for it, overzealous and corrupt road traffic officers such as the police, civil defence, Customs, VIO, and road safety marshals. 

The wear-and-tear that bad roads inflict affect the vehicle as well as the person driving it. The economic loss that results and the health impairment that road users suffer cannot be quantified. While citizens can provide themselves with power through generating sets (even if it is the poor man’s generator called “I pass my neighbour”), inverter and solar panels; and we can also dig boreholes or wells to meet our water needs, no one is able to build all the roads he will travel on. This is a duty set apart for the government. Hence, a road is either a federal, state or local government road. How effective, responsible and responsive has the three tier of government been in living up to this obligation?

On Monday last week, I traveled to Abeokuta to participate in a live radio programme on Rockcity 101. 9 FM at the invitation of my friend and professional colleague, Niran Malaolu. The topic of discussion was the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN), which the six governors of the south-west states (Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti and Ondo) appear to have suddenly developed interest in! 

Someone said it was because of the marching orders given to the 36 state governors by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to find a solution to the food shortage and the resounding cries of “we are hungry” resonating all over the country. Another said the incentive was the funds the president promised would be made available. I am sure you know our leaders go after the money, like the two mice (Sniff and Scurry) and two little people (Hem and Haw) went after the cheese in the book “Who moved my cheese” by Spencer Johnson.

 Yet, another explanation was that the fear of military coup (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso) and the people’s rage (Kenya) has suddenly become the beginning of wisdom for our leaders. So, DAWN, which had been comatose since its inauguration in July 2013, with many of the governors failing in their statutory financial obligation to it, has suddenly become the darling of the south-west governors. We shall return to that.

The trip from inner Lagos to the interior of Abeokuta took me less than two hours. In times past, that would have been impossible. Good roads make trips easier, faster and pleasurable. You are able to meet up with appointments - and with ease. No sweat. Each time I hopped into my car to travel, I always felt the trepidation and disgust of what lay ahead of me on some of our roads. There was an occasion when I spent six hours on the Lagos - Sango-ota - Abeokuta road that ordinarily should not have taken more than one hour. I missed the appointment I went for. That was when the Lagos-Ibadan expressway was undergoing its unending construction. I never again ventured near that road!

 Not only has it not been made good, it has gotten even worse. The right hand side of that road, going from Lagos to Abeokuta, I understand, has now totally collapsed from very close to the foot of the Abule-Egba flyover all the way to Abeokuta while the state governor, Dapo Abiodun, blames the FG . How is a gateway without good road networks linking it to Lagos, the commercial and economic life-wire of the entire country? To think that this is the same state that has produced some of the country’s foremost leaders - Awolowo, Obasanjo, Diya, MKO, Shonekan, Osinbajo, among others!

Neighbouring south-west states cannot take full advantage of their proximity to Lagos because of bad roads. The Lagos-Ibadan expressway, which took eternity to construct, is already wobbling at some sections, particularly at Ogere and as you drive into Ibadan around the Foursquare church camp , down to Guru Maharaj and beyond. As they say, a stitch in time saves nine. But not with Nigeria! Here, nine stitches are needed to save one! It is only when contracts worth billions of Naira can be awarded that our leaders get interested. I am sure you understand why this is usually so. 

The federal road that runs from Ibadan through Ife to Ilesa is a nightmare. I have lost tyres, shock absorbers, tie rods, upper joint, lower joint - what have I not lost on that stretch of road, save life? I have run into crevices and potholes better described as manholes. I have suffered breakdowns and skidded off the road once. On one occasion, my friend, Prof. Tope Ogunbodede (immediate past VC of OAU), had to come in the dead of night to tow my vehicle off that road. Only the grace of God sustains someone on that road.

From Ilesha juncture to Akure is fairly okay but from Akure to Owo, my hometown, is another nightmare. I understand Akure to Ado-Ekiti has become impassable. Apart from its disincentive to economic activities, bad roads make the job of terrorists, kidnappers and other sundry criminals easier. They - and the traffic and security officials who extort money from motorists and other road users - wait at the very bad sections of the road to strike because they know you must slow down there. One mischievous FRSC official sarcastically told me: “Sir, it is in your interest that the roads are bad because our statistics show that ghastly accidents are more prevalent on good roads than on bad roads!” Let's ask our leaders: is that, then, the consideration?

From the Ibadan end of the Lagos - Ibadan expressway to Iwo road junction and from there until one gets out of Ibadan and is on the Ibadan - Ife road was nightmarish in times past. One could spend hours there - a stretch of road that, ordinarily, should not take more than 10 minutes. The road was particularly bad at the time. Now, it has been reconstructed. The by-pass from the expressway into Old Ife road, just before the Iwo road junction, has also helped travelers to escape getting enmeshed in the unpredictable traffic flow at the Iwo road junction. 

The clincher, however, is the Ibadan Circular Road that the Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde, is constructing at a whopping cost of N120 billion. When the road is completed in November this year (hopefully!) travelers coming from Lagos and going towards Ife and those from Ife travelling towards Lagos will have the opportunity of bypassing Ibadan. I told Makinde during the facility tour of his legacy projects during the first anniversary celebration of his second term in office on Saturday, June 8, that I cannot wait to see that happen!

The 110 km Circular Road, named after a former governor of the state, Senator Rashidi Olawolu Ladoja, comprises bridges and interchanges to ease traffic congestion in various areas of the city. Handled by Craneburg Construction Company, it encircles the urban area of the Ibadan metropolis and will provide a strategic link between different parts of the city and the new Central Business District. 

According to the Oyo State Commissioner for Public Works and Transport, Prof. Daud Sangodoyin, the Circular Road is not just a mere stretch of asphalt but “a catalyst for monumental change and advancement. The expansive setbacks along the road corridor will be transformed into sprawling industrial parks and a myriad other amenities. Appropriately, Ibadan, the largest city in West Africa by land mass, aims, with this project, to rival and even surpass the landmarks set by other larger and (more famous?) African cities like Cairo (Egypt), Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Johannesburg (South Africa). Again, I cannot wait to see this happen!

 Only last Thursday, the Oyo State Government carried newspaper adverts personally signed by the governor announcing the commissioning of 33 klm roads in what Makinde described as keeping his promise to fix hundreds of city centre and rural settlement roads during his second term in office. Thirty-three minus hundreds leaves us with how many more roads for Makinde to fix?

Now back to DAWN! Its mandate is: To manage Western Nigeria Development Agenda. The vision is: For the south-west region of Nigeria to become the preferred place for people to visit, live, work, and invest. Its mission is: To engender regional cooperation and integration as a catalyst for development and facilitate sustainable working relationships among different governance stakeholders. Noble ideals! 

Our problem, I am sure you know, is not in formulating ideas and coming up with programmes and policies that will wow anyone. Leadership deficiency, lack of the political will to implement laudable policies and programmes, reluctance to follow-up and conclude what we start (leading to abandoned projects and waste of resources), the selfishness and self-centredness of our leaders, their lack of discipline; political partisanship, political instability and incessant change of leaders are some of the problems that we face. 

Our people have a saying: This thing is our own is different from this thing is my own. “This thing is our own” often suffers neglect. It is passing the buck that ensures that the hen being taken care of by two owners ends up in the wolf’s belly. That was one of the viruses that killed Sketch newspapers where I started my journalism. We also saw it rear its ugly head in the tussle between Oyo and Osun states over the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso jointly owned by them. I suspect the same factor will dog, if it has not already dogged the feet of DAWN. 

DAWN’s name will also wag it, like the tail wags the dog: It is the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria; not the Development Agenda for Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti and Ondo states. We must return, first of all, to Western Nigeria. Stop putting the cart before the horse!   

 Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/ Editor-in-chief of THE WESTERNER newsmagazine. He writes the ON THE LORD'S DAY column in the Sunday Tribune and TREASURES column in New Telegraph newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.

A serving police inspector, identified as Hussaini Umar, has been reportedly murdered by some suspected members of a ‘one chance’syndicate in Abuja.

The deceased, said to be attached to the Force Intelligence Bureau (FID), had reportedly boarded the gang’s vehicle from Maitama Junction in the city centre to his home in Dei-Dei community, FCT, on Friday night.

Our reporter who visited the Kubwa General Hospital on Saturday morning, came across a police convoy, who went into the facility to convey his remains, and headed for Zaria, his home town, for burial.

A police official in the convoy,  who didn’t disclose his name, said Umar was stabbed robbers before they dumped him around a bridge, near the NNPC Junction in Kubwa.

He said another vehicle ran over him, before the police patrol team, stationed around the junction, were alerted about the incident by some motorists, who took him to the hospital.

A police source in Dei-Dei equally confirmed the incident, adding that the victim had been living in the area for a while, and recently relocated his family to join him.

The FCT Police Command spokesperson, SP Josephine Adeh, promised to make an inquiry and get back to our correspondent, but she was yet to do so as at the time of filing this report.

[DailyTrust]

An ingrate is but a robber in disguise. I am thrilled to celebrate, on the same platform today, two great Nigerians who have impacted greatly on our collective intellectual environment and whose birthdays providentially fall within a few days of each other. Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka turned 90 on July 13 while Emeritus Professor Olatunji Dare will clock 80 on July 17.

Armed with a calabash full of frothing palm wine, I raise an elbow in a twin celebration of our own WS, the irrepressible Kongi, Eniogun, the man of iron on the one hand; and the unassuming four-star general of journalism, dean of satire and incredibly prescient public intellectual, Olatunji Dare, on the other.
Let’s take them one after the other.

Kongi

Soyinka is 90! Our very own teacher, playwright, poet, novelist, hunter, philosopher, rebel, musician, essayist, literary stylist, cultural beacon, social engineer and public intellectual has defied all odds to breast the tape of his 90th year.

If you ask, what’s in a number, you may attract the riposte, what’s NOT in a number. In their own esoteric way, numerologists break 90 into 9 and 0 and postulate that Number 9 brings us the energies of completion, universal love, inner-wisdom, and compassion while 0 adds its own vibrations of eternity and infinity — a reminder that we have access to infinite resources within ourselves when we remain connected to our spiritual essence.

A little over 50 years ago, many people who analysed his trajectory as an activist of the ‘talk-and-do’ hue, swore that the young Soyinka was destined to die young without even the remote possibility of having a nice-looking corpse. But whoever is monitoring when the crab goes to bed should prepare for a long vigil because the crab does not go to bed early (and the crab is Soyinka’s zodiac sign)!

Ninety years is special, culturally, spiritually and commemoratively. It is called the nonagintennial or granite anniversary. There are only about 22 million nonagenarians in existence, constituting 0.28 percent of the global population of 8.1 billion people. It is the privileged club of the anointed, those fated to be among the last set to tell the story of their generation — and Soyinka’s generation of intellectual elites was our golden generation.

It is not given to many people to be of abiding relevance to their country as Soyinka has been for six decades. By the time my path crossed that of Soyinka at the University of Ife in the 70s, he had already achieved fame (his foes will say, notoriety) and was a highly sought academic. I wasn’t a spring chicken myself having cut my teeth in journalism at DRUM Publications before returning to school.
As president of the students’ union, I knew that I needed the collaboration of those who had seen it all before and who would be there as trusted allies if things turned awry. In that sense, Soyinka was an uncommon counsellor and backbone. It was from him that I learnt that what matters in life is not the ‘ariwo ojà’, but the nobility of your convictions and the courage with which you pursue your ideals using all your talents, no matter the odds. He shares that honour in my life with his cousin, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Dr. Tai Solarin and Chief Gani Fawehinmi.

I pity those who, because of a disagreement over political perspectives, think that they can diminish Soyinka’s stature as a global intellectual. Great as the invention of social media is, it has, sadly been turned into a lynching machine by those that Nelson Ottah, (one of those who taught me how to chew the journalistic cud) would have described as “intellectual piccaninnies”.

Former presidential aspirant, Kingsley Moghalu has this to say on the matter: “Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka is a principled fighter for justice in our country and around the world. He is a phenomenon that unlettered and uncultured people may not fully understand in an age of lazy social media in which many don’t read or think deep.”

In 2014 when he turned 80, I invoked Providence to spare our elderly friend and pathfinder for many more years, especially as he still looked so comely and strong. In many ways, he is “a tree that makes a forest”, as I titled my column in Daily Trust at the time (https://dailytrust.com/kongi-a-tree-that-makes-a-forest/) In just one more decade, if the Heavens permit, we’ll be gathered to usher him into the club of centenarians. Happy birthday, Prof!

Olatunji Dare

By the time I enrolled for a Masters degree at the University of Lagos, I was already an editor at DRUM. I knew a few of the teachers on the faculty, like Prof Alfred Opubor and Dr. Idowu Sobowale. I was later to meet another respected member who made a strong impression on me — Prof. Frank Ugboaja. We hit it off straight away as friends. Ugboaja said he would be proud to supervise my final thesis and I looked forward with excitement to it.

But Fate decreed otherwise. Ugboaja died. In the meantime I had also become familiar with other faculty members, especially those whose speciality tallied with editorial expertise. The then Dr Olatunji Dare easily stood out. Among the postgraduate students, the whisper making the rounds was that Dare was the first and only student of the faculty so far to make a first class and that he had only returned to UNILAG from the United States out of patriotic commitment after finishing his Masters and PhD at Columbia and Indiana universities respectively.

Dare’s Editorial Writing class opened the eyes of many strutting professional peacocks to the reality that they still had a lot to learn to become field generals. His style was collaborative rather than autocratic. He preferred to show ‘how’ rather than pontificate. He deservedly won the respect and friendship of his students.

When he took his talent and art to Nigeria’s flagship newspaper, The Guardian, his brilliance was acknowledged on the national stage. His award-winning Tuesday column was a must-read. Indeed, his satirical writings have become the subject of two Masters theses. He was to serve as editorial page editor and chair of the Editorial Board of the newspaper for almost 10 years.

Dare resigned from the Guardian when the newspaper’s proprietor chose to apologise to the military junta of General Abacha rather than continue to suffer financial loss on account of the shutting down of the newspaper over the June 12 crisis. Abacha was a usurper and the newspaper clearly said so through its powerful editorials and op-eds, many of which had Dare’s imprimatur.

Embarrassed that his publisher would choose acquiescence with despotism over principled commitment to propriety and the rule of law, Dare resigned from The Guardian without an immediate Plan B. Nigerian journalism has produced many heroes of the June 12 struggle. Dare was one of them. Unable to find meaningful media work and facing constant harassment, he left Nigeria in 1996 to take up a faculty position at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, USA.

His book, “Diary of a Debacle: Tracking Nigeria’s Failed Democratic Transition, 1986-1994”, is, perhaps, the most authoritative work on the military’s democratic transition programme in Nigeria’s Third Republic.

The oak is the symbol of octogenary. Just as the oak is the source of durable timber, Dare has been instrumental in not just helping to produce some of the finest editorial writers in contemporary Nigerian journalism, but has also been part of the movement to elevate public discourse and mobilise public opinion for the common good. He still writes a weekly column in The Nation from his base in the United States.

Both Soyinka and Dare are Cancerians with the crab as their zodiac sign. Experts say that the symbol of the crab offers a key to understanding Cancers’ preternatural ability to know things without knowing how they know them. I raise an elbow in a hearty toast again. Birthday blessings!

ON Thursday, July 11, Nigeria’s apex court, the Supreme Court, dropped the gavel on the much-awaited suit marked SC/CV/343/2024, brought before it by the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Barrister Lateef Fagbemi, SAN on behalf of the Federal Government.

In the suit, the Federal Government had prayed to the Supreme Court to grant full financial and administrative autonomy to the 774 local governments recognised by the 1999 Constitution, thereby, effectively recognising the councils as the third tier of government in the country. Before that ruling, there had been divided opinions about the status of local governments in the polity. One opinion is official and the other dubiously speculative. The nation has known a three-tier system of governance since the days of the military. The 1999 Constitution attempts to further cement that in Section 7, by guaranteeing democratically elected government at the councils. In the thinking of the constitution, the local governments are presumed to be the third tier of government. The state governments, however, believed that the councils should at best be seen as their appendages.  Some state governors openly expressed the view that a democratic system is supposed to operate two tiers of government, federal and state.

In that posture, the states want to eat their cakes and still have them. It is dubious in the sense that while the governors would happily keep the councils under their armpits, they do nothing to object to the allocation of 20 percent of the federation account which accrues to the councils. Rather, they will gladly assist the councils in managing the funds once appropriated. Incidentally, there is no one cube-fit-all model of democracy. Most democratic settings tailor their examples in line with local experiences, history, and culture. In truth, there is no such universality in democratic practice.

So, when President Tinubu asked his Attorney General to drag the 36 state governors to court, it was clear that the apex court would make some landmark decisions.  On Thursday, the court unanimously declared in the lead judgment delivered by Justice Emmanuel Agim, that it was unconstitutional for state governments to tamper with the allocations due to the councils and that the democratically elected governance in the local governments is guaranteed.  The judgment ordered the federation account to henceforth pay all monies including shares from taxes and other sources meant to the councils directly to their accounts. The court barred governors from dissolving democratically elected officials of local governments, while also declaring that it is unconstitutional for governors to tamper with council funds. The court said that the 774 local government councils should be allowed to manage their funds. Aside from that, the court also barred the operation of caretaker officials in the councils. The federation account was empowered to withhold funds meant for councils that operate the caretaker system.

The declarations by the Supreme Court have, therefore, affirmed the third-tier status of local governments in the country in line with the 1976 Local Government Reform, which established the presidential system of government in the councils. Several commentators have praised the apex court for the bold move to free the councils from the apron strings of the state governments. In one of such comments the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE), which spoke through its president, Comrade Ambali Olatunji, said that the ruling has solved 50 percent of Nigeria’s problems. “We believe that with the local government autonomy judgment, over 50 percent of Nigerian problems have been fixed. Also, we hope there will be financial integrity at the local government levels and all financial transactions will be tracked,” he said. Olatunji’s prognosis can however be said to be too generous. Autonomous councils hold huge benefits for the grassroots but attendant issues remain as potent as the existing situation. It is good to have councils that can address the needs of the people at the local level and serve as avenues for leadership recruitment.  But as Olatunji said, there are questions about the sincerity of the council officials in providing quality service. An example is already emerging in the Federal Capital Territory(FCT), Abuja, where no governor is breathing down the necks of the councils, but where the councils hardly embark on any developmental projects. Commendable as the ruling is, there appear some booby traps and some rivers to cross before the nation can reach its desired destination on local government autonomy.

One of the speed bombs is the constitutional provision on the operation of joint accounts between the states and the local government. Section 162(6) of the 1999 Constitution(as amended), mandates the states to operate a State Joint Local Government Account. The Section reads: “Each state shall maintain a special account to be called “State Joint Local Government Account” into which shall be paid all allocations to the local government councils of the state from the Federation Account  and from the Government of the State.” In Section 162(7) the 1999 Constitution goes further to mandate each state to pay a percentage of its earnings to the local governments. I suspect there is an assignment for legal minds to dissect the intendment of subsection 6 in relation to the ruling of the Supreme Court.  There is also the question of Local Council Development Authorities(LCDAs), which the Supreme Court had declared inchoate as far back as 2006, but which has become a fad among states in recent years. The political system also needs to state clearly the relationship between the councils and the ministries of local governments in the states. Are the councils to be seen as mere departments of the state government, which have to submit files for approval of the governor or they are to operate their presidential system in the real sense of the word?

And with the decision of the apex court, that LG funds must henceforth be paid directly to the councils from the federation account, one would want to ask what use would the State Joint Local Government Account continue to serve. What happens to the balances or liabilities (if any) in such an account while the states ran the show?

One other emerging issue as far as the implementation of the Supreme Court ruling is concerned is the continued existence of the State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs), as stipulated by Section 197(1) of the 1999 Constitution. The SIECs are recognised as one of the State bodies, which can only cease to exist via constitutional amendment. Will the states let go of SIECs, which are a potent force that would enable the governors to control the happenings at the councils? It is a well-known fact that in the Nigerian political ecosystem, whoever pays the piper dictates the tune, and that has informed the cautionary note some commentators have chosen to employ in celebrating the Supreme Court ruling. If council elections are still to be conducted by the SIECs, is it not possible we start hearing that candidates are being forced to swear oaths in all manners of shrines before they are made council chairmen?

Even though the Nigerian Governors’ Forum(NGF) has welcomed the judgment of the apex court, the nation is still awaiting a comprehensive response from the governors on this matter. Even at that, it is not yet uhuru, as per local government autonomy.