Many Nigerians believe that restructuring the country or devolving powers from the centre to the sub-nationals is the silver bullet that will solve all our problems. This belief has sustained the debate for or against restructuring for decades. As fanciful as this claim is, I disagree with this position because bad leadership is a more significant challenge than the superstructure of the country. Although the way Nigeria is structured does not make for optimal productivity and needs some form of amendment or tinkering, we need thinking and honest leadership to make progress. This kind of leadership is required at the central and sub-national levels. 

One area in which sub-nationals or states of the federation would take advantage of to show that a restructured Nigeria can be an oasis of development is electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. This is because of the multiplier effect of electricity on quality of life, productivity, employment generation, and human development. The recent epidemic of blackouts that has enveloped the nation due to the collapse of the national grid and frequent power outages have challenged the proposition that if power is devolved to the sub-nationals or states, most, if not all, of our problems would be solved. It has also brought to the fore the need for state governments to step up their game. A quick review of how a change in the 1999 constitutional provision and a new electricity act has necessitated a change in the role of state governments in electric power sufficiency is essential for clarity. 

Electricity has always been on the concurrent legislative list. It was so under the 1963 and 1979 constitutions. However, the 1999 provisions on the concurrent federal and state legislative powers over electricity were drafted in a way that made it impossible for states to make laws to establish their electricity markets and play a pivotal role in addressing power shortages that have literarily crippled our economic growth. Eventually, in 2023, the National and State assemblies came together to amend the 1999 constitution and remove the constraints that challenged enacting state laws on electricity. This was followed up by enacting a new Electricity Act, 2023, which allowed states to regulate electricity generation, transmission, and distribution businesses within their territories. The act created two electricity markets, the national and state markets. The National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) from Abuja will regulate the national electricity market, while the states are expected to implement electricity market policies, legal frameworks, and institutions to regulate their respective state electricity markets.

One takeaway from the current state of the anaemic electricity supply nationwide is that states cannot continue to wait for the federal government alone to resolve the challenge. The states now have the full constitutional authority to create the frameworks for the adequate electricity supply to their citizens. They now have the power to create the right environment to attract investment into this new electricity market and ultimately raise the national power-generating capacity from the embarrassing levels at which it is currently. The current situation where the country generates less than 4,000 MW of electricity for 220 million people, but the same people own and operate over 50,000 MW of self-generation or generator capacity, makes us appear unserious. Despite this 50,000mw self-generation, we still have epileptic power nationally, producing sub-optimally and far less than our potential. The epidemic of blackouts that has enveloped the nation in the past few weeks has challenged the proposition that if power is devolved to the sub-nationals or states, most, if not all, our problems would be solved. 

I will share my thoughts on why most state governments are not taking advantage of the new Electricity Act and should double their effort to get us out of this perennial descent into a permanent state of darkness. This is against the background of the abundance of gas in south-south and southeast states, massive potential for hydro in Southwest states and solar generation in the northern states. The significant reasons states fail to tackle the electricity problem and unleash economic growth in their states are fourfold: first, a lack of understanding of the need for and political will to fix the power problem from a state perspective. State governors prefer short-term infrastructure projects that give them political mileage and are transactional. The myth that electricity is the centre’s problem has shaped state leaders’ thinking for too long. The second is the lack of qualified and competent human resources to drive policy and serve as regulators. Even the national regulator, NERC, had this problem in 2006 when they started, which is still so today. The third is the problem of implementation and enforcement of policies, laws, and agreements in the long term. Most investors have had to contend with violations of the sanctity of contracts and policy inconsistencies at the state and federal levels. The fourth reason is that states need more investment in technology and network infrastructure for electrification projects and for the ecosystem to become attractive to potential investors.

Despite these challenges, there is some silver linings in this dark cloud. Recently, I had a long engagement with the governor of Enugu state around power. Enugu state has taken the bull by the horns and has not only enacted its state policy and law but has already set up its regulatory body comprising experienced hands who have experience working in NERC, discos, or industry consulting firms. The Enugu Electricity Regulatory Commission is now on the verge of issuing its first licenses to private investors. There is no doubt that Enugu is on the path to energy self-sufficiency, which will, in turn, unleash her economic growth potential. States like Lagos, Oyo and Ogun, Kaduna, Kano, Anambra, Abia, Rivers, Taraba, and Plateau, where there is a significant advantage in terms of availability of commercial/industrial markets and availability of fuel sources such as natural gas, hydro and solar have no reason to be slow about following in Enugu state’s footsteps.

The inference from the preceding is that both political devolution and electricity devolution require political will and an enabling economic environment. An economically unviable state will remain a nightmare as it cannot demand or pay for electricity. Industrial and commercial markets for power are a prerequisite for investment in the power sector. Investors will only come if the electricity market exists. In this regard, only 30% of our states can attract investors to the power sector. Nigeria has long struggled with electricity supply issues, leading to frequent blackouts nationwide. Several factors contribute to the current blackouts and power outages, the most reoccurring narratives being grid disruptions, failing distribution infrastructure and, topmost, short supply of gas due to debt and other commercial reasons. 

Therefore, the federal government still has a crucial role in the power sector to drive social and economic development on a national scale. It must create the right ecosystem to spur investment in electricity infrastructure, including building new power plants, upgrading existing ones, and expanding the transmission and distribution networks. This requires both public and private sector involvement, as well as partnerships with international organizations and investors. It must champion the diversification of energy sources, especially renewable energy, such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric power, which provide a more sustainable and reliable electricity supply. 

The current state of the anaemic electricity supply in Nigeria, as experienced in the blackouts of the past few weeks, calls for a new approach. Nigeria’s blackout problem is not just a technical issue but a combination of human capacity challenges and systemic inefficiencies requiring urgent and comprehensive solutions. The flickering lights of Nigeria are a stark reminder of the urgent need for visionary leadership at the federal and state levels in the energy sector. We must never forget that blackouts are not just inconvenient interruptions; they’re crippling barriers to progress and development.

The current national blackout should be a wake-up call for states of the federation to wake up from their complacency and speed up the process of playing a pivotal role in energy sufficiency. State governments must avail themselves of the incredible opportunity the new Electricity Act provided them and at least provide the building blocks to electricity sufficiency and efficiency in the states.

“Nigeria, long known for its flamboyant corruption”, was how the journal, ‘The Historian’, synopsized an article on Nigeria by Steven Pierce five years ago. Because character is smoke, scandals of same hues and similar odour have continued to climb the ladder of time with us. Indeed, the narratives in the cement scandal of fifty years ago would sound so familiar to Nigerians of this day. You remember the oil subsidy scandal and its sad, lurid details. Under the military in 1974/1975, people demanded and got paid demurrage for goods that never existed. In this democracy, people have collected (and may still be collecting) subsidy payments for vessels of petrol that never came here or that never existed”.

On October 29, 1974, the Nigerian Ministry of Defence, through the Ministry of External Affairs, wrote to Nigerian missions and embassies abroad that it wanted to buy tonnes of cement to build barracks for its post-civil war armed forces of 200,000 officers and men. The Nigerian Army had just about 8,000 personnel before the war. The ministry not only made that open call for supply of cement, it avoided competitive bidding; it fixed the price at $60/per ton. Analysts noted that that offer price was five dollars more than the prevailing world market price. But, no wahala. Price and pricing have never been a problem for Nigeria. In fact, at that point in our growth (or decadence), the problem we had wasn’t money, it was what to spend it on.

So, between December 1974 and June 1975, our Ministry of Defence, which needed just 6 (six) million metric tonnes of cement, awarded 69 contracts for 16.23 million metric tonnes valued at almost $1billion. Other agencies and departments of government soon got on board the cement armada. History says half of the world’s cement was diverted to Nigeria. One researcher (Fabian Ihekweme, 2000) found that “approximately half the merchant ships in the world which were suitable for carrying cement became involved in supplying Nigeria.” An American newspaper reported that “the massive orders led to an armada of ships anchored off the Lagos coastline…stretching as far as the eye could see. Many were decrepit hulks manned by skeleton crews dispatched by ship owners to collect demurrage costs…”

The end was the famous cement scandal of 1974/75 which The New York Times of June 28, 1976 described as “a web of kickbacks and bribes involving government officials, foreign ship owners, corrupt purchasing agents, unscrupulous middlemen, phony corporations, dubious letters of credit and Swiss bank accounts.”

The scandal was not just about us biting more than our mouths could contain. We not only allowed and accepted substandard cement from suppliers, concessions were granted by Nigeria approving extension of expiry dates for expired products. Hanaan Marwah, an African infrastructure historian formerly with the London School of Economics, did a major work on this in 2020 for Business History. She places the scandal “in the context of debates about corruption, organizational failure and a ‘resource curse’ in Nigeria.” We had a ports congestion of over 400 ships queuing to offload cement. To compensate for the delay at the ports, we offered generous demurrage. We increased payable demurrage from the standard $3,500 per day to $4,100/ per ship per day. Some ships came carrying nothing; some did not come near our ports at all; some never existed. Yet they all claimed demurrage. And we paid. An account says Nigeria ultimately paid an estimated $240 million in real and phony demurrage costs.

In instances when deals were too criminally stark to click, Nigeria demurred in payment of costs for delays. And some audacious fake suppliers went to court to demand payment for their ashy goods. For this, Nigeria had a harvest of court cases, home and abroad. The very interesting UK Supreme Court appeal case number (1978) EWCA Civ J1219-3 appeals to me here. That case was between a company, Etablissement Esefka International Anstalt (Plaintiffs/Respondents) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (Defendants/Appellants).

Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, who presided over the appeal, tells the story of the case better in elegance of language and in ghastly details – and copiously I am quoting him:

“This is another case involving what has been called in the papers ‘the cement scandal’ in regard to Nigeria. It so happened a few years ago that the Ministry of Defence in Nigeria ordered vast quantities of cement from all over the world. The Central Bank of Nigeria issued letters of credit to pay for all the cement which was coming in, and a good deal of it was payable through London banks.

“Great quantities of cement were shipped to Lagos: and at one time there were 300 or 400 ships waiting outside the port of Lagos to discharge the cement. There were not enough wharves or quays to take it there, let alone all the other goods coming into Nigeria. So immense demurrage was built up on the ships which were lying outside the port of Lagos for months and months. The story of what happened will be found in the case of Trendtrex v. The Central Bank of Nigeria, in which that bank claimed sovereign immunity and said they could not be sued. It was held in this court that they could be sued in the ordinary courts. That was the position in law. This is a further aspect of that “cement scandal”.

“In this case the Ministry of Defence ordered 240,000 metric tons of cement in December 1974 at a price of U.S.$59.90 per metric ton c.i.f. Lagos. The total purchase price was U.S.$14,376,000. That was ordered and agreed to be paid for by the Ministry of Defence in Lagos from a company (I will call it such) called Etablissement Esefka International Anstalt of Liechtenstein, but operating apparently from an address in the Strand, London. The Nigerian Ministry of Defence said that letters of credit would be opened accordingly – transferable, divisible letters of credit. The letters of credit were issued on the 18th March, 1975. The advice was given by the Midland Bank here on the account of the Central Bank of Nigeria for these monies to be paid for the goods against documents. The documents included commercial invoices (four copies), a full set of four bills of lading, an insurance policy and the like. The ordinary set of shipping documents was to come forward. The credit was irrevocable, transferable and divisible: and, furthermore, there was a special provision by annexure for demurrage to be payable in the total sum of U.S.$4,100 a day. That demurrage also came under the letters of credit which were issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria through the London correspondents the Midland Bank in favour of the Liechtenstein company Esefka International.

“I do not suppose that Esefka International had any cement at all themselves. They had to buy it; and apparently successfully in several cases. A good deal of the cement was shipped, a good many of the ships were held up, and a good deal of demurrage was payable. As to a great number of them, no question arises. But a question does arise in regard to eight vessels which were supposed to have shipped about 94,000 tons of this cement. With regard to those eight vessels, the shipping documents, the bills of lading, certificates and the like were presented to the Midland Bank as though everything was in good order. On being presented with those documents, the Midland Bank in London paid out huge sums in respect of these goods. Nearly $6,000,000 were paid out in respect of these ships.

“Lo and behold. I will come almost to the end of the story in a moment. Solicitors from London have been out to Lagos on behalf of the Central Bank of Nigeria. They have been to Greece, and they have obtained very strong evidence that there were no genuine documents at all – that these bills of lading were not genuine, but were forged. There is great doubt whether these eight vessels ever existed at all. What happened was that bills of lading were presented on behalf of three of these vessels by Esefka in Liechtenstein, and five others by a gentleman called Klemo. This is the way they got the money. Mr. Klemo, for example, on the 21st June, 1975 presented to the bank in London four commercial invoices apparently in order, full sets of 4/4 shipped bills of lading apparently in order, giving the name of the ship ex so and so. For instance, I have one before me for the m.t. Lion ex Avgi.In practically every one of these eight ships the bills of lading appeared as if there had been a ship which had changed its name. Nearly all the bills of lading were made out on that basis, and signed by the master, that they were shipped at a port in Greece called Volos.

“When the solicitor from London went out to Greece he found that it was all “moonshine” in effect.They had never had any of these ships in Volos at all. And Volos had not got the quantity of cement or anything like it to fulfil these supposed bills of lading. What is more, the harbourmaster did not know of any being put on board or sent forward, and so forth. So a very strong case was made out that these bills of lading were not genuine at all. They were forged in respect of goods which had never existed.

“In addition, added to these documents, there was a certificate of value given by Mr. Paul Harris, who seems to be a leading member of this Liechtenstein company Esefka International. He apparently lives in Zurich now. He gave certificates of value and certificates of origin of these goods, certifying himself that the invoices were all correct and the goods were produced in Greece and so on. When he was asked for an explanation of it, he said that he signed it in blank thinking that it would be all right in the ordinary way. That sounds a little suspicious to me: people ought not to sign certificates of this kind in blank and leave them for other people to fill in. At all events, there it was.

“Esefka, the Liechtenstein company, got money on three vessels. There is a question of whether those vessels ever existed. Klemo got money on five other vessels, and the same question mark arises about those. And the long and the short of it is that on these supposedly genuine documents Mr. Klemo and the other people got U.S.$6,000,000.

“When the solicitor from London found this out, he advised the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Midland Bank in London that they were not to pay any more money. They were certainly not to pay any demurrage with regard to this claim under these letters of credit when this kind of fraud, as he said it was, had been perpetrated.

“Was there such a fraud or not? Of course it is a debatable question. We have not got anywhere near the trial itself. But for myself, in view of the strength of the evidence which has been collected by the London solicitor in Lagos and in Greece, it seems to be elementary that, if it was a genuine transaction, Mr. Paul Harris (who was obviously the genius behind it) and Mr. Klemo (who was the person who was supposed to have supplied the goods) would have made affidavits or come forward to show that these were genuine goods and these were genuine shipments.

“But there are no such affidavits. All we know about Mr. Klemo is that he supposedly in May 1975 took up a divisible part of 60,000 tons of this supply and took up the transfer of the corresponding letters of credit. There it is…”

That was about us from the legendary Lord Denning.

The Shagari regime of 1979 to 1983 had its “Rice Armada” scandal into which Nigeria reportedly sank over N4 billion. A dollar exchanged for 55 kobo in 1980 when we minted that scandal. The scandal is foregrounded by a story of food crisis in Nigeria. The price of rice tripled with consequent political and social implications. President Shehu Shagari responded with mass issuance of import licences for 200,000 metric tonnes of rice in January 1980. A big scandal soon afflicted the policy. Stories of how sweet sleaze was being extracted from people’s hunger painted the street red. As more and more rice reportedly came in, the price of the commodity was going up, aiming at the roof. Who and who got the licences? Jon Kraus answers that question in his ‘Nigeria under Shagari’ (1982) published in Current History, Volume 81. Kraus writes that when the scandal broke, and the National Assembly demanded a list of the licencees, what it found on the list of rice importers were “records and electronics companies.”

Further to the lawmakers’ horror, on the list were names of their leaders in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. The Washington Post of 26 December, 1980 reported that one of the rice merchants, the deputy leader of the House of Representatives, was very “unapologetic about his floor-tile company receiving one of the highly sought after licenses.” To reporters who questioned him, The Washington Post said the House leader posed a counter question: “Do you think because I am in the House of Representatives I should stop doing business? I have been in business a long time.”

The arrogance in the above statement shocked Nigeria of 1980. If you followed proceedings in our senate in the last seven days, you would know that such audacity of privilege won’t shock anyone in Nigeria of today. Bola Tinubu’s presidency calmly admitted last week that he presented a budget of N27.5 trillion to the National Assembly but the “National Assembly, in its wisdom, increased the amount proposed by the executive by N1.2 trillion.” The lawmakers returned to Tinubu a pregnant budget of N28.7 trillion, largely of borrowed money, for him to sign. And he signed it; no query raised or question asked; no explanation or answer given. Part of that infusion is the provision of scandals that will sink one borehole for N193 million.

All around us here we see what the French call déjà vu – the feeling that you’ve experienced something before. Unlike the French who thought it a mere feeling, here, the experience is real. President Shehu Shagari, in his autobiography ‘Beckoned to Serve’ wrote on what he called “the greed culture” which dominated the legislative life of his regime. He reminisced that “in the 1981 financial year alone, the three million naira that I proposed for improvements to legislators’ quarters was hiked to twenty million naira by the joint committee on finance and appropriation” (see page 269-270). Now, do the calculation. How much would that criminal hike in cost be today? A dollar exchanged for 60 kobo in 1981.

“Nigeria, long known for its flamboyant corruption”, was how the journal, ‘The Historian’, synopsized an article on Nigeria by Steven Pierce five years ago. Because character is smoke, scandals of same hues and similar odour have continued to climb the ladder of time with us. Indeed, the narratives in the cement scandal of fifty years ago would sound so familiar to Nigerians of this day. You remember the oil subsidy scandal and its sad, lurid details. Under the military in 1974/1975, people demanded and got paid demurrage for goods that never existed. In this democracy, people have collected (and may still be collecting) subsidy payments for vessels of petrol that never came here or that never existed.

Our elders say the fear of death does not prevent soldiers from going to war. Tinubu’s friends should tell him to learn to say no to his National Assembly. His success is in saying not yes to whatever is wrong. Great leaders step on toes. I read an article in the Financial Times last year on why saying no may be a virtue. On the very top of that article the author planted a quote: “You can only achieve great things if you know how to say no.” The president presumably saw everything in that budget of transparent sleaze and scandal yet he did not withhold his assent. Tinubu’s office said the big boss closed his eyes to whatever was added to what he presented “in the spirit of democracy which allows give and take.” Yet, last Friday, the president waxed patriotic. He told his visiting party patricians: “As we are fighting corruption, smugglers and old subsidy beneficiaries, they most certainly will fight back. All those who falsified records and became losers with the subsidy removal, they will fight back. But we will defend our people. The treasury belongs to the people, and that sacred trust must not be abused.”

It was so nice hearing the president pronounce “the treasury belongs to the people.” But some carnivores plan to sink 427 boreholes with N82.5 billion public funds and the president endorsed it with his signature. What else is the meaning of complicity?

Nigerians have continued to express displeasure at the alleged padding of the 2024 budget.

Some are concerned about the huge figures involved in the allegations, while others are alleging that the Senate attempted to “sweep under the carpet” the allegations, with the suspension of Senator Abdul Ningi (PDP, Bauchi).

Recall that Ningi was last week suspended for three months over the allegation.

The former chairman of the Northern Senators’ Forum had claimed in a BBC Hausa Service interview that the 2024 budget was padded to the tune of N3.7 trillion.

During the debate over Ningi’s allegation, Senator Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe (Cross River) had revealed that “senior senators” were allegedly allocated constituency projects worth N500 million in the  budget.

This had led to more revelations with several senators having to clarify how much was allocated to them.

Over the weekend, Nigerians explored different platforms, including the social media, radio and television, to express their views on the matter.

Some of those who spoke to Daily Trust yesterday, including former senators, called for a holistic investigation into Ningi’s allegations.

N212bn streetlights, N82.5bn boreholes part of insertions

Findings by BudgIT, a foremost civic-tech organisation with specialty in budget analytics, revealed that the National Assembly inserted a total of 7,447 projects totaling N2.24 trillion in the 2024 Budget, with 55 projects with cumulative value of N580.7 billion costing at least N5 billion each.

BudgIT’s findings also showed that N100 billion envelope was earmarked in the 2024 Executive Budget Proposal for lawmakers to nominate constituency/zonal intervention projects in their constituencies, but that the lawmakers went above the amount earmarked “to insert thousands of constituency-like projects in the budgets of 326 MDAs that in most cases neither have the mandate nor technical capacity to implement and monitor the execution of the projects.

“For example, 1,777 projects worth N218.6 billion are to be directly delivered in federal constituencies while 1,308 projects with a value of N176 billion are directly in senatorial districts. Other categories of projects include 1,150 streetlights worth N212 billion, 427 boreholes worth N82.5 billion, 170 ICT projects with a value of N30.95 billion, and N7.61 billion for empowerment of traditional rulers. If our analysis shows that 1,308 projects are to be implemented specifically in senatorial districts, it is not out of place that apart from the constituency projects, lawmakers also added up projects to their constituencies, at least N500 million each.”

Meanwhile, a report that analysed the details of the 2024 Budget has revealed that the senatorial district of the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, comprising 10 local government areas in Akwa Ibom State, might have gotten as much as N90 billion worth of projects, with at least 280 of such domiciled in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.

A breakdown of the budget shows that N7.2 billion was allocated for construction and equipping of ICT centres; N395 million for construction and equipping of community schools; N957 million for supply of sewing machines, hairdressing/barbing equipment, and deep freezers; N50 million for construction of district head palace; N4 billion for construction of police stations.

Others include N12.7 billion for construction of roads within communities and supply of transformers; N3.1 billion for farm implements, motorcycles, tricycles, welding machine to artisans, and buses; N4.5 billion for empowerment materials and training of women and youths and provision of grants; N474 million for security cars; N1.22 billion for educational materials to selected schools; N1.220 billion for medical supplies and equipment to health centres; N2.996 billion for starter packs for youths and women

Also included is N7.551 billion for solar powered boreholes and streetlights; N1.095 billion for workspace and farm stalls; N475 million for development of agricultural value chains; N4.090 billion for equipment of primary healthcare centres.

I got N1bn for constituency projects – Senator

The senator representing Delta North, Ned Nwoko, disclosed that he received N1 billion for constituency projects.

Speaking on a podcast, Nwoko corroborated Senator Ali Ndume’s claims that the allocation of resources to the legislators often varies based on their respective positions in the leadership of the chamber, and the magnitude of their constituency projects.

The lawmaker said: “Senators get what they lobby for, not because they have the right to it. Everybody just goes about doing what they can do for their constituencies and senatorial districts.

“A better approach would have been for senatorial uniformity. So, if they say that everyone should get about N1 billion, be it. But this way, you rely on your weight and contacts to see what you can get for your people.

“We’re not talking about money for the senators. This is for projects within our senatorial districts. If you have road, water, or training programmes, all should aggregate to a particular amount.”

‘Constituency projects riddle with corruption’

Bolanle Bolawole, a columnist, faulted the argument in support of the “constituency projects” insertion that lawmakers “want to ensure fair and equitable distribution of projects all over the country.

“Without becoming contractors, they can ensure equity before passing the budget”, stressing that from what we he observed, the constituency projects are riddled with corruption.

“The constituencies seldom get value for money. Carcasses of constituency projects litter the landscape of Nigeria. The system employed is opaque and not transparent,” he stated.

Prof. Tonnie Iredia, a former Director-General of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), said: “The argument that legislators have a right to review a budget before approving it becomes puerile when the power to review is abused by distorting the document with new incoherent items in which several projects are inexplicably lumped into the budgets of agencies that have no responsibility for such projects.

“For example, the National Agency for Great Green Wall set up to prevent land degradation and desertification afflicting parts of the country suddenly found within its budget, N1.3 billion for purchasing motorcycles, street lights and other projects outside its mandate.

“If budgeting is not appropriately directed to its proper target, it can be assumed that such distortion is a veiled attempt to budget for nebulous items that would in the end be diverted to private pockets”, he noted.

Iredia said the allegations by Ningi were too weighty to be concluded without a thorough investigation.

“The number of times the courts have held that the National Assembly cannot suspend their members and the fact that the latter continues to disobey the judgment seems to confirm the hypothesis that such suspensions are merely face-saving as well as a device to punish all members who divulge secrets from which the group hugely gains materially,” he said.

Prof. Kamilu Sani Fage, a renowned political analyst, in an interview with Daily Trust, said the allegation of budget padding was a very serious matter, “especially when one looks at the impact the N3.7 trillion mentioned can make in vital social sectors like education, health, water.”

Ex-senators slam Senate

Senator El-Jibrin Doguwa, who represented Kano South in 1999, told Daily Trust that he felt bad about “what is happening currently in the Senate because whatever happens, either directly or indirectly affects all other senators who are not even serving, because it’s an institution we’ve established for quite a long time.”

According to him, “in an ideal situation, a senator has nothing to do with projects. But because of the demands of constituents, lawmakers started advocating projects for their constituencies, but a lot of lawmakers have come to abuse this right.”

He said the issue “is not much about the legality of it, but about the management of the projects.”

Senator Alex Kadiri, who represented Kogi East in 1999, also lampooned members of the 10th Senate for suspending Ningi for “blowing the whistle” on the 2024 national budget.

He said instead of suspending Ningi, the 10th Senate should have explained the details of the budget, especially areas not clear to Nigerians.

“Ningi is just a whistle-blower. Why are they punishing Ningi for telling us the truth?” he queried.

Fatuhu Muhammad, who represented Daurawa/Sandamu/Maiadu’a Federal Constituency of Katsina State in the 9th Assembly, said many lapses in the Nigerian budgeting system allowed for the various abuses and corruption.

He said: “We’re operating a faulty budgeting system. It has been the same since independence. When you observe very well, it has been a copy-and-paste system year-in and year-out. We only change the figures.

“The main culprits in these padding and other allegations are the big people in the MDAs. Why I said this is that our budget originates from the executive. They sit down and formulate everything and then the president brings it to the National Assembly for endorsement.

“The National Assembly cannot escape from its failures because it failed to provide the scrutiny needed to have the budget work for the people.

“As long as we have this faulty budgeting system in place, legislators must be ready for the backlash. They allowed themselves to be used. What I mean by being used is that people were made to believe that they can do the work of the executive like the provision of water, roads, electricity and other basic amenities which are outside their statutory functions of making laws and keeping the executive arm in check.

“Since the National Assembly has the power of appropriations, what stops the members in the two chambers from cleaning the system and avoiding the controversies about budget padding and taking the whole blame? They need to wake up and do the needful to protect the image of the National Assembly as an institution and clear themselves of the infractions being perpetrated”, he further queried.

N/Assembly has powers to tinker with budget – Senator Urhoghide

Senator Matthew Urhoghide, who presented Edo South in the 8th and 9th Senate sessions, said the parliament was constitutionally empowered to make insertions into what the president presented to it.

He said: “Budget padding is completely misconstrued. It’s a deliberate insertion of some line items into the budget by the National Assembly that were not included by the executive.

“The National Assembly is empowered to make changes to the budget. The law does not say the National Assembly must pass exactly what the president presented to it. If the budget was passed as presented without changes, then there’s no need to bring the budget to the National Assembly,” he said.

Urhoghide, who chaired the Senate Public Accounts Committee in the 9th Senate, expressed surprise at how Nigerians acted in ignorance about constituency projects.

He said it was normal for some lawmakers to get more funds to execute projects than others.

He noted that allocations for constituency projects are shared by geo-political zones and that lawmakers from zones with more states get less funding compared to their colleagues from zones with fewer states.”

He also said Ningi’s suspension was not new to the parliament, urging Nigerians to stop attaching sentiments to the Senate’s action.

SERAP, dons demand investigation

The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) yesterday urged Senate President Akpabio to refer the allegations of budget padding to appropriate anti-corruption agencies for investigation and prosecution in line “with the lawmakers’ oath of office and the letter and spirit of the Nigerian Constitution 1999 (as amended).”

In a letter dated March 16, 2024 and signed by SERAP’s deputy director, Kolawole Oluwadare, the organisation said: “Rather than suspending Senator Ningi, the Senate ought to have used his allegations as a trigger for addressing the lingering problem of budget padding and corruption in the implementation of constituency projects,” the letter added.

A political analyst and senior lecturer at the Department of Political Science, Bayero University Kano (BUK), Aminu Hayatu, said, “Because the budget padding doesn’t happen without the knowledge of all those in the executive arm, especially in the ministries, departments and other agencies on whose behalf these paddings actually take place,” and because of the involvement of the Senate, the best option is for anti-corruption agencies to take up the investigation.

“To suspend a member of the National Assembly because he blows a whistle about alleged corruption, sends a signal to every other member to be warned that this is not a place where corruption will be exposed.

“This is a wake-up call for our anti-corruption agencies to really do their bit, to do their calling in terms of actually investigating independently of the National Assembly in order to understand what are these issues, where the problem lies, and what is the truth about them.”

CSOs speak on ‘insertion claim’ by lawmakers, executive

Emmanuel Onwubiko, National Coordinator, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), queried: “What do they mean by zonal intervention? Who are the beneficiaries of these interventions, and what exactly are the interventions that justify the indiscriminate sharing of bulk sums of money to senators under the guide of zonal interventions?

“When were these interventions discussed with the constituents, and how did the senators arrive at the exact type of interventions needed by each of the senatorial zones? What the Senate did is simply “budget padding”, which was exposed by one of them,” Onwubiko said.

Executive Director, Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education (CHRICED), Ibrahim Zikirullahi, said the Presidency and the National Assembly were expected to vigorously defend “the indefensible aspects of the inflated budget.”

“Furthermore, both levels of governance have taken advantage of the complacency of the people to act with impunity. Otherwise, why would a federal lawmaker have the audacity to claim that a project funded by public money is a personal constituency project?

“What is most concerning, however, is the silence of the once esteemed civil society activists who appear unperturbed by such actions within the National Assembly. Nevertheless, the day of reckoning will inevitably come,” Zikirullahi said.

National Convener, Coalition of Civil Society Network, Adamu Matazu, also noted that the National Assembly is empowered to alter budgets.

“Senator Ningi’s recent allegations of budget padding lack substance and credibility. His claims are devoid of factual evidence and demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of budgetary processes,” he said

Senior Communications Officer at Yiaga Africa, Mark Amaza, said “The practice of constituency projects is one that needs to be overhauled because it not only bloats the budget, but it causes the spending all over the place with seemingly no direction. Not only that, it continues to be controversial.”

“But you can see that this current budget insertions and all that is the height of insensitivity. And the worst aspect is that they’re not apologetic about it. We hear them saying that they gave every senator about N200 million, and then those that are leaders, either minority leader, majority leader, the Senate President, the Deputy Senate President and all of these other people went with higher amount of money.”

Tunde Salman, the Team Lead/Convener, Good Governance Team Nigeria, said, “Maybe until the issue of constitutionality of padding is defined, the debate about its appropriateness or inappropriateness would linger as some constitutions empower their legislatures to either reduce or increase executive budget proposals.”

The director and co-founder of BudgIT, Oluseun Onigbinde, said the organisation “was not contesting the legitimacy of the insertions into the budget of the national budget. We’re only saying that most of those projects are not geared towards national development.

“And the scale of the insertion is something that we have not seen in recent history. We find that our projects are around N2.2 trillion. In this current environment, where more fiscal tightening is required, it’s a bit of a shocker. Let’s not forget that in previous years, we had delays in the budget process just because of this constant breaking between the executive and the legislature to ensure that the budget signed into law is focused on national development.

Old clip of  Obasanjo’s description of N/Assembly trends

Meanwhile, an old clip of former President Olusegun Obasanjo describing the National Assembly as a “den of corruption” resurfaced at the weekend on social media as Nigerians shared their thoughts on the budget padding allegation.

Obasanjo, who spoke in 2016 during the First Akintola Williams Annual Lecture in Lagos, had said: “The National Assembly cabal of today is worse than any cabal that anybody may find anywhere in our national governance system at any time. Members of the National Assembly pay themselves allowances for staff and offices they do not have or maintain.

“Once you’re a member, you’re co-opted and your mouth is stuffed with rottenness and corruption that you cannot opt out as you go home with not less than N15 million a month for a senator and N10 million a month for a member of the House of Representatives.

“Most of them conduct themselves and believe that they are not answerable to anybody. They are blatant in their misbehaviour, cavalier in their misconduct and arrogant in the misuse of parliamentary immunity as a shield against reprisals for their irresponsible acts of malfeasance and/or outright banditry,” he said.

Another video of an event held in 2014 were also being shared across social media. The former president at this event said “Corruption in the National Assembly also includes what they call constituency projects which they give to their agents to execute but invariably, full payment is made with little or no job done.”

Ningi may be reinstated soon- Sources

Sources close to the leadership of the Senate told Daily Trust last night that the allegation of budget padding was a plot to tarnish the image of the National Assembly and distract attention.

One of the sources said the issue, which culminated in Ningi’s suspension “is being resolved amicably.”

He said the suspended senator might be reinstated anytime “if he tenders a public apology to the Senate.”

“I can tell you there is no tension in the Senate. The Senate remains one. The allegation about budget padding is just a ploy to tarnish the image of the senate under Godswill Akpabio who has shown uncommon commitment towards tackling the various challenges confronting the country by fostering effective collaboration with the Executive without jeopardizing the principle of separation of power.

“The N3.7 trillion that was mentioned represents the budget of government owned enterprises (GOEs) and they are expected to come to the Senate to defend their budget because the details are not always in the entire estimate. So, where is the budget padding allegation coming from? The budget was prepared by the executive. The House of Representatives plays more role in scrutinizing the budget and so where’s this allegation coming from if not because some people felt they should be the President of the Senate and not Senator Akpabio.

“There was also the allocation for Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIPs) for members of the National Assembly for their constituencies. The money is not being released to any lawmaker but this is in form of projects for their constituencies”, the lawmaker who did not wish to be name said.

[DailyTrust]

Ian Wright, an Arsenal legend, has slammed Darwin Nunez for his costly mistake in Liverpool’s 4-3 FA Cup quarter-final loss to Manchester United on Sunday.

Nunez’s loss of the ball in the midfield allowed Marcus Rashford to score the equalizer in the second half of extra time.

Liverpool previously scored three goals to lead the game twice before United made a comeback.

Wright criticized Nunez in an interview with ITV, stating that he should have played the ball to the left-back instead of returning it to the dangerous area.

The mistake proved costly for Liverpool, causing them to lose the match.

“You have to look at Darwin Nunez there. What are you doing there? The thing is, he’s got the capability to play it to the left-back,” Wright said.

“You don’t put it back into that area. You just don’t do that.”

Terrorists on Sunday night kidnapped 87 people after launching a fresh attack on the Kajuru-Station community in Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

A member of the Kajuru-Station Youths, Harisu Dari, confirmed the incident to our correspondent on Monday in Kaduna.

Harisu said the terrorists also broke into some shops and stole food items and other valuables.

He said they invaded the village around 10 pm.

The attack came barely two days after 15 women and a man were abducted in the Dogon-Noma community of the same local government.

Kajuru and Chikun LGs had in the past two weeks become the hotbed of kidnapping, causing tension in the state.

Harisu explained that no contact has been established yet with the 87 locals abducted on Sunday night.

“As of the time I visited the community this morning, security operatives have not been drafted to help restore the confidence of the villagers.

“The villagers are traumatic with the sad development. The government needs to re-strategise in tackling these terrorists,” he said.

PUNCH Online reports that the terrorists had in two weeks kidnapped over 172 villagers.

When contacted, the state Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Mansir Hassan, did not respond to calls or a text message sent to him by our correspondent as of the time of filing this report.

[Punch]

JONATHAN  Ihonde. I never came across a leader so dominant, but invisible. So influential, but unknown. Silent waters, running deep, he was like a wall gecko in the Nigerian house, observing everything, but remaining virtually unnoticed.

Traversing the country’s political terrain since the 1960s, a major labour leader for over five decades, accepted leader of the Left forces and one of the most creative minds who ran a drama series from 1962. Yet, if a vox pop were to be held, most Nigerians would ask: Jonathan who?

Many Nigerians know Raymond Dokpesi as the founder of African Independent Television, AIT, and Ray Power, but only a handful would know that he started out as an actor under the tutelage of Ihonde, or that famous actors, like Sam Loco Efe, passed through his hands.

In trying to trace Ihonde through the flow of life, I first located him in an incident in 1961. He was suspended without pay as an accounts clerk on the fourth floor of the Western Nigeria Development Corporation, WNDC, when a communist book, Lenin in Britain was found on his desk by the Chief External Accounting Auditor, a Whiteman.

The following year, Ihonde at 23, created a satirical drama series, “Hotel De Jordan”. This came to define him. He said of the series which became one of the most popular and longest-running television drama series in the country: “The theme of ‘Hotel De Jordan’ is class antagonism; the perpetual struggle between the rich and the poor, especially in a bourgeois society … Many characters are created in the programme; revolutionary characters and reactionary characters.”

Patrick Obayagbon, a logophile who loves high-sounding words and language, must have been a student of Professor Milo Moro, one of Ihonde’s fictional characters.

Hotel De Jordan was staged across theatres in Ibadan and Benin, and the studios of NTA “highlighting the ills and foibles of the society, and with a view to solving them”. It was one of the precursors of Nollywood.

In 1963, he joined left elements in the country to establish the Society for Progress, SOFOPRO. It was led by high school teacher, Olu Adebayo, who, one day, disappeared and was never seen again. Ihonde said this group directly or and indirectly, influenced the Socialist Movement in the country.

In 1968, Ihonde was thrown into the Oko Prison by Colonel Samuel Ogbemudia, the Military Governor of then Mid-West, later renamed Bendel State. They were friends, but Ihonde who was the leader of the over 17,000 workers of the Urhonigbe Rubber Estate, Ughelli Glass Factory and Ewohimi Oil Palm Plantation, opposed the privatisation of viable and profitable public companies.

Reminiscing on this, he said: “Foreigners came from abroad to buy from these companies in hard currency. With these benefits, somebody just rose up and said he was going to sell these companies to private individuals. I then told my friend that was not possible. I resisted it.”

Ihonde had written an anti-Apartheid play: “Our blindness”. So when he was detained for organising the workers strike, Apartheid South Africa mocked Nigeria as being a worse country for detaining Ihonde whose crime was fighting for social justice.

After a long stay in prison, he was released but was further punished by being demoted from Grade Level 12 to Grade Level 4: “They -the military regime – insisted that they were going to make me an example for fighting against the government.”

When 20 years later, the Babangida regime’s privatisation policy became like full blown AIDS, the post-Chiroma Trade Union Movement embraced it. Perhaps, if the labour leaders had fought privatisation like Ihonde did, the country would have been in a far healthier state.

When the four trade union centres: the United Labour Congress, ULC; the Nigeria Trade Union Congress, NTUC; the Nigeria Workers Council, NWC; and the Labour Unity Front, LUF, merged in December 1975 to established the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Ihonde emerged one of its leaders.

However, the military regime under General Murtala Mohammed dissolved that NLC. After a new NLC was born in 1978, Ihonde became the Chairman of its Bendel State Council, comprising Edo and Delta states.

He became the ideological arrowhead of the NLC. When then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited Nigeria in 1978, Ihonde came to Lagos from Benin to lead the massive demonstrations against her for supporting the Apartheid regime in South Africa. I recall that loads of armed security men were deployed at Ojuelegba to block the buses of the protesters and stop them from getting to the airport. Rather than put up resistance, Ihonde ordered the demonstrators to disembark and walk the two-three hours distance to the airport. Having lost control, the security services caught up with Ihonde on Ikorodu Road and begged him to order the demonstrators back into the buses. He simply ignored them and led the protesters to the airport. There, the Union Jack was burnt as Thatcher’s bewildered convoy was forced to sneak its way through the angry crowds.

The 1988 NLC conference was endangered by the Babangida regime that had hired fifth columnists to cause mayhem and forcibly break up the Congress. The NLC wisely turned to Ihonde in Benin, to host the conference. He did so successfully, although an angry Babangida later issued a decree to ban the Congress.

It is a measure of Ihonde’s political stature that when Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola sought the support of Edo State people to actualise his presidential mandate, it was to Ihonde he was directed.

Indeed, there was hardly any progressive tendency that emerged in Edo State in the last four decades, without Ihonde’s imprint. There was ecstasy in 2008 when former NLC President, Adams Oshiomhole, was elected Edo State Governor. In the euphoria, Ihonde studied Oshiomhole’s moves and told comrades that they were free to join the administration, but he would not because Oshiomhole merely signalled left but is taking a right turn.

On January 22 and 23, 2024, when a group of us organised the Lenin Centenary Conference in Abuja, Ihonde sent a paper and participated virtually. On March 8, 2024, I got a message that he was hospitalised. I spoke with him. He was recovering fast and we agreed to speak on his discharge. He was billed for discharge on Wednesday, March 13. However, the night before, he developed complications and at 9.50 am, Comrade Jonathan Ihonde marched on to assume other commands.

As the guns boomed at 7 am on March 14, in Oke-Ora to announce his interment, it was a red salute from us his political children.

–As subsidy spending hits N17.7bn daily
–Marketers put landing cost above N1,000/litre
–Say independents no longer get products

There are indications that the Federal Government through the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) is now spending N17.72 billion daily to fund subsidy on petrol.

Data clothed in secrecy
Vanguard’s efforts to get Finance Ministry’s official data on petrol import prices were rebuffed while the regular FAAC breakdown of remittances by NNPC has been removed from public communications contrary to the practice a year ago.
Also NNPC declined to release its information on petroleum imports saying that it is now running as a private company, and therefore not obligated to making its trading information public.

Contrary to the position of the FG, petroleum marketers have insisted that the current landing price is above N1,000 per litre, meaning the government was paying the difference.
According to them, the major cost determinant is the exchange rate which had seen the Naira depreciate by almost 200 per cent since the May 29, 2023 declaration.
NNPC Limited remains sole importer of the product as scarcity of foreign exchange killed the euphoria that greeted the passage of the Petroleum Industry Act 2021 that provided for deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry.
The Act was expected to usher in an era of free market in the downstream sector, where marketers will be able to import and sell at competitive prices.

Marketers’ views
Speaking to Vanguard, the immediate past public relations officer of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, IPMAN, Chief Chinedu Ukadike, said the rise in petrol price is largely driven by the low value of the Naira to the Dollar.
Ukadike pointed out that while crude oil price has remained largely stable in the past one year, the Naira has continued to tumble against the dollar following the decision of President Tinubu to float the currency.

He explained that it is impossible for anyone to claim that the price of petrol has not changed significantly from when the exchange rate was N750/dollar when the subsidy was removed last year to now when the rate has moved to N1,600/dollar.
He explained: “Because NNPC is the sole importer of PMS in this country, it is very difficult for anyone to say for sure the actual cost of importing PMS into the country. Simple mathematics will tell you that the price cannot be the same when a dollar was exchanged for N750 and now that it is N1,600 to a dollar. What this means is that the price is above N1,000 per litre.

“So, the foreign exchange determines the price at the local market and if forex rate has increased, invariably, the landing price of petroleum products has also increased by same magnitude. I don’t know the magic through which they continue to sustain the price of PMS at the same level.”
He disclosed that while NNPC’s portal currently displays that ex-depot price was N566.7 per litre, independent marketers are not able to load at NNPC depots and have had to depend on private depots supplied by NNPC at the cost of N630 per litre.

Also speaking to Vanguard, a major marketer blamed foreign exchange rate for the huge gap existing between the actual market cost of petrol and the pump prices.
The marketer who didn’t wish to be named said government is certainly subsidising petrol at the current rate.
According to the marketer, “The landing cost is determined by the rate of the dollar to Naira. If you have US Dollar at N800, the price will be different if you’re buying at N1,600 for instance. So, it depends on the context. The government has told NNPC: don’t move the price.

“But for the rest of us, if you buy a vessel and you bring that vessel from the mother vessel to the port, it will cost you between $400,000 to $600,000 depending on where you are taking it to. If you are coming to Lagos it will cost about $400,000 but if you’re going to the east, it will cost $600,000. So, it cost about $30 per ton. So, if you are calculating this at N1,600/$ the amount is significantly different. And that informs the difference in pump price at NNPC outlets and the rest of us.
“You must also know that when your vessel gets to the port, NIMASA and NPA charge you in dollars. Everything amounts to $10 per ton. That dollar you cannot see in the banks. It is either you buy from the parallel market or you don’t operate.

“So, if NNPC has continued to sell at the old price, it means that the government has intervened. Which I will not call subsidies”, he explained.
Backing the positions of the marketers, oil and gas governance expert, Mr. Henry Adigun said government is paying over N400 per litre as subsidy.

Adigun explained that the easiest way to know the actual price of petrol “is to look at the price of diesel as both products were of the same value”.
He expressed dissatisfaction over non-release of data by NNPC Limited, adding the company remains publicly-owned and funded by the Nigerian people.
He pointed out that NNPC has become more opaque than it was a few years ago, adding that NNPC is likely paying for the subsidies with proceeds of crude oil sales as it did during the President Muhammadu Buhari’s government.

Analysts’ comments
Views across financial experts contradict FG’s position on existence of subsidy payment.
According to them, it is obvious that not only has subsidy regime returned, perhaps the amount spent on fuel subsidy is now far more than ever before.

They also believe that government may have decided to carry the subsidy burden for fear of a likely political and social backlash of transmitting the full cost of imported petrol onto the consumers.
But they also expressed worry over what they see as clear violation of the 2024 Appropriation Act which did not provide for subsidy funding.

Why FG was forced back to subsidy– Expert
Speaking to Vanguard on the subsidy controversy, Tunde Abidoye, Head, Equity Research, FBN Securities Limited, stated: “It is quite clear that petrol subsidies have been back for some time, considering: a) that the product is imported; b) there is a substantial import component in the product’s price and; c) the naira exchange rate has been devalued at least twice, first to around N760, and N1,500per USD.

“Industry experts will tell you that the landing cost of the product is already above the current pump price. Also, we can easily determine the real cost reflective price of petrol by bench-marking its price with those of other deregulated fuels like diesel and kerosene.

“According to the last NBS report, the average price of household kerosene was N1,329.5 as at January 2024. Diesel prices averaged N1,153 due in the same period. The real market price of petrol cannot be substantially lower than prices observed for these two other petroleum products. Consequently, it is clear that PMS prices are being subsidized.”

NNPC owes Nigerians transparency — Highcap Securities boss
Reacting, David Adonri, Executive Vice Chairman at Highcap Securities Limited, said: “There might be a merit in the claim by NNPCL that being a private company although a publicly sponsored enterprise, it is not under any obligation to publicly disclose its corporate information.
“However, it remains an entity with very substantial public interest which demands a high level of transparency. It ought to feed the public with necessary information if it does not have anything to hide.

“From the perspective of arithmetic, depreciation of the Naira and continued importation of petroleum products by NNPCL points in the direction of subsidy at current pump price. It is only when petroleum products are produced locally and sold at open market prices by private refiners that subsidy may no longer arise.”

Publish financial statement to bring everything clearer — Kurfi
In his comment, Mallam Garba Kurfi, Chief Executive Offer at ATP Securities & Funds Limited, said: “We are not having any doubt about subsidy existence in petroleum sector. What is the price of diesel now? There is no doubt about fuel subsidy especially when you compared it with the price of diesel which is about N1,300’per litre. As a public company, their financial statement will bring everything clearer when published.”

Subsidy has crept back into the price of petrol — Olayinka
Reacting as well, Tajudeen Olayinka , Analyst/ CEO, Wyoming Capital and Partners, said: “I believe every discerning individual should know that subsidy is back. So far exchange rate is no longer at the level we had it the last time further adjustment was made to petrol prices, it follows therefore that subsidy has crept back into the current price of petrol across the country. I believe government deliberately put further removal of subsidy on pause, to enable the administration address all the socio-economic costs associated with subsidy removal and economic reforms.”

Withholding information undermines public confidence — Egbomeade
In his response, Clifford Egbomeade, Communications experts /economy commentator, said: “Transparency is essential in ensuring public trust and accountability, particularly in a sector as vital as oil and gas. Withholding information on subsidies and fuel distribution costs can undermine public confidence and raise questions about the motives behind such actions.”

Regarding the existence of subsidies on petrol, he said: “The lack of transparency from NNPC makes it challenging to ascertain the current situation definitively. However, given Nigeria’s history of subsidizing fuel prices to stabilise domestic markets and support consumers, it is plausible that some form of subsidy still exists, albeit potentially obscured by the lack of disclosure.”

[Vanguard]

On February 27, 2024, Nigeria’s National Judicial Institute (NJI) in Abuja opened a continuing education course for judges. The opening featured an address by the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Olukayode Ariwoola, who invited the participants to eschew “unethical conduct that could expose the judiciary to ridicule”. Beneath his text, it seemed as if the Chief Justice desired to warn the participants to stay away from interfering with a brief that he had chosen to make entirely his own. Under his watch, judicial appointments in Nigeria have become corruptly farcical.

The fortnight before this address, it emerged that the CJN’s daughter-in-law, Oluwakemi, was at the top of a list of 12 nominees to fill judicial vacancies in the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). In the preceding six months, he had also appointed his son, Kayode Jr., as a judge of the Federal High Court; elevated his nephew, Lateef, to become a Justice of the Court of Appeal; and made his blood brother, Adebayo, the auditor of the National Judicial Council (NJC), which he chairs in his capacity as the CJN. With this CJN’s retirement from office due on August 22, 2024, the concerted effort to anoint his daughter-in-law to the bench would presumably showcase his credentials for gender equity within his family. Let’s not digress though.

That these appointments occurred when they did is no coincidence. They are spoils of office for the CJN. Nor is it any coincidence that the same list that proposes the CJN’s daughter-in-law for appointment as a judge of the High Court of the FCT also contains the names of the daughters of the Chief Judge of the FCT, Hussaini Baba-Yusuf; and of Ariwoola’s predecessor in the office of the CJN, Ibrahim Muhammad Tanko.

As a federal institution, however, section 14(3) of Nigeria’s constitution requires that appointments to the High Court of the FCT “shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few State or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or any of its agencies.” If these nominations in favour of the children of the Chief Judge of the FCT and the CJN were to be implemented, then their respective states, Kogi and Oyo, would have three judges on the bench of the court while a state like Ebonyi would have none. 

It requires no original insight to understand that this kind of outcome is hardly compatible with the requirements of Federal Character. Sadly, the senior judges who are supposed to protect this high constitutional value are the people willfully endangering it. 

Last month, Azubuike Oko, a lawyer from Ebonyi State, sued accusing the CJN and the Chief Judge of the FCT High Court of unconscionable insider dealing in judicial appointments. In response to the suit, the CJN and his satrap in the FCT High Court did not bother to confront the serious allegations levelled against them. Instead, they sought to disqualify Mr. Oko from litigating the issue by arguing that he lacked the standing to sue, claiming, contrary to a long line of relevant jurisprudence, that he had not suffered any personal injury. 

On 15 March, the Federal High Court in Abuja presided over by Inyang Ekwo, upheld these shameful objections by the CJN and the Chief Judge of the FCT High Court. According to the judge, to establish standing to question this high racketeering in judicial office by the two officials responsible for stopping it, Mr Oko needed to show “how the appointment being considered by the defendants has affected him as a person…. This, he would have done, by showing that he applied to be considered by the defendants for appointment but he was ‘routinely excluded and marginalized.” How he was supposed to do this in a situation in which the CJN and the heads of courts who work under him will not allow a fair and credible process of judicial recruitment, only the judge can tell.

This is the latest in a line of cases in which senior judges use their offices to steal judicial appointments for their children or mistresses and then use lower court judges to make it legal. In 2020, the Justice Reform Project (JRP), an entity comprising several Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs), sued to restrain former President, Muhammadu Buhari, from going forward with the appointment of 21 persons to the bench of the High Court of the FCT who, according to the JRP, “failed to meet the mandatory requirements under the NJC Procedural Rules.” That round of hires, like the latest, was a bounty for judicial insiders. On September 30, 2020, Okon Abang, then a judge of the Federal High Court, ruled that the “JRP lacked the legal right to challenge the NJC’s actions and that the National Industrial Court and not the Federal High Court was the proper court to approach as it was an employment-related case”. 

The appeal by the JRP against this judgment has been pending since November 24, 2020. Meanwhile, for his efforts, Okon Abang got elevated to the Court of Appeal in October 2023 along with the nephew of the Chief Justice. 

The JRP are not the only SANs openly scandalised by what the CJN and his colleagues are doing with judicial appointments. In January 2024, seven SANS from Kogi State sued the State Chief Judge, Josiah Majebi, and the Kogi State Judicial Service Commission, alleging egregious perversions in the nominations into high court vacancies in the state, including the nomination of a wife of the then outgoing governor of the state, Amina, whose only claim to the nomination appeared to be her marital relationship with the then incumbent in the office of the Governor. The SANs effectively claimed that the effort by the Chief Judge of Kogi state and the Judicial Service which he chairs, to nominate Amina Bello as a judge of the Kogi High Court was meant as a parting gift to the state governor, who was term-limited, making it clear that this was not a lawful or relevant factor in the exercise of powers of judicial appointment.

While this case is pending, the NJC has suspended the process of appointment of new judges in Kogi State. In neighbouring Edo State, however, the appointment of new judges is suspended by the ego of Governor Godwin Obaseki. In June 2023, the NJC approved the appointment of eight new judges to the High Court of Edo state. Over eight months later, the governor has refused to consent to their appointment or to swear them in. Adaze Emwanta, a former commissioner in Governor Obaseki’s cabinet, sued late last year seeking to compel the governor to formalise these appointments. 

A manifestly unwilling Governor Obaseki has chosen instead to use the case as his excuse for refusing to appoint them. While the case pends, these judicial nominees waste. Because they have been nominated as judges, they can no longer undertake legal work to subsist or earn. But because they have not yet been formally appointed as judges, they cannot be paid in that role. In effect, Governor Obaseki does more than merely choose not to appoint them as judges. He has chosen to destitute them and ruin their lives.

While all these scandals unfold, the leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), under the presidency of Yakubu Maikyau, SAN, has chosen to the path of eloquent silence. The president of the NBA is a member of the National Judicial Council and he is entitled to nominate three other representatives of the association into that body. For the record, the stated motto of the NBA supposedly is “promoting the rule of law”. 

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

President Vladimir Putin is leading the 2024 Russian presidential election with a landslide.

According to Reuters, exit polls showed that Putin is leading with 88 percent of the votes to trounce Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, who trails with four per cent.

Vladislav Davankov, candidate of the New People’s Party, scored 3.85 percent, while Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) trailed with just 3.1 percent.

Putin, who has been in power since 2000, is set to secure another six-year term that would enable him to become Russia’s longest-serving leader for more than 200 years.

After his second tenure ended in 2008, he served as prime minister for another four years before becoming president again in 2012. 

Subsequently, the president drafted a constitutional amendment that extended the presidential term from four to six years in Russia.

[TheCable]

Although the appointment of Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede as the Board Chairman of Access Holdings last week was a highly anticipated event, the announcement still came with elements of surprise and psychology. With the tragic death of Dr. Herbert Wigwe in February, it was clear to well-informed analysts that his friend and partner, Aigboje, would have to step in to fill the void. ‘’I am not surprised at the appointment. From the perspectives of the sudden and painful death of Herbert, it was clear that the institution would require a leader of immense status and credibility to step in and provide a strong leadership to the institution which has grown rapidly in the last two decades; and with all due respects to all the other professionals in the company, Aigboje has the requisite calibre, influence and institutional memory to play that role’’, says Dr. Henry Essien Nelson, a financial consultant, and former executive director of Eco Bank Plc.

He added, ‘’Don’t forget, it is possible that some important shareholders and analysts might have been unnerved by Herbert’s death and were worried about the direction the bank might take; and so, by Aigboje coming out of retirement to take up the leadership of the institution, some frayed nerves have been calmed’’. A statement from Access Holdings that announced the appointment described Aigboje as a visionary and accomplished leader who ‘’is bringing an outstanding record of accomplishments, wealth of expertise and leadership to guide the group to a new era of success’’. Foreign financial analysts, international partners and the regulatory authorities have also welcomed the selection, not the least because the bank is a systemically significant player in the industry.

The appointment also offers a psychological balm, some sort of solace to the 28,000 employees of the Access Nation (as they sometimes call themselves) who have been severely hurt by the tragedy. Aigboje had led the bank as chief executive from 2002 when he and Herbert acquired it, and together they built it into one of the five biggest banks by the time he retired in 2013. Herbert took over and continued in the same trajectory, taking it to the top spot in the country by assets and expanding to many African countries and other parts of the world.

When the tragedy struck, Aigboje rose to the challenge admirably well, managing every aspect admirably well. From the night of Friday, February 9 (Los Angeles time) when the chopper came down to Saturday March 9 (Nigerian time) when Herbert, his wife and son were buried in his village, Aigboje served as the chief mourner and key planner of the funeral events. ‘’It is quite consoling and uplifting to see Aig come back. He’s been and will continue to be an important part of Access Family’’, says a senior management official who declined to be mentioned in this article.

Many had however expected that Aigboje would return as the Group Chief Executive, the exact same position Herbert held. That was out of the question. As he told this writer in his office in Lagos last week, he would no longer be leading a management team of any of his businesses. ‘’I am no longer interested in being owner-manager. I prefer to spend my time now in philanthropy, sit back and play advisory roles to guide the men and women I have mentored over the years’’, he said. Those who expect that his new role will force him to shed his low-key lifestyle will also be disappointed. He will continue to stay away from the limelight and the headlines and operate from the background.

One of Aigboje’s role models is John Davison Rockefeller Sr; the late American business magnate and philanthropist. Just like the American, Aigboje has built substantial wealth in many areas, including financial services and oil exploration. Following his retirement from banking in December 2013, Aigboje was inspired by the Rockefeller Family Office to establish the Tengen Family Office as a platform to achieve his shared goal (along with Herbert Wigwe) of a multi-generational legacy of wealth transfer and business succession. The Family Office is responsible for managing the wealth of the Aig-Imoukhuede and Wigwe families.

In retirement, he focuses his attention and resources on philanthropy. Through the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation, he and his wife, Ofovwe, a development specialist, oversee their $100 million philanthropic commitments in building Nigeria’s next generation of government leaders, transforming public sector effectiveness, and improving access to quality primary health care. Aigboje believes that the capacity of the public sector workforce is a key determinant of a nation’s success, therefore the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation aims to build the capacity of junior, middle and senior level African public servants. The foundation provides scholarships for mid-career public servants to undergo postgraduate degrees at Oxford University in England. Annually, the Foundation also convenes the AIG Public Leaders Programme in partnership with University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. This much sought after two-month learning opportunity is funded by the Foundation, thus enabling thousands of Nigerian civil servants and their contemporaries from other African nations to obtain the skills required to meet the challenges of a complex and rapidly changing continent.

Aigboje’s return is coming just in time for the 35th Annual General Meeting of Access Holdings in late April. The shareholders will be pleased to note that their bank is indeed in safe hands despite the sad event that occurred in that chilly California night.