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![[OPINION] Nigeria: Federalism, unitarism, hybrid or what? - Bolanle Bolawole](/media/k2/items/cache/6bb9506f04d71c169532ccae597972b4_L.jpg)
It is a puzzle that the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration has dragged the 36 state governments to court to compel them to respect the autonomy of the 774 local governments, often touted, though erroneously, as the third tier of government and the government that is closest to the grassroots. That Tinubu has seemingly chosen the path of strengthening the existing Nigerian political structure or system contrary to the avalanche of cries for restructuring will baffle many.
It may appear that Tinubu is negating, nay, rubbishing, the very battle he waged - successfully - against President Olusegun Obasanjo when he (Tinubu) was the governor of Lagos State (1999 - 2007). After conducting a referendum and getting the endorsement of the state House of Assembly, Gov. Tinubu in April 2004 announced the creation of 37 additional local governments in Lagos, bringing the number of LGs to 57. The constitutionally-recognized local governments in Lagos State hitherto had been 20.
Obasanjo would have none of it. Yet, Tinubu would not back down. Obasanjo seized the Federally-allocated funds for Lagos state local governments. Tinubu took a step backward by designating his new local governments as “Local Government Development Areas” subsumed under the constitutionally-recognized 20 local governments. Obasanjo was not assuaged. Tinubu went to court and the matter dragged up to the Supreme Court. In the end, Tinubu won but Obasanjo would not be persuaded to let go of the Lagos State local government funds he had placed a lien on.
Tinubu was, thus, forced to ingeniously search for means to increase Lagos State’s internally-generated revenue. It remains to his eternal credit that he succeeded in doing that, setting the pace for Lagos to wean itself from dependence on federal allocation. The bad belly generated between Obasanjo and Tinubu as a result of that tango remains to this day. It was the government of President Umaru Yar’Adua, who succeeded Obasanjo, that obeyed the courts and ordered the release of the seized Lagos State LG funds - amounting to N10.8 billion - in July 2007.
Lessons learned include that of putting to test the principles of federalism or constitutional democracy. One is that the Federal Government (or the Centre) may not dictate or breathe down the neck of its constituent parts or federating units on matters concerning local administration.
Two: That the same system of local government administration cannot be imposed on a heterogeneous society like Nigeria, where there are over 370 nationalities with different languages, cultures, traditions, ways of life, economic and political systems, religions, etc. Even the colonial powers recognized and respected this basic fact in the system of government they imposed on the conquered peoples of Nigeria for the period they bore rule over them.
Three: that the command-and obey structure or unitary system of government imposed on Nigerians by successive military leaders, beginning with the first military coup of 1966, and which Obasanjo, himself an erstwhile military dictator, appeared to favour, could not be tolerated in a supposedly civilian federal system of government.
What, then, has changed since he stepped down as a two-term civilian governor of Lagos state that has made Tinubu to now step into the shoes and assume the same position as Obasanjo? Why seek to strengthen a local government system that is as oppressive and wasteful as it is unjust to a large section of the Nigerian polity? The present local government system is an aberration, to say the least. It is unitary in concept as well as in its implementation.
The same system cannot be expected to work uniformly all over the federation. Each segment of the country is unique and should be allowed to formulate, fashion out, and administer a local government system suitable to it. What the Tinubu administration seeks is an imposition and must be discarded for a truly federal system to emerge; to do otherwise is to enhance illogically.
The question many are also asking is whether Tinubu as governor of Lagos allowed the local governments the kind of autonomy he is seeking for them now as the President! It is on record that Tinubu as governor took the Federal Government of Obasanjo to court on many occasions over this or that issue, testing the constitutionality of Obasanjo’s efforts to arm-twist the States. No other governor was that audacious against President Obasanjo. Will Tinubu stomach the same treatment from any of the governors? Shall we have at least one State governor able and willing to do unto Tinubu what he did to Obasanjo?
The present local government system is not the only incongruous creation of the military that must be done away with. To start with, the 1914 amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates of Nigeria by Lord Lugard to form what is now known as Nigeria was an imposition. There was no referendum or plebiscite allowed for the people under the two protectorates to determine whether or not they wanted the amalgamation. It was a “diktat”, pure and simple, imposed by the British colonialists for their own selfish reasons.
The agitations for self-rule by Nigerians, over which a civil war was fought, and over which some have, again, taken up arms, must now be respected. Let Nigerians decide whether or not they want a continuation of the Lugardian experiment, as some have described it, or they want a break-up; be it a “velvet divorce” along the lines of erstwhile Czechoslovakia or the USSR, Yugoslavia, and Sudan model.
Nigeria’s Constitutions, especially after those of 1960 and 1963, have been described as a fraud - and appropriately so - because they make claims that everyone knows to be patently false. They all started by saying “We the people (of Nigeria)” made those constitutions for ourselves when we did not. Our first military ruler, JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi, destroyed Nigeria’s federalism with his Unification Decree Number 34 of 1966; since then, all the states created by fiat by our military rulers cannot be regarded as “federating units” properly so-called but are mere “begging bowls” as my sister, Funke Egbemode, once described them.
Virtually all the states are weak and are not economically viable. In many cases, strange bedfellows have been lumped together and birds of a feather separated, giving rise to perpetual acrimony and animosity. One reason why we do not, and cannot, see the kind of economic development witnessed in the First Republic is because the states as we have them today are a far cry from the Regions of old.
Why restructuring is not top on President Tinubu’s agenda - seemingly - should baffle many; for that has been canvassed as the panacea to the myriad problems bedeviling the country. Professor Akinyemi Onigbinde’s position on the issue of federalism titled “Granting autonomy to Local Governments undermines federalism principles”, aligns with mine.
Hear the erudite professor: “In a federal system of government, such as the one we claim to be running, granting autonomy to local governments undermines the principles of federalism. Successive military leaders from certain sections of Nigeria have used their power to create local government areas in their regions, giving them demographic and fiscal advantages over other sections which provide the bulk of the fiscal resources that all tiers of government rely on. This autonomy is a subversion of federalism and should be rejected by all who value democracy within a federal system.
“In a true federal system, regions, provinces, or states are the federating units that create a central authority to achieve specific mutual benefits. Local government areas, which are created for administrative convenience, do not qualify as federating units and should not draw administrative costs from the federation account. In principle, they are unknown to the central authority as established by the federating units.
“While efforts should be focused on repairing our feudalistic unitary system disguised as federalism, we are instead dismantling the political architecture of the federal system by undermining the states' authority over local governments. The argument that governors are misappropriating local government funds from the federation account does not justify dismantling the federal system. The neglect of local roads and other responsibilities of local governments is not solely due to state governors’ controlling funds, but also due to politicians' general disregard for the welfare of the people and their tendency to prioritize personal gain.
“Even if local government funds were distributed directly to them, there is no guarantee that local government chairmen would not emulate the governors' corrupt practices. This could lead to further fragmentation, with each political ward or village demanding direct allocations from the federation account.
“The issue of underdevelopment in local government areas is more about the politicians' lack of accountability than the governors' control over funds. Constituents must mobilize to hold their local leaders accountable, regardless of political party affiliations. Furthermore, while state governors are criticized for mismanaging funds, there is little concern about the federal government's handling of its share of the federation account, which affects national infrastructure and services like policing.
“As part of our journey towards a restructured federal system that allows states or geographical zones to flourish socioeconomically, we should consider dissolving existing local government areas. States should delineate their own local-governing areas based on demographics, administrative needs, and available financial resources. The current proliferation of local government areas, driven by military rulers from the North, was primarily to receive funds from the federation account without considering viability.
“Granting local government areas direct funding from the central purse has serious implications for rural lands. Local government chairmen in rural areas, dependent on federal allocations, may be pressured into relinquishing land for projects that serve the political or personal interests of the central authority. The RUGA project under former President Muhammadu Buhari exemplifies the potential dangers of such autonomy, which could have led to significant land loss for communities if local governments had been autonomous.
“The Yoruba people in the South-West are still not free from the threat of land subjugation, even with their son in power. It is important to avoid supporting policies simply because they are pushed by someone from one's own group. While President Bola Tinubu may have good intentions for local government administration, we must be wary of the potential misuse of rural lands by future presidents from other geopolitical zones. The idea of RUGA remains alive in the consciousness of herdsmen in Nigeria, and local government autonomy could provide a legal basis for similar projects in the future”.
I agree no less with Professor Onigbinde! From experience, creation of LGs have not led to development at the grassroots; if anything, it has only democratized corruption, taking it from the top (FG) through the middle (State Governments) to the bottom (LGs) of the country’s leadership ladder! In Lagos where I work and live, don’t we see how LG chairmen live large, abandoning their localities and relocating to VGC or Banana Island? Don’t we see how they compete with governors to send their children to the most expensive schools and acquire choice properties abroad?
![[OPINION] “New” National Anthem is National Self-Debasement - Farooq A. Kperogi](/media/k2/items/cache/6dd410d6b207ab1333048c46b558dc1c_L.jpg)
Nothing in my adult life has made me more ashamed to be a Nigerian and more inclined to completely divest my emotions from Nigeria than the readoption of “Nigeria, We Hail Thee,” a colonially created national anthem whose first stanza drips wet with the spit of racist condescension, gender exclusion, and stodgy, ungainly archaisms.
First, it’s inexcusable national self-humiliation to discard a home-made national anthem, irrespective of its defects, for one that was made by an imperialist whose influence we’re supposed to be independent of. That instantiates a phenomenon that social anthropologists call cultural cringe.
First propounded by an Australian scholar by the name of Arthur Phillips in the 1950s to describe Australia’s complicated cultural relations with Britain and the US, cultural cringe is the deep-rooted inferiority complex that causes psychologically damaged, formerly colonized people to inferiorize and disdain their own country and its culture and to uncritically valorize cultures and countries that their low self-esteem persuades them to believe is superior to theirs.
In previous columns, I have called this Nigeria’s national xenophilia, which I have defined as our predilection for irrational, unjustified, inferiority-driven veneration of the foreign and the corresponding sense of low national self-worth that this veneration activates.
A country whose symbolic song of independence is inspired, written, and composed by the appendicular remnants of imperialist oppressors of whom the country has supposedly been independent for more than six decades isn’t worthy of its independence. Such a country has lost the moral and philosophical argument for independence and against recolonization.
That is why, as I’ve argued in the past, our leaders are routinely infantilized by the West. As a people and a culture, we have internalized a mentality of low self-worth and an unwarranted veneration of the foreign, especially if the “foreign” also happens to be white. Nothing has demonstrated this more than the readoption of a national anthem that was written and composed by colonial British women.
But my worry transcends this. I am mortified that the very first stanza of our national anthem derogates our humanity. I have written multiple articles on what I have called the vocabularies of racial differentiation and exclusion in which I have repeatedly pointed out that “tribe” and “native” are racist words that white people reserve only for people they consider inferior, and that their appearance in Nigeria’s first national anthem was one of the reasons for the anthem’s rejection in 1978.
I’ll repeat some of the things I’ve written over the last few years on this issue and hope that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu sees reason to rescind the readoption of this denigrating British anthem written for Nigeria.
Shorn of all pretenses, “tribe” basically means backward, primitive nonwhite people. Let no one deceive you that the word means anything other than that in the English language. Even the Oxford Dictionary of English recognizes this fact. Its usage note on “tribe” reads:
“In historical contexts the word tribe is broadly accepted (the area was inhabited by Slavic tribes), but in contemporary contexts it is problematic when used to refer to a community living within a traditional society. It is strongly associated with past attitudes of white colonialists towards so-called primitive or uncivilized peoples living in remote underdeveloped places. For this reason it is generally preferable to use alternative terms such as community or people” (p. 1897).
I personally prefer “ethnic group” as an alternative to “tribe.” But I am aware that “tribe” has been congealed in our lexical repertory and can even be said to have been resemanticized by Africans, that is, given a meaning that is different from its original one.
For most English-speaking Africans, “tribe” is simply the English lexical equivalent of the words in their languages that they deploy to denote peoplehood. That may be so, but I come to language from a communication standpoint. To effectively communicate, you have to speak the same codes and share the same meanings.
Native English speakers would never call themselves “tribes” and understand the word to mean a group of primitive, nonwhite people who are still stuck at the lower end of the civilizational hierarchy.
You may understand the word differently, but if you tell a native speaker you belong to a tribe, you are inadvertently authorizing your inferiorization. That’s why when anybody asks me, “What is your tribe?” I always say, “You mean my ethnic group? I don’t belong to a tribe.” That was, by the way, Chinua Achebe’s attitude, too. He hated the word “tribe.”
That was also why when former US President Bill Clinton visited Nigeria and other African countries in 1998, experts told him to steer clear of the word “tribe” and its inflections such as “tribal,” “tribalism,” “tribalistic,” etc.
An influential American newspaper called Politico contrasted Clinton’s studied avoidance of the word “tribe” and Obama’s liberal use of it. “Keep in mind that the word ‘tribal conflict’ is extremely insulting to Africans,” the paper quoted a scholar by the name of Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to have told American reporters who would cover the presidential visit. “Don't write about ‘century-old tribal conflicts in African countries’… Yet, when Obama uttered the phrase ‘tribal conflicts’ at a press conference Friday as he discussed his planned trip to Africa, it went virtually unremarked upon. So too did several references he made in his Ghana speech to battles among ‘tribes.’” “Another president,” the paper concluded, “might have been accused of racism…”
Well, I criticized Obama for this in a Jul 18, 2009, column titled, “The Anti-African Racist Insults Obama Got Away with in Ghana,” which attracted the attention of the White House at the time.
A column I wrote earlier on February 27, 2009, titled “What’s my tribe? None” got the attention of CNN International’s copy desk. After a back and forth with its Chief Copy editor, the organization banned the use of the word “tribe” from its style guide. It came from their admission that no white ethnic group would ever be called a “tribe.”
In my September 30, 2018, column titled, “‘Tribe’ and ‘Detribalized’ are Derogatory Words,” I wrote: “Sadly, in 2018, our elites not only still call us ‘tribes’; they defend doing so. Lillian Jean Williams, the British colonial who wrote the anthem, would be proud.” I had no inkling that Tinubu would take this embarrassing sociolinguistic suicide to the next level.
“Native” is another linguistic marker of racial inferiorization that has no business being on Nigeria’s national anthem. The word was originally used by white colonialists and later by Western anthropologists to refer specifically to nonwhite people. The New Oxford American Dictionary (3rd edition) captures this subtlety well. One of the definitions of “native,” which the dictionary says is “dated, often offensive,” is “one of the original inhabitants of a country, especially a nonwhite as regarded by European colonists or travelers.”
Lillian Jean Williams was a British colonialist who thought herself superior to the “natives” and reflected that in the first stanza of the anthem she composed for us.
Notice, though, that in American (and Canadian) English “native” is used widely in a non-racially discriminatory way. When people call a city their hometown, they often say they’re natives of the city, as in “I am an Atlanta native.” I am not sure how widespread this usage of “native” is in British English, but it appears only 148 times in the British National Corpus.
The New Oxford American Dictionary’s usage advice on “native” is instructive. It says, “In contexts such as native of Boston or New York in the summer was too hot even for the natives, the noun native is quite acceptable. But when it is used to mean ‘a nonwhite original inhabitant of a country,’ as in this dance is a favorite with the natives, it is more problematic. This meaning has an old-fashioned feel and, because of its association with a colonial European outlook, it may cause offense.”
There is exactly zero reason to revert to “Nigeria, We Hail Thee.” Its readoption symbolizes the starkest evidence of national defeat, national self-humiliation, and national inferiority complex that I have ever seen. If Tinubu doesn’t reverse himself on readopting this national disgrace, the next government should. This is simply unbearably embarrassing!
![[OPINION] Tinubu’s silent and unreported achievements - Tunde Rahman](/media/k2/items/cache/f24a772c1d1dc1dec3607ec3fdc145d2_M.jpg)
But for the ministerial presentations on the achievements of the President Bola Tinubu administration in its first year, christened ministerial sectoral update, which began on Tuesday, May 21 at the National Press Centre in Abuja, many may not have known or appreciate the quantum of work that has been done by the government within such a short period of one year in office. This piece is not really about the re-engineering work that is being done on the economy, which is now recording a gradual growth. For instance, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, the nation recorded a 2.98% growth in the first quarter of this year, higher than the 2.31% recorded in the same period in 2023.
The article is also not about the improving security in the land, especially in the oil-producing Niger Delta region, which has engendered increased oil production. Daily oil production has jumped up from barely 1 million to 1.7 million barrels per day including condensate, overshooting Nigeria’s OPEC quota, following the statistics provided by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri. The focus of this piece is also not on the increasing flow of investments into the economy like the $30 billion Foreign Direct Investment commitments already secured during the year to grow the economy.
My focus is about those silent, quiet achievements recorded, thus far, by the administration, which are largely unreported and unsung until now. These achievements are by no means insignificant. They are so concrete and substantial that in some instances, they are ground-breaking, either laying or re-laying the foundation for growth and development in the country or resetting the sectors where they have occurred.
It must be admitted, however, that some ministers have little to showcase in one year. This is evident enough in their presentations, which were drab and lacklustre in a number of cases. The ministerial presentations and inauguration of projects executed by the administration were the only approved activities organised to mark President Tinubu’s one-year anniversary. The president had ordered a low-key celebration.
One defining feature of most of the achievements recorded in the various ministries is that they emerged from the vision or ideas President Tinubu espoused and developed over time, and embodied in his Renewed Hope Agenda as eight priority areas. The President is reform-minded and, like Singapore’s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, he is the guardian angel of those reforms and the achievements recorded thus far.
It is pertinent to highlight some of these reforms and initiatives across the various sectors. Take, for instance, the laudable projects executed by the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Ezenwo Nyesome Wike, the catalyst for those monumental achievements in just one year, is the full autonomy granted FCT by President Tinubu over the resources accruing to the territory.
By removing FCT from the treasury single account, the FCT administration’s resources were unlocked for Wike to deploy in addressing the developmental challenges of the city. Yet that singular action of the president remains unsung and perhaps unappreciated by many. Of course, there are more things done to recalibrate the governance structure of the FCT by the president, including approval for more mandate secretaries and its own civil service commission.
As a result of these presidential approvals, Minister Wike, away from the political turmoil in his native Rivers state where he has been fingered as a central figure, unleashed infrastructure on the FCT, opening up new districts with a network of roads and bridges, and resurfacing arterial roads. The minister has completed the construction of many bridges, refurbished the moribund metro line in Abuja and created access roads to the train stations, which had earlier rendered the stations inaccessible even when it was briefly operational.
Around $15 million was expended on building the access roads to the various stations. The minister also restructured and completed the official residence of the vice-president, which had been abandoned since 2010. Some cynics may ask – how important is that residential project at this point in time? This question would be of no significance when it is realised that the project, valued at N7 billion in 2010, could not be left to waste and to scoundrels at a time when the FCT authorities are working hard to ward off kidnappers and other criminal elements.
The ministry of power also has a remarkable story to share, though many would insist the sector has left much to be desired given its importance as an enabler of the economy. But believe it, a silent retooling, which promises to change the disastrous electricity situation in the country, is ongoing. Indeed, unbeknownst to many, power generation is gradually increasing. For instance, 5000MW of power was achieved this month for the first time in three years. “Precisely on May 3, 2024, we generated, transmitted, and distributed 5,003.45MW of power. This is expected to further rise to 6000MW by the end of this year,” the minister of power, Adebayo Adelabu, said in his presentation.
President Tinubu did three important things, among others, to tackle the issues in the electricity supply value chain and set the sector on the path to recovery and optimal performance. Number one, in June 2023, President Tinubu signed the 2023 Electricity Act into law, marking a significant milestone in the sector. The new law focuses on enhancing the regulation and management of the electricity value chain with the active participation of the sub-national governments. This, thus far, has resulted in the process of devolution of regulatory powers to three states – Enugu, Ekiti, and Ondo – to set up their electricity markets.
Two, the President gave approval to defray legacy debts owed gas companies to allow efficient gas supply for the sector going forward and payment mechanism to address generation companies’ debts. This, according to Adelabu, will ensure necessary maintenance and evacuation capacity optimization.
Third, there has also been a series of infrastructure upgrades in the last one year. The ongoing Siemens Power project under the Presidential Power Initiative was one of the programmes that ensured improvement of power assets in Nigeria. In December 2023, President Tinubu and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz witnessed the signing of an accelerated performance agreement aimed at expediting the implementation of the PPI to improve electricity supply in Nigeria.
The Minister of Power also disclosed that the government had also put in place the required framework to achieve an injection of 3.5 million meters into the power sector – 1.5 million meters through the World Bank Distribution Support Recovery Program and 2 million meters through the Presidential Metering Initiative.
In aviation, some developments are worthy of note, including the construction of the second Abuja runway, which had been stalled for many years as a result of lawsuits while a second runway in Lagos has been reactivated. Among other things, Minister of Aviation Festus Keyamo has facilitated the acquisition of aircraft by local operators under the dry lease agreement to support and empower the indigenous airlines to compete with international airlines on more lucrative international routes like the case of Air Peace on the Lagos-London route. Additionally, discussions have also reached an advanced stage with foreign investors to establish a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul Centre in Nigeria through PPP. Ibom Air is almost through with its negotiations with Airbus.
With respect to the food situation in the country, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development launched dry season farming involving 118, 651 hectares in 15 states, with Jigawa State alone getting 40,000 hectares. This intervention injected an estimated N309 billion into the economy, according to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Abubakar Kyari. The ministry also supported a total of 107, 429 wheat farmers with inputs resulting in an output of 474, 628 metric tonnes. It has also created about 60,000 jobs across the agric value chain within the first year. As the administration’s substantial investments in enhancing security across the country begin to post concrete yields, this will positively impact agricultural productivity going into the President’s second year in office.
Also, the revenue accruing to the country from the marine and blue economy is on the increase. Minister of marine and blue economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, said the ministry, through its agencies, realised N242 billion within the first quarter of 2024, which represents 92% compared to the amount generated within the same period last year.
Importantly, the nation’s budgeting system has also been rejuvenated to give proper attention to the government’s priorities. The Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Atiku Bagudu, who incidentally is also the Chairman of the Ministerial Sectoral Update Committee, said the 2024 budget has two remarkable features. “One is the determination, despite our challenges, to restore budget discipline by lowering the fiscal deficit. So, the 2024 budget targeted a reduction in deficits from 6.11% in 2023 to less than 4% in 2024 and an increase in capital expenditure relative to recurrent spending, which is 39% expenditure, the highest in the country’s history,” he said.
In addition to innovative budgeting, N100 billion fund has been earmarked for Consumer Credit designed to mobilise the manufacturing sector to produce again, which would occur when the people can fund their purchases.
There is also a mortgage fund to support the creation of mortgages. “So with consumer credit mobilising the manufacturing sector, mortgages re-energising the housing sector, and national agricultural development fund mobilising the agricultural sector, our youth and our productive economy will be mobilised. The N130 billion we provided for conversion, for transition to CNG, which is a cheaper form of energy than petroleum, is designed to restore energy competitiveness so that our manufacturing sector, our transport sector, and our economy will benefit from a cheaper form of energy that will support the economic reform,” Bagudu said.
Under the Tinubu government, the projects and initiatives undertaken thus far did not emerge by happenstance or by luck. They are well thought-out and emerged from a vision to reengineer the country and put it on the path of economic recovery and prosperity. One of these landmark initiatives is the Renewed Hope Infrastructure Development Fund, aimed at revitalising Nigeria’s crumbling infrastructure. This fund has earmarked substantial investments for constructing and rehabilitating roads, bridges, and public amenities. The construction of the Lagos-Calabar coastal road connecting nine littoral states has already taken off.
There is also the Students Loan Fund for indigent students in tertiary institutions, which registration portal opened about two weeks ago.
The country may not be where it should be at present. There are still challenges; notable among them is the cost of living, which is still high. Food prices surged last month, with inflation rising to 33.69%, according to NBS. The Naira is also struggling to find its level against the Green Back, hovering around N1,400 to N1,500/1$ at the parallel market for a couple of weeks. However, on Wednesday, May 29, it recorded its biggest appreciation in four months to close at N1,173. 88/1$.
The country is gradually turning the corner.
Looking back at how far he has gone since he mounted the saddle, President Tinubu said the journey had been challenging and fulfilling. He promised that his administration would do all it takes for the average Nigerian to feel the impact of governance, stating that governance must be transformative and must address the critical needs of citizens.
Speaking when he received a delegation of the Yoruba Leaders of Thought at the State House, Abuja on Friday, May 24, President Tinubu added that the country is no longer “bleeding”, but moving gradually into prosperity.
“It has been challenging. It has been fulfilling as well. We took over, and we have stopped the bleeding. I can say categorically now that Nigeria is no longer bleeding. And it will not bleed to death, but rather will now move to prosperity,” he said.
“That is the promise that I made to you all, and it is also the charge that you gave to me. We are managing to swim through the pond. The current is not a good one. We will turn the tide. We are turning the bend. This I assure you. I am being very careful. The worst is over for Nigeria. We will prevail.
“I thank the team who have been working really hard. All I can promise is that we will do whatever it takes. We are determined, and we will work so that all Nigerians can feel the impact of good governance.”
Rahman is a senior presidential aide
![[OPINION] National anthem change: Rat chase in house on fire - Law Mefor](/media/k2/items/cache/d71f6787e8714f5847181d8b2a5f1620_M.jpg)
It was like a joke at first. Nigeria’s national anthem was being reversed to the previous one by a law passed by the national assembly. The president is believed to be the inspiration for this somewhat pointless action taken by the national parliament, the logic for which has been looked for to no avail. It couldn’t determine if the bill was an executive or private member bill. However, it is noteworthy and unprecedented how quickly President Tinubu signed it and how urgently the national assembly passed it. Simply put, the Tinubu presidency is majoring in minor amid economic and security crises.
Priorities and the results of actions and inactions are important to life. The economic and security challenges present President Tinubu’s administration with at least two fronts of a national emergency. A man whose house is on fire doesn’t go after rats, but going for a change of the national anthem—which, incidentally, not many Nigerians think is a problem—makes just that impression. Every citizen is concerned about the growing economic and security problems, which the president needs to address head-on.
The World Bank and the IMF, two Bretton Woods institutions, enticed President Tinubu to abandon fuel subsidies and defend the naira, a step that previous Nigerian presidents fiercely opposed or implemented piecemeal. For the sole reason that he was eager to validate his disputed presidential mandate, which is still in dispute, and to gain worldwide influence as an ‘action president’, Tinubu fell for it and led Nigeria into a trap.
Even crude oil, which makes up about 75 percent of the country’s export earnings, was heavily mortgaged during the past Muhammadu Buhari administration. This indicates that just a portion of Nigeria’s oil exports are sold for income; the remainder is used to pay off debt and meet other commitments made to other countries.
To make matters worse, the naira was floated and made to compete with other world currencies in the absence of significant inflow from exports and external reserves that continued to decline from $35 billion at the start of the Tinubu administration. Braggadocio is no virtue. What chance does Tinubu’s economic team see for the naira against, say, the $1 trillion foreign reserve-backed Chinese yuan, not to mention the British pound, US dollar, EU euro, or Japanese yen? Yet, the presidency boasts that the naira is floating to find its level.
The naira, as the trend is showing, has no level and needs to be defended and protected by all means. If not, it will collapse along with the nation’s economy. Because of the significant disruption and misalignment the naira floating and unplanned fuel subsidy removal have caused to the economy, the government is once again standing up for the naira, just like other nations do with their currencies.
The unplanned removal of fuel subsidies remains a tragic economic decision and another instance of braggadocio. Combined with naira floatation, the two policies dragged the economy into stagflation, with food inflation standing at about 40% as of today, a figure never recorded since Nigeria came into existence. As an example, in May 2023, when Tinubu took over, a basket of tomatoes sold for about N10,000. This week, tomatoes sold for N150,000. Yes, you read it right, and this kind of galloping inflation is not isolated. Virtually all goods have moved up by at least 300% and will leap further up when the new minimum wage comes into effect.
That’s what you get when you have rising prices for goods, expanding unemployment, and economic stagflation. That is what the country has to urgently deal with, yet the national assembly and the presidency are more focused on changing the national song.
In actuality, both the previous and current national anthems had important messages and were appropriate. The old hymn “Nigeria, we hail thee” is a relic from the colonial era because it was composed during the rule of the British in colonial days in 1959 and was first rendered the Whites. In 1978, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo changed it, ostensibly to create something genuinely indigenous and to strengthen the nation’s autonomy.
The succeeding anthem brought in by Obasanjo—”Arise, O’ Compatriots”—makes a lot of sense as well. So, changing to the old has nothing to do with meaninglessness or applicability. It smacks more of inconsequential politics and ego trips that detract from the economic and security crises, which are the main challenges unsettling Nigeria at the moment. The third challenge is corruption, which is still having a field day and growing more and more intractable.
Therefore, one cannot help but beg the president to concentrate on the important matters, give the nation’s economic and security challenges the emergency attention they require, and give less attention to unimportant and irrelevant issues.
Nigeria is a nation of farmers. The country’s economy is built primarily on agriculture, and not much has been done to move the country away from subsistence farming and towards mechanised agriculture. Terrorists, Janjaweed bandits, and killer herdsmen have destroyed even subsistence farming by evicting Nigerian farmers from their lands and causing food shortages and serious insecurity.
Farmers in many states now have to pay terrorists and bandits to gain access to their farms so they may plant and harvest crops, given the level of insecurity that has enveloped the land.
The proposed establishment of the state police is a wise decision because it will enable the people to use their state governments to defend themselves against terrorists and bandits invading the country and other groups of terrorists who are encircling the country like vultures and attacking everywhere like a pack of wild dogs. To reduce the possibility of state governor misuse, the establishment of state police would require extremely detailed legislative drafting. The national anthem change is not as urgent as security is. Yet, such frivolities are what preoccupy the FG and the NASS.
The economy is in dire straits and requires rejigging. Until the value of the naira comes down to a reasonable level (below N1,000) and stabilises there, the country’s economy will not improve. Fuel subsidy has returned through the back door as a result of the government realising that the pump price of fuel cannot be allowed to continue to rise at the whim of staged market forces. If subsidies hadn’t been used to intervene, the price of fuel at the pump would have surpassed 1,000 naira long ago.
However, without the refineries in the country working, the price of fuel at the pump would not resettle favourably. Not a single refinery is operating a year after Tinubu entered office. As a private enterprise, the Dangote refinery has taken off. This is unlikely to provide any relief, though, as Nigeria is unable to provide crude to the Dangote plant due to both oil theft and the Buhari administration’s mortgage of crude. Because of this, the Dangote refinery is now compelled to look for crude from the US.
In summary, the Tinubu administration ought to stop focusing on minors and shadowboxing and instead tackle the pressing issues of the economy and security.
The federal government must give the economic crisis urgent attention. FG has to work with state governments to break the electricity jinx and fix a workable state police.
What’s more, a lazy approach to the nation’s macroeconomic management would be to continue to tax a collapsing economy, tax citizens who have been robbed of their ability to pay by poor economic policies, and take more loans. The only options left are: getting into massive export and high-volume food production, ensuring import substitutions, and, of course, rooting out corruption. But this cannot occur unless the enablers, such as electricity and security, are first taken care of. It will not happen by squandering time and money on unimportant side issues that divert attention from the primary, urgent course of action that is required, certainly not reversing the national anthem.
Dr Law Mefor, an Abuja-based forensic and social psychologist, is a fellow of The Abuja School of Social and Political Thought. He can be reached via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; Twitter: @Drlawsonmefor.
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![[OPINION] The OBJ of Illiberalism - Ebenezer Obadare](/media/k2/items/cache/8d13dfb188a462f203716b7454104f1b_M.jpg)
In recent times, Nigerian statesman Olusegun Obasanjo has spoken repeatedly of his conviction that Nigeria and other African countries “made a mistake” by adopting “Western liberal democracy,” a system that, being a unique product of “Western history, culture, and way of life” is poorly suited for African conditions.
In the same breath, Obasanjo has canvassed for “a model of democracy that is true to the African heritage,” a model that, in his telling, “encompasses our culture, our traditional ways of life.”
Obasanjo’s pedigree is one reason his assaults on liberal democracy have continued to attract attention. One of two individuals (Muhammadu Buhari is the other) to have ruled Nigeria in both military and civilian capacities, Obasanjo, far from just another citizen, can lay claim to having been in the thick of things and hence endowed with the kind of knowledge and perspective not vouchsafed to the average individual. Another reason is the political moment. The Nigerian statesman’s repeated attacks are music to the ears of many at a period when skepticism about liberal democracy and associated Western values is on the ascendance, especially across the Western world.
Due to the latter coincidence, it is tempting to conclude that Obasanjo and critics of liberal democracy across the West are united by the same grievances, and to some extent they are, especially as far as there is mutual concern about the failure of liberal democracy to deliver tangible material benefits to the most disadvantaged. To be fair to Obasanjo, even in his least lucid moments, one observes what appears to be a genuine and constant solicitude for “the welfare and the well-being of the people: all the people.”
But this is where the comparison stops. While much of the concern for the fate of liberal democracy across the Western world is animated by a desire to deepen it and make it work for all sectors of society, or at least all of those who are willing to submit to the rules of liberalism, Obasanjo seems motivated by a contrary desire: to abolish liberal democracy in toto and replace it with a “homegrown” system ostensibly hewn out of Africa’s specific culture and history.
The distinction is not trivial: unlike most Western critics of liberal democracy, Obasanjo does not want an improved version of liberal democracy; to paraphrase the inimitable Groucho Marx, whatever liberal democracy is, he is against it.
The distinction is not trivial: unlike most Western critics of liberal democracy, Obasanjo does not want an improved version of liberal democracy; to paraphrase the inimitable Groucho Marx, whatever liberal democracy is, he is against it.
To be sure, Obasanjo is not a recent convert to this tradition-bound “Afro-democracy.” On the contrary, he has written consistently, if vaguely, about allowing “the wisdom of a linkage with our traditional political praxis to chart a progressive future for us;” his desire for a single-party system whereby “the party shall be the only legal party until such a time that national integration and cohesion would have been sufficiently achieved;” “the urgent need to create a political machine, a self-made (sic) indigenous institution that would destroy the ‘alien institution’ conception of government;” and last but not least, his opposition to “the systemic practice of the institutionalized opposition,” an idea that, as he sees it, is incongruent with an African political past when “in arriving at political decisions our fore-fathers disagreed to agree and agree to disagree.”
To the extent that he has been consistent in his avowals of them, the foregoing must be accepted as the basic elements of Obasanjo’s weltanschauung, which means that, in order to do justice to it, one must apply pressure to its cornerstone assumptions, the better to see whether they pass the smell test and are worthy of the attention—and in some intellectual circles, uncritical approval—that is being accorded them.
The first question to ask is whether Obasanjo is in fact correct in claiming that African countries have adopted Western liberal democracy. While there is no doubt that liberal democracy is, with few notable exceptions, the coin of the political realm across Africa, upon closer inspection, one discovers that the real problem facing Africa is not that it has imported Western democracy, but that, as a matter of fact, it has not. If there is one overarching sentiment from the typically rancorous relationship between political and civil societies in a majority of African states, it is that the latter have been democracies only in name, and that many of them (Nigeria and South Africa jump to mind) in fact stand out on account of being characterized by the very sensibilities that are the exact antithesis of Western liberal democracy. It would thus appear that, for reasons that are not entirely clear, Obasanjo has failed to distinguish between the appearance of democracy and its substance.
The second question is whether Obasanjo is right in his assessment and understanding of African history as an essentially friction-free paradise of political unanimity. As even the most casual acquaintance will disclose, not only is the African past as depicted by Obasanjo a pure fantasy, there is considerable evidence that it was, in many cases, stolidly hierarchical and in egalitarian. Contra the unsubstantiated mythology that Obasanjo has become strangely enamored of, modern African history is in fact mostly an account of ordinary Africans struggling against tremendous odds to relieve themselves of the burden of custom and tradition; in other words, to cast off the fetters of the very history that Obasanjo would have them return to. It is hardly a coincidence that (1) contemporary African leaders who share Obasanjo’s tendentious understanding of African history are unrepentant dictators and (2) that Obasanjo has failed to show specific examples of eras and or regimes that he would have ordinary Africans revert to.
If Obasanjo is a poor student of African history, his grasp of contemporary African politics seems even more dubious. For instance, his avid recommendation of the virtues of a single-party system does not take into account the ugly record of actual one-party states in Africa, whether de jure one-party states like Tanzania under the late Julius Nyerere, or the invariable mean into which many post-independence African states (among other examples, Cameroon, Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea, and Uganda jump to mind) have tended to regress. Even when they have managed to attain a modicum of political stability and economic prosperity as is undeniably the case with Rwanda under Paul Kagame, the ossification of civil society that is a concomitant of the personalization of political power under one-party systems raises important questions as to their long-term costs to the country as a whole.
Finally, the fact seems to have escaped Obasanjo that he owes his freedom to criticize and propose political alternatives to the fact that he lives in an admittedly imperfect liberal democracy, one with a foundational commitment to individual freedoms (among them the freedom to express oneself freely); and that a single-party state and suchlike authoritarian cousins invariably culminate in the abrogation of such freedoms.
Granted, Obasanjo may be earnest in his espousal of alternatives to liberal democracy, but ultimately, his advocacy amounts to nothing more than an avoidance of the real causes of Africa’s underdevelopment and a far from subtle incitement to autocracy. The Nigerian statesman may be excused for exploring alternatives, but he should not escape censure for resurrecting ideas that have been tried and found wanting, and now belong, for good reason, in the museum of political ideas.
•Reina Patel contributed to the research for this article
![[OPINION] NDLEA’s Continued “Root and Branch” Onslaught - Okey Ikechukwu](/media/k2/items/cache/f1ee4eb7ab6495b48466f870d803d46d_M.jpg)
Picture the international and national illicit drug and narcotic trade as a tree. The roots are buried in the perverted demands, and needs, of an ever-growing population of the young, old, rich and poor of both sexes. Here in Nigeria, the percentage of rural youths and women who are now totally beholden to aphrodisiacs and opioid derivatives benumbs the imagination. Worse still, some variants of psychotropic drugs are now so cheap, so readily available and so easily addictive. Thus, the problem which the Nigerian Drug law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has to deal with goes way beyond the matter of seizing drug consignments, arresting drug peddlers or burning down Indian hemp farms.
The trunk, or stem of the drug tree, which carries water and nutrients to the branches and the leaves, is the international and national drug superhighway. It is this highway that facilitates and projects the drug trade universe. Like a typical tree trunk, it grows ever bigger, as it develops Cambium Cells, just like the process commonly known as Secondary Thickening in the biological sciences. With secondary Thickening, a trunk gets sturdier, and becomes less susceptible to the blast of strong winds and the paltry endeavours of scraggly machete-wielding persons who try to cut it down.
The drug business is a wide universe, with strong and deep enablement from the deep Dark Web. The Dark Web, for those who may not know, is the Alternate Reality that has more cash, more capacity for devilry and even more capacity for perverting and subverting the 10% reality we, law abiding do-gooders, mistake for the actual reality of human life on earth today. Everything, including human body parts and high-end security information of the most secretive of nations, is available on the Deep Dark Web, once you can pay. It is a world better not visited, because a permanent tab is kept on you once you make any form of contact with it.
It is easy to see that the branches of our drug tree are the international, regional and national cartels. The twigs, or branchlets of the tree are the village dealers, city lounges, side street hawkers and neighbourhood facilitators that service various strata of the clientele. The leaves of the tree are the consumers, while the flowers and fruits are distribution, consumption, addiction and disorientation.
As fruits and flowers of the drug tree, the mentally deranged of all ages are all over the place. They spare no efforts, including selling off precious personal or stolen property at giveaway prices, to satisfy their craving. The growing population of disoriented youths who adopt desperate measures, including determined criminality, to keep their drug supplies going, are now a major social problem that should not be there in the first place.
It is against the background of the foregoing that we are to look at the latest exploits of the Nigerian Drug law enforcement Agency (NDLEA). This is not about an officer of the Agency, Francis Ameh Igonoh, who got a special motion yesterday and who emerged the 2024 winner of the prestigious International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) with an outstanding success Award, no. It is about the latest report of NDLEA’s deconstruction and asphyxiation of a massive drug cartel, including substantial sections of its tributaries and clientele.
The agency, last week, announced the successful bursting of an elaborate cocaine trafficking cartel. The two successful operations were in Lagos and Ogun States. Multi-billion-naira worth of illicit drugs were seized and a couple, Bolanle and Olayinka Dauda, were apprehended by operatives of a special operation unit of the NDLEA. They were arrested while attempting to cross the land border to deliver the consignment in Ghana. Some 42 blocks of the Class A drug weighing 47.5 kilograms was found on them and a swift follow-up operation at their residence led to the recovery of another eight blocks of the same drug, this time weighing 10kg
The major points to note here are that: (1) NDLEA operations are intelligence-led, (2) Collaboration with international network or capacities is always part of the cocktail of measures leading to a successful raid, and (3) The recent success stories came through joint operations involving NDLEA officials and the Drug Enforcement Administration of the United States.
Also, another stint of the Special Operations Unit, which led to the recovery of about 1,100 ampoules of the lethal synthetic opioid, fentanyl, was intelligence-led. The 6.48kg of the opioid was recovered from a member of a drug trafficking syndicate at Idumota Market in Lagos. The story is the same for about 790 ampoules of the dangerous opioid weighing 5.273kg seized from another member of the fentanyl syndicate at the same Idumota in Lagos.
As was said on this page on March 9, under the title, “Buba Marwa’s NDLEA, “All the arrests and seizures of illegal drug consignments and sundry successes of Marwa’s NDLEA have been very heavy on preemptive intelligence work. There is also overwhelming evidence of thorough going demographic analysis. Within this you find, also, the conscious mapping of drug production, transportation, distribution and consumption patterns. Marwa’s NDLEA is one of the few examples of an organization that is paying deliberate scientific attention to the physical and human geography of drug-related issues today”.
The current exploits also confirm what was said here on the article under reference, namely: “There seems to be, in all of this, a structured collaboration with the international anti-drug network, with focus on predictive, and predictable drug-related activities”.
During the sensitization and advocacy programme for women and youths in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in Abuja, a collaborative engagement with Dr Aminu Gusau organized under the platform of WADA, Brig. Gen. Buba Marwa (rtd) said that drug abuse among Nigerians was one of the main drivers of insecurity in the country. He was concerned that the phenomenon had taken a life of its own all over the nation; and was no longer an urban phenomen.
It is a matter or record, born out by our collective experience, that many rural communities play host to a disturbingly large drug consuming population. Marwa has had cause to draw public attention to the fact that the problem of drug abuse among the youths has now become everyone’s problem, which calls for synergy and joint endeavours at all levels. Federal and State Governments, traditional and religious leaders, parents, schools, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Community Based Organizations (CBOs), among others, must work together as a single societal force working for the good of all.
As was said here, “One of the essential takeaways from Marwa at the aforementioned event is his observation that the youths constitute the engine room of every society, which must be in the right shape mentally and physically to drive a better future. But that will not happen if they are damaged by psychotropic drugs. This is a universal problem of humanity, irrespective of tradition, culture, and religion”.
He also said, further, on that occasion; “The youths exhibit attitudes both for the development of society and, at the same time, for the creation of problems in society. Drug abuse leads to criminal offences, and this fuels insecurity, such as armed robbery, murder, kidnapping, and banditry, among others. This also leads to burglary and sex work. Evidence shows that young people use drugs for various reasons, which include relaxation, experimental/curiosity, and enhancing performance, among others”.
His charge of “Go all out for drug barons and cartels”, to NDLEA commanders, when he set targets for Commanding Officers in his 2024 Tasking Orders, which was also his charge to Zonal Commanders, State Commanders and Area Commanders of the Agency, continues to yield visible results. The dismantling of the cartels, distribution networks and other facilitating platforms of the drug universe by NDLEA can best be described as a deliberate, well-designed, structured and intelligence-driven, root and branch onslaught against the burgeoning drug tree.
Today, there is visible evidence of a decline in the availability of illicit drugs. This is largely because of the NDLEA’s progressive asphyxiation of illegal drug supply channels and facilitators. We see the Agency constantly engaging stakeholders within and outside the country. We see the agency taking administrative and other steps that will progressively enhance its operational efficiency and effectiveness. We see, also, that the job of the Agency is a thankless one, and that it cannot rest on its oars.
The NDLEA’s existing collaborations and linkages should be strengthened and deepened. All relevant state and non-state actors must team up as Strategic Partners to drive both the effort and the narrative. Once we burst cartels, cripple distribution channels and undermine drug availability, much would have been gained in the war against illicit drugs. This will naturally impact drug abuse, drug addiction and opportunistic youth criminality.
In the aforementioned article referenced above, Marwa was quoted as saying thus to his Commanders: “This year, we want to raise the bar of our performance and this calls for commanders who are up to the task to be up and doing on the job”, it means that the NDLEA should be helped to “… clean our streets and communities of illicit substances… recently, there is another demand by kidnappers and bandits aside money, which is drugs. In that sense, it means NDLEA is working because they don’t ask for it before, meaning that they’re no longer as available as they used to be and the prices of those available have gone beyond their reach.”
As was said at the beginning of this article, the roots of the illicit drug and narcotic trade is like a tree. “The roots are buried in the perverted demands, and needs, of an ever-growing population of the young and old of both sexes. For us here in Nigeria, the percentage of rural youths and women who are now totally beholden to aphrodisiacs and opioid derivatives benumbs the imagination. Worse still, it is all now so cheap, so readily available and so easily addictive that the problem is no longer a matter of seizing drug consignments, arresting drug peddlers or burning down Indian hemp farms”.
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The fruits and flowers of the drug tree, the mentally deranged of all ages … spare no efforts, including selling off precious personal or stolen property at giveaway prices, to satisfy their craving. The growing population of disoriented youths who adopt desperate measures, including determined criminality, to keep their drug supplies going, are now a major social problem that should not be there in the first place.
![[OPINION] Who Is A Leader? - Richard Odusanya](/media/k2/items/cache/c709977282fe241b3ee46371d8040459_S.jpg)
Who is a leader? Simply put, a leader leads by example. My idea of a leader can see what an entire populace can not see, and whose vision is far greater than that of the nation. A leader can think outside the box while everyone around him is scared out of their pants. Therefore, the road to a prosperous Nigeria and the leader that will lead Nigeria to the dawn of that new day of economic growth, technological advancement, and Political stability, will not come from Mars but from within the people who so wish to pay the full price.
Leadership is an action-oriented process involving influencing and motivating people to achieve goals. Leaders have a vision for the future and inspire others to follow them. There are many ways a leader can be seen as good or bad. It all depends on the person and their goals. Leadership is contagious. If you hang out with a great leader, you'll become a leader. Great leaders don't "lead", they inspire people to become leaders with their actions. Actions speak louder than words. I was fortunate enough to work closely with some great leaders. I learned a lot from them -- just by observing them. With profound humility, in my little world, I know others who learned from me, just by observing. So leadership spreads.
I'd like to digress here by pointing out the obvious and stark reality of hunger, poverty, and dissatisfaction -- the harsh realities of President Bola Tinubu's first year in office. Hopefully, our dear President will painstakingly address such issues that will alleviate the pains on June 12 DEMOCRACY DAY. Nonetheless, there are fundamental issues that must be addressed. As such, effective leaders don’t avoid hard truths or difficult challenges. Instead, they take responsibility for their decisions, maintain optimism, and focus on charting a new course of action.
President Bola Tinubu (PBAT), signed into law the bill to revert to the old national anthem. PBAT, assented to the bill on Wednesday '29 2024. The newly re-adopted anthem, which begins "Nigeria, We Hail Thee," was written by Lillian Jean Williams in 1959 and composed by Frances Berda. The anthem symbolizes Nigeria's diversity. "...Help Us to Build A Nation, Where No Man is Oppressed.." is a powerful line. Historically speaking, several countries have changed their national anthems over time for various reasons. Hence, my preference for the then-former national anthem, 'Nigeria, We Hail Thee’ over ‘Arise Oh Compatriots’:
1. South Africa: Changed in 1994 to reflect the country's transition from apartheid to democracy.
2. Germany: Changed in 1990 after reunification, replacing the East German anthem.
3. Canada: Changed in 1980 to make the lyrics more inclusive.
4. Australia: Changed in 1984 to replace the British national anthem with a more Australian-focused song.
5. New Zealand: Changed in 1977 to include Maori language and culture.
6. Russia: Changed in 2000 to replace the Soviet-era anthem.
7. Poland: Changed in 1926 and again in 1991 after the fall of communism.
8. India: Changed in 1950 from "Vande Mataram" to "Jana Gana Mana" to promote national unity.
9. Sri Lanka: Changed in 1951 to include Tamil language and culture.
10. Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe): Changed in 1980 after gaining independence from British colonial rule.
These changes often reflect significant political, social, or cultural shifts in a country's history. My stand: as an unrepentant advocate of restructuring and having written series of articles on "Mind Restructuring" I can conclude that we need to rebuild our beloved country Nigeria together. Therefore, I have concluded that; it is a lack of, and inadequate, education including our mindsets. That Africans, particularly Nigerians, in our mentally lazy state, and expectation of magical happenstance, believe we can live in a society that we did not create because we are dissatisfied with the one we have made! People who want to live well must work 100% to achieve that yearning; no shortcut to this reality!
Let me conclude by stating that, I have the utmost respect for the person of Marcus Tullius Cicero, of the blessed memory; a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, writer, and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy, and politics. Cicero was the one who said: "Vox Populi, Vox Dei," literally meaning the voice of the people is the voice of God or the voice of the divine. Therefore, I crave our compatriots' indulgence at home and abroad in voicing out, more particularly, to revisit the issues of our constitution and electoral process/laws.
![[OPINION] What does Trump’s conviction mean for his presidential bid? - Claire Mom](/media/k2/items/cache/845b4e80bc447536af912853b672c249_S.jpg)
Since leaving the White House in January 2021, Donald Trump has been plotting a return to power — unfazed by the legal tangle his life has become.
With four criminal charges, the former president’s conviction on May 30 was the latest addition to his collection of firsts, making him the first former president in US history to be convicted of a felony.
The businessman is also the first former US president to have a mugshot, to face federal charges, and the first presumptive Republican nominee to become a convicted felon.
With his third presidential bid underway, the stakes are indeed high for Trump and country.
A QUICK GLANCE AT THE CASES
Hush money trial
The case against Trump was also a novel application of state and federal fraud and campaign finance laws, predicated on a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
Daniels said she was paid $130,000 to remain quiet after having sex with Trump. The former president denies the encounter took place.
Hush money is not illegal. The technicality stems from how Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer who disbursed the money to Daniels, had his reimbursement recorded in the former president’s accounts.
Trump was accused of falsifying his business records by saying the payment was for legal fees and faced 34 counts of fraud under campaign finance laws.
Falsifying business records charges come with up to four years behind bars.
Prosecutors have not said whether they intend to seek imprisonment, and it is unclear if the judge — who earlier in the trial warned of jail time for gag order violations — would impose that punishment even if pressed.
Trump’s sentencing on the guilty verdict is scheduled for July 11.
Classified documents
Trump was indicted in June 2023 by a federal grand jury in Miami for taking classified national defense documents from the White House after he left office.
According to prosecutors, Trump resisted the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials.
An indictment released by the US department of justice showed that the former president is facing 37 criminal counts over retaining national defence information, nuclear secrets, exposing information, and obstruction of justice.
The former president has denied the allegations.
Aileen Cannon, presiding judge, indefinitely postponed the trial on May 7, citing “significant issues” around classified evidence that would need to be worked out before the federal criminal case goes to a jury.
Election interference
Trump is being investigated for attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The indictment alleges that Trump and a co-conspirator “attempted to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol by calling lawmakers to convince them… to delay the certification” of the election.
It also alleges another co-conspirator pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to “violate the law” to delay President Joe Biden’s victory. The Trump campaign issued a statement shortly after the indictment denying the allegations.
A date for the trial has not been fixed.
Election interference (again)
Last year, an Atlanta-based grand jury indicted Trump and 18 others on state charges, stemming from their alleged attempts to overturn the former president’s 2020 electoral defeat.
Fani Willis, Fulton county district attorney, charged the former president on accounts of false statements and filing false documents.
In March, Scott McAfee, superior court judge, dismissed six of the 41 counts from the indictment, including three that applied to Trump.
A date has not been fixed for the trial.
CAN TRUMP STILL RUN FOR PRESIDENCY?
According to the US constitution, a candidate is only required to be a natural born citizen, at least 35 years old, and a resident of the US for at least 14 years, to have their name on the ballot for the presidency.
Trump ticks all boxes.
In theory, he could be sworn in from jail if he were to unseat President Joe Biden from the ballot.
Whether being convicted is enough to dissuade voters and ‘Trumpists’ is subject matter for another day.
A recent poll of registered voters found 67 percent as saying that convicting Trump for hush money will not be a factor in how they vote.
While 15 percent said a guilty verdict could more likely make them vote for Trump, 17 percent said it would make them less likely to vote for him come November.
![[OPINION] The big American cock and the small Cuban needle - Owei Lakemfa](/media/k2/items/cache/e7f50c8db52dfa54ceaace9d676d387e_S.jpg)
IT is a very serious matter for the United States of America, USA, the most powerful country in the universe, to place a country on the list of states “sponsoring” terrorism. So, when on May 15, 2024 it placed Cuba in this category, it was bound to attract attention. However, this will be for those who have not been following the cat and mouse game between both countries since November 3, 1961 when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy signed “The Cuban Project.”
Otherwise called ‘Operation Mongoose’, it was a project by the US authorising the use by all means, including terrorism against Cuban civilians, to overthrow the Cuban government. At inception, the operation was jointly led by US Air Force General Edward Lansdale and William King Harvey of the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA.
The Kennedy administration had begun with the invasion of Cuba by exiles backed by the American military in what became known as the ”Bay of Pigs Invasion”. There were other attacks, including hundreds of attempts to assassinate former Cuban President Fidel Castro Ruiz.
Terrorism is essentially the use of violence to further political goals. But the USA has a number of definitions depending on various institutions like the CIA.
However, since we are concerned here with international relations, we can adopt the USA State Department definition which states that terrorism is “an activity that one, involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; two, appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or, three, to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.”
Now, Cuba does not involve itself in violent acts that are dangerous to humanity. Its acknowledged acts outside its borders are primarily two. The first, is sending medical personnel in their tens of thousands to various countries, especially Asia, Latin America and Africa, including Nigeria. One of its remarkable successes was helping to contain Ebola in Africa.
But its most spectacular contribution to humanity was during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, it was perhaps the only country in the world that refused to shut its borders against other human beings. When in March 2020, the British cruise ship, MS Braemer with 682 passengers on board ravaged by COVID-19 was left to drift in the Caribbean with no country allowing it to berth, Cuba brought in the ship.
It followed this up by sending 3,700 healthcare personnel around the world to combat the pandemic. This included missions to Italy,Azerbaijan, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru, Antigua, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Suriname, Jamaica, Haiti, Belize, Barbados, Martinique and Trinidad and Tobago.
Here in Africa, Cuban doctors and nurses helped to Combat COVID-19 in Angola, Togo, Cape Verde, South Africa, Guinea Conakry, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome and Principe, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone and Kenya. This internationalist intervention by the Cuban doctors called “The White Coat Army” was so overwhelming that in my September 11, 2020 column titled, “Nobel Peace Prize: A case for the White Coat Army.” I joined the campaign that the Cuban internationalist medical teams under the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade, be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The second intervention the Cubans had engaged in was sending 55,000 troops over 9,000 kilometres to fight and conquer the seemingly invisible Apartheid South Africa military that was invading various African countries and colonising Namibia and South Africa. This led to the independence of these two colonies in Africa.
While we in Africa were grateful to the Cubans, the USA and Great Britain saw the Cuban action as terrorism. So, the USA not only declared Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, it also declared a liberation movement like the African National Congress, ANC, as a terrorist organisation. While South Africa became independent in 1994, it was not until May 5, 2008 that the USA parliament voted on “Removing the African National Congress from Treatment as a terrorist organisation.” Also, the USA removed liberation fighters like Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Thambo from its list of ‘terrorists’.
Cuba was first designated a so-called sponsor of terrorism in 1982 for backing liberation movements like the ANC and SWAPO and supporting revolutionary governments like the Sandinista in Nicaragua.
On April 14, 2015, the USA under President Barack Obama reviewed this classification of Cuba and admitted it was political and unhelpful. On that day, the White House declared: “While President Obama acknowledges that Cuba and the United States continue to have great differences, these differences do not pertain to Cuba supporting terrorism.” So Cuba was removed from the list.
Events outside the control of Cuba and, having no relation to terrorism, led to the re-listing of Cuba. On January 23, 2019, then American Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo issued a statement on the “Recognition of Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s Interim President.” This was a failed coup by the USA to unseat Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro. The Trump administration was livid that Cuba refused to recognise Guaido; so on January 12, 2021, eight days before leaving office, President Donald Trump, relisted Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism for its continued recognition of President Maduro.
It was expected that incoming President Joe Biden who was Vice President to Obama when Cuba was delisted, would reverse the Trump decision, more so as it had nothing to do with terrorism. However, the Biden administration has simply continued to relist Cuba.
![[OPINION] The Happy Warrior - Akin Osuntokun](/media/k2/items/cache/a4c588f7546422a87ee260788d2be706_S.jpg)
My first encounter with royalty and power politics is the stuff of family and Yoruba history. At the end of the Ekiti Parapo war, the architect and motivator of the Ekiti uprising, Prince Ishola Fabunmi and his main lieutenant Dada Akoja (my forefather) returned to Okemesi. The long serving Monarch of the town was Fabunmi’s great uncle, Aponlese. Reputed to have been on the throne for an improbable hundred years, he had grown feeble and weak. As is often the case, the returning triumphant General and Prince, Fabunmi resolved on taking the throne and requested his Uncle to abdicate. The confidence of Fabunmi was predicated on the anticipated support of the returnee Okemesi contingent of the Parapo war. But his close friend and confidante demurred and warned that those who were goading him on may turn against him at the critical moment. And so it transpired.
On the day of the coup, rather than turned the cannon fire on the Palace, his military confederates turned against him. The mob headed for his residence and he had to flee the town. They pursued and were upon him when my Dada intervened, stood against his pursuers and enabled his escape. In retaliation, the mob turned on him, burnt down his residence and drove him out of town. The most recent is the one concerning my friend Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
Back in the day, we were political and intellectual collaborators. Like many Nigerians I first took notice of him as a regular newspaper contributor. He was an intellectual rebel in the political debate over the wildfire regionalist push for the enthronement of Sharia jurisprudence in the Northern Muslim states. He called to question the propriety and honesty of purpose of the introduction of Sharia especially the orthodox penal code in a context that does not fulfil the condition precedent. To convict an offender and proceed to exact the severe punishment presupposes the prerequisite of a society where no one is compelled to steal in order to assuage hunger and basic necessities of life. He argued and rightly so in my view that such a precondition does not exist in Nigeria and the Nigerian society must ab initio be deemed as failing to satisfy the primary condition for the introduction of Sharia.
The first fruit of our collaboration was the establishment of a political pressure group called the Progressive Action Group, PAM. It was conceptualised as a response to the failure of the political system to fulfil the role of continuous and regular leadership reproduction and recruitment into the civilian political class-to assume political succession from one generation to another. There was an emergent generational gap and vacuum-to whose remedy we programmatically addressed ourselves. We intended ourselves as a kind of political nursery for preparing and producing a successor class at the shortest possible time. As it were, the major indication of this systemic failure was the recycling of political leaders rather than a renewal with successor generations.
On the occasion of my fortieth birthday, I got him and six other friends including Odia Ofeimum, Sina Odugbemi, Ruben Abati, Kayode Samuel, Dotun Oni and Professor Adebayo Williams to write essays in my honour as companion to a collection of my columns and got the hybrid published as “Beyond Abacha: Companion Essays”. Sanusi titled his chapter “Shariacracy In Nigeria: The Intellectual Roots Of Islamist Discourses”
He wrote “Over a long period of time I have become suspicious of the Northern political establishment. The Northern Muslim population has often been used as a cannon fodder by the establishment in its political battles with other class fractions of the Nigerian elite. At the end of it all the people remain poor, uneducated, malnourished and oppressed. I approach my analysis of Shariacracy from a Shariati perspective.
“I try to examine it from the point of view of the welfare of the people and their liberation from these pathetic conditions. This has placed me in seeming conflict with traditional scholarship and the political class. What they portray as piety, I consider hypocrisy. What they see as achievements, I see as diversion. Until Shariacracy focuses on the true problem of the North, the condition of its people, it will not be, in my books, serving the purpose”. He wrote this 23 years ago and couldn’t have served a better notice of his future interventions in the public life of Nigeria.
At the height of his crisis as CBN governor, I weighed in on the controversy as follows “Inherent in him are the contradictory character traits of humility and arrogance. In his father and grandfather he inherits the DNA of non-conformity and aristocratic hauteur. That he made a success of his banking career owes less to any special aptitude for banking and more to the fact that people of his talent make-up would generally make a success of any assignment they are given”.
“Without prejudice to the allegations against him, I think he generally acquitted himself brilliantly as the Governor of the Central bank but he was equally immensely flawed. He was too politically brash, controversial and confrontational. He was self-adulation and gave the impression that his accomplishments amount to a licence to redefine the job profile of the CBN governor in his own image; he was unduly populist and constructed the CBN as a law unto itself”
Unable to reconcile this character profile with the sedate pomp and pageantry that conventionally define monarchy, I argued on his behalf that he would never be interested in becoming the Emir of Kano. When next I saw him, I confidently told him I had dismissed the speculations making the rounds that he may be interested in mounting the Kano throne. He cut me off and protested ‘I am o, I am o! He achieved his heart’s desire and wasted no time in the imposition of his activist personality on the traditional institution. Faced with a considerable push back by the reactionary establishment, he retorted with this vintage Sanusi “I have reflected over and over on my speech and I still don’t see what I said that is so wrong and offensive. I didn’t say the North cannot survive as a country. After all, Niger Republic is there with some help from Paris. I didn’t say that the North in the past had no glory. I know it has a rich history. I didn’t say the North cannot be rich and better. In fact, I think it can and it is a disgrace we are where we are”
The quality I admire most in him is his resilience, the ability to bend with the winds of adversity and emerge triumphant. There has been this persistent speculation that his early adulthood had been partly spent in the pursuit of fundamentalist causes in dangerous sects. Consequently, he was one of a group of fifteen zealots who were locked up in Sokoto Prisons indefinitely for sectarian extremism by General Sani Abacha. According to Jafar Jafar “Sanusi Lamido Sanusi escaped firing squad by whiskers and jailed for about two and half years under Abacha’s Decree 2 in Sokoto Prisons for “inciting violence”,
He thereafter picked up himself and applied his talent in the service of the banking industry. And boy, was he massively rewarded! And then he became the Emir of Kano as he wished. It was from this Olympian height that he was pulled down by one of the personifications of contemporary Nigerian political regression, former Kano state Governor, Ibrahim Ganduje. Their collision was predictable. There was no way a rogue Governor and a reformist Emir in the same domain could avoid a confrontation and showdown.
And when the end of the beginning came, Sanusi did not exhibit an iota of self-pity or depression. It was as if he knew he was coming back to the throne and refused to be addressed as the former Emir of Kano. He would insist on being identified as the 14th Emir of Kano. As I was concluding a one year academic visiting fellowship at the University of Oxford in 2020, he was coming in for a similar fellowship at St Anthony’s college at the same institution. He subsequently escalated his academic ambition by registering for a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
At the end of the day what matters most is what best serves public interest. Is it an Emir who defines his role as a reformer in a society desperately in need of progressive reform or a Governor caught on tape stuffing wads of proceeds of corruption into the cavernous folds of his babariga? I actually believe that it is a badge of honour to be at odds with such a contrarian character with the charge of “Insubordination” no less. If Kano state was not all about Ganduje, then it was wrong to have deposed Sanusi in the first place. It was a wrongdoing that cried for remedial justice.
I sympathise with the dethroned Emir, Aminu Ado Bayero, who is an innocent victim of crass power politics. Nonetheless, here is an audition for the two Emirs and you be the judge of who better serves the cause of Nigerian public interest. The theatre was the politicisation of the relocation of certain offices of the Central Bank to Lagos.. Here goes Bayero.
“We are indeed suspicious on why Mr. President single-handedly relocated key departments of CBN, and outright relocation of FAAN to Lagos.
“We are receiving a series of messages from my subjects, and most of them expressed concern over the relocation of CBN and FAAN to Lagos…the Federal Government should “come out clean on this matter and talk to Nigerians in the languages they would understand.” And then came Sanusi
“Moving certain functions to the Lagos office (which is bigger than the Abuja head office) is an eminently sensible move,”. “It makes eminent strategic sense. And I would have done this if I had stayed.
“All this noise is absolutely unnecessary. The CBN has staff manning its branches and cash offices across the federation..
“My advice to the governor is to go ahead with his policy. Once the CBN starts bending to political pressure on one thing it will continue doing so. ethnic and religious bigots will always shout but the CBN should rise above it and just do what needs to be done
One puzzle remains. How did the federal government manage to insinuate itself into what was clearly within the remit of the Kano state government?
More...
![[OPINION] Why we should protect the independence of the Central Bank - Etim Etim](/media/k2/items/cache/f3b820b3471c839509c95205a4ec4d18_XS.jpg)
The Senate is currently undertaking a comprehensive amendment of the Central Bank Act of 2007, but the exercise is generating mixed reactions in the banking industry. Operators are worried that some of the new clauses being proposed by the lawmakers are capable of eroding the autonomy and independence of the apex bank and therefore weakening its capacity to perform. The amendment bill is being sponsored by Senator Mukhail Adetokunbo Abiru (Lagos East) and is co-sponsored by 32 others. Wednesday, May 29 was slated for a public hearing for this amendment. Senator Abiru was once the chief executive of Polaris Bank, a fellow of Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and a member of Chartered Institute of Bankers (CIBN). He holds a first degree in Economics from Lagos State University. In August 2020, Abiru resigned from the position of CEO of Polaris Bank to run for the senatorial seat. Many in the financial services sector are worried that a man with such credentials is leading the charge to weaken our central bank, and this is the context of my intervention today.
The proposed amendments include setting the tenure of the Governor and Deputy Governors at a single, non-renewal term of six years; appointment of a minimum of one career staff of the Bank in the Committee of Governors; appointment of at least one woman among the external directors and the establishment of the position of Chief Compliance Officer in the rank of a Deputy Governor. It is also proposed that the five external directors should hold office for a non-renewal single five years. In addition, the amendment intends to increase the Ways and Means to government to 10% of the total of total revenues of the previous three years. These are quite commendable innovations. I’m particularly pleased with the single tenures for the Governor and the Deputy Governor and the creation of the Chief Compliance Officer. I’m surprised that the CBN had not established the Chief Compliance Office all this while, yet the apex bank had since mandated the commercial banks to create the position in the last 15 years or so. I remember that Access Bank has a Chief Compliance Officer as far back as when I joined in 2008. How could the CBN not have had one? There is also a provision in the proposed review of the law that states that changing legal tender should be done in phases and in a manner that does no cause any distortion to the economy. Nobody would disagree with this given our recent experience. I also support the proposed increase in the CBN’s paid up capital from One billion Naira to one trillion Naira, and the provision that such reviews should be done as regularly as is necessary.
But there are a few provisions in the proposed amendment bill that have jolted stakeholders, the banking industry and even international partners like the IMF. The bill seeks to establish a seven-member Coordinating Committee for Monetary and Fiscal Policies to be chaired by the finance minister. The Coordinating Committee will set ‘’internally consistent targets of monetary and fiscal policies that are conducive to controlling inflation and promoting financial conditions for sustainable growth’’. In other words, the bill, if passed and signed into law, will give the finance minister powers to fix interest rate – a traditional duty of any central bank the world over. In addition, the CBN’s budget would be approved by the National Assembly while the Governor will have to appear before the lawmakers twice in a year to give accounts of his stewardship, in addition to answering to their routine summons as often as they deem fit. With these amendments, the CBN will essentially revert to its former status as an appendage of the Finance Ministry, about 20 years after it secured an autonomy.
A central bank independence matters for price stability which in turn conduces for a consistent long-term growth. During the COVID-19 pandemic central banks responded swiftly to steer the global economy out of meltdown due to their independence. Now, facing rising inflation, central bankers are responding to the challenges – although at different speed and timelines. In many countries, their responses helped to tame inflation. Compare this to the 1970s when most central banks were still subjugated under bureaucratic and political influences and how sluggishly the central banks responded to the high inflation then. This is why the IMF was among the first to kick against the proposed amendment of the CBN law, stating that the proposed amendments ‘’could undermine the authority of the CBN and weaken its capacity to respond to emerging challenges appropriately’’. Indeed, Turkey and Venezuela are good examples of this.
Eminent economist and former director of the CBN and former member of its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), Prof Akpan Ekpo, is unsparing in his assessment of the proposal. Speaking to this writer, he said: ‘’The Coordinating Committee is unnecessary. The Finance Ministry may have its own committee to determine crucial fiscal variables, while accommodating monetary policy. That is, the CBN will be represented in that committee as is the case in the MPC where the Finance Ministry is also represented. The seven-member Coordinating Committee will undermine the independence of the CBN and place it under the control of the Finance Minister. The CBN (Monetary policy) and the Ministry of Finance (Fiscal Policy) must coordinate and collaborate. Its global best practice that doesn’t require any legal backing. The misnomer of the Coordinating Committee will create further distortions resulting in the mismanagement of the economy. I am particularly worried that the Senate is increasingly becoming an institution of revisionism. Just this week, it reverted to the old National Anthem without as much as a debate or convincing reason; and now the senate is taking the CBN back to the apron string of the Ministry of Finance. What else should we expect from this senate?
![[OPINION] The Ever Refreshing And Glorious Month That Is May - Abdu Rafiu](/media/k2/items/cache/26f33adfa4b0c64d30b1e21b1fd11ba6_XS.jpg)
Before we could say Jack Robinson; before we could catch our breath, the ever refreshing and glorious month that is May has come and is closing its cycle today. It is a month of storms, a month of lightning and thunder. It is a month of restoration. When lightning and thunder strike, we dash under the table, under the bed, shaken to our marrows for whatever can give us that momentary cover. Yet, there must be lightning and thunder to moderate temperate and tropical atmospheric temperature imbalance. May comes with a weather that is a mixture of rain and sunshine, a signal to the rainy days ahead. In these times, the failings of EKDC and its siblings scattered at Ikeja, Ibadan, Benin, Enugu, Kaduna, Jos—I am sure in combustible Kano, as well—do not get as much trumpeted on rooftops as they are accustomed to receiving in January and February when the day and night can be refreshingly cool. This reminds me by way of digression, as my boss, Allah-De, was wont to say, when the weather begins to wink at you, a sign that rain is on the way, get your candle ready. These days, get your inverter ready! But pray that the inverter supplier/engineers do not become the new NEPA, NEPA of blessed memory, unfeeling and uncaring. Who can fight Nature, despite your thunder arrestor and a booster one mounted by the supplier; thunder can still damage your inverter as it has done to mine! What is Nature? I am entreating Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev who dismantled the Soviet Union to be on standby.
There is so much to say and write about the month of May. As Numerologists are wont to say, those who preoccupy themselves with the science of numbers, Figure 5 represents Love. It is powered by the force that is Love. May, being the fifth month of the year therefore swings in the Law of Numbers as the month of love. Sandwiched between April, the fourth month which swings in Nature featuring awakening and sprouting and June the month of power, the love of May is particularly significant and it is not to be interpreted in the narrow sense. For love is not indulgence. It is severity. The releasing power of love gives to everyone that which is of benefit to him. Thus, it is said true love gives benefit, not comfort. Ultimately in benefit lies comfort. The tongue of fire in a furnace, for example, is beautiful and attractive. A child finding it irresistible only needs to touch once in his life to learn the right lesson! In experiencing, therefore, lies knowledge, and knowledge rightly applied leads to maturity and development. Instantly, the hearty, unburdened laughter of the child turns to a loud outcry!
In May, regeneration in Nature, a gift of love, drives everything relentlessly towards its climax, particularly towards the end of the month. In this driving or forcing towards blossom, everything is animated and it regenerates the good and the bad, to bring to their authors, in justice, the bountiful harvest of their labour. This May ending today, what can we say has been amiss? Practically everything, some would say. If anything, the standard of living has taken more heartless bashings and dipped beyond last year’s levels. The beating of the chest since Buhari’s era on the catalogue of magic achievements on occasions of anniversaries has continued. I did state in this column that I was going to give Bola Tinubu one year of honeymoon to find his feet. That honey moon was over two days ago. I will henceforth mount my observatory pole. In the area of security, it is the same old story! But thank goodness, life goes on. Perhaps in the hope which Bola Tinubu has made his sing song. Hope of a better tomorrow, however, only if we ourselves change for the better. For only a completely different people who can produce a completely different leader, thus a completely different nation since the people can only give what they have. In a democratic setting such as the world clamours for and embraces, leaders rise through the ranks of the populace to brandish before their gaze their own mirror which the leaders constitute. Who has heard of cocoa being harvested where a seed of oranges was planted? Who has not heard of the law of sowing and reaping? This column has stated repeatedly that our world is governed. We supply the threads for the weaving of our carpet of fate.
The season of mango is moving away. In the goodness of the Almighty, maize is returning to town. A reflective person may not easily discountenance the fact that one mango seed holds the promise of hundreds of thousands of mango fruits. Anyone may venture to count the number of ears of corn on a cob of maize. Upon reflecting that there may sometimes be as many as five cobs on a stalk and as many as four hundred ears of corn to a cob, we see that the lesson rings home powerfully that there may be as many as 2,000ears of corn generated from an only one. Then the picture is of the Law is clear: Whatever a man soweth that shall he reap in multiples and many times over.
Back to the subject of May and Nature raeminds me of those memorable thoughts of Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet agent of change and liberation of its various peoples who constituted the country from an unnatural union. Mr. Gorbachev said in 1994: “As an ongoing re-evaluation of values is basic to the evolution of civilization. In its early history, mankind treated Nature with reverence. People were afraid of Nature, regarding it as something superior and unfathomable; they worshipped Nature as a kind of deity. Harming Nature was considered a deadly sin. Later, as man accumulated knowledge and practical skills, he began to see himself as superior to Nature, setting himself the goal of conquering it and subordinating it to his own interests. Soon it became apparent that the arrogance of technical knowledge scars Nature with wounds that will not heal.”
Mr. Gorbachev went on to blame the problem in the relationship between man and nature on “a crisis of spirit.” He urged the world to recognize the urgent need to reconsider the old views and attitudes towards nature and reach a new level in learning the laws that govern the system that incorporates man and nature.”
What then is Nature? This brings us back to the fundamental issue Mr. Gorbachev raised in his profound perception. What is Mother Nature? Like many human words which have lost their original meaning in human perception long ago, the concept of Nature remains nothing but a vague expression for many people today. Many long to be close to Nature. They throng the sea shore for its refreshing spectacle, the rippling of waters, the undertows, the sheer breath-taking expanse of the ocean that bows the spirit; tides rising and falling. Some wander in the woods for oozing of insects, the ruffling of leaves. Some head for the mountains for their rarifying effects on the spirit and others behold the undulating hills. Many long to be close to Nature when they are tormented by the plastic city life and flee to the beautiful greens of the invigorating countryside, even if only for a short while. These days it also has suddenly become wise to be natural for the sake of good health. Medicine is advancing quite all right. But has it not created two problems where it solves one? Natural spring water is thus the vogue. And there is a return in droves to herbal remedies once discarded as having no place in modern medicine. Talk of beautiful nature fills the air. We speak of natural beauty and everyone is enraptured by beauty that is natural, which has moved away from artificiality that is not animated, that is dead. Yet simultaneously, man has not evinced signs of being tired to tinker with the conquest of Nature. Are we not in the time of Mr. AI, the rapidly growing Artificial Intelligence? Two weeks ago, one product of Artificial Intelligence was posted to me. It was a lady you cannot believe is not real! I am told before long An Artificial Intelligence pilot will be flying our planes. It is been sold to us as far more competent and precision-driven than man! After all, what are drones?
Any talk of nature today is likely to evoke no more than images of coarse forms, that is, outward appearances. Pictures of landscapes automatically arise as do those of all that are perceivable by the physical senses. At best, this picture conceives of the earth or the galaxy or the entire subsequent Creation as belonging to Nature. In a sense this would not be an altogether false or incomplete picture if these manifestations often called seen as no more than mere visible effects of the intricate natural activities behind which stand some beings. Yes, some beings! But not perchance human beings. To be certain , Nature is the undistorted material effects of the activities of these Nature Beings. Matter has no life of its own. It assumes a living form when it has been glowed through. These forms, glowing, warm and active are then able to unite to produce power and even stronger forms. When the animating glow withdraws, matter collapses or dies and returns to its primeval state. The glow is a healthy union of radiations and distinguishes what belongs to Nature.
Engrained in the works of Nature also is the capacity for self-strengthening and propagation. In the end we will all become aware that all of life is radiations and that the visible life is nothing other than the coarse replicas of fine animating core. We can now connect the dots about what tells a woman from a man as being bundles of different radiations. Thus, we are told in the enlightenment graciously mediated to all mankind in these times that a woman is defined by the nature of her activities.
Thus, the tones in the radiations of the month of May, most importantly of the special power from On High, drive the month in all its encompassing invigorating love. So is it that we stand encompassed in the unrelenting driving power of May. In the grip of its radiance, of that unfathomable Love which only Jesus Christ, the Love of God can mediate, swinging in Figure 5, and the Holy Spirit in Figure 7 which is also perfection, in unswerving Justice, lays upon no one nothing more than he has taken upon himself–both Arms in everlasting Holy Trinity with the Father, the Father in Them and They in the Father.
When we look at the world, every country and possibly as many men and women, the signs of the nature of the harvest of the future of our world is self-evident, even today. In May, specifically, 30 May, out of love, the Almighty Creator renews His Creation with the outpouring of Power from On High, from the Highest Temple standing at the peak of Paradise, into our universe. It is the Day the Holy Dove appears over a vessel, called Chalice. It is from this vessel that all the worlds below receive power from the Almighty Creator for their continued existence, flowering and fruiting. We must bow our spirits in worshipful thankfulness and adoration for His ever-present Grace.
![[OPINION] Tinubu’s best-forgotten first year in office - Ikechukwu Amaechi](/media/k2/items/cache/e6e16d5b203be0de1207f38dd0215317_XS.jpg)
ASKED last December to comment on Bola Tinubu’s performance as President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria’s Armed Forces since May 29, 2023, Professor Wole Soyinka, first black man to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and one of the most fervent cheerleaders of the Tinubu presidency, said he will only do so on the administration’s first anniversary.
“Well, you know, something you may have noticed about me is that most heads of state, when they take office, I always leave them alone for about the first year… because they need time. I know when they come in, they don’t start from ground zero. They often start even lower than ground zero and they have to make up. So, I’m adopting the same principle this time. When you see me next year, ask the same question again and listen to my answer,” Soyinka, who has taken up the untypical role of Tinubu’s attack dog, told journalists on December 25 when he paid the president who was holidaying in Lagos what he called an “embarrassing visit.”
The literary giant, whose primary assignment from the Tinubu government seems to be a vicious and unrelenting put-down of Mr. Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections with the sole purpose of demarketing him ahead of the 2027 polls, is yet to comment even as fellow citizens struggle to make sense of where the government is headed. Nigerians are patiently waiting for him.
But Tinubu, just like the proverbial lizard that jumped from the high Iroko tree to the ground and crowed that he would praise himself if no one else did, didn’t wait for Soyinka’s validation of his “exceptional exploits” in office.
While flagging-off the 700-kilometre Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway on Monday, a visibly excited President Tinubu said it was his day to boast.
Maybe it is. But the boasting would have been more appropriate if it was reserved for the commissioning of the project after completion. The deal cannot simply be done as he ululated because a project has been flagged-off. The deal can only be done when the project is completed and delivered to the Nigerian people.
But he was not only euphoric about the coastal highway, he also commissioned the rehabilitated Third Mainland Bridge and the concrete-paved road to the nation’s major ports in Apapa and Tin Can Island.
It is instructive that Tinubu is making a song and dance about a rehabilitated bridge. But why not? Considering the fact that the disastrous Muhammadu Buhari administration worked on the same bridge intermittently without any appreciable result, the Tinubu administration, indeed, has earned a bragging right for doing a refurbishing job on the 12.5 kilometre bridge that even their worst critics acknowledge is outstanding.
What’s more, in an era where a state governor is listing a visit to the National Security Adviser, NSA, and a courtesy call by his constituents as achievements in his first 100 days as Governor Usman Ododo of Kogi State did recently, why won’t Tinubu brag about refurbishing a bridge in his first 365 days in office?
But to say that the president has made good progress in the last one year as his spin doctors are doing is to incredulously stretch logic and common sense.
Agreed, Tinubu is entitled to his fantasies which explain his gloating while speaking to a group of investors in November 2023 at the 10th German-Nigerian Business Forum in Berlin, Germany, that his name be included in the revered Guinness World Records, GWR, for reforms that have made life unbearable not only for the poor but also the rich.
But beyond the grandstanding and propaganda, Nigerians, with the exception of those feeding off the crumbs from his table, agree that Tinubu’s first year in office has been a curse rather than a blessing.
The primary purpose of government is the security and welfare of the people as clearly spelt out in Section 14(2) (b) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999.
So, beyond refurbishing the Third Mainland Bridge, which, to those who may have forgotten, was commissioned by President Shehu Shagari in 1980 and completed by President Ibrahim Babangida in 1990, and the reconstructed concrete-paved road leading to the Lagos seaports, a project which was financed by the Dangote Group, using its tax credits, the economy is in dire straits and Nigerians are bleeding, literally.
Besides, assessments cannot be made in a vacuum. Those who say Tinubu inherited a hellhole from Buhari and use that as an excuse for his abysmal performance are being smart by half.
To be sure, Tinubu knew that Buhari was a colossal failure. He was well aware that the All Progressives Congress, APC, government took Nigeria to the brink of socio-economic and political collapse, which explains why Nigerians refused to reward such dreadful performance and rejected the APC at the February 25, 2023 poll. But the magician he is, he managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Having wangled his way to Aso Rock, and knowing how badly Buhari damaged the country, he unfurled an eight-point agenda to recovery that included food security, poverty eradication, growth, job creation, access to capital, inclusion, rule of law and fighting corruption. Any assessment not anchored on this agenda is duplicitous.
Unveiling the agenda in September 2023 at the first Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting after three months of haphazardness, Tinubu said it was targeted at addressing the country’s socio-economic challenges and mandated the ministers to deliver the first phase within three years. Reminding them of the prevailing adversity, unemployment, insecurity, and poverty in the land, he said the idea was to move away from the frenzied borrowing of the Buhari regime, check the “unacceptably high” jobless rate, achieve economic growth, “prosperity for all,” and end poverty with a promise to create 50 million jobs to boot.
One of those three years has been spent and no item in the eight-point agenda was realised. With food inflation at over 40 per cent, Nigerians are starving, literally, and food security has become a mirage. Rather than creating 50 million jobs, millions of Nigerians have been pushed into the unemployment loop.
It couldn’t have been otherwise. The ill-digested twin policies of petrol subsidy stoppage and consequent higher pump prices, and the unification of official and parallel foreign exchange rates not only pummelled the Naira but also pushed the headline inflation to 33.69 per cent in April 2024, according to the figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, on May 15. It was 22.22 per cent in April 23, a month before Tinubu came on board. Food inflation which was 24.45 per cent in March 2023 is today 40.01 per cent, a 15.56 percentage point year-on-year climb.
Rather than ebb, insecurity has spiked in the 12 months of Tinubu’s presidency. This week, some 84 civil society organisations led by Global Rights disclosed that more than 4,416 people were killed and 4,334 abducted in the last one year.
Tinubu enthused in October 2023 at the 29th Nigeria Economic Summit in Abuja that the economy under his watch can grow to $1 trillion by 2026, stressing that a $3 trillion economy is possible in a decade with government ensuring “double-digit, inclusive, sustainable and competitive growth.” That remains a mirage with the GDP declining to 2.98 per cent in the first quarter of 2024. With interest rate at 26.25 per cent, access to capital for businesses is near zero.
The average Nigerian is poorer today than he was a year ago. Tinubu’s renewed hope agenda has not yielded the touted benefits. Instead, it has dragged Nigeria back to the Hobbesian state of nature in which life, to many, has become solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
If the sole purpose of government is the welfare and security of citizens, a fact which Tinubu captured in his eight-point agenda, then, he cannot claim to have achieved much, if anything at all, when there is hardly any Nigerian that can sincerely say he is better off today than a year ago.
But most worrisome is the fact that the president, like the fifth Roman emperor, Nero, who was busy playing the fiddle while Rome was consumed by fire, has perfected the inelegant art of majoring in the minor, focusing on insignificant things rather than the larger, more important issues at hand. It is quite instructive that on a day that should have been spent introspecting and seeking ideas for navigating out of the self-inflicted headwinds, the government busied itself replacing the National Anthem with the colonially bequeathed version, discarded since 1978 .
Talk of Tinubu’s best-forgotten first 365 days in office.
![[OPINION] Tinubu’s first-year assessment: Mark: 37%; Grade: Fail! - Olu Fasan](/media/k2/items/cache/8193e625f9a1517c1c5b424e0dfe506c_XS.jpg)
DEAR readers, I am wearing my academic cap this week, and assessing the first-year performance of Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president since May 29 last year. In fact, I have marked Tinubu’s first-year assessment. The result? He failed badly. He scored an abysmal 37 per cent!
Earlier this week, Tinubu marked his own exam paper and awarded himself a pass mark. He said he met Nigeria bleeding and stopped the bleeding. That’s utterly ludicrous, given that most Nigerians have been trapped in unimaginable misery and anguish over the past one year, and the fundamentals of Nigeria’s economy and social fabric have crumbled further in the past year. Yet, Tinubu has cheerleaders. One of them is Dr Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, who said Tinubu “has laid the groundwork for progress” in his first year. What an outlandish thing to say! Well, for me, Tinubu failed his first-year assessment.
Talking about assessment, let me, in fidelity with the Aristotelian mode of persuasion, appeal to ethos, to credibility. Until recently, I was a tutor at the London School of Economics, LSE, where I am still a visiting fellow. Over the years, I have marked many essays, exams and dissertations, against established marking criteria. To secure a Distinction or top Merit, a student must show sophistication in the following areas: their answers must be relevant to the questions; organised and structured; show clarity of exposition; have analytical depth; and demonstrate the use of evidence.
Now, don’t think these criteria are only relevant to students’ assessments; no, they are also applicable to performance in government, especially to policy development and delivery. Tinubu failed in each of them.
Trust me, dear readers, the 37 per cent I have awarded Tinubu has nothing to do with the 37 per cent he secured in last year’s presidential election. That said, there is a shared resonance of failure between them. I mean, anyone who secured 37 per cent in an election, rejected by 63 per cent of voters, can hardly claim any success. But under Nigeria’s military constitution, someone with such a weak mandate and legitimacy can form a winner-takes-all government. Thus, despite his 37 per cent “mandate”, Tinubu has absolute power and runs Nigeria like his personal fiefdom. The election result, now history, is not my concern here. Except that, coincidentally, Tinubu also gets 37 per cent in his first-year assessment. But how?
Well, first, Tinubu’s government lacks an organising principle, lacks a vision; everything is based on a scattergun approach. The first evidence of the absence of a vision is the formation of his cabinet. No president who wants to succeed, knowing the challenges that Nigeria faces, would form the kind of cabinet Tinubu formed. It was a cabinet designed to reward cronies, return political favours and shore up support for his re-election bid in 2027. Why, for instance, did Tinubu put virtually all the economic ministries under his Lagos “boys” and other cronies from the South- West, his geo-political zone? And why are there so many deadwood ministers, whose only qualifications were that, as governors, they helped Tinubu “ win” their states? Why did he choose to form a government of cronies, sycophants and political jobbers? Truth be told, Tinubu’s current cabinet is too weak, too ineffectual, to tackle Nigeria’s acute challenges; the time calls for a government of all the talents.
Another evidence of Tinubu’s unpreparedness is that none of the policies he introduced since he came to office involved serious analysis and planning. There is what political economists call stroke-of-a-pen decisions. These are decisions anyone can make quickly and easily. But there are decisions, with far- reaching consequences, that no president should make simply at the stroke of a pen. Yet, when Tinubu declared that “subsidy is gone” and when he floated the naira, no analysis and planning went into those decisions. No thoughts went into their implementation to avoid unintended consequences. Absolutely none. Tinubu said he was “possessed by courage” in abruptly scrapping the fuel subsidy. But good policies are not made with such impulsiveness, such rashness.
Dr Agbakoba listed removal of the fuel subsidy, flotation of the naira and “ rehabilitating refineries and incentivising new private refineries” as Tinubu’s “notable achievements” that laid the “groundwork for progress”. The learned senior lawyer was hasty in his judgement. Each of the “achievements” is already unravelling. Take the fuel subsidy. Even the IMF which called for its removal also called for “adequate compensatory measures for the poor and efficient and transparent use of the saved money.” None of these has happened. There is no transparency on the use of the saved money, and the savings have not been used to alleviate the pains of poor Nigerians.
Furthermore, the IMF believes the government has quietly introduced “an implicit subsidy.” Truth is, until Nigeria can produce refined petroleum, enough to meet local demands, fuel subsidy won’t go away completely. Yet, despite the promises to turn around the Port Harcourt Refinery, it is still not working, and the other three state- owned refineries remain moribund. Recently, Aliko Dangote said the government won’t need to import refined petroleum from next month, suggesting his refinery would produce enough to meet local demands. Would that happen? Even if it did, would Dangote’s consumable fuels bring down the pump price of petrol? The jury is still out!
What about the floating of the naira? Well, the government is fretting about the naira’s devaluation. And it is intervening aggressively to make the naira appreciate. But the value of a currency is determined by the strength of the economy. If the economy is weak, the currency will be weak, and vice versa. Yet, the fundamentals of Nigeria’s economy are extremely weak, with inflation at 33 per cent and interest rates at 24.75 per cent. In a recent report titled “Nigeria’s currency crisis the last straw for many overseas groups,” the Financial Times said naira’s devaluation and foreign exchange scarcity have forced many foreign companies to divest from Nigeria, while many local businesses “have died quietly.” So, where are Tinubu’s “notable achievements” that lay the “groundwork for progress”?
There are other policies, such as students’ loans, plans to establish state police and the so-called Lagos-Calabar coastal highway, that space doesn’t allow me to discuss. But they all fail the good policymaking test and will have perverse consequences.
So, forget the praise singers, Tinubu’s first year in office is a failure. It inflicted untold pains on ordinary Nigerians and caused huge damage to Nigeria’s economy and social fabric. All for some pie-in-the-sky future “gains”!