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For decades, the Nigerian government has regularly rolled out obnoxious policies to make life difficult for individuals and businesses. The expatriates employment levy (EEL) must rank among the top five. It is as silly as silly gets. Although it has now been suspended by the same Bola Tinubu administration that launched the ghastly policy, it should still not escape intense scrutiny because it was deceptively packaged as a patriotic policy to save Nigerian jobs, whereas it was all about money, money and more money. While the government definitely needs as much money as it can get in this dire situation, we seem hell-bent on shooting ourselves in the foot because of narrow thinking.
Everything about the EEL is absurd — the concept, the levy, the timing, everything. It was sugar-coated with a claim of “discouraging” companies from hiring expatriates for jobs Nigerians “can do”. It is a fee of between $10,000 and $15,000 per head. If you really want to protect Nigerian jobs, the right thing to do, in my opinion, is to place visa restrictions on certain jobs or sectors. In countries like Canada, the UK, and the US, jobs in which locals have competence and there is no shortage of workers are not eligible for work visas. We are just being half clever by the “job protection” claim. I reckon that restrictions can be subverted, but at least we should be clear in our minds what we want.
If our interest is to “discourage” companies from hiring expatriates for jobs Nigerians “can do”, why is there no exception to the EEL? Why is the levy to be applied on all expatriates, including those doing the jobs Nigerians cannot do? In a society where there is rigour in public policy process, that is a question that would have been asked, dissected and answered before the fanfare of the launch. The EEL contractor is a company owned by foreigners who, you won’t believe this, are also trying to do the job Nigerians can do. We may be deficient in many things, but it is not too much for us to build an IT system. In fact, the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has the IT infrastructure in place.
But you know what? The contractors are charging us $95 million to “build” the IT infrastructure in a country that has captured the similar data multiple times through BVN, NIN, driving licence, population census, passport processing, visa applications, work permit issuance, etc. There is hardly information needed on expatriates in Nigeria that is not already in the custody of NIS: biometrics, date of birth, place of birth, nationality, name of employer, office address, home address, etc. Trust me, the NIS system will be core to this “new” thing. But trust some smart guys to think up another scheme for yet another company to collect similar data once again — for a fee of $95 million.
The most tragic aspect of the EEL is that at a time we are desperately crying for foreign investors to flood Nigeria with dollars to help save the naira and create jobs, we are telling them there will be a levy of $15,000 on every expatriate they bring. Imagine a Dutch investor coming to Nigeria to set up a dairy factory that will employ 2,000 Nigerians, but we are telling him that in addition to all his expenses on diesel, bitumen, water treatment, equipment, police, and so on, he will have to fork out an additional $1.5 million for bringing 100 expatriates, whereas he will not incur such costs going to Ghana, Benin or Rwanda. This is aside the $2,000 level per dependent that we are already charging.
I think there is a bit of arrogance that goes into policy making in this country. I can easily claim that the government is deliberately making life hard for individuals and businesses. I can also easily claim that the policy making process is devoid of rigour. But the truth is that we also have this arrogance about us: that Nigeria is the biggest market in Africa, that investors would always rush down here no matter how sickening our policies are. Apparently, our policymakers do not take stock of how our tragic policies have either been chasing away investors or discouraging them from coming here. We need to get the data and take a critical look at the ins and outs in the last decade. It is not pretty.
Nigeria is not the only country in the world (in case we don’t know). Investors have options. Those behind the EEL idea project that Nigeria will rake $13.39 billion from it. Let me even concede some ground by saying that maybe this revenue motive tempted the government to approve the levy, but is the $13.39 billion revenue even guaranteed? You want to “discourage” expatriates and at the same time raise $13.39 billion from “discouraging” them! You impose $15,000 levy to stop them from coming here and still expect to raise $13.39 billion from the same people who have stayed away? That is why I said I would like to be a fly on the wall when these daft policies are being considered.
Nevertheless, my position is not a blanket endorsement of the practices by some companies who abuse our immigration system by flooding Nigeria with low-skilled workers under the pretext of “expatriates”. The right thing to do is crack down on them by developing a robust system of checks. The problem is the collusion by immigration officials, but our ingenious way of addressing this is to place a $15,000 levy — or a levy of any kind — on ALL expatriates. In a battered economy that wants to attract the best of brains and the biggest of investments! I recall the Yoruba proverb about blocking your nose to patronise a dirty pap seller — only for him to start charging premium prices.
The fact that the Tinubu administration suspended the EEL after consulting with the critical stakeholders in commerce and industry confirms yet again another malaise with public policy process in Nigeria: lack of proper homework and prior consultation. Those behind the EEL had been peddling the idea for years. It was resisted by the Buhari administration. But they found willing tools in the Tinubu administration who helped them fast-track it and then unleashed it on the economy. Thank God the damage had not been done before Tinubu suspended it, unlike in the cases of petrol subsidy and exchange rate when the government only started asking questions after hastily firing its guns.
The EEL apart, we generally live with many contradictions. We want the economy to grow, to tackle poverty, and to reduce crimes by creating jobs. We want businesses to boom. Yet, we subject them to the harshest environment with all kinds of levies and using thugs in uniform to extract taxes from them — as if it is not bad enough that they are buying diesel at N1,600/litre to power their offices and factories. We chase street vendors off the road without providing an alternative, like an organised location for them to do business and feed themselves and their families. We treat them as mosquitoes and cockroaches. We destroy shanties and provide no accommodation for the homeless.
In my previous article, I focused on the hardship the government has been inflicting on Nigerians since 2010 over biometric captures for SIM registration, BVN and NIN. My conclusion was that some of the stress Nigerians are routinely subjected to — in the name of “linking” BVN to bank accounts or NIN to phone lines — could have been better managed through the use of smart phones or portals on the websites of banks and telcos. But there seems to be this almost sadistic satisfaction some people in government enjoy from seeing Nigerians queueing up in the sun and under the rain and getting extorted as a result of directives and policies that are clearly not well thought through.
In the past, I wrote a series of articles on the traumatic processes Nigerians go through in trying to get a passport. I am glad that the stress is being reduced, although there is a lot of exaggeration and social media buzz on how easy it is to apply for a passport from your laptop. In reality, it is still hellish, just that if you know how to play the game, you will experience less pains. For the passport officials, the worst crime you can commit is to pay online. You will be properly humiliated at their offices. My niece who committed the offence said all who paid online were asked step aside at the Ikeja office for trying to be “wise”; only those who came with cash were attended to, and promptly.
I have a friend who has been trying to change one data error in her passport. It was not her fault that the wrong name was inputted, but she was ready to make amends all the same. After paying the official rate of N67,000 online without seeing result, she was asked to pay an additional N250,000 to get the correction done. In addition, she will have to travel to Abuja, even though on social media, the official line is that you can correct passport data from the comfort of your kitchen. Another official of the passport office said he can help her get it done in Lagos but blamed her for paying online. “The money has gone into TSA,” he told her, while asking for N200,000 to start all over again.
Having reflected extensively on our oppressive system and how it is impacting negatively on Nigeria and Nigerians, I am forced to conclude that we don’t know what we are doing — even though we speak highfalutin jargons, wear designer attires and play the part. There is no sincerity of purpose in many policies and actions by the government — and this is not just at the federal level, as we are wont to lament. There is no genuine intention to solve problems in many cases. There is no rigour in the policy process in several instances. A lot of public policies are motivated by what Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the former youth and sports minister, calls “carica-chop” — a caricature of caricature.
I will close today by throwing this challenge at our policymakers at all levels: take time to think through what you conceive as policies. There may be hidden costs — financial and human — to which you are blindsided. Consult widely to know the impact on the stakeholders, the economy and, most importantly, the people. Research and run the numbers. Test the ideas. Get yourselves organised to avoid duplications. Government needs money, no doubt about that, but do the benefits outweigh the costs? Should the people’s misery be aggravated all the time? Must they make our world so hard that every day we have to keep on struggling and fighting and panting to survive?
AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…
NAILING NINGI
The senate on Tuesday suspended Senator Abdul Ningi (PDP, Bauchi Central) for alleging that the 2024 budget was padded by N3.7 trillion — although he tried to clarify by saying he was only questioning the details. I knew he was not going to get away with the allegation as his colleagues would viciously go after him — not when he too couldn’t prove his claim. However, I do not, for the life of me, believe that the whole fiasco is about accountability. When legislators fight like this, it is usually about money — who got and who didn’t get. Those who understand the shenanigans and intrigues in the corridors of power will not applaud either Ningi or his colleagues. Sameness.
DIE ANOTHER DAY
There are moves to de-criminalise attempted suicide in Nigeria. It is currently punishable by one-year imprisonment. Hon Francis Waive, a member of the house of reps, is sponsoring a bill that will remove the imprisonment. On the good side, he wants therapy. On the bad side, he prescribes compulsory community service for at least six months. Even if we know nothing about mental health issues such as depression and panic attacks, do we think any human being, under normal circumstances, would want to commit suicide? I hope mental health practitioners and campaigners will not miss this. It speaks again to the way we make laws and policies in this country. Antithetical.
TECHNICAL KNOCK-OUT
Senator Orji Uzor Kalu was jailed for 12 years in 2019 over allegations of fraud amounting to N7.1 billion when he was governor of Abia state between 1999 and 2007. After spending some nights in prison, he walked free as his conviction was nullified by the Supreme Court on technical grounds — that the trial judge had been elevated to Court of Appeal before he delivered the judgment. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) tried to start the trial afresh, but the Court of Appeal has blocked the move — again on technical grounds, saying the record was not “properly” transmitted in line with court rules, and that it was not stamped or “properly” signed. Nigeria!
NO COMMENT
Maybe I should start something called “Oronsaye Watch” to keep Nigerians updated with the drama surrounding the inevitably doomed reform. Since the directive by President Bola Tinubu that the report — which proposes streamlining dozens of governmental bodies through mergers — should be implemented, I have lost count of the number of new agencies being considered to be established by the National Assembly. On Wednesday, I read that there is a bill to set up a mining bank. The following day, there was another one to set up maritime bank. We play too much in this country. What next? A bill to set up a rat commission and another to establish Isi-ewu Bank? Wonderful.
If I were President Tinubu, I would, without further delay, approve the contracting of search and rescue missions to private security firms. The deliverables would be simple: Track and locate the camps run by terrorists and hostage takers of whatever hue; neutralise the terrorists; and rescue the victims.
If the above measure is taken, the Nigerian armed forces will be freed to pursue their ‘normal’ constitutional duties of safeguarding the territorial integrity of the country and the police can also concentrate on their traditional role of maintaining law and order.
The current challenges predate the Tinubu administration. There is no point splitting hairs over what, before our very eyes, has ballooned to become an industry with its own ecosystem. The way the Gordian knot has metastasised indicates that only a carefully executed programme of calculated ruthlessness will achieve the goal of ridding the country of the vermin.
Right now, terrorists are running rings round the security forces as they have done in the last 10 years. That is because we have been tilling the ground of the anti-terror campaign with the wrong implements. How do you prosecute an asymmetrical war with conventional tactics? Imagine, we have been deploying air force planes and helicopters to trace and bomb locations identified as terrorists’ dens when we could have achieved better results with a targeted, tech-assisted mission by crack professional counter-terror operatives.
The Financial Times recently made the following evaluation of the Nigerian situation:
“Much of Nigeria is in effect ungoverned. Millions of children, especially girls in the North, are out of school and health provision is so dire that life expectancy is 53. In many parts of the country, law and order is non-existent. This month, in Borno State, at least 200 mainly women and children were kidnapped searching for firewood. A few days later, in Kaduna State, less than 300 kilometres from Aso Rock, armed men abducted nearly 300 schoolchildren.
“The incidents will rekindle memories of 2014, when Boko Haram militants kidnapped 276 schoolgirls in Chibok. Ninety-eight are still missing. Abductions have become hideously common, mostly carried out not by religious zealots, but by criminal gangs who have turned kidnapping into a racket. Last year, almost 4,000 people were abducted. What explains such prolific criminality? Part of the answer is economics. Ordinary people’s incomes have gone backwards for a decade. Former president Muhammadu Buhari oversaw eight years of economic self-harm, with clumsily executed state intervention that fuelled corruption.”
If, for national security concerns, we are reluctant to openly accept help from other nations with more experience in fighting terror, we can at least procure the services of companies specialised in neutralising the monster. Remember, oil theft in the Niger Delta was a free-for-all until the government introduced private security firms who have been making a huge difference.
Outside Nigeria, let’s look at the example of one security company called Executive Outcomes. In March 1995, the company contained an insurrection of guerrillas known as the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone, regained control of the diamond fields, and forced a negotiated peace.
According to Wikipedia, “Executive Outcomes was directly involved militarily in Angola and Sierra Leone. The company was notable in its ability to provide all aspects of a highly trained modern army to the less professional government forces of Sierra Leone and Angola. For instance, in Sierra Leone, Executive Outcomes fielded not only professional fighting men, but armour and support aircraft such as one Mi-24 Hind and two Mi-8 Hip helicopters, the BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle and T-72 main battle tank…”
To ensure proper control and coordination, I suggest that the National Security Adviser lead the recruitment, monitoring and periodic evaluation of the activities of such security firms when engaged. But there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that that is the route we should be headed for quick wins at this critical time.
I will urge the government to be wary of self-appointed negotiators and pro-ransom clerics who offer to help negotiate between the authorities and the bandits. Anytime there are mass abductions, they show up at TV stations pontificating on the need to reach out to the terrorists using non-kinetic lollies. We have spent the last 10 years trying to pacify evil. It is time we simply apply the law and bring in competent professionals whose specialty is ridding the earth of these kinds of pests.
I think that President Tinubu has already started well by declaring that the government under his watch will not pay any ransom to criminal gangs. The government should not be shy to declare a state of emergency in any specific area where such a measure will facilitate the interdiction of terrorists. This desperate disease requires a desperate cure.
My greatest fear is that if we don’t staunch this perennial haemorrhage decisively, Nigerians may begin to lose the only thing that has been tethering them to rationality — hope. The whole world knows that Nigerians, more than other Africans, live on a diet of hope. We are incurable optimists. We believe that tomorrow has no option but to be better than today.
So, considering that hope is the greatest thing Nigerians have going for them, it will be nothing short of cataclysmic if anything were to happen to remove hope from the Nigerian equation. The society will simply regress into bottomless depression and medieval brutality. It is not for nothing that politicians have been milking the ‘H’ word for eons, some of the most recent coinages being ‘Hope Assured’ (President Buhari) and the ‘Renewed Hope’ of incumbent President Bola Tinubu.
To hope is to experience that magical mix of positive expectation and deep desire. And hope is necessary to get us through times of difficulty and suffering. Social scientists have asked over the years whether hope is intoxicating but detrimental, like a drug?
As a matter of fact, there is a drug called hope. Hope 0.5 mg Tablet belongs to a class of medicines called benzodiazepines and is used to treat anxiety, stop seizures (fits) or relax tense muscles. This can also help relieve difficulty sleeping (insomnia), and is usually prescribed for a short period of time, if used to treat sleeping problems.
Hope is crucial in times of uncertainty, and in dealing with adversity.
Nigerians have been living on hope since Independence in 1960. We have always exuded the ‘Ogadinma’ spirit — “e go better”. Even when we repeat the same mistakes over and over again, we somehow hope that the outcomes will be different “by the grace of God”, or “insha Allah”. Psychologically attuned to not taking responsibility for our actions and inactions, we are free of any guilt feeling or emotional encumbrances. No wonder we wind up, by global acclaim, as the happiest people on the planet.
Boko Haram, terrorists, bandits, unknown gunmen and all the other criminal gangs terrorising Nigeria should not be allowed to continue dominating the game of coercion. When I was growing up, I was taught that no matter how great a hunter was, he could not be greater than the government because whereas he could only hunt animals, the government was the only hunter permitted to hunt men.
Let the government live up to its name. Outsource the ‘fumigation’ of our ungoverned spaces and restore normalcy so that we can return to relishing our diet of hope. If hope dies, then the people will no longer be able to mobilise for a common purpose; nor will they be in a position to appreciate whatever else the government is doing to make their lives better. It used to be said that when there’s life there’s hope; now we know better: When there’s security there’s hope.
Nigeria’s now perennial insecurity has been damaged by political laziness. Every two- penny politician has developed a habit of weaponizing insecurity as political language. In the process, very little effort or rigour is devoted to the reality of what we are dealing with. Even those who are paid to keep us safe tend to resort to simplistic solutions to what is clearly a complex problem. Everyone seems to be mimicking politicians, talking frequently about insecurity as if the problem will go away the more we talk about it.
National insecurity as we have come to know it has grown in dimension and scope over the last twelve years or so. When factions of jihadist terrorists invade local governments in parts of Borno or Yobe state, we are dealing with threats to Nigeria’s sovereignty by an adversary that may indeed be ‘external’ with inputs from ignorant local zealots. They take and hold territory, convert citizens into dissidents and collect taxes and levies and in the process extract loyalties that ordinarily belong to a sovereign authority. This level of national insecurity belongs in the realm of external aggression by a concerted foreign adversary. It does not matter whether it recruits and arms our citizens to do its bidding or draws inspiration from an external multinational ideology such as fanatical Islamist fundamentalism. We must call it its real name and design and deploy containment instruments and strategies that befit an external aggression.
With the onset of the Boko Haram insurgency in parts of the North-east, Nigeria can be said to have been involved in a counter insurgency war for the better part of the past twelve years. In the process, Boko Haram has sometimes been degraded, reinforced, splintered or been acquired by ISWAP and other franchises born and bred in the Middle East and nurtured in the turbulent Sahel. Have we been winning or losing that war? Yes and no. We have at least retaken most of the local governments that the terrorists initially acquired as part of an evil caliphate in the hot days of Al Queda and ISIS. But the fact that twelve years after the inauguration of Boko Haram, factions of this movement are still taking huge numbers of hostages and razing buildings is an indictment of whatever effort we have exerted so far.
In the immediate neighbouring precincts of the insurgency war- Katsina, Kaduna, Zamfara- hybrid forms of insurgent insecurity have taken shape. Banditry, quantum abductions and kidnapping for ransom are now recognized forms of national insecurity. Initially, these hybrid forms acted as retail arms of the larger jihadist insurgency. They used to supply them with hostages, sha ransoms and collected revenue and hide under their ideological umbrella for greater political relevance. Over time, however, the bandits and other downstream criminal gangs have come unto their own. They mostly now operate as independent criminal enterprises with a purely commercial purpose. This form of insecurity has graduated into a criminal enterprise. They carry out daring raids, collect huge ransoms which is reinvested in more arms for further raids. The industry grows.
In this form, agents of insecurity have sometimes reached for recognition by state governments and agencies of national security. Some local bandit squads have in the recent past reached understandings with individual state governments and even posed for photo opportunities with them after these meetings. Implicit in such unholy alliances is a certain illicit power sharing arrangement. Under these arrangements, embattled state governments are known to have ceded parts of their territory to bandit squads, allowing them to collect revenue from locals and to wield authority over some local governments literally unchallenged.
This form of national insecurity is inherently dangerous because it cedes parts of the national sovereign space and authority to non -state actors and in the process accords them space and scope to disturb the peace, make lots of money and whittle down the capacity of security agencies to exercise total control over the national sovereign space. More dangerously, illicit non -state actors partake of national resources to make the nation even more ungovernable while also compromising segments and aspects of national security structures and personnel.
The atmosphere of insecurity created by the proliferation and free reign of bandit squads and roving armed cartels has led to a spread in the supply of small to medium scale arms. Retail editions of trouble makers like armed robbers, small time kidnappers and urban cults have found an atmosphere of general insecurity that is both lucrative and in vogue. An industry of sorts has been born. Herdsmen that were originally engaged in herding and the livestock trade have since found kidnapping, armed robbery and abductions more lucrative than escorting scraggy herds around the nation.
We cannot fail to add to this picture the thriving political industry and its inherent criminal offshoots. Political thugs, licensed state militias and all manner of private armies have in the last twenty four years of democracy come into being. Political supremacy in most parts of the country has come with the help of armed thugs generously supplied with weapons, narcotics and other dangerous substances. In post election periods, these political agents of violence tend to find work for their hands and use for their weapons in sundry criminal undertakings. In an atmosphere where employment is scarce and easy money quickly runs dry, the political industry has perhaps inadvertently been fueling the atmosphere of national insecurity which the same politicians return to convert into campaign issues in the next election cycle.
The fierce competition for political vantage placement has also led to the growth of ethnic, regional and other separatist movements. They generally start out by shouting for recognition and relevance in a national space that deliberately ignores extant disquiet. When no one seems to be listening, the rhetoric of separatist agitators assumes an incendiary tone. Soon enough, the more determined ones set up armed militias since the authorities tend to listen more when their monopoly of violence is challenged by an equally fierce contender for power and political space. Armed separatist movements have in the last ten years therefore added their voice and muscle to the spread of violence as a means of political expression in the country. IPOB, ESN and the various Niger Delta militias belong in this sphere.
This is the effective backdrop to the current situation in which governments at nearly every level seem to have been held to ransom by all these forms of insecurity all over the country. The sheer expanse of the insecurity landscape is more vast than the entire security asset base of the country can deal with. Therefore, bandits and all sorts of criminals are fairly certain that the security agencies cannot easily interrupt their operations let alone effectively trail or arrest them.
There is no lack of response from government. Endless meetings have taken place between politicians and service chiefs. The two chambers of the National Assembly have met severally with the service chief. State governors have met repeatedly with the president with the matter of insecurity topping the agenda of every meeting. The Federal government has gone to considerable length to acquire weapons of war from all corners of the globe to combat what has become a systemic insecurity. It has become systemic because it has become self- regenerating, having become an economic sub sector which requires self sustainability to drive itself as a series of economic activities.
Last month, however, an emergency meeting of the president and state governors was prompted by an increase in incidents of insecurity in and around the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. The most consequential decision of that meeting was a decision to begin the implementation of the long canvassed introduction of State Police as a silver bullet to end insecurity in the country.
One of the strongest arguments advanced by advocates of a State Police system is local knowledge and proximity to the community origins of criminality around the country. This argument is not new. Nor are we just being introduced to perspectives about how to solve insecurity in the country.
Given the picture of the multi dimensional nature of our insecurity, no single item agenda can deal with the problem. State Police is fraught with many weaknesses. It is likely to be commandeered by ambitious state governors into private political weapons. The operatives could become terror squads who use their new found power and uniforms to torment innocent people. State Police can further divide the country, terrorize the people they are supposed to protect and reduce the effectiveness of the existing national police force. Misuse of the powers of the State Police can further divide the country. After all, before the civil war, we had regional police formations. They became part of the divisive forces that had to be neutralized to reunify the country in 1970.
It is undeniable that one of the benefits of over four decades of military rule and the civil war is the emergence of a unified police and military command. That benefit cannot be wiped away by the present anxiety over insecurity. Nothing has so far happened in our national security situation that invalidates or overrides the advantages of national integration in matters of police or military command and national security control. On the contrary, what our situation requires is a serious interrogation of the overall internal security situation in the country to determine why the existing structure has not quite served us well enough.
We are under policed. The police has been overwhelmed for years in terms of personnel and equipment. Equipment and recruitment in the police has not matched our population growth and the rate of sophistication of the criminal enterprise. Similarly, the military has in the post civil war era found itself in roles that have degraded its operational capability and professional advancement. The involvement of the military and entire gamut of national security apparatus in internal security has militated against real professional development of the various services. Our military is today involved in civil security operations in all of our 36 states and Abuja.
As indicated earlier, the profile of our internal security challenges presents a complex picture that may not have fully dawned on the present state. At the end of the civil war, the enemy was either an external aggressor or internal criminals. The civil populace wanted to be at peace after the trauma of war. While a war -tested military was adequate for the former role, the police was more than adequate for the latter task of keeping the peace. The military is defined in its role. Its rules of engagement are self -defining: defend or be conquered. The police is a civil force with rules of engagement circumscribed by democracy and the civil rights of free citizens.
Towards the end of the Babangida regime, a different internal security picture began to emerge. A different type of civil unrest became more manifest. Inter communal violence began to feature among groups that had coexisted for years. Between the Jukun and their neighbours, in the Zango Kataf area of Southern Kaduna, in parts of the Niger Delta etc. Sections of the country began to witness problems of ethno national integration. Even within the newly created states, issues of inter communal co -existence began to show up. There was a perception then than the task of nation building was largely uncompleted and still needed to be fine -tuned. A different type of trouble maker was emerging. Armed militants intent on challenging the federal might were in the horizon.
The new forms of violent self -assertion were more than the police could deal with but a little less ferocious than what a full military engagement was required to deal with. The necessity was therefore for an intermediate force; something not as tame and civil as the police and also not as ferocious and terminal as the military. Thus was born the idea of the National Guard. Unfortunately, this idea came too late in Babangida’s troubled political transition programme. Opposition to the possibility of a Babangida self- perpetuation ploy also became part of the opposition to the idea of a National Guard. For the political class, no good or disinterested idea could come from the beleaguered military administration. Both were thrown away with the same birth water.
Here we are once again with an insecurity challenge that literally re-writes the challenge that was envisioned by the authors of the National Guard over 30 years ago. The idea of the National Guard was to have a uniform national organization but with substantial state government control on deployment. It should be a mid intensity force that is civil enough to realize that the criminals and trouble makers in each state are first and foremost Nigerians with full civic rights. It however needs to be taken more seriously than the police at the local government office who separates domestic fights and settles quarrels among siblings.
The National Guard should be under the ultimate control of the president as commander-in-chief without whose endorsement no state governor has the power to deploy the National Guard. But the National Guard needs to be composed of state contingents who are familiar with the local terrain.
In the United States, the National Guard is an offshoot of the army. It is made up of army reservists who are called up for specific tours of duty for specific lengths of time annually. In times of national emergency above the call of the police but less intense than requiring the military, the army can advise the president to call in the National Guard. The desirable Nigerian National Guard should be a variant of this format.
On no account must we establish and equip a separate state police force and place it under the control of our emergent crop of imperial governors. That would be an invitation to quick anarchy
My birthday anniversary is today, the 17th of March. But I prefer to sing the blues this time because I feel blue.
Folks around me know that I don't spare any moment that calls for gathering friends for a time to enjoy culinary delights, assorted drinks and pleasant music. And on each birthday anniversary since my liberation, I usually use the day to drink the joy of being alive; hence, I live out my fancies. So, I have had several significant birthday anniversary celebrations in recent years.
On my birthday, I once travelled to Stockholm, Sweden, to enjoy singing along at the Abba Museum. It was like a dream come true after Assad Hassan Alvi of blessed memory first played Abba music to my hearing in 1982.
In 2022, Toyin Dawodu and a few friends helped me organise a big event at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, to mark my birthday and launch LawTimes.Ng. The ambience of that evening was electric. The food setting was otherworldly, and the conviviality among friends that night was surreal. The Distinguished Senator Ita Enang and Otunba Gbenga Onayiga led the 'big boys' in a show of massive solidarity. And some of the many beautiful women who have supported me so far were there. I was simply creating memories.
In 2023, I got the most significant exposure ever on global television when the dream maker, Prince Nduka Obaigbena, flew me on his private jet to Warri to host the Delta State Governorship debates, which aired live on the Arise News channel. I had to contend in the spirit, the night after successfully co-hosting the debates, whether the prophetic was correct to have declared that I had a brighter future in the media than practising law. I fought principalities and powers so viciously to graduate from UNIBEN and to be called to the Nigerian Bar, I am called to be in the media but law, I must practise. I do appear to be at rest from such kind of spiritual warfare, but I trust the Almighty God to see me through life's battles, present and coming phases.
After 50 years, it seems life is just about to start because so many things are yet to be done. Hence, I pray that I don't die before my time. Not because I like this life so much. There isn't really much in it, after all. But I am fixated on completing my task here on earth. Some legacies must be built, and children must be parented to fulfil their destiny; hence, there is no more time to waste. So the prayer is that our days here on earth be complete before being transported to the other side.
As I mark my birthday anniversary this year today, I will not celebrate as usual because my heart is aching about the state of affairs in our country.
Today, across the country, in Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto and many other parts of the country, there are mourning families whose loved ones are currently in captivity in kidnappers' dens, yet life appears to be normal as constituency projects of Senators and allegations of budget padding are dominating the headlines. Sadly, the government appears to be at its wits end in tackling Nigeria's present security and economic crises.
I will not celebrate, yet I am thankful for Paul the Apostle admonished in his letter to the Thessalonians, that we should give thanks in connection with everything (in any situation).
I will not celebrate like I would have wanted. Instead, I will be praying that the Almighty God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, visit our country and deliver us from this present political and economic quagmire
That is why I will not celebrate; rather, I'll be singing the blues because I feel blue of the situation in Nigeria.
I will sing the blues like African slaves in history working on American slave farms. So anyone who cares for a time of musical contemplation with a bit of cheer can join me this afternoon for some sombre yet cheerful karaoke and sing-a-long sessions. It is my birthday!
Frank Tietie
Lawyer, Executive Director of Citizens Advocacy for Social Economic Rights (CASER) and
Arise News (Legal) Analyst, writes from Abuja
At the LEADERSHIP Conference and Awards 2023 which held recently in Abuja, Professor Kingsley Moghalu, a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), delivered an adrenalin-pumping keynote which ruffled not a few feathers, even as the appreciative audience applauded his brilliant and thought-provoking presentation.
But what exactly should anyone expect from such a great mind, public intellectual and authority on political economy? Going by his antecedents, Prof Moghalu shoots straight and does not like beating about the bush. He delivered an excellent Masterclass which will resonate in the public and private sectors for a long time to come.
The economic challenges that we face today, Prof. Moghalu pointed out, are the result of continuous mismanagement over the years, yet those responsible always go scot-free. “The past 10 years have been particularly ruinous,” he said. Moghalu spoke from his heart as an economist, professional, technocrat, and patriot – not as a politician.
Clearly, he was not interested in any blame game; his aim was to proffer solutions to our seemingly intractable economic problems. The best way to solve a problem, he said, is to know what caused it.
Speaking on the topic, “Nigeria’s distressed economy: Which way forward?” the keynote speaker explained that every choice we make has consequences, but we have no choice over the combined consequences of the choices that we have made.
When a country like Nigeria that is so blessed with human and natural endowments refuses to achieve its full potential, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Our GDP per capital, as Prof. Moghalu told his attentive and bewildered audience, is only $2,000 in more than 60 years of nationhood which he described as a “testament of failure.”
That kind of report is shocking and deeply troubling, and it calls for serious interrogation of our economic fundamentals if we truly want to join the league of developed nations.
How do we undo the period of the locusts? The issues that Moghalu raised in his presentation are not exactly new, but he wondered why rising unemployment, extreme poverty, debt distress and revenue challenge have refused to go away.
If we add the illegal ways and means lending of N30 trillion, unprecedented corruption, hyperinflation and the hunger in the land which the keynote speaker also listed in his paper as problems we must address urgently, it means all hands must be on deck, no matter our political persuasion or where we come from.
If we know what are economic problems are, why can’t we fix them? What is holding us back? When we have experts like Prof. Moghalu pointing the way forward, why has it been difficult to act on their recommendations?
The answers are not far-fetched. One, we politicise the best ideas and actionable plans; two, we weaponise tribe, region and religion, and three, corruption - the big elephant in the room – has remained a major albatross.
Moghalu explained that “ideas rule the world,” but he also knows that we have never lacked good ideas or policies; the other elephant in the room has been poor implementation of policies by the enemies of Nigeria. They know themselves.
Having situated what the problems are, Moghalu went on to make recommendations on how we can navigate our way out of the crisis. But he provided a caveat: the crisis and its effects will last for three to five years.
If we are truly serious about fixing the myriad of economic problems, five years is not a long time, but the political leadership under President Bola Tinubu must come up with a winning strategy as we have seen in the USA, UK, Germany, UAE, Singapore, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, etc.
In the case of UAE, Moghalu provided data to explain how the country’s economy was transformed. By 1971, 90 percent of UAE’s GDP depended on oil but it is now less than 30 percent arising from a deliberate strategy of development away from oil. He also said that UAE’s GDP grew more than 247 times in 50 years – a remarkable economic growth index indeed.
It would appear that the unprecedented assault on the CBN is giving Prof. Moghalu sleepless nights and grief, and he said it must stop. How did we get here? Having played an active role at the CBN as a deputy governor for financial system stability, he is obviously disappointed and pained at what the CBN has turned into.
It is evident that the unbridled political assault on the independence of the Central Bank since 2014 is at the heart of most of our economic problems today. How will Godwin Emefiele defend his tenure as CBN governor? It will be nice to hear his own side of the story – that is if he chooses to write his memoirs or grant media interviews.
Moghalu praised President Tinubu’s decision to remove petrol and forex subsidies, describing the decision as “bold and correct.” He said that we could no longer afford to pay petrol subsidy or defend the naira artificially – the double whammy and hydra headed problems that eroded our foreign reserves.
He also said Yemi Cardoso, CBN governor, acted well by raising MPR (monetary policy rate).by 400 basis points to 22.75 percent on February 27 – a new record high since 2007, and above forecasts of 21 percent. The aim is to tighten rates and money supply to rein in inflation. Well done, Yemo.
However, Prof. Moghalu went on to identify three “strategic errors,” or, if you like, blunders, that the Tinubu administration made. He said it loud and clear that he was not attacking the government with his comments, but he believes that there are lessons to be learned by everyone, except, of course, those who earn their daily bread sabotaging the economy and de-marketing Nigeria.
In fact, he said that we must not waste the current economic crisis as it presents an opportunity to re-build the country. The three mistakes, he noted, were: 1.) the precipitate nature of the reform policies; 2.) the exchange rate unification that occurred in a loose monetary environment which contributed to the naira’s race to the bottom, and 3.) it took too long for the cabinet to be formed, and it was predominantly political.
In a nutshell, if we had a tight monetary policy, the demand pressure on the dollar would have reduced. It goes without saying that when you prioritise politicians over technocrats, there’s no way we will not pay the price.
Based on his research and findings, Moghalu went on to present a dashboard of seven problematic areas which he believes caused our present predicament.
They are: 1.) absence of nationhood, 2.) bad governance in Nigeria’s national life, 3.) adhoc-ism and lack of strategy, 4.) absence of philosophy and knowledge, 5.) financialisation and de-industrialisation, 6.) irregular power supply (let there be light!) and 7.) population crisis.
In order to craft the right strategy to overcome our economic challenges, we must first know whether we are operating a capitalist, socialist or a mixed economy.
Moghalu said in our free market type of economy with capitalist orientation, the economic system must guarantee property rights, unleash innovation and that access to capital is non-negotiable. An economy built on innovation, he explained, is the secret of the rise of great nations.
Rich people, he continued, have access to capital but how many of them re-pay their loans when they are due? For Nigeria to develop its productive base, Moghalu prescribed that SMEs – they constitute the engine of the economy – must have access to capital.
Since liquidity is critical, the political economist recommended that the federal government should raise a N20 trillion bond to develop three strategic sectors in three years: railways, housing and agriculture. He described the proposal as Project 3-in-3 which is capable of putting about five million Nigerians to work.
Moghalu also listed the following prescriptions: a vibrant fiscal policy, end oil theft and corruption, cut the cost of governance that is bleeding the economy, CBN must continue its monetary tightening, and Nigeria should carefully consider borrowing between $20 billion and $30 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that would serve as a stabilisation fund and life line.
The corruption-laden palliative economy, he said, must be abolished immediately. He also did not mince words when he said that our national and subnational budgets legalise corruption because between 40 percent and 50 percent of the budgets are usually not accounted for; they simply disappear like the morning dew.
He believes that the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI) should sell some of our assets to raise additional funds to reflate the economy.
Moghalu also strongly recommended that President Tinubu should create a full time Economic Advisory Council (EAC) made up of seven wise men and women. The idea behind the EAC is to build an economy that can function, adding that fixing the economy cannot be a part-time job.
He was very clear about the composition of the council: they must be experts with established credentials in agricultural economics, business economics, fiscal policy, industrial policy, trade policy, industrial policy and development economics.
How well are some of the ministers performing? Probably not good enough and we should not be surprised to see a cabinet shake-up by May 29 which Moghalu also recommended. Such a moved, he believes, will boost investor-confidence.
The keynote speaker accused banks of hoarding US dollars. He asked the CBN to go hard on bank CEOs and take action against erring banks. Why should they become part of a criminal enterprise sabotaging the economy?
Another strategic policy prescription is that the government should work towards achieving 20 megawatts of electricity within three years which should be tied to our productive base to enhance industrialisation.
Finally, Moghalu is confident that we can beat the crisis, but President Tinubu must have the political will to insulate our institutions from politics, and avoid knee-jerk reactions because of policies that are not well thought out. It is common practice for our political leaders to mix politics and governance which is clearly a recipe for disaster.
After all said and done, only Nigerians can make Nigeria a productive economy and better place. Moghalu is of the view that Nigeria is too important to fail. If Nigeria fails, he said, then we have all failed.
To avoid failure, Moghalu said we must do away with corruption, nepotism, tribalism, cronyism and mediocrity. Let us have a new resolve to replace these unproductive adjectives with meritocracy, strategy, discipline, competence, and integrity in governance.
Thank you Professor Kingsley Moghalu for the deep insights on, and critical analysis of, the Nigerian economy and your bold recommendations which, by the way, some consultants get paid for. You truly earned the standing ovation that you received for your honesty and scholarship.
Braimah is a global public relations and marketing strategist. He is also the publisher/editor-in-chief of Naija Times (https://ntm.ng) and Lagos Post (https://lagospost.ng), and can be reached via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Emem woke up suddenly. She didn’t know what startled her out of sleep. She sat up and could hear movements. Was there a rat in the house? Then she listened again. It was water falling on a hard surface. But it was not raining. She pushed aside the window blind and saw the most traumatic, strange and confusing sight of her life. Her husband of 20 years, the father of her twins boys who were undergraduates, was there bathing naked, chanting something. Incarnations? Prayers? Well, the covered calabash he was scooping soap, black soap, from told the rest of the story.
When we say or hear that a wife should step back from a marriage that has become life-threatening, what most of us think is that it is about physical abuse, wife battering or husband battering. Well, there are more things than kicking in the teeth of a spouse that can be life-threatening. One of them is resort to diabolical or fetish ways to manipulate or even eliminate your spouse, for whatever reasons.
Like Emem found out to her shock and dismay that night. She was too scared to confront Emeka when he finished his ‘black bath’. Indeed, she dived right back under the duvet and pretended to be fast asleep. Of course, she didn’t sleep a wink the rest of the night. Who would? She didn’t know if the sight she just beheld would be followed by beheading. She didn’t know if her husband was going to continue the diabolical session in some other way in their room.
Emem couldn’t look at the husband in the eyes the following morning. She became afraid generally around Emeka. She couldn’t eat if the food was bought by Emeka. The usual suya and barbecue chicken he bought every Friday on his way home suddenly became suspicious, dreaded and some sort of sacrifice in her imagination, even without tasting it. She simply couldn’t leave her drink with Emeka.
‘I became extremely cautious around him. I searched through his wardrobe and found a lot of fetish stuff. I noticed he had fresh incisions just above his buttocks. I started paying more attention to his conversations, movements and habits.
‘I found out a lot of things I never thought possible in my marriage. But the camel’s back broke the day I saw him shaking hands with two of his friends with his left hand. I was born and bred in Ibadan and I know what that meant. They didn’t know I saw them and I pretended all was well, but after that I knew my marriage was in trouble. The children were in school most of the times, leaving me alone with the domestic staff. I was afraid to let my husband make love to me. What if he has incisions on his dick? I was afraid in my own bed, in my kitchen, everywhere. The only place I felt safe at was in my office.
‘Emeka started making strange demands that coincided with the few times we had sex. Right after, he would ask me for huge sums of money or to see my will or to be made Chairman of my company. If I refused, I fell ill, got hospitalized.’
Emem described a very evil pattern that left her without much choice but to step back.
‘I kept asking myself why it was only Lagos that I fell ill. Never in Abuja or Port-Harcourt.’
So, was Emeka trying to harm or even kill his wife to take over her wealth and business? Do men do it too? Of course, women adapt to things like that. We are witches, wealth grabbers, gold diggers who marry for money, trade sex for money, kill our husbands to inherit their wealth. Which is why there are more widows than widowers. Isn’t that the evil brush the society and little-minded people use to tag women? Or have you heard of widowers being subjected to head-shaving and drinking water used to bathe their wives’ corpses? Do you hear of widowers being thrown out of their homes so their late wives’ families could strip and pillage and generally make the widower miserable?
If you do not have at least 10 examples of husbands who are wizards or widowers as victims, begin to believe when I say men, still just a handful of them, do juju to inherit or to dispossess their wives. They connive and conjure. They charm and chant. They consult evil diviners to harm and disarm their wives so they can take over their wealth and lives. These few evil men put things on their tongues to command their wives to hand over their hard earned money or businesses to them. They blow ‘dark powder’ over their sleeping wives to turn her into ‘mumu’.
You don’t believe me? Well, may it never happen to your daughter. You think I’m exaggerating? Ask victims! And in any case would you still believe me if your sister has three cars but hops on okada to work so her husband could pick and choose which of the cars to drive to work and return to take which one to take to the club to hang out with his friends? Yet, he has no business address.
My point? Marriage does not just become life-threatening when a man starts slapping his wife around and beating her till she goes into premature labour. Marriage does not only become life-threatening when a husband verbally abuses his wife until she does not know whether she’s going or coming, lazy or hard working and loses herself, her self-esteem and self-confidence.
There is physical abuse, emotional abuse and spiritual abuse. The last one, if not acted upon quickly, is usually fatal and irreversible if the victim and her family realise it too late or explain it away with stuff like ‘juju is not real’. ‘juju is bullshit,’ and ‘I don’t believe in such rubbish’. This is a different clime, and as one of my friends, an ambassador’s wife would say, ‘our spiritual environment can be very toxic.’
Thinks about these things.
French political philosopher, Baron de Montesquieu, in his seminal work, The Spirit of Laws, 1748, posited that the executive, legislative and judicial functions of government should be allocated to separate and independent bodies, with none of them superior or more powerful than the other; so, they can act as checks and balances on one another. In one word, they are co-terminus and equal in powers.
John Locke had earlier argued that where legislative and executive powers belong to separate hands, then, the protection of all members of society can be as high as possible. This is what is called the principle or theory of separation of powers and its aim is to prevent too much power in one branch of government and allow for checks and balances.
Remember that Lord Acton had said that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority”
It is that “tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority” that is at the bottom of the constituency projects or padding of the 2024 budget that has ensnared the National Assembly. Constituency projects are an aberration; it is corruption of the functions and duties of the Legislature.
Law makers have two functions: To make laws and to have oversight functions on the Executive; that is, to act as checks on the Executive. They are not to begin to hijack and exercise executive functions or powers. They are not to even share executive functions or powers with the Executive, in the same way the Executive is not supposed to dictate to the law makers as regards their legislative and oversight functions.
Our legislators have fished in trouble waters since the Fourth Republic. Like the angels who abandoned their estate in heaven to eat the forbidden fruit among the daughters of men, the National Assembly members who took money for constituency projects have abandoned their own duty post to hanker after filthy lucre. There is no argument that can wash them clean of corruption.
The argument that they want to ensure fair and equitable distribution of projects all over the country does not wash. Without becoming contractors, they can ensure equity before passing the budget. And from what we have seen, constituency projects are a huge scam and corruption personified.
The constituencies seldom get value for money. Carcasses of constituency projects litter the landscape of Nigeria. The system employed is opaque and not transparent. Who determines what? Who handpicks the contractors? Who supervises? Who dispenses funds? Who ascertains that quality job is done? Who holds the law makers to account? Constituency projects are sleaze money, no more!
Any law maker who defends constituency project is a thief, pure and simple. Those who collect hundreds of millions of Naira for constituency projects should not only desist but should also return the money so collected to the national coffers without delay!
FEEDBACK
The rumour of coup d'etat is the hand work of those who thought they can prevent Tinubu from being the president. Perhaps, this is their last joker! Tinubu’s decision on removal of petroleum subsidy is the best. Waiting a minute later, he would not have been able to do it. What we need at this time is to cooperate with the president in rebuilding the country. The governors should come to terms with the reality that they have a great role to play in securing their respective state. - Kola Oloye.
No coup is coming up in Nigeria; the military is already as corrupt as the politicians. I think they enjoy sharing the national cake quietly without the burden of governability. Anyone planning a coup will be silenced within. What Nigerians need is re-orientation, to be truthful and to worship God in truth. Everyone cannot, and should not, own or build a house, for example. The quest for material things by everyone and the unnecessary outdoing of every other person in a negative competitive environment is what is adversely killing the country. - Dr. Demola Sodeinde.
Nigerians are optimistic that Nigeria will come out of the numerous difficulties and challenges created by ourselves. This recovery will only manifest when corruption and fraudulent activities by all of us are tackled headlong. The government should listen to the people, and their policies should have a human face. You will not expect the economy to grow when businesses are folding up and relocating to neighbouring countries. The struggle by the government to woo investors is a mirage because the cost of doing business in Nigeria is on the high side. Look at insecurity everywhere! The cost of diesel and PMS rises daily. What of electricity supply? Will investors bring in an enabling environment to do their business here in Nigeria? No! Some of the people in the leadership boat of Nigeria’s recovery have a record of "the good, the bad and the ugly." How will such people perform? The judiciary, all arms of government, must rise up to save the country from total collapse. Politicians who have failed Nigerians are not ready to quit the stage for genuine politicians to come on board. Some of the politicians who milked their state dry are still occupying various elective and appointive positions. Some of them are now law makers while others are to execute the policies of government. The judiciary has a big role to play in salvaging the economy. Politicians who have skeletons in their cupboards should not run to the judiciary to shield their evil. The judiciary should let erring politicians face the music. I am not an advocate of military take-over but let us ask ourselves what military rule vis-a-vis civilian rule has achieved in Nigeria. The military have ruled for much longer, their achievements towards national unity, economic emancipation, and security are glaring for all to see and judge. The military single-handedly built the federal capital territory and some notable infrastructure in Lagos. The civilian rule that we refer to as democracy is a demonstration of craze, according to one songs-writer (musician). The only achievement of civilian rule is the GSM. Considering the fact that some Nigerians who are highly-placed are not interested in the unity of the country, then, Prof. Banji Akintoye’s suggestion for a peaceful dissolution becomes sellable. The attitude of some Nigerians for self, region or tribe alone must change. There is strength in diversity, and on the unity of Nigeria I stand! - Dr. Eclarke.
Military rule is an aberration. 1966 to 1979: Thirteen years of uninterrupted military misrule. 1983 to 1999, another sixteen years of military misrule. 1999 to 2007 witnessed eight years of our Number One citizen being the military exchanging uniforms for “agbada”. Number 2 citizen was a controversial Customs officer and the Number 3, (Senate president) was also a retired military officer. Many of the senators and House of Representatives members were ex-military officers. 2007 to 2015 was a period of confusion when the elected president died in office and a cabal refused to allow the acting president to assume office as president. 2015 to 2023 witnessed another military man becoming the president of Nigeria. 29 years of straight military rule plus 16 years of military presidency, that's a whopping 45 years of military misrule in a young country like Nigeria, compared with just about 13 years of civil rule. The five years of the First Republic witnessed far-reaching development in some parts of the country. The long years of military misrule have done so much havoc to the development of this country. The way to go is not to bring in another military intervention. Let's allow the military perform the functions for which they are recruited and trained: to defend the territorial integrity of the nation! Pa EK Odeleye.
I do not support military dictatorship but, perhaps, it is needed to reset our country! - Azuka Jebose.
President Tinubu needs to focus on policies that safeguard the future of Nigeria from potential threats posed by the Fulani tribe. Given rotational presidency, power will eventually shift to the North after eight years. It is crucial to prevent a Fulani man from becoming the next president because that will definitely reverse every progressive policy being put in place now. The current government should prioritize policies that will empower the Hausa community and liberate them from Fulani dominance. We need to ensure that when power rotates back to the North, it goes to a Hausa president, not a Fulani. History has shown that Fulani-led governments tend to hinder Nigeria's progress and even damage its economy, as seen in past administrations. We must learn from these experiences and enact measures to break free from Fulani hegemony, allowing Nigeria to thrive and ensuring a brighter future for the nation. If we can achieve this, then, the battle for the progress of Nigeria is half-won. - Idowu Faleye.
If we are not to play any ostrich and deceive ourselves, the best that should happen now is military termination of the current democracy because the governance Nigerians have got from the political actors since 1999 has been mediocre and punitive. We have only always bred a new band of thieves in governance that are increasingly decapitating the life of ordinary Nigerians through rapacious stealing of state resources and intolerable inflation on the honest labour of the average Nigerian. A military government will clear all the imbeciles murdering Nigerians and kidnapping for money on a daily basis, set up a new constituent assembly to redraft the Constitution and adopt a new model of government recommended by the assembly before the country returns again to elections. This is the desirable break that the country needs. Nigerians have justifiably lost interest in these thieving politicians. They are crooks basically and a crooked man or gang cannot lead any nation anywhere other than Armageddon. - Bashiru Wahhab.
May God give us good leaders! - Gbenga Osinaike.
It has always been said that the worst civilian regime is better than the best military administration. But then, the question is: Are we actually having true civilian rule in Nigeria based on free and fair elections? This is because there is no true democracy in Nigeria. What we are having is riggo-cracy. That is, most of the elections in Nigeria that would have brought about true democracy have been based on election rigging. Therefore, any civilian rule derived through the rigging of election should be seen as an aberration, just like a military coup. The civilians who found themselves in office through election manipulation should be treated as 'civilian coup plotters'. I quite disagree that past military regimes have not contributed to the economic growth of Nigeria. Many of Nigeria’s major roads, especially, rural-urban roads, were built by past military regimes. Bad governance would always invite military rule. - Dr. JF Olukotun.
Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/ Editor-in-chief of THE WESTERNER newsmagazine. He writes the ON THE LORD'S DAY column in the Sunday Tribune and TREASURES column in New Telegraph newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.
[OPINION] As Withdrawal Of Ruby Onwudiwe’s Nomination For CBN’s Board Evokes Stalemate Comments On X - Isaac Asabor
AdminJust as it is no more news that President Bola Tinubu recently asked the senate to confirm the appointment of Ruby Onwudiwe as a member of the board of directors of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), it is surprising news that he has stepped down her nomination as a member of the apex bank.
It will be recalled that the president’s request for her nomination was contained in a letter addressed to Senate President Godswill Akpiabio, and read at plenary on Wednesday in Abuja.
In the letter, according to a NAN, the president said the confirmation request complied with provisions of Section 10 (1) of the CBN Establishment Act 2007.
“I am pleased to present for confirmation by the senate, the appointment of Dr Ruby Onwudiwe as a member of the CBN board of directors,” Tinubu said.
“The Senate is invited to kindly note that Onwudiwe is a replacement for Mr. Kalu Eke, due to the unavailability of Eke for the position.
“It is my hope, therefore, that the senate will consider and confirm in its usual expeditious manner, the appointment of Onwudiwe.
“Please accept the assurances of my highest regards.”
The new nomination comes one month after Tinubu asked the senate to confirm five people as directors of the board of the CBN.
The directors of the board are; Robert O. Agbide, Ado Yakubu Wanga, Murtala Sagaley, Urom Eke, and Olayinka Aliyu.
On February 29, the senate confirmed four people as members of the board of the CBN after a nominee from the south-eastern region rejected the offer, citing a “conflict of interest”.
However, it was gathered that immediately after the news of her nomination was public, a screenshot of her social media surfaced where she flaunted her support for the Labour Party (LP) and its Presidential candidate, Peter Obi in the last election and a display of the result of the presidential election at a polling unit in Lekki part of Lagos where the LP candidate won.
The screenshot riled up All Progressives Congress (APC) supporters who protested strongly to senior government officials on the abnormality of the nomination of an opposition figure to serve at the apex bank.
No Nigerian is praying for the failure of the apex bank, and the federal government. It is the most important point to keep in mind as one follows the comments being made in reaction to the withdrawal of Onwudiwe’s nomination on the board of the apex bank.
According to Journalist KC whose X handle is @kc_journalist in a post he rated to be breaking news in the wee hour of today, March 14, 2024, “President Tinubu withdraws Ruby Onwudiwe’s nomination as CBN Board member after receiving complaints from top APC members over Ruby’s support for Peter Obi in the 2023 presidential election, per WesternPost
“Senator Opeyemi Bamidele and Senator Solomon Adeola pointed out the impropriety of the nomination to President Tinubu last night during his meeting with Senate President Akpabio and other senators.
“Some top APC supporters had earlier protested strongly to senior government officials on the abnormality of the nomination of an opposition figure to serve at the apex bank after the news of her nomination.
“Tinubu is now expected to announce a new nominee from the South East”.
In his reaction to the post on X, Olumide Adesina@olumidecapital commented, “This is highly unfortunate, to say the least, such a position should be based on merit and not by political affiliation”
In a different comment, Adesina reacted, “The President is the leader of the country not just a ruling party. The financial industry should be handled with professionalism”
Another commentator on the popular social media platform, Ola’Lekan @theolamilekan commented, “She’s not the only person that can merit that position from SE. She will leak confidential documents if she’s hired. She’s Obidient blood and she doesn’t hide it. More so, election has consequences and this is one of them.”
However, while this writer is opposed to patronage appointment which is unarguably becoming the hallmark of the ongoing Tinubu-led government, it is salient to recall that a contest for superiority between patronage and merit has been an unresolved issue since 1999 when Nigeria transitioned to a democratic system of government.
Without any iota of exaggeration, this battle for supremacy arises from the fact that political connectedness, ethnic fantasy, religious identity, party affiliation, and other primordial considerations have become dominant criteria in determining who should be given political appointments in every passing political dispensation.
In many nations, the head of state is nonpartisan, even if the prime minister and parliament are chosen in partisan elections. Such heads of state are expected to remain neutral with regard to partisan politics. In a number of parliamentary or semi-presidential countries, some presidents are non-partisan or receive cross-party support.
From the onset, being in government has been viewed as an opportunity to empower one’s people over others with devastating consequences. In my view, given the parlous state of the economy at the moment, there is an urgent need to eschew patronage appointments and tap from the pool of human resources that can equally be found in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP) and other political parties as all the talents Tinubu needs to succeed cannot be exclusively be found in the APC.
Those who say “any publicity is good publicity” might not be so right after all. In fact, I think they are wrong. At least they might have been right in the past, but not anymore, not in this era of empathy and “life on stage” where everyone now has a platform to air their views, where most like to be liked and followed and where many, regardless of depth, can actually influence the views and choices of others. There is a brand and a company that I think will agree with me that not any publicity is good publicity because of what they are going through.
The company is Erisco Food Limited, makers of tomato paste and other food products, led by Chief Eric Umeofia.
It is easy to see the link between the name Eric and Erisco. One can wish for anything good or bad, but I doubt that anyone from the founder of Erisco Food and all his well-wishers as well as his enemies could have imagined let alone wished for or against making the list of Amnesty International’s concern. Yet, that is what recently happened. How did Eric and Erisco go from tomato paste to social media trouble and amnesty list lies in the link between Eric and Erisco. Let us be clear: Chioma infuriated Eric, but it was Eric that made Chioma famous and took Erisco to amnesty.
Here are some context and chronicles of salient events for all.
In the middle of the month of September 2023, a relatively unknown social media user with the name Chioma Egoji, published a comment on her Facebook page, saying: “I went to buy tin tomatoes yesterday that I will use to make stew. I didn’t see Gino and Sonia. So, I decided to buy this one. When I opened it, I decided to taste it. Omo! Sugar was just too much. Ha, biko, let me know if you have used this tin tomato before because this is an Ike gwuru situation.”
It is worth noting here that Mrs. Chioma Egoji was till that moment just one lady trying to make stew and whose purpose of commenting was to get other social media users and comments. The more the merrier. It is a new but common practice. There was a time when people kept their reflections and experience private. That era is gone. In the new world, private is dead. People wear their hearts on their sleeves.
The reaction of Erisco Food to this comment was to call the police and get Chioma Egoji arrested. The police promptly swung into action and not only arrested this woman who dared make negative comments about the tomatoes she bought with her own money, the Nigerian Police Force also issued a high-profile public statement on the matter, making the NPF look like the Nigerian Paste Force.
To the Erisco Food team, the comments made by Chioma Egoji was an attempt to damage their brand and company and they felt the need to fight back. The apex of the fight was the direct intervention of Chief Eric Umeofia himself, who went on national TV to say he is willing to let his business die rather than give an inch to Chioma Egoji.
Against their intentions, the first consequence of the reaction of Erisco Food was to make Chioma Egoji popular. People are even calling her a reviewer. I wonder if she appreciates that. The popularity of Chioma Egoji and the stances of the Eric in Erisco have made people of different geopolitical colourations to stand with Chioma Egoji and to start a campaign to boycott Erisco food products. We have not seen their sale reports yet but from the number of people talking negatively about their company and brand, things cannot be good.
No need to pretend, readers of this page will know that I have a high propensity towards defending private businesses and entrepreneurs. Our bias for the corporate component of our society is very simple to understand: we believe businesses and the entrepreneurs bring to the table creation of job and wealth based on competence, innovation, creativity, knowledge of and deference to consumers. Faced with the kind of situation Erisco is going through due to this Chioma business, one is inclined to say let us find a way to save the business from boycott and save Chioma’s dignity and safety.
We must however be clear, the first party to err was Erisco Food. Their first sin was to ignore the golden rule that says “customer is king” in business. Customers are referred to as king not because they are always right, but because they should never be fought. Erisco Food had many professional choices. They could have ignored Chioma, engaged her in a positive way, proved her wrong, or get people to endorse the quality of their products.
Instead, they chose the risky path of an ego driven position that feels threatened and insulted. Erisco Food chose to make heard not the deliberated voice of a business that has responsibilities of employing hundreds of staff and catering to thousands of customers but the voice of a proud stubborn man who feels that because he has worked hard and has achieved a lot he should therefore not be questioned. Things don’t work that way as he is learning and as others should be cautioned.
With the position of Eric in Erisco, we are on a risky path where all is personal and nerves are frayed. All these with a national audience recording and applauding every statement and move. It will take more than a lot to get common sense back and for reconciliation to prevail. This is a test for Chief Eric Umeofia to see if he has friends who have the resolve to say “Erisco must be saved even against Eric” and that can tell him the truth and stand by him as he retraces his steps from risky to safety.
Join me if you can on X: @anthonykila, to continue these conversations.
. Kila is the Institute Director at CIAPS and can be reached via: www.ciaps.org.
In the spirit of Ramadan, I am republishing a revised version of an article I wrote in June 2017 in my defunct “Politics of Grammar” column about pig-based meats and foods that Muslims are forbidden from eating but which many of them who visit the West unwittingly eat on occasion because of their poly-appellativeness (my coinage for multiple names.)
The column was inspired by an encounter I had in 2015. A Muslim high court judge from Osun State nearly ate pepperoni pizza (pepperoni is a mixture of beef and pork) at a workshop for Nigerian judges that I facilitated here in the United States. I knew he was an observant Muslim because we’d prayed together, and he’d shared concerns about the ubiquity of pork in Western culinary choices.
During lunch break, I saw him with slices of pepperoni pizza amid several people. I beckoned to him to come immediately, but he was really hungry, so he said I should give him a few minutes to finish his food.
I know enough Yoruba to know that pig is called “alede” and eat is “je.” I combined the words to make a sentence that I didn’t think made much sense. He jumped out of his seat instinctively and asked me in English if what he was about to eat contained pork. I answered in the affirmative.
He went straight to the bathroom and vomited, even though he hadn’t eaten anything. I felt sorry for him. He refused to eat or drink anything thereafter.
Another inspiration for this column derives from the tales of distress and guilt I’ve heard from many Muslim visitors to the West who consumed pig meat or who were awfully close to doing so out of ignorance of the deceptive appellative trappings of many pork-based gastronomic products.
For instance, at least five Muslims have told me that they either ate or almost ate a pig-based meat product called “salami” because they were deceived by the lexical similarities between “salami” and “salam” (Arabic for “peace”) and were misled into thinking they were eating halal meat.
What could be more halal, they thought, than a meat that shares lexical and phonological similarities with “salam,” the short form of the Muslim, Arabic-derived greeting, As-salamu alaykum, and the root word of Islam itself?
In fact, many African Muslims bear the name Salami as the short form of Abdulsalam or “Abdus Salam (which stands for servant of the Peaceful, “salam” being one of the 99 names of Allah.) (Africans typically add a terminal vowel to every word or name. Thus, “Salam” becomes “Salami.”)
So how did pig meat come to share lexical similarities with the name of Allah and/or the short form of the most common greeting among Muslims, especially given that pork is prohibited in Islam?
A northern Nigerian Muslim who ate salami in London in ignorance told me he was sure that the choice of the name was a deliberate “Zionist plot to make Muslims eat pork.” That’s not true. First, Jews, like Muslims, are forbidden from eating pork. Second, the phonemic similarity between “salami” to “salaam” is actually accidental.
Salami is salted Italian pork sausage (more about this later.) “Salami” is derived from the Latin name for salt, which is “sal.” The Italian suffix “ame” is used to form collective nouns. For example, foglia, which means “leaf,” becomes fogliame when used as a collective noun. So salame actually literally means “salts,” but specifically salted meats. (“Salami” is the plural form of salame). The association of salami with salted pork came later.
Interestingly, this pork-based meat is called “salam” in Romanian, Bulgarian, and Turkish!
Well, there are few animals in the English language that trump “pig” in abundance of alternative names for it.
This includes names that indicate gender (such as “boar” for male pig and “sow” and “gilt” for female pig) and names that indicate age (such as “piglet,” “farrow,” or “shoat/shote” for young pigs).
A pig is also called a “hog,” a “swine,” a “grunter,” a “squealer,” a “sus scrofa,” a “porker,” and a “cobb roller.”
Most people know “pork” as the culinary noun for meat from pig, but there are way more pig-based foods and meats than “pork” that several people, especially Muslims who are prohibited from eating pork, are not familiar with. I list 14 more below as a public service.
1. “Bacon”: This is usually served during breakfast at homes and in hotels—along with eggs and sausage. It’s thin, sliced, salted, fried and brownish pork. It’s one of the most traditional culinary treats in the West. It’s so central to the gastronomy of the West that it appears in idioms such as “bring home the bacon,” which means to be the breadwinner, to be responsible for one’s family’s material wellbeing.
Most people know that bacon is derived from pig, but I have met many Muslim visitors to America, especially from Nigeria, who don’t know this. It’s also less commonly called “flitch.”
2. “Banger”: This is chiefly British English. Banger is pork cut into tiny pieces, seasoned, and stuffed in casings. The usual name for this elsewhere is “sausage” (see 3 below). It appears in collocations such as “banger and beans,” “bangers and mash,” etc.
3. “Bratwurst (or just brat)”: Just like “banger” is chiefly British, “bratwurst” is mostly German. It’s a popular German pork sausage, although it’s often mixed with beef. In America bratwursts are called “brats.” (Sausage is any type of minced meat, mostly pork, that is seasoned and stuffed in casings).
4. “Chitlings” or “chitlins” or “chitterlings”: It is the intestines of a pig, which American blacks ate as food during slavery because it was one of the few sources of protein available to them.
Several decades after slavery, chitlins (also spelled chitlings and chitterlings) are still an African-American delicacy. If you are a Muslim who wants to experience African-American culinary delights, often called “soul food,” be sure to avoid “chitlings.” It’s just a cute word for the intestines of pigs.
5. “Chops” or “pork chops”: I know “chop” means “eat” in West African Pidgin English. But in Standard English it can mean a small cut of meat. It usually, though, is a small cut of meat from cooked pig. That’s why the usual phrase is pork chops, but it is also frequently rendered as “chops,” and that’s where people unfamiliar with the culinary vocabularies of the West might be misled into thinking they are eating a small cut of beef or mutton, etc.
6. “Frank” or “Frankfurter”: This is a type of smooth, minced, smoked pork often served in a bread roll. It is sometimes made of beef or a mixture of beef and pork. It’s generally called “hot dog,” especially in American English, and it’s so named because some people suspected, without any proof, that in Germany, where it was invented in the city of Frankfurt, dog meat was surreptitiously inserted into the meat since Germans ate dogs up until the 20th century.
Other names for franks or Frankfurters are “dog,” “weenie,” “wiener,” “wienie,” and “wienerwurst.” Although hot dogs or Franks started in Germany, they have become a staple of American street cuisine.
Thankfully, there are now turkey hot dogs, beef hot dogs, and chicken hot dogs, but the most popular ones are the pork-based ones. It’s always good to ask before you buy.
7. “Gammon”: This is pork taken from the thighs of a pig. It’s derived from the Latin word “gamba,” which means leg. It’s also called jambon or, more commonly, ham.
8. “Kielbasa”: This is the Polish word for pork-based sausage, which has achieved widespread acceptance in American English, especially in northeastern United States. It’s also called “Polish sausage” because it’s originally from Poland.
9. “Liverwurst”: Sometimes people in the West grind the liver of pigs and stuff them in casings. Germans call it leberwurst, which has been Anglicized to liverwurst. It’s also called “liver pudding” or “liver sausage.” Wurst, as you’ve probably guessed, is German for sausage.
10. “Rasher”: This is another name for bacon. Note that because of increasing pressure from Muslims and Jews, there's now bacon or rasher made entirely from beef, turkey, chicken, or goat. If in doubt, ask.
11. “Ribs (or baby back ribs)”: This is meat from the ribs of a pig. But the term can seem like a generic reference to the ribs of any animal. It is also called back ribs or loin ribs.
12. “Pancetta”: It is Italian pork, derived from the belly of the pig. It is dried, salted, and chemically processed.
13. “Prosciutto”: As you’ve probably guessed, it’s also an Italian word. It is ham (see number 7 above) that has been dried and salted.
14. “Sowbelly”: It is salted pork cut from the belly. Other obvious names are “pork bellies” and “pork slab.”
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An Igbo proverb says that a dog does not become a leopard because it is addressed as one by its owner, or even the entire community. That is why you have the popular warning, which is often addressed to anyone perceived to be overrating himself: “Oke aha n’egbu nwa nkita” (a big name, or preposterous self-inflation, leads a low-grade domestic dog to its doom). Now imagine a place where dogs are called all manner of names, except their rightful name: ‘dog’.
Tell me, can you make sense of a world wherein everything you know is arbitrarily renamed? Will you even be able to easily retain your sanity and communicate meaningfully if everyone accepted the new names and carried on as if all was well? especially when there is no connection whatsoever between the names and what the entities really are.
Just picture this: An elephant is walking by and you hear everyone shouting “Oh, see that massive and lovely cockroach”! Then a lion is called ‘mosquito’ and a cow is called ‘toothbrush’. For good measure, it turns out also that what you had always known as, and called, a house is now called ‘groundnut’! Well, there you have it: A land affiliated to bedlam; wherein the criterion for sanity is pronounced irrationality.
Is that, perhaps, what our dear country has turned into today? A place where there is no real connection between government expenditure and the welfare of the citizens in whose names the expenses are ostensibly being incurred? A nation in which many of those parading the title of ‘leader’ at state and local government levels are everything a leader should not be? A land where loyalty means “I support you because you pay me and retain me to do whatever you want”. A nation beholden to tomfoolery perhaps, because its current crop of leaders imagine that truth is circumscribed by what they say and do in enclosed government chambers?
It is so pervading, so surreal, so benumbing, and also so profoundly revealing about how far we have travelled on the wrong road. We need a rectification of names!
The mayhem is such that whoever wants to really do anything meaningful here must first start at what we might just call the ethereal level. First specify, to yourself first of all, the true meaning and purpose of many things. This includes titles, institutions of state and even ordinary names. Can you restore their real names, in terms of getting public consciousness to actually internalize new usages? That means getting the people to use the appropriate designation of each entity when they address it?
Now, don’t start any arguments about Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ‘pictorial’ conception of language. Yes, it is true, as he said, that it is by the association of sounds and the objects touched or pointed at when the sounds are made that every child learns the meaning and names assigned to things in his environment as he grows. But does this apply to full grown adults who are not learning a new language?
Still on Wittgenstein, before returning to our core subject matter for today, it was actually St. Augustine, and not Wittgenstein, who first put forth what is described today in philosophical, philological and linguistic circles as the pictorial conception of language. That was in his book Confessions, wherein he engaged in a detailed personal mental walk-through of his life; beginning with the earliest memories he could recollect of his childhood.
Concerning the matter at hand, let us start by observing that to rectify anything is to restore or correct something about that thing. For instance, if there is a spelling, or entry, error against your name in a document, and the error is taken care of, we say that it has been rectified. So, what do we do when almost everything, and everyone, around us is wrongly designated? Budgets are excuses for fleecing the nation in the name of the people. Constituency projects are new names for subterfuge and organized but, back to the rectification of names!
It was worries like the foregoing that n propelled the Chinese thinker, Confucius, to propose the doctrine, or principle, or “Rectification of names” to his people. He taught his disciples that all would be well in any society if everyone played the roles assigned to him by name flawlessly. If father played the role of father, mother played the role of mother, leader played the role of leader, etc., then there would be no place from which corruption, impropriety and societal decay would come in. The catch, however, is that these roles may actually already be badly defined. In such a situation, it would mean reaffirming and reinforcing nothing but the entrenchment of what is wrong.
The question of “who” defines “father” for instance, and all the other concepts, is the catch and the trap set by Confucius. Once a social concept, or any concept at all, is wrongly defined, all is lost. And lost for good!
Take, for instance, the concepts of Yin and Yang, the active and passive principles in nature. A father is Yang to his son. The latter is Yin to his father, but yang to his wife and children. He must always obey his father and all elders and rulers. This places on the son the obligation of having to listen to, and obey, an entire chain of Yangs, even if he has ideas of his own. So, you must listen to your ignorant father, uninformed elders and misguided leaders, instead of venturing forth any fresh thoughts borne of contemporary experience.
Coming back to our issues here, and bearing in mind the extent of national decay at the moment, we must admit that our crop of leaders today are mostly victims, and willing collaborators in a generation of leaders and followers brought up on impunity, consumption and arbitrary use of state power for personal gains.
As was said on this page on 28th October 2016, under the Title ‘Symptoms of a Deep-Rooted Crisis”, that we are in a deep bind that took time to mature. The article said thus then: “The many powerful people whose interests differ from the national interest are partly responsible for the trajectory of most past regimes and presidents. So let us first calmly admit that our crises have had long gestation. To fail to do so is to ignore history, particularly the essential elements of our own history, and replace it with hysteria. The Nigerian nation has been run as a criminal enterprise for too long”.
It went further to say: “We have been building a mansion on quicksand and with pillars of straw. The soil, quicksand as it is, is further infested with two species of ants, called presumption and nepotism. These ants, which feed exclusively on straw, have been nibbling away for decades. They have left us with a hollow and painted frame that conceals a lie. This lie has been on parade for decades. It is described as an architectural masterpiece by casual observers. An architectural masterpiece that is not designed to withstand the wind? Now that the whirlwind has come, and the elements are in their element, radical modifications (in design and material) have become necessary”.
Against the background of what we are seeing everywhere today, especially the pretence that most people in leadership positions are concerned about the national interest, we must wake up to the fact that something stinks around here. The stench is getting worse by the hour. People are not bearing their real names and they are also not available to have their names rectified.
What was said here in October 2016 stands, namely: “It is not right that a nation should be undergirded by untruth. It is also not right that a nation should be under a political economy of decay and corruption, warehoused and propagated by a business and political elite that lives in denial. When old lies are told afresh by those who know they are lying, a time comes when even the liars themselves won’t be sure whether they are lying anymore. Now that we have brought up children who have seen shielded criminality as leadership, we have a nation wherein hiding under the instruments of state to violate natural justice, equity and good conscience makes you not guilty of any crime. Look at Nigeria today. The dominant motifs are (1) skewed values, (2) a flawed national psyche and (3) an aberrant leadership recruitment process. These motifs have given us several national ‘leadership pseudopodia’, or “false feet”.
Do we have, today, any intimations of Plato’s “philosopher king? A leader with correct knowledge of man’s duality and a broad knowledge of life? and who could also address everyday issues with an overarching vision that many do not possess? Not anymore. We are all now being nurtured in the available knowledge of wheeling and dealing. It is all about temporary gains, seasonal loyalty and debauched offerings.
The Platonic conception of human development as ‘the nurturing of character and the human person through the education of life’ is no more in vogue. Our founding fathers were not deal makers who were out to fill their pockets. They were ideas inventors and investors of repute. They were leadership entrepreneurs, with deeper than average knowledge, insight and vision. That is why they could fashion and nurture broad-based development projects. They designed holistic templates, with their eyes set on consolidation; in addition to mentoring others.
It is trite to say that the root of all leading civilisations, organizations and individuals in the last 400 years always rested on some philosophy of leadership, human capital management, or service delivery. So, what is our current leadership trajectory based on? Sustainable human, national, economic and political development, must be multi-dimensional; with spiritual, aesthetic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. National character and national development do not derive from a desperate alliance of mechanics, bicycle repairers, cobblers, one-eyed bricklayers, amoral young people pressing computer keyboards and allied tradesmen. If it were so, Japan would not be in its present quagmire of worry over the growing number of computer whiz kids committing suicide every other week.
As things stand today, we need a re-evaluation of all our values as a nation. Where are we headed exactly, and for what purpose? With our basic political, cultural, philosophical and spiritual, values in limbo, is it any surprise that we do not have enough people in the public space who can be seen as responsible managers of our lives and resources, as human beings? What are the core foundations of our nationhood – of our national political culture? What are we drilling into the average young Nigerian today; both young and old? As debauchery is on the ascendant everywhere today, it behooves us to consider a rectification of names for everyone.
QUOTE
“…all would be well in any society if everyone played the roles assigned to him by name flawlessly. If father played the role of father, mother played the role of mother, leader played the role of leader, etc., then there would be no place from which corruption, impropriety and societal decay would come in.
I had meant to write an article to explain recent economic decisions that are surely on their way to creating a new economy and helping the citizens with relief from the harsh economic climate. Nigerians are passing through what is called a cost-of-living crisis, akin to what citizens of European countries and the USA had seen about two years ago, even into last year. Inflation is the major culprit here, as it gallops in bounds in the face of stalled productivity. And so, all hands are on deck to wrestle it down.
I am compelled to now push out this article because of another one that has gone viral titled ‘Edun and Cardoso – A Case of Ikoyi-bred Economists Trying to Operate a Fadeyi Economy’, by one Ope Banwo, who admits to not being an economist, but to being a certified Fadeyi brought-up. I am neither an Ikoyi nor Fadeyi brought up, but I am an economist.
The upshot of Banwo’s viral article was to say that raising interest rates by 4% as the Monetary Policy Committee did on February 27, 2024, did not slow down inflation and is therefore counterproductive. The quick fact here is that no official or certified index has come out to confirm or deny this, and so Ope Banwo was rather too hasty to dismiss the CBN’s policy accuracy, for now. Also, such policies are not meant to produce immediate reaction but to act in concert with other policies.
Banwo wrote further that in Fadeyi (a suburb of Lagos where he lived) if someone tried to increase prices and exploit customers back in the day, the residents would either burn down his/her shop or threaten his/her family. I reckon that he proposes unorthodox strong-arm tactics by the government to curb ruinous inflation, perhaps because the Nigerian economy is still evolving, and some textbook solutions may not work here. I need to quickly state that those running the economy are aware of the need to go the extra mile, but certainly not to be arm-twisting people or embarking on criminal acts just to curb inflation. When, for example, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission started chasing currency hawkers off the road, the same Nigerians questioned why that was necessary, after all the hawkers who stood by roadsides were ‘serving a market’.
Believers in pure market economics have also wagered that the CBN should allow every form of market to flourish – legal or illegal. Also, when the Ministry of Agriculture complained about hoarding, many Nigerians shunned them for trying to interfere in what they deemed a normal business practice – buying commodities to keep until prices skyrocket. Now, Banwo is suggesting that mafia tactics be deployed by the government. And I was surprised by the number of people who shared the article, liked it, forwarded it, and hailed it. Even Professor Kingsley Moghalu referred to the article in his recent speech, showing how far it went. And that is how Nigerians create economic theories of their own.
So, first to explain all that is going on. Surely, we know that not all of our inflation in Nigeria is explained by excess money in circulation, and when the CBN speaks about excess money being mopped, they are more interested in the huge monies that our banks may be sitting on. When the CBN increases the base rate as they have, yes, one of the incentives is that people will deposit their monies in banks for higher interest earnings. Another is to disincentivise folks from borrowing from the banks. The central bank is solely concerned with its use of monetary policy instruments to curb inflation. And so, by increasing rates from 18.75% to 22.75%, the intention is to make Nigeria into a depository of funds. Banks – local and foreign – with excess money will keep the same in Nigerian bonds and other instruments.
There is an asymmetric window around that rate of 22.75%, which is +1-7. What this means is that when a bank is illiquid and intends to borrow from the CBN, the applicable rate will be 22.75+1=23.75%. But if a bank wishes to merely deposit money with the CBN, they will only get 22.75%-7%=15.75%. This relatively low rate is meant to discourage banks from parking their liquidity for quick interest earnings from the CBN rather than to lend to the real sector and bear the risk that some loans may go back. The excess money supply may therefore not necessarily be such monies as may belong to individuals, but to banks, and other institutions.
The many memos that have emanated from the CBN are still very much on point. The CBN under Cardoso is following the crucial path to economic recovery from a strictly monetary point of view. Some of the achievements of these crucial steps of late include getting Nigerian banks to sell over $2 billion to their customers from what they had hitherto sat upon as Net Open Position. A corporate treasurer with whom I was on an X-space discussion confirmed that the amount of liquidity that the Nigerian foreign exchange market had seen in the last three weeks had never been seen in three years! The CBN has also sold close to $300 million – including $27.46 million to Bureaux de Change at N1,300 for the first time in 3 years! Before this intervention, the CBN had not engaged in the FX market at all for more than five months. But now, the bank is showing capacity, having systemised some of its operations, especially around foreign exchange management.
With the new rule that business and personal travel allowances be loaded on cards and not disbursed in cash, the central bank is ensuring that there will be less fraud. And given the experiences with the last regime which became so slack, there is a very low probability that the usual games will be played when allocating foreign exchange to legitimate importers. Under Cardoso, I am certain that roundtripping will tend to $0.00! It is however not yet uhuru, but Banwo is wrong to write that there has been no achievement – the black-market rate hovers around N1500 today, and not the N2000 that some evil naysayers who were behind the speculative attack on the naira had ‘predicted’.
Of course, alongside the other law enforcement agents, something is being done to clean up the so-called black market. And now we hear that Binance, that cryptocurrency repository where many young Nigerians like to play, has upped and left Nigeria. Nigeria will be the 20th or so country to fine the company and give it the boot.
Further actions that will calm the markets and bring control back to the CBN include delisting 4,173 BDCs from the list of almost 6,000, for several infractions, including non-submission of returns. Now we are talking! By the time the new capital requirements for BDCs are enforced, we may not have more than 100 BDCs that will then be able to transact even more businesses (aside from credit creation) like a bank. I am in the advocacy that properly structured BDCs be allowed to do local and international money transfer businesses as is done abroad. I understand that in Kenya, the BDCs are plugged into their CBK (Central Bank of Kenya’s) reserve management system, thus allowing the bank to capture data on the informal market and invisible trade.
One of the criticisms of the strategy adopted by CBN is that the formal economy is so small in Nigeria and that a policy dealing with interest rates could only be relevant in the formal sector which accesses bank credits. Well, the countervailing point to that is that the strategies around BDCs are meant to help the informal sector, by bringing more players on stream. And the banks don’t do a lot of lending these days anyway. I think we should also encourage the CBN to mandate banks to increase deposit rates (to close the margin between lending and deposit rates) so that their depositing and investing customers will have something to gain as well. Increasing deposit rates also helps to mop up excess liquidity in the hands of the few Nigerians that have cash – monies that would have otherwise chased the dollar for a store of value. All these strategies work together.
Enough of CBN policy reforms which are coming out almost in torrents for now. What about the fiscal side? Wale Edun, the minister for finance, was mentioned as well. It is worth noting that Nigeria’s national oil company, NNPC Ltd, has been instructed to submit its invoices and receipts to the central bank for audit purposes. Also, the international oil companies have been told to leave a float of 50% of their sales for some time so that Nigeria may enjoy some stability in reserve management. To this extent, Nigeria’s foreign reserves have risen by almost $2 billion in the last couple of months. Mr Edun, last December, laid new rules around the treasury single account which will ensure that 100% of what is due to the federation is captured from government-owned enterprises in a systemised fashion using technology.
The Federal Inland Revenue is poised to almost triple its revenue collections for this year from last year’s numbers, and we are already performing very positively in the oil and gas sector, which gave our GDP growth a bump in January. Production nudges 1.6 million barrels a day. Non-oil sector is also performing above expectations. Even the National Bureau for Statistics is working on a rebasing of both the GDP figures and inflation – the former from 2014 when it was last done to 2024, and the latter from 2009 when it was last done, to 2023. Our GDP will certainly be larger in naira terms as new industries and an increased population plus a new stock of infrastructure are a plus.
At the same time, inflation is likely to recede because the 2009 index was heavily skewed towards food, but a 2023 index will consider new choices and habits of Nigerians. For example, Nigerians now buy more internet data than we ever did in 2003, our youth population has increased further and that comes with more psychedelic choices rather than food. Many sectors need to be better captured in our GDP, such as the role of e-commerce and our FINTECHs. Also worth estimating is the explosion of skits, pranks, and comedies. These activities employ hundreds of thousands of our youths and even generate foreign currency.
As I have been emphasising for some time now, it is not only hikes in interest rates that will tamp down inflation towards the single-digit region that we desire. The new understanding of inflation, new surveillance and awareness around the subject, and even the resistance to exploitation by citizens, will also help. We are in this together. The case of the Niger state government comes to mind. The governor spoke up because his people were complaining of hunger, in the state with the largest landmass in Nigeria. So, the man perked up and swore to produce food in record quantity in 2024. He also instructed that the purposes of bulk purchasers be checked. Lagos state governor, Babajide Sanwoolu went to Niger state to sign a memorandum of understanding, ensuring that Lagos state gets food directly under the supervision of both governments. That is cheaper food than if left to middlemen to play games with. That points to a reduction in inflation. In the same Lagos state, neighbourhood food/farmers markets have been established where cheaper food is accessible to Lagosians. That is proactive governance, which has its place in managing inflation. I have warned some people who believe that it is over for Nigeria because of present challenges, that they should also understand that some people are thinking and working assiduously to ensure that Nigeria emerges glorious from present hiccups.
To Mr Banwo, I will say he should allow CBN to do its work, which is a very complex one. Maybe by the time Messrs Cardoso and Edun succeed, the Ikoyi gang would have emerged over their less-fortunate Fadeyi counterparts. From antecedents, capacity, ambience, sheer value, and what-have-you, I will personally vote for Ikoyi to trump Fadeyi. But we can be more positive in our criticism. I think that if CBN can achieve positive interest rates soon (where the rate that investors can obtain on government bonds and treasuries exceed inflation, chiefly because inflation starts to recede faster than whatever increases is desired on policy – and by extension lending – rates), we will be home and dry, and would not have to push rates to the 50% region like Ghana, or 70% like Turkey, much less three digits like Argentina. We have seen the way Egypt is being asked to devalue and increase interest rates at once because of her quest for loans from the IMF. African countries are being passed through shock therapy. I think because of the vocal advocacy of people like Mr Banwo, we will escape the worst. But he and other concerned Nigerians should also engage with middlemen and retailers who try to exploit the misfortune of fellow citizens by arbitrarily increasing the prices of everything.
I will close by expressing my profound desire to see a memo going to the banks to increase deposit/investment rates for people who want to park some money in the banks, and also for savings rates. We shouldn’t let go of that opportunity. I will also look forward to a quick resolution of salaries and wages issues in the civil service. Even the private sector should be visibly encouraged to adjust wages so that our people can survive, and public sector entities should adjust their contracting fees etc so that companies that work for them should earn more. The reforms call for a total rejig of the economy and create opportunities for more jobs and contracts as well as innovative ideas. It is certainly not the end of the world for Nigeria. It’s the very beginning.
May the Ikoyi team win, via Lagos Island and Bourdillon. I say no to the Igbobi/Onipanu/Fadeyi tactics. They won’t work in this milieu
It is enheartening that the Federal and State Governments are hearkening to our outcry: They have given nod to the establishment of state police. It is a decision that must be given bite immediately. It is quite a pity that it has taken such a shockingly long time to see that the solution to the insecurity bedeviling our land is the establishment of state police. Something so simple to see and so commonsensical to perceive! Because of the lackadaisical attitude of certain past leaders because they lived in a fortress, all manner of dare-devil criminals were less loose on the country. Citizens were and are still exposed to mindless attacks and destruction of properties. It will soon be 10 years since 276 Chibok school girls in Borno State were kidnapped; no fewer than 96 remain in captivity till date!
The sign of a renewed legislative thinking was foreshadowed in the House of Representatives agenda upon reconvening from its Christmas/end-of-year recess. Perturbed Speaker Tajudeen Abbas did state that the issue of security and the concomitant imperative of the establishment of state police would receive priority attention of the House. Within the last one week, the nation was driven to a fresh rude awakening causing alarm to warrant bringing the matter to the front burner again. A new wave of kidnapping began in Borno State when about 400 persons were kidnapped. It was followed by the abduction of 257 school children in one go in Kaduna State. And to muddle the situation, on Tuesday 60 more persons were kidnapped in the already menaced axis of Kajuru, bringing to more than 300 kidnapped in that state within a week. Sokoto lost 15 persons in the earlier wave of an attack in which two persons were killed. Consider the trauma and a feeling of helplessness of the little school children exposed to the elements and the psychological damage to them as well as the anguish of their parents.
With the Federal and State Governments now on the same page, it should go without emphasizing the fact that the National Assembly should realise that time is of the essence. The country can’t but recognize and agree it has a common enemy: insecurity. There is no part of the country that is not yearning for fresh air and the longing to be free from the menacing insecurity that holds the country firmly in its grips. They should permit no distractions, but speed up whatever processes are required to facilitate the establishment of State Police in the country. What I wrote barely two months ago on the subject following the Reps’ announcement to give new police architecture pressure necessary attention can bear restating in part as follows:
We should all applaud and support the House of Representatives in their rethinking of a new tier in police structure for our land. In the face of seeming intractable insecurity bedeviling the country, that certainly is the right step and it raises a great deal of hope. It would have been a height of insensitivity to look on, believing that the present security architecture is all there is to protect Nigerians from bandits, kidnappers and what have you. It is said that you cannot continue to do the same thing, over and over again, using the same method and expect a different result. It has been the same shibboleth, the same beaten track, the same old hat since the Yusuf Gobir Committee report which recommended one central policing system for the whole country whenever complaints arose about its inadequacy in ensuring security, law and order in the country. We have heard it repeatedly said and as much as practicable, done –that all that is needed is increased funding, training, and raising the numerical strength of the police under the current arrangement. But all that, as it has been clearly proven, has not given us the desired protection shield.
The Gobir committee was set up by General Aquiyi-Ironsi, but he did not live to see the report and implement it. The recommendations were passed to Gen. Gowon, his successor who gave them effect in August 1967. Regional police formations were abolished and swallowed by the federally-run Nigeria Police. Understandably, generals are raised under one command system. But why should the system subsist and tie the hands of states under a democratic order waving the federalism emblem going to 25 years come May?
Good enough, former President Babangida has had a rethink over the issue since he left office and this was brought to the open in 2010. Babangida said we cannot be detained in the past and watch civilization leave us behind. It is so obvious that the present centralised policing system has failed woefully; it is incapable of meeting our national security needs. Former Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo read the situation correctly as far back as 2018. In his words: “We cannot realistically police a country the size of Nigeria centrally from Abuja. State police and other community policing are the way to go.” And come to think of it. Professor Osinbajo was addressing the right audience, the Security Summit organized by the Senate! Disappointingly, in his accustomed obstinacy, President Buhari in pronouncement and body language was unimpressed by all the clamour for state police.
Today, several parts of the country are overrun by criminality and the governors have had to be grappling unceasingly with security challenges. On Christmas Eve, when Nigerians like others across the globe were naturally in a festive mood, terrorists went on an orgy of killing and destruction of property under the cover of darkness in some communities in Plateau State. At the end of the day, more than 200 were killed and more than 100 injured, some critically, in the attacks that lasted several hours. In the Federal Capital Territory, gunmen kidnapped six girls and their father on Tuesday, 09 January. The father was later released to go and find N60 million to pay as ransom for the freedom of his daughters with a timeline of last Friday, 12 January. Frantic appeals were made to Nigerians to donate whatever anyone could into a bank account. By Friday when the deadline elapsed and not enough money had been raised, one of the girls, the eldest and a 400-level student at Ahmadu Bello University, was killed by the abductors. But they did not stop there, they jerked up the sum to N100 million to save the remaining girls.
Senator Shehu Sani, the civil rights activist, commenting, said: “The gruesome murder of Nabeeha Al-Kaddriya is a condemnable act of evil before our very eyes. Her death was an avoidable tragedy. The perpetrators must be brought to justice. The deterioration of security within the Federal Capital should be a matter of urgent concern to our security services.”
Just last Sunday, according to reports, residents of Tse Jikina in Mbavuur, Logo Local government Area of Benue State, had almost all their houses burnt by unknown gunmen, leaving about 3,000 of them displaced. Their farm produce was set ablaze as well. In the same state, gunmen abducted the council chairman of Ukum Local Government Area, Haanongon Gideon, his personal aide, security detail, and driver. They were on their way to the burial of the traditional ruler of Katsina-Ala, Chief Fezaanga Wombo. Recently a vehicle carrying about 45 persons was forced to stop and it was feared that the passengers were kidnapped. This has been the trend largely and it is getting worse—what the ordinary citizens have been going through. Practically every day, someone, somewhere is being shot or kidnapped. Gunmen, marauders, bandits, kidnappers, cultists, and sundry criminals have for years been let loose, laying siege on the country with alarming impunity. In towns and villages most Nigerians go to bed with their eyes half-closed. People travel with bated breath, feeling relieved only when they reach their destination. Prayers are said at motor parks before drivers turn the ignition key to put their vehicles on the road. Schools have been invaded and their students carted away.
The worst-hit zones in terms of insecurity have been the North East, North West, and North-Central with North-West and North-Central taking over from the North-East where insurgents had held the country by the jugular. In the latter two, herdsmen, bandits, and kidnappers have swept through farmlands and rural communities in an orgy of bloodletting and maiming as well as the just-cited mindless destruction of property. It has been so clear, even to the blind to see and the deaf to hear, that the police have been overwhelmed. Daredevil gunmen have been known to take the battle to the police themselves. One night in 2018, seven policemen were shot dead while on duty at a checkpoint. The security situation was so bad at a stage that the then Governor of Zamfara State who doubled at the time as the chairman of the Governors’ Forum of that era, Mr. Abdullaziz Yari, that he threw up his hands in resignation! He washed his hands off being decorated as the chief security officer of his state. He saw his position as a joke. His argument was that he had no operational control over the police. The instruction of a governor may have to be forwarded by the state commissioner of police to his boss, the Inspector-General of Police, who may also wish to seek clearance from the President before it is carried out. The Nigeria Governors’ Forum under his leadership pressed for the establishment of state police. To show how serious the situation was, troops had to be called in in certain cases because the police were overwhelmed and had spread thin because their hands were full, facing challenges on several fronts at the same time.
The silver lining seems to be coming from the National Assembly when they reconvene at the end of this month, January. Their thinking is being reinforced by the reopening and dusting up of Nasir el-Rufai Committee Report being mulled by the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ruling APC. The Deputy National Organizing Secretary, the Hon. Nze Chidi Duru, and a member of the NWC, said Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje-led foremost organ of the party was making internal moves to ensure the implementation of the el-Rufai Committee report. This is coming at the same time the pioneer chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande, was pressing, with his weighty voice, for a new constitution to be patterned after the Independence Constitution used in the nation’s First Republic. According to him, that constitution was the best. “For example, in the 1960 Constitution, if you are a member of the National or State Assembly, you are a part-time. You go to your work; politics wasn’t work then. Farmers went to the farm, lawyers to their chambers; doctors to their hospitals…and when it was time for a meeting they went to the meeting and they paid them sitting allowance. Everybody knows that they are doing it in the interest of the public.” Chief Akande is not new to the subject of restructuring; he has written a well-received book on Restructuring.
A major plank on which the el-Rufai Committee report rests is devolution of power and restructuring of the country. The report left no one in doubt on the establishment of the state police which is an element in the restructuring for which the nation has been clamouring. Media reports quote Nze Chidi Duru as saying: “It has become an article of faith in the APC and for APC; in the ideology and philosophy of the party on the basis of which the current Administration campaigned. The issue of devolution of power and restructuring is clearly embedded in that report. “It is good for Nigeria, it will work for Nigerians and it will be best for Nigerians”.
I do hope the National Assembly will not dash our hope this time as it did in 2018. As I did state when I first dabbled into this discourse in 2018, it is so astonishing, to say the least, that we are just about to take this concrete step at addressing the grim security challenge in the land. In my criticism of President Buhari’s embarrassing cold attitude and incomprehensible obstinacy to the issue of state police when he was in the saddle, especially in the wake of killings in Plateau State and before then the massacre in Benue, I did ask: How many more people are we waiting to see killed before we become wise to apply the simplest and most commonsensical panacea: the establishment of state police? I said policing is local and that is how it is in all stable and secure free world. Newspapers have shouted themselves hoarse on the urgent need to set up state police. I will ask President Bola Tinubu the same question at the end of May. I want to believe that he knows that how he handles matters concerning the engine of public spending that has broken loose will be of tremendous interest to a great many when his honeymoon is over by June. The new normal today is to talk in billions and trillions of Naira and in a few cases in Dollars, too. No one talks in thousands of Naira any longer!
It is shocking that any group or individuals because they are in their comfort zone would still oppose the establishment of state police in this country in this day and age, especially given the grave situation of criminality and insecurity in the land. The situation is made much more frightening when the opposition is coming from public opinion leaders who are expected to be exposed, enlightened, and deep. These are leaders expected to consider where we are coming from, survey where we are, and, like prophets, look into the future and help chart a new course.
The face of government you encounter on the street in any community is the police. You see the police and there is the feeling of an assurance that all is well, that you are secure. It is not for nothing that the police authorities launch their sing-song: “The police is your friend”. The constitution says the governor is the chief security of his state. What this says to us is that there is a nexus between the police and the governor whose face the policeman symbolizes and by whose name he swears.
When former Vice-President Osinbajo spoke at the Security Summit organized by the Senate in 2018, he said: “The nature of our security challenge is complex. Securing Nigeria’s over 923, 768 square kilometres and its 180 million people requires continual re-engineering of our security architecture and strategies…” He said it had become difficult for the Federal Government to provide security for the country from Abuja in view of the fact that Nigeria had failed the United Nations requirement of a policeman to 400 people.”
There is hardly any federal state with diverse people that operates a centralized police system. Our experience is that there is no way it will not lead to acrimony and hostilities. If we have elected a federal republic, it means we have chosen what we think is good for us as a country of more than 500 nationalities as discovered by the 2014 National Conference–people with different cultures, aspirations, and worldviews. Policing is a veritable instrument of federalism for the federating units to run their affairs. As former Jonah Jang was wont to remind us: “We cannot be calling ourselves a federation and be running a unitary system of government. If we want to run a federal system of government we should run it properly. It is unfortunate that during the military of which I was a part we believed in a unitary system and any time we were in power, we ran a unitary system, and when we were trying to give the nation a constitution we ended up giving the nation a unitary constitution to be operated in a federal system of government. This is why nothing is working. So if we want to progress as a country we must restructure the country.”
Former Bayelsa State Governor, Henry Dickson, who is now fortunately in the Senate, corroborating Professor Osinbajo’s position, argued that the prevailing security situation and the need for an effective response to the challenge had made the establishment of state police mandatory. His conviction was anchored on the fact that the personnel would be drawn from the locality that makes up the state. Such personnel would be able to access valuable information required to track down criminals. He also agreed with Prof. Osinbajo that the current federally controlled police had become overstretched owing to the wide ratio of the police to the rapid increase in population. And former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mr. Joseph Daodu in the heat of the debate, had said in all striking simplicity that state police is for law and order. Can anything be greater than simplicity? That statement says it all. In the living higher knowledge available to mankind on earth today, it is said that in simplicity lies greatness.
I had once reported former President Babangida as throwing his full weight behind the restructuring of the country, and listen to his clincher when he said: “Added to this desire, that is of restructuring, is the need to commence the process of having state police across the states of the Federation…the initial fears of state governors misusing the officers and men of the state police have become increasingly eliminated with renewed vigour in citizen’s participation in and confidence to interrogate power. We cannot be detained by those fears and allow civilization to leave us behind. We must as a people with one destiny and common agenda take decisions for the sake of posterity in our shared commitment to launch our country on the path of development and growth. Policing has become so sophisticated that we cannot continue to operate our old methods and expect different results.” On another occasion, he had said the claim of misuse of state police by the governors was unfounded and exaggerated.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has also thrown his weight behind the establishment of state police. I have gone this length to demonstrate the fact that we have never been short of literature on the imperative of state police and community policing. What is more, the police authority themselves have long recognised the necessity for some form of augmentation by way of community policing. In 2003, the Nigeria Police High Command sent some of its men to Britain to train in community policing.
The establishment of state police is not tantamount to the abolition of federal police. They will work collaboratively under guidelines on the distribution of responsibilities and duties. That should go without saying. The guidelines will safeguard any possibility of abuse such as taking away the appointment of members of the state police commission away from the governor. It can be done in such a way that members of the commission drawn largely from civil societies, religious organizations such as CAN, the Bar, ASUU and retired Justices will appoint their own successors endorsed by their respective organizations every 10 years, and also staggered in a way the appointment of any member will not begin or end with the tenure of any sitting governor. As I did state when I first dabbled into the debate some years back, there will always be ideas. We can always think outside the box, for where there is a will, as it is said, there must be a way.
What the Senate needs to do is just to exhume and dust up its decision of 2018 to pass a Bill for the establishment of state police. It will make easy a joint sitting of the two Houses with the House of Representatives now also ready to take the much-awaited decision on the matter. It will be a delusion to think that the country can make the desired progress without a rethinking of our policing architecture. I do not want to go into the clever security engineering by many of the governors as an indication and signal that they are roaring to go! A lot has been done in that area such as donating helicopters to the police by Lagos and giving them special incentives to work.
The Federal and State governments now deciding to create police should be commended. It raises hope of law and order which alone provides the enabling environment to grow the economy and for the generality of the citizenry to prosper. Above all is the necessity of having the knowledge of the dire consequences of lending a hand to evil, here or hereafter, whether as perpetrators or through negligence of duty.
PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu on March 13, 2024, directed the reopening of Nigeria’s land and air borders with the Republic of Niger. He also ordered the lifting of all sanctions, including commercial, financial and service transactions, like electricity.
He equally approved the lifting of financial and economic sanctions against the Republic of Guinea. These steps should open better opportunities for Nigeria which accounts for 70 per cent of the trade in the West African Region. But, unfortunately, Nigeria has no ambassador in either country that can drive the process. In fact, we have no single ambassador in the entire Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, a body over which President Tinubu presides.
President Tinubu engaged in a somewhat controversial state visit to Qatar from March 2-3, 2024. That was partly because the Qatari had initially turned down the holding of a business and investment forum on the margins of his visit, and also, for the number and composition of his 38-Member Delegation.
The visit was pulled-off and there were cooperation agreements in the fields of education, employment regulation, establishment of a joint business council and in the field of youths and sports.
The Nigerian Delegation returned to the country, leaving no ambassador to drive the follow-up process. This was because back on September 2, 2023, that is six months before, Nigeria had recalled all its ambassadors in the world except for those in the United Nations Missions in New York and Geneva. It means Nigeria cannot reap fully from the dozen foreign trips of President Tinubu in the nine months he has been in power.
Yes, there are charge d‘affaires. But which country takes a stand-in ambassador, serious enough, for business transactions realising he is standing in gap? A charge d‘affaires is like a regent waiting for the appointment and coronation of the actual king.
In my experience outside Nigeria, charge d‘affairs, at state functions, are arranged after ambassadors. They are outranked by ambassadors. So, a country without ambassadors cannot engage in serious diplomacy. My worry is that things are not about to change quickly because the process of having ambassadors in place can be quite slow.
There are those who may argue that in the internet age, countries do not really need physical ambassadors to sit in embassies. This they call E-Diplomacy, Cyber Diplomacy or Twitter Diplomacy –Diplomacy in 40 Characters.
This is, essentially, the use of technology and digital platforms like Facebook and Twitter (X) to run diplomacy, shape or influence foreign relations and, engage global audiences. The most famous or infamous user of Twitter Diplomacy is former President Donald Trump.
In its ‘Social media use by Donald Trump’ report, Wikipedia said: “Over nearly twelve years, Trump tweeted around 57,000 times, including about 8,000 times during the 2016 election campaign and over 25,000 times during his presidency. The White House said the tweets should be considered official statements. When Twitter banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 during the final days of his tenure, his handle @realDonaldTrump had over 88.9 million followers.”
Despite such power and, claims of some Presidents, to be their own foreign ministers and diplomats, the presence of ambassadors on ground is essential as it is a reflection of how you value a country. So, no matter how the power of E-Diplomacy is stretched, a country without ambassadors is like a void on the diplomatic stage.
The sack of all our ambassadors by each new administration without immediate replacement, as was done by the Buhari and Tinubu administrations, is unwise.
In our present case, the process of picking ambassadors is still on. After this, the nominees are to be screened by the Senate which presumably would have had the security report on each nominee. It is after clearance the nominees will undergo some induction course.
Then, the receiving country would decide whether to receive the new ambassador. This is usually a formality, but in some cases, countries reject ambassadors posted to them.
For instance, in April 1984, the United States, US, rejected the nomination of Nicaraguan lawyer and Deputy Foreign Minister, Nora Astorga, as ambassador. She had played a prominent role in the revolution which toppled pro-American President Anastasio Somoza. However, Nicaragua ensured Ms Astorga was a prominent face in the US by appointing her Nicaraguan Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York.
Thirty eight years later, Nicaragua had some form of pay-back. In 2022, Ambassador Hugo Rodriguez who was confirmed by the US Senate as Ambassador to Nicaragua, was refused entry. This, according to Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo, was due to his “interfering” attitude.
To be accepted by the receiving country does not mean the ambassador starts work immediately because he still has to present his Letter of Credence to the President of the host country. During the Buhari administration, it was not unusual for ambassadors to wait for months before being invited to present their letters.
So, as it is, Nigeria may not have ambassadors in any part of the world in the next six months. This would mean that under the Tinubu administration, we may not have ambassadors for at least one quarter of its four-year tenure.
Beyond this, is the challenge of politicians who see ambassadorial postings as post-election war booty to be shared. Under Buhari, they took 60 per cent of the ambassadorial positions leaving 40 per cent to be filled by career ambassadors.
In my December 18, 2023 column titled: ‘Tinubu, appoint diplomats, not politicians to run our Missions.’ I had appealed to the President to reverse this unhealthy culture. I had argued that it is better for the country to appoint career ambassadors because they are people who spend their entire career in the Foreign Ministry and therefore understand the basics of diplomacy. This is in contrast to political nominees who, in the world of diplomacy, are essentially birds of passage.
I had received encouraging nods and thought that this culture would be reversed. But now, the feelers I am getting of a push for 65 per cent of the ambassadorial positions going to non-career diplomats, is not encouraging. I hope for the sake of our country, this will be reversed.
One more suggestion. We need to return to the General Murtala Mohammed era when the populace took part in foreign affairs through mass bodies like those of students and genuine civil society organisations.
It was that momentum that defined our principled recognition of the MPLA in Angola, FRELIMO in Mozambique, the African National Congress, ANC, and the Pan African Congress, PAC, in South Africa. It was that mass participation that led to workers contributing part of their monthly salaries into an anti-Apartheid fund for the total liberation of the African continent.