Sadly, most Nigerians will not read or appreciate this contribution because frankly, it is beyond them.

Worst still, many of them, particularly in the younger generation, find it difficult to read more than three lines even though it is to their own shame and detriment.

For those that have the gravitas, insight, foresight, profundity and intellectual virility to read and comprehend the counsel I have offered in this write-up, I urge you to bookmark it and wait and see what unfolds unless and until we quickly identify and recognise the problem and address the issues raised.

There are two reasons for the mass abductions and kidnappings that we are witnessing in our country today.

Firstly, to garner cash which is then sent abroad to buy more arms and fund terror and secondly to destabilise our country and to discredit and undermine the credibility of our president and the federal government.

I hope and pray that someone is listening because this is precisely what we witnessed when the Chibok girls and other children were abducted over the years and the motives are the same. Those who think it is only about the acquisition of money are naive and ignorant.

There is far more to it than that and there are numerous shady and sinister characters, international criminal cartels, foreign governments and intelligence agencies and local accomplices and facilitators that are involved in this great evil.

Nigeria has been targeted for destruction, division and disintegration by those who see us as a threat to their regional hegemony, strategic national interests and imperialist aspirations, but most of us still don’t get it and perhaps never will.

They do not want a strong, united, prosperous and regionally dominant Nigeria but would rather turn us into a pathetic and pitiful shadow of our former selves, a cowardly and quivering caricature of what we once were and a weak, divided, incredulous and headless pawn and set us up for self-destructive economic and military annihilation.

They know that a strong Nigeria, like a strong South Africa, would stand up to them in the arena of world politics and international affairs and ensure that our collective interests as Nigerians and Africans would be protected and they do not want this.

As a matter of fact, for us to achieve that enviable status is not just their greatest fear but their worst nightmare.

They ask themselves in their corporate boardrooms, presidential palaces, cabinet meetings and legislative chambers, who can stand up to a strong Nigeria?

They wonder where else they would get their free mineral resources and be in a position to manipulate and dictate to servile leaders if not Nigeria.

And if Nigeria were to fail, fall and go the way they want us to, who would stand and speak for Africa and the black man in the comity of nations?

If the truth be told without a strong, flourishing and virile Nigeria, Africa is nothing and the black man is nowhere and this is precisely why the powers that be, when it comes to world politics and the international community, do not want us to succeed.

As far as they are concerned we are too weak, corrupt, ignorant, primitive, backward, servile, self-hating and dumb to achieve anything meaningful and we are more than happy to spend the next 100 years as a nation and a people that seek nothing but validation, leadership and guidance from them.

Yet how wrong they are. They have no idea who and what we are and deep down they fear us and recognise the fact that an unbound and unfettered Nigeria with strong, bold, articulate, confident and fearless leaders who do not seek their approval or validation and who have no interest in remaining as their slaves would be their worse nightmare. Such leaders would be dangerous to their evil cause and their attempt to sow the seeds of civil war, hardship and economic paralysis in our country.

It is time for us to get off our knees, to throw away the begging bowl, to stop constantly seeking validation from those who do not wish us well, to stop blindly implementing their disastrous economic models which seek to impoverish and destroy our people, to uproot and reject their well-planted seeds of division and to stop tolerating their subversive activities.

Ask yourself, who funds the terrorists and bandits and where do they get their weapons from?

They did it in Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Algeria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria and so many other countries over the years and decades and now they are doing it here.

Ask yourself who was behind the attack on a mosque in which worshippers were killed just yesterday in Kaduna and what was the purpose of this abominable and condemnable act of terror if not to destabilise us and create panic and chaos in our nation?

All this must stop and we must desist from refusing to acknowledge that we now have and indeed have always had a major problem which needs to be acknowledged and be solved.

None of these things happen by chance and what we are witnessing is a deep-seated and long-term conspiracy to literally end our nation as we know it and throw us into a state of fear, poverty, anomie, anarchy, fratricidal butchery and carnage.

Worst of all is the fact that our so-called “best friends” and “allies” in the West and the international community are the ones behind it.

We need help and if we can get it from the Russians, the Chinese and even the Iranians in order to restore our peace, self-respect, freedom, dignity and prosperity, we should do so.

Asking the West for help either in intelligence gathering, advice or covert military operations when it comes to the fight against the terrorists and insurgents in Nigeria is like asking the big bad wolf to save Little Red Riding Hood.

It cannot work because ultimately they are the hidden hand behind our numerous travails and they are the enemy.

May God open our eyes and deliver our nation and may we cultivate the fortitude and courage to come together as a people, eschew our differences, resist the evil and save our nation.

Dey your dey

Make I dey my dey

Dey your dey o

Nobody worry nobody

Kpekele kpekem

Dey your dey

My brother dey your dey

Make I dey my dey

Dey your dey o

Nobody worry nobody

Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, said Nigeria should break up if the path would solve the country’s challenges. Soyinka said this at the PUNCH Newspapers’ 50th-anniversary lecture held in Lagos recently.

Delivering his lecture titled ‘Recovering the Narrative’, Soyinka said Nigeria should decentralise for Nigerians to enjoy the country more.

The elder statesman said decentralisation would allow governance to get closer to the people, adding that it was high time for leaders to stop taking Nigerians for a ride.

“I know the fear. The fear is collapse, break up. That’s been the excuse given by several regimes. But suppose the nation is breaking up informally, in other words as a fact rather than as a theory. Then, you better just address this. Come straight on and see exactly what happened. What is wrong with general representatives seeing them and saying this is the protocol of our association, Anything outside of it? Anyone who does not want to accept these protocols, abide by these protocols and manifest these protocols in the act should take a walk. I have no problem at all.

“We live in what is known as the nation beginning as a vast football field ending up as a ping pong table. If that is going to restore dignity to citizens. If that is going to guarantee three square meals a day then so be it. One of my favourite expressions with people is “Let nations die, that humanity may live.”

He explained that while Nigerian politicians know the importance of restructuring, they change their tune when they get to power.

He said, “What do you mean by restructuring? Well, I don’t even like the word restructuring. I prefer expressions like reconfiguration and decentralisation. And those who lead, recognise the necessity of it. They recognise the importance, almost the inevitability of it…

“It’s about time, I think leaders stopped taking this nation for a ride, you know, we must decentralise. Security, you know, has become a burden to bear. Decentralised so that the government can come closer to the people, and productivity can really be manifested as a product of citizens, not simply as a manna from heaven.”

In the same vein, Mr Emeka Anyaoku, former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, has said that Nigeria’s current constitution would not adequately address the nation’s economic predicaments and other myriad challenges. Anyaoku spoke to newsmen in his country home, Obosi village of Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State.

He said the current challenges being faced in the nation like poverty, insecurity, and dilapidated infrastructure, among others, were serious challenges bedevilling the country.

“We cannot effectively address these challenges that have assumed nationwide dimension, especially insecurity which has pervaded the Northern part of the country and other communities,” he said. He stressed that the current constitution was a departure from the constitution that the nation’s founding fathers negotiated and agreed upon.

“I am on record for saying that these challenges cannot be effectively addressed under the constitution and governance system we have at the moment.

“The constitution for a pluralistic state as Nigeria; we have to return to those principles of the constitution as earlier agreed by our founding fathers. “Until we do that, I am afraid that we cannot effectively deal with the challenges facing the nation,” he added.

Now, let us get to the underground (In Fela’s voice)

I will pick randomly, in Benue, it is the Tiv versus the Idomas vs others, in Kogi it is the Igbiras versus Igalas, in some cases it has even degenerated to no Catholic has ruled our state, and in others we cannot allow the Muslims to continue.

None of these debates has brought the much-needed development for a nation that is so structurally divided.

Because we are structurally deformed we check how many SE, SW, SS (which by the way is an anomaly), NE, NW, NE are on a list before we check whether they are qualified. We still suffer a COVID-like disease called Federal Character in a characterless state, still plagued by terms such catchment area, educationally disadvantaged (by who abeg)

We pride ourselves by our state of origin, yet are minorities in many cases in the so-called state. We debate which region is poorest, and which feeds the other. A nation of an elite and intellectual class conspiracy against the ordinary citizens and themselves.

We keep amending our constitutions and reviewing them since forever. We stay on our high horses and cry restructure like in that one pill is the local Yoruba “agbo” that cures all ailments. We speak to decentralization, to a people that have not allowed the local government system work, we recommend a shift to the parliamentary system of old like if we go back, spirits would operate it.

Nigerians remind me so much of what deep thinkers men are…and permit me to share this.

I mowed the lawn today, and after doing so I sat down and had a cold beer. The day was really quite beautiful, and the drink facilitated some deep thinking.

My wife walked by and asked me what I was doing and I said ‘nothing’. The reason I said that instead of saying ‘just thinking’ is because she would have said ‘about what’. At that point, I would have to explain that men are deep thinkers about various topics, which would lead to other questions.

Finally, I thought about an age-old question: Is giving birth more painful than getting kicked in the nuts? Women always maintain that giving birth is way more painful than a guy getting kicked in the nuts.

Well, after another beer, and some heavy deductive thinking, I have come up with the answer to that question. Getting kicked in the nuts is more painful than having a baby; and here is the reason for my conclusion. A year or so after giving birth, a woman will often say, “It might be nice to have another child.” On the other hand, you never hear a guy say, “You know, I think I would like another kick in the nuts.” I rest my case.

Time for another beer…but before I pop it open

In sincerity have we really allowed the current skewed federal structure to work, with bogus census figures, with criminal politicians, is it about systems, structures or those that work it. If today we have a feeding bottle federal fiscal structure, do we expect much difference or will it be a Seven-up case when we restructure.

Let me end with this little narrative, a young man chose to change his name for reasons best suited and known by himself alone. For small money, he walks into the High Court, swears to an affidavit, that reads, “I, Zakka Davou Dangwang, Nigerian citizen, Adult residing at XYZ, deponent to the oath, and by virtue of positions (that I know he’s not conversant with), changes the said name to Zakka Azi Nyam, all documents/credentials bearing old names remains valid.” He even adds a newspaper change of name publication.

What has changed? The young dude is still who he is…in reality all those calling for restructuring are the same elites that have refused to restructure the structure, especially when they had the opportunity. Nigeria, Nigerians are not yet sure what they want, to restructure, or to structure the restructuring, or to make structures work—May Nigeria win.

If life be long, I will be glad
That I may long obey;
If short, then why should I be sad
To soar to endless day?

And so it was for Herbert, the sun set at noon.

I wrote most of this tribute while on the flight back from China to attend Herbert’s funeral.  My mood had shifted from the initial shock and devastation to that of grieving and a deep sense of loss of a friend who had become my brother.  To that of thanksgiving to the Almighty, for the gift of Herbert in the first instance to his family and friends, his staff at Access Holdings and for his extraordinary accomplishments, for his energy and drive, his vision and mission, passion and compassion, his industry, and his humanity.

Yet the tributes have hardly relented and have only grown more intense as time has passed. It is almost like the kind of treatment reserved for kings and statesmen. Except, one can say that, for Herbert, the subject of our grief was the de-facto Prince of the banking industry, and he was a man who did extraordinary things with the ordinary things that he found in his life’s path.

Herbert had the audacity to dream. He dreamt big and made it happen.
Herbert and I were friends but not particularly close until he decided it was time to conquer the Pensions Industry. He reached out to me through our mutual friend – Nduka Obaigbena with the intention of acquiring my PFA. What started as a pure business relationship, deepened into a close friendship. He was regularly in my house, if I was in Lagos, I would call him and his response was “you dey house, I dey come”, and he would always be coming from Aliko’s house (so I can understand Aliko’s tears and deep sense of loss).

He was a financial whiz kid, indeed a colossus, who straddled the financial services industry, redefining it in his own unique way. Herbert has been described as a “visionary”. Literally, he and Aigboje set out with a vision to make Access Bank one of the top banks in Nigeria. They took over a bank of very modest reputation and swiftly turned it into a formidable national financial services behemoth and is now transforming into a global conglomerate. Not satisfied with turning Access Bank into one of the top five banks in the country, they then set out to make the bank one of the top banks in Africa by 2027. Already, by January 2024, Access Bank had acquired six banks across western, southern, and central African regions.

In their days running Access Bank, Aigboje and Herbert earned reputations as taskmasters. (Aigboje describes it, in his 2021 memoir, as “our fabled work ethic”). Critics saw them as willing to go to any lengths to achieve whatever they sought. The landmark takeover of Intercontinental Bank in 2011 — which tripled their customer base — was believed to be a hostile, even ruthless, one. Not uncommon allegations, admittedly, at that level of performance. Similarly, the merger repositioned the Nigerian banking sector on the African continent as the combined entity had the potential of ranking amongst Africa’s top 10 banks according to The Bankers’ Magazine’s review of top African banks.

Ironically, Herbert’s most telling impact was not just about the mergers and acquisitions or about his corporate conquests. It was not in the number of businesses or branches in his fledging conglomerate. When Access Bank bought Diamond Bank in 2018, the resulting entity became the biggest lender in Africa by customer base. It means that the bank lent to more people and entities than any other financial institution on the continent. It also meant that the bank became a leading provider of capital to the private sector, particularly MSMEs in the continent.

Selling the PFA to Herbert was an easy decision for me. We had grown it to the point where I was convinced that we needed an institutional investor that could drive the business effectively to compete against Stanbic IBTC. There were more than 10 suitors out of which I zeroed down to only 2, Access and GTB. During his tribute on Wednesday night, Segun Agbaje mentioned that Herbert was his friend and at the same time, his competitor, he meant every word of that. Segun also wanted to buy the same PFA. He pleaded with me not to sell to Herbert, but Herbert won at the end. Herbert assured me that he could compete against Stanbic. He was emphatic that he would enter the market with at least N1 trillion assets under management. He was able to quickly achieve this by acquiring First Guarantee Pensions and Sigma Pensions in quick succession, Herbert was in too much of a hurry to grow any business organically, his preference was for mergers and acquisitions (Buy then Build). He then set his sights on Premium Pensions, the second largest in the industry. We both worked relentlessly on this, my assignment was to engage the two major blocks in Premium Pensions. When the infighting in Premium got messy, Herbert quickly turned his sights in the direction of ARM Pensions and engaged his friend Deji Alli and the rest is history. In a couple of months, he was able to enter the industry with assets under management of over N2 trillion. Vintage Herbert.

Much has also been said about Herbert’s state-of-the-art university in his Isiokpo hometown. In truth, the university is no ordinary one. Like all things Herbert, the institution has grand visions to close Africa’s skills gap in finance and technology, and ultimately to help shape Africa’s future.

Again, just like everything else that Herbert conceived and executed, the University was neither a whim nor a product of purposeless ambition. He got me involved in this project as well, my specific assignment was to get the license out from the National Universities Commission (NUC). The executive secretary of the NUC, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed was a member of the board of trustees of The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) which I chaired. The university bears the mark of an important part of Herbert’s bigger vision. The institution is a product of the HOW (Herbert Onyewumbu Wigwe) Foundation, which he founded in 2016 to support health, education, and capacities of young people. The university, billed as the first Ivy League institution in Africa, came straight out of the foundation’s five-year strategic plan to provide quality education and shape the future of education in the continent. This may sound very idealistic. But then who would have put their money on Herbert and his partner taking a small bank that ranked outside the top fifty in the country and turned it into the biggest lender on the continent?

The objective of the university, not surprisingly, is to build expertise of Africans in finance and technology. It is very obvious, therefore, that the university’s goal and outlook synch almost seamlessly with Herbert’s triple passions in finance, technology and human capacity.

In itself, The Wigwe Foundation is another testimonial of a life driven by not one, but multiple visions, each amplifying the essence of the other. In just five years, the foundation had trained dozens of Nigerian doctors abroad, funded the education of thousands of out-of-school children in northern Nigeria, and supported the operations of health facilities.

From his banking legend to the other sectors in which he has affected society and broken the boundaries of possibilities, Herbert has operated like a human force perpetually on the move, pausing only to conceive another vision after attaining the last one. It is almost inevitable that only death would have placed a limit on the heights that Herbert was bound to attain. He was in a hurry to get so many things done, like he knew he had limited time on this earth.

Up to the time of his death, Herbert was still very actively pursuing his visions, doing deals, and setting personal targets. In January, just weeks before his death, Herbert’s Access Bank announced a deal to acquire Uganda-based Finance Trust Bank, the seventh bank it would be acquiring within a short time. The full take-over was scheduled to happen in June, just four months from the time of his death. Earlier in the year, he had wanted to put ATMs at a chain of filling stations in Cameroon, but the owner had refused. In her tribute, Iyabo Soji-Okusanya said that shortly after Herbert’s death, she told her colleagues that instead of sitting down to mourn, Herbert would wish them to keep working, cutting deals. They went back to work and tried to revive the deal, this time, the owner accepted, he said he could not deny Access Bank this after the tragic occurrence of Herbert’s death. In death, Herbert was still closing deals for the bank. He had also planned to take up mentoring of the students at the Wigwe University, scheduled to start operation in September this year.

Herbert was a very generous man, HRH Khalifa Sanusi in his tribute on Wednesday spoke glowingly about his generosity, Pastor Enoch Adeboye of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) also spoke of his immense generosity during his tribute. He supported several worthy causes at home and abroad.

Given the timing of his death, one would be tempted to say that these plans belonged on the list of his unfinished business. But knowing him as we do, it is hard to imagine that Herbert envisioned and planned for everything except the fate of his legacy.

It is also hard to mourn Herbert like we do regular people, however tragic his death was. There is just too much to celebrate and reflect, even for someone who died at such a relatively young and vibrant age. The only service we can do to his memory is to continue to reflect on what we can learn from his life of relentless aspirations and serial triumphs.

After listening to all the tributes, I would like us to emulate that of his friend, partner, and brother Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, who asked us to clap for Herbert for 10 minutes during the evening of tributes.

I hereby call on all Nigerians to pause and clap for Herbert Wigwe for an extraordinary life of remarkable achievements,

Adios, Dear Friend and Brother.

A mong the pantheon of today’s political godlings, perhaps Senate President Mr. Godswill Akpabio is the epitome of the spirit of the times. An embodiment of power and delusion, Akpabio’s pronouncements on the state of the nation resonate with echoes of emptiness and grand hallucinations. The impression is that of a man who is either deliberately out to misinform or is so thoroughly intoxicated by the aroma of supreme power that he mistakes his own delusions for portrayals of reality.  For some reason, he probably thinks that his elevated office and the grand toga of Senate President will glorify whatever nonsense he mouths on national affairs. A typical man for all seasons as characterized by my friend Segun Adeniyi a few weeks back, Akpabio will stop at nothing in his serial adulations of Tinubu and his government. After over six months in office, most people would expect that the nation’s number three citizen should have fulfilled his gratitude obligations to President Tinubu for elevating him to dizzying heights. But not Akpabio. He is intent on usurping the role of the Minister of Information or the nabobs that are crawling around the corridors of Aso Rock Villa to natter endlessly and be paid for it.

A few weeks ago, Akpabio was variously quoted as claiming that the Federal Government has doled out a frightening N30 billion a piece to each of our 36 governors and the Minister of the FCT. He was forced to disown the naked falsehood by some sensible governors. Just last Thursday, Mr. Akpabio was at it again. He was quoted as waxing lyrical on how insecurity has receded and declined under the Tinubu administration. Meanwhile, he was in attendance barely a fortnight ago when insecurity forced his principal to summon a meeting of all governors and security chiefs to initiate moves towards  the introduction of state police. The terrorists and bandits heard Akpabio this time. On the same day, they struck in Kaduna State. They attacked a school and carted away over 287 children and their teachers including the head teacher of the school. The world has heard it.

A day earlier, Boko Haram or ISWAP or both struck an IDP in Borno state. They took away over 100 inmates mostly women and destroyed some of the new buildings erected by humanitarian agencies to house the displaced persons. On the same day as the Borno attack, inter militia violence in Benue state claimed 30 lives. Just last Friday, the terrorists struck again in Kaduna state. Gunmen attacked a mosque during Friday prayers and killed a number of worshippers. No one knows what further acts of brazen insecurity will be visited on our hapless people any time. So much for Akpabio’s delusionary and self- ingratiating propaganda.

But this piece is not about the Akpabios of this world. It is about a much more fundamental trouble with government and governance in Nigeria. From the forests of our recurrent troubles, an unsettling reality has unfolded. It is a simple observable problem. Hardly does our successive governments achieve closure on any national problem. Be it insecurity, economic disaster or the scourge of ever increasing poverty or terrorism, no job ever seems to get completed by government in Nigeria. Everything remains an unfinished business which is carried over to subsequent years or handed over to the next administration. Isolated troubles even graduate into permanent features of public life as to acquire separate charges and allocations in our annual budgets. We now make annual budgetary provisions for insecurity,  poverty alleviation, cybercrimes, new forms of corruption and even for combating self inflicted economic disasters . 

Year in, year out, our troubles regenerate , multiply and assume lives of their own. Nothing ever gets resolved nor does any task get completed. The Nigerian state never puts anything behind it in order to face new challenges. Nothing bad comes here and ever goes away again. Everything that afflicts us becomes an endemic ailment and we add it to our ever expanding basket of troubles and vocabulary of abnormality. We budget for bad things and assume them as part of a new normal that grows by the day. The pile heaps on the heads of our helpless and hapless citizenry.

Our economy hardly ever improves. Our GDP growth rate never remains on a rise for more than two quarters. Our exchange rate has steadily worsened for over two decades. Our poverty index rises every year as more and more people enroll in the poverty republic. Even more people exit the miserable middle class as they lose jobs and living standards. Familiar places become more dangerous with the years as rail rolling stock and passenger coaches are routinely stopped by bandits and ransacked for captives to be held for ransom. In this place, nothing ever improves neither does a government declared emergency been known to end. Every Nigerian public business remains forever unfinished.

Soon enough, new government positions are created, even new ministries spring up and an industry of sorts is born in honour of the unfinished businesses of state. Take poverty alleviation and the empowerment of the under privileged. Nigeria as the new Poverty Capital of the World has necessitated a whole gamut of government actions to address poverty. From the onset of the Buhari government, a department sprang up first in the office of the Vice president with varying nomenclature. Then it was yanked out of the VP’s office and granted independent full ministerial status. Humanitarian Affairs. National Emergency Relief Agency. Poverty Alleviation, any group of names.

Soon enough, new ways of dispensing government money in pursuit of these maladies emerged. Cash transfers to the poor. N-Power. Palliatives. Helicopter Money. In a nation of too many illiterate people, it is easy to come up with target figures of people whose lives will be made better by these new phantom schemes- cash transfers relief for 15 million, 20 million, 25 million families of individuals. Just name a figure. No questions asked about the relationship of these arbitrary numbers to the mass of impoverished humanity.  Some agencies of government speak of households, others prefer individuals and yet  others opt in other wild directions. Some want to assist traders with Trader Money, Artisan Money, Vulcanizer Support etc. In spite of these diverse epithets, nothing changes. Poverty as the poet said, “stands there like an elephant, huge and unmoved”.

In one recent instance, a new Minister was placed in charge of one of these schemes for which a ministry had been created. Before our very eyes, the elegant new Minister had ordered over half a billion Naira of government cash to be paid into her friend’s private bank account. Her friend had become a government ATM through whom beneficiaries  of government poverty alleviation in a number of states would be paid! Her patrons and principals were embarrassed that she did not spend enough time to learn the trade before swooping! She lost her job within weeks of being sworn in. Investigations are still ongoing and may be completed on the eve of the 2027 elections, just in time for her to rejoin the re-election campaign trail!

Similarly, a Buhari era Minister of Humanitarian Affairs has reportedly been called in to explain how N37 billion of the poverty alleviation money entrusted in her care developed wings. Reports indicate that a few billions of the unaccounted funds have been returned to the EFCC. Again, investigations are said to be ongoing. In a situation where the reality of poverty has also become a business, government is not likely to be in a hurry to either scrub the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs or take it off the budget. Poverty alleviation is likely to remain an unfinished business for a long time.

Insecurity is easily the most entrenched area of our culture of unfinished national business. For more than 12 years, insecurity has come to occupy a central place in the language of our social and political discourse as a nation. Our insecurity has created its own industrial momentum of unfinished business. In the absence of a formal war, our entire security and military apparatus has become embroiled in the last ten years or more in combating forms of insecurity in all of our 36 states and the FCT.  Countless prison breaks have taken place all over the country. No one knows how many children have been adducted from school dormitories and hurled into slavery or sadistic ‘marriages’ to jihadists and nasty zealots. Many have died unnecessary death either in the hands of sundry gunmen or badly trained security personnel. Yet many more have been abducted, kidnapped and ransoms totalling billions of Naira paid. Children have lost their parents to enemies they cannot recognize just as parents and husbands have watched their children or wives abused before their very eyes. 

The world has come to brand Nigeria as a permanently unsafe and insecure place. In furtherance of this brand identity, our citizens have been branded, our passport held in permanent disdainful suspicion with our citizens subjected to all manner of indignities at airports and land borders across the world. Of course the global arms business has benefitted from our permanent insecurity status. The United States, Turkey, China and all manner of black market arms dealers around the world have benefitted from our institutionalized insecurity. We have , for the past decade or more, been buying  all manner of instruments of war to combat what is widely regarded as an internal security problem. We now need sophisticated fighter jets, helicopter gunships and all classes of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones) to suppress bandits, terrorists and community based common criminals. No one cares to ask about the human rights implications of using disproportionate force to discourage common criminals from disturbing the peace. “War is war. All is fair in war”, I can hear the arms merchants and their Nigerian agents chant in unison.

The recent spate of insecurity incidents has come at a time when most Nigerians thought that the critical emergency of the hour is the epidemic of hunger and government inflicted hardship  ravaging the country. That in itself is manifesting in hitherto unimagined ways. In the various theatres of the hardship war, new forms of anarchic trends are being witnessed. Destitutes and children have taken to way -laying and looting trucks in transit especially those loaded with food items. Private and government warehouses are being breached and ransacked. In Abia state, a hungry man has reportedly shot dead his teenage son for ‘eating the only food left in the house’. In Lagos, two children have reportedly been sold in exchange for some bags of rice.

There needs to be a way out of these multiple crises. The upshot of all this is to challenge our government to call this anomaly of multiple crises its rightful  name. Are we in a war or at peace? Does any of our troubles have an end in sight?  Why must we consecrate transient problems that other nations put out in months into permanent conditions?

Government needs to summon up the courage to become pragmatic and unconventional. Government must attach a deadline to its exertions in the various areas of the troubles that afflict us. Our security forces now need to give all bandits, terrorists, armed agents,  non- state actors and trouble makers a deadline to surrender beyond which deadline they qualify as enemy combatants with full consequences. On the economy, I guess it is time that the government of the day gathers the nation’s best economic brains in one room with a simple task: come up with workable solutions to rescue our economy within a 12 month window.

It is also time to dissolve the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and other related poverty enabled government efforts. They are enriching a few opportunists and deepening the poverty of the majority. Poverty was not created by any ministry. It was created and widened by a succession of bad inhumane governments presided over by politicians. Our poverty and economic calamity are the products of the politics of bad table manners: eating too much when the majority are starving! Therefore, all those who have held executive political positions from local government to federal level since 1999 should voluntarily let us know how much they are willing to “lend” to the Central Bank in both Naira and foreign exchange within  the next three months to help us revamp the economy. That is probably all the money we need to revamp the economy. No need for World Bank or IMF loans. No need to go camp in hand to Qatar, Saudi Arabia or UAE. We shall repay our politicians the ‘soft loan’ within an agreed time frame for as long as the loan amount can be justified as legitimate income in their period of public service.