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‘Waiting for Godot’ is a play by Irish playwright, Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives. This play, according to Wikipedia, in a poll conducted by the British Royal National Theatre in 1999, was voted the “most significant English-language play of the 20th century.” The play portrays the political, religious, philosophical and socio-economic perspectives to solutions of life challenges, but all end up as mere chimera—a charade.
As in the ‘Waiting for Godot’ play, Nigeria and its people have been fantasizing about the imminence of an Eldorado—economically—especially since the commencement of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration some nine months ago. Apparently playing to the gallery or in total submission to the dictates of the Bretton Woods institutions (The World Bank and IMF), the administration adopted and applied (market-led) economic policies that have caused so much disruption to the economy. This reality, though unexpected, has since bogged the administration with grappling with the negative consequences and fallouts of its economic reforms so far.
Thus, more than anything else, the government has been preoccupied with packaging and re-packaging of palliatives for the citizenry to (merely) assuage the fast-spreading and deepening poverty, hunger and anger in the land. The latest dimension of the degenerating social order is sporadic upheavals in forms of public protests in many towns and cities across the country. Public angst and cries against spreading hunger, spiking cost of living and deteriorating insecurity are pervasive.
For close to nine months since the inauguration of the current Tinubu administration, every economic indicator has been moving in the wrong direction. Whether it is inflation rate, exchange rate of the Naira, level of unemployment, public debt, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) or the external reserves—all have been heading in the wrong direction. For instance, while the headline inflation rate was 21.84 per cent in January 2023, one year after, end-January 2024, it has shot up to 29.90 per cent; and will surely maintain the trajectory—going forward.
Paradoxically, while several internal and external factors will keep sustaining this hyperinflationary trend, the government keeps wishing for a magical decline of the figures. This accounts for why the 2024 Federal budget is predicated on an inflation rate expectation of 21.24 per cent. Yet, the impact of the fuel subsidy removal by end-May 2023 has pushed the prices of all goods and services through the roof. Particularly, food inflation has risen phenomenally—as food supply and agriculture (especially, faming) remains threatened by worsening insecurity in the land.
Although by mere pronouncement, the government has declared a state of emergency on agriculture, the wide-spread insecurity across the country has kept most farmers off their farms. Ironically most of the areas usually referred to as ‘food baskets’ of the country are now more like ‘war zones’ as farmers in their communities, villages and hamlets are daily being overrun and displaced by terrorists, bandits, brigands and other armed gangs. Most of the surviving farmers are in their new-found-abodes—Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps—in various locations across the country. This state of affairs puts the lie to the intentions of the so called state of emergency on agriculture.
One of the upshots of this—which is lingering food scarcity—sustains the spiking food inflation trajectory. Also, in more ways than one, the peremptory floatation of the Naira and its kindred policies (as contained in the CBN’s circular of 14 June 2023 to Deposit Money Banks, DMBs) have kept the local currency on the tailspin. The sharp and sudden crash of the Naira vis-à-vis the dollar and other hard currencies has translated to very high and rising cost of importation of all items. And for the highly import-dependent economy (that Nigeria is), prices of all imports have practically gone through the roof. This is ‘transferred’ to the ultimate consumer by importers of raw materials, machineries and sundry intermediate goods.
Right from the outset, the intention of the Government in the Naira floatation policy was to attain a sustainable unified exchange rate in the foreign exchange (forex) market in Nigeria. However, for upwards of nine months now, the policy is a woeful failure. Rather than achieving a single forex rate, the official and ‘black market’ windows have kept waxing stronger—with the Naira collapsing in both of them. In fact, in the past few days, the local currency has been losing more strength in the official than parallel window. Specifically, Naira to dollar exchange rate in the official window has hit N1500/$, while it remains slightly below this in the ‘black’ market.
The upshot of this scenario has been persistent uncertainty for all economic agents, but particularly for businesses. This pervading uncertainty has been at the root of recent (almost daily) hiking of the exchange rate for cargo duties charged by the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS). The exchange rate (for duties) which was N952 per dollar in December 2023, has been raised several times in a matter of weeks, to now stand at about N1500 per dollar. And the hike has not stopped.
Already, several reports show that many importers have begun to abandon their cargoes at the ports because of the huge sums the NCS expects them to pay as duties. These cargoes are also accumulating outrageous demurrages; and all these scare the importers. Not a few of these importers have since resorted to using the port facilities of neighboring West African countries. And this is a huge loss to Nigeria. Not a few persons, too, have resorted to smuggling—rather paying through their nose to import into Nigeria—with crashing consumer demand/weak purchasing power.
As all these are playing out, the Organized Labor (OL) remains in a ding-dong with the Federal government, over deteriorating life of Nigerian workers courtesy of the recent economic policies. For the umpteenth time since June 2023, the OL—represented by the Nigeria Labor Congress and Trade Union Congress—have threatened calling out Nigerian workers on protests/strikes. While the imbroglio lingers, the standard of living of the Nigerian worker keeps declining—essentially because of the collapsed Naira and rising inflation.
This deplorable fate of the Worker has become such that the NLC is now known to be proposing one million naira as the minimum wage that it would table before the Federal government-constituted Minimum Wage Negotiation Panel. The NLC says it would index its proposed minimum wage to the high and rising inflation as well as the deteriorating Naira exchange rate: issues that have practically left the worker impoverished and hapless.
From another plank, the fuel subsidy debacle is yet lingering. Driven by the collapsing Naira exchange rate, cost of importation of refined petroleum products (especial, Premium Motor Spirit, PMS) has kept rising too. With the soaring landing cost of PMS, importers of the product have been ‘pushing’ to transfer the high cost directly to the pump (price of PMS). However, even as reported by the IMF and the World Bank, the Nigerian Government has been ‘covertly’ paying some subsidies to these PMS importers. It therefore means that like the Naira floatation initiative that failed, fuel subsidy removal policy also has not succeeded.
So, as the President Tinubu administration is about to enter the last quarter of its first year, Nigerians, and indeed, the world is waiting for the direction of the Nigerian economy. How soon will the Government move from dishing out palliatives to effectively begin to churn out policies that stimulate the economy? How soon will these failed policies be ‘reformed’ to begin to leapfrog the economy of Nigeria. Or, are we ‘waiting for Godot’?
- The author, Okeke, a practising Economist, Business Strategist, Sustainability expert and ex-Chief Economist of Zenith Bank Plc, lives in Lekki, Lagos. He can be reached via: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
A few days ago, Ndigbo came under fire from Professor Usman Yusuf, the former executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), for their perceived lack of interest in the ongoing nationally spreading hunger protests and strikes. He said: “I honestly don’t know why the south-east is quiet, uncharacteristically quiet. But the president needs to find out.”
Normally, one would disregard and deny him additional visibility for such an insulting and inflammatory tirade. However, it is a professor who has shaped the opinion of his divide and has led a significant federal agency. He has equally assumed the role of a sort of northern star and advocate. What he said about the Igbo ethnic group is not statesmanlike.
In response to a disaster that was long foretold, Ndigbo are silently protesting as should, perhaps more than those who have come to the streets, despite what Professor Usman Yusuf claims. A person cries till they are unable to make any more sound. That is what has happened to Ndigbo ever since Nigeria began to put its knee on the neck of Ndigbo, following the civil war between Nigeria and Biafra.
Professor Yusuf is aware that both government policies and elections have repercussions. A well-known political economist, Thomas R. Dye, has stated that “Public policy is whatever governments choose to do or not to do”. The disaster that soon befell Nigeria when Tinubu took office as President is a replay of past events, which began when Buhari took office and institutionalised sectionalism and nepotism with people like Professor Yusuf goading him. That was how mediocrity ended up being the guiding principle in Nigeria.
When Buhari ran Nigeria for a section of the country, Prof Usman Yusuf was in Nigeria and said nothing. Of course, He was appointed the executive secretary / chief executive officer of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in August 2016 by Muhammadu Buhari and it is un-African to talk while eating. So, don’t blame the cultured professor! He understandably failed to perceive any issue when the Buhari administration permitted bandits to enter Nigeria in an attempt to settle an ethnic group that had become stranded. Today, the bandits and terrorists have seized control of the country’s forests. Free reign and encouragement were also provided to killer herdsmen so they could go on a murderous rampage, pillage, and displace communities. No word from people like Professor Yusuf.
Under their watch, Buhari brought the nation to its knees, amassing N77 trillion in debts—among them, an unprecedented N23 trillion in “ways and means” borrowed from the CBN without the National Assembly’s prior approval. The Buhari administration even pledged Nigeria’s future oil production as collateral for the careless loans it took, so the country will only receive a portion of the proceeds from oil sales today—a large portion of which is also going to private individuals’ pockets.
When Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu took office as Nigeria’s president, he discovered an empty treasury. But instead of pursuing those who had bankrupted the country, he chose to visit the ensuing sufferings of the hapless Nigerian masses.
Carelessly introducing currency flotation and fuel subsidy removal, Tinubu unleashed two major negative economic headwinds that have severely damaged Nigeria’s economy and inflicted unheard-of agony on the country’s already beleaguered populace.
The ensuing suffering against which the populace is revolting was foreseeable and avoidable. The twin anti-people economic policies will not in any way help the economy even in the long run. Naira lacks any solid foundation to go into the contest with market forces, with no significant exports or economic output to increase domestic production and shore up exports.
As said, terrorists and bandits have taken over the farmlands and driven farmers off their lands. Given the country’s low production and export levels, one may wonder what guarantees the naira flotation programme was based on. In the absence of such preconditions, those who advised the naira floatation policy are nothing but agents of the Bretton Woods Institutions – IMF and World Bank.
Since the country doesn’t progressively acquire foreign exchange through export to base such a policy, why is anybody astonished that the naira’s value is disappearing against the dollar? Given that there is no foundation for the policy that even sophisticated economies don’t try, why try it in Third World Nigeria?
Reducing fuel smuggling to nearby countries is one of the motivations behind the withdrawal of fuel subsidies. However, as the value of the naira rapidly declines, the currencies of most of the West African nations have surpassed the naira, making the cross-border smuggling of fuel and grains even more profitable today. Therefore, the losses from the naira flotation, which has driven the value of the dollar to almost N2000 in just six months, also shattered the hope of stopping fuel smuggling from Nigeria contrary to the unfounded predictions.
Rewind to Professor Usman Yusuf’s complaint against his perceived Igbo people’s lack of interest in their country’s self-inflicted economic woes. The Igbo people are accustomed to hardship and privation. Igbo marginalisation is structural and constitutional, as Ohanaeze pointed out. Professor Usman Yusuf is aware that the South East is the only region in the country with only five states (the North West, to which the learned professor belongs, has seven states, but that’s good with him).
In addition, the South East has a shortfall of over 80 LGs in comparison to other zones. Yet, federal allocations, enrollment in educational institutions, appointment and recruitments for federal government positions, and more are entirely based on the number of States and LGs.
Prof is aware that Ndigbo have endured suffering as a result of the country’s successive governments’ discriminatory policies, and that they have bemoaned for social justice and relief since the Nigeria-Biafra war, to no effect. During the war starvation and hunger were used as a war strategy against Biafrans and Ndigbo. When the genocidal war ostensibly ended, only a select few who could demonstrate that they had bank deposits in a certain bank before the war were offered a paltry twenty pounds.
The effect was that more than 90% of the surviving Igbo people had nothing to start over after the war if they had no proof of bank accounts before the war or had no documentation of the same. Since the war, Ndigbo have continued to feel like an endangered species in Nigeria and Professor Usman Yusuf knows.
The horrific experiences that Ndigbo had both during and after the war are what made the current hunger crisis seem insignificant. They have seen worse. It’s not like things are not rough in Igbo land. Perhaps much more so than in some other zones in the country, where suffering is believed to be rife. However, the truth is that since the war, the Igbo people can bear pains to any degree. That’s the point Professor Yusuf overlooked.
It is equally important to point out that palliative protests are not the solution. The professor ought to utilise his influence to get the Tinubu administration to undo the two misguided policies—the naira flotation and the removal of subsidies. The government needs to institute a strategy to do away with fuel subsidy that will last at least two years. Additionally, the professor ought to inform President Tinubu that the naira will not profitably float even in a decade without export and productivity. If not, the dollar will hit N5,000 within the Tinubu administration at the rate of the plunge.
Prominent figures such as Professor Yusuf ought to urge the government to abandon its delusional assertion that hardship protests are sponsored by the opposition who lost the election. Citizens are aware that to reinforce the false impression that there are no food crises in the land, the government will soon begin funding counter-protests, even in the South East. Tell the government, however, that the rain is only getting started. There won’t be somewhere to flee when it will pour, as it hasn’t started yet.
According to an Igbo proverb, a person who is unaware of the location of where the rain began to fall will never know where they sought cover. Nigeria needs to reject IMF economic prescriptions aimed at trapping the largest African economy in debt to maintain the continent’s status as a rentier economy and supplier of raw materials to the West. Rather than advocating for only palliative measures that aid in consumption rather than production, one hopes the professor will support the spread of this viewpoint as well before it is an eclipse.
Should these actions not be implemented expeditiously soon enough, Ndigbo will persist in their quiet form of protest—the “Sidon Look” model—which Professor Usman Yusuf is needlessly protesting. They are still watching the systematic destruction of their zone and livelihoods, typical of which is the crippling of the Ibeto Cement by the Buhari government, to pave the way for monopoly, which partly accounts for today’s hardships and protests.
Dr. Law Mefor, an Abuja-based forensic and social psychologist, is a fellow of The Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts. He can be reached via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; Twitter: @Drlawsonmefor
IF a family meets in a room, members give themselves pecks, exchange polite greetings, make flowery speeches and emerge laughing for group photographs, it is likely they have not been truthful to themselves. That was my impression following the 37th Summit of the African Union, AU, from February 17-18, 2024 in Addis Ababa.
After attending a few AU Summits, I have learnt to look beyond the theme, to the recommendations and draft resolutions of the AU Permanent Representatives Committee, PRC. This body of ambassadors or representatives of Member States, sets the agenda and drafts the resolutions which, with a few amendments, are passed to the Summit by the AU Executive Council of Foreign Ministers.
As can be imagined, our Heads of State are quite busy. So, their two-day summits are actually for one day with large chunks of that day taken by goodwill messages from foreign dignitaries and bodies like the United Nations. When we add the speeches of our political leaders, there is virtually no time for discussions and debates at the summits.
This week’s Summit was not different, except that it was worse in some aspects. Attendance by 35 countries was quite poor because it means 20 African countries were not at the Summit.
Secondly, the unusual happened: an alleged violation of a President’s immunity and rights. Somalia President, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, claimed that the security services of the host, Ethiopia, tried to stop him from leaving his hotel to attend the meeting. He said he had to join the convoy of Djibouti President, Ismail Omar Guelleh, to be able to leave. The Somalia President added that on arrival at the AU headquarters, armed Ethiopian guards tried to prevent him from entering the building. He claimed that: “A soldier with a gun stood in front of us and denied us access to this facility.” He also accused the host of “.. annexing part of Somalia to Ethiopia, and changing the borders of Somalia”.
The Summit appeared deaf to these complaints and to the October 2023 statement of Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed Abiy, that his country’s landlocked state is an unacceptable “geographical prison” which has to be changed for peace to reign.
The theme of the 2024 AU Summit, “Educate an African fit for the 21st Century: Building resilient education systems for increased access to inclusive, lifelong, quality and relevant learning in Africa”, is quite fine. However, I find the Summit’s adoption of the Second 10-year (2024-2033) implementation plan of Agenda 2063, christened the ‘Decade of Acceleration’, a bit problematic because we do not have the report of the First 10-year plan. It is going the way of the illusive AU ‘Silencing the Guns by 2020’ agenda.
However, these and other talks of the AU joining the G20, do not address the immediate and fundamental challenges of the continent which include insecurity, hunger and economic integration. For Africa to be firmly on the road to economic integration, an effective free trade zone, realisable 2063 agenda, peace and development, it has to rebuild its regional broken blocs, and ensure transnational and regional peace.
The Arab Maghreb Union, AMU, in North Africa, made up of Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia, is like a kwashiokhor victim on life support. Its leaders met last on July 3, 2008, that is 16 years ago. While Tunisia is trying to recover, Libya is a failed state and Algeria holds a principled position against Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara by the monarchy in Rabat. In trying to flee the regional bloc, Morocco sought asylum in the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, but was denied. It had also sought to join the European Union, but was like an illegal migrant, denied entrance. Ironically, the new AU Chairman, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, is the President of Mauritania, a country that broke away from ECOWAS in 2000 while remaining in a comatose AMU.
The East African Community, EAC, comprising the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC, the republics of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania, is one of the oldest and most viable. It has even gotten to the level of recognising the identity cards of member-states, as a substitute for international passports. However, it has been bogged down by serious conflicts, especially between war-torn DRC and Rwanda which allegedly supports the brutal M23 rebels. There is also the continuous disagreements between Rwanda and Burundi.
The Economic Community of Central African States, ECCAS, also suffers from the Rwanda-DRC- Burundi crises. Additionally, ECCAS member, Cameroun, has for years experienced a low intensity civil war in its Anglophone part, as well as a sick, gerontocracy under President Paul Biya.
Gabon is still in the grips of the military which on August 30, 2023 ousted President Ali Bongo Ondimba. Another ECCAS member, Chad, has been virtually under military rule for over three decades. The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, served as Chadian Foreign Minister. After General Mahamat Deby overthrew the Chadian government on April 20, 2021, Faki ensured the regime was not sanctioned by the AU.
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD, made up of Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Uganda, Sudan and South Sudan is one of the most conflict-ridden regions. Somalia has for decades been a failed state, Sudan has experienced a civil war between its military and the Rapid Support Forces since April 2023, and the scars of the civil war in South Sudan are still visible. Ethiopia has been engaged in serious conflicts with its Tigray and Amhara regions, while its Oromo nationality is still restive.
The Southern African Development Community, SADC, has been perhaps the most stable, while nine of the 15 members of ECOWAS are experiencing serious stages of instability. Guinea Bissau does not allow its parliament function; Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are under direct military rule; the Ivorian President, Alassane Ouattara, is in an illegal and unconstitutional third term; Senegalese President Macky Sall has blocked the general elections and Sierra Leone claims to have aborted a coup on November 26, 2023, while Nigeria is wracked by terrorism, kidnapping and banditry.
So, the AU Summit did not even scratch the surface of the continent’s immediate security and economic challenges. When new AU Chair, Ghazouani, talked about the need to realise Africa’s socio-economic development ambitions, build continental stability and ensure that Africa has an assertive presence on the world stage, he should realise that the continent would need to be steered in a proper direction. The AU needs to call a proper summit dedicated to peace building and economic integration where our leaders can tell themselves the truth, call themselves to order, and carry out joint work. Otherwise, Africa will continue to drift from one summit to another.
[OPINION] President Tinubu Must Stay the Present Course While Bringing Succour To Nigerians - Jesutega Onokpasa
Admin
My brother, Reno Omokri, recently shared some statistics which revealed that contrary to the propaganda of the opposition, President Bola Tinubu's policies are gradually bearing fruit for our national economy.
Indeed, I most earnestly concur with Reno's position on SUBSIDY REMOVAL and NAIRA FLOATATION and urge Mr President to stay the course.
Every fruit takes time to mature and that's what we are presently experiencing.
Yes, our dear citizens of this great country are facing challenges but if truth be told, we have always faced challenges in Nigeria and what has now happened to us is the inevitable consequence of the chickens coming home to roost because past administrations preferred to paper over the cracks rather than do what was required to prevent the house from collapsing.
It is now up to President Tinubu to ensure that doesn't happen and that is precisely what he is doing.
Those calling for the reinstatement of fuel subsidy and pegging of the Naira either don't understand the issues or fully understand them but are acting out a clandestine script from the pit of Hell, itself.
The latter category know exactly what they are doing and we are not falling for it.
While staying the course and doing the needful to finally place this country on a strong, solid and irreversible footing for sustainable progress, there are many things the administration can do to ameliorate the condition of our citizens.
Nevertheless, whatever President Tinubu does must be similar to what he has already been doing to ensure fuel is available to Nigerians at a stable rate but most certainly NOT policy reversal.
Any REVERSAL of policy will be similar to what President Jonathan ended up doing after unadvisedly removing subsidy on New Year's Day.
In fact, those calling for policy reversal are only trying to subject our President to the same aftermath and its consequences.
These people are trying to set us up for President Tinubu to end up as President Jonathan did and we must not let that happen.
They are entreating us to willfully fail, thus enabling them to take over, four years from now, resume their looting spree, and, finally and permanently destroy this country.
Any truly politically savvy person would immediately see that.
Indeed, it is those that got us into this mess that are urging us to return to the mess they created and may God judge them harshly.
We know the script and, sorry, it will not work.
Politics is politics and governance is governance.
This is the time for governance and governing is what President Tinubu is doing.
Many roads lead to Rome; President Tinubu has already shown us one road to stable fuel prices and we can take a similar one to solving exchange rate volatility.
Indeed, these policies of subsidy removal and Naira floatation MUST NOT be reversed because the opposite is simply both UNAFFORDABLE and UNSUSTAINABLE.
WE ARE BROKE AND DON'T HAVE THE WHEREWITHAL TO PAY FOR THE UNPAYABLE.
Let's all do well to understand that inescapable reality in order for this country to move forward.
Nevertheless, and as we forge ahead to restoring this nation to progress and prosperity, we can ameliorate the challenges of our dear citizens via other creative solutions our President has already shown himself to be adept at.
There are many additional steps Mr President can take to correct the grotesque anomalies and macabre dislocations he met on ground.
He must go after the crooked bankers, the shady currency speculators, the food hoarders and other categories of maniacal saboteurs across the country.
President Tinubu must call the Governors to order and clamp down on their diabolical greed which induces them to convert a substantial part of the monthly allocations of their states into dollars instead of investing it on development, agriculture and salaries of workers and pensioners.
All tiers of government must be functional and Mr President should insist on the local government councils effectively playing their roles with absolutely no excuses from the local government Chairmen.
President Tinubu must realize that by far the biggest part of the present challenge is something that seems to have escaped most analysts, which is the age old abomination of satanically low salaries, wages and emoluments in this country.
There is some form of inflation everywhere in this world and a major plank of the coping mechanism developed economies have constructed to deal with it is regular and inflation-sensitive remunerations.
This country is a terrible place from the point of view of how much workers are paid.
Nowhere is this atrocity more vicious than in the private sector.
Some people have been paying their gateman, driver, cook, cleaner, house help, secretaries, waiters and other categories of workers in the private and domestic sectors the same pittances since ten years ago!
How in the world are they supposed to survive in an economy wherein prices have increased tenfold in that period?
The same people who as entrepreneurs, businessmen, company executives, restauranteurs, supermarket owners, hoteliers, etc who have increased the prices of their goods and services tenfold over that span of time are still paying utter crap to their workers, forgetting that labour is actually the MOST IMPORTANT factor of their cost of production and is already reflected in those price increases.
But they will never increase their workers salaries, will brazenly steal that increased labour cost and then blame government for everything.
We have become a nation of blame shifters who do terrible things to one another only to turn around and blame our President for what we ourselves are most guilty of.
The same hypocrites who pay their workers N30,000 and their managers N40,000 will come on television and lambast the President for not doing enough to improve the economy that they, themselves are the ones destroying.
But, they are paying their childrens'expensive school fees, changing their cars and servicing their girlfriends.
Mr President must insist that absolutely no worker, public, private or domestic, must be underpaid or howsoever cheated or denied their just remuneration in this country, henceforth.
If you will not pay your workers fair wages, do your work yourself.
If you are not willing to pay your domestic staff properly, please feel free to open your gate yourself, drive your car with your own hands, bend down and mop your house and cook your own food, for God's sake!
If workers were being well paid, the challenges our citizens are currently facing could never be as excruciating as they are.
Any other steps we take to solve this problem without doing something drastic, onerous and fundamental about remunerations in this country will only amount to beating about the bush.
Against the background of the sabotage being orchestrated to undermine this administration by those who lost elections, two things must be made crystal clear to those who don't care if the country collapses in their desperation for power:
1. This government is not going anywhere;
And,
2. If this government does not succeed, we might not even have a country anymore.
Any idiot out there hoping that through gaslighting, propaganda, incitement, ethnicism, regionalism or vide any other subterfuge, this government will go away is only wasting his time.
The Bola Tinubu administration is here to stay and actualize renewed hope in Nigeria.
It is in our collective best interest to ensure it succeeds.
I assure my fellow Nigerians that their President and Commander-in-Chief, President Bola Tinubu has what it takes to do what it takes.
All he needs is our support.
Onokpasa, a lawyer, is Chairman, Tinubu Media Support Group, TMSG, and writes from Abuja.
Nigeria’s politicians have perfected the art of burying themselves with one foot sticking out. And it appears that the All Progressives Congress (APC) will, once again, stage this rite of self-destruction in the forthcoming governorship election in Edo State.
The party’s primaries on Saturday was such a shambles, it has now been forced to conduct it again, with no guarantee of a sensible outcome for an exercise involving perhaps less than 500,000 members (parties routinely inflate their roll). If Governor Godwin Obaseki’s ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), had paid to put a spell on APC, the outcome would not have been more potentially devastating.
Yet, this is a governor whose bet to install a successor from his own party is not necessarily based on his own record, but on the gift of an opposition in disarray.
After the turbulent last four years at Osadebey House between Obaseki and his deputy, Philip Shaibu, it looked all but certain that the divided house of PDP would collapse when elections hold again in September.
And this was not wishful thinking. Not only has the common political front that paved the way for Obaseki’s ascension to power in his first term eroded; in his second term, he has been fighting both internal and external political enemies, severely limiting his attention and performance.
If his first term was uneventful, it was precisely because that was when the seed of the state’s future political crisis was sown. Even though his benefactor, former Governor Adams Oshiomhole, had installed him in office in the hope of replicating the Tinubu-Fashola model in Lagos, Obaseki had other plans.
The new “tuke-tuke”
Once he was ensconced in office, he made a point of telling the remnant of the Oshiomhole crowd still hanging around the corridors of power, that power had changed hands. No longer, he reportedly said, were the days of “tuke-tuke” politics, a carryover from the era of Tony Anenih, which former Edo State Commissioner for Information and presidential aide, Louis Odion, once described in Louis-pedia as a political variant that empowered touts and prioritised rent for politicians for doing little or no work.
Obaseki, the blue-eyed Lagos Boy and financial consultant, advertised as the answer to Edo State’s private sector woes, should know. He was a core member of Oshiomhole’s cabinet, now determined to carve his own path.
When after taking power, however, he began to cut off the supply line to the trough, starving the APC’s political structure in the state of nutrition, the battle line with Oshiomhole was drawn. The former governor who had also become the Chairman of the APC at the time, used his position to block Obaseki from getting the party’s ticket for a second term.
Obaseki of course milked public sympathy and later decamped to the PDP where he contested and won re-election. As a result of his defection, he governed with a hostile, hobbled parliament. Fourteen – and later 10 – out of the 24 members of the State House of Assembly were in the opposition and they operated mostly from a hideout provided in Abuja by Oshiomhole.
Significantly damaged in legitimacy, there was very little Obaseki could do. He has spent a greater part of the last four years watching his back for a deputy who, were he in the opposition, could not have plunged more daggers in the government’s back.
Residents have borne the brunt. Not only has Obaseki replaced the old cult of “tuke-tuke” with the new cult of “yes-men,” reports from the state also indicate that there are few paved roads and other social infrastructure such as water, hospitals, and schools, especially in areas outside the capital, Benin City.
The more you look…
Not unlike a good number of the states, the doubling of the state’s internally generated revenue from N1.8billion monthly in 2016 has barely been felt in rural areas where homes are still without water and school buildings are still largely without roofs and students without teachers.
Although Edo is currently ranked above its peers in the South-South poverty league with 1.4m (out of the state’s 3.9m population) leaving in multidimensional poverty, a government determined to make its mark could have done far more to lift the people.
Obaseki has done well in cultivating an elite in smart suits, while keeping up a façade of performance, especially with high-profile media events like Edo Best, Alaghodaro Summit, and the renovation of the Secretariat. But as surely as the ball of pounded yam never fails to press into the straying fish crumb in the soup, these projects have been criticised, particularly by the opposition, as the government’s conduit pipes.
Edo could not have been riper for the taking than in its present state, but Oshiomhole’s ambition may well be the wrecking ball. In my forecast entitled, “What you might expect in 2024,” published last December 28, I said, “The biggest danger to APC’s victory is Oshiomhole…except the APC finds an overwhelmingly appealing candidate, the party could be in for a surprise.”
The result of the party’s “inconclusive” primaries on Saturday, showed that the surprise came early. From reports, Oshiomhole, APC’s certified nemesis in Edo, managed to suborn forces in the Presidency to hand over the party’s flag to Dennis Idahosa – a candidate that Oshiomhole’s government had once described as “untrustworthy,” the most flattering of the government’s description at that time.
But suspects have their moments of redemption. Except that in this case reports on the conduct of the primaries on Saturday showed that even the redeemer seemed so far gone in his waywardness, he suborned not only Abuja, but also one of the most notorious political conductors to supervise the primaries.
A crime scene
The result, of course, were parallel primaries. One with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officers present – as it should be – that produced Monday Okpebholo; and the other, which invariably produced Idahosa, became a crime scene.
The outcome was neither organised, even from the point of a common heist, which it was; nor was it politically strategic. Idahosa, the beneficiary of that crime scene, is from Edo South, where Obaseki, who is backing Asue Ighodalo, a candidate from Edo Central, could significantly undermine APC’s votes. A third candidate, Anamero Dekeri, even emerged from the woodwork, to claim victory!
It’s true that whether a political party holds its primaries in the motor park or at a brothel, it is not the business of non-party members. The point, unfortunately, is that we have seen that in the end, voters pay for the travesty, corruption and incompetence in the parties.
APC should have learnt that lesson in Zamfara four years ago when a court ruling invalidated the entire state election over shambolic party primaries, never mind a recent Supreme Court ruling that has further muddied the waters.
At elections, voters often have uninspiring candidates – Tweedle-dee and Tweedledum – inflicted on them by party primaries that were anything but primaries. The crimes committed by politicians behind closed doors soon become public bastards, often leading to voter apathy, bitter wranglings or needless court disputes. It’s incredible that parties that can’t even manage their own affairs want a chance on the bigger stage.
PDP may laugh – and indeed it should, as it appears that the APC has already handed it the shovel to finish off the burial rites. But with Obaseki’s deputy, Shaibu, threatening to bring down the roof, it would be interesting to see how the PDP and the Labour Party, which is also having its own troubles, organise their own primaries.
If Nigeria’s elections – party, local council, state or federal – has taught anything, it is that as surely as a stumble precedes a fall, shambolic primaries lay the foundation for turbulent electoral outcomes and unstable governments.
Once again, Edo is proving that the story is not about to change.
Azu Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP.
Godswill Akpabio (then Akwa Ibom State Governor) once stated that only the re-election of President Goodluck Jonathan could guarantee peace in Nigeria. At an interdenominational church service beamed live on the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) network on 2 January 2015, he declared: “As a PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) chieftain, I have found the solution to the peace we are seeking in Nigeria. That solution is the election of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan for a second term in office. When you do that, you would show that you are not a religious bigot. When you do that, you would show that you are not an ethnic jingoist and that you believe in the unity of this country.”
Of course, we know Jonathan lost the presidential election that year. But Akpabio won his bid to be a Senator. Ordinarily, by their Standing Rules at the time, positions of Principal Officers were reserved only for ranking senators. But on the strength of his previous position as chairman of PDP Governors Forum and the depth of his pocket, the Senate broke their own rule to accommodate Akpabio as Minority Leader. The hope was that he would help to rebuild PDP as a robust opposition platform to counter the excesses of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). The hope was misplaced.
Two years into his tenure as Minority Leader, Akpabio resigned from the PDP to join the APC and offered a perfect excuse. “The first thing you need to know about the APC, from the point of view of leadership, I am quite impressed the president has kept his integrity intact. He has been able to improve the image of Nigeria and restore a lot of respect to Nigeria from the international community,” Akpabio said while heaping praises on then President Muhammadu Buhari who later offered him a ministerial appointment after losing his Senate re-election bid. “I am joining the APC to stabilize the government and to assist the government to create employment opportunities for Nigerians so that we can fight the twin brother to corruption, which is poverty.”
We are aware that Akpabio has been fighting poverty with his garrulous and ostentatious lifestyle for almost two decades. Incidentally, on 23 February 2018, while presenting the Special Achievement Award conferred on then Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor by the Silverbird Group in Lagos, Akpabio commended Godwin Emefiele for maintaining the global integrity of the apex bank and stability of Naira, describing him as “a humble and silent achiever”. Now, after being enabled to the office of Senate President by the current President Bola Tinubu, Akpabio is singing a different tune.
During a thanksgiving service in Rivers State on Sunday, Akpabio compared the economy left by Buhari for Tinubu to a spoof. “Nigeria was like a foam inside a pail. As the foam has filled the pail you think that it was water. The economic situation was tricky. By the time you push your hands (inside), you will only touch water towards the bottom. So, the kind of economic mess we were in, a lot of people do not understand.” After dissing the ‘anti-corruption’ president under whom he was a minister, Akpabio descended on Emefiele. “We don’t even know what to charge the former Central Bank governor (Emefiele) with. Whether to charge him for putting foam on top of the pail or to charge him for printing notes without income. I don’t know what we will charge him with,” Akpabio said, raising questions about the credibility of the ongoing court case if they are still trying to frame the alleged crime. “What we know is that we are here today because of the actions and policies that they (Buhari administration) took, and we recognise that, but we are now battling to ensure that Nigerians can sleep with their eyes closed and have three square meals on their tables.”
‘A Man for All Seasons’ is a British historical drama that celebrates the life of Sir Thomas More, the 16th century Chancellor of England who chose death (he was beheaded) to helping Henry VIII achieve his diabolical aim to jilt his wife for another in a desperate bid for a male child. If that popular drama depicts someone whose moral strength did not bend even in the face of death, then what do you call a man like Akpabio? The only phrase that comes to mind is a man for every new season. That has been the story of the ‘Uncommon transformer’ who for the past 22 years has been a ‘government pikin’—a man whose livelihood has depended on political office: Commissioner, Governor, Senator, Minister and now Senate President!
While endorsing Tuesday’s decision to probe how the N30 trillion Ways and Means CBN loans approved by the last Senate was spent by the Buhari administration, Akpabio said “The food and security crises confronting the nation now are traceable to the way and manner the said Ways and Means were given, collected and spent.” Akpabio may be right but how does such a probe bring down the price of garri in the market or help in halting the depreciation that has rendered the Naira almost of no value? We know that, like all previous probes, it will serve no useful purpose beyond buying time for the government while Nigerians are regaled with tales. Besides, was Akpabio, who has dismissed those protesting the rising cost of living in the country as “sponsored protesters”, not part of the Buhari administration? Does the president need people who can help him find solutions to our mounting economic challenges or those who are good only at inventing self-serving excuses?
For those who may have forgotten, under Buhari, Akpabio was an all-powerful Minister of Niger Delta. He came up with the idea of an Interim Management Committee (IMC) arrangement at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) – whose members he kept sacking while practically running the show so that nobody would “kill the forensic audit”. In the ‘Off the mic’ drama involving one of his henchmen, it was Akpabio who admitted before a House of Representatives committee chaired by the current Internal Affairs Minister, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo that our lawmakers are also contractors while inadvertently indicting himself in the process: “I just told you that we have records to show that most of the contracts in NDDC are given out to members of the National Assembly, but you don’t know about it, the two chairmen can explain to you. I was a member of the NDDC committee; so, I know about it.”
In a milieu where politics has become a vehicle to secure power and privilege (rather than advance the public good) and public office merely provides access for the control of resources, it is no surprise that people like Akpabio thrive. He is of course not alone on this, so I do not begrudge him his good fortune. But those whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit, to borrow from the eternal wisdom of Chinua Achebe, should not insult our collective intelligence. By virtue of his current office, Akpabio is one of the few people with unhindered access to President Tinubu. If this is what he says publicly at a time like this, one can only imagine what he is telling the man in private moments.
Let me break it down for the Akpabios of this world who may not be aware of the current situation in Nigeria. If, going by the World Bank parameters, living in extreme poverty means surviving on less than $1.90 (now more than N3000) per day, and minimum wage still stands at N30,000, one can then imagine what many Nigerians are going through. As of last year March, when the situation was not even this bad, a World Bank report revealed that “as many as 4 in 10 Nigerians live below the national poverty line.” Several households in the country, the report added, had to adopt “dangerous coping strategies, including reducing education and scaling back food consumption, which could have negative long-run consequences for their human capital.”
That report was based on the reality of 2022 when Akpabio was still a minister under Buhari. Today, things are far worse. The removal of fuel subsidy and floating of the Naira have combined to push basic necessities beyond the reach of most Nigerians. With daily hikes in the cost of staple foods, essential drugs, transportation costs, school fees, house rent etc. at a time when there seems to be no bottom to Naira’s depreciating value, millions of Nigerians are groaning under an unprecedented level of misery. Nothing depicts our dire situation more aptly than the trending video of a crowd of women rushing to scoop from a pot of rice being cooked by a food vendor, almost like animals. Therefore, if the president listens only to people like Akpabio, how would he understand how dire the situation is for most Nigerians today?
Let me also be clear here. Buhari and Emefiele deserve all the opprobrium anybody can heap on them for mismanaging our economy. That is not my issue with Akpabio. But not all of us suffer from the Nigerian malaise of collective amnesia. A country where an enabler of every sitting president like Akpabio is a source of state wisdom cannot but end as a basket case. It is therefore no surprise that in a bid to address the fast-depreciating value of the Naira, Tinubu’s henchmen have reduced monetary policy to chasing BDC operators around the streets of Abuja with guns!
ECOWAS and Vanishing Democracy
On Monday, military authorities in Guinea dissolved the interim government it had put in place since June 2022. They pledged to appoint a new administration. We recall that Colonel Mamady Doumbouya toppled President Alpha Conde in September 2021, in a coup hailed by many Guineans. Conde invited it upon himself by forcing through a controversial constitutional amendment that gave him a third term in office. And he brutally crushed the street demonstrations that followed, killing many before he was ousted. Although the military promised to return power to elected civilians by the end of this year, there is nothing to suggest such proposition is still on the cards in Guinea.
However, the latest challenge for the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) is in Senegal where President Macky Sall, whose tenure expires on 2 April, is also playing the sit-tight game. First, he toyed with the idea of a third term that elicited street protests. When that gambit failed, Sall postponed the election scheduled to hold this Sunday, 25 February till December this year. The Constitutional Court in the country has ruled that proposition also illegal. While Sall promised to abide by the court ruling, uncertainties remain about when the election will hold. That ECOWAS is silent about Senegal shows the hypocrisy of the leaders within the subregion. Meanwhile, Sall himself has shown that despite mouthing platitudes, his belief in democracy is driven only by self-interest. And I say this based on a personal encounter I had with him six years ago. Although I did not reveal who secured for me the encounter at the time, I can do so now and the circumstance in which it happened.
In writing my book, ‘Against the Run of Play: How an Incumbent President was Defeated in Nigeria’, I spoke to many of the principal actors, including President Goodluck Jonathan and current President Tinubu. Because he was abroad on self-exile at the time, it was difficult to get the former Bauchi State Governor, Adamu Muazu. Yet, I needed him to clarify certain issues to complete the book, considering he was PDP National Chairman during the 2015 general election. Eventually, we agreed to meet in Dakar, the Senegalese capital where I arrived on the day preceding a special ECOWAS meeting in Abuja on the Gambian presidential election lost by Yahyah Jammeh who decided not to leave office. As it would happen, Muazu had a dinner appointment with President Sall, and I tagged along. Below are excerpts from my December 2017 recollection, ‘Buhari, Sall and Jammeh’s Defiance’ to illustrate the tragedy of Senegal today.
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…While I do not know much about Sall’s stewardship, it was nonetheless a refreshing time with him until we departed the presidential palace at exactly 1.20am (Nigerian time) which was 12.20am local time in Dakar. He said he would be departing for Abuja by 6.30am for the ECOWAS meeting on the crisis in The Gambia. By then, I had learnt a lot about the mutiny in Cote D’Ivoire where soldiers went on strike last week as well as the attempts by the ECOWAS leaders, including President (Muhammadu) Buhari, to resolve the political crisis in The Gambia.
Fortunately for me, when Sall was receiving us on arrival, I had been introduced to him as a former presidential spokesman in Nigeria, so he had no reason to be on his guard, as most people usually are when with reporters. That gave me ample opportunity to ask probing questions during dinner without raising any suspicion about my interest. I started by reminding Sall of what he already knows: that whereas the problem in The Gambia may be a challenge for ECOWAS, it is one that his country (Senegal) would have to deal with. He agreed with my summation before also expressing optimism that it would be resolved before January 19 (2018). He was confident that Yahya Jammeh will go because the consequences of doing otherwise would be too much for the Gambian dictator. Already, some of Jammeh’s ministers have started voting with their feet.
However, Sall is also mindful of old prejudices between the two countries that for a period in history were one (Senegambia), especially when I asked him whether he was ready to offer asylum to Jammeh; having already told me of such a plan and some of the countries that could play host without mentioning Senegal. “I can have him here in Senegal, but I don’t think he will come,” Sall said as he explained the complications of the negotiations to oust Jammeh. “I think he fears what might happen to him when he leaves office, especially with the International Criminal Court that could look into some things that happened under his watch.”
To say that it will not be easy is an understatement given that Jammeh is digging in, and he is not without his own supporters. For instance, The Gambian Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Mr. Samsudeen Sarr, recently took to the social media to reiterate his “unflinching support for His Excellency Shiekh Professor Doctor Alhagie Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh Babillimansa” while attacking Senegal that “has always overtly or covertly expressed its compulsion to annex our Anglophone nation into its 8th region.”
According to Sall, raising the stakes by Jammeh may prove to be no use for him at the end, given that Charles Taylor of Liberia also negotiated his way out of power before he was apprehended three years later under circumstances that were not particularly edifying for Nigeria. The best way out for Jammeh, the Senegalese president argued, was the first option he took to concede the election before reneging. But Sall believes that he and other African leaders have a responsibility to ensure Jammeh’s exit without damage to his country and Senegal will play a decisive role in that direction…
ENDNOTE: President Sall indeed played a very critical role in ECOWAS efforts to force Yahya Jammeh out of Banjul in defence of democracy in the subregion and peace in The Gambia. It is therefore a shame that he would now seek to plunge his own country into avoidable crisis on the altar of inordinate ambition. But the greater challenge is for ECOWAS that must be worried about the state of democracy, anchored on the rule of law, and expressed will of the people within the sub-region.
• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com
President Goodluck Jonathan in his independent message to Nigerians on the occasion of the nation’s 51st independence anniversary had on behalf of Nigerians thanked our founding fathers who “brought joy and hope to the hearts of our people after six decades of colonial rule by working together to restore dignity and honour to a multicultural and multilingual nation of diverse people with more than 250 distinct languages and ethnic groups”. This was achieved in spite of the initial lack of consensus on the national question with Nnamdi Azikiwe and his group canvassing for unitary system, Obafemi Awolowo and his Yoruba group insisting on federalism while Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who believed “Nigerian unity is a British invention” and Ahmadu Bello who expressed grief over “the mistake of 1914” settled for confederacy. But at the end, realizing their responsibility to those that look up to them for direction, these illustrious Nigerian pathfinders settled for a federal arrangement that allowed groups to develop at their own pace without interference from federating members.
Then came in January 1966, a bunch of criminals who like those “the gods want to destroy, they first made mad”, visited violence on themselves killing their best officers and their wives on their beds before descending on politicians – their benefactors who besides sending them for military training abroad set up military institutions for them at home. Forgetting that being the custodian of the nation’s constitution was a responsibility, they defied the constitutional provisions, imposed themselves as rulers and in a moment of madness turned a multicultural and multi-ethnic state into a unitary state. Six months later, a more vicious criminal group embarked on vengeance killing that eventually led to 33 months of civil war.
Most of those that have ruled our nation ever since have always behaved like outlaws. But General Ibrahim Babangida, the evil genius, who after a palace coup against his boss, hilariously called himself president stood out as the one that carried reign of brigandage to other institutions of society notably, the judiciary, the economy, the intellectual and the press on whose back he rode to power. It was Babangida’s Aso rock professor who fraudulently claimed political parties could be decreed. And it was they that undermined the nation’s political socialization process by assuring him he could ban old political parties which was like cutting the umbilical cord between a mother and his baby.
His economic wizards include Olu Falae and Kalu Idika Kalu who in spite of Nigerians’ round rejection of IMF loan and its conditionalities insisted there was no “alternative to Structural Adjustment Programme”, (SAP) which opened our nation to imported goods from any part of the world.
Driven by greed, unpatriotic Nigerians who secured import licences decided to flood the country with substandard goods and fake drugs that killed local manufacturing companies including, electronics, car accessories, textile, ceramics, pharmaceuticals etc. While thousands of Nigerians lost their jobs, criminals were buying land at N1billion per plot in Banana Island and other choice locations in Nigeria.
For the nation, it was double jeopardy. Under Babangida’s dubious commercialization policies, the federal military government divested government holdings in many otherwise thriving government enterprises. State Military Administrators were equally directed to sell off state-owned public enterprises. Thus, Ikeja Cocoa Industry (CIL) owned by the ODUA Group was sold by Yoruba military administrators for an amount less than the cost of land on which the thriving industry with all its equipment was built.
New set of criminals emerged in 1999 in form of military-baked ‘new breed’ politicians that followed in the footsteps of their creator who like military invaders, often loot conquered territories. It therefore did not come as a surprise that about 17 of 22 governors elected under PDP and ANPP between 1999 and 2007 were dragged to court by EFCC for financial malfeasance against the states they governed. National Assembly probe of Obasanjo’s ill-implemented privatization policy also confirmed Nigeria’s total investment of about $100b put together between 1959 and 1988 was sold to PDP stalwarts and their cronies for a paltry $1.5b.
Babangida’s economic wizards found parallel in Obasanjo’s Chukwuma Soludo and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The banking crisis had its origins in the Soludo’s forced consolidation of the sector in 2005-2006. Like Olu Falae and Kalu Idika Kalu, Soludo, foreclosing a place for small banks in society went on with his program of consolidation and recapitalization which reduced the number of banks from about 90 in 2005 to 24 by 2006 and with 20 of them by end–2011, controlling ₦18.2 trillion assets and ₦12.5 trillion in deposit. The CBN also went on to inject ₦620 billion (about US$4.1 billion) of liquidity into the banking sector.
By September 2011, the recapitalization of the intervened banks was completed with AMCON purchasing all the Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) of the intervened banks while the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) paid N16.18 billion for depositors in the 20 banks.
It soon became obvious the banking sector had been taken over by a new set of actors. The chief executives of the capitalized banks became too powerful and with too much money at their disposal, compromised everyone while those below also embarked on massive stealing including the alleged 2015 CBN collusion with officials of commercial banks to defraud the country of N8 billion through recirculation of defaced and mutilated currencies (Premium Times of May 31 2015.)
Of those fingered by Sanusi for tampering with depositors’ funds, it was only Cecelia Ibru who apart from forfeiting assets of N191.4 billion including 94 choice properties around the world, was jailed in October 8 2010 by Justice Dan Abutu for 18 months. Other accused criminals were never brought to justice.
With incompetent President Buhari, and compromised CBN Governor Emefiele who was recently indicted by a special investigator’s probe report for allocating more forex than applicant’s request, allocating forex to those who never even applied and of fraudulent cash withdrawal of about $2.9billion, it became obvious that the stars of the leading commercial banks that engaged forex round-tripping that allowed them to declare profit in trillions were men with feet of clay.
Criminals including those who committed treason, economic vampires, intellectual frauds, compromised journalists and sponsors of terrorists and bandits are well known to us but remain untouchable. Their response to the president’s appeal to their humanity in the interest of our beautiful country has yielded no fruit.
If the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, is trying to attribute the “twin challenges of poverty, insecurity and “the untold hardship” arising from unemployment and hunger” in the northern region” to the painful but necessary decision of Tinubu’s eight months administration while ignoring the over 200 years feudal system that today fuels war of resistance between marginalized Hausa farmers and their Fulani overlords; if importers of second hand clothes, substandard products including fake drugs that contributed to the collapse of local industries continue to sabotage government forex policies out of self-preservation, the president should be reminded that what he needs as an elected sovereign, is not moral suasion but to borrow a leaf from Niccolo Machiavelli, (Italian statesman,1469-1572) the ‘arch apostle’ of naked force, who believes for a state to “fulfil its function of promoting the common good and preserving justice”, morality has no place. If in line with Machiavelli, his Yoruba forbears spoke of ‘Afobaje l’Oba npa’, the fate of opponents of his policies is sealed.
Tinubu asked for the job. His hands are on the straw. As an elected sovereign, there should be is no looking back.
Officials of the present administration do not seem to have any other platitude to offer Nigerians than appeal to them to just “endure.” When they mount any available pulpit to comment on the ongoing economic and social crises facing longsuffering and beleaguered citizens, their message hardly ever goes beyond preaching the gospel of endurance. The problems confronting the country have become so convoluted that there is no end in reasonable sight. Since no one can guarantee how and when this would shape out, the best they can offer is more bitter doses.
“Endure, endure, and endure,” they say, but it seems they forget that Nigerians have done nothing but endure. If people have started to cry and groan very loudly now, it is because their capacity to take pain has been overstretched. Even God, in his vindictive rage, did not visit the 10 plagues on Egypt at once.
In the past couple of weeks when the prices of goods and services have unprecedentedly been surging out of control, several emergency measures have been taken to combat the crisis of soaring inflation. From declaring a “war” on forex operators to raiding warehouses for “hoarded” food and several urgent (and contrasting) proclamations by state officials, it is clear that nobody thought through how our present situation was supposed to unfold. There was no clear plan for containing the fallouts from the outset, just the Nigerian tendency to wing things. We should have known that we would end up on Sorry Lane when the president stated that he was possessed by spirits when he pronounced, “subsidy is gone.”
Perhaps the conversations around endurance for the promise of greater glory would have been far different if at least two factors had been in place to reassure that there is a method within this madness. Number one would have been Bola Tinubu’s record of prudent economic management and demonstrated capacity for creative leadership. His paid media vuvuzelas would have you believe that he is the architect of modern Lagos, but they have never quite reckoned with how relatively easier it is to “develop” a city that had already established itself as a national economic base.
The real test of his managerial creativity would have been if he had taken on a poorer city like Osun or Ekiti and turned it into an economic centre. He has no such record, and even his supporters who willfully closed their eyes to that deficiency last year are now beginning to open them to the realisation that they are asking a man whose capabilities have never been truly tested to steer the country through hard times.
Second, it would have been helpful if those preaching forbearance could bring themselves to live what they preach. Apart from professional politicians like FCT Minister Nyesom Wike and Senate President Godswill Akapabio who asked people to be patient until the incoherent policies of their administration somehow begin to work out, even members of Tinubu’s immediate family deigned to contribute their voices from the lush palace of Aso Rock.
On Monday, his son, Seyi, also came out to urge Nigerians to endure the current economic difficulty saying, “We must endure if we are to reach the good side of our future.” Not to be outdone, Tinubu’s daughter jumped into the spotlight to also register her existence on the radar of Nigerians with the same message of endurance and patience. I understand when the president’s wife attends a public function and speaks about the nation’s challenges, but his children’s interventions are an overstep. What exactly do these nepo babies know about life that qualifies them to preach virtues to anyone? If you think enduring hardship is the solution to Nigeria’s problems, maybe you should demonstrate it by offloading some of the privileges Daddy got you.
The Tinubus are not the only ones giving the wrong social cues while pacifying the people growing restless. Former CBN governor and deposed Emir Lamido Sanusi added his voice to those seeking to exonerate Tinubu from the ongoing calamity by saying that, “For eight years, we were living a fake lifestyle with huge debt from foreign and domestic debts. The Central Bank of Nigeria owes over N30 trillion, which resulted in debt service surpassing 100 percent.” I think the problem with people like Sanusi—and this is me being generous—is that they confusedly assume the privileges they enjoy under various circumstances beyond their clique of state-sponsored moochers.
When Sanusi said, “We were living a fake lifestyle,” he should have clarified who exactly was included under that collective pronoun. When he was being driven around in a Rolls Royce as an Emir—a position that gulps massive economic resources and yet has zero economic value—did the millions of almajiri children wandering the streets of Kano and its environs join him in living that fake lifestyle? Nigerian leaders have this penchant for assuming a collective voice when it is time to share either pain or blame for a rotten situation. When they want to splurge on public resources, they see themselves as individuals who have earned the luxury.
Nigerians could be groaning from the agony of insecurity and leaders would still go ahead and budget $2.8bn for bulletproof vehicles for themselves. The same leaders will forewarn the whole country that hard times are ahead and people should be ready to endure, and in the same breath also announce the billions they would be budgeting for renovating their official palaces and procuring even more vehicles for the motorcades.
Times are hard, the times are hard, but they will still throw a birthday party inside a stadium and expend billions on international and domestic travel just to earn the attendant estacodes. The biggest and the most scandalous instances of wastage were perpetrated by the ruling class who had near unlimited access to public resources, yet without concomitant accountability. They do all these in broad daylight and somehow still manage to retain enough guts to tell the rest of us to endure to attain the promise of future glory.
But the question is, how much more should people have to endure? The story of our Nigerian lives has been about endless endurance and unrelenting faith in the possibility of a better future. Nigerians in the past welcomed military coups with a similar same sense of expectation of a new beginning as the Nigerians who now go to the polls. Everything we have done as a people has been in the hope that we would finally turn the corner from merely enduring and start living. Year after year, one leadership tenure after the other, the story has hardly changed. Our leaders do not deliver on their promises, but they expect us to hold up the social contract by being patient and forbearing.
You must have seen Senator Adams Oshiomhole doing the media rounds and now blaming the “eight reckless years of Buhari” for all the woes in the land. Up until last year, he consistently blamed all Nigeria’s problems on the “16 years of PDP.” Now that that excuse is no longer tenable, he shifts gears to blaming the Buhari’s locust years. Notice how, in laying the blame for the present darkness on the immediate past administration, he crookedly manages to avoid naming the party and instead opting for an individual? That is a man who has found a calling in manipulating public memory. By 2031, you can take it for granted that he would still be running from one media house to another to ask Nigerians to be “patient” or to “endure” because whoever is in power at that time still cannot solve the problems caused by the “16 years of APC” overnight. There will never be an end to their weaponisation of the virtue of endurance.
CLEAN-shaven, suave, upwardly mobile, and incurably optimistic, Herbert Onyewumbu Wigwe, HOW, was one of the most recognisable figures in the banking space and corporate Nigeria. His official biography could only be written by him. But I hope his example can inspire and influence us.
Accurately describing Herbert in one word can be compared to explaining the mystery of centuries in a few words or a wild goose chase. It is a nuanced and complex process. He was an extraordinary businessman who died alongside his wife and son in the United States of America under exceptional circumstances. His tragic and sudden departure reverberated beyond our shores.
But who was Herbert Wigwe? I can only answer this question from the narrow prism of my friendship and many encounters with him. Herbert and I were members of the same local church assembly, and I witnessed his dedication to spirituality, good works, and commitment to church growth. It is easy to explain because of his solid Christian foundation. Herbert’s father, Elder Shyngle Wigwe, is a pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God.
Herbert was a man of prayer, which he complemented with a ruthless work ethic. He attributed all his successes to God’s blessings. Both of us are from Rivers State, and we had many sessions on how best to fix the politics of Rivers and, by extension, improve the State’s development trajectory. Herbert was utterly detached from politics but had deep insight into political manoeuvrings.
We debated the affairs of Rivers State and the country, and he baffled me with the precision with which he predicted the outcome of political contests. He would quickly tell you that his political party is Nigeria and no other. His passion for Nigeria was simply unwavering. Only a few persons can match his faith in Nigeria. He firmly believed that he would impart society by using businesses to provide solutions to society’s needs and create wealth that would touch the lives of many.
He was unapologetically capitalist, in the proper sense of it, and he lived his life using capital to solve many societies’ needs. Herbert was a man of bold dreams and obsessed with excellence while making room for unavoidable mistakes. Herbert never gave up on any bold dream, no matter the odds. He rode the waves of challenges and was filled with the spirit of hard work, dedication, and strokes of ingenuity. He had bold dreams in all ramifications, and this was self-evident.
First, as a young banker, he teamed up with his friend and partner to acquire “a distressed bank”, rated number 89 then, and turned it around in two decades to become one of the top five banks, with an assets base of over N20.9 trillion. This was quite phenomenal. Herbert, as CEO, set out to build an Access Bank with the vision of becoming the gateway to Africa and the world’s most respected African bank.
With a presence in more than 13 African countries plus a footprint in other continents, Access Bank was working towards realising this vision. Second, Wigwe University, which Herbert personally referred to as the “Future Harvard University of Africa”, was another extraordinary, bold dream. He set out to build the best University in Africa, investing $500m in the initial set-up.
You do not need further testament that he was a man of bold dreams. An entrepreneur extraordinaire, his mystique was his ability to sniff out opportunities where others see none, multiplied by the fact that he was one of the most persistent persons I know when going after opportunities. He mentored many budding entrepreneurs, top managers, and top academics in entrepreneurship.
Apart from his well-known flagship, Access Bank, he was active in other financial services, construction, oil and gas, aviation, film, and music, and, most recently, the education sector. He made a star success of all his multiple business pursuits. Herbert’s hidden strength was his ability to connect with people of all classes and cadres, accompanied by a related instinct to simplify complex things in the most basic way.
His mastery of Rivers’ version of Pidgin English could only equal his fluency in Queens English. He was among the few successful people referred to as the “original old Port Harcourt boy”. Another strength of his was his courageous, daring, patient, and persistent nature, which added to his relentless ambition to accomplish exceptional things. This attracted to him friends and foes in equal measure.
His philanthropic work in the Herbert Wigwe Foundation, which he founded in 2016, focused on youth empowerment, health, arts, and education. This focus on youth development was central to his mentoring, given his strong belief in the importance of the youth in the development of Nigeria and Africa. He was an art enthusiast and contributed to art development in the country. As the art connoisseur he was, his collection reflected his passion for excellence, diversity, and social purpose.
The HOW foundation extensively supported many healthcare projects for the downtrodden among us. His charity works were unique because he loathed publicity about it. Herbert’s enduring legacy is the power of vision, bold dreams, courage, and determination to pursue it and rally people to accomplish the objective. This is what we need to improve in our public space. History has shown that bold dreams have the power to transform societies.
Listening to Herbert talk about his vision was to find yourself in the oasis of inspiration. He genuinely believed that there was nothing you fixed your mind on that you could not accomplish. What lessons can we learn from him? Herbert epitomised a life of passion, dedication, resilience, and boldness in achieving grand personal and societal visions. He was bold in setting out great goals and pursuing them relentlessly until he reached them.
He proves that an unexamined life is not worth living. To achieve greatness and impact on society maximally, one must be purposeful, bold, and patient.Peter Drucker posits: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Herbert created his future and lived it to the full of those he loved. For our budding entrepreneurs, Herbert left a legacy. He proved the axiomatic expression true: “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”
Last week, Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, played host to his Nasarawa State counterpart, Abdullahi Sule, at the Government House, Okemosan, Abeokuta, the state capital. As stated by the August visitor, the courtesy call aimed to congratulate Prince Abiodun on his victory at the Supreme Court and to also commiserate with the family of the late former Minister of Finance, Dr Onaolapo Soleye, who died late last year at the age of 90. With a shared experience of prolonged litigation spanning over six months, the visit was an auspicious movement for the two friends to exchange pleasantries over their hard-won victory. “I am here to congratulate my brother over his victory at the Supreme Court, it was not an easy fight,” Governor Sule declared.
Beyond that, he also seized the occasion as a unique opportunity for cross-fertilization of ideas on how to achieve the developmental agenda set for the people of his Nasarawa home state. And he didn’t mince words on this as he said: “I am also here to appreciate (Abiodun) him for all the good works that he is doing and to learn from what he is doing in Ogun because Ogun to Lagos is the way Nasarawa is to Abuja, we have so much to learn from Ogun State. While on a tour of the state, one thing that particularly caught his fancy, among other critical landmark achievements, is the sprawling network of road infrastructures. Without much ado, this great accomplishment speaks for itself. Even as a cynic, you can only ignore it at your peril because posterity judges better than humans. For being so impressed, Governor Sule commended Abiodun for his giant strides in road construction and infrastructural development in the last four and a half years. Expressing delight at the good road network that criss-crosses the state, described infrastructure as a catalyst for investments and industrial growth. His words: “So many projects like the AgroCargo Airport are going on in the State. I know about the various projects that President Muhammadu Buhari came to commission. “The last time I came here was when Nestle was beginning to build their factory and the Brewery was also building their site. Today, I have not only seen those industries, but I have also seen the dualisation of the Sagamu-Abeokuta road. We zoomed here in 20 minutes. “That is what a private thinking person will do to attract investments as investments will not come without somebody doing something.” Engr. Sule rightly observed that most of the projects were sited at the grassroots, adding that it would help in their socio-economic endeavours. “I am even happier that most of these projects are done at the grassroots as people will be able to benefit especially in the area of agriculture, health, and education,” he added. The network of road infrastructure is not the only thing that stands out Ogun State among its peers. Beneath all the remarkable achievements in its capacity for Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). It is the magic wand that puts the state in the leading role. The recent report by the Economic Confidential which listed Ogun State as the second leading economically viable state in Nigeria after Lagos is the evidence of the capacity of the state for IGR. For three consecutive sessions under the present administration, the state has routinely maintained its competitive edge over the rest of the country.
The Nasarawa governor, while applauding the creativity Prince Abiodun has brought into governance, openly confessed the readiness of his administration to learn from the state. “We have so much to learn from Ogun State. Ogun is to Lagos what Nasarawa is to Abuja. In the area of revenue, Ogun State is doing very well and there are states that do not generate the kind of revenue Ogun is generating. “The biggest of them all is the area of your revenue. You will not appreciate it until you understand what other states that are not generating this kind of revenue are doing,” he said. There is, indeed, a direct link between revenue-generating capacity and economic viability. Without adequate funds, the desire of the administration to create an enabling environment for direct foreign and local investments in the state wouldn’t have been possible. Since Governor Abiodun assumed office, the commitment of his administration has been toward sustainable industrial growth. Yet, sustaining a leading position among other competing states is not by wishful thinking. It is one thing to evolve a roadmap to industrialisation; it is another thing to sustain the action plan. The pursuit of an industrialisation policy has been the overarching objective of all successive governments, but none has achieved the level of success the present administration has recorded within the four and a half years of its inception. The difference is in the commitment to a sustainable environment for industrial growth through the aggressive development of a network of road infrastructures. Apart from the network of road infrastructure visible across the three senatorial districts, continuous improvement in the Ease-of-Doing Business is also a major attraction for investors. This is evident in the creation of four economic zones in the last four and a half years in addition to the Agbara Industrial Zone, which includes the Ota and Kajola axes.
The recent commissioning of two factories and extension of the Tropical General Investment (TGI), along Interchange, Sagamu is a good testament to the administration’s commitment to the effect of Easy-of-Doing Business. Governor Abiodun, while commissioning the two factories, described the event as a classic example of the success story of the state and a reference point in Direct Foreign Investment (DFI). “If we had not increased the ranking of the state on the ease-of-doing business index, you would not be expanding your business. You are a testament to the fact that we are truly working the talk and we are proud to be associated with you,” he said. The most celebrated infrastructure for agroindustrial transformation is the construction of the Agro-Cargo Airport project which would soon commence operation. The Airport with the longest runway in Nigeria (4km) is primed to support the planned investment of over $400 million for a Special Agricultural Processing Zone (SAPZ) in the adjourning lands. “All these projects have changed the face of the state as well as the well-being of the people,” Abiodun enthusiastically said. The discussion on infrastructure will not be complete without a mention of the housing policy of the present government. As an administration that places a premium on humans as a means and an end to development, the governor has left his imprint in this critical sector. In terms of housing, Ogun State has been adjudged to be the friendliest in the area of provision of affordable housing, bridging the housing deficit for the benefit of the people in the state and the nation at large. It was in furtherance of his housing policy implementation that the government recently announced its decision to commence the rebuilding of structures inside the Government Residential Area (GRA) Ibara occupied by civil servants in the state to give way to a smart city. According to the Commissioner for Housing, Jamiu Akande Omoniyi, the decision aligns with the GRA Regeneration Programme initiated by the present administration. To this end, no fewer than 33 housing units sitting on about seven hectares of land at the Annex of the Government Technical College, Idi Aba, Abeokuta, had been demolished as part of the regeneration programme.
To this end, the Ogun State Housing Corporation has been monitoring compliance with the evacuation order issued by the state government to civil servants residing in the housing units. Part of the vision to invest in affordable housing is to prepare the ground for the increasingly growing population of the state due to its proximity to Lagos, the nation’s commercial nerve centre. The idea is to bridge the yawning gap between the demand and supply sides of affordable rent. As the gateway to the largest and fastest growing commercial city in the West Africa subregion, it has become imperative for the government to have a sustainable future action plan to absorb the exodus of people seeking affordable rent in Ogun State. Otherwise, the population explosion that will eventually result from the trend will overwhelm the government with its catastrophic consequences. This is why the governor has made affordable housing schemes the primary objective of his developmental agenda both for social security and economic advantage of an ever increasing population. And he has left his imprints in the sand of time.
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The undeniable truth is that 99% of Nigeria's current challenges stem from General Muhammadu Buhari's presidency, marked by the highest levels of incompetence and recklessness, resulting in eight years of devastation. The consequences of his actions are what we are now experiencing. Tinubu's confused tenure exacerbated matters by adding fuel to Buhari's already consuming fire, unlike what an Obi presidency could have achieved in alleviating them by extinguishing the flames. Is it appropriate for Buhari to roam freely amidst the catastrophic damage he inflicted upon this nation?
Meanwhile, let's refrain from solely blaming Nigerians from all regions for mistakenly voting for Tinubu. The reality is that Nigerians transcended religion and ethnicity to vote for Obi, only to be deceived by the same heartless individuals—Buhari and INEC chief, Prof. Yakubu Mohammed.
Another institution equally culpable alongside Buhari is the judiciary. Let judicial officers stop this annoying pretense as if they live in another world. How can reasonable men unreasonably search for self-evident truths and even bury them under the weight of technicality when found? I assert this with the utmost sense of responsibility.
Not a few defenders of neoliberalism have criticised the judgment of the Federal High Court in the case of Femi Falana SAN v Attorney-General of the Federation for directing the Federal Government to fix the prices of essential commodities in the country. The criticism of the judgment is anchored on the claim that Nigeria is a capitalist country. It is surprising that such critics are not aware that the leading capitalist countries in the world regularly subsidise energy and gas and regulate the prices of certain goods and services.
According to Hugh Rockoff, governments in the United States "have fixed the price of gasoline, the rent on apartments in New York City, and the wage of unskilled labour, to name a few. At times, governments go beyond fixing specific prices and try to control the general level of prices, as was done in the United States during both world wars and the Korean War, and by the Nixon administration from 1971 to 1973."
Sometime in October last year, in response to the growing demand for rent control in the United Kingdom, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan recently said that: “Londoners re-elected me on a manifesto pledge to push for the powers to control rents and I will not stop advocating for this lifeline on their behalf. I am delivering on my promise to build a better, fairer, and more prosperous London by building more affordable homes in the capital and providing vital support to Londoners through the cost-of-living crisis. It’s about time the government did the same.”
Notwithstanding that Nigeria operates a so-called free market economy, several laws have imposed a duty on the Federal Government and State Governments to regulate the prices of fuel, tickets for train and domestic air travels, schools fees paid in government colleges and tuition in tertiary institutions, water rates, electricity tariffs, telecom call rates, tolling fees paid by road users, land use charge, fees for land documentation, rents paid by tenants and wages paid to workers. The Federal Government has just set up a Wages Review Panel to recommend the minimum wage payable by the public and private sectors in the country.
It is common knowledge that the federal government fixes duties on goods imported into the country. In particular, the Nigeria Customs Service is legally obligated to collect such duties. However, the Government has decreed that import duties shalll not be paid in respect of certain goods and products, including all basic foods items, medical and pharmaceutical products, books and educational materials, baby products, fertilizer, locally produced agricultural and veterinary medicine, farming machinery and farming transportation equipment, plant and machinery imported for use in the export processing zone.
Some private companies that are required to pay import duties running to several trillions of Naira are also granted duty waivers by the federal government. In the last 5 years of the Buhari administration, they gave duty waivers of N17 trillion to a few "captains of industry.". Similarly, the Tinubu administration has extended such facilities to not less than 34 companies. It is submitted that the federal government is duty bound to prevent the beneficiaries of such humongous duty waivers from fixing the prices of the goods without regulation.
The Central Bank of Nigeria is legally mandated to fix the exchange rate of the Naira visavis other currencies. But contrary to the letter and spirit of the Central Bank Act, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has continued to devalue the Naira through dollarisation. The CBN has also floated the currency to allow market forces to fix the exchange of the Naira. But, the various circulars recently issued by the CBN, in the past couple of weeks, have confirmed that the federal government can no longer afford to allow market forces alone to fix the exchange rate of the Naira without regulation.
It is interesting to note that the services provided by a number of professional bodies are fixed and controlled by law. For instance, any lawyer who fails to pay the annual practising fees shall be denied audience in courts. The Stamp and Seal (purchased from the Nigerian Bar Association) shall be affixed to all documents, including court processes prepared by lawyers. In addition, the 2023 Legal Practitioners Remuneration Order has fixed the professional fees charged by legal practitioners. Any lawyer who fails to comply with the Remuneration Order shall be sanctioned by the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee.
Therefore, the Order of the Federal High Court which has directed the Federal Government to control the prices of essential commodities in Nigeria is in accordance with section 16 (1)(b) of the Constitution which has imposed a legal obligation on the Government to control "the national economy in such manner as to secure the maximum welfare, freedom and happiness of every citizen on the basis of social justice and equality of status and opportunity."
Last week, Vice President Kashim Shettima announced the plan of the Bola Tinubu administration to set up a Commodity Board which will be given the mandate to assess and regulate food prices, as well as maintain a strategic food reserve for stabilising prices of crucial grains and other food items. That’s the way to go if the poor in the society are to “breathe” as the implementation of the reforms embarked upon by the Tinubu administration gather pace.
The plan is in accordance with the Fifth Alteration to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 which stipulates that the Government shall direct its policy towards ensuring the right to food and food security for the people. It is also a revival of the Commodity Boards that were abolished as part of the conditionalities of the World Bank-inspired Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) that was imposed on Nigeria in 1986 by the General Ibrahim Babangida regime.
This is a welcome development as the official announcement comes after the federal high court in Lagos ordered the federal government to fix the prices of essential goods within seven days. It is however pertinent to note that notwithstanding that the Attorney-General of the Federation has filed an appeal against the judgment, the federal government and some state Governments have been compelled to halt the moves by landlords and traders to fix the prices of goods in defiance of relevant laws.
Hence, on February 16, 2024, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) temporarily sealed off a popular shopping mall, Sahad Stores in Abuja for persistently displaying lower prices on shelves and charging higher prices. The Commission exercised its powers under Section 18(f) of the FCCPC Act. Even though the shopping mall has since been reopened based on the undertaking of the owner to stop further involvement in “misleading” or “deceptive” pricing practices, the FCCPC has demonstrated its resolve to protect consumers from wanton manipulation of prices by traders.
In the same vein, the Lagos State Government has warned that it would start penalizing house owners found guilty of renting out their apartments at exorbitant fees. This disclosure was contained in a statement issued by the Commissioner for Housing, Mr. Moruf Akinderu-Fatai, who stated that the government would wield a big stick on allottees who engaged in sharp practices. Mr. Akinderu-Fatai said that residents of various state housing schemes have filed complaints about the high rent being charged by homeowners, adding that the state government would not hesitate to withdraw allocation from culpable home owners.
A few days ago, a bag of cement was sold for as much as N13, 000 in many parts of the country. But based on public outcry, the federal government and major cement manufacturers have jointly resolved to peg the price of 50kg bag of cement at between ₦7,000 and ₦8,000 depending on the location nationwide. The Minister of Works, Sen. David Umahi made this known to newsmen after a protracted meeting with major cement manufacturers in the country on February 19, 2024. The meeting was convened at the instance of President Bola Tinubu.
In view of the rising cost of living in Nigeria as a result of the religious implementation of neoliberal policies dictated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the Nigerian people should mount pressure on the Federal Government and State Governments to invest in massive production of food and other goods. Meanwhile, the skyrocketing duties and tariffs imposed on essential commodities that are imported into the country should be substantially reduced so as to make them cheap and affordable in line with the terms of the judgment of the Federal High Court.
In fact, what you are about to read is a two-pronged response to a two-pronged attack on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu by two notable Northern leaders. The attack by the Sultan of Sokoto was responded to by the Yoruba Nation activist, Chief Sunday Adeyemo aka Sunday Igboho, while the second attack by the Emir of Kano was responded to by Tunde Rahman, one of Tinubu’s presidential aides. Let’s take them one after the other: Sultan/Igboho first; then Emir of Kano/Rahman after that, both as they were reported in the media.
“Insecurity, poverty can’t be tackled overnight", Igboho tells the Sultan of Sokoto. Mr. Adeyemo maintained that the blame of bad economy, perennial insecurity problem, food inflation, unemployment and youth restiveness should not be heaped on Tinubu's administration, which is just about eight months old.
“Yoruba nation activist, Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, on Thursday, took on the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, contending that the nation’s twin challenges of insecurity and poverty cannot be resolved overnight.
“He emphasized that relevant stakeholders in governance, economy, security and other critical sectors should be committed to finding ways round the insecurity challenge and socioeconomic obstacles for Nigeria to achieve peace and steady development.
“In a statement he personally signed, in reaction to the position of Mr. Abubakar on the prevalent hardship and spate of insecurity in some parts of the country, Mr. Adeyemo stressed that President Bola Tinubu’s administration should be allowed to work out solutions capable of addressing the situation.
"Recall that Mr. Abubakar, who is also the chairman, Northern Traditional Rulers’ Council, had, during the sixth executive meeting of the council in Arewa House, Kaduna (last week) Wednesday, declared that Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gunpowder due to poverty, hardship and ravaging insecurity bedeviling the nation.
"(While) Mr. Adeyemo posited that the Sultan’s position on the current state of the nation was not out of place (he) maintained that the blame of bad economy, perennial insecurity problem, food inflation, unemployment and youth restiveness should not be heaped on Tinubu’s administration, which is just about eight months old".
According to Igboho's statement, “it is important for our leaders at all levels, be it religious or traditional, to demonstrate commitment to bringing solutions to the table at this crucial point in our history. Our problems as a nation are foundational.
“Nigeria had been in a precarious state in terms of bad governance, poor economy, terrorism, insecurity, irresponsive leadership for decades. I believe that the Federal Government is not unconcerned about the plight of the people and has taken steps to remedy the situation.”
"Mr. Adeyemo noted that while the nation could not gloss over the incessant attacks by rampaging herdsmen on farmlands, most especially during the immediate past regime of former President Muhammadu Buhari, thus forcing thousands of farmers to abandon farm settlements, it is thoughtful to say that the effect of farmers/herders’ clash, leading to killings (and the) destruction of farms, has been devastating on food production and agriculture value chain.
“This worrisome development has been one of the major causes of food insecurity and increase in prices of food items and commodities. We need to allow the incumbent administration to explore all measures being deployed to address inflation, foreign exchange issues, exorbitant foodstuff prices, which will soon yield results.
“The recent decision by the government to deploy troops for the protection of farmers against herders’ attacks, which are negatively affecting harvest and food productivity, will further boost the confidence of peasant farmers and agric. entrepreneurs to return to the farm. Also, the plan to set up the National Commodity Board will checkmate escalating food inflation,” the statement added.
The Sultan’s statement, though not unexpected, was reckless, provocative and inciting, to say the least. What does he mean that they can no longer restrain their people? For eight years they restrained the same people while Buhari ruined the country irreparably but cannot now restrain the people while Tinubu grapples with the ruins left behind by Buhari! Interestingly, Sunday Adeyemo’s statement, though straight to the point, was measured; it was more of that of a statesman than of an agent provocateur like the Sultan's. Nigerians are no fools!
Titled “Olayemi Cardoso’s dilemma” the second response by Tunde Rahman started by detailing the CBN governor’s antecedents that he said eminently qualified him for his present job before stating the variables that he said would make or mar Cardoso in his new assignment: “But in the wake of the floating of the Naira, some of the variables shaping the value of the national currency, including limited production in the country as a result of insecurity, Nigerians’ high taste for imported products, dwindling exports, poor dollar remittances, humongous school fees of Nigerian students abroad and medical tourism - all of which engendered a strong demand for dollar, far outweighing supply - seem to be clearly beyond his control.
"Until these situations change for the better, no monetary policies by the CBN will work any miracle, hence Cardoso’s predicament. For instance, in his presentation at the sectoral debate organized by the House of Representatives… the CBN governor lamented that the growing number of Nigerian students studying abroad, increasing medical tourism and food imports have led to the depreciation of the Naira against the Dollar. According to him, over the past decade, foreign exchange demand for education and healthcare totaled nearly $40 billion, surpassing the total current foreign exchange reserves of the CBN, while personal travel allowances accounted for a total of $58.7 billion during the same period”
The question here is: Since we know the problems, tell us what we are doing to solve them! I read of efforts to revamp some hospitals; good! But what are we doing to reverse the "japa" of doctors and other medical staff? What are we doing to revamp our institutions of higher learning? What efforts are we making to engage university teachers and implement the MOU entered into with them?
Not done yet, Rahman continued: “Another critical yet intriguing factor but seemingly odd in Cardoso’s reckoning is the perception in some quarters of some of the decisions of the CBN, which the apex bank considers purely administrative, but which some others give strange connotations. One of such is the decision to move some departments of the bank; notably banking supervision, other financial institutions supervision, consumer protection department, and payment system management department from Abuja to Lagos.
" Indeed, until the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero, spoke on this issue last week, I had reckoned that the imperative of the planned relocation of some CBN departments and the headquarters of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria from Abuja to Lagos was evident enough. I had reasoned that the Northern politicians, including Senator Ali Ndume from Borno State, who had moved to bring down the roof over the development, were merely playing politics.
Rahman then quoted the Emir as saying: “We are indeed suspicious on why Mr. President single-handedly relocated key departments of CBN and outright relocation of FAAN to Lagos. We are receiving a series of messages from my subjects, and most of them expressed concern over the relocation of CBN and FAAN to Lagos. President Tinubu should come out clean on this matter and talk to Nigerians in the language they would understand. Do more enlightenment on this matter. I, for one, cannot tell the actual intentions of the government. We should be made to actually understand why the relocation of the CBN and FAAN offices back to Lagos.”
Rahman said many would wonder “why some members of the northern elites are losing their cool, misinterpreting this move and, perhaps inadvertently, heating up the polity on this rather elementary matter. Is their reservation altruistic? Or are they just being sincerely mistaken and reading unnecessary motives into the policy?” While I agree that the Northern leaders' views on this issue is not altruistic but unhelpful, tribal, sectional, selfish and myopic, I disagree with Rahman that more PR by Cardoso would have changed the Northern leaders’ opinion. No amount of PR will! Rahman advised the CBN governor to “be political without being partisan”. I disagree! The CBN governor is not a politician and must resist every insidious effort to turn him into one.
However, I agree with Rahman that “those who are responding negatively to the policy (of moving some offices from Abuja to Lagos) are treating Abuja as if it belongs to the North rather than being the symbol of the entire country as the Federal Capital Territory. In that capacity, as the FCT, Abuja belongs to all and belongs to no one. In the same vein, as the economic capital and nerve center of the country, Lagos is a melting pot where representatives of virtually all ethnic and cultural groups in the country reside and earn a living. There is absolutely nothing that says that the headquarters of all federal agencies must be located in the federal capital even when economic considerations and efficiency dictate otherwise. Some federal agencies reside neither in Abuja nor Lagos at present, and their work goes on unimpeded”.
O yes! If need be, let more FG offices be moved from Abuja to Lagos and other parts of the country. Akinola Aguda, Kayode Esho, Tai Solarin and other Yoruba conscientious and eminent luminaries who thought they were being patriotic when they recommended and or supported the movement of the capital from Lagos to Abuja will squirm in their grave, seeing how the North is appropriating to themselves alone what should belong to all of us equally! Every part of Nigeria is qualified to house any agency of the federal government if we are truly the Federal Republic of Nigeria and not an appendage of the feudal North.
“I like the noise of democracy.” James Buchanan Jr.
The lie that Nigeria is operating a multi-party system of politics or government, with a whopping 18 legally registered political parties (see: INEC, 2023), is daily being perforated by the actual practice of politics (realpolitik, as the Germans call it) in the country; a classic example of appearance being way different from reality.
The body language of Nigerian politicians—and the atmosphere of its political trajectory—has always been tilted in favour of at best a two-party and at worst, a one-party set-up. This could be traced back to the First Republic, during the clash of the alliances between the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA) and the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA), well into the Second Republic when the dominant ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) sought to smother into oblivion any voice of dissent or opposition but rather foist on the opposition, the Hobson’s choice of choosing between either entering the Big Tent of the NPN, or facing a well-oiled witch-hunt. This is usually climaxed either in having some opposition actors being hacked to death by the assassin’s axe or being rammed into distant goals (better described as ‘dissenters centres’) from their habitats, on various trumped-up charges. A bad precedent was thus set; and it came to become one which would be so faithfully followed for much of the past sixty-three years, by whichever set of its disciples made a majority in the Government of the day, otherwise called ‘the ruling party’.
DEFECTIONS AND STOMACH INFRASTRUCTURE: THE LINK
The ruling party syndrome (or ‘party spirit’, as George Washington, America’s first and greatest president, once termed it), has continued to plague and foul the Nigerian political space with its corrosive stifling and depletion of opposition or alternative voices, so much so that since the return of democracy in 1999, Nigeria continues to totter precariously on the precipice of one-party politics or government. The situation has got to its worst nadir since the last general elections of 2023. With the spate of defections (or decampments), anti-party activities, and spineless opposition at the federal and state legislature levels of late, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has since emerged the behemoth winner, clawing at the foundations of the nation’s democracy like a leviathan. And its ever-yawning jaws are closing in on the rest of the other seventeen (17) registered political parties. The death of Opposition is nigh and the fate of democracy in Nigeria is benighted against a bleak socio-political one-party future. It makes one wonder what politics Nigeria is really operating. A co-operative for people-oriented service or a trusteeship for egotistic personal vendetta? The reality appears to be a woeful weave of the two. My OZEKPEDIA neologism either coined or rephrased this genre of politics as “Akpu”, or “Edikang ikon”, “tuwo shinkafa”, or politics of “omisaghue and amato”. Ozekpedia has also termed it “come-and-chop”, or “chop-I-chop” politics. Maverick politician ang great achiever, Ayodele Fayose (Peter the Rock), former governor of Ekiti State, once called it “stomach infrastructure” politics. Before Fayose, colourful Nigerians such as Busari Adelakun (Eruobodo) and Lamidi Adelabu had coined “Amala” or “Gbegiri” politics. All refers to the sorry non-ideological stance of Nigerian politicians (sorry, “Politricians” according to OZEKPEDIA) where over 90% of leading lights and major players in the APC today were once the controllers of the PDP (now a mere shadow opposition).
WHAT IS POLITICS?
This simple question of what the essence of politics is all about has agitated great minds for centuries. No definition is quite exhaustive. A few shed some directive light. One was so brief or flippant it acquired a universal notoriety. It is “who gets what, when and how”. This was by Harold Dwight Lasswell, a leading American political Scientist, Communications theorists and Law Professor at Yale University. The question that comes to mind then becomes, “Who gets what?” The answer to this poser could be found in the etymology of the word politics, which is the Greek word ‘politiká’, meaning “affairs of the cities”. Without undue resort to polemics devoid of practicality, it is our submission that power is the search result of politics. So, the question “Who gets what, when and how?” acquires the reply POLITICAL POWER. Now, politics is the ways and means of acquiring political power, which is the power an individual requires to partake in the politics of his country for the formulation and implementation of positive policies directed towards the welfare of the country. A. Appadorai defines politics simply as “the science concerned with the State and of the conditions essential to its existence and development”: see The Substance of Politics (1975) 11th ed., p. 4. Put in homely metaphor, politics is therefore the avenue through which the venue for the consecration of the “affairs of the cities” is routed. And nations have blazed and failed on the effect of their politics!
MULTI OR ONE PARTY- QUO VADIS, NIGERIA?
The looming spectre appears to be a gradual gravitation towards a one-party system of Government. How? Of Nigeria’s 36 States, APC, the ruling party, controls a majority of 20 states. PDP trails behind with 13 states; while the Labour Party (LP), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the New Nigeria People’s Part (NNPP) clutches on to one state a piece. For APC to override any decision of the entire Governor’s forum (if we go by two-third majority vote), all it needs to do is to pluck out four governors from PDP, APGA, LP and NNPP. Sikena! Opoo!!
Coming to the National Assembly (NASS), the APC is also dominant. Of the 109 Senators in the Upper Red Chambers of the NASS, APC tops with 60; PDP 37; LP 8; SDP 2; and APGA 1. Two-thirds of 109 Senators is 73.80, for APC to have its way through in the Upper Chamber on matters that requite two-third majority votes, all it needs to do is to lobby and get additional 13 Senators from the other parties – a mere piece of cake, based on the non-ideological “come-and-chop” politrics we presently operate in Nigeria. The same is the story in the 360-member Chambers of the House of Representatives (the Green Chambers).
Is this movement towards a one-party state good for Nigeria? does it allow for plurality of ideas and strong democratic precepts? We shall now look at the gamut of all these.
WHAT ARE POLITICAL PARTIES?
A political party is a vehicle for the attainment of political power. This vehicle usually contains a group of citizens who act together as a political unit and seek to obtain control of the Government or take part in it. Political parties articulate the desires of the masses they represent. They give life to politics, educate the electorate and help in carrying on elections. They may act as watchdogs of Government depending on the system of party politics in practice in the polity.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF PARTY SYSTEM
A party system is the adopted way by which the Government of a country allows political participation through political parties. It is the system of government by political parties in a democratic state. There are various types of party system practised all over the world. The most common are:
(a) One-party system;
(b) Multi-party system.
ONE-PARTY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
As the name implies, in a one-party system of government, the train of political power or politics travels on a monorail. Only one political party is legally eligible to vie for power. All other parties aside the ruling party are banned. Although they may exist in closets; they must remain closeted to all political intents and purposes. It is a case of Either,—no Or! In the world today, countries that practise one-party system of government include Russia, China, Bulgaria, Rumania, Finland, Yugoslavia, North Korea, Cuba, and Czechoslovakia. They are usually Communist countries, with the Communist Party as the one and only recognized political party. A one-party system is characterized by the presence of only one legally recognized political party, absence of an official opposition, absence of opposition parties during elections, limitation in the scope of political education, sameness of the state and the ruling political party and presence of only one political ideology, if any. A one-party system has its advantages and disadvantages. It is to these we now turn.
ADVANTAGES OF A ONE-PARTY SYSTEM
The following are the reasons why a one-party system is preferred by all the countries that practise it. They include:
(a) Political Stability: a one-party system of government is characterized by political stability as there is usually a long-term security of tenure or a life-tenure into the bargain. The incidence of deadly power struggle amongst political parties with the attendant orgy of blood, arson, pains and pangs is removed. Divisive tendencies are eliminated or nipped in the bud.
(b) Speedy Decision-making: Socio-political decisions are reached much more quickly and easily because there are no much nay-sayers in the absolutist system. The decision of the party is always right. And because of this centralized decision-making process, the decisions made are more focused, direct and result-oriented.
(c) Less Expensive: A one-party system is easy to run because it is usually shorn of all the heavy expenditure that is required to run a multi-party government. There are usually fewer avenues for the wasting of scarce national and individual resources.
(d) Ensures National Integration: A one-party system promotes national unity because every step of the government is taken or seen to be taken in the best interest of the nation, not the leaders. Political, cultural, religious, ethnic or tribal fears are allayed, because they are hardly allowed to rear their ugly heads in the first place. There is a reduction or outright absence of sectionalism, favouritism, prebendalism, tribalism or ethnic and religious bigotry.
(e) Ensures continuous Economic Development: In a one-party system, the incidence of tenure-based development as happens in a multi-party system where elections could be easily won by any political party than the ruling party and thus government changed unexpectedly from time to time as happened in Nigeria in 2015, is totally removed or drastically reduced. Here, the government’s security of tenure gives it time to plan and execute developmental programmes on a long-term basis for the benefit of the people.
(f) Useful in Times of National Emergencies: A one-party government is always together and speaks with one voice in times of national emergencies. The interest of the country as represented by the ruling party is always ensured and protected.
(g) In a one-party system of government, no much time is wasted or dissipated in unnecessary media war, criticism, squabbles, and high-powered political propaganda. Every member of the society has a stake or is made to believe they have a stake in the government and works to build rather than pull it down. The usual centripetal and ...
DISADVANTAGES OF A ONE-PARTY-SYSTEM
The following are the reasons why a one-party system should be avoided in favour of more liberal or democratic ones as will be discussed anon. They include:
(a) Prone to Dictatorship: In a one-party system, the ruling party sees itself as the state (L’Etat, c’est moi – I am the state – by Kind Louis XIV of France, 13th April, 1655). It acts and reacts arbitrarily and whimsically without much consideration to external interests, rights or suggestions. Any form of opposition is seen as treasonable, and must be crushed. Tolerance is obfuscated. There is no supremacy of the law but of the leaders. Political debate is stifled and the words of the leader of government become the law of the land.
(b) Breeds unbridled Corruption in Governance: It is said of power that it corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely (Lord Acton). A one-party system of government could engender so much corruption as there is no opposition to criticize or speak against it. Nepotism, favouritism, prebendalism, sectionalism, tribalism, and other negative “isms” thrive in this government set-up.
(c) Lack of Accountability: In a one-party system where the government is not answerable to anybody but itself the government acts according to its whims and caprices. There are no checks and balances as the government has a blank cheque to do and undo as it pleases.
(d) Undemocratic: As the government is but a select class of the populace, the vast majority of the people are shut out of participation in the administration of their government. Democracy is stifled and the aspirations of the people asphyxiated.
(e) No Freedom of Choice: In a one-party system, imposition of leadership is the order of the day. The most unpopular, clueless candidate could be imposed on the nation without the opportunity given for his screening. Elections, if any, are conducted as a mere formality to rubber stamp the anointed.
(f) Hinders Development: A one-party system inhibits social development because important governmental policies, programmes and decisions are taken without consulting widely and subjecting same to constructive debate, criticisms and input. The progress of the leader of government is often equated with the progress of the society. Rather than developing the country, the government spends taxpayers’ moneys in stockpiling very costly military hardware which they then use to harass and intimidate the masses of the people in order to maintain their iron grip on power.
(g) Citizens are reckoned as objects of the state and all social freedoms and liberties are crushed and their rights curtailed. Personal growth and innovation are hindered; and there is mutual distrust between the government and the governed.
(h) Breeds civil unrest and culminates in such social vices as armed banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery, insurgency, terrorism and bloody insurrections, revolutions and overthrows. There are usually pent-up grievances, bad blood and sour emotions against the leadership class from the lot of the masses. Peace is enforced; no loyalty is real.
(i) The laws of the land could be amended at any time to serve the needs or ends of the government at the expense of the governed. Tenure elongation and other unconstitutional vices are committed with impunity.
(j) Civil rights are often abrogated. In these political enclaves, citizens exist rather than live. Fear hangs in the air, as the Big Brother might be watching, hearing and seeing!
MULTI-PARTY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
In his Gettysburg Address, delivered on the afternoon of 19th November, 1863, during the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States of America, defined democracy as “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. This definition has come to become the hanger from which to assess liberalism and/or authoritarianism in the enterprise of government or governance. In it is contained all the hallmarks of free, popular and untrammelled participation in governance or the political process, which is effectively achieved through the instrumentality of multiple political parties vying for political power, during periodic elections.
Multi-party system is that system of political participation that encourages the full and adequate participation of the people in politics, nay governance, through political parties or units of their own choosing. Countries that practise multi-party system include Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, the United States of America, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Tunisia, Ukraine, Turkey, India, Cameroon, Israel, Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, etc.
ADVANTAGES OF A MULTI-PARTY SYSTEM.
The following are some of the reasons why nations choose the multiple party system.
(a) Full Citizens’ Participation in Governance: The multi-party system encourages citizens from all walks of life to participate in the government of their country and contribute in the overall development of their society.
(b) Encourages Liberalism and Opposition: In a multi-party system, citizens are not gagged or caged; opposition is welcome and the ruling government is kept always on its toes by the timely constructive checks on the activities of Government. In Africa, the opposition is more active in South Africa, where the Economic Freedom Fighters, have held the ruling ANC to accountability since 2013.
(c) Prevents Despotism and Tyranny: The multi-party system does not guarantee a stronghold on government for too long. Periodically, elections are held and positions open to all to contest. Bad leaders are often booted out of office through the ballot and those who are elected into office rule with the constant reminder in their minds that only excellent service can guarantee them security in office.
(d) Allays Fears of the Minority: There are minority groups in every society. In a multi-party system where politics is free for all, minority groups can form themselves into parties, or form alliances with other minorities or parties to participate in governance. These reduce the resentment that festers in a system that restricts or restrains popular participation in governance or the electoral process.
(e) Helps in the Facilitation of Peaceful Change of Government: In a multi-party system of government, the process of changing government is always easy, as elections are held periodically and the electorate votes in the government of their own choosing. This allows for peaceful change of government.
(f) Encourages Voter Participation: Multi-party system ensures voter participation is usually high, because the electorate has the power to elect their leaders and have a strong say in the outcome of the elections that throw up their leaders. They feel valued and this encourages active participation in the electoral process. It makes representation more real and public life more honest.
(g) Breeds a ready alternative force to displace and replace a non-performing government.
(h) Reduces the incidence of corruption in governance: Incidence of corruption is reduced because of the abundance of a watchful civil society community that follows up on the activities and programmes of government officials to make sure that the right thing is done always. Through them, many shady deals have been unearthed, exposed and the affected government officials named and shamed.
(i) Shared Responsibility: In a multi-party system governance, there is a shared responsibility. It is not the exclusive preserve of a few privileged and powerful lot. For this reason, the interest of the common good is put over and above personal considerations. Citizens view the government as their common patrimony and do everything to preserve and improve on it as patriotically as possible.
(j) Openness and transparency in government: In a multi-party system the resentment that festers amongst citizens when their voices are muffled by the ruling class in a one-party system is removed, and citizens express their grievances in more democratic ways instead of resorting to criminality, intrigues, subterfuge, insurrection, sabotage, vandalism, and vicious class struggle.
(k) Fear of the Electorate: The fear of what the electorate would do come next election makes the government to channel governmental presence by way of infrastructural development and provision of vital social amenities to every part of the country.
DISADVANTAGES OF A MULTI-PARTY SYSTEM
The following are some of the reasons why nations choose the multiple party system.
(a) Political Instability as a Result of Party Rivalry: As a result of the multiplicity of parties vying for the ultimate goal of ruling the country, it often degenerates into vicious and unhealthy rivalries amongst the various parties. The aim of politics then only becomes the securing of personal, sectional or partisan benefits rather than carrying out a programme of public policy. In the words of Alexander Pope, party politics becomes “the madness of the many for the gain of the few."
(b) Encourages Division in the Polity: In climes like Africa where religion, tribalism, ethnicity and other primordial consideration inform the formation of political parties, the political parties are always at loggerheads with one another. This often leads to disagreements that invariably degenerates into bloody civil unrests and ethnic cleansing.
(c) Expensive and Corruption Prone: It is very expensive to operate and may engender official corruption. A multi-party system is usually very expensive to operate. Because many political parties are vying for power, they put so much money and other resources into the electioneering, with the hope that all expenses would we recouped once they win and take over government. This system of “investment politics” thus engenders high-octane official corruption and waste of the nation’s resources. In some countries, the cost of running elections are higher than the annual budgets! Many take bank loans and others sell landed properties to contest elections – they invest to reap.
(d) Confusion as to the Choice of credible Leaders: In a multi-party system where the parties are many and the candidates are surplus, the electorate could get confused in the choice that they make. Many factors could lead to this, namely, monetization of the electoral process, vote-buying, bribery, fake promises, lack of a single/national political ideology, and selfish interests.
(e) Leads to Compromise of Political Values: In a multi-party political system, it is may be very difficult for one political party to win election and control the government. In that wise, parties enter into alliances or coalitions to enable them achieve their goals. When such a government borne out of diverse political attitudes, cultures and values band together there is always bound to be clashes and conflicts of interest (centripetal and centrifugal), unhealthy compromises which have very negative impacts on the programmes of the government and the society.
(f) Creates Room for Electoral Malpractices.
(g) Retards national growth and development because of the need for the majority of the parties to agree before critical governmental decisions are made and implemented. And this inter-party consensus may always be difficult to arrive at.
(h) Engenders factional hatred which invariably lead to mutual distrust that defeats the purpose of government, which is the molding of national unity and consensus as well as the conditions essential to the development of the nation.
CONCLUSION
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter”-
Ecclesiastes 12: 13.
All men desire happiness. States exist for the purpose of bringing about the greatest happiness of the greatest number of its citizens. Government is the instrument the State employs for the actualization of this goal; and political parties are the routes or vehicles to government. Therefore, parties are necessary for the formulation of government and a popular government is the delight of the masses. The success of the State and the respect it gets from the masses of its people is judged by the efforts it makes to give their rights—nay their lives—increasing meaning.
We have exhaustively discussed the system of attaining political power in a democracy with the searchlight beamed across the globe. We have discussed the one-party system and the multi-party system. They have their advantages as well as their disadvantage, duly appraised and objectively construed. Only after one has gone through these two party systems of government with some objectivity would one realize the dilemma one is cut in in choosing one from the other. But the litmus test of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number of its citizens” becomes our barometer (to measure or show the changes that happen in the economy, society or political space whether the system is run on one-partysm or multi-partysm), because the State exists for the sole good of the citizen. On this journey, therefore, the State is the means and the citizen the end.
If democracy is “government of the people, by the people, for the people” for the attainment of the “the greatest happiness of the greatest number of its citizens”, then it should leave wide open the Ark of politics for its multitude to enter in order that they may be rescued from the flood of tyranny of one man or one party calling the shots, for better or for worse.
It is on the basis of the above purpose of the State that this writer prefers the multi-party system, which seeks to accommodate and harmonize different interests and represents the interest of the majority and minority for the good of all; indeed that system which allows all men to join in the roaring chorus of democracy accompanied by the different percussion of its players
The ruling party syndrome (or ‘party spirit’, as George Washington, America’s first and greatest president, once termed it), has continued to plague and foul the Nigerian political space with its corrosive stifling and depletion of opposition or alternative voices, so much so that since the return of democracy in 1999, Nigeria continues to totter precariously on the precipice of one-party politics or government. The situation has got to its worst nadir since the last general elections of 2023. With the spate of defections (or decampments), anti-party activities, and spineless opposition at the federal and state legislature levels of late, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has since emerged the behemoth winner, clawing at the foundations of the nation’s democracy like a leviathan. And its ever-yawning jaws are closing in on the rest of the other seventeen (17) registered political parties. The death of Opposition is nigh and the fate of democracy in Nigeria is benighted against a bleak socio-political one-party future. It makes one wonder what politics Nigeria is really operating. A co-operative for people-oriented service or a trusteeship for egotistic personal vendetta? The reality appears to be a woeful weave of the two. My OZEKPEDIA neologism either coined or rephrased this genre of politics as “Akpu”, or “Edikang ikon”, “tuwo shinkafa”, or politics of “omisaghue and amato”. Ozekpedia has also termed it “come-and-chop”, or “chop-I-chop” politics. Maverick politician ang great achiever, Ayodele Fayose (Peter the Rock), former governor of Ekiti State, once called it “stomach infrastructure” politics. Before Fayose, colourful Nigerians such as Busari Adelakun (Eruobodo) and Lamidi Adelabu had coined “Amala” or “Gbegiri” politics. All refers to the sorry non-ideological stance of Nigerian politicians (sorry, “Politricians” according to OZEKPEDIA) where over 90% of leading lights and major players in the APC today were once the controllers of the PDP (now a mere shadow opposition).
WHAT IS POLITICS?
This simple question of what the essence of politics is all about has agitated great minds for centuries. No definition is quite exhaustive. A few shed some directive light. One was so brief or flippant it acquired a universal notoriety. It is “who gets what, when and how”. This was by Harold Dwight Lasswell, a leading American political Scientist, Communications theorists and Law Professor at Yale University. The question that comes to mind then becomes, “Who gets what?” The answer to this poser could be found in the etymology of the word politics, which is the Greek word ‘politiká’, meaning “affairs of the cities”. Without undue resort to polemics devoid of practicality, it is our submission that power is the search result of politics. So, the question “Who gets what, when and how?” acquires the reply POLITICAL POWER. Now, politics is the ways and means of acquiring political power, which is the power an individual requires to partake in the politics of his country for the formulation and implementation of positive policies directed towards the welfare of the country. A. Appadorai defines politics simply as “the science concerned with the State and of the conditions essential to its existence and development”: see The Substance of Politics (1975) 11th ed., p. 4. Put in homely metaphor, politics is therefore the avenue through which the venue for the consecration of the “affairs of the cities” is routed. And nations have blazed and failed on the effect of their politics!
MULTI OR ONE PARTY- QUO VADIS, NIGERIA?
The looming spectre appears to be a gradual gravitation towards a one-party system of Government. How? Of Nigeria’s 36 States, APC, the ruling party, controls a majority of 20 states. PDP trails behind with 13 states; while the Labour Party (LP), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the New Nigeria People’s Part (NNPP) clutches on to one state a piece. For APC to override any decision of the entire Governor’s forum (if we go by two-third majority vote), all it needs to do is to pluck out four governors from PDP, APGA, LP and NNPP. Sikena! Opoo!!
Coming to the National Assembly (NASS), the APC is also dominant. Of the 109 Senators in the Upper Red Chambers of the NASS, APC tops with 60; PDP 37; LP 8; SDP 2; and APGA 1. Two-thirds of 109 Senators is 73.80, for APC to have its way through in the Upper Chamber on matters that requite two-third majority votes, all it needs to do is to lobby and get additional 13 Senators from the other parties – a mere piece of cake, based on the non-ideological “come-and-chop” politrics we presently operate in Nigeria. The same is the story in the 360-member Chambers of the House of Representatives (the Green Chambers).
Is this movement towards a one-party state good for Nigeria? does it allow for plurality of ideas and strong democratic precepts? We shall now look at the gamut of all these.
WHAT ARE POLITICAL PARTIES?
A political party is a vehicle for the attainment of political power. This vehicle usually contains a group of citizens who act together as a political unit and seek to obtain control of the Government or take part in it. Political parties articulate the desires of the masses they represent. They give life to politics, educate the electorate and help in carrying on elections. They may act as watchdogs of Government depending on the system of party politics in practice in the polity.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF PARTY SYSTEM
A party system is the adopted way by which the Government of a country allows political participation through political parties. It is the system of government by political parties in a democratic state. There are various types of party system practised all over the world. The most common are:
(a) One-party system;
(b) Multi-party system.
ONE-PARTY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
As the name implies, in a one-party system of government, the train of political power or politics travels on a monorail. Only one political party is legally eligible to vie for power. All other parties aside the ruling party are banned. Although they may exist in closets; they must remain closeted to all political intents and purposes. It is a case of Either,—no Or! In the world today, countries that practise one-party system of government include Russia, China, Bulgaria, Rumania, Finland, Yugoslavia, North Korea, Cuba, and Czechoslovakia. They are usually Communist countries, with the Communist Party as the one and only recognized political party. A one-party system is characterized by the presence of only one legally recognized political party, absence of an official opposition, absence of opposition parties during elections, limitation in the scope of political education, sameness of the state and the ruling political party and presence of only one political ideology, if any. A one-party system has its advantages and disadvantages. It is to these we now turn.
ADVANTAGES OF A ONE-PARTY SYSTEM
The following are the reasons why a one-party system is preferred by all the countries that practise it. They include:
(a) Political Stability: a one-party system of government is characterized by political stability as there is usually a long-term security of tenure or a life-tenure into the bargain. The incidence of deadly power struggle amongst political parties with the attendant orgy of blood, arson, pains and pangs is removed. Divisive tendencies are eliminated or nipped in the bud.
(b) Speedy Decision-making: Socio-political decisions are reached much more quickly and easily because there are no much nay-sayers in the absolutist system. The decision of the party is always right. And because of this centralized decision-making process, the decisions made are more focused, direct and result-oriented.
(c) Less Expensive: A one-party system is easy to run because it is usually shorn of all the heavy expenditure that is required to run a multi-party government. There are usually fewer avenues for the wasting of scarce national and individual resources.
(d) Ensures National Integration: A one-party system promotes national unity because every step of the government is taken or seen to be taken in the best interest of the nation, not the leaders. Political, cultural, religious, ethnic or tribal fears are allayed, because they are hardly allowed to rear their ugly heads in the first place. There is a reduction or outright absence of sectionalism, favouritism, prebendalism, tribalism or ethnic and religious bigotry.
(e) Ensures continuous Economic Development: In a one-party system, the incidence of tenure-based development as happens in a multi-party system where elections could be easily won by any political party than the ruling party and thus government changed unexpectedly from time to time as happened in Nigeria in 2015, is totally removed or drastically reduced. Here, the government’s security of tenure gives it time to plan and execute developmental programmes on a long-term basis for the benefit of the people.
(f) Useful in Times of National Emergencies: A one-party government is always together and speaks with one voice in times of national emergencies. The interest of the country as represented by the ruling party is always ensured and protected.
(g) In a one-party system of government, no much time is wasted or dissipated in unnecessary media war, criticism, squabbles, and high-powered political propaganda. Every member of the society has a stake or is made to believe they have a stake in the government and works to build rather than pull it down. The usual centripetal and ...
DISADVANTAGES OF A ONE-PARTY-SYSTEM
The following are the reasons why a one-party system should be avoided in favour of more liberal or democratic ones as will be discussed anon. They include:
(a) Prone to Dictatorship: In a one-party system, the ruling party sees itself as the state (L’Etat, c’est moi – I am the state – by Kind Louis XIV of France, 13th April, 1655). It acts and reacts arbitrarily and whimsically without much consideration to external interests, rights or suggestions. Any form of opposition is seen as treasonable, and must be crushed. Tolerance is obfuscated. There is no supremacy of the law but of the leaders. Political debate is stifled and the words of the leader of government become the law of the land.
(b) Breeds unbridled Corruption in Governance: It is said of power that it corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely (Lord Acton). A one-party system of government could engender so much corruption as there is no opposition to criticize or speak against it. Nepotism, favouritism, prebendalism, sectionalism, tribalism, and other negative “isms” thrive in this government set-up.
(c) Lack of Accountability: In a one-party system where the government is not answerable to anybody but itself the government acts according to its whims and caprices. There are no checks and balances as the government has a blank cheque to do and undo as it pleases.
(d) Undemocratic: As the government is but a select class of the populace, the vast majority of the people are shut out of participation in the administration of their government. Democracy is stifled and the aspirations of the people asphyxiated.
(e) No Freedom of Choice: In a one-party system, imposition of leadership is the order of the day. The most unpopular, clueless candidate could be imposed on the nation without the opportunity given for his screening. Elections, if any, are conducted as a mere formality to rubber stamp the anointed.
(f) Hinders Development: A one-party system inhibits social development because important governmental policies, programmes and decisions are taken without consulting widely and subjecting same to constructive debate, criticisms and input. The progress of the leader of government is often equated with the progress of the society. Rather than developing the country, the government spends taxpayers’ moneys in stockpiling very costly military hardware which they then use to harass and intimidate the masses of the people in order to maintain their iron grip on power.
(g) Citizens are reckoned as objects of the state and all social freedoms and liberties are crushed and their rights curtailed. Personal growth and innovation are hindered; and there is mutual distrust between the government and the governed.
(h) Breeds civil unrest and culminates in such social vices as armed banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery, insurgency, terrorism and bloody insurrections, revolutions and overthrows. There are usually pent-up grievances, bad blood and sour emotions against the leadership class from the lot of the masses. Peace is enforced; no loyalty is real.
(i) The laws of the land could be amended at any time to serve the needs or ends of the government at the expense of the governed. Tenure elongation and other unconstitutional vices are committed with impunity.
(j) Civil rights are often abrogated. In these political enclaves, citizens exist rather than live. Fear hangs in the air, as the Big Brother might be watching, hearing and seeing!
MULTI-PARTY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
In his Gettysburg Address, delivered on the afternoon of 19th November, 1863, during the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States of America, defined democracy as “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. This definition has come to become the hanger from which to assess liberalism and/or authoritarianism in the enterprise of government or governance. In it is contained all the hallmarks of free, popular and untrammelled participation in governance or the political process, which is effectively achieved through the instrumentality of multiple political parties vying for political power, during periodic elections.
Multi-party system is that system of political participation that encourages the full and adequate participation of the people in politics, nay governance, through political parties or units of their own choosing. Countries that practise multi-party system include Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, the United States of America, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Tunisia, Ukraine, Turkey, India, Cameroon, Israel, Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, etc.
ADVANTAGES OF A MULTI-PARTY SYSTEM.
The following are some of the reasons why nations choose the multiple party system.
(a) Full Citizens’ Participation in Governance: The multi-party system encourages citizens from all walks of life to participate in the government of their country and contribute in the overall development of their society.
(b) Encourages Liberalism and Opposition: In a multi-party system, citizens are not gagged or caged; opposition is welcome and the ruling government is kept always on its toes by the timely constructive checks on the activities of Government. In Africa, the opposition is more active in South Africa, where the Economic Freedom Fighters, have held the ruling ANC to accountability since 2013.
(c) Prevents Despotism and Tyranny: The multi-party system does not guarantee a stronghold on government for too long. Periodically, elections are held and positions open to all to contest. Bad leaders are often booted out of office through the ballot and those who are elected into office rule with the constant reminder in their minds that only excellent service can guarantee them security in office.
(d) Allays Fears of the Minority: There are minority groups in every society. In a multi-party system where politics is free for all, minority groups can form themselves into parties, or form alliances with other minorities or parties to participate in governance. These reduce the resentment that festers in a system that restricts or restrains popular participation in governance or the electoral process.
(e) Helps in the Facilitation of Peaceful Change of Government: In a multi-party system of government, the process of changing government is always easy, as elections are held periodically and the electorate votes in the government of their own choosing. This allows for peaceful change of government.
(f) Encourages Voter Participation: Multi-party system ensures voter participation is usually high, because the electorate has the power to elect their leaders and have a strong say in the outcome of the elections that throw up their leaders. They feel valued and this encourages active participation in the electoral process. It makes representation more real and public life more honest.
(g) Breeds a ready alternative force to displace and replace a non-performing government.
(h) Reduces the incidence of corruption in governance: Incidence of corruption is reduced because of the abundance of a watchful civil society community that follows up on the activities and programmes of government officials to make sure that the right thing is done always. Through them, many shady deals have been unearthed, exposed and the affected government officials named and shamed.
(i) Shared Responsibility: In a multi-party system governance, there is a shared responsibility. It is not the exclusive preserve of a few privileged and powerful lot. For this reason, the interest of the common good is put over and above personal considerations. Citizens view the government as their common patrimony and do everything to preserve and improve on it as patriotically as possible.
(j) Openness and transparency in government: In a multi-party system the resentment that festers amongst citizens when their voices are muffled by the ruling class in a one-party system is removed, and citizens express their grievances in more democratic ways instead of resorting to criminality, intrigues, subterfuge, insurrection, sabotage, vandalism, and vicious class struggle.
(k) Fear of the Electorate: The fear of what the electorate would do come next election makes the government to channel governmental presence by way of infrastructural development and provision of vital social amenities to every part of the country.
DISADVANTAGES OF A MULTI-PARTY SYSTEM
The following are some of the reasons why nations choose the multiple party system.
(a) Political Instability as a Result of Party Rivalry: As a result of the multiplicity of parties vying for the ultimate goal of ruling the country, it often degenerates into vicious and unhealthy rivalries amongst the various parties. The aim of politics then only becomes the securing of personal, sectional or partisan benefits rather than carrying out a programme of public policy. In the words of Alexander Pope, party politics becomes “the madness of the many for the gain of the few."
(b) Encourages Division in the Polity: In climes like Africa where religion, tribalism, ethnicity and other primordial consideration inform the formation of political parties, the political parties are always at loggerheads with one another. This often leads to disagreements that invariably degenerates into bloody civil unrests and ethnic cleansing.
(c) Expensive and Corruption Prone: It is very expensive to operate and may engender official corruption. A multi-party system is usually very expensive to operate. Because many political parties are vying for power, they put so much money and other resources into the electioneering, with the hope that all expenses would we recouped once they win and take over government. This system of “investment politics” thus engenders high-octane official corruption and waste of the nation’s resources. In some countries, the cost of running elections are higher than the annual budgets! Many take bank loans and others sell landed properties to contest elections – they invest to reap.
(d) Confusion as to the Choice of credible Leaders: In a multi-party system where the parties are many and the candidates are surplus, the electorate could get confused in the choice that they make. Many factors could lead to this, namely, monetization of the electoral process, vote-buying, bribery, fake promises, lack of a single/national political ideology, and selfish interests.
(e) Leads to Compromise of Political Values: In a multi-party political system, it is may be very difficult for one political party to win election and control the government. In that wise, parties enter into alliances or coalitions to enable them achieve their goals. When such a government borne out of diverse political attitudes, cultures and values band together there is always bound to be clashes and conflicts of interest (centripetal and centrifugal), unhealthy compromises which have very negative impacts on the programmes of the government and the society.
(f) Creates Room for Electoral Malpractices.
(g) Retards national growth and development because of the need for the majority of the parties to agree before critical governmental decisions are made and implemented. And this inter-party consensus may always be difficult to arrive at.
(h) Engenders factional hatred which invariably lead to mutual distrust that defeats the purpose of government, which is the molding of national unity and consensus as well as the conditions essential to the development of the nation.
CONCLUSION
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter”-
Ecclesiastes 12: 13.
All men desire happiness. States exist for the purpose of bringing about the greatest happiness of the greatest number of its citizens. Government is the instrument the State employs for the actualization of this goal; and political parties are the routes or vehicles to government. Therefore, parties are necessary for the formulation of government and a popular government is the delight of the masses. The success of the State and the respect it gets from the masses of its people is judged by the efforts it makes to give their rights—nay their lives—increasing meaning.
We have exhaustively discussed the system of attaining political power in a democracy with the searchlight beamed across the globe. We have discussed the one-party system and the multi-party system. They have their advantages as well as their disadvantage, duly appraised and objectively construed. Only after one has gone through these two party systems of government with some objectivity would one realize the dilemma one is cut in in choosing one from the other. But the litmus test of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number of its citizens” becomes our barometer (to measure or show the changes that happen in the economy, society or political space whether the system is run on one-partysm or multi-partysm), because the State exists for the sole good of the citizen. On this journey, therefore, the State is the means and the citizen the end.
If democracy is “government of the people, by the people, for the people” for the attainment of the “the greatest happiness of the greatest number of its citizens”, then it should leave wide open the Ark of politics for its multitude to enter in order that they may be rescued from the flood of tyranny of one man or one party calling the shots, for better or for worse.
It is on the basis of the above purpose of the State that this writer prefers the multi-party system, which seeks to accommodate and harmonize different interests and represents the interest of the majority and minority for the good of all; indeed that system which allows all men to join in the roaring chorus of democracy accompanied by the different percussion of its players