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Category: Opinion

  • The Ills of Ethnicising Badenoch-Shettima Clash

    The Ills of Ethnicising Badenoch-Shettima Clash

    “… the attempt to yorubalise the clash between the Vice President and Kemi Badenoch is bad politics for President Tinubu. Not only does it put the President and his Vice in an awkward position, it risks creating a political headache for the president in the north, a region that was critical to his 2023 electoral victory and that will be needed for a repeat performance in 2027.”

    A popular Yoruba adage says when an elephant dies all kinds of knives come out of their sheaths for a piece of the action. In the same vein, a political crisis on social media such as the dust-off between Kemi Badenoch and the Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, or the titanic rumble in the jungle clash between Dele Farotimi and Afe Babalola represent a tantalizing opportunity for all kinds of groups to gain notoriety and to launder all kinds of agenda. After the initial broad-based condemnation of Kemi Badenoch for denigrating Nigeria, the ill-advised intrusion of Vice President Shettima into the controversy, has brought out the ugly side of Nigeria ethnic animus. No sooner had the VP asked the British leader of the UK’s opposition Tories Party, to drop her Yoruba name, if she was ashamed of our Nigerian ancestry, to which she responded with an equally ill-advised ethnic slur against the north, than many Yoruba groups ran to her defense.

    This post in the SaharaReporter by the UK based Yoruba Union has taken the Yorubanization of the Kemi Badenoch controversy over the top. It is doubtful even if the Yoruba Union group is a registered entity in the UK as no such document could be retrieved in a search of Yoruba registered entities in the UK (see https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/search?q=Yoruba+Union&page=5). Its website is also very scanty in terms of its organizational structure and executive board. I might be wrong of course, but it looks like a fairly new entity.

    Yet, this Union has put out a post that includes a potpourri admixture of issues from IG Egbetokun, to Kemi Badenoch versus Shettima, Dele Farotimi Versus Chief Afe Babalola, to police brutality during #Endbadgovernance and a host of inflammatory and denigrating statements about the north. Given its track record, the choice of Sowore’s SaharaReporter might raise some suspicious glance. This attempt to throw every and any spaghetti on the wall to see which one sticks smacks of gross opportunism by this group to get some media leverage from the various controversial issues on the Nigeria social media landscape.

    READ ALSO: Tax Reform Bills: The North Must Modernise Anyhow

    Beyond that, the attempt to yorubalise the clash between the Vice President and Kemi Badenoch is bad politics for President Tinubu. Not only does it put the President and his Vice in an awkward position, it risks creating a political headache for the president in the north, a region that was critical to his 2023 electoral victory and that will be needed for a repeat performance in 2027. Asiwaju Tinubu as governor of Lagos state and in his political alliance with General Buhari clearly played a post-ethnic, cosmopolitan, broad based nation-wide politics. Not only did he appoint non-Yoruba to his cabinet to the chagrin of many people, given the apparent ingratitude shown by the beneficiary ethnic group, but he built a broad based nationwide political empire on whose cor-tail he rode to Aso Rock.

    Unlike Peter Obi who allegedly ran an Igbo-centric campaign spiced with his attempt to religionise his campaign toward the end with his Muslim-Muslim candidate campaign, Asiwaju Tinubu ran a broad-based, nation-wide campaign. He never ran as a Yoruba candidate. Yes his Emilokan speech talked about Yoruba having earned the ticket, but his campaign did not run on an ethnised agenda. Had he, he would have lost the election in a landslide. To start with, a huge chunk of his own Yoruba people campaigned vigorously against him candidacy. A majority of the major Yoruba mega-churches opposed his candidacy on the basis of the Muslim-Muslim candidate tag, the Yoruba media, a faction of the Afenifere, and a large chunk of the Yoruba intellectuals also went sour on him. Former President Obasanjo unleashed the vast political capital to defeat Asiwaju Tinubu. They all failed thanks to the strategic politics played by Tinubu and sheer fortune of a fractured opposition.

    It bears reminding ourselves that Asiwaju lost in Lagos state (his political base), in Osun state and if my memory serves me right, he either lost or split Oyo state with the former Vice President, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). So it is not too far-fetched to say that Asiwaju Tinubu won his presidential election in spite of the less than maximum support from his own people. On the other hand Obi won in the east in a Tsunami with the Igbo. Asiwaju Tinubu owes his narrow victory largely to the support he garnered from the north despite the fact that Alhaji Atiku a northern candidate also ran in that election. Of course we all knew that Tinubu was crushed in the southeast.

    It is therefore a great disservice to President Tinubu’s re-election prospects to tokenise and wrap him in the Yoruba candidate garment. It is doubly unhelpful to denigrate the north as uneducated terrorists. Playing the tribe card by insulting “the Vice President and asking him to stop harassing their daughter (whatever that means) and urging him to focus on his Almajiri people who are being used as terrorists” like the Yoruba Union of UK noted in its release is not only despicable, it smacks of ethnic stereotyping. More importantly, it is bad politics for Yoruba and for President Tinubu in 2027.

    ALSO READ: Edo LG Government Chairmen Suspension Declared Invalid By AGF

    So, as we transverse through this Kemi Badenoch drama, frankly more like an unnecessary tempest in the tea cup, it is important that we don’t lose perspective and not allow ourselves to be distracted from the prize, a focus on helping the president succeed in the big and consequential reform agenda he is pursing. If he succeeds, our country succeeds. We need to tone down on our hyper-ethnicised rhetoric and politics. Otherwise President Tinubu risks ending up a one term president without building bridges to other ethnicities especially the north. Antagonizing the north and denigrating them as uneducated Boko Haram is a dumb thing to say. It is putting President Tinubu’s reelection prospect in grave jeopardy.

    Yes, ours is a country suffering from unbelievable identity crisis, from a debilitating trust deficit between, among and sometime, within the ethnic nationalities that make it up. A mixture of ethnic nationalities, many of which feel trapped in an unwanted union.

    We must understand that as much as we might dislike each other and wished that we were not yoked together in a union that was put together without our consent, Nigeria is the only country we have. Nigeria is not the only nation that came into existence in that fashion. The entire continent was carved out by Europeans who were more interested in preserving their fiefdoms of exploitation than what was good for the continent. That phenomenon of nation states emerging as a result of conquest, colonialism and imperialism has been around since antiquity and it is not peculiar to our country nor the African continent. We have the choice to either work harmoniously to build a true nation state out of the geographical expression that the European created in 1914 or engage in highly destructive seccessionist agitation. Those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it. No matter the flowery optimistic language of secessionists who point out to their so called “peaceful” break-up of Yugoslavia (ask the survival of Serbian genocide in Kosovo and Srebrenica) and the Soviet Union, it is unlike that Yoruba nation will emerge via a peace treaty with other Nigerian ethnicities. Sending petition to 10 Downing Street when the UK has its own internal secessionist agitation, is dumb. The Biafran disaster should be instructive. Nigeria is our present reality and we must all do our part to make it work for us.

    Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

  • TAX REFORM BILLS: THE NORTH MUST MODERNISE ANYHOW 

    TAX REFORM BILLS: THE NORTH MUST MODERNISE ANYHOW 

     

    By Abdullahi Ismaila Ahmad, Ph.D.

    The tax reform bills recently sent to the National Assembly by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, have generated controversies over the past weeks. Many commentators have expressed their views in support of the bills or against some of their provisions. The Northern Region has expressed vehement objection to the bills. They are against the bills because, in their views, the bills are entirely or partly anti-north. Given most of the observations and the pros and cons of the arguments advanced by the various commentators, it is pertinent to say that whatever views are advanced by the Northern stakeholders, the truth that must be told is that Northern Nigeria must yield itself to the full extent of modernisation, anyhow and soonest. The tax bills will invariably switch a region like the North out of its encrusted traditional and provincial life patterns.

    There is no need to regurgitate the controversial issues around the tax reform bills as they are already in the public domain, and much has been said about them thus far. However, three keywords about the VAT derivation model proposed in the tax bills should form the cornerstone of deliberations and whatever decisions may be taken afterwards by the Northern stakeholders. These signature words are production, consumption, and competition. 

    The Value Added Tax (VAT) is described as a consumption tax. However, before consumption occurs, there must be production, whether in goods or services. Therefore, production is a key factor in any consideration or discussion of the Value Added Tax. Our rudimentary economic class tells us that factors of production are land, capital, labour, and entrepreneurship, which are the building blocks of any economy. Any society that desires economic progress will not take these factors of production for granted. Without mincing words, these production factors are abundant in Northern Nigeria, almost to the point of waste. One would expect that the North will have no issue with production, which invariably gives rise to consumption. 

    As an output of the production process, consumption depends on the purchasing parity of a people and their cultural tastes. Nonetheless, consumption can happen away from the point where goods and services are produced. It is expected, however, that both production and consumption can occur at the same place, thereby enriching the economy of that particular place. This is because trading and commerce will enhance people’s purchasing parity. Without mincing words, Northern Nigeria is essentially a consumption society but with the potential to be a producing economy. It must embrace progressive ideas and modernisation to harness its full economic potential. 

    This is where competition comes in. There is competition in every aspect of our lives, from the products and services being churned out daily to how societies employ strategies to grow their economies. This makes every society think progressively and forecast the future. No society lays back or indulges in wastefulness or a careless lifestyle and expects to be at par with other societies that have moved on the fast pedestal of development. 

    The pertinent question to ask at this juncture is why Lagos has suddenly become the envy of the entire nineteen northern states. What does Lagos state have that all northern states do not have or cannot have? The answer to the second question is that Lagos state has painstakingly embraced the full extent of modernisation through its deliberate policy planning and execution, it has embraced technology, industrialisation, financial inclusiveness and wealth creation strategies. Northerners are among those who made Lagos State what it is today with their massive investment there. 

    The point being emphasised here is that the VAT derivation formula being proposed by the tax bills should also be seen as a wake-up call for the Northern stakeholders and political establishment to stir the region out of its slumber and decipher these salient issues dredged up by the bills and quickly embrace the imperative of modernisation. Modernisation does not mean only the erection of skyscrapers, the construction of flyovers, or paved motorways. Suppose we have all these, by all means, okay. In other words, modernisation refers to a reformation of habits, which W. H. Auden refers to as a ‘change of heart’, which is not simple. In this regard, modernisation ‘is the reshaping and resharing social values, such as power, respect, rectitudes, affection, well-being skill, and enlightenment’. This is to say that the Northern leadership and political establishment must change its old ways of engaging with the people and the society. It must change its way of perceiving reality to begin to understand that leadership is an instrument for improving the conditions of a people, not a tool for manipulating them. It must wake up to an understanding that modern life is about competition, progress, and overcoming challenges that improve the condition of a people. It’s not about rhetoric and hyperbole.

    The Northern political establishment must develop a mindset that comprehends the reality that governance is about service to the people, building capacities, developing human resources, bettering the living conditions of a people, and challenging the environment to yield its potential for the growth of the society. Indeed, governance should not be approached as a private fiefdom, a personal estate for a willful distribution of privileges and patronage. For too long, the Northern political establishment has held down its people in poverty to authenticate its affluence and influence, thereby closing the space for more engaging and productive ideas and wealth creation. That’s why the political class would instead purchase bicycles, coffins, grains, wheelbarrows, and other mundane items purportedly as empowerment when politicians from different regions build their people on ICT and technology pedestals and build food security hubs and other progressive ideas.

    The change of attitude required of the Northern political establishment should be the type that will lead to an organisation of economic activities, automation of business transactions, creative development of natural resources, and development of human resources through restructuring of education system and manpower training. W. W. Rostow states that for a society to sustain economic growth by its autonomous operations, ‘it must be effectively geared to the skills and values of the people who make it work’. That is to say that people’s entrepreneurial skills and values of hard work, industry, and resilience must be sharpened and attuned to the demands of modern life. Small and medium enterprises abound in the North. Still, they require uplifting through capital incentives like access to interest-free loans and other grants and enabling environment such as electricity, potable water supply, access roads to agricultural belts, etc. For example, through loans and grants, business owners can be encouraged to develop a value chain in their business lines and offer jobs to unemployed youth.

    On automation, it’s essential that state governments in the North also recognise the role of technology in business transactions. Globally, technology is being used to drive revenue collection. Today, the record-breaking revenue collected by the FIRS is made possible because of the massive investment in technology allied with administrative finesse. Therefore, automation of tax payment processes is the norm everywhere. Automation can be done right from the point of business registration, where the data of a business owner can be collected and included in the financial or fiscal process. 

    Most importantly, this automation option becomes more compelling with the proposed derivation method of sharing VAT. In terms of consumption, it’s unarguable that soft drinks like 7UP, Fanta, Coca-Cola, Mirinda, Sprite, etc, are widely consumed in the remotest part of the North.   In the North, soft drinks equate to the liquor in the South. To be able to appropriate VAT from these drinks and other goods like indomine, pasta, sugar, cement, etc, an automation process needs to be implemented to track how VAT is charged at the wholesale distribution point. This is what is referred to as the output VAT.

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    Regarding the input VAT, deliberate policy can be made to create a value chain in producing and processing products like rice, yams, vegetables, and fruits. In other words, instead of selling the products in their raw forms, state governments should encourage investors to set up factories to create value chains necessary for generating the required revenue. Given its large population, the North can gain more from the consumption-based VAT method if a deliberate strategy is implemented to optimise the process of output VAT. 

    There is nowhere in the proposed VAT law explicitly stating that the 60% proposed is entirely and exclusively for Lagos state. The presumption that the VAT proposal will favour only Lagos state is just a figment of the imagination of those peddling the sentiment, which stems from a feeling of inadequacy. The clause says, ‘wherever the consumption of goods and services takes place’ will be given the percentage of the VAT it generates from the earmarked 60% of the overall monthly VAT volume generated. So, the onus on every state and region is to put its act together to track and authenticate the VAT it generates. Instead of lamenting or expressing the sentiment about Lagos getting the large share of the VAT, it behoves the North to look inward to harness its potential and organise its economic activities. Northern states must wake up to the challenge and stop the lamentations. The North has a population; it has all the factors of production, and it is equally endowed with natural resources to be ahead of other regions. So, why the panic? 

    Talking about natural resources, there is a concentration of mineral resources in the North like lithium, uranium, talc, limestone, gold, and even black gold and a host of others to make it able to establish companies and industries for the manufacture and production of all kinds of goods and services. And so, the North is not a poor region as it is being iterated; it is just reeling in misplaced priorities and elite complacency. As it were, if the North had kept to the trajectory of the examples set by Sardauna and Balewa who set up viable business ventures and strategic institutions, built manpower, and laid solid economic framework for the future, all of which have now gone with the winds, it won’t be crying wolf now. However, what it requires now is the political will and negotiation skills necessary in politics to turn things around for the better. To be sure, politics is about negotiation over scarce resources. Therefore, the sharper your negotiation skills are, your chances of gaining a competitive advantage in a political arrangement will increase. 

    For instance, what stops the North from negotiating a tax credit scheme to revamp the moribund textile industries in the North? Why did the North allow the Bank of the North to be taken over? Why didn’t the Northern political establishment say anything about the stoppage of the dredging of the River Niger and the abandonment of the Baro Port? What happened to its cotton potential and the ginnery enterprises? What is it doing with the vast water bodies and arable land? So many questions, indeed. 

    The VAT debacle has provided the North an opportunity for negotiation and introspection. The present atmosphere of regional competition makes the matter even more enjoyable. Therefore, the North must muster every skill to get a better deal out of this debacle and seize this moment to modernise its social and economic institutions for more financial inclusiveness and overall economic growth. This is a time to change the old habits and embrace progressive ideas. It is instructive how the North raised its voice in unison to object to the Tax Reform Bills. It is equally expedient for the North to rise in unison against the spate of insecurity bedevilling the entire region. Let the Governors,  the Emirs, the Ulamas, and the whole people equally give marching orders to their legislators in the National Assembly, as they did on the tax reform bills, to end the insecurity in the region.

    Let the North rise against the misplacement of governance priorities and begin to chart the course of modernisation. As recently suggested by the immediate past Executive Chairman of FIRS, Muhammad Nami, the North must take the issue of financial inclusiveness seriously to be able to move on the same pedestal with the other regions of the country. There are probably billions of naira circulating in the North outside the banking system because the handlers detest bank interest. Indeed, the North has no other option but to start modernising now.

    For instance, what stops the Northern stakeholders from using diplomatic instruments to get Middle Eastern banks like Al Rajhi to set up branches in key Northern states’ capitals to attract those outside the banking system to bank their money? It must be stressed that transactions through the banking system and the embrace of the BVN and NIN, which ensure that everybody is captured in the National Database and the overall fiscal construct of the country, are no longer optional; it should be considered obligatory on everybody, whether young or old, educated or not. Therefore, the North must shift away from the traditional way of doing business and tax collection to a more financially inclusive way to benefit from the VAT windfall.

    Abdullahi Ismaila Ahmad, Ph.D. is the Director, Communications & Liaison Department, Federal Inland Revenue Service

  • Defence Tops Tinubu’s 2025 Spending Plan  

    Defence Tops Tinubu’s 2025 Spending Plan  

    President Tinubu has presented the 2025 budget of N49.7 trillion, prioritizing defence, infrastructure, education, and healthcare to address key national challenges.  

    As it is to be expected, the president has titled it as the Budget of Renewed Hope, even when the highest percentage of the budget has been allocated to defence.

    Defence and Security: The highest allocation of N4.91 trillion (9.88%) is set for defence and security, focusing on modernizing military equipment, improving border control, and tackling insurgency and banditry. Clearly arming the military to combat domestic violence does not indicate renewed hope.

    Also, it is argued by some analysts that allocating the lion’s share to defence does not represent sound judgement as it seems to address the symptom rather than the root cause of insecurity in the country. Even the lay man on the street can hazard a sound guess that poverty is at the root of insecurity in the land.

    This explains why the leadership of the Nigerian Armed Forces is altering their strategy of war by adopting a soft approach rather than kinetic means.

    Kidnapping, farmers/herders clashes, cattle rustling and banditry are some of the major forms of violent crimes bedeviling Nigeria. Moreover, these challenges are more prevalent in the north where poverty is most pervasive.

    This trend has been amply established by the recent NBS Survey which has attributed most violent crimes in Nigeria to poverty.

    Infrastructure Development: With N4.06 trillion or 8.17% allocated, infrastructure aims to boost the energy sector, expand transportation networks, and complete major public works projects using private investments.  

    Education: Allocated N3.52 trillion or 7.08% ,the government plans to enhance school facilities, fund the Nigeria Education Loan Fund, and invest in teacher training programs.  

    Healthcare: The N2.48 trillion or 4.99 percent set aside for health will improve primary healthcare services, strengthen infrastructure, and support initiatives like the Basic Health Care Fund.  

    The budget is anchored on an oil benchmark of $75 per barrel, production of 2.06 million barrels daily, and an exchange rate of ₦1,400 to the dollar, reflecting a focused approach to economic recovery and stability.

    This part of the budget however, does not sit well with many analysts who challenge the reality of these assumptions.

  • Nigeria Social Media and the Badenoch Obsession

    Nigeria Social Media and the Badenoch Obsession

    Yes, our country can definitely use some diversion from the daily grind of the economic Tsunami, inflation and price volatility that is making life tough for our people. However, the level of obsession with this lady Kemi Badenoch who was a non-factor in our daily existence until through her political smarts, she reached the pinnacle as leader of the Tory opposition, has become so obscene and nauseating. Even our Vice President who should be focusing on the overflowing plate of his primary responsibility to assist the president in making life livable for Nigerians could not resist poking his nose into the hot potato.

    Even our dear brother Sunday Igboho, after the blow-back from his recent misadventure to No. 10 Downing Street has found a new cause célèbre to get out of this his recent hibernation. He has taken on the VP for attacking a Yoruba woman. When are we going to hit the time-out button and say enough is enough? Let the Brits bury their own dead while we bury ours. Our Gbarunmi (help me carry load) cannot take the ownership of someone’s burden. Our load is so humongous its weight is turning us into the hunchback yet, we are asking others to pile theirs on top. No be juju be that?

    READ ALSO: Sacked Ag. VC Sues FUHSO, Education Minister Over Unlawful Removal

    Many on social media are applying the old political playbook in assessing the impact of the Nigeria controversy on Kemi Badenoch political fortune. The lesson we just learned from Trump’s historic comeback electoral victory in the U.S. is that what the old media establishment regards as gaffe, cultural war and controversial no-go topics, resonate with the electorate if they sense the genuineness, consistency and straightforwardness from the politician. Trump broke all the rules of political convention, accused immigrants of eating pet dogs and cats, and said things that in the old political game book should have sunk his candidacy. Yet, he defied gravity and rode into a historic comeback victory. The old rule of politics of evasiveness, political correctness, pandering, slickness and playing it safe is out of the window.

    Nigerians on social media including VP Shettima can shout themselves hoarse till they turn blue, they are of no consequence and have zero vote or say in Kemi’s political future. It is mere “ariwo lenu vendor” like Great Fela sang about the eons ago.

    We are just wasting time, blowing hot air and hyperventilating for nothing. Sadly, that has become the stock in trade of Nigeria social media, people mindlessly sharing the same garbage content ad nasseum.

    Frankly being anti-Nigeria might be good politics for Kemi. She wouldn’t have gotten to the position she is, being a black woman with a foreign name without being a shrewd astute politician. She knows exactly what she is doing which is why she is upping the ante and escalating the controversy. So let’s go at it, make as much noise on our WhatsApp fora all we want. It’s no skin off Kemi’s nose.

    Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

  • SYRIA AND NIGERIA AT HISTORY’S CROSSROADS

    SYRIA AND NIGERIA AT HISTORY’S CROSSROADS

    “Syria’s a classical case of a country that first died in the hearts and minds of its people long before the erosion started manifesting in the physical. It was decades in the making and it was obvious except to those who benefited from the rot. It is about the same thing in Nigeria with the country falling apart in the eyes of everybody except in the eyes of the ruling elite. The demise of a country begins with the erosion of its people’s sense of identity, purpose and connection to the homeland.“

    SYRIA is an enigma. It has always been from ancient times including the era preceding the writing of the Holy Bible by some inspired persons. We will have to contend with time and space if we tried to explore the enigmas of that country in detail. In spite of its current travails, Syria remains a mystery notwithstanding its rich history, cultural diversity, and fractious, indeed, tumultuous politics. It might as well be that the aforementioned traits are the reasons for the mystery of that Middle East country. Well before Damascus, the capital of this historic country fell last week to the many rebel groups that besieged it, it had been losing territory inch-by-inch and day-by-day. But the loss of territory on its own does not necessarily lead to the demise of a country or to a regime change. A country or a regime dies faster when there’s a disconnect with the citizens. That was the lot of Bashar al-Assad who suddenly fled from Syria after his family had ruled the country with iron fists for more than half a century.

    Syria’s a classical case of a country that first died in the hearts and minds of its people long before the erosion started manifesting in the physical. It was decades in the making and it was obvious except to those who benefited from the rot. It is about the same thing in Nigeria with the country falling apart in the eyes of everybody except in the eyes of the ruling elite. The demise of a country begins with the erosion of its people’s sense of identity, purpose and connection to the homeland. The clear implication is that the decline of a country is not just a physical or economic phenomenon, but a psychological and emotional one too. There’s no doubt that a country’s strength and resilience are deeply rooted in the collective consciousness of its citizens. When people lose faith in their country, its institutions, and its values, the very fabric of that country is bound to unravel. This was, probably still is, the case with Syria. And it speaks to the situation in Nigeria today. Is our country at risk, given the manifest disconnect between Nigeria’s ruling elite and sections of its population, especially the majority of the younger generation who feel disaffected by the direction the country is headed? Is implosion inevitable given the obduracy of our rulers? Can it yet be headed off? Is anything being done now or has anything been done in the last 25 years of the fourth republic to salvage the country or are more grievous things being done to savage it? Time will tell.

    “…when a country dies in the souls of its citizens, as appears to be the case of Syria under the successive Assad family regimes, and as it seems to be applying to Nigeria, it leads or can lead to a range of negative consequences. It can trigger social unrest and violent agitations as happened in Syria that have led to the fall of the regime and an uncertain future for the country. Citizens become increasingly frustrated, resort to protests, unrest and violence as Nigeria has been witnessing…To many fellow citizens, the Renewed Hope mantra of the Tinubu regime is a bad joke.”

    Let’s attempt to speak to why the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the uncertainty about the future of that country should be of concern to Nigeria, Nigerians and their rulers. As in Syria but for different reasons, there’s a significant and growing loss of national pride because many Nigerians no longer feel a sense of pride and ownership of their country. It’s increasingly becoming a case of ‘us versus them’. As in Syria also there were things that hitherto held our people together in the past. Now there’s a disconnect from whatever is left of the things that could be considered as values and principles that used to define us. A significant portion of Nigerians are emotionally detached from the country, including from its history, culture, and traditions. You may do well to ask that teenager or tweenager (children in their 20s) next to you who is not an heir to a plum political office or to private wealth what they feel about our country. Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, is a typical diaspora Nigerian who holds the citizenship of another country. She has been in a spat with Nigeria’s vice president Kashim Shettima over comments she made about Nigeria. She represents a typical diaspora Nigerian – acute frustration with the state of our country. It’s baffling that Shettima chose to interject in Kemi’s expression of frustration. My people would say that ‘onaghi adinma ka madu di ka ihe ejiri ko ya onu’. You don’t need to behave like a mad person just because someone said that you are mad. The only way Shettima can shame Kemi is for him to be an example of altruistic leadership in our country. For now we’ll ignore Kemi’s expressed Yoruba bonafide and her slur in distancing herself from a part of the country and their sectarian contribution to Nigeria’s lingering insecurity. Could this be a pointer that Nigeria is actually dying in the hearts and minds of its citizens?

    Syria ravaged by war

    And when a country dies in the souls of its citizens, as appears to be the case of Syria under the successive Assad family regimes, and as it seems to be applying to Nigeria, it leads or can lead to a range of negative consequences. It can trigger social unrest and violent agitations as happened in Syria that have led to the fall of the regime and an uncertain future for the country. Citizens become increasingly frustrated, resort to protests, unrest and violence as Nigeria has been witnessing. A disconnection with a country makes people vote with their feet through indiscriminate migrations sometimes through hazardous routes including deserts on foot, and oceans using dinghy boats. Some more desperate ones try to flee by inserting themselves inside tyre and cargo holds of Europe, Asia or American-bound commercial aircraft. It also accounts for brain drain where talented individuals choose to leave the country to seek better opportunities elsewhere. We live in an era where well trained and skillful compatriots abandon their otherwise respectable jobs and businesses here to travel abroad where they waste their talents by engaging in menial jobs. The life of an average Nigerian is defined by frustration, desperation, despondency and lingering hopelessness. To many fellow citizens, the Renewed Hope mantra of the Tinubu regime is a bad joke.

    “Is Seyi also being prepared for the presidency after his father or sometime later. Before Hafez al-Assad died he took Bashar to France and handed him over to the then French president Jacque Chirac. Hafez told Jacque to treat Bashar as his own son and to help the young man become president of Syria. Jacque Chirac delivered when Hafiz died. Now Tinubu enjoys a difficult to explain association with France and romance with its president Emmanuel Macron. And our president has a politically ambitious son, Seyi.”

    When your best brains flee, the country could experience economic decline, a lack of investment, dearth of innovation, and lacklustre entrepreneurship. Indeed, there could be economic stagnation which could spike the crime rate and make individuals and corporations unsafe. Even the government will be compelled to spend more money to combat crime. When this happens investment will be imperiled and the provision of infrastructural facilities will suffer since the money for their provision will be channeled to fighting crime and criminals. It’s a vicious cycle. Our country is showing signs of these ailments. When a country loses its place in the hearts and minds of its citizens, it stands the risk of loss of its sovereignty. This scenario could be far-fetched in the case of Nigeria. But a weakened country in terms of governance and national security could become vulnerable to external influences that could threaten its independence.

    Nigeria is weakened in governance and this is compounded by conjectures that the critical mass of its leadership could be assets of powerful foreign countries. Gradually, Nigeria is ticking the boxes of everything that could prove fatal to its well-being. Not too long ago, no other person than a former military ruler and later an elected civilian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, while in the United States of America warned that Nigeria was barreling towards a failed state. But Nigerian rulers are adept at living in denial. It gives them comfort because it’s blissful. It postpones the day of reckoning. So it was not strange when the extant regime promptly and vigorously dismissed the assertions of Obasanjo. But Obasanjo was not alone in raising concerns about the declining status and stature of our country in the comity of nations, and the emerging signs of state capture. Other prominent citizens have spoken in that regard.

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    Syria and Nigeria may share some things in common but they are two different countries, in different parts of the world, and which have followed different trajectories in their aspirations for growth and development. Nigeria’s aspiration to growth and development may actually have been in reverse gear for many years. It was heightened during the eight disastrous years of Muhammadu Buhari (2015-2023). In Syria Hafez al-Assad died of cancer. His preferred son and heir apparent Bassel had died earlier in a car crash in 1994. So his despised second son Bashar was quickly drafted and recalled from his training as a doctor in England, and groomed for rulership. He assumed the presidency when his father died and started off as an economic and political reformer. But when Syrians demanded more freedoms and political reforms, Bashar dropped the baton and returned to the playbook of his father – use of the sledgehammer. For years he maimed and killed his people until he lost grip and fled to Russia for asylum. History is replete with the certain fate of every ruler that resorts to iron fists.

    Nigeria does not yet have a father-to-son-to-grandchild rulership template. But who says it cannot happen here. It starts with state capture and some political commentators are already persuaded that we are headed in that direction. Seyi is the son of president Tinubu. He is said to be preparing to be the governor of Lagos state in 2027. That’s a legitimate aspiration. But of greater note is that he is a permanent fixture in the delegations of the president’s foreign trips. He is often at the head of protocol standings in foreign lands, usually in front of ministers, diplomats and, other Nigerian state officials. Is Seyi also being prepared for the presidency after his father or sometime later. Before Hafez al-Assad died he took Bashar to France and handed him over to the then French president Jacque Chirac. Hafez told Jacque to treat Bashar as his own son and to help the young man become president of Syria. Jacque Chirac delivered when Hafiz died. Now Tinubu enjoys a difficult to explain association with France and romance with its president Emmanuel Macron. And our president has a politically ambitious son, Seyi. But I do not think that there’s any dots to connect. Only that I have since dropped the notion that certain things cannot happen here. I did so for the good of my mental health.

    Ugo Onuoha, Veteran Journalist & Foundation Member of FICAN, He was Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief, Champion Newspapers Ltd

  • Nigeria: Challenging the Dysfunction, Rebuilding the Institutions

    Nigeria: Challenging the Dysfunction, Rebuilding the Institutions

    “My faith in my country is anchored on the knowledge that nation-building is like making sausage. It is a messy, ugly, unending process. Every nation has its fair share of shit, the difference between failed and successful nation states is not measured by their inherent perfection but by the commitment of their citizens to the patriotic task of constant improvement and adding more layers of growth from lessons learned from past mistakes and failures in the gradual, unending and never-completed task of building the elusive perfect union.“

    Beyond the particular case of Dele Farotimi versus Aare Afe Babalola which hopefully will be fairly decided in the court of law, after listening to his lengthy video interview, I have to agree that Dele Farotimi made a compelling case about the decadence, the abject lack of integrity and probity in the Nigerian judiciary.

    Frankly, that should not come as a surprise to most Nigerians. In most Nigerian lived experience we have all at one time or another been confronted with, and victimized by the obscenely ugly side of the Nigerian legal system starting with the decadent, corruption ridden, oppressive Nigerian police force which victimizes the poor with illegal arrest and bribery at every point in our interaction with it while the rich gets away with murder.

    A police force which ordinarily should serve as the foundation of the judicial system, but which instead is the agency in which the victim of crime is made to pay for the book on which his or her case will be documented and to provide fuel to the car to arrest the offender. A police force that will advise the criminal how to circumvent the law.

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    We have seen a judiciary where justice is meted out according to the pocket book. A judicial system in which a poor man who steals rickety cellphone, if he escapes lynching by the mob, would be lucky to get 10 years in jail while a white collar criminal who steals billions and with a water-tight case against him or her by the EFCC , will have his or her case killed with adjournments amidst injunctions.

    If we are going to be honest with ourselves, the weight of evidence against our judiciary like every single institution in our country starting with our religious bodies, the churches, the mosque and the traditionalists, to our educational system where certificates have been commoditized and sold to the highest bidder or with demand for sexual favor or exploitation, to the highest level of our government, is that the stench and rot is so deep, so total, so all-encompassing, and so systemic, that they are almost irredeemable and all need to be totally blown into shreds and rebuilt from the ground up. That is the honest to God truth. Until then, we shall be moving from one crisis to another.

    It is a bitter pill to swallow but there is no escaping it. It is sad and demoralizing but we must face our stack reality. This is bigger than President Tinubu because the rot in our institutions predates him. It has been long, deep and systemic from its foundation.

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    Before people start to shout “we told you so”. Let me state clearly that my faith, belief and commitment to Nigeria is total. It is not anchored on a denial of nor shaken by its inherent dysfunction and its internal contradiction. My faith and commitment to my country which I dearly love and in which I am grateful that the universe has placed me, is regardless of its dysfunction and internal contradiction. My faith in my country is anchored on the knowledge that nation-building is like making sausage. It is a messy, ugly, unending process. Every nation has its fair share of shit, the difference between failed and successful nation states is not measured by their inherent perfection but by the commitment of their citizens to the patriotic task of constant improvement and adding more layers of growth from lessons learned from past mistakes and failures in the gradual, unending and never-completed task of building the elusive perfect union. That is the task we as citizens must take on if we are going to build a virile, strong nation we all can be proud of. No one else in this world would do it for us. And no matter how many passports we earn by way of naturalization, there is no escaping our Nigerianess. People will always ask you the “I mean where are you really from” no mater how much you try to code-switch.

    Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

  • Dele Farotimi Versus Baba Aare Afe Babalola: A Case of an Unfair Apportioning of The Institutional Wage of Sin

    Dele Farotimi Versus Baba Aare Afe Babalola: A Case of an Unfair Apportioning of The Institutional Wage of Sin

    “I have never been a fan of Dele Farotimi and his tactics of seeking to take on the mantle of Gani Fawehinmi as the fighter for social justice and the little man without putting in the work. Unlike the late icon Gani Fawehinmi who put in the work, paid the huge price personally and professionally with deep scars to show for his effort, Dele Farotimi has sought to use social media notoriety, crude and unguarded defaming, scandalizing of other people’s reputation as the launchpad for his undeserved and unmerited social activist status.“

    The titanic legal confrontation between Dele Farotimi and highly respected Chief Are Afe Babalola has totally taken up the oxygen in the Nigerian social media, judicial and political space. It has dominated the news and taken on a life of its own with partisan combatants on both sides. It has pitted the preeminent Doyen of the Nigerian legal aristocracy against a legal upstart who is a master of social media fueled social activism and pseudo-defender of the poor and oppressed. I am not pretending to be a neutral objective analyst in the conflict. I have never been a fan of Dele Farotimi and his tactics of seeking to take on the mantle of Gani Fawehinmi as the fighter for social justice and the little man without putting in the work. Unlike the late icon Gani Fawehinmi who put in the work, paid the huge price personally and professionally with deep scars to show for his effort, Dele Farotimi has sought to use social media notoriety, crude and unguarded defaming, scandalizing of other people’s reputation as the launchpad for his undeserved and unmerited social activist status. I find that morally and professionally reprehensible. He is not the only one in this new cottage industry of reputation washing. I find the entire short cut celebritization of virtue as an obscenity.

    Chief Gani Fawehinmi

    Baba Are Afe Babalola is undoubtedly at the very pinnacle of the Nigerian legal industry, a reputation he has built diligently and meticulously over six decades. Yes, there are rumors out there in the public domain about how he might have parlay his contact with the Nigerian political class to build his legal empire. If leveraging political capital is a crime, the Nigeria jail-house and in fact jailhouses around the globe will the filled to overcapacity. In order for anyone to criminalize alleged political influence like Dele Farotimi did in his book, on public TV and social media, they had better have irrefutable evidence. That judgement will hopefully be rendered in the Nigerian court of law.

    It would appear that Dele Farotimi recklessly and maliciously defamed Baba Afe Babalola’s name to advance his unearned and underserved social activist street cred. Dele Farotimi has a long record of recklessly throwing bombs at other people’s reputation wrecking them to build up his own.

    Even more impressive and legacy affirming than Chief Afe Babalola’s out of this world remarkable legal career, are what he has done at the later stage of his life with his resources, when most of his contemporaries have either kicked the bucket or are too infirm to do much. While the Nigerian money class would rather invest their resources in plush real estates in the Riveira amd Monte Carlo and in shell companies in Panama, Baba Afe Babalola has instead chosen late in his life when he could be resting in the luxury of retirement, to invest a huge chunk of his resources in legacy humanitarian projects like the Afe Babalola University with its world class physical and academic infrastructure among other community development ventures and donations to international institutions. That, in my view, is a life worthy of celebration and emulation. It is not how one begins life that matters, it is how one ends it. Baba Afe Babalola embodies that as he races to the finish line of a remarkable life. Baba has left a legacy that people will be talking about for centuries after we all have gone. His legal exploit will be a mere byline in that legacy. So Baba Afe Babalola would remain a historical figure whose humanitarian footprint will stand the test of time no matter the outcome of this last legal kungfu fight. He should be commended for his courage in taking on the fight when he could have walked away and let the howling dog have its day.

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    The legal tussle between him and Dele Farotimi is however an entirely different story. On its legal merit, based on what is out there in the public domain it would appear that Chief Afe Babalola has a solid case against Dele Farotimi. It would appear that Dele Farotimi recklessly and maliciously defamed Baba Afe Babalola’s name to advance his unearned and underserved social activist street cred. Dele Farotimi has a long record of recklessly throwing bombs at other people’s reputation wrecking them to build up his own. Many including President Tinubu have been on the receiving end of his reckless scorched earth, bomb throwing reputation damage tactic. Perhaps his being held accountable this time will send a cautionary warning to him and his ilk. Nigerian Social media has for too long become a waste land for long earned reputation with many of its victims having no place to seek restitution. While this case will not put and end to the celebritization of social media activisms and notoriety monetization cottage industry, the Dele Farotimi versus Are Babalola case might send a cautionary note that there are limits.

    The unfortunate part of the whole saga for Baba Afe Babalola is that it has metastasized beyond its legal argument to the status of an attention-grabbing, controversy-spinning social media cause célèbre. On top of that, it has gotten enmeshed in the messy world of Nigerian class warfare. It has been mischievously turned into a David versus Goliath affair, and partisan politics. The partisan dimension is indeed the most curious part because neither Baba Afe Babalola nor Dele Farotimi supported Asiwaju Tinubu candidacy, yet some mischief makers have sought to make it so. The two combatants are in fact ideological and partisan compatriots.

    What is working against Baba Afe Babalola, despite his solid legal argument, is the public perception that he represents the ultimate insider, the primadonna, and the power broker of the much maligned and unpopular Nigerian judiciary whose reputation with the Nigerian populace is only slightly better than that of politicians. That is as low as it can get for any Nigerian institution given how much the Nigerian masses despise their politicians.

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    So, unfortunately and unfairly in the public perception, Baba Afe Babalola is being made to carry the institutional wage of sin for the judiciary, while Dele Farotimi is erroneously and unjustifiably being portrayed as the one carrying the cross and the angst of the common man in a fight against what is perceived as an oppressive, corrupt judiciary. No matter the final outcome of the legal rumble in the jungle, that unfortunately is likely to be the final narrative of the story. Either a David who fell a Goliath, or a Goliath who uses his brute power to oppress an innocent and overmatched David in a rigged match.

    Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

  • The real persons living ‘fake good life’

    The real persons living ‘fake good life’

    WE will do the unusual in our discourse today. We will copiously quote Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in his address to a university convocation about two weeks ago. But first the summary of what he said. He claimed in his usual unconscionable, insensitive, provocative and uncaring manner that the ‘good life’ Nigerians had enjoyed before he happened to the presidency was fake, unreal, undeserved, and contrived. He said that that life was bogus, founded on falsehood, and erected on nothing really. He said we lived the life of, to use a local parlance, 419ers. Four one nine (419) is a clause in Nigeria’s criminal code that deals with obtaining by false pretext. In other words, in the president’s full contemplation, Nigerians were all 419ners  or were made to appear so until he came and removed the so-called petrol subsidy on May 29, 2023. What a man. What callousness. What a president of a people going through severe privations visited on them by himself.

    Tinubu said, as widely reported in the media during the 34th and 35th combined convocation ceremonies of the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA) in Ondo state: “As you are all aware, we took the baton of authority at a time our economy was nose-diving as a result of heavy debts from fuel and Dollar subsidies. The subsidies were meant to support the poor and make life better for all Nigerians. We are all aware of the fact that the poor and average Nigerians were the sufferers of what was supposed to give them succour and improved standard of living. Unfortunately, the good life we (other Nigerians really) thought we (they) were living was a fake one that was capable of leading to a total collapse unless drastic efforts were urgently taken. The need to salvage the future of our children, and bring the country back from the brink of collapse necessitated the strategic (thoughtless) decisions to remove the fuel subsidy and also unify the exchange rate”. ‘Unify the exchange rate’ was an euphemism for what has turned out to be the current and sustained devaluation of the Naira. But as we write the Naira is gaining in value due largely to the recently issued Euro bond (yet another debt) which was made attractive by high coupon rates offered to ‘hot money’ and volatile foreign portfolio investors (FPIs); the new mechanism introduced by the central bank for FX traders (usually banks); and, the influx of dollars from diaspora Nigerians who are home for the Christmas and New Year celebrations.

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    For a start here’s the immediate fallout of the regime’s claim about securing the future of Nigerian children. Recently there was a report that a consultant in one of Nigeria’s foremost teaching hospitals had raised an alarm that many children in our country were presenting with kwashiorkor. In 2024? Damn it! This is not only a national embarrassment but a grave national disaster. There has been no time since the Nigeria -Biafra civil war that kwashiorkor had posed a clear and present danger to the country than today. And this is all down to Tinubu’s economic ‘rescue mission’ and Renewed Hope mantra. For our casual information kwashiorkor is a disease that affects children who don’t have access to enough protein in their meals. Its early symptoms include but are not limited to fatigue, irritability, lethargy, growth retardation, loss of muscle mass, swelling and severely eroded immunity which makes room for other opportunistic diseases to strike. I saw this image live as a child in the defunct Republic of Biafra in the late 1960s. The legs of a kwashiorkor victim look like tiny sticks and s/he presents a protruded stomach which is filled with rotten gas. There are exceptions but generally kwashiorkor leads to poor brain development and low IQ, that’s, if the child survives.

    The frightening dimension is that the findings claim that the outbreak of kwashiorkor is across all the zones of the country. It has to be said, no matter how offensive our current rulers may consider it, that the prevailing outbreak of kwashiorkor in this country is a direct result of the pervasive hunger situation which now borders on starvation. And this is down to the grossly misguided economic policies of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and Tinubu. If Nigerians lose their children to death through kwashiorkor or stunted growth in body and IQ, then the claim by the extant regime that it is fighting to secure the future of the country becomes questionable. Whose future? And for whom? It has to be stated that kwashiorkor is not an infectious disease, and so it can be arrested and reversed within weeks with diets that are rich in protein and sundry wholesome foods. Even before the kwashiorkor story broke UNICEF had revealed that “around 11 million children in Nigeria, or one in every three children under five years of age”, were “experiencing severe child food poverty, making them up to 50% more likely to experience wasting, a life – threatening form of malnutrition”. (Apparently UNICEF restrained itself from using the word kwashiorkor). But how can the prevailing food insecurity situation and the attendant kwashiorkor be reversed with a majority of Nigerian families struggling for access to basic foods. Just before Nigeria’s affliction, Maj Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, left the presidency in 2023, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had reported that about 133 million Nigerians were suffering from multidimensional poverty. By the level of today’s suffering where two-thirds of families in Nigeria can hardly afford one decent meal a day, the Buhari era could as well be classified as being among the good old days. Certainly, the figure of the dimensionally poor in Nigeria could be in excess of 150 million people today.

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    In Tinubu’s reckoning the ‘fake good life’ that many Nigerians lived before he happened on the country and yanked off the so-called petrol subsidy and then devalued the Naira would certainly include to get by the day with at least two meals that may actually have been of doubtful nutritional quality; struggle to see their children through schools and in some cases the university; acquire and dress up in modest attires; afford a modicum of potable water (a rarity before Tinubu and after Tinubu); barely manage to provide a shelter over their heads; afford transportation fares to commute from one point to the other to eke out a living; visit a drug (chemist as we know them) shop or hospital (consulting clinic really) and then be able to pay for medication and consultation; buy a 15-year-old pre-used or tokunbo car/truck shipped in from the dump sites of Europe, North America and Asia; buy an okrika (second hand) shirt or blouse that probably might have been stripped off the back of a dead person elsewhere; or to buy a coffin, not casket, to bury a dead loved one. For Tinubu and his cohorts and choristers, these were luxuries and in their own words ‘fake good life’. One illustration they routinely use to justify their silliness was that in the era of Nigerians living a ‘fake good life’, there were some people who had a fleet of cars, some of which were fuel guzzlers, who ran around town aimlessly. The people who make this argument to justify petrol subsidy removal and Naira devaluation are either being mischievous or are outrightly depraved. They could have the two maladies at the same time, anyway. How many Nigerians since the advent of this dispensation in 1999 could afford a multiplicity of cars/vehicles for frivolities? Even without the benefit of any structured study, they were certainly less than 5%, and we are being generous, of Nigeria’s population at any point in time. And the people in this class were mostly civil/public servants, their proxies, and the few rich and wealthy families in our midst. And the wealth of some of these families were linked to the pervasive corruption in government. How then could that be a basis for inflicting pains on the vast majority of the citizens.

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    If the truth must be told, the people who are really presently living a fake good life are Tinubu and his co-travellers. It was the president who acquired a $150 million presidential jet and reportedly used another $50 million to retrofit it for his globetrotting. Since the country is in the throes of debt peonage, it could reasonably be argued that every dollar expended on the purchase of that bird and to retrofit it was borrowed money. In addition, the acquisition of the craft was tainted with corruption. There was no request before the national assembly. There was no specific appropriation for the purchase of the aircraft. The purchase was shrouded in secrecy. The latter-day revelation that the aircraft was bought via the service -wide vote was a glaring abuse of the budgetary system. The service – wide vote was not designed for such a purpose. Apart from the litany of abuses, what more can demonstrate living a fake good life than that the president of a country that is the poverty capital of the world had prioritised the purchase of an aircraft for his personal comfort above the crying needs in all sectors of the country? And he feels no shame travelling inside the same aircraft to visit countries from whose institutions the monies were borrowed. From the last count which was before he went to South Africa recently, Tinubu jets out of Nigeria to visit one country or the other after spending only 17 days of any given month here at home since he assumed office in May 2023. Every expert will tell you that a presidential trip abroad is akin to the execution of a big envelope capital project. Every trip involves payment for personnel in dollars, aircraft maintenance in dollars, hotel bills in dollars like the $500,000 or so that was expended on hotel bills last year in New York in barely one week, airport parking fees in dollars, among others. Now supporters of the vice president Kashim Shettima are also clamouring for an aircraft for him. Why not? Shettima’s life also matters.

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    A fake good life is when the president of a country where families can hardly afford one meal a day, and where some family members would need to skip meals completely for the sake of others, will proceed to buy a car worth tens of millions of Naira for prestige purposes without qualms. The same country also embarks on buying sprees of luxury sport utility vehicles (SUVs) for the vice president, ministers and sundry state functionaries. It also spends billions of Naira on SUVs for offices that are not known to the laws of the land such as that of the first lady. Ours is a country that is said to be poor but behaves as though it is affluent. Our rulers have no conscience. If they do, their consciences are seared. They splurge money borrowed in our collective names on themselves for their fake good life. And they then turn around to provocatively project the fake good life on the rest of us. What more can better illustrate living a fake good life than splashing N21 billion to build a mansion for the vice president in a paranoid and paralyzed economy and to spend billions of Naira to renovate presidential and vice presidential vacation mansions? Here’s the debt profile as at June of a country whose rulers are spending borrowed money with reckless abandon on promiscuous consumption, and as if money is going out of fashion. Going by the prevailing exchange rate the indebtedness of our country should be in excess of N100 trillion with multilateral lenders accounting for more than half of the debt. And the creditors include the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank Group, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), among others.

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    As at last June Nigeria whose rulers live the life of drunken sailors owed the IMF about $1.61 billion; the World Bank Group $16.32 billion; AfDB $3.87 billion; the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa $4.97 million; the Islamic Development Bank $241.84 million; and, the International Fund for Agricultural Development $273.51 million. Then there are debts from bilateral lenders with Nigeria owing China in excess of $5 billion routed through that country’s Exim Bank. We owe Nigeria’s new lovers, France, about $623.55 million; Japan $52.18 million; India $22 million; Germany $115.81 million; and, commercial creditors through Eurobonds $15.12 billion. Meanwhile, Nigeria has struggled to reduce debt servicing, not repayment, from over 100% of revenue to just below 70% currently. In other words, after servicing debts and taking care of recurrent expenditures and overhead, nothing is left for capital projects which spur development. This could explain why the regime is desperate to force through its tax reform bills now mired in controversy. The implication of this situation is that borrowing is not about to end.

    It has been said that people get the kind of leadership they deserve. Nigeria is a classical case in the 21st century. It has fake rulers with fake promises and fake assurances and fake policies and fake programmes. And the rulers are in overdrive to project fakery on the hapless citizens. But they will not succeed in making Nigeria a fake and failed country.

    Ugo Onuoha, Veteran Journalist, was the Managing Director, Editor-in-Chief, Champion Newspapers Limited.

  • Restructuring Nigeria Makes for Great Rhetoric: Getting it Done is harder than Separating a Conjoined Twin.

    Restructuring Nigeria Makes for Great Rhetoric: Getting it Done is harder than Separating a Conjoined Twin.

    “With his local government autonomy, the deregulation of the power to generate and distribute electricity, and now the tax reform bill, President Tinubu is strategically attempting to restructure the country through the back door approach.“

    The katakata that has accompanied the tax reform bill is laying to bare once again how intractably difficult it is to govern and transform a country as structurally complicated as Nigeria. The most difficult bill to pass even in the best of circumstances including in countries with a coherent national identity is the tax bill. At the core of any country’s sovereignty is the ability to impose and collect taxes. On it hinges the ability of any government to carry out their core governance responsibilities. One can therefore only imagine how close to impossible it would be to reform the tax collection law in a country like ours with no national consensus, and where the constituent parts treat the country like meat from a stranded bleached whale to be plundered.

    Hence, the presidency should have anticipated the stiff resistance it is now facing from the different power centers each with conflicting agenda.

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    It is a known fact that the north has a higher dependency ratio on federal revenue, hence a tax reform bill that shifts the locus of collection and distribution proportionately to the source will disadvantage them. There are also a few states in the southwest with the same higher dependency ratio, whose internally generated revenue is nothing to write home about and whose productive economies do not generate enough VAT to meet their budgetary obligations. In those instance it would be suicidal for the governors to support a tax reform bill that disadvantages them.

    With his local government autonomy, the deregulation of the power to generate and distribute electricity, and now the tax reform bill, President Tinubu is strategically attempting to restructure the country through the back door approach. He has chosen that approach knowing full well that a full scale restructuring bill would be dead on arrival in a Senate and a House of Representatives where the north has clear numerical advantage.

    The north and some southern governors are sending a clear message to the President that they are not ready for restructuring, which might lead to the diminution of their power to tax and control local government allocation as they choose.

    Nigerians have been shouting restructuring, restructuring and now as President Tinubu begins to unpack what restructuring looks like some governors are beginning to develop cold feet knowing that their own power might be eroded.

    Barring a miracle, the tax bill might have suffered a fatal blow. Some of the senators and members of the house of representatives that are opposed to the bills know who butters their bread and who can also put sand in their gaari, the governors. They would dare not go against their wishes.

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    Nigerians are learning in real time how intractable it is to reform a dysfunctional country like Nigeria which remains 64 years after independence, a mere geographical expression like Chief Awolowo described it. Nigeria is like an arranged marriage between two partners each of which hates and distrusts one another, seeks to take advantage of one another, and yet are too afraid to disengage and dissolve their dysfunctional union because they figure out that like trying to separate a conjoined Siamese twins, the cost of disengagement might be too high to pay including the possibility of death on the surgical table.

    That is the intractable conundrum that our country has found itself. President Tinubu is putting everything at stake including his second term aspiration with his bold reform agenda. Only time will tell if it was a risk worth taking.

    Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

  • Our central bank governor is angry. Really?

    Our central bank governor is angry. Really?

    OLAYEMI Cardoso is the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). I was made to understand that he came to the job with intimidating credentials. Some of his traducers will dispute this by saying that his hands-on banking experience is thin and that he was essentially a once-upon-a-time chairman of an international bank with only one branch. And that one branch shared a building with the bank’s headquarters somewhere in Victoria Island in Lagos. I think the name of that institution is City Bank. It has to be acknowledged though that it was, still is, a global brand. But Cardoso’s experience, whether thin or thick, did not fetch him the top CBN job. What did it for him was his connection to Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He had worked for Tinubu in the president’s previous incarnation as the governor of Lagos state between 1999-2007. Cardoso is not alone in this regard. Virtually everybody who is anybody and who is occupying any significant position in this regime has been a ‘boy’ or acolyte of the president.

    Cardoso as the CBN governor has done a few other things since he was installed to succeed the former hack who occupied that office. Godwin Emefiele was a disaster who in addition to economic management ineptitude and administrative failings diminished the office of the CBN governor almost beyond redemption. Emefiele, it was, who as a sitting CBN governor made a grab for the presidency of Nigeria. He threw his hat into the ring in the contest for the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) political party. He was a card-carrying though closet member of the ruling party. The man who reappointed him to office for a second term, former president, Maj.-Gen Muhammadu Buhari, said much later that Emefiele did not break any law. Buhari, who turned out to be Nigeria’s affliction, may yet be right but in which sane clime would a serving central bank helmsman dive in such a reckless manner into the murky waters of partisan politics and walk away scot-free. Well, he has not walked away unscatted though he appears to be facing political persecution from Tinubu who appears to feel that the ex-CBN governor threw huddles on his way to Aso Rock Villa through the sudden currency recoloration in the heat of the 2023 campaigns.

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    Expectedly, Cardoso had his hands full in terms of house cleaning when he assumed office. In addition, he had a couple of petty bills to pay including the backlog of unremitted foreign currency revenues of international airlines. Apart from minor distractions such as the above and occasional claims of accretion to the country’s foreign reserves (up to $40bn now from about $36bn though no mention is ever made of any portion of the sum that may be encumbered), the new sheriff in the apex bank has preoccupied himself solely with raising interest rates. For Cardoso, mindless raising of interest rates with its deleterious effects on other areas of the economy is the only tool in his box to rein in galloping inflation which now stands at over 33% (food inflation is actually about 40%}, and arrest the rapid and precipitous decline in the value of the Naira. The current street value of the Naira is $1/N1,740. For the 2024 national budget the federal government projected that $1USD would exchange for N800. The projection was off target. Even the economically illiterate knew then that the benchmark was a non-starter. The $1/N1,400 provided for in the 2025 budget may still fall through the cracks. In spite of Cardoso’s best efforts in digging in neither inflation nor exchange rate stability has been achieved. And he has been on these for one and a half years. Just like the chief executive officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, and the completion of refineries’ turnaround maintenance, Cardoso has missed all the targets he had set for himself on inflation reduction and Naira stability.

    For a distraction, the CBN governor has turned his attention to populism. Christmas and New Year celebrations are around the corner. Under Emefiele the experience of Nigerians during the festive season in 2023 was both horrible and horrific. To be sure the trauma started from October of that year. Nigerian banks virtually froze the bank accounts of ordinary folks and created a situation where it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for Citizen Ugochi to withdraw any cash from her bank account. In frustration some Nigerians visited their anger at automated teller machines (ATMs) and destroyed a couple of them. Others laid siege to bank premises and held workers hostage. Indeed some bank staff had to use a ladder to scale the fence to escape from the angry mob. We also witnessed situations where customers who managed to force their way into banking halls but could not be availed with desperately needed cash resorted to stripping themselves stark naked as a mark of protest. Of course, the videos of naked bodies with exposed genitalia went viral. The acute cash hoarding by the CBN in connivance with money deposit banks eased up a little soon after the February/March 2023 general elections. But the problem was not addressed in a systematic and deliberate manner. It has lingered on. Getting cash out from the bank accounts of ordinary folks has remained a nightmare for about two years, either from over the counter or from the ATM.

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    Last weekend at the Chartered Institute of Bankers Annual Dinner, Cardoso told Nigerians, probably over mouth full of delicacies, that we should report to the CBN any difficulties in withdrawing cash from bank branches or from ATMs. This must have come as a shock to many ordinary folks because this has been their experience since before Cardoso assumed office. That statement from the CBN is the clearest indication that the governor and his leadership team are alienated from the reality of the majority of Nigerians. And how can you serve people you do not know and whose daily grind you are unaware of? On paper, depositors are allowed to withdraw up to N150,000 from the ATM daily. But this has not been the experience of customers for about two years. Rather ATM patrons have had to grapple with ATM machines that never dispensed cash. Where they do the customer is usually arbitrarily limited to cash withdrawal of about N20,000. Often these are old, torn and smelly Naira notes. An acquaintance whose remit included loading ATM machines at weekends (that’s when they have the money anyway) once told me that she had to iron the currency notes on an ironing board before loading them onto the ATM to avoid glitches in dispensing. It’s the same frustration for over the counter cash withdrawals. Customers are restricted to withdrawals of between N20,000-N50,000. But since last month cash withdrawals have been capped at a maximum of N20,000 by many so-called commercial banks. It is the same for ATMs whenever they are dispensing.

    But the experience at ATMs in recent times has been frustrating, annoying and degrading. The limit for daily withdrawal remains N20,000 but the mode of withdrawal has changed. In some ATMs, including the ones owned by the bank warehousing your deposits, the ATMs are now configured to dispense the N20,000 in multiples of N4000. In other words, you are compelled to work the machine five times to get N20,000 in N200 currency notes. And yet the CBN governor who urged us last weekend to report banks which are derelict in their duty of care pretends not to know what has been happening in the institutions he is supervising. He may really not be aware but that’s no credit to him and his team. It is dereliction of duty. Perhaps, the CBN is also not aware of the notorious fact that while the banks appear not to have cash for their customers, the point of sales (POS) operators have more than enough cash at any point in time for their own patrons, of course, at a handsome fee. Unless you are well heeled and connected, you can never get cash of N1,000,000 from any bank at this time. But you can readily get the same amount of money, and even more, from the street side POS as long as you are willing to pay a commission of between N30,000-N50,000. For the street vendor, selling Naira is a profitable business. There’s probably no other country where their currency is sold for a hefty profit by the street corner.

    Apart from cash withdrawal headaches, customers  can hardly get crisp banknotes from the banks, certainly not from transactions made over the counter inside the banking hall. Occasionally, a fortunate patron could get the new notes, including those minted in controversial circumstances last year by Buhari and Emefiele. But by special arrangement you can get these same rare banknotes from the POS if you are willing to pay a premium. However, there are two other sure places of getting the Buhari/Emefiele banknotes – through a superior bank officer, and at event centres for high-end parties.

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    For the bank officer you must be ready to play ball while for the hawkers at event centres, you will have to pay a ransom. You may have to pay as much as N30,000 for N100,000 in fresh banknotes. Naira hawkers at event centres are not known to be bank workers. So how do they get the crispy banknotes that they sell at a premium. The banks know. And the CBN knows. Both are complicit in the economic sabotage. The CBN knows or should know the serial numbers of the banknotes it supplies to each bank and so knows the source of any leakage. As for other infractions by the commercial banks, the relevant CBN staff should be made to get off their air-conditioned offices and hit the streets for random checks on the banks and their ATMs. If this is not happening it will only be because the CBN and the banks are in league to punish depositors.

    Nigeria’s economy is largely informal and still driven by cash transactions. Through cash squeeze the CBN and the banks are doing incalculable damage to the economy and so should be branded as economic saboteurs. Cardoso’s angst at the bankers dinner last weekend is contrived and designed to distract. He should be made to purge himself. As for the banks, it is time for customers to file class action lawsuits to test the subject of Duty of Care of banks to their depositors and other clients.

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    Onuoha, a veteran journalist, was the Managing Director/Editor-in-Champion Newspapers Ltd