The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has warned the Federal Government of a nationwide protest if it moves forward with the proposed telecommunications and electricity tariff increases that go against previous agreements.
The NLC has instructed all its branches to prepare for action if the government proceeds with the telecom tariff hike, which was initially set at 50%.
Despite reports suggesting that a compromise was reached, reducing the hike to 35%, telecommunications companies say they have not received any official communication about the reduction.
They claimed that without a formal notification from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), they cannot act on the agreement.
In addition to the telecom issue, the NLC has voiced strong opposition to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (NERC) plans to reclassify electricity consumers.
The NLC accused NERC of unfairly shifting consumers from lower to higher tariff bands, which would lead to higher bills.
The union has declared that any further increase in electricity tariffs would lead to massive protests.
The NLC also criticized the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, for overstepping his role and taking actions that should be handled by NERC.
The union has made it clear that they will not stand by while the government continues policies they consider harmful to the Nigerian public.
The NLC’s recent decisions were made during a meeting in Yola, Adamawa State, where they also launched a new mass transit bus initiative for the North East Zone.
Our children are now chasing out the adults from the business. But in their own case they are mainly foraging for foods that are often not there. On Monday, January 20, a national newspaper published a news feature on the dire situation of some Nigerian children. Its finding was that not many children were currently privileged to have tea and bread for food at home. It said many of them now live off refuse dumps; they carry sacks filled with used cartons, empty drink cans, and discarded plastic bottles and bowls.
WHAT’S unfolding presently will form part of the foundations for the future of our country. And the picture is not good. That the majority of the privileged and the ruling elite live in denial will not change it. What is looming and getting clearer as daylight is that this will be a future and a disaster that was foretold. Successive regimes, and especially those of the All Progressives Congress (APC) political party since 2015, had been leading Nigeria down a slippery slope. The 15 years or so of the former ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) are now being celebrated as the ‘golden years’ of Nigeria, to borrow from President Donald Trump’s so-called American golden age. But as disasters go the PDP as a ruling party was just a shade above this ruinous APC. PDP lived on borrowed robes. It started fairly well under President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007) but quickly relapsed into bad ways, profligacy and the expressed feelings of invincibility. The party suffered from low crude oil prices at the beginning, as low as $15 per barrel at the start of this democratic dispensation, but later under President Goodluck Jonathan enjoyed a boom with prices surging beyond $120/barrel. It failed miserably in managing the bumper returns. And so got itself sacked ostensibly by voters in 2015.
The APC, a hastily cobbled special purpose vehicle that passed as a political party, took power at the centre and in most of the sub nationals subsequently. This party over-promised in its quest for power during the campaigns in 2014. It promised everything under the sun except creating human beings. It even promised to recreate Nigeria and Nigerians. But under Muhammadu Buhari it started very poorly by first denying virtually all it promised, and disclaiming its own manifesto. Its candidate – turned – president Buhari was strident in distancing himself from the promises of the party, the so-called Contract with Nigerians. In terms of ineptitude the APC under Buhari turned out worse than the PDP. In corruption the party and its principal operatives were worse than eye-sores. It piled up debts from every source – offshore, domestic markets, and through Ways and Means which simply means minting Naira banknotes backed by nothing. Yes, nothing. Buhari fumbled and wobbled for eight years, and took the country back by 30 years. He was an affliction of unimaginable proportions.
Buhari’s successor, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, now going to 20 months on the saddle, appears to be no better in spite of claims to courage and to reforming the economy and the country. He came with a baggage of personal failings, certificates and names controversies, and a questionable electoral victory. So he was dogged by palpable legitimacy issues. Indeed, there was a recent report, which is yet to be refuted (unlike what is in the regime’s DNA), that a foreign lobbying firm was retained with millions of dollars to help burnish his image and to make him appear less a pariah among his supposed peers on the international stage. By some calculations, Tinubu jets out of the country after every 17 days of what now appears to be a visit to the country he is supposed to be governing to, according to his officials woo foreign investors. He cuts a forlorn and isolated figure in many of his trips abroad, especially when he is in the midst of other significant world leaders. Not a good comparison, anyway, but the US President Donald Trump who took office one week ago, yesterday, and without travelling out of his country, has attracted pledges of investments reported to be close to $3 trillion from around the world.
Nobody needs to dig deep to find out how shallow this regime is and how desperately it looks for a win. Recently, the henchmen of the administration and their choristers started celebrating that the Naira, Nigeria’s national currency, has stabilised at N1,500 to $1USD. Are they for real? At the beginning of the so-called economic reforms and currency convergence, the consensus and the projection was that the rate would settle at N800/$. Rulers with a modicum of shame will not roll out the drums for the current exchange rate.
The economic policies and programmes of the Tinubu regime are whimsical and his claimed political reforms are inchoate and haphazard. The jury is still out on his quest to make federating units out of the country’s 774 local councils by making them ‘autonomous’ and funding them directly from the federation account. He claims his actions were informed by Constitutional provisions. But that’s self – serving because this same man, in his earlier incarnation as Lagos state governor (1999-2007) fought tooth and nail for councils to be under the suzerainty of state governments. But not anymore today. The only thing that has changed is that Bola Tinubu is now the president. His actions are political and driven by 2027. He wants his fingers in every pie, and foot soldiers to ‘grab, snatch and run’ away with results of the 2027 election, that is, if there will be any elections in the true sense of the word. The same uncertainty is playing out in the economy. Tinubu says repeatedly that he is already seeing light at the end of the tunnel. He might be seeing a mirage. The World Bank has said it would take a minimum of 15 years of sustaining his punishing economic regimen for any impact to be noticed. The hallmarks of the Tinubu economic kalo kalo are that his policies and programmes are not measurable, they have no benchmarks, they have no timelines, and they have no publicly available templates for reviews should the need arise. They are more like the rural Nigerian children’s game of tumbom tumbom.
Nobody needs to dig deep to find out how shallow this regime is and how desperately it looks for a win. Recently, the henchmen of the administration and their choristers started celebrating that the Naira, Nigeria’s national currency, has stabilised at N1,500 to $1USD. Are they for real? At the beginning of the so-called economic reforms and currency convergence, the consensus and the projection was that the rate would settle at N800/$. Rulers with a modicum of shame will not roll out the drums for the current exchange rate. But APC has no shame. The party’s serial misrule is on display. Poverty is becoming entrenched in our country. The other day the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives Benjamin Kalu celebrated the rise in diaspora remittances from $25 billion in 2023 to $28 in 2024, as a sign of confidence in Nigeria’s economy. No, it was not. It showed that Nigerians at home were in dire straits, and that the situation had increased the pressure on diasporans to up their remittances. How could it be otherwise with inflation running in the high 30s, the worst level in about one generation?
The increased diaspora remittances could be the reasons why Nigerians are not yet widely dropping dead on the streets as Europeans predicted and wished would happen in Africa during the COVID pandemic; why some families are still managing to pay children’s school fees at all levels in spite of students’ loan scheme; why some families can still spare a little money for hospital bills; why there’s no widespread starvation; why erstwhile middle class citizens can afford transportation fares to their offices or business premises, or to repair and fuel their cars. If Tinubu’s friend whom he claimed had abandoned his four Rolls Royce limousines had been a destiny – helper, he probably wouldn’t have suffered humiliation brought upon him by friend, the president. A little dollar here and a little pounds sterling and euro there would have kept him going. He would not have been reduced to using a car whose front wheel is susceptible to breaking off in motion without notice on Nigerian roads. In spite of diaspora remittances and other mercies, the Tinubu and APC economic wizardry is taking a huge toll presently on a vulnerable segment of the population. And it presents a foreboding future for our country.
WASTE to wealth is a fairly popular phrase. Ordinarily, it means a situation where some citizens out of choice visit dump sites to pick out supposed waste and recycle the same to create value and possibly wealth. And this used to be the exclusive preserve of adults. It is no longer the case. Our children are now chasing out the adults from the business. But in their own case they are mainly foraging for foods that are often not there. On Monday, January 20, a national newspaper published a news feature on the dire situation of some Nigerian children. Its finding was that not many children were currently privileged to have tea and bread for food at home. It said many of them now live off refuse dumps; they carry sacks filled with used cartons, empty drink cans, and discarded plastic bottles and bowls. The newspaper illustrated with the story of one Jacob Olorunfemi who claimed that the economy had crippled his parents, forcing him to drop out of school. “I don’t go to lesson(s) anymore because my parents said there is no money… I usually attend lessons like school, where I pay N500 per week. My mother usually sweeps and wash(es) clothes for customers . My father works at a bus park. I have a friend called Sule. He is twelve years old. He used to pick used plastics and condemned items and sell them. His mother beg(s) for alms for a living. He advised me to join him in this scavenging routine and I have been able to save N2,000 since I started”. Jacob is 10 years old.
Yet there’s another child, Yekini Salam, 11 years old. His late father reportedly left him with a step mother who also had three other children of her own to care for. “I have not been in school for years”, he started. “I dropped out when I lost my father. I don’t know who my mother is but I have a stepmother and three step brothers. I usually hawk wares for my stepmother. But last year she asked me to stop. Sometimes I help people to run errands and they give me tokens in the form of food or cash (in) appreciation. Recently I had to join my friends who are a little above my age in the scavenging routine. I move around places sourcing for plastics, cans and bottles. There are people who I sell to. The materials are scaled (weighed) and I am paid. I want to save enough money to learn aluminium window and door frame construction skills”. The plights of Jacob and Yekini are not just urban phenomena. Children engaging in menial jobs and dropping out of school for various reasons are widespread. The figures for Nigeria’s out of school children range from between 18-20 million. The future is sadly not also bright for some of our children who are fortunate to be in school. The findings are depressing in schools in one of the country’s most populated states. Last Friday, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) disclosed that only 9.6% of primary school pupils in Kano showed reading proficiency whilst only 11.2% had basic numeracy skills. The agency’s chief field officer for Kano, Rahama Mohammed further indicated that almost one million children (989,234) of primary school age (about 32% of the population), were “currently not enrolled in formal education in the state”.
The depressing statistics in Kano could be the same across many states in the north of this country. And it will be myopic to blame the situation solely on the emphasis placed on Islamic or religious education in that part of Nigeria. Even if that were to be the case, a more sensitive ruling elite should know that in the fullness of time what’s happening in Kano and some other states would have a cataclysmic national impact, and would have taken steps to arrest the looming disaster. But how can the situation be redressed with no discernable and sustainable national policy on education with widespread buy-in, and with a miserable and miserly allocation to education in the 2025 national and sub nationals budgets. Even before the advent of the APC in governance at the federal level, infrastructure in public schools were dilapidated. They have only become worse. Not many teachers are in the profession out of choice. The teachers in public schools are badly trained or not trained at all, poorly remunerated, ill-equipped, and generally demotivated. Some of them are petty traders hawking their wares right inside school premises. The future of this country is not looking good. But do our rulers care?
UGO ONUOHA, a veteran journalist, was the Editor-in-Chief of Champion Newspaper
UNICEF says Katsina, Sokoto and Zamfara States will need $15 million to upscale the quality of life of their citizenry.
The UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Ms Christian Munduate, said this at a news briefing in Gusau on Wednesday shortly after holding an interactive session with stakeholders from Gidanwada Model Primary School in Bungudu Local Government Area.
Munduate said that the governors of the three states needed to provide the matching grants to address the socio-economic challenges and provide quality life for their citizens.
She regretted the prevalence of malnourished children and nursing mothers in the three states.
She identified open defecation as a major cause of diseases capable of reversing polio epidemic to the states.
According to her, children, mothers and other Nigerians deserve quality education, healthcare and nutrition, among other critical needs.
Munduate urged the three states to collaborate with partners and stakeholders to tackle the challenges and improve the living condition of their people.
She further solicited for a strong partnership with all the stakeholders to address the needs of children, mothers and the entire people of the three states and other Nigerians.
The year 2024 was gruesome for many, globally, what with the wars, violent crimes, civil strife; just name it. Many parts of the world became like William Butler Yeats’ widening gyre. It was no wonder that many looked so forward to 2025 that the new year was ushered in with some kind of gusto that belied all the whining about bad economy. May be the excitement stems from the resolve by many that even though 2024 left footprints tears and blood, the emotional turmoil most not be allowed to endure as we brace up for a new year that should be different.
In Nigeria, President Bola Tinubu did a fairly job of giving a not too sombre new year broadcast. Unlike previous communications that drip with arrogance, insensitivity and propaganda, this new year message was temperate and contained realistic promises that one can relate. The only major flaw is that there is still a big gap between what the citizens expected to hear and what their president was telling them. For instance, not a few Nigerians are yet to be convinced that the economic policies of the administration is headed in the wrong direction and are waiting for the president to announce a review.
As one of the anchors on Arise TV Morning Show brilliantly captured it yesterday, January 1, 2025, the Federal Government of Nigeria has unabashedly adopted a Neo-liberal economic development model that is anchored on dictates by the Bretton Woods Institutions. Put simply, Nigeria has adopted a fully fledged capitalist agenda in its economic planning principle. So, at least for now, there is no room for any form of subsidy or subvention and those who are still waiting and hoping that Mr. President would backtrack on his reform agenda are not only wasting their time waiting for a bus that would not come, they are at the wrong bus stop altogether! Now that the President and the Federal Executive Council have crossed the Rubicon, the question is whether Nigeria ready for a capitalist economic model? Or, our we merely putting the cart before the horse? May be the President, those working with him and his cheerleaders need to be reminded that economies are PLANNED, and not DICTATED. As it is often said, there are many ways of killing a chicken, but the challenge lies in deciding which is the best way, which, however, is not like reinventing the wheel.
Creating chaos or causing massive destruction in the socioeconomic fabric of the society just because you want to proffer or find the solution to a recurring problem does not look like a smart approach to development or economic planning. After all, others have traversed the route, and we should be able to learn from their experience. One of the most important difference between any two individuals or countries in today’s world is most likely to be their capacity to create wealth. In this instance, Nigeria has the unique advantage of being a resource-rich and high-earning economy where the major challenge is the management of the wealth of the nation. It is true that time is of essence, but the regime has four years in the first instance, to commence the reform process, and it is entitled to another term of four years, if the electorate is convinced about the efficacy of the approach. The point being made here is that there is rarely an alternative to an organised planning that is thorough and methodical, if the outcome is expected to endure. In this instance, the more sustainable approach is a bottom-up strategy that enlists the buy-in of the enlightened segment of the populace.
At the moment, the content and manner in which the President Tinubu Economic Reform Programme is being deployed may deny it needed integrity for it to endure. A substantial segment of the Nigerian populace feel unduly burdened by a set of reforms they are unable to connect with. Only yesterday, the former governor of Kano state, Senator Ibrahim Shekarau emphasised the point that part of the reasons many are resisting the Tax Reform Bills is because they feel excluded from the administration of President Bola Tinubu. Second, apart from the bias in the choice of officials to drive the policies of the government, it does not enjoy the buy-in of a lot of the people for which they are intended. Even the civil service is ill-conditioned to drive the policies. This leads some to wonder whether it would have not been more appropriate to commence with the reform of the service, cut the cost of governance, right-size the workforce and upwardly review the system of emolument before introducing some of the reforms?
The damage that has been wrought on the average self-employed Nigerian by the withdrawal of subsidies on petrol and electricity is humongous. In 2023, Nigeria’s poverty rate was estimated to be 38%, with 87 million Nigerians living below the poverty line. According to a World Bank report, 14 million more Nigerians are estimated to have fallen into poverty in 2024 due to stagnant labor incomes in the face of escalated cost of living. This brings the total number of Nigerians living below the international poverty line of $2.15 per day to nearly 47%. These figures are conservative, because poverty has become quite pervasive in Nigeria as of today. The signs are there for all to see: the hunger protests, the violent crimes, stampede at food sharing venues, ugly sights of desperate destitution, meteoric rise in mental health issues, fall in life expectancy rate, huge out-of-school population and rising rate of school dropouts, etc. Yet, the administration believes that the reform in their present format must be seen through. That what Nigerians need are palliatives, CNG buses, enhancing access to credit through the establish of a National Credit Guarantee Company, provision of student loans by an education bank, instilling the spirit of patriotism in Nigerians through a national re-orientation campaign, and so on and so forth.
In conclusion, and to further elucidate on the point about the need for proper planning, it is now crystal clear that the administration has failed woefully to appreciate the fact that you can not put something on top of nothing, to paraphrase an axiom of the legal profession. Apart from an institutionalised mass based political system, which practice is still largely flawed, Nigeria, as it presently is, lacks the basic fundamental requirements for a Ne-liberal economic system to thrive. First, on paper, Nigeria is a rich country, but in real terms, it is very poor country. Put otherwise, Nigeria is a rich country of poor people as the household disposable income per capita in 2024 was US$0.72 (about N1,11.74). This is projected to decline to US$0.70,000 per capita in 2025. In other words, the average Nigerian still does not earn enough income to survive in the ecosystem that is currently being hoisted on them. This is what economists refer to when they advise the federal government to adopt a gradualist approach in its reform programme.
So, the advisable strategy is for the government to introduce measures to build back the purchasing power of the average citizen. And this can not be achieved through palliatives or cash transfers but through adoption and implementation of a robust and sustainable strategy that entails the following:
Tackle Insecurity, Poverty: Insecurity is the negative elixir that fuels most of the headwinds against socioeconomic progress in contemporary Nigeria. Insecurity and poverty are intertwined and mutually re-enforcing. Affordable food supply is the silver bullet that has the potential to tackle both evils. So, the federal government may do well to bring the governors onboard and sensitise them to realise the imperative of a partnership across party lines to address the two problems through an agrarian revolution.
Reform civil and public services to nip corruption in the bud and cut the cost of governance. For the civil service, it may be necessary to incentivise the dead woods to retire; then right-size, retrain the workforce and review the pay package to enhance discipline and productivity. The President must display the same courage he has exhibited in the withdrawal of subsidies by introducing similar cuts in the cost of governance. The current Animal Farm approach of not acting based on your preaching does not cohere. If not addressed, the president can be assured that his successor in office may throw away most of his policies.
Upgrade existing infrastructural facilities to support industry and commerce. This will be the right point to withdraw subsidies, review tariffs and introduce tax reforms.
Stampede at a food gifting centre, Okija, Anambra State at Christmas
Deaths and blood rituals for bulaba balablu Christmas
‘It will get worse before it gets worse’. That was the title of my article published here and in other newspapers on November 21, 2023, six months after Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, assumed office, and started his incoherent economic policies and programmes. The chicken is coming home to roost but it’s doing so at the cost of limbs, livelihoods and lives of the majority of Nigerians who are at the receiving end. Everyday we wake up to news of tragedies, especially of avoidable accidents, miseries and needless deaths. Tragedies now straddle the land – at home, school, market, highway, sea/river, farm, stream, bush path. Everywhere, really. There are no safe places in our country anymore. Nigerian lives no longer matter. Generator fumes wipe out families in their sleep. Kidnappers are no longer content with snatching travelers on the highways; they now pluck them from their homes, and kids from their schools, playgrounds, and classrooms. Terrorists, bandits, and sectarian insurgents who for political correctness were christened herdsmen invade farmlands and rape women and girls, slaughter men and occupy farms. Markets routinely go up in flames, many of them suspected to be acts of sabotage designed to cause economic dis-empowerment of a section of the country. Panels of inquiry follow such incidents but the results usually come to naught. There’s no life for a vast majority of Nigerians, and where there is, it is cheap.
When we wrote on November 21, last year that things will only get worse in this country we had no inkling it will be this bad. We had wished that we will not be vindicated because the consequences will be dire. The reality today is that Nigeria is in a dire straits. But the truth is that in spite of the acute poverty gripping Nigerians right now, the prognosis is that the future, at least the near future, is not looking good. If truth be told the future for many Nigerians is foreboding. What we wrote 13 months ago could have been written today and they will not be widely off the mark. The first three paragraphs of that entry unedited read: “Nigeria is in the intensive care unit and its caregivers appear not to be perturbed. No. They are actually engaged but not in attending to a gravely ill patient. They make platitudes on the delivery of their promises but commit to attending to their hedonistic desires and pleasures.
“It is 146 days (as at November 21, 2023) since another set of rulers took the reins of power in Abuja. But not for one day have Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief. It has been like the reign of the Biblical rebellious Absalom in one part of the divided Kingdom of Israel. Absalom had told his subjects that whilst his father King David chastised them with the whip, he would do the same with the scorpion. Under former President, Maj.-Gen. Mohammadu Buhari, Nigeria suffered afflictions of unimaginable proportions. Indeed as that clueless regime that was bereft of imagination and humaneness was winding down, the common refrain from Nigerians was: Never Again. Many citizens believed that no future administration in Nigeria will be worse than Buhari’s in terms of abuse of power, impunity, desecration of democratic ethos, insensitivity to the country’s diversity, disregard for the suffering of citizens and intolerance of critical and opposing views. Obviously, we were mistaken”.
Stampede at Okija, Anambra State
The extant regime which we wrote about when it was six months old in November last year will be 20 months in office by next month, January 2025. Loyalists and choristers of ‘on your mandate we shall stand…” will still fly off-the-handle to insist that it is still too early to assess the capacity of the regime with a four-year mandate. We will grudgingly concede that they may be right. However, the challenge is that there are virtually no indications that the needles for economic recovery and good governance are moving in the right direction, even if slowly. The experience is that of deterioration in the living standards of many, crisis in the cost of living, runaway inflation with food inflation about 40%, imported inflation caused by the country’s overwhelming dependence on imports and the poor exchange rate. The prediction is that many of these indicators will continue to head south for the foreseeable future. The consequences of forlorn hope which has trumped Tinubu’s ill-fitting mantra of Renewed Hope are beginning to increase in their effects. You don’t need to listen to hear the groans of the people. You don’t need to be sensitive to feel the despondency of citizens. The sound of hopelessness is loud and clear. Nigerians are buffeted and the country could just be sitting on a keg of gunpowder. But do our rulers know about this clear and present danger? I doubt it otherwise they won’t still be behaving like Nero who serenaded himself with the wafting sounds and melodies from his flute while Rome burnt.
If they know that the folks are hurting they probably will not continue their hedonistic indulgences by parcelling significant portions of the 2025 national budget to themselves. As in the budget of this year, hefty sums in billions have been carved out in next year’s appropriation bill to buy sport utility vehicles (SUVs) for themselves, their consorts, cronies, and their acolytes; renovate mansions, residences and offices; procure cooking utensils and cutleries; provide fittings, fixtures and furnishings; pay for offshore frivolous junkets and carousing; gorge themselves on foods and drinks at banquets; organize trainings at home and abroad where nothing useful are learned; set up additional ministries, departments and agencies that fail even before they take – off; and, sundry things that suit their fancies. Almost N50 trillion is said to be the size of the proposed 2025 budget. But by this time next year Nigeria will at best still be stagnant, and at worst deteriorated further in the global misery index. By the way, the current budget is said to have its implementation extended up till June 2025. So by the time next year’s budget is rubber-stamped by the national assembly, say in February or March, the two budgets will be running side-by-side. Multiple budgets make accountability by the government difficult but it has remained the preferred option for this regime since its inception. It ran multiple budgets in 2023. It is doing the same in 2024. It will do so in 2025. When you want to evade accountability, muddle the budget, and distort the conventional January -December budget cycle. Play ‘smart’ and pretend that nobody will understand the game. But Nigerians are no fools.
We are in the season of Christmas and New Year celebrations. But the aroma of the season is not in the air. In its place we have the smell of death. Nigerians are not amused. Ordinarily, Christmas should be a season of celebrations and reflections symbolising light, hope, and redemption. It’s a period when people, especially Christians demonstrate love, kindness, and generosity towards others. It’s a time for family reunion, boost in retail sales and businesses as well as travels and tourism, and vacations. It’s also a period when many people engage in charitable giving, donating to causes and organisations that support the vulnerable and those in need. Christmas is a time for renewal and new beginnings. It offers the opportunity to reflect on past experiences and to look forward to the future. But under Tinubu Christmas has added a new, depressing and morbid dimension – death in dozens. Gloom has overtaken excitement. Mourning has replaced celebration. Hopelessness has displaced hope. It’s renewed anguish for renewed hope. Death has taken the place of life. For Christians December is a celebration of life, the birth of Jesus Christ. But Christmas of 2024 looks more like Easter when Christ was crucified. This Christmas is a season of mourning – mourning in scores.
Ibadan Stampede, Oyo State
Tomorrow is Christmas Day but many homes will be mourning, wearing sac clothes. The week before this Christmas may go down in history as the period the most tragedies were recorded in Nigeria with scores of avoidable deaths through stampede caused essentially by grinding poverty. In a space of one week about 35 persons, mostly children, were killed in Ibadan, Oyo state in a supposed fun fair. In reality, it was not a fun fair. It was a hunting ground for food and sundry gifts for starving kids and their parents or guardians. A stampede ensued and the children trampled under the foot. There was no assurance that the children who turned up in their numbers, far more than the capacity the organisers could handle, had any food in their stomachs, and the energy to survive the push and the shove. So they died because this country eats its children. Arrests have been made. Probe has been ordered. Commiserations have been offered. Those are standard fairs. As we wrote this last Sunday, the Ibadan deaths have receded from the news headlines. The authorities are still probing the devastating blast that wrecked the same Ibadan about the middle of this year. As we say here, that probe has ‘entered voicemail’. There’s no reason to believe that the same will not happen to the deaths of the kids.
Soon after Ibadan tragedies struck in Abuja in the federal capital territory at a Roman Catholic church. Eleven persons were reportedly killed in yet another stampede. The church has a tradition of giving alms to its neighbours and other less privileged people in the community and beyond. The charity is not limited to its members nor to Christians. The church has done this in the past without any incidents. Until this year. The venue was besieged, and in the process of distributing the alms, a stampede ensued and almost a dozen people were killed. About 350 km from the Abuja church, another harvest of deaths took place. This time in Okija in Anambra state. Obijackson Foundation founded by billionaire Ernest Obiejesi, was conducting its annual gifting of bags of rice and other food items to the needy when tragedy through yet another stampede struck. The death toll was officially put at 21. They were mostly women and expectant mothers. A mother of Nigerian extraction who is abroad wept uncontrollably when her son showed her the video of the incident. She lamented that it had to be mothers because they were searching for where the next meal for their children would come from. She reportedly would not eat for the rest of that day. So in the week before Christmas about 70 Nigerians died because of poverty inflicted on them by their own rulers.
Already the search for scapegoats for these avalanche of deaths has started. Some persons, especially regime choristers, are pointing accusing fingers at the organisers of these events for failure to put in place mechanisms for crowd control. They may have a point. But they conveniently forget that some of these charities have been going on for years with no incident. Could it then be possible that the misery and poverty and hopelessness inflicted on Nigerians are the reasons for the desperation that led to the stampedes in Abuja (north), Ibadan (west), and Okija (east)? Governments at all levels are culpable for the harvest of deaths. But the federal government whose misguided macro economic policies have pauperised the majority of Nigerians takes the lion’s share. The policies of this regime have turned once proud and otherwise hard working Nigerians into beggars and hunters of palliatives. The federal government has ordered that the tragedies be probed. What’s there to probe? The reason for what happened is in plain sight – hunger and starvation occasioned by government policies have driven people to the edge. In Okija, for instance, people were not deterred by the deaths. A video showed that people still stayed on for the bags of rice even after the confirmation that 21 persons from amongst them had died. That was the level of desperation. Nobody was scared that the next stampede could claim their own lives.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Police are at it. They said that they are minded to prosecute the charities and persons in whose events the tragedies happened for being negligent in crowd control. They can go ahead as long as they bear in mind that the first to be indicted should be the federal government which has breached a crucial provision in the Constitution which says that the primary duty of the government is to ensure the welfare and security of Nigerians. Has it lived up to it? The police should also know that after indicting the organisers, getting the courts to proscribe the charities, and jailing their operatives, others may begin to shun the act of giving. The emergent hungry and angry people will be recruiting grounds for criminals. It will be a vicious cycle. Is that where we want to be at this time in our country?
President Lays 2025 Budget Proposal Before the Joint Session of NASS
The Federal Government of Nigeria has relaunched its conditional cash transfer program, aiming to support 15 million households and an estimated 75 million individuals.
This initiative, which was previously suspended due to allegations of corruption, provides ₦25,000 per household each month, distributed three times annually.
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development, Nentawe Yilwatda, explained that the program seeks to ease the financial strain on vulnerable Nigerians.
The relaunch of the scheme at this time coincides with the current needless death of over 60 Nigerians from stampede occurring at various distribution venues in Ibadan, Okija and Abuja where charities dole out foodstuff to indigent and hungry Nigerians.
To ensure effective management and transparency, the government now requires all beneficiaries to possess digital identities, a move introduced following new policies by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
So far, the programme has reached five million people, but only 1.4 million beneficiaries are registered with digital IDs.
The minister acknowledged that many targeted individuals are unbanked, presenting challenges in expanding the reach of the scheme.
Despite these hurdles, efforts are ongoing to sanitize the national social register and improve accessibility for the most affected.
Women are being prioritized as heads of households in the program, with the rationale that they are better positioned to manage resources for the benefit of children and other vulnerable family members.
This targeted approach, according to the minister, ensures that the financial assistance reaches those who need it most.
The programme, initially suspended in January due to corruption concerns, was revamped and restarted in February.
The government also plans to extend the initiative to an additional 12 million households in the coming months.
This measure is part of President Bola Tinubu’s broader strategy to address the economic challenges faced by Nigerians, particularly those at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
Many were rushed to a local hospital, where chaotic scenes were captured in a viral video.
In Abuja, a food distribution at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Maitama claimed 10 lives, including children.
Over 3,000 residents, primarily from Mpape and nearby settlements, gathered to receive palliatives.
The stampede occurred early in the morning as the crowd pressed forward.
Security forces were later deployed to restore order, and the church suspended further distributions.
Authorities have urged organizers of such events to prioritize safety and notify security agencies in advance to prevent future incidents.
The latest incidents in Abuja and Anambra brings to 65, the number of persons that have been killed at stampedes arising from the rush to collect foodstuff in one week.
Earlier, 35 children were reported killed in a stampede at Ibadan, Oyo State, South West Nigeria as funseekers rushed to collect foodsuff at a funfair, Wednesday, this week.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Nigeria Police Force has denied accusations by Amnesty International claiming the use of excessive force and illegal arrests during the #EndBadGovernance protests in August 2024.
According to a statement from the Force, these claims are inaccurate and contradict reports submitted by police commands involved in managing the protests.
The police maintained that officers followed strict guidelines throughout the demonstrations, ensuring the safety of peaceful protesters while addressing violent situations with specialized units.
The Inspector-General of Police had instructed officers to avoid using arms unless protests escalated into violent riots threatening lives or property.
Kano State Governor, Abba Yusuf, has returned 76 minors detained during the August #EndBadGovernance protests to their families.
The handover took place on Thursday at the Muhammadu Buhari Specialist Hospital, where the children had been cared for after being arrested for their involvement in the protests, which called attention to governance issues in Kano and Nigeria at large.
Governor Yusuf, represented by his Chief of Staff Shehu Sagagi, acknowledged President Bola Tinubu’s role in securing the minors’ release. In his address, he urged parents to collaborate with the state government in providing quality education for their children, which he believes is key to the state’s growth.
He also cautioned parents against using any associations to solicit funds, as such behavior would not be tolerated.
Kano’s Education Commissioner, Haruna Doguwa, shared that steps had been taken to support the minors’ educational journeys, including providing school uniforms for 50 of them.
Additionally, a final-year student protester would be assisted in completing their studies, and another with a National Certificate in Education would be given a job.
Health Commissioner Dr. Abubakar Yusuf confirmed that the minors had all received medical treatment during their stay at the hospital before being reunited with their families.
The event also saw former Sokoto State Governor, Attahiru Bafarawa, donate N50,000 to each child for their education.
