Tuesday 30 June 2015

A matter of justice



First a disclaimer. This piece is about power; no, not the other convoluted one, but rather the primary one that has to do with electricity. And in this wise then, the second person to bring into the dock (the first of course is the government with which we would not really bother much here) would be one with whom yours truly had fought and crusaded for a progressive Nigeria during their time at the University of Calabar; namely, the Chairman of the National Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC,
Dr. Sam Amadi. So there is indeed something personal.


But then that is as far as it goes because the critical burdens of our nation and indeed of life would not really be discharged by personal relationships. They will rather be built on nobler ideals like the fidelity to truth, values, hard work, sacrifice, honour and justice. Yes, many of the subsisting realities of today’s Nigeria are clearly at conflict with this ‘Olympian heights rationalization,’ but a deeper appreciation of history will confirm that sloppy grandeur never lasts. ‘Vanity on vanity, all is vanity!’ So to justice we return.


The fundamental premise that we take in this piece therefore is that to fix the most enervating power incubus in the land today, we will need to return to a critical exegesis of the foundations of the system to confirm whether there is indeed any justice in it. For years, the old Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN), National Electricity Power Authority (NEPA) and the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in turns, carried on like ‘lords of the manor.’ They inflicted injustice on Nigerians via their operations, billing systems and disconnection practices and there was virtually nothing that distraught consumers could do about it. In one instance for example, yours truly had strongly protested a very ridiculous act of over-billing. At the then PHCN office on Oba Akran Way, Ikeja, the official looked at the bill and tersely responded: ‘I know how you feel, Mr. Mammah, but you have to go and pay.’ He was lying! How could he know how I felt!! But then it was a state-controlled monopoly; and ‘the king could do no wrong.’


A few years ago, the government commenced an unbundling and privatization programme and the metrics seemed to be promising; until they bungled it themselves! This piece is about a promise deferred and the way out for the nation. And we say again, it is about justice.


A business, indeed every business that will thrive, must run on an intrinsically sustainable model. This involves a number of core variables that must be in place. It must have an organization to carry out its activities. It must develop a quality product that the market needs. It must take the same product to, and canvass potential buyers to pick and pay for it in the market. It must correctly price the product. And finally, it must put in place a robust and efficient feedback mechanism that would help it continue to gauge the satisfaction levels of customers and promptly make adjustments as they arise so as to continue to sustain critical customer interest.


The trouble with power in Nigeria today then is that between the government and the firms that presently run the complex, they have not taken heed to observing these commonplace rules. And there is no alternative.


Even more telling in all of this fiasco is the relative helplessness of the regulator to step in strongly with a view to putting square pegs in square holes. By its mandate, NERC is in a good position to corral all actors onto ensuring that basic performance matrixes are observed and met. To its credit, it moved to do same a few weeks ago when it announced sanctions on the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company, over infractions related to the unscrupulous practice of estimated billing. If it could do that, then it means that it always had, and still has the nominal capacity to get all actors within the system to shape up or ship out. Now that it has begun to use its power, our plea is that it simply continues. There is far too much rot in Nigeria’s house of power that compel such confrontation.


As we write, distribution companies continue to collect a very dubious flat rate charge for consumers with prepaid meters even as they fleece other subscribers - that they are doing very little to provide with meters - through the pre-privatisation practice of ramming outrageous estimated bills down their throats. And now, they are posting notices of an intention to raise tariffs! On which service? This is plainly annoying, vexatious, unjust and contemptible and NERC must stop them now.



Wednesday 24 June 2015

Nigeria is not blighted, I insist!


Nigeria is not blighted; it is our leaders that are. And there is evidence everywhere attesting to this fact.


In 2002, the conveners of the annual Lagos Bookfair which had made its debut at the University of Lagos Sports Centre in 2000 staged the 3rd edition at the National Museum, Onikan, Lagos. Amongst other guests at that event was a very hard-working young writer, Chude Jideonwo. A student of Mayflower College, Ikenne, he was the author of the novel, My Father’s Knickers.


Seed grows. Chude went on to work as a researcher on Funmi Iyanda’s show that aired on the then NTA Channel 10, Lagos and is currently one of the anchors of The Future Awards, RED Media and YNaija.


Our people are not blighted, only the leaders are.


There is a second witness: Tolu Ogunlesi. While yet a science student at the University of Ibadan, Tolu discovered that his first love was really writing and stuck to it. When this writer met him on the portals of Krazitivity, an arts-inclined listserve, about 2003, Tolu was moments away from picking up a Bachelors degree in Pharmacy.


Post-graduation, Tolu found space as an analyst at Accenture and later in the Corporate Affairs Department of Visaphone. But writing kept tugging at him and he moved on to bag a Masters from the University of East Anglia, won the CNN Africa Journalist of the year and has gone on to be one of the country’s most enterprising bloggers and ‘freelance journalists!’
Today he writes steadily for The Punch, Voyager Media and The Financial Times. He is also the West Africa Editor at The Africa Report and runs WoweMedia.


I have referred to these young everyday leaders to illustrate my thesis that our nation is at heart a God-blessed land where a thousand flowers are almost guaranteed to bloom. But to achieve this potential, the nation simply needs better leaders than it is getting today. I refer here to leaders that will stop abusing our collective potential by their shameless display of incompetence, greed and kleptomania. We need leaders that will commit themselves to ruling within the context of this critical axiom: ‘godliness with contentment is great gain!’


Daily, we read of governors wringing their hands, waiting for bailouts to pay basic wages to their workforce. Your Excellency sir, your bailout is lodged between your obtuse convoy and your asinine security vote! We also read about party leaders who believe that the first order of business is to emplace their cronies in juicy 'toll gates' and not the cultivation of viable and visionary solutions that will get this nation out of the social and economic quagmire that it is presently mired in. They were wrong yesterday, they will still be wrong tomorrow.


But we will not give up. Every problem has a solution. And the first thing to do is to get a handle on things. In 1983, the writer, Chinua Achebe, published a slim tome on the Nigerian condition. Titled The Trouble with Nigeria, Achebe went on to pen those very famous remarks: ‘The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership!’ He could not have been any more exact. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, Nigeria is not a blighted country and 'the fault is not in our stars;' ‘it is our leaders, stupid!’


When people seek to get into power and sadly do get there without knowing that the first order of business is to serve and serve and serve, then that country indeed has no champions. Leaders by their job description are simply expected to lead! To do this they must understand the people and society they want to lead. Let no one be befuddled about all the sophistry that is usually brought into the discourse on leadership in these parts. The average Nigerian father leads his home daily without any grand speeches and rationalizations. What our so-called national leaders are being asked to do is to multiply same on the national scale. What the minister of power is expected to do is to learn from the millions of his citizens who daily use local electricians to connect ‘I better pass my neighbour’ generators that give them light when they switch them on! He should simply escalate this already existing practice onto the grid! To paraphrase Paul's letter to the church in Galatia; 'O, foolish Nigerians, who has so bewitched you!!'


Our leaders must simply do the jobs they ostensibly applied for! They must be in front to lead our people. They must serve us and not themselves. And to do this, they must have a vision of where they are taking us all, corporately speaking! This for this writer is an irreducible minimum. Life is indeed too short and too impactful to spend valuable time behind leaders who are going nowhere or even more insidiously, ‘whose belly is their god!’ Tufiakwa!

This dear reader is the 'common sense revolution' we now need.



Wednesday 17 June 2015

Why did he do it?




To those who believe that they are the first best thing to happen to the world of column writing, Yours Sincerely has almost nothing to say. The little that he knows about humans and the expression of strong personal opinion would suffice. Column-writing is at its most basic the simple but strong expression of views. And from Genesis days, man has not only always been at liberty to express his opinions; he has always also done so. ‘This surely is the bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman,’ our progenitor, Adam, had reportedly quipped. Humbled by this long-ranging genealogical find, yours truly no longer worries over whether what he writes would be completely original. To borrow once again from that most original book: ‘surely, there is no new thing under the sun.’


And so when the recent tiff between factions of the APC over the election of principal officers of the National Assembly broke last week, he went searching for an explanation in the records of man. And it is here that he was to chance once again on Achebe’s very puzzling one-line explanation about why the tragic anti-hero, Obi Okonwo condescended so low as to accept a most fatal career-destroying 20 pounds bribe. As the writer’s ruminant voice in that context quizzed the situation: ‘Everybody wondered why he did it?’


By extension, so is it with the principal player in the NASS crisis today, the mercurial Bola Ahmed Tinubu as pundits are looking over themselves, searching for explanations as to why he did not see the very obvious brick wall coming as he kept pushing to have his way in the now tragi-comic Senate leadership saga. Did he not see the outcome before it emerged?


There is power in power and Tinubu of all people should know this. As Governor of Lagos, he had used the power he so ebulliently collected in 1999 to begin to politically recast the city-state in his own image and likeness. Even in those early years, there were indeed other contenders for the throne but Tinubu out-paced them and they were soon to fade-out of the grand picture of things. Wahab Dosunmu. Sikiru Shitta Bey. Lanre Razak. Dapo Sarumi. Ganiyu Dawodu. J.K Randle. Yomi Edu. Kofo Bucknor. Funsho Williams. Adesewe Ogunlewe. The list is endless.


But it was a better prepared Tinubu that was entering the scene and he soon shone above them all as a very wily and most combustible power dynamo. Additional help also came in the form of his association with the late Iyaloja of Lagos, Alhaja Abibat Mogaji, the late MKO Abiola and NADECO on the one hand; and ambitious and determined patrons, co-labourers and foot-soldiers like Olatunji Hamzat, Musiliu Obanikoro, Tokunbo Afikuyomi, Babatunde Fashola and Ganiyu Solomon, that were all ready and committed to working with him. He rose to the occasion then; the rest is history. So solid was this coalition of the brave, determined and fighting; and so gracious and covenant-al were they in carrying out their briefs that together, they could take on any storm that emerged. And there were indeed many storms that showed up. Funsho Williams. Chicago-gate. Gani Fawehinmi. LGA funds witholding. Second term. Working together, they bravely weathered the storms.


Even in the recent issues of the emergence of the APC and its initial power fights for factional control, Tinubu and his factional allies, with several of the variables in his favour, won over others in the critical inner fights. Choice of National Chairman. Picking the flagbearer. Choice of Vice presidential nominee. He was the unbeatable Lord of the Manor.


One reason why Tinubu could win in all of these encounters was because he and his inner circle held the aces in all of the instances. But something happened on March 28 that the Jagaban Borgu did not comprehensively reconcile himself to at first. His adopted son, the strong-willed and long suffering, Muhammadu Buhari was successfully elected as the nation’s new Number 1 citizen in a country where ultimate power yet flows almost completely from the Presidency. His limited appreciation of the import of that shift is what is presently responsible for the short end of the stick that he is presently holding. As Bessie Head would have written, it is a question of power. And in this world of endless warring, taking hostages can indeed be most costly. They invariably bid their time and break out as soon as that almost inevitable crack shows up. Cheer up Jagaban; it is the least you can do. Today.





Friday 12 June 2015

Adesina, AfDB and the African development challenge



In a matter of weeks, the recently elected helmsman for the continent’s prime developmental agency, the African Development Bank, AFDB, would be taking up his post.


Across Africa and the world, the jury out there is that Akinwunmi Adesina, the pick for the position of President of the pan-Africanist agency, has performed creditably well in his immediate past posting as Minister of Agriculture. They are therefore pleased that he is getting the job.


Indeed, when and wherever dispassionate performance reviews on the outgoing Jonathan administration ministers have been done, Adesina routinely scores above a B. Some punditocrats have even gone on to suggest that if only the outgoing President was insistent enough to have had as much as five Adesinas in his team, his story would invariably have been different now. H would have very easily been returned for a second term in office. But that is, as they say, medicine after death.


But the Adesina story did not start with his captainship of Nigeria’s ministry of agriculture. For those who have cared to carry out the expository background checks, this is a well-grounded international public servant in every sense of the word. His salutary performance at Nigeria’s agricultural ministry adds to his billing no doubt but it is also to be noted that this is one bright wit that has shone and excelled in his service to the African continent at different levels.


With all of this, Adesina surely comes prepared as the man to take on the gargantuan challenge of the hour and do the job of literally fixing the development crises of the African continent; identifying the long-standing specific and general challenges and working with other critical stakeholders in their resolution.


And there is indeed a sense in which the success of the AFDB is indeed Africa’s success. For one, about none of the fifty something states that today dot the African landscape, by themselves or even together, have presently demonstrated a solid capacity to drive growth on the continent in such a way as to ensure the gradual erosion of the trend where the continent is widely perceived as being the least developed in the world. Evidence of this for example would be seen in the facts that Africa contributes less than two percent of the global world trade and industrial productivity tally; is the biggest net receiver of foreign aid and has no permanent member on the Security Council. Meanwhile, the continent where human life almost incontrovertibly began, contributes well over a quarter of the total 193-seat membership at the United Nations!


One core reason for these continuing lapses is the failure to seriously find and drive a solid socio-economic development paradigm for the continent. This was the reason why the global development community pushed for, and encouraged the transformation in 2001 of the politically-leaning supra-national umbrella body, the Organisation of African Unity, OAU, into the relatively more pragmatically defined African Union, AU. But the AU was supposed to be more than a definition. Like some of its contemporaries the world over, it was expected to come to the table with a slew of active and regularly functioning support institutions that were staffed by officers whose ultimate pull was not going to be the political leaders that chose them, but rather the technocratic institutional framework within which they operated. At the apex of these institutions were platforms like the continent’s standing army, its parliament and development bank. There were also the New Partnership for African Development, NEPAD and the African (Leaders) Peer Review Mechanism, APRM. Critically evaluated then, it will soon emerge that at the heart of the continuing under-performance of the AU and the continent therefore is the fact that these, and other associated agencies have yet to grow and bloom.


In a precise sense, the AFDB must as a matter of necessity, rise up to be counted. One of the realities of the global environment today is that even when the world has assuredly come to be a global village, for many of its peoples, the familiar and the proximate still take pre-eminence over the distant and exotic when it comes to core details of trade and interaction. Equally, there are issues of infrastructure, logistics and politics that continue to impede global trade relations amongst nations and peoples. This is what accounts for the continuing expansion of intra-European, intra-Asian and intra-North American trade today. It is practically, yet, a world of regions, thus there is no alternative to the deepening of intra-African economic activity today and this is where a well-led and strategically focused AFDB comes in.

Tuesday 9 June 2015

David Mark: Never again!



At the valedictory session of the Senate last week, outgoing Senate President, David Bonaventure Mark made some remarks that were clearly not casual. Of course, he gloated over his very impressive performance as leader of ‘the hallowed chamber’ but then he also went on to lament how pained he was that the senate that he had led in the past eight years could not pass several very important pieces of legislation, including the very critical Petroleum Industry Bill. Crocodile tears. Even as Mark waxed lyrically off-key, the corollary House of Representatives (which equally has been another relative disappointment) was choosing to work some more on the PIB which it finally passed on the same day that Mark had rather preferred to throw his self-adulating eulogy party!


Indeed, the putrid obscenity of that valedictory event was most depressing. It was more of an ‘Ali, Baba and the forty thieves’ (get my drift?) scenario as one ‘distinguished’ senator rose after the other rose to celebrate the grandeur of Mark’s leadership. It reminded this writer of a comparable scene in the medieval Roman senate, when the reprobate Emperor Caligula, completely overtaken by vainglory, hedonism and debauchery, allegedly enthroned his horse, Incitatus as consul!


To put the obscenity in better context, the reader will recall that only the day before this ill-fitting charade, the same David Mark had superintended over a most bewildering passage of 46 bills in ten minutes! And even as he was gloating over the fact of his brilliant leadership, the senate was also revealing that in the past four years, it had received a total of 591 bills with only 123 passed! And then 46 of those 123 were passed in one day!! Is this the great feat that Mark and company were clinking glasses over?


Getting beyond Mark’s team of in-house cheerleaders, what do we the people say about his tenures? Are we impressed? To put it in another mould, has Mark done enough in his eight year leadership of the Senate to merit the plaudits that his colleagues are flinging at him?


For us, a critical analysis of the Mark years as leader of the senate would begin from his home Benue South senatorial zone where the reports are categorical that virtually all of his recorded victories to even enter the senate in the first place have largely been Pyrrhic encounters, with each of his pre-leadership wins being seriously disputed and contested.


Our analysis goes next to value where the senate under his watch has clearly not been seen to stand robustly with the people in the critical issues of the day. Starting with the fuel subsidy protests through the mystery of exactly how much senators earn, the verdict is that the senate that Mark led was a critical under-performer in real terms. What is the value of his great brilliance and chequered leadership when for over a year after its sad occurrence, victims of the immigration saga failed to find succour in the senate? What about the constitution review charade that ended as ‘a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing!’ And to return to the crisis of PIB under reference, it is equally to Mark’s great leadership credit that he has now presided over two sessions of the Senate that consistently failed to pass the critical industry-shaping enactment.


Rather the Senate under Mark preferred to sit lamely by and be accomplices in the maladministration of a great nation and people. Rather than excoriate a criminally fumbling executive over its culpable inability to fix the fuel challenge, it is sending a lame handover note to the new administration to ensure that it fixes the problem. Oh Mark, where did we find you?
But we know the answer. We found you in a Nigeria where values had long gone askance. As Minister of Communications in the Babangida era, you had remarked that telephones were not for the poor. When Abacha came, you could not be found. You are the archetypal system player, deal maker, what some will prefer to call ‘the real trouble with Nigeria.’


On the other side, some have argued that you have represented a stabilizing force in the nation. But what is the texture of your stabilization programme and at what costs? Mr. David Bonaventure Mark, Nigeria will not miss your departure from the hallowed seat of Senate President of the republic. And here is hoping that your successor and indeed the slim band of returnee senators and the motley crowd of new Senators also get it: it is bye-bye to rege-rege.