With AfCFTA, Africa is surging ahead

It is a good day in Africa today.
After months of negotiations, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, AfCFTA comes into effect.
52 nations are signed up and 23 have ratified. It is indeed a great leap forward and now we urge all stakeholders to patiently but determinedly engage the process of implementing the landmark treaty for the greater good of all of the people of the continent.
#Africadeservesbetter!

A weekend of frenzied political combat

February is near, who are you voting for?


The departing weekend has witnessed a flurry of political activities or what could be described as a season of frenzied political combat.

In a country where many sometimes wait until the last minute before throwing in their spades, some of the frenzy is understandable.

At the end of the day however, the final set of political gladiators that will be flying the flags of the respective political parties have largely emerged.

For the presidential contest are the likes of incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Mr. Donald Duke, Madam Oby Ezekwesili and Mr Fela Durotoye. Others are Rev. Chris Okotie, Mr. Tope Fasua and Gbenga Olawepo Hashim.


Indeed, it is 'Nigeria on the march again!'

 

Amos Tutuola: A Bridge across the streams

Amos Tutuola: A Bridge across the streams

(Being a presentation by Richard Mammah at the Lagos book fiesta ‘Profiles at the Lagoon,’ Art Gallery, Kongi’s Harvest, Freedom Park, Lagos, May 30, 2018)

A few things are remarkable about our subject under reference today, the very prodiguous Amos Tutuola.

First, when his first novel, the Palm Wine Drinkard, rolled off the presses in 1952, there had not been much in the way of advance notice that he would be a successful writer.

As one who had barely struggled to get a basic education, not many gave him a chance to venture into, and then make a mark in this area. But thanks to his determination, doggedness and industry, he worked at it and not in addition to getting that first book, The Palmwine Drinkard out, he also went on to write and bring out other very remarkable titles:

    My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954)

    Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle (1955)

    The Brave African Huntress (1958)

    Feather Woman of the Jungle (1962)

    Ajayi and his Inherited Poverty (1967)

    The Witch-Herbalist of the Remote Town (1981)

    The Wild Hunter in the Bush of the Ghosts (1982)

    Yoruba Folktales (1986)

    Pauper, Brawler and Slanderer (1987)

    The Village Witch Doctor and Other Stories (1990)

As is most apparent from this profile, it will be seen that our author did indeed demonstrate a very prodigious commitment to his chosen vocation, which ensured that other than the decade of the 1970s, he not only brought out book after book, beginning with his 1952 debut offering, indeed, he also sustained a pattern of sorts in that he succeeded in getting into the market, fresh new titles within two, three and five year intervals!

Second, Tutuola stands as a bridge across the many trajectories of the Nigerian creative writing firmament. From when The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African entered the scene in 1789 through the outing of the maiden edition of the first Nigerian newspaper,“Iwe Irohin Fun Awon Ara Egba Ati Yoruba on November 23, 1859, and on to the coming into the scene of other pioneering texts such as Pita Nwana’s Omenuko in 1933 and  Daniel Olorunfẹmi Fagunwa’s 1938 text, Ògbójú Ọdẹ nínú Igbó Irúnmalẹ̀, it was evident that it was just going to be a matter of time before an even more robust creative writing tradition would be experienced.

With the end of the Second World War in 1945, the coming of the decade of the 1950s - with its very strong pan-Africanist fervour, along with an accelerated march to nationhood - Nigerians across all walks of life began to express themselves in even more assertive tones. One of these who moved on to demonstrate the capacity of the emergent Nigerian in the arena of creative writing was Amos Tutuola. It was indeed a mark of his sterling achievement in this regard that he was to round off work on his first book, The Palm Wine Drinkard, in 1946. And the road to this achievement was indeed not an easy one as he had been forced to drop out of school upon the death of his father in1939, and then go on to train as a blacksmith, work with the Royal Air Force in Nigeria, become a bread seller and then a messenger with the colonial Nigerian Department of Labor! How did the other wise man put it: ‘tough times don’t last; it is tough people that do. Tutuola was quintessentially one cut out of the thick cloth of hardwork, determination, drive and endurance; he was of ‘the strong breed.’

In a sense, a contemporary of Tutuola at this time would be the other most prodigious writer, Cyprian Ekwensi, who after jointly winning a British Council Writing Competition with Mabel Segun and Ogundipe Leslie, had gone on to feature as a star player in the famous Onitsha Market Literature series with his twin offerings in that ‘pamphlet explosion,’ that were published by Tabansi Books in 1947; namely, When Love Whispers and Ikolo the Wrestler and Other Igbo Tales. From there he published many other books that included An African Night’s Entertainment, the passport of Mallam Ilia and The Drummer Boy. And if you think Tutuola’s six-year wait to have his first book come out in print was a heck of time, then what would you say about Ekwensi not having his first full length novel text enter the market until four decades after he had finished writing it! Some of today’s young writers may simply need to find some patience.

Third, it is also to be noted that the coming onto the limelight of the Tutuolas and Ekwensis at this time was in the same progressing line of vision in the development of the practice of creative writing in Nigeria that was to find its next expression in the publication in 1958 of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the inception of the African Writers Series and the work of practitioners such as Wole Soyinka, Elechi Amadi and J.P Clark. 

And fourth, even in death, Tutuola continues to shine on with his works gracing the archival shelves of the Harry Ransom Center, an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, which specializes in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts for the purpose of advancing the study of the arts and humanities. Its collection spans 36 million literary manuscripts, one million rare books, five million photographs, and more than 100,000 works of art.

Underscoring this achievement, it is to his credit that Tutuola today shares that space with the likes of D. H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, Woodward and Bernstein (of the Watergate Papers fame), Gutenberg, William Shakespeare, Ezra Pound, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the Coleridge family.

Others are Doris Lessing, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Norman Mailer, Graham Greene, J. M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Kerouac, Chaucer, Alfred A. Knopf, Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, Harry Houdini, Arthur Miller, John Osborne, Peter O'Toole, George Bernard Shaw, Pablo Picasso, George Aiken, George Frideric Handel, Robert De Niro, Napoleon Bonaparte and Emperor Maximilian I.

Finally, let me salute Delta Publications (Nigeria) and its CEO, Dillibe Onyeama for convening this most epochal event. In a land and clime that continues to pay scant regard to the great creative achievements of its people, it is important that some who do know should continue to hold the torch high in the hope that over time the rest of our people would come to be converted. I therefore anticipate even more of such grand offerings from the Delta Book Club and Delta Publications (Nigeria) in the years ahead.

-         Richard Mammah

George Weah's burden

It is the economy and the economy and the economy!

Liberia's newly elected president, George Oppong Weah is still in honeymoon season. The crowds love him, the media celebrates him, but reality is a few inches away - commencing January 22.

As he takes the oath of office that day to become the newest ECOWAS leader, thanks to the outcome of a bruising two-round electoral battle, the ex-football maestro would from that moment inherit the very grave burden that outgoing President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has been trying to paper over for months now; Liberia is broke!

At the moment close to 85 percent of the nation's youth is unemployed. Many of these voted for him and have been part of his very awesome electoral machine over the years that culminated in his 61.5 percent victory in the second round of the presidential elections process on Boxing Day, 2017. How long would they wait? How quickly would Weah deliver?

Underscoring the depth of the crisis is the drama that followed the unveiling of the current 2017/2018 National Budget of Liberia. Shortly after its formal signing, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had convened a special meeting with the Legislature. The reason: they needed to revisit about all of the core parameters contained therein because government is unable to raise the revenue needed to fund the US$563.6 million budget.

In the explanation of the President, the crisis was on account of the decline in global prices of commodities. What she stopped short of saying was that the crisis was in actual fact not a new one as it had been on for a few years and counting! So, she had only prepared a political feel-good budget!

True, there had been a decline in prices of major exports like rubber and iron ore on the world market. And then there had also been the the impact of the Ebola outbreak, but there had also been serious issues of fiscal indiscipline, with Mama Sirleaf 's government being largely unable to reduce recurrent expenditure and boost local agriculture and agro-allied economic activities.

Almost all through the Sirleaf years, there had been a continuous depreciation of the value of the Liberian dollar relative to its American counterpart; falling from LD 62 to US $1 dollar in 2006, to LD 108 to US$1 in 2018, and now LD$126 for US$1.

Compounding this is an accompanying public sector liquidity crisis in which commercial banks are reportedly unwilling to cash government checks or provide credit lines to government contractors. Put at over US$400 million in real terms, this liquidity shortfall is well over two-thirds of the total allocation for the now being revised National budget!

More recently also, President Johnson-Sirleaf has frozen all payments of bonuses, severance allowance, and incentives to members of the Board of Directors, Managing Directors, Deputy Managing Directors, and all other Officials of similar standing, in State-Owned Enterprises (SoEs), Commissions, and Autonomous Agencies of the Government of Liberia.

Equally, she ordered that all expenditures be other than those for salaries and allowances be halted and that invoices for for the daily operations of Government Ministries in the amount US$10,000 and above must be approved by her office.

Indeed, things are really so bad now that government employees are now receiving truncated salaries with government checks bouncing on vendors.

Weah would need therefore to hit the ground running and give life to his so-called "pro-poor government." He has talked of improving the economy through the cultivation and export of cash crops rather than being solely dependent on the export of mineral extractives and rubber but this then has to be practically done in addition to demonstrating greater transparency than was the case in the outgoing ra in the management of the revenues derivable from the extractives and power sectors.

Analysts say that one model that the new president should consider could be neighbouring Ghana that has been able to define the allocation of its petroleum revenues through its Petroleum Revenue Management Act.

Then there are several other challenges. Liberia ranked 179 out of 189 countries in terms of protecting minority investors in the 2017 Ease of Doing Business Index. Access to electricity remains a problem as it takes an average of 465 days and costs 4066.6 percent of income per capita to secure electricity connections today. And capping the restraints is the fact that the country presently boasts zero percent credit bureau coverage and a corresponding non-distribution of credit information on both firms and individuals. Meaning: the much needed capital that is required to drive growth even at the level of SMEs and private business is invariably still too difficult to find at this time when government needs all the help it can get.

Mr Weah, your work is surely cut out for you.

Africa Day Colloquium: The power of unity

Come Thursday, May 25, 2017, The Difference Newspaper will at its annual #AfricaDay Colloquium be hosting a multi-disciplinary panel discussion on the theme: 'One People, One Continent: Making the All-Africa Passport Work.'


The discussion is a follow-through on the Common African Passport Project which was inaugurated at the 27th African Union Summit of Heads of States that was held in Kigali in July, 2016. At that event, the diplomatic version of the passport was issued to African leaders present -including President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Idris Deby of Chad and the then AU Chairperson, Ms. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma - even as the AU secretariat and member states were asked to commence the process of popularising, adopting and domesticating the resolution ahead of the 2020 implementation deadline.


Ahead of the 2020 date, two important timelines are expected to be met by the AU Secretariat and member states in January and July, 2018.


Building on this, the May 25 event, which will be held at the Bankers House, Chartered Institute of Bankers, 19, Adeola Hopewell St, Victoria Island, Lagos, also promises a lot of robust inquisition and exegesis of how best to achieve the goal of a Common African Passport as well as the long-standing subject of growing the African economy further in such a way that it contributes better than the 2 percent it currently brings to the global trade table.


Moderated by the Director of the United Nations Information Centre, UNIC, Lagos, Nigeria, the very versatile and erudite Mr Ronald Kayanja, speakers at the Colloquium include the Head of the Ikoyi Passport Office, Deputy Comptroller of Immigration, Segun Adegoke, the General Manager, Public Policy, Uber West Africa, Jacquelyn Omotalade, the Head, Department of History and International Studies, Babcock University, Dr Abiodun Adesegun and the filmmaker and director, Osezuah Elimihe.


You really cannot afford to miss this very expository session which kicks off at 11.00am.

Understanding Grace

Grace is more than a feeling. It is reality. Hence the psalmist sang:

'Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me....'

Forthcoming

Stay glued to this page for some fresh developments shortly

Thanks

The Buhari in You

Since President Muhammadu Buhari made remarks at his first media chat days ago indicating that he was personally inclined towards a situation where those accused of graft and misdemeanour continue to remain in custody without bail irrespective of what the law says, there has been justifiable umbrage all across the land and beyond with the President being roundly criticised for demonstrating an anti-democratic temper.


For Buhari, the road to democratic correctness has really been a long one. From his first-time out as a military head of state to his Chatham House declaration of now being a reformed democrat, it has clearly not been a piece of cake. But from his remarks during the chat, and particularly as they have to do with this contentious issue of the best methods of fighting the pervasive indiscipline and graft that has contributed its own fair share in the current hobbling of the giant of Afrrica, it is clear that there is still some more way to go.


Without as much as explaining away the president’s gaffe, it however has to be stated that the president in his blunt expressions on this subject was in a sense only being typical of large swathes of Nigerians, military, retired military and civilian alike who very sadly continue to support extra-judicial and a-constitutional paths to resolving disputes and challenges in the society.


Last week for example, your correspondent was returning home at about 7pm and had to pass by a military checkpoint set up as part of measures to contain pipeline vandalism and oil theft in his neighbourhood


On approaching the checkpoint, he met two truckloads of soldiers blocking the roads and two other security operatives on mufti a few metres away. He briefly paused for the road to be cleared but seeing that the soldiers were not in a hurry to go anywhere, he voted to veer of the main road and walk past the space between the standing operatives and the trucks.


‘You, yes you, where are you coming from; don’t you see that there are soldiers here? Don’t you know that somebody can blast your head off now and nothing will happen….’ With or without their superiors knowing it, the soldiers who had been drafted to fight a menace have themselves now become a threat to innocent residents and passers-by. It was indeed some very chilling encounter.


The fault indeed is not in our stars. It is in the way we have ordered our society up until this moment. And it is an aberrant ordering that has to be corrected. As the late Burkinabe resident, Thomas Sankara put it, without political education, a soldier is not better than a criminal. The truth of our situation today is that quite a large number of our military personnel, serving and retired, see nothing wrong with using their tax-payer-funded ‘tactical advantage’ to ride roughshod over ‘idle civilians,’ and many times with the uncritical acquiescence of many civilians themselves!


For years, many Nigerians could be heard to say: ‘what this country needs is a Rawlings; a bloody revolution that will wipe away all looters.’


When you have a traffic dispute with a fellow citizen and pick up your phone to call that military acquaintance of yours to 'come and deal with the bloody fool’ you are indirectly acquiescing to the errant mindset that the President displayed on national television in his inaugural media chat.


So to help Buhari continue to make much needed progress on his democratic conversion experience, we, even we, must continue to make the case without any equivocation at all, that our society must at its base be ordered in a civic, democratic format, where the rule of law must be followed to the latter at all times.


Mercifully, the Presidency has now come out to reportedly distance the President from those limitations.
And while we are at this, it will be good for the President/Presidency to urgently realize that he/they need (s) to openly commit to a programme of reorienting his own military base. And the way to do this is not to rush into providing soft-landing for them when they are accused of extra-judicial conduct. Let the law take its course, always. And let this President always remain a leader ‘for everybody and for nobody.’

Greetings

Season's greetings to all followers of this blog. We wish you the best also in 2016.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

richard

Morning VP, be warned, you may be losing me!

Dear Sir,

For those who really know me, I may be one of the easiest persons that a Nigerian government can satisfy. This is for a reason. I know the depth of the challenge of running government in Nigeria and am familiar with what is involved. But I also know one chief reason why Nigerian leaders fail: they forget themselves.


Yes, one of the prime killers of good men in government in Nigeria is amnesia. The opulence and basic non-accountability of the system sucks them in and they lose their humanity. It is that simple. I have made this point in an earlier piece asking for the Aso villa to be turned into a fee-paying museum. I still hold that view and my premise is simple: as presently constituted, the villa is too big, too lavish and too out-of-touch with the reality of the mass of our people. It was built at another time when the ruling notions were about imperial domination, not democracy. Today it is an anachronism, a leech that sucks off the little innocence left in hitherto simple men. And Mr. Vice President sir, I am afraid that 'Aso Rock' has begun to get at you.


Trust me, this conclusion has not been arrived at casually. Rather, it is the product of reasoned, exegetical analysis. Months ago, I wrote a piece lauding your commendable involvement with the establishment and functioning of the Office of the Defender during your stint as Commissioner for Justice in Lagos State. Now it is my lot to conversely point out what Professor Wole Soyinka would describe as ‘the road you are not taking.’


So what is 'the new one you have now done' as my people would put it? It is simple. A few hours ago, you were credited with having stated in a parley with the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria that: ‘we must be ready to accept that for a while, until things stabilize somewhat, (electricity) tariffs cannot remain at the levels at which they are today... It certainly means that there may be higher costs, but I don’t think that an option of not having power is really what we want. The real issue of course is that at the end of the day, some of the cost goes to the consumer, but a cost reflective tariff is an absolute necessity, otherwise, privatization and all of that simply doesn’t make sense.”


Sir, from where you are today, you make your point most indulgently; but let us also make ours. No one is really afraid of paying cost reflective tariffs. But we need to put things in their proper sequence. There must be service before costs. And again, you will really have to watch what you say and what signals you send out. Because you are speaking for the Presidency in a yet executive-dominated country!


Let me explain. The truth of our society today is that there are many contending agendas out there. There are the wishes of the masses and there are the schemings of the affluent. It is therefore the responsibility of those that govern us to always remember that their mandate must always be used to serve the common good.

Broken down, your current logic on our power conundrum may very well be serving primarily the interests of the DISCOs and notably, their insistence on continuing for as long as they can, with the ignoble and discredited practice of estimated billing.


Again, we say no one is afraid of cost-reflective tariffs. But like the House of Representatives has rightly argued, no one should also be compelled to pay for services he has not received. And your government must not join in propping up a system that compels consumers to pay for services not rendered. That, Professor, would not be right before God and man. It would also not qualify as one of the hallmarks of modern democratic living in Nigeria which you have been forsworn to defend.


Indeed, you got close to hitting the nail on the head when you talked of the estimated 40 percent losses in the current transmission and distribution chain. There is not only a primary challenge of halting these losses but also dealing with a second regretable fallout, that today those costs are being passed on majorly only to those Nigerians who haplessly continue to find themselves on the estimated billing platform! And figures suggest that well over 50 percent of electricity subscribers in the country fit in here. So you see why you need to be reminded that whenever you speak, it should be in the defence of the common good or at the very least, in the interest of the greater majority of our people whom you are elected to serve!

For this majority, the first call of duty is simply and squarely about putting an end to the estimated billing system. This practice is obnoxious and vexatious. And there is a sense in which it is also patently wicked given that it is really the poorer segments of our society that are carrying this cup of hemlock. And so month after month they continue to get bills that are heavily at variance with those served their neighbours who are lucky enough to have received the few prepaid meters that the current system has so grudgingly offered.

Mr. Vice President Sir, you had served in Lagos and seen first-hand the reason why for very many years, many of our people did not want to pay their taxes. They were not persuaded that their monies would be mis-applied! When successive governments put in more resources to work in schemes that the people could see, compliance rates rose. It is a similar situation with electricity fees. Improve supply, strengthen its justiceability and watch cost-recovery levels rise.

Your National Electricity and Regulatory Commission, NERC appeared to be getting close to a solution when it came out with its Credited Advance Payment for Metering Implementation, CAPMI scheme as a first step in ensuring that DISCOs provide meters for all. But that is largely being observed in the breach today. And even that scheme is not the first time that the DISCOs were asked to serve meters to their subscribers. Months earlier, NERC had commenced an initial pay for meters scheme. Under that cover, the DISCOs brutally jerked up their estimated bills for a few months while it lasted. Till date, they have kept mum on how the fleeced sums would be accounted for. Mr. VP sir, we may indeed have a cost-reflective tariff issue going forward, and will cross that bridge when we get there, but what is urgent today is that we do not have a just billing platform for over 50 percent of subscribers. That in any country worth its salt and led by people of integrity is a monumental scandal. And that is what we must first address.


So we request that you and your principal should get together on this subject and work out a 'Marshall Plan' to ensure that every electricity subscriber gets a prepaid meter that will facilitate his getting a just bill for electricity that he truly uses. I will really be surprised if you cannot fix this.


Sincerely,


Citizen Richard

Court restores inheritance rights of females

Court restores inheritance rights of females

The Nigerian Supreme Court has reportedly handed down a revolutionary ruling in respect of a long-standing suit on the inheritance rights of female children in Igboland.

According to a post on the blog of The Child Rights Awareness and Creation Organisation, CRACO, the court ’voided the existing traditional law and custom, which forbid a female from inheriting her late father’s estate, on the grounds that it is discriminatory and conflicts with the provision of the constitution.

The court held that the practice conflicted with section 42(1)(a) and (2) of the 1999 Constitution. The judgment was on the appeal marked: SC.224/2004 filed by Mrs. Lois Chituru Ukeje  (wife of the late Lazarus Ogbonna Ukeje) and their son, Enyinnaya Lazarus Ukeje against Mrs. Cladys Ada Ukeje (the deceased’s daughter).

Cladys had sued the deceased’s wife and son before the Lagos High Court, claiming to be one of the deceased’s children and sought to be included among those to administer their deceased’s father’s estate.

The trial court found that he was a daughter to the deceased and that she was qualified to benefit from the estate of their father who died intestate in Lagos in1981.

The Court of Appeal, Lagos to which Mrs. Lois Ukeje and Enyinnaya Ukeje appealed, upheld the decision of the trail court, prompting them to appeal to the Supreme Court.’

In its judgment, the Nigerian apex court concluded that the earlier ruling of the Court of Appeal, Lagos which voided the Igbo native law and custom that disinherits female children was right and proper.

Justice Bode Rhodes-Vivour, who read the lead judgment, in her ruling asserted that “no matter the circumstances of the birth of a female child, such a child is entitled to an inheritance from her later father’s estate.

“Consequently, the Igbo customary law, which disentitles a female child from partaking in the sharing of her deceased father’s estate is breach of Section 42(1) and (2) of the Constitution, a fundamental rights provision guaranteed to every Nigerian.

“The said discriminatory customary law is void as it conflicts with Section 42(1) and (2) of the Constitution. In the light of all that I have been saying, the appeal is dismissed. In the spirit of reconciliation, parties to bear their own costs,” the learned judge affirmed.

All of the other justices - Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen, Claral Bata Ogunbiyi, Kumai Bayang Aka’ahs and  John Inyang Okoro -on the panel endorsed the lead judgment.

Says Uche Akolisa, a brands analyst at Hallmark newspapers on the development: ‘Bravo! It is huge step that will help in the economic empowerment of the girl-child. It will also help alleviate the problem of the disinheritance of widows. However, it will take a lot of social orientation and mobilization for it to be accepted at the grassroots.’

Buhari’s limitations and the new Nigeria momentum

President Muhammadu Buhari is on the spot. He is President of Nigeria at a time like no other. He is leading the country at a time where the aspiration of the people for fairness, equity, social justice and the good life is fever-pitch. Long held in the grips of incompetent and uncaring leadership, a heavily repressed people have cast off their chains: they want to be led with sensitivity, respect and honour.

Interestingly, it is this background that had helped Buhari to assume power three months ago; that is also the Achilles heel he is contending with today and which may make or mar the success-graphs of his tenure. But is he seeing it? Will he or won’t he? Or as the other writer put it: ‘to be or not to be, that is the final question.’


To fully understand the Buhari challenge, we have to go autobiographical. A man is largely a product of his story, it has been suggested. Sometimes this is not necessarily correct; many times however, it has been so. So how does our subject rank in this regard?


In this particular instance, Buhari’s story is indeed telling us a whole lot about where he is coming from, where he has been, where he is today and where next he is inclined to be headed, if left alone to himself and his natural inclinations, desires and the constraints of his internal space as it exists now.


Born in the Daura emirate 72 years ago in an era when the British colonial authorities had initially contended - but was later to be compelled to share power, values and systems - with the traditional emirate system, his family was persuaded to send him out to have a bit of the western educational experience that had then become an alternate reality in his milieu. He obliged and off to the ‘whiteman’s school’ did Muhammadu go.


Just before he completed his secondary schooling, a new imperative came to the fore. Independence was coming and with it also some landmark changes. Power was going to be totally devolved to Nigerians, with the immediate implication that many young people who had already embraced western education were also going to be the first in line to fill up spots in the public services of the regions, municipalities and at the centre that the British were vacating. Those like Buhari who were already enrolled, were dutifully rewarded with opportunities and positions of worth and substance in the unfolding dispensation. His specific posting was the military and the rest as we say is history.


The event of military intervention in the nation’s body-politic also provided a boost for Buhari. He was during that era to be awarded critical political positions that helped to grow his name recognition and which he also utilized to grow the brand appeal of a Spartan and discipline-driven patriot which was to come in most handy in the making of the political Buhari three decades after. Now all of the cards look like they are neatly stacked on his desk, and the nation watches as he serves.


So how far has he served? While the jury is already out on this subject, and notably on the way he has used power this far, this writer would however rather prefer to focus on the things that he cannot serve. This is because, given our history as a nation and the range of variables that underpin our group structure, there is really very little that any leader, one leader can do.


Buhari can, and has indeed made mistakes at the moment especially as it has to do with his near-total absence of solid and all-encompassing political sensitivity. In this sense, he has not been able to infuse and bring along the integrative political nuances that mitigate elite mischief in an environment where visible national development is the core need. So he really has no one but himself to blame for the political flak that has greeted his appointments list so far.


Indeed, there is a sense in which in carrying on in the manner he has done so far, he does indeed give credence to the pre-election postulations of pundits that he was not really properly prepared for the task of running a 21st century Nigeria. Yes, he had held a sizeable number of appointments in different aspects of our national life in the past, but given his story and the fact that a lot of his earlier service had been done within the restrictive frames of authoritarian military rule, there has now arisen then a brand new imperative of his having to prove himself within the elective space. And as we are seeing by the day, this is clearly not the easiest of tasks for Buhari to handle today.


However, this writer would yet counsel that we do not on account of errors in rendering throw away the baby with the bath water. Yet. The truth is that when the Nigerian voters were making the choice in the April polls, they had the benefit of the facts on the table. They were presented with the same question marks that are showing up today alongside the promise marks of what he could deliver and chose to yet go on with him. For them then, there was a whole lot of work to be done to save Nigeria and keep her on course. And they concluded he was the best fit for the job.


But does that absolve him from dealing with his question marks particularly as it has to do with the touchy issue of geo-political balancing and leadership sensitivity. Never. However, seeing that he clearly does not have it; it imposes an additional responsibility on his immediate handlers, his sponsoring political party, other variable institutions of state, the media, civil society, the opposition and the nation at large to rise to the challenge and ensure that Mr. Buhari’s limitations would not yet impede our continuing march to get the new Nigeria we yet deserve. Aluta continua.

Buhari, a Washington trip and the rest of us

At this time of writing, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari is in Washington DC on what some would call a seeming breakthrough visit by a Nigerian leader to the American peak of governance, the White House, in a relatively long while. Given the apparent cold shoulder that the U.S administration had extended to the Nigerian government in the past few years and the fact that the visit is coming only days into the inauguration of Buhari as President, and even when he is yet to assemble a full complement of governing personal, let alone articulate sure-footed policies that would form the thrust of his term in office, it is clear that this ‘shift’ is essentially symbolic.


But even that has to be put in context. With some 60 percent of the total population of West Africa and about 15 percent of the total population of the 54-nation continent (which in turn make up over a quarter of the total haul of 192 states that comprise the United Nations), Nigeria is arguably no pushover in the comity of nations. It is therefore not the mere ‘good luck’ of the ruling APC at this point in our history (pun and all!), but rather the very non-strategic mismanagement of our natural weight that had led to our past marginalization in global affairs.


And it should never have been so. At Independence on October 1, 1960, the influential American weekly, Time magazine, looked into its crystal ball and all it could see was a veritable world-beater that needed only a few years to prove its worth. The spectacular successes that had been demonstrated in the immediate past seven years - when the three regional premiers who had been given limited self-governance powers had chalked giant strides in education, infrastructure, industrialization and political organization - was for them a veritable foretaste of the glory that lay ahead.


Again, when the leaders of the newly independent African states began to hold talks within the ‘Monrovia’ and ‘Casablanca’ blocs to forge the initial outlines of the continent’s first multi-state supra-national gathering, the Organization of African Unity, Nigeria’s voice and vote was a strong factor in ensuring the successful harmonization of the contending ideological aspirations and the result was the July 25, 1963 summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.


At about the same time, the Congo crisis became even more intractable and Nigeria was one of the first nations to be requested to come and help put out the fires. We went there and did our bit.


Indeed, so decisive was Nigeria’s voice back then that when General Murtala Mohammed who served as Nigeria’s Head of State for just 200 days spoke out in favour of an end to apartheid and colonial rule in Africa at the July 11, 1975 OAU summit, it was in the self-assured strength of a leader and people, who, to paraphrase the gospel artist, Sinach; know who they are! ‘Africa had indeed come of age.’ And the whole world was listening:


“Mr. Chairman, when I contemplate the evils of apartheid, my heart bleeds and I am sure the heart of every true blooded African bleeds. Africa has come of age. It is no longer under the order of any extra continental power. It should no longer take orders from any country, however powerful. The fortunes of Africa are in our hands to make or to mar. For too long have we been kicked around; for too long have we been treated like adolescents who cannot discern their interests and act accordingly…The time has come when we should make it clear that we can decide for ourselves…”


We can continue to list other strong stuff from our past but space constrains us. However this would include the first time outing of Muhammadu Buhari as Head of State when he and his colleagues attempted to use the institution of the military to correct the national shame that the Shagari administration had become and which in the face of its very grave leadership failings at the time had yet gone ahead to award itself a very vexatious second term in office. A coup is a coup is a coup but this writer knows more than a few Nigerians who were sincerely not amused by the scepter of Shagari continuing in office back then!


It is however also on record that during that first time out, Buhari very well knew the colour of national pride, honour and self-reliance that he insisted on exploring alternative, though controversial, approaches to resolving Nigeria’s economic crisis rather than acquiesce to adopting pro-imperialist solutions that have almost never worked in favour of beneficiary states anywhere. Hobbled as we are even today, it is that Buhari whom we expect to see in Washington. May God help Nigeria.




Note: This piece was penned on July 13, 2015

Is Buhari that politically naive?

The nomination last week of Mr. William Babatunde Fowler as Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS has indeed taken the political barometer of the nation one notch higher.


Coming days before the long-expected September date for the unveiling of President Muhammadu Buhari’s list of ministers, the commentary waves are agog as to both the significance of this nomination, and going forward, its contribution to the entire ‘sub-industry of appointments-guessing’ that has since arisen on account of the President’s holding the ball so close to his chest.
Of course, as the nominal captain of the Lagos Internal Revenue Service, LIRS team that grew the average monthly internally generated revenue profile of Lagos State from N3billion to N20.6 billion there is a sense in which Fowler could ordinarily be considered for the position. But there could indeed be more than meets the eye, as we say in these parts.


So why was Fowler nominated? Of course as with all other matters in the current Buhari dispensation, only the President knows. But given the nominees closeness to APC leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, with whom the President has had a frosty relationship on account of the failure of critical earlier nominees which both Tinubu and the nominal APC high command had so authoritatively endorsed, there has necessarily come a reading of the Fowler nomination as a kind of rapprochement; a reaching out by Buhari himself to smoothen rough edges in his relationship with Tinubu.


But then there is another reading. And this is; that in nominating Fowler, Buhari may very well be throwing his cards on the table and like an accomplished Chess master, be goading the other levers of power in the APC and the nation to throw theirs in also ahead of the bigger fights that are ahead. These would include; the screening and clearing of ministers, nominations into boards, ambassadors-designate, as well as critical agencies like the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. And then there is the 2016 budget.


If this is so, and we can indeed demonstrate that there is indeed more method than randomness to the political moves of the President since his emergence on the scene, then it will suggest that so many of us been so glibly mis-reading Mr. Buhari and in the process giving him less credit than he actually deserves in the complex world of political brinksmanship.


Again if this is so, we should equally then be looking at a rather more determinate set of variables going forward even as we undertake a holistic review of every step he has taken so far since his return to the nation’s political frontlines.


Was Mr. Buhari’s decision to run in the 2015 presidential polls - after having earlier suggested he would not - be just a casual or indeed a programmed shift? Was his assiduously working with Tinubu and other opposition leaders to ensure the emergence and rise to prominence of the APC in those heady days of the party’s emergence not indicative of the fact that, he was, even at that time, already embarked on the path of an ambition that is definitely ‘made of sterner stuff,’ a la William Shakespeare.


There is even more. Was his carefully choreographed insistence on a 3-point agenda of ‘reversing insecurity, fighting corruption and curbing unemployment’ even when the APC manifesto and the mood of the nation indicating a much broader package not a deliberate act of only putting on the table what he was personally interested in? Was his relative ‘aloofness’ in the battle for the leadership of the National Assembly only coincidental? Is the delay in naming ministers merely attributable to what Femi Adesina has expressed as ‘slow and steady wins the race?’


The sum of all of this is that we may need to be more thoughtful than we are presently. It would appear that some persons may not have been reading Mr. Buhari correctly. It would appear that the man may be packing far-more political muscle than we have currently bothered to ascribe to him? And the implications would indeed be most interesting in the days ahead.


Which would then leave us with one final point; and this has to do with the ends to which this presently unraveling sense of political astuteness of Mr. President would be deployed to serve? Is it going to be in the larger interests of Nigeria, patriotically defined, or would it be to some self-serving or parochial ends?


Whichever way it would go however, this writer is comforted by the infallible verdict of history which ultimately yet brings every hidden matter to light. Dribble as brilliantly as you can, every mystery on earth eventually comes into the light. And then there is a second truth: propositions, no matter how lofty, do not really stand except they accord with the will of God.
So there is no fretting over our new-found discovery that Mr. Buhari is indeed packing more than what some had thought he had. Indeed, there is even a reassuring ring to the fact that he is this much endowed given the fact that many of our pundits have actually not based their earlier profiling of him on hard and immutable evidence that can stand the test of logical and exegetical inquiry. So let the real Mr. Buhari stand up to be counted and this nation will back him only to the extent that his agenda does indeed correlate with the greater interests of our people. God bless Nigeria!

NNPC: Agenda for Ibe Kachikwu

As was widely expected, President Muhammadu Buhari has continued on his already promised decision to restructure the nation’s long-ailing oil sector by effecting critical personnel changes in the system.


After dissolving the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, he next moved on to relieve the erstwhile Group Managing Director of the corporation, Dr. Joseph Thlama Dahwa of his position, replacing him with the former Executive Vice Chairman and general Counsel of Exxon-Mobil Africa, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu. Equally fired and replaced are several top management staff of the corporation as well as heads of its component subsidiaries.


On assumption of office, Kachikwu has also moved very swiftly to carry out further personnel changes that have seen even more members of the old guard at different levels equally relieved of their duties. He is also literally swearing that he has the mandate of Mr. President to turn things around at the heavily mis-governed corporation. We want to believe him.


Indeed, evidence of the fact that a new order may certainly be brewing at the corporation can be seen firstly, in the fact that not only is a wholesale sweep is presently being undertaken within the cognate leadership cadre of the corporation, a sizeable number of their replacements are being brought from outside the system, thus signaling a resolve at the moment towards ensuring that new broom does indeed take charge of the reform agenda that is expected to be executed.


But that exactly is the point: the full details of the agenda need to be put on the table so we can comprehensively critique it. This is because though carrying out wholesale personnel reform to bring new and fresh good men on board is a good idea, it is even much better when the governing mechanisms around which the organization is run, are built around enduring institutional formats that have even greater overall impact and more assured sustainability on the job being done.


Even as the agenda is being worked out, it is important that we go beyond a lot of the limitations of the Nigerian environment that continue to hobble the NNPC and by extension our overall national petrochemical complex. In this wise, we make the case for the adoption of global best practices in the running of the corporation going forward. We also counsel on the need for very robust and meticulous exegetical studies on the global petroleum industry today with a view to ensuring that we are working and build with a wholesale appreciation of where the industry is today, as well as where it is definitively headed in the years ahead. For example, with green being the vogue now, this is not a time to undertake ecologically-insensitive carbon-heavy projects.


One other area of concern is over how much operational space the new GMD would be granted to carry out his set duties. This is because while we commend President Muhammadu Buhari for the appointment of this well-heeled and diversely experienced technocrat to preside over the affairs of the NNPC, there is also the need to take into consideration the fact that political actors through the years have seen the NNPC as the most handy, if not omnibus piggy-bank of government and as such constantly taken steps and measures to compromise its integrity, governance bearings and accounting structures. And with an increasingly assertive citizenry insisting at every twist and turn for even more and more transparency in the operations of the corporation, the easy way out for many a political actor has been to lay all of the blame for the failings of the corporation at the doorsteps of successive GMDs and go ahead to relieve them of their duties each time the temperature of public disdain rises. Little wonder then that the NNPC penthouse has been graced by as much as six GMDs in the past five years!


On his own part, we want to call Mr. Kachikwu’s attention to the fact that there is a sense in which by his appointment, he is indeed a poster-boy of the long-awaited new Nigeria that is run by men and women of professional candour, integrity and good conscience. As he tackles the day-to-day challenge of running and administering the corporation, he should be conscious of the fact that there are indeed a ‘cloud of witnesses,’ this writer included, that are cheering him on; hoping and praying that he succeeds. This definitely then is not a time to start weaving, or kowtowing to, silly self-enrichment schemes at the expense of the corporation and the Nigerian people who indeed are his ultimate employers. The nation is depending on him at this critical moment in time to run a changed and reformed NNPC that would demonstrate to all and sundry that indeed that new Nigeria that we have long yearned for is indeed possible and here. Mr. Kachikwu must therefore not fail.

Engaging Boko Haram correctly

When the immediate past Goodluck Jonathan administration, after a long season of pussy-footing, gerrymandering and buck-passing finally embarked on a large-scale aerial assault on positions then being held by the Boko Haram insurgents in North Eastern Nigeria, many applauded the move seeing it as the beginning of the end of the sect. However, some of us who wanted the sect gone forever but also knew that everything that was needed to achieve that outcome had not been put in place were nonetheless circumspect: guerilla wars are not exactly won from the air. We have been proved right sadly.


Indeed, though the Boko Haram insurgency has gone on for about a six years now, one notable failing in the entire saga is that as a nation, we are yet to come to grips with what exactly it is. And the sect continues to feast on our somewhat deliberate insistence on not correctly perceiving it for what it is. ‘My people perish because they have rejected knowledge.’ This surely has to change.


When the sect first emerged in Kano, the reaction of the local community was to see it as one other proselytizing movement that was seeking converts for its variant of Islam. The history of the religion was such that time after time, sects and tendencies have continued to show up introducing one dialectic or emphasizing one point. This was one more like the others and in their view, the canvas was big enough to accommodate it.


But they should have looked deeper. This is because, though the sect was doing everything it could to expouse its own variant of the religion, there was also something else that it was also promoting. In declaring all the heritage of western education as a taboo to be discarded, the sect was in a very troubling way demonstrating a certain fanaticism that resonated with the extremist
Shiite attitude that had seen its highpoint in the Iranian revolution of 1979.


The last straw for Boko Haram was its alleged murder of a rival imam and the sacking of his mosque over theological differences. This was the time that the muslim ummah and indeed the Nigerian state should have instituted a very comprehensive enquiry into the teachings, reach and dangers of the sect, but they failed. It was also the best time to scorch the hydra. In this also, they failed.


Rather than embark on this most logical course of action, the sect was literally permitted to flee to the north eastern fringes of Borno and Yobe.


Tragically also, local political juggernauts were soon to do a deal with the sect to help them clinch power at the state level, a move that after its success, came to confer quasi-official legitimacy on the outlaws. This was accentuated by the fact that the resultant administration incorporated one of its leaders as a commissioner for religious affairs and ethical orientation.
Almost inevitable differences soon crept in however, resulting in a strained parting of ways. But this was not after the sect had grown astronomically in personnel, influence and resources. A state of mutual animosity was therefore the norm between both old-time associates and this was to continue until the Yar ‘Adua-led Federal Government was encouraged to unleash the military upon them, a move that led to the killing of the sect’s founding leader, Mohammed Yusuf.


To be sure, there is a sense in which the critical error of terminating Yusuf’s life without proper trial and investigation of the origins, motivations, nuances and depth or otherwise of the group resonates with the latter-day error of authorizing aerial bombardments of the group’s locations without a corollary plan on how to equally contain the inevitable outcome that the sect would in this situation very likely vote to slip back into regular society to save itself and plot fresh ways of continuing to advance its insurgent activities. Now the chickens have come home to roost.


With the benefit of hindsight, the road that should have been taken then may have been to have left the insurgents corralled in the towns and villages that they had already taken and then plotted a comprehensive plan to remove every trace of them. Speed is of essence in matters like this and we recall Chadian President, Idris Deby, asking then for permission to fully pursue after the insurgents and bring home their leadership. Foolish pride; we shut him down. When the blind lead the blind, the Bible surmises, both are guaranteed to fall into the ditch.


From our ditch position today, the options before us would clearly be more gradualist. We need to grow our intelligence infrastructure so it can fully infiltrate the group and bring us much needed information from within. We need to train and retrain our troops to realize that carrying the civil population along, no matter the risks involved, is non-negotiable. And then we need to get mosques across Nigeria and the other affected nations to vote decisively against the insurgents and to play their own part in ensuring that their adherents do not fall prey to the deceitful and beguiling rhetoric from the sects recruiters. We shall overcome, some day.


http://hallmarknews.com/boko-haram-getting-the-terms-of-engagement-right/

Comrade, you’ve taken the wrong path

I like explaining my titles, particularly when they are borrowed. And this one is not any different. It is the title of one of a set of four act plays in Chinese literature. And it deals with issues relating to revolution, change and ‘errors in rendering.’ In Osun State, Nigeria today, we may very well be on such a page.


The coming into office of the incumbent Governor of Osun State was truly the stuff of which heroic revolutionary epics are made. Doggedly, he took on foes that at a first glance, could be said to be immovable. Olagunsoye Oyinlola, the man he ousted was not just a retired army General, he was also a fiery no-nonsense one to boot. And then he was equally an incumbent, in addition to the fact that he also had the then most awesome PDP machine at his behest.


But he was worsted by the dogged Comrade in a battle that had all the trappings of the classic ‘David and Goliath’ saga. Indeed, so humbling was the eventual outcome that the supreme lesson of Oyinlola’s defeat even then was a repeat of that oft stated truism: gods do have clay feet. You only need to take the right aim and they will tumble down.


Today however, a lot has changed. Unlike the situation when he came into power, a slew of economic reversals have since come to expose the shallowness of many a state economy. And Osun is high up on the ladder. With very little to contribute in the arena of Internally Generated Revenue, the state is then regularly constrained to wait on the federation account for whatever it will disburse. And with that ‘ATM’ being presently stymied, Osun bleeds.


To be sure, when the going was good, Aregbesola rode on a dizzyingly populist wave of welfarism. Free meals and uniforms for students, creation of public sector jobs in the thousands, free train rides for Osun indigenes resident in Lagos…the cash was rolling, the man was spending.


Now the bubble has burst and salaries are no longer coming. Pensions are not being paid. Workers are on strike. And Comrade continues to wait for bailouts from the centre to get his groove going on once again. And this indeed is the bigger challenge: that in waiting to simply return to grooving mode, Comrade may not have learnt the first lesson of the Osun challenge that he is enmeshed in today.


Evidence of this can be seen in his own rhetoric on the crisis, the unhelpful comments of his aides, and associated diatribes from the state chapter of the ruling All Progressives Congress. And there is no better evidence of this than in the instance of how the entire machinery has presently being laid out against the hapless judge of the Osun High Court who dared to look the king squarely in the face and proclaim that indeed, His Excellency was no longer wearing any clothes!


Now this is not to say that the learned justice may have indeed got all of her facts right. But hunger really excites anger. And non-payment of public service wages in a nominal civil service state is indeed an invitation to anger. And by the way, as chief executive of the on-going concern that is ‘the state of Osun,’ Comrade’s primary order of business is to manage its resources and affairs in such a way that it meets its existing contractual obligations in a timely manner (wages and pensions included) and provide the greater good for the greatest number of the citizenry.


And we do not think that it is mature and responsible when the governor continues to shift the blame for the current state of affairs to dwindled receipts from the federation account. Yes, there have been dwindled receipts; and so what? Did we all not see it coming? When every other nation in our backyard and beyond began to strike oil, did we not know that there were going to be fewer buyers of the crude which provides the bulk of the federation account receipts that we are bewailing now? The truth of the matter, dear comrade is that, by omission and commission, the administration which you lead has brought in the proverbial ant-infested faggots; you cannot therefore be so hypocritically self-righteous in responding to the consequent arrival of the delegation of lizards! Were you not expecting them? It will indeed be a greater pity if you were not.


So my dear Comrade, the learned justice is not the issue; you dug yourself into this ditch, you will do well to get yourself out. And please do everything to be humble and contrite while doing so.

A Vice-President's dilemma

Professor Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s incumbent Vice-President sure needs all the prayers that he can get at the moment.


A professor of law, former Commissioner for Justice in Lagos State and pastor within the Redeemed Christian Church of God, those who know him say he is a gentleman and indeed one Nigerian that can be trusted to do his best for his country.


This writer’s first interaction with Osinbajo was in the course of his service as Commissioner for Justice in Lagos State. Within that tenure, yours truly who then lived in Oregun, Lagos State had received some summons from the Office of the Defender, one of the institutions set up by Osinbajo as Commissioner for Justice, to provide alternative dispute resolution for Lagos residents.


The particulars of the case in question had to do with a landlord who wanted to summarily evict the writer from his premises on the stated ground that he wanted to renovate the building while in reality all that he wanted was to raise the rents! Osinbajo’s team intervened and very professionally mediated in such a way that yours truly kept his accommodation while the landlord got some raise.


His next encounter with Osinbajo had to do with the latter coming over as a guest of the Men’s Fellowship of the House on the Rock Church in Lagos to speak on issues relating to integrity and doing business as a Christian in today’s Nigeria. That event was held at the Federal Palace hotel and also featured Dr. Christopher Kolade as a second resource person. Instructively, the Professor spoke to the subject and many participants left the venue refreshed.


Beyond these, he had also encountered him now and again on the pages of newspapers, the Covenant Christian Centre’s Platform events, the campaign circuit for the 2015 presidential polls and now as Vice-President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. And in most of these appearances, Osinbajo’s talk has not only been upbeat, it has been largely good. So why does he need the prayers we are canvassing at this moment? We will tell you.


Today, Osinbajo stands in a very difficult position as a bride that is betrothed to three suitors! And the Christian that he is, he would be familiar with the Bible reference: ‘you cannot serve two masters!’


Politically, Osinbajo’s master is Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the presently estranged ‘national leader’ of the All Progressive Congress, APC. His second master is Muhammadu Buhari, the incumbent President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that he was elected on March 28 by Nigerian voters to work alongside. And third, he has the Lord Jesus Christ who watches over his soul and also called him to serve as a pastor under his under-shepherd, Pastor Enoch Adeboye.


With unanimity of purpose and commitment to a common purpose, there should really be no issues on the table. But there is nothing presently to indicate that the values of Tinubu, Buhari and the Lord Jesus Christ are in concord. ‘And can three, sorry two, work together except they agree?’ So you understand why the prayers are needed.


However, Osinbajo’s task is really not a hopeless one. On the contrary this writer is much persuaded that if he juggles his cards correctly, he would yet come out as one that will do his bit in the Nigerian reconstruction story.


To achieve this outcome, he must begin from a dispassionate analysis of the situation in which he is presently enmeshed. Politically, his leader remains Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He must continue to show allegiance to him on this score. At the governance plain, his boss is Muhammadu Buhari. He must also be totally loyal and supportive of him.


As things stand, in carrying out his schedules and relating with these two bosses he is already getting to testy crossroads. This is where his third boss, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he must always emplace at all times as a super-boss, comes in. In all circumstances, He alone must lead. And this Osinbajo must always live by no matter the costs.


And there could be costs, humanly speaking. Bola Tinubu may complain that he is not getting enough political support from him. Buhari may aver that he is giving too much support to Tinubu. To all of these, Osinbajo simply has to ensure that he does what he knows to be right and gives to all of his Caesars what belongs to them. But to God he must give his all. That is how his illustrious predecessors on this thorny path - the Josephs, Davids and Daniels - survived. And here also lies his path to safety; and glory.

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.