Oily lessons from Saudi Arabia

Last week, this column touched on the crisis of fuel supply in the country and the notable incongruity of having a so-called ‘oil-producing’ (really, the precise term should be ‘rent-collecting’) nation that cannot refine its crude domestically but has to engage in the neo-colonial and economically ruinous practice of round-tripping its crude abroad from where it shamelessly re-imports same as finished petroleum products!


This week, we may have gone elsewhere but the reality of the fact that just like was the case with NITEl and the telecommunications sector, nothing would really change until we dismantle the NNPC behemoth, compels us to remain on that page in the hope that over time we will achieve the required critical mass to dislodge the beast.


Oil is politics and for a mono-dependent economy as ours, it quickly moves the subject to the realm of political economy. As is evident presently, Nigerians and indeed the rest of the world have been at the receiving end of dislocating oil prices in the past few months. So malevolent has its effects been that the naira has since spiraled from an exchange rate of N151 to the dollar to a current figure in the range of N227!


This has come with collosal effects. As we write, the Jonathan administration and the National Assembly have continued to tinker with the 2015 budget in which revenues are largely predicated on crude oil sales. States can hardly meet salary and pension obligations even as 2015 may sadly yet turn out to be our leanest year yet in much needed capital projects and infrastructure upgrades. At the personal level for citizens, the value of N1 this time last year hovers between 50 and 70 kobo even as Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote has tumbled some 40 paces on the world’s richest rankings. Of course, foreign investors, clinical and unemotional portfolio managers that they are, have since scrammed, waiting to someday return when you would have sorted yourselves out! And ‘thanks’ to a leadership hiatus, organized labour has not sent its already indicated wage review invoices to government at the moment, but wait for it, it is coming! And with all its implications too!!


When many analysts explain the problem, they put it on the doorsteps of the now traditional ‘general downturn in the global economy.’ But they need to be more precise: this current crisis has its roots in the Middle East, and precisely in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the acknowledged biggest producer of crude oil in the world today.


The land remade in the 1920s by the then fundamentalist House of Saud has over time been largely made famous by the annual convocation of the muslims at Mecca and Medina for the hajj. Within the conclave of Arab politics, it has also been seen lately as a conservative political monarchy as opposed to the theocratic rule of the mullahs in Iran and the jackheads of ‘Islamic State,’ Al-Shabab and Boko Haram. Then there is the issue of the opportunistic relationship between its leaders and the Washington establishment which has helped the West secure a critical political foothold in the Gulf but deeply infuriated regional power contenders and Ottoman empire revivalists like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.


Oil as politics
In the 1970s and 1980s, the West, whose production and growth machines have for over a half century been closely tied to crude oil as a critical energy source, pushed all of its buttons to ensure that crude oil prices fell. Oil producing nations, including the single largest producer of all, Saudi Arabia, saw their revenues decline massively. It was not funny.

It was particularly most difficult for the Saudis who, on account of their closeness to the leaders of the West, were being vilified in the Arab world as traitors to the oil producing nations, the Arab world and the beneficial interests of muslims. To mitigate some of this, the Saudis used their clout in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, to galvanize a campaign to resist free-falling oil prices through measures like national production quotas


It is leadership, stupid!
One man’s meat it has been said is another man’s poison. For years, the Saudis were content to remain as shock balancers in the global economy as it has to do with oil. Recently however, their patience has literally snapped. There is a limit to how much you can pumell a dog without it responding.

The point of vexation is in the threat of an imminent end to the reign of crude oil as the single most dominant fuel source in the world, thanks to continuing progress in the research and development of shale oil and other energy alternatives. Should this come to full fruition, the Saudis risk not just a return to the tumultuous 70s and 80s but also an even more uncertain future where their crude would no longer be king. So this is a fight between crude and shale and the worst hit nations in the debacle are those like Nigeria who on account of having no strategic vision in the entire process, are mere bystanders. Pity the nation….

It is one thing to be beaten today. It is however something else to see tomorrow’s trouble coming and do nothing to avert it. Nigerians, your vote is your power; this weekend, use it wisely. It shall be well with our nation.

Jega, the baby, the bath water

Today, Nigeria has what has been described as a Jega problem. It has to do with the fact that a very influential and high-level segment of the political elite has concluded that the biggest national project on the horizon, the 2015 polls, should not be superintended over by the Professor of Political Science and immediate past Vice-Chancellor of the Bayero University, Kano.


To be sure, there have been several problems with the Jega tenure. However, this is not an apology for the out-going INEC boss. And on a personal note, this correspondent who has voted in every election since 1999 should be the last person to ‘defend’ the Professor given that on account of some of the failings of the Independent National Electoral Commission that he presently leads, your correspondent, sadly, is not a registered voter in the 2015 polls.


However, beyond the individual hurts that Nigeria has caused us must be a deeper commitment to the broader interests of the nation. And this today has to do with the worrying trend to demonize the office and person of the Chairman of the Independent National Elections Commission.


At this point, history must be our guide. And here we recall that Nigeria has had a long roll of electoral commissioners being vilified. From Esua in 1964 to Ani in 1979, Ovie Whiskey in 1984, Guobadia, Iwu and now Jega, INEC Chairmen have actually not had their ride easy. In the run-up to the 1983 election, Ovie-Whiskey was so harassed that he had to publicly ‘swear’ that he had never seen a million naira in his life!


For Jega today, the accusations have been similarly heated. He has for example been accused of taking actions to favour the North and for good measure, the leading candidate of northern extraction in the polls, General Muhammadu Buhari (retd). For one who supervised the 2011 polls where the same Buhari was defeated by the incumbent, this 360 degrees shift has to be explained. If Jega did not go out of his way to promote the interests of Buhari in 2011, what changed?


The Nigerian political environment being what it yet is today, it is clear that some of these difficult-to-add-up postulations would be heard now and again. What is more worrying however is that within this confluence of ‘all-is-fair-in-the-jostling-for-political-and-personal-advantage,’ we are now seemingly becoming a people who stand for nothing, who dispense with ethics and truth so cheaply and who throw away the baby with the bath water so casually.


The present elections will come and go with one of either Goodluck Jonathan or Muhammadu Buhari becoming President. But for some of us, that is only the beginning. We will next have to roll up our sleeves and get on with the tough work of building a maximally functional nation, complete with institutions that work and systems that thrive.


And it is here that we return to the Jega tenure. For example, Jega’s emergence in 2011 was a moment that was cherished. Here was a competent and accomplished professional coming to fill a void that had been waiting to be filled. And so unanimous was his appeal and the mood of the nation to help him succeed that, when he asked for a seemingly incredulous sum of money to do the first voters roll for the 2011 polls, the nation rose up to a man to say, ‘give it to him, we want the job done.’


Perhaps this was part of the problem. That Nigeria was too generous to Jega; that he got away with his primal request so easily; that he was Nigeria’s spoilt child, that the national Assembly did not perform more of the oversight that was required of it, that….


There were also other ‘problems.’ In an interview this correspondent had with Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe weeks into the Jega appointment, he pointed to the fact that one problem Jega could have in delivering on his mandate would very well be that the average INEC Chairman is usually brought in from above and then introduced to a team that has already been put in place for him to work with! The implication of this, he reasoned, is very clear: he has limited elbow room within which to manouvre.


Abaribe’s point can be given flesh today in what is clearly the Ogun dilemma. As we write, the National average for voter cards collection is well over 80 percent. But Ogun is only now just struggling to close on 50! So what is the problem here? Many reasons have been adduced for this lag but this writer who lives in Ogun and who had tried to register there knows that Ogun INEC is structurally today a most incompetent organization where gratification is requested of communities before electoral officials are sent to register them!


But there have also been global positives in the Jega years. The introduction of youth corps members in the electoral process, the use of professors and vice chancellors as returning officers, the search for and insistence on modernizing the electoral infrastructure as it has to do with say the Permanent Voters Cards and the Card Reader machines; these are positive developments that should be sustained and built further upon even in the post-Jega era.


Has Jega been fantastic? No. Has he been totally terrible? This is arguable. But for Nigeria, the struggle surely continues. And this includes the struggle to not throw away the baby with the bath water. Good night, Mr. Jega. Of course you know by now not to hope for a renewal of your tenure as it lapses in a few weeks’ time.



This piece was first published in www.hallmarknews.com

Slaying the fuel scarcity dragon

As I write this piece, Nigerians are about putting the lid on the latest incidence of fuel scarcity, the annoying wait at the gas pumps, burning away precious time in needless queues, looking for fuel with which to power their cars, generating sets and other industrial appliances.


Like many of the periodic acts of fuel scarcity that occasionally ravage this clearly misbegotten oil-producing nation, the media had before this time out caught a whiff of its imminence and written whistle-blowing stories to push the system managers to work at averting it. Characteristically however, the spin-doctors at the Ministry of Petroleum and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, preferred to obfuscate the facts and continue to wallow in denial. And then the chickens came home to roost; literally.


Because it is election season, funds were of course found from ‘ways and means’ sources to stem the gap, albeit temporarily, and to get fuel a fairly significant volume of fuel back to the pumps. The NNPC - which is yet to fully pay back the $1.48bn, which even the pro-establishment PWC audit report held, it had withheld from the Federation account - for example, promptly announced an injection of some 688million litres of products into the system in a move that it believed would definitely make the current queues history. It has succeeded in the main; but we are yet to slay the dragon.


And the reasoning here is simple. If it is true that the recurrent supply shortfalls have come upon us because the ‘Major Marketers’ say they can no longer continue to shoulder the burden of borrowing to import products on their behalf, and also on behalf of a government that perennially fails to pay its own negotiated ‘subsidy component,’ then the question is for how long can the NNPC wade in and meet the supply shortfalls? Also worth answering would be where the NNPC found the funds to import the current bridging stock as well as would find even more to undertake further importation thereafter given the cash crunch that has afflicted government revenues? All things considered then, the current queues will almost invariably return in the not-so-distant future, because the dragon still breathes.


At the centre of the problem is the crisis of perennial mis-diagnosis. In statement after statement, NNPC and the Ministry continually pass on the gauntlet. They accuse hapless Nigerian citizens of panic buying and their partner-marketers of hoarding on a good day and being most insensitive on other days. NNPC is the patriotic party in all of the messages and the enemy is the other. But beyond the blatant blame shifting that is apparent from these lines, it is also clear that any contributions by citizens and marketers in the entire debacle can only be flicks on an already developed gargantuan snow-trail. So we have to go back to the critical question of where the massive iceberg came from.


Critically examined, we are faced with that classic situation explored in that anti-imperialist poster that was most popular within the progressive students’ movement a few decades ago. It displays the picture of a Caucasian imperial overlord being carried in a hammock by black African freedom-seeking slaves, and the inscription which we only paraphrase here, read somewhat: ‘I am the source of your oppression, the only way you would be free is when I come down, but I would not!


Put squarely, the trouble with our petro-chemical complex today is the nature, structure and oppressive mould in which our oil affairs are managed. And it would take the complete restructuring of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to begin to appropriately reset the template. Herein is the path to our liberty as a people.
The NNPC and its mother ministry today are like the Caucassian oppressor described in the poster just referred to. They are imperial behemoths, parasites that leach on what should ordinarily have been a most robust national oil sector. We will not make any progress in our oil affairs as a nation if their excesses are not curtailed. And some of the corollary questions to address in this regard are whether we need them in the first place, and if we do, whether they should continue to remain in their present imperial form and shape, too?


As things stand in the sector today, our crude oil is explored and drilled by private prospecting companies. Going down the chain, other private companies negotiate long-term contracts to buy the produced crude and all of these objectively speaking can take place without the NNPC and the Ministry of Petroleum. Indeed, when the first oil contracts were entered into in colonial Nigeria, it was in the form of the Governor-General giving a long lease to Shell D’Arcy, precursor of today’s Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, to prospect for, drill and market oil on behalf of the colonial state. And it worked. From 1938 when this lease was given to 1958 when oil was finally located at Oloibiri, this was the extant state of affairs. All the government involvement that was noticeable at this time was that Shell D’Arcy sent progress reports to the relevant desk in the Colonial Department of Mines. It was that much of a simple operation. And no one batted an eyelid.


At independence, it was still this state of affairs that persisted until the civil war and its aftermath when oil began to play a heavier role in the nation’s revenue profiles. This coupled with the move for more and more centralized federal power, led to the introduction of a Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the formation of the Nigerian National Oil Corporation which was to later become the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.


While it has been argued that the expanding profile of oil in the national economy justified the need to introduce these additions, the reality is that their introduction may have indeed done more harm than good to the overall national petrochemical and economic infrastructure. This is because, rather than assisting in the enhancement of the national petrochemical and economic value chain, they have rather retarded same. This is because though petroleum has since come to be the biggest source of our national revenue, its shoddy management by the agencies in the dock has resulted in a most untenable situation where the nation is today saddled with deficit refineries, a despoiled environment, perennially leaking pipelines and haemorrhaging national values. It is a sad day today in oil-endowed Nigeria.


And so without adding any significant real value to our national fortunes today, the Ministry and NNPC have become most notorious as a cesspool of scandals, blockades, easy cash, slush funds and economic sabotage. They routinely withhold funds from the Federation Account, make upfront deductions from revenues accruing to the nation and dispose of national assets at their own whims. This clearly is not the way to go. And these are the underlying reasons why fuel scarcity would not go for a very long time to come. Compelling reasons indeed why we must most determinedly, slay the dragon today.

Lagos, the April polls and the imperative of big ideas

There are many things wrong with Nigeria as structured today, we have repeatedly held. But one of the most jarring is that the constituent units are not pulling their weight. If and when they do, Nigeria will rise up again.


One state that has a good chance of pushing further in this regard is Lagos. It is clearly the smallest in geographical terms but arguably the richest in terms of financial and commercial capabilities. And for it to even build stronger on this base, we need then to look at the vector factors that made the present degree of success possible.


History has a place in this. The colony of Lagos was set up as a separate British jurisdiction over a half century before my co-pen pusher, Flora Shaw, gave the overall entity her name.


With the amalgamation in 1914, it was the first, formal coordinate seat of governance. At Independence in 1960, this status was reconfirmed and remained so until about the end of the century.


But then the strength of Lagos is not just in its being a former capital city of Nigeria. There are indeed several other variables.


One critical element of the Lagos story is its commercialism. From the ports to the banks, Lagos sits atop a lot of the business and traffic in this yet import-dependent nation.


The development of this strong commercialism has also encouraged a greater ethnic accommodation. Though this suffers from time to time, it remains a major component element in its continuing success story. And it is one that several other states and territories who are looking to grow should not obscure: migrants build cities, states and nations, effortlessly.
Indeed, stretched further, there is a sense in which the coastal city was prepared to be a rainbow enclave. Lagos is beneficiary of a host of migrations from Edo to Brazil, Ile-Ife to Ijebu-Ode, Portugal to England and Sagamu to Niger; Lagos has taken many in and continues to take even more.


With this mass of people have come urban engineering pressures that successive administrations have tried to respond to. During the colonial era for example, ‘new towns’ like Surulere were encouraged to come into being. And they did. Post-independence, the struggle has continued. From the ‘tenure’ of Mobolaji Johnson through Raji Rasaki and on to Lateef Jakande, Bola Tinubu and the incumbent, Raji Fashola, the race has been two-fold: responding to the dynamics of the ever-burgeoning population and advancing the infrastructure to cater for even more migrants that would inevitably come.


In all of this, one critical concern has been the issue of getting resources that government can use to work on and expand the state’s infrastructure. For Mobolaji Johnson, his tenure coincided with the execution of city-redefining infrastructure projects like the Carter bridge and Ikorodu road. Lateef Jakande on his part expanded schools and hospitals infrastructure massively and during the Fashola administration, a lot of critical road infrastructure have been revamped and/or introduced.


Two factors that helped Johnson, resource-wise, were the outpouring of oil wealth, nationally, and the fact of Lagos being the extant federal capital during that era. For Jakande, it was the drive to be faithful to the manifesto of the Unity Party of Nigeria. And for the Fashola administration, it has been built on the current tax-and-spend paradigm that reigns in the state.
On account of many strides that it has taken, Lagos has over time then come to be established as Nigeria’s pacesetter state. And one challenge before it in the forthcoming electoral and post-electoral season is about its living up to this billing.
The next administration would have to do more than has been done this far. As things stand now, the tax-and-spend regime looks like it is here to stay but there must be a lot done to plug loopholes, including issues of probity, transparency and popular buy-in. But no matter what is done, it is most critical that for the Lagos of the future to emerge, bigger and more elaborate ideas need to come in stronger onto the governance template. And when they do, the taxed would have had greater value for their ‘sacrifices.’


For example, virtual ‘brand new cities’ have to be built to decongest the very many presently clogged parts of the state. Lekki for example has no doubt been helped by the expansion in road infrastructure there, but the continually expanding traffic situation on that artery comes with a very clear foreboding that that ‘city’ could soon begin to experience even more troubling incidents of epileptic but sustained shut-ins. God forbid. While the average feeling is that Lagos has no land left upon which to build, the truth is that with creative engineering, the stretches between Ajah and Epe and Ajah and Ikorodu can receive new and better planned cities. Equally capable of taking new developments is the stretch between Ojo and Seme. And should more space be needed, the state can negotiate with neighbouring Ogun for example, to ‘take over’ swathes of the Lagos-Shagamu expressway and expand the remit of its present ‘limited acquisition’ of farmlands on the Ikorodu-Ijebu-Ode axial. And if outright take over fails, an alternative ‘Greater Towns’ framework can be contemplated and worked on. The truth of the Lagos situation clearly is that since more and more people are surely going to continue migrating into this ‘fairly solvent Nigerian oasis of economic opportunity,’ forward looking administrators must continually engage and re-engage in scenario planning with a view to ensuring that the city does not someday crash on account of this deluge. Now is the time to act.


A second core decision that the next administration should bring to bear is greater creativity in the arena of fiscal management. For one, the State has in the Fashola years being borrowing massively for projects execution even as it has also built stronger savings buffers. As at September 2014 for example, the state’s debt portfolio was a princely N160bn. Even with this, there is still an assurance that the state can really do without spending any bit of its income allocation from the federation account today. This is particularly so when it is observed that the state currently runs annual budgets in the half a trillion naira mark! And that is why it should go ahead now to build on its present strengths through the House of Assembly passing a law to compel that at least 50 percent of the current ‘paltry’ revenue from the Federation account should be automatically saved and invested and not spent. Like Norway does with 85 percent of its oil receipts, this would be a further endowment for future generations.


We also need a greater practical synergy with the people. To whom much is given, much indeed is expected. While the rest of Nigeria whines over the curse of government, Lagos should be basking in its positives. The state must take very strong and assuring steps to improve its education and healthcare facilities to world-grade and residents should benefit maximally in this. Public schools and health institutions remain largely unattractive and this must not be allowed to continue. It is not enough to give people free education or free healthcare. If there is no quality integral in the offering, the people have really only been shortchanged. In this wise, it is quite timely that one of the candidate’s asking to be elected governor is already talking of a statewide Health Insurance scheme. While some may balk at a project of this magnitude, given its anticipated costs, the other side of the equation is that a well-executed health insurance scheme would translate into greater prosperity for Lagos and Lagosians. So let us not give up so readily.


Still talking of big ideas, another candidate is proposing a N25billion Employment Fund. This also is a winning proposition if it is properly executed. And the logic here is simple. With thousands of Nigerians pouring into the state daily in search of jobs and economic opportunities, a fund of this nature would avail employers with the necessary financial resources with which to create the jobs and opportunities that government does not have. The barber with two apprentices can move on to four. The bakery down the road can acquire a delivery van and thereby be in position to expand its market reach. Lagos must embrace its destiny. It simply cannot say no now to committing to continuing growth. And progress. E ko o ni baje o!

Cry, the beloved country

You may already know Alan Paton’s epic, anti-apartheid novel from which this caption has been taken. But we are not talking of South Africa today. No, we are talking today about Nigeria, which to paraphrase our own Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has continued to be enthralled in an ‘embarrassment of bad choices.’


Yes, bad choices. And we know what happens with bad choices. They invariably lead to bad outcomes. Some eternally optimistic Nigerian would say ‘God forbid!’ But that is why the creator Himself carefully outlined in the Book of Deuteronomy: ‘This day I place before you life and death. Choose life that you may live!’


Indeed, before the current dilemma of having to choose between Buhari and Jonathan, Nigeria and Nigerians have long been enthralled in choice-making.


The British first set up four separate ‘protectorates.’ They were the northern, southern, oil rivers and the colony of Lagos. Then for greater administrative ease, they began to blend them into one entity and finally ended with the unified territory of Nigeria in 1914.


The January 1966 coup brought in some dilemma when it did not succeed in all of its objectives. It left the rump of the administration with two options: work around it some more until a civilian government could be put in place or turn over power to the armed forces. The lot fell on the then Senate President, Nwafor Orizu to read ‘the instrument of surrender.’ In a classic case of déjà vu, the military’s withdrawal of protection for the electoral process last weekend follows most whimsically in that same tradition.


In July 1966 also, the hamstrung North wanted out of the unified federation. Araba, they insisted. Again the British intervened and the mantra changed: ‘To keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done!’


With the crisis in the North and the pogroms, a traumatised Eastern region had to make a choice. The crowd wanted out. Some other voices counselled continuing on with ‘difficult dialogue.’ The military administrator of the region, Lt Col Odumegwu Ojukwu cast the deciding vote. ‘On Biafra we stand.’


Were there alternatives to postponing last weekend’s polls? Plenty. But two would suffice here. And they reach to the heart of the issues.


A country is about its plans. Nigeria planned the botched electoral event four years ago. Three years after, the substantive agency in charge of the project declared specific dates for the contest. And then with literal days to the event, the agency is forced to abort the process.


Two principal challenges have been largely adduced for this. First is the issue of security. Nigeria has been fighting insurgents for years. And if we recall our historical details correctly, the escalation in the violent disposition of Boko Haram coincides with the extra-judicial killing by the security forces of Boko Haram’s first leader. When the same forces say they are requesting six weeks to finish off or substantially contain the insurgents (as the text is now being watered to), the question to ask is that given public knowledge that the theatre of conflict largely involves 14 local governments spread across three of our 36 states, could Nigeria not have requested strategic military support six months ago from the United Nations to beef up security in the affected areas and thereby ensure peaceful polling as has been the case in Iraq, Afghanistan and several other conflicted nations where the Nigerian military has participated and shone?


The second issue is that of the organisational inadequacies of INEC. Now, there is really no breaking news in saying that INEC, like the average national institution, is performing below the mark. And this writer is a personal victim giving that on account of this tardiness, he would not be voting in the elections. It is sad, but that is our cross today. But to insist that the elections must not hold on account of this is most mischievous. The other day for example, I watched INEC spokesman, Kayode Idowu, reel out figures on the level of PVCs collection as at Feb 10, 4 days to the initial polling date. Contrary to the widespread view that the PVCs had only been given out to ‘northern voters,’ the records show that in Akwa Ibom INEC had scaled the 80 per cent mark, while in Rivers and Abia States, PVC collection was in the range of 75 – 78 per cent.


Let us describe the spade after its shape. This postponement is indeed a sore blight and my prayer and hope is that this is all that it is. May God help Nigeria.


This piece was initially published on www.hallmarknews.com

Goodbye, Mr. Omar

NLC elections and the legacy conundrum


A democracy is many things. It is about citizens that vote. It is about institutions that are constitutionally enabled to drive the processes of statecraft. While some function directly, others exert indirect influences. One such indirect buoy is organised labour. As the aggregator of the views of the bulk of the working class in a country, organised labour is an important player in the overall democracy project.


During the Olusegun Obasanjo era when Adams Oshiomhole held sway as captain of the labour movement, and in the absence of a strong, formal political opposition in the land; the lot fell on the labour movement to ensure that there was some degree of accountability in the land.


While some commentators take exception to this liberal reading of the mandate of Labour in a democratic society, the deeper truth is that such a reading did not begin with Oshiomhole. In the 1940s for example, it was organised labour, then led by the venerable Micheal Imoudu, aka Number One, that rose to the challenge of insisting on the right of Nigerian workers and people to be treated with dignity and decorum in the land of their birth despite that Nigeria was then a British-occupied territory.
Imoudu it was who led the workers and other Nigerian nationalists in what is perhaps, the first minimum wage protests in our history, the Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) struggle. When the colonial security forces brutalized and killed workers at the Iva Valley Mines in the eastern heartland of Enugu, it was again the mercurial pan-Nigerian fighter that rose to the fray and led organised labour and the nationalists in demanding justice for victims and more hospitable mining conditions in the land.
Imoudu’s interventions were not only for the masses. When for example, he heard that the Nigerian elite were being denied access to ‘Whites Only’ clubs, the lion in him arose and he led yet another series of marches to de-segregate the clubs. Indeed, when the full and correct story of Nigeria’s independence movement is eventually told, it would be most apparent that it is heroic statesmen like Imoudu that should occupy the top ranks.


Beyond Imoudu and Oshiomhole, other notable labour leaders like Hassan Summonu have also read the mandate of labour to include advocacy for the rights and interests of the Nigerian people. And such advocacy has helped in ensuring a balance in the political make-up of the nation and ensuring that the issues of the mass are not casually dismissed by elite power jugglers.
It is one such moment that arose on January 1, 2012 when the Jonathan administration gave Nigerians the very ill-timed new year’s gift of a hike in the prices of petroleum products! Incensed, organised labour joined other civil society advocates in resisting the increase.


However, unlike in the Imoudu and Oshiomhole eras, it soon became clear that the Abdulwaheed Omar-leadership of the NLC, in consort with the Peter Esele-led Trade Union Congress were only observing the motions. To paraphrase a Bible text, they were only ‘having a form of militancy but denying the power thereof.’ And so the protests petered off.


Many commentators believe that the now-ending Omar era, like that of Paschal Bafyau also, clearly does not fit in with the highpoints of the labour movement in Nigeria. And even as Congress is engaged this week in picking a new leadership, they also do not see much to recommend the trio of Ayuba Wabba, Igwe Achese and Joe Ajaero who are currently angling to succeed Omar as NLC President.


Interestingly, the NLC polls are coming in the middle of one of the most embarrassing mis-steps associated with organised labour in recent times. It has to do with the ill-advised mass housing scheme being undertaken by Congress in conjunction with the developer, Kriston Lally Nigeria Limited which till date has failed to deliver one house!
While Congress is accusing the company of making illegal withdrawals from the project account, the company is accusing Congress of not having met a pre-condition of the project, namely the provision of land upon which the said houses would be built!
Meanwhile the embattled workers remain caught in the throes with no houses, their monies trapped and no solid assurance that the saga would be resolved in their favour soon. This is what happens when leaders leave the core demands of their calling in preference for chasing shadows.


The next President of the NLC must then not be only one who stares down government. He must also be one who would like Caeser’s wife is seen to be clearly above board in all respects. Goodbye, Mr Omar.

Militant Islam and the rest of us

Last week’s attack by Islamic fundamentalists on media workers at the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo in Paris, was clearly a wake-up call for all of the peoples of the world. And quite aptly, the incident has since attracted global umbrage with leaders, commentators and activists united in their disgust over the fiendish and atrocious acts of the murderers.


In Nigeria, which has for five years running being at the sustained end of the Boko Haram insurgency, it was yet a grim reminder that the darts of fundamentalism have truly eaten deep. The local angle was to be further exarcebated at the weekend when yet another bloody strike was carried out by the insurgents on the much-besieged town of Baga almost at the same time that a strappling 10-year old girl blew herself and no less than ten others up, at a market in Maiduguri.


For a world that has been at the receiving end of the insurgents’ onslaught, the easy thing to do in response to this continuing tale of ‘sorrow, tears and blood’ is to ask what the insurgents want and to hang their troubles on that. But it is not that simple. This is because the fundamentalists who are canvassing a new ‘world order’ in which the Islamic religion, ideology and worldview is the only accepted norm, are in a generic sense aligned to the global Islamic idea of how humans should live, worship and revere their creator. And to put the icing on the cake, there reside in the earth today, an estimated 1.8 billion muslims, accounting for about 25 per cent of all of humanity.


While it is clear that not every muslim in the earth today is a sword-wielding or bomb-strapped terrorist going out on the streets looking for targets to die with, there are very many non-muslims who think that not enough has been done to separate the wheat from the chaff. What has been done this far is to rhetorically ostracise the fundamentalists from mainstream muslims and to therefore view them as an extreme bunch who do not represent the worldview and aspirations of mainstream Islam. But is that all that can and must be done at a time when the evidence on ground is that the extremists have presently gone gaga and the sceptre of Islamic fundamentalism is assuming clearly very worrying dimensions the world over?


This writer understands the burden that the fundamentalists are heaping on Islam as a religion but then the next question has to be asked. Per chance the fundamentalists do succeed; what would be the outcome? Clearly, an-all Islamic world! Hence moderate muslims need to do more to reassure non-muslims that, at heart, they really do not mind living in a world where Islam contends with other faiths as alternative options and where individuals retain the ‘right to freedom of (spiritual) expression. Indeed there is a feeling amongst several troubled non-muslims that many ‘moderate muslims’ are only ‘sleeper-fundamentalists’ that time and circumstance would fully reveal. This conclusion may very well be wrong but that is what they can see.


Put in clearer perspective, there is also a sense in which Nigeria’s present confrontation with militant Islam must be better situated. In doing this, it is most appropriate to note that Islam had made its entry into the Nigerian landmass since the 9th Century as part of the trans-Sahara trade route. So there is indeed a sense in which Islam has come to stake a claim to at least part of the territory of Nigeria today.


And when we talk particularly of Islamic fundamentalism, it is also to be remembered that the jihad of Uthman dan Fodio was not a tea-drinking session. It was undergirded by a sturdy and militant act of Islamic propagation that could in many respects be described as fundamentalist. Of course since then, there have been latter-day fundamentalist activities including those of Mohammed Marwa, aka Maitatsine, and now Boko Haram.



So what is to be done now? Again we return to history. For the average fundamentalist crusader, the inspiration dates back to the medieval era of the Ottoman empire when parts of Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa were ensconsced within that empire. It is that empire which Al-Gaeda, ISIS, Al-Shabab, Boko Haram and the rest of the fundamentalist crew are feverishly trying to re-enact. And it is in an appreciation of this reality that we can then begin to chart the way forward.