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.