It was like a joke at first. Nigeria’s national anthem was being reversed to the previous one by a law passed by the national assembly. The president is believed to be the inspiration for this somewhat pointless action taken by the national parliament, the logic for which has been looked for to no avail. It couldn’t determine if the bill was an executive or private member bill. However, it is noteworthy and unprecedented how quickly President Tinubu signed it and how urgently the national assembly passed it. Simply put, the Tinubu presidency is majoring in minor amid economic and security crises.

Priorities and the results of actions and inactions are important to life. The economic and security challenges present President Tinubu’s administration with at least two fronts of a national emergency. A man whose house is on fire doesn’t go after rats, but going for a change of the national anthem—which, incidentally, not many Nigerians think is a problem—makes just that impression. Every citizen is concerned about the growing economic and security problems, which the president needs to address head-on.

The World Bank and the IMF, two Bretton Woods institutions, enticed President Tinubu to abandon fuel subsidies and defend the naira, a step that previous Nigerian presidents fiercely opposed or implemented piecemeal. For the sole reason that he was eager to validate his disputed presidential mandate, which is still in dispute, and to gain worldwide influence as an ‘action president’, Tinubu fell for it and led Nigeria into a trap.

Even crude oil, which makes up about 75 percent of the country’s export earnings, was heavily mortgaged during the past Muhammadu Buhari administration. This indicates that just a portion of Nigeria’s oil exports are sold for income; the remainder is used to pay off debt and meet other commitments made to other countries.

To make matters worse, the naira was floated and made to compete with other world currencies in the absence of significant inflow from exports and external reserves that continued to decline from $35 billion at the start of the Tinubu administration. Braggadocio is no virtue. What chance does Tinubu’s economic team see for the naira against, say, the $1 trillion foreign reserve-backed Chinese yuan, not to mention the British pound, US dollar, EU euro, or Japanese yen? Yet, the presidency boasts that the naira is floating to find its level.

The naira, as the trend is showing, has no level and needs to be defended and protected by all means. If not, it will collapse along with the nation’s economy. Because of the significant disruption and misalignment the naira floating and unplanned fuel subsidy removal have caused to the economy, the government is once again standing up for the naira, just like other nations do with their currencies.

The unplanned removal of fuel subsidies remains a tragic economic decision and another instance of braggadocio. Combined with naira floatation, the two policies dragged the economy into stagflation, with food inflation standing at about 40% as of today, a figure never recorded since Nigeria came into existence. As an example, in May 2023, when Tinubu took over, a basket of tomatoes sold for about N10,000. This week, tomatoes sold for N150,000. Yes, you read it right, and this kind of galloping inflation is not isolated. Virtually all goods have moved up by at least 300% and will leap further up when the new minimum wage comes into effect.

That’s what you get when you have rising prices for goods, expanding unemployment, and economic stagflation. That is what the country has to urgently deal with, yet the national assembly and the presidency are more focused on changing the national song.

In actuality, both the previous and current national anthems had important messages and were appropriate. The old hymn “Nigeria, we hail thee” is a relic from the colonial era because it was composed during the rule of the British in colonial days in 1959 and was first rendered the Whites. In 1978, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo changed it, ostensibly to create something genuinely indigenous and to strengthen the nation’s autonomy.

The succeeding anthem brought in by Obasanjo—”Arise, O’ Compatriots”—makes a lot of sense as well. So, changing to the old has nothing to do with meaninglessness or applicability. It smacks more of inconsequential politics and ego trips that detract from the economic and security crises, which are the main challenges unsettling Nigeria at the moment. The third challenge is corruption, which is still having a field day and growing more and more intractable.

Therefore, one cannot help but beg the president to concentrate on the important matters, give the nation’s economic and security challenges the emergency attention they require, and give less attention to unimportant and irrelevant issues.

Nigeria is a nation of farmers. The country’s economy is built primarily on agriculture, and not much has been done to move the country away from subsistence farming and towards mechanised agriculture. Terrorists, Janjaweed bandits, and killer herdsmen have destroyed even subsistence farming by evicting Nigerian farmers from their lands and causing food shortages and serious insecurity.

Farmers in many states now have to pay terrorists and bandits to gain access to their farms so they may plant and harvest crops, given the level of insecurity that has enveloped the land.

The proposed establishment of the state police is a wise decision because it will enable the people to use their state governments to defend themselves against terrorists and bandits invading the country and other groups of terrorists who are encircling the country like vultures and attacking everywhere like a pack of wild dogs. To reduce the possibility of state governor misuse, the establishment of state police would require extremely detailed legislative drafting. The national anthem change is not as urgent as security is. Yet, such frivolities are what preoccupy the FG and the NASS.

The economy is in dire straits and requires rejigging. Until the value of the naira comes down to a reasonable level (below N1,000) and stabilises there, the country’s economy will not improve. Fuel subsidy has returned through the back door as a result of the government realising that the pump price of fuel cannot be allowed to continue to rise at the whim of staged market forces. If subsidies hadn’t been used to intervene, the price of fuel at the pump would have surpassed 1,000 naira long ago.

However, without the refineries in the country working, the price of fuel at the pump would not resettle favourably. Not a single refinery is operating a year after Tinubu entered office. As a private enterprise, the Dangote refinery has taken off. This is unlikely to provide any relief, though, as Nigeria is unable to provide crude to the Dangote plant due to both oil theft and the Buhari administration’s mortgage of crude. Because of this, the Dangote refinery is now compelled to look for crude from the US.

In summary, the Tinubu administration ought to stop focusing on minors and shadowboxing and instead tackle the pressing issues of the economy and security.

The federal government must give the economic crisis urgent attention. FG has to work with state governments to break the electricity jinx and fix a workable state police.

What’s more, a lazy approach to the nation’s macroeconomic management would be to continue to tax a collapsing economy, tax citizens who have been robbed of their ability to pay by poor economic policies, and take more loans. The only options left are: getting into massive export and high-volume food production, ensuring import substitutions, and, of course, rooting out corruption. But this cannot occur unless the enablers, such as electricity and security, are first taken care of. It will not happen by squandering time and money on unimportant side issues that divert attention from the primary, urgent course of action that is required, certainly not reversing the national anthem.

Dr Law Mefor, an Abuja-based forensic and social psychologist, is a fellow of The Abuja School of Social and Political Thought. He can be reached via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; Twitter: @Drlawsonmefor.

The United Kingdom (UK) is set to begin a “match-making” service called the cancer vaccine launch pad (CVLP), which can match patients with suitable trials.

In the project, which will be run by the Southampton Clinical Trials Unit (SCTU), based at the University of Southampton, thousands of patients will be able to access “ground-breaking” cancer vaccines as part of an NHS trial.

The programme aims to improve patient access to clinical trials to test new investigational immunotherapies by speeding up the development of personalised cancer vaccines.

The vaccines are created by analysing a patient’s tumour and using that information to create a vaccine tailored to that individual.

The vaccines aim to create an immune “memory” that can prevent cancer from returning after surgery or chemotherapy.

The first trial will be testing a vaccine under development by the biotech company BioNTech SE.

Simon Crabb, SCTU clinical director, said the new scheme would “bring together different academic and industry partners who are developing cancer vaccines and allow patients across England to access trials of treatments that may not have previously been an option for them”.

“Cancer vaccines have the potential to improve the way we treat the disease, particularly for those cancers where treatment options are currently limited or very demanding on patients’ bodies,” Gareth Griffiths, director of the Cancer Research UK SCTU, said.

[TheCable]

In recent times, Nigerian statesman Olusegun Obasanjo has spoken repeatedly of his conviction that Nigeria and other African countries “made a mistake” by adopting “Western liberal democracy,” a system that, being a unique product of “Western history, culture, and way of life” is poorly suited for African conditions.
In the same breath, Obasanjo has canvassed for “a model of democracy that is true to the African heritage,” a model that, in his telling, “encompasses our culture, our traditional ways of life.”

Obasanjo’s pedigree is one reason his assaults on liberal democracy have continued to attract attention. One of two individuals (Muhammadu Buhari is the other) to have ruled Nigeria in both military and civilian capacities, Obasanjo, far from just another citizen, can lay claim to having been in the thick of things and hence endowed with the kind of knowledge and perspective not vouchsafed to the average individual. Another reason is the political moment. The Nigerian statesman’s repeated attacks are music to the ears of many at a period when skepticism about liberal democracy and associated Western values is on the ascendance, especially across the Western world.      

Due to the latter coincidence, it is tempting to conclude that Obasanjo and critics of liberal democracy across the West are united by the same grievances, and to some extent they are, especially as far as there is mutual concern about the failure of liberal democracy to deliver tangible material benefits to the most disadvantaged. To be fair to Obasanjo, even in his least lucid moments, one observes what appears to be a genuine and constant solicitude for “the welfare and the well-being of the people: all the people.”    

To be sure, Obasanjo is not a recent convert to this tradition-bound “Afro-democracy.” On the contrary, he has written consistently, if vaguely, about allowing “the wisdom of a linkage with our traditional political praxis to chart a progressive future for us;” his desire for a single-party system whereby “the party shall be the only legal party until such a time that national integration and cohesion would have been sufficiently achieved;” “the urgent need to create a political machine, a self-made (sic) indigenous institution that would destroy the ‘alien institution’ conception of government;” and last but not least, his opposition to “the systemic practice of the institutionalized opposition,” an idea that, as he sees it, is incongruent with an African political past when “in arriving at political decisions our fore-fathers disagreed to agree and agree to disagree.”

The first question to ask is whether Obasanjo is in fact correct in claiming that African countries have adopted Western liberal democracy. While there is no doubt that liberal democracy is, with few notable exceptions, the coin of the political realm across Africa, upon closer inspection, one discovers that the real problem facing Africa is not that it has imported Western democracy, but that, as a matter of fact, it has not. If there is one overarching sentiment from the typically rancorous relationship between political and civil societies in a majority of African states, it is that the latter have been democracies only in name, and that many of them (Nigeria and South Africa jump to mind) in fact stand out on account of being characterized by the very sensibilities that are the exact antithesis of Western liberal democracy. It would thus appear that, for reasons that are not entirely clear, Obasanjo has failed to distinguish between the appearance of democracy and its substance.

The second question is whether Obasanjo is right in his assessment and understanding of African history as an essentially friction-free paradise of political unanimity. As even the most casual acquaintance will disclose, not only is the African past as depicted by Obasanjo a pure fantasy, there is considerable evidence that it was, in many cases, stolidly hierarchical and in egalitarian. Contra the unsubstantiated mythology that Obasanjo has become strangely enamored of, modern African history is in fact mostly an account of ordinary Africans struggling against tremendous odds to relieve themselves of the burden of custom and tradition; in other words, to cast off the fetters of the very history that Obasanjo would have them return to. It is hardly a coincidence that (1) contemporary African leaders who share Obasanjo’s tendentious understanding of African history are unrepentant dictators and (2) that Obasanjo has failed to show specific examples of eras and or regimes that he would have ordinary Africans revert to.

Finally, the fact seems to have escaped Obasanjo that he owes his freedom to criticize and propose political alternatives to the fact that he lives in an admittedly imperfect liberal democracy, one with a foundational commitment to individual freedoms (among them the freedom to express oneself freely); and that a single-party state and suchlike authoritarian cousins invariably culminate in the abrogation of such freedoms.
Granted, Obasanjo may be earnest in his espousal of alternatives to liberal democracy, but ultimately, his advocacy amounts to nothing more than an avoidance of the real causes of Africa’s underdevelopment and a far from subtle incitement to autocracy. The Nigerian statesman may be excused for exploring alternatives, but he should not escape censure for resurrecting ideas that have been tried and found wanting, and now belong, for good reason, in the museum of political ideas.  

•Reina Patel contributed to the research for this article

The Abia League of Professionals Initiative (ALPI) strongly denounces and condemns the recent brutal killing of soldiers in Abia State by unidentified gunmen. We urge the military high command to kindly restrain from retaliatory actions that may result in more innocent lives being lost. Instead, we recommend a comprehensive investigation to identify and apprehend all individuals directly or remotely responsible for the heinous murder of these soldiers, whose duties are to protect the nation's territorial integrity.

ALPI calls for peace and condemns the disturbing trend of targeting soldiers and other security officials. This criminal behavior must be unequivocally condemned in all its ramifications.

Sonny Iroche
Director General
Abia League of Professionals Initiative
(ALPI)
May 30, 2024

The House of Representatives has distanced itself from a trending bill seeking to restore the regional system of government in Nigeria.

Naija News reports that the bill, which has gone viral on social media, is titled, “A Bill for an Act to substitute the annexure to Decree 24 of 1999 with a new governance model for the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

The Bill is said to have been drafted by one Dr Akin Fapohunda as a private bill as the individual is not a lawmaker.

The draft seeks, among other things, new extant laws to be cited as “The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria New Governance Model for Nigeria Act 2024.”

However, the spokesperson of the House of Representatives, Akin Rotimi, has denied knowledge of the bill. He added that the said bill is not before the lawmakers and is not under consideration before the House.

“The Committees on Rules and Business and Constitution Review have confirmed that there is no such bill before them,” he told Punch in a telephone conversation.

Similarly, the Chairman, House Committee on Rules and Business, Francis Waive, said the bill is not before the committee.

He said, “There are two routes to making presentations for constitutional amendments. One is by members proposing an amendment bill during the plenary. The second is by memoranda from individuals and groups to the Constitution Review Committee

“Please, note that memoranda submitted should eventually come by way of bills sponsored by a member of the committee.

“On this specific memo (draft bill) under reference, I doubt if it has come before the Rules and Business Committee for listing. I speak as chairman of the committee.”

[NaijaNews]

Since May 28, 2024, the Mauritian-incorporated company, Tengen Holdings (Mauritius) Limited, has acquired approximately 59.403 million shares of Access Holdings, valued at roughly N1.012 billion.  

According to corporate disclosures on the NGX website, Tengen Holdings initially purchased 45 million units of shares at N17 per share on May 28.

The company then purchased an additional 14,402,633 units at N17.20 per share on May 30.  

Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, the Non-Executive Chairman of Access Holdings Plc and Herbert Wigwe jointly founded Tengen Holdings in December 2013, after Aig-Imoukhuede’s exit as the CEO of Access Bank.  

About Tengen Holdings Limited  

• Before his demise, Access Holdings’ Group Managing Director, Herbert Wigwe was the largest individual shareholder of the group with a 3.72% shareholding in the group. While the erstwhile CEO, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede held no direct shareholding in the group.  
• The second largest substantial shareholder in the group, following Stanbic Nominees, is “Coronation Trustees Tengen Mauritius”. This entity, associated with Tengen Holdings (Mauritius) Limited, holds a 7.11% stake acquired in 2023. 
• Tengen (Holdings) Limited is a part of the Tengen Family Office, co-owned by both Herbert Wigwe and Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, the partners who took over Access Bank in 2002.  
• According to a directory of Nigerian companies, Tengen Family Office was incorporated in Nigeria in 2017, with Herbert Wigwe and Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede identified as the shareholders in the company.   

Access Bank since the demise of Herbert Wigwe 

• Since the demise of Herbert Wigwe, Access Holdings has undergone leadership changes, with Ms. Bolaji Agbede stepping in as the Acting Group Chief Executive Officer and Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede stepping in as the group’s Chairman.  
• In Q1 2024, Access Bank posted a 148% year-on-year growth in pre-tax profit to N202.7 billion, from N81.7 billion as of Q1 2023. The group’s net income within the period hit N159.3 billion, marking a 123% YoY growth from the N71.8 billion net income posted in 2023.  
• Less than two months after Wigwe’s departure, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced new minimum capital requirements for banks, thereby imposing the responsibility of recapitalization on Access Bank’s new leadership.  
• Access Bank needs to raise at least N248.2 billion in new capital to meet up with the N500 billion capital requirement before March 2026.
• During the institution’s Annual General Meeting in April, the shareholders approved the bank’s move to issue 30 billion new shares.  

As one of his first tasks upon returning to leadership, Aig spoke nostalgically about his experience as Group CEO of Access Bank Plc during the last recapitalization exercise. 

He noted during the AGM, “The amount we have mentioned today, is large and significant, and the capital raising efforts we’re pursuing is a significant step in your company’s history and future.”  

“However, I’d like to remind shareholders that between August 2004 and 2007, you may recall that cumulatively, in a period of two and half years, we raised $2 billion in equity together. So, it is not new for us to come to you like this and for us together to succeed in such capital raising effort.”  

[NAirametrics]

Details of the soldiers gruesomely murdered by members of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) have emerged.

Our correspondents had earlier reported how vehicles and tricycles (popularly known as Keke Napep) were also set ablaze by the rampaging IPOB terrorists while the attack lasted on Thursday.

The military high command had earlier on Friday confirmed that no fewer than 5 of its troops deployed at Obikabia Junction Checkpoint in Obingwa Local Government Area adjourning Aba metropolis in Abia State were killed.

In a signal sighted by Daily Trust on Friday, those killed included two Sergeants, two Corporal and one Lance Corporal while 6 civilians, according to the military were killed in the cross fire.

The soldiers were identified as:

• Sergeant Charles Ugochukwu (94NA/38/1467)
• Sergeant Bala Abraham (03NA/53/1028)
• Corporal Gideon Egwe(10NA/65/7085)
• Corporal Ikpeama Ikechukwu (13NA/70/5483)
• Corporal Augustine Emmanuel (13NA/70/6663)

Then signal read, “On 30 May 24, at about 0830 hrs, troops of 144 Battalion deployed at Obikabia Junction Federal School Road, Ogbor Hill in Obingwa LGA were attacked by unknown gunmen suspected to be IPOB/ESN members.

“Gunmen who were enforcing Sit-At-Home order numbering about 30, stormed troops location in 3 black Toyota Land Cruiser Jeeps and opened fire during which 5 x Soldiers were killed.”

It further disclosed that the assailants also carted away 5 AK47 rifles, burnt down 2 military patrol hilux vehicles and injured 2 civilians.

The signal noted that the current situation in Aba is generally tensed while monitoring continues as further details will be forwarded as situation unfolds.

[Dailytrust]

Arsenal legend Paul Merson has predicted Real Madrid to beat Borussia Dortmund in Saturday’s UEFA Champions League final.

Merson believes the LaLiga Champions have too much firepower, adding that Carlo Ancelotti’s side will beat Dortmund 3-1 at Wembley Stadium.

“Real Madrid have way too much firepower in their squad, but it’s not to say Dortmund won’t have a trick or two up their sleeves.

“I think it will be an open game, but Carlo Ancelotti and Co. know how to get the job done on the grandest stage, so I think they will get their hands on the trophy for the 15th time in their history.

“Borussia Dortmund 1-3 Real Madrid,” Merson stated.

The kick-off time for the match is 8 pm.

[DailyPost]