The federal government says it has set up a committee to investigate a wide range of issues that have caused lingering crisis within the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) and find a lasting solution to the issues.

Minister of Labour and Employment, Simon Lalong, who disclosed this at the NSITF headquarters, Abuja on Tuesday, confirmed that within the short period of time he has spent in office as minister, he has received a lot of petitions.

Lalong also said he never knew an agency like NSITF existed in the country, not until he was appointed a minister, adding that he had taken a look at all the petitions submitted to his office.

Recall how the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) invited some top officials of the NSITF for questioning over gratuity payment of N47m to the Managing Director of the Fund, Mrs Maureen Allagoa.

In a letter dated 14th September, 2023, with reference number ICPC/SSD/TB/197/2023 and directed to the Managing Director of the Fund, those invited include Head of Administration Department, Head of Finance and Investment Department as well as Head of Audit and Inspectorate Department.

Speaking on the development, Lalong said he was aware of different issues that arose from the Fund, particularly the issue of how the MD paid herself, how she was queried by the ministry and how she refunded the money when it became public knowledge.

“Yes, we saw achievements. We also saw a lot of complaints. A lot of complaints came from this agency. And that was why we all came up to look at it first hand and to see how to address some of these issues. There is no agency that has no problem.

“There’s no ministry that has no problem, but if you have problems, you look at ways of addressing some of these problems, so that you can move forward. You may want to step beyond your bounds because you want to achieve beyond that bounds. That is my prayer for NSITF today.

“We are here to look at them, it is not to say we are here to open up opportunity to collect grievances again. I want to assure you that those that came to me both formally and informally, I am aware. Just like I told you the other time, there is no petition that comes to me that I don’t look at it. I look at it and I will address it. Right now, I’ve addressed all of them.

“It is not only in the interest of the nation, but it’s also in your own interest, because you are given responsibilities and those responsibilities given to you can be accessed. Who knows? Tomorrow, the next Minister of Labour and Employment may come from NSITF. That’s why we are here today.

“As a way forward, I quickly set up a committee and that committee I’m going to inaugurate tomorrow to handle all these, summarize them and bring up to me,” the minister said.

The minister stated that people outside only know the ministry for settling labour disputes including averting strike actions labour unions might want to embark on.

He said, “In the whole of outside, people think in the ministry, it is just to settle disputes between workers, and yes, we have been baptised with one. That was the withdrawal of the subsidy. Of course, that took the attention of the nation, and gratefully, that was resolved yesterday.

“Everybody was thinking that would be the mother of all strikes. I must say to that to the cooperation of the labour leaders, Nigeria is moving forward, moving forward.

“Back to the ministry, we gave opportunity for briefings and each agency, all the agencies also came on their own but at the end of the day after collections and summary of all, we realised that this is one big ministry.

“For me, like I said, that time, I never knew about NSITF until I became a Minister of Labour and Employment. Out of all the agencies, I’m not saying others are not important, but there is one that we must focus on, if we want to succeed in that ministry. That was why we give this priority to take this visit to your agency. I thank you very much for the welcome.”

There were clear indications on why the All Progressives Congress could not save the embattled Ondo state deputy governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa.

This was evident when the Ondo State House of Assembly declared on Tuesday, October 3, that Aiyedatiwa had failed to respond to a notice served on him on September 25 concerning allegations of gross misconduct.

Speaker of the Assembly, Olamide Oladiji, revealed during the plenary that the notice had been received on behalf of Aiyedatiwa by his chief protocol officer.

Following a motion by the Majority Leader, Oluwole Ogunmolasuyi, concerning the Ondo State Impeachment Panel Procedure Rules, it was proposed that the panel should be constituted by the Chief Judge of the state.

The motion was seconded by Felix Afe (Akoko North West 2-PDP).

The speaker stated that the seven days allowed for Aiyedatiwa to respond to the allegations as stipulated by the constitution has lapsed.

He said that the resolution that the deputy governor be duly served the notice of allegations signed by 11 lawmakers was in line with Section 188 of the Nigerian Constitution.

Oladiji noted: “Concerted efforts were made to serve the Notice on the deputy governor, who for some time was not available for the service, prompting the House to approach the court for a substituted service on the deputy governor.

“On 25th of September, a substituted service of the Notice of Allegations was made on the deputy governor duly signed by more than one-third of Honourable Members of the House as required by the Constitution in Section 188 Sub-section 2.”

He, therefore directed Chief Judge of the State, Justice Olusegun Odusola, to immediately set up a seven-man panel to investigate Aiyedatiwa on the allegations levelled against him.

He stated: “Distinguished colleagues, Section 188 of the Constitution states further that the deputy governor has 7 days within which to reply to the allegations levelled against him.

“The Constitution states further that within seven days of the passing of a motion under the foregoing provisions of this section, the Chief Judge of the state shall at the request of the Speaker of the House of Assembly appoint a panel of seven persons.

“Distinguished colleagues, I, therefore, wish to seek your opinion to direct the Chief Judge of Ondo State, Hon. Justice Olusegun Odusola, to in line with this section of the Constitution, set up a seven-man panel to investigate the deputy governor on the allegations levelled against him.”

A total of 23 out of 26 members at the plenary session supported the speaker through a voice vote.

Some Ondo APC leaders who spoke to our reporter said the move by the national body of the APC to save Aiyedatiwa from being impeached would fail because all APC stakeholders in the state have agreed that Aiyedatiwa must go.

The state chairman of the Ondo APC, Ade Adetimehin, said the state chapter would work with the national body for possible resolution of the impasse.

A source said many aides who sided with Aiyedatiwa especially those already penciled to be Deputy Governor, Chief of Staff, SSG would soon be sacked.

Arising from the withdrawal of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) by the Federal Government and the resultant increase in the price of the commodity, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) issued a strike notice which had elapsed and they were poised to embark on a strike billed to commence on Tuesday, the 3rd of October, 2023.

Consequently, a meeting was called by the Federal Government to avert the strike and after much discussion, the following agreements were reached:

1. The Federal Government grants a wage award of N35,000 (thirty-five thousand Naira) only to all Federal Government workers beginning from the month of September pending when a new national minimum wage is expected to have been signed into law.

2. A minimum wage committee shall be inaugurated within one month from the date of this agreement.

3. Federal Government suspends collection of Value Added Tax (VAT) on Diesel for six months beginning from October, 2023.

4. Federal Government accepts to vote N100 billion for the provision of high capacity CNG buses for mass transit in Nigeria. Provisions are also being made for initial 55,000 CNG conversion kits to kick start an auto gas conversion programme, whilst work is ongoing on state-of-the-art CNG stations nationwide. The rollout aims to commence by November with pilots across 10 campuses nationwide.

5. The Federal Government plans to implement various tax incentive measures for private sector and the general public.

6. On the leadership crises rocking the NURTW and the purported proscription of RTEAN, the Federal Government commits to handling Labour matters in line with relevant ILO Conventions and Nigerian Labour Acts. A resolution of the ongoing impasse is expected by or before October 13.

7. The issue of outstanding Salaries and Wages of Tertiary Education workers in Federal-owned educational institutions is being referred to Ministry of Labour and Employment for further engagement.

8. The Federal Government commits to pay N25,000 per month for three months starting from October, 2023 to 15 million households, including vulnerable pensioners.

9. The Federal Government will increase its initiatives on subsidized distribution of fertilizers to farmers across the country.

10. The Federal Government should urge State Government through the National Economic Council and Governors Forum to implement wage award for their workers. Similar consideration should also be given to local government and private sector workers.

11. The Federal Government commits to the provision of funds as announced by the President on the 1st of August broadcast to the Nation for Micro and Small Scale Enterprises. The MSMEs beneficiaries should commit to the principle of decent jobs.

12. A joint visitation will be made to the refineries to ascertain their rehabilitation status.

13. All parties commit to henceforth abide by the dictates of Social dialogue in all our future engagements.

14. The NLC and TUC accept to suspend for 30 days the planned Indefinite Nationwide strike scheduled to begin, Tuesday, the 3rd of October, 2023.

15. This Memorandum shall be filed with the relevant Court of competent jurisdiction within one (1) week as consent judgment by the Federal Government.

Signed:

NLC:

Comrade Joe Ajaero                                                                      Comrade Emmanuel Ugboaja, mni

President NLC                                                                                        General Secretary

Bias, desperation, delusion, and deception govern the outputting of the distortionist mob. Mob distortions are purposive fabrications. They are oddly designed inventions pulled from a smorgasbord of fake news, injurious falsehood, slander, and prejudice. They come in the cloak of truth and certainty. They come in the swaddle of history and records. But in actuality, they are just a carefully curated jumble of lies, propaganda, disinformation, and misrepresentation.

What the crocheters of the yarns of distortionist hypotheses seek to achieve may be to cause a breakdown of trust, to blackmail, poison perception, stoke crisis, cause disaffection, and ultimately, spur an uprising.

In the case of President Bola Tinubu, his villifiers have always sought, but fruitlessly so, to poison public perception against him. They invent ahistorical accounts, contort records, fabricate stories, and think up utter ridiculousness.

During the campaigns, detachments of distortionists worked the mill of propaganda overtime. They invented tales and doctored videos. Time has revealed the falsity of those videos as well as the dark entrails of the promoters. Today, the President is seen speaking extempore, clearly, intelligently with poise, panache, and a sprightful gait.

The traducing did not let up after the elections – even when it was expected that those in the adversarial phylum would form an opposition established on unrelenting issues of governance as they affect all Nigerians -- and not on inanities and delusions. The fixation has been, laboriously, on the pursuit of a will-o’-the-wisp -- not substance.

Despite indisputable evidence, punitive expeditions to the US were undertaken in furtherance of the smear campaign. There was nothing to be had from such endeavours ab initio, but to stir disruptive controversies and excite supporters whose morale is waning. The outcome of the Chicago State University expedition is an indictment on the species of opposition and their disposition of resistance.

This dimension of opposition is ruinous, perfidious, and insidious. It tears down without building; it talks down without uplifting; it attacks without reason; it claims without evidence; it lies without let; it defames and defiles without conscience; and it opposes without a cause. All it seeks is to pull down and destroy – for as long as its longing for the chief seat remains a pipedream.

At the heart of Nigeria’s troubled and enchanted existence are wild and minacious politics. Politics defiant of patriotism and national interest; politics vacant of soul and righteous purpose; politics of predation and degradation. Politics of gladiatorial contests and duels. Destructive, dangerous politics.

We cannot make progress if our politics persists to be cancerous and a contest of absurdities. We seldom debate policies, and even when we do, it is usually from insular, dopey, and blighted lenses.

Groundless tropes are the definers of our conversations when there are critical matters seeking attention. We keep going through the same foundry every cycle and expect a change. We have to be more purposive about governance, and less obsessed with thrilling distractions.

Political parties, especially those in the opposition, have seminal roles to play in educating citizens, mobilising consciences, and activating the right discourses. The opposition holds a decisive place in any democracy. Should this value be expended on asininities and on guerrilla warfare? If the essence of seeking power is corrective and righteous, where is the sense in efforts to bring down the roof with every artifice and conjuring available?

No one is saying the opposition should be the consort of anyone, but patriotism dictates citizens must commit to the peace, unity, and progress of the country regardless of who is president.

The Tinubu administration has been expansive and sensitive to Nigeria’s complexional complexities, blurring the lines between ‘’supporter and opposition’’ in appointments and in the provisioning of public goods. This clearly says it is all about governance and building a cohesive country for this administration. This is patriotism -- what has been essentially lacking in governance in Nigeria.

However, it has become evident that debate in the next four years will be on the absurd. Perhaps, there is a cavity in the intellectual domain of the objurgators. I recall during the past administration; vicious conspiracy theories of ethnic domination and ethnic cleansing were noised as imminent truths. Ethnic epithets, slurs and tropes defined oppositional aspect to that administration. All for what reason – politics. It was all politics.

Conspiracy theories are the animating force of Nigeria’s political discourses. They give taste to falsehood, tension, fear, and prejudice. And often, they are eaten, digested, and regurgitated by the unwary. It is only four months in the life of this administration, but the crocheters of conspiracy theories are returning to their accustomed vocation. I would not give oxygen to the plot of lies and tall tales by reproducing them here.

But it is important that Nigerians understand that those desperate for power will do anything to keep them hooked on the opium of lies, fear, and prejudice.

Be discerning.

Reno Omokri, a former presidential aide, has slammed Peter Obi, the Labour Party, LP, presidential candidate in the last election, for suggesting that President Bola Ahmed had submitted a fake certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission.

Peter Obi had, while reacting to the university certificate issues surrounding Tinubu, said people should be honest about their qualifications, insisting that educational qualification is not even a criterion to be a good President. He cited some American leaders who lacked good educational backgrounds.

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, obtained victory in his fierce legal battle to probe the academic qualification of Tinubu in the February 25 presidential poll.

Tinubu had supplied certificates from the Chicago State University, CSU, to INEC to secure eligibility to participate in the election.

A United States of America court on Saturday ordered CSU to release Tinubu’s academic records for verification and in support of Atiku’s petition challenging the result of the 2023 presidential poll.

Justice Nancy Maldonado, in a judgment, dismissed the objection raised by Tinubu against Atiku’s request and expressly ordered that the CSU must submit the academic records to Atiku.

And on Monday evening, the records were made available to the PDP leader, although the authenticity is still being questioned by some sections of social media users.

But Reno is calling out the Labour Party candidate for even suggesting that there could have been a fake certificate somewhere.

“Peter Obi, Chicago State University, has backed Bola Tinubu’s certificate and stands by the legitimacy of his academic credentials,” he wrote on X.

“Only yesterday morning, you were on AriseTV accusing a certain leader of having a ‘fake certificate.’

“Now, answer this question: Why did you not tender your own degree from the University of Nigeria Nsukka to the INEC?”

Both pro- and anti-Tinubu news outlets and blogs are selectively reporting the documents that Chicago State University handed over to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar yesterday. Here are 6 non-partisan tidbits I discovered from poring over them:

1. Chicago State University’s Office of the Registrar affirmed that Bola A. Tinubu indeed attended the university “from August 1977 through June 1979” and was “awarded a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with Honors on June 22, 1979.”

 The registrar also swore to this under oath. The penalty for lying under oath in America can be steep. It is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

This information is consistent with my September 2, 2023, column titled, “Tinubu Definitely Graduated from Chicago State University.”

2. The certificate (we call it “diploma” in the US) that Tinubu submitted to INEC is inconsistent with the certificates CSU issued in 1979 and subsequently, indicating that Tinubu forged his. (In the US, diplomas are mere ceremonial documents that most employers don’t ask for. Transcripts directly from universities are the usual ways to verify attendance and graduation.)

Although he did legitimately graduate from Chicago State University in 1979, he obviously lost his certificate and, instead of applying for a replacement, decided to forge it. 

That strikes me as mysterious self-harm. It costs only $26 to get a replacement diploma from CSU. But it takes between eight and 10 weeks to receive it after filling out the Diploma Replacement Order Form. 

My guess is that, in the typical last-minute, fire-brigade approach to things among Nigerian elites, Tinubu didn’t plan ahead and didn't have enough time to apply for his replacement diploma from CSU to meet INEC's deadline and decided to visit Lagos’ infamous “Oluwole” for a counterfeit replacement.

3. The Southwest College transcript that Tinubu used to get admitted to Chicago State University belongs to a female. I had questioned the authenticity of the transcript because of the many errors in it, such as the date and social security number. We await what CSU has to say about this.

This reality, though, seems to validate uncorroborated but long-standing whispers from the grapevine that Tinubu, who was allegedly born Lamidi Amoda [Yoruba Muslim domestication of Abdulhamid Ahmed] Sangodele in Osun State’s Iragbiji, stole the identity of a female Bola Adekunle Tinubu to go to America.

4. Nonetheless, this whisper may be difficult to sustain in light of the fact that Tinubu’s Chicago State University admission letter dated August 23, 1977, was addressed to “Mr. Tinubu,” not Ms. or Miss Tinubu. 

Was the “F” in the transcript from Southwest College a clerical error, especially because the social security number and the dates were also clerical errors? Or was there a cover-up somewhere? 

Well, we saw from the documents released to Atiku that after accepting his transfer credits from Southwest College (which later became Daley College), CSU required Tinubu to take qualifying exams in English, math, and reading, which he passed. Why did CSU allow a man who presented a transcript that belonged to a woman to take qualifying exams as a man? 

Tinubu obviously identified as a man throughout the two years he studied at the school. A Nigerian CSU graduate and classmate of Tinubu’s swore under oath that Tinubu ran for and won election as president of CSU's accounting students’ association. His yearbook photo from 1979 also clearly showed a younger version of Tinubu. 

 And Tinubu’s handwriting and signature in the June 27, 2022, Consent to Release Student Education Records form, which authorized CSU to release his academic records to one Oluwole Afolabi of 3 Roosevelt Avenue, West Orange, New Jersey, seems to me similar to his handwriting and signatures in his CSU records.

Finally, if he used a woman’s associate degree from Southwest College to gain admission to CSU without having any background in accounting or business administration, his performance at CSU was perplexing. Of the more than 30 courses he took there, he got C’s in only three courses. The rest were A’s and B’s, which earned him honors.

5. The Bola A. Tinubu who applied to Southwest College for an associate degree in 1975 claimed to have attended Government College, Lagos, and presented a 1970 GCE A-level result with grades E in Chemistry and Biology and an F in Physics. The problem is that Government College, Lagos, was established in 1974. So, there’s a chronological conundrum there, which signposts forgery. 

The GCE A-level result also shows that “Bola A. Tinubu” took the exam as an HSC student, which used to be a two-year study after 5 years of secondary school education. In other words, the owner of the certificate must have graduated from secondary school at least in 1968. 

It’s not clear at the moment if the GCE A-level result is fake or authentic—or if it belongs to the man we know today as President Bola A. Tinubu. My hunch is that it doesn’t belong to him. But this will become clear in the coming days.

6. Tinubu tells the world that he was born on March 29, 1952, but the birthday recorded in his CSU transcript says he was born on March 29, 1954. The space for birthday in the Southwest College transcript he submitted to CSU is blank. So is the record of his secondary school education. These facts added to my previous suspicion that the transcript was probably fake.

If he was born in 1954, it means he was 14 years old when he graduated from high school.

Bonus: Tinubu’s last name was misspelled in a few of the CSU documents. I thought the “THUBV” misspelling in his final graduation record was bad enough until I saw “Tinububu” in one of the documents.? Bubu, remember, is Buhari’s nickname among a vast swath of Nigerians. Make of that what you will.

We should all thank VP Atiku Abubakar for his doggedness, which has helped us to get this much clarity about Tinubu’s past.

As Nigeria celebrated its 63rd independence anniversary on Sunday, 1 October 2023, there seemed to be a consensus that we are not where we ought to be either in the nation-building process or with respect to economic development. While many wondered whether there was anything to celebrate at all (other than that we have somehow managed to be together all these years despite the challenges), others felt we would have fared better if the different nationalities that were brought together to form the Nigerian State in 1914 were allowed to continue on their autochthonous path of development.  

The idea that there is nothing else to celebrate other than our managing to be together for these past 63 years is to take pessimism too far. Certainly we have made some progress on all fronts – from the revolution in telecoms to a Nigerian firm (Dangote) achieving the status of a multinational corporation, to the emergence of an indigenous motor manufacturing company (Innoson Motors), to the country having a Nobel Laureate in Literature and to the global mainstreaming of the accomplishments of our entertainment artists in music and films.

On nationhood, the rate of inter-ethnic marriages and friendships have continued to grow. In fact, the idea that the separate nationalities that were agglomerated into one entity in 1914 could have done better if they had continued on their individual paths to development is purely academic. The truth however is that if these nationalities were as powerful and successful as we often make them to be, they would not have been easily conquered and pacified by a few White men as was the case in most pre-colonial entities that fused to become Nigeria. Besides, that a nation has a homogeneity of culture and language is no guarantee that they will build a successful nation-state as the case of Somalia illustrates.

I align myself with the position that despite modest gains on several fronts, we are not where we ought to be. This leads logically to what is really the problem with the country.

In a Daily Trust article of 30 July 2015, I interrogated four popular diagnoses of the Nigerian condition – corruption, leadership, weak institutions and insecurity and concluded that neither of these was the fundamental problem of the country.  On the corruption mantra, I argued that while I accept that corruption is a serious issue, it is merely the symptom of a more fundamental malaise and that it would be wrong to elevate the institutional manifestations of a problem to its defining characteristic. I contended that corruption is a systemic problem that is exacerbated in climes where the nation-building process has manifestly failed – as in Somalia or engulfed in deep crisis – as in Nigeria and several other African countries.

My opinion was that if we were right about our diagnoses of the causes of corruption and prognoses for action, then the incidence of corruption would be reducing and not be increasing as it seems to be doing now despite the existence of institutions like the EFCC and the ICPC and the fact that every government in the country has made fighting the malaise one of the cornerstones of its administration.

I also interrogated the ‘failure of leadership’ argument, which was popularized by Chinua Achebe’s slim booklet, The Trouble With Nigeria, (originally published in 1983). In that booklet, Achebe argued that the “trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.” In essence for Achebe and others who argue within this framework, Nigeria has continued to underperform simply because she has been unfortunate to be cursed by a recurrent blizzard of mediocre and corrupt leadership. I pointed out that one of the problems with the ‘failure of leadership’ argument is the neglect of the influence of environmental variables – what we call the ‘Nigerian factor’ or political scientists would call system dynamics. I pointed out that there is often a wrong assumption that the environmental variables will lend themselves to whichever way the leader wants to manipulate them. There is also the problem of how this ‘good leader’ would emerge in an environment where one’s ethnic and other primordial identities already condemns everyone as a suspect.

On the ‘Africa needs strong institutions, not strong men’ rhetoric, I argued that since institutions necessarily have to be built by people, and since the environmental variables seriously constrain leaders, building strong institutions in a country like Nigeria will be akin to the chicken and egg argument.

On insecurity, my position was that while no one should trivialize the security challenges in the country, it cannot be the fundamental problem of the country. I felt it was an overstatement to say that insecurity inhibits foreign direct investment because capital smells opportunity for accumulation and often moves into areas where it can reproduce itself – often regardless of the security situation there.

My main contention was that the fundamental problem in the country is the crisis in the country’s nation-building. This perspective assumes that diversity is not inherently antithetical to nation-building because many of the most successful nations of the world were in fact built from an agglomeration of different ethnic nationalities. As the experience of Somalia teaches us, ethnic and cultural homogeneity does not necessarily guarantee the success of nation-building – defined as a deliberate use of state instruments to build trust and create a sense of community among the nationalities that make up the ‘new’ states in the ‘developing’ countries.

I argued that the nation-building process in Nigeria appears to have stalled, if not in severe crisis, and that this feeds into the crisis of underdevelopment to create an existential crisis for many Nigerians. For many people, a way of resolving the consequent sense of alienation appears to be to delink from the Nigerian state into primordial identities – often with the Nigerian state as the enemy. I have elsewhere called this phenomenon a de-Nigerianization process. I strongly believe that unless the crisis in our nation-building is resolved, any solution thrown at any of the country’s multifarious problems will end up becoming part of the problems.

I feel that the nature of our politics, (in which elections are conducted every four years), exacerbates the crisis in our nation-building process. Not only is politics seen as a veritable vehicle of wealth accumulation, there is also a pervasive fear that whoever captures state power will use it to privilege his or her in-group and disadvantage the others. For this, politics tends to be anarchic and almost a warfare, in which all forms of primordial identities, including ethnicity and religion, are mobilized in a simplistic binary of ‘we versus they’ dichotomy. Elections therefore deepen the chasms in our fault lines and the wounds from one election cycles are not given enough time to heal before another election cycle beckons. For this I strongly feel that the Western brand of liberal democracy is unlikely to work in our environment and that we need a uniquely African solution. This is where I feel that we need to urgently re-imagine our politics. I do not agree with those who argue that our problem is fundamentally the economy because economic policies themselves are decided through the political process.

Since the fear of being excluded and marginalized is at the heart of the contentious nature of our politics, I will recommend a collegial presidency in which one candidate is elected from each of the six geopolitical zones, with each of the six persons elected into the College taking turns to serve as president of the College for two non-renewable years, while others become Vice Presidents responsible for constitutionally specified duties. I will also recommend proportional representation at the State level and a College of Governors, one person from each of the Senatorial Districts. The three will take turn in being governor for two years while the others become Deputy Governors.

Given that we are still living in the shadows of the Civil War and that war propaganda on both sides (with its distortions and embellishments) have apparently been swallowed as the naked truth by the descendants of the parties to the conflict, there will also be a need for a new historiography which will focus on reconciliation, forgiveness and giving proper context to some of those war propagandas. I will support the criminalization of group profiling as is the case in countries like the United Kingdom.

Having a collegial system of presidency with a single tenure of twelve years, will give us a long break from presidential elections (which, besides the cost, have lost their value as credible vehicles for leadership recruitment).

The Chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), Abike Dabiri-Erewa has said that the government must play its part in providing a favourable environment for its residents.

Dabiri-Erewa stated this on Monday from Paris during an appearance on Channels Television’s Empowering Tomorrow: A New Vision for Nigeria, a special programme on the 63rd anniversary of Nigeria’s independence celebrated on October 1.

According to her, it is impossible to completely halt the mass exodus of Nigerians popularly referred to as Japa.

She said, “You can’t stop this migration, legal or illegal, but the question is: Why are you migrating? Are you migrating to a better place? Are you migrating to bigger dreams?

“Here is a quick thing, government needs to play its own role of [providing] a conducive environment. The Tinubu administration has talked about job creation, SMEs, digital transformation, and digital truth for our younger people, and a lot of that conversation is going on here in France.”

Speaking further, the NIDCOM boss opined that moving to another country has no inherent flaws, but it must have a clear goal.

“There is nothing wrong with migration, but migrate to a better place. Migrate to become a better person; don’t migrate to get into trouble. A lot of people we deal with are looking for jobs but they don’t get the jobs when they go abroad.

“Why are you migrating? Are you a better person by the time you migrate? But again, government must play its role and do what it has to do,” she added.

The West African Examinations Council has initiated the 76th meeting of the Nigeria Examinations Committee to deliberate on cases of malpractice and irregularities arising from the 2023 West African Senior School Certificate Examination for school candidates.

The body disclosed this on Tuesday via its official X handle.

Earlier on Monday, WAEC appointed Dr. Amos Josiah Dangut as the Head of the Nigeria National Office, The PUNCH reports.

“The 76th Meeting of the Nigeria Examinations Committee (NEC) to consider & decide on the malpractice/irregularity cases arising from the conduct of WASSCE for School Candidates, 2023 begins today.”

In August, the examination body initially released the 2023 WASSCE results, but the outcomes of 262,803 candidates were put on hold due to instances of examination malpractice.

However, the body has assured candidates that information about their results will be communicated after the NEC meeting concludes its deliberations.

“The 76th Meeting of the Nigeria Examinations Committee (NEC) to consider & decide on the malpractice/irregularity cases arising from the conduct of WASSCE for School Candidates, 2023 begins today,” the post read.

The Federal Government may incur additional N315bn in wage bill in the next six months for the newly introduced allowance for federal workers, findings by The PUNCH have shown.

This came as Organised Labour agreed to suspend its proposed nationwide strike for 30 days, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Federal Government after a marathon meeting that ended around 11pm on Tuesday.

The resolution followed over five hours of deliberations between the Federal Government and Labour at the Chief of Staff Conference Room of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Announcing the outcome of the meeting to State House correspondents, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Simon Lalong, said “The NLC and TUC accept to suspend for 30 days the planned Indefinite Nationwide strike scheduled to begin, Tuesday, the 3rd of October, 2023.”

Lalong said the memorandum shall be filed with the relevant court of competent jurisdiction within one week as consent judgment by the Federal Government.

However, the NLC President, Joe Ajaero, said the unions would revisit the agreement if the FG failed to fulfil their demands.

According to the agreement, the Federal Government grants a wage award of N35,000 only to all Federal Government workers “beginning from the month of September pending when a new national minimum wage is expected to have been signed into law.”

The agreement further read in part, “A minimum wage committee shall be inaugurated within one month from the date of this agreement.

“Federal Government accepts to vote N100 billion for the provision of high capacity CNG buses for mass transit in Nigeria. Provisions are also being made for initial 55,000 CNG conversion kits to kick start an auto gas conversion programme, whilst work is ongoing on state-of-the-art CNG stations nationwide. The rollout aims to commence by November with pilots across 10 campuses nationwide.

“The Federal Government should urge state government through the National Economic Council and Governors Forum to implement wage award for their workers. Similar consideration should also be given to local government and private sector workers. A joint visitation will be made to the refineries to ascertain their rehabilitation status.”

Meanwhile, the Federal Government had on Sunday said that the provisional wage increase announced by President Bola Tinubu for all low-income workers for six months would cut across all treasury-paid workers.

The Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, revealed this to State House correspondents at the end of a four-hour marathon emergency meeting with the leaders of Organised Labour.

The compromise was reached to avert the proposed indefinite nationwide strike declared by the organised labour.

The meeting came hours after the President in his Independence Day broadcast announced the approval of a N25,000 provisional wage increase for a certain category of federal workers for the next six months.

However, The PUNCH gathered that labour leaders rejected Tinubu’s N25,000 provisional wage increment for low-grade workers.

As a result, the Federal Government raised the wage award to N35,000.

“The Federal Government has announced N35,000 only as provisional wage award for all treasury-paid Federal Government workers for six months following further consultation with President Bola Tinubu,” according to a statement by the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mallam Mohammed Idris.

Earlier in August this year, the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze, said the Federal Government’s personnel cost was over N5tn, with 1.5 million workers under the Federal Government’s payroll.

He disclosed this to an Ad-Hoc committee of the House of Representatives, seeking to investigate the mismanagement of personnel recruitment, employment racketeering and gross mismanagement of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System.

Akabueze said, “Not only have we not redrawn, we have significantly reduced our numbers and managed the cost of the government, which as of 2015, was about N1tn. Today, it is over N5tn and as much as we desire to depopulate the growing number of unemployed people in the country, the reality is that the government is not really a direct job creator.

“The role of government is to create an enabling environment for the private sector to create jobs. The total number of people in the employment of the federal government nationwide, including all of the security services, the military and all of that, is under 1.5 million people.”

This likely means that 1.5 million federal workers will benefit from the proposed N35,000 monthly palliative proposed by the Federal Government to cushion the effects of the removal of subsidy on the Premium Motor Spirit, popularly known as petrol, for a period of six months.

The Federal Government is expected to spend N52.5bn monthly on 1.5 million federal workers.

This means that a total of N315bn will be spent in six months, with each civil servant getting a total of N210,000.

The President General of the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria, Adewale Adeyanju on Monday, directed that all members of the union to resume work on Tuesday (today) instructed by the Nigeria Labour Congress.

Working-class Nigerians

However, The PUNCH observed that many people of working-class age will not benefit from this Federal Government’s new allowance (N35,000)

Earlier, The PUNCH reported that about 88.2 per cent of working-age Nigerians have no salary-paying jobs.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that only about 11.8 per cent of working-age Nigerians were engaged in wage employment in the first quarter of 2023.

According to the asksource.info site, wage employment includes any salaried or paid job under contract (written or not) to another person, organisation, or enterprise in both the formal and informal economies.

The NBS also disclosed that there was a decrease of 1.6 percentage points in the percentage for wage employment from 13.4 per cent in Q4 2022 to 11.8 per cent in Q1 2023.

The Nigeria Labour Force Survey (4th Quarter 2022 and 1st Quarter 2023) report by the NBS read, “The share of wage employment was 13.4 per cent in Q4 2022 and 11.8 per cent in Q1 2023.”

It means that 1.6 per cent of working-age Nigerians either resigned or lost their salary-paying jobs between Q4 2022 and Q1 2023.

However, the NBS did not provide a value for the total number of working-age Nigerians, unlike in its previous report.

In 2020, the NBS placed Nigeria’s working-age population at 122 million.

Using the figure of 122 million, the N35,000 monthly will not cover up to one per cent of working-age Nigerians.

However, the Federal Government announced that it would commence payment of N75,000 to 15 million households at N25,000 per month for a three-month period from October to December 2023.

The PUNCH earlier reported that at least 42.69 million poor Nigerians were excluded from the N5,000 monthly cash transfer since its inception in 2016.

Also, the Senate earlier approved Tinubu’s request to borrow $800m loan from the World Bank. It also amended the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Act to accommodate the provision for N500bn for palliatives to mitigate the effect of petrol subsidy removal on poor Nigerians.

According to Tinubu, the $800m loan will be used to cater for the welfare of the vulnerable and poor households in the country under the National Safety Net Programme, while the sum of N8,000 will be transferred monthly to the bank accounts of 12 million poor and low-income households for six months.

However, findings by The PUNCH showed that not less than 3.7 million poor households would be excluded from this new cash transfer programme.

Urban poor

The Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, has stressed the need for the government’s palliatives to focus on those in the urban poor.

Oyedele did this on Monday at The Platform, a bi-annual good governance conference hosted by Poju Oyemade, the Senior Pastor of Covenant Christian Centre in Lagos.

He noted that the urban poor are the most affected by the government’s policy, which has made life almost impossible for them.

“Since fuel subsidy removal, it is a painful sacrifice that Nigerians are making… If you are an urban poor, life is almost impossible. When the subsidy was removed, the price of PMS at the pump went up by more than 200 per cent. You know what happened? Traffic in Lagos disappeared.

“One of the reasons it disappeared was because a lot of people could no longer maintain buying fuel to be on the road and then they park their cars. Do you think those are the upper-class people? No! The upper-class people will just complain briefly, they will pay and move on. They drove exactly the way they drove before, after the removal,” Oyedele said.

He further noted that the policy is necessary, but the government needs to commit every saved amount from this policy to helping those who really need it.

He also said that the most impacted by the subsidy removal policy are not in the villages.

“Many villages have no idea that they have removed fuel subsidy. But if you are an urban poor, you commute to work; you pay rent; you buy food. We produced our foods in the village. In other words, we must make sure that we are able to attend to these problems where it is most painful,” Oyedele said.

He further advised Nigerians to stop praying for the country’s refineries to work. Rather, they should channel such energy into demanding their sale.