Latest News
OTHERS' VIEWS
Nigeria’s litany of troubles has finally anchored on two basic existential matters. Insecurity and hunger. We are all very unsafe and now the vast majority of our people are very hungry and angry. Of the two urgencies, the rise of mass hunger is indeed a novel addition to our familiar tale of serial calamities. Mass hunger and the anger and protests it can breed is a clear and urgent threat to our national security.
The signs are already everywhere. Mass protests have held dress rehearsals in places as far flung as Minna, Kano, Suleja, Osogbo, Abeokuta and other isolated pockets around the country. The intensity of the protests has been somewhat tepid and mellow but the message is clear and unmistakable. The population of hungry Nigerians is building up into a critical mass that can make us all uncomfortable. The fear is now palpable that if the scourge of hunger is allowed to spread with the attendant protests, the business of governing Nigeria could turn into a nationwide crowd control and mob anger management operation.
The danger in these hunger protests is in the very nature of hunger itself. Hunger is indeed an unfamiliar addition to our familiar cocktail of Nigeria’s usual calamities. Hunger in the sense of absolute lack of food of any kind in addition to the lack of the money to buy what is available and necessary, has not quite been the Nigerian thing. The poor may not feast on delicacies every day but they have always managed to find the bowl of eba, fufu, tuwo and basic grains to fill the stomach and resume praying for tomorrow as a better day. Never before has plain simple hunger been the lot of so many Nigerians at once. But we are in a new and different place. Democracy has yielded us the unexpected dividend of universal poverty and the reality of mass starvation.
In response to the unfolding signs of imminent mass hunger, the government has been stumbling from one gamble to another. Initially it was some palliative of sharing bags of rice to poor people in the states and the FCT. The budgeted N5 billion per state has largely been lost in a haystack of corruption allegations. Claims and counter claims over who got rice or noodles have featured from across the country. There was a follow up pledge by some states to offer government employees cash incentives of anywhere between N10,000 and N100,000. From most states, the feedback is mostly one of serial default and unfulfilled promises.
While this parade of guesswork has gone on, the cost of living especially food inflation has continued to gallop. Food inflation has shot up from under 30% in May to over 40% now. General inflation has similarly skyrocketed from 33% to over 39% in the same period. More frightening, the exchange rate of the Naira to major world currencies has seen the national currency dip in value from less than N500 to the dollar in May to over N1,600 to the dollar at the time of this writing. Neither the government nor the general populace have any idea of what concrete informed economic actions are being taken to alleviate a worsening economic condition. Nearly every measure or statement of solution by the Central Bank has been greeted by a worsening exchange rate scenario the day after.
One interesting aspect of the onset of the hunger protests is that they began while President Tinubu was away in Paris on a “private visit”. The message did get to him. He probably cared as a man with the mandate of the people to help them overcome mundane matters like hunger and cashless poverty. But he preferred dignified silence on the matter till he returned home. Since his return, the president has resumed the affairs of state as usual. He has, for instance, urged citizens to recite the national pledge after each rendition of the National Anthem. He has instructed that limitless amounts of grains be released from the national reserves to assuage the raging hunger.
No one has said exactly where the grains reserves are located and how much the silos hold in total. Even worse, no one has told us how hungry people who are also abjectly poor will pay for the grains. It turns out, as an afterthought, that the grains will be distributed free of charge. But the modalities are yet in the works. The promise of grains has raised other troubling questions. Without reference to any concrete evidence of concrete food production effort to support his optimism, the president has insisted that Nigeria will soon become a net exporter of food as he can envision a period of plenty in the horizon.
As with most things in political Nigeria, the onset of mass hunger and the rising costs of living in the country have been the subject of either political football or predictable populist doublespeak among the elite. Predictably, the Nigerian elite has jumped on the hunger wagon to preach their familiar lines. The more politically minded have opted to play political football with the hunger crisis.
Former Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has preferred shifting the blame for the current hardships from Tinubu to Mr. Buhari. This is political bad manners. Every new government is elected to solve the problems they find on the ground, not to blame the predecessor government indefinitely. That is the most elementary lesson of democratic succession. New governments that spend most of their time looking for aspects of mistakes in what they inherited end up badly as a general rule. When Barrack Obama took over from George Bush Jr., some Democrats wanted him to blame the Bush administration for the global economic meltdown of 2007-8. Obama preferred to face and solve the economic problem instead of surrendering the global economy to a litany of blames. He succeeded.
In furtherance of the Nigerian political football about hunger and high cost of living, political megaphones of the ruling APC have blamed the governors of the rival PDP as being responsible for the hardship in the land. They did not distribute the palliatives released to them nor have they lived up to their obligations in paying the promised allowance of N30,000 to workers in the service of their states. No one has reminded them that the same thing applies to the APC governors.
The Nigerian Labour Congress President has questioned the efficacy of grains as an antidote to universal hunger, arguing that Nigerians are not birds that feed mostly on grains. Implicit in that cynical interrogation of governmental good intention is the common knowledge that food consists of more than grains: proteins, vegetables, fats and various other carbohydrates etc. Meanwhile even the little that is promised remains invisible.
The Sultan of Sokoto has been closer to his trenchant self. He has said Nigerians are now deeply frustrated, extremely hungry and very resentful. He spoilt his courageous message by insisting that it was time for Nigerians to seek repentance as our present adversities were a repercussion for our past sins.
In similar vein, the incumbent Emir of Kano has sent the message of mass hunger and frustration more directly to the centre of power. Receiving First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu in Kano, the Emir topped up is lavish hospitality with a message through her to her husband. It was clear and direct: “please tell your husband that the people are hungry and angry”.
The clergy is not to be left out. Pastor Enoch Adeboye has shifted the blame for our intractable insecurity and hardship to the realm of the supernatural. In his view, the leaders are doing their best but the insecurity and current hardship require divine intervention. The answer is perhaps in more prayers and supplication while patiently awaiting God’s appointed time for relief of our economic burdens. Meanwhile the scourge of hunger rages and the fire of anger consumes the land as wealthy priests ready to jet out of hell in their private jets.
Having failed to wish away the hunger troubles through political and public opinion manipulation, the Presidency has at last managed to find the courage to confront the matter as a government. President Bola Tinubu held a very consequential meeting last Thursday with the Governors of a 36 states and Minister of the FCT. The meeting was the first tacit admission by their excellencies that the Nigerian state is now reduced to a machinery for confronting the original necessity of the nation state. The business of government is to guarantee the security of lives and property or limbs in the absence of property and to ensure the livelihood (food) of all citizens. In its classical sense, the necessity of government is the need to save humanity from the physical danger of hurt and death by his fellows while guaranteeing food and livelihood for those alive. In short, the essence of the state and government can be reduced to these two elements.
Quite wisely, the President and the governors winded up addressing the biting urgency of security and food security. The consensus on these two is not far fetched. Prior to the last one month, insecurity in the form of banditry, kidnappings, abductions sense killings and violence was the dominant concern of most Nigerians. The idea of state police is being debated to combat bandits and kidnappers. Meanwhile, rhetorical poverty has graduated into mass abject penury and mass hunger. While sensible normal people can take measures to avoid being kidnapped or abducted, there is no armour against unavoidable hunger.
But when people are hungry, they become irritable and very angry. In every sense, hunger is an instant unifier of mankind. A mass of hungry people is undifferentiated by the things that divide people in a polity. Hunger has no religion, ethnicity or region. All those whom poverty throws into the hellish pit of hunger find fellowship in the commonality of their condition.
When a critical mass of the citizenry is reduced to an angry mob in protests about basic necessities and hunger, we have the makings of anarchy. An anarchic mob can only produce a revolution for good if the mob is infused with guiding ideas and a populist political leadership. The French were lucky that the mobs that stormed the Bastille in 1789 were armed with a slogan of ‘Equality, Freedom and Egalitarianism’. They were helped along by the arrogance of a monarchy whose queen, on learning that the people were marching to protest scarcity of bread, urged them “to go and eat cakes”! There was of course an underlying political leadership that took over the revolution and converted it into a republic after an intervening period of anarchy.
On the contrary, a series of hunger protests over a wide area such as Nigeria can get out of hand. It could degenerate into mere anarchy if it overwhelms the state. I cannot see an informing idea nor a political leadership that can own or galvanize Nigeria’s hunger protests into a political movement. Therefore, what we may be seeing is a series of rehearsals in anarchy. The possible ensuing mayhem may fall into the hands of a cocktail of power adventurers: military despots, ethnic bigots, religious fundamentalists, narcotics warlords and treasure- seeking gangster collectives. What began as hunger protests could lead straight into anarchy and total state meltdown.
Perhaps it is much easier to import, mass produce or borrow food to assuage these hunger protests and mobs than allow them to consume the fragile Nigerian state and plunge us all into a 100 years of anarchy.
The President Bola Tinubu administration has responded swiftly to street protests in three Nigerian cities about rising food prices. Some high-level meetings have been held and clear directives have been given, including through a statement by the president himself after his emergency meeting with state governors on Thursday. This is commendable. Challenges can compound when officials do not act on time. This administration can thus be awarded an A on responsiveness. However, the government will struggle for a passing grade on the quality of its immediate interventions for taming soaring food prices. Some of its interpretations and actions on the issue need more nuance and rigour, and could benefit from a quick rethink.
Public policy can be likened to the field of medicine. Proper diagnosis is foundational and should guide the way to appropriate prescription and effective treatment. Misdiagnosis has dangerous consequences not just in the medical field, but also in governance. When confronted with a public challenge, officials should spend quality time to first understand what is going on, identify the remote and immediate triggers, then design their interventions. Granted that sometimes decisions have to be taken quickly and it is difficult to have perfect information in governance but querying assumptions, being sceptical about ideas that easily jump to the fore and asking the why question many times over could help. Public policies should not be made on a hunch or on impulse/emotions or be based on anecdotal evidence or isolated intelligence. Constantly, policymakers need to ask themselves: what does the fact tell us? Policymakers need to make data, not dogma, their friend.
Different government officials, including the president, have implicated hoarders as the culprits of rising food prices. Security forces have been ordered to go after them. A government agency in Kano actually stormed and sealed ten warehouses in the ancient city for hoarding foodstuffs and other essential items, and the president acknowledged this on Thursday. Merchants, including those who trade across borders, have also been blamed. The Minister of Agriculture was reported as saying Nigerian land borders should be closed to stop those coming to buy our grains on the cheap and driving up prices here. The Nigerian Customs Service has swung into action by impounding vehicles reportedly smuggling food items out of Nigeria. The governor of Niger State was quoted as saying traders from other parts of Nigeria will be banned from buying food grown in his state. Sometimes it is difficult to believe that we are in 2024 AD.
There is a lot to unpack from these official statements and actions. Suffice to say that these prescriptions and statements give insights into official diagnosis of rising food prices. With all the charity I can muster, I will say these official prescriptions reveal a reductionist and even dangerous diagnosis of the problem. The misdiagnosis could be inadvertent or deliberate—inadvertent because of inadequate attention to data and developments; deliberate because of a ploy to create scapegoats, cause distractions and divert attention. Whatever it is, government is unwittingly creating another set of problems. It is undermining efforts at improving storage of agricultural produce, stigmatising and criminalising enterprise, discouraging investment, and officially sanctioning possible harassment and extortion of businesses by security agents. Worse: hungry and angry people could start storming and ‘liberating’ warehouses, stores and shops of ‘hoarded items.’
Just to be clear: farmers and traders have always stored food items that they could. (I know this first hand as I followed my grandfather to his farms almost every day for two years while waiting for university admission. My grandfather stored grains and yams on his farms and in the house sometimes for close to a year.) It is also not unusual for traders to aggregate produce from farmers, store and package them in warehouses/stores before selling to wholesalers and retailers. So, farmers, merchants and commodity traders storing grains and other items is not the problem. It will be important to know what objective metrics government officials and informants will use to determine when keeping items in warehouses/stores is legitimate storage and when it is hoarding.
Also, selling grains across the borders actually predated independent Nigeria. And it is not a one-way trade: we buy grains from and sell to our neighbours depending on prices and harvests’ yields. For ages, we have had border markets and even international grains markets. A ready example of the latter is the Dawanau International Grains Market in Kano, which is patronised by farmers and traders from across Nigeria and from other west and central African countries. So, selling food items to non-Nigerians cannot be the reason for high food prices. According to even accounts by government officials, there is no scarcity of food in Nigerian markets. Food items are readily available. Affordability is the challenge. The nuance that government needs to factor into its clearly tendentious diagnosis is that an item can be available and be expensive at the same time, especially when price is largely driven by cost. However, admitting to the impact of associated costs will not allow the government to easily pass the buck or create convenient scapegoats.
Food prices are impacted by associated costs in two ways. One obvious transmission line is transportation costs. Most of the trucks moving farm inputs and produce run on diesel, which is fully deregulated and which now sells for about N1400 per litre in Abuja. It would be unfair to expect the farmers and traders to absorb that cost. The second channel is that farmers have to adjust their prices to ensure that rising inflation doesn’t hand them the short end of the stick. Farmers cannot grow everything they need and they have reasonable expectations of the basket of goods that their produce should give them. We can call this the exchange value of their produce. For example, if a 100kg bag of sorghum used to fetch a farmer 50kg of vegetable oil, what do you expect the farmer to do when the price of vegetable oil doubles? Take the halving of the value of his bag of sorghum as an act of God or as a patriotic contribution or adjust his own prices? Farmers/traders adjusting their prices to ensure they can maintain a commensurate standard of living in the midst of soaring cost of living is not profiteering. It is a rational human response.
Though I criticise the implementation style and clear lack of a prior strategy for the Tinubu reforms on petrol subsidy removal and official exchange rates unification, I think both reforms are necessary and I support them. But it is indisputable that it is the combined effect of both reforms, especially the constant depreciation of the Naira in both official and parallel markets, that is the main driving force behind the recent surge in the prices of most goods, including home-grown food items for reasons mentioned earlier. It is true that both headline inflation and food inflation have been high for a while. According to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), food inflation crossed the 20% threshold in June 2022 (20.60%) and headline inflation caught up in August 2022 (20.52%). Both have not looked back since, with headline inflation and food inflation notching up to 29.90% and 35.41% respectively in January 2024. The constant yo-yoing of the Naira, now beyond the previously unimaginable N1500/$1 threshold, is the immediate cause of skyrocketing prices. The farmers and traders didn’t cause the plummeting of the value of the Naira.
To be sure, our homegrown food items would now be cheaper for our neighbours because they are holding a relatively stronger currency, leading to an increase in quantity demanded. And of course, there would be some unscrupulous traders cashing in here and there too. But as long as these activities have not led to shortage or scarcity of grains and other foodstuffs in the markets (as government officials themselves have repeatedly said), we have to look for the drivers of high food prices elsewhere. Policy makers should be asking for actual or proxy data on demand and supply before arriving at probable cause. One useful hint about the hollowness of the primacy of the hoarding/smuggling narrative: prices of all food items, including perishable and non-exported ones, are rising.
Our overstretched security and anti-corruption agents should have more important things to do with their precious time than to be reduced to price police and chasers of food hoarders/smugglers. This approach feeds into the fallacy that the brute force of the state can solve all problems including purely market issues. It is wrongheaded, counter-productive and futile. I will not join those asking the government to abandon its two signature reforms. Government needs to finetune their implementation and develop robust strategies for them. Government also needs to urgent change course on some of its approach to the food price crisis.
It is commendable that president has ordered the release of 42,000 metric tons of grains from the national grains reserves to be distributed free to the poor. But as in other areas, the absence of a clear strategy is evident. The Minister of Information announced the presidential order on February 8th but gave no indication about how this will be done. On February 14th, the Minister of Agriculture said the distribution will be done by NEMA and DSS but that government is awaiting ‘indexes’ from these agencies. Up till now, a cup of grains has not been shared anywhere and there is no clarity on when this emergency intervention will start.
By the way, 42, 000 metric tons comes to 840, 000 bags of grains in 50kg bags. Assuming equal distribution, that will come to 22, 703 bags of grains for each of the 36 states and FCT. It will be interesting to see how much grains will get to each person (and the cost of distribution) in a country where 104 million people are categorised as income poor. I find two other things curious in this still cloudy arrangement: the involvement of DSS in identifying and distributing food to the poor; and the fact that 79.25% of the 53,000 metric tons of grains in our reserves will be released at once. On the latter point, an argument could be made that releasing about four-fifth of our reserves at once shows how seriously the government takes this crisis. Fair enough. But what happens to high food prices after the distribution, what happens to the beneficiaries after the one-off largesse and what happens in case of a critical emergency in the country?
I am all for the state coming to the aid of the poorest of the poor. But I don’t think people are asking for free food. Agreed it is good gesture, and maybe some people actually need bowls of free grains. But how sustainable is this approach and what happens next? My sense is that most people are bothered about constantly changing prices of food items. Maybe releasing the grains to boost supply would have been a more appropriate intervention. Or maybe splitting what will be released to the market to boost supply and what will be shared gratis could also be a mid-path. Maybe. This goes back to the issue of proper diagnosis and the imperative of driving policy decisions with data.
But there are more things to worry about. In the statement released on his X handle, President Tinubu said: “I will not establish a price control board, nor will I approve the importation of food. We must extricate ourselves from this predicament because importation only enables rent seekers to perpetrate fraud and mismanagement at our collective expense. Instead, we will support our farmers with schemes that encourage them to cultivate more food for the nation.” This is a great quote by the way. Fighting and patriotic words. I agree with the president on the futility of price control and on the need to support our farmers to produce more (because we actually have a serious food security problem that we need to tackle in many ways in the medium term to long term).
But, Mr. President, we have an urgent problem that demands an immediate and consequential intervention. I don’t think fighting and patriotic words are enough. The only immediate solution that the president has put on the table is the 42,000 metric tons of free grains, but it is too puny to make a dent. According to the USDA, Nigeria in 2024 is projected to consume 31.35 million metric tons of just four major grains: corn (12.3mmt), rice (7.8mmt), sorghum (6.75mmt) and wheat (4.5mmt). That 42,000mmt is a mere 0.13% of our projected consumption of four grains this year. Whatever support the president and the governors give to farmers now will not translate to harvests and lower prices until three to six months. What happens in the interim? This is why the fighting words about imports have to be reconsidered.
Luckily, we are largely self-sufficient in roots/tubers, pulses, maize and sorghum. We are close to self-sufficiency in rice, but we have had an annual supply gap in excess of two million metric tons for more than ten years despite all our interventions over the time. But we are dependent on imports almost 100% for our supply of wheat and sugar, two items consumed directly or used as inputs for foods and drinks widely consumed in the country, especially in the tetchy urban areas. So, the fighting and patriotic words on not sanctioning importation and not enabling rent-seeking are not quite helpful in addressing the problem at hand. Despite all the different regimes of restrictions, we always import some staple food items anyway. If what the president meant is that the government will not do the importation, that is fine.
But there are levers that the government can pull to quickly reduce the prices of some strategic food items like rice, sugar and wheat: reducing or removing tariffs on them, even for a short period. The argument is about making cheaper items that we already import, items that we do not have capacity to meet or fully meet in the short to medium terms, and items that are widely consumed and whose prices set the prices of so many other food items made out of them.
At this time of high stress, the government invariably punishes consumers with high prices if it continues to insist on imposing tariffs of 85% on wheat (the main ingredient for bread), 75% on sugar (on which we created market power for Dangote, BUA and Flour Mills in the name of a clearly ineffective backward integration policy) and 70% on rice. Removing or reducing the tariffs, duties and other charges on these items for say three to six months will quickly reduce their prices and touch many more people than distributing cups of free grains. Late President Umaru Yar’Adua removed all levies and duties on rice between May and November 2008 in response to the global food crisis at the time. The price of imported rice crashed by 45%. A rough calculation shows that even at the current exchange rate, imported rice will cost at least 35% cheaper today without tariff and duties.
Reducing or removing tariff on these three items won’t bring down the prices of all food items, but it will considerably calm nerves and will be good signalling because of the strategic importance of the items involved. It will not be cost-free. Government will take a revenue cut. But it is a time-bound cut, and the slight reduction in revenue will be more than compensated for by the benefits to the larger society. Government will be seen to be making sacrifice for the people and to be taking immediate and significant steps (not engaging in work avoidance of chasing ‘hoarders’ and ‘profiteers’). Consumers will breathe a little.
The fears about displacing local farmers are misplaced, as the items spoken about here are not maize, sorghum, cassava, yam and others in which we are self-sufficient. In any case, we need to look at the big, national picture, not just the narrow interest of a lobby group or at how to burnish our ideological/nationalistic credentials. We need pragmatic and immediate interventions on this food issue. And very quickly too, as it is not in anyone’s interest for the surging hunger and anger on the streets to spill over.
Coup making is not the exclusive preserve of soldiers or the armed forces. Civilians, too, do stage coups. In Nigeria, we have had our fair share of coups and counter-coups, and have resolved that our collective aspirations as a people are best served by a government of the people, for the people and by the people.
Every form of government has its own warts. We have been indoctrinated to believe that the universal adult suffrage of the West is God-ordained. But we have seen, especially in the last US presidential elections, attempts to stage a coup by overrunning the parliament and preventing the announcement of the winner of the elections. That incident clearly showed the whole world that there is nothing unassailable about American democracy. Every mother does have them.
Long ago, I came to the conclusion that each society deserved to devise its own system based on its history, culture and aspirations. The monarchical system of Saudi Arabia is replicated in the United Kingdom. Even then, the more you try to compare them, the more they look different because each has its own peculiar flavour. The world can no longer describe a monarchical setting as autocratic because these days, the monarch merely reigns while a prime minister rules.
Until recently, Senegal had the distinction of being the poster boy for democracy in Africa. Since Independence in 1960, the country has managed to glide from one civilian administration to the other, even the handing over of power by a ruling party to the opposition— First in 1980, from Leopold Sedar Senghor to Abdou Diouf; then, in 2000, from Diouf to Abdoulaye Wade; and then, in 2012, from Wade to Sall. The country has never experienced the ugly incidence of coups, not even when forceful change of government was commonplace in Africa.
Third Term Bug
Although regular elections are held, each one of Senegal’s leaders attempted to stay in power longer than the designated time. Political observers had been wondering if incumbent president Macky Sall would escape the bite of the tenure extension bug, especially as he had publicly declared that he would not succumb to what we in Nigeria call the “third term syndrome”. Everything seemed primed for a successful election until the president forcefully procured an indefinite postponement of the election by getting the parliament to do his bidding with security forces bundling opposition elements who disagreed with the move out of the parliament.
Judging by his body language, Sall desired to run for a third term, but knowing that such an unconstitutional move would pit him against the people, he jettisoned that option in 2023, and endorsed Amadou Ba as his candidate for succession. Then, as the election date drew nearer, it seemed he could no longer bear the imminent change in status from president to citizen and he therefore decided to make another attempt at tenure elongation by first postponing the elections indefinitely. Sall, who has been in power since 2012, called off the elections over disputes about the disqualification of potential candidates and concern about a repeat of the unrest seen in 2021 and 2023. Senegal’s opposition has decried the move as a “constitutional coup” and suspects it is part of a plan by the presidential camp to extend Sall’s term in office.
It is interesting how history repeats itself. Sengor had played a few political tricks to stay in power for 22 years before handing over power to his chosen successor, Abdou Diouf, in 1980. Diouf stayed in power for two decades during which Abdoulaye Wade was his fiercest opponent. Wade went to jail for his political convictions and even went on exile at a point in time.
His tenacity won him a lot of followers and his popular movement succeeded in defeating the long-ruling Socialist Party headed by Diouf. Towards the end of his second term, he succumbed to the third term bug. He started plotting how to remain in power beyond the constitutional mandate. When he saw that the people of Senegal would not tolerate him for one day longer than constitutionally guaranteed, he named his son, Karim Wade, as his successor. The dynastic dream of the Wades was not to be. Karim ran foul of the law and was convicted of corruption, thus ending his presidential dream.
Long Knives
After the elimination of Karim Wade from the list of possible leaders in the country, Senegal was confronted with the possibility that power could go to Ousmane Sonko, a maverick politician nicknamed by some of his admirers as the “Trump of Senegal”. It was Sonko who published a book on oil and gas corruption in which the Sall-led administration was roundly indicted. It was also Sonko who famously said, “Those who have ruled Senegal from the beginning deserve to be shot.”
Last year, sexual assault charges were preferred against him in what many people saw as political vendetta. The court acquitted him of the rape charge but convicted for “corrupting the youth”. Young people, many of whom believe in him, took to the streets in protest, but Sall quelled all the protests forcefully. But Sonko is out of this 2004 ballot.
With Sall and Sonko out of the race, is there a clear frontrunner? The answer is no. Analysts have been weighing the chances of Sall’s chosen successor Ba, as well as long-time Sall opponents Khalifa Sall and former premier Seck. There is also Bassirou Diomaye Faye, whom members of Sonko’s now-dissolved Pastef party nominated as a back-up candidate in the event of Sonko’s disqualification. Faye himself is in detention but he remains eligible to run as there has been no ruling yet on the case of defamation and contempt of court against him.
It is unlikely that any of the candidates will cross the 50% threshold in the election to claim victory. The election is therefore likely to go to the second round.
President Sall’s bad behaviour has put his brother presidents in ECOWAS in a quandary. With the way ECOWAS has been sending signals that coups are no longer welcome in the West African sub-region, it was embarrassing that Senegal, the stainless member of the community, the beacon for democracy is toeing the line of anomie. Frantic efforts were being made by the regional body and the African Union last week to save President Sall from himself. It was clear to every objective analyst that Sall had pushed his country to the precipice. The only logical gear to engage was the reverse gear.
Court Intervention
Which was what, thankfully, the Constitutional Court did last week to the relief of all those who had been monitoring the unfolding tragedy. Opposition presidential candidates and lawmakers had filed a number of legal challenges to last week’s parliamentary bill, which also extended President Macky Sall’s mandate in what critics said amounted to an “institutional coup”. Senegal’s Constitutional Council has now cancelled the decree signed by President Macky Sall that postponed the election. The National Assembly’s move on February 5 to reschedule the vote for December 14 also was adjudged “contrary to the constitution”.
As a result of protests and international pressure, President Macky Sall has ordered the release of some political prisoners. To further ease the tension in the land, the president also has to lift restrictions placed on internet usage
Let Sall’s misadventure into ‘third-termism’ be a lesson to all African leaders. You have no right to transmogrify from a democrat to a despot. Indeed, your tenancy of the state house is at the pleasure of the people. It is immaterial whether the mastermind of a coup is a soldier or a civilian; a coup is a coup. Had Sall’s coup succeeded, it wouldn’t have been any different from those of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
The people are stirring and the leaders are panicky! As hunger keeps the people awake, the fear of what a hungry person can do keeps the well-fed awake! This is typical of a chick that perches on a rope: No peace for the rope and no peace for the chick.
True, then, are the words of Frederick Douglass that “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or bows or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those they oppress”
It could not have been better put! And the practical demonstration of that has begun to unfold before our very eyes in the protests against escalating cost of living, especially of essential foodstuffs, taking place spontaneously – or instigated, as some have alleged – in parts of the country. Semantics and politics apart, what is incontestable is that these are hard times. And something quickly has to be done before matters get out of hand. If food is not made available for the people to eat, they sure would not mind eating the leaders themselves!
The Government moved days ago to find solutions: The president and the governors rubbed minds and arrived at some decisions which ought to have been taken a long time ago by previous administrations, such as on state police to curb insecurity, which has driven farmers off the farm; accelerated food production all over the country, rather than continued dependence on the importation of essential commodities; and the mobilization of state governors to play their own part in solving problems, instead of abandoning all the task for the Federal Government and heaping all the blames on Mr. President.
The First Republic remains the golden age of Nigeria where all the achievements we still refer to today were chalked up but, tell me, what do we remember the Federal Government for, in that epoch? I cannot remember any! But we remember the regions for their achievements. In an era when there was no crude oil, it was agriculture that the regional governments leveraged upon to record outstanding successes.
Competition amongst the regions produced the development that we still speak about to this day. Discovery of crude oil, abandonment of agriculture and industrialization, the splintering of the economically viable regions into weak states, decades of military adventurism and amateurish governance; scandalous cost of governance; and the cankerworm of corruption that grew steadily to become the octopus that it is today - all of these have combined to bring this country on its knees.
Whether it will rise again, like the Phoenix rising from its ashes, remains to be seen.
The meeting of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the governors, however, gives a ray of hope. One of the news media reported it thus: “President Bola Tinubu and governors have agreed on 10 ways to tackle the security and food challenges in the country. Tinubu in company of Vice President Kashim Shettima on Thursday, February 14, 2024 met with the 36 States Governors and the FCT Minister at the State House. Special Adviser to the President on Information & Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, who provided insight into the deliberations between the President and the state governors, said the meeting agreed on common grounds to address some of the challenges currently facing the country, especially the rising cost of food and insecurity.
"Onanuga said after extensive deliberations, the President and governors agreed to work together to solve the problems and tackle the economic pressure being faced by the citizens. On ways of addressing insecurity, which is affecting farming and food production, President Tinubu made three key pronouncements: One, more police personnel to be recruited to strengthen the force. Two, President Tinubu informed the governors that the Federal Government will work with them and the National Assembly towards putting in place a mechanism that will engender state police, instead of the vigilantes that are being used in some states. Three, the President charged the governors to strengthen their Forest Rangers and arm them to keep all the forest safe from criminals. It was agreed that the modalities for State Police and addressing security issues (are) to be discussed further at the National Economic Council.
"On rising cost of food, the President directed that the state and federal governments should collaborate to increase local food production. The President advised against the idea of food importation and price control... Also, the President advised governors to follow the example of Kano State in dealing with hoarding of food for profiteering by commodities merchants. He directed the Inspector-General of Police, National Security Adviser, Department of State Services to monitor warehouses hoarding food items across the country and stop profiteering by merchants. The President charged governors to pay attention to livestock development in their states and increase production, most especially poultry and fishing products”
Onanuga then quoted the president as saying: “My position at this meeting is that we must move aggressively and establish a committee to look critically at the issues raised, including the possibility of establishing state police. From Kano, we have read reports about large-scale hoarding of food in some warehouses. The National Security Adviser (NSA), the Inspector-General of Police, and the Director-General of the Department of State Services should coordinate very closely and ensure that security agencies in the states inspect such warehouses with follow up action. We must ensure that speculators, hoarders, and rent seekers are not allowed to sabotage our efforts in ensuring the wide availability of food to all Nigerians.
“What I will not do is to set a price control board. I will not also approve the importation of food. We should be able to get ourselves out of the situation we found ourselves in because importation will allow rent seekers to perpetrate fraud and mismanagement at our collective expense. We would rather support farmers with the schemes that will make them go to the farm and grow more food for everyone in the country. We must also look at the rapid but thoughtful implementation of our livestock development and management plans, including dairy farming and others”
The President was also reported to have pleaded with governors to ensure that all salary arrears to workers, gratuities to workers and pensioners are cleared as a way to put money into the hands of the people since states are now getting more monthly FAAC revenue. "Spend the money, don’t spend the people", the president was said to have urged the governors. "President Tinubu (also) implored governors to create more economic opportunities for the youths in their states to keep them more productively engaged”.
I like the way the governors have been dragged into the matter of insecurity and food protection by Mr. President. The local government chairpersons must have been excluded because of their sheer number – which chamber will accommodate the whole lot, 774 in number? The heat, usually, has been on the President while governors escape the censure, when the reverse ought to have been the case. Many governors do nothing with the funds they collect. It is time for them to be put on the spot. Let the groundnuts pyramids return in the North! Let the Southwest regain its lost glory as one of the world’s top cocoa producers! Let the East compete with Malaysia in palm-oil production!
On insecurity, it is time for the governors to justify money collected as security votes. What have they been securing? Yes, we need more policemen. But quantity must also go hand-in-hand with quality. Good training, modern equipment, hi-tech, and motivation must all work pari-passu if we are to have value for money. State police are long overdue. Now the governors will have a good place to spend their security votes.
Still on insecurity, the governors for long neglected to explore the Forest Rangers option, which the law sanctions and which is not as politically contentious as State Police. But now with the president's tacit acceptance of both State policing and Forest Rangers empowerment, keeping our forests free of dangerous elements becomes a task that must be done. As I shared the Forest Rangers idea with one of the South-west governors a fortnight ago, I was happy to hear him say it was on the cards. Now, I can see it truly was.
I support that we grow our own food rather than rely on imports. I belong to a group where some members incessantly advocated for the “importation” of foodstuffs from the Middle Belt of the country into the South-west. Each time they broached the idea, I wasted no time in shooting it down. We must grow our own food in the South-west instead of relying on “food imports” from the North. We all saw how they used food as a weapon against us not long ago!
We used to grow our own foodstuffs. We can do so again. Governors and LG chairmen must lead the way back to the farm in the Southwest. We must grow whatever is growable in our backyards. Every available space must be turned into gardens. In my primary and secondary school days, we had gardens and school farms – even fish ponds. Let the governors start a Green Revolution that will spread like wildfire all over the Southwest.
I once advised a Southwest governor to convert a sprawling field within the Government House into a farm where we could grow some of the foodstuffs that we consumed in the Government House but he said no. He loved to see the green grass mowed day-after-day for nothing! Bunkum! It is that type of stupid mentality that causes the Southwest to starve today. Let every green grass that serves no purpose pave way for farms that will grow pepper, tomatoes, vegetables, yams, beans, etc.
A crate of eggs now costs N3,500! What this means is that every source of animal protein is now beyond the reach of the average Nigerian! Meat, chicken, and fish are already no-go areas! The solution is for us to return to the farm. Growing up, I had a garden where I grew all sorts of items. I also raised chicken. I plan to return to all of that as much as is practicable. If we all strive to reduce what we go to the market to purchase, we shall be contributing to solving the problem of the escalating cost of foodstuffs. Bringing down the cost of living is not the responsibility of the government alone; but for each and everyone of us, it is a task that must be done!
Whilst much of the world and most of America watched the superbowl the other night, the State of Israel was busy bombing and slaughtering the Christian and Muslim women and children of Rafah and its sprawling refugee camp in far away Gaza.
100 innocent and defenceless people were killed, most of whom were women and children, in the space of a few hours of relentless bombing.
Israel has expressed her intention to continue to bomb and unleash horror on Rafah despite the stern warnings and desperate pleas from the rest of the world not to do so including her two greatest allies and closest friends, the United States of America and the United Kingdom.
The Jewish state has murdered no less and probably far more than 35,000 Palestinian civilians in the last four months, 17,000 of whom are children, and injured over 100,000.
I am compelled and constrained by my faith and love for humanity to oppose and resist such a monstrous entity that is given to commiting such inhumane and genocidal crimes against my fellow human beings for WHATEVER reason and neither can I be expected to confer on it some far-fetched and illusionary notion of "the right to exist".
Surely no country, particularly one which was artificially-created and which was built on the blood, sweat, suffering, toil, tears and bones of the Palestinian people like the Zionist state, has the right to exist.
The oppressor has no right to exist if that "right" entails cheating, pillaging, plundering, enslaving, murdering at will and occupying the land of the oppressed.
The usurper, the conqueror, the pillager, the rapist, the mass- murderer, the thief, the land-grabber, the ethnic cleanser, the butcher of the elderly and the murderer of women and children may have the weapons, wealth, international support, power, wherewithal and homicidal disposition to commit and get away with his horrendous crimes against humanity but he has no "right to exist" other than the one that he forcefully and erroneously appropriated and conferred upon himself.
He exists and commits such unspeakable atrocities only because he has the power to do so and to get away with them and not because he has any right to exist.
Great nations and powerful empires come and great nations and powerful empires go.
That is the way of the world, it is inevitable and it is well reflected in history.
The Babylonian, Persian, Mongol, Ottoman, Roman, British, Spanish, Russian, Han and Greek empires collectively and respectively once ruled the civilised world and their power was deemed to be never-ending and irresistible but where are they today?
They had their time, sometimes stretching into hundreds of years, but eventually they crumbled and were compelled by the force of circumstances which were beyond their control to relinquish power, to leave the scene, to crumble and to eventually vanish into the night.
And in that crumbling their so-called "right to exist" solely for the purpose of destroying, enslaving, subjugating and tormenting others disappeared into the night with them.
So it shall be for the Zionist state if she does not repent, go back to God and change her wicked ways.
Like Juilus Caesar she came, she saw and she conquered.
From the time that she was re-established 75 long years ago she boastfully flaunted her awesome power, magnificent glory, unprecedented excellence and stupendous wealth over much of the world and particularly over the Palestinian people.
Like the Virgin Daughter of Babylon who was graphically displayed and meticulously described in Isaiah 47 of the Holy Bible she loudly and boastfully proclaimed to the world and all that cared to listen that "I AM and there is none besides me!"
Yet despite her hubristic pride and vainglorious proclamations of invincibility it is self-evident to the discerning that with her blind, vengeful and savage rage, her unconciable lack of restraint and self-discipline, her inexplicable descent into madness and the abominable atrocities that she is committing in Gaza on a daily basis her cup is full and the Most High God has set His heart and the people of the world against her just as He did 2000 years ago after they murdered our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
He shall surely break her yoke, bring her to her knees, revoke her "right to exist", scatter her to the four corners of the earth, compel her to vanish into the night and ensure that her insidious and perfidious intention to establish a "Greater Israel" whose borders stretch from Egypt to Iran crumbles and is blown away with the wind.
The Zionist state's sole purpose of existence is to crush, conquer, enslave and exterminate the Palestinian people in their nefarious and sinister expansionist quest and to deny them what is rightfully theirs including their identity, their history, their heritage, their land, their dignity
and their lives.
Worse still they seek to achieve this with the full backing and blind support of a Biden-led United States of America that is simply incapable of any rational thinking or being impartial when it comes to this matter and that has wilfully shunned world opinion, given a thumbs up to genocide, supplied aid, arms, money, and material support to the ethnic cleansers, abandoned the cause of the Palestinian people and given their oppressors the right, the weaponry and the means to wipe them off the face of the earth.
Yet consider this.
No matter how powerful she deems herself to be the Jewish state has an Achilles heel and a soft and vulnerable underbelly and she will NEVER achieve these objectives.
More importantly in the fullness of time and in the process of trying she may well be totally crushed and removed from the map of the world.
This is because God alone rules in the affairs of men and He is just and true.
The Bible says He is slow to anger but irresistible in battle. His power is awesome, His majesty is irresistible and His justice is swift.
He is a man of war and as the Bible asks, "who can stand against Him?"
He contends against those who contend against us, He fights for the rights of the less privileged and the underdog and He rises in defence of the enslaved and the oppressed.
He removes mighty Kings from their thrones in the blink of an eye and He causes paupers, the rejected, the hated and the deprived to rise up in power and excel.
He is the father of the orphan and the husband of the widow.
He is the champion of the poor, the needy, the elderly and the defenceless infant and He is the avenger of our blood.
His name is the I Am That I Am, the Ancient of Days, the Rose of Sharon, the Lily of the Valley, the Lamb of God, the Ressurected Messiah, the Coming King and the Lord God of Hosts and at the appropriate time He will honor His word and rise up for the occupied, the cheated, the subjugated, the humiliated, the denied, the oppressed and the enslaved and strike down their strong tormentor.
Simply put there is no place or space in todays world for the worst, most brazen, most primitive and most insidious form of racism, colonialism and fascism that today's Zionist State of Israel embodies, manifests and represents.
And neither does a vicious, relentless, barbaric, cruel, heartless and blood-lusting apartheid Jewish state which is led by evil men who have lost their sense of reason, their minds and their humanity and who behave in a worse manner than the wildest of beasts have a right to exist.
They LOST that right when they embarked on violating all international norms, laws and protocols and chose to target and kill Palestinian women and children for their sport and pleasure.
And the sordid and reckless friends and company that they keep do not help matters.
For example, egged in their insanity and to the brink of catastrophy by delusional clowns like the newly-elected Argentinian President who went to Israel a few days ago, wept at the praying wall in Jerusalem and proclaimed that the Jewish state should proceed to build the second Jewish Temple on the Al Aqsa mosque as soon as possible ignoring the fact that this would undoubtedly and instantly provoke millions of Muslims all over the world to violence, likely result in WW111 and probably end with the total and complete obliteration and annihilation of Israel, the Jewish state continues to wallow in her pitiful delusion of invincibility and infalliblity.
I guess one cannot expect any better counsel from a man who leads a Latin American country in which every single black person was wiped out, exterminated and eliminated at the outset on the grounds of not wanting their "beautiful" white bloodlines and unsullied Spanish heritage to be infiltrated, soiled, sulllied and diminished by the blood of the black African and which acted as a secure and valued safe haven for Hitler's Nazis after World War 11.
With friends like President Javier Milei of Argentina the Jews do not need any enemies!
Surely this is not the Israel of King David, the greatest of all the Jewish Kings and a man who was described in the Holy Bible as being "a man after God's heart".
This is not the Israel of Prime Minister Golda Meir, who described herself as being first and foremost "a Palestinian".
This is not the Israel of Prime Minister Yizthak Rabin who fought for peace with the Arabs and who was murdered by one of his own for doing so.
This is the Israel of Binyamin Bibi Netanyahu, a bloodthirsty, deluded and demonic meglomaniac and tyrant who is not a Jew in the true sense of the word but rather a bloodlusting and fascitic Nazi and flaming Zionist.
His is not the Ancient Israel of the Holy Bible which prided itself on decency, righteousness, the love and fear of God and justice but rather the Israel of the Rothchild family, the Israel of the Zionists and the Israel of shaitan.
His is not the Israel that is the beloved of the Lord and the apple of God's eye but an Israel that does not know or recognise God and one that has no sense of decency, goodness, mercy and compassion.
His is not the Israel that is guarded jealousy by the Archangel Michael but rather an Israel that is led, guided, motivated and propelled by Beelzbub, Asmodeus and the principalities and demons of hell which seek to lead her to enmity with God and utter destruction.
Yet as insane and extreme as Netanyahu appears to be his bellicose disposition is nothing compared to the utter psychotic and sociopathic depravity of some of his cabinet Ministers such as the far-right National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said that the Palestinian people should be driven into the Sinai desert or into the sea and who suggested that the 2.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip should be displaced and scattered into 100 different countries at 25,000 Gazans per country or the Minister of National Heritage, Amihai Ben Eliyahu, who said that a nuclear bomb should be dropped on Gaza and that everyone in it, including the women and children, should be sent to an early grave!
If you think these outrageous submissions and nauseating contributions are, to say the least, shameful and unacceptable, I challenge you to listen to those that were made by some of Netanyahu's other right wing Cabinet members such as the Minister of Intelligence, Gila Gamliel and the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich.
Their views are truly beyond the pale and would make even Dr. Faustus' demon, Mephistopheles, tremble.
Yet it doesn't stop there. Worse of them all is a modern-day Jezebel by the name of Tally Gotliv who is an Israeli MP and who, just a few days ago on the floor of the Israeli Knesset, said that the war must continue in Gaza, there must be no ceasefire, the occupation must be sustained, the siege must not be lifted and the people of Gaza should not be allowed one drop of water or one morsel of food and instead must be "starved to death!"
This modern day harpy should have not been named Tally at all but rather Medusa the Gorgon or Cruella De Ville!
Does anyone still believe that these bestial creatures are God's chosen people or some kind of star-studded master race?
They may be a chosen people but judging by their rhetoric, speech and actions they were not chosen by God but rather by the devil.
To talk about wiping out a whole race of people with nuclear weapons is, to say the least, cold-blooded and barbaric and it is the kind of rhetoric that Hitler's Nazis indulged in.
It has no place whatsoever in todays world and whether it comes from the Jews or anyone else we must condemn it in the strongest terms.
The State of Israel that I know, that I love, that I pray for everyday and that is eulogised, celebrated and enunciated in the Holy Bible is not one and the same as the vile, callous, murderous, beastly, accursed and blood-drunk Zionist entity that is presided over by the creature called Bibi Netanyahu, that falsely and erroneously describes itself as Israel and that feeds and drinks on the blood, flesh, tears, misery and suffering of the Palestinian people.
The Israel of old that I knew and loved was a shining beacon of light, love, joy, hope and goodness to the world and to humanity and was truly a blessing to all but Netanyahu's Israel is a curse to the world and is shrouded in perfidy, deceit, evil and darkness.
To those that still claim to love the Zionist state and who believe that they are above the law and can get away with anything I say this: search your conscience, find your humanity and always remember that God is fair and just.
He will never support or encourage the barbaric things that Israel is doing in Gaza and neither can there be any blessing in supporting it.
Be guided, be wise and never forget that every form of evil and oppression has an expiry date.
For the Palestinian people and indeed all those from all over the world that stand by them and that are weeping for them, the night may be dark but joy comes in the morning!
Permit me to end this contribution by sharing a little more about the nature, history, character and experiences of these beautiful Palestinian people that Israel wishes to remove from the records of history.
Ever since the people of Gaza voted for Hamas in a free and fair election in 2006 Israel turned their entire territory into the worlds largest and most horrifying concentration camp and open prison.
Right from the outset everything and everyone, including food, water, medical provisions, electricity and other essentials of life that went in and out of Gaza was controlled by the State of Israel.
All her borders were closed and no-one could go into or come out of the Strip without the permission of the Jewish authorities.
In addition to that no nation, corporation or individual from the international community was allowed to provide them with succour, aid or provisions without the permission of the Israelis which was almost impossible to get.
They were treated like caged rats and they were subjected to what can best be described as a military siege and blockade from the land, the sea and the air right from the outset whilst their people, including women and children, were systematically targeted for humiliation, slaughtered, butchered, tortured, maimed, abducted, raped and murdered by members of the Israeli Defence Force whose greatest claim to fame for the last 20 years is the ability not to fight and win wars against other standing armies successfully but to rape, pillage and slaughter innocent and defenceless Palestinian civilians including women and children.
Permit me to add the following which in my view serves as the ultimate indignity and humiliation.
As a matter of policy the Israelis do not return the bodies of any Palestinian, whether man, woman or child, that dies in their prisons.
If you are a Palestinian and you go to jail or are put in detention in Israel, if you die there you are NEVER going home to be buried and your loved ones will never see you or your body again.
You will be denied the normal burial writes which are accorded to every himan being and your body will be dropped in some filthy hole in the corner of some rat and cockroach infested Israeli jail like that of a stray dog!
This is utterly heartless but what is even worse is the fact that when Palestinians die or are killed by the Jews either on the battlefield, in their homes, in their hospitals, on their streets or indeed anywhere else and the Israeli Defence Force has access to their bodies they cut them open, remove their vital organs, take them back to Israel and sell them on the international black market!
One is constrained to ask whether those that insist on doing such abominable things are really human beings?
The Palestinians of Gaza are a people that have been living under the most grotesque, repressive, repressed and insidious form of bondage and occupation for the last few decades yet they remain strong, focused, fearless, resilient, gallant, heroic, confident, courageous and irrepressible.
What makes the wickedness and cruelty that they have been subjected to all the more difficult for them to bear is the fact that contrary to Israeli and Western propaganda and their inexcusable and deplorable revision and outright perversion of history the Palestinians are a proud, noble, enlightened, refined, cosmopolitan, technologically-advanced, peace-loving people whose sacred values and noble heritage are second to none and whose rich history of peace, tolerance, civilisation, accommodation, religious diversity, charity, kindness and peaceful coexistence with their guests and neigbours goes back thousands of years.
Again they are by far the best educated people in the Middle East and possibly amongst the best educated in the world with 30% of them being PhD holders whilst 99% of their over 14 million population are literate.
There are seven million Palestinians living in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Israel put together whilst another seven million live in the diaspora and are spread all over the world doing skilled jobs, running businesses and attending universities and other institutions of higher learning.
Abandoned by much of the Arab world in their struggle for emancipation due to American and Jewish influence and pressure, they have soldiered on regardless making huge contributions in science, the arts, commerce, sports and virtually every other field of human endeavour.
They are not only industrious and hard working but they have remarkable foresight and have resolved never to bow, submit, capitulate or bend the knee to their Zionist oppressors and colonial masters but rather to stand firm, stand tall, maintain their self respect and dignity, thrive, survive and resist them till the very end even if it means that they all die trying.
This courageous thirst and quest for freedom, emancipation and liberation despite the horrific circumstances they have been subjected to can only but be admired and applauded by all right thinking people.
They are indeed a testimony to courage and a great source of inspiration to the downtrodden and those that the famous Afro-American author Franz Fanon described in his famous book titled 'The Wretched of the Earth'.
Like the black majority population of the old apartheid South Africa who stood firm against all odds, fought hard, held on to their dream of freedom and were martyred in their thousands for hundreds of years till it eventually came they have refused to bend the knee and become slaves to the Zionists and instead, like Patrick Henry the famous American revolutionary courageously proclaimed to King George 111 of England in 1775 they have defiantly shouted "give me liberty or give me death" and they have courageously screamed "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!"
Literally every single Gazan and Palestinian is committed to this noble cause of liberation and is prepared to sacrifice their lives for it and nothing provides a more eloquent testimony to this than their willingness to protect themselves militarily and wage war against their oppressors.
Consequently they manufacture virtually all of their own weapons and their ably-trained and well- equipped armed wing, known as the Al Qasam Brigade, has proved to be a formidable fighting force in battle and one which has given the Israeli Defence Force a bloody nose.
I watched the Minister of Social Services of Gaza, Dr. Ghazi Hamad, who is a leading member and an influential and powerful figure in the Hamas Government speak on Seun Okinbaloye's Channels Television 'Politics Today' show last tuesday evening and I was very impressed by the way he marshalled his points and stated his case.
He spoke in a concise, eloquent, refined and effective manner and his arguments and submissions were irrefutable, incontrovertible and compelling.
Millions of Nigerians were spell-bound and star-struck when they heard him as he calmly enunciated the truth about the events of October 7th (for which he refused to apologise) and the history of the Palestinian struggle.
He made four notable points.
Firstly that a person whose home or country has been forcefully occupied by a foreign power and aggressor and whose family members and compatriots are being killed on a daily basis cannot be legitimately described as a terrorist as a consequence of his quest to throw the occupier out and free his people by any means, including violent ones.
This appears to me to be sound logic.
You cannot beg a famished wolf to leave the sheep pen and you cannot appeal to a hungry tiger to leave the chicken coop. You can only drive them out by force.
You either tread the path of violent resistance to evil or you shamefully submit, close your eyes, prepare for the worse and die a shameful and cowardly death.
For those who have bought the lies of the West and Israel and that continue to dismiss Hamas as nothing but a terrorist organisation I ask the following.
How can an occupier of someone elses land and a violent conqueror describe those whose land and people they have suppressed, conquered, subjugated, humiliated, enslaved and violently and forcefully appropriated describe their victims and those whose lives, homes and land they have taken and captured as terrorists simply because they have opted to undergo an armed struggle in an attempt to defend themselves, fight back, deliver their people and take back what is rightfully theirs?
Surely those that resist such oppression cannot fairly be described as terrorists but rather as freedom fighters.
This is precisely what happened in apartheid South Africa and after decades of suffering, degradation, oppression, subjugation, humiliation, murder, persecution and destruction the black South Africans took their nation back through a gallant and courageous armed struggle which was waged by the armed wing of the ANC known as Umkontho We Sizwe (The Spear of the Nation).
History is replete with such examples.
The courageous and fiery black American preacher and slave Nat Turner did the same in the southern American state of Virginia when he led his fellow black slaves in a violent and murderous rebellion, known as the Southampton Insurrection, against their white slave owners in 1831.
The Americans themselves waged a violent and bloody revolution and war of independence against the oppression and subjugation of their erstwhile British colonial masters in 1775.
The French broke their own shackles of bondage and oppression in 1789 with a violent and extremely bloody revolution against the subjugation of the monarchy and the ruling class durng which they killed or drove into exile most of the French upper classes and ruling elite and sent the King, his Queen and other members of his family to the guillotine.
The English waged their own war of emancipation in 1642 when Oliver Cromwell unleashed a violent revolution and civil war against King Charles 1st and not only removed him from power and established the Parliamentary system of Government but also beheaded him!
The Russians embarked on their own revolution in 1917 when Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks fought a civil war against Tsar Nicholas 11, removed him from the throne, ended 300 years of the brutal oppression of the Romanov dynasty, took power for the people and established a Communist nation known as the USSR.
Toussant Louverture did the same in Haiti in 1801 when he led his army of black slaves in a war of emancipation against the French, defeated them in battle and established the western worlds first free black nation.
Closer to home Fl. Lt. John Jerry Rawlings freed the people of Ghana from oppression, corruption, subjugation and suppressive military rule in 1979 when he organised a coup detat and effected what he himself described as a revolution after which many members of the erstwhile ruling class were executed.
I could go on and on.
If armed struggle against the unjust, vicious, relentless usurper and wicked oppressor is a legitimate form of resistance in all these countries and cases and if it worked successfully for them why should the Palestinians not do the same?
Are they not human beings too or are they less human than the rest of us? Do they not also have a duty to their people and indeed an obligation to God to resist every form of oppression, injustice and evil?
Do the great faiths of Islam and Christianity not insist on this in their Holy books?
They most surely do.
The second point the Minister made when asked about whether or not Hamas would release the remaining over 100 Israeli hostages that they abducted on October 7th, was that they would only do so once the Israelis released at least 5000 of the 7000 prisoners, most of whom were women and children, that they had arrested and kept in illegal detention and held without trial from both Gaza and the occupied West Bank for the last few months and years.
When asked about the targetting and killing of women and children by Hamas and particularly the ugly events of October 7th he made the point that it was not and had never been the practice and intention of Hamas' Al Qassam Brigade to target women and children and that the Israeli Defence Force has targetted and killed thousands of Palestinian women and children over the months and years BEFORE October 7th and yet the world turned a blind eye to it, sat back and said nothing.
Though in my view two wrongs do not make a right again this appears to me to be a fair point.
Are Palestinian women and children not human beings as well? Does red blood not flow through their veins too? Do they not also have a right to life?
Israel has indeed been slaughtering them at will over many decades without a word from the world but the barbarity and brutality of their post October 7th butchery on Palestinian babies, infants, children and youths beggars belief. Such wickedness has never been seen in modern history.
The Zionists have murdered no less than 17000 Palestinian children in Gaza and maimed and wounded thousands of others in the last four months alone and yet they are still claiming to be the victims?
Surely this makes no sense. As bad as October 7th was, Israel's response is disproportionate, barbaric, unacceptable and can best be described as a Nazi-like World War 11 second holocaust.
What Hitler and the Germans did to the Jews between 1936 and 1945 is precisely what the Zionists are doing to the Palestinians today.
The Germans called it the "Final Solution" then and I call it the "Final Solution" today.
The only difference is that the race of the victims are different and the hunted has now become the hunter.
Finally he made the point that whilst the whole world appeared to have abandoned the Palestinians and were indifferent to their suffering and struggle over the last 70 years and given the fact that the path of peaceful negotiation that Fatah, the PLO and the President Mahmoud Abbas-led occupied West Bank Government had chosen to tread had not produced any positive results over the last 30 years, Hamas had no intention whatsoever of abandoning their people, renouncing their armed struggle or submitting to Israel and her allies.
Can anyone legitimately fault the logic of his position? Yours truly certainly cannot.
This is especially so given the fact that Netanyahu has proclaimed that there will and cannot be a two-state solution as long as he is in power and given the fact that he has thrown the American-brokered Oslo Accord agreement into the dustbin.
To him and those that share his views the Palestinian people must either be totally subjugated, enslaved, colonised, occupied and beaten into cowardly submission or they must be totally and completely eliminated, exterminated and removed from the face of the earth.
Given this, would any right thinking person that has even a modicum of self-respect and honor not fight back?
Should one not rather be prepared to die on their feet than live in chains and on their knees?
That is the position of Hamas and frankly it is unassailable in its rationale and logic.
It is no wonder that Juilus Malema, the fiery young South African MP and politician, recently said "anyone that condemns or does not support Hamas in their armed struggle against the Israelis is a coward!"
I commend Channels Television and Seun Okinbaloye for providing Dr. Hamad with their powerful platform and for cultivating the courage to enable us to hear the other side of the story.
The Israeli Ambassador to Nigeria, one Michael Freeman, who appeared on the same show the following evening in a futile attempt to do some damage control by responding to and countering Dr. Hamad was not only completely out of his depth but was also inexplicably agitated, overly emotional, unnecessarily abusive, deeply insulting, overtly and manifestly offensive and worse of all he was disingenuous, deceitful, dishonest, vulgar, out of control,deranged, enraged, condescending and wholly and completely ineffective.
Simply put he spoke nothing but specious lies and rubbish and he did so in the most simplistic and condescending manner.
His appearance was merely a pitiful regurgitation of the puerile propaganda and infantile lies that the Jews have peddled and churned out over the years and he painted the picture of a drowning man who was representing a dying, discredited, old and mortally wounded flogged horse.
He was not only unconvincing and irritating but also malevolent and bellicose in his approach and choice of words and thoroughly nauseating.
I could literally see two little devil horns sticking out of his balding head and smell the sulphur of hell seeping through my television screen as he bellowed whilst the words "mendacious", "deceitful", "liar", "propagandist", "artful dodger", "lover of carnage", "drinker of blood", "eater of flesh", "poisonous viper", "child-killing terrorist", "dark oppressor", "dung-eating coprophiliac" and "accuser of the brethren" were spiritually inscribed on his ugly Zionist head.
I guess one can expect no less from a creature who represents satan's kingdom on earth, who speaks for a
a vile race of quislings that fawn before their masters and genuflect at their every word and whose nation thrives, flourishes and excels on lies, falsehood and the premeditated and systemic mass murder, ethnic-cleansing, genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and wilful slaughter of innocent and defenceless men, women and children.
Whether Freeman likes it or not Ghazi Hamad's appearance on Channels proved to yours truly and millions of other Nigerians that the leadership of Hamas are not the primitive, barbaric and ignorant stone age cavemen and blood-lusting terrorists that Israel and the West portrays them to be.
They are not a bunch of ignorant and illiterate savages, village idiots, genocidal maniacs, cruel beasts, unrefined field hands, war mongering and blood lusting meglomaniacs and primitive barbarians that they have been portrayed to the world to be but rather a cerebal, intellectual and highly knowledgeable group of civilised men and women who have leaders that are quite capable of holding their own with any others in the world.
It is no wonder that the Zionists have not been able to defeat them or break their spirit despite the fact that no less than 70% of Gazans have at one time or the other been detained in Israeli prisons.
It is no wonder that if there is an election in Gaza today Hamas would win hands down just as they did in previous elections.
This is the bitter truth and unpalatable reality that the world does not wish to hear.
We pray for peace and justice for the Palestinian people and we cry to the Living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to bring the State of Israel back to her senses before it is too late. Shalom.
(FFK)
In today's fast-paced world, the significance of maintaining security and harmony within our communities cannot be overstated. The proposal put forth by the Executive Governor of Enugu State, His Excellency Barr. Peter Mbah, to establish ranching and abattoirs in select Local Government Areas, deserves careful consideration. From the government perspective, this initiative aims to mitigate the alleged terroristic activities of Fulani nomads and cattle herders, in the state, thereby fostering a safe environment for all citizens.
But this explanation did not sit well with a portion of the populace. In fact, it is still generating heated reactions among the people of the state. While many lauds the governor for his foresight, others condemn it as an invitation to future anarchy from the Fulani cattle breeders who had been wrecking havoc across the state and the country at large.
Some of the reactions are borne out of emotions, and it's understandable considering the endemic strife and untold hostilities that defined Fulani cattle (breeders) herders vs farmers parasitic relationship over the last two decades.
But come to think of it, barely five hours down south beyond the neighborhood of Ebonyi State from Enugu lies the famous Obudu Cattle Ranch established established since 1949 and sustained till date. So why have Mbah's policy proposal on similar project eliciting mixed reactions? The answer is the same as above. People are apprehensive of what the future holds for them if the implementation of such 'lofty" idea goes south, especially when one remembers Nimbo massacre of March 2016.
But we must agree with the old Latin phrase that "abuse don't stop use." The fact that these Fulani marauders tend to abuse the hospitality of native population, should not suggest that establishing ranching as a way of keeping them in check must be quashed quashed. Not every governor wants to allow nomads unguarded space to continue their gory escapades. They have to be dammed. And Mbah is envisioning it through ranching that mimics the Obudu project.
Despite the differing opinions surrounding this proposal, it is crucial to have an informed discussions and robust debate around it. First let's start by way of definition of terms.
What exactly is ranching in livestock management?
Cattle ranching is the practice of raising and managing cattle for meat and dairy production. International best practices for cattle ranching encompass various principles aimed at promoting sustainability, animal welfare, and environmental stewardship.
Some key principles of cattle ranching are: Land and Habitat Management in which Cattle ranchers adopt sustainable land management practices that prioritize soil health, carbon sequestration, and protection of natural habitats. This includes rotational grazing, reforestation efforts, water conservation, and minimizing deforestation for pasture expansion.
Cattle ranching also prioritizes the welfare of the animals. This involves providing access to clean water, sufficient feed, shelter, and appropriate veterinary care.
It also provides effective pasture management which is critical for sustainable cattle ranching. Rotational grazing methods that allow the land to fallow and regenerate are encouraged. This helps prevent overgrazing, soil erosion, and degradation while maintaining a balanced ecosystem.
This plan by government will also enhance livestock traceability and quality assurance management in dairy and meat production which are major benefits of cattle ranching. The ability to track the origin and movement of animals, as well as ensuring hygiene and food safety standards throughout the production chain, helps build consumer trust and facilitates market access.
Feelers from government House indicates they are scaling up a skilled and knowledgeable workforce that will ensure sustenance in line with international best practices. It will map out a scheme for ranchers, farm managers, and animal caretakers, covering topics such as animal husbandry, land management, disease control, and sustainable practices etc.
So in overall analysis, by proposing the establishment of a state-controlled ranching and abattoirs, Mbah acknowledges the urgent need to protect the lives and property of Ndi Enugu, as he promised during electioneering campaign. This proposal would restrict the nomadic movement of cattle herders and effectively curtail their potential for wanton destruction of crops. By harnessing the power of ranching, the Governor offers a proactive solution that can help prevent conflicts, mitigate damages, and enhance overall security surveillance within the state.
Everyone knows that Enugu is a gateway state to the north, with sporadic border encroachment especially at the Isi-Uzo and Uzo Uwani LGAs axis.
One of the crucial aspects of the proposed policy is the regulation and control of meat production. It would provide a well-organized process for the production and distribution of meat, ensuring high hygiene standards and quality assurance. Thus, reducing the current rampart incidents of zoonotic human diseases. In the words of one of the founding fathers of America — Benjamin Franklin: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." By centralizing the meat production process, the government can implement stringent regulations, ensuring that only healthy and safe meat reaches the market. Consequently, this not only guarantees the well-being of consumers but also protects local farmers from unregulated competition.
Moreso, the clashes between herders and farmers have been a significant cause of tension and unrest within communities across the state, leading to avoidable loss of lives and property. Through the establishment of ranching and abattoirs, Governor Mbah seek to address this contentious issue. By confining cattle to designated areas, the risk of accidental trespass and subsequent conflicts with farmers will be mitigated. "Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free" so said Dalai Lama
This measure seeks to foster mutual understanding, promote peaceful coexistence, and lay the foundations for a more harmonious society.
If implemented in its ideal sense, Gov. Mbah's proposal is a wise step towards ensuring the security and prosperity of Enugu State. By implementing this policy, the government empowers itself to control the activities of Fulani nomads and cattle herders, while simultaneously protecting the lives and property of its citizens. Moreover, if well executed according to plans, the Ranch would be a vital source of revenue for the state, as not only will the breeders and rearers pay tax tariff for the services they enjoy, but it would be a tourism attraction as well.
So, as we embrace this prudent policy, we can move forward together, creating a more secure, prosperous, and harmonious Enugu State.
In the words of John F. Kennedy, "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining." Perhaps there is need to give Governor Mbah the benefit of doubt, and accord the proposal chance, as a proactive measure to ensure the safeguarding of lives, the effective regulation of meat production, and the fostering of harmony between herders and farmers.
May daylight spare us!
Jude EzeOur endless search for solutions to our self-inflicted problems has become comical. We appear to be in a merry-go-around, trying one idea after the other. Restructuring. State Police. Fiscal Federalism. More States. Float the Naira. Managed Float. Privatization. Structural Adjustment. Sovereign National Conference. Military or civilian government. Commodity Boards. Price Control. Close Borders. Open Borders. Just about everything has been suggested as a panacea for our problems. Last week, a group of lawmakers in Abuja proposed a constitutional change to return the country to parliamentary system of democracy, over half a century after we dumped it. They claimed that the presidential system is too expensive. It is really not a novel idea. Elder statesmen like Obong (Arc) Victor Attah and Chief Emeka Anyaoku are some of the notable proponents of a return to the parliamentary system. In addition, they want the states dissolved and the country restructured into regions as we had in the First Republic. They prefer six regions to align with the current geopolitical zones.
Those who canvass this position are mostly senior citizens who are essentially nostalgic about their good old days. I don’t blame them. Most of them were in the university in Europe and America during that ‘golden’ era when the economy was doing well; civil servants were well-educated, well-trained and employed strictly on merit; corruption was very low and politicians were more dedicated to nation building. But did things go well in those days because of the system of government we operated or was it due to the quality of manpower and the patriotism of the leaders at the time? Does the system of government build the country, or is it the people who build their country and design a workable system for themselves? This is the crux of the matter.
Countries choose different systems to suit their histories and peculiarities. European countries have either presidential or parliamentary systems; the US is a presidential democracy while Asian countries have adopted either. Saudi Arabia is both a theocracy and monarchy, and it’s a prosperous country. North Korea operates a draconian family dictatorship while South Korea has a competitive presidential system. China, the second largest economy in the world, is a civilian dictatorship, just like Russia.
All these countries are at different stages of development and their citizens enjoy varying standards of living. But look at Africa. Most of the continent has one form of democracy or the other, just like in the other six continents. While places like Uganda have a civilian dictatorship masquerading as a democracy, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa have become relatively stable and competitive presidential democracies. A few others have parliamentary systems. But overall, Africa has remained a blithering basket case, with all indices pointing south. Why?
There are many reasons why Nigeria has remained economically stunted or retrogressive over the years, and they can be encapsulated into three categories: corruption, incompetence and decadence. No country can develop or has ever developed with the level of corrupt, incompetent and decadent leadership that has bestrode our nation, at all levels. No matter the system of government we adopt; this nation will not make progress unless the quality of human resources that manages our public affairs improves drastically. Our progress as a nation is not dependent on a particular system of government, but rather on the quality of our political, bureaucratic and technocratic leadership at every important level.
The reason the regional governments of the First Republic seemed to have performed well is because they were led by first-class, patriotic and competent leaders who worked with equally skilled bureaucrats. Can you compare any of our leaders today to Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Dr. Michael Okpara, Sir Denise Osadebey and the others who led the charge in that era? It is the people who build their nations and create systems that suit their peculiarities. Not the other way round.
But is the presidential system more expensive to run? Of course, any system could be very expensive, depending on how you operate it. If a parliamentary system, for instance, has a bicameral legislature with about 600 overpaid ministers, including a prime minister, deputy prime minister and all the special advisers, senior special assistants, special assistants and personal assistants, first lady and second lady, why wouldn’t it be expensive? Similarly, if a presidential system has unicameral legislature with few part-time members and an executive branch with few ministers, the running costs would be lower. It is therefore important to cut the cost of the governance, rather than change from one system to another. We should stick with the presidential system, but reduce its costs by adopting drastic measures. We can use one chamber of the National Assembly with 10 part-time members from each state; only 37 ministers (only one from each state and FCT) and reduce agencies and parastatals to no more than 200.
The solutions to our problems are right before us. There’s no need moving around in circles.
[OPINION] The Solution To Long-Run Inflation And Economic Hardship In Nigeria - Adémólá Òrúnbon
Admin
The twin economic problems of inflation and exchange rate deterioration have become persistent in Nigeria. They have become monsters that have defied various policy solutions. Without putting these two rates under control, the desire for economic growth would continue to be elusive. Our focus here is on inflation.
To proffer solutions to a problem, it is a standard requirement that the nature or background to the problem be understood. To enable us achieve this, we will attempt to provide some economics behind this persistent rise in prices. This should hopefully provide the perspective for our suggested solutions.
It is our opinion that the solution the policy makers are currently relying on and widely publicising (i.e policy rate adjustments) to fight current inflation is rather complicating the situation and making the inflationary problem more persistent. The approach probably stems from the wrong diagnosis that the problem has been subjected. In fact, the use of policy rate increases is rather leading to an increase in deposit and lending rates without the compensating desired reduction in the inflation rate. A number of reasons are responsible for this from both theoretical and empirical perceptions.
The current structure of the Nigerian economy, the stage of the development of its financial sector and the liquidity preference behaviour of economic agents in the country, do not even fulfil the necessary conditions for the use of the orthodox policy tools such as policy rate adjustment as a tool to successfully and fully combat an upward inflationary trend.
The current inflation in Nigeria is more of ‘supply driven’ inflation than a ‘demand driven’ one. Policy rate adjustments as a tool becomes ineffective when an inflationary trend is dominantly supply driven. We tend to often argue that our inflation is caused by excess money supply in the system chasing too few goods. However, our core problem is that it is the aggregate supply level that is significantly fallen short of aggregate demand, in an economy that is operating at below full employment.
To simplify our exposition, we will use the familiar National Income (GDP) equation which is generally taught in the 2nd year intermediate macroeconomics class in all our universities. We would denote aggregate output (GDP) with Y and its components as: Consumption (C), Investment (I), Government expenditure (G), Export (X) and Import (M) and Net Export as X-M and write the simple GDP equation as Y = C + I + G + (X – M).
Theoretically, Consumption is a function of Income and interest rate. Consumption, is expected to be positively related to income and negatively related to interest rate. However, it is an established fact that Consumption in Nigeria is more, if not wholly, a function of Income. The current low level of consumer credit in Nigeria weakens the relationship between aggregate consumption expenditure level and interest rate. Plethora of empirical studies have proved this assertion.
In largely credit-driven societies e.g the developed countries, consumption has a very high negative relationship with interest rate. Hence, whenever there is a disequilibrium resulting in rising prices, you can bring down the rise in aggregate consumption by increasing the interest rate. By implication, aggregate demand is reduced to bring the economy back to equilibrium. It works for them as well because their economy is almost always near full employment and ‘domestic’ capacity for production of consumption goods is high.
Investment expenditure (I) in the equation is defined as additions to capital stock or demand for investment goods, that is, demand for those goods that are used for further production. Theoretically, the demand for investment goods (I) is both a function of income and interest rate as well. It is positively related to income and has an inverse relationship with interest rate. Just as it applies to Consumption, by increasing interest rate upwards, growth in investment demand, that is demand for capital goods, can be reduced.
In essence, for an inflationary trend which is demand driven and an economy with adequate domestic production capacity, the relationships between interest rate and consumption on the one hand and investment on the other, is the logical reasoning behind the prescription of the use of policy rate increases to bring aggregate demand down. Since these relationships and condition do not fully hold in Nigeria particularly for consumption, it provides the justification for the below optimal results we get when we frontally adopt this orthodox prescription to fight inflation.
With a very high unemployment level and consistent news of manufacturing companies either closing down or exiting the country, it means that domestic production capacity is on a downward spiral. It is safe to conclude that the economy is clearly operating significantly at below full employment level. To combat rising inflation in such a situation, increasing the interest rate is not the right and frontal choice as a policy tool. What such an approach ends up doing is to increase lending rate of banks, that is, borrowing rates to firms. It will also increase the internal hurdle rate for investment decision by firms, reduce Investment expenditure as defined in the National Income equation and bring aggregate supply further downwards.
Similarly, owing to the nature of the relationship between consumption and interest rate in Nigeria as aforementioned, consumption expenditure level would largely remain sticky with an increase in policy rate. To satisfy domestic consumption demand owing to low domestic production capacity, imports of foreign goods will fill the gap. Our unaltered and high consumption expenditure level, is of course the source of pressure on the exchange rate. To complete the cycle, the worsening exchange rate filters back into the price level and inflation gets perpetuated.
By inference therefore, if we are going to make headway in our economic management in general and inflation in particular, it is essential to first accept the fact that, our persistent increase in prices is a supply driven problem rather than a demand driven one and that the frontal solution we are implementing is counterproductive.
Òrúnbon, a journalist, poet and public affairs analyst.
Think of that man whose blue skies are crimsoned by the ravages of cancer. He cannot afford to travel abroad to get the needed treatment and his access to life-saving medical care at home hangs by a hair’s breadth. Many of us might have had a vicarious experience with this cell-corrupting proxy of death. We either know a friend, a friend’s friend, or a relative that has been afflicted. We could as well have been victims. But access to efficient and effective diagnosis, management, treatment of cancer, and other non-communicable diseases, as well as communicable diseases is about to improve tremendously.
In full apprehension of the economics of health and the fierce urgency of now, President Bola Tinubu directed the immediate upgrade of key health infrastructure and equipment across the six geo-political zones. Only a few months ago, a strategic blueprint, the Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative, was launched. This health exemplar espouses a sector-wide motif geared towards improving population health outcomes through the primary healthcare system, and enhancing reproductive, maternal, and child health services in the country.
According to the World Health Organisation’s Country Disease Outlook for 2023, non-communicable diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disease were estimated to have caused 27 percent of deaths in Nigeria in 2019. The reality is, the country has a high burden of both communicable -- malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, etc -- and non-communicable diseases. And child mortality rates are still well above SDG targets.
It is in the light of these pre-existing and immanent health perturbations that President Tinubu’s valiant directive is situated. To this end, the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in partnership with the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) will undertake an overhaul of cancer-treatment infrastructure and other critical accoutrements in six tertiary hospitals across the geopolitical zones, as well as expand prior investments to improve broad-based access to high-quality healthcare.
These tertiary hospitals -- (1) University of Benin Teaching Hospital, (2) Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, (3) University of Nigeria (Nsukka) Teaching Hospital, (4) Federal Teaching Hospital, Katsina, (5) University of Jos Teaching Hospital, and (6) Lagos University Teaching Hospital – will be sanctuaries for oncology and nuclear medicine to ease access to deluxe cancer diagnosis and care across the country.
Also, 10 hospitals bestrewing the six geopolitical zones will be revamped to provide exigent and top-tier healthcare services in the line of radiology, clinical pathology, medical and radiation oncology, and cardiac catheterization.
The hospitals: (1) North-West: Reference Hospital, Kaduna — (Radiology, clinical pathology, medical and radiation oncology); (2) South-East: Medical Diagnostic Centre Complex, Enugu — (Radiology, clinical pathology, medical & radiation oncology); (3) North-West: Usman Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital, Sokoto — (Diagnostic and intervention radiology, clinical pathology, and cardiac catheterization); (4) South-West: University College Hospital, Ibadan — (Diagnostic and intervention radiology, clinical pathology, and cardiac catheterization); (5) South-South: University of Uyo Teaching Hospital — (Radiology and clinical pathology); (6) North-East: Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital, Bauchi — (Radiology and clinical pathology); (7) South-South: Federal Medical Centre, Asaba — (Radiology and clinical pathology); (8) North-Central: Harmony Advanced Diagnostic Centre Complex, Ilorin — (Radiology and clinical pathology); (9) North-Central: Jos University Teaching Hospital — (Radiology and clinical pathology), and (10) North-East: Federal Medical Centre, Nguru — (Radiology and clinical pathology).
These projects when completed, within 12-18 months, will among other benefits, improve screening and diagnostics for communicable and non-communicable diseases; reduce mortality rates, as well as improve outcomes for non-communicable diseases.
It takes a healthy population to build a thriving economy. A diseased or decaying population cannot be very productive. Healthcare is an intrinsic element of human capital development, which is the nucleus of the overall wellbeing and advancement of society.
The Tinubu administration has put healthcare on the foreground of its policy ideation, iteration, and implementation, with an understanding of the fundamentality of this variable in domestic economics.
At the 37th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union, President Bola Tinubu was appointed as the African Union (AU) Champion for Human Resources for Health and Community Health Delivery Partnership in honour of his bold and groundbreaking interventions in the sector.
The administration is training 120,000 frontline health workers over the next 16 months; it is doubling the number of primary healthcare facilities in communities across the federation from 8,800 to 17,000 over the next three years; it is increasing health personnel enrolment capacity of accredited nursing and midwifery institutions by two-fold to accommodate the new demand created by new facilities across Nigeria, and it is establishing a paid volunteer youth force of social accountability officers to monitor the functioning and financial integrity of primary healthcare centres.
This is clearly innovative, purposed, and audacious.
As the President said: ‘’Health is not merely the absence of disease but the embodiment of physical, mental, and social well-being. It is a fundamental human right and Nigeria’s commitment to achieving Universal Health Care Coverage is reflected in the unwavering dedication of my administration to uphold this right for every individual, young or old, in rural or urban areas.”
Fredrick Nwabufo is Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Engagement
On January 24, 2024, Nigeria lost a patriotic citizen. It lost Mr Olaleye Franklin Adenibuyan. He died in circumstances that, at once, confounds, breaks the heart, and puts a big question mark on Nigeria’s healthcare system. To not a few people, Mr Adenibuyan’s death was avoidable if only the hospital where he died lived upto its assumed status of a Teaching Hospital.
Let me make a confession upfront so you don’t accuse me of being deliberately emotional.
Mr Adenibuyan was my cousin-in-law. A fine gentleman, he was married to my cousin, Thelma. And we admired and loved both of them “die”, as young people would put it. Theirs was a relationship built on solid foundation; a partnership rooted in time. They loved wearing uniforms, and pranced around like teenagers who just fell in love.
Mr Adenibuyan had served his country, Nigeria, as a Police Officer before he relocated to the United States of America, USA, in 1989. But that relocation never stopped him from visiting his beloved country, his beloved Ondo State, and his more beloved Community, Owo, two times every year. For him, it was a ritual. His love for Nigeria was that strong. And each time he visited, he bought more local fabrics for uniforms for him and his beloved wife Thelma. In their local fabrics, they promoted Nigeria’s culture, Nigeria’s fashion.
So, this year, 2024, as usual he set out from his Dallas, Texas, USA base for Nigeria and arrived Lagos on January 14, 2024. Each time he and his wife came home, either together, or separately, they usually checked into a Hotel at Ajao Estate. The Estate is close to the Lagos Airport. For the Adenibuyans, it was convenient as it saves them from the, atimes, punishing Lagos traffic (we call it go slow) to the Airport for a flight to Akure, Ondo State, en route Owo.
So, on this January 14, Mr Adenibuyan arrived Lagos and checked into the usual hotel. A luggage did not arrive from the US and so, he needed to buy something from a shop opposite the Hotel. That done, as he climbed up the staircase back to his room, the devil stepped in. Tragedy struck. He missed a step. And fell backwards.
As he fell, the family was told, he hit his head on the floor or wherever. The impact was grave. He lost consciousness. And was quickly rushed to a nearby hospital. I cannot confirm what attention he got there. Obviously, his state was beyond what a small private hospital could handle. So he was quickly referred to the University of Lagos Teaching Hospital, LUTH.
Established in 1961, LUTH is a Tertiary Hospital affiliated to the University of Lagos College of Medicine. It is a 761 bed Hospital established to be a Centre of Medical Excellence. To its credit are some of Nigeria’s best brains in Medicine. Many of its products are those “making waves” worldwide. They were trained there. It used to be Nigeria’s pride. As were the University College Hospital, UCH, affiliated to the University of Ibadan, and the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, OAUTH, affiliated to the Obafemi Awolowo University, former University of Ife. And some more.
I don’t know about others, but LUTH has lost its status as a Centre of Medical Excellence. It is now a shadow of itself. A shame to Nigeria. It has deteriorated. With Mr Adenibuyan admitted there, we experienced, first hand, the shadow LUTH has become. And our hearts broke.
The injury Mr Adenibuyan sustained to the head needed URGENT attention. It was a medical emergency. So, obviously, he was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit, ICU – private wing, no less. Meaning the attention was expected to be top-notch. When one pays millions of Naira, even as Naira has lost its value, the least one would expect would be a first class attention. But not here. There was nothing special. Patients were kept in what I choose to call “an open mini ward”. No privacy. No screen. When the question of some privacy was raised, the answer was: “it is because there is no general monitor.”
Once Thelma heard of her husband’s situation, she began to make arrangements to come home. She works in one of the biggest and best Government-owned hospitals in Texas where she has risen to the position of a Director. So, once she was briefed of the prognosis, she knew she had to rush back to Nigeria. Her mission was to take her husband back with her to the USA once he was stable enough to fly.
Meanwhile, from the US, before she was able to secure a seat on a plane, she and the family rallied round to pay every kobo required, every kobo directly and indirectly demanded, officially or unofficially. No expense was spared.
But what did the family see at LUTH.
LUTH had no equipment. Nothing. After the millions of Naira deposited, one still had to pay, separately, for soap and gloves. For a scan to determine the extent of damage to the head, Mr Adenibuyan was taken to a private facility outside LUTH. Why? LUTH said its own scan machine was not in “a working condition.” A Teaching Hospital? The scan showed a lot of blood in the skull. Nothing was done. A couple of days later, LUTH declared triumphantly that the “bleeding has stopped”. The question we, as laymen, asked was: What about the blood already accumulated there? Our elementary understanding was that the blood “has caked there!” If true, we were nervous about the implication.
More surprises were afoot.
On January 17, three days after he was admitted, LUTH said Mr Adenibuyan needed an Intracranial Pressure (ICP) monitoring machine. But this Teaching Hospital does not have the machine. When needed, it was explained to us, it is rented from outside. Cost: N400,000. The family paid. But the machine was not delivered until January 19th. And when it was delivered, it was left by the corner of Mr Adenibuyan’s bed for days, unused.
Perhaps, it was a coincidence, but the ICP Monitoring Machine was used only on the day Thelma arrived (24th) and began to ask questions. This was 10 days after he was referred to LUTH, and perhaps, 10 days after it should have been used.
Thelma arrived Nigeria at about 9.40am on Delta Airlines, and went from the Airport to LUTH to see her husband. She waited for about three hours before she was allowed to, after she incessantly requested to speak with his medical team. She wanted to know why the ICP had not been put in place as was revealed to her by Lekan, her step son, who was in Nigeria for a short vacation, and her husband’s younger brother, Deji. She wondered why the machine was just lying down there. When one of the doctors finally arrived, he tried to explain. But given Thelma’s background, and where she came from, the explanation made no sense to her. She hinted so in many ways, but was, at once very disciplined and too distraught to argue. But finally, she was told another doctor who would do that was being expected.
The doctor, an unassuming guy, competent, calm and collected finally arrived. We were sitting at the ICU waiting room when he walked past. Instinctively, and I guess, from his carriage, I knew he was the one, and I told Thelma so. She sent a message across that she would want to speak with him. Over an hour later, the Doctor came out from the ICU, and asked for Thelma. We followed him. And Thelma had a lot of questions and complaints. He listened, said he had just returned to the country the previous day, and was seeing Mr Adenibuyan for the first time, but quickly added “he is being attended to by a good team.” He explained to us where he thought he should, and apologized where he thought he should. For example, he agreed with Thelma that it was not right to intubate her husband without informing the family. He apologized it was wrong not to have carried the family along every step of the way. And then, calmly, he told us what the situation was, and the way forward.
He said Adenibuyan required an urgent surgery to release the pressure on the brain. He disclosed that the pressure was 61, far beyond the normal 15. This was what Thelma and Lekan consistently, subtly, suggested and appealed for: a surgery to release the pressure to the brain. It would entail a removal of a part of the skull bone to allow the brain swell and then, compress later to normal size. This should have been done, at most, three days after the unfortunate incident.
Anyway, better late than never, we consoled ourselves.
The time for the surgery was set for 4.00pm. But again, a problem.
LUTH does not have a drill. The family was told “there is only one place to rent it. Cost N200,000. No problem. This was on a Thursday. The surgery was meant to be done immediately. But the rental place said “drill not available until Friday afternoon”. Another vendor was frantically sought. He agreed for N180,000, and promised to deliver it against the 4.00pm surgery time. Great. Our spirit lifted some.
But another problem.
Unbelievably, LUTH does not have more than two functional surgery rooms. So, there is usually a queue. Adenibuyan had to wait. One doctor, obviously frustrated by the situation told us: “Today two are functional. Tomorrow, Friday, only one will be available.”
So, I asked why: He told us: “We have 22, but there is no manpower. Doctors, Nurses, Technicians, most have left. If the 22 are open, there will be nobody to man them. Nobody. So, why keep them open?” We were appalled. Our hearts sank. But we held unto hope.
So, either as a result of the queue, or the unavailability, yet, of the drill, the surgery was shifted from 4.00pm to 8.00pm. I left, and told Thelma I would be back by 7.00pm. But just before 5.00pm when Thelma went in to see her husband again, his health had taken a nosedive. Even then, the man who hadn’t opened his eyes for 10 days, opened them once he heard his wife’s voice. She held his hands tight. “Baby, you know why I came. I came for you. We are going back together. I will put you on a flight. We go back together. Your treatment will be taken care of in the US. And, you will be perfect. We’ll be fine, you and I.” The three Doctors Thelma met, she told them the same thing. “I am going back with my husband. That’s my mission. To take him back to the US with me.”
That was not to be. While Thelma held his hands, and CPR was being performed on him, he gave up. He died. In his wife’s arms. Same day she arrived Nigeria.
Since Adenibuyan’s passing, too many questions remain unanswered about our Country’s Healthcare system. Take LUTH for instance.
It is not that there are still no qualified medical personnel, even with the exodus, but here is the problem. There are no medical equipments. The medical personnel are just managing, barely managing. Or, how does one explain that a Teaching Hospital, LUTH, no less, does not have a functional scan machine; does not have ICP Monitoring Machine, or the equipment for drill?
It is the shame of a Country. Like I said earlier, it is not the problem of the Medical Personnel. I admit that the work ethics of a number of them is zero. Compared to what we see in some other climes, they need a re-orientation. There is no sense of urgency. Atimes there is no empathy. But I also admit that their work a environment is a major problem. It is not inspiring. I admit that their welfare is a major problem. It is depressing. I admit that knowing what to do, and not having the equipment to do it is frustrating. One of the doctors who spoke to us out of frustrations said: “You are talking about the equipment.Where is the manpower? Because of our situation, most of us have left. A number of those remaining are on the verge of leaving.” When I asked if he was on his way out too, he gave a knowing smile. I helplessly shook my head.
Since Adenibuyan’s death, regrets have been our food. Many “ifs”. What if he hadn’t been referred to LUTH? Perhaps he would still have been with us. What if LUTH had used the ICP machine as at, and when due? Perhaps, he would still have been with us. What if the drill was used as at the time it should have been used, perhaps he would still have been here with us. What if some sense of urgency had been exhibited, perhaps, he would still have been here with us.
The Federal Government shamelessly laments what negative effect the ”Japa” syndrome has had on Nigeria’s healthcare system. It shamelessly tells us that 42,000 Nurses have left Nigeria in the past three years. Why not? How has the FG treated them? What have you given them to work with? Now, shamelessly, it is putting obstacles here and there to stop Nurses from leaving. Why? My response is in one word: Shame.
Isn’t it a shame that the Nigerian Government, from State to Federal Government which throws money around as if it is going out of circulation, cannot boast of one good Government Hospital except Lagos State. I am reliably informed that Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, LASUTH, affiliated to the Lagos State owned Lagos State University, LASU, is very well equipped by the Lagos State Government. In our doubts at LUTH, one woman called us aside and asked: “Why did you come to LUTH? Why did you not take him to LASUTH? This type of injury is better handled there.”
We spend tons and tons of money, billions of Dollars, trillions of Naira, on frivolities, on things we can do without. How does one explain that $6.2m was spent, allegedly, without authorization, on foreign election observers when LUTH has no medical equipment? Of what use was the presence of the foreign observers to the masses? Did their presence stop us from rigging, from snatching ballot boxes, from doctoring results? Nigeria spent this money when LUTH has no medical equipments, not even a functional scan machine. How does one explain that the sum of one billion Naira was recently requested to enable a Committee fix Workers salaries? Yet, our premier hospitals are empty? Can you imagine what that obscene request could have done for LUTH?
But back to Thelma. We don’t know how to handle her, or what to tell her. She is distraught. Disoriented, almost. Her mission to take her husband home to their “second Country”, US, blew up on her face. “Oh, your husband loved you to death. He waited for you to come back , to see you before he passed on. He even opened his eyes for the first time in 10 days once you arrived”, Thelma is told in a bid to console her. Where do all those leave her?
All she knows is that the Nigerian healthcare system failed her. Her mission to take her husband back to the US with her failed. She was, at a point, making inquiries for an air ambulance to evacuate him to the US. That failed. Ironically, what worked was taking him back to Owo in a body bag! Sad!!
Mr Adenibuyan, as your beloved wife fondly called you, may your soul rest in peace. May you find peace in the fact that you are finally, finally back to your cherished Owo.
More...
[OPINION] Tinubu’s accurate 12-year-old prediction on subsidy removal effects - Farooq Kperogi
AdminON January 11, 2012, Bola Ahmed Tinubu published a sober, thoughtful, deeply insightful, and penetratingly foresightful article titled “Removal of Oil Subsidy: President Jonathan Breaks Social Contract With the People” that uncannily prefigured the untoward consequences of petrol subsidy removal that Nigerians are currently grappling with.
The article has trended on social media in the last couple of weeks, but I had never taken the trouble to read it until multiple people who I regard highly sent it to me in what seemed like a coordinated torrent of forwards.
But after reading the 4,000-plus-word article and finding out that it predicted the current petrol-subsidy-removal mass excruciation Nigeria is suffering with almost mathematical exactitude, I became suspicious of its authenticity. It was too good to be true.
My incredulity compelled me to make inquiries, which led me to realize that the Nigerian Tribune had actually fact-checked the genuineness of the article on May 31, 2023. It not only found that it wasn’t fake but also scanned and uploaded a printed copy of the article published in The Nation, Tinubu’s paper.
I encourage everyone to read it. In the article, Tinubu derided the 2012 removal of petrol subsidies as the “Jonathan tax,” and the following paragraphs are particularly noteworthy for the mysterious precision of their prescience:
“Government claims the subsidy removal will create jobs…. The stronger truth is that it will destroy more jobs than it creates. For every job it creates in the capital intensive petroleum sector, it will terminate several jobs in the rest of the labor intensive economy.
“Subsidy removal will increase costs across the board. However, salaries will not increase. This means demand for goods will lessen as will sales volumes and overall economic activity. The removal will have a recessionary impact on the economy as a whole. While some will benefit from the removal, most will experience setback.
“What is doubtless is that the Jonathan tax will increase the price of petrol, transportation and most consumer items. With fuel prices increasing twofold or more, transportation costs will roughly double. Prices of food staples will increase between 25-50 percent….
“Most people’s incomes are low and stagnant. They have no way to augment revenue and little room to lower expenses for they know no luxuries; they are already tapped out. The only alternative they have is to fend as best they can, knowing they must somehow again subtract something from their already bare existence.
“There will be less food, less medicine, and less school across the land. More children will cry in hunger and more parents will cry at their children’s despair…. Poor and middle class consumers will spend the same amount to buy much less. The volume of economic activity will drop like a stone tossed from a high building. This means real levels of demand will sink.
“The middle class to which our small businessmen belong will find their profit margins squeezed because they will face higher costs and reduced sales volumes. These small firms employ vast numbers of Nigerians. They will be hard pressed to maintain current employment levels given the higher costs and lower revenues they will face.
“Because the middle class businessman will be pinched, those who depend on the businessmen for employment will be heavily pressed. States that earn significant revenue from internally generated funds will find their positions damaged. Internally generated revenue will decline because of the pressure on general economic activity. The Jonathan tax will push Nigeria toward an inflation-recession combination punch worse than the one that has Europe reeling.
“This tax has doomed Nigeria to extra hardship for years to come while the promised benefits of deregulation will never be substantially realized. People will starve and families crumble while federal officials praise themselves for ‘saving money.’ The purported savings amount to nothing more than an accounting entry on the government ledger board. They bear no indication of the real state of the economy or of the great harm done the people by this miserly step.”
Like I have done for years, Tinubu also fulminated against “European conservatives” whose economic prescriptions are at variance “with the needs of the Nigerian populace.”He even said something that is eerily close to what I wrote in a previous column. “There has been no nation on the face of the planet that has developed or achieved long-term prosperity by devotion to conservative, ultra-free market economic ideas that dominate this government,” he wrote.
“If no nation has grown using these conservative ideas,” he asked, why are we stuck with them? I have an answer, and it’s three-fold: sadly familiar Nigerian elite self-love, xenophilic obeisance to mean spirited racist wretches at the IMF/World Bank, and a visceral disdain and blithe unconcern for ordinary Nigerians.
Like Tinubu pointed out in 2012, the removal of petrol subsidies in 2023 merely took money from the so-called oil subsidy cabal and put it directly into the pockets of politicians without hurting the bottom line of the subsidy cabal. The cabal simply pushed the extra cost of importing petrol to consumers.
In the aftermath of the removal of subsidies, allocations to the three tiers of government rose by 29.05% in just six months. By the end of 2023, governments shared N15.1 trillion, which represented an increase of N3.4 trillion from 2022.
Note that, according to the Punch of September 22, 2023, N3 trillion was budgeted for petrol subsidies from June 2022 to June 2023 (although it was N1.57 trillion in 2021 and N1.27 trillion from January to May 2022, indicating obvious fraud). In other words, the money that would have been used to keep the pump price of petrol at less than N200 per liter was simply shared between the presidency, governors, ministers, and the rest.
State governors now receive several folds more money than their normal monthly allocations without a corresponding increase in their expenditures. Because they have way more naira than they have use for(of course, they don’t care about the masses), they convert the extra naira into dollars, which contributes to the relentless depreciation of the naira, according to the Business Day of February 13.
In other words, to put it even more crudely, the masses and the economy benefited more from the corruption of the subsidy cabal than from what has replaced it since May 2023. But, as I pointed out earlier, the subsidy cabal isn’t hurt in the least by this change. Apart from pushing the cost of importation to consumers, they are now receiving subsidies through the back door to keep the price of petrol from climbing to over N1,000 a liter, which the IMF is now instructing Tinubu to stop.
The only losers are ordinary Nigerians, small businesses, the informal economy, and the manufacturing sector. After Tinubu said subsidies were gone in May 2023, the GDP of the transportation sector contracted by 50.64% in the second quarter of 2023 and by 35% in the third quarter, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The road transport sector is the most reliable barometer to measure the health of commerce and of the informal economy in Nigeria. Petrol subsidy removal is killing it. A November 28, 2023, Business Day headline succinctly captures this: “Subsidy removal pushes transport industry into recession.”
My job as an inveterate opponent of subsidy withdrawal is made easier by the knowledge that Tinubu knows the truth. He knows for a fact that petrol subsidies are not a waste, especially if the corruption in the administration of subsidies is addressed. He knows that it’s an investment in the people and in the economy.
Petrol doesn’t just power the transportation sector, it’s also the main source of electricity generation for industries, small businesses, and the vast majority of our people. Given that Nigeria has the worst electricity generation record in West Africa (and possibly in Africa), it’s easy to see why a drastic rise in the cost of petrol activates an across-the-board cost-push inflation and deepens the misery index in the country.
Tinubu knows this but has chosen to care more for the validation of the sadistic bastards at the IMF and the World Bank than the comfort and wellbeing of his people.
There’s no doubt that it’s the IMF and its evil twin, the World Bank, that are ruling Nigeria. Tinubu’s government is just a proxy. For example, just two days after the IMF told Tinubu he must remove electricity subsidies (I had no clue such a thing existed given the unreliable electricity in Nigeria) Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu announced that the government would withdraw electricity subsidies.
The same IMF has also instructed that the surreptitious subsidies the Tinubu administration is paying to stop petrol prices from getting to—or even rising above— N1,000 a liter must be stopped. Get ready for another bumpy ride, Nigerians. Until half the country drops dead from starvation, the IMF, which is the real government in Nigeria, won’t rest. I can guarantee you that.
The environment is getting increasingly toxic. The toxicity is so palpable you would think it can be held in one’s hand. It is flowing out of outcry of anger which in turn is primarily from experiencing hardship and a feeling of uncertainties of daily living in these times. In Nigeria, the outcry is over escalating prices of foodstuff, in several cases shooting beyond reach, beyond the roof. Transportation costs have similarly gone up astronomically. What makes it all the more troubling is the security problem in many places which keeps farmers away from their farms. The situation is such that the Emir of Kano, a normally reserved institution, has had to parcel complaints of hunger in his domain wrapped in a message to President Tinubu through his wife, Remi. The Sultan of Sokoto has spoken about how much efforts traditional rulers in the North have been making to calm the nerves of their youths who have been restive. He was kind enough to state that the difficulties in the land did not start with the Bola Tinubu Administration and that the Administration is a continuation of the previous one.
In some parts of the world, there are already signs of economic heat flashing in the horizon, too. Take as an example the number of years that may be required of a first-timer to be able to buy property today in London. According to The Telegraph digital edition, first-time buyers of property in London are now to save for 31 years for a deposit as homes today cost 12 times the average yearly salary. The newspaper reports as follows:
“A typical first-time buyer in London will have to save for 31 years to raise a deposit on a home, twice as long as their parents, analysis shows.
“A Londoner on an average salary would need to save 10 percent of his take-home pay for three decades to afford a 20 percent deposit on a 438, 000 Pounds property—the average price for a first-time buyer in the capital. However, in 2003 the equivalent figure was just 15 years.”
Although, evidently we are living in unusual times, with several parts of the world engulfed in one affliction or the other, Nigerians believe the hardship in the country is peculiar. Last week Thursday, South-West Iceland experienced a volcano for the third time since December. Amidst assurances by the Federal Government spokesmen that the hardship in our land would soon be over, Nigerians believe that the Nigerian troubling situation was complicated and some think, triggered by the peremptory withdrawal of petroleum subsidy without cushioning effect mechanisms already in place before the announcement was made. What is not often stated is, yes, Bola Tinubu formally removed the subsidy, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for Economy in Buhari Administration, Mrs. Ahmed, said the Buhari’s government did not make provision for subsidy in the budget Tinubu inherited. The error of Tinubu was that he did not handle the issue with enough care. Brave though he was, he walked through landmines and he did not tiptoe; he did not exercise enough care; he did not handle the issue diplomatically enough. The consequence is that he has had to carry the can for accumulated failings of recent years.
A litre of petrol, PMS (Premium Motor Spirit) rose from between N178 to N650. Because motion is a Law, movement of persons and goods constitutes foundational factor in the affairs of man. We move from home to work and from work back home. The farmer transports his produce to the silos from where in a chain they finally reach the market and the end user through one form of movement or the other. The transporter buys fuel. Therefore, whatever touches movement must trigger ripples in the affairs of daily living. And so, everyone talks about costs and margins. A bag of rice has shot up from between N30,000 and N35,000 early last year to N65,000 currently. Transport is thus admitted as a major expenditure head and catalyst of cost-push inflation. Indeed, it was the currency change fiasco of late 2022 to early last year that moved the price of rice from N18,500 to N30,000. The price of garri has gone up in a similar sharp manner.
Swarovski in his book, The Time is Ripe, says: “The only one way out of the dilemma, chaos and confusion besetting nearly all humanity and our world is to understand the wider correlations.” What are these wider correlations? He continues: “We must realise that all there is, all that lives, owes its existence to an extra-material Force which in the last analysis dominates everything. Beauty and harmony are obviously the main concern of this marvelous Force and we human beings must strive to make this concern our own and translate it into reality.”
In other words, we are not heeding the fundamentals. And it is hard to admit that as Cassius says, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.” The Law of Movement is exhaustive. It makes for freshness, constant renewal, and preservation. Non-observance of the Law of Movement makes human beings prone to illness. There are birds that have lost their wings with which to fly and there are fishes at the bottom of the sea that can no longer swim. To prevent illness we are admonished to exercise our bodies. The Law is such that when we sleep, we roll from one side of the bed to the other. The Law makes the earth to move round its axis every 24 hours to give us day and night and round the sun in 365 days to give us seasons which in the temperate region are distinctly four: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. These are hardly distinguishable in the tropical region. The seasons in the tropics are simply rainy season and dry season. One month of what is known as the Platonic Year or the Great Year is 2, 160 years and it gives us an Age. The Platonic year itself spans 25, 920 earth years. We can from this see this period in which we are — between when the Lord Christ left the earth and now which is the proverbial End-Time — is the Age of the Holy Spirit. It should stand to reason that the closer to the Source of Life, the faster movement is. This is why as we are told in 2 Peter 3:8, “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years.” This is saying, therefore, that three days in the Light Realm translate to three thousand years on earth. The power that is active in the Law of Motion cannot permit a standstill not, above all, in the quest for higher knowledge, spiritual knowledge. Physicians admonish us to take a walk, to exercise ourselves for good health. Scientists, geologists in particular, would tell you that there is movement even in the rock as it consists of chemical compounds that are inherently animated and which in turn are composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons.
There is also the Law of Cycle and there is the Law of Reciprocal Action. This latter Law ensures that the harvest is tied to the sower. It is thus said that what a man soweth that shall he reap — in multiples. The Law of the Cycle ensures that the end goes back to the beginning. This demonstrates to us that what is sown as seed goes back to the sower as fruit for harvesting. The maturation period of each plant depends on its nature. Bitter Kola takes between 29 and 32 years to produce harvestable fruits while maize takes only three months, vegetables, 12 days, and yam nine months. We sow in thought, in speech, in our volition, and in our action. When we harvest, the consequences depend on its nature. What else do we want as proof that the Laws work collaboratively, manifesting the Will of the Almighty Creator? Because the Creator is perfect and eternal, it should follow that the Laws issuing from Him must be perfect and eternal. Being perfect, they are not in need of improvement. They are immutable, they are self-acting and self-enforcing; they are incorruptible. They are the mechanisms with which the Most High governs His Creation, seeing to the germination, maturing, and ripening of fruits. Mango trees are bringing forth fruits now. From one seed of mango, we have a giant tree brandishing its fruits that will be ripe very soon for harvesting. Yam and cassava are both tubers, but they are different species. To harvest yam, we have to plant yam, and to harvest cassava, we must plant cassava. The Laws are the manual of Creation, which demonstrates to us what Creation consists of and how the Almighty God works in His Creation.
The other Laws are the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species; the Law of Balance and the Law of Spiritual Gravitation. The Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species stipulates that like attracts like. The Law is reflected in the popular saying that birds of the same feather flock together. In the animal kingdom, in the gathering of giraffes, no one can find sheep or goats. Thus, people of the same tendencies are pulled together. They gravitate readily towards one another to form their communities where they are nourished by the radiations peculiar to their native soil, the stars, the wind, and the plants. They would have practically similar if not the same world view, values, relative strengths, and weaknesses. When Africans meet in foreign lands, there is a stirring within their souls, there is uplift in their souls and it is easier for them to strike a relationship, seeing themselves as brothers, than others who are fundamentally alien to them. In their home countries, political competition could be fierce. There will be those who will rise above the din; such a situation is an indication of inner radiance and polish. In another incarnation, such will move to a higher level where their new spiritual maturity places them.
We experience the Law of Balance every second — in breathing and in give and take. There must be balance in inhalation and exhalation. In business, we balance the books. We strive for balance in measures of articles to ensure fairness. Equity is equally found, applying the Law of Balance. Where there is imbalance, there is instability and there are complaints of lack of consideration for others. We observe the Law of Gravitation in the weights of objects. What is light floats to the surface. A ball no matter the efforts which may be made to have it kept at the bottom of a river will float whereas a sinker or a stone thrown into the same river goes to the bottom of it until it can find its level and balance. The Law of Spiritual Gravitation determines who takes flight at the end of our sojourn on earth to the Light Region, the Spiritual Realm that is Paradise, and who goes down to the Dark Region. Purity and nobility make the spirit light, but wrongdoing constituting guilt and dross gives the spirit weight which makes it sink into Darkness and damnation.
It is these Laws that give expression to the Will of God. Since Creation came out of His Will, it is governed by It. This Will is unyielding. It is this Will that His Messengers, Prophets, and Teachers of Mankind came to explain to mankind at different epochs as the Commandments of God. The Teachings were in the measure of the development of the people among whom they incarnated. Moses, one of the leading Teachers of Mankind, for example, received the Ten Commandments of God on Mount Sinai. No sooner than these Servants of God left than mankind formed religions around their Teachings and formulated doctrines and creeds that were and still are at variance with their true Teachings and instructions. The teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Truth Bringer was Himself not spared. He was received with intense hate and envy, especially by the religious and political establishments of the time who saw Him as a threat to their power and influence on the people they led. His Teachings were distorted and are so to this day. That Will, rightly understood, meant to lead us mankind away from wrong causes that in turn lead away from tribulations has been replaced by the will of men in parliaments and other levels of political leadership. Laws are enacted by consensus and by show of hands.
There is hardly any point I have not hinted at before in this column. In view of the pervading hardships, disasters — natural and manmade — wars, economic collapse, and political instability, it bears repeating that they are largely consequences of obstinate deviation from the Will of God and replacing it with man’s will expressed in human laws. The higher knowledge of Truth existing on the face of the earth today permits us a good grasp and understanding of all events in our world. The laws of parliament are subject to debate and regularly amended, Lawyers are required to interpret them and it is not all the time they agree on the interpretation of these laws. Higher, appellate Courts are required for the interpretations which are regarded as final. And the esteemed jurist, Oputa, Mr. Socrates of our time, thoughtful, quotable, and quoted said referring to the Supreme Court: We are final not because we are not fallible, but fallible because we are final.”
The hardships, which arose out of the ongoing compulsory purification, will not cease until the return to that which swings with the Holy Will on earth—until we adjust ourselves to the Supreme Laws which are at work. Swarovski, an author and industrialist, said: “All through the history of mankind up to the present time the necessity of what will give us high value has been given far too little attention, if any, and that is the cause of a great deal of hardship and trouble—the cause of restlessness afflicting the world today many things which are obviously wrong are said to be in the spirit of our times, of the changing times.”
TIME FOR EVERYTHING
There is time for everything. There is time for joy and rejoicing; there is time to mourn and go sorrowing. Publications have been made and going viral in social media about Herbert Wigwe, the Managing Director/CEO of Access Bank, and to a lesser extent about Abimbola Ogunbanjo, corporate lawyer and one-time Chairman of the Stock Exchange. The publications purportedly detailed what can be regarded as dirty deals in the acquisition and development of Access Bank.
The publications at the time of sorrow and grieving are in very bad taste. True or false is not the point. The publications should have waited. An unspeakable tragedy has just hit the nation. Even if to demonstrate our deep feelings, humanness, and sense of propriety, the publications should have waited for perhaps six months for the families and friends to be relieved of their pains. Here was a man who met what we would call, in general parlance, his untimely death in a gruesome manner. Wigwe lost his wife and son and his lawyer and there is an atmosphere of gleefulness and gloating suggesting that the death served Igwe right and I ask myself: Have we been so drained of our humanity and deep sense of empathy for our fellow men? Their remains had hardly even been gathered how much less flown back home in Nigeria before the publications began. Abimbola Ogunbanjo died in the tragic crash barely three months after the exit of his illustrious father, Chief Chris Ogunbanjo. The wreckage itself was mindboggling.
This is a mourning period for the nation no matter how we look at it. So devastating is what has happened that the President, Bola Tinubu wasted no time in sending out a proper condolence message to the families and the nation at large. Most of the people said to be involved in the deal: Aig Imokhuede, Emir Lamido Sanusi, and Mrs. Oputu are still much in the flesh. Why the haste? It rings in the ears of a determination to completely rubbish the memories of the departed in the eyes of those who love them. The publications are indecent, insensitive, and cruel.
Ejindu`s grandfather, Okachie the wise, was always a man of great insights. He knew Alaoma and its people like the back of his hand. But he was also not a man of many words. Were he a man of many words, he would have told Ejindu, his grandson, and many other people, that his insight into people’s nature and character was a gift of the gods. He would also probably have said that it was partly because he had seen so many years in the village that he could tell the turn of events simply by sniffing the wind.
But he was no talkative. Thus, no one knew his thoughts on these matters.
He was always his own man. He believed that the spoken word should be accompanied by action; hence his aversion for people who talked too much. He once rebuked an imprudent prattler by advising him to watch his steps, lest he step on a rattlesnake and join his ancestors prematurely.
Okachie taught his son Obidike, and his grandson, Ejindu, that one must always do one`s best to ascertain which bridges to burn and which ones to cross in life. He always warned them never to forget that no one could do an evil did and truly be at peace with himself, or with the gods.
He sometimes spoke of destiny, but of destiny made by each individual for himself. He would not give window to the lazy and unsuccessful who blame destiny for their failings. Nor would he approve of the attitude of the brave and successful who make the mistake of flaunting their achievements, as if in defiance of the gods.
He respected and praised diligence and responsible behaviour, in leaders and the led alike. He had no regard for the bad people in the community, whatsoever. The repeated attempts of many good people to call the depraved among them to their senses over the years had all been to no avail.
Okachie, therefore, knew for a fact that the bad, the depraved and the temporarily triumphant in Alaoma, had prepared their own fate. He also knew that the fate so prepared had become inevitable.
He has seen many people rise and fall in his long and eventful life. He has also watched the fortunes of those who overrated themselves plummet. He has come to realize, with time, why the fate of people who overrated themselves was always easy to predict.
He likened them to reckless butterflies which, thinking that they could take liberties with the flickering light of the open flame of an oil lamp, soon discovered that the fire usually burnt flying insects to death. And the discovery always came when it was too late for the unfortunate insects.
The few reckless, fire-loving, night insects that managed to survive such encounters usually got de-winged and diminished; unable to ever fly again. Thus, de-winged, they would not show themselves anywhere among flying things ever again. They had become crawling things, through their own efforts at folly. They would all be eventually eaten by ants, rodents, frogs and worms. Their tomfoolery made their fate inevitable.
Okachie used to warn Ejindu, his grandson, not to be deceived if some bad and reckless people appear to be doing well. Not even when their prosperity lasts for a while! And not when their apparent good fortune seemeds to make a mockery of the gods and of the laws of the land. It would only seem to be so, Okachie would say.
Such people usually came to no good in the end. More often than not, their end was quick and inglorious. They would pass away with appalling ease, unsung; to be remembered occasionally when parents wished to admonish their children about the dangers of presumption and reckless living.
Like the morning flower that withered with the upward climb of the morning sun, the memory of such people served as perpetual reminders to others; that only fools used the early morning flow of customers to make proud pronouncements about how the day’s sales would be in the market.
Okachie once told a group of reckless young men that a man who refused to learn from the mistakes of others was like an oiled calabash that remained dry inside and outside, after long hours in water.
The oiled calabash absorbs no water. Therefore, it gives none. It gets immersed in the richest abundance, but only serves as an instrument for carrying such abundance to others. It is no example of how to absorb water when immersed in it.
Okachie would call such people forests without game! Cobs without corn! Castles without gates and guests! Clouds without rain! Hens that do not know the value of ‘kwom, kwom’, the calling sound, for guiding young chicks along the path of life and away from danger!
He once warned a disrespectful young man thus: ‘When elders see the first dance steps of a young man who receives the Ozo title at the age of twenty, they know whether he would live to be an old man.’
Okachie could say that because he had seen many such young men come and go. He was an old man now; a very old man indeed, from whom even other old men often sought wisdom.
Ejindu, his grandson, often recollected the many patient lessons and kind words of wisdom from his grandfather. He always felt humbled by the fact that his grandfather was a man so completely without airs that you sometimes wonder who, or what, he really was.
Through this patient old man, Ejindu had come to know and understand much that he would not otherwise have ever known, or understood, without the benefit of being close to his grandfather. Yes, Okachie was a man from whose words you sometimes discerned the voice of the gods. It was as if his ancestors knew his nature and gave him that name.
The name, Omee-Okachie, means ‘one who does, or says, and rules that it is over and cannot be redone – or undone’; `one whose actions, and pronouncements, are to be accepted as a matter of course’. An Omee-okachie is not to be contradicted in word or deed. He earns, receives and enjoys respect without being arrogant.
And this particular Omee-Okachie has held his position as head of his filial clan with a quiet, unobtrusive but unassailable dignity and authority. As head, he was the custodian of a family tradition.
He lived true to his name, but almost like some kind of benevolent guardian spirit to everyone. Alaoma people knew that for a fact. As the oldest and wisest man in the community, he was now also the village Patriarch. He was, at once, leader, guide, teacher, nurse, mentor and healer.
While his position as community patriarch was conferred on him by age and wisdom, his status as Patriarch of his extended family was conferred on him by the filial Patriarch before him. It would be his task to also eventually identify another and hand over this custodianship, the way he was identified and given the mantle.
He thought about this from time to time, often wondering whether he was taking too long in handing over the custodianship to another. At least the feeling was creeping in on him that he was running out of time and that he needed to discharge this burden sooner than later.
Then, one fateful Eke market day, an incident occurred that led to his son, Obidike, becoming the new head of the filial clan. And it came without any warning.
It was just like any other day for Agbonma, his wife, Obidike and his siblings, until Okachie came back after the day`s work. They were all surprised, even a little startled, when the man of the house walked into the family compound with strangely slow and heavy steps. This was most unlike him.
When he stopped midway and stood on one spot in the compound, apparently lost in thought, Obidike and other members of the family sensed that all was not well. More so, because they noticed that he was not fully conscious of what was going on around him.
He was like a man in a semi-trance, or someone who was seeing only the thoughts in his head. Strange!
It was still early evening when he walked into the compound. The full evening was merely sneaking up from behind the late afternoon, to subtly drag it along and force it to become night. Yes, the sun’s eyelids were beginning to look heavy. They were slowly covering it in the western sky. And it looked so terribly red.
As the giver of daylight was quietly disappearing under the massive, crimson eyelids of clouds, while it was still visible, with its wide afterglow, Okachie was still standing there in his compound.
The full evening finally came! The evening birds started singing and chirping in neighbouring bushes. The crickets started clearing their throats and warming up their wings for yet another round of night music. What would moonlight games be without these musicians of the night? How would you enjoy the moonlight tales without the sounds that made them so genuinely traditional and real? The crickets, the insects and other creatures of the night, usually created the chorus of sounds that added joy to every night in the community.
But Okachie could hear none of that as he stood transfixed. Whatever put him in this state must be serious and ominous. Given the sombre air, there can be no gathering of children under any benign moonbeams. No dreamy, and sometimes scary, stories about the amazing exploits of the ever-cunning tortoise, no!
But enough of Omee-Okachie and all that.
The above, from my coming book, “The Return of Ejindu, deliberately “speaks in tongues”. Nigerians are perplexed. There is fear and trembling, everywhere. Riots may escalate, as insecurity and hunger escalate. State and local governments ignore their roles as primary custodians of the people’s welfare. The precipice is so close, but is overlaid with coloured mats. Do you smell bad news in the air, from Okachie; who is still standing in the compound – as night closes in?
QUOTE
Nigerians are perplexed. There is fear and trembling, everywhere. Riots may escalate, as insecurity and hunger escalate. State and local governments ignore their roles as primary custodians of the people’s welfare. The precipice is so close, but is overlaid with coloured mats. Do you smell bad news in the air?
Those who know Mr. Olayemi Cardoso will agree he got his current job as the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria on a platter of solid professional background and strong personal attributes. His pedigree is rich as his character is unsullied. Cardoso had a remarkable private sector career where he shone brilliantly in banking, stockbroking and consulting.
Cardoso also came from a very solid family pedigree. Nigeria’s late Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, appointed his late father, Mr. Felix Bankole Cardoso, as the first Accountant-General of the Federation in 1963. The late elder Cardoso served with enviable record till 1971.
Part of the remarkable private sector career of Olayemi Cardoso was his appointment as the Chairman of the Board of Citi Bank in Nigeria.
Cardoso began his public service journey when he became the Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning in the cabinet of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Governor of Lagos State as he then was in 1999. In addition to superintending that ministry, Cardoso was charged with several other responsibilities including heading important cabinet committees that birthed landmark agencies in the state. Cardoso was known for enforcing strict budgetary discipline that contributed significantly to the overall success of the Tinubu administration in Lagos. He refused to authorise the release of funds for projects or programmes that had no budgetary head. For all of that and many more, Cardoso was nicknamed the Headmaster.
Armed with a Bachelor of Science degree in Managerial and Administrative Studies and Masters in Public Administration from the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School of Government and parading strong personal attributes, Cardoso is obviously a perfect fit for the CBN top job. He is calm but firm, strict but fair, prudent but practical, straightforward and honest with loads of integrity. These are the unique qualities he carried unto his job at the apex bank and his major selling points when on September 23, 2023 he officially assumed office with the Senate confirmation of his appointment.
However, it does appear Cardoso will need much more than that to succeed in his present assignment. Under him, the CBN seems to be doing the right thing or doing things right: thinking and working on coming up with appropriate monetary policies, moving to rein in the rising foreign exchange rates and particularly achieve an appropriate value for the naira, which Cardoso believes has been undervalued.
But in the wake of the floating of the Naira, some of the variables shaping the value of the national currency, including limited production in the country as a result of insecurity, Nigerians’ high taste for imported products, dwindling exports, poor dollar remittances, humongous school fees of Nigerian students abroad and medical tourism all of which engendered a strong demand for dollar, far outweighing supply, seem to be clearly beyond his control.
Until these situations change for better, no amount of monetary policies by the CBN will work any miracle, hence Cardoso’s predicament. For instance, in his presentation at the sectoral debate organised by the House of Representatives two weeks ago, the CBN governor lamented that the growing number of Nigerian students studying abroad, increasing medical tourism and food imports have led to the depreciation of the Naira against the Dollar. According to him, over the past decade, foreign exchange demand for education and healthcare totalled nearly $40 billion, surpassing the total current foreign exchange reserves of the CBN, while personal travel allowances accounted for a total of $58.7 billion during the same period.
Another critical yet intriguing factor but seemingly odd in Cardoso’s reckoning is the perception in some quarters of some of the decisions of the CBN, which the apex bank considers purely administrative, but which some others give strange connotations.
One of such is the decision to move some departments of the bank; notably banking supervision, other financial institutions supervision, consumer protection department and payment system management department from Abuja to Lagos.
Indeed, until the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero, spoke on this issue last week, I had reckoned that the imperative of the planned relocation of some CBN departments and the headquarters of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria from Abuja to Lagos was evident enough. I had reasoned that the Northern politicians including Senator Ali Ndume from Borno State who had moved to bring down the roof over the development were merely playing politics.
The Emir of Kano, a highly revered royal father, raised the ante last Monday while receiving the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, who was in Kano to inaugurate the School of Law Building named after her by Maryam Abacha American University of Nigeria, and had stopped by to pay a courtesy call on the Emir.
Emir Bayero, whose speech was translated from Hausa to English Language by a senior palace counsellor, had told the First Lady to convey his message to President Tinubu. He said among other things: “We are indeed suspicious on why Mr. President single-handedly relocated key departments of CBN, and outright relocation of FAAN to Lagos.
“We are receiving a series of messages from my subjects, and most of them expressed concern over the relocation of CBN and FAAN to Lagos. President Tinubu should come out clean on this matter and talk to Nigerians in the language they would understand. Do more enlightenment on this matter. I, for one, cannot tell the actual intentions of the government. We should be made to actually understand why the relocation of the CBN and FAAN offices back to Lagos.”
Many will wonder why some members of the northern elites are losing their cool, misinterpreting this move and, perhaps inadvertently, heating up the polity on this rather elementary matter. Is their reservation altruistic? Or are they just being sincerely mistaken and reading unnecessary motives into the policy? With the benefit of hindsight, one can say that Cardoso and his team should have understood the political dimensions of the decision better and undertake a more effective public enlightenment on it rather than treat it as a purely administrative matter. Knowing the kind of people and country that we are and the fact that ours is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural society where every action or decision is viewed from ethnic and religious lenses, the CBN ought not to have released the news about the movement of the departments concerned in a routine manner as it did.
It should have released the news with the detailed information and explanation behind the move. The CBN Communication Department should have deployed all in its arsenal to explain the movement to its critical stakeholders and the general public. The apex bank should have seen the movement beyond a mere administrative move, which is within its remit to do. The bank should have situated the movement and anticipated the social and political meanings some may give it. That is how things run in Nigeria.
A deeper and detailed explanation was later provided when Cardozo appeared on the floor of the House of Representatives in Abuja. I was there at the session and witnessed it all. Asked by one of the members of the House from the North, at the session, the rationale behind the movement, the CBN Governor said: “There is nothing political in the movement. We didn’t change any plan. It has always been like that to ease banking supervision. Most of the banks are based in Lagos. So it works well for supervision if our officials are there with them and close to them and close to those the banks interact with. It’s for administrative convenience. It’s also cheaper for the CBN.” He also disclosed that the movement of the departments concerned to Lagos is also important because, according to him, the country is at the point where there is a need for more banking surveillance.
It is important that the CBN governor draws the appropriate lesson from this. He should learn from this experience that though his job of superintending the country’s monetary system is a professional and economic one, yet it has its political aspects. His decisions have consequences not only on the economy but also on the political front. As such, the CBN Governor must always pay attention to the political ramifications of his decisions.
He must be political without being partisan.
Indeed, his situation is also not helped by the fact that he has had very political predecessors-in-office including the high-sounding Professor Chukwuma Soludo, the soft-spoken but loud former Emir of Kano, Khalifa Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, and the immediate-past Governor, Godwin Emefiele (this one even attempted to contest for president while holding the office as CBN governor).
There are a couple of things to say on the hoopla about the staff transfer though.
One, President Tinubu is receiving attacks over the movement. Emir of Kano says he must reverse it, urging the First Lady to deploy the feminine soft power to actualise this. Yet, to all intent and purposes, the President that is being asked to reverse the transfer may not have been apprised of the decision because he does not micromanage those he gives responsibilities to where their unique expertise and experience are called to service. The CBN on its part may not have briefed the President because Cardoso had seen the planned movement as purely administrative.
Secondly and more importantly, those who are responding negatively to the policy are treating Abuja as if it belongs to the North rather than being the symbol of the entire country as the Federal Capital Territory. In that capacity, as the FCT, Abuja belongs to all and belongs to no one. In the same vein, as the economic capital and nerve center of the country, Lagos is a melting pot where representatives of virtually all ethnic and cultural groups in the country reside and earn a living.
There is absolutely nothing that says that the headquarters of all Federal Agencies must be located in the Federal Capital even when economic considerations and efficiency dictate otherwise. Some federal agencies reside neither in Abuja nor Lagos at present and their work go on unimpeded.
In any case, President Tinubu’s pan-Nigerian outlook and credentials are too well known. His ability to build political and personal networks and relationships across the length and breath of the country were partly responsible for his victory in the keenly contested 2023 presidential election. He will be the last person to approve or support any policy designed to be detrimental to any part of the country.
But for CBN Governor Cardoso, all of that represents his baptism of fire and a wake-up call for him to be a little more flexible particularly in matters that have wider political connotations.
– Rahman is a Senior Presidential aide