It is one of the great ironies of modern times that an idea first floated by Jim O’Neill, a British economist then working for Goldman Sachs (and now sitting in the House of Lords), has morphed into an organisation that according to some accounts is about to knock the G7 and the advanced liberal-democratic economies off their economic perch. 

This particular narrative is certainly a dramatic and, in some circles at least, a persuasive one too. Indeed, who after the recent 15th BRICS summit hosted in Johannesburg can any longer doubt that the BRICS are set to run the world by displacing the United States (US) dollar with a shared currency, rendering the G7 irrelevant, and realising a dream harboured by many of building a more equitable world with more countries sitting around the high table of international affairs? Moreover, with over 40 countries now queuing up to join – six will do so by the beginning of 2024 – there can be little question the international system is undergoing a profound change. The future order, it seems, is going to look a lot different to that of the past few decades. 

Enter O’Neill

Yet, there is at least one rather important individual who seems less than convinced: the individual who came up with the idea of the BRICs in the first place. Indeed, in a recent piece published with the revealing title, ‘Does an expanded BRICS mean anything?’, O’Neill pours a fair amount of cold water on the notion that BRICS as an organisation represents anything more than a ‘symbolic gesture’.

O’Neill is clear. It is quite misleading, he argues, to suggest that the five current BRICS nations are about to overtake the G7 economically. In fact, when measured in current nominal US dollars, the group ‘remains significantly smaller than its advanced-economy counterpart’. Nor are all the original BRIC countries doing as well as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or even India. Brazil and Russia, for example, have in relative terms stood still over the past ten years. It is true South Africa was added to the original group in 2010. But as O’Neill points out, it is by no means the largest economy in Africa today. That privilege now falls to Nigeria. 

Furthermore, why choose the countries the organisation has hit upon to join the BRICS in a few months time? As O’Neill notes, the decision to admit the six is rather odd. Hence why ask indebted Argentina with its US$610 billion (£475 billion) economy, and not Mexico, whose economy is over two times as large? Why, moreover, invite poor Ethiopia and not oil-rich Nigeria? And what about Indonesia, an economy which over the past few years has done extremely well? From an economic point of view the proposed expansion of the group makes little sense. 

No doubt if somebody else had been raising all these points, then they would be accused of sour grapes. But O’Neill has never been a stout defender of the old economic order. It was he after all who made the case for the new big emerging economies in the first place. It was O’Neill too who then added the important rider that the leading economies should at some point have to make the necessary adjustments and give the original BRIC countries more voice and space at the top table. 

Nor is he any great fan of the G7 either. As he has remarked, ‘what the world really needs is not the G7 but a resurrected G20’, the best forum in his view ‘for addressing truly global issues such as economic growth, international trade, climate change and pandemic prevention’.  After all, the G20 he feels did a fine job in pulling the world economy out of the 2008 crisis and is much better suited than any other organisation – including either the BRICS or the G7 – in managing the international economic order. 

Beyond economics 

So what, then, has happened to make O’Neill talk of the new BRICS today as if it has lost its way? At least two things might be suggested, neither of which have very much to do with economics. 

The first is what has been happening to the PRC since he first wrote about the country with such enthusiasm. When O’Neill invented the BRIC idea, the PRC still looked as if it was attempting to rise within the existing international order. But those days are long gone. The PRC has moved on under the leadership of Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, a strong-minded leader by any account who rarely misses an opportunity these days to berate liberalism and the various ills visited upon the world by the US. 

Nor did Xi deviate from this particular narrative at the South African summit. Xi may not have delivered his own speech on the first day. That task was left to Wang Wentao, the Chinese Commerce Minister. But the words were Xi’s. As Wang (or Xi)  put it, there was ‘some’ (unnamed) ‘country obsessed with maintaining its hegemony’ by going out ‘of its way to cripple the emerging markets and developing countries.’ And just to make sure the message got home, Wang continued to attack the said ‘country’ by insisting that in pursuit of its own power it was doing everything it could to thwart the legitimate ambitions of those seeking a place in the sun. ‘Whoever is catching up’ soon ‘becomes a target of obstruction’ he went on. 

‘Best and bosom friends’ 

The second big change has been Xi’s determination to maintain and even extend the PRC’s very close partnership with another BRICS member, Russia. Once dismissed by some writers as being little more than an ‘axis of convenience’, over the last dozen years or so the two countries, not to mention the two leaders, have got ever closer, a process which reached a diplomatic climax just before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine when they announced a partnership with ‘no limits’. Indeed, long before the meeting in South Africa, Xi and Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, had not only become ‘best and bosom friends’ but had for some time been talking quite openly of challenging the existing international order by making a direct appeal to the developing countries or what they prefer to call the ‘Global South’.  

Some may have hoped that the war against Ukraine would weaken the Russia-PRC relationship. But if anything it has become more entrenched. In fact, since the beginning of the conflict Xi and Putin have continued to speak from the same script about the deeper ‘cause’ of the conflict (NATO expansion) while at the same time attacking the European Union (EU) and the US for imposing sanctions on Russia and ‘pouring oil on the flames’ by arming Ukraine. Nor has the relationship between the two countries cooled since. Indeed, only a short while before the South African summit, officials from both sides met yet again to work out how to, as said by Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, ‘continue expanding and intensifying [their] partnership.’

As is known, Putin himself was unable to attend the summit in Johannesburg. But nobody who was there (Xi least of all one suspects) was prepared to criticise him or his war. In fact, one of the more significant aspects of the meeting was Putin’s speech close to the beginning of proceedings where he defended his ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine by claiming that Russia had been forced to take action because of the aggressive policies of the US. And as if to cock a further snook at what he liked to call ‘the collective West’, it was then decided that the next summit would be held in Russia – where Putin would be able to attend in person. 

Reform 

Which brings us back to the BRICS and how to judge its position in international affairs. Those doubtful about its claim to represent the future might take comfort from the fact that at least two of its key members – India and the PRC – are potential rivals, and that many of the BRICS countries (including many of those about to join the organisation) can hardly be described as paragons of political virtue. Indeed, at least three of the new members – the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Iran – come well down the list of countries upholding the rule of law and press freedom, while Ethiopia is still mired in a bloody war that has claimed up to 600,000 civilian lives.

Some will also be reassured by another set of facts; namely that the US remains the biggest economy in the world by a serious margin, that 7 of the top 10 economies in the international system are non-BRIC, and that the majority of the biggest corporations are still to be found in the United Kingdom, US, EU and Japan.

Yet the ‘West’ should not be complacent. Again, as O’Neill reminded us, the BRICS group has ‘been able to tap into the broader Global South’s suspicion that the post-Second World War global arrangements are too Western.’ Moreover, as others have pointed out, resentment in developing countries where memories of colonial rule still remain raw and life’s chances for millions look decidedly limited is on the rise. Viewed from this perspective, the growing appeal of the BRICS has to be recognised for what it is: less a serious threat perhaps and more a protest against the current economic order and the distribution of power within it. Reform therefore might not just be a choice but a necessity if the ‘Global South’ is not to drift apart from the ‘West’. As one of the main characters from the great Italian novel, The Leopard, put it: ‘if we want things to stay as they are, then things will have to change.’ Those shaping the future of an increasingly unsettled world might want to take note.

Prof. Michael Cox is a Founding Director of LSE IDEAS and was Director of LSE IDEAS between 2008 and 2019.

It’s more than one year to the next governorship election in Edo State, which prides itself on being the “heartbeat of the nation”. But in a maelstrom that has forced the state’s heart to beat faster than is good for it, you would be forgiven to think the election is tomorrow.

The bad blood between Governor Godwin Obaseki and his deputy, Philip Shaibu, is so bitter and so strong it has spilled beyond Osadebe House in Benin, splattering as far as Abuja courts, and daily smearing the front pages of newspapers. 

Reports last week said the governor, fed up of seeing his deputy’s face, is preparing an isolation centre for him in the precincts of the Government House, but far enough to keep him out of sight.

One cynical way to look at it is to say Shaibu is getting what he deserves for trying to do what Napoleon could not do. In Nigeria’s 24 years of unbroken civilian rule there are few examples of deputy governors who have succeeded their bosses by election, and only two of them – Mahmud Shinkafi (Zamfara); and Abdullahi Ganduje (Kano) – did so by mutual consent. The others, whether in Bayelsa, Kaduna, Sokoto, Ebonyi, Yobe or Oyo, were either by default or defiance. 

Except Shaibu intends to make his luck, which will not only include raiding the vote bank in Edo South, but also subverting the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) structure in the state, and overthrowing Obaseki’s ego, history is not on his side. 

Making his luck? 

How can Shaibu make his luck when he is throwing everything into battle at once, the very opposite of Napoleon’s famous manoeuvre sur les derrie ‘res or the strategy of inferiority? He doesn’t even enjoy support in his Edo North home base, where the rival All Progressives Congress (APC) could have thrown him a lifeline.

Senator Adams Oshiomhole, APC leader in Edo and Shaibu’s former staunch backer, has told him that APC has no room for internally displaced politicians (IDP) in search of a rehabilitation camp. That may sound harsh, but I’m sure that Shaibu knows he deserves his current misery. Loyalty is not a virtue in politics, sadly. But if Oshiomhole is dressing Shaibu down, he has earned the right to do so. 

Of course, Oshiomhole’s snake may have its hand buried in its womb, but it was this man, for all his hubris, that extended a helping hand to Shaibu, a former Prisons Service officer, after an electoral defeat in his early political career in 2003 nearly left him for dead. 

That helping hand, which he would later turn round to bite, was the hand that paved the way for him not only to later become the majority leader in the Edo House of Assembly, but also to represent Estako Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives in 2015. 

According to one account, in the good old days of comradery conviviality, the infernal idea of inaugurating a minority House of Assembly of 10 members in 2019 after which the majority of 14 (APC) were locked out for entire four years was suggested by Shaibu, who was House Leader between 2009 and 2015. It was a coup that benefited all the plotters.

Yet, however deserving he may be of his current misery, it would be unfair to ignore the circumstances under which Shaibu parted ways with Oshiomhole in 2020. Oshiomhole who was then party chairman of the APC had supervised shambolic primaries in a number of states. 

Things fall apart 

The primaries in Edo were obviously meant to settle scores with his protegee, Obaseki, who had developed a mind of his own. Shaibu joined the train of “conscientious objectors,” ostensibly led by Obaseki, who were obliged to part ways with the APC, taking refuge under PDP’s umbrella provided by the former Governor Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike. 

But Obaseki, the other significant party in this pathetic drama playing out in Edo, is a man of infinite contradictions, whose chameleonic gifts are matched only by his ruthless deployment of power. Against the run of fair play, Oshiomhole imposed him as his successor in 2016, in a self-aggrandising bid to copy the Tinubu-Fashola model in Lagos; he being the Tinubu of Edo, and Obaseki, the former stockbroker from Afrivest, Edo’s Fashola.

The experiment turned out to be a catastrophic fiasco. Barely two years after take-off, the falcon began to defy the falconer and the monster created in the process now threatens not only the creator but also the supplicant who has dared to challenge it.

Birds of a feather

Obaseki and Shaibu deserve each other. And Oshiomhole, the father of this incorrigible pair and high priest of their shenanigans, must be sorry at what his experiment has brought upon the people of Edo. In all of this, my heart goes out to the people who must now endure 12 months of a government in disarray, hampered by in-fighting and back-stabbing.

The deputy governor has been stripped of his responsibilities of monitoring and reporting the collection of Internally Generated Revenue and also benched from supervising the Sports Ministry.

But it gets even pettier. Shaibu’s sister-in-law, Sabina Chikere, who was until recently permanent secretary of the Sports Ministry, has been redeployed to “Central Administration”, an administrative wasteland. She was lucky not to have been lynched by a politically motivated mob as she tried to retrieve her personal effects from her former office.

And to asphyxiate his deputy, Obaseki sacked media aides attached to that office in a vendetta straight out of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s playbook during his face-off with Atiku Abubakar.

A resident, Edosa Okunbo, described the fight as “selfish, shameful and diversionary at a time when the state is bedeviled by bad roads and daily killings by rival cult gangs.” Another resident, Isaac Olamikan, said, “The people will be the worse for this in-fighting.”

Even as videos of the governor’s convoy stranded in flooded Benin roads trend, there is still something he manages to do well: calling out the Federal Government’s profligacy. How a governor can superintend over a shambles at home, call out Abuja with a straight face, and also win local elections overwhelmingly at the height of his hubris are part of the inexplicable alchemy of Nigeria’s politics. I don’t get it.

But it doesn’t matter. The emergence of Obaseki in 2016 propped by political heavyweights and supported by some of Nigeria’s high and mighty, including Aliko Dangote, must feel like an investment in junk bonds now. And the governor’s union with Shaibu, must feel like a marriage made in hell. 

I can imagine that folks in Edo Central who have been hard done by over the years must be fancying the clash between Obaseki who is from the South, and Shaibu who is from the North, with extraordinary amusement. It may well be the argument that advances their case for a shot at power in 2024.

I hope, however, for the sake of the long-suffering people of the state that the governor and his deputy will sheathe the sword, let common sense prevail and serve the people they have sworn to serve for their remaining time in office. 

I have seen what appears to be a letter of rapprochement by the deputy governor addressed to the DSS, the governor and the chief judge, on official letterhead and was pleased that Shaibu still has access to his letterhead. I hope the truce holds. As things are now, apart from the two contenders, the only people profiting from this ego-fest are political opportunists and assorted jobbers.

Edo people deserve far, far better than being spectators in a pointless, diversionary ego war.

The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) has just delivered its excoriating judgement on the petitions flowing from the Presidential Elections of February 25th 2023.

Majority of the followers of the Labour Party (LP) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), including their candidates who have often tacitly expressed their lack of confidence that the Tribunal would deliver justice are not surprised at the judgment because they never truly believed they would get a fair the courts in the long run.

They accused the judiciary of rapacious interference of hire wired corruption and a highly influential establishment that is against them in a game where they are no match. Yet they played on thinking that the Almighty God would touch the hearts of the Justices to be patriotic by the awakening of a new populist consciousness driven by the campaign of “All Eyes on the Judiciary“.

The “All Eyes….” campaign did not only fail with sleepy eyes on the bar but it availed nothing but additional misery when the Learned Justices of the Court of Appeal decided to validate the election of President Bola Tinubu in such a stoic judgment that has stunned the legal teams of the petitioners, making them to wonder if the law they thought they understood was written in the English language.

To the chagrin of the LP and PDP supporters who had really hoped otherwise against their singsong of utter lack of confidence in the courts, yet in their fatalism, they thought the Tribunal would rule in their favour but lawyers understand that when a court has decided to follow a particular course, it would employ every relevant Supreme Court authority to support its position just to make it very difficult to fault its judgment and nearly impossible to overturn it on appeal. Thus it is not the fault of those brilliant lawyers who represented PDP and LP. And becomes ridiculous to suggest to Peter Obi to demand a refund of the legal fees he paid to them.

Therefore the Labour Party and the People’s Democratic Party will be inviting more misery and disappointment on their supporters if they choose to go on appeal to a Supreme Court that they don’t trust or consider able to engender any confidence to deliver justice.

A better course would be to consider the future of Nigeria with a better strategy of unity. The LP and PDP lost the 2023 presidential elections when they failed to realize that only a coalition of true unity of their political parties could have defeated the All Progressives Congress that was in charge of government at that time.

LP and PDP must simply wake up to the reality!

ON Wednesday, September 6, the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal, PEPT, delivered judgement in the petitions filed by Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Peter Obi and the Labour Party, and the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, challenging the declaration of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, winner of the February 25 presidential poll.

It is instructive that the ruling came exactly on the day the respondent, Bola Tinubu, marked his 100th day in office as President. It is also worth noting that as the judgement was being delivered in Abuja, Tinubu who ordinarily should be in the eye of the storm, was in far-away New Delhi, India, where he is representing Nigeria on an observer status at the summit of the group of 20 most industrialised nations, G20, the premier forum for international economic cooperation, on the invitation of the incumbent chairman, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India.

I doubt if there is any Nigerian who was in doubt what the outcome of the case would be. Before he left Nigeria for India on Monday, Tinubu’s spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale, told Nigerians that his principal was “not worried” about the outcome of the court matter. The braggadocio of the Tinubu loyalists in the week leading up to the judgement day pointed to the fact that they were sure of the outcome.

As the PEPT was delivering its judgement on Wednesday, a friend of mine, a senior lawyer, sent me a text enquiring if I was watching it on television. He said the judges couldn’t even have done a better job as defence attorneys. I asked him if the judiciary can ever be redeemed and his answer was a categorical No!

I was saddened. Make no mistake about it. I have never believed that Nigerian courts are capable of delivering justice particularly in matters of high-octane political value like this one. So, I was not saddened because I was disappointed. No! But to realise that many lawyers are increasingly losing faith in the ability of the courts to deliver justice is a bad omen.

I have had discussions in recent times with many politicians who have been in courts either defending their “mandates” as declared by the electoral umpire or trying to retrieve their alleged “stolen mandates”. It has been a tale of woes on both sides. The only determinant factor is money – loads of money.

But the outcome of this case should worry any well-meaning Nigerian because it impugns on our so-called democracy. For democracy to be “government of the people, by the people, for the people” as former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, noted in his famous Gettysburg address on November 19, 1863, the votes of the people must be the sole determinant of who gets elected. That is not the case in Nigeria, as indeed it is not in many other African countries, where elections are not free and fair.

In every milieu where might is right, and those who are powerful can do what they wish unchallenged, even if their action is, in fact, unjustified, woe betides anyone who stands in their way. That is clearly the case with our dear country where a few people have totally captured the state. There is everything wrong with our democracy. In a country where there is no difference between private and public purse, swearing in “winners” of a contentious election before the final determination is made in court is injurious not only to the so-called losers but the Nigerian state itself.

All the odds are against the petitioners. Attempt by the National Assembly in 2014 to make a law that would make the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, take the responsibility of proving the conduct and regularity of elections in the country before the election petitions tribunal or the court failed. If that Bill had scaled through, the resultant Act would have placed the burden of proof on the INEC, instead of the litigants. It would have also reduced the difficulties petitioners normally face while trying to get the necessary documentary evidence in support of their petitions.

In their ruling, yesterday, the five Justices blamed the petitioners for not producing enough evidence of electoral malfeasance even when they were well aware that the Professor Mahmoud Yakubu-led INEC blatantly refused to avail them those documents, flagrantly disobeying the Tribunal’s order. While the alleged losers who, for all I care, may indeed be the winners are further stretched financially in courts, those that have been declared winners, who may indeed be the losers, make use of public funds in defending their “mandates” in court.

Not only that, they deploy the resources of the state – human and material – maximally. As it is the case in this instant case, Tinubu has been using the enormous privileges and powers conferred on him by the office of the presidency to consolidate power and entrench himself. He sacked the Service Chiefs and appointed his loyalists. In a country where the military swear allegiance to the President rather than the Constitution, and are only interested in regime protection rather than protection of the Nigerian state, wielding the coercive powers of the state makes all the difference.

Immediately the PEPT announced the judgement date, the Department of State Services, DSS, issued an ominous warning against anyone who may have the appetite to protest the ruling. Before Tinubu jetted out to India, he had a meeting with all the Service Chiefs behind closed doors. The military top brass came out of the meeting to warn would-be “troublemakers”.

While the petitioners were finding it difficult to make a headway in the case, the President was busy making juicy appointments and dispensing political patronages. Prince Lateef Fagbemi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, one of Tinubu’s lawyers at the tribunal, is now the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF, and Minister of Justice. Even presidential candidates of some political parties are seriously lobbying President Tinubu for a slice of the national cake and pledging their unalloyed loyalty.

I doubt if there is any Nigerian who sincerely believed that the PEPT will sack Tinubu. And yesterday’s judgement will only be a fait accompli at the Supreme Court should the petitioners decide to go on appeal. Those who insist that what happened at the Tribunal on Wednesday is evidence that Nigeria is still groping in the dark, may not be wrong after all. Someone quipped: “After seeing this, do you still want to waste time on Nigeria’s judiciary and questionable politicians?” Some do but I don’t. Tinubu has wangled his way to the presidency and used the judiciary to legitimise his position.

Ours is a democracy where the people have no say. As a pall of silence descends on Nigeria once again as it was the case when Prof Yakubu declared the presidential election result in the wee hours of the morning when most people were asleep, highly distraught but subdued Nigerians will pick the pieces of their lives and move on. But I foresee danger. Aside Nigerians like myself who have vowed never to vote again in any Nigerian election and the attendant voter apathy, those who are still foolhardy to throw their hat into the electoral ring may decide that henceforth every electoral battle must be waged, won or lost at the polling booth rather than waiting for INEC to make a declaration and embark on a wild goose chase at the courts. When the judiciary wittingly or unwillingly takes the role of democracy undertakers, that is a recipe for anarchy!