Now, that’s a new one wouldn’t you say? But bear with me and come along. We know of the employment index. We also know of the unemployment index. There is then, again, the underemployment index. These indices have become convenient devices for masking a frightening democratic fact, namely that we ought to also take inventory of that active, perhaps too active, part of our population that is absolutely unemployable. But can someone really be absolutely unemployable?

We speak of the employed as people who are engaged in some type of employ, for wages or profit. They may be working for an individual, an organization or for themselves. The unemployed would be generally taken to be “those who have nothing doing”. But that is incorrect, in my view. A person may have nothing doing out of choice. So, the unemployed should strictly refer to those with some skill or capacity for which they could earn pay or make profit, but which is not put to use; even though such parsons are able, willing and available to be employed or deployed. As for the underemployed, it is perhaps best to explain that with a telling example.

Imagine that you spent six years to obtain a university degree in architecture. Imagine also that you are willing and ready to either work in an architectural firm, or open up your own practice. Imagine, further, that you have no way of doing either for two reasons. The first reason is that there is no architectural firm willing and able to hire you. The second reason is that even if you would like to set up your own firm, you are not able to do so. So, there you are starving. You cannot buy soap for a bath or fend for yourself in any way. Fortunately, you run into a friend who knows of a vacancy in a small hotel, which needs a receptionist. You jump at the job, lest you perish.

You are then underemployed in two distinct senses. In the first sense your capacities completely outclasses every demand the hotel will ever make of you as a receptionist. In the second sense, the hotel does not even have enough room, or human traffic, to task just your ability to be awake and alert in the hotel’s front office. 

As for the underemployed, they are simply too many today. They range from graduates who cannot find what to do, to artisans and workmen whose skills are not being sought by a weather-beaten populace that is writhing in economic anguish and gnashing of teeth.

As for the unemployable, they include graduates and non-graduates. A student who obtains a university degree by paying his teachers from start to the point of graduation cannot be employed for anything in his field of study. If, in addition, he also did not acquire any vocational skills, or even develop muscles in order to serve as a bouncer or load bearing tout in the market, then he is truly finished. Such a person must be “retooled” for value, or he will remain eternally useless to the society – and also to himself -in terms of engaging meaningfully in his immediate and remote economic environment. But he can be a criminal, because of the low entry requirement.

Let us leave the university graduates and such others and look at the graduates of the Almajiri school system. Many observers and commentators make the mistake of saying that Qur’anic education is useless; and that graduates of the system are useless dullards and that it should be abolished. These claims and assumptions can be traced to a misunderstanding of the real challenge facing products of this system. To begin with many graduates of the Almajiri system prove their intelligence, measured as the ability to memorize and reproduced presented data the way it is done in the average classroom in the Western educational system, by scriptural recitations, etc. 

What they lack is the tools with which they can engage meaningfully, and also at the level of values. Without economic survival skills, in terms of the ability to provide goods or services that could earn them income, they remain a troublesome demographic group to any development planner. They need to be retooled at two levels: the economic and the axiological. But the axiological is a matter for another day.

Our limited intention here is simply to show that the ignored unemployability index is not readily acknowledged in clear terms and it not being planned for. Yes, there are government “empowerment programmes” and job creation agencies and platforms. But is anyone tracking their impact or trajectory in real terms? Is anyone relating the number of people they reportedly empowered economically to the unemployment figures? Is anyone tracking job losses and juxtaposing them against claims about job creation, to be sure they are not all cancelling out each other? Just asking. 

It would seem that not much will change around here in the short term. If anything, matters are likely to get much worse, before they get any better. The security situation is not getting better, but let us hope that the 8-point Agenda will do something about that. I am not sure how; as oil theft is still thriving and poverty is walking the land; and holding hands with fuel price hike and rampaging rise in food prices. 

The facts staring us in the face today, for which the blame does not necessarily lie with the three months old government, include the following: “ (1) The problem of increasing national productivity in the face of insecurity and other negative factors; (2) The prevalence of consumption patterns and product preferences that negatively impact Nigeria’s Balance of Trade, especially from the angle of accruing deficits, (3) The fact that the Nigerian State, and the political and economic elite, consume mostly what they do not produce and are not in a hurry to change; (4) The tendency to mistake policy statements and records of expenditure for positive impact on lives, and (5) The challenges of an operating environment that flagrantly undermines the best policy initiatives and economic intervention programmes. 

All things considered, and taking us back to our subject matter for today, unemployable Nigerians have become an absolute majority today. This includes intelligent graduates who actually studied for, and got, their academic qualifications. Their “unemployability” stems from a moral handicap. In their education, socialization and engagements, they internalized the wrong values about leadership, public office, service delivery and much more. If you “employ” them to manage the common till, via an electoral process, they go there to serve their personal interests. Thus, they are a danger to the state and are the wrong mentors for those coming after them.

See what unemployability has morphed into? So, look around you again and answer this question: Is it correct to say that the major crisis facing the Nigerian State today is the failure to work out, and be guided by, the unemployability index in everything it is doing today? Just asking.

Values create the right mindset for substantive citizenship, rather than nominal citizenship. In our New World Order, wherein anyone with a cell phone and a social media handle is automatically a media owner, broadcaster, Editor-in-Chief and even a television station, we need a rallying call for a gathering of wits. But who will make the call? Who is making it? Who even thinks that such a call is necessary?

The issues and problems raised here demand some reflection. Other issues not raised here are also alive and well. Some are cheerfully mutating, and not disappearing. Many more are even popping out of every street corner as I write. That is why weariness walks the land. But let the weary not thump their chests and point fingers. The space is being progressively taken over by aggrieved indigenes – not citizens – who are withholding loyalty from the Nigerian State. This is perhaps understandable when we consider that, in many cases, we have official marauders and state-decorated insurgents passing themselves off as leaders and statesmen. 

As observed on this page, under “The Call for Authenticity” nearly a year ago, “Inauthenticity walks the land! In Aso Rock, in the National Assembly, in the judiciary, in state government houses, in state Houses of Assembly, in local government headquarters, in churches and mosques, in institutions of higher and lower learning. We walk through a maze and claim to be walking under bright lights. Debauchery has been given a new name, in the hope that the discerning will no longer keep watch over disappearing values. No, the relevant eyes are still wide open, even if fewer in number than hitherto. The call for authenticity is real”. Enough said!

NIPR Gets a New President

Last week, Dr Ike Neliaku emerged the new President of the Nigerian Institute of Public relations. It was a victory well deserved and for an organization that he has tirelessly helped to build and nurture for so long.

Always in the background and almost desperate not to be seen, Ike has been the backbone of some of the most highly celebrated and successful national events. He has worked in government at the highest levels, but has never focused on anything else that adding value to the nation and to his principals. Ask any former minister about him and you will always get the same nostalgic and grateful note in the voice as they speak of a man without whom they would not really have had a meaningful tenure.

Ike was central to the conception, and successful execution, of the recent NIPR powered Nigeria Citizens Summit that moved from the Zonal Level to a well-attended Grand Finale in Abuja. In all of that, he was only concerned about ensuring that every demographic group and stakeholder platform had visibility, representation and voice. Those that were not forthcoming were approached specially. Ike’s argument in all instances was consistent: “We are not complete if we are not complete. The very idea of inclusivity in national discourse implies the absence of observers, of whatever coloration. So, those who have not said anything should be specially briefed on the subject matters on the table and their input taken”.

Need I say anything from the personal angle. I had better not. We leave it a this: NIPR has got the good man it deserves at a time like this.

Yakubu Maikyau was sworn in as the 31st NBA president last Friday, August 25. Like most of his predecessors, he was conscious of the critical role of the judiciary without which a society descends into a state of anarchy where it ‘is the war of all against all’. Reading the mood of the nation correctly during his inaugural speech, just as he did during his first appearance on national television after his inauguration, he had expressed his concern for “terrorized, traumatized and pauperized Nigeria and Nigerians”. He went on to remind members of his noble profession of the need to protect the ‘voice of the legal profession’, which according to him “must speak against the terror in the land and the hardship that has taken over the lives of our people”.

Unfortunately, just as his predecessors did, the voice which he claimed “remains what is left of this country which cannot be emasculated” was misdirected into fighting a needless battle to whittle down the power of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) by restricting it to investigative duties while the prosecutorial function is ceded to the bar or to another new body entirely.

Successive presidents of the Bar  as well as past attorneys-general have  adopted various strategies to emasculate EFCC despite the fact it can only be as independent as the supervising minister who has the last say on who to be prosecuted, wanted it to be.  It was on account of this open hostility of the Bar that EFCC in its statement of August 2016 took us on a journey through memory.  Back in 2005, Lanre Odogiyan as NBA president had called for outright scrapping of the EFCC during the Bar’s conference in Port Harcourt. That reactionary proposal was killed by some respected social crusaders including Chief Gani Fawehinmi who was present at the conference.  But Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa’s (Justice Minister 2007-2010) waged a silent war against EFCC.

The battle was again brought to the open by Abubakar Mahmoud who during his inauguration in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on August 26, 2016 as the Bar president called for reforms in the operations of the EFCC. He suggested that the anti-graft commission be made to only investigate while an independent agency carries out prosecution.

His crusade was hailed by another former NBA president, Chief O.C.J. Okocha (SAN). “The principle that the BAR is trying to pursue”, according to him is that “with thousands of lawyers looking for jobs, these legal practitioners should be employed to act as prosecutors at all levels of prosecution instead of police”. In other words for a Bar whose responsibility is first to the Bar according to Chief Idowu Sofola, one time Secretary General  of the Bar, and its president (1980-82), it is a matter of jobs for the boys.

Of course other senior members of the Bar seem to share the same mind-set. Only last week, August 24, Olisa Agbakoba, another  former  NBA president regarded as one of the pillars behind EFCC’s recorded success in its anti-corruption war suddenly remembered that EFCC as a ‘federal establishment  by virtue of being a creation of the National Assembly, cannot prosecute state offences and should not interfere in the affairs of state governors’. He has therefore urged the new Attorney General of Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, to ‘unbundle’ the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and restrict it to investigations while a new National Prosecution Agency should be established.

Unfortunately, some of the arguments brought up by the Bar to support their needless war fly in the face of available facts. First, EFCC is convinced that the war against is “a cleverly disguised campaign by powerful forces”, and so called attention to Section 6 (m) of the EFCC Establishment Act, 2004, which clearly spelt out the powers of the commission as including: “taking charge of, supervising, controlling, coordinating all the responsibilities, functions and activities relating to the current investigation and prosecution of all offences connected with or relating to economic and financial crimes.”

The anti-corruption body also wondered whether it was “not a strange coincidence that the suggestion to strip the EFCC of its prosecutorial powers is being floated few months after EFCC arraigned some senior lawyers for corruption?”

Besides accusing many senior members of the Bar of accepting “tainted briefs” to aid looters by providing them with technicalities on how to avoid prosecution and conviction, EFCC also believes government cases given to some senior members of the Bar for prosecution were deliberately bungled. It cited two examples. Abubakar Mahmoud as “the federal government-appointed prosecuting counsel in the trial of ex-Delta State governor, James Ibori, at the Federal High Court, Asaba. EFCC lost the   case in questionable circumstances while the same ingredients from that case were used to fetch Ibori a 13-year jail term in London”.  

Mahmoud according to the anti-corruption body was also the EFCC’s counsel in the appeal against the infamous ‘perpetual injunction from arrest and prosecution’ by former Rivers State governor, Peter Odili, which was still pending before the Court of Appeal in Port Harcourt’, eight years after it was first filed.

Finally, Mahmoud was also reminded that of the over 200 fraudulent bankers responsible for the collapse of the banking sector, only four were brought to justice in a period spanning eight years when the brief were given to senior members of the Bar.

Besides, the body wondered why the Bar that has not lived up to expectation wanted to change a winning team that has in one year recorded more convictions than all the states and federal ministries of justices combined. And it was for this reason EFCC anti-corruption lawyer Rotimi Jacobs (SAN) believes NBA president’s comment borders on ‘corruption fighting back’ especially after pointing out that of about 20 agencies authorized by the constitution to investigate and prosecute, only the EFCC is more prominent having secured over 1000 convictions since inception in 2004 which involved former governors, public servants and businessmen.

Precisely because EFCC believes  there are some rogue elements in the Nigerian Bar Association giving the Bar bad name” which the Bar unfortunately have been unable to tame, it was of the opinion that a “Bar populated or directed by people perceived to be rogues and vultures cannot play the role of priests in the temple of justice.”

It is apparent that even with EFCC holding prosecutorial powers, most of the briefs will still have to go to the senior members of the Bar. The only control it has and which the Bar wants to take away is its power to decide in the interest of Nigeria which of those ‘celebrated’ rogue elements in the Nigerian Bar Association, giving the Bar a bad name and that must be left out because of   their notoriety for ‘tainted briefs from well-known fraudsters or for betraying the very essence of law which is the pursuit of justice.

This is why the joke today is on the Bar which must invalidate EFCC’s thesis that “the current self-serving campaign is intended to create a cabal of untouchables who can be investigated but may never be prosecuted.”

Central Africa is the den of despotism. It has, for almost 60 years, been the barnyard of autocratic geriatrics and playgrounds for the mostly Frenchified African rulers.

France, among the worst of the colonial and post-colonial oppressors and exploiters of Africans, has become the most disliked and repudiated European country in Africa!

Britain held that terrible medal of shame and injustice!

On August 30, 2023, the latest military coup in Gabon reminded us of the domestic strife and atrocities imposed by those presidents-for-life in the Central African economic bloc, CEMAC.

Gabon has substantial notoriety and corruption records.

It’s a long time member of the den of despots and despair in the geopolitical area known as Central Africa

While the soldiers in Nigeria’s neighboring Niger Republic seized power and kept the deposed president under “house arrest” only a few miles away from the other home/residence of Nigeria’s immediate former president MuhammaduBuhari.

Buhari is a veteran and key figure in a number of military coups in Nigeria.

While the recent military coup in Niger has caused major anxieties and characterizations of the regional ECOWAS and its new Chairman, Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu as being relatively clueless. Especially for Tinubu whose educational sojourn to Chicago State University has become a major embarrassment even for Tinubu who seems  perennially engaged in one form of mendacious fix, or another, monthly.

In Gabon, familiar stories of the shameful evidences of the crassness of the Bongos are emerging— less than 50 hours of being booted out of office. The squandering of the massive resources of their oil-rich country is raising concerns.

Clearly, the grossness of the greed of these dictators and their tenure elongating, votes rigging schemes are fit for some Nollywood and Hollywood movies.

Already, a part of the reason I decided to caption my analyses of the coup in Gabon, Ali Bongo and the 40 Thieves, is that the pillaging of the country has many thieves, some of those are natives and many are original French citizens, not just ‘honorary French Africans’.

President Ali Bongo’s removal is being celebrated by citizens of Gabon. He became the leader following the death of his father Omar Bongo, in 2009. Omar ruled for 42 years. Ali was into the 14th year of his presidency for the controversial August 26, 2023 “election”. It simply means that the Bongo family ruled Gabon for 56 years!

As the dust and debate and tensions escalate across the Sahel region and the Central African areas of the continent, the latest questions are: What’s the best way forward amid the rash of military coups?

Do corrupt and incompetent politicians make it easier to topple governments?

A new school year begins this month across the country and over two million university students will return to classes in the nation’s 170 universities. Of these, 79 are privately owned, either by individuals, foundations or faith-based organizations; 43 are owned by the federal government and 48 owned by the 36 states. The students are returning to the same old problems in their campuses, which are particularly more acute in the public institutions than the private ones. Although the private universities do fare relatively better in terms of infrastructure, facilities and governance, our public universities have completely broken down and I will like to ask the Tinubu administration to pay particular attention to this.

The major problem that debilitates our public universities is poor funding and this leads to other problems such as lack of adequate lecture rooms; lack of laboratories, lab equipment and reagents; inadequate libraries, books and journals as well as hostel and office accommodation. Just like the rest of the country, they also suffer from inadequate electricity and many other facilities. Poor funding also means poor remuneration for faculty and non-faculty members, and this, in turn, usually triggers labour crises and disruptions of academic calendars. In other words, we have a poorly paid and poorly motivated workforce in these universities who are no longer interested in training and molding the characters of our young folks, but are more bent on supplementing their incomes by selling lecture notes and extorting money from their students. Our public universities have become breeding grounds for social deviants, cult groups, thieves and perverts, among others. The overall impact of these is that our children graduate from these universities poorly trained, ill-equipped and unprepared to enter either the labour market, proceed to graduate studies or create their own jobs. They not only become helpless to themselves, but are also dependents on their parents and relations and become a burden to the society.

Nigerian universities also lack linkage and partnership arrangements with international universities. When last did any of our universities collaborate with foreign institutions in conducting cutting-edge scientific research? Our professors seldom take up fellowships in other international institutions and this lack of exposures hampers learning.

The private universities, especially those owned by the mega churches, are well resourced, and so they fare better. Their campuses look decent and well-kept, and the facilities appear modern and adequate. Some private universities are however struggling to meet their financial needs as students’ enrolments have fallen short of expectations. Every year, over 70% of about 1.5 million young folks who seek university admissions in Nigeria apply to the 91 publicly-owned universities mostly due to affordability factor, while the rest who are from relatively well-to-do families choose the private universities. Federal government-owned universities are tuition-free, but students are required to pay some charges that could amount to a paltry N100,000 per session.

Students in state government-owned universities, however, pay tuition fees, ranging from N100,000 to N300,000 per session, in addition to other sundry charges. The fees vary from states to states. Lagos State University (LASU), for example, charges far more than Nassarawa State University! In addition to inadequate funding, public universities also suffer from corruption and misgovernance. It’s not uncommon to see a fight erupt now and then between Governing Council members and Vice Chancellors over contracts. But the private universities, on the hand, cater for students from families that can afford them. Their fees are higher than what the public institutions are charging. Faith-based institutions like Covenant University (owned by Winners Chapel/Bishop David Oyedepo) and Redeemers University (owned by RCCG) charge moderately because they receive a lot of additional funding from their respective missions.

So, overall, we have a situation in which only about 20% to 30% of Nigerian university students receive adequate learning in a conducive environment because they happen to be schooling in the private universities. The rest are languishing in public institutions, facing constant sexual harassments from old professors with high libidos or coping with the menace of gun-wielding cult members. How things have changed! When I graduated 38 years ago, UNN looked very much like a small American college. It was a beautiful campus with wide tree-lined roads, nice buildings and sport facilities. The swimming pool was still functioning. Pray! Is there any government-owned university with a pool today? The big students’ hostels were named after Africa’s icons (Awolowo, Akintola; Azikiwe; Ahmadu Bello; Balewa; Eyo Ita; Nkrumah; Eni Njoku and Mary Slessor); the faculty buildings took the names of global icons (Jackson; Sapara; Cardoso, Alexandria; etc) while the two main refectories were named after Margaret Ekpo and Oba Akenzua. The first assignment a curious freshman would give himself was to find out whom these persons were. But things have grown worse since then. We have not only lost our history as a nation, we have also lost our values, and our students are now in a quagmire. Campuses are no longer fun places for our young adults. I pity the new generations.

So, where do we go from here? The federal and state government governments must make education a priority in the next four years and our universities must be adequately funded. More private universities are needed to fill the gaps in our education system. It is notable that with the sharp increase in fuel price tax imposed by the new administration (we call it subsidy removal), governments’ revenues have improved considerably since June. Education and Health should take the lion’s share of the national and states’ budgets, and these monies should be used judiciously in improving our public universities. Governing Councils should be composed of persons of high integrity whose preoccupation will not be to make money from contracts. Making our universities work is a better palliative than sharing grains of rice! The private sector also has a role to play. In that case, more of our wealthy businessmen and women should establish universities and be ready to fund them adequately. In this new age, university graduates should be job creators, but not job seekers!