OTHERS' VIEWS

OTHERS' VIEWS

As President Joe Biden, the 46th American president bowed out yesterday after 52 years of service to the nation he passionately served as a parliamentarian and president and Trump took over as the most powerful leader in the world in a seamless transition, devoid of the uneasiness and anxiety that heralded his first coming, it was the beauty of the American system that was in display.

Trump’s landslide victory over both Biden and Harris is but once again a confirmation that all politics is local. No matter how much Trump is derided by the rest of the world over what was considered his infantile behaviour, character deficit and right-wing world view, it is the Americans who wear the shoe that know where it pinches.

And lastly, the unexpected outcome of the American presidential election also once again confirmed the major weaknesses of the democratization process -free and fair election the hallmark of participatory democracy which is capable of throwing up anyone.

Biden had exploited what has turned out to be unfounded fears about Trump’s threat to democracy and the battle against Trumpism a “fight for the soul of the nation” to cruise into power in 2020. First, in order to rescind some of the Trump policies, Biden on his first day in office, issued executive orders that took back the US into the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, cancelled the US withdrawal from the World Health Organisation and a number of other executive orders in the areas of immigration, health care and environment.

In spite of the control of the presidency and both houses of Congress by the president’s party, after the 2020 mid-term election, three significant pieces of voting rights and electoral-reform legislations, including the For the People Act, passed by the House in March 2021; the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, passed by the House in August; and the Freedom to Vote Act, introduced in the Senate in September. (The first two bills were later versions of legislation passed by the House in 2019) were all blocked in the Senate by Republican filibusters, which could be overcome only with the support of at least 60 senators.

 

Finally, believing he, and his party knew what the people wanted without asking them, Biden became a victim of his own hubris.  On December 13, 2022, Biden signed into law the “Respect for Marriage Act which   formally repealed the federal Defence of Marriage Act (1996) which had defined marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman and had permitted states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriage performed in other states.

 

Biden had earlier alienated the power American Pentecostals who supported Trump by appointing Pete Buttigieg, a gay as U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Biden also went on to sign an LGBTQ executive order which advanced equality on June 15, 2022.

Of course, the unexpected outstanding performance of Biden and his Democratic Party in American last mid-term election was American women’s show of gratitude to the president and his party’s crusade over women’s right to control their bodies But their dismal performance in the last November election was American women’s rejection of the notion that institutions of state manned by individuals who have no children can decide for parents how best to groom their children. If there are American adults who today exhibit evidence of maladjustment as a result of challenges of growing up, parents don’t want confused state officials to tell their five year old boys and girls about their right to change their sex.

Biden, a veteran of foreign relations having served as Foreign Relations Committee chair twice (2001–03; 2007–09), was no less haunted by his mishandling of foreign issues with domestic issues content by failing to rise to the occasion as the leader of the world. His unconditional support for Jonathan Netanyahu was to set him up against moderate democrats, students, first time voters and American Arab voters and the rest of other world leaders that had expected him to use his moral voice to provide leadership for the world in disarray.

But then Biden could not give what he did not have.  He instead on October 2023 secured Congress aid package $15 billion in additional military assistance for Israel in its war against Hamas. It was true Hamas started the war with the unprovoked killing of 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers. But informed members of the international community understood the act was out of frustration by Palestinians after over 50 years of Israel’s occupation, scores of rejected UN resolutions with tacit support of the US.

 

Israeli response in form of massive invasion and destruction of a ‘caged’ Gaza resulted in the death of over 45,000 Palestinians mainly innocent children and women.

Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of schools, hospitals and mosques, blockade preventing water, food, medicine, electricity, and fuel from entering the territory, was declared disproportionate response by the Pope, genocide by the United Nations and the rest of the world leading to issuing of warrant of arrest of Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defence minister ‘for crime against humanity and war crimes committed from at least October 8 2023 until at least May 20 2024”.

Biden, a Catholic who takes Holy Communion every day and the only man with leverage on Netanyahu kept insisting Israel has the right to defend herself.

And finally, Trump’s triumph was one more evidence of the major weaknesses of democracy-free and fair election the hallmark of participatory democracy which often involve group bargaining. Democracy is capable of throwing up anyone including, outright idiots who do not know their right from their left  or even those who have no faith in democracy at the expense of those who have faithfully served their nation in the military, bureaucracy and parliament such as John McCain in 2008, Hillary Clinton 2016 and Biden and Harris 2024.

In fact, the apprehension of most enlightened Americans during Trump’s first coming was the parallel between Trump, his rhetoric and Adolf Hitler. Like Hitler and most far right politicians, Trump had blamed economic and social crises in America on outsiders. And sounding like Hitler before the Jewish final solution, he had said ‘we have problem in this country. It is called Muslims; we know our current president is one, he is not an American”…”They have training camps where they want to kill us; we want to take our country back”. He blamed China for America’s economic woes and the menace of drug and unemployment on Brazil.

Like Hitler, Trump does not believe in political parties. Just as Hitler used Nazism as springboard to take over power, only to later destroy the leadership of the party as well as the party’s values before taking upon the world as a dictatorship responsible for the death of over 11 million people, six million of them from Israel, Trump hijacked the Republican Party to secure the party’s presidential ticket. Like Hitler, he went on to assault the core values and the soul of the Republican Party. And just like what Hitler did to his party leading members, Trump had humiliated leading light of the GOP before the far-right Republicans, particularly members of the Trump-led MAGA movement, who generally supported Russian President Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán, the authoritarian leader of Hungary took over.

Trump was against the Fourteenth Amendment which confers citizenship on all children born in America and threatened to deport all such children. Worried Americans back then could not but see the parallel between this and Hitler’s ‘bastardisation’ policy which considered children born in Germany but of non-German parents inferior and could not be given citizenship because citizenship was by blood of the Aryan race.

Trump neither believes in free press or shares the sentiments of Thomas Jefferson, the American founding father and the principal author of American declaration of independence (1776) that “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”. Today Trump has undermined confidence in the free press, creating his own alternative reality through lies propagated by Fox news and other platforms that supported him.

Trump’s ‘I am the only one who can fix America’ is not markedly different from Hitler’s delusion that he was ordained to protect the Aryan race.

But Trump’s 2020 defeat despite his failed insurrection and his return to the White House yesterday after four years in the political wilderness speaks to the resilience of the American system. It shows the American system has an in-built mechanism to prevent any America from taking a precipitate action which poses danger to American democracy.

A healthy nation is a productive one. Health is existential and ranks extraordinarily on the pyramid of desiderata. Since 2023, the President Tinubu-led administration has foregrounded healthcare, making it a nucleus of its policy decisions and prescriptions.

For instance, in the 2024 budget of Renewed Hope, the first in the life of the administration, health, and other contributing sectors to the human capital index received due attention. Also, in the yet-to-be-passed 2025 budget estimates, N402 billion has been allocated for infrastructural investments in the health sector and another N282.65 billion for the Basic Health Care Fund, N188 billion for vaccines, and N40 billion for malaria vaccines.

A brief review of the past year

 

The Tinubu administration prioritises Nigerians – their health, social welfare, and otherwise. 2024 was a significant year for the administration in the health sector with many tangible outcomes. Over 53,000 frontline health workers were trained in the past year to deliver integrated, high-quality services in keeping with the objective of training 120,000 health workers by December 2025.

 

Also, the blanket of the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) was expanded with over 2.4 million citizens enrolling in the national health insurance scheme in the year and with 10 million Nigerians under its sturdy cover.

Nigeria also secured a EUR1 billion European Investment Bank financing mechanism and a $1 billion Afreximbank financing mechanism to support incoming manufacturers in the health and life science sectors.

In addition, the health sector witnessed significant investment interest with over 70 new healthcare manufacturing companies with 22 large-scale projects in talks with international financiers, and more than 10 value-chain verticals already being established in the country.

2025 targets for health

The year, 2025, comes with a dispensary of possibilities, considering the streak of outcomes in the previous years. It should ordinarily be a year of new quarries, fecundated grounds, and consolidation.

According to projections by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, about 40 percent Level 1 primary health facilities will be enhanced and advanced to Level 2, widening the capacity and reach of facilities capable of delivering integrated Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) services across all states of the federation.

Over 60,000 frontline health workers will also receive training in comprehensive SRH service delivery in 2025, aiming to achieve feasible quality improvement in family planning (FP) and post-abortion care (PAC).

 

Also, there will be a fulsome activation of the free C-Section and VVF repair programme in 50 percent of the 172 priority local government areas, which account for the highest burden of maternal deaths in the country.

In addition, the Sector-Wide Approach (SWAp), a mechanism for driving efficiency in healthcare service delivery, will ensure that performance and financial management officers are engaged in all 774 local government areas to supervise the construction of primary healthcare centres, as well as manage their operations with fidelity to transparency and efficiency.

The Presidential Initiative to Unlock the Healthcare Value Chain (PVAC) achieved some milestones in 2024, and it is expected that the initiative will consolidate the gains and execute more multiplier interventions and programmes.

PVAC is a crucial all-wheel vehicle established by President Bola Tinubu to unleash the potential of the health sector and unlock the arteries in the healthcare value chain by increasing local manufacturing of pharmaceutical products to least 70 percent of total consumption by 2030; increasing the total direct full-time employees working in the life sciences manufacturing sub-sector to at least 50,000 (up from the current workforce estimated at approximately 20,000); establishing at least two commercial vaccine plants across the health sector; establishing at least five new medical supplies and diagnostics plants, and doubling Nigeria’s pharmaceutical market share in Africa to at least 15 percent.

 

In 2025, PVAC says it will focus on the priority areas of market shaping, advancing local manufacturing, regulation and policy advocacy, and execution of special projects.

Some of its interventions will include expanding the range of health products and medical technologies manufactured domestically to strengthen Nigeria’s healthcare value chain, further addressing regulatory hurdles, advocating policy changes required to advance healthcare businesses across the sector by providing support to manufacturers, as well as working with public sector bodies.

 

Also, it will include implementing strategic, high-impact projects on behalf of the government to enhance local manufacturing capacity and improve health outcomes, addressing critical gaps in the healthcare sector.

In addition, establishing three to five manufacturing plants for pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, diagnostics and LLINs; leveraging global knowledge hubs to improve technical capacity for local manufacturing; supporting new manufacturers in obtaining WHO pre­ qualification and implement enabling ecosystems interventions; accelerating implementation of Executive Order and engage EO Technical Working Group to implement import duty and VAT exemption for manufacturing equipment and materials.

 

By the same token, it seeks to successfully deliver projects that support the establishment or expansion of local manufacturing facilities for essential health products and technologies and launch initiatives that improve healthcare access and outcomes for underserved populations, ensuring alignment with national health priorities.

Also, the Renewed Hope Medical Relief Programme once approved by parliament as proposed by President Tinubu, to be implemented through the Presidential Initiative to Unlock the Healthcare Value Chain (PVAC), will see the federal government purchasing drugs, medical consumables, test kits directly from local manufacturers and distributing via technology-enabled public-private partnership, to 73 FTHIs, 37 general hospitals, and 8,800 PHCs receiving funds from BHCPF. This will subsidise the cost of medicines, channel activated real demand to Nigerian manufacturers, lower costs, and ensure quality.

 

The National Emergency Medical Service and Ambulance System (NEMSAS), a special-purpose entity which serves as the foundation for organising and institutionalising emergency medical services across Nigeria, says some of its future aims include the procurement and equipping of tricycle and boat ambulances, which is in process with the plan of distributing over 700 tricycle and 30 boat ambulances to rural communities across Nigeria; advocacy and behavioural change communication: each state is expected to implement a robust community level advocacy exercise to drive demand and utilisation of RESMAT services; formal launch and commencement of RESMAT operations; monitoring and evaluation and plan for scale up to 37+1 states.

Already, NEMSAS has supported some states in establishing State Emergency Medical Service Governance and Operational Structures. Some of these states are Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Gombe, Nasarawa, Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto, Plateau, Taraba, Delta, Ogun, Osun, Rivers, Yobe, Jigawa, Kebbi, Adamawa, Borno, and FCT.

NEMSAS says in regions and universities where it is fully operational, individuals facing emergencies—such as complicated pregnancies or deliveries—can dial the national emergency short code (112) or a designated 12-digit number from their institution or state. An ambulance will be dispatched to assess their situation, provide initial treatment, and transport them to the nearest hospital at no charge.

To deepen access to critical emergency services and bridge EMS chasms in areas with limited NEMSAS coverage, NEMSAS seeks to launch the Rural Emergency Service and Maternal Transport Programme.

The World Bank through the IMPACT project is supporting a pilot of this programme, in 15 IMPACT Project states namely: Bauchi, Delta, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Gombe, Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, Nasarawa, Ogun, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba and Yobe.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) itemises some of its key development benchmarks for 2025 to include public health legislation: passing of the Public Health Emergency Management and NCDC amendment bills, development of Public Health Emergency Management Standards and Structure for states in line with the SWAp Agenda and subnational EPR mentorship; health promotion and disease prevention for priority and epidemic prone diseases on all media platforms, improved national and subnational awareness, AMR/IPC implementation, surveillance and early warning systems (including SORMAS optimisation through a national digital transformation agenda); laboratory and diagnostic capacity optimisation (including genomic sequencing and a standard service menu for state (subnational) laboratories); expand laboratory network and capabilities; response, medical countermeasures, and event (outbreak) management actions (including risk profiling, simulation exercises, IPC, and stockpiling), and reduce outbreak mortalities.

In addition, other targets include increasing national efforts in public health emergencies, human resource capacity development (including field epidemiology and laboratory training, integrated training for surveillance officers); public health emergency training, case management training core personnel and SURGE staff, and definition of the minimum human resource competencies for state EPR programmes), including leadership training and performance review of outbreaks of priority and endemic prone diseases (Lassa fever, Meningitis, Diphtheria, Measles, Cholera, Influenza-like illnesses, Mpox and Yellow Fever).

Looking through the magnifying glass, 2025 is shaping up to be another stellar year for Nigeria’s health sector under President Tinubu.

Fredrick Nwabufo is the senior special assistant to the president on public engagement

I turned 83 years old on the 15th of September 2024 and recently realised that I have outlived a substantial proportion of acquaintances whom I encountered in the active and useful years of my life. If I was able to visit Jamaica, where I spent my childhood and adolescence, I would hardly find anyone with whom I attended school or with whom I played when I enjoyed a typical Jamaican boyhood. Nevertheless, these days I find myself wishing that I could return to my natal home not necessarily to see old friends so much as to experience old sensations.

This desire I believe is actually a sign of the arrival of old age as the wish to experience juvenile memories is a function of geriatric nostalgia. As I confront daily existence, especially by trying to overcome the unfortunate circumstance of the reduction of mobility and social intercourse occasioned by the loss of my left leg to diabetes in my 79th year, I feel compelled to reflect on various events that I have witnessed in the journey so far. However, this compulsion generates a terrifying sense of loss and anxiety over one’s own chance of survival when such reflections reveal the serial departure of scores of individuals who were either younger or not much older than myself.

This anxiety coupled with gratitude for my close family’s devotion to my welfare has rendered the consciousness of the importance of divine faith alive in my awareness. While I still entertain some misgivings about the use of religion to satisfy the opportunistic advantages of some of its practitioners I try my best to respect and honour the true belief of the advocates of the best principles of faith.

That is to say that I recognise the need for faith among the believers because my own circumstance makes me hope for divine intervention to make life be more than suffering. I reflect on this issue constantly these days because I am in need of faith as I recognise that old age has arrived.

 

Taxes, tariffs, duties and levies are ways the government rakes in revenue to run institutions of governance and finance provisions of physical infrastructures including social amenities.

Taxation is as old as humanity so much so that it is even in the holy books. Zacchaeus in the Bible is said to be a tax collector while Jesus himself paid tax.

Remember the popular phrase of giving unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God, what is God’s. Biblical records about tax payment can be found in Matthew 17:24-27 and 22:15-22. During the pre-colonial era, Yoruba people paid isakole and owo-ori, which are forms of taxation.

Really speaking, most people don’t want to pay taxes for different reasons. Many Nigerians believe that the government is rich enough with proceeds from crude oil and gas sales and does not need additional income to run its affairs.

 

Some refuse to pay because of the assumption that there is no accountability and transparency from the government on what it has done with monies paid by those who complied, especially proceeds from Pay As You Earn, which is deductible from the salaries of workers. Corruption is one of the barriers and impediments to voluntary tax compliance.

Many Nigerians are also of the opinion that they are not earning enough to enable them to pay taxes. Research has shown that many corporate organisations making super profits in Nigeria and the super-rich people in the country do not pay commensurate taxes if they pay at all.

As part of his economic restructuring, President Bola Tinubu on Tuesday, August 3, 2023, inaugurated the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms with Taiwo Oyedele as its chairman.  In October last year, the President sent four tax reform bills to the National Assembly for passage.

The bills are: the  Nigeria Tax Bill, which harmonises all the major taxes, such as corporate income tax, personal income tax, VAT etc.; the Nigeria Tax Administration Bill, which provides a framework for tax management covering taxpayer identification, registration, assessment, collection, enforcement, etc.; the Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Bill, which seeks to replace the FIRS with the NRS to perform a broader role of revenue administration in Nigeria and drive collaboration with subnational governments and MDAs and the  Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Bill meant to transform the JTB to JRB with an expanded mandate and enhanced role for cooperation and tax harmonisation.

The bill also sets up the office of the tax ombudsman to protect taxpayers and advocate for tax simplification.

A December 3, 2024 tweet on the X handle of Taiwo Oyedele (@taiwooyedele) says, “Altogether, the bills offer a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s tax framework to drive economic growth, support Nigerian households and position the country as a competitive economy within the comity of nations. These reforms reflect a commitment to equity, efficiency, and sustainable development.”

It is noteworthy that since the bills were sent by President Tinubu to NASS for passage, there has been a lot of pushback by many northern elites including governors, senators and House of Representatives members.

Among those who spoke out against the bills were Governors Bala Muhammed of Bauchi, Prof. Babagana Zulum of Borno and Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State.

Senator Ali Ndume also did not hide his disdain for the bills. The bone of contention in the bill majorly was the revised sharing formula for the distribution of the Value Added Tax.

Recall that under the immediate past administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, this was very contentious to the extent that the then Governor Nyesome Wike of Rivers State had to drag the Federal Government to court over what it considered to be an inequitable sharing formula of VAT.

The Northern Elders, Arewa Consultative Forum and many powerful northern power brokers queued behind their governors and federal lawmakers to issue subtle threats to President Tinubu, indicating that they would not support his reelection bid in 2027.

Indeed, on October 31, 2024, the National Economic Council asked President Bola Tinubu to withdraw the Tax Reforms Bills from the National Assembly to allow for wider consultations and consensus building.

Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, said that formed part of resolutions reached at the 144th meeting of the National Economic Council at the State House, Abuja.

 

On December 3, 2024, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, in a statement said President Bola Tinubu had directed the Ministry of Justice to work with the National Assembly to address the concerns raised by different quarters on the tax reform bills.

It is important to highlight some of the salient provisions of the four tax reform bills.

According to the earlier referenced tweet by Oyedele, changes to income tax laws will attract remote work opportunities in the global business process outsourcing sector, enabling Nigerian youths to thrive in the digital economy; goods, services, and intellectual property exports will benefit from zero-rated VAT and other incentives to enhance Nigeria’s global trade competitiveness; tax exemptions, including zero per cent corporate income tax, VAT, and withholding tax, will apply to small businesses with annual turnover of N50m or less; minimum wage earners will be exempt from personal income tax, while over 90 per cent of workers across the private and public sectors will see a reduced tax burden.

Essential items such as food, education, and healthcare will enjoy zero per cent VAT while rent, public transportation, and renewable energy will be exempted, providing relief for low-income households that spend nearly 100 per cent of their income on these necessities.

Furthermore, over 50 nuisance taxes are to be repealed, with the remaining levies harmonised into a few numbers of taxes.

Corporate income tax rates will reduce from 30 per cent to 25 per cent over the next two years, and earmarked taxes on companies will be replaced with a streamlined single levy; businesses will benefit from input VAT credits on assets and services, eliminating the minimum tax on loss-making and low-margin companies.

This will lower production costs and stimulate investment; a redesigned tax framework will ensure progressive personal income tax, VAT, and capital gains tax while safeguarding low-income earners.

Taxes on foreign currency-denominated transactions will be payable in naira, easing compliance for businesses and reducing pressure on the exchange rate; VAT revenue will be distributed among states based on an equitable model to reward economic contributions, rather than the current model which is skewed in favour of states with head office locations where VAT remittances are usually made;  the introduction of tax ombudsman to improve the tax system by protecting vulnerable taxpayers and advocating for fairness and lastly,  a strategic framework for fair taxation, responsible borrowing, and sustainable spending will be established to guide the fiscal system.

In a rider to those points, Oyedele said, “These tax reforms aim to alleviate the rising cost of living, foster economic equity, and create a business-friendly environment to attract local and foreign investments.”

It is heartwarming to note that the Nigerian governors who were initially against this bill were able to meet with the Taiwo Oyedele Presidential Tax Reform Committee last week and ironed out their differences.

In a communique issued by the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum and Governor of Kwara State, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, the forum reiterated its strong support for the comprehensive reform of Nigeria’s archaic tax laws.

The forum endorsed a revised Value Added Tax sharing formula to ensure equitable distribution of resources:  50 per cent based on equality, 30 per cent based on derivation, and 20 per cent based on population.

Members agreed that there should be no increase in the VAT rate or reduction in Corporate Income Tax at this time, to maintain economic stability. The forum advocated for the continued exemption of essential goods and agricultural produce from VAT to safeguard the welfare of citizens and promote agricultural productivity.

The meeting recommended that there should be no terminal clause for TETFUND, NASENI, and NITDA in the sharing of development levies in the bills and lastly, the meeting supports the continuation of the legislative process at the National Assembly that will culminate in the eventual passage of the Tax Reform Bills.

This is a classic case of using political solutions to resolve economic conundrums. Commendable!

X: @jidejong

American President Gerald Ford, in a posthumous eulogy read by his son, Steve, at the funeral of another American President, Jimmy Carter, his immediate successor, affirmed, “Honesty and truth-telling were synonymous with the name Jimmy Carter.”

This assessment by a president about another president is the exact opposite of what a Nigerian would probably say about a fellow Nigerian, both knowing that “honesty and truth-telling” will be antonyms to their characters as Nigerians.

That is a sad, but true, commentary on the character of the average Nigerian that prompted former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, to say that “Nigeria and Afghanistan are possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world”, to the hearing of Muhammadu Buhari, a sitting President of Nigeria, who hardly knew how to react to a biting insult.

The best that former President Buhari could muster was his trademark wide Cheshire cat grin, a “Yes” that Nigeria was “fantastically corrupt” and the underwhelming comment that he “was shocked and embarrassed” and would rather “demand… a return of (Nigeria’s) stolen assets (hidden in Britain), than “demand an apology” from ex-Prime Minister Cameron. 

And to appear to be pushing what is no more than a half-hearted demand of his boss, the then Chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu. revealed that at that time, $37bn of stolen Nigerian money had been routed through Britain.

A joke that made the rounds in Lagos in the mid-1980s stated that when it looked as if an aircraft on an international flight was about to crash, the flight stewards thought of the most effective way to persuade the frightened passengers to don the parachute and dive into the sky.

To the gambling Americans, they said it was a 50-50 chance of survival. The Americans weighed their options, took the parachute and jumped out. The Japanese took the parachute when they were told that it was a matter of honour to be brave and jump out with the parachute.

It became a royal problem to persuade Nigerians to dive. No one knew how to get them to accept the parachutes. Until a retired pilot, who had lived in Lagos, offered to help. When he got the all-clear, he simply walked into the fuselage and announced, “Nigerians. It is illegal to jump out!”

In less than a jiffy, all the Nigerians on the aircraft jumped the queue, collected and wore the parachutes and saw to it that they all jumped out ahead of other nationals, who stood puzzled that the motivator for Nigerians was the zest to breach rules.

Following is another interesting story. A video gone viral showed a young lady, presumably a Diaspora Nigerian, in a rented boat trying to appease some gods by throwing US dollars into a lagoon. After the ritual, she was asked what she liked about Nigeria. She answered, “I like that I can pay my way through anything,” in the most casual manner.

These stories are probably a summary of the disdain that Nigerians have for orderliness, ethical guardrails and the rule of law. It also shows that any Nigerian state actor, in any official capacity, can be bought to compromise on any rule or policy.

To quote the character, Basi, in Ken Sawo-Wiwa’s TV series, “Basi & Company”, “It’s a matter of cash.” More uncouth Nigerians would use the phrase, “Cash for hand, back for ground,” in the capsule of transactions between a prostitute and her clients.

What all these negatives say of Nigeria is that there are no referees to call out those who engage in wrongdoing. If anything, it is those who are expected to caution and make Nigerians obey the rules that invite them to disobey the laws.

It was rumoured that a Nigerian estate developer who died under the rubble of one of his buildings was encouraged by Lagos State officials to raise the building beyond the level that was originally approved for him.

 

A referee maintains fair play by interpreting and enforcing rules, making impartial decisions on infractions, keeping stock of scores of the game, and ensuring that a player’s behaviour complies with laid-down rules and guidelines.

In today’s Nigeria, no one seems to be responsible for compliance, and those who should maintain the rules are the culprit-in-chief in the disgraceful act of breaching laid-down rules and regulations. Indeed, the average Nigerian seems to think that rules are to be breached.

When a boss restrained a company driver from driving against the traffic, the driver told him that no one obeyed highway codes anymore and continued breaking the highway codes. When the boss asked the unruly driver to be fired, the HR Manager was interceding on behalf of the errant driver.

You may not be too surprised that Nigeria endures so much impunity, with the two referee organs, the judiciary and the media, created by the Nigerian Constitution for dispensing justice and ensuring fair play, are hamstrung by the same Constitution!

Section 6 (6,c) absolves the government of responsibilities to Nigerians by saying, “The judicial powers… (that) shall be vested in the courts… shall not… extend to any issue or question as to why any act… or any judicial decision is in conformity with the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy… in (Chapter II of the Constitution).”

What this convoluted jabber is saying is that the Constitution, grundnorm of Nigeria, gives no guarantees that the government shall provide security, welfare, an efficient economy, adequate educational and health services, and safeguard the air, land, forest and wildlife to Nigerians. In other words, the judiciary cannot compel the executive arm to perform its constitutional duties.

The Father Christmas Section 22 of the Constitution gave the Nigerian media the power “to uphold the Fundamental Objectives… and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people”.

But Section 45(1) withdrew that, along with a slew of other fundamental human rights, like the right to life, personal liberty, freedom of thought, association, and right to live or own property in any part of Nigeria, “in the interest of (the generally ill-defined) public safety, public order, public morality, or public health, or for the purpose of protecting the rights of other persons”.

Where the hands of the judiciary and the media have been tied behind their backs by the Constitution that created them, they would hardly make any impact, especially when you consider how much the military culture impacted the socio-cultural lives of Nigerians.

The military ruled Nigeria, for 29 of the first 39 formative years of the Nigerian state- from 1960 to 1999- when the military packed their baggage of impunity and disrespect for the rule of law and returned to their barracks.

When a predator Nigerian tells his victim to go to court or gets his less connected compatriot beaten up by friends in the military barracks, he is simply boarding the time-machine, back to the days when a connected Nigerian gets what is not due to him by associating with a senior brass of the military government.

To borrow a phrase from Lasisi Olagunju, a columnist with Nigerian Tribune newspaper, “We cannot become (like the countries that are prospering so well) until we have blind laws that recognise no class (and) no ethnicity.”

When the politics-administration dichotomy inaugurated the practice of public administration, what was intended was a critical need to bifurcate the logic of the two in ways that will extend the relationship between the politicians and the administrator and make it more efficient. The politician is then, within the logic of the dichotomy, restricted to policy formulation while the administrator is confined to the realm of policy implementation. Reality however defeats the neat boundary between the two. Politics and administration, in practical reality, are almost inseparable. And one would expect that the relationship between political science and public administration discourse will reflect this inseparability. Unfortunately, it does not. The separation undermines the fundamental urgency of addressing the political foundation of administrative research and practices, especially as they relate with the issues of power, governance, politics and democracy.

Political science descriptively and critically studies political phenomena and how they contribute to our understanding of the political community. Significantly, political science analyzes the fundamental role that power plays in the articulation of politics especially in the attempt to unravel the dynamics of the political community and its social and political circumferences and trajectories. Public administration is the very embodiment of the state as the most critical embodiment of politics. The state is made most visible within the frameworks and institutional workings of public administration, especially through the public sector and the public services. The straightforward argument is that the political and administrative reality of any state cannot be studied in isolation of each other. This seems obvious enough given that each of political science and public administration reinforces each other in terms of shedding light on the complex and intricate workings of the state and its response to the citizens and the commonwealth. In other words, there is no way the concepts of power and governance, for example, would not intersect political and administrative questions, and complicate them. The issues of democratic governance and innovation, and collaborative governance demand thinking of the interplay between politics science and administration.

In my many years as a deep insider career bureaucrat in the public service, I have been aware not only of the role that politics play in administrative matters, and vice versa. I have also been apprised of how political acts of commission and omission actively promote or undermine the public service. Indeed, my theoretical and practical researches into the dynamics of government business and institutional reforms highlights how political and administrative factors interact. My deep worry however is that political science and public administration discourses in Nigeria carry on as if these interactions and interrelations are at best trivial or at worst non-existence. For instance, in institutional terms, there is nothing to write home about in the existence and possible cross-fertilizing relationship between the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA) and the National Association for Public Administration and Management (NAPAM). Indeed, there cannot be such a cross-fertilization because while NPSA is active, NAPAM has remained comatose. And the vision and mission statement of NPSA is not broad enough to take in administrative matters and concerns, or the interplay of politics and administration.

The most fundamental observation that my status as a scholar-bureaucrat in the federal civil service afforded me is a practical understanding of the nature of the fundamental disconnections in public administration practices and the consequences on the state’s responsibility to her citizens, all due to crucial assumptions and principles that have been left lying fallow and unattended to in an interdisciplinary discourse and cross fertilization between political science scholarship and public administration theories and practice. A few examples suffice. In 1966, Nigeria shifted away from the parliamentary system of government and, after the long interregnum of military administrations, resumed with the presidential system, enshrined in the 1979 Constitution. This move was preceded by the Dotun Phillips studies report of 1985, and the Civil Service Reorganization Decree of 1988, which aligned the civil service with the presidential system of government. However, even with the reversal of the reform frameworks by the Ayida reform of 1995, it is still clear that many of Nigeria’s administrative practices still retain aspects of parliamentary elements that could be one source of unresolved structural troubles necessitating performance inefficiency.  

This has some other implications for the practice of federalism and the stabilization of Nigeria’s governance structure. Since the intervention of the military in 1966 and the subsequent militarization of Nigeria’s political and governance structure of the Nigerian state, the federal arrangement that ought to have been the natural remedy for the unruly ethnonational diversity became compromised. For instance, inter-governmental relations and the critical need for fiscal federalism became caught in the cracks of constitutional and institutional dysfunction. The Babangida administration, through the recommendation of the IBB’s Presidential Advisory Committee, established the National Council for Inter-Governmental Relations (NCIS) as one in a series of government’s efforts—like the Centre for Democratic Studies (CDS), National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies, Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies, etc.—to rehabilitate Nigeria’s governance and administrative structures.   

All this goes to demonstrate a cogent reason why the political and the administrative in Nigeria’s governance context cannot be separated, even in terms of theoretical argumentation. Political science scholarship, in longing for an interdisciplinary relationship with public administration, must recognize how the latter has evolved first as a sub-discipline of political science, and later as a multidisciplinary endeavor that encompasses insights drawn from management science, organizational psychology, sociology, statistics, industrial engineering, computer science, etc. from which it draws to invigorate its curriculum and pedagogy. This point is still not demonstrated in the disciplinary silos that define the existence of political science on the one hand and public administration on the other in Nigerian universities. In some universities, public administration functions in a different faculty, or is its own faculty, as different from the faculty of the social sciences. And so, scholars carry out their scholarly discourses in different contexts, oblivious of the grave challenges that the Nigerian administrative and governance predicament pose to their theoretical and practical separation. In what follows, I will point attention at a few contentious institutional matters to which I have gestured in many of my works, but which I contend require the critical interrogation of political scientists.

First, there is the recurrent issue of the need to keep clarifying the nature and the role of the state in terms of administrative efficiency. While the state is central to the analysis of power, and constitutes one of the central thematic focus of political science scholarship, the fundamental need to redefine the role of the state has often not been taken up in terms of its significance for the restructuring of the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) that are the critical engine room for measuring the developmental successes of the state. Aligning the role of the state to the understanding of the MDA becomes crucial as it facilitates the reform of the MDAs in terms of the need to remodel and strengthen their core vis-à-vis their non-core functions as both relate to the service delivery function of government. This could also instigate the urgency of conducting institutional audit that is crucial not only to determining the performance status of many state agencies, but to also jumpstart organizational development dynamics that are meant to motivate the movement of structures to institutions. It is institutions, rather than mere structures that government requires to undermine governance failure.      

Second, political science scholarship in Nigeria is necessarily confronted by the need to clarify and explicate the thorny issue of the relationship between the administrative operational dynamics of the executive arm of government in terms of its apparatuses—like the Federal Executive Council—and the working of the American-styled presidential system of government. This is a key concern given that Nigeria’s adoption of many institutional dynamics has remained problematic in terms of relating them to her political and administrative realities. For instance, acute and critical attention need to be paid also to the political economy involved in the executive-legislature relations, and the implications deriving from the planning and budgeting processes from legislative oversight to appropriation and budget implementation. Peter Ekeh’s analysis of migrated structures alert us to the danger of adopting these structures without paying critical attention to their value orientation and the political realities of where they are coming from.    

Democratic governance and all its ancillary structural and administrative apparatuses encompass a host of issues that require critical analyses. Since the notion of the public good and the commonwealth, in the idea of good democratic governance, constitute the formidable core of the relationship between politics, public management and public administration, then the discourse around stakeholder management, participatory governance, performance management and accountability become key and critical core issues that interact with the way we see politics, administration and citizenship. The recent discourse on the resuscitation of local governance, through the landmark decision of the Supreme Court to legally reinvigorate the constitutional strength of local government in Nigeria, points at the significance of connecting community development structures and traditional institutions to the state systems and democratic enablement through the principle of social capital and subsidiarity.

To reiterate, the predicament of the postcolonial Nigerian state demands that political science scholarship must necessarily and urgently signal an interdisciplinary collaboration that will instigate a ferment of theoretical, practical and institutional discourses from which both can expect not only to refresh their internal discursive vibrancy, but also collectively contribute to the understanding of the working of the Nigerian state and her capacity to induce participatory democratic governance.     

 

 

         

The zoning of the presidency of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo to the Igbo-speaking people of Rivers State, and the subsequent emergence of three Ikwerre sons, each claiming to be the new President-General of the apex Igbo sociocultural group, has raised very interesting questions about identity construction. It should be recalled that three Ikwerre sons – Jackson Omenazu, Uche Okwukwu and Senator Azuta Mbata, at different conventions, claimed to have been elected the President-General of the association. In addition to Ikwerre, which is the largest group in Rivers State, other Igbo-speaking groups in the State are Etche, Ekpeye, Ogba, Egbema, Ndoni, Ndoki, Asa, Bonny and Opobo.

Senator Azuta Mbata who was proclaimed elected at a convention organized at the Old Government Lodge, Enugu, on January 10 2025, has been congratulated by a number of eminent Nigerians including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Enugu State Governor, Dr. Peter Mbah; South-east senators; Northern Christian Youth Professionals, and the Chief of Staff to Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State, Dr. Ehie Edison, which confers on him an additional halo of legitimacy to the office.

But there was a quick backlash: the Ogbakor Ikwerre Cultural Organisation Worldwide, which claims to speak in behalf of the Ikwerre ethnic nationality worldwide, disowned him. The group argued that by accepting to be President of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, which it conceded was his constitutional right; he had willingly and freely renounced his membership and identity as an Ikwerre man. They further argued that Senator Azuta Mbata’s decision to identify as an Igbo “does not represent the collective view, will, position, or thinking of the Eneka community, Apara Kingdom, or the entire Ikwerre Ethnic Nationality”. 

There have been suggestions that the decision of Ohanaeze Ndigbo to zone its presidency to the Igbos of Rivers State was part of the Igbo agenda of territorial ambitions. I think suggestions such as this are borne out of either ignorance or mischief. The truth is that the South-east Igbos, like many parts of the country, are themselves also in conversations about their own identity. It is not just about whether they should anchor their identity in Nigeria as presently constituted or have their own country, but also conversations on how to relate with their ‘cousins’ outside the South-east who share the same or similar language with them.

There are for instance those who argue that Ohanaeze Ndigbo should be exclusively for Igbos of South-east – partly to avoid being accused of nurturing territorial ambitions or running after people who do not want to identify with them despite sharing the same or similar language. There are however others who believe that limiting the leadership of Ohanaeze to the Igbos of the South- east would be a disservice to their ‘cousins’ in Delta and Rivers’ States who are proud of their Igbo identity, and want to be identified as such. I think the latter group won the argument which was why in 2008, the Ohanaeze Presidency was zoned to Delta State and Ambassador Ralph Uwechue, from Ogwashiuku, emerged the President-General of the organization. 

It is important to bear in mind that even within the South-east, there are some areas that traced their history or myth of origin outside Igboland and would sometimes not want to be called Igbos. The people of Onitsha in Anambra State would for instance call non-Onitsha Igbos as ‘Nwa Onye Igbo’, meaning the “son or daughter of an Igbo person”. One of the limitations of relying on the myths of origin to construct one’s ethnic identity is that the ethnic group that another group wants to appropriate as its place of origin (usually one that enjoys some historical prestige), would themselves also have their own myth of where they migrated from.

This means that the fact that some Ikwerre people do not want to be identified as Igbo is not really a big deal. It is the same among the Igbo-speaking people of Delta – some would want to identify as Igbos while some will not want to. In Benue and Plateau states for instance, there are conversations and contestations on whether they are better off anchoring their identity in Northern Nigeria or create their own identity as Middle Belt. The same is true of Yorubaland where Yoruba nation activists feel they are better off having an Oduduwa Republic despite the fact that the country’s president, Bola Tinubu, is a Yoruba man.

This trend is not limited to Nigeria. For instance on 14 February 1974, barely 14 years after independence, Somalia joined the Arab League as part of the efforts by the leadership of the country at that time to make Somalis see themselves as Arabs rather than as Africans. It is important to underline that before colonialism, there was no consciousness of being Igbo, Yoruba or Hausa/Fulani. Ethnicity as an identity marker is therefore a recent phenomenon – a practice that was developed in the colonial urban centres. 

The fact that three Ikwerre sons presented themselves for elections as President-General of Ohanaeze, and campaigned vigorously for the office, would challenge the claim by Ogbakor Ikwerre Cultural Organisation Worldwide to be the sole custodians of the aspirations of the Ikwerre people over their choice of ethnic identity. The truth is that such conversations are rarely conclusively decided, and would often mutate in line with the fortunes of the ethnic group which is the focus of the contestation. For instance at a time when the Italians and Irish were discriminated against in the USA, some concealed their ethnic and racial identities but began to proudly flaunt these as Italy and Ireland became economic successes. In the current climate of Igbophobia there are some of our Igbo ‘cousins’ who may fear that anchoring their ethnic identity on Igbo may be a career-killer. Elsewhere, this is called ‘Bleaching complex’ – denying or masking your ethnic/linguistic identity so that it does not inhibit your career progress. 

Of course some Igbo ‘cousins’ outside the South-east who are opposed to anchoring their ethnic identity on the Igbo may have other reasons, including a genuine conviction that they have nothing in common with the Igbos and that their shared language is just an accident of history. Igbo ‘cousins’ who want to anchor their ethnic identity on their Igboness on the other hand may have their own convictions, including the potential benefits of being part of one of the dominant ethnic groups in the country rather than focusing only narrowly on the current state of the Igbos in the country. From an identity perspective, the furore raised by the emergence of an Ikwerre as the President-General of Ohanaeze raises a number of important questions: Who are the Ikwerres? Who do people say they are? Who do they want to be? And why? 

In 2009, I published a very well received edited book on identity, entitled: ‘Who is an African? Identity, Citizenship and the Making of the Africa-nation’. The book had many very known Africanists as contributors, including the late Professor Ali Mazrui, Professor Kwesi Prah, Professor Mammo Muchie and Gamal Nkrumah, the late Kwame Nkrumah’s son. I introduced the book thus: 

Who is an African? At face value, the answer seems obvious. Surely, everyone knows who the African is, it would seem. But the answer becomes less obvious once other probing qualifiers are added to the question. How is the African identity constructed in the face of the mosaic of identities that people of African ancestry living within and beyond the continent bear? Do all categorised as Africans or as having an African pedigree perceive themselves as Africans? Are all who perceive themselves as Africans accepted as such? Are there levels of “Africanness”, and are some more African than others? How does African identity interface with other levels of identity and citizenship in Africa? And what are the implications of the contentious nature of African identity and citizenship for the projects of pan-Africanism, the making of the Africa-nation, and Africa’s development trajectories?

Flowing from the above, there are some elements in identity construction that we should bear in mind: One, every individual or group embodies a mosaic of identities, not just one identity. You may have people with different ethnic and religious identities but share several other identities in common such as being members of the same political party, the same sports club, the same profession, the same gender etc. Essentially, one can be both Igbo and Ikwerre if the person feels sufficiently anchored on both identities.

Two, identities that are perceived to be under threat will often be the ones most vociferously defended. Though we embody several identities, if your identity as an Igbo, Yoruba, Ikwerre, Christian, Muslim, an academic and so on, is perceived to be threatened, your other identities will be submerged while you defend the identity that is felt to be under threat. For instance a Black person called ‘Black Monkey’ by a White person may lead to several Black people from across the world responding very vigorously, if not violently. On the other hand, a White person who is called a ‘White monkey’ may not elicit a similar response among the White people.

Following from this, it is understandable why the Ogbakor Ikwerre Cultural Organisation Worldwide decided to descend hard on Senator Azuta-Mbata including literarily ex-communicating him from the Ikwerre community and nullifying any chieftaincy title conferred on him by any of the Ikwerre communities. Does the organization really have such powers over any Ikwerre person? I seriously doubt that. The hard-line position of Ogbakor Ikwerre Cultural Organisation Worldwide may be more to remind us that despite the election of Senator Azuta-Mbata as President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the conversation on where the Ikwerres should anchor their ethnic identity remains inconclusive. 

Three, identities have both time and space dimensions. Up to the creation of the 12 states by Gowon in 1967, both the Ikwerres and the Igbos shared the identity of being from the Eastern region. In the same vein, if the Ikwerres were to find themselves in a distant country with people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, including the Igbos of the South-East, they are likely to feel more connected to the latter than to other groups in the imagined country simply by virtue of their common (or similar language) and culture. 

The much-anticipated tax reforms initiated by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration have become a battleground of competing interests, as the nation grapples with how to restructure its fiscal policies in a way that fosters growth while ensuring fairness. Four key tax bills, presented to the National Assembly in 2024, were supposed to set the stage for a new era of economic revitalization. Instead, they have ignited a series of debates that reveal deep fissures in Nigeria’s political economy. With state governors, major fiscal stakeholders, and the public all weighing in, the question remains: can the government navigate these choppy waters, or is it destined to crash upon the rocks of political resistance?
In the latest development, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), representing the collective voice of all 36 state governors, issued a communiqué on January 16, 2025, signalling strong support for the overarching goal of reform, but expressing serious reservations about certain provisions of the bills. Their opposition, particularly to proposals on Value Added Tax (VAT) and Corporate Income Tax (CIT), has added another layer of complexity to an already fraught process. These concerns come at a time when the country’s fiscal policy is in urgent need of clarity, and the implications of these debates could be far-reaching.

 

VAT and CIT: Sticking Points in Reform

The debate over VAT has quickly become the focal point of the reforms. While the NGF has expressed its backing for the need to modernize Nigeria’s tax laws, it has strongly opposed any increase in VAT at this time. For an economy already burdened by inflation, rising costs of living, and economic policy shocks, a hike in VAT could exacerbate the financial strain on everyday Nigerians. From food to fuel, and basic services, the cost of living has soared, making any potential increase in the VAT rate a highly contentious issue.

The NGF’s opposition is not without merit. With many Nigerians already struggling to make ends meet, a VAT hike would be akin to adding insult to injury. The governors have also raised concerns about the distribution formula for VAT revenue, suggesting a more equitable approach that considers factors such as derivation and population distribution. In this, they argue that a 50% allocation based on equality, 30% based on derivation, and 20% based on population would better reflect the needs of the country’s diverse regions.

However, the proposed reforms are not only focused on VAT. The issue of CIT has also sparked significant debate. The NGF has opposed the reduction of CIT, largely due to the potential loss of revenue at the state level. This position reflects the governors’ concerns about the already strained financial situation of many states, which depend on federal allocations to meet their budgets.

Yet, reducing CIT could be an important tool in fostering business growth and economic development. Lowering the corporate tax rate could make Nigeria a more attractive destination for foreign investment, encouraging businesses to expand and create jobs. In the long term, this could result in higher economic output and a larger tax base, ultimately benefiting both the private and public sectors.
The Federal Government’s proposal to cut CIT is a gamble, but one that could potentially pay off if the right balance is struck. However, there is no denying that such a reduction would need to be carefully managed to ensure it doesn’t undermine essential state-level revenues, which are already under pressure.

TETFUND, NASENI, and NITDA: The Unseen Stakeholders

Another critical aspect of the tax reform debate centers on the handling of development funds for key agencies such as TETFUND (Tertiary Education Trust Fund), NASENI (National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure), and NITDA (National Information Technology Development Agency). These agencies, which play crucial roles in education, technology, and infrastructure, have become the subject of controversy in the proposed reforms.

 

The NGF has called for the exclusion of a terminal clause for these agencies in the sharing of development levies, a position that highlights the governors’ concern about the potential erosion of funds meant for national development. These agencies rely on specific levies and allocations to support their vital work, and any changes to the distribution of these funds could have far-reaching consequences.

For instance, TETFUND is essential to Nigeria’s higher education system, ensuring that universities, polytechnics, and other tertiary institutions receive the financial support they need to develop infrastructure and improve academic standards. Any reduction in the funding available to TETFUND could lead to a deterioration in the quality of higher education, with long-term negative implications for the country’s human capital development.

Similarly, NASENI and NITDA play pivotal roles in the country’s push for technological advancement and infrastructure development. The funding these agencies receive supports crucial projects that could transform Nigeria’s technological landscape. Without adequate resources, these agencies could be left unable to fulfill their mandates, stalling progress in critical areas of the economy.
The NGF’s call for a more careful consideration of the funding mechanisms for these agencies is a valid concern, as reducing or altering the flow of funds could severely hamper Nigeria’s development goals.

A Flawed Budget: The Fallout from Miscalculations

If the National Assembly decide to align with the position of the NGF, it would have a direct impact on the 2025 appropriation of the Federal Government. It’s likely that the budget for the year was formulated based on the assumption that VAT would increase and CIT would be reduced, with projections reflecting these anticipated changes. Should these provisions be altered or blocked by the National Assembly, the Federal Government would be left with a budget built on faulty assumptions.

The ramifications of this could be significant. A shortfall in revenue, caused by the failure to implement the expected changes to VAT and CIT, would force the government to make tough decisions. It could either ramp up borrowing or scale back crucial projects in sectors like infrastructure, health, and education, areas that are already feeling the strain. Such adjustments could place additional pressure on an already fragile economy and lead to greater hardship for Nigerians. Essentially, the government may find itself scrambling to adjust its fiscal policy, possibly even revising its budget mid-year if the projected revenues fall short. In the end, these miscalculations could create an even deeper fiscal crisis and erode public confidence in the government’s ability to manage the economy effectively.

The Way Forward: Engagement and Dialogue

As the National Assembly deliberates on the proposed tax reforms, it is clear that more engagement and dialogue are needed between the federal government, state governments, and other key stakeholders. While the broader goal of tax reform is laudable, the implementation details are crucial. The government must carefully consider the concerns raised by the NGF and other stakeholders, and work to address these issues in a way that balances the need for revenue generation with the imperative to protect vulnerable Nigerians and foster business growth.
Ultimately, the success of these reforms will depend on the ability of all parties to find common ground and ensure that the tax system is both equitable and efficient. If the government can navigate these challenges, the reforms could lay the foundation for a stronger, more sustainable economy. However, if the government fails to address the concerns of stakeholders, the reforms could falter, and Nigeria’s fiscal future could be left in limbo.

There are many stories of old students going back to their alma mater to build classrooms and donate books to the school’s library. I am also familiar with cases of NYSC members using their meagre allowances to fund the construction of toilet facilities in the schools they’re teaching. But the case of a former NYSC member going back to his place of primary assignment 51 years after he passed out to make contributions is a rare act of benevolence.

This is the story of a 24-year-old ABU graduate from Kano state who participated in the first set of the NYSC scheme in 1973; and was posted to what was then known as South Eastern State (renamed Cross River in 1976 from which Akwa Ibom was carved out in 1987) and sent to a catholic school, St. Columbanus Secondary School in Ikwen, a very rural community in what is now Obot Akara LGA in Akwa Ibom State, for his primary assignment. He taught English; maths and French.

In the many years after he left the village, the young man went on to acquire postgraduate degrees in Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, worked in the banking industry and later became Nigeria’s minister of finance, and later minister of national planning. In all these years, Dr0 Shamsuddeen Usman, former executive director of UBA and Union Bank; former chief executive of NAL Merchant Bank (now Sterling Bank) and former deputy governor of CBN, never forgot his one year of national service at the rustic community and the lessons he learned.

Last Saturday, Usman, 75, elder statesman and distinguished technocrat, retraced his steps back to the school where he gave a talk to the students and teachers; donated money; instituted a prize for the best final year student in economics and left a few lessons in humility and kindness. I have known him for 35 years, and so, when he invited me to join him, I quickly sensed that the trip would be full of symbols, symbolism and unforgettable experiences.

 

We arrived at the school at 10.30 am, half an hour earlier than scheduled, but the versatile principal, Rev. Father (Dr) Emem Umoren and his team were ready for us. It was my first time there, although I had driven past the school a few years back on my way to Owerri. The student band was playing while a guard of honour mounted by serving NYSC members was set for the guest’s inspection.

With the welcome formalities done, the principal received and briefed us at his residence. St. Columbanus was established in 1959 by Catholic missionaries from Ireland, first as a boys’ school, but later turned into a coed. It was taken over by the state government in 1970/1971, and given back to the church in the 2008/2009 session. With nearly 600 students; only one-third from Akwa Ibom (the rest from Abia, Cross River and other states), the school has maintained impressive academic performance.

Since last February, it’s been generating its own electricity mostly from solar, supplemented with diesel generators. Each student pays only N210,000 for boarding and tuition per term, a meagre sum compared to private schools. “The campus is so beautiful; it would pass for a small community college or university,’’ I said, eliciting smiles from the principal, who had by now been joined by the Dean of Students Affairs, Rev. Father Dominic. Dr. Usman listened, nodding intermittently as the principal spoke on the history; facilities; academic performance; faculty of the school and its needs.

 

“We farm and produce a lot of our food, but we also need donations from individuals and organizations,” the principal said. Five years ago, NCC donated a computer lab, but Akwa Ibom state government is yet to offer assistance, although senior government officials, including commissioners, have their children there. “We don’t need government’s money, but they can donate facilities like hostels,’’ the principal concluded just as we moved to the assembly hall where the students, teachers and NYSC members were already seated for the rest of the program. In the audience also were Bartholomew Ogbonna, representing the NYSC State Coordinator; Principal of Methodist Boys School, Nto Ndang, and the president of the alumnus association.

 

In the assembly hall, Dr Usman gave a keynote address on the theme: “What’s your measure of success?’’, emphasising the seven ingredients of success and the importance of honesty and trust; touching on his personal stories as a corps member and the early lessons he learned.

He described the school as ‘’the best of the best’’, and applauded the management and staff for upholding high standards and nurturing well-rounded students over the years. Usman recalled that he had so well integrated himself into the community that the principal of the neighbouring Methodist Boys High School, Nto Ndang, had invited him to teach Hausa to his students out of admiration for both the NYSC scheme and his personal conduct.

 

When Usman arrived in Ikwen in 1973, there was no shop in the school and the village. The school had only two graduate teachers, with him making the third. With permission from the principal, he set up the first cooperative shop which turned out to be very profitable. He commuted on his motorbike between the village and Ikot Ekpene – a 20 km distance – to buy provisions for the shop. On one of those commutes, he had an accident, suffered a severe concussion and was unconscious for eight days in a hospital. The accident, he said, was a turning point in his young life as it was a major reason he went for his postgraduate studies because “I wanted to test that my mental capabilities were no badly affected,” he said, noting that something good could come out of a misfortune.

He recalled how a stranger he met in the village had queried how a Hausa man like him (He’s actually Fulani) could be a university graduate – a hackneyed stereotype in those days. Concluding his lecture, Dr Usman promised to ‘connect’ the school to greater opportunities which he may have in future and announced a cash donation to the school which the principal promptly pledged to use in establishing a basketball facility to be named after the donor. There were responses from NYSC members; teachers and the senior prefect, all commending Dr Usman for his uncommon gesture.

Now, what are the takeaways from Usman’s return to Ikwen? The visit reflects a genuine act of generosity without the expectation of a reward. Dr Usman is not a government contractor and he has no family ties to Akwa Ibom state or the school beyond the fact that he did his NYSC program there over half a century ago. He simply followed his natural instincts for philanthropy and a knack for building friendships. The visit also demonstrated that there are Nigerians who do not allow religion; tribe and ethnicity to influence their actions. Third, his visit also taught a lesson in humility and simplicity. Very few people of his ilk would go back to where they did NYSC to give back to the society on their own, without political or ethnic considerations. Four, a genuine act of bigheartedness does not require social media showmanship.

Dear friends, sisters and brothers, you are hosting this 2025 edition of your annual Pastors’ Conference in the context of a very vicious, aggressive, vengeful and vindictive form of secularism in the world, that is accompanied by practical atheism, which is openly demonstrated in the lives of many modern-day men and women, including even some of those who fill up our Churches on Sundays. Practical Atheism is the new way of life whereby many people, while not openly rejecting God and religion, are daily making choices and conducting their public and private affairs, as if God does not exit, and in total disregard for God’s commandments, and fragrant violation of critical values and virtues which have always been associated with persons with any measure of religious consciousness.

Let me highlight the point with a few examples: In July 2024, the organisers of the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic games in Paris, decided to desecrate a principal symbol of the Christian religion, by making a public mockery of the scene of the Last Supper in a shameless parody, that involved satanic images as well as homosexual, lesbian or LGBTQ++ symbols. Opinion leaders across the world (including Muslims and even people who are not known to have any religious affiliations), reacted with outrage at this public expression of blasphemy and disrespect for the religious sensitivities of the globlal population of Christians. Last week the news broke out that US Nigerian Professor Uju Anya, is now legally married to her lesbian lover, Dr. Sirry Alang, who is a Cameroonian American. In this country Nigeria, the LGBTQ+ madness is today spreading like wildfire. It is being aggressively promoted around the world by not only individual campaigners and NGOs, but also whole governments.

A number of those we call celebrities in Nigeria today, who have millions of young people following them, have often been recruited by powerful international organisations, as agents, to spread these new gender ideologies, by which strange and unnatural sexual behaviours, which the Christian Scriptures squarely condemns as abominable and damnable (See Romans 1:20 32); the same behaviours that only a few decades ago used to be diagnosed as mental illness; are now defended and promoted as alternative lifestyles and fundamental human rights, such that those of us who express moral outrage at the normalization of these perversions, are blackmailed as homophobic, condemned as religious bigots, and sometimes subjected to persecuted for defending the traditional Christian position in these matters.

In spite of the Same Sex Prohibition Act of 2014, we see homosexual practices being openly advertised in the social and regular media today, and viewed by some as progress. Among the many aggressive LGBTQ+ campaigners in Nigeria today, we even have one who calls himself a Christian pastor. He is Jide Macauly, founder of what he calls the House of Rainbow International Church, where homosexuals and transgender persons are not only warmly welcomed, but earnestly celebrated for their courage to come out openly to declare what they call their sexual orientation. And many of our young people appear fascinated by these horrifying developments. If you do a quick google search on the number of young people following Bobrisky, you would be utterly amazed. He has over 3 million followers on Facebook and almost 5 million followers on Instagram. He has almost the same number of followers on social media as Pastor Enoch Adegboye! Brothers and sisters, are you beginning to see what I am talking about?

Your 2025 Pastors’ Conference on the theme, The Cross and the Altar, is happening at a time of widespread loss of God-consciousness, or the rejection by many of any spiritual reference point for the human person and the human society. You are gathered here amid the growing scourge or epidemic that the famous 20th Century Psychologist, Viktor Frankl, identifies as existential nihilism, which is the widespread loss of any sense of meaning and purpose in human existence. Existential nihilism emanates from the loss of the consciousness of God, and any sense of transcendence in the contemporary society. We are confronted today with a much more serious problem than the fact that people are stealing, cheating, committing fornication or engaging in Yahoo-Yahoo. Many young people do not know why they are alive, and some are ready to end it any day, at the slightest provocation. The widespread rejection of any spiritual reference point by an ever-increasing number of men and women in our generation, gives rise to the existential frustration which Augustine of Hippo alludes to when he declares that “the Lord has created us for himself, and our hearts will remain restless, until they rest in him.”

The Scriptures of our Judeo-Christian religion and the testimonies from all other major religious traditions sufficiently demonstrate that the more human beings move away from God, the more they move away from the consciousness of spiritual or supernatural realities, and the more they are motivated wholly and entirely by materialistic, this-worldly ultimate goals; the more confused, senseless, restless and violent they become. Yes, as the men and women of our generation move farther and farther away from God and the things of God, they gradually become disoriented and confused about their true identities, about the purpose of their lives, and about the meaning of the very physical bodies they carry around.

Is it not instructive that multiple psychopathologies, including widespread drug addiction, rampant cases of depression, suicide ideation, and actual suicides, appear to be increasing geometrically in the same age and among the same generation that has witnessed what is called the “sexual revolution,” when men and women are being told that they no longer need to exercise any restraints, and when all inhibitions in sexual expression, are gradually being seen as vestiges of a dying primitive era? The truth that stares modern humanity in the face, is the same one that dawned on Augustine in the 4th Century A.D., namely, that the human heart is either home-bound or death-bound; and there appears to be no resting place in between! Yet, a cursory survey of the dominant segments of our own youth culture in this country, Nigeria, especially as displayed in popular movies, comedy skits, music and dance, including some of what people call Gospel music today, will reveal that even though our Churches are often filled up on Sundays, and though the public practice of religion still appears to be thriving in our society, all is however not well with us. All is not well with us, because our youths are speedily abandoning the path of Christian virtues and values, and they are losing their souls to the social and moral decadence of the age.

Christian youth in this country and elsewhere these days, are often the ones with the least respect for religion and religious persons. They are often the ones denigrating the Church, blackmailing and insulting religious leaders, desecrating religious symbols, and recklessly engaging in acts that used to be identified as blasphemy and sacrilege. Most of the young Nigerians who are today addicted to pornography, and those engaged in internet fraud, Yahoo Yahoo and Yahoo+, or those allegedly engaged in ritual killing (of their mothers, their sisters and girlfriends, for quick money), are often youths brought up Christian homes, but who seem to have lost their way, and are now in the den of the devil. Traditional African religious rituals have suddenly become very attractive for many Nigerian youths, who are today not only enlisting as devotees of traditional deities and ancestral cults in their villages, but many are actually becoming priests and priestesses of some of these traditional African religious cults; the kind of cults that their parents were never exposed to, because their grandparents had abandoned them to embrace Christianity!

Just last week, at the opening ceremony of the annual retreat in Anambra State, of all the Bishops of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, Governor Chukwuma Soludo raised an alarm over a frightening development that I am well aware of myself. He observed that this is a very trying moment in the history of Christianity in our society today. Though the Anglican Church claims to have up to 20 million Nigerians officially registered in their books, and though the Christian Church as a whole, boasts of more than a 100 million registered members in Nigeria, he wondered how many of these 100 million people, most of who were brought up in Christian homes, are still Christians. He said the question is even more pertinent in the Southeast, as in his view, the fastest growing religion in the Southeast is idolatry. He said from Anambra to Imo, and from Abia to Enugu and Ebonyi, there is a massive resurgence in idolatry, with traditional shrines springing up everywhere, and that they are recruiting young people massively, young people with names like Emmanuel, Joseph, and even some bearing the name Christian, but they are carrying their shrines. He said the leaders of the Church in Nigeria must now engage in a sober reflection, asking themselves the question: Why are the young y leaving Christianity in droves? He said the leaders must constantly re-examine their purpose, asking themselves, “Are we still serving the purpose? Are our ways in conflict with our purpose?” He wondered whether in the eyes of some people in Nigeria, religion has not become a business, where the transactions have gradually overwhelmed the transformation.

We are living through very challenging times, especially for truly religious people, as there is very little sense of spirituality and transcendence left in the popular culture, and sometimes even in some of our Churches that have been turned to theatres of endless entertainment. The powerful agents of the global culture have become increasingly secular, and aggressively anti-religious and vengefully anti-church. These are difficult times indeed. We are at the threshold of a new dark age, and a new era of Christian persecution, when truly committed agents of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be challenged to embrace martyrdom that will come from different directions, including even from within the Church itself. Today, an increasing number of men and women who were raised in Christian homes and schools, are rejecting the true gospel of Christ, and instead they are choosing to dine with the devil and to give themselves over to the most reckless forms of debauchery, self-indulgence and moral depravity.

The religion of many who flock to our churches on Sundays, often has no depth at all. It is often a transactional religion that is devoid of serious elements of Christian spirituality or the godly life, such as is exemplified in Jesus Christ himself and in those we celebrate as the saints of the Christian Church. We cannot see in the life of many who fill our Churches in Nigeria, evidence of people who have truly encountered the God of Jesus Christ and fallen in love with Him; people who have had the same experience of the all-consuming power of God's love, and now and again can exclaim like Prophet Jeremiah (in Jeremiah 20:7), “You have seduced me Lord and I have allowed myself to be seduced; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed...” Instead, many of those we have in our Churches are still trapped at the infantile (transactional) level in their religiosity; that level at which prayer is not aimed at lifting the heart and mind to God, but aimed at appeasing, bribing, manipulating or twisting God's hands into doing our will; that level at which attempts are even made to coerce the God of love into destroying one's enemies, etc. This kind of religiosity is like a pack of cards that will come crashing down in the face of the enormous existential challenges that are ahead of us.

Our Churches and auditoriums are filled to capacity, yes, but many of our members have not been well formed in Christian spirituality and Christian morality. Yes, indeed, the harvest of the 3 Lord is plentiful but true labourers are few. The vineyard of the Lord today is made up of many ignorant but arrogant, fun-seeking, power hungry, enemies of God and enemies of Christ, who shamelessly display and audaciously promote abominably perverse behaviours that insult the sensibilities of god-fearing people of all times. In this kind of degenerate dispensation, we all must brace up for action, and assume our roles as born-again Christians - priests, pastors and evangelists, faithful witnesses of Christ, and courageous defenders of the Christian faith, not with swords and javelins as in the days of the Crusaders of the Middle Ages, but with the intellectual, spiritual and moral resources of our faith.

To function as faithful witnesses of Christ, and to answer the call to be pastors and agents of evangelism in the 21st Century, is going to be a very difficult and challenging spiritual, pastoral and social enterprise. To live our lives and discharge our duties effectively as witnesses and defenders of the Christian faith today, may be a via crucis – that is, the way of the cross, which may take some of us toward Calvary. When I consider the many forces that are mounting viciously and aggressively against the Christian message today, I feel compelled to go around warning my fellow priests, pastors, and evangelists, that “it is not party time;” that we are being called to thread the painful path towards Calvary. The challenging task before us will daily demand of us a high degree of faith commitment, for the radical witness to the Gospel of Christ which an age of widespread unbelief and debauchery such as ours requires of us.

The good Lord desires to save the people of every generation, but the appropriate character disposition, the depth of spirituality, and the degree of sacrifice required of the agents of the gospel who are to be sent to each generation, will be determined by the peculiarities of each generation. Those of us who embrace the call of Christ to minister in his vineyard today, are in for some very serious business. It is not party time all. These days, when I see Christian pastors and preachers, dressed in expensive clothes and designer jewelry, flying around in private jets or first class compartments of air planes, or driving around with motorcades, sometimes with police escorts and civilian bouncers, I often turn to those around me, and say, “Ewo o - awon eleyi o mo nkan nkan!” See, these ones don’t know anything. In other words, such priests, pastors and preachers that still carry themselves around at this point in time, with what we can describe as a high degree of ecclesiastical and clerical triumphalism; such church leaders are reveling in the past glories of medieval Christendom, when bishops, priests and pastors, lived like medieval feudal lords, monarchs and emperors. That era in European Christianity was brought to a brutal end by the violent French Revolution of 1789 to 1892. We in the Catholic Church have learnt a few lessons from the history of medieval Christianity in Europe. That is why you are not likely to see a Catholic Pope, Cardinal or Archbishop, anywhere in the world these days, living an openly flamboyantly lifestyle, no matter how rich his church or his diocese may be.

Now, as the world gets more and more engulfed in the darkness that manifests itself in new forms of paganism, such as we see in the radical Gender, Transgender and Non-Binary ideologies that aim to destroy traditional religious and family values; and as our own youth population are increasingly turning towards new forms of paganisms in Nigeria, Christian pastors, and the generality of Christians, are today called upon to stand up to be counted among the true followers of Christ, by disciplined lives of meaning and purpose. We are called upon to quickly get ourself educated in the complex dynamics of the times we live in, so we may courageously confront the neo-paganism of contemporary society, with the light of the Christian gospel which never dims.

Those the Lord requires as pastors, preachers, and evangelists in our society today, should be persons who daily submit themselves prayerfully as instruments in God’s hands for the salvation of souls. Those the Lord requires as agents of Christian evangelism today, should be persons of extraordinary courage and fortitude, who accept the call to shine the light of Christ amid the darkness of contemporary society, and to constitute themselves into signs of contradiction to a world of ruthless and aggressive competition for wealth and power, and mindless devotion to the cult of sensual pleasure. Those the Lord requires as pastors, preachers and evangelists today, should be persons of faith, who can interpret the signs of the times, as well as offer gospel discernment on the socio-historical circumstances of their people.

Let me be very blunt with you: We are in the midnight hour, and the Ship of Peter (the Church), is battling amid very turbulent waters, as is sufficiently demonstrated in the spiritual and moral crisis to be found in our various Churches today. At this time of widespread mediocrity, hypocrisy and apostacy among many Christians, including even among high-ranking personalities in our Christian Churches, the Lord requires men and women of extraordinary commitment that would be part of his remnant few, who, with a heightened sense of sacrifice, would be holding the fort, standing in the gap, and putting on the whole armor of God against the wiles of the vicious enemies of God’s people. For as St. Paul reminds the Ephesians, “it is not against flesh and blood that we must contend, but against principalities and powers, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, and against the spiritual forces in the heavenly places…” Therefore (he says), “take on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand firm … and quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one” (See Ephesians 6:10-17).

The challenges I have outlined above are even more pressing for Christian pastors and Christians who are young parents, as we would have to practice our Christian faith and raise our children in a world that is becoming terribly hostile to any form of religiosity and spirituality, and particularly hostile to traditional Christian values; a world that is completely different from the one in which many of the older pastors here grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. When those of us in the older generation of today were growing up, the principal agents of socialisation included the Family, the Church, and the School, in that order. And those whom the children saw as heroes and mentors to be emulated, were from among their parents, their church leaders and their teachers. But all that has changed today. With the mobile phone in the hands of our children, the television in our homes, and the billboards littering our towns, villages, and highways, the more powerful influencers of our children’s values today, are often social media personalities, popular musicians, movie stars, comedians, and sundry entertainers. Many of these celebrities are school dropouts, products of broken homes or dysfunctional families. Many of them are drug and alcohol addicts, serial polygamists, and unrepentant sexual perverts. Some of them are known psychiatric cases. Others regularly display symptoms of one psychopathology or the other. But they are all rich and famous. They all have millions of young followers on social media. This is why they are called social influencers, and they are regularly recruited as “brand ambassadors” by unscrupulous agents of corporate organisations.

Thus, in the absence of good parenting; and in the absence of adequate and effective strategies for appropriate instructions in Christian values and morals for our children and youth, these celebrities who are themselves often in need of spiritual, psychological, and social rehabilitation, have unfortunately become the prime influencers, the principal inspirers, the key mentors, and the chief opinion molders of our vulnerable and gullible young people. So, I really do not envy those who happen to be young Christian parents today. Christian parenting today involves a lot more effort and investment than was required when many of in the older generation were growing up. Those who are still raising young children today should recognize that their children may not turn out to be good Christian children, simply because they pray at home and ensure that the children follow them to Church on Sundays.

Parents of young children will need to do a lot more, with the grace of God. They will need to be Christian parents in all truth and with all seriousness, making their homes domestic Churches, giving loud witness to Christian values, and teaching their children from their earliest days, to become signs of contraction to the evil generation; to stand out and shine their light amid the surrounding darkness; and with all boldness, to defend the hope that is in them, as St. Peter urges believers in 1 Peter 3:15. This is by no means an easy task, but with God all things are possible. After all, the Lord has promised us that the powers of hell will not prevail against his Church. And we know that the One who called us to be Christians and to be ministers of the of the Gospel in season and out of season, will not abandon us in this critical season. May the certainty of his presence sustain, strengthen, and comfort us, as we renew today our commitment to defending the true faith that Jesus left us. Amen.

Before concluding, I would like to challenge all those who, like me, are senior citizens, to take responsibility for the future generation. Many of our young people are today behaving like sheep without shepherds. Many have lost their souls to debauchery and depravity as we noted above. So, we need experienced older people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, to help these young people answer the most profound and critical question of life’s ultimate meaning and purpose; questions which the young people seem to be grappling with daily. In the face of the tragedies and frustrations of life, and especially in the face of the mess which successive generations of rogue leaders have made of our country Nigeria, we need a “remnant few” from among the experienced members of the Christian community, who have been sufficiently schooled by both the positive and negative experiences of their lives, and who have learnt some of the profound truths of their human existence, so they can now become teachers, inspirers and mentors of the younger generation in a life of discipline, virtue, meaning and purpose.

I challenge those of the older generation, to take responsibility for the future, by using their time and resources, their skills and talents, their rich knowledge and privileged exposures, their successes and achievements, but also your failures and disappointments – from which hopefully they have learnt good lessons – to disseminate those values and principles, and promote those norms and habits, that will make for meaningful existence for future generations of humanity. It is in this way that those of us in the older generation today would live the rest of our lives purposefully, that we would age gracefully, and that at the end, when the Lord calls us, that we would have the honour of exiting this world, as it were, gallantly!