The National Youth Service Corps has denied a social media report that corps members’ bank accounts are being upgraded to accommodate the N70,000 new national minimum wage.

The corps said no directive has been given by the relevant authority for it to start the payment of N70, 000 minimum wage to corps members or to upgrade their accounts.

According to a statement issued by the NYSC Director of Information and Public Relations, Eddy Megwa, on Saturday, the report is misleading and absolutely false.

The NYSC, therefore, advised corps members to desist from allowing mischief makers who are set to mislead Nigerians to continue to play on their intelligence.

The statement read, “The attention of National Youth Service Corps management has been drawn to misleading information circulating in the media regarding payment of N70,000 minimum wage to corps members and the directive to upgrade their accounts. This is an absolute falsehood which is far from the truth.

“Corps members, parents and members of the public should note that no directive has been received from the relevant sector of government responsible for wages matters.

“It is, therefore, impossible for the NYSC to issue any information on such. Corps members already know the approved channel and mode of communication in the scheme and should therefore ignore the directive accordingly.

“The NYSC, by this release therefore admonishes corps members to desist from allowing mischief makers who are set to mislead Nigerians from continuing to play on their intelligence.

“Bloggers and social media influencers are warned to stop issuing statements that concern the management of National Youth Service Corps without authorisation.”

[Punch]

Abdulmumin Jibrin, a member of the house of representatives from Kano, says Alhassan Doguwa, chair of the house committee on petroleum resources (downstream), is the biggest threat to the administration of President Bola Tinubu.

The lawmaker said Doguwa is also a threat to the All Progressives Congress (APC) and to peace in Kano.

Jibrin is a New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) member, while Doguwa belongs to the APC. Both politicians have been aiming diatribes each other’s way for days now.

In a statement on Saturday, the NNPP lawmaker said Doguwa’s utterances are capable of brewing more tension in the north-west state.

“A peaceful Kano or otherwise, will have consequences on the country,” Sani Paki quoted his principal as saying.

“I strongly believe people like Doguwa are the biggest enemies of his party and the President because of such deliberate divisive and reckless actions and utterances which is deepening the already tense atmosphere in Kano.”

Jibrin added that Doguwa should never have insulted Rabiu Kwankwaso, a former governor of Kano.

“Doguwa has repeatedly tried so hard to drag others, especially his party leaders into the issues I raised with him as a result of his constant false and unwarranted attacks and insults to Kwankwaso,” he added.

“The reality is that this matter is about Hon Alhassan Ado Doguwa, him and him alone. It is about his reckless, insultive utterances and divisive character which he deploys to malign Kwankwaso and deepen the feud in Kano.

“Today, Doguwa stands tall as one of the biggest obstacles to peace in Kano.”

The heated exchanges between both men began after Jibrin asked Doguwa to stop insulting Kwankwaso.

[TheCable]

Undoubtedly, the political matrimony between President Bola Tinubu and Northern Nigeria is at Talaq stage. Talaq is the Islamic unilateral repudiation of a marital union. There are no sobs, no wails. No dabbing of the face with a handkerchief. But, the dusts provoked by the matrimonial dislocation hang notoriously in the sky. Even bystanders miles away can see them. The marriage is only 15 months old but the couple’s patience for each other is rope-thin. As our elders say, right in the presence of the kolanut seller, irreverent worms slide inside his pods. A matrimony celebrated with pomp and ceremony is now a chaotic market row. The gluttonous cat has eaten the poisonous meat of a toad. A post on X late last week even claimed that “Northerners have (begun) Al-Qunut prayers against Tinubu…Al-Qunut prayers (are) done…to eliminate evil.” There is a litany of allegations hung on the neck of the seismic marriage. It ranges from prostitution, abandonment, betrayal to battery. While the world sees the palm fronds, (mariwo) the egungun of the matrimony would seem to have been long gone.

Well, as the saying goes, a household of misbehaving children is a reflection that it is devoid of elders with wisdom – (T’ómodé ilé bá ńse réderède, àgbà ibè ni ò ní làákàyè). Elders then summoned the couple and demanded the reason for their tiff. Flaunting patriarchal righteousness, the husband has kept mum, dragging smoke off his burning cigarette intermittently. The Northern wife however did the narration, tears coursing down her cheeks. On her knees, she tells the story of Lagere, the cripple and Python, a huge heavy-bodied reptile which kills its prey by constriction. Lagere was a prince crippled from birth. At his turn to succeed his father, Kingmakers bucked, citing an existing tradition forbidding disabled on traditional stools. Downcast, Lagere hopped down river road to commit suicide. As he folded his deformed leg to jump into the river, a huge python emerged from nowhere and demanded why he contemplated suicide. Moved, Python promised to help him. The snake jumped up, wrapped himself round Lagere and constricted him. Upon unwrapping self from the cripple, the deformed leg received strength. Overexcited, Lagere swore to show gratitude to Python.

Before he was crowned king, continued the Northern Wife, the Ifa Oracle summoned to divine Lagere’s reign muttered a saying, the purport of which was cryptic to all at the time. The Oracle said, “Oore tán, asiwèrè gbàgbé” meaning, at the fullness of time, the foolish will forget a kindness of the past. Lagere then ordered that a groove be earmarked in the palace for the worship of the mysterious reptile. He indeed worshipped Python for months. One day, however, having smoked alien weeds, the king’s head exploded with pride. Lagere reasoned that His Imperial Majesty shouldn’t be seen groveling before an ordinary reptile. He then ordered that the animal be brought to the palace to be sacrificed to him. On seeing what King Lagere was about to do with him, Python cried passionately and asked for mercy. Lagere would not listen. But as he was being dragged down for propitiation, Python suddenly pounced on Lagere, twined self round him. Instantly, he returned to his old cripple state. The town then dethroned Lagere. “That, elders of the land, is my story,” narrated the Northerner wife.

Being a student of Nigeria’s political history and one right inside its vortex, from its beginning, it should have occurred to Tinubu and his Northern bride that their matrimony would be short-lived. As the one who holds an umbrella all-day long would find out only later at sunset that they carry a heavy object, only at dusk would an Oko Ìyàwó Elépòn Búlúù (a vulgar Yoruba folksy appellation for a newly-wedded groom) realize that wedlock is the least of matrimonial rituals. Meeting responsibilities of matrimony is the toughest nut to crack. So long as there is a colony of lice on clothe, the fingernail cannot be devoid of blood. While narrating her ordeals and betrayal of trust from Lagere, the Northerner wife had lapsed into a  Yoruba proverb which says that if a monkey is uncertain about the danger upon a tree, it should not be found climbing it (Bi oju alakedun o da igi, kii gun) to which the elders nodded in unison.

Before the End Bad Governance protests which began on August 1, the depth of the matrimonial discord between Tinubu and the North was, at best, at the level of guesswork. For instance, we knew that it is almost an impossibility that tantrums won’t follow a stubborn child given a knock on the head. When the Tinubu government thus disgraced Nasir el-Rufai last year, tantrums were expected. So when the Tinubu government, for which he pulled critical chestnuts off the fire, rewarded him with a non-ministerial clearance by the Senate, many could swear by their mothers’ graves that the northern Eliri, the minutest of all rats, will become one of the rebellious faggots that will upset the fire. And that, whenever the North was reorganizing for an Araba, Eliri would play a prominent role. Araba should remind any student of Nigerian history of the historical Northern Nigerian cry of disaffection with the Nigerian state of affairs immediately Aguiyi Ironsi promulgated the highly objectionable Decree 34 which rendered Nigeria’s federalism unitarist. The North had earlier visited midless pogrom on eastern Nigeria. I got a whiff of the heartlessness of the bloodletting from a live play of Yoruba Apala music lord, Ayinla Omowura, recently. He sang, “wón ńpa yíbò bí eni p’eran alápatà…” – they butchered Igbo people as though killing cows in a meat shop.

In June, Northern politicians began coalescing around Muhammadu Buhari. They advertised this in a visit which anyone familiar with the colour, tone and tenor of historical serpentine regrouping of the north would know was the beginning of a call to put spanner in the works. Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and Aminu Tambuwal, Sokoto state’s ex-governor, kicked off the visit. It was to Buhari in his Daura hometown. Within 24 hours, el-Rufai followed suit. Photograph of the former governor’s legendary stoops to shake hands, similar to Iscariot’s kiss of Jesus, a notorious signature tune heralding betrayal, was amply advertised. Packaged as “Sallah homage,” political watchers claim the visits were the beginning of a packaged northern tempest against the Yarbawa who the north was wedded to in a matrimony that has now gone sour. Shehu Sani, Afro-haired ex-senator said this much in a release and attributed it to an attempt to build a strong northern alliance using Buhari as a rallying point to challenge and evict Tinubu in 2027. On the comedic scene, a Bello Galandachi satirizes the rot in the Tinubu government almost weekly.

The End Bad Governance protest was the strongest alibi for Northern Nigeria to ventilate its 15-month accumulated angst. It has been said that the protest, which kicked off on August 1, was a reflection of the geographical and ethnic politics that Nigeria had practiced from pre-colonial times. While the southeast, in a bid to stamp its disavowal with its typecast as a bellicose race, signed off from the protest, the southwest, which goes on protests, whether it is convenient for it or otherwise, marched out, while the north, often pacifist in matters that doesn’t personally concern it, was at the height of its hostility. The social reality of protest against the status quo in Nigeria is that, outside of university campuses, protests are a rarity on the streets of the Muslim North. For the eight years of Buhari’s non-governance, the north was as constantly docile as the northern star. But in this protest against bad governance, not only did northern protesters go to the Hobbesian state of nature, inflicting nasty, brutish jabs on sanity, some protesters even waved Russian flags, shouting “Putin!”

There is no denying the fact that the current Tinubu government has made life very excruciating for the people of Nigeria. Perhaps, like no other government in recent history. The pain is such that, as the elders will say, it is only a child who has not beheld the sight of a lion’s devoured carcass in the forest who will pray to be killed by a leopard (Bí omodé ò rí àjekù kìnìhún nínú igbó, á ní kí eran bí ekùn ó pa òhun).The truth is also that, the government has democratized sufferings across board in Nigeria. Tinubu dishes out pains, death, escalating food inflation and hopelessness to Nigerians without any ethnic, religious or social discrimination. As the poor of Kaura-Namoda feels the cluelessness of Aso Rock, the poor of Nchatancha and Telemu equally feel it. But the way the North has taken the lead in escalating the protest this murderously, the question that begs for answer is, what exactly is that region beefing Tinubu about? Hunger? Certainly not. Since we have agreed that no part of Nigeria is spared Tinubu’s merciless, slavish Bretton Woods economic policies, why then is the north crying so vociferously as if it is the only bereaved?

After his announcement as winner of the 2023 presidential election, one of the victorious thoughts that must have crossed Tinubu’s mind was that the ground Chief Obafemi Awolowo wobbled while treading, he gallantly stomped on it. Awolowo’s famous 1959 election campaign round the north, which roused Ahmadu Bello from his slumber, culminating in a Sardauna embarking on a political campaign which got his royal face caked with dusts in the process, opened Awolowo’s eyes to the myth of a monolithic north. Awolowo then came to the conclusion that an alliance of Southern Nigeria with the Middle Belt and Christian North holds the key to a southerner’s presidency of Nigeria. An alliance of his AG with NCNC to form UPGA had Michael Okpara, Eastern Premier, campaigning on the streets of Ibadan. This model still didn’t work during the Second Republic. Citing S. L. Akintola in his book, House of War (2003) Dare Babarinsa said Akintola, Western Nigeria Premier, rationalized his romance with the feudal north in that, the economic, educational and commercial aggressiveness of the Igbo was a greater danger to the Yoruba than the political hegemony of the Hausa/Fulani. An alliance with the NPC, he believed, was the surest way of rescuing the Yoruba from political annihilation. MKO Abiola lapped up the Akintola power model. From his alliance with Muhammadu Buhari in 2014, Tinubu also dusted the Akintola and Abiola handbook hook, line and sinker. On a superficial level, the trio of Akintola, Abiola and Tinubu would seem to be right and Awolowo wrong, right?

The above, however, cannot elicit a QED (quod erat demonstrandum) answer. The northern establishment’s political pedigree hoists it as a typical African witch. Of the many symbols and attributes of the witch, she holds tightly to her ferocious mystic power, using it as bait. She is also reputed with the upside-down symbolism. Among the Akan tribe of Ghana, the witch is literally “inverted.” Hans Werner Debrunner, in his Witchcraft in Ghana: A Study on the Belief in Destructive Witches and Its Effect on the Akan Tribes (1961) said of witches, “Before they leave the body, they turn themselves upside… They walk with their feet in the air, that is, with the head down, and have their eyes at the back of the ankle joints.” The Ewe in same Ghana also believe that witches walk backwards and, in walking upright, have their feet turned backwards. The witch is represented by such animals like snakes, owls, hyenas, and leopards, characteristically nocturnal animals.

As it romances political power like the witch, the Northern establishment has an inverted thinking as well. Awolowo’s welfarist philosophy futuristically foretold that a feudal north not weaned of its weaponization of the large population of its Talakawa and roam-about Almajiri children would pose huge danger to the rest of Nigeria. That prophecy has made him a Nostradamus today. In a 1978 presidential speech, Awolowo had said, “For the North, I have three things, Education, Education and Education.” He also maintained that, “The children of the poor you failed to train will never let your children have peace”. The bulk of Nigeria’s social malaises today – insecurity, bloated population, renteer system of overdependence on the lean purse of the federal – come from the north. This has bred multidimensional poverty, misery and anger in the region. Governor Uba Sani recently said the region has over 70% out-of-school children and same number living in grueling poverty. You cannot solely blame Tinubu for all these as the north’s vulture has been suffering the merciless trouncing of rainfall strokes for more than a century. From Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Mohammed, Shehu Shagari, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Abdulsalami Abubakar to Musa Yar’Adua, as well as their northern accomplices, successive northern leaders share huge slices of the hopelessness that the north is today. Not minding the multidimensional poverty, the northern establishment still frantically shuts the door against education of this crop of persons, lest they be liberated from its chokehold.

At the turn of Lagere to narrate the root cause of the tiff, the elders were aghast. Rather than him being an ingrate, the python is almost the equivalent of Omolokun, he said. Omolokun is a Yoruba Ifa deity scholar and practitioner, Araba Ifáyẹmi Ọ̀ṣúndàgbonù Elebuibon’s drama series that ran on western Nigerian television in the 1980s. A couple, suffering decades of bareness, besought a deity for a child it named Omolokun. A spoilt brat who demanded the impossible at every point, when Omolokun one day demanded a human being to be propitiated to him, it dawned on the couple that it had a misbegotten ghormid in its household. Lagere reminded the elders that but for him, their son, Buhari, could not have won the presidency. Like Omolokun’s parents, the Lagere in Aso Rock has bent over backwards to please his Python, allocating consequential federal ministries to the North and in many cases, devoting junior and senior ministries to it. Recently, Lagere even established a Federal Ministry of Maalu as sacrifice to Omolokun. Yet, the northern establishment is steeped in roiling anger and cannot be pacified.

Lagere compared the excesses of his Northern wife to an excessive liquour that intoxicates; excessive sun that runs a child mad; excessive stronghold that begets madness and a spinach vegetable which, if it grows in excess by the stream, is rendered a common weed (Bí otí bá kúnnú, otí á p’omo; bí òòrùn bá pò l’ápòjù, á s’omo di wèrè; bí a bá l’óba l’ánìíjù, á sínni n’íwin; bí tètè ègún bá pò á di òleri). Lagere concluded that he had reverenced the cow enough and even went overboard to call it “Brother.”

The target of the Northern Witch is to stop Lagere’s reign. By now, Tinubu must have realized that the Awolowo who divined education and welfare as antidote to the tyranny of the Northern Witch was no fool.

The Witch cannot be appeased. It is insatiable. Like Omolokun, this Witch will demand flesh and blood. Suffusing Nigeria with plenty and Northern Talakawa with education is the only route to rescue Lagere from the chokehold of his Python captor.

Reports that the Oyo State government has just created an agency for the enforcement of the rule of law sounded strange to me because I could not appreciate how a subnational entity can successfully implement an assignment that is essentially federal. Although I am aware that some states often maintained federal roads in their states and occasionally got reimbursed by the federal government, I was unsure of the applicability of such to the implementation of a contentious subject like the rule of law. Would it not lead to clashes between federal officials and those of the state concerned? Due to the boring details of the reports, I called an old schoolmate in Ibadan to get a better brief on the subject.

Whereas my friend, Bisi, had himself not heard of the proposed rule of law agency, he believed that it was a credible story having been credited to the Ibadan-based Oyo state government which could decide to be innovative like its predecessor of the first republic. For the next 20 minutes, Bisi kept talking about the glorious days of the defunct Western Region which led the rest of Nigeria in establishing several structures such as the first television station in Africa that others struggled hard to emulate. He pleaded with me passionately not to doubt the capability of the Oyo state government because it was operating from the same ‘charismatic location’ designed by the legendary Obafemi Awolowo.

Realising that my friend and I were obviously not on the same page, I ended the discussion and went back to other media reports to get a more realistic information on the rule of law story from Ibadan. Alas, the type of rule of law in focus in Oyo state concerns those relating to health and environmental standards and road traffic safety etc. for which Governor Seyi Makinde had signed into law a bill for the establishment of an Enforcement Authority. Indeed, Makinde had earlier authorised previous rules on the protection of mining communities as well as safe handling and storage of harmful substances in his state.

While there is merit in the decision of the Makinde-led government to prioritize the enforcement of state laws on environmental protection, sanitation and waste control as well as road traffic, open rearing and grazing regulation etc., two immediate questions standout.  First, why are these laws the only ones that deserve to be emphasized when the rule of law presupposes that all things ought to be done according to law? In other words, if the agency is not mandated to deal with breaches of other laws, we are just bothering about the rule of some laws instead of all laws. In addition, it is an open secret that some people are visibly more privileged and better positioned whereas ideally, everyone is supposed to be equal before the law.  

In fact, equality before the law is a global concept which Nigeria should not find difficult to embrace. As Bracton, the 13th-century British scholar and jurist once explained, everyone including the King is under the rule of law because ‘it is the law that made him King.’ Oyo state fully appreciates this hence at the inauguration of its relevant agency last week, the governor said “the rule of law as we know is the cornerstone of any functioning society as it ensures that everyone, regardless of status, wealth or background is held to the same standard and that justice is administered fairly and impartially.”

But, if the Oyo State Agency ensures that some citizens are sanctioned for breaching the specific laws that it was set up to handle while others are neither questioned nor sanctioned for the same breaches, the Agency is probably here to intensify Nigeria’s legal dilemma. One is really tempted to believe that the prioritization of the implementation of certain laws such as those on environmental sanitation or traffic will only embolden corrupt law enforcement officials to further extort funds from citizens. That notwithstanding, the approach adopted by Oyo state is still better than that of any other state where no effort is made to implement any law whatsoever.

If doing all things according to the law is precisely what the rule of law stands for, Nigeria can hardly be defined as under the rule of law. For example, citizens are supposed to be arrested for only offences known to the law, yet quite often, people are arrested for being allegedly rude to some big personalities. Even if waving another country’s flag is embarrassing, there is no law prohibiting the act. If so, what offence would those arrested for it last week be said to have committed? Again, no citizen is allowed to be detained for more than 48 hours; yet, the Nigerian prisons, now described as correctional centres are overpopulated because of a large number of suspects that are detained ad infinitum without trial.

Nigerian rulers hardly make rules or even policies that can enable every citizen to be equal before the law. For instance, although a salutary policy of assisting the elderly in our society with some stipends was surprisingly initiated some years back in Ekiti state, it did not last. But then, such elders could never have been described as equal to those in other states where such policy never existed. In every state of the federation, taxation and building rules as well as development projects in urban centres are not same as those of the rural areas. In the circumstance, does it make sense to say that Nigerian rules/laws are intended to make everyone equal?

Another aspect of the rule of law that is hardly adhered to is that which prohibits arbitrary amendments to laws. Whereas the constitution specifically puts security of the citizenry as one of the two-sided primary purpose of government, the immediate past government of President Muhammadu Buhari did not only insisted that security was the business of everybody but actually asked Nigerians to rely on self-help thereby changing the law without an amendment in line with the due process of law.  On its part, the police force which is the primary agency in Nigeria that is saddled with the implementation of the provisions of the law, often change some laws while implementing them.

Nigerians are legally entitled to use protests to ventilate their grievances as it is in a typical democracy, but quite often, the police hold on to either their own predisposition or to some obsolete laws thereby technically amending the relevant provisions of the Nigerian constitution. A good example is the inclination of the police to continue to abide by the repealed Public Order Act of 1979 which required anyone seeking to carry out any protest to first apply and obtain a police permit. 

Last Wednesday’s invasion of the national office of the Nigerian Labour Congress NLC by armed policemen has been condemned by a large number of Nigerians. To start with, many frown at the fact that the event took place at night. We now know however that although some of the armed men were not in uniform, the Department of State Services, DSS, did not participate in the alleged invasion. The Police have already confirmed that the operation was the handiwork of their operatives adding that their only target was a foreign crime suspect that they had traced to a shop within the Labour House.

Luckily, the nation was for once not emotionally assaulted by anyone calling the armed operatives, ‘unknown gunmen.’ It is rather unfortunate that in a country supposedly under the rule of law, nothing has been said about the allegation that the invasion was without a court warrant approving the operation. That is the aspect of the rule of law that worries more people than the establishment of an Authority to ensure the implementation of sanitation and traffic laws that exacerbate traffic hold-ups and corruption. 

Accordingly, the Nigerian government should prioritize the implementation of the rule of law which ensures the supremacy of law; equality of all citizens before the law; and the amendment of every law only through the due process of law. Oyo state in particular, should keep to the posture of Governor Makinde who has proven to be a true democrat and never return to the style of his predecessor who demolished a radio house because its proprietor could not be cowed into a pro-government journalist.

•We aren’t expecting any consignment after the one received in March – Lagos
•Taraba, Delta, Niger, Plateau, Zamfara and Abia: No food palliative received in July
•We got it – Kano, Oyo, Akwa–Ibom, Rivers, and Bayelsa
•The rations we got were a far cry from what we expected – Cross-River monarch

There seems to be confusion over the 740 truckloads of rice the Federal Government promised to deliver to the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja) at the rate of 20 truckloads each last month (July) to alleviate the hunger in the land.

Whereas officials of some state governments said the consignment had arrived and shared to residents, officials of some told Sunday Vanguard they were still expecting the consignment.

But the twist to the story came from Lagos where a top official said the only consignment of palliative they received from the Federal Government was in March and that they were not expecting any fresh delivery.

States which said they had not received the rice palliative as of late week include Taraba, Delta, Niger, Plateau, Zamfara and Abia.

Meanwhile, if the Lagos situation is to apply, then the states claiming not have received the consignment may never get it if they received any in March.

The Minister of State for Steel Development, Uba Maigari, had, penultimate Wednesday, asked residents to hold their governors as the Tinubu administration had provided remedial measures to stem hunger in the country, including the distribution of rice and fertilizers.

Maigari spoke in Jalingo, Taraba State capital, on the sidelines of a town hall engagement with stakeholders ahead of the protest against hunger and hardship in Nigeria.

“The president directed the release of rice and fertilizers in large quantities directly to state governors, whether they are PDP, APC, or APGA”, he said.

“I think you should, as journalists and professionals, do your job by asking state governors, starting from our brother here.

“He has taken delivery of fertilizers the Federal Government sent to governors, and there is also rice delivered to governors across the country.

“These are some of the remedial measures, including the new minimum wage which has just been signed into law, before the long-term economic programmes and policies of government begin to benefit all”.

In Benue, the Executive Secretary of the State Emergency Management Agency, SEMA, James Iorpuu, declined comment.

Of the states monitored on the weekend, only Kwara, Katsina, and Kaduna claimed to have received the truckloads of rice.

Sunday Vanguard had earlier reported that the rice consignment had been received in Kano, Oyo, Akwa–Ibom, Rivers, and Bayelsa states, among others.

The rice palliative was arranged to ease the hunger affecting poor people, one of the reasons Nigerians trooped out in protest against the government on Thursday and Friday.
Critics, however, say the measure was not enough to address the hardship occasioned by the downturn in the economy.

The Federal Government had, about four weeks ago, precisely, Monday, July 15, said it had allocated 740 trucks of rice to the 36 states of the federation and the FCT, Abuja.

Each state, including the FCT, under the arrangement, was expected to get 20 trucks containing 1,200 bags of 25kg each and the rice was to be distributed to the most vulnerable in the society.

The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents at the end of a meeting of the Federal Executive Council, FEC, presided over by President Bola Tinubu at the Council Chamber, Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The Minister, who was flanked by the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, said that the President directed the Minister of Agriculture to ensure that food is made available to Nigerians.

He explained that the distribution of trucks of rice was also to ensure that the hardship in the country was ameliorated, adding that it was expected that the state governors would distribute the trucks of rice to the most vulnerable.

Kwara

Kwara State government officials said they had received the rice consignment but did not release the details of how it was shared.

However, sources said the rice was distributed to residents through groups and professional unions.

For instance, it was gathered that a journalist was contacted by the leadership of the state Chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria to get the palliative to his colleagues.

However not even one-third of Christian journalists in the state benefitted from the palliative because it was grossly insufficient.

Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Rafiu Ajakaiye, who was contacted for details of how the rice was shared failed to respond at press time.

Taraba

Our correspondent in Jalingo, Taraba State capital, quoted the state government as saying they had yet to receive the truck loads of rice.

The state Commissioner for Information and Re-Orientation, Zainab Usman Jalingo, told Sunday Vanguard on Thursday that they were still expecting the consignment.

Jalingo noted that the state Commissioner for Special Duties, Saviour Noku, who is supposed to oversee the receipt of the food items, had not received any communication from the Federal Government regarding the delivery of the 20 trucks of rice to the state.

“As far as Taraba State is concerned, we have not received any allocation of twenty trucks of rice”, she said.

Niger

In Niger State, Sunday Vanguard learnt that the rice consignment was yet to be delivered.
Bologi Ibrahim, Chief Press Secretary to the state governor, Muhammed Umaru Bago, in a telephone chat, on Friday, said the state was yet to get the palliative.

“As I speak with you, the state is yet to get delivery of the rice consignment. It depends on the destination the consignment is coming from, but, for now, Niger State is yet to get the trucks of rice”.

Plateau

The situation is not entirely different in Plateau where government officials said that the state was yet to get the trucks of rice promised by the Federal Government.

Penultimate week, the state Commissioner for Information and Communication, Musa Ashoms, had told Sunday Vanguard, “Not yet, there has been communication and they will come when they will come. When we receive the trucks, we will announce them to the public because we are very transparent and accountable; we don’t hide what we do.

“Whatever we get in trust for our people will be given to the people. Whenever things come to the state, we set committees for fair sharing, equity, and transparency. When the trucks arrive, we will let the people know.”

Similarly, the state Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources, Samson Bugama, on Thursday, stated, “The trucks are yet to arrive. Plateau State is still expecting ours, once the trucks come in, it will be made known that we have received them.”

He declined to mention the reasons for the delay and insisted, “All I know is that the trucks have not arrived yet”.

Abia

On its part, Abia State government said it was yet to receive the trucks of rice.

The state Commissioner for Information, Prince Okey Kanu, told Sunday Vanguard on Friday that no such palliative had arrived in the state, adding that there was no communication from the Federal Government for any such palliative.

Kanu also dismissed as fake reports that the Federal Government had distributed 50kg bags for rice to states for sale at N40, 000 each.

He said:” We didn’t see any truck of rice from the Federal Government. And the issue of selling 50kg bag of rice for N40, 000 is fake news.

“We don’t deal with rumours and speculations. There has been a way the Federal Government communicates with us when it has to do with palliative, and no such message has come from the Federal Government.”

Asked whether it was not proper for the state government to open channels of communication with the Federal Government on the issue, he said it was not necessary.

“There is no point for us to be wasting our time looking for where to verify the news. If the news was authentic, we could have gotten the message as a government straight from the Federal Government. No such thing happened!”

Responding to a question on the efforts of the state government to cushion the effects of the economic hardship on Abia residents, the Commissioner said the state government “believes in teaching the people how to fish” in addition to giving them palliatives.

“We have been doing all that. It’s a continuous process. We have shared palliative about four times since this government came to power. We received about twice from the Federal Government and we did the other ones on our own.

“Not too long ago, we shared rice to workers from grade level 0-7. Currently, the office in charge of palliative is compiling the list of workers from level 8-10 for another round of palliative. It’s a continuous thing.

“Even in August, the governor’s wife will also reach out to indigent people in society. We are a people focused government. Our policies are directed towards improving on the people’s welfare. “Recently, the state sponsored some Abians to Nassarawa State to understudy farming.

“So, it’s not just by sharing rice. The governor also distributed N100, 000 interest free loans to 10, 000 Abians. We believe in teaching people how to fish instead of giving them fish to eat”.

Delta

In Delta, the 20 truckloads of rice had not arrived as of Thursday.

Chief Press Secretary (CPS) to Delta State governor, Sir Festus Ahon, confirmed this to Sunday Vanguard.

Ahon’s words: “We do not know what is causing the delay, but once we receive them, we will let Deltans know.”

Zamfara

Our correspondent in Zamfara State quoted the Director General (DG) on Media and Communications, Government House, Gusau, Nuhu Salihu, as saying the state government was yet to even get the letter of rice allocation from the Federal Government.

The DG further said the moment the Federal Government was ready to send the allocation to the state, officials will be appropriately notified.

Rivers

In Rivers State where Governor Siminilayi Fubara said they had received 21,650 bags of grains, consisting of 3,680 bags of garri, and 17, 970 bags of corn, he explained that the state government constituted a committee to evenly distribute the items across the 23 local government areas of the state.

The Caretaker Committee Chairman of Khana local government area, Marvin Yorbana, claimed to have given a stipend of N145,000, 35 bags of grains, and eight bags of garri to each of the 19 wards of the council.

Cross River

In Cross River State, the Director General of the State Emergency Management Agency, SEMA, told Sunday Vanguard: “Between April and May 2024, we received food items from the Federal Government National Strategic Reserve.

“The items include 3,384 bags of garri (25k), 24,000 bags of rice (25kg), and 14,040 bags of maize (50kg).

“The maize, with Governor Bassey Otu’s approval, was swapped for beans (600 bags of 100kg) and 800 bags of 50kg garri”.

He clarified that in July 2024, 20 trucks of food items, including garri, rice, and beans, were received and shared among the 18 local government areas of the state.

The vulnerable, disabled, communities, groups, households, and organizations, according to him, received quantities of foodstuff as they were distributed to all parts of the state and “no one would say he did not get a share of the food, no matter how little.”

But a traditional ruler in Bakassi, Chief Edem Archibong, told our reporter that the rations that got to his community were “a far cry from what we expected, as some people got three cups of rice, others got two, and the garri was terrible. It looked like animal feed.”

Archibong said government should bring down the cost of fuel and subsidize food prices, rather than bringing “animal food to us in the name of palliative”.

Kaduna

In Kaduna, the Chief Press Secretary to the governor did not respond to our inquiry concerning the 20 trucks of rice allocated to the state.

However, a reliable source in the government circle told our correspondent that the truckloads of rice had arrived in the state, but he didn’t know how the rice was being shared.

Katsina

Katsina State government confirmed the arrival of the 20 truckloads of rice.
Acting Governor Faruq Lawal Jobe made the disclosure during a meeting with key stakeholders, including security chiefs, government officials, and local government leaders, at the state Government House on Monday.

To ensure equitable distribution of the rice, the state government has established a seventeen-member committee headed by the Secretary to the State Government, Abdullahi Faskari.

The committee, inaugurated on Friday, is tasked with verifying the quantity of the rice received from the Federal Government, developing a distribution plan for the state’s 34 local government areas, and establishing local committees to oversee distribution at the grassroots level.

The committee will also monitor the distribution process in all local governments, provide regular updates to the public on its activities, and submit a comprehensive report to the government within three weeks of its inauguration.

The Acting Governor commended the Katsina State Care Authority (KT-CARE) and the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) for their efforts in providing empowerment and relief assistance to residents. He disclosed that KT-CARE has disbursed N300 million in empowerment funds, while SEMA has allocated over N63 million for relief materials.

Lagos

Lagos State government officials said there were no fresh trucks of rice being expected from the Federal Government as it received truckloads of rice in March and distributed same appropriately.

It also assured that there were ongoing measures to boost food sufficiency and affordability in the state.

Special Adviser to the Governor on Agriculture and Imota Rice Mill, Dr Oluwarotimi Fashola, clarified when contacted on the whereabouts of the reported 20 truckloads of rice for Lagos.

Fashola told Sunday Vanguard, “The Ministry received trucks of rice from the Federal Government (in several batches) in March.

“The rice came at a time when the state was also aggregating food items (bags of beans and garri) for the implementation of Phase 2 of the State Food Bank Programme.

“The bags of rice were subsequently applied as part of the food palliative distributed to vulnerable households through the Community Development Committees, State Institutions, military and paramilitary organisations, including the Nigerian Police Force.

“When this announcement on the release of 20 trucks of rice to the states was made by the Federal Government in July, the Ministry was then informed that the state (Lagos) had received its own consignment in March 2024 which, of course, had been distributed back then, so Lagos is not expecting any fresh consignment of truckloads of rice”.

However, to cushion the effect of hardship in the country occasioned by the economic downturn and insecurity which led to farmers fleeing the farms thus worsening food insecurity in Nigeria, the Lagos administration launched the EKOCARES, a social protection initiative. Under this programme, the state government introduced the Sunday Discount Markets where residents bought basic foodstuff at 25 per cent discount rate across the state.

Recall that Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu had previously initiated the distribution of food supplies to 500,000 vulnerable households in the state to mitigate the impacts of fuel subsidy removal.

Sanwo-Olu explained that the primary objective of the program was to provide essential food items to vulnerable households in two different ways.

The first category received bulk food items such as 50kilograms of garri and 100kg of beans.

The second category, vulnerable households, received food boxes containing 10kg of garri, and 5kg of beans.

The governor said he was aware of the challenges faced by many residents due to increased transportation costs and higher prices of essential goods following the removal of fuel subsidy by the Federal Government.

One of the measures announced and formally flagged off was the distribution of food items for vulnerable households through the Lagos Food Bank Programme.

“The strategic goal of this programme is to reach 500,000 vulnerable households in the state with staple food items using two methodologies – bulk and individual”, he said.
“Bulk food items include (50kg Rice, 50kg Garri and 100kg Beans) for groups; and food boxes (10kg Rice, 5kg Garri, and 5kg Beans) for individual vulnerable households”.

Sharing

To ensure transparency in the implementation of the intervention, Sanwo-Olu created a monitoring committee comprising representatives from various sectors such as religious groups, trade unions, people with disabilities, civil society organisations, youth groups, community development councils, and the Lagos House of Assembly.

The distribution was carried out in phases among the beneficiary groups to facilitate the process. Each group were duly informed of the collection dates.

Speaking on the scope of the food palliative program, the governor said: “Overall, the initiative will directly impact 500,000 benefitting households, over 2,500 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises involved in bag manufacturing, food aggregation, packaging, and logistics, while over 25,000 employees of the MSMEs will be indirectly impacted.”

He, therefore, solicited the support of well-meaning and public-spirited individuals and organisations for this programme so that more people in need of this intervention could be reached.

“Be rest assured that adequate measures have been put in place to ensure that all items received get to the intended beneficiaries,” he assured.

Sanwo-Olu, penultimate Thursday, also urged agro and food processing companies to work toward reducing their prices given the current economic hardship as a way of alleviating the impacts in giving back to the society as well as ensuring food security in Nigeria.

He noted that Nigerians were going through tough times; therefore, private organisations, particularly agro and food processing companies, should think about people’s survival and sustainability above profitability during this crucial period in Nigeria.

The governor spoke during a courtesy visit by the Senior Management Team of Olam Agric Nigeria, led by its Managing Director, Mr Anil Nasir, at Lagos House, Marina, on Thursday.

Sanwo-Olu, who stressed the need for food security and support from every well-meaning individual and organisation, said his administration has done a lot through several intervention programmes to cushion the effects of economic hardship on the residents of Lagos State, adding that he would do more to continue to provide succour for the people.
According to him, “Agro and food processing is a critical industry because food security and food systems are as critical as people trying to safeguard either medical security or even sovereign security in times of war.

There is no better security these days than food.
“Today, being the first day of August, you can see agitation in some streets in Nigeria as a result of hunger. You (Olam Agric) are in a strategic position, and you have that structure and that capacity.

“At a difficult time like this, it shouldn’t be only the government reducing costs and providing avenues for people to buy things at a reduced price.

“You must be able to tell your shareholders that you have been in this environment for such a long time, and today it should not be about profit-making. Let us go into this market and just cover our costs and let us pass on. Let the people feel the critical support.

“I want you to take this message back. The private sector needs to know that there are times when it does not have to be about value to the shareholders because of food security and the logistics nightmare that is happening everywhere due to the economic challenge.
“We are all joint stakeholders, and we need to slow down on shareholder returns. We need to be alive today to be able to make a profit tomorrow.”

Kano

In Kano, while it was confirmed that the state government received the 20 trucks of rice from the Federal Government, it was not clear whether the rice has been distributed or not and what modalities were adopted in the distribution.

In a previous chat with Sunday Vanguard, the state Commissioner for Agriculture, Dr Danjuma Mahmud, confirmed that the consignment had been received. His words, “Yes, 20 trucks received by the Kano State government”, Mahmud said. When our correspondent called to ascertain whether the rice had been distributed and what modalities were adopted in the distribution, the Commissioner said he was not ready to speak on the matter.

[Vanguard]

YESTERDAY, the #ENDBADGOVERNANCE protests ran its full gamut. In the days, weeks, months and years to come, pundits, critics and analysts will continue to discuss, review, critique and draw useful lessons from it. Did it fail? Did it succeed? Have lessons been learned on both sides of the divide? Will the protagonists as well as antagonists of the protests organize and behave better in future? The answers will depend on who is providing them! One thing is certain, however: No one will forget the protests in a hurry, just like we have not forgotten its precursor #ENDSARSNOW protests years after – the organizers; families, friends, loved ones and comrades of the victims; the government itself; those who had their hands smeared with the blood of the innocent, as well as those who d their conscience permanently seared in that episode – many are those who will go into their grave with their memories haunted by whatever role they played in the gory event of the massacre of defenceless Nigerian youths fighting for a better future for themselves and their fellow citizens.

Lives have also been lost needlessly in the follow-up #ENDBADGOVERNANCE protests. Those who genuinely meant well with the protests; the opportunists who took advantage of the honest grouse of patriotic citizens to stoke the embers of chaos and anarchy; those who, for selfish and self-serving reasons have an axe to grind and who stayed in their comfort zones home and away while instigating others to bring the roof down our head; the genuinely aggrieved, impoverished and long-suffering hapless Nigerians run ragged by insensitive and oppressive government policies; the illiterate, uninformed hoi polloi always acting in a self-destructive manner; those who, in these protests, suffered unmitigated losses for no fault of theirs; and the government itself always caught flat-footed time and time again – all will reflect on the events of the last 10 days for a long time to come.

One of such reflections is printed here today. Titled “Grinding poverty and endless protests in Nigeria”, it is written by my comrade and classmate at “Great Ife”, Wale Olajire Ajao. Enjoy it! “In Nigeria today, grinding poverty co-exists with endless protests and agitations. Why? Precisely because the Nigerian Government has become notorious for generating poverty – from independence on October I, 1960 till today. How? In the sense that the government since independence has not diversified the economy; corruption-cum-mismanagement has also continuously been on the rise. Till date, Nigeria remains a mono-cultural economy that relies on income from the sale of crude oil in the world market. The Government all these years has not diversified its major source of revenue. The poor performance of this mono-product economy has been compounded by the steadily rising scourge of corruption unleashed on the country by its political as well as business class.

The first major shock to the economy came in 1980 under the civilian government of  President Shehu Shagari when we suffered a sharp drop in revenue due to the fall in the price of crude oil in the global oil market. On December 29, 1983, the Shagari administration declared austerity measures aimed at restoring the fortunes of the economy. In the first half of 1986, we witnessed another drop in the price of crude oil at a time the country was heavily indebted to international finance organizations. Military president Ibrahim Babangida devalued the Naira under what was code-named Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which, actually, was the foundation of the economic hardship we suffer today. From that time, we have ceaselessly battled with the very tough impact of currency devaluation. The long-run effects of currency devaluation and unending kleptomania in government over the years have resulted in the consistent co-existence of poverty and protests in the country, such that, by 2006, poverty had reached an incredibly high level.

Millions of street urchins, almajiris, area boys and miscreants were produced by the system. Corruption has become endemic to the extent that, by 2015 when the immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari, assumed office, our country was on top of the global corruption index published by Transparency International (TI), a non-governmental organization that profiles global corruption. Also, by 2015, the total number of out-of-school children in Northern Nigeria alone had risen to ten million. All over the country during the same period, the total number of out-of-school children was not less than twenty million; with these constituting themselves into a menace, always hijacking otherwise peaceful protests and agitations and turning them into golden opportunities to loot and commit arson. The eight unbroken years of rudderless leadership under Buhari further aggravated our economic woes.

Under Buhari, youth unemployment rose to an unprecedented level. Insecurity became heightened and multi-faceted. Buhari succumbed to ethnic chauvinism as he condoned the atrocities of his kinsmen-herdsmen, noticed at first in Benue and Plateau states but this later spread all over the country like bushfire in the harmattan. The painful result of the criminal activities of the

Fulani herdsmen and a few retaliatory attacks by farmers is the drastic reduction in food production all over the country, which has now been compounded by fuel subsidy removal, electricity subsidy removal and floating of the Naira, despite the fact that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu ought to know that as an import-dependent mono-cultural economy, a combination of these policies in a single stretch without carefully-prepared palliatives already put in place would unleash unimaginable hardship on the citizenry. His hopes, and pleas, were that as time went on, significant economic improvement would compensate for the period of hardship. Unfortunately, one year later, there has been no respite as inflation is on the rise everywhere and life has become harder for the vast majority of our people day after day.

From May 29 last year, Tinubu has rolled out palliative measures after palliative measures, following his harrowing International Monetary Fund(IMF)-induced policies. Aside from the fact that the conception and manner of implementation of the palliative measures look like an after-thought, that the palliatives also suffer diversion by highly-placed political actors has made matters worse. By 2020 when the #ENDSARSNOW protests were embarked upon by the youths, youth unemployment nationwide had neared an alarming 40 percent; illiteracy was as high as 45 percent while poverty level hovered around 60 percent, in the midst of constant police brutality unleashed mainly on youths; eventually culminating in the #ENDSARSNOW protest which, as usual, was later hijacked by millions of hopeless and helpless bad boys and girls produced by the Nigerian system. Having impoverished and neglected millions of our children and youths, should we expect normal behaviour from them? Until we give them the right training and proper upbringing, they will continue to remain a menace to society.

Therefore, it was tragic that the President’s speech on Sunday, August 4 said nothing about this group of young persons. Given his pedigree as an anti-military dictatorship activist, one was surprised that Tinubu repeated the mistakes of previous leaders. What mistakes? Reacting to the #ENDBADGOVERNANCE protests the same way Buhari and the Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, had reacted to the #ENDSARSNOW protests. Thus, the predictable cycle of protests, looting and arson followed by the concomitant police brutality we are all familiar with, is unleashed on our psyche again and again. Everyone goes home after a peaceful protest has turned violent and our children have been killed by our own policemen who usually justify their action with the cliche “Government cannot fold its arms while the enemies of government destabilize the country!” This unending vicious cycle is what has played out since August 1st when the #ENDBAD GOVERNMENT protests broke out across the country.

Rather than put strong preventive measures in place, the authorities waited until miscreants and anti-protest forces joined the fray before the security forces started shooting live bullets and firing tear gas indiscriminately, to the extent that even journalists going about their legitimate duty of reporting the protests and innocent, peaceful protesters and passers-by got engulfed, with many losing life and limbs to the bargain. At this juncture, it must be said that the passivity of citizens is equally a hindrance to positive development, just as the looting and mismanagement of our resources by the political actors. Had millions of adults come out to join the peaceful protests, they most likely would have, by their sheer population, made it impossible for hoodlums to hijack the process. Had the police, too, strategically positioned themselves in front of our very important assets one week before August 1st when the protests began, maybe the story would have been different.

We must, as a matter of urgency, part ways with the colonial legacy of seeing peaceful protesters as enemies of the government. Our insincere pursuit of democracy will continue to put us on a permanent track of convoluted crises if we do not. It is in this context that I consider the president’s broadcast as a little late and also inappropriate. He ought to have made the broadcast three or four days before August 1st, while the security forces ought to have been fully armed and taken positions days before the protests began in front of our vital assets as a preventive measure to make it impossible for hoodlums to invade or burn those assets.

Let our leaders understand that, by suppressing citizenship activism, which must manifest in a democracy in the form of peaceful protests, they are inhibiting the emergence of viable democratic governance. As long as we keep having high-level illiteracy in the midst of equally high-level corruption and mismanagement, along with embarrassingly high-level of poverty and endless neglect of out-of-school children and the so-called miscreants and Almajiris, we will not get out of the ugly cycle of poverty, of endless protests and agitations and of the endless killings on both sides of the divide. We will permanently keep heaping disgrace and shame on ourselves in the eyes of the international community.

It is not too late for President Tinubu to re-orientate the people working with him and for himself as well to rebuild his own mindset as he summons the courage to return to the fold of campaigners for true federalism and the restructuring of the polity. Let there be strict adherence to the rule of law and respect for fundamental human rights of all citizens, irrespective of background, religion or status. Let him reinvigorate the anti-corruption campaign. He must subscribe to the ethos of responsive governance that sees the people as partners in progress, not abject subjects to be ruled and intimidated from time to time. One way of showing a commitment to return to his original base or camp of the progressives is for President Tinubu to take a second look at the demands of the #ENDBADGOVERNANCE protesters, especially their economic agenda, and see how some of those demands can be met with a view to doing something concrete immediately to reduce youth unemployment, high cost of living, and high cost of transportation. He must also commit to waging a more vigorous battle against insecurity. Working together, we shall achieve peace and justice in our country”.

Well said, comrade! But someone volunteered that President Tinubu is still too engrossed in the fruits, plums and perquisites of office – sacking this, hiring that – to have any inclination yet for anything restructuring or true federalism! Another said if all the #ENDBADGOVERNANCE protests achieved was frightening the daylight out of President Tinubu and his cohorts, that it is worth the effort. But I say, if we think we have survived this scare, let’s fear the rage next time!

How does a Nigerian from the south of the country convince his northern compatriot that he means well when he analyses the problems in the North and their implications for the country?

I honestly don’t know. But having spent the last 25 years in the geographical north of Nigeria and having had the privilege of travelling round the states that make up the former Northern Region in the company of some of my most trusted friends who happen to be northerners, I believe that I am well positioned to write this friendly memo to my brothers and sisters in Northern Nigeria.

Children Bearing Children

The spectacle that confronts a first-time visitor to many of the major cities in the North in terms of how underaged children are treated is scandalous. Hiding under contrived religious injunctions, the society accepts what an outsider would consider as marriage between children. Or how else would you describe a marital union between a 16-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl?

In many cases, the boy grew up on the streets, having been sent to an Islamic teacher from an early age as an almajiri. Some of the almajiris are as young as five years old. The mallam himself needs material succour and he uses the children under his care as street beggars. There are millions of such children all over the major towns looking unkempt, undernourished and desperate. It is from their ranks that politicians recruit underage voters during elections and ‘protesters’ for various causes.

The girl child who is married off at the age of 10 or 12 always holds the short end of the stick because, more often than not, she ends up having Vesicovaginal fistula (VVF). The elite who are in a position to legislate against it are firmly opposed to such a move.  So, babies continue to beget babies. Poverty is compounded by destitution and incontinence.

This wasn’t how the North was administered during the time of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the legendary Premier of the Northern Region in the First Republic. Ahmadu Bello prioritised education and ensured a balance between religious activities and educational pursuits. The Northern region became famous for groundnut pyramids, cotton, tin mining, and massive production of staple food items. The late premier instituted scholarships for children of the North without ethnic or religious discrimination.

The ever-prescient Premier of the West, whose greatest legacy was the provision of free and compulsory education in his region, looked ahead and warned his fellow politicians who felt that he was wasting too much money on education that it was in their interest to do so because “The children of the poor you refuse to train (educate) will never let your children have peace.” His prediction is played out at the #EndBadGovernance protests as gangs of youthful vandals went from street to street, smashing cars and frightening the daylight out of the children of the elite.

The sense of entitlement which the Northern elite have had over the years has made them believe that the federal government ought to pick the bills of parenting the almajiris while the elite continue their life of luxury. No other part of the country is breeding children and calling on the federal government to raise them. It is a simple case of irresponsible parenting.

Beggars Everywhere

The present system of bundling the beggars to the South in droves has not had a dramatic effect as expected. How many more thousand beggars can southern cities accommodate before they start screaming? And with the present economic crunch, are the almsgivers of the South themselves not in need of help now?

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has expressed concern that Nigeria has the largest number of out-of-school children globally, with only 63 percent of primary school children regularly attending school. It lamented that a staggering 10.2 million primary school-age children and an additional 8.1 million at the junior secondary level are out of school in Nigeria.

Assessing the situation in an article on Newsdiary Online, Rashidat Yusuf writes: “The shocking revelation to some of us who hardly go far north is the level at which the almajiris (children) have grown up to adolescents and yet are left to wander on their own aimlessly… Little wonder there is so much kidnapping and banditry in this part of the North.”

It is gratifying that some of the northern elite, notable among whom is Prof Usman Yusuf, have risen up to the challenge of campaigning for the rights of the underprivileged, especially the almajiris, and have put the problem squarely at the doorsteps of the state governors and local government chairmen who are best positioned, together with the religious authorities, to mount region-wide advocacy for responsible parenthood and carry out a skill acquisition programme to give the almajiris a future.

Prof Yusuf also wants northerners to realise that they have to share power if Nigeria is to survive. He drew attention to the cabinet positions which northerners currently hold in the Tinubu administration and thinks the spread is fair:

Northern Ministers

Minister of State, Housing and Urban Development; Minister of Budget and Economic Planning; Minister of State, FCT; Minister of State, Water Resources and Sanitation; Minister of Agriculture; Minister of Education; Minister of Police Affairs; Minister of Foreign Affairs; Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare; Minister of State, Steel and Development; Minister of Steel and Development; Minister of Information and National Orientation; Minister of State, Police Affairs; Minister of Special Duties; Minister of Water Resources and Sanitation; Minister of State, Agriculture and Food Security; Minister of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy; Minister of Defence; Minister of State for Defence; Minister of State, Education; Minister of Housing and Urban Development.

The North also has the Vice President, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the National Security Adviser, the Chief of Defence Staff, the Chief of Air Staff, and highly coveted positions in the oil industry and important federal parastatals.

Protests Sponsored?

Last week, Senator Shehu Sani revealed that most of the protesters in Kaduna were sponsored by disgruntled Northern politicians against Tinubu.

*”If anyone tells you that those protesters in the North brandishing flags were out because of hunger, it’s a lie. I can say boldly and credibly that those boys were offered money and flags to stage a revolt against the government to instigate a coup. Take it from me: there is a deliberate attempt to overthrow the Tinubu’s government by some folks in the north here, who hid under the hunger protest to do what they plotted with the flying of Russian flags in Kaduna, Kano, Katsina and Jigawa States.”

According to ancient tradition, a wind from the South means a good harvest, while one from the East means a good year for fruit, but a wind from the North foretells a year of storms.

If the Tinubu administration comes to grief through undemocratic means (tufiakwa 10 times), those who think they’re pursuing a northern agenda today may find that they have played into the hands of separatists and unwittingly proclaimed new nations into existence — goodbye Nigeria!

My humble advice to my brothers and sisters in the North: bend down and do the hard work that will make the North great again!

Fela Anikulap-Kuti, the inimitable Nigerian musician, was a trail-blazer in many parts. He created the music genre called Afrobeat; he rendered the lyrics of his popular tunes in pidgin English, and he deployed his music to fighting social ills and the government’s oppressive policies. He had a running battle with the Nigerian police, more than any other establishment. As their regular guest, he must have visited police detention centres over a hundred times in his chequered life. 

After one of his controversial arrests and detention at Alagbon Close, a cul-de-sac of a street in Lagos Island that served as the police criminal investigation facility in 1974, he released a song called Alagbon Close, with lyrics that lampooned the police for maltreating him. The popular refrain…uniform na cloth, na tailor dey sew am…mocked the police for being inhuman, just because they were putting on uniforms that any tailor could sew. 

Uniforms are not the only clothes that change the status and circumstances of men. Flags are even more so. Though simply a piece of cloth, or pieces of clothes sewed together, flags symbolize things of different meanings; it is an instrument of authority and it symbolizes the status of sovereignty. 

So when the #EndBadGovernance protests got underway 11 days ago, it was expected to be a show of public disapproval of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s handling of the socio-economic affairs of the country. In less than 15 months, his administration has shown great incompetence in managing the nation’s economy. While it embarked on questionable expenditures, some of the major projects are either self-serving or have no significance to the needs of the poor. 

Tinubu set the wrong foot forward from day one. While many agreed on the need to remove the subsidy on petroleum products which was guzzling humongous amounts of our resources, the manner it was arbitrarily removed at the inauguration ground, without first studying the books, consulting with industry stakeholders and emplacing social safety nets for the people whose life and livelihoods revolve around the industry, was fatal. 

There were other neo-liberal policies like the much-criticized floating of the Naira which plunged the nation’s currency into a tailspin it has not recovered from till today. Unable to survive in the harsh operating environment, over 12 major multinational companies have exited Nigeria within the period, while countless local business concerns have folded up. In nearly all sectors, production has plummeted and food insecurity has added to the general insecurity ravaging the country. 

In the midst of all the adversity, the Tinubu administration and the National Assembly that enables its every financial request rides the wave of luxury. The presidential air fleet that boasts 5 aircraft recently welcomed one more super jet; convoys of officials in the executive got longer with more shinning vehicles; the legislators use the latest SUVs from Japan’s Toyota, and the Vice President has moved into his mansion that cost a princely N21 billion to complete. Even the presidential guest house in Dodan Barracks, got about N5 billion for another face-lift, just in case the president may want to spend a few minutes there while in Lagos.

If that is not profligacy, Nigerians wonder what is?

In the build-up to the protest, Tinubu showed nonchalance, Senate President Akpabio taunted the poor masses the more while Police IG Egbetokun talked tough. The protesters must have thought a mere demonstration against the pervasive profligacy was not enough since no official of any consequence appeared to be losing sleep. 

The idea of the Russian flags must have been a brilliant idea to draw attention and frighten security personnel out of their slumber. So, after a violent first day of the protests in Kano during which buildings and cars were torched and offices and shops looted, they arrived the streets of Kano the next day with Russian flags.

A year after Nigeria’s northern neighbours, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger expelled the French authorities and entered a security understanding with Russia, the sight of Russian flags on the streets of Nigeria was not just embarrassing, it was scary. Have the Sahel nations that spurned Nigeria and the ECOWAS headed by President Bola Tinubu become a route through which our sovereignty could be threatened?

All attention turned to Kano. Has the state with two ‘governors’ and two ‘emirs’ for one emirate, also split into people of two nationalities?

For a moment, the security chiefs who had been scare-mongering about a possible foreign sponsorship of the protests, appeared to have hit the bulls eye on intelligence. Though the Russian government – through its Embassy in Nigeria – denied any involvement, our security analysts seized the stage with extrapolations on the wider ideological battles the two major world powers were turning Nigeria into. To say that it was a frightening scenario is to put it mildly, especially when some of the protesters were calling for regime change, a senseless and outrageous proposition. 

But after three days of doomsday analyses, and a national broadcast that some people say was forced on the President by the dire circumstances in Kano, the chips finally came down to one tailor called Ahmed. 

The Directorate of State Security announced that it has apprehended Ahmed, the tailor that made the Russian flags. The picture of Ahmed appeared with pieces of clothing materials in the colours of the Russian flag. Could this haggard-looking man be the source of the events that caused the nation so much scare and discomfort? If he is, then the reports of massive infiltration of Vladimir Putin’s supporters from neighboring countries may have been exaggerated or totally off-point.

As it turned out, the flags that some people were prepared to swear were first soaked in the communist chambers of the Kremlin, were actually produced in the dingy backstreets of Gyadigyadi in Kano City by one ‘Obioma’ tailor.

The result of investigation by security agencies is not out yet, but one question comes to mind: was Ahmed the tailor aware of the consequences of his treasonable acts? I wager he didn’t but it doesn’t count for an excuse. Any 100 level law student will tell you that ignorance is not an excuse in law. He may jolly well be a pawn in the hands of some more enlightened sponsors. Or like the tailor in Fela’s ‘Alagbon Close’ who innocently sew the uniforms that turn the mere mortals in police uniforms to beasts that delight in the ill treatment of fellow citizens. 

As the nation awaits the outcome of investigations, the fact is that flags – even the Russian flag – is, after all, mere pieces of clothes that any tailor can turn into an instrument of national scare.

Sheddy Ozoene, Editor-In-Chief of People&Politics, is Vice President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors. 

An American immigration officer caught me unawares with a probing question. I was doing a research on five oil-producing countries on a comparative scale with Nigeria to draw out lessons for our leaders on policy environment, windfall management, upstream-downstream linkages, local content, and operations of national oil companies. I had travelled to Washington, DC to use the libraries of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In my hand was a book, ‘The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-states’,  authored by Terry Lynn Karl who explored why the oil boom of the 1970s produced disappointing outcomes in some countries, Nigeria inclusive.

“So, what do you think Nigeria’s problem is?” the immigration officer, who obviously saw the book, asked me. I was not expecting that. Until 2006, my answer to every question about “Nigeria’s problem” had always been “corruption”. I never had to think twice. The evidence was everywhere. However, upon deeper reflection — after studying the development trajectories of many countries across the world — I had come to realise that as big a problem as corruption was, incompetence would give it a run for its money. That was how I began to develop and peddle my pet theory that for Nigeria to break out of underdevelopment, our leaders must be BOTH patriotic and competent.

“Umm,” I stammered a response to the officer. “I think it is—”

He cut in, with a smile: “Let me help you. Some countries have political problems. Some have economic problems. Nigeria has both political and economic problems.” What a summary!

The recent (or ongoing) protest in Nigeria reminded me of this conversation. There were clearly two aspects to the protest: there were those complaining about the economy and there were those playing politics. It was very glaring. Those interested in the economy were complaining about the price of garri and the cost of running government. Those playing politics were waving the Russian flag (ignore the lie that it was the flag of the Nigerian military) and calling for President Vladmir Putin to help overthrow President Bola Tinubu’s government. Some of the protesters said Tinubu should resign and hand over to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who came second in the 2023 presidential election.

Governor Uba Sani aptly captured this about the violent protest in Kaduna, his state. “When you see children within the ages of nine, 10 and 14 now raising the flag of another country, you will agree with me that it’s well designed, sponsored by some elements who are calling for anarchy in their own country. They took advantage by using the psychology of those children, knowing fully that here in Northern Nigeria, our people are close to our neighbouring countries, such as Niger Republic, making them to believe that what happened in Niger Republic can happen in Nigeria; what happened in Burkina Faso can happen in Nigeria and what happened in Mali can happen in Nigeria.”

I read several comments in WhatsApp groups and the platform formerly known as Twitter. Some suggested that the north was ganging up against Tinubu and would do anything to regain political power in 2027. One commenter argued that northerners never protested over economic hardship under President Muhammadu Buhari but have suddenly found their voice because a southerner is president. The central theory, from what I can glean, is that some northern forces are moving against Tinubu because they cannot control him. Well, I am not a fan of conspiracy theories so don’t expect me to jump on the bandwagon. In any case, I also have my own issues with Tinubu’s leadership style.

However, there is nothing happening so far that surprises me. I am well aware that the political and economic history of Nigeria did not start in 2023 or 2019 or 2015 — as you could be misled to think if you spend too much time on social media. Nigeria has always been complicated; the mistrust and competition between the north and the south has always been there. We went to war in 1967 basically as an aftermath of the 1966 coup which pitted a part of the country against another. More so, there is nothing strange about mutual suspicion in a multicultural society. Even in societies that are seemingly monolithic, there is still room for rancour. There is no perfect society in the world.

I am not suggesting that all conspiracy theories are false. Some things are too striking to be coincidental. Some of the protests and violence in the north are definitely politically motivated and have nothing to do with the inflation rate. Why would protesters invade the Kano government house? The state is governed by the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), not the All Progressives Congress (APC), so why should Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf be the target of protesters when the macro-economic policies are orchestrated by the APC-led government in Abuja? Why should Tinubu be asked to resign and be replaced by Atiku when the constitution is clear on who succeeds him?

Being president of Nigeria is no tea party. Challenges must come. Conspiracies must surface. Let us look back a bit. When President Olusegun Obasanjo was in power, he faced quite a number of crises in his early days. Perhaps, the biggest was the introduction of Sharia criminal code by 12 northern states. Shari’a had always been for civil affairs, but it was being scaled up to criminal matters which had been the exclusive preserve of our criminal laws. Zamfara state, which in 2000 became the first to adopt the Sharia criminal code, amputated the hand of Bello Buba Jangebe, a cow thief, to show that it meant business. Two women were sentenced to death for adultery in other Shari’a states.

Obasanjo’s initial response was to fiercely condemn and threaten the Shari’a states but having seen the brick wall ahead of him (there were unconfirmed rumours that the Supreme Court was going to rule in favour of the states), he decided to calm down. It seemed to me that he realised, and accepted, that it was a political challenge that he needed to handle with tact. He changed rhetoric, saying that there was the “real Shari’a” and the “political Shari’a”. He predicted that the “political Shari’a” would soon fade out. Today, it appears only Kano is still operating Shari’a in a newsworthy format with the frequent breaking of bottles of beer and mass arrest of “immoral” mannequins.

It was not easy for Obasanjo. The Shari’a riots between 2000 and 2002, mostly in the north-west, claimed thousands of lives. It was bloodshed upon bloodshed. As if this was not enough trouble, Jos, Plateau state, exploded. The riot of September 2001, sparked off by some seemingly innocuous development (they said one Christian lady walked past a Muslim praying ground or one Muslim politician got a political appointment ahead of a Christian — all sorts of theories), led to the deaths of at least 1,000 persons. Jos has not known peace since then. Obasanjo also faced an impeachment process in 2002. His supporters blamed his travails on northerners who wanted power back in 2003.

It may also interest us to recall that some anti-Obasanjo protesters called for the military to overthrow him, although they did not fly the Russian flag. Rather, pro-Osama bin Laden and “Death to America” rallies were common in Kano. When people make it look like Obasanjo had an easy time in power, I tend to think time has erased our memory. He had it rough and tough, some of his own making and some out of political intrigues. He survived and somehow got a second term. But he managed to unite almost the entire country against himself with the ill-fated third term agenda. Overall, he played the complicated politics of leading Nigeria and implementing economic reforms.

Tinubu is now facing his own baptism of fire. How will he handle it? Will he play the regional card by insisting it is a northern conspiracy against him in order to gain the sympathy of southerners, most of whom voted against him in 2023? Will he engage in pragmatism — “give a little, take a little” — in order to keep his northern friends onside? There is no card he plays that will not come with a price. The regional card can backfire and make Aso Rock hotter for him (President Goodluck Jonathan definitely has a story to tell about this) but some southerners will be happy if it will eventually lead to balkanisation. The pacification card will require changing his style but it may hurt his ego.

Running a delicate country like Nigeria requires a lot of tact. Many presidents discover this too late, to their own hurt. As the US immigration officer told me, we have both economic and political problems. These are hefty weights. Fixing the badly broken economy is a monumental challenge on its own, but at least it is largely a technical issue. Managing political interests in a complex polity is another thing altogether. It requires a different skill set and mindset. What did Obasanjo get right (or wrong) when he faced his own baptism of fire in the games of policy, power and politics? What did other presidents get right (or wrong)? I am curious to see how Tinubu will handle his own baptism.

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

MISS CHIEF

Ms Chidimma Adetshina, born in South Africa to a Nigerian father and a Mozambican mother, found herself in a nasty situation when she decided to contest for Miss South Africa. She ordinarily should qualify to be a South African — having lived there all the 23 years of her life so far — but she was branded a “foreigner” and now, one of her parents is being investigated for allegedly obtaining citizenship through identity theft. This is not a coincidence. We may talk all the legal jargons, but the fact is that this is indisputably another episode in the senseless cold war between Nigeria and South Africa, or should I say between Nigerians and South Africans. MTN, Multichoice and all that. Silly.

CAMPAIGN PAIN

Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi state aimed hot shots at President Tinubu on Wednesday in what may be an effective kick-off of the 2027 presidential election campaign. Commenting on the nationwide protest, Mohammed — who was minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) from 2010-2015 and is a staunch member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) — took aim at the government of the All Progressives Congress (APC). “It’s their programmes that have caused all these problems. If Tinubu continues like this, in 2027, I will invite him to be our campaign director because everywhere would be PDP, and we are going to win because it is self-inflicted injury,” he fired. Ouch!

HAMMER BLOW

I watched in pains as Ms Annette Echikunwoke represented the US in hammer throw at the Paris Olympics. It is not strange for athletes to fly “a flag of convenience” and win medals for their adopted countries. But Echikunwoke’s case is different and painful. Born in the US to Nigerian parents, all she wanted to do was represent her ancestral country where her heart was. But we messed her up. Because of an administrative lapse, she was disqualified from the 2020 Olympics over Nigeria’s failure to comply with the out-of-competition testing (OCT) requirement. Echikunwoke had already set the African record by then. Nobody can blame her for deciding to jump ship. Heartbreaking.

NO COMMENT

A state in the Federal Republic of Nigeria has not recruited into its civil service in 25 years. Those are not my words — they belong to Mr Erasmus Ekpang, commissioner for information, Cross River state. Governor Bassey Otu has now lifted the embargo. “As we speak, the state civil service is almost depleted and we are indeed happy that the governor has considered it necessary to recruit at this point in time,” Ekpang said. A quarter of a century? A whole generation? Civil service is the engine of government. It is where policies are formulated and implemented. Entries and exits are critical to keeping the wheel running. You mean a state has not replenished the stock in 25 years? Wonderful.

In a way, the #EndBadGovernance or #EndHunger protests have not panned out exactly the way the organisers had planned. A few cities—notably Abuja, Lagos, Bauchi, Maiduguri, Kano and Kaduna—were grounded for a few days, and the president was dragged into making a national broadcast. But weariness and complications crept in, most citizens expectedly hurried back to their normal businesses, and the protests petered out.

Having weathered this storm—without sustaining more than a mere scratch—the President Bola Tinubu administration could be led to think that its containment strategy worked well, that it has developed a good template for handling future iterations, and that all is well and good. That will be a wrong lesson to take from these protests. As long as the underlying reasons for the protests remain or even worsen, all cannot be said to be well and good. The country will remain a tinderbox, and be vulnerable to the slightest spark.

A few complications helped the government in taking the heat out of the hunger protests. The most obvious one is that the protests were quickly infiltrated or hijacked by those whose agendas went beyond the cost-of-living crisis: those calling for a coup and for regime change; those trying to relitigate the outcome of the 2023 elections or positioning ahead of 2027; those calling for the president to resign and be replaced by one of his competitors in the last election; and those flying Russian flags and asking Vladmir Putin to intervene in Nigeria. Then, there was the looting of public and private property, and there was the fact that the protests were more pronounced in certain parts than others.

It became clear these other dimensions were clearly well-orchestrated and that some bad-faith actors were pulling the strings behind the scene. Not a few had to reconsider their stance and avoid becoming mere pawns in the high-wire political chess game they didn’t sign up for. This twist created a dilemma for even some of the leaders of the protests, divided the larger populace, and weakened support for the cause. Unwittingly, these became a boon to the government.

However, it will be a mistake for the president and his team to think they will always be presented with such a luck. The right approach will be for them to understand why many Nigerians were willing to participate in or to support the call for street protests that started on social media, how this administration contributed to that willingness from even among some ardent supporters of the president, and where and how the government needs to make quick course correction.

The simple truth is that even when most Nigerians have had it rough for a while, their suffering has been of a higher concentration in the past year or so.  Times have become extremely hard—most Nigerians are struggling to feed themselves and straining to afford other key necessities of life. There is hunger mixed with angst in the land. The angst is so thick you can slice it.  

So, this is not the time for the administration to congratulate itself on successfully sitting out the first major confrontation with the masses. The urge to declare victory may be tempting, but it will be clearly wrongheaded. If the status quo subsists, it is just of a matter when, not if, the next and the next confrontations will happen, and there is no guarantee that things will not turn out in a totally different way. The administration will help itself and the country by taking this slight brush as a wake-up call, and as a major opportunity for rigorous introspection and for a step-change.

As said earlier, things were not particularly rosy when the president assumed office on May 29^th, 2023. Headline inflation was 22.41% while food inflation was 24.84% as at May 2023. Inflation rate above 20% is a danger sign that should keep policymakers constantly awake and worried. Nigeria crossed the 20% barrier in August 2022 when headline inflation hit 20.52%, and has kept a steady climb since.

But things have got rapidly and remarkably worse in the 14 months of the current administration. As at June this year, headline inflation had jumped to 34.2% and food inflation had soared to 40.87%, up from 22.41% and 24.84% respectively when the president assumed office. And by the way, the inflation rates are aggregate figures, and as such are not fully representative of the extent of the hit that Nigerians have taken in their pockets and in their savings. Prices of some commonly used or consumed food items have tripled or even quadrupled. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the prices of brown beans surged by 252% and tomatoes by 320% between June 2023 and June 2024. The corresponding months of the two years indicate this is not about seasonality. A country with such rapid hikes in food prices is just an orange-pip-spit away from trouble.  

To be sure, there are different drivers of the current high prices in the country. But the major culprits are the after-effects of the signature reforms of the Tinubu administration: removal of petrol subsidy and floating of the Naira. Both reforms are necessary and should have been implemented long ago, as I have submitted here on many occasions. For instance, Nigeria splurged $10 billion on petrol subsidy alone in 2022, a year when debt service consumed more than 80% of Federal Government’s retained revenue. The country was simply burning the money it didn’t have and was hurtling towards a thinly-disguised ditch. So, petrol subsidy was unsustainable and an unwise way of allocating scarce resources. It needed to go.

However, while the president still deserves applause for having the guts to take on the subsidy that most Nigerians have become passionately wedded to, he cannot be absolved of the charge that he undertook this significant reform without adequate thoughts and provisions for those that would be disproportionately affected it, especially the poor. It is well documented that petrol subsidy removal would lead to a hike in the costs of transportation and food, two things that the poor spend almost all of their incomes on. More than a year after what has come off more like an impulsive than a considered policy action, we are still discussing how to cushion the effects of subsidy removal on the poor, and petrol subsidy, clearly, has crept back because of the next thing the government did.

On 14^th June 2023, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), with a clear nod from above, introduced another major shock: the floating of the Naira. This can be termed the most egregious step taken by the administration so far. The gap between the official and parallel exchange rates has narrowed and forex-denominated revenue of the government has swollen to the extent that exchange gain is now the third highest component of revenue shared by FAAC (after statutory revenue and VAT). But Naira has experienced a massive plunge, losing 53% at the parallel market and 71% at the official window. In an economy that imports a lot, businesses and individuals are reeling from the double and persistent whammy of price hikes and instability.

One of the things that the president and his team say so often these days is that the pains from the reforms are unavoidable. No, that is not exactly accurate. Yes, reforms come with pains, and delayed adjustments are accompanied by a higher order of anguish. But there is nothing inevitable about the quantum or the calibration of the misery inflicted through the reforms, especially the forex reform. One, floating the Naira was totally ill-advised. The CBN could have gradually devalued the Naira to what is now considered the fair value of our national currency. With that a dollar would still be below N1000 by now.

Two, floating the Naira without first securing adequate supply of forex to meet pent-up demands and muster enough firepower against speculators is a recipe for the rapid depreciation that we are living through. And three, floating the Naira shortly after removing petrol subsidy amounts not only to introducing double shocks simultaneously on a long-suffering people but also to ignoring that there is a limit to the amount of pain the human body can tolerate. Pacing or sequencing is a key element in reform management. But it seems the reform team, if there was any, missed that memo.

So, it will be important for the Tinubu administration to acknowledge that it tried to do the right thing but in the wrong way or in the wrong order. It needs to own its mistake, make reasonable adjustments, and ensure that future actions are more carefully considered and undertaken with clear and robust strategies and plans. In terms of needed adjustments, it might be necessary, for example, to move from a free float of the Naira to a managed float. It is also worth considering freezing the forex rate used for imports or adjusting it on a quarterly basis. That will make for better planning and less fluctuation.   

There are some areas where the government needs to take a hard look at itself. The first is its speed of response. Measures to cushion the effects of petrol subsidy removal should have been frontloaded or fast-tracked. There was a vacuous debate about the social register because some governors want to control the paltry sums meant the poorest households. In July, the Federal Government announced some consequential actions against soaring food prices. Those were good, emergency and time-barred moves that could have come at least three to six months earlier. Precious time had been wasted by key government officials in looking for scapegoats for high food prices. It is important not just to act, but also to act on time.

The second is the need for the government to actively model the time we live in and take the lead in demonstrating the sacrifice that it is asking of or imposing on the citizens. Neither the pattern of budgetary allocations nor the way public officials carry themselves suggests that Nigeria is passing through a tough period. With the business-as-usual approach to budgeting in the main appropriation, with the mind-boggling extravagance in the budgets of the government-owned entities, and with the talks about new presidential jets, the government either doesn’t get it or doesn’t care or is just plain insensitive. You can’t be inflicting pains on your citizens and be coasting around in obscene convoys, be prioritising new cars and new buildings, be fielding huge delegations to international meetings and be running a bloated, and mostly lacklustre, cabinet.

Third, the president needs to adopt a more inclusive, less alienating and more practical approach. He seems too eager to reward his Lagos loyalists with key appointments, without due sensitivity to the need for national spread. He is alienating key individuals and major sections of the country. Ruling a country, as with politics, is a game of addition, not subtraction. It is strange that this seems lost on someone regarded as a master political strategist. The triumphalist edge to his politics overlooks the point about the harm that a growing army of the alienated can do, especially in moments of real or concocted crisis.

President Tinubu, unexpectedly, has enjoyed a long honeymoon. But all honeymoons are like weekends: they don’t last forever. It is safe to assume that with the protests, Tinubu’s extended honeymoon has lapsed or is about to. He should brace himself for more confrontations. The right lesson for him to take from the protests this time will not be how to continue to win against those who confront or oppose him. But about the need to significantly address the underlying conditions that can make it easy for the genuinely hurting masses and various interested parties to join forces.