Nigeria’s children of the dump sites

Our children are now chasing out the adults from the business. But in their own case they are mainly foraging for foods that are often not there. On Monday, January 20, a national newspaper published a news feature on the dire situation of some Nigerian children. Its finding was that not many children were currently privileged to have tea and bread for food at home. It said many of them now live off refuse dumps; they carry sacks filled with used cartons, empty drink cans, and discarded plastic bottles and bowls. WHAT’S unfolding presently will form part of the foundations for the future of our country. And the picture is not good. That the majority of the privileged and the ruling elite live in denial will not change it. What is looming and getting clearer as daylight is that this will be a future and a disaster that was foretold. Successive regimes, and especially those of the All Progressives Congress (APC) political party since 2015, had been leading Nigeria down a slippery slope. The 15 years or so of the former ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) are now being celebrated as the ‘golden years’ of Nigeria, to borrow from President Donald Trump’s so-called American golden age. But as disasters go the PDP as a ruling party was just a shade above this ruinous APC. PDP lived on borrowed robes. It started fairly well under President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007) but quickly relapsed into bad ways, profligacy and the expressed feelings of invincibility. The party suffered from low crude oil prices at the beginning, as low as $15 per barrel at the start of this democratic dispensation, but later under President Goodluck Jonathan enjoyed a boom with prices surging beyond $120/barrel. It failed miserably in managing the bumper returns. And so got itself sacked ostensibly by voters in 2015. The APC, a hastily cobbled special purpose vehicle that passed as a political party, took power at the centre and in most of the sub nationals subsequently. This party over-promised in its quest for power during the campaigns in 2014. It promised everything under the sun except creating human beings. It even promised to recreate Nigeria and Nigerians. But under Muhammadu Buhari it started very poorly by first denying virtually all it promised, and disclaiming its own manifesto. Its candidate – turned – president Buhari was strident in distancing himself from the promises of the party, the so-called Contract with Nigerians. In terms of ineptitude the APC under Buhari turned out worse than the PDP. In corruption the party and its principal operatives were worse than eye-sores. It piled up debts from every source – offshore, domestic markets, and through Ways and Means which simply means minting Naira banknotes backed by nothing. Yes, nothing. Buhari fumbled and wobbled for eight years, and took the country back by 30 years. He was an affliction of unimaginable proportions. Buhari’s successor, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, now going to 20 months on the saddle, appears to be no better in spite of claims to courage and to reforming the economy and the country. He came with a baggage of personal failings, certificates and names controversies, and a questionable electoral victory. So he was dogged by palpable legitimacy issues. Indeed, there was a recent report, which is yet to be refuted (unlike what is in the regime’s DNA), that a foreign lobbying firm was retained with millions of dollars to help burnish his image and to make him appear less a pariah among his supposed peers on the international stage. By some calculations, Tinubu jets out of the country after every 17 days of what now appears to be a visit to the country he is supposed to be governing to, according to his officials woo foreign investors. He cuts a forlorn and isolated figure in many of his trips abroad, especially when he is in the midst of other significant world leaders. Not a good comparison, anyway, but the US President Donald Trump who took office one week ago, yesterday, and without travelling out of his country, has attracted pledges of investments reported to be close to $3 trillion from around the world. Nobody needs to dig deep to find out how shallow this regime is and how desperately it looks for a win. Recently, the henchmen of the administration and their choristers started celebrating that the Naira, Nigeria’s national currency, has stabilised at N1,500 to $1USD. Are they for real? At the beginning of the so-called economic reforms and currency convergence, the consensus and the projection was that the rate would settle at N800/$. Rulers with a modicum of shame will not roll out the drums for the current exchange rate. The economic policies and programmes of the Tinubu regime are whimsical and his claimed political reforms are inchoate and haphazard. The jury is still out on his quest to make federating units out of the country’s 774 local councils by making them ‘autonomous’ and funding them directly from the federation account. He claims his actions were informed by Constitutional provisions. But that’s self – serving because this same man, in his earlier incarnation as Lagos state governor (1999-2007) fought tooth and nail for councils to be under the suzerainty of state governments. But not anymore today. The only thing that has changed is that Bola Tinubu is now the president. His actions are political and driven by 2027. He wants his fingers in every pie, and foot soldiers to ‘grab, snatch and run’ away with results of the 2027 election, that is, if there will be any elections in the true sense of the word. The same uncertainty is playing out in the economy. Tinubu says repeatedly that he is already seeing light at the end of the tunnel. He might be seeing a mirage. The World Bank has said it would take a minimum of 15 years of sustaining his punishing economic regimen for any impact to be noticed. The hallmarks of the

Peter Obi and Tinubu’s APC’s morbid line

My brother and friend Emeka Duru, a member of the reverred Nze na Ozo fraternity in Orlu, Imo state, said in the title of his article last week in the Niche online publication that ‘Peter Obi is not the issue’ afflicting the floundering regime of Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his special purpose All Progressives Congress (APC) clueless ruling party. In the old order, unblemished integrity and fidelity to the truth are some of the irreducible minimums for admission into the Igbo Nze na Ozo clan. Sadly, these requirements for membership appear to be receding as some young men of dubious character and questionable wealth have invaded that rarefied association ostensibly in their quest for legitimacy, relevance and acceptance. Today, many Igbo men and youngsters who are living thousands of kilometres away from the Igbo homeland simply send money home to their relatives to purchase the title of Nze or Ozo, and membership of the club. But I know Nze Emeka Duru. I know he lives here and he associates closely with the people of the ancient Orlu Kingdom where he comes from. He is honest, he is truthful, to the extent that any typical human being can be. If he makes a mistake it will be that of the heart, not the head. And he made a mistake in the title of his article which I referenced above when he wrote that Peter Obi was not the issue. The blurb in the said article which I alluded to said Nigerians needed issues of hunger and poverty holding them down to be tackled. That they needed assurances of a better future for their children. That they needed adequate security for their businesses and properties. That these were the issues that matter to the citizens. The point is that these things enumerated by Duru are exactly the issues that Peter Obi speaks to, and hammers on, to the discomfiture of our current rulers. And because those are the issues that Obi forcefully and relentlessly calls attention to, he has become an irritant to this band of insensitive rulers. He has, therefore, become the issue. So Peter Obi is the issue. They ignore him at their own peril. They take him out also at their own peril. Head or tail they lose. The rulers are in-between and in-betwixt. “So what happened recently with Felix Morka, national publicity secretary of the APC, was natural and expected, though weird. It’s typical that when one party in a debate loses the argument, they resort to abuse, intimidation, threat, and violence – first verbal and then physical violence. Morka and his band in the APC are at the first stage of verbal violence. And what they have done was to serve a notice that their regime will not be shy in moving to the next phase. The use of the phrase “crossing the line” by Morka on Obi was intentional, thought – through, deliberate, and collectively considered and agreed upon by the APC enforcers and executioners.” Obi is not a typical Nigerian politician in spite of his being a two -term governor of the south east state of Anambra, and a presidential running mate at another election. So when after the Nigerian Supreme Court legalised the controversial, some would say fraudulent, 2023 presidential election, and Obi said he would not abandon the pursuit of his quest for the realisation of a better Nigeria, not many people took him seriously. The expectation was that he would grumble and make noise for a few months, slip into oblivion, lose traction with his base of mostly young people, go abroad to catch his breath and attend to his health and business, and possibly return close to the next election in 2027 to once more stake his claim to the presidency. None of the expectations came to pass. And no sitting regime, especially that which has been burdened with a lingering perception of illegitimacy, and so many warts and baggage, will not feel irritated and angry at the ‘effrontery’ of Peter Obi. Not many rulers in a third world country like Nigeria will be comfortable with any citizen calling them out for inflicting pains and privations on the vast majority of the people. How can a man whom the electoral agency and the courts had judged that his alternative vision for the country had been rejected by the Nigerian electorate remain so popular and relevant? How could it be that the voice of the same man who was said to have been spurned by the majority of the voters still carried so much weight and resonated across the country two years, next month, after the election? It’s irreconcilable. It just does not make any sense. He should be stopped. The high decibel ‘noise’ from a man with a naturally tiny voice must be muzzled. So what happened recently with Felix Morka, national publicity secretary of the APC, was natural and expected, though weird. It’s typical that when one party in a debate loses the argument, they resort to abuse, intimidation, threat, and violence – first verbal and then physical violence. Morka and his band in the APC are at the first stage of verbal violence. And what they have done was to serve a notice that their regime will not be shy in moving to the next phase. The use of the phrase “crossing the line” by Morka on Obi was intentional, thought – through, deliberate, and collectively considered and agreed upon by the APC enforcers and executioners. For them it is enough for Obi. Words carry weight and meaning. It’s especially so in a fledgling anti-democratic dispensation such as ours is rapidly turning into. It does not matter whether the threatening words and warnings were muttered in a sober or in a menacing manner. And in this instance, Morka was menacing. He could not hide the fact that the APC is frustrated by the rankling failures of its successive administrations since 2015, first with that serial

Obasanjo, NNPC’S Invitation and Fraud Foretold

With its tattered reputation, the expectation is that the NNPC will carry on its corruption-stained operations below the radar. But no. It won’t. It must behave like the typical Nigerian politician and institution. It must be loud and given to attempting to ridicule. That will only be the explanation for its recent ‘invitation’ to a former president, Dr. Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007) to tour the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries which it claimed it had revamped after decades of their being comatose There has been no contest, at least not in the last 20 years, about the most opaque government corporation in Nigeria. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (Company) Limited (NNPCL) holds that dubious record. The corporation is synonymous with corruption and brazen lack of accountability. Most times it operates like a parallel government. It sells the country’s crude oil and spends the proceeds as suits its fancy. There are some fancy agencies in that sector, but in reality the NNPC is the operator and the regulator in Nigeria’s oil business. It does not really know how much crude oil is extracted from the belly of Nigeria; it does not know how much is exported; it does not know how much is earned; and, it does not account to anybody. But all the claims or pretentions not to know the critical aspects of its operations are down to one thing: corruption. The company is almost adept at pulling the wools over our eyes. I say ‘almost adept’ because it actually hides under the cover of successive presidents of the country to carry out its heists. Except probably during the presidency of Jonathan, other presidents since 1999 had served as presidents and oil ministers at the same time. Nigeria’s current president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu is also the minister of petroleum resources. It has to be said that the corruption in the corporation was no less when Jonathan ceded the oil ministry portfolio and supervision of the NNPC to Mrs. Diezani Allison – Madueke. She is right now a fugitive from the law who is hibernating somewhere in the United Kingdom, a country that is notorious for warehousing proceeds of corruption from third world countries’ rulers. The UK is also a beneficiary of centuries of slavery of Africans and black people on whose backs and sufferings it built its evil empire and criminal wealth. It has stoutly resisted taking responsibility for its cruelty, and paying reparations. Meanwhile, that woman whose former husband, a retired Navy General, and officer and gentleman, has since issued a cease and desist order on her use of his name, clutches the international passport of one obscure island nation ostensibly to escape justice in Nigeria. It’s curious that successive regimes since 2015 when the All Progressives Congress (APC) came to power, all attempts to extradite Diezani had failed. The reasons for the seeming failure of the current and past APC administrations to extradite the former oil minister should not be difficult to decipher – the potential revelations from her and her collaborators in the grand theft of our commonwealth during that era will splash mud on present and past rulers. The failure is a grand cover up for the exploiting class. READ ALSO: Nigeria Reopens North Korean Embassy After Long Closure For many years the NNPC did not publish any audited accounts of its operations. And it did not explain why. For years, and up till now, the former governor of the central bank, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has been asking NNPC the whereabouts of proceeds from the sales of our crude oil. Under President Goodluck Jonathan, Sanusi accused the NNPC and that administration of carrying out hanky-panky with crude oil export proceeds running into tens of billions of dollars. Sanusi was subsequently suspended as CBN governor, an audit firm was quickly recruited by the accused administration to probe Sanusi’s allegations. The outcome was what you suspected it would be – a clean bill of health for that regime and its corporation. But Sanusi who later became the emir of Kano, and then former emir after he was dethroned, and now back to power as a co-emir of the same Kano, will not be silenced in spite of his travails. He still believes that the NNPC is among the worst afflictions to befall this country in the management of its crude oil resources. Well, NNPC is the automated teller machine (ATM) of the federal government. So it works in concert with any sitting president and his administration. In terms of sleaze, it competes annually for the first position with our judges, police officers, Customs men, among others. “Let’s talk about the refineries. I know people are excited about it but I have a completely different view. Is it good that they are functioning? You bet but at what cost? Let’s look at a few things. 1. The (Muhammadu) Buhari administration borrowed $3bn to fix the refineries, $1.5bn for PH, then $1.5bn for both Warri and Kaduna. I wrote against it then because it (made) no sense at all. Why fix before selling? 2. Selling it (for) $750m in 2007 or even lower price would have been better for the nation (and) I am sure you know about Eleme Petrochemicals that for 10 years it was operating at 20-25% capacity utilisation but the first year under Indorama operated at 100% capacity, made profit and dividends paid about $74m. With its tattered reputation, the expectation is that the NNPC will carry on its corruption-stained operations below the radar. But no. It won’t. It must behave like the typical Nigerian politician and institution. It must be loud and given to attempting to ridicule. That will only be the explanation for its recent ‘invitation’ to a former president, Dr. Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007) to tour the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries which it claimed it had revamped after decades of their being comatose. Part of Obasanjo’s crime was that he reported how he had offered refineries to an international oil company (IOC)

MY PREDICTIONS FOR 2025

DO not ask me whether I am now also among the prophets as was curiously inquired of someone else in the Good Book. This shock of a development was recorded in 1 Samuel chapter 10 verse 11. I will take the version or translation or adumbration of the Message Bible. It said: “When Saul and his party got to Gibeah, there were the prophets, right in front of them! When those who had previously known Saul saw him prophesying with the prophets, they were totally surprised. What’s going on here? What’s come over the son of Kish? One man spoke up and said, ‘Who started this? Where did this people come from? That’s how the saying got started, Saul among the prophets! (Is Saul also among the prophets?). Who could have guessed?”. I may not have really been called to the ministry of prophecy but I am also a prophet of sorts. But the more important thing is that in Nigeria you do not need to be a schooled prophet to predict what will happen tomorrow, the next day or the day after. I know that prediction and prophecy are not one and the same thing, but I will leave those who like to split hairs to worry about the distinctions and differences. For our purpose today, the last day of this troubled year, I will be peeping into my crystal ball and I will treat whatever I see that will happen in Nigeria in 2025 as a prophecy. So I will advise that you do not deprive yourself of the prophet’s portion through unbelief. Here we go. In 2025, I see the country implementing two distinct and separate national budgets simultaneously. Unless Nigerians pray very hard, I see the number of budgets climbing to three towards the end of the year. Whether two or three budgets end up being implemented by the All Progressives Congress political party led federal government, it will still be an improvement on 2023/2024 fiscal year when, at a time, three and half budgets were being implemented. As it is the case right now, I predict that by this time next year, the henchmen of the government will not bother to give a coherent account of the performance, or better still, lack of performance of the expiring fiscal document or documents. READ ALSO: Military Action Against Niger: International Group Drags Tinubu to ECOWAS Court From my crystal ball it has been shown clearly to me that the 2025 budget will be passed by the national assembly and signed into law by the president of Nigeria, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, before April. The delay in passing the budget will not be down to the scrutiny of the document by senators and representatives. The delay will be down to two factors: one, for them to have sufficient time to pad the budget to line their pockets, and two,to create the impression that they are conducting due diligence. I predict and prophesy that the 2025 fiscal document will be riddled with hanging monetary provisions: allocations for building farm settlements which will be under the aviation and aerospace ministry; budgetary provisions for the repair of highways which contracts will be awarded to crude oil prospecting companies; funds for space exploration which will be domiciled in the newly created ministry of livestock development; and, money inserted in the ministry of agriculture which is expected to be used to build and install solar lights on Lagos -Ibadan expressway. Budgetary allocations for the construction of new classroom blocks in our Unity Schools will be in the name of one obscure restaurateur whose eatery is not registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission; money will be allocated to a community development association in Mgbidi in Oru West local government area of Imo state for the kitting of the national youth service corp members nationwide. It’s our prediction that this will be the complexion of the 2025 national budget. Those who may not like the look and the taste and the texture of the fiscal document should be free to ‘go to court’. The pockmarks and  abracadabra budgeting will continue next year and Budgit, SERAP and other anti-graft kindred spirits go scream and shout taya. These watchdogs have yet to realise that they are talking to rulers who have ingrained witchcraft spirit, the type that whispered to them to remove petrol subsidy and devalue the Naira at the same time last year without considerations for the deleterious fallouts. I prophesy that nothing significant will happen with the claim by the regime that it is working to diversify the economy. The Naira value of non-oil exports will increase in a phenomenal manner. But the significant increases will be due to the illusion of money. In dollar terms, the value of non-oil exports will be lower, or it will at best be at the same level with that of Muhammadu Buhari. And there’s nothing complementary with any regime’s performance being compared with Buhari’s, who until now was Nigeria’s worst president. Bad as it is, the Naira will continue to be unstable and unsettled, and will continue to bleed. The posturing of the central bank of Nigeria is just that – posturing. The claims of accretion to the foreign reserves is a ruse. That’s why the CBN is loathe to speak to the structure and tenor of the foreign reserves. The devil is in the details. So there will be no sustainable reprieve for the Naira. Indeed as we wrote this last weekend, Afrinvest took the thunder out of our prophecy. It projected in its latest study that the Naira will depreciate to N1,804/$1 at the official Forex window in 2025. Afrinvest said that it anticipates “that exchange rate volatility would persist in 2025, albeit at a modest pace. Our prognosis is hinged on the belief that the CBN would be constrained from adequately meeting market demand on a sustained basis, as the recent FX reserves accretion was largely driven by inflows from inorganic sources, including those

Deaths and blood rituals for bulaba balablu Christmas

Deaths and blood rituals for bulaba balablu Christmas ‘It will get worse before it gets worse’. That was the title of my article published here and in other newspapers on November 21, 2023, six months after Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, assumed office, and started his incoherent economic policies and programmes. The chicken is coming home to roost but it’s doing so at the cost of limbs, livelihoods and lives of the majority of Nigerians who are at the receiving end. Everyday we wake up to news of tragedies, especially of avoidable accidents, miseries and needless deaths. Tragedies now straddle the land – at home, school, market, highway, sea/river, farm, stream, bush path. Everywhere, really. There are no safe places in our country anymore. Nigerian lives no longer matter. Generator fumes wipe out families in their sleep. Kidnappers are no longer content with snatching travelers on the highways; they now pluck them from their homes, and kids from their schools, playgrounds, and classrooms. Terrorists, bandits, and sectarian insurgents who for political correctness were christened herdsmen invade farmlands and rape women and girls, slaughter  men and occupy  farms. Markets routinely go up in flames, many of them suspected to be acts of sabotage designed to cause economic dis-empowerment of a section of the country. Panels of inquiry follow such incidents but the results usually come to naught. There’s no life for a vast majority of Nigerians, and where there is, it is cheap. PLEASE READ: Nigeria: Challenging the Dysfunction, Rebuilding the Institutions When we wrote on November 21, last year that things will only get worse in this country we had no inkling it will be this bad. We had wished that we will not be vindicated because the consequences will be dire. The reality today is that Nigeria is in a dire straits. But the truth is that in spite of the acute poverty gripping Nigerians right now, the prognosis is that the future, at least the near future, is not looking good. If truth be told the future for many Nigerians is foreboding. What we wrote 13 months ago could have been written today and they will not be widely off the mark. The first three paragraphs of that entry unedited read: “Nigeria is in the intensive care unit and its caregivers appear not to be perturbed. No. They are actually engaged but not in attending to a gravely ill patient. They make platitudes on the delivery of their promises but commit to attending to their hedonistic desires and pleasures. “It is 146 days (as at November 21, 2023) since another set of rulers took the reins of power in Abuja. But not for one day have Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief. It has been like the reign of the Biblical rebellious Absalom in one part of the divided Kingdom of Israel. Absalom had told his subjects that whilst his father King David chastised them with the whip, he would do the same with the scorpion. Under former President, Maj.-Gen. Mohammadu Buhari, Nigeria suffered afflictions of unimaginable proportions. Indeed as that clueless regime that was bereft of imagination and humaneness was winding down, the common refrain from Nigerians was: Never Again. Many citizens believed that no future administration in Nigeria will be worse than Buhari’s in terms of abuse of power, impunity, desecration of democratic ethos, insensitivity to the country’s diversity, disregard for the suffering of citizens and intolerance of critical and opposing views. Obviously, we were mistaken”. The extant regime which we wrote about when it was six months old in November last year will be 20 months in office by next month, January 2025. Loyalists and choristers of ‘on your mandate we shall stand…” will still fly off-the-handle to insist that it is still too early to assess the capacity of the regime with a four-year mandate. We will grudgingly concede that they may be right. However, the challenge is that there are virtually no indications that the needles for economic recovery and good governance are moving in the right direction, even if slowly. The experience is that of deterioration in the living standards of many, crisis in the cost of living, runaway inflation with food inflation about 40%, imported inflation caused by the country’s overwhelming dependence on imports and the poor exchange rate. The prediction is that many of these indicators will continue to head south for the foreseeable future. The consequences of forlorn hope which has trumped Tinubu’s ill-fitting  mantra of Renewed Hope are beginning to increase in their effects. You don’t need to listen to hear the groans of the people. You don’t need to be sensitive to feel the despondency of citizens. The sound of hopelessness is loud and clear. Nigerians are buffeted and the country could just be sitting on a keg of gunpowder. But do our rulers know about this clear and present danger? I doubt it otherwise they won’t still be behaving like Nero who serenaded himself with the wafting sounds and melodies from his flute while Rome burnt. If they know that the folks are hurting they probably will not continue their hedonistic indulgences by parcelling significant portions of the 2025 national budget to themselves. As in the budget of this year, hefty sums in billions have been carved out in next year’s appropriation bill to buy sport utility vehicles (SUVs) for themselves, their consorts, cronies, and their acolytes; renovate mansions, residences and offices; procure cooking utensils and cutleries; provide fittings, fixtures and furnishings; pay for offshore frivolous junkets and carousing; gorge themselves on foods and drinks at banquets; organize trainings at home and abroad where nothing useful are learned; set up additional ministries, departments and agencies that fail even before they take – off; and, sundry things that suit their fancies. Almost N50 trillion is said to be the size of the proposed 2025 budget. But by this time next year Nigeria will at best still be stagnant, and at worst deteriorated further in the

SYRIA AND NIGERIA AT HISTORY’S CROSSROADS

“Syria’s a classical case of a country that first died in the hearts and minds of its people long before the erosion started manifesting in the physical. It was decades in the making and it was obvious except to those who benefited from the rot. It is about the same thing in Nigeria with the country falling apart in the eyes of everybody except in the eyes of the ruling elite. The demise of a country begins with the erosion of its people’s sense of identity, purpose and connection to the homeland.“ SYRIA is an enigma. It has always been from ancient times including the era preceding the writing of the Holy Bible by some inspired persons. We will have to contend with time and space if we tried to explore the enigmas of that country in detail. In spite of its current travails, Syria remains a mystery notwithstanding its rich history, cultural diversity, and fractious, indeed, tumultuous politics. It might as well be that the aforementioned traits are the reasons for the mystery of that Middle East country. Well before Damascus, the capital of this historic country fell last week to the many rebel groups that besieged it, it had been losing territory inch-by-inch and day-by-day. But the loss of territory on its own does not necessarily lead to the demise of a country or to a regime change. A country or a regime dies faster when there’s a disconnect with the citizens. That was the lot of Bashar al-Assad who suddenly fled from Syria after his family had ruled the country with iron fists for more than half a century. Syria’s a classical case of a country that first died in the hearts and minds of its people long before the erosion started manifesting in the physical. It was decades in the making and it was obvious except to those who benefited from the rot. It is about the same thing in Nigeria with the country falling apart in the eyes of everybody except in the eyes of the ruling elite. The demise of a country begins with the erosion of its people’s sense of identity, purpose and connection to the homeland. The clear implication is that the decline of a country is not just a physical or economic phenomenon, but a psychological and emotional one too. There’s no doubt that a country’s strength and resilience are deeply rooted in the collective consciousness of its citizens. When people lose faith in their country, its institutions, and its values, the very fabric of that country is bound to unravel. This was, probably still is, the case with Syria. And it speaks to the situation in Nigeria today. Is our country at risk, given the manifest disconnect between Nigeria’s ruling elite and sections of its population, especially the majority of the younger generation who feel disaffected by the direction the country is headed? Is implosion inevitable given the obduracy of our rulers? Can it yet be headed off? Is anything being done now or has anything been done in the last 25 years of the fourth republic to salvage the country or are more grievous things being done to savage it? Time will tell. “…when a country dies in the souls of its citizens, as appears to be the case of Syria under the successive Assad family regimes, and as it seems to be applying to Nigeria, it leads or can lead to a range of negative consequences. It can trigger social unrest and violent agitations as happened in Syria that have led to the fall of the regime and an uncertain future for the country. Citizens become increasingly frustrated, resort to protests, unrest and violence as Nigeria has been witnessing…To many fellow citizens, the Renewed Hope mantra of the Tinubu regime is a bad joke.” Let’s attempt to speak to why the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the uncertainty about the future of that country should be of concern to Nigeria, Nigerians and their rulers. As in Syria but for different reasons, there’s a significant and growing loss of national pride because many Nigerians no longer feel a sense of pride and ownership of their country. It’s increasingly becoming a case of ‘us versus them’. As in Syria also there were things that hitherto held our people together in the past. Now there’s a disconnect from whatever is left of the things that could be considered as values and principles that used to define us. A significant portion of Nigerians are emotionally detached from the country, including from its history, culture, and traditions. You may do well to ask that teenager or tweenager (children in their 20s) next to you who is not an heir to a plum political office or to private wealth what they feel about our country. Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, is a typical diaspora Nigerian who holds the citizenship of another country. She has been in a spat with Nigeria’s vice president Kashim Shettima over comments she made about Nigeria. She represents a typical diaspora Nigerian – acute frustration with the state of our country. It’s baffling that Shettima chose to interject in Kemi’s expression of frustration. My people would say that ‘onaghi adinma ka madu di ka ihe ejiri ko ya onu’. You don’t need to behave like a mad person just because someone said that you are mad. The only way Shettima can shame Kemi is for him to be an example of altruistic leadership in our country. For now we’ll ignore Kemi’s expressed Yoruba bonafide and her slur in distancing herself from a part of the country and their sectarian contribution to Nigeria’s lingering insecurity. Could this be a pointer that Nigeria is actually dying in the hearts and minds of its citizens? And when a country dies in the souls of its citizens, as appears to be the case of Syria under the successive Assad family regimes, and as

Restructuring Nigeria Makes for Great Rhetoric: Getting it Done is harder than Separating a Conjoined Twin.

“With his local government autonomy, the deregulation of the power to generate and distribute electricity, and now the tax reform bill, President Tinubu is strategically attempting to restructure the country through the back door approach.“ The katakata that has accompanied the tax reform bill is laying to bare once again how intractably difficult it is to govern and transform a country as structurally complicated as Nigeria. The most difficult bill to pass even in the best of circumstances including in countries with a coherent national identity is the tax bill. At the core of any country’s sovereignty is the ability to impose and collect taxes. On it hinges the ability of any government to carry out their core governance responsibilities. One can therefore only imagine how close to impossible it would be to reform the tax collection law in a country like ours with no national consensus, and where the constituent parts treat the country like meat from a stranded bleached whale to be plundered. Hence, the presidency should have anticipated the stiff resistance it is now facing from the different power centers each with conflicting agenda. READ ALSO: Nigerians Vow ‘Days of Rage’ Over Economic Hardships It is a known fact that the north has a higher dependency ratio on federal revenue, hence a tax reform bill that shifts the locus of collection and distribution proportionately to the source will disadvantage them. There are also a few states in the southwest with the same higher dependency ratio, whose internally generated revenue is nothing to write home about and whose productive economies do not generate enough VAT to meet their budgetary obligations. In those instance it would be suicidal for the governors to support a tax reform bill that disadvantages them. With his local government autonomy, the deregulation of the power to generate and distribute electricity, and now the tax reform bill, President Tinubu is strategically attempting to restructure the country through the back door approach. He has chosen that approach knowing full well that a full scale restructuring bill would be dead on arrival in a Senate and a House of Representatives where the north has clear numerical advantage. The north and some southern governors are sending a clear message to the President that they are not ready for restructuring, which might lead to the diminution of their power to tax and control local government allocation as they choose. Nigerians have been shouting restructuring, restructuring and now as President Tinubu begins to unpack what restructuring looks like some governors are beginning to develop cold feet knowing that their own power might be eroded. Barring a miracle, the tax bill might have suffered a fatal blow. Some of the senators and members of the house of representatives that are opposed to the bills know who butters their bread and who can also put sand in their gaari, the governors. They would dare not go against their wishes. PLEASE READ: Nigeria’s Public Debt Rises By N12.6Trn in Three Months Nigerians are learning in real time how intractable it is to reform a dysfunctional country like Nigeria which remains 64 years after independence, a mere geographical expression like Chief Awolowo described it. Nigeria is like an arranged marriage between two partners each of which hates and distrusts one another, seeks to take advantage of one another, and yet are too afraid to disengage and dissolve their dysfunctional union because they figure out that like trying to separate a conjoined Siamese twins, the cost of disengagement might be too high to pay including the possibility of death on the surgical table. That is the intractable conundrum that our country has found itself. President Tinubu is putting everything at stake including his second term aspiration with his bold reform agenda. Only time will tell if it was a risk worth taking. Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org

Our central bank governor is angry. Really?

OLAYEMI Cardoso is the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). I was made to understand that he came to the job with intimidating credentials. Some of his traducers will dispute this by saying that his hands-on banking experience is thin and that he was essentially a once-upon-a-time chairman of an international bank with only one branch. And that one branch shared a building with the bank’s headquarters somewhere in Victoria Island in Lagos. I think the name of that institution is City Bank. It has to be acknowledged though that it was, still is, a global brand. But Cardoso’s experience, whether thin or thick, did not fetch him the top CBN job. What did it for him was his connection to Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He had worked for Tinubu in the president’s previous incarnation as the governor of Lagos state between 1999-2007. Cardoso is not alone in this regard. Virtually everybody who is anybody and who is occupying any significant position in this regime has been a ‘boy’ or acolyte of the president. Cardoso as the CBN governor has done a few other things since he was installed to succeed the former hack who occupied that office. Godwin Emefiele was a disaster who in addition to economic management ineptitude and administrative failings diminished the office of the CBN governor almost beyond redemption. Emefiele, it was, who as a sitting CBN governor made a grab for the presidency of Nigeria. He threw his hat into the ring in the contest for the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) political party. He was a card-carrying though closet member of the ruling party. The man who reappointed him to office for a second term, former president, Maj.-Gen Muhammadu Buhari, said much later that Emefiele did not break any law. Buhari, who turned out to be Nigeria’s affliction, may yet be right but in which sane clime would a serving central bank helmsman dive in such a reckless manner into the murky waters of partisan politics and walk away scot-free. Well, he has not walked away unscatted though he appears to be facing political persecution from Tinubu who appears to feel that the ex-CBN governor threw huddles on his way to Aso Rock Villa through the sudden currency recoloration in the heat of the 2023 campaigns. PLEASE READ: CBN to Sack 1000 Workers, Offers N50bn as Incentive Package Expectedly, Cardoso had his hands full in terms of house cleaning when he assumed office. In addition, he had a couple of petty bills to pay including the backlog of unremitted foreign currency revenues of international airlines. Apart from minor distractions such as the above and occasional claims of accretion to the country’s foreign reserves (up to $40bn now from about $36bn though no mention is ever made of any portion of the sum that may be encumbered), the new sheriff in the apex bank has preoccupied himself solely with raising interest rates. For Cardoso, mindless raising of interest rates with its deleterious effects on other areas of the economy is the only tool in his box to rein in galloping inflation which now stands at over 33% (food inflation is actually about 40%}, and arrest the rapid and precipitous decline in the value of the Naira. The current street value of the Naira is $1/N1,740. For the 2024 national budget the federal government projected that $1USD would exchange for N800. The projection was off target. Even the economically illiterate knew then that the benchmark was a non-starter. The $1/N1,400 provided for in the 2025 budget may still fall through the cracks. In spite of Cardoso’s best efforts in digging in neither inflation nor exchange rate stability has been achieved. And he has been on these for one and a half years. Just like the chief executive officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, and the completion of refineries’ turnaround maintenance, Cardoso has missed all the targets he had set for himself on inflation reduction and Naira stability. For a distraction, the CBN governor has turned his attention to populism. Christmas and New Year celebrations are around the corner. Under Emefiele the experience of Nigerians during the festive season in 2023 was both horrible and horrific. To be sure the trauma started from October of that year. Nigerian banks virtually froze the bank accounts of ordinary folks and created a situation where it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for Citizen Ugochi to withdraw any cash from her bank account. In frustration some Nigerians visited their anger at automated teller machines (ATMs) and destroyed a couple of them. Others laid siege to bank premises and held workers hostage. Indeed some bank staff had to use a ladder to scale the fence to escape from the angry mob. We also witnessed situations where customers who managed to force their way into banking halls but could not be availed with desperately needed cash resorted to stripping themselves stark naked as a mark of protest. Of course, the videos of naked bodies with exposed genitalia went viral. The acute cash hoarding by the CBN in connivance with money deposit banks eased up a little soon after the February/March 2023 general elections. But the problem was not addressed in a systematic and deliberate manner. It has lingered on. Getting cash out from the bank accounts of ordinary folks has remained a nightmare for about two years, either from over the counter or from the ATM. PEASE READ: Tax Reform Bills: Tinubu Shuns National Consensus for Radical Policy Proposals Last weekend at the Chartered Institute of Bankers Annual Dinner, Cardoso told Nigerians, probably over mouth full of delicacies, that we should report to the CBN any difficulties in withdrawing cash from bank branches or from ATMs. This must have come as a shock to many ordinary folks because this has been their experience since before Cardoso assumed office. That statement from

VAT, vassal states and restructuring (2)

“Almost two years since his hare-brained twin policies, market forces are yet to fully determine the prices of petroleum products and the price of the Naira… The irony right now is that there are claims that the country is turning the corner, and that good days are on the horizon. Tinubu says so.” THERE are too many things wrong with the regime of Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. For 18 months since the advent of the administration, it has been a case of stumbling from one problem to the other. The tragedy is that almost all the challenges that this regime has been grappling with were self-inflicted. It started off with an ill-conceived petrol subsidy removal, and it followed that almost immediately with allowing the national currency, the Naira, to be floated. Both policies turned out to be disastrous because the so-called petrol subsidy payment persisted in an opaque manner, and subsidizing the Naira did abate. Recently, the state oil corporation, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) insisted that it will continue to import petroleum products in spite of the existence of a domestic producer, Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Company, Lagos, which said that it has the capacity to satisfy domestic consumption for petroleum products. Dangote’s 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day production should on full stream produce 50 million litres of petrol and 15 million litres of diesel per day. READ ALSO: THREE TRAGICALLY KILLED AFTER GOOGLE MAPS DIRECT CAR ONTO UNFINNISHED BRIDGE Experts estimate that petrol consumption in Nigeria should not exceed 35 million litres per day. But corruption puts it much higher, sometimes for as high as 70 million litres per day. This outrageous figure is not strange because Nigeria is widely acknowledged as a crime scene – a country hurting in the hands of its supposed care-givers. Private importers who work at the behest of collaborators inside the government have been known to ‘import’ shiploads of petroleum products without the ships being sited anywhere near the country’s territorial waters, not to talk of discharging any products. But such ‘importers’ file claims with excellent shipping documents, and collect hundreds of millions of dollars from the public treasury. NNPCL does the same. Then a cartel hijacks the little litres of petrol that were in truth brought in, ferrying such to neighbouring countries in 33000-litre trucks and in broad daylight where they make a kill. Nigeria has clearly delineated borders with its neighbours. We have all manner of tax-payer paid government officials at those borders. But the trade booms. Currently, an investigative reporter has been reporting on the daily massive smuggling of 50kg bags of rice into the country with the active involvement of immigration top shots. He has been doing so with video evidence. Last week the journalist reported that the leader of the smugglers was accorded a red carpet reception at the Abuja headquarters of the Nigeria Immigration Service. His reports have not been disputed and nothing has happened to the economic saboteurs. Back to the issue at hand. Alhaji Tinubu takes responsibility for his misadventures on petrol and Naira. Almost two years since his hare-brained twin policies, market forces are yet to fully determine the prices of petroleum products and the price of the Naira. Whilst the NNPCL moderates the prices of petroleum products especially petrol by importing and fixing different pump head prices for different parts of the country, the Central Bank defends the Naira through regular sales of the United States dollars to the bureaux de change, and through the aggressive mopping up of  Naira in circulation. The policies are obviously not working. The price of petrol at over N1000/litre is not sustainable. It has ruined the economy and will inflict more damage with the regime’s insistence that it will stay the course. Nigerian families are worse off. Bloomberg, an American news organization reported last week that about two -third of Nigerian households can barely manage to feed once a day. And the quality of the meal is suspect. Their report was drawn from the latest statistics from the Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). PLEASE READ: NIGERIA, THREE OTHER COUNTRIES GO LIVE ON ECOWAS E-Certificate The irony right now is that there are claims that the country is turning the corner, and that good days are on the horizon. Tinubu says so. The central bank governor says the same. Finance minister who is also the coordinating minister for the economy sees the same signs of economic recovery. Even the national security adviser, yes the NSA, who should have his hands full with widespread insecurity pervading the land, parrots the same message of visible economic turn around. But they are the only people who see economic recovery on the horizon. And they all share one thing in common – they all binge on the public treasury. I wager that none of them had been to a gas station to buy either petrol for the government SUVs (armour- plated and bomb-resistant brands) that they are driven in or to purchase diesel to fire government – owned electricity generators in their residences which also are built and tastefully furnished with taxpayers money. It is not strange, therefore, that they are separated from reality and the daily grind of the majority of Nigerians. The case of the NSA is particularly painful and pathetic. Daily, he joins the security agencies including the secret police otherwise called the Directorate of State Services (DSS), the regular Police, the Civil Defence Corps, the Armed Forces, among others, to run political commentaries on the state of the country. In place of combating insecurity, what the NSA does is to warn non-state agents terrorizing Nigeria to know that Tinubu is not known to lose any battle. Is he for real? The man cannot be, and should not be, a national security adviser even in a banana republic. What our rulers are doing is beyond talking up the economy, they are deliberately deceiving Nigerians. Any sign of economic recovery must

VAT, vassal states and restructuring [1]

“Buhari was an intentional man but because he was inept at whatever he did, he failed to accomplish his parochial vision of restructuring Nigeria. He failed himself. He failed his people. But he left a template for his successor.“ “Soso onye nzuzu bu onye na-amagh mgbe ekechara nku ukwa”. Only a fool would not know when the bazaar is over. I used to have a friend. He is now late. His name was Jimanze Alowes. He said he was Igbo from Amaigbo in Imo state. But his name did not sound Igbo. However, he spoke impeccable Igbo, if there was any such thing. He also spoke impeccable English, if there was any such thing also. He was brilliant, and articulate. He was certainly street wise. In hindsight, he probably knew that longevity of life was not a gift to him from his creator. He understood this country, and he wanted things done, and done fast to his personal upliftment. On occasions when we sat down to discuss and bemoan the challenges that the country threw on the path of youngsters, he would sit in disturbing and disconcerting silence. He left you with the impression that he was not paying attention. But when you expressed frustration that he was not listening he would quietly but intently look you in the eyes, and then say something to the effect that bells were being rung every morning and those with trained ears knew where to go to grab their share of the looting that was going on in the country. Here, I am referencing conversations that took place almost 30 years ago. In another vein, Nigeria is like the Biblical story of the 10 Virgins as recorded in the Gospel of St. Matthew chapter 25 from verse 1 and following. “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish”. You will wonder about the relevance of this illustration to the topic above and the broad theme of the subject under discussion. The five virgins who had oil in their lamps represented real Nigerians, while the five foolish virgins who profess to be Nigerians are only outwardly so, doing so just with their lips. In reality they are outsiders who have been left, or who allowed themselves to be left, with the short end of the stick. The Igbo in Nigeria may just be the five foolish virgins. This is not an effort at self deprecation. We know it as a fact that some Nigerians have been mouthing the urgent imperatives of restructuring the country. But some elements in the Igbo nation are campaigning for an excision from this country, and the creation of a new country to be called Biafra. This new country was actually first created on May 30, 1967 and became defunct in January 1970. So, Biafra was a country that lived for about three years. The point to note is that while some Nigerians are still clamouring for restructuring, the smart ones are at work doing the deed of reshaping the country. This started with the advent of the All Progressives Congress (APC) political party with Maj.-General (rtd) Muhammadu Buhari in government in 2015. Buhari (2015-2023) was a bad ruler. And he was inept in his attempt to restructure Nigeria to benefit Muslims and the northern parts of the country. Nonetheless, he tried his best. He populated his regime with people who worshiped like him. He moved every movable government institution to areas which he considered to be part of the the greater north. He borrowed offshore funds in the name of all Nigerians but concentrated on the citing of public facilities and infrastructure in the north. Buhari’s regime went into overdrive to explore for crude oil in parts of the north. He spared no expense to make this a reality. Where the money for the Buhari venture was not borrowed, it came from the resources from other parts of the country. He commenced building pipelines from the Niger Delta region to the north, and further afield to neighbouring Niger Republic, his alleged ancestral home, to pipe natural gas to yet to be built power stations, and for storage. Buhari was no fool. He had a clear picture of Nigeria’s tomorrow. He knew that what we were doing, and are still doing, in this country was not sustainable. He worked very hard to ensure that the north or part of the north was ready for the inevitable. It was this reasoning that informed his borrowing billions of dollars from the Chinese to construct standard gauge rail tracks from the north to the heart of Niger Republic, his other home country. Nigeria will repay the debt but will only get crumbs from the designated projects. The eastern axis of the country will get a narrow rail gauge. Buhari was an intentional man but because he was inept at whatever he did, he failed to accomplish his parochial vision of restructuring Nigeria. He failed himself. He failed his people. But he left a template for his successor. And the new man is adept at devious schemes. The new ruler, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is focused and determined to restructure Nigeria to benefit his south west people. And he is not shy about it. He has already said that those expecting restructuring along the lines he had been campaigning for in the past three decades will have to wait in vain. He said that restructuring of the country has been moving apace since he was made president about 18 months ago. And Tinubu’s new definition of political and economic restructuring of Nigeria included stuffing the institutions of the federal government with people who speak and dress like him. He has captured the commanding heights of the security sector and gifted the same to his acolytes who mostly are members of his ethnic group. The same goes for revenue generating