President Tinubu’s Much Touted Independence Speech: A monumental Let Down

President Tinubu must be living in an alternate universe and in a denial bubble if he thinks “Nigerians worldwide can look back to see how well we have succeeded in realizing the lofty dreams of our founding fathers”. That single line so early in his 64th independence presidential speech set the tone for the speech and it tanked it from the get-go. It is so off-putting, so disconnected from reality, I totally lost interest in reading the rest of the speech. The heroes of our independence could not have envisaged that 64 years after, the nation they fought for would be unable to feed its citizens, still be so consumed by the virus of ethnic animus in geometruc proportion than what they faced, be overrun by bandits and kidnappers with tens of millions of its children panhandling for survival instead of being educated in schools. Our country had the largest population out of school children in the entire world. That was not the country they fought for.   If the President thinks that Nigerians can see any light at the end of the tunnel, he must be totally disconnected from the daily Hobbesian reality in which his citizens live. Our people are locked up in the prison of their home unable to get to work due to unavoidability of fuel to power their cars or pay for public transport. State governments are telling their workers to stay home and not come to work because the cost of transport is greater than their wages.   Children are going to bed on absent stomach with formula 001 which Obey sang about decades ago looking now like a faraway unobtainable Nirvana.   I am a supporter of the Tinubu presidency who strongly believes that our economy was desperately in need of a major reform shock treatment to prevent our match to the apocalypse. Hence, I have defended his reform agenda as necessary even though it is imposing unbelievable pain on the citizenry. I am also not blaming him for the despondency in the country and our collective failure. Only a jaundiced and blind fool would blame a 16-month presidency for the dysfunction of 64 years. In fact I commend President Tinubu for taking the hard road instead of continuing in our delusion of riches that was sinking our country deeper and deeper into the abyss. His reform policy was the painful surgery our country needed to remove its festering malignancy.   However, the president is failing to show the needed empathy to put a soothing balm on the pain of the people. He is failing once again to understand that government is part policy, part public relation and public perception. He is failing woefully in the public relation, public perception part and if not urgently addressed it might further sour people on his presidency and tank it.   People are not so more interested in his enumeration of his many policies nor new proposals like the proposed youth confabs. Nigerians have lost faith in confabs with our very long history of meaningless national confab jamborees with their resolutions left on the shelf to gather dust. The Nigerian youths want jobs, schools that are conducive to learning not the dilapidated pig pens they are forced to learn with no teachers nor resources to prepare them for the highly competitive knowledge driven global digital economy. They are not interested in hobnobbing with well fed, rosy-cheeks, government officials and politics bigwigs.   Nigerians are so consumed with the insurmountable challenge of meeting the most basic requirements of minimal existence which have been priced beyond the reach of the middle class if they even exist not to talk about the masses. They are sick and tired of looking their children in the face at night and tucking them in bed on an empty stomach: Husbands are tired and ashamed to live off of the bounty of their wives’ adulterous exploits to put food on the table. They are looking for an empathetic presidency to acknowledge their pain, to accept and own the responsibility that their reform policy is a major source of their pain. They want President Tinubu to reassure them that their pain has a terminal date and that even though it looks like the darkest night, that the sun shall shine again on the other side. They are not interested in being told to deny their daily reality by being told that Boko Haram and bandits have been eliminated when they are afraid to leave their homes, or to go to their farm without the fear of kidnappers and bandits. Not even great Michelangelo can paint over the Hobbesian reality in which the Nigerian citizens are living. The president will do himself a great favor by acknowledging it even as he is convinced and confident that his policies are the right one to save the country. I also believe that his policies will work if we are patient.   His most urgent task is to calm the restive passengers on the wobbling ship he is captaining on a violent sea or risk a stampede that will capside and doom a voyage to the promised land. He should learn great lessons of Moses in the wildness leading his Israelites people to the promised land. I am his great supporter but he needs to do a better job of feeling the pulse of his citizens and communicating with them.   Presidential speeches, especially in moments of crisis like we are going through, are historical documents that are carefully and methodically crafted, with each word, infection, tonality and even commas carefully chosen, debated and analyzed to meet the exigency of the moment. Once again the people around the president did him great disservice by inserting some of the totally disconnected from reality lines, so early in his speech instead of the president spending a big portion of his speech empathizing with the pain, anguish, suffering, and the disillusionment with the country, with its democracy, with his reform

Subsidy Has To Go – Dangote To Nigerian Government

As Nigerians grapple with prohibitive pump price of petrol and consequent spiraling inflation, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the President and Chief Executive of Dangote Refinery, repeats the call for removal of fuel subsidy. The businessman asserted that the removal would determine the actual petrol consumption in the country. Speaking in a 26-minute interview with Bloomberg Television in New York on Monday, he confirmed ownership of two oil blocks in the upstream sector with an expected production date of next month. Dangote also stated that fuel production from his $20bn mega refinery in Lagos will help ease pressures on the naira. Speaking further, he noted that ending petrol imports will have a huge upside in easing currency pressures. According to him, “Subsidy is a very sensitive issue. Once you are subsidising something then people will bloat the price and then the government will end up paying what they are not supposed to be paying. It is the right time to get rid of subsidies. “But this refinery will resolve a lot of issues out there, you know, it will show the real consumption of Nigeria, because, you know, nobody can tell you. Some people say 60 million litres of gasoline per day. “Some say, it’s less. But right now, if you look at it by us producing, everything can be counted. So everything can be accounted for, particularly for most of the trucks or ships that will come to load from us. We are going to put a tracker on them to be sure they are going to take the oil within Nigeria, and that, I think, can help the government save quite a lot of money. I think it is the right time, you know, to remove the subsidy.” On whether the subsidy will make the refinery viable, Dangote said, “Well, you see, we have a choice of either one. We produce, we export, and when we produce, we sell locally. But we are a big private company. And yes, it’s true, we have to make a profit. We build something worth $20bn so definitely we have to make money. “The removal of subsidies is totally dependent on the government, not on us. We cannot change the price, but I think the government will have to give up something for something. So I think at the end of the day, this subsidy will have to go.”

Nigeria suspends import duties on selected food items

Rising demand pressures spark global food concerns –FAO

The Nigeria Customs Service Board has reiterated that the temporary implementation of a zero-duty levy on selected food imports is designed to alleviate the current food shortage and reduce soaring food prices across the country.   This was disclosed in a post is the Federal Ministry of Finance official X handle on Wednesday, September 11.   The post reads: “The Nigeria Customs Service Board addressed the press on a key decision concerning the temporary implementation of a zero-duty levy on selected food imports.   “The measure is designed to alleviate the current food shortage and reduce soaring food prices, which have been a major contributor to inflation across the country.   “‘We discussed how to collaborate effectively to make food more affordable and accessible in the short term’, the Minister explained. He emphasised that while this initiative offers immediate relief, President Tinubu remains focused on long-term solutions, particularly boosting domestic food production. HM Edun highlighted ongoing efforts to increase the availability of essential farming inputs, such as fertilizer and seeds, particularly for small-scale farmers, which is expected to enhance local food production and ensure food security in the long run.   “In addition to the zero-duty measure, the Minister commended the Nigeria Customs Service Board for its regular meetings to review the Service’s financial performance and operational activities. He praised the Comptroller General and the leadership of the Service for upholding the core values of Transparency, Integrity, and Merit, noting these values are essential for effective governance and the efficient operation of the Service.   “The Minister concluded by reaffirming the President Tinubu-led administration’s commitment to tackling both short-term and long-term food security challenges, while continuing to work closely with the Nigeria Customs Service and other stakeholders to ensure smooth implementation of key policies.”  

Oil is Indeed the Devil’s excrement: It’s Stench Is Choking Up Nigeria

A new Nigeria needs cooperation of all and sundry -Tinubu

Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, the prominent Venezuelan politician and one of the founders of OPEC, in the early 70s called petroleum “the devil’s excrement” that always brings trouble—waste, corruption, consumption: our public services falling apart and debt. How I wish he could wake up from his grave to see the devastation of his native land, Venezuela my homeland, Nigeria, he would shake his head in shock how apt and in fact understated his prediction was. The stench of oil, specifically, the high price of one of its refined products, petrol, is literally threatening to choke the life out of my ancestral homeland, Nigeria. It has set the country’s social media on fire and threatening to do same to the regime of the newly elected President Tinubu, who removed the corruption-infected oil subsidy scam. The data below which is making the round on social media compares the selling price for PMS (petrol) across different countries apparently to justify the price hike. Assuming that one can even verify the reliability of this data (there are different grades of PMS in the U.S. for instance, and prices vary from state to state and in fact from one station to another on the same street. Due to local regulation and standards, in Carlifonia petrol can cost twice as what obtains in Texas. The data shows that PMS price in the US is about twice what we pay in Nigeria. However while the proposed minimum wage in Nigeria is equivalent to $43.75 a month at the current exchange rate of Naira 1600 to a dollar, the minimum wage in the U.S. which also varies from state to state is $7.25 per hour for federal minimum wage for covered nonexempt employees. In Carlifonia the minimum hourly wage hovers around $16. The bottom line is, comparing PMS prices across nations is a meaningless venture. In many of these countries unlike Nigeria, the public transport infrastructure is so advanced that many people don’t even drive. With our poor public transport network, the ridiculously low wage in our economy, and our over-dependence on fossil fuel dependent road transportation to move commodities across the nation, the price of PMS is unsustainably high. It is a drag on our economy and a major driver of our high inflation. Our challenge is that we can’t work our way out of the high price of PMS with the corruption-ridden oil subsidy scam. We have got to increase our refinery capacity. While Dangote coming on stream is a great first step, we cannot depend on another monopoly for the supply of arguably the most critical factor in our economy, petrol and diesel. By the way as Dangote himself has proclaimed publicly, the refinery wouldn’t have happened without the visionary leadership of Tinubu, himself an oil man having worked in the industry before. We need to give the man Tinubu some credit. Solving our petrol problem would not be easy nor quick, but we must have some faith in and give this 15 months old presidency time to work through it. Although, the uninformed has been howling about NNPC acquisition of a major petrol distribution company two years ago, with NNPC poised to be the main distributor for Dangote petrol, this all is making some sense now. The petrol marketers are a powerful cartel which is adept at price manipulation and price gouging. Have you noticed the almost coordinated rolling sale of PMS by different petrol stations in your neighbourhood? Most of them close shop when PMS is available in NNPC stations. With NNPC acquiring more petrol stations and with its exclusive right to Dangote petrol, there is a distinct possibility to finally break the back of the oil marketer cartel. However, more refineries need to come on-stream to address the supply-demand-price equilibrium conundrum in the Nigeria petrol supply chain. This coupled with massive investment in public transport infrastructure especially rail line and solution to our energy infrastructure, our power generation and distribution infrastructure, the prospect for economic revitalization of our country should improve substantially. However, all of these prospect goes down the tube if we throw the baby out with the bath water out of frustration. If we allow those vested and entrenched interest who have fed fat on our dysfunction andwho wish our country no good to decapitate the Tinubu presidency and our hard earned albeit imperfect and frankly frustrating democracy. Ww cannot allow people to fly the Russian flag again as a form of protest in our country. We must understand that there can be no gain without pain. We didn’t get to this economic Armageddon in one day and it will take time, pain and sacrifice to dig our way out. We the grown-up who enjoyed the bounties of petrol-dollars in the 70s and who contributed in one way or another to our country’s perilous condition, should complain and whine less and make one last sacrifice to bequeath to our children, grand children and future generation, a country they can at least have an opportunity to salvage. We have made a mess of our country. We have put our parochial tribal interest above the mission of building a strong virile nation. We have complained about corruption until it is our countryman who is caught or it is our turn to dip our hands in the treasury and we end up doing worse than the people we once condemned. We can heap the blame for global warming and every other problem that confronts our country on Tinubu’s 15-month regime all we want. It won’t solve our problem. Neither him nor anyone possess the magic wand to solve all the problems that have been built up through decades of misgovernance and corruption. He is not to blame for all the governors mismanaging the huge revenue allocations they are now getting. He is not responsible for the price gouging by the market women and the corruption that has become endemic in the Nigerian moral fabric. Our problems are multidimensional, multigenerational, of both poor

#EndBadGovernance: Why We Waved Russian Flags

Abba Kabir Yusuf, Gov, Kano State

Protesters in Kano who waved Russian flags during the  #EndBadGovernance protests say they took the action to challenge the Nigerian government. When a journalist immersed himself among the demonstrators in Kano City’s Kurna neighborhood to request one of the flags, he was directed to a man recognized as an Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) member. For security reasons, the journalist—who wished to remain anonymous—observed that the Shi’ite group started waving Russian flags, which other protestors later picked up on. But another demonstrator, identifying himself as Haruna, claimed to be unaffiliated with IMN when speaking with PREMIUM TIMES. He said someone brought the flags to the protest to challenge the Nigerian government. “I don’t know him, but what is the Nigerian government doing to us? The government must listen to our concerns; they must bring back the fuel subsidy. The only flag that I cannot raise is that of Israel,” Mr Haruna said. Kano is predominantly Muslim, with a large Sunni population, where anti-Israeli sentiments are common. IMN member Isah Bawa, from Fagge local council, confirmed the participation of Shi’ite members in the protests and the use of Russian flags but stated there was no directive from their leaders to do so. “Shite members took part in the protest like other Nigerians who are hungry but there is no formal instruction from our leaders for members to wave the Russian flag,” Mr Bawa said. A tea vendor, Abdullahi Maishayi, was detained by the State Security Service (SSS) on Sunday for displaying a Russian flag at his tea shop in Fagge. He was later released after denying knowledge of who placed the flag there. “It’s a tea joint, we host all categories of people. I don’t know whether the person who hoisted the flag at the joint is a Shiite because I was not around when the flag was hoisted,” said Maishayi, who is not a member of IMN. The display of Russian flags during the #EndBadGovernance protests in Kano was first noticed on Sunday and Monday in certain areas of the city. On Monday, hundreds of protesters on IBB Way in Kano took advantage of a relaxed curfew to continue their demonstrations while waving Russian flags. Several protest groups adopted the Russian flags, asserting they had no political agenda behind their actions. The Russian embassy in Nigeria stated that the Russian government was not involved with its national flags being used in the #EndBadGovernance protests. In a statement on Monday, the embassy clarified that neither the Russian government nor its officials were associated with the flag-waving. The Nigerian government condemned the use of Russian flags and calls for a military takeover by some protesters, labeling such actions as treason.