What APC Can’t Destroy…

 By Ugo Onuoha

On Thursday, February 9, South Africa’s embattled President, Cyril Ramaphosa, went to the country’s Parliament, braced heckling by the militant opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) political party to declare that the country was in a ‘“national state of disaster.” So, what was the problem with that Southern African country? They have been grappling with energy, particularly electricity, supply crisis for about two years. Yes, two years.

*APC leaders

The country has been experiencing load-shedding, read, power outages, where some consumers experience blackouts for up to 12 hours in a day. A mere 12 hours.

Last year, the country’s economic growth fell to 2.5%. This year, the projection is that it would shrink to 0.3%, the declines essentially boil down to South Africa’s electricity crisis. In parliament, Ramaphosa told South Africans: “We are, therefore, declaring a national state of disaster to respond to the electricity crisis and its effects.”

The declaration allows the government, among other things, to adopt emergency procurement procedures, sans regulations and bureaucratic bottlenecks. The problem with shortcut procurement process is that, for a country which grapples with corruption and state capture, as is the case in Nigeria, the freestyle procurement system could create room for freeloading by kleptocrats. But the thing that should also be of interest to Nigerians is that South Africa declared a national state of disaster because they have suffered power outages and load-shedding for just two years. 

Here at home, our experience with public power supply for more than one generation, say 30 years, is worse. As it stands today, the majority of Nigerians do not even have access to public electricity supply; some who do frequently endure not seeing a flicker of light for months and years because of stolen transformers or cables; some others are thrown into darkness whenever electricity workers decide to switch off turbines and then go on strike; we also suffer outages whenever the water levels in our hydropower plants are low or whenever gas, which we flare every day, is in short supply; while the greatest problem remains the industrial-scale theft of monies voted for investment in the power sector. 

For instance, the federal government, under the Peoples Democratic Party, 1999 to 2007, failed to satisfactorily account for $16bn said to have been appropriated for investment in the power sector. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was Nigeria’s Vice-President during that period. He is now the presidential candidate of the PDP seeking the votes of Nigerians in the February 25 election. He has Nigerians working for him to become President in spite of the $16bn. That’s the way we roll in our country. As we say here, nothing spoil.

In spite of what we say, the evidence before us is that many things are getting spoilt in Nigeria. And the bad situation has been accelerated by a bungling All Progressives Congress (APC) regime of the President, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari.

It is now obvious to all, including supporters of the ruling party, that the APC has done grievous harm to Nigeria.

Nothing has been spared. The economy has been dealt a body blow with unemployment, inflation, exchange rate, etcetera in troubling territories. To cap up the massive destruction, it has been projected that the APC’s Buhari regime willl walk away from office on May 29, 2023, three months hence, leaving a debt of about N70 trillion for this generation, the next generation and other generations down the line to figure out how to pay. 

The APC also has a presidential candidate, Alhaji Bola Tinubu, asking us to vote for him and his party to continue the carnage. The conclusion is not mine, it’s Tinubu’s. He has repeatedly said on campaign stomps that part of his plan is to consolidate on Buhari’s legacy. And what are some of those legacies? A mismanaged economy, reign of terror nationwide in the form of insurrectionists, murderous herdsmen of Fulani extraction, bandits, kidnappers, growing the number of out-of-school children from about 15 million in 2015 to well over 22 million within eight years, driving a wedge between and among Nigerians through nepotistic appointments and making 97% v. 5% a state policy.

Under APC and Buhari, we have had to contend with a bizarre situation where a sitting governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emiefele, insisted on holding on to his day job and jostling in the primary election of the ruling APC for its presidential ticket. There was outrage but Emiefele was undaunted. He went to court to establish his rights to vie for the office of the President of Nigeria as a bonafide card-carrying member of the APC. 

He already had a N100 million nomination and expression of interest forms said to have been paid for on his behalf by his supporters. He eventually backed down and out but the damage had been done. The governor of the CBN could no longer be trusted as an honest and unbiased superintendent of the apex bank. Emiefele is a partisan hack and that partly explained the under-the-counter award of more than N22 trillion as loans to the Buhari and APC regime, a blatant breach of extant laws and even the Constitution of Nigeria. 

After many years of extorting illegal loans from under the table, the regime has now gone to the pliable National Assembly to legitimize an obvious illegality. He will have his way and it would become the normal practice, if the PDP or APC wins the February and March elections. The two parties are hewn from the same rotten wood.

Because of Emefiele’s folly, Nigerians are currently being made to pay a huge and painful price over a bungled currency redesign policy. Nigerians can’t access their money, petrol crisis and shortages have lingered since last year and elections are due in days.

In 2016, about one year after the APC ousted a ruling party at the centre, it unleashed the secret police for a midnight raid of the homes of judges. A number of the judges were arrested, some in their pajamas. They were charged to court for corruption. All the cases collapsed because they were frivolous. On the eve of the 2019 election, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, was hounded and ousted from office. 

It was alleged that the ruling party could not vouch for his loyalty in the wake of speculations that the outcome of that year’s presidential election could be decided in the Supreme Court. As it emerged later, the whole idea was to intimidate the judiciary and make judges the lapdogs of the executive. The APC regime succeeded. 

It then proceeded to create a Supreme Court in its own image and likeness, the likeness and image of lies and corruption. Tanko Mohammed, a glaringly ill-qualified Sharia jurist, was created and installed as the chief justice. The court promised to henceforth deliver justice and not judgment. It has failed to do so in all and every high-profile case in politics from Imo state to Akwa Ibom states and Yobe State.

As with the central bank, Nigeria’s Supreme Court has descended to the arena of partisanship. The Chief Justice, Oluwakayode Ariwoola, now publicly expresses his partisan political views, including on the divisive G5 PDP governors, commissions ‘dividends of democracy’ projects in states, and engages critics of the court’s judgments in notorious and riotous public spats. And there’s no class to what he does. 

The press statement from the court appears to have been written by a barely literate fellow. But it is no surprise because, less than two years ago, a similar statement [actually worse in terms of the display of illiteracy] was issued by the office of the chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal defending the man for his abuse of power in a case that could be likened to ‘two fighting’. 

Every institution that can be diminished has been diminished by the APC and Buhari – the legislature, the executive, the judiciary and every institution in-between. That’s the Buhari and APC legacy. That’s what a presidential candidate says he would consolidate.

*Onuoha is a commentator on public issues