Buhari’s Sack Of Maina An Afterthought – Gov Fayose

         Press Release

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose, has said the President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive for the immediate disengagement of former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Mr. Abdullahi Maina, is an afterthought.

*President Buhari 

He said the President only acted to save his face from the global embarrassment caused him by the outcry of Nigerians on the news of Maina’s reinstatement.

The governor demanded immediate arrest and trial of Maina as well as the dismissal of all those who perpetrated his reinstatement, which he described as fraudulent and shameful.

Hopes Fading For Buhari’s Regime, Unless…

By Hector-Roosevelt Ukegbu

Early last year, in the run-up to the 2015 general elections, this writer argued in two newspaper articles that Nigerians should vote for then presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari and against Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and the then-ruling PDP. I pointed to the massive systemic corruption in the Jonathan government and how this was seriously impeding economic growth and miring the hapless citizens in poverty.

*President Buhari and VP Osinbajo

I called the entire Nigerian government system a vast criminal enterprise. In truth, my whole premise of advocating support for Mr. Buhari was not for his vaunted economic management skills, but for his self-discipline, for his circumspect way of life, for his nationalism. My belief was and still is, that Mr. Buhari was the lone person in Nigeria’s political firmament capable of slaying the hydra-headed monster called Nigerian corruption.

My belief remains that if corruption is crushed, economic recovery will come, and so will improve all other indices of human growth among the people. President Muhammadu Buhari while he met with the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury and the most senior bishop in the Church of England, Justin Portal Welby, Monday. The crash in world oil prices has thrown a wrench in the wheel of Nigeria’s economic recovery even as the battle against corruption proceeds. It pains me, as I am sure it pains lovers of the Nigerian people, that the Buhari/APC government appears to be willy-nilly trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The people are groaning under the unfamiliar burdens of severe fuel scarcity (something that the Jonathan government had largely gotten rid of in the recent past). They also contend with declining electricity generation, making worse an output that was already abysmal (reportedly from sabotage of gas pipelines that send feedstock to generating plants), and serious shortages of hard currency (due to reduced oil export revenue inflows). Which way out now for the Buhari/APC government?

For Peace In South-East, South-South

By Wale Sokunbi

Nigeria has, for some weeks now, been reeling under protests by Niger Delta militants and pro-Biafra groups demanding self-determination and a number of other things from the Federal Government. Hardly any day has passed in recent weeks without gory reports on the bombings of oil pipelines, destruction of other critical oil facilities and killings of protesters, that are capable of distracting the government from the very serious challenges confronting the nation.

(*pix: vanguard)

With the incessant protests and destruction of oil facilities, the impression that is being created is that some of our compatriots are tired of the continuing existence of Nigeria as one country and would prefer to opt out of the Nigerian arrangement. The response of the security agencies to this unfortunate scenario is only succeeding in further hardening the agitators. Scores of protesters were reportedly killed by soldiers in Onitsha, Anambra State, during the celebration of the 49th anniversary of the declaration of the Republic of Biafra by the late Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu, on May 30, while the military also laid siege to the Gbaramatu hometown of one of the leading Niger Delta militants. The government’s response to this situation has not stopped the Niger Delta militants from continuing with their bombing campaigns and threatening the Federal Government and the entire country.

Whatever the problem is, one thing that is clear is that the best way for the militants to achieve their objectives is not by destroying whatever is left of the country. They will do much better to channel their grievances against the state through their recognised leaders and National Assembly members to the appropriate quarters so that they can be addressed and resolved.  The problems that are currently blowing against the soul of Nigeria are such that can topple the nation’s ship of state, if not immediately and properly addressed.  As things stand, the nation’s economy is walking a tightrope on account of the fall in the price of crude oil in the international market.

The delay in the passage of the 2016 Budget has thrown the economy into a bind. Power supply is getting more epileptic, while inflation has gone through the roof. The pump price of petrol has almost doubled.

Coming To Terms With Niger Delta Avengers

By Paul Odili

To correct a wrong, it is sometimes necessary to exceed proper limits’. This doctrine is attributed to Mao Zedong by his personal secretary, Lin Ke.

Mao, founder of the modern communist state of China was a man of power, who had no hesitation using whatever means he judged necessary to protect his power and the state he founded. In this context, Mao was justifying the use of terror. 

I do not ordinarily believe in the use of terror by legitimate forces of the state, yet there are times you just ponder what are the options before state actors under certain circumstances. If Mao were to be the commander of Nigerian state, there is no question as to what he would do in view of the dystopia in the Niger Delta area.

The senseless attacks and economic sabotage going on in the Niger Delta by a shadowy militant group( Niger Delta Avengers) claiming to be fighting for the interest of Niger Delta, you wonder if there is no great wisdom in Mao’s doctrine. We don’t have a Mao here of course, we have PMB and PMB is no Mao clearly. And Nigerian state is neither a communist state nor resembling a Chinese society. We are Africans with our cultural mores and social and economic structure. But we are a society that must survive and we are under attack by a merciless force. Nigeria is in a state of war.

In any state of war, economic assets are legitimate targets. So what do we do? Let’s get inside PMB’s head. A retired old school Army General, strict and unbending, prides himself in promoting order and discipline above everything else, is now faced with one of the greatest existential threat yet to his administration. At a period of great economic stress, in which the main source of the government’s economic power is being systematically sabotaged and somehow he is powerless to do anything. This must be his worst nightmare! Naturally, his first instinct would be to use military force and exterminate these saboteurs.

He said as much when he declared that the Niger Delta militants would be dealt with like Boko haram. So far PMB is wrong. The terrain and associated circumstances are different. NDA have called his bluff. Almost on a daily basis one asset or the other has been blown up. Minister Ibe Kachikwu is lamenting the effect of this on oil production down to 1.4 million; the lowest production in two decades. With the hapless situation he is facing PMB must be torn between armistice with the militants or military operation to conquer. With public panic rising and economic downturn worsening with the continuation of this act of war, what should be done and done to end this conflagration once and for all?

And The Truth Shall Make President Buhari Free

By Reno Omokri

Having worked twice at the Nigerian Presidential villa and once at the British Parliament, if there is anything I have learnt, it is that it is impossible to over inform a leader. You can under inform him, but no matter how much information you give a leader, you cannot give him too much information.

*Buhari 

In today’s world, strength and weakness are gauged differently than they were, say in 1984. In the millennial age in which we live in, information is power and lack of information is weakness. My concern is that there are a lot of weaknesses in Nigeria’s seat of power because not enough information is being given to President Muhammadu Buhari. I, like other Nigerians, have heard or read reports of ministers in President Buhari’s cabinet being afraid to challenge him or disagree with him. Perhaps unawares, the minister of state for petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, corroborated these reports in a recorded YouTube video now circulating where he revealed that the President ignores his ministers when they bring up issues that he does not want to discuss.

Having such anodyne personalities around you just means that you are living in a bubble, seeing things as you want them to be and not as they are. On Friday May 20th, 2016, Dr. Yemi Kale, the Statistician General of the Federation and head of the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics revealed that Nigeria’s economy had not grown in the first quarter of the year but had rather shrunk by 0.36%, the worst contraction in 25 years! Since the announcement was made, there has been various reactions with pundits pointing at this or the other as being the cause of this setback. But I am convinced beyond any reasonable doubts that this negative trend owes more to President Muhammadu Buhari’s utterances on our economy and polity than to any other single causative factor.

 The bigger problem is that even though I suspect that his ministers know that what I have just said is true, they would rather pander to the President and like Dr. Chris Ngige, say that Nigerians are lucky to have President Buhari (obvious Ngige does not know the meaning of luck). In the last eleven months, the President had traversed the globe and has spoken about Nigeria’s economy as if he was the chief undertaker of our polity rather than the chief marketer that he is meant to be. Of what benefit is it to the President’s agenda or to Nigeria’s economic well being for him to go to foreign nations and instead of highlighting the positive things that are happening in Nigeria, he begins to regale his hosts with the most unsavory stories about Nigeria.

 And some of the stories the President tells are just that-tales. They are not factual. At best they are arguable. You go to India for a summit where other world leaders are competing with you for the attention of venture capitalists and foreign investors and while your counterparts are talking about how great their countries are, you tell the audience how everybody in your country is corrupt except you and oh, can they come and invest in your country? Only a foolish investor would go and invest in a country whose President thinks his citizens are ‘criminals’ (as the President said to the Telegraph of UK in February) and whose officials are ‘fantastically corrupt’ (as the President said in agreement with British PM David Cameron when questioned by Sky News). The President speaks on the Nigerian economy and polity without any filters and his comments are causing his chickens to roost with devastating consequences for all of us.

Buhari, Tinubu And Anti-Kachikwu Hysteria

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

Having crashed from the dizzy heights of the grand dreams of prosperity and equity of the All Progressives Congress (APC) government led by President Muhammadu Buhari, the citizens who are desperately in search of succour are faced with the danger of snatching whatever promises to ameliorate their plight. What is amply being demonstrated now is that the citizens’ straitened circumstances could blur their capacity to make a distinction between those who really love them and are genuinely committed to their well-being and those who would gleefully turn their blighted condition into a populist stunt to leverage their social and political capital.

*Tinubu and President Buhari

The citizens who have been left in the lurch by the APC government after winning the presidential election may agree with Bola Tinubu that what Minister of State for Petroleum Ibe Kachikwu owes Nigerians is a public apology and not smugly applauding himself from an Olympian height for how much he has deployed his ingenuity  to supply the citizens fuel amid highly discouraging odds.  Yet, the citizens must take cognisance of the need to avoid being corralled into a turf war that is not actually designed to benefit them. We do not need to probe how much love of the people Tinubu demonstrated while he was the governor of Lagos State. What we observe now from his position as a leader of the ruling party is enough for us. He was instrumental to the emergence of Buhari as president. It was apparently to avoid indicting himself that Tinubu would not like to blame Buhari for the failure of his government. For Tinubu cannot really say that he found in Buhari administrative genius that compelled him to recommend him to Nigerians as the best presidential material last year. In this regard, we are reminded of the attempts by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to divorce himself from the crises sired by the inability of  his successor Musa Yar’ Adua to govern effectively after being hobbled by an illness that he never recovered from.

To be sure, the nation’s fuel crisis is aggravated by the erratic supply of electricity. This is a sector managed by Babatunde  Fashola whom Tinubu imposed on Lagos State residents for eight years.  On account of Tinubu’s newfangled love for the well-being of the citizens, he should have  issued a statement bristling with rage at  Fashola’s abandonment of   his responsibility of providing the citizens improved electricity. Or does Tinubu not consider it revoltingly illogical for  Fashola to compel the citizens to pay more for electricity they are not provided? Which should come first, the provision of meters for the citizens or their paying more for electricity? Would the citizens not readily pay their bills if they were metered and they were convinced that they were paying for what they consumed?

President Buhari, You Are Still The Petroleum Minister

By Ogundana Michael Rotimi

Dear President Buhari,

I am addressing you not as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but as the Minister of Petroleum Resources, a post to which you appointed yourself on the November 11, 2015.

*President Buhari 

You seem to have forgotten that you are the Minister of Petroleum Resources and may have completely relinquished your responsibilities to the Minister of State of Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu.

You seem to have neglected the fact that you are directly answerable to Nigerians as the Minister of Petroleum Resources, and owe it to Nigerians to make the product readily available and affordable.

As a reminder of what you already know - fuel scarcity has fully gripped major cities in the country and is contributing negatively to an economy that is still struggling to pick its stand.

Pathetic as it may be, your Ministry has failed Nigerians over its inability to end the lingering fuel shortage, as this unabated scarcity of the product has contributed to the high cost of goods and services.

The Honourable Minister of Petroleum Sir, you are on your way to set the record for the longest reign of fuel scarcity in the history of the Republic under your watch. Since you have been sworn in, it has been from one scarcity to another.

Although, one cannot belittle or underestimate the efforts of the junior Minister of Petroleum Resources who also happens to be the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, in revamping the sector. But Sir, your unnecessary and unwarranted silence and carefree attitude before every short statement is issued on the lingering scarcity is worrisome. It suggests that you may have forgotten or may have become unconscious of the fact that you head the Ministry that is currently failing to make available and affordable the product that is key to the economy and the everyday activities of the people.

Kachikwu As Scapegoat Of Tinubu's Frustration

By Uche Ezechukwu

The mantra of ‘change’, mouthed by the All Progressive Congress (APC) during the electoral campaigns was so appealing at the time to Nigerians, such that when they ushered Muhammadu Buhari into office by voting out Goodluck Jonathan, hope became the most abundant commodity in Nigeria. When APC promised that they were going to recreate for Nigerians a heaven on earth, they were believed and trusted, especially as that ‘change promise’ was being steered by a man that was reputed to be a man of truth. 

*Bola Tinubu and President Buhari 

For a country that places little premium on competence and proven track record, not much thought was extended on Buhari’s ability to understand, not to talk of being able to confront the complex demands of modern-day issues. Even those who had queried his intellectual capacity to face up to those modern-day challenges were shouted down. Nigerians wanted their man; they got him. Ten months into President Muhammadu Buhari’s APC administration, it has become obvious, even to the APC bosses themselves, that talk is cheap, and that as the saying goes here in Nigeria, ‘khaki no be leather’. 

One does not have to be ‘a wailer’ to see and accept that nothing is working in today’s Nigeria or that the government is at sea over where next to turn. In the beginning, every bend on the road was blamed on the outgone administration of President Jonathan as well as on the 16-year reign of the PDP, which in any case, was made up of most of today’s top-hats in the APC. The over-lapping messages of the campaign period had continued to work for the APC during the early months of the administration, but it could definitely not last forever. Propaganda, though effective on the short run, has a very quick expiry date. The APC’s campaign excuses and the blaming game days have also elapsed…perhaps permanently.

For instance, there was no way the Buhari administration could continue to blame Goodluck Jonathan for the president’s inability to pick ministers for six whole months; nor could the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) be blamed for having anything to do with the fact that when PMB eventually did pick his ministers, they were mostly lack-lustre and lacking in pedigree, accounting for the fact that the cabinet does not have one single person whose voice commands authority in the field of economic management. Many have wondered if the problem with the embarrassingly low quality of Buhari’s team is the lack of the ability, ab initio, of the president to distinguish copper from gold.

Yet, there are many other informed observers who believe, like an article of faith, that the problem with the inertia of the current cabinet members who have definitely not performed, might not be in their personal lack of capacity, but rather, in the absence of a definite roadmap, as it is widely alleged that no minister can as much as sharpen a pencil without the president’s say-so. Which should not be a surprise, as, after all, over 90 per cent of them were picked not on their individual merit as proven performers, but rather because they were cronies of either Buhari or Ahmed Tinubu, the ‘owner’ of the other half of the party that brought the votes and the cash.

Nigeria: Farewell To Fuel Scarcity

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Through the ages, peo­ples, including those currently occupying the space known today as Nigeria, who are faced with seri­ous challenges, naturally devise ways of mastering them. Yet, Ni­geria continues to groan under the weight of multifarious prob­lems that are, in truth, not intrac­table. Of course, there are prob­lems and there are those of them that are unquestionably knotty, including the task of building am­ity and unity between disparate peoples lumped together by the invasion of trans-Atlantic greed. When, in such a setting, it seems like the signs of enduring con­cord are in the offing, local greed – the insidious variety planted and nurtured by the trans-Atlan­tic original – rises and wipes away every vestige of hope. That is un­derstandable.

When, however, the problem has to do with fuel shortages, or the acute shortages of other goods and services, there is a fundamental reason why things permanently bad – to the cha­grin, utter pain and peril of Nige­rian peoples. Take the perennial shortages of petroleum products – gas, kerosene and petrol – in the country. These items are not scarce because they are not obtainable. They are invariably scarce because those employed to guarantee their availability have, through time, either shirked their responsibility or failed to under­stand what that responsibility entails.

This disgraceful situation criti­cally questions the nature of the essence of Nigerian peoples. It indicts Nigeria. Despite being the biggest oil nation in Africa, it remains the only one on the continent in which the discord­ant woes of fuel scarcity are regularly emitted. It is shameful that the mournful riff of lack of fuel, and the sorry sight of end­less queues at gas stations are Nigerians trademarks. Non-oil producing countries, including those in the Sahel region, hardly ever experience fuel shortages. But it is the lamentable lot of Ni­geria. Countries engaged in wars or afflicted by other tribulations manage somehow to meet their fuel demands. But not Nigeria, a country said to be benefitting from “relative” peace.

The reasons behind this blight are all too obvious. Corruption is one of them, as are ineptitude and negligence. So, the peoples suffer. The peoples suffer because of the long queues in the blistering heat of everyday. The peoples suffer because of the contrived delays by those operating the distribu­tion channels and the fuel sta­tions. The peoples suffer because artificial scarcities hike pump prices, which automatically im­pact negatively on prices and the availability of other goods and services. Without fuel there can­not be locomotion. Without this essential product, there cannot be power in homes and hospitals and factories; without fuel, what remain are jaded peoples.

Nigeria’s Most bogus And Fraudulent Budget

By Femi Aribasala

When the incredible issue of a missing/counterfeited 2016 budget arose some weeks ago, I was expecting to hear from the All Progressive Congress (APC) that Goodluck Jonathan was to blame. Surprisingly, that did not happen. Instead, blame was traded between the presidency and the national assembly, seemingly forgetting that both organs of government are now controlled by the same APC.

The stock-in-trade of this government is to blame Goodluck Jonathan for everything. If there is petrol shortage: Jonathan is to blame. If there are power cuts, Jonathan is to blame. If there Boko Haram killings, Jonathan is to blame.

This government has apparently not yet heard the aphorism that: “the buck stops with the president.” Nine months down the road from his inauguration, the president continues to pass the buck to Goodluck Jonathan. Then came the defining issue of the 2016 budget.

Mr. President did not just send the budget to the National Assembly, he presented it himself with great fanfare and bells and whistles. This was supposed to be his signature proposal. With seven months squandered ostensibly trying to get a cabinet of saints and angels who turned out to be the same old same old, many with corruption allegations hanging over their heads; the budget was expected to provide redemption for the government.

*President Buhari presenting the 2016 Budget

It would provide a bold new start to the government’s much-heralded “change” with a N6 trillion “zero-based” proposal that would defy Nigeria’s austere economic circumstances, and put us firmly on the launch-pad to economic recovery and diversification.

This makes it all the more perplexing that the 2016 budget has turned out to be the biggest blunder of this government in a catalogue of blunders that has now come to define it. I am still waiting for those who voted for APC to admit they blundered royally. In their blunder, they have given us a government that keeps going from one blunder to another.

We did not need Olisa Metuh, the opposition spokesman conveniently padlocked by the EFCC, to expose the blunders in the 2016 budget proposals. Different government spokesmen have competed to distance themselves from it as much as possible. Charles Dafe, Director of Information, Ministry of National Planning, blamed the blunders in the budget on the government’s insufficient knowledge of the zero-based budgeting. Who is to be held responsible for this ignorance? Surprisingly, Dafe forgot to mention Goodluck Jonathan.

Isaac Adewole, the Minister of Heath, also forgot to blame Goodluck Jonathan. Instead, he maintained: “rats invaded Nigeria Budget documents and smuggled in foreign items.” You may well ask who was supposed to buy rat poison. Did Goodluck Jonathan forget to hand it over on his departure?

Lai Mohammed, the past-master at blaming Goodluck Jonathan for everything, could not blame Jonathan for once. The man who promised to hold 365 carnivals in 365 days in 2016, and was awarded a budget allocation bigger than the Ministry of Agriculture, openly disowned the government’s “budget of change.” Apparently, someone had gone ahead to change a number of the items in it; much in the spirit of the APC’s highfalutin change mantra. Among them, the N5 million proposed for buying computers for the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and the Film and Video Censors Board mysteriously became N398 million.

Wombling And Fumbling With Fuel Prices

By Henry Boyo

The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency’s Executive Secretary, Farouk Ahmed, reportedly announced, at a press briefing in Abuja on 29th December, 2015, that a revised template for fuel pricing had been approved by the Agency; the announcement was evidently the formal manifestation of the ‘modulated pricing’ model earlier canvassed by Ibe Kachikwu, the NNPC CEO and current Minister of State for Petroleum. Thus, with the adoption of the new template, petrol price will be reduced from N87 to N86 in NNPC filling stations, while other marketers would sell at a pump price of N86.50/litre.

However, in contrast to the previous static cost template, fuel prices would henceforth be reviewed quarterly to reflect fluctuations in any cost variable. Indeed, Kachikwu had also corroborated the thrust of the new template when he emphasized in an earlier press briefing in Kaduna on December 2015 that “we are not going to be fluctuating prices day to day, we are going to take like an average, and I think that today when you look at the prices, we have no subsidy, because prices remain low and that is what we need to do”. 

Kachikwu’s statement probably suggests that the reviewed fuel price has fallen below the existing subsidy threshold of N87/litre; consequently, government decided to pass on between N1 and 50Kobo/litre discount on petrol prices to the public, despite the oppressive N2Tn projected loan required to fund 2016 budget deficit. The PPPRA’s modulated response to fuel pricing is allegedly a demonstration of government’s “honesty in being able to sell products to Nigerians at affordable prices that make sense”. Nonetheless, the Minister is certain that we still need to get out of the subsidy debacle, because, according to him “the reliability and affordability of subsidy are issues we need to get away from, whether or not you believe in subsidy”.

Now That Body Language Has Failed!

       By Abraham Ogbodo 

LINGUISTS contend languages could die if they fail to expand to accommodate new notations. This was what happened to Latin, which at some point in the history of western education was the language of scholarship. The English language, which has grown to conquer the world was, more or less, vernacular and interjection of Latin in scholarly presentations in England and elsewhere was seen as a mark of erudition.

As a young man, I did not know what had happened to Latin. I thought it was still alive and kicking and I had wished for it to replace French in my first year in the University when the latter was a compulsory elective course for Theatre Arts students. It was my first classroom contact with the French language where everything is either masculine – le or feminine – la, and the learner does not have a clear guide as to who or what is a man or a woman. When I told my French lecturer one day that I would prefer Latin to French, she laughed and replied in French: “ Latin est mort!”

Permit the long digression. I was only trying to establish that language, including body language can die if not properly nourished. Everybody was happy when the Buhari Body Language was introduced into the curriculum of the political economy on May 29, 2015. It was linguistically efficient and people understood it without interpretation. Importers of fuel understood it and began immediately to conduct the business of fuel importation and distribution to sales outlets in the new language. It was understood, for instance, that fuel could flow ceaselessly at N87 per litre with or without payment of subsidy. The long queues at filling stations vanished overnight and there was jubilation in the land and in the camp of the APC, which promptly appropriated the turn-around as part the change it promised Nigerians.

In fact, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who until recently was publicity secretary of the APC said nothing was more evident of the change than this strange situation when the president could get things done without expending effort and scarce resources. He named the new approach that ensured performance without corresponding investment, Body Language. He said it was working far better than anything previously known.