The Reality Of Poverty In Nigeria

By Dan Amor

Against the backdrop of the declaration of Tuesday October 16, 2017, as 'World Poverty Day', we may well take a critical look at a damning document entitled, "Report Card on World Social Progress". Released currently in the United States of America by the International Society for Life Quality Studies, the report has identified the best countries in which to live in the world. These include Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria and Belgium , in that order. The report which is signed by the group's international president, Prof. Richard Estes, who has studied human development for over 45 years, has equally stated the bottom 10 poorest nations in the world. They include Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Guinea, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The report was compiled based on data provided by governments to the United Nations and measures the ability of nations to meet the basic needs of their residents in terms of health, education, security, human rights, political participation, population growth, improved women's status, cultural diversity and freedom from social chaos.

*Buhari and Obasanjo

According the report, the overall picture for social progress in the world is grim with 21 African and Asian countries nearing social collapse due to concentrated poverty, weak political institutions, repeated economic failure, disease and cultural dislocation. But the report missed out corruption which is the bane of the Nigerian society and the major cause of poverty in the country. Of course, Nigeria, since 1998, has been described by the Berlin-based anti-corruption organisation ,Transparency International, as one of the five most corrupt countries in the world. Unfortunately, President Muhammadu Buhari, who claims to be fighting corruption, did not even bother any hoot to address the nation on the pervasive and scandalous maze of mass poverty in Nigeria. Yet, the irony of the Nigerian condition is that Buhari was a cabinet member of the military regime of General Olusegun Obasanjo (1976-1979) which actually handed over the legacy of poverty to the Alhaji Shehu Shagari regime (1979-1983). The Obasanjo military regime it was which syndicated the first ever $15billion loan from a consortium of European banks. Millions of Nigerians were sacked from work and their sources of livelihood were sacrificed to meet International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities for the granting of the loan.

Uniform Palavar: I Stand With The Senate (1)

By Ochereome Nnanna

 Whe retired Col. Hameed Ali, the Comptroller General of the Customs, CGC, finally yielded to the language and pressure of force and appeared before the Senate on summons on Thursday, 16th March 2017, the only thing I wanted to see on him was his uniform as the overall boss of that organisation.

  

Once I saw he was still wearing his white kaftan, my gaze went beyond him to the bevy of the Customs top brass, all proudly and smartly outfitted in their grey khaki uniforms and looking resplendent indeed. Some of the “oga madams” (or female officers) seemed to make a meal of the situation, all dolled up in comely (even sexy) make-ups and slanting their caps at rakish angles, as if to say: “to hell with Oga Hameed Ali for insulting the dignity of this uniform”.

Meanwhile, Hameed Ali stood before the Senators like a truant schoolboy physically bundled to the assembly ground to receive his due punishments from the school principal. Receive the punishment he did: he was dismissed with ignominy to go and wear his uniform and come back a week later.

Otherwise, he would face the wrath of 109 Senators with the mandates of millions of Nigerians. The arrogant will always be humiliated, and the proud put to shame. I hear people parrot Ali’s nonsensical claim that no law compels him to wear the uniform. Which law compels Africans to respect their elders? Which law compels us to greet people when we meet them?

Is Nigeria A Tragedy?

By Abike Olajide 

In literature, tragedy does not really connote something tragic but it means a re-evaluation and possible redemption of a given situation. Truly, this is a season of darkness and struggling: No power, no good roads, unemployment and poverty are on the alarming rate. But surely, light will break and relief will fall.

*Buhari 

With much natural abundant resources, Nigeria has failed on all indices of life worth living. What went wrong? Leadership deficiency, I can hear you say. Nigeria is wasting God’s resources. The country is now in a mess.

General Yakubu Gowon, despite the oil money available to him, chose to increase workers’ salary rather than use the money to build industries as foundation for a great economy. His action led to inflation that the country is yet to be freed from. 

President Shehu Shagari, a weakling, permitted politicians to loot the country dry. Ibrahim Babangida introduced an economic policy, Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) that inflicted untold hardship on the people. Coupled with this was that Nigeria got exposed to maximum corruption under him.

Do I need to say anything about General Abacha, 18 years after his death, his looted funds are still in different vaults around the globe. Olusegun Obasanjo, in his second coming destroyed the country more than he met it. He paid the country’s debt and those who facilitated it smiled home with hundreds of millions of dollars. On his watch, infrastructural decadence reached its peak. Under him, though, microeconomy was got right, credit line improved but he never touched infrastructure.  At the twilight of his term, he came into the realisation that he had not met the aspiration of Nigerians and thus sought a third term. Of course, he could not get it.

Can Buhari’s Dumb Government Also Choose To Be Deaf?

By Rotimi Fasan

In describing the Muhammadu Buhari administration as dumb I do not wish now to be understood as referring to what many commentators increasingly call the administration’s or, in fact, the president’s cluelessness (Is it not amazing that this administration has so quickly frittered away its goodwill in less than two years, to the extent that it’s now being described in the same unflattering register as the Goodluck Jonathan administration?) Buhari, Osinbajo and Adeosun.

 

*Buhari 

Rather than commenting on the frustrating missteps and ineffectuality of this government, my focus here is on the widening wall of silence that the administration has chosen to erect between itself and the Nigerian people. It is a needless and useless wall that will ruin whatever very modest gains can yet be recorded for the administration- if it knows true sovereignty lies with the people.

The Buhari administration has rigidly stuck to its gun in its irresponsible failure to communicate with the people of this country and keep them in the know of important activities in government circle. Whatever are the immediate inconveniences this stance could mean to sections of the Nigerian people, whatever may be the pains being presently endured by some Nigerians (such as the beleaguered people of Southern Kaduna) as a consequence of such willful hostility from leaders of this country, the government in the long run stands to lose far more than any section of the Nigerian population.

It’s not given to many to have the boon of a second chance. But Nigerian leaders randomly take such chances for granted without any hint of an awareness of it. We’ve seen this tragic cycle repeat itself in the lives of our leaders and occupants of public offices from the lowest position in the land to the highest offices imaginable. Given a second or even third chance in some public office, they go on to repeat the very errors and scandalous performance that marred earlier opportunities, making them forgettable footnotes on the pages of history.

Provided he has the sense of history to measure his own conduct and appraise his government’s performance, President Buhari would one day look back and regret his failure to connect with the people by building on the goodwill that ushered him into power. For this he has nobody but himself to blame. This is a self-inflicted but entirely avoidable wound that is right now festering and worsening the relationship between the government and the people. It’s in this sense that I have described the present administration as dumb, that is mute and lacking the ability to speak. The detail that needs to be restated, however, is that this government’s muteness is not a congenital defect.

It is rather a clear case of hubris, a demonstration of an authoritarian disposition within a democratic context. It is no more unavoidable than it is natural. It would seem then that President Buhari feels affronted by differing opinions and would rather not have his authority questioned in the manner permissible in a democracy. His dismissive silence, which looks sullen in every particular, is the only way he could get back at those who ‘disturb’ him with their ‘noise’, unsolicited and annoying demand of explanations to actions he would rather take without being held to account.

Obasanjo And His 25 Billionaires

By Remi Oyeyem

The brief exchange (as reported by the News Agency of Nigeria via PUNCH newspaper on October 30, 2016) between Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Mrs. Folorunso Alakija at the 2016 Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Forum last weekend was very instructive in so many ways. It was very instructive because it underscored the kind of mentality possessed by those who have had the chance(s) to govern Nigeria. Or it underscored the misfortune of Nigerians to have been governed by the kind of leaders they have had so far.

*Obasanjo: Celebrating his 25 billionaires? 

Mrs. Alakija, according to reports, had fired the first salvo accusing the Obasanjo administration that it “illegally took an oil block” allocated to her company after her family had “invested all” to “strike oil in commercial quantity.” Mrs. Alakija said the following in addition:

‘She said, “This oil block is in 5000 feet depth of water and was extremely difficult to explore. It took 15 years from the time that we were awarded the licence in 1993 till 2008 when we first struck the first oil.

“When this event happened, 60 per cent out of our 60 per cent equity in the business, was forcefully taken from us by the government of the day without due process.

We had to fight back by going to court to seek redress and it took another 12 years for justice to be served in our favour.”

Obasanjo in his response had reportedly explained that the “action of the government then was in line with the Mining Act which regulates oil prospection and exploration.” He insisted that it was “not fair” for Mrs. Alakija to claim that she was denied what was rightfully hers. Obasanjo –Onyejekwe added “I do not know you from Adam and there is no reason I would have denied you what rightfully belonged to you. So, you struggled, and you have struck oil. God bless your heart.”

Then Obasanjo dropped the bombshell:

“My delight is to be able to create Nigerian billionaire and I always say it that my aim, when I was in government was to create 50 Nigerian billionaires.

“Unfortunately I failed. I created only 25 and Madam, you are one of them.”

There is nothing unusual about Obasanjo’s failing to create 50 Nigerian billionaires as he intended. He has always failed Nigerians in every endeavour he has been involved. But the larger question remains the inability of our leaders to follow due process in exercising power. Our rulers often act as if they are kings of the jungle and that the laws of the land do not apply to them. They exude beastly instincts permeated with ruinous vendetta in manifesting congenital need to demonstrate crude power.

To Mrs. Alakija, until she was allotted oil wells, no one has really heard about her. She was never associated with any known business endeavour. She did not descend from any rich family or was previously married to a billionaire of credible means. She became a billionaire because she was allotted oil wells. She is emblematic of the mis-governance that has always characterized our clime. She got to be allotted oil wells in a system where nothing was ever fair and without due process. She only used her connections with our power aphrodisiacs euphemized as rulers, to get the oil wells.

Mrs. Alakija is a Yoruba woman. Like the retired General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma she got many oil wells because of her proximity to crude power in Nigeria. None of them is from Niger Delta. With the publicly available list of the owners of oil wells in Nigeria, the people of the Niger Delta have been evidently short changed. How many Niger Deltans became billionaire as a result of owning oil wells?